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>•-■ * • • > 




A Pair of 
Patient Lovers 

idun 



by 



W 



fi-'^/k 



Howells 



Author of 

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



C( 





New York and London 

Harper £r Brothers Publishers 

1901 




Copyright, 1901, by William Dkam Howblls. 



All right* rutvtd. 



CONTENTS 



A Pair op Patient Lovers 1 

The Pursuit op the Piano 79 

A Difficult Case 145 

The Magic op a Voice . 221 

A Circle in the Water 285 



A PATE OF PATIENT LOVEES. 



I. 



We first met Glendenning on the Canadian boat 
which carries you down the rapids of the St. Law- 
rence from Kingston and leaves you at Montreal. 
When we saw a handsome young clergyman across 
the promenade-deck looking up from his guide-book 
toward us, now and again, as if in default of knowing 
any one else he would be very willing to know us, we 
decided that I must make his acquaintance. He was 
instantly and cordially responsive to my question 
whether he had ever made the trip before, and he was 
amiably grateful when in my quality of old habitue of 
the route I pointed out some characteristic features 
of the scenery. I showed him just where we were on 
the long map of the river hanging over his knee, and • 
I added, with no great relevancy, that my wife and I 
were renewing the fond emotion of our first trip down 
A 



2 A PAIR or PATISKT LOVERS. 

the St Lawrence in the character of bridal pair which 
we had spumed when it was really ours. I explained 
that we had left the children with my wife's aunt, so 
as to render the travesty more lifelike; and when he 
said, ** I suppose you miss them, though," I gave him 
my card. He tried to find one of his own to give nie 
in return, but he could only find a lot of other peo- 
ple's cards. He wrote his name on the back of one, 
and handed it to me with a smile. ** It won't do for 
me to put * reverend ' before it, in my own chirogra- 
phy, but that's the way I have it engraved." 

** Oh," 1 said, ** the cut of your coat bewrayed you," 
and we had some laughing talk. But I felt the eye 
of Mrs. March dwelling upon me with growing impa- 
tience, till I suggested, ** I should like to make you 
acquainted with my wife, Mr. Glendenning." 

He said. Oh, he should be so happy ; and he gath- 
ered his dangling map into the book and came over 
with me to where Mrs. March sat; and, like the good 
young American husband 1 was in those days, I stood 
aside and left the whole talk to her. She interested 
him so much more than I could that I presently wan- 
dered away and amused myself elsewhere. When I 
came back, she clutched my arm and bade me not 
speak a word ; it was the most romantic thing in the 



A PAIB OF PATIENT LOVERS. 3 

world, and she would tell me about it when we were 
alone, but now I must go off again ; he had just gone 
to get a book for her which he had been speaking of, 
and would be back the next instant, and it would not 
do to let him suppose we had been discussing him. 



11. 

I WAS sometimes disappointed in Mrs. March's 
mysteries when I came up close to them ; but I was 
always willing to take them on trust ; and I submitted 
to the postponement of a solution in this case with 
more than my usual faith. She found time, before 
Mr. Glendenning reappeared, to ask me if I had no- 
ticed a mother and daughter on the boat, the mother 
evidently an invalid, and the daughter very devoted, 
and both decidedly ladies; and when I said, '*No. 
Why ? " she answered, " Oh, nothing," and that she 
would tell me. Then she drove me away, and we did 
not meet till I found her in our state-room just before 
the terrible mid-day meal they used to give you on 
the Corinthian, and called dinner. 

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



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 5 

"Did he tell you that?" 

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

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

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

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

" Yes, he's quite Greek," said Mrs. March, in assent 
to my opinion of his nose. " Too Greek for a clergy- 
man, almost. But he isn't vain of it. Those beautiful 
people are often quite modest, and Mr. Glendenning 
is very modest." 

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

" I'm ready," said my wife, and she continued with 
her eyes still on the glass : " He's got a church out in 
Ohio, somewhere ; but he's a New-Englander, and he's 



6 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

quite wild to get back. He thinks those people are 
from Boston : I could tell in a moment if I saw them. 
Well, now, I am ready," and with this she really 
ceased to do something to her hair, and came out into 
the long saloon with me where the table was set. 
Rows of passengers stood behind the rows of chairs, 
with a detaining grasp on nearly all of them. We 
gazed up and down in despair. Suddenly Mrs. March 
sped forward, and I found that Mr. Glendenning had 
made a sign to her from a distant point, where there 
were two vacant chairs for us next his own. We 
eagerly laid hands on them, and waited for the gong 
to sound for dinner. In this interval an elderly lady 
followed by a young girl came down the saloon toward 
us, and I saw signs, or rather emotions, of intelligence 
pass between Mr. Glendenning and Mrs. March con- 
cerning them. 

The older of these ladies was a tall, handsome ma- 
' tron, who bore her fifty years with a native severity 
qualified by a certain air of wonder at a world which 
I could well fancy had not always taken her at her 
own estimate of her personal and social importance. 
She had the effect of challenging you to do less, as 
she advanced slowly between the wall of state-rooms 
and the backs of the people gripping their chairs, and 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 7 

eyed them with a sort of imperious surprise that they 
should have left no place for her. So at least I read 
her glance, while I read in that of the young lady 
coming after, and showing her beauty first over this 
shoulder and then over that of her mother, chiefly a 
present amusement, behind which lay a character of 
perhaps equal pride, if not equal hardness. She was 
very beautiful, in the dark style which I cannot help 
thinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as 
she passed us I could see that she was very graceful. 
She was dressed in a lady's acceptance of the fashions 
of that day, which would be thought so grotesque in 
this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls 
laugh at the mere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we 
thought hoops extremely becoming; and this young 
lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as 
to give herself room in the narrow avenue, and not 
betray more than the discreetest hint of a white stock- 
ing. I believe the stockings are black now. 

They both got by us, and I could see Mr. Glenden- 
ning following them with longing but irresolute eyes, 
until they turned, a long way down the saloon, as if 
to come toward us again. Then he hurried to meet 
them, and as he addressed himself first to one and 
then to the other, I knew him to be offering them his 



8 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

chair. So did my wife, and she said, "Yoa most 
give up your place too, Ha^il,*^ and I said I woald if 
ahe wi8he<l to see ine starve on the spot But of 
course I went and joined Glendenning in his entreaties 
that they would deprive us of our chances of dinner 
(I knew what the second table was on the Corinthian) ; 
and I must say that the elder lady accepted my chair 
in the spirit which my secret grudge deserved. She 
made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when 
they first passed us; but it was some satisfaction to 
learn afterwards that she gave Mrs. March, for her 
ready sacrifice of me, as bad a lialf-hour as she ever 
had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady 
took Glcndenning's place, and as soon as we had left 
them she began trying to find out from Mrs. March 
who he was, and what his relation to us was. The 
girl tried to check her at first, and tlien seemed to 
give it up, and devoted herself to being rather more 
amiable than she otherwise might have been, my wife 
thought, in compensation for the severity of her moth- 
er's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold 
Mrs. March responsible for knowing little or nothing 
about Mr. Glendenning. 

** He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman," she said, 
in a haughty summing up. ** From his name I should 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 9 

have supposed he was Scotch and a Presbyterian." 
She began to patronize the trip we were making, and 
to abuse it; she said that she did not see what could 
have induced them to undertake it ; but one had to 
get back from Niagara somehow, and they had been * 
told at the hotel there that the boats were very com- 
fortable. She had never been more uncomfortable in 
her life ; as for the rapids, they made her ill, and they 
were obviously so dangerous that she should not even 
look at them again. Then, from having done all the 
talking and most of the eating, she fell quite silent, 
and gave her daughter a chance to speak to my wife. 
She had hitherto spoken only to her mother, but now 
she asked Mrs. March if she had ever been down the 
St. Lawrence before. 

When my wife explained, and asked her whether 
she was enjoying it, she answered with a rapture that 
was quite astonishing, in reference to her mother's 
expressions of disgust : " Oh, immensely ! Every in- 
stant of it," and she went on to expatiate on its pecul- 
iar charm in termd so intelligent and sympathetic that 
Mrs. March confessed it had been part of our wedding 
journey, and that this was the reason why we were 
now taking the trip. 

The young lady did not seem to care so much for 



10 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

this, and when she thanked my wife in leaving the 
table with her mother, and begged her to thank the 
gentlemen who had so kindly given up their places, 
she made no overture to further acquaintance. In 
fact, we had been so simply and merely made use of 
that, although we were rather meek people, we decided 
to avoid our beneficiaries for the rest of the day ; and 
Mr. Glendenning, who could not, as a clergyman, in- 
dulge even a just resentment, could as little refuse us 
his sympathy. He laughed at some hints of my 
wife's experience, which she dropped before she left 
us to pick up a meal from the lukewarm leavings of 
the Corinthian's dinner, if we could. She said she 
was going forward to get a good place on the bow, 
and would keep two camp-stools for us, which she 
could assure us no one would get away from her. 

We were somewhat surprised then to find her seated 
by the rail with the younger lady of the two whom 
she meant to avoid if she meant anything by what she 
said. She was laughing and talking on quite easy 
terms with her apparently, and " There I " she tri- 
umphed as we came up, " I've kept your camp-stools 
for you," and she showed them at her side, where she 
was holding her hand on them. " You had better put 
them here." 



A PAIR OF PATrBNT LOVERS. 11 

The girl had stiffened a little at our approach, as I 
could see, but a young girPs stiffness is always rather 
amusing than otherwise, and I did not mind it. Nei- 
ther, that I could see, did Mr. Glendenning, and it 
soon passed. It seemed that she had left her mother 
lying down in her state-room, where she justly imag- 
ined that if she did not see the rapids she should 
suffer less alarm from them ; the young lady had come 
frankly to the side of Mrs. March as soon as she saw 
her, and asked if she might sit with her. She now 
talked to me for a decent space of time, and then 
presently, without my knowing how, she was talking 
to Mr. Glendenning, and they were comparing notes 
of Niagara; he was saying that he thought he had 
seen her at the Cataract House, and she was owning 
that she and her mother had at least stopped at that 
hotel. 



m. 

I HAVE no wish, and if I had the wish I should not 
have the art, to keep back the fact that these young 
people were evidently very much taken with each oth- 
er. They showed their mutual pleasure so plainly 
that even I could see it. As for Mrs. March, she was 
as proud of it as if she had invented them and set 
them going in their advance toward each other, like 
two mechanical toys. 

I confess that with reference to what my wife had 
told me of this young lady's behavior when she was 
with her mother, her submissiveness, her entire self- 
effacement, up to a certain point, I did not know quite 
what to make of her present independence, not to say 
freedom. I thought she might perhaps have been 
kept so strictly in the background, with young men, 
that she was rather disposed to make the most of any 
chance at them which offered. If the young man in 
this case was at no pains to hide his pleasure in her 



A PAIR OF PATIBNT LOYBBS. 13 

society, one might say that she was almost eager to 
show her delight in his. If it was a case of love at 
first sight, the earliest glimpse had been to the girl, 
who was all eyes for Glendenning. It was very pretty, 
but it was a little alarming, and perhaps a little droll, 
even. She was actually making the advances, not 
consciously, but helplessly; fondly, ignorantly, for I 
have no belief, nor had my wife (a much more critical 
observer), that she knew how she was giving herself 
away. 

I thought perhaps that she was in the habit from 
pride, or something like it, of holding herself in 
check, and that this blameless excess which I saw was 
the natural expansion from an inner constraint. But 
what I really knew was that the young people got on 
very rapidly, in an acquaintance that prospered up to 
the last moment I saw them together. This was just 
before the Corinthian drew up to her landing at Mon- 
treal, when Miss Bentley (we had learned her name) 
came to us from the point where she was standing 
with Glendenning and said that now she must go to 
her mother, and took a sweet leave of my wife. She 
asked where we were going to stay in Montreal and 
whether we were going on to Quebec ; and said her 
mother would wish to send Mrs. March her card. 



14 A PAIR or PATIENT LOVKB8. 

When she was gone, Glendcnning expUinedf with 
rather saperflaoos apology, that he had offered to see 
the ladies to a hotel, for he was afraid that at this 
crowded season they might not find it easy to get 
rooms, and he did not wish Mrs. Bentley, who was an 
invaljd, to have any anxieties about it. He bade as 
an affectionate, but not a disconsolate adieu, and when 
wc had got into the modest conveyance (if an omni- 
bus is modest) which was to take us to the Ottawa 
House, we saw him drive off to the St Lawrence Hall 
(it was twenty -five years ago) in one of those vitreous 
and tinkling Montreal landaus, with Mrs. and Miss 
Bentley and Mrs. Bentley's maid. 

We were still so young as to be very much absorbed 
in the love affairs of other people ; I believe women 
always remain young enough for that; and Mrs. March 
talked about the one wc fancied we had witnessed the 
beginning of pretty much the whole evening. The 
next morning we got letters from Boston, telling us 
how the children were and all that they were doing 
and saying. We had stood it very well, as long as 
we did not hear anything about them, and we had lent 
ourselves in a sort of semi-forgetfulness of them to 
the associations of the past when they were not ; but 
now to learn that they were hearty and happy, and 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 15 

that tney sent love and kisses, was too much. With 
one mind we renounced the notion of going on to 
Quebec; we found that we could just get the ten- 
o'clock train that would reach Boston by eleven that 
night, and we made all haste and got it. We had not 
been really at peace, we perceived, till that moment 
since we had bidden the children good-bye. 



IV. 

Perhaps it was because we left Montreal so abrapt- 
ly that Mrs. March nevej received Mrs. Bentley's card. 
It may be at the Ottawa House to this day, for all I 
know. What is certain is that we saw and heard 
nothing more of her or her daughter. Glcndenning 
called to sec us as he passed through Boston on his 
way west from Quebec, but we were neither of us at 
home and we missed him, to my wife's vivid regret. 
I rather think we expected him to find some excuse 
for writing after he reached his place in northern 
Ohio ; but he did not write, and he became more and 
more the memory of a young clergyman in the begin- 
ning of a love-affair, till one summer, while we were 
still disputing where we should spend the hot weather 
within business reach, there came a letter from him 
saying that he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing 
that he might tempt us up some afternoon before we 
were off to the mountains or seaside. This revived 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 17 

all my wife^s waning interest in him, and it was hard 
to keep the answer I made him from expressing in a 
series of crucial inquiries the excitement she felt at 
his being in New England and so near Boston, and in 
Gormanville of all places. It was one of the places 
we had thought of for the summer, and we were yet 
so far from having relinquished it that we were re- 
curring from time to time in hope and fear to the 
advertisement of an old village mansion there, with 
ample grounds, garden, orchard, ice-house, and stables, 
for a very low rental to an unexceptionable tenant. 
We had no doubt of our own qualifications, but we 
had misgivings of the village mansion ; and I am afraid 
that I rather unduly despatched the personal part of 
my letter, in my haste to ask what Glendenning knew 
and what he thought of the Conwell place. However, 
the letter seemed to serve all purposes. There came a 
reply from Glendenning, most cordial, even affection- 
ate, saying that the Conwell place was delightful, and 
I must come at once and see it. He professed that 
he would be glad to have Mrs. March come too, and 
he declared that if his joy at having us did not fill his 
modest rectory to bursting, he was sure it could stand 
the physical strain of our presence, though he con- 
fessed that his guest-chamber was tiny. 
B 



18 A PAIR or PATIENT LOYBRS. 

" He wants you^ Basil," my wife divined from terms 
which gave me no sense of any latent design of part- 
ing us in his hospitality. " But, evidently, it isn't a 
chance to be missed, and you must go — instantly. 
Can you go to-morrow? But telegraph him you're 
coming, and tell him to hold on to the Conwell place ; 
it may be snapped up any moment if it's so desirable." 

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

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

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

"Why, those people we met on the Corinthian^ 
summer before last — ^you thought he was in love with 
the girl—" 

A simultaneous photograph could alone reproduce 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 19 

Mrs. March's tumultuous and various emotions as she 
seized the fact conveyed in my words. She poured 
out a volume of mingled conjectures, assertions, sus- 
picions, conclusions, in which there was nothing final 
hut the decision that we must not dream of going 
there ; that it would look like thrusting ourselves in, 
and would he in the worst sort of taste ; they would 
all hate us, and we should feel that we were spies 
upon the young people; for of course the Bentleys 
had got Glendenning there to marry him, and in effect 
did not want any one to witness the disgraceful spec- 
tacle. 

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

" What do you mean ? " 

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

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

" They're not married, at any rate, and I suppose 
they're engaged. I did not have it from Miss Bent- 
ley, but I suppose Glendenning may be trusted in 
such a case." 



20 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYEBS. 

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

"Why, it is simply this. Glendenning seems to 
have made himself so useful to the mother and pleas- 
ing to the daughter after we left them in Montreal 
that he was tolerated on a pretence that there was 
reason for his writing back to Mrs. Bentley after he 
got home, and, as Mrs. Bentley never writes letters. 
Miss Bentley had the hard task of answering him. 
This led to a correspondence." 

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

" Apparently. Glendenning himself was not in the 
secret. The Bentleys were in Europe last summer, 
and he did not know that they had a place at Gor- 
manville till he came to live there. Another proof 
that Miss Bentley got him there is the fact that she 
and her mother are Unitarians, and that they would 
naturally be able to select the rector of the Episcopal 
church." 

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

" Oh, there's nothing more. He is simply rector 
of St. Michael's at Gormanville ; and there b not the 



A PAIR or PATIENT LOVERS. 21 

slightest proof that any young lady had a hand in 
getting him there." 

" As if I cared in the least whether she had ! I sup- 
pose you will allow that she had something to do with 
getting engaged to him, and that is the great matter." 

" Yes, I must allow that, if we are to suppose that 
young ladies have anything to do with young men 
getting engaged to them ; it doesn't seem exactly del- 
icate. But the novel phase of this great matter is the 
position of the young lady's mother in regard to it. 
From what I could make out she consents to the en- 
gagement of her daughter, but she don't and won't 
consent to her marriage." My wife glared at me with 
so little speculation in her eyes that I felt obliged to 
disclaim all responsibility for the fact I had reported. 
" Thou canst not say / did it. They did it, and Miss 
Bentley, if any one, is to blame. It seems, from what 
Glendenning says, that the young lady and he wrote 
to each other while she was abroad, and that they be- 
came engaged by letter. Then the affair was broken 
off because of her mother's opposition ; but since they 
have met at Gormanville, the engagement has been 
renewed. So much they've managed against the old 
lady's will, but apparently on condition that they 
won't get married till she says." 



22 A FAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

" Nonsense ! How could she stop them ? " 

" She couldn't, I dare say, by any of the old roman- 
tic methods of a convent or disinheritance ; but she is 
an invalid ; she wants to keep her daughter with her, 
and she avails with the girl's conscience by being 
simply dependent and obstructive. The young people 
have carried their engagement through, and now such 
hope as they have is fixed upon her finally yielding in 
the matter of their marriage, though Glendenning was 
obliged to confess that there was no sign of her doing 
so. They agree — Miss Bentley and he — ^that they 
cannot get married as they got engaged, in spite of 
her mother — it would be unclerical if it wouldn't be 
unfilial — and they simply have to bide their time." 

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

I said, and then she asked, ^* Is there a windmill or 
a force-pump I " I answered proudly that in Gorman- 
ville there was town water, but that if this should 
give out there were both a windmill and a force-pump 
on the Conwell place. 

" It is very complete," she sighed, as if this had re* 
moved all hope from her, and she added, '* I suppose 
we had better take it" 



V. 

Wk certainly did not take it for the sake of being 
near the Bentleys, neither of whom had given us par- 
ticular reason to desire their further acquaintance, 
though the young lady had agreeably modified herself 
when apart from her mother. In fact, we went to 
Gprmanville because it was an exceptional chance to 
get a beautjful place for a very little money, where we 
could go early and stay late. But no sooner had we 
acted from this quite personal, not to say selfish, mo- 
tive than we were rewarded with the sweetest overtures 
of neighborliness by the Bentleys. They waited, of 
course, till we were settled in our house before they 
came to call upon Mrs. March, but they had been 
preceded by several hospitable offerings from their 
garden, their dairy, and their hen-house, which were 
very welcome in the days of our first uncertainty as 
to trades-people. We analyzed this hospitality as an 
effect of that sort of nature in Mrs. Bentley which can 
equally assert its superiority by blessing or banning. 



24 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

Evidently, since cliance had again thrown us in her 
way, she would not go out of it to be offensive, but 
would continue in it, and make the best of us. 

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

During all that time Glendenning's personal eleva- 



A PAIR OF PATIElfT LOVERS. 25 

tion remained invisible to us, and we began to wonder 
if he were not that most lamentable of fellow-creat- 
ures, a clerical snob. I am not sure still that he 
might not have been so in some degree, there was such 
a mixture of joy that was almost abject in his genuine 
affection for us when Mrs. Bentley openly approved 
us on her first visit. I dare say he would not have 
quite abandoned us in any case; but he must have 
felt responsible for us, and it must have been such a 
load oft him when she took that turn with us. 

She called in the afternoon, and the young people 
dropped in again the same evening, and took the 
trouble to win back our simple hearts. That is. Miss 
Bentley showed herself again as frank and sweet as 
she had been on the boat when she joined my wife 
after dinner and left her mother in her state-room. 
Glendenning was again the Glendenning of our first 
meeting, and something more. He fearlessly led the 
way to intimacies of feeling with an expansion uncom- 
mon even in an accepted lover, and we made our 
conclusions that however subject he might be to his 
indefinitely future mother-in-law, he would not be at 
all so to his wife, if she could help it. He took the 
lead, but because she gave it him ; and she displayed 
an aptness for conjugal submissiveness which almost 



26 A FAIR OF FATIKMT LOVKR8. 

amounted to genius. Whenever she spoke to either 
of us, it was with one eye on him to see if he liked 
what she was saying. It was so perfect that I doubted 
if it could last; but my wife said a girl like that could 
keep it up till she dropped. I have never been sure 
that she liked us as well as he did ; I think it was part 
of her intense loyalty to seem to like us a great deal 
more. 

She was deeply in love, and nothing but her lady- 
like breeding kept her from being openly fond. I 
figured her in a sort of impassioned incandescence, 
such as only a pure and perhaps cold nature could 
bum into ; and I amused myself a little with the sense 
of Glendenning's apparent inadequacy. Sweet he 
was, and admirably gentle and fine ; he had an unfail- 
ing good sense, and a very ready wisdom, as I grew 
more and more to perceive. But he was an inch or so 
shorter than Miss Bentley, and in his sunny blondness, 
with his golden red beard and hair, and his pinkish 
complexion, he wanted still more the effect of an emo- 
tional equality with her. He was very handsome, with 
features excellently regular ; his smile was celestially 
beautiful ; innocent gay lights danced in his blue eyes, 
through lashes and under brows that were a lighter 
blond than his beard and hair. 



VL 

The next morning, which was of a Satarday, wnen 
I did not go to town, he came over to us again from 
the shadow of his sombre maples, and fell simply and 
naturally into talk about his engagement. He was 
much fuller in my wife's presence than he had been 
with me alone, and told us the hopes he had of Mrs. 
Bentley's yielding within a reasonable time. He 
seemed to gather encouragement from the sort of per- 
spective he got the affair into by putting it before us, 
and finding her dissent to her daughter's marriage so 
ridiculous in our eyes after her consent to her engage- 
ment that a woman of her great good sense evidently 
could not persist in it. 

"There is no personal objection to myself," he 
said, with a modest satisfaction. " In fact, I think 
she really likes me, and only dislikes my engagement 
to Edith. But she knows that Edith is incapable of 
marrying against her mother's will, or I of wishing 



28 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVBRS. 

her to do so ; though there is nothing else to prevent 
us." 

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

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

" Yes, I know," my wife relented. 

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

" Yes," my wife assented. 



A FAIR OF PATIENT LOYEBS. 29 

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

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

" We are Unitarians, too," said Mrs. March. " But 
we are coming to hear yot*." 

" I am glad you are coming to church,^^ said Glen- 
denning, putting away the personal tribute implied 
with a gentle dignity that became him. 



VII. 

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

We were admitted by the maid, who came running 
down the hall stairway, with a preoccupied air, to the 
open door where we stood waiting. There were two 
great syringa-bushes on each hand close to the portal, 
which were in full flower, and which flung their sweet- 
ness through the doorway and the windows ; but when 
we found ourselves in the dim old-fashioned parlor, 
we were aware of this odor meeting and mixing with 
another which descended from the floor above — ^the 
smell of some medicated pastille. There was a sound 



A PAIR or PATIENT LOVERS. 31 

of anxious steps overhead, and a hurried closing of 
doors, with the mechanical sound of labored breathing. 

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

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

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

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

" It's dreadful, of course, but it isn't as bad as it 
sounds, and it isn't nearly so bad as it looks. She is 
used to it, and there is a great deal in that. Oh, 
don^t go ! " she begged, at a movement Mrs. March 
made to rise. " The doctor is with her just now, and 
I'm not needed. It will be kind if you'll stay ; it's a 
relief to be out of the room with a good excuse 1 " 



82 A PAIR OF PATIBKT LOVXB8. 

She even laughed a little as she said this ; she went 
on to lead the talk away from what was so intensely 
in oar minds, and presently I heard her and my wife 
speaking of other things. The power to do this is 
from some heroic qnality in women^s minds that we 
do not credit them with ; we think it their volatility, 
an<l I dare say I thought myself much better, or at 
least more seriouH in my make, because I could not 
follow them, and did not lose one of those hoarse 
gasps of the sufferer overhead. Occasionally there 
came a stifling cry that made me jump, inwardly if 
not outwardly, but those women had their drama to 
play, and they played it to the end. 

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

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

'< I had to do it. She wished it, and, as she said, 
it was a relief to have us there, though she was wish- 
ing us at the ends of the earth all the time. But 
what a ghastly life 1 " 

^^ Yes ; and can you wonder that the poor woman 
doesn't want to give her up, to lose the help and com- 



A FAIR OF PATIENT LOVBRS. 83 

fort she gets from her ? It's a wicked thing for that 
girl to think of marrying." 

" What are you talking about, Basil ? It's a wicked 
thing for her not to think of it ! She is wearing her 
life out, tearing it out, and she isn't doing her mother 
a bit of good. Her mother would be just as well, and 
better, with a good strong nurse, who could lift her 
this way and that, and change her about, without feel- 
ing her heart-strings wrung at every gasp, as that 
poor child must. Oh, I wish Glendenning was man 
enough to make her run off with him, and get married, 
in spite of everything. But, of course, that's impos- 
sible — for a clergyman ! And her sacrifice began so 
long ago that it's become part of her life, and she'll 
simply have to keep on." 
C 



VIII. 

When her attack passed off, Mrs. Bentley sent and 
begged my wife to come again and see her. She went 
without me, while I was in town, but she was so cir- 
cumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came 
home, that I never felt quite sure I had not been 
present. What most interested us both was the ex- 
treme independence which the mother and daughter 
showed beyond a certain point, and the daughter's 
great frankness in expressing her difference of feeling. 
We had already had some hint of this, the first day 
we met her, and we were not surprised at it now, my 
wife at first hand, or I at second hand. Mrs. Bentley 
opened the way for her daughter by saying that the 
worst of sickness was that it made one such an afflic- 
tion to others. She lived in >n atmosphere of devo- 
tion, she said, but her suffering left her so little of 
life that she could not help clinging selfishly to every- 
thing that remained. 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYEBS. 35 

My wife perceived that this was meant for Miss 
Bentley, though it was spoken to herself ; and Miss 
Bentley seemed to take the same view of the fact. 
She said ; " We needn't use any circumlocution with 
Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair 
stands. You can say whatever you wish, though I 
don't know why you should wish to say anything. 
You have made your own terms with iis, and we are 
keeping them to the letter. What more can you ask ? 
Do you want me to break with Mr. Glendenning ? I 
will do that too, if you ask it. You have got every- 
thing but that, and you can have that at any time. 
But Arthur and I are perfectly satisfied as it is, and 
we can wait as long as you wish us to wait," 

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

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

My wife broke off from the account she was giving 
me of her visit : " You can imagine how pleasant all 
this was for me, Basil, and how anxious I was to pro- 
long my call I " 



86 A FAIR pF PATIENT LOVERS. 

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

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

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

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

" Abnormal ? I don't call it abnormal," I began, 
and I was sensible of my wife's thoughts leaving her 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 87 

own injuries for my point of view so swiftly tliat I 
could almost hear them whir. 

" Not abnormal ! " she gasped. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Should you say hate^ quite?" 



38 A PAIB OF PATIKNT LOVERS. 

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

** Then let us hope she — '* 

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

" Oh, come, now ! '* I retorted. "Do you mean to 
say that you haven't thought how very much it would 
simplify the situation if — " 

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

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

"AndGlendenning?" 

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

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

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



IX. 

It was, indeed, a trying summer for our emotions, 
torn as we were between our pity for Mrs. Bentley 
and our compassion for her daughter. We had no 
repose, except when we centred our sympathies upon 
Glendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender 
regret without doing any one else wrong, or even crit- 
icising another. He was our great stay in that re- 
spect, and though a mere external witness might have 
thought that he had the easiest part, we who knew his 
gentle and affectionate nature could not but feel for 
him. We never concealed from ourselves certain 
foibles of his ; I have hinted at one, and we should 
have liked it better if he had not been so sensible of 
the honor, from a worldly point, of being engaged to 
Miss Bentley. But this was a very innocent vanity, 
and he would have been willing to suffer for her 
mother and for herself, if she had let him. I have 
tried to insinuate how she would not let him, but 



40 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYSBS. 

freed him as much as possible from the stress of the 
situation, and assumed for him a mastery, a primacy, 
which he would never have assumed for himself. Wo 
thought this very pretty of her, and in fact she was 
capable of pretty things. What was hard and arrogant 
in her, and she was not without something of the kind 
at times, was like her mother ; but even she, poor soul, 
had her good points, as I have attempted to suggest 
We used to dwell upon them, when our talk with 
Glendenning grew confidential, as it was apt to do ; 
for it seemed to console him to realize that her daugh- 
ter and he were making their sacrifice to a not wholly 
unamiable person. 

He confided equally in my wife and myself, but 
there were times when I think he rather preferred the 
counsel of a man friend. Once when we had gone a 
walk into the country, which around Gormanville is 
of the pathetic Mid-Massachusetts loveliness and pov- 
erty, we sat down in a hill-side orchard to rest, and he 
began abruptly to talk of his affair. Sometimes, he 
said, he felt that it was all an error, and he could not 
rid himself of the fear that an error persisted in was 
a wrong, and therefore a species of sin. 

" That is very interesting," I said. " I wonder if 
there is anything in it ? At first blush it looks so 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 41 

logical ; but is it ? Or are you simply getting morbid ? 
What is the error ? What is your error ? " 

" You know," he said, with a gentle refusal of my 
willingness to make light of his trouble. ** It is surely 
an error to allow a woman to give her word when she 
can promise Nothing more, and to let her hold herself 
to it." 

I could have told him that I did not think the error 
in this case was altogether or mainly his, or the per- 
sistence in it ; for it had seemed to me from the be- 
ginning that the love between him and Miss Bentley 
was fully as much her affair as his, and that quite 
within the bounds of maidenly modesty she showed 
herself as passionately true to their plighted troth. 
But of course this would not do, and I had to be 
content with the ironical suggestion that he might try 
offering to release Miss Bentley. 

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

" My dear fellow," I said, " I see your point. But 
don't you think you are quite needlessly adding to 
your affliction by pressing it ? You two are in the 
position which isn't at all uncommon with engaged 
people, of having to wait upon exterior circumstances 



42 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 

before you get married. Suppose you were prevented 
by poverty, as often happens ? It would be a hardship 
as it is now ; but in that case would your engagement 
be any less an error than it is now ? I don't think it 
would, and I don't believe you think so either." 

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

" I don't see how it could have been easier to pre- 
vent than to undo your error. I don't admit it's an 
error, but I call it so because you do. After all, an 
engagement is nothing but an open confession between 
two people that they are in love with each other and 
wish to marry. There need be no sort of pfedge or 
promise to make the engagement binding, if there is 
love. It's the love that binds." 

" Yes." 

" It bound you from your first acknowledgment of 



A PAIB OF PATIENT LOVERS. 43 

it, and unless you could deny your love now, or here- 
after, it must always bind you. If you own that you 
still love each other, you are still engaged, no matter 
how much you release each other. Could you think 
of loving her and marrying some one else ? Could 
she love you and marry another ? There isn't any 
error, unless you've mistaken your feeling for each 
other. If you have, I should decidedly say you 
couldn't break your engagement too soon. In fact, 
there wouldn't be any real engagement to break." 

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

I had a feeling that he had not put forward the 
main cause of his unhappiness, though he had given 
a true cause ; that he had made some lesser sense of 
wrong stand for a greater, as people often do in con- 
fessing themselves ; and I was not surprised when he 
presently added : " It is not merely the fact that she 
is bound in that way, and that her young life is pass- 
ing in this sort of hopeless patience, but that — ^that — 
I don't know how to put the ugly and wicked thing 
into words, but I assure you that sometimes when I 
think — when I'm aware that I know — Ah, I can't 
say it!" 

"I fancy I understand what you mean, my dear 



44 A FAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

boy," I said, and in the right of my ten years' sen- 
iority I put my hand caressingly on his shoulder, 
" and you are no more guilty than I am in knowing 
that if Mrs. Bentley were not in the way there would 
be no obstacle to your happiness." 

" But such a cognition is of hell,' he cried, and he 
let his face fall into his hands and sobbed heartrend- 
ingly. 

" Yes," I said, " such a cognition is of hell ; you are 
quite right. So are all evil concepts and knowledges ; 
but so long as they are merely things of our intelli- 
gence, they are no part of us, and we are not guilty 
of them." 

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

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

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



A PAIB OF PATIENT LOVERS. 45 

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

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



It was not very reverent to his cloth, or his recent 
tragical mood, but Glendenning was not offended ; he 
laughed with a sheepish pleasure, and that evening 
he came with Miss Bentley to call upon us. The 
visit passed without unusual confidences until they 
rose to go, when she said abruptly to me: "I feel 
that we both owe you a great deal, Mr. March. Arthur 
has been telling me of your talk this afternoon, and I 
think that what you said was all so wise and true ! 
I don't mean," she added, "your suggestion about 
putting an end to the anomaly ! " and she and Glen- 
denning both laughed. 

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

" Then you must scold me too a little, Mrs. March,' 



A PAIB OF PATIENT LOVERS. 47 

said the girl, "for I've sometimes wondered if I 
couldn't work Arthur up to the point of making me 
run away with him," which was a joke that wonder- 
fully amused us all. 

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

" Oh, you've no idea how obdurate clergymen are ; " 
and then she went on, seriously, to thank me for talk- 
ing Glendenning out of his morbid mood. With the 
frankness sometimes characteristic of her she said 
that if he had released her, it would have made no 
difference — she should still have felt herself bound to 
him ; and until he should tell her that he no longer 
cared for her, she should feel that he was bound to 
her. I saw no great originality in this reproduction 
of my own ideas. But when Miss Bentley added that 
she believed her mother herself would be shocked and 
disappointed if they were to give each other up, I was 
aware of being in the presence of a curious psycholog- 
ical fact. I so wholly lost myself in the inquiry it 
invited that I let the talk flow on round me unheeded 
while I questioned whether Mrs. Bentley did not de- 
rive a satisfaction from her own and her daughter's 
mutual opposition which she could never have enjoyed 
from their perfect agreement. She had made a cer- 



48 A PAIR or PATIENT LOYEBS. 

tain concession in consenting to the engagement, and 
this justified her to herself in refusing her consent to 
the marriage, while the ingratitude of the young peo- 
ple in not being content with what she had done 
formed a grievance of constant avail with a lady of 
her temperament. From what Miss Bentley let fall, 
half seriously, half jokingly, as well as what I ob- 
served, I divined a not unnatural effect of the strained 
relations between her and her mother. Shp concen- 
trated whatever resentment she felt upon Miss Bentley, 
insomuch that it seemed as though she might alto- 
gether have withdrawn her opposition if it had been 
a question merely of Glendenning's marriage. So far 
from disliking him, she was rather fond of him, and 
she had no apparent objection to him except as her 
daughter's husband. It had not always been so ; at 
first she had an active rancor against him ; but this 
had gradually yielded to his invincible goodness and 
sweetness. 

" Who could hold out against him ? " his betrothed 
demanded, fondly, when these facts had been more or 
less expressed to us ; and it was not the first time that 
her love had seemed more explicit than his. He 
smiled round upon her, pressing the hand she put in 
his arm ; for she asked this when they stood on our 



V 

I 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 49 

threshold ready to go, and then he glanced at us with 
eyes that fell bashfully from ours. 

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



XL 

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

Now and then we saw Glendenning, and now and 
then Miss Bentley came to call upon Mrs. March, when 
she was in town. Her mother had given up her Bos- 
ton house, and they lived the whole year round at 
, Gormanville, where the air was good for Mrs. Bentley 
without her apparently being the better for it ; again, 
we heard in a roundabout way that their circumstances 
were not so fortunate as they had been, and that they 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 51 

had given up their Boston house partly from motives 
of economy. 

There was no reason why our intimacy with the 
lovers' afiEairs should continue, and it did not. Miss 
Bentley made mention of Glendenning, when my wife 
saw her, with what Mrs. March decided to be an 
abiding fealty, but without oflEer of confidence ; and 
Glendenning, when we happened to meet at rare inter- 
vals, did not invite me to more than formal inquiriy 
concerning the well-being of Mrs. Bentley and her 
daughter. 

He was undoubtedly getting older, and he looked it 
He was one of those gentle natures which put on fat, 
not from self-indulgence, but from want of resisting 
force, and the clerical waistcoat that buttoned black to 
his throat swayed decidedly beyond a straight line at 
his waist. His red-gold hair was getting thin, and 
though he wore it cut close all round, it showed thin- 
ner on the crown than on the temples, and his pale 
eyebrows were waning. He had a settled patience of 
look which would have been a sadness, if there had 
not been mixed with it an air of resolute cheerfulness. 
I am not sure that this kept it from being sad, either. 

Miss Bentley, on her part, was no longer the young 
girl she was when we met on the Corinthian, She 



52 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYEBS. 

must then have been about twenty, and she was now 
twenty-six, but she looked thirty. Dark people show 
their age early, and she showed hers in cheeks that 
grew thinner if not paler, and in a purple shadow un- 
der her fine eyes. The parting of her black hair was 
wider than it once was, and she wore it smooth in 
apparent disdain of those arts of flufiing and fringing 
which give an air of vivacity, if not of youth. I 
should say she had always been a serious girl, and 
now she showed the effect of a life that could not have 
been gay for any one. 

The lovers promised themselves, as we knew, that 
Mrs. Bentley would relent, and abandon what was more 
like a whimsical caprice than a settled wish. But as 
time wore on, and she gave no sign of changing, I 
have wondered whether some change did not come 
upon them, which affected them towards each other 
without affecting their constancy. I fancied their 
youthful passion taking on the sad color of patience, 
and contenting itself more and more with such friendly 
companionship as their fate afforded; it became, 
without marriage^ that affectionate comradery which 
wedded love passes into with the lapse of as many 
years as they had been plighted. " What," I once 
suggested to my wife, in a very darkling mood — 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 53 

" what if they should gradually grow apart, and end in 
rejoicing that they had never been allowed to join their 
lives ? Wouldn't that be rather Hawthornesque ? " 

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

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

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

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

"Yes, but it's not indefinite itself. Marriage is 



54 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYEBS. 

something very distinct and permanent ; but such an 
engagement as this has no sort of future. It is a mere 
motionless present, without the inspiration of a com- 
mon life, and with no hope of release from durance 
except through a chance that it will be sorrow instead 
of joy. 1 should think they would go to pieces un- 
der the strain." 

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

" Ah," I confessed, " there is that wonderful adap- 
tation of the human soul to any circumstances. It's 
the one thing that makes me respect our fallen nature. 
Fallen ? It seems to me that we ought to call it our 
risen nature ; it has steadily mounted with the respon- 
sibility that Adam took for it — or Eve." 

" I don't see," said my wife, pursuing her momen- 
tary advantage, '* why they should not be getting as 
much pleasure or happiness out of life as most mar- 
ried people. Engagements are supposed to be very 
joyous, though I think they're rather exciting and 
restless times, as a general thing. If they've settled 
down to being merely engaged, I've no doubt they've 
decided to make the best of being merely engaged as 
long as her mother lives.'* 

" Ther^ is that view of it," 1 assented. 



XII. 

By the following autumn Glendenning had com- 
pleted the seventh year of his engagement to Miss 
Bentley, and I reminded my wife that this seemed to 
be the scriptural length of a betrothal, as typified in 
the service which Jacob rendered for Rachel. " But 
he had a prospective father-in-law to deal with," I 
added, " and Glendenning a mother-in-law. That may 
make a difference." 

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

"No," I said; "but I have some oflSce business 
that will take me to Gormanville to-morrow, and I did 
not know but you might like to go too, and look the 
ground over, and see how much we have been suffering 
for them unnecessarily." The fact was that we had 
now scarcely spoken of Glendenning or the Bentleys 



56 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

for six months, and our minds were far too full of our 
own afbirs to be given more than very superficially to 
theirs at any time. " We could both go as well as 
not," I suggested, " and you could call upon the Bent- 
leys while I looked after the company's business." 

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

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

This was putting it rather with the indifference of 
the past six months than with the feeling of the pres- 
ent moment. Since I had known that I was going to 
Gorman ville, the interest I denied had renewed itself 
pretty vividly for me, and I was intending not only 
to get everything oiit of Glendenning that I decently 



A PAIR or PATIENT LOTERS. 57 

could, but to give him as much good advice as he 
would bear. I was going to urge him to move upon 
the obstructive Mrs. Bentley with all his persuasive 
force, and I had formulated some arguments for him 
which I thought he might use with success. I did 
not tell my wife that this was my purpose, but all the 
same I cherished it, and 1 gathered energy for the en 
forcement of my views for Glendenning's happiness 
from the very dejection I was cast into by the out- 
ward eflEect of the Gormanville streets. They were 
all in a funeral blaze of their shade trees, which were 
mostly maples, but were here and there a stretch of 
elms meeting in arches almost consciously Gothic over 
the roadway ; the maples were crimson and gold, and 
the elms the paly yellow that they afEect in the fall. 
A silence hung under their sad splendors which I found 
deepen when I got into what the inhabitants called 
the residential part. About the business centre there 
was some stir, and here in the transaction of my 
affairs I was in the thick of it for a while. Everybody 
remembered me in a pleasant way, and I had to stop 
and pass the time of day, as they would have said, 
with a good many whom I could not remember at 
once. It seemed to me that the maples in front of 
St. Michael's rectory were rather more depressingly 



58 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

gaudy than elsewhere in Gormanville ; but I believe 
they were only thicker. I found Glendenning in his 
study, and he was so far from being cast down by 
their blazon that I thought him decidedly cheerfulier 
than when I saw him last. He met me with what for 
him was ardor ; and as he had asked me most cordially 
about my family, I thought it fit to inquire how the 
ladies at the Bentley place were. 

" Why, very well, very welF indeed," he answered, 
brightly. " It's very odd, but Edith and I were talk- 
ing about you all only last night, and wishing we could 
see you again. Edith is most uncommonly well. 
During the summer Mrs. Bentley had some rather 
severer attacks than usual, and the care and anxiety 
told upon Edith, but since the cooler weather has 
come she has picked up wonderfully." He did not 
say that Mrs. Bentley had shared this gain, and I im- 
agined that he had a reluctance to confess she had 
not. He went on, " You're going to stay and spend 
the night with me, aren't you ? " 

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

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



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVKBS. 59 

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

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

" My dear fellow," I said, ** I'm not surprised at 
anything in your relation to the Bentley homestead, 
and I won't vex you with any glad inferences." 

" Why," he returned, a little bashfully, " there's no 
explicit change. The affair is just where it has been 
all along. But with the gradual decline in Mrs. Bent- 
ley — I'm afraid you'll notice it — she seems rather to 
want me about, and at times I'm able to be of use to 
Edith, and so—" 

He stopped, and I said, " Exactly." 

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



60 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 61 

" Yes, that was pleasant," he said, cheerfully again, 
" And it was the beginning of the kind of relation 
that I have held ever since to her household. I am 
afraid I am there a good half of my time, and I be- 
lieve I dine there often er than I do at home. I am 
quite on the footing of a son, with her." 

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

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

" Did you ever ask her ? " 

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

** And of course she could never ask yow," I laughed. 
" My opinion is that you have lost a great deal of time 
unnecessarily. I haven't the least doubt that if you 
had brought a little pressure to bear with Mrs. Bent- 
Icy herself, it would have suflSced." 

He looked at me with a kind of dismay, as if my 
words had carried conviction, or had roused a convic- 



62 A PAIR or PATIENT LOVERS. 

tion long dormant in his heart. " It wouldn't have 
done," he gasped. 

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

" Yes, it's too late. We must wait now." He has- 
tened to add, " Until she yields entirely of herself." 

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

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

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

Glendenning was quite right about her looking bet- 
ter. She looked even gay, and there was a vivid color 
in her cheeks such as I had not seen there for many 
years ; her lips were red, her eyes brilliant. Her face 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 63 

was still perhaps as thin as ever, but it was indescrib- 
ably younger. 

I cannot say that there were the materials of a 
merrymaking amongst us, exactly, and yet I remem- 
ber that luncheon as rather a gay one, with some 
laughing. I had not been till now in discovering that 
Miss Bentley had a certain gift of humor, so shy and 
proud, if 1 may so express it, that it would not show 
itself except upon long acquaintance, and I distinctly 
perceived now that this enabled her to make light of 
a burden that might otherwise have been intolerable. 
It qualified her to treat with cheerfulness the grimness 
of her mother, which had certainly not grown less 
since I saw her last, and to turn into something like a 
joke her valetudinarian austerities of sentiment and 
opinion. She made a pleasant mock of the amenities 
which passed between her mother and Glendenning, 
whose gingerliness in the acceptance of the old lady's 
condescension would, I confess, have been notably 
comical without this gloss. It was perfectly evident 
that Mrs. Bentley's favor was bestowed with a mental 
reservation, and conditioned upon his forming no ex- 
pectations from it, and poor Glendenning's eagerness , 
to show that he took it upon these terras was amusing 
as well as touching. I do not know how to express 



64 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

that Miss Bentley contrived to eliminate herself from 
the affair, or to have the effect of doing that, and to 
abandon it to them. I can only say that she left them 
to be civil to each other, and that, except when she 
recurred to them in playful sarcasm from time to time, 
she devoted herself to me. 

Evidently, Mrs. Bentley was very much worse than 
she had been; her breathing was painfully labored. 
But if her daughter had any anxiety about her condi- 
tion, she concealed it most effectually from us. I 
decided that she had perhaps been asking the doctor 
as to certain symptoms that had alarmed her, and it 
was in the rebound from her anxiety that her spirits 
had risen to the height I saw. Glendenning seized 
the moment of her absence after luncheon, when she 
helped her mother up to her room, to impart to me 
that this was his conclusion too. He said that he had 
not seen her so cheerful for a long time, and when I 
praised her in every way he basked in my appreciation 
of her as if it had all been flattery for himself. She 
came back directly, and then I had a chance to see 
what she might have been under happier stars. She 
could not, at any moment, help showing herself an in- 
tellectual and cultivated woman, but her opportunities 
to show herself a woman of rare social gifts had been 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 65 

scanted by circumstances and perhaps by conscience. 
It seemed to me that even in devoting herself to her 
mother as she had always done she need not have en- 
slaved herself, and that it was in this excess her in- 
herited puritanism came out. She might sometimes 
openly rebel against her mother's domination, as my 
wife and I had now and again seen her do ; but in- 
wardly she was almost passionately submissive. Here 
I thought that Glendenning, if he had been a different 
sort of man, might have been useful to her ; he might 
have encouraged her in a little wholesome selfishness, 
and enabled her to withhold sacrifice where it was 
needless. But I am not sure ; perhaps he would have 
made her more unhappy, if he had attempted this ; 
perhaps he was the only sort of man whom, in her 
sense of his own utter unselfishness, she could have 
given her heart to in perfect peace. She now talked 
brilliantly and joyously to me, but all the time her 
eye sought his for his approval and sympathy ; he, for 
his part, was content to listen in a sort of beatific pride 
in her which he did not, in his simple-hearted fond- 
ness, make any effort to mask. 

When we came away he made himself amends for 
his silence by a long hjonn in worship of her, and I 
listened with all the acquiescence possible. He asked 
E 



66 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

me questions — whether I had noticed this thing or 
that about her, or remembered what she had said upon 
one point or another, and led up to compliments of 
her which I was glad to pay. In the long ordeal they 
had undergone they had at least kept all the freshness 
of their love. 



xin. 

Glendennino and I went back to the rectory, and 
sat down in his study, or rather he made me draw a 
chair to the open door, and sat down himself on a step 
below the threshold. The day was one of autumnal 
warmth ; the haze of Indian summer blued the still 
air, and the wind that now and then stirred the stiff 
panoply of the trees was luUingly soft. This part of 
Gormanville quite overlooked the busier district about 
the mills, where the water-power found its way, and 
it was something of a climb even from the business 
street of the old hill village, which the rival prosperity 
of the industrial settlement in the valley had thrown 
into an aristocratic aloofness. From the upper win- 
dows of the rectory one could have seen only the red 
and yellow of the maples, but from the study door we 
caught glimpses past their boles of the outlying coun- 
try, as it showed between the white mansions across 



68 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

the way. One of these, as I have already mentioneil, 
was the Con well place ; and after we had talked of the 
landscape awhile, Glendenning said : " By the way ! 
Why don't you buy the Con well place ? You liked 
it so much, and you were all so well in Gormanville. 
The Con wells want to sell it, and it would be just the 
thing lor you, five or six months of the year." 

I explained, almost compassionately, the impossi- 
bility of a poor insurance man thinking of a summer 
residence like the Con well place, and I combated as 
well as I could the optimistic reasons of my friend in 
its favor. I was not very severe with him, for I saw 
that his optimism was not so much from his wish to 
have me live in Gormanville as from the new hope 
that filled him. It was by a perfectly natural, if not 
very logical transition that we were presently talking 
of this greater interest again, and Glendenning was 
going over all the plans that it included. I encour- 
aged him to believe, as he desired, that a sea-voyage 
would be the thing for Mrs. Bentley, and that it would 
be his duty to take her to Europe as soon as he was 
in authority to do so. They should always, he said, 
live in Gormanville, for they were greatly attached to 
the place, and they should keep up the old Bentley 
homestead in the style that he thought they owed to 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 69 

the region where the Bentleys had always lived. It 
is a comfort to a man to tell his dreams, whether of 
the night or of the day, and I enjoyed Glendenning's 
pleasure in rehearsing these fond reveries of his. 

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

" What did he say ? " 

" I don't know." Glendenning's face as he turned 
to me again was quite white. " It is Mrs. Bentley's 
farmer," he added, feebly, and I could see that it was 
with an effort he kept himself from sinking. " Some- 
thing has happened." 

" Oh, I guess not, or not anything serious," I an- 
swered, with an effort to throw off the weight I sud- 
denly felt at my own heart. "People have been 
known to run for a plumber. But if you're anxious, 
let us go and see what the matter is." 

I turned and got my hat ; Glendenning came in for 



70 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOYBBS. 

his, but seemed unable to find it, though he stood 
before the table where it lay. I had to laugh, though 
I felt so little like it, as I put it in his hand. 

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

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

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

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

We made what speed we could after them, but they 
were long out of sight in the mile that it seemed to 
me we were an hour in covering before we reached 
the Bentley place. The doctor's buggy stood at the 
gate, and I perceived that I was without authority to 
enter the house, on which some unknown calamity 
had fallen, no matter with what good-will I had come ; 
I could see that Glendenning had suffered a sudden 



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 71 

estrangement, also, which he had to make a struggle 
against. But he went in, leaving me without, as if 
he had forgotten me. 

I could not go away, and I walked down the path 
to the gate, and waited there, in case I should be in 
any wise wanted. After a very long time the doctor 
came bolting over the walk towards me, as if he did 
not see me, but he brought himself up short with an 
" Oh ! " before he actually struck against me. I had 
known him during our summer at the Conwell place, 
where we used to have him in for our little ailments, 
and I would never have believed that his round, opti- 
mistic face could look so worried. I read the worst 
in it ; Glendenning was right ; but I asked the doctor, 
quite as if I did not know, whether there was anything 
serious tne matter. 

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

" Yes, I heard you telling her daughter so, just be- 



72 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

fore lunch. Isn't it a frequent complication with 

asthma?" « 

" Asthma ? Her daughter ? Whom are you talk* 

ing about ? " 

" Mrs. Bentley. Isn't Mrs. Bentley— " 

" No ! " shouted the doctor, in disgust. " Mrs. 

Bentley is as well as ever. It's Miss Bentley. I wish 

there was a thousandth part of the chance for her that 

there is for her mother." 



XIV. 

I STAYED over for the last train to Boston, and then 
I had to go home without the hope which Miss Bent- 
ley's first rally had given the doctor. My wife and I 
talked the affair over far into the night, and in the 
paucity of particulars I was almost driven to their in- 
vention. But I managed to keep a good conscience, 
and at the same time to satisfy the demand for facts 
in a measure by the indulgence of conjectures which 
Mrs. March continually took for them. The doctor 
had let fall, in his talk with me, that he had no doubt 
Miss Bentley had aggravated the affection of the heart 
from which she was suffering by her exertions in lift- 
ing her mother about so much ; and my wife said that 
it needed only that touch to make the tragedy com- 
plete. 

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



74 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

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

" No. And I haven't the least notion that anything 
like it happened. But if it had — " 

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

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

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

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

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



A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 75 

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

" There is no one else," she went on, " who has 
been so intimately acquainted with the facts of my 
daughter's engagement — no one else that I can con- 
fide in or appeal to." 

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

" It is the only thing I can do now, and it is useless 
to do that now. It will be no reparation for the past, 
and it will be for myself and not for her, as all that I 
have done in the past has been ; but I wish to know 
what you think of their getting married now." 

I am afraid that if we had said what we thought of 



76 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS. 

such a tardy and futile proof of penitence we should 
have brought little comfort to the mother's heart, but 
we looked at each other in the disgust we both felt 
and said there would be a sacred fitness in it. 

She was apparently much consoled. 

It was touching enough, and I at least was affected 
by her tears ; I am not so sure my wife was. But she 
had instantly to consider how best to propose the 
matter to Miss Bentley, and to act upon her de- 
cision. 

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

" They think I am going to die," she said, quietly, 
" and I can understand how she feels. It seems such 
a mockery ; but if she wishes it ; and Arthur — " 

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

" Marriage is for life and for earth," he said, sol- 
emnly, and I thought very truly. " In the resurrection 
we shall be one another's without it. I don't like to 
go through the form of such a sacrament idly; it 
seems like a profanation of its mystery." 

" But if Miss Bentley— " 



A PAIR OF PATIBNT LOYBBS 77 

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

" Yes, I know," I urged. " It would not be for 
her; it would not certainly be for yourself. But if 
you could see it as the only form of reparation which 
her mother can now offer you both, and the only mode 
of expressing your own forgiveness — Recollect how 
you felt when you thought that it was Mrs. Bentley's 
death ; try to recall something of that terrible time — " 

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

I have often had to criticise life for a certain caprice 
with which she treats the elements of drama, and mars 
the finest conditions of tragedy with a touch of farce. 
No one who witnessed the marriage of Arthur Glen- 
denning and Edith Bentley had any belief that she 
would survive it twenty-four hours ; they themselves 
were wholly without hope in the moment which for 
happier lovers is all hope. To me it was like a fu- 
neral, but then most weddings are rather ghastly to 
look upon ; and the stroke that life had in reserve 
perhaps finally restored the lost balance of gayety in 



78 A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVBRS. 

this. At any rate, Mrs. Glendenning did live, and 
she is living yet, and in rather more happiness than 
comes to most people under brighter auspices. After 
long contention among many doctors, the original 
opinion that her heart trouble was functional, not or- 
ganic, has been elected final, and upon these terms 
she bids fair to live as long as any of us. 

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



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 



Hamilton Gaitbs sat breakfasting by tHe window 
of a restaurant looking out on Park Square, in Boston, 
at a table which he had chosen after rejecting one on 
the Boylston Street side of the place because it was 
too noisy, and another in the little open space, among 
evergreens in tubs, between the front and rear, be- 
cause it was too chilly. The wind was east, but at 
his Park Square window it tempered the summer 
morning air without being a draught; and he poured 
out his cofEee with a content in his circumstance and 
provision which he was apt to feel when he had taken 
all the possible pains, even though the result was not 
perfect. But now, he had real French bread, as good 
as he could have got in New York, and the cofEee was 
clear and bright. A growth of crisp green water- 
cress embowered a juicy steak, and in its shade, as it 



80 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

were, lay two long slices of bacon, not stupidly 
broiled to a crisp, but delicately pink, and exempla- 
rily lean. Gaites had already had a cantaloupe, whose 
spicy fragrance lingered in the air and mingled with 
the robuster odors of the coffee, the steak, and the 
bacon. 

He owned to being a fuss, but he contended that 
he was a cheerful fuss, and when things went reason- 
ably well with him, he was so. They were going well 
with him now, not only in the small but in the large 
way. He was sitting there before that capital break- 
fast in less than half an hour after leaving the sleep- 
ing-car, where he had passed a very good night, and 
he was setting out on his vacation, after very successful 
work in the June term of court. He was in prime 
health ; he had a good conscience in leaving no inter- 
ests behind him that could suffer in his absence ; and 
the smile that he bent upon the Italian waiter as he 
retired, after putting down the breakfast, had some 
elements of a benediction. 

There was a good deal of Gaites's smile, when it 
was all on : he had a generous mouth, full of hand- 
some teeth, very white and even, which all showed in 
his smile. His whole face took part in the smile, and 
it was a charming face, long and rather quaintly nar- 



THE PURSUIT or THE PIANO. 81 

row, of an amiable aquilinity, and clean-shaven. His 
figure, tall and thin, comported well with his style of 
visage, and at a given moment, when he suddenly 
rose and leaned from the window, eagerly following 
something outside with his eye, he had an alert move- 
ment that was very pleasant. 

The thing outside which had caught, and which 
now kept, his eye as long as he could see it, was a 
case in the shape of an upright piano, on the end of 
a long, heavy-laden truck, making its way with a 
slow, jolting progress among the carts, carriages, and 
street cars, out of the square round the corner toward 
Boylston Street. On the sloping front of the case 
was inscribed an address, which seemed to gaze at 
Gaites with the eyes of the girl whom it named and 
placed, and to whom in the young man's willing fancy 
it attributed a charming quality. Nothing, he felt, 
could be more suggestive, more expressive of some- 
thing shy, something proud, something pure, some- 
thing pastoral yet patrician, something unaffected and 
yet chic, in an unknown personality, than the legend : 
Miss Phyllis Desmond, 

Lower Merritt, 
New Hampshire. 
Via S. B. & H. C. R. R. 
E 



82 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

Like most lawyers, he had a vein of romance, and 
this now opened in pleasing conjectures concerning 
the girl. He knew just where Lower Merritt was, 
and so well what it was like that a vision of its white 
paint against the dark green curtain of the wooded 
heights around it filled his sense as agreeably as so 
much white marble. There was the cottage of some 
summer people well above the village level, among 
pines and birches, and overlooking the foamiest rush 
of the Saco, to which he instantly destined the piano 
of Phyllis Desmond. He had never known that these 
people's name was Desmond, and he had certainly 
never supposed that they had a daughter called Phyl- 
lis; but he divined these facts in losing sight of the 
truck; and he imagined with as logical probability 
that one of the little girls whom he used to see play- 
ing on the hill-slope before the cottage had grown up 
into the young lady whose name the piano bore. 
There was quite time enough for this transformation ; 
it was seven years since Gaites had run up into the 
White Mountains for a month's rest after his last 
term in the Harvard Law School, and before begin- 
ning work in the office of the law firm in New York 
where he had got a clerkship, and where he had now 
a junior partnership. The little girl was then just ten 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 83 

years old, and now, of course, the young lady was 
seventeen, or would be when the piano reached Lower 
Merritt, for it was clearly meant to arrive on her 
birthday; it was a birthday-present and a surprise. 
He had always liked the way those nice people let 
their children play about barefoot; it would be in 
character with them to do a fond, pretty thing like 
that ; and Gaites smiled for pleasure in it, and then 
rather blushed in relating the brown legs of the little 
girl, as he remembered seeing them in her races over 
her father's lawn, to the dignified young lady she had 
now become. 

He amused himself in mentally following the piano 
on its way to the Sea Board & Hill Country R. R. 
freight-depot, which he was quite able to do from a 
habit of Boston formed during his four years in the 
academic course and his three years in the law-school 
at Harvard. He knew that it would cross Boylston 
into Charles Street, and keep along that level to Cam- 
bridge ; then it would turn into McLane Street, and 
again into Lynde, by this means avoiding the grades 
as much as possible, aud arriving through Causeway 
Street at the long, low freight-depot of the S. B. & 
H. C, where it would be the first thing unloaded 
from the truck. It would stand indefinitely on the 



84 THK PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

outer platform ; and then, when the men in flat, nar- 
row-peaked silk caps and grease-splotched overalls 
got round to it, with an air of as much personal in- 
difference as if they were mere mechanical agencies, 
it would be pulled and pushed into the dimness of 
the interior, cool, and pleasantly smelling of pine, and 
hemp, and flour, and dried fruit, and coffee, and tar, 
and leather, and fish. There it would abide, indef- 
initely again, till in the same large impersonal way it 
was pulled and pushed out on the platform beside the 
track, where a freight-car marked for the Hill Country 
division of the road, with devices intelligible to the 
train-men, had been shunted down by a pony engine 
in obedience to mystical semaphoric gesticulations, 
from the brakeman risking his life for the purpose 
among the rails, addressed to the engineer keeping 
his hand on the pulse of the locomotive, and his head 
out of the cab window to see how near he could come 
to killing the brakeman without doing it. 

Gaites witnessed the whole drama with an interest 
that held him suspended between the gulps and mor- 
sels of his breakfast, and at times quite arrested the 
processes of mastication and deglutition. That pretty 
girl's name on the slope of the piano-case continued 
to look at him from the end of the truck ; it smiled 



the: pursuit of the piano. 85 

at him from the outer platform of the freight-house ; 
it entreated him with a charming trepidation from the 
dim interior ; again it smiled on the inner platform ; 
and then, from the safety of the car, where the case 
found itself ensconced among freight of a neat and 
agreeable character, the name had the effect of intrep- 
idly blowing him a kiss as the train-man slid the car 
doors together and fastened them. He drew a long 
breath when the train had backed and bumped down 
to the car, and the couplers had clashed together, and 
the maniac, who had not been mashed in dropping 
the coupling-pin into its socket, scrambled out from 
the wheels, and frantically worked his arms to the 
potential homicide in the locomotive cab, and the 
train had jolted forward on the beginning of its run. 
That was the last of the piano, and Gaites threw it 
off his mind, and finished his breakfast at his leisure. 
He was going to spend his vacation at Kent Harbor, 
where he knew some agreeable people, and where he 
knew that a young man had many chances of a good 
time, even if he were not the youngest kind of young 
man. He had spent two of his Harvard vacations 
there, and he knew this at first hand. He could 
not and did not expect to do so much two-ing on the 
rocks and up the river as he used ; the zest of that 



86 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

sort of thing was past, rather ; but he had brought his 
golf stockings with him, and a quiverful of the uten- 
sils of the game, in obedience to a lady who had said 
there were golf-links at Kent, and she knew a young 
lady who would teach him to play. 

He was going to stop off at Burymouth, to see a 
friend, an old Harvard man, and a mighty good fel- 
low, who had rather surprised people by giving up 
New York, and settling in the gentle old town on the 
Piscatamac. They accounted for it as well as they 
could by his having married a Burymouth girl ; and 
since he had begun, most unexpectedly, to come for- 
ward in literature, such of his friends as had seen him 
there said it was just the place for him. Gaites had 
not yet seen him there, and he had a romantic curios- 
ity, the survival of an intensified friendship of their 
Senior year, to do so. He got to thinking of this 
good fellow rather vividly, when he had cleared his 
mind of Miss Desmond's piano, and he did not see 
why he should not take an earlier train to Burymouth 
than he had intended to take ; and so he had them 
call him a coupe from the restaurant, and he got into 
it as soon as he left the breakfast-table. 

He gave the driver the authoritative address, " Sea 
Board Depot," and left him to take his own way, 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 87 

after resisting a rather silly impulse to bid him go 
through Charles Street. 

The man drove up Beacon, and down Temple 
through Staniford, and naturally Gaites saw nothing 
of Miss Desmond's piano, which had come into his 
mind again in starting. He did not know the colon- 
naded structure, with its stately porte-cochere y where 
his driver proposed to leave him, instead of the form- 
less brick box which he remembered as the Sea Board 
Depot, and he insisted upon that when the fellow got 
down to open the door. 

"Ain't no Sibbod Dippo, now," the driver ex- 
plained, contemptuously. " Guess Union Dippo'U do, 
though ; " and Gaites, a little overcome with its splen- 
dor, found that it would. He faltered a moment in 
passing the conductor and porter at the end of the 
Pullman car on his train, and then decided that it 
would be ridiculous to take a seat in it for the short 
run to Burymouth. In the common coach he got a 
very good seat on the shady side, where he put down 
his hand-bag. Then he looked at his watch, and as 
it was still fifteen minutes before train-time, he in- 
dulged a fantastic impulse. He left the car and hur- 
ried back through the station and out through the 
electrics, hacks, herdics, carts, and string-teams of 



88 THE PUBSUTT OF TfiS PIANO. 

Causeway Street, and up the sidewalk of the street 
opening into it, as far as the S. B. & H. C. freight- 
depot. On the way he bet himself five dollars that 
Miss Desmond's piano woald not be there, and lost; 
for at the moment he came up it was unloading from 
the end of the truck which he had seen carrying it 
past the window of his restaurant 

The fact amused him quite beyond the measure of 
anything intrinsically humorous in it, and he staid 
watching the exertions of the heated truckman and 
two silk-capped, sarcastic-faced freight-men, till the 
piano was well on the platform. He was so intent 
upon it that his interest seemed to communicate itself 
to a young girl coming from the other quarter, with 
a suburban, cloth-sided, crewel-initialed bag in her 
hand, as if she were going to a train. She paused in 
the stare she gave the piano-case, and then slowed 
her pace with a look over her shoulder after she got 
by. In this her eyes met his, and she blushed and 
hurried on ; but not so soon that he had not time to 
see she had a thin face of a pathetic prettiness, gentle 
brown eyes with wistful brows, under ordinary brown 
hair. She was rather little, and was dressed with a 
sort of unaccented propriety, which was as far from 
distinction as it was from pretension. 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 89 

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

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



\)0 TUE rUKSVIT OF TUE PIANO. 

When the train pulled out of the station into tlie 
clearer light, she turned her face from him toward the 
forward window, and the comer of her month, which 
her half-averted profile gave him, had a kind of pit- 
eous droop which smote him to keener regret Once 
it lifted in an upward curve, and a gay light came into 
the corner of her eye ; then the mouth drooped again, 
and the light went out 

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

The girl turned her face promptly round and up, 
and answered, with a flush in her thin cheek, but no 
embarrassment in her tone, " No, I thank you. This 
will do quite well," and then she turned her face away 
as before. 

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



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 91 

II. 

"Ah, I see what you mean," said Gaites, with a 
kind of finality, as his friend Birkwall walked him 
homeward through the loveliest of the lovely old Bury- 
mouth streets. Something equivalent had been in his 
mind and on his tongue at every dramatic instant of 
the afternoon ; and, in fact, ever since he had arrived 
from the station at BirkwalPs door, where Mrs. Birk- 
wall met them and welcomed him. He had been suf- 
ficiently impressed with the aristocratic quiet of the 
vast square white old wooden house, standing behind 
a high white board fence, in two acres of gardened 
ground ; but the fine hallway with its broad low stair- 
way, the stately drawing-room with its carving, the 
library with its panelling and portraits, and the din- 
ing-room with its tall wainscoting, united to give him 
a sense of the pride of life in old Burymouth such 
as the raw splendors of the millionaire houses in New 
York had never imparted to him. 

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



92 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

" Be sure you get back in good time for tea," said 
Mrs. Birkwall for a parting charge to her husband ; 
and she bade Gaites, *' Remember that it is tea, 
please ; not dinner ; " and he was tempted to kiss his 
hand to her with as much courtly gallantry as he 
could ; for, standing under the transom of the slender- 
pillared portal to watch them away, she looked most 
distinctly descended from ancestors, and not merely 
the daughter of a father and mother, as most women 
do. Gaites said as much to Birkwall, and when they 
got home Birkwall repeated it to his wife, without in- 
juring Gaites with her. If he saw what Birkwall had 
meant in marrying her, and settling down to his liter- 
ary life with her in the atmosphere of such a quiet 
place as Burymouth, when he might have chosen 
money and unrest in New York, she on her side saw 
what her husband meant in liking the shrewd, able 
fellow who had such a vein of gay romance in his 
practicality, and such an intelligent and respectful 
sympathy with her tradition and environment. 

She sent and asked several of her friends to meet 
him at tea ; and if in that New England disproportion 
of the sexes which at Burymouth is intensified almost 
to a pure gynocracy these friends were nearly all 
women, he found them even more agreeable than if 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 93 

tbey had been nearly all men. It seemed to him that 
fie had never heard better talk than that of these se- 
questered ladies, who were so well bred and so well 
read, so humorous and so dignified, who loved to laugh 
and who loved to think. It was all like something 
in a pleasant book, and Gaites was not altogether to 
blame if it went to his head, and after the talk had 
been of Burymouth, in which he professed so accept- 
able an interest, and then of novels, of which he had 
read about as many as they, he confided to the whole 
table his experience with Miss Phyllis Desmond's 
piano. He managed the psychology of the little in- 
cident so well that he imparted the very quality he 
meant them to feel in it. 

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

" If / were a man," said the girl across the tabic 
who was not less sweetly a girl because she would 
never see thirty-nine again, " I should simply drop 
everything and follow that piano to Phyllis Des- 
mond's door." 

" It's quite what I should like to do," Gaites re- 
sponded, with a well-affected air of passionate regret. 
" But I'm promised at Kent Harbor — " 



94 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

She did not wait for him to say more, but submit- 
ted, " Oh, well, if you're going to Kent Harbor^ of • 
course ! " as if that i^^ould excuse and explain any sort 
of dereliction ; aud then the talk went on about Kent 
Harbor till Mrs. Birkwall asked, generally, as if it 
were part of the Kent Harbor inquiry, " Didn't I hear 
that the Ashwoods were going to their place at Upper 
Merritt, this year ? " 

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

At one time he had it on his tongue to say that 
there seemed to be something like infection in his in- 
terest in that piano, and he was going to speak of the 
young girl who seemed to share it, simply because she 
saw him staring at it, and who faltered so long with 
him before the freight-depot that she came near get- 
ting no seat in the train for Burymouth. But just at 
that moment the dispute about the Ashwoods renewed 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 95 

itself upon some fresh evidence which one of the 
ladies recollected and ofEered; and Gaites's chance 
passed. When it came again he had no longer the 
wish to seize it. A lingering soreness from his expe- 
rience with that young girl made itself felt in his 
nether consciousness. He forbore the more easily be- 
causCy mixed with this pain, was a certain insecurity 
as to her quality which he was afraid might impart 
itself to those patrician presences at the table. They 
would be nice, and they would be appreciative, — but 
would they feel that she was a lady, exactly, when he 
owned to the somewhat poverty-stricken simplicity of 
her dress in some details, more especially her thread 
gloves, which he could not consistently make kid? 
He was all the more bound to keep her from slight 
because he felt a little, a very little ashamed of her. 

He woke next morning in a wide, low, square 
chamber to the singing of robins in the garden, from 
which at breakfast he had luscious strawberries, and 
heaped bowls of June roses. When he started for 
his train, he parted with Mrs. Birkwall as old friends 
as he was with her husband ; and he completed her 
conquest by running back to her from the gate, and 
asking, with a great air of secrecy, but loud enough 
for Birkwall to hear, whether she thought she could 



96 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

find him another girl in Barymoatb, with just such a 
hoase and garden, and exactly like herself in every 
way. 

" Hundreds ! " she shouted, and stood a graceful 
figure between the fluted pillars of the portal, waving 
her hand to them till they were out of sight behind 
the comer of the high board fence, over which the 
garden trees hung caressingly, and brushed Gaites's 
shoulder in a shy, fond farewell. 

It had all been as nice as it could be, and he said 
so again and again to Birkwall, who would go to the 
train with him, and who would not let him carry his 
own hand-bag. The good fellow clung hospitably to 
it, after Gaites had rechecked his trunk for Kent Har- 
bor, and insisted upon carrying it as they walked up 
and down the platform together at the station. It 
seemed that the train from Boston which the Kent 
Harbor train was to connect with was ten minutes 
late, and after some turns they prolonged their prom- 
enade northward as far as the freight-depot, Birkwall 
in the abstraction of a plot for a novel which he was 
seizing these last moments to outline to his friend, 
and Gaites with a secret shame for the hope which 
was springing in his breast. 

On a side track stood a freight-car, from which the 



THE PURSUIT OF THB PIANO. 97 

customary men in silk caps were palling the freight, 
and standing it aboat loosely on the platform. The 
car was detached from the parent train, which bad 
left it not only orphaned on this siding, but appar- 
ently disabled ; for Gaites heard the men talking about 
not having cut it out a minute too soon. One of 
them called in at the broad low door, to some one in- 
side, " All out ? " and a voice from far within respond- 
ed, "Case here, yet; /can't handle it alone." 

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

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



98 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

" The .real thing," said Gaites, with his most tooth- 
ful smile, and he laughed for pleasure in his friend's 
astonishment. 

" Well," Birkwall resumed, " she seems to be fol- 
lowing you up, old fellow. This will be great for 
Polly, and for Miss Seaward, who wanted you to fol- 
low her up ; and for all Burymouth, for that matter. 
Why, Gaites, you'll be the tea-table talk for a week ; 
you'll be married to that girl before you know it. 
What is the use of flying in the face of Providence ? 
Come ! There's time enough to get a ticket, and have 
your check changed from Kent Harbor to Lower Mer- 
ritt, and the Hill Country express will be along here 
at nine o'clock. You can't let that poor thing start 
off on her travels alone again ! " 

Gaites flushed in a joyful confusion, and put the 
joke by as well as he could. But he was beginning 
to feel it not altogether a joke ; it had acquired an 
element of mystery, of fatality, which flattered while 
it awed him ; and he could not be easy till he had 
asked one of the freight-handlers what had happened 
to the car. He got an answer — flung over the man's 
shoulder — which seemed willing enough, but was whol- 
ly unintelligible in the clang and clatter of a passen- 
ger-train which came pulling in from the southward. 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 99 

" Here's the Hill Country express now 1 " said 
Birkwall. " You won't change your mind? Well, 
your Kent Harbor train backs down after this goes 
out. Don't worry about the piano. I'll find out 
what's happened to the car it was in, and I'll see that 
it's put into a good strong one, next time." 

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

III. 

Gaites was going to stay a week with a friend out 
on the Point ; and after the first day he was so en- 
grossed with the goings-on at Kent Harbor that he 
pretty well forgot about Burymouth, and the piano of 
Miss Phyllis Desmond lingered in his mind like the 
memory of a love one has outlived. He went to the 
golf links every morning in a red coat, and in plaid 
stockings which, if they did not show legs of all the 
desired fulness, attested a length of limb which was 
perhaps all the more remarkable for that reason. 
Then he came back to the beach and bathed ; at half 
past one o'clock he dined at somebody's cottage, and 
afterwards sat smoking seaward in its glazed or can- 



*> * * * 
» • <* 



100 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

opied veranda till it was time to go to afternoon tea at 
somebody else's cottage, where he chatted aboat until 
he was carried off by his hostess to put on a black 
coat for seven or eight o'clock supper at the cottage 
of yet another lady. 

There was a great deal more society than there had 
been in his old college-vacation days, when the Kent 
Harbor House reigned sole in a perhaps somewhat 
fabled despotism ; but the society was of not less sim- 
ple instincts, and the black coat which Gaites put on 
for supper was never of the evening-dress convention. 
Once when he had been out canoeing on the river 
very late, his hostess made him go " just as he was," 
and he was consoled on meeting their bachelor host 
to find that he had had the inspiration to wear a flan- 
nel shirt of much more outing type than Gaites him- 
self had on. 

The thing that he had to guard against was not to 
praise the river sunsets too much at any cottage on the 
Point ; and in cottages on the river, not to say a great 
deal of the surf on the rocks. But it was easy to re- 
spect the amiable local susceptibilities, and Gaites got 
on so well that he told people he was never going 
away. 

He had arrived at this extreme before he received 



••• .'a • • 
.• . • • • 

• • • " • 



THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 101 

the note from Mrs. Birkwall, which she made his 
prompt bread-and-butter letter the excuse of writing 
him. She wrote mainly to remind him of his prom- 
ise to stay another day with her husband on his way 
home through Burymouth ; and she alleged an addi- 
tional claim upon him because of what she said she 
had made Birkwall do for him. She had made him 
go down to the freight-depot every day, and see what 
had become of Phyllis Desmond's piano ; and she had 
not dared write before, because it had been most un- 
accountably delayed there for the three days that had 
now passed. Only that morning, however, she had 
gone down herself with Birkwall ; and it showed whatj 
a woman could do when she took anything in hand. 
Without knowing of her approach except by telepa- 
thy, the railroad people had bestirred themselves, and 
she had seen them with her own eyes put the piano- 
case into a car, and had waited till the train had 
bumped and jolted off with it towards Mewers Junc- 
tion. All the ladies of her supper party, she declared, 
had been keenly distressed at the delay of the piano 
in Burymouth, and she was now offering him the re- 
lief which she had shared already with them. 

He laughed aloud in reading this letter at break- 
fast, and he could not do less than read it to his 



102 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

hostess, who said it was charming, and at once took a 
vivid interest in the affair of the piano. She accepted 
in its entirety his theory of its being a birthday-pres- 
ent for the young girl with that pretty name ; and she 
professed to be in a quiver of anxiety at its retarded 
progress. 

" And, by-the-way," she added, with the logic of 
her sex, " I'm just going to the station to see what's 
become of a trunk myself that I ordered expressed 
from Chicago a week ago. If you're not doing any- 
thing this morning — the tide isn't in till noon, and 
there'll be little or no bathing to look at before that — • 
you'd better drive down with me. Or perhaps you're 
canoeing up the river with somebody ? " 

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

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

But Miss Alber was already engaged for canoeing, 
and Gaites was obliged to drive off with his hostess 
alone. She said she did pity' him, but she pitied him 
no longer than it took to get at the express agent. 
Then she began to pity herself, and much more ener- 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 103 

getically if not more sincerely, for it seemed that the 
agent had not been able to learn anything about her 
trunk, and was unwilling even to prophesy concerning 
it. Gaites left him to question at her hands, which 
struck him as combining all the searching effects of a 
Rontgen-ray examination and the earlier procedure 
with the rack ; and he wandered off, in a habit which 
he seemed to have formed, toward the freight-house. 

He amused himself thinking what he should do if 
he found Phyllis Desmond's piano there, but he was 
wholly unprepared to do anything when he actually 
found it standing on the platform, as if it had just 
been put out of the freight-car which was still on the 
siding at the door. He passed instantly from the 
mood of gay conjecture in which he was playing with 
the improbable notion of its presence to a violent in- 
dignation. 

" Why, look here ! " he almost shouted to a man 
in a silk cap and greased overalls who was contemplat- 
ing the inscription on the slope of its cover, " what's 
that piano doing here ? " 

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

"That piano," Gaites went on with unabated vio- 



104 THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

lence, '^ started from Boston at the beginning of the 
week ; and I happen to know that it's been lying two 
or three days at Burymouth, instead of going on to 
Lower Merritt, as it ought to have done at once. It 
ought to have been in Lower Merritt Wednesday 
afternoon at the latest, and here it is at Kent Harbor 
Saturday morning I " 

The man in the silk cap scanned Gaites's figure 
warily, as if it might be that of some official whale in 
disguise, and answered in a tone of dreamy sugges- 
tion : " Must have got shifted into the wrong car at 
Mewers Junction, somehow. Or maybe they started 
it wrong from Burymouth." 

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

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

" No ! ? " she exclaimed and questioned in one. 

Gaites nodded confirmation. 



THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 105 

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

He nodded again. 

Mrs. Maze was a woman who never measured her 
terms, perhaps because there was nothing large enough 
to measure them with, and perhaps because in their ut- 
most expansion they were a tight fit for her emotions. 

" Well, it's an abominable outrage ! " she began. 
She added ; " It's a burning shame ! They'll never 
get over it in the world ; and when it comes lagging 
along after everything's over, she won't car» a pin for 
it I How did it happen ? " 

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

" Well, it doesn't matter ! " she said, with a bitter- 
ness that was a great comfort to Gaites. " What are 
you going to do about it ? " she asked him. 

" I don't know what can be done about it," he an- 
swered, referring himself to the man in the silk cap. 

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

Mrs. Maze burst forth again : " If I had the least 
confidence in the world in any human express com- 
pany, I would send it by express and pay the express- 
age myself." 



106 THE PURSUIT OF THB PIANO. 

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

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

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

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

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

She took fire. " Then Fll meddle myself 1 " she 
blazed. " There's nothing to hinder my telegraphing, 
I suppose ! " 

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

" Well, then ! " She pulled a bunch of yellow tel- 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 107 

egraph blanks toward her, and consumed three of 
them in her comprehensive despatch : 

Miss Phyllis Desmond, 

Lower Merritt, N, H. 
Piano left Boston Monday P. M, Broke dovm on 
way to Burymouth, where delayed four days. Sent by 
mistake to Kent Harbor from Mewers Junction, For- 
warded to Lower Merritt Monday, 

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

" That seems to cover the ground," he said, not so 
wholly hiding the misgiving he began to feel but that 
she demanded, 

" It explains everything, doesn't it ? " 

« Yes—" 

" Very well ; sign it, then ! " 

"I?" 

" Certainly. She doesn't know me." 

" She doesn't know me, either," said Gaites. He 
added : " And a man's name — " 

" To be sure ! Why didn't I think of that ? " and 
she affixed a signature in which the baptismal name 
gave away her romantic and impulsive generation — 
Elainb W. Maze " iVbw," she triumphed, as Gaites 



108 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

helped her into her trap — " now I shall have a little 
peace of my life ! " 

IV. 

Mrs. Maze had no great trouble in making Gaites 
stay over Sunday. The argument she used was, " No 
freight out till Monday, you know." The inducement 
was June Alber, whom she said she had already en- 
gaged to go canoeing with Gaites Sunday afternoon. 

That afternoon was exquisite. The sky was cloud- 
less, and of one blue with the river and the girl's 
eyes, as Gaites noted while she sat facing him from 
the bow of the canoe. But the day was of the treach- 
erous serenity of a weather-breeder, and the next 
morning brought a storm of such violence that Mrs. 
Maze declared it would be a foolhardy risk of his life 
for Gaites to go; and again she enforced her logic 
with Miss Alber, whom she said she had asked to 
one-o'clock dinner, with a few other friends. 

Gaites stayed, of course, but he atoned for his 
weakness by starting early Tuesday morning, so as to 
get the first Hill Country train from Boston at Bury- 
mouth. He had decided that to get in as much 
change of air as possible he had better go to Cray- 
brooks for the rest of his vacation. 



THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 109 

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

It was still raining heavily, and on the first cut be- 
yond Porchester Junction his train was stopped by a 
flagman, sent back from a freight-train. There was 
a wash-out just ahead, and the way would be blocked 
for several hours yet, if not longer. The express 
backed down to Porchester, and there seemed no 
choice for Gaites, if he insisted upon going to Cray- 
brooks, but to take the first train up the old Boston 
and Montreal line to Wells River and across by the 
Wing Road through Fabyans ; and this was what he 
did, arriving very late, but quite in time for all he 
had to do at Craybrooks. 

The next day the weather cleared up cold, after the 
storm, and the fat old ladies, who outnumber every- 
body but the thin young girls at summer hotels, made 
the landlord put the steam on in the corridors, and 
toasted themselves before the log fires on the spec- 
tacular hall hearth. Gaites walked all day, and at 
night he lounged by the lamp, trying to read, and 



110 THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

wished himself at Kent Harbon The blue eyes of 
June Alber made themselves one with the sky and the 
river again, and all three laughed at him for his folly 
in leaving the certain delight they embodied for the 
vague good of a whim fulfilled. Was this the change 
he had come to the mountains for ? He could throw 
his hat into the clouds that hung so low in the defile 
where the hotel lurked, and that was something; but 
it was not so much to the purpose, now that he had 
it, as June Alber and the sky and the river, which he 
had no longer. As he drowsed by the fire in a break 
of the semicircle of old ladies before it, he suddenly 
ceased to think of June Alber and the Kent sky and 
river, and found himself as it were visually confronted 
with that pale, delicate girl in thread gloves ; she was 
facing him from the bow of a canoe in the train at 
Boston, where he had first met her, and some one was 
saying, " Oh, she's a Desmond, through and through." 
He woke to the sound of a quick snort, in which he 
suspected a terminal character when he glanced round 
the semicircle of old ladies and found them all star- 
ing at him. From the pain in his neck he knew that 
his head had been hanging forward on his breast, and, 
in the strong belief that he had been publicly dis- 
gracing himself, he left the place, and went out on the 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. Ill 

piazza till his shame should be forgotten. Of course, 
the sound of the name Desmond had been as much a 
part of his dream as the sight of that pale girFs face ; 
but he felt, while he paced the veranda, the pull of a 
strong curiosity to make sure of the fact. From time 
to time he looked in through the window, without 
courage to return. At last, when the semicircle was 
reduced to the bulks of the two ladies who had sat 
nearest him, he went in, and took a place with a news- 
paper at the lamp just behind them. 

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

" Yes," she said, " they must have had their sum- 
mer home there nearly twenty years. Lower Merritt 
was one of the first places opened up in that part of 
the mountains, and I guess the Desmonds built the 
first cottage there." 

The date given would make the young lady whom 
he remembered from her childhood romps on her 



112 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

father's lawn somewhat older than he imagined, but 
not too old for the purposes of his romance. 

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

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

She stopped with a definite air, and rolled her knit- 
ting up into her handkerchief. Gaites made a merit 
to himself of rising abruptly and closing his paper 
with a clash, as if he had been trying to read and had 
not been able for the talking near him. The ladies 
looked round conscience-stricken ; when they saw 
who it was, they looked indignant. 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 113 

V. 

In the necessity, which we all feel, of making prac- 
tical excuses to ourselves for a foolish action, he pre- 
tended that he had been at Craybrooks long enough, 
and that now, since he had derived all the benefit to 
be got from the west-side air, it was best to begin his 
homestretch on the other slope of the hills. His real 
reason was that he wished to stop at Lower Merritt 
and experience whatever fortuities might happen to 
him from doing so. He wished, in other words, to see 
Phyllis Desmond, or, failing this, to find out whether 
her piano had reached her. 

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

He began to long for some new occasion of pro- 
moting the arrival of the piano in Lower Merritt, and 
he was so far from regretting his former interventions 
that at the first junction where his train stopped he 
employed the time in exploring the freight-house in 
H 



114 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

the vain hope of findiDg it there, and urging the road 
to greater speed in its delivery to Miss Desmond. He 
was now not at all ashamed of the stand he had taken 
in the matter at former opportunities, and he was not 
abashed when a man in a silk cap demanded, across 
the twilight of the freight-house, in accents of the 
semi-sarcasm appropriate in addressing a person ap- 
parently not minding his own business, '^ Lost some- 
thing?" 

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

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

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

" Might 'a' got off on some branch ro-ad, by mis- 
take, and waited there till it was looked up. You 
see," the man continued, resting an elbow on the tall 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 115 

casing of a chest of drawers, and dropping to a more 
confidential level in his manner, " an upright piano 
ain't like a passenger. It don't kick if it's shanted 
off on the wrong line. As a gene'l rule, freight don't 
complain of the route it travels by, and it ain't in a 
hurry to arrive." 

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

" But it ain't likely," said the man, who now pushed 
his hat far back on his head, in the interest of self- 
possession, "that it's gone wrong. With all these 
wash-outs and devilments, the last f o't-night, it might 
a' been travellin' straight and not got the'a, yet. 
What d'you say was the ac^dress ? " 

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

" Name ? " persisted the man. 

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

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

" No, it isn't I " Gaites retorted, angrily, aware that 
he was giving himself away in fine shape. 

" Oh, I see," the man mocked. " Friend o' the 
family. Well, I guess you'll find your piano at Lower 



116 THE PUBSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

Merritt, all right, in two-three weeks." He was now 
openly offensive, as with a sense of having Gaites in 
his power. 

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

The man openly laughed. " Guess it is, if you're 
goin' to. Lower Merritt.'* As Gaites shot through the 
doorway toward his train, he added, in an insolent 
drawl, " Miss — ^Des — mond I " 

Gaites was so furious when he got back to the 
smoking-room of the parlor-car that he was sorry for 
several miles that he had not turned back and kicked 
the man, even if it lost him his train. But this was 
only while he was under the impression that he was 
furious with the man. When he discovered that he 
was furious with himself, for having been all imagin- 
able kinds of an ass, he perceived that he had done 
the wisest thing he could in leaving the man to him- 
self, and taking up the line of his journey again. 
What remained mortifying was that he had bought 
his ticket and checked his bag to Lower Merritt, which 
he wished never to hear of again, much less see. 

He rang for the porter and consulted him as to 
what could be done toward changing the check on his 
bag from Lower Merritt to Middlemount Junction; 



THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 117 

and as it appeared that this was quite feasible, since 
his ticket would have carried him two stations beyond 
the Junction, he had done it. He knew the hotel at 
Middlemount, and he decided to pass the night there, 
and the next day to go back to Kent Harbor and June 
Alber, and let Lower Merritt and Phyllis Desmond 
take care of themselves from that time forward. 

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

The united station-master-and-baggage-man, who 
appeared also to be the freight agent, came lounging 



118 THE PURSUIT OF THB PIANO. 

down the platform toward him. He was so exactly 
of the rustic railroad type that he confused Gaites 
with a doubt as to which functionary, of the many he 
now knew, this was. 

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

" Yes," Gaites faltered, and the man abruptly turn 
ed, and made the gesture for starting a locomotive to 
the driver of the Middlemount stage. 

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

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

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

"When does this freight go out?" Gaites palpi- 
tated. 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 119 

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

" Does it stop at Lower Merritt ? " 

''^Leaves this cah the' a," said the man, as if sur- 
prised into the admission. 

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

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

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

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

" No." 

" Well, I guess you can stand it fo' five miles, any- 
way." 

He turned and left Gaites, who understood this for 
permission, and clambered into the car, where he 
found himself in a rude but far from comfortless in- 
terior. There was a sort of table or desk in the 



120 THB PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

middle, with a heavy chair or two before it; round 
the side of the car were some leather-covered benches, 
suitable for the hard naps which seemed to be taken 
on them, if he could guess from the man in overalls 
asleep on one. 

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

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

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

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

** Oh, yes ; I passed a week or so there once, after 
I left college. Are you acquainted there ? " 
] '* Vm/rom the'a. Used to wo'k fo' the Desmonds 
— ^got that summa place up the side of the mountain 
— before I took to the ro-ad." 

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



THE PUB8U1T OF THE PIANO. 121 

"Yes. Or it*8 got them. Be glad to sell it, I 
guess, since the old man lost his money. But Lowa 
Merritt's kind o' gone down as a summa reso't. Try- 
in' ha'd to bring it up, though. Know the Des- 
monds ? " 

" No, not personally." 

" Nice fo-aks," said the conductor, providing him- 
self for conversational purposes with a splinter from 
the floor. He put it between his teeth and continued : 
" I took ca' thei' bosses, one while, as long's they had 
any, before I went on the ro-ad. Old gentleman kep' 
up a show till he died ; then the fam'ly found out that 
they hadn't much of anything but the place left. 
Girls had to do something, and one of 'em got a place 
in a school out West — smaht, all of 'em ; the second 
one kind o' runs the fahm ; and the youngest, here, 's 
been fittin' for a music-teacha. Why, I've got a 
piano for her in this cab that we picked up at Mid- 
dlemount, now. Been two wintas at the Conservatory 
in Boston. Got talent enough, they tell me, Unda- 
stand 't she means to go to Pohtland in the fall and 
try to get pupils, ^Ae'a." 

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



122 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

VI. 

Gaites found some notable changes in the hotel at 
Lower Merritt since he had last sojourned there. It 
no longer called itself a Hotel, but an Inn, and it had 
a brand-new old-fashioned swinging sign before its 
door; its front had been cut up into several gables, 
and shingled to the ground with shingles artificially 
antiquated, so that it looked much grayer than it nat- 
urally ought. Within it was equipped for electric 
lighting ; and there was a low -browed aesthetic parlor, 
where, when Gaites arrived and passed to a belated 
dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of 
a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the clos- 
ing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room 
was painted a self-righteous olive-green ; it was thor- 
oughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in 
myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pil- 
lars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites 
through the gloom to his place with a warning and 
hushing hand which made him feel as if he were be- 
ing shown to a pew during prayers. 

He escaped as soon as possible from the refection 
which, from the soup to the ice-cream, had hardly 
grown lukewarm, and went out to walk by a way 
that he knew well, and which had for him now a 



THE PUBSUIT OF THE PIANO. 123 

romantically pathetic interest. It was, of course, the 
way past the Desmond cottage, which, when he came 
in sight of it round the shoulder of upland where it 
stood, was curiously strange, curiously familiar. It 
needed painting badly, and the grounds had a sadly 
neglected air. The naked legs of little girls no longer 
twinkled over the lawn, which was grown neglectedly 
up to low-bush blackberries. 

Gaites hurried past with a lump in his throat, and 
returned by another road to the Inn, where his long 
ramble ended just as the dining-room doors were 
opened behind their nettings for supper. At this 
cheerfuler moment he found the head waiter much 
more conversible than at the hour of his retarded din- 
ner, and Gaites made talk with him, as the young fel- 
low lingered beside his chair, with one eye on the 
door for the behoof of other guests. 

Gaites said he had found great changes in Lower 
Merritt since he had been there some years before, 
and he artfully led the talk up to the Desmonds. The 
head waiter was rather vague about their past; but he 
was distinct enough about their present, and said the 
young ladies happened all to be at home. " I don't 
know," he added, " whether you noticed our lady or- 
chestra when you came in to dinner to-day ? " 



124 THB PURSUIT OP THB FIAKO. 

" Yes, I did," said Graites. " I was very mach in- 
terested. I thought they played charmingly, and I 
was sorry that I got in only for the close of the last 
piece." 

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

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

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

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

"Yes; she's engaged to play here the whole sum- 
mer." The head waiter fumbled with the knife and 
fork at the place opposite, and blushed. " But you'll 
hear her to-night yourself," he ended incoherently, 
and hurried away, to show another guest to his, or 
rather her, place. 

Gaites wondered why he felt suddenly angry ; why 
he resented the head waiter's blush as an impertinence 
and a liberty. After all, the fellow was a student and 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 125 

probably a gentleman ; and if he chose to help him- 
self through college by taking that menial r61e during 
the summer, rather than come upon the charity of his 
friends or the hard-earned savings of a poor old fa- 
ther, what had any one to say against it ? Gaites had 
nothing to say against it; and yet that blush, that 
embarrassment of a man who had pulled out his chair 
for him, in relation to such a girl as Miss Phyllis Des- 
mond, incensed him so much that he could not enjoy 
his supper. He did not bow to the head waiter when 
he held the netting-door open for him to go out, and 
he felt the necessity of taking the evening air in an- 
other stroll to cool himself off. 

Of course, if the poor girl was reduced to playing 
in the hotel orchestra for the money it would give 
her, she had come down to the level of the head wait- 
er, and they must meet as equals. But the thought 
was no less intolerable for that, and Gaites set out 
with the notion of walking away from it. At the sta- 
tion, however, which was in friendly proximity to the 
Inn, his steps were stayed by the sound of girlish 
voices, rising like sweetly varied pipes from beyond 
the freight-depot. Their youth invited his own to 
look them up, and he followed round to the back of 
the depot, where he came upon a sight which had. 



126 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

perhaps from the waning light, a heightened charm. 
Against the curtain of low pines which had been 
gradually creeping back upon the depot ever since the 
woods were cut away to make room for it, four girls 
were posed in attitudes instinctively dramatic and 
vividly eager, while as many men were employed in 
getting what Gaites at once saw to be Miss Phyllis 
Desmond^s piano into the wagon backed up to the 
platform of the depot. Their work was nearly accom- 
plished, but at every moment of what still remained 
to be done the girls emitted little shrieks, laughs, and 
moans of intense interest, and fluttered in their light 
summer dresses against the background of the dark 
evergreens like anxious birds. 

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

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

" You've got to do it, Pbyl ! " 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 127 

" Yes, Phyllis, you must get in ! " 

"It's your piano, Phyl. YouVe got to keep it 
from tipping out ! " 

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

It was no question with Gaites whether he should 
bring up the end of the procession ; he could not think 
of any consideration that would have stayed him. He 
scarcely troubled himself to keep at a fit remove from 
the rest ; and as he followed in the deepening twilight 



128 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

he felt a sweet, unselfish gladness of heart that the 
poor girl whom he had seen so wan and sad in Boston 
should be the gay soul of this pretty triumph. 

The wagon drove into the grounds of the Desmond 
cottage, and backed up to the edge of the veranda. 
Lights appeared, and voices came from within. One 
of the men, despatched to the barn for a hatchet, came 
flickering back with a lantern also ; lamps brought out 
of the house were extinguished by the evening breeze 
(in spite of luminous hands held near the chimney to 
shelter them), amidst the joyful applause of all the 
girls and the laughter of the men. A sound of ham- 
mering rose, and then a sound of boards rending from 
the clutch of nails, and then a sound of pieces thrown 
loosely into a pile. There was a continual flutter of 
women's dresses and emotions, and this did not end 
even when the piano, disclosed from its casing and all 
its wraps, was pushed indoors, and placed against the 
parlor wall, where a flash of lamp-light revealed it to 
Gaitcs in final position. 

He lingered still, in the shelter of some barberry- 
bushes at the cottage gate, and not till the last cry of 
gratitude had been answered by the unanimous dis- 
claimer of the men rattling away in the wagon did he 
feel that his pursuit of the piano had ended. 



THK PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 129 

VII. 

<*Can you tell me, madam," asked Graites of an 
obviously approachable tabby next the chimney-corner, 
** which of the musicians is Miss Desmond ? '^ 

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

" Oh," the approachable tabby answered, " it's the 
one at the piano. The violinist is Miss Axewright, of 
South Newton. They were at the Conservatory to- 
gether in Boston, and they are such friends I Miss 
Desmond would never have played here — intends to 
take pupils in Portland in the winter — if Miss Axe- 
wright hadn't come," and the pleasant old tabby 

poned on, with a velvety pat here, and a delicate 
I 



130 THE PURSUIT OP THK PIANO. 

scratch there. But Gaites heard with one ear only ; 
the other was taore devotedly given to the orchestra, 
which also claimed both his eyes. While he learned, as 
with the mind of some one else, that the Desmonds 
had been very much opposed to Phyllis's playing at 
the Inn, but had consented partly with their poverty, 
because they needed everything they could rake and 
scrape together, and partly with their will, because 
Miss Axewright was such a nice girl, he was painfully 
adjusting his consciousness to the fact that the girl at 
the piano was not the girl whom he had seen at Bos- 
and whom he had so rashly and romantically decided 
to be Miss Phyllis Desmond. The pianist was indeed 
Miss Desmond, but to no purpose, if the violinist was 
some one else ; it availed as little that the violinist was 
the illusion that had lured him to Lower Merritt in 
pursuit of Miss Desmond's piano, if she were really 
Miss Axewright of South Newton. 

What remained for him to do was to arrange for 
his departure by the first train in the morning; and 
he was subjectively accounting to the landlord for his 
abrupt change of mind after he had engaged his room 
for a week, while he was intent with all his upper fac- 
ulties upon the graceful poses and movements of Miss 
Axewright. There was something so appealing in the 






THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 131 

pressure of her soft chin as it held the violin in place 
against her round, girlish throat that Gaites felt a 
lump in his own larger than his Adam's-apple would 
account for to the spectator; the delicately arched 
wrist of the hand that held the bow, and the rhythmi- 
cal curve and flow of her arm in playing, were means 
of the spell which wove itself about him, and left him, 
as it were, bound hand and foot. It was in this help- 
less condition that he rose at the urgence of a friendly 
young fellow who had chosen himself master of cere- 
monies, and took part in the dancing ; and at the end 
of the first half of the programme, while the other 
dancers streamed out on the verandas and thronged 
the stairways, he was aware of dangling his chains as 
he lounged toward the ladies of the orchestra. The 
volunteer master of ceremonies had half shut himself 
across the piano in his eager talk with Miss Desmond, 
and he readily relinquished Miss Axewright to Gaites, 
who willingly devoted himself to her, after Miss Des- 
mond had risen in acknowledgment of his bow. He 
had then perceived that she was not nearly so tall as 
she had seemed when seated ; and a woman who sat 
tall and stood low was as much his aversion as if his 
own abnormally long legs did not render him guilty 
of the opposite oflEence. 



132 THE FUB8UIT OF THE PIANO. 

Miss Desmond must have had other qualities and 
characteristics, but in his absorption with Miss Axe- 
Wright's he did not notice them. He saw again the 
pretty, pathetic face, the gentle brown eyes, the ordi- 
nary brown hair, the sentient hands, the slight, grace- 
ful figure, the whole undistinguished, unpretentious 
presence, which had taken his fancy at Boston, and 
which he now perceived had kept it, under whatever 
erring impressions, ever since. 

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

" I think we have," she replied ; and Miss Des- 
mond, whose habitual state seemed to be intense inat- 
tention to whatever directly addressed itself to her, cut 
in with the cry : 

" You have met before ! " 

" Yes. Two weeks ago, in Boston," said Gaites. 
** Miss Axewrigbt and I stopped at the S. B. & H. C. 
freight-depot to see that your piano started off all 
right." 

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

"Probably they *throwed a spell' on it, as the 



THE PURSTJIT OF THE PIANO. 133 

country people say," suggested the master of cere- 
monies. " But all's well that end's well. The great 
thing is to have your piano, Miss Phyllis. I'm com- 
ing up to-morrow morning to see if it's got here in 
good condition." 

" That's some compensation," said the girl ironical- 
ly; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with 
which women know how to leave men the responsi- 
bility of any reciprocal approach, " I don't know 
whether it won't need tuning first." 

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

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

VIII. 

The next morning when Gaites came down to break- 
fast he had a question which solved itself contrary to 
his preference as he entered the dining-room. He 



134 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

was SO early that the head waiter had to jump from 
his own unfinished meal, and run to pull out his chair ; 
and Gaites saw that he left at his table the landlord's 
family, the clerk, the housekeeper, and Miss Axe- 
Wright. It appeared that she was not only staying in 
the hotel, but was there on terms which indeed held 
her above the servants, but separated her from the 
guests. 

He hardly knew how to dissemble the feeling of 
humiliation mixed with indignation which flashed up 
in him, and which, he was afterwards afraid, must 
have made him seem rather curt in his response to the 
head waiter's civilities. Miss Axewright left the din- , 
ing-room first, and he hurried out to look her up as 
soon as he had despatched the coffee and steak which 
formed his breakfast, with a wholly unreasoned im- 
pulse to offer her some sort of reparation for the slight 
the conditions put upon her. He found her sitting 
on the veranda beside the friendly tabby of his last 
night's acquaintance, and far, apparently, from feeling 
the need of reparation through him. She was very 
nice, though, and after chatting a little while she rose, 
and excused herself to the tabby, with a politeness 
that included Gaites, upon the ground of a promise to 
Miss Desmond that she would come up, the first thing 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 135 

after breakfast, and see how the piano was getting 
along. 

When she reappeared, in her hat, at the front of 
the Inn, Gaites happened to be there, and he asked 
her if he might walk with her and make his inquiries 
too about the piano, in which, he urged, they were 
mutually interested. He had a notion to tell her all 
about his pursuit of Miss Desmond^s piano, as some- 
thing that would peculiarly interest Miss Desmond's 
friend ; but though she admitted the force of his rea- 
soning as to their common concern in the fate of the 
piano, and had allowed him to go with her to rejoice 
over its installation, some subtle instinct kept him 
from the confidence he had intended, and they walked 
on in talk (very agreeable talk, Gaites found it) which 
left the subject of the piano altogether intact. 

This was fortunate for Miss Desmond, who wished 
to talk of nothing else. The piano had arrived in 
perfect condition. "But I don't know where the 
poor thing hasn't been, on the way," said the girl. 
" It left Boston fully two weeks ago, and it seems to 
have been wandering round to the ends of the earth 
ever since. The first of last week, I heard from it at 
Kent Harbor, of all places ! I got a long despatch 
from there, from some unknown female, telling me it 



136 THE PURSUIT or THE PIANO. 

had broken down on the way to Burymouth, and been 
sent by mistake to Kent Harbor from Mewers Junction. 
Have you ever been at Kent Harbor, Mr. Gaites ? " 

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

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

" Not to my knowlege," said Gaites, with a mysti- 
cal smile. 

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

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

" And can you tell me why Mrs. Maze should be 
telegraphing me about my piano ? " 

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

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

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



THE PURSUIT OP THK PIANO. 137 

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

Gaites thought of all his own anxieties and interfer- 
ences in behalf of the piano of this ungrateful girl, 
and in her presence he resolved that his lips should 
be forever sealed concerning them. She never would 
take them in the right way. But he experimented 
with one suggestion. " Perhaps she was taken with 
the beautiful name on the piano-case, and couldn't 
help telegraphing just for the pleasure of writing it." 

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

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

** You will call me Miss Desmond, if you please, 
Mr. Ellett." The owner of the name had been facing 
her visitors from the piano-stool with her back to the 
instrument. She now wheeled upon the stool, and 
struck some chords. " I wish you'd thought to bring 
your fiddle, Millicent I should like to try this 
piece." The piece lay on the music-rest before her. 



138 THE PURSUIT OF THK PIANO. 

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

" Do," said Miss Desmond. 

" No, no," Gaites protested. " I brought Miss Axe- 
wright, and I have the first claim to bring her fiddle." 

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I could see that — ^too late," said Gaites. 
"But what I can't understand is. Miss Axewright 
seemed to hate it, too." 

Mr, EUett appeared greatly edified. "Did you 
notice that ? " 

" I think I did." 

" Well, now I'll tell you just what I think. There 
aren't any two girls in the world that like each other 



THE PTJR8TJIT OF THE PIANO. 139 

better than those two. But that shows just how it is. 
Girls are terribly jealous, the best of them. There 
isn't a girl living that really likes to have another girl 
praised by a man, or anything about her, I don't care 
who the man is. It's a fact, whether you believe it 
or not, or whether you respect it. I don't respect it 
myself. It's narrow-minded. I don't deny it: they 
are narrow-minded. All the same, we can't help our- 
selves. At least, / can't." 

Mr. Ellett broke into a laugh of exhaustive intelli- 
gence and clapped Gaites on the back. 

IX. 

Gaites, if he did not wholly accept EUett's philos- 
ophy of the female nature, acted in the light it cast 
upon the present situation. From that time till the 
end of his stay at Lower Merritt, which proved to be 
coeval with the close of the Inn for the season, and 
with the retirement of the orchestra from duty, he 
said nothing more of Miss Phyllis Desmond's beautiful 
name. He went further, and altogether silenced him- 
self concerning his pursuit of her piano; he even 
sought occasions of being silent concerning her piano 
in every way, or so it seemed to him, in his anxious 
avoidance of the topic. In all this matter he was gov- 



140 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

emed a good deal by the advice of Mr. EUett, to whom 
he had confessed his pursuit of Miss Desmond's piano 
in all its particulars, and who showed a highly humor- 
ous appreciation of the facts. He was a sort of second 
(he preferred to say second-hand) cousin of Miss Des- 
mond, and, so far as he could make out, had been 
bom engaged to her ; and he showed an intuition in 
the gingerly handling of her rather uncertain temper 
which augured well for his future happiness. His 
future happiness seemed to be otherwise taken care 
of, for though he was a young man of no particular 
prospects, and no profession whatever, he had a gen- 
erous willingness to liberate his affianced to an artistic 
career ; or, at least, there was no talk of her giving up 
her scheme of teaching the piano-forte because she 
was engaged to be married. He was exactly fitted to 
become the husband of a wage-earning wife, and was 
so far from being offensive in this quality that every- 
body (including Miss Desmond, rather fitfully) liked 
him ; and he was universally known as Charley EUett, 
After he had quite converted Gaites to his theory 
of silence concerning his outlived romance, he liked 
to indulge himself, when he got Gaites alone with the 
young ladies, in speculations as to the wanderings of 
Miss Desmond's piano. He could always get a rise 



THE PURSUIT OF THK PIANO. 141 

out of Miss Desmond by referring to the impertinent 
person who had telegraphed her about it from Kent 
Harbor, and he could put Gaites into a quiver of anx- 
iety by asking him whether he had heard Mrs. Maze 
speak of the piano when he was at Kent Harbor, or 
whether he had happened to see anything of it at any 
of the junctions on his way to Lower Merritt. To 
these questions Gaites felt himself obliged to respond 
with lies point-blank, though there were times when 
he was tempted to come out with the truth, Miss Axe- 
wright seemed so amiably indifferent, or so sympa- 
thetically interested, when Ellett was airing his con- 
jectures or pushing his investigations. 

Still Gaites clung to the refuge of his lies, and upon 
the whole it served him well, or at least enabled him 
to temporize in safety, while he was making the prog- 
ress in Miss Axewright's affections which, if he had 
not been her lover, he never would have imagined 
diflScult. They went every day, between the after- 
noon and evening concerts, to walk in the Cloister, a 
colonnade of pines not far from the Inn, which dif- 
fered from some other cloisters in being so much de- 
voted to love-making. She was in love with him, as 
he was with her; but in her proud maiden soul she 
did not dream of bringing him to the confession she 



142 THB PUBSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

longed for. This came the afternoon of the last day 
they walked in the Cloister, when it seemed as if they 
might go on walking there forever, and never emerge 
from their fond, delicious, tremulous, trusting doubt 
of each other. 

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

The next morning brought another mood, a mood 
of sweet defiance, in which she was still more enrapt- 
uring. By this time the engagement was known to 
their two friends, and Miss Desmond came to the cars 
with Charley Ellett to see her off. As Gaites was 
going to Boston on the same train, they made it the 
occasion of seeing him off, too. Millicent openly de- 
clared that they two were going together, that in fact 
she was taking him home to show him to her family 
in South Newton and see whether they liked him. 

Ellett put this aspect of the affair aside. '^ Well, 
then," he said, " if you're going to be in Boston to- 
gether, I think you ought to see the S. B. <k H. C. 



THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 143 

traffic-manager, and find out all about what kept 
Phyl's piano so long on the road. / think they owe 
her an explanation, and Gaites is a lawyer, and he^s 
just the man to get it, with damages. 

Gaites saw in Ellett^s impudent, amusing face that 
he divined Millicent's continued ignorance of his ro- 
mance, and was bent on mischief. But the girl paid 
no heed to his talk, and Gaites could not help laugh- 
ing. He liked the fellow ; he even liked Miss Des- 
mond, who was so much softened by the occasion that 
she had all the thorny allure of a ripened barberry in his 
fancy. They both hung about the seat, where he 
stood ready to take his place beside Millicent, till the 
conductor shouted, " All aboard I " Then they ran 
out, and waved to the lovers through the window till 
the car started. 

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



144 THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

" Now,** she said, " tell me all about yourself." 
" About myself ? " 

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



A DIFFICULT CASE. 



I. 

It was in the fervor of their first married years that 
the Ewberts came to live in the little town of Hil- 
brook, shortly after Hilbrook University had been es- 
tablished there under the name of its founder, Josiah 
Hilbrook. The town itself had then just changed its 
name, in compliance with the conditions of his public 
benefactions, and in recognition of the honor he had 
done it in making it a seat of learning. Up to a cer- 
tain day it had been called West Mallow, ever since 
it was set off from the original town of Mallow ; but 
after a hundred and seventy years of this custom it 
began on that day to call itself Hilbrook, and thence- 
forward, with the curious American acquiescence in 
the accomplished fact, no one within or without its 
limits called it West Mallow again. 

The memory of Josiah Hilbrook himself began to 
be lost in the name he had given the place ; and except 
for the perfunctory mention of its founder in the cer- 
K 



146 A DIFFICULT CASS. 

emonies of Commencement Day, the university hardly 
remembered him as a man, but rather regarded him 
as a locality. He had, in fact, never been an impor- 
tant man in West Mallow, up to the time he had left 
it to seek his fortune in New York; and when he died, 
somewhat abruptly, and left his money, as it were, 
out of a clear sky, to his native place in the form of 
a university, a town hall, a soldiers' monument, a 
drinking-fountain, and a public library, his fellow- 
townsmen, in making the due civic acknowledgment 
and acceptance of his gifts, recalled with effort the 
obscure family to which he belonged. 

He had not tried to characterize the university by 
his peculiar religious faith, but he had given a church 
building, a parsonage, and a fund for the support of 
preaching among them at Hilbrook to the small body 
of believers to which his people adhered. This sect 
had a name by which it was officially known to itself ; 
but, like the Shakers, the Quakers, the Moravians, it 
early received a nickname, which it passively adopted, 
and even among its own members the body was rarely 
spoken of or thought of except as the Rixonites. 

Mrs. Ewbert fretted under the nickname, with an 
impatience perhaps the greater because she had 
merely married into the Rixonite church, and had 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 147 

accepted its doctrine because she loved ber busband 
ratber tban because sbe bad been convinced of its 
trutb. From tbe first sbe complained tbat tbe Rix- 
onites were cold ; and if tbere was anytbing Emily 
Ewbert bad always detested, it was coldness. No 
one, sbe once testified, need talk to ber of tbeir pas- 
sive waiting for a sign, as a religious life ; if tbere 
were not some strong, central belief, some rigorously 
formulated creed, some — 

" Good old berb and root tbeology," ber busband 
interrupted. 

" Yes 1 " sbe beedlessly acquiesced. " Unless tbere 
is sometbing like that^ all tbe waiting in tbe world 
won't " — sbe cast about for some powerful image — 
" won't keep tbe cold cbills from running down my 
back wben I tbink of my duty as a Cbristian." 

" Tben don't tbink of your duty as a Cbristian, my 
dear," be pleaded, witb tbe caressing languor wbicb 
sometimes made ber say, in reprobation of ber own 
pleasure in it, tbat he was a Rixonite, if tbere ever 
was one. " Tbink of your duty as a woman, or even 
as a mortal." 

" I believe you're tbinking of making a sermon on 
tbat," sbe retorted; and be gave a sad, consenting 
laugb, as if it were quite true, tbougb in fact be never 



148 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

really preached a sermon on mere femininity or mere 
mortality. His sermons were all very good, however ; 
and that was another thing that put her out of pa- 
tience with his Rixonite parishioners — ^that they 
should sit there Sunday after Sunday, year in and 
year out, and listen to his beautiful sermons, which 
ought to melt their hearts and bring tears into their 
eyes, and not seem influenced by them any more than 
if they were so many dry chips. 

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

" Well, one thing, Clarence," she summed up, " I'm 
not going to let you throw yourself away on them ; 
and unless you see some of the university people in 
the congregation, I want you to use your old sermons 
from this out. They'll never know the difference ; 
and I'm going to make you take one of the old ser- 
mons along every Sunday, so as to be prepared." 

II. 

One good trait of Mrs. Ewbert was that she never 
meant half she said — she could not ; but in this case 
there was more meaning than usual in her saying. It 
really vexed her that the university families, who had 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 149 

all received them so nicely, and who appreciated her 
husband^s spiritual and intellectual quality as fully 
as even she could wish, came some of them so seldom, 
and some of them never, to hear him at the Rixonite 
church. They ought, she said, to have been just 
suited by his preaching, which inculcated with the 
peculiar grace of his gentle, poetic nature a refine- 
ment of the mystical theology of the founder. The 
Rev. Adoniram Rixon, who had seventy years before 
formulated his conception of the religious life as a 
patient waiting upon the divine will, with a constant 
reference of this world's mysteries and problems to 
the world to come, had doubtless meant a more stren- 
uous abeyance than Clarence Ewbert was now preach- 
ing to a third generation of his followers. He had 
doubtless meant them to be eager and alert in this 
patience, but the version of his gospel which his lat- 
est apostle gave taught a species of acquiescence which 
was foreign to the thoughts of the founder. He put 
as great stress as could be asked upon the importance 
of a realizing faith in the life to come, and an implicit 
trust in it for the solution of the problems and per- 
plexities of this life ; but so far from wishing his 
hearers to be constantly taking stock, as it were, of 
their spiritual condition, and interrogating Providence 



150 A DimCTTLT CASE. 

as to its will concerning them, he besought them to 
rest in confidence of the divine mindfulness, secure 
that while they fulfilled all their plain, simple duties 
toward one another, God would inspire them to act 
according to his purposes in the more psychological 
crises and emergencies, if these should ever be part 
of their experience. 

In maintaining, on a certain Sunday evening, that 
his idojis were much more adapted to the spiritual 
nourishment of the president, the dean, and the sev- 
eral professors of Hilbrook University than to that of 
the hereditary Rixonites who nodded in a slumbrous 
acceptance of them, Mrs. Ewbert failed as usual to 
rouse her husband to a due sense of his grievance 
with the university people. 

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

" Of course not. And I would be the last to have 
you lift a finger. But I know that you feel about it 
just as 1 do." 

"Perhaps; but I hope not so much as you think 
you feel. Of course, I'm very grateful for your in- 
dignation. But I know you don't undervalue the 
good I may do to my poor sheep— they're m)t an in- 
tellectual flock — in trying to lead them in the ways of 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 151 

spiritual modesty and unconsciousness. How do we 
know but they profit more by my preaching than the 
faculty would? Perhaps our university friends are 
spiritually unconscious enough already, if not modest." 

" I see what you mean," said Mrs. Ewbert, provis- 
ionally suspending her sense of the whimsical quality 
in his suggestion. " But you need never tell me that 
they wouldn't appreciate you more." 

" More than old Ransom Hilbrook ? " he askedi 

" Oh, I hope he isn't coming here to-night, again 1 " 
she implored, with a nervous leap from the point in 
question. " If he's coming here every Sunday night" — 

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

"But he stayed so late!" she insisted from the 
safety of her real belief that he was not coming. 

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

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



152 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

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

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

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

III. 

The minister had found his parishioner in the old 
Hilbrook homestead, which Josiah Hilbrook, while he 
lived, suffered Ransom Hilbrook to occupy, and when 
he died bequeathed to him, with a sufficient income 
for all his simple wants. They were cousins, and 
they had both gone out into the world about the same 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 153 

time: one had made a success of it, and remained; 
and the other had made a failure of it, and come back; 
They were both Rixonites, as the families of both had 
been in the generation before them. It could be sup- 
posed that Josiah Hilbrook, since he had given the 
money for a Rixonite church and the perpetual pay of 
a Rixonite minister in hi& native place, had died in 
the faith ; and it might have been supposed that Ran- 
som Hilbrook, from his constant attendance upon its 
services, was living in the same faith. What was 
certain was that the survivor lived alone in the family 
homestead on the slope of the stony hill overlooking 
the village. The house was gray with age, and it 
crouched low on the ground where it had been built 
a century before, and anchored fast by the great cen- 
tral chimney characteristic of the early New England 
farmhouse. Below it staggered the trees of an apple 
orchard belted in with a stone wall, and beside it sag- 
ged the sheds whose stretch united the gray old house 
to the gray old bam, and made it possible for Hil- 
brook to do his chores in rain or snow without leav- 
ing cover. There was a door-yard defined by a picket 
fence, and near the kitchen door was a well with a 
high pent roof, where there had once been a long 
sweep. 



154 A DIFFICT7LT CASE. 

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

Ransom Hilbrook came and went among the vil- 
lagers in the same sort of inaccessible contiguity. He 
did not shun passing the time of day with people he 
met ; he was in and out at the grocer's, the meat man's, 
the baker's, upon the ordinary domestic occasions; 
but he never darkened any other doors, except on his 
visits to the bank where he cashed the checks for his 
quarterly allowance. There had been a proposition 
to use him representatively in the ceremonies cele- 
brating the acceptance of the various gifts of Josiah 
Hilbrook ; but he had not lent himself to this, and 
upon experiment the authorities found that he was 
right in his guess that they could get along without 
him. 

He had not said it surlily, but sadly, and with a 
gentle deprecation of their insistence. While the 
several monuments that testified to his cousin's wealth 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 155 

and munificence rose in the village beyond the brook, 
he continued in the old homestead without change, 
except that when his housekeeper died he began to do 
for himself the few things that the ailing and aged 
woman had done for him. How he did them was 
not known, for h,e invited no intimacy from his neigh- 
bors. But from the extent of his dealings with the 
grocer it was imagined that he lived mainly upon 
canned goods. The fish man paid him a weekly visit, 
and once a week he got from the meat man a piece of 
salt pork, which it was obvious to the meanest intel- 
ligence was for his Sunday baked beans. From his 
purchase of flour and baking powder it was reason- 
ably inferred that he now and then made himself hot 
biscuit. Beyond these meagre facts everything was 
conjecture, in which the local curiosity played some- 
what actively, but, for the most part, with a growing 
acquiescence in the general ignorance none felt author- 
ized to dispel. There had been a time when some 
fulfilled a fancied duty to the solitary in trying to see 
him. But the visitors who found him out of doors 
were not asked within, and were obliged to dismiss 
themselves, after an interview across the pickets of 
the dooryard fence or from the trestles or inverted 
feed pails on which they were invited* to seats in the 



156 A DIFFICULT CASE, 

barn or shed. Those who happened to ^nd their 
host more ceremoniously at home were allowed to 
come in, but were received in rooms so comfortless 
from the drawn blinds or fireless hearths that they 
had not the spirits for the task of cheering him up 
which they had set themselves, and departed in great- 
er depression than that they left him to. 

IV. 

EwBERT felt all the more impelled to his own first 
visit by the fame of these failures, but he was not 
hastened in it. He thought best to wait for some 
sign or leading from Hilbrook ; but when none came, 
except the apparent attention with which Hilbrook 
listened to his preaching, and the sympathy which he 
believed he detected at times in the old eyes blinking 
upon him through his sermons, he felt urged to the 
visit which he had vainly delayed. 

Hilbrook's reception was wary and non-committal, 
but it was by no means so grudging as Ewbert had 
been led to expect. After some ceremonious moments 
in the cold parlor Hilbrook asked him into the warm 
kitchen, where apparently he passed most of his own 
time. There was something cooking in a pot on the 
stove, and a small room opened out of the kitchen. 



A birncuLT case. 157 

with a bed in it, which looked as if it were going to 
be made, as Ewbert handsomely maintained. There 
was an old dog stretched on the hearth behind the 
stove, who whimpered with rheumatic apprehension 
when his master went to pat the lamp on the mantel 
above him. 

In describing the incident to his wife Ewbert stop- 
ped at this point, and then passed on to say that after 
they got to talking Hilbrook seemed more and more 
gratified, and even glad, to see him. 

" Everybody's glad to see yow, Clarence," she broke 
out, with tender pride. " But why do you say, * Af- 
ter we got to talking ' ? Didn't you go to talking at 
once?" 

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

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

'' Oh, nothing. Only, all at once I realized that he 



158 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

liad a sensitive nature. I don't know why I shouldn't 
have realized it before. I had somehow taken it for 
granted that he was a self-conscious hermit, who lived 
in a squalid seclusion because he liked being wondered 
at. But he did not seem to be anything of the kind. 
I don't know whether he's a good cook, for he didn't 
ask me to eat anything ; but I don't think he's a bad 
housekeeper.'* 

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

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

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

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

" Well, what did he say about them ? " 

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

" I can understand that," said Mrs. Ewbert philo- 
sophically. " Books are crowded out after your life 
fills up with other interests." 

" Yes." 



A DIFFICULT CASK. 159 

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

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

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

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

" Well, upon my word ! " Mrs. Ewbert exclaimed. 
** I don't see what business he has coming to church, 
then. Doesn't he understand that the idea of im- 



160 A DIFFICULT CASS. 

mortality is the very essence of Rixonitism ? I think 
it was personally insulting to you^ Clarence. What 
did you say ? " 

'' I didn't take a very high hand with him. Yon 
know I don't embody the idea of immortality, and the 
church is no bad place even for unbelievers. The fact 
is, it struck me as profoundly pathetic. He wasn't 
arrogant about it, as people sometimes are, — ^they 
seem proud of not believing; but he was sufficiently 
ignorant in his premises. He said he had seen too 
many dead people. You know he was in the civil 
war." 

" No I " 

" Yes, — ^through it all. It came out on my asking 
him if he were going to the Decoration Day services. 
He said that the sight of the first great battlefield 
deprived him of the power of believing in a life here- 
after. He was not very explanatory, but as I under- 
stood it the overwhelming presence of death had 
extinguished his faith in immortality ; the dead riders 
were just like their dead horses " — 

" Shocking I " Mrs. Ewbert broke in. 

" He said something went out of him." Ewbert 
waited a moment before adding: '' It was very affect- 
ing, though Hilbrook himself was as apathetic about 



A DIFFICULT CASK. 161 

it as he was about everything else. He was not in- 
terested in not believing, even, but I could see that it 
had taken the heart out of life for him. If our life 
here does not mean life elsewhere, the interest of it 
must end with our activities. When it comes to old 
age, as it has with poor Hilbrook, it has no meaning 
at all, unless it has the hope of more life in it. I felt 
his f orlomness, and I strongly wished to help him. I 
stayed a long time talking ; I tried to interest him in 
the fact that he was not interested, and " — 

" Well, what ? " 

'* If I didn't fatigue Hilbrook, I came away feeling 
perfectly exhausted myself. Were you uneasy at my 
being out so late 9 " 

V. 

It was some time after the Ewberts had given up 
expecting him that old Hilbrook came to return the 
minister's visit. Then, as if some excuse were nec- 
essary, he brought a dozen eggs in a paper bag, which 
he said he hoped Mrs. Ewbert could use, because his 
hens were giving him more than he knew what to do 
with. He came to the back door with them; but 
Mrs. Ewbert always let her maid of all work go out 

Sunday evening, and she could receive him in the 
L 



162 A DIFFICULT CASE 

kitchen herself. She felt obliged to make him the 
more welcome on accoant of his humility, and she 
showed him into the library with perhaps exaggerated 
hospitality. 

It was a chilly evening of April, and so early that 
the lamp was not lighted ; but there was a pleasant 
glow from the fire on the hearth, and Ewbert made 
his guest sit down before it. As he lay back in the 
easy-chair, stretching his thin old hands toward the 
blaze, the delicacy of his profile was charming, and 
that senile parting of the lips with which he listened 
reminded Ewbert of his own father's looks in his last 
years ; so that it was with an affectionate eagerness he 
set about making Hilbrook feel his presence accepta- 
ble, when Mrs. Ewbert left them to finish up the work 
she had promised herself not to leave for the maid. 
It was much that Hilbrook had come at all, and he 
ought to be made to realize that Ewbert appreciated 
his coming. But Hilbrook seemed indifferent to his 
efforts, or rather, insensible to them, in the several 
topics that Ewbert advanced ; and there began to be 
pauses, in which the minister racked his brain for 
some new thing to say, or found himself saying some- 
thing he cared nothing for in a voice of hollow reso- 
lution, or falling into commonplaces which he tried to 



A DIFFICULT CASE. . 163 

give vitality by strenuousness of expression. He 
heard his wife moving about in the kitchen and din- 
ing room, with a clicking of spoons and knives and a 
faint clash of china, as she put the supper things 
away, and he wished that she would come in and 
help him with old Hilbrook; but he could not very 
well call her, and she kept at her work, with no ap- 
parent purpose of leaving it. 

Hilbrook was a farmer, so far as he was anything 
industrially, and Ewbert tried him with questions of 
crops, soils, and fertilizers; but he tried him in vain. 
The old man said he had never cared much for those 
things, and now it was too late for him to begin. He 
generally sold his grass standing, and his apples on 
the trees; and he had no animals about the place 
except his chickens, — ^they took care of themselves. 
Ewbert urged, for the sake of conversation, even of a 
disputative character, that poultry were liable to dis- 
ease, if they were not looked after ; but Hilbrook said, 
Not if there were not too many of them, and so made 
an end of that subject. Ewbert desperately suggested 
that he must find them company, — they seemed socia- 
ble creatures ; and then, in his utter dearth, he asked 
how the old dog was getting on. 

" Oh, he's dead," said Hilbrook, and the minister's 



164 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

heart smote him with a pity for the survivor's forlom- 
ness which the old man's apathetic tone had scarcely 
invited. He inquired how and when the old dog had 
died, and said how much Hilbrook must miss him. 

" Well, I don't know," Hilbrook returned. " He 
wa'n't much comfort, and he's out of his misery, any- 
way." After a moment he added, with a gleam of 
interest : " I've been thinkin', since he went, of what 
we talked about the other night, — I don't mean ani- 
mals, but men. I tried to go over what you said, in 
my own mind, but I couldn't seem to make it." 

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

" You mean as to a life beyond this ? " 

"Ah!" 

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

Ewbert had forgotten the points he had made be- 
fore, and he had to take up the whole subject anew. 
He did so at first in an involuntarily patronizing con- 
fidence that Hilbrook was ignorant of the ground; 
but from time to time the old man let drop a hint of 
knowledge that surprised the minister. Before they 
had done, it appeared that Hilbrook was acquainted 
with the literature of the doctrine of immortality from 



A DIFFICULT CASB. 105 

Plato to Swedenborg, and even to Mr, John Fiske. 
How well he was acquainted with it Ewbert could not 
quite make out ; but he had recurrently a misgiving, 
as if he were in the presence of a doubter whose 
doubt was hopeless through his knowledge. In this 
bleak air it seemed to him that he at last detected the 
one thing in which the old man felt an interest : his 
sole tie with the earth was the belief that when he 
left it he should cease to be. This afEected Ewbert 
as most interesting, and he set himself, with all his 
heart and soul, to dislodge Hilbrook from his deplor- 
able conviction. He would not perhaps have found 
it easy to overcome at once that repugnance which 
Hilbrook's doubt provoked in him, if it had been less 
gently, less simply owned. As it was, it was not pos- 
sible to deal with it in any spirit of mere authority. 
He must meet it and overcome it in terms of affec- 
tionate persuasion. 

It should not be difficult to overcome it ; but Ew- 
bert had not yet succeeded in arraying his reasons 
satisfactorily against it when his wife returned from 
her work in the kitchen, and sat down beside the 
library table. Her coming operated a total diversion, 
in which Hilbrook lapsed into his apathy, and was 
not to be roused from it by the overtures to conver- 



166 A DIFFICULT CASB. 

sation which she made. He presently got to his feet 
and said he must be going, against all her protests 
that it was very early. Ewbert wished to walk home 
with him; but Hilbrook would not suffer this, and 
the minister had to come back from following him to 
the gate, and watching his figure lose itself in the 
dark, with a pang in his heart for the solitude which 
awaited the old man under his own roof. He ran 
swiftly over their argument in his mind, and ques- 
tioned himself whether he had used him with unfail- 
ing tenderness, whether he had let him think that he 
regarded him as at all reprobate and culpable. He 
gave up the quest as he rejoined his wife with a long, 
unconscious sigh that made her lift her head. 

" What is it, Clarence ? " 

" Nothing "— 

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

Then he told her, and he had trouble to keep her 
resentment in bounds. She held that, as a minister, 
he ought to have rebuked the wretched creature ; that 
it was nothing short of offensive to him for Hilbrook 
to take such a position. She said his face was all 
flushed, and that she knew he would not sleep, and 
she should get him a glass of warm milk; the fire was 



A DirnCULT CASE. 167 

out in the stove, bat she could heat it over the lamp 
in a tin cup. 

VI. 

HiLBROOK did not come again till Ewbert had been 
to see him ; and in the meantime the minister suffered 
from the fear that the old man was staying away be- 
cause of some hurt which he had received in their 
controversy. Hilbrook came to church as before, and 
blinked at him through the two sermons which Ew- 
bert preached on significant texts, and the minister 
hoped he was listening with a sense of personal appeal 
in thenL He had not only sought to make them con- 
vincing as to the doctrine of another life, bat he had 
dealt in terms of loving entreaty with those who had 
not the precious faith of this in their hearts, and he 
had wished to convey to Hilbrook an assurance of 
peculiar sympathy. 

The day following the last of his sermons, Ewbert 
had to officiate at the funeral of a little child whose 
mother had been stricken to the earth by her bereave- 
ment. The hapless creature had sent for him again 
and again, and had clung about his very soul, be- 
seeching him for assurance that she should see her 
child hereafter, and have it hers, jast as it was, for^ 



168 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

ever. He had not had the heart to refuse her this 
consolation, and he had poshed himself, in giving it, 
beyond the bounds of imagination. When she con- 
fessed her own inability to see how it could be, and 
yet demanded of him that it should be, he answered 
her that our inability to realize the fact had nothing 
to do with its reality. In the few words he said over 
the little one, at the last, he recurred to this position, 
and urged it upon all his hearers ; but in the moment 
of doing so a point that old Hilbrook had made in 
their talk suddenly presented itself. He experienced 
inwardly such a collapse that he could not be sure he 
had spoken, and he repeated his declaration in a voice 
of such harsh defiance that he could scarcely after- 
wards bring himself down to the meek level of the 
closing prayer. 

As they walked home together, his wife asked, 
" Why did you repeat yourself in that passage, Clar- 
ence, and why did you lift your voice so ? It sounded 
like contradicting some one. I hope you were not 
thinking of anything that wretched old man said ? '' 

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



A DIFFICULT CASB. 169 

" Well, then, I wish he wouldn't come about any 
more. He has perfectly obsessed you. I could see 
that the last two Sundays you were preaching right 
at him." He had vainly hoped she had not noticed 
this, though he had not concealed from her that his 
talk with Hilbrook had suggested his theme. " What 
are you going to do about him ? " she pursued relent- 
lessly. 

" I don't know, — I don't know, indeed," said Ew- 
bert; and perhaps because he did not know, he felt 
that he must do something, that he must at least not 
leave him to himself. He hoped that Hilbrook would 
come to him, and so put him under the necessity of 
doing something ; but Hilbrook did not come, and 
after waiting a fortnight Ewbert went to him, as was 
his duty. 

VII. 

Thb spring had advanced so far that there were 
now days when it was pleasant to be out in the soft 
warmth of the afternoons. The day when Ewbert 
climbed to the Hilbrook homestead it was even a lit- 
tle hot, and he came up to the dooryard mopping his 
forehead with his handkerchief, and glad of the south- 
western breeze which he caught at this point over the 



170 A DIFFICULT CASK. 

shoulder of the hill. He had expected to go round 
to the side door of the house, where he had parted 
with Hilbrook on his former visit; but he stopped on 
seeing the old man at his front door, where he was 
looking vaguely at a mass of Spanish willow fallen 
dishevelled beside it, as if he had some thought of 
lifting its tangled spray. The sun shone on his bare 
head, and struck silvery gleams from his close-cropped 
white hair; there was something uncommon in his 
air, though his dress was plain and old-fashioned ; and 
Ewbert wished that his wife were there to share his 
impression of distinction in Hilbrook's presence. 

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

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

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

The old man shook his head. " It was once, when 
we were children ; now there's what we remember of 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 171 

it. We like to make believe about it, — that's natural ; 
and it's natural we should make believe that there is 
going to be a spring for us somewhere else like what 
we see for the grass and bushes, here, every year ; but 
I guess not. A tree puts out its leaves every spring ; 
but by and by the tree dies, and then it doesn't put 
out its leaves any more." 

" I see what you mean," said Ewbert, " and I allow 
that there is no real analogy between our life and that 
of the grass and bushes ; yet somehow I feel strength- 
ened in my belief in the hereafter by each renewal of 
the earth's life. It isn't a proof, it isn't a promise ; 
but it's a suggestion, an intimation." 

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

" But character," the minister urged at a certain 
point, — " what becomes of character ? You may sup- 
pose that life can be lavished by its Origin in the im- 
measurable superabundance which we see in nature. 
But character, — that is a different thing ; that cannot 
die." 

^'The beasts that perish have character; my old 



172 A DIFFICULT CA8B. 

dog had. Some are good and some bad ; they're kind 
and they're ugly." 

" Ah, excuse me ! That isn't character ; that's tem- 
perament. Men have temperament, too; but the 
beasts haven't character. Doesn't that fact prove 
something,— or no, not prove, but give us some rea- 
sonable expectation of a hereafter ? " 

Hilbrook did not say anything for a moment. He 
broke a bit of fragrant spray from the flowering cur- 
rant — which guarded the doorway on his side of the 
steps ; Ewbert sat next the Spanish willow — and softly 
twisted the stem between his thumb and finger. 

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

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

" Thought there wa'n't much in it ? Well, that's 
right, generally speakin'. Folks like to make up 
stories about a man that lives alone like me, here ; and 
they usually get in a disappointment. I ain't goin' to 
go over it. I don't care any more about it now than 
if it had happened to somebody else ; but it did hap-^ 
pen. Josiah got the girl, and I didn't. I presume 
they like to make out that I've grieved over it ever 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 173 

since. Sho 1 If s forty years since I gave it a thought, 
that way." A certain contemptuous indignation sup- 
planted the wonted gentleness of the old man, as if he 
spurned the notion of such sentimental folly. " I've 
read of folks mournin' all their lives through, and in 
their old age goin' hack to a thing like that, as if it 
still meant somethin'. But it ain't true ; I don't sup- 
pose I care any more for losin' her now than Josiah 
would for gettin' her if he was alive. It did make a 
difference for a while ; I ain't goin' to deny that It 
lasted me four or five years, in all, I guess ; but I was 
married to somebody else when I went to the war," 
— Ewbert controlled a start of surprise ; he had al- 
ways taken it for granted that Hilbrook was a bache- 
lor, — " and we had one child. So you may say that 
I was well over that first thing. It wore out ; and if 
it wa'n't that it makes me mad to have folks believin' 
that I'm sufferin' from it yet, I presume I shouldn't 
think of it from one year's end to another. My wife 
and I always got on well together; she was a good 
woman. She died when I was away at the war, and 
the little boy died after I got back. I was sorry to 
lose her, and I thought losin' him would kill me. It 
didn't It appeared one while as if I couldn't live 
without him, and I was always contrivin' how I should 



174 A DIFFICULT CASIB. 

meet up iwith him somewhere else. I couldn't figure 
it out." 

Hilbrook stopped, and swallowed dryly. Ewbert 
noticed how he had dropped more and more into the 
vernacular, in these reminiscences; in their contro- 
versies he had used the language of books and had 
spoken like a cultivated man, but now he was simply 
and touchingly rustic. 

" Well," he resumed, " that wore out, too. I went 
into business, and I made money and I lost it. I 
went through all that experience, and I got enough of 
it, just as I got enough of fightin'. I guess I was no 
worse scared than the rest of 'em, but when it came 
to the end I'd 'bout made up my mind that if there 
was another war I'd go to Canady ; I was sick of it, 
and I was sick of business even before I lost money. 
I lost pretty much everything. Josiah — ^he was al- 
ways a good enough friend of mine — wanted me to 
start in again, and he offered to back me, but I said 
no. I said if he wanted to do something for me, he 
could let me come home and live on the old place, 
here ; it wouldn't cost him anything like so much, and 
it would be a safer investment. He agreed, and here 
I be, to make a long story short." 

Hilbrook had stiffened more and more, as he went 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 175 

on, in the sort of defiance he had put on when he first 
began to speak of himself, and at the end of his con- 
fidence Ewbert did not venture any comment. His 
forbearance seemed to leave the old man freer to re- 
sume at the point where he had broken off, and he 
did so with something of lingering challenge. 

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

" No, no I " Ewbert protested. " Human capacity 



176 A DimCULT CASE. 

is infinite ; *' but even while he spoke this seemed to 
him a contradiction in terms. *^ I mean that the pas- 
sions renew themselves with new occasions, new op- 
portunities, and character grows continaallj. You 
have loved twice, you have grieved twice ; in battle 
you hated more than once ; in business you must have 
coveted many times. Under different conditions, the 
passions, the potentiality of experiences, will have a 
pristine strength. Can't you see it in that light? 
Can't you draw some hope from that ? " 

" Hope ! " cried Ransom Hilbrook, lifting his fallen 
head and staring at the minister. " Why, man, you 
don't suppose I want to live hereafter ? Do you think 
I'm anxious to have it all over again, or any of it ! Is 
that why you've been trying to convince me of im- 
mortality! I know there's something in what you 
say, — more than what you realize. I've argued anni- 
hilation up to this point and that, and almost proved 
it to my own mind ; but there's always some point 
that I can't quite get over. If I had the certainty, the 
absolute certainty, that this was all there was to be of 
it, I wouldn't want to live an hour longer, not a min- 
ute I But it's the uncertainty that keeps me. What 
I'm afraid of is, that if I get out of it here, I might 
wake up in my old identity, with the potentiality of 



A DirncuLT CASE. 177 

new experiences in new conditions. That's it. I'm 
tired. I've had enough. I want to be let alone. I 
don't want to do anything more, or have anything 
more done to me. I want to stop,^'* 

Ewbert's first impression was that he was shocked ; 
but he was too honest to remain in this conventional 
assumption. He was profoundly moved, however, and 
intensely interested. He realized that Hilbrook was 
perfectly sincere, and he could put himself in the old 
man's place, and imagine why he should feel as he 
did. Ewbert blamed himself for not having conceived 
of such a case before ; and he saw that if he were to 
do anything for this lonely soul, he must begin far 
back of the point from which he had started with him. 
The old man's position had a kind of dignity which 
did not admit of the sort of pity Ewbert had been 
feeling for him, and the minister had before him the 
difficult and delicate task of persuading Hilbrook, not 
that a man, if he died, should live again, but that he 
should live upon terms so kind and just that none of 
the fortuities of mortal life should be repeated in that 
immortality. He must show the inmiortal man to be 
a creature so happily conditioned that he would be 
in effect newly created, before Hilbrook would con- 
sent to accept the idea of living again. He might say 
M 



178 A DIFFICULT CA8B. 

to him that he would probably not be consulted in 
the matter, since he had not been consulted as to his 
existence here ; but such an answer would brutally 
i^ore the claim that such a man's developed con- 
sciousness could justly urge to some share in the 
counsels of omnipotence. Ewbert did not know where 
to begin, and in his despair he began with a laugh. 

"Upon my word," he said, "you've presented a 
problem that would give any casuist pause, and it's 
beyond my powers without some further thought. 
Your doubt, as I now understand it, is not of immor- 
tality, but of mortality ; and there I can't meet you in 
argument without entirely forsaking my own ground. 
If it will not seem harsh, I will confess that your 
doubt is rather consoling to me ; for I have so much 
faith in the Love which rules the world that I am per-' 
fectly willing to accept reexistence on any terms that 
Love may offer. You may say that this is because I 
have not yet exhausted the potentialities of experience, 
and am still interested in my own identity ; and one 
half of this, at least, I can't deny. But even if it 
were otherwise, I should trust to find among those 
Many Mansions which we are told of some chamber 
where I should be at rest without being annihilated ; 
and I can even imagine my being glad to do any sort 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 179 

of work about the House, when I was tired of rest- 



»» 



ing. 

VIII. 

" I AM glad you said that to him 1 " cried Ewbert's 
wife, when he told her of his interview with old Hil- 
brook. "That will give him something to think 
about. What did he say ? " 

Ewbert had been less and less satisfied with his 
reply to Hilbrook, in which it seemed to him that he 
had passed from mockery to reproof, with no great 
credit to himself ; and his wife's applause now set the 
seal to his displeasure with it. 

" Oh, he said simply that he could understand a 
younger person feeling differently, and that he did 
not wish to set himself up aaa censor. But he could 
not pretend that he was glad to have been called out 
of nonentity into being, and that he could imagine 
nothing better than eternal unconsciousness." 

" Well ? " 

" I told him that his very words implied the refusal 
of his being to accept nonentity again ; that they ex- 
pressed, or adumbrated, the conception of an eternal 
consciousness of the eternal unconsciousness he im- 
agined himself longing for. I'm not so sure they, did, 
now." 



180 A DIFFICULT CASB. 

** Of course they did. And then what did he say ? '* 

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

** I don't see how you could have been more so ! '* 
she retorted, in tender indignation with him against 
himself. *' And I think what he said was terrible. 
It was bad enough for him to pretend to believe that 
he was not going to live again, but for him to tell you 
that he was afraid he was ! " An image sufficiently 
monstrous to typify Ililbrook's wickedness failed to 
present itself to Mrs. Ewbert, and she went out to 
give the maid instructions for something unusually 
nourishing for Ewbert at their midday dinner. " You 
look fairly fagged out, Clarence," she said, when she 
came back ; " and I insist upon your not going up to 
that dreadful old man's again, — at least, not till 
you've got over this shock." 

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

" Yes, it has ! yes, it has ! " she declared. " It's 
just like your thinking you hadn't taken cold, the 
other day when you were caught in the rain ; and the 



A DIFnCULT CASE. 181 

next morning you got up with a sore throat, and it 
was Sunday morning, too." 

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

That night, before the Ewberts had finished their 
tea, there came a ring at the door, from which Mrs. 
Ewbert disconsolately foreboded a premature evening 
call. "And just when I was counting on a long, 
quiet, restful time for you, and getting you to bed 
early ! " she lamented in undertone to her husband ; 
to the maid who passed through the room with an 
inquiring glance, to the front door, she sighed, still in 
undertone, " Oh yes, of course we're at horned 

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

"It's that old gentleman who lives all alone by 
himself on the hill over the brook," she explained ; 



182 A DIFriCULT CASE. 

and Mrs. Ewbert rose with an air of authority, waving 
her husband to keep his seat. 

" Now, Clarence, I am simply not going to let you 
go in. You are sick enough as it is, and if you are 
going to let that awful old man spend the whole even- 
ing here, and drain the life out of you I I will see 
him, and tell him " — 

" No, no, Emily I It won't do. I must see him. 
It isn't true that I'm sick. He's old, and he has a 
right to the best we can do for him. Think of his 
loneliness! I shall certainly not let you send him 
away." Ewbert was excitedly gulping his second cup 
of tea ; he pushed his chair back, and flung his nap- 
kin down as he added, " You can come in, too, and 
see that I get ofE alive." 

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

ax. 

Mrs. Ewbert heard old Hilbrook begin at once in 
a high senile key without any form of response to her 
husband's greeting : " There was one thing you said 
to-day that I've been thinkin' over, and I've come 
down to talk with you about it." 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 183 

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

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

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

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

" I guess we're built like an onion," he said, with 
a severity that forbade Ewbert to feel anything un- 



184 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

dignified in the homely illustration. " You can strip 
away layer after layer till you seem to get to nothing 
at all ; but when you've got to that nothing youVe 
got to the very thing that had the life in it, and that 
would have grown again if you had put it in the 
ground." 

" Exactly ! " said Ewbert. 

" You made a point that I can't get round," Hil- 
brook continued, and it was here that Ewbert enjoyed 
a little instant of triumph. '* But that ain't the point 
with me, I see that I can't prove that we shan't live 
again any more than you can prove that we shall. 
What I want you to do now is to convince me, or to 
give me the least reason to believe, that we shan't live 
again on exactly the same terms that we live now. I 
don't want to argue immortality any more ; we'll take 
that for granted. But how is it going to be any dif- 
ferent from mortality with the hope of death taken 
away ? " 

Hilbrook's apathy was gone, and his gentleness ; he 
had suddenly an air and tone of fierce challenge. As 
he spoke he brought a clenched fist down on the arm 
of his chair; he pushed his face forward and fixed 
Ewbert with the vitreous glitter of his old eyes. Ew- 
bert found him terrible, and he had a confused sense 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 185 

of responsibility for him, as if he had spiritually con- 
stituted him, in the chamel of unbelief, out of the 
spoil of death, like some new and fearfuler figment 
of Frankenstein's. But if he had fortuitously reached 
him, through the one insincerity of his being, and 
bidden him live again forever, he must Hot forsake 
him or deny him. 

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

" You didn't go to the Book for the point you made 
against me. But if you go to it now for the point I 
want you to make for me, what are you going to find ? 
Are you going to find the promise of a life any differ- 
ent from the life we have here ? I accept it all, — all 
that the Old Testament says, and all that the New 
Testament says ; and what does it amount to on this 
point ? " 

" Nothing but the assurance that if we live rightly, 
here we shall be happy in the keeping of the divine 
Love there. That assurance is everything to me." 

" It isn't to me I " cried the old man. " We are in 
the keeping of the divine Love here, too, and are we 
happy? Are those who live rightly happy! It's 
because we're not conditioned for happiness here ; and 



186 A DirncxTLT case. 

how are we going to be conditioned differently there f 
We are going to suffer to all eternity through our 
passions, our potentialities of experience, there just 
as we do here." 

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

"Like what?" Hilbrook demanded. "IVe been 
trying to figure it, and I can't. I should like you to 
try it. You can't imagine a new passion in the soul 
any more than you can imagine a new feature in the 
face. There they are : eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin ; 
love, hate, greed, hope, fear I You can't add to them 
or take away from them." The old man dropped 
from his defiance in an entreaty that was even more 
terrible to Ewbert. " I wish you could. I should 
like to have you try. Maybe I haven't been over the 
whole ground. Maybe there's some principle that 
I've missed." He hitched his chair closer to Ew- 
bert's, and laid some tremulous fingers on the minis- 
ter's sleeve. " If I've got to live forever, what have 
I got to live for ? " 

" Well," said Ewbert, meeting him fully in his hu- 
mility, " let us try to make it out together. Let us 
try to think. Apparently, our way has brought us to a 



A DIFFICULT CASB. 187 

dead wall ; but I believe there's light beyond it, if we 
can only break through. Is it really necessary that 
we should discover some new principle ? Do we know 
all that love can do from our experience of it here ? " 

" Have you seen a mother with her child ? " Hil- 
brook retorted. 

" Yes, I know. But even that has some alloy of 
selfishness. Can't we imagine love in which there is 
no, greed, — ^for greed, and not hate, is the true anti- 
thesis of love which is all giving, while greed is all 
getting, — a love that is absolutely pure ? " 

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

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

" Well," said Hilbrook provisionally. 

Ewbert had not thought of these points himself be- 
fore, and he was pleased with his discovery, though 
afterwards he was aware that it was something like 



188 A DIFFICULT CASB. 

an intellectual juggle. "You see," he temporized, 
" we have got rid of two of the passions already, fear 
and greed, which are the potentialities of our unhap- 
piest experience in this life. In fact, we have got rid 
of three, for without fear and greed men cannot hate." 

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

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

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

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

He rose briskly from his chair, and went to the 
shelves, running his fingers along the books with that 
subtlety of touch by which the student knows a given 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 189 

book in the dark. He had heard Mrs. Ewbert stirring 
about in the rooms beyond with an activity in which 
he divined a menacing impatience; and he would 
have been glad to get rid of old Hilbrook before her 
impatience burst in an irruption upon them. Perhaps 
because of this distraction he could not find the book, 
but he remained on foot, talking with an implication 
in his tone that they were both preparing to part, and 
were now merely finishing o£E some odds and ends of 
discourse before they said good-night 

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



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

" You donH mean that you've been out in the night 
air without your hat on ! " she returned. " Well, this is 



190 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

too much ! " Her long-pent-up impatience l)roke in 
tears, and lie strove in vain to comfort her with ca- 
resses. '^ Oh, what a fatal day it was when you stirred 
that wretched old creature up ! If Ay couldn't you leave 
him alone I " 

" To his apathy ? To his despair ? Emily I " Ew- 
bert dropped his arms from the embrace in which he 
had folded her woodenly unresponsive frame, and re- 
garded her sadly. 

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

" Oh yes, I shall," he answered bravely. " I be- 
lieve I've done some good work with poor old Hil- 
brook ; and you mustn't think he's tired me. I feel 
fresher than I did when he came." 

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



A DIFFICULT CASE. 191 

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

" Oh yes ! " Mrs. Ewbert exulted disconsolately, 
and she left him to his book. She returned to say : 
" If you must take anything to make you sleepy, IVe 
left some warm milk on the back of the stove. Prom- 
ise me you won't take any sulphonal ! You know 
how you feel the next day ! " 

" No, no, I won't," said Ewbert ; and he kept his 
word, with the effect of remaining awake all night. 
Toward morning he did not know but he had drowsed ; 
he was not aware of losing consciousness, and he 
started from his drowse with the word ** conscious- 
ness " in his mind, as he had heard Hilbrook speak- 
ing it. 

XL 

Throughout the day, under his wife's watchful 
eye, he failed of the naps he tried for, and he had to 
own himself as haggard, when night came again, as 
the fondest anxiety of a wife could pronounce a hus- 
band. He could not think of his talk with old Hil- 
brook without an anguish of brain exhaustion ; and 
yet he could not help thinking of it. He realized 
what the misery of mere weakness must be, and the 



192 A DIFFICULT CASB 

horror of not having the power to rest. He wished 
to go to bed before the hour when Hilbrook conunonly 
appeared, but this was so early that Ewbert knew he 
should merely toss about and grow more and more 
wakeful from his premature efiEort to sleep. He trem- 
bled at every step outside, and at the sound of feet 
approaching the door on the short brick walk from 
the gate, he and his wife arrested themselves with 
their teacups poised in the air. Ewbert was aware of 
feebly hoping the feet might go away again ; but the 
bell rang, and then he could not meet his wife's eye. 

" If it is that old Mr. Hilbrook," she said to the 
maid in transit through the room, " tell him that Mr. 
Ewbert is not well, but / shall be glad to see him,'* 
and now Ewbert did not dare to protest. His fore- 
bodings were verified when he heard Hilbrook asking 
for him, but though he knew the voice, he detected 
a difEerence in the tone that puzzled him. 

His wife did not give Hilbrook time to get away, 
if he had wiahed, without seeing her; she rose at 
once and went out to him. Ewbert heard her asking 
him into the library, and then he heard them in par- 
ley th^re ; and presently they came out into the hall 
again, and went to the front door together. Ewbert's 
heart misgave him of something summary on her 



A DIFFICULT CASB. 198 

party and he did not know what to make of the cheer- 
ful parting between them. " Well, I bid you good- 
evening, ma'am," he heard old Hilbrook say briskly, 
and his wife return sweetly, " Good-night, Mr. Hil- 
brook. You must come soon again." 

" You may put your mind at rest, Clarence," she 
said, as she reentered the dining room and met his 
face of surprise. " He didn't come to make a call ; 
he just wanted to borrow a book, — Physical Theory 
of another Life." 

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

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

XII. 

Hilbrook came the night after he had borrowed » 
the book, full of talk about it, to ask if he might keep 
it a little longer. Ewbert had slept well the interven- 



id4 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

ing nighty and had been suffered to see Hilbrook apon 
promising his wife that he would not encourage the 
old man to stay ; but Hilbrook stayed without encour- 
agement. An interest had come into his apathetic 
life which renewed it, and gave vitality to a whole 
dead world of things. He wished to talk, and he 
wished even more to listen, that he might confirm 
himself from Ewbert's faith and reason in the conject- 
ures with which his mind was filled. His eagerness 
as to the conditions of a future life, now that he had 
begun to imagine them, was insatiable, and Ewbert, 
who met it with glad sympathy, felt drained of his 
own spiritual forces by the strength which he supplied 
to the old man. But the case was so strange, so ab- 
sorbing, so important, that he could not refuse him- 
self to it. He could not deny Hilbrook's claim to all 
that he could give him in this sort ; he was as helpless 
to withhold the succor he supplied as he was to hide 
from Mrs. Ewbert's censoriously anxious eye the ner- 
vous exhaustion to which it left him after each visit 
that Hilbrook paid him. But there was a drain from 
another sourse of which he would not speak to her till 
he could make sure that the effect was not some trick 
of his own imagination. 

He had been aware, in twice urging some reason 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 195 

upon Hilbrook, of a certain perfunctory quality in his 
performance. It was as if the ti'uth, so vital at first, 
had perished in its formulation, and in the repetition 
he was sensible, or he was fearful, of an insincerity, 
a hollowness in the arguments he had originally em- 
ployed so earnestly against the old man's doubt. He 
recognized with dismay a quality of question in his 
own mind, and he fancied that as Hilbrook waxed in 
belief he himself waned. The conviction of a life 
hereafter was not something which he was sharing 
with Hilbrook ; he was giving it absolutely, and with 
such entire unreserve that he was impoverishing his 
own soul of its most precious possession. 

So it seemed to him in those flaccid moods to which 
Hilbrook's visits left him, when mind and body were 
both spent in the effort he had been making. In the 
intervals in which his strength renewed itself, he put 
this fear from him as a hypochondriacal fancy, and he 
summoned a cheerfulness which he felt less and less 
to meet the hopeful face of the old man. Hilbrook 
had renewed himself, apparently, in the measure that 
the minister had aged and waned. He looked, to 
Ewbert, younger and stronger. To the conventional 
question how he did, he one night answered that he 
never felt better in his life. "But you," he said, 



196 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

casting an eye over the face and figure of the minis- 
ter/ who lay back in his easy-chair, with his hands 
stretched nerveless on the arms, ^^you look rather 
peaked. I don't know as I noticed it before, but 
come to think, I seemed to feel the same way about 
it when I saw you in the pulpit yesterday." 

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

" Well, that's right," said Hilbrook, in willing dis- 
missal of the trifle which had delayed him from the 
great matter in his mind. 

Some new thoughts had occurred to him in corrob- 
oration of the notions they had agreed upon in their 
last meeting. But in response Ewbert found himself 
beset by a strange temptation, — by the wish to take 
up these notions and expose their fallacy. They were 
indeed mere toys of their common fancy which they 
had constructed together in mutual supposition, but 
Ewbert felt a sacredness in them, while he longed so 
strangely to break them one by one and cast them in 
the old man's face. Like all imaginative people, he 
was at times the prey of morbid self-suggestions, 
whose nature can scarcely be stated without excess. 
The more monstrous the thing appeared to his mind 
and conscience, the more fascinating it became. Once 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 197 

the mere horror of such a conception as catching a 
comely parishoner about the waist and kissing her, 
when she had come to him with a case of conscience, 
had so confused him in her presence as to make him 
answer her wildly, not because he was really tempted 
to the wickedness, but because he realized so vividly 
the hideousness of the impossible temptation. In. 
some such sort he now trembled before old Hilbrook, 
thinking how dreadful it would be if he were suddenly 
to begin undoing the work of faith in him, and putting 
back in its place the doubts which he had uprooted 
before. In a swift series of dramatic representations 
he figured the old man's helpless amaze at the demon- 
iacal gayety with which he should mock his own se- 
riousness in the past, the cynical ease with which he 
should show the vanity of the hopes he had been so 
fervent in awakening. He had throughout recognized 
the claim that all the counter-doubts had upon the 
reason, and he saw how effective he could make these 
if he were now to become their advocate. He pict- 
ured the despair in which he could send his proselyte 
tottering home to his lonely house through the dark. 
He rent himself from the spell, but the last picture 
remained so real with him that he went to the window 
and looked out, saying, " Is there a moon ? " 



198 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

" It ain't up yet, I guess," said old Hilbrook, and 
from something in his manner, rather than from any- 
thing he recollected of their talk, Ewbert fancied him 
to have asked a question, and to be now waiting for 
some answer. He had not the least notion what the 
question could have been, and he began to walk up 
•and down, trying to think of something to say, but 
feeling his legs weak under him and the sweat cold 
on his forehead. All the time he was aware of Hil- 
brook following him with an air of cheerful interest, 
and patiently waiting till he should take up the thread 
of their discourse again. 

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

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

" Well, sir," said the old man when he rose to go 
at last, " I guess you've settled it for me. You've 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 199 

made me see that there can be an immortal life that's 
worth living; and I was afraid there wa'n'tl I 
shouldn't care, now, if I woke up any morning in the 
other world. I guess it would be all right ; and that 
there would be new conditions every way, so that a 
man could go on and be himself, without feelin' that 
he was in any danger of bein' wasted. You've made 
me want to meet my boy again ; and I used to dread 
it; I didn't think I was fit for it. I don't know 
whether you expect me to thank you ; I presume you 
don't ; but I " — he faltered, and his voice shook in 
sympathy with the old hand that he put trembling 
into Ewbert's — " I bless you I " 

XIII. 

The time had come when the minister must seek 
refuge and counsel with his wife. He went to her as 
a troubled child goes to its mother, and she heard the 
confession of his strange experience with the motherly 
sympathy which performs the comforting office of per- 
fect intelligence. If she did not grasp its whole sig- 
nificance, she seized what was perhaps the main point, 
and she put herself in antagonism to the cause of his 
morbid condition, while administering an inevitable 
chastisement for the neglect of her own prevision. 



200 A DimCULT CASE. 

'^That terrible old man/' she said, ^'has simply 
been draining the life out of you, Clarence. I saw it 
from the beginning, and I warned you against it; but 
you wouldn't listen to me. Now I suppose you will 
listen, after the doctor tells you that you're in danger 
of nervous prostration, and that you've got to give up 
everything and rest. / think you've been in danger 
of losing your reason, you've overworked it so ; and I 
sha'n't be easy till I've got you safely away at the 
seaside, and out of the reach of that — ^that vampire^ 

" Emily ! " the minister protested. " I can't allow 
you to use such language. At the worst, and suppos- 
ing that he has really been that drain upon me which 
you say (though I don't admit it), what is my life for 
but to give to others ? " 

" But my life isn't for you to give to others, and 
your life is mine, and I think I have some right to 
say what shall be done with it, and I don't choose to 
have it used up on old Hilbrook." It passed through 
Ewbert^s languid thought, which it stirred to a vague 
amusement, that the son of an older church than the 
Bixonite might have found in this thoroughly terres- 
trial attitude of his wife a potent argument for sacer- 
dotal celibacy ; but he did not attempt to formulate 
it, and he listened submissively while she went on: 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 201 

" One thing : I am certainly not going to let you see 
him again till you've seen the doctor, and I hope he 
won't come about. If he does, I shall see him." 

The menace in this declaration moved Ewbert to 
another protest, which he worded conciliatingly : " I 
shall have to let you. But I know you won't say any- 
thing to convey a sense of responsibility to him. I 
couldn't forgive myself if he were allowed to feel that 
he had been preying upon me. The fact is, I've been 
overdoing in every way, and nobody is to blame for 
my morbid fancies but myself. I should blame my- 
self very severely if you based any sort of superstition 
on them, and acted from that superstition." 

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

Whether a woman with opinions so strong as Mrs. 
Ewbert's, and so indistinguishable from her preju- 
dices, could be trusted to keep them to herself, in 
dealing with the matter in hand, was a question which 
her husband felt must largely be left to her goodness 
of heart for its right solution. 

When Hilbrook came that night, as usual, she had 
already had it out with him in several strenuous rev- 
eries before they met, and she was able to welcome 



202 A DIFFICULT CASB. 

him gently to the interview which she made very 
brief. His face fell in visible disappointment when 
she said that Mr. Ewbert would not be able to see 
him, and perhaps there was nothing to uplift him in 
the reasons she gave, though she obscurely resented 
his continued dejection as a kind of ingratitude. She 
explained that poor Mr. Ewbert was quite broken 
down, and that the doctor had advised his going to 
the seaside for the whole of August, where he prom- 
ised everything from the air and the bathing. Mr. 
Ewbert merely needed toning up, she said; but to 
correct the impression she might be giving that his 
breakdown was a trifling matter, she added that she 
felt very anxious about it, and wanted to get him away 
as soon as possible. She said with a confidential ef- 
fect, as of something in which Hilbrook could sym- 
pathize with her: "You know it isn't merely his 
church work proper; it's his giving himself spiritually 
to all sorts of people so indiscriminately. He can't 
deny himself to any one ; and sometimes he's perfectly 
exhausted by it. You must come and see him as soon 
'as he gets back, Mr. Hilbrook. He will count upon 
it, I know; he's so much interested in the discussions 
he has been having with you." 

She gave the old man her hand for good-by, after 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 203 

she had artfully stood him up, in a double hope, — ^a 
hope that he would understand that there was some 
limit to her husband's nervous strength, and a hope 
that her closing invitation would keep him from feel- 
ing anything personal in her hints. 

Hilbrook took his leave in the dreamy fashion age 
has with so many 4;hingSy as if there were a veil be- 
tween him and experience which kept him from the 
full realization of what had happened; and as she 
watched his bent shoulders down the garden walk, 
carrying his forward-drooping head at a slant that 
scarcely left the crown of his hat visible, a fear came 
upon her which made it impossible for her to recount 
all the facts of her interview to her husband. It be- 
came her duty, rather, to conceal what was painful to 
herself in it, and she merely told hi'm that Mr. Hil- 
brook had taken it all in the right way, and she had 
made him promise to come and see them as soon as 
they got back. 

XIV. 

Events approved the wisdom of Mrs. Ewbert's 
course in so many respects that she confidently trusted 
them for the rest. Ewbert picked up wonderfully at 
the seaside, aild she said to him again and again that 



204 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

it was not merely those interviews with old Hilbrook 
which had drained his vitality, bat it was the whole 
social and religious keeping of the place. Everybody, 
she said, had thrown themselves upon his sympathies, 
and he was carrying a load that nobody could bear up 
under. She addressed these declarations to her lin- 
gering consciousness of Ransom Hilbrook, and con- 
finned herself, by their repetition, in the belief that 
he had not taken her generalizations personally. She 
now extended these so as to inculpate the faculty of 
the university, who ought to have felt it their duty 
not to let a man of Ewbert's intellectual quality stag- 
ger on alone among them, with no sign of apprecia- 
tion or recognition in the work he was doing, not so 
much for the Rixonite church as for the whole com- 
munity. She took several ladies at the hotel into her 
confidence on this point, and upon study of the situa- 
tion they said it was a shame. After that she felt 
more bitter about it, and attributed her husband's 
collapse to a concealed sense of the indifference of 
the university people, so galling to a sensitive nature. 
She suggested this theory to Ewbert, and he de- 
nied it with blithe derision, but she said that he need 
not tell her^ and in confirming herself in it she began 
to relax her belief that old Ransom 'Hilbrook had 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 205 

preyed upon him. She even went so far as to say 
that the only intellectual companionship he had ever 
had in the place was that which he found in the old 
man's society. When she discovered, after the fact, 
that Ewbert had written to him since they came away, 
she was not so severe with him as she might have 
expected herself to be in view of an act which, if not 
quite clandestine, was certainly without her privity. 
She would have considered him fitly punished by Hil- 
brook's failure to reply, if she had not shared his un- 
easiness at the old man's silence. But she did not 
allow this to affect her good spirits, which were essen- 
tial to her husband's comfort as well as her own. She 
redoubled her care of him in every sort, and among 
all the ladies who admired her devotion to him there 
was none who enjoyed it as much as herself. There 
was none wjio believed more implicitly that it was 
owing to her foresight and oversight that his health 
mended so rapidly, and that at the end of the bathing 
season she was, as she said, taking him home quite 
another man. In her perfect satisfaction she suffered 
him his small joke about not feeling it quite right to 
go with her if that were so ; and though a woman of 
little humor, she even professed to find pleasure in 
his joke after she fully understood it. 



206 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

" All that I ask," she said, as if it followed, " is 
that you won't spoil everything by letting old Hil- 
brook come every night and drain the life out of you 
again." 

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

He treated the notion of Hilbrook's visits lightly; 
but with his return to the familiar environment he 
felt a shrinking from them in an experience which 
was like something physical. Yet when he sat down 
the first night in his study, with his lamp in its wonted 
place, it was with an expectation of old Hilbrook in 
his usual seat so vivid that its defeat was more a 
shock than its fulfilment upon supernatural terms 
would have been. In fact, the absence of the old 
man was spectral ; and though Ewbert employed him- 
self fully the first night in answering an accumulation 
of letters that required immediate reply, it was with 
nervous starts from time to time, which he could 
trace to no other cause. His wife came in and out, 
with what he knew to be an accusing eye, as she 
brought up those arrears of housekeeping which al- 
ways await the housewife on the return from any va- 
cation ; and he knew that he did not conceal his guilt 
from her. 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 207 

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

Ewbert dreaded to look in the direction of Hil- 
brook's pew, lest he should find it empty ; but the old 
man was there, and he sat blinking at the minister, as 
his custom was, through the sermon, and thoughtfully 
passing the tip of his tongue over the inner edge of 
his lower lip. 

Many came up to shake hands with the minister 
after church, and to tell him how well he was looking, 
but Hilbrook was not among them. Some of the uni- 
versity people who had made a point of being there 
that morning, out of a personal regard for Ewbert, 
were grouped about his wife, in the church vestibule, 
where she stood answering their questions about his 
health. He glimpsed between the heads and shoul- 
ders of this gratifying group the figure of Hilbrook 
dropping from grade to grade on the steps outside, 
till it ceased to be visible, and he fancied, with a 
pang, that the old man had lingered to speak with 
him, and had then given up and started home. 

The cordial interest of the university people was 
hardly a compensation for the disappointment he 
shared with Hilbrook ; but his wife was so happy in 



208 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

it that he could not say anjrthing to damp her joy. 
** Now," she declared, on their way home, " I am 
perfectly satisfied that they will keep coming. You 
never preached so well, Clarence, and if they have any 
appreciation at all, they simply won't be able to keep 
away. I wish you could have heard all the nice things 
they said about you. I guess they've waked up to 
you, at last, and I do believe that the idea of losing 
you has had a great deal to do with it. And that is 
something we owe to old Ransom Hilbrook more than 
to anything else. I saw the poor old fellow hanging 
about, and I couldn't help feeling for him. I knew 
he wanted to speak with you, and I'm not afraid 
that he will be a burden again. It will be such an 
inspiration, the prospect of having the university 
people come every Sunday, now, that you can afford 
to give a little of it to him, and I want you to go 
and see him soon ; he evidently isn't coming till you 
do." 

XV. 

EwBKRT had learned not to inquire too critically 
for a logical process in his wife's changes of attitude 
toward any fact. In her present mood he recognized 
an effect of the exuberant good-will awakened by the 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 209 

handsome behavior of the university people, and he 
agreed with her that he must go to see old Hilbrook 
at once. In this good intention his painful feeling 
concerning him was soothed, and Ewbert did not get 
up to the Hilbrook place till well into the week. It 
was Thursday afternoon when he climbed through the 
orchard, under the yellowing leaves which dappled 
the green masses of the trees like intenser spote of 
the September sunshine. He came round by the well 
to the side door of the house, which stood open, and 
he did not hesitate to enter when he saw how freely 
the hens were coming and going through it. They 
scuttled out around him and between his legs, with 
guilty screeches, and left him standing alone in the 
middle of the wide, low kitchen. A certain discom- 
fort of the nerves which their flight gave him was 
heightened by some details quite insignificant in 
themselves. There was no fire in the stove, and the 
wooden clock on the mantel behind it was stopped ; the 
wind had carried in some red leaves from the maple 
near the door, and these were swept against the farth- 
er wall, where they lay palpitating in the draft. 

The neglect in all was evidently too recent to sug- 
gest any supposition but that of the master's tempo- 
rary absence, and Ewbert went to the threshold to look 
o 



210 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

for his coming from the sheds or the bam. But these 
were all fast shut, and there was no sign of Hilbrook 
anywhere. Ewbert turned back into the room again, 
and saw the door of the old man's little bedroom stand- 
ing slightly ajar. With a chill of apprehension he 
pushed it open, and he could not have experienced a 
more disagreeable effect if the dark fear in his mind 
had been realized than he did to see Hilbrook lying in 
his bed alive and awake. His face showed like a fine 
mask above the sheet, and his long, narrow hands 
rested on the covering across his breast His eyes 
met those of Ewbert not only without surprise, but 
without any apparent emotion. 

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

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

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

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

"Oh," said Ewbert, apologetically, and he did 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 211 

not know quite what to do ; he had an aimless wish 
for his wife, as if she would have known what to do. 
In her absence he decided to shut the door against 
the hens, who were returning adventurously to the 
threshold, and then he asked, " Is there something I 
can do for you ? Make a fire for you to get up by " — 

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

" The consciousness of unconsciousness ? " 

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

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



212 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

" Vau can, if yon want to," said the old man, dryly 
*• I got no interest in it any more ; 'twa'n't nothing 
but a metaphysical toy, anyway." He turned his head 
apathetically on the pillow, and no longer faced his 
visitor, who found it impossible in the conditions of 
tacit dismissal to philosophize further. 

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

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

" But / had," the minister persisted. " I thought 

a great deal about you when I was away, and I 

went over our talks in my own mind a great many 

times. The more I thought about them, the more I 

believed that we had felt our way to some important 

truth in the matter. I don't say final truth, for I 

don't suppose that we shall ever reach that in this 

life." 

" Very likely," Hilbrook returned, with his face to 

the wall. ^' I don't see as it makes any difference ; or 
if it does, I don't care for it." 

Something occurred to Ewbert which seemed to 
him of more immediate usefulness than the psycholog- 
ical question. " Couldn't I get you something to eat, 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 213 

Mr. Hilbrook ? If you haven't had any breakfast to- 
day, you must be hungry." 

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

Ewbert had risen hopefully in making his sugges- 
tion, but now his heart sank. Here, it seemed to him, 
a physician rather than a philosopher was needed, and 
at the sound of wheels on the wagon track to the 
door his imagination leaped to the miracle of the doc- 
tor's providential advent. He hurried to the thresh- 
old and met the fish-man, who was about to announce 
himself with the handle of his whip on the clapboard- 
ing. He grasped the situation from the minister's 
brief statement, and confessed that he had expected 
to find the old gentleman dead in his bed some day, 
and he volunteered to send some of the women folks 
from the farm up the road. When these came, con- 
centrated in the person of the farmer's bustling wife, 
who had a fire kindled in the stove and the kettle on 
before Ewbert could get away, he went for the doctor, 
and returned with him to find her in possession of 
everything in the house except the owner's interest. 
Her usefulness had been arrested by an invisible but 
impassable barrier, though she had passed and re- 
passed the threshold of Hilbrook's chamber with tea 



214 A DIFFICULT CASE. 

and milk toast. He said simply that he saw no ob- 
ject in eating; and he had not been sufficiently inter- 
ested to turn his head and look at her in speaking to 
her. 

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

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

" You see," the baffled doctor fumed in the con- 
ference that he had with Ewbert apart, " he doesn't 
really need any medicine. There's nothing the mat- 
ter with him, and I only wanted to give him some- 
thing to put an edge to his appetite. He's got cranky 
living here alone ; but there is such a thing as starving 
to death, and that's the only thing Hilbrook's in 
danger of. If you're going to stay with him — he 
oughtn't to be left alone " — 

" I can come up, yes, certainly, after supper," said 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 215 

Ewbert, and he fortified himself inwardly for the 
question this would raise with his wife. 

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

XVI. 

When we speak of Nature, we figure her as one 
thing, with a fixed purpose and office in the universal 
economy ; but she is an immense number of things, 
and her functions are inexpressibly varied. She in- 
cludes decay as well as growth ; she compasses death 
as well as birth. We call certain phenomena unnat- 
ural ; but in a natural world how can anything be un- 
natural, except the supernatural? These facts gave 
Ewbert pause in view of the obstinate behavior of 
Ransom Hilbrook in dying for no obvious reason, and 
kept him from pronouncing it unnatural. The old 
man, he reflected, had really less reason to live than 
to die, if it came to reasons ; for everything that had 
made the world home to him had gone out of it, and 
left him in exile here. The motives had ceased ; the 
interests had perished; the strong personality that 



216 A DIFFICULT CA8B. 

had persisted was solitary amid the familiar environ- 
ment grown alien. 

The wonder was that he should ever have been 
roused from his apathetic unfaith to inquiry concern- 
ing the world beyond this, and to a certain degree of 
belief in possibilities long abandoned by his imagina- 
tion. Ewbert had assisted at the miracle of this re- 
suscitation upon terms which, until he was himself 
much older, he could not question as to their benefi- 
cence, and in fact it never came to his being quite 
frank with himself concerning them. He kept his 
thoughts on this point in that state of solution which 
holds so many conjectures from precipitation in actual 
conviction. 

But his wife had no misgivings. Her dread was 
that in his devotion to that miserable old man (as she 
called him, not always in compassion) he should again 
contribute to Hilbrook's vitality at the expense, if not 
the danger, of his own. She of course expressed her 
joy that Ewbert had at last prevailed upon him to eat 
something, when the entreaty of his nurse and the 
authority of his doctor availed nothing; and of course 
she felt the pathos of his doing it out of affection for 
Ewbert, and merely to please him, as Hilbrook de- 
clared. It did not surprise her that any one should 



A DIFFICULT CASE. 217 

do anything for the love of Ewbert, but it is doubtful 
if she fully recognized the beauty of this last efflores- 
cence of the aged life ; and she perceived it her duty 
not to sympathize entirely with Ewbert's morbid regret 
that it came too late. She was much more resigned 
than he to the will of Providence, and she urged a 
like submissiveness upon him. 

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

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



218 A DimCULT CASE. 

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

Mrs. Ewbert broke down in her turn. " I don't 
know what I'm saying!" she retorted from behind 
her handkerchief. " I'm trying to show you that it's 
your duty to yourself — and to me — and to people who 
can know how to profit by your teaching and your 
example, not to give way as you're doing, simply be- 
cause a worn-out old agnostic couldn't keep his hold 
on the truth. I don't know what your Rixonitism is 
for if it won't let you wait upon the divine will in 
such a thing, too. You're more conscientious than 
the worst kind of Congregationalist. And now for 
you to blame me " — 

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

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



A DIFFICULT CASB. 219 

XVII. 

There was reason and there was justice in what 
she said, though they were so chaotic in form, and 
Ewbert could n»t refuse to acquiesce. 

After all, he had done what he could, and he would 
not abandon himself to a useless remorse. He rather 
set himself to study the lesson of old Hilbrook's life, 
and in the funeral sermon that he preached he urged 
upon his hearers the necessity of keeping themselves 
alive through some relation to the undying frame of 
things, which they could do only by cherishing 
earthly ties; and when these were snapped in the 
removal of their objects, by attaching the broken 
threads through an efEori of the will to yet other ob- 
jects: the world could furnish these inexhaustibly. 
He touched delicately upon the peculiarities, the ec- 
centricities, of the deceased, and he did cordial jus- 
tice to his gentleness, his blameless, harmless life, his 
heroism on the battlefields of his country. He de- 
clared that he would not be the one to deny an inner 
piety, and certainly not a steadfast courage, in Hil- 
brook's acceptance of whatever his sincere doubts 
implied. 

The sermon apparently made a strong impression 
on all who heard it. Mrs. Ewbert was afraid that it 



220 THB PUB8UIT OF THB PIANO. 

was rather abstruse in certain passages, but she felt 
sure that all the university people would appreciate 
these. The university people, to testify their respect 
for their founder, had come in a body to the obsequies 
of his kinsman ; and Mrs. Ewbert augured the best 
things for her husband's future usefulness from their 
presence. 



THE MAOIG OF A YOIOE. 



There was a full moon, and Langbourne walked 
about the town, unable to come into the hotel and go 
to bed. The deep yards of the houses gave out the 
scent of syringas and June roses ; the light of lamps 
came through the fragrant bushes from the open doors 
and windows, with the sound of playing and singing 
and bursts of young laughter. Where the houses 
stood near the street, he could see people lounging on 
the thresholds, and their heads silhouetted against the 
luminous interiors. Other houses, both those which 
stood further back and those that stood nearer, were 
dark and still, and to these he attributed the happi- 
ness of love in fruition, safe from unrest and longing. 

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

At last he tamed and walked back through the 



222 THB MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

streets of dwellings to the business centre of the town, 
where a gush of light came from the veranda of his 
hotel, and the druggist's window cast purple and yel- 
low blurs out upon the footway. The other stores 
were shut, and he alone seemed to be abroad. The 
church clock struck ten as he mounted the steps of 
his hotel and dropped the remnant of his cigar over 
the side. 

Ue had slept badly on the train the night before, 
and he had promised himself to make up his lost 
sleep in the good conditions that seemed to offer them- 
selves. But when he sat down in the hotel office he 
was more wakeful than he had been when he started 
out to walk himself drowsy. 

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



THIS MAGIC OF A VOICE. 223 

He rose and asked the clerk for a lamp, but he 
turned back from the stairs to inquire when there 
would be another New York mail. The clerk said 
there was a train from the south due at eleven-forty, 
but it seldom brought any mail; the principal mail 
was at seven. Langboume thanked him, and came 
back again to beg the clerk to be careful and not have 
him called in the morning, for he wished to sleep. 
Then he went up to his room, where he opened his 
window to let in the night air. He heard a dog bark- 
ing ; a cow lowed ; from a stable somewhere the soft 
thumping of the horses' feet came at intervals lull- 
ingly. 

n. 

Langbournb fell asleep so quickly that he was 
aware of no moment of waking after his head touched 
the fragrant pillow. He woke so much refreshed by 
his first sound, soft sleep that he thought it must be 
nearly morning. He got his watch into a ray of the 
moonlight and made out that it was only a little after 
midnight, and he perceived that it must have been the 
sound of low murmuring voices and broken laughter 
in the next room which had wakened him. But he 
was rather glad to have been roused to a sense of his 



224 THB MAOIC OF A TOICB. 

absolute comfort, and he tarned anresentfolly to sleep 
again. All his heaviness of heart was gone ; he felt 
cnrionsly glad and yoang ; he had somehow forgiven 
the wrong he had sufEered and the wrong he had done. 
The subdned murmuring went on in the next room, 
and he kept himself awake to enjoy it for a while. 
Then he let himself go, and drifted away into gulfs 
of slumber, where, suddenly, he seemed to strike 
against something, and started up in bed. 

A laugh came from the next room. It was not 
muffled, as before, but frank and clear. It was wom- 
an's laughter, and Langbourne easily inferred girl- 
hood as well as womanhood from it. His neighbors 
must have come by the late train, and they had prob- 
ably begun to talk as soon as they got into their room. 
He imagined their having spoken low at first for fear 
of disturbing some one, and then, in their forgetful- 
ness, or their belief that there was no one near, 
allowed themselves greater freedom. There were 
survivals of their earlier caution at times, when their 
voices sank so low as scarcely to be heard ; then there 
was a break from it when they rose clearly distin- 
guishable from each other. They were never so dis- 
tinct that he could make out what was said ; but each 
voice unmistakably conveyed character. 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICK. 226 

Friendship between giris is never equal ; they may 
equally love each other, but one must worship and 
one must suffer worship. Langboume read the dif- 
fering temperaments necessary to this relation in the 
differing voices. That which bore mastery was a low, 
thick murmur, coming from deep in the throat, and 
flowing out in a steady stream of indescribable coax- 
ing and drolling. The owner of that voice had im- 
agination and humor which could charm with absolute 
control her companion's lighter nature, as it betrayed 
itself in a gay tinkle of amusement and a succession 
of nervous whispers. Langboume did not wonder at 
her subjection ; with the first sounds of that rich, ten- 
der voice, he had fallen under its spell too ; and he 
listened intensely, trying to make out some phrase, 
some word, some syllable. But the talk kept its sub- 
audible flow, and he had to content himself as he 
could with the sound of the voice. 

As he lay eavesdropping with all his might he tried 

to construct an image of the two girls from their 

voices. The one with the crystalline laugh was little 

and lithe, quick in movement, of a mobile face, with 

gray eyes and fair hair ; the other was tall and pale, 

with full, blue eyes and a regular face, and lips that 

trembled with humor ; very demure and yet very hon* 
p 



226 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

est ; very shy and yet very frank ; there was something 
almost mannish in her essential honesty ; there was 
nothing of feminine coquetry in her, though every- 
thing of feminine charm. She was a girl who looked 
like her father, Langboume perceived with a flash of 
divination. She dressed simply in dark blue, and her 
hair was of a dark mahogany color. The smaller girl 
wore Hght gray checks or stripes, and the shades of 
silver. 

The talk began to be less continuous in the next 
room, from which there came the sound of sighs and 
yawns, and then of mingled laughter at these. Then 
the talk ran unbrokenly on for a while, and again 
dropped into laughs that recognized the drowse creep- 
ing upon the talkers. Suddenly it stopped altogether, 
and left Langboume, as he felt, definitively awake for 
the rest of the night. 

He had received an impression which he could not 
fully analyze. With some inner sense he kept hear- 
ing that voice, low and deep, and rich with whimsical 
suggestion. Its owner must have a strange, complex 
nature, which would perpetually provoke and satisfy. 
Her companionship would be as easy and reasonable 
as a man's, while it had the charm of a woman^s. At 
the moment it seemed to him that life without this 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 227 

companionship would be something poorer and thin- 
ner than he had yet known, and that he could not en- 
dure to forego it. Somehow he must manage to see 
the girl and make her acquaintance. He did not 
know how it could be contrived, but it could certainly 
be contrived, and he began to dramatize their meeting 
on these various terms. It was interesting and it was 
delightful, and it always came, in its safe impossibil- 
ity, to his telling her that he loved her, and to her 
consenting to be his wife. He resolved to take no 
chance of losing her, but to remain awake, and some- 
how see her before she could leave the hotel in the 
morning. The resolution gave him calm ; he felt that 
the afEair so far was settled. 

Suddenly he started from his pillow ; and again he 
heard that mellow laugh, warm and rich as the cooing 
of doves on sunlit eaves. The sun was shining through 
the crevices of his window-blinds ; he looked at his 
watch ; it was half -past eight. The sound of flutter- 
ing skirts and flying feet in the corridor shook his 
heart. A voice, the voice of the mellow laugh, called 
as if to some one on the stairs, ** I must have put it 
in my bag. It doesn't matter, anyway." 

He hurried on his clothes, in the vain hope of find- 
ing his late neighbors at breakfast ; but before he had 



228 THB MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

finished dressing he heard wheels hefore the veri^ida 
below, and he saw the hotel barge drive away, as if 
to the station. There were two passengers in it; two 
women, whose faces were hidden by the fringe of the 
barge-roof, but whose slender figures showed them- 
selves from their necks down. It seemed to him that 
one was tall and slight, and the other slight and little. 

III. 

He stopped in the hall, and then, tempted by his 
despair, he stepped within the open door of the next 
room and looked vaguely over it, with shame at being 
there. What was it that the girl had missed, and had 
come back to look for ? Some trifle, no doubt, which 
she had not cared to lose, and yet had not wished to 
leave behind. He failed to find anything in the 
search, which he could not make very thorough, and 
he was going guiltily out when his eye fell upon an 
envelope, perversely fallen beside the door and almost 
indiscernible against the white paint, with the ad- 
dressed surface inward. 

This must be the object of her search, and he could 
understand why she was not very anxious when he 
found it a circular from a nursery-man, containing 
nothing more valuable than a list of flowering shrubs. 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 229 

He satisfied himself that this was all without satisfy- * 
ing himself that he had quite a right to do so ; and 
he stood abashed in the presence of the superscrip- 
tion on the envelope somewhat as if Miss Barbara F. 
Simpson, Upper Ashton Falls, N. H., were there to 
see him tampering with her correspondence. It was 
indelicate, and he felt that his whole behavior had 
been indelicate, from the moment her laugh had wak- 
ened him in the night till now, when he had invaded 
her room. He had no more doubt that she was the 
taller of the two girls than that this was her name on 
the envelope. He liked Barbara ; and Simpson could 
be changed. He seemed to hear her soft throaty 
laugh in response to the suggestion, and with a leap 
of the heart he slipped the circular into his breast 
pocket. 

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

The clerk said that it was about thirty miles up the 
road, and was one of the nicest places in the moun- 



230 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

tains ; Langboume could not go to a nicer ; and there 
was a very good little hotel. " Why," he said, " there 
were two ladies here overnight that just left for there, 
on the seven-forty. Odd you should ask about it.'* 

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

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

Langboume answered that it would have taken a 
good deal of talking to wake him the night before, 
and then he lounged across to the time-table hanging 
on the wall, and began to look up the trains for Up- 
per Ashton Falls. 

" If you want to go to the Falls," said the clerk, 
'* there's a through train at four, with a drawing-room 
on it, that will get you there by five." 

"Oh, I fancy I was looking up the New York 
trains," Langboume returned. He did not like these 



THE MAGIC or A VOICE. 231 

evasions, but in his consciousness of Miss Simpson be 
seemed unable to avoid tbem. The clerk went out 
on the veranda to talk with a farmer bringing sup- 
plieSy and Langbourne ran to the register, and read 
there the names of Barbara F. Simpson and Juliet D. 
Bingham. It was Miss Simpson who had registered 
for both, since her name came first, and the entry was 
in a good, simple hand, which was like a man's in its 
firmness and clearness. He turned from the register 
decided to take the four-o'clock train for Upper Ash- 
ton Falls, and met a messenger with a telegram which 
he knew was for himself before the boy could ask his 
name. His partner had fallen suddenly sick ; his re- 
call was absolute, his vacation was at an end; nothing 
remained for him but to take the first train back to 
New York. He thought how little prescient he had 
been in his pretence that he was looking the New 
York trains up; but the need of one had come already, 
and apparently he should never have any use for a 
train to Upper Ashton Falls. 

IV. 

All the way back to New York Langbourne was 
oppressed by a sense of loss such as his old disap- 
pointment in love now seemed to him never to have 



232 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

inflicted. He found that his whole being had set 
toward the unseen owner of the voice which had 
charmed him, and it was like a stretching and tearing 
of the nerves to be going from her instead of going 
to her. He was as much under duress as if he were 
bound by a hypnotic spell. The voice continually 
sounded, not in his ears, which were filled with the 
noises of the train, as usual, but in the inmost of his 
spirit, where it was a low, cooing, coaxing murmur. 
He realized now how intensely he must have listened 
for it in the night, how every tone of it must have 
pervaded him and possessed him. He was in love 
with it, he was as entirely fascinated by it as if it 
were the girl's whole presenqe, her looks, her qualities. 
- The remnant of the summer passed in the fret of 
business, which was doubly irksome through his feel- 
ing of injury in being kept frotn the girl whose per- 
sonality he constructed from the sound of her voice, 
and set over his fancy in an absolute sovereignty. 
The image he had created of her remained a dim and 
blurred vision throughout the day, but by night it be- 
came distinct and compelling. One evening, late in 
the fall, he could endure the stress no longer, and he 
yielded to the temptation which had beset him from 
the first moment he renounced his purpose of return- 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICB. 238 

ing in person the circular addressed to her as a means 
of her acquaintance. He wrote to her, and in terms 
as dignified as he could contrive, and as free from any 
ulterior import, he told her he had found it in the 
hotel hallway and had meant to send it to her at once, 
thinking it might be of some slight use to her. He 
had failed to do this, and now, having come upon it 
among some other papers, he sent it with an explana- 
tion which he hoped she would excuse him for troub- 
ling her with. 

This was not true, but he did not see how he could 
begin with her by saying that he had found the cir- 
cular in her room, and had kept it by him ever since, 
looking at it every day, and leaving it where he could 
see it the last thing before he slept at night and the 
first thing after he woke in the morning. As to her 
reception of his story, he had to trust to his knowl- 
edge that she was, like himself, of country birth and 
breeding, and to his belief that she would not take 
alarm at his overture. He did not go much into the 
world and was little acquainted with its usages, yet he 
knew enough to suspect that a woman of the world 
would either ignore his letter, or would return a cold 
and snubbing expression of Miss Simpson's thanks for 
Mr. Stephen M. Langbourne's kindness. 



284 THE MAGIC OF A VOICB. 

He had not only signed his name and given his ad- 
dress carefully in hopes of a reply, but he had enclosed 
the business card of his firm as a token of his respon- 
sibility. The partner in a wholesale stationery house 
ought to be an impressive figure in the imagination of 
a village girl ; but it was some weeks before any an- 
swer came to Langbourne's letter. The reply began 
with an apology for the delay, and Langboume per- 
ceived that he had gained rather than lost by the 
wi-iter's hesitation ; clearly she believed that she had 
put herself in the wrong, and that she owed him a 
certain reparation. For the rest, her letter was dis- 
creetly confined to an acknowledgment of the trouble 
he had taken. 

But this spare return was richly enough for Lang- 
bourne ; it would have suflSced, if there had been noth- 
ing in the letter, that the handwriting proved Miss 
Simpson to have been the one who had made the en- 
try of her name and her friend's in the hotel register. 
This was most important as one step in corroboration 
of the fact that he had rightly divined her ; that the 
rest should come true was almost a logical necessity. 
Still, he was puzzled to contrive a pretext for writing 
again, and he remained without one for a fortnight. 
Then, in passing a seedsman's store which he used to 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 235 

pass every day without thinking, he one day suddenly 
perceived his opportunity. He went in and got a 
number of the catalogues and other advertisements, 
and addressed them then and there, in a wrapper the 
seedsman gave him, to Miss Barbara F. Simpson, Up- 
per Ashton Falls, N. H. 

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

The correspondence now established itself, and with 
one excuse or another it prospered throughout the 
winter. Langbourne was not only willing, he was 
most eager, to give her proof of his reliability; he 
spoke of stationers in Springfield and Greenfield to 
whom he was personally known; and he secretly 
hoped she would satisfy herself through friends in 
those places that he was an upright and trustworthy 
person. 

Miss Simpson wrote delightful letters, with that 
whimsical quality which had enchanted him in her 
voice. The coaxing and caressing was not there, and 



236 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

could not be expected to impart itself, unless in those 
refuges of deep feeling supposed to lurk between the 
lines. But be hoped to provoke it from these in 
time, and his own letters grew the more earnest the 
more ironical hers became. He wrote to her about a 
book he was reading, and when she said she had not 
seen it, he sent it her ; in one of her letters she casu- 
ally betrayed that she sang contralto in the choir, and 
then he sent her some new songs, which he had heard 
in the theatre, and which he had informed himself 
from a friend were contralto. He was always tending 
to an expression of the feeling which swayed him; 
but on her part there was no sentiment. Only in the 
fact that she was willing to continue this exchange of 
letters with a man personally unknown to her did she 
betray that romantic tradition which underlies all our 
young life, and in those unused to the world tempts 
to things blameless in themselves, but of the sort 
shunned by the worldlier wise. There was no great 
wisdom of any kind in Miss Simpson's letters ; but 
Langboume did not miss it ; he was content with her 
mere words, as they related the little events of her 
simple daily life. These repeated themselves from 
the page in the tones of her voice and filled him with 
a passionate intoxication. 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 237 

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

Langbourne replied that he was going up to Spring- 
field on business the first week in May, and that he 
thought he might push on as far north as Upper Ash- 
ton Falls. To this there came no rejoinder whatever, 
but he did not lose courage. It was now the end of 
April, and he could bear to wait for a further verifi- 



288 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

cation of his ideal ; the photograph had confirmed him 
in its evasive fashion at every point of his conjecture 
concerning her. It was the face he had imagined her 
having, or so he now imagined, and it was just such 
a long oval face as would go with the figure he attrib- 
uted to her. She must have the healthy palor of skin 
which associates itself with masses of dark, mahogany* 
colored hair. 

V. 

It was so long since he had known a Northern 
spring that he had forgotten how much later the be- 
ginning of May was in New Hampshire ; but as his 
train ran up from Springfield he realized the differ- 
ence of the season from that which he had left in 
New York. The meadows were green only in the 
damp hollows; most of the trees were as bare as in 
midwinter ; the willows in the swamplands hung out 
their catkins, and the white birches showed faint signs 
of returning life. In the woods were long drifts of 
snow, though he knew that in the brown leaves along 
their edges the pale pink flowers of the trailing arbu^ 
tus were hiding their wet faces. A vernal mildness 
overhung the landscape. A blue haze filled the dis- 
tances and veiled the hills ; from the farm door-yards 



THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 239 

the smell of burning ^leaf-heaps and garden-stalks 
came through the window which he lifted to let in the 
dull, warm air. The sun shone down from a pale 
sky, in which the crows called to one another. 

By the time he arrived at Upper Ashton Falls the 
afternoon had waned so far towards evening that the 
first robins were singing their vespers from the leaf- 
less choirs of the maples before the hotel. He in- 
dulged the landlord in his natural supposition that he 
had come up to make a timely engagement for sum- 
mer board ; after supper he even asked what the price 
of such rooms as his would be by the week in July, 
while he tried to lead the talk round to the fact which 
he wished to learn. 

He did not know where Miss Simpson lived ; and 
the courage with which he had set out on his adven- 
ture totally lapsed, leaving in its place an accusing 
sense of silliness. He was where he was without rea- 
son, and in defiance of the tacit unwillingness of the 
person he had come to see ; she certainly had given 
him no invitation, she had given him no permission to 
come. For the moment, in his shame, it seemed to 
him that the only thing for him was to go back to 
New York by the first train in the morning. But 
what then would the girl think of him ? Such an act 



240 THE MAGIC OF A YOIGIB. 

must forever end the intercourse which had now be- 
come an essential part of his life. That voice which 
had haunted him so long, was he never to hear it 
again ? Was he willing to renounce forever the hope 
of hearing it ? 

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

He put on his hat, and with his overcoat on his 
arm he started out for a walk which was hopeless, but 
not so aimless as he feigned to himself. The air was 
lullingly warm still as he followed the long village 
street down the hill toward the river, where the lunge 
of rapids filled the dusk with a sort of humid uproar ; 
then he turned and followed it back past the hotel as 
far as it led towards the open country. At the edge 
of the village he came to a large, old-fashioned house, 
which struck him as typical, with its outward swaying 
fence of the Greek border pattern, and its gate-posts 
topped by tilting urns of painted wood. The house 
itself stood rather far back from the street, and as he 
passed it he saw that it was approached by a pathway 
of brick which was bordered with box. Stalks of last 
year's hollyhocks and lilacs from garden beds on 



THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 241 

either hand lifted their sharp points, here and there 
broken and hanging down. It was corioas how these 
details insisted through the twilight. 

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

As Langbourne came abreast of the gate the tinkle 
of a gay laugh rang out to him ; then ensued a mur- 
mur of girls' voices in the room, and suddenly this 
stopped, and the voice that he knew, the voice that 
seemed never to have ceased to sound in his nerves 
and pulses, rose in singing words set to the Spanish 
air of La Paloma. 

It was one of the songs he had sent to Miss Simp- 
son, but he did not need this material proof that it 
was she whom he now heard. There was no question 
of what he should do. All doubt, all fear, had van- 
ished ; he had again but one impulse, one desire, one 
purpose. But he lingered at the gate till the song 
ended, and then he unlatched it and started up the 
walk towards the door. It seemed to him a long way ; 



242 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

be almost reeled as he went ; he fumbled tremnloosly 
for the bell-puU beside the door, while a confusion of 
voices in the adjoining room — ^the voices which had 
waked him from his sleep, and which now sounded 
like voices in a dream — came out to him. 

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

VL 

She must have recognized him from the photograph 
he had sent, and in stature and fignre ho recognized 
her as the ideal he had cherished, though her head 
was gilded with the light from the lamp, and he could 
not not make out whether her hair was dark or fair; 
her face was, of course, a mere outline, without color 
or detail against the luminous interior. 

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

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

He obeyed, but at the sound of her silvery voice 
his heart dropped back into his breast. He put his 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 248 

hat and coat on an entry chair, and prepared to follow 
her into the room she had come out of. The door 
stood ajar, and he said, as she put out her hand to 
push it open, " I am Mr. Langbourne." 

**0h, yes," she answered in the same high, gay 
tinkle, which he fancied had now a note of laughter 
in it. 

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

They all three bowed silently, and in the hush the 
sheet on the music frame slid from the piano with a 
sharp clash, and skated across the floor to Lang- 
bourne's feet. It was the song of La Paloma which 
she had been singing ; he picked it up, and she re- 
ceived it from him with a drooping head, and an 
effect of guilty embarrassment. 

She was short and of rather a full figure, though 
not too full. She was not plain, but she was by no 
means the sort of beauty who had lived in Lang- 
bourne's fancy for the year past The oval of her 



244 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

face was squared; her nose was arched; she had a 
pretty, pouting mouth, and below it a deep dimple in 
her chin ; her eyes were large and dark, and they had 
the questioning look of near-sighted eyes; her hair 
was brown. There was a humorous tremor in her 
lips, even with the prim stress she put upon them in 
saying, " Oh, thank you," in a thick whisper of the 
voice he knew. 

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

Miss Bingham was easily mistress of the situation ; 
she did not try to bring Miss Simpson into the con- 
versation, but she contrived to make Mrs. Simpson 
ask Langbourne when he arrived at Upper Ashton 
Falls ; and she herself asked him when he had left 
New York, with many apposite suppositions concern- 
ing the difference in the season in the two latitudes. 
She presumed he was staying at the Falls House, and 
she said, always in her high, gay tinkle, that it was 
very pleasant there in the summer time. He did not 



THE MAGIC or A VOICE. 245 

know wliat he answered. He was aware that from 
time to time Miss Simpson said something in a fright- 
ened undertone. He did not know how long it was 
before Mrs. Simpson made an errand out of the room, 
in the abeyance which age practises before youthful 
society in the country ; he did not know how much 
longer it was before Miss Bingham herself jumped 
actively up, and said. Now she would run over to 
Jenny's, if Mr. Langbourne would excuse her, and tell 
her that they could not go the next day. 

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

" No, she's got to know to-night,'* said Miss Bing- 
ham, and she said she should find Mr. Langbourne 
there when she got back. He knew that in compli- 
ance with the simple village tradition he was being 
purposely left alone with Miss Simpson, as rightfully 
belonging to her. Miss Bingham betrayed no inten- 
tionality to him, but he caught a glimpse of mocking 
consciousness in the sidelong look she gave Miss 
Simpson as she went out ; and if he had not known 
before he perceived then, in the vanishing oval of her 
cheek, the corner of her arched eyebrow, the point of 
her classic nose, the original of the photograph he had 
been treasuring as Miss Simpson's. 



246 THB MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

VIL 

'' It was her picture I sent yon,'' said Miss Simpson. 
She was the first to break the silence to which Miss 
Bingham abandoned them, but she did not speak till 
her friend had closed the onter door behind her and 
was tripping down the brick walk to the gate. 

"Yes," said Langboume, in a dryness which he 
could not keep himself from using. 

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

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

She did not attempt to deny it. " I oughtn't to 
have done it, and I ought to have told you at once — 
the next letter — ^but I — ^you said you were coming, 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICB. 247 

and I thought if you did come — I didn't really expect 
you to ; and it was all a joke, — ofE-hand." 

It was very lame, but it was true, and it was pite- 
ous ; yet Langboume could not relent His grievance 
was not with what she had done, but what she was ; 
not what she really was, but what she materially was ; 
her looks, her figure, her stature, her whole presence, 
so different from that which he had been carrying in 
his mind, and adoring for a year past. 

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

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

" Yes, very much,'' and now for the first time she 
got her voice fairly above a whisper. She took the 
sheet down from the music-rest and looked at the 
picture of the lithographed title. It was of a tiled 



248 THB HAOIC OF A VOICB. 

roof lifted among cjrpresses and laarels with pigeons 
strutting on it and sailing over it. 

" It was that picture," said Langboume, since lie 
must say something, 'Hhat I believe I got the song 
for ; it made me think of the roof of an old Spanish 
house I saw in Southern California." 

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

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

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

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

The situation grew more and more painful for her, 
he could see, as well as for him. She too was feeling 
] the anomaly of their having been intimates without 
being acquaintances. They necessarily met as strang- 
ers after the exchange of letters in which they had 
spoken with the confidence of friends. 



THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 249 

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

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

vni. 

In their attempts to talk he was aware that she was 
seconding all his endeavors with intelligence, and with 
a humorous subtlety to which he could not pretend. 
She was suffering from their anomalous position as 
much as he, but she had the means of enjoying it 
while he had not. After half an hour of these defeats 
Mrs. Simpson operated a diversion by coming in with 
two glasses of lemonade on a tray and some slices of 



250 THB MAGIC OF A VOICl!. 

sponge-cake. She ofiEered this refreshment first to 
Langboume and then to her niece, and they both 
obediently took a glass, and pnt a slice of cake in the 
saucer which supported the glass. She said to each 
in turn, " Won't you take some lemonade ? Won't 
you have a piece of cake ? " and then went out with 
her empty tray, and the air of having fulfilled the 
duties of hospitality to her niece's company. 

" I don't know," said Miss Simpson, " but it's rath- 
er early in the season for cold lemonade," and Lang- 
boume, instead of laughing, as her tone invited him 
to do, said: 

" It's very good, I'm sure." But this seemed too 
stiffly ungracious, and he added : '^ What delicious 
sponge-cake ! You never get this out of New Eng- 
land." 

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

"Oh, I like doughnuts too," said Langboume. 
" But you can't get the right kind of doughnuts, eith- 
er, in New York." 

They began to talk about cooking. He told her of 
the tamales which he had first tasted in San Francisco, 
and afterward found superabundantly in New York; 
they both made a great deal of the topic ; Miss Simp- 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE, 251 

son had never heard of tamales. He became solemnly 
animated in their exegesis, and she showed a resolute 
interest in them. 

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

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

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

" We think a great deal of our dor-bugs in Upper 
Ashton," said Miss Simpson demurely, looking down. 
" We don't know what we should do without them." 



252 TBA MAGIC OF A YOIClfi. 

'^ Lemonade I " exclaimed Miss Bingham, catching 
sight of the passes and saucers on the comer of the 
piano, where Miss Simpson had allowed Langboume 
to put them. "Has Aunt Elmira been giving you 
lemonade while I was gone ? I will just see about 
that 1 " She whipped out of the room, and was back 
in a minute with a glass in one hand and a bit of 
sponge-cake between the fingers of the other. " She 
had kept some for me I Have you sung Paloma for 
Mr. Langboume, Barbara?" 

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

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

" Wait a moment," cried Juliet Bingham, and she 
gulped the last draught of her lemonade upon a final 
morsel of sponge-cake, and was down at the piano 
while still dusting the crumbs from her fingers. She 
struck the refractory sheet of music flat upon the rack 
with her palm, and then tilted her head over her shoul- 
der towards Langboume, who had risen with some 
vague notion of turning the sheets of the song. '< Do 
you sing ? " 

" Oh, no. But I like—" 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 253 

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

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

Barbara began rather weakly, but her voice gath- 
ered strength, and then poured full volume to the end, 
where it weakened again. He knew that she was 
taking refuge from him in the song, and in the magic 
of her voice he escaped from the disappointment he 
had been sufEering. He let his head drop and his 
eyelids fall, and in the rapture of her singing he got 
back what he had lost; or rather, he lost himself again 
to the illusion which had grown so precious to him. 

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



254 THE MAOIC OF A VOICE. 

The girls' voices followed him down the walk, — 
Juliet's treble, and Barbara's contralto, — and he be- 
lieved that they were making talk purposely against a 
pressure of silence, and did not know what they were 
saying. It occurred to him that they had not asked 
how long he was staying, or invited him to come 
again : he had not thought to ask if he might ; and in 
the intolerable inconclusiveness of this ending he fal- 
tered at the gate till the lights in the windows of the 
parlor disappeared, as if carried into the hall, and then 
they twinkled into darkness. From an upper entry 
window, which reddened with a momentary flush and 
was then darkened, a burst of mingled laughter came. 
The girls must have thought him beyond hearing, and 
he fancied the laugh a burst of hysterical feeling in 
them both. 

IX, 

Lakgbourke went to bed as soon as he reached his 
hotel because he found himself spent with the experi- 
ence of the evening ; but as he rested from his fatigue 
he grew wakeful, and he tried to get its whole meas- 
ure and meaning before him. He had a methodical 
nature, with a necessity for order in his motions, and 
he now balanced one fact against another none the 



THK MAGIC OF A VOICE. 255 

less passionately because the process was a series of 
careful recognitions. He perceived that the dream in 
which he had lived for the year past was not wholly 
an illusion. One of the girls whom he had heard but 
not seen was what he had divined her to be : a domi- 
nant influence, a control to which the other was pas- 
sively obedient. He had not erred greatly as to the 
face or figure of the superior, but he had given all the 
advantages to the wrong person. The voice, indeed, 
the spell which had bound him, belonged with the 
one to whom he had attributed it, and the qualities 
with which it was inextricably blended in his fancy 
were hers ; she was more like his ideal than the other, 
though he owned that the other was a charming girl 
too, and that in the thin treble of her voice lurked a 
potential fascination which might have made itself 
ascendently felt if he had happened to feel it first. 

There was a dangerous instant in which he had a 
perverse question of changing his allegiance. This 
passed into another moment, almost as perilous, of 
confusion through a primal instinct of the man's by 
which he yields a double or a divided allegiance and 
simultaneously worships at two shrines ; in still an- 
other breath he was aware that this was madness. 

If he had been younger, he would have had no 



256 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

donbt as to his right in the circumstances. He had 
simply corresponded all winter with Miss Simpson ; 
but though he had opened his h^art freely and had 
invited her to the same confidence with him, he had 
not committed himself, and he had a right to drop 
the whole affair. She would have no right to com- 
plain; she had not committed herself either: they 
could both come ofE unscathed. But he was now 
thirty-five, and life had taught him something con- 
cerning the rights of others which he could not ignore. 
By seeking her confidence and by ofEering her his, he 
had given her a claim which was none the less bind- 
ing because it was wholly tacit. There had been a 
time when he might have justified himself in dropping 
the affair ; that was when she had failed to answer his 
letter ; but he had come to see her in defiance of her 
silence, and now he could not withdraw, simply be- 
cause he was disappointed, without cruelty, without 
atrocity. 

This was what the girPs wistful eyes said to him ; 
this was the reproach of her trembling lips ; this was 
the accusation of her dejected figure, as she drooped 
in vision before him on the piano-stool and passed 
her hand soundlessly over the key-board. He tried 
to own to her that he was disappointed, but he could 



THB MAGIC OF A VOICE. 257 

not get the words out of bis throat ; and now in her 
presence, as it were, he was not sure that he was dis- 
appointed. 

X. 

Hk woke late, with a longing to put his two senses 
of her to the proof of day ; and as early in the fore- 
noon as he could hope to see her, he walked out tow- 
ards her aunt's house. It was a mild, dull morning, 
with a misted sunshine ; in the little crimson tassels 
of the budded maples overhead the bees were droning. 

The street was straight, and while he was yet a 
good way ofE he saw the gate open before the house, 
and a girl whom he recognized as Miss Bingham close 
it behind her. She then came down under the maples 
towards him, at first swiftly, and then more and more 
slowly, until finally she faltered to a stop. He quick- 
ened his own pace and came up to her with a " Good- 
morning " called to her and a lift of his hat. She 
returned neither salutation, and said, " I was coming 
to see you, Mr. Langboume." Her voice was still a 
silver bell, but it was not gay, and her face was se- 
verely unsmiling. 

" To see me f " he returned. " Has anything — " 

" No, there's nothing the matter. But — I should 

R 



258 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

like to talk with yoa.'' She held a little packet, tied 
with blue ribbon, in her intertwined hands, and she 
looked urgently at him. 

" I shall be very glad," Langboume began, but she 
interrupted, — 

" Should you mind walking down to the Falls ? " 

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

** Oh, perfectly," said Miss Bingham, and they 
fenced with some questions and answers of no interest 
till they had walked back through the village to the 
Falls at the other end of it, where the saw in a mill 
was whirring through a long pine log, and the water, 
streaked with sawdust, was spreading over the rocks 
below and flowing away with a smooth swiftness. 
The ground near the mill was piled with fresh-sawed, 
fragrant lumber and strewn with logs. 

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

"You may think it's pretty strange, Mr. Lang- 
bourne, but I want to talk with you about Miss Simp- 
son." She seemed to satisfy a duty to convention by 
saying Miss Simpson at the outset, and after that she 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 259 

called her friend Barbara. " I've brought you your 
letters to her," and she handed him the packet she 
had been holding. " Have you got hers with you ? " 

" They are at the hotel," answered Langbourne. 

" Well, that's right, then. I thought perhaps you 
had brought them. You see," Miss Bingham contin- 
ued, much more cold-bloodedly than Langbourne 
thought she need, " we talked it over last night, and 
it's too silly. That's the way Barbara feels herself. 
The fact is," she went on confidingly, and with the 
air of saying something that he would appreciate, " I 
always thought it was some young man, and so did 
Barbara; or I don't believe she would ever have an- 
swered your first letter." 

Langbourne knew that he was not a young man in 
a young girl's sense ; but no man likes to have it said 
that he is old. Besides, Miss Bingham herself was 
not apparently in her first quarter of a century, and 
probably Miss Simpson would not see the earliest 
twenties again. He thought none the worse of her 
for that; but he felt that he was not so unequally 
matched in time with her that she need take the atti- 
tude with regard to him which Miss Bingham indi- 
cated. He was not the least gray nor the least bald, 
and his tall figure had kept its youthful lines. 



260 THS XAQIC OF A YOICK. 

Perhaps his fsce manifested something of his sup- 
pressed resentment At any rate, Miss Bingham said 
apologetically, " I mean that if we had known it was 
a serious person we shoald have acted differently. I 
oughtn't to have let her thank you for those seeds- 
man's catalogues; but I thought it couldn't do any 
harm. And then, after your letters began to come, 
we didn't know just when to stop them. To tell you 
the truth, Mr. Langboume, we got so interested we 
couldn't bear to stop them. You wrote so much about 
your life in New York, that it was like a risit there 
every week ; and it's pretty quiet at Upper Ashton in 
the winter time." 

She seemed to refer this fact to Langboume 
for sympathetic appreciation; he said mechanically, 
" Yes.'* 

She resumed : " But when your picture came, I said 
it had pot to stop ; and so we just sent back my pict- 
ure,— or I don't know but what Barbara did it with- 
out asking me, — and we did suppose that would be 
the last of it ; when you wrote back you were coming 
here, we didn't believe you really would unless we said 
so. That's all there is about it; and if there is any- 
body to blame, I am the one. Barbara would never 
have done it in the world if I hadn't put her up to it.'' 



THK MAGIC OF A VOICE. 261 

In these words the implication that Miss Bingham 
had operated the whole afEair finally unfolded itself. 
But distasteful as the fact was to Langboume, and 
wounding as was the realization that he had been led 
on by this witness of his infatuation for the sake of 
the entertainment which his letters gave two girls in 
the dull winter of a mountain village, there was still 
greater pain, with an additional embarrassment, in the 
regret which the words conveyed. It appeared that 
it was not he who had done th,e wrong ; he had suf- 
fered it, and so far from having to offer reparation to 
a young girl for having unwarrantably wrought her 
up expect of him a step from which he afterwards re- 
coiled, he had the duty of forgiving her a trespass on 
his own invaded sensibilities. It was humiliating to 
his vanity ; it inflicted a hurt to something better than 
his vanity. He began very uncomfortably : " It's all 
right, as far as I'm concerned. I had no business to 
address Miss Simpson in the first place — " 

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



262 THK MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

These words, while they showed Miss Simpson in 
a more amiable light, did not enable Langbourne to 
see Miss Bingham's merit so clearly. In the method- 
ical and consecutive working of his emotions, he was 
aware that it was no longer a question of divided alle- 
giance, and that there could never be any such ques- 
tion again. He perceived that Miss Bingham had not 
such a good figure as he had fancied the night before, 
and that h^ eyes were set rather too near together. 
While he dropped his own eyes, and stood trying to 
think what he should say in answer to her last speech, 
her high, sweet voice tinkled out in gay challenge, 
" How do, John ? " 

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

" Don't want to let the summer get the start of 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 263 

you," the young man generalized, and Miss Bingham 
said, — 

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

" All right," said the young man, 

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

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

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

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

" Mr. Dickery is owner of the mills," she explained, 
and she explored Langbourne's face for an intelligence 
which she did not seem to find there. He thought, 
indifferently enough, that this young man had heard 
the two girls speak of him, and had satisfied a natural 
curiosity in coming to look him over ; it did not occur 
to him that he had any especial relation to Miss Bing- 
ham. 



264 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

She walked up into the Tillage with Langbonmey 
and he did not know whether he was to accompany 
her home or not. But she gave him no sign of dis- 
missal till she put her hand upon her gate to pull it 
open without asking him to come in. Then he said, 
'^ I will send Miss Simpson's letters to her at once." 

" Oh, any time will do, Mr. Langboume," she re- 
turned sweetly. Then, as if it had just occurred to 
her, she added, '^ We're going after May-flowers this 
afternoon. Wouldn't you like to come too ? " 

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

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

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

" Why, / should be delighted to have you. Mr. 
Dickery's going, and Jenny Dickery, and Barbara. I 
don't believe it will rain. 

" Then, if I may," said Langboume. 

" Why, certainly, Mr. Langboume I " she cried, and 
he started away. But he had gone only a few rods 
when he wheeled about and hurried back. The girl 
was going up the walk to the house, looking over her 
shoulder after him ; at his hurried return she stopped 
and came down to the gate again. 



THB MAGIC OF A YOICB. 265 

'< Miss Bingham, I think — I think I had better not 
go." 

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

" I will bring the letters this evening, if you will 
let me — if Miss Simpson — if you will be at home." 

"We shall be very happy to see you, Mr. Lang- 
bourne," said the girl formally, and then he went back 

to his hotel. 

XI. 

Langbourne could not have told just why he had 
withdrawn his acceptance of Miss Bingham's invita- 
tion. If at the moment it was the effect of a quite 
reasonless panic, he decided later that it was because 
he wished to think. It could not be said, however, 
that he did think, unless thinking consists of a series 
of dramatic representations which the mind makes to 
itself from a given impulse, and which it is quite 
powerless to end. All the afternoon, which Lang- 
bourne spent in his room, his mind was the theatre of 
scenes with Miss Simpson, in which he perpetually 
evolved the motives governing him from the begin- 
ning, and triumphed out of his difficulties and embar- 
rassments. Her voice, as it acquiesced in all, no longer 
related itself to that imaginary personality which had 



266 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

inhabited his fancy. That was gone irrevocably ; and 
the voice belonged to the likeness of Barbara, and no 
other ; from her similitude, little, quaint, with her hair 
of cloudy red and her large, dim-sighted eyes, it 
played upon the spiritual sense within him with the 
coaxing, drolling, mocking charm which he had felt 
from the first. It blessed him with intelligent and 
joyous forgiveness. But as he stood at her gate that 
evening this unmerited felicity fell from him. He 
now really heard her voice, through the open door- 
way, but perhaps because it was mixed with other 
voices — ^the treble of Miss Bingham, and the bass of 
a man who must be the Mr. Dickery he had seen at 
the saw mills — he turned and hurried back to his ho- 
tel, where he wrote a short letter saying that he had 
decided to take the express for New York that night. 
With an instinctive recognition of her authority in 
the affair, or with a cowardly shrinking from direct 
dealing with Barbara, he wrote to Juliet Bingham, 
and he addressed to her the packet of letters which 
he sent for Barbara. Superficially, he had done what 
he had ho choice but to do. He had been asked to 
return her letters, and he had returned them, and 
brought the affair to an end. 

In his long ride to the city he assured himself in 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 267 

vftin that he was doing right if he was not sure of his 
feelings towards the girl. It was quite because he 
was not sure of his feeling that he could not be sure 
he was not acting falsely and cruelly. 

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

Now he saw and understood at last that what his 
heart had more than once misgiven him might be the 
truth, and that though she had sent back his letters, 
and asked her own in return, it was not necessarily 
her wish that he should obey her request. It might 
very well have been an experiment of his feeling tow- 
ards her, a mute quest of the impression she had 
made upon him, a test of his will and purpose, an 
overture to a clearer and truer understanding between 
them. This misgiving became a conviction from 
which he could not escape. 

He believed too late that he had made a mistake, 
that he had thrown away the supreme chance of his 



268 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

life. But was it too late ? When he could bear it 
no longer, he began to deny that it was too late. He 
denied it even to the pathetic presence which haunted 
him, and in which the magic of her voice itself was 
merged at last, so that he saw her more than he heard 
her. He overbore her weak will with his stronger 
will, and set himself strenuously to protest to her real 
presence what he now always said to her phantom. 
When his partner came back from his vacation, Lang- 
bourne told him that he was going to take a day or 
two off. 

XIL 

Hb arrived at Upper Ashton Falls long enough be- 
fore the early autumnal dusk to note that the crimson 
buds of the maples were now their crimson leaves, but 
he kept as close to the past as he could by not going 
to find Barbara before the hour of the evening when 
he had turned from her gate without daring to see 
her. It was a soft October evening now, as it was a 
soft May evening then ; and there was a mystical hint 
of unity in the like feel of the dull, mild air. Again 
voices were coming out of the open doors and windows 
of the house, and they were the same voices that he 
had last heard there* 



THE MAGIC OF A YOICE. 269 

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

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

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

He had not dwelt so long and so intently on the 
meeting at hand without considering how he should 
account for his coming, and he had formulated a con- 
fession of his motives. But he had never meant to 
make it to Juliet Bingham, and he now found himself 
unable to allege a word in explanation of his presence. 
He followed her into the parlor, Barbara silently 
gave him her hand and then remained passive in the 
background, where Dickery held aloof, smiling in 
what seemed his perpetual enjoyment of the Juliet 
Bingham joke. She at once put herself in authority 
over the situation ; she made Langbourne let her have 
his hat ; she seated him when and where she chose ; 
she removed and put back the lampshades ; she pulled 
up and pulled down the windoiY-blinds ; she shut the 
outer door because of the night air, and opened it be- 
cause of the unseasonable warmth within. She ex- 
cused Mrs. Simpson's absence on account of a head- 
ache, and asked him if he would not have a fan ; when 



270 THE MAGIC OF A VOICK. 

he refused it she made him take it, and while he sat 
helplessly dangling it from his hand, she asked him 
about the summer he had had, and whether he had 
passed it in New York. She was very intelligent 
about the heat in New York, and tactful in keeping 
the one-sided talk from falling. Barbara said nothing 
after a few faint attempts to take part in it, and Lang- 
bourne made briefer and briefer answers. His reti- 
cence seemed only to heighten Juliet Bingham's sat- 
isfaction, and she said, with a final supremacy, that 
she had been intending to go out with Mr. Dickery 
to a business meeting of the book-club, but they would 
be back before Langboume could get away ; she made 
him promise to wait for them. He did not know if 
Barbara looked any protest, — at least she spoke none, 
— ^and Juliet went out with Dickery. She turned at 
the door to bid Barbara say, if any one called, that 
she was at the book-club meeting. Then she disap- 
peared, but reappeared and called, '^ See here, a min- 
ute, Bab ! '' and at the outer threshold she detained 
Barbara in vivid whisper, ending aloud, " Now you 
be sure to do both, Bab ! Aunt Elmira will tell you 
where the things are." Again she vanished, and was 
gone long enough to have reached the gate and come 
back from it. She was renewing all her whispered 



THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 271 

and out-spoken charges when Dickerj showed himself 
at her side, put his hand under her elbow, and wheeled 
her about, and while she called gaylj over her shoul- 
der to the others, " Did you ever ? " walked her defin- 
itively out of the house. 

Langbourne did not suffer the silence which fol- 
lowed her going to possess him. What he had to do 
he must do quickly, and he said, '' Miss Simpson, may 
I ask you one question." 

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

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

" Why, of course ! " 

" I mean, was it your idea ? " 

" We thought it would be better." 

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

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

*' Because I had come here without being asked ? " 



272 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

^ N09 no ; it wasn't that/' the girl protested. 

^'I know I oughtn't to have come. I know I 
oughtn't to have written to you in the beginning, but 
you had let me write, and I thought you would let me 
come. I tried always to be sincere with you ; to make 
you feel that you could trust me. I believe that I am 
an honest man ; I thought I was a better man for hav- 
ing known you through your letters. I couldn't tell 
you how much they had been to me. You seemed to 
think, because I lived in a large place, that I had a 
great many friends ; but I have very few ; I might say 
I hadn't any — such as I thought I had when I was 
writing to you. Most of the men I know belong to 
some sort of clubs ; but I don't. I went to New York 
when I was feeling alone in the world, — it was from 
something that had happened to me partly through 
my own fault, — and I've never got over being alone 
there. I've never gone into society; I don't know 
what society is, and I suppose that's why I am acting 
differently from a society man now. The only change 
I ever had from business was reading at night: I've 
got a pretty good library. After I began to get your 
letters, I went out more — ^to the theatre, and lectures, 
and concerts, and all sorts of things — so that I could 
have something interesting to write about ; I thought 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 278 

you'd get tired of always hearing about me. And 
your letters filled up my life, so that I didn't seem 
alone any more. I read them all hundreds of times ; 
I should have said that I knew them by heart, if they 
had not been as fresh at last as they were at first. I 
seemed to hear you talking in them." He stopped as 
if withholding himself from what he had nearly said 
without intending, and resumed : " It's some comfort 
to know that you didn't want them back because you 
doubted me, or my good faith." 

" Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Langboume,'* said Barbara 
compassionately. 

" Then why did you ? " 

" I don't know. We—" 

" No ; wo« * we.' You ! " 

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

" What made you think that ? " 

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

He knew that the fact which their words veiled was 

now the first thing in their mutual consciousness. He 
s " 



274: THE MAGIC OF A YOICK. 

spoke the truth in saying, '' No, I never wanted to,'' 
but this was only a mechanical truth, and he knew it. 
He had an impulse to put the burden of the situlction 
on her, and press her to say why she thought he 
wished to do so ; but his next emotion was shame for 
this impulse. A thousand times, in these reveries in 
which he had imagined meeting her, he had told her 
first of all how he had overheard her talking in the 
room next his own in the hotel, and of the power her 
voice had instantly and lastingly had upon him. But 
now, with a sense spiritualized by her presence, he 
perceived that this, if it was not unworthy, was sec- 
ondary, and that the right to say it was not yet estab- 
lished. There was something that must come before 
this, — something that could alone justify him in any 
further step. If she could answer him first as he 
wished, then he might open his whole heart to her, at 
whatever cost ; he was not greatly to blame, if he did 
not realize that the cost could not be wholly his, as 
he asked, remotely enough from her question, '< After 
I wrote that I was coming up here, and you did not 
answer me, did you think I was coming ? " 

She did not answer, and he felt that he had been 
seeking a mean advantage. He went on: ''If you 
didn't expect it, if you never thought that I was com- 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 275 

ing, there's no need for me to tell you anything 
else." 

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

" Then I will tell you why I came — ^the only thing 
that gave me the right to come against your will, if it 
was against it. I came to i^k you to marry me. Will 
you ? " 

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

" Do you mean to ask it now ? " 

" Yes." 

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

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

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

" Not sure ? " 

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

He could not make out whether she was laughing' 



276 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

at him. He sat, not knowing what to say, and he 
blurted out, " Do yon mean that you won't ? " 

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

" I don't know what you " — ^he was going to say 
"mean," but he substituted — "wish. If you wish 
for more time, I can wait as long as you choose." 

" No, I might wish for time, if there was anything 
more. But if there's nothing else you have to tell 
me — then, no, I cannot marry you." 

Langboume rose, feeling justly punished, somehow, 
but bewildered as much as humbled, and stood stu- 
pidly unable to go. " I don't know what you could 
expect me to say after you've refused me — " 

" Oh, I don't expect anything." 

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

He looked down into his hat, and she said in a low 
voice, " I think I ought to know. Won't you — sit 
down ? " 

He sat down again. " Then I will tell you at the 
risk of — But there's nothing left to lose I You 
know how it is, when we think about a person or a 



THE MAGIC or A VOICE. 277 

place before we've seen tliem: we make some sort of 
picture of them, and expect tliem to be like it. I 
don't know how to say it ; you do look more like what 
I thought than you did at first. I suppose I must 
seem a fool to say it ; but I thought you were tall, and 
that you were — well ! — rather masterful — " 

*'Like Juliet Bingham?" she suggested, with a 
gleam in the eye next him. 

"Yes, like Juliet Bingham. It was your voice 
made me think — it was your voice that first made me 
want to see you, that made me write to you, in the 
beginning. I heard you talking that night in the ho- 
tel, where you left that circular ; you were in the room 
next to mine ; and I wanted to come right up here 
then ; but I had to go back to New York, and so I 
wrote to you. When your letters came, I always 
seemed to hear you speaking in them." 

" And when you saw me you were disappointed. I 
knew it." 

"No; not disappointed — " 

" Why not? My voice didn't go with my looks; 
it belonged to a tall, strong-willed girl." 

" No," he protested. " As soon as I got away it 
was just as it always had been. I mean that your 
voice and your looks went together again." 



278 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 



'' As soon as yoa got away ! ** the girl qaestioned. 

" I mean — What do you care for it, anyway ! *' 
he cried, in self-scornful exasperation. 

" I know," she said thoughtfully, " that my voice 
isn't like me ; Fm not good enough for it. It ought 
to be Juliet Bingham's — " 

" No, no ! " he interrupted, with a sort of disgust 
that seemed not to displease her, " I can't imagine it I " 

" But we can't any of us have everything, and she's 
got enough as it is. She's a head higher than I am, 
and she wants to have her way ten times as bad." 

" I didn't mean that," Langbourne began. ** I — ^but 
you must think me enough of a simpleton already." 

" Oh, no, not near," she declared. " I'm a good 
deal of a simpleton myself at times." 

" It doesn't matter," he said desperately ; " I love 
you." 

*' Ah, that belongs to the time when you thought I 
looked differently." 

" I don't want you to look differently. I — " 

" You can't expect me to believe that now. It will 
take time for me to do that." 

'* I will give you time," he said, so simply that she 
smiled. 

*' If it was my voice yon cared for I should have 



THE MAOIC OF A VOICE. 279 

to live up to it, somehow, before you cared for me. 
Vm not certain that I ever could. And if I couldn't ? 
You see, don't you ? " 

" I see that I was a fool to tell you what I have," 
he so far asserted himself. " But I thought I ought 
to be honest." 

"Oh, you've been honest /^^ she said. 

" You have a right to think that I am a flighty, 
romantic person," he resumed, " and I don't blame 
you. But if I could explain, it has been a very real 
experience to me. It was your nature that I cared 
for in your voice. I can't tell you just how it was ; 
it seemed to me that unless I could hear it again, and 
always, my life would not be worth much. This was 
something deeper and better than I could make you 
understand. It wasn't merely a fancy ; I do not want 
you to believe that." 

" I don't know whether fancies are such very bad 
things. I've had some of my own," Barbara sug- 
gested. 

He sat still with his hat between his hands, as if 
he could not find a chance of dismissing himself, and 
she remained looking down at her skirt where it tented 
itself over the toe of her shoe. The tall clock in the 
hall ticked second after second. It counted thirty of 



280 THB MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

tbem at least before he spoke, after a preliminaiy 
noise in his throat. 

" There is one thing I should like to ask : If you 
had cared for me, would jou have been offended at 
my having thought you looked differently ? " 

She took time to consider this. " I might have 
been vexed, or hurt, I suppose, but I don't see how I 
could really have been offended." 

" Then I understand," he began, in one of his in- 
ductive emotions; but she rose nervously, as if she 
could not sit still, and went to the piano. The Span- 
ish song he had given her was lying open upon it, and 
she struck some of the chords absently, and then let 
her fingers rest on the keys. 

"Miss Simpson," he said, coming stiffly forward, 
" I should like to hear you sing that song once more 
before I — Won't you sing it ? " 

" Why, yes," she said, and she slipped laterally 
into the piano-seat. 

At the end of the first stanza he gave a long sigh, 
and then he was silent to the close. 

As she sounded the last notes of the accompani- 
ment Juliet Bingham burst into the room with some- 
how the effect to Langboume of having lain in wait 
outside for that moment. 



THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 281 

" Oh, I just knew it ! " she shouted, running upon 
them. "I bet John anything! Oh, I'm so happy 
it's come out all right ; and now I'm going to have the 
first—" 

She lifted her arms as if to put them round his 
neck; he stood dazed, and Barbara rose from the 
piano-stool and confronted her with nothing less than 
horror in her face. 

Juliet Bingham was beginning again, " Why, 
haven't you — " 

" No ! " cried Barbara. " I forgot all about what 
you said ! I just happened to sing it because he 
asked me," and she ran from the room. 

" Well, if I ever I " said Juliet Bingham, following 
her with astonished eyes. Then she turned to Lang- 
bourne. " It's perfectly ridiculous, and I don't see 
how I can ever explain it. I don't think Barbara has 
shown a great deal of tact," and Juliet Bingham was 
evidently prepared to make up the defect by a diplo- 
macy which she enjoyed. " I don't know where to 
begin exactly ; but you must certainly excuse my — 
manner, when I came in." 

" Oh, certainly," said Langbourne in polite mysti- 
fication. 

" It was all through a misunderstanding that I don't 



282 THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

think / was to blame for, to say the least ; bat I can't 
explain it without making Barbara appear perfectly — 
Mr. Langboame, will you tell whether you are en- 
gaged?" 

" No ! Miss Simpson has declined my offer," he 
answered. 

" Oh, then it's all right," said Juliet Bingham, but 
Langboume looked as if he did not see why she 
should say that. " Then I can understand ; I see the 
whole thing now ; and I didn't want to make another 
mistake. Ah — won't you — sit down ? " 

" Thank you. I believe I will go." 

" But you have a right to know — " 

" Would my knowing alter the main facts I '* he 
asked dryly. 

" Well, no, I can't say it would," Juliet Bingham 
replied with an air of candor. ^'And, as you say, 
perhaps it's just as well," she added with an air of 
relief. ' 

Langboume had not said it, but he acquiesced with 
a faint sigh, and absently took the hand of farewell 
which Juliet Bingham gave him. ** I know Barbara 
will be very sorry not to see you ; but I guess it's bet- 
ter." 

In spite of the supremacy which the turn of affairs 



THE MAGIC or A VOICE. 283 

had given her, Juliet Bingham looked far from satis- 
fied, and she let Langboume go with a sense of in- 
conclusiveness which showed in the parting inclina- 
tion towards him ; she kept the effect of this after he 
turned from her. 

He crept light-headedly down the brick walk with 
a feeling that the darkness was not half thick enough, 
though it was so thick that it hid from him a figure 
that leaned upon the gate and held it shut, as if forci- 
bly to interrupt his going. 

" Mr. Langbourne," said the voice of this figure, 
which, though so unnaturally strained, he knew for 
Barbara's voice, " you have got to know ! I'm ashamed 
to tell you, but I should be more ashamed not to, 
after what's happened. Juliet made me promise when 
she went out to the book-club meeting that if I — if 
you — if it turned out as you wanted, I would sing 
that song as a sign — It was just a joke — like my 
sending her picture. It was ray mistake and I am 
sorry, and I beg your pardon — I — " 

She stopped with a quick catch in her breath, and 
the darkness round them seemed to become luminous 
with the light of hope that broke upon him within. 

'' But if there really was no mistake," he began. 
He could not get further. 



r^c 



284 THE MAGIC OF A YOICB. 

She did not answer, and for the first time her silence 
was sweeter than her voice. He lifted her tip-toe in 
his embrace, but he did not wish her taller ; her yield- 
ing spirit lost itself in his own, and he did not regret 
the absence of the strong will which he had once im- 
agined hers. 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 



I. 

The sunset struck its hard red light through the 
fringe of leafless trees to the westward, and gave their 
outlines that black definition which a French school of 
landscape saw a few years ago, and now seems to see 
no longer. In the whole scene there was the pathetic 
repose which we feel in some dying day of the dying 
year, and a sort of impersonal melancholy weighed 
me down as I dragged myself through the woods tow- 
ard that dreary November sunset. 

Presently I came in sight of the place I was seek- 
ing, and partly because of the insensate pleasure of 
having found it, and partly because of the cheerful 
opening in the boscage made by the pool, which 
cleared its space to the sky, my heart lifted. I per- 
ceived that it was not so late as' I had thought, and 
that there was much more of the day left than I had 
supposed from the crimson glare in the west. I threw 
myself down on one of the grassy gradines of the 



286 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

amphitheatre, and comforted myself with the antiquity 
of the workjwhich was so great as to involve its origin 
in a somewhat impassioned question among the local 
aathorities. Whether it was a Norse work, a temple 
for the celebration of the earliest Christian, or the 
latest heathen, rites among the first discoverers of 
New England, or whether it was a cockpit where the 
English oflScers who were billeted in the old tavern 
near by fought their mains at the time of our Revo- 
lution, it had the charm of a ruin, and appealed to the 
fancy with whatever potency belongs to the moulder- 
ing monuments of the past. The hands that shaped 
it were all dust, and there was no record of the minds 
that willed it to prove that it was a hundred, or that 
it was a thousand, years old. There were young oaks 
and pines growing up to the border of the amphithea- 
tre on all sides; blackberry vines and sumach bushes 
overran the gradines almost to the margin of the pool 
which filled the centre ; at the edge of the water some 
clumps of willow and white birch leaned outward as 
if to mirror their tracery in its steely surface. But of 
the life that the thing inarticulately recorded, there 
was not the slightest impulse left. 

I began to think how everything ends at last. Love 
ends, sorrow ends, and to our mortal sense everything 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 287 

that is mortal ends, whether that which is spiritual 
has a perpetual effect beyond these eyes or not. The 
very name of things passes with the things them- 
selves, and 

*• Glory is like a circle in the water, 
Which never ceaseth to enlarg^e itself, 
Till by broad spreading, it disperse to naught" 

But if fame ended, did not infamy end, too ? If 
glory, why not shame ? What was it, I mused, that 
made an evil deed so much more memorable than a 
good one ? Why should a crime have so much longer 
lodgment in our minds, and be of consequences so 
much more lasting than the sort of action which is 
the opposite of a crime, but has no precise name with 
us ? Was it because the want of positive quality which 
left it nameless, characterized its effects with a kind 
of essential debility ? Was evil then a greater force 
than good in the moral world ? I tried to recall per- 
sonalities, virtuous and vicious, and I found a fatal 
want of distinctness in the return of those I classed as 
virtuous, and a lurid vividness in those I classed as 
vicious. Images, knowledges, concepts, zigzagged 
through my brain, as they do when we are thinking, 
or believe we are thinking; perhaps there is no such 
thing as we call thinking, except when we are talking. 



288 A CIRCLE IK THE WATER. 

I did not hold myself responsible in this wilUess rev- 
ery for the question which asked itself, Whether, 
then, evil and not good was the lasting principle, and 
whether that which should remain recognizable to all 
eternity was not the good effect but the evil effect ? 

Something broke the perfect stillness of the pool near 
the opposite shore. A fish had leaped at some unsea- 
sonable insect on the surface, or one of the overhanging 
trees had dropped a dead twig upon it, and in the lazy 
doubt which it might be, I lay and watched the ever- 
widening circle fade out into fainter and fainter ripples 
toward the shore, till it weakened to nothing in the 
eye, and, so far as the senses were concerned, actually 
ceased to be. The want of visible agency in it made 
me feel it all the more a providential illustration ; and 
because the thing itself was so pretty, and because it 
was so apt as a case in point, I pleased myself a great 
deal with it Suddenly it repeated itself; but this 
time I grew a little impatient of it, before the circle 
died out in the wider circle of the pool. I said whim- 
sically to myself that this was rubbing it in ; that I 
was convinced already, and needed no further proof; 
and at the same moment the thing happened a third 
time. Then I saw that there was a man standing at 
the top of the amphitheatre just across from me, who 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATEB. 289 

was throwing stones into the water. He cast a fourth 
pebble into the centre of the pool, and then a fifth 
and a sixth ; I began to wonder what he was throwing 
at ; I thought it too childish for him to be amusing 
himself with the circle that dispersed itself to naught, 
after it had done so several times already. I was sure 
that he saw something in the pool, and was trying to 
hit it, or frighten it. His figure showed black against 
the sunset light, and I could not make it out very 
well, but it held itself something like that of a work- 
man, and yet with a difference, with an effect as of 
some sort of discipline ; and I thought of an ex-recruit, 
returning to civil life, after serving his five years in 
the army ; though I do not know why I should have 
gone so far afield for this notion ; I certainly had never 
seen an ex-recruit, and I did not really know how one 
would look. I rose up, and we both stood still, as if 
he were abashed in his sport by my presence. The man 
made a little cast forward with his hand, and I heard 
the rattle as of pebbles dropped among the dead leaves. 
Then he called over to me, " Is that you, Mr. 
March ? " 

" Yes," I called back, " what is wanted ? " 

" Oh, nothing. I was just looking for you." He 

did not move, and after a moment I began to walk 

T 



290 A CIRCLE IN THE WATBB. 

round the top of the amphitheatre toward him. When 
I came near him I saw that he had a clean-shaven 
face, and he wore a soft hat that seemed large for his 
close-cropped head ; he had on a sack coat battoned 
to the throat, and of one dark color with his loose 
trousers. I knew him now, but I did not know what 
terms to put my recognition in, and I faltered. 
" What do you want with me ? " I asked, as if I did 
not know him. 

" I was at your house," he answered, " and they 
told me that you had walked out this way." He hes- 
itated a moment, and then he added, rather huskily, 
" You don't know me ! " 

" Yes," I said. " It is Tedham," and I held out 
my hand, with no definite intention, I believe, but 
merely because I did know him, and this was the usu- 
al form of greeting between acquaintances after a long 
separation, or even a short one, for that matter. But 
he seemed to find a special significance in my civility, 
and he took my hand and held it silently, while he 
was trying to speak. Evidently, he could not, and I 
said aimlessly, " What were you throwing at ? " 

" Nothing. I saw you lying down, over there, and 
I wanted to attract your attention." He let my hand 
go, and looked at me apologetically. 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 291 

" Oh ! was that all ? " I said. " I thought you saw 
something in the water." 

" No," he answered, as if he felt the censure which 
I had not been able to keep out of my voice. 



n. 



I DO not know why I should have chosen to take 
this simple fact as proof of an abiding want of 
straight-forwardness in Tedham's nature. I do not 
know why I should have expected him to change, or 
why I should have felt authorized at that moment to 
renew his punishment for it. I certainly had said and 
thought very often that he had been punished enough, 
and more than enough. In fact, his punishment, like 
all the other punishments that I have witnessed in life, 
seemed to me wholly out of proportion to the offence ; 
it seemed monstrous, atrocious, and when I got to 
talking of it I used to become so warm that my wife 
would warn me people would think I wanted to do 
something like Tedham myself if I went on in that 
way about him. Yet here I was, at my very first en- 
counter with the man, after his long expiation had 
ended, willing to add at least a little self-reproach to 
his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I can analyze 



A CIBCLB IN THB WATER. 293 

my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all 
reason and experience, that his anguish would have 
wrung that foible out of him, and left him strong 
where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls the 
light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty nat- 
ures, but it does not render them wise and weighty ; I 
had often made this sage reflection, but I failed to 
apply it to the casie before me now. 

After waiting a little fpr the displeasure to clear 
away from my face, Tedham smiled as if in humorous 
appreciation, and I perceived, as nothing else could 
have shown me so well, that he was still the old Ted- 
ham. There was an offer of propitiation in this smile, 
too, and I did not like that, either; but I was touched 
when I saw a certain hope die out of his eye at the 
failure of his appeal to me. 

" Who told you I was here ? " I asked, more kindly. 
" Did you see Mrs. March ? " 

" No, I think it must have been your children. I 
found them in front of your house, and I asked them 
for you, without going to the door." 

" Oh," I said, and I hid the disappointment I felt 
that he had not seen my wife ; for I should have liked 
such a leading as her behavior toward him would have 
given me for my own. I was sure she would have 



2^4 A CIRCLE IN THB WATER. 

known him at once, and would not have told him 
where to find me, if she had not wished me to be 
friendly with him. 

" I am glad to see you," I said, in the absence of 
this leading ; and then I did not know what else to 
say. Tedham seemed to me to be looking very well, 
but I could not notify this fact to him, in the circum- 
stances ; he even looked very handsome ; he had aged 
becomingly, and a clean-shaven face suited him as 
well as the full beard he used to wear; but I could 
speak of these things as little as of his apparent health. 
I did not feel that I ought even to ask him what I 
could do for him. I did not want to have anything to 
do with him, and, besides, I have always regarded this 
formula as tantamount to saying that you cannot, or 
will not, do anything for the man you employ it upon. 

The silence which ensued was awkward, but it was 
better than anything I could think of to say, and Ted- 
ham himself seemed to feel it so. He said, presently, 
'^ Thank you, I was sure you would not take my 
coming to you the wrong way. In fact I had no one 

else to come to— after I " Tedham stopped, and 

then, " I don't know," he went on, " whether you've 
kept run of me ; I don't suppose you have ; I got out 
to-day at noon." 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 295 

I could not say anything to that, either ; there were 
very few openings for me, it appeared, in the conver- 
sation, which remained one-sided as before. 

" I went to the cemetery," he continued. " I wanted 
to realize that those who had died were dead, it was 
all one thing as long as I was in there ; everybody was 
dead ; and then I came on to your house." 

The house he meant was a place I had taken for the 
summer a little out of town, so that I could run in to 
business every day, and yet have my mornings and 
evenings in the country ; the fall had been so mild 
that we were still eking out the summer there. 

"How did you know where I was staying?" I 
asked, with a willingness to make any occasion serve 
for saying something, 

Tedham hesitated. " Well, I stopped at the office 
in Boston on my way out, and inquired. I was sure 
nobody would know me there." He said this apolo- 
getically, as if he had been taking a liberty, and ex- 
plained: "I wanted to see you very much, and I was 
afraid that if I let the day go by I should miss you 
somehow." 

" Oh, all right," I said. 

We had remained standing at the point where I had 
gone round to meet him, and it seemed, in the awk- 



296 A circle: in teus water. 

ward silence that now followed, as if I were rooted 
there. I would very willingly have said something 
leading, for my own sake, if not for his, but I had 
nothing in mind but that I had better keep there, and 
so I waited for him to speak. I believed he was 
beating about the bush in his own thoughts, to find 
some indirect or sinuous way of getting at what he 
wanted to know, and that it was only because he 
failed that he asked bluntly, " March, do you know 
where my daughter is ? " 

"No, Tedham, I don't," I said, and I was glad 
'that I could say it both with honesty and with com- 
passion. I was truly sorry for the man ; in a way, I 
did pity him ; at the same time I did not wish to be 
mixed up in his afiEairs ; in washing my hands of them, 
I preferred that there should be no stain of falsehood 
left on them. 

" Where is my sister-in-law ? " he asked next, and 
now at least I could not censure him for indirection. 

" I haven't met her for several years," I answered. 
" I couldn't say from my own knowledge where she 
was," 

" But you haven't heard of her leaving Somerville ? " 

" No, I haven't." 

" Do you ever meet her husband ? " 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 297 

"Yes, sometimes, on the street; but I think not 
lately ; we don't often meet." 

'* The last time you saw her^ did she speak of me ? " 

"I don't know — I believe — yes. It was a good 
many years ago.'* 

" Was she changed toward me at all ? " 

This was a hard question to answer, but I thought I 
had better answer it with the exact truth. " No, she 
seemed to feel just the same as ever about it." 

I da not believe Tedham cared for this, after all, 
though he made a show of having to collect himself 
before he went on. " Then you think my daughter is 
with her?" 

" I didn't say that. I don't know anything about 
it." 

"March," he urged, "don't you think I have a 
right to see my daughter ? " 

" That's something I can't enter into, Tedham." 

" Good God ! " said the man. " If you were in my 
place, wouldn't you want to see her ? You know how 
fond I used to be of her ; and she is all that I have 
got left in the world." 

I did indeed remember Tedham's affection for his 
daughter, whom I remembered as in short frocks when 
I last saw them together. It was before my own door 



298 A CIRCLE IN TKB WATBB. 

in town. Tedham had driven up in a smart buggy 
behind a slim sorrel, and I came out, at a sign he 
made me through the bow-window with his whip, and 
saw the little maid on the seat there beside him. 
They were both very well dressed, though still in 
mourning for the child's mother, and the whole turn- 
out was handsomely set up. Tedham was then about 
thirty-five, and the child looked about nine. The col- 
or of her hair was the color of his fine brown beard, 
which had as yet no trace of gray in it ; but the light 
in her eyes was another light, and her smile, which 
was of the same shape as his, was of another quality, 
as she leaned across him and gave me her pretty little 
gloved hand with a gay laugh. " I should think you 
would be afraid of such a fiery sorrel dragon as that," 
I said, in recognition of the colt's lifting and twitching 
with impatience as we talked. 

" Oh, Fm not afraid with papa I " she said, and she 
laughed again as he took her hand in one of his and 
covered it out of sight. 

I recalled, now, looking at him there in the twilight 
of the woods, how happy they had both seemed that 
sunny afternoon in the city square, as they flashed 
away from my door and glanced back at me and 
smiled together. I went into the house and said to 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 299 

my wife with a formulation of the case which pleased 
me, " If there is anything in the world that Tedham 
likes better than to ride after a good horse, it is to 
ride after a good horse with that little girl of his." 
" Yes," said my wife, " but a good horse means a 
good deal of money ; even when a little girl goes with 
it." " That is so," I assented, " but Tedham has made 
a lot lately in real estate, they say, and I don't know 
what better he could do with his money ; or, I don't 
believe he does." We said no more, but we both felt, 
with the ardor of young parents, that it was a great 
virtue, a saving virtue, in Tedham to love his little 
girl so much ; I was afterward not always sure that it 
was. Still, when Tedham appealed to me now in the 
name of his love for her, he moved my heart, if not 
my reason, in his favor ; those old superstitions per- 
sist. 

"Why, of course, you want to see her. But I 
couldn't tell you where she is." 

" You could find out for me." 

" I don't see how," I said ; but I did see how, and 
I knew as well as he what his next approach would 
be. I felt strong against it, however, and I did not 
perceive the necessity of being short with him in a 
matter not involving my own security or comfort. 



300 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

'* I conld find out where Hasketh is," he said, nam' 
ing the husband of his sister-in-law ; ^^ but it would be 
of no use for me to go there. They wouldn't see me." 
He put this like a question, but I chose to let it be 
its own answer, and he went on. *< There is no one that 
I can ask to act for me in the matter but you, and I 
ask youy March, to go to my sister-in-law for me." 

I shook my head. "That I can't do, Tedham." 

" Ah ! " he urged, " ^hat harm could it do you ? '' 
• " Look here, Tedham ! " I said. " I don't know 
why you feel authorized to come to me at all. It is 
useless your saying that there is no one else. You 
know very well that the authorities, some of them — 
the chaplain — would go and see Mrs. Hasketh for you. 
He could have a great deal more influence with her 
than any one else could, if he felt like saying a good 
word for you. As far as I am concerned, you have 
expiated your ofiEence fully ; but I should think you 
yourself would see that you ought not to come to me 
with this request; or you ought to come to me last of 
all men." 

" It is just because of that part of my ofiEence which 
concerned you that I come to you. I knew how gen- 
erous you were, and after you told me that you had 
no resentment — I acknowledge that it is indelicate, 



A CIRCLE IN THB WATER. 301 

if you choose to look at it in that light, but a man 
like me can't afford to let delicacy stand in his way. 
I don't want to flatter you, or get you to do this thing 
for me on false pretences. But I thought that if you 
went to Mrs. Hasketh for me, she would remember 
that you had overlooked something, and she would be 
more disposed to— to— be considerate." 

" I can't do it, Tedham," I returned. " It would 
be of no use. Besides, I don't like the errand. I'm 
not sure that I have any business to interfere. I am 
not sure that you have any right to disturb the shape 
that their lives have settled into. I'm sorry for you, 
I pity you with all my heart. But there are others to 
be considered as well as you. And — simply, I can't." 

"How do you know," he entreated, "that my 
daughter wouldn't be as glad to see me as I to see 
her?" 

" I don't know it. I don't know anjrthing about it 
That's the reason I can't have anything to do with it. 
I can't justify myself in meddling with what doesn't 
concern me, and in what I'm not sure but I should do 
more harm than good. I must say good-night. It's 
getting late, and they will be anxious about me at 
home." My heart smote me as I spoke the last word, 
which seemed a cruel recognition of Tedham's home- 



302 A CIRCLE IK THB WATER. 

lessness. But I held out my band to him for parting, 
and braced myself against my inward weakness. 

He might well have failed to see my band. At any 
rate he did not take it. He turned and started to 
walk out of the woods by my side. We came pres- 
ently to some open fields. Beyond them was the road, 
and after we had climbed the first wall, and found 
ourselves in a somewhat lighter place, he began to 
speak again. 

" I thought," he said, " that if you had forgiven 
me, I could take it as a sign that I had sufiEered 
enough to satisfy everybody." 

" We needn't dwell upon my share in the matter, 
Tedham," I answered, as kindly as I could. " That 
was entirely my own affair." 

" You can't think," he pursued, " how much your 
letter was to me. It came when I was in perfect de- 
spair — in those awful first days when it seemed as if 
I could not bear it, and yet death itself would be no 
relief. Oh, they don't know how much we suffer I If 
they did, they would forgive us anything, everything ! 
Your letter was the first gleam of hope I had. I don't 
know how you came to write it ! " 

" Why, of course, Tedham, I felt sorry for you — " 

" Oh, did you, did you ? " He began to cry, and as 



A CIRCLE IN THB WATER. 303 

we harried along over the fields, he sobbed with the 
wrenching, rending sobs of a man. " I knew you did, 
and I believe it was God himself that put it into yoar 
heart to write me that letter and take ofiE that much of 
the blame from me. I said to myself that if I ever 
lived through it, I would try to tell you how much you 
had done for me. I don't blame you for refusing to 
do what I've asked you now. I can see how you may 
think it isn't best, and I thank you all the same for 
that letter. I've got it here." He took a letter out 
of his breast-pocket, and showed it to me. " It isn't 
the first time I've cried over it" 

I did not say anything, for my heart was in my 
throat, and we stumbled along in silence till we climbed 
the last waU, and stood on the sidewalk that skirted 
the suburban highway. There, under the street-lamp, 
we stopped a moment, and it was he who now offered 
me his hand for parting. I took it, and we said, to- 
gether, "Well, good-by," and moved in different 
directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, 
and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced 
about. He was shambling off into the dusk, a most 
hapless figure. " Tedham ! " I called after him. 

" Well ? " he answered, and he halted instantly ; he 
had evidently known what I would do as well as I had. 



304 A CIRCLE IN TEUS WATER. 

We reapproached each other, and when we were 

* 

again under the lamp I asked, a little awkwardly, 
" Are you in need of money, Tedham ? " 

" I've got my ten years' wages with me," he said, 
with a lightness that must have come from his reviving 
hope in me. He drew his hand out of his pocket, and 
showed me the few dollars with which the State in- 
humanly turns society's outcasts back into the world 
again. 

** Oh, that won't do." I said. " You must let me 
lend you something." 

"Thank you," he said, with perfect simplicity. 
" But you know I can't tell when I shall be able to 
pay you." 

"Oh, that's all right." I gave him a ten-dollar 
note which I had loose in my pocket; it was one that 
my wife had told me to get changed at the grocery 
near the station, and I had walked off to the old tem- 
ple, or the old cockpit, and forgotten about it. 

Tedham took the note, but he said, holding it in his 
hand, " I would a million times rather you would let 
me go home with you and see Mrs. March a moment." 

" I can't do that, Tedham," I answered, not unkind- 
ly, I hope. " I know what you mean, and I assure 
you that it would'nt be the least use. It's because I 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 305 

feel 60 sure that my wife wouldn't like my going to 
see Mrs. Hasketh, that I — " 

" Yes, I know that," said Tedham. " That is the 
reason wLy I should like to see Mrs. March. I believe 
that if I could see her, I could convince her." 

" She wouldn't see you, my dear fellow," said I, 
strangely finding myself on these caressing terms with 
him. " She entirely approved of what I did, the let 
ter I wrote you, but I don't believe she will ever feel 
just as I do about it. Women are different, you 
know." 

" Yes," he said, drawing a long, quivering breat . 

We stood there, helpless to part. He did not offer 
to leave me, and I could not find it in my heart to 
abandon him. After a most painful time, he drew 
another long breath, and asked, " Would you be will- 
ing to let me take the chances ? " 

" Why, Tedham," I began, weakly; and upon that 
he began walking with me again. 

U 



in. 



I WKNT to my wife's room, after I reached the 
house, and faced Her with considerable trepidation. I 
had to begin rather far off, but I certainly began in a 
way to lead up to the fact. " Isabel," I said, " Ted- 
ham is out at last.'' I had it on my tongue to say 
poor Tedham, but I suppressed the qualification in 
actual speech as likely to prove unavailing, or worse. 

" Is that what kept you ! " she demanded, instantly. 
" Have you seen him ? " 

" Yes," I admitted. I added, " Though I am afraid 
I was rather late, anyway." 

" I knew it was he, the moment you spoke," she 
said, rising on the lounge where she had been lying, 
and sitting up on it ; with the book she had been read- 
ing shut on her thumb, she faced me across the table 
where her lamp stood. " I had a presentiment when 
the children said there was some strange-looking man 
here, asking for you, and that they had told him 



A CIBCLB IN THB WATER. 307 

where to find you. I couldn't help feeling a little un- 
easy about it. What did he want with you, Basil? " 

" Well, he wanted to know where his daughter was." 

" You didn't tell him ! " 

" I didn't know. Then he wanted me to go to Mrs. 
Hasketh and find out." 

" You didn't say you would ? " 

" I said most decidedly I wouldn't," I returned, and 
I recalled my severity to Tedham in refusing his pray- 
er with more satisfaction than it had given me at the 
time. " I told him that I had no business to interfere, 
and that I was not sure it would be right even for me 
to meddle with the course things had taken." I was 
aware of weakening my case as I went on ; I had bet- 
ter left her with a dramatic conception of a downright 
and relentless refusal. 

" I don't see why you felt called upon to make ex- 
cuses to him, Basil. His impudence in coming to 
you, of all men, is perfectly intolerable. I suppose it 
was that sentimental letter you wrote him." 

" You didn't think it sentimental at the time, my 
dear. You approved of it." 

I didn't approve of it, Basil ; but if you felt so 
strongly that you ought to do it, I felt that I ought to 
let you. I have never interfered with your sense of 



308 A CIBCIJI IN THE WATBB. 

duty, and I neyer wiiL But I am glad that 70a didn't 
feel it jour duty to that wretch to go and make more 
trouble on his account. He has made quite enough 
already ; and it wasn't his fault that you were not tried 
and convicted in his place/' 

" There wasn't the slightest danger of that — " 

^' He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring 
the disgrace on your wife and children." 

" Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long 
ago. And I don't think — I never thought — that Ted- 
ham would have let the suspicion rest on me. He 
merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investi- 
gation began, so as to gain time to get out to Canada." 

My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw 
tender affection dangerously near contempt. "You 
are a very forgiving man, Basil," she said, and I 
looked down sheepishly. " Well, at any rate, you 
have had the sense not to mix yourself up in his bus- 
iness. Did he pretend that he came straight to you, 
as soon as he got out ? I suppose he wanted you to 
believe that he appealed to you before he tried any- 
body else." 

" Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask 
for my address, and after he had visited the cemetery 
he came on out here. And, if you must know, I 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 309 

think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Pnt him be- 
hind a good horse, with a pocketful of some one else's 
money, in a handsome snit of clothes, and a game- 
and-fish dinner at Tafft's in immediate prospect, and 
you couldn't see any difference between the Tedham 
of to-day and the Tedham of ten years ago, except that 
the actual Tedham is cleannshaved and wears his hair 
cut rather close." 

" Basil ! " 

" Why do you object to the fact ? Did you ima- 
gine he had changed inwardly ? " 

" He must have suffered." 

'^But does suffering change people? I doubt it. 
Certain material accessories of Tedham's have changed. 
But why should that change Tedham ? Of course, he 
has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some 
hints of what he had been through that would have 
broken my heart if I hadn't hardened it against him. 
And he loves his daughter still, and he wants to see 
her, poor wretch." 

" I suppose he does ! " sighed my wife. 

'^ He would hardly take no for an answer from me, 
when I said I wouldn't go to the Haskeths for him ; 
and when I fairly shook him off, he wanted me to ask 
you to go." 



310 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

'^And what did 70a say?*' she asked, not at all 
with the resentment I had counted apon equally with 
the possible pathos ; you never can tell in ths least how 
any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the 
reason why men do not trust women more. 

'* I told him that it would not be the smallest use to 
ask you ; that you had forgiven that old affair as well 
as I had, but that women were different, and that I 
knew you wouldn^t even see him.*' 

'' Well, Basil, I don't know what right you had to 
put me in that odious light," said my wife. 

** Why, good heavens ! B ould you have seen him ? " 

"I don't know whether I would or not. That's 
neither here nor there. I don't think it was very nice 
of you to shift the whole responsibility on me." 

'^ How did I do that ? It seems to me that I kept 
the whole responsibility myself." 

'^ Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, 
then ? " 

" We walked along a little farther, and then — " 

" Then, what t Where is the man ? " 

" He's down in the parlor," I answered hardily, in 
the voice of some one else. 

My wife stood up from the lounge, and I rose, too, 
for whatever penalty she chose to inflict* 



A CIBCI.E IN THE WATER. 311 

" Well, Basil, that is what I call a very cowardly 
thing." 

"Yes, my dear, it is; I ought to have protected 
you against his appeal. But you needn't see him. 
It's practically the same as if he had not come here. 
I can send him away." 

" And you call that practically the same ! No, / am 
the one that will have to do the refusing now, and it 
is all off your shoulders. And you knew I was not 
feeling very well, either ! Basil, how could you ? " 

" I don't know. The abject creature drove me out 
of my senses. I suppose that if I had respected him 
more, or believed in him more, I should have had 
more strength to refuse him. But his limpness seemed 
to impart itself to me, and I — ^I gave way. But really 
you needn't see him, Isabel. I can tell him we have 
talked it over, and I concluded, entirely of myself, 
that it was best for you not to meet him, and — " 

" He would see through that in an instant. And if 
he is still the false creature you think he is, we owe 
him the truth, more than any other kind of man. 
You must understand that, Basil ! " 

" Then you are going to—" 

" Don't speak to me, Basil, please," she said, and 
with an air of high offence she swept out of the room, 



312 A CIBCLB IN THX WATBB. 

and out to the landing of the stairs. There she hesi- 
tated a moment, and pat her hand to her hair, me- 
chanically, to feel if it were in order, and then she 
went on downstairs without farther faltering. It was 
I who descended slowly, and with many misgivings. 



*%»'. 



IV. 



Tedham was sitting in the chair I had shown him 
when I brought him in, and in the half-light of one 
gas-bamer in the chandelier he looked, with his rough, 
clean clothes, and his slouch hat lying in his lap, like 
some sort of decent workingman ; his features, refined 
by the mental suffering he had undergone, and the 
pallor of a complexion so seldom exposed to the open 
air, gave him the effect of a workingman just out of 
the hospital. His eyes were deep in their sockets, 
and showed fine shadows in the overhead light, and I 
must say he looked very interesting. 

At the threshold my wife paused again ; then she 
went forward, turning the gas up full as she passed 
under the chandelier, and gave him her hand, where 
he had risen from his chair. 

'* I am glad to see you, Mr. Tedham,^' she said ; 
and I should have found my astonishment overpower- 
ing, I dare say, if I had not felt that I was so com- 



314 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

pletely in the hands of Providence, when she added, 
" Won't you come out to dinner with us ? We were 
just going to sit down, when Mr. March came in. I 
never know when he will be back, when he starts off 
on these Saturday afternoon tramps of his.*' 

The children seemed considerably mystified at the 
appearance of our guest, but they had that superior 
interest in the dinner appropriate to their years, and 
we got through the ordeal, in which, I believe, I suf- 
fered more than any one else, much better than I could 
have hoped. I could not help noting in Tedham a 
certain strangeness to the use of a four-pronged fork, 
at first, but he rapidly overcame this ; and if it had 
not been for a terrible moment when, after one of the 
courses, he began, mechanically, to scrape his plate 
with his knife, there would not have been anything 
very odd in his behavior, or anything to show that it 
was the first dinner in polite society that he had taken 
for so many years. 

The man's mind had apparently stiffened more than 
his body. It used to be very agile, if light, but it was 
not agile now. It worked slowly toward the topics 
which we found with difficulty, in our necessity of 
avoi^g the only topics of real interest between us, 
and I could perceive that his original egotism, inten- 



A CIRCLB IN THB WATER. 315 

sified hj the long years in which he had only himself 
for company, now stood in the way of his entering 
into the matters brought forward, though he tried to 
do so. They were mostly in the form of reminis- 
cences of this person and that whom we had known in 
common, and even in this shape they had to be very 
carefully handled so as not to develop anything lead- 
ing. The thing that did most to relieve the embar- 
rassment of the time was the sturdy hunger Tedham 
showed, and his delight in the cooking ; I suppose that 
I cannot make others feel the pathos I found in this. 

After dinner we shut the children into the library, 
and kept Tedham with us in the parlor. 

My wife began at once to say, " Mr. March has told 
me why you wanted to see me, Mr. Tedham." 

" Yes," he said, as if he were afraid to say more 
lest he should injure his cause. 

'^ I think that it would not be the least use for me 
to go to Mrs. Hasketh. In the first place I do not 
know her very well, and I have not seen her for years, 
I am not certain she would see me." 

Tedham turned the hollows of his eyes upon my 
wife, and asked, huskily, " Won't you try ? " 

" Yes," she answered, most unexpectedly to me, " I 
will try to see her. But if I do see her, and she re- 



316 A CIRCLB IN THB WATER. 

fuses to tell me anything about your daughter, what 
will you do? Of course, I shall have to tell her I 
come from you, and for you." 

"I thought," Tedham ventured, with a sort of tim- 
orous slyness, '* that perhaps you might approach it 
casually, without any reference to me." 

" No, I couldn't do that," my wife said. 

He went on as if he had not heard her: " If she did 
not know that the inquiries were made in my behalf, 
she might be willing to say whether my daughter was 
with her." 

There was in this suggestion a quality of Tedham's 
old insinuation, but coarser, inferior, as if his insinu- 
ation had degenerated into something like mere animal 
cunning. I felt rather ashamed for him, but to my 
surprise, my wife seemed only to feel sorry, and did 
not repel his suggestion in the way I had thought she 
would. 

" No," she said, ** that wouldn't do. She has kept 
account of the time, you may be sure, and she would 
ask me at once if I was inquiring in your behalf, and 
I should have to tell her the truth." 

"I didn't know," he returned, "but you might 
evade the point, somehow. So much being at stake," * 
he added, as if explaining. 



A CIBCLB IN THE WATBR. 317 

Still my wife was not severe with him. " I don't 
understand, quite/' she said. 

" Being the turning-point in my life, I can't begin 
to do anything, to be anything, till I have seen my 
daughter. I don't know where to find myself. If I 
could see her, and she did not cast me off, then I 
should know where I was. Or, if she did, I should. 
You understand that." 

" But, of course, there is another point of view." 

" My daughter's ? " 

" Mrs. Hasketh's." 

** I don't care for Mrs. Hasketh. She did what she 
has done for the child's sake. It was the best thing 
for the child at the time — ^the only thing ; I know that. 
But I agreed to it because I had to." 

He continued : " I consider that I have expiated the 
wrong I did. There is no sense in the whole thing, 
if I haven't. They might as well have let me go in 
the beginning. Don't you think that ten years out of 
my life is enough for a thing that I never intended to 
go as far as it did, and a thing that I was led into, 
partly, for the sake of others ? I have tried to reason 
it out, and not from my own point of view at all, and 
that is the way I feel about it. Is it to go on for- 
ever, and am I never to be rid of the consequences 



318 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

of a single act ? If you and Mr. March could con- 
done — " 

" Oh, you mustn't reason from t*«," my wife broke 
in. " We are very silly people, and we do not look 
at a great many things as others do. You have got to 
reckon with the world at large." 

" I have reckoned with the world at large, and I 
have paid the reckoning. But why shouldn't my 
daughter look at this thing as you do ? " 

Instead of answering, my wife asked, " When did 
you hear from her last ? " 

Tedham took a few thin, worn letters from his 
breast-pocket. " There is Mr. March's letter," he said, 
laying one on his knee. He handed my wife another. 

She read it, and asked, ^^ May Mr. March see it ? " 

Tedham nodded, and I took the little paper in turn. 
The letter was written in a child's stiff, awkward hand. 
It was hardly more than a piteous cry of despairing 
love. The address was Mrs. Hasketh's, in Somerville, 
and the date was about three months after Tedham's 
punishment began. '^ Is that the last you have heard 
from her ? " I asked. 

Tedham nodded as he took the letter from me. 

*^ But surely you have heard something more about 
her in all this time ? " my wife pursued. 



A CIBCLB IN THE WATER. 319 

*'Once from Mrs. Hasketh, to make me promise 
that I would leave the child to her altogether, and not 
write to her, or ask to see her. When I went to the 
cemetery to-day, I did not know but I should find her 
grave, too." 

" Well, it is cruel ! " cried my wife. " I will go and 
see Mrs. Hasketh, but — ^you ought to feel yourself 
that it's hopeless." 

"Yes," he admitted. "There isn't much chance 
unless she should happen to think the same way you 
do : that I had suffered enough, and that it was time 
to stop punishing me." 

My wife looked compassionately at him, and she be- 
gan with a sympathy that I have not always known 
her to show more deserving people, "If it were a 
question of that alone it would be very easy. But 
suppose your daughter were so situated that it would 
be — disadvantageous to her to have it known that you 
were her father ? " 

" You mean that I have no right to mend my bro- 
ken-up life — what there is left of it — by spoiling hers ? 
I have said that to myself. But then, on the other 
hand, I have had to ask myself whether I had any i 
right to keep her from choosing for herself about it 
I sha'n't force myself on her. I expect to leave her 



320 A CIBCLE IN TKB WATER. 

free. Bat if the child cares for me, as she used to, 
hasn't that love — ^not mine for her, but hers for me 
— got some rights too ? " 

His voice sank almost to a hush, and the last word 
was scarcely more than a breathing. " All I want is 
to know where she is, and to let her know that I am 
in the world, and where she can find me. I think she 
ought to have a chance to decide." 

<* I am afraid Mrs. Hasketh may think it would be 
better, for her sake, not to have the chance," my wife 
sighed, and she turned her look from Tedham upon 
me, as if she wished me rather than him to answer. 

"The only way to find out is to ask her," I an- 
swered, non-committally, and rather more lightly than 
I felt about it. In fact, the turn the afiEair had taken 
interested me greatly. It involved that awful mystery 
of the ties by which, unless we are born of our fathers 
and mothers for nothing more than the animals .are, 
we are bound to them in all the things of life, in duty 
and in love transcending every question of interest and 
happiness. The parents' duty to the children is ob- 
vious and plain, but the child's duty to its parents is 
something subtler and more spiritual. It is to be 
more delicately, more religiously, regarded. No one, 
without impiety, can meddle with it from the outside. 



A CIRCLB IN THE WATER. 321 

or interfere in its fulfilment. This and much more 
I said to my wife when we came to talk the matter 
over after Tedham left us. Above all, I urged some- 
thing that came to me so forcibly at the moment that 
I said I had always thought it, and perhaps I really 
believed that I had. " Why should we try to shield 
people from fate ? Isn*t that always wrong ? One is 
fated to be born the child of a certain father, and one 
can no more escape the consequences of his father's 
misdeeds than the doer himself can. Perhaps the 
pain and the shame come from the wish and the at- 
tempt to do so, more than from the fact itself. The 
sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children. 
But the children are innocent of evil, and this visita- 
tion must be for their good, and will be, if they bear 
it willingly." 

" Well, don't try to be that sort of blessing to your 
children, Basil," said my wife, personalizing the case, 
as a woman must. 

After that we tried to account to each other for 
having consented to do what Tedham asked us. Per- 
haps we accused each other somewhat for doing it. 

" I didn't know, my dear, but you were going to 

ask him to come and stay with us," I said. 

"I did want to," she replied. "It seemed so for- 

X 



322 A CIRCLB IN THB WATBR. 

lorn, letting him go out into the night, and find a 
place for himself, when we could just as well have let 
him stay as not. Why shouldn't we have offered him 
a bed for the night, as we would any other acquaint- 
ance ? " 

" Well, you must allow that the circumstances were 
peculiar ! " 

" But if he was sentenced to pay a certain penalty, 
and has paid it, why, as he said, shouldn't we stop 
punishing him ? " 

'*I suppose we can't. There seems to be an in- 
stinctive demand for eternal perdition, for hell, in the 
human heart," I suggested. 

" Well, then, I believe that your instinct, Basil — " 

" Oh, / don't claim it, exclusively ! " 

" Is a survival of savagery, and the sooner we get 
rid of it the better. How queer he seems. It is the 
old Tedham, but all faded in — or out." 

"Yes, he affected me like an etching of himself 
from a womout plate. Still, I'm afraid there's like- 
ness enough left to make trouble, yet. I hope you 
realize what you have gone in for, Isabel ? " 

She answered from the effort that I could see she 
was making, to brace herself already for the work be- 
fore us: 



A CIRCLB IN THE WATER 323 

" Well, we must do this because iwre can't help do- 
ing it, and because, whatever happens, we had no 
right to refuse. You must come with me, Basil ! " 

"I? To Mrs. Hasketh's?" 

" Certainly. I will do the talking, but I shall de- 
pend upon your moral support. We will go over to 
Somerville to-morrow afternoon. We had better not 
lose any time." 

" To-morrow is Sunday." 

" So much the better. They will be sure to be at 
home, if they're there at all, yet." 

She said they, but I knew that she did not expect 
poor old Hasketh really to count in the matter, any 
more than she expected me to do so. 



V. 



The Haskeths lived in a house that withdrew itself 
beliiud tall garden trees in a large lot sloping down 
the hillside, in one of the quieter old streets of their 
suburb. The trees were belted in by a board fence, 
painted a womout white, as far as it was solid, which 
was to the height of one's shoulder ; there it opened 
into a panel work of sticks crossed X-wise, which wore 
a coat of aged green ; the strip above them was set 
with a bristling row of rusty nails, which were sup- 
posed to keep out people who could perfectly well 
have gone in at the gate as we did. There was a brick 
walk from the gate to the door, which was not so far 
back as I remembered it (perhaps because the leaves 
were now off the trees), and there was a border of box 
on either side of the walk. Altogether there was an 
old-fashioned keeping in the place which I should have 
rather enjoyed if I had been coming on any other 
errand ; but now it imparted to uie a notion of people 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 325 

set in their ways, of something severe, something 
hopelessly forbidding. 

I do not think there had ever been much intimacy 
between the Tedhams and the Haskeths, before Ted- 
ham's calamity came upon him. But Mrs. Hasketh 
did not refuse her share of it. She came forward, 
and probably made her husband come forward, in 
Tedham's behalf, and do what hopelessly could be 
done to defend him where there was really no defence, 
and the only thing to be attempted was to show cir- 
cumstances that might perhaps tend to the mitigation 
of his sentence. I do not think they did. Tedham 
had confessed himself and had been proven such a 
thorough rogue, and the company had lately suffered 
so much through operations like his, that, even if it 
could have had mercy, as an individual may, mercy 
was felt to be bad morals, and the case was unrelent- 
ingly pushed. His sentence was of those sentences 
which an eminent jurist once characterized as rather 
dramatic ; it was pronounced not so much in relation to 
his particular offence, as with the purpose of striking 
terror into all offenders like him, who were becoming 
altogether too common. He was made to suffer for 
many other peculators, who had been, or were about 
to be, and was given the full penalty. I was in court 



326 A CIRCLE IN THS WATER. 

when it was pronounced with great solemnity by the 
judge, who read him a lecture in doing so ; I could 
have read the judge another, for I could not help feel- 
ing that it was, more than all the sentences I had ever 
heard pronounced, wholly out of keeping with the 
offence. I met Hasketh coming out of the court-room, 
and I said that I thought it was terribly severe. He 
agreed with me, and as I knew that he and Tedham 
had never liked each other, I inferred a kindliness in 
him which made me his friend, in the way one is the 
friend of a man one never meets. He was a man of 
few words, and he now simply said, " It was unjust,'* 
and we parted. 

For several months after Tedham's conviction, I did 
not think we ought to intrude upon the Haskeths ; but 
then my wife and I both felt that we ought, in de- \ 
cency, to make some effort to see them. They seemed 
pleased, but they made us no formal invitation to 
come again, and we never did. That day, however, I 
caught a glimpse of Tedham's little girl, as she flitted 
through the hall, after we were seated in the parlor ; 
she was in black, a forlorn little shadow in the shall- 
ow ; and I recalled now, as we stood once more on the 
threshold of the rather dreary house, a certain gentle- 
ness of bearing in the child, which I found infinitely 



A CIBCLB IN THE WATER. 327 

pathetic, at that early moment of her desolation. She 
had something of poor Tedham's own style and grace, 
too, which had served him so ill, and this heightened 
the pathos for me. In that figure I had thought of 
his daughter ever since, as often as I had thought of 
her at all ; which was not very often, to tell the truth, 
after the first painful impression of Tedham's afEair 
began to die away in me, or to be effaced by the ac- 
cumulating cares and concerns of my own life. But 
now that we had returned into the presence of that 
bitter sorrow, as it were, the little thing reappeared 
vividly to me in just the way I had seen her so long 
ago. My sense of her forlomness, of her most hapless 
orphanhood, was intensified by t}ie implacable hate 
with which Mrs. Hasketh had then spoken of her fa- 
ther, in telling us that the child was henceforth to 
bear her husband's name, and had resentfully scorned 
the merit Tedham tried to make of giving her up to 
thera. " And if I can help it," she had ended, with 
a fierceness I had never forgotten, " she shall not hear 
him mentioned again, or see him as long as I live." 
My wife and I now involuntarily dropped our voices, 
or rather they sank into our throats, as we sat waiting 
in the dim parlor, after the maid took our cards to 
Mr. and Mrs. Hasketh. We tried to make talk, but we 



328 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

coald not, and we were funereally quiet, when Has- 
keth came pottering and peering in, and shook hands 
with both of us. He threw open half a blind at one 
of the windows, and employed himself in trying to 
put up the shade, to gain time, as I thought, before 
he should be obliged to tell us that his wife could not 
see us. Then he came to me, and asked, " Won't you 
let me take your hat ? " as such people do, in expres- 
sion of a vague hospitality ; and I let him take it, and 
put it mouth down on the marble centre-table, beside 
the large, gilt-edged, black-bound family Bible. He 
drew a chair near me, in a row with my wife and my- 
self, and said, '^ It is quite a number of years since 
we met, Mrs. March," and he looked across me at her. 

" Yes, I am almost afraid to think how many," she 
answered. 

" Family well ? " 

"Yes, our children are both very well, Mr. Has- 
keth. You seem to be looking very well, too." 

" Thank you, I have nothing to complain of. I am 
not so young as I was. But that is about all." 

" I hope Mrs. Hasketh is well ? " 

" Yes, thank you, she is quite well, for her. She 
is never very strong. She will be down in a moment." 

" Oh, I shall be so glad to see her." 



A CIRCLE IN THB WATER. 329 

The conversation, which might be said to have 
flagged from the beginning, stopped altogether at this 
point, and though I was prompted by several looks 
from my wife to urge it forward, I could think of 
nothing to do so with, and we sat without speaking 
till we heard the stir of skirts on the stairs in the hall 
outside, and then my wife said, **Ah, that is Mrs. 
Hasketh." 

I should have known it was Mrs. Hasketh without 
this sort of anticipation, I think, even if I had never 
seen her before, she was so like my expectation of 
what that sort of woman would be in the lapse of 
time, with her experience of life. The severity that 
I had seen come and go in her countenance in former 
days was now so seated that she had no other expres- 
sion, and I may say without caricature that she gave 
us a frown of welcome. That is, she made us feel, in 
spite of a darkened countenance, that she was really 
willing to see us in her house, and that she took our 
coming as a sign of amity. I suppose that the indur- 
ation of her spirit was the condition of her being able 
to bear at all what had been laid on her to bear, and 
her burden had certainly not been light. 

At her appearance her husband, without really stir- 
ring at all, had the effect of withdrawing into the 



330 A CIRCLE IN THS WATER. 

background, where, indeed, I tacitly joined him ; and 
the two ladies remained in charge of the drama, while 
he and I conversed, as it were, in dumb show. Apart 
from my sympathy with her in the matter, I was very 
curious to see how my wife would play her part, which 
seemed to me far the more difficult of the two, since 
she must make all the positive movements. 

After some civilities so obviously perfunctory that I 
admired the force of mind in the women who uttered 
them, my wife said, " Mrs. Hasketh, we have come 
on an errand that I know will cause you pain, and I 
needn't say that we haven't come willingly." 

" Is it about Mr. Tedham ? " asked Mrs. Hasketh, 
and I remembered now that she had always used as 
much ceremony in speaking of him; it seemed rather 
droll now, but still it would not have been in character 
with her to call him simply Tedham, as we did, in 
speaking of him. 

" Yes," said my wife. " I don't know whether you 
had kept exact account of the time. It was a surprise 
to us, for we hadn't. He is out, you know.'* 

" Yes — at noon, yesterday. I wasn't likely o for- 
get the day, or the hour, or the minute." Mrs. Has- 
keth said this without relaxing the severity of her 
face at all, and I confess my heart went down. 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 331 

But my wife seemed not to have lost such courage 
as she had come with, at least. *' He has been to see 
us—" 

*' I presumed so," said Mrs. Hasketh, and as she 
said nothing more, Mrs. March took the word again. 

" I shall have to tell you why he came — why we 
came. It was something that we did not wish to enter 
into, and at first my husband refused outright. But 
when I saw him, and thought it over, I did not sec 
how we could refuse. After all, it is something you 
must have expected, and that you must have been ex- 
pecting at once, if you say — " 

" I presume," Mrs. Hasketh said, " that he wished 
you to ask after his daughter. I can understand why 
he did not come to us." She let one of those dread- 
ful silences follow, and again my wife was forced to 
speak. 

''It is something that we didn't mean to press at 
all, Mrs. Hasketh, and I won't say anything more. 
Only, if you care to send any word to him he will be 
at our house this evening again, and I will give him 
your message." She rose, not in resentment, as I 
could see (and I knew that she had not come upon 
this errand without making herself Tedham's partisan 
in some measure) but with sincere good feeling and 



332 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

appreciation of Mrs. Hasketh's position. I rose with 
her, and Hasketh rose too. 

" Oh, don't go 1 " Mrs. Hasketh broke out, as if 
surprised. " You couldn't help coming, and I don't 
blame you at all. I don't blame Mr. Tedham even. I 
didn't suppose I should ever forgive him. But there I 
that's all long ago, and the years do change us. They 
change us all, Mrs. March, and I don't feci as if I had 
the right to judge anybody the way I used to judge 
him. Sometimes it surprises me. I did hate him, 
and I don't presume I've got very much love for him 
now, but I don't want to punish him any more. That's 
gone out of me. I don't know how it came to go, 
but it went. I wish he hadn't ever got anything more 
to do with us, but I'm afraid we haven't had all our 
punishment yet, whatever he has. It seems to me as 
if the sight of Mr. Tedham would make me sick.'* 

I found such an insufficiency in this statement of 
feeling that I wanted to laugh, but I perceived that it 
did not appeal to my wife's sense of humor. She 
said, '^ I can understand how you feel about it, Mrs. 
Hasketh." 

Mrs. Hasketh seemed grateful for the sympathy. 
" I presume," she went on, and I noted how often she 
used the quaint old-fashioned Yankee word, '' that you 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 333 

feel as if you had almost as mach right to hate him as 
I had, and that if you could overlook what he tried to 
do to you, I might overlook what he did do to his 
own family. But as I see it, the case is different. 
He failed when he tried to put the blame on Mr. 
March, and he succeeded only too well in putting the 
shame on his own family. You could forgive it, and 
it would be all the more to your credit because you 
forgave it, but his family might have forgiven it ten 
times over, and still they would be in disgrace through 
him. That is the way I looked at it." 

^' And I assure you, Mrs. Hasketh, that is the way 
I looked at it, too," said my wife. 

" So, when it seems hard that I should have taken 
his child from him," the woman continued, as if still 
arguing her case, and she probably was arguing it with 
herself, "and did what I could to make her forget 
him, I think it had better be considered whose sake I 
was doing it for, and whether I had any right to do 
different. I did not think I had at the time, or when 
I had to begin to act. I knew how I felt toward Mr. 
Tedham ; I never liked him ; I never wanted my sister 
to marry him ; and when his trouble came, I told Mr. 
Hasketh that it was no more than I had expected all 
along. He was that kind of a man, and he was sure 



334 A CIRCLB IN THB WATBR. 

to show it, one way or other, sooner or later; and I 
was not disappointed when he did what he did. I 
had to guard against my own feeling, and to put my- 
self out of the question, and that was what I tried to 
do when I got him to give up the child to us and let 
her take our name. It was the same as a legal adop- 
tion, and he freely consented to it, or as freely as he 
could, considering where he was. But he knew it 
was for her good as well as we did. There was no- 
body for her to look to but us, and he knew that ; his 
own family had no means, and, in fact, he had no 
family but his father and mother, and when they died, 
that same first year, there was no one left to suffer 
from him but his child. The question was how much 
she ought to be allowed to suffer, and whether she 
should be allowed to suffer at all, if it could be helped. 
If it was to be prevented, it was to be by deadening 
her to him, by killing out her affection for him, and 
much as I hated Mr. Tedham, I could not bring my- 
self to do that, though I used to think I would do it. 
He was very fond of her, I don't deny that ; I don't 
think it was any merit in him to love such a child, 
but it was the best thing about him, and I was willing 
it should count. But then there was another thing 
that I couldn't bring myself to, and that was to tell 



A CIRCLE IN THH WATER. 335 

the child, up and down, all about it ; and I presume 
that there I was weak. Well, you may say I was 
weak ! But I couldn't, I simply couldn't. She was 
only between seven and eight when it happened — " 

" I thought she was older," I ventured to put in, 
remembering my impressions as to her age the last 
time I saw her with her father. 

"No," said Mrs. Hasketh, "she always appeared 
rather old for her age, and that made me all the more 
anxious to know just how much of the trouble she 
had taken in. I suppose it was all a kind of awful 
mystery to her, as most of our trials are to children ; 
but when her father was taken from her, she seemed 
to think it was something she mustn't ask about; 
there are a good many things in the world that chil- 
dren feel that way about — ^how they come into it, for 
one thing, and how they go out of it ; and by and by 
she didn't speak of it. She had some of his light- 
ness, and I presume that helped her through ; I was 
afraid it did sometimes. Then, at other times, I 
thought she had got the notion he was in for life, and 
that was the reason she didn't speak of him ; she had 
given him up. Then I used to wonder whether it 
wasn't my duty to take her to see him — where he was. 
But when I came to find out that you had to see them 



336 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

through the bars, and with the kind of clothes they 
wear, I felt that I might as well kill the child at once ; 
it was for her sake I didn't take her. You may be 
sure I wasn't anxious for the responsibility of not do- 
ing it either, the way I knew I felt toward Mr. Ted- 
ham." 

I did not like her protesting so much as this ; but I 
saw that it was a condition of her being able to deal 
with herself in the matter, and I had no doubt she was 
telling the truth. 

" You never can know just how much of a thing 
children have taken in, or how much they have under- 
stood," she continued, repeating herself, as she did 
throughout, '^ and I had to keep this in mind when I 
had my talks with Fay about her father. She wanted 
to write to him at first, and of course I let her — ^" 

My wife and I could not forbear exchanging a 
glance of intelligence, which Mrs. Hasketh intercepted. 

" I presume he told you ? " she asked. 

" Yes," I said, " he showed us the letter." 

" Well, it was something that had to be done. As 
long as she questioned me about him, I put her off 
the best way I could, and after a while she seemed to 
give up questioning me of her own accord. Perhaps 
she really began to understand it, or some of the cruel 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 337 

little things she played with said something. I was 
always afraid of the other children throwing it up to 
her, and that was one reason we went away for three 
or four years and let our place here." 

"I didn't know you were gone," I said toward 
Hasketh, who cleared his throat to explain : 

" I had some interests at that time in Canada. We 
were at Quebec." 

" It shows what a rush our life is," I philosophized, 
with the implication that Hasketh and I had been old 
friends, and I ought to have noticed that I had not 
met him during the time of his absence. The fact 
was we had never come so near intimacy as when we 
exchanged confidences concerning the severity of Ted- 
ham's sentence in coming out of the court-room to- 
gether. 

" / hadn't any interest in Canada, except to get the 

child away," said Mrs. Hasketh. "Sometimes it 

seemed strange we should be in Canada, and not Mr. 

Tedham ! She got acquainted with some little girls 

who were going to a convent school there as externes 

—outside pupils, you know," Mrs. Hasketh explained 

to my wife. " She got very fond of one of them — 

she is a child of very warm affections. I never denied 

that Mr. Tedham had warm affections — and when her 

Y 



338 A CIRCLE IN THE WATBB. 

little girl friend went into the convent to go on with 
her education there, Fay wanted to go too, and — we 
let her. That was when she was twelve, and Mr. Has- 
keth felt that he ought to come back and look after 
his business here; and we left her in the convent. 
Just as soon as she was out of the way, and out of the 
question, it seemed as if I got to feeling differently 
toward Mr. Tedham. I don't mean to say I ever got 
to like him, or that I do to this day ; but I saw that 
he had some rights, too, and for years and years I 
wanted to take the child and tell her when he was 
coming out. I used to ask myself what right I even 
had to keep the child from the suffering. The suffer- 
ing was hers by rights, and she ought to go through 
it. I got almost crazy thinking it over. I got to 
thinking that her share of her father's shame might 
be the very thing, of all things, that was to discipline 
her and make her a good and useful woman ; and that's 
much more than being a happy one, Mrs. March ; we 
can't any of us be truly happy, no matter what's done 
for us. I tried to make believe that I was sparing her 
alone, but I knew I was sparing myself, too, and that 
made it harder to decide." She suddenly addressed 
herself to us both : " What would you have done ? " 
My wife and I looked at each other in a dismay in 



A CIRCLE IN THB WATER. 339 

which a glance from old Hasketh assured us that we 
had his sympathy. It would have been far simpler 
if Mrs. Hasketh had been up and down with us as 
Tedham's emissaries, and refused to tell us anything 
of his daughter, and left us to report to him that he 
must find her for himself if he found her at all. This 
was what we had both expected, and we had come 
prepared to take back that answer to Tedham, and 
discharge our whole duty towards him in its delivery. 
This change in the woman who had hated him so 
fiercely, but whose passion had worn itself down to 
the underlying conscience with the lapse of time, cer- 
tainly complicated the case. I was silent ; my wife 
said : ^^ I don't know what I should have done, Mrs. 
Hasketh ; " and Mrs. Hasketh resumed : 

" If I did wrong in trying to separate her life from 
her father's, I was punished for it, because when I 
wanted to undo my work, I didn't know how to begin ; 
I presume that's the worst of a wrong thing. Well, I 
never did begin ; but now I've got to. The time's 
come, and I presume it's as easy now as it ever could 
be ; easier. He's out and it's over, as far as the law 
is concerned; and if she chooses she can see him. 
I'll prepare her for it as well as I can, and he can 
come if she wishes it." 



340 A CIRCLE IN THS WATER. 

" Do you mean that he can see her here f " my wife 
asked. 

'^ Yes/' said Mrs. Hasketh, with a sort of strong 
submission. 

" At once ? To-day ? " 

" No," Mrs. Hasketh faltered. " I didnt want hira 
to see her just the first day, or before I saw him ; and 
I thought he might try to. She's visiting at some 
friends in Providence ; but she'll be back to-morrow. 
He can come to-morrow night, if she says so. He 
can come and find out But if he was anything of a 
man he wouldn't want to." 

** I'm afraid," I ventured, " he isn't anything of 
that kind of man." 



VI. 



" Now, how unhandsome life is ! " I broke out, at 
one point on our way home, after we had turned the 
afiEair over in every light, and then dropped it, and 
then taken it up again. '^ It's so graceless, so taste- 
less ! Why didn't Tedham die before the expiration 
of his term and solve all this knotty problem with 
dignity ? Why should he have lived on in this shabby 
way and come out and wished to see his daughter? 
If there had been anything dramatic, anything artistic 
in the man's nature, he would have renounced the 
claim his mere paternity gives him on her love, and 
left word with me that he had gone away and would 
never be heard of any more. That was the least he 
could have done. If he had wanted to do the thing 
heroically — and I wouldn't have denied him that sat- 
isfaction — ^he would have walked into that pool in the 
old cockpit and lain down among the autumn leaves 
on its surface, and made an end of the whole trouble 
with his own burdensome and worthless existence. 



342 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

That would truly have put an end to the evil he 
began." 

" I wouldn't be — ^impious, Basil," said my wife, 
with a moment's hesitation for the word. Then she 
sighed and added, '^ Yes, it seems as if that would be 
the only thing that could end it There doesn't really 
seem to be any provision in life for ending such 
things. He will have to go on and make more and 
more trouble. Poor man ! I feel almost as sorry for 
him as I do for her. I guess he hasn't expiated his 
sin yet, as fully as he thinks he has." 

" And then," I went on, with a strange pleasure I 
always get out of the poignancy of a despair not my 
own, '^ suppose that this isn't all. Suppose that the 
girl has met some one who has become interested in 
her, and whom she will have to tell of this stain upon 
her name ? " 

" Basil ! " cried my wife, " that is cruel of you ! 
You knew I was keeping away from that point, and it 
seems as if you tried to make it as afflicting as you 
could — ^the whole affair." 

" Well, I don't believe it's as bad as that. Probably 
she hasn't met any one in that way ; at any rate, it's 
pure conjecture on my part, and my conjecture doesn't 
make it so." 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 343 

^^ It doesn't unmake it, either, for you to say that 
now," my wife lamented. 

" Well, well ! Don't let's think about it, then. The 
case is bad enough as it stands, Heaven knows, and 
we've got to grapple with it as soon as we get home. 
We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, un- 
less something has happened to him. I wonder if 
anything can have been good enough to happen to 
Tedham, overnight." 

I got a little miserable fun out of this, but my wife 
would not laugh; she would not be placated in any 
way ; she held me in a sort responsible for the dilem- 
ma I had conjectured, and inculpated me in some 
measure for that which had really presented itself. 

When we reached home she went directly to her 
room and had a cup of tea sent to her there, and the 
children and I had rather a solemn time at the table 
together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at 
the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes 
or thin sliced things for the warm abundance of the 
week-day dinner ; with the gloom of Mrs. March's ab- 
sence added, this was a very funereal feast indeed. 

We went on quite silently for a while, for the chil- 
dren saw I was preoccupied; but at last I asked, 
" Has anybody called this afternoon ? " 



344 A CIBCLB IN THE WATER. 

. " I don't know exactly whether it was a call or not," 
said my daughter, with a nice feeling for the social 
proprieties which ^would have amased me at another 
time. *' But that strange person who was here last 
night, was here again." 

"Oh!" 

" He said he would come in the evening. I forgot 
to tell you. Papa, what kind of person is he ? " 

" I don't know. What makes you ask ? " 

" Why, we think he wasn't always a workingman. 
Tom says he looks as if he had been in some kind of 
business, and then failed." 

** What makes you think that, Tom ? " I asked the 
boy. 

" Oh, I don't know. He speaks so well." 

" He always spoke well, poor fellow," I said with a 
vague amusement. " And you're quite right, Tom. 
He was in business once and he failed — badly." 

I went up to my wife's room and told her what the 
children had said of Tedham's call, and that he was 
coming back again. 

" Well, then, I think I shall let you see him alone, 
Basil. I'm completely worn out, and besides there's 
no reason why I should see him. I hope you'll get 
through with him quickly. There isn't really any- 



A CIRCLE IN TKE WATER. 345 

thing for you to say, except that we have seen the 
Haskeths, and that if he is still bent upon it he can 
find his daughter there to-morrow evening. I want 
you to promise me that you will confine yourself to 
that, Basil, and not say a single word more. There is 
no sense in our involving ourselves in the affair. We 
have done all we could, and more than he had any 
right to ask of us, and now I am determined that he 
shall not get anything more out of you. Will you 
promise ? " 

" You may be sure, my dear, that I don't wish to 
get any more involved in this coil of sin and misery 
than you do," I began. 

" That isn't promising," she interrupted. " I want 
you to promise you'll say just that and no more." 

" Oh, I'll promise fast enough, if that's all you 
want," I said. 

" I don't trust you a bit, Basil," she lamented. 
" Now, I will explain to you all about it. I've thought 
the whole thing over." 

She did explain, at much greater length than she 
needed, and she was still giving me some very solemn 
charges when the bell rang, and I knew that Tedham 
had come. " Now, remember what I've told you," 
she called after me, as I went to the door, '^ and be 



346 A CIBCLE IN THE WATEB. 

sure to tell me, when you come back, just how he takes 
it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I know you'll 
make the most dreadful mess of it ! " 

By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so 
curious to see Tedham again that I should have been 
willing to do much worse, rather than forego my meet- 
ing with him. I hope that there was some better 
feeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the 
present, call it curiosity. 

I met him in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and 
put a witless cheeriness into the voice I bade him 
good-evening with, while I gave him my hand and led 
the way into the parlor. 

The twenty-four hours that had elapsed since I saw 
him there before had estranged him in a way that I 
find it rather hard to describe. He had shrunk from 
the approach to equality in which wc had parted, and 
there was a sort of consciousness of disgrace in his 
look, such as might have shown itself if he had passed 
the time in a low debauch. But undoubtedly he had 
done nothing of the kind, and this effect in him was 
from a purely moral cause. He sat down on the edge 
of a chair, instead of leaning back, as he had done the 
night before. 

" Well, Tedham," I began, " we have seen your sis- 



A CIBCLE IN THE WATER. 347 

ter-in-law, and I may as well tell you at once that, so 
far as she is concerned, there will be nothing in the 
way of your meeting your daughter. The Haskeths 
are living at their old place in Sonlerville, and your 
daughter will be with them there to-morrow night — 
just at this moment she is away — and you can find 
her there, then, if you wish." 

Tedham kept those deep eye-hollows of his bent 
upon me, and listened with a passivity which did not 
end when I ceased to speak. I had said all that my 
wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, 
and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as 
we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking 
threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter 
end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one 
makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, " Of course, 
it's for you to decide whether you will or not." 

" What do you mean ? " asked Tedham, feebly, but 
as if he were physically laying hold of me for help. 

"Why, I mean — I mean — my dear fellow, you 
know what I mean I Whether you had better do it." 
This was the very thing I had not intended to do, for 
I saw how wise my wife's plan was, and how we really 
had nothing more to do with the matter, after having 
satisfied the utmost demands of humanity. 



348 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

" You think I had better not," said Tedham. 

" No," I said, but I felt that I was saying it too 
late, '^ I don*t think anything about it" 

" I have been thinking about it, too," said Tedham, 
as if I had confessed and not denied having an opin- 
ion in the matter. *^ I have been thinking about it 
ever since I saw you hist night, and I don't believe I 
have slept, for thinking of it. I know how you and 
Mrs. March feel about it, and I have tried to see it 
from your point of view, and now I believe I do. I 
am not going to see my daughter ; I am going away." 

He stood up, in token of his purpose, and at the 
same moment my wife entered the room. She must 
have been hurrying to do so from the moment I left 
her, for she had on a fresh dress, and her hair had the 
effect of being suddenly, if very effectively, massed 
for the interview from the dispersion in which I had 
lately seen it. She swept me with a glance of re- 
proach, as she went up to Tedham, in the pretence 
that he had risen to meet her, and gave him her hand. 
I knew that she divined all that had passed between 
us, but she said : 

** Mr. March has told you that we have seen Mrs. 
Haskcth, and that you can find your daughter at her 
house to-morrow evening ? " 



A CIBCLB IN THB WATER. 349 

" YeSy and I have just been telling him that I am 
not going to see her." 

"That is very foolish — very wrong!" my wife 
began. 

" I know you must say so," Tedham replied, with 
more dignity and force than I could have expected, 
" and I know how kind you and Mr. March have been. 
But you must see that I am right — that she is the 
only one to be considered at all." 

"Right! How are you right? Have you been 
suggesting that, my dear ? "v demanded my wife, with 
a gentle despair of me in her voice. 

It almost seemed to me that I had, but Tedham 
came to my rescue most unexpectedly. 

" No, Mrs. March, he hasn't said anything of the 
kind to me ; or, if he has, I haven't heard it. But 
you intimated, yourself, last night, that she might be 
so situated — " 

" I was a wicked simpleton," cried my wife, and I 
forebore to triumph, even by a glance at her; " to put 
my doubts between you and your daughter in any 
way. It was romantic, and — and— disgusting. It's 
not only your right to see her, it's your duty. At 
least it's your duty to let her decide whether she will 
let you sec her. What nonsense! Of coarse she 



850 A CIBCLE IK THE WATEB. 

will ! She must bear her part in it. She ought not 
to escape it, even if she could. Now you must just 
drop all idea of going away, and you must stay, and 
you must go to see your daughter. There is no other 
way to do." 

Tedham shook his head stubbornly. "She has 
borne her share, already, and I won't inflict my pen- 
alty on her innocence — " 

"Innocence? It's because she is innocent that it 
must be inflicted upon her ! That is what innocence 
is in the world for ! " 

Tedham looked back at her in a dull bewilderment. 
" I can't get back to that. It seemed so once ; but 
now it looks selfish, and I'm afraid of it. I am not 
the one to take that ground. It might do for you — " 

" Well, then, let it do for me ! " I confess that I 
was astonished at this turn, or should have been, if I 
could be astonished at any turn a woman takes. " I 
will see her for you, if you wish, and I will tell her 
just how it is with you, and then she can decide for 
herself. You have certainly no right to decide for 
her, whether she will see you or not, have you ! " 

" No," Tedham admitted. 

" Well, then, sit down and listen." 

He sat down, and my wife reasoned it all out with 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 361 

him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Ted- 
ham proposed to do seemed not only sentimental and 
foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that I 
admired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. 
She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the 
tastes and the nerves and the prejudices could be as 
illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question 
large enough to engage the hereditary powers of her 
New England nature she showed herself a dialectician 
worthy of her Puritan ancestry. 

Tedham rose when she had made an end ; and when 
we both expected him to agree with her and obey her, 
he said, " Very likely you are right. I once saw it all 
that way myself, but I don't see it so now, and I can't 
do it. Perhaps we shouldn't care for each other; at 
any rate, it's too much to risk, and I can't do it. 
Good-by." He began sidling toward the door. 

I would have detained him, but my wife made me 
a sign not to interfere. " But surely, Mr. Tedham," 
she pleaded, " you are going to leave some word for 
her — or for Mrs. Hasketh to give her ? " 

" No," he answered, " I don't think I will. If I 
don't appear, then she won't see me, and that will be 
all there is of it" 

** Yes, but Mrs. Hasketh will probably tell her that 



352 A CmCLB IN THB WATER. 

you have asked about her, and will prepare her for 
your coming, and then if you don't come—" 

" What time is it, March ? " Tedham asked. 

I took out my watch. " It's nine o'clock." I was 
surprised to find it no later. 

" I can get over to Somerville before ten, can't I ? 
I'll go and tell Mrs. Hasketh I am not coming." 

We could not prevent his getting away, by force, 
and we had used all the arguments we could have 
hoped to detain him with. As he opened the door 
to go out into the night, " But, Tedham ! " I called to 
him, " if anything happens, where are we to find you, 
hear of you ? " 

He hesitated. " I will let you know. Well, good- 
night." 

" I suppose this isn't the end, Isabel," I said, after 
we had turned from looking blankly at the closed 
door, and listening to Tedham's steps, fainter and 
fainter on the board-walk to the gate. 

** There never is an end to a thing like this ! " she 
returned, with a passionate sigh of pity. " Oh, what 
a terrible thing an evil deed is ! It carCt end. It has 
to go on and on forever. Poor wretch I He thought 
he had got to the end of his misdeed, when he had 
suffered the punishment for it, but it was only just 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 353 

beginning then ! Now, you see, it has a perfectly 
new lease of life. It^s as if it had just happened, as 
far as the worst consequences are concerned." 

** Yes," I assented. " By the way, that was a great 
idea of yours about the ofiice of innocence in the 
world, Isabel ! " 

" Why, Basil ! " she cried, " you don't suppose I 
believed in such a monstrous thing as that, do you ? " 

" You made me believe in it." 

" Well, then, I can tell you that I merely said it so 
as to convince him that he ought to let his daughter 
decide whether she would see him or not, and it had 
nothing whatever to do with the matter. Do you 
think you could find me anything to eat, dear ? Fm 
perfectly famishing, and it doesn't seem as if I could 
stir a step tiU I've had a bite of something." 

She sank down on the sofa in the hall in proof of 
her statement, and I went out into the culinary re- 
gions (deserted of their dwellers after our early tea) 
and made her up a sandwich along with the one I had 
the Sunday-night habit of myself. I found some 
half -bottles of ale on the ice, and I brought one of 
them, too. Before we had emptied it we resigned 
ourselves to what we could not help in Tedham's case ; 

perhaps we even saw it in a more hopeful light. 

Z 



VIL 



The next day was one of those lax Mondays which 
come before the Tuesdays and Wednesdays when bus- 
iness has girded itself up for the week, and I got 
home from the office rather earlier than usual. My 
wife met me with, " Why, what has happened ? " 

" Nothing," I said ; " I had a sort of presentiment 
that something had happened here." 

'* Well, nothing at all has happened, and you have 
had your presentiment for your pains, if that^s what 
you hurried home for." 

I justified myself as well as I could, and I added, 
** That wretched Tedham has been in my mind all day. 
I think he has made a ridiculous mistake. As if he 
could stop the harm by taking himself off ! The harm 
goes on independently of him ; it is hardly his harm 
any more." 

**That is the way it has seemed to me, too, all 
day," said my wife. "You don't suppose he has 



A CIRCLB IN THE WATER. 355 

been out of my mind either ? I wish we had never 
had anything to do with him." 

A husband likes to abuse his victory, when he has 
his wife quite at his mercy, but the case was so en- 
tirely in my favor that for once I forbore. I could 
see that she was suffering for having put into Ted- 
ham^s head the notion which had resulted in this er- 
ror, and I considered that she was probably suffering 
enough. Besides, I was afraid that if I said anything 
it would bring out the fact that I had myself intimated 
the question again which his course had answered so 
mistakenly. I could well imagine that she was grate- 
ful for my forbearance, and I left her to this admir- 
able state of mind while I went off to put myself a 
little in shape after my day's work and my journey out 
of town. I kept thinking how perfectly right in the 
affair Tedham's simple, selfish instinct had been, and 
how our several consciences had darkened counsel; 
that quaint Tuscan proverb came into my mind : Las- 
cia fare Iddio, ch* h un buon vecchio. We had not 
been willing to let God alone, or to trust his leading ; 
we had thought to improve on his management of the 
case, and to invent a principle for poor Tedham that 
should be better for him to act upon than the love of 
his child, which God had put into the man's heart. 



356 A CIRCLB IN THE WATER. 

and which was probably the best thing that had ever 
been there. Well, we had got our come-uppings, as 
the country people say, and however we might reason 
it away we had made ourselves responsible for the 
event 

There came a ring at the door tliat made my own 
heart jump into my mouth. I knew it was Tedham 
come back again, and I was still in the throes of but- 
toning on my collar when my wife burst into my room. 
I smiled round at her as gayly as I could with the 
collar-buttoning grimace on my face. " All right, I'll 
be down in a minute. You just go and talk to him 
till—" 

" Him ? " she gasped back ; and I have never been 
quite sure of her syntax to this day. " Them ! It's 
Mr. and Mrs. Ilasketh, and some young lady ! I saw 
them through the window coming up the walk." 

** Good Lord ! You don't suppose it's Tedham's 
daughter ? " 

" How do I know ? Oh, how could you be dressing 
at a time like this ! " 

It did seem to me rather heinous, and I did not 
try to defend myself, even when she added, from her 
access of nervousness, in something like a whimper, 
" It seems to me you're always dressing, Basil ! " 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 357 

" ril be right with you, my dear," I answered, pen- 
itently ; and, in fact, by the time the maid brought up 
the Haskeths' cards I was ready to go down. We 
certainly needed each other's support, and I do not 
know but we descended the stairs hand in hand, and 
entered the parlor leaning upon each other's shoulders. 
The Haskeths, who were much more deeply concerned, 
were not apparently so much moved. We shook hands 
with them, and then Mrs. Hasketh said to us in suc- 
cession, " My niece, Mrs. March ; Mr. March, my 
niece." 

The young girl had risen, and stood veiled before 
us, and a sort of heart-breaking appeal expressed it- 
self in the gentle droop of her figure, which did the 
whole office of her hidden face. The Haskeths were 
dressed, as became their years, in a composite fashion 
of no particular period; but I noticed at once, with 
the fondness I have for what is pretty in the modes, 
that Miss Tedham wore one of the latest costumes, 
and that she was not only a young girl, but a young 
lady, with all that belongs to the outward seeming of 
one of the gentlest of the kind. It struck me as the 
more monstrous, therefore, that she should be involved 
in the coil of her father's inexpiable offence, which 
entangled her whether he stayed or whether he went. 



358 A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

It was well enough that the Haskeths should still be 
made miserable through him; it belonged to their 
years and experience; they would soon end, at any 
rate, and it did not matter whether their remnant of 
life was dark or bright. But this child had a right to 
a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and 
looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable 
indignation that we feel in the presence of death when 
it is the young and fair who have died. .Here is a 
miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not to have been. 

I thought that ray wife, in the effusion of sympathy, 
would have perhaps taken the girl in her arms; but 
probably she knew that the dropped veil was a sign 
that there was to be no embracing. She put out her 
hand, and the girl took it with her gloved hand ; but 
though the outward forms of their greeting were so 
cold, I fancied an instant understanding and kindness 
between them. 

" My niece," Mrs. Ilasketh explained, when we were 
all seated, *' came home this afternoon, instead of this 
morning, when we expected her." 

My wife said, " Oh, yes," and after a moment, a 
very painful moment, in which I think we all tried 
to imagine something that would delay the real busi- 
ness, Mrs. Hasketh began again. 



A CIRCLE IK THE WATER. 359 

** Mrs. March," she said, in a low voice, and with a 
curious, apologetic kind of embarassment, " we have 
come — Fay wanted we should come and ask if you 
knew about her father — " 

" Why, didn't he come to you last night ? " my wife 
began. 

" Yes, he did," said Mrs. Hasketh, in a crest-fallen 
sort "But we thought — we thought — you might 
know where he was. And Fay — Did he tell you 
what he was going to do ? " 

" Yes," my wife gasped back. 

The young girl put aside her veil in turning to my 
wife, and showed a face which had all the ill-starred 
beauty of poor Tedham, with something more in it 
that she never got from that handsome reprobate — 
conscience, soul — whatever we choose to call a certain 
effluence of heaven which blesses us with rest and faith 
whenever we behold it in any human countenance. 
She was very young-looking, and her voice had a wist- 
ful innocence. 

"Do you think my father will be here again to- 
night ? Oh, I must see him ! " 

I perceived that ray wife could not speak, and I 
said, to gain time, " Why, I've been expecting him to 
come in at any moment ;" and this was true enough. 



360 A CIBCLE IN THE WATEB. 

»• 

" I guess he's not very far off," said old Hasketh. 
"I don't believe but what he'll turn up." Within 
the comfort these words were outwardly intended to 
convey to the anxious child, I felt an inner contempt 
of Tedham, a tacit doubt of the man's nature, which 
was more to me than the explicit faith in his return. 
For some reason Hasketh had not trusted Tedham's 
decision, and he might very well have done this with- 
out impugning anything but the weakness of his will. 

My wife now joined our side, apparently because it 
was the only theory of the case that could be openly 
urged. " Oh, yes, I am sure. In fact he promised 
my husband to let him know later where he was. 
Didn't you understand him so, my dear ? " 

I had not understood him precisely to this effect, 
but I answered, " Yes, certainly," and we began to 
reassure one another more and more. We talked on 
and on to one another, but all the time we talked at 
the young girl, or for her encouragement ; but I sup- 
pose the rest felt as I did, that we were talking pro- 
visionally, or without any stable ground of conviction. 
For my part, though I indulged that contempt of 
Tedham, I still had a lurking fear that the wretch had 
finally and forever disappeared, and I had a vision, 
very disagreeable and definite, of Tedham lying face 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 361 

downward in the pool of the old cockpit and shone on 
by the stars in the hushed circle of the woods. Si- 
multaneously I heard his daughter saying, "I can't 
understand why he shouldn't have come to us, or 
should have put it off. He couldn't think I didn't 
wish to see him." And now I looked at my wife 
aghast, for I perceived that the Haskeths must have 
lacked the courage to tell her that her father had de- 
cided himself not to see her again, and that they had 
brought her to us that we might stay her with some 
hopes, false or true, of meeting him soon. " I don't 
know what they mean," she went on, appealing from 
them to us, " by saying that it might be better if I 
never saw him again ! " 

" I don't say that any more, child," said Mrs. Has- 
keth, with affecting humility. " I'm sure there isn't 
any one in the whole world that I would bless the 
sight of half as much." 

" I could have come before, if I'd known where he 
was ; or, if I had only known, I might have been here 
Saturday ! " She broke into a piteous lamentation, 
with tears and sobs that wrung my heart and made me 
feel like one of a conspiracy of monsters. ^' But he 
couldn't — ^he couldn't — ^have thought I didn't want to 
see him I " 



362 A CIBCLE IN THE WATER. 

It was a very trying moment for us all, and I think 
that if we had, any of us, had our choice, we should 
have preferred to be in her place rather than our own. 
We miserably did what we could to comfort her, and 
we at last silenced her with I do not know what pre- 
tences. The affair was quite too much for me, and I 
made a feint of having heard the children calling me, 
and I went out into the hall. I felt that there was a 
sort of indecency in my witnessing that poor young 
thing^s emotion ; women might see it, but a man ought 
not. Perhaps old Hasketh felt the same ; he followed 
me out, and when we were beyond hearing, even if he 
had spoken aloud, he dropped his voice to a thick 
murmur and said, **' This has all been a mistake. We 
have had to get out of it with the girl the best we 
could; and we don't dare to let her know that Ted- 
ham isn't coming back any more. You noticed from 
what she said that my wife tried to make believe it 
might be well if he didn't ; but she had to drop that ; 
it set the girl wild. She hasn't got anything but the 
one idea : that she and her father belong to each other, 
and that they must be together for the rest of their 
lives. A curious thing about it is," and Hasketh sank 
his voice still lower to say this, '* that she thinks that 
if he's taken the punishment that was put upon him 



A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 363 

he has atoned for what he did; and if any one tries to 
make him suffer more he does worse than Tedham did, 
and he's flying in the face of Providence. Perhaps 
it's so.» I'm afraid," Hasketh continued, with the sat- 
isfaction men take in blaming their wives under the 
cover of sympathy, " that Mrs. Hasketh is going to 
feel it more and more, as time goes on, unless Tedham 
turns up. I was never in favor of trying to have the 
child forget him, or be separated from him in any 
way. That kind of thing can't be made to work, and 
I don't suppose, when you come to boil it down, that 
it's essentially right. This universe, I take it, isn't an 
accident in any particular, and if she's his daughter 
it's because she was meant to be, and to bear and share 
with him. You see it was a great mistake not to pre- 
pare the child for it sooner, and tell her just when 
Tedham would be out, so that if she wanted to see 
him she could. She thinks she ought to have been 
there at the prison waiting to speak to him the first 
one. I thought it was a mistake to have her away, and 
I guess that's the way Mrs. Hasketh looks at it her- 
self, now." 

A stir of garments made itself heard from the par- 
lor at last, and we knew the ladies had risen. In a 
loud voice Hasketh began to say that they had a car- 



364 A CIBCLE IK THB WATER. 

riage down at the gate, and I said they had better let 
me show them the way down ; and as my wife followed 
the others into the hall, I pulled open the onter door 
for theoL On the threshold stood a man about to 
ring, who let his hand drop from the bell-pulL " Why, 
Tedham ! " I shouted, joyfully. 

The light from the hall-lamp struck full on his face ; 
we all involuntarily shrank back, except the girl, who 
looked, not at the man before her, but first at her aunt 
and then at her uncle, timorously, and murmured some 
inaudible question. They did not answer, and now 
Tedham and his daughter looked at each other, with 
what feeling no one can ever fully say. 



VIII. 

It always seemed to me as if we had witnessed 
something like the return of one from the dead, in this 
meeting. We were talking it over one evening some 
weeks later, and " It would be all very well," I philos- 
ophized, " if the dead came back at once, but if one 
came back after ten years, it would be difficult." 

" It was worse than coming back from the dead," 
said my wife. " But I hope that is the end of it so 
far as we are concerned. I am sure I am glad to be 
out of it, and I don't wish to see any of them ever 
again." 

" Why, I don't know about that," I returned, and I 
began to laugh. " You know Hubbell, our inspector 
of agencies ? " 

" What has he got to do with it ? " 

^^ Hubbell has had a romantic moment. He thinks 
that in view of the restitution Tedham made as far as 
he could, and his excellent recora — elsewhere — it 



366 A ClBCLfi IN THE WATER. 

would be a fine thing for the Reciprocity to employ 
him again in our office, and he wanted to suggest it to 
the actuary." 

** Basil ! You didn't allow him to do such a cruel 
thing as that ? '' 

" No, my dear, I am happy to say that I sat upon 
that dramatic climax/^ 

This measurably consoled my wife, but she did not 
cease to denounce the idea for some moments. When 
she ended, I asked her if she would allow the com- 
pany to employ Tedbam in a subordinate place in an- 
other city, and when she signified that this might be 
suffered, I said that this was what would probably be 
done. Then I added, seriously, that I thoroughly 
liked the notion of it, and that I took it for a testi- 
mony that poor old Tedham was right, and that he 
had at last fully expiated his offence against society. 

His daughter continued to live with her aunt and 
uncle, but Tedham used to spend his holidays with 
them, and, however incongruously, they got on to- 
gether very well, I believe. The girl kept the name 
of Hasketh, and I do not suppose that many people 
knew her relation to Tedham. It appeared that our 
little romantic supposition of a love affair^ which the 
reunion of father and child must shatter, was for the