r
WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
A
THE GREATER GLORY
They came back to town, his arm about her shoulders, hers
about his waist. FRONTISPIECE. Page 122.
By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
NORMAN PRICE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown & Company
Copyright, 1919,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved
Published, September, 1919
Reprinted, September, 10] 9
Reprinted, December, 1919
10
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GRACE GOODALE PELLEY
WHOSE LIFE HAS INCLUDED MANY OF THE
SITUATIONS WHICH FOLLOW
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
ST. .TOHKSBFET, VEBMONT
APKIL lOrn, 1919
S137624 *
PART I
THE GREATER GLORY
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH WE CONSIDER PARIS, VERMONT AND
OUR HOME FOLKS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF OUR
NEWSPAPER OFFICE.
UP here in the center of Vermont in a valley
enclosed by the virile summits of the Green Moun
tains, is the little New England town of Paris.
It is a neighborly state a neighborly little town.
It is lovingly known as "back east" to large numbers
of Yankee folk who in their young manhood or
womanhood have mistakenly left it to pursue fickle
fortune in states afar. It is called "up north" by
those southerners who know us only from our prom
inence in the weather reports or think of Vermont as
open for travel a couple of months only in the sum
mer time. As for the country at large, it thinks of
us as a quiet little state, smelling mostly of new-
mown hay and cow-barn, chiefly valuable to the
union as a producer of turkeys for its Thanksgiv
ing dinners, maple syrup for its breakfast pancakes
or pretty school ma ams for its western romances.
Once upon a time our town consisted merely of a
few houses, two general stores, a printing office, a
post-office, and a blacksmith shop, barnacled about
a country crossroads.
Today Main Street is a thoroughfare two miles
long with a mile of modern business blocks at one
4 THE GREATER GLORY
end and an equal distance filled with pretentious
residences at the other. Side streets have been laid
out by enterprising real estate men ; Main, Maple
and Walnut streets have been paved with material
on which our appropriate quota of Ford automobiles
skid badly in wet weather. New structures have
arisen where twenty years ago fat, sociable New
England homesteads stood behind white rail fences,
banked with hollyhocks and cinnamon roses.
^ On the main street of Paris, between the Odd Fel
lows Hall and Edward Brothers Cigar Store, dating
back to the early days of the community, is a dingy
brown building that has always housed a printing
office. In this building during the past thirty-seven
years, two men have been publishing a small-town
evening newspaper. One of them is a kindly,
grizzled philosopher by the name of Samuel P. Hod.
The other is his partner, the humble scribe who
sits before a battered old exchange table recording
this narrative.
It is a town landmark, this newspaper office of ours.
Our sign
The Paris Daily Telegraph
is weather-beaten and the letters are well-nigh
indistinguishable.
Inside these humble premises the furniture is
barked and battered. Beneath the old pine counter
lies the dust of years. An antiquated green box safe
by the side window is piled high with wasted govern
ment money in the shape of Congressional Records
and files of old correspondence which we do not know
why we save yet which we cannot bring ourselves to
throw away. The pigeon holes of the walnut desks
are stuffed with memoranda and impedimenta, col-
THE GREATER GLORY 5
lected there through many years, that we are always
going to clean out some day when we can find the
time.
Yet on those rainy days or those holidays when we
do have the time and make noble start at the epochal
renovation, we do not get far into the mass. For
very soon we are sitting with faded yellow clippings
dropped before us letters of bygone days per
haps here and there a once-used photograph of some
familiar face, disappeared these many years. And
cur gaze is far away; there is a dull ache in our
hearts ; we cannot bring ourselves to the sacrilege of
disturbing these mute testimonials of the cruel
flight of time. We cannot consign to rubbish
basket or furnace fire this litter which comes to us
in these hours like voices and faces from the dead.
Better indeed, to let the youngsters do it in those
future years when we likewise shall be but a memory
to this community and this office.
From this apparently systemless and cluttered
place there is a door opening into a long, low-stud
ded apartment in the rear. In a more pretentious
plant it would be designated as the mechanical
department. To us it is only the " back room." Here
are laid out the chipped and battered imposing stones
and racks of type-cases, even more abused than the
business furniture out in front. The floor is worn
and uneven and the knots in the old boards are in
evidence. Floor cracks are pressed full of dirt and
tiny types, swept there by careless boys through all
the years that have slipped away.
Over in the southwest corner is our old linotype
machine. It is wheezy and rheumatic, sure to lie
down on us at the wrong time and some day to go to
pieces like the wonderful one-horse shay. Finally,
6 THE GREATER GLORY
in the opposite corner, surrounded by vicious ink-
barrels with gobby sides and rolls of newsprint,
is the Cox-Duplex press that has stood by us
through the years like some faithful old animal. It
has often been starved for oil, it is encrusted with
dirt for want of care, but it has done its duty some
how, and we could no more bring ourselves to dispose
of it and put in stereotyping machinery than we could
bring ourselves to dispose of one of our children.
This is the home of our little country paper. It
is far from being a pretty place. Yet we love it
we who have labored in it for over a quarter century.
For in it we see in a thousand little ways reminders
of the changes time has wrought to ourselves, our
profession, our town, our nation. We love it most,
however, for the human associations it has meant
to us in the daily routine of getting out our paper.
The career of the Telegraph began in the eighties.
It is an eight-page, seven-column little paper, often
poorly printed in the cold Vermont winters when the
ink will not flow freely in the fountains of the press,
or in the warm New England summers when the same
material spreads far too copiously to suit the con
noisseur of good printing or a pressman with a
vocabulary surpassing any crass imitation in type.
Its front page is given over to world news, telegraphed
each noontime from Boston. Its inside pages
chronicle, from day to day, month to month and
year to year, the poorly- written stereotyped advertise
ments of our local merchants, bordering the daily
summary of the activities of our home folk : births
and marriages and deaths, little stories of social
glory which from time to time descend on homes
about our community; the meeting and parting of
friends ; business success or failure ; illness and ac-
THE GREATER GLORY 7
cident, petty felony and unspeakable tragedy, all
the sad gamut of human affairs from the bathetic to
the sacred, with which the country newspaperman
does business.
If you are one of those rare souls who find delight
in the study of your fellow men, come and live and
work awhile in the office of a little country paper.
For in the office of such a paper in an American small
town you will get down to the bedrock of human
nature closer than you have ever reached before. All
day long through the front office will filter the pathos
and bathos of the lives of your kind in the form of
news for your columns : births and marriages and
deaths; inspiring stories of success, heartrending
stories of failure ; cheap snobbery masquerading as
quality ; noble aspirations, unrequited sacrifices,
kindly return of good for evil. And in the back
room you will find the printer folk, perhaps not so
picturesque as they were yesteryear, but still very
humanly interesting and each man and each woman
with a story worth the telling.
In this intensely interesting and very human task
of publishing this little country newspaper, there
comes a time in each week when we view our w^ork in
perspective. It is the hour on Saturday afternoons
when the distribution of the pay envelopes has been
made and the labors of another seven days are ended.
The boys and girls of the back room have gone. The
whirring of the shafting that runs the big press is
silent ; the motors on the linotype have been shut off
and the front office is no longer conscious of the faint
clicking of matrices falling into endless lines of news.
With the back room smelling of printing-ink, lubri
cating grease and linotype fumes like a lair of beasts,
the plant rests for twenty-four hours. Then we who
8 THE GREATER GLORY
are responsible for this newspaper, sit in the front
office where we can see the crowds milling up and
down Main Street with an occasional individual
dropping in to pay his subscription or an advertising
bill, and the thoughts that come to us are solemn.
We have completed another week. We have
added six more numbers to the files which our children
and our children s children will look back upon some
day, perhaps in amusement, perhaps in soft sorrow.
For another six times we have repeated to our little
world the fleeting joys, the momentary successes,
the simple and awful little tragedies that make up
the daily life of our community and its people.
When we come to this reflectory time, being or
dinary two-legged men and women ourselves in the
office of our little local paper, we find, ."ourselves
unconsciously asking questions. We wonder why in
some of the homes, the new babies have arrived ; why
it is that in our town there are young folks whose
love affairs have not had a happy ending ; why many
of the young and the strong, whose futures seemed so
promising, have been removed from their activities
among us ; while the aged, the crippled, the morally
deficient, live wearily onward ? Thinking of our own
small role, we wonder if we have done right in print
ing certain items in our paper. We recall incidents
which have occurred within the week. Some of them
make us wish we had given more publicity to one good
work and less to some other thing of minor value.
We regret that we have hurt one person s feelings,
although all unintentionally, and we are sorry we
were so lenient with another who deserved far more
censure than we meted to him.
Then when we are deepest in our spell of the blues,
and when we have smoked a pipe or two by way of
THE GREATER GLORY 9
adjusting our philosophy, it comes to us that there is
a townful, a stateful, a nationful of men and women
around us who perpetually ask these questions. All
over this continent and this hemisphere are millions
upon millions of ordinary folk who have these periods
of mental depression and introspection.
But this is a strange thing about these ordinary
folks. The fact that yet awhile there appears no
answer does not shake their faith in the belief that
they should do their best while the opportunity is
theirs.
It may be raising a family of freckled-faced young
sters to become ordinarily good men and women.
It may be paying for a home. It may be building a
business which adds to the town s industries. It
may be only in the hundred-and-one little tasks of
a ten-hour, three-dollar day. But underneath the
conscious endeavor is the effort to do the best possible.
So we of our newspaper office, looking at ourselves
and the people of our community, have grown to take
these Saturday afternoons more and more philo
sophically as we have gone onward week by week and
year by year with our labors. When we finally lock
the office and go home for the brief respite of the
Sabbath day, we are forced to recognize that there is
more of good in life than bad, more of success than
failure, more of reward than unrequited struggle. I
might say that our position and occupation in the
community have made us optimists in spite of our
selves.
But now and then we of this country newspaper
office take note of some exceptional person some
exceptional struggle some exceptional success
experienced by some one in our village, it being the
nature of our business to note such things. Oc-
10 THE GREATER GLORY
casionally there comes a case where some one has
done the almost impossible thing, made the almost
inhuman sacrifice, achieved the almost improbable
attainment. And these rare folk stand out in the
high light.
Strange to relate, if we were to catalogue some of
these, we would be forced to recognize that the
majority of them have been women. What is more,
judged by conventional standards, they have been
quite average women. Some of them have come to
our attention in the daily news grist filtering through
our office for publication. Many of them have
worked for us. And we give credit where it is
due some of them have married these ordinary
aggravating bewhiskered males who are responsible
for this paper.
So it has come to us that it would not be out of
place or character with the function we are supposed
to fill in this community to speak of the achieve
ments of these in a larger way than our paper war
rants, that they may become as much of an incentive
to those in the great world outside of our valley as
they have been to those within.
For after all, ordinary, struggling, curious, hopeful,
discontented, American folks are not half so much
helped on their earthly way by preachment or pre
cept as by the exposition of others of their kind who
have been strong where they have been weak, who
have succeeded where they have failed.
It is with these thoughts in mind, in this setting
and this atmosphere, for these reasons, that I sit here
before this old exchange table and begin the story
of a woman s life.
The story of Mary Wood, to us in this newspaper
office, is the frail, delicate, beautiful little history of
THE GREATER GLORY 11
the love of a girl for a man and for the sons of that
man which that girl bore him. Yet somehow, as we
grow older and go down the hill of life and see the
new children coming up and the marriages taking
place and watch the friends and loved ones and ac
quaintances dropping by the wayside, the story of
little Mary Wood resolves itself into a eulogy
of the lives of all good women everywhere. And the
hoped-for reward in the telling is that all good
women everywhere may know while yet on this side
the Valley of Shadows that we men folk while
often thoughtless and preoccupied with other things
do not always forget or fail to appreciate.
CHAPTER H
WE CONSIDER MRS. WHEELER, A VICTIM OF SELF-
MADE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND GAIN OUR FIRST
PICTURE OF MARY WOOD.
IF you should come to Paris, go eastward to the end
of Main Street, and take the road over the Green
River bridge and past Haystack Mountain, you
would ultimately find yourself in rolling New Eng
land country meadow, pasture and wood lot
with solitary farm homes barnacled against the rocky
hillsides and dusty roads winding over the hills and
far away. You would pass the Marshall Mill Pond
Bottoms, colloquially known as the "fiats." You
would traverse the Green Mountain Valley district
and pass through Simonds Woods. After an hour s
drive through sumach thicket, deer bottom, spruce
timber and roadside briar-bloom, you would leave
the dilapidated McDermott lumber job behind you
and ascend Cobb Hill.
Near the top of Cobb Hill on the right-hand side
of the road, you would come to a weather-beaten old
house now faded to a sun-blistered mustard brown.
A crazy stone wall beneath a row of hoary, gnarled,
unpruned maples divides the south dooryard from the
highway.
No one lives in that old house at present. For a
long time its rooms have been empty, its doors
locked, its blinds drawn. The lilacs grow ragged
and frowsy at the corners and are full of caterpillars.
THE GREATER GLORY 13
The back yard is choked with caraway, yarrow and
bastard raspberry with an added mixture of wild
roses, syringas, blossomless hollyhocks, and coarse
grained rhubarb banked against the west wall of the
house and ell. A well-sweep by the opposite fence
has defied the years but beyond it lie the founda
tions and gray-timber ruins of some out-buildings
that collapsed in the Shirkshire storm of two years
ago. Photographers journey long distances to snap
the place from different angles. It is the typical
New England abandoned farm.
An abandoned farm indeed ! There are many of
them scattered through this section of Vermont.
True, this particular place is not so dilapidated and
abandoned as some others with their sashless windows
and sunken roofs and fallen doors. But it is pathetic
enough, especially to those who know the story of
the place as we of the Telegraph office have come to
know it.
The yard of the old place is picked up very clean.
The haylofts in the old barn are empty. The place
was stripped of nearly everything of value at the
time of the auction when Mary Purse came to live
in the village. Even the three-forked lightning rods
on both gables of the house and on the front of the
high barn were bought for old metal by a Jewish
gentleman of our community who is somewhat of a
connoisseur in old metal with a clandestine remelt-
able value. No, the place is abandoned indeed and
stands on the little hilltop all alone, waiting the spark
from the pipe of some tramp or a northern gale to
carry it down to oblivion. Yet what has taken place
in those naked lonely rooms the unspeakable joys
they have seen, the wordless griefs, the nameless
sorrows brings a warm glow about our hearts
14 THE GREATER GLORY
and wells our eyes with tears, and there is nothing
maudlin in this frank confession either.
Probably we in our little country office know more
about the kinship and inside history of every man,
woman and child in our town than any one else, for
that is our business. But we especially know more
about this particular family, this abandoned farm,
than any other native because it is literally tied up
with the Telegraph office with ties of blood. We
know there are times when thoughtless folk in our
town drive the visitor and the stranger past the place
of a summer afternoon, point their whips at it and
remark: "That s the old Purse place, the home of
an unfortunate family that finally summoned up
gumption to amount to somethin ." But they say
that because they cannot know the history of the
family as we have seen it from the inside, from the
night that Mary sat with her mother in the little
room under the eaves, down to the present. For
when we drive past, an affection for it arises with
in us as though we were one of the family ourselves,
and the place meant father and mother and home.
Away back many years ago, before New England
had discarded her well-sweeps for windmills and
filtered water systems ; before electric cars had come
in ; before the Sherman Act and the ten-cent maga
zine and the machine-gun, when Central Park was
one of the attractions of New York, and all our news
papers were set in nonpareil by tramp printers who
knew their Shakespeare as well as the high school
girl of the present knows who is married in the
movies, the house was in its prime and very much
occupied, and the windows were open, especially one
window in the gable of the upper story.
THE GREATER GLORY 15
It was a stuffy little bedroom up under the eaves.
It smelled of weather-dried shingles and cedar chests
and musty closets and old rag carpets. A cheap
low-hung yellow bedstead with a ridiculously high
headboard and a ridiculously low footboard and a
bouquet of hideous brown flowers painted on both
occupied the corner between the one south window
and the west wall, squaring out into the room and
leaving space only for a rocker and a bureau with
a badly-flawed glass.
Time-discolored wall paper peeling in places, Sun
day-school mottoes, small tintypes and photographs
stuck in the sides of the cheap mirror, chairs and
dresser and mantelshelf indicating feminine oc
cupancy, these things the light of the day might
have disclosed. Now they showed dimly or in
fantastic shadow, for it was late of a soft spring night,
and the room was illumined by moonlight outlining
a long white blotch upon the floor.
There were two people in this little room tucked
away beneath the twisted old eaves. One was a girl
of twenty years in a nightgown, sitting upon the bed
with her back against the billowing pillows, her fair
arms clasped about her knees, troubled eyes fixed
upon the shadows. Near the head of the bed in the
rocker sat the mother, a woman with terribly red
dened hands. An elbow on the narrow sill supported
the gnarled fingers as they pressed against her lips,
and she stared wistfully out into the singing spring
night. The other hand fumbled aimlessly, folding
and refolding a pleat in the threadbare wrapper
across her lap.
Mother and daughter had been for hours so, while
the moon went higher and higher up the sky, and
the world sank deeper and deeper into slumber.
16 THE GREATER GLORY
A warm night breeze wafted the muslin curtains
with which the one box window was hung. The town
clock far over in North Foxboro tolled eleven lone
some strokes. Each time, in the rooms below, a
similar clock added its fussy, absurd confirmation
of the passing hours.
Her eyes fixed on the moonlit country spread out
down the hill and away before her, the mother
listened until the last stroke of both clocks had died
away. Then she spoke in a husky whisper.
"In the story books, women folks in my fix would
pack up their belongin s and leave. No self-
respectin woman d stand for it, not in story books.
But it s different in real life when their children are
to be thought of, and when the place you re leavin*
is the only home you got ! "
Then silence again. Somewhere off in the hills
a whippoorwill was singing.
" Taint as if I had folks to go to," she went on.
"And besides besides there s Artie. What
could I do with Artie if I went? It s certain I
couldn t go to work nowhere s and take him with
me."
The girl turned her face about and gazed up at
the clear, high-riding moon.
"We could go together, mother," she said. "I
could work, and you could help out."
"That s just what I don t want you should do,
dearie, not yet. I want you should finish at the
Academy and graduate, and know you got what s as
good as a high-school education ; I ll feel it was worth
all the sacrifice. It s why I m puttin up with so
much from him, him your stepfather. I been
hopin almost against hope that he wouldn t find
more n his usual amount o fault with you stayin
THE GREATER GLORY 17
around home and just helpin me, until I could see
you graduate. But after the way he s been talkin
the last few weeks, and especially after what he says
to-night -
"Don t take on so over that, mother. After all,
maybe leaving home won t kill me. Maybe it would
be the best thing, seeing that staying around here
keeps causing you so much trouble and abuse."
"But where d you go, dearie? Out among
strangers ! I ain t got no folks and Amos s folks
couldn t afford it even if they was so minded. You d
have to go into the world with only half a schoolin
and knowin no business to support you."
"But if you should die suddenly, mother, I d
have to face it. And I got to face it sometime,
anyway."
"Which ain t no reason why you should leave and
miss your schooling so long as I m alive and all it
means is me standin up for you !"
"It isn t fair for you to put it that way. It
sounds as though my education was taking some
thing out of you that I have no right to take." The
girl s voice was tender.
"But you have, Mary girl. When you get to be
a mother you ll realize how you don t begrudge havin
your children take things out o you that way."
"When I get married, mother, and have my own
home " began the girl.
" Don t talk about it ! " the mother broke in. " It
hurts ! Not because it ll mean losin you who s
nearer and dearer to me than any one else on earth,
but because you don t understand what it means to
be married. You just don t understand what the
chances are you re takin . You don t under
stand!"
18 THE GREATER GLORY
"You mean, mother," corrected the girl, "I
don t understand what the chances are I d be taking
if I married a man like Pa Wheeler. But if I married
a man like my own father ; if I were to be as happy
as you claim you were in the one short year before
my own father died, you wouldn t feel that way,
would you, mother?"
The woman bit a quivering lip.
"There ain t often anybody as happy as I was
that one year with your pa, Mary. And yet from
my experiences with men folks since, I wonder if
that happiness wasn t due more to his dyin before
the novelty o livin together wore off than because
the match was so awfully perfect."
"You ought not to let yourself be as bitter as
that, mother. It ll spoil your faith in everything."
"It has almost, Mary. Yes, I m bitter ! And
why shouldn t I be bitter? What chance has a
woman got back here in this forsaken country?
Tell me that just tell me that ! No matter how
fine her ambitions or how badly she longs to better
herself, tell me what chance she s got when the men
folks ain t no better than you ve seen round these
parts since you was old enough to know about
things?"
The daughter remained silent.
"What chance has a farmer s wife got, anyhow?"
the mother cried, all the sorrow of her heart in the
tone of her voice. "We re born of poor folks off on
some lonely weed-grown country road. We grow
up with no society but goin down to the general
store or Sunday meeting or an occasional dance.
We get what education we can at some white coun
try schoolhouse taught by a girl who d be in a place
in some city school if she knew enough herself.
THE GREATER GLORY 19
Then soon s we reach the place where we re a finan
cial drag on our folks, the boys come courtin . "
"I know, mother, I know," sympathized the girl.
"They re boys same as their fathers was before
em," went on the mother, "and same as their
fathers was before them. They got no ambition.
They don t know nothin but farmin . Their ideas
o bein men and growed-up is chewin tobacco,
smokin pipes, sayin swear words and considerin*
women folks as a possession to run a farm with like
a plow or a horse. We marry em because we don t
know what s in the world and feel flattered by their
attentions. Or we become wives because it s dis
graceful to be an old maid, or because we just have
to get out into a home of our own, or because we
ain t never met real men ! "
"You re getting yourself all worked up, mother,"
declared the girl.
"We marry such as ask us, usually the first askin ,
and go off to lonely farms in the hills. Then quick
enough the mask o holy matrimony is stripped away !
Life? It turns out just plain hard work, and suffer
ing and goin without things, bein abused, stayin
alone, kept from havin money to spend for ourselves,
bearin children, fightin the silence till death or in
sanity comes as a blessin ." She choked a bit
hysterically, and the girl put out her hand, but it
had no effect.
"We have to have children when we don t want
em," she cried, "and when our men folks want
em less n we do. We get up before daylight and
through the long hours o forenoon, afternoon, and
into the night we slave with our work all cut out
for years, years ! weary years, with no thanks,
no praise, no money, no cooperation, just existence.
20 THE GREATER GLORY
that s all, just plain existence ! Don t make no
difference how much work we do, Mary, it don t
get us nowhere ; we just have to take what the men
folks hand out and endure in silence, and if we
buck up and run away from it all, we re bad women
and lackin character!"
"I know, mother, I know !"
"It s a hard, rough lot we got, Mary, with precious
little at the end of it but a funeral in some village
church, the lowerin into a grave in some quiet
hillside cemetery runnin mostly to wild asters and
rank grass and weeds. And the grass soon enough
grows over our grave, and hides even our name, and
the date on our headstone."
"Don t, mother!" the girl pleaded piteously,
- "don t talk that way."
"I can t help talking that way. I been puttin
up with it, just for your sake, Mary so s
maybe I could keep you from doin what I have done.
I married Pa Wheeler so s maybe I d have a home
and you d have a home and maybe a father to help
you. He was nice enough to me so long as I was
only his housekeeper you know that. I thought,
o course, it d keep up after we was man and wife.
I d been so happy that one brief year with your father
that I d clean forgot my own mother s hard time.
But just as soon as the new wore off, I see it was my
mother s fix all over again. And for fourteen years
I been standin it. Artie come along crippled
like he is on account o the way Pa Wheeler abused
me fore he was born, and he s been a helpless
whimpering burden that s kept me tied here endur
ing it all. The weeks has grown into months and
months into years, and all my ambitions to moke
something out o myself for my children all my
THE GREATER GLORY 21
likin for pretty things, all my yearnin for education
myself has all gone for nothin but doin the work
peaceable to keep JPa s temper down, livin for only
you and Artie for after all, I m his mother
and hopin to get you started right. And it s from
goin through with it and knowin what it s like
that I want to save you from it, Mary. It s why
I feel hurt and afraid when you talk about the time
when you ll be married. You don t know what it
means, Mary. You just don t know what it means."
The girl answered sorrowfully :
** The world s awful unfair to some folks who don t
deserve it, isn t it, mother?"
"Lots of older heads than yours and wiser heads
than mine have made the same observation long
ago and arrived at about the same conclusion !"
The girl watched the stars millions and millions
of stars peaceful stars twinkling stars in the
midnight sky but stars that often mean only
insanity to lonely farmers wives exiled off in the
country s great silent places. After a time, tears
like chips of diamonds glinted in her eyes.
"It spoils all the dreams of the future to think
that marrying means that, mother. There must be
some good boys somewhere who grow up without
looking on their wives that way."
"For your sake, Mary, I hope there is I hope
there is ! But that brings us around to the subject
we were talking about a few minutes ago you
can t marry them kind that are worth while, and
gentlemen, while you re only a little country bump
kin that don t know nothin . It s one of the reasons
why I want you should finish at the Academy
get an education that ll bring you the proper boy,
the right sort, with brains and education and am-
22 THE GREATER GLORY
bitjon all o which means courtesy and kindness.
You got the natural good looks and the ability,
Mary. You ain t been spoiled by no foolish no
tions. You can do it if you get the education."
Then for a long time it was quiet in the little bed
room. Somewhere down in the lilacs at the corner of
the house a tramp cricket cheeped philosophically.
In the lower pasture below the orchard, among
the rushes bordering the swamp, the frogs were
piping with a chorus that was hourly growing
lighter as the night deepened. Their music had a
melancholy that all the experiences that came to the
girl in after life, and all the joy and all the success,
could never entirely efface. Each springtime when
the frogs began peeping, the memory returned of that
little eaves bedroom and that moonlight night in
June, back when she was nineteen-goin -on-twenty
and she waited with her mother the homecoming of
"Silent" Wheeler from the McDermott job down
the valley.
"Mother," she asked, "if it came to a choice
between a poor man who d treat you decently and
love you or a rich man who d see you got plenty of
money but not much else which would you
take?"
"I pray God I might never have to decide !"
"It isn t fair to answer so."
"There ain t no such thing as a poor man treating
his women folks decent and loving them ! " exclaimed
the embittered woman. "I m afraid, after all I
been through, that I d take my chances with the
rich man." Her voice wavered. She leaned over
and buried her face on her arms across the bed.
"Oh, God ! God ! God ! " she wept hysterically,
"forgive me for sayin it! God forgive me! But I
THE GREATER GLORY 23
have stood so much, God so much for such a long,
long time ! I guess at last I m goin crazy !"
"Mother, mother! You re not going crazy.
Don t let yourself get all worked up like that.
You re just feelin badly because Pa told me to
pack up my things and get out, to-night. You re
sorrowful because he took your last month s egg
money and went down to McDermott s to get drunk
on instead of using his own."
"It ain t the loss of no egg money, dearie, al
though that s hard enough, seein I was savin up
for to get you the muslin dress for the dance down
to Christie s. It s the hopelessness of it for me.
You ain t made no fatal mistake yet. You ain t
made no mistake and saddled yourself with debt
and work and unhappiness and hopelessness for the
future. There s the chance for you to meet the right
kind o boy with money and ambition and ability to
get ahead and be happy with him. But there s no
such relief for me. I m just tied here tied for life
to a man that the neighbors say is half crazy who
takes my money and goes off to buy cheap rum that
makes him come home and wreck things tied
here to a crippled boy that d die if I didn t look after
him every moment. It s having to give myself all
the time as a peace offering trying to keep a home for
my girl so s she can finish her education like other
mother s girls and stand the poor chance o bein a
lady. And I ask what have I done to deserve it ?
It ain t fair, God just ain t fair ! I don t wonder
why most farmers marry two or three times, wearin
out one woman after another like cattle and buryin
-ra "
"Please, mother! Oh I wish I knew what to
do ! What would remedy things ! I wonder if
24 THE GREATER GLORY
finishing at the Academy means so awfully much
after all. I wonder if it s worth the price of staying
here and enduring Pa Wheeler s abuses." She was
silent for a few moments. Then she tried to laugh.
"When I get married it won t be anything at all the
way we both imagine. Maybe I ll meet some
"It s natural for you to look on the bright side,
dearie. You re young and your nerve ain t broken ;
besides, that s your way. Me I m old and faded
and washed out and discouraged. Look at my
hands, Mary ! See how hard and out o shape and
red-colored they are. I can remember when they
was even whiter n your n. There was a time
The woman straightened up. She held up her
hands before her. They looked like claws the
great knobs of gnarled knuckles were hideous in
the moonlight.
"Don t, mother, don t!" cried the girl.
The moon went higher and higher up the sky.
The piping of the frogs quieted to an occasional
solitary note off down in the dark. The clock in
the lonely tower over in North Foxboro sent twelve
lonesome strokes over the sleeping countryside ; a
few moments later the cheap little clock belowstairs
fussily corroborated the hour of midnight.
"Why doesn t he come?" sighed the woman.
"If he s got to come home and make us all miserable,
why don t he have it done with? What s keepin*
him ? He ll be sick for a week if he drinks enough to
keep him away all night !"
"I thought a moment ago that I heard him!"
answered the girl.
Silence again !
Far down the Cobb Hill road the figure of a man
climbed unsteadily. He covered much unnecessary
THE GREATER GLORY 25
ground. He stumbled much and cursed continually.
Withal he made progress.
When he reached the house at the top of the hill
on the right, he turned under the maples and into
the yard.
Mother and daughter, waiting in the moonlit
upper room, heard a curse come up from the yard.
They heard a man s step on the rear porch floor.
His heavy boot came down upon a loose board that
settled back into its place with a bump. Then
followed a fumbling at the string-mended screen
door and the slap of the flimsy thing behind him.
Next he fell over a chair in the kitchen. The girl
had heard a repetition of all on countless nights.
Yet this night she shivered with a nameless
dread.
"If he ll only drop asleep in one o the chairs!"
prayed the wife.
Long ominous silence in the lower kitchen !
"I hope he isn t up to anything," whispered the
daughter.
The mother drew a long breath for poise and
strength. She arose and stood before the window,
looking up at the clear-cut high riding moon and
the myriad stars up to the heavens where God
is supposed to dwell.
"Holy matrimony!" she whispered. "Holy
matrimony!" Then ashamed of her sarcasm:
"Dear God," she prayed with sudden nobility,
- help me ; give rne the strength ! for the sake
of my girl give me the strength to go onward
and do what I can and save her from makin her
mother s mistake."
The silence grew into minutes. The two in the
upper chamber decided the man had fallen into a
26 THE GREATER GLORY
drunken slumber. Then suddenly up from the
bottom of the flight came the roar of his voice.
"Sarah!" he bellowed.
"Don t go down, mother !" cried the girl.
"I got to go down, dearie. If I don t, it ll only
make him worse. And it ain t myself, it s you
and Artie I got to think of." She gathered the red-
yarn shawl about her narrow shoulders as though
for protection, and disappeared in the shadows of
the narrow hallway. Straightening out on the bed,
the girl buried her face in the soft pillows.
Once she heard her mother s shrill voice in protest,
followed by a retort in burly bass. Only once ! The
speaking solitudes of the summer night were resolv
ing into whispers. The moon was moving so far
westward that the phosphorescent patch upon the
bedroom floor was a contorted fantasy in one corner.
Even the tramp cricket in the lilacs down below
had grown tired like the frogs.
A quarter-hour the girl lay thinking, straining
her ears to hear evidences of trouble below. Sud
denly came a step upon the stairs.
She sat up in the bed, pulling the clothes to her
white throat. The rays from a lighted lantern
weak, weird rays showed down the hallway stairs.
A second later a man entered her room.
He was a heavy-set, big-boned man in a black
striped shirt and overalls that stunk of the cow barns.
He wore long ragged moustaches and had flat
jowls with a week s growth of characterless black
beard. His features were coarse, with the eyes
deeply sunken. They were large, round, ominous
eyes. When the man was under the influence of
liquor they smouldered with a fire of deadly green.
"Silent" Wheeler was the nickname by which
THE GREATER GLORY 27
the town knew him. It was an appropriate nick
name. During the day, as he met and mingled
with his neighbors, he was laconic, taciturn, friend
less. On summer nights he went down to McDer-
mott s where he spent the hours getting morosely
drunk. In the other three seasons he sat at home
before the fire, nursing the poker, raising one of
the covers and spitting from time to time with
sharp hiss into the stove. In this manner passed
hours and hours. When addressed by wife or step
daughter he nodded or ignored them. Always he
was thinking, thinking, thinking, brooding over a
wrong. The neighbors declared he was holding it
against his wife for giving him a crippled idiot as his
only son. But that was conjecture. At ten o clock
he would descend to the cellar for his porter. He
drank it alone by lantern light in the musty regions
belowstairs. Then he went to bed without speak
ing and snored through the hours. Weeks passed
thus always the brooding, brooding, brooding
always the watching of the movements of wife or
stepdaughter with the baleful green eyes, always
biding his time to set a great wrong right.
This man came into the girl s room carrying the
lantern which the woman with the terrible reddened
hands left burning each night in the kitchen to
light him for his slug of porter. He set the lantern
down upon a corner of the dresser where its greasy
base marked a ring which ruined the delicate em
broidery. Kicking the rocker out of the way, he
moved toward the bed, the green eyes fixed omi
nously on the girl s white face.
"Pa!" she cried.
She shrank away from him, huddled down against
the opposite wall, the bedclothing drawn to her throat.
28 THE GREATER GLORY
" Pa ! What is it you want ? "
The stepfather stood unsteadily before her. Sens
ing the feel of an ugly knife in his coarse palm, force
of habit prompted him to bring a plug of tobacco
from his overalls pocket and cut himself a huge
twisted chew.
"I want to know somethin . I want to know how
old you be?"
" Father ! You know how old I am. I m nine-
teen-going-on-twenty . "
"Yas! You re nineteen-going-on-twenty. You re
nineteen-goin -on-twenty ! So I been thinkin !"
His tone was ominous. He returned the plug
and knife to his stinking clothes.
The girl was terrified by her mother s absence
and that the man was not intoxicated with the same
effect as on other nights.
"Yas, you re nineteen-goin -on-twenty," continued
Silent Wheeler. "And I been thinkin , I tell you,
I been thinkin. Tell me this : What ye ever done
to help earn your livin or bring in money to support
yourself or help the family?"
"But this is home our home together. Does a
girl have to earn money and pay board at home?"
"Don t it cost money to support a female o your
size, at home?"
"But I can t work outside and go to the Academy
at the same time. And I do so want to go to the
Academy. I ll be finished in another year."
" Yas ! And who pays your keep in the meantime ?"
The girl knew that to answer would add fuel to the
fires of wrath smoldering behind the strange green
eyes.
"Tell me ! " he roared suddenly.
"I I thought my own stepfather might -
THE GREATER GLORY 29
"That s it! That s it! Me! I thought so.
And why should I? Tell me that? Are you my
daughter? Are you?"
"I m your stepdaughter."
" Are you my daughter ? Tell me that ! "
"You married mother. Isn t it the same?"
"I married your mother. But it ain t the same.
You heard what I said; it ain t the same. I been
thinkin ."
"You never raised any question before about me
staying here. I haven t any other place to go."
"How about lookin after yourself? How about
you makin some place ?"
"I wanted to finish school first. I ll be better
equipped to
"To what? You want education to prance
round before your betters, that s what you want.
Did I have any education ? Did your mother have
any education? What right you got to expect us
to support you while you re learnin education
so s to prance round before your betters ? Oh, I
got this all thought out. For a long time I been
turnin it over in my mind. For a long time I been
thinkin ."
"You married mother; and when you married her
you knew she had me. It isn t fair now to go back
on :
"Who s goin back on anything? Don t give me
no argument. Don t try to down me with your
education. I won t be downed. I got this thing
all thought out, I tell you. You was little when I
married your mother, little and helpless. You
ain t little no more. You re able to take care o
yourself. Yet you don t make no effort to take care
o yourself; you just laze around and wipe a few
30 THE GREATER GLORY
dishes and do a little cookin and mend a little clothes
and do a few high-flown chores like you was some
grand breed o duchess ; and think I ought to sup
port you while you get an education to prance
around and shame your betters. I m sick of it.
I stood it as long as I m agoin to stand it. So I
been thinkin !"
He had been thinking, for hundreds of terrible
evenings !
"Father !" she cried hysterically.
"I don t mean I should do it no more ! "
"Father!"
"I don t intend to do it no more. You heard
what I said to-night. Why ain t you gone ?"
"I didn t think you meant it. At least not so
soon. Not at once, to-night ! "
"Didn t think I meant it! She says after all
the thinkin I ve done she didn t suppose I meant
it ! I told you to get out ! I told you to get out ! I
meant it when I said get out. And I come home and
find you here. You know what happens to willful
young uns who disobey ! "
For a third time she uttered the word " Father ! "
but this time in a whisper. Then she tried to
scream, but no scream would come.
The man was drunk. He was more than drunk, -
he was mad. The lantern glint fell aslant on his
face, and the girl caught the look in his eyes. They
were the eyes of a person without reason.
She saw the green light blaze up. She saw the
pupils dilate. She sensed that the worst had hap
pened. The silence eternal of the lonely New
England hillsides, the maddening quiet of the
evenings, the lack of intercourse with people of
education and breeding, the months and months of
THE GREATER GLORY 31
brooding before the kitchen stove, all had tended
toward the inevitable. Something had snapped in
Silent Wheeler s brain. Silent Wheeler had become
obsessed.
The stepfather reached into his clothes. From
around the top of his trousers he unbuckled a heavy
belt.
"Don t, father, don t!" It was the voice of a
little girl beseeching an irate parent to withhold
punishment for some childish disobedience. Yet
she was not a little girl. She was a woman grown
and a ghastly pretty woman.
Silent Wheeler laughed. He had not laughed for
so long and the levity was so uncanny that it para
lyzed the daughter as much as the deadly thing he
held in his hand. With the laugh he reached over.
He closed his other hand around a soft white wrist.
The slumbering spring night was suddenly cut
by screams!
CHAPTER III
SLUG TRUMAN, MONDAY- WASHING AND CARDINAL
WOLSEY ENTER THE NARRATIVE AND START THEIR
ROLES AS MINOR HEROES.
DOWN Cobb Hill came the rattle of buggy tires
in the sandy road. A trap drawn by a little black
mare and driven by a stocky, well-dressed young
man reached the maples alongside the Wheeler
house. The stocky young man stopped the mare
and arose in the vehicle. A hideous bulldog in the
seat with him rose likewise.
Two times more those cries sounded on the sum
mer night. The young man put a foot on the
carriage wheel and leaped over. The dog tried the
same thing and had to be extricated. The young
man, followed by the dog, approached the house.
"Hey, you!" he called, "is anything especially
the matter?"
For answer he heard a thump, a crash, a curse.
The dim light that had been burning in that eaves
room was suddenly extinguished. There was an
other thump, another crash as of furniture falling.
He heard a long cry. Some one came swiftly through
the lower rooms. Then the light screen door on the
side porch flew open ; there came a flash of white in
the moonlight and across the lawn toward him ran a
girl.
"What s it all about?" the young man de
manded.
THE GREATER GLORY 33
For he had suddenly discovered himself with a
protecting arm about this girl a girl whose
shoulders and body were enveloped in a heavy quilt
and whose hair fell wildly about her face.
"Where can I go ? What can I do ?" she sobbed.
At the moment the heavy footfalls of Silent
Wheeler sounded through the lower rooms, and a
bruised and disheveled man appeared on the rear
porch. He started across.
"Wait a moment! Stop!" ordered the young
stranger. "What s the meaning of all this, any
how? Can t I ask a civil question and get a civil
answer? "
"He struck me with his belt he struck me ! "
sobbed the girl.
"What for?"
"He told me to leave and go away. I didn t
think he meant to-night. I was here when he came
from McDermott s. And he struck me with his
belt ! "
The heavy quilt slipped from her grasp. The
moonlight disclosed the white flesh of her arms and
shoulders. For a moment the young man gaped
blankly.
"Cripes!" he ejaculated. "Gripes!" Then he
turned on the stepfather. "I m Slug Truman, I am !
They call me that in Paris because I got a hundred-
and-seventy-pound punch I have. And if I hit
you with the whole hundred and seventy, I might
bust you right open. What s coming off here, any
how ? What s the row ? "
"Strangers ain t wanted in this!" growled Silent
Wheeler angrily.
"Maybe they ain t. Then I ll be the little old
unwelcome guest. What s the matter with you,
34 THE GREATER GLORY
Si Wheeler? You talk as if you d gone plumb
looney ! "
" Strangers ain t wanted in this ! " declared Wheeler
again.
"But they ain t goin to stand aside and see no
women folks beat up ! "
"You keep out ! " warned the stepfather.
The girl uttered a little cry. She fancied she could
see his strange eyes green eyes glowing and
smouldering in the moonlight.
"Keep out nothin ! You keep off ! Keep off
or seem that just this minute I got this lady to sort
o keep standin up, I might call in this dog to help
me, don t you know ! "
"To hell with your dog ! "
"Don t say that. He ain t used to bein spoke
unkindly of. "
But the man started forward. He made a lurch
at the girl. The dog growled. The young stranger
tried to get himself between man and girl. Wheeler s
onslaught made him stumble.
"Sic em, Card !" the boy cried. " Help a feller
out that s got a armful ! "
The scruff of the dog s back arose. He ran around
and around the group a couple of times, growling low
and ominously. The man hit at the boy. The blow
infuriated the animal. His jowls slobbered with
sudden rage. He sprang. His teeth snapped.
In the next three minutes that yard witnessed a
tragedy.
"Gripes!" Slug defended himself, "I had to ask
Card to help me out, didn t I ? I couldn t bust him
with my arms full o girl and bed quilt. What good
is a dog, anyhow unless he rises to a emergency ?"
He led the fainting girl to an old berry crate that
THE GREATER GLORY 35
helped clutter the yard and started in to disengage
the powerful brute who was doing such terrible
execution.
Silent Wheeler dragged himself back to the
porch on hands and knees, where he collapsed and
rolled down the steps. The dog who had tasted
blood had to be kicked, cuffed and beaten into sub
mission. Then Slug lifted him bodily, carried him
to the buggy and tied him to the fancy iron un
der the seat in the rear. There the dog licked his
wounds where the man had clawed him and growled
continually while the scruff of his coat settled.
"Are you hurt, Miss ?" Slug asked the girl.
"No! That is not much. It isn t me I m
thinking of it s mother. Oh, what s become of
her?"
"As I was drivin over the top of the hill about
five minutes ago I see a woman runnin in the moon
light across the south mowin . I thought it was
queer. You don t suppose it was her, do you ?"
"Then she started for help to the Osgood s. It s
the nearest way across the south mowing."
"Whatter you want to do? You can t stay here
like this i"
"I don t know. I could wait till the Osgood
boys come."
"You better let me take you to the Osgood s if
you mean the Henry Osgoods. You can t go back
in the house to-night. Besides, I don t know how
bad Card s chewed the old man up. Sheriff Crum-
pett ought to be called right away quick."
She let him lead her to the buggy. He helped her
in. She tucked the heavy quilt about her and he
added a blanket. He got in over the opposite wheel,
picked up the reins and pulled the beribboned whip
36
from its socket. The little mare was lashed into a
wild gallop, and the rig careened off through the night.
It was four miles by the road to the Osgood s.
Young Truman guided the foaming little mare into
the Osgood s front yard and halted close to the steps,
where she quivered and champed at the bit. The
old Osgood house was dark and silent. Evidently
the mother had not arrived, or lights would have
been burning. Slug vaulted over the wheel, alighted
on the piazza and hammered at the door with the
butt of his whip.
The minutes ticked past. They waited. Slug
hammered again. But though the noise he made
sounded through the house like the summons of an
enemy of invasion, no sign of life appeared within.
A big black cat came around the corner. It leaped
up the front steps, purring and mewing. It rubbed
against Truman s ankles.
"Looks as if they ain t home," he announced.
Again and again he pounded. He went around to
the side doors and made a similar racket. He called
to the upper windows from the front yard.
"There ain t a window open anywhere," he
announced. "They wouldn t sleep on a warm
night like this with all their windows shut. Do you
want me to take you back or anywhere ?"
He drove her back. A half hour later they turned
into the 8 Wheeler yard.
Silent Wheeler was gone from the porch steps.
Leaving the girl in the rig and prepared for trouble,
the boy alighted and called through the darkened
kitchen door. But he received no reply.
He found matches in one of his pockets. He broke
one from the card, waited until it had burned up
and then went boldly inside. The girl saw the
THE GREATER GLORY 37
reflection of the flame travel through the lower rooms.
In a minute he was back.
"There ain t any one here at all, Miss Wheeler.
Your Ma is probably still off looking for help. Your
dad has probably -
" gone down to McDermott s once more. And
my name isn t Wheeler it s Wood Mary Wood."
"What do you want to do ?"
As he waited for her to decide, he suddenly raised
his head and listened.
"What s that?" he demanded sharply.
The girl listened likewise. Then her delicate lips
grew hard.
"That s only Artie. He s my stepbrother. He s
probably in his upstairs room."
Slug had heard of Silent Wheeler s crazy son. He
did not refer to him again.
"You can t stay here," the Truman boy declared.
"Your stepfather might come back and try to pull off
more fireworks. You ought to go somewhere s and
wait for morning. And I ought to go get Sheriff
Crumpett. Old Wheeler belongs in jail after a night
of this. You women folks can t trust yourselves to
him again."
"I haven t any place I could go ! " the girl broke
down. "Not unless it was to one of the neighbors.
And there aren t any besides the Osgoods that we
know real well."
Slug came across to the rig. He stood by the rail
looking up into the pretty features.
"Did he hurt you ?" he asked gently.
"Not much!"
"I ought to have left Card have him."
"The dog would have killed him."
"It would have served him right. It was lucky
38 THE GREATER GLORY
I come along. I was just coming back from the dance
to Gilbert Mills."
It was an inappropriate time for him to thrust him
self into the situation with personal explanation.
Beyond this brief declaration he said nothing. Only :
"If you could get your things, I d be glad to take you
down to Paris or somewheres. And you could
leave a note for your mother, tellin her you was all
right and lettin her know the place you d gone.
That is if you want to go right now."
The girl sat thinking for a time.
"It s a good time for me to go," she said patheti
cally at last. "Mother will come back all right
and if she finds my note, it will be better than a sad
parting bidding me good-by. I ll go quickly now
- if you ll just take me to Paris."
The girl swayed as he helped her to the ground.
She went inside. He sat down on the porch steps to
guard her from further harm and he waited.
At the end of half an hour she reappeared. She
was dressed in a plain brown dress, a hat with a long
black feather. She carried an old-fashioned tele
scope bag.
"I couldn t stay here another hour after this has
happened," she said. " I ve made trouble enough
here. If you ll take me to Paris and I can fix it so to
get work to-morrow, I ll pay you back for your
trouble and transportation. You re Herbert Tru
man, aren t you ? I ve heard the girls at the Foxboro
Center Academy speak of you."
"Yes," he replied.
He assisted her into the buggy again. He thumped
the big dog to make him lie over and give room for
the telescope bag. Then he climbed in beside the
girl and unwound the reins from the whip.
THE GREATER GLORY 39
"How about the note for your mother ? " he asked.
"I wrote one. I left it pinned to the tablecloth in
the dining room. I said I d gone to Paris to get work
and as soon as I d got a place, I d send and get her. "
Slug said little more until they were nearly down to
the Marshall-pond bottoms.
"I think you could get a job in the Telegraph
office," said he. "I was looking over last night s
paper to see who d advertised to get work in the
shop Dad s shop and I remember that Sam
Hod and his partner wanted a couple of girls to learn
typesetting. Think you would like typesetting ? "
"I d like anything," the girl said desperately,
"that would save me from going back. You re very
kind."
"Helping the ladies is my specialty," Slug de
clared. Then, sensing that his rejoinder had fallen
exceedingly flat, he struck the little mare sharply
with the reins and they rumbled through the covered
bridge by Patterson s sawmill.
"Her name s Monday-Washin ," said Slug off
handedly. He meant the mare. But little Mary
Wood was thinking about something else than the
name applied to the horse.
CHAPTER IV
MARY WOOD "ACCEPTS A POSITION" IN OUR GRIMY
NEWSPAPER OFFICE AT WHICH THE TOWN is
APPROPRIATELY HORRIFIED AND OSTRACIZES THE
WOOD GIRL SOCIALLY.
"THERE S a girl in the office wants a job!" an
nounced Mr. Nimrod Briggs, compositor, returning
to the back room with his fingers full of proofs.
I went into the front office. A girl in pitifully
plain clothing and a pale, pretty face stood on the
other side of the battered counter.
It was my first view of Mary Wood. Many years
have passed since that far-off spring forenoon. I
have seen Mary in many different places, under many
cruel circumstances, resolutely facing many hard
situations in life, mostly with a smile on her face.
But as I saw her in that office that morning, she
was the Mary Wood I have liked best to remem
ber before care and anxiety and struggle came
to her before love had levied its price, taken its
pound of flesh from her heart and the soft bloom
from her features before disappointment and cruel
suffering and noble effort had changed her from that
gentle-faced blushing girl, surprised in the presence
of strangers, into the typical American wife and
mother.
And I remember Mary Wood that day, not so
much for the soft brown hair parted on the fair high
forehead, nor the lines of her graceful figure nor the
THE GREATER GLORY 41
sweet, patient, frightened look deep in her dark
eyes, but for the graceful way in which she came over
and begged for work and the chance to earn a living
for herself.
She got it !
Mary went to work for us immediately, "learn
ing the case."
Sam got her a boarding place with one Mrs.
Mathers, a widowed lady, who ran a boarding
house on School Street.
The first few days slipped away; by Saturday
she could get up a fairly sizable string of locals.
And she tried to "find herself" in our community.
It was something of a novelty in those days for
women to be employed in printing offices. Our
newspapers of those years were produced by journey
men printers, popularly known as "tramps."
They were strange, lovable souls, more or less out of
plumb with the world around them, who drifted from
place to place, staying only long enough to earn the
wherewithal to finance them further in their wander
lust. Most of them drank to excess. They could
thoroughly be relied upon to demand employment
when there was no more work than the regular staff
could handle and with equal faithfulness they lay
down on the job or moved onward just when work
was burying the office and they were needed most.
It occasioned some talk in the village therefore
when Sam Hod departed from the traditions of the
profession and sought local girls to do his typesetting
as being dependable, all-the-year-round work folk.
This talk was revived when it became known that
the Wood girl, after a humiliating experience with
42 THE GREATER GLORY
a drunken stepfather at their lonely farmhouse on
the Cobb Hill road, had secured a place and intended
to pay her own way and care for herself by taking
employment in the local newspaper office.
It was regarded as a rather radical procedure for
her to take her place at the case alongside the
flotsam and jetsam of human life who commonly
lived off printing offices and rub shoulders with
them in the day s work. Conservative parents
commented dubiously on the idea of a "nice"
young lady overhearing the lumberous and ofttimes
highly-hued talk circulating among employees of a
printing establishment and taking up with the grimy,
monotonous, back-room life which in those days was
typical of newspaper offices the nation over. And
as conservative fathers and mothers of "nice"
daughters frequently discussed it when Mary Wood
passed by, it followed that those "nice" daughters
gradually came to acquire the same ideas and rated
Mary accordingly.
It was a hard place in which to put the girl,
the more so because she could not understand what
lay at the bottom of the snubs and jellybean social
ostracisms which occurred during that following
autumn and winter.
She supposed poor girl that the lack of
interest taken in her, the lack of companionship
on the part of other girls about the village, the failure
to receive invitations to parties and dances and
village functions given by the younger set was due to
the unsavory reputation which Silent Wheeler had
in the community, that she was his stepdaughter and
a girl who had come from "nobodies."
She laid it to her family; the fact that she had
come from the inconsequential hamlet of North
THE GREATER GLORY 43
Foxboro ; that she could not afford to dress as some
of the other village girls dressed and therefore
offended those in a place to offer her social favors,
anything and everything but the truth.
It was a thoughtless and cruel little small-town
snobbery. Happily the days of such provincialism
are over. But the fact remains that Mary was not
fortunate enough to "get in" with the "right
people." She did her work in the daytime faith
fully and satisfactorily. But when six o clock
came and the labor was done until another morning,
she went alone to the cheap room at the top of Mrs.
Mathers boarding house and spent her evenings by
herself.
Once or twice the men in the office made advances
to her ; tried to take her out and show her attention.
But they were coarse, rough printer-folk, here to
day and gone to-morrow. She judged them in
tuitively at their true value and gave them no en
couragement.
Yet the talk which her employment in the office
occasioned among the "best" people was not match-
flare alongside the commotion caused in the "back
room" of our establishment to have a girl of Mary
Woods dainty personality working side by side
with our men, appealing to them with her questions
and trade perplexities, tickling their rough-shaven
cheeks unintentionally with the truant strands of
her fine-spun hair as she bent with them over the
forms, getting little daubs of ink or type-case grime
on her features and only making them the prettier.
If the town people could only have known, her
presence in the office made a different place of the
cluttered old room. It produced also startling
changes in the moral tone of the establishment.
4-i THE GREATER GLORY
Old "Daddy Joe", the ad-man, stopped spitting
tobacco juice on the floor and grinding it in with his
boot. "Skinny Napoleon" Higgins, a lugubrious
soul of exceeding thinness who had once been jilted
by a widow, ceased his morbid recreation of setting
up his own obituary in different styles and leaving
it around on galleys which we always wanted in a
hurry, he stopped sending out every afternoon for a
pail of beer, he shaved three times a week and de
clared that swearing had to stop in that office, by
Gawd, or he d see to it that somebody had hell
knocked out of em. The one-eyed boy whose
given name was Lawrence BriggsHanchett, but whom
we called "Slob" because of his propensity to cover
everything in the place but the payroll with ink
whenever he filled the press fountains, ceased re
moving his glass eye and rolling it around the
stove because it horrified the girls, and Mr. Nimrod
Briggs who helped with the ads and tended press,
buttoned his vest for the first time in years; he
changed his shirt as often as twice a month and
showed up for work so regularly on Monday morn
ings that the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph
noting that these changes had begun with the
advent of the pretty little compositor rose up
and called her blessed.
There were three other girls in the office : Annie
Seavers was the senior of these in point of employ
ment a big horse of a female with sloppy heels,
receding chin and three rolls of fat on her neck under
washed-out brown hair which would never stay
combed. Annie "ran" with the River Street
crowd, which was decidedly not a crowd for Mary at
all, keeping up the traditions and popular concep
tion of females who would work in printing offices.
THE GREATER GLORY 45
Susie Whitcomb was the second; a conscientious
little soul in gold spectacles which she wore half-way
down a very freckled nose. But she was a slow-
witted girl who lacked imagination, always
scented with cheap perfumery and clothed in home
made dresses with coarse stitches which were always
parting somewhere about her anatomy.
The third girl Mabel Henderson, more famil
iarly known as "Mibb" -was a black-eyed, in
dependent young spitfire whose mother ran the mill
boarding house at the east end of town. Mibb spent
most of her wages on caramels and clothes and was
always talking over the type cases about her "gentle
men friends." Her father was a poor, overgrown,
inconsequential soul who toiled not, neither did he
spin, and who spent his days sitting around in
grocery stores or blacksmith shops keeping folks
informed about the progress of his old army trouble.
Between a mother with a caustic temper who was
forever "telling the world" how she had thrown
herself away marrying old Harvey Henderson, and
a father who dined in the kitchen from scraps the
boarders left Mibb had grown up with rather
unique ideas about the matrimonial relation.
"Harvey s wife is a sort o female battleship,"
quoth Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philosopher who
ran the livery stable behind the Whitney House on
Main Street, "and Harvey always reminds me of
two or three hours o July afternoon. And when
you get a battleship married to two or three hours
o July afternoon, it ain t reasonable to expect that
the offspring s goin to recite any phenomenal
number o scripture verses at a Sunday-school enter
tainment. Some young folks know a lot about
marriage by missin it to home. Show me a home
46 THE GREATER GLORY
where the mother runs the bank account, and I ll
show ye a bunch o kids who usually don t rise up
and give the old man a chair when he hoofs it in ! "
This was the general attitude of the village toward
the Hendersons. And yet there was one redeeming
feature about the Henderson girl, because of which
the village made due allowance for her "freshness."
By one of those strange pranks which Nature often
plays in a small town, the girl could sing.
Sing ?
She had a contralto voice that Uncle Joe further
remarked was "liquid glory" given her "to soothe
the savage beast" probably referring to "her
old woman", a beautiful voice that needed only
training to make Mibb a prodigy. But it had not
been trained for two reasons. Ma Henderson had
no goods of this world to waste on such foolishness ;
and Mibb wouldn t have put the time into training
if she had.
The girl sang at singing schools, parties, small
town entertainments. She abused her gift with all
the abandon of the irreverent child of such parents,
and used it only to create merriment for her asso
ciates with the popular songs and ballads of the
period.
Neither with the Henderson girl, therefore, did
Mary find much temperamental compatibility.
Many is the night that we elder folk in the front
office, sensing the trouble but not knowing exactly
how to go about applying a remedy, encountered
Mary walking about the streets of Paris, with a
little feeling of sorrow and sympathy.
Somehow she just didn t fit in with the various
phases of the town s social life. She was too good
for the workaday crowd in the shops and factories
THE GREATER GLORY 47
of Paris as well as her fellow-employes in the me
chanical department; and the balance of our
people considered her beneath them and gave her
small opportunity to convince them how thoughtless
and wrong they were.
At first we had supposed that her mother was
coming in off the farm to live with her ; that indeed,
would have been a happy solution to her lone
liness. But the helpless idiot to whom she had given
birth and who spent his days in a bare room on the
second floor of the Wheeler house would have perished
without her. While such an event might have been
a mercy, mother-love held her to the unspeakable
sacrifice. With Mary out of the way, temporarily
the husband s personal abuse ceased.
Mrs. Wheeler said she guessed that after what
she d stood she could stand it a little longer, so long
as it didn t get any worse. Besides, she didn t
propose to go to no Paris and live on the slender
wages of no daughter, not while she had the breath
o life in her body to look out for herself and she
calculated she had. If Mary couldn t finish her
schoolin if she had to go to work and take care
of herself she needed all the money she earned
to buy herself clothes and pretty things and fit
herself to attract "the right sort" in the matter of a
husband.
It is not correct in this chapter of introduction of
Mary to Paris to say that in the first lonely summer
and autumn she was wholly ignored by the thought
less boys and girls that made up our community s
younger set. The night of the lawn party at
Calvary Methodist church there was one young
man who remembered her and asked her to go with
him.
48 THE GREATER GLORY
Poor "Slug" Truman! With all his faults and
indiscretions he was a good-hearted boy and meant
well. He too had been unfortunate in the choice
of parents.
His father was old "Short -Cramp" Truman, so
called because in an overgrown blacksmith shop
down on River Street he "manufactured" a farm
wagon of his own design with exceptionally small
front wheels which gave his product a sale and
tuppence worth of fame for its unique short turning
qualities : also because, being a first-class mortgage
forecloser and plate-passer, he was not above cramp
ing unfortunates whenever he had the opportunity
to execute such a maneuver to his financial ad
vantage.
Herb s mother was a weak-eyed, whimpering-
voiced, flat-faced woman with a hand like a damp
dishcloth who never expressed an opinion in her
life and spent her days following around and setting
off a rather flashy and forward daughter, who made
all decisions and saw that they were carried out.
Herb was a decent sort of chap and rather easy
going, and a natural sense of humor prevented him
from reaching the extremes which finally landed
Esmeralda Truman in the divorce court and a sana
torium. Old Short-Cramp might have been a
leech and a sharper in business but he had lost
a baby son the year before Herb came along and
that made him partial and strangely indulgent to the
offspring particularly the male offspring that
had survived. Herb had all the money he wanted,
but he spent it harmlessly though ofttimes foolishly,
on horses and dogs and the village belles,
whereas Esmeralda squandered hers viciously and
lived to rue the day she was born.
THE GREATER GLORY 49
Long before he had graduated from high school
Herb had been a familiar sight on the streets of
Paris with his little black mare, Monday- Washing,
and his hideous big English bull with the equally
incongruous title of Cardinal Wolsey. Herb stood
six feet in his stockings and weighed two hundred
pounds. He had the most tremendous cowlick in
Paris, which Uncle Joe Fodder declared "had used
up all the rest of the hair the Lord had left after he d
finished thatchin the rest of mankind," which was
a marvelous creation and immediately he removed his
hat arose like a congregation of Sioux war feathers
with a strong wind perpetually blowing from be
hind. When Amos Tempi eton, one of the barbers
at Jim Stiles s barber shop went crazy one night and
nearly scalped Doctor Johnson in the chair, the
village declared his mental aberration was due to
the struggle a few minutes before with Herb s c^"
lick in which he had been ignominiously defeated and
brought down to the dust.
Old Short-Cramp s wealth was popularly assumed
to be written in six figures ; he was a sufferer from
acute Bright s disease; when he passed on Herb
would get most of his money. r -iierefore was Herb
popular among the unmarried girls of the village
and parents who winked an eye at the boy s pro
clivities for cigarettes, neat ankles and trim horses.
It was Herb who did not forget the little girl with
the wistful brown eyes whom he had felt for one
brief instant seeking protection within the hollow
of his arm, and he intercepted her at the door of the
boarding house one September night with some
mummery about having "two tickets give him"
for the "ice-cream splurge" that he was unsuccessful
in disposing of although he had proffered them
50 THE GREATER GLORY
gratis far and wide. Would she help him make use
of em as it was a pity they should go to waste and
the Calvary Methodist ladies be profiters by an
unearned thirty cents?
And Mary, with the color coming and going in her
face because it was her first invitation "out" as
she wrote to her mother had "thanked him ever
so much" and said she would be pleased to assist
him in making the Methodist ladies give full value
for cash received. So she washed and ironed and
strung with baby ribbon a poor cheap little muslin
dress made by the woman with terribly reddened
hands and on that memorable Thursday night
"accompanied" Herb to the sociable.
Adam McQuarry, janitor of the Calvary Metho
dist church, was a simple creature with big ears and
bigger feet who couldn t see why folks couldn t
hold their lawn parties indoors and minimize the
destruction to church property attending the re
moval of church furniture to the open air for social
purposes, to say nothing of sr.ving his velvet lawn.
During the afternoon Adam had stretched a wire
from tree to tree in front of the church while little
Mrs. Pratt followed him anxiously about and steadied
his stepladder under the conviction that Adam turned
loose unattended on a church lawn with a wild and
rambunctious stepladder would surely break his
neck and cast a shadow over the function.
At six o clock the church lawn was bobbing with
bulbous decorations of weird shape and gala hue ;
tables, chairs and vestry crockery had been spilled
out onto the green, amid which a dozen ladies in
"white things" starched as stiff as their religion,
were effecting some kind of order and utility. The
Sunday-school piano had been brought out by the
THE GREATER GLORY 51
combined effort of Adam, a passing grocer s boy, and
"Doctor" Dodd the minister, all of them morally
assisted by the ladies, without knocking the varnish
off more than four corners of that melodious piece
of machinery or lowering it unexpectedly on more
than two of Adam McQuarry s feet.
The ice-cream freezers were lined along the eastern
wall of the church behind an improvised plank table
and looked like huge moist shells waiting to be ex
ploded on the social battlefield.
The entire neighborhood, Protestant, Catholic,
Jew or pagan, had loaned something to the execu
tive committee which it was positive it was never
to see again, for the way things get lost or mixed up
or carried off at these lawn-party and church affairs
was a caution.
At seven o clock the artists who were to furnish
the evening s literary and musical entertainment
had arrived and were tinkling at the piano or running
over scales or thumping stringed instruments or
wildly dispatching reluctant messengers for music
which had been forgotten.
At seven-thirty the church people began to arrive
in knots of twos and threes and fives, the men dressed
with the painful laboriousness of horny-handed sons
of toil and the women indicating the five-dollars
worth of fuss through which they had gone to be
present and consume ten cents worth of ice cream.
At eight o clock Adam got loose with his stepladder
and lighted all the bobbing, bulbous Japanese
lanterns, and so long as Mrs. Pratt was busy else
where and didn t see him, whether he fell off and
broke his neck or set himself afire with the taper
was nobody s concern but his own.
The lawn of Calvary Methodist church became a
52 THE GREATER GLORY
fantastic, romantic place where harsh faces softened
and thin ladies became less scrawny and fat ladies
became merely plump and homely girls became
pretty and pretty girls prettier. Figures in white
moved about among the tables from which arose the
sociable hum of animated small-town "conversation"
and the tinkle of tableware and spoons. And the ice
cream was not the flat, starchy, patented quick-
process stuff bought in these latter days from a public
caterer and sold at a profit which is the obtaining of
money under false pretences. It was great yellow
rich scoops of frozen deliciousness made with real
cream, and eggs that weighed eight to the pound.
A plateful was a meal and two plates full a hurry call
on the castor-oil commissary.
Mary accompanied Slug to the ice-cream social and
entertainment and found a corner with him not far
from the piano where was a "table for two", and she
sat and dissipated in a dish which she had grown up
to recognize as sacred to occasions of great ceremony.
The boy tried introducing her to girls who passed
them or waited on the tables. But it was an awk
ward, painful proceeding and after two attempts
he gave it up. None of them lingered. They
acknowledged the introduction with a quick "pleez-
tomeecher" and were gone on errands of an ex
tremely urgent nature.
"Ain t much society around here to-night," apolo
gized Herbert. "As old man Fodder says, it s
principally giggle, garble, gobble and git ! Any
how, there s the entertainment and if it ain t worth
fifteen cents we ll take it out on Adam McQuarry."
Thinking this a good joke, Herb laughed and pulled
off his hat, and his cowlick arose as though in aston-
THE GREATER GLORY 53
ishment to find itself at a church lawn party, and
Mary was obliged to laugh also, though not at Herb s
pleasantry.
The entertainment began at eight-thirty with a
prayer by the minister, although whether to in
voke a blessing on the artists or compassion on the
audience was not made clear by the text. Then
Doctor Dodd announced that the first number on the
program would be a duet by the Rathburn Twins
from Chopin (he pronounced it "choppin") and the
two terrifically starched and stiffly braided little
Rathburn girls were headed toward the piano and
pushed forward. They climbed on two stools facing
a piece of music as large as themselves and after
several audible "one-two- three" "one-two-three"
became launched on the rendition of so-called music
in a manner which quickly demonstrated that
Doctor Dodd had not been so very far wrong in his
pronunciation of the name after all. Uncle Joe
Fodder in the office next day declared that whenever
he saw those musical but diminutive Rathburn Twins
high on stools before some philosophical long-suffering
piano they reminded him of a couple of painters
slung on a staging half-way down the sides of a
three-story building hurrying to finish the job before
their paint gave out.
It was Uncle Joe s favorite joke.
One of the Twins having finished the duet not more
than four bars ahead of the other and having to play
" The Storm" as an encore because the Twin s mother
constantly embraced such opportunities to call
public attention to their capacity for "expression"
(in which she was tremendously successful although
not in just the way she intended), Doctor Dodd
declared that they would next be favored with
54 THE GREATER GLORY
an instrumental selection from Master Robert
Bo wen.
"Master" Robert Bowen, consisting mostly of
Windsor tie, knees like gourds and manifest stage
fright who in other times and seasons was more
popularly referred to as "that lanky Bowen young
one" pulled up his stockings with a subconscious
jerk, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and
followed Grace Rawlins to the piano. Thereupon he
proceeded, as Uncle Joe also commented, to "murder
Old Black Joe with a fiddle got with soap- wrappers."
Esmeralda Truman, whose latest brainstorm was a
career on the stage next recited as Doctor Dodd
announced it " Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night
With Piano Accompaniment." And when she
showed her hands " all torn and bleeding" and struck
a rather hysterical pitch when Cromwell arrived and
announced that her lover lived and could resume his
job in the morning, Uncle Joe Fodder couldn t stand
the entertainment a moment longer but stamped off
down to the Whitney House bar and had a strong
drink.
Jerry Peterson who worked in the wagon shop did
some sleight-of-hand tricks that fooled everybody but
the small boys, and Clarence Potherton appeared in
blackface and had a good deal to say about the train
that went to Morrow to-morrow but got all tangled
up in his time of departure and destination and did
three-quarters of the song in a manner which sug
gested that his mouth was filled with hot potatoes.
Julian Blackburn told a few jokes about the baby
brother that couldn t be sent back to heaven because
he d been used four days and about Irish widow
ladies who had the news of their bereavements broken
to them in strange and wonderful ways. And
THE GREATER GLORY 55
Douglas MacMillan appeared on the scene in Scot
tish kilts with a couple of cavalry swords and did the
Sword Dance, his younger brother improvising a
Scottish bagpipe out of his nose, while several elderly
ladies turned their faces away and said the very idea
to let Douglas come into a church entertainment in
his bare legs like that and why didn t some one send
him home to put on his pants ?
The entertainment was concluded with the sing
ing of "America," Mibb Henderson with her rich
but abused contralto taking the verses as solos and
the audience joining in on the chorus. The young
ladies took the soprano, the elderly ladies took the
alto, the young men took the tenor, and the old men
took anything they could get.
The parents then called noisy children from their
fellowship on the church steps, or lifted phenomenal
infants who had slept through it all, from their laps
and started toward home.
Several good souls rolled up their sleeves and
pinned on borrowed aprons and tackled the pile of
dishes, looking for their reward in heaven. Lovers
paired off and dissolved quietly into moonlit streets
and under sleeping maples. Adam McQuarry blew
out all the lanterns that hadn t caught fire and pro
ceeded to "cart all the junk indoors, because it looked
like rain before morning and the table tops might
warp."
And through the entertainment, with half a plate
of ice cream unconsumed before her, little Mary
Wood sat apart with Herb Truman and thought
how this indeed was life, and of her mother at a
moonlit window far away on Cobb Hill too weary
and heart-heavy to seek her bed.
Herb got to his feet, found his hat under the table,
56 THE GREATER GLORY
effectively squelched the riotous cowlick and mur
mured something about how he hoped he could see
her safe home. And they casually moved off the
lawn with the others and found themselves in de
serted summer streets where the young man regaled
her with items of interest wherein his own ec
centricities were prominent.
He asked her if she supposed the little black mare,
Monday-Washing, could possibly contract shoe boil,
and when she said she couldn t imagine such a thing,
he declared that Monday-Washing had done that
thing and explained in great detail how Doc Sawyer
the veterinary had lanced it and taken away a
"quart" and could she suppose you could take away
a "quart" from the leg of a mare as small and neat
as Monday- Washing.
Mary replied rather faintly that she could not
conceive of such a happening which prompted Slug
to move on to the subject of glanders.
Had she ever had a horse with glanders ? No ?
Well, did she know what to do if she should have a
horse with glanders ? No ? Well, he would tell her
so that she might be prepared for such an emergency
and save the animal from the death-violent at the
hands of the authorities. Which he did, with much
elaboration of the price the secret had cost him and
the intimation that he was disclosing it only because
he took it she was a friend and could be trusted.
He confided to her that Jim Stile s collie dog had
mange and that nothing would tickle him more than
to know that Jim s dog had given it to fussy little
Miss Sparrow s curly-tailed pug. He said that if
Frank Morrow persisted in running his bay so fast
between here and Barre that he was going to break
her wind and wanted to know which she would pre-
THE GREATER GLORY 57
f er : a mare with broken wind or a horse with spavin ?
Finding at length however, that Mary was not
prolific on the ailments of horses and dogs, he
changed to athletics.
The longest way round being the shortest way
home, they did not turn in at Mrs. Mather s gate
when they reached School Street. Slug said some
thing about a fine night and would she walk down as
far as the water- works and back to enjoy it? And
Mary because he was the first young man who had
taken interest in her since she arrived in Paris
consented and with hat in hand wandered with him
down Main Street and through Pine and off to the
south of town.
Slug grew intimate on the return. At Glark Street
he put his hand under her arm to help her over the
broken crosswalk and on the other side he did not
take it away. She was rather glad they were headed
homeward. He got around in a conversational way
to family affairs, among which he confided to her that
most of the time his sister Esmeralda gave him a pain
in the neck anyhow and that all she needed was
someone to marry her that would whale the tar out of
her.
He said that his mother had long ago impressed it
upon him that he ought to marry and settle down, but
that he said to her he d be damned if he would until
the right girl came along, all the girls in the village
being more or less lightheaded sisters who couldn t
boil water without burning it and a hundred to one
would try to cook a chicken without removing the
feathers.
He asked her if she ever had moments when the
feeling came over her that all folks cared about her
was for her money or what they could get out of her
58 THE GREATER GLORY
and sustained a rather suggestive pressure on her arm
when he asked her if love wasn t the real true thing
in life after all and what could you find to equal it ?
It was a badly disquieted girl who saw the white
fence of Mrs. Mathers house come in sight a second
time, feeling herself in a situation beyond her control.
They stood for a while at the gate post, the girl
leaning back against it with her bonnet behind her,
gazing from time to time a bit fearfully up into the
young man s face.
"Well," said he, "I hope you had a pleasant
evenin ."
"Yes," she faltered.
"Hope we ll see more of each other."
"I hope so."
"Well, I suppose I got to say good-by."
"Good-by. I ve had an awful good time. I
can t tell you how grateful I am to you."
Before she realized what he intended there was an
elephantine arm upon her neck, the faint reek of stale
cigar smoke in her senses and a dab of a kiss had been
imprinted upon the side of her half -parted lips.
Her face burned. There came a choke in her
throat. She raised the back of one hand to her
mouth and held it there. Her eyes fused tears of
mortification.
"How how could you?" she lisped faintly.
"I didn t mean nothin by it," he laughed un
easily. "Aw, come back! All the girls in our set
lemme kiss em when I see em safe home "
"How could you?" she said again. "And
I thought you were a gentleman."
"I am a gentleman ! "
But she went swiftly up the steps and into the
house.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH A RATHER BORED BUT INDUSTRIOUS
SMALL-TOWN DEVIL TAKES OUR LITTLE JELLY
BEAN HEROINE UP ONTO A MOUNTAIN TOP AND
SHOWS HER THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD.
SUMMER faded. Dreamy days of russet and gold
followed. Over the eastern wooded hills loitered a
harvest moon. There were husking bees and corn
roasts out among the farmer folk. In the tangled
woodlands songs of winter fires were aripple in the
sear brown leaves. In the west appeared low-lying
cloudbanks and the leaden grays of November were
upon us.
One Saturday morning toward the close of Indian
summer the office mail contained a letter for Mary.
Running her eye down the single sheet and noting
the signature, the pallor fled and a dull red took its
place.
It was a letter from Herbert and contained the
following chatter :
I was fresh, too darned fresh. All summer
you been keeping away from me and avoiding me
and you taught me a lesson. I m sorry and I apolo
gize. It won t ever happen again. It s come to me
that you re just the kind of girl I been waiting for ;
a girl who wouldn t let me get fresh.
"I mean this. I want you to forgive me. Show me
60 THE GREATER GLORY
you accept my apology by going to ride with me to
morrow behind Monday- Washing out Gilbert s Mills
way. If you d done something you were sorry for
and asked forgiveness, you d want to be taken in the
same spirit you apologize in, wouldn t you? Then
be ready and come with me around one o clock "
She saw him across the street when she came out
of the office later that night. She went deliberately
over and intercepted him.
"I got your letter," she said, "I m sorry."
"You ll go buggy -ridin with me to-morrow?"
"Yes."
He called for her at Mrs. Mathers after Sunday
dinner next day. All the inmates of the boarding
house watched them drive away. Mrs. Mathers
went around all the rest of the afternoon looking
troubled.
It was a lazy autumn day. The sun was warm,
the fields were fragrant with stubble over which blew
a fitful wind. Barrels stood beneath apple trees ;
ladders leaned against yellow-leafed boughs. The
horizons were hazy. Autumn s mysterious voices
were calling as they have called since the world was
young.
They drove out of town by the south road.
The hills hid Paris behind them. The little mare
shied at boulders and old newspapers fluttering
against roadside bushes. The New England country
rolled away until it was blurred in a violet skyline.
For several miles there was a silence between them.
Then Herb said :
"Thank you for fdrgivin me; girls in this town
as a rule are too fresh anyhow ! "
"Let s not talk about that. I see by a local I
THE GREATER GLORY 61
* set up on Friday that your sister has gone to New
York."
"Thinks she s goin on the stage. She s just like
all the rest. Makes me sick."
Mary tried again.
"I see the Odd Fellows are going to give a play
in the Opera House. You re an Odd Fellow, aren t
you?"
"Yes," he replied curtly. "But I don t want to
talk about that. I want to talk about about
something else."
"You promised in your letter that nothing
would ever happen -
"But I m honest in what I ve got to say to you.
I ve thought lots about the lawn party and our walk
home. Do you know, you re the first girl in this
town who s ever let me talk with her about horses
and dogs and sports and such ? "
"Yes?"
"And a girl that s interested in the things a man is
interested in, is bound to prove interesting to the
man them things interest."
"You ll get twisted up in your tongue if you
attempt many sentences like that." Yet despite
her laugh, Mary was uneasy.
"I m serious."
She sobered. The man s declaration was an
appeal. Regardless of his size and awkwardness he
suddenly showed himself to her as nothing but a
lonely, heartsick, unmothered boy. That was why
he had apologized to her perhaps. A queer feeling
of wanting to do something maternal came over her.
"Let me keep company with you this winter,"
he asked.
She sensed again that the situation was engulfing
62 THE GREATER GLORY
her. To keep company with her ? What lay at the
end of such an experience, what but marriage or
a broken love affair? For there were no "friend
ships" among the younger set in those days that
have since come to be. To keep company with a
girl, to be seen constantly in public with her, to visit
her regularly on Wednesday evenings was tanta
mount to an engagement. If honorable the end was
matrimony. And as she rode along in the light buggy
with the delightfully easy springs behind the neat
little mare, over the autumn hills and far away be
side the stocky young man with the idiotic pompa
dour and lumberous manners, she tried to conceive
of herself as married to young Truman. And at the
conception there stirred in her heart a little protest.
And yet what would her mother say if she knew
that a young man with a fortune was at the moment
taking her out riding and asking her to enter a rela
tion which unfailingly led to matrimony that this
was happening and that in the daughter s heart was
disappointment and resentment?
"What what would your folks say to any such
arrangement?" the girl demanded after another mile.
"Oh we d keep it quiet. They d kick like
steers probably, but we d keep it quiet. We d just
slip away somewhere on the sly and be
"What!"
He took out the whip and slashed the little mare
cruelly, effecting to "train" her when there was not
the least reason for training her at all.
"I always put my foot in it!" he complained.
" I m a great big lummox, I am, and I wish I wish
I was dead ! "
"You mustn t wish that. It s wicked !"
"But haven t you ever felt blue and lonesome and
THE GREATER GLORY 63
as if nothin you did was worth while, and nobody
gave a darn for you, and if you didn t have money
you d be the least among all the people in the
world ?"
"I ve been blue and lonesome, yes. I ve often
felt as if nothing I had accomplished was worth
while. But I don t know about folks caring for
me only for money. You see, I never had money
to bother me that way that is much ! "
"That s so! But you can imagine
"Yes."
"I knew you could. You re that kind. Did you
know there s lots of girls in Paris that d like to be
out here with me havin me talk to em like this."
"Maybe so. But you see "
"Well, what?"
"You re asking me so much so suddenly
"I know all about that. It don t make me feel
no better to realize it."
"Please, please! Let s talk about something
else. Let me think !"
It was eight o clock when they drove into the
village from the east. Most of the towns folk were
in church; from behind stained glass windows
organ music carried out on the spicy autumn night
the tunes of beautiful old hymns.
"I wish you d come in and meet my folks,"
said Herb. They were opposite the big white house
with the only plate-glass windows in Paris, sur
rounded by the aristocratic iron fence and with the
terra-cotta statue in the center of the leaf-choked
front yard. Monday- Washing was making urgent
appeals to turn in at the driveway. She offered no
protest as the boy gave the little mare the reins
and she stopped before the side door.
64 THE GREATER GLORY
She waited a moment on the brown-stone steps
while Herbert hurriedly unharnessed the mare,
blanketed her, fed her and pushed the buggy out
of the way in the carriage house. Then he took
her arm and they passed into his home together.
The girl had never before been in such a house.
In books and magazines she had read of them and
tried to picture what they were like. Now that she
found herself in the big hall with her poorly shod
little feet sinking into rich carpets and the atmos
phere of rich embroideries and hangings assailing her,
she was awed and frightened.
The lad helped her off with her coat and hung it
on the big black walnut hall-tree. He led her into
the southeastern front room and left her while he
went in search of his mother.
Whatever his parsimony might be in business, old
Short-Cramp was a home man and his house was his
castle furnished according to his means. A marble
mantel was built on the north side of the room with
an open fireplace beneath. The fall night being
chilly, a fire had been burning in the grate and the
charred embers were warm and hospitable. The
carpet was similiar to floor coverings in the hall
and the high windows were hung with heavy cur
tains of creamy lace. The chairs were upholstered
in gray. Over the carved center table was a chan
delier of a hundred spangles and the big oil lamp in
the center sent out an illumination which blended
the whole into an air of unutterable luxury.
The girl sank into one of the chairs drawn before
the dying fire. Something deep within her stirred
in appreciation and compatibility with the atmos
phere about her.
To live in a house like this was what it meant to be
THE GREATER GLORY 65
wealthy. This is what her mother had wanted. To
gain an entrance to such a life was the reason that
she had tried to finish her schooling that had been so
unhappily interrupted. She thought of the lonely
farmhouse on the Cobb Hill road in contrast, and
she choked back an impulse to shed tears. The
avenue was open to her to spend all the rest of her
days in such a mansion. And after all, Slug wasn t
such an impossible boy. He was only big and
clumsy and lonesome and heart-hungry. He would
never treat her as Pa Wheeler had treated her
mother. He wasn t that kind. What should she
do ? She had no one to help her or take counsel
with her, She knew well enough what her mother
would say. And with thoughts of her mother
came the realization of what she could do for the
woman with the terribly reddened hands if as
Herb s wife she had access to the Truman money.
She wept a little bit before Herbert returned.
"Neither mother nor father are in the house,"
he announced. "I suppose they ve stepped out to
Sunday meetin ."
"I m sorry," she said. "Some other time, per
haps -
"Don t go," he pleaded.
"I must," she said simply.
Rather sorrowfully he assented. He followed
her back into the hall and helped her with her coat.
"Mary," he said -I don t mean nothin*
wrong by what I been tellin you this afternoon."
"I know you don t, Herbert."
She stood by the door, her fingers fumbling the
rim of her bonnet, her face downcast.
"I d like to keep company with you regular
"Let me please let me think it over."
66 THE GREATER GLORY
"All right," he agreed. His agreement was
pathetic.
The luxury and refinement of the place she was
leaving was speaking to her. Outside was the dull
gray night with the strange mystetious heart-cries
of autumn. The thought of her own hard life up
to the moment, her mother s sacrifice and present
predicament, the uncertainty of the future, the
work and struggle and worry, all arose before her
and confused and unbalanced her.
Courteously Herbert opened the big front door
and stood aside for her to precede him. His desire
to please her, to do the correct and gentlemanly
thing, overwhelmed her.
"Herbert," she said hi a voice she scarcely recog
nized as her own.
"Yes, Mary."
"You can kiss me if you want to !" she offered
softly.
The humble scribe who sits here in the corner of
this grimy little newspaper office recording this
narrative, entered the back room unnoticed the
next noontime, entered to find little Mary Wood
with her head down on her type case by the window
weeping with no one to see. Daddy Joe, fatherly
old tramp printer, was in the next ad-alley.
The girl suddenly raised her head. She turned
and looked out of the window, down Cross Street
and beyond the town to the brown hills awaiting
the winter.
"Daddy Joe," said the girl, "tell me; is it real
wrong for a girl to want to marry money ?"
Joe did not know she had been weeping. In a
voice soft and sympathetic he replied across the cases :
THE GREATER GLORY 67
"Suppose you tell an old man the circumstances,
honey."
"Oh there aren t hardly any circumstances, Joe.
Only I m just tired, that s all. I m tired of living
in a boarding-house bedroom all alone. I m tired
of getting up at the unfeeling bang of a cheap alarm-
clock every morning. I m tired of having no one
to talk to at night, no one who cares about me for
myself alone. I m weary of making endless motions,
setting endless galleys, correcting endless proofs,
drawing my pay envelope every Saturday that s
spent before I get it for board, for clothes for
the help of mother out on the farm. Sometimes I
feel just as if I d like some man any man to
come along with about a billion dollars and pick
me up and carry me off and do anything he wants
with me, so long as he ll only take away the endless
grind ; so long as he ll just provide me with pretty
clothes and proper food and a few good times and
just let me rest. Yes, I m wondering if it s
sinful to want to marry any man for his money."
Now those are dangerous sentiments from an honest
pretty girl. Daddy Joe saw in a moment that it
wasn t money the girl craved. It was love. For
as I heard him tell her that day, "when folks is in
love they don t give a hoot bout making no endless
motions or payin board or gettin up every morning
to the bang o a cheap alarm clock." Fatherly
old Joe, whom we found out afterward had buried
a wife and two children, saw that the girl was tired,
friendless and alone ; that it depended upon him to
keep her feet in pathways that were straight.
"Yes, Mary," he went on, "it s downright wicked
to want to splice up for cash when you just ain t
swept off your feet with hell-bent-for-election adora-
68
tion for somebody. What you need is for some nice
young chap to come along and get you interested in
him. Ain t you got no steady, Mary?"
"No, "said the girl.
"Then just you hang on, Mary," said the kind
old fellow. "The right boy s on his way along.
You ll meet him sooner or later and when he comes
you won t have to be told. And you don t want to
go spoilin things by havin him find you the wife of
some other fellow just because there was money-bags
figgered in it. You want to be free to marry that
young chap in a world all pink and gold with happi
ness. And you ll have a nice home and all your
troubles will be forgotten."
The old man cheered the girl and she dried her
tears and went on with her string of locals. But
as he bent over his stick I saw him sadly shaking his
world-wise old head like Mrs. Mathers.
CHAPTER VI
ENTER THE ONLY HERO THIS HEROLESS STORY
WILL EVER KNOW
THE week following Christmas, two things hap
pened : First, the North Sidney Bulletin, a little
weekly newspaper up in the northern part of the
State, failed for several thousand more dollars than
it was worth and was duly eulogized by the Ver
mont newspaper fraternity. Old Joshua Purse,
who was ill of pneumonia at the time the creditors
petitioned the court for a referee, passed away two
days later and the newspaper folk of the State
wondered what was going to become of his boy John
who had been associated with him in the business.
The second thing which occurred that Christmas
week was the unusual disability and indisposition
on the part of several of our workmen to remember
Christmas season to keep it sober. Two of them
stayed away at great length and the Telegraph
almost missed two issues. Sam Hod came across
with a letter which he laid on my desk.
"Bill," said he, "I m sick of these journeymen.
I m going to get some workmen of a little higher
class. Joshua Purse s boy has written asking if
there s an opening on our staff. He says he can do
anything on a newspaper from sweeping the floor
to writing editorials. I m going to send for him to
come down and talk it over."
Two days later the Purse boy came.
70
Hiring a new man from that time onward grew
into a ceremony for Young Sam. There was a long
visit and catechism in the private office and negotia
tions extending over another day in the matter of
duties and wages. Jack had been closeted with
Sam about twenty minutes when the editor was
called across the street. He left Jack in the private
office with the door open. Jack moved across into
Sam s swivel chair before this battered table and
began to read over some of the exchanges.
He was so occupied when Mary came through with
a proof of an editorial in her soiled hands. She heard
the well-known creak of the desk chair in the inner
office. She supposed that it was Sam. She entered
the private sanctum with her eyes riveted on the
proof. She laid it down on the table, and then she
missed the familiar baldspot on top of the head of the
man to whose attention she had called an error.
She took her eyes from the type and started back
when she recognized a stranger. A stranger ?
She saw a lad of about her own age, slenderly
built, with a fine serious face, high forehead and
wavy brown hair who was half a head taller than
herself and looked shyly into her eyes with honest
confusion. For a moment boy and girl stared at
one another without speaking. Then :
"I beg your pardon," faltered Mary, "I thought
you were Mr. Hod."
"I m John Purse," he said half -apologetically, as
though it explained everything. "I m hoping to
get a place here."
The girl was staring at his fine face. The sensa
tion which comes to all of us at times of having been
in exactly the same circumstances and done the
same thing beiore when we know we have not, came
THE GREATER GLORY 71
over her then. A stranger? This young chap was
not a stranger. Wherever had she seen him before ?
"I I thought for a moment that I knew you,"
she went on. "Your face is familiar."
He laughed, showing a set of fine even teeth.
"And I was thinking the same of you."
"Have you ever been in Paris before?"
"No." "
"Or North Foxboro?"
"No." He fingered his watch charm. "And you
haven t ever been up to North Sidney ? I come from
there, you know. My father and I have been run
ning the newspaper there. He died last week."
"I know," said Mary. "I m so sorry for you.
I set up Mr. Hod s editorial about it. I hope you
get the place here. Mr. Hod is one of the finest
men I know."
"I hope I get the place also," the boy returned.
So Jack came among us.
" Who s that girl ? " he asked of "Slob" Hanchette,
indicating Mary Wood.
"Her? Oh, that s Slug Truman s girl -least
wise he s been flirtin round her a lot lately, though
folks say they can t see why she lets him make an
easy mark out o her just because he s got money.
But that s always the way, Ma says. And Pa,
he says that many a chap who wouldn t knock a
feller man when he was down or kick a cripple nor
overturn a baby carriage, thinks he s did somethin
smart when he s got the best o some poor trustin
girl. She ll fall fer him afore he s through with
her see if she don t."
"Who s Slug Truman?"
"He s a sort of a sport round here. Ma says all
he s good for is sausage meat and to make muddy
72 THE GREATER GLORY
tracks on the church carpet and Pa, he says all he s
good for is to put some o old Short-Cramp s widder s-
mites back into the channels o trade. Say, Mr.
Purse, what s * widder s-mites ? "
"Money," answered Jack. "He s rich, you say?
And courtin that girl ? And is she poor?"
"Yep poorer than old Mis Marks down by
the Gas Works, and that s goin some ! Her folks
live out to Cobb Hill. Ma says her mother s a
softie and Pa says if there was more like her, there d
be less old men go to the devil and less young ones
go to N York. He beat her up, one night her
stepfather did. So she come over here and got a
job. Slug rescued her then. He come along and
found her bein beaten up and he sicked his bull
dog, Cardinal Wolsey, onto him. Anybody 11 tell
you the story."
Jack Purse worked over his forms in silence for a
time, casting clandestine glances at Mary.
"Is she engaged to marry him ?" asked Jack.
" Dunno. Most folks doubt it. But she lets him
kiss her. I seen her. I was goin past his house
last Sunday night and I seen her let him kiss her
behind the glass o the Truman front door. I tole
Ma about it and Ma, she says something about the
social precipice and Pa, he says : * Gawd, that s
too bad. Say, Mr. Purse, what s the Social
Precipice?"
"When you get older you ll understand," said
Jack.
His eyes were upon the dainty features bent over
the composing stick and the pretty, slender back
bowed over the typecase. "And who s the black-
eyed girl always talking about her fellers ?"
"That s Mibb Henderson. Her mother runs the
THE GREATER GLORY 73
mill boarding house and makes old Harvey eat the
chicken gizzards and pie-crusts. Old Harvey got
some kind of a crick in his back stabbin the enemy
at Bull Run and ain t been able to do a stroke o*
work since. Mibb sings."
"She does what?"
"She sings solos and songs. They been tryin
to get her into the quartet at the Methodist
church for two years to take the place of old Mis
Busbee who always flats on High C, but Mibb says
the only time they ll ever get her into a church will
be so the proper number o folks can file past and
remark * Don t she look natural. Means when
she s dead, I guess, and folks come to her funeral.
Ma says all she needs is her ears boxed regular an
a few chores to make her realize she lives in a New
England small town. Pa, he says she s an after-
nine-o clock girl and if she was his daughter he d
stop it if he had to go lookin for her in his carpet
slippers. And that always makes Ma sore because
she thinks it s a slam at the slippers she give him
Christmas and she says he won t get another pair
next Christmas if his feet after hours has to go
naked."
Jack spotted an ad in the forms and undid the
string from around it. Then he wetted it with a
sponge to keep the rules from falling over until
he had his column rules in place.
"You don t wanner go chasin either one of em
unless you got money, though," went on the irre
pressible Hanchette young one. "Because that s
principally all they think about both of em.
Ma says the younger generation is perkin up and
Pa, he says thank Gawd he s shot his bolt and
ain t called on to strain his liver no longer on the
74 THE GREATER GLORY
gentler sex s demand for doo-dabs. Have you got
any money, Mr. Purse?"
"Not much," confessed our new employee.
"Then take my advice and choose Annie," went
on Slob. "She s fat but she s inexpensive and
chocolates that come twenty cents a pound tickles
her just as much as the kind that comes by the box
with a ribbon around em."
"Thanks," said Jack dryly.
Jack had occasion to speak to the girl that after
noon when she came over to the imposing stones to
get an empty galley.
"Is it a good town here to live in ?" he asked.
She avoided his eyes as she replied :
"There isn t much going on at times. It gets
lonesome."
She dropped the galley with a loud clatter; it
had slipped from her grasp. They both reached
for it at the same moment. Their heads came
together.
"I think," said the boy grimly, "that I m seeing
more stars than you are !"
"That," she replied, "is an awful exaggeration !"
They laughed.
A few days later Sam came into the front office.
He was only a young man in those days we were
all young then and only a few years older than
Mary Wood.
"That new man of ours is falling in love with
that Wood girl as sure as the Lord made cider
apples ! You mark me ! The son of a gun ! And
I was just on the point of falling in love with her
myself."
"He s poorer than Job s turkey," replied Harriet
Babcock at the proofreader s desk.
THE GREATER GLORY 75
"What ice does that cut when a chap gets the
girl fever?" demanded Sam.
"I guess Slug Truman will have something to say
about that," commented Harriet. "Wait and see.
Heavens and earth ! Here comes Mrs. Blake
Whipple with her list of actors for the Odd Fellows
play. Let me duck !"
CHAPTER VSL
IN WHICH WE ATTEND THE REHEARSAL OF THE
ODD FELLOW S PLAY AND FROM THE WINGS
WATCH A HERO AND HEROINE INDUSTRIOUSLY
FALLING IN LOVE
THE time seemed to pass quickly after Jack came
to work for us and Daddy Joe began nodding approv
ingly when he saw the beautiful head of little Mary
Wood bent over the forms alongside Jack Purse s
wavy pompadour.
We do not recollect where that winter went,
but we do remember very well that play the Odd
Fellows gave in the Opera House. It is embodied
in this narrative because it is typical of amateur
plays everywhere and because it marked another
gala night in the Wood girl s life and led afterward
to the picnic in Gold-Piece Cabin up the Glen.
It came about that the first wonderful spring
that Jack Purse was in Paris, a handful of good
women, whose altruism and untiring endeavor was
the backbone of the social life in our community,
stayed after the regular meeting of Rebekah Lodge,
No. 1533, and listened to the proposal advanced by
Mrs. Blake Whipple under the enthusiastic per
suasion of none other than Mibb Henderson of
our office. Mrs. Whipple occupied the chair.
Harriet Babcock, our proofreader and office girl,
was also there and Mrs. Ben Williams, wife of our
THE GREATER GLORY 77
local clothier; also the Blair sisters, spinsters, who
had money and who looked and dressed as near
alike as two peas. Alice Whiting was there, the
school teacher out in the Green Valley who afterward
married Sam Hod and Grace Rawlins whose
specialty was music and whose disposition was not
all that it might have been. Aunt Julia Farrington
and Mrs. Ebenezer Mathers completed the com
mittee, women who usually said the least and did
the most work at any given public function, particu
larly the ever-necessary cleaning up afterward.
"What kind of a play could we give, now?"
ruminated Mrs. Whipple. "You know it s hard to
interest the men folks; usually they haven t much
time to memorize parts or come to rehearsals."
Old Sol Hopper, the janitor, who some folks said
wasn t quite right in his head, sat among a mass of
empty seats in the rear. A silence following Mrs.
Whipple s question, old man Hopper contributed
the opinion that, " The King of the Cannibal Islands "
wasn t a bad show ; he d seen it put on by the Odd
Fellows up to Wickford and a pleasant time was had
by all. Grace Rawlins wanted to know if Hopper
was crazy and said "The King of the Cannibal
Islands" called for a cast in brown tights. Where
upon old man Hopper retorted "what of that?"
and the assembled matrons turned upon him to a
woman and Mrs. Williams reminded him that his
job was to keep the furnace coaled and the hall
clean and that bar-room pleasantries were entirely
uncalled for in a business session of perfect ladies.
W 7 hich rather dampened Old Man Hopper s en
thusiasm for the project and he sloughed down onto
the small of his back and meditated darkly on the
ingratitude of all flesh.
78 THE GREATER GLORY
Alice Whiting mentioned "East Lynne" but Mrs.
Whipple declared that "East Lynne" was played
out. Mrs. Mathers suggested " Uncle Tom s Cabin "
that being the only play she had ever witnessed and
her acme of dramatic attainment ; but Mrs. Williams
maintained it was too much work to get up a street
parade. Whereat the prospect sagged. Mrs. Whip-
pie then turned suddenly to Harriet and demanded to
know what kept them from putting on a play written
as well as acted by local talent. Who had more
talent and training for that chore than Harriet
who wrote many of the items each week for the
paper and once received five dollars for an anecdote
sent to the Youth s Companion. Yes, the very idea !
Harriet should write a play.
Harriet blossomed out in crimson and said she
could never do it in the wide, wide world. But
Harriet s heart was going pitapat and all the king s
horses and all the king s men couldn t have dragged
her into a permanent refusal. So they had to spend
fifteen minutes coaxing her and at the end of that
time Harriet agreed to write a play and Mrs.
Whipple agreed to continue the canvass of the town
and see who would be willing to act in the play which
Harriet wrote.
"We ought to have specialties between the acts,"
said Mrs. Whipple. "Some one ought to come out
and sing or recite something."
Mrs. Williams suggested getting Doctor John
son s wife to sing ; she carried the air in the Metho
dist church. But Ophelia Blair said the doctor s
wife was a Methodist and didn t believe in the stage.
And then they suggested Mrs. Parker Turner
whose husband manages the gas works. But the
argument was advanced that Mrs. Parker Turner
THE GREATER GLORY 79
had studied music for a year in New York and would
consider it beneath her dignity to appear in such a
vulgar low-brow capacity as a between-the-acts
feature in a small-town show. It ranked her with
little cigars or ventriloquists or ice water.
"We needn t lose any sleep over it," snapped
Grace Rawlins, "because if worse comes to worst
we ll get Mibb Henderson. Leave it to me as part
of the music."
Then Mrs. Whipple said : "I wonder if we can get
Georgie Griffin to help us with rehearsals? The
Masons had him last year in their minstrel show!"
"Sure we ll get Georgie," declared Clementine
Blair. "He s property man at the Opera House,
and if we rent the place, we rent Georgie s services."
On the following afternoon, Mrs. Blake Whipple
took stock of herself and girded up her loins and
applied to her person sundry dashes of perfumery
and looked at the back of her head with a hand
mirror and was sure she had her notebook and pencil.
Then she ordered the smallest boy to wipe his nose
and stop hollering and she sallied forth into the
byways as a fisher of men.
It is verbose to record her visits of that afternoon
or the amazing amount of duties demanding un
divided attention during the coming month on the
part of our townspeople, chiefly male, which pre
vented them from demonstrating their dramatic
ability. But Mrs. Whipple was not to be cast
down. She was one of those who set their faces to
the stars and whose voices reply from far up the
heights. At half -past five she came in to Harriet,
and to the playwright she handed over a list of names
of the anointed. And that night Harriet took the
list home with enough copy paper to write a three-
80 THE GREATER GLORY
decker novel and enough of our office advertising
pencils to rewrite it after it was written.
She withdrew to her room and took all the things
off her center table and spread thereon last week s
copy of our little local paper and fixed the light
and seated herself and wooed the muse. And the
pencils were indelible pencils and Harriet went to
bed that night with a mouth resembling the eating
of much huckleberry pie. Which is mentioned to
emphasize her concentration. She wrote an outline
of her play the first night and tried to make the local
characters fit in. It was hopeless and she tore it
up. She tried it again on the second night and was
as far from satisfaction as ever. She tried again
and again and three or four times was panic-stricken.
Finally she jogged up her pages and looked her work
over and pronounced it good, although the evening
and the morning were the sixth day. Sighing in
relief she affixed to the top of her manuscript the
highly-dramatic title: "Lady Audrey s Mistake."
We never could exactly figure out just what
Lady Audrey s mistake was, unless it was being
dragged into the play at all. Because Lady Audrey
was more sinned against than sinning, having at
divers times and in sundry seasons before the play
opened been treated roughly by a party in a waxed
moustache and a plug hat who was the father of
her daughter. In the fullness of time she discovered
herself up in New England without a place to lay
her head and being at the end of her resources,
moral, financial and physical, she appealed to
strangers for assistance and repaid their goodly
offices by dying a few minutes later in their back
kitchen. Just for that the orphan daughter even
tually grew up into an appleblossoin of a young
THE GREATER GLORY 81
thing who ran away to the city and almost missed
marrying into the aristocracy if it hadn t been dis
covered by means of a locket that she was of the
aristocracy herself. It was a brilliant and original
plot and Harriet was to be congratulated. Which
Harriet was, profusely.
The point is that the play was finished and duly
read by Georgie Griffin and the rest, although it
cannot be said that Georgie approved of it as en
thusiastically as the cast who must act it. Notices
therefore with the date and admission prices were
duly printed in our paper with the announcement
prominent at the bottom that homemade candy
would be on sale between the acts; also for
our opera house is built with a flat floor and re
movable seats for just this purpose that the
affair would be followed by a dance at which ice
cream and cake would be procurable for a considera
tion. Harriet was inclined to feel peevish about
that footnote. Somehow it detracted from the
quality of her effort and grossly commercialized
the drama. We suspect that Harriet had artistic
temperament. Such things have happened.
There were rehearsals one night a week at first to
which everybody came late, bringing the information
that they hadn t had time to learn their parts very
well but would do better next week. The second
week so many folks were absent that Grace Rawlins
got huffy and declared that if no more interest was
going to be taken in it than this they might as well
chuck it all up right here and now. Georgie agreed
with her, using the spittoon copiously, and said he
was glad to see somebody in the bunch showed traces
of brains. But some one retorted that Grace was sore
because they wouldn t let her play at the Woodman s
82 THE GREATER GLORY
dance next week and for everybody not to mind
her and as for Georgie, a few opinions out of him one
way or another would never have any effect on the
world, anyhow. And Mrs.Whipple suggested that
rehearsals be held twice a week and a third week
there was some semblance of a company who
knew at least one quarter of their parts. The
fourth week everybody sent in word that they knew
their parts letter perfect and could say them in their
sleep. But a great sickness began to seize the soul of
Mrs. Whipple because the advertisements had been
running for days, and two hundred and seven
teen tickets had been sold and there hadn t
been one complete rehearsal. Then, as happens
in such affairs the nation over, the play being
scheduled eight weeks ahead, about ten days
beforehand everybody put in an appearance at once
and came into belated action with such a whirlwind
of rehearsing and feverishness of preparation that
they lost their manuscripts and their cues and their
tempers and blamed every one else for everything;
and two people walked out cold and their places had
to be filled by others, and one girl worked so hard
over her lines she was taken sick abed, which made
her mother declare that the pace the young folks
lived these days was a caution and would open the
eyes of the dead.
All of which having been duly set down, as it has
been written in the book of the prophets since the
days when small towns and Odd Fellows lodges
and depleted treasuries were young, brings us in the
course of things to Georgie Griffin, rehearsals and
eventually romance, for Jack Purse and Mary
had been cast to play the leads in that little local
talent play.
THE GREATER GLORY 83
Georgie was a bony, undersized little fellow as hard
as nails with a fluffy down on his jaw, a quid of to
bacco in his cheek the size of a small hen s egg and
a disposition somewhat soured on life by reason of the
many trials and sufferings that were the heritage of
his profession. He installed meters for the gas
company daytimes and on show nights acted as
property man at our only playhouse. Property
man ! Georgie Griffin was more. Georgie was the
whole opera house. Ask any one who ever tried to
put on a show there. They ll tell you. And when
they get through telling you, you ll understand.
For Georgie had artistic temperament, whether
the Babcock girl did or not, an awful dose of it,
which is an extremely unfortunate thing for a prop
erty man in an opera house in a little town, particu
larly if the actors be local. For in a case like the
present one Georgie had ideas how a show should be
put on. Furthermore Georgie had full control over
the vocabulary adequate to express them. Up to
Georgie it was to make of Harriet s milksop manu
script a theatrical knock-out.
Now Georgie clothed himself by day and also by
evening in a pair of smudgy white overalls the size
whereof was enormous and the pockets of which were
popularly supposed to con tain any little thing wanted,
from a pair of andirons to a four-poster bed. He
wore a blue shirt, the collar of which was always
turned up about his neck, and on Georgie s head was
an over-sized cap which came down to his ears.
In fact, one might say that no one would ever look
upon him and then confuse him with any one else.
Having been bribed and bought and complimented
and labored with he had eventually assented to act as
stage director and general supervising dramatist.
84 THE GREATER GLORY
Therefore he procured a kitchen table from regions
back stage or it may have been his overalls -
and came grunting out with it. He planked it in the
center of the platform as close to the footlights as it
would go without sliding over into the pit of the
orchestra and spilling Georgie off onto the pianist s
head. Then he went behind the scenes again and
returned with a cuspidor nearly as large as himself,
which he set down on the floor conveniently at hand,
sampled it a couple of times to see that it was working
properly, and finding it was, called the courageous
to the chalk mark.
Georgie sweat and he swore and emptied his soul
of sarcasm and his mouth of tobacco juice. He
waved the manuscript and he waved the ham
mer ; he jumped off the table a dozen times a minute
and he jumped back again. His initiative was phe
nomenal. As an illustration : when no live baby
could be procured for Lady Audrey to carry in re
hearsals he substituted a sofa pillow. And the
spectacle of an emaciated woman falling into the
door of a farmhouse in the last stages of collapse,
going through four minutes of " heaven-will-care-f or-
the-child" doggerel and then blandly handing over a
sofa pillow with a six-inch rip in the stuffing shrieked
to high heaven for applause. The funny part of it
was that Georgie never saw that it was funny.
Jack Purse had been cast for the hero s part, and
because she had the time and the conscientiousness
to devote to it, and because by such situations are
the whole courses of our lives affected, Mary
Wood was cast for the heroine. That little
local talent play ! How strange that it should have
been proposed just then.
The first act of "Lady Audrey s Mistake" was
THE GREATER GLORY 85
divided into two parts. The first was given over to
that much abused lady s demise and the bequest of
her offspring to the good-hearted strangers.
Then the curtain came down for three minutes,
supposed to represent the passing of two decades
while the orphaned child grew to maturity.
When the first half of the act had been concluded
somewhere near to Georgie s satisfaction, the cur
tain arose on the real beginning of the story, twenty
years after. Mary, in the role of the girl who was to
be enticed away to the city by the villain, was dis
covered sitting in the kitchen. On should come
the hero and make love to her, love which was
true love indeed because it was not destined to run
smooth. And Jack came on.
" Come on now ! Come on now ! " ordered Georgie
from his table-top. "Get busy with the love stuff.
Come up behind her and give her a kiss, when she
don t expect it. Make it a humdinger so the whole
house won t mistake it like an old she-cow
pulling her hoof out of a bog. You re in love with
each other, ain t yer ? Well, well, mix together as
though you had sunstroke."
Jack looked into the girl s eyes and the girl
blushed crimson.
"In the play I mean !" added Georgie.
"Yes," whispered the girl.
"Well then, act like lovers and not like a couple
of elephants tryin to cuddle down together in a coal
hod. Start in, Jack Purse ! Git your hands blind
ing her eyes and then get in your lovin properly.
Cripes ! You act as if you was scared of her. Does
she bite?"
Jack went out as he was bidden. He came softly
in on tip toe. He stole his fingers around the girl s
86 THE GREATER. GLORY
eyes. As she dropped the pan in her lap, he kissed
her.
It was only a stage kiss, a kiss in a play. But it
was the first kiss he had ever given her. The blood
pounded strong in his temples when he had given it.
For the scent of her hair and her soft flesh was in his
senses. He was muddled and clumsy and confused
when Mary turned to confront him, as she was
supposed to confront him in the play. His eyes
dropped. He could not meet her gaze.
"Do it over again!" interrupted Georgie. "Do
it without actin as if it was a public misdemeanor !"
The little girl flushed furiously and tried it again.
Grace Rawlins got huffy and wanted to know whether
this was a play or a game of postoffice, and Dick
Robinson said it was no wonder some chaps would
consent to play hero parts for nothing, and young
Sam Hod declared that some guys were born lucky
anyhow. And all the time something in the touch
of the girl was calling to something deep in the boy,
something he had never felt before, something he
could hardly understand. And through the rest of
that play and that rehearsal there seemed a strange
intimacy between himself and Mary Wood. When,
in the last act and just before the final curtain, he
took the girl in his arms, he hated the brazen publicity
of it all. She was soft and delicate and fragile and
sweet to his embrace, and again and again when he
had gone home to his room at night he lived over and
over those moments.
On the last night before the play he arrived late at
his own boarding place after seeing Mary to her gate.
He parted the curtains and stood looking out over
the soft sleeping village swathed in romantic moon
light. A strange pain, an uneasiness, a weird, wild
THE GREATER GLORY 87
dissatisfaction filled him. It seemed as though, he
wanted to walk on and on all night. Action, mot ion,
were the only things which could ever end his awful
nervousness. Over and over he saw the girl s face
before him as he drew her to him in the play ! the
brown eyes with the lovelight in them and the dare
and the deviltry, although a good little deviltry and
he was made frantic with sudden heart-hunger and
longing for her in some other way than theatrical
make-believe.
"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "I ve only known
you just a little while. But it s the truth, Mary
Wood ! I love you ! And to-morrow night to
morrow night the play will be over and a memory of
the past. After that ! Oh Mary ! I m going
to have you ! I m going to have you ! somehow !
for my own forever ! poor little play ! Will I
ever forget Lady Audrey s Mistake ?"
It was plain however that Georgie Griffin held no
such temperamental sentiments about "Lady Audrey s
Mistake." On that same night that Jack was walk
ing home through the New England moonlight with
Mary he sat on a trunk back in the opera house and
pounded aimlessly and morosely on its front with his
property hammer dangling between his knees.
"Act? If this bunch was to goto N York, there
ain t one in the whole flock could get an engagement
as * shouts outside or a dead body ! And when
it comes to applause, we ll be lucky if some yellow
dog will only wander in and wag his tail ! "
There were indications it was going to be a great
return of value for the admission money.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH HERO AND HEROINE IN THE ROLE OF
PLAY-ACTORS WIN THE VILLAGE APPLAUSE AND
THERE COMES A DANCE AFTERWARD.
THE great night of the play arrived. At eight
o clock high school boys in their old-fashioned Sunday
go-to-meetin clothes were ushering fathers, mothers,
brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles and
spinisters and bachelors and the strangers within
the gates, to their places. In the big auditorium
there was much clumping down of seats and ladies
unwinding scarfs from the heads and men standing
up here and there to pull off overcoats and noisy
rustling of programs printed that afternoon at
our little printing office, and the town crank damning
the house and performance and solar system generally
because he d been given a seat with a broken ^ire
hat-rack beneath his cosmos, to hold a hat that at
home was hung upon the floor.
But if there was hustle and bustle and thrilling
expectancy out in front, what was it behind on the
stage? Mrs. Christopher Stacy had been given
Lady Audrey s part because she had the proper
tragedy in her temperament by special endowment
from nature, and not much else, and a willingness to
stay where she was put and not offer advice. She
was weak in the knees and ill in the stomach because
she was the first person to go on and every line of her
part had fled from her head and would not return
THE GREATER GLORY 89
regardless of how much she applied herself to her
manuscript.
Mrs. Whipple was moving around among the
players and stage hands in her make-up, and people
who had known her since infancy were staring at her
and asking who the strange woman was anyhow ; for
the sallow yellow of Mrs. Whipple s countenance had
fled before the application of grease-paint and pencil
ing, and Mrs. Blake Whipple was not Mrs. Blake
Whipple at all, but a girl of sweet sixteen whose
youth had been renewed like the eagle s ; and some of
the women were asking nastily where she had ever
learned to make up like that and she must have had
a past.
Chubb Barber the shoeman, who agreed with
everybody and never ran an ad in our paper that cost
more than forty cents, and who was to play the irate
foster parent, was monopolizing the peekhole in the
curtain and beholding the size of the audience grow
ing ever greater, and agreeing with everybody and
wetting his lips and wishing to Gawd he was home.
Mrs. Hoadley, the barber s wife, was there, sitting
around on things always needed next to dress the
stage and jouncing on her nervous knee the
momentous little Rollin Hoadley who was the cause
of it all, and who was to be carried right on and right
off very carefully, and who had been loaned after
much coaxing. Most of the boys were out on the
fire-escapes, smoking in the reviving coolness of the
evening and fortifying themselves for the ordeal
ahead. Everywhere was confusion and the giving
of orders which no one executed, and proffering of
help where it was least needed, and advice and sar
casm and turmoil and a time of trouble such as there
never has been since there was a nation.
90 THE GREATER GLORY
But Georgia was there ! And Georgie was boss !
But alas ! how empty is public honor. For never
in all the lengths and breadths and depths of time or
infinity had there been such an occasion as this where
the answer to every snarl was that since-coined
phrase ! "Let George do it ! "
George was doing it or it didn t get done.
He d hired old Peter Ferguson to come in and help
with the "props." But before showing up for work
Peter had stopped en route and looked upon the wine
when it was red and allowed it to sting him like a
serpent and bite him like an adder. And so Peter
wasn t good for much but to say "yes, sir" and then
forget what Georgie had told him.
Georgie was an overworked man. Somehow when
he grabbed hold of a piece of scenery and juggled it
across the floor he had the appearance of a man
grabbing hold of the Woolworth building to keep it
upright in a high wind. He sent sundry persons out
after things which they brought back late or did not
bring back at all, so that Georgie was fated to forget
that ladies were present and indulge in strong phrases.
At twenty-five minutes to nine the house was packed
and the boys in the gallery were giving catcalls and
Grace Rawlins had been back-stage twice to inform
him that the bunch out front was getting out of con
trol and why in Sam Hill didn t Georgie get a move
on himself and what did he think this was anyway,
a Jew picnic ? Georgie had retorted that if she didn t
like his speed she could do it herself and if that
didn t suit her, she knew where she could go. And
Grace had retorted that if it wasn t for hurting
people s feelings she might open her mouth and say
something, and Georgie had replied it wouldn t be
anything new, and Grace slammed out into the
THE GREATER GLORY 91
auditorium again to smile at every one and act busy
at the piano as if she d gotten instructions to go
ahead, which she hadn t.
At ten minutes to nine the fathers out front were
publicly asking if they d forgotten back of the cur
tain that there were heads of families in the place
who had to get some sleep before morning, and on the
stage Mrs. Hoadley was overheard by struggling,
swearing Georgie to say that if he didn t hurry up
she d have to take baby home, because baby wasn t
used to being out so late nights. And then, just
when the town cut-up out front had let out an
agonizing yawn that was heard all over the place and
received a laugh, the orchestra lamps blinked and
saved Grace Rawlins life, and she said thank Gawd
and broke out into the overture and played it, and the
curtain worked by old Peter Ferguson in the scenery
loft lifted on a stage wherein Mibb, in the capacity
of the foster mother, was cooking industriously and
waiting for the door to be opened violently on
tragedy.
In all of the rehearsals, Mrs. Stacy in the capacity
of Lady Audrey had died and bequeathed to her kind-
hearted friends the half-disemboweled sofa pillow.
This now was the real thing and requiring a real baby ;
the curtain was up and waiting ; Mibb was singing
about her work and waiting for the fatal knock ; Lady
Audrey was bolstered up with smelling salts and a glass
of cold water and approached the Hoadley woman to
get the illegitimate progeny. But out in front the
tittering and expectant audience suddenly heard a
peal of infantile despair as though somebody s off
spring was being strangled. That baby wasn t going
to leave the Hoadley woman, not if it knew it. And
it calculated that it did.
92 THE GREATER GLORY
" What am I going to do, I can t take it on kicking
and shrieking like this !" declared Mrs. Stacy.
"Choke it!" suggested Georgie. And if looks
would have killed, the young one would have ceased
to exist on the spot.
Again Mrs. Stacy assayed to borrow the baby. It
planted a number one foot in the hollow of her left
cheek and howled like an Apache.
"What are we going to do?" cried Mary in
alarm. "The curtain s up and the audience is
waiting !"
"We ought to have thought of this before !" cried
Mrs. Whipple. Then to Georgie: "Is there a big
doll in the house we can use in its place ?" Thereat
the assembled players turned to Georgie as though he
might have such a thing in his white overalls.
"There is not!" declared Georgie. "If that brat
won t consent to let itself be borrowed, why we simply
got to leave it keep its mother. Mis Hoadley ll have
to go on and play Lady Audrey herself ! "
Then it was the mother s turn to have a con
vulsion.
Georgie was equal to the occasion. He told her all
she had to do was stagger across the stage and die on
the sofa and leave it to Mibb s initiative to make
up the impromptu lines for the lack of Lady Audrey s
speech. But Mrs. Hoadley was obdurate.
And all the time the baby was yelling its head off
and some boys up in the gallery were stamping on the
floor.
Georgie realized with a great realization it was up
to him to do something and he did it. He grabbed
hold of the Hoadley woman bawling child and all
- opened the canvas door and shoved her through.
Then he planked his foot against it so she couldn t
THE GREATER GLORY 93
get back. The astounded and flabbergasted Mrs.
Hoadley found herself for once in the public eye in a
manner that from the standpoint of her feelings ought
to have put that eye out. And the audience was
treated to the spectacle of a woman with a bawling
infant assisted violently into the stage kitchen by a
party prominent in white overalls and the door
slapped shut in a manner that rocked the scenery.
Then the baby quit as promptly as it had begun, and
to the uttermost parts of that house penetrated ap
parently the opening line of the play :
"My Gawd! If Jim Hoadley knew I was here,
he d rip this place into tatters ! "
Which considering that Jimmy Hoadley never did
anything more spectacular than post bills for a living,
struck Paris as rather overdrawn.
Hoarse whispers advised Mibb what the trouble
was, and she rose to the dilemma.
"Have you no friends, my good woman?" she
asked earnestly.
"No! If I had," retorted the Hoadley woman,
"they d take Georgie Griffin out and lynch him ! "
It was several moments before order was restored.
"Come, rest awhile, my dear," struggled Mibb
bravely onward. Then in an undertone :
Please don t spoil the play at the start, Amy ! Do
your best for the sake of the rest of us."
The appeal in Mibb s voice softened the Hoadley
woman somewhat and for a wonder her baby kept
quiet. She looked back and saw her retreat cut off
and for the sake of the ugly predicament of the rest
she decided to pull things through somehow.
"All right," she agreed. Then aloud and to the
stark astonishment of the rest on the other side the
set: "He s deserted me! He s deserted me !" she
94 THE GREATER GLORY
suddenly cried. And she staggered magnificently
across to the sofa.
It was the audience s turn to gasp. The Hoadley
woman s last audible reference had been to Georgie
Griffin, and Paris batted the public eye. Was she
referring perhaps to Jim Hoadley. The Hoadley
woman s name was not on the program. Was a
juicy bit of dramatic scandal being promulgated?
It was an awful half-moment !
"Gripes!" said Georgie weakly, "I see where I
need a drink ! "
But the Hoadley woman went on :
"He deserted me and left me penniless. I m sick
and dying. Have pity on a poor unfortunate sister
and care for my child. Heaven will reward you !
and about its neck you will find a locket that that
"Yes, yes!" cried Mibb. "That what, my
dear?"
"That identifies it so that we can kill it to
morrow ! " bawled Georgie from the wings.
But the Hoadley woman had fallen back ap
parently dead !
"The poor, poor motherless little thing ! " went on
Mibb, picking up the threads of her mangled lines.
And she went to take the infant from the apparently
deceased mother s arms.
But would that brat consent to be taken by Mibb
any more than by Mrs. Stacy ? Not on your grand
mother s tintype ! Mibb acquired it by the laying
on of hands but it was like picking up a twelve-
pound chunk of howling wildcat. That child knew
it was on the stage and hogged the scene with
every last trick of a cheap actor. Mibb tried to com
fort it and get a word in between breaths. The other
THE GREATER GLORY 95
players came on as they were supposed to come on,
but not a word could get across the footlights. That
infant kicked and fought and squealed. The scene
was finished somehow in a pandemonium of terrific
bawls ; and Mibb got white-faced fearing it would
go into convulsions . Slug Truman suggested she lay
it on its stomach, and Georgie Griffin from behind
made some frightfully suggestive pantomime with his
property hammer, and all the mothers in the audience
said it was a shame to abuse a child so but what could
you expect from that Hoadley woman, she never
had a brain in her head anyhow. Again it was up to
Georgie to do something and again Georgie did it.
"Run dow T n the curtain ! " he ordered.
The curtain was lowered, but did that child notice
it ? No. It was a very peevish child and set in its
ways. Its mother leaped up, once the curtain had
fallen, and took it and patted it on the back and laid
it over her shoulder and said let her get out and take
it home, and Georgie said yes for Gawd s sake let her.
And the Hoadley woman postponed settling with
Georgie until a more auspicious time and the audience
followed that child in all its journeyings for the next
three minutes, twice around the stage and downstairs
to where the mother got her wraps, and down the
stairs outside and along the wall of the opera house
under the east windows, and down the street until a
merciful distance made the episode only a nightmare.
And Uncle Joe Fodder in the front row remarked
that "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the
Lord may have ordained truth ; but not that Hoadley
suckling ! It was a delusion and a snare and un
doubtedly would end its days on the gallows ! "
There were many other incidents in that play,
amusing enough if told at length, but they have no
96 THE GREATER GLORY
vital bearing on our story. Jack came in and sur
prised Mary he caressed her as per schedule, in
which some boys in the gallery assisted with shrill
whistles. He went through the usual pabulum of an
amateur play, stiffly and awkwardly and frightened
half out of his senses. Frank Whitcomb, who was
messenger and boy of all work in Amos Farmers*
bank, entered in the capacity of villain and enticed
Mary away to the city. The Henderson girl sang
her songs between the acts. In the second act
young Sam Hod nearly upset the scenery by catching
his toe under a corner while coining on at a run,
and between the second and third acts tragedy was
narrowly averted when some one needed a barrel and
didn t know what to do with the property tinware it
contained, and Georgie told them to lift up the trap
door in the stage and dump it into regions below;
and some one did and Colonel Jethro Wilson was
down there underneath the trap door "seeing what
he could see" and got the whole five-and-ten-cent
store poured merrily on his head.
The Henderson girl sang her songs between the
acts ! Yes, Mibb sang that night and we have never
forgotten her singing because of the song which she
sang. It was "Silver Threads Among the Gold."
"Silver Threads Among the Gold " ! How she sang
it ! The audience had hooted and laughed at the
rest of the little local talent play. But they did not
hoot and laugh at Mibb s part in that entertainment.
The girl s full rich contralto put a sweetness and a
haunting melancholy into the lines and the melody
which filled the eyes of old Uncle Joe Fodder with
tears. For Uncle Joe had heard it in a younger and
a happier day, like many a gray -head in that
audience. But the Henderson girl never knew of her
THE GREATER GLORY 97
power and her gift, or if she knew, she did not care.
It was very quiet in that hall when Mibb finished the
ballad.
In the last act, too, after Jack had rescued his hero
ine for the last time from the toils of the villain, the
curtain did not respond (for verily old Peter Ferguson
had fallen asleep in the scenery loft under the sooth
ing influence of the strong liquor by which he was
ensnared) . The perplexed audience was still further
perplexed by sight of Georgie Griffin appearing
suddenly in the middle of the stage where the final
love scene was in process and shouting "Damn
your immortal soul, send down that curtain ! " and
firing his property hammer insanely up into the wings.
This brought down the curtain in one titanic flop,
as though all the strings had been cut and it had fallen
from the skies. But every one declared that Georgie
Griffin always thought himself smart anyhow and
what could you expect if he took it into his head to
show off, and Uncle Joe Fodder remarked that all the
cast appeared to lack was memory, concentration
and self-confidence; outside of that it was all
right and the play was a riot.
Then as per the advertising, the boys cleared the
auditorium of seats and Grace Rawlins and Uncle
Joe Fodder took their places ; she before the piano,
he beside her with his famous old violin, and we held
the dance.
Mary Wood danced with Jack Purse that night.
She danced more than once with him. And by the
strange subtle telepathy which exists between
youth, it was accepted that the new Jack Purse was
Mary Wood s "fellow" and the new Mary Wood was
Jack Purse s "girl." And the elders smiled, for they
were a pretty pair Jack and the Wood girl. And
98 THE GREATER GLORY
the boys shrugged their shoulders; and the girls
pretended not to mind. Round and round in a
dreamy waltz Jack swung her, her body bending
against his own, her eyes half-closed, her heart
beating rhythmically to the young printer s, who held
her close.
She laughed a bit sadly as they sat down along the
side of the hall between dances and she fanned her
self with her handkerchief.
"I m sorry it s over," she said. "It s been a lot
of fun; I ll always have it to think of this little
local-talent play. Somehow my good times in Paris
seem to have begun since you came here, Jack."
Jack sat silently. A strange pain disturbed him,
for the feel of her kisses was still hot upon his lips and
the press of her soft yielding body in the waltzes was
still in his senses.
"Look at Jack!" laughed Sam Hod. "Clean off
his ballast in love ! If ever there was a case of love
at first sight it was that pair. And the girl s as
addled over the boy as the boy is over the girl.
Just look ! look at his hands, his necktie, his
knees, his feet! Gad, what a wreck love makes of
a man ! "
Jack left the girl by the wall while he went to
bring her a glass of water. And Mary Wood sud
denly felt a pluck at her sleeve. She turned to find
Herb Truman.
"I wanner see you, Mary!" he said thickly, "I
jus got to see you alone!"
"What s the matter, Herbert?"
"I jus got to see you alone. I mean it."
"Herbert, you re ill!"
"Can t I see you alone most anywheres?"
She arose and followed him outside.
CHAPTER IX
So HEKE THEN WE HAVE THE PROBLEM OLD AS
EDEN ITSELF, AS TO WHICH IT Is BETTER To Do,
CHOOSE POVERTY WITH LOVE OR RICHES WITH
DISSATISFACTION-- WHICH THE WOOD GIRL
SOLVES AFTER THE MANNER OF HER HEART, WITH
RESULTS FAR-REACHING IN AFTER YEARS BE
CAUSE OF WHICH WE HAVE A STORY.
THEY went out of the Opera House and across the
street and into the "Common" where the moths
were winging around the sputtering, old-fashioned
arc-lights, which threw pleasant shadows amid the
shrubbery. They found a settee a hideous fancy-
iron settee and they sat down and Mary waited
anxiously. Across the street, high in the hall, the
music struck up in another waltz.
"I ve got to be going back, Herbert," she said.
"Jack will be surprised not to find me when he
returns. What was it you wanted?"
He took off his cap and the cowlick rose terrifically.-
He twisted the cap in his hands. He was pitiful in
his misery. " You /" he blurted out.
" Me ? What do you mean, Herbert ? "
"You!" he cried doggedly. "You kissed him
on the stage in front o everybody. You been
lettin him dance most every dance with you ! I
know I got awful feet but "
She wanted to laugh but could not.
100 THE GREATER GLORY
"You ve forgotten me since he came to work over
to the Telegraph office," Herb said, his eyes averted.
"Oh, Herbert," cried the girl softly, "what can
I say? What can I do?"
"I kind o thought, when you lemme kiss you that
night in my house
"Dear Herbert, it was wicked of me to have done
that, to have encouraged you. I ve thought
about it and thought about it and wondered what
I could do to make amends. But I ve always de
cided that to try to make amends would only fix
a bad matter worse. I just hoped you d forgive me
and overlook it."
"Then I take it there ain t no chance."
"If you want to know it, yes, I love Jack; it
would be wicked to deny it. But what can I do
when my heart is that way, Herbert ? "
"Yes, I know. He ain t a clumsy lummox like
me always puttin his hoof in it ! He s good-lookin
and has got nice ways with the ladies. Look at the
way he played the hero part in that show."
"It isn t that at all, Herbert. It was that Jack
and I seemed like old friends from the start, although
we both knew we never had seen one another before
in our lives. I couldn t help falling in love with him.
I didn t mean to treat you shabbily ; I just couldn t
help it."
"You ll be marryin him, I suppose? *
"He hasn t asked me yet but but "
"But you expect he will. That s it, isn t it?"
She averted her face and poked at a little pile of
sand between the bricks of the walk.
"Perhaps !" she said. "But it can t be for a long
time, you know. Jack s father failed in business
and his creditors lost a lot of money. Jack s got
THE GREATER GLORY 101
to pay that money back; he thinks he s morally
bound to do it. They trusted him and his father
and there s no reason why they should lose. Per
haps after the money s paid we can begin to save for
our home and when we get enough
" If Purse owes as much as I hear he does, you ll be
an awful long time gettin married."
"We re young yet. There s ample time. Mean
while we re together "
"Yes," said Herb sadly, " you re together.
That s a lot. I m sorry it s him, Mary. I was
hopin it might be me. I was hopin I could use the
money I m comin into to make a nice girl like you
- happy. Wouldn t you, Mary ? Wouldn t you ? *
Momentarily a vision of that luxurious front room
in the Truman home arose before the girl ! She gave
thought, too, of her mother s experience with a poor
man. But she was not alone now; the future was
not uncertain. It made a difference.
"Well," concluded Herb philosophically as he
moved away, " there s many a slip between the
cup and the lip, Mary Wood. Lots of things may
happen while you re waitin for Purse to pay up four
thousand out of sixteen a week. I ain t goin to lose
hope entirely. But if you should marry him, I want
you to know that I that I loved you, Mary Wood.
I ain t seen such an awful lot o you. But you got
hold o me in a way no other woman or girl ever has.
If you do marry him, I want you should know I don t
harbor no bad feelings and hope you ll both be
happy."
"Thank you, Herb," she said. "Next to Jack,
I think more of you than any other man in the
world."
"Well," decided Herbert, " that s somethin !"
102 THE GREATER GLORY
"Is that all? "she asked.
He realized then how great and terrific was his
failure. He was losing Mary Wood, the girl that he
loved, to the Purse boy who was not lumberous and
clumsy and did not have a cowlick and hands like
hams, regardless of Sam Hod s declaration. The
misery of his heart was appalling, unconsolable. He
arose blindly.
"Aren t you coming back to the hall and stay until
the end of the dance?"
"It don t matter," mumbled Herb. "No!
It don t much matter with me!" He moved
away. "Good night, Mary," he said without look
ing at her.
And he left her standing there, wanting to run
after him and console him and mother him and tell
him how his disappointment hurt her, also. But
he was gone amid the shrubbery and she went slowly
back to the hall, the small-town gaiety and the
music.
So fled her chance to marry a wealthy man.
She went back to the hall and to Jack, who was
wildly looking for her and who demanded the cause
of the tears in her eyes, back to the boy whom she
loved.
After the dance they walked homeward together.
"Good night," she said softly at the gate, as she
held out her hand.
"Good night, Mary!" he replied thickly in turn.
But he did not go.
The moon made mystic shadows of the street
under the sleeping maples, of the long white fence
flanked with the flower beds, of the lawn and the
ghostly white Mather house. The xylophones of the
crickets sounded from beneath the fences and the
THE GREATER GLORY 103
hollow board walks. The songs of insect lovers
piping out of tune, came to them. Down the street
now and then showed a flash of a muslin dress
white in the moonlight and the little shriek of a
woman s laughter floated to them . . . carefree
boys and girls going home from a dance ! And under
the moonlight the girl was twice as dainty and
pretty as the boy had ever seen her before, for that
is the way of moonlight and of spring nights and of
women in days when we love.
Occasionally a couple strolled past them, Sam
Hod with Alice Whiting, Grace Rawlins with
the Whitcomb boy. Even Georgie Griffin and the
Whalen girl were out enjoying the beautiful ex
quisite summer night.
As Jack came away finally from the Mather s
gate, the beauty and the sadness of the night and the
heart cry of his new-found age-old love came to him
as neither had ever impressed him before. And
taking off his hat beneath the stars he murmured :
"Oh, if it could always go on always!" But he
knew it could not. And he was miserable and
afraid.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH THE HEARTS OF OUR FRIENDS ARE YOUNG
AND THE WORLD is FAIR AND THE CHIEF CHAR
ACTERS OF OUR STORY GIVE INDICATIONS OP
THEIR DESTINY.
LET us go back for a time and consider the Hender
sons.
It would be difficult to state accurately whether
or not Paris approved of the Hendersons.
The Hendersons came into town along with the
railroad, that is to say Mrs. Henderson came at
the same time as the railroad and so Harvey had
come too, there being no alternative for Mrs. Hender
son s husband.
Ma Henderson weighed two hundred and forty
pounds, two hundred of which was located in her
chest. She had a firm mouth with knotted muscles
at the corners thereof, and a faint moustache show
ing over all. She had a square jaw and a sour
expression to her eye. And her husband, who
had no business being one, went around with a
dazed look in his lamblike eye as though perpetually
pondering on how it had all happened, anyhow.
He was a head shorter than Ma Henderson and
about a hundred pounds lighter, and his cue was to
say "I believe so, Ma", and spend his time smoking
in the cellar, spitting in silence into the furnace
or sitting in the cigar stores down-town. One
THE GREATER GLORY 105
might say that Harvey Henderson lived under a
perpetual matrimonial handicap.
They had not been in town long before Paris
folks knew all the inner workings of the Henderson
household and that Mrs. Harvey Henderson assumed
full charge of Harvey s pension money as she
assumed full charge of everything else belonging
to Harvey. And because society has not yet
reached that stage where it may take literally the
biblical interpretation to take no thought what ye
shall eat and drink or what ye shall put on, Ma
Henderson was renting the big Squire place at the
east end of Main Street and opening it as a boarding
house.
And Ma Henderson for many years was miserable
and lonesome, and the other wives of the town
sought not her counsel nor her companionship.
It was with Mibb, the only daughter, that the
chief deviltry was to pay. For as has been stated,
early in life Mibb had witnessed many domestic
altercations and set up a marital philosophy of her
own. In that philosophy, man as a male held a
very small and inconsequential position. But man
as a provider of money was different. The neigh
bors whispered with significant eyebrows that Mibb
Henderson often addressed her dad publicly and
in the Henderson home by his first name, which after
a time she shortened to "Harv." And her mother
laughed and thought it smart and implanted in that
poor handicapped young woman s head the sole
idea that she must never commit her mother s
mistake ; Mibb also like the Wood girl must
set her cap for money, the male of the species being
a nobody and an easy mark anyhow.
So Mibb had gone to school in Paris and after
106 THE GREATER GLORY
school spent much spare time down at the station
watching the drummers come in. Finally she took
a position in the Telegraph office.
She was not a bad girl ; had she departed at any
time from the straight and narrow pathway followed
by our New England daughters, the town even
the girl friends to whom she condescendingly told
deep things which no girls should know wouldn t
have tolerated Mibb for a moment. She was merely
handicapped by a brainless, unnatural mother and
a weak-willed father, and why she never stumbled
over the edge of the social precipice will always
remain one of the mysteries of small-town morality.
Mibb in our printing office was a bright girl and
a good compositor when she would work which
was chiefly when she especially wanted a new dress
or a hat or something to wear to a party. But Ma
Henderson came periodically to the conclusion that
work before a type case was not dignified enough
for an embryo "lady" and hinted often at Mabel s
social standing and her chances to marry money;
and Mibb as periodically laid down her stick and left
us and stayed away from us and then came back
again. Poor Mibb ! Perhaps after all, like our old
duplex press, she was more sinned against than
sinning.
We had singing schools in those days. A crowd
of six Mibb Henderson and Dick Robinson, Sam
Hod and Alice, Jack Purse and Mary were return
ing home from the last one for that spring season
held in Green Valley, when they sat down on the
wall about Seaver s pasture on another moonlit
evening.
"Folks," announced Mibb, "I ve had a proposal
a real proposal a proposal of marriage !"
THE GREATER GLORY 107
Mary glanced quickly at Mibb with disapproval
strong on her fine features. Such things were not
to be discussed lightly in public. But Mibb dug
her foot deeply in the grass and the brierbloom and
went on mischievously: "Now aren t some folks
the jokers ! "
Dick Robinson s lips closed grimly. We had
known for a long time that Dick loved Mibb Hender
son. But Dick was only a bookkeeper in the process
works, and good looking though he was, his good
looks would never make up for the tragedy of a pay
envelope containing a mere ten dollars a week,
not to Mabel reared by her mother.
"I d just as soon you d keep such things in the
same confidence in which they were spoken, Mibb,"
he said with hard insinuation.
"Now isn t he sensitive !" Mibb returned.
Mary and Jack were sitting side by side on the
wall between Mibb and the girl s lover. Mary
turned and looked at Dick, a picture of confusion,
anger, misery and chagrin.
"Mjbb," declared the sympathetic Mary, "such
things are sacred ! "
"Sacred!" Again the merry peal of laughter
from Mibb. Finding that no one joined her and
that only embarrassment resulted, she sobered.
"I thought we were all good friends together or
I shouldn t have mentioned it," she said.
"We are good friends together, Mibb," declared
Alice. "That s why Mary spoke so frankly."
And the boys looked sheepishly at one another.
"I don t want to be married!" declared Mibb.
"Not for a long, long time. I want to get the full
fun out of life. When a girl gets married it means
care and worry and work and squalling kids.
108 THE GREATER GLORY
And besides," she added brutally, "I wouldn t
marry anybody that was poor anyhow !"
Dick Robinson arose.
"I ll move along," he said. He started down
the road alone, off into the night and back to town.
And on another evening in a far distant year Mibb
recalled his going, with a far different emotion in
her heart. "Dick!" she cried. "Come back!"
But Dick paid her no attention. He disappeared
around the bend in the road.
"Mabel you re heartless !" Mary rebuked her.
But Mibb passed it off with a laugh.
"Dick should have known he was impossible,"
she said. "I don t see why he keeps thrusting him
self upon me!"
"Dick s a good boy!" defended Alice " as
good as there is in Paris. He only makes ten
dollars a week. But that isn t anything against
him."
" Then let him come around when he makes more,"
replied Mibb. She was angry that the company had
turned against her.
"You re putting it that nothing matters but
dollars and cents," declared Alice. "That s heart
less and silly, Mibb, and it leads only to unhap-
piness."
"Money won t buy happiness, Mibb," added
Mary.
"Fiddlesticks," declared the Henderson girl.
Jack Purse s heart fluttered suddenly and wildly.
For the hand that was laid on his arm to keep the
Wood girl steady on the wall imparted some little
pressure to that arm not at all necessary in the busi
ness of maintaining her equilibrium.
"I don t want to get married," repeated Mabel.
THE GREATER GLORY 109
"I ve always been sorry I was born a girl anyway.
Girls and women get the hard end of marriage the
same as everything else in life. It means work,
work, work, marriage does, work from morning
till night and precious little thanks in return for
the effort. It means waiting helplessly inside a
home while a man makes good or doesn t make
good, according to his ability. It means pain and
suffering and sometimes death and what do you
get in return? Yes, what do you get in return?
Answer me that ! Men can get out in the world and
do things. They re free to go and come as they
like. They earn money that gives them the right
to say how it shall be spent. It s a man s world
and made for men, and all that s left for a woman is
to play the second part ; and if a girl s high-spirited
and wants to rise above her lot, she s heartless and
unnatural and shameless. She s a slave, that s
what she is, a slave. Deny it if you can. Cover
it with fine phrases. Smooth it over with love and
romance. But deep down underneath is the ugly
truth just the same, the ugly truth of the slavery.
And I won t be a slave ! Even if you do call me
heartless and unnatural I tell you I won t be a slave.
I m free now to live my life as I please and I ll
keep so. If I do marry, it ll be because there s the
money available to make me escape the slavery.
It ll be because it ll help me to enjoy life and get
out of it all there is in it. If that s shameful and
bold and unwomanly, make the most of it. But
it s my way of looking at things. So far in life I ve
seen no reason to change."
There was silence for a time. The words had a
strange familiar ring in Mary s ears.
"Being married doesn t seem that to me at all,
110 THE GREATER GLORY
Mibb," she replied softly. "I suppose it s all a dif
ference in temperament. If you want to call it
slavery, then then well, speaking for myself "
and her voice was very low and soft and almost a
whisper "I m cheerfully willing to be that kind
of slave, Mibb."
"You re a little fool !" retorted Mabel.
"You say it means work throughout life. But
what of that, Mibb ? All of us must work at some
thing or other, mustn t we? Isn t work a law of
life? Why not in a home that s your own among
people that you love, as anywhere? You say it
means waiting for the man you marry to succeed.
But that isn t a hardship, Mibb? It s a privilege.
If you pick out the right man, and he s honest, and
ambitious and capable, why isn t it the most interest
ing game in the world to play, Mibb ? to watch
him step by step as he climbs upward; and help
him to do it ; and climb upward with him ; and some
day stand on the summit with him and have the
same feeling together we did it ! You say it
means pain and suffering and sometimes death
but what of that, Mibb? Only the cowardly
shrink from pain and suffering and death. I am
not afraid of work and pain and suffering be
cause it s far from being all shadows; there s com
pensation, Mibb. Beautiful compensation !"
Mary s voice was unsteady. Sam and Jack
looked at her. In the moonlight they fancied her
eyes were wet with tears.
"Mary," returned Mabel, "you re sickishly senti
mental. It s women like you that are holding other
women down in society. The time s coming, Mary,
like Grace Rawlins says, when women with those
old-fashioned ideas are going to give way. This is
THE GREATER GLORY 111
going to stop being a man s world. It s going to be
a woman s world as well, Mary. Women are go
ing to be equal with men "
"Aren t they equal now, Mibb?"
"Aren t they now? No, they aren t! I ve told
you this is a man s world, and I ve told you why."
"It seems to me they re equal to men if they care
to do the right thing. It seems to me it s wholly a
matter for the individual girl to settle, Mibb. She
can pick up the right sort of husband and be a
partner to him and enjoy all he enjoys and be his
wife and sharer in his success, now as much as she
ever can there s nothing to stop her, Mibb."
But Mibb did not answer because put that way
there was no answer. And because the truism
always holds : When you cannot answer your op
ponent s argument do not despair, you can still
call him names, she began making fun of Mary
Wood.
Mary was pulling a bit bewilderedly at her hand
kerchief, her eyes downcast.
"I m perfectly willing to be considered old-
fashioned," she said brokenly. "If you want to
call it that. I m perfectly willing to take any
chances on being happy in my own way that
way that I ve said. I haven t any desire to be a
man not in the slightest. I can t see why a
woman s place in the world doing a woman s
work keeping a home raising little children
to be good men and women in turn isn t just as
important and noble as anything a man could do
outside that home. No, I can t see why a woman
shouldn t be satisfied and look upon her work as
a privilege. I m willing to take my chances in
life with my belief. It can lead me where it will ! "
112 THE GREATER GLORY
When at last they came to continue on their way
back to town, the five of them were very thoughtful.
Mibb walked behind alone.
"Don t feel badly over it," Jack said soothingly
to the girl on his arm. " It isn t worth crying over
what she says, Mary. She ll see she s mistaken
some day, Mary. You re you re noble, Mary!"
he paid the compliment with difficulty "and I
hope the man who marries you stays big
enough to know it."
That night the boy lay on his bed sleeplessly
through many hours, thinking over what had
occurred and the things which had been discussed
between them that evening. Boys and girls do not
discuss things in that way in these barren days on
which we have fallen. "She s one girl in a thou
sand," he muttered miserably. "If I lose her if
I don t marry her I ll never, never know another
like her again."
Gray dawn stole up over the eastern mountains
and found him still awake, tossing fretfully on his
bed.
CHAPTER XI
AND so, HAVING PLACED THE HEROES AND HEROINES
AND THE VlLLAINESSES OF OUR STORY WHO ARE
TO WORK OUT THEIR DESTINY AS TIME GOES
ON, WE COME TO THE MEMORABLE PICNIC UP IN
BLAISDELL S GLEN AND EVENING IN GOLD-PIECE
CABIN.
AT the office the talk was of the picnic up the
Glen that afternoon, a celebration for the success
of the local talent play.
The ex-players met on the Opera House steps.
The girls had generous baskets of which the boys
relieved them as they arrived with awkward greet
ings meant to be funny and at which the girls laughed
as they were supposed to laugh. Quickly they
paired off: Jack and Mary; Mibb and Slug Truman ;
Sam Hod and Alice; Harriet Babcock and Frank
Whitcomb ; even Georgie Griffin and the Whalen
girl were there the latter brought her pathetic
addition to the refreshments done in a paper parcel.
Then as they were about to start, Dick Robinson
and Grace Rawlins arrived from different directions.
"I m the odd one!" greeted Mrs. Whipple.
" You ll just make partners ! "
The crowd laughed and Dick colored, glowering
darkly at Truman in possession of Mibb s basket.
The thirteen moved up Main Street and eastward
out of the village toward the East Wickford road,
114 THE GREATER GLORY
Mrs. Whipple walking with Grace and Dick, and
Dick carrying two baskets.
"Why is it called Gold-Piece Glen and Gold-
Piece Cabin ? " Jack asked Truman as they walked
on ahead.
"Years ago when they mined for iron around these
parts there was an old chap lived up in the Glen,"
replied Herbert, "who turned all his wages into
gold pieces. He hid them somewhere in his cabin.
They called him Gold-Piece Blaisdell. He died a
dozen years ago, from injuries when two tramps
broke into the place. They found his hoard in an
earthen vessel buried under the fireplace. The
governor bought the Glen to lumber the chestnut
a year afterward and I fixed up the old Cabin. I
stay up there in the deer season or whenever I have
a hankering to take to the woods."
"And is the old earthen pot still buried?"
"Yep," answered Slug Truman.
"Do you know where?"
" Yep ; I ll show you when we get up there. We ll
build a fire in the fireplace Frank s got his violin
we ll have a great time and the moon s going
to be full to-night full for the last time this
month. It ll be a great walk home!" He glanced
sadly at Mary Wood. He was trying hard to bear
his disappointment like a dead game sport.
They wended their laughing, joking, coquetting
way out School Street and past the gas works.
They passed the County Farm and turned toward
East Wickford. As the whistles back in the village
were blowing six, they came to the "turning-off
place", as Slug termed it, and passed over the
Truman land and climbed up into the Glen.
A thousand country scents, of sweet fern and briar
THE GREATER GLORY 115
bloom and blossoming laurel, of blackberry vine
and checkerberry and wild apple made the
beautiful evening air sensuous with rustic fragrance.
Through the raspberry that scratched at their
clothes and the milkweed that left lint upon them,
through grasses that were already beginning to
grow damp and little swarms of insects which winged
and fell on the quiet atmosphere, they moved
along the weU-worn path and up under the tall
silent trees to where the cabin stood in the shadows.
Th& picnic was not unlike a thousand other picnics
between boys and girls in love that have taken place
since the world began. Grace Rawlins wanted to
know how Slug ever had the nerve to invite them up
to such a dirty hole and it just went to show what
brutes men were at heart when they got away from
women ; and a few minutes later she wanted to
know why they d brought so much food ; what
did they think they had to feed, an army? But
Slug built a fire in the low fireplace and they boiled
their coffee and the food was laid out over the big
plank table, The boys held back and had to be
handed their sandwiches and coffee and then,
having been thus given a start, they forgot when it
was time to stop and massacred the refreshments.
Slug as clumsy as a plow horse upset a cup
of coffee on Alice Whiting s dress and in helping her
remove the mess got in a back-fire motion and sent
a jar of pickle the other way over Mibb. Grace
Rawlins said some one ought to have brought along
a martingale for him or umbrellas for the crowd.
The Whalen girl did the most work getting things
ready and then began to weep inwardly because
she hadn t brought near enough food for herself
and Georgie Griffin, too, because, poor girl, she
116 THE GREATER GLORY
didn t have it to bring. But Georgie had no scruples
about whose food it was and "pitched in."
It was a joyous happy meal in the woods where
nature gives zest to youthful appetite and much
harmless courting was to come, which was even
better than the food.
Then as the Glen darkened outside and an oc
casional mosquito winged in the open doorway and
dined off a plump wrist or ankle, and the stars came
out, and the Glen was made weird by mysterious
night noises, the table with the wreckage of edibles
was moved back and the boys lighted their pipes
and found places for themselves and their girls
around the fire that Slug had coaxed and poked
until it was a thing of joy and romance and comfort.
Mibb sat on the floor with her head against
Slug s knees and in a corner beside the Rawlins
girl, whom he detested for her uncomfortable tongue,
Dick looked as miserable and kept as quiet and in
conspicuous as a puppy that is ailing grievously.
Harriet was seated beside the Truman boy,
Frank Whitcomb was sprawled out in front of her,
his big feet silhouetted against the flames, his head
in the girl s lap. Sam and Alice were over on the
left and behind the crowd, seemingly not of it,
were Jack Purse and Mary Wood. Jack had stolen
his arm about Mary s waist and Mary did not resent
the intimacy.
Why repeat the talk the jests, the repartee,
the foolery and the clumsy sallies at one another
that followed on that evening? Every man and
every woman on God s footstool who has ever been
young and loved has been present at such an outing
and knows the talk thereof.
Finally Frank Whitcomb produced his violin
THE GREATER GLORY 117
from its battered old black case and tuned it and
laid aside his pipe and began to play "Oft In the
Stilly Night", "The Light of Other Days", and
"Auld Robin Gray", and many more of the old-
time favorites. They were silent a long time after
Fred had finished playing. The boys pipes had
gone out. It seemed as though all of them, under
the spell of the hour and the place and the music,
had caught a glimpse of the future and had been
made solemn and thoughtful and a bit afraid.
"Wonder," said Slug suddenly in a tone that was
strange for that easygoing, loose-habited young
fellow, "where this crowd will be all of us twenty
or thirty years from to-night?"
Indeed Truman had voiced the feeling in the
hearts of them all. And they could not reply.
Just at the moment their hearts were too full to reply.
"I suppose," answered Sam lightly, "some of us
will be married and have families some of us will
have made successes of our lives and made money
or won fame and some of us maybe will
- be dead ! perhaps many years dead !"
There was a strange quiet in the cabin. Even
Mibb was sobered and looked into the flames with
staring eyes. It came to them that moment, as a
reaction from the foolery of that hour that had gone,
how aptly Sam had spoken. Yes, the spell of the
hour, the place and the music was indeed upon them.
But there was more. There was the mystery of
life and living and the thoughtless heart of youth
made suddenly thoughtful.
Herb Truman spoke again. His tone was strange
to those who knew him well. He seemed musing
aloud on what Sam had said :
"Yes, some ll have families and some ll be rich
118 THE GREATER GLORY
and some ll be famous. But I wonder which of us
will be the most successful just plain downright
successful never mind what our work in life
happens to be?"
" Successful ? " asked Mibb. " What do you mean
by successful?"
"Just successful," replied Slug doggedly. "I call
success wherein we ve done the things we set our
selves to do, to the best that s in us."
"You talk like a preacher," declared Mibb. "I
didn t know it was in you !"
Indeed, neither did the rest of them. And in
that time perhaps the first and last and only time
- the Truman boy showed what really lay within
him, the manner of man he might have been if he
had not been handicapped, cruelly handicapped, first
by lack of a mother, second by the woman whom he
married. There are folk in our town who have only
harsh words for Herbert Truman for the things which
subsequently happened. Verily they judged cruelly
from circumstantial evidence. They never took
the trouble nor were given the opportunity to gaze
down into the boy s soul and learn of the stuff of
which it was made.
They discussed success with the thoughtfulness
of youth ; for half an hour they talked of solemn
things, for they were on the threshold, some of them
of solemn things, for there is some truth to the prov
erb that coming events cast their shadows before.
Then, for what reason not one in that party ever
found out, though they debated over it through all
maturity Slug felt in the pocket of his waistcoat
and pulled out a coin.
"A twenty -dollar gold piece," said he. "Just
had an idea. Going to propose something funny."
THE GREATER GLORY 119
"Funny? Don t break the charm of the hour
and the atmosphere," said Mary Wood.
"It s funny and it isn t," answered Slug. "Here s
a twenty-dollar gold-piece I say.; Carried it as a
pocket piece for a couple of years. I ll donate
it for the purpose. Let s do something unusual
with it to remember this picnic by. Let s
bury it!"
"Bury it!"
"In old Gold-Piece Blaisdell s pot here under the
fireplace. Let s put it away for twenty or thirty
years. Then twenty or thirty years whatever
number of years we agree on from to-night, let
us that are living and physically able to do so,
come back here to Gold-Piece Cabin if it s standing,
and dig up this coin !"
"Why dig it up then ? " asked Jack Purse.
"Dig it up and present it to the one of us who
has made the biggest success of his life."
"Why?"
" Sort of a medal of honor from the rest of us -
the crowd we used to go around with a tribute,
a sort of an admission that while some of us have
become successful, there s some one person here who
will be more successful than all the others. This
medal they can keep for the rest of their lives a
medal, as I say of honor !"
"A crazy idea !" scoffed Grace Rawlins.
"It s not a crazy idea!" contradicted Frank
Whitcomb. "It s bully!"
Several times as Herb was digging up the brick
from the hearth, to get to the miser s earthen pot
below, Mibb looked at him queerly. Verily it was
a different Herb disclosed for the moment than she
had ever known before.
120 THE GREATER GLORY
"In thirty years there won t be any gold-piece
that s recognizable," suggested Grace Rawlins.
"Gold stands the test of time," replied Sam.
"But it might be better if we had something to
protect it. Who s got a pocket match-safe they don t
mind donating to posterity ? "
It developed that the only match-safe in the crowd
belonged to Dick Robinson.
Slug found the brick, dug it loose, lifted it and
discovered the musty cavity.
"Here goes!" he declared. "Which shall it
be twenty or thirty years ? " he asked as he dropped
the medal into the thin German silver match-box
with a sharp brief jingle.
"This old shack won t be standing in thirty
years!" croaked Grace. "It s a waste of good
money ! "
"Which shall it be twenty or thirty years?"
repeated Slug again.
"Make it thirty," suggested Sam.
"Thirty it is!" declared Truman, enjoying the
unique prank and his part in it.
With all leaning forward and looking on, into the
earthen cavity Slug laid it almost reverently. Then
he carefully set the brick.
"Thirty years from to-night the seventeenth
of May, eighteen hundred and eighty six," he said.
"I wonder which of us it will go to then.
Thirty years from to-night ! that will be the
seventeenth of May, nineteen hundred and sixteen."
CHAPTER XII
A SOMEWHAT GRUESOME CHAPTER AT THE END OF
WHICH OUR SOLICITUDE FOR THE WOOD GIRL
MOUNTS TO GRAVE CONCERN.
THEY did not go home together on that night.
Eight-thirty found Jack and Mary alone on the
hilltop that overlooks Paris on the east. Amid
the country quiet, in the depth of evening, the boy
took the girl in his arms and together they watched
the stars come out, and heard the frogs begin their
piping along the banks of the river.
"Oh, Jack, it s such a long time to wait until
you pay the debts four thousand dollars worth
of them. I try to keep up a brave front, Jack.
But when I get out a paper and pencil and figure for
myself, it makes me it makes me a coward."
"There ll be a way out somehow," he said hope
fully. "I don t expect to pay up four thousand
dollars out of my wages on the paper. I m only
trying to show the creditors I m on the level by
paying them what I can while I m waiting for my
opportunity. The opportunity will come sooner or
later and that doesn t mean I m content, Micawber
fashion, to idly wait for something to turn up. I m
doing a pile of thinking these days, Mary."
"Oh, Jack, if there was only some way that I
could help!"
"You are helping, right now! You don t half
know how much !"
122 THE GREATER GLORY
The stars grew brighter. The piping of the frogs
grew louder. Night indeed was upon them.
"I wonder," he said after the manner of the
poet which he was, as they saw the lights begin to
appear in the homes dotting the valley floor below
them and thought of what Herbert had done that
night, "I wonder what life holds for you and me,
Mary? If we could look into the future I wonder
what we would see there ; I wonder how different
we might be planning to-night ? "
He pressed the girl s hand, the hand with the
slender fingers which looked so frail and were destined
to do so much in the years that came afterward.
When we of the Telegraph office think of Jack that
night out on Bancroft s hill, pressing the girl s
delicate hand and thinking of what the years might
bring, we seem to feel a sadness which all the glories
of those intervening years and all the pleasures and
successes cannot assuage.
They came back to town late that night, his arm
about her shoulders, hers about his waist.
They walked slowly, each occupied with his own
thoughts, bareheaded, the sweet wild scents of
night country enveloping them.
"It s such a long time to wait, Jack, such a long
time to wait. And I want you so !"
"Yes," he said. "I ll do my best. God being
my witness, I will !"
Where the inlet runs up into Morse s pasture the
frogs were chorusing particularly loud.
"Oh Jack, I can t help thinking of how I heard
them the night I left home. A year ago ! Oh,
how short the time has been." A little later she
said: "Poor mother! We must drive out to the
place Sunday and see if she is all right and wants
THE GREATER GLORY 123
for anything. She must have it brought to her how
happy and miserable I am !"
"Yes," said Jack absently, his thoughts on another
problem, "we will drive out there Sunday." A
quarter-mile further on he said between his teeth :
"I ve either got to get hold of a paper of my own
or I ve got to look around for some other business !
I ve just got to make some money!" He said it
as though he had discovered something new under
the sun.
"Jack ! You wouldn t leave the Telegraph office !
I somehow couldn t work there if you left."
"You can help me by being patient, dear," he said.
"Don t know which is harder, Jack, to be the one
who has the responsibility of making good or the
one who must remain quiet and patient while the
other strives to realize his ambition !"
He bade her good-night at her gate and left for
Ma Henderson s boarding place with her kiss burn
ing upon his lips.
At nine o clock that following morning Sam Hod
came into the back room. There was tragedy in
his expressive eyes ; his face was pale.
"Jack," he directed, "come into the front office."
Purse followed Sam.
The editor closed the doors and turned to the
young man.
"Son, you love Mary Wood, don t you?"
"Yes." The boy flushed but he was not ashamed.
"I knew it. I want to see the girl happy. Jack,
forget this absurdity about paying up all your father s
bills. The court has absolved you from any such
nonsense. Go get that girl, make her put on her
things and take a holiday with you. Get one of
Uncle Joe Fodder s rigs, drive off to some of the little
124 THE GREATER GLORY
towns roundabout and get married. Do it quickly,
right now, without losing another moment !"
"Mr. Hod, what s the matter? What s hap
pened ? "
"I advise you to do it for the sake of the girl
herself. I pity her; I want to know she s got a
good boy like you to look out for her and comfort
her."
"Comfort her? Why?"
"Boy, Henry Osgood has just driven in here from
the Cobb Hill district. He says he has only seen
Sheriff Crumpett, Doctor Johnson the coroner and
myself. The town don t know it yet. You can get
Mary out and away and give her something to
mitigate the blow "
"Mr. Hod!" The boy s voice was a hoarse
whisper. "Tell me what has happened. If it s
about her folks, I can comfort and help her just as
though we were already married -
"Silent Wheeler s gone and done it at last !"
"Done what?"
" Will you go get the girl and move her out of this
for the day? Marry her? I ll raise your wages to
eighteen a week."
"Mr. Hod, I can t, I can t ! Don t you see how it
is? I had something to do with some of the men
putting money into our newspaper. I ve got to
square with them or be a cad in my own heart. I
can t marry Mary right now although my heart s
about broke over it. Tell me straight; what has
Silent Wheeler done?"
Sam told him.
The boy went out into the back room.
"Mary," he said, ill himself from the thing which
he must do, "come out with me for an hour."
THE GREATER GLORY 125
She raised her face to his with such a look of
wonder and innocence that his heart smote him so
he almost cried aloud.
"Why?"
"I want to talk to you ! Please come," he begged.
She laid down her composing stick, slipped off her
apron, washed her hands at the little iron sink in the
corner and took down the big black straw hat be
hind the door. She followed him into the morning
sunshine.
On the morning of the thirty-first of May, 1883,
our little Vermont town was shocked by news of a
revolting crime.
On top the big green safe which stands in a
corner of our office are piled the bound files of our
newspaper covering four decades. They are more
or less accurate and certainly a most detailed history
of our community history in all those years.
Referring to those files for the refreshment of
memory, accuracy of date and the proper chronology,
those volumes of battered calf on which every cub
reporter has left uncountable thumb marks profit
us as follows :
About half -past six of May 30, of that year, Mrs.
Henry Osgood, who lived on a farm adjacent, was
returning from the exercises of the G. A. R. in Fox-
boro Center. She drove her old white horse in at
the Wheeler place and was about to alight when she
heard cries of terror coming from within.
She hesitated to alight from her muddy old
buggy and in that moment of hesitation caught sight
of a face a woman s face in one of the side
windows, distorted with agony or terror. Being
alone, badly startled herself, she belabored her old
THE GREATER GLORY
white horse and started down the road to McDer-
mott s before she realized that because of the holi
day McDermott s would be deserted. Thus she
lost a valuable ten minutes.
There were no men at her own home that after
noon ; the nearest farm was the Adams place, six
miles to the north. She was about to start off across
a weed-grown cross-road for help from Gilberts
Mills when Joel Sibley and Ed Dickinson came along
in Joel s buckboard. The two men returned with
her.
The Wheeler place was ominously quiet. The
men explored cautiously.
Ed came back.
"Gawd!" he ejaculated. "There s enough blood
on the floor o the side bedroom to float a boat. And
it s fresh blood ! On your life, Mis Osgood, don t
you go in ! "
"It s a job for Sheriff Crumpett !" declared Joel.
"Either old Graveyard Wheeler s killed his woman,
or she s killed him."
"But where s the bodies ?"
"I don t know and I ain t got the stomach to
look. But one or t other is somewheres in this
house, and from the looks o* things, when they re
found they won t be nice to look at. Who goes
for Crumpett, you or us?"
"I ll go !" announced Mrs. Osgood.
Sheriff Crumpett from Foxboro Center was a
Grand Army man and was found just as he was
leaving G. A. R. hall. It was dark, the house was
eery, when three buggies came along the road and
turned sharply into the Wheeler yard with the
sheriff in the lead. They had lanterns. They
entered by the kitchen door, viewed the evidences
THE GREATER GLORY 127
of tragedy in the side bedroom and began their
gruesome search of the premises. It was a task for
strong nerves.
They searched for two hours and found nothing
but the huge blood stain drying into the matting.
"I saw Mis Wheeler s face at the sittin -room
window, clear as day !" swore Mrs. Henry Osgood.
"And she looked murdered already."
"We ll have to wait for daylight and search the
farm," said Sheriff Crumpett.
Dawn came between half-past three and four
o clock. They sauntered out in the gray of the
misty morning and resumed the hunt.
Between five and six o clock Ed Dickinson tried
to draw some water from the well in the yard. The
bucket hung to the sweep failed to work properly.
Investigating, as the sun came up and daylight
filtered down into the deep regions of the well, he
caught sight of something which brought a hoarse,
excited cry and his companions on a run and ex
plained why their night s search of the premises
had been fruitless.
Scarcely had this awful thing been found and the
first shock of it passed, than one of the Osgood boys,
on going into the lower cow barn to water the neg
lected and noisy stock, made a second discovery
that completed the tragedy.
Three minutes later the stiffened hulk of Silent
Wlieeler was cut down by the steady hand of Sheriff
Crumpett from a beam over an empty stall where it
had hung through the hours of the night at the end
of an old tierope. Neck and head were twisted
and stiffened rakishly. Hen Osgood said afterward
that Wheeler s corpse reminded him of an old rat
removed from a trap the morning after.
128 THE GREATER GLORY
It was a typical country tragedy of those days,
the logical sequel of conditions which the daily
newspaper, the telephone and the low-priced auto
mobile are happily ameliorating. But for a month
and a day it was the chief topic of conversation in
the grocery stores, sewing circles and blacksmith
shops of the county or wherever two or three were
gathered together in small-town, back-country inter
course.
The woman with the terribly reddened hands had
paid the price of being a farmer s wife, of marrying
a man whose idea of a "woman" was a chattel, an
appliance to help him run his farm successfully.
At the request of the prostrated stepdaughter
the "authorities" (meaning the Foxboro selectmen)
assumed charge of the idiot whom Sheriff Crumpett
and his aids had not overlooked in that bare upper
room the night they hunted the place, and the boy
Artie was lodged temporarily in a private asylum
at the expense of the town, for our State at the
time had none of those model institutions for the
treatment of such cases which it has since acquired.
Silent Wheeler s brothers appeared from the four
corners of the county, and after making arrangements
for the most inexpensive burial possible, like selfish,
provincial, hill-town buzzards, started dividing the
Wheeler effects. Thereat the probate court stepped
in meaning Judge Farmer in Paris and ap
pointed old Short-Cramp Truman as Silent Wheeler s
executor. Between the "authorities", the sullen
bickering brothers, the bereaved stepdaughter, Jack
Purse, Sam Hod and Doctor Dodd of the Calvary
Methodist church the funeral was held, the two
pitifully plain caskets lowered into a double grave
and the crime became a thing of small-town history.
THE GREATER GLORY 120
Observations and comment of representative local
people mostly female on the affair may be
introduced here as appropriate and fitting into the
warp and woof of our narrative.
At the Ladies Home Missionary Sewing Circle at
Mrs. Dexter Merritt s the following Thursday after
noon the following is of record :
Mrs. Blake Whipple, wife of our local undertaker,
who frequently assisted her husband in times of
professional rush and who enjoyed something of a
reputation as a business woman prone to place more
value on the shekels than on sentiment fitting
attributes perhaps for an undertaker s spouse
took a temperamentally commercial view of the
occurrence. She said she regretted Blake had
really went and put so much effort on making em
ready for the fun ral because Short-Cramp Truman,
the vinegar-blooded old scoundrel, had beat him
down on his bill as usual and Blake was too honest
to make out the bill for double the price and thus
compromise on what he originally expected.
Which lugubrious line of intercourse prompted
Mrs. Felix Taylor to inquire if any present supposed
that whoever bought the property would relish
drinkin the well water after Sarah had been fished
out from it, and Mrs. Fred Bellows to declare that
she wouldn t live in that Cobb Hill house after the
crime which had been committed there for a million
dollars and twenty-three cents per night. Thus
by due process of small-town elimination the con
versation came around to Mary Wood.
"I understand," advanced Mrs. Gaylord Miller,
"that she s engaged to the Purse boy at the news
paper office but they can t get married because the
Purse boy is deep in debt."
130 THE GREATER GLORY
"It s too bad the house is haunted," assumed
Mrs. Merritt, "or at least has got such gruesome
associations, because it really ain t so far away from
Paris but what them two could marry and live there
without havin no rent to pay and make up the sum
for the boy s debts."
"But she couldn t do that," declared Judge
Farmer s wife. "John said in my hearin that the
place and furniture and tools and stock would have
to be put up to auction. That s the law ! "
"Yet if Mary s goin to get the money from it
after the estate s settled, why does the law go to all
that bother?" Mrs. Howard wanted to know.
"Why not just turn it over to her and let her marry
who she pleases and live there without all that fuss
and expense?"
"She ain t goin to get the money from it," went
on Mrs. Farmer, looking very important as she
imparted her legal knowledge as became the wife
of our leading barrister and judge of probate. "The
law don t take no account o stepchildren and Mary s
a stepchild. The crazy boy Artie is the only heir.
The money 11 be spent for his keep. The Lord
knows taxes is high enough in the Foxboros without
folks over there havin to pay for his confinement in
no madhouse when there s money available if only
took. I hear Short-Cramp Truman s goin to send
him away to some place down in Massachusetts."
"Then Mary doesn t get anything?" demanded
Mrs. David Dodd, the minister s wife.
"Why should she? Let her marry the Purse boy
and have him support her."
"Yes," added Mrs. Elisha Porter, twice married
and reasonably willing to try it again. "At her age
I was married and had two offspring ! "
THE GREATER GLORY 131
Everybody always hastened to head Mrs. Elisha
Porter off when she started in on her "offspring"
because in all the State of Vermont there were no
other "offspring" as remarkable as Mrs. Elisha
Porter s. So Mrs. Dodd said quickly :
"But it s kind of rough on the poor little thing.
And she s already had such a hard girlhood ! It s a
wonder to me she s the sweet, gentle little body that
she is and not more like some other unfortunates
in this town that could be helped more than they
are."
"Mibb Henderson?" inquired Mrs. Taylor.
"Yes," declared the minister s wife in righteous
indignation. "Mibb Henderson!"
"But I dare say that Mibb will take care of her
self and make a better marriage than the Wood
girl," commented Mrs. Miller.
General silence followed, broken only by the click
of knitting needles or the snip of shears. It was to
be expected that Mrs. Dodd would stand up for the
stepdaughter. It was entirely consistent with her
husband s profession. As for the others, the fact
that Silent Wheeler had done the thing which he had,
reduced him to that status of general misapprobation
where it was perfectly permissible for these good
women to air themselves after the tenor of their
souls. The strange feature was that not one of the
dozen or more had a single good word to say for the
woman with the terribly reddened hands. But
those who know New England can recognize that
this was not because they felt no compassion for her
whose life was done. It was because each and every
one of them realized the mockery which marriage
far too often was for country women, and their
reticence and indifference was that of trying to sup-
132 THE GREATER GLORY
pose that no such conditions existed because they
were never brought into conversation.
"I suppose Mary Wood knows she ain t got
nothin comin to her?" This from Mrs. Miller,
directed to the Judge s wife, who was the legal
authority of the dozen.
Mrs. Farmer was a long time replying.
"That s the pitiful part of it," she said finally.
"It s the job which my husband and Mr. Truman
hate most to bring themselves to do. She don t
dream of such a thing ; she was over to Mrs. Seaver s
yesterday to see about havin a black dress made to
wear in the newspaper office and she said that the
least she could do was to keep the home as near as
possible like it was when her mother left it."
CHAPTER XIII
SLUG TRUMAN CONTINUES TO BE A SPORT BUT
COMES ON A SAD ERRAND.
MARY sat on the side porch of the Cobb Hill place,
looking over the tops of the gnarled trees in the lower
orchard at the far-flung valley below. The country
side was leafing out more luxuriously with each
passing week, into the deep calm greens of mid
summer.
She had bought herself some cheap black stuff at
the Bon Ton store and Mrs. Amos Seaver, who did
"dressmaking reasonable", had fashioned it into a
mourning dress. Her dark hair was gathered low
at the back of her head. Her face held an un
healthy pallor, and her dark wistful eyes were red
dened with traces of many tears.
It was hard for her to realize as she sat on the
steps that the stepfather was dead, that he would
never sit more by the kitchen fire during the long
evenings, eternally brooding, nursing the poker,
lifting the warped red covers and spitting with
sharp hisses into the stove. It was hard to believe
that the long, anxious evening hours, when her
mother awaited his homecoming with the greenish
fire smouldering in his inhuman eyes, were over for
all time. But it was hardest to realize that she
would never see her mother again. The bitterest
part of her sorrow was that she had been able to go
home but four times in the brief year which had
134 THE GREATER GLORY
passed, that her mother had seen Jack but once,
that the inability to get home because of finances or
transportation was tantamount to neglect and that
the woman had gone with no one at hand to help
her. And yet she had gone and was out of her
earthly Golgotha. That was something.
About the place were a hundred evidences of the
man who had died so terribly, and of her mother s
personality. At the edge of a narrow, newly-
planted garden by the fence she saw a trowel which
had been laid down by her mother s hand but a few
days, not over a week bygone. A couple of her
mother s big white hens came leisurely around the
corner of the house, searching philosophically for
grubs, crooning to themselves and darting forward at
a fly together. Tom Tinker, the big tiger cat who
had purred in her mother s lap and kept her com
pany on many lonesome evenings, came out of the
shed door, started across the yard and stopped mid
way, catlike, to scratch a particularly inaccessible
spot on his anatomy. Two of the Holsteins were
browsing along down in the lower lane and toward
the barnyard bars as the sun sank lower. It seemed
strange the homely little world she had known from
girlhood could be so much the same and yet so
different.
She tried to think out her plans for the future.
If Jack would have accepted the money, she would
have brought herself to sell the place and use the
proceeds in his financial predicament. But he had
scolded her for thinking of such a thing. She
thought that she could get one of the Osgood boys
to work the farm for her and get enough out of it to
keep up the taxes and help out their finances after
she and Jack were married. She was thankful that
THE GREATER GLORY 135
old Peter Whipple at the bank had refused her step
father a mortgage on the place last year when he
wanted cash to take over the Perkins woodlot. At
least she did not have that mortgage to worry over
and pay.
She was trying to think of some man and wife
who might be glad of the opportunity to live at the
place and run it for her when she heard the rumble
of buggy wheels and the click of steel tires in the
sand on the other side of the wall and the maples.
The next instant a spirited horse spanked into the
yard, his hoofs becoming immediately noiseless as
he stepped on the short-cropped lawn.
She was expecting Jack to come out after work
and return to the village with her, for her finances
demanded that she be back at her typecase in the
morning. But it was unusual that Jack should have
hired a livery rig.
Then she recognized the horse before she recog
nized the driver, for the driver s body was momen
tarily obscured by the little animal s head. It was
Monday- Washing.
"Herbert !" she said, arising.
He fastened the mare to the hammock ring in
the corner of the house. He came across and took
her trembling, outstretched hand, pulling off his
cap as he did so and freeing the mammoth cowlick
which seemed surprised to find itself uncovered and
rose up as much as to say : "Well, and whereabouts
in the world is this place, anyhow ? "
"I went to Mis Mather s place and asked for
you, and she said you were out here to your folks s
place gatherin up some things. So I just come on
out "
"I m glad you did, Herbert. I don t know any
136 THE GREATER GLORY
one whom I would rather see just now than yourself,
excepting "
"I understand," he said. It was one time when
he did not "put his foot in it."
She placed a big armchair for him on the porch and
sat down opposite.
"It come kind o sudden an tough, didn t it?"
"Yes," she said.
The conversation lagged. He tortured his hat.
"I come on business for my father. It s
about your estate." ~ . . .
A little fear stabbed in the girl s heart. Like all
country people she had a nameless dread of that
great, all-powerful, ofttimes cruel thing known as
the Law. And "business" and "estate" were terms
of law. The pallor on her face deepened as she
waited for Slug to make his errand known.
"Yes?" she prompted faintly.
But Slug was in no hurry.
"You you think a lot of Purse, don t you,
Mary ? " He did not wait for her to make a painful
reply. "I see you do and that for me it ain t no
use. I guess I warn t cut out to have the kind o
wife such as you. A sportin man don t cry over
spilt milk nor when the cards goes against him. And
life s more or less of a sportin proposition, anyhow,
but love is a stacked deck ! Oh, hell ! "
He did not mean to be coarse. The exclamation
came from his heart.
" Herbert -
"Why don t you marry him, Mary? Is it true
that he s payin up debts the law don t require him
to pay ? "
"Yes."
"He wouldn t do that unless he was more than on
THE GREATER GLORY 137
the level I don t think. I m glad if I can t have
you, that a chap s going to be your man who s like
that. I ll feel safer."
"You ll feel safer!"
"I d hate to think o you married to a man that
grew to be like your stepfather was at least what
the town believed."
The girl turned her face away.
"Mary, there s a lot o jokin about a girl bein
a sister to a man after she s give him the mitten.
But I sort o wish seein I m cut out by
Jack Purse that you d look on me same as a brother."
"Herbert," she said after a painful interval,
"I hope it will make you happy to know that I ve
thought of you that way from the night when you
first invited me into your house. Maybe that s
why I let you kiss me and yet didn t come
to think of you quite like I ve come to think of
Jack."
"Then you don t mind talkin about yourself to
me?" he asked after the ruination of the cap was
nearly completed. "Not so long as I mean it all
right?"
"What can I possibly say, Herbert?"
"Mary, ain t you got no folks nowhere that could
give you a hand in this scrape?"
"No," she replied. "Both my mother s brothers
were killed at Malvern Hill. My stepfather s folks
have no interest in me nor have I any claim on them ;
I wouldn t press it even if I had. My own father
had a couple of brothers ; one of them went out to
Kansas and was killed by the Indians. There s one
left still, I think, Uncle Josiah who was last
heard from in Chicago. I m pretty much
alone; that is, excepting for you and Jack."
138 THE GREATER GLORY
"Mary, ain t, there no way I could help you?"
"No, Herbert," she said with sudden grimness in
her voice. "This happens to be one of those times
in life when we just have to shut our teeth and stiffen
our will power and face our problems and solve them
for ourselves. I don t ask pity. I don t ask
charity. All I want is friendship and a fair
chance to work and live and be happy with those
I love. The shock of losing mother was awful ;
naturally I feel badly and will continue to feel badly
for a long time. But perhaps I ve been sent all the
hard experiences of my girlhood to make me strong
for the battle royal I ve got alongside Jack now;
perhaps there ll come a day when I ll understand
why my way wasn t made easy up to now and
be thankful because the experiences I ve had made
me strong and self-reliant and poised and equipped
to fight that battle alongside the man I marry to
make me the proper wife for him. I m not feeling
sorry a bit for myself ; it s Jack and mother and
you that I m feeling sorry for. As for myself
I ll manage somehow ! "
"Mary, if ever the time comes when you need
me same as you might need a brother -
"Thank you deeply, sincerely, from the bottom
of my heart, Herbert."
"I just come out here to give you a letter that dad
wanted I should see you got. That s the business
I meant about your estate."
"A letter?"
She took the long envelope in a hand that trembled
nervously. She carefully undid the flap and read
the enclosure. One hand held the letter before her.
The other fumbled in her waist. It found her small
lace handkerchief. The handkerchief was suddenly
THE GREATER GLORY 139
pressed tightly against her lips. Then the letter
was lowered, the face with the handkerchief held
tightly against it, averted. As she got to her feet,
Short-Cramp s message fluttered out onto the lawn.
"What s the trouble, Mary?"
In a voice which was an effort to keep from break
ing and betraying her brave words of a moment
before, she said :
"Your father has just sent word that I mustn t
touch nor carry away anything from here but my
mother s and my own personal property. He says
the law doesn t recognize anybody but Artie as the
heir step-children don t count."
"It s hard, Mary. I ve known it from the first.
But don t blame the Governor. He didn t make the
law."
"I thought I thought maybe I was going
to have the place and "
"It s got to be auctioned," the boy stated miser
ably.
Independence Day arrived. Five weeks slipped
away and came August sixteenth, the annual observ
ance of the Battle of Bennington and a Vermont
holiday. The leaves and bowered country had lost
the virility of summer freshness. They were dusty
and faded and gradually streaked with yellow and
brown. Time was going relentlessly along into
another autumn. The village housewives began
covering their rose bushes and flower beds with
sheeting and papers at night to preserve their
beauty for a few weeks longer.
Canny old Truman and the other two dummy
executors decided to wait until after the crops were
in before holding the Wheeler auction. The farm-
140 THE GREATER GLORY
ers would then have time and money to make the
sale a financial success.
It came one day early in Indian summer. Jack
found the girl on that night of the Wheeler sale down
in the lower orchard. She had no other place to
go. She had climbed up on the hoary, gnarled old
arm of the russet apple-tree, the only one in the
orchard, the place where as a little girl she had
played through violet vistaed hours with her dolls.
There was no one to comfort her, no one left from
those Other Years but the old russet apple-tree.
And soon all too soon that would be but a
memory.
A few feet away was the hole in the stone wall
where she had first seen the little Haskins boy who
had played with her for a little time and then moved
away and grown up and become a minister and gone
as a missionary to India. Where was he now, and
did he ever think of the girl on the adjoining farm
in Foxboro who had dared to follow him through the
hole in the stone wall under boulders that might
easily slide off and crush them ? She wondered.
Over between the two scrawny astrachan trees
was the big boulder where she had always sought
safety from the wicked knives of the mowing machine
when they cut the grass in the orchard. She had
played mud pies there with Nellie Harrington, who
came down from the Harrington place which had
burned years and years ago and was now only a
blackberry-grown cellar hole and a stump of brick
chimney. Nellie had married one of the Blodgett
boys and died with the coming of a little child.
A score of old familiar things she saw : The one
pure white stone in the wall where on a winter s day
she had come face to face with a fox ; the outline of
THE GREATER GLORY 141
the frog-pond in the swamp where some men had
once shot an ailing horse; the bars into the wood
lot where the youngest Osgood boy had started a
fire with stolen matches and nearly ruined a town
ship ; raspberry and blackberry bushes where she
had watched for the first autumn fruit to ripen.
Every feature of the landscape had its associations.
"Old apple-tree! dear old russet apple-tree!"
she choked. "I m going away now and I can t
come back any more. You have always seemed
human to me. Will you remember the little girl
who played dolls here, and brought cookies and
sugared bread-and-butter here, and came here for
solace when she had been punished for some dis
obedience of childhood? Will you remember her,
old apple-tree, and think of her as having gone
out into the world from this day a woman ? "
A breeze blowing over the valley stirred the
branches. It seemed as though the tree had replied.
She stole her arms about its battered scaly trunk and
placed her fair face close against its surface.
Her face was streaming tears when Jack came upon
her.
"Mary," he said with a wonderful tenderness in
his rebuke, "you promised you weren t going to the
auction to-day ; you said you were going to stay with
the Osgoods until after the agony was over. That s
why I worked at the office. Otherwise I should have
tried to be with you."
She slipped off the apple-tree s low bough as a little
child climbs down from the knee of an aged grand
parent, slipped down and stood before her lover
with her back against the tree.
He looked into her face and he knew what she had
that day suffered and was suffering now.
142 THE GREATER GLORY
"Mary ! " he said huskily.
"I never felt more lonely in my life than I do now,
Jack," she said. "Up to now I have been only a
girl. After this I m a woman, a woman and
alone. A man can be alone and lonely and not
mind, but a lonely woman is the most miserable
creature in God s world."
"Mary," he said, "I ve been talking to Mr. Hod.
He was at the auction you know, and he saw you.
He made me come out early and and take care
of you. Mary, dear, I m alone, too. I m alone
and in debt. I have my own way to make, my living
to earn under a handicap. You know what that
handicap is and what it means. But Mary, since this
has happened, since you too have been left alone,
since my talk with Mr. Hod and his kindness to me,
I ve come to realize what it means for you and I to
try to solve this problem alone and apart. I I want
you, Mary. I want you to help and encourage me ;
to work with me ; to be at home when I come there
at night after trying to fight my way ahead in
the day. I want to feel that nothing is going to
part us but death. I want you to marry me,
Mary, marry me and fight with me, and share
with me the glory of winning the victory. Perhaps
I have no right to ask it. I m a poor man. But
we are both alone and poor now. "Why should it
be any harder to fight our way together than sepa
rately and alone ?"
"It would be easier Jack ! "
"Will you marry me, Mary ?"
"When?" she asked fearfully.
"Now!" he said. "To-night! Mr. Hod said
and I see how truly he knew that you would need
me to-night, especially. Oh, Mary ! I love
THE GREATER GLORY 143
you ! I want you ! Come with me and let s live
together ! "
Under the old apple-tree where she had played with
her dolls and brought spiced cookies and dried her
childhood tears and fell on many golden afternoons
a-dreaming with books of lords and fine ladies and
knight-errants and charming princes spread before
her but forgotten, she told him that she would marry
him that night.
CHAPTER XIV
AND so THEY WERE MARRIED BUT DID THEY
LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AS THE STORY BOOKS
HAVE HAD IT SlNCE THE DAYS WHEN THE OLD
EARTH WAS YOUNG?
LIFE holds many mysteries, but among them
is none greater than this : That the lives of some folk
should lead into pleasant places and beside still waters,
that most of their troubles should be small ones, that
their days should be filled with pleasure and their
nights with untroubled slumber. And that there
should be other folk, in no way responsible, for whom
existence is a pathway through many shadows, for
whom many of the most en joy able of life s experiences
are denied, whose days are filled with endless labor
and evenings with heartache.
These are the things understood only by those who
with clean hands and a pure heart aspire to the secret
places of the Most High : That there is a Glory which
comes to these other folk a Greater Glory than
anything which men of little hearts and little minds
conceive.
This, our tale, is a love story. But for the tired
scribe whose pen scratches line after line across the
paper, it is more than that. It is the Greater Glory
as he has seen it descend upon a woman. It is the
narrative of a girl s love for a man and the still
greater love for the sons of that man which she bore
him as has been set down before. But it does not end
THE GREATER GLORY 145
with a wedding. Few of us, indeed, live "happily
ever after." It ends with the coming of the Greater
Glory as will be subsequently set forth. It goes
beyond the commencement of courtship. It follows
onward into some of the deep and sacred tragedies
and dramas of plain, ordinary, day-to-day living.
And the best part of it is this : This is the story of
Everywoman, your wife and my wife, your
mother and my mother a dedication, a eulogy,
a testament.
Mary Wood married Jack Purse on the evening
of the day of the auction. She married him in the
little front parlor of the Methodist parsonage on
School Street before the Reverend David Dodd, who
is now sainted old "Doctor" Dodd of the Calvary
Methodist Church. The only witnesses were Mrs.
Dodd, who blew her nose, shed tears and smiled
simultaneously all through the ceremony, which
after all was so short and simple as to seem as though
something were horribly illegal somewhere at starting
immediately to live together afterward.
If, on the evening of her wedding day, Mary gave
a thought to the dreams she had dreamed, of the gor
geous wedding which she had imagined w r as coming
on some wonder night in the future, of wealth and as
piration and golden opportunity which married life
was to open to her, no one knew it but herself. If
there was the least twinge of bittersweet disappoint
ment that this simple little exchange of promises
before the kindly minister was her "great wonder
night", it never disturbed the outer surface of the
love for the young chap whom she raised her sweet
face up toward when the thing was done and called
him husband. Despite her mother s experience, her
146 THE GREATER GLORY
mother s bitterness, the girlhood of warning, she had
married finally for love, on eighteen dollars a week,
and before her lay the same variety of matrimony
which year in and year out has dotted the continent
with millions and millions of homes and makes up,
forsooth, the Great America. But very worthwhile
homes they are, though built on a very great amount
of affection, the courage of ignorance, and a pitifully
meager amount of money.
The boy and girl came out and stood on the side
walk.
"Mr. Hod says we are to come up to his house and
spend our first night together," Jack said huskily.
At the top of Maple Street Hill, before Sam s house,
she paused. For a moment she clasped his arm, her
face against his shoulder.
"Oh, Jack," she said softly, "I guess I guess -
I m yours now ; yours to love, work with, play with,
suffer with, sorrow with yours to abuse, neglect,
forsake. My life is yours now, Jack. Like the verse
. in the Bible : Where you live I will live. What you
suffer, I will suffer. Your joys shall be my joys ;
your successes my successes. I don t mind what the
future brings only this : Be good to me Jack, -
take me and do what you will with me. But be as
kind as you can, Jack, that some day I may be able
to show mother she was wrong ! "
And man and wife, they passed in to Sam Hod s
house for their first supper together.
At the moment that Jack Purse and Mary Wood
entered Sam Hod s house together, another girl
came out of the Henderson house and strolled lei
surely down Main Street.
Near the corner of Union Street she heard the rattle
THE GREATER GLORY 147
of buggy wheels behind her and the hoarse bark of an
excited dog. She turned. Slug Truman, driving
Monday- Washing with Cardinal Wolsey on the seat
beside him, stopped at the curb beside her.
"Mibb come here," he called thickly.
She switched her jacket to her other arm and
strolled across the strip of sod to the buggy side.
"Well!" she demanded. "What ails you, Slug?
You look like a case of seven- weeks sickness."
"Anything on this evenin , Mibb ?"
"Nothin special."
"Get in and take a ride with me, Mibb."
"Where you goin ?"
"Get in and take a ride with me, and I ll tell you.
It s awful important, Mibb."
She cast an uneasy look at his heavy features, but
she calculated she could take care of herself with any
man that she ever see wearin pants and so she got in
beside the boy and they rumbled away in the sum
mer s evening.
"Mibb Mary Wood has just married Jack
Purse ! "
"She s what?"
"Married Jack Purse to-night ! to-night ! in
the Methodist parsonage. They re up to supper
together at Hod s right now. They re man and
wife!"
"The little fool!" Mibb ejaculated. "But
why the ding-ding are vou takin on about it,
Slug?"
"I guess I m I m jealous, Mibb."
"Jealous of who Purse ?"
"Of just bein married and have somebody to care
about me."
" Gosh, but you re an awful fathead ! "
148 THE GREATER GLORY
"Don t talk to me like that, Mibb. It hurts!"
He sloughed down into the seat. "Hell," he told her
miserably, "you don t know what a happy home we
got up there on Main Street, dad sick, Esmeralda
stage-struck and always bossin Ma, and Ma with no
more spine than a than a than a fish ! I m sick
of it, Mibb plumb sick. I wish it was different,
Mibb so different."
She looked at him out of the corner of her world-
wise young eye.
"Just how sick is your dad, anyhow?"
"Pretty bad, Mibb. He may go off any day now.
He s hit pretty hard."
"Slug," she said quietly, "let s run away and get
married too ! "
"Let s what!" he cried.
"Let s run away and get married. Mary Wood
and Jack Purse aren t the only ones who can play the
game."
"You d marry me a great big lummox
that s always puttin his hoof in everything?"
"Yes," she declared determinedly, as though she
had arrived at her decision long beforehand, "I ll
marry you, Herb Truman."
"W-h-e-n?" he demanded blankly.
"Any old time you want me !"
The big, fat, rosy young man turned pale. Then
the blood surged into his face again and made it
beefy red.
"You mean it, Mibb?"
"You don t imagine I m talkin in my sleep do
you, on a question of so much importance ? "
"Oh Mibb!"
"There s no need for you to get maudlin about it,
as I see," she reminded him.
THE GREATER GLORY 149
"But you called Mary a a little fool."
"Sure she s a little fool. Because Jack Purse isn t
situated like you re situated."
Herb should have taken warning from that signif
icant declaration, but he did not. The lad was
heartsick, lonesome and miserable. It wasn t the
girl he was in love with, it was love and comradeship
and consolation in his life. He recovered from his
lugubrious surprise and like the boy eternal that he
was in his heart, he suddenly began to enthuse with
the proposition the Henderson girl had suggested.
"The evening train is comin down the valley,"
he cried. "Hear the whistle? Mibb ! let s
let s elope!"
"The sky s the limit!" she retorted brazenly.
"Yes, let s!"
" The station ! I wonder can we make it ?"
"We could if I had those lines."
"Giddap, Monday-Washin ! " he cried suddenly.
And he struck the little mare with the whip.
Down through the village they were carried swiftly
and around the corner of Depot Street toward the
station. Just once Herb wondered if he might not
regret this thing she had proposed. But Mary Wood
was lost to him now, lost for always. He might as
well take second choice while he had the chance.
Besides, he didn t want to endure the coming week of
readjustment alone. A wife of his own might help.
And so he refused to harken to consequences.
And they made their train.
" We ll just see who gets the most out of marriage ! "
declared Mibb Henderson grimly and with abandon.
"What?" demanded Herb above the rumble of
the vehicle.
"I m not talkin to you; I m talkin to myself.
150 THE GREATER GLORY
I was making a remark about something Mary
Wood said once. It s nothing you need lose any
sleep over, now ! "
So, with a far different kind of feeling in her heart,
another girl in the office of our little local paper went
that night to her marriage.
And Slug Truman married Mabel Henderson,
"the nine-o clock-girl", instead of Mary Wood, and
up in heaven an angel sighed a couple of times and
then with a philosophical remark which no one in
heaven above overheard, flew about its celestial
business.
PART II
CHAPTER I
WE HAVE FOLLOWED OUR YOUNG FOLK THROUGH
THE MORNING OF THEIR LIVES AND THE THROES
OF YOUNG LOVE. WE COME NOW TO THE AFTER
NOONS AT PRESENT THE EARLY AFTERNOONS
AND THE HENDERSON GIRL COMES BACK FROM HER
WEDDING TRIP.
FOR the proper and orderly denouement of the
events which have gone before, it has been necessary
to refer now and then to the old files of our news
paper from the time we founded the Telegraph up to
83. But approaching now the events in the years
1883 to 1897, it is necessary to take the battered old
volumes down from the safe, spread them freely over
tables, chairs and reporters desks, and watch the
front pages and follow the local columns day by day.
For from the ready-reference of those files we have
refreshed in our memories many incidents that
throw sidelights on the people of our story, help to
straighten our chronology and bind in neatly to form
a symmetrical, clean-cut whole, many of the tiny
frayed ends and ravelings of our narrative.
For instance, here comes first a half-column account
of the Purse- Wood nuptials. It says that they were
"quietly married" at the Methodist parsonage on
the preceding evening on account of "the recent
death of the bride s mother." There is a brief sketch
of each person s life in which the phrases "accepted a
154 THE GREATER GLORY
position" when the meaning is that they "got a
job", and "in order to advance their prospects"
when the inference is that it was the only thing left
for them to do under the circumstances, occur fre
quently in the text. Thus do these calloused, heart
less, obstreperous country newspapermen prostitute
their talents ignominously to soften the tragedies of
day-to-day living for plain people and help them to
put the best face upon shame and necessity and
misfortune in the eyes of the multitude.
Witness how the account reads on : That owwg
to recent untoward events bride and groom will "post
pone their honeymoon until a later date" but that
in honor of the nuptials a pretty wedding supper was
served at the home of the young couple s employer
attended by a "few intimate friends." And the
menu is given in all of which may be detected the
hand of Mrs. Hod and the heart of her husband.
Turn over two issues and here on the fifth page,
third column, fourth item down is something else :
Mr. and Mrs. John Purse, who were recently
married at the Methodist parsonage, have furnished
a home in the house owned by William Stevens
on Pleasant Street and will entertain their many
friends after November 1st.
What did it matter that the "furnishing of a home"
was merely the fitting up of three rooms in one of
Bill Stevens upper tenements next to the wood yard
on Pleasant Street, that the "furnishings" were
mostly indescribably sacred little odds and ends
which the girl had saved from the auction or bid
in with her slender purse or that Jack had bought on
instalments from Blake Whipple s "Household
Emporium & Furniture Bazaar " ? The hands of a
155
woman with a song in her heart have been accom
plishing miracles in making a human habitation
out of nothing since the days when the cave man
returned at nightfall and found a curtain of skins
hung before his door in the first faint privacies of the
race.
Mary s hands were busy and her heart was singing.
When November first brought the curious friends, not
one of them conceived in his most irrational moment
that the hideously ugly box house with its flat tin
roof and awful jig-saw trimmings could have sheltered
the homely comfort which they found. It was a sad
day when Bill sold his three tenements as a site for a
business block and one by one Mary had to take
down the pictures and knickknacks and fold up the
carpets. On all the long life journey from a fur
nished room to a mansion, there is never again a home
just like the first.
Lest we be accused of morbidness, let us turn a few
more pages of the files. What is this under a "two
head" down in the lower left-hand corner of this
front page?
The village was pleasantly surprised last evening
when the six o clock train up the valley brought back
to Paris two young people very well known in the
community, who during a week s absence have joined
their lives and fortunes : Herbert R. Truman, son of
our well-known manufacturer Silas Truman, and
Miss Mabel Henderson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
Harvey Henderson of East Main Street, who is being
introduced about town to-day as Mrs. Herbert
Truman.
The couple had been entirely successful in keeping
their courtship secret and last Friday night they
156 THE GREATER GLORY
slipped away quietly down to Brattleboro and were
married. They have since been spending a week s
honeymoon in Boston and Providence.
Mr. Truman is in business with his father in the
manufacture of the celebrated Short-Cramp Farm
Wagon and Mrs. Truman for the past four years has
been employed as compositor in the Telegraph office.
It is a queer coincidence that all unwittingly the
couple were married at about the same hour as two
other employes of the local newspaper plant, Mr. and
Mrs. John Purse. Cupid appears to have acquired
an extraordinary fancy for the office where the
Telegraph is published.
For the present Mr. and Mrs. Truman have taken
a suite at the Whitney House. It is rumored that
the bridegroom is negotiating for the purchase of the
Holland property on Maple Street which he will
have rebuilt and furnished for a home. The best
wishes of their many friends go with them for a long
and happily married life.
"Huh!" exclaimed that lovable old philosopher,
Uncle Joe Fodder, as he sat in our office whence he
came to read the down-state exchanges, " happily
married life ! It s got to go that way in print, I
suppose. But when one party marries on heartache
and t other marries on a flyin grab for purple and
fine linen, there s goin to be just about as much hap
piness as between Cain and the girl from Nod when
she found out his record and called on the four winds
o heaven to witness that she was a buncoed woman.
When Mibb finds out Herb s always loved some one
else and when Herb finds out that most of his wad is
findin its way into the hands o his wife s mother, be
lieve me there s goin to be doin s. It ll be a case of
THE GREATER GLORY 157
a snippy, fussy little female poodle mated up to a
brokenhearted mastiff."
"Maybe there s something to it," Sam admitted.
"You re gol-durned right there s somethin to it,"
vouched Uncle Joe. "Give em two months and
watch the ruckus. Solomon, father of all Masons
because he had so many wives, had an easier time
with his domestic circle than Herb s goin to have
with just two."
"Two?"
"Mibb and Mrs. Harvey Henderson."
"But will Herb s folks stand for anything from
Mrs. Harvey Henderson ?"
"No. That s why there s goin to be fireworks
for Herb. He ain t married Mibb alone, which
would be bad enough. He s went and spliced up
with her family."
Mary had not given up her job following her
marriage. She and Jack needed her wages worse
than ever. So she was in the back room alone,
starting in early that noon because we were short-
handed, when Mibb came in.
Neither the Queen of Sheba nor Dolly Varden had
anything on Mibb on her return from her wedding
journey. She wore an elaborate creation of broad
cloth and satin, mauve and mustard. The skirt
was flounced and draped and multiple-pleated after
the fashion of the period, the bustle and the basque
waist set off a figure which Skinny Napoleon declared
was a cross between the Venus de Milo and a two-
day drunk, and on her head she wore one of those
ridiculously small hats seen now only in the wood
cuts of old ante-bellum magazines.
"Hello, little Eight-Point!" she called out.
"How s the local column?"
158 THE GREATER GLORY
Mary rested her stick on the edge of her case and
stared at the butterfly that had emerged from its
black cambric chrysalis.
"Well," demanded Mibb, "and how do you like
the landscape gardening?"
" You re beautiful ! " exclaimed Mary, her hun
gry eyes taking in every detail of the citified attire.
"I m graduated thank Gawd !" returned Mibb,
with a suggestive sniff at the lay-out of cases. "I
thought I d drop in because I heard you and Jack
had also married. I didn t know," insinuated Mibb
with a poke of the parasol that matched the suit
at an old patent-medicine cut lying on the floor,
- that Jack could afford it. But you re going to
keep on working, of course. That explains it."
Mary picked up her stick hurriedly. She read
it over with eyes which saw no type.
"Yes," she said after a time, "I m going to keep
on working."
Mibb paced grandly up and down the short type
alley, swinging the parasol, affecting to be interested
in the type cases as though she had never seen them
before and wondered how such little slivers of metal
were managed.
"Of course I wouldn t say anything for the world
about another woman s husband ; but weren t you a
bit hasty, Mary ? You ought to have waited until
you could afford it, you know."
"I wasn t any more hasty than you were,
Mibb." Mary examined very minutely the badly-
penned copy before her on the cap-case.
" What do you mean ? Why, Herbert and I have
been going together for years long before you ever
arrived in Paris ! And we d been planning our
elopement for weeks and weeks. It was grand ! "
THE GREATER GLORY 159
Mary remained silent. The type began to click in
her stick.
"We ve decided to buy the Holland house.
I think I shall have it made over, retaining its
colonial style." She continued to stroll restlessly
about, examining things very superficially and con
descendingly.
"I hope you will be very happy," said Mary. She
did not know what else to say.
"Happy? Huh! Leave it to me, Mary Wood.
I always told you, didn t I, there was nothing like
money to make a marriage happy. Herb says to
me this morning, he says : I want you should have
everything your heart desires, Mabel ; you only got
one life to live and while it s short it ought to be
merry. Don t let money stand in your way of mak
ing life worth living. Anything you see that you
want, say the word and I ll try to see that you get it.*
That s the kind of husband to have, Mary Wood."
"Yes," said Mary, "that s the kind of husband to
have."
Mibb was nettled. Somehow, beyond her first
show of surprise, Mary didn t seem at all impressed
by her "creation" or the costly little dewdrop bon
net. Mary s last statement she fancied contained a
subtle inference of doubt at her veracity. It piqued
Mibb to declare :
" Only a fool would marry a man who didn t have
nothing to fall back on but his wages."
It had the desired effect. Mary paused for a
moment, stared ahead of her absently, turning a
capital M over and over in her grimy fingers.
"I think," she said softly, "that is rather an un
kind statement to make."
"Oh, I wasn t thinking of Jack particularly, al-
160 THE GREATER GLORY
though that doesn t exempt him. I was looking at
it in the light of my own case," returned Mibb
grandly. One of her paniers caught on an unsunken
lag-screw head which held a type rack together.
She unfastened herself and got a smutch on her
puffs. "My! what a dirty hole!" she cried
fastidiously.
"I see you and Herbert are staying at the Whitney
House," suggested Mary, trying to turn the conversa
tion off dangerous ground. " I m surprised you didn t
return to Herbert s folks until your new home is
ready."
"Herb s mother gets on my nerves," snapped the
other. "To shake hands with her is like wringing
the claw of a corpse."
"And how does your mother like Herbert ?"
"She knows a good thing when she sees it," an
nounced Mibb. Mary glanced up in surprise at the
tone and manner. But the Henderson girl was
reading some inconsequential thing tacked up on
the wall. Mibb went on : "You folks are boarding,
I suppose. Naturally it s the only thing you could
do in your straitened circumstances."
"We are furnishing a little place on Pleasant
Street," returned Mary as evenly as she could,
adding : "You must come over and see me when we
pronounce it finished."
"I might drop in for a moment." She did not
return the invitation.
The boys and girls came to work presently and
crowded around Mabel and congratulated her, and
the other two women admired her finery and gazed
at her lost in envy and admiration. Mibb was
satisfied now. She came over to Mary s stool be
fore she left and used Mary s little three-corner piece
THE GREATER GLORY 161
of mirror on the window casing to tie the bow of her
bonnet very precisely.
"Well," she said, "good-by. I m sorry for you,
having to stay indoors this beautiful autumn day.
I ve got to go try on a dress at Mrs. Seaver s and
then I think I shall take a drive with the little black
mare over to the dance at Warfields this evening."
"Good-by," said Mary.
The Henderson girl swept out like the grand lady
she was, from the standpoint of clothes. It was
the undignified parade of the snobbery of a cheap,
ill-bred woman. But to Mary it hurt. When
Mibb had gone, she sat looking out the side window
for several minutes. The fragrant autumn air, in
sharp contrast to the pungent odor of printing ink
inside the shop, wafted in on the pleasant afternoon
sunshine and called to her. She would like to be
out in the beauty this golden afternoon. She
would like to be going over to Mrs. Seaver s to have a
fine dress fitted. She would enjoy taking Monday-
Washing all alone by herself and driving over the
yellow and scarlet hills to Warfields.
But she put the tempter righteously out of her
thoughts.
"Some day I will!" she told herself. "My
time hasn t come yet ! "
She came face to face with Herbert that evening
as she emerged from the Red Front grocery with her
arms laden with bundles. There was a confused,
averted-faced greeting. Then to her dismay and
bit of panic Herb fell into step beside her and
walked to the corner of Pleasant and Pine streets.
After three or four blocks of silence, she said :
"Well, Herbert how did it happen?"
He read her thoughts perfectly, and her meaning.
162 THE GREATER GLORY
"I met Sam Hod in Fred Barrett s jewelry store,
that afternoon," confessed the boy. "He was
telling Fred about Jack buying you some kind
of wedding present. He said you and Jack were to
be married that night and his wife was already
fixing up the wedding supper."
"Well?"
"I didn t know what else to do I was so lonely
and disappointed and miserable. I went and got
Monday- Washing and hitched her up and went
driving all by myself. Suddenly out beyond the
Greene River bridge it all come to me like a vision
out o the dyin afternoon s twilight. You was
bein married for life! After to-night there was
no gettin you; it wouldn t even be proper to see
you alone after this, not even for a talk. And just
in that minute I wanted a woman to talk to and give
me some some some sympathy worse than
I d ever wanted one in my life. Sounds soft and
sickenin , don t it? But I just did. And the
hopelessness of it all, and what a mess I d made
o things and the panic that maybe I was too big and
fat and homely too much of a slob for any
woman ever to want me exceptin the wrong kind,
got to my head, and drivin down the next street I
see Mibb."
"Yes, Herbert."
"I m tellin you as a brother. I see her and went
sort o crazy, I guess. All I knew, we was rattling
down the street to the station and the down train
was waitin with steam up. Oh, what a lark,
says she after a time. I give Jim Barnes, the station
agent, two dollars to take Monday- Washing back
home and stable her and tie up Card, and Mibb and
I got on the last car without even buyin a ticket."
THE GREATER GLORY 163
The boy moved his head. The gaslamp from the
corner shone on his features. He was weeping
silently, without sobs, as men weep. Never had
Mary wanted to comfort him as a sister might com
fort a brother, as she did in that moment. She
knew the influence she exercised over him to make
him confess his troubles. She knew that to confess
his troubles might make him feel better. Very
sympathetically she said :
"Yes, Herbert. I understand. And then what? *
"All the way down Mibb was keyed up and kept
sayin over and over again what a lark it was and
what a sensation they d be at home when the news
come back. She let me caress her a bit, that was
some satisfaction. Only I wanted more n that. I
felt as if I wanted to have the kind o mother you
read about in story books come along and pick me
up and rock me to sleep. I wanted a lullaby to
make me forget I d lost you, Mary."
"And you were married?"
"Yes, we was married. And we went on down to
Boston and Mibb splurged."
This last seemed sufficient in itself as an explana
tion of what Mibb alone had the courage to put into
words :
"And you re not happy with her, are you, Her
bert?"
"I could be happy if she d let me. I could take a
grip on myself and call it a sportin proposition and
that I was married and would make the best of it
and the most. In time I could love her a lot. But
she ain t domestic. That s a good word, ain t
it?"
"Yes, Herbert," said Mary sadly. "That s a
very good word."
164 THE GREATER GLORY
"Oh what a mess I ve made o things !"
"Perhaps not, Herbert. You do your part nobly.
Keep right on doing your part. Be a a good
sport, as you say. Time works many changes.
We never know what a day will bring forth."
" It s the money ! " declared the boy. " If I hadn t
it I d be working like Jack for wages and
married to some girl who cared about me for myself
and not because it give her a lark or allowed her to
splurge. Gawd, how I wish I was poor ! It s
just simply hell !"
"Let s see how it will work out, Herbert. Please
do!"
Ten minutes afterward, she watched him disappear
through the falling leaves, with a heart full of sad
ness, and happiness. There was sadness there
for Herbert; there was happiness there that she
had deliberately put out of her mind that afternoon
the thoughts which had tried to force their way in
after Mibb had left her.
CHAPTER H
So NOW WE GET DOWN TO THE BUSINESS OF
LIVING AND ENTER A ROOM WHERE FOOTFALLS
ARE HUSHED TO WITNESS THE ALMIGHTY SEND
ING A MIRACLE.
BACK to the Files again. Under date of December
the 10th. What is this that we find ?
A pleasant social time was held last evening on
Pleasant Street when about fifteen friends and neigh
bors gathered to give a house-warming to Mr. and
Mrs. John Purse. The evening was spent with
games and music, and refreshments were served.
The guests presented the young couple with a valu
able parlor clock and the members of the office
force as a body contributed toward a bronze horse
man to surmount its top.
Still further on, under date of February the twenty-
fifth and prominently displayed on the front page
where it occupied two columns, an obituary which
opened thus :
The community suffered a great shock last even
ing when Silas M. Truman, one of the town s most
prominent business men and leading citizens, passed
away in his magnificent Main Street home of a
complication of diseases. He took to his bed over
a fortnight ago, leaving his affairs in the hands of
his son. He grew rapidly worse and the end came
at twenty minutes to seven last night. He was
67 years old.
166 THE GREATER GLORY
Follows an elaborate obituary. The grim com
ment about the town next day revealed the universal
sentiment that Sam Hod had overdone it a bit.
There are few real tears at the death of a highly
successful plate-passer and mortgage foreclose!-.
But greater even than the death of Herbert s
father and his son s inheritance of the house, the
wagon works and the family money at least to
the importance of the denouement of this narra
tive is one little four-line item found in an August
issue after several months of newspaper silence
regarding the Telegraph folk.
The Purse tenement had been a cozy little place
that first winter. Jack and Mary had both joined
the Calvary Methodist Church and being a willing,
accommodating little body, the girl was in demand at
all sorts of social functions where there were rooms
to be trimmed or children to be drilled or dishes to
be washed, which was not without its compensa
tion in the matter of a permanent place in the village
social circles and among the younger married people.
There were many little "affairs" in the upper Purse
tenement, many surprise parties, many attendances
on singing schools where the girl s clear soprano and
Jack s fine tenor increased their popularity.
But toward the end of the spring, Mary left us.
One April morning she failed to report for work.
Jack carried home her black kimono apron, the extra
pair of emergency rubbers and umbrella that had
stood for so long at her case and the corner of the
wall.
She gradually dropped out of church society;
she attended but one lawn party. Jack went around
with a worried look and sought every opportunity
THE GREATER GLORY 167
of running up over-time for a reason other than
the creditor s moral claims upon his slender pay
envelope.
July fourth came with its unholy racket in the
gray of the morning and its parade at ten o clock,
ending with fireworks in the evening which Mary
watched from the little front porch over the front
steps. Lazy August was upon us. And one day the
small Ashley boy, who lived downstairs under the
Purses, padded into the back room in his bare feet,
the pucker-strings of his blouse hanging down and
his nose very damp. He found Jack making up the
last galleys into the front page.
"Hey, Mister Purse," he announced excitedly
so that all the office heard, " you better getcher
hat and go home quick. Somebody s brought you
a baby!"
Jack went home with a strange feeling in his
heart. He hardly had the strength to climb the
outside back stairs. He went in through the
kitchen. Mrs. Ashley was there, and Mrs. Pother-
ton from the next house and Doctor Johnson.
"Your wife, son," announced Johnson, rolling
down his sleeves as he stepped into the homely
little sitting room from the bedchamber on the east.
" has just given birth to a whale of a baby son !"
He stepped before the bewildered young husband.
"You can t go in there," the doctor declared,
"not until you come across with cigars ! Good
ones ! Two bits apiece !"
Nevertheless, Jack went in.
A great American author has since declared that
there are three earthly experiences without which no
168 THE GREATER GLORY
life is complete : Love, War, Poverty. There is a
fourth. It is the birth of a child.
Of all events in the annals of humankind this is
the greatest life s essence and foundation.
Noble sacrifice, fearless courage, indescribable
agony, the triumph of the love beside which all
other loves are weak and whimsical fantasies
one little knows what deep and sacred depths can
be plumbed in the fathoms of human character
until he has beheld this greatest of all miracles, until
he has witnessed the going-down of a woman into
and beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Happiness
to find the Singing Souls of the unborn children,
entice a little soul away by the tenderness of her
eyes and the compassion of her arms and bear
it up the steeps and out into the world of earthly
sunlight through the pink and golden portals of
birth.
A man marries a woman. The ceremony lies in
the past. There comes the return from the honey
moon. The event is but a few paragraphs on an
out-of-date newspaper page and to all but their
relatives and a few intimate friends the new home
stirs not a ripple in the social sea of great humanity.
And then a baby comes !
A baby comes !
In some side room where curtains are drawn,
footfalls softened and sounds are hushed, a diminu
tive gasping human creature convulses spasmodically
on a nurse s arm. The first breaths of earthly air
are burning like fire in its tiny lungs. Its black face
is slowly turning pink. Its features are becoming
understandable. Its fists are opening and closing,
its vocal chords are strengthening, its breathing
regular. Its head is misshapen, its eyes twisted, its
THE GREATER GLORY 169
legs crooked ; its general anatomical design sends a
panic through the household, through all but a
relieved physician, a smiling nurse, a mother who
dimly knows that all is well.
This is a new human life begun. This is the com
mencement of a soul.
Gases may swirl out in the seething immensities
of space, cool, form a planet, and to-morrow that
planet be rolling cold and dead in the infinite zeros
of ether. Continents may be discovered and civili
zations established, but the cycles of eternal
time speed onward and seas blot out the one and
evolution ride down the other. Empires may rise
and states may flourish, but peoples rise against
peoples, they go down in the dust, to-morrow the
sands of the eternal deserts lie heavily upon them.
Cities may become great, ships may plow the oceans,
markets may teem with trade and statesmen rise to
glory; fortunes may be made or lost and men may
lose their souls for ambition or the love of woman.
But what indeed of all these things unless ever down
the ages comes the inexhaustible Niagara of new
babies ? How pale and insignificant do all these
things which men term great sink down beside the
onward march of hoards of children, watching as
they come for mothers faces.
A baby comes, indeed !
There will be days of play and nights of fever
ahead, months of helplessness, a few brief years
of banging on the table with a spoon and ruling
a household s heart. There will be the time of
awkwardness, saucer eyes, big knees, bursting
buttons and rending seams. There will be times of
calf-love and seasons of heartburn. There will be
years of conceit unbearable ; periods, too, of cruel
170 THE GREATER GLORY
chastisement. Then it will know real love and the
beginning of the Golgotha of seeing visions and
dreaming dreams. Sorrow and tragedy and dis
appointment will be its portion. And then, far, far
ahead somewhere down the dim corridors of saner,
cooler, finer years may come to a brief decade of
real usefulness, to itself and to the race.
And as poet has sung and author has written from
the days when Pandora s box was opened and all
the troubles of the world were loosened so long
that only the fool would claim the thought for his
own some one must be tender, faithful, hopeful,
ever-patient, never discouraged, always confident
through all those years and times, the Some
One who lies upon the bed as John Purse looked
that day on the wife of his love lying upon the bed -
her body wet with agony, her eyes hollow, her cheeks
haggard, her smile a mask to hide the pain, the
Some One who reaches for the little reddened crea
ture, lays it upon her heart and soothes its hunger
with her breast.
This is the grandeur and infinity of God focused
in the instincts of a woman. This is our genesis
and our decalog. This is our Vision of the Most
High, life s fourth experience which should come
first!
It was evening. Jack was alone in the room with
his wife and the newly arrived baby. The two
women had gone home. Doctor Johnson had
departed, promising to get a nurse over before mid
night. The little son lay sleeping on his mother s
arm, lost in flannel.
"Jack!"
"Yes, dear."
THE GREATER GLORY 171
"I hope he ll be a great good man, a minister !"
"A man ! You re figuring pretty far ahead,
Mary. Let s raise him to be a boy first. I ll be
thankful when he can talk ! "
The man walked to the window. Thrusting his
hands in his pockets he said :
"I wonder why it is that every woman wants her
boy to be a preacher ? "
He stood looking out into the summer night and
the street lamps beginning to sprinkle the dusk.
And after a time she replied :
"I guess it must be because preachers are supposed
to represent all that s finest and best in manhood."
But in her heart she knew it was more than that.
Perhaps one other Mary could have framed the idea
in words twenty centuries ago.
"I ll be thankful if he grows up to be anything,
so long as it isn t a newspaperman ! "
Sam came over around eight o clock, bringing the
paper. When he had seen the new baby, spoken
gently to the inert woman, and gone, Jack came into
the bedroom with the newspaper in one hand and a
dimmed light in the other. He gave Mary the
night s Telegraph properly folded to the designated
place. Then he held the lamp, turning it up momen
tarily to give her the illumination to read :
LAST MINUTE NEWS !
Born To Mr. and Mrs. John Purse of Pleasant
Street, this afternoon, a son, weight eight and three-
quarter pounds. Congratulations !
CHAPTER in
MIBB TRUMAN PAYS MARY A VISIT IN HER TENE
MENT HOME THE FIRST OF THREE VISITS
THAT SHE EVER PAYS IN HER "CAREER", AT
WHICH "A PLEASANT TIME is NOT HAD BY ALL."
EVEN the most realistic story of married life
drags after a time if the attempt is made to chronicle
the thousand and one situations and struggles and
sacrifices and anticipations and heart-hopes of the
days and the months and the years. And as the
greatest part of Mary Purse s story is the last part,
we can turn the pages of the files here in great
handf uls down through the Eighties > after a passing
reference to one or two situations that stand out in
high light after the new baby came.
We didn t see much of Mary after the first
youngster arrived. Now and then one of us in the
office would meet her pushing a rather noisy baby
carriage with wooden wheels and steel tires along
the village streets of a pleasant afternoon, perhaps
idling along the Main Street windows and pausing
to gaze wistfully into them, working the carriage
forward and backward to keep Thomas Joshua
Purse from riling up the entire business section.
We took note of the very plain clothes and how the
sleeves of her jacket were always just out of fashion.
Her hat would be pinned too far back on her head.
Her rubbers would be sewed neatly enough with a
black thread where the shoes had broken through.
THE GREATER GLORY 173
But her face, despite the fine lines of care and
labor that were beginning to come and which were
indeed changing her from a girl into a woman, was
still pretty. And when any one, even strangers,
stopped, as fussy old ladies sometimes will, or tooth
less gentlemen carrying canes, to comment on the
size and health of the lusty youngster in the carriage,
there was a pathetic pride which seemed to defy
the town and the world.
Then one day Mibb stood on the front porch
when Mary went down to answer the bell. She
was overfed, over-dressed, over-masseured.
"Well," said she, the condescension in her voice
not to be mistaken, "I ve come to see your baby !"
Mary was dressed in a cheap wrapper, her breast
was decorated with safety pins, the apron gathered
in a quick roll at her waist. It was blotched where
Thomas Joshua Purse had five minutes before upset
a dish of syrup upon her and she had no other to
wear until morning. She remembered that the
parlor curtains were in the wash and the front
room looked barren as a small barn without them;
that the sitting room was strewn with toys, carelessly
wrecked trains of cast-iron cars and picture blocks
which were ideal when one had an ankle he wished
to turn and make useless for a week. Half her
week s dry-wash was strewn about the same room
where she had been sprinkling when the bell rang.
Yet she could not refuse Mibb entrance. Biting her
lip, Mary tried to smile and invited the other upstairs.
"I suppose I ought to have called on you before,"
declared Mibb, "but I ve been so busy getting the
Holland house properly furnished, with Mama having
so many contrary ideas which she simply must
have carried out, and there s been so much to see to
174 THE GREATER GLORY
since Herbert s father passed away " (and Mibb
sighed wonderfully well) "that I haven t had the
chance to think about anybody. My ! what a
little house ! And do you live in these three rooms ? "
"Yes," replied Mary quietly, "we live here, the
three of us a room apiece !" she laughed "and
find ourselves quite comfortable."
"Well, I declare. I couldn t stand it. I must
have space. Only yesterday I was telling Herbert
that we must tear out the wall on the north room of
the library before the contractors called the re
building finished and make that room larger. I
can t bear to be cramped. Large rooms and plenty
of them is my motto. And what s this ? "
"This," replied Mary, wheeling the carriage with
the coarse wooden wheels over, "is Tommy Joshua
Purse, age eight months and fifteen days."
"My stars ! What s the matter with him ? "
With a startled turn Mary bent over the carriage.
She inventoried the contents with puzzled anxiety.
"Why, nothing," she declared.
" But he s so small and so red. Goodness gracious !
He looks like a worm ! "
"He will recover, I dare say, by the time he dons
long trousers."
"Mercy ! I hope so. It would be awful to have
a son in long trousers looking like a worm. To what
college are you planning to send him ? "
Mibb detected irony and subtle sarcasm in Mary s
reply. Her question was a sally in kind. But there
was nothing but deadly seriousness in the mother s
reply as she said: "We were thinking of Dart
mouth; my own father graduated from there, you
know."
"No; I didn t know your father was a college
THE GREATER GLORY 175
man," said Mibb blankly. "I always thought of
Silent Wheeler as your father. It s queer your
mother chose to marry him after first marrying a
Dartmouth man."
"She was left with a little child, without insurance,
and knowing no business with which to support
herself. All she could do was keep house. There
was no alternative. She accepted Mr. Wheeler,
thinking to give me a home. Poor mother. I
wish she could see my baby ! "
This last was somehow the sudden wistful heart-
cry of a little girl.
Mibb was uncomfortable. She leaned over the
carriage and poked Thomas Joshua a couple of times
with a stiff forefinger, as old ladies sometimes
poke at prospective pot-roasts at the butcher s.
"Please don t!" cried Mary hurriedly.
"You ll awake him and I ve just rocked him to
sleep." But Thomas Joshua stirred and stretched
and opened his eyes and his mouth, and great and
terrible was his sudden lamentation. Mary lifted
him in her arms.
"He must be an awful aggravation at times
bawling like that."
Mary smiled sadly. She laid her lips for a moment
on the downy little head where an artery was throb
bing.
"Aggravation? Poor Mabel, what a lonesome
unhappy time you must be having !"
"Lonesome ! Unhappy ! Just because I haven t
got a a a worm ? " Mibb laughed. " I
should say not. Every woman has got a right to
happiness in her own way."
"Yes," agreed Mary, "every woman has a right to
happiness in her own way." She looked at the other
176 THE GREATER GLORY
in her exquisite black silk with the cut-steel buttons
and the paniers and the puffs and the overskirts
and the rare ruching at the throat and the gaudy
jewelry on her characterless fingers. "Some day,
Mibb," she said, "you will be sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Sorry for what you told Herbert on this same
subject last Sunday afternoon. "
"What do you know about that?"
"Herbert came over here Sunday evening to
see Jack and I and Thomas Joshua. He and Thomas
Joshua romped on the carpet for a half hour. After
we d got Joshua away to bed and we sat talking
about the future, Herb broke down and cried like a
motherless little boy and told me us ! all
about it."
"This," said Mibb, arising coldly, "is as enlight
ening as it is disgusting. Herb going around
peddling tales of our privacies to the neighbors
j"
"The fault is yours, Mabel. You shouldn t give
him cause."
"He had probably been drinking."
"Yes, a little bit. It made me feel very badly.
I ve been thinking about it all the week."
"Indeed! How many men do you require to
feel badly for? I should think the mess you ve
made marrying a wage-slave like Jack Purse who
can t provide you with a home bigger than a doll
house and the whole proposition saddled with debt
would be quite sufficient."
"Herbert and I were quite good friends for a
long time before he married you, Mabel."
"But not good friends enough so that he asked
you to be his wife."
THE GREATER GLORY 177
"I never wanted to be his wife." She said it
slowly, wondering if she were telling a falsehood.
"Because you never stood a chance. You know
the story about the fox and the grapes."
In the voice of a lady, Mary replied :
"Herbert has been like a brother. In fact, I
remember very distinctly the time and situation
when he asked if he might consider me as a sister."
"All of which is as amusing as it is illuminating."
The Henderson girl affected a fine superiority. Then
her mood changed. With a deadly expression of
cheap-charactered bad temper, she snapped: "But
if he thinks he s got license to peddle our domestic
differences all over Paris just because I m too wise
to tie myself down to a brace of night-squalling
sour-smelling brats, he s going to find he s started
something he ll have a warm time to finish." She
gathered up her finery and made ready to depart.
" I wouldn t have a young one for a million dollars I "
"And I wish I could have a dozen and I d pay a
million dollars for each one."
"You always were a mopey, sentimental little
fool. I m sure you re welcome to your worms !"
"You don t know, Mibb "
"Yes, I do know. That s where I m wise."
She made a significant gesture at Mary Purse.
"Look what they do to you. They keep you poor.
They twist you out of shape with pain and work.
They take the girlhood out of your face and your
eyes, they tie you at home, they break your heart "
Mary s eyes fused tears.
"Perhaps, Mibb, it s just as well after all that you
have none. They keep you poor financially
maybe. They twist you out of shape with pain and
work, perhaps. They take away your girlhood and
178 THE GREATER GLORY
keep you at home I admit it. But as for breaking
your heart you don t know what it is to have a
heart until until -
"This is banal and disgusting."
"Some day, Mibb, I think you will be very, very
sorry."
"I m willing to take my chances. I d like a
photograph of you and me stood up side by side
thirty years from to-day. It might tell an inter
esting story."
"Yes," agreed Mary, "it might."
"I came up here in all good friendship to see your
baby. I have to listen to a sermon about that
moth-eaten theory that woman s place is in the
home sacrificing herself for race propagation. I
won t bother you again. We think differently.
You re old-fashioned. Your fireside-and-family
notions are going out of date. There s a new day
dawning for women and I m not staying in my
house and pulling down my curtains and refusing
to see the sunrise. A woman has the right to
happiness ; she has the privilege of living her own
life in her own way as much as a man. I intend to
have my day of happiness after what I ve come
up from and what I ve endured. I intend to dic
tate what my life shall be in my own way. Tell
Herbert that, the next time he comes around here
to see his sister "
"After what you ve come up from, and what
you ve endured ! O Mabel!" Mary sighed. "Some
day you may realize that there s such a thing as
happiness that comes from not dictating what our
lives shall be, but in putting the best side out and
making the most of things in any and all situations
in which we find ourselves. I m not at all con-
THE GREATER GLORY 179
vinced that people who dictate their own lives in
their own way are happiest. That way lies selfish
ness. It seems to me that in the case of a woman,
struggling out of poverty, being twisted out of
shape with pain and work, losing her girlhood, being
tied at home because of babies in short, the
sacrifice of herself for others and especially little
children, all comes under the head of the highest
sort of service one can render the world and the
fellow-folk in it. How about it, Mabel? And if
there s a new day dawning as you seem to think,
it s the day when service is going to be glorified, and
generosity and gentleness and self-sacrifice for others
considered the things in life really worth while. I m
not at all impressed, Mibb, that you ve read or are
reading correctly the signs of the times."
"More sermonizing!" snapped Mibb. "Good-
by, Mary Purse ! Both of us may have had a
common girlhood and worked side by side at a type
case. But beyond that, we have nothing in common
and as for me I am perfectly willing right here that
our friendship should end."
With a sad face Mary laid Thomas Joshua in his
carriage and started to show Mibb the way down
stairs.
"You really needn t trouble yourself." Mabel
Truman turned at the door. "I ll meet you thirty
years from to-day, Mary Wood, and compare
results !"
Mary did not return at once to the sprinkling of
her clothes. After the rich woman had gone and
the little sitting room was quiet, she lifted Thomas
Joshua in her arms and sat for a long time by the
window in the cracking rocker, looking down through
the breeze- wafted muslin curtains on to Mrs.
180 THE GREATER GLORY
Ashley s side flower beds. Thomas Joshua went to
sleep. Half an hour afterward, when it was entirely
unnecessary, she started humming a lullaby.
When Jack came home, Mary said :
"Mibb Truman was here this afternoon. She
came to see Thomas Joshua."
"What did she think of him?" asked Jack.
"She called him a worm !"
"So long as Thomas Joshua doesn t turn out a
bookworm or a newspaper-office grub, I m satis
fied," the husband declared. He was glum because
things had not gone right in the back room that
afterrioon and he was worrying about the bills.
"I ve told you," commented Mary quietly, after
transferring a sizzling griddle of fried something
from the stove to the table, " that our Thomas
Joshua is going to be a preacher."
"Don t set your heart on it too strongly.
Preachers get paid even worse than newspapermen."
They were eating supper across a corner of the
homemade kitchen table, Thomas Joshua a future
pastor dining off the paint on a huge Noah s
Ark, the gift of "Uncle Herbert", when the doorbell
rang. Jack went down to the front door. In a
moment he had returned and his face was serious.
"It was Judge Farmer s little boy. He says his
father wants to see you and me at his office to-night
at eight o clock."
"Me !" Mary s face paled.
"On some kind of business."
Again the fright of "law" and "business" stabbed
into the young mother s heart.
"What can Judge Farmer possibly want of you
and me ? "
THE GREATER GLORY 181
"I don t know. Judge Farmer s little boy didn t
know."
"I can t go. There s no one to look after Thomas
Joshua ! "
"Maybe Mrs. Ashley will come up for an hour."
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH A LONG LANE TURNS JUST A LITTLE BIT
AND THEN RESUMES ITS COURSE AGAIN AWAY TO
THE HORIZON.
OVER thirty years have passed since that evening.
To-day Judge Farmer is a tall, grim, big-boned
Vermonter with a Mark-Twain head of hair, a hawk
like nose containing a mole famous in three States,
and a pair of enormous gray moustaches which fall
below his chin like the tusks on a walrus. He is a
dean of the Paris County Bar, president of the
People s National Bank and director in half a dozen
big corporations. But this night back in the
Eiglaties he was a rising young attorney who was
somewhat ceremonious with the consciousness of a
recent judgeship and an increasing law practice
among the "best people." His wavy black hair
was scrupulously barbered and shining with bay
rum, he wore a choice set of the black "side light"
whiskers of the period and a tight-fitting suit of
black broadcloth reputed to cost more money than
any other combination of male attire in Paris county.
Jack and Mary climbed the stairs to his office in
the southwest corner of the old Hawkins block with
misgivings amounting almost to panic. It meant
something in those days to be "summoned" to a
lawyer s office in the evening !
The young Judge was busy with his law books
as the couple entered. He arose very dignifiedly
THE GREATER GLORY 183
and motioned them into the side room dominated
by a life-sized print of Daniel Webster. They went
in and took seats on the extreme edge of chairs.
At length Amos Farmer came in, carrying an
envelope of ominous length which he laid down on
the green baize table. He adjusted a swivel chair
for his long richly-clad legs and seated himself
gravely, lighting a cigar with the nicety of a priest
kindling a sacred altar fire.
"I hope," faltered Mary, "you haven t called us
down on account of bad news."
"Yes and no," replied the Judge, clearing his
throat. Which only made the young man and
woman the more uneasy.
Jack wet his lips. Mary gripped the chair-arms.
Farmer picked up the long envelope and emptied it
of papers. He unfolded and smoothed them on his
knee. They looked to Jack like business letters and
letter-press replies.
The Judge loved effect in those days. No one
cares less for it at present.
"Mrs. Purse," he demanded, "where were you
bom?"
"In Foxboro Center in Sixty-one."
"And your parents ? "
"My father was Frederick Wood. My mother s
name before her marriage was Sarah Talmadge."
"Ah, yes. Precisely. Good. Very good."
The Judge stroked his silky black whiskers. He
continued :
"I wish to corroborate certain, ah, details in your
genealogy. Can you tell me anything of your
father s forebears ? "
"He was the son of Hebion Wood who settled in
184 THE GREATER GLORY
Bryant township in Eighteen-thirty. His grand
father was Micah Wood who fought in the Battle
of Bennington "
"That is going back far enough. Now about your
own grandfather s family; about Hebion Wood.
Whom did he marry ? "
"Grandma Wood s name before she met Grandpa
was Talmadge. I think her first name was Matilda."
" Yes. And Matilda Talmadge and Hebion Wood
had how many children?"
"Four, Judge Farmer. One died while a baby
and is buried beside Grandpa and Grandma in the
family lot at the Center. There were two boys,
my uncles, Adam and Josiah. Adam went to
Kansas just after the war and was killed by the
Indians ; Josiah went out to Indiana and later we
heard he was in some kind of business in Chicago.
He s living there now, I think. I never saw him.
Mother was the youngest, born while Grandpa and
Grandma lived for a time on the Holbrook place
over to Merrittsville
"There were no children by your Uncle Adam?
Are you positive ? "
"We never heard of Uncle Adam being married."
"And Josiah?"
"Mother said none of the family heard from him
much after he went West. There was some trouble
between him and his father, I think."
"Ah, yes. Good. Very good. Excellent. Just
as I wrote them."
"Wrote who?"
The Judge ignored the question. It was all part
of his legal "ceremony." As judge of probate, he
knew all of this but also as part of his love for
effect, he had called upon the woman to go
THE GREATER GLORY 185
through it to add to the mystery and import of the
proceeding.
"I understand you had a half-brother who was
amply taken care of by your stepfather s demise."
"Why, Judge, you know all about that. You
handled it yourself. But I wouldn t call it he was
amply taken care of. You know the house didn t
bring a buyer on account of its reputation what
Pa Wheeler did and the bank took it for the
mortgage. It hasn t been sold yet, has it?"
"No," Farmer answered. "But to get back to
your half-brother and your immediate family : There
were no other children but you and Arthur?"
"Why certainly not!"
"Then I take it that outside of any offspring which
your Uncle Josiah might have left in the West, you
are the only living representative of the Hebion
Woods?"
"I guess I am, Mr. Farmer."
"Good. Very good. Ah, excellent."
"What has happened, Judge? What is all this
about ? "
"Two months ago," declared the Judge, "I
received a letter from Pitts, Huling, Donovan and
Wiley, a firm of attorneys in Chicago. You
asked me a moment ago if the news I had for you
was bad. In one respect it is, although I presume
the relationship is so far removed that it will not
seriously grieve you. The fact is, Mrs. Purse, your
Uncle Josiah of Chicago has passed away."
Mary sat searching the young lawyer s face with
frightened eyes.
"He died some time since, at what date I am not
informed. Two months ago, I say, I received a
letter from the mentioned firm of attorneys request-
186 THE GREATER GLORY
ing certain facts regarding the existence of any mem
bers of the Hebion Wood family or other near
relatives. I replied consistently with the facts you
have just confirmed."
"Yes," Mary whispered.
Jack sat with wide-opened eyes and lips apart.
"I might say that considerable correspondence
followed. I did not inform you what was in progress
for I did not wish to raise false hopes and bitter
disappointment. Things have come to the point
where your signature is required to certain affidavits
and other documents and therefore
"My signature is necessary to documents ? What
do you mean?"
"In some aspects of the case I am as much in the
dark as yourself. From present indications, how
ever, I judge it safe to assert that you are about to
inherit either money or property."
"I am about to inherit
"The amount of this money or the value of this
property has not been disclosed to me. I have been
retained by Pitts, Ruling, Donovan and Wiley to
look up the possible heirs of Josiah Wood here in
Vermont. From certain things in the correspond
ence I do not think your mother s brother died
worth a very great amount. But so far as I can
judge, regardless of what it includes, you are the only
beneficiary "
"You mean somebody s died and left Jack and
me money? "
"In popular parlance, I believe such to have been
the case. Of course, it will take some little time
yet to settle the man s estate completely and before
anything tangible is forthcoming. Also there will
probably be the settlement fees to come out of the
THE GREATER GLORY 187
sum. I would advise against any too much opti
mism at present. But from now on I will keep you
informed of the progress of the case and do all I can
to facilitate the settlement."
The judge laid his cigar on the edge of the table,
found the proper papers from among the sheaf,
separated them and spread them out before him.
He lifted the top of a big bronze ink-well and dipped
in a pen.
"If you will sign these affidavits, Mrs. Purse,
here on the lines I have indicated, we will not pro
long your visit here any more than is necessary."
It was a quarter to nine when the girl and her
husband reached the sidewalk. They turned the
corner by the bank, went up Maple Street and
toward Pleasant.
"Jack," whispered the girl fearfully, "it s it s
a dream ! Jack, who would have thought that help
would come to us from such a quarter. Jack !
What s the matter? Aren t you glad?"
"For your sake, yes. For my sake no !"
"Why not?"
"If it s a lot of money, I couldn t think of being
a male Mabel-Henderson. If it s only a little "
"Isn t all that s yours mine too, Jack?"
"Certainly, dear."
"Then why isn t all that s mine yours?"
"It s different !" he choked.
CHAPTER V
THE INEVITABLE HAPPENS AS WE MAY HAVE SUR
MISED FROM THE START AND OUR LITTLE TOWN
OF PARIS KNOWS THE HENDERSON GIRL NO
LONGER.
MIBB went to Herbert s office on River Street
directly from the Purse house. Bud Matherson
told her that Herb had gone home to harness Mon
day-Washing and drive over to Center Foxboro on
business. Mibb went back to the Holland place
and found her husband in the big ivy-covered barn,
currying off the little black mare himself. He never
allowed any other person but his wife to care for
or drive the animal.
Somehow Herb had grown old. Only yesterday
he had been but a fat, sportive, good-natured boy,
easy-going, affable, but with a certain pathos
about his well-meant clumsiness. Since the un
happy ending to his love affair his marriage with
spitfire, irresponsible Mabel, the constant friction
between his mother and his mother-in-law, the death
of his father, the unsuccessful accession to the place
his father had filled so profitably in the town s busi
ness life and the untimely demise of one mammoth
bulldog, by name Cardinal Wolsey, from eating food
covered with rat poison since his life had been
shadowed by all these things, Herb had become a
middle-aged man almost in a twelvemonth. The
cowlick which for years had been a county joke was
THE GREATER GLORY 189
not so obstreperous as formerly, at his temples a
few gray hairs were showing. There were lines in
his face and his eyes were always tired. Of late
it was whispered around that "Herb ain t able to
stand prosperity : he s takin a quiet drink by him
self occasionally."
But Mabel cared nothing for these things even
if she noted them.
"I want to know," she demanded hotly, coming
into the big airy varnished interior of the barn where
Monday-Washing was hitched with tie ropes from
either side her halter, " what on earth you mean by
going over to the Purses and making me ridiculous ? "
Herb straightened up and looked at her with a
puzzled frown. Mibb s eyes were blazing. He did
not comprehend, but he sensed domestic breakers
ahead. And the sea of matrimony had been in a
more or less turbulent condition ever since he had
pushed his bark from the shore. He turned back
to his horse, scratched over a space of the glossy
black coat and tapped out the currycomb on a
doorpost.
"Answer me!" And Mibb stamped her foot.
"I don t know what you re talkin about," he
replied dully.
"What do you mean by going over there un
beknown to me the Purses of all places !
especially to that little sentimental chit of a Mary
Purse and mewling around about us not having
a lot of brats !"
Herb curried for a moment in silence.
"Call em children," he suggested. "It sounds
better!"
"I ll call em what I please."
"I ain t called upon for no explanations. Reckon
190 THE GREATER GLORY
I can go where I want and say what I please. There
warn t any prohibition o that in the marriage
license."
"Haven t you any sense of propriety? Haven t
you any family pride?"
"Family pride? Sure! That s why I d like a
few little shavers round this stiff and stuck-up place
- like Thomas Joshua of the Purses ."
"But if you and I don t think alike on that
subject doesn t common decency and manhood
demand that you keep quiet about it and not adver
tise our differences to the town?"
"Ain t advertised em to the town. Ain t said
a word about you to the Purses - - Mary or any
body. Just been over there a few times and played
with their kid. Where s the harm in that ? "
"You must have said something about it or Mary
Purse wouldn t have known."
"Mary Purse ain t nobody s female fool, I guess.
That s more n I can say o some people."
"So you d insult me !"
"I wish I had the cussedness in me to insult you.
Wish I had it in me to be a damned wife-beater.
Maybe we d both be happier."
"If you ever laid a finger on me, you know what
would happen. I d I d leave you, Herb Truman
I d leave you as sure as God made little apples!"
"I believe it," Herb rejoined. "That s why I
say I wish I had it in me and then both of us d
be happier."
Mibb bit her lip. The blood ran. She grew a bit
hysterical.
"Yes," she cried shrilly, "you talked like that to
me the night we rode down to Brattleboro, didn t
you ? A pretty way to cheat a girl marry her
THE GREATER GLORY 191
and take away her liberty so she can t marry any
body else without a divorce or a scandal and then -
"I can t see as you re the one that s cheated.
What about me?"
" You ! You ! What about you ? -
Herb tossed the currycomb nonchalantly into
the rack and picking up the big black brush he
began using it on Monday-Washing s fine-spun tail.
"Yes, what about me !"
"You think more of that mare than you think of
me
"She s worth more! At least she s honest and
square and don t try to be what God never made
her to be in the first place. She gives me square
service; she s always glad to see me; she loves
me a little bit ! -
Beside herself, the girl raised the parasol and
sprang at the mare s head.
"So she loves you ! Fiddlesticks !"
She struck the sociable little animal one,
two, three sharp blows across the head.
"Stop!" roared Herbert as the mare reared
wildly.
He came around to the horse s head.
"Do that again and there ll be trouble!" he
said hoarsely.
"There ll be trouble! What kind of trouble?
What will you do ? What ? "
He quieted his horse, stroking the silky nose and
the quivering nostrils.
"Mibb," he said hoarsely, "you and me just don t
hitch and the sooner we realize it the better. I ve
give you whatever you ve wanted in the way o
money ; I ve bought this place and fixed it up for
you just as you and that hellion of a mother o yours
192 THE GREATER GLORY
wanted. I said I d be a sport and play square and
perhaps try to get you to love me -
"You talk as though you d done me a favor by
marrying me."
"Which I did. You never give a hoot for me.
It was what cash I had access to that made you do
it. If I d been poor as Jack Purse you wouldn t
have done it in a thousand years. But I was pretty
well fixed and heart-hungry for a woman like -
"Like Mary Purse!"
"Yes, like Mary Purse, God damn it ! I d asked
Mary Purse to marry me and she d turned me down
because she couldn t love me somehow, only as a
sister and I was heart-broke. I was half crazy the
night I heard she was marryin Jack, and anything
in petticoats that d show some aspects o woman
hood, I d a-married at the drop of a hat just to feel
I was hitched to somebody and had some interest
in life -
"And I came along and was picked up and mar
ried like a hand-me-down !"
"Call it what you like. I married you thinkin
you d give at least value received for what I d try
to do for you. But it s been a miserable farce from
first to last and every day always makes it worse.
The place ain t far off where it ll all come to an end.
There just ain t nothin to you, Mibb. Not even
sympathy. A man can forgive a woman for every
sin in the decalogue and put up with every vice and
selfishness a small-bored woman can contract so
long as she gives him sympathy in what he is and
what he s tryin to do. A man s a brute, too, to
make a woman have youngsters that she don t want
em and even that won t break his love and regard
for her if if she s sympathetic. But "
THE GREATER GLORY 193
"So it s sympathy you want?"
She stepped up to him and asked him the question
viciously.
" It s somethin "
" It s sympathy you want ? "
With drawn face, tired eyes, he raised his head
and looked at her.
And as he did so, she struck him ! struck him
a swift, sharp blow across his face.
"You - - you Jezebel!" whispered Herb
hoarsely.
"I won t have to be asked to get out twice," she
said.
She turned abruptly and walked out.
He put his grimy hand up to his face and drew
it away as though half expecting to see blood on the
place where she had struck him. Finding none, he
stood there for a moment, stroking the mare s
forgiving head, his eyes looking wistfully far away.
Then he walked over and sat down on the lowest
of the hayloft stairs.
For half an hour he simply sat there, his face in
his hands.
Two nights later we ran this item in our paper.
Mrs. Harvey Henderson, with her daughter, Mrs.
Herbert Truman, with whom she has been making
her home since the daughter s marriage, left town last
evening for a week s stay in New York, following
which they will sail for a three-months trip to
Europe. Mrs. Silas Truman, Mr. Truman s mother,
will keep house for her son during the wife s absence.
Mibb Truman, nee Henderson, had "left" her
husband.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH THE PURSES "Snip COMES IN" -ET
A RATHER DlMINUTJVE LlTTLE VESSEL WITH
ONLY A MODEST CARGO IN HER HOLDS BUT HER
DECKS PILED HIGH WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS.
THINGS droned along in our little town for a month
or so after Mabel and her mother left. Some one
asked Herb in Jimmy Stiles barber shop one night
why he hadn t gone with them.
"I wanted em to enjoy the trip if they can,"
he replied and walked out, leaving the boys wonder
ing exactly what he meant.
"Some one ought to take a harness tug to them
Hendersons mother and daughter ! " declared
Uncle Joe Fodder from a corner. "Every dog may
have his day but the Bible never said nothin about
the cats ! And Herb he s a good man goin all
to pieces just because things ain t natural some-
wheres. You know what I mean. Bud Matherson
was in my place yesterday to get a rig to take that
red-headed Peters girl up spoon river. He says
the day after Mibb and her mother got out in such
a nice pretty dignified way, Herb was all clogged up
with liquor and had to go home in the afternoon and
sleep it off. The boy s goin to hell and I don t
know s I blame him !"
Herb on the night in question emerged from the
barber shop and started up Maple Street. At the
foot of the hill he met Mary and Jack, coining down
THE GREATER GLORY 195
arm-in-arm. With a cry of delight, Mary saw him
and ran up to him.
"Herbert ! Herbert !" she cried, her face shining,
her voice atremble. "What do you suppose has
happened to us, Herbert ? "
"I dunno."
"Jack and I are going to inherit money ! It s
from an uncle in Chicago I ve never seen. He died
and left us his estate. The executor turned it into
cash and has sent the money on to Judge Farmer
for us. Mr. Farmer s little boy just brought us word
that it s come. We re going down after it now."
"Money?" said Herb. He spoke the word as
though it were tar and acid in his mouth. "How
much?"
"We don t know yet." She was a little sobered
by Herbert s indifference.
"Aren t you glad for us, Herbert?"
"That," the other replied, "depends on how much
it is !" He moved away. "I ain t feelin* just
right to-night," he explained. "Excuse me."
Mary looked after him sadly.
Then she turned and continued her energetic walk
downtown with Jack. After a few blocks she said :
"Did you smell his breath? It s too bad, Jack.
Somehow I feel personally responsible. And yet
I couldn t do any different, could I ? "
"What do you mean?" Jack demanded sharply.
"Some day, Jack," she said, "I ll tell you !"
And nothing more could the husband get from the
wife of his heart.
They found Judge Farmer as before busy over his
law books or pretending to be and pompous
and dignified and inclined to ceremony.
196 THE GREATER GLORY
"You sent for us?" asked Mary.
"I did, Mrs. Purse. I have heard from Chicago
that the Wood estate has been entirely settled and
all the law been complied with."
"And Uncle Josiah actually did leave us his
money ? "
"At least to you, Mrs. Purse," smiled the Judge.
"And when will it arrive, do you think?" she
asked. "You see, if it s of any size I ve made so
many plans for it "
"I have the check here on my desk and the
papers. They arrived this afternoon."
" You have the money here ? "
" Yes. But I warned you not to expect too much."
"If it s only enough to pay up our debts and leave
us free just to work and save for ourselves and the
youngsters, I ll thank the dear God humbly ! " the
girl declared.
"Youngsters!" cried the Judge. "There isn t
but one, is there ? "
"Suppose we get to the business!" exclaimed
Jack suddenly.
The color gradually became normal in the young
woman s face. Judge Farmer spread out more
official-looking documents. He finished with the
arrangement of the papers and lastly on the top he
laid a long narrow slip of pink paper face downward.
"How much are your debts?" he asked. "I
suppose you are referring to the bankruptcy of
Jack s father."
"Those debts of mine will never be paid with
Mary s legacy if it s a million dollars ! " declared
Jack grimly.
Mary placed a hand over his mouth. Playfully
holding it there she replied :
THE GREATER GLORY 197
"Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty
dollars right this minute, Judge." Then she
gathered herself together as though to meet a
shock and asked : " Will the legacy cover it,
Judge?"
It was very quiet in the little corner room. A
clock ticked on the wall opposite Webster s picture.
A blue bottle fly buzzed against a dusty window.
"It will," said the Judge. "The amount left you
comes to five thousand and five hundred and fifty
dollars and twenty-five cents !"
Mary was the first to speak.
"It pays the debts," she declared hoarsely, "and
Jack, it leaves us it leaves us with a whole
thousand dollars over, for you to get into some
business ! "
Jack leaped up and walked to the window. He
stood looking down into the square.
"Don t be a fool, young man," declared the
Judge. "You ve got a wife that loves you. Thank
God for her ! "
"It cheats me ! Cheats me out of the satisfaction
of making a real effort to come up to the scratch."
"Tommyrot, young man!" retorted Farmer.
"I guess you find the job of raising those youngsters
that youngster ! hard enough without looking
for a slow smouldering financial fire to make you a
martyr to your principles."
"It s Mary s money I ll never touch it !"
Mary had the check in her hands. She winked
at the Judge and made a gesture not to mind any
thing Jack might say. Then her eyes sought the
figures on the paper figures which in those days
meant a competency, figures which to her poor
financially starved scheme of things meant a for-
198 THE GREATER GLORY
tune. If it had been fifty or a hundred thousand
dollars, the amount could have meant no more.
Fifty-five hundreds of dollars !
The figures swam before her gaze. Frantically
she fingered in her bosom for her handkerchief.
She sank down into the chair, her pretty brown head
bowed in her arms on the edge of the Judge s table.
"What are you weeping for?" demanded Farmer.
"That s the way a woman signifies she s having
a good time," declared Jack grimly, without looking
around.
The papers and receipts were duly signed, sealed
and delivered. The check formally became her
property. The Judge said they didn t owe him
anything ; he d been paid from Chicago. He shook
hands with them elaborately and they went out.
Mary carried the check all the way home in her
hand. Jack spoke not a word.
"Jack," she pleaded, "can t you act as happy
over it as I would have been if you had been the
one left the money?"
"It s different," choked Jack. "It puts me
in a worse position than ever. I m frantic at times
about getting ahead."
"We ve got a start now," she declared.
"Mary," he begged, "keep that money in your
own bank account for yourself. I want to make
good for the sake of my own pride for the sake of
doing it."
She put the check in the clock for safe keeping
until morning. After Jack had dropped asleep she
stole out of bed and took it out of the clock. What
of robbers? Fire? It was an awful responsibility
- this having such vast wealth loose around the
house. She got an envelope and tucked it under
THE GREATER GLORY 199
her pillow and fell asleep at last to see visions and
dream dreams. And Thomas Joshua, awake early
in the morning an idiosyncrasy peculiar to infants
in some quarters saw a corner of the envelope
protruding from beneath his mother s pillow just
above his head and drew it forth. Kind angels
awakened Mary, and a wild shriek awakened Jack.
For Thomas Joshua was just preparing to eat fifty-
five hundreds of dollars at one vast extravagant
gulp.
One week later we took a batch of mail out and
passed it to Jack across the imposing stone.
Purse ran over many of the corner-cards on the
envelopes and his face wore a frightened look.
"Duns ! * he cried. "But why have they arrived
all at once ? "
He ripped one open and read !
Dear Sir :
We enclose herewith receipt in full for the money
owed us on North Sidney Bulletin invoices after-
settlement of twenty cents on the dollar by Judge
Atherton. Please accept our sincere thanks for the
same. You have acted very fairly in this matter.
Envelope after envelope he tore open until there
was a waste basket of papered clutter on the forms he
was making up. And when he realized what had
happened he went over and sat down by the big
press and ran his fingers through his hair until it
was a worse mess than Herb s cowlick had been in
its wildest days.
Sam came over and wanted to know what had
happened.
"Poor Mary s gone to work and paid up
200 THE GREATER GLORY
everything I owe or ever have owed, out of that
legacy she got from her uncle."
He rubbed his hands nervously together.
" Well, what did you want her to do buy a
horse-car line?"
"No, but "
"But what?"
" Can t you understand how I feel about it
having a woman pay my bills ? "
"Yes, I can. But I can feel too what pleasure
it gave to Mary when she did it."
"Pleasure! Spending money by mailing it out
to a list of names and never getting a thing but so
many thank you s ? "
"Of feeling that she has been able to really help
you out of a bad situation. Young man, you ve
got a family and a future to work for and the god of
luck has freed you from debt. Show what s in you ;
go at your task of winning success with the idea that
when the time comes, you ll pay Mary back a
thousandfold."
Jack went back to his stones, gathered up his mail
sadly and put it in his pocket.
He drew Mary to him that noontime with great
terrible man tears rolling down his cheeks. Gripped
in his embrace, her own features shining, she knew
then that he knew what she had done.
"The rest oh, Mary keep the rest for
Tommy s education. Promise me ! "
"The rest goes to help you get into some good
business. Then the business can pay for Thomas
Joshua s education through theological school ! "
Mrs. Hod came over to the Purses that evening
after some thread to match her mauve silk. As she
declared afterward, if she d seen the ghost of Julius
THE GREATER GLORY 201
Caesar walk into the room dressed in a Japanese
umbrella and a pair of rubber boots, she couldn t
have been more startled than when she heard Jack
Purse striding up and down the kitchen and
swearing.
"What s happened?" gasped that good lady,
properly horrified.
"Oh, I took the legacy money, you know, and paid
all the bills so that we re free free free ! And
Jack s out there cussing over it. Let him alone!
That s the way a man signifies he s having a good
time ! " answered Mary sweetly.
CHAPTER VII
THE MILLS OF THE GODS GRIND SLOWLY ONWARD
AND THE PURSES HAVE A SlJDDEN ADDITION TO
THEIR FAMILY WITH WHICH THE STORK HAS
NOTHING TO Do.
LET us turn back to the files. Having elaborated
on the "lead stories" found in those blurred pages
and having a special significance to our narrative,
let us skim through half a dozen items of minor
importance.
For instance, here is a brief account of the marriage
of Esmeralda Truman to some chap in New York
with a name like a villain in the Seaside Library.
And a few months further on we note that Mrs.
Silas Truman has left for New York to make her
home with her daughter and that her son Herbert
will reside temporarily at the Whitney House. We
were gullible enough for a time to believe that Mrs.
Truman Senior s explanation "daughter needs me"
was tantamount to announcing that Esmeralda
wanted her mother near her through the advent of
a youngster. We subsequently demonstrated that
she was one of those women who must have a back
ground against which the lights and shadows of her
character can be shown to advantage. The Seaside-
Library husband having a will of his own, however,
and a jaw too square to allow his wife to get away
with her role of Mrs. Hawksbee, the mother was sent
THE GREATER GLORY 203
for and we understand she fulfilled her function
faithfully until death.
Four months further along in the files, we come
to the ending of the pitiful, miserable career of
Mary s half-brother, the idiot Artie, in an asylum
down in Massachusetts. The body was sent back
to Foxboro for interment and laid beside his father
and mother in the family lot. There was a prayer
at the grave. The casket was not opened.
When we lie back in an old office chair with a
friendly pipe in the quiet hours and think of the
changes which the last thirty years have wrought,
more and more do we come to think of life only as
a constant readjustment, a constant replacing of
new faces for old, a constant swapping of friendships
and exchanging of the old and antiquated for the
better. After all, the only thing permanent in life
is change. The sane and happy person is he who
can accept life as such and adapt himself most
quickly and thoroughly to the circumstances.
As for Jack and Mary Purse, the files place all
their family vicissitudes in very orderly and quite
rational fashion. But if we had no great diary of
the town s life to thus guide us and if we were
dependent upon memory alone, we would have set
it down that the babies seemed to come along in the
Purse household in record-breaking fashion after
the advent of Thomas Joshua. It was one of the
unexplainable things in life that they should all have
run to boys, but that is what happened. Fred and
Theodore were born the fall after Mibb and her
mother left Herbert and went to Europe, and Mary
was busier in her little home than ever.
It is unexplainable also that the birth of twins
should be looked upon by average American folks
204 THE GREATER GLORY
as a joke on the parents. It was anything but a
joke to Jack Purse. Not that he didn t love the
youngsters as his life, but that he was beginning to
grow gray at the temples prematurely, wondering
when that business chance was coming along which
should provide the money necessary for their bring
ing up and education.
We have always given Jack full credit; he tried
to do his best by his family and his job. That was
the pathos of it. There were times when panic
seized him and he wondered if there was indeed any
"future" before him, if all his energies and his life
must be spent sticking to his job in the newspaper
office which was steady and permanent, and
raising those boys without any great wealth of
money but just rich in character and manhood,
a little bit better men than their father had been
before them, taught to avoid, if possible, their
father s mistakes.
America is filled with that kind of men, men who
feel as the days slip away and the bills keep coming
in and money must be secured to meet them, that
they may have already shot their bolt and missed ;
that the best part of their lives is passing ; that the
best they can do is to equip those young lives for
whom they are responsible to take up the battle of
life where their father left it off and carry it forward
to a better conclusion. They are heroes, these
fathers. They are the real blue-bloods and
thoroughbreds by which this nation is great.
Thomas Joshua and Frederick and Theodore
Herbert came along in those years while the Purses
were living on Pleasant Street and Jack was drawing
eighteen dollars a week in our office and looking for
some kind of opening. And the year of the Truman
THE GREATER GLORY 205
bankruptcy Richard Samuel put in his tiny appear
ance and demanded his rights as an infant and got
them.
The year of the Truman bankruptcy ! Let us
refresh our memory by the files. Yes, it was in
1890 that the Truman Wagon Works went into the
hands of the sheriff. It was in 1890 that changes
took place in the lives of some of our story folk
indeed.
It did not come wholly unexpected, the Truman
bankruptcy. The town knew that Herb was drink
ing heavily, and that for some mysterious reason the
Purses were trying desperately to save him. But
for an equally mysterious reason, every time there
was a new young one in the Purse home, Herb went
on a spree a terrible spree and the last one
ended in his being arrested and detained in Sheriff
Crumpett s emporium under the town hall over
night because behind the reins of Monday-Washing
he was a menace to the safety of our public streets.
Judge Farmer, who had gone on the board of
directors of the People s National Bank, gave it out
that Mibb had drawn drafts on the husband which
time and again cleaned Herb out of ready cash and
once caused the wagon works to skip a pay roll.
The Judge had a long talk with Herbert on that
occasion and advised the husband to let the drafts
be reported back as unpaid. But Herb said he
couldn t do that. Mibb might have received money
on them and if one came back unpaid it might lead
to her arrest and all manner of scandal. Thereat
the Judge secured Mabel s address and wrote her
a harsh letter about which Herb never knew. For
a time the sums she asked for were reasonable.
WTien she drew a check on a big New York jewelry
206 THE GREATER GLORY
house for a sum that would have supported the
Purse family for a year and at the same time Herb
had to sell the Holland place to meet some of his
notes, the Judge knew the end was only a matter
of time. The directors of the People s National
called in Herb s paper. That finished him. He
made an assignment.
Bud Matherson was placed in charge to run the
business for a time for the benefit of the creditors.
Herb appeared one night at the Purses . His
clothes were wrinkled and his face unshaven. His
eyes were a trifle bleared and his voice cracked.
But he was far from being intoxicated.
Most bankrupts make frantic and hopeless effort
to recoup. They try to convince their friends that
the embarrassment is only temporary. They go
around snapping rubber bands on papers and looking
hopeful and important and then as the tide goes
against them explaining to every one who will
listen, exactly how it happened and that everybody
else in the business was to blame but themselves.
But Herb did none of these things. He was listless
and silent and seemingly relieved that the respon
sibility had slipped from his shoulders. He got
down on the floor and played with the little Purse
boys until Jack came home from the shop and then
with a sigh he got up and sat in a chair and became
apologetic.
"Jack," he said unevenly, "I ain t ever asked
many real favors o you folks exceptin to come over
now and then and take your kids to a circus, have
I?"
"No," Jack replied.
"I got one big favor to ask of you now."
Jack thought Herb wanted to borrow money.
THE GREATER GLORY 207
He would have loaned it gladly had there been any
prospect of getting it back, despite the fact that
because of the youngsters and doctors and clothing
and grocery bills Mary s fifteen hundred odd dollars
remaining from the legacy had gradually dissolved
until but eight hundred and fifty dollars were left.
"What is it, Herb?"
"How much money you got, Jack? That s
personal, but I d just like to know before I speak
what I come for."
"We ve got several hundred dollars."
Herb fingered a baby s toy he picked from the
floor. He dropped it a couple of times and picked
it up again.
"Jack, I got an idea I ll do a little traveling" he
said. "I don t mean just down to New York, and
back. I mean some real travelin somewheres.
Things has got pretty well snarled up here. I ain t
got the stomach to try to straighten em out. I m
tired, Jack. I want a change o scene and a rest."
"Yes."
"I ve done the best I could by Mibb. My
conscience don t hurt me none on that score. And
this goin away now will be the best thing I ever
did. After three years she ll be able to get a divorce
for desertion ; there ain t no other reason she could
get one for. But, Jack, I can t go away until
until "
"How much money do you want?"
"Two hundred aint far out o the way, Jack."
Jack s heart sank. Two hundred dollars with
practically no prospect of getting it back meant
diminishing the legacy to six hundred and fifty
dollars.
"That s rather steep, Herb."
208 THE GREATER GLORY
"We won t argue about price between friends.
I said two hundred warn t far out o the way because
she s worth that. But if you was only able to pay
twenty-five dollars, Jack, I d take it because I don t
know anybody on earth I d want to have her besides
you and Mary."
"What on earth are you talking about? Who s
she ? Don t you want to borrow money ?"
"No! I want you should have Monday- Washin
because you ll treat her as I d o treated her if I d
stayed around. I can t take no horse and rig where
I m goin !"
"Herbert!" cried Mary, anxiously entering from
the kitchen. "You re not going to do anything
foolish?"
"No, Mary. I m goin to do the wisest thing I ve
ever done in my life. Just goin away, that s all."
"Herbert you re not going to to "
"Yes, I m goin to part with Monday- Washin .
And I want to know you folks have got her. It ain t
the cash ; it s you takin care o her until she dies that
I want to remember. I ve had some nice rides be
hind Monday- Washin , Mary."
Like a flash Mary s thoughts fled back to the night
when her stepfather had assaulted her and how she
had first come to Paris behind the little animal ; the
ride with Herbert one Sunday afternoon in the
autumn ; the day in the office when Mibb had paraded
her finery and Mary had wished that Monday-
Washing might have been hers to drive over the
azure hills and far away.
"Yes, Herbert. Only we don t really need a
horse, unless unless "
The husband and wife exchanged glances.
"Yes?"
THE GREATER GLORY 209
"Unless we should move from here out to the edge
of town where there s room for the boys to grow.
Our place here is getting somewhat cramped. Jack
would probably need a horse to drive back and
forth."
"If I didn t need a little money I d give him to
you. But I do need a little money "
"Herb," declared the husband, "would you listen
to a hundred and fifty dollars for the mare, harness
and buggy?"
"She s yourn," Herb answered without hesitation.
CHAPTER
MABEL TRUMAN, NEE HENDERSON, COMES BACK TO
PARIS IN A HIGH HUFF, AND GOES BACK TO NEW
YORK WITH A BIG IDEA.
IT was a different Mabel Truman, nbe Henderson,
who came back to Paris two years later. Mibb had
matured in those years of absence. Maybe it had
been the people she had met, the places she had
frequented, the wider horizons or the removal of all
horizons, that was responsible. She had gone away
a cheap country-town spitfire covered with the
veneer of easy money. She came back polished but
not subdued, cultured but not refined, sophisticated
but sadly lacking a sense of humor.
Naturally she had heard about the bankruptcy,
for the money had stopped coming from Herbert.
But she was not persuaded that the whole catastrophe
was not a sharp lawyer s trick which some scheming
parties somewhere had succeeded in putting over on
provincial, easy-going Herb, and back she had come
to "see about it."
She was stouter than when she had gone away.
Her dress was less conspicuous and showed better
taste. But there were tiny crowsfeet in the corners
of her eyes and the faintest of faint wrinkles com
mencing to show in her neck, and she gravitated
toward men and told them her troubles as naturally
as a brook seeks the river and the river the sea.
No one in Paris recalls a single instance where Mibb
211
took a woman into her confidence or sought her
sympathy. But she hadn t been in town two hours
before two strange drummers in the Whitney House
were patting her hand and old man Ezekial s boy,
who lived summers in the big house on Preston Hill,
was thanking the Lord that the town had turned up
a live one at last.
Mabel visited Judge Farmer first and met with
such an icy reception that she came to Sam Hod with
tears of mortification and rage in her eyes and de
manded the price of space in the Telegraph so she
could say publicly in print just what she thought of
our leading attorney and banker.
Sam got her quieted down after a fashion, during
which procedure he had difficulty to avoid Mibb
weeping on his shoulder, and explained to her the law
of libel and how a paper and not an individual con
tributor was held responsible for any such deliberate
indiscretion. Then with eyes snapping and a very
great deal of pompous and self-important fidgeting,
she listened while Sam narrated as diplomatically
as possible the vicissitudes of the carriage works
under Herb s incompetent management.
"I made the mistake of my life," Mibb declared,
"when I went away. I should have had the brains
to stay here and personally take charge of the
carriage work myself. What I cannot understand
is this : What has become of all Herbert s money ?"
"I guess what he didn t send you to New York or
Florida or abroad, was lost by inefficiency and dis
honesty at the factory," Sam replied. "Anyhow, the
supply has stopped, Mabel. You ve got to make
up your mind to that."
"Of course I ll get what s left. That should be
something."
212 THE GREATER GLORY
"What s left!"
"After the bills are paid, I mean."
"My dear girl, Judge Farmer tells me that the
effects won t enable the referee to pay more than
twenty cents on the dollar."
"But I, as his wife, also have a claim !"
" Certainly not at least not on the business.
It was a corporation, you know, although Herbert
owned nearly all the stock. All there is in the
business goes to satisfy the creditors, and I under
stand that what Herbert personally owned he turned
into cash before the assignment."
"He was rich !" retorted Mabel.
"Not so rich as most of the town imagined, You
made a poor bet, Mibb, when you got it into your
head you d married a gold mine."
"But where is the man? Has he deserted me?"
"He went away one night about two months ago ;
no one saw him go ; no one knows where he is. Poor
Herb ! He had been drinking heavily."
"Poor Herb fiddlesticks! A weak character
always takes to drink. What I want to know is,
what s to become of me? I haven t had a remit
tance for two months. The last one was only a
hundred and fifty dollars
"That must have been the cash he got for the
mare," mused Sam.
"The mare? And that isn t mine ? Who has it?"
"The Purses bought it."
" The Purses ? Oh, yes, I believe I remember ; the
young couple with such a disgusting proclivity for
babies. Aiid they bought it ! You re sure ? Be
cause if Herb simply gave it to them, they re going to
find that Herb s wife is still in existence and not to be
cast aside financially like an old glove."
THE GREATER GLORY 213
"They bought it all right, and riding around in it
with the space in front of them stuffed with small
boys is the first recreation they ve had come into
their lives since they were married."
"I m not interested in the recreation of the Purses !
My husband had altogether too much to do with
Mary Purse. If I thought there was a chance of
bringing suit against Mary Purse and getting any
thing for the alienation of my husband s affections
they re doing that now in the best circles I d
have the papers filed so quickly that "
"And not a lawyer in town would take the case !
Mabel, you are simply ridiculous."
"But I ve got to have money. If Herbert has
deserted me I ve still got to live somehow "
"Get a job and go to work."
"A job! Work! Me! After the people I ve
associated with ; the set I move in "
"I wouldn t let that worry me ; no one here in town
is the wiser."
"Now you are ridiculous!" the woman cried.
Suddenly the truth dawned on her and she cried :
"I m a widow without a widow s privileges!
What shall I do oh, what shall I do ? If I could
only get my hands on that Herbert Truman ; if I only
could ! "
"You ve had your hands on him for quite a spell
and squeezed him dry. Better let it go at that,
Mabel," and Sam hitched his chair up under him,
lighted his pipe and prepared to go on with his
interrupted editorial.
"I plainly see," she declared icily, "that I haven t
a friend in this town."
"There s no especial reason why you should have,
Mibb. You haven t exerted yourself greatly to
214 THE GREATER GLORY
cultivate friendship. There is a very arbitrary law
about such things, you know."
"Oh well," she snapped haughtily, "I dare say I
know a few gentlemen friends who will not be
above helping me temporarily."
"I dare say you do, Mibb ! " grunted Sam grimly.
The door closed after the woman and Sam said a
bad word.
It rained that afternoon, a sudden thunder
shower that pelted huge drops like marbles on to
the dust-covered foliage, made Main Street mer
chants hustle their sidewalk displays indoors with
frantic energy and sent the luckless townspeople
caught on the streets into whatever shelters were at
hand.
Mabel Truman in a lacy creation, embroidered
parasol, bare head, and fingers ablaze with rings,
chanced to be strolling down Union Street meditating
hotly on her predicament when the shower came up.
Casting frantically about for a place of shelter, she
noted the deep portico of the Baptist church entrance.
She made the protection just as the rain descended in
a sudden cloud. At the top of the steps, the parasol
obstructing the way, she bumped into a person who
had taken refuge there a moment before, a woman
with an infant.
"I beg your pardon!" cried Mibb in her most
adroit voice. And then she stiffened.
"Mabel ! " cried Mary Purse. "You ! "
"I was not aware you were here or I should have
found a place from the rain elsewhere," the grass
widow declared.
Mary looked at her finery wistfully. Then the
dark eyes of Jack Purse s wife sought the other
much-massaged face and lingered there.
THE GREATER GLORY 215
"Why do you say that, Mabel?" she asked.
"What have you against me ?"
"You ask me that ! "
"I m sure it s nothing I ve done intentionally."
Mibb tapped her toe impatiently on the flagstone
floor.
"No; I dare say you didn t know any better.
You ve been tied down to this town all your life ; how
could you ! "
Mary did not reply. The shower increased.
Great sweeps of rain clouded the atmosphere ; gutters
were choked, limbs of trees broke in the violence of
the wind that swept a fine spray into the portico
where the women waited. And while the thunder
rattled and clacked and played about the upper air,
Mibb held her head high and tapped her toe impa
tiently.
"I m sure, Mabel, if there s anything I m respon
sible for, I m willing to apologize. You know -
"You d better !" snapped Mibb.
The apologetic, threadbare look, the gentle wist-
f ulness of the other woman, somewhat touched
Mabel and after a time she condescended to look
around, stare her over and allow her very superior
eyes to rest on the infant.
"I declare!" she said. "Hasn t that young one
grown a bit in the last four years?"
"This isn t the baby you saw at my house. This
is Richard my fourth."
"Your what?"
"My fourth. Fred and Theodore, the twins, born
while you were in Europe. This one was born
four months ago. We call him The Dickie-Bird."
"My Gawd!" cried Mibb. "And your husband
is in business by this time, I suppose."
216 THE GREATER GLORY
"No; he s he s still foreman in the news
paper office. There hasn t been exactly the business
chance come along "
"I know! Some men just simply haven t it in
them to get ahead. Where are you living?"
In the same place. But I don t think we ll be
there much longer because the man who owns the
property is going to sell for a building site. Jack
and I are thinking awful seriously of buying the old
place on Cobb Hill for a home. It s country out
there and plenty of room for the boys to play and
grow. Jack could drive back and forth mornings
and evenings, you know. We we bought your
horse."
"So I have heard," commented Mibb coldly.
"But I thought you were poor ! You talk of buying
places as if "
"O, but I had a legacy ; not much but still a legacy.
My Uncle Josiah in Chicago died and left us over
five thousand dollars."
"How long ago?"
"About three years."
"I dare say it s spent by this time. I never saw
folks who were baby-crazy who had the knack of
hanging on to money."
"It isn t all spent. Anyhow, that s why
Jack and I are talking about getting what s left into
some sort of real estate before the whole legacy
becomes exhausted. The bank s never been able to
dispose of the Wheeler house and property because
of what happened there. We can buy it for the
mortgage and interest. We ve got money enough to
do that and I m beginning to think it s a wise move.
I m looking for my happiness in other ways
than money."
THE GREATER GLORY 217
"What do you know about what happiness money
will buy," demanded Mibb " you that s hardly
been beyond the skyline in your life? Nonsense! "
"I don t," returned Mary, "and what I don t
know won t hurt me."
"Poor little country bumpkin ! Poor little fool ! "
declared Mibb. She wished the storm would end so
she could leave. It was a most disconcerting pre
dicament.
But Mary pretended not to be disparaged.
"How are things going with you, Mibb?" she
asked politely.
"Beautifully, thank you."
"You re still singing, I suppose. You had a
beautiful voice, I remember, when we worked in the
office together. I remember very often the night
you sang between the acts of the little local talent
play. How very long ago that seems, doesn t it?
And your voice should have improved much with
time."
"I studied under the best masters while abroad,"
Mibb replied. It was a falsehood. She had not
raised her voice while abroad above an ordinary tone
except to hold up her end of an altercation with her
mother. But it sounded well, this "best-masters"
business.
"You are fortunate; it will stand you in good
stead now."
"What do you mean?"
"Since Herbert well, you know."
Yes, Mibb knew. She knew all too well. But
she was furious to have it "thrown" at her by
homely little Mary Purse in her last year s hat and
coat with the baggy sleeves.
"I ll thank you to mind your own business.
218 THE GREATER GLORY
You have financial troubles of your own, I under
stand, which should be quite sufficient for an ordinary
person without interesting yourself in mine. I see
the rain is letting up. I ll say good-afternoon."
Despite the w^d wet, she raised her creamy para
sol and was gon.
Mary, who watched her picking her dainty way
among the broken boughs and sticks and miniature
washouts, declared :
"Well, one thing s certain, Dicky -Bird, we don t
look quite so old and burned out as she s com
mencing to look for all of our craze after babies ! "
As for Mibb, she went down that devastated street
with a Big Thought whirling in her head.
Mary Purse had given her an idea a great idea !
CHAPTER IX
BACK IN THE OLD HOUSE ON THE COBB HILL ROAD,
THE PURSES SETTLE DOWN TO THE DAY TO DAY
EXPERIENCES OF PLAIN PEOPLE WHICH MAKES
JACK PURSE A FRANTIC MAN.
IT was about the time we put in our linotype that
Jack and Mary bought the old Wheeler place out on
Cobb Hill. The man was plainly worried that he
was never going to draw more than three dollars a
day in our office and three dollars a day with
rents going up in the village was not sufficient to
raise the live-wire youngsters who were beginning
to demonstrate that they were real boys. The day
came when his landlord gave formal notice that the
place was to be sold for a business block site, and on
that day he and Mary took the remaining money out
of the savings bank and the place passed back into
the hands of the girl who had left it so sadly a decade
before.
The first home on Pleasant Street which had stood
for so much to them, was broken up. Ed Dickinson
drove over from Foxboro with his big two-horse van
one spring day and moved them. The musty old
house was scrubbed and renovated and aired and
painted. The bitter-sweet sorrow at leaving the
little tenement on Pleasant Street was only offset
for the woman by the satisfaction of the home-coming,
- back to the old farm behind the maple trees near
the top of Cobb Hill.
THE GREATER GLORY
"I thought when we moved from Pleasant
Street at all that it was to be so very different,"
Jack complained bitterly. "I thought it was rather
going to be like the Holland place. After all, it s
only a lonely old farm
"But the boys they will have their childhood
in the country, and after all, there s no blessing equal
to that, Jack."
Jack knew it, but he refused to be consoled.
"I ve got to do something!" he cried bitterly.
"I ve got to prove I m not a failure! Damn the
newspaper business. It takes and takes and never
gives ! It ties you down and squeezes the best that s
in you out for some other person s profit. Why did
I ever learn the trade of a printer ?"
But if Jack realized he was headed toward failure,
Mary too must have looked into the future after two
more children six in all had come to her, and
had it brought home to her that she had made the
same mistake that her mother had made before her :
that life would be but one dreary day of years so
much cooking, so much dishwashing, so much mend
ing and cleaning and hanging out of clothes. Some
day death would overtake her. There would be a
plain average American small-town funeral with the
relatives attending and the church choir rendering
an anthem and a young local pastor not old enough
yet, nor wise enough, to understand the hearts of
human beings, who would mouth conventional fu
neral phrases and look gloomy and be more or less
thankful when the ordeal was over. There would be
a six-inch obituary down in a corner of our paper,
perhaps sandwiched between a report of the county
treasurer and a patent medicine advertisement.
There would be a plain white stone out in the ceme-
THE GREATER GLORY 221
tery on the hill, soon forgotten by all but a lonely man
and God. It would be marked with the words :
"Mary, Beloved Wife of John Purse. Born Sept.
15th, 1861. Died, April 8th, 19." Life, like her
wedding day, like the dreams which she had dreamed,
would have passed. The grass and the briar bloom
would grow up around the headstone. She would
be forgotten. Oh, the heart-rendering hopelessness
of it.
But, in so far as any of us can recall, in so far as
any of the folk in our town knew, those who came in
contact with her after her sixth and final baby was
born, never heard a word of complaint or bitterness
from her lips. The features which had made her
once the prettiest girl in Paris took on deep dull lines
of work and worry and motherly anxiety. She was
growing rapidly into a plain, middle-aged woman
with nothing ahead but the successful manhood of
her boys, like a million other wives of average men
all over America tonight.
Mrs. Hod drove out to see her one afternoon and
stayed to supper. After supper they went up to the
front bedroom Mary s old room under the eaves
to hunt up some dress patterns. The moon came up
while they were there and the frogs down in the
marsh began their piping. It was a dreamy, beauti
ful hour.
Mary grew suddenly silent. From her place in
the rocker by the window Mrs. Hod glanced across
in the deep deep shadow to where Mary sat on the
bed. The girl suddenly began sobbing. Then to
Mrs. Hod s surprise, Mary Purse leaned across and
kneeled suddenly down with her head in Mrs. Hod s
lap. There she wept convulsively.
"Mother, mother!" Mary cried. "At least he s
222 THE GREATER GLORY
kind to me ; he loves me. But I understand, mother.
I understand ! "
"I spose you ve heard about Mibb Truman,"
said Mrs. Hod, attempting to get the girl s mind on to
another subject.
"What about her?"
"I understand she s gone on the stage the con
cert stage singin . The Mathers went to New
York last week and looked her up. She wasn t at
all nice to em. But they learned that some of her
gentlemen friends down there have backed her
financially and that wonderful voice o hers seems to
be doin the rest. She always did have a wonderful
voice. You remember it?"
"Yes," said Mary dully. She was plainly not in
terested in the Henderson girl s fortunes, having
forsooth her own pitiful fortunes to occupy her
mind.
Mrs. Hod comforted her and after a while Mary
arose and wiped her eyes.
"I m sorry, Mrs. Hod. Once in a while I feel
weak and helpless. What I need, I suppose, is some
real sorrow to make me strong."
"There s trouble enough comes to us in life without
wishing for it, dear. You re all right. You re only
worrying over Jack because he doesn t get into
business."
"No; I m worrying over Jack because Jack is
worrying that he doesn t get into business. He s
afraid to make the break, Mrs. Hod. He s afraid to
leave his sure job for a brilliant uncertainty. And
our capital is gone now, you know I paid the bills
with the largest part of it and the rest I put into buy
ing this house so we could at least be sure of a roof
over our heads. That makes Jack timid about
THE GREATER GLORY 223
taking chances; he s got the responsibilities of so
many on him."
"Has he had many chances?"
"Yes ; there s been the Red Front grocery which he
felt he couldn t swing because he didn t have the
capital ; there s been the newspaper at Saugus and
the job-printing business that Daddy Joe finally
bought and that I understand he s doing well in.
There s been Jim Galloway s rustless fire-screen
business and the sash-and-blind mill. All of them
were good businesses and would have made us fairly
well-fixed in time. But most of them needed money
quite a lot of it and somehow the boys have
taken most of our money."
"I know how it is, dear. It s too bad Jack couldn t
have found something before so many babies came.
Not," she added, "that I m saying a word against
them ; they re beautiful boys there aren t six boys
in the whole world any beautif uller excepting three
that I happen to have down at the Hod place on
Walnut Street in Paris. But still it s unfortunate."
"Jack s especially wild just now because you
won t tell a soul will you, Mrs. Hod ?"
" Certainly not, dear." She stroked the black hair
just beginning to fleck with gray. "Haven t I and
Mr. Hod proved that we re your friends ?"
"Well, then, Jack s especially wild just now because
he thinks he s discovered something on the Osgood
farm that may prove valuable a sort of ore and
he can buy the land for a thousand dollars. Only he
hasn t got the thousand dollars and even if he had it,
he lacks the money to develop it."
"What kind of ore, dear?"
"Some kind of yellow dirt that s in great demand
just now for paint. Ochre isn t that it ? Yes !
224 THE GREATER GLORY
There s a huge bed of it on the Osgood place along the
South Fork of Sheppard s brook. Jack had it sent
away and analyzed and then got a figure on the Os
good place because the Osgoods want to sell and move
to Montpelier. But it s all money money -
money again. And, well, there s our money,
Mrs. Hod, out there in the moonlight kicking their
heels on the corncrib. Hear them?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Hod, "Sam and J have got quite
a bit of change tied up in the same way. I know
how you feel, Mary. I ve been there ! "
It was true that Jack Purse at last had tumbled
on to something of business value. A huge ochre
bed by some freak of nature had been deposited along
the south fork of Sheppard s brook where it flowed
across the Osgood place. Old man Osgood cared
nothing about ochre and had no money to develop it
or small ambition to place value on what his farm
contained. He wanted to sell and move down to
Montpelier with his eldest son and go into the harness
business. If Jack really wanted it, he could have a
six-month option on the property for a hundred
dollars, because old man Osgood had as soon stay on
his farm for that last summer as anywhere.
Jack had a hundred dollars. He bought that op
tion. He disclosed to Sam Hod what he had done.
We think he had an idea for a time, that Sam Hod
might go on his note and help him raise the money,
and so indeed Sam might have done had not Jim
Thome started a rival newspaper in Paris that year
and given us a lot of trouble across the street. It
took every cent we could buy, beg, borrow or steal, to
keep the Telegraph above water that summer and
fall, and the chill days of autumn came with Jack as
handicapped and discouraged as ever.
THE GREATER GLORY 225
One night in early November he came home
through the first fall of snow with a grim white look
on his face. Mary stood by the stove frying pota
toes for the evening meal. She looked up with a
faithful smile on her plain features as he entered,
but he hardly noticed her. He went to the sink
and washed and stood for an unusual time drying
his hands on the roller towel.
The smile died from Mary s face as Jack ignored
her. There was a sudden pain in her heart. She
had not minded much when he had left off
meeting her after the day s work with a caress. But
to be ignored after a lonely day with the thought
less youngsters it brought the fear of her mother s
words into her soul and her mother s prophecy.
She burned her hand on the hot griddle but she
did not cry out. She put the stinging patch of flesh
to her lips for a moment and then shoved the griddle
to the rear of the stove. The last baby, Dexter
Farrington Purse, cried suddenly from the inner
room, a wail of anguish that sent the mother flying
to his side. Tn a moment she was back. But Jack
had been watching her as he dried his hands at the
towel and he suddenly came over.
"Mary," he said thickly, "you have it pretty
hard, don t you ? First one thing and then another
all day long. It wasn t a life like this we were
thinking of living together at thirty-five, was it,
Mary?"
He made her relinquish the griddle and the dish
into which the contents were being emptied. He
turned her about and took her in his arms.
"Mary," he said, lifting her face up toward his,
"you never say anything ; you never complain ; day
after day you stay out here in the country quiet,
226 THE GREATER GLORY
and keep plugging away the wife of a poor printer
who can t seem to get ahead. Oh, Mary girl, I love
you ! "
"I m looking for my pleasure in life in other ways,
Jack," she replied softly. "I guess, Jack, I ve
changed my standards, else I d given out long
ago."
"I may not say a lot, Mary dear, but but I
haven t forgotten and I I appreciate "
He drew her closer to him and crushed her suddenly.
In the dining room Richard, age eight, was busy on
the red tablecloth with Frederick, age eleven, dis
emboweling a clock which would never run again.
Jack in his stocking feet would later find many of
the cogwheels on the carpet. Richard chanced to
glance up and was hypnotized.
"Lookit ! " he exclaimed to his brothers watching
the process of clock surgery, "paw s kissin maw! "
The small Templeton boys came in after supper to
play until eight o clock with the Purse young ones.
Mary sent them, ruined clock, muddy boots, hand-
fuls of cogwheels and all into the back kitchen.
"What s the matter, Jack," she asked her husband
when the boys were out of earshot. "Is it the
ochre option that s worrying you ?"
"Yes. Old man Osgood was in Paris this after
noon shopping. He said Joel Sibley has made him a
cash offer for the farm and wanted to know if I cared
to exercise my option."
"Jack," said the wife, "you mustn t make yourself
ill over this business. You re half -dead now with
worry and overwork and keeping such hours as
you ve been doing lately."
He rubbed his hands over tired eyes eyes that
felt like two burnt holes in a woolen blanket.
THE GREATER GLORY 227
"I know it," he admitted. "But this ochre
bed looks like such a good chance, and I ve read up so
much on it and know just how to go about doing it
working it up into a big business that I m about
crazy to see it slip away as other business proposi
tions have had to go by the board because I didn t
have the money. "
"Jack, this time why do you let it go by the board ?
Why don t you raise the money ? "
"But how can I raise the money when I ve got
nothing to raise it on? A mortgage on this place
wouldn t net two hundred dollars. The bank had
one stiff lesson with it "
"I mean if you can t raise the money out of your
own resources, use some one else s."
"Who for instance? I did think of asking Sam
Hod "
"Jack, I ve been thinking ; why don t you go see
Mr. Ezekial ? You know who I mean, the old man
who comes up to the place on Preston Hill summers.
He s got loads of cash ; you know that."
"And knows how to hang on to it !" declared Jack
grimly. "What chance would I stand going up to
him and trying to interest him in a little jelly-bean
ochre bed like this when he could buy all of Foxboro
and Paris put together and never miss it from his
account ? And even if he did put in the cash, -
even if I did interest him, how could I, with
nothing, keep control?"
"I don t know. But I don t believe old man
Ezekial is anything like what gossip paints him.
I can t understand how a man who really was all
that people claim him to be could have such an awful
nice daughter. I ve met Martha Ezekial several
times at Ladies Aid meetings, you know ; she s just
228 THE GREATER GLORY
common and ordinary like other folks, only she s
politer and kinder and softer spoken sort of finer
grained."
"She s real aristocracy," declared Jack, "to
distinguish from Mibb Truman s brand."
"Why not go to old Mr. Ezekial and tell him
honestly just what you ve found and what you think
you could do, and ask him to assist you "
"Because," said Jack, "I m too wise. Because
I know how business is done and how men like Old
Zeke as they call him are pestered to death
every day of their lives with industrial propositions
of this kind."
"Jack, dear, you don t know you can t be
certain until you ve tried. And isn t it worth
the trial ?"
"The cowardice of wisdom, Mary," the man cried,
leaning forward in his battered Morris chair, "makes
it appear ridiculous." He arose angrily and paced
the floor.
For Jack knew that deep in his heart he lacked the
courage to go up to Old Zeke s fine home on Preston
Hill and beard the old money bear in his den and try
to put across any such proposition. Part of his
hesitation might have been the cowardice of wisdom
- yes. But it was more physical courage that
detained him.
Mary got out her weekly washing, gathered from
the clothes lines just before the twilight began to
spit snow, and started her sprinkling, her ironing-
board across two chairs. Jack sat in the Morris
chair beside the reading table under the dining-
room clock and tried to make sense out of the news
paper he had that day printed and produced. But
he could not.
THE GREATER GLORY 229
The Templeton boys and three of his own young
sters had secured permission to carry out some experi
ment in the side bedroom and he heard the dull
drone of their voices and the shrill declarations and
contentions as they employed themselves after the
fashion of boys in that final hour before they were
called to go to bed.
"Our father made that !" declared Dexter proudly
referring to some toy or implement whose identity
Jack could not determine.
"Huh!" retorted one of the small Templeton
boys, "our father made a bigger one than that and
it had six sides to it, too."
"Your father ain t half so wonderful or smart as
our father is. Your father s only a farmer, and our
father makes a whole newspaper and bosses every
body all over the place. He s the most wonderful
man in the world, our father is ! " Freddie grew
emotional. "He ain t afraid o nothin and he can
do anything. He can lick your father with one hand
tied behind him and if you say he can t I ll do you
right here and now "
Jack heard no more. He sprang from his chair
and paced the floor. His boys thought him the
most wonderful man in the world ; the man who could
do everything; the man afraid of nothing. And he
couldn t raise a thousand dollars to buy an ochre
bed estimated to be worth a competency !
"Jack!" cried his wife. "What is the matter?
Where are you going ?"
"Crazy!" he retorted. Pulling down his hat he
passed out into the cold raw night.
He walked in the darkness of early evening down to
the ochre beds. They were covered with the light
blanket of snow but it was the exertion the man
230 THE GREATER GLORY
wanted, the feeling of doing something beside
sitting helplessly in a chair.
Over and over in his mind he turned all the men
who were likely to aid him in developing such a
business. One by one they were eliminated. There
was Old Zeke, of course, but the proposition of Old
Zeke helping out was nothing but the wild imagery
of a wife s business ignorance. What should he do ?
What should he do? He hated himself for this
weakness. He felt tired out, worn out, played out !
Yet he must do something. He must not let his
proposition go through his grasp. There might
never be another like it !
He must have walked around the south part
of the Osgood property for an hour in the falling
snow which quickly turned to slush. Then he dragged
his tired limbs back to the house. He opened the
door.
He was startled to see a strange woman in the
kitchen. It was Edith Crosswell from the Gilbert
Mills road. She sat before the kitchen stove reading
the evening s Telegraph.
"Why, where s Mary?" Jack demanded.
"Where are you?" demanded Edith. She was
a red-headed girl with big feet, square shoulders and
a hard mouth. She put down the paper and sur
veyed him critically. "I come over to borrow some
yeast because Ma s just got to make bread to-mor
row if we re not buried under fifty feet o snowdrift.
Edith, says your wife, you re a godsend. Would
you look after the young-uns for the evenin while I
hitch up the orse and make a quick trip down to
Paris, says she, It s urgent, she says."
"To Paris!" gasped Jack. "Mary s gone to
Paris ? At this time of night ? "
THE GREATER GLORY 231
"T aint eight o clock yet and it only takes an
half hour to drive to Paris. She s been gone half
that time already."
"Did she say who she was going to see in
Paris?"
"No; but she put on her Sunday-go-to-meetin
bib-and-tucker."
Jack found his way into the other room and sank
down, wet though he was, into the Morris chair.
Mary gone to Paris ! What other errand could she
possibly have but to attempt with the courage of
ignorance what he with his cowardice of wisdom had
declared impossible. He knew that old man Ezekial
was spending the Thanksgiving holidays at his
Preston Hill home. Our paper a few nights before
had said so. Mary had taken their dilemma by the
horns. She had gone into town at eight o clock
of a miserable night to meet the rich man and plead
for capital for her husband.
Hot, burning shame came over Jack as he sat
there. What a small, miserable piece of masculine
humanity he was, anyhow ! What a failure as a
husband and a father he had been. Before marriage
he had courted the girl with fair promises and golden
predictions. She had loved him because of his am
bition, the goals which he had set for himself. And
how had that marriage turned out ? What were the
fair promises, the golden predictions, the ambitions,
the goals, what but words, words, words ? The
ugly fact remained that despite the time which had
passed, despite the good health with which he and
Mary had been blessed, eleven years after marriage
found him in the same job he had held a decade
before, drawing the same money, content perforce
with the same kind of home, as far as ever from the
232 THE GREATER GLORY
dreams he had dreamed of the future. Why? Be
cause he lacked the courage to do exactly what his
wife was probably doing at the moment.
And had his wife not done enough ? Had she not
been kind, sympathetic with all his weaknesses,
patient with the privations, uncomplaining with the
pain and labors of motherhood, generous almost to
censure with the small fortune her uncle had left
her? Had she not done all he could expect of her
and more, without stepping into the situation now
and trying with her frail strength and homely courage
to succeed where he had failed ?
He started from his chair with a cry. Edith
heard him and brought her big feet down from the
edge of the oven door with a startled clump.
"Where be you going, Jack Purse?" she de
manded.
"I m going to show I won t be a spineless weakling
any longer ! " Jack cried. He took down his over
coat and went out.
"Something," declared Edith to the stove, "is
the matter with this here family !"
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH A LIFE- WEARY MAN PUTS His TROUBLES
UP TO A WORLD-WlSE FATHERLY OLD FELLOW
AND THINGS BEGIN TO LOOK UP FOR THE PURSES
JACK slopped along the six miles into Paris hoping
against hope that he could reach Preston Hill before
Mary left. If he could only do that, he could ex
plain to old man Ezekial that he had not put her " up
to it", that she had interviewed him of her own
accord and in her ignorance of the ways in which
men did business and looked upon such things. He
would try to convince the old financier that he was
not the kind that had to send women to plead for
him : that was the shame of it.
Down below McDermott s he heard a horse and
rig coming along through the muck and slush of the
road. He recognized Timothy Bailey s old white
horse and high-bodied buggy. He stepped out in
front.
"Tim, Tim," he cried, "have you just come from
Paris?"
The long, lank young farmer declared that he had.
"Did you pass my little black mare on the road,
with my wife driving her?"
"Reckon I did," returned Tim, "down near
Marshall Mills pond bottoms."
"Tim, would you turn your horse around and
drive like the devil to overtake her? I ll pay you
well!"
234 THE GREATER GLORY
" You ll pay me ! Drive like the devil ! Say,
what th hell, Jack? Your woman ain t runnin
away from you, be she?"
"No, she s started on an errand to Paris that s an
awful mistake and misunderstanding. I ve got to
reach her before she gets to a certain party. Please,
Timothy!"
Timothy clumsily backed his old white horse
about and the two men splattered back toward the
town.
Twenty-five minutes later they reached the top
of Preston Hill on the west side of Paris village and
turned south on Vermont Avenue. Here stretched
our residential section containing the homes of our
summer people. One fine old-fashioned place with
broad verandas stood back from the walk amid a
lawn dotted with silver birches. At the hitching
post a rig was tied. Jack Purse recognized the horse
from afar.
"Old Zeke s place !" echoed Timothy. "Gripes !
What s your woman doin at old Zeke s?"
"I can t tell you - now," returned Jack. "How
much for bringing me here, Tim? You don t need
to wait. I ll drive home with Mary."
"I guess you don t owe me nothin . I had
trouble with my women folks myself. We all do ! "
He would take no pay. Jack alighted and went
up the walk.
Panic seized him as he approached the enormous
pile which he had always viewed from the street and
which increased in size and ominous dignity like a
nightmare as he came close. He could never ring
the bell and go into this house and face the man of
whom a leading financial writer had once penned :
" when E. E. Ezekial takes snuff we all sneeze !"
THE GREATER GLORY 235
And yet Mary was in there now, putting him to
shame. And Timothy Bailey was down at the end
of the walk, standing up in his buggy and watching
to behold the miracle of Jack Purse gaining an en
trance to the "swellest" place in Paris, and ready
with embarrassing questions if he went soft now and
turned back. He had to go on. He pulled the
china-white knob of the bell as in a dream.
A horse-faced manservant came in response to the
summons. He snapped on a light over Jack s
head and the whole broad veranda was illumined.
"I want to see Mr. Ezekial. I ve got to see him
on something real important. Purse is the name.
I m from the local newspaper."
"Wait here," directed the servant. "I believe
Mr. Ezekial is busy at present."
"Yes, I know! Tell him that s just what I
want to see him about. I ll not take No for an
answer. I I can t ! "
The servant left the big glass door ajar. In a
moment he was back.
"Mr. Ezekial says he ll give you fifteen minutes
because you re on the local paper. Follow me ! "
He led Jack into a richly appointed hall and up
a wide staircase. They turned the balustrade post
in front of a stained-glass window with a luxurious
window seat and went down the upper hall. At a
door on the right the servant tapped.
"All right !" declared a heavy voice.
Jack was being consumed with ague and nerves.
His thoughts were confused, his vision blurred. He
only knew he was going to make some sort of an
apology to old man Ezekial, explain that it didn t
matter what his wife had asked, he knew how busi
ness men locked on such things and would seek the
236 THE GREATER GLORY
capital in the proper channels or not at all. The
servant with the elongated features stepped aside
for him to pass. And Jack entered Old Zeke s study.
He saw red walls hung with paintings in gold
frames. He saw a fire crackling comfortably in the
grate. Across an immense flat-topped secretary
desk at the north side he saw a very clean and white
elderly man facing him, a William H. Taft of a
man with a substantial jaw, not unkindly eyes, and
heavy white moustache.
But there was no woman !
For a moment Jack stood gaping like an idiot.
"Where s my wife? * he demanded.
The elderly man laid his pen across a mammoth
bronze inkwell.
"Your what?" he demanded sharply.
"My wife! Where is she? I thought she was
here!"
Old Zeke, during his long career in Boston, New
York and Chicago, had met up with many fanatics.
But here was a specimen that puzzled him. Over-
brilliant eyes, snowsplashed clothes, muddy shoes,
nervous and not over-clean hands : Jack Purse was
not one to inspire confidence in any scheme involving
the investment of money. Jack realized this per
fectly. He had not come for money. He had come
for his wife. And his wife wasn t here. He felt
like a condemned man on the scaffold who has steeled
himself for the shock of the sprung trap and the
hanging, been suddenly interrupted. As for the
very clean and very white old man, immediately he
sensed some sort of conspiracy. Yet he was mystified.
In his own home, surrounded by his family and
servants, the modus operandi of the intrigue was
certainly novel.
THE GREATER GLORY 237
"Your wife!" repeated the financier. "I
haven t got your wife here. What made you think
that I had?"
"She came here. I know it. Her buggy is
hitched out in front."
E. E. Ezekial raised a bushy eyebrow.
"Indeed ! And what would your wife be coming
here for ? "
"Womanlike, she was coming to you for money
for my business."
"Womanlike!"
"Yes; she didn t know any better. She didn t
understand how men look at these things and that
sentiment doesn t count. She only understood
that I stood a big chance of making some money
by securing the ochre beds and I ve failed so many
times that this time she was going to see what she
could do."
"Young man, what on earth are you talking
about? Who are you, anyway?"
"My name s Purse. I m foreman at the local
newspaper office."
"And what is it you re all wrought up about?"
"My wife coming here to ask you for money."
"But your wife hasn t been here to ask me for
money."
"Then I m glad and relieved and all I can do
is to apologize."
"But what should prompt her to do such a thing?
What kind of a wife have you got, anyhow ? "
"A better than I deserve," Jack answered. He
moved toward the door.
"Wait a minute, young man ! This is a fine way
to come in here and interrupt and mystify an old
fellow. What s back of all this, anyhow?"
238 THE GREATER GLORY
"It s too long a story to bother you with. I d
be only taking your valuable time."
"I m the best judge of that. What s the matter
with you ? Are you ill ? "
"I m sort of wrought up with overwork and worry.
When a man faces the proposition of bringing up six
boys and educating them on the wages of a printing
office, he realizes that unless he gets into business
sometime, sooner or later, he s going to give out.
Maybe I m reaching that time."
" Six boys ! Have you got six boys ? "
"Yes, sir!"
"And a wife that goes around looking for capital
for her husband s business?"
"Yes," miserably.
"Wait a minute, young man; don t be in such a
damned hurry !"
The canny old financier and dealer in human nature
saw suddenly a distraught, over-taxed, grimly
honest young workingman who had reached a place
in life s struggle where he knew not where to turn
or what to do. He took note of the high forehead,
the fine face, the direct eyes, the threadbare clothes,
the bonafide embarrassment. And something in
the picture touched him. Maybe the melancholy
November night had something to do with it, and
the rain tapping against the glass. Maybe it was the
sorrow which had come to the old man that week of
which our townspeople at the time had learned
nothing. Maybe it was something deep within the
reference to six growing boys and a wife who went
after capital for her husband. Anyhow, old man
Ezekial was suddenly kind, just a very human and
sympathetic old man who came around the corner
of his desk and shoved an enormous leather chair
THE GREATER GLORY 239
before the blazing logs for Jack and brought for
ward another for himself.
"Sit down, young man," he invited. "Sit down
and let s visit for a little while. You look sort of
played out."
"But your time is "
"I m tired of business to-night. It would be
well for me if I laid it aside. I was only busying
myself, trying to forget something. Won t you
sit down and have a smoke?"
Have a smoke ! With old man Ezekial, whose
name was a financial flurry in six States ! Jack
moved forward in a daze, as though the request was
a command.
He sank down into the luxurious chair, putting
his wet cap behind him. His trousers legs imme
diately began to steam. The old financier opened
the top drawer of his desk and brought out a long
thin cigar box. Jack took one of the Havanas with
raw red fingers.
"Now then, just for the sake of some memories of
my own, tell me about the wife and six boys and the
struggle to get into business."
"Mr. Ezekial, how can you possibly be interested
in that?"
"We ve all been there, son ; we ve all been there."
"Have you been there, Mr. Ezekial?"
"Certainly, young man. It s the life-story of
American business from Maine to the Golden Gate
all down the years."
Many dark days in the past eleven years had
Jack longed for a father to whom he could go with
his struggle and his perplexities and ask for advice.
But there had been no father. He had never known
that kind of parent. Men are only boys grown up.
240 THE GREATER GLORY
Every man at some time or other has longed for
the father of his boyhood to help him in the dark and
bitter years of struggle and disappointment and
heartache. There was nothing maudlin about the
longing.
Here before the fire for the moment Jack Purse
found himself with a kindly, successful old man,
verily, the father of his dreams. With the
eternal boy-heart he told the story of his life and
career thus far. He told of the death of his mother
at twelve years, the newspaper business at North
Sidney, the bankruptcy, the loss of his own father,
the job in Paris. He told as best he could of his
love affair, the girl s plight, the marriage, the home
on Pleasant Street, the six sons for whose lives he
had made himself responsible. There was no at
tempt at effect, no subtle plea for sympathy, for
he was not that kind of man. He was simply tired,
perplexed, baffled. He wanted to know what the
world-wise old financier in his difficulty would do.
And so he stated his case.
"You mean to tell me," demanded old Ezekial
incredulously, "that you had fifty-five hundred
dollars in your fingers to do what you wanted with
and you went and paid it out for bills the court had
declared it was legally unnecessary for you to settle ? "
"Yes, sir. At least my wife did !"
"Why?"
"Those men put money into our business and
gave us credit expecting to receive their money
back. They d turned over full value and done
their part. Bankruptcy may be necessary in some
cases but in this one it looked to me like a skin-
game for those creditors. Legally, I didn t have to
pay them; morally I did. So long as I was alive
THE GREATER GLORY 241
and could earn the money that debt was just as
pressing as if the court had not made my financial
escape legal."
"And they got their money every one in full."
"Yes, sir. One day while I was at work Mary
found my list of creditors, with the sums I owed
them, together with interest. Instead of putting
the money into the savings bank, she put it into
a checking account and she sat down and wrote
checks for all of them and mailed them unbeknown
to me until the receipts came in."
"My God!" cried the old financier. He forgot
to smoke. He simply stared at the bedraggled
printer with wide opened eyes. After a time he
said :
"And what about this ochre bed you referred to?
What s the story of that?"
Jack hesitated. Should he tell this old financial
buccaneer about the deposit he had found on the
Osgood farm; of old man Osgood s indifference to
its value; of his willingness to sell for a puny
thousand dollars ?
The elderly man must have grasped what was
passing in the other s mind.
"Go on, young man. Don t be afraid to tell
me all about it. I may cut the throats of a gang
of money buzzards now and then with lemonjuice
in their guts but I haven t yet reached the place
where I ve found it necessary to rob the widows, or
phans, school-teachers and struggling fathers with
six babies. Tell me all about it!"
And Jack told him. And after he had brought
the whole narrative down to the present moment
there came a long silence in the rich apartment
broken only by the crackling of the logs.
242 THE GREATER GLORY
"We ve all been there, son," repeated old Eze-
kial. "I know! I had a good woman once like
that."
"Once?"
" She s dead. Dead these twenty-seven years ! "
"Oh! "said Jack.
"I used to think I was the only one who had such
an experience. I guess it s the life of American
married folks the nation over. I m rich now, I
suppose. But I d give it all, all, just to go back
to a home I once knew with a blue-eyed girl that s
found a heaven if there is one."
Old Zeke arose and went to his desk. He sat
down there, smoking violently. Then he got up
and paced the floor, his footfalls making no sound.
"Young man," he said huskily at the end of five
minutes, "you ve recalled things to me that I m
not sorry to have recalled to-night. Only, I m
left in a sort of soft condition to talk business.
Suppose, young man, that you come back and see
me to-morrow afternoon?"
"Talk business, see you, to-morrow afternoon?"
"Yes, to-morrow afternoon. I m a little bit
up-set after all that s happened to-day to
attempt to fix anything up with you just now.
But-
Jack s face went white. The breath left his lungs.
"Fix anything up with me!" he whispered.
"You don t mean that you ll -
"I don t give a damn about your measly little
pasture mud-patch, but a man ballasted with six
growing boys and a faithful woman who ll take five
thousand dollars and put it into paying up debts
that a bankruptcy court says haven t got to be
paid, is wasting his life in a country printing office.
THE GREATER GLORY 243
I only wish to God I had a dozen such chaps in some
of my companies. I can use em right this minute
and pay em five thousand a year for their their
unimpeachable honesty. I ve only heard of
one other case like this : it was an Illinois country
storekeeper who walked several miles through the
rain to return some change on which he d made a
mistake. I believe some folks made him President
of the country through quite a trying spell. The
world is starving for that kind of man. You come
back to-morrow, young man. I m going to make
you a proposition."
"But Mr. Ezekial," Jack began after his first
emotions had passed, "the money in the ochre bed
"To hell with the small change in that ochre
bed ! I ll pay you three thousand dollars a year,
commencing next Monday morning, to go to New
York, take a place in a certain office, and leaven a
bunch of crooks who think they re smart enough to
take away my eyeteeth without Old Zeke knowing.
That is, providing what you have told me to-night
stands investigation!"
"Mr. Ezekial, I"
"You take my advice and go home and sleep
from now until to-morrow afternoon. Have your
wife soak your feet in mustard water and put you
to bed with a dose of castor oil, goose grease on your
chest and an old stocking round your neck. Come
and see me around toward four o clock. I ve got
a place for a chap like yourself, and in due time you ll
understand why. Now "
A soft tapping at the closed door interrupted
him. The plain-faced, sweet-tempered, democratic
daughter Martha looked in.
"Is Mrs. Purse s husband here?" she asked.
244 THE GREATER GLORY
"We were passing through the hall and we thought
we heard his voice."
"Yes," roared old Zeke impatiently, "and if Mrs.
Purse is out there, tell her to come in. I want to
see the wife of a man in debt five thousand dollars
worth who d spend her legacy to get him out !"
Mary came in wonderingly and caught sight of
Jack s bedraggled appearance and haggard face.
" What has happened ? " she demanded,
frightened.
"I ve just made your man an offer to go to work
for me in a place where I can count on his adamantine
honesty. Would you go with him and live in New
York?"
"I d live anywhere that means Jack s success "
Old Zeke was suddenly softened.
"You are a good girl," he said. "Take your
husband home, Mrs. Purse. He s ill. Get him on
his feet again and then send him around to see me.
We ll fix this thing up so he doesn t need to worry
over his future. I know what six growing boys
can do to a man to keep him hustling, loyal, on the
straight track ! "
"Mr. Ezekial," began Jack, "I don t know how
to-
" You re a sick man, young fellow. Go home!"
Jack suffered himself to be aided down the stairs.
The servant helped tuck him into the buggy behind
Monday-Washing. Old Zeke and his daughter
waved them good-by from the steps and Timothy
Bailey, who had been waiting for just such a cata
clysmic proceeding from a distant corner, suddenly
thrashed his old white horse into fury and tore for
the distant village to spread the epochal news.
Then the Purses drove home.
THE GREATER GLORY 245
"Mary," choked the husband, "light s breaking
at last ! He made me an offer of three thousand
dollars a year to go to New York and work for him."
"How much?" demanded Mary in a whisper.
"Three thousand dollars !"
"Jack ! That s seventy -five dollars every week."
"What ll we ever do with so much money?"
"Raise Tom to be a minister," declared Jack a
little hysterically. "If he ever shows a leaning for
newspaper work I ll flay him alive."
They splashed along through the slough of mud
and snow with the drizzle beating in their faces.
"I guess you re responsible for it, as usual,"
Jack declared. "It was you that started out to
see him "
"I m a miserable cheat," she choked. "I
started out to see him. But when I got there, I
guess my courage failed me. Oh, Jack, I m only a
woman, and I didn t I didn t really know how
men looked on such things. I made an excuse to
see Martha on Ladies Aid business instead." And
she began sobbing.
A wonderful tenderness surged up in his heart
toward her.
"I think just as much of you as if you had,"
he declared thickly. "After all, it s worked out all
right. Think what lies ahead of us, Mary, New
York, a princely salary, working for E. E. Ezekial,
Mary!"
"Do you know why he laid so much stress on
honesty, Why he was so interested in you to
night especially, Jack?"
"No."
"I guess it s just one of those coincidences in life
that are bound to happen to the most unfortunate
246 THE GREATER GLORY
of us by the law of averages. Intuition tells me
he s going to look you up to see if what you ve told
him is true, and then lie s going to put you in
the place where he thought his own son was safe
enough to occupy."
"His son ? What about his son ?"
"Did he say anything about any sorrow that d
come to him to-day?"
"No!"
"Jack, young Teddy Ezekial has just taken a lot
of his father s money entrusted to him and spent
it on Mibb Henderson something to do with her
singing !"
Up the road ahead came a gleam of mellow light.
They were approaching home.
CHAPTER XI
LIFE is A MIXTURE OF SMILES AND TEARS INDEED
AND HAVING SMILED WITH OlJR STORY FOLK AT
SUNDRY SEASONS IN THIS STORY, WE ARE CALLED
UPON Now TO ENTER ON A QUIET SOLEMN
TIME AND SHED A TEAR FOR A CHASTISEMENT OF
THE ALMIGHTY
THE next morning before seven o clock, Tommy
Purse brought a note into town and up to Sam s
house. It was from Mary.
"Boys," said Sam at the office a half hour later,
"Jack Purse has the grip. And that isn t all,
when he recovers he s going to leave us ! Mary
sent word this morning that as soon as he gets better
he s going to work for old man Ezekial in New
York!*
Great was the consternation in our back room for
the rest of that day.
Along toward three o clock that afternoon our
front door opened to admit royalty. None other
than old E. E. Ezekial stood there the first time
he had ever been in the Telegraph office since he had
bought his summer place in Paris a decade before.
"I want a half -hour s talk with Mr. Hod," he
announced. His features were careworn and his
eyes tired. The sorrow of disappointment in his
son was eating far more deeply into his tough old
heart than many of us knew. "It s about young
Purse. I understand he s been working here."
248 THE GREATER GLORY
Sam led the way into his private office and closed
the door. They were closeted for an hour and when
the door was opened the little room was foul with
stale cigar smoke. Old Man Ezekial went out.
"Old Zeke just gave me an earful of news, Bill, *
said Sam. "But I don t know whether it s a square
deal to him to publish it or not. You know his boy
Ferdinand got mixed up with Mibb Truman just
after Herb disappeared, and she came back to try to
raise some cash?"
"Yes."
"He followed her to New York and she s been
carrying on with him more or less ever since. Any
how, he s fallen for her. He took a lot of his dad s
money and backed her on the stage. And now she s
left him with success coming to her and gone
on her own."
"But what s become of Mibb s mother?"
"I don t know. Nobody does. After Mibb got
her divorce for Herb s desertion, she dropped out of
sight. You d probably find her in some obscure
little place where she isn t known, running a board
ing house."
"And telling her troubles to anyone who ll listen."
"Yes," Sam confirmed.
And he lighted his pipe philosophically.
The days went by. Mike Garrity ascended into
the seat of the mighty, meaning the foremanship
of our back office. He was a big-bodied, white-eye-
browed Irishman who never wore a printer s apron
and always gave the impression that he was only
holding the job down for a few minutes during some
body s absence. But he did get the work out of
the help. Getting to press on time was his specialty.
THE GREATER GLORY 249
There were many cuss-words ; some tears. But he
put system in our office and brought praise from our
advertisers.
The days went by, indeed seven of them.
Then the horse-faced servant from Preston Hill
came in one afternoon and wanted to know if we
had heard anything about John Purse s condition.
Mr. Ezekial was returning to New York on the follow
ing day and he couldn t hold the place he had for
Jack open indefinitely.
"We haven t heard anything beyond what there s
been in the paper," Sam replied. "But for the sake
of Jack s future I ll take a run out this evening and
try and get something definite for Mr. Ezekial.
It would be hard luck if Jack lost this opportunity
through prolonged illness."
Sam drove out to the Purse place in one of Uncle
Joe Fodder s livery rigs. At half -past eleven at
night I was awakened by the ominous ringing of
my own doorbell. Sam stood out in the frosty
moonlight.
"Bill," he said, "oh, God, Bill! Jack s grip
has gone into pneumonia, and he s taken a turn for
the worse ! Bill, you better get in and come back
with me. Because Jack isn t expected to live
until morning ! "
We spoke not a word as we drove those six
miles through the crystalwhite winter country. I
sat for the entire distance badly cramped by an
oxygen tank which Sam had procured from the
Metropolitan Drug Store. Far across the crusted
winter fields where swept gusts of nipping air, I
saw ruddy lights at last. Every room in the Purse
house appeared lighted.
We met Doctor Johnson at the threshold of the
250 THE GREATER GLORY
room off the kitchen, the little side bedroom that
for years had been Mary s mother s.
"You ve brought the tank?" he demanded.
"Yes," said Sam huskily.
"I m afraid it s useless. Mary waited too long.
She depended too much on home remedies, thinking
it was only a bad cold that he had."
"Where is Mary?"
"In there with him."
"Can we go in?"
"Yes."
Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed holding
Jack s hand. She raised her face blankly as we
entered. The situation was too sinister, too intense,
for such trifles as recognition. She looked at us
and then turned her gaze back down on Jack s
sleeping face. But in that instant we saw that
Mary Purse was old. Her face was sunken. Her
eyes were hollow. Her hair was sprinkled with
gray.
Sam walked the floor ceaselessly, up and down the
farmhouse dining room, carrying and comforting a
little boy who was persistent in whimpering and
breaking the silence of that house because he could
not have his mother. I sat in the armchair and tried
to comfort young Tom, age eleven, who was old
enough to realize much that was taking place. But
it was all a bungled job at best. The other boys
were asleep, never knowing, alas, the meaning of the
long watches of that night.
Along toward four o clock, under the influence of
the oxygen, though still struggling with his breath
ing, Jack rallied, came to consciousness and opened
his eyes.
His gaze met the face of his wife.
THE GREATER GLORY 251
Her features and the faces of those about his bed
seemed to tell him the worst.
"Perhaps I wouldn t have made good at
Mr. Ezekial s office, after all," he whispered weakly
so that Mary had to bend down to catch the
words. "Nevermind! Some other time! Oh,
Mary ! You were a better wife than I was a hus
band. You will be a better mother than
I was father. I ll try again some other time ! "
There was a gentle pressure of his hand.
Some other time !
Mary put her free hand suddenly to her eyes.
Otherwise there was no sound, no motion, in that
room.
And Jack Purse went home.
During the thirty-seven years in which we have
been publishing a newspaper, it follows that we have
written many, many obituaries. But no obituary
has ever meant to us exactly what Jack Purse s did,
for without wishing to pose as heartless or unduly
calloused we may set it down that the hundreds of
others have been the material with which we did
business. But Jack Purse s obituary was the sum
mary and the heart-story of a man s life bringing
death home to us, stark and sinister and grim and
deadly. Sam would suffer no one else to attempt
that column story. He also wrote an article for
the editorial column. And both were masterpieces
because he forgot he was writing for print, forgot
the thing called literary effect, forgot technique and
paragraphing and punctuation and style and com
posed from his soul the simple little record of the
passing of a friend.
The obituary and the editorial caused much
THE GREATER GLORY
comment in the community. Every one knew the
Purses and how Jack s fortunes were about to change
just as he was "taken." Every one knew also the
predicament in which Mary had been left. It
happened that the sewing circle of Calvary Church
met the day between the death and the funeral and
the comment of its membership is again of note :
Mrs. Artemus Howard voiced the universal
sentiment. She said :
"I don t mind the passing of Mr. Purse himself.
He s out of his troubles. But think of Mary nice
little woman that she is left with all those little
children ! What will she ever do ?"
"And after all the trouble she had about ten
years ago with her own folks!" declared Mrs.
Taylor, " not to mention the struggles she has
been through since in a financial way and havin
so many babies and all. I wish the Lord would give
me the running of this universe for just five minutes.
I d change some things ! It d do your soul good to
watch me !"
"I heard he was just going to work for old man
Ezekial at some fishy-soundin sum of money,"
declared Mrs. Dexter Merritt. "He d went up with
a nerve o brass that T w r ish my Dexter could muster,
and he d got Mr. Ezekial to do soinethin handsome
for him. And right away he s taken ! Right when
the light was shinin through on all the darkness of
his struggles and troubles, he was taken ! What a
mystery, what a mystery ! And a mess ! There
simply ain t no consistency to the world nohow."
Mrs. Fred Babcock called attention to the fact
that Jack carried no life insurance although Fred
had been up to see the Purses scores of times and
Jack was always just going to do it but never felt
THE GREATER GLORY 253
he could quite afford it, and now look at the fix his
wife is in. And she went on to say that was always
the way it was : men without chick or children and
only some frumpy old woman to look after, always
carried thousands, and them as had helpless wives
and little mouths depending on em thought they
could get by somehow and take chances with death
that always bested em !
Mrs. Walter Gaylord said the village ought to
take up a collection to help Mary out and Miss
Malinda Sparrow said she doubted if Mary would
accept it if the village should. She was very proud,
was Mary. To which Judge Farmer s wife said
"beggars shouldn t be choosers", which she was
immediately sorry for, meaning no unkindness but
being simply unfortunate in her choice of an axiom
appropriate for the circumstances.
Mrs. Blake Whipple, a lady of parts and known
of old to have an eye for business, for once had no
comment to make in a commercial capacity. She
merely remarked that Blake was pretty well screwed
up to such situations and usually they didn t upset
him. But when he came back from the Purse
place with all those little children playing around
almost as usual and never knowing their loss that
was laid out in the chilly front room, he said damn his
business anyhow, and if it wasn t for the dead folks
havin to be took care of and some one simply havin
to do it, he d get out of it so quick you d never see
him and his hearse go ; you d just simply miss em.
But Jack Purse was gone gone ! Gone just
when his fortunes showed promise of change.
WE do not understand, being ordinary thick-
skulled males, how Mary Purse survived that blow.
254 THE GREATER GLORY
She must have gone through hell the first week
following the placing of Jack s body in the vault for
burial in the spring. Our wives went out there to
console her and brought back stories of her cheer
fulness, her poise, the wonderful tenderness she
exhibited toward her fatherless boys. And then,
then came an episode with which it is fitting to close
this portion of our narrative and move on out of
scenes of struggle and grief and heartache into those
of success and glory and great peace. About seven
days after the funeral, Mary Purse came into our
office.
It was Saturday afternoon. The paper had been
run off but the boys and girls had not been paid off
or the shafting stopped whirring in the basement.
Crowds of farmers were milling up and down Main
Street, patronizing our barber shops, occasional
individuals dropping in now and then to insert
classified ads or pay their subscriptions. Sam Hod
looked up from the exchange he was reading and
there, in the private-office doorway between our
two desks, stood Mary.
She was in mourning but not morbidly so. Her
face was drawn, her hair was grayer than ever.
She was not thirty -five, yet somehow Mary Purse had
mellowed. Grief and terrible trouble affects some
folk that way. Others it makes mean and cynical
and hateful toward their fellows and their God. But
Mary was one of those whom the vicissitudes of
life were mellowing and deepening, one of those whom
it is good to have around because of what they have
suffered.
"Mary!" cried Sam, springing up and placing a
chair for her. "You! I m so glad to see you again,
Mary ! We didn t know whether coming out to try
THE GREATER GLORY 255
to console you would make things better or worse.
We haven t quite gotten over Jack s passing yet
ourselves."
She took the chair. She smiled a wonderful smile.
"You shouldn t have hesitated to come, Mr.
Hod. But that is in the past. I have come to you
because I want something."
Yes, Mary. What can we do for you?"
"Mr. Hod, I m wondering if you d do something
for me so very hard and that sounds so impertinent
for me to ask that I m almost ill with worry that you
might refuse."
"Anything on earth I can do for you, I promise
that I will, Mary."
She waited a moment before the request came out.
"Mr. Hod," she said fearfully, faintly, but
steadily, "I want can I have my old place
back in your office ? "
Sam looked at her blankly.
"You want what?"
"I want my old job back, in your office. Setting
type in a printing office is all that I know how to do.
And I must do something. All during this week
I have been turning it over and over in my heart.
That first night after the funeral I got into bed alone.
I could not stand it alone. I called to my boys and
they got into bed with me. The little ones thought
it was sport. The older boys snuggled up close
beside me. Yes, we did ! six of us in one bed.
And they quieted down after a time and fell asleep.
I only was left awake in the awful, awful dark.
"And there in the bed, with the bodies of my boys
around me, and their little hearts beating close to
mine, I laid in the silence and fought it out with
myself. I must not complain. I must not lose
256 THE GREATER GLORY
heart nor faith. I must take up the battle of life
where Jack laid it down and carry it on. I am not
the first woman who has lost a husband. I must not
think of my sorrow. I must bury that in my heart
and my life. Ahead of me lies the work of raising
those boys of mine to be good men. And when I
have done that, I am ready and willing to lay down
my heartache and follow Jack. That is for the far,
far future. Life for me now must be too practical
to think of that."
" You want to go to work here ? "
"Yes. I am going to work here if you ll let
me. I am going on ! God helping me, I will not
fail my little boys ! "
"And you think you can do it by working here,
Mary!"
"I thought some of taking Tom out of school.
The next moment it seemed ridiculous. Just be
cause my life has ended in failure is no reason why
I should do anything to make his little life a failure,
also. So I m going to keep him in school and all
the other boys as fast as they become old enough.
I ve got the cow, the little black mare and the place ;
I guess I can manage somehow if you only give
me back my work. Old Mrs. Morrow will live with
us and look after the youngsters while I m here in
the village typesetting each day. If you can give me
the chance to earn nine or ten dollars a week, it
will keep us in clothes and pay the taxes and doctor s
bills that are bound to come. Then as each boy
gets through college, I count on him turning around
and helping the next younger brother under him."
"What!" we both cried. "You re going to try
to put those six boys through college alone ?"
"Yes, I m going to try. Once I wanted to go to
THE GREATER GLORY 257
college. Once I wanted to amount to something
in the world. But things occurred that prevented
me. Somehow the chance never seemed to work
around. I had to leave home suddenly and go to
work here. Then I got married and the babies
came. After that there was no hope. And I
faced it. But my boys every one of them !
are going through college if it kills me ! I want
Tom to go through theological school and turn out
a preacher. I guess that every mother wishes
that one of her boys would turn out a preacher.
But whatever happens, I shall do my best and leave
the rest to God. Mr. Hod, I want that old place of
mine very, very much. I ll work my fingers to the
bone if you ll only give me the chance. Can I
have it?"
"Yes, Mary," replied Sam quietly, the pref
ace to an emotional explosion, "You can have it.
Come in Monday morning and take your old job.
The wages will be sixteen dollars a week and you
can keep it till you re a hundred !"
When she had gone I said to Sam :
"But she can t set anything but straight matter,
Sam ! And we don t set any more straight matter
by hand. We dumped all our eight point when we
installed the machines."
"Then, by gad, we ll buy some !" roared Sam Hod.
"For so long as I own a controlling interest in this
Biannual Bedquilt which the town calls a newspaper,
that woman shall have a job here as long as there s
one exclamation point left outside the hell-box !
And if any bat-eared slob with a kink in his neck
ever breathes that we bought type especially for her
to stick, there ll be a bunch of journalistic fatheads
taken suddenly dead around here that we won t show
258 THE GREATER GLORY
enough post-mortem respect to haul out by the
legs!"
"But sixteen dollars a week, Sam !"
" Yes, sixteen dollars a week ! And what about six
teen dollars a week ? Suppose Jesus Christ walked
into my office this afternoon and sat down opposite
the exchange table. Suppose He said to me, Sam
Hod, will you manage somehow to rake together
sixteen measly dollars every Saturday to loan to
Me so that I can help a poor, perplexed, bewildered
mother raise six freckled-faced, hell-raising, button-
busting kids ? I d just naturally scrape that money
together somehow, wouldn t I ? for His sake ?
Well, I don t mind sayin that seven minutes ago,
as I sat in that chair and Mary Purse declared her
intention o slavin her life out to put them half-
dozen young wild-cats through school / Saiv
Jesus Christ in that woman s face! And I d a damned
sight rather lay a few mouldy treasures for myself
in heaven by givin Mary Purse sixteen dollars of
unnecessary money every Saturday afternoon than
give double that amount to some of the churches
of this town. I d rather do it than help pay minis
ter s grocery bills or send missionaries to teach the
slant-eyed Japs how to bungle the Beatitudes or
that Moses was a Hebrew law-maker and not a
Canal Street manufacturer of boys pants !"
Sam was exploding with a vengeance and when
in that condition, had a certain facility with language.
He went into the back room and addressed the
force.
"Boys," he announced, "Mary Purse Jack s
wife is coming back to work for us. She com
mences Monday morning."
Mike Garrity straightened up from his stone.
THE GREATER GLORY 259
"What?" he demanded.
"I said Jack Purse s widow, who once graced this
hole with her sweet presence, is coming back to pick
up her stick and show us how to set a few locals so
I don t dread the sickenin ring of a telephone bell
every night after supper ! "
Mike said an unholy sentence and threw down his
quoin-key.
"Then, by gad, I m about ready to quit! After
all the pie-eyed freaks I ve had wished on to me since
I come into this place to make over into printers, to
have an old woman given a place as an object of
charity ! "
He got no further. Only once in my life have I
known Sam Hod to see red. He was upon Mike
with an oath and had him by the throat.
"Take it back ! you foul-mouthed, bleary-eyed,
tobacco-spittin harp ! Act crazy with joy that she s
comin and treat her like a lady, or by the eternal
Jehoshaphat I ll bust you in the jaw, hammer you
against the wall, grind your ugly mug in the gravel
and stamp on your stomach ! Now then, what is
there about this newcomer s position here that you
don t understand? Speak it out now and speak it
out loud. Because if you open your elongated head
about it after she gets here, it s going to take more
money than Solomon spent on his immortal meeting
house to pay for the masses said over your smoul-
derin soul ! "
But Mike had nothing to say, absolutely nothing.
When Sam untangled his fingers, the Irishman s
face was pasty. Deprived of Sam s support, he
caught himself as he was sliding onto his knees.
The office individually and otherwise drew a
long breath. They continued their washing up with
260 THE GREATER GLORY
strange smiles playing upon their faces. From time
to time after Sam had returned to the front office
they cast furtive glances at the suddenly cowed
foreman.
Considering Mike s little idiosyncrasies of self-
aggrandizement since he had taken Jack s position
and his frequent loud-mouthed assertions of con
tempt and independence of the boss, Sam s emotional
explosion had rather smashed Mike s militarism.
On the whole a pleasant time had been had by all.
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE VISIT OF THE
TRUMAN WOMAN, NEE HENDERSON, ON THE SECOND
OF THREE VISITS WHICH SHE PAYS TO THE HERO
INE OF OUR NARRATIVE.
MANY are the elderly people all over the land
who recollect very well when the Great Zola captured
the music-lovers of the country, half a generation ago,
and carried the nation by storm. She filled theatres,
auditoriums and music halls from old Cape Cod to
the Golden Gate and then appeared to have dropped
out of sight as completely as though old mother
Earth had opened and engulfed her forever.
The Great Zola indeed !
Where she got the name none of us ever heard or
knew. As Uncle Joe Fodder put it : "Fame usually
consists o long hair, longer nerve and a few idle
letters of the alphabet, anyhow, compressed into a
reasonable amount o newspaper advertisin ." And
in Mibb Truman s case it did look indeed as though
Uncle Joe were correct. For Mibb called herself
"The Great Zola" and had a backer and a press agent.
Her wonderful voice, given her from birth, trained for
a few years and then exhibited before "the best
people" did for her all that may have been expected.
Mibb "arrived" at last, although the angels may have
sighed at times over the methods by which Mabel
advanced her career and reached her hilltop.
When poor young Ferdie Ezekial blew out his
262 THE GREATER GLORY
brains in an Atlantic City hotel some time after, his
family gave it out that he had been a victim of
melancholia since boyhood. But some of the plain-
spoken folks of our town made no bones of saying
that he did it because after backing Mibb Truman
and buzzing about her as a moth buzzes about a
flame for a year and a day, until she had achieved a
tuppence worth of fame in some quarters on her talent
and his money, the woman turned him down for a
Quick Rich Johnnie from the West who subsequently
went financially insolvent, if not mentally and
morally so, endeavoring to keep up with Mibb s
ramifications. Then we next heard of her having
met Dick Robinson, the boy who had proposed to her
once in the long ago on the way home from singing
school and been laughed at, and gone away to the
city and and remained a bachelor and made several
millions of dollars as vice-president of some big oil
company. These things leak back to a little New
England town. Because of her fame, perhaps, Dick
had picked up with her again, and Judge Farmer
who spent much of his time now in New York, de
clared he had met them in Delmonico s together on
several occasions.
But the mills of the gods grind slowly. One cannot
sow the wind without reaping the whirlwind.
And while Mibb Henderson was journeying to
and fro in the land and going up and down in it sing
ing wonderful songs at hundreds of dollars a night
and spending on baubles what would have kept Mary
Purse and her growing family in the necessities of life
for a year, this same Mary Purse was back at her place
in our office day after day before a typecase, now set
ting locals when the machines were busy and we
needed extra matter, now helping with twelve point
THE GREATER GLORY 263
in the Modern Bargain store ads, assisting with
the mailing or reading proof, earning her sixteen
dollars every week which was quickly spent as in
days of old, for the sustenance of others beside her
self. There were times when it did seem as though
Mibb s philosophy had beeen soundest after all.
So one grand bird wore grand plumage and flew
high, and another in softer, grayer feathers remained
close to earth and hunted food for hungry little
mouths, and the years began to go onward faster and
faster, and the Purse boys took to bursting buttons
and ripping seams more than ever and increasing
their stature overnight, after the manner of boys since
Adam became the father of young.
Mary Purse was sitting in a creaking rocker in the
twilight of a restful Sunday afternoon when the
muffled throbbing of an automobile sounded out
front, accompanied by the slam of a door. Auto
mobiles were curiosities in those days, rarely stopping
before the Purse place. Mary moved across to the
window and peered out through the ladders of
geraniums.
A high newfangled car stood in the road. On its
forward seat was a man in livery. The sinking sun
glinted on its polished surfaces but Mary paid but
brief attention to the vehicle. A woman was coming
into the yard and the woman was Mibb.
She came leisurely up the path, carrying a sailor
hat in her hand and looking interestedly about her.
Once she stopped, turned and gazed over the hills
and the valleys far away, beautiful in the peaceful
hush of the mellow sunset.
Mary moved across the room to the door. After
all she was Mibb Henderson of the old days, her girl
hood friend.
264 THE GREATER GLORY
"Hello, Mary!" greeted Mibb, standing on tha
doorstone fringed with the plantain leaves.
"How do you do, Mabel," responded Mary.
"Won t you come in?"
"For a few minutes perhaps," the other answered.
"I just ran out to see how things were going and to
talk over old times with you. I don t get a chance
to look Paris over very closely nowadays. All our set
seems to have grown up or died or moved away, and
all the faces you see on the streets nowadays are
strange. I m a busy woman nowadays, Mary."
"So I understand, Mabel. We hear of you once in
a while back here. You have made a wonderful
success of your voice ; Judge Farmer came back from
New York last month and said he went to hear you.
It must be a great source of satisfaction to you."
"Oh that s nothing," declared Mibb con
temptuously. "I always said I could look out for
myself, didn t I ? You could have done something
similar if you hadn t been so sickishly sentimental.
After all, in this life, we have to look out for our
selves. If we don t nobody else will, that s sure!"
She paused on the step. "My heaven s, who s that
boy?"
"That s my eldest boy, Tom. He s fifteen this
coming summer, although the neighbors say he looks
eighteen or twenty."
The boy had appeared with a vault over the stone
wall followed by a black spaniel dog. He went on
through the yard to the barn. Mabel looked after
him blankly. Then she flushed. For it must have
come to her in that moment how many years had
passed since she had poked her very patrician finger
in Thomas Joshua s infantile torso as old ladies poke
their fingers into prospective pot-roasts at the
THE GREATER GLORY 265
butcher s. Yes indeed, it must have come to Mibb
that she was getting on. And it must have hurt.
For Mibb was one of those worthy females who hadn t
had a birthday in the last dozen years. She said
quickly : "And may I come in and see your old house ?
You know I haven t been out here to go inside since I
was a little girl and father s buggy wheel came off, a
little way down the road, spilling mother and me out
on the ground in the cold slush."
"Certainly you may come in, Mabel. Although
the house doesn t look at its best. The boys are
always leaving something around. Richard must
put his baseball things away ; I keep telling him that
I ll burn them up if he persists in dropping them
when he s done with them, but of course I wouldn t.
A boy s a boy."
Madame Zola entered the little west sitting room,
the room with the rag carpet on the floor that was
once Jack s mother s, with one or two high-backed
old horsehair rockers with tidies ; the marble-topped
center table ; the whatnot in the corner ; the high old
secretary and the enlarged picture of Jack in crayon
over the mantel. It was a homely, quiet, comfort
able old room a typical room for a woman with a
family of growing boys being raised in the country
the windows massed with geraniums, petunias, inch-
plant and heliotrope. Madame Zola took one of the
heavy horsehair rockers and ran her eye over the
things in the room depreciatingly.
"I m glad you came," volunteered Mary politely.
"I get so few visitors way out here these days with
my work in the office keeping me so busy during the
week. Mrs. Morrow is over to the Browns this
afternoon
"Lord sake ! Then why do you live way out here ?
266 THE GREATER GLORY
Why not move into the village where there s some
thing going on ?"
"It s home," replied Mary weakly.
Mibb glanced the room over again. She glanced
Mary over also, from the worn frayed shoes on
her weary feet to the dark hair streaked with gray,
done hard and flat upon her head. Truly it was
difficult to realize that these two women were almost
of an age.
"Mary," she said finally, "it s too bad!"
"What s too bad , Mabel?"
"The way you ve ruined your life. We started
out equally, Mary. You remember what I told you
soon after you and Jack were married. But you
wouldn t take my warning. You were dead set on
this love business. You said the hard work didn t
matter. And look what it s got you at last, Mary.
Nothing but this." And again her eyes glanced over
the room.
"It s home, Mabel," said Mary again.
"Which isn t saying much, Mary. I feel sorry for
you, Mary. Indeed I do ! Oh, I know that you
think I m a snob and all that. But I do feel sorry
for you, Mary. I m sincere in saying it. You ve
worked hard all your life. You never went any
where nor had any good tunes. You re spending
the best years of your life in that pokey old printing
office now, living out here in a lonesome old place
in the country, struggling to raise six boys ! It must
be awful. If there s anything I could do for you for
old time s sake, I d do it in a minute. That s really
the true reason why I came out here this afternoon.
I heard in the village how you were living and
I came out to see if I couldn t help you money
or something."
THE GREATER GLORY 267
"You can t," replied Mary softly, a trifle hoarsely.
"I said this was home. I mean it, Mabel. You
can t appreciate what that means. You never had a
home, not a real home. Jack and I bought this place
when we were young and life was all sort of full of
hope and promise ; again you don t know what that
means, Mabel "
"I was too wise," cut in Mabel. "Catch me tying
myself up to a man and having kids that twist you
out of shape and take away your good looks and
make you dowdy and frumpish and tubby ; but we ve
been all over that before."
" so you cannot appreciate the associations,"
went on Mary. " On the walls here, Mabel, are scars
of little household accidents the boys have made
growing up, the barks of their toys and the prints of
their grimy little fingers on the wall paper to indicate
the passing years. Jack died there in the east room.
His casket was carried out this door. Every piece
of furniture is dear to me, Mabel. Every room and
door and window and corner holds associations and
sometimes, Mabel sometimes in the dark
there s little ghosts play around through these rooms,
Mabel
"For Gawd s sake, quit, Mary. You talk spook-
ish ; it s enough to get on a party s nerves. I should
think you d go crazy living out here in this fashion
with no man around to protect you."
"They re dear to me, these things, these associa
tions are ; they ve been my life, Mabel. You can t
live in one house a long time without every stick and
stone and nail in it bein sort of like your flesh and
blood."
"I m thankful I haven t got any associations like
those, Mary. There s nothing like that to make me
268 THE GREATER GLORY
miserable on dark and rainy days. I ve always had
a good time and kept my eye on the future. And if
you d done the same I don t know as you d been
living through this hell of worry and work now."
"It isn t hell !" whispered Mary. "It s wicked to
call it that ! It s it s heaven, Mabel. It s the
nearest thing to earthly heaven I know. I love it
so!"
"You always were sort of sickishly sentimental;
I say it again. I told you so the day after I got back
from my own wedding trip. My way was best,
Mary. After all is said and done you can t deny I ve
made a success of my life. Never mind what people
say all the same I know that I have. I ve had a
good time all along ; I ve enjoyed life ; I ve been to
Europe seven times, Mary. I ve seen the world and
life. Right now I m free to come and go; I get a
salary in five figures a year for my concert work.
I have my automobile and my apartments in the
city-
"And what else, Mabel?"
"What else? What else is there to have ? What
do you mean ?"
"You ve got all that as you say. But what else.
You ve got no one to care about you ; no one to love
you"
"Haven t I, though? Don t be too sure about
that, Mary."
"You ve no children or nothing?"
"No, I haven t got any kids, but good Lord why
do you persist in placing such a lot of emphasis on
kids? Anybody d think that kids were the only
concern a woman could have in the world ?"
"According to the way I look at things, they are,
Mabel."
THE GREATER GLORY 269
"Well, I place a different value on things. For
instance, there s Dick Robinson "
"Yes, but what s he to you, Mibb? Merely a
rich man. It isn t like sons or daughters of your own
who care for you because of what you ve done for
them."
"Then it might interest you to know that I expect
to marry him Dick Robinson in the not too
distant future."
"Marry him!"
"Yes, marry him ! And why shouldn t I ? Haven t
I been through enough so I deserve the haven of a
good husband s love at last? I ll never have any
brats, it s true. But again I say, that to me brats
never stood for nothing but pain and worry and care.
No, sir; folks don t know it yet and I don t intend
they should. But if things work around all right
and I rather calculate that if I have anything to say
about them they will I m going to marry Dick
Robinson next year and come into my share of his
money "
"Always money, money, money! You haven t
changed a great lot, have you, Mabel ?"
"I said I d take my chances with money and I
have. I haven t fared so badly. Can you say the
same, Mary Wood ?"
"I m satisfied," breathed Mary at last.
"But you can t make me believe it, Mary. No
sensible, high-strung, sensitive woman could possibly
be satisfied with this, not when they ve slaved like
you ve slaved."
"I m satisfied," breathed Mary again. "I
can t understand you, Mabel. I never could.
Somehow it seems at times as if you ain t really truly
woman. 3
270 THE GREATER GLORY
"Don t lose any sleep over me, Mary. I m ca
pable of taking care of myself. I think I ve proved
it. I m going to prove it some more
"I hate to say it, Mabel; you re an old girlhood
friend of mine, almost the only one that s left out of
the old crowd. But you re you re selfish, Ma
bel. You ve always been selfish "
" We won t indulge in personalities, Mary. I came
out here in the best spirit possible to see if there was
anything I could do for you."
"There isn t, Mabel. Not anything. I m not
ungrateful. I ve lived my life in my own way and
after my own standards. If I was to go back and live
it over there isn t hardly a day or an hour of it that
I d live differently."
"Some folks do have such queer ideas," observed
Mabel, fixing her hair in the back.
"Then you got a divorce, did you, from Herbert ?"
"Herbert? Oh, yes, you mean the elephantine
person of the male sex with whom I once com
mitted a rash girlish act. Certainly I got a divorce
from him, while I was out in California in ninety-
four."
"And you never heard what became of him ?"
"No, why should I ? What is he to me ?"
"He was your husband, Mabel."
Mabel laughed, a contemptuous laugh.
"Heavens, but you are old-fashioned ! In my set,
a woman who hasn t had two or three husbands
simply isn t in the swim, at all."
"I wouldn t care much for those in your set, Mabel,
I m afraid."
"Nor they for you, either. Oh, for heaven s sake,
can t you and I come together without fighting over
this disgusting subject of domesticity? You make
THE GREATER GLORY 271
me mad ! What s your life, anyway ? Tell me
that!"
"My life," answered Mary quietly, "is working
to raise six live-wire boys to be good men. When
that is done, my life-work is completed. That s
been my career - at least up to the present and I
can t change it now. There s been frightfully cruel
moments in it. But there s been frightfully dear
and precious moments too. After all, keeping a
home and raising children is a woman s work in the
world, and if she isn t content to accept it, she hasn t
any business being a woman. I can t for the life of
me see why w r hen God made woman for that
there should be so much fault-finding and discontent
and dissatisfaction among them and wanting to be
something else. Somehow the women folks nowa
days think it s a curse on a woman that she is a wo
man and they re trying their best to be men. But
somehow I ve observed, Mabel, that there s nothing
but unhappiness and heart-hunger beneath it all,
and a fault-finding with the men folks, society and
God everybody and everything but themselves
with selfishness at the bottom of it and a cowardly
shrinking from some of the noble duties of life just
because they want a pleasant time and good looks
and nonsense. I ve been through the experience of
motherhood six times, Mabel. And I ve buried a
husband. But along with it all there s come a satis
faction and a peace, a resignation if you want to
call it that, Mabel, that s ample to repay it all. I ve
tried not to shirk ; I ve tried to do my duty and am as
happy as I know how to be, while doing it. And I m
not galivanting around, looking for happiness through
dollars or marrying rich men or fearful of losing my
good looks and all such nonsense. I m not looking
272 THE GREATER GLORY
for happiness, because I ve got it, Mabel. I ve got a
happiness now that nothing in life can take away.
Maybe I haven t seen Europe seven times ; probably
I ll never see Europe or any other place but Paris,
Vermont. But I ve seen other things that you ve
never seen and it isn t given you to see, Mabel, and it s
plenty. Don t waste any pity on me, Mabel. Pity
yourself. You re a lonely woman ; you re the lonely
one, not me. I can read it in your face, Mabel. And
may the kind Father have mercy on you. You need
it, Mabel, indeed. You need it but you don t
know it."
"This is all one gets for trying to be neighborly
and helpful for old time s sake," Mabel replied wrath-
fully. " Well, as we both seem to be satisfied with our
lots, Mary, I might as well call my visit at an end
and go."
She arose stiffly and she did go. But as she rolled
back to town she knew deep in her heart that Mary
Wood had spoken the truth.
"My Gawd!" she cried suddenly and miserably,
"I d give all the Robinson millions I m coming into
next year just to have the peace that s on Mary
Purse s face !"
She meant what she said though there was no
one to hear.
CHAPTER
THE MILLS OF THE GODS KEEP GRINDING, GRIND
ING, GRINDING, AND FIVE COUNTRY FOLK JOURNEY
TO THE CITY TO LOOK UPON ITS TINSEL FOR A
MOMENT.
THERE were two times in those years when she was
raising her youngsters that Mary Purse went away
from home on a vacation. The first was the two weeks
that she spent with an aunt of Jack s up in North
Sidney, taking the boys on a never-to-be-forgotten
visit. The second was the time that she went with
Sam Hod and myself and our wives down to Boston
to the famous Fair in the old Mechanics Hall.
This tired scribe has forgotten now exactly how
it was that we happened to go and take Mary. I
think she had broken down temporarily after Fred
had the scarlet fever and for a week or so, just after
Tom left for college, and fearing for her health,
I think we utilized our railroad passes freely issued
to newspapermen in those halcyon days of country
journalism and made Mary the fifth of our party.
But if we of the office have forgotten the little
details of how Mary chanced to be with us, em
phatically we have not forgotten what happened on
that trip and the pathos of the girl who married Jack
Purse for love in one situation that came from that
journey.
For we saw the Great Zola the Truman woman,
nee Henderson in all her glory.
274 THE GREATER GLORY
It was Sam who found the notice in a newspaper
as we lounged late one winter s afternoon in the
lobby of the old Parker House.
"The famous contralto, the Great Zola !" he cried.
"Sufferin 5 Moses, Bill, do you suppose that could be
Mibb?"
"What about the famous contralto, the Great
Zola?"
"She s singing here ! She s giving a concert here
to-night!"
We read the advertisement. We passed it to our
women folk and to Mary. It was Mary who turned
the page in a trifle of bewilderment and uncertainty,
and we fancied a bit of wistfulness. It chanced
then that she turned open the pages of the theatrical
section. From the page a picture stared at us.
There was no mistaking that picture. It was indeed
Mibb Mabel of our office. Beneath was the
usual press-agent write-up of Mibb s wonderful
talent.
"It sort of slops over," declared Sam disgustedly.
"All the same, if she can sing now as she sang in the
old days, she s certainly some warbler. Folks !
Let s go to that concert."
Mary whitened a trifle. She bit a soft lip. Then
a forced smile broke over her careworn countenance.
"Yes," she said, "let s go to that concert. Let s
go and hear Mibb sing in public."
We went.
We secured five tickets from sidewalk brokers. I
think we paid five dollars apiece for them. Sam made
a grimace as he gave up the money.
Mary was careworn and a trifle shabby as of old,
though not from preference, the good Lord knows in
His heart. She had matured into mellow matron-
THE GREATER GLORY 275
hood ; the gray was beginning to be more and more
noticeable now in her hair ; her face was a trifle sal
low; her hands were growing gnarled, alas, like her
mother s. The five of us made somewhat of a
shoddy appearance in that patrician Bostonese
audience.
As we sat there, from the corner of an eye I saw
Mary watching those Boston folks. Then, poor soul,
I knew by the expression on her face that she was
comparing herself with them and finding poor conso
lation in the comparison. She pulled at her sleeves,
fixed her hair, arranged a frail little bit of ribbon at
her throat. But it was all poor excuse at best for
the lack of finery real finery which the starved
woman heart of her craved. A feeling of sadness
came over me and a sympathy for Mary in that
moment such as I had not felt before, verily not even
on that afternoon of Jack Purse s burial. As that
evening went on that sympathy for her increased
increased in just that proportion that Mibb was
beautiful where Mary was shabby and shoddy.
For Mibb was beautiful, at least from where our
usher had seated us. Distance may have lent en
chantment or it may have been Mibb s war-paint in
her battle with life. Perhaps it was her purple and
fine linen. Anyway when she finally came on to the
platform Sam at my side emitted a low whistle.
"Oh, for Uncle Joe Fodder !" the editor declared.
"I wonder what remark he would make to look upon
Mibb Henderson now ?"
Mibb had grown stouter. She also had mellowed,
at least in her figure. In her black, low cut gown,
high coiffure and diamond bespangled fingers, the
"nine-o clock girl" of our little town was not the
nine-o clock girl at all, but a gorgeous creature out-
276 THE GREATER GLORY
matching Solomon in all his glory, providing that
Solomon ever arrayed himself in black, low-cut
gowns, high coiffures and slipped clusters of fire gems
with reckless abandon on his fingers.
"She s took to painting and powdering," remarked
Alice Hod in a hoarse whisper, "and her hair is dyed
or I m a carrot!"
"Well, she s no amateur at it," remarked her
husband enthusiastically. "The days when she used
to keep a little square of mirror in her P-case and
primp herself between locals have certainly turned
to her advantage." He said it in an extra-loud
voice, for the great audience was applauding enthusi
astically and Mibb was nodding and acknowledging
their tribute just a wee bit indifferently. Something
of her old contempt for her talent remained in her
carriage in public. A tall, lean, lank young man,
whom Sam declared resembled a string bean in a
dress suit, hurried across stage, carrying an immense
white handkerchief, spun the piano stool as though in a
hurry to have it done and it was something to be
ashamed of doing in public, seated himself and tinkled
a few bars of piano music. And Mibb, poised rather
languidly at thd corner of the baby-grand piano with
the raised cover, began to sing.
She sang that old song, "Stars of the Summer
Night."
"Remember where we folks heard that song last?"
Sam demanded.
"At the party up in Gold-piece Cabin," returned
Alice. "Frank played it on his violin !" Then she
dented one of her husband s ribs with her elbow.
"But you keep quiet," she admonished. "We want
to hear this music ! "
I looked at Mary Purse. Her head was slightly on
THE GREATER GLORY 277
one side. Her work-hardened hands were relaxed in
her lap. Her eyes were fixed on Mibb hungrily.
When Alice Hod leaned over and criticized some
thing in Mibb s toilet, she merely nodded sadly.
In that moment I was sorry that we had at
tended this entertainment and brought Mary. For
Mibb s materialistic philosophy may have been
faulty as an abstract problem in metaphysics, but it
had brought her success, while Mary s had brought
her seemingly but work and sorrow and red hands
and a care-lined face and raiment that was only
cheap serge and shoddy.
The audience applauded when Mibb finished, as
audiences have had a habit of doing out of the ages
eternal when the applause was for the social idol or
artist of the moment and their work on the whole
was passing fair. And Mibb sang the encore the
song is immaterial and was applauded again, and
the string bean came in for his portion of it ; and then
both had some more and Mibb swished off the plat
form and back on again and consulted with the
string bean and the string bean nodded and began
again and we had still more music.
The concert only lasted an hour. But toward
the close of that hour, Mibb sang two songs that
demonstrated only too plainly that it was not alone
her voice which had brought her fame, but the dis
cretion employed in her selections. For they had
been chosen to answer the age-old yearning in the
hearts of tired men and women, patrician or no, for
the scenes and faces and heart-hopes of days that
have gone with the long ago. She sang "Silver
Threads Among the Gold" and for an encore followed
it with that beautiful simple old ballad, "Home,
Sweet Home."
278 THE GREATER GLORY
A vast hush fell over the audience. Even a
dreamy daze came over the features of the string
bean at the piano, as Mibb sang it and his fingers
followed her on the keys. Sam s chin sank lower and
lower into his chest. There was no coughing, no
rustling of programs. Mibb cast a spell over that
throng and even the most sophisticated for the moment
could not break away. And the spell was no less
thrown over the hearts and minds of five ordinary
country folk down in the front seats of that
theater.
Mibb did not wait for applause to spoil the effect
she had created. She passed quickly though equally
quietly to "Home, Sweet Home."
Mary Purse put her handkerchief quickly to her
lips. Then it went up to her eyes and she held it
there.
Only two men in that audience fancied they knew
why Mibb put such feeling into her last song.
Somehow we wished we were all out of that place
and up in the familiar old streets of Paris, Vermont.
Was the applause deafening ? It was !
They would not let Mibb go off that platform.
They called for her again and again. And again and
again she had to respond. A bouquet of flowers
came down the left aisle, somewhere under the mass
a human being carried along by legs. Another came
down the right aisle. Wave after wave of approval
swept down from the balconies and back again.
"And to think," said Sam hoarsely, "that that
Queen of Sheba once worked in our printing office !"
Sam wanted to go back-stage and see Mibb and
visit with her but Alice would not have it.
"Because, to me she ll always be the same old Mibb
Henderson, never mind how high she flies. I
THE GREATER GLORY 279
couldn t bring myself to rave over her and congratu
late her as I suppose I ought/
But Mary said nothing. With the same wistful
look ever on her face, she went with us out of that
theater.
When we got back to the hotel she complained of a
headache and went almost at once to her rooms.
Alice, who had cause to go down the hotel cor
ridor afterward, said the light was burning under
Mary s adjacent door until well into the morning.
She came back to Paris with us and took up the
burden of her life again before a grimy type case,
earning the wherewithal to raise those boys which
Jack had left her, in the dumb, hopeless, unsung
heroism of plain people doing plain tasks because
that is their destiny.
But as for Mibb, she went on, onward and upward,
from Glory unto Glory.
Going home on the train I said to Sam :
"I feel that we should have gone back and made
ourselves known to Mibb. There was something
about the way she sang that Home, Sweet Home
that tells me she would have been glad to see us."
"See her? Of course I saw her," Sam answered.
"I waited until Alice had gone to our room and then
made an excuse I wanted a lunch, to go back and see
her. And who do you suppose I found with her ?"
"Who?" I demanded.
"Dick Robinson. You remember Dick whom she
once turned down when he proposed to her back in
Paris before she married Herb for his money ?"
Certainly I remembered Dick.
"But you wouldn t know him," went on Sam.
"I hardly knew him myself. He s changed, Dick
has. He s grown hard and cynical and there are
THE GREATER GLORY
creases in his face. He was waiting in her dressing
room for her."
"In her dressing room !"
"Yes, and Mibb was disrobing almost in front of
him as though it were the most commonplace thing
in the world. It sort of disgusted me ; that s why
I haven t said much about it. A pair of corsets was
hanging over the back of the chair in which Dick
was sitting dawdling his cane."
We were alone temporarily in the smoker. We
rode for a few minutes in silence.
"Well?" I said.
"They wanted me to go out with them and have a
feed and some drinks. I didn t go. Bill," said the
editor suddenly, "do you suppose Mary Purse was
envious of Mibb as the crowd was applauding last
night and the bouquets coming down the aisles ?"
"Mary s only human, like the rest of us," I
answered. Then I said: "Let s see, Dick never
married, did he ?"
But Sam did not hear. He answered his own
question :
"Strange," he remarked, "that it should be old
Harve Henderson s daughter who ll get that gold-
piece ! "
We told Uncle Joe Fodder about it in the office the
next day.
"Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord,"
was the only comment the old man made. Which
was queer.
" Mibb told me she was starting on another grand
continental tour in the spring," said Sam, as the
train drew into Paris on that ride home.
CHAPTER XIV
As THE MILLS OP THE GODS GRIND SLOWLY THERE
COMES A SUDDEN OMINOUS BUMP IN THE MACHIN
ERY AND THOSE WHO ARE LISTENING FEEL THAT
SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG SOMEWHERE OR A
SUBSTANCE GONE BETWEEN THE STONES THAT
HAS BEEN ANNIHILATED MERCILESSLY.
IT is time to close the second portion of this story
now, but before we write "Part the Third" at the top
of a new sheet of foolscap, let us set down here one
grim anecdote that stands out in jagged red and per
haps in the general scheme of things adds some poor
measure of consolation.
We have never been able to get the exact details.
We have only the strange little morsels of gossip
which are bound to drift back to a little country town
to be tossed to and fro over family teacups. And
.combining these with the story which Dick Robinson
told Judge Farmer one night down at the Banker s
Club in New York, we can collect a pretty fair amount
of evidence upon which to build the tragedy.
On a certain rainy October night in a far western
city, "Madame Zola" ended her concert and started
from the rear of the theater through the alley to her
hansom. The light over the stage door fell aslant
a hallway opening into a cheap rooming house across
the alley. She was about to pass this hallway when a
burly figure turned in from the sidewalk and passed
her. Something in his walk arrested her. She
282 THE GREATER GLORY
stopped in the foggy drizzle and stepped back in
voluntarily. As she did so, the burly man raised
his head.
The woman s body went cold all over. She gasped
a fearful word. The man halted and peered at her.
"Herbert!" she whispered.
He was big and rough and unshaven and drunk
exceedingly drunk. He swayed unsteadily in the
mist and the light over the stage door she had just
quitted made an auriole of iridescent color above his
battered derby hat.
But he seemed to come to himself as she spoke his
name in that awful voice resulting from the terrific
shock of her surprise.
"Who s callin me Herbert? Me? Huh! Ain t
heard that name for years and years, I ain t ! "
They faced each other in the dripping semi-dark,
she rich, cultured, seemingly patrician to her finger
tips in the harness of her stage dress ; he slovenly,
broken down, just an odd fish cast up from the great
sea of derelict city life.
"You! "he cried. "You! You! You!"
She did not know what to say. Strength and
voice apparently had deserted her.
"What are you doin here?" he demanded
ominously. "Ain t you done me nough damage
already without followin me here? Tell me that?
Ain t you?"
"I I haven t followed you here, you fool!"
she managed to gasp at last. "Where have you
been? Where did you go to? It s you that needs
calling to account. You deserted me left me
penniless. If I hadn t been clever I might have
starved ! "
"You say that, after what you done to me and
THE GREATER GLORY 283
my money ! If you hadn t been clever you might
have starved. Clever ! Clever ! Yes, you was
clever ! You was damned clever ! You cheat, you I
You cheat!"
" Stop it, you fool ! Don t you know you ll wake
the whole city and start a scandal? Lower your
voice, I tell you ! "
He supported himself with one hand against some
old iron pipes piled against the near-by brick wall of
the theater. He was weak, too, with the tremen
dous surprise of that meeting but with a far different
kind of surprise. He was trying to collect his
dazed senses. And something was getting away
from him. He was losing control of the great brute
animal within him which drink and abuse of the
years had nurtured. Before him he fancied he was
seeing the cause of all his life s misery. And the
devil was over his shoulder, pushing him on.
"Fine lady, ain t you? Fine, fine lady! Them
geegaws and everything fine, fine lady ! What
man paid for em, you ? " and he said a word that
struck the woman as a blow across her mouth.
She backed away and went white to the lips.
"You call me that, you vagrant! you gutter
snipe! you you bum!" she screamed, for
getting her own admonition of a moment before.
"Yes, me call you that !" he retorted. "Me call
you that ! Me call you that ! And why shouldn t
I ? " And his voice was like the roar of a bull.
"No man paid for them," she retorted in deadly
voice. "I m paying my own way with my voice,
and no thanks to a dirty street loafer fit only
for the gutter ! "
"And who sent me to the gutter ? " he cried wildly,
choking on his words. Again he repeated the
284 THE GREATER GLORY
unprintable word. "Who sent me to the gutter?
Who but a hell-cat with a heart o ice that bled me
dry and cheated me from bein a man? Tell me
that! Oh, you .she-devil! Oh, you she-devil!"
And he lurched forward.
"Lay one of your dirty fingers on me and you ll
go to jail for life !" she cried hysterically.
He did not reply this time. He simply swayed
there with a wild unhealthy light burning suddenly
behind his bloodshot eyes.
Then in the next instant he lurched at her. With
the agility of insanity, despite his size he lurched at
her, as though all the accumulated misery and
heartaches and vicissitudes of the years were his
to avenge on human flesh and blood at last. It was
as though he had been waiting years and years for
exactly that moment.
He sprang at her and she screamed. She screamed
terribly. Some men heard it in the next block and
came a-running. Some people in the lodging house
above heard it also and ran for the windows and
peered fearfully downward. A policeman heard
it over in front of the corner saloon out on the main
street and meditated whether he should go swiftly
to where it sounded or turn discreetly down the side
thoroughfare.
For when poor Herb Truman lurched his burly
weight upon the wife of his young manhood, he held
in his scabby fist one of the short ugly pieces of pipe
that had been piled beneath his hand against the
wall of the theater.
He beat her down, once, twice, three times he
belted at her terribly, horribly.
The pipe crunched on soft human flesh nauseat-
ingly. It had a ragged end and full in her unpro-
THE GREATER GLORY 285
tected face the Henderson girl received it. A man
in the lodging house above stairs testified next day
that he saw the assailant stamp on the woman s
prostrate body after she had fallen inert on the
cement floor of the alleyway. But he was recover
ing from a three-day indiscretion himself and his
testimony may not be entirely trustworthy.
Anyhow, when help did arrive, headed by the
policeman who had decided to do his duty, seven
men found one woman battered into insensibility,
weltering in a great sickening pool of human blood,
and her features horribly mashed by a blunt in
strument thrown or dropped into the open doorway
of that lodging house hall.
And though the lodging house and the city were
searched, they did not find the assailant.
Three months later a woman was discharged from
the hospital in that city with a face a hideous thing
to behold, one side of her mouth drawn together and
closed permanently.
As Uncle Joe Fodder had often remarked : "Ven
geance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord/
PART III
EVENING
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH WE CONSIDER THE CHANGES TIME HAS
WROUGHT IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS AND FOR
THE LAST TIME, PRAISE GOD, SEE MARY PURSE
BEARING NOBLY THE LAST GREAT DISAPPOINT
MENT OF HER LIFE.
ACCORDING to Joe Bardwell the Joseph Bard-
well a Paris man who has gained fame with two
novels and interminable short stories so that his
name is often on the magazine covers of Service s
News Room, according to Joseph Bardwell who
is in a place to know, the most difficult part of
writing a book is to convey skilfully and convinc
ingly the passing of time.
This is especially true if the narrative covers the
entire lives of a group of people. Due allowance
must be made "for them periods when nothin*
didn t happen", as Uncle Joe Fodder would put it.
For there are such times in the lives of all of us.
Comedy and tragedy leave such a terrific effect upon
us because they break in upon lives that are running
the even tenor of their way, careers that on the whole
are uniformly quiet and prosaic. They are the
paragraph marks and chapter-headings in the jour
nal of existence.
Coming down to concrete things and following the
lives of the particular people with whom our story
290 THE GREATER GLORY
has to do, we may say without fear of successful
contradiction that the years from 1896 to 1912 saw
more changes in American life than any other period
in the history of our people or our nation. We can
close the files here now and lay them back on top
the green box safe. All too vividly memory will
serve us and as for the rest, our story must come
down for its close into modern times.
The first thing of which we have taken note is the
change in the life of our town, which is a counterpart
of hundreds of American towns scattered all over
the continent. Business blocks went up several
stories and wooden structures descended under the
crowbar of the building wrecker. We paved Main
Street and built a jail. Fat, sociable, boxlike old
houses painted dirty white gave way to cupolas and
bay windows and softer hues and trimmings. We
razed our white picket fences and allowed our lawns
a breathing chance. We bought a fire truck and
a policeman s uniform and made Mike Hogan, our
chief of police, who hitherto had gone about in his
suspenders, climb into the latter, station himself at
the corner of Main and Maple streets Saturday
nights and Sunday afternoons and make motions
with his hands. Thus we arose to the grandeur of
a traffic cop and took great pride in him until he had
"bawled us out" publicly a few times for driving
our automobiles with a light blinked out and then
we declared him a nuisance and started a petition
to have him removed.
In our homes we took up our carpets and laid
down art rugs. The graphophone with the old wax
records and morning-glory horn was consigned to
the attic and in the corner of our "libraries" we
installed what resembled an old-fashioned music
THE GREATER GLORY 291
box on top of a wine cabinet but which was really
Caruso and McCormick and Gluck ready at a
moment s notice to fill the neighborhood with art.
We consigned the old red tablecloths to limbo and
went in for Haviland china. The less furniture we
could get into a room the better it was furnished
and the prosperity of a family was not reckoned by
its acres but by the number of silver birches on its
lawn and the width of its front piazza,.
Our social life changed also. Young people be
came old and old people became young. The acme
of ambition for our rising generation was to grow up
and s^hake the dust of the place from their negro-
polished shoes and dwell amid purple and fine linen
in the cities. We became a nation of speed maniacs,
and life insurance statistics on the insanity rate were
used to prove that we were a great nation.
And while these changes were in progress, what
shall be said of our townsfolk themselves and espe
cially the folk whose history we have followed?
Where are the folk of yesteryear, indeed? Where
are the faces we once knew, the voices that were
so familiar? Scattered to the four corners of the
tired old earth, most of them, or sleeping quietly in
the cemetery on the hill. And in their places are
strange folk, faces and voices which we know and
yet do not know, upstarts and usurpers, ac
quaintances instead of friends, names to fill the
census and the telephone directory and not human
3ouls whose joys were our joys and failures our
failures, whose successes were our successes and
their griefs our griefs.
Even the people of our narrative are different folk,
alas, than we recognized them yesteryear. We are
on the third and last part of our story now, the
292 THE GREATER GLORY
final lap toward home and the Greater Glory. And
in this last act of life s play the make-up of our
actors must be changed.
We have seen Sam Hod a young newspaperman,
very deliberate and precise in all he did, gravely
deporting himself, striving to build a newspaper
which should be respected and sworn by among all
kinds and classes everywhere. We look upon him
now with his hair gray, his moustache ragged, his
eyes old and philosophical and tired. We have
seen the people of our office young and careless and
heart-free, thinking only of the good time coming
in the evening after work. We look upon them now
toil-worn and care-bent, with families and respon
sibilities, going down the hill of life and hugging
closer and closer in the evening hours to their easy
chairs and rockers.
And what of the heroine of this heroless narrative ?
What of Mary Purse ? What, indeed ? For the time
has come when we must also look on Mary when
she is old, for time spares not the heroes and heroines
more than it does the adventuresses and villains.
During the years of her wifehood and mother
hood that she had been absent from the office, she
had altered somewhat from the nimble girl we once
had known. Her hands, once so deft and delicate
and slender, had become red and stiff and contorted
with labor. She couldn t set the "string" of the
years before. But she didn t appear to notice that.
Or if she did, she never mentioned it for fear she
might discount herself in the eyes of the office
powers and lose her place. Day after day she
toiled at the case and then drove home at the
supper hour, and, doing the housework for those
growing boys, worked far into the night.
THE GREATER GLORY 293
Oh, that we could stop and set down here in detail
some of the struggles that woman went through as
the seasons went slowly by and bills came in which
must be paid, and cruel setbacks and handicaps and
hardships interrupted the noble work she was
doing, work for which it seemed there never
could be an adequate reward. Sam Hod, who from
time to time has glanced over these pages while
they were in composition, is wrathy indeed that so
much prominence has been given to the days and
times and folk that came before Jack left us and
Mary s work since crowded into one petty chapter.
"The time since she was left a widow is the real
story of Mary Purse, you fat-head," he has again
and again declared.
But Sam Hod does not realize that there is no
drama in one aging widow woman coming into the
village day after day and working through the
hours at a type case and going home at night to
order the household for a family of growing boys
and the old Morrow woman. Those years might
be replete with childhood tragedies and bumps
and bruises and the vagaries of expanding boyhood
and youth, but they would only weary the reader.
Those years from Jack s passing to the time that
the youngest Purse boy left to take a job down in
Boston are one of those periods of Uncle Joe Fod
der s when "nothin didn t happen." All we can
set down is that she did her task somehow, the
task almost beyond her strength, and yet a task in
which will power and mother love and her husband s
memory triumphed and which she completed.
And her only remuneration as she went along was
the fervent hope that Thomas Joshua would not
fail her, that he would turn out a preacher.
294 THE GREATER GLORY
But we might as well have it first as last : Tom
Purse did not turn out a preacher.
The old Seminary on the north side of Putnam
Square was burned down in nineteen hundred and
Paris built a fairly up-to-date school. In due
course of time Tom entered this institution and on
his graduation went up to the University of Ver
mont. We learned that he was working in one of
the Burlington newspaper offices to pay his ex
penses and tuition, with what his mother sent
him, which she saved and had ready from God only
knows where. He was a quiet, studious boy, very
intense in everything he did and his high marks won
him a scholarship in his third year. That helped
some. He was valedictorian at Commencement.
The night he came back to Paris, he and his mother
drove out to the Purse place together. She had not
been able to afford the trip to the graduation because
the twins were coming along and wanted to get
through Middlebury in another two years. It was
a rainy day in the last of June and neither mother
nor son felt like talking, but that was not altogether
because of the rain.
They reached home and Tom put up the horse.
Mrs. Morrow was growing more and more feeble.
The other boys had not returned from school or from
work and with Mrs. Morrow in her chair in the
kitchen asleep, mother and son were alone.
"Well," Mary said softly, "at any rate, one of
you boys has had a college education."
"Yes, Ma."
Tom arose and took a couple of turns up and down
the room. He was a big, strapping fellow now six
feet in his stockings with sharp forceful features
and a steel-gray eye. He pulled out his college
THE GREATER GLORY 295
Jimmy-pipe and filled it thoughtfully, standing by
the window and looking out into the fragrant rainy
night.
"Tommy," breathed the mother fearfully at last,
from her place before the devastated dishes, " is
it all completed, Tommy?"
The young man flushed deeply.
"You mean, Ma, the the theological school ? "
"Yes," she said half -hopefully.
He was a long time in replying and in that mo
ment the mother knew she had another disappoint
ment to bury in her life.
"Confound it, Ma, I hate to say it; I know it
hurts you like sin, but what s the use of trying to
follow up something I don t care anything about
and arn t fitted for?"
"It was the dream of my life, Tommy from the
first night I looked into your little face that you
should some day be a minister. And I m - I m
willing to keep right on workin , Tommy, to see you
get the money to help you out there also
"That s the trouble, Ma; you ve been working
too darned much ! I ve felt ashamed of it lots of
times. But I ve got the satisfaction of knowing
I didn t cheat. I plugged to get through as hard
as you plugged to have me."
"I know you did, son. It wouldn t be in Jack
Purse s son to cheat." She waited a long time.
Then she said: "And you aren t going to try to
be a minister ? "
"What s the use, Ma?" he cried without looking
into her face. "I m simply not cut out for it; my
bent doesn t lie in that direction. Honest, it
doesn t. What s the use of spoiling a good black
smith to make a rotten preacher?"
296 THE GREATER GLORY
"But you don t want to be a blacksmith !"
"You know what I want to be, Ma. We ve
talked it over times enough."
Mary placed her tired hands to her throbbing
temples. Yes, they had talked it over times enough,
indeed.
"It s in my blood, mother," Tom went on. "It s
something you and dad have bequeathed to me.
It s ground into my very bone and fiber. You can t
blame me. I was born to it."
"Yes," agreed Mary. "Perhaps you were,
Tommy. But if your father had lived, this would
about break his heart."
"Because dad was only a second-rater; he never
got to the top in his profession. And I m going to
climb to the top Springfield, Boston, New York !
Watch me ! And dad married too young and en
cumbered himself with a family before he could
afford it. I shan t do that. I m a rolling stone
until I ve rolled myself up to the top of the grade.
Then I ll marry and stay there."
"My son only a newspaperman like his
daddy before him ! Oh, well ! It doesn t matter ;
it s honorable even if it s poorly paid. Maybe -
maybe some of the other boys will be ministers
- although I can t say it ll be the same as if it was
you, Tom. You were my first baby, you know.
It makes a difference."
"Mother, don t take on so. I ll be at the top of
my profession the same as I stood at the top of my
class. And I ll see that you re not sorry you re
leased me from the ministerial obligation." He
said this last with an attempt at pleasantry. But
it fell pathetically flat.
She arose and went over to him after a time. He
THE GREATER GLORY 297
knew when he looked at her that the situation he
had dreaded for months was successfully in the past.
She took him by the lapels of his coat with her
scrawny hands and he took the Jimmy-pipe from
his teeth that she could look into his face.
"Tom," she said. "Then be a good newspaper
man. Remember you re dealing with the deep and
sacred things of life, the hearts and souls and des
tinies of men and women!"
"I will, mother," he said quietly.
It was silent in that room for a time. Then the
boy said huskily :
"Mother, you won t feel so awful, awful badly
if I don t become a preacher, if I become a really
good, a really big newspaperman?"
The answer was a long time in coming. But it
came. She smiled a wonderful smile, as she turned
her sweet face up to his as she had turned it up to
another man in the bygone years.
"No, Tom," she said brokenly. "I won t feel
awful bad, over it."
And the next night Thomas Joshua Purse left for
Boston to take a job on the old Chronicle.
He never knew what that decision cost his mother.
CHAPTER II
THE WOMAN WITH THE SCARRED FACE DISCOVERS
THAT SELFISHNESS DOES NOT PAY AFTER ALL
AND KNOWS THE MEANING OF THE WARNING
"VENGEANCE Is MINE; I WILL REPAY, SAITH
THE LORD," IN ANOTHER WAY.
THEY sat facing one another across a small side
table in the dining room of a quiet little hotel off
Broadway. The time was eight in the evening;
dinner guests had gone ; after-theater supper parties
were yet to come. For the present they were almost
alone in the rich and silent place excepting for a
waiter who leaned against a grating far in the rear
and gossiped idly with the cashier in a foreign
tongue.
The man was a striking personality. Out of his
long massive features glinted hard eyes of cold gray.
His nose and mouth and chin were adamantine and
a trifle sinister. His age might have been fifty if
one averaged his youthful athletic carriage with the
head of iron-gray hair parted on one side and brushed
back in a hoary mane above his forehead. He
was clothed in expensive but sober black; there
was a heavy diamond glinting on his right hand.
About him was an air of success, of a man who
had forged to the front and made the world yield
him his measure of its wealth.
The woman who sat opposite him with elbows on
the table edge and hands clasped against her cheek
may have been of equal age but the years had dealt
THE GREATER GLORY 299
more harshly with her than with him, or she may
have attempted to get more out of them than the
man had done. Her face was lined and counter-
lined with a million tiny wrinkles which she had
plainly tried to hide with cosmetics; her hair was
iron gray, although the fatal pathos of its color had
been somewhat offset by the clever and modish
manner in which it had been treated. The woman s
eyes were tired eyes now, but they were more than
that; they were hungry eyes, wistful eyes, be
wildered eyes, eyes in which it would require
much more emotion to make the tears well and the
cheeks become ridiculous.
And her face was scarred, a faint scar to be sure,
and cleverly treated by surgeons whose fees were
written in four figures. But the mouth remained
partially closed ; all the skill of facial surgery in the
world had failed to make the lips function normally
again. Which, if the musical world knew the whole
truth, had been the enforced reason for the dis
appearance of one Madame Zola from the concert
and operatic stage.
Neatly the man tapped the ash from his long
cigar into the base of the safety-match holder at his
right. He restored the cigar to his lips and replaced
his elbows on the table s edge. Then he stroked
his heavy powerful chin with a capable hand. His
level gray eyes were upon the woman. In them was
no pity, no emotion, no compassion for any one or
anything.
"It is one of those situations in life," he said in
his low matter-of-fact tone, "which must be looked
at sensibly. Both of us have lived beyond the
years of sophomoric sentiment although there are
times, I will admit, when I d give many dollars to
300 THE GREATER GLORY
return to them again and not know many things
which I ve since discovered in life. So let s change
the subject, Mibb, because it bores me by its very
absurdity."
"But it isn t absurd, Dick !" protested the woman,
and in her tone and the manner of its expression lay
a pitiful indication of her weakness to cope with the
situation, yet a desperation that it must be done
somehow, if by no other method than perseverance.
"It s big and vital to me, Dick. Oh, Dick ! Don t
you know what it means to me?"
"No," returned Dick Robinson coldly. "What
does it mean to you?"
" The the end, Dick !"
"End of what?"
"Life, love, hope everything." Her voice as
she said it was sunk to a whisper.
"I told you a long time ago that dramatics always
disgusted me, Mibb."
"Dick! I m in earnest, Dick ! It isn t dramatics.
I mean it, Dick ! I ve reached the end."
"And I believe you had reached the end also with
Herb Truman, and Young Ezekial and all the
various other male satellites who have had more
or less bearing on your mundane orbit, Mibb."
"Dick! My Gawd, Dick! Don t say that;
don t talk that way about things. It s burning,
blistering acid on my naked heart "
"Oh, rot, Mibb! If your heart s so nude, pull
something over it. I don t want to be brutal and
you re a good sport, Mibb but make a fight and
get your balance "
"It s what you have just said the most
cruel thing I ve ever heard, and I ve had lots of
cruel things said to me "
THE GREATER GLORY 301
"Mibb, you ll have me saying lots worse things
in a moment. You re making a scene, you ve "
"No, I haven t taken too much, and I will make
a scene if it means "
"Now look here, Mibb; we ve got to have an
understanding and we ll have it right here and now ;
you re provoking it. I m sorry for you, although
not in just the way you think. I can see exactly
how you feel and if I could I would help you."
"You can help me !"
"But not by marrying you "
"Yes, by marrying me! Why not? What s the
past few years meant all the times we ve had
together and the trips and the talks and the
suppers and parties ; what have they meant if not
matrimony. What could a woman think ? Dick !
Dick ! Don t go back on me now ! Gawd, Dick
- don t tell me it s all "
"Well, what?"
" entertainment and nothing more, Dick.
I ve had a hard row to hoe. I ve been unfor
tunate, it seems, in everything I ve taken up, every
thing I ve tried to do. And I m on the level in
this, on the level with you, I ve been on the level
all along, and I thought at last I was coming into
a little peace and rest after it all. What have I done
to get this what have I done."
The tears that came up in her tired and burned-
out eyes only caused the man to tap off more cigar-
ash calmly and look at her in vivisectional interest
cold interest as he would consider the im
properly-timing functions of a machine that was
suddenly doing strange and inexplicable things.
"I never thought it was in you, Mibb," he said
finally. "I thought you were more sensible."
302 THE GREATER GLORY
"Sensible? Ain t I sensible, Dick? Ain t it the
most sensible thing in the world for me to want
you? After what I ve gone through and suffered
and been cheated out of "
"Mibb, let s discuss this thing like a sane man
and a sane woman. Looking backward for a mo
ment I can remember a night twenty-eight years
ago when you and I with a lot of other young folks
up home sat around a fire in a little shack up in
the mountains."
"Don t I remember it? Haven t I thought of it
thousands of times, Dick ? Wished I could go back
to that night and live the years over again -
The man frowned at the interruption. But he
went on :
" and Herb Truman poor old Herb! got
sentimental and proposed an extraordinary thing
"Yes, poor old Herbert! Look what he did to
me ! Look at my face ! "
he proposed, Mibb, that thirty years from
that night we should all gather together again and
the one who had made the greatest success of his
or her life should get the gold-piece that was to be
left under the miser s hearthstone."
"And that s what I m trying to do, Dick! in
wanting to marry you, making a success of my life,
taking up the life of a real woman, settling down "
"Please don t interrupt me, Mibb. On that
night, at the threshold of our lives, so to speak, we
started to face the world and take our places in
society and work out our destiny, the manner of
men and women which we were."
"Don t open old wounds !"
"We were about equally divided, boys and girls
men and women. There was no stipulation
THE GREATER GLORY 303
what shape our successes were to take. The boys
were supposed to be judged on their careers as men ;
the women were not to be compared to them, but
on their careers as women. The greatest success,
the fullest life that was the criterion of achieve
ment "
"I didn t know as much then as I know now,
Dick. I was only a silly girl that hadn t awak
ened "
" and we all agreed that if we were living thirty
years in the future and it was humanly possible to
do so, we would gather again and see who had made
their lives worth while, whether they had indeed
realized success in the vocation to which they turned
themselves. Business, the professions, the making
of money for the men ; careers for the women, per
haps ; perhaps motherhood, wifehdod ; it didn t
matter. We would all of us recognize quickly when
that gathering time came, to whom the gold-piece
belonged. The point was that we were conscious
of our situations on the threshold of life; we had
our lives and careers ahead to mould as we saw fit.
We were free moral agents. If we won, we would
have ourselves to applaud ; if we lost and made a
failure of life, we would have no one but ourselves
to thank."
"Dick ! I can t stand it to listen to this ; I just
can t ; not after what you ve told me just now "
"But you re going to listen to it, Mibb, because
I know what s good for you. It won t hurt you to
hear the truth. All your life you ve dodged the
truth; you ve avoided looking unpleasant subjects
or situations squarely in their faces ; you ve floated
with the current of existence and trusted and
expected it to waft you into pleasant places."
304 THE GREATER GLORY
"Dick! I never expected to have to stand this
from you."
"You are upset because when it came to a show
down I ve balked on making you my wife. You
want to know the reason. I m telling you now,
Mibb. It s unpleasant but it s high time you
cultivated a little fiber in your soul to stand un
pleasant things."
The woman clenched her thin and bloodless hands.
"I m not going into the careers of any one in that
crowd but your own, Mibb. You went back to
town from that Gold-Piece Party the same as all
the rest of us ; you had your chance "
"And I tried the same as all the rest of you ;
Herb Truman had money give me credit for try
ing to better myself in marrying him, Dick and
I thought that success meant bettering myself that
way. If I made a wrong calculation in that, in the
estimate of money being the estimate of success,
give me credit for trying."
"I m not discounting your endeavor, your attempt,
as you call it. There was nothing wrong with that.
The point was that your idea of success was the
height of selfishness you could attain for yourself.
You didn t want to measure your success by the
things which you could do in the world ; you wanted
to measure your success by the things you could
avoid and money helped you to avoid them. You
married Herb, not to make him a successful wife,
but to acquire the money to make your life easy and
filled with physical comfort."
"I was only a girl, Dick. Look at my mother
and father ! Could you blame me ? "
"Blame you? Of course I blame you! With
the exception of Jack Purse and Mary Wood there
THE GREATER GLORY 305
wasn t one of us in the crowd but what had just as
poor apologies in the shape of parents as yourself.
You knew just as much as the rest of us did, that
there was work in the world to be done, a share cut
out for each of us to do. Deliberately you ignored
it. I happened to know that a few days after that
Gold-Piece Party you openly taunted Mary Wood
for marrying poor honest, earnest Jack Purse ; you
taunted her for marrying poor, for condemning her
self to a life of work and household drudgery and
child-bearing and all the rest that s a humble
woman s portion. You were selfish, Mibb, and that
selfishness has hounded you right down to the
present, in everything you ve done in every
decision you ve made in everything you ve taken
up."
"I ve seen my mistake, Dick. I want to
"No, you haven t seen your mistake. You want
to marry me for the same reason you wanted to
marry Herb Truman and young Ezekial and all the
rest of the boys who had money to save your
own skin, Mibb ; to better yourself physically.
Personal service doesn t enter into it at all, Mibb
"Oh, how cruel how heartless you are!" she
moaned.
"Not a bit of it ! Merely sensible."
" As your wife I could
"As my wife you could do absolutely nothing
more than you are doing now give me your society.
And for that society I pay you what it is worth."
"How about a home ?"
"I have a home. It cost me seventy thousand
dollars and it is all that I desire. I have efficient
servants who keep it well ordered
"Is that all a home means, Dick?"
306
"Don t let s talk about children at our ages,
Mibb. It s disgusting, if that s what you mean.
As for your society in my home, it would be of no
more value to me there than it is in the places we
have been going together the past few years ; no,
there is absolutely nothing which you could give me
as my wife. On the other hand, there is much more
that I would be called upon to give you : my name
which I may say without egotism is of no small
value and not lightly to be bestowed my money,
my liberty, the concentration of my fancy solely
on one woman whom I am sure in time would bore
me"
"So I bore you, do I : the last two years I ve been
boring you ? Then why continue ? "
"No, you have not bored me yet, for the reason
that we have not seen enough of one another to
become bored with one another s eternal society -
"And you call yourself a successful man and a
gentleman."
"I do not, Mibb. There is a difference between
us. One side of my life the life of a normal man
which should be well rounded out before he can call
himself wholly successful one side of me has
been dwarfed and stunted, the family part, through
agencies with which women like yourself have had
much to do. That s irrelevant to what we re dis
cussing, Mibb. I m saying that there s nothing you
could give me that I m not getting now ; yet there s
much that I could give you for which I would get
no value in return. So it would not be a fair bargain.
And an unfair bargain is no bargain in my philos
ophy. To get back to your personal career : Within
a few years after your tempestuous marriage to Herb
you left him or he left you "
THE GREATER GLORY 307
"He was a drunken sot! He was a brute! I
could tell you "
"I knew Herb Truman as well as you did. We
were chums together before you ever married him.
He was a big-souled, lovable boy. All he wanted
was to be mothered. He never had a mother of
his own any more than I ever had one. He didn t
know it was a mother he craved; I didn t know it
either until I became older. But that s what he
wanted and in a fashion he married you to get it."
"Get what?"
"Mothering."
The man looked straight as a lance at the woman.
Her eyes fell guiltily.
"He wanted mothering, I say," Robinson went on.
"Every man wants it from a woman. I don t
care how old men grow, they re only boys at heart.
And when they grow up and get lonely and out of
sorts they want some one to whom they can bring
their troubles and get sympathy and help. A suc
cessful wife understands that, though perhaps she
couldn t put it into fine phrases, it would sound
maudlin. In their boyhood days a mother fills
that place. It s the sterling-true function of woman
kind without which she s merely female and nothing
else ; men come to look for it in all women that
influence over them that sympathy, and wherever
you find an unhappily married man you find a fool
of a woman too small-bored to recognize it. You
were too selfish and thoughtless to do that to Herbert.
He became discouraged without knowing why he was
discouraged. He sought relief for his nameless
heartache in drink. One thing led to another and
he wandered away, God knows where. He became
a derelict because he was despondent over a great
308 THE GREATER GLORY
disappointment which stood out in his life irreme
diable, so he thought, or at least he lost interest in
things because he was out of accord with all the
world, and he not you ! paid the price !"
"Dick, haven t you any heart at all? Are you a
cad after all ; can t you see how this is
"Mibb, did anybody ever take the time or trouble
to tell you this before ? "
"No one ever did because they had too much
regard for my feelings."
"Then it s time some really good friend of yours
cast aside pretty conventionalities and gave you a
strong look at the naked truth. Sit quiet and hear
me out; there s lots more I have to tell you. I m
coming down to my own career in a moment, why
I hold these ideas that I do why I won t marry
you, or any woman. That should interest you,
what?"
"Yes," she whispered miserably.
"Very good. There was once a boy, Dick Robin
son ; remember him ? He was a good sort before
he went money-mad. But there was a time when
he wasn t money-mad. He loved you sincerely and
deeply. He would have made you a good husband.
But you refused him, so long as there was money to
be married elsewhere, and when you finally came
around to him in after years and displayed interest
in him, the damage had been done. You had sent
him into his money-madness ; his idea at first was
to acquire so much that it would make you sorry.
When he got going he generated so much momentum
that he couldn t stop. The stuff owned him got
him as booze gets some men. But at the same time
he d generated enough common sense if you want
to call it that to see that you weren t after him
THE GREATER GLORY 309
for the sake of love for him ; it was his money and
what it meant. And by that time he loved his
money too much to let you dig your lily-white fingers,
your greedy fingers, deeply down into his pile. He
went away from you. You had sent one man to
disgrace directly as the result of your lack of ma
ternity, Mibb ; you sent Dick Robinson s soul to
hell, the hell of worship of seven per cent, by your
choice of wealth over honest love and willingness
to get down and work honestly for it beside a man
who loved you. But that isn t all, Mibb "
"I am a hell-cat, ain t I?" said the woman
bitterly. But it was sarcasm and her voice was
broken.
"No, just merely selfish, fearfully selfish ; selfish
ness has been at the bottom of every shadow which
has crossed your life, Mibb."
"You! Telling this to me, after all the ways
you ve made money and the things you ve done."
" Careful, Mibb. Maybe I ve made folks come up
to the scratch in business but I ve gone on the level."
"And you don t admit that your life has been
selfish ? That you are living selfishly now alone
and without a family and for your own enjoy
ment; not helping anybody or doing anything to
make the world better?"
"No; I haven t gone to extremes in this thing.
And as for selfishness, at least I haven t always
looked for the easiest way around things. I haven t
dodged hard work. I haven t asked others to carry
my burdens, or finance me, or permit me to live on
the fruits of their labors."
"You re a man. You re supposed to do hard
things and carry burdens and finance yourself.
I m I m a woman !"
310 THE GREATER GLORY
The man raised his eyebrows.
"That, Mibb," he said, "is the most absurd
thing you ve said to-night. Let s quit this," he
snapped. "I ll be saying things for which I ll be
sorry, things unbecoming a man who tries to pre
serve the appearance of a gentleman."
"No," she said with feminine perversity.
"You ve started; go ahead and finish! You ve
asked me if I wanted to know why you haven t
marrieji; why you won t marry me when when"
- her voice suddenly softened into a strange mellow
thing and rang with the pain of it, " when I love
you, Dick!" she concluded lamely. "Might as
well finish what you d begun. You ve hurt me
already more than I can feel."
But for a moment he simply sat quiet, his eyes
upon her, his heavy lips closed firmly. He sat
quiet until his queer fit of temper passed. His
face gradually softened. Over his features came a
look of hunger and homesickness and longing,
melancholy heartache. It was a rather startling
change. He picked up a fruit knife and drew lines
with its point in the cloth.
Twice he looked at her and dropped his eyes
again. There was a trace of cynicism in his voice as
he said :
"Mibb, I m not a woman-hater. But I ve simply
lost faith in you women. I never knew a mother,
though like poor Herb, I felt the need of one. When
I grew up, if I was attracted to women it was for
companionship and sympathy and help. But some
how I never connected right. The longer I looked
the more bitter I became, Mibb. Women for wives
indeed women for pleasure, women for business,
women for careers plenty of women for every-
THE GREATER GLORY 311
thing but to go to with a weary head and a heart
ache and get a little help and inspiration and strength
for the soul. Oh, Mibb ! You don t know it
don t realize it and few women there are that do ;
but the crying need of the age and the heart of men
is for that kind of women, the maternal women,
Mibb."
For an instant the woman forgot her own misery
in her stark surprise. This ! from Dick Robinson.
"Years ago, Mibb, before women went outside
the home and into business and got all snarled up
with fads and isms, they didn t have much else to
occupy their attention but home and folks and kids.
All these folks who want to mend the status of
poor down-trodden and abused womankind say
it was narrowing and degrading and enslaving. But
Mibb, it did make mothers ! The business of women
was to marry and have homes and stay in those
homes and raise little kids. That was their func
tion in life and having no other it was inbred into
their bone generation after generation. Look at the
homes of fifty or a hundred years ago, Mibb. Look
at some of those on the Vermont hillsides back
around Paris. There s nothing like those old home
steads to-day, Mibb. They ve all gone with the
old-fashioned women that used to live in them."
The woman wanted to say something but she
didn t know just what it ought to be.
"I suppose industries that have come in to make
women s work easier, and yet that have taken her at
the same time out of the home and into business,
are responsible, Mibb. Perhaps I m wrong in
judging you so harshly. But oh, Mibb inside
deep inside, there s the awful heart-hunger in a lot
of men to know what their grand-daddies knew, yet
312 THE GREATER GLORY
who never placed a value on it because it hadn t been
denied them. We re not raising families any more,
Mibb. We re only having kids. We re not making
homes. We re renting a place to live in and furnish
ing it with stuff bought at a store. Everything s
shallow and transitory and unsatisfactory and
addled. Half the time we don t know what the
matter is with us, we men of to-day. But it s that
we re getting away from nature, away from the
family idea, away from solid substantial rugged
foundations of living."
The man drew a deep breath. For a moment his
jaw closed hard. Then he went on :
"Oh, I know we ve got women that are well enough
willing to marry the men, girls still fall in love with
the boys and the boys with the girls. But I couldn t
take a clerk out of my office and put him half the
time in my engineering department and expect him
to keep on improving as clerk, following up the
job, growing more and more efficient in his line
when all the time I m distracting his energies and
making him neither one nor the other. And it s
much the same with you women, Mibb. The girls
to-day marry the boys, true enough, and they rent
a place and furnish it and raise their babies. But
there s a hundred things to attract them and distract
them and take them outside the home while at the
same time they try to keep the home; and gradu
ally the home instinct of generations is being ironed
out of them, Mibb. They want to do a woman s
work and at the same time they want to do a man s
work, and the good Lord only knows what to call
the things they do. They re forgetting how to
really truly mother, Mibb. I heard a dam-fool
female the other day get up on a soapbox and yell
THE GREATER GLORY 313
that the child was the jailer of the mother. As if
there was any reason why it shouldn t be, Mibb ?
And all mankind knows is that something has been
tipped over and upset somewhere and he s all at
sea and doesn t know where he gets off or what s
coming. And pretty soon, either en masse or as an
individual, he commences to feel that he doesn t
give a damn, Mibb. And when a man gets to the
point that he doesn t give a damn, he isn t over-
careful about his relations in other matters. It s
all a mixed-up and lamentable mess, and God only
knows who s responsible. But it s coming over all
society, Mibb, more and more every year and well
the kids that are growing up to-day are show
ing it."
Again the woman did not know what to say. She
felt as if Dick Robinson had waded off beyond her
depth and if she tried to follow him she would
flounder. If she had been where she had been thirty
years before, up in Gold-Piece cabin, she might have
tried to follow him. But she had dissipated the
heritage that had once been hers. She must pay
the penalty, the penalty of silence silence more
than the mere silence of speech.
"Mibb," he concluded in a hollow voice, "what
this old world needs to-day more than it ever needed
it before, isn t women to run business and make
governments and all that rot. I suppose it s all
right in its way to have women leavening up things
a trifle, but they ve gone and overdone it, Mibb ;
they re overdoing it already. They need to get back
to first principles, back to the good old-fashioned
family idea of home interest and unselfish devotion
to the heartaches of little kids and the solid sub
stantial fundamentals that the family is the basis
314 THE GREATER GLORY
of society, and there s not a place on God s earth
where a man can learn to be a square business man,
a decent citizen, a credit to this creator, that beats
his mother s knee, Mibb. Bring on your damned
old arguments about the uplift of society and puri
fication of government and the refining influence
of women in business. Talk your head off ! That
won t take from the heart of a man the ache after
something he can t express, the feeling that he s
all at sea somehow, or it won t put into his soul the
wholesome love and veneration and respect that
he had for his mother who was a woman and a wife
first, even if it cost her her life and her reason.
Mothers? The world s heartsick for them, Mibb.
God, I wish I had one right now !"
Finally the woman spoke.
"Well, I don t suppose I can say anything on that
score, Dick. Sometimes I ve felt something was
wrong in my own life. I ve had some fearfully
lonely moments, Dick, when I wondered if what the
matter with me was was -
"Go ahead and say it !" ordered the man. "It s
nothing to be ashamed of ! Kids ! that s it,
isn t it ? And why didn t you have them ; do you
suppose if poor Herb had had three or four kids he d
gone off the way he did? Why didn t you have
them, Mibb ? Because of the way you was brought
up. Your mother kept trying to save you from what
she called the drudgery of the home. I know;
I remember. She put pretty clothes on you and
did all she could to discourage you from becoming
a mother. Why did she do it? Because she
wasn t a mother herself. Oh, she may have gone
through hell and brought you into the world. But
that s only an incident in motherhood, Mibb. She
THE GREATER GLORY 315
wasn t living naturally in her own home herself;
she was the pants and the check book and the
wage earner of your home I remember how your
dad sat around Will Seaver s store in the old days
rather than smoke his pipe with his feet on his own
sitting-room stove at home. And you had mother
hood and homehood ironed out of you the same as
millions of young girls are getting it ironed out of
them to-day."
"Then you admit I wasn t to blame wholly,
Dick."
"But I hold it was up to you when you reached
maturity and age of reason yourself, to correct the
trouble, just as it s up to the women of to-day to
do it. Lord, the men can t do it ; the women have
got to do it for themselves."
"But you ll admit that the drudgery of the home
is"
"Drudgery of the home hell! There s no
drudgery of the home only what women make for
themselves. There s drudgery everywhere. All of
us have got to sweat our clothes for the things we
make the world hand over to us. It s all in the way
you look at a thing; what your mental attitude is.
I suppose sawing wood is one of the hardest kinds
of labor. Yet don t you remember old Bill Fletcher
up home ? He said the Lord sent him into the world
a-purpose to saw wood and he was made to saw
wood, and he was going to saw wood and saw wood
he did. The man was supremely happy in sawing
wood. It s the same with anything and every
thing. It s all in your mental attitude. If you re
a woman and hate housework and motherhood and
don t use your brains in your work and don t know
how to mother your husband and your boys and
316 THE GREATER GLORY
get the best results by the shortest route, like
you d have to do to be successful in business, nat
urally what you have to do in your natural sphere
will be drudgery, won t it? And if you go on
creating this mangling myth about the drudgery
of the home and pass it on to your daughter and she
skims it over as quickly as she can and passes the
idea on to her daughter, pretty soon the drudgery
of the home is going to be a reality, isn t it? But
if you love your home and your babies and look at
your life work as the biggest job under God s heaven,
bringing human beings to life and caring for them
and rearing them into the stature of strong men and
noble women if your mental attitude is right
there won t be much drudgery in it, will there ? "
"Dick," said the woman after a long time. "I m
sorry ; oh, I m so sorry for lots of things. The pity
of it is that for me it s too late to mend. I
guess I guess you ve told the truth, Dick. I
do know what s the matter with me. Yes, I ll
confess it. It was the kids, the little kids of my own
that I never had. I ve lived a lonely, abnormal
life and I guess I guess it s up to me to pay
the penalty. Gawd, haven t I paid the penalty?"
she cried it out suddenly. "Dick, perhaps it was
the longing for some remnant of that satisfaction
that I was seeking though I wouldn t hardly
dare confess it to myself when I went around
with you, hoping that "
"Hoping that I d marry you? It s too late,
Mibb. I ve seen too much; I m all burned out
inside. I m burned out and blue and discouraged
and cynical. It s been my lot to run up against
only the modern women meaning the kind that
sort of break out in a riot when some one dares to
THE GREATER GLORY 317
say that woman s place is in the home. Maybe it s
because I came away from a little town so early in
life. Whatever it is, it s done for me."
There was an awful pathos in Dick Robinson s
voice. And something stirred in the woman across
the table, the woman who had wasted the sub
stance of her womanhood in selfish living. Perhaps
it was the latent spark of maternity ; heart answer
ing heart in the loneliness of worldliness. A choke
came in her parched throat. She reached forth
her hands convulsively.
"Dick," she whispered, "if you d only let me
help you ; if you only would ! "
"You can t !" he declared harshly. "No woman
can. I ve seen so much now that I wouldn t trust
the best woman that ever drew breath. The
time for that is on the threshold of life, not in the
exit out into the late afternoon, when everything s
in the future and a man needs a woman s help and
a home behind him and a family to bind and inspire
him. Oh, Mibb ! There s so many women and
men too who like to argue how women live
beside men and fight beside men and ought to vote
beside men, and dish out a beautiful lot of claptrap
about how legislation is going to change this, that
and the other evil that s afflicting society. But
take it from an old rounder, Mibb ; that s all irrel
evant and shallow and on the surface. It doesn t
go deep enough, Mibb. It doesn t get down to the
bedrock and the hard-pan of human nature and
alter the causes that are spreading the disease of
social dissatisfaction. You can t legislate old mother
Nature, Mibb. You can t rip out in a generation
all that s been imbedded in the race since the dawn
of time. The trouble is that women are consciously
318 THE GREATER GLORY
or unconsciously forgetting how to mother, Mibb
mother their kids or their menfolk they re simply
killing the maternal instinct by distractions. Our
industrial generation means families moving around
from town to town where wages are highest ; camp
ing out in rented quarters, getting away from the
land, from substantial domestic foundations. We re
going through a sort of racial hysteria for shorter
methods, quicker results, labor-saving devices, a
million distractions and diversions and it s
making everything, even motherhood and do
mestic life, over into the same hit-or-miss, off-
again-on-again-gone-again pabulum. And where
we re all going to bring up, the good God in His
infinite wisdom only knows. Now you know what
I mean when I say I ve got no use for your claim a
moment ago that I m expected to carry my burdens
and win my battle and shield and protect you women
when at the same time you re scrambling away as
fast as you can from filling the function you re in
tended by nature to fill in the heart of a man and
the life of his family. Oh, hell, Mibb, I m sick of
it; sick unto death. I ll take your society in the
way I ve taken it the last two years, for mental
diversion. But soul diversion and satisfaction, and
inspiration and that heart-hunger for the thing I
call maternity, that s another thing, Mibb. I
don t ever expect to know it, and I m sour and caustic
about it inside and there s about as much chance
of ever recovering at my time in life as there is for
the cost of living to go down. And that s some
chance !"
"Dick! Dick! And this, this, after all, is the
result of my life !"
"It looks as if it were, Mibb. Kind of barren
THE GREATER GLORY 319
and lonely and unpleasant to look forward to, isn t
it?" He recovered his old self with a sigh. "Just
think of me in those times ; we re a pair of domestic
cripples. Let it go at that."
"Stolen sweets bitter almonds," muttered the
woman. "A man can be lonely and forget; but a
lonely woman is the loneliest creature on God s
footstool."
"Hell! Let s forget it, Mibb. I m going to
order a drink ! "
Which he did.
Over in the corner an orchestra began jazzy music
for the theater crowd which was coming in.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH HERB TRUMAN COMES BACK, STAYS FOR
BUT A LITTLE WHILE AND THEN GOES His WAY
ALSO AROUND THE BEND IN THE ROAD BY THE
SUMACHS.
IF Tom s decision to pass up the ministry for a
newspaperman s career was another great dis
appointment in his mother s life, Mary never made
any fuss about it. If she had ever dreamed of a
time when she would look up into a pulpit and see
her son there, preaching the message of the good
God to a world of sin-sick and heart-hungry men and
women, and realized like many other dreams of
hers that it would never materialize, she buried that
also in her poor tired mother-heart and went on
working to educate the rest of the boys.
Tom Purse was a good boy. He was too good for
the Boston Chronicle office ! He had been on the
Hub paper a year and seven months, sending what
money he could back to his mother, when word
came that opportunity had opened for him to go
down to New York. He accepted the place and
then for a time we lost track of him. Next we
heard he was married !
The other boys were coming along now. Fred
had taken an agricultural course at Amherst and
in the summer he used the poor little hillside farm
to try out his experiments. Then he returned to
college each fall and left the hired man to reap the
THE GREATER GLORY 321
harvest. And many were the phenomenal turnips
or apples or melons that Mary brought us to the
office with a pathetic pride on her plain features,
features where now all traces of beauty and girlhood
had faded, leaving her a plain old woman with hair
rapidly growing white. Then, after graduation, the
next we heard he had taken a chair in an agricul
tural college out in Ohio.
For some time Teddy worked for us, carrying
papers and washing forms and doing odd jobs. But
Teddy s mind worked in mechanical grooves. He
nearly killed himself trying out a home-made flying
machine. And if we were to hesitate and in a
weak moment yield to the wishes of Sam Hod,
about the biggest incident of drama we could glean
from those years "when nothin didn t happen"
was the time that he constructed an automobile
that got away from him at the top of Maple Street
hill, careened wildly down into Main Street and
went bang into the window of Ben Williams cloth
ing store. The window was plate glass, and Mary
and Teddy had to pay for it. He left school in
the second year of a technical course to go with a
firm of engineers out in Chicago who wanted young
men badly in the prosperous back-fire that resulted
from the 1907 panic. Last we heard of Ted, he
was on a big bridge job somewhere in western
Pennsylvania.
Dick stayed around Paris until he was nineteen.
But he was the business man and Yankee trader of
the family. He tended store for Alec Potherton,
our local shoeman, and stuck to college afterward
simply because he thought it would equip him to
do a bigger business. He graduated with the help
of his brothers and mother and then took a
322 THE GREATER GLORY
place with a firm of wholesale shoe men in Lynn and
Brockton. He used practically his whole salary
the first two years in getting his younger brothers,
George and Dexter, through school. George plowed
through law school, stayed for a time with a firm of
Boston attorneys, and then went under his own sail.
The last we heard of him, he was married, so for a
lawyer he must have prospered.
Dexter was the last to leave, and the day he set
out for Pittsburg, there wasn t a more pitiful sight
in Paris County than "Aunt Mary." For that
was the name the town gave her, in all kindness.
She laid her frail old hand down quietly on the
case and said in a voice trembling with emotion :
" If only one of my boys had turned out a preacher !
But not a one did! Not a one!"
That was the nearest to a complaint we ever
heard her make.
They must have been lonesome days for her,
after Dexter went. Old faces must have floated at
times in the space over her type cases; old voices
called across the years. On gray days it must
have come to her that all she had to do was walk
around the type rack and find Jack at his old place
over the imposing stones, or Daddy Joe over in
the ad. alley, or Lawrence Briggs rolling his glass
eye around the stove clandestinely to the terror of
Annie Seavers and the other girl. But they were
all gone. Jack and all of them excepting Mr.
Nimrod Briggs and Sam Hod and herself and the
scribe with the grimy fingers whose pen travels
slowly now across this page.
And then came the day when Mary dumped her
final stick and went out to the poor Purse Place and
never came back.
THE GREATER GLORY 323
It was the day when Herb Truman showed up
in the village.
For Herbert Truman did one day turn up again
in Paris. The door opened one summer s morning,
and a big-bodied, loose-jointed, rather dilapidated
individual shuffled into the office, dressed in a faded
green cutaway coat with two buttons ridiculously
high in the back, and a pair of gray trousers badly
bagged at the knees. He wore a derby hat, a bosom
shirt without a collar and big shoes in which were
slits to ease his corns., A week s growth of very
white stubble was on an over-pink jowl and he was
given to wheezing.
"Is Jack Purse in ? Does he work here now ? "
asked this seedy individual of Myrtle Corey, our
little Marguerite-Clark proofreader.
Myrtle was puzzled.
"Jack Purse! There s only one Purse around
here and that s a woman, Aunt Mary Purse, who s
leaving us to-day. I don t know whether her
husband s name was Jack or not."
"I been away for quite a spell," apologized the
derelict. "But Mary Purse was Jack Purse s wife.
I remember that, well enough. Is Jack workin
somewheres else?"
"Golly," exclaimed Myrtle, "he s dead. Been
dead ever so many years ; long before my time !"
"Dead?" The man repeated it in a cracked
voice. It didn t appear that he quite comprehended.
There was an awkward pause.
"Do you want me to call Aunt Mary ?"
"Yes, I d like to see Mary again !"
Myrtle went out into the back room but came
back in a moment alone.
"The foreman says Aunt Mary came to work this
324 THE GREATER GLORY
morning but wasn t feeling well and went home,
about an hour ago."
"Went home?"
"Out to the poor Purse Place on Cobb Hill."
"The poor Purse place? Did they used to call
it the Wheeler place ? "
"I believe so."
"I think I been there. Maybe I ll go out. 1
come back here to see the Purses. I used to know
em years ago," he said whimsically, somehow child
like.
He was moving toward the door when Sam Hod
came in. He cast a curious glance at the visitor.
Then something stirred in Sam s memory.
"Good morning," he declared. "It seems to
me I remember your face but I can t recall your
name
"Truman s my name, Herbert Truman! My
folks used to own the Truman Carriage Works
years ago."
"Good Lord !" cried Sam as he inventoried again
the poor derelict on the sea of human life.
He visited with us the balance of the forenoon,
and we learned that he had spent much of the inter
vening time in Missouri and Kansas. He kept
making constant references to "my son", so we
inferred that he had been married. But what had
become of the wife or boy we couldn t quite make
out, nor could he tell a very connected story.
"Poor old Herb!" declared Sam, passing me in
the back room. "Life has done for him. As the
young folks say nowadays, he s a little bit off his
base."
"I think," said Herb finally in his childish voice,
THE GREATER GLORY 325
"that J ll go out and call on a few folks" and he
mentioned several names. But we had to tell him
that the people he had come to see, with the excep
tion of Mary Purse, were all moved away, scattered,
or dead.
"There s been quite a lot o changes," he said
philosophically. " Mibb Henderson ? is she here ? "
We looked at him and wondered if he realized
he had once been married to Mabel and what he
had done to her one night in the far western city.
"No," we told him. "Harvey Henderson died,
you remember. Mrs. Henderson went off with her
daughter and we never knew what became of her."
"And you don t know where she is now?"
"No. Not the slightest idea."
"I think," he said, these items making no im
pression upon him, "I ll go out and visit Mary
Purse. I used to like Mary Purse. She ll be glad
to see me."
We brushed him off and knocked the dents out.
of his derby hat, and Sam sent out and bought
him a collar and tie so he could look his best to visit
Mary. He submitted calmly to the dolling up and
claimed he was grateful when Sam gave him two
dollars. Then he shuffled out of the office.
It must have taken Herb all day to walk that six
miles because it was almost sunset when he turned
finally into the Purse yard.
Aunt Mary was sitting on the side porch, just as
she had been sitting one day when Herb had entered
the yard to tell her the home was hers no longer. She
saw the big flabby hulk with the faded green coat
and the derby hat which had somehow managed
to get the dents back into its crown on the way
out, and she took him for a tramp come to beg food.
326 THE GREATER GLORY
He approached the steps and stood there for a
moment, looking around as though to fix something
in his memory.
"Why," he said in simple surprise, "I must o
walked out. And that was foolish. I oughter
hitched up Monday- WashinV
Mary started. Her eyesight was failing her
after the long years setting the little type faces.
She came down one step and peered closer into his
features.
"Herbert!" she said thickly.
Something in her face, her voice, her manner of
repeating his name, did the business. His wander
ing thoughts came back. He recognized her in that
moment and he recognized himself, and he looked
down at himself and out around the yard as though
astonished to find himself there.
! "I come out to see you, Mary," he said. "It s
a long, long time since we had a talk."
He sat down opposite her precisely as he had
seated himself one summer s day in the years before.
And the past all rose up again before both of them.
"Where have you been all this time, Herbert?"
she asked in a voice mellow with sympathy.
"Somewhere, out there!" he said thickly, with
a wave of his frayed arm to the west. "There s
been so many places. I can t remember them all.
Just sort o wandered around, Mary, lookin for
happiness. Don t press me about it. It s you I
want to hear about."
And she told him. She told him about the home
on Pleasant Street and its ending; about Jack s
worries and struggles and heart hopes and disap
pointments. She told him too, about Jack s passing
and the years she had spent since in the Telegraph
THE GREATER GLORY 327
office. She told him about each boy and where he
was and what he had become and how well he was
doing. And through it all, something of his own
old personality coming back through the hazes of an
abused mind and memory, he sat there and never
interrupted. When she was finished with the story
down in the present, it was a different Herbert
than the one who had left our office who said :
"And ain t it terrible lonesome for you, livin
out here alone in this Cobb Hill house now that
Dexter s gone and old Mrs. Morrow is dead?"
Old Aunt Mary shut her lips tightly to keep
back the emotion. But the tears would not stay
leashed.
"Yes," she said huskily, "but I love it. I lived
here as a girl and dreamed dreams of the future here
and left the old russet apple-tree that now is only a
lightning blasted stump down in the orchard here,
to go to Paris and take up my life work there. It
was here that I buried mother. It was here that
I came with Jack and our family of six little boys.
Life was full of many beautiful things then. And
the place still stands for them now. Jack s coffin
was carried out this door. One by one I watched
the boys go away to college and later out of my life
through this chip-cluttered yard and down the road
and around the bend where the sumachs hid them.
"No, Herbert, I couldn t leave it. The dear
Father knows it s lonely. But it would be lonelier
to live somewhere else now without the memories.
They are all I ve got now the memories but
they re sweet memories."
The old man rubbed his face and seemed startled
to find the stubble upon it. He made as though to
say something and then checked himself. For
328 THE GREATER GLORY
with her eyes fixed on the peaceful scene in the valley
below them Mary was going on :
"The place is filled with ghosts, Herbert, but I
am not afraid of the ghosts. There is the ghost of
the little girl who played around here and down
under the old russet apple-tree and the stone wall
and the fence by the woods that have all been cut
away. There is the ghost of my mother that comes
to me in the evenings and sits with me by the open
window when the moon is high and the frogs are
peeping. Then there are other little ghosts -
boys that once called me mother and that I worked
for and gave my life for and who are somewhere
out in the world now doing the world s work. And
yet I see these little ghosts again often, Herbert,
toddling through the rooms, playing about the old
toy-scarred furniture; it may sound eery to you,
but many is the door that I open to feel the presence
therein of those who have gone far off. And I
am not afraid."
Herbert was now quite himself again. But he was
a broken-down old man.
"Mary," he said in his queer cracked voice, "I
loved you once, didn t I ? You know that."
"Yes, Herbert dear, I believe you did."
> "I wish it was so that we could we could
spend our last few years together."
She covered her care-lined features with her
gnarled red hands for the moment. She lifted
them again with a wonderful gentleness upon her
face.
"It would be sacrilege, Herbert," she said.
"Sacrilege to the ghosts the memories the
ones who are gone. Not now, Herbert. It is too
late. If you had come ten years ago when I was
THE GREATER GLORY 329
struggling to raise the boys, perhaps the drama of
our lives might have had a different ending. But I
am an old woman now, Herbert. I feel somehow
that my work is almost done. When Jack died,
the minister who is also old now preached a beau
tiful sermon about loaning our loved ones to eternity
to make our anticipation of death out-balance our
fear of its shadows. I know now what the minister
meant."
The day died as they sat there, just as it had
died one springtime years and years before. Robins
called far across the valley where the sun shone
in long slanting beams of gold. The hush of New
England peace was upon the world and on the old
Purse place and upon the woman s life.
"I guess I ll go now, Mary," Herbert said
clumsily as in days of yore.
"You ll come again and see me, Herbert. That
at least would be a pleasant thing for both of us."
"Perhaps, Mary," he said. He started to go.
Then he came back. "And there was a little black
mare Mon Mon Monday- Washin ," he said.
"What ever became of Monday- Washin ?"
"She died of colic one night about twelve years
ago, Herbert. But she had a good home to the last."
"I m glad of that," he said with much of his old
awkwardness. "Thank you, Mary."
"You ll come again and visit, Herbert?"
"Perhaps, Mary. Good-by."
"Good-by, Herbert."
She watched him shuffle across the yard and out
under the hoary old maples. He went down the
road and then he also vanished where so much in
Mary s life had vanished around the bend in the
road by the sumachs.
330 THE GREATER GLORY
Around the bend in the road by the sumachs,
indeed !
Poor Herb ! He went around the bend by the
sumachs and down the simple country road. And
somewhere down near Simonds woods because
of the mental strain which the visit had made upon
him, because of the reawakening of his mind, be
cause, perhaps, of the old associations and all which
they suddenly meant to him again something
happened in poor old Herb s head, and he fell in the
road there and was found by old man Dickinson,
driving out from the village later that night with the
evening mail.
He was dead by the time that old man Dickinson
got him to Doctor Johnson s.
All that night and the next day he lay in Blake
Whipple s Undertaking Parlors with no one to
mourn for him excepting a few poor old friends who
shortly will be lying in Blake Whipple s parlors them
selves, and who scarcely recognized in him the
boy of the Long Ago no one to care only a
frayed handful to come to the funeral.
The men and women of the village who had known
him in the old days took up a purse to defray the
expenses of that simple service and he was laid away
beside his father and mother on the hill, with
Jack Purse sleeping through the years a few graves
away under the briarbloom.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH THE LONG LANE OF LIFE TURNS SUD
DENLY FOR MARY PURSE THROUGH GREEN PAS
TURES AND BESIDE STILL WATERS AND HER CUP
OF LIFE S HAPPINESS AND REWARD Is FILLED TO
ITS BRIM.
THE summer and autumn passed. Then came an
awful Vermont winter when Sam made his maiden
sister go and live with Aunt Mary Purse to see that
the old house on Cobb Hill saw no further tragedy.
Spring came in again with its weeks of alternate slush
and mud and pneumonia weather. Then one day
before the mud was entirely dried or the first green
shoots began poking through the fragrant sod,
Sam at the exchange table was trying to think up a
subject for an editorial, pawing idly amid the mass
of newspapers, free magazines, political claptrap
and press material which would later find its way
into our wastebasket. His hand struck a long heavy
periodical done in brown paper. When he drew
it forth he saw it was addressed in a man s hand
writing and that it bore a two-cent stamp.
Suddenly the editor s feet came down with a
startled clump. He sat bolt upright, holding the
open magazine in his hands. Then he crossed the
floor, uttered an exclamation as he did so and laid
the paper down on my desk.
"Bill!" he cried, laying it out flat, "look at the
front cover and tell me whose picture that is !"
332 THE GREATER GLORY
Know him? Of course I knew him. Small
need to read the name beneath the picture.
"Why, it s Mary s boy," I said, and the book
keeper overheard and came running.
It was the current issue of a New York trade
paper published for newspaper men that Sam had
opened. There occupying the whole of the front
page was a fine half-tone of Aunt Mary s oldest
boy, a strongfaced, clean-cut, fine-looking man.
He had just been promoted to a position as leading
editorial writer on one of the greatest newspapers
in America.
"Turn to page seven, Mr. Hod !" begged the book
keeper. "See what its got to say inside about him."
We turned to the indicated page. There, as we
expected, we found Tom Purse s biography, Tom
Purse who once washed the forms and swept out
our little country office. Sure enough too, our
little country paper was given full credit as being
his kindergarten of journalism.
But that was not all.
The United States, at the time, was apparently
becoming embroiled in diplomatic difficulty with
Mexico. Force might have to be employed; it
might mean war. The article went on to add that
there was to be a great union meeting of three of the
biggest New York churches in the immense Man
hattan Tabernacle that following Sabbath evening
and because of his tremendous editorial position, an
invitation had been extended to this big newspaper
man to preach the sermon. His acceptance had
been recorded. His text was to be: "Jesus Christ,
the King of the Nations."
"His mother old Aunt Mary ought to see
this paper," I declared.
THE GREATER GLORY 333
"Bill," said Sam thickly, "she ought to see the
boy himself, risen to his power and his manhood.
Don t you know it was her wish all along a
piteously disappointed wish that one of her boys
should turn out a preacher ? Bill, Aunt Mary ought
to hear Tom Purse address that massive congregation."
"And I wouldn t mind hearing him myself,"
I replied vehemently.
There was silence between us for a moment. It
was the little bookkeeper who said :
"Wouldn t it be grand if Uncle Bill could take
Aunt Mary down there somehow, telling her nothing
about it, and get her into that building without
ever knowing who the speaker was to be, and surprise
her by seeing her son walk out and address that
audience."
Sam Hod suddenly acted like a boy.
"Bill," he cried, "I ve got an idea !"
"Yes?"
"Let s do a kindly act ; for just once in our lives,
let s do a kindly act !"
"Considering that for thirty-seven years we ve
been robbing widows and orphans, firing foundling
asylums and kicking the crutches out from under
cripples, let s have an explanation."
"I m for giving Mary Purse a whale of a blow
out at the Telegraph s expense."
"A banquet?"
"No, you fat-head! A trip to New York to
hear her son deliver that address ! You get her to
do it, Bill. Here s where Aunt Mary, for the first
time in her life, is going to be introduced to some
thing beside worry and trouble and heartache."
He took a quick turn up and down the office. "Bill,"
he declared, "I can t go myself on account of
334 THE GREATER GLORY
Saunders coming down to-morrow on the annual
paper contract. But you can go, Bill you can go
- and take Aunt Mary and the paper will pay
her expenses. Take her down to the Big City
without saying one word to her of her boy s promo
tion or what they ve asked him to do. Take her
down and for once let the poor, starved, lonesome
old soul get one final ray of sunshine into her over
worked and spent and exhausted life."
Agreed? Of course we agreed. Acting on an
impulse that was strange in Sam Hod, the editor
flung himself into his chair, felt for his check book
and wrote a good-sized check.
"Take your wife into it, Bill. Make her get
Aunt Mary all the clothes she needs that her boys
may have forgotten to provide for her; tell her
you re going to New York on a business trip for the
paper and there s a chance for her to visit her boy
and his wife as an equal surprise to them. And
we ll charge it up to profit and loss but principally
profit."
It took two days effort on the part of my wife
and myself to persuade Aunt Mary to accompany
us on a trip to New York and incidentally "look
in" on her son. I remember the first time I went
out to talk with her about it, she was sitting in her
rocker in the side room. I had the trade magazine
with me, but we had carefully clipped out the note
on the end of Tom s biography, telling about the
address.
"Mary," I said, "they ve printed Tom s picture
in a New York paper."
Her wrinkled hand went to her lips.
"My stars!" she cried faintly. "Has he got in
jail?"
THE GREATER GLORY 335
"No such bad luck, Mary. Get your glasses
and read this piece. And then Ann and I have got
a plan for a good time to propose to you."
So it was that three days later Aunt Mary and
my wife and I were being whirled through lower
Connecticut in the chair car of a Pullman the
first one Mary had ever experienced and that
in the dusk we began to see the ten million lights of
upper New York flash out in the twilight s dreariness.
Three or four times during the ride Mary had choked
up and wondered whether or not Tom s wife would
be glad to see her, coming in unannounced in this
way. But we reassured her and said that surprise
parties were always happiest and studiously kept
newspapers away from her so that no mention of
the coming meeting might reach her.
It was a difficult task inventing excuses for not
going immediately on our arrival to Tom Purse s
residence over in Brooklyn. Finally we had to tell
her that it was arranged for Tom to meet us that
evening at the close of a big meeting in the Man
hattan Tabernacle which he was covering for his
paper. Which was the truth and satisfied her.
When we reached the place by taxi after supper,
the place, despite its world-famous size, was crowded
to the doors with people. Old Aunt Mary bore up
well in the crowds ; her anticipation of what was
coming afterward was pathetic. We fought our
way up four flights of stairs and came out on a
great gallery with the whole vast sea of space below
us thronged with chaotic human faces. Three
unoccupied seats were obtained down by the rail
in the center, on the sheer edge of the dizzy depths
down into the body of the house.
Just before the great organ began to shake
336 THE GREATER GLORY
that tremendous edifice, old Aunt Mary leaned
over.
"Who s goin to be the preacher to-night?" she
whispered.
A flood of emotion went over us that nearly swept
us over the rail. Poor Aunt Mary ! If she only
knew ! But we had kept the secret well ; the sur
prise would be overwhelming.
"Wait and see," was all we said.
We stole two or three glances at her while waiting
for those services to begin. Her face was deep-
lined with the care and the struggle she had ex
perienced. Her red hands that had set so many
personals for our little local paper were distorted out
of shape with the years of labor; they were now
covered with new black gloves. But she was gazing
over the rail with the entranced delight of a child.
Time passed quickly. We had come in late.
The biggest pipe organ in America or in the world
began to rumble and fill that tremendous void with
music.
WTio the minister was who read the scripture or
who the dignitary who made the prayer, we do not
know. It doesn t matter. Neither did the leader
of the music. But mightily interested indeed were
we when three men mounted the chancel and took
seats in the high-backed chairs behind the pulpit.
For in the center of them, in a smooth, sleek, frock
coat which fitted his stocky and somewhat youthful
figure we had small difficulty in recognizing even
from that height Thomas Purse of the Paris Tele
graph office and the poor Purse Place.
It was after eight o clock when one of the last
three arose to announce the speaker for the evening.
Aunt Mary s eyesight had not been keen enough
THE GREATER GLORY 337
to recognize Tom from the height and the distance
as we had done. So she suddenly leaned over.
"What?" she demanded /in a hoarse whisper.
* What did he say the speaker s name was ?"
"He said, Mary," I told her in a voice I did not
recognize as my own, "he said the speaker of the
evening was Mr. Thomas Purse !"
"Why! why that s the name of my boy!"
she gasped.
"Mary," we said, almost fearful of the result,
"that is your boy /"
Old Aunt Mary drew back and for one long
moment became rigid as though turned to stone.
"My boy my boy Tom!" she cried. It
was heard all over our part of the gallery. People
craned their heads in our direction.
"Yes," I replied.
"He s speaking here to-night? He s
preachin ? "
"Yes, Mary. It was all a little surprise for you.
That s why we brought you down. Hush ! Tom,
your boy Tom, is starting his address ! "
Her boy !
Down there on the pinnacle, facing that gigantic
sea of human faces, with the vast lights overhead,
the vast balconies and galleries around, the great
organ at his back, that stocky, well-dressed, fine-
faced man down there on the pinnacle addressing
this vast assemblage of people in strong, sure,
steady statements was her boy !
Her gnarled, misshapen old hands, made only to
do mother work and to hold a composing stick,
gripped the railing. Her care-furrowed face looked
down upon him transfixed. Her eyes were livid
things.
338 THE GREATER GLORY
Her boy !
Down there on the vast pinnacle, the center of
that great throng, the focus of thousands of eyes
was Thomas Purse of the poor Purse Place, and all
this crowd was there to hear him preach, to hear
her boy preach ! Down there was Thomas Purse,
the boy and the man who had fought and con
quered and won. Down there was the lad that
by sheer merit and brains and the blood of his
mother that was in him had pounded his way up
until his voice and his pen were conceded to rank
among those mightiest in the land. And he was
her boy ! and he was preaching !
It must have come to Aunt Mary, as she sat there
in those next few moments of pitiful delirium, in
another world, rigid and transfixed, what all those
long years meant in the office of the little Paris
Daily Telegraph. Long dreary days when she had
looked forward into a cheerless future and done her
task only one hour at a time for the sake of the
doing and because of her mother-love which
prompted the endeavor; quiet evening hours when
she had bent over a crib where a little boy cried, and
said: "You want your father, little lad; and oh,
dear God, I want him, too"; hours when she had
worked into the dark and soundless midnights mend
ing tiny little jackets, making tiny little clothes, sew
ing on little buttons, while her tears blended with
the stitches and she could not see her needle for
them; memories of the day when his father had
died and she had accepted her lot with the noble
philosophy that "troubles are sent us to be over
come" and "we ll get along somehow, I guess",
which meant she would shoulder uncomplainingly
the double burden ; monotonous, backbreaking
THE GREATER GLORY 339
months and years when she had worked over a
grimy type case for the sake of the food and the
clothes and the taxes and the meager tuition which
the resultant money could provide; days of agony,
when she had watched the boys go out of sight
around the bend in the road by the sumachs ; lonely
days when she had wandered through the rooms of
the poor Purse place and fancied she saw little
ghosts toddling about the legs of toy-scarred tables,
- verily, indeed, all these must have come to Aunt
Mary in that greatest of all moments, that wonder
ful, heart-pausing moment when she looked over the
edge of the high balcony down on the black, stocky
figure who was of the world and the world s business,
yet was placing Jesus the Son of Mary, the Man of
Sorrows, the greatest of all Statesmen, Christ the
Master, forward as the great pattern on whose pre
cepts governments of men must be built to weather
the vicissitudes of ages and of peoples.
Her boy !
She had lain with her body wet with agony and
heard his first wordless cries piercing the darkness
of his new-born nights. She it had been who felt
for him in that darkness and gathered him to her
warm mother-breast. She had watched over him
through hours of feverish childhood slumber. She
had mended his tattered clothes in his young school
days ; comforted him in his boyish sorrows ; advised
with him in his heartrending high-school love
affairs ; guided him as best she knew into ways that
led to honor and uprightness, as it was given her
with her limited advantages to know.
He had finally left her, as is the law of life and
of species the wide world over through all ages that
have ever been or will ever come. She had given
340 THE GREATER GLORY
the best that was in her, and he had left her and
gone out to take his place in the battle of life among
men. But this was the glory of it : that he had not
been untrue to her whom he had left in boyish
thoughtlessness up in New England s bleak hours
of twilight. He had fought a man s-sized fight and
won his recognition. He was her son ! And we
know that in those moments when she watched
him down before those thousands, Aunt Mary
came into the blessing of her heritage through an
emotion that is known by no other save the mother-
heart. It was her great and all-consuming, all-
alleviating, all-recompensing moment of power and
glory, the greater glory, the greatest glory, of
whose width and breadth and depth there is no
telling.
When it was over we got her out of that place
somehow and down those cursed flights of stairs.
Out in the street, after the press of the throng and
the excitement, the body that had given so much
and spent so much, broke beneath the strain. She
fainted. In a taxi we took her hurriedly to her
hotel and summoned a physician.
Hours afterward the man of medicine called me
aside.
"Has this woman any children or other relatives ? "
he asked.
We told him that she had.
"I advise you to call them," he said. "Some
how, all at once, her system has given out. It s
a general breakdown and collapse. She may pull
through it ; she may go quietly and without any
pain. Yes, get them here. Perhaps they will help
her. It s a peculiar case. I don t understand it."
THE GREATER GLORY 341
But we who remembered Mary Purse as she had
come to work for us in the long ago, we who re
membered the love-match with poor Jack Purse,
we who remembered the young mother with the
wistful face who had trundled babies past the Main
Street shop windows, we who remembered the one
who had driven her husband home that last night
from Ezekial s and two weeks later buried him ; we
who remembered the mother in whose face as she
took up her cross smilingly Sam had seen Jesus
Christ, and who had watched one by one those she
loved best on earth go down the road and become
lost to view by the sumachs we understood.
Aunt Mary had lived to realize that all her labors
and sacrifices had not been in vain.
She had known the greater glory the greatest
glory.
And now she wanted to go and tell the man she
had lost back over the years.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH AT LAST WE COME TO KNOW WHAT Is
MEANT BY THE GREATER GLORY WHICH OFTEN
COMES TO WOMANKIND WHEN THE SUN OF LIFE
Is SETTING.
A DAY and a half later the Purse boys began
arriving. There came a moment that evening that
I can never, never forget.
On the rich bed lay the frail body of a broken-
down old woman. She was sallow and spent and
her life was ebbing. And about that bed stood six
stalwart, full-grown, manly men, strong men,
men who were doing the work of the world, clean-
cut, well-born, firm-jawed fellows.
First there was Tom, who stood at the head of the
bed and held his mother s hand. Daily through
his editorial page he spoke to a quarter million men
and women and impressed great truths upon them
with a prestige and power exerted by no pulpit.
Next came Fred, who occupied a chair in an
agricultural university. He taught men how to
grasp the great forces of nature provided by the
Creator, and with aid from them bring forth scien
tifically the food wherewith to feed the race.
Beside him was Theodore, the man who wrestled
with other forces of nature and subdued them and
compelled them to do his bidding. He spanned
streams for human commerce. He laid the rails
that brought civilization into the far places. He
THE GREATER GLORY 343
carried to success great irrigation projects so that
water was brought to arid lands and the desert
through his hand and brain was made to blossom
like a rose.
On the other side of the bed were Richard and
George and Dexter. Each man was on his way
toward success. But most of all, they were first
of all men, resourceful, honest, forceful men,
expending their lives and their talents for the
betterment of the race.
And there on the bed, broken and frail and
worn-out and old, lay the one to whom they owed
their being. From her loins they had sprung;
from her travail they had felt that first sharp sting
of life in their nostrils, by her ministrations they
had been nurtured into mature life until they stood
- the completed product of woman and the Al
mighty.
She was only a poor old woman, spent and worn
and almost done with life. But she was not a failure.
No woman who raises one child or a dozen and
spends her life to bring other lives to maturity and
into the image of the Creator no such woman is a
failure, regardless how humble may have been her
lot or dark and cruel the pathway she has trodden.
At length the boys withdrew into Dexter s bed
room across the hall. In silence, with looks sheepish
and ashamed, they grouped themselves in different
attitudes about their eldest brother. At length that
eldest brother spoke. His voice was husky.
"A grateful bunch of fat-heads we six are, aren t
we?"
"What do you mean, grateful ?"
"How long since you wrote mother last or sent
her any money?"
344 THE GREATER GLORY
"A couple of months, I guess."
"A couple of months ! Sufferin Moses ! Call
yourself a son. Bah !"
"How long since you did?"
"Three months," replied Tom honestly.
" Call yourself a son ? " mimicked George.
"No ; a skunk ! " said the eldest son, equally honest.
In his slow, thoughtful, precise way, Frederick
spoke up.
"I guess it hasn t been that we think any less of
mother or were ungrateful. But mother s always
appeared so self-reliant and self-supporting and
efficient that it s never come home to us hard enough
that she was human and could grow old and get
played out. I don t know as I ever gave it much
thought."
"To say nothing," added George, "of being so
blooming concentrated in making good at our jobs
that we hadn t much time to give to associations
of the past."
Silence, scowls, much drumming on table tops
with finger tips. Richard bit the tip off a cigar
savagely.
"My God, fellows," cried Tom, "mother s fifty-
seven ; fifty-seven only ; and she s old ! She looks
seventy. We re a bunch of cads, the whole kiboodle
of us. Dammit!"
The brothers took the censure without protest.
"What s her life been?" demanded Tom. "She
came off the farm and married dad. And they were
poorer than scrub whites and had to furnish their
home on instalments. She had this holy-rolling
bunch of roughnecks one by one that tied her down
and took away her looks and her womanhood and
made her old even before dad died. And then she
THE GREATER GLORY 345
lost him. We are old enough now to realize what
she faced, the morning she returned to her place in
the newspaper office to fight the battle of life for
thoughtless scum like ourselves. And think of the
stunt she s put over since ! Boys, does it strike
you that this is the first time to our knowledge that
mother s been to New York in her life?"
"Go on ! rub it in !" prompted Ted.
"Fellows," concluded Tom quickly because he
could not go on, "it s up to us to see that she spends
the rest of her days in joy-riding. It s up to us to
help her make up for lost time."
"How?"
"Here s my share : A week ago the paper wanted
to send me to Europe to get a line on international
politics. I turned it down because Lily couldn t
leave her crippled sister. I had no heart to go alone.
The paper s sending Higgins. But here s where
Higgins gets a disappointment. I m going to
Europe and by God, mother s going with me !"
"At her age?"
"What about her age? She s only fifty-seven.
All mother wants is a resting spell and a chance to
come back."
"Go in and tell her so," ordered George. "Maybe
it ll help her to recover."
Tom left the room to talk it over with his mother.
As he closed the door behind him, he came face to
face with a strange woman. She was dressed in a
long heavy coat and a hat of gorgeous red plush.
Her features were burned out and old, her eyes tired.
Something ailed her lips ; she could not speak
distinctly.
"I m looking for two-fifty-seven," she said.
"What do you want with two-fifty-seven?"
346 THE GREATER GLORY
"I just heard a story up in Manhattan Tabernacle
that Tom Purse s mother was in the crowd there
the other night and fainted. A policeman told me
she was brought here."
"She was. But you can t see her."
"But I must see her."
"Who are you?"
She told him, but the name made little or no
impression on him. "I knew your mother when
we were girls up in Vermont together. We were
chums, she and I," said the woman.
"What do you want with my mother just now?"
"I want to visit her. I want to tell her some-
thin ."
"You can t do it; she s ill!" said the son de
terminedly.
"Badly ill?"
"Yes."
"She s liable to die ?"
"Yes."
The woman s eyes stared at him blankly for a
moment. Her crippled lips formed a small round
" O." "She oughtn t to die without knowing."
"Knowing what?"
"I couldn t explain so you d appreciate. Listen!
Will she live through the night?"
"We hope so!"
The woman backed away, turned, started swiftly
for the elevator. "I ll be back!" she called. "I
must go to my apartment."
Tom went in to his mother.
Half an hour later came a tap at the door. The
nurse answered the summons.
"There s a woman out here says she must see
you, Mr. Purse."
347
Tom went out. The woman with the red plush
hat was there again.
"Is she any better, Mr. Purse?"
"A bit yes."
"But I can t see her?"
"No."
"If she wakes up and recognizes things, will you
give her this note?"
"Perhaps. It depends on her condition. What s
in it?"
"I heard your speech. It s sort of a surrender."
"My speech?"
"No; this note."
The nurse called to him. "Your mother s
whispering your name, Mr. Purse. You d better
come."
Tom thrust the big square envelope into his
pocket where it crumpled and was immediately
forgotten.
The woman in the red plush hat avoided the ele
vator. She went slowly down the stairs, as one
who had been cast out.
The woman in the red plush hat, with the tired
eyes, walked the hard pavements in the cold spring
rain. The rain in the country is sweet and sad.
It awakens a hundred fragrant odors from shrubs
and sod. But the rain in the city is raw and heart
less and spatters down like a curse and a scourge,
a reproof from the Creator that the cities are foul
and an abomination unto Him.
The woman walked the streets of the city beneath
this rain that was slowly bedraggling the hat and the
iron-gray hair. At length she came to an eating
and drinking place that she knew and she turned
S48 THE GREATER GLORY
inside. And as she turned inside, a moth-eaten little
poodle of a man who had been standing in a near-by
doorway, recognized her and trotted after to over
take her. He went inside also and smirked at her.
Half-apologetically, he fidgeted himself about until
she noticed him.
"Hello, Georgie ! You following me round
again? Come on in and have something, George.
Come and keep me company because I wish I was
dead."
It was just what the little poodle of a man had
wildly hoped for. Maybe if Mibb imbibed the
appropriate number of drinks she would become
generous as she had at sundry times in the past,
and loan him five so he could go back and get
another week s bed and board.
"Lost yer job, Mibb?" asked the threadbare
little man. He sat opposite her, his little rounded
shoulders hunched up, his thumbs together on the
table s edge, in his buttonhole a wilted, ragged
nosegay.
"No; something worse than my job, George."
"What could be worse n your job to lose, Mibb?"
"My soul, George, my soul, my soul !"
He looked at Mibb, trying to get his cue. Was
she facetious or already intoxicated or was she in
earnest? He concluded she was indulging in grim
jest.
"And when did you lose this soul o your n,
Mibb?"
"Years and years ago, George. Years and years
ago when I was young and handsome."
George smirked.
"You re pretty and handsome now, Mibb." Thus
did he hope to wheedle the five.
THE GREATER GLORY S4
"Pretty and handsome ? Don t be an ass, George.
I m not in the mood for it to-night."
"If you ain t pretty and handsome, what are you ?"
"I m a greasy, burned out, old woman with a heart
like a peanut and a face that shows plainly enough
she s gone the pace and is paying the price. That s
what I am ! "
"You re a woman - " began George.
"I m not a woman I m only female. Maybe
I showed some traces of being a woman once. May
be I could have become a woman if I d had a better
bringing up and not been so God-damned selfish.
But I bungled the job of life and I see it now and I
think I m going to get drunk. If you don t
want to miss it, sit where you are, George, and
watch me ossify ! v
"But Mabel, my dear !"
"Don t dear me! You want something out of
me. Nobody ever dears a selfish woman unless they
want favors. There s going to be a funeral here,
George. I know a woman who s goin to bury her
sorrows and heartache in booze. Hold a coffin handle,
George. It will be entertaining ! "
"But, Mabel; really, you mustn t, you know*
You ll lose your job
"Lose my job! And what o that? What s the
loss of a job beside the things I ve lost ? "
"What have you lost, especially, Mabel ?"
"What have I lost especially? Listen, I ll
tell you what I ve lost especially. I ve lost my girl
hood and my future ; I ve lost the regard of respect
able people and a birthright of honor. I ve lost the
love of one of the finest men God ever made, sort of a
silly grinning fellow but with a heart as good as gold
and out of whom I could have made a man, and a
350 THE GREATER GLORY
husband who d be with me now and make my last
days happy. I ve lost a fine home and friends and
the things that money can t buy, and I ve lost a
fortune also. I ve lost baby arms around my neck
and damp baby kisses on my lips. I ve lost the
blessings of little children growing up around me,
George ! and the joy of caressing their bumps and
softening their tragedies and healing their bruises.
I ve lost God ! what haven t I lost ! I ve
lost the glory of reaching times that I ve reached now,
to-night, and not a single man to tower over my
shoulder and call me mother and stand around
with his brothers beside my bed and pray to God, if
there is one, that my life may be spared for the sake
of what I mean to some one. That s what I ve
lost, ee-specially, George, and I only want to forget
my troubles and be carried back in fancy to my girl
hood in a little New England town again !"
The waiter came up. Mibb ordered wine. George
raised his stubby little hands to protest. But a bit
hysterically she laughed him down.
"And why have I lost it, George why have I
lost all those things ? I ll tell you, George. Because
I was too damned afraid that I d do somethin for
other folks that d interfere with my blessed happiness
or spoil my shape. Because I was brought up by a
hellion that should have been covered with black
blotches from a harness tug for teaching me that a
woman s place in life was to go around with a stuffed
club in her skirts loaded to the point of explosion
because some man might be treadin on her rights.
By God ! Rights ! All the rights most of the women
nowadays need is the right to have their hearts broken
and their souls all mangled and cut up so s they can
know the meaning of fellow feeling and home love and
THE GREATER GLORY 351
sympathy. Because when a woman s a woman first
and other things afterward, George, she doesn t
need to worry none about her rights. She ll get her
rights, all right, without hiring any halls or buying
any brass bands or breaking up homes or going out
and grabbing a man s pay envelope !"
The waiter came with the drinks and Mibb took
three at once. Promptly she became still more
hysterical.
"Look at me, George! You d never think I d
ever have been a famous lady, would you, George?
You d never think I d come from a sweet, pure, little
town up in the hills of New England and been mar
ried to a good man with money enough once to buy
this street ? You d never think I d had a home with
fourteen rooms and three baths and a lawn where you
could hold a moving-picture carnival ? Never think
I d been to Europe four times and spent more money
on jewelry in a week than I ll earn now for the rest
of my life ? Never think all those things, would you,
George? I m a beauty now, ain t I George? I ve
a face like a pan of dough and a shape like a bundle
of iniquity ! I ve got a home that stinks of straw
matting and slops, and jewelry now that Woolworth
lays in by the ton. I ve got all the happiness out of
life that life has to give, excepting the happiness that
conies from sacrifice and repression and generosity.
I ve been thirty years carefully avoiding the un
pleasant things in life and met suddenly the brink
of the precipice that yawns down into the chasms of
abandon ! "
The frayed poodle watched her furtively ; he began
to dismiss thoughts of getting that five with Mibb
in such a state and momentarily growing worse.
"It s all right to have a good time while you re
352 THE GREATER GLORY
young, George ! It s smart to call the girls who
marry for love and settle down quietly into homes
slow , and laugh at them for being content to struggle
on with only fifteen a week in the man s envelope.
It s quite the proper thing to avoid having babies and
keeping your figure and follow the styles and live
generally on the upper crust while others are growing
careworn and anxious-eyed with the struggle and the
worry. It s all right for a time, George ! But
it s all a mess of tinsel and mummery and a bad taste
in your mouth, the morning after, George. There s
old age to be reckoned with; there s time to be
taken into consideration. And time asks its pound
of flesh and the years find your pals all gone. And
the nights are quiet and lonely, George, and the
days drag by in a mockery. Oh, God ! God ! God !
I d give more for one racked, twisted, furrowed-faced,
gnarled-fingered, sock-darnin , food-cookin , hymn-
singin old woman reachin the Empty Years at last
but with her brats grown up around her into strong
men and gentle women, than all the silver-slippered,
low-necked, fizzle-headed sissies you can find from
Grant s Tomb to Bowlin Green ! "
"Don t, Mibb. You re crossin your drinks bad,
by orderin that."
"Let me alone, George ! I know what I m doin .
About thirty years ago to-night, it was, I made a
bet with Mary Purse that I d beat her hands down
at the game of matrimony when each of us were fifty-
seven. I made that bet, George. But I ve lost it.
I ve had my fling, George. I ve had my rights.
I ve been entitled to live my own life in my own way
and I ve done it. And it s gall in my heart, George,
it s wormwood in my soul ! "
Her voice had become high and wild. People
THE GREATER GLORY 353
turned and stared. George saw his opportunity was
lost and slipped away. At the cashier s desk a man
summoned a burly waiter.
"That s enough of that, over there at the corner
table. This is a respectable place, Zelf !"
"It s a down-and-outer trying to tell the world the
sad story of her past life."
"Go over and tell her to take a walk."
The waiter came across to Mabel. He said harsh
things to her ; he made it all too plain how undesir
able was her patronage.
"I know, I know," she said brokenly, wearily.
And her hard, lined, worldly face was wet with tears.
"I ve got a little money left. I ll go back to Paris
to-night."
The waiter scratched his head when she had gone
out, rather unsteadily, a wandering, lone, ageing,
broken, pathetic figure.
"Now what did she mean by Paris, to-night?"
he demanded. " She ain t no Frencliie; I ll bet my
envelope upon it ! "
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH AN ANGEL HOVERS AWHILE OVER EARTH
AND BEHOLDS A STRANGE SIGHT AND SIGHS AND
THEN GOES ON AGAIN ABOUT ITS BUSINESS.
BUT there were many weeks before she came back
to Paris.
Mibb Henderson alighted on our station platform
from the four o clock train which had brought her
up the valley. She had made the trip in a day-coach :
her only baggage was a small black valise.
No one recognized her ; few indeed there are among
present-day Parisians who have lived long enough in
one place, in this one town, to know the prodigals
when they return. Uncle Joe Fodder, driving
his depot hack, knew. Perhaps for that reason she
avoided him. She did not take a carriage up to the
business section. She walked up slowly, as though at
last there were no need for hurry, no need for
hurry ever again. She had no place to reach. She
had just come home.
She was still stylishly dressed. The smart hat
concealed the iron-gray hair. The modish veil with
its field of black polka-dots hid the telltale wrinkles
and traces of cosmetics. She was yet a well-built
woman and indeed would pass as far younger than
the Paris of yesteryear knew her to be. But Mibb
was old ; somehow as she walked up Depot Street to
Main she was broken and burned out and bowed.
She made a pathetic figure as she came up Depot
Street in the soft afternoon of a late spring.
THE GREATER GLORY 355
When she got up to Main Street she stopped fre
quently on the corners as though undecided where to
go or what to do. Reaching the taxi stand in front
of Joe Farrell s quick lunch and finding a driver whose
face was strange, she suffered him to put her bag in
his machine and she climbed in the back under the
auto top which partly hid her identity from those who
might recognize her. A few years before there would
have been no such attempt to keep her visit private.
She would have gone up Main Street as Uncle Joe
Fodder had once expressed it, "with all the pomp
and importance of a fat wash-lady in the back seat
of a new Ford." But Mibb s star had set now.
And Mibb knew that it had set. All she wanted was
to flee away to a quiet place somewhere like a tired
and perhaps wounded animal ; let nature heal those
wounds. Yes, Mibb was very tired. Pitiful was her
soul s yearning for Alsatia.
"Where to?" asked the chauffeur.
"Take me out to the Purse Place on Cobb Hill."
The driver started his engine and Mibb went
through town with no one to see ; no one to care.
The car was but a few moments covering the
ground that in a far-off happier year had seemed an
afternoon s journey to reach. How small and
scrubby the little town was, after all !
It turned around the corner by the bridge; it
climbed the long, sandy grade ; the raspberry and
blackberry vines brushed its dusty sides as it skirted
the road along the stone wall banked with birches
and dwarf willows and sumach, and hiding the poor
Purse Place from sight. With dexterous twist it
headed up into the yard with its short-cropped grass,
behind the old stone wall where the sweep had once
stood but banked now by the fragrant lilacs and
356 THE GREATER GLORY
shrubbery of the wild roses, the yard where there
were no farm implements lying around and where a
fence rail was wedged firmly against the rusty red
doors of an empty barn.
She alighted from the car. It waited for her with
its engine running. She went up the two brown flag
steps and knocked on the panels.
The raps of her knuckles sounded like thumps
on a coffin. She tried the split and shriven door.
It was locked.
"I guess there s no one home," she faltered.
No one home indeed. Poor Mibb !
"I could o told you that in the first place," replied
the driver. "I didn t know but what you d bought
the place, or somethin ; that s why I didn t say
nuthin ."
"Doesn t Mrs. Purse live here any longer? She
isn t dead?"
"Naw ; she held an auction last week and went to
live with Aunt Julia Farrington down in the village."
Mibb swayed wearily on the doorstep.
"Take my bag and leave it at the Whitney House.
How much do I owe you ? I ll walk back."
She paid her tariff. The car backed out and
headed for the village. When the soft chuf-chuf-chuf
of its engine had grown fainter and fainter until it
died away to nothing, she was alone out there in
front of the abandoned house in the long slanting
hours of closing day. Somehow she felt as if she had
been abandoned too, like the old place brooding now
in the sinking sun.
After a while she walked slowly from the yard.
Her loneliness seemed greater than it had ever seemed
before, not to find Mary Purse in the old Purse
Place.
THE GREATER GLORY 357
She started slowly down the hill. Baker s meadow
over the way that used to be the finest mowing any
where around Paris, was not coming up virile and green.
The grass was red and thin and sickly and filled with
devil s paintbrush. The old Squire s place was gone ;
two hoary elm trees, green with scale, stood sentinel
now over a cellar hole and heaps of senile yellow
brick and stumps of a fireplace; the Squire s house
burned down in the winter of 97. The grove of
chestnut trees in Cogswell s pasture had been cut
down these many years and likewise had the big
beechnut tree gone from the eastern end of the
bridge. And the bridge itself was no longer the pic
turesque covered affair of thirty-odd years before. It
was a trim business-like affair of white iron thrown
across the stream in nineteen hundred after the freshet
of the previous winter had made the old one dan
gerous.
"Oh, it s changed so ; it s all changed so !
If it wasn t for the old Purse Place and the hills, I d
hardly know it was the same," she said.
She crossed the bridge with a heavy heart. The
location at the eastern end of Main Street where once
her father s house had stood had been absorbed for
ten years by the increasing areas of the Process
works.
"Thank God that s gone!" she whispered. "I
could have stood most anything but to see the old
place again as it used to be when I was happy at
home with Ma and the boarders ! "
She finally reached the point where Pine Street
bisects Main. At the southern end of Pine Street
there is a little slope that comes out overlooking
the river. On this stretch between road and river on
the southeast corner of the village, there is a little
358 THE GREATER GLORY
plot of grass-choked land we ve come to call "the
cemetery on the hill."
Something turned Mibb s steps that way. She
had nowhere else to go. Why not up into the grave
yard where lay sleeping the loved ones of other
years ?
A beautiful afterglow was over the world as she
entered the cemetery and moved down among the
graves. Half -fearfully she searched the tomb
stones, yet morbidly hungry for what they might
disclose.
She came on her father s and mother s grave so
suddenly that the bold inscriptions of the familiar
name startled her. It was marked by a small white
shaft of granite with the one word "Henderson"
upon the base. On one side was a headstone with
her father s name. On the opposite side her
mother s.
"Poor pa and ma," she thought. "Even in death
something had to divide you, didn t it, even if it s
only the monument." But strange to say she did not
feel so badly over the sight of those graves as she did
over those friends of her carefree girlhood who had
been her boon companions. And when this realiza
tion came to her, came also the words of Dick
Robinson a few months before, about her mother s
lack of maternity which had been partly responsible
for the woman she had grown to be. And for a
moment a fierce wild hatred filled her.
But the resentment left her when gazing over be
hind her family plot, and off to the left, she saw a last
year s grave with a brand new headstone that stuck
out among the lazy sleepy old stones like a mansion
among the dwellings of paupers. She drew near
fearfully and read :
THE GREATER GLORY 359
HERBERT PEASE TRUMAN
Beloved Son and Husband
Departed this Life
In the Fifty-eighth
Year of His Age
Beloved son and husband ! Beloved son and
husband !
"Gone, gone, they re all gone, those that might
have cared for me," she cried softly and brokenly.
"And those that haven t gone, those that are living,
they do not cannot care ! Oh the bitterness of
it!"
Upon the grave of her husband chance had de
posited an old tin can, battered and rusty and pro
fane. With a choke in her throat Mibb leaned
tenderly over. She lifted it away. She was about
to cast the thing of desecration from her when she
paused. The receptacle was half filled with rain
water.
"Herbert ! Herbert ! Herbert ! I killed you ; I know
I killed you ! I killed you as sure as though I had run
a knife in your heart. But I am sorry, Herbert ! And
if I could go back, be with you just through one
evening again, I d take you into my starved and
lonely and foolish soul in a way that would make
you a man ! Beloved husband ? Yes, Herbert,
yes!"
She crossed over to the near-by stone wall. A
clump of wild roses was growing there. Carefully,
tearfully, she gathered a handful of the limp sweet
flowers, and carried them back. Then with a tender
ness she had never employed in doing any other
earthly thing, she settled the offering on the hus
band s grave.
360 THE GREATER GLORY
And an angel, wafting its way with wings as soft
as air, over that acre of the dead on that peaceful
Spring twilight, saw the thing that Mibb Truman did.
There came a soft glow in the angel s heart and a well
of tears to his eyes. For he knew that the thing
Mibb did was from a broken and repentant heart,
with no one around to see, no one to know, because
she had lived and lost and come at last to know the
fullness of love.
One lone robin came with shrill chirps out of the
sunset and fluttered for a moment in a tall elm tree
that grew just over the spilled stone wall. And as
she stood there at the foot of her cross, the robin
broke into song.
Far away down in the next mowing another bird
answered.
The angel winged away to carry a report to
heaven, leaving the two robins peacefully singing
their vespers.
CHAPTER
A SORT OF GRADUATION CHAPTER IN WHICH THE
MEDAL OF HONOR Is AWARDED AND A LONELY
WOMAN S TEARS CARRY HER NEAR TO GOD.
DOUBTLESS it was our report of what had taken
place in New York that turned Sam s thoughts back
ward that sunset as he stood that balmy spring
evening by his open window.
"Thirty years ago it took place," he said. "To
think of it ! "
A hush of infinite peace hung over our valley. The
screaming color of the west that set a thousand
western windows aflame, was gradually softening.
It was Wanderlust time, that period of the year
when the grass has come green again and the faint
odor of damp lilacs births sensations in the heart of a
man that are sweet and wild and sad.
"I haven t been up there in ten years," he said.
"I m going to walk up to the old cabin to-night and
see what s left."
In the cool of the evening the editor whose temples
were now gray, wended his steps out School Street
and along by the gas works ; beyond the gas works to
the county farm; beyond the county farm to the
East Wickford road ; along the East Wickford road ;
to the turning-off place up into Gold-Piece Blaisdell s
Glen.
As he walked he could not avoid the memory of
362 THE GREATER GLORY
how he had taken that pathway in other years, nor
those who walked with him who had gone.
A thousand country scents of sweet-fern and briar
bloom and blossoming laurel, of blackberry vine and
checkerberry and wild apple, assailed his senses as
he walked along. And the odors which he had for
gotten to notice since he became a man, with the
cares and responsibilities and problems of a man,
brought back to him now old voices and old faces,
old trysts and old happinesses. For a moment he
almost turned back, so badly did the pain of memory
hurt him. But he was so near now that it was
foolish to turn back. Through the raspberry vine
that scratched his trousers and the milkweed that
left lint upon him, through the grasses that were
damp and wetted his shoes, through the little swarms
of evening insects that lifted and fell in the evening
air, he went forward.
"The brush has grown up high," he said. "The
path is almost gone."
The Glen was darkened when at last he left the tall
-.rank grass and undergrowth and saw before him the
ghostly outlines of the cabin.
"It s not fallen in yet," he observed. "But how
hoary and grizzled everything seems."
He surveyed the dilapidated old cabin for a long
^time before venturing near. It had been a well-
built cabin. The hemlock logs had stood the frosts
of winter and the rains of summer. The roof was
fallen in at a corner ; the windows were gone. Half
the chimney had been carried down and the door
hung by a rusty hinge. Everywhere were the marks
of the sharp teeth of the hedgehogs. But still it was
the same old structure around whose fireplace those
companions had gathered after that tired day back
THE GREATER GLORY 363
over the years. And a choke came in the editor s
throat and a nameless hunger grew deep and man
gling in his heart.
Then as he stood there looking at it, he saw a ghost !
The ghost of Mibb Henderson stepped from that
doorway, not the Mibb of that far-away holiday
but a Mibb whose face was furrowed with sorrow,
whose hair was iron gray.
He wanted to run. He wanted to cry out. But
he stood rooted to the spot in terror.
And the ghost of Mibb Henderson spoke to him.
"Sam," it cried, "Sam Hod! Oh, Gawd! Is it
you, Sam ? Is it you ?"
"Yes, it s me, Mibb," he replied in a voice he
did not recognize as his.
"Oh, Sam, I m glad you ve come; I couldn t go
back alone. I d have given out along the way."
And Sam saw it was not Mibb s ghost. It was
Mibb Henderson herself and she was just a broken-
down, sorrow-laden, repentant and suffering old
woman, suffering with memories as he was suf
fering.
"Why did you come up here, Mibb?" he asked.
" I had to come, Sam. I had to come."
"So did I," he said.
After a time he found himself in the cabin with
her.
"Let s light a fire, Mibb," he said. "Let s light
a fire from the rubbish and see how the old place
looks."
Deer hunters who had probably occupied the place
the season before had left ample wood piled beside
the fireplace. There were old papers scattered about.
It was the work of a moment for Sam to make a place
in the cold dead ashes. He touched a match to the
364 THE GREATER GLORY
paper under the wood which he had piled. It burned
blue at first and then blazed up.
A few minutes after the cabin was warm and filled
with weird and rosy light. Silently he swung a box
over, and Mibb, gathering her noisy silken under
skirts about her ankles, sat down upon it. He found
a similar box for himself. He poked the fire once or
twice. It made queer shadows of the two on the wall
behind; queerer shadows of the cuts and jogs and
corners.
"How long has it been, Mibb; thirty years
ago?"
"Thirty years ago," she said in a whisper ; "thirty
years ago to-night."
"To-night!"
She looked at him in sad surprise.
"Surely to-night," she confirmed. "Why, that s
why I came ! Didn t you ? "
"I d forgotten just what month and day it was,
Mibb. I only remember it was in the late spring.
We were on a picnic in return for the play we gave
that year at the Opera House !
"They sat over there on that wall settle, in the
shadow, afterward. It s there yet ! I can see them,
Mibb The editor s voice wavered.
"And Harriet is dead these eleven years ! "
"And Dick ? The last I heard of him he was richer
than Croesus and lonelier than Job in his affliction,
living down in Boston - Mabel shut her lips
suddenly hard, pitifully hard.
Silence for a time. The fire crackled and blaze u
and drove the damp from the musty old place. Sa.m
poked it with his crooked stick to give his hanoL
something to do.
"And I sat about where you re sitting," Mibb
THE GREATER GLORY 365
went on. "I was on the floor with my head against
Herb s knees ! "
More silence ; longer silence this time.
"I saw Dick Robinson the other night," declared
the woman. "He cleaned up a million, looks like a
matinee idol, and and he s a woman-hater."
She laughed a trifle bitterly.
"Folks around here said you were going to marry
him a while ago, Mibb."
"I m not worthy of him; I m not worthy of any
man, Sam. That s why the wedding was called off."
Sam raised his heavy brows quickly in surprise.
This was surely a different Mibb from the old days, a
Mibb who would declare herself unworthy of a man,
any man. But he said nothing.
"And you, Sam, I can see you and Alice leaning
against the masonry there on the left corner. Have
you ever stopped to think, Sam, that you and Alice
were the only two out of all that crowd who married
and lived happily ever since."
"There was there was Jack and Mary Purse,"
suggested the editor.
"Don t let s talk about them, Sam ; it hurts."
After a time Sam said :
"Thirteen young folks, typically American young
folks, on a soft spring night, off in the woods after
May flowers. They group around it, lovers and
sweethearts, and they sing old love songs and tell
yarns and watch the pictures in the flames.
"And the talk drifts around to the happiness of the
moment, of the threshold of life where they all stand,
healthy young mortals, rejoicing in their youth and
strength as a strong man to run a race. And
laughingly one takes a gold piece from his pocket
and makes a proposition : They are to bury the
366 THE GREATER GLORY
gold piece beneath the hearthstone, miser-fashion.
Through the years of their life-endeavor it is to lie
there. And when thirty years have flown, if they be
alive, they are to dig that coin up and it is to be
medal of honor for the one who has made his life the
most successful."
Again the woman shivered. But it was not cold.
The editor went on :
"We won t go through the careers of those thirteen
young folks ; we know them too well, Mibb. But
thirty years have flown, six of those boys and
girls have gone to their graves. Of the seven living,
two have amassed fortunes
"Which isn t the measure of success at all, Sam."
"You thought it was once, Mibb."
"I ve learned differently, Sam," she replied
quietly.
"Then you think they can be eliminated ?"
" They can be eliminated," she said sadly.
Sam poked the fire several times.
"Mibb," he said softly at length, "tell me, to whom
does the medal of honor belong ?"
She turned her worn countenance to him then. In
a soft, soft voice she said :
"I think we know to whom it belongs, Sam."
The editor felt in his pocket for a cigar. He
lighted it in an ocean of time. He got it going
comfortably. He took it from his mouth and studied
its ash.
"I think we do," he said.
"Shall we dig it up, Mibb ?" he asked.
"I don t suppose any one ever will, if we do not."
Sam Hod produced his penknife. He dug away
the dirt by the light of the dying flames.
"It is here, Mibb," he said reverently.
THE GREATER GLORY 367
Under the hearth brick was found the cavity. In
the cavity lay Dick Robinson s match-safe. Thirty
years it had laid in that box that was eaten with
rust. For when Sam shook it, the tinkle came
inside it.
"Sam!" cried the woman with a sob, "oh, Sam,
we ve committed a sacrilege !"
The woman broke down and sobbed.
They went home under the soft spring moonlight.
It seemed strange to think, as they quitted that glen,
that the same moon had lighted the way of that
happy, carefree, light hearted party thirty years
before. They went home in silence, the man helping
the woman over the difficult places. They went out
of the Glen, out of the trysting place of other,
better and brighter and happier days, back along the
country road and the brook and the streets into town.
"To think, Mibb," said Sam when they were
almost up in the business section again, "that you
and I, out of all that party, should be the ones to dig
up that gold piece."
The woman did not reply. Her heart was too full.
"I ll give it to her, to-night, Sam," she promised.
"I m going up there, now. I ve got to go. I ve got
to see Mary. Sam Sam my heart is broken.
And I ve got to let Mary know that it s broken."
The editor understood.
"Good night, Mibb," he said. "And perhaps it
would help you a little bit to know that I don t think
half as much ill of you, after being up there in that
cabin with you, as I might have thought if I had not
seen what I have."
"Good night," she whispered.
The editor went into his office.
The woman went over to the hotel and got the bag
368 THE GREATER GLORY
that had been left there. Then she went to Aunt
Julia Farrington s house which she knew so well, tit
the corner of Pine and Walnut streets, the house
that looked like a picture out of yesterday with its
iron fences and old-fashioned posy beds and terra
cotta statue in the yard.
There was a light burning in the hall as Mibb went
up. She pulled the old-fashioned bell and waited.
Aunt Mary Purse herself answered that bell. She
came to the door with a red-yarn shawl over her frail
shoulders. She had been packing for the epochal
trip abroad on the coming Thursday with her son.
"Mary, Mary Purse, can I come in?" begged the
woman outside in the dark. "It s me, Mary; it s
Mabel Henderson."
A quarter-hour later they sat in the little front
parlor of the Farrington home, the parlor with its
antique melodeon and its whatnot filled with Aunt
Julia s daguerreotypes, and its life-sized picture of
Abraham Lincoln and with John Farrington s big
cavalry sword standing in a corner.
Mary Purse, only five years the older but looking
twenty, sat in a round-backed horsehair chair. On
the floor at her feet with her poor, addled, weary
head on the older woman s lap, sat Mibb Henderson,
the girl who would "take her chances" with riches.
And she was sobbing out her heart. As that great
emotion possessed her, the gnarled beautiful hands of
our lady compositor of years in the Telegraph office
smoothed her hair and soothed her feverish forehead.
"Oh, if you only hated me, Mary," she moaned,
"if you d only fought me, damned me, killed me, if
you d even rebuked me one little bit, it would have
been so much easier to bear now. But you took it
369
sweetly and nobly and bore it somehow ; and you
never held it against me. You never let it show
when I came around so snippily, throwing your
poverty in your face; taunting you with the load
you were under ; showing how base and contemptible
I was and how low I had fallen. If you d only
done it, Mary, if you only had ! "
"I couldn t, Mibb," Aunt Mary said. "I knew
you couldn t help it. You didn t do it to be mean ;
you were thoughtless, that s all. There s lots of
thoughtless folks in the world, Mibb. We want to
be patient with em and help em; most of em see
their errors in time and so it all comes out right in the
end."
Dumbly, piteously the woman of the world who
had lost her moorings at last clung to the other as the
only Alsatia to which to bring her tired soul. And
true to the great noble woman soul and the mother-
heart that was in her and the saint her troubles and
struggles had made her, she found that sister ready
and willing to forgive and help and comfort and in
spire and smooth away all care . Freely the Henderson
woman s tears flowed, and by those tears got as near
to God as it was possible for her to get in earthly life.
Aunt Mary forgave her ; forgave her for the cruel
jests and stabbing taunts ; forgave her for flaunting
the prostituted finery before her when her heart was
breaking with her poverty and load ; forgave her for
all of these and took her in and fed her soul with
kindness and wrapped her in her great big mother-
heart of eternal sympathy, which is the blessed
ness of womankind above all other divinity, and which
is the high road to peace.
Verily Aunt Mary Purse deserved the gold piece.
We think so.
CHAPTER VIII
A GREAT SHIP STEALS OUT OF A HARBOR AND OVER
THE SKYLINE, OUT OF THE HOMELAND AND INTO
THE SOUL.
FOR thirty-five years now, we have published this
little local paper. Perhaps we may be spared to keep
it going for another quarter-century; such things
have happened. Or perhaps just to-morrow, as we
sit writing our briefs and our editorials, our four and
five-line bits of pabulum about the out-of-town y --i-
tors with us, the sales of new automobiles, tne
recoveries from the sick list, who has a newly painted
fence and who drove into town yesterday with a load
of potatoes anything and everything which will
put people s names in print, and please them and
make them buy copies so we can sell our advertising
space perhaps a soft hand will be laid on our
shoulders, we may look up a trifle bewilderedly to see
who stands there ; and we may behold a stranger,
yet a stranger who knows us well, who has come to
guide us to the land of our missing children, who shall
stoop over, take our blue pencil, write "Thirty"
beneath the items of the page on which we are work
ing, and bid us follow.
When that time comes we shall not be afraid to go,
we say, because we have seen God in the faces and
souls of the ordinary men and women about us.
Although the curriculum of our earthly education
has been a mystery at times and in many strange
THE GREATER GLORY 371
turnings in the long lane of living, although we have
grieved often at the pied skein we have made of our
lives because we have not been given to see the reason
for the apparent snarl and tangle of it all, we think
how weary God must be looking down on the world
and watching the iniquities of those whose education
is yet incomplete, and we are cheered and at peace.
For if the Almighty has the patience and the
optimism to keep the old world going in spite of the
grievous short-comings of many folk in many places,
things are not so bad as they seem and all must be
well with most of us in the end.
True to his agreement, Tom Purse did take his
mother away for a rest, a rest that meant more
than a cessation of bodily labor. It was a rest of the
soul and the spirit in the companionship of the man-
child she had reared, which companionship in the
struggle of life thus far had somehow been denied her.
When she had recovered and was strong again, it
was Fred who arranged the finances ; the sons who
had been only human in forgetting the loneliness of
the mother-heart who had given so much for them,
saw her start off with Tom. Though in years it was
but a short time ago, yet it was in those far-off
pleasant ages before the scourge of war had blighted
the world, that Tom started with his mother on her
great vacation to those far-away lands that only
exist for most New England mothers in books or
dreams.
There came a morning when Aunt Mary was helped
by her son across the gangplank of a great steamship.
The last good-bys were said by the boys who were all
there to see her off. The smallest details had been
arranged. Nothing lay ahead but the unspoiled
372 THE GREATER GLORY
Wonderland of the Old World. Nothing lay ahead
to the woman who had once been little Mary Wood
and married a poor printer for love, but reward for
the things she had gone through, reward and
enjoyment.
At noon, amid indescribable confusion, the board
ing of the last luggage and freight to the weird songs
of the stevedores, the blowing of many whistles and
the last leave-takings, the hatches were finally swung
into place, the gangplanks hoisted and the hawsers
drawn on board. Slowly the little tugs pulled the
great lazy monster from its stall in the city, awoke
her from her two-weeks slumber, swung her about and
faced her toward the deep blue distance. The wharf,
with the faces of those Aunt Mary loved and was
leaving behind just for a little time, dwindled to an
indistinct strip of wooden roofed confusion. The
great boat floated farther and farther away from the
strip of smiles and waving handkerchiefs and tears.
For the first time Aunt Mary saw Dame Liberty on
her island in the harbor, that iron woman holding
her torch aloft to the weak and oppressed of every
nation. The tugs, like sturdy irrelevant office-
seekers looking for loot, ploughed to and fro, in
different to the coming adventures of the great levi
athan or greater than the great leviathan, the hap
piness in the heart of one woman on its deck.
Soon all that could be seen of the city was the dis
tant overhanging smoke growing fainter and fainter.
The arms of the Atlantic were opening wider and
wider. America and home were only a mem
ory. But what of that ? Was she not going to Eu
rope to Europe ! with the big son, her son, who
had made this dream reality ?
Ahead of her were seven wonder days, days of
THE GREATER GLORY 373
quiet days of infinite peace days of rest and
diversion and a laying aside at last of life s burdens.
Seven days, indeed, with the trailing, furling smoke,
the emerald green of the mountains of water, the
impromptu rainbows, the gulls that knew no home
by the ever-rocking cradle of the deep, the spray
from the swells and the foam from the prow ; seven
days with the swing and the swish through the
hours ; seven afternoons to sit lazily upon the
comfortable chairs of the deck and send her dream
cargoes off homeward into the blood-red sunset that
was setting for us too, at the same time, back home
in New England. Seven nights for the engine to
sing her to sleep with its sobbing and the melancholy
double-strokes of the bells to mark off the great
eternity of time and horizon, when the distance
slipped away, past the eye and into the soul, and
each low-hung sun on the rim of the world created
a shadow-ship that kept them convoy into the
mysterious depths of the night.
She stood by the rail of the gently swaying vessel
in the late evening. And Tom came and stood by
her side.
"Havin a good time, mother?" he asked cheerily.
But she could not reply.
It meant something to her this " Going Abroad."
She had indeed paid for her passage.
"Mother, I was just going through my black suit
to have the boy press it when I came across a letter
a woman gave me for you two nights after you
knuckled under and we thought you were going to
leave us. She wanted to see you but we wouldn t
let her in. She went off and returned with this
envelope. Maybe you ought to open it. It might
be something important."
374 THE GREATER GLORY
There were many lights on deck. Tom led his
mother to her steamer chair and she got her glasses.
She tore open the envelope. Two papers came out.
One was crumpled and wrinkled with long keeping.
The other was a blotchy letter but recently written.
She read the last first.
DEAR MARY:
I heard Thomas Joshua speak at the Tabernacle
to-night and some of the things he said hurt me
badly. You have six like Tom. I haven t even one.
It ought to seem unfair but it isn t. You paid the
price for them. I refused. It s a pretty square
world after all. We get just about what we
deserve.
I may not see you again, Mary. But for the sake
of my soul I want to say something for the man I
sent to the bad. I want some one besides me to
appreciate him. When I went through his things
after he disappeared twenty odd years ago, I found
the enclosure. I didn t say anything about it at the
time. Mean and dirty like I was, I intended to keep
it, and trot it out to lord it over you and make you
feel bad. I don t send it in that spirit now. I send
it for a square deal for Herbert some sort of poor
compensation.
Good-by, Mary Purse. I won t say God Bless You
for that is superfluous. He has done that already and
amply. I say, pray God for me, a lonely woman.
My cup of sorrow and remorse is very very full.
MABEL HENDEBSON.
Mary s old hand trembled a bit as she slowly
lowered the letter. Wonderingly, she picked up the
enclosure from her black-silk lap.
It was plainly a receipt for money paid. Across
the top in big type were the names :
THE GREATER GLORY 375
PITS, RULING, DONOVAN &
WILEY, Attorneys.
Chicago, El.
And on the face of the receipt was the information
Received of Herbert Truman, Paris, Vt., $6000
for transfer to Mrs. John Purse, under terms and
conditions specified in correspondence, Jan. 17th to
May 10th inclusive, purporting to come from estate
of late Josiah Wood, Bankrupt. Less usual commis
sions.
For the partnership,
A. V. WILEY.
The import of the document dawned upon her.
With some of her oldtime vigor, Mary sprang from
the chair. She went to the railing. She stood there
with her eyes turned back over the sea toward home.
Herb Truman had been responsible for that
legacy !
The ship swung softly from side to side. From
down on the surface of the waters came the ceaseless
swash of the spray. Pedestrians paced the deck.
From somewhere far up forward an orchestra was
playing dreamy music.
But of these things Mary Purse took no note.
The moon came up after a time, and made a fantas
tic dreamy place of the infinite wastes of water.
Lovers laughed in the shadowed nooks and corners.
The black smoke from the funnels trailed off to the
distances like a cloud of unleashed black phantoms.
Her thoughts were back in New England where the
peaceful dream-time of the summer night was upon
376 THE GREATER GLORY
the landscape and the crickets were cheeping down
in the roots of the ragged lilacs.
And here, with her lack-lustre eyes fixed on
unspeakable solitude, let us leave her. Let us leave
her and go back to our labors and our town and news
paper and the ordinary t^wio-legged men and women
who remain. Let us bid her farewell and see her sail
away in the path of the moonlight, calling "Bon
Voyage" to her, trusting that the time may come soon
when we may join the familiar faces and hear again
the familiar voices with her in the Great Port where
storm-tossed humanity comes safely to harbor at
last.
For some day, please God, it shall come our turn
also to embark upon a journey, to take a ship and
sail away for the Port of Missing Faces. Then like
Mary Purse, as she draws softly out of our hearts and
out of our story, we will become one with the thou
sands of souls on the bosom of the Infinite ; we too
will be a flash of phosphorus washed on the evening
billows.
THE END.
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