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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flint, by Maud Wilder Goodwin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Flint
+ His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes
+
+Author: Maud Wilder Goodwin
+
+Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21690]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLINT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David T. Jones and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ FLINT
+
+ HIS FAULTS, HIS FRIENDSHIPS
+ AND HIS FORTUNES
+
+
+
+
+ FLINT
+
+ His Faults, His Friendships
+ and His Fortunes
+
+
+
+ BY
+
+ MAUD WILDER GOODWIN
+
+ AUTHOR OF "THE HEAD OF A HUNDRED," "WHITE
+ APRONS," "THE COLONIAL CAVALIER," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+ BOSTON
+ LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+
+ 1897
+
+
+
+
+ _Published_, _1897_,
+ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
+
+
+
+ University Press:
+ JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+ Dedicated to Miriam.
+
+
+
+
+ TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+ * * * * * *
+
+
+ CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ I. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 1
+
+ II. MINGLED YARN 11
+
+ III. OLD FRIENDS 35
+
+ IV. THE DAVITTS 57
+
+ V. THE OLD SHOP 71
+
+ VI. THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 87
+
+ VII. ON THE BEACH 102
+
+ VIII. THE MARY ANN 125
+
+ IX. NORA COSTELLO 139
+
+ X. FLYING POINT 154
+
+ XI. THE POINT OF VIEW 174
+
+ XII. "PIPPA PASSES" 188
+
+ XIII. A SOLDIER 205
+
+ XIV. TWO SOUL-SIDES 218
+
+ XV. A BIRTHDAY 236
+
+ XVI. YES OR NO 252
+
+ XVII. A LITTLE DINNER 270
+
+XVIII. A MAIDEN'S VOW 289
+
+ XIX. A SLUM POST 303
+
+ XX. THE UNFORESEEN 323
+
+ XXI. GOD'S PUPPETS 338
+
+ XXII. THE END 356
+
+
+
+
+ Flint:
+
+ His Faults, His Friendships, and
+ His Fortunes
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+ THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS
+
+
+ "Say not 'a small event.' Why 'small'?
+ Costs it more pain that this ye call
+ 'A great event' should come to pass
+ Than that? Untwine me from the mass
+ Of deeds which make up life, one deed
+ Power should fall short in, or exceed."
+
+
+
+ _The following chapter is an Extract from the Journal
+ of Miss Susan Standish, dated Nepaug, July 1, 189-._
+
+We are a house-party.
+
+To be sure we find pinned to our cushions on Saturday nights a grayish
+slip of paper, uncertain of size and ragged of edge, stating with
+characteristic New England brevity and conciseness the amount of our
+indebtedness to our hostess; but what of that? The guests in those
+stately villas whose lights twinkle at us on clear evenings from the
+point along the coast, have their scores to settle likewise, and
+though the account is rendered less regularly, it is settled less
+easily and for my part, I prefer our Nepaug plan.
+
+We are congenial.
+
+I don't know why we should be, except that no one expects it of us. We
+have no tie, sacred or secular, to bind our hearts in Christian love.
+We have in fact few points in common, save good birth, good breeding,
+and the ability to pay our board-bills as they fall due; but
+nevertheless we coalesce admirably.
+
+We are Bohemian.
+
+That is, our souls are above the standards of fashion, and our incomes
+below them, and of such is the kingdom of Bohemia. A life near to
+Nature's heart, at eight dollars a week, appeals to us all alike.
+
+We are cross.
+
+Yes, there is no denying it. Not one of us has escaped the irritation
+of temper naturally resulting from ten days experience of the fog
+which has been clinging with suffocating affection to earth and sea,
+putting an end to outdoor sport and indoor comfort, taking the curl
+out of hair, the starch out of dresses, the sweetness out of
+dispositions, and hanging like a pall over all efforts at jollity.
+
+Irritation shows itself differently in each individual of our
+community. As is the temperament, so is the temper.
+
+Master Jimmy Anstice, aged twelve, spends his time in beating a tattoo
+on the sofa-legs with the backs of his heels. His father says: "Stop
+that!" at regular intervals with much sharpness of manner; but lacks
+the persistent vitality to enforce his command.
+
+My nephew, Ben Bradford, permanently a resident of Oldburyport, and
+temporarily of Cambridge, sits in a grandfather's chair in the corner,
+"Civil Government" in his lap, and "Good-Bye, Sweetheart," in his
+hand. Even this profound work cannot wholly absorb his attention; for
+he fidgets, and looks up every few minutes as if he expected the
+sunshine to walk in, and feared that he might miss its first
+appearance.
+
+I, for occupation, have betaken myself to writing in this diary,
+having caught myself cheating at solitaire,--a deed I scorn when I am
+at my best.
+
+Doctor Cricket, his hands nervously clasped behind him, has been
+walking up and down the room, now overlooking my game and
+remonstrating against the liberties I was taking with the cards (as if
+I had not a right to cheat myself if I like!) and then flying off to
+peer through his gold-bowed spectacles at the hygrometer, which will
+not budge, though he thrusts out his chin-whisker at it for the
+fortieth time.
+
+"The weather is in a nasty, chilly sweat," he says grumpily; "if it
+were my patient, I would roll it in a blanket, and put it to bed with
+ten grains of quinine."
+
+"Not being your patient, and not being dosed with quinine, it may be
+better to-morrow," Ben retorts saucily.
+
+Ordinarily, the Doctor takes Ben's sallies with good-humored contempt.
+To-day, he is in other mood. He smiles--always a bad sign with him, as
+the natural expression of his truly benignant mood is a fierce little
+terrier-like frown.
+
+"My poor boy!" he says sympathetically. "The brain is going fast, I
+observe. Steep a love-story, and apply it over the affected part!"
+
+I see Ben wrestling with a retort; but before he has it to his mind,
+something happens. The door opens and a girl enters. Ben's face lights
+up. The sunshine has come.
+
+There is something more than a suggestion of sunshine about Winifred
+Anstice, even to those of us who are neither of the age nor the sex to
+fall under the glamour of sentimental illusions. I have often
+speculated on the precise nature of her charm, without being able to
+satisfy myself. She is not so extraordinarily pretty, though her hair
+ripples away from her forehead after the American classic fashion, to
+which style also belongs the little nose, straight in itself, but set
+on at an angle from the brow, which, to my thinking, forms a pleasing
+variation from the heavier, antique type. The classic repose is wholly
+lacking. The eyes are arch, bright, and a little daring; the mouth
+always on the verge of laughter, which is not quite agreeable, for
+sometimes when there is no visible cause for amusement, it gives one
+an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps he is being laughed at
+unbeknown, and a person need not be very stingy not to relish a joke
+at his expense.
+
+Perhaps this sounds as if Winifred were hard, which she is not, and
+unsympathetic, which she never could be; but it is not that at all. It
+comes, I think, of a kind of bubbling over of the fun and spirits
+which belong to perfect physical condition and which few girls have
+nowadays. I suppose I ought not to wonder if a little of this vigor
+clings to her manner, making it not hoidenish exactly, but different
+from the manner of Beacon Street girls, who, after all said and done,
+have certainly the best breeding of any girls the world over. Ben
+doesn't admire Boston young ladies; but then he hates girls who are
+what he calls "stiff," as much as I dislike those whom he commends as
+"easy." Of course he gets on admirably with Winifred, who accepts his
+adoration as a matter of course, and rewards him with a
+semi-occasional smile, or a friendly note in her voice.
+
+After all, Winifred's chief charm lies in her voice. For myself, I
+confess to a peculiar sensitiveness in the matter of voices,--an
+unfortunate peculiarity for one condemned to spend her life in a
+sea-board town of the United States. Like Ulysses, I have endured
+greatly, have suffered greatly; but when this girl speaks, I am
+repaid. I often lose the sense of what she is saying, in the pure
+physical pleasure of listening to her speech. It has in it a
+suggestion of joy, and little delicate trills of hidden laughter
+which, after all, is not laughter, but rather the mingling of a
+reminiscence and an anticipation of mirth. I cannot conceive where she
+picked up such a voice, any more than where she came by that carriage
+of the head, and that manner, gracious, yet imperative like a young
+queen's. Professor Anstice is a worthy man and a learned scholar; but
+the grand air is not acquired from books.
+
+"How glum you all look!" Winifred exclaims, as she looks in upon us.
+
+At his daughter's entrance, the face of Professor Anstice relaxes by a
+wrinkle or two; but he answers her words as academically as though she
+had been one of his class in English.
+
+"_Glum_ is hardly the word, my dear; it conveys the impression of
+unamiability."
+
+"Precisely," persists Mistress Winifred, not to be put down, "that is
+just the idea you all convey to me."
+
+"Why shouldn't we be unamiable," answers Ben, eager to get into the
+conversation, "when there is nothing to amuse us, and you go off
+upstairs to write letters?"
+
+"You should follow my example, and _do_ something. When I went
+upstairs Miss Standish was in a terrible temper, scowling at the ace
+of spades as if it were her natural enemy; but since she has taken to
+writing in that little green diary that she never will let me peep
+into, she has a positively beatified, not to say sanctified,
+expression. And there is Ellen Davitt hard at work too, and as
+cheerful as a squirrel--just listen to her!"
+
+With this the girl stands still, and we listen. The waitress in the
+next room, apparently in the blithest of spirits, is setting the
+tea-table to the accompaniment of her favorite tune, sung in a high,
+sharp, nasal voice, and emphasized by the slapping down of plates.
+
+ "Tell me _one_ thing--tell me trooly;
+ Tell me _why_ you scorn me so.
+ Tell me _why_, when asked the question,
+ You will always answer '_No_'--
+ No, sir! No, sir! No-o-o, sir--No!"
+
+The voice is lost in the pantry. Smiles dawn upon all our faces.
+
+"A beautiful illustration of the power of imagination!" says Dr.
+Cricket. "Ellen is contentedly doing the housework because she fancies
+herself an heiress haughtily repulsing a host of suitors. It is the
+same spirit which keeps the poet cheerful in his garret, or a young
+Napoleon in his cellar, where he dines on a crust and fancies himself
+an emperor."
+
+"Steep an illustration and apply it over the affected part!" drawls
+Ben.
+
+The Doctor prepares to be angry; but Winifred, scenting the battle and
+eager to keep the peace, claps her hands and cries out, "Excellent!"
+with that pretty enthusiasm which makes the author of a remark feel
+that there must have been more in his observation than he himself had
+discovered.
+
+"There, Ben, if you are wise you will act on this clever suggestion of
+Dr. Cricket's, and travel off to the land of fancy, where you can make
+the weather to suit yourself, where fogs never fall, and fish always
+bite, and sails always fill with breezes from the right quarter, and
+whiff about at a convenient moment when you want to come home--oh, I
+say!" she adds with a joyful upward inflection, "there's the sun, and
+I am going for the mail."
+
+"I'll go with you," volunteers Master Ben.
+
+"Thank you, but Mr. Marsden said that I might drive his colt in the
+sulky."
+
+"Not the _colt_!" we all cry in chorus.
+
+"The _colt_," she answers with decision.
+
+"Not in the sulky?"
+
+"Yes, in the sulky."
+
+"Surely, Professor Anstice--" I begin; but before I have time for
+more, Winifred is out of the room, and reappears, after ten minutes,
+strangely transformed by her short corduroy skirt and gaiters, her cap
+and gauntleted gloves, to a Lady Gay Spanker. I do not like to see her
+so; but then I am fifty years old, and I live in Massachusetts.
+Perhaps my aversion to the sporting proclivities of the modern woman
+is only an inheritance of the prejudices of my ancestors, who thought
+all worldly amusements sinful, and worst of all in a woman. Even the
+Mayflower saints and heroes had their cast-iron limitations, and we
+can't escape from them, try as we will. We may throw over creed and
+catechism; but inherited instinct remains. The shadow of Plymouth Rock
+is over us all.
+
+Just here I look up to see Winifred spin along the road before the
+house, seated in a yellow-wheeled sulky, behind the most unmanageable
+colt on this side of the Mississippi, as I verily believe. Of course
+Mr. Marsden is very glad to have the breaking process taken off his
+hands; but if I were Professor Anstice I don't think I should like to
+have my daughter take up the profession of a jockey. I must admit,
+however, that she looks well in that tight-fitting jacket, with the
+bit of scarlet at her throat, and her hair rippling up over the edges
+of her gray cap.
+
+I wonder why I chronicle all this small beer about Winifred Anstice
+and old Marsden's colt. I suppose because nothing really worth noting
+has occurred, and it is not for nothing that a diary is called a
+commonplace book. I find that if I wait for clever thoughts and
+important events, my journal shows portentous gaps at the end of the
+week, and I promised myself that I would write something in it every
+day while I was at Nepaug. For my part, I enjoy the old-fashioned
+diary,--a sort of almanac, confessional, receipt-book, and daily paper
+rolled together; so I will just go on in my humdrum way. As it is only
+for myself, I need not fear to be as garrulous and egotistical as I
+please. Besides, a journal is such a good escape-valve for one's
+feelings! Having written them out, one is so much less impelled to
+confide them, and confidences are generally a mistake--yes, I am sure
+of it. They only intensify feelings, and at my age that is not
+desirable. At twenty, we put spurs into our emotions. At fifty, we put
+poultices onto them.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+
+ MINGLED YARN
+
+ "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."
+
+
+The road from the station at South East to Nepaug Beach was long and
+dusty, tedious enough to the traveller at any time, but especially on
+this July afternoon when the sun beat down pitilessly upon its arid
+stretches, and the dust, stirred by passing wheels, rose in choking
+masses.
+
+Jonathan Flint, however, surveyed the uninteresting length of highway
+with grim satisfaction. It was the inaccessibility and general lack of
+popular attractions which had led him to select Nepaug as a summering
+place. Mosquitoes and sand-fleas abounded; but one need not say
+"good-morning" to mosquitoes and sand-fleas, it is true. The fare at
+the inn was poor; but one was spared that exchange of inanities which
+makes the average hotel appear a kindergarten for a lunatic asylum;
+and, finally, the tediousness of the journey was a safeguard against
+the far greater tedium resulting from the companionship of "nauseous
+intruders," striding in white duck, or simpering under rose-lined
+parasols.
+
+The horse which was drawing the ramshackle carryall in which Flint
+sat, toiled on with sweating haunches, switching his tail, impatient
+of the flies, and now and then shaking his head deprecatingly, as if
+in remonstrance against the fate which destined him to work so hard
+for the benefit of a lazy human being reclining at ease behind him.
+
+Flint was, indeed, the image of slothful content, as he sat silent by
+the side of old Marsden, who drove like a woman, with a rein in each
+hand, twitching them uselessly from time to time, and clucking like a
+hen to urge on his horse when the sand grew unusually deep and
+discouraging.
+
+Ignoring his companion, or dreading perhaps to let loose the floods of
+his garrulity by making any gap in the dam of silence, Flint sat idly
+inspecting his fishing-tackle, shutting it up, then drawing it out,
+and finally topping it with the last, light, slender tip, quivering
+like the outmost delicate twig of an aspen as he shook it over the
+side of the carryall. In fancy, he saw it bending beneath the weight
+of a black bass such as haunted the translucent depths of a
+freshwater pond a mile or two away. In fancy, he could feel the
+twitch at the end of the line, then the run, then the steady pull,
+growing weaker and weaker as the strength of the fish was exhausted.
+Suddenly into the idler's lotus-eating Paradise came a rushing sound.
+A sharp swerve of the horse was followed by an exasperating crackle,
+and, lo! the beloved fishing-rod was broken,--yes, broken, and that
+delicate, quivering, responsive, tapering end lay trailing in the dust
+which whirled in eddies around a flying vehicle.
+
+Flint saw flashing past him a racing sulky drawn by a half-tamed colt,
+and driven by a girl--if indeed it was a girl and not, as he was at
+first inclined to think, a boy in petticoats.
+
+The young woman took the situation jauntily. She reined in the colt,
+adjusted her jockey-cap, and pulled her dog-skin gauntlets further
+over her sleeves.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she called out as Flint's wagon overtook her.
+"I'm awfully sorry to have broken your rod; but I saw that we had room
+to pass, and I didn't see the pole hanging out. It never occurred to
+me," she added with a dimpling smile, "that any one would be fishing
+on the Nepaug road."
+
+Flint had labored hard to subdue the outburst of profanity which was
+the first impulse of the natural man, and had almost achieved a
+passing civility, but the smile and the jest put his good resolutions
+to flight. The milk of human kindness curdled within him.
+
+"You could hardly," he answered, raising his hat, "have been more
+surprised than I was to see a horse-race."
+
+A trace of resentment lingered in his tone. The mirth died out of the
+girl's eyes. She returned his bow quietly, leaned forward and touched
+the colt with the tassel of her whip. The creature reared and plunged.
+
+"Great Heavens!" exclaimed Flint, preparing to jump out and go to her
+assistance.
+
+"Let her alone!" said Marsden, with unmoved calmness, shifting the
+tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. "That girl don't need
+no guardeen. She's been a-drivin' raound here all summer, and I reckon
+she knows more about managin' that there colt'n you do. It's my colt,
+and I wouldn't let her drive it ef she didn't."
+
+"I hope to thunder you won't again, at least while I'm about, unless
+you intend to pay for damage to life and property," Flint answered
+testily.
+
+By this time colt and driver had been whirled away in a cloud,
+Elijah-like.
+
+"Nice kind of a girl that!" said Flint to himself with savage,
+solitaire sarcasm. He felt that he had appeared like a fool; and it
+must be a generous soul which can forgive one who has been both cause
+and witness of such humiliation. To conquer his irritation, Flint
+proceeded to take his injured rod to pieces, and repack it gloomily in
+its bag of green felt. When he looked up again, all petty annoyances
+faded out of his mind, for there ahead of him, behind the little patch
+of pines, lay the great cool, cobalt stretch of ocean, unfathomably
+deep, unutterably blue.
+
+The young man felt a vague awe and exaltation tugging at his heart.
+But the only outward expression they gained was a throwing back of the
+head, and a deep indrawing of the breath, followed by the quite
+uninspired exclamation, "Holloa, there's the ocean!"
+
+"Why shouldn't it be there?" inquired the practical Marsden. "You
+didn't think it had got up and moved inland after you left, did you?"
+
+"Well, I didn't know," Flint answered carelessly. "I've seen it come
+in a good two hundred feet while I was here, and I couldn't tell how
+far it might have been carried, allowing for its swelling emotions
+over my departure. But I'm glad to see it at the old stand still; and
+there's the pond too, and the cross-roads and the Nepaug Inn. I
+declare, Marsden, it is like its owner,--grows better looking as it
+gets old and gray."
+
+Marsden's face assumed that grim New England smile which gives notice
+that a compliment has been received and its contents noted, but that
+the recipient does not commit himself to undue satisfaction therein.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "the old inn weathers the winters down here
+pretty middlin' well; but it's gettin' kind o' broken down, and its
+doors creak in a storm like bones that's got the rheumatiz. I wish I
+could afford to give it a coat o' paint."
+
+"Ah!" said Flint, with a shrug, "I hope, for my part, you never can! I
+can see it now as it would be if you had your way--spick and span in
+odious, glaring freshness, insulting the gray old ocean. The only
+respectable buildings in America are those which the owner is too poor
+to improve."
+
+Marsden turned sulky. He did not more than half understand Flint's
+remarks; but he had a dim impression that he was being lectured, and
+he did not enjoy it; few of us do.
+
+Flint, however, was wholly unconscious of having given offence. It
+would have been difficult to make him understand what there was
+objectionable in his remark, and indeed the offence lay more in the
+tone than in the words. Flint's sympathies were imperfect, and he had
+no gift for discerning the sensitiveness which lay outside his sphere
+of vision. To all that came within that rather limited range, he was
+kind and considerate; beyond, he saw nothing and therefore felt
+nothing.
+
+Yet he himself was keenly sensitive, especially to anything
+approaching ridicule. He had not yet forgiven his parents, for
+instance, for naming him Jonathan Edwards. He was perpetually alive to
+the absurdity of the contrast.
+
+"What if the great Jonathan _was_ an ancestor! Why flaunt one's
+degeneracy in the face of the public?" As soon as he arrived at years
+of discretion, he had proceeded to drop the Jonathan from his name;
+but it was continually cropping up in unexpected places to annoy him.
+The very trunk strapped onto the back of the carryall, that
+sole-leather trunk which had travelled with him ever since he started
+off as a freshman for the university, was marked, in odiously
+prominent letters, "Jonathan Edwards Flint."
+
+It provoked him now as he reflected that that female Jehu must have
+seen it as she drove by. Perhaps that accounted for the suspicion of a
+smile on her face. He didn't care a fig what she thought, and he
+longed to tell her so.
+
+The most tedious road has an ending, and the Nepaug highway was no
+exception, except that instead of a dignified and impressive ending,
+it only narrowed to a grass-grown track, and finally pulled up in the
+backyard of the Nepaug Inn. The inn had stood in this same spot since
+the days of Washington, and there was a tradition that he had spent a
+night beneath its roof, though it puzzled even legend-mongers to
+invent an errand which could have taken him there, unless he was
+seized with a sudden desire for salt-water bathing, and even then it
+must have been of a peculiar kind, for the inn stood far back from the
+ocean, at the head of a salt-water pond, shadeless and low-banked, a
+mere inlet of the sea.
+
+This pond, however, was the great attraction of Nepaug to Flint, for
+in one of its coves lay an ungainly boat of which he was the happy
+owner. She was a bargain, and, like most bargains, had proved a dear
+purchase. True, the hull had cost only five dollars and the sails ten;
+but she yawed so badly that a new rudder had become a necessity, and
+that article, being imported, cost almost more than hull and sails
+together. When all was done, however, and a new coat of paint applied,
+Flint vowed she was worth any sixty-dollar boat on the pond. Once
+afloat in "The Aquidneck" (for so Flint had christened her, finding
+her a veritable "isle of peace" to his tired nerves) he seemed to
+become a boy again. The Jonathan in him got the upper hand. All the
+super-subtleties of self-analysis which in other conditions paralyzed
+his will, and congealed his manner, gave place here to the genial glow
+of careless happiness.
+
+It was his fate to be dominated alternately through life by the
+differing strains in his blood: one, flowing through the veins of the
+old Puritans, chilled by the creed of Calvin; the other, of a more
+expansive strain perpetually mocking the strenuousness of its
+companion mood. Flint's friends were wont to say, "Flint will do
+something some day." His enemies, or rather his indifferents,
+scoffingly asked, "What _has_ Flint ever done anyway?" Flint himself
+would have answered, "Nothing, my friends, less than nothing; but more
+than you, because he is aware that he has done nothing."
+
+The morning after Flint's arrival at Nepaug broke clear and cloudless,
+yet he was in no haste to be up and actively enjoying it. Instead, he
+lay a-bed, taking an indolent satisfaction in the thought that no
+bustling duty beckoned him, and amusing himself by a leisurely survey
+of the various corners of his bed-room.
+
+It was scarcely eight feet in height, and the heavy, whitewashed beams
+made it look still lower. In the narrow space between the ceiling and
+wainscot, the wall was covered with an old-fashioned paper, florid of
+design, and musty of odor. On the mantel-shelf stood two brass
+candle-sticks with snuffer and extinguisher. As Flint stared idly at
+them, wondering what varied scenes their candles had shone upon, his
+eyes were drawn above them to a picture which, once having seen, he
+wondered that he could ever have overlooked so long. It was a portrait
+of great beauty. He propped himself on his elbows to study it more
+closely.
+
+"It looks like a Copley," he said to himself, "or perhaps a Gilbert
+Stuart. How the devil could such a picture get here, and how could I
+have failed to see it last year? I must have it--of course I must! It
+is absurd that it should be wasted here! I wonder if Marsden knows
+anything of its value?"
+
+Here Flint fell back upon his pillow and found, to his disgust, that
+his metaphysical conscience was already at work on the problem of the
+equity of a bargain in which the seller is ignorant of facts known to
+the buyer, and whether the buyer is in honor bound not to take
+advantage of his professional training.
+
+The picture which had given rise to this long and complicated train of
+thought was the portrait of a young woman in Quaker dress, her hair
+rolled back above a low and subtle brow, her lace kerchief demurely
+folded over a white neck. Her head was bent a little to one side, and
+rested upon her hand. At her breast sparkled a ruby,--a spot of rich,
+luminous flame.
+
+"That is odd," thought Flint. "I fancied Quakers never wore
+jewels--conscientiously opposed to them, and all that sort of thing.
+Perhaps this damsel was a renegade from the faith, or perhaps this was
+some heirloom,--a protest against the colorless limitations of the
+creed. Queer thing the human soul. Can't be formulated, not even to
+ourselves. Sometimes I've seen people show more of their real selves
+to utter strangers at odd moments than their nearest and dearest get
+at in a life-time."
+
+This disjointed philosophy beguiled so much time, that Flint was late
+to breakfast. His fellow-boarders, a pedler and a fisherman, had gone
+about their business, and he sat down alone at the oilcloth-covered
+table, and twirled the pewter caster while he waited for his egg to be
+boiled. It was one of his beliefs that a merciful Heaven had granted
+eggs and oranges to earth for the benefit of fastidious travellers who
+could wreak their appetites in comparative security, especially if
+they did their own cracking and peeling. At length the breakfast
+appeared, and with it the innkeeper, who sat down opposite Flint.
+
+He had many weighty questions to put.
+
+Should oakum or putty be used in the seams of "The Aquidneck"?
+
+Should he pack the dinner-basket with beef or ham sandwiches?
+
+Would Flint take lines for fishing, or a net for crabbing?
+
+When all these were settled, Flint's thoughts drifted back to the
+portrait in the bed-room overhead. He began his questioning somewhat
+warily. "I suppose you've lived in this house for some time?"
+
+"Wall, ever since I wuz born."
+
+"And your father before you?"
+
+"Yes, and my gran'father before him, and hisn fust."
+
+"Ah, I see--an old homestead; and that portrait in my room is the wife
+of 'hisn'?"
+
+"Not exactly--we never had no womenfolks in our family ez looked like
+that--stronger built is ourn, with more backbone, and none of that
+lackadaisical look raound the eyes."
+
+"Pre-cisely," answered Flint. "And how does it happen that this
+lackadaisical-eyed portrait has hung so long without getting packed
+off to the garret?"
+
+"Wall, you see," began Marsden, slowly and with evident relish,
+"thet's quite a story about thet theer."
+
+"Yes?" said Flint, with a rising inflection which invited further
+confidence.
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Marsden, expanding still further and stroking
+his chin-whisker as he proceeded. "You see 't wuz this way--Captain
+Wagstaff--he wuz the portrait's uncle--wall, he wuz in command of a
+fleet that lay in the harbor up yonder, in the Revolutionary War. When
+he wuz ashore, he spent most of his time to this haouse; and when his
+sister down to Philadelphy died, leavin' this daughter and no one to
+take care on her, he brought her on here to live with him. He'd been
+brought up a Quaker,--'Friend,' he called it,--though he did fight for
+his country, and right enough, sez I. Wall, this girl,--Ruth, her name
+wuz,--she came here and stopped awhile; and then there wuz a fight off
+the shore between the Captain's ship and a British cruiser. The
+cruiser wuz run down and sunk; but one of the officers they picked up
+waounded and brought ashore, to this house, and Miss Ruth she set to
+work takin' care on him.
+
+"Wall, what with cossettin' of him, and all sorts of philanderin', she
+got kinder soft on him, and one day, fust any one knowed, she'd jest
+run off with him."
+
+"And what did the Captain say to that?" asked Flint, more interested
+than he was wont to be in Marsden's narratives.
+
+"The Captain? Oh, they say he took on about it like thunder, and swore
+he'd never forgive her. But Ruth, she sent him her marriage lines, and
+wrote him what a good husband she'd got; and after the war wuz over,
+she kep' a-beggin' the Captain to come over and live with them. He
+wouldn't go; and I don't know ez I blame him any. Europe is so fur
+off, and such a wicked place--seems onsafer ez you get old. New
+England's the best place in the world to die in, and so he thought.
+
+"Howsumever, she kep' a-sendin' him money and things; and one day ther
+came this here box--I've often heard my gran'mother tell how she
+looked on when 't wuz opened, and this picter turned out. Gran'ma wuz
+only a little thing, and she didn't know what to make of it all; for
+the Cap'n, he cried like a baby when he seen it. He had it taken up
+right away to his room (thet's whar you're a-sleepin') and hung over
+the mantel jest whar he could see it from his bed. Thar it stayed ez
+long ez he stayed on airth, and when he lay a-dyin',--He died, you
+know, in that very bed you're a-sleepin' in--only o' course the
+mattress is new--the old one wuz a feather-bed. My gran'mother wuz
+with him at the end, and she said he stretched out his arms to the
+pictur, same ez ef 't ed been his niece herself; and he sort o' cried
+out, 'God bless you, Ruth! I wish I'd 'a' understood you better!'
+Wuzn't that a queer thing for him to say when he wuz a-dyin'?"
+
+"Poor Ruth!" murmured Flint, with that placid, mild melancholy born of
+a sad story heard under comfortable circumstances. His fancy travelled
+back to the damsel in her Quaker dress, and he fell to wondering if
+the garb had been donned, with innocent hypocrisy, to please her old
+uncle, or if she always wore it in her faraway new home.
+
+When he had got so far in his musings, his host recalled him to the
+present by continuing, "I dunno ez we've a very good claim to the
+pictur; but there ain't no heirs turned up, so ez the Cap'n wuz a
+little behind in his board bills, we sort o' kep' it."
+
+Flint sat drumming with his fingers on the table, while his host still
+maundered on after the fashion of old age, which has so few topics
+that it cannot drop them with the light touch-and-go of youth.
+
+Flint had already firmly determined that he would be the possessor of
+that portrait; but he was too shrewd to make any further advances now.
+
+Instead, he turned again to the subject of "The Aquidneck," and,
+rising, made his way to the porch, where he almost walked over a
+speckled hen so nearly a match for the floor that his near-sighted
+eyes failed to perceive her, paying as little heed to her clucking and
+fluttering as he bestowed upon the smiles of a girl who stood in the
+doorway and moved, with conspicuous civility as he passed. He stalked
+around to the corner of the porch where stood his long boots, for
+which he exchanged his low ties of russet leather, and, picking up
+fishing-tackle and crabbing nets, started off at a brisk pace for the
+shore of the pond, leaving Marsden to follow with the pail of dinner.
+
+When all these were stowed away in the locker of "The Aquidneck,"
+together with a straw-covered flask and a volume of Omar Khayyam,
+Flint bade a cheerful good-bye to Marsden, who stood rolling up his
+shirt-sleeves, and giving copious advice. The amateur skipper cast off
+from the little dock, lowered the centreboard, and stretched himself
+lazily in the stern, with one hand on the tiller. Peace was in his
+heart, and a pipe in his mouth--what could man ask more of the gods?
+
+The white sails of "The Aquidneck" fluttered in the light breeze as if
+tremulous with the ecstasy of motion. The sea, beyond the low
+grass-covered sand-bar which enclosed the pond, lay bright and smooth
+to southward, its surface dotted with craft of various sizes. Here
+skimmed a white-winged schooner; there panted and puffed a tug
+absurdly inadequate to its tow of low-lying coal-barges. Far on the
+horizon, a swelling island raised its bulk, purple as Capri, against
+the golden haze.
+
+Flint might have been a better sailor had he not been so good a
+swimmer; but, having no fear of the consequences of a sudden bath, he
+took all risks, sailed into the very apple of the eye of the wind, and
+habitually fastened his sheet,--a practice strongly reprehended by old
+Marsden.
+
+"There's a new boat on the pond," said Flint to himself, as a
+cat-rigged craft, white-hulled with a band of olive, shot out from
+behind a point of rock. "Her lines are rather good. A good sailor
+aboard too, I should say, for she runs free and yet steady. I'd like
+to try a race with the chap some day; maybe it would be hardly fair if
+he's a new comer, for I know the pond like--Damn it! what's that?"
+
+_That_ was a sunken rock which Flint, in his self-satisfied musings,
+had failed to keep a lookout for. It had struck "The Aquidneck" full
+(or _vice versa_, which amounts to the same thing); and here was a
+pretty pickle. Navigation is like flirtation: all goes smoothly till
+the shock comes, and then everything capsizes, with no chance for
+explanation.
+
+"The Aquidneck" began to fill, and then to sink so rapidly that
+Flint, not caring to risk entanglement in the sheets, thought it
+prudent to jump overboard, and struck out lustily for the shore.
+Fortunately for Flint, the shore was near and the water shallow.
+Unfortunately, the shore was at the end further from the inn, his
+clothes were soaking, and his tobacco and whiskey flask in the locker,
+already under water in the midst of mud and eel-grass.
+
+Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Flint swam ashore,
+calmly disposed his coat and knickerbockers over the bayberry bushes,
+and seated himself, in his dripping under-garments, to dry in the sun
+to consider his next move.
+
+"Certainly things couldn't be much nastier," he grumbled. "Yes, they
+could too," he added, as he heard a female voice calling from beyond
+the screen of bayberry bushes.
+
+"Boat ahoy! What's the matter?"
+
+Flint's first impulse was to hide; but fearing the voice and its owner
+might come ashore to investigate the extent of the calamity, he
+hastily donned his outer clothing and emerged, like a dripping seal,
+from his retreat. "All right!" he called out.
+
+"All wrong! I should say," the voice replied; and in an instant he
+knew it for the voice which had called to him from the sulky on the
+previous afternoon.
+
+"That girl is a hoodoo!" he muttered.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" inquired the voice, with that
+super-solemnity which results from the effort to conceal amusement,--a
+solemnity doubly insulting to its object, implying at once his
+absurdity and his vanity.
+
+"Thank you!" answered Flint, stiffly; "if you will be kind enough to
+send some one over to give me a lift, I will be greatly obliged."
+
+"Why not get in with us? Luff her in, Jim!" With this the girl and her
+companion, a boy of twelve years old, bare of leg and freckled of
+face, brought the boat around, and Flint climbed aboard with rather a
+bad grace.
+
+To tell the truth, he was in a fit of the sulks. I admit that the
+sulks are not heroic; but Homer permitted them to Achilles, and why
+should I conceal the fact, unpleasing though it be, about my lesser
+hero.
+
+Doubtless his ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, would have felt a like
+discomposure, had his pulpit given way under him in the presence of
+his congregation; and even that other fiery orator, Patrick The Great,
+might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up
+the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and
+pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the
+crowning achievement of philosophy.
+
+The boy addressed as "Jim" stared at Flint with open-mouthed
+enjoyment.
+
+"You didn't fetch where you meant to, did you?"
+
+"Hush, Jim!"
+
+"Why, Fred, what am I saying wrong now? You're always hushing me up. I
+didn't mean to guy him, but he did look so jolly glum."
+
+Seeing that intervention was vain in this quarter, his sister essayed
+a change of topic, and, womanlike, rushed on to the one she had most
+steadfastly promised herself to avoid.
+
+"Were you fishing when the accident happened?" She stopped and colored
+nervously.
+
+"No," observed Flint, dryly. (His remarks were the only dry things
+about him.) "My fishing-rod happened to be broken. It is of no
+consequence however," he hastened to add, seeing her blush deepen
+painfully. "The fish about here are not gamey enough to make fishing
+an exciting sport. Do you find it so?"
+
+"I never fish."
+
+"Ah, I am surprised."
+
+"I hate to see the poor things suffer--"
+
+"You are too tender-hearted?"
+
+"Say rather too weak-nerved--I should not care if every fish in the
+sea died a violent death after prolonged suffering, provided I was not
+obliged to watch the process."
+
+Flint smiled.
+
+"But don't you know these cold-blooded creatures can't be made to
+suffer? I dare say the keenest enjoyment a fish ever feels is when his
+nervous system is gently stimulated by a hook in his mouth."
+
+"Perhaps--I don't know--I tell you it is no question of sympathy. It
+is simply physical repulsion; and then I loathe the soft slipperiness
+of the bait."
+
+"That's so," put in the boy at the tiller. "Fred groans every time I
+put a worm on the hook, and squeals when the fish flop round in the
+bottom of the boat, especially if they come anywhere near her skirts."
+
+"Fred," repeated Flint to himself, "I might have known she would have
+a boy's name--" Aloud, he said: "I suppose, Master Jim, you have found
+all the best fishing-grounds in the pond."
+
+Jim softened visibly at this tribute to his skill.
+
+"Well, I know one good one over at Brightman's, and I'll show it to
+you to-morrow, if you like."
+
+His sister shot a warning glance from under her level eyebrows.
+
+"Don't make plans too far ahead, Jim. Sufficient unto the day, you
+remember--and unless this gentleman gets dry and warm soon, I am
+afraid he will spend some days to come under the doctor's care.
+Haven't you some brandy or whiskey?" she asked, turning more fully
+toward Flint, and noticing for the first time that his lips were blue
+and his teeth chattering in spite of his efforts at unconcerned
+conversation.
+
+"Yes," he answered; "a flask full of excellent old whiskey--over
+there," and he pointed disconsolately to the line of green water where
+the tell-tale fluttered above the wrecks of "The Aquidneck."
+
+The young lady knit her brows in puzzled thought, "What is in our
+locker, Jim?"
+
+"Bread and butter, cocoanut balls and ginger-ale."
+
+"Get out the ginger-ale."
+
+"But it is your luncheon," deprecated Flint.
+
+"No, it isn't--it is your medicine. Try it."
+
+Flint pressed the iron spring, and poured down the spluttering liquid,
+striving to conceal his wry face.
+
+"Bully, ain't it?" exclaimed Jim, not without a tinge of regret for
+lost joys in his tone.
+
+"Excellent!" returned Flint, perjuring himself like a gentleman.
+
+"It is better than nothing," Miss Fred answered judicially. "I will
+send Jim up to the inn with some brandy; Marsden's stuff is rank
+poison. I had some once this summer when I was ill, and straightway
+sent off to town for a private supply. If you feel able to exercise, I
+should advise you to let us put you off at this point, and make a run
+across country to Marsden's."
+
+"I don't know how to thank you," Flint murmured as Jimmy pulled the
+row-boat up, and the young man prepared to climb in after him.
+
+"There is no occasion for thanks. But if you insist on a debit and
+credit account, please charge it off against the ruin of your
+fishing-rod."
+
+"I am humiliated."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Yes; I must have been a model of incivility."
+
+"No; it was I who was in fault, rushing about the country like a
+jockey riding down everything in sight."
+
+"Who except a fool would have had a fishing-rod trailing half-way
+across the road?"
+
+"Look here," grumbled Jim, "I can't hold this dory bumping against the
+side of the boat forever--"
+
+"Don't be impertinent, Jim. Besides apologies never last long. It is
+only explanations which take time--"
+
+Flint jumped from the gunwale of the sail-boat into the dory, and took
+the oars. As he headed for shore, he turned his eyes once more to the
+sail-boat, and the glimpse that he had of its skipper he carried for
+long after--the vision of her standing there in the stern, against the
+stretch of blue water, her soft handkerchief of some red stuff knotted
+about her throat above the gray jacket, her felt hat thrust up in
+front above the waves of her hair, and her eyes smiling with frank
+mirthfulness.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+
+ OLD FRIENDS
+
+ "It's an ower-come sooth
+ For age and youth,
+ And it brooks wi' nae denial,
+ That the oldest friends
+ Are the dearest friends,
+ And the new are just on trial."
+
+
+Flint was glad enough on reaching the inn to creep into bed. In spite
+of his cross-country run he was chilled through. Little shivers ran
+down his back, and his hands and feet seemed separated by spaces of
+numbness from the warmth of his body. The brandy arrived, and he
+swallowed some eagerly; but it had little effect on his chilly apathy.
+The dinner-bell clanged below. Flint heard it, but he paid no heed to
+the summons. He had forgotten what it was to desire food. A blur
+before his eyes, and an iron band about his head, occupied his
+attention to the exclusion of the outside world.
+
+By three o'clock the headache-fiend had entered into full possession,
+had perched itself in the centre of consciousness, and seemed to
+Flint's excited nerves to be working its octopus claws in and out
+among the folds of his brain.
+
+Waves of pain vibrated outward to his ears and eyes. He watched the
+shade against the blindless window flap to and fro. Each streak of
+light admitted, struck the sufferer like a blow. He got up, went to
+the washbasin and sopped a towel, which he bound about his head and
+lay down again--no relief. He could endure it no longer. He dropped
+his boots one after the other on the floor, till at length Marsden
+heard the signal of distress, came lumbering up the stairs, and
+thumped upon his door.
+
+Flint bade him come in and state in the fewest possible words whether
+there was any doctor within reach.
+
+"There was."
+
+"How long would it take to fetch him?"
+
+"About half an hour."
+
+"Let it be done."
+
+Again Flint sank into a sort of stupor, from which he was awakened by
+a knock, and the entrance of a nervous, little wiry gentleman whose
+clothes of rusty black had the effect of having been purchased in a
+fit of absence of mind.
+
+The sufferer roused himself as the physician came in.
+
+"The doctor?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My name is Flint, and I sent for you to give me a dose of morphine."
+
+"My name, sir, is Cricket, and I'm damned if I do any such thing."
+
+"Why did they send for you then?"
+
+"They sent for me to see what I thought you needed--not to take your
+orders for a drug. I am not an apothecary."
+
+"More's the pity!" returned Flint, flouncing across to the inner side
+of the bed, and turning his back unceremoniously upon his visitor.
+
+Dr. Cricket received this demonstration with unconcern. He took out
+his thermometer and shook it against his wrist. Then resting one knee
+on the bed he thrust the thermometer into his recalcitrant patient's
+mouth, saying: "Don't crunch on it, unless you want your mouth full of
+glass, and your belly full of mercury. Now for the pulse. Ah! too
+fast--I expected as much."
+
+He took out the thermometer and held it to the light. "Over one
+hundred--see here, young man, it's well you sent for me when you did."
+
+"I wish I hadn't."
+
+"So do I, from a professional point of view. Nothing so good for
+doctors' business as delay in sending for us. As it is, I fear I can't
+conscientiously make more than two calls, or keep you in bed after
+to-morrow."
+
+"But what are you going to do for this accursed pain in the head?"
+
+"Oh, that's of no consequence--only a symptom. It's the fever that
+worries me."
+
+"Oh, it is--is it? Well, it is the pain that worries me, and if you
+don't do something about it, I'll fire your old bottles out of the
+window."
+
+"Very good. Then I will send back to Mrs. White's for more bottles and
+a straight-jacket to boot--"
+
+"So you live at Mrs. White's, do you?"
+
+"No, sir, I do not _live_ anywhere in summer--I board."
+
+The doctor chuckled over his little joke as genially as if it had
+never seen the light before; but humor does not appeal to a man with a
+headache, and antique humor least of all.
+
+"That's where Miss Fred and that freckled-faced brother of hers
+stay--isn't it?" Flint continued.
+
+"Ah, do you know the Anstices?"
+
+"Not I--that is, I never saw the young woman till yesterday; but to
+the best of my belief she is not human at all, only an evil genius of
+the region who goes about with incantations which cause fishing-rods
+to break at the end, and boats to run onto rocks."
+
+"So--ho! You were the skipper of 'The Aquidneck,' were you? Well,
+well! no wonder you're laid up with a chill. We nearly burst our
+blood-vessels, laughing over Miss Fred's account of you, rising up
+like a ghost out of the eel-grass, and the topmast of your boat
+sticking up out of the water like a dead man's finger."
+
+Dr. Cricket's little black eyes twinkled with enjoyment as he recalled
+the scene. The misguided man fancied he was helping to take his
+patient's thoughts off himself, and, having measured out his powders
+and potions, he took his departure, leaving Flint inwardly raging.
+
+To be made the butt of a boarding-house table! Really it was too much;
+and this girl, of whom he had begun to think rather well--this girl
+doubtless mimicked his disconsolate tones and his chattering teeth,
+and made all manner of fun of his sorry plight.
+
+Folk with a headache see life quite out of focus; and at the moment it
+really would have been a comfort to Flint to know that this mocking
+maid had been drowned, or struck by lightning, or in any fashion
+disabled from repeating the story of his discomfiture. He writhed and
+twisted, and at last fell asleep, still alternately vowing never to
+forgive, and never to give her another thought.
+
+In the morning when he woke, free from pain and, except for a certain
+languor, quite himself again, he wondered at his childishness of the
+night before, though in spite of reason a certain sub-conscious
+resentment lingered still.
+
+At seven o'clock Matilda Marsden knocked at his door and gave warning
+that the breakfast-hour drew near.
+
+"I say," he called in response, "will you please send some one with a
+pitcher of hot water? I'll have my breakfast in bed."
+
+Flint knew perfectly well that she would bring the water herself; but
+it was necessary to keep up the fiction of intermediate agency in
+deference to her position.
+
+From October until June she was "Miss Marsden," in a shop of a small
+New England town; and when from June to October she condescended to
+become plain "Tilly," and to lend her assistance to her parents at the
+Nepaug Inn, she made it distinctly understood that she did so without
+prejudice to her social claims.
+
+She waited at the table to be sure; but she shaded her manner with
+nice precision to meet the condition of the guest she served. To the
+timid pedler, she was encouraging; to the encroaching commercial
+traveller, she was haughty, and to Flint gently and insinuatingly
+sympathetic.
+
+Flint, on his part, treated her with the deference which he accorded
+to all women; but it never occurred to him to consider her as an
+individual at all. To him she was simply an agency for procuring food
+and towels; and when she lingered on the stairs, or at the doorway,
+making little efforts at conversation, he cut her ruthlessly short.
+
+The result of this mingling of courtesy and neglect was of course that
+the girl fell promptly and deeply in love with the young man, cut out
+from the current magazines every picture which bore the slightest
+resemblance to his features, and went about sighing sighs and dreaming
+dreams, in a fashion at once pathetic and ridiculous. Flint,
+meanwhile, always obtuse on the side of sympathy, went his way wholly
+oblivious of her state of mind. How should he know that his rolls were
+hotter and his coffee stronger than those of his fellow-boarders, or
+that to him alone was accorded the friendly advice as to the
+comparative merits of "Injun pudd'n" and huckleberry pie, which
+constituted the staple of desserts at the inn?
+
+This morning, as usual, he was wholly unconscious of the effort to
+beautify the tray set down outside his door. It meant nothing to him,
+that the pitcher holding the hot water was of red and yellow majolica,
+that the coarse napkin was embroidered with a wreath of impossible
+roses, and the coffee-cup bore the legend "Think of me" in gilt
+lettering. In fact the only thing which attracted his attention at all
+was a pile of letters on the tray. He glanced hastily over the
+envelopes, swallowed his breakfast, and returned to closer inspection
+of the correspondence. The first letter which he opened was written by
+the editor of an English "Quarterly," informing him that his recent
+critique on Balzac had found favor in high places, and that the
+"Quarterly" would like to engage a series.
+
+Flint tried not to seem, even to himself, as pleased as he felt.
+
+The next note was of a different tone, a grieved rejoinder from a
+young author whose book had been reviewed by Flint with more light
+than sweetness. Less stoical to reproaches than to compliment, Flint
+kicked vigorously at the bedclothes, as though they had been the
+offending note-writer.
+
+"Great Heavens!" he growled. "Does the man think his budding genius
+must be fed on sugar-plums? What I said about him and his book was
+either true or false; and here he spends his whole sheet prating about
+'sensitive feelings,' as if they had anything to do with the matter."
+
+Oh, imperfect sympathies! How large a part you play in the unhappiness
+of the world!
+
+The third envelope on the tray was yellow, and contained a large,
+careless scrawl on a half-sheet of business paper; but it seemed to
+afford Flint unalloyed delight.
+
+"Brady coming to-day!" he almost shouted aloud. "That is what I call
+jolly. I would like to see forty Dr. Crickets keep me in bed."
+
+Brady and Flint had been college friends in the old days, at Harvard,
+and after that for years had drifted apart. Flint betaking himself to
+a German university, and Brady to a business career in Bison, a
+flourishing town of the great Northwest, wherein he too had flourished
+mightily, and whence he sent imploring messages to Flint, begging him
+not to waste his life in the effete civilization of New York, but to
+come out and get a view of real folks in the fresh new world of the
+West.
+
+To these messages Flint had replied with more candor than courtesy,
+that the only fault he had to find with New York was its lack of
+civilization, that he was saving every nickel in hopes of getting away
+from it to eastward, and that if he were condemned to spend his life
+in Bison, or any other prairie town, he would make short work of
+matters with a derringer.
+
+This slight difference of opinion had not at all interfered with the
+attachment of the two; and few things would have roused Flint to such
+enthusiasm as this expectation of a fortnight--a leisurely,
+gossiping, garrulous, quarrelsome fortnight--with his old friend. The
+prospect of the visit was a better tonic than any contained in the
+little doctor's black-box. Indeed it drove all thoughts of doctors and
+their medicines so completely out of his head that he was quite
+surprised when, having dressed and descended to the ground-floor, he
+saw Dr. Cricket standing at the foot of the stairs, wiping the
+perspiration off his forehead with a large silk handkerchief.
+
+The Doctor looked fiercely at him from under his shaggy eyebrows.
+
+"Is this Mr. Flint?" he asked, as if unable to believe the testimony
+of his eyes.
+
+"It is," Flint answered with unconcern.
+
+"Why did you get up?"
+
+"Because I formed the habit in my youth."
+
+"Didn't I tell you to lie in bed till I came?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+The Doctor quivered with rage.
+
+"I am an old man, sir," he said, "and I've walked a mile in the heat
+of this devilish sun, and all for a patient who is determined to kill
+himself, and such a fool that it doesn't matter much whether he does
+or not."
+
+Flint smiled.
+
+"Every man, you know, must be either a fool or a physician when he
+reaches maturity. Some may be both. However, since you were kind
+enough to come to my assistance last night, I cannot be induced to
+quarrel with you this morning, and you ought to be the last man to
+find fault with me for feeling the benefit of your medicine sooner
+than you expected."
+
+Dr. Cricket was as easy to be placated as to be stirred to anger; and
+when Flint urged him to come into the stuffy little office and partake
+of a lemonade with the addition of a stronger fluid from a bottle in
+Flint's room, he forgot his wrath or drowned it in the cooling drink,
+and at length parted in kindliness, only bidding his patient wear
+cabbage-leaves in his hat, and be sure to take wraps in case of a
+change in the weather, not forgetting to put on his "gums" if he
+walked on the wet beach.
+
+When he had gone, Flint found the Doctor's gold-bowed spectacles in a
+chair. "Brady and I will walk up with them this evening," he said to
+himself. "Perhaps I was not as civil to the old gentleman as I might
+have been."
+
+When Marsden learned that Flint was planning an expedition to South
+East, he suggested that he would "take it kindly" if Flint could make
+it convenient to bring down a few packages of groceries, as some of
+the store supplies had run out, and the relays were not expected until
+the next day.
+
+Flint reproached himself for weakness in complying, and growled still
+further when he saw the length of the list which Marsden handed to him
+as he took his seat in the carryall.
+
+"What a cursed fool I am," he muttered as he drove off, "to hire this
+man's beast for the privilege of doing his errands!"
+
+The three-o'clock train puffed into the station at South East nearly
+an hour behind time. The period of waiting in the intense mid-day heat
+had not improved Flint's temper. For all his hearty greeting to Brady,
+he could not shake off a sense of irritation, intensified by the fact
+that he had no one on whom to wreak it.
+
+Brady's trunk was strapped onto the carryall, the various bottles,
+jugs, and packages which Flint, with such unusual urbanity, had
+consented to bring down to the Beach for Marsden, were stowed away
+under the seat, and nothing remained but the mail. To get this Flint
+drew up at the post-office. The postmaster was a grouty old
+store-keeper who, through political influence, retained his position
+in spite of the efforts of the town's-folk to oust him. This afternoon
+a line of wagons stood at the door, and a line of men stood at the
+little window within. Seeing his own name in the list of those for
+whom there were letters, Flint waited for the window to open, and took
+his place in the line. When he reached the window, he asked for his
+letter.
+
+"No letter for you," growled the postmaster.
+
+Flint stepped out of line and consulted the list. There was no
+mistake. Again he presented himself before the window.
+
+"What cher want?"
+
+"My letter."
+
+"Ain't no letter, I told cher."
+
+"Perhaps you will be kind enough to look at the list."
+
+The postman, in the worst of humors, went to a drawer of his desk,
+and, after much hunting about and turning over of parcels, he found a
+letter which he threw out at Flint without a remark. Flint took it
+also in silence, turned away and resumed his place at the end of the
+line. Again he returned to his old post before the little window. This
+time the postman grew purple with rage.
+
+"Get out o' this you! What cher want now?"
+
+"I simply wish," answered Flint, in his low, clear, gentlemanly voice,
+"to tell you that you have behaved like an insolent blackguard, and
+deserve to be removed from office."
+
+Flint's words were the signal for a storm of applause from the
+loiterers, and he walked out a hero. He was in a more amiable frame of
+mind when he climbed into the carryall. The old horse, feeling his
+head turned homeward, needed less urging than usual, and the young men
+lolled back, talking busily of old times and new.
+
+Brady was a typical business-man of the West,--cheerful, practical, a
+bit boastful, square-shouldered, clear-eyed and ruddy-faced, confident
+of himself, proud of his surroundings, sure that there were no
+problems of earth or Heaven with which America in general, and Philip
+Brady in particular, were not fitted to cope.
+
+Before he had uttered a dozen sentences, Flint began to realize how
+far apart they had drifted in the ten years since they had met. He
+experienced a vaguely hopeless sense of complexity in the presence of
+his friend's bustling frankness. He felt almost a hypocrite, and yet
+it seemed to him that any attempt at self-revelation would be useless,
+because the relative value, the _chiaro-oscuro_ of life, was so
+different to each. He took refuge, as we all do under such
+circumstances, in objectivity--asked heartily for the health of each
+member of Brady's family, listened with polite interest to the
+statistics of the growth of Bison, and then began to wonder what he
+should talk about next. As he cast his eye downward, a very practical
+subject suggested itself, for he saw with dismay that the cork was
+out of the molasses jug, from which the sticky fluid had already oozed
+forth, and was rapidly spreading itself over the floor of the
+carryall.
+
+"This is what comes of being obliging. Just look at this mess! What in
+time are we going to do about it, Brady?"
+
+Brady, being a man of action, wasted no energy in discussion. He
+jumped to the ground, pulled out first his overcoat and gripsack,
+fortunately unharmed, then the paper parcels of oatmeal and hominy,
+sticky and dripping. Swiftly corking the jug, he lifted it out of the
+carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both
+against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He
+felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful
+calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be
+put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth and the fatal jug?
+
+No house was in sight.
+
+Flint stood gloomily gazing down at his boots covered with the oozy
+brown fluid. "Jupiter aid us!" he exclaimed; and as if in answer to
+his call, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," rose on their
+sight, coming towards them from over the ridge of the hill. She came
+on swiftly, yet without hurry. She walked (a process little understood
+by the feminine half of the world, hampered as they are by their stays
+and tenpenny heels). This woman neither hobbled, nor waddled, nor
+tripped. With the leg swinging out from the hip (no awkward
+knee-movement, yet no stride), she swept down the hill as serenely as
+though she were indeed a messenger sent by Jupiter to their
+assistance. Beside her trotted a large dog who now and again
+excursionized in search of tempting adventure, but as constantly
+returned to rub his head lovingly against his mistress's skirt, and
+lick her hand, as if to assure her that, in spite of his wandering
+propensities, his heart remained faithful.
+
+"The hoodoo!" muttered Flint.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" exclaimed Brady.
+
+The object of these widely differing criticisms moved steadily nearer.
+She wore a white gown. A basket was on her arm, and her wide-brimmed
+straw hat was pulled low over her eyes to shield them from the sun.
+She was close upon the scene of accident before she discerned it.
+Catching at the same moment a look of annoyance on Flint's face, she
+swerved a little, as if with intent to pass by, like the priest and
+the Levite, on the other side; then, reassured by Brady's look of
+half-comic despair, she set down her basket and paused.
+
+"You have met with an accident, I see," she observed, as casually as
+though she had never before heard of any catastrophe in connection
+with Flint. "The molasses worked, I suppose. It will, sometimes, if it
+is not tightly corked. It was stupid in the grocer not to warn you."
+
+"It is kind of you," said Brady, "to lay the accusation of stupidity
+so far off; but, wherever it lies, the results are the same, and we
+are in a bad way."
+
+"What can we find to wipe these things off with?" the good Samaritan
+asked, making common cause in the misfortune.
+
+"Nothing," answered Flint, with extravagant gloom, striving as he
+spoke to cleanse his shoes by rubbing them against the grass-grown
+bank.
+
+The girl put her finger to her lips,--a characteristic gesture when
+she was puzzled. Then, unfastening her basket with sudden energy, she
+exclaimed: "Why won't this do? Here is some sea-moss which I was
+taking to an old woman who lives a little further down the road. She
+makes some stuff which she calls farina out of it, and grieves
+bitterly that she is no longer young and spry enough to gather it for
+herself along the shore. My basket is full of this moss, and if we
+could wet it in the brook down yonder, we might sponge off the things
+with it, and then dry them with big leaves, backed up by those
+newspapers which I see you have in your parcel of mail."
+
+"What a clever notion!" Brady said, as he plunged down to the brook,
+and came up again with the dripping moss. He and the Samaritan
+scrubbed merrily away, while Flint stood by with an uncomfortable
+sense that he was out of it all, and that no one but himself knew or
+cared.
+
+When comparative cleanliness was restored, and the bundles returned to
+the bottom of the wagon, the girl scrambled down to the brook, and,
+pushing back her wide cuffs, knelt by the water, where she washed the
+traces of sticky substance from her long slender fingers.
+
+"You have relieved us from a very awkward situation," said Flint, as
+she rose; "but your basket of moss is spoiled and your long walk
+rendered futile. Surely you will permit us at least to drive you
+home."
+
+"Thank you, no. Mrs. Davitt will like to talk a while, and to know
+that I have not forgotten her and her farina. So I will bid you 'good
+afternoon.'"
+
+"That is the most charming girl I ever met," observed Brady, as he
+stood watching her disappear around the turn of the road.
+
+"Did you ever meet one who was not?" asked Flint.
+
+"The way she took hold was magnificent," continued Brady, unmoved by
+his companion's raillery. "And then when it was all over she was so
+unself-conscious; and the best of all was her politeness in never
+laughing at us, for really, you know, we must have looked rather
+ridiculous, standing gawking there like two escaped imbeciles."
+
+This allusion irritated Flint, as he remembered the last two
+occasions, when she had borne herself less seriously. The recollection
+colored his first remark, after they had clambered into the carryall,
+and persuaded Dobbin to resume his leisurely trot.
+
+"I am afraid myself, inconsistent as it seems, I should have liked her
+better if she had not taken hold in such a capable, mannish fashion.
+There is a certain appealing dependence which is rather becoming to a
+woman--to my thinking, that is--it is an old-fashioned notion, I
+admit."
+
+"Well, I must say I don't think an attitude of appealing dependence
+would have been very serviceable to us to-day; and as an habitual
+state of mind, while it may be very attractive, it seems to imply
+having some one at hand to appealingly depend upon. Our sex must have
+reciprocal duties; but I don't notice that you have offered yourself
+as a support for any of these clinging natures."
+
+"Nevertheless," answered Flint, "if I ever did fall in love, it would
+be with a woman of the clinging kind. But don't let us get to talking
+like a couple of sentimental schoolgirls! Here we are, anyway, at the
+last turn of the road, and there is Nepaug Beach. How does it strike
+you?"
+
+"It reminds me," said Brady, smiling, "of the Walrus and the
+Carpenter:--
+
+ "'They wept like anything to see
+ Such quantities of sand.
+ If this were only cleared away
+ They said it would be grand.'"
+
+"Brady, you are a sentimentalist! You sigh for brooks and willows and,
+for all I know, _people_."
+
+"Flint, you are a misanthrope! You have searched out this God-forsaken
+stretch of sand just for the purpose of getting away from your kind.
+Now I have hunted you to your lair, and I propose to stay with you for
+a fortnight; but I am not to be dragooned into saying that I think
+your resort is a scene of beauty, for I don't; but that is a jolly,
+old, gray, tumbled-down building over there--a barn, I suppose."
+
+"No, sir; that is the Nepaug Inn. As it has neither porters, waiters,
+nor electric bells, you are expected to shoulder your own luggage and
+march upstairs--second room to the right. Whoa, there!" he called out
+to the old horse a full minute after the animal had come to a dead
+halt in front of the inn door. The noise, however, served its purpose
+in bringing Marsden to the door, and loading the old inn-keeper with
+imprecations for their unlucky experience with the molasses, Flint
+left him to struggle with the contents of the wagon, while he himself
+escorted Brady up the narrow, sagging stairs, and ensconced him in a
+room next his own,--a room whose windows looked out like his over the
+purple stretch of ocean, now opalescent with reflection of the clouds.
+
+"Where do you take your bath?" Brady asked, looking round somewhat
+helplessly.
+
+"In there, you land-lubber!" answered Flint, pointing out to sea;
+"isn't the tub big enough?"
+
+Brady laughed, a hearty, boyish, infectious laugh. "All right," he
+said, "only it seems rather odd to come East for pioneering. Did you
+know, by the way, that I am to be in New York this winter?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes. Our house is just establishing a branch office there, and I am
+to be at the head of it."
+
+Flint chuckled.
+
+"Bison establishing a branch office in New York! The humor of the
+thing delights me."
+
+"I don't see anything so very funny about it," answered Brady, rather
+testily; "but I have no stomach for a quarrel till I have had some
+supper--unless you sup _out there_," he added with a lordly wave of
+his hand towards the ocean in imitation of Flint's gesture. "I hope,
+at any rate, our evening meal is not to be of farina. The associations
+might be a little too strong even for my appetite."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+ THE DAVITTS
+
+ "The short and simple annals of the poor."
+
+
+After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred
+quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she
+intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had
+no time to lose.
+
+"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing
+gesture on the shaggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had
+kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in
+the road,--"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."
+
+The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off
+pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her,
+flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt
+family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or
+tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and
+sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt's calling.
+A whole section of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate
+swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a brood of chickens wandered
+at will over the unmown grass before the house: yet the place was not
+wholly unattractive, for it bore evidences of human love and
+happiness; and, after all, these are the objects for which the most
+orderly and elegant mansions exist, if indeed they are so fortunate as
+to attain them. These are the essence of a home.
+
+An old dory filled with geranium and nasturtium brightened the centre
+of the yard. Beneath the wide spreading maples, which lent their
+unbought adornment to the shabby old house, hung a child's swing, and
+near by stood a rickety express-cart, to which an unlucky goat was
+tethered by a multi-colored harness made of rope, tape, and bits of
+calico. The driver of this equipage, a tow-headed lad of some five
+years old, stood with his thumb in his mouth, gazing with open-eyed
+amazement at the young lady who thought it worth while to walk so
+fast.
+
+"Good afternoon, John!" said Winifred, when she had regained her
+breath. "Is your mother at home?"
+
+The practice of answering questions is an acquired habit, and comes
+only after long acquaintance with society. Children left in a state of
+nature rarely think it necessary or even safe to commit themselves so
+far. John Davitt only pulled his thumb out of his mouth, poked his
+pink toes deeper into the grass, and gave a hitch at the single
+suspender supporting the ragged knickerbockers which formed two-thirds
+of his costume.
+
+"Oh!" continued the visitor, not in the least disconcerted by the lack
+of response to her advances, "you don't want to leave your goat long
+enough to go and ask about your mother, do you? Well, I should not
+like to be asked to leave my colt if I were driving. People should do
+their own errands, I think, and not be bothering other folks with
+their business. You will not be afraid of my dog if I leave him here
+while I go into the house, will you?"
+
+"Whath hith name?" asked John, discovering for the first time that he
+had a tongue and knew its use.
+
+"Paddy," answered the visitor.
+
+"I uthed to have a brother Paddy. He died."
+
+"Then you must make friends with the dog for his sake. Would you like
+to see how my Paddy can chase a stone?" With this Winifred picked up a
+large pebble, and threw it far down the road. Paddy, with a bark of
+animated enjoyment, made after it, with wagging tail and ears laid
+back against his head. John laughed loud, wrinkled up his little pug
+nose and showed his white teeth.
+
+"Now when he brings it back, you throw it again, and I will go in and
+try to find your mother; I think I see her now," she added, as she
+turned the angle of the house and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Davitt,
+seated in the wooden rocking-chair beside the kitchen-table, paring
+potatoes.
+
+To the casual glance she was only a homely old Irish woman who might
+have been the original of "The shape which shape had none." The only
+semblance of waist was the line drawn by her gingham apron-string. Her
+form bulged where it should have been straight, and was straight where
+it should have curved. Her face, however, had a gentle motherliness,
+and still bore traces of the comeliness which had marked it a quarter
+of a century earlier, when, as Bridget O'Hara, she had set sail from
+"the owld counthry" to try her fortune in the new.
+
+After a few months' experience of city life over here, she had drifted
+to South East, where she found employment in a thread factory which
+stood on the bank of the tiniest stream that ever, outside of England,
+called itself a river. Its current ran swiftly, however; its mimic
+falls were forced into the service of trade; and the wheels of the
+thread factory whirred busily, except when bad times brought wheels
+and bobbins to a standstill.
+
+For three years after her arrival in South East, Bridget O'Hara stood
+beside her wheel, and fed her bobbin faithfully. Her blue Irish eyes
+were bright in those days, and her cheeks red as the roses of County
+Meath, where the thatched homestead of the O'Haras lifted its humble
+head. More than one of the men working in the factory took notice of
+the blue eyes and the red cheeks, and would have been glad to secure
+their owner for a wife; but she was not for any of them. Before she
+had been in the village six months, she had given her faithful heart
+to Michael Davitt, the young New England fisherman whose boat lay
+below the bridge which she crossed every morning on her way to her
+work in the factory. Many a time on bright spring mornings she
+loitered on the bridge, leaning over its wooden railing to watch
+Michael as he washed out his boat, and made ready for the day's sail.
+Sometimes the talk grew so absorbing that the factory bell sounded out
+its last warning call before Bridget could tear herself away, and
+afterward, through the long day, shut up among the whirring wheels, in
+the dust and heat of the big dreary room, she kept the vision of the
+white flapping sail, and of Michael Davitt standing by the tiller of
+the boat under the bridge.
+
+At last the fisherman asked her to marry him, and she accepted him
+joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions of their united
+incomes.
+
+"Sure, Mike dear," Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for
+wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the bit I'll be
+afther atin'."
+
+This specious theory of political economy has beguiled into matrimony
+many a young couple who fail to take account of the important
+difference that what is enough for two may not be enough for three,
+and still less for three times three. So it fell out with the Davitts.
+For the first year of their married life, Bridget went on working in
+the factory, and kept her tiny tenement tidy, and Michael mended nets
+on the doorstep, and sold fish in summer, and loafed in the winter in
+contented assurance that life would continue to treat him well. But
+the next year opened less prosperously. Bridget was compelled to give
+up her work in the factory, and when, in the middle of a particularly
+rigorous winter, a baby was born to the house of Davitt, the outlook
+would have appeared discouraging to any one less optimistic than
+Bridget. But she found much cause for satisfaction in the thought that
+the baby had come at this particular time, when Michael could be at
+home to help take care of the house; and above all in the reflection
+that the baby was a boy, "who'd not be thrubblin' any wan long, for
+before we know it, Mike, me jewel, he'll be lookin' afther you and
+me."
+
+Part of her self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby
+Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who
+sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At
+an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the
+family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small
+Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care.
+Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, Katie, and John had found their way into
+the family circle, and no one hinted that there was not place and
+porridge for the last as well as the first.
+
+As the years went on, Michael Davitt lost whatever alertness of
+temperament he might once have possessed. New England seems to endow
+some of her children with such a surplus of energy, that she is
+compelled to subtract a corresponding amount from the share of others.
+Michael Davitt was one of the others. His experiences as a fisherman
+had persuaded him that it was useless to put forth effort, unless he
+had wind and tide in his favor. Consequently, his life was spent in
+waiting for encouragement from the forces of nature,--encouragement
+which never came; so that at last he gave up the struggle, and sat by
+the chimney-corner all winter, as contentedly as he sat on the stern
+of his boat all summer, ready to move if circumstances favored, but
+serene under all conditions. His silence was as marked as his
+serenity. On occasions, he could be moved to smiles, but seldom to
+speech. He sat quiet and unmoved amid the family hubbub, his long
+limbs twisted together, his arms folded above his somewhat hollow
+chest, and his protruding tusks of teeth firmly fastened over his
+nether lip, as if constraining it to silence.
+
+Tommy might lift off the cover of the beehive, and rush into the house
+shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset
+the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,--no
+matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma.
+But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to
+show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make
+room on the settle, and even went so far as to make an entering wedge
+of conversation with a "Well, Leon!"
+
+Leonard Davitt was a boy to warm any father's heart,--stout and
+strong, hearty and frank, cheerful as the day was long, with the smile
+and jest of his race ready for any chance comer. This light-heartedness
+had made him a favorite not only in his own family, but among all the
+youth and maidens who dwelt in the outlying farmhouses around South
+East; but of late an unaccountable change had come over the lad. This
+merry, careless happiness had deserted him. He had taken to going
+about with hair unbrushed, and a "dejected 'havior of his visage."
+
+The noisy mirth of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and
+their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much
+as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence
+under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered
+at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of
+rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked
+in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured
+to rally him on "the girl that was so cool she'd give a man the mitten
+in summer;" but her pleasantry was ill-received. Leonard scowled at
+her, and stalked away muttering to himself.
+
+His mother saw him from her window, and she too knew what was the
+trouble with her boy; but she only dropped a few tears among the
+potato-parings, and resolved to make griddle-cakes for supper,--as
+though Leonard were still a child whose heart could be cheered
+through his stomach. As Mrs. Davitt laid down her knife to wipe her
+eyes, she heard the barking of a dog, and then a rapid double knock on
+the half-open kitchen-door.
+
+"Come in, Miss," she said, rising and wiping her hands on her gingham
+apron. "Come in and take the rocker. Don't be standin' when sittin'
+down is chape enough, even for the poor. It's yourself hezn't forgot
+me, nor me bit o' farina."
+
+"No, indeed, Mrs. Davitt, I did not forget you: but you won't get your
+farina after all; for I met some poor men in distress, and I handed
+over all the sea-moss to them."
+
+"Poor craytyurs! Wuz they that hungry they could ate it raw?"
+
+"Hardly," answered Winifred, smiling at her remembrance of the
+peculiarly well-fed looking recipients of her bounty, "they were not
+hungry at all; but they had come to grief with a molasses jug. The
+carriage and everything in it was sticky, and I don't know what they
+would have done to get it clean without your moss; but you shall
+surely have some more to-morrow, and now tell me how you are feeling."
+
+"Is it meself? Thank ye kindly, me dear. I'm jest accordin' to the
+common, save where I'm worse; me legs ache me nights, and I fale the
+washin' in me back some days; but if me moind wuz right, it's little
+I'd moind the thrubble in me bones."
+
+"Why, what is wrong, Mrs. Davitt?" Winifred asked with sympathy in her
+voice. "The children all look well. John's cheeks are red as apples,
+and Katie is as round as a butter-ball."
+
+"Oh, the childers is all right," answered Mrs. Davitt, with an air of
+mystery, but evidently not unwilling to be pressed further as to the
+source of her trouble.
+
+"Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this
+morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a
+catch of fish as I have seen this summer."
+
+"Yea, himself's all right."
+
+"Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother
+might be proud."
+
+"Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart."
+
+"Tell me all about it," said her young visitor, laying her delicate
+hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel
+knife. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with
+the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a
+fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.
+
+"It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her for a bowld hussy! She's
+put the insult on Leonard."
+
+"The insult?"
+
+"Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice
+of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on
+two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too
+good to be shpakin' with the praste himself."
+
+"Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt," remonstrated Winifred,
+soothingly. "Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want
+him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that
+yourself, when you were a girl."
+
+"Thrue fer ye, me dear!" Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful
+Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame
+of mind. "Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz
+caught before ever he'd shpread the net."
+
+"Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same."
+
+"Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and
+it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best
+by in the counthry."
+
+The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her
+apron over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair,
+swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black wooden chair from the
+back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a
+century of rocking.
+
+"Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with
+Leonard?" Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the
+wisdom of the proceeding.
+
+"Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not
+bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all."
+
+"Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be
+disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not
+listen to me."
+
+"Not listen to yoursilf, is it!" cried Mrs. Davitt, once more
+transported to the heights of hope. "Sure, the saints in Hiven would
+lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at
+ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o'
+thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!"
+
+Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an
+appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loitering at
+the gate.
+
+"There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It
+is growing dark, and you know," she added, laughing, "how timid I
+am!"
+
+Mrs. Davitt smiled in answer to the laugh, for Winifred's daring was
+the talk of the countryside. She dried her eyes, and peered over her
+spectacles at her visitor as she picked her way among the chickens,
+feathered and human, who thronged about the doorstep, to the spot
+where Leonard stood, listlessly hanging over the gate gazing idly up
+and down the road.
+
+Mrs. Davitt's heart beat anxiously as she marked the girl stop to
+speak to him, and when at last she saw him turn and walk beside her up
+the road, followed suspiciously by Paddy with the basket in his mouth,
+she burst out into a tearful torrent of joy and thanksgiving.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V
+
+ THE OLD SHOP
+
+ "Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share
+ the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?"
+
+
+The sun was already low in the west, when Flint and Brady, having
+supped heartily on boiled lobster and corn bread, lighted their pipes
+and strolled toward the door of the tiny shop which leaned up against
+the inn as if for support. A bird, looking down upon it in his flight,
+might have mistaken it for some great mud-turtle, so close did it
+sprawl along the ground.
+
+For some years it had served as a turkey-house on the farm; but as
+Marsden had begun to discover possibilities of profit in a shop which
+should both draw custom to the inn, and find customers in the chance
+guests of the tavern, he had turned his attention to the work of
+transforming the poultry-house into a village store, and had been
+surprised to find how well it adapted itself to its new purpose. True,
+the beams ran across only a few inches above Marsden's head; but that
+was rather an advantage than otherwise, for they thus made an
+excellent substitute for counters, and the wares were well displayed
+and within easy reach. Along one beam hung a row of boots of every
+style and size,--from giant rubbers, reaching to the thighs, in which
+the Nepaug farmers went wading for seaweed fertilizer, to the clumsy
+baby shoes, jauntily set off with a scarlet tassel at the top, in that
+pathetic effort of the poor to express in their children's dress the
+poetry so scantily supplied in their own lives. Another beam was hung
+with wooden pails, and a third gleamed with the reflections of
+bright-new tinware.
+
+On the shelves opposite the door lay bright hued calicoes flanked by
+jars of peppermint candies, some of which were rendered doubly
+irresistible to youthful customers by being cut in heart-shape and
+decorated with sentimental mottoes chiefly in verse.
+
+Marsden fitted his shop so well, that he seemed little more than an
+animated bundle of secondhand goods. His cowhide boots were the
+fellows of those that dangled from the fourth beam. His gayly checked
+flannel shirt harmonized delightfully with the carriage robes in the
+corner, and the soft brown-felt hat toned æsthetically with the plug
+tobacco in the case behind him.
+
+When Flint and Brady looked in at the door, a girl was standing at the
+counter, turning over the pile of calicoes. She had brought with her
+a pailful of blueberries which she evidently wished to barter for a
+remnant of the prints. She showed much disappointment when Marsden
+declined to trade except upon a cash basis.
+
+"What might this be wuth?" she asked at length, pointing to a red and
+white calico on the second shelf. Marsden, Yankee-like, answered her
+question by another. "What'll ye give fur it? It's the end of the
+piece, and I dunno but I'd as lives you'd hev it ez anybody."
+
+"Wall," answered the girl, cautiously, "I wouldn't give no more'n six
+cents a yard for it."
+
+"Take it along," said Marsden, wrapping it, as he spoke, in coarse
+brown paper. As he handed it to her he said: "I _wuz_ goin' to offer
+it to you for five cent."
+
+The girl's face fell.
+
+"You see," whispered Flint to Brady, "there never was a woman who
+could really enjoy anything unless she thought she had paid less than
+it was worth. It is my own belief that Eve bought the apple from the
+Serpent as a bargain, and that Satan assured her that he would not
+have sold it to Adam at double the price."
+
+As the maiden withdrew, a buggy rattled up to the door of the little
+shop. In the broad strip of light formed by the lamp opposite the
+door, the creaking vehicle stopped short. A dumpy female in a
+nondescript black garment took the reins, while her male companion
+descended heavily, putting both feet upon the step, and cautiously
+lowering himself to the ground close beside the spot where Flint and
+Brady stood. Once assured that he had reached the ground in safety, he
+proceeded to take off his wrinkled duster, fold it tenderly, and lay
+it on the seat, from beneath which he pulled out a bulky bundle,
+securely tied up in bed-ticking.
+
+Flint watched the rustic with idle curiosity, as the old man entered
+the store and deposited his bundle on the counter. Marsden sat on a
+chair with no back, nursing his knee and assuming indifference to the
+entrance of the new-comer.
+
+"Be thar any market naow for _quilts_, or _be_ thar?" asked the old
+farmer, somewhat anxiously, while untying the knots of his parcel.
+
+"I dunno ez thar be, and I dunno _ez_ thar be," Marsden answered.
+
+Both parties seemed to understand each other perfectly. They
+approached as warily as two foxes. When the roll was finally spread
+out on the counter, the dim lamplight flickered over a patchwork quilt
+of the familiar log-cabin pattern, gay with colors as varied as those
+of Joseph's coat.
+
+"What cher s'pose yer could give fur this?" the new-comer asked with
+a relapse into unwary eagerness, and an irrepressible pride in this
+evidence of the household industry of his women folk.
+
+"Dunno, I'm sure," said Marsden, slowly, shifting his quid of tobacco
+and spitting meditatively on the floor. "Shop-keepin' 's all a resk
+anyhow. I'll give yer seventy-five cents for it though, jest for a
+gamble; but nobody has much use for quilts in this weather, except to
+hide their heads under from the skeeters."
+
+"Truth will out," whispered Flint. "Marsden always declares that
+mosquitoes are unknown at Nepaug."
+
+The owner of the quilt shook his head dubiously.
+
+"Couldn't you go a dollar on it?" he queried. "It took my wife a month
+to make it, sewin' evenin's."
+
+"Did--did it?"
+
+"Yaas, 'n' it's made out of pieces of the children's clothes, and some
+on 'em 's dead--and associations ought to caount for somethin'."
+
+"Will it last?" questioned the cautious Marsden, twitching it this way
+and that, and testing the material with his thumb-nail, which he kept
+long and sharp apparently for the purpose of detecting flaws in
+dry-goods.
+
+"Wall," assumed the other, somewhat nettled by the purchaser's
+skepticism, "I reckon it'll last ez long ez a dollar will."
+
+"Mebbe," said Marsden, quite impressed by the logic of this last
+statement. "Anyhaow I'll give you ninety cents, and that's my last
+figger."
+
+The man glanced furtively over his shoulder at the female in the
+buggy, who sat twitching the reins impatiently, then he hitched up
+closer to Marsden and held out a dime.
+
+"Take it," he whispered, "'n' give me the greenback. I promised I
+wouldn't let it go fur less'n a dollar, 'n' I dassent."
+
+The two men winked at each other like brothers in the freemasonry of
+married life, and the knight of the duster disappeared in the
+gathering dusk. His departure emptied the little shop, and Flint and
+Brady entered and seated themselves on a couple of kegs on opposite
+sides of the door.
+
+"Ef it's all the same, gentlemen," drawled Marsden. "I'd recommend you
+to take another seat with yore pipes, fur one of them kags is filled
+with ile, and the other with gun-paowder."
+
+Brady jumped up in haste, and felt of his coat-tails as though they
+might even then be on fire.
+
+Even Flint moved with greater alacrity than usual, quite concurring in
+the wisdom of seeking another seat, especially as the new one brought
+him opposite the low doorway, through which he could see the sky, and
+watch the night drawing in over bay and cove.
+
+On the fence-rail opposite, a flock of turkeys had composed themselves
+to sleep. The crickets in the corn-field were tuning their wings for
+their habitual evening concert. The night-moth flapped heavily against
+the small, square window-pane.
+
+It was a scene bare but tranquil; and Flint was possessed by its
+dreary charm. The dim quiet of the twilight suited him; and it struck
+him jarringly, like a false note in an orchestra, when there fell on
+his ear a high, shrill voice, exclaiming,--
+
+"Pa, ma wants to know if the yeast-cakes have come."
+
+Tilly Marsden gave a little start of surprise, as she came down the
+steps from the house-door, at the sight of Flint and Brady, who rose
+at her entrance, and removed their pipes from their mouths.
+
+"Enter woman--exit comfort," thought Flint.
+
+"I hope you're better, Mr. Flint," said Tilly, edging a little nearer
+him while her father searched among the blue boxes for the desired
+yeast-cakes.
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"Wasn't the sun awful hot up to town?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"But you didn't get sun-struck?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm awful glad. I says to ma this morning, 'I do hope,' says I, 'Mr.
+Flint has taken Pa's big white umbrella lined with green. You know his
+head is so weak.'"
+
+Flint felt Brady's amused glance upon him. "Thank you," he answered
+stiffly, "my head is quite well again. Come, Brady," he added, turning
+to his friend, "if you are ready, we'll get our stroll before we turn
+in."
+
+"Here, Tilly," said Marsden, at the same time, "here's the yeast-cake;
+but I don't see what ma wants with it, fur I gev her two this
+arfternoon."
+
+Tilly blushed, and looked furtively toward the doorway where the young
+men stood. The girl had a kind of flimsy prettiness which suggested a
+cotillon favor. Her hair was fluffy, and coquettishly knotted at the
+back with blue ribbon. Her freshly ironed white dress set off her
+hourglass figure, and the fingers on which she was continually
+twisting the rings were white and slender. Her lips were set in a
+somewhat simpering smile, and her voice was soft with a view to
+effect. Brady watched her artless artfulness with some amusement. When
+they had gone out, he hinted something to Flint in regard to the
+conquest he appeared to have made; but found him so loftily
+unconscious that his jest fell flat, and he dropped the subject to
+take up a more serious theme as they strolled along the road, and at
+length seated themselves where the turkeys had made their roost, on
+the gray rail-fence in the moonlight.
+
+"I wonder, Flint," said Brady, "if we shall be able to take up our old
+association where we dropped it."
+
+"Of course not," Flint answered, "don't imagine it for a moment!"
+
+"I don't see why we should not."
+
+"You don't?"
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+"Well, that fact alone is enough to show the gap between us. I can see
+it plainly enough. You have spent these last ten years in active,
+quick decisions, accumulating energy, push, drive--what you call
+hustling; while I have been trying to see into things a little, trying
+to find out what is worth hustling for--whether anything is. Now do
+you suppose that two people with such opposite training are going to
+fit together like a cup and ball, as they used to do when they were
+chums in college, and had had no training at all?"
+
+"I don't know," said Brady, more dubiously. Then he went on, with the
+air of one who is not to be balked in speaking his mind, "I am not
+quite sure that I think your training has improved you."
+
+"Very likely not," said Flint, imperturbably puffing away at his pipe.
+
+"I suppose," continued Brady, "that it is very cultivating, and
+philosophical, and up-to-date to lie back like that, and let your soul
+expand, to wonder whether anything is worth while, and smile at the
+struggle of the dull people around you who are foolish enough to
+believe that something is worth while; but I'll be hanged if I like
+it. I would rather be the lowest of the warm-blooded animals than the
+highest of the cold-blooded. I beg your pardon," he added a little
+lamely, "I did not mean to put it quite so strong as that."
+
+"You have made a very clear statement, my dear fellow. Don't weaken it
+by apologies. What you say of me is as true as gospel--truer perhaps.
+The only mistake you make is in ascribing to training what is really
+to be attributed to temperament. What is bred in the bone, you know--
+But never mind, I detest talking of myself. Now you have had
+experiences worth talking of; let us hear some of your doings out
+West, there!"
+
+Long and late that night the two friends sat together. Now that the
+first strangeness had worn off, and with it the consciousness of the
+divergence of the roads which they had travelled since the old days,
+Flint began to find his liking springing up as strong as ever, only
+the liking was of a different kind. It was after midnight when he came
+into the house, and betook himself to his own room. As he was pulling
+off his coat, he suddenly remembered his unopened letter. He smiled
+grimly, as it recalled the scene at the post-office, the glowering
+official, and the grinning bystanders. He was still smiling as he took
+the candle from the mantel-shelf and set it on the bureau, to which he
+drew up his one rickety chair. He sat down and scrutinized the letter
+again, and more closely.
+
+The envelope was a large, square one, with the editorial address of
+the "Transcontinental Magazine" in the left-hand corner. The writing
+was in the large, loose scrawl of Brooke, the junior editor. He wrote
+in haste as usual. All at the office was going well, new subscriptions
+were coming in fast, and if Flint would keep away long enough, the
+success of the "Transcontinental" would be secure. The letter which he
+enclosed had been opened by mistake, being apparently a business
+communication with no other address than "To the Editor;" but finding
+it personal in character, he forwarded it unread, and remained as
+always, Flint's faithful friend, C. Brooke.
+
+The enclosed letter to which Brooke alluded presented a
+curious contrast to his own. The handwriting was firm, but
+delicate--distinctively feminine.
+
+"I want to thank you," so the letter began, "not only for accepting my
+verses on 'A Thimble,' but also for the words of encouragement with
+which you accompany the acceptance. You say that you are especially
+glad to print the verses because they suggest a return to the type of
+womanhood of an earlier day, for which you retain an old-fashioned
+admiration. Now, I scarcely know whether my verses are very deceitful,
+or whether it is the realest and truest side of my nature which finds
+expression when I take my pen in hand.
+
+"I wonder if a bit of autobiography would bore you. I should feel that
+it would most men; but I think of you as a genial, elderly gentleman
+with a face like Thackeray's, and with a broad human interest in all
+phases of life."
+
+Flint grinned. "So much," he said to himself, "for the intuitions of
+woman." Yet he felt a trifle vexed at being set down as elderly, and
+secretly elated at the allusion to Thackeray,--as if a wide mouth, a
+turned-up nose, and eye-glasses carried with them fee-simple to "Henry
+Esmond" and the "Newcomes."
+
+"I am twenty-two years old!" the letter went on. "As a young girl I
+knew nothing of city life. My father owned a sheep ranch in the
+Northwest, and there I grew up, roaming about as freely as the sheep
+themselves. I learned to ride and to shoot. Until I was a woman grown,
+I never took a needle in my hand. Perhaps it may seem strange to you,
+but out of this aloofness from feminine pursuits there grew up within
+me a sort of reverence for the feminine ideal. I felt a vague awe,
+such as I imagine strikes a man at sight of a rose-lined parasol, or a
+thimble laid on a pile of stitchery. It is this sense of the poetry of
+women's occupation which must give what little value they possess to
+my verses; and perhaps you will not care for any more now that you
+know they are no part of the real _me_, but only an ideal."
+
+The letter was signed "Amy Bell," and the only address given, a New
+York post-office box.
+
+"A pretty name," said Flint to himself, as he studied it, "a very
+pretty name!" Then he fell to musing on how this girl must look; and
+he found himself making a likeness from the picture over the mantel,
+only he would have the face a trifle rounder, with a dimple in either
+cheek, and a hint more of tenderness in that firm under-lip, whose
+smile savored of delicate irony. His thoughts unconsciously reverted
+to the reflections of the morning, as he looked at the portrait.
+
+"How shy we all are of self-revelation!" he murmured, as he folded the
+letter slowly, and slid it into his vest-pocket; "and then, when we
+have gone about for years hedging ourselves in with barriers of ice,
+suddenly some emotion thaws them, and out flow all the tides of
+feeling which we have been damming up so long." Flint's musings ended
+in a determination to answer this letter, and to answer it now while
+the genial mood was on him. The writer had taken pains to give little
+clue to her identity. Well, he would answer her from behind the same
+veil of impersonality. She need never know how widely she had missed
+her guess in her picture of him. She might keep her poor little
+illusions--yes, "elderly gentleman" and all. He would speak to her, as
+one soul might speak to another, unhampered by all the trammels of
+outward circumstance. It was his to offer help, sympathy,
+encouragement, and he dispensed it in no stinted measure.
+
+As he drew pen and paper towards him, there swept over him a sense of
+the oneness of humanity, and a vision of what the world might be, if
+man were tenderer, and woman held the wider vision. Such a training as
+hers, he wrote to Amy Bell, might give her something of both, might
+grant her a standpoint from which she could see clearer than most
+women, just because she saw life in larger outlines, undimmed by
+detail,--a life as different from that of the average woman as the
+sweep of the garments of the Greek caryatides from the fussy,
+beruffled gowns of the nineteenth-century women. The question, the
+vital pressing question in her case, was how she would use this
+freedom. Should it slip into the hardness of the new woman, on the one
+hand, or, on the other, allow itself to be fettered to the dulness of
+every-day decorum, her opportunity would be lost; but if she could
+hold the delicate equilibrium where she stood,--self-poised, and yet
+swaying to the influences which must work on every soul for its
+highest development, plastic yet firm,--then he believed, firmly
+believed, that there might lie in her a power for which the world
+would be the better and the richer.
+
+"There!" said he, as he blotted and sealed the letter. "That, I should
+say, is as prosy and didactic as a discourse of my venerated ancestor.
+I wonder if the tendency to sermonize runs in the blood. I dare say if
+I had the good fortune to have any religious convictions, I should
+dogmatize over them in the pulpit, and pound the cushions as
+vigorously as any itinerant evangelist. Well, well! heredity is a
+queer thing. We think we get away from it, but it is always cropping
+up in unexpected places. Our ancestors are like _atra cura_, and ride
+behind every man's saddle."
+
+The clock struck three as he finished his musings. He pushed away his
+chair, and set back the lamp on the mantel. The light, flaring a
+little in the draught from the open window, lent a startling look of
+life to the portrait above it. Flint seemed almost to hear the voice
+of the dying sea-captain whispering: "God bless you, Ruth--I wish I
+had understood you better!"
+
+Upon his exalted mood the morning voice of a barnyard cock broke
+mockingly.
+
+"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "what a fool I am!--and at my age, too. I am
+ashamed. And, by the way, we never took back Dr. Beetle's--no--Dr.
+Cricket's spectacles. Well-to-morrow will answer as well."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI
+
+ THE GLORIOUS FOURTH
+
+
+_Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan Standish. Nepaug, July 4, 189-._
+
+
+A holiday, for some reason or other, is always longer than other days,
+even for people like me who live a life of ease and comparative
+idleness, and who can make every day a holiday by abstaining from
+unnecessary and self-imposed work. It certainly is curious that this
+morning we rose an hour later, by way of compliment to our ancestors,
+who doubtless rose several hours earlier than usual on the day we
+celebrate, and certainly did a hard day's work.
+
+After breakfast Mr. Anstice read the Declaration of Independence
+aloud, signatures and all. Then Jimmy recited part of a highly
+patriotic address, beginning, "Give up the Union? Never!" He worked
+his arm in the gestures with all the grace and agility of a
+pump-handle. His voice, to be sure, came out very strong on the
+prepositions and conjunctions, and sank to a whisper on the explosive
+climaxes; but we all voted it a masterpiece of elocution, and his
+father really thought so. When these exercises were over, Dr. Cricket
+and I played a game of chess, in which he insisted that I should take
+the part of the British, while he represented the Americans.
+
+In spite of a severe struggle with my patriotic emotions, I felt
+compelled to do justice to the side thus thrust upon me, and I
+conducted my campaign with such vigor, that it was Washington who was
+compelled to hand over his sword to Cornwallis, and I swept the last
+American pawn triumphantly off the board as the dinner-bell rang.
+
+The afternoon rather dragged. I came to the conclusion that the secret
+of the length of a holiday lies in the severity of the effort to enjoy
+one's self. At our age the truest happiness lies in absorption in
+work,--a kind of active and bustling Nirvana. Having come to this
+conclusion, I pulled out the golf-stockings I am knitting for Ben, and
+fell to work, with the result that it was tea-time before I knew it.
+
+Winifred made quite a diversion by coming down dressed as Columbia, in
+a white muslin with blue sashes and a big bunch of red roses. She had
+made a helmet of card-board and covered it with gold paper. In one
+hand she held a long lance of the same shiny stuff, and in the other
+a big flag. We all laughed and sang and shouted, and had a fine
+old-fashioned, emotional Fourth. It did me good.
+
+After tea, I had a surprise in a call from Cousin John's son. In fact,
+the call was a surprise on both sides. This is how it came about. The
+day before yesterday, Dr. Cricket, who is a good creature, though
+self-opinionated and always differing from me, was called to see a
+patient over at the inn; and yesterday, making his second call, he
+left his gold-bowed glasses, and spent the afternoon bewailing his
+loss, for he fancied they had slipped out of his pocket when he sat
+down on the beach to rest. The patient, who is a young man (of some
+pretensions to gentility, I understand, although a New Yorker),
+discovered them in the office (otherwise bar-room) of the inn, and
+walked over to bring them this evening. With him was Philip Brady,
+whom I have not seen these ten years; but I should have known him in a
+moment from his likeness to Cousin John. He is a fine young man, and
+does credit to the family. I think Winifred will like him.
+
+Dr. Cricket was on the porch when they came; and when he saw the
+glasses, he was ready to fall upon the young men's necks while they
+were yet a long way off. He really was quite ridiculous with his
+"Bless my soul!" "Very kind upon my honor!" "Now Richard is himself
+again!" and I don't know what more, hopping about meanwhile like the
+cricket, who was no doubt his ancestor in pre-historic times, and
+pulling up chairs for men twenty years younger than himself. I have no
+patience with too much vivacity in middle-aged people; when we turn
+fifty, dignity is all we have left, and we'd better make the most of
+it.
+
+When the Doctor had thanked his visitors five times over for what was
+really a small matter for two able-bodied young men, he insisted on
+their sitting down, and turned round to me,--I hate being dragged into
+a situation,--"Miss Standish," said he, "I want you to know Mr.
+um--ah--Flint, I believe? and his friend, Mr. um--ah--What is the
+name, may I ask?"
+
+"I can tell you," said I, coming forward and really looking up for the
+first time (for I am trying to train myself not to stare and peer as
+some of my age do when their sight is failing)--"I can tell you and
+save your visitor the trouble. His name is Philip Brady, and his
+father is my cousin."
+
+Dr. Cricket looked thoroughly taken aback. This I rather enjoyed, for
+he is always prying into affairs and saying, "I rather suspect so and
+so," with his nose held out as if he got at his intuitions by the
+sense of smell.
+
+"You don't say so," was all he could get out this time; and meanwhile
+Philip called out, in his hearty voice, "Holloa, Cousin Susan!" and
+kissed me a little louder than I liked; but that is the difference
+between Bison and Boston. Perhaps I am hard to suit, for his
+companion's manner seemed to me as much too repressed as Philip's was
+too exuberant. He had the air of holding his mental hands behind him
+and warning off social intruders with a "Let us not enter upon too
+familiar a basis of mutual acquaintance," and yet he was not brought
+up on Beacon Street, and I was, which makes it all the worse. He is a
+handsome man,--that is, his features are regular, his teeth are fine,
+and the little tuft of white hair above the temple gives a marked air
+of distinction. Altogether, he has a peculiarly well-groomed effect;
+but his face is like a mask,--one does not get any inkling of what is
+going on behind it. The eye-glasses too seem to take all expression
+out of the eyes, and leave them mere inquisitors for discovering the
+sentiments revealed by those who don't wear similar shields. I notice
+the same thing about Dr. Cricket. I can always get the best of him in
+argument unless he has his spectacles on. Then I become confused,
+forget my point, and the Doctor comes off triumphant.
+
+Of course, when the Doctor urged the young men to stay, they sat
+down, and Philip began at once to ask about the people in Oldburyport,
+whom he remembered very well, except their names. Everything was
+pleasant until Jimmy Anstice came along, as he always does when not
+especially wanted, and began to tease about having the fire-works set
+off. Nothing could be allowed to go on until they were brought out. If
+he had been my child, he should have been soundly punished and sent to
+bed for whining and pulling at his father's coat-tails; but Mr.
+Anstice is amiable to the verge of inanity where Jimmy is concerned,
+and after saying, "My dear!" and "Yes, in a minute," he allowed
+himself to be fairly pulled out of his chair and into the house, from
+which he shortly emerged with Jimmy, bearing between them an oblong
+pine box filled with packages of every shape and size, and smelling
+objectionably of gunpowder.
+
+Of course this put an end to all rational conversation. Philip jumped
+up to inspect the crackers and pin-wheels. To my surprise, Mr. Flint
+showed no annoyance, but began to poke about among the Roman candles
+and rockets, as if he rather liked it. Jimmy has taken a great fancy
+to him, it seems. I must admit that it is in a man's favor to be liked
+by boys and dogs. So they drove stakes into the grass, and set up
+inclined planes for the rockets; and, when it grew dark enough, Jimmy
+set off his first pin-wheel, amid a chorus of shouts of that
+artificially enthusiastic sort common among older people at a junior
+entertainment.
+
+The shouts brought Winifred out to the porch. She had taken off her
+helmet, for which I was sorry, as it was very becoming. I introduced
+Philip, who said, with a smile, that he thought they had met before;
+but Winifred did not seem to remember it. Now, if Winifred has a
+failing, it is thinking she knows just how everything ought to be
+done; and after fidgeting about in her chair for a minute or two, she
+called out: "Why don't you set the rocket against that stone?" and
+down she ran to arrange it herself.
+
+The rocket did go better in her way, but she was not satisfied even
+then. She must show them how to hold the Roman candles, which was very
+imprudent with the loose sleeves of her muslin dress. Mr. Flint called
+out: "Hold it out away from you! Further away!" but instead of paying
+any heed, she held it straight up in the air. She had forgotten
+herself entirely; and we were all watching the little fountain of fire
+sending out its red, white, and blue colored balls when, all of a
+sudden, I saw a line of fire creeping up Winifred's sleeve. She threw
+away the candle, which lay sputtering on the ground; but that line of
+fire on her arm seemed to grow and grow, and I watched it in helpless
+agitation. I suppose the thing was over in two minutes, though they
+seemed hours to me. The instant Flint saw the accident, he stripped
+off his coat, and, rushing up to Winifred, bound it tightly about her.
+Dr. Cricket brought out his bandages and liniments, and the arm was
+bound up and in a sling before the girl really knew what had happened.
+
+She was quite bewildered, and looked about like a little child, from
+one to the other. Then she turned to Mr. Flint, with a smile which
+seemed to me not so very far from tears, and said:--
+
+"This time, it was your turn."
+
+"This time, it was my fault."
+
+"Your fault?"
+
+"Yes; it was stupid, my letting you hold it so. I knew it was
+dangerous."
+
+Winifred shook her head, in a wilful little way of hers which always
+reminds me of a Shetland pony.
+
+"Pardon me, but I think I should have done it whether you had let me
+or not. I should have had to pay pretty dearly for my venture though,
+if you had not been so quick, and as for the poor coat--" Here she
+picked it up from the floor where it had fallen. "What a pity it
+should have a hole right in front!--but Miss Standish will make it as
+good as new, though. You never saw any one who can darn like Miss
+Standish" (which is quite true).
+
+"Papa," she added, turning to her father, who had been utterly
+unnerved by the accident, and was now walking up and down with a vain
+pretence of calmness. "Papa, you can lend Mr. Flint a coat for
+to-night, can't you?"
+
+"Oh, certainly, certainly! what will he have--a dressing-gown or a
+Tuxedo?"
+
+"Thank you," said Flint, with gravity; "but, if the etiquette of
+Nepaug will not be violated by a shirt-sleeve costume, I can go as I
+am, though indeed I do not like giving Miss Standish so much trouble,
+and the coat is a veteran anyway, only promoted to the Nepaug station
+after long service elsewhere."
+
+"Veterans always command my respect," I answered, "and deserve at
+least repairs at the hands of their country."
+
+"All very fine," said Dr. Cricket; "but I advise you to wear your coat
+home to-night, even if you send it back to-morrow. It is easier to
+mend coats than constitutions."
+
+"And cheaper," I suggested.
+
+"I'll tell you," Winifred broke in, seeing Dr. Cricket glowering at
+me. "He shall neither risk a cold by going home in this night air
+without his coat, nor tear the sleeves out of papa's, which would
+surely be half-a-dozen sizes too small. He shall wear my golf cape. Go
+up to my closet and get it, Jimmy!--the blue one lined with red."
+
+Jimmy, who having once been relieved of anxiety as to his sister's
+life, had spent his time in maligning her as the cause of stopping his
+fire-works exhibition, turned somewhat sulkily to obey her command; as
+he went he fired a parting shot: "This is what comes of girls meddling
+with things they don't understand."
+
+"James!"
+
+When Mr. Anstice says "_James_," he is not to be trifled with; and his
+son ventured no further remarks, only emphasized his feelings by a
+vicious stamp on each separate stair as he ascended. While he was
+prosecuting his search for the cloak, his sister sat in the big chair
+by the fireside, her head thrown back a little against the angle
+formed by the back and the side, which curves out like a great ear. I
+saw Philip and Mr. Flint looking at her as the firelight climbed over
+her dress and touched her cheek, and I wondered what they thought of
+her.
+
+To me, her face is one of the most interesting I have ever seen. It
+evades description, and yet I feel tempted to try to describe it again
+and again, and to analyze its charms for myself. It is full of
+distinction, though the only really beautiful feature in it is the
+brow, broad and low, from which her hair rolls back in that long, full
+sweep. About her lips, there is the fulness that Leonardo gave his
+Mona Lisa, and the lips have the same subtle curves, with a smile
+whose meaning is often of dubious interpretation, and tempts the eyes
+of her companion to return to them again and again to confirm his last
+impression.
+
+As for her character, I do not yet feel sure of it, though I have
+known her for years. Dr. Cricket says he understands her perfectly.
+Pshaw!
+
+Ben says he and she agree in everything. Poor boy! The fact is, that
+the girl has one of those curious natures, absolutely unmoved and
+unmovable at the centre, but on the surface reflecting every one and
+everything that comes in her way.
+
+Many men have loved her. I don't think she has ever cared for any one.
+The Mona Lisa smile comes over her lips when I question her about this
+one or that.
+
+"Tell me now," I said the other day, "did you never love any one?"
+
+"Yes, and I do now."
+
+"Excellent. At last we shall have confidences."
+
+"And you like confidences?"
+
+"I do--but no diversions--who is the youth?"
+
+"I did not say it was a youth."
+
+"Well, it is not a dotard, I trust; but who is the man?"
+
+"I did not say it was a man."
+
+"But you said--"
+
+"I said I loved somebody, and that somebody is you, dear Miss
+Standish. Indeed I do, and I am ready to fight a duel, if necessary,
+with Dr. Cricket to prove that my affection is deeper and loftier, and
+generally better worth having, than his."
+
+What can one do with a girl like that, who winds up with a little
+mocking laugh and goes off whistling?
+
+I wish she would not whistle. It is one of those mannish tricks of
+hers which give a wrong impression. Her father ought to stop it; but
+he is so fond of the girl, and thinks her so altogether perfect and
+beyond cavil, that he lets everything go. She needs to have some one
+stronger than herself come into her life. I wonder if he ever will.
+
+It took Jimmy Anstice a long while to find that cloak. When he
+returned with it, he was still sulky.
+
+"I don't see why I should have to go on Fred's errands, when she
+spoiled my fire-works."
+
+"Ah!" said Flint, "it was a pity about those fire-works. Suppose you
+bring them down to the inn to-morrow night, and we will set them off
+there."
+
+Jimmy brightened up; but his sister rather resented the suggestion.
+"You need not be afraid to do it here," she said; "I promise not to
+interfere again."
+
+Mr. Flint ought to have said something civil; but he only turned to
+Jimmy and proposed that they go out and gather up the rockets before
+the dampness spoiled the powder.
+
+"Here, are you going without the cloak after all?"
+
+"Oh, thank you!" answered Flint, with sufficient graciousness, as he
+took it from Professor Anstice's hand.
+
+To reach the door, he passed near Winifred's chair. As he did so he
+bent over and spoke to her. I could not hear what he said; but I saw
+an angry color come into her cheeks, and she answered:--
+
+"Yes, as you say, we seem fated to bring each other ill luck. Let us
+hope we shall not meet often."
+
+I never heard Winifred make so rude a speech before. But, to my
+surprise, it seemed to develop an unsuspected amiability in Mr. Flint.
+
+"That might be the worst luck of all," he answered, still in that
+provoking half-tone of his, and, waiting no answer, he followed Jimmy
+out of doors. It seemed to me that Philip Brady would have liked to
+take advantage of the general stir to get in a word with Winifred; but
+I saw that the girl was really suffering with the burn on her arm, so
+I told him, without ceremony, that it was time he went home.
+
+Dr. Cricket, who seems to feel personally responsible for these young
+men, evidently thought my behavior ungracious and inhospitable. To
+make amends, he followed Philip to the door, and called out after him
+and Mr. Flint:--
+
+"Oh, by the way, we're going up to Flying Point for a clam-bake some
+evening this week. Would you care to go too?"
+
+"By all means, if you will be good enough to take us into the party,"
+Philip answered heartily. If his friend said anything, it was lost in
+the fog which was rolling in thick from the ocean.
+
+I never take prejudices; but I often have an instinct about people
+before I know them, and this instinct tells me that I am not going to
+like this Mr. Flint. He is so self-sufficient,--not conceited, but
+completely satisfied with his own judgments. When he asks any one's
+opinion, he does it as if it were a mere matter of curiosity how such
+a person might feel, not with any idea of being influenced. I can
+stand this from a person with strong convictions; but this young man
+seems to have none. He actually smiled when I quoted Dr. Channing.
+
+"Perhaps you never heard of him," I said, a little irritated by that
+supercilious smile of his.
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered; "but he was at such pains to set himself up in
+opposition to my ancestors, that family pride compels me to resent it,
+though my personal prejudices may be in his favor."
+
+I cannot abide such trifling. It seems to make it ridiculous in any
+one to be in earnest.
+
+P. S.--Dr. Cricket asked me to-day if I would marry him. I told him he
+was an old fool; but I could not make him believe it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII
+
+ ON THE BEACH
+
+ "The curving land, with its cool white sand,
+ Lies like a sickle beside the sea."
+
+
+The next morning dawned cloudless. Nature, radiant in her bountiful
+splendor, seemed to give herself to man, who, in response, thrilled
+with something of the primal impulse which stirred his pulses in the
+golden days before he had separated himself from the beneficent
+currents of the Earth Mother's vitality to shut himself up within
+brick walls with artificial heat, artificial light, and artificial
+stimulants.
+
+On such a day, it is good to be alive. Flint felt the sunshine in his
+blood as he stepped out into the fresh, open air. For a while he
+hesitated as to the use to which he should put the morning in order to
+secure the utmost of its bounty. Then he bethought him of his duty in
+returning the blue golf cape which he reproached himself as an idiot
+for having taken. Brady had gone crabbing with Marsden, so Flint could
+not delegate the duty to him, as he had intended. Accordingly,
+slinging the wrap over his shoulder, in the middle of the morning, he
+started on the path which ran along among the scrub-oak and blueberry
+patches, to lose itself on the curving stretch of beach which lay
+between the inn and Captain's Point, where stood the Whites' house
+known in the region of Nepaug as "The White-House."
+
+The Point stretched along at the mouth of the little harbor, one side
+thrust boldly out cliffwise into the ocean, the other sliding by soft
+degrees to the margin of the salt-water lagoon. On the crest of the
+cliff, and commanding a fine view of both sea and shore, rose the
+White-House, originally owned and built by a sea-captain who could not
+live without the sea, even when he had ceased to live on it. For years
+the Captain took his daily walk on the little platform railed in from
+the slanting roof, and scanned the horizon with his glass, taking note
+of every sail, till at length he walked and gazed no more, and his
+grave was made in the little hollow that dips behind the house. The
+places which had known him knew him no more, and the house was let to
+strangers.
+
+The Point, however, retained his name; and the white railing around
+the Captain's walk gleamed in the sunlight from the crest of the cliff
+as bright as when he leaned upon it to sweep the face of the waters
+with his glass.
+
+Flint did the Captain the honor to bestow a passing thought on him
+this morning, to be vaguely sorry for him, and to reflect that it was
+really a fine thing to be above ground when the sun was shining like
+this. To be sure, life had its vexations; but they were so brief, and
+there was so much time in which to be dead!
+
+Flint had not gone many paces along the beach before he saw Jimmy
+Anstice digging clams out on the oozy flats left bare by the receding
+tides, his knickerbockers rolled well up on his legs, and a great pail
+set on the mud beside him.
+
+The boy's hat was pushed far back on his head, and the sun fell full
+on his face. Even at this distance, the resemblance to his sister was
+so marked as to be almost comical. The eyes were the same. The nose,
+with its unmistakable upward turn, a burlesque on the short, straight
+one which lent piquancy to Winifred's face. The soft, subtle curve of
+her cheek developed in Jimmy to a hardened rotundity inevitably
+suggesting the desire to pinch it, which one feels toward the tomato
+pin-cushions on exhibition at church fairs.
+
+Nevertheless, despite freckles bestowed by nature, and grime
+artificially acquired, Jimmy Anstice was a well-looking lad, and added
+a distinct note of human interest to the barren flats, as he stood,
+spade in hand, staring at Flint.
+
+"Come out here!" he called.
+
+"No, thank you," answered Flint. "Not with my boots on. What are you
+about? Clamming, I suppose."
+
+"Oh, no--fishing!" answered Jimmy, with fine sarcasm. "Come and help
+me pull in the mackerel, can't you?" Then he turned his back and began
+his digging once more. At the same moment Flint caught a glimpse of a
+red hat against a seaweed covered rock. Obeying an impulse which was
+rather a surprise to himself, he directed his course toward it. He
+found, as he surmised, that it belonged to Winifred Anstice, who sat
+reading, comfortably ensconced with her back against the low sandbank,
+and her feet stretched out in front of her. She looked up at Flint's
+approach, but made no change in her attitude as he came and stood over
+her. He found it a little harder than he had expected to make a
+conversational beginning. After a second's hesitation he asked:
+
+"How is the wrist?"
+
+"Better, thanks! but still in close confinement," Winifred answered,
+throwing back her shawl and revealing the bandaged arm.
+
+"You had a narrow escape."
+
+"Very."
+
+"I hope you have not felt the need of the cape you were kind enough to
+lend me. I was just on my way to carry it home."
+
+"And, having found the owner, you need not pursue your journey any
+further."
+
+Flint felt inwardly chagrined. This, then, was her interpretation of
+his stopping to speak to her,--that he might be rid of his trouble.
+
+"Thank you," he said stiffly; "but unless you need it, I prefer to
+take it back to the house."
+
+"Very well," said his companion, "as you please." Then, moved
+evidently by a prick of conscience, "Perhaps you will rest awhile
+before climbing the hill."
+
+As she spoke, she moved a little that he might share the shadow of the
+bank.
+
+"Don't move on my account," Flint said.
+
+"Oh," answered Winifred, smiling, "I owe you a decent civility, since
+you saved my life last night."
+
+"Don't mention it. Actions should be judged by what they cost, not
+what they come to; and mine cost nothing but the hole in my coat,
+which I don't doubt is already better than repaired under Miss
+Standish's skilful handiwork, so pray dismiss the subject from your
+thoughts. There are few, I fancy, who find it so hard as you to accept
+anything at the hand of another. It vexes you not to be the one always
+to give aid and comfort. If I knew you better, I might venture to
+hint that it smacks of spiritual pride."
+
+"You generalize widely after an acquaintance of four days."
+
+"One sees character more clearly sometimes by the flashlight of a
+first meeting, than when the perception is blurred by more frequent
+opportunities."
+
+Again the smile, inscrutable and mocking; the eyes looked into his
+with a gay defiance.
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough to give me the benefit of these first
+impressions of my character. They are as comprehensive, no doubt, as
+those of the British traveller in America. Tell on, as the children
+say."
+
+"Pardon me, I have said too much already, under the circumstances.
+Praise would be impertinence, and criticism insolence."
+
+"You shall have absolution in advance. Begin then!" she added, with a
+little nod of command. "What is the most striking trait of my
+character on first acquaintance?"
+
+"Well, if you will have it, I should say it was a restlessness which
+you probably call energy; but it is a different thing. Energy is
+absorbed in the object which it seeks to attain. Restlessness is
+absorbed in the attaining."
+
+"Hm! what next?"
+
+"Next? Next, comes a quality almost invariably allied to such
+restlessness as yours,--ambition. You may have all sorts of fine
+theories about equality and that kind of thing; but you want
+power--power over the lives with which you come in contact--power for
+good of course; but it must be yours and wielded by you. It is not
+enough that things should get along somehow. They must go right in
+your way."
+
+Winifred laughed.
+
+"Ah! you say that because I wanted to show you how to set off a rocket
+last night."
+
+"I should say you showed us quite satisfactorily how _not_ to set off
+a rocket last night."
+
+"Don't let us revert to that episode, about which we shall probably
+not agree. But go on. Let me hear more of your impressions. They are
+quite diverting."
+
+"No more. I dare not presume further upon my advance absolution.
+Rather let me ask you to return candor for candor, and give me your
+impressions of me and my character, or lack of it."
+
+"I have formed none."
+
+"Is that quite true?"
+
+"No," said Winifred, looking up, "it is not true at all. I formed
+impressions within the first ten minutes after I had seen you, only I
+called them, more modestly, prejudices."
+
+"Prejudices? They were unfavorable then. Good! Let us have them!" and
+Flint settled himself more comfortably, bracing his head against his
+clasped hands; and, leaning back against the bank of sand, he sat
+watching the little tufts of coarse grass springing up close beside
+him. Still Winifred was silent. At last Flint began himself:--
+
+"You thought me rude and churlish, I suppose?"
+
+"I certainly did not think you were Bayard and Sidney rolled together;
+but I admit you had some provocation," she answered lightly, "at least
+in our first meeting. When I demolished your new fishing-rod, I think
+you might have accepted my apologies more gracefully; and I think you
+need not have been so particularly uncivil when Jimmy and I tried to
+come to your assistance on the pond. I have not yet recovered from the
+reproof conveyed on that occasion by your manner, which plainly
+indicated that, in your opinion, it would have been more tactful for
+us to sail by, and ignore your disaster, or treat it as an episode
+which did not call for explanation or remark. I should have felt duly
+humiliated, no doubt; but I have become hardened to rebuffs, since I
+have been at Nepaug, for I meet with many, as I go about like a beggar
+from door to door in South East."
+
+"Distributing tracts?" Flint asked, with eyebrows raised a little.
+
+"No."
+
+"Collecting statistics, perhaps?"
+
+"Not at all; my errand is neither philanthropic nor scientific."
+
+"Private and personal, that is, and not to be farther pursued by
+impertinent inquiry?"
+
+"Oh, I have no objection to telling you, since you are not a native. I
+am searching for my great-great-grandmother."
+
+Flint looked at his companion uneasily. She smiled.
+
+"No, I have not lost my senses. Such as they are, I have them all. I
+do not expect to find this ancestress of mine in the flesh, nor
+sitting in any one of the splint rockers behind the checkered
+window-panes of the old South East houses. It is only her portrait for
+which I am searching as for hid treasure."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes, her portrait. I feel certain it is hidden away somewhere in
+South East."
+
+"How very odd!"
+
+"Odd? Not at all, as you will say when you come to hear the story of
+the original. But perhaps it would bore you to listen?"
+
+"Go on; I am all attention."
+
+"Well, to begin with, my great-great-grandmother was a very pretty
+girl."
+
+"I can believe it."
+
+Winifred looked quickly round, but her companion's eyes were fixed
+upon the horizon with an abstracted gaze which lent an air of
+impersonality to his words. So she began again:
+
+"Yes, she was a young Quakeress, born, I believe, in Philadelphia; but
+her father and mother died, and she came to South East, to live with
+her uncle, when she was about eighteen. The story of her girlhood is
+rather vague; but somehow she fell in love with an English officer,
+and made a runaway match which turned out better than such affairs
+usually do; for his relatives received her favorably, and she made her
+home with them at Temple Court in Yorkshire--doesn't that sound like a
+book? Well, her uncle died, and she never came back to this country;
+but her grandson came in the early part of the century, and, following
+the traditions of his race, fell in love with an American girl. They
+were married and settled in Massachusetts. But once, when they were
+visiting at the old home, my grandmother saw a portrait of her
+husband's grandmother hanging in the great hall at Temple Court. She
+was fascinated by its beauty; and when she heard the story of the
+runaway bride, who was an American like herself, she determined to
+have a copy of the portrait, and talked of engaging one of the London
+artists to make it for her. An old servant told my grandfather that
+he remembered seeing another, painted at the same time and sent over
+to this uncle in America. The man was sure that the address of the
+uncle was South East. Many a time I have heard my grandmother tell the
+story, which so fired my youthful fancy that I dreamed of it for
+years, and at last I persuaded papa to come down here this summer, and
+let me hunt for the picture. But I am tiring you, I am afraid."
+
+Flint pulled his hat lower over his eyes.
+
+"Pray go on; I am immensely interested."
+
+"Thank you. Well, the desire for the recovery of the portrait is no
+longer a sentiment with me,--it is a passion. My daily occupation now
+is driving about and asking for a drink of water, or inquiring about
+early vegetables, chickens, goslings,--anything which will afford a
+plausible excuse for penetrating into the dark halls or stuffy
+fore-rooms. Of course I rule out the modern houses. I have even tried
+the tavern here at the beach; but the only decorations of the walls
+were 'Wide Awake' and 'Fast Asleep,' and other chromos of the same
+pronounced and distressing variety."
+
+Flint took off his eye-glasses, and began to wipe them tenderly with
+his delicate handkerchief.
+
+"Perhaps," he began, when he was interrupted by a wild whoop just
+above. It was from Jimmy Anstice, who shared the delusion, common to
+his age and sex, that nothing is so amusing as a sudden and unexpected
+noise.
+
+"Oh, Jimmy!" his sister exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Jimmy!" mocked the boy. "I am glad to find that you are alive.
+I've been watching you two these ten minutes, and you've sat as still
+as if Mrs. Jarley hadn't wound you up yet."
+
+"She hasn't," said Winifred, somewhat inconsequently. "Have you
+finished digging your clams? What time is it?"
+
+"I've dug all the clams I'm going to; don't intend to get all the food
+for the boarding-house," answered Jimmy, somewhat sulkily, leaving
+Flint to answer the last question.
+
+"It is ten minutes after twelve," he said, looking at his watch.
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated Winifred, "I had no idea it was so late. I
+promised Dr. Cricket to play chess with him at twelve."
+
+She rose as she spoke, and stretched out her hand for the golf cape;
+but Flint kept it quietly, and started on by her side.
+
+"Are you going all the way to the house?" Jimmy asked.
+
+"If your sister permits."
+
+"Oh, then, you might as well take the other handle of this basket."
+
+"Jimmy!" exclaimed Winifred, "I'm ashamed of you."
+
+"Well, you needn't be. You'd better be ashamed of yourself, saying one
+thing to a fellow's face, and another behind his back. Sitting there
+for an hour talking with Mr. Flint, as if he were your best friend,
+when only last night you said--"
+
+"Jim, how near the shore should you say that sloop lay?" Flint
+inquired in even tones.
+
+"'T ain't a sloop at all; it's a schooner," returned Jim,
+contemptuously.
+
+"Why, to be sure, so it is. How stupid in me! I suppose all my
+nautical learning went down in 'The Aquidneck.' By the way, Mr. Brady
+and I are talking of going up to the wreck soon to try what can be got
+out of her by diving. Wouldn't you like to go along?"
+
+"Wouldn't I!" responded Jimmy, _con brio_. "Don't you forget it!"
+
+His sister gave a dubious glance over the boy's head at Flint; but he
+only smiled in return. This smile so transformed his face that the
+girl beside him fell secretly to wondering whether her instinct of
+character-reading, upon which she prided herself, had not played her
+false in the case of this man, and whether she might not be called
+upon for a complete reversal of judgment,--so apt we are to mistake
+the momentary mood for the index of character.
+
+They walked on in silence along the margin of the bank, Flint with the
+cape thrown over one arm, while he and Jimmy carried the basket, heavy
+with clams, between them. The blue water shoaled into emerald at their
+feet; a single white gull soared and swooped above their heads. The
+long sunburned grasses swayed in the summer wind, and the clouds
+floated tranquilly over all.
+
+How tiny the three human figures seemed in the wide setting of earth,
+sea, and sky!
+
+As they passed the bluff on the other side of the cove from Captain's
+Hill, Jimmy suddenly dropped his side of the basket of clams. "Hi!" he
+exclaimed. "Why can't we go up into the light-house, now Mr. Flint is
+with us?"
+
+"Not to-day," answered his sister, repressively. "Mr. Flint may have
+other engagements, and then, you know, Dr. Cricket is waiting for his
+game of chess."
+
+"As for me," said Flint, "I was never more at leisure; and as for your
+appointment with the Doctor, I advise you to adopt my motto: 'Better
+never than late.'"
+
+Winifred hesitated.
+
+"Oh, come on!" persisted her small brother. "Don't be a chump, Fred.
+You never used to be."
+
+"Lead on," answered his sister; "rather than be considered anything so
+ignominious, I would scale more alarming heights than those of the
+light-house, though I confess its winding staircase is not without its
+perils."
+
+The path to the light-house led through a patch of bayberry bushes.
+Winifred stooped, as she passed, and gathered a handful, which she
+crushed in both hands, taking in a deep breath of their spicy aroma.
+
+"Are they so good?" Flint asked, smiling at her childish enjoyment.
+
+"Try and see!" she answered, holding them out to him in the cup of her
+joined hands.
+
+Flint bent his face over them for an instant. Then Winifred suddenly
+dropped her hands and shook the fragrant leaves to the four winds.
+Flint smiled again, for her gesture said as plainly as words: "Here I
+am being friendly with this man, to whom I intended to be as frigid as
+an iceberg."
+
+Flint responded as if she had spoken.
+
+"Do you never forgive?" he asked.
+
+"No," answered Winifred, impetuously. "I never forgive; but I have a
+horrid facility for forgetting."
+
+"Cherish it!" exclaimed her companion. "It is the foundation of many
+of the Christian graces."
+
+As they drew nearer the light-house, they felt the salt sea-wind
+strong in their faces. The bluff was so gale-swept that the trees,
+few, small, and scrubby, had caught a slant to westward, and the
+scanty vegetation clung timidly to the ground, like some tiny state
+whose existence depends upon its humility. From the edge of the bluff
+rose the light-house,--a round stone building, dazzling in its coat of
+whitewash. Far up in the air its plate-glass windows gleamed in the
+morning sun.
+
+The keeper was standing in the open door, and cheerfully consented to
+show the visitors over the premises. Loneliness is a great promoter of
+hospitality.
+
+As they peeped into the tiny kitchen, with its shining brasses and its
+white deal floor, Winifred exclaimed at the exquisite neatness of the
+housekeeping.
+
+"It is a man's, you see," Flint commented with pride. "No doubt we
+shall drive you from the domestic field yet."
+
+"I should think the position of light-house-keeper would suit you
+excellently," Winifred replied, oblivious of the slant at her sex.
+"Your desire for solitude would surely find its full satisfaction
+here."
+
+"There might be much worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he
+saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had
+already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a
+fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred
+was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing
+climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been
+dizzy, but for the railing under her left hand.
+
+At last they arrived in the little room with its giant reflectors of
+silvered copper, and its great lamp set on a circular table. Outside,
+ran a narrow balcony with iron railing. Winifred stepped out onto the
+ledge, clinging nervously to Jimmy, who professed a great desire to
+sit on the railing. The wind here was so strong that it gave one a
+feeling that the building was swaying, though it stood firm as a cliff
+of granite.
+
+Flint leaned over the railing. "See!" he said, "there is a great white
+gull which has beaten itself to death against the light, and fallen
+there, close to that fringy line of mottled seaweed on the beach."
+
+"Don't!" exclaimed Winifred, turning pale, and leaning further back
+against the light-house wall.
+
+Flint saw in an instant that she was feeling dizzy, but thought it
+best for her to ignore the fact.
+
+"Come," he said, "we must be going down now, unless Dr. Cricket is to
+lose his game entirely. You go first, Jim! I will come next."
+
+Jimmy started down, whooping as he went, for the pleasure of hearing
+his voice echo and re-echo from the bare walls.
+
+Flint glanced somewhat anxiously at Winifred. He saw her put her foot
+upon the first stair and then draw back. At the same instant he caught
+the cause of her terror. Her bandaged wrist prevented her grasping the
+balustrade, or getting any better support than the smooth wall to
+which to cling.
+
+"Put your hand on my shoulder, and count the steps aloud as you go."
+He spoke like one who does not question obedience; and, somewhat to
+her own surprise, Winifred found herself meekly doing as she was bid.
+
+The last part of his advice was even better than the first, for it
+occupied her mind, and also gave her the encouragement of feeling that
+at each step she had lessened the distance between her and _terra
+firma_ by one.
+
+Flint felt the hand upon his shoulder tremble like a leaf; but he
+never turned his head, only moved steadily onward and downward, with a
+regularity and solidity which soon told upon Winifred's nervous
+dizziness.
+
+When she reached the ground, and stood once more in the sunlight of
+the open doorway, she looked at him with a little tremulous smile. "A
+hundred and seventeen!" she exclaimed. "I am sure I shall never
+forget how many steps there are leading to the Bug Light."
+
+"What a fool you are, Fred!" Jimmy remarked, with family frankness.
+
+"I am," admitted Winifred. "No one knows it better than I, except,
+perhaps, Mr. Flint."
+
+"I know nothing of the kind," her companion answered with unwonted
+cordiality. "Any one may be subject to a fit of dizziness, and to be
+minus an arm under such circumstances makes the situation really
+uncomfortable. We must try it again some day, to give you an
+opportunity to prove to yourself that it was only an affair of the
+moment."
+
+"Dear me!" thought Winifred to herself, "why can't he always be nice
+like that! He seems to be a queer kind of stratified rock; you never
+know what you are going to strike next."
+
+Aloud, she said, "I fancy, Jim, it must be past the White-House dinner
+hour, and papa has grown worried and sent out scouts to look for you
+and me. See, here is Ben Bradford!"
+
+Looking down the road, Flint saw approaching them a tall, long-legged
+youth whom he dimly remembered among the group on the porch of the
+White-House the night before. His hair was parted in the middle, and
+thickly pomaded to restrain its natural inclination towards curling.
+His ears were large, and set on at right angles to his face. His nose
+was Roman, and its prominence had rendered it peculiarly sensitive to
+sunburn. His manners were too frank to be polished. As he joined them
+now, he succeeded in making it evident at once that Flint's further
+presence was entirely superfluous. This juvenile candor would have had
+no effect, had not Winifred supplemented it by saying:--
+
+"Mr. Bradford will take charge of me and my cape, Mr. Flint; I really
+cannot consent to trouble you further."
+
+Her manner was equivalent to a dismissal. Flint handed over the cape,
+as she bade him, to young Bradford's eager grasp, bowed, and turned
+his steps homeward. As he strolled along, he felt a curiously sudden
+change of mood, from the elation of the morning to a depression half
+physical, half mental.
+
+"I wonder," he said to himself, "if this is not another phase of my
+inheritance from Dr. Jonathan. I remember the old gentleman used to
+complain that his constitution was an unhappy one from birth, attended
+with 'flaccid solids, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low tide of
+spirits.' The description amused me in my youth; but I begin to have
+an uncomfortably sympathetic sense of his state of mind and body. I
+wonder, by the way, what _he_ would have done about that portrait. I
+never heard that he or any other Puritan gave away his property to
+any extent; and this portrait I regard as virtually mine. To be sure,
+I have not paid for it; but I had fully determined to purchase it,
+and--Yes, to all intents and purposes, it belongs to me. Now, to be
+expected to give it up, just because I happen to hear of some one else
+who wants it too, is asking a little too much. If I had avoided the
+girl, as I intended, I should never have heard of her search for her
+beloved great-grandmother. No, my mind is made up; I shall keep that
+picture--of course I shall. I am glad I put it into the closet before
+Brady came."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII
+
+ THE MARY ANN
+
+ "Our deeds are like children that are born to us:
+ they live and act apart from one's own will."
+
+
+The weather of the morning, with its golden clearness, was too
+beautiful to last. By noon the gold had paled. The high wind which had
+prevailed earlier in the day subsided; but the swelling waves, which
+broke with thud after thud upon the shelving beach, gave evidence of a
+gale still whirling somewhere off the coast. The clear-cut lines of
+the distant cliffs faded to dim, quiet masses. Far out on the horizon
+rose a line of phantom hills,--a line which, as night drew in, moved
+slowly shoreward, rising as it came, shutting out sail after sail,
+point after point, till at last it met the land and shut out the sea
+itself. There is something weird and uncanny about the approach of a
+fog, stealing thus unperceived out of the heart of sunshine and blue
+weather. It has in it a hint of death.
+
+Flint felt the weight of it. His mind was shut in upon its own
+resources, and did not find them altogether satisfactory. Brady added
+little to the gayety of nations. He came in from his day on the water
+sunburned, tired, and as nearly cross as it lay in his genial
+disposition to be. He swallowed his supper, and made haste to stow
+himself away in bed, leaving Flint to choose between a conversation
+with Marsden and the self-communion which was his least congenial
+occupation.
+
+For an hour or so, he loitered in the little shop, listening idly to
+the yarns which Marsden rolled as sweet morsels under his tongue: of
+the whale which the fishermen had caught off the beach, a sea-monster
+of untold length, breadth, and thickness, which had been sold for a
+thousand dollars; of the marvellous experiences of his father, as
+captain of a trading-vessel in the "East Injies;" and finally of the
+fire-ship which he himself had seen hanging between sea and sky, out
+yonder between the island and the mainland.
+
+"You say you saw it yourself?" Flint asked, partly from listless
+curiosity, and partly with an eye to the society of psychical
+research.
+
+"True as yo' 're a settin' thar. 'Twas one night nigh onto fifteen
+years ago,--good deal such a night as this heer. The old cow wuz sick
+that night, and as I wuz out to the barn, puttin' hot cloths on her
+till past midnight. Ez I wuz comin' into the house, I looked out, and
+there, jest where the mist was breakin' away, hung a ship, lookin'
+like a light under a cloud."
+
+"Did you call any one?" queried Flint.
+
+"Call any one? Lord! I was too scared to move hand or foot; I jest
+stood gapin' at her till she faded clean out o' sight."
+
+"Mirage, I suppose," Flint murmured to himself, "unless the old fellow
+is lying out and out, which is not likely." Then, aloud, as he rose,
+stretching himself lazily, "If you ever see the fire-ship again, while
+I am here, let me know. I have always wanted to see a wreck, and a
+phantom wreck is better than none."
+
+"Don't go to talkin' too much about it," said Marsden, mysteriously.
+"They say it brings bad luck."
+
+"Apparently it brings bad luck for anybody but you to do the talking.
+Well, I think I will leave you before I am tempted to a loquaciousness
+which might bring down a curse on the house of Marsden."
+
+Smiling to himself over the old man's superstition, Flint climbed the
+stairs to his own room, as softly as possible, lest Brady's wrath at
+being waked descend upon him. Having closed his door cautiously, he
+sat down by the open window, enjoying the soothing dampness of the fog
+as it came rolling in laden with the pungent fragrance of the salt
+marshes.
+
+He sat a long while in the darkness. Even the Bug Light, which shone
+on ordinary nights from the tip end of Bluff Point, this evening
+formed only a paler shade in the universal grayness.
+
+His thoughts turned to the scene of the morning. He remembered the
+wide-stretching purple of the sea, the yellow shell-strewn sand, the
+patch of coarse grass on the bank against which Winifred Anstice
+leaned. He remembered to have noted how perfectly her dun-colored
+dress had harmonized with the environment, so much so, that, but for
+the patch of red in her hat, he might have passed her as a part of the
+inanimate nature of the beach. He remembered, too, the touch of her
+hand on his shoulder there in the light-house, and the sound of her
+voice as she counted the steps, "One--two--three--four." Then he fell
+to thinking more closely than he had yet done of the girl
+herself,--that curious blending of subtlety and simplicity, of reserve
+and frankness; he had never seen anything quite like it. What a queer
+coincidence that she should be a descendant of this Ruth, in the room
+behind him! Now she spoke of it, there was a suggestion of
+resemblance, faint, but haunting. This must have been the secret of
+his desire to study her face again, and yet again, that day on the
+pond, to determine the source of the sense of familiarity which even
+their first meeting had given him.
+
+How charming her frankness about the portrait had been! Ah, there the
+recollection ceased to be altogether agreeable! He twisted a little in
+his chair, and screwed the end of his moustache into his mouth, as he
+recalled his own lack of response when the portrait was mentioned. Had
+he been deceitful? No, certainly not that, for he had conveyed no
+false impression by word or gesture. Disingenuous? Perhaps, but after
+all he was in nowise pledged to equal frankness, because his companion
+chose to be confidential. Suppose, though, Winifred Anstice should
+come to the inn; should hear from old Marsden of the portrait; should
+learn that it was hanging in his room, and he had made no sign!
+
+The train of thought was perplexing, and not altogether pleasing.
+Flint was not sorry to have it interrupted by a call upon his
+attention in the appearance of two figures below, looming dim and
+ghostlike in the fog. Just beneath his window, they paused in their
+walk, and their voices came up to him first indistinctly, then with
+more and more clearness. The tones Flint recognized at once as
+belonging to Tilly Marsden and to Leonard Davitt, the young fisherman
+whose scarlet shirt was often to be seen on the clamming grounds, and
+whose rich baritone voice came ringing over the pond as he sat in his
+boat hauling in his nets.
+
+To-night, it was subdued, and at first scarcely rose above a murmur;
+at length Flint caught the words:--
+
+"I shall never ask you again."
+
+"I hope to goodness you won't!" answered the shriller tones of the
+innkeeper's daughter.
+
+"That isn't a very nice way to speak, Tilly."
+
+"Well, it's _my_ way, and my name isn't 'Tilly;' it is Matilda
+Marsden, and very polite folks call me 'Miss.'"
+
+"Some day you'll find out that it isn't the politest folks that's the
+trustiest, or sticks to you the faithfullest. Don't you remember two
+years ago, Tilly, when I was going to the Banks, how you kissed me
+good-bye, and how you promised--"
+
+"Never mind what I promised. I was only a child anyway."
+
+"Well, you didn't think so then, and neither did I. Mebbe, the time
+will come when you'll think you acted wiser then, than you're a-doin'
+now."
+
+"Oh, you needn't take the trouble to warn me, Mr. Leonard, about my
+being foolish to give you up. You're not the only man in the world."
+
+"Oh, yes," responded Leonard, nettled at last, "I knew very well that
+was the trouble; and I know who the other man is; and all I can say
+is--"
+
+"Hush," cried Tilly, with a little turning of her head, and quickly
+laying her hand on Leonard's arm. "Don't you say another word, Leonard
+Davitt, if you ever want me to speak to you again."
+
+At this, Flint's conscience got the better of him, and he rose and
+closed the window noisily enough to startle the speakers below, as he
+perceived with some amusement.
+
+"What a little minx that girl is!" he said to himself as he turned to
+light the lamps. "I have half a mind to devote myself to convincing
+Leonard that she would make his life miserable if she married him, and
+that he is worth ten of her; but I don't suppose he could be made to
+believe either. Men are such fools when they are in love! By Jove!
+that portrait is like Miss Anstice!"
+
+This last ejaculation escaped him as he held the lamp above the mantel
+where all his books were piled in heterogeneous confusion. One by one
+he scanned their covers, with the half intention of the idler who
+reads for pure diversion, and at length he drew out a volume of Dumas.
+He set his lamp--a large one with double burners--on the table by the
+window; and tilting his chair on the back legs, resting his shoulders
+against the wall, he plunged into the mysteries of "The Forty-Five."
+
+In a few minutes he was absorbed, as only Dumas has power to absorb
+his readers. The man of action in that great romancer exercised a sort
+of hypnotic power over Flint. The robust virility passed into the
+sinew of his soul. The romance possessed him utterly, and left him
+without even the power to criticise. It was he himself who stood in
+Queen Catherine's box, and watched the spouting of Salcide's blood, as
+he was drawn by the horses in the arena beneath. He sat secreted
+beside Chicot in the great arm-chair in the King's bed-room. He took
+part in the serenade beneath the balcony of the mysterious lady in the
+Rue des Augustines. He joined the hunting of the wolf in Navarre; and
+finally he had plunged into the fight between the French and Flemings,
+with such intensity of reality that it scarcely surprised him to hear
+the booming of a gun.
+
+"It is those rascally Flemings!" he thought for a moment. "Up and at
+them, Joyeuse!" Then suddenly he rubbed his head like one striving to
+recall wandering wits. His chair came down with a crash. He took out
+his watch. It marked three. Again the gun! He threw up the window. The
+fog was breaking fast, and lights were visible too far out for the
+the land, too near for a vessel at sea; unless, Great Heavens! it was,
+it must be, a ship grounded off the Point. For an instant, the thought
+of Marsden's fire-ship flashed across his mind; but his head was too
+clear to be fooled in such fashion.
+
+Banging on Brady's door, he shouted:
+
+"A wreck off the Point! I'm going down to the shore!"
+
+"Hold on! Wait for me, can't you?" called Brady, still half asleep.
+
+"No; there's no time to lose. I may be of use. Come on as fast as you
+can!"
+
+As Flint rushed downstairs, he met Marsden coming out of his room,
+lantern in hand. The old man's face was ashen gray, and his fingers
+fumbled at the buttons of his coat.
+
+"Did you hear it?" he said in a trembling, shaken voice. "It's the gun
+of a ship in distress. Many's the time I've laid awake a-listenin' for
+it when the wind was wild and the sea lashin' up over the rocks; and
+now it's come on a night as ca'm as a prayer-meetin'. I told you no
+good would come of our talk this evenin'."
+
+"Is there any life-saving station near?" Flint asked, as they stumbled
+along the road in the dark.
+
+"No, not near as you might say. Ten miles away is as bad as a
+hundred."
+
+Once out of doors, they started on a run down the road which led to
+the shore. The booming of the gun grew louder in their ears; and dimly
+through the mist they caught sight of a vessel lying keeled over on
+her side well in shore. Flint was conscious of a not wholly unpleasing
+excitement as he watched her. As yet his mind had found no room for
+thoughts of individual suffering. It was a wreck, and he had always
+wished to see a wreck.
+
+The thoughts passing through his mind did not delay his footsteps, and
+he made such good speed that, half way to the shore, he had left
+Marsden far behind, and struggled on alone through the last few rods
+of heavy sand.
+
+When he reached the beach, several people were gathered there already:
+Ben Bradford and Dr. Cricket, with that dishevelled air which always
+marks a midnight alarm; Michael and Leonard Davitt, who slept in their
+fisherman's hut by the pond, in order to get an early morning start,
+and were therefore first at the scene of excitement.
+
+Michael felt all the importance of his position as first witness, and
+with unusual loquacity was giving an account of the catastrophe to the
+group around.
+
+"I can't nohow account for it," he said; "that captain must be an
+escaped idjit to go on a lee-shore a night like this."
+
+"Had the fog lifted when she struck?" queried Marsden.
+
+"Well, it was jest a-waverin', breakin' up like, and then shuttin'
+down agin. The idjit must er thought he was off the Bug Light, where
+the water's deep right up close in; but why should he a-thought
+so?--that's the question."
+
+"Well, it is a question that can wait, I should think," said Brady,
+who had come up panting from his run. "The most important question is,
+what are you going to do about it? There's not much danger, I suppose,
+as long as the night is as calm as this; though there's such a ground
+swell on it looks as if there must have been a big storm at sea. See
+how she pounds on the reef out there! She is likely to go to pieces
+before many hours, I should say, and if a wind springs up, as it's
+pretty sure to do with morning, it would be an ugly lookout."
+
+"Is there a life-boat anywhere?" asked Flint.
+
+"Yes," said Leonard, somewhat scornfully, "in the pond." (He
+pronounced it pawnd.)
+
+"They must have boats on the ship," said Marsden; "seems to me I see
+'em launchin' one now." At this the men on shore huddled closer
+together, as though four could see farther than one.
+
+Yes, there was no doubt of it. The misty dawn showed forms standing on
+the slanting deck of the ship, and a boat hoisted, held out, and then
+dropped into the waves, which were already rising with the rising
+wind.
+
+"They'd best make haste," muttered Michael, uneasily; "if the sea gets
+up, they'll go down."
+
+It seemed an age to the little waiting group before the boat put off
+from the ship. The wind had begun to blow in cold and strong. Flint
+buttoned his coat tight to his chin, and still he shivered. On the
+little boat came, now dipping almost out of sight in the hollow of the
+big green waves, now rising like a cork upon their crest.
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Brady, "they're almost in."
+
+"Hm!" said Michael, "not yet, by a long sight! The danger comes when
+they git into the breakers."
+
+Flint was enough of a sailor to know that the fisherman spoke truth. A
+little later, he saw the white, combing foam break over the boat. He
+drew his breath quicker, and caught his under-lip between his teeth.
+
+"There's four men in her," said Marsden, making a telescope of his
+closed hands.
+
+"Five," said Leonard,--"five, and one of 'em is a woman!"
+
+Flint unbuttoned his coat and threw it off.
+
+"What are you about?" asked Brady. "You'll get your death of cold."
+
+Flint made no answer, but, stooping, unfastened his boots, and kicked
+them off. Rapidly as he undressed, he was too slow; for, as the boat
+reached the tenth breaker, a great wave struck her a little on the
+side, and over she went, spilling out her contents as heedlessly as
+though they had been iron or lead in place of flesh and blood. In an
+instant, Flint was in the surf, and striking out for the spot where he
+had seen a woman's shawl.
+
+"Curse it!" cried Leonard, "why can't I swim, and me a sailor!"
+
+"I'd orter a-learned yer, Leon, and thet's a fact. Look at him! He's
+got her. He's a pullin' of her in. Make a line, men! Make a line!
+Quick as thunder, and the last man grab 'em when they come within
+reach!"
+
+In answer to Michael's words, the men hastily formed in line, and
+moved out till Brady stood chest-deep in water. It was a wise
+precaution, for Flint, though a good swimmer, found his task too hard
+for him. He felt like a man in a nightmare with a weight of lead upon
+his chest; and arms that must move, and could not move, and yet must
+again.
+
+Dimly, a sense of possible escape for himself came over him. Why
+should two drown in place of one? He had but to let go this weight and
+strike out. Why not?
+
+Why not indeed? This man held to no altruistic creed. His doctrines,
+had he expounded them quite coolly, would have claimed that
+self-preservation was the first law of Nature, and that Nature was the
+best guide. But now, with no time for reason, by the flashlight of
+instinct, intuition, inheritance,--call it what you will,--he found
+himself absolutely physically unable to let his load slip. With this
+stranger he would live or die, most likely die!
+
+With the last thought, he felt a numbness creep over him. The limbs
+refused to obey the will. The will itself was paralyzed. Blank
+darkness fell around; the end had come.
+
+He awoke to consciousness with a painful gasp, to find himself
+stretched out on the sand, and to hear Dr. Cricket's voice sounding
+far away, saying: "He'll be all right soon. Keep on working his arms,
+Ben! Here comes Marsden with the brandy and warm blankets." Then
+followed a vague sensation of swallowing fire, and a blissful warmth
+creeping along his veins as though Nature had taken him to her heart
+once more.
+
+Languidly, he unclosed his eyes. What did it all mean: the waves
+roaring close at hand; the driftwood fire burning hard by; the circle
+of anxious faces? Through his dim senses ran the lines long familiar,
+never till now fully realized:
+
+ "The tall masts flickered as they lay afloat
+ The crowds, the temples wavered, and the shore."
+
+What made everything wobble about like that? Was he dying? What had
+brought him here, anyhow? Then, with a rush, it all came back. Raising
+himself on one elbow, he looked about inquiringly. "Where is she?" he
+asked, and fell back exhausted by the effort of speech.
+
+"Here and safe," answered a woman's voice which he recognized as that
+of Winifred Anstice. "The captain and crew are saved too."
+
+"Could they all swim?" Flint questioned feebly.
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Dr. Cricket, with more good sense than good
+manners. "Your business now is to save your strength. Leave questions
+for later in the day. If that coffee is done, Ben, pass it round. We
+will all have a pull at it."
+
+The commonplace of the daily routine is a blessed relief after the
+overstrained excitement of a great catastrophe. We eat and drink, and
+life seems real once more. Even Dr. Cricket was drawn for a moment
+from his patient's side to the circle gathered about Ben Bradford,
+who stood with the steaming coffee-pot in one hand, and a tin dipper
+in the other. Nectar and ambrosia, served from jewelled plate, could
+not have offered more temptation to the appetite of the weary group.
+Flint, lying a little apart, was conscious that Leonard Davitt was
+standing beside him, staring down into his face. As the young
+fisherman turned away, Flint heard him say, below his breath: "Damn
+him!"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX
+
+ NORA COSTELLO
+
+"We pass through life separated from many people as by a wall of glass.
+ We see them, we are conscious of their presence; but we never touch."
+
+
+The evening following the wreck of "The Mary Ann" found the friends in
+council, who included most of the summer population of Nepaug,
+gathered around the White-House hearth, on which blazed a hospitable
+fire, doubly cheering in its radiant contrast to the gathering
+darkness without. The wind, which had risen to half a gale, rattled at
+the window panes and roared down the chimney. The sound of the booming
+surf, as the great waves hurled themselves against the dunes, made
+itself heard, even through the heavy pine doors and shutters. The
+foam, which yesterday curved in lines of delicate spray below the
+headland, was now lashed into a lather of white terror. Above it
+through the twilight rose, dim and ghostlike, the masts of the
+wrecked vessel.
+
+The dreariness outside lent an added charm to the snug and cheerful
+cosiness within the little parlor, the inmates of which drew closer
+than usual, as they talked in somewhat subdued voices.
+
+Jimmy Anstice lay on his back upon the hearth-rug, his head pillowed
+upon Paddy, and his knees braced one on top of the other. Ben Bradford
+sat on a chair tipped back against the wall, with his thumbs thrust
+through the armholes of his corduroy vest. Winifred lounged upon the
+haircloth sofa with one foot surreptitiously tucked under her. Every
+one's attitude suggested a degree of comfort rare in society. A
+wonderful sense of intimacy is imparted by perils undergone together,
+or profound experiences shared. They seem to sweep away, as with a
+whirlwind breath, that thick veil of convention and commonplace which
+shroud many acquaintances from beginning to end. At these times the
+real nature has shown itself, as it does only in the great crises of
+life; and, once revealed, it can never wholly conceal itself again.
+
+At the White-House that evening, the wreck was discussed over and over
+from every point of view. Each person wished to describe the moment
+when he awoke to the apprehension of the calamity,--what he said and
+did, thought and planned. Such conversations lead one to believe that
+the chief pleasure of the resurrection will lie in the comparison of
+post-mortem experiences on first awakening.
+
+Dr. Cricket said that when he first heard the booming of guns,
+half-asleep as he was, he dreamed that the statue of William Penn was
+falling off the dome of the Philadelphia city hall.
+
+Miss Standisth said that she was broad awake; but had happened not to
+catch any sound till she heard the commotion of people moving about
+downstairs. This she took to mean that breakfast-time had arrived, and
+that this was destined to be another dark day like the freak of nature
+famous in the colonial annals.
+
+"I heard Fred call out--" Jimmy Anstice began; but his sister
+interrupted, "Please, Jimmy, leave me out. You know Papa forbade you
+to talk about me in company."
+
+"My dear," remonstrated her father, mildly, "don't speak so abruptly
+to your little brother."
+
+Thus, in one shape and another, every one said his say.
+
+Flint alone, of the entire group, was silent, almost surly. He
+submitted without comment to being ensconced in the great
+chintz-covered chair. He even swallowed, under protest, the various
+pills and potions which Dr. Cricket presented to him at intervals; but
+the most adroit questioning on the part of Miss Standish failed to
+elicit any information as to his sensations or emotions, past or
+present. Brady, who understood his friend better than all the rest,
+strove to shelter him by talking longer and laughing louder than
+usual; but this Miss Standish resented as much as Flint's silence, and
+set it down to flippancy. Her ethical training impelled her to strive
+to improve the occasion to these young people. She shook her gray
+curls, and cleared her throat several times before her conversational
+opening arrived.
+
+"I hope, Mr. Flint," she said at last, "that you feel as strongly as
+that poor girl upstairs, the mercy of the divine Providence which
+brought you to the rescue at that critical moment, and enabled you to
+save a life."
+
+Something in Miss Standish's tone irritated Flint.
+
+"If, for 'divine Providence,' you will substitute 'lucky accident,' I
+will agree to it as heartily as either you or she. If you persist in
+dragging in Providence, I must really beg leave to inquire where
+Providence was when the ship struck."
+
+The silence which reigned in the room was like the space cleared for a
+sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises
+in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked
+amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved a
+dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish fumbled with her cameo brooch,
+and smoothed the folds of her skirt, as if to make sure that all was
+in order before entering upon a possibly ruffling contest.
+
+"I suppose--" she began; but old Marsden, who sat on the other side of
+the fire, and who was no respecter of persons, broke in: "I've heerd a
+deal about how you all felt, and what you all thought; but what I'd
+like to know is what really happened. The men at the inn wont talk
+without their captain gives them leave; and Dr. Cricket has got him
+and his sister shut up in their rooms, to git over the shawk. Now
+perhaps the Doctor can tell us how it wuz thet thet air ship went
+aground on a sandy coast, in a ca'm night like the last."
+
+"Captain Costello says it was the light in the tavern-window which he
+mistook for the Bug Light off the point; but how could that have been,
+when it was past two o'clock, and I'll answer for it that no one at
+Nepaug was ever found awake after nine?"
+
+Dr. Cricket questioned with the inflection of a man who neither
+expects nor desires an answer. Indeed, he had only paused for breath,
+when Flint, from his easy chair on the other side of the fireplace,
+broke in:--
+
+"So I am to blame for the whole thing."
+
+"You!"
+
+"You don't say so!"
+
+"Was the light yours?"
+
+"What on earth were you doing at that hour?"
+
+"Not quite so many questions at once, friends, if you please. My brain
+is still a little waterlogged, and my thoughts work slowly. I only
+remember sitting down about ten o'clock to read a novel, and the first
+thing that roused me was the gun, which for the moment I took for the
+attack of the enemy of whom I was reading. I rushed out, half
+expecting to find the tavern surrounded, and to have to risk my life
+in its defence, and instead--"
+
+"Instead," put in Winifred Anstice, very quietly, "you risked your
+life to save some one else,--Nora Costello, the Captain's sister,
+spent the whole morning in tears, because Dr. Cricket would not let
+her leave her room to go and tell you how grateful she was."
+
+"Hysterical, I suppose," said Flint.
+
+Winifred, who had opened her lips to say something more, shut them
+closely again, and sat back with the air of a person determined to
+have no further share in the conversation.
+
+Dr. Cricket hastened to occupy the floor. "A charming girl--upon my
+word, a charming girl--if she _is_ a Hallelujah lassie."
+
+"A what?" ejaculated Brady.
+
+"A Hallelujah lassie--Feminine of Salvation Soldier, don't you know!
+Why, she had one of the coal-scuttle bonnets hanging by its draggled
+strings round her neck when Flint pulled her in, and a number of 'The
+War Cry' was in the pocket of her dress, when we stripped it off."
+
+"Oh," said Brady, with a touch of disappointment in his tone, "I took
+her for a different sort of a person; she looked quite the lady."
+
+"So she is, young man," answered Dr. Cricket, with his fierce little
+frown. "There is no doubt of that. She told me her story this morning.
+I wanted her to rest; but the poor thing was so nervous I thought it
+would hurt her less to talk than to keep still."
+
+Flint smiled sardonically. The Doctor's little foible of curiosity had
+not escaped his observant eye.
+
+"You would have done much better to shut her up; but what did she
+say?" queried Miss Standish.
+
+Flint smiled again. But the Doctor began briskly:--
+
+"Why, it seems that the Costellos are the children of a Scotch
+minister; though, from his name, I should guess that he had a drop
+more or less of Irish blood in his veins, and their looks show it too.
+They were brought up in a manse on one of those brown and bare Scotch
+moors. The boy was to be educated for the church, like his father;
+but when he was seventeen, he grew restive under the strictness of his
+training, turned wild, and ran away. For ten years they had no word of
+him. The father reproached himself for having been too hard on the
+boy; and he never stopped loving and praying for him. On his
+death-bed, he charged Nora--that's the girl's name you know--to sell
+all the things in the manse, and start out into the world to find her
+brother, and never to give up the search as long as she lived."
+
+"That is always the way," said Flint, with a shrug: "the reward of
+virtue is to be appointed trustee of vice--no assets--assume all the
+liabilities."
+
+"Hm! wide, of the mark this time, Mr. Flint. The very day after her
+father's death, Nora Costello received a letter from her brother,
+saying that he was ashamed to come home without first securing
+forgiveness, and asking his sister to intercede for him, and to meet
+him in London with the news of his pardon."
+
+"Exactly," resumed Flint with irritating calmness. "Prodigal son sends
+postal card stating that he is prepared to receive overtures looking
+to a resumption of family relations. No questions asked."
+
+"He has not seen Captain Costello, has he, Dr. Cricket? or he would
+be more sparing of his jibes."
+
+"Never mind, Miss Winifred, Mr. Flint is ashamed of having played the
+humanitarian this morning, so he is trying to atone by double cynicism
+this evening; but don't let him interrupt my story again, under pain
+of being sent back to the tavern, instead of taken care of in Mrs.
+White's best bed-room, under the charge of the best doctor (though I
+do say it) in Philadelphia.
+
+"Well, as I was about to say, Nora Costello came up to London; and
+there she found her brother, a brown and bearded man in command of a
+schooner, 'The Mary Ann,' plying between New York and Nova Scotia. He
+had been looking forward joyfully to his homecoming; but when he
+learned of his father's death, he was all broken up, and talked about
+its being a judgment of God on himself."
+
+"Rather severe on his father," grumbled Flint; but no one heeded him,
+and the Doctor continued:--
+
+"Costello felt so awfully cut up, that one night he came near drowning
+himself; and after that his sister did not dare leave him alone, but
+went about everywhere with him; and one night they came upon a
+Salvation Army meeting, with drums and torches and things, in the
+streets of the East End. General Booth was there; and, my soul! to
+hear that girl talk, you would think he was the archangel Gabriel,
+with the sword of the Lord in his hand."
+
+"It was Michael who carried the sword," came from Flint's corner,
+exasperating even Brady beyond endurance.
+
+"Come, Flint, you're too bad. Hold your tongue, can't you, and let the
+rest of us hear the story! That girl is a trump."
+
+"You 're right, sir," echoed the Doctor, cordially, "a trump she was,
+and her brother too, for that matter. General Booth preached that day,
+as it happened, about remnants, and argued how a man might make the
+most of the remnants of a life, as well as of a meal, even if the best
+part was gone. Well, the talk sort of heartened up Angus Costello;
+and, after the meeting, he and his sister went up to the General, and
+Nora asked to be taken into the Army. She went in as a private; and
+when Angus came back to Nova Scotia, Nora came with him, and was
+assigned to duty, first in Montreal, and then in New York. She has
+risen already to be an officer, and, I judge, a valuable one. She was
+off this month on sick-leave for her brother's ship, taking a vacation
+from overwork, I suspect."
+
+"What is her work?" asked Brady, leaning forward with his square chin
+propped on his hands, which, in their turn, were supported by his
+knees,--an attitude to which he was prone when self-forgetful.
+
+"Her work? Oh, I don't know! Everything I suppose. Taking care of sick
+people in tenements, talking, and singing, and selling copies of the
+'War Cry,' in offices and liquor-saloons."
+
+Brady frowned. "I don't like it," he said. "She's too pretty, with
+those little curly rings of hair round her pale face, and with those
+big blue eyes. Why don't they send some old maid on such errands?"
+
+"Because they want to sell their papers," answered Miss Standish,
+dryly.
+
+The talk around the fire had gone on so eagerly that the attention of
+the group was utterly absorbed; and every one started as if an
+apparition had appeared in their midst, when a slim figure in a dark
+dress, against which her face looked doubly white, glided noiselessly
+into the room. With eyes fixed in almost trance-like far-sightedness,
+she moved towards Brady, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
+
+"My brother," she said, "it is you have risked your life to save mine.
+God gave you back both. What will you be doing with your share?"
+
+"I--I--I'm awfully sorry, don't you know!" stammered Brady, terribly
+embarrassed; "but it wasn't I who did it."
+
+"Here is the man, Miss Costello, to whom you owe your life," said the
+Doctor, who dearly loved a "situation," turning as he spoke, with a
+little flourish, to the place where Flint had stood; but that
+gentleman had taken advantage of the mistake to bolt into the bed-room
+behind him. He would have bolted into the pond, rather than submit to
+be thanked publicly in this fashion.
+
+"He's gone!" exclaimed Dr. Cricket, in disappointment.
+
+"Ah!" said Nora Costello, with a quick, sympathetic smile, "it's verra
+natural. He did not wish to be thanked. Perhaps he is right. After
+all, it is to the good God himsel' that our thanks are owing."
+
+She knelt on the rug, as simply as she would have taken an offered
+chair, and spoke to some invisible presence, as naturally as she would
+have spoken to any of those in the room. Brady was shocked at first,
+at the conversational tone. It was so realistic that he opened his
+eyes, half expecting to see the Someone--the Something--so evidently
+apparent to the girl herself.
+
+Having once opened his eyes, he forgot to close them again. The actual
+so pursued him, that he ceased to seek the spiritual presence. The
+firelight, playing over the girl's face, threw strange lights, and
+shadows half unearthly. She seemed a spirit, of whom no ordinary
+restraints of the familiar social life were to be expected.
+
+When her prayer was finished, she rose as simply as she had knelt,
+though now two large tears stood on the long fringe of her eyes.
+
+"Good-night, friends!" she said with a confiding glance around. "I
+think I shall be able to get the sleep now. God bless you all!"
+
+When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last
+Winifred spoke.
+
+"I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation
+of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a
+sudden seen a real woman go by."
+
+"Jove! what eyes she has!" said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own,
+rather than answering Winifred's speech.
+
+"Really," said Ben Bradford, "it wasn't unpleasant at all."
+
+"Unpleasant!" exclaimed his aunt. "Well, I should say not, unless
+heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I
+daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways.
+Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to
+her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs
+an efficient ambulance corps."
+
+"Hm!" said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish disappeared. "Mary may have
+chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys.
+Give me a Martha in mine every time!
+
+"That reminds me," he added briskly, "that I must look after my
+patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not
+been aired for a week; and nobody in this house knows the difference
+between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady," he
+continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, "I
+have taken a great shine to that queer friend of yours. I don't know
+how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most
+folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back."
+
+"Oh, Flint is a brick!" said Brady, with enthusiasm. "I have known him
+to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college--he was
+rather pushing socially, and nobody liked him--but he was 'a dig,'"
+and he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever
+fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't
+want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to
+send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and
+nurse turned up at the fellow's room,--said they'd been asked not to
+say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never
+knew who his benefactor was; but I did, and you may judge of my
+surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the
+street.
+
+"'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded
+to see him do it.
+
+"'Because the fellow is a cad, and would be taking all sorts of
+advantages. Better ignore the acquaintance at the start.'
+
+"'Then why did you do what you did for him?'
+
+"'I don't know, I'm sure!' Flint answered.
+
+"That's just the sort of fellow Flint is. He may seem crusty, but in
+any emergency he is a man to tie to."
+
+"If life were a series of emergencies," said Winifred, reflectively,
+"Mr. Flint would be invaluable; but in every-day existence, one does
+not quite know what to do with him."
+
+"I can put up with a great deal," said Ben Bradford, "from a chap like
+that, who shows real sand and pluck when a crisis comes. I mean to
+tell Mr. Flint to-morrow that I think he's a daisy, and go down on my
+marrow bones for the things I have thought and said about him before."
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were you, Ben," observed Winifred, with an amused
+smile; "for I doubt if Mr. Flint has ever had the dimmest idea that
+you have not been thinking well of him all along."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X
+
+ FLYING POINT
+
+ "We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more."
+
+
+Far up the pond, at no great distance from the spot where "The
+Aquidneck" had met her untimely and ignominious end, Flying Point
+thrust out its tongue of land into the rippling water, which stole in
+and out between its tiny coves so gently that scarcely a murmur could
+be heard, except when a northeaster lashed the pond into a mimic sea;
+and then the teapot tempest was so outdone by the giant waves outside
+the bar, that it passed unnoticed, like the fury of a child beside the
+rage of a grown man.
+
+The Point took its name from the flights of ducks which passed over it
+in vast numbers in the spring and autumn, their dark, irregular
+squadrons black against the intense blue of sea and sky. Its low bluff
+of gleaming sand was crowned by a grove of tall pines, through which
+purled a tiny brook perpetually prattling to the sea of its little
+inland life. Below the bank, stretched out a rod or more of level
+beach where fires might be lighted and cloths spread by those who
+wished to return to the gypsy habits of their forebears and sit down
+as Nature's guests, to simple fare of their own cooking and serving.
+
+A midsummer pilgrimage to Flying Point was a regular feature of the
+season with the dwellers at the White-House; and it was a point of
+honor for the old-timers to declare that last year's expedition was in
+every way more successful than that of the present season. Newcomers
+endured this superiority in silence, consoled by the prospect of
+enjoying the same triumph themselves next summer.
+
+Several times the date of this year's expedition had been set, and as
+often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July;
+but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which
+followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of
+amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the
+calm of existence at Nepaug.
+
+On the second day after the wreck, Angus Costello and his sister took
+their departure for New York,--he to collect the insurance on the
+ill-fated "Mary Ann," she to report again for duty in the Army. With
+the going of the Costellos, quiet settled down once more; but the
+dwellers on the Point found themselves impatient of the very repose
+for which they had sought Nepaug. Rest had turned to inanimation,
+quiet to dulness, peace to stagnation.
+
+Flint, usually unaffected by environment, found himself incapable of
+any intellectual or physical exertion. He could not work. He could not
+even loaf alone. Brady was an indifferent companion, subject to fits
+of absence of mind,--more unsocial than absence of body.
+
+There was only one resource left; the young men betook themselves to
+the White-House. Life there could not be wholly dull, while a
+perpetual sparring match was going on between Miss Standish and Dr.
+Cricket, while Professor Anstice smoked his pipe serenely on the
+corner of the piazza, and Ben Bradford openly adored Winifred,
+heedless of outside observation or amusement.
+
+Ben himself was an endless source of entertainment to Flint, so
+vividly did his demeanor recall the rapidly receding days of his own
+youth, when he too had felt the constraint which is born of the
+assurance that all the world is fixing its gaze upon us and our
+actions.
+
+Ben never dreamed that he could be taken humorously. He regarded
+himself with a deep seriousness, and planned innocent little
+hypocrisies with a view to their effect on the public. He was anxious
+to be supposed to handle a large correspondence, and took pains to
+sort his mail in public, fingering a number of letters in his leather
+case with a reflective air, as if he were considering what replies
+they demanded, although their worn envelopes revealed them to the most
+casual observation as at least a fortnight old.
+
+He had the sensitiveness of youth, and spent much useless effort in
+the endeavor to discover what people meant by their words and deeds;
+when, nine times out of ten, they meant nothing at all, but were only
+striving to fill up the gaps of life with idle observations or
+diversions. He himself was fond of side remarks, intended to be
+satirical, but falling rather flat, if dragged out into the prosaic
+light of general conversation, as sometimes happened when Miss
+Standish caught a word or two and exclaimed aloud: "What was that,
+Ben? Won't you give us all the benefit of that last observation?"
+
+Ben loved his aunt; but he did not like her.
+
+She interfered sadly with his pose as a man of the world, by relating
+anecdotes of his infancy, and stating the precise number of years
+which had elapsed since the occurrence.
+
+On the occasion of one of the daily visits of Flint and Brady, they
+were made aware of unmistakable signs of a domestic unpleasantness.
+They were no sooner seated, than Ben picked up again the grievance
+which their arrival had compelled him to drop.
+
+"You have told that story four times already this summer, Aunt Susan,"
+he remarked truculently; "and I don't think it is of great interest to
+the public at any time to know that I took a bite out of each one of
+the Thanksgiving pies when I was five years old."
+
+"I have _not_ told it before, and you were _six_ when it happened,
+which was fourteen years ago next November," Miss Standish answered.
+
+Winifred Anstice, foreseeing a battle, made haste to the rescue. She
+called out from her hammock:--
+
+"When are we going to Flying Point? I think we all need change of air
+for our--ahem!--nerves."
+
+Woe to the person who undertakes to divert the lightning from meeting
+thunder-clouds; unless he be well insulated, he is sure to fall victim
+to his own well meant efforts.
+
+"Winifred, my dear," sniffed Miss Standish, "you may remember that it
+was only this morning when _I_ asked when we were going to Flying
+Point that you answered, 'Never, I hope--I detest picnics.'"
+
+"Did I?" laughed Winifred; "well, it's true, and I cannot deny it."
+
+"I must agree with you there," said Ben. "A picnic is an occasion
+when all the food is picked and all the china nicked."
+
+"A picnic," said Winifred, "is a place where you can accumulate an
+indigestion without incurring an obligation. In this, it is an advance
+upon a tea-party."
+
+"Picnicking with people you know is a bore, Picnicking with people you
+don't know is a feat of endurance," echoed Flint.
+
+"Professionally, I am in favor of them," threw in Dr. Cricket. "I
+often feel like saying, with the old Roman, 'This day's work shall
+breed prescriptions.'"
+
+"Oh, come now!" said Brady, "you're all trying to be clever. This is
+only talk. I think a picnic is great fun, especially a tea-picnic,
+where you boil coffee, and light a camp-fire, and perch about on the
+rocks over the water. You would appreciate that last privilege, if you
+lived out on the prairies, where there is no water, and the rocks are
+all imported."
+
+"Bully for you!" shouted Jimmy Anstice, who had been sitting by with
+his hands clasped over the knees of his stockings to conceal the holes
+from his sister's observant eye, but none the less eagerly following
+the conversation. "You're a peach; and why can't we go to-night?"
+
+"That boy is all right," said Brady, smiling. "He knows enough to
+take the current when it serves. Off with you, Jim, while the tide is
+out, and dig your basket of clams! Come on, Flint, and we will join
+them at the Point! How will you go, and when?"
+
+"I think we'd better go up in the Whites' sail-boat. There'll be room
+for one of you," said Miss Standish, looking meaningly at her nephew,
+for she had not yet forgiven Flint's indifference.
+
+"That's good," Flint said cheerfully. "You take Brady. He's better
+ballast; and I'll row up in my dory."
+
+"A good excuse for coming late and leaving early," said Winifred,
+mockingly.
+
+Flint bowed and smiled imperturbably, without troubling himself to
+offer a contradiction.
+
+Miss Standish swept past him with her Plymouth Rock manner. "I will go
+and look after the supper," she remarked, and added, as she reached
+the door, "however much people may sniff, there's nobody, so far as I
+know, who is superior to food."
+
+Nepaug picnic suppers had been reduced to scientific principles under
+Miss Standish's rule. There was a picnic coffee-pot and a
+picnic-dipper, a set of wooden plates and a pile of Japanese paper
+napkins. All these went into one basket, together with cups and
+glasses and knives and forks. Another, still more capacious, held the
+sandwiches and biscuit, the cake and coffee, the pepper and salt,
+beside the jar of orange marmalade, and the pies surreptitiously
+borrowed from the pantry, where they were reposing upon the larder
+shelf, tranquilly awaiting the morrow's dessert. Everything was neatly
+stowed away,--no crowding, no crumbling. Miss Standish was willing to
+take any amount of trouble; all she asked was to be appreciated.
+
+Flint certainly did not appreciate her. Her particularity he found
+"fussiness," her energy annoyed him, and her well-meant interest in
+others appeared to him insufferable busy-bodyism. More than once that
+afternoon he remembered her with a sense of irritation. "A confounded
+old maid," he called her to himself as he pushed off his dory from the
+beach below the inn.
+
+But no matter how irritable the frame of mind in which he started, he
+could not help being soothed by the tranquillity of the scene around
+him as he went on. The west was one sheet of orange. The brilliancy of
+the sunset had faded to a tenderer tone. The spikes of the pointed
+firs on the mainland stood dark against it. Over in the east, the moon
+was rising, pale and spectral, with all her ribs showing like a
+skeleton leaf. Jupiter shone out more clearly as the darkness
+deepened and the shadows fell more heavily along the strip of shore.
+
+ "The gray sea and the long black land;
+ And the yellow half-moon, large and low,"
+
+Flint quoted to himself. "What is it that comes
+next? Something about
+
+ "'A mile of warm sea-scented beach.'
+
+Must have been curiously like this. Where is Flying Point anyhow? Oh,
+yes; there's the camp-fire."
+
+"Here comes Flint," cried Brady, as he heard the grating of the prow
+of the dory on the gravel.
+
+"I should think it was time," grumbled Miss Standish, who had been
+making great sacrifices to keep the coffee hot. For some inscrutable
+reason, all the people with whom Flint came in contact felt impelled
+to do their best for him, let their opinion of him be what it would.
+
+"Well, we thought you must be lost!" called Brady from the height of
+the rocks. "We have all had supper; but we have kept some for you."
+
+"Thanks," answered Flint, from below, "I am sorry you had the trouble,
+for I took mine at the tavern before I started."
+
+This was more than the descendant of Miles Standish could bear. With
+a bang, she emptied the coffee-pot and knocked out the grounds, as her
+ancestor had shaken the arrows out of the snake-skin to replace them
+with bullets. Henceforth, she was implacable; and yet Flint never
+dreamed that he had given offence. Imperfect sympathies again!
+
+Winifred Anstice, whose misfortune it was to be peculiarly sensitive
+to disturbances in the atmosphere, jumped up from under the pine where
+she had been sitting with Brady. "Come," she said, "let's all sit down
+around the fire. I want Leonard to recite for us. Will you, Leon?"
+
+Flattered, yet embarrassed, the young fisherman rose from his
+occupation of tying up the baskets, and drew nearer. As he stood in
+front of the fire, Flint looked at him with a thrill of æsthetic
+admiration. His red shirt, open at the throat, showed a splendid chest
+and a neck on which his head was firmly and strongly poised. His hair,
+curling tightly, revealed the well-shaped outline of the skull, and
+the profile was classic in its regularity. "And that little fool
+doesn't know enough to fall in love with him!" thought Flint.
+
+"What'll you have, Miss Fred?" asked Leonard.
+
+"Whatever you like."
+
+"Wal, then, ef you'd jes ez lief, I'll say 'Marmion.' I was learned
+it at school." Throwing off his cap and striking a dramatic pose, he
+began:--
+
+ "The Douglas round him drew his cloak."
+
+It is marvellous, the power of strong feeling to communicate itself
+through all barriers. True emotion is the X-ray which can penetrate
+all matter,--yes, and all spirit too.
+
+The hackneyed words burned again with the freshness of their primal
+enthusiasm. Again Douglas spurned, and Marmion flung him back scorn
+for scorn. It was not acting. Leonard Davitt could never have thrown
+fire into a rôle which did not appeal to him; but this lived. He put
+his soul into it, and he drew out the soul from his audience.
+
+"I must go now," he said, when he had finished, having ducked his head
+shyly in response to the applause, and picked up his cap. "I'm goin'
+off at sunrise."
+
+"Where are you going, Leon?" queried Winifred Anstice, coming up to
+him where he stood not far off from the spot where Flint, in dead
+shadow, leaned against the trunk of a giant pine.
+
+"Goin' off bars-fishin' for a week with the men from the Pint,"
+Leonard answered, and then added in a lower tone, "you won't forget
+your promise, Miss Fred."
+
+"No, I will not forget; but you must try not to cherish hard feeling."
+
+"Oh, I don't say it's his fault. Mebbe it's hers."
+
+"Perhaps it's nobody's, and perhaps there's no harm done after
+all,--at any rate, none that can't be undone."
+
+"Yes, there is," Leonard answered gloomily. "The past can't never come
+back, and things won't never be the same."
+
+"Oh, cheer up!" Winifred answered more hopefully. "Your going away is
+the best thing under the circumstances, and I'll do what I can for
+you; but I wish it were anything else."
+
+"Thank you, marm, and good-bye!" With another shy duck, Leonard let
+himself down over the rocks and sculled out into the strip of rippling
+moonlight which stretched across the bay.
+
+The moonlight fell also upon Winifred Anstice's face as she stood
+looking after him, and showed a pathetic little quiver about the
+mouth. An instant later, she dashed the back of her hand across her
+eyes, and exclaimed, half aloud, "It's too bad; I've no patience with
+him."
+
+"What a clear night it is!" said Flint, stepping out from the shadows.
+
+Winifred started a little. "I thought you were sitting by the fire,"
+she said rather abruptly.
+
+"Indeed," Flint answered. It was one of his peculiarities never to be
+drawn on to the explanations to which most people are driven by the
+mere necessity of saying something. After all, he had as good a right
+to the place where he was as Miss Anstice herself. Miss Anstice
+perhaps was thinking the same thought, for she made no response, only
+stood twisting and untwisting a bit of lawn handkerchief which bade
+fair to be worn out before it reached home. At length, with the air of
+one nerving herself to a difficult task, she turned about and faced
+Flint. Lifting her clear gray eyes full to his, she began
+hesitatingly:--
+
+"Mr. Flint."
+
+"Yes, Miss Anstice."
+
+"Will you do me a favor?"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"No, not an 'assuredly' favor, but a real favor."
+
+"If I can."
+
+"Will you do it blindly?"
+
+"No, I will do it with my eyes open."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Try me!"
+
+The girl shifted her eyes from his face to the path of moon beams in
+which Leonard's boat floated far off like a dark speck against the
+ripples of light. When she went on, it was in a lower tone, with a
+note in her voice which Flint had never heard there before,--the note
+of appeal.
+
+"I am going to ask you a very strange thing," she said; "I would not
+ask it if I could see any other way."
+
+"Surely, Miss Anstice, you cannot doubt my willingness to oblige you
+in any way. You have only to command me."
+
+"But it is not to oblige me. It is--oh, dear! I can't explain, but I
+want you to go away."
+
+Flint rose instantly.
+
+"No, no, not away from this spot, but from Nepaug. That's it," she
+went on insistently; "I want you to leave Nepaug."
+
+Flint stared at her for a moment, as if in doubt whether to question
+her sanity or her seriousness. The latter he could not doubt, as he
+looked at her eager attitude, her hands tightly interlaced, her head
+bent a little forward, and a spot of deep red sharply outlined on
+either cheek. Suddenly the meaning of her conversation with Leonard
+flashed across his mind; but it brought only further puzzlement. He
+motioned Winifred to sit down upon the great tree which lay its length
+on the earth, overthrown by the last storm, and with stones and
+upturned dirt still clinging to its branching roots.
+
+"Are you sure," he said gravely, as he took a seat beside her,--"are
+you sure that you are doing right to keep me in the dark?"
+
+"I think so; I hope so."
+
+"Of course I know you would not ask such a thing if there were not
+something serious back of it all; and since it so nearly concerns me,
+it seems to me I have a right to know it."
+
+Dead silence reigned for some minutes. Then Winifred said, speaking
+low and hurriedly:
+
+"Yes, you are right; I ought to tell you,--I know I ought; but it is
+so hard. Why isn't it Mr. Brady! He would understand."
+
+"Perhaps if you would explain," Flint began with unusual patience.
+
+"Well, then, it is about Tilly Marsden, who has been engaged these two
+years to Leonard Davitt; and now she refuses to marry him, and he
+thinks it is because she is in love with someone else. _Surely_ you
+understand _now_."
+
+"No, upon my soul, I don't. You can't mean that the little
+shop-girl--the maid-of-all-work at the inn--is--thinks she is in love
+with--"
+
+"With you; exactly."
+
+"But I have hardly spoken to her."
+
+The silence which followed implied that the situation was none the
+less likely on that account. The implication tinged Flint's manner
+with irritation.
+
+"I suppose I am very dull; but I confess I don't understand these
+people."
+
+"Have you ever tried to understand them?" returned Winifred, with a
+sudden outburst of the indignation which had long been gathering in
+her heart against the man before her.
+
+"Haven't you always thought of them only as they ministered to your
+comfort, like the other farm animals? Is it really anything to you
+that this narrow-minded girl has conceived a very silly, but none the
+less unhappy, sentiment for you?"
+
+"I--" began Flint, but the flood would have its way.
+
+"Oh, yes, it annoys you, I dare say. You feel your dignity a little
+touched by it; but does it move your pity, your chivalry? If it
+does--Oh, go away!"
+
+Flint would have given much to feel a fever heat of anger, to flame
+out against the audacity of the girl with an indignation overtopping
+her own; but he only felt himself growing more cold and rigid. He told
+himself that she had misunderstood him hopelessly, utterly. There was
+a certain aggrieved satisfaction in the thought. He had risen, and
+stood leaning against a tree. Winifred wondered at her own courage, as
+she saw him standing there stiff and haughty.
+
+"I shall go, of course," he said at length. "My absence seems to be
+the only sure method of producing universal content. But let me ask
+you one question before I go. Do you consider me to blame in this
+unlucky business?"
+
+Winifred parried the question by another.
+
+"Why should I tell you, when you don't care in the least what I
+think?"
+
+"If I did not, I should not ask you, and I think I have a right to
+demand an answer."
+
+"I can hardly answer you fairly. Is ice to blame for being ice and not
+sun? We cannot say. We only know that we are chilled. I always have
+the feeling that with those you consider your equals, you might be
+genial and responsive; but the joys and sorrows of the great world of
+uninteresting, commonplace people about you have no power to touch
+your sympathies. Of course, in a way, it is not your fault that you
+never noticed Tilly Marsden's manner--"
+
+"I am not a cad who goes about investigating the sentiments of--of
+women like that. But you have your impressions of my character fully
+formed, and I shall not be guilty of the folly of trying to change
+them. To-morrow, I shall relieve Nepaug of my objectionable presence,
+and, I hope, you will cease to fear me as a disturbing element when I
+am far away at my office-desk."
+
+"You are going back to New York?" echoed Winifred, uncertainly,
+realizing all of a sudden what it was that she was sending him away
+from, and to what she was consigning him.
+
+"Yes, of course," Flint answered a little impatiently.
+
+"I am sorry," the girl began lamely. It was just dawning upon her that
+it was not so easy to control the destinies of other people, as she
+had fancied.
+
+"Oh, that is all right!" her companion responded more cheerfully; "New
+York in summer is not half so bad as you people who never stay there
+probably imagine."
+
+"I don't know," said Winifred; "to me it seems dreadful to be shut up
+inside brick walls, or walking on hot paving-stones, when one might be
+sitting under green trees, or by rolling waves, breathing in the fresh
+country air. But I suppose I feel so because while I was growing up I
+never lived in a large city."
+
+"Indeed! How was that? I should think your father's profession would
+have kept him in the city."
+
+"Oh, it does now, of course; but for years after my mother's death he
+was so broken down that he could not bear to mix with people at all,
+and he chose to bury himself out on a Western ranch, and there I grew
+up with no more training than the little Indian girls who used to come
+to the house with beads and things to sell. It was a queer life for a
+girl; but it was great sport."
+
+Winifred had almost forgotten her companion for the moment in her
+thoughts of the past; but as he rubbed his hand across his forehead in
+the effort to recall something, she mistook the gesture for a sign of
+weariness, and reproached herself for her egotistical garrulity.
+
+"I do wish," she said hastily, "that there were some way out of this
+unlucky matter,--some way which would not send you back so
+unseasonably."
+
+"Never mind that," Flint answered; "my vacation was almost at an end,
+anyway. I am really needed now at the office of the 'Trans-Continental.'"
+
+"The 'Trans-Continental'?" echoed Winifred. "Do you work on that
+magazine?"
+
+"Yes, I do a little writing for it occasionally."
+
+"Then perhaps you know the editor--the chief editor, I mean."
+
+"Yes, he is a friend of mine."
+
+"I envy you the privilege of calling such a man your friend. Oh, you
+may smile if you choose, but perhaps, after all, you do not know him
+as well as I do. I have never seen him, I don't even know his name,
+and yet I have a clear picture of him in my mind. And he has been so
+kind--so good to me. His letters have helped me more than he will ever
+know." Here a sudden thought seemed to strike the girl, and she
+lifted beseeching eyes to his face.
+
+"You won't try to make him dislike me, will you? I know you never did
+like me. I saw it the first time we met, when I was driving that
+wretched colt, and we ran over your fishing-rod, and then, the next
+day on the pond, and ever since, things have steadily kept going wrong
+between us. So, of course, it would be quite natural for you to talk
+about it all to him; and then he would never like me any more, and I
+do want him to."
+
+For an instant Flint felt a mad desire to keep up the illusion; but he
+himself was too much shaken to have played his part if he would.
+
+"Miss Anstice," he said, "_I_ am the editor of the
+'Trans-Continental.'"
+
+Without another word, he swung himself down by the pine-bough to the
+gravelly beach, and, pushing off the dory, slipped out over the same
+moonlit course which Leonard had travelled. Winifred watched him till
+his boat had rounded the Point; then she turned back to the camp-fire
+in a daze. Do what she would, she could not shake off the spell of
+those last words: "_I_ am the editor of the 'Trans-Continental.'"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+ THE POINT OF VIEW
+
+
+_Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan Standish. Nepaug, August First._
+
+ [_From which it will appear that contemporary
+ journals are not always trustworthy._]
+
+
+This August weather is really unbearable. Nobody but flies can be
+happy in it, and they are part of the general misery. I sleep with a
+handkerchief over my face to keep off the pests; but I invariably wake
+to find one perching on every unprotected spot, and the others buzzing
+about my ears, and making such a noise that I can't sleep a wink after
+five o'clock.
+
+It is a very long time between five o'clock and breakfast. It would be
+a sufficient incentive to a blameless life, to know beforehand that
+you were to be condemned to think over your past for three mortal
+hours every morning.
+
+This is what I do; and though I suppose I have been as respectable as
+most people, I find cold shivers running down my back when I remember
+some things, and the blushes of a girl of sixteen mounting to my
+wrinkled forehead, when I think of others. On the whole, the silly
+things are the worst. I think at the Judgment Day I would rather
+answer up to my sins than my sillinesses--especially if my relatives
+were waiting round. The only way I can turn my thoughts out of the
+uncomfortable reminiscent channel which they make for themselves at
+five o'clock in the morning, is to think as hard as I can about
+somebody else. Lately, I don't find this so difficult; for our
+household here at Nepaug includes some interesting people, and,
+moreover, some very queer things have happened lately, I thank Heaven,
+I have none of Dr. Cricket's curiosity; but I should be ashamed if I
+were so indifferent to those about me as not to take an interest in
+their concerns. This interest has led me of late to ponder on recent
+events, and speculate as to their causes.
+
+When I asked some very simple and natural questions of Winifred
+Anstice, she snapped at me like a snapping-turtle; but I did not
+discontinue my investigation on that account. On the contrary, I
+resolved to be all the more watchful; and when it comes to putting two
+and two together, there are few who have a more mathematical mind than
+Susan Standish.
+
+On Friday evening, we had a picnic supper at Eagle Rock.
+
+Mr. Flint (superior as usual) preferred to go in the only society
+which interests him, and therefore set off _alone_ in his dory. His
+absence did not have any visibly depressing effect on the party in the
+sail-boat. Winifred was at her very best; and Philip Brady seemed to
+appreciate her. If I were a matchmaker, I should have tried to throw
+them together, for they do seem just cut out for each other; in spite
+of all my efforts to give them opportunities of making each other's
+acquaintance on intimate terms, they never appeared to take advantage
+of them. But on Friday it was different. In the first place, anything
+more warm-blooded than an oyster must have fallen in love with
+Winifred at first sight on that evening. She wore a white flannel
+yachting-dress, and a red-felt hat cocked up on one side, and as she
+stood against the sail in the sunset, she was--Well, I'm too old to be
+silly; but really that girl is something worth looking at when she is
+nice. To-day, she looked like a frump, and talked like a fury.
+
+The wind on Friday died out soon after we started; and at one time I
+was afraid Mr. Flint would have the satisfaction of getting to the
+Point before us; but, providentially, it sprang up again and, indeed,
+I need not have worried, for it seemed he was afraid of being bored,
+and did not start till six o'clock. Brady says he was always like
+that, even in college; that when they were invited anywhere, Flint
+would always put off the start, and would say, "Your coming away
+depends on your hostess; but your going depends upon yourself."
+
+"If it had been _my_ house," said I, "his _staying_ away would have
+depended on his hostess. I have no patience with a rude man."
+
+"Flint rude?" said Philip.
+
+"Most decidedly rude, I should say."
+
+"Oh, but he is not rude. He is only indifferent."
+
+"Indifference is rudeness."
+
+"Then I'm afraid, Miss Standish," broke in Winifred, "we must all be
+rude to most of the world. That is, unless we belong to the Salvation
+Army, like Nora Costello, and take an interest in everybody or rather
+every soul."
+
+"Very remarkable girl, that Nora Costello," said Philip. "I don't
+quite know what it was that made her so interesting."
+
+"_I_ know," answered Winifred, with a little laugh; "it was her
+looks."
+
+"Or her manner," suggested Philip.
+
+"Oh, her manner without her looks would not have carried at all.
+Manners are only thunder. It is looks that strike."
+
+"You should know," Philip said quite low. Just at this moment Jimmy
+Anstice, with that exasperatingly inopportune way of his, called
+out:--
+
+"Look, Fred! Did you see that fish jump? Gracious! He must have gone
+up two feet! What makes a fish jump? Papa, Papa, do you hear me? What
+makes a fish jump?"
+
+"I don't know, my dear; I suppose to get food, or because he wants
+air."
+
+"Then why doesn't he jump oftener?"
+
+It has always been one of Professor Anstice's pet theories that a
+child's mental development is promoted by the stimulation of
+intellectual curiosity. As a result, Jimmy has been encouraged to ask
+questions to an extent which the world at large finds somewhat
+tiresome. For my part, I think one of the most useful accomplishments
+connected with the tongue is the art of holding it; and I believe in
+its early acquirement by the young.
+
+After Jimmy's curiosity in regard to the habits of fish had expended
+itself, there was no more _tête-à-tête_. Everybody was shouting this
+way and that; and then the boat brought up at the rocks, and those of
+us who could jump, jumped out, and those who couldn't, clambered out;
+and Jimmy Anstice flopped into the water above his knees, as usual,
+and had to sit by the fire getting dry, when he should have been
+running errands and making himself useful. Small boys, being neither
+ornamental nor interesting, should be either useful or absent.
+
+Winifred and Brady started off after driftwood. I invited Ben to help
+me with the coffee; but he said, "Presently," and made off after the
+other two. Really, that boy may come to something if he selects his
+profession with care. He can't see when he's not wanted, which may
+make him a success in the ministry.
+
+Well, at last, we got our two fires started, and the tablecloth
+spread; and the coffee tasted so good I just hoped Mr. Flint would
+come to have some, because he made some disagreeable remarks in the
+morning on the subject of picnics. Some people are never satisfied
+unless they can spoil the enjoyment of others.
+
+While we were eating, everybody was jolly and all went well, except
+that Philip would tell stories,--Western stories about "commercial
+gents" and "drummer hotels" and such things. He tells a story very
+well; but he also tells it very long. With the tact upon which I
+justly pride myself, I tried to shut him up or draw him off; but each
+time Winifred would bring him right back, with "What was it you were
+just going to tell, Mr. Brady?" or "As you were saying when Miss
+Standish began," I was a good deal annoyed, for I couldn't quite make
+out whether she was really interested, or whether she was making fun
+of us both. Now I have a very keen sense of humor; but I don't like a
+joke at my expense. At last Philip offered to give us a comic poem
+from the "Bison Spike;" but _that_ I _couldn't_ stand; and I pretended
+that the coffee was boiling over, and Winifred jumped up to attend to
+it. Philip, of course, went to her assistance, and afterward, as he
+stood before the fire with Winifred beside him, I could not help
+thinking what a fine looking couple they would make. His golf suit
+brought out the fine proportions of his stalwart figure. The firelight
+played over his firm chin, his broad, square forehead, and his frank,
+kind eyes. He would make a good husband for any girl; and a judicious
+wife could soon break him of his habit of telling stories.
+
+I dare say they would have had an interesting talk, if Ben Bradford
+had not come up with his hands full of stone chips, which he calls
+arrowheads. That ridiculous boy walks the furrows of old Marsden's
+potato-fields for hours together, with the sun blistering the back of
+his neck, quite contented if he brings home a dirty bit of stone,
+which his imagination fits out with points and grooves. At Flying
+Point, he had apparently reaped a rich harvest of these treasures. His
+companions inspected them with civil but languid curiosity. While they
+were turning them this way and that, and striving hard to be
+convinced that the bulkiest had undoubtedly been employed by the
+Indians as a pestle for corn-grinding, we heard the grating of a boat
+on the beach. Of course it was Mr. Flint.
+
+Ben called out to him to hurry up and have some coffee before it was
+cold; to which he coolly answered that he had had supper before he
+started; and there I had put off ours half an hour for him, and then
+kept the coffee boiling another half hour! I would have liked to shake
+him.
+
+Winifred saw that I was justly indignant; and though she can be as
+peppery as anybody over her own quarrels, she is always bent on
+smoothing down other people; so she called out:--
+
+"Well, fortunately, Mr. Flint, you are not too late for 'the feast of
+reason and the flow of soul;' and I am sure you did not get that all
+alone there at the inn." I wondered if he appreciated that rather neat
+little stab. Winifred does those things well, with a demure manner
+which leaves people in doubt whether her remarks are vicious or simply
+blundering. "Come, Leon," she added, turning to young Davitt, "you
+know you promised to recite something for us."
+
+Leonard stood up like a boy at school, and recited the speech from
+"Marmion" where he and Douglas give it to each other like Dr. Cricket
+and a hom[oe]opathic physician. Then he bobbed his head, just like a
+schoolboy again, and said he must go. Winifred followed him, and
+spoke to him, almost in a whisper. What they were talking about I
+could not catch; but I heard her say, "I will do it for you, Leon; but
+I wish to goodness it were anything else." Then Leonard answered, just
+as if she had given him some great thing: "Oh, thank you, thank you!"
+and then he disappeared. At the same moment Mr. Flint took his place
+by her side.
+
+Instead of joining us all, and making a jolly party, what does he do
+but stand in the shadow of the three big pines talking to Winifred in
+that insultingly low voice which seems to imply that people are
+listening. I did, however, catch one or two things. I distinctly heard
+Winifred say: "Oh, do go away!" and I heard him say: "I hope you will
+cease to fear me when--" There I lost it again; but what could it
+mean? Winifred _fear_ him!--fear _him_! She, who never feared the face
+of clay! There is only one explanation, and yet that is too wildly
+improbable!
+
+I never saw any one more unlikely to inspire an affection. Flint by
+name and Flint by nature,--cold and hard as rock itself; and for a
+girl like Winifred! It never could be!--and yet, I confess, I don't
+know what to think.
+
+After they had talked together for some time, he swung himself down
+the bank, pushed off the dory, and we saw him pulling rapidly into the
+middle of the bay.
+
+"Well, if that doesn't beat the Dutch!" said Dr. Cricket.
+
+"Hi, there!" cried Ben; and Brady, standing up, waved his hat, and
+hallooed through his hand with a volume of voice that could be heard
+all the way to Nepaug. But though Flint hallooed in return, he never
+changed his course, nor slackened his speed.
+
+When Winifred came back to us, a color like flame burned in her
+cheeks, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. No one but me
+noticed it. Every one fell upon her with questions.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Why did he leave so suddenly?"
+
+"Why did he come at all?"
+
+"What did he have to say for himself?"
+
+"Was this rude, or only indifferent?"
+
+"Don't bury me under such an avalanche of inquiry," said Winifred,
+with a little artificial laugh. "There really is nothing very
+mysterious about Mr. Flint's departure. He is not a flying Dutchman. I
+don't think he wanted to come at all; but he was afraid we might
+think something had happened if he failed to appear. Ben, the fire
+needs another log. Mr. Brady, did you bring your banjo, as you
+promised?"
+
+This was a master-stroke,--divert and conquer,--presto, Ben was off
+after wood, and Philip tuning up for alleged "melodies;" but I was not
+so easily put off the track.
+
+"It took him some time to make his excuses," I said to her aside. She
+looked up quickly.
+
+"You are too shrewd to be put off like the others, Miss Standish; but
+don't say anything more,--I'm so awfully tired."
+
+The poor girl did look used up, and I knew she was longing to get
+home, so I coughed violently, and asked Dr. Cricket for my shawl.
+
+"You are taking cold," said he.
+
+"Oh, don't mention it," I answered.
+
+"But I will mention it," persisted the dear old goose. "You mustn't
+stay out in this damp air."
+
+"Don't let me break up the party."
+
+"The party is all ready to break up, and it's time it did."
+
+"Oh, yes," added Winifred in a tone of relief. "Do let us be going."
+
+So that was the end of our Flying Point expedition. I might have
+forgotten the episode in the shadow of the three pines, or at any rate
+have come to the conclusion that I had failed to catch the true
+meaning of the words I heard; but for the sequel.
+
+The next morning Mr. Flint appeared on the porch as usual, but instead
+of the cap and flannel shirt, the knickerbockers and canvas shoes
+which formed his familiar Nepaug costume, he was attired in ordinary
+citizen's dress. I must admit that the straw hat, linen collar, and
+close-fitting blue suit were decidedly becoming; and, bitter as I felt
+against him on Winifred's account (she came down to breakfast
+confessing that she had not slept a wink), I was forced to admit that
+Mr. Flint was a gentleman,--even a gentleman with a certain
+distinction.
+
+"Yes," he answered to the chorus of questions which met him, "I am
+going back to town to-day. Yes, as you say, Mr. Anstice, quite
+unexpected; but business men can't expect the vacations that fall to
+the lot of college professors. Dr. Cricket, I believe you said you
+were going on to New York to-night. I shall be glad if you will drop
+in and have breakfast with me to-morrow morning at 'The Chancellor.'
+That will give me the latest budget of news from Nepaug. Have you any
+commissions, Miss Standish? What, none? I assure you, my eye for
+matching silks is quite trustworthy. Now you, Jim, have more
+confidence in me,--what can I send you from town?"
+
+"A fishing-rod."
+
+Flint and Winifred Anstice turned and looked at each other. What it
+meant, I don't know; but I saw her color up to her hair. The others
+had turned away for a moment to watch a schooner which had just come
+in sight round the Point. Flint went up close to Winifred and said:
+"And you--what will you have?"
+
+"Your pardon."
+
+"That you cannot have, for you don't need it. Will you take my thanks
+instead?"
+
+"You are too generous."
+
+"With thanks?--that is easy. They are 'the exchequer of the poor.'"
+
+"I trust, Mr. Flint," said Professor Anstice, who, having withdrawn
+his attention from the schooner, could now bring it to bear nearer
+home,--"I trust we may not altogether lose sight of you after these
+pleasant days together, I shall be glad--"
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I know you should be included. My daughter and I will
+be glad to see you at our house on Stuyvesant Square." With this he
+pulled out a card, but, discovering in time that it contained the
+address of his typewriter, he returned it to his pocket and
+substituted his own.
+
+"I thank you," said Flint, with more of human heartiness in his voice
+than I had ever heard before,--"I thank you, and I shall not fail to
+avail myself of the privilege. Here comes the carryall! Good-bye!"
+
+A moment later he was gone. Dr. Cricket goes by the night boat this
+evening, and Philip Brady leaves on Monday. How dull we shall be!
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII
+
+ "PIPPA PASSES"
+
+
+The train for New York came along duly, and Flint clambered into it as
+quickly as the impediment of his luggage permitted. He stowed away his
+belongings in the car-rack,--his bag, umbrella, and the overcoat which
+seemed a sarcasm upon the torrid heat of the car. A flat, square
+package which formed part of his luggage he treated with more
+respectful courtesy, giving it the window-seat, and watching with care
+lest it slip from the position in which he had propped it.
+
+When the engine ceased to puff, and the bell to ring, when the wheels
+began to revolve and the landscape to move slowly out of sight, Flint
+leaned out of the window for one more glance at the dull little
+cluster of houses, beautiful only for what it connoted; then he drew
+in his head, and settled himself against the cushions of wool plush to
+which railroad companies treat their passengers in August.
+
+He was not in an enviable frame of mind. He felt like a fool who had
+been masquerading as a martyr. He had given up two weeks of vacation,
+of rest and comfort and health-giving breezes fresh from the
+uncontaminable ocean, to go back to the noisy pavements, the clanging
+car-bells, the noisome odors of the city,--and all for what? Simply
+because a jealous fisherman and a hysterically sympathetic young woman
+chose to foist it upon him as his duty.
+
+Duty? Why was it his duty? What was duty after all? Did it not include
+doing to yourself as others would have you do unto them? Decidedly, he
+had been a fool. As for Tilly Marsden--here a vague and--shall I
+confess it?--not wholly uncomplacent pang smote him, as he remembered
+her red eyes, and the trembling of her hand as she set the doughnuts
+before him this morning. There was one who would for a day or two, at
+least, genuinely regret his departure. Let that be set off against the
+aggressive benevolence of Miss Standish's parting, indicating, as it
+did, unalloyed satisfaction.
+
+From Miss Standish, his thoughts wandered to the other inmates of the
+White-House. Ben Bradford at this hour would be lounging over the golf
+field, driver in hand, making himself believe that he was taking
+exercise. Dr. Cricket, no doubt, was playing chess with Miss Standish
+(beating her, he hoped); and Winifred Anstice--what was she doing?
+Leaning back, perhaps, in the hammock, as he had seen her so often
+lately, with one arm thrown over her head, pillowed against the mass
+of cardinal cushions. Was she feeling a little remorseful, and
+bestowing a regretful thought upon the man whom she was driving away
+from all the coolness and comfort which she was experiencing? If he
+could be sure of that, he could forgive her; but, as likely as not,
+she was driving cheerfully about the country behind Marsden's colt,
+smiling, perhaps, as she recalled the series of misadventures which
+had marked her acquaintance with the supercilious stranger whose
+civility she and her colt had put to rout.
+
+Flint's morbid musings had taken more time than he realized, for at
+this point, to his surprise, the conductor thrust his head in at the
+door shouting, _New_ London, as if the passengers were likely to
+mistake it for the older city on the other Thames. Here a boy came
+aboard the train with a basket laden with oranges, scalloped
+gingerbread, and papers of popcorn labelled, "Take some home."
+
+The misguided youth tried to insinuate a package into Flint's lap, but
+was met with an abrupt demand to remove it with haste. His successor,
+bearing a load of New York afternoon papers, fared better. Flint
+selected an "Evening Post," and, leaning back in his corner, strove
+to find oblivion from the wriggling of the small child in front, and
+the wailing of the infant in the rear of the car.
+
+Hotter and hotter, the blistering sun beat upon the station; and, as
+though the misery were not already great enough, an engine, panting
+apparently with the heat, must needs draw up close beside Flint's
+window.
+
+In vain did he try to concentrate his attention upon the Condition of
+the Finances, the Great Strike in Pittsburg, or the Latest Dynamite
+Plot in Russia. Between him and the printed page rose the vision of
+cool, translucent waves crawling up the long reach of damp sand to
+break at last upon the little shelf of slippery stones. Could it be
+that only yesterday he was tumbling about in that surf, and to-day
+_here_? He thought vaguely what a good moral the contrast would have
+pointed to the sixteenthly of one of his great ancestor's sermons;
+then he fell to wondering if the old gentleman's theology would have
+stood the strain of an experience like this. Fancy even this carful
+doomed to an eternal August journey! Ah, the car is moving again!
+Thank Heaven for that! Purgatory after Hell approaches Paradise.
+
+On and on the train jogs, over flat marshes, past white-spired
+churches, and factory chimneys belching forth their quota of heat and
+smoke. The twin rocks, which guard New Haven, loom in view at last;
+and Flint feels that he is drawing towards home. If it were not for
+the square, flat package, he would get out and stretch his legs by a
+walk on the platform. As it is, he picks up the package tenderly, and
+transports it to the smoking-car. The air here, although filled with
+smoke, seems more bearable. The leather seats, too, are more
+tolerable, as his hand falls on them, and, best of all, he can light
+his pipe here. With the first puff dawns a serenity with which neither
+faith nor philosophy had been able to endue the journey hitherto.
+
+After all, what are two weeks?--a mere trifle; and he can make it up
+by a run down to the Virginia Springs in October. This will give a
+good quiet time too, for the foreign "Review" critiques. The libraries
+are empty at this time of year, and he can study in peace. Of course
+there will be a pile of letters waiting for him.
+
+With that reflection, came, irresistibly, the thought of Winifred
+Anstice, and their curious, mutually deceptive correspondence. In the
+swiftly thronging events of the last twenty-four hours, he had
+scarcely had time to let his mind dwell upon that strange clearing up
+between them last night. He smiled, unconsciously, as he remembered
+the look of utter bewilderment in those great eyes of hers.
+
+"Candy, sir, peanuts, oranges, and gingerbread! Popcorn in papers!
+Take some home?" With this the train-boy, quite oblivious that this
+was the same person who had met his advances so cavalierly in the
+other car, again held out an olive branch, this time a cornucopia
+marked "Ridley, best broken candy."
+
+To his own surprise, Flint felt himself fingering in his pocket for a
+dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the
+stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next
+car,--dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will
+probably make him wriggle all night. Never mind, serves him right."
+
+The boy grinned.
+
+A passenger in the next seat turned round.
+
+"It is pleasant," he said with a smile, "to see such kindness of heart
+survive on a day like this."
+
+"Sir," answered Flint, "don't mistake me for a philanthropist. I make
+a small, but honest livelihood at a different calling."
+
+The man's smile died out in a little disappointment; and he turned
+again to his paper. Imperfect sympathies! Flint took up his paper
+also, and read until the sudden shutting off of light warned him that
+the train had entered the tunnel. Through the checkered darkness, he
+made his way back; his flat, square package under his arm, to the
+other car, where all was in the confusion of preparation for arrival.
+The pale little mother of the wriggling boy looked up, as he entered.
+
+"Thank you, sir," she began; "it was very kind in you--"
+
+"Not at all, madam; the boy would have been much better without it,"
+Flint answered. The art of being thanked gracefully is a difficult
+one, and Flint had never acquired it.
+
+The train came to a standstill with a jerk which, but for Flint's hand
+put out to steady her, would have thrown the pale little woman to the
+floor. He stopped at the car-steps, lifted her and her bundles, her
+boy and her bird-cage, to the platform, then, touching his hat
+hurriedly, as if in nervous fear of being thanked again, he made off
+at full speed to the outlet, where his ears were greeted with the
+familiar sounds of--
+
+"Cab, sir? Cab? Cab? Have a cab?" which sounded like the chorus of a
+Chinese opera. "No, I won't have a cab, unless you intend to treat me
+to a free ride," Flint remarked, ironically, to the nearest applicant,
+and then swung himself aboard the yellow car at the corner.
+
+As it made its way downtown, he was struck with the strangeness which
+the city had assumed, after so short an absence. It did not look like
+New York at all; and he could not remember noticing before how large
+a part of the population lived on the street. It reminded him of
+Naples. He was forced to admit, too, that it had a certain charm of
+its own,--a charm which deepened as he reached "The Chancellor," the
+bachelor apartment-house which did duty for a home to a score of
+unmarried men. He was met by the janitor with a cordiality born of the
+remembrance of many past gratuities. Yes, his telegram ("wire," the
+man in uniform called it) had been received, and his rooms were in
+order. He pulled out his latch-key and turned it in the lock. The door
+opened on an interior pleasantly familiar, yet piquantly removed from
+the dulness of every-day acquaintance. The matting was agreeable to
+his foot. The green bronze Narcissus in the corner beckoned
+invitingly; above all, the porcelain tub in the bath-room beyond, with
+its unlimited supply of water, and sybaritic variety of towels,
+appealed to him irresistibly. Into it he plunged with all despatch,
+and emerged more cheerful, as well as less begrimed.
+
+An hour later, clad in fresh linen, white vest, and thin summer suit,
+he sallied forth in search of dinner. He felt that he had earned a
+good one, and did not intend to scrimp himself. After a moment's
+deliberation, he turned into Fifth Avenue, and, at Twenty-sixth
+Street, made his way through the open door of Delmonico's. He saw
+with pleasure that his favorite table (the second from the corner on
+the street, not too conspicuous, and yet commanding the avenue) was
+vacant. He slipped into the chair which the waiter drew out for him,
+and took up the bill of fare. With the sight of the menu, he felt his
+flickering appetite revive; but it was still capricious, and would not
+brook the thought of meat. Little-Neck clams, of course. They seemed
+to convey a delicate intimation to the waiting stomach of favors to
+come. Soup? No, too hot for soup. Frogs' legs à la McVickar? Yes, he
+would have those, though he did not exactly know what "à la McVickar"
+indicated, and felt that he should lose caste with the waiter by
+inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled
+tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh
+mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded.
+An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee,
+completed his order. Oh, and a pint of Rudesheimer with it!
+
+The waiter departed; and Flint, not hungry enough to be impatient,
+settled back in his chair with the damp evening paper unopened beside
+him. The sigh he gave was one of satisfaction, rather than regret. His
+gastronomic taste was to some extent feminine. He cared as much for
+the service as for the thing served, and found a carnal gratification
+in the shining glass and the table linen, smoothed to the verge of
+slipperiness. Really, he wondered how he could have endured the Nepaug
+Inn so long.
+
+A hand laid upon his shoulder caused him to turn his head quickly.
+
+"Halloa, Graham! You here?"
+
+"Yes, we sail on the 'Etruria' to-morrow,--only in town over night.
+Beastly hot, isn't it? My wife is here. Come over, won't you, and let
+me present you?"
+
+Now Mr. Jonas Harrington Graham, though one of the most fashionable,
+was by no means the best beloved of Flint's acquaintance; and it was
+with an inward conviction of perjury that he murmured, "Most happy,
+I'm sure," and made his way to the table by the centre window which
+the Grahams had selected. The lady already seated there was sleek and
+well appointed. Flint noticed that the people at the other tables did
+her the honor to prolong their casual glance to an instant's critical
+inspection. The women studied her costume of black with white lace as
+if wondering whether the confection of a Parisian artist might not be
+successfully duplicated by a domestic dressmaker (as it never can,
+ladies). The men's gaze generalized more, but had in it a hint of
+approbation which Flint found offensive. He did not relish the idea
+of making one of a restaurant party which challenged observation; but
+he perceived at once that it was unavoidable. Mrs. Graham was very
+gracious, and insisted, with much emphasis, that he should take his
+dinner with them.
+
+"You _must_ come and dine with us at our table. You look _so_ lonely
+over there," she remarked. "I have some sympathy with bachelors. My
+husband was one once."
+
+"Yes," answered Flint; "I knew him in those pre-madamite days."
+
+This allusion was too occult for Mrs. Graham. She smiled the smile of
+assent without apprehension, and asked if Flint had been at Bar Harbor
+this summer. He should have been; it was _so_ pleasant. The young man
+felt a wild desire to set forth the rival charms of Nepaug, and urge
+her to try it next season. The thought of her and her husband settled
+at the inn made him smile as he saw her lift a roll in her delicately
+ringed fingers, and smooth back the lace of her cuffs. What would
+happen, he wondered, if she were seated before a Nepaug dinner, with a
+Nepaug tablecloth and napkin?
+
+"I have not been so far afield as Mount Desert," he answered, with an
+irrepressible smile at his own thoughts. "I stayed in town till July,
+and then I went to Nepaug. Perhaps you never heard of that delightful
+summer resort?"
+
+"Nepaug? Nepaug?" repeated Mrs. Graham, with as near an approach to
+reflection as she ever permitted herself. "Why, that's where Winifred
+Anstice was going! Do you know Winifred Anstice?"
+
+"Do _you_ know her?" Flint questioned in his turn, in some surprise.
+
+"Oh, dear, yes; we met her one summer when we were travelling in the
+West. We were visiting on the same ranch. Mr. Graham quite lost his
+head over her; didn't you, dear?"
+
+"Well, I was a little touched. She showed up uncommonly well out
+there,--rode a broncho, and beat all the men firing a pistol."
+
+"Yes," his wife added, "and then so clever--so _frightfully_ clever.
+Why, I've seen her _reading_ before breakfast, and not a novel either.
+You and she must have enjoyed each other; for Mr. Graham tells me you
+are--"
+
+"Frightfully clever, too? Don't believe any such slander, I beg of
+you, Mrs. Graham! It is not fair to blast a man's reputation like that
+at the very outset. What chance would there be for me in society, if
+such a rumor got abroad?"
+
+"Well," responded Mrs. Graham, "there's a great deal of truth in what
+you say. It's very nice of course to be lively and good company, and
+all that; but when it comes to right down cleverness, and particularly
+bookish cleverness, it does stand in a man's way socially. At the
+smartest houses, they don't want to be talked down, and still less to
+be written up afterward. I don't feel so myself. I just _dote_ on
+literary people; but then I am called positively blue."
+
+"What was there to do at Nepaug?" asked Mr. Graham, who had not
+followed the intricacies of his wife's remarks. "Any good shooting?"
+
+"I'm afraid not, unless you rode a cow and shot at a goat," Flint
+answered, and was rather relieved to have the conversation drift away
+on to the comparative merits, as hunting-grounds, of the different
+sections of the country. The subject was not specially exciting to
+Flint; but it was at least impersonal, and he felt an unaccountable
+aversion to hearing any further discussion of Winifred Anstice.
+
+The diners had advanced to the meat course,--Graham having
+complimented Flint so far as to duplicate his order, with the addition
+of an ice for Mrs. Graham and Pommery Sec for the party,--when a noise
+was heard further up the avenue. The sound drew nearer, and the notes
+of a brass band tooted a lively tune which re-echoed from the walls of
+the Brunswick, and drew a crowd from the benches of the square.
+Several people in the restaurant left their places, and came to the
+window to investigate the commotion. Flint himself rose, napkin in
+hand, and stood under the blaze of the lights, looking out.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Graham, raising her lorgnon as the procession
+came in sight, "it's that horrid Salvation Army!"
+
+"Bless me! so it is," assented her husband, adjusting his eye-glass.
+"Pretty girl, though, that--in the front row with the tambourine."
+
+Flint's eyes followed his companion's, and saw Nora Costello walking a
+few paces in advance of her comrades, the electric light from the
+northern edge of the square falling on her pale face and rings of
+dark, curling hair.
+
+The tambourines jangled discordantly; the brass instruments were out
+of tune; the rag-tag crowd surged about, some jeering, some
+cheering,--everything in the environment was repellent, but in the
+midst shone that pale face like a star.
+
+Attracted by the brilliant lights within, or perhaps impelled by that
+curious psychic law which arrests the attention of one closely
+watched, the girl turned her head as she passed their corner, and her
+eyes met those of Flint; she smiled gravely, and he bowed.
+
+Graham saw the interchange of glances, and looked at the man beside
+him, with the raised eyebrows of amused comprehension. Flint could
+have shot him.
+
+"I don't see," said Mrs. Graham, returning to her venison, "why they
+let those creatures go about like that, making everybody
+uncomfortable. They are very annoying."
+
+"Yes, very. So were the early Christians," murmured Flint, as he
+helped himself to the mushrooms.
+
+"I never studied church history," said Mrs. Graham, a little
+repressively. She felt that the conversation was bordering on
+blasphemy, and sought to turn it into safer channels. She begged
+Flint, whom, she looked upon, in spite of his denials, as alarmingly
+cultivated, to recommend a course of reading for the steamer, so that
+she might be "up" on the associations of the English lakes.
+
+"You know," she said, "I just _adore_ Wordsworth. I think 'Lucy Grey'
+and 'Peter Bell' are too sweet for anything, and the 'Picnic'--no, I
+mean the 'Excursion' is my favorite of them all. So light and
+cheerful; I'm glad the dear man did take a day off once in a while."
+
+Flint gravely promised a Life of Wordsworth, to be sent to the
+"Etruria" to-morrow, and then, bidding his companions adieu, he passed
+out into the night.
+
+His mood, as he strolled up the avenue, was far from complacent. He
+felt a contempt for himself, as the sport of every passing impression.
+It was not enough, it seemed, that he should have cut short a summer
+vacation, and come hurrying back to the city at Winifred Anstice's
+behest. He must vibrate to every whim about him. He had found, with
+inward disgust, that he was raising his elbow to shake hands with the
+Grahams, instead of holding his hand at the customary, self-respecting
+angle; and that he might be still further convicted of weak
+mindedness, he had a sense of being in some inexplicable fashion
+dominated by the vision of Nora Costello and her comrades. Not that he
+experienced any sudden drawing to the Salvation Army; he felt, to the
+core, its crudeness, its limitations, its social dangers. His reason
+assured him that its methods threatened socialism and anarchy. He
+could have demolished all General Booth's pet theories by an appeal to
+the simplest logical processes, but that it seemed absurd to apply
+logic to so crude a scheme. "Nevertheless," said conscience, "these
+people are striving, however blunderingly, to better the condition of
+the forlorn, the wicked, and the wretched. What are _you_ doing about
+it?" He had almost framed a defence, when it suddenly occurred to him
+that he was under no accusations, except from his own soul, and such
+thoughts and impulses as had arisen at sight of Nora Costello, moving
+in the world outside the social wall behind which he had intrenched
+himself.
+
+"I suppose," he said to himself, with a shrug, "if I were living in
+the Massachusetts of a hundred years ago, I should be considered in a
+hopeful way to conversion. Now, we have learned just how far we may
+indulge an emotion, without allowing it to eventuate in action."
+
+Yet the passing of Nora Costello, like the passing of Pippa in the
+poem, had left its light, ineffaceable touch on at least one life that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII
+
+ A SOLDIER
+
+ "'T was August, and the fierce sun overhead
+ Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green;
+ And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
+ In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
+
+ "I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
+ 'Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?'
+ 'Bravely!' he said; 'for I of late have been
+ Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the _living bread_.'"
+
+
+Nora Costello was even more moved than Flint by their chance meeting,
+if meeting it could be called, under the white light of the lamps of
+Madison Square. On leaving Nepaug, she had resolutely shut out of her
+mental horizon the acquaintances that she had made in her few days
+there. She felt instinctively that any further continuance of the
+associations would be fraught with embarrassing complications, if not
+actual perils. These people belonged to a world to which she was as
+dead as though she had taken the black veil in a convent.
+
+As the daughter of the manse, in her young girlhood she had come in
+contact with people of refinement and some wealth; people of keen
+perceptions if somewhat pronounced limitations; and she realized that
+in enlisting in the Salvation Army, she had not only shocked their
+prejudices beyond repair, but had wrenched herself out of their
+sympathies in a degree which could not have been exceeded by an actual
+crime on her part.
+
+Time had in some measure healed the sensitiveness which had been
+sorely wounded by the withdrawal and disapproval of these early
+friends; but she seemed to feel all reflected and renewed in her brief
+acquaintance with the strangers at Nepaug, especially in her
+intercourse with Miss Standish. There is a curious resemblance, which
+lies deeper than outward circumstances, between New England and
+Scotland. The same outward environment of frugal poverty, the same
+inward experience of intense religious exaltation, continued from
+generation to generation, produced in early New England a type closely
+allied to the Scotch Covenanters, and many resemblances still linger
+among their descendants, widely as they may be removed from the
+primitive conditions which formed their ancestors.
+
+Miss Standish's manner was marked by all the old Covenanters'
+directness, and in spite of her prepossession in Nora Costello's
+favor, showed clearly that she looked upon her as an extremist, if not
+a fanatic.
+
+"What took you into that Salvation Army?" she had asked, as she sat by
+Nora's bedside in the upper front chamber of the White-House.
+
+"A divine call, I hope," Nora had answered.
+
+"Couldn't you have done just as much good in some of the churches?"
+
+"Very likely, but there's many will be doing that work, and there's no
+over-crowding among us highway-and-hedgers."
+
+Nora remembered a curious little look on Miss Standish's face, as if
+she thought the answer savored of sarcasm. This expression had led her
+on to further explanation:--
+
+"I know just how folk will be feeling about the Army. I know how I
+felt myself before I signed the Articles of War,--as if it was much
+like joining a circus-troop, going about so with a brass band."
+
+"Well, isn't it?" asked Miss Standish, bluntly.
+
+Nora colored, but answered amiably: "No, it does not look so to me
+now,--whiles there's things in the Army work for which I've no liking
+myself, the noise and a'; but such things are not for you and me. We
+can get our spiritual aid and comfort somewhere else; but these are
+like a snare spread for the souls we are hunting, and when you see the
+rough men come round us like those in the London streets, it's fair
+wonderfu' how they be taken wi' the drums and torches."
+
+"Humph!" sniffed Miss Standish, "it is as easy to gather converts with
+a drum as to collect flies round a lump of sugar,--men will always
+come buzzing about where there is any excitement. The question is,
+Have you got the fly-paper to make 'em stick?"
+
+At Nepaug Nora had smiled at Miss Standish's blunt questions; but
+here, in the depression of spirits caused by overwork and the deadened
+atmosphere, the words came back to her with overwhelming force. When
+she rose on the morning after seeing Flint standing in the window at
+Delmonico's, she found more than one importunate question arising in
+her mind. Was it worth while after all--the sacrifice she was making,
+the work, the worry, and above all the contact with so much that
+offended her taste and judgment?
+
+Were not those people behind the curtains, with their purple and fine
+linen, more nearly right than she? They at least found and gave
+pleasure for the moment--while she--? Then there swept over her the
+recollection of the drunkard who had shouted loudest in the hallelujah
+chorus and reeled home drunk after the meeting, of the penitent girl
+whom she had seen one night dissolved in tears, the next out on the
+streets again at her old calling,--"Yes," she admitted sadly, "Miss
+Standish is right. It is one thing to catch them, but another to keep
+them." If it had been only the sinners, she would not have minded so
+much, but there were some things about her fellow-officers-- Here
+she stopped, for her loyalty would not allow her to go on, even in
+thought. This mood of depression was not an uncommon thing in Nora
+Costello's life, but she sought the antidote in prayer and work.
+
+After her morning devotions, she spent an hour in setting her room to
+rights; watering the plants on the window-sill, feeding the bird in
+the cage, and then, after a breakfast of the most frugal sort, she
+started on her way to her post. Although it was not yet eight o'clock
+when she emerged from the door of the tenement-house where she lodged,
+a haze of heat hung over the city like a pall, the sun was already
+beating with a sickening glare upon the sidewalk, which still showed
+signs of having been made a sleeping place by those who found their
+crowded quarters within too suffocating for endurance. On the
+doorstep, worn with the feet of the frequent passers, sat a weary
+woman, nursing her baby. Nora's heart sank as she noticed the deathly
+pallor of the little thing. She stopped, bent over, and listened to
+its breathing. Then she lifted the eyelid streaked with blue, and
+looked into the fast dimming eye.
+
+"That bairn needs a doctor," she said to the mother. "Come with me;
+there is a dispensary on the next block."
+
+Rising stupidly, with her infant in her arms, the woman in dull
+obedience followed her down the sun-baked block to the door marked:
+
+ "DISPENSARY.
+
+ "PATIENTS TREATED FREE FROM TEN TO TWELVE O'CLOCK."
+
+Nora looked at the sign in discouragement; instinct told her that two
+hours of delay would be fatal. The child was evidently nearing a state
+of collapse. Turning about entirely baffled, Nora's eyes fell upon an
+elderly man coming down the street at a brisk trot, a travelling bag
+in one hand and a large white umbrella in the other. He was evidently
+a gentleman,--which was strange, for gentlemen did not often appear in
+Bayard Street. What was stranger still, he looked up at the numbers of
+the houses as if he were seeking a friend, and, strangest of all, at
+the sight of herself he took off his hat, and her astonished gaze
+rested upon Dr. Cricket.
+
+"Well, well, Captain," the little Doctor cried, peering at her with
+his near-sighted frown. "I _am_ in luck. I came down on the night
+boat, and hurried over here right away; but we were so late I was
+afraid you might have got off to headquarters to report for duty. I
+promised Miss Standish when I left Nepaug that I would surely see you
+on my way through New York. She felt so worried about your coming back
+so soon to this town, which is like a bake-oven,--or would be if it
+smelled better."
+
+All this the good Doctor poured forth so rapidly that Nora could not
+get in a word edgewise. When at length she found space to utter a
+reply, she cried out, "Oh, Doctor, never mind me, but take pity on
+this bairn! It's in an awfu' way."
+
+"Pooh, Pooh, nothing of the sort!" answered the Doctor, with
+professional cheerfulness, before he had fairly glanced at the child.
+Then aside to Nora: "We must get into the dispensary somehow. Water,
+hot and cold, are what the child needs. It is near a convulsion."
+
+At this juncture, as eight o'clock was striking, the dispensary clerk
+arrived, key in hand, and, seeing the emergency, put all the resources
+of the building at the disposal of Dr. Cricket, who soon brought a
+better color to the little face, and handing the child, rolled in a
+blanket, to the mother, bade her keep it cool. The woman looked
+blankly at the rising wave of heat outside; Dr. Cricket too looked
+out, and felt the shadow of her hopelessness fall on himself. "Here,"
+he said suddenly, pressing a bill into her hand, "take that; get your
+baby dressed and onto the Coney Island boat as quick as you can."
+
+The woman took the bill and crumpled it in her fingers; but she turned
+away without uttering either thanks or protest.
+
+"You must na mind the ongraciousness o' the puir mither," Nora said,
+as they turned away. "She is too fashed and clear worn out to have any
+sense o' gratitude left." In her excitement the girl dropped into a
+nearer approach to dialect than marked her ordinary speech.
+
+"My dear young lady," said the Doctor, "do you suppose I hold you
+responsible for the manners of Bayard Street? You won't be here to be
+held responsible for anything long if this heat lasts. I wish to the
+devil (excuse me!) I could get you out of the hole. We need just such
+a person as you at our Sanatorium in Germantown. What do you say to
+coming to try it for two months at least?"
+
+The offer chimed in so with her morning thoughts that it seemed to
+Nora a direct temptation of the devil, and she thrust it away almost
+angrily.
+
+"Never be speaking o' such a thing! Do you think I would desert now
+when the war is raging?"
+
+"I don't know anything about your Salvation Army jargon," answered the
+Doctor, with equal brusqueness; "if it's the war with sin you're
+talking about, you needn't be afraid of lack of fighting wherever you
+go--I'll wager Philadelphia can furnish as lively service as New
+York."
+
+Nora laughed, showing her white teeth in genuine amusement.
+
+"Well, I'm fearing you're richt, Doctor, and you must na fancy I dinna
+recognise your kindness in wanting to get me out of 'this hole;' but
+I'm called to work right here, and I must 'stay by the stuff,' like
+the men in the Bible."
+
+"Then my taking the trouble to come here without any breakfast goes
+for nothing," said the Doctor, a little crossly. He liked his own way,
+and he liked to help people, and this girl was balking him in both
+desires.
+
+"Good for nothing!" cried Nora. "You must na say so. You dare na say
+so, when God put it into your hands to save a life! Dinna ye remember
+the story of Abdallah, and how the golden leaf of his clover, the most
+precious leaf he found on earth, was the life which it was given to
+him to save?"
+
+Nora stopped in her words, as in her walk, for they had reached the
+corner where her division headquarters stood. Dr. Cricket made no
+answer to her little sermon--only put out his hands in response to
+hers, and gave her a grip like a freemason's. "Maybe you're right
+after all," he said, "and I like your pluck, right or wrong. Only
+remember, if you want help, or think better of my offer, just drop a
+line to Dr. Alonzo Cricket at the Sanatorium."
+
+When the good-byes were said, Nora stood a moment watching the
+Doctor's little figure moving jerkily down the street under its white
+umbrella. "I believe he was sent," she said to herself. "I must try to
+be to some other puir soul what he has been to me this day."
+
+At her desk at headquarters Nora found a memorandum of four letters to
+be written,--three to men in the prison at Sing-Sing. These she
+despatched speedily, with the aid of a typewriter; but the fourth she
+wrote with her own hand, for it was in answer to one from an orphan
+girl who was coming to New York in search of work, and who desired to
+be put in the way of finding a safe boarding-place. Nora's heart was
+touched by a peculiar sympathy at the thought of the girl's
+loneliness, so closely allied to her own, and she wanted her to feel
+that it was a friend, and not merely an officer of the Army, who
+responded to her appeal, and held out the right hand of fellowship.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when the letters were written, and Nora ran
+downstairs to vary her industry by cutting out baby-clothes in the
+workroom. Just as she was taking the shears in hand, however, news was
+brought in of an accident to a factory-girl who had crushed her foot
+in the machinery, and had been brought home to her lodgings in the
+house on the next corner.
+
+To this house Nora went, and found the girl alone, and weeping more
+from loneliness than suffering. The doctor had left, promising to come
+again, and to send an ambulance later in the day, to take the sufferer
+to the hospital. Nora knocked gently at the chamber door.
+
+"Come in!" a voice from within answered wearily.
+
+The visitor, standing in the doorway, was impressed by the dreariness
+of disorder which reigned inside. Such a room would have been
+impossible to Nora herself while hands and knees and a scrubbing-brush
+were left to her. In one sweeping glance she took in the hastily
+dumped clothing on the floor, the bureau heaped with mussy finery, the
+fly-specked window-pane, and soiled bed-spread.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the girl, raising her head from the pillow. "Oh,
+one of those Salvation Army women," she added, as she caught sight of
+the dark bonnet.
+
+"Yes," answered Nora, "I heard of your accident and that you were all
+alone. I have come to try to help you."
+
+"You can't. Nobody can help me. I wish I was dead." With this the girl
+buried her face in the pillow and resumed her half-hysterical weeping.
+
+Nora wisely wasted no words in trying to prove her ability to help,
+but began quietly to hang up the clothes, to slip the soiled lace and
+brass chains from the top of the bureau into the drawer, to close the
+blinds, and fold a towel over a basin on the chair within reach of the
+sufferer.
+
+"There," she said, "maybe if you could wash you'd feel a bit more
+comfortable, and I'll run round to my lodgings--they're not far
+off--and back in no time."
+
+When she reappeared, it was with a snowy white dimity spread taken
+from her own bed, a pitcher of ice-water, and a large palm-leaf fan.
+When the bed was re-made, the self-appointed nurse seated herself by
+the bedside of the sick girl, promising to stay until the coming of
+the ambulance, and settling down to listen to all the details of the
+accident, which seemed to give the victim a grewsome satisfaction in
+rehearsing.
+
+When the ambulance arrived, and the patient departed, the nurse began
+to realize that it was three o'clock, and that she had had no food
+since seven. As the Bible-reading was at four, she had time only for a
+hastily swallowed cup of tea, and a slice of bread and butter, with a
+bit of cold meat, before the reading, after which she went home,
+bathed, rested, and supped, before presenting herself again at
+headquarters for the night duty, which called her to patrol the
+streets with a companion officer (a dull, rather coarse woman, who
+"exhorted" and sang through her nose) until after midnight.
+
+Then she went home and to bed, inwardly thanking Heaven for her happy
+day. She felt, as she would have said, that she had been "awfu'
+favored."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV
+
+ TWO SOUL-SIDES
+
+ "Thanks to God, the meanest of his creatures
+ Boasts two soul-sides--one to face the world with,
+ One to show a woman when he loves her."
+
+
+A man's character is like the body of a child,--it grows unequally and
+in sections. Certain qualities in Flint had lain throughout these
+thirty-three years wholly undeveloped and unaffected by the culture of
+other characteristics. In his case the dormancy of the sympathetic
+side of his nature was no doubt largely due to the absence of those
+close family ties which call out in most of us our first sense of the
+kinship of the race.
+
+Flint had no recollection of either father or mother, and he was an
+only child. On his mother's death, he was sent to the home of an uncle
+and aunt in Syracuse. They received him without enthusiasm, and only
+because it was inevitable that the child should be cared for, and
+there was no one else to undertake the task. Flint sometimes recalled,
+with a feeling of bitterness against Fate, those early years of
+repression, when silence and self-obliteration were the only merits or
+attractions asked for in the orphan boy.
+
+Those formative years might have proved a much drearier period but for
+the circumstance that his uncle's house was provided with a library,
+made up of books of all grades and qualities. To these volumes young
+Jonathan was at liberty to help himself without let or hindrance,
+provided he handled them with care.
+
+Mr. Mullett Flint was a collector of books, but not a reader. Elzevirs
+and Aldines and first editions bound by Rivière pleased him as so much
+pottery might have pleased him, and he took great pride in relating
+how the value of his purchases had increased on his hands. His
+guidance in the paths of literature would not have been of great
+benefit to his nephew had he been disposed to offer it; but, in fact,
+he wasted little thought either on the contents of books or on his
+nephew's mental progress. His tastes, interests, and ambitions lay
+wholly in the business world, in the making of money, and the handling
+of mercantile affairs of magnitude. Had Jonathan, as he grew older,
+shown more sharpness and sagacity, some bond of sympathy, if not
+attachment, might have formed itself between the two. As it was, they
+drifted farther and farther apart. The uncle looked with a shrug of
+his shoulders at the boy curled up in one of the library arm-chairs on
+a Saturday morning, poring over a volume of the Waverley Novels, when
+he himself was briskly making ready to betake himself to business.
+
+"I wish that boy had any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking
+windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that,"
+he said once to his wife.
+
+"Yes," answered that worthy lady,--"and he wears out the furniture
+so!"
+
+Mrs. Mullett Flint was one of those heavy, apathetic women who seem to
+have a special attraction for brisk, energetic men of Mr. Flint's
+type. If he ever made the discovery that apathy and amiability are not
+identical, he never revealed his disappointment to the world,--perhaps
+for the same reason that he kept silence over the failure of other
+investments, lest the rumor should injure his reputation for
+shrewdness as a business-man.
+
+From the beginning Mrs. Mullett Flint had taken one of her apathetic
+dislikes to the little Jonathan. He was no kindred of hers, and she
+thought it rather hard at her time of life to have her housekeeping
+put about by a boy whose feet were always muddy and who had a
+reprehensible habit of tucking them under him when he sat down, as he
+did with utter lack of discrimination in the matter of relative values
+in furniture. Her manner toward the child was not intentionally
+unkind, but it was wholly devoid of the tenderness which is as
+necessary to the growth of a child as air and sunshine to a plant. She
+always called him by his full name, which sounded strangely prim and
+formal applied to the little kilted figure with its thatch of black
+hair. He recalled distinctly once going up to the long pier-glass
+between the two windows and stroking his own hair as he had seen a
+mother across the street do for her boy at the window opposite, and
+then saying softly, in imitation of supposed maternal tones, "Johnny!
+Dear little Johnny!"
+
+Such moods of sentiment were exceedingly rare in Flint's earliest
+infancy, and grew rarer as he advanced in life. At twelve he was sent
+to boarding-school, and thence to college, with scarcely an interval
+of home life. In college he formed several friendships; but in each he
+was and felt himself the superior, whereby he lost the inestimable
+privilege of looking up.
+
+There had been a decided difference of opinion between Mr. Mullett
+Flint and his nephew in regard to the choice of a college. Mr. Flint
+strongly urged that the family traditions should be preserved, and
+that Jonathan should pursue his education under the shadow of old
+Nassau, "where giant Edwards stamped his iron heel." The nephew was as
+strongly prejudiced against Princeton as the uncle in its favor. He
+declared that the educative effect of living for four years within
+sight of his venerated ancestor's grave in President's Row was more
+than offset by other considerations, and that if the influence of the
+departed still lingered about the college halls he was as likely to
+fall under the spell of Aaron Burr as under that of Jonathan Edwards.
+With all the headstrong will of youth he determined to go to Harvard,
+and carried his point, though not without a degree of friction, which
+alienated him still farther from his uncle.
+
+It was, therefore, with immense surprise that, on Mr. Flint's death,
+which occurred in Jonathan's junior year at college, the young man
+learned that his uncle had left him his library and a substantial
+share of his fortune. The terms of the will were not flattering. "To
+my nephew, Jonathan Edwards Flint," so it ran, "I leave this amount,
+realizing that the money left him by his father is inadequate for his
+support, and that he will never have the energy to make a living for
+himself."
+
+The widow wrote a conventional note of combined self-condolence and
+congratulation for Jonathan over his inheritance. Between the lines
+Flint quite easily read that her latent aversion to him was augmented
+by her husband's bequest.
+
+"I have decided," she wrote, "to go at once to London, where I shall
+probably reside for some years. I shall therefore strip my house of
+furniture preparatory to renting. I will pack up the books which now
+belong to you, and await your instructions as to the address to which
+you would like them forwarded. Should we not meet again--and I presume
+you will agree with me that it is hardly worth while to interrupt your
+studies at Cambridge for a trip to New York before the steamer
+sails--pray accept my best wishes for your future happiness and
+prosperous career."
+
+With this cool leave-taking Flint's association with his aunt had come
+to an end. The books, which were his earliest friends, followed him
+about from place to place, until at length they had found a home on
+the walls of his study in "The Chancellor."
+
+The work of his first solitary evening after his return from Nepaug
+was to pull off the sheets and newspapers with which the caretaker of
+his room had vainly striven to protect them against the all-pervading
+dust of summer. He sat in his easy-chair, running over the titles with
+the endeared eye of long familiarity.
+
+There stood a set of Edwards's treatises, in eight ponderous volumes;
+their leaves yellow with age, and cut only here and there at irregular
+intervals. "Freedom of the Will" and "The Nature of Virtue" jostled
+"Original Sin;" and "The History of Redemption" leaned up against
+"God's Last End in the Creation of the World."
+
+On the same shelf, as if with sarcastic attempt to mark the logical
+sequence, Flint had placed a black-clad row of John Stuart Mill's
+essays, while Hume and Hobbes looked out above and below. It amused
+Flint, as he sat there alone, to fancy these polemical gentlemen
+issuing from their bindings and sitting down together around his
+evening lamp, to talk things over. "Probably," he mused, with that
+idle pensiveness which is the lazy man's apology to himself for not
+thinking, "the thing which would surprise them most would be to see
+how much they held in common. If they could get rid of the cant of
+theology and the jargon of metaphysics, they would find that they were
+not so far apart after all. But I don't know that that would gratify
+them so much,--certainly not the old parson, for he belonged to the
+Church Militant if ever any one did, and dearly loved to belabor his
+enemies with the spiritual weapons too heavy for any but him to
+handle. Well, it _was_ a temptation to let something fly, be it Bible
+or brickbat, at the head of the average dullard. How was it that some
+people did not find the average man dull? There was Winifred Anstice,
+for instance,--she seemed to find something interesting in every one
+she met. Perhaps because she did not try to approach them on the
+intellectual side at all, but took them into her sympathies and
+soothed their troubles, as he remembered that mother across the way
+from his uncle's house soothing the little son and wiping away his
+tears."
+
+_Perhaps, after all, she was right and he was wrong._ It was almost
+the first time in Flint's life that he had ever definitely formulated
+a confession that his attitude towards life in general was not what it
+might be. Once formulated, it began to grow upon him curiously. He
+found himself reviewing whole courses of conduct, and testing them by
+new rules and standards.
+
+At first these rules and standards were cold and rigid abstractions;
+but gradually they took on a faint echo of personality, and he found
+himself speculating on what Winifred Anstice would have done or said,
+on occasions when he felt himself to have been harsh and hard. This
+haunting influence was intensified by the presence of the portrait
+which he had brought away from Nepaug; the picture of the gray-robed
+Quakeress, with the soft dark eyes, and the white lace, and the point
+of flame at her breast.
+
+He had lost all appreciation of its artistic qualities. The mottled
+softness of the curtained background against the folds of the woollen
+stuff gave him no pleasure now,--at least, he never thought of it. His
+whole attention was absorbed in that faint hint of resemblance to
+Winifred Anstice which lay chiefly in the full eyelids and the subtle,
+shadowy, evanescent smile which said at once so much and so little.
+
+He could not tell how it fell out, but at last the time came when he
+admitted the source of its charm. He recalled the time sharply long
+after, and how he had risen hastily, and paced the floor with his
+hands thrust deep into his pockets. That it should come to this--he,
+Jonathan Flint, a man whose gray hairs--here he stepped before the
+mirror and studied the tuft of prematurely white locks upon his
+forehead--whose gray hairs ought to have brought with them wisdom, or
+at least common sense,--that he should fall to sitting for hours in
+front of a picture like any schoolboy of eighteen! Really, it was too
+absurd!
+
+He would send off the portrait to the cleaner to-morrow, and then when
+it was properly framed, it should be sent to Miss Anstice with his
+compliments, and so an end of the whole matter. He would never see it
+again.
+
+_Nor the original?_
+
+This query was so insistent that it seemed to come from outside his
+consciousness, and to demand an answer. He stopped short in his walk
+as it struck him. Then, alone as he was, he colored to the temples,
+and gave a little gasp. Like an overwhelming tidal wave there swept
+over him the realization that his will was mastered by a power above
+it, mightier than itself; that his seeing Winifred Anstice again was
+hardly a question of volition any longer, any more than breathing was
+a matter of will--that he _must_ see her--that the chief question of
+his future was whether she cared to see him.
+
+This train of thought did not tend to anything very cheerful. One
+after another he recalled their interviews, on the road, in the boat,
+on the beach, and again at Flying Point. Her manner on each of these
+occasions had been sufficiently pronounced to leave him in no doubt of
+her opinion; and at the last two meetings her words had been even more
+explicit. She had called him a man of ice. She had taxed him with the
+narrow limits of his sympathies. "Well," said Reason, "did you not
+give her cause for all she said and more? Weren't you an odious,
+crabbed, supercilious cad?"
+
+Flint took a savage satisfaction in admitting every accusation which
+he could bring against himself, in recalling the light irony with
+which Winifred Anstice had witnessed his blunders, and the direct,
+downright anger with which she had dealt out her judgments there at
+the Point. Only one drop of comfort could Flint extract from the
+memory of that interview, and he smiled cynically as he remembered the
+warmth which marked her description of her friend, the editor of the
+"Trans-Continental." When the surprises of the sudden enlightenment
+and the emotion of the moment had passed away, which feeling, he asked
+himself, would remain in her mind,--the liking for the ideal or the
+disliking of the experienced? For both there was not room, yet each
+was intense. It was a curious psychological problem. At a further
+remove it would have afforded him a keen intellectual pleasure to
+speculate upon the probable working of a woman's heart under such
+conditions. As it was, he found himself incapable either of solving
+the problem or of letting it alone. His mind dwelt upon it
+continuously. He was almost inclined, like Eugene Aram, to tell his
+story disguised to strangers, and listen to their idle speculations.
+Brady was a comfort at this time. He was so responsive in his
+sympathies and so obtuse in his perceptions. It was possible to talk
+all round a subject to him with no fear that his imagination would
+travel a step farther than it was led. It needed no urging, either,
+for he appeared to have a sentiment of his own for Nepaug and all its
+associations, and drew towards it as naturally as a moth to a flame or
+a woman to a mirror.
+
+Indeed, Brady often dwelt spontaneously upon the various episodes of
+the days at the beach,--the fireworks, the shipwreck, the evening at
+Flying Point. He was a capital mimic, and loved to imitate Dr. Cricket
+striding up and down the room, with his hands clasping his elbows
+behind his back and his chin-whiskers thrust out before as a herald of
+his approach. Then casting aside all the scruples which should have
+been raised within him by ties of blood, he would give a burlesque of
+Miss Standish peering out from beneath her little gray curls at the
+world, and rapping out her opinion of those around her in good set
+terms.
+
+After her came Mr. Anstice, looking busily in every corner for the
+book he had in his hand. This the mimic followed by a representation
+of Ben Bradford, with hand propped on knee and chin on hand, glooming
+from his corner upon Winifred Anstice, when she ventured to address
+some one else.
+
+"I cannot do Miss Anstice," Brady confessed one evening. It was
+October then, and the two friends were sitting together in Flint's
+room. "She has too much humor. The more humor there is in an original
+poem, for instance, the harder it is to parody, and so with people.
+The grand, gloomy, and peculiar are easy enough, let them be ever so
+august; but the light, delicately ironical manner is a difficult thing
+to exaggerate."
+
+"Yes," assented Flint, "the heaviness of touch necessary to caricature
+spoils the effect."
+
+"Precisely," said Brady, "and it is as difficult to take off her looks
+as her manner. Her expression is too changeable to leave any
+characteristic fixed in the mind. The fact is, Miss Anstice is almost
+a beauty at times."
+
+"You think so?" responded Flint, with half-closed eyes.
+
+"Yes, I do really--in a way--not like that Madonna-type of Nora
+Costello."
+
+"No, certainly not like her."
+
+"But still she has a style of her own."
+
+"Oh, yes, quite so--as you say, she has a style of her own."
+
+"You are very cool on the subject; but you should have heard a man at
+the club go on about her, when he heard that we had spent our vacation
+at Nepaug."
+
+"I should scarcely think," said Flint, opening and closing his
+match-box with a quick, nervous movement, "that you would have allowed
+her name to come up at the club."
+
+"Oh, hang it, Flint, that is going pretty far! I don't know that Miss
+Anstice's name is too sacred to be mentioned in general society; and
+as for the club,--why, if it is not made up of gentlemen, what did you
+put me up for?"
+
+It was seldom that Brady got off so much of a speech, and he felt a
+little elated by seeing his friend without an answer for the moment.
+
+"Besides," he continued, "nothing was said, except about what a
+stunning girl she was. 'Handsomer than ever,' Livingston said, 'since
+she came home.'"
+
+"So the Anstices are at home?"
+
+"Yes, and Cousin Susan is coming down next week to visit them. She
+wrote me to be sure to call."
+
+"I shall try to go before Miss Standish arrives."
+
+Brady laughed.
+
+"You and Cousin Susan never did hit it off very well."
+
+"Excuse me, I think she hit me off very well; the fact is, the _femme
+sole_ after fifty becomes either pious or pugnacious. Miss Standish is
+both."
+
+"You are prejudiced, as usual, and malicious, too, under the guise of
+impartiality. Miss Standish is a benevolent woman, with an
+irresistible bent towards doing people good even against their will."
+
+Flint groaned assent. "Alas, yes," he muttered.
+
+"She is a fine woman," continued Brady, "and a fine-looking one too,
+as Dr. Cricket will testify, for on my soul I think the old duffer
+wants to marry her."
+
+"I wish he would, and rid the world of an officious old maid."
+
+"'Old maid' is an opprobrious term. Miss Standist is a well-preserved
+single woman."
+
+"Hold there, Brady! She is really not sugary enough for a preserve; I
+should say rather well canned. But never mind, I can forgive her some
+acidity toward myself, in consideration of her sweetness to Nora
+Costello. She has really been good to that girl."
+
+"Who could help it!" exclaimed Brady, unguardedly. Then he cleared his
+throat with a nervous little cough, and began again with would-be
+unconcern: "By the way, I don't know whether I told you, that the day
+after you left Nepaug, Jimmy Anstice picked up a gold brooch on the
+beach, just where you came ashore after the wreck. It was a homely,
+old-fashioned thing, with a gold-stone centre big enough for a
+tombstone; but Jim brought it to me with all the pride of a
+discoverer. I turned it over, and on the back I saw engraved in the
+gold, 'To Nora from her Mother, on her birthday, November tenth,' Of
+course I knew in an instant that it belonged to Nora Costello. Then it
+came to me how the girl spent most of the day while she was at Nepaug
+wandering up and down on the beach. Of course she was looking for her
+brooch; but she was afraid, if she said anything, it would look like
+accusing somebody; and besides, very likely with her queer ideas she
+felt that she ought not to have kept any piece of jewelry, even if it
+was her mother's."
+
+"You seem to have studied her feelings rather closely."
+
+"Why, of course, when one meets a pretty girl like that--and really
+you know she is the prettiest I ever saw--"
+
+"How long is it since you said the same of Miss Anstice?"
+
+"Ah! that was before I met Nora Costello. 'Time's noblest offspring is
+his last.' But if you will keep still and listen, instead of
+interrupting all the time, you will hear something about the little
+plot which Miss Anstice and Cousin Susan and I have laid among us."
+
+"Well--"
+
+"I should say it was well. Just you wait and see. Cousin Susan is to
+write to Nora."
+
+"Nora?" commented Flint, with raised eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, Nora," repeated Brady, somewhat defiantly. "If I said Captain
+Costello you would not know whether I was talking of her or her
+brother."
+
+"Oh, yes, I should," said Flint, "for you never talk of him at all;
+but never mind that--go on with your revelations of this deep
+conspiracy."
+
+"You don't deserve to hear; but as it gives me pleasure to tell you, I
+will. Cousin Susan writes to the Costellos to come to the Anstices'
+house on the evening of November tenth. They arrive. We are there
+already. Tableau--old Nepaug minus Dr. Cricket and Ben Bradford--and a
+bouquet for Mistress Nora, with her brooch hanging from it in a little
+bag which Miss Standish was manufacturing when I came away. Now isn't
+that a scheme?"
+
+"The tenth of November," responded Flint, as though the latter part of
+the sentence had escaped him--"and am I to be invited?"
+
+"Why, of course!" exclaimed Brady, impatiently. "Weren't you the one
+to save her life? Worse luck to you for having the honor fall to your
+share!"
+
+"Then," said Flint, with that curious obliviousness of the important
+parts of his companion's remarks,--"then in common civility I ought to
+call there beforehand."
+
+"Ah! Flint, I'm glad to see you waking up to some decent sense of
+social observances."
+
+"What time is it?" asked his friend, absently, oblivious of the watch
+in his pocket.
+
+"Quarter before eight," Brady answered.
+
+"Then out of my room with you, for I have just time to dress and get
+down there. If one must do these things, the sooner they are out of
+the way the better."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV
+
+ A BIRTHDAY
+
+ _An Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan
+ Standish, New York, November 12._
+
+
+It is nearly two weeks since I left Oldburyport, and in spite of the
+Anstices' hospitality I have been homesick ever since. When we reach
+middle age nothing suits us so well as village life. The small events
+occupy and divert our minds without wearying them with the bewildering
+whirl of the city. The interest of our neighbors in us and our
+affairs, which is annoying in youth, becomes more grateful as life
+goes on, and we discover how little real thoughtfulness and interest
+in others the world contains. As for the narrowing influences of
+village life, I don't see that people in Oldburyport are any more
+provincial or prejudiced than they are in New York,--not so much so, I
+really think, for they are forced by the very smallness of their
+circle to find their interests in the affairs of the great world, and
+the lack of social excitements gives them so much more time for
+reading. To be sure, when people are unhappy there is less to divert
+their minds, and when they are irritable they feel more at liberty to
+vent their tempers, because they know folks cannot get away from them
+so easily. I confess I was not sorry to take leave of Cousin John,
+though I did feel sorry for him, as he sat there all alone with his
+gouty foot up on the chair in front of the Franklin stove in the
+sitting-room. He is not satisfied with Philip, and seems to hold me
+responsible. He would like to have Phil come home to live and be
+cashier of the bank.
+
+Cousin John thinks the world revolves round the Oldbury bank; and I
+suppose it is natural he should, seeing how long he has been
+president, and what a fine reputation it has the country round.
+
+Of course Philip does not see it in the same light, and it seems he
+made some ill-advised speech,--said he would rather turn sexton and
+bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that,
+which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,--but that was
+no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was
+sick of his capitalist airs, and he for one should not be surprised if
+he came some day to beg for aid from the bank he thought too
+insignificant to be worthy of his attention.
+
+Philip was furious. "Bankrupt I may be some day," he answered, "but I
+promise you I will go to the poorhouse before ever I ask help of you
+and your infernal bank."
+
+This was the state of mind in which they parted, when Philip had come
+home for his first visit in years. I could have shaken them both for
+their obstinacy and lack of common sense; but it is always so when men
+live alone. They need a woman about the house to accustom them to
+being contradicted. Now if Philip married a girl like Winifred, she
+would soon straighten things out. I can see now how Cousin John would
+dote on her and pretend not to care very much, and scold sometimes
+when he had the gout; but all the while be her slave and spend his
+life trying to give her pleasure. That is what ought to happen, so of
+course it won't. Instead, Philip will go and marry some uncomfortable
+sort of person with a mission. Oh, dear! what if it should be--?
+There, I will not allow my mind to turn in _that_ direction. I have a
+sort of superstition that thinking too much about any unfortunate
+thing helps to bring it about. I think it must be this city life which
+makes me feel so blue and discouraged. The fact is, I do not like New
+York. In the first place, because it is not Boston; and in the second
+place, because it _is_ New York. There is too much of everything
+here--too much money, too much show, too many lamps, and
+sofa-pillows, and courses at dinner. Then everybody seems to be
+everlastingly at work getting ready to live. Here is Winifred, for
+instance, tearing up and down for hours after upholsterers and
+paper-hangers, toiling about from shop to shop, and from Broadway to
+Sixth Avenue, matching samples and trying æsthetic effects which no
+one but herself cares anything for when they are accomplished. And by
+the end of the day she is so tired that she falls asleep when I read
+aloud to her in the evening.
+
+"Why do you fuss so about everything?" I asked her the other day. "We
+don't fuss in Boston."
+
+"That accounts," she answered,--which was not very civil, I
+thought. She has certainly grown very queer this fall. She told me
+this morning that she thought the Unitarians were as bigoted as
+anybody. Now she never would have said a thing like that this summer
+when she was living in the open air. It's my opinion that two things
+are telling upon her,--furnace heat and the influence of that Mr.
+Flint--especially the last. Why, it just seems to me as if she were
+trying to make herself over into the kind of woman he would be likely
+to like. She has dropped her old hoidenish ways and goes about as prim
+as a Puritan. She says she is always like that in the city, and that
+her Nepaug ways are only a reaction; but I don't believe it. He comes
+here a great deal, that is certain; and I don't think it is very
+gentlemanly, after her begging him, as I heard her with my own ears,
+to go away. But he is too selfish to care what any one wants but
+himself. For some reason or other it suits his plans just now to try
+to please Winifred.
+
+The first night I was here Winifred was telling him about Maria
+Polonati, the little Italian girl who sells flowers at the corner of
+the Square, and how she had made friends with her, and learned all
+about her "padre" and her "madre" and the playmates she had left
+behind her in the "bella Napoli." Winifred knows how to tell a thing
+so it seems to stand right out like the old Dutch women in the
+pictures, and I could see that Mr. Flint was taking it all in, for all
+he said so little; and so he was, for the next time he came he walked
+right up to Winifred's chair and dropped a great bunch of violets into
+her lap.
+
+"The little girl at the corner sent you these," he said; and Winifred
+smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world for that
+cross-grained egotist to do a thing like that. He did it rather
+gracefully, I admit; but a Boston man would have done it just as well,
+if he had only thought of it.
+
+Of late Mr. Flint has taken to dropping in once or twice a week of an
+evening to play whist,--he and Winifred against her father and me. Now
+I like to beat as well as any one; but I do like some show of
+organized resistance, and this young man's playing is what I call
+impertinently poor, as if he did not think it worth while to try.
+Winifred seems just as well satisfied to be beaten as to beat, and the
+Professor takes a guileless and childlike satisfaction in his triumph
+which is quite pitiable. I take pains to let Mr. Flint see that I at
+least am not taken in; but he only smiles in that exasperatingly
+non-committal way of his, as if it mattered little enough to him what
+I thought one way or the other. After the game is over he gets a
+chance for a few minutes' talk with Winifred while I am hunting up my
+knitting and her father his pipe, and it is my belief that it's just
+those few minutes that he looks forward to all the evening, while he
+is ignoring his partner's trump-signal and leading from his weak suit.
+
+Winifred has caught a very annoying trick of turning to him on all
+occasions, as if waiting to know what he thought before making up her
+mind. Altogether I don't like the look of things at all.
+
+Of course there was no getting out of inviting Mr. Flint to the little
+birthday party which we were planning for Nora Costello. To tell the
+truth, nobody but me seemed to want to get out of it. Professor
+Anstice says he is the most agreeable man that comes to the house, and
+when I confided to him that I was afraid Winifred would fall in love
+with him, he answered: "She might do worse. She might do much worse."
+That was all the consolation I got in that quarter, and with Winifred
+herself it was as bad. I thought it might do good to recall some of
+her early impressions, which seem to have changed so mightily of late.
+
+"Don't you remember," I said, "how you called him a refrigerator?"
+
+"Did I?" she said with a little laugh. "Well, he was rather frigid in
+those days."
+
+"Yes, and you said how disagreeable his manners were, and how
+thoughtless he was of every one but himself."
+
+At this Winifred colored up as if they hadn't been her own very words.
+"If I said it," she answered with a little toss of her head, "or if
+anybody else said it, it was a stupid slander, which grows stupider
+every time it is repeated."
+
+I was a little nettled myself at her answering me like that. "You
+didn't think so," I said, "when you begged him to go away from
+Nepaug."
+
+At this Winifred jumped straight up from her chair, running her hand
+through her hair in a way she has when she is excited--"Did you hear
+that? Then you must have been listening," she cried out, as if she
+were accusing me of chicken-stealing.
+
+"If you think that of me, Winifred, the sooner my trunk is packed the
+better," I answered, as stiff as the Captain's monument on Duxbury
+Hill.
+
+In an instant Winifred was on her knees by my side, and had thrown her
+arms around my neck.
+
+"No, no, dear Miss Standish, I do not think it, and I ought not to
+have said it. It only made me feel so badly to think of any one's
+having overheard my secret, which after all was not my own."
+
+Now here was my chance to find out the very thing which had been
+bothering my old head all these weeks. I had only to pretend to know
+and I should hear it all, for Winifred was in one of her rare
+confidential moods. But that inconvenient New England conscience of
+mine not only would not let me pretend, but it pricked me a little
+with Winifred's accusation of having listened. Perhaps if my ears had
+not been strained just a trifle, I should not have caught as much as I
+did of the conversation at Flying Point. Anyway, I felt bound to
+confess now.
+
+"I did not hear anything but just your asking him to go away, and his
+answering rather reluctantly that he did not want to, but he would."
+
+"Then," said Winifred, "you are bound to take my word for the meaning
+of the snatch of talk you heard, and I tell you that he acted like a
+gentleman and a very honorable gentleman; moreover, that from that
+good hour I began to be ashamed of my rash estimate of him (I always
+do jump in overhead in my judgments) and am only waiting for a chance
+to tell him so frankly, and to ask him to forget all my rude
+speeches."
+
+After this there was no more to be said. I only pray to be kept from
+arguing. The habit of making comments has brought me into more trouble
+than all my other vices put together. Well, this time grace was given
+me to hold my tongue. When I saw a note addressed in Winifred's hand
+to "J. Edwards Flint, Esq.," I did not even observe that it would have
+been as well to let her father write it, nor did I say what I
+think,--that I hate to see a man chop off his first name with a
+capital and write his middle name in full. It always looks like an
+alias. The man who does it is either trying to attract attention or
+trying to get rid of it.
+
+Everything else about the birthday scheme ran as smooth as a ribbon
+from Jordan & Marsh's. I begged leave to make the cake, and it came
+out of the oven done to a turn, white as snow inside and a golden
+brown on the crust. Nora Costello and her brother came at eight
+o'clock just as they had promised, with unfashionable promptness. They
+looked somewhat surprised to see the house so lighted up, and Nora
+gave a timid little glance at Winifred's rose-colored waist (a woman
+doesn't forget how clothes look just because she joins the Salvation
+Army); but she herself was a picture in spite of her dress--perhaps
+because of it, for the close-fitting blue gown, with its plain band at
+the neck and sleeves, set off her fine features and the noble carriage
+of her head. The chief decoration of her dress was a scarlet ribbon
+coming diagonally from the shoulder to the belt, marked "Jesus is My
+Helper." I did wish she had not felt called to make a guy of herself
+with that thing; but she seemed so unconscious of it herself that I
+should have forgotten it too if Mr. Flint had not been coming; but I
+hate to see a scoffer like him get hold of anything ridiculous in
+religion. Now we Unitarians stand midway between scepticism and
+superstition. I wonder everybody can't see it as we do.
+
+I am bound to say, however, that Mr. Flint behaved exceedingly well. A
+thorough acquaintance with the world seems to give pleasanter manners
+sometimes than a religious nature. Anyway, he came forward and greeted
+her very handsomely. He handed her a little volume of Thomas à Kempis,
+"For those leisure hours which you never have," he said. The girl
+looked mightily pleased but a little bewildered, and still more so
+when Philip Brady followed with a great bunch of the reddest of red
+roses (trust men for always picking out red flowers--I don't believe
+they know there is any other color). Tied by a satin ribbon to the
+flowers was the little blue bag which I made at Nepaug, and inside it
+lay the lost brooch. I never saw any such delight as shone on Nora
+Costello's face when she drew out the pin. She looked from one to
+another of us, then at the pin in her hand, which she turned about and
+about, crying over it softly. At length she brushed away her tears and
+smiled a real child's smile of pure pleasure. "Look, Angus!" she
+exclaimed, holding out her treasure to her brother, "the lost is
+found. Do you mind the day Mither gave it me, and how she bade me have
+a care, for that I was a heedless lass and like to lose it?"
+
+"Ay, I mind it," answered her brother, a flush of gratified pride and
+affection mounting to his high cheekbones. "How can we thank these
+kind folks?"
+
+"How indeed!" echoed Nora. "Oh, how good it is to have it back!" she
+exclaimed, fondling the brooch as though it had life and could feel.
+"But where did you find it, and why--Ah! I see," she added, as she
+turned it in her hand--"you dear, good folks--and here it was only
+this morning I thought the Lord had clean forgot 't was my birthday."
+
+I wish I could recall on paper the little foreign accent of the Scotch
+girl which seemed to add so much to the charm of her simple speech.
+Her big drooping eyes were wet with tears, and the little homesick
+note in her voice made an irresistible appeal to the hearts of those
+who heard it,--at least it did to mine, and I sneaked away behind the
+lid of the grand piano, which was open, to get out my pocket
+handkerchief, for I did not choose to make a spectacle of myself, and
+I don't know how to cry prettily, like Nora Costello. My nose gets
+red, and my eyes look as if I were addicted to the use of intoxicating
+liquors.
+
+When I emerged from behind the screen of the piano, I saw Philip Brady
+standing over Nora Costello, and looking down at her in a way that
+made my heart jump. She is a sweet girl, and a good girl, and a
+beautiful girl; but really this wouldn't do at all. Fancy Cousin
+John's son going round with a drum, keeping company with a
+tambourine. Shades of Dr. Charming forbid! Now why couldn't it have
+been Mr. Flint? That would have been poetic justice. Conversion of an
+atheist--marriage on the platform in presence of the Army. She is too
+good for him; but still I would have given my blessing--but here
+everything is snarled up and getting worse all the time.
+
+The surprises of the evening were not over yet, for the most
+remarkable remains to tell. While we were all sitting at table
+(Winifred did look startlingly handsome under the pink candle-shades)
+the bell rang, and a messenger boy appeared.
+
+Could he not leave the package? Professor Anstice asked, when he had
+signed the ticket the boy took out of his hat, where for some
+inscrutable reason New York messengers carry everything.
+
+No, he was ordered to give it to Miss Anstice herself.
+
+"Very well," said Winifred, "bring it in by all means. Perhaps some
+one has mixed things a little, and fancies that it is _my_ birthday
+that we are celebrating."
+
+So in came the package, and with it a great bunch of violets, and a
+card which said, "The little girl at the corner sends you these."
+
+I saw Winifred's hands tremble as she untied the ends of the package.
+The wrappings fell off and she saw a picture.
+
+"What--who is it?" Winifred asked, turning from one to another of us
+with bewilderment in her eyes.
+
+"A relative of yours, I believe," Mr. Flint answered quietly. "Her
+name is Ruth. She formed the habit of eloping in her youth, and had
+not the heart to refuse my entreaties to run away with me when I left
+Nepaug."
+
+Then in an instant it flashed across Winifred and all of us
+that this was the portrait for which she had been searching all
+summer (any one might have recognized it, for the resemblance to
+Winifred about the eyes and mouth is unmistakable), and she knew of
+course that Mr. Flint had been the one to find it. Her way of taking
+the affair was very characteristic. There was no tearful tremulous
+gratitude like Nora Costello's, but a great overflow of pride and
+gladness. Rising, with her just filled wine glass in her hand, and her
+head thrown back a little as if in a pride which had a shade of
+defiance in it, she called out, "A health!--a health! Here's to my
+great-great-grandmother, the runaway bride, and to the generous man
+who restored her to the bosom of her family!"
+
+Every one looked bewildered, but all laughed and drank the toast (I
+noticed that the Costellos drank theirs in water), and then began to
+ask questions as fast as they could talk. The health broke up the
+feast, and every one crowded about the portrait. As Winifred and Mr.
+Flint stood close behind me, I overheard, this time without intention,
+upon my honor, an exchange of remarks between them.
+
+"You have shown yourself very generous, Mr. Flint," Winifred remarked.
+"You will not surely be so _un_generous as not to let us make some
+little return for your gift. I am not ignorant that such a portrait
+has a value besides that of sentiment."
+
+"You touch me there on a sore point, Miss Anstice," Mr. Flint
+answered. "I am afraid the person to whom you are really indebted is
+old Marsden, for I knew if I offered him anything like the real value
+of the picture, he would hold it for the price of a Raphael. So I made
+him set his own price, which the sly old dog thought a staggering one,
+and which I found so absurdly low that I shall feel bound to remember
+him handsomely at Christmas."
+
+"You are jesting," Winifred answered, speaking lower; "but I am in
+earnest. Can we not persuade you to let us pay for this picture? For
+the pleasure you have given us we never could repay you."
+
+"If it is a question of payment," said Mr. Flint, sinking his voice
+still lower, "I am so deep in your debt that it would bankrupt me to
+straighten our accounts. If it is a question of generosity, and I
+should come to you some day and ask--"
+
+"Did you say it was a Copley?"
+
+This question from Philip broke in upon Mr. Flint's aside. He answered
+with some asperity, "No, it was painted in England before Copley's
+time. It is unsigned, but the artist, I should say, was first-rate."
+
+After this response Mr. Flint turned his head in an instant; but the
+charm was snapped. Winifred had slipped away, and the company was
+breaking up. How the man would hate me if he knew that it was I who
+set Brady on to ask that question!
+
+Winifred is tired to-day, and took her breakfast in bed. I
+wonder--Pshaw, what good does it do to wonder?
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI
+
+ YES OR NO
+
+ "A man's homage may be delightful until he asks straight for
+ love, by which a woman renders homage."
+
+
+The Anstices' house stood on the sunny side of Stuyvesant Square. It
+belonged to the type common in the lower part of the city fifty years
+ago,--a type borrowed from Beacon Street, as Miss Standish was fond of
+pointing out, and never improved upon for comfort. Its red-brick front
+swelled outward, not in the awkward proportions of the modern
+bay-window, which suggests some uncomfortable protuberance; but with a
+gracious sweep from the front door to the limits of the next property.
+In front ran a balcony with a finely wrought iron balustrade, over
+which clambered a wistaria vine hung with purple clusters in the
+spring, and green with foliage throughout the summer.
+
+The front door was framed by glass side-lights set in delicate oval
+mouldings, and above, the colonial fan-light lined with silk fluted in
+a rising-sun pattern, gave additional cheerfulness to the hall
+within.
+
+This hall was of generous proportions, and suggestive of land sold by
+the foot rather than by the inch. At the back a white staircase railed
+with mahogany wound its way to the second story, and at the right a
+broad silver-knobbed mahogany door opened invitingly into the
+drawing-room.
+
+The charm of the Anstice drawing-room lay in its being no drawing-room
+at all, but just a living-room, reflecting the taste and habits of the
+people who occupied it. Jim's parrot usurped the window, where he
+chattered in the sun all day, and flew about at his will, much to the
+injury of the curtains. Between the windows and the white casing of
+the mahogany door, stood an old desk strewn with papers in some
+confusion; for Professor Anstice was fond of bringing his writing from
+the study on the upper floor to Winifred's domain. The piano occupied
+the opposite side of the room, the coffin-like gloom of its polished
+rosewood enlivened by a tall vase brilliant now with the
+chrysanthemums which autumn had brought. A shaded lamp glowed on a
+table loaded with books and drawn cosily to the side of a deep couch,
+and on the other side of the fire, which shot out little hisses of
+heat on this chilly afternoon, stood the tea-table, with its delicate
+old-fashioned silver, its transparent china cups, and the plates of
+hot toasted muffins and ethereally thin bread-and-butter sandwiches
+which McGregor brought in punctually at five every day.
+
+The old butler was the one extravagance of the Anstice ménage, and as
+Winifred said, she saved his wages out of the china that he didn't
+break,--which was one way of looking at it,--and then, McGregor was so
+much more than a butler! He was housekeeper and parent's assistant and
+family counsellor all in one. He advised Professor Anstice as to the
+weight of overcoat called for by the temperature outside. He reminded
+Jimmy of his mittens and rubbers, and his respectful but significant
+glances informed Winifred of the exact estimation in which he held her
+guests.
+
+Flint was a special favorite, and the bow he accorded him was
+equivalent to a benediction.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said this afternoon, "Miss Anstice is in the parlor. I
+am just taking in the tea." Having relieved the visitor of his hat and
+coat, he ushered him in with the air of a protector, and then, after
+drawing the curtains and lighting the alcohol lamp under the silver
+kettle, he withdrew noiselessly and deferentially.
+
+"What a treasure that man is!" said Flint, looking after him as he
+disappeared. "He is better than forty coats of arms as a guarantee of
+respectability, and the welcome which he extends to callers is a
+perpetual testimonial to the hospitality of the household."
+
+"Ah," Winifred answered, smiling, "you say that because you belong to
+the most favored nations. You might not think him so genial if you saw
+the frigidity with which he receives some of our guests."
+
+"Then I suppose I have only to be thankful that McGregor has not yet
+caught a hint of my real character, as set forth last summer so
+vividly by his mistress, and I think I have one more friend in the
+household; what do you say to that, Paddy?"
+
+The dog had risen from his comfortable doze in front of the fire, and
+stood stretching himself, with two shaggy paws thrust out in front.
+When he heard his name called he wagged his tail and came up to
+Flint's chair, by which he squatted, laying his tawny head cosily
+across the visitor's lap.
+
+"Come here, Paddy; don't make yourself a nuisance!"
+
+The dog listened calmly to his mistress's invitation, wagged his tail
+again, and winked his sleepy eyes, but made no motion to obey.
+
+Flint patted the dog's head.
+
+"This is too bad!" Winifred exclaimed, in assumed indignation. "Jimmy
+has already learned to oppose my opinions by quotations from what Mr.
+Flint thinks and says; but I will not have Paddy taught to defy my
+authority."
+
+"Go, Paddy!" said Flint, moving his chair further back. "Your mistress
+regards me as a dangerous character, and considers it her solemn duty
+to remove every one in her charge from the risk of the injurious
+effects of my society."
+
+In spite of Flint's jesting tone there was a hint of bitterness in his
+voice. The dog, in some surprise at the sudden withdrawal of his
+head-rest, stood up, looking from one to the other, apparently in
+doubt as to the rival claims. At length old habits of allegiance
+asserted themselves, and he seated himself in the angle between the
+tea-table and his mistress's chair.
+
+Winifred's mood suddenly seemed to have changed from gay to grave. She
+sat for a moment or two in silence, her hand softly playing with
+Paddy's long ear, and her head bent ever so little to one side.
+
+"Mr. Flint," she said at last, somewhat abruptly, "I want to tell you
+a little story; but first let me make your tea. Do you take lemon?"
+
+"Yes, if you please."
+
+"And sugar?"
+
+"One lump--no, thanks--no more."
+
+"Try this brown-bread sandwich. Now, lean back in your chair and
+listen. Once there was a girl--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes, there was, and she was a very stupid girl, and all the stupider
+that she thought herself rather clever. She fancied that she was very
+acute in reading character, and she trusted a great deal to instinct,
+and first impressions, and all that sort of rubbish by which women
+excuse themselves from taking the trouble to use their reason. Well,
+once upon a time, this girl met a man whom she did not like. Her
+vanity was touched, in the first place, because he disapproved of her
+and showed his disapproval."
+
+"What a cad he must have been!" Flint put in.
+
+"Now you are no better than the girl I am telling you about--going off
+like that on insufficient evidence. The girl made up her mind at once
+that the man must be at fault, since he failed to appreciate her,--all
+our estimates are based on vanity, you see in the last analysis,--so
+she proceeded to fit him out with a character to match her ideal of
+him. He was to be selfish and cold, and regardless of everybody but
+himself, and supercilious and domineering, and endowed with all the
+other agreeable qualities which go with those engaging epithets. This
+answered very well for a while, and I am bound to admit that at first
+you--I mean he--seemed to play the part which she had assigned to him
+very satisfactorily; but presently little things began to come to her
+knowledge which refused to fit into the picture she had made of him.
+He had a friend who let slip stories of inconsistently kind things he
+had done for a man whom he had known in college, pooh-poohing them all
+the time as folly."
+
+"Rubbish!"
+
+"Exactly what the girl said. They didn't go with the character of the
+kind of man that she had made up her mind this was to be, so she would
+not believe them, and kept repeating every disagreeable thing she had
+ever heard him say as an antidote against any change of impression.
+But stupid as she was, she was not quite dishonest, even with herself,
+and when gradually her eyes were opened to the wrong which she had
+done him in her own mind, she longed for an opportunity to make him
+some amends; but all the opportunities came to him, and the coals of
+fire were heaped on her head till she began to feel them quite too hot
+for comfort. So at last she resolved, on the first occasion when she
+saw him alone, to ask his pardon very humbly for all her misdoings and
+misthinkings. Now, if she did, what do you think the man would say?"
+
+Flint had set down his tea untasted, and sat staring steadily into
+the fire, yet no detail of Winifred's dress or attitude escaped him.
+He noted the glint of the firelight playing on the buckle of her
+little slipper; he watched it climb over the sheen of the gray-silk
+dress, higher, higher, till it reached the bare throat, and flushed
+the already flushed cheek to a deeper carnation. He felt the appeal in
+the girl's attitude as she leaned ever so little towards him. He
+caught the tremulous note in her voice. His own was less steady than
+its wont as he answered:--
+
+"How do you know that the girl was not right in her first
+estimate? For my part, I think a man who presumed to show the
+disapproval you speak of, and to say disagreeable things on slight
+acquaintance, fully justified her opinion of him; and if he seemed to
+change later, I should think it probable that something in her had
+shamed him out of his coldness and his selfishness. As for the
+superciliousness, I should be inclined to set down the appearance of
+that to the charge of an unconquerable shyness masquerading in the
+guise of self-assertion,--I have known men like that,--but the other
+qualities I believe were there. I suspect it was a reversal of the old
+story of Pygmalion and Galatea, as if he were slowly turning from
+stone to flesh, yet still held back by the old chill of stony
+habit,--an imprisonment which could only be broken by a word from
+her. Is there any chance that you will ever speak it--Winifred?"
+
+"Oh, no--no!" the girl answered brokenly. "Don't say anything more!"
+
+"I love you," Flint continued, as if the statement were necessary to
+his vindication.
+
+"Oh, but why do you tell me?"
+
+"Because I choose to have you know,--because I must tell it. I love
+you. I love you." He repeated the words with a persistence not to be
+put aside. Winifred was inwardly furious with herself for her own
+stupidity in giving him such an opening; but then, as she told
+herself, who could have foreseen it, with this man of all men! The
+shock of the surprise took her breath away, and robbed her of her
+usual self-command. She still strove to take the situation lightly, to
+treat it picturesquely, like a love-scene on a Watteau fan.
+
+"Here is another proof of your generosity," she said, with a half
+tremulous, wholly adorable little smile. "I asked for pardon and you
+offer love."
+
+Flint would not be put off so. "Ah, but I ask for so much more than I
+offer," he said.
+
+"And--if I cannot give it?"
+
+"Why, then," he answered steadily, "I shall still carry with me
+through life something you cannot take away if you would,--the ideal
+which these weeks have held up before me. If it is not for your best
+happiness to marry me, loving you as I do, I would not have you do it.
+The matter is in your hands--a simple 'Yes' or 'No' is all I ask."
+
+"But life is too complicated to be settled by a word like that. It
+could not be 'Yes'--but what if it is 'No'?"
+
+She paused a moment, and then, hurried on by a tidal wave of feeling,
+she burst out: "Oh, I don't suppose you can understand it; but much as
+I like you,--and I do like you now,--I feel as though if I promised to
+marry you, I might absolutely hate you."
+
+"Oh, yes," Flint answered quietly, "I can quite understand it; I think
+I should feel in the same way if I were not perfectly sure I loved a
+person."
+
+Winifred felt herself touched by his quick response and perfect
+comprehension of her state of mind; but her feeling was too intense,
+too direct and too importunate, to be stayed in its utterance.
+
+"I cannot marry you. I never could promise. I am sure of it. Forgive
+me!"
+
+Flint rose and stood by the mantel, toying absently with a bronze
+model of the Praxiteles Faun which rested on its shelf.
+
+"It is all right," he said, "and I shall always thank you for it all,
+and say God bless you, whatever happens; only for a while I must go
+away and make my life over a bit in the light of all this."
+
+"Why must you go away?"
+
+"Because--" Here Flint paused, and began to walk the floor
+impatiently. "Oh, if you can ask that, I could not make you
+understand. It is useless to go on talking."
+
+"No," said Winifred, now with fuller command of herself, "it is not
+useless; it is necessary. We must make each other understand. If we
+cannot do it now, how much less afterward! It always seems to me as if
+it were selfish folly in men and women to act as if their love were
+the only reality in the world, so that they forget everything that
+they owe to other people. Yes," she added, gathering strength as she
+went on, "I think it would be selfish in you to consider only
+yourself, or even yourself and me, in this matter, and I think it
+would be foolish if--if you really care for me, as you say you do, to
+throw away all my interest and regard and sympathy just because I do
+not consent to marry you. If you would only put that idea out of your
+head, I think I could be of some service to you. I know you could be
+of great service to me."
+
+As Winifred uttered these words she sat looking up at him with
+wide-open, childlike eyes, a hint of pathetic appeal in her voice.
+
+Flint paused a moment, as one who counted the cost of his words. Then
+he said slowly: "It shall be as you wish; but on your own head lie the
+risks. When a man has once said, 'I love you,' the woman to whom he
+says it sees it in his eyes and hears it in his voice forever after. I
+tell you," he went on, setting down the faun hard on the mantel, "love
+is like the spirit which the Arabian fisherman let out of the shell.
+It can never be shut up again--never--never--never!"
+
+Winifred stirred a little, but did not lift her eyes.
+
+"You shall try this precious scheme of friendship," Flint continued
+hotly. "It is not a new experiment. It is well worn, and so far in the
+world's history it has not proved a great success; but try it if you
+will, only you shall make me one return. I shall never ask you again
+for your love. It is not a plaything to be teased for in such childish
+fashion. You tell me you will not give it to me. Well and good. But if
+ever--" here he paused and shut his eyes for an instant, as if upon
+some inward vision,--"if ever you should come to feel differently, I
+demand it as my right that you shall tell me so honestly. You know me
+too well to think I could ever change."
+
+"I accept the risk," Winifred answered steadily. "You shall never
+regret this concession, and by-and-by, when we both grow old, you will
+look back and see that such a friendship is the best thing that could
+befall you and me."
+
+The girl spoke with quick decision of manner. It was characteristic of
+her not to question for a moment the wisdom of her decision, the
+infallibility of her own judgment, or her power to regulate the life
+and destiny of those around her.
+
+Flint smiled, as one smiles at the eager illusions of a child. He was
+going to speak further; but the ringing of the door-bell warned him
+that the interview was at an end.
+
+"So be it!" he said, coming over to the side of the fireplace where
+Winifred stood,--for she too had risen. "Since it is not to be
+good-bye, then, I will bid you good-night."
+
+He took the hand which she extended, and raised its slender
+finger-tips to his lips. "That is for friendship," he murmured; then
+turning it, he laid a swift kiss upon the delicate pink palm,--"and
+that is for love," he whispered, and was gone.
+
+On his way out he passed Miss Standish, who had just come in from a
+concert. She gave a little nod of scant civility, suggestive of
+disapproval, and instead of turning in at the parlor door, made her
+way directly to her room.
+
+As the hall door closed after Flint, Winifred Anstice felt as if some
+door had closed also in her life. She sat for some time in her low
+chair, leaning forward, with her hands clasped about her knees, and
+her pretty brows knit, gazing into the embers. At length, with a
+little vexed shake of the head, she rose, and paced the long room; but
+the whirl and rush of thought were too importunate for her present
+mood, and she paused in her walk at last, and betook herself to the
+table, with its litter of new books and magazines. She picked up the
+"Fortnightly Review," and opened mechanically where a silver book-mark
+pointed to an article on "Balzac and his Followers" marked with
+emphatic notes of assent or protest. It was another reminder. She
+impatiently shut the covers sharply together and returned to her
+vigils before the fire.
+
+There is no woman living who is not somewhat shaken by a proposal of
+marriage. It is a peremptory challenge, which forces her, for the
+moment at least, to consider a certain man not as one of a class,--as
+a member of the conventional, calling, smiling, chaffing circle,--but
+as an individual, passing suddenly from all this surface trifling to a
+life and death reality--saying as Jonathan Flint had said this night:
+"Give me all or nothing. I will have no half loaves. Let us have an
+end of pretences and evasions. For once at least you shall listen, and
+be told the truth flowing at lava heat out of a man's heart." It was
+by no means a new experience to Winifred Anstice. As a younger girl,
+although no coquette, she had found a certain charm of romance in
+finding herself the heroine of a love-affair in real life; but as she
+grew older she felt more and more shrinking from such sentimental
+crises, and a more and more genuine regret as she saw the candid
+comradeship of one friendship after another sacrificed to the
+absorbing egotism of passion.
+
+One by one she had let these lovers slip out of her life, and
+acknowledged to herself that it was better so; but when it came to
+Jonathan Flint, she had found herself impelled to the impetuous
+protest for which she already half blamed herself in her heart. But in
+self-exculpation she argued with the embers, which seemed to wink at
+her from the hearth, that there were more considerations than one in
+the matter; that as she had told Mr. Flint, modern life was too
+complex to be compressed into a "Yes" or "No."
+
+As she was pondering, her eyes fell upon the portrait,--Ruth's
+portrait, hanging there over the mantel.
+
+"I wish you were here, Grandmamma," Winifred exclaimed, looking up at
+it, "to help me clear up the muddle in my mind! I have a kind of
+feeling that _you_ would understand."
+
+The girl's sentimental musings were rudely interrupted by a race
+between Jimmy and Paddy, who came rushing through the room, regardless
+of tea-tables or rugs.
+
+"Jump for it, Paddy!" cried Jim, snatching a piece of cake from the
+tray, and holding it high in air.
+
+"Don't, Jimmy! You will upset the table."
+
+"Come on then, Paddy, we'll jump in the hall, where there is no girl
+to be nervous--I hate nervous people."
+
+"Whose cane is that, McGregor?" he asked, as he saw an unfamiliar
+walking-stick on the hall table.
+
+"It belongs to Mr. Flint--he must have forgot it," the butler
+answered.
+
+"I say, Fred, has Mr. Flint been here?" Jimmy called out from the
+baluster, over which he was leaning at imminent risk to life and limb.
+
+"He has," Winifred answered repressively.
+
+"Did he say anything about seats for the football game on Thanksgiving
+Day?"
+
+"He did not."
+
+"Then I think I'd better sit right down and write to him, for he told
+me not to let him forget about it, and all the best seats will be
+taken if he does not attend to it soon."
+
+"Papa," appealed Winifred to her father, who had come in and was
+taking off his coat in the hall, "you won't let Jimmy write to Mr.
+Flint, will you?"
+
+"I _will_ write," said the voice from the stairs, "and I'll tell him
+how cross you are. I did once, and he only laughed."
+
+"Jimmy!"
+
+"Yes, I did. It was that day when you would not let me go fishing with
+him. I told him you were quite nice sometimes, but you could be horrid
+to people when they did things that didn't suit you, and he said that
+was just the way you struck him."
+
+"Papa!" cried Winifred, now thoroughly out of temper, "will you forbid
+Jimmy to talk me over with strangers? It is really too much, the way
+that boy's tongue runs on."
+
+"You understand him, don't you?" the Professor asked mildly, looking
+over his gold-bowed spectacles.
+
+"Yes, but other people don't."
+
+"Are they so much less clear-sighted than you?" With this gentle
+sarcasm her father slowly mounted the stairs, leaving Jimmy making
+faces of triumph through the open door.
+
+It is often a curious experience in the contrasts of life for a girl
+to see herself from the family point of view, after catching the
+rose-colored reflections which the admiration of an outsider throws
+upon her character.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII
+
+ A LITTLE DINNER
+
+ "Wreathe the bowl with flowers of soul."
+
+
+The suppressed excitement of the afternoon lent an added flush and
+sparkle to Winifred's face as she entered the study where her father
+and Miss Standish were playing chess together after the family dinner.
+Self-absorbed as she was at the moment, she found leisure to be struck
+with the picture of the two sitting there; her father's head, with its
+austere profile outlined against the green curtain, which cast
+softened reflections over his white hair, and Miss Standish, crisp and
+dainty as a sprig of dried lavender, her gray curls quivering with the
+excitement, and her white hands hovering anxiously over rooks and
+pawns.
+
+Miss Standish looked up as Winifred came in, radiant in her new
+evening gown, for she was to dine with the Hartington Grahams, who had
+recently returned from England and opened their town house for the
+season.
+
+"I thought it was to be a _little_ dinner," said Miss Standish,
+looking with some disapproval at the bare shoulders rising above the
+billowy ruffles of rose-colored chiffon.
+
+"It is--'just a small affair,' Mrs. Graham wrote me. Besides, it is
+too early in the season for anything formal. In fact, she would hardly
+ask her most fashionable friends at this time of year. But she must
+get round somehow," Winifred finished with a little laugh.
+
+"In Boston," said Miss Standish, "you would be overdoing it to wear
+that kind of a gown to such an affair, but here people seem to have no
+sense of gradation. They take literally Longfellow's advice to the
+young poet seeking success: 'Do your best every time.'"
+
+"I don't see," said Winifred, "why the advice is not just as good for
+dress as for poetry,--except that gowns wear out and poems don't. Is
+the carriage there, McGregor, and Maria ready? Well, good-night, Papa;
+look out for your queen, and don't let Miss Standish checkmate you
+with any of her Boston tricks!"
+
+"I think," Jimmy called out after her from the corner of the big sofa,
+where he lay curled up like a dormouse, "if you would do your best on
+_my_ dress, instead of making me wear this old suit, it would strike a
+better average in the family."
+
+As McGregor closed the carriage door, Winifred was conscious of a
+certain satisfaction that she was not to spend the evening at home
+with the family. Her restlessness craved a vent, and she wanted to
+postpone =all= opportunity for reflection.
+
+There was something about the Grahams which always appealed
+to the girl. Their environment suited her æsthetically. For
+themselves,--why, one could not have everything--and then they were
+never alone.
+
+The carriage stopped before Mrs. Graham's house, and the door opened
+almost before she had mounted the steps.
+
+As she passed along the hall, a wave of fragrance from lavishly
+disposed flowers floated out to her through the drawn portières, and
+she caught a glimpse of the softened light of many lamps-shaded to the
+eye but festive to the fancy. "Decidedly," thought Winifred, "it is
+agreeable to be rich, and next to being rich one's self, the best
+thing is to associate with rich people. Money is such a smoother of
+rough ways! and then the vast opportunities of being nice to other
+people that come of a purse at leisure from itself to soothe and
+sympathize." She smiled to herself at her bold adaptation of the
+poet's sentiments, and mounted the stairs with a quickened step,
+reflecting suddenly that she had not marked the time accurately and
+might be late. Her glance in at the door of the dressing-room
+reassured her. At least she was not the last, for in front of the
+mirror stood a portly, bediamonded dame, gazing intently into the
+glass and putting the last touches to her toilet with stolid
+equanimity.
+
+"Want to come here?" she asked, pausing in her elaboration of her
+water-waves, and nodding affably to Winifred.
+
+"No, =I= thank you," Winifred answered, seating herself in the low
+easy-chair, while the maid pulled off her velvet overshoes.
+
+"Chilly to-night, isn't it?" the lady continued pleasantly, desirous
+of putting the new-comer at her ease.
+
+Winifred acquiesced in the views of the weather expressed, and a hint
+of the chilliness seemed to have crept into the interior. Her
+agreeable anticipations of the evening were vaguely dampened, and she
+could not quite forgive the innocent cause. "Why will women with red
+necks wear light blue and diamonds!" she wondered, "and what can
+reconcile her to looking in the glass?"
+
+With a little shake of the head to make sure that her hairpins were
+firmly anchored, and a futile effort to smooth the rebellious curls at
+her neck, Winifred glided past the lady in front of the mirror, who
+seemed no nearer the completion of her toilet than when she had
+entered. At the door of the rear room stood a short, bald-headed man
+with a patient expression on his face, as of one who had spent a large
+share of his life waiting for his wife. He glanced with some surprise
+at the swift reappearance of the girl whom he had watched as she came
+up the stairs so short a time before.
+
+"That girl beats the ticker," he said to himself as she passed him;
+"she'll make some man happy if she keeps it up."
+
+The clock was striking eight as Winifred entered the drawing-room. "It
+is quite a feat to be on time in this city of long distances," said
+her hostess.
+
+"How delightful to be appreciated!" responded Winifred, with a
+brilliant smile. "I was just pluming myself on being so prompt, but I
+see the others are still more so." Here she swept a rapid glance over
+a seated group at the other end of the room.
+
+"I suppose it is hardly more prompt to be too early than too late, so
+you are still entitled to the palm."
+
+The voice which came from close beside her drew the blood to her
+cheek; but as the words went on, her nervous tremor subdued itself,
+for the tone said to her as clearly as words, "Everything is to be
+ignored. We are on the social stage, and must play our parts. You may
+trust me."
+
+Winifred felt a wave of relief sweep over her. She thanked the speaker
+with her eyes. To her hostess she said lightly, "Mr. Flint is as much
+of a purist as ever--no; don't leave us together. He and I have been
+quarrelling over the tea-cups this afternoon. I will let you take up
+the defence, while I go over to speak to your sister, Miss Wabash, in
+the corner--and isn't that Captain Blathwayt with her?"
+
+"Yes, he crossed with us on the 'Lucania'; remembered meeting you in
+Cheyenne or some other outlandish Western town--thinks you the most
+charming American he ever met."
+
+"How clever of you!" said Winifred over her shoulder, as she moved
+away. "Reflected flattery is the most alluring kind."
+
+As Mrs. Graham turned to greet two newcomers, Flint was left alone,
+with no hindrance to the occupation of watching Winifred Anstice. She
+stood with her back toward him and her head slightly turned, so that
+his eye took in the delicate line of cheek and chin, broken by the
+shadows of a dimple, the curve of the neck, and the soft little curls
+that nestled at the base of the hair. A woman is always much handsomer
+or much plainer than usual in evening dress.
+
+As Flint looked at Winifred, he felt an absurd jealousy of the
+monocled Englishman who presumed to show his admiration so plainly.
+His reflections were ended for the time being by the voice of his
+hostess saying, "Will you take my sister in to dinner?" As he moved
+across the room, Winifred and Captain Blathwayt passed out together,
+just ahead of Miss Wabash and himself. He scarcely knew whether to
+feel regret or relief to find that the width of the table was to be
+between him and Winifred. It certainly had the advantage of shutting
+off all necessity for the conversation _farcie_ of the conventional
+dinner, which he felt would be an impossibility between him and her
+to-night.
+
+With Miss Wabash the _vol-au-vent_ of talk seemed the most natural
+thing; and Flint dashed at once into a jesting, somewhat daring tone,
+which she took quite in good part, and when her attention was claimed
+by the bald-headed broker on the other side, his neighbor on the left,
+a double-chinned dowager, with a pearl necklace half hidden in the
+creases of her neck and a diamond aigrette in her hair, proved no less
+garrulous if somewhat less sprightly.
+
+She had much to tell of the loss of her diamonds by a burglary last
+week, and of their recovery through the agency of detectives whose
+charges were exorbitant. She acquainted Flint with every detail of
+the conduct of the family and the servants, the police and the
+detectives. As she went on, people began to listen, and the talk
+around the table, which had lagged a little, started up more briskly
+than before.
+
+"I have noticed," said Winifred to Captain Blathwayt, "that there are
+two subjects which will make even dull people lively,--burglaries and
+mind-cure."
+
+"Aw, I don't know much about burglaries,--never had one in the family;
+but I think a lot about mind-cure and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Confirmation of my theory!" said Winifred, with an impertinence which
+felt safe in banking on the lack of perception in the person whose
+dignity was assailed.
+
+"Do you believe in the mind-cure?" asked Miss Wabash, who had caught
+the phrase across the table.
+
+"It depends on the mind," Flint answered.
+
+"Oh, no, it doesn't; not at all. That's the first principle of the
+science. You only need to resign yourself and let the influence flow
+over you."
+
+"Does it make any difference whose influence it is?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so. It must be trained influence, and it seems to work
+better when it is paid for."
+
+"Most things do," observed Flint.
+
+"My cousin says--"
+
+Flint never knew exactly what Miss Wabash's cousin did say, for at
+that point in the conversation his attention was irresistibly
+attracted by the talk of his opposite neighbors.
+
+"Now there's a lot in it, I'm sure," the man of the monocle was
+saying, bending toward Winifred with what Flint considered
+objectionable propinquity,--"telepathy, don't you know, and--and all
+that sort of thing. I had no idea I was to meet you to-night, but as I
+was standing on the doorstep I remembered how you looked at that
+dinner out in Cheyenne, and a remark you made to me--do you
+recollect?"
+
+"The dinner, perfectly; the remark, not at all."
+
+"Well, I sha'n't repeat it, for it was deucedly severe on the English.
+Really, you know, we're not half bad; but you don't care for your
+cousins over the water, I am afraid. Do you?"
+
+"I think the cousins over the water are much like those on this
+side,--the relationship is simply an opportunity for intimate
+acquaintance. Some Englishmen are the most charming of their sex;
+others are--well, quite the reverse."
+
+"To which do _I_ belong?" asked the Captain, turning toward her more
+openly and leaving his terrapin untasted, which meant much with
+Blathwayt.
+
+"Can you doubt?" Winifred responded with a radiant but wholly
+non-committal smile. Self-possessed as she was outwardly, however, she
+felt Flint's eyes upon her, and experienced a sense of annoyance at
+the attitude of both men.
+
+Her host on the other side came to her relief at the moment.
+
+"Blathwayt," he said, leaning over, "you must try this wine. It is
+some my wine-merchant in Paris sent over ten years ago,--a special
+vintage,--and don't let the terrapin go by, for there's nothing else
+worth while before the canvas-backs. I'll let you into the secret too,
+Miss Anstice," he added with an expression closely approaching a wink.
+
+"Thanks," said Winifred, rather wearily, "I am not an epicure."
+
+"Oh, but you can be trained to be!" Graham answered encouragingly. "It
+is mainly a question of practice, though I must say that I was born
+with the taste,--inherited from my father, I believe; and I've heard
+him tell how once when I was five years old I scolded the butler for
+sending up the Burgundy iced."
+
+"How precocious!" murmured Winifred.
+
+"Well, of course, that was unusual; but if children were taken young
+and had half the attention paid to their palates that folks give to
+their eyes and ears, with their fool drawing-teachers and
+music-masters in the attempt to enable them to bore somebody with
+their twopenny accomplishments, we should soon have a race of
+gourmets; and gourmets make cooks. No chef can do his best without
+appreciation. For the matter of that, a cook must be born,--he must
+have the feeling for his business. Now there was a fellow in
+England--My dear," he called out to his wife at the other end of the
+table, "was it Windermere or Grassmere where we had those excellent
+breaded trout?"
+
+"I forget," Mrs. Graham answered; "but I know it was the one where
+Wordsworth lived. Which was that, Mr. Flint?"
+
+"Now don't interrupt us," Miss Wabash said in her loud, unshaded
+tones; "Mr. Flint has just consented to let me tell his fortune by his
+hand."
+
+Flint looked rather foolish. He was in that awkward position where it
+seemed equally fatuous to assent or decline; but deciding on the
+former course, he held out his hand, saying, "Spare my character as
+far as you conscientiously can, Miss Wabash, and remember in
+extenuation of my shortcomings that I did not have the advantage of
+being brought up in Chicago."
+
+All tête-à-tête conversation now ceased, and the attention of the
+company was riveted upon Flint and his neighbor. Winifred felt herself
+growing intensely nervous. She had no fear of Miss Wabash's
+extraordinary power of divination, but she had still less confidence
+in the delicacy of her perceptions, and she dreaded some remark which
+would embarrass her through Flint's embarrassment.
+
+In her present high-strung condition, her apprehension made her a
+little faint for a moment. The centrepiece of orchids and roses seemed
+a vague mass of rather oppressive color and perfume. The women's faces
+and necks looked like reddish blobs with flashes of light where the
+jewels came. The broad white expanse of the men's shirt fronts alone
+retained a certain steadiness. Hastily she grasped her glass of
+champagne and drained it dry. It was the first wine she had tasted
+that night, and it braced her nerves at once. Fortunately no one
+observed her paleness, for everybody's attention was fixed upon Miss
+Wabash as she bent over Flint's open palm.
+
+"A surprising hand!" that young lady was saying; "really in some ways
+quite the most interesting I ever came across. I must report it to
+Chiro. The fingers very pointed--that ought to indicate idealism, but
+the knots on the joints imply practical critical sense. It looks as
+though the mind were always grasping at some ideal and were held back
+by the critical faculty."
+
+"Don't blink your points, Mamie!" called out the host, facetiously. At
+this allusion to sporting reminiscences, all the men laughed, but the
+women rather resented the interruption, as a frivolous treatment of a
+serious subject.
+
+"You have learned your profession thoroughly," said Flint, coloring a
+little in spite of himself. "I shall begin to be afraid of you in
+earnest, if you are so discerning."
+
+"Oh, I have only begun!" answered Miss Wabash, kindled by success to
+greater vivacity. "That thumb shows marked firmness (see, I can
+scarcely bend it back at all); perhaps, if I knew you better, I should
+say obstinacy."
+
+Every one laughed.
+
+"The fingers," she went on, "show more sensitiveness; and the
+mounds--oh, those mean a great deal! Mars is firm and prominent--what
+you undertake you will carry through, if it kills you and everybody
+else."
+
+"What a fellow to buy on margin!" said the broker.
+
+"He doesn't seem to have succeeded in getting married for all his
+perseverance," laughed Mr. Graham.
+
+Winifred, in spite of her emotion, found time to reflect on the
+vulgarity of the phrase, and shivered a little. Flint colored, though
+he held his hand quite steady.
+
+"Perhaps he'll buy her sixty," chuckled the broker, pleased with his
+technical wit.
+
+"He'd better hurry up," said Miss Wabash, "for his life-line is short.
+He's had experiences though. May I tell them, Mr. Flint?"
+
+"I give you permission."
+
+"Well, then, you were in love once a long time ago, but there were
+reasons why you couldn't marry, and so you gave up the affair and have
+never really cared for any one since; but two or three women have been
+desperately in love with you."
+
+"Mademoiselle, respect the seal of the confessional!" said Flint,
+smiling, but drawing away his hand with a quick instinctive motion
+which did not escape Winifred.
+
+"Ho! ho!" called out Graham, "perhaps there is more in palmistry than
+I thought. Go on, Mamie, and give us the history of the Salvation Army
+episode and the Hallelujah lassie!"
+
+Flint cursed inwardly, cursed everything and almost everybody, himself
+most of all. What was he here for? What if Graham _was_ the chief
+stockholder in the "Trans-Continental," he was a coarse-grained
+sensualist, with whom no gentleman should associate. (This estimate by
+no means did Graham justice, but Flint was not in a judicial mood.)
+Then this crack-brained girl with her foolish fake of a theory--and he
+had been idiot enough to fall into this trap, and now Winifred would
+think he had boasted of Nora Costello as a conquest, perhaps bragged
+about saving her life. Oh, the whole thing was past endurance!
+Meanwhile everything around moved on mechanically. He heard his host
+say impatiently, "My dear, if you keep that épigramme of lamb waiting
+much longer, we'd better give up dining and take to holding hands all
+round."
+
+At this there was a general taking up of forks and a subdued buzz of
+conversation. It was rather a relief when the candle-shade took fire
+and Flint had an excuse for rising to seize it before the butler could
+reach it.
+
+The dinner ended at last, though it seemed as if it never would. As he
+held aside the velvet curtains for the ladies to pass, Flint strove to
+catch Winifred's eyes, to judge, if he might, what impression Graham's
+remark had made; but Blathwayt held her in talk till the threshold was
+reached, and the curtain dropped behind her without a glance in
+Flint's direction.
+
+She held her head a little higher than usual as she moved beside Mrs.
+Graham into the music-room. A wave of contempt was sweeping over her,
+as she reviewed the dinner, its gilding, its gluttony, and its
+unspeakable dulness, and she felt that she had sold her birthright of
+self-respect for a mess of pottage.
+
+Miss Wabash sat down at the piano and sang "Oh, Promise Me," and one
+or two other gems from DeKoven's latest opera, and then the ladies
+adjourned once more to the library.
+
+The Grahams' library was a large square room, diversified by two
+shallow bay-windows such as only a corner house permits. It was ceiled
+and finished in heavy Flemish oak, and the walls above the low
+bookcases were hung with tapestry. Easy-chairs and softly upholstered
+divans filled every nook and corner. It was really, Winifred decided,
+an ideal library,--or would have been if there had been any books
+behind the silk curtains hung over the shelves.
+
+As they entered the room Miss Wabash drew Winifred to a seat near
+herself on the sofa.
+
+"Green mint or Chartreuse?" the hostess asked, as the little
+ice-filled glasses were set on the low table by her side.
+
+Winifred declined the cordials, but sat sipping the coffee out of the
+tiny Dresden cup, while she listened to the wearisome platitudes of
+Mrs. Graham and her guests. From time to time her eye was caught by
+the flashing of the jewelled pendulum of the clock on the mantel, in
+the drawing-room across the hall, and her mind dwelt ironically on
+some lines she had read somewhere:--
+
+ "Ah! who with clear account remarks
+ The ebbing of Time's glass,
+ When all his sands are diamond sparks
+ That dazzle as they pass!"
+
+She smiled a derisive little smile, all to herself, as she thought how
+small a power lay in jewelled pendulums to make a brilliant evening,
+and she felt a certain thrill of pride at the thought that her
+associations lay in a world removed from all this smothering
+materialism. The lavish sumptuousness which till now had appealed to
+her rather strongly, seemed suddenly tainted with vulgarity, and her
+thoughts wandered half unconsciously to the bare little room where she
+had gone to see Nora Costello. The name brought a slight quickening of
+her pulses, and she wanted time to think over things alone.
+
+As the men came in from the dining-room Miss Anstice's carriage was
+announced, and she rose to bid her hostess good-night.
+
+"Must you run away so early, my dear?"
+
+"Thank you, yes; I promised Papa to come home early. He likes to see
+me before he goes to bed, and to hear an account of my evening."
+
+"You will be at home at five to-morrow, and I may bring Captain
+Blathwayt?"
+
+"Any friend of yours, of course," murmured Winifred, in a tone which
+could hardly have proved encouraging to the vanity or incipient
+sentiment of the guardsman.
+
+"If you will permit me," said Flint to Graham as Winifred came down
+the stairs, "I will put Miss Anstice into her carriage, and then come
+back for that last cigar."
+
+Never in his life had Flint so raved against his own lack of readiness
+as now, when he felt the passing moments slipping by, and could find
+no words to set himself right in the eyes of the woman he loved,--the
+woman whose little gloved hand rested on his arm. Judge then of his
+feeling when, smiling up into his eyes with perfect friendliness,
+Winifred said under her breath, "Why do we go there--you and I? They
+really aren't our kind at all."
+
+The remark carried with it full assurance that no words uttered by
+Hartington Graham had power to shake for an instant her faith in the
+man whom she had called her friend; but beyond that her confident use
+of the word _our_, as if their interests and associations were the
+same, thrilled him with a sort of intoxication.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" was all that he could find to say to express his
+complicated state of mind.
+
+"I do not deserve any thanks at all," Winifred answered. "I ought to
+be well scolded for speaking slightingly of people whom I have just
+been visiting. I do not often do such ill-mannered things, and I
+should not have said it to any one but you."
+
+Again Flint thrilled at the unconscious flattery.
+
+"Will you come in to-morrow afternoon?" she asked, as he shut the
+carriage door.
+
+"To meet Captain Blathwayt? No, thank you."
+
+"The day after then."
+
+"So be it--till then, farewell!"
+
+Flint re-entered the house with his heart beating like a trip-hammer.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ A MAIDEN'S VOW
+
+ "A maiden's vow, old Calham spoke,
+ Is lightly made and lightly broke."
+
+
+As the cab rattled down the avenue, Winifred sank back against the
+cushions. She sat in the corner in a sort of daze, marking the glimmer
+of the electric lights, which seemed so many milestones in her life,
+as she passed them one after another. After all, it is experience
+which marks time, and in this day Winifred Anstice had tasted more of
+life than in many a year before. Crashing into her world of calm
+commonplace had fallen the dynamite bomb of an overwhelming emotion.
+Her present, with all its preoccupying trifles, lay in wrecks about
+her. For the future--it was too tumultuous to be faced.
+
+She was like a person who has been walking in the darkness along a
+familiar road, and suddenly feels himself plunging over an unsuspected
+precipice. She was conscious of nothing but a gasping sense of
+dizziness--all control of herself and her life seemed passing out of
+her hands into those of another, and she scarcely knew whether to be
+glad or sorry. Was it only this afternoon that she had looked upon a
+marriage with Jonathan Flint as impossible? If she had thought so a
+few hours ago, why not now? Nothing had occurred since. No
+transcendent change had come over him or her--why should it all look
+so different to her now? Perhaps, she told herself, this mood too
+would pass like its precursor. She dared not feel sure of
+anything--she who had swung round the whole compass of feeling like a
+weather-vane before a thunder-storm.
+
+These introspective reflections brought back irresistibly the feelings
+with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was
+his,--the letter so full of wise and friendly counsel. She remembered
+how, as she read, she had been filled with a yearning desire to rise
+to the ideal her unknown counsellor had set before her, and filled too
+with a longing that Fate might send it in her way, to be something to
+him, to return in some measure the spiritual aid and comfort which she
+had received at his hands.
+
+"Well," she told herself gloomily, "the opportunity had come, and this
+was how she had used it--not only by denying his petition,--that, of
+course, was inevitable, feeling as she did,--but by accusing him of
+selfishness, by insisting that he should accept her terms of
+friendship. _Friendship_, bah!--how stale and flat it sounded! Could
+she not have devised some newer way of wounding an honorable man who
+had offered her his heart?"
+
+It seemed to her excited consciousness that she must appear to him a
+vain and empty coquette, eager to retain a homage for which she
+intended no return. When once he awoke to that view, his love would
+die out, for he was not a man to continue devotion where he had lost
+respect; and so it was all over, or as good as over, between her and
+him.
+
+The cab lurched sharply across the tracks at Twenty-Third Street,
+jostling Winifred's flowers and fan out of her lap. The maid stooped
+to pick them up. As she returned them she caught a glimpse of the set
+look in the face of her mistress.
+
+"Are you feelin' bad?" she asked.
+
+"No, no, I am quite well, Maria, only a little tired--are we near
+home?"
+
+"Yes'm, we've passed Gramercy Park, and there's the steeples of St.
+George's that you see from your windows."
+
+"Yes, yes, I see. Here we are close at home. You may go to bed, Maria,
+after you have lighted the lamp in my room. I shall not need you
+to-night."
+
+"Well, well," thought the maid, "something's the matter sure. I never
+knew no one more fussy about the unhooking of her gown. She can't do
+much herself, but she does know how things ought to be done, and
+that's what I calls a real lady."
+
+"Winifred, my dear, is that you?" Professor Anstice called, as the
+rustle of his daughter's dress caught his ear on the stair.
+
+"Oh, Papa, are you awake still?"
+
+"_Still!_ Why it is not so very late!" said her father, as Winifred
+entered the study and threw herself into the deep upholstered chair
+beside the fire, which was just graying into ashes in the grate.
+
+Her father was sitting in his cane-seated study-chair with a
+conglomeration of volumes piled about the table. His face, perhaps
+from the reflection of the green-shaded student-lamp, looked pale and
+worn. His shoulders, too, seemed to Winifred's abnormally quickened
+perception to have caught a new stoop. The fact forced itself upon her
+consciousness with a sudden, swift pang, that her father was growing
+old. She had never thought of age in connection with him before. To
+her he had been simply and sufficiently "my father," without thought
+of other relations or conditions; but now it rushed upon her with a
+wave of insistent remorse, that his life was slipping by, while she
+was doing so little for his happiness. A rather bare and dreary life
+it seemed to her now, as she contemplated its monotony; for Winifred
+had no appreciation of "the still air of delightful studies." Her
+world was peopled with live, active figures, always pushing forward,
+seeking, striving, loving. And her father had loved once. Yes, that
+too struck her now, almost with a shock of surprise. He, too, had
+asked for some one's love as ardently, perhaps, as Jonathan Flint for
+hers. More than that, he had won the love he sought. Won it and lost
+it again. Could it ever come to that for her? The thought smote her
+with an intolerable sharpness.
+
+Mr. Anstice was a strange man to be the parent and guardian of such a
+girl as Winifred. The world for him was bounded by the walls of his
+study. Even his teaching seemed an interruption to the real business
+of his life, and he turned his back upon his class-room with a
+sensation of relief.
+
+He was not a popular professor among the body of the students; but the
+unfailing courtesy of his manner, and the solidity of his scholarship,
+won the respect of the many, and the esteem and warm admiration of the
+few.
+
+His bearing, in spite of the scholar's stoop, was marked by a certain
+distinction, and the lines of his worn face curiously suggested the
+fresh curves which marked his daughter's brow and cheek. The beauty of
+youth is an ivorytype; the beauty of age is an etching, bitten out by
+the burin and acid of thought, experience, and sorrow.
+
+The prevailing mood with James Anstice was one of gentle weariness. He
+felt that his life was ended, and that the years were going on in a
+sort of monotonous anti-climax. Yet, in spite of this undertone of
+depression, his manner was responsive, genial, even gay at times, and
+he lived much in the reflected light of Winifred's youth and energy.
+
+If it caused him some surprise that any one should want anything as
+much as Winifred wanted everything for which she cared at all, he
+treated her enthusiasms with amused toleration, and made as much
+effort to secure for her the successive desires of her heart as though
+they had assumed the same importance in his own mind as in hers.
+
+To-night he forced himself away from his own train of thought with an
+effort, to throw himself into Winifred's evening experiences. He
+watched her for some time as she sat in silence, with head bent
+forward and gloved hands clasped about her knee.
+
+"Well, little girl," he said at last, "you seem to have fallen into a
+brown study. Was the dinner so dull?"
+
+"No, Papa, not dull exactly; rather brilliant in some ways."
+
+"I understand--brilliant materially, dull spiritually, like the
+mantles those fellows wore in the Inferno--gilt on the outside, and
+lead within. 'Oh, everlastingly fatiguing mantle!' I am gladder than
+ever that I stayed at home."
+
+"I am glad too, for I think you would have been bored, and when you
+are bored you make no concealment of the fact."
+
+"Of course not,--why should I? If I seemed to be having a good time, I
+should be compelled to go through it again. No, society is organized
+for people under twenty-five. They really enjoy it. For the rest of
+the world it is a sham."
+
+Winifred smiled absently.
+
+"Who was there?" Professor Anstice asked at length, pushing away his
+books as if bidding them a reluctant good-night.
+
+"Oh, no one whom you know, I think, except Mr. Flint."
+
+"Flint? Does he go to such things?"
+
+"Yes, and appears to find them sufficiently entertaining, though I
+fancy he must be decidedly over twenty-five. By the way," she added,
+with an elaborately careless aside, "what do you think of Mr. Flint,
+on the whole?"
+
+"I think, for a clever man, he plays the worst game of whist I ever
+saw."
+
+"Yes, yes," admitted Winifred, with light mockery in her tone; "but
+what do you think of him in lesser matters,--general character, for
+instance?"
+
+The Professor looked at his daughter with a little quizzical sadness
+in his faded gray eyes. He began to perceive the drift of her banter.
+
+"It would be difficult to state exactly what I think of him when you
+put it so broadly as that," he answered. "Flint's character is
+complex. He has in him the making of a fine man; but the question is,
+will it ever be made? He seems to me abnormally lacking in personal
+ambition,--does not seem to care whether he is heard of or not,--has a
+sort of contempt for the little neighborhood notorieties which give
+most men pleasure. It is as if he were taking a bird's-eye view of
+himself, and every one else, and they all looked so small that the
+trifling variations in prominence did not matter."
+
+Winifred looked at her father in silent surprise. She had no idea that
+he had made such a study of the younger man. He paused for a moment;
+but meeting his daughter's absorbed gaze, he continued: "The thing
+which gives me most hope of Flint is his genuine devotion to truth.
+Positive or negative truth--it is all the same to him. Now, many a
+man is loyal to his convictions; but very few are loyal to their
+doubts. He will 'come into port greatly or sail with God the seas.'
+Fine line that, isn't it? The sound is quite majestic if you say it
+over aloud--'Come into port--'"
+
+"But, Papa," interrupted Winifred a little impatiently, "you were
+talking of Mr. Flint."
+
+"To be sure, so we were,--at least I was; but I should like to hear a
+little of your opinion of him. A woman's estimate of a man is always
+worth having, though not always worth heeding. You see too much in
+high lights and deep shadows, not enough by clear daylight; still, I
+should like to know how Flint strikes you. I remember at first you
+found him absolutely disagreeable."
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+"But of late you have seemed to change your mind, or at least to feel
+less prejudice against him."
+
+"Yes, Papa."
+
+A silence fell between them after this. At length Winifred rose and
+turned down the lights. Then she drew a low stool to the side of her
+father's chair, and sitting down by his knee began to rub her hand
+gently up and down over the broadcloth.
+
+"Papa," she said after a while, "I haven't been very nice to you; have
+I?"
+
+"Nonsense, child,--what put such an idea into your head? As if I had
+had any happiness in all these years since--since your mother
+died--except through my children!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know you have found your happiness in taking care of us,
+but I have found my happiness in being taken care of; and I have
+enjoyed having my own way and doing the things I liked, and now I
+would give--oh, so much!--if I had been different."
+
+"What does this mean?" exclaimed Professor Anstice, anxiously fumbling
+about Winifred's wrist in the vain effort to find her pulse. "Are you
+ill? You have not had a hemorrhage or anything, have you?"
+
+"Don't worry about me, dear! I shall live to plague you for many a
+year yet. I'm as well as can be, except for the mind ache." Here she
+gave a nervous little laugh. The Professor looked down at her, sitting
+there on the stool, her head drooping to the side as he remembered to
+have seen it years ago when she was a little chidden child. The waving
+hair hid her face from his sight,--all but the delicate oval of the
+cheek and the curve of the full, rounded chin.
+
+"Winifred," he said gently, "I think you have something to tell me."
+
+"Yes, I have, only I don't know how to begin."
+
+"Is it, perhaps, about Mr. Flint?"
+
+"Yes, about Mr. Flint," Winifred admitted.
+
+"He has been asking you to marry him?"
+
+"Yes, asking me to marry him," Winifred repeated, still like a child
+reciting her catechism.
+
+"And you promised."
+
+"No, I did not," Winifred answered with sudden energy; "I told him I
+never could, would, or should marry him,--that I would go on being
+friends with him as long as he liked, but on condition that he gave up
+the other idea entirely."
+
+Professor Anstice reached out his thin white scholarly fingers and
+stroked the rebellious waves of his daughter's hair.
+
+"Winifred," he said, "you are always acting on impulse. You never take
+time to consider anything, but jump and plunge like a broncho. Now let
+us talk this matter over calmly: I am afraid you have made a
+mistake--a serious mistake, my dear, though it may not be too late to
+remedy it."
+
+"There is nothing to remedy," said Winifred, with a tremulous attempt
+at cheerfulness; "he asked me and I said 'No,' and he said he should
+never ask me again, and I said I hoped he wouldn't, or something like
+that, and so the matter ended; and I am always going to live with you
+and be good to you,--and you won't be sorry for that, will you?"
+
+"I should be very sorry if it came about so. Listen, Winifred. Because
+you see me a delver in dusty old books, you think perhaps that I don't
+know what love is; but I tell you as I grow older it comes to fill a
+larger and larger part of the horizon, to seem perhaps the only
+reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the
+great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the
+kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness
+that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry,
+Winifred,--I have always wished it,--only let it be to a true man, my
+dear,--let it be to a true man!"
+
+"Father, he _is_ a true man," said Winifred, speaking low and with a
+timidity wholly new to her.
+
+"I think so,--I earnestly believe it. He seems to me to have more
+ability, more strength, and more tenderness than he has shown yet.
+Some wrong ideas have twisted themselves persistently among the very
+fibres of his life and warped it; but it is not yet too late to tear
+them away."
+
+"Some one else may do it," said Winifred, in exaggerated
+discouragement, "I let the opportunity slip by. He will never ask me
+again, and as for me--do you think I will ever go to any man with the
+offer of my love? Not if my heart broke for him!"
+
+"He said he would never ask you again?"
+
+"Yes, Papa; he said it twice."
+
+"Well, if he said it twice fifty times, it was a lie, or would have
+been if he had not believed it himself at the time. Never fear but you
+will have a chance to tell him that you have changed your mind, and
+without any wound to your pride either."
+
+"Oh, Papa!" cried Winifred, rising and throwing her arms about his
+neck, "you are such a comfort!"
+
+The old clock on the landing of the stairway struck one.
+
+"There, it is morning already," said her father. "Off to bed with you,
+else I shall have no one to pour out my cup of coffee to-morrow." As
+he spoke, he gently unclasped her arms from about his neck, but she
+would not go quite yet.
+
+"If--if--all this should ever come about, are you quite sure you would
+be willing to have me leave you?"
+
+"Quite sure, my dear. It is the natural thing, and what is natural
+must be right. Now, good-night."
+
+Winifred wiped away the tears which had been hanging on the fringe of
+her eyelashes, and after a parting hug gathered up her wraps and swept
+away to her room. Her father watched her tenderly till the last trace
+of her gown had vanished up the stairs; then he closed the door
+softly, took a miniature from its case in the drawer, laid it on the
+table, and bowed his head on both arms above it.
+
+"'Father and Mother both.' Yes, that was what I promised, and that is
+what I must be so far as I can, and may God help me!" he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX
+
+ A SLUM POST
+
+ "Sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
+
+
+Despair fells; suspense tortures. The forty odd hours which lay
+between the ending of the Grahams' dinner and the promised interview
+with Winifred Anstice stretched out into an eternity to the impatience
+of Flint. By turns he tried occupation and diversion; yet his ear
+caught every tick of the clock, which seemed to his exaggerated fancy
+to have retarded its movement. He found it so impossible to work at
+his office that he packed up his papers and started for home.
+
+"What! going so early?" called Brooke from his desk.
+
+"Yes, a man cannot do any work here with this everlasting steam-drill
+outside."
+
+"You are growing too sensitive for this world, Flint. We shall have to
+build you a padded room, like Carlyle's, on top of the building."
+
+Flint vouchsafed no answer. He posted out and up Broadway as if he
+were in mad haste. Then suddenly recollecting that his chief purpose
+was to kill time, he moderated his stramming gait to a stroll. At a
+jeweller's on Union Square he paused, and turned in, ostensibly to
+order some cards; but passing out he stopped surreptitiously before
+the case of jewels. The rubies interested him most. How well they
+would look against a certain gray-silk gown! Should he ever dare-- He
+caught a meaning smile on the face of the clerk, and bolted out of the
+door.
+
+He paused again at a fashionable florist's shop tucked deftly in among
+the theatres of central Broadway. The men at the counter were busily
+engaged over curiously incongruous tasks,--one binding up a cross of
+lilies, another a wreath for a baby's coffin, and a third preparing a
+beribboned basket, gay with chrysanthemums, for a dinner-table.
+Heedless, like us all, of every one's experiences but his own, Flint
+stood by, waiting impatiently for the clerk who was putting the last
+lily in the cross. From the great heaps of roses which stood about he
+selected an overflowing boxful of the longest-stemmed and most
+fragrant. The clerk smiled as he watched his recklessness. "I've seen
+'em like that," he said to himself, "and two or three years after
+they'll come in and ask for carnations, and say it doesn't matter if
+they _were_ brought in yesterday."
+
+Unconscious of the florist's cynical reflections, Flint tossed him
+his card, and emerged once more to add one to the moving mass of
+humanity on the street. At Madison Square he dropped in at the club
+and looked over the latest numbers of "Life" and "Punch."
+
+Still time hung heavy on his hands. He looked at his watch; it was
+just five o'clock,--exactly the time when that objectionable Blathwayt
+was to call in Stuyvesant Square. Still two hours before dinner.
+
+He left the club, crossed over to Broadway, and jumped onto the
+platform of the moving cable-car at imminent peril to life and limb.
+He rode on in a sort of daze, till he was roused by a sudden jerk and
+the conductor's call of: "Central Park--all out here!" Moving with the
+moving stream of passengers, he stepped out of the car, and refusing a
+green transfer ticket he crossed the street and entered the park at
+the Seventh Avenue gate, where the path makes a sudden dip from the
+level of the street. The sun was near its setting, and the chilly wind
+had swept the walks clear of tricycles and baby carriages. The
+gray-coated guardian of the peace blinked at him from his sentry box.
+Otherwise he had the park to himself, and found an intense pleasure in
+the solitude, the keen air, and the sharp outlines of the dreary
+autumn branches against the gorgeous sky.
+
+The west had that peculiar brilliancy which the dwellers on Manhattan
+would recognize as characteristic of their island in November, if
+there were not so few who ever get a peep at the sky except
+perpendicularly at noonday, as they emerge from rows of brownstone
+houses or overshadowing buildings of fabulous height. Flint was in no
+mood to sentimentalize over sunsets. The intensely human interests
+before him drove Nature far away, as a cold abstraction akin to death;
+yet half unconsciously the scene imprinted itself upon his senses, and
+long afterward he recalled distinctly the pale grayish-blue of the
+zenith shading into the rare, cold tint of green, and that again
+barred over with light gossamer clouds, beneath which lay the glowing
+bands of orange, red, and violet.
+
+As the sun dropped, the temperature followed it. The wind whistled
+more keenly through the bare branches. Flint turned up the collar of
+his overcoat, thrust his hands into his pockets, and quickened his
+pace.
+
+The relief of rapid motion told upon his overstrained condition. By
+the time he had rounded the lakes he was calmer. The ascent of the
+steep, rock-hewn steps of the ramble rested his nerves as much as it
+taxed his wind, and as he came stramming down the mall, his mind was
+sufficiently detached from its own hopes and fears to be able to
+realize that the overhanging elms recalled agreeably the long walk at
+Oxford, and that the Cathedral spires were fine in the gathering dusk,
+as one emerged from the Fifth Avenue entrance. The return to the world
+of men stimulated him, and the long undulating waves of electric
+lights seemed to beckon to him hopefully as he went on.
+
+The afternoon was gone. That was one comfort, he said, as he reached
+his own room. It would take half-an-hour to dress for dinner, and that
+meal might be prolonged to cover another hour; but the evening still
+stretched onward, seeming interminable to his restless fancy. It was a
+relief when Brady came in and suggested that they drop in at a meeting
+of the Salvation Army to be held at a slum post in a region of the
+city known as Berry Hill.
+
+"Will I go?" he said, echoing the question of his friend, who stood
+looking out of the window with an appearance of indifference, which
+deceived no one. "Yes, I will; but I want you to understand that I
+don't go as you do, out of pure emotional piety, but only to see and
+hear Nora Costello."
+
+"Well, she is worth it, isn't she?" Brady responded.
+
+"Worth a trip down-town? Without doubt; but that is not the question
+that is lying down in the depths of the locality you are pleased to
+call your heart. Come, now," he added, walking across to the window
+and throwing his arm over Brady's shoulder with one of his rare
+exhibitions of affection,--"come; make a clean breast of it, and let
+us talk the thing out from A to Z. _Imprimis_, you are in love with
+Nora Costello."
+
+Brady started and moved away a trifle, but made no effort at denial
+till after a minute, when he said rather weakly, "What makes you think
+so?"
+
+"_Think_ so! Why, man, I must be deaf, dumb, and blind not to _know_
+it. Do you suppose I believed that a man at your time of life, brought
+up as you have been, had suddenly gone daft on this Salvation Army
+business?"
+
+"It's a 'business', as you call it, that does more good than all the
+churches put together," answered Brady, hotly.
+
+"Hear him!" echoed Flint, mockingly.
+
+"Hear this son of New England actually declaring that there may be a
+way to heaven which does not lie between church-pews or start from a
+pulpit!"
+
+"Flint, you are a scoffer."
+
+"What do I scoff at?"
+
+"Religion."
+
+"Pardon me, but I do not."
+
+"Well, theology, anyway."
+
+"Ah, that is a different matter."
+
+"You call yourself an agnostic."
+
+"No, I don't. 'Agnostic' is too long and too pretentious a word. I
+prefer to translate it and call myself a know-nothing."
+
+"Don't you believe in God and a future life--and--and all that sort of
+thing?" Brady ended rather disjointedly.
+
+"Don't you believe Mars is inhabited? and that the lines on its
+surface are canals for irrigation?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Brady, whose mental processes were simple.
+
+"Neither do I," said Flint; "and what is more, neither does any man,
+any more than he knows about God and a future life; and so why should
+we go to making up creeds and breaking the heads of people who don't
+agree with us when we are all just guessers, and probably all of us
+wrong?"
+
+"Then you would take away faith out of the world?"
+
+"Not I,--at least not unless I could see something to take its place,
+which at present I don't; and as for these poor devils who are
+consoling themselves for their hard lot in this world by the
+expectation of a soft thing in the next, I would not be such a brute
+as to shake their confidence if I could, and I don't blame them much
+if in addition to their heaven they set up a hell where, in
+imagination at least, they can put the folks who have been having a
+too good time here while they were grunting and sweating under their
+weary load."
+
+"Then I wonder you have not more sympathy with an organization like
+the Salvation Army, which is doing its best to lighten the burden of
+the grunters and sweaters."
+
+"Ah," answered Flint, "I had forgotten the Salvation Army,--it seems
+so small a branch of a big subject. I am glad you brought me back. But
+let us go a little further back still, for you know it was not the
+Army at all that we started to discuss, but only one of its officers,
+with a slender little figure and a pale face and a big pair of rather
+mournful dark eyes."
+
+"Oh!" said Brady, taken somewhat off his guard, "but you should see
+her when she is pleased! They light up just as if a torch had been
+kindled in them."
+
+"Oh, they do, do they?" said Flint, with genial raillery; "well, you
+see I never saw her so pleased as that."
+
+"Why, don't you remember on her birthday, when I gave her back the
+locket?"
+
+"I remember the occasion; but I had precious little chance to see how
+her eyes looked, for you stood so close to her that nobody else could
+catch a glimpse. I did see something, though."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I saw _you_, and any one more palpably sentimental I never did see."
+
+"Well, what of it? It isn't a crime, I suppose--"
+
+"That depends," Flint answered dryly.
+
+Brady shook off his hand. "What do you mean by that?" he asked
+angrily.
+
+"I mean," said Flint, folding his arms and looking at his friend
+steadily, "that you have come to the cross-roads. You cannot go on as
+you are. You must either give up hanging about Nora Costello, or you
+must make up your mind to marry her."
+
+"And why not, pray, if I could induce her to accept me?"
+
+"Great Heavens!" cried Flint; "has it gone so far as that?"
+
+"Yes, it has," answered Brady, as defiantly as though Flint had
+represented his whole family circle; "and if she will marry me I shall
+be a proud and happy man."
+
+"And your relatives,--the Bradfords and Standishes and all?"
+
+"Plymouth Rock may fall on them for all I care," exclaimed Brady.
+
+"And how about the tambourines and torches?"
+
+Brady colored a little, but he stood his ground manfully.
+
+"I shall never presume to dictate," he answered. "I will go my way and
+she shall go hers; and if I can lend a helping hand to any of the poor
+wretches she is trying to save, I shall do it, if I have to take off
+my kid gloves and get down into the gutter, as many a better man has
+done before me."
+
+"Well," answered Flint, "if that is the way you take it I have nothing
+more to say. But if you don't object I would like to be present when
+you announce the engagement to Miss Standish."
+
+"Miss Standish be hanged!" cried Brady. "It is a question of Miss
+Costello, I tell you. My only anxiety lies right there. If you had
+ever been in love you would know how it feels."
+
+"I can imagine," Flint answered, taking up his pipe and looking
+scrutinizingly into the bowl; "I have read about it in books. But
+come! if we are going to the rally we must be about it. It is nearly
+eight by my watch. How long is the confounded thing--excuse me--I mean
+the gospel gathering?"
+
+"If you are going to make fun of it, Flint, you would better stay at
+home," said Brady, stiffly.
+
+"No, no, forgive me, Brady! I meant nothing of the kind; it is my
+accursed habit of joking when I am in earnest, and being so solemn
+when I try to be funny that I am never in harmony with the occasion.
+Go on; I will close the door. I ought not to go, for I half expect
+Brooke of the Magazine. No matter; I will leave word for him."
+
+As they passed the janitor, Flint said, "I shall be back by ten. If
+any one comes to see me you have the key of my rooms, and let any
+visitor come in and wait."
+
+"All right, sir!"
+
+"And see that the fire is kept up."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Flint shivered as he passed out of the warm, heavily carpeted halls
+into the chilly night of late November.
+
+"To-morrow will be Thanksgiving, won't it?" Brady observed.
+
+"Yes, and judging by the number of turkeys on this avenue there will
+be no family without one. I heard last year of a poor widow who had
+_six_ sent her by different charitable institutions. That is what I
+call a pressure of subsistence on population."
+
+Something in Flint's manner jarred upon his companion. It seemed like
+a determined opposition to any undue influence of sentiment or
+emotion. Brady could not have defined the attitude of his friend's
+mind; but he felt it, and resented it to the extent of keeping
+silence after they had taken their seats in the car of the elevated
+road.
+
+There were few other passengers, and the car smelled of lamp-oil. All
+surrounding influences tended to depress Brady's ordinarily buoyant
+spirits, and he wished he had stayed at home, or at any rate had left
+Flint behind. Meanwhile his companion, apparently wholly oblivious of
+the frigidity of his companion's manner, sat with his hat pulled over
+his eyes, and his face as undecipherable as the riddle of the Sphinx.
+
+As the cars stopped at a station half-way between the up-town
+residences and the downtown offices, in the slum belt of the city,
+Brady buttoned up his overcoat and rose, saying shortly, "We get out
+here."
+
+"He has been here more than once," was Flint's inward comment; but he
+made no reply, only followed in Brady's footsteps down the iron
+stairs, and under the shadow of the elevated track for a block or two,
+when Brady made a sharp wheel to eastward.
+
+"Is this our street?" asked Flint, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Yes, this is our street. Turn to the right--there where you see the
+red lantern hanging out from the second story."
+
+"Ah, you know the neighborhood well, I see. Lead on, and I will
+follow. How dark it is down here!"
+
+"Yes, electric lights are reserved for the quarters where you rich
+people live."
+
+"_You_ rich people!" Flint smiled to himself. "Pretty soon," he
+thought, "Brady will be classing me among the greedy capitalists who
+are battening on the sorrows of the poor." He was almost conscious of
+a feeling of guilt as he recalled the fresh, pure air of the park and
+contrasted it with this atmosphere. The name of Berry Hill seemed
+curiously inappropriate for the level streets lined with tumble-down
+tenements; and its suggestion of the long-ago days when vine-clad
+uplands swelled between the narrowing rivers, and little children
+steeped their fingers in nothing more harmful than the blood of
+berries, lent an added pathos to the gloom of the contrasting present.
+
+The slum post was a forlorn wooden building which had quite forgotten,
+if it had ever owned, a coat of paint. The windows of the lower story
+were guarded by a wire netting, behind which reposed the treasures of
+the poor under the temporary guardianship of the pawnbroker. On one
+side lay bits of finery, tawdry rings of plate and silver set with
+sham diamonds and pearls, which if the product of nature, would have
+bankrupted a Rothschild. In among them were infants' rattles and
+spoons marked for life with the impress of baby teeth. Behind the
+smaller articles hung a row of musical instruments, fifes and fiddles
+sadly silent, and hinting of moody, mirth-robbed homes. Behind these
+again, by the dim light within, Flint caught a glimpse of
+miscellaneous piles of household articles wrung from the reluctant
+owners who had already parted with vanity and mirth, and now must
+banish comfort too.
+
+The door on one side of the window stood open, and a rather dim light
+within showed a bare hall-way with a worn shabby staircase leading to
+the room above. Flint and Brady toiled up two flights. "The path to
+heaven is not to be made too easy, is it?" said Flint, pausing to take
+breath.
+
+"No; did you expect elevators?" his friend asked with some asperity.
+
+Flint's good humor was not to be shaken, however.
+
+"To heaven? Why, yes. Angels' wings I've always understood were to be
+at our service. Here it seems not."
+
+At the door Brady stopped to drop a quarter into the basket labelled
+"Silver contribution," held by a buxom and not unpleasing young woman
+in the Army uniform.
+
+"They understand the first principles of the church, I see," Flint
+whispered. "They have dropped the communion, but they keep the
+contribution-box."
+
+Brady did not attend to him. As the two men entered, several turned to
+look at them. Clearly they were not of the class expected. Brady,
+however, nodded to one or two, and he and his friend sat down on a
+bench near the door, in the corner of the hall. Flint wished it were
+in order to keep his hat on to shield his eyes from the unshaded gas,
+which struck him full in the face. But he resigned himself to that, as
+well as to the heat and the odor, and charged it off to the account of
+a new experience.
+
+The interior was bare and cheerless, colorless save for the torn red
+shades above the high dormer windows, and the crudely painted mottoes
+over the platform and around the wall. "_Berry Hill for God!_"
+sprawled along one side, flanked by "_Remember Your Mother's
+Prayers!_" and in front the sinner's trembling gaze was met by the
+depressing suggestion, "_What if you Was to Die To-night?_"
+
+The ceiling was low, and the air already over-heated and
+over-breathed. Flint was an epicure in the matter of air. He looked
+longingly at the door, which offered the only method of escape. But he
+had come for the evening, and he made up his mind to endure to the
+end.
+
+A Hindoo was speaking as they came in, shaking his white turban with
+much vehemence, and waving his small delicate hands in the air as he
+told of "The General's" work in India, and how he had been drawn by
+the gospel (which he pronounced go-spell) to give up his rank in the
+Brahmin caste, to wander over the world as an evangel.
+
+"Queer," muttered Flint, "that every converted Hindoo was a Brahmin.
+Booth seems to have had great luck with the aristocracy."
+
+For a few moments the strangeness of the Hindoo's speech amused Flint;
+then he grew bored, and finally irritated. He took out his watch,
+looked at it conspicuously, then closed it with an audible click. If
+there is a depressing sound on earth it is the click of a watch to the
+ear of an orator. The speaker felt it, and looked round deprecatingly,
+reflecting perhaps that however superior in morals, Occidentals have
+something to learn of the Orientals in manners.
+
+When the high-caste Hindoo sat down, there was much clapping of hands
+and shaking of tambourines, and then to the tune of Daisy Bell rose a
+chorus of,--
+
+ "Sinner, Sinner, give me your answer, do!"
+
+Flint felt a convulsive twitching at the corner of his mouth, but he
+had sworn to himself that he would betray no levity. Brady looked so
+uncomfortable that his friend pitied him. There is much which disturbs
+us, chiefly through the sensibility of others. At the end of the
+singing, a man rose to tell of what the Army had done for him in
+rescuing him from the gutter; but his legs were so unsteady and his
+speech so frequently interrupted by hiccoughs that an audible titter
+ran around the room, and there was great propriety in the song
+following his remarks.
+
+ "If at first you don't succeed,
+ Try, try again."
+
+The room grew hotter, the lights more trying, the bench harder. The
+humor of the situation began to die out in Flint's mind, and gave way
+to a wave of repulsion and of pity for his friend who was about to
+condemn himself to these associations for life. His mind, which had
+wandered from the scene around him, was recalled by the sound of a
+voice, so different from the preceeding ones that it fell like angelic
+tones upon a world far beneath.
+
+"My friends," said the voice, which was of course Nora Costello's,
+"you have listened this night to stories of sin and suffering, of
+struggle, of victory, and sometimes of defeat."
+
+"Like the tipsy gent's," a man called out with a coarse laugh.
+
+"Yes, like his. Would you jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in
+the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown
+out to him from the ship?"
+
+A shamed silence showed that the question had struck; but the speaker
+was not satisfied with silence. She went on driving the shaft home.
+"Would you laugh if you saw a man trying to climb out of a burning
+building and beaten back time after time by the flames?"
+
+(Cries of "No, no.")
+
+"Then why should you laugh over a poor wretch who is struggling with
+worse flames and in danger of being dragged down to more terrible
+fires of endless punishment?"
+
+"Fire! Fire!" cried some one in the hall. For a moment Flint took this
+to be like the "No, no" of a moment before,--only a running comment on
+the speaker's words,--but at the same instant his eye caught the
+curling of a thin blue line of smoke in the corner, and he remembered
+the furniture and flimsy flummery stored on the lower floor. He
+measured the distance to the door. There was no one between him and
+it. He would have little difficulty in escaping if he started on the
+instant--_but these others!_
+
+"The place will go up like a rocket," he said to Brady, "but a panic
+is worse. Hold the door with me!"
+
+"Take me, meester; I'm stronger nor him!" said a broad-shouldered
+coal-heaver, who had overheard their whisper.
+
+With this the three men made a bolt for the door, and formed in line
+in front of it, with their stout walking-sticks in hand.
+
+"Keep your seats. We will knock down the first man who moves. There's
+no danger!" Flint shouted. For an instant the crowd wavered. It would
+have taken only one more impulse to turn it into a mob. Nora Costello
+saw the danger, and seizing her tambourine she began on a ringing Army
+chorus. The audience fell in with such energy that it drowned the
+rattle of the fire engines.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said a fireman, sticking his head in at the door,
+"the fire is out, and the danger over. Five minutes more, though," he
+added in an undertone to Flint, "would have done the business, and
+then, I reckon, we might have spent a week looking for bodies in the
+ashes."
+
+"Come, Brady, let us go; I want some fresh air," said Flint, when the
+excitement had subsided and another convert had begun his sing-song
+confession and adjuration.
+
+"Go, then," answered his friend; "I shall wait to the end. I am going
+to walk home with Miss Costello. Yes," he went on, in response to his
+friend's questioning glance, "it's to-night or never."
+
+"Then I won't wait," said Flint; "only come in to-morrow and tell me
+how you fared."
+
+It was with a feeling of exultation that Flint found himself again on
+the street. "How grewsome it would have been," he thought, "to be
+carried off in a job lot like that! I can imagine nothing worse,
+except perhaps to be killed in a crush at a bargain-counter."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX
+
+ THE UNFORESEEN
+
+ "C'est toujours l'imprévu qui arrive."
+
+
+The ruling thought in Flint's mind as he emerged from the crowded room
+and made his way down the shaky stairs to the outer door, was of the
+physical delight of inhaling fresh air. He drew in two or three deep,
+lung-filling breaths, then he opened his coat and shook it to the air
+as he had seen doctors do after coming out of a sick-room.
+
+"Decidedly," he said to himself, "slumming is not my vocation. If I
+were drafted into the Salvation Army, I should plead to be permitted
+to join the open-air brigade. My sympathy with the poor in general,
+and drunkards in particular, is in inverse proportion to the nearness.
+Poor Brady! I wonder how he will endure being unequally yoked together
+with a believer. Suppose Nora Costello refuses him. No, he is safe
+enough, if it is being safe to have her return his love. I saw her
+look up as we came in, and though she never glanced in our direction
+again till the cry of 'Fire!' came, I saw her look of appeal then,
+and his response. Oh, there is no doubt about her accepting him; but
+the question is, not how does she feel now, but how will she feel a
+year or two years from now? As I grow older, I grow more conservative
+on these things. There is such an amount of wear and tear in the
+ordinary strain of married life that I hate to see cruel and unusual
+ones added. If Winifred Anstice should ever or could ever-- There, I
+will not allow myself even to think about it, for it would be so much
+harder to give it up afterward if I am compelled to, and, after all,
+what chance is there that a girl like Winifred would be willing to
+spend her whole life with a man whose nature and character are so
+different from hers!"
+
+Flint had been walking rapidly, and his musings had so filled his mind
+that he saw with surprise that he had reached the corner where the
+Sixth Avenue elevated and surface cars curve together for their
+straight-away race to the Park at the end of the course. He was
+conscious of a certain added rush of spirits at finding himself once
+more on the edge of a familiar world,--a world where the sin was at
+least conventionalized and the misery went about well dressed. Already
+the scene at the slum post had taken on in his mind a distance which
+enabled him to regard it humorously, and he amused himself in
+rehearsing the scene as he would set it forth to Brooke when he
+reached "The Chancellor."
+
+As he turned a corner, he noticed just in front of him in the side
+street leading toward Fifth Avenue a young woman carrying a paper
+parcel, and looking up a little nervously at one number after another.
+She wore a Canada seal jacket, and a wide felt hat topped with nodding
+plumes which made a large effect for the investment. Over the jacket
+hung a gilt chain holding a coin purse, the latest fad of the
+fashionable world.
+
+As Flint's footsteps quickened behind her, she turned her head a
+little timorously. At last she stopped, and as he caught up with her
+she began, "Could you tell me--" Then she stopped short.
+
+"Miss Marsden!" exclaimed Flint, in amazement. "What in the world
+brings you here?"
+
+"To see New York," the girl began a little flippantly, but ended more
+tremulously, "and to see you."
+
+"But where are you staying?"
+
+"Nowhere--that is, I came down on the train this afternoon, and I
+thought I'd go to a hotel, and then I meant to write you a note
+to-morrow and ask you to come and see me; but a lady I met on the
+cars, she was real kind, and she said she guessed I'd find it cost
+more 'n I reckoned on to go to a hotel, and so she gave me this
+address where a friend of hers lived. She said she was a perfect lady,
+and would take good care of me. Not that I need anybody to do that!"
+
+This last with that curious mixture of innocence, ignorance, and
+sophistication, incredible outside America, where the self-dependent
+girl so early becomes sufficient for herself and too much for every
+one else.
+
+Flint took the address from her hand, and studied it for a minute.
+"That will not do at all," he said quietly, as he threw the bit of
+paper into the gutter. Then he took out his watch. "Half-past nine.
+You have just time to catch the night train for South East."
+
+The girl's face fell. "I'm not going to South East," she said
+sullenly. "I wrote Pa that I was going off for Thanksgiving, with a
+friend from Boxbury."
+
+"Then why not go back to Boxbury? That's still an easier trip, and I
+can let you have the money."
+
+Flint's tone, which was always low, had dropped still deeper; but the
+earnestness of his manner made itself felt, and a casual passer-by,
+catching the word "money," slowed up his walk, and turned his head for
+an instant's inspection of the couple. Flint raged inwardly at the
+vulgarity of the situation thus thrust upon him. To his companion,
+however, the glance of the passer-by conveyed nothing more than a
+recognition of her good looks, to which she was not averse. She stood
+still a moment, rubbing her ringed and ungloved hand back and forward
+over the sanded iron imitation brownstone fence by which she had
+paused. Then, as Flint, feeling the conspicuousness of their
+stationary attitude, made a movement to walk on, she broke out with a
+note of genuine feeling,--
+
+"It's no question of money. I came away because I couldn't stand it
+any longer. I wanted so to see you and to tell you what a lot I cared
+about you, and I thought perhaps--"
+
+"Don't go on!" said Flint, a trifle sternly. "You are a silly little
+fool; but you ought to know better than to say things like that to a
+man who never did and never could care anything for you."
+
+"Then you despise me and my love!" said Tilly, with passion half real,
+half premeditated for effect. She had rehearsed this scene many times
+in her own mind.
+
+"Despise you? Not I," Flint answered; "and as for your love, a real,
+genuine affection is about the last thing in the world to be despised.
+Whether it is returned or not, it does not matter; and besides," here
+Flint paused a minute and then went on, "in that I have much sympathy
+with you, for I too love some one who has refused to marry me."
+
+It was with a sense of inward surprise that Flint heard himself
+revealing the secrets of his inmost heart to this tawdry young girl;
+but Brady's words were ringing in his ears: "I think I would try to
+help save a soul, if I had to take off my kid gloves or even go down
+in the gutter to do it."
+
+Tilly Marsden had not enough nobleness of nature to take in the spirit
+of his confidence. To her his words implied some hope for herself.
+
+"Perhaps," she said brokenly, "if you couldn't get her you might take
+me." As she looked up at him pleadingly, with real tears standing on
+her long eyelashes and the flush of a genuine emotion on her cheeks,
+Flint was conscious that she was very, very pretty.
+
+Her prettiness would not at any time have held any temptation for him.
+The inherited austerity of his blood and a fastidiousness of
+temperament beyond the appeal of this chromo beauty would have
+prevented it in any case, but just now he was under the spell of an
+exaltation which lifted him above even the possibility of such danger.
+He had stood on the Mount of Transfiguration and looked into the eyes
+of spiritual love. Its light still shone above and around him, and
+shed its influence over the whole world. All dark thoughts, all
+basilar instincts shrank back abashed before that white light. The old
+monogamous instinct of the Anglo-Saxon race, which has kept it sound
+at the core in spite of a thousand vices, held this man as true to the
+woman whom he wished to marry as if she were indeed his wife.
+
+Tempted he was not, but most wofully disturbed in mind he certainly
+was. Having destroyed the dubious address, he felt himself to have
+assumed in a measure a responsibility for this foolish girl's future,
+her immediate future at least. His mind traversed rapidly all the
+possible courses open to him. He must take her somewhere. Hotels and
+boarding-houses were alike impossible. He thought of Nora Costello;
+but he could not bring himself to ask her to share the narrow limits
+of her one room with this be-furbelowed young person, and then it
+would involve so many awkward explanations. There was only one person
+who would understand. By a process of exclusion, his thoughts were
+driven more and more insistently toward seeking aid from Winifred
+Anstice.
+
+He felt to the full the delicacy and difficulty, not to say the
+absurdity, of his position, in seeking to place the woman who loved
+him under the protection of the woman he loved, but it was the only
+course which seemed even possible.
+
+"Come," he said suddenly to Tilly, with an authority which the girl's
+will was powerless to resist. "Since you will not go home, you must be
+cared for here. I will take you to a friend of mine, and you must do
+as she tells you."
+
+"And what if I won't go?" said the girl, with a feeble effort at
+self-assertion.
+
+"Then I will leave you here. Only never hold me responsible for the
+ruin that lies before you clear as Hell."
+
+The girl quailed before the energy of his words.
+
+"Cab, sir?" called the driver of a hansom the lights of which had
+twinkled from a judicious distance for some time past.
+
+Flint raised his finger in acquiescence, and the hansom rattled up to
+the curbstone. Flint handed Tilly Marsden into it with his habitual
+deference, gave a street and number to the driver, and, jumping in
+himself, slammed to the half doors with a clang which echoed along the
+silent street. The driver cracked his whip over the horse's head as if
+he were about to drive him at a desperate pace; but the animal,
+familiar with the noisy demonstration and recognizing it as intended
+for the encouragement of the passengers within the vehicle and not
+conveying any special warning to himself, set off at his customary
+jog-trot.
+
+A man who had been standing in the shadow of a house moved out and
+stood a moment under the quivering nimbus of the electric light. His
+brow darkened as he looked after the retreating cab.
+
+"Curse him!" he muttered.
+
+Flint and his companion drove on unwitting of the vengeance-breeding
+wrath behind them. For a time they kept silence, each absorbed in his
+own thoughts. Flint was unpleasantly conscious that the girl was
+crying behind her veil, but realizing that he had no consolation to
+offer, he wisely let her alone, and before many minutes the novelty of
+her surroundings began to tell upon Tilly's grief.
+
+"Whose house is that?" she asked in a broken voice, as they passed a
+brilliantly lighted hotel. She had read so much of the palaces of the
+millionnaires that a fourteen-story private dwelling did not strike
+her as at all unexpected.
+
+"She will recover," Flint murmured cynically to himself. His mind was
+working rapidly now. Like many contemplative men, once roused to
+definite action he was capable of great energy and direct executive
+ability. He planned every detail of the coming interview, met every
+emergency, was prepared for every event.
+
+As the cab drew up before the Anstice door, he noted with relief that
+the lights above were bright and those on the parlor floor subdued.
+"No company, thank Heaven! and the family upstairs," was his comment.
+What he most dreaded now was Winifred's being out. He wondered if in
+that event he should have courage to ask for Miss Standish, and had
+almost persuaded himself that he would, when McGregor, to the comfort
+of his soul, admitted that Miss Anstice was at home and without
+visitors. Flint felt a little cut by McGregor's glance of suspicion at
+his companion. It seemed to connote the opinion of the world, and to
+make his position more difficult than ever. He determined, however, to
+carry things with a high hand.
+
+"Show this young woman into the dining-room, McGregor, and close the
+doors. Then take this card to Miss Anstice, and ask if I may see her
+for a moment on important business."
+
+The old butler stumbled upstairs, murmuring, "Well, it's a queer
+business, and I can't make it out; but he's the right sort, he is."
+
+As Flint waited in the drawing-room, he was dimly conscious of the
+perfume from the roses in the jar on the piano, conscious too that he
+was standing on the very spot where he had kissed Winifred's hand
+yesterday. Was it really only yesterday? It seemed an age ago.
+
+The spell was broken by the sound of a light step on the stair, and
+the appearance of Winifred herself in the doorway,--Winifred in her
+gown of soft gray silk, with a bunch of his roses at her
+belt,--Winifred as he had never seen her before, with the gladness of
+unrestrained welcome in her eyes, with shy words of love almost
+trembling on her lips.
+
+Flint started forward, then thought of the girl behind the closed
+door, and hesitated. Surely they could postpone happiness for a time
+to bind up the bruises of that foolish wayfarer who was none the less
+to be pitied that her wounds were self-inflicted.
+
+Winifred's quick perception took in at once the agitation of his face
+and manner.
+
+"You are in trouble!" she said, coming close to him with swift
+sympathy.
+
+"Yes, in trouble and in perplexity. I have come to you for help."
+
+"I am glad you have come to me," the girl said simply, and stood with
+uplifted eyes waiting for him to go on.
+
+"Don't look at me like that," Flint cried out; "when you do I can
+think of nothing but you, and to-night we must both think about some
+one else."
+
+"Who is it? What is it? Tell me from the beginning."
+
+Flint was profoundly moved by the instant putting aside of all
+thoughts of self in the desire to be of service.
+
+"How dared I ask her to marry me?" he thought. Aloud he said: "Listen,
+Winifred, and know that I am trying to tell you the white truth
+without reserve or evasion. I come to you because you are the only
+person who will need no explanation of the past, to unravel the evil
+of the present. I went with Brady this evening to a meeting of the
+Salvation Army at a slum post down on Berry Hill, where Nora Costello
+was to speak--"
+
+"Oh, why didn't you let me go too?"
+
+"You shall go if you like sometime; but I am glad you were not there
+to-night, for there was a fire, and something near a panic--"
+
+Winifred turned white and moved nearer to him.
+
+"Don't be alarmed!" he said; "nothing happened. The fire was soon put
+out, and people settled back in their seats. But I grew restless, and
+concluded not to wait for Brady; so I started to walk up alone--"
+
+"Alone?" echoed Winifred, "through that quarter! Why, Nora says it is
+as bad as Whitechapel."
+
+"Perhaps," said Flint, with a nervous laugh; "but my walk was entirely
+uneventful till I reached our own highly respectable part of the city.
+As I was turning into Fifth Avenue, out of one of the side streets
+above Washington Square, I saw a girl looking up at the houses. As I
+came along she stopped to speak to me, and to my amazement I found it
+was Tilly Marsden."
+
+"_Tilly Marsden?_"
+
+"Yes, she had come down to spend Thanksgiving here in the city. She
+had been expecting, it seems, to go to a hotel; but a woman on the
+train gave her the address of some friend, and she was looking up this
+unknown landlady when I came along."
+
+"Little fool!" said Winifred, with finely feminine exasperation.
+
+"She is--beyond a doubt she is; but still--"
+
+"But still," said Winifred, with a vanishing smile, "you naturally
+have more sympathy with her folly than I have." (At this moment
+Winifred had forgotten the charge of lack of sympathy which she had
+brought against the man before her three months ago.) "The question
+is, of course, what is to be done with her?"
+
+Flint felt an immense sense of relief at Winifred's practical words,
+which seemed to remove the situation from the element of tragedy to
+rather sordid commonplace.
+
+"That's it exactly," he said helplessly. "I thought of taking her to
+Nora Costello."
+
+"That would not do at all," said Winifred, positively. "I am
+disappointed in you. If you had trusted to my proffer of friendship
+yesterday, you would have brought her to me."
+
+"I--I did," hesitated Flint; "she is in the rear room there. But the
+more I think of it, the more I feel as if I could not have her here
+near you. She is--"
+
+"You need not tell me what Tilly Marsden is," Winifred interrupted. "I
+know her of old. She is silly and pert, and cheaply sensational; but
+she is not vicious, and if she were, our duty would be the same. You
+may leave her with Miss Standish and me. We will take care of her, and
+try to make something of her."
+
+"I suppose I ought to say 'Good-by' to her?"
+
+"By no means. Go, and leave her to me."
+
+"Have you no word for me at parting?"
+
+"No, not now,--all that can wait."
+
+"Good-night, then, since you will let me say nothing more."
+
+Winifred answered with a farewell glance, full of confidence and of
+love. Then the door closed after Flint, and Winifred threw open the
+folding-doors into the dining-room.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Marsden?" she said, taking Tilly's hand.
+
+The girl looked at her, stupidly bewildered.
+
+"You do not recognize me, I see, but I remember you from seeing you
+with Leonard Davitt down at Nepaug."
+
+Tilly blushed painfully, but Winifred took no notice of her
+embarrassment.
+
+"Mr. Flint said you were belated in your trip to the city, so he
+brought you to us for the night," Winifred continued, as if it were
+the most natural episode in the world.
+
+"And did he tell you--"
+
+"He told me nothing else. He was in a hurry, I suppose."
+
+"Then he is gone?"
+
+"Yes, he is gone, and I am glad, because it is time you went to bed
+after you have had such a tiresome journey. Come upstairs. I am going
+to give you the little room next Miss Standish's. You remember her
+perhaps--she was at Nepaug too. To-morrow we will talk over anything
+you wish to tell me. Come!"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI
+
+ GOD'S PUPPETS
+
+ "God's puppets best and worst are we,
+ There is no last or first."
+
+
+The breakfast-hour in the Anstice household was regularly irregular. A
+movable fast, Professor Anstice called it. On the morning of
+Thanksgiving Day the hand of the old Dutch clock pointed to nine when
+Winifred Anstice entered the dining-room.
+
+A freshly lighted fire blazed on the hearth. The lamp beneath the
+silver urn blazed on the table. Toasted muffins and delicate dishes of
+honey and marmalade stood upon the buffet.
+
+"Will you wait for Mr. Anstice?" McGregor asked as she entered.
+
+"No, McGregor, I am like time and tide, and wait for no man or woman
+either; but you need not hurry, for I will look over my mail while the
+eggs are boiling,--just four minutes, remember. I don't want them
+bullets, nor yet those odious slimy trickling things which seem only
+held together by the shell."
+
+McGregor smiled,--a smile it had cost him twenty years of service in
+the best families to acquire,--a smile which expressed respectful
+appreciation of the facetiousness intended without any personal share
+in it. He never allowed himself to be more amused than a butler should
+be.
+
+Winifred Anstice dropped into the chair which he held for her, and
+took up, one by one, the letters which lay on the silver tray by her
+side. They proved a strange medley, as the morning mail of a New York
+woman always is,--a dozen "At Home" cards, Receptions, Teas, "days" in
+December, all put aside after a passing glance for future sorting; an
+appeal for aid, by a widow who had done washing for the family twenty
+years ago, and was sure for the sake of old times Miss Anstice would
+lend her a small sum, to tide over the cruel winter when her son could
+get no work; a note from Mrs. De Lancey Jones, stating that a few
+excellent seats for a performance to be given for the benefit of the
+"Manhattan Appendicitis Hospital" could be had from her; there was a
+great rush for the tickets, but she wanted if possible to keep a few
+for her friends, and would Miss Anstice kindly let her know at once if
+she desired any?
+
+Miss Anstice smiled a sceptical smile, which deepened into a laugh
+when she picked up the next note, which stated that Mrs.
+Brown-Livingston was also holding back a number of the same
+much-sought tickets for her friends, but would part with a few to Miss
+Anstice if informed at once.
+
+"What frauds these mortals be!" exclaimed Winifred, laying both
+requests aside to amuse her father later.
+
+At the next envelope she colored hotly, for she recognized the
+handwriting instantly. Indeed it was an easily recognizable
+superscription and of very distinct individuality,--a back-hand which
+at first glance gave the impression that it must be held up to the
+mirror to be read, but on closer scrutiny looked plainer than the
+upright round hand of the copy-books. It did not need the "F" upon the
+seal to tell Winifred Anstice from whom it came. She opened it, as she
+opened all sealed documents, with a hairpin, though two paper-cutters
+of silver and ivory lay at her hand on the tray.
+
+The note was brief. It was dated "University Club, Midnight," and had
+no beginning, as if the writer could think of none befitting his
+feeling.
+
+"I am distracted," it began abruptly, "with the contest of fears and
+hopes, regret and satisfaction. If I seem to have unloaded upon you a
+burden of responsibility which was justly mine, I beg you to believe
+that I did it only because I could see no other way, and even then I
+meant only to ask you to share it. In place of this, with
+characteristic generosity you insisted upon assuming the whole. This
+must not be. Pray name some hour when I may come to you, and let it be
+to-morrow. You don't know how far off that seems."
+
+Only that, and then the signature. It was a strange note from a lover;
+but to Winifred Anstice it was full of the assurance that the man to
+whom she had given her heart (for she admitted it to herself now) was
+of a nature large enough to put himself and his own feelings aside and
+to believe that she too was capable of the larger vision, the
+renunciation of present happiness for pressing duty. The highest plane
+upon which those who love can meet is this of united work and united
+self-sacrifice.
+
+Winifred's eyes glistened as she read, and when she had finished, she
+slipped the note into her pocket for a second reading. As she did so,
+Miss Standish entered.
+
+"I declare, Winifred, you get more morning mail than a Congressman."
+
+"Yes," said Winifred, "and my constituents make larger demands."
+
+"It seems to me," said Miss Standish, "that you engage in too many
+projects. You do not give yourself time to attend to your own needs
+at all."
+
+"Oh, never fear for that!" answered Winifred. "One's own needs pound
+at the door; the needs of others only tap. How did you sleep last
+night?"
+
+"Finely. I was so tired after that picture exhibition that I could
+hardly keep my eyes open. I was glad enough to creep off to bed by
+nine o'clock; but do you know I had a confused dream of voices in the
+room next mine,--the little one with the green and white hangings. I
+thought I heard your voice, and then a stranger's, and I seemed to
+catch the word 'Nepaug.' Isn't it curious how dreams come without any
+reason whatever?"
+
+"H'm! Sometimes it is, as you say, very curious; but in this
+particular instance there was nothing very miraculous about it, since
+you did hear voices and you very likely caught the word 'Nepaug,' for
+it was certainly mentioned."
+
+"How's that?" questioned Miss Standish, sharply. She did not relish
+the idea of having missed any unusual happenings.
+
+Winifred was a little vexed by the note of curiosity in her voice, and
+she answered without undue haste, "Yes, it was I and Tilly Marsden;
+you remember her, perhaps,--the daughter of the inn-keeper."
+
+There were two things most exasperating to Miss Standish,--one to be
+supposed to know what she did not and thereby to be cheated of
+acquiring the information, the other to be suspected of not knowing
+what she remembered perfectly.
+
+"Not know Tilly Marsden! Well, you must think I am losing my
+faculties. I wish you would not waste your time in telling things I
+know as well as you do; but what I would like to hear is how she came
+to be in this house."
+
+"Mr. Flint brought her," answered Winifred, with unkind brevity.
+
+"Ah!" commented Miss Standish, with an upward inflection, "and did he
+explain how it happened that she was under his protection?"
+
+"I did not insult him by inquiring," flashed Winifred, "and I will not
+have him insulted in my presence."
+
+Miss Standish looked at the girl over her glasses, as if she suspected
+her of having lost her wits. We are all of us surprised by a response
+which seems to us vehement beyond the proximate cause of the present
+occasion; we fail to allow for the slow-gathering irritation, the
+unseen sources of excitement which collect in the caverns of the mind
+like fire-damp ready to explode at the naked flame of one flickering
+candle. Winifred had the grace to be instantly ashamed of her
+impulsive irritability. She had already set before herself the
+standard of self-control which she saw and reverenced in Flint.
+
+"Excuse me," she said. "I was awake almost all night, and am tired and
+nervous. Mr. Flint met Tilly Marsden by accident in the street. She
+did not know where to go, and so he brought her here. My father
+approved," she added a little haughtily.
+
+"But why did she appeal to Mr. Flint?" pursued Miss Standish, who
+clung to her inquiries like a burr.
+
+"Because she was in love with him," blurted out Winifred, irritated
+beyond the power of silence. "Can't you see! _This_ was why I asked
+him to leave Nepaug last summer."
+
+"Tilly Marsden in love with Mr. Flint!" echoed Miss Standish, amazed
+beyond the desire to appear to have suspected it all along. "I can't
+understand it."
+
+"I can," said Winifred; "I can understand it perfectly. Poor girl! I
+am heartily sorry for her."
+
+"Well, you needn't be," responded Miss Standish, with an asperity born
+of impatience at her own lack of astuteness. "For my part, I have no
+doubt she has enjoyed the situation thoroughly from beginning to end.
+No, don't talk to me. I know those hysterical people. All they care
+about is making a sensation and being the centre of attention. It is
+my opinion that she has made fools of you and Mr. Flint too. As for
+her being in love with him, nonsense! She would have fallen in love
+with a wax figure at the Eden Musée, if it wore better clothes than
+she was accustomed to. It tickles her vanity to fancy herself in love
+with a gentleman. It is the next best thing to having him in love with
+her."
+
+"Don't you think you're a little hard on her?" asked Winifred, whose
+feelings were unusually expansive this morning.
+
+"I think you are entirely too soft about her," Miss Standish answered.
+"It is sickly sentimentalism like yours which is filling the hospitals
+with hysterical patients. Let 'em alone and they'll come round fast
+enough."
+
+"How do you account for my sickly sentimentalism when I have no heart,
+as you told me the other day?" commented Winifred demurely, with
+downcast eyes.
+
+"Most natural thing in the world," said Miss Standish, rising to an
+argument like an old war-horse to the sound of a trumpet.
+"Tenderheartedness is touched by the sufferings of others.
+Sentimentality is touched by your feeling for them, which is the most
+enjoyable form of sadness."
+
+At this point McGregor, who with admirable discretion had retreated to
+the pantry, reappeared, served Miss Standish with coffee and eggs, and
+again vanished, closing the door behind him.
+
+"Really," cried Winifred, half laughing, half vexed, "you're as bad as
+Mr. Flint, with your fine-spun differences."
+
+"There, Winifred, you've said enough. Whatever the provocation, you
+could not have hit back harder,--to say I am like Mr. Flint."
+
+"It _was_ rather more than the truth warrants," answered Winifred,
+with a little spot of color flaming up in her cheeks like a
+danger-signal.
+
+"I hope so," Miss Standish continued, oblivious of the red flag. "I
+must say, Winifred, I think you let him come here too much."
+
+"You don't like him?"
+
+"No, I confess I don't."
+
+"Then you needn't like me, either, for _I_ like him so much that I am
+going to marry him."
+
+Miss Standish laid down her egg-spoon, and sat staring at Winifred.
+
+"Well!" she exclaimed at length, "this does beat all."
+
+Winifred opened her lips to reply, when her attention was called to
+the maid who came hurrying into the room with her cheesecloth duster
+in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other.
+
+"The young woman, mum, as you said I was to call at nine,--well, she
+isn't in her room, and the bed doesn't look as if it had been slept in
+at all, and I found this on the bureau."
+
+Winifred caught at the paper and read it breathlessly. It was
+addressed to herself.
+
+"Good-by," it said, "and thank you for taking me in. I suppose I ought
+to be very grateful. I came here because I could not help it, and I am
+going away without taking a meal, or sleeping in your bed. I don't
+like being taken on charity. If it had not been for you, Mr. Flint
+might have cared for me, same as the hero did in 'The Unequal
+Marriage.' I saw last night it was you he was talking about when he
+said there was somebody he wanted to marry who wouldn't have him. My
+heart is broken; but I mean to have _some_ enjoyment, which I
+couldn't, if I stayed here with you and that poky Miss Standish. I
+think it was real mean of Mr. Flint to bring me here anyhow."
+
+ Yours truly,
+ "MATILDA MARSDEN"
+
+She tossed the letter across the table to Miss Standish, and touched
+the bell under her foot.
+
+"McGregor," she said, as the man appeared, "did you hear any one go
+out of the house this morning?"
+
+"I thought I did, Miss Winifred, about six o'clock, before
+light,--that is, I was justly sure I heard the front door shut; but
+when I got there it was all right, except the outer door was unlocked,
+and that often happens when your father is at the Club. He do forget
+now and then."
+
+"Three hours' start!" said Winifred to herself, then aloud: "McGregor,
+go at once to 'The Chancellor' and leave word for Mr. Flint to come
+here. Wait--I will send a note. Oh dear! why didn't I foresee this
+possibility?"
+
+"Come!" said Miss Standish, who, even in her excitement, could swallow
+the last of her cup of hot coffee,--"come, let us go upstairs and see
+if the foolish girl has not left some clew!"
+
+As Winifred and Miss Standish passed out at the parlor door, Master
+Jimmy entered from the hall, sleek and smiling in his holiday attire.
+"Great Scott!" he ejaculated. "What started Miss Standish off like
+that? Our stairs make the old lady puff when she takes 'em on the
+slow, and at this rate Fred will have to carry her half-way.
+Something's up, that's evident. Never mind, I'm not in it. McGregor,"
+he called, "bring on those griddle-cakes; I smell 'em cooking. Quick
+now, while there's no one here to count how many I eat! Hurrah for
+Thanksgiving!"
+
+McGregor failed to appear at Master Jimmy's call, and when Maria came,
+she said he had been sent out on an errand.
+
+"What's up?" asked Jimmy, between mouthfuls.
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing--I wonder will they have the police?"
+
+"Cops!" cried Jimmy, waking up for the first time to a genuine
+interest in the family excitement. "Has any one gone off with the
+spoons? It would be just my luck to have had a burglar in the house
+last night and me never got a pop at him with my air-gun loaded and
+close by the bed."
+
+"It's no burglar," said the maid, with mystery in her tones.
+
+"Not McGregor drunk!" shouted Jimmy, with a scream of delight. "That
+would be too good a joke."
+
+"McGregor drunk, indeed!" sniffed Maria, indignantly. "If every one as
+came to this house was as good as McGregor, it would be a fine thing;
+but when it comes to takin' in all sorts and making a Harbor of Refuge
+out of a respectable home--I'm not surprised _whatever_ may happen."
+
+"Oh, hold your tongue, Maria. Don't be a fool! Get me some more cakes,
+while I go up and ask Fred what's the matter. It won't take _her_ half
+an hour to get it out, I'll bet."
+
+With this cheerful observation Jimmy vanished, and Maria disappeared
+down the kitchen stairs, declaring that that boy was "a perfect
+gintleman."
+
+When Flint entered the Anstices' drawing-room a little later, Winifred
+was standing by the window, and though she turned away quickly, it was
+evident that she had been watching for him.
+
+The thought thrilled him.
+
+"What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do?" she broke out, as he came up
+to her.
+
+He took her hands; they were burning hot.
+
+"First of all, I will tell you what _not_ to do," Flint answered. "You
+are not to work yourself into a fever of distress over this
+unfortunate business. The responsibility is not yours but mine, and
+the burden of anxiety is to be mine and not yours."
+
+"Oh, never mind me! What about Tilly Marsden? It is dreadful to think
+of her wandering about this great city entirely alone--and she such a
+simpleton. Of course, it's hopeless to try to find her. Papa says so."
+
+"Not so hopeless as you think," said Flint, with a trifle more
+assurance than he felt in his inmost heart. "New York stands for two
+things to a girl like her,--the shops and the theatres,--her ideas of
+the 'amusement' she speaks of in the note you sent me would be limited
+to one of these. Now, as this is a holiday, none of the shops would
+be open, and that limits it to the theatres. I shall have detectives
+at the door of every theatre this afternoon."
+
+"How clever you are," murmured Winifred, "how clever and how
+sympathetic! You have such feeling for everybody in trouble."
+
+This was too much for even Flint's sense of humor, which had suffered
+somewhat, as every one's does, from the process of falling in love.
+His lips twitched.
+
+"Then I am not more obtuse than any one you ever saw, when the
+sufferings of others are involved?"
+
+"Don't, pray, don't bring up the things I said that night!" cried
+Winifred, blushing rosy red.
+
+"This is no time for jesting, dear, I know," Flint answered, coming
+close to her as she stood against the filmy lace curtain. "No time
+either for jesting or hoping; only your words did give me a gleam of
+encouragement to think that perhaps a girl who changed her mind so
+much in a few weeks might have wavered a little in a few days. Is it
+possible--Winifred, before I go away, as I must at once--could you
+find it in your heart to say 'I love you'?"
+
+Winifred made him no answer, at least in words; but she came close to
+him, and laid both hands on his arm with a touching gesture of
+trustful affection.
+
+So absorbed were they in one another that they did not notice how near
+they stood to the window, or that the curtain was too diaphanous quite
+to conceal them from view. Suddenly into their world of ecstatic
+oblivion came a crash, a sound of falling glass, a dull thud against
+the wall opposite to the window.
+
+"Great Heavens!" cried Flint, looking anxiously at Winifred. "What was
+that? Are you sure you're not hurt, my darling?"
+
+Even as he spoke, another report was heard outside, and, throwing open
+the curtains, they saw a man on the other side of the street stagger
+and fall. Flint rushed to the door, down the steps and across the
+sidewalk. A crowd had already collected.
+
+"He is dead,--stone dead," said one, kneeling with his hand over his
+heart.
+
+"Queer, isn't it--on Thanksgiving Day too?" said another.
+
+"Who is he?--a countryman by his looks," said a third. "Fine-looking
+chap, too, with that crop of curly hair and these broad shoulders."
+
+"Faith!" murmured an old woman, "it's some mother's heart 'ull bleed
+this day." And pulling out her beads, she knelt on the sidewalk to say
+a prayer over the parting soul.
+
+The prostrate form lying along the pavement had a certain tragic
+dignity, almost majesty, in its attitude. One arm was pressed to the
+heart, the other thrown out in a gesture of abandonment to despair.
+The revolver, which had dropped from the nerveless hand, lay still
+smoking beside the still figure. From a wound in the left temple under
+the dark curls the blood trickled in a red stream. Death was in his
+look. The lips were turning blue, and the eyes glazing rapidly.
+
+Flint came close to the dying man, and then shrank back with an
+involuntary start of horror. "Leonard Davitt!" he murmured below his
+breath. In an instant the whole situation was clear to him. By one of
+those flashlights which the mind sometimes sheds on a scene before it,
+making the hidden places clear and turning darkness to daylight, he
+grasped the truth. He knew that by some unlucky chance Leonard had
+come to New York, had seen him and Tilly Marsden in conversation, had
+seen them come here together, had fancied that he was wronged. Then
+this morning again he must have seen him with Winifred at the
+window,--Winifred mistaken for the girl he loved,--and then jealousy
+quite mastered the brooding brain, and the end was _this_.
+
+As Flint stood over the boy's body, a great weight of sadness fell
+upon him. He felt like one of the figures in a Greek tragedy, innocent
+in intent, but drawn into a fatal entanglement of evil, and made an
+instrument of woe to others as innocent as himself. The blue sky above
+in its azure clearness seemed a type of the indifference of Heaven,
+the chill of the pavement a symbol of the coldness of earth. These
+thoughts, chasing each other through his brain with lightning
+rapidity, still left it clear for action.
+
+"Stand away there, and give the man air!" he cried, clearing a little
+space. "Go for a doctor, somebody,--quick!"
+
+"Oh, can it be Leonard Davitt!" whispered Winifred under her breath,
+as pale and trembling with emotion she drew near the edge of the
+crowd. "Poor boy! What shall we say to his mother?"
+
+"Hush!" Flint answered. "May we carry him into the house?"
+
+"Of course--of course. Oh, do hurry with the doctor. Perhaps he is not
+dead, after all."
+
+With that ready adaptiveness which in Americans so often supplies the
+place of training, four of the men stepped forward, and lifting the
+body gently bore it up the steps and through the open door into the
+drawing-room, and laid it on the lounge just under the bullet-hole in
+the wall.
+
+A doctor bustled in, box in hand. He made no effort to open his case,
+however. One look was sufficient.
+
+"Death must have been instantaneous," he said. "What a queer thing,--a
+suicide on Thanksgiving Day!"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII
+
+ THE END
+
+ _Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan
+ Standish, Oldburyport, December 1._
+
+
+It is good to be at home again. I said it over to myself many a time
+yesterday, as I was helping Mary to take the covers off the family
+portraits, and sitting in front of the old andirons with the firelight
+dancing in their great brass balls. I felt it when I sat down at my
+mahogany table and laid my fingers on the ebony handle of the old
+silver coffee-pot. Things come to have a distinct individuality,
+almost a personality, and we unconsciously impute to them a response
+to our feeling for them. It seemed to me that the old claw-foot sofa
+was as glad to get me back as the cat herself, and the door swung wide
+with a squeak of welcome. My desk too stood open with friendly
+invitation, and on it lay a couple of letters. The first was from Ben
+Bradford. It was so long since I had heard from the boy that I opened
+his letter first. I wrote him last month, sending him some news and
+more good advice. I counselled him to stop thinking about Winifred
+Anstice or any other girl, and throw himself into his studies, to make
+a record which should do credit to the Bradford name. He replies that
+the advice is excellent; only one drawback,--it cannot be done. He has
+tried throwing himself into his studies, but they closed over him
+without a trace. Talk about records,--he will be glad enough if he
+gets through his examinations without a dead flunk. As for not
+thinking about Winifred, he says I have not helped him to the desired
+end by what I wrote about Mr. Flint and his attentions. Of course, Ben
+says, he could not expect that Winifred would wait for him. In these
+days no man could hope to marry until he was white-headed like that
+Flint; but as for himself he never did or should see any woman whom he
+could love except Winifred Anstice.
+
+To try to throw off his depression and discouragement, he had gone
+around last evening to call on Fanny Winthrop, who was studying at
+Radcliffe this year and staying on Mount Vernon Street. She sent her
+love to her "dear Miss Standish," and if I had any message to send in
+return he would be happy to carry it, as he and she were to act in
+"The Loan of a Lover," and he was likely to see a good deal of her in
+the course of the next week or two.
+
+This letter has relieved my mind greatly. It is evident that Ben's
+heart is built like a modern ship, in compartments, so that though one
+bulkhead suffers wreck, the vessel may still come safe to a
+matrimonial haven.
+
+Fanny Winthrop is a plain little girl with a round face and the
+traditional student spectacles; but a merry pair of dimples twinkling
+with a fund of cheery humor, and then--a Winthrop! That will please
+his mother, I am sure. But I am no matchmaker. I never think of such
+things unless they are forced upon me, as they have been lately.
+
+The other letter on my desk was from Philip Brady. I had missed his
+call that last evening in New York. He writes, as if it were a
+surprising piece of information, that he is going to marry Nora
+Costello, provided she can gain the consent of her superior officers,
+and he delegates to me the pleasant duty of breaking the news to his
+family circle. "This," he says, "will be easy for you who have known
+Nora, and who were the first to discover her charm and the solid merit
+which goes so much deeper than charm."
+
+Here is a pretty state of things!
+
+What am I to do? I can see Cousin John's face when he hears the words
+"Salvation Army." He has always scoffed and scolded and sworn at the
+mere mention of the business, and his opinions are very "sot," as the
+Oldbury farmers say. He is, in fact, the only obstinate member of our
+family; but I will let him know that he cannot talk down Susan
+Standish. I mean to go right over to his house after dinner and have
+it out with him. I shall tell him that Nora Costello is a
+daughter-in-law to be proud of (as she is), and that I dare say, if he
+wishes it, she will leave the Salvation Army (which she never will);
+that, at any rate, he must send for the girl to come on to visit him;
+that if he does not, _I_ shall; and that I heartily approve the match.
+
+I call myself a truthful woman, and the proof of it is that when I do
+start out to tell a lie, it is a good honest one, not a deft little
+evasion such as runs trippingly from the tongue of practised
+deceivers.
+
+I suppose the news of Philip's engagement will be spread all over town
+before night. I feel now as though I should not object to a little of
+that indifference to the affairs of one's neighbors which I found so
+depressing when I was in New York. Not that I am any less loyal to
+Oldburyport; if anything, I have grown more loyal than ever.
+
+I love the deep snow and the trees bare as they are, and the square
+down the road a piece, and the post-office, and the trolley cars. Our
+cars go fast, but not too fast,--just fast enough, and they have no
+dead man's curve. Folks in Oldburyport die a natural death. They are
+not killed by the cable or run over by bicycles, or, what is quite as
+bad, hurried and worried to death by the rush of life, as people are
+in New York. I declare I felt as if I had lived an age in the month I
+was there; but then, why shouldn't I, with so much happening and such
+exciting and distressing things too! It seems as if everything went
+crooked. Now, if my advice had been taken in the beginning--but nobody
+ever will take advice except in Oldburyport.
+
+It makes me wrathy to think of Winifred Anstice marrying that Mr.
+Flint, who is so dangerously irreligious, and Philip Brady marrying
+Nora Costello, who is so injudiciously religious, and then poor
+Leonard Davitt throwing away his life for that pert, forward, foolish
+Tilly Marsden, who has gone back to her shop-counter, pleased, for all
+I know, with all the excitement she raised! If corporal punishment in
+early youth were strictly adhered to, there would be fewer Tilly
+Marsdens in the world. In Oldburyport, I am happy to say, we believe
+in corporal punishment.
+
+Poor Leonard! I have not got over his death yet. It was all so sad and
+so unnecessary. But I am not sure that he is not better off as he is
+than he would have been married to that girl. His mother took to her
+bed when she heard the news, and the doctor thinks she will not live
+long. So Tilly Marsden will have that death on her conscience, too, or
+would if she had a conscience to have it on.
+
+There might very easily have been a third, for they said the first
+bullet which Leonard fired must have come within an inch of Jonathan
+Flint's head. I should have supposed such an escape must have softened
+even him. I thought it was a good time to impress the lesson, so I
+pointed to the bullet buried in the wall.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said I, "can you look at that and not believe in
+Providence?"
+
+Instead of being convinced, as I thought he would, he only pointed to
+Leonard's body lying under it and said nothing.
+
+I hate these people who are given to expressive silences. It takes one
+at a disadvantage. Silence is the only argument to which there is no
+answer. At the time I could not think of anything to say to him,
+though, since I got home, I've thought of ever so many. It is easier
+to think, I find, in Oldburyport.
+
+Except for the last terrible days I had a beautiful time in the city,
+and as I look over my diary I am quite overwhelmed to see how many
+things Winifred did for me. She is a dear girl! I have promised to
+embroider all the table linen for her wedding outfit. I console myself
+by reflecting that Mr. Flint is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, and
+if she wants me to like him, I suppose I must try, though I may
+confess right here to my diary that for years I have been wanting her
+to marry Philip Brady. She ought to have done it, but we are all fools
+where matrimony is concerned.
+
+ P. S. I have promised to marry Dr. Cricket.
+
+
+ * * * * * *
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flint, by Maud Wilder Goodwin
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