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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by 
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+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: The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2010 [EBook #31202]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE CASES OF DR. STANCHON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that
+was softly tightening."]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+STRANGE CASES OF
+
+DR. STANCHON
+
+
+BY
+
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"THE INHERITANCE," "THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY,"
+
+"THE MADNESS OF PHILIP," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+
+  Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
+  Copyright, 1909, 1910, by Harper and Brothers.
+  Copyright, 1911, 1913, by the Crowell Publishing Company.
+  Copyright, 1911, by the Curtis Publishing Company.
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+M. A. T.
+
+WHO WATCHED MANY OF
+
+THESE STORIES IN THE MAKING
+
+               J. D. B.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE KEY
+  THE CHILDREN
+  THE CRYSTAL
+  THE GOSPEL
+  THE GYPSY
+  THE WARNING
+  THE LEGACY
+  THE MIRACLE
+  THE UNBURIED
+  THE ORACLES
+
+
+
+
+THE KEY
+
+The young doctor stamped vehemently up the marble steps, to warm his
+feet, and once in the warm, flower-scented halls, let a little shiver
+escape him.  The butler was new--he was always new, the doctor
+thought--and actually didn't know him.
+
+"Mrs. Allen is at bridge, sir, with a party: she asks to be excused,"
+he began mechanically.
+
+(_"That's good!" Stanchon felt tempted to say, "and I hope the girls
+are out, too!"_)  As if in answer to this indiscretion, the new butler
+droned on:
+
+"Miss Alida is at her riding-lesson and Miss Suzanne is--is engaged----"
+
+(_"Now, what particular infernal idiocy is Suzanne at, I wonder?"
+Stanchon pondered, still smiling lightly at the butler and warming
+himself at every breath._)
+
+"Mr. Edmund is--I think he could be found, sir," the voice went on.
+
+(_"I don't doubt it," Stanchon agreed mentally, "at the side board, no
+doubt; a nice time of day for a lad of twenty to be hanging about the
+house!"_)
+
+But all he said was:
+
+"I am the doctor.  I called to see Miss Mary."
+
+"Oh!"  Even this new butler assumed a look of burdened intelligence; he
+leaned toward the visitor, "Oh, yes, sir--Miss Mary.  I understood that
+it wouldn't be possible for Miss Mary to see anybody, sir, but I
+suppose, the doctor----"
+
+"Certainly," said Stanchon curtly.  "Please send word to her nurse that
+I am here."
+
+"Yes, sir," but the man hesitated, even as he took the hat held out to
+him, "yes, sir, but--but ... it isn't Dr. Jarvyse, is it, sir?"
+
+A slow, dark red spread over Stanchon's forehead.
+
+(_"So they've sent for Jarvyse--well, I might have known.  Nice,
+tactful crowd, aren't they!"_)
+
+He scowled slightly and set his jaw.
+
+"No, I'm Dr. Stanchon," he said.  "Dr. Jarvyse is coming later, I
+suppose.  Kindly let Miss Jessop know that I am here, will you?  I
+haven't much time."
+
+The man sped swiftly down the hall, after depositing his hatless charge
+in a blue satin reception-room, and Stanchon stared, unseeing, at the
+old Chinese panels and ivory figures that dotted its walls and tables.
+The strong odour of freesias and paper-narcissus hung heavy in the
+room; the roar of the great, dirty, cold city was utterly shut away and
+a scented silence, costly and blue and drowsy, held everything.
+
+Presently the nurse stood before him, smiling, and he saw that her
+usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and
+peaked cap of her profession.
+
+"What's all this?" he asked, and she shrugged her broad shoulders.
+
+"She told me to put it on to-day.  'You're really a nurse, you know,
+Miss Jessop,' she said, 'and if I require one, it might as well be
+known.'  Of course, I had it here, so I got it right out.  Poor Miss
+Mary!"
+
+"I see they've sent for Jarvyse?"
+
+She nodded uncomfortably.
+
+"Then it's all over but the shouting, I suppose?"  Again she shrugged.
+The fatalism of her training spoke in that shrug, and the necessity for
+taking everything as it comes--since everything is bound to come!
+
+"H'm..." he meditated deeply, and all the youth went out of his face,
+suddenly: he might have been forty-five or fifty.  At such times the
+nurses and the other doctors always watched him eagerly; it was
+supposed that it was then that those uncanny intuitions came to him,
+that almost clairvoyant penetration of the diseased minds that were his
+chosen study.
+
+"How is she?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Oh, very much the same, doctor.  I can't see much difference."
+
+"But you see a little?"
+
+She moved uncomfortably.
+
+"I don't say that ... it's nothing she says or does--but--sometimes I
+think she's a little more--a little less..."
+
+"A little less normal?"
+
+She rested, relieved.
+
+"Yes, just that."
+
+Across the broad halls came a wave of sudden sound: movement of
+drapery, faint clashes of metallic substances and glass, broken
+feminine cries and light, breathy laughter.  A difference in the air
+became noticeable, new perfumes floated in to the little blue room,
+perfumes and the odour of expensive, warm fur.
+
+--"You don't mean to say that you discard from a strong suit--always?"
+
+"My dear, I had nothing but that queen--nothing!"
+
+--"And that's why, as Elwell says...."
+
+--"And so he absolutely refuses to play with women!"
+
+Evidently a door had been opened, somewhere.  The next moment brought a
+new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence
+again, sudden and profound, from the street-side.  A deep, almost
+dramatic voice silenced the confused babble.
+
+"My dear, I'm frightfully sorry, but I simply could _not_ manage to get
+here before!  Why weren't any of you at the lecture?  _Moyen Age_
+house-furniture and decoration--terribly interesting.  It's a shame to
+miss a thing like that.  Is my table all made up?  Never mind, I can
+cut in any time.  Yes, Mrs. Allen, I know, but really, you ought not to
+neglect the intellectual side, entirely, you know!"
+
+The door closed instantly, and again they stood alone in the heavy
+silence.  It was as if a curtain had been lifted swiftly on some
+bustling, high-lighted scene and dropped as swiftly.  Only a strong,
+heady scent floated in on them, troubling, suggestive, complicated.
+
+"What is that?" Stanchon asked, sniffing.
+
+"Oh, one of those new Russian perfumes," the nurse said.  "I hate them."
+
+"Russian?" he looked puzzled.
+
+"Don't you know it's a Russian season?" she instructed him.  "Dancers
+and music and hats--those high fur ones--and perfumes?  And all that
+Byzantine embroidery?  You must have noticed!"
+
+"Oh!"  He considered thoughtfully.  "I _had_ noticed the perfumes.  But
+I didn't know why it was....  Well, am I to see Miss Mary?"
+
+"I don't know why not, doctor," she said.  "She always likes to see
+you.  And I suppose you'll consult with Dr. Jarvyse, won't you?"
+
+"I suppose so," he agreed, "though, of course, nobody's asked me.  Is
+she going out, this weather?"
+
+"No: I wish she would.  She says it tires her too much.  It's a pity
+she hates the South so."
+
+They walked to the tiny tapestried lift, beyond the curve of the great
+stairs, and she pressed the ivory button that sent them up.  At the
+fourth floor the car settled lightly and they stepped out.
+
+"She's not speaking much," the nurse warned him, "but of course she
+may, for you.  Very gloomy, for two days, she's been."
+
+She knocked lightly at a door and entered without waiting.  The room
+was very light, with bowls of cut flowers everywhere and a pair of
+green love-birds billing eternally on a brass standard: they chirped
+softly now and then.  A miniature grand piano filled one corner, and
+the light fell richly on the tooled leather of low book-cases, and
+slipped into reflected pools of violet, green and blood-red on the
+polished floor.  A great tiger skin stretched in front of a massive,
+claw-legged davenport, and in the corner of it, away from the cheerful,
+crackling fire, a black-haired woman sat, tense and silent, her eyes
+fixed in a brooding stare.  She was all in delicate, cunningly mingled
+tints of mauve, violet and lavender; near her neck tiny diamond points
+winked; magnificent emeralds edged with diamonds lay like green stains
+on her long white hands.  In her dark immobility, among the rich, clear
+objects scattered so artfully about the sun-lighted chamber, she had a
+marvellous effect of being the chief figure in some modern French
+artist's impressionistic "interior."  She gave a distinct sense of
+having been bathed and dried, scented and curled, dressed--and
+abandoned there, between the love-birds and the polished piano: a large
+gold frame about the room would have supplied the one note lacking.
+
+"Well, Miss Mary, and how goes it?" Dr. Stanchon said, sitting beside
+her and taking her hand easily, since she failed to notice his own
+outstretched.
+
+She lifted her eyes slightly to his, moved her lips, then sighed a
+little and dropped her lids.  She might have been a young-looking woman
+of forty, or a girl of twenty-five who had been long ill or distressed.
+
+"Come, now, Miss Mary, I hear you've given me up--wasn't I high priced
+enough for you?  Because I can always accommodate, you know, in that
+direction," Stanchon went on persuasively.
+
+Again she raised her eyes, swallowed, appeared to overcome an almost
+unconquerable lethargy of spirit, and spoke.
+
+"It's no use, doctor, all that.  I've given up.  It's all one to me,
+now.  Don't bother about me."
+
+Stanchon looked genuinely concerned.  He had worked hard over this
+case, and it cut his pride to have the great specialist, with his
+monotonous inflexible system, summoned against his express wish.  That
+meant they were all tired, disgusted, sick of the whole business.  They
+were determined to be rid of her.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look at it that way, Miss Mary," he said gently.
+"I don't believe you need give up--if you'll only make an effort.  But
+it's fatal to give 'way: I've always told you that."
+
+"Yes.  You always told me that.  You were always open and fair," she
+said wearily, "but now you see it is fatal, for I _have_ given 'way.
+Please go," she added nervously.  "I feel more like crying.  Ask him to
+go, Miss Jessop..."
+
+Her voice grew peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left
+her.  It was too bad, but there was nothing to do.  Once or twice in
+his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness,
+realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping
+over him, too, and that he had no power to help.
+
+"Oh, well, you can't win out all the time," he said to himself
+philosophically, "and it isn't as if she wouldn't have every comfort.
+Old Jarvyse looks after them well: I'll say that for him."
+
+The new butler met him as the lift reached the drawing-room floor.
+
+"Mr. Edmund would like to see you a moment, sir," he murmured.
+"He's--he's in the dining-room, doctor."
+
+Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung
+apartment.  He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave
+under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the
+peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked
+him for a moment.  Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual,
+even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand
+had a positively insolent angle.
+
+"Oh!  How do!" he said discontentedly.  "Been upstairs, I hear?"
+
+"Yes," Stanchon answered briefly.
+
+"Well, ... how about it?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say your aunt is a little worse to-day; it may be,
+probably is, nothing but a passing phase----"
+
+"Ah, go on!" Edmund burst out.  "Phase, nothing!  She's as dippy as
+they make 'em, Stanchon, and I'm through with it!"
+
+The older man looked his disgust, but Edmund scowled and went on.
+
+"After day before yesterday afternoon, I told Suzanne I'd come to the
+end of my rope, and I meant it.  I suppose you heard about it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, Miss Jessop knows.  Upsetting a whole luncheon, and one the girls
+had worked over, too, I can tell you!  Why, they had three reporters on
+their knees to hear about that luncheon!"
+
+"Really?" Stanchon inquired politely.
+
+"Yes.  But Alida wouldn't let mother say a word.  And that was all
+right, too.  And then what does Aunt Mary do but say she's coming?  And
+mother weakened and said we'd have to let her, because either she is
+all right or she isn't, and according to you, we're not to admit she
+isn't--yet.  So she comes, and what does she do but insult two of the
+biggest swells there, right to their face!  And when Suzanne tried to
+carry it off, she just turns stubborn and never opens her mouth again.
+Queered the whole thing.  Broke the women all up.  Suzanne says, never
+again!  And I'm with her.  I had Jarvyse called in and he's going to
+make his final decision today.  Of course, if he wants to consult,
+we'll be glad----"
+
+"Dr. Jarvyse and I will settle all that, thanks," Stanchon interrupted
+coldly.  "I regret that your sisters should have been annoyed, but as I
+explained to your mother, inconveniences of this sort would be bound to
+occur, and the only question was----"
+
+"The only question is," Edmund blustered, "are we to be queered in New
+York for good by a woman who ought to have been shut up long ago!  It's
+up to me, now, as the man of the house, and I say, no."
+
+He dabbed his cigarette viciously into a wet ring on the silver tray
+beside him and filled a tiny glass from a decanter; his hand shook.
+
+Stanchon's mounting wrath subsided.  The boy became pathetic to him;
+behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and
+rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly
+shadow of a sickly middle-age, a warped and wasted maturity.
+
+"I'm sorry for you all," he said kindly.  "Don't think I don't
+appreciate the strain ... your mother has tried her best, I'm sure.
+And--and go slow on those cigarettes, Allen, why don't you?  They won't
+help that cough, you know.  And you told me you'd cut out the Scotch."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," Edmund assured him.  "I was seasoned in the
+cradle, doc!  Remember the old man's cigars?"
+
+Stanchon put on his gloves.
+
+"Your father was a very strong man," he said quietly, "and a hard
+worker.  And I've already reminded you that he didn't inhale.  And for
+more years than you've lived, Allen, he worked out of doors.  I don't
+want to nag at you, but just give it a thought now and then.  And let
+me know if I can do anything for you, ever.  My regards to your
+sisters."
+
+As he paused at the curb, a short man in heavy motoring furs stumbled
+out of a luxurious landaulet and would have gone down on the
+treacherous pavement without Stanchon's quick arm.
+
+"All right, doctor, all right," he smiled, as he braced himself for the
+little man's weight.  "Glad I was here.  I've just left Mary--she's
+getting a little unmanageable, I hear."
+
+"Yes, yes," the little man panted, "she'll do better out of the family.
+Yes, yes.  They often do, you know.  Position's perfectly anomalous
+here, you know--constant friction."
+
+"I see," said Stanchon.  "Let me walk up to the door with you--I've
+practiced on the steps, once today.  You make it ..."
+
+"Oh, clear paranoia," Jarvyse finished the sentence promptly.  "They go
+right along, you know.  Perfectly typical.  Good days--yes.  Of course.
+Everybody encouraged.  Come to a ladies' luncheon--fat in the fire
+directly.  No keeping servants, you know.  All that sort of thing.
+Ever show you my card-catalogue of women between thirty-eight and
+thirty-nine?  No?  Ask me some day."
+
+The younger man pressed the electric button and turned the bronze knob
+of the outer door, wrought and decorated like some great public tomb.
+
+"Thanks, I'd be interested," he said.
+
+"You knew the brother, didn't you?" Jarvyse went on, breathing easier
+in the warmth of the vestibule.  "Nothing out of the way there?"
+
+"Absolutely not.  He had the constitution of a bull.  But I fear he's
+not handed it on to his son."
+
+"Ugh, no!  Nasty little cub.  Those families don't last.  Daughters
+always stronger.  I give him fifteen ... eighteen years," the alienist
+said placidly.
+
+The inner door opened and Stanchon turned to go.
+
+"Come up and see the patient," Jarvyse suggested, over his shoulder,
+one glove already off.  "Pleased to have you, and so would she, of
+course.  You'll find her much happier."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+But Miss Mary was not happier.  Freed of the contemptuous _brusquerie_
+of Edmund, the thinly-veiled dislike of the girls, the
+conscience-stricken attempts of her sister-in-law, she had felt for a
+time the relief of a strain abandoned, the comfort of a definite
+position.  They had come to see her, too, and their timid overtures of
+interest, their obvious surprise at the ease with which this great
+change had been effected, their frank amazement at the luxury and
+silken routine in which they found her, had almost established
+relations long since fallen out of use.  But the novelty had faded, the
+visits grew fewer and shorter, the very telephone messages languished;
+and as she sat brooding alone, in the few unoccupied half-hours that
+the omniscient System left her, a slow, sure conviction dropped like an
+acid on the clouded surface of her mind: she was alone.  She was no
+longer a part of life as it was ordinarily lived.  She and the others
+who shared that rich, tended seclusion were apart from the usages and
+responsibilities of the World that was counterfeited there.  They were
+unreal.  Through all the exercise and repose, the baths and
+manipulations, the music and the silences, the courtesies and the
+deprecations, the flowers and the birds that brought an artificial
+summer within the thick walls, one idea clanged like a bell through her
+weary mind: _This is not real_.
+
+To Dr. Stanchon, who came in the intervals allowed by his work, she
+seemed sadly changed.  It was not that her face looked heavier and more
+fretfully lined; not that her voice grew more monotonous; not that she
+seemed sunk in the selfish stupor that her type of suffering invariably
+produces.  He had seen all this in others and seen it change for a
+better state.  No; in Miss Mary the settled pessimism of a deep
+conviction had an almost uncanny power of communicating itself to those
+about her.
+
+"She's in bad, that one," one of the gardeners said to him, on a windy
+March day when he had hunted for her over half-a-dozen guarded acres,
+and found her sitting in one of her heavy silences under a sunny ledge
+of rock.
+
+"She's quiet and easy, but she's one of the worst of 'em, in my
+opinion."
+
+And when she turned to him a moment later and said quietly: "Tell me,
+once for all, Dr. Stanchon, do you consider me insane?" his voice
+expressed all the simple sincerity of his eyes.
+
+"Miss Mary, I tell you the truth--I don't know."
+
+"But you know they'll never let me out?"
+
+He braced himself.  "How can they, Miss Mary, when you won't
+promise----"
+
+"Why should I promise anything, if I'm not insane?  Would you promise
+never to state your opinion in your own house?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"You see!" he said gently.
+
+Beyond them the gardener struggled with a refractory horse that refused
+to draw his load of brush and dead leaves.  She stared at the group
+dully: six months ago she would have flinched at the great clambering
+hoofs and the man's danger.
+
+"And even if I did give up and promise everything, do you believe I'd
+get out, doctor?"
+
+"I see no reason----"
+
+"You don't need to lie to me," she interrupted.  "When I signed that
+paper, they fooled me: it was for good.  It said six months--but it was
+for good."
+
+He felt a great sympathy for her.  It was hard, very hard.  And yet,
+what they had been through with her!
+
+"If only you hadn't refused to travel," he began.
+
+"But I agreed to--I agreed to, last month," she cried, "even though I'm
+never well travelling, I agreed to--and what happened?  Dr. Jarvyse
+said it wouldn't be best for me!  And you did nothing..."
+
+"How could I, Miss Mary?" he urged.  "You know the only reason I see
+you so often is that I acquiesce and don't interfere.  The moment I
+thought it would do any good----"
+
+"You mean you're not sure, yourself!" she said keenly.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"You know I'm your friend," he said simply.
+
+Her whole face changed.  An almost disconcerting brightness flashed
+over it.  Through all the heaviness and fatigue and despair that had
+yellowed her skin, dulled her eyes, and taken, it seemed, the very
+sheen from her black hair, her lost girlhood flared a moment.  With the
+inconstant emotion of a child she smiled at him.
+
+"I know you are," she murmured confidingly, "and I'll tell you
+something, because you are."
+
+"What is it, Miss Mary?" he said, but he sighed as he said it.
+
+"Do you see how I'm dressed?" she half whispered.  He looked,
+uncomprehending, at the long light ulster she wore.
+
+"Underneath, I'm in black," she said softly, "a whole suit.  I have a
+little bag packed right under this rock, and I have ninety dollars in
+my bag, here."  She tapped her waist, where a small shopping bag
+dangled.  "And I have an umbrella.  I always sit near this gate."
+
+"Why do you do such things, dear Miss Mary?" he said sadly.  "It does
+you no good--please try to believe me!"
+
+"I never did, until I had the dream," she answered calmly.  "This is
+the third night I've had it.  I dreamed I was near some gate, and I
+looked down, and right before me on the path I saw a key--a great,
+brown key!  So I started to pick it up, and then I realised that I
+wasn't prepared, that I had no money, and that I'd just be caught and
+brought back.  Then I woke.  But I dreamed it over again the next
+night, so I packed the bag and got it out here under this steamer-rug,
+and asked for some money to buy presents when that embroidery woman
+came from Lakewood.  And I got it, of course, and bought some.  She
+said she was coming again.  So I got more.  Last night I dreamed it
+again, and it looked like this gate, in the dream.  That's three times.
+Suzanne has those dreams, you know--she's like me, Suzanne--and they
+always happen.  So perhaps mine will.  I tell you, because you're my
+friend.  And you would never have put me here."
+
+Stanchon bit his lip.  A sudden disgust of everything seized him.
+
+"No, I wouldn't have put you here--once," he said slowly, then rose
+abruptly.
+
+"Hi, there, hold him! hold him, you fool!" he shouted.  "Sit on his
+head!"
+
+The gardener's horse, beyond all control, now, was rolling furiously,
+neighing and snapping.  The man clung to the reins, keeping his
+distance, but as the animal gained his feet with a lurch, his finger
+slipped and he, too, rolled over and over down the little slope to the
+gravelled path.  Stanchon was after the horse before the attendant had
+picked himself up and was calling him angrily.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, miss," the man panted.  "The doctor and I can settle
+him!" and staggering to his feet made off to the rescue.  As he ran,
+something clinked and rattled about his boots, and a bunch of keys lay
+quiet on the gravel.
+
+Miss Mary rose instantly, walked to them and put her foot over them,
+but the man was several yards away and Stanchon and the horse were
+struggling towards the wagon.  Miss Mary stooped down and lifted the
+keys; all had metal tags and the one in her hand read, _East Gate, by
+shrubbery_.  She stepped to the ledge, drew out a fair sized black
+hand-bag, tucked her umbrella under her arm and looked about her.  The
+nearest gate, set in dense shrubbery, lay in a direct line with the
+ledge, and as she slipped behind it the two men and the horse were
+wiped out of her vision.  With her usual quiet, long step she reached
+the gate, fitted the key, turned it and opened the gate.  She closed it
+behind her, considered a moment, then tossed the keys back among the
+thick, glossy rhododendrons.
+
+"Just as I dreamed," she muttered, "but where is the carriage?"
+
+She stood on the edge of a road she had never seen, a quarter of a mile
+from the great wrought-iron entrance that had closed behind her half a
+year ago, and looked vaguely about her, at the mercy of Fate.  And
+Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the
+hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny
+little electric run-about of Miss Winifred Jarvyse, a handsome young
+Diana, who had never seen the inside of the great walled estate next
+her father's private grounds, so that she waved her hand cordially,
+stopped out of pure good feeling for the absent-minded stranger in the
+beautiful coat, and asked if she could drop her at the station!
+
+"Why, yes, thank you," said Miss Mary, still vaguely.
+
+"It's going to rain and I've no cover on," said Winifred.  "It's a pity
+about your coat."
+
+"I can turn it," said Miss Mary, and standing up for a moment she
+slipped the sleeves of the ulster, shook herself slightly and sat down
+a totally different woman.  So that when (such was the perfection of
+the System) a quick call to the ticket office set the agent searching
+twenty minutes later for a tall woman in a light tan coat, alone,
+without luggage, he replied very truly that no such person had entered
+his station.  Only a friend of Miss Jarvyse had come to the 2:15, a
+lady in a dark plaid ulster with bag and umbrella, in Miss Jarvyse's
+car.
+
+"I hope you found your friends--er--doing well?" said Miss Jarvyse
+delicately.
+
+"Thank you, they were very well," said Miss Mary gravely.  And she took
+the 2:15 for New York.
+
+Nothing further than the immediate moment was in her mind.  To her
+thought, long confused and fleeting, the dreamlike character of this
+sudden change seemed natural and simple.  She had no plan of campaign,
+no route of escape, no future.  Her mind, relaxed from the quick
+decision that had cleared its mists in the moment of action, began to
+dull and settle and fall into its old rut of mechanical despair, when
+suddenly the voices of two women in the seat behind her grew louder and
+rose above the jar of the train.
+
+"And so she decided to get it over while he was in the hospital.  She
+thought the dye would have to wear off gradually, but there's a place
+on West Twenty-eighth Street--near Sixth Avenue, I think--where a
+French woman guarantees to remove any dye, perfectly harmlessly, in two
+hours.  So she had it done, and he was delighted.  My dear, she was
+fifty, and the grey hair really was more becoming to her.  Everybody
+thinks so.  But nobody knew her--I never saw such a change, at first.
+If you know anybody who wants it done, just send them there.  Some
+French name."
+
+And just as Miss Mary was drifting off to that dull world of grievances
+in which she dwelt habitually, a new idea, as strong and definite as
+that which took her through the gate caught and held her, and she wrote
+in a little leather book in her bag, "28th St. west, near Sixth."  Some
+primitive instinct of caution directed her to a street car in
+preference to a hansom or taxi-cab, and she found the French woman's
+small, musty establishment with an ease that surprised her.  Her coat,
+obviously "imported," the elegance of her bag and umbrella, the air of
+custom with which she submitted to others' ministrations, brought her
+quick service, and in less than the guaranteed two hours she left
+Madame, whose very considerable fee she paid with gloved hands, thus,
+through sheer inadvertence, concealing the one trace of her
+identity--her massive and beautiful rings.  For no one of Dr. Jarvyse's
+detectives could be expected to look at an iron-grey woman in black,
+when searching for a black-haired woman in blue plaid.  And none of
+them, not the great Jarvyse, nor her maid even, knew that Miss Mary had
+dyed her hair for ten years!
+
+As she stood by a little optician's, on one of the great avenues,
+later, gazing fascinated at her strange reflection in a large glass
+there, terrified at her daring, doubtful if her freedom could endure,
+two errand-girls, peering in with her in the imitative New York
+fashion, held her with an idle sentence.
+
+"Did you know Miss Mahoney with those glasses?  I nearly fell over when
+I seen her, honest!  She was awful cross--the boss himself cut her
+dead!"
+
+"Say, what do you think of that now?"
+
+"An' they're only window-glass, too!  She told one o' the fitters.  She
+can stare at the ladies better she says, when they try to beat her
+down."
+
+They moved on, but Miss Mary entered the shop.
+
+"Can I get a pair of eye-glasses made of window-glass?" she asked him
+simply.
+
+"Certainly, madam," and one would have supposed that leaders of fashion
+generally were wearing these articles, so swiftly and unsmilingly did
+he produce them and adjust them to her strong, dark eyes.
+
+"Wonderful how they change a person, though," he admitted.  "You
+wouldn't believe it."
+
+The price seemed very small to Miss Mary, whose last purchase in that
+line had been a tortoise-shell lorgnette for her sister-in-law.
+
+She had eaten very lightly at luncheon, for food was tasteless to her,
+of late, and she had been so followed, tended and directed in all the
+operations of life that she actually failed to recognise her sensations
+as those of hunger.  But her unwonted exertions, the strain on her
+flagging brain, the stimulus of this unprecedented day, all combined to
+flush her cheek feverishly and she felt strangely weak.  For the first
+time it flashed over her cleared faculties that she must go somewhere
+and at once.  New York was too dangerous for her; she must leave it.
+
+A very panic of terror seized her and she half expected to hear Dr.
+Jarvyse's soft voice at her shoulder.  She started from the shop like
+one pursued, and hurried foolishly on and on in an ecstasy of flight.
+The streets were now dark, and Miss Mary, who had begun life in New
+York with her own private hansom, felt singularly out of place in the
+jostling crowd.
+
+She stopped at the foot of an elevated railway station, and more
+because she was pushed up the steps by the hurrying mass of humanity
+that scurried like ants up and down, than for any other reason, climbed
+wearily up.  As she sat pressed against a dirty man with a bundle, a
+sudden inconsequent thought struck her, and she removed her gloves in a
+leisurely way, took off her rings, dropped them into a roll of
+chamois-skin in the large bag, added to them a diamond cross and
+pendant from the lace at her neck and put on her gloves again.  The
+dirty man stared at her.
+
+Then she lifted her eyes to a large sign above the car-windows and the
+sign read:
+
+_Avoid the biting March winds.  You will find quiet, an even
+temperature and perfect seclusion among the pines at restful Lakewood.
+Take the ferry at 23d St._
+
+So that when the guard announced Twenty-third Street, Miss Mary got up,
+went down the stairs, tumbled with surprising facility upon a
+cross-town car and made for the ferry.  And the dirty man went down the
+stairs with her.
+
+Fate put Miss Mary on just the right boat for a Lakewood Special, and
+hunger cleared her mind to the extent of throwing her card-case over
+the rail on the way across.  Her umbrella and ulster she had left
+behind on the elevated train, not being accustomed to carry such
+things, and they were found by a thrifty old lady in the
+second-hand-clothing line, who annexed them silently and forever.  So
+that when she arrived at the Lakewood Station and fell among the
+cabbies and hotel touts she was the perfect type of the no-longer-young
+spinster, unaccompanied, awkward and light of luggage, presumably light
+of purse.  The cabbies left her therefore, unchallenged, to a lad as
+shy and awkward as herself, who mumbled something about quiet,
+reasonable rooms, and received her yielded bag with a surprise as great
+as her own.
+
+Miss Mary was by now almost light-headed from hunger and excitement.
+At the slightest pressure she would have told her story to the first
+interested stranger, and thus ended her adventure, most surely.  But
+Fate led her to the door of one too full of trouble to heed Miss
+Mary's.  To Mrs. Meeker she was a lodger certainly, a boarder
+possibly--in any event, a source of income.  So long had she been
+waiting for Miss Mary that she fairly snatched her bag from her and
+pushed her up the faded, decent stairs into the faded, decent bedroom
+with the cracked china toilet-set.  Any one, _any one_ would have been
+welcome to Mrs. Meeker, and Miss Mary's quiet elegance and handsome
+travelling-bag were far beyond her hopes.
+
+"A real lady," she whispered to her nephew.  "Ask if she'd like a
+little something on a tray, Georgie.  I could poach that egg, and
+there's tea.  I won't say anything about a week in advance.  She looks
+tired to death."
+
+Miss Mary's famishing senses cried out loudly at sight of the meagre
+tray, and as the egg and tea passed her lips a strange, eager sensation
+was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad
+she was alive!  She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could
+have wished it doubled; the cheap tea filled her nostrils with a balmy
+odour; she was hungry.
+
+And hardly had the food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head
+dropped forward.  Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her
+and she dozed in her chair.  But some instinct forced her to her feet
+as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and
+pocketbook, she held herself awake.
+
+"I'd like to pay," she murmured, "and then I'll--I'll go to bed.  Will
+you send some one, please?"
+
+She meant some one to undress her, but Mrs. Meeker did not know this.
+
+"It's--it's twelve a week, with board," she said, her eyes lighting at
+the yellow bills in her lodger's hand, "and--oh, dear, yes, two weeks
+is ample, Miss--Miss----"
+
+"My cards are lost," said Miss Mary fretfully.  "I can't think where I
+left them.  The man or somebody will know.  Ask----"
+
+She started to say, "Ask the doctor," for her memory was swallowed,
+nearly, by sleepiness, and a curious woman would have had her secret in
+a twinkle.  But Mrs. Meeker was too thankful to be curious.
+
+"Certainly, Miss--Miss----"
+
+"Miss Mary," said the other, yawning, and the landlady repeated, "Yes,
+Miss Merry.  Can't I help you, you being so tired and all?"
+
+"And she stuck out her feet for her shoes, just like a baby," she
+confided to Georgie, later.  "She went off before I got her undressed,
+really; her folks ought to 've sent some one with her, worn out as she
+was!  You go 'round the first thing in the morning and tell the agent
+I've got a fine boarder, and more expected.  I feel real encouraged."
+
+And all that night and all the next day Miss Mary slept dreamlessly,
+for the first time in years without a drug to help her.
+
+It did not seem unusual that Mrs. Meeker should have unpacked her few
+things and laid them in the drawer of the battered bureau: some one
+always unpacked her things.  And when, strangely weak and relaxed, she
+lay for three days more and ate dutifully from the tray, dozing between
+whiles, nobody questioned her.
+
+On the fourth day she woke into a grey, despondent world again.  The
+old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible
+dumbness settling over her.  She had long ceased to fight it, now; she
+only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her.  But she never knew
+what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little
+woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands;
+she was dressed for a journey.
+
+"My brother's down with a stroke," she said abruptly, "Georgie's
+father, and wants to see me.  I'll have to nurse him, prob'ly, and I
+s'pose his sending means he's friendly again.  It may just be I won't
+need to come back, and I'm glad, of course, for I'm worth my keep to
+him any day, and he'd ought to have took Georgie long ago.  I'll soon
+know, and I'll write you, and what I wanted to ask was, would you be
+willin' to wait till I find out?  It might be only temp'ry, and then
+I'd be sorry to lose a boarder.  Will you stay till you hear, anyway?"
+
+Miss Mary nodded dumbly.  She could not speak and she was ashamed that
+she could not; _she had never been ashamed before_.
+
+"That's good," said Mrs. Meeker quickly, "and the lady next door'll
+give you meals.  I'll settle with her--Mrs. Palmer.  Her board's good,
+and I'll only charge you five for the room.  That makes a month you've
+paid for.  D'you see?"
+
+Again, Miss Mary nodded.
+
+"Then I'll get right off.  It's Philadelphia I'm going to, and I'll
+write you as soon's I know.  But I count on you to stay."
+
+"Yes, I'll stay."
+
+Miss Mary forced the words harshly and it seemed that they would tear
+her lips, so hard they came.  But they came, and they sufficed for Mrs.
+Meeker, who went out of her solitary lodger's life as quickly as she
+had come into it, for Miss Mary never saw her again.
+
+On that day she dressed herself slowly, and with a certain clumsiness,
+took her little shopping bag and bought, with economy and taste, a very
+fair outfit of simple clothing for the seventy dollars she had gained
+on the strength of the peddler of embroideries; she passed the
+peddler's very shop on her way.  Underwear, a black dress, rubber
+overshoes and a plain umbrella--nothing was forgotten.
+
+"When my money is all gone, I will begin to sell the jewelry," she
+thought, for she knew that she could live comfortably for the rest of
+her life on less than the value of the emeralds and diamonds.  She did
+her shopping in a public victoria and brought the parcels home in it:
+it was her only extravagance that day.
+
+As she got out at the door of the little faded house and paid the
+driver, it occurred to her that she had left it unlocked during her
+absence, and in her remorse over this and the bustle of going to the
+strange dining-room for luncheon, whither she was summoned by a
+slatternly waitress, she forgot completely that on this day she had
+sworn to stay alone in her room, to conceal from strangers her malady
+of melancholy dumbness.
+
+"But I'm _not_ that way--I'm _not_!" she whispered to herself in
+amazement, "why, I talked to the clerks all the morning!" And so she
+had, and none of the dozen at Mrs. Palmer's table that noon remarked
+anything further than that Miss Merry seemed a quiet, shy sort of
+person with a tendency to vagueness and little idea of passing the
+butter dish.
+
+She sorted and arranged her purchases all the afternoon; the little
+roll of chamois-skin she kept carefully in the wrist-bag which never
+left her arm.
+
+At dinner Mrs. Palmer took her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss
+Mary's blood turned to water.  "She knows about me!" she thought and
+nearly fell to the ground from weakness.
+
+"I'm sorry I startled you," said Mrs. Palmer, "Mrs. Meeker said you
+weren't any too strong, I remember.  I only wanted to say that I've
+sent three more roomers over to your house--she'll be only too glad, I
+know.  You don't mind, Miss Merry?"
+
+"No.  I don't mind," she answered, and her heart gave a great pump of
+relief.
+
+"It'll be more comfortable at night, too," said Mrs. Palmer.  "That
+makes the four rooms full, now, and I'll see that your room gets done
+up every day with the others.  I presume we'll hear from her soon."
+
+The next day she approached Miss Mary with an open letter in her hand.
+
+"Mrs. Meeker's to live with her brother, now, he's paralysed," she
+announced.  "She's sent me a check for the rent and you've paid
+twenty-four dollars, I see.  I'm going over to pack up her stuff and
+she'll sell me the rest reasonable enough.  I'm going to take her
+house, too.  There's a new roomer comes to-day--I think I'll put him in
+her old room.  Or if you," with a shrewd glance at Miss Mary, "wanted
+to economise at all.  I'd rent you hers for four dollars and give this
+gentleman yours.  And I'm usually paid in advance, so if you could make
+it convenient----"
+
+"I'll attend to it," said Miss Mary, "but I'll keep the room, I think.
+I don't like change."
+
+She went up to her room, and Dr. Jarvyse would have been amazed at the
+easy quickness of her gait.  She had it all planned, now--the diamonds
+should go first, and then she would buy some fruit and a plant for her
+room.  She liked her room very much; she did as she pleased in it and
+no one spied on her or suggested ways of passing the time.  Was it some
+faint memory of her room as a girl, before her brother made his great
+fortune, that found this dull, half-worn chamber so home-like and
+soothing?  Every afternoon she dusted it, as the chambermaid suggested
+most ladies expected to, and once she had turned the mattress and made
+the bed, when the girl felt ill.  It gave her a sense of competence and
+executive ability.
+
+Now she went to the little chamois skin roll, unpicked the tight knots
+carefully, opened it--and dropped on her knees.  The roll was empty.
+On the compartment where the diamond cross had fitted, stretched a
+soiled, streaked thumb mark; mechanically she sniffed it--it smelled of
+tar.  The dirty fellow with the bundle who had followed her down the
+elevated steps had smelled of tar, too, had Miss Mary remembered it.
+
+Well, it was over.  She never had a moment's doubt.  She had no means,
+she could not starve, nobody would keep her, and she must go back to
+Dr. Jarvyse.  She groaned in anguish as she looked about her dear, safe
+room and thought of the horrible luxury of that guarded prison, the
+birds and the flowers and cruel kindness of those strangers who knew
+every corner of her bureau, every word of her letters.  Still, it must
+be.  The Allens would never take her back, and after this, she would be
+watched as never before.  It must be.
+
+She met Mrs. Palmer on the threshold of what she had begun to call her
+home.  Mrs. Palmer looked worried and spoke sharply to the untidy
+cleaning-woman behind her.
+
+"Now, I do hope I can trust you," she said, "for I can't stay here to
+watch.  Three new gentlemen for meals, and I have no table for them!
+And this whole house to be cleaned!  And not a girl to be hired in the
+town!  I wish I had another room--I could rent it this afternoon."
+
+"You can have mine," said Miss Mary quietly.  "I have no money and I
+must go."
+
+Mrs. Palmer looked shrewdly at her.
+
+"What made you think you had, before?" she said.
+
+"I had some valuable jewelry--I expected to sell it.  It must have been
+stolen before I got here.  I have nothing here to pay with, but I can
+send it back to you from New York."
+
+"Folks rich?" asked Mrs. Palmer.
+
+Miss Mary nodded carelessly.  That people should be rich was nothing to
+her, and the practiced landlady saw this in a twinkling: no
+protestations could have proved so much.
+
+"But you don't get on well, I s'pose," she suggested.
+
+"No.  We don't get on well," Miss Mary repeated dully.
+
+"I guess it's often so," said the other.  Her placid acceptance of
+these facts was very comforting to Miss Mary.  She did not realise how
+different she herself was from the vague, scared woman of a week ago;
+nor how her quiet, well-dressed taciturnity impressed Mrs. Palmer.
+
+"You find this agrees with you here, don't you?" the landlady asked,
+tapping her teeth with a key, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, yes, I like it here.  I would have liked to stay."
+
+"Well, Miss Merry, how'd you like to stay and help me?" said the
+landlady.  "To tell the truth, I've bit off more than I can chew, as
+they say.  I never had such a run of boarders, and it's all the girl
+can do to look after the other house.  What keeps my people is the
+cooking, you see, and that I do mostly myself.  I'm not fit to talk to
+the ladies and gentlemen, with my hair all stringy, and smelling of
+cooking.  I know it well enough.  I had some thought of asking Mrs.
+Meeker to go in with me and look after this house and take the head of
+the table, and keep the books.  But you could do it, if you wanted, and
+you'd look more--more--not that Mrs. Meeker wasn't a lady, of course,
+but--well, some people look the part better than others."
+
+Miss Mary's brain whirled.  The head of the table!  The books!  It was
+impossible.  Why, the woman didn't realise that she was talking to
+a--a--Patient, then!  (They were never called anything but Patients at
+Dr. Jarvyse's.)
+
+"I--I'm afraid I haven't the experience," she began tremulously.
+"I--sometimes my head--I can't always talk to people----"
+
+"Oh, you talk enough," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, kindly.  "That's just
+what it is: some talk too much.  Mr. Swartout (that's the literary
+gentleman in brown--the one with the grey moustache) said you were so
+quiet and dignified.  You know you sat at the end, today, for
+breakfast, and he said to me it would be pleasant if you kept that
+place.  That's what put it into my head, really.  And I guess you've
+had experience enough.  Miss Jenny, that went with you through the
+store when you bought those clothes (I know her, you see) said she'd
+never seen seventy dollars used with more judgment nor made to go
+further.  I noticed what she said."  She nodded shrewdly, as one who
+knew the world.
+
+"Well, I don't want to urge, but will you or won't you?  I'd give board
+and lodging and, say, twenty-five a month, till I could do better.  The
+Palmer House has just got to the point where there'll have to be a
+change, or it'll get second-class."
+
+"Very well, I will try," said Miss Mary huskily, and in a moment she
+was alone, for Mrs. Palmer was half across the side-yard.
+
+"Just boss that woman, then, and see if she can get the house clean by
+evening," she called over her shoulder.  "I leave her to you, Miss
+Merry, and it's a weight off me, I can tell you!"
+
+If Miss Mary had paused to think, she would have collapsed into tears
+and sent for the doctor, but she could not stop, for the cleaning-woman
+addressed her briskly.
+
+"I suppose everything better come right out and get a good beating?"
+she said, shouldering her mop; and Miss Mary controlled her quivering
+lips, pressed her hands to her head, which must not, _could not_ fail
+her now, and agreed.
+
+Late in the afternoon Mrs. Palmer dashed over, her hair flying, her
+dress untidy.
+
+"Well, how'd you get along?" she began, but paused in the doorway of
+the fresh, aired house, taking in, at one eagle glance, the white
+curtains behind shining panes, the polished woodwork, the re-arranged
+furniture.
+
+"I guess that cleaning-woman met her match," she announced dryly.  "You
+must be nearly dead, Miss Merry!  And all ready for dinner, too!  I've
+had a clean table cloth put on, and what do you think that Delia said?
+'I'll just rub out me apron an' press it off,' she said, 'for if
+_she's_ to head the table, I can see she'll be particular!'"
+
+Nothing could have kept Miss Mary up but the fact that her own room was
+yet uncleaned.  The lust of soap and water had entered into her, and
+she ate and answered and passed the butter dish like one in a dream,
+looking forward with the last of her strength to sleeping in an
+immaculate chamber.  And at half-past one in the morning, she did so.
+The warm bath in the painted tin tub was a luxury she had never
+imagined; as the sheets received her tired body, aching in every joint,
+she tasted for the one moment before sleep blotted out consciousness
+the ecstasy of earned rest after steady, worried toil, and it was very
+sweet.  Privilege of the clumsiest hod-carrier, it was utterly new to
+Miss Mary, and she in her innocence, thought it due to delight at the
+prospect of board and lodging and, say, twenty-five dollars a month!
+
+She did not know that she had hummed, unconsciously, during the
+afternoon, a song of her early girlhood; nor that the blood, long
+stagnant, that had raced through every vein as she stooped and beat and
+lifted and cleansed, was driving the crawling vapours from that
+mysterious grey tissue in her skull that had so long plagued and
+confused her.
+
+Nor did she know that the flowers on the table, the fresh chintz covers
+for the worn lodging-house furniture, so recklessly provided by her,
+the quick neatness of an apotheosised Delia and the gentle, reserved
+welcome of the new housekeeper herself, were lifting the commonplace
+boarding-house to a higher and still higher level.  She only knew that
+she worked harder and harder and never wept nor shuddered nor looked
+out of black apathy into a cruel tantalizing world, whose inhabitants
+had evil thoughts of her and wished and worked her ill.
+
+"It's just as I always say," Mrs. Palmer observed, one afternoon in
+May, as, resting in frank gingham and enveloping apron, she permitted
+herself the luxury of a cup of tea in Miss Mary's own room.  "What's
+bred in the bones comes out in the blood.  I had a gift for cooking
+since I was ten, and there's little I'll thank a French chef to tell
+me, Miss Merry.  But I can't impress the boarders.  I never could.  And
+I can't get the work out of servant-girls without screaming at
+'em--never could.  And look at you!  Every man of 'em--that we
+wanted--coming up two dollars a week, like gentlemen.  And all for the
+privilege of having this house bachelor.  I thought they would.  And
+every man Jack of 'em booked for November first again.  I tell you
+what, Miss Merry, we'll paint both houses this fall, and I wouldn't
+wonder, what with this spring being so backward and the season so long,
+if we could paint and paper inside, right through, would you?"
+
+"No," said the housekeeper, rocking gently, luxuriating in the
+half-hour rest after a hard day on her feet with one servant gone.
+"No, I wouldn't.  That would be nice.  I have something saved.  You can
+take that."
+
+"Look at you!" cried Mrs. Palmer.  "Saving on thirty a month!  We'll
+pretty near go halves, Miss Merry, from next November.  What's bred in
+the bone, as I said--you were born for the business!"
+
+And the sister of Hiram Z. Allen, late Captain of Finance, blushed with
+pleasure.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was in March of the next year, as she sat at her neat desk in the
+little room they had made into an office when they created a sun
+parlour out of the side verandah, that Delia, responsible head of three
+maids now, ushered a gentleman in to her.
+
+"The doctor, Miss Merry, that came yesterday about the rooms for his
+patient in the cottage," said Delia softly.  "I can't seem to get the
+name, ma'am."
+
+"Very well," said Miss Mary and rose, plumper by eight or ten pounds
+than she had been, dignified in black broadcloth, only enough of
+reserve and weighing of her words about her to mark her off slightly
+from the most of her sex and business.
+
+"Miss Merry?  I am Dr. Stanchon, I have been recommended most
+strongly----"
+
+She swayed before him, then sank into her chair, grasping the arms.  He
+looked courteously alarmed, stared, stared again, then snatched her
+hand.
+
+"It's not--it can't be--why, Miss Mary!"  She gasped and trembled.  The
+year dropped off from her like a loosened cloak.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Stanchon, don't, _don't_ tell him!" she moaned.
+
+"Him? him?" he repeated.  "Why, Miss Mary, were you here all the time?
+And your hair--you were ill?"
+
+"It used to be coloured--you never knew," she murmured.  "I mean
+Dr.--Dr. Jarvyse."
+
+"But you are the one Swartout described to me--the one he's in love
+with?  Miss Mary, it was wrong of you--I looked for months.  It was
+cruel.  And when they found the emeralds and the cross----"
+
+"Did they find them?"
+
+"Why, certainly--the stones were all listed, you know.  Didn't you read
+it in the papers?"
+
+"I never see them," she said quietly.  She had gathered herself
+together for what must be the struggle of her life.
+
+"Will you tell him?  I can't go back.  I'd die first!" she cried.
+
+"But why should you go back?" he asked in amazement.  "Surely you'll
+let them know?  They gave up hope long ago.  You needn't go back to
+them, if you're happy here, of course, and indeed, I wouldn't, Miss
+Mary----"
+
+"I don't mean go back _there_," she interrupted gently, "I mean to
+the--to--Dr.----"
+
+He stared.
+
+"You know, of course, what's the matter," she said quietly, "but nobody
+here does.  They think I'm--I'm like anybody else.  I don't mind any
+more, since I've been so busy.  I haven't had time to worry over it.
+But still, I know it.--And so I told Mr. Swartout it would be
+impossible.  It wouldn't be right."
+
+Stanchon seized both of her hands.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Miss Mary, what do you think's the matter with
+you?" he cried, his voice breaking in spite of himself.
+
+"Isn't it so?" she queried wistfully.  "Do you really mean it?--But who
+cured me, then?"
+
+"If you are the wonderful person I've been hearing about all this time
+from Swartout," Stanchon said, trying to speak lightly, his grey eyes
+firm on her anxious brown ones, "I should say that working for your
+living did it, Miss Mary!"
+
+And it may be he was right: as a diagnostician he has been widely
+commended.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+It all came over me, as you might say, when I began to tell the new
+housemaid about the work.  Not that I hadn't known before, of course,
+what a queer sort of life was led in that house; it was hard enough the
+first months, goodness knows.  But then, a body can get used to
+anything.  And there was no harm in it--I'll swear that to my dying
+day!  Although a lie's a lie, any way you put it, and if all I've
+told--but I'll let you judge for yourself.
+
+As I say, it was when I began to break Margaret in, that it all came
+over me, and I looked about me, in a way of speaking, for how I should
+put it to her.  She'd been house-parlor-maid in a big establishment in
+the country and knew what was expected of her well enough, and I saw
+from the first she'd fit in nicely with us; a steady, quiet girl, like
+the best of the Scotch, looking to save her wages, and get to be
+housekeeper herself, some day, perhaps.
+
+But when Hodges brought the tray with the porringers on it and the
+silver mug, for me to see, and said, "I suppose this young lady'll take
+these up, Miss Umbleby?" and when Margaret looked surprised and said,
+"I didn't know there were children in the family--am I supposed to wait
+on them, too?"--then, as I say, it all came over me, and for the first
+time in five years I really saw where I stood, like.
+
+I stared at Hodges and then at the girl, and the tray nearly went down
+amongst us.
+
+"Do you mean to say you haven't told her, Sarah?" says Hodges (and that
+was the first time that ever he called me by my given name).
+
+"She's told me nothing," Margaret answers rather short, "and if it's
+invalid children or feeble-minded, I take it most unkind, Miss Umbleby,
+for I've never cared for that sort of thing, and could have had my
+twenty-five dollars a month this long time, if I'd wanted to go out as
+nurse."
+
+"Take the tray up this time, yourself, Mr. Hodges, please," I said,
+"and I'll have a little talk with Margaret," and I sat down and
+smoothed my black silk skirt (I always wore black silk of an afternoon)
+nervously enough, I'll be bound.
+
+The five years rolled away like yesterday--as they do now--as they do
+now----
+
+I saw myself, in my mind's eye, new to the place, and inclined to feel
+strange, as I always did when I made a change, though I was twenty-five
+and no chicken, but rather more settled than most, having had my
+troubles early and got over them.  I'd just left my place--chambermaid
+and seamstress--in a big city house, and though it was September, I was
+looking out for the country, for I was mortal tired of the noise and
+late hours and excitement that I saw ahead of me.  It was parties and
+balls every night and me sitting up to undress the young ladies, for
+they kept no maid, like so many rich Americans, and yet some one must
+do for them.  There was no housekeeper either, and the mistress was not
+very strong and we had to use our own responsibility more than I
+liked--for I wasn't paid for that, do you see, and that's what they
+forget in this country.
+
+"I think I've got you suited at last, Sarah," the head of the office
+had said to me, "a nice, quiet place in the country, good pay and light
+work, but everything as it should be, you understand.  Four in help
+besides the housekeeper and only one in family.  Church within a mile
+and every other Sunday for yourself."
+
+That was just what I wanted, and I packed my box thankfully and left
+New York for good, I hoped, and I got my wish, for I've never seen the
+inside of it since.
+
+A middle-aged coachman in good, quiet country livery, met me at the
+little station, and though he was a still-mouthed fellow and rather
+reserved, I made out quite a little idea of the place on the way.  The
+mistress, Mrs. Childress, was a young widow, deep in her mourning, so
+there was no company.  The housekeeper was her old nurse, who had
+brought her up.  John, who drove me, was coachman-gardener, and the
+cook was his wife--both Catholics.  Everything went on very quiet and
+regular and it was hoped that the new upstairs maid wouldn't be one for
+excitement and gaiety.  The inside man had been valet to Mr. Childress
+and was much trusted and liked by the family.  I could see that old
+John was a bit jealous in that direction.
+
+We drove in through a black iron gate with cut stone posts and old
+black iron lanterns on top, and the moment we were inside the gates I
+began to take a fancy to the place.  It wasn't kept up like the places
+at home, but it was neat enough to show that things were taken thought
+for, and the beds of asters and dahlias and marigolds as we got near
+the house seemed so home-like and bright to me, I could have cried for
+comfort.  Childerstone was the name of the place; it was carved on a
+big boulder by the side of the entrance, and just as we drove up to the
+door John stopped to pick some dahlias for the house (being only me in
+the wagon) and I took my first good look at my home for twenty years
+afterward.
+
+There was something about it that went to my heart.  It was built of
+grey cut stone in good-sized blocks, square, with two windows each side
+the hall door.  To some it might have seemed cold-looking, but not to
+me, for one side was all over ivy, and the thickness of the walls and
+the deep sills looked solid and comfortable after those nasty
+brown-stone things all glued to each other in the city.  It looked old
+and respectable and settled, like, and the sun, just at going down,
+struck the windows like fire and the clean panes shone.  There was that
+yellow light over everything and that stillness, with now and then a
+leaf or so dropping quietly down, that makes the fall of the year so
+pleasant, to my mind.
+
+The house stood in beeches and the trunks of them were grey like the
+house and the leaves all light lemon-coloured, like the sky, and that's
+the way I always think of Childerstone--grey and yellow and clean and
+still.  Just a few rooks (you call them crows here), went over the
+house, and except for their cry as they flew, there wasn't a sound
+about the place.  I can see how others might have found it sad, but it
+never seemed so to me.
+
+John set me down at the servants' entrance and there, before ever I'd
+got properly into the hall, the strangeness began.  The cook in her
+check apron was kneeling on the floor in front of the big French range
+with the tears streaming down her face, working over her rosary beads
+and gabbling to drive you crazy.  Over her stood a youngish but
+severe-appearing man in a white linen coat like a ship's steward,
+trying to get her up.
+
+"Come, Katey," he was saying, "come, woman, up with you and
+help--she'll do no harm, the poor soul!  Look after her, now, and I'll
+send for the doctor and see to madam--it's only a fit, most like!"
+
+Then he saw me and ran forward to give a hand to my box.
+
+"You're the chambermaid, Miss, I'm sure," he said.  "I'm sorry to say
+you'll find us a bit upset.  The housekeeper's down with a stroke of
+some sort and the madam's none too strong herself.  Are you much of a
+hand to look after the sick?"
+
+"I'm not so clumsy as some," I said.  "Let me see her," and so we left
+the cook to her prayers and he carried my box to my room.
+
+I got into a print dress and apron and went to the housekeeper's room.
+She was an elderly person and it looked to me as if she was in her last
+sickness.  She didn't know any one and so I was as good as another, and
+I had her tidy and comfortable in bed by the time the doctor came.  He
+said she would need watching through the night and left some medicine,
+but I could see he had little hope for her.  I made up a bed in the
+room and all that night she chattered and muttered and took me for
+different ones, according as her fever went and came.  Towards morning
+she got quiet, and as I thought, sensible again.
+
+"Are you a nurse?" she says to me.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Shipman, be still and rest," I told her, to soothe her.
+
+"I'm glad the children are sent away," she went on, after a bit.
+"'Twould break their mother's heart if they got the fever.  Are the
+toys packed?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I answered, "all packed and sent."
+
+"Be sure there's enough frocks for Master Robertson," she begged me.
+"He's so hard on them and his aunties are so particular.  And my baby
+must have her woolly rabbit at night or her darling heart will be just
+broken!"
+
+"The rabbit is packed," I said, "and I saw to the frocks myself."
+
+There's but one way with the sick when they're like that, and that's to
+humour them, you see.  So she slept and I got a little nap for myself.
+I was glad the children were away by next morning, for she was worse,
+the cook lost her head, and managed to break the range so that the
+water-back leaked and John and Hodges were mopping and mending all day.
+The madam herself had a bad turn and the doctor (a New York doctor for
+madam, you may be sure!) brought out a handsome, dark woman, the
+trained hospital nurse, with him.  Madam wasn't allowed to know how bad
+her old nurse was.
+
+So it turned out that I'd been a week in the house without ever seeing
+my mistress.  The nurse and I would meet on the stairs and chat a
+little, evenings, and once I took a turn in the grounds with her.  She
+was a sensible sort of girl, not a bit above herself, as our English
+nursing-sisters are, sometimes, but very businesslike, as they say, and
+a good, brisk way with her.  She saw a lot more than she spoke of, Miss
+Jessop did, I'll warrant!
+
+"It's a good thing the children are sent away," I said.  "They always
+add to the bother when there's sickness."
+
+"Why, are there children?" says she.  "Oh, yes, a boy and a girl," I
+answered, "poor old Mrs. Shipman is forever talking about them.  She
+thinks she's their nurse, it seems, as she was their mother's."
+
+"I wish they were here, then," says she, "for I don't like the looks of
+my patient at all.  She doesn't speak seven words a day, and there's
+really little or nothing the matter with her, that I can see.  She's
+nervous and she's low and she wants cheering, that's all.  I wonder the
+doctor doesn't see it."
+
+That night, after both patients were settled, she came up to my room
+and took a glance at the old lady, who was going fast.
+
+"Mrs. Childress will soon have to know about this," she said and then,
+suddenly, "Are you sure about the children, Sarah?"
+
+"Sure about them?" I repeated after her.  "In what way, Miss Jessop?"
+
+"That there are any," says she.
+
+"Why, of course," I answered, "Mrs. Shipman talks of nothing else.
+They're with their aunty, in New Jersey, somewhere.  It's a good thing
+there are some, for from what she says when she's rambling, the house
+and all the property would go out of the family otherwise.  It's been
+five generations in the Childress family, but the nearest now is a
+cousin who married a Jew, and the family hate her for it.  But Master
+Robertson makes it all safe, Mrs. Shipman says."
+
+"That's a queer thing," said she.  "I took in a dear little picture of
+the boy and girl this afternoon, to cheer her up a bit, and told her to
+try to think they were the real ones, who'd soon be with her, for that
+matter, and so happy to see their dear mamma, and she went white as a
+sheet and fainted in my arms.  Of course, I didn't refer to it again.
+She's quiet now, holding the picture, but I feared they were dead and
+you hadn't known."
+
+"Oh, no," said I.  "I'm sure not," and then I remembered that I'd been
+told there was but one in family.  However, that's often said when
+there's a nurse to take care of small children (though it's not quite
+fair, perhaps), and I was certain of the children, anyway, for there
+were toys all about Mrs. Shipman's room and some seed-cookies and
+"animal-crackers," as they call those odd little biscuits, in a tin on
+her mantel.
+
+However, we were soon to learn something that made me, at least, all
+the more curious.  The doctor came that morning and told Miss Jessop
+that her services would be no longer required, after he had seen her
+patient.
+
+"Mrs. Childress is perfectly recovered," he said, "and she has
+unfortunately conceived a grudge against you, my dear girl.  I need
+you, anyway, in town.  Poor old Shipman can't last the night now, and I
+want all that business disposed of very quietly.  I have decided not to
+tell Mrs. Childress until it is all over and the funeral done with.
+She is in a very morbid state, and as I knew her husband well I have
+taken this step on my own responsibility.  Hodges seems perfectly able
+to run things, and to tell the truth, it would do your mistress far
+more good to attend to that herself," he said, turning to me.
+
+"It would be a good thing for the poor woman to have some one about
+her, Dr. Stanchon," the nurse put in quietly.  "If there were children
+in the house, now----"
+
+"Children!" he cried, pulling himself up and staring at her.  "Did you
+speak to her about them?  Then that accounts for it!  I should have
+warned you."
+
+"Then they did die?" she asked him.  "That's what I thought."
+
+"I'm afraid not," he said, shaking his head with a queer sort of sad
+little smile.  "I forgot you were strange here.  Why, Miss Jessop,
+didn't you know that----"
+
+"Excuse me, sir, but there's no sign of your mare about--did you tie
+her?" says Hodges, coming in in a great hurry, and the doctor swore and
+ran off and I never heard the end of the sentence.
+
+Well, I'm running on too long with these little odds and ends, as I'm
+sure Margaret felt when I started telling her all about it.  The truth
+is I dreaded then, just as I dread now, to get at the real story and
+look our conduct straight in the face.  But I'll get on more quickly
+now.
+
+Old Mrs. Shipman died very quiet in her sleep and madam wasn't told,
+which I didn't half like.  The doctor was called out of those parts to
+attend on his father, very suddenly, and Hodges managed the funeral and
+all.  It was plain to see he was a very trusty, silent fellow, devoted
+to the family.  I took as much off him as I could, and I was dusting
+the drawing-room the day of the funeral, when I happened to pick up a
+photograph in a silver frame of the same little fellow in the picture
+the nurse had shown me--a dear little boy in short kilts.
+
+"That's Master Robertson, isn't it?" I said, very carelessly, not
+looking at him--I will own I was curious.  He gave a start.
+
+"Yes--yes, certainly, that's Master Robertson--if you choose to put it
+that way," he said, and I saw him put his hand up to his eyes and his
+mouth twitched and he left the room.
+
+I didn't question him again, naturally; he was a hard man to cross and
+very haughty, was William Hodges, and no one in the house but respected
+him.
+
+That day I saw Mrs. Childress for the first time.  She was a sweet,
+pretty thing, about my own age, but younger looking, fair, with grey
+eyes.  She was in heavy crêpe and her face all fallen and saddened
+like, with grief and hopelessness--I felt for her from the moment I saw
+her.  And all the more that I'd made up my mind what her trouble was: I
+thought that the children were idiots, maybe, or feeble-minded, anyhow,
+and so the property would go to the Jew in the end and that his family
+were hating her for it!  Folly, of course, but women will have fancies,
+and that seemed to fit in with all I'd heard.
+
+She'd been told that Shipman was away with some light, infectious
+fever, and she took it very mildly, and said there was no need to get
+any one in her place, at present.
+
+"Hodges will attend to everything," she said, in her pretty, tired way;
+"not that there's much to do--for one poor woman."
+
+"Things may mend, ma'am, and you'll feel more like having some friends
+about you, most likely, later on," I said, to cheer her a bit.
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"No, no, Sarah--if I can't have my own about me, I'll have no others,"
+she said, and I thought I saw what she meant and said no more.
+
+That night the doctor and the legal gentleman that looked after the
+family affairs were with us and my mistress kept them for dinner.  I
+helped Hodges with the serving and was in the butler's pantry after
+Mrs. Childress had left them with their coffee and cigars, and as
+Hodges had left the door ajar I couldn't help catching a bit of the
+talk now and then.
+
+"The worst of it is this trouble about the children," said the doctor.
+"She will grieve herself into a decline, I'm afraid."
+
+"I suppose there's no hope?" said the other gentleman.
+
+"No hope?" the doctor burst out.  "Why, man, Robertson's been dead six
+months!"
+
+"To be sure--I'd forgotten it was so long.  Well, well, it's too bad,
+too bad," and Hodges came back and closed the door.
+
+I must say I was thoroughly put out with the doctor.  Why should he
+have told me a lie?  And it was mostly from that that I deliberately
+disobeyed him that night, for I knew from the way he had spoken to the
+nurse that he didn't wish the children mentioned.  But I couldn't help
+it, for when I came to her room to see if I could help her, she was
+sitting in her black bedroom gown with her long hair in two braids,
+crying over the children's picture.  "Hush, hush, ma'am," I said,
+kneeling by her and soothing her head, "if they were here, you may be
+sure they wouldn't wish it."
+
+"Who?  Who?" she answers me, quite wild, but not angry at all.  I saw
+this and spoke it out boldly, for it was plain that she liked me.
+
+"Your children, ma'am," I said, softly but very firm, "and you should
+control yourself and be cheerful and act as if they _were_ here--as if
+it had pleased God to let you have them and not _Himself_!"
+
+Such a look as she gave me!  But soon she seemed to melt, like, and put
+out her arm over my shoulders.
+
+"What a beautiful way to put it, Sarah!" says she, in a dreamy kind of
+way.  "Do you really think God has them--somewhere?"
+
+"Why, of course, ma'am," said I, shocked in good earnest.  "Who else?"
+
+"Then you think I might love them, just as if--just as if----" here she
+began to sob.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Childress," I said, "where is your belief?  That's all
+that's left to mothers.  I know, for I've lost two, and their father to
+blame for it, which you need never say," I told her.
+
+She patted my shoulder very kindly.  "But oh, Sarah, if only they
+_were_ here!" she cried, "really, really here!"
+
+"I know, I know," I said, "it's very hard.  But try to think it,
+ma'am--it helped me for weeks.  Think they're in the room next you,
+here, and you'll sleep better for it."
+
+"Shall I?" she whispered, gripping my hand hard.  "I believe I
+would--how well you understand me, Sarah!  And will you help me to
+believe it?"
+
+I saw she was feverish and I knew what it means to get one good
+refreshing night without crying, and so I said, "Of course I will,
+ma'am; see, I'll open the door into the next room and you can fancy
+them in their cribs, and I'll sleep in there as if it was to look after
+them, like."
+
+Well, she was naught but a child herself, the poor dear, and she let me
+get her into bed like a lamb and put her cheek into her hand and went
+off like a baby.  It almost scared me, to see how easy she was to
+manage, if one did but get hold of the right way.  She looked brighter
+in the morning and as Hodges had told me that Shipman used to do for
+her, I went in and dressed her--not that I was ever a lady's maid, mind
+you, but I've always been one to turn my hand easily to anything I had
+a mind to, and I was growing very fond of my poor lady--and then, I was
+a little proud, I'll own, of being able to do more for her than her own
+medical man, who couldn't trust a sensible woman with the truth!
+
+She clung to me all the morning, and after my work was done, I
+persuaded her to come out for the air.  The doctor had ordered it long
+ago, but she was obstinate, and would scarcely go at all.  That day,
+however, she took a good stroll with me and it brought a bit of colour
+into her cheeks.  Just as we turned toward the house she sat down on a
+big rock to rest herself, and I saw her lip quiver and her eyes begin
+to fill.  I followed her look and there was a child's swing, hung from
+two ropes to a low bough.  It must have been rotted with the rains, for
+it looked very old and the board seat was cracked and worn.  All
+around--it hung in a sort of little glade--were small piles of stones
+and bits of oddments that only children get together, like the little
+magpies they are.
+
+There's no use to expect any one but a mother or one who's had the
+constant care of little ones to understand the tears that come to your
+eyes at a sight like that.  What they leave behind is worse than what
+they take with them; their curls and their fat legs and the kisses they
+gave you are all shut into the grave, but what they used to play with
+stays there and mourns them with you.
+
+I saw a wild look come into her eyes, and I determined to quiet her at
+any cost.
+
+"There, there, ma'am," I said quickly, "'tis only their playthings.
+Supposing they were there, now, and enjoying them!  You go in and take
+your nap, as the doctor ordered, and leave me behind..."
+
+She saw what I meant in a twinkling and the colour jumped into her face
+again.  She turned and hurried in and just as she went out of sight she
+looked over her shoulder, timid like, and waved her hand--only a bit of
+a wave, but I saw it.
+
+Under a big stone in front of me, for that part of the grounds was left
+wild, like a little grove, I saw a rusty tin biscuit box, and as I
+opened it, curiously, to pass the time, I found it full of little tin
+platters and cups.  Hardly thinking what I did, I arranged them as if
+laid out for tea, on a flat stone, and left them there.  When I went to
+awaken her for lunch, I started, for some more of those platters were
+on the table by her bed and a white woolly rabbit and a picture book!
+She blushed, but I took no notice, and after her luncheon I spied her
+going quickly back to the little grove.
+
+"Madam's taking a turn for the better, surely," Hodges said to me that
+afternoon.  "She's eating like a Christian now.  What have you done to
+her, Miss Umbleby?"  (I went as "Miss" for it's much easier to get a
+place so.)
+
+"Mr. Hodges," I said, facing him squarely, "the doctors don't know
+everything.  You know as well as I that it's out of nature not to
+mention children, where they're missed every hour of the day and every
+day of the month.  It's easing the heart that's wanted--not smothering
+it."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he says, staring at me.
+
+"I mean toys and such like," I answered him, very firm, "and talk of
+them that's not here to use them, and even pretending that they are, if
+that will bring peace of mind, Mr. Hodges."
+
+He rubbed his clean shaven chin with his hand.
+
+"Well, well!" he said at last.  "Well, well, well!  You're a good girl,
+Miss Umbleby, and a kind one, that's certain.  I never thought o' such
+a thing.  Maybe it's all right, though.  But who could understand a
+woman, anyway?"
+
+"That's not much to understand," said I, shortly, and left him staring
+at me.
+
+She came in late in the afternoon with the rabbit under her arm and
+there was Mr. Hodges in the drawing-room laying out the tea--we always
+had everything done as if the master was there, and guests, for the
+matter of that; she insisted on it.  He knew his place as well as any
+man, but his eye fell on the rabbit and he looked very queer and nearly
+dropped a cup.  She saw it and began to tremble and go white, and it
+came over me then that now or never was the time to clinch matters or
+she'd nearly die from shame and I couldn't soothe her any more.
+
+"Perhaps Hodges had better go out and bring in the rest of the toys,
+ma'am," I says, very careless, not looking at her.  "It's coming on for
+rain.  And he can take an umbrella ... shall he?"
+
+She stiffened up and gave a sort of nod to him.
+
+"Yes, Hodges, go," she said, half in a whisper, and he bit his lip, and
+swallowed hard and said, "Very good, madam," and went.
+
+Well, after that, you can see how it would be, can't you?  One thing
+led to another, and one time when she was not well for a few days and
+rather low, I actually got the two little cribs down from the garret
+and ran up some white draperies for them.  She'd hardly let me leave
+her, and indeed there was not so much work that I couldn't manage very
+well.  She gave all her orders through me and I was well pleased to do
+for her and let Mr. Hodges manage things, which he did better than poor
+old Shipman, I'll be bound.  By the time we told her about Shipman's
+death, she took it very easy--indeed, I think, she'd have minded
+nothing by that time, she had grown so calm and almost healthy.
+
+Mr. Hodges would never catch my eye and I never talked private any more
+with him, but that was the only sign he didn't approve, and he never
+spoke for about a month, but joined in with me by little and little and
+never said a word but to shrug his shoulders when I ordered up a tray
+with porringers on it for the nursery (she had a bad cold and got
+restless and grieving).  I left her in the nursery with the tray and
+went out to him, for I saw he wished to speak to me at last.
+
+"Dr. Stanchon would think well of this, if he was here.  Is that your
+idea, Miss Umbleby?" he said to me, very dry.  (The doctor had never
+come back, but gone to be head of a big asylum out in the west.)
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Hodges," I answered.  "I think any doctor
+couldn't but be glad to see her gaining every day, and when she feels
+up to it and guests begin to come again, she'll get willing to see them
+and forget the loss of the poor little things."
+
+"The loss of _what_?" says he, frowning at me.
+
+"Why, the children," I answered.
+
+"What children?"
+
+"Master Robertson, of course, and Miss Winifred," I said, quite vexed
+with his obstinacy.  (I had asked her once if the baby was named after
+her and she nodded and went away quickly.)
+
+"See here, my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my
+benefit.  _I'm_ not going into a decline, you know.  I know as well as
+you do that she couldn't lose what she never had!"
+
+"Never had!" I gasped.  "She never had any children?"
+
+"Of course not," he said, steadying me, for my knees got weak all of a
+sudden.  "That's what's made all the trouble--that's what's so
+unfortunate!  D'you mean to say you didn't know?"
+
+I sank right down on the stairs.  "But the pictures!" I burst out.
+
+"If you mean that picture of Mr. Robertson Childress when he was a
+little lad and the other one of him and his sister that died when a
+baby, and chose to fancy they was _hers_," says he, pointing upstairs,
+"it's no fault of mine, Miss Umbleby."
+
+And no more it was.  What with poor old Shipman's ramblings and the
+doctor's words that I had twisted into what they never meant, I had got
+myself into a fine pickle.
+
+"But what shall I do, Mr. Hodges?" I said, stupid-like, with the
+surprise and the shock of it.  "It'd kill her, if I stopped now."
+
+"That's for you to decide," said he, in his reserved, cold way, "I have
+my silver to do."
+
+Well, I did decide.  I lay awake all night at it, and maybe I did
+wrong, but I hadn't the heart to see the red go out of her cheek and
+the little shy smile off her pretty mouth.  It hurt no one, and the
+mischief was done, anyway--there'd be no heir to Childerstone, now.
+For five generations it had been the same--a son and a daughter to
+every pair, and the old place about as dear to each son, as I made out,
+as ever his wife or child could be.  General Washington had stopped the
+night there, and some great French general that helped the Americans
+had come there for making plans to attack the British, and Colonel
+Robertson Childress that then was had helped him.  They had plenty of
+English kin and some in the Southern States, but no friends near them,
+on account of my mistress's husband having to live in Switzerland for
+his health and his father dying young (as he did) so that his mother
+couldn't bear the old place.  But as soon as Mr. Robertson was told he
+was cured and could live where he liked, he made for Childerstone and
+brought his bride there--a stranger from an American family in
+Switzerland--and lived but three months.  If anybody was ever alone, it
+was that poor lady, I'm sure.  There was no big house like theirs
+anywhere about--no county families, as you might say--and those that
+had called from the village she wouldn't see, in her mourning.  And yet
+out of that house she would not go, because he had loved it so; it was
+pitiful.
+
+There's no good argle-bargling over it, as my mother used to say, I'd
+do the same again!  For I began it with the best of motives, and as
+innocent as a babe, myself, of the real truth, you see.
+
+I can shut my eyes, now, and it all comes back to me as it was in the
+old garden, of autumn afternoons--I always think of Childerstone in the
+autumn, somehow.  There was an old box hedge there, trimmed into balls
+and squares, and beds laid out in patterns, with asters and marigolds
+and those little rusty chrysanthemums that stand the early frosts so
+well.  A wind-break of great evergreens all along two sides kept it
+warm and close, and from the south and west the sun streamed in onto
+the stone dial that the Childress of General Washington's time had had
+brought over from home.  It was set for Surrey, Hodges told me once,
+and no manner of use, consequently, but very settled and home-like to
+see, if you understand me.  In the middle was an old stone basin, all
+mottled and chipped, and the water ran out from a lion's mouth in some
+kind of brown metal, and trickled down its mane and jaws and splashed
+away.  We cleaned it out, she and I, one day, _pretending we had help_,
+and Hodges went to town and got us some gold fish for it.  They looked
+very handsome there.  Old John kept the turf clipped and clean and
+routed out some rustic seats for us--all grey they were and tottery,
+but he strengthened them, and I smartened them up with yellow chintz
+cushions I found in the garret--and I myself brought out two tiny
+arm-chairs, painted wood, from the loft in the coach house.  We'd sit
+there all the afternoon in September, talking a little, me mending and
+my mistress embroidering on some little frocks I cut out for her.  We
+talked about the children, of course.  They got to be as real to me as
+to her, almost.  Of course at first it was all what they _would_ have
+been (for she was no fool, Mrs. Childress, though you may be thinking
+so) but by little and little it got to be what they _were_.  It
+couldn't be helped.
+
+Hodges would bring her tea out there and she'd eat heartily, for she
+never was much of a one for a late dinner, me sewing all the time, for
+I always knew my place, though I believe in her kind heart she'd have
+been willing for me to eat with her, bless her!  Then she'd look at me
+so wistful-like, and say, "I'll leave you now, Sarah--eat your tea and
+don't keep out too late.  Good-bye--good-bye..."  Ah, dear me!
+
+I'd sit and think, with the leaves dropping quiet and yellow around me
+and the water dripping from the lion's mouth and sometimes I'd close my
+eyes and--I'll swear I could hear them playing quietly beyond me!  They
+were never noisy children.  I'll say now something I never mentioned,
+even to her, and I'd say it if my life hung by it.  More than once I've
+left the metal tea-set shut in the biscuit box and found it spread out
+of mornings.  My mistress slept in the room next me with the door open,
+and am I to think that William Hodges, or Katey, crippled with
+rheumatism, or that lazy old John came down and set them out?  I've
+taken a hasty run down to that garden (we called it the children's
+garden, after a while) because she took an idea, and seen the swing
+just dying down, and not a breath stirring.  That's the plain gospel of
+it.  And I've lain in my bed, just off the two cribs, and held my
+breath at what I felt and heard.  She knew it, too.  But never heard so
+much as I, and often cried for it.  I never knew why that should be,
+nor Hodges, either.
+
+There was one rainy day I went up in the garret and pulled the old
+rocking-horse out and dusted it and put it out in the middle and set
+the doors open and went away.  It was directly over our heads as we sat
+sewing, and--ah, well, it's many years ago now, a many and a many, and
+it's no good raking over too much what's past and gone, I know.  And as
+Hodges said, afterward, the rain on the roof was loud and steady....
+
+I don't know why I should have thought of the rocking-horse, and she
+not that was always thinking and planning for them.  Hodges said it was
+because I had had children.  But I could never have afforded them any
+such toy as that.  Still, perhaps he was right.  It was odd his saying
+that (he knew the facts about me, of course, by that time) being such a
+dry man, with no fancy about him, you might say, and disliking the
+whole subject, as he always did, but so it was.  Men will often come
+out with something like that, and quite astonish one.
+
+He never made a hint of objection when I was made housekeeper, and that
+was like him, too, though I was, to say so, put over him.  But he knew
+my respect for him, black silk afternoons or no black silk, and how we
+all leaned on him, really.
+
+And then Margaret came, as I said, and it was all to tell, and a fine
+mess I made of it and William Hodges that settled it, after all.
+
+For Margaret wanted to pack her box directly and get off, and said
+she'd never heard of such doings and had no liking for people that
+weren't right.
+
+"Not right?" says Hodges, "not right?  Don't you make any such mistake,
+my girl.  Madam attends to all her law business and is at church
+regularly, and if she's not for much company--why, all the easier for
+us.  Her cheques are as sensible as any one's, I don't care who the man
+is, and a lady has a right to her fancies.  I've lived with very high
+families at home, and if I'm suited, you may depend upon it the place
+is a good one.  Go or stop, as you like, but don't set up above your
+elders, young woman."
+
+So she thought it over and the end of it all was that she was with us
+till the last.  And gave me many a black hour, too, poor child, meaning
+no harm, but she admired Hodges, it was plain, and being younger than I
+and far handsomer in a dark, Scotch way, it went hard with me, for he
+made no sign, and I was proud and wouldn't have showed my feelings for
+my life twice over.
+
+Well, it went on three years more.  I made my little frocks longer and
+the gold fish grew bigger and we set out new marigolds every year, that
+was all.  It was like some quiet dream, when I've gone back and seemed
+a girl again in the green lanes at home, with mother clear-starching
+and the rector's daughter hearing my catechism and Master Lawrence sent
+off to school for bringing me his first partridge.  Those dreams seem
+long and short at one and the same time, and I wake years older, and
+yet it has not been years that passed but only minutes.  So it was at
+Childerstone.  The years went by like the hours went in the children's
+garden, all hedged in, like, and quiet and leaving no mark.  We all
+seemed the same to each other and one day was like another, full,
+somehow, and busy and happy, too, in a quiet, gentle way.
+
+When old Katey lay dying she spoke of these days for the first time to
+me.  She'd sent up the porringers and set out glasses of milk and made
+cookies in heart shapes with her mouth tight shut for all that time,
+and we never knowing if she sensed it rightly or not.  But on her
+deathbed she told me that she felt the Blessed Mary (as she called her)
+had given those days to my poor mistress to make up to her for all
+she'd lost and all she'd never had, and that she'd confessed her part
+in it and been cleared, long ago.  I never loved any time better,
+looking back, nor Hodges either.  One season the Christmas greens would
+be up, and then before we knew it the ice would be out of the brooks
+and there would be crocuses and daffodils for Mr. Childress's grave.
+
+She and I took all the care of it and the key to the iron gate of it
+lay out on her low work table, and one or other of us always passing
+through, but one afternoon in summer when I went with a basket of June
+roses, she being not quite up to it that day, there on the flat stone I
+saw with my own eyes a little crumpled bunch of daisies--all nipped off
+short, such as children pick, and crushed and wilted in their hot
+little hands!  And on no other tomb but his.  But I was used to such as
+that, by then....
+
+Margaret was handy with her needle, and I remember well the day she
+made the linen garden hat with a knot of rose-colour under the brim.
+
+"You don't think this will be too old, do you, ma'am?" she said when
+she showed it to my mistress, and the dear lady was that pleased!
+
+"Not a bit, Margaret," she said and I carried it off to Miss Winifred's
+closet.  Many's the time I missed it after that, and knew too much to
+hunt.  It was hunting that spoiled all, for we tried it....
+
+And yet we didn't half believe.  Heaven help us, we knew, but we didn't
+believe: St. Thomas was nothing to us!
+
+Margaret was with us three years when the new family came.  Hodges told
+us that Hudson River property was looking up and land was worth more
+every year.  Anyway, in one year two families built big houses within a
+mile of us and we went to call, of course, as in duty bound.  John
+grumbled at getting out the good harness and having the carriage
+re-lined, but my mistress knew what was right, and he had no choice.  I
+dressed her very carefully, and we watched her off from the door, a
+thought too pale in her black, but sweet as a flower, and every inch
+full of breeding, as Hodges said.
+
+I never knew what took place at that visit, but she came back with a
+bright red circle in each cheek and her head very high, and spent all
+the evening in the nursery.  Alone, of course, for I heard little quick
+sounds on the piano in the drawing-room, and the fairy books were gone
+from the children's book-shelves, and Margaret found them in front of
+the fire and brought them to me....
+
+It was only three days before the new family called on us (a pair of
+ponies to a basket phaeton--very neat and a nice little groom) and my
+heart jumped into my mouth when I saw there were two children in with
+the lady: little girls of eight and twelve, I should say.  'Twas the
+first carriage callers that ever I'd seen in the place, and Hodges says
+to me as he goes toward the hall,
+
+"This is something like, eh, Miss Umbleby?"
+
+But I felt odd and uncertain, and when from behind the library door I
+heard the lady say, "You see I've kept my word and brought my babies,
+Mrs. Childress--my son is hardly old enough for yours--only four--but
+Helena and Lou can't wait--they are so impatient to see your little
+girl!"--when I heard that, I saw what my poor mistress had been at, and
+the terrible situation we were in (and had been in for years) flashed
+over me and my hands got cold as ice.
+
+"Where is she?" the lady went on.
+
+At that I went boldly into the library and stood by my mistress's
+chair--I couldn't desert her then, after all those years.
+
+"Where?  where?" my poor lady repeated, vague-like and turning her eyes
+so piteous at me that I looked the visitor straight in the face and
+getting between her and my mistress I said very calmly,
+
+"I think Miss Winifred is in the children's garden, madam; shall I take
+the young ladies there?"
+
+For my thought was to get the children out of the way, before it all
+came out, you see.
+
+Oh, the look of gratitude she gave me!  And yet it was a mad thing to
+do.  But I couldn't desert her--I couldn't.
+
+"There, you see, mamma!" cried the youngest, and the older one said,
+
+"We can find our way, thank you," very civil, to me.
+
+"Children have sharp eyes," said the lady, laughing.  "One can't hide
+them from each other--haven't you found it so?"
+
+"Now what the devil does she mean by that?" Hodges muttered to me as he
+passed by me with the tray.  He always kept the silver perfect, and it
+did one's heart good to see his tray: urn and sugar and cream just
+twinkling and the toast in a covered dish--old Chelsea it was--and new
+cakes and jam and fresh butter, just as they have at home.
+
+I don't know what they talked of, for I couldn't find any excuse to
+stop in the room, and she wouldn't have had it, anyway.  I went around
+to the front to catch the children when they should come back, and
+quiet them, but they didn't come, and I was too thankful to think much
+about it.
+
+After about half an hour I saw the oldest one coming slowly along by
+herself, looking very sulky.
+
+"Where's your sister, dear?" I said, all in a tremble, for I dreaded
+how she might put it.
+
+"She's too naughty--I can't get her to leave," she said pettishly, and
+burst into the library ahead of me.  My mistress's face was scarlet and
+her eyes like two big stars--for the first time I saw that she was a
+beauty.  Her breath came very quick and I knew as well as if I'd been
+there all the time that she'd been letting herself go, as they say, and
+talked to her heart's content about what she'd never have a chance to
+talk again to any guest.  She was much excited and the other woman knew
+it and was puzzled, I could see, from the way she looked at her.
+
+Now the girl burst into the talk.
+
+"Mamma, Lou is so naughty!" she cried.  "I saw the ponies coming up the
+drive, and I told her it was time, but she won't come!"
+
+"Gently, daughter, gently," said the lady, and put her arm around her
+and smoothed her hair.  "Why won't Lou come?"
+
+I can see that room now, as plain as any picture in a frame: the
+setting sun all yellow on the gilt of the rows of books, the streak of
+light on the waxed oak floor, the urn shining in the last rays.  There
+was the mother patting the big girl, there was Hodges with his hand on
+the tray, and there was me standing behind my mistress, with her red
+cheeks and her poor heaving bosom.
+
+"Why won't Lou come?" she asked the girl again.
+
+"Because," she says, still fretful, and very loud and clear, "because
+she is taking a pattern of the little girl's hat and trying to twist
+hers into that shape!  I told her you wouldn't like it."
+
+My mistress sprang up and the chair fell down with a crash behind her.
+I turned (Hodges says) as white as a sheet and moved nearer her.
+
+"Hat!" she gasped.  "What hat? _whose hat_?"
+
+There seemed to be a jingling, like sleighbells, all through the air,
+and I thought I was going crazy till I saw that it came from the tray,
+where Hodges's hand was shaking so, and yet he couldn't take it off.
+
+"The hat with the rose-coloured ribbon on it," said the girl, "the one
+we saw as we drove in, you know, mamma.  It's so becoming."
+
+"Sarah!  Sarah! did you hear?  Did you hear?" shrieked my mistress.
+"She saw, Sarah, _she saw_!"
+
+Then the colour went out of her like when you blow out a candle, and
+she put her hand to her heart.
+
+"Oh, oh, what pain!" she said very quickly, and Hodges cried, "My God,
+she's gone!" and I caught her as she fell and we went down together,
+for my knees were shaking.
+
+When I opened my eyes there was only Margaret there, wetting my
+forehead, for William had gone for a doctor.  Not that it was of any
+use, for she never breathed.  But the smile on her face was lovely.
+
+We got her on her bed and the sight of her there brought the tears to
+me and I cried out, "Oh, dear, oh, dear! she was all I had in the
+world, and now----"
+
+"Now you've got me, my girl, and isn't that worth anything to you,
+Sarah?"
+
+That was William Hodges, and he put his arm over my shoulder, right
+before Margaret, and looked so kind at me, so kind--I saw in a moment
+that no one else was anything to him and that he had always cared for
+me.  And that, coming so sudden, when I had given up all hope of it,
+was too much for me, weak as I was, and I fainted off again and woke up
+raving hot with fever and half out of my mind, but not quite, for I
+kept begging them to put off the funeral till I should be able to be up.
+
+But this, of course, was not done, and by the time I was out of
+hospital the turf was all in place on her dear grave.
+
+William had managed everything and had picked out all the little
+keepsakes I should have chosen--the heirs were most kind, though Jews.
+Indeed, I've felt different to that sort of people ever since, for they
+not caring for the house on account of its being lonely, to their way
+of thinking, made it into a children's home for those of their belief
+as were poor and orphaned, and whatever may have been, the old place
+will never lack for children now.
+
+I never stepped foot in the grounds again, for William Hodges, though
+the gentlest and fairest of men, never thwarted me but once, and it was
+in just that direction.  Moreover, he forbade me to speak of what only
+he and I knew for a certainty, and he was one of that sort that when a
+command is laid, it's best kept.
+
+We've two fine children--girl and boy--and he never murmured at the
+names I chose for them.  Indeed, considering what my mistress's will
+left me and what his master had done for him, he was as pleased as I.
+
+"They're named after our two best friends, Sarah," he said, looking
+hard at me, once.
+
+And I nodded my head, but if she saw me, in heaven, she knew who were
+in my heart when I named them!
+
+
+
+
+THE CRYSTAL
+
+In reviewing the matter dispassionately, it seems difficult to find
+anybody (anybody, that is to say, to whom her career was or is of the
+slightest interest) who omits to pronounce Molly Dickett's life an
+egregious and shameful failure.  I should be sorry for any one, for
+instance, who had the hardihood to address her mother on the subject,
+for Mrs. Dickett's power of tongue is well known in and beyond local
+circles; and since Eleanor married young Farwell, who stands in line
+for cashier of the bank forty or fifty years from now, if all goes well
+and a series of providential deaths occurs--indeed, ever since Kathryn
+became assistant-principal at the high-school (because, as her mother
+points out, a mere teacher's position, even in a high-school, may not
+be much, but an assistant-principal may be called to consult with the
+trustees any day and Kathryn has twice refused a college professorship)
+since these family adjustments, I repeat, Mrs. Dickett's tongue has
+grown steadily more incisive and her attempts at scaling the fortress
+of Mr. Dickett's wardrobe more encouraging.
+
+I believe it to be the simple truth to say that she literally never
+mentions her second daughter, and that Molly sends her letters direct
+to the factory to be sure that her father gets them--for Mrs. Dickett
+is Napoleonic in her methods and would really, I am afraid, stop at
+nothing.  Any woman who has borne three children and will learn to
+drive an electric runabout at the age of forty-five, for the purpose of
+taking her husband home from his office in it, is to be reckoned with,
+you will agree.
+
+The last time she is known to have referred to the girl definitely was
+when she announced the theory that her unfortunate name lay at the
+bottom of it all.
+
+"Molly," she is reported to have said, "was named by her father--a
+mistake always, I think.  The fact that Eleanor was baptised Ella has
+little or nothing to do with it; there was never any 'Nellie' or
+'Lelie' about it, and at sixteen she began of her own accord to write
+it Eleanor.  Kathryn I named entirely myself--and after all, what can
+Aunt Ella be said to have done for Eleanor?  A silver ring and a
+bracelet when she graduated!  But it was always 'Molly Dickett' all
+over the town!"
+
+And it must be confessed that this was so, if, indeed, the confession
+proves anything.  Nevertheless Mrs. Dickett cannot deny that for a long
+time, up to the period of her plunge into outer darkness, Molly was
+confessedly the flower of the family.  Eleanor was rather soggy, a
+creature of inertia, chocolate caramels and a tendency to ritualism
+which her mother could not have foreseen when she encouraged her
+entering the Episcopal communion ("I don't mind candles so much," said
+Mrs. Dickett, "but I must say I think it's very bad taste to call
+yourself an American Catholic, when you can't help but feel that
+Catholics should be foreigners").
+
+Kathryn her mother pronounced "a very ordinary girl, very ordinary
+indeed," up to the day when she was graduated, head of her class, at
+the State normal-school.  She showed every sign, even after that, of
+snapping at the bait of a middle-aged widower with three children,
+simply because his hook was labelled _New York_; but when it became
+known, as a result of herculean detective efforts on Mrs. Dickett's
+part, that he employed but one servant, insisted upon the payment of
+what he termed "spot cash" for every article purchased in his
+establishment, and disapproved of the theatre, Kathryn yielded to
+reason and henceforth consulted her mother at each successive stage of
+her growing career until such consultation was frankly deprecated by
+the fountain-head itself.
+
+But Molly was neither soggy nor ordinary, being distinctly handsome in
+a grey-eyed, black-haired, white-skinned way, a clever student, an
+original conversationalist--in short, a personality.  Unlike the usual
+victim to an older and a younger sister, she managed to get quite her
+fair share of the family dignities and finances--was in fact accused by
+her sisters of using undue influence in persuading her father to send
+her to a woman's college.  It is most characteristic of her that at
+this accusation she refused the favour, interested her teachers in her
+cause so that they procured her a full scholarship at the college of
+her choice, and actually completed a four years' course there with no
+other means than her share of the twenty-five dollars yearly placed to
+his daughters' bank accounts by their father since the birth of each.
+On this slender sum, plus the accruing interest, eked out by college
+journalism, which began to be mentionable in those years--the early
+90's--strengthened further in the last terms by tutoring, did Molly
+Dickett triumphantly assert her independence,  and I tell it of her at
+this length so that none may throw "rolling stones" at her, in what
+followed.  A young woman of eighteen who can set her course in solitude
+and steer it alone, friendless, except for what friends her qualities
+can make her, absolutely unaided but for her own exertions, for four
+years, is not to be called lacking in application, I submit.  She got
+out of that business just what there was in it, _and so_, she insists,
+_she did at every stage of her subsequent history_.  Note this, for it
+is important.
+
+Here you see her, then, at twenty-two; handsome, accomplished,
+independent, well-rated on her particular 'Change--one fairly hears
+Dick Whittington's bells in the air!  Her mother, when Molly wrote home
+the news of her appointment as under-reader in the office of one of the
+new cheap magazines that began to appear with such frequency at about
+that time, spoke of her with the typical respect of the dependent woman
+for the wage-earner, and never dropped that note till the crash came.
+Mr. Dickett was head clerk by now, with an appreciable advance in
+salary; and Eleanor's wedding (it was in dressing the Roodscreen at
+Christmas that young Farwell met his fate), with her sisters as
+bridemaids, marked a distinct stage in the family's social career.  Old
+Mr. Farwell, who had long been nursing his only son's bank position,
+did the handsome thing for the young couple, and stomached, very
+decently, what must have been his regret at the boy's choice--for we
+all like our children to "look up and not down," as the motto suggests,
+in these matters.  And he was paid for it, for Eleanor made a man of
+the boy and a vestryman to boot, and quite won the old man's heart,
+though he never loved Mrs. Dickett.
+
+By the time Molly had been for two years at her post in _Slater's
+Monthly_, Kathryn had moved back to her normal-school as
+instructor--"and they paid well to get her, too," as Mr. Dickett
+informed his stenographer confidentially.  She had been invited to
+supper more than once, had the stenographer, in the old days, and there
+had even been a little talk of Kathryn's acquiring this accomplishment,
+once, but Mr. Dickett was far too wise to suggest her presence at the
+half-past six dinner now-a-days.  He was far too wise, indeed, to do
+anything that seemed likely to ruffle the increasingly easy currents
+into which his bark had drifted of late.  In a vague way he had always
+counted on supporting four women until three of them--or two, say, for
+Kathryn was plain and rather managing--should marry; and lo and behold,
+all three were off his hands in a twinkle, and there was a pretty
+little nest-egg growing for little Henry (for Eleanor had been very
+discreet about the first baby).
+
+So now we arrive at the day when Molly left her desk in the ante-room
+of Slater's, walked through the book department and the art offices and
+encountered Miss Spinner, the little dried and spectacled reader of
+forty-odd years, and centuries (or their equivalent) of magazine
+experience.
+
+"Miss Spinner," said Molly, "do you mind telling me what they pay you a
+week?"
+
+"Twenty-five," Miss Spinner replied promptly.  "Not at all.  Of course
+I'd been fifteen years at Franklin Square, and it was all that
+experience that made them offer me the three dollars raise.  So I left.
+But, of course, there are five magazines now where there used to be
+one.  In ten years I think there'll be ten.  So does Mr. Slater.  That
+means competition, and that means that experience will always be worth
+something to the new ones.  You started at fifteen, you see, and of
+course I only got ten ...  Gracious, isn't that Mrs. Julia Carter
+Sykes's voice?  Perhaps you'd better step out, my dear--Mr. Slater's
+talking with that English prison man and said that he wasn't to be
+disturbed if the Twelve Apostles came!"
+
+Molly went with her swift, unhasty step (she had long legs) and
+received Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes urbanely, as befitted the best paid
+woman novelist of her country.  Occasionally she had the fancy to "trot
+around to the office" as she called it: it was believed that she
+"picked up types" there.  And Molly knew how to keep her waiting
+without offending her, just as she knew how to dispose of the
+illustrators, from the Great Moguls who came in cabs to scold about the
+defects in half-tone processes, to the just discovered young genius who
+waited an hour in the outside hall, his great pasteboard square between
+his knees.
+
+"You're much too pretty to be here, my child--do you like it?" Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes remarked impertinently (she was supposed to believe
+that her manner was that of the English Aristocracy, and asked the most
+embarrassing questions of everybody with an income of less than fifteen
+thousand a year).
+
+"Not very much," Molly replied placidly.  "It's a little dull.  I'm
+thinking of going into journalism.  Couldn't you give me some letters
+to some of the editors?  I could do good special article stuff, I'm
+sure."
+
+"But certainly!" the novelist cried.  "You are too delicious!  I'll
+write you a card to Hecht himself this moment--I'm dining with him
+to-night--and I'll speak of you.  I'll tell him to send you to
+interview me at 'Bonnybraeside.'"
+
+"Thanks," said Molly laconically and rose to show the celebrity to Mr.
+Slater's sanctum.  The English prison man, emerging, took in the
+contrasted couple at a single glance, supposed them to be the whirlwind
+editor's wife and daughter, from his greeting ("Come in, come in, my
+dears, both of you!") and inquired of his wife, eight days later, how
+she explained a woman of that type, "strung with sapphires, literally,"
+and a daughter like a young duchess, with Irish eyes and a walk like
+Diana's.  His wife could not explain it at all, and said as much.
+
+Molly left Mr. Slater somewhat puzzled.  He raised her salary three
+dollars, might have been pushed to five, but she merely smiled
+deprecatingly.
+
+"It isn't exactly that," she said, "but there seems no outlook,
+somehow.  I don't think it's a very reasonable profession--if it is a
+profession."
+
+He exploded into the name of a great English novelist who held
+precisely that position.
+
+"Yes.  But I am not a great novelist, you see," said Molly, and cleared
+out her desk with the swift thoroughness that characterized her.  She
+put a clean sheet of green blotting paper on it before she left, and
+washed out the inkwell herself.
+
+"That stenographer spells worse and worse, remember," she remarked.
+"I'll look in for any mail."
+
+"Why, aren't you going to stay at a hundred-and-three any more?"
+
+Miss Pinner spoke with concern: she knew that the boarding-house
+recommended highly by Eleanor's rector (his sister had stayed there
+while studying singing) was very tautly managed, in an unobtrusive way,
+and that the sisters who directed it had a shrewd idea of the goings
+and comings of their "guests."
+
+"No," said Molly.  "I'll be out at all hours, maybe, and they wouldn't
+like it.  Don't be worried--I'll look in now and then."
+
+And so, for a year, she did, and they were all delighted to see her,
+for few people likely to enter such offices can talk more amusingly
+than Molly Dickett.  She had always used her material well, when it was
+limited, and now, when it bumped into the Himalayas at one end  (her
+famous Rajah of Bhutpore interview)  and rounded the hitherto
+speechless promontories of Spud Connors' career, the champion
+heavyweight of the world (she actually drew vivid metaphors from him
+and he gave her a tintype of himself at eight years) the entire staff
+gathered 'round her when she came, and Mr. Slater, under a temporary
+financial cloud, wept literal tears because he could not afford to buy
+her back to them.  It was, of course, the "Bonnybraeside" interview
+that did it.  So cleverly was this column-and-a-half of chatty
+sharp-shooting manoeuvred that Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes sent hundreds of
+copies to her friends, while her fellow celebrities giggled among
+themselves, and the publishers wondered exactly what the Public really
+wanted, anyhow.  You couldn't tell, any more, they complained.
+
+Just here began the little cloud on Mrs. Dickett's happiness.  For two
+years the family were very proud of Molly, and Eleanor gave a tea for
+her on one of her infrequent visits to them and got some people she
+could never have hoped for otherwise on the strength of her sister's
+celebrityship, for her Sunday morning column-and-a-half got to
+two-thirds of the town's breakfast tables, and her picture was at the
+head of it, now.  At twenty-five she was called (and probably
+correctly) the second highest paid woman journalist in the country, and
+she spoke familiarly of names that are head-lines to most of us and
+bought evening gowns at "little shops" on Fifth Avenue.  She lived with
+a red-haired friend, a clever illustrator of rising vogue, in a pretty
+little apartment, and Mrs. Dickett dined there one night with a really
+great novelist, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera House and a young
+Englishman whose brother was a baronet.  They had four glasses at their
+plates and the maid's cap and apron were tremendously interesting to
+Mrs. Dickett.  But when she learned the rental of the apartment, the
+wages of the maid, the cost of Molly's black evening-frock and the
+average monthly bill for Molly's hansoms, she no longer wondered that
+her daughter was always poor.  She had never spent seventy-five dollars
+for a single garment in her life, barring a fur-lined cloak, a
+Christmas gift from her husband, and to drink crême-de-menthe at a roof
+garden gave her a very odd sensation.  However, there was the baronet's
+brother...
+
+But at one of the songs at the roof-garden Mrs. Dickett drew the line,
+and the entire British Peerage, embattled, could not have persuaded her
+that it could possibly be the duty--not to suggest the pleasure--of any
+respectable woman to listen to it.  As she put it later to the
+red-haired girl and Molly, no unmarried woman could understand it and
+no married woman would want to, a simple statement which they persisted
+in treating as an epigram, to her annoyance.
+
+"But nobody minded it but you, dear Mrs. Dickett," the red-haired girl
+soothed her, "and it's all in how you take those things, don't you
+think?  Of course, if you find it wrong, why then it is wrong--for you.
+But really, I assure you, I simply paid no attention to it..."
+
+"Then you must allow me to say that I think you should have!" Mrs.
+Dickett snapped out.
+
+"Oh, come, mother, a woman of twenty-five is to all intents and
+purposes as capable of hearing--anything--as a married woman," said
+Molly lazily.  "I'm not a school girl, you know."
+
+"I know that," her mother replied shortly, and might have added that
+Molly looked Kathryn's age--which she did, and Kathryn was twenty-eight.
+
+She was, however, if anything, handsomer than when her cheek had its
+fuller curve, for her eyes looked larger and her mouth had more
+mobility: there was a stimulation in her tenseness.  Mrs. Dickett felt
+a little troubled.
+
+"Although, of course, Molly admitted that the creature had no character
+and sang that sort of song purposely," she confided to her husband.
+
+Imagine, then, her feelings when Molly's interview with the singer was
+printed!  She began a severe letter to her--and ceased midway of the
+first paragraph.  What possible hold had she over her daughter?  What
+did she know of her friends and associates, and what, had she known and
+disapproved, would it have mattered to Molly?  Since the day she won
+her college scholarship at eighteen she had been independent,
+financially speaking, and, though financial independence is not, of
+course, everything ... but it would almost seem that it is!  There must
+be some mistake here.  Mrs. Dickett chewed the end of her pen and
+thought as hard as she had ever thought in her life.  Nonsense!  What
+finally settles the thing is public opinion--Society.  If one's world
+turns the cold shoulder, one retracts, capitulates, acknowledges that
+the conventions are in the right of it.  Well; but Molly's world was
+not the suburban circle of the Dicketts and her world applauded her;
+she stood high in it; her interview with the unspeakable one was "a
+great hit," in their jargon.  Molly, in short, applied different
+standards, was in another class--was it, could it be, a Lower Class?
+And yet, the baronet!
+
+Mrs. Dickett tore her letter through.
+
+It is quite true that they didn't see her for a year, after
+that--eighteen months, if you except Kathryn's flying luncheon with her
+at the time of the Convention of Associated Normal Schools.  Kathryn
+then informed them that the red-haired girl had married her teacher and
+left the apartment and that Molly lived alone there.
+
+"I'm very glad," said her mother.  "I never liked that girl."
+
+"She seems to have been a bad influence," Kathryn agreed
+conservatively, and there, good, simple people as they were at heart,
+it would have ended.
+
+But here comes Eleanor upon the scene, Eleanor, with two boys, a
+probable Warden for husband, and a father-in-law who has become very
+respectably wealthy from long ago, almost forgotten investments in
+Southern Railroads.  And George is the only son.  Eleanor wonders that
+people can send their children to the public schools, and wishes that
+Kathryn had married that college professor, even though his salary did
+barely equal hers.
+
+"Every woman ought to settle, you know--it's nonsense to discuss it."
+
+"But I am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of
+housekeeping.  You don't get any time for anything else."
+
+"!!!" said Eleanor.
+
+Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows
+lifted.
+
+"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"
+
+Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.
+
+"Really, mother, I must say!  She must be crazy.  It's not right at
+all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."
+
+"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.
+
+"As if that had anything to do with it!  I'm going down to see her."
+
+It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded.  The
+first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York
+society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the
+first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing
+line."  Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping,
+dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous
+at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at
+Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet
+backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman,
+swayed and whirled and beckoned.  A slender spiral of smoke rose from
+the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room.  Three
+or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men
+applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock
+of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge
+of technique to feel extraordinarily poignant and moving.  All but the
+dancer were smoking, and Molly sat on the floor (in copper-coloured
+chiffon, too!) her hands clasped about her knees, a cigarette in an
+amber holder between her lips and enunciated clearly,
+
+"Bully!"
+
+In describing matters afterward Eleanor referred to Molly's reception
+of her as brazen.  There is no reason to believe that this word has any
+relation to Molly's state of mind: she saw nothing to be brazen about.
+When she said, "How lucky you dropped in today, sis!" she unaffectedly
+meant it.
+
+"Well, rather!" one of the young men replied.  "Won't you have
+something, Mrs. Er--Oh, yes--Farwell?  Rhine wine cup, what?"
+
+"No, I thank you," said Eleanor frigidly.  "May I have a few minutes'
+conversation with you, Mary?"
+
+"Not just now, I hope," said some one, "for she's going to dance again."
+
+"In that case I will not trouble you," said Eleanor, rather
+dramatically, one fears, and backed out to avoid the smoking violinist.
+It was a little trying, and Eleanor should have had tact enough to let
+the matter rest, but she was rather inelastic in her methods, and she
+had come to New York with a Purpose.  So Molly disappeared with her
+into the bedroom, and they had it out, with what result it is
+unnecessary to say.
+
+It was from that moment that a doubt as to whether Molly were an asset
+or a liability slipped into the Dickett family.  It is improbable that
+knowledge of the fact that "the disgusting foreign dancing woman" was
+born and bred in Bangor, Maine, and had never been farther than a
+stage-length from a vigilant mother, would have greatly affected their
+judgment.  And almost certainly the fact that the baronet's brother had
+asked her to marry him would only have irritated them the more--and
+perhaps with reason.  Had he ever wanted to marry Molly?  Maybe; she
+never said so.
+
+And here one must pause, to consider the interesting subject of Molly's
+Relations with Men.  It proved singularly lacking in richness.  To
+state that she had lived four years (as she did, ultimately) on the
+staff of the largest New York daily newspaper, hanging personally over
+the "forms" many a time, among the printers, from 10 P.M. until 3 A.M.,
+walking home with the milk-carts in the lead-blue morning; sitting in
+the outer office of one of the greatest city editors for three of these
+years; studying every "first night," every picturesque slum, every
+visiting or indigenous notoriety at close range--to catalogue a life
+like this, add that it was the life of a handsome, well-dressed,
+high-spirited girl, and pretend that it was an existence unqualified by
+male adjectives, would be the merest absurdity.
+
+I hear that from the tiniest, most impudent printer's devil up to the
+Dean of College Presidents, who became so interested in her during his
+famous interview of "_After Democracy--What?_" that his wife asked her
+to luncheon and she spent the day with them, every man she encountered
+"swore by her," as they say.  In a novel, the editor-in-chief would
+have married her and Eleanor would have been delighted; but in a novel
+the editors-in-chief are handsome, athletic young bachelors (which
+rarely occurs, as a matter of fact) or magnificent widowers whose first
+marriages were tragic mistakes, so the emotional field is really clear.
+Now Molly's editor-in-chief was, so far as is known, quite happy with
+his wife, and his four daughters were not so much younger than Molly
+herself.  It is true, the art editor of the Sunday edition was supposed
+to be pretty far gone, but he was married, too, and even his
+stenographer, who was furiously jealous, admitted that Molly never gave
+him the slightest encouragement.  Such reporters as were free to do so
+are generally credited with proposals in strict order of income (there
+had to be some working system), but nothing but continued good feeling
+ever came of it; and the French portrait-painter who spent three days
+at the Metropolitan Art Museum with her out of the ten he vouchsafed
+America, declared openly that she was perfectly cold, a charming,
+clever boy in temperament--"absolutely insulated."  And perhaps she
+was.  She always said that she knew too many men to take them too
+seriously.  And yet when Kathryn remarked once that it was encouraging
+to observe how women were gradually growing independent of men, Molly
+laughed consumedly.  So there, as the great Anglo-American novelist
+says, you are!
+
+Living, as she did, alone, utterly unrestricted in her goings,
+uncensored except by her own common-sense, one readily imagines that
+there may have been scenes ... how could they have been avoided,
+mankind being as it is?  But if her house was of glass, it was, by its
+very nature transparent, and I do not see how any one who didn't
+deserve it could have kept the consistent respect of the entire force
+of _The Day_.
+
+On her twenty-eighth birthday she came home from a very gay supper at a
+very gay restaurant with a hard pain at the back of her neck and a deep
+wrinkle from it between her eyebrows.  They had been harder of late,
+these headaches, and lasted longer, and this one not only failed to
+yield to the practised massage of her kindly housemaid, but baffled the
+nearest doctor and left her, finally, a pallid, shaken creature, who
+saw written on every wall in the little apartment, as she dragged
+herself about it:
+
+_I must not take any coal-tar preparation because my heart simply won't
+stand it!_
+
+"And let me tell you this, Miss Molly Dickett," said the great
+specialist she had consulted as a matter of course (he ordered Trust
+Magnates to Egypt and consulted at Presidents' bed-sides, and if Mrs.
+Dickett had known that he never accepted a cent from Molly, what would
+she have said?) "let me tell you this.  You think you're a very
+remarkable young woman, don't you?"
+
+"Don't you, Dr. Stanchon?" Molly retorted placidly.
+
+He patted her shoulder and capitulated.  "But you ought to be spanked,
+you know," he said.  "Now, listen.  For what was all this vitality and
+endurance given you, my child?"
+
+"If you mean twins," said Molly curtly, "I won't.  There are plenty of
+women to have twins, doctor."
+
+"But there are not plenty of women to have _your_ twins," said he.
+
+She grimaced and blew a saucy kiss to him.
+
+"I see why they all want you!" she told him.  "But, honestly, do
+married women never have headaches?"
+
+"There's no good being clever with me, child," he went on, a little
+wearily (he seemed middle-aged beyond words to her).  "You are making a
+great mistake and when you find it out, it will in all probability be
+too late to remedy it, worse luck!  _That's_ the real harm of all this
+Advanced Woman stuff: if you could only get it over before twenty-five!
+But when you wake up, you're nearer forty, and then--what's the
+difference?"
+
+"I'll marry, then, maybe!"
+
+"Dear child, it doesn't matter a continental what you do, then," he
+said simply.
+
+She gave a little shudder, in spite of herself.  He sounded so final,
+and his eyes were so bright and deep.  She stared into them and,
+somehow, lost herself--the eyes turned to bright points in space, and
+Time seemed to stop, with a sort of whir like a clock that runs down...
+
+"There, there!" his voice came roughly.  "None of that, my girl, none
+of that!  You _are_ in a nice state!  Now, you march off on a vacation,
+and take it on a boat of some sort--do you hear?  And, listen to me--if
+I find a nice woman to go with you----"
+
+"Oh!" she interrupted mockingly, "the famous Miss Jessop!  Now I _know_
+you think I'm pretty bad!  You forget, doctor, that I've interviewed
+Miss Jessop--or tried to."
+
+"That's better," he retorted grimly.  "You hadn't much of a success,
+had you, missy?  And would you like to know what the famous Miss Jessop
+said about you?"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you.  There are two sides to every interview, you know.  She
+said, 'If you don't see Miss Molly Dickett in your office before a
+year, doctor, I miss my guess.  She's a neurasthenic for you, all
+right.'  So what do you think of that, eh?"
+
+"I think she was impertinent," said Molly, weakly, "and you can tell
+her so."
+
+"Bosh.  Now go and lie down," he commanded shortly, and the interview
+closed.
+
+A vacation seemed a simple remedy, and she started out, bent on one,
+with the kindest orders to make it long, accompanied by large credit;
+but the promised renewal of vitality did not come, and the taste seemed
+gone from everything.  The quaint and tiny little fishing hamlet she
+had fixed upon as a good place for gathering "material" by the way,
+proved all and more than she had been led to hope for, and when the
+greatest north-easter that had blown for fifty years bruised and tore
+the rugged little coast, she "wrote it up" as a matter of course--as a
+bird-dog points or a carrier pigeon wheels for home.  And then Molly
+Dickett received what was literally her first setback in ten years: the
+City Editor sent her copy back to her!
+
+"You're too tired, my dear girl," he wrote.  "Why not wait a bit?  Or
+pad this out and point it up a little in the middle and send it to one
+of the magazines.  Peterson covered it for us, anyway, at
+Kennebunkport.  The cubs send you an officeful of affection, and we are
+all yours truly."
+
+But the "cubs" never hung over her desk again, for Molly never returned
+to it.
+
+"You see," as she explained to them gently, "I lost my nerve--that's
+all.  If I hadn't sent the stuff, it would have been all right, later,
+I suppose.  But I did send it, and I thought it was O.K., and if it was
+as rotten as you said, why, how could I ever tell, again?  Anyway, I'm
+tired."
+
+They protested, but the City Editor shook his head.
+
+"Let her alone," he said shortly.  "It's straight enough.  I've seen it
+happen before.  She's gone too far without a check: I don't believe
+women can stand it.  Let her alone."
+
+And when the most talented of the cubs went next to interview Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes as to her recently dramatized novel, he was referred
+to her secretary--and it was Molly.
+
+"For heaven's sake!" he said angrily.  "Are you insane?  Wasn't it true
+that Slater offered----"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Molly negligently, "but I'm tired of offices."
+
+"I suppose you get time for writing your own stuff--on the side?" he
+suggested awkwardly, but Molly shook her head.
+
+"Writing seems bad for the back of the neck," she said, with a grey
+flash out of the tail of her eye for the cub.
+
+"We're getting ready for the sanitarium this morning--sun-baths and
+Swedish Movement Cure and grape diet.  Of course you won't mention it,"
+she said.  "She can't possibly see you--I do all the interviews
+now--but if you come around to-morrow, after I get the house closed,
+I'll give you a good one."
+
+A solemn butler entered.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to cast your eye over the table for the
+ladies' luncheon, Miss Dickett?" he said weightily.
+
+"There's two orchids short and no time for getting more.  And the salt
+got into the mousse, I'm told by the cook--she wished to know if you
+could suggest anything.  And one of the ladies has been detained and
+cannot come--by telephone message.  Will you take her place, Miss
+Dickett?"
+
+"Yes," said Molly.  "Tell Mrs. Carter not to worry about the orchids,
+Halsey; I'll arrange something.  I must go and dress, now--come
+to-morrow," she added hastily.
+
+"By George!" the cub gasped, and left, to electrify the office later.
+
+"It's a darned shame," he ended, and the other cubs nodded sagely over
+their pipes.
+
+"With her talent, too!" they said...
+
+You will have understood, of course, why Eleanor dropped Molly after
+the unfortunate Greek dancer, but you may be surprised to learn of
+Kathryn's attitude when she learned of the secretaryship.  It wasn't
+dignified, she said, and she was greatly disappointed in Molly.
+
+Kathryn was Dean of Women, now, in a co-educational college in the
+middle west, and was spoken of as Dean Dickett in the college journal.
+Of all her children Mrs. Dickett was proudest of Kathryn, because Molly
+frightened her and Eleanor patronized her.  Eleanor was getting up in
+the world a little too fast for her mother, nowadays, and knew people
+Mrs. Dickett would never have dreamed of meeting in the old
+days--people that she had grown used to the idea of never meeting, even
+now that Mr. Dickett was in the Firm.  Eleanor's little girl went to
+school with all the little girls on the Hill and was asked to attend
+their parties.  Her name was Penelope, after George's mother, who had
+never expected it--the name being so old-fashioned--and was
+correspondingly delighted and had given her much jewelry already.
+
+Eleanor, in so far as she mentioned Molly at all, had expressed her
+opinion that to live with Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes was the most
+respectable thing Molly had yet done, and added that there were
+exceptional opportunities in more ways than one for the woman who held
+that position--would perhaps even have called on her there, but Molly
+never asked her to.  Kathryn, to her parents' surprise, developed a
+stodgy but unblinking antagonism to her sister, for what she called
+Molly's lowering of her sense of what was due to herself, and said
+coldly that she had no doubt her sister's life was easier now, but that
+it was un-American.
+
+Un-American it may have been, but easier it assuredly was not.  Unlike
+the factory-girls and clerks for whose benefit Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes
+gave readings from her unpublished works, Molly's hours were not
+limited, and her responsibility grew as her executive ability became
+increasingly manifest.  The thousands of women to whom the celebrity's
+manifold occupations, publicities, hospitalities and charities were an
+endless wonder and discussion might have marvelled less had they been
+able to follow Molly's crowded days and nights and peep through the
+littered desk and scribbled calendar of her study.
+
+To amusement and interest, succeeded fatigue and interest, and to
+these, fatigue alone.  Each hurried, various day became a space of time
+to be got through, merely, and Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes's heavy sigh as
+she curled into her wicker-inset Circassian-walnut bed was no more
+heartfelt than her secretary's.  If Molly had ever envied Mrs. Julia,
+she had long ceased to, and indeed, on that final afternoon when she
+laid her dark, braided head on her arms and cried on her desk, she felt
+as sorry for the authoress as for herself.
+
+Mr. Julia Carter Sykes (as many of his friends called him) sat opposite
+her, biting his nails.  He was well dressed, fond of auction-bridge,
+and travelled abroad in the interests of some vaguely comprehended firm.
+
+"This will just about kill the madam," he said despondently.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Sykes, but I really must--I must," Molly gulped.
+
+"It isn't money, is it?" he asked.  "Because though I'm not a popular
+authoress or anything like that, I could----"
+
+"Oh, goodness, no!" said Molly.  "It's not money at all.  Only I must
+get away."
+
+"We've never got on so well with any of the others," he went on
+jerkily, "and she's certainly awfully fond of you--the madam is.  She's
+taken you everywhere, I know, and all the dinners, and the car whenever
+you----"
+
+"Mrs. Sykes has been very kind," Molly broke in dully, "but--oh, it's
+no use, Mr. Sykes.  It's got to be done, and putting it off only makes
+her worse.  So I'm going to-morrow.  She'll feel better about it later."
+
+"I hope so, I'm sure," Mr. Sykes responded doubtfully.  "She was pretty
+bad when I left her.  That brain of hers, you know--it's a great
+strain, they tell me.  Hard on us all, in a way."
+
+Molly always smiled and sighed when she remembered him and the hunched
+shoulders that leaned drearily over the tonneau.
+
+"Where'll I tell him?" he asked, and she drew tighter the tight line
+between her brows, sighed, tried to speak, and found her mind quite
+utterly a blank.
+
+"Where'll I tell him?" Mr. Sykes repeated, looking curiously at her.
+
+To save her life Molly could not have remembered where she had arranged
+to go!  A real horror caught her: was this the beginning of all the
+dreadful symptoms that few of Julia Carter Sykes's admirers suspected
+in their idol?  She must say something, and there flashed suddenly into
+her mind, otherwise blank of any image or phrase, an odd occurrence of
+the afternoon before, an occurrence she had been too tired to try,
+even, to explain.
+
+"Drive to the docks!" she cried sharply, and the chauffeur touched his
+visor, and her life poised for twenty minutes on its watershed,
+although she did not know it.
+
+In the motor it came back to her, that twilight not eighteen hours
+back, when in clearing out her desk ("the last desk I shall ever clear,
+I swear!") she had happened on the little transparent glass ball, a
+paper-weight, she supposed, and fingered it idly, void of thought or
+feeling, after the last emotional storm with her celebrity.
+
+As she looked into it, staring, her tired mind seemed to sink and sink
+and submerge in the little clear white sphere till it drowned utterly,
+and only a rigid body, its eyes turned into its lap, sat in the still,
+dim room.
+
+Presently, after what might have been hours or seconds, she seemed to
+gather into herself again, but could not wrench her eyes from the
+crystal ball, which looked opalescent now, and filmy, so that she
+shaded her eyes mechanically with the black scarf of her dinner-dress,
+to shut out the reflections of the room.  But they were not
+reflections, for there was bright blue in the ball, blue and white, and
+nothing of that sort was in the room.
+
+She peered into the ball, and saw in it, clear and sharp and bright as
+the little coloured prints that are pasted to the bottom of such
+things, a tossing sapphire sea with little white-caps on it, a boat
+with a funnel, and little boats lashed to the side, a white rail, a
+tilted deck, and herself, Molly Dickett, in a striped blue and white
+frock and bare head, leaning over the rail on her elbows beside a
+broad-shouldered man with a cap such as officers on a boat wear.  The
+waves actually danced and glittered in the sun.  _But the room was
+nearly dark_, something whispered in her brain, and just then she had
+dropped the shielding scarf, and gasped back to a sense of reality and
+the ball was suddenly empty.
+
+There had been no picture in the bottom of it, after all.
+
+But on the bow of the little boat lashed to the side she had seen,
+written in tiny, tiny letters just as the Lord's Prayer is written in
+carved ivory toys of incredible smallness, the letters E-L-L-A, and
+these letters had fixed themselves in her mind, they had seemed so
+absurdly real and she had felt so absurdly sure of them.
+
+"Which steamer, Miss Dickett?" the chauffeur inquired respectfully; all
+the employees of the Julia Carter Sykes establishment respected Molly,
+as well they might.  A sudden, happy irresponsibility flooded Molly's
+tired mind, and she smiled into the man's face--the old,
+not-to-be-resisted Molly Dickett smile.
+
+"The name of the boat is _Ella_, Pierce," she said cheerfully, "and
+it's a small boat, not a liner.  Look it up."
+
+And as he disappeared she laughed aloud.
+
+She was still laughing softly when he returned, looking worried.
+
+"I think you must have told me wrong, Miss Dickett, didn't you?" he
+began hurriedly, lifting out her small, flat trunk.  "It's the _Stella_
+you mean, isn't it?  There seems to be a misunderstanding; they said
+the stateroom was countermanded at the last minute, but the party's
+name was Richards.  It's all right now, but we nearly lost it--they're
+holding her for you.  There don't seem to be any more passengers--are
+you sure there's no mistake?"
+
+"Perfectly sure," said Molly, sober enough now.  "I'm very much
+indebted to you, Pierce."
+
+She gave him a tip that caught his breath, walked up the gang-plank of
+the _Stella_, nodded easily to a severe official, and followed a pale,
+neat stewardess to her state-room.
+
+"Where is this boat going?" she asked of the pale stewardess, who
+gasped and replied,
+
+"South America, ma'am.  Didn't you know?"
+
+"I may have forgotten," said Molly, and then sleep overcame her and the
+days and nights were one for a long time.
+
+The _Stella_ carried hides and fruit and lumber, and, occasionally, two
+or three passengers, for whose convenience the company had fitted up a
+stateroom or two, since the demand for these proved steady.  People, as
+Molly learned from the stewardess (whose sole charge she was) for whom
+a sea-voyage had been recommended for various reasons.  There had never
+been more than five at a time and two was the average; one, very common.
+
+The long, blue days slipped by, she ate and slept and lay in the
+deck-chair that had been sent by the party named Richards, and spoke to
+the stewardess alone, who was used to tired and silent charges, and
+served her meals on a tray.
+
+She was a quiet, refined woman with a hand often at her heart.  Molly
+found her gasping in the companionway once, fed her quickly from the
+little flask she pointed at in her pocket, and helped her to her berth,
+as clean and comfortable as Molly's own.  This produced confidences,
+and she learned that Mrs. Cope (every one called her that, she said,
+and treated her most respectfully) had made her first voyage as
+children's nurse to an English family bound for Rio, who had turned her
+off on arriving at that port.  The stewardess on that trip proved
+inclined to drink and sauciness, and at Mrs. Cope's suggestion they had
+given her the post in her stead and she had kept it for five years.  An
+easy berth, she said, good pay, good board, little to do and pleasant
+people.  She ate alone, was practically her own mistress, and the
+sea-air had saved her life, she knew.
+
+This Molly could well believe, for she had come to count the days of
+her ignorance of salt water for days of loss and emptiness.  The
+mornings of wind, the nights of stars and foam, the hot blue moons,
+sang in her blood and tinted her cheeks: she felt herself born again,
+the crowded past an ugly nightmare.  She says that she had never, till
+then, been alone with herself for ten years and that she had never had
+time to find out what she really liked best in the world.  We must
+suppose that she did at last find out, but it cannot be denied that the
+discovery was unusual.
+
+Mrs. Cope died at Buenos Ayres, suddenly, as she was serving Molly's
+supper, and Molly, piloted by the first mate, for she knew no Spanish,
+buried her there and put up a neat headstone over her grave: the
+possible lack of one had been the poor woman's one terror, and she had
+sent every cent of her wages to some worthless, mysterious husband
+whose whereabouts nobody knew.  This took all Molly's money but so much
+as was needed for her return trip, for it has to be confessed of her
+that she never saved a penny in her extravagant life.
+
+And now we see her speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory
+salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious
+just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and
+horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess.  Two ladies
+waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in
+the _Stella_ by the owners, and there is not a decent, respectable
+woman to be found on the whole coast of South America, to look after
+them.
+
+"Suppose you give me the job?" says Molly, quietly.
+
+He looks her up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes
+the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear,
+grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim,
+broad-shouldered figure as security for fitness.
+
+"I suppose you know your own business best," he says brusquely.
+"You're engaged.  What name do you wish to go by?"
+
+"My own," says she, "Molly Dickett."
+
+So now, you see!  The secret is out, and you may observe her again
+piloted by the first mate, scouting through the shops of Buenos Ayres
+for a blue-and-white striped cotton frock, broad enough through the
+shoulders.  Aprons she purchased and caps (larger caps than Mrs.
+Cope's, who compromised on white lawn bow-knots) and high-laced,
+rubber-soled, white canvas boots, only to be procured in English shops
+for sporting-goods.  Their price caused the first mate to whistle.
+
+"What's the idea of all this?" he demanded suddenly.  "Of course, you
+know, you must be up to some game.  Your kind doesn't ship as
+stewardess."
+
+"What game were _you_ up to?" Molly replied quickly.  "Your kind
+doesn't ship as first mate, does it?"
+
+"What kind?" he said gruffly.
+
+"The 'Dicky' kind," she answered.
+
+He blurted out some amazed incoherence, and,
+
+"Oh, I've seen Harvard men, before," she assured him pleasantly.
+
+Molly took the best of care of her two ladies and accepted their
+gratuities with a grave courtesy.  They confided to the captain, at New
+York, that she seemed unusually refined for her position, and he
+replied that for all he knew, she might be.
+
+"We'll never see _her_ again," the first mate grumbled sourly, when she
+stepped off the gangplank, and the captain shrugged his shoulders
+non-committally.
+
+They did, nevertheless, but her mother never did.  After that one
+dreadful interview in the Dickett library (it had used to be the
+sitting-room in her college days) when Eleanor had cried, and Kathryn's
+letter had been read aloud, and Mr. Dickett had vainly displayed his
+bank-book, and her mother had literally trembled with rage, there was
+nothing for it but oblivion--oblivion, and silence.
+
+"A stewardess!  My daughter a stewardess!  I believe we could put you
+in an asylum--you're not decent!"
+
+Mrs. Dickett's cheeks were greyish and mottled.
+
+"Come, come, mother!  Come, come!" said Mr. Dickett.  "There's some
+mistake, I'm sure.  If you'd only come and live with us, Molly--we're
+all alone, now, you know, and Lord knows there's plenty for all.  It
+doesn't seem quite the thing, I must say, though.  It--it hurts your
+mother's pride, you see."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Molly, sadly.  It is incredible, but she had never
+anticipated it!  She was really very simple and direct, and life seemed
+so clear and good to her, now.
+
+"To compare yourself with that Englishman is ridiculous, and you know
+it," sobbed Eleanor.  "What if he _was_ a cow-boy?  He didn't wear a
+cap and apron--and it was for his health--and George is too angry to
+come over, even!"
+
+"It's for my health, too," Molly urged, trying to keep her temper.  "I
+never was the same after I went on that vacation to Maine--I told you
+before.  Life isn't worth living, unless you're well."
+
+"But you could have the south chamber for your own sitting-room, as
+George suggested, and do your writing at your own time," Mr. Dickett
+began.
+
+"I've told you I'm not a writer," she interrupted shortly.
+
+"George would rather have paid out of his own pocket----"
+
+"We'll leave George out of this, I think," said Molly, her foot tapping
+dangerously.
+
+"Then you may leave me out, too!" cried George's wife.  "I have my
+children to think of.  If you are determined to go and be a
+chambermaid, this ends it.  Come, mother!"
+
+Mrs. Dickett avoided her husband's grasp and went to the door with
+Eleanor.  It is hard to see how these things can be, but the cave-woman
+and her whelpish brood are far behind us now, and Molly's mother was
+cut to the dividing of the bone and the marrow.  The two women went out
+of the room and Molly stood alone with her father.
+
+"I'm sorry, father," she said quietly.  "I can't see that I should
+change my way of life when it is perfectly honourable and proper, just
+to gratify their silly pride.  You must realise that I have to be
+independent--I'm thirty years old and I haven't had a cent that I
+didn't earn for more than ten years.  I have never been so well and
+so--so contented since I left college, really."
+
+"Really?" Mr. Dickett echoed in dim amazement.
+
+"Really.  And mother never liked me--never.  Oh, it's no use, father,
+she never has.  I can't waste any more of my life.  I've found what
+suits me--if I ever change, I'll let you know.  I'll write you, anyway,
+now and then.  Good-bye, father.  Shake hands."
+
+And so it was over, and she jumped into the waiting "hack" ("it was
+some comfort," Eleanor said, "that she wore that handsome broadcloth
+and the feather-boa") and left them.
+
+Perhaps you had rather leave her, yourself?  Remember, she had dined
+the brother of a baronet (and dined him well, too)!  And George Farwell
+had never earned her salary on _The Day_.  Still, if you will stick by
+her a little longer, you may feel a little more tolerant of her, and
+that is much, in this critical civilisation of ours.
+
+She leaned over the rail in her striped blue-and-white, and the first
+mate leaned beside her.  The sapphire sea raced along and the milky
+froth flew off from their bow.  The sun beat down on her dark head, and
+there was a song in her heart--oh, there's no doubt of it, the girl was
+disgracefully happy!
+
+"A fine trip, won't it be?" she said contentedly, and drew a deep
+breath, and washed her lungs clean of all the murk and cobwebs left
+behind.
+
+"Yes," said the first mate.  "My last, by the way."
+
+"Your last?" she repeated vaguely.  "Your last?"
+
+He nodded and swallowed in his throat.  "Shall I tell you why?"
+
+"Yes, tell me why," she said, and stared at the ship's boat, lashed to
+the side.
+
+"I've told you about myself," he blurted out roughly, "and my family,
+and all that.  It can't be helped--now.  We look at things differently.
+A man either wants to be an attaché fooling around Baden, or he
+doesn't.  I don't, that's all.  And I go bad in offices.  And I won't
+take money from them--or anybody.  This suits me well enough.  Probably
+I'm not ambitious."
+
+"Then if it suits you," Molly began, but he put his hand over hers.
+
+"It doesn't suit me to love any woman as much as I've loved you since
+Buenos Ayres," he said, "and feel that to get her I must give up this
+and settle down into a smelly office.  It doesn't suit me to find that
+life is just hell without her, but to know that if I know anything
+about myself I couldn't live any other way but this, and that no decent
+man could ask a woman to lead the rolling-stone life that I lead--she
+wouldn't, anyhow."
+
+Molly's eyes were fastened on the bow of the ship's boat; her heart
+pounded against the rail; she had never felt so frightened in her life.
+
+And suddenly she became aware that she was staring at the letters
+E-L-L-A, and they looked very tiny, like the letters of the Lord's
+Prayer written in carved ivory toys, and something she had not thought
+of since she first left New York flashed into her mind, and she
+trembled slightly.  Then all the vexed and broken, many-coloured
+fragments of her life clicked and settled into place, quietly and
+inevitably, as they do in a child's kaleidoscope, and the final pattern
+stood out, finished.  She smiled slightly and thinks that perhaps she
+prayed.  Then,
+
+"Why don't you give the woman a chance?" said Molly Dickett.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mr. Dickett pushed little Penelope gently off his knee and stroked a
+whitening whisker.
+
+"Molly's baby was a boy, mother--I know you'd want to hear," he said.
+
+Mrs. Dickett was silent.
+
+"Her husband's bought a third interest in the boat," he went on firmly,
+"and she says he'll probably be captain some day."
+
+"Indeed," said Mrs. Dickett.
+
+"They've stopped carrying passengers and the rooms are fitted up for
+them, quite private, she writes, and the boy weighed nine pounds.  I'm
+thinking of going down to see them, when they get in to this country
+again, mother.  Would you care to see her husband's picture?  He's a
+fine looking chap--six feet, she writes."
+
+"I don't care about it," said Mrs. Dickett, through thin lips.  "It is
+a relief, however, to learn that she is no longer a chambermaid."
+
+"Come, come, mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know,"
+Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly.  "It seems a roving sort of life, to us,
+I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I can't see any real
+harm..."
+
+"Tastes differ," said his wife grimly--and so, God knows, they do!
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL
+
+For the first few days of her stay there, she thought little enough of
+the strangeness of the situation.  To think of it, to marvel at the
+neat stillness, the quiet precision of all the domestic arrangements,
+would have been to let her mind dwell on just what she had to avoid.
+She was sick to her very soul of all that the words "domestic
+arrangements" implied; sick with an actual spiritual nausea.  It was
+honestly no exaggeration to say that she would gladly have died rather
+than take the trouble to arrange the details of living.
+
+So every morning she woke when her dreams ended and lay staring idly,
+through the cross-bars of the primitive window-netting, at the swaying,
+sinking, tree-tops, and the floating white above them, so white between
+the blue and green; and then her breakfast came, fresh and chill and
+shining, with a flaming nasturtium on the snowy linen; and then a
+dreamy time, when thought ranged among stray lines of poetry and
+memories of childhood; and then some one rubbed and kneaded and ironed
+out her tired muscles and she slept again.  Sometimes foaming milk came
+in a beaded brown pitcher that smelt of dairies; sometimes luscious,
+quartered fruits, smothered in clotting cream, tempted a palate nearly
+dulled beyond recall; sometimes rich, salted broth steamed in a dim,
+blue bowl till she regretted to see the bottom of it.
+
+And just at that time she was lifted into a long, basket chair and,
+propped in lavendered pillows, looked dreamily into the hills and
+pastures rolling out in front of her.  Cows wandered here and there,
+birds swooped lazily through the June blue, the faintest scent of
+grapevines hung on the wind.  But no human figures blotted the
+landscape; only the faint, musical clash of distant scythes (a sound as
+natural as the cawing and lowing and interminable twittering of the
+busy animal world all around) spoke of men.
+
+Then one day (it might have been a week's time) she caught herself
+listening for sounds of household labour.  Where was the breaking, the
+slamming, the whistling, the quarrelling, the brushing and the rattling
+that these thin partitions ought to filter through?  Simply, it was
+not.  A little faint, suspicious worry came to her: the house was a
+tomb, then?  Did it have to be?  Was she as bad as that?
+
+And when her tray came next, some kind of savoury stew, by now, with
+fresh picked strawberries on a sea-green grape leaf, she looked
+directly at the woman who brought it to the bed.
+
+"How still this house is!" she said, and flushed with weakness, for it
+was her first real sentence, and it occurred to her that only little
+sighs of fatigue or groans of relief and halting exclamations of, "That
+feels good," or "No more, thanks," had passed her lips.
+
+The woman smiled.  She wore a straight gown of some cool stripe of
+white and grey and her eyes were grey.
+
+"We live in a quiet place," she said, and lifted the pillows higher.
+
+But it seemed that after that--perhaps it was because she listened--she
+began to hear faint sounds.  The clear falling of poured out water, and
+the tinkling of dish on dish, now and then, and later, the soft murmur
+of exchanging women's voices.
+
+Another day she spoke of the freshness of her morning egg, and that
+afternoon she leaned nearer the casement to catch the cluck of a
+motherly hen with her brood, and smiled at the scurry of wing and feet
+as grain was scattered somewhere.
+
+It must have been at that time that the doctor came up to see her, a
+big brown man, whose beard hid his smile when he chose, but nothing
+could cover the keen, reading beam of the eye.
+
+"I see you are doing well," he said.
+
+"It is wonderful," she answered him, "but I am sure it is not the
+world."
+
+"The world is very large," he said, and went away.
+
+"And I never asked about--about anybody," she murmured, her eyes
+filling, "but I am sure they are all right, or he would have said!"
+
+She was ashamed, afterward, to remember for how long she had thought
+the woman who attended on her a servant.  And yet she did think her so
+until the morning when it suddenly occurred to her that it was not
+possible any ordinary servant should be so deft and self-contained at
+once: servants were not so calm--that was it, so calm.  Even the best
+of them were hurried and anxious, and if they were old and valued, they
+got on one's nerves the more: one had to consider them.  Of course,
+this was a trained nurse.  She had decided suddenly that she felt equal
+to rising for her bath, and congratulated herself on discerning the
+nurse in time, for now she could ask for help, if she needed it.
+
+"If you will show me the bathroom," she said, "and will be there to
+help me over the edge of the tub, in case I feel weak----"
+
+"I will be there," said the woman, "but I must get it ready: the tub is
+not high."
+
+And when she stepped into the next room she realised, with a little
+smile, how far she was from white porcelain and tiled walls.  On the
+scrubbed deal floor there stood a white deal tub, clean as new milk,
+round and copper bound.  Towels and soaps and sponges were there in
+plenty, and great metal ewers full of hot and cold water, and nothing
+else but one chair in all the scrubbed cleanliness.  The woman poured
+the water over her as she crouched in the fragrant wooden pool and
+dried her gently and quickly in towels pressed away in lavender, with
+the deft, sure movements of one well practised in her business; but
+when she lay, just happily tired from the new exertion, among the
+fragrant sheets, a tiny shadow seemed about to haunt her sleep.  She
+placed the little discomfort with difficulty, but at length expressed
+it.
+
+"That tub is very heavy, now," she said drowsily.  "Is there a man to
+lift it?"
+
+For the first time the woman smiled.  Till then she had been hands and
+feet merely, tireless and tactful, but impersonal: now she smiled, and
+her face was very sweet.
+
+"I shall empty it," she said.  "I am quite strong.  Go to sleep, now."
+
+Very soon again the doctor came, and at her quiet request gave her news
+of husband, children and home; all well, it seemed, and smoothly
+ordered.  Days of absolute stillness had broken the habit of insistent
+speech, and many things that once would have said themselves before she
+thought, now halted behind her lips and seemed not worth the muscular
+effort.  But one thing she did mention.
+
+"Ought not the nurses here to have more help?" she asked.  "Mine lifts
+out my bath-water every day.  Are there not servants enough?  I could
+pay for it..."
+
+"There are no servants here at all," he said, "and there is nobody you
+could pay more than you are already paying."
+
+"Then they are all nurses?"
+
+"There are no trained nurses here, if you mean that," he said.
+
+"Then who--what is the woman who takes care of me?" she asked, vaguely
+displeased.
+
+"She is one of the daughters of the house," he said.  "She is no more a
+nurse than her mother is a cook or her sister a laundress.  They do
+what is to be done, that is all.  Each has done and can do the others'
+tasks."
+
+She felt in some way corrected, yet it was hard to say in what she had
+offended.  But Dr. Stanchon was an odd man in many ways.  "All the
+same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now.  I shall
+feel more comfortable.  Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me.  I
+believe I could get along with her, now.  I'm afraid I was childish,
+before."
+
+But he only shook his head.  "The time for Miss Jessop has passed, dear
+friend," he said quietly.  "No nurse ever comes here."
+
+"Then this is a private house," she began again, "their own home.  And
+I do not even know their names!"
+
+"It is private because it is their own home--just that," he said.
+"That is what a home is.  It is a simple fact, but one that seems not
+to have been included in your education."
+
+"Why, Dr. Stanchon, what can you mean?" she cried.  "My mother's
+hospitality----"
+
+"I mean that I do not consider an art museum a home, no matter how
+highly the chef is paid," he said shortly.
+
+"But there is the place on the Hudson----"
+
+"That is a country club, nothing more," he interrupted.  "Your mother
+dismissed a butler once, because, though he offered eight liqueurs to a
+guest, the guest asked for a ninth and the butler had neglected to
+order it.  I have attended her there for a really painful attack of
+sciatica when none of her visitors knew that anything ailed her, though
+she had been away from them for forty-eight hours."
+
+"But that is mother's house, not mine," she protested, "and I do not
+pretend to keep up----"
+
+"You do not pretend to, because you could not do it," he interrupted
+again.  "Your father is a multi-millionaire and your husband is not.
+But it is your constant ideal, nevertheless, and your failures to
+realise it, even in the degree to which you have tried, have sapped
+your vitality to a point which even you can understand now, I should
+suppose."
+
+She looked doubtingly at him.
+
+"Do you really mean, Dr. Stanchon," she began, "that this dreadful
+attack----"
+
+"'Attack'!" he muttered brusquely, "'attack'!  One would imagine I had
+pulled you through pneumonia or peritonitis!  If, after constant
+sapping and mining and starving-out the garrison, it gives way and
+falls defeated, you choose to call the day of surrender a yielding to
+an attack, then you have had an attack."
+
+And again he left her abruptly, a prey to creeping, ugly doubts.  For
+she had been very sorry for herself and the fatality that had stranded
+her on the dreary coast where so many of her friends had met mysterious
+wreckage.
+
+"Has the doctor sent patients here before?" she asked her attendant the
+next morning, when she sat, fresh and fragrant in her invalid ruffles,
+at the window, watching the poultry yard, which somehow she had not
+noticed before, and the cow browsing beside the brook where the white
+ducks paddled, gossiping.
+
+"Oh, yes, often," said the busy sister (she was Hester; the other was
+Ann).  "We are never without some one.  So many people are ill in the
+city.  Now I am going to clean your room, and perhaps you will feel
+like stepping out on the balcony?"
+
+Surprised, for she had not seen any such addition to the simple frame
+house, she stepped through a window cut down somewhat clumsily, but
+efficiently enough, and hinged to swing outward, onto a shallow, roofed
+_loggia_ with vines grown from boxes on the sides and two long, low
+chairs faced to the view of the hills.  In one of these sat a woman,
+slender and motionless, whose glistening white wrapper seemed to melt
+in the strong sun into the white of the painted wooden balustrade that
+protected the balcony.  Flushed with an invalid's quick irritation and
+resentful of any other occupant, for her raw nerves were not yet
+healed, she was about to turn back hastily into the room when a second
+glance assured her that it was only one of her own white wrappers
+draped along the chair.  The face and hands that her vexed irritation
+must have supplied amazed her, in retrospect, with their distinctness
+of outline, and she trembled at her weak nerves.
+
+From inside the room came the swishing of water and the sound of
+scrubbing; soon the strong clean flavour of soapy boards floated out,
+and the flick of the drops into the pail; from where she sat she could
+see out of the corner of her eye the fluff of snowy suds that foamed
+over the shining bucket as Hester rubbed the milky cake of soap with
+the bristles.  Her strong strokes had a definite rhythm and set the
+time for the stern old hymn-tune she crooned.  The listener on the
+balcony obeyed her growing interest and turned her chair to face into
+the room.  The kilted Hester, on her knees, her brow bound with a
+glistening towel, threw her body forward with the regularity of a
+rower, her strong, muscled arms shot out in a measured curve; on her
+little island of dry boards she sang amid her clean, damp sea,
+high-priestess of a lustral service as old as the oldest temple of man,
+and the odour of her incense, the keen, sweet freshness of her
+cleansing soap, rose to the heaven of her hymn.
+
+"You sing as if you liked it," said the watcher.
+
+"And so I do," said Hester.  "Things must be clean, and I like to make
+them so."
+
+"Why, you are doing just what we did in the gymnasium the year I went
+there," cried the invalid, with the first real interest she had felt in
+anything outside herself.  "We kneeled on the floor and swept our arms
+out just like that!"
+
+"If there were many of you, it must soon have been clean," said Hester,
+moving the rug she knelt on deftly.  "Oh, we were not cleaning it,"
+said the invalid smiling.  "It was only the same motion."
+
+"Indeed?  Then why were you doing it?" Hester asked, turning her
+flushed face in surprise toward the ruffled whiteness in the window.
+
+She stared at the worker, but even as she stared she frowned
+uncomfortably.
+
+"Why, for--for exercise--for strength," she said slowly, and coloured
+under Hester's smile....
+
+Later in the day she moved out again upon the balcony, regretful for
+the first time that no one of her own world could be there to talk with
+her.  Hester, wiping bed, chair and mirror with the white cloth that
+never seemed to soil, whipping the braided rag rugs below her on the
+green with strong, firm strokes that recalled the scheduled blows she
+had practised at a swinging leather ball, vexed her, somehow, and she
+was conscious of a whimsical wish that her delusion of the white
+wrapper stretched along the reclining chair had proved a reality.  The
+soft grey shadows of early evening covered the little balcony, the
+chairs were plunged in it, and it was with a cry of apology that she
+stepped into a grey gown, so soft and thin that she had taken it for a
+deeper shadow, merely, and had actually started to seat herself in the
+long chair where the slender woman lay.  Her own body appeared so
+robust beside this delicate creature's that pity smothered the surprise
+at her quiet presence there, and the swift feeling that she herself was
+by no means the frailest of the doctor's patients added to her
+composure as she begged pardon for her clumsiness.
+
+"I thought I was the only patient here," she explained.  "Miss Hester
+and Miss Ann have a wonderful way of getting quiet and privacy in their
+little house, haven't they?"
+
+"Is it so little?" the stranger asked.  She felt embarrassed, suddenly,
+and tactless, for she had taken it for granted that they were both of
+the class to which the modest cottage must seem small.
+
+"I only meant," she added hastily, for it seemed that at any cost this
+gentle, pale creature must not be hurt, "I only meant that to take in
+strangers, in this way, and to keep the family life entirely separate
+requires, usually, much more space."
+
+"But do they keep it separate--the family life!"
+
+("Evidently," she thought, "they have not been able to give her a
+private room, like mine, or perhaps she eats with them.")
+
+"I think that is how they do it," the stranger went on, "by not having
+any separate life, really.  It is all one life, with them."
+
+"All one life..." the other repeated, vaguely, recalling, for some
+reason, the doctor's words, "but, of course, in a larger establishment
+that would not be possible.  With servants..."
+
+"I suppose that is why they have no servants," said the stranger.
+
+There was a soft assurance in the tone, soft, but undoubtedly there.
+And yet what assurance should a woman have who did not find this house
+small?  She discovered that she was still a little irritable, for she
+spoke brusquely.
+
+"People do not employ servants, I imagine, for the very simple reason
+that they cannot afford to."
+
+"Not always," said the other quietly.  "I have known Ann and Hester
+many years, and there has never been a time when they could not have
+afforded at the least one servant."
+
+"Tastes differ, I suppose," she answered shortly.  "I should have
+supposed that every woman would take the first opportunity of relieving
+herself from the strain of household drudgery, which any ignorant
+person can accomplish."
+
+"Have you found so many of them to accomplish it for you?"
+
+She flushed angrily.
+
+"Dr. Stanchon has been talking about me!" she cried with hot memories
+of her interminable domestic woes.
+
+"Indeed not," said the grey lady.  "I knew nothing....  I only asked if
+ignorant persons really accomplished their drudgery to any one's
+satisfaction nowadays?  They used not to when--when I employed them...."
+
+So she had been wrecked beyond repair, this shadowy, large-eyed thing!
+She spoke as of a day long over.  The other woman felt ashamed of her
+suspicion.
+
+"No, indeed," she answered wearily, "that was an exaggeration,
+naturally.  But they might, if they would take pains.  They are paid
+enough for it, heaven knows."
+
+"Ann and Hester are not paid," said the voice from the dim chair.
+"Perhaps that is why they take pains."
+
+The woman nodded fretfully.
+
+"That is all very well," she said, "and sounds very poetic, but it
+would be rather impractical for us all to do, on that account."
+
+"Impractical?  _Impractical?_"
+
+A hint of gentle laughter from the long chair.  "But it seems to me
+that Ann and Hester are the least impractical of people--are they not?
+They are surely less harassed than you were?"
+
+("I must have been very sleepy: I don't remember telling her all about
+it," thought the woman, "but she seems to know.")
+
+"Yes," she said aloud, "I was harassed.  Nearly to death, it seems.  I
+am hardly myself yet.  I suppose you have been through it all?"
+
+"I have been through a great deal, yes."
+
+The shadows deepened and a thin, new moon sank lower and lower.  The
+grey figure grew less and less distinct to her, and before she knew it,
+she slept.  When she woke, she was alone on the balcony, and the
+sunlight lay in blue-white pools upon the floor.  For the first time in
+her life she had slept alone under the stars, with no one to settle her
+into her dreams or to attend on her when she woke from them, and
+suspicion and displeasure darkened for a moment the freshest awakening
+she could remember.  Had they really forgotten her?  No one seemed to
+be coming, and after a quarter of an hour's impatient waiting she left
+the long, couch-like chair, opened the door of her room and went with
+quick determined steps down the narrow hall, down the stairs, straight
+to the sounds of women's voices in the distance.  They led her through
+a shining kitchen, where a patient, old clock presided, through a cool,
+dim buttery into a primitive laundry, or washing shed, with deal tubs
+and big copper cauldrons and a swept stone floor.  But no odour of the
+keen cleanliness she had learned to connect with Hester's soap ruled
+the wash-house this morning: a breeze from Araby the blest blew through
+the piles of dewy crimson strawberries that heaped themselves in yellow
+bowls, in silver-tinted pans, in leaf-lined wicker baskets, and brought
+all the gardens of June into the bare, stone room.  Hester's quick
+fingers twisted the delicate hulls from the scarlet, scented globes,
+and near her, measuring mounds of glittering sugar, stood a broader,
+squarer woman with greying hair, who smiled gravely at her, facing her.
+
+"Here she is, now," said this woman, whom she guessed to be Ann, and
+Hester, turning to her, added, as one who finishes a sentence, merely,
+
+"And I was just getting ready a dish of strawberries for you.  Mother
+has stepped out for your egg: the brown hen has just laid.  The rolls
+are in the oven and mother has the chocolate ready.  I thought you
+would be early this morning, you were sleeping so soundly."
+
+"Early? early?" she repeated, taken aback by their easy greeting of
+her.  "Why, what do you mean?"  And just then the clock struck seven,
+deliberately.
+
+"Why--why, I thought--then you did not forget--" she began, uncertainly.
+
+"There is nothing like the open air for sleeping, when one is ready for
+it," said Hester.  "Did you not notice the cover I threw over you?  You
+must have gone off before it grew dark, quite."
+
+"Oh, no, because I was with--" then she stopped abruptly.  For it
+dawned on her that the other woman must have been a dream, since she
+perceived that she was unwilling to ask about her, so faintly did that
+conversation recall itself to her, so uncertain her memory proved as to
+how that other came and went, or when.
+
+"It was a dream, of course," she thought, and said, a shade resentful
+still,
+
+"I never slept--that way--before."
+
+"It seems to suit you," said Ann briskly, "for you have never left your
+room till now."
+
+Then it dawned on her suddenly.
+
+"Why, I am well!" she said.
+
+"Very nearly, I think," Hester answered her.  "Will you have your
+breakfast under the tree, while sister picks the berries?"
+
+To this she agreed gladly and found herself, still wondering at the new
+strength that filled her, under a pear-tree, in a pleasant patch of
+shadow, eating with relish from Hester's morning tray.  Ann knelt not
+far from her in the sun, not too hot at this hour for a hardy worker,
+and soon her low humming rose like a bee's note from under her broad
+hat.
+
+"The wash is all ready for you, sister, on the landing," she called.
+"Tell mother her new towels bleached to a marvel: they are on the
+currant-bushes now.  I'll wet them down and iron them off while the
+syrup is cooking, I think--I know she's anxious to handle them."
+
+"Are you always busy, Miss Ann?" her guest inquired, for Ann's fingers
+never stopped even while she looked toward the house-door.
+
+"Always in the morning, of course," she answered, directly.  "Every one
+must be, if things are to get done."
+
+"But in the afternoon you are ironing, and Miss Hester tells me you do
+a great deal in the garden.  When do you rest?"
+
+"In my bed," said Ann briefly.
+
+She was less sweetly grave than her sister, and it was easy to see that
+her tongue was sharper.  She would not have been so soothing to an
+invalid, but the woman under the pear-tree had her nerves better in
+hand by now, and felt, somehow, upon her mettle to prove to this broad,
+curt Ann that there were tasks in the world beyond her sturdy
+rule-of-thumb.
+
+"But surely every one needs time to think--to consider," she began
+gently.  "Don't you find it so?"
+
+"To plan out the day, do you mean?" said Ann, moving to a new patch.
+"I generally do that at night before I go to sleep."
+
+"No, no," she explained, "not the day's work--that must be done, of
+course--but the whole Scheme, life, and one's relation to it..."
+
+"I don't feel any call to study that out," said Ann.  "I haven't the
+headpiece for it."
+
+"No, but some people have, and so----"
+
+"Have you?" said Ann.
+
+She bit her lip.
+
+"It is surely every woman's duty to cultivate herself as far as she
+can," she began.  "Nobody denies that nowadays."
+
+Ann was silent.
+
+"Don't you agree with me?" the woman persisted.  "You surely know what
+I mean?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know what you mean, well enough," Ann said at last.  "I
+know you have to cultivate strawberries, if you want to get more of
+'em--and bigger.  The question is, what do you get out of it?"
+
+A flood of explanations pressed to her lips, but just as they brimmed
+over, some quick surmise of Ann's shrewd replies choked them back.
+After all, what had she got out of it?  What that she could show?  She
+rose slowly and walked back to her room, where the bath, fresh,
+uncreased clothes, and Hester's deft ministry waited ready for her.
+Later, she lay again in the balcony chair, not so soothed by her little
+pile of books as she had looked to be.  Beautiful, pellucid thought,
+deep-flowing philosophies, knife-edged epigrams and measured verse lay
+to her hand, but they seemed unreal, somehow, and their music echoed
+like meaningless words shouted, for the echo merely, in empty halls.
+She drowsed discontentedly and woke from a dream of the grey lady to
+see her stretched in the companion chair, herself asleep, it seemed,
+for it was only after a long doubtful stare from the other that she
+opened her great dark eyes.
+
+"And I almost thought I had dreamed of meeting you before!  Wasn't it
+absurd?  I am only now realising how ill I have been--things were all
+so confused...  I find that I can't even reply to Miss Ann as I ought
+to be able to, when she scorns the effects of culture!"
+
+"Does Ann scorn culture?" the grey lady asked in mild surprise.  "I
+never knew that."
+
+"She scorns the leisure that goes to produce it, anyway."
+
+"Did you give her a concrete instance of any special culture?"
+
+She moved uneasily in her chair.
+
+"Oh--concrete, _concrete_!" she repeated deprecatingly.  "Must I be as
+concrete with you as with her?  Surely culture, and all that it
+implies, need not be forced to defend itself with concrete examples?"
+
+"I'm afraid that I agree with Ann," said the soft voice in the shadow.
+"I'm afraid that so far as I am concerned, culture needs just that
+defence."
+
+She tried to smile the superior smile she had mustered for Ann,
+kneeling in her checked sunbonnet, but this was difficult, with a woman
+so obviously of her own class and kind.  Still the woman was clearly
+unreasonable, and she was able, at least, to speak forcibly as she
+replied,
+
+"Aren't you rather severe on the enormous majority of us, in that case?
+We can't all be great philosophers or productive artists, you know, and
+yet between us and Ann's preserved strawberries and Hester's scrubbing
+there's a wide gulf--you must admit that!"
+
+The stranger rose lightly from her chair and walked, with a swaying
+motion like a long-stemmed wild flower, toward the home-made
+window-door.  At the sill she paused and fixed her great eyes on the
+stronger woman--stronger, plainly, for the frail white hand on the
+china knob supported her while she stood, and she seemed to cling to
+the woodwork and press against it as she sank into the shadow of the
+eaves.
+
+"A wide gulf, indeed," she said slowly, in her soft, breathless voice,
+with an intonation almost like a foreigner's, her listener decided
+suddenly, "a gulf so wide that unless you can cross it with some bridge
+of honest accomplishment, it will swallow you all very soon--you women
+of culture!"
+
+She slipped across the sill and presently Hester's clear, firm voice
+was heard in the narrow hall,
+
+"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" and the balcony was drowned in the dusk, and
+the woman on it yielded consciously to the great desire for sleep that
+possessed her.  But before she drifted off, not afraid, this time, of
+night under the sky, it occurred to her dimly that Hester's other
+patient must come through her own room whenever she used the little
+_loggia_.
+
+"What is she--an anarchist? a socialist?" she thought.  "I must surely
+ask Hester about her.  'You women of culture,' indeed!  What does she
+call herself, I wonder?"
+
+That next morning as she waited idly for bath and breakfast, the
+stranger possessed her thoughts more and more.  Only in such an
+absolutely unconventional place, she told herself, could a completely
+unknown woman appear (in her own apartments, really) and discuss with
+her so nonchalantly such strange questions.  In many ways this delicate
+creature's words seemed to echo Dr. Stanchon's, and this seemed all the
+more natural, now, since she was so obviously still his patient.
+Hester had said that he sent many there--this one was perhaps too frail
+ever to leave them, and felt so much at home that no one thought to
+speak of her.
+
+A healthy hunger checked these musings, and more amused than irritated
+at such unusual desertion, she bathed and dressed unaided and went down
+to the kitchen.
+
+"They will soon see by the way I keep my temper, now," she thought,
+"and my strength, that I am quite able to go back.  I really must see
+how the children are getting on."
+
+Following the ways of her last journey through the house she found the
+kitchen, where an oven-door ajar and a half-dozen small, fragrant
+loaves in the opening showed her that though empty, the room was
+deserted only for a housewife's rapid moment.  She sat down therefore
+beneath the patient old clock, and waited.  Soon she heard a quick,
+bustling step, unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of
+Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh and tidy as a
+clean withered apple, was their mother.  She had a pan of new-picked
+peas in one arm and a saucer of milk balanced in the other hand,
+plainly the breakfast for the sleek black cat that bounded in beside
+her.  This she set carefully on a flagstone corner before she noticed
+her visitor, it seemed, and yet she did not appear startled at company,
+and showed all of the younger women's untroubled ease as she explained
+that a message from Dr. Stanchon had called them both away suddenly,
+very early.
+
+"It was perhaps some other patient in the house?" the guest suggested
+curiously, with a vivid memory of the grey lady's frail white hand and
+breathless voice.
+
+"Perhaps," said the old woman equably, and tied a checked apron over
+the white one, the better to attack the peas.
+
+From the shining pan she tossed the fairy green globes into the rich
+yellow bowl of earthenware at her side, with the quick ease of those
+veined, old hands that outwork the young ones, and her guest watched
+her in silence for a few minutes, hypnotised, almost, by the steady
+pit-pat of the little green balls against the bowl.
+
+"And when do you expect them back?" she asked finally.
+
+"I don't know," said the old lady, "but they'll be back as soon as the
+work is over, you may depend--they don't lag, my girls, neither of 'em."
+
+"I am sure of that," she assented quickly.  "They are the hardest
+workers I ever saw: I wonder that they never rest, and tell them so."
+
+"Time enough for resting when all's done," said the old lady briskly.
+"That was my mother's word before me and I've handed it down to Ann and
+Hester."
+
+"But then, at that rate, none of us would ever rest, would we?" she
+protested humourously.
+
+"This side o' green grave?" the old lady shot out.  "Maybe so.  But
+podding peas is a kind of rest--after picking 'em!"
+
+"And have you really picked all these--and in the sun, too?" she said,
+surprised.  "I trust not for me--I could get along perfectly..."
+
+The old lady jumped briskly after her loaves, tapped the bottoms
+knowingly, then stood each one on its inverted pan in a fragrant row on
+the dresser.
+
+"Peas or beans or corn--it makes no odds, my dear," she cried
+cheerfully.  "It's all to be done, one way or another, you see."
+
+An inspiration came to the idler by the window, and before she had
+quite caught at the humour of it, she spoke.
+
+"Why should you get my breakfast--for I am sure you are going to?" she
+said.  "Why shouldn't I--if you think I could--for I don't like to sit
+here and have you do it all!"
+
+"Why not, indeed?" the old woman replied, with a shrewd smile at her.
+"Hester judged you might offer, and left the tray ready set."
+
+"Hester judged?" she repeated wonderingly.  "Why, how could she,
+possibly?  How could she know I would come down, even?"
+
+"She judged so," the mother nodded imperturbably.  "The kettle's on the
+boil, now, and I've two of the rusks you relished yesterday on the
+pantry shelf.  Just dip 'em in that bowl of milk in the window and slip
+'em in the oven--it makes a tasty crust.  She keeps some chocolate
+grated in a little blue dish in the corner and the butter's in a crock
+in the well.  The brown hen will show you her own egg, I'll warrant
+that."
+
+Amused, she followed all these directions, and poured herself a cup of
+steaming chocolate, the first meal of her own preparing since childish
+banquets filched from an indulgent cook.  And then, the breakfast over,
+she would have left the kitchen, empty just then, for the mistress of
+it had pottered out on one of her endless little errands, had not a
+sudden thought sent a flush to her forehead, so that she turned
+abruptly at the threshold and walking swiftly to the water spigot, sent
+a stream into a tiny brass-bound tub she took from the deep window
+seats, frothed it with Hester's herb-scented soap, and rinsed and
+dipped and dried each dish and cup of her own using before the old
+woman returned.
+
+"It is surprising how--how _satisfactory_ it makes one feel, really,"
+she began hastily at the housewife's friendly returning nod, "to deal
+with this sort of work.  One seems to have accomplished something
+that--that had to be done...  I don't know whether you see what I mean,
+exactly...."
+
+"Bless you, my dear, and why shouldn't I see?" cried the other,
+scrubbing the coats of a lapful of brown jacketed potatoes at the
+spigot.  "Every woman knows that feeling, surely?"
+
+"I never did," she said, simply.  "I thought it was greasy, thankless
+work, and felt very sorry for those who did it."
+
+"Did they look sad?" asked the old worker.
+
+In a flash of memory they passed before her, those white-aproned,
+bare-elbowed girls she had watched idly in many countries and at many
+seasons; from the nurse that bathed and combed her own children,
+singing, to the laundry-maids whose laughter and ringing talk had waked
+her from more than one uneasy afternoon sleep.
+
+"Why, no, I can't say that they did," she answered slowly, "but to do
+it steadily, I should think..."
+
+"It's the steady work that puts the taste into the holiday, my mother
+used to say," said the old woman shortly.  "Where's the change, else?"
+
+"But of course there are many different forms of work," she began,
+slowly, as though she were once for all making the matter clear to
+herself, and not at all explaining obvious distinctions to an
+uneducated old woman, "and brain workers need rest and change as much,
+yes, more, than mere labourers."
+
+"So they tell me," said Hester's mother respectfully, "though of course
+I know next to nothing of it myself.  Ann says it's that makes it so
+dangerous for women folks to worry at their brains too much, for she's
+taken notice, she says, that mostly they're sickly or cranky that works
+too much that way.  Hard to get on with, she says they are, the best of
+'em."
+
+"Indeed!" she cried indignantly, "and I suppose to be 'easy to get on
+with' is the main business of women, then!"
+
+"Why, Lord above us, child!" answered the old woman briskly, dropping
+her white potatoes into a brown dish of fresh-drawn water, "if the
+women are not to be easy got on with, who's to be looked to for it,
+then; the children--or the men?"
+
+She gathered up the brown peelings and bagged them carefully with the
+pea pods.
+
+"For the blacksmith's pig," she said.  "We don't keep one and he gives
+us a ham every year....  Not that it's not a different matter with you,
+of course," she added politely.  "There's some, of course, that's
+needed by the world, for books and music and the like o' that--I don't
+need Hester to tell me so.  There's never an evening in winter, when
+all's swept and the lamp trimmed and a bowl of apples out, and Ann and
+I sit with our bit of sewing, that I don't thank God for the books
+Hester reads out to us.  One was written by a woman writer that the
+doctor sent us here for a long, long time--poor dear, but she was
+feeble!
+
+"She worked with the girls at everything they did, that she could, by
+doctor's orders, and it put a little peace into her, she told me.
+You've a look in the eyes like her--there were thousands read her
+books."
+
+The guest rose abruptly.
+
+"I never wrote a book--or did anything," she said briefly, and turned
+to the door.
+
+"You don't tell me!" the old mother stammered.  "Why, I made sure by
+your look--what made ye so mortal tired, then, deary?"
+
+"I must find that out," she said, slowly, her hand on the knob.
+"I--must--find--that--out!"
+
+And on the balcony she paced and thought for an hour, but there was no
+calmness in her forehead till the afternoon, when alone with Hester's
+mother, for the daughters did not return all that day, she worked with
+pressed lips at their tasks, picking Ann's evening salad, sprinkling
+cool drops over Hester's fresh-dried linen, brought in by armfuls from
+the currant-bushes, spreading the supper-table, pressing out the
+ivory-moulded cottage cheese and ringing its dish with grape-leaves
+gathered from the well-house.
+
+So intent was she at these tasks, that she heard no footsteps along the
+grass, and only as she put the fifth chair at the white-spread table
+(for the old mother had been mysteriously firm in her certainty that
+they should need it) did she turn to look into the keen brown eyes of
+the wise physician who had left her weeks ago in the bed above them.
+He gave her a long, piercing look.  Then,
+
+"I thought so," he said quietly.  "We will go back to-morrow, you and
+I--I need your bedroom."
+
+Through the open door she caught a quick glimpse of Ann and Hester half
+supporting, half carrying up the stairs a woman heavily veiled in black
+crêpe; Hester did not join them till late in the meal, and went through
+the room with a glass of milk afterward.  No one spoke further of her
+presence among them; no one thanked her for her services; all was
+assumed and she blessed them for it.
+
+The doctor passed the evening with his new patient, and when she
+mounted the stairs for her last night she found her simple luggage in
+the room next hers: there was no question of helping her to bed, and
+she undressed thoughtfully alone.  The house was very still.
+
+Her window was a deep dormer, and as she leaned out of it, for a breath
+of the stars, she saw Dr. Stanchon stretched in her chair on the
+balcony, his face white and tired in the moonlight.  In the chair near
+her, so near that she could touch it, lay the frail creature in the
+grey dress, black now at night.
+
+"It is his old patient!" she thought contentedly, remembering with
+vexation that she had absolutely forgotten to ask the house-mother
+about her and why she had not appeared; and she began to speak, when
+the other raised her hand warningly, and she saw that Dr. Stanchon
+slept.
+
+Why she began to whisper she did not know, but she remembered afterward
+that their conversation, below breath as it was, was the longest they
+had yet had, though she could recall only the veriest scraps of it.
+For instance:
+
+"But Mary and Martha?" she had urged, "surely there is a deep meaning
+in that, too?  It was Martha who was reproved...."
+
+"One would imagine that every woman to-day judged herself a Mary--and
+that is a dangerous judgment to form, one's self," the other whispered.
+
+"But to deliberately assume these tasks--simple because they clear my
+life and keep me balanced--when I have no need to do them, seems to me
+an affectation, absurd!"
+
+"How can a thing be absurd if it brings you ease?"
+
+"But I don't need to do them, really, for myself."
+
+"For some one else, then?"
+
+It was then that another veil dropped from before her.
+
+"Then is that why, do you think, people devote themselves to those low,
+common things--great saints and those that give up their own lives?"
+
+ "I think so, yes."
+
+"It is a real relief to them?"
+
+"Why not? ..."
+
+She fell asleep on the broad window-seat, her head on her arms, and
+when she woke and groped for her bed in the dark, the balcony was empty.
+
+There was no bustle of departure: a grave hand-shaking from the
+daughters, a kiss on the mother's withered, rosy cheek.
+
+"Come back again, do," said the old woman and the doctor commented upon
+this as they sat in the train.
+
+"That is a great compliment," he said.  "I never knew her to say that
+except to a long-time patient of mine that stayed a long time (more's
+the pity!) with them.  'Come back,' said Mother to her.  'Come soon,
+deary, for the house will miss your grey dress so soft on the floor.'
+They would have cured her if anybody could."
+
+"Then you don't consider her cured?" she said with a shock of
+disappointment.  "I am so sorry.  But it is surely a wonderful
+place--one can't talk about it, but I see you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know," he said briefly.  "I saw you would pull through in
+great shape there.  This patient I spoke of used to tell me that the
+duty of her life, here and through Eternity, ought by rights to be the
+preaching of the gospel she learned there.  Well--maybe it is, for all
+we know.  If I could have cured her, she would have been a great--a
+really great novelist, I think."
+
+"If you could have--" she gasped, seizing his arm, "you mean----"
+
+"I mean that I couldn't," he answered simply.  "She died there.  I
+dreamed of her last night."
+
+
+
+
+THE GYPSY
+
+Very early in the last century, while Napoleon still reigned over
+Europe and the people went journeys in post-chaises through England,
+John Appleyard, the only son of a thriving Sussex farmer, met, while
+walking across one of his father's fields, a troup of gypsies camping
+under a hedge.  Among them was a dark young woman, very lovely, with
+straight, heavy brows and a yard of thick blue-black hair, which she
+was drying in the wind at the moment, having washed it in the brook.
+John looked at her hard, walked by, turned, looked again, and stood
+staring so long that a surly gypsy father slipped a fowling-piece into
+his elbow and approached him menacingly.
+
+"My daughter, young sir," he said shortly, "may sleep in a wagon and
+not eat off chayny plates as the like o' you do, but I'll have none
+eying her like that, be who he may, for she's a good girl, she is, and
+the best man that walks is none too good to be her husband!"
+
+"Am I good enough?" says John Appleyard, quietly.
+
+And as a matter of fact he married her in the parish church in three
+weeks' time, and his mother cried herself sick.
+
+It was no use trying to live at the farm, after that, for the
+neighbours smiled and pointed, and the old farmer was scandalised at
+his new relatives, and though he had nothing against his handsome
+daughter-in-law personally, felt himself a marked man and counted the
+spoons every night.  So John, who had never loved farming, compounded
+for half the outlying land, which he sold very shrewdly, left his only
+sister the farm, shook hands all 'round and sailed with Lilda, his
+wife, for the United States of America.
+
+On the voyage he made friends with the captain, who took a great liking
+to him (and had no dislike, the passengers said, for Mistress Lilda),
+and put him in the way of business with a thriving grain-merchant of
+Boston, Massachusetts, whom, after twenty prosperous years, he bought
+out, and founded the house of Appleyard.  He had fondly hoped that this
+house should outlast the century, but his only son was no merchant, and
+all for the sea and its constant change and chance, and John was too
+sensible to blame the lad's roving soul to any one but Nature.  So with
+a sigh and a thrill of how his old father must have felt, he bought a
+fine trading-packet for young John and established his daughter's
+husband (she was a steady, prudent girl) as his partner and heir.
+
+John II did wonderfully well and found himself at fifty the owner of
+the most flourishing packet line in the States, with his only son
+prize-man at Harvard University and a daughter who nearly whitened his
+hair by her mad plan for acting in public on the stage.  The son went
+early into buying and selling on 'Change, and was a weighty bank
+president by the time his daughter had finished her schooling.
+
+This was a trifle more elaborate and thorough-going than most girls of
+twenty could boast at that time, and for three reasons.  First, because
+she had a brilliant mind and great powers of concentration; next,
+because John III was not a little vain, in a quiet way, of all his
+Greek and Latin and historical research; and had plenty of leisure for
+imparting them; last, because his son--and only other child--had been a
+disappointment to him in that line, not only failing to repeat his
+father's brilliant college record, but proving actually slow at his
+books and decidedly averse to study, though a steady, competent
+accountant and investor.
+
+So Lilda, named for her great-grandmother by John III's lady (who,
+being of Knickerbocker descent, laid great stress on family names),
+added to the somewhat doubtful accomplishments of a fashionable
+finishing school a great part of what her own daughter, years later,
+learned at the then popular woman's college.  Nor was other and more
+practical lore neglected, for her maternal grandmother, a notable
+_hausfrau_ of the old school, taught her, in two long summers at her
+great country estate on the Hudson River, all the household arts and
+duties that girls of her own age were beginning to despise.  So that
+when, after a brilliant début in New York and a winter season there in
+which her wit and beauty, to say nothing of her horsemanship and
+exquisite dancing had made her the belle of that critical metropolis
+(not too large, then, for one reigning toast), she married one of the
+country's most prominent young lawyers, already suggested for high
+posts abroad, it was felt that America would honour both herself and
+whatever Court should receive these two young fortunates from her hands.
+
+There is a picture of her in the Court dress in which she made her bow
+to Queen Victoria, standing at the foot of a Roman stairway of
+yellowish marble, near a fountain, her baby boy clinging to her hand.
+Under the blue-black of her heavy hair, her cheeks are tinted like
+wall-ripened peaches; her strong, curved figure is just the Flora and
+Juno of the ancient city's statuary.
+
+There is still whispered, in a few old New York houses that have kept
+their white marble and black walnut, the audacious story of Lilda
+Appleyard's falling-in-love.  It was at the Philadelphia Centennial of
+'76, whither her father had taken her for a long visit, for its
+educational influences.  He used to say that women had little chance of
+acquiring practical information of the large and comprehensive order,
+and that no one would ever know without a trial what of all that sort
+their brains could or could not take in.  The progress of the world, he
+said, was no greater than the progress of its homes, "and that," he
+used to wind up, "is no more nor less than the progress of their women."
+
+So Miss Lilda studied the progress of all three at the Centennial, and
+took sage notes in a little red morocco book, and the proud banker read
+them in private for years afterward to his friends.  But she was not
+engaged in this interesting occupation by night as well as day, you may
+rest assured.  Many a ball and high tea did Philadelphia's ladies offer
+their visiting friends, and there was not one of any consequence that
+failed to beg the honour of Miss Lilda Appleyard's company.  And her
+luggage was by no means limited to the little red morocco book!
+
+A party from New York had come in a special train to Philadelphia for
+three days at the Centennial, and the occasion was seized by the wife
+of an army officer to give a large ball in her great house in
+Germantown.  All visiting Knickerbockers who might expect to be asked
+anywhere were asked to attend this ball, and Lilda's maid assured the
+hotel chambermaid that she never had known her young lady so hard to
+suit.  And finally, after three different trials, to pick out that
+strange black mousseline-de-soie!  She looked like pictures of
+foreigners, to tell you the truth, her young lady did!  Of course, her
+grandmamma's pearls would make anything dressy, and there's no denying
+the black made her arms and neck look like ivory--but to snatch up that
+flame-coloured scarf her grandpapa had brought from India, and knot it
+over her shoulder at the last minute!  It was downright outlandish.
+Mrs. Appleyard would never have liked it.
+
+She had a high, staglike carriage of the head, and as she was rather
+tall, she looked over most of her girl companions.  Halfway through the
+dance she raised this dark head a little higher and stared.
+
+"Who is that man?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Elliot Lestrange," the girls told her, "but he doesn't care for women.
+He's very proud."
+
+"I should like to meet him," she said simply.
+
+They tittered and teased her, but after all, she was a belle, and Mr.
+Lestrange was sent for.  The young dancing man who undertook the
+message told freely how Lestrange had said,
+
+"Oh, hang it all, I'm not dancing to-night!"
+
+"But she's Miss Appleyard, of Boston and New York--she's a beauty!"
+
+"Then she must have plenty of beaux, Clarke, without me!"
+
+So young Mr. Clarke took his little revenge (for after all, he had used
+his dance with the dark beauty for this stupid errand and resented it),
+and in presenting the chilly hero, said maliciously,
+
+"Here is Mr. Lestrange, Miss Appleyard--but he says you must have
+plenty of beaux without him!"
+
+"That is just it," returned the calm Lilda, looking straight at the
+grey eyes that faced her under the thick honey-coloured hair
+(Lestrange, though of Huguenot descent, was curiously blonde).  "I have
+_not_ enough beaux--without Mr. Lestrange!  Will you have the next
+waltz, Mr. Lestrange--Mr. Clarke's, I believe it is?"
+
+"Thank you, yes, and this schottische, too, if I may," says Lestrange.
+The young people standing about said that they never took their eyes
+off each other from the moment she spoke to him, and that they swung
+into the dance like automatons, leaving her lawful squire, a young
+Philadelphian, irate and ridiculous.
+
+"These may be New York manners," he said sourly, "but they would never
+do in a _civilized city_!"
+
+His opinion was a matter of indifference to the couple.
+
+They are supposed to have talked very little, but danced frequently
+together.  As the young ladies were putting on their capes and cloaks,
+just before the dawn, one among them shrieked suddenly across the room.
+
+"Why, Lilda! where is your flame-coloured scarf!  You've lost it!"
+
+"I gave it away," she said briefly.
+
+They gasped.
+
+"Good heavens!" said another.  "He'll be proposing before you know it!"
+
+"He proposed at twelve," Miss Appleyard said placidly, "and I accepted
+him.  Will you be maid-of-honour, Evelyn?"
+
+No one had ever told her of John I and his gypsy.
+
+They had a wonderful wedding-tour among the Italian lakes and came back
+after a three months' honeymoon to the solid "brown stone front" of the
+period, which, furnished from cellar to attic, had been John's wedding
+gift to his daughter.
+
+"Well!" some gossip had cried, "it's big enough, in all conscience!
+But I suppose Mr. Appleyard was thinking of the size of Elliot's
+family."  (He was one of eight children and had nine uncles and aunts.)
+
+"None of us has ever had but two," said Lilda calmly, "and the
+Appleyards don't change, papa says."
+
+And as a matter of fact little Elliot Lestrange never had but one
+contestant for nursery rights--his fair-haired, gentle sister.
+
+"I wonder which of the children will be the 'wild one'?" Lilda asked
+her husband one night, as they sat opposite each other in the great,
+high-ceilinged dining-room.  They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike
+the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to
+break the monotony of five years of table tête-à-tête, they delighted
+in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together.
+They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so
+much and such varied entertaining, that they could not remember when,
+before, the attentive coloured butler had had but two glasses to fill.
+
+Lestrange looked admiringly at his handsome wife.  Never had he ceased
+to bless the day he married her.  He was a proud man, conventional and
+ambitious to a degree, and at moments during his short betrothal period
+he had felt threatening chills of doubt when away from his enchantress
+as to the wisdom of such a feverishly short acquaintance, such a
+sudden, almost dramatic alliance.  Never for a moment would he have
+been satisfied with the standing of an ordinary lawyer; the career he
+had set before himself needed a larger background than any one city,
+even his country's metropolis, could offer, and in his future the
+position and qualities of his wife would count enormously.  Money,
+breeding and beauty he had always told himself he must marry, but to
+win brains and a loving heart into the bargain was more than even he
+could have expected, and he admitted the justice of his friends'
+half-earnest jealousy.
+
+To-night he raised his glass gallantly and drank to her bright dark
+eyes, noting with pleasure that she had remembered to have her new gown
+of the filmy black material he fancied so much!
+
+"Why should either of them be 'wild,' dearest?" he asked.
+
+"Papa told me once, when I was a child, that every Appleyard that he
+had ever heard of had two children, a son and a daughter," she said
+thoughtfully, "and one of them was always staid and steady and--oh,
+well, looked up to in the community, you know, and the other always
+flighty and ... unusual, to put it mildly.  And certainly, as far back
+as _I_ can remember, it has been so.
+
+"There was Aunt Adelaide.  Grandpapa found her one day acting in a play
+in the town hall in the little village where they went for the
+summer--right on the stage with all those travelling actors.  She
+actually wanted to go with them!"
+
+"Absurd!" said her husband, selecting and peeling for her a specially
+fine peach.
+
+"But grandpapa himself," she went on thoughtfully, "threatened to go as
+a common sailor before the mast, rather than be tied down to
+business--papa showed me a letter he wrote once; he said it was
+sickening to him to think of putting up the shutters every night and
+heaping up money in a strong-box."
+
+"How about your great-grandfather?" he asked idly.  "I don't know about
+him," she said, "except that I am named for my great-grandmother.  They
+were the first Appleyards to come to this country, you know."
+
+"I know," he said politely.  He himself traced his ancestry to a cousin
+of Henry of Navarre, and was furiously proud of it, though wild horses
+could not have dragged from him an allusion to it.
+
+They dipped into the heavy crystal finger bowls in silence.  Then, as a
+sudden curious idea struck him,
+
+"But how do you account, on that theory, for your own generation?" he
+asked.  "Certainly no one could call Johnny wild?"
+
+"Poor old Johnny!" she said, laughing, "no, indeed!  The wildest step
+he ever took was to put type-writing machines in the bank!"
+
+"Then, is it you?" he demanded, and smiled gravely, for her dignified
+young matronhood was his pride.
+
+"It may come out in me later," she threatened, "for Appleyards don't
+change, you know."
+
+But old Mr. Appleyard, who perhaps knew more instances of the tradition
+than he imparted to his daughter, died peacefully at seventy-two, the
+accepted Appleyard age for that process, convinced that he, at last,
+had produced two steady children: he was a little worried about his
+grandson, young Elliot, who displayed a freakish talent for composing
+and performing music for the violin, and an unfortunate preference for
+the society of professional musicians, of which his mother seemed
+almost culpably tolerant, not to say proud.  The arts were rising,
+socially, in that generation, and Elliot was actually excused from an
+examination in ethics for the purpose of attending a concert by the
+Boston Symphony Society.
+
+By this time, of course, they had returned from their European period.
+It had been a brilliant ten years, and Mrs. Lestrange had met most
+royalties and all travelling Americans of any consequence--all with the
+same gracious dignity, the same delicate balance of charm and reserve
+that delighted foreigner and compatriot alike.  Her portrait was
+painted by a great German, her bust was modelled by a great Frenchman,
+the words of a little lullaby she had composed for her baby girl was
+set to music and made famous through Europe by a great Italian.  Queen
+Victoria complimented her on her devoted personal care of her children,
+and sent her an autographed _carte de visite_, as they were still
+called then, framed in brilliants.  The silver trowel with which she
+laid the foundation stone of her school for instructing the
+peasant-girls of her adopted country in the simple household arts is
+still a bone of contention between her two proud children.  A duke
+stood godfather to her little Wilhelmina and Royalty herself
+embroidered at least one frill of the baby's christening robe.
+
+When the children were twelve and fourteen, however, the family
+returned; papered, painted and decorated the house anew from top to
+bottom, and settled down to the task that had brought them back--the
+bringing up of their boy and girl in an American tradition.  If Mrs.
+Lestrange ever missed the polish and variety of European social life,
+if she found the "Anglo-mania" (just then so fashionable in New York) a
+little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it.  Handsome and
+serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day,
+perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties
+of household, nursery, ballroom and _salon_, omitting nothing,
+excelling in all.
+
+No charity bazaar, no educational exhibition, no welcoming of
+distinguished foreigners, no celebration of the arts, was complete
+without Mrs. Elliot Lestrange.  For her son's sake she patronized music
+extensively, for her daughter's, she sat through endless balls and
+garden parties.  By the time they were both married, her dark hair was
+powdered with silver.
+
+"What a beautiful old lady mamma is going to make," Wilhelmina said to
+her brother, who had made a flying visit across the Atlantic and left
+the old Italian villa where he made music all day among the birds and
+orange-trees, to see his sister's baby son.
+
+"You think so?" he answered quickly, with his darting, foreign air.  "I
+am myself far from certain."
+
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?" she cried, looking up a moment from the
+lace-trimmed bassinet.  "What a thing to say!"
+
+He laughed indulgently.
+
+"Oh, you know everything I say always shocked you, Sister Mina," he
+said.  "What a joy it must have been to you and father when I left
+these Puritan shores for good!"
+
+"No, no," she began, but he tapped her lips.
+
+"Yes, yes!" he contradicted.  "Even to marry an opera singer, you were
+glad to see me go!  But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will
+sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside
+her, and hear this little lady in the bassinet here say her lessons?"
+
+Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted
+it.
+
+"Well," young Elliot said, reflectively, "all I can say is, I don't
+think so.  There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of."
+
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?"
+
+"I can't explain it exactly," he said, "but she's very deep--mamma.
+Father doesn't understand her, you know."
+
+"Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!" his sister contradicted.  "You
+remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of
+not sleeping last year.  She and mamma got on famously, from the first;
+she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping
+again.  She was used to it--the nurse, I mean--and didn't mind, she
+said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.
+
+"I remember asking her why she thought mamma should have insomnia--for
+there was nothing whatever on her mind, and they say that's the cause,
+you know.  She gave me the strangest look.
+
+"'Are you sure your mother has nothing on her mind?' she asked me,
+'your mother's very deep, you know!'
+
+"'What nonsense, Miss Jessop!' I told her.  'Mamma's as open as the
+day!'"
+
+Elliot laughed.
+
+"Sensible woman, your Miss Jessop," he said.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  She was very decided, certainly, and easy in her
+ways.  More so than I quite like in a trained nurse.  I will say for
+her, though, that the out-of-doors idea was hers.  Though father was
+quite alarmed about it."
+
+"That's what I say.  Father doesn't understand her."
+
+"Oh, Elly, how can you?  Every one says there never were two people so
+suited to each other.  There's not one wish of father's she doesn't
+carry out, and never has been."
+
+"I don't say not," he agreed, "but that merely shows what a good,
+clever wife she is.  That doesn't say he understands her.  He certainly
+never understood me, I know; Uncle John didn't either."
+
+"But you were always--always--_queer_, you know, Elly," she explained
+deprecatingly.
+
+"Was I?" he questioned lightly.  "Mamma understood me, all the same.
+So perhaps she's 'queer,' too."
+
+"Nonsense," Wilhelmina said briefly.  "Mamma is like anybody else, only
+a great deal cleverer."
+
+"Maybe, maybe," he repeated thoughtfully.  "But she always gives me the
+impression of having something up her sleeve.  She said a strange thing
+to me after my little girls--the twins, you know--were born.  She was
+holding them out in the orange grove, and saying such sweet things to
+Maddelina, and then she turned to me suddenly and said,
+
+"'Have I been a good mother to you, Elliot?'
+
+"'Why, madre, you've been perfect,' I said.
+
+"'Is there anything more you think I could ever do for you?' she asked.
+
+"'Honestly, dear, I don't think there is,' I said.
+
+"'That's all I wanted to know,' she said, and sailed the next day....
+What's the matter?  How strange you look!"
+
+"It's only that she said just that to me, last week," Wilhelmina told
+him, "and left the next day for New York.  But I supposed it was to get
+back to father.  She depends so on him."
+
+"Do you really think so?" he asked curiously.
+
+But every one agreed with Wilhelmina--perhaps because Wilhelmina very
+seldom said anything that any one was likely to disagree with--and so
+every one was much surprised at the comparatively short time that Mrs.
+Lestrange spent in retirement after her husband's sudden death.  He had
+not the Appleyard habit of living to be seventy-two, it appeared, and
+succumbed to pneumonia, following fatigue and exposure.
+
+His wife's hair turned quickly to an iron-grey, soon after, but she
+moved steadily on among the many educational and philanthropic schemes
+with which she had begun to fill her time after her daughter's
+marriage.  Organized charity was developing rapidly, just then, and
+Mrs. Lestrange's clear common sense, executive ability and knowledge of
+European institutions of the sort made her, with her wealth and
+leisure, a leader on New York boards and councils.
+
+It was noted that the year after her widowhood found her less
+frequently in the public meetings, less willing to organise new centres
+of work, more determined to avoid presidencies and chairmanships.  For
+this she gave as an excuse the frequent trips abroad, which seemed to
+have no special purpose and displeased Wilhelmina, who frequently
+offered her a home in Boston.
+
+"I cannot understand why she refuses," said Wilhelmina, on the occasion
+of Elliot's last flying trip to America.  "The children would love
+their granny to be with us, and she could have her own sitting-room.
+Can't you persuade her, Elly?"
+
+"I'm afraid not," he answered absently.  "You know she's winding up all
+those boards and trade-schools and hospitals and things?"
+
+"And a good thing, too," said his sister.  "Mamma's done enough for the
+community.  She ought to settle down.  And you see she's going to."
+
+"So that's the way it looks to you, Mina?" he asked, looking
+searchingly into her pale blue eyes, and shrugging his shoulders
+slightly.
+
+"Gracious, Elliot, if you know so much more about mamma than I do, why
+don't you ask her to live with you and Maddelina?" she suggested
+sharply.
+
+"It wouldn't do any good--she'd never think of it," he answered simply.
+
+"Well, of course, she and Maddelina..."
+
+"Exactly," he agreed with his teasing foreign smile.
+
+"And I'll tell you another thing," she went on; "all these sudden trips
+about the country and to Europe--what is the sense?  Mamma will be
+fifty in a few days, and anything might happen----"
+
+"Oh, nonsense, Mina," he laughed at her.  "Mamma is stronger than
+either of us, and you know it."
+
+"Of course she's never been ill," his sister admitted.  "But all this
+travel makes her nervous, just the same.  She's not like herself.  Why,
+yesterday, we drove out through the suburbs--she seems to want to be
+out doors all the time, you know--and under a big tree there was a camp
+of those horrid gypsies.  The horses were unhitched, and the dirtiest
+children playing all about, and they were cooking over a fire.  Nothing
+would do but we must stop the horses--the new bays, you know, and they
+hate anything queer--and mamma actually made quite a visit among them!
+They were English gypsies, from Sussex, they said.  One of the women
+ladled out some mess or other from the great pot and mamma actually ate
+it.  And it was odd, too, but they wouldn't take any money.
+
+"'Not from you, lady, not from you!' they said.  The woman put her
+hands behind her back."
+
+"That _was_ odd," said Elliot.
+
+"Yes.  And as we drove off she looked after them and said the strangest
+things.  'Could any one be happier, do you think?' she said, and
+afterward: 'Life seems so unwrinkled, somehow, when one sees it lived
+that way!'"
+
+"And what did you say to that?" asked her brother.
+
+"Why, of course, there was nothing to say.  I only said that I couldn't
+conceive how any educated woman could be happy without a bath-tub."
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"Of course you did," he murmured.
+
+"That's what mamma said," she sighed.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, she looked at me so queerly and said, 'Of course you would say
+that, Mina!'"
+
+"Do you know what I've come over for?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"On business, I suppose," she answered idly.
+
+"Yes.  Uncle John sent for me, to ask if I had any idea of mamma's
+intentions.  And then there were papers to sign."
+
+"Papers?" she looked alarmed.
+
+"Yes.  I think you might as well know.  But we're not to discuss it
+with her, understand.  She's disposing of all her property."
+
+"Why, Elly!"
+
+"It's divided into thirds.  One-third to me, one-third to you, and the
+other third cut up into servants' legacies, one or two charities and
+enough for herself to give her a hundred pounds a year."
+
+"Pounds?"
+
+"It's in English securities.  It looks as if she meant to live in
+England.  Uncle John asked if he might tell us, and she said only on
+condition that we didn't discuss it.  She meant to travel for some
+years, she said, and she had arranged to have us notified immediately
+in case of any accident or difficulty.  She expected to write
+occasionally, too, she said.  You know how mamma is--she simply
+hypnotised the old gentleman."
+
+"Why, Elly! you don't think her mind..."
+
+"Bosh!  Her mind's better than ours will ever be!  Uncle John went to
+Dr. Stanchon about it and he said that mamma was in perfect health,
+good for twenty-five years more----"
+
+"She always says 'twenty-two,'" Wilhelmina interrupted.
+
+"--And that she was not to be bothered or crossed in any way.  He said
+that at her age women often took odd fancies, and that with a woman so
+capable and determined as mamma, the best thing was to give her her
+way.  'Mind you, now, Appleyard,' he said, 'your sister consulted me
+long before you did, and whatever she does I justify in every way!'"
+
+"Well, of course, with mamma, there's nothing else to do," sighed
+Wilhelmina, "but--five hundred dollars a year!  Why, it's impossible!
+She can't travel on that!"
+
+"No, but she can't starve, either," said Elliot, philosophically, "and
+everybody was always telling her she could have earned her own living
+in a dozen ways--perhaps she's going to do that."
+
+"Oh, Elly!" cried poor Wilhelmina.  He turned to go, then picked up a
+small blue-print from the top of a pile on a camera.
+
+"What's all this?"
+
+"Oh, that's one of the photographs the children are always taking
+nowadays.  That one--why, that's one of mamma and the gypsies, that I
+told you about!  See, there's the gypsy woman handing her out the soup.
+They get very clear prints, now, don't they?"
+
+"But what an extraordinary likeness!" he exclaimed.  "Isn't it
+remarkable!"
+
+"Oh, you mean mamma and the gypsy," she said indifferently.  "Yes, the
+children both noticed it at once.  The other gypsies did, too, I'm
+sure, from the way they pointed and stared.  Well, she always was that
+dark type, you know.  Would you like to keep it?"
+
+"Thanks, if you don't mind," he said, and put it carefully in his
+pocketbook.  "It's better of mamma than any of the professional ones."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Nobody who attended the great dinner-party given for Mrs. Elliot
+Lestrange on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday will forget it
+readily.  It was as much a public as a private function, and around the
+great hotel dining-room used for the occasion stood many different
+tables for many different classes of people.  Between the party of
+girls trained years ago in her trade-school and the long table of
+boards of directors of different movements in which she had long been
+prominent, sat the entire cast of one of the theatrical successes of
+the season, the play being openly founded on one of the dramatic
+incidents of her life as a diplomat's wife, a generation ago, in
+Europe.  The old composer of her famous cradle-song shared with the
+publisher of her "Letters from an Attaché's Wife," and the prima-donna
+she had discovered and educated, a merry little Italian table where her
+musician son made the proud fourth.  A party of old pupils from the
+convent school where she had spent a year surprised the room with the
+valedictory verses she had written for the class, and at her
+bridesmaid's table only one was lacking--the saucy maid-of-honour,
+Evelyn, of thirty years ago!
+
+A goodly fraction of what was just about to be known as the famous
+"Four Hundred" of New York society chattered and stared at the poets
+and novelists from Boston; and, for the sake of future memories,
+Wilhelmina's children and the olive twins from Florence gazed curiously
+from under their governesses' wings at the lights and roses and jewels
+and tinted glass that made the great room a scented fairyland to their
+round eyes.
+
+At every table was a vacant chair, and to each of these she moved in
+turn for the space of one of the courses of the elaborate dinners of
+the end of the nineteenth century, a majestic figure in black velvet,
+frosted to the waist with her grandmother's wonderful point-lace, her
+shoulders, firm and creamy still, twinkling with her father's wedding
+diamonds, her neck soft under her husband's birthday pearls.
+
+It was said of her on that night that she was the one person in the big
+room who could have been perfectly at ease at every table there, and
+the pride of the children as she took her nuts and coffee among them
+was delightful to witness.
+
+"You have, indeed, lived every moment of a rich life, Signora," said
+the composer to her, in Italian, as he sat again after their graceful
+bows on the rendering of his now almost classic lullaby by the great
+singer.  "Is it not so?"
+
+"It may be, _Maestro_, but there is, after all things, and for all
+people, a rest at last," she answered gravely.
+
+Her son, who was dressing them one of his inimitable salads, looked up
+sharply at this, though the others only smiled.
+
+"And you start on your travels, it appears, after this triumph?" the
+_Maestro_ inquired.
+
+"To-morrow," she said.
+
+"And may we know..."
+
+"I go alone," she answered, smiling.
+
+About each of her ecstatic granddaughters' necks she gravely clasped
+her pearl or diamond chains, as they stood at the foot of the stairs in
+her brownstone house long after midnight; in each grandson's hot,
+astonished palm lay a glittering ring or bracelet, "For your wife, some
+day!"
+
+"How strangely mamma is acting," Wilhelmina complained to her brother.
+"I suppose she is excited by all this?"
+
+"She appears perfectly calm to me," he answered.  "I have always told
+you, Mina, that you have a tendency to call any one excited who does
+anything that you don't expect."
+
+Their mother sat in silence in her room while her maid, a faithful
+mulattress of many years' service, undressed her.
+
+"Is that little tin box where I can get it?" she asked at last, when
+all was done.
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"Are the house-keys here?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"Then I shall not want you any more.  You have always been all that I
+could wish, Ella, and I shall miss you.  Take this, to remember me by,"
+and the woman stared at the watch and chain in her hand.
+
+"But--but--when you come back, Mrs. Lestrange, shan't I--shan't I----"
+
+"If ever I come back, yes.  But Miss Wilhelmina will make a good home
+for you.  Good-night."
+
+Amazed, the woman closed the door, and the house lay in darkness, but
+for one lighted room--the room of its mistress.
+
+Mrs. Lestrange went to a wardrobe, dragged out a small tin trunk, no
+larger than a leather case, opened it with a key from a private drawer,
+and turned out the contents.
+
+These were two sets of plain, warm underclothing, some stout boots, a
+heavy skirt and jacket of coarse dark blue stuff, a mackintosh, a cheap
+wooden brush and rubber comb.  A sensible wallet for her hand and a
+canvas bag on a belt under the clothes which she put on quickly, held
+some notes and gold.  She fingered the coarse, plain handkerchiefs, the
+brown Windsor soap, the stout cotton umbrella, lovingly.  Over her
+thick iron-grey hair, twisted firmly into a plain knot behind the ears,
+she pinned a small round hat with a twist of cheap ribbon around it,
+slipped her hands into a pair of new cotton gloves, took a seat by her
+window overlooking the Central Park, and sat silently for an hour.  Her
+eyes were fixed on the shadowy bulk of the trees in the park; her hands
+were still on her lap: she waited.
+
+Soon the air grew vaguely grey, then white, then a pearly pink.  The
+trees came out clear, the city sparrows and robins chirped.  The milk
+carts rumbled loud, and here and there, even in that wealthy quarter, a
+few early workers crossed the park paths.  It was day.  She rose, tied
+a thick green veil over her hat and face, lifted the tin box by its
+handle and opened her door softly.  In that house it was still
+midnight.  She went quietly down the corridor, through a service hall,
+down some narrow stairs, through the warm kitchen, clean for the new
+labour of the day, then took out a key from her wallet, turned it
+gently and stepped into the area-way.  This had an iron gate and a
+second key opened it: once through and the last gate locked, she put
+her hand through the bars and slipped both keys under the metal frame
+laid out ready for the milk bottles.  No one was in sight.  Alone in
+the street, she gave one comprehensive, quick glance at the great
+sleeping house, and drew a long, deep breath that seemed to stretch the
+very depths of her lungs--one would have almost thought she had not
+really breathed for a long time.
+
+Then she turned her back, and grasping the box and umbrella strongly, a
+plain, sturdy, middle-class figure of a travelling working-woman, she
+walked to a car-line, lifted her box beside her, and sitting between a
+negress with three children and a plumber's bag with a kit of tools,
+made her way to the downtown wharves.
+
+Here all was activity: the day was well along for these labourers, and
+she had to push her way to reach the officer who would let her board
+the steamer.
+
+"Second class," she said briefly, producing her ticket.
+
+He ran down a list quickly.  "Number sixty-three," he said, "Mrs.
+Stranger."
+
+"Yes," she answered, and still carrying her box, went in the direction
+he indicated.
+
+It was not a large steamer and not very swift, and for ten days the
+sturdy figure lay inert on her chair, silent and absorbed.  She had no
+book, no friend, no knitting.  Silently she sat and stared at the
+purple horizon-line, silently she ate, silently she bestowed the modest
+gratuities that brought her what little assistance she needed.  Her
+only social act was the nursing of the two sisters who shared her
+cabin, and this was done so quietly and competently that they were
+certain she was a professional nurse on her vacation.
+
+One of the sisters, a head clerk in a great department store, offered
+her a newspaper on the third day out.
+
+"It's old," she said, "but you may like to look it over.  That's Mrs.
+Elliot Lestrange in the picture.  That was a grand banquet she had.
+I'll bet she was proud, with all that fuss made of her!  Isn't she a
+lovely lady?"
+
+"It is handsome lace," Mrs. Stranger agreed.
+
+"My, it's a fortune!  I've waited on her.  She's fine--so aristocratic,
+but no airs.  I'd never have been here, but for her, maybe.  She and
+the other League ladies got us our vacations, they say, at our place,
+and she started the lending fund so those that need it can get the
+third week, by borrowing.  That gives us the trip both ways, you see.
+She must have a grand life--Sister says there's no house she couldn't
+go into here or the other side, and every hour of the day is planned
+out for her by a secretary she keeps.  Sister says she wonders when she
+ever has a moment to herself."
+
+"Perhaps she will have--some day," said the other woman quickly.  "I
+agree with your sister, that she needs it."
+
+"Sister says you look like her," the clerk went on, with a laugh.  "The
+hair and eyes, she says.  Of course, I see what she means, but,
+gracious--if you could have seen her the day she came in last winter!
+A sable wrap to her knees, and her hair all waved, and besides, her
+figure was different--much taller."
+
+"All dark women with thick grey hair resemble each other, more or less,
+I think," said Mrs. Stranger.
+
+When she walked down the landing plank to the Tilbury dock, Mrs.
+Stranger stood for a moment, scanning the little crowd that waited on
+the water's edge.  She appeared to expect some one, for her tin box lay
+at her feet, and she stood negligently by it, her head raised rather
+haughtily for a woman of her general appearance.  Suddenly she smiled
+oddly, drew again that deep-lunged breath of relief, stooped and picked
+up the box, and carried it unassisted to the great train-shed.
+
+From London she travelled south and west, and beyond purchasing at
+Salisbury a warm red-hooded cape bought nothing and transacted no
+business except for a brief cablegram to New York despatched from
+London, signed with initials only, and a telegram to a small town in
+the south of England.  On arriving at this town, she waited fully an
+hour at the little station, but if the time were wasted, she did not
+seem to feel the waste annoying, for she sat comfortably on a bench,
+her box and umbrella at her stout-shod feet, her eyes placidly on the
+distance.  A stray dog attached himself to her and laid his black head
+on her umbrella; she made no motion to drive him away.
+
+About noon a red-faced teamster drove into the square before the
+station, looked about inquiringly, caught her eye and dismounted.
+
+"Name o' Stranger?" he asked gruffly; she nodded.
+
+"Have you the wagon?" she asked.
+
+"Horse ain't none too fond o' they engines," he responded.  "He's
+waiting by the Crown and Stirrup--will you step across?"
+
+By the little sleepy inn stood a roomy, covered cart drawn by a solid
+middle-aged bay, with heavy brass tips on his high collar.  The vehicle
+had evidently been freshly painted, for the red and black twinkled in
+the sunlight and the harness looked strong and new.  As Mrs. Stranger
+lifted the back curtain and threw a quick, keen glance around the
+interior she smiled briefly.  Rows of tins, coppers and kettles hung
+there; bales of cotton prints, notions and such lay on narrow,
+fenced-in shelves on the sides; a sort of bunk filled one-half, covered
+with a neat patch-work quilt, and thick waterproof curtains' were
+rolled in readiness all around.
+
+"There's oats in the box and a nose-bag," said the carter, "but there's
+good cropping all about.  Will that be your pup, Missis?"
+
+"If no one else claims him," she said brusquely, and examined the horse
+carefully, foot by foot.  All seeming to suit her, she took a small
+canvas bag from her wallet and handed it to him.
+
+"Count it, please," she said and the carter with much biting and
+inspection of each gold piece, signed a receipt and handed her,
+formally, a new stout whip.
+
+"You'll wet the bargain, I hope," the interested landlord suggested,
+and Mrs. Stranger having ordered a quart of his best ale, and gravely
+taken a glass, the carter finished the rest with due ceremony.
+
+She mounted the seat deftly, nodded all 'round, and drove off at a
+steady jog through the village, the dog under the cart.
+
+"_That's_ no new hand," said the landlord.  "It's well you provided a
+good animal, carter!"
+
+"First letter showed me I'd best do so," said the carter briefly.  "A
+tidy bit of savings she had, for a woman."
+
+"She'll earn as much more, _I'll_ lay.  There's money on the road, as
+much as ever there was, for them as knows the business and don't
+drink," said the landlord.  "She'll be one of that gypsy sort, by her
+looks."
+
+Mrs. Stranger drove steadily along through the countryside.  The road
+lay clear before her, the emerald grass and the white may of the hedges
+smelled sweet from a week's rain, the clap-clap of the big bay's feet
+and the birds' twitter were the only sounds.  She was between two
+villages, and only a straggling farm or two at either side broke the
+distant view; a grey church tower caught the sun far away.  The
+driver's eyes never left the road, as became a good driver, but they
+seemed to be turned inward, too, and to see more--or less--than that
+empty road offered to the ordinary sight.  One would have said that
+something other than the present unrolled before those absorbed brown
+eyes under the straight, dark brows, but whether it was the past or the
+future was not shown.  Either was full enough, probably, in the case of
+Mrs. Stranger.
+
+Shortly after noon she began to study the roadside more carefully and
+soon, pausing by a particularly lush, green spot, she dismounted, led
+the horse off from the road and quickly traced the green area back to a
+tiny bubbling spring.  Unharnessing the horse deftly, she fastened him
+to a pointed iron picket she took from the cart and drove firmly into
+the ground, lifted out a little portable tin oven which she propped
+between two rocks, kindled a fire from some dried fagots tied below the
+axle-tree, and taking a slice of fresh beef from a stone crock on the
+seat, cut it slowly into small pieces with an onion and a yellow turnip
+from the crock.  She filled a small iron pot at the spring, dropped in
+the meat and vegetables, set a potato to bake in the ashes and measured
+out a little coffee from a cannister.  While the stew simmered, she
+watered and fed the horse, threw a bone to the dog, and then spread her
+red cloak on the ground, sat on it, and resumed her inward
+contemplation.  When the savoury fumes smelled rich enough, she threw a
+pinch of pepper and salt into the pot from another small cannister,
+poured boiling water from her kettle over the coffee, cut a slice from
+a fresh cottage loaf, ladled her stew out on a new tin plate, and ate
+and drank with a sort of eager deliberation, inhaling at intervals the
+aroma of the coffee and the cooking food.  When a generous plateful had
+vanished, she gave the anxious dog the rest, cut herself a block of
+orange-coloured dairy cheese and ate it with a handful of small
+biscuits from a square tin.  Then, leaning against the great rock from
+under which the spring gushed, she took from her ample pocket a small
+worn volume, opened it at random, filled and emptied her lungs with a
+third great breath, like only two others in her life, and began to read.
+
+The book's title page read, "Compensation, and Other Essays, by R. W.
+Emerson," and on the fly leaf was written in a firm, masculine hand,
+"L. L. from her father, Boston, 1870."
+
+The horse grazed quietly, the dog rested a grateful head on her skirt,
+the spring trickled on, and the woman read--if that can be called
+reading where the eyes wander inward after every sentence.
+
+After a little of this she was disturbed by a thick-set, middle-aged
+farmer rattling by in a springless cart.  At sight of her he stopped,
+stared, but not too curiously, got out and addressed her:
+
+"Peddler's goods, I see," he said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Had you any thoughts o' going up Endover way?" he inquired, "it's out
+o' way, somewhat, but my wife was wishing only yesterday for some
+cooking ware, and but that you need to make village by dark----"
+
+"I do not need to, unless I choose," she assured him; "my time is my
+own."
+
+"Ay, is it?" he said.  "There's few trades can say that, these
+days,--is that why you gypsies take to this one, maybe?"
+
+"Maybe," she said, smiling gravely.
+
+"You're new to these parts, I think," he went on, "though there'll be
+plenty o' your kind before summer's gone--few as thrifty to look at,
+though.  I'll lay your cloth's not rotten."
+
+"That's true," she said, rising and beginning to wash her simple
+cooking pots.  "Which turn for Endover, farmer?"
+
+"First to the left after Appleyard's woods," he began, and at her start
+and cry of "Appleyard?" he explained, "Why, yes, it's hard to change
+old names.  Appleyards ran out when I was a boy, but the name sticks.
+Hundred years ago, an old farmer Appleyard owned most o' what you'll
+see from here.  My granny knowed one of 'em well; a well-to-do woman
+she was, and her husband got all the land, or near it, account o' the
+brother's running away to foreign parts."
+
+Her brown eyes held him and he warmed to his tale.
+
+"You've heard all this, maybe?" he hazarded.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I knew there was such a family, once, somewhere about these parts,"
+she said, "but I did not know just where----"
+
+"Why, it was just here," he went on slowly, looking around, "here and
+no other spot, whatever, Mrs. Peddler.  Here's what granny called
+'Gypsy's Spring,' 'account of their always searching the best water,
+you see--like yourself.  Gypsy Spring in Appleyard Lower Field, she'd
+tell us, and there was where he met the gypsy and the land changed
+hands and the name ran out."
+
+"Who met the gypsy?" she asked, her eyes large and mellow on him.
+
+"Who?  Why, young John Appleyard, Mrs. Peddler, and married her, and
+off with them both!  They're all for roaming, you see--_you_ know.
+'But she'll be back, sooner or later,' my granny used to say: 'Come
+spring, back she'll be, if not him; for there's two things certain and
+they won't change, my time or yours,' she said.  'An Appleyard must own
+a good horse, and a gypsy woman must come back.'  But, you see, for
+once my granny was in the wrong of it, for 'twas a full hundred years
+ago, what I'm telling ye, and they never came."
+
+A slow, satisfied smile crept over the peddler woman's firm lips.  Her
+eyes rested on the great, browsing bay; her strong sea-browned hand
+caressed the watchful dog's head; the odour of the may in the hedge
+filled her nostrils.  Life spread before her.
+
+"No, farmer, your granny was right," she said gravely, "gypsy women
+always come back."
+
+
+
+
+THE WARNING
+
+Weldon leaned forward slightly in his chair, his hands loose between
+his knees, and faced the president steadily.  The moment had come.  All
+his rehearsals of it, all his tremours, all his incredulities must end
+here.  He felt a distinct surprise at his collected coolness, his
+almost amused grasp of the situation.  Except for the tense, guarded
+muscles that a month's racking, overworked strain had left conscious of
+their possible trickiness, he was absolutely himself.
+
+And yet, what had the doctor warned him?  To be very cautious when he
+felt so especially clear-headed and calm, after days of strain--yes,
+just that.  And when he had expostulated, "But, my dear Stanchon, how
+foolish!" had not the doctor replied, "All right, old man, but didn't
+you tell me that it was always after such little exaltations"--he had
+shrugged impatiently at the phrase--"that you were subject to these
+strange dozes you describe?"
+
+"Not exactly dozes," he had objected.  Dozes, indeed!  Those months and
+years of experiences that raced by--and one woke with a start, to
+realise that the clock was still striking!  It was this, too often
+repeated, that had sent him against his will to the rising specialist:
+he remembered so well the dark, sympathetic eyes of the office nurse
+who had brought him the much-needed stimulant after he had yielded to
+one of the curious fits at his very first consultation.
+
+After he had passed out from the inner office with echoes of that
+futile order to cease all business for six weeks (to stop, _now!_ to
+leave with the fruit almost in his hand!) and commands as to a southern
+sea-trip stimulating his taut, trembling nerves, he had sunk for a
+moment into a chair near the door, just to rest his head in his hands a
+bit and dream of the future, and the nurse had appeared from a misty
+somewhere and stood beside him.
+
+"I wouldn't be discouraged, Mr. Weldon," she had said kindly.  "Your
+case is not so uncommon--really.  He has cured much worse."
+
+"You're very kind, Miss--Miss Jessop," he had answered gratefully (her
+rich, brown colouring was so restful, her hand on his shoulder so firm
+and deftly powerful).
+
+He had thought of her all the way home.
+
+Now, curiously enough, perhaps because the president's desk was placed
+in the same position as Dr. Stanchon's desk had been, he thought of her
+again, irrelevantly.  That was the trouble--not to be irrelevant!
+
+The president's careless glance conveyed just such a tinge of critical
+surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender
+tortoise-shell paper-cutter.  The pendulum of the sombre, costly
+grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of
+the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and
+forgotten behind the bronze velvet curtains.  The president's voice
+sounded on--he seemed to Weldon to have been uttering pompous
+platitudes since time began.  His voice was as meaningless as a
+cardboard mask: how could people pay attention to him?  Weldon wondered
+irritably.
+
+"...Nor has it ever been my policy to render myself inaccessible to
+my--my corps of assistants.  No.  Not in the slightest degree.  Our
+interests..."
+
+Here Weldon's mind slipped softly from its moorings and drifted off on
+seas that soon grew tropic: should it be Bermuda, after all?  Oleanders
+and a turquoise bay--what a relief to pavement-gritted eyes!
+
+"Nevertheless, trivial, inconsequent interviews between one in my
+position and those of my--my corps of assistants who may so far forget
+themselves as to seek them, must always be deplored.  They tend only to
+weaken..."
+
+And yet this man had a reputation for cleverness--nay, it was no empty
+reputation.  Did not Weldon know what he could do, know better than any
+living man?  And yet, how he babbled!  Hark, here was his own name.
+
+"You inform me, Mr. Weldon, that you have been ten years in the employ
+of the bank, a gratifying but by no means unusual record.  Our cashier,
+you know, is now in his twenty-third year, if I am not mistaken.  Yes.
+Was it to inform me of this only that you requested this interview?"
+
+"No," said Weldon wearily, for the president's voice hit like a dull
+hammer on his ear.  "No, it was not for that."
+
+"I trust, Mr. Weldon, that your mention of the fact that your salary is
+two thousand dollars was not intended in any way ... was not, in short,
+to be regarded in the light of..."
+
+"No, no, no," Weldon murmured impatiently, trying to shake off a
+compelling drowsiness that threatened him.
+
+"Because in that case ... in that case ... it was, I remember, only
+upon Mr. Bingham's urgent recommendation that it was made two thousand.
+The post has never carried but eighteen hundred.  But your exceptional
+work, according to Mr. Bingham ... I am glad to hear it is not a
+question of salary.  I never discuss..."
+
+Again Weldon's mind slipped off, and this time groves of palms hovered
+between the grooved Corinthian pillars of the president's office, palms
+and frosty coral wreaths.  To breathe that languid, blue-stained air!
+
+"... May I ask, then, Mr. Weldon, for what purpose you have requested
+this interview?"
+
+Consciousness returned with a flash and Weldon straightened in his red
+leather chair.
+
+"I have been waiting for some time the opportunity to tell you, sir,"
+he said coolly, and the angry start that greeted this positively
+strengthened him.  It was a natural start, at least.
+
+"Mr. Deeping," he continued, with only a little catch of the breath,
+"what you describe as my 'exceptional work' has led me to request this
+interview.  I believe it to be in many ways exceptional.  During Mr.
+Russell's illness I assisted Mr. Bingham, and after his recovery I
+continued this assistance in other ways.  Mr. Bingham has perhaps
+intrusted me with more responsibility than was in every respect
+wise--certainly with more than he realised.  I was enabled to give him
+some opportune help on the occasion of the last inspection, and this
+gave me a fairly general survey----"
+
+"One moment, Mr. Weldon."
+
+The president glanced at the clock and laid the paper-cutter down with
+a decisive motion.
+
+"Let me suggest to you that whatever assistance you may have rendered
+Mr. Bingham (for which, by the way, I consider you have received ample
+compensation), you rendered it entirely of your own volition and on
+your own responsibility.  It is quite your own personal affair.  I
+could not for a moment consider----"
+
+Weldon's taut control snapped short under these booming syllables.
+
+"Damn it all!" he cried fiercely, "shall we talk here all night?  This
+should have been over long ago.  Listen to me, if you can.  I have been
+for a month convinced that there is something vitally wrong in this
+bank.  In the beginning I couldn't tell why.  Some men have an instinct
+for false figures, a sort of scent for rotten conditions, I suppose.
+I'm one of them.  I've been working at it for a month.  And now I know."
+
+The president laid the paper-cutter gently down again, and Weldon
+realised that he must have picked it up.  As it touched the polished
+desk one half of it was seen to be at the least angle from the other:
+it was in two parts.
+
+"And now you know, Mr. Weldon?" he repeated quietly.  "You surprise me.
+What do you know?"
+
+Weldon smiled approvingly at him.  There was stuff in this babbler,
+this hypnotist, this phrase-maker.
+
+"I know that one of the cleverest frauds in the history of banking has
+been accomplished in this bank, Mr. Deeping, and I know by whom and how
+it has been accomplished.  I know how Mr. Bingham has been used in the
+matter and how ignorant he is of the tool he has been.  I know how
+completely the directors have been deceived and how ably the books have
+been doctored.  I know precisely where the discrepancies are and how
+great they are."
+
+"You have been very diligent, Mr. Weldon," said the president gently.
+"I presume you to have the proofs of all you assert?"
+
+Weldon put his hand into an inner pocket and drew out a slip--a small
+slip--of paper.
+
+"You must, of course, have a memorandum by which to check this," he
+said a little huskily, but meeting the older man's eyes steadily, "so I
+made it as condensed as possible.  You will understand it, however, I
+am sure."
+
+Without a moment's hesitation the president put out his hand and took
+the slip.  Weldon touched his thumb and it was like an icicle.  For a
+brief space he studied the close, tiny figures, then he raised his eyes
+from them.
+
+"You are to be congratulated, young man," he said, pausing slightly
+between his words, "on the possession of a very keen mind and abilities
+far from ordinary.  I believe you said you had no assistance in all
+this?"
+
+"I did not say so," Weldon replied, "but it is true."
+
+"And no confidants, I infer?"
+
+"Absolutely none."
+
+"It would be idle," said the president, "to assume ignorance of your
+motive in obtaining this interview."
+
+Weldon bowed in silence.
+
+"I will merely inquire of you what guaranty I have, in case I arrange
+for the purchase of this slip from you, that the terms will be final?"
+
+"Only my word to that effect," said Weldon composedly, "which I do not
+think I have broken since I was eighteen.  Also the fact that I intend
+to leave the country--finally, to the best of my belief."
+
+"But you must have a duplicate of this slip?"
+
+"None.  I have a mass of rough memoranda, from which I could after some
+trouble reconstruct it, but this I should destroy.  After that, unless
+I had free access to the bank, I should be helpless.  And in six
+months, barring accidents, you will be able to set everything straight:
+you have left the way open admirably."
+
+The president folded the list small, and pushing aside the tail of his
+frock-coat, put the square of paper into his hip pocket--an odd
+selection, it seemed to Weldon.
+
+"And where did you say you were going?" he inquired, in his perfunctory
+voice.
+
+"I did not say," Weldon returned, marvelling at the man's control, "but
+I am going south somewhere."
+
+"No," said the president quickly, still pushing the list deep into his
+hip pocket, "you are not.  You are going to die, Mr. Weldon," and
+something shone in his hand on the flap of the pocket.
+
+His elbow was crooked back; his muscles were those of an elderly man,
+not quite coordinated with his tongue.  In a breath, a space too short
+for thought, Weldon flung himself across the gap between them and drove
+his head and shoulders straight at the rounded, broadcloth vest: under
+his impact the elaborate swivel-chair slipped, swayed, crashed to the
+ground, and they went down together, Weldon's weight on the bent arm.
+
+He raised himself cautiously, hands pressed on the fat shoulder under
+him.
+
+"The old fox!  The old fox!" he muttered aggrievedly.  "Shoot me, would
+he?  Murdering old fox!"
+
+There was no heaving in the heavy body under him, but he was not to be
+easily hoodwinked now--he had had a taste of the man's mettle.  He held
+his breath and listened: the clock ticked tolerantly, wealthily; the
+flames flickered in the open, sea-coal fire; there were no other sounds
+at all.
+
+Reaching with infinite care around the relaxed, portly body he felt for
+the hip pocket and drew out the small revolver, then sprang quickly
+backward.
+
+"Get up, Mr. Deeping!" he said softly, "get up, sir, some one may come."
+
+But it seemed that for once the president was indifferent to
+appearances, for he did not move, but lay as he had fallen, with one
+bent arm.  Weldon walked over to him and lifted the coat-tail from his
+face.  Then he perceived that it was improbable that Mr. Deeping would
+ever get up again.  His face had long been a mask, but never had it
+been coloured in this way, and Weldon knew that the artist responsible
+for that tinting never worked on any subject but once.
+
+Between two ticks of the clock, it might be, Weldon saw himself leaping
+to the window, pouring water from the inner lavatory, calling for
+brandy, loosening the collar.  So vivid was this vision that it seemed
+he must be doing all this, actually, and he stood vacant-eyed, staring
+at the dead man.  Once he tried to take a step, but his very muscles
+seemed paralysed, and a voice, steady as the clock, seemed to tell him:
+
+"How senseless!  The man is dead.  Dead.  You know it.  Let him alone.
+Think what to do.  How can you escape?  Think!  Think!"
+
+Suddenly his mind cleared and he laughed shortly, with relief.  He had
+felt literally guilty.  But he had not killed the president.  It was
+the president who would have killed him.  What had he done but protect
+himself?  If the shock of his defensive lunge had done for Mr. Deeping,
+how could he help that?  The man's time had come, that was all.  And it
+was a quick death, a good way.  He moved toward the body again and
+tried to lift it, but had not the strength.  He could not do it
+decently.  The revolver was still in his hand, and with a quick
+exclamation he pushed it into the hip pocket again, considered a
+moment, took it out, felt for his folded list at the bottom of the
+pocket, got it, and restored the revolver.  Moving toward the little
+mirror in the lavatory, he straightened his tie, wiped his face, then
+stood, thinking, between the body and the door.
+
+Curiously enough, the figure on the floor hardly disturbed his
+consciousness.  It was difficult for him to take Mr. Deeping seriously,
+even in death.  He had, always been an absurdity; posturing,
+phrase-making, repellant.  Death conferred a dignity, he had supposed,
+but death had not done this for the president.  Another time-worn
+superstition, that: humanity had invented so many.  Suppose all those
+old ideas should turn out, on the event, to be as threadbare, and
+empty?  Remorse, for instance?  Would one dishonesty, one violent break
+with the canons of honour, never repeated, _oh, surely never repeated!_
+tincture all the future with a slow, spreading black drop?  If so ...
+but why imagine it?  It was unlikely.  A whip in the closet to frighten
+the timid children....
+
+He shook himself briskly.  A clever business, to stand philosophising,
+with a dead man in the room, and all his work to do!  Now, what was the
+next step?  To see the directors?  There was Webb; would he be clever
+enough for Webb?  And yet, if Webb had not been able to detect the
+frauds that juggled along under his nose, how should Webb be a match
+for him, who had thus detected them?  It would certainly be to Webb's
+interest to keep this quiet till they could straighten it all out.
+Then they could divide what the president would have got.  And nobody
+would be a penny the poorer.  It was absurd to call it a crime--if the
+event proved successful.  And it would be more than absurd to refuse
+him the reasonable amount he would ask for: their gain would far exceed
+his, even if five of them should divide the whole.
+
+Stop a moment!  Suppose he could confront them with Deeping's own
+memoranda?  Suppose he should control the material the president must
+have had ready, in case ... why, he must have an incredible sum by him,
+all ready at a moment's notice, something he could convert in an hour
+into cash, before he fled.  He kept the revolver: he would have kept
+this.  He was ready for anything.  His pockets...
+
+Weldon pushed aside the coat flap, but his hands refused the further
+motions.  To go through another man's pockets!  And yet Deeping had
+done worse than this: what sums had he not twisted and turned, added
+and subtracted, borrowed and replaced?  But not an actual pocket.  No,
+no.  He cursed himself for a weak fool, but the pockets he could not
+touch.  The spirit indeed was willing, but the flesh, tyrant after
+years of honest, deep-indenting habit, travelled its accustomed grooves
+and would none of such muscular innovations.  Well, he must take his
+chance with the Board.  He flung open the door and seized a
+brass-buttoned official of many years' inferior but faithful service.
+
+"Run," he muttered, "run, Henry, for Mr. Dupont!  Mr. Deeping has had
+some sort of stroke.  Get him and call a doctor quickly--don't make any
+row now about it, you understand.  I'll stay here."
+
+The man touched his cap and hurried off and Weldon stood nervously by
+the door.  A minute passed, two minutes.  Suddenly he turned, slipped
+the ornate brass bolt above the Yale lock, stepped quickly to the dead
+man's side, and went with rapid, tactful fingers from one pocket to
+another.  The clock ticked leisurely, and unconsciously he muttered,
+counting the strokes,
+
+"Seven, eight, nine ... he must have them here...."
+
+A low knock at the door caught his strained ear.  His hand held a thick
+time-table; _New York, New Haven and Hartford_ stared him in the face.
+The leaves fell apart as his hand for the first time shook, and between
+them--ah! there they were!  "Memoranda, etc.," was written on the top
+paper.  Thrusting the slender sheaf into his pocket, he threw the
+time-table on the desk and drew the bolt slowly, peering out between
+the bronze curtains with caution.
+
+"How is he--gone?" whispered Dupont, the dead man's brother-in-law,
+tiptoeing across the room.  "Heart, I suppose.  Henry's called the
+doctor, but he said he guessed it was no good, from your face.  Nobody
+has an idea of it--you managed very well, Mr. Weldon."
+
+He glanced at the body and said a few perfunctory words.
+
+"Well, well, we all have to go.  Sixty-one, I think.  Has any one sent
+for Webb?  I think Webb should be sent for."
+
+Weldon glanced curiously at the mild, unimportant brother-in-law.  He
+was always thought of and mentioned in his capacity of brother-in-law.
+Why should he think of Webb?  Common-sense answered, why not?  Webb was
+immeasurably the head of them all.  Opening the door to discover if
+there were yet any disturbance in the bank, he confronted Potter, a
+fat, red-faced, many-millioned man, who puffed excitedly by him.
+
+"Terrible thing, isn't it, Dupont?  Great shock to you.  Naturally.
+Has--has Webb been informed?  Quite right, quite right."
+
+He dropped into a chair and wiped his pink, fat forehead, looked once
+sharply at the body on the floor, then obstinately at his knees.  He
+appeared very excited to Weldon; more so than the death of his
+associate could properly explain, perhaps?  No, no: what folly!
+Probably it made them all feel rather shaky--overfed, weak-hearted old
+fellows, all of them.  They saw their end.
+
+A soft tap on the door followed, and as the two older men looked with
+one accord at Weldon, he pushed aside the portières and admitted Mr.
+Fayles, a thin, aristocratic, iron-grey man, who made himself one of
+them without a word.  Stepping to the body he looked a moment, then
+sank into the chair Weldon had occupied during his interview, fitted
+his gloves into his top hat, dropped it beside him, and with an
+extraordinary convulsion of countenance buried his face in his hands.
+After a moment's annoyed contemplation of his motionless figure, Weldon
+met Dupont's eyes inquiringly.  The brother-in-law shook his head, no
+wiser, evidently.  Weldon gestured imperiously toward the fat man, and
+Dupont tiptoed over to him, whispering hoarsely, "I didn't know he was
+so attached to Edward, did you, Potter?"
+
+Potter pressed his puffy hands together till they streaked red and
+white.
+
+"Good heavens!  Good heavens!" he burst out, "this is awful!  Where can
+Webb be?"
+
+Dupont stared, then shrugged his shoulders vaguely and returned to his
+seat.  "I really didn't know he was so attached to Edward," he murmured
+to Weldon confidentially.
+
+They sat in silence.  The president's great bulk stretched among them
+like some sleeping, foreign animal in a zoological garden.  It was like
+a funeral; the funeral of some associate, attended with perfunctory
+punctiliousness.  The blow was financial, not human: it was the death
+of so much bank stock.
+
+Another knock.  Again Weldon, recognised master of ceremonies now,
+opened the door, this time for the doctor.  It was the president's own
+doctor; Weldon wondered why it was that important men's doctors were
+always to be got so quickly.  Did they have a secret call in the event
+of a bank president's death?  What would happen in case one were called
+from the birth, say, of another bank president's son?  Imagine the
+doctor's state of mind ... he shook himself to dissipate such idiotic
+thoughts: his mind worked as the mind of one in a worried, hurried
+dream.
+
+"Good-day, gentlemen, a sad errand for me," said the doctor gravely.
+"Ah, yes, a little more light, please?  Ah, yes.  Instantaneous, of
+course.  Half an hour, forty minutes, I should say?  Ah, yes.  I
+supposed so.  Any one present ... any shock or excitement?"
+
+Weldon spoke briefly.  He had been discussing bank matters with Mr.
+Deeping.  He had mentioned a few of the matters in discussion when Mr.
+Deeping had put his hand into his pocket, appeared to sustain some
+stroke, slipped back in his chair, and fallen dead-weight on the bent
+arm.  Just as they saw him.  It was impossible to move him, except to
+free him from the chair.  He appeared to have died instantly.  It had
+been made known immediately.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the doctor.  "Just as I expected.  I warned him of it.
+Not a month ago.  A great loss to the community, gentlemen.  All the
+arrangements, now ... Mr. Dupont, I suppose you ... or if you had
+rather that I...."
+
+"If you would, please," said the brother-in-law gratefully, "I am bad
+at that sort of thing--I--my head----"
+
+"Ah, yes.  Perfectly natural.  I will have the body removed, then, as
+soon as possible----"
+
+"Not till Webb gets here!" Potter broke out, twisting his hands
+convulsively, "wait for Webb.  I insist on Webb!"
+
+The doctor stared.
+
+"Mr. Potter, I believe?" he inquired courteously.  Then turning to the
+others generally, "Do I understand that there is any reason----"
+
+"No reason at all," Dupont interrupted irritably, "not the least.  Webb
+will be informed, fast enough.  If you are kind enough, doctor----"
+
+It was obvious that he dreaded the chance of any personal
+responsibility.  What a rabbit of a man he was!  Weldon remembered
+suddenly that a night watchman had been dismissed for saying that Mrs.
+Dupont blew her husband's nose for him!  One could almost believe it.
+Hear him, now.
+
+"Mr. Fayles will, I am sure, agree with me----"
+
+"With you?  With _you_?"
+
+Mr. Fayles's voice was hollow, tortured.  His face was wet.  He turned
+his red-rimmed eyes on the man before him.
+
+"What in God's name are you?" he said ferociously.  "Wait for Webb, of
+course."
+
+His head went back in his hands and they stared at one another.
+Fayles, the cold aristocrat.  Fayles, the unruffled!  The doctor's
+glance settled finally on Weldon, as a possible clew to the situation.
+
+"This is--this is--we make every allowance, of course," he began, "for
+such an unsettling occurrence.  Of course.  Mr. Webb, of course, would
+naturally ... and yet I hardly like the idea ... it seems..."
+
+There was a strange sense of tension in the room, not to be accounted
+for by that dead creature on the floor.  No, there was something else.
+Weldon with difficulty repressed a smile.  That fool of a
+brother-in-law knew nothing, clearly.  Potter was merely irritable and
+at sea generally, he was sure.  He could swear that whatever alarmed
+Potter alarmed him only through Fayles, whose collapse was
+unprecedented.  Did Fayles know?  Impossible.  Fayles stood for
+old-fashioned, delicate scruples, finical standards.  "As straight as
+Joseph Fayles," they said.  And yet, why....  He remembered that he had
+not yet answered the doctor.  How his thoughts ran away with him!
+
+"Mr. Webb's connection, of course," he murmured, "principal director,
+you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ...
+undoubtedly he would have been notified.  Probably if the doctor were
+to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his
+colleagues be satisfied.  They depended on his judgment to such an
+extent..."
+
+The air of the room seemed to tighten round them.  That doctor was no
+fool.  He must feel something--what, how much?  He pursed his lips.
+
+"Just as you like, of course," he said briefly.  "It would seem that
+there can be very little difference in judgment as to the expediency of
+burying a dead man, however.  If that is what you mean.  I will do as
+this young man suggests.  These matters, of course, have a certain
+formality.  There are precedents....  Ah, yes.  Good-day, gentlemen."
+
+He looked toward the door, which Weldon, in his capacity of master of
+ceremonies, opened for him, and passed out, drawing a deep breath as he
+crossed the threshold and hurrying, it seemed to Weldon, down the
+corridor.  Did he want to be rid of them?  It seemed so.
+
+There they were.  All the directors but Webb.  All that counted, that
+is.  One would imagine it a meeting of the board.  Then why was he
+here?  Suddenly he lost himself in a great yawn, and realized that he
+was dying of sleepiness.  Neither last night nor the night before had
+he closed his eyes.
+
+"As there seems nothing more for me to do, gentlemen," he said
+abruptly, "I think I will go now.  There is no more assistance----"
+
+"Wait for Webb," cried Potter nervously, "wait, won't you?  I--I insist
+on it!"
+
+One felt really sorry for this rich, fat man.  How ludicrously he
+resembled his caricatures!
+
+"I really wish you would wait for Mr. Webb, Mr. Weldon," Dupont assured
+him, "it would be a great convenience.  You could tell him just how it
+happened, you know.  Just.  You see, your being there, you know...."
+
+"Of course I will stay, if you desire it," Weldon answered gravely,
+wondering if he could keep awake.  His eyeballs fairly dragged down.
+The tall clock's tick confused itself with his thoughts: _one, two!
+one, two! one, two!_  Suppose he were to run now, with the "memoranda,
+etc.," and take whatever Mr. Deeping had been going to take?  That was
+folly, if the rest didn't know.  Then he would be a common criminal.
+If they did know, then he could leave his memoranda slip and they would
+understand and make up the sum amongst them.  Let Webb and Potter fork
+out, for once.  Let them bleed the depositors.  _One, two! one, two!
+one, two!_ Why not? why not? why not?  His eyes fairly closed for a
+second.
+
+But a soft click of the door opened them.  There was no knocking here.
+The curtain moved and Mr. Webb was in the room.  Involuntarily they
+rose to meet him, and Fayles for the first time took his hands down.
+Tall and unnaturally thin, his sallow cheeks framed in lank, sandy
+hair, his eyes turned down, it was hard to realise that this almost
+slouching fellow held the attention of the shrewd in these matters as
+the certain head of them all, when the present great leader should have
+dropped his sceptre.  But this was the Webb in whose labyrinthine
+meshes the cartoonists delighted to picture the unhappy flies of their
+country's financial system; this was the weaver whose warp was of
+railroads and his woof the unhappy populace, in yet other pictorial
+fancies.  This was that Webb before which many patient Penelopes had
+sat through many Sunday editions, dressed in stars and stripes, a
+sorrowing, perplexed America, and gaped to find it unwoven by day,
+though thick patterned with rich promises in the evening.
+
+"All over, is it?" he said in his dry, sceptical voice, "too bad, too
+bad."
+
+His eye shot out from its heavy lid and took them all in.  It lingered
+on Weldon.
+
+"This the young man with him at the time?  Sudden shock, eh?"
+
+Weldon told his story again.  They had talked of business.  The
+president had put his hand in his pocket.  Handkerchief, probably.  Had
+experienced some shock and fallen, dead-weight, on his bent arm.  As
+you see him now.  Unable to lift him.  Notified Mr. Dupont immediately.
+Nothing more.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Webb.  "As quickly as that!  Hard on you.
+Nothing handy, I suppose; only window up and water and such things?"
+
+For the life of him Weldon could not help the slow red in his face.  He
+glanced at the window: it was locked.  For Heaven's sake, why lie?  He
+was no murderer.  And yet--any one, _any one_ would have opened that
+window.
+
+"I did what I could," he said in a low voice, "but it was plain that
+Mr. Deeping was dead.  He never drew another breath."
+
+"No brandy about, I suppose?" pursued Webb.
+
+But Potter interrupted.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Webb," he implored, "let all that go!  He's gone.
+You know he never touched a drop of anything.  Of course there was no
+brandy."
+
+"Of course," Weldon interrupted, relieved.  Every one knew the
+president's views on that subject; he had forgotten them.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Webb softly and glanced again at the window.
+An intense irritation flared up in Weldon: this man flicked him on the
+raw with every syllable.
+
+"If you have no further use for me, gentlemen," he began, but Webb
+waved his thin, small-boned hand negligently.
+
+"One moment, Mr.--Mr. Weldon, I think?  What business did you say you
+were discussing with my poor friend?"
+
+Mr. Fayles took a quick step and grasped his colleague's arm.
+
+"For God's sake, Webb," he muttered huskily, "look at us!  Where are
+we?  What's to be done?  They've sent for the body by now."
+
+Potter seized the other arm.
+
+"Will you tell me what all this means, Webb?" he blustered, "what's the
+matter with Joe Fayles?  Is it possible that--is anything----"
+
+Webb's lids lifted and the snake-like swiftness of his glance at Fayles
+was not lost on the others.
+
+"If Mr. Fayles," he began slowly, "has occupied himself in spreading
+the disquiet he has endured since he discovered (and imparted to me)
+the fact that my poor friend here carried a revolver about with him, he
+has done a mighty foolish job.  That's all I have to say."
+
+Even Dupont was alarmed now.  It was with a grim amusement that Weldon
+watched them all.  Dupont suspected Potter, was staring malevolently at
+him and chewing his slight moustache nervously.  Potter never took his
+eyes from Fayles, whose clutch on Webb was the anguished clutch of the
+drowning man that has caught at sea-weeds.  They seemed to Weldon like
+actors in a play, and he was the spectator.  He observed them from his
+red plush seat, almost despising them for the entertainment they gave
+him.  How absurd they were, with their dead president and their
+suspicions.  They were mad to get at the pockets--he knew!  But they
+hadn't the nerve.  And Webb, crafty old Webb, was holding them in like
+dogs on a leash.
+
+"Did he really carry a pistol?" he said gently, "let's see."
+
+He leaned over the body.
+
+"I wonder why he wanted the pistol pocket?" he went on casually, "any
+idea, Mr. Weldon?"
+
+A tiny, fine chill tingled at Weldon's heels and flew up to his hair.
+He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly
+tightening.  In an agony of regret he wished that he had not that sheaf
+of "memoranda, etc."  It was suddenly clear to him that he had stolen
+them.
+
+"I have no idea, sir," his tongue answered stolidly.
+
+"No, ... of course not," said Mr. Webb thoughtfully.  "Well, gentlemen,
+I can't see the need for any more discussion.  This is very
+deplorable--a great shock.  He was very methodical and no doubt
+everything is in easy shape...."
+
+They drew close to him and Weldon, though he caught the murmur of
+voices, distinguished nothing but the steady notes of the clock: _one,
+two! one, two!_  His head nodded a trifle and for one blissful second
+his eyelids fell.  The clock began to strike eleven.  _One!_ he
+struggled, but it was too sweet.  _Two!_  He became dimly conscious of
+a rustling and movement by him.  _Three!_ there was a light touch on
+his arm and Webb stood near the chair he had dropped into.  The others
+must have gone.
+
+"You seem exhausted, Mr. Weldon," he said quietly.
+
+"I--I have missed my sleep lately," Weldon stammered, trying to control
+the motions of his mouth, his voice striking his own ear as mechanical,
+far away, laboured.
+
+"Exactly," said Webb suavely.  "And now, Mr. Weldon, _how much do you
+expect for those papers_?"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Weldon drew his chair across the broad verandah in an aimless,
+leisurely way, anchored it in the shadow of a wicker table laden with
+cool glass pitchers and iced fruits, and sank into it, sighing
+restlessly.  The pillars of coral that supported the verandah roof
+framed, each pair of them, an oblong of sapphire bay; vivid masses of
+pink oleanders hedged the foreground; the tremulous sapphire crawled
+softly over a creamy crescent beach.  In the pleasant noon stillness
+the mild whine of a patient puppy, broken by the chuckles of some young
+human thing, rose on the air.  Jars of sweet flowers sent out their
+almost tropical odours with each tiny, invisible wind current: they
+seemed to puff it into his face.
+
+A great green and flame-coloured parrot, hung head downward in his
+yellow cage, began suddenly a mechanical, dry litany:
+
+"_Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!_"  It was like a clock--passionless, regular,
+meditative.  Weldon shrugged his shoulders distastefully; he had never
+been able to conquer his dislike of steady, measured sounds.  It was an
+unreasonable weakness, but incurable.  He twisted uneasily in his white
+flannels as the bird droned on,
+
+"_Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!_"
+
+"Be still, Chico, be still, sir!"
+
+A fair, finely grown boy took the coral steps two at a bound and
+threatened the parrot.
+
+"Daddy, keep him quiet, won't you?  He frightens my white mice awfully.
+Why do mice hate parrots?  Do you know, daddy?"
+
+Weldon's face cleared and he threw his arm over the slender shoulders.
+
+"I don't know, Pippo, I can't guess," he said.  "Where's your mother?"
+
+"Just beyond you," and the boy slipped away to his pets, grudging the
+time for her kiss in passing.
+
+She stood softly behind the wicker chair and laid her hand on his
+forehead.  Her lips were only a little smoother.
+
+"Still troubled, dearest?" she asked him in her pleasant voice.  "Still
+dreaming?"
+
+She was very dark, with reddish lights in her thick, low-growing hair,
+and brown, broad eyebrows.  Under them her eyes shone, a frank, dark
+brown; she bore a curious likeness to that nurse he had seen in the
+doctor's office, so many years ago.  How strange that a passing fate
+should have set his ideal of dear and loving women forever!  She had
+even the same small dimple at the left of her mouth.
+
+She slipped to the floor beside him and laid her head in her wifely way
+against his knee.
+
+"I'm so sorry it bothers you, Phil," she murmured, her cheek against
+his hand.  "One would think you were a superstitious boy, you silly!
+Hear baby--he's playing so dearly with those puppies!  He pats them and
+then pinches their tails so slyly!  Oh, Ted!  Oh, baby!  Call to mummy!"
+
+From the balcony above a shrill crow drowned the complaint of the
+puppies.
+
+"Doesn't he say it plainly!" she cried, flushing a beautiful
+mother-rose.  "And he is so strong, Phil!"
+
+He caressed her absently.  Ten years gone, and a dream had swept those
+years to one side as one would draw a bronze curtain, had opened the
+past as one would open a heavy mahogany door!  All night a tall, carved
+clock had ticked, ticked through his dreams, _one, two! one, two! one,
+two!_  A sinister, sandy face had mocked and probed him, a fat, animal
+face had irritated him, a pale, haunted face had pleaded with him.  He
+had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing
+beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk
+again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day
+through every clock-tick.  And now his brain was cloudy with it.  His
+hand lay listless on her shoulder.
+
+A five-year-old girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the
+cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at
+the left of her mouth.  Running at his call she flew into his arms and
+dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder.  For the first time he
+smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from
+the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses.  Later she
+disturbed them reluctantly.
+
+"I want to say you are not at home," she said, "but I daren't quite do
+that, for he is from the States, dear, and it is important business.
+His name," dropping her eyes to the white rectangle in her hand, "is
+Webb.  Shall I send him out here?"
+
+Weldon put the child down from his knees and half rose.
+
+"Yes," he said, clearing his throat, "send him out here.  And keep the
+children away."
+
+So this was it.  It had not been for nothing, that dream.
+
+The tall, lank figure was before him, the ironical smile drooped on the
+tight lips.  Ten years had left him as they found him, but for a
+thought of grey in the sandy hair.
+
+"Sit down," said Weldon briefly, "what is it?"
+
+"You've put on a little weight, I see," said Webb, nodding at the
+proffered chair, "but that's only proper in the president of a bank, I
+suppose.  You've done well, Mr. Weldon."
+
+Weldon bowed.
+
+"You did not come to Bermuda to tell me this, Mr. Webb, I think?"
+
+"No," said Webb, "I didn't.  Ten years ago, Mr. Weldon, you called me a
+mind-reader when I had put two and two together once or twice, put
+myself in your place for ten minutes, complimented you by assuming that
+your course had been what mine would have been, and spoken to you
+accordingly.  Can't you do a little mind-reading on your own account,
+now?"
+
+"I confess myself unequal to it," Weldon said coldly.
+
+Webb nodded indulgently.
+
+"All right," he returned, "we'll take it that way, if you want to.  Mr.
+Weldon, I don't know if you read our papers down here at all?"
+
+"I have never opened an American newspaper since I left the country,"
+said Weldon briefly.
+
+"I see.  I suppose you know that Blickenstern's dying, though?"
+
+"Yes," Weldon answered indifferently, "we all know that, of course."
+
+"Yes.  Well, Mr. Weldon, I'm supposed to inherit his shoes.  It's not
+much to you, of course, but a lot to me--and to a lot of other people,
+too.  Now for something you don't know.  In just about five days, Mr.
+Weldon, we're going to break through the crust and drop into the
+biggest panic since '93.  That and Blickenstern's death--he must go
+soon, now--and this fearful railroad business--I won't bore you--will
+put me into a bad hole.  A worse hole, I don't mind telling you, Mr.
+Weldon, than Blick's successor can afford to get into.  It's all a
+matter of balance now; pretty fine balancing, too, for the next week.
+In six weeks there'll be enough for most of us, but just now--well,
+there'll be dozens of us in the Street who'll be grateful for ten
+thousand in cash around the corner.  Think of it--ten thousand!  Now
+I'll be short.  I need some money--not stage money, Mr. Weldon, real
+money!  I wouldn't take Blick's name on paper for what I want this
+week--and getting it or not getting it means the top of the heap for
+me, or three years' fight for it.  I can't afford three years.  I
+wasn't a bank president at forty, you know."
+
+"You mean you want the ten thousand pounds you gave me?"
+
+"Just so.  I want fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Weldon--for six weeks.  I
+hate to do it, honestly.  Nothing but this infernal panic could have
+driven me to this.  But I'm helpless.  And it's worth millions to me to
+have no one suspect it.  I can't touch a penny elsewhere--it's all tied
+up.  I must be able to produce it without any fuss, or disturbing the
+jack-straws a particle.  There's no use in going into the details."
+
+"No use at all," said Weldon stiffly, "for it will be impossible for me
+to lend you such a sum, Mr. Webb, impossible.  I have paid well for my
+position here."
+
+"And a good move, too," said the other heartily.  "You stand well,
+Weldon; none better."
+
+"I have never been what you would call ambitious," Weldon went on, more
+passionately, now.  "When you yourself asked me why I demanded no more
+than the ten--the fifty thousand, you remember my answer.  I knew that
+it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a
+position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently,
+and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted.  I shall never be a
+rich man--by your standards.  I don't care.  I thought my brains and
+initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me.  I promised
+utter silence and have kept my word.  You promised the same and have
+broken yours.  I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to.  I'd
+rather not discuss it further."
+
+"_Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!_" the parrot shrilled.  It still hung head
+down in the shining cage.  Weldon could have wrung its neck.  It was
+worse than a clock.  Webb sighed regretfully and raised his heavy lids.
+As the old snakish glance reached him Weldon felt the old net-like
+sensation, the old baffled rage.
+
+"I'm sorry, Weldon, but I can't let it go.  It's no use--you can't
+afford it.  It's all like a house you build out of cards, you see, and
+you can't slip out one without the whole thing caving in.  Whatever I
+pull out I have to explain.  How do you suppose I got you your fifty
+thousand, back there?  You know I've never had much money--to call
+money.  It's brains--what you call mind-reading, you other
+fellows--that I've matched against the rest of them.  And I've got them
+where they're afraid of me.  I can't drop back.  Listen to me, Weldon!"
+
+He drew his chair close and talked low and steadily for five minutes.
+The air seemed to grow dense; the rustling hiss of the foam on the
+creamy beach was the hiss and flicker of a sea-coal fire; the grotesque
+shadow of the wicker chair, black on the white verandah floor, was the
+spread, silent bulk of a dead man.
+
+The low voice ceased.
+
+"How about it, Weldon?" it added abruptly, "can you afford that?"
+
+Weldon pushed away his chair roughly.  "Come down to my room at the
+bank," he said.
+
+Hours afterward he dragged himself into his bedroom, an older man by
+ten years than when he had quitted it.  His body seemed heavier, his
+face hollower, with pinched lips and sunken eyes.  The man who waited
+on him stared openly and mentioned the doctor, only to receive a curse
+for his pains--the first he had ever heard from his master.
+
+In the late dusk his wife found him asleep in a long chair with an
+empty decanter beside him and heavy rugs dragged up to his chin.  They
+tried, both of them, to make that nervous chill account for the change
+in him, but she watched him narrowly and he felt her eyes day and night.
+
+Something tolled like a bell in him and never stopped for a moment:
+_six weeks! six weeks! six weeks!_ all his waking movements went to
+that intolerable rhythm; he was like a man under a gallows, with a
+reprieve coming to him, at the mercy of all the elements.  It was
+observed at the bank that he worked harder and longer and much alone:
+they said the American blood was coming out at last, and smiled at each
+other.
+
+"Only mind you don't engage us in speculations, old man," said one of
+his colleagues jocosely, "'safe and sound,' you know!  Look at the
+States--a pretty mess that!"
+
+Weldon turned on him in a fury of anger.
+
+"Speculation! speculation!" he cried harshly, "you know that I hate it
+like hell!"
+
+They were genuinely anxious about him.
+
+One morning he found his wife in his dressing-room, white-faced over
+something in her hand.
+
+"Philip!  Philip!" she whispered and clung to him.
+
+He put the shining little steel-eyed thing behind him.
+
+"My dear, don't be foolish," he said quietly, "if I have my reasons for
+wishing a certain sort of protection for a few days, will you make me
+regret my sparing you?"
+
+"You--you mean the bank?" she gasped.
+
+"What else could I mean?" he said steadily, and in some quaint woman's
+reasoning she was appeased.
+
+At the end of three weeks the strain eased a little.  He read a letter
+from Webb with a grim smile, bought an American newspaper, and passed
+an entire day away from the bank.  His wife held her breath as she
+watched him, but affected not to notice the change, and he blessed her
+for it: his nerves were raw.  Two days, three days went by.  He sent
+out for another newspaper and later in the day raised the tiny salary
+of the page who had brought it to him.  In the cool of the afternoon he
+rode with his wife, the boy on a shaggy pony beside them, and kissed
+her as she turned in the saddle in the shadow of the dusk.
+
+"You are the best wife a man ever had," he said, looking deep into her
+honest brown eyes, and she galloped away from him to hide her happy
+tears.
+
+The next day he told the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the
+verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced
+tolerantly at its strident cry:
+
+"_Mañaña! mañaña!_"
+
+Life is as it is, he thought, and can we hope to change it because we
+change?  Surely not.  Everything had its price, and he had really never
+paid the price of that ten-years-old bargain till now--he acknowledged
+it.  Out of that blue-stained air the messenger of fate had dropped and
+taken his toll of youth and candour and elasticity, and departed again,
+and now the weight was slackening from his chest and there were but
+fourteen days to wait.  The next day he found a second letter from Webb
+on his desk.  To relieve him from needless anxiety, said the great
+financier, he wrote to inform Mr. Weldon that six weeks had proved too
+wide a margin and he promised himself the pleasure of a complete
+settlement six days from the date of writing.  Weldon stared at the
+letter head: it had been three days on the way--that meant in three
+days--by the next boat!  The letter was grave, but subtly jubilant.
+The railroads were subdued.  Blickenstern was dead, the country hailed
+his successor.  A foundation of millions lay firm beneath his feet.
+
+The president left his bank early and went home on horseback to
+luncheon.  His wife saw the husband of many days ago and asked no more
+of life, but sang among her flower jars.
+
+"Will you come up to Government House this afternoon, dear?  It's weeks
+since you've been," she said, and he smiled and promised.  "I've a new
+frock," she confided shyly, like a girl, "and I think you'll like to
+see it--now."
+
+"I'll be back before four," he told her, "a little late, but I promised
+one of our young fellows an appointment."
+
+She pouted as she had done in her courtship days.
+
+"A young man!"
+
+"I can't disappoint him, sweetheart.  Youngsters feel those things.  He
+wants more money, and I really believe he's worth it."
+
+As he entered his private room something struck him disagreeably.  He
+glanced about--a sea-coal fire burned in the tiny English grate.  He
+scowled and touched a bell.  Asked to explain, the page confessed that
+he had promised Mrs. Weldon to put a fire there whenever any dampness
+should threaten, and that to-day being noticeably damp he had kept his
+word.  The president nodded and the lad made his escape.
+
+In another moment a slender young man entered, with a discreet knock,
+and faced him.  He seemed unaccountably excited--even blustering, for a
+young man in his position.
+
+The president took out his watch and counted the ticks to quiet his
+irritation.  We must be kind to the young ones--promotion means so much
+to them.
+
+"Let us look at all this a little quietly," he said, softened already,
+"believe me, I want to satisfy every reasonable claim.  It is to my
+interest----"
+
+He caught his breath.  Something in the young man's attitude as he
+faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on
+his hard young face, smote him to the very marrow.
+
+"What is he thinking of me?" flashed through him.  The answer came like
+the shot from a cannon.
+
+"Is it to your interest to satisfy every reasonable claim on the ten
+thousand pounds you borrowed from the bank last month, Mr. Weldon?"
+
+The soft lines faded from his face and two grey streaks grew around his
+mouth.  The ticking of the watch in his hand rose and swelled and
+filled the room--_one, two! one, two! one, two!_
+
+So this was the end.  Never a night of honest sleep again.  Never a
+free swell of the chest.  To go down in sight of land, to drop just
+outside the fort!  _All over!  All over!  All over!_
+
+The young man was still talking, quickly, definitely enough, but it
+grew blurred as it reached his brain.  He found his tongue, dry and
+stiff in his mouth, asking questions mechanically?
+
+Did any one know of this?
+
+No, only the young man.  He was not inclined to be rapacious.  He had
+an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would
+establish him there.  He had thought it might be worth the president's
+while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds--considering
+everything.  Promotion was slow in Bermuda ... dead men's shoes....
+
+The tongue in Weldon's mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be
+protected against further demands.  The young man explained very
+clearly.  The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the
+recent transaction would be a ripple under water.  But during those few
+days ... he smiled disagreeably.
+
+The fire whistled in the grate; the bank was utterly still.  They were
+alone in it.  In one second of time, years and the future itself
+wheeled before Philip Weldon's sunken eyes.  So the black drop _had_
+lasted, after all, and would tint his life as long as that life lasted
+on earth ... and longer?  Anything was possible.  Must the sordid drama
+play itself eternally, through the years and countries, till the final
+ripple hit the southern-most port of refuge?  Would this young man sit
+before a sea-coal fire in Gibraltar, one day, frozen, his life and
+honour nipped at the root by the triumphant hound who had tracked down
+his one fault?  Before God, it was _his_ only one!  He was white beside
+some others who lived and died respected.  Prove the contrary, any one!
+
+_One, two! one, two! one, two!_  That watch.  Either he was going mad
+or it could be heard in the street outside, it shouted so.  Who was he,
+anyway--Deeping or himself?  Who was that young man?
+
+Suddenly his head cleared.  He moistened his lips and leaned forward,
+the watch crystal shivered in his grasp.
+
+"And you are going----"
+
+"To Gibraltar," said the young man briskly.  "I am glad that you----"
+
+"No," said Weldon thoughtfully, "I am afraid you are not going to
+Gibraltar.  You are going to die."
+
+He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard
+little object there.  His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him
+reeling in his chair.  A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he
+fell heavily backward on his bent arm.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+His eyes opened.  He drew a deep breath.  A tall, carved clock in the
+corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have
+said something, for his voice was in the air.
+
+"He must have had some papers--if there is anything wrong--good God,
+Webb, what shall we do?"
+
+This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey.  Weldon sprang to his feet,
+pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now.  He was
+free!  He was free!
+
+The clock struck again.
+
+Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and
+pressed them upon Webb.
+
+"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want!
+And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an
+explanation that may help you with them.  I wish you good-day."
+
+To get out!  To get out!  He burst through the portières and the door,
+as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it
+from without.  In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one
+sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and
+terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes
+fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with
+his snake-like eye.  Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in
+the room and the group dissolved.
+
+Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode
+down the corridor.  He threw himself on the outside door and as he
+opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the
+great clock strike eleven.  With a shudder he plunged across the
+threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGACY
+
+Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody
+believes this or not.  It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that
+I'm writing it, anyway.  And nobody needs to get the idea that I think
+I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that.  But there's not
+a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over
+her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too.  Not that he's cocky about
+it, though.
+
+"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of
+the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back,
+while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."
+
+"Style be damned," he said.  "You're long on facts, and that's all I
+want, my dear.  And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that
+C----r's rot on me!"
+
+I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it.  I
+took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix
+removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always
+insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that.  But of
+course they weren't.
+
+"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own
+language.  I'd like to keep it."
+
+And of course anybody can do that.  Although Mr. C----r told me once
+that that was the hardest job he ever tackled.  He said he could write
+like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself.  But he was always
+joshing, that man.
+
+"Why, Miss Jessop," he used to say to me, "if I could write like
+myself, I'd have won the Nobel prize any time this last ten years!"
+
+But he wrote awfully well, I always thought.  Hardly a patient I had
+that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:
+
+"Oh, well, what's the last C----r's?" and when I got to the parts I'd
+taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used
+to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!
+
+It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case.  He 'phoned me to drop in at
+the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been
+shopping with her all the morning.  She had just invited me to go out
+to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the
+idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case
+that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue.
+It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any
+feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my
+own sister, almost.  She was lovely.
+
+But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes,
+though my suit-case was all packed for the country.
+
+"That's good," he said, "for I specially want you.  It's nothing to do,
+really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend.  There's a
+family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through
+the country--New England, I believe.  They've got a big, dressy car,
+and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the
+weather's reasonably good."
+
+"What do they want of a nurse?" I said.
+
+"Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening," he said.
+"They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?"
+
+Well, that sounded all right, and yet I got the idea that it wasn't the
+real reason, somehow.  I don't know why.  Those things are queer.
+
+Of course, there was no reason why it shouldn't be so: I spent a month
+on a private yacht, one summer, just to be there in case of sickness,
+and nobody wanted me all the time we were gone, for a minute.  As a
+matter of fact, the lady's maid took care of me the first three days
+out!
+
+But I never happened to be asked on a motor-trip in that way, and it
+seemed a little different.  For of course you could pick up a nurse
+almost anywhere, if you wanted one, on that sort of a tour, and every
+place in the tonneau counts.
+
+"Isn't there anything the matter with any of them?" I asked.
+
+"What a suspicious lot you nurses are!" he said, with his queer little
+chuckle (all the young doctors try to imitate it in the hospital).
+"The daughter's a little nervous, that's all.  It's for her they're
+taking the trip, to give her a change."
+
+"Now look here, Dr. Stanchon," I said, "I'm here to tell you that I
+don't want any of your old dope cases, and I might just as well say so
+first as last.  That last young man of yours was about all I wanted.
+He was a sweet creature, wasn't he?"
+
+This probably sounds very fresh to you, but everybody knows me: I speak
+right out, and if you want me, you have to stand it!  And the way I
+slaved over that boy, and he getting morphine from his valet right
+along--it was simply disgusting.
+
+"It's nothing like that--nothing at all," said he; "don't get so
+excited!"
+
+"Oh, very well," I said, "then I suppose it's melancholia.  Not for
+mine, if you please.  Perhaps you remember that charming woman that
+jumped out of the window?  I'm no clairvoyant, and that was enough for
+me, thank you."
+
+"You're getting saucy, Jessop," he said, "but it's not melancholia.
+But you certainly had a hard time with that one."
+
+And I should say I did.  The foxy thing was as good as gold for three
+weeks, minded everything I said, fairly ate out of my hand, and got us
+so that we all believed she did better for me alone than when I had
+help handy.  Of course I kept my eye on her, but nevertheless, the
+other nurse just above gave up the job, and used to be off learning
+French from the governess they had, most of the time.  So when madam
+got us where she wanted us, she tied me to the door knob and jumped out
+of the window before my eyes!  And I can tell you, the thirty dollars a
+week that would get me on a case like that again, never left the
+Treasury!
+
+"I assure you it's not that at all," he said.  "It's a case of nerves,
+that's all."
+
+"Nerves! nerves!" I repeated (I _was_ pretty snippy, I suppose).
+"That's all right for the family, doctor, but what's the matter with
+her?  I've got to know, haven't I, some time?"
+
+"Well, I must say you nurses are getting to be the limit," he said.
+"The truth is, I spoil you.  But there's something in what you say, of
+course.  Now here's the whole business.  This girl, and she's a sweet,
+lovely girl, too, had a maid, that was a sort of nurse, I believe, when
+she was a child, and had seen her grow up, and was very much attached
+to her, and all that.  Like all those old servants she was pretty well
+spoilt, I imagine, and seems to have had the girl under her thumb.  She
+always slept in the room with her.  Now; the maid had bad headaches and
+used to take all sorts of proprietary remedies for them--coal-tar, of
+course, and probably had weakened her heart with them.  Anyway, she
+waked the girl up one night with her troubles and the girl gets up and
+gives her an overdose in the dark, and the maid's dead in her bed in
+the morning."
+
+"Oh, I see," I said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that
+suicidal woman.  "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame.
+An automobile trip will certainly do her a lot of good."
+
+"Well, there's a little more to it than that," he said.  "As a matter
+of fact, she's a very sensible sort of girl and she knows she's not to
+blame, really.  Of course it was pretty rough, but then, the maid had
+no business to expect her to wait on her, and she ought to have given
+careful directions about the dose, anyhow.  She might have gone off any
+time, and the girl knows it.  But the night of the funeral, after the
+girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of
+the bed, looking at her!  Of course she was overwrought nervously.
+Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the
+woman comes every night.  She knows it's hallucination, optical
+delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but
+she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do.
+They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried
+auto-suggestion--no use.  She's all right through the day, but at
+night, in any bedroom, under any circumstances, this thing appears and
+she just has to go through with it till morning."
+
+"Why doesn't she have some one sleep with her?" I asked.
+
+"It doesn't make the slightest difference," he said.  "One week she had
+a bed between her father's and mother's, but it was just the same, and
+of course they got pretty bad, out of sympathy.  They'd spend two or
+three ordinary fortunes to cure her--but it's one of the cases where
+money doesn't talk, unfortunately.  So there we are.  It came over me
+last night that I'd like to have you try what you can do with her."
+
+"But, heavens and earth, what good will I be?" I said.  "Am I a
+ghost-catcher?  I never knew it."
+
+"No," says he, "but I'm sorry for the ghost that would run up against
+you, Jessop--honestly, I am!"
+
+"Much obliged, I'm sure," I said, "but why doesn't she take her sleep
+in the daytime?  That would fool the ghost from her point of
+view--wouldn't it?"
+
+I'll never forget the look he gave me.  "Listen to me, my girl," he
+said, running out his jaw in the way he does when he's in dead earnest
+and means you to know it, "listen to me, now.  If that young woman ever
+takes to living by night and sleeping by day, on that account, _she's a
+gone goose_!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said I.
+
+"I mean it's all up with her, and she might as well engage a permanent
+suite in Jarvyse's little hotel up the river," he says, very sharp and
+gruff.  "I've staved that off for a month now, but they can't see it
+and they're bound to try it: Jarvyse himself half advises it.  And I'll
+risk my entire reputation on the result.  If she can't fight it
+out--she's gone."
+
+He waited a moment and put out his jaw.
+
+"_She's gone,_" he said again, and I felt creepy when he said it, and I
+tell you I believed him.
+
+"Well, I'll try my best," I said, and I went on the case the next
+morning.
+
+As soon as I saw her I got the idea of her I've always had since:
+that's me, all over.  I went to a palmist's once with a lot of the
+other nurses and that's the first thing he said to me.
+
+"It's first impressions with you, young woman," he said.  "Take care to
+trust 'em and act on 'em, and you'll never need to count on the old
+ladies' home!"
+
+Well, as soon as I saw Miss Elton she put me in mind of one of Mr.
+C----r's heroines, looks and clothes and ways, and all, and I've never
+changed my mind.  Her things were all plain, but they had the loveliest
+lines, and she always looked as if she'd been born in them, they suited
+her so!  Her hair was that heavy, smooth blond kind that makes a Marcel
+wave look too vulgar to think about, and her eyes and complexion went
+with it.  And with all her education she was as simple as a child:
+there were any number of things she didn't seem to know.  She took to
+me directly, her mother said, and I could see she liked me, though she
+hardly spoke.  She had big rings under her eyes and seemed very tired.
+
+She got a nap after lunch--only two hours, by the doctor's orders--and
+it did seem a shame to wake her, she was off so sound, but of course I
+did, and then we walked for an hour in the park.  I didn't talk much at
+first, but I saw that she liked it, and so gradually we got on to
+different subjects, and I think she was entertained.  She seemed
+interested to hear about the nurses at the hospital and some of the
+funny things that happen there, and I could see that she was trying to
+keep her end up--oh, she was all right, Anne Elton was, and no mistake!
+There was nothing morbid about her: she was trying to help all she
+could.
+
+When I came down for dinner there was a young man with them, a
+handsome, dark fellow, and he talked a great deal with me--I could see
+he was trying to size me up, and it was easy to see that he was pretty
+far gone as far as Miss Elton was concerned, and didn't care who knew
+it.  We must have seemed a strange party to any one who didn't know the
+ins and outs of the thing--only the five of us in that big dining-room
+with the conservatory opening into it; the mother, one of those
+stringy, grey New York women, that always wear diamond dog-collars,
+worried to death and nervous as a witch; Mr. Elton--he was Commodore of
+the New York Yacht Club at that time--fat and healthy and
+reddish-purple in the face; young Mr. Ferrau (he was from an old French
+family and looked it, though a born New Yorker) and me in my white
+uniform and cap next to Miss Elton, all in white with a big rope of
+pearls and pearls on her fingers.  She could wear a lower cut gown and
+look more decent in it than any woman I ever saw.  All her evening
+dresses were like that, perfectly plain, just draped around her, with
+long trains and no trimmings: her skin was like cream-coloured marble,
+not a mark or line or vein on it, but just one brown mole on the right
+shoulder blade, and that, as her mother said, was really an addition.
+
+Nobody talked much but Mr. Ferrau and the old gentleman--there's no
+doubt he had been a gay old boy in his day!--for I never do talk when I
+dine with the family, and the mother was too nervous for anything but
+complaining of the food.  The Lord knows why, for it beat any French
+restaurant I ever ate in, or Delmonico's either, and Mr. Ferrau and I
+got quite jolly over how they put soft-boiled eggs into those round,
+_soufflée_ sort of things with tomato sauce over them, without spilling
+the yolks.  Then they asked if I'd play bridge a bit, and though I
+don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my
+morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old
+gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted,
+sitting up straight as a poker on a gold sofa.
+
+It always makes me laugh when I read what some persons' ideas are of
+how rich people amuse themselves.  The nurses are always jollying me
+about my rich friends and playing the races and champagne suppers and
+high-flying generally, and I often wish they could have seen us those
+evenings at the Eltons, playing bridge--no money, mind you, and
+Apollinaris at ten!  The Commodore had to have ginger-ale, the ladies
+hardly ever drank, and I never take anything but water when I'm on a
+case, so Mr. Ferrau had all the champagne there was at that dinner.  At
+ten the masseuse came and rubbed Miss Elton to sleep, and I got into my
+bed next hers before she went off, not to risk disturbing her.  There
+was a night lamp in her bath and I could just make out her long braid
+on the pillow--the pillow cases had real lace insertions and the
+monograms on the sheets were the most beautiful I ever saw.
+
+I went off myself about eleven, for I was determined to act perfectly
+natural: I knew I'd wake if anything was wrong.  And sure enough: all
+of a sudden I began to dream, a thing I seldom if ever do, and I
+dreamed that my suicidal case was clambering over me to jump out of the
+window, and woke with a start.
+
+Miss Elton was sitting up in bed staring at me, breathing short.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" I asked quietly and she gave a sort of
+gasp and said,
+
+"No--I think not, thank you.  I'm sorry to bother you, but the doctor
+told me to."
+
+"Why, of course," said I, "that's what I'm here for.  Do you see
+anybody?"
+
+I didn't say, "Do you think you see anybody?" for I never put things
+that way.
+
+"Yes," she said, "she's there--Janet."  I glanced about, and of course
+there was no one, and I tell you, I felt awfully sorry for her.  It was
+all the worse that she was so pretty and calm and decent about it: I
+didn't like that a bit.
+
+"Where is she?" said I.
+
+"Right on the foot of the bed," she answered, in that grim, edgy kind
+of way they always talk when they're holding on to themselves.  Oh, how
+that morphine boy of mine used to begin!
+
+"Excuse me, Miss Jessop, but would you mind assuring me that there's
+nobody crouching under the bed?" he used to say.  "Of course I know
+there's not, but there appears to be, and I'd be obliged if you'd look!"
+
+If I went under that bed once, I went fifty times.
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, Miss Elton, I don't see a thing," I said.
+"Shall I turn on the light?"
+
+"No--not yet," she said.  "The doctor said to hold out as long as I
+could.  Would you mind putting your hand there?"
+
+"Not a bit," said I, and I pawed all over the foot of her bed.  Finally
+I got up and sat there.
+
+"What happens now?" I asked her.
+
+"She just moves up and sits farther out," said she.
+
+I couldn't think of much to say to that, she was so quiet and hopeless,
+so I waited awhile and finally I said,
+
+"Would it help you any to talk about it?"
+
+"Oh, if you didn't _mind_!" she cried out, and then the poor thing
+began.  It makes me tired, the way people treat a patient like that.
+There was that girl just bottled up, you might as well say, because
+they all thought it would make her worse to talk about it.  Her father
+pooh-poohed it, and her mother cried and asked her to send for their
+rector, and even Dr. Stanchon slipped up there, it seemed to me, for he
+advised her not to dwell on it.  Not dwell on it!  Why, how could she
+help it, I'd like to know?
+
+"What I can't understand," she'd say, over and over, "is her coming,
+when it hurts me so.  Why, Janet loved me, Miss Jessop, she loved the
+ground I walked on, everybody said!  And she knows--she must know--that
+I wouldn't have hurt her for the world.  Why should I?  She took care
+of me since I was six years old--sixteen years!  She said to put in
+those powders in the box and I put them in.  How could I know?"
+
+"Of course you couldn't know," I said, "she knows that."
+
+"Then why does she do this?" she asked me, so pitifully, just like a
+child.  "Why does she, Miss Jessop?"
+
+"Well, you know, Miss Elton," I said, "you wouldn't believe me if I
+lied to you, now, would you?  And so I must tell you that I don't think
+she _does_ do it: none of us do.  It's just your idea.  If Janet's
+there, why don't I see her?  You're overstrained and excited and you
+feel that she might not have died----"
+
+"Ah, but I didn't feel that the night she came!" she broke out, "truly
+I didn't.  Dr. Stanchon and all of them said I was very brave and
+sensible.  He talked to me and made me see: if Janet had been sleeping
+with one of the maids and waked her up and told her not to turn on the
+light because it hurt her head, but just to give her the powders in the
+box, that maid would have done it.  I can see that."
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"I didn't blame myself--really," she went on, and suddenly she looked
+straight to the foot of the bed.
+
+"Janet," she said, "the doctor said never to speak to you, and I never
+will again, but I must, this once.  Janet, _do_ you blame me?  Are you
+really there?  Why do you come this way?  You're killing me, you know.
+I can't sleep.  You shouldn't have taken that strong medicine, and the
+doctor told you not to, you know, yourself.  Won't you go, Janet?  Not
+to please Nannie?"
+
+Really, it would have melted a stone to hear her.
+
+She was still a moment and then she began to cry and whimper, and I
+knew that it had made no difference.
+
+"She won't go--she won't go," she said, crying, "not even for Nannie!"
+
+Well, I talked to her and read to her and stroked her head, and by two
+o'clock or so she was off for an hour, and I got a nap myself.  But
+from three till nearly five she was awake again, and I had to light up
+the room; she said she hardly saw her then--only felt her, and that
+wasn't so bad.
+
+I don't know that anything different took place for a week after that.
+We went through the same business every night, and I took a nap every
+afternoon when she did.  She told me, what I wasn't much surprised to
+hear, that she and Mr. Ferrau were engaged--or just about--when this
+precious Janet died, and that now she wouldn't hear of it and had
+refused to marry him till she was well again.  And I must say I think
+she was right.  Of course the old gentleman didn't see it that way, and
+we had many a discussion about it, he and I.
+
+"God Almighty, Miss Jessop, my dear," he used to say to me, "you know
+as well as I do--I'm speaking, of course, to a woman of practical sense
+and experience, and therefore I speak plainly--you know as well as I do
+that the day after the wedding all this will be done for!  We'll never
+hear of that damned Janet nonsense again.  Now, would we?"
+
+"Well, Commodore, maybe not, but you can't tell," I'd say.  "It's a
+good bet, but--it's a bet, after all.  It would be awkward if it didn't
+work out, you know."
+
+"Oh, bosh, bosh!" he'd burst out, and roll off to the Yacht Club.
+People that live in big houses like that, I've noticed, always have to
+go out to get a little peace, they say, and privacy.  It's funny.
+
+The weather was bad, so we didn't go on the motor trip at all, and that
+was just as well, for if we had, I should never have gone up to the
+hospital that day and never seen old Margaret.  She was an old darky
+woman that used to come in to clean the wards when they were short of
+help, and all the nurses knew her, because she used to tell fortunes
+with cards and a glass ball she looked into--pretty fair fortunes, too.
+I've known of some awfully queer things she told different nurses that
+were only too true.  She always liked me because I used to jolly her
+up, and I stopped to speak to her, and she asked me where I was working.
+
+"Oh, a grand place on the Avenue, Margaret," I told her, "marble stairs
+and a fountain in the hall."
+
+"What's the sickness, honey?" she asked, for those darkies are always
+curious.
+
+"The patient's got a ghost, Margaret," I said, just to see what she'd
+say, "and I'm sorry to say we can't seem to cure her."
+
+"Co'se you cayn't cure her," says she, "no stuff in bottles for that,
+honey!  What the ghos' want?"
+
+"Nothing at all," said I.  "It just sits on the bed and looks."
+
+"Laws, honey, Miss Jessop, but that yer kine's the wors' of all," says
+she, staring at me.  "She'll jes' have ter leave it onto somebody else,
+that's all."
+
+"Why, can you do that?" I asked.
+
+"Sure you can do it," she says.  "Was it one that loved her?"
+
+"They all say so," said I.
+
+She struck her hands together.
+
+"I knew it--I knew it!" she cried out.  "It's always that-a-way.  My
+ole mudder she had that ha'nt fer ten years, and it was her half-sister
+that brung her up from three years ole!  She'll jes' have ter leave it
+onto some one."
+
+"Well, I'll tell her so," said I, just in joke, of course.
+
+"You do," says she, solemn as the grave, "you do, Miss Jessop, honey,
+an' she'll bless you all her life.  You get some one ter say they'll
+take that ha'nt off her _right w'ile it's there, so it hears 'em_, and
+w'ile there's a witness there ter hear bofe sides, an' you hear to me,
+now, she'll go free!"
+
+"I'll certainly tell her, Margaret," I said, and I went on and never
+gave it another thought, of course.
+
+We went up to the Elton's camp in Maine all of a sudden, for Miss Elton
+got the idea she'd feel better there, and though it was cold as
+Greenland, it did seem for a little as if she got a bit more sleep.
+But not for long.  We slept out on pine-bough beds around a big fire,
+for that made more light, and that precious Janet seemed to be fainter,
+but she was there, just the same, and the poor girl had lost eighteen
+pounds and I felt pretty blue about it.  It didn't really look as if we
+got ahead any, as I told the doctor, and she hardly spoke all day.  I'm
+not much for the country, as a rule, it always smells so damp at night,
+but the Lord knows I'd have lived there a year if it would have helped
+her any.
+
+Then came the night when Mr. Ferrau ran up to see how she was getting
+along.  It was too cold for Madam and the Commodore, so we were there
+alone except for a gang of guides and servants and chauffeurs and
+masseuses.  She had a bad night that night, for she got the idea that
+this lovely Janet was sitting up nearer and nearer to her, and she had
+it in her head that when she got to a certain point it would be all up
+with her.  And when I told the doctor that, over the telephone, all he
+said was:
+
+"Too bad, too bad!"  So I knew how _he_ felt.
+
+Well, she got talking rather hysterically for her, and I began to wish
+somebody else was around, when Mr. Ferrau jumps out of his door in the
+bachelor quarters and dashes over to us in a heavy bathrobe, white as a
+sheet.
+
+"For God's sake, Miss Jessop, _do_ something!" he said, but I just
+shrugged my shoulders.  There was nothing to _do_, you see.  She was
+all bundled up in a seal-skin sleeping-bag with a wool helmet over her
+head; her eyes certainly looked bad.  I just about gave up hope, then.
+The moon made everything a sort of bluish-white and we all must have
+looked pretty ghastly.
+
+"I think I'll give her a little codeine," I said.  "Just stay here a
+moment, will you?"
+
+He knelt down by her bunk while I began to unwind myself from all the
+stuff you have to get into up there.
+
+"Oh, Anne, my dearest, dearest girl," he said, "if only I could take
+this instead of you!  If only I could see her, and you not!"
+
+"Would you--would you, really, Louis?" I heard her say.  "You _do_ love
+me, don't you?  But that would be too dreadful.  I couldn't allow that
+to happen."
+
+"Heavens, my dear girl, I'd take it in a minute, if I could!" he cried.
+"Oh, Anne, do try to look at it in that way--try to give it to me!
+Perhaps if you used your will-power enough for that----"
+
+"That can't be, Louis," she said, "this is just my fate.  I must bear
+it--till it kills me.  But if it could be, I'll tell you this: I
+_would_ give it to you, dearest, for you are stronger, and maybe a man
+could fight it better."
+
+I was off to the main camp then, but when I got back with the codeine
+she was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he kneeled there till
+four without moving--he was game, that Mr. Ferrau, and no mistake!
+
+She slept right through till eight, and I left them together all day,
+as much as I could, and I let her off her nap, she begged so.  I could
+see from the solemn way she talked that she was saying good-bye to him,
+as much as he'd let her.  She told me that as soon as it began to get
+on her brain, really, and she got worse (we always called it "getting
+worse"), she was going up to Dr. Jarvyse's place, and he wasn't to see
+her at all.
+
+"I want him to remember me--as I was," she said.  It certainly was
+tough.  I used to cry about it, when I was alone, sometimes.  You get
+awfully fond of some patients.
+
+He stayed the next night, too, and I took my regular nap from ten to
+one.  I could nearly always count on that, and I'd got so I woke the
+moment she did.  I was fast asleep when I felt her touch me, and I
+woke, feeling scared, for she almost never did that.
+
+"What is it?" I said, half awake.  "Is she coming nearer?"
+
+"Miss Jessop, dear Miss Jessop, she isn't here at all!" she said,
+shaking and crying.  "I've been awake an hour, and she hasn't come
+to-night!  Oh, _do_ you think, _do_ you----"
+
+"Yes, I do," I said, though I was pretty excited myself, I can tell
+you.  "I believe you're getting better, Miss Elton, and now I think
+I'll have Miss Avidson rub you, and see if we can get through the night
+all right."
+
+The Swedish woman put her right to sleep, working over her head, and we
+never opened our eyes till nine.  One of the guides told me that Mr.
+Ferrau had been called to the city early, and had left quietly, not to
+disturb us, but we were both so delighted and yet so anxious not to be
+delighted too soon, that we didn't notice his going much.  She ate
+three good meals that day, besides her tea, and we walked five or six
+miles--I wanted to wear her out.  And that night she slept right
+through!
+
+We waited one night more, to be certain, and then I 'phoned the doctor.
+
+"Hurray!" he yelled, so I nearly dropped the receiver.  "Bully for you!
+Keep out for a week and then move in--with a light.  Drop the light in
+another week.  Then I'll send 'em all off to Beachmount."  This was
+their Long Island place.
+
+Well, it all worked out perfectly.  She gained nine pounds in three
+weeks, and I don't know when I've been so pleased.  The old people came
+up to see her, and I spent most of my time convincing them that it was
+no case for tiaras and sunbursts, as I never wore them.  Mrs. Elton
+really looked almost human.  She cried so that I finally had to take a
+little string of pearls.  They were small, but all matched, and she
+said I could wear them under my blouse and I could always sell them.
+You'd have thought that I'd cured the girl, when, as I told them, the
+thing had just run its natural course, and her youth and good sense and
+the outdoor life had done the rest.
+
+Of course, there was no more use for me, and I went right off on a big
+operation case--a very interesting one, indeed.  I promised to come to
+the wedding, if I possibly could; she told me she would be married just
+as soon as Mr. Ferrau wished, she felt she'd made him go through so
+much in the last four months.  And it seemed that he _had_ felt the
+strain more than they thought, for her mother told me that just as Anne
+recovered, he seemed to give way and got very nervous and had gone off
+on a yacht with some of his college friends to the south somewhere.  I
+was rather surprised not to see him at the house, and so was Miss Anne,
+I thought; but he sent the loveliest flowers every day and telegrams,
+and of course they were working on the trousseau and pretty busy,
+anyway.
+
+I couldn't get to the wedding, after all, for my patient was taken to
+Lakewood and simply refused to let me off, which was rather mean of
+her, for I could have run up for the afternoon as well as not.  But
+that's what you have to expect, if you go into nursing, and you get
+used to it.
+
+Mrs. Elton called me up once at the hotel, to see if I couldn't get
+away (they were going to send the car for me if I could), and I asked
+if Mr. Ferrau was all right again.
+
+"Really, Miss Jessop," said she--and I could just see how she must have
+looked, from her voice--"really, my dear, I am terribly, _terribly_
+worried about Louis.  He looks frightfully, so pale and nervous and run
+down.  And he simply _won't_ see a doctor, and when I earnestly begged
+him to consult Dr. Stanchon, he flew out at me--he really flew out!"
+
+"What can it be?" said I.  "What does Miss Elton think?"
+
+"Why, how can she know, my dear?" says the old lady.  "Only he assures
+her that it will be all right once they're married, and begs her so not
+to put it off, that she won't, though I don't entirely approve, myself.
+Really, you'd scarcely know Louis, Miss Jessop."
+
+It did seem too bad, but then, those things will happen, and I just
+thought to myself that probably there was more to that southern trip
+than the old lady knew, and let it go at that.  The doctor says that
+all the nurses have dime-novel imaginations--but where do we get them,
+I'd like to know, if not from what we see and hear?  The Lord knows we
+don't have to invent things.
+
+Miss Elton was dreadfully disappointed that I couldn't be there for the
+wedding, and promised me they'd stop a minute at the hotel on their
+wedding journey and see me.  They were going on a motor trip, nobody
+knew just where, and Lakewood would only be a few miles out of their
+way.  Wasn't that nice of them?  But it was just like both of them.  So
+I was quite excited, of course, and when it poured rain all day, and
+got worse and worse, I did feel so sorry for them and never expected
+they'd leave town.  But, lo and behold, about five o'clock didn't the
+boy bring up their cards, and for a wonder my patient was decent and
+said she wouldn't want me till next morning--she had her own maid with
+her and really didn't need me but once a day.
+
+I ran down to one of the little reception rooms--I must say I like
+those big hotels--and when I saw them I nearly collapsed, for though
+she was looking perfectly beautiful and well as could be, poor Mr.
+Ferrau certainly did give me a shock.  He was all tanned, well enough,
+but as thin as a rail, and dreadful around the eyes.  And yet he looked
+very happy and seemed quite glad to see me.
+
+"Isn't she looking magnificent?" he asked me, and I said--I just have
+to say right out what I think--"Yes, she is, but I can't say the same
+for you."
+
+"Oh, I shall be all right--after a bit," he said, turning red and not
+meeting my eyes.  "Just let me get away with Anne for a while, and
+you'll see."
+
+They insisted on my having tea with them, and I couldn't help but think
+that she didn't realise how bad he looked and acted: his hand shook so
+that his tea-spoon jingled.  And yet he was as straight as a string, I
+was sure.
+
+It kept on pouring so dreadfully that they gave up the idea of going on
+anywhere, and he engaged a suite at the hotel for that night, and I
+said good-bye to them, then, for they were to have their dinner served
+by themselves and I knew they'd want to get off quietly in the morning.
+My patient kept her word and didn't bother me, and I listened to the
+music for a while and then went up to my room and wrote some letters.
+About ten I put my boots outside the door and happened to notice the
+boots opposite and saw that they were Mr. Ferrau's--they were patent
+leather, with rather queer cloth tops.  So I knew that they had the
+suite opposite ours; there were only those two for the one little hall.
+
+I couldn't seem to sleep that night at all.  I kept dreaming about that
+suicide of mine, even when I did sleep, and finally I put on my wrapper
+and decided to take a few turns up and down the corridor.  I opened the
+door softly and stepped out--and ran right into Mr. Ferrau!  He was
+stalking along in a bathrobe, his arms spread out, and tears rolling
+down his cheeks, and he was chattering to himself like a monkey.  His
+eyes rolled, and I could see he was just on the verge of a regular
+smash-up.
+
+"Why, Mr. Ferrau, what's the matter?" I asked.
+
+He stared at me like a crazy man.  "You here!" he said.  "For God's
+sake!  Go up to her--go to Anne--I'm all in," he said.  "Oh, Miss
+Jessop, it didn't work!  It didn't work!"
+
+He pointed to his door, and I went through the private dining-room and
+the sitting-room and a dressing-room and a big marble bath, and there
+she was, crying like a baby in one of the beds.
+
+"Why, Miss Elton--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau--what _is_ the
+matter?" I said, running up to her and taking hold of her hand.  "Are
+you ill?"
+
+She only sobbed and held on to me and suddenly something struck me and
+I said, "You haven't seen Janet again, have you?"
+
+"No, no--but I wish I had!  I wish I'd never stopped!" she gulped at
+me.  "Oh, Miss Jessop, _Louis sees her_!  He sees her all the time;
+that's what makes him look so ill!  Ever since she stopped coming to
+me, he's seen her, and he never told."
+
+"For heaven's sake!" said I.
+
+"She sits on the bed, but she doesn't look at him--he only sees her
+profile.  He walked twenty miles a day--he did boxing and fencing and
+riding--it was no use--he thought when we--when--he hoped if we were
+married--oh, Miss Jessop, she came just the same!"
+
+"For heaven's sake!" I said again.  It wasn't very helpful, but I
+simply couldn't think of anything else.  She was so pretty and sweet,
+and he was so plucky, and who would have supposed it would have got on
+his nerves so!
+
+Her night gown was solid real lace, and the front of it was sopping wet
+where she'd cried, and the top of the sheet, too.
+
+"I gave her to him, and he won't give her back--I can't make him!" she
+went on, gasping and sobbing.  "I begged him on my knees, but he
+wouldn't."
+
+"And don't you see her?" I asked.
+
+"No, no, I can't!" she cried.  "I try, but I can't."
+
+"Well, that's something, anyway," I said.  "You wait till I go and
+speak to him again, and put some cold water on your eyes, why don't
+you?"
+
+For it just occurred to me that maybe I could do something with him,
+after all.  He was leaning against the window at the end of the
+corridor, and I never like to see excited people near windows, after my
+suicide woman, so I sprinted along till I got to him.  But I really
+don't believe there was any need for it--he wasn't that kind.
+
+"See here, Mr. Ferrau," I said, "do you really believe that Miss
+Elton--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau--really gave that old Janet ghost
+to you?"
+
+"Believe it? _believe it_?" he said, staring at me out of his red eyes.
+"No, I don't believe it, Miss Jessop--I know it!  I tell you I see the
+damned thing, in a brown dress, on the edge of my bed every night!"
+
+"Well, then," I said, "do you think you could give it to anybody else?"
+
+And just at that moment, and not before, I remembered old Margaret!
+
+"Why--why, I never thought of that," he said.  "I--I wouldn't put any
+one else through such a hell, though----"
+
+"Oh, come, now," I said.  "Maybe they wouldn't think it was so bad as
+you do, Mr. Ferrau."
+
+"But who would--oh, it's too crazy!" he said, half angry, but all
+broken up, so he didn't much care how it sounded.
+
+"Oh, lots of people," I told him.  "Why, you might easily find some one
+with an incurable disease, you know, that hadn't long to live and
+wanted money----"
+
+Of course, this was all nonsense, but anything to humour people in his
+condition--it's the only way.  And what do you think?  He turned around
+like a shot and stared at me as if I'd been a ghost, myself.
+
+"That might be possible," he said, very slowly; "it's just possible I
+know ... excuse me, I'll go in and speak to my wife a moment!"
+
+He left me there and in a few minutes he came for me again, and I went
+into their parlour.  She had on a beautiful pale rose negligée all
+covered with lace and her braids were wound around her head: she'd
+wiped her eyes.
+
+"Would you perhaps play a little bridge with us, Miss Jessop?" says he,
+trying to keep calm.  "We think we'd better have some one with us."
+
+So there we sat till four in the morning, playing three-handed bridge,
+and if anybody knows of a funnier wedding-night, I'd like to hear of it!
+
+I suppose anybody would have thought us all crazy if they could have
+seen us, the next night, sitting, all three of us, by the bed of that
+queer old man that lived in old Greenwich Village.  (My patient let me
+off, for I told her it was a case of a young bride and groom, and she
+was delighted to oblige the Eltons.  She told me she should call on
+them after that!  She was a climber, if there ever was one, that woman.)
+
+He was an old valet of Mr. Ferrau's father, and Mr. Ferrau was
+supporting him till he died in a little cottage there.  He had angina
+and was likely to go off any minute, and the Lord knows what Master
+Louis paid the old monkey--I'll bet it was no thirty cents!  He only
+talked French, but I could see he thought Mr. Ferrau was crazy--he
+looked at me so queerly out of his little wrinkled eyes and nodded his
+head as if to say, "What a pity all this is!  But we must humour him."
+
+Mrs. Ferrau told me afterward that her husband promised him solemnly to
+take Janet back if he couldn't stand her--and he would have, too, and
+don't forget it!  He was a game one.  But the old fellow just kept
+saying:
+
+"_Bon, m'sieu, bon, bon!_" and kept reaching for his envelope.  He was
+only afraid they'd change their mind, you see.
+
+Then Mr. Ferrau lay down on a cot next the old fellow's--he was kept
+very clean and neat by the woman that boarded him--and I stayed in the
+room while Master Louis gave that darned old Janet away.  He insisted
+that I should witness it, and to tell you the truth, when I remembered
+what black Margaret had said about having a witness, I _did_ feel
+rather queer, for a moment.  But of course they were all crazy--as
+crazy as loons--so far as that one thing went.  You see, it was what
+Dr. Stanchon calls an _idée fixe_.  They had to be humoured.
+
+Mrs. Ferrau and I went out, then, and walked up and down for an hour
+through the village with the chauffeur behind us, a little way, and I
+really thought I'd be dippy myself, before long, if I had to pretend to
+be serious about it much longer.  It's no wonder to me the doctors in
+asylums get touched themselves, after what I went through with those
+two.
+
+In just about an hour he came dashing out and pushed us into the car.
+We didn't need to ask him--he looked ashamed, but oh, so different!
+
+"Let's get back to town," was all he said, and I never mentioned it to
+him again, any of it.  Of course, a sensible fellow like him _would_
+feel too ridiculous; knowing he had that silly idea in his head, yet
+not being able to get over it without such childishness--I felt sorry
+for him.
+
+I know that they didn't go back to Lakewood, for her maid packed up
+there, and a week after that the old lady wrote me from Long Island
+that they'd gone for a honeymoon tour in the car through Southern
+France, so I knew that father-in-law's valet hadn't gone back on his
+bargain.  I never knew what that old monkey made on it, but Mrs. Ferrau
+told me he was going to leave it to the Catholic church in Normandy,
+where he was born.  I hope it did some good.
+
+I went up to Greenwich that summer with a little boy who had
+tuberculosis of the spine (the sweetest little fellow, and so clever!)
+and on one of my afternoons out with him I stopped at the old cottage
+where the valet lived, just to ask after him.  The woman there told me
+he had passed away about ten days after I was there before.
+
+"In the night?" I asked, more for something to say than any real reason.
+
+"No, in his sleep, in the afternoon," she said.  "He didn't sleep much
+at night, after his young gentleman came, I noticed.  He seemed to have
+bad dreams.  He'd be praying away and clicking those rosary beads half
+the night, sometimes.  But he went out easy, at the last.  I learned a
+little French when I was lady's maid to a party, once, so I could get
+along pretty well with him.  But I couldn't make out about those
+dreams, exactly; they seemed to be about something brown, with its back
+to him, on the bed.  But he was pretty contented by day, when he was
+awake; he kept telling me of all he was leaving to his church."
+
+... When you think about it, it was queer, wasn't it?
+
+
+
+
+THE MIRACLE
+
+"And are they all really insane?"
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+"'Insane'?" he repeated, "'really'?"
+
+He was very young, but very clever, and I had known his mother well and
+listened to his letters from school many a time; she was intensely
+proud of him.
+
+"I tell you what it is, aunty," he began, selecting a cigarette with
+the deft manual gesture of a born surgeon (he was only twelve years
+younger than I, and his phenomenal record of almost impossible
+accomplishment made him seem far older than his years; but we kept to
+the habits of his perambulator days, when I had been tremendously
+pleased with the title).  "I tell you what it is, aunty--I'm hanged if
+I know!"
+
+He peered slit-eyed through the clouds of smoke, and I waited eagerly
+for what would come; when his eyes took on that look the boy seemed to
+me, frankly, inspired.  Twenty-three years (he had finished Harvard at
+nineteen) appeared so pitifully inadequate to account for him!  One was
+forced to the belief that he had directly inherited that marvelous
+"intuition" of his: that it was actually part of his famous father's
+experience--for he was Richard Stanchon's only son.
+
+"Of course, you know," he said quietly, "I see what they mean--most of
+'em.  I always do, somehow.  And the more you do that, the less insane
+they get to seem to you.  It's only you and I, a little warped, a
+little exaggerated.  My idea is that fewer and fewer of them will be
+sent to places like this, and more and more put out among families--oh,
+don't shiver, aunty, there's nothing to shiver at, I assure you.
+
+"Look here--do you see that tall girl in the blue silk shirtwaist?"
+
+I saw her--she was reading _Punch_ before the big library fire (it was
+furnished like a wealthy private club, the library), and just because
+she was so calm and high bred and Madonna-faced, I flattered myself
+that I could jump in the right direction.
+
+"Does she murder babies?" I asked resignedly.
+
+"Not at all," he replied, with a tiny grin for my cleverness, "not a
+bit of it.  She only insists on taking five baths a day and never
+touching any washable thing that's been handled.  She wears five
+changes a day and cleans the piano keys before she plays--plays very
+well, too."
+
+"But--but, is that all?"
+
+"Every bit."
+
+"Then why must she come here?"
+
+"Oh, well, there are practical complications, of course.  She thinks
+most people are pigs, and says so.  Then her family is nervous--I
+notice most of them come from very nervous families--and they simply
+couldn't rub on.  She shampoos her head every day.  It's my firm
+belief, aunty, that if some steady-going German-American family without
+any nerves would give her two rooms and a bath and put up with her for
+a few months, she'd be all right.  Honestly, as it is, she's fretting
+herself crazy.  She's no fool, you know."
+
+"Heavens, Will!  Why, I can perfectly understand----"
+
+"Of course you can.  Not mother, though.  Mother won't hear about
+her--and the joke of it is, you know, aunty, mother takes her three
+tubs a day all summer and never shakes hands in warm weather!"
+
+I gasped.
+
+"But, Will, this is awful!  Why, we're all on the verge, if you look at
+it that way!"
+
+He shrugged and put out his hand to a heavy-faced, ordinary woman of
+the well-groomed New York type.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Vint--let me present you to my aunt, Mrs. Ba--oh,
+come, now, aunty's a woman of the world and she's married, too.
+There's no reason on earth why you shouldn't."
+
+"But, doctor, you know what I am----"
+
+"I know," he said kindly, and the real sympathy in his boy's eyes
+struck moisture into my own, "I know.  But you're living it down--no
+woman could do more."
+
+"Really?" she begged, her features working, "really, doctor?  Heaven
+knows I try!"
+
+"And you never slip back.  _You never slip back!_" he said slowly and
+emphatically.  "Just think what that: means, Miss Vint!"
+
+We nodded at each other and she hurried off, almost smiling.
+
+"She looks no more insane than I do," I suggested, and again he
+shrugged.
+
+"There's where it is," he answered quietly; "she's just a little over
+the line, that's all.  She's Levi B. Vint's daughter, you know."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"I'd hate to think what she pays a week.  What she's really worrying
+about, I believe, is the old man's money.  She insists he was all
+right, you know, and all this exposure business, though it couldn't
+shake her trust in the old scoundrel, got on her nerves and she got
+worrying over herself.  Everybody argued with her--the whole Vint gang
+are a set of bronze mules, you know--and finally she arrived at a
+definite _idée fixe_: I'm sure it could have been prevented.  Anyway,
+she thinks she's--she's all sorts of a bad lot, you know.  She won't
+speak to the girls here--not even to the maids.  She says she might
+corrupt them."
+
+"How absurd--I mean how sad!  But she's so healthy; she'll soon
+recover?"
+
+"I don't know," he said briefly, and something scared me in his voice.
+"She's a very hard case.  A bad age."
+
+We walked in silence through a long glass-walled hall, a sort of
+conservatory, with palms and caged canaries chirping and trilling.
+
+"I hate those birds!" I cried nervously; he stopped and looked
+thoughtfully into me--it was no less than that.
+
+"That's interesting," he said abruptly, "I don't like 'em, either.  And
+you're one of the best-balanced women I know.  Mother, too--she doesn't
+care for them.  No--nor Beatrix."
+
+Beatrix was the hardy young woman who contemplated marrying him--a
+tremendous venture, it seemed to me!
+
+"But they seem to like 'em here.  The crazier they are (there's nobody
+bad here, you know) the more they like 'em, ...  Did you know mediums
+and spiritualists and all that sort can't live without 'em?  I never
+heard anybody mention it, but it's so.  When I went over to Lourdes,
+last year, I made a point of looking up the families of the people that
+had the visions, and they all kept larks in cages----"
+
+I saw he was following some train of thought and kept silence.  At
+length he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But that isn't what I asked you out for," he began.  "I thought you'd
+be interested in seeing--Oh, Mrs. Leeth, how are you?"
+
+"Very well, thank you, doctor."
+
+A busy, quiet, elderly woman, plainly dressed, cut across our path
+through the long conservatory.
+
+"Everything all right to-day?"
+
+"Everything, I think, thank you, doctor."
+
+There was nothing to remark about her until she lifted her eyes, and
+then the curious, intense depth of them (like a dog who could speak, I
+thought), held me almost breathless with sympathy.  She looked,
+somehow, as if she had gone through more than would be right for her to
+tell.
+
+"Poor creature," I said as she disappeared through a baize door.  "Tell
+me about her.  What is her trouble?"
+
+"She has none that I know of," he replied quietly.  "She's the
+housekeeper."
+
+"Good Heavens, Will!  I think I should go mad myself, if I lived here!
+How does one tell them apart?"
+
+"I don't think one does, always," he remarked placidly.  "I sometimes
+think that accounts for a good deal!  There's a man, now--see that
+fussy little fellow getting out of his motor coat?  That's Jarvyse."
+
+"_The_ Jarvyse?  The great specialist?"
+
+"That's it," he grunted with a disrespectful grin.  "From my point of
+view, you know, aunty, he might about as well stay in, now he's here.
+I wouldn't go too near him, if I were you--he'll say you're a
+paranoiac, if you mention your prejudice against free silver or thick
+soup at dinner or steam heat.  Everything's been paranoia with him
+since 1902.  It's just as much an _idée fixe_ as anybody's here.  If
+you object to anything he says, he diagnoses you immediately.  You
+couldn't build asylums fast enough to hold all Jarvyse's paranoiacs!
+That's why I'm here, by the way; the case I want you to see is really
+father's.  But he loses his temper so, when he meets Jarvyse, that he
+sends me up, instead.  The old boy doesn't bother me--'Morning, doctor."
+
+We stepped into a noiseless lift and he ran it to the fourth floor.  At
+the end of the corridor an open door showed a pleasant little interior;
+a window full of red geraniums, goldfish in a globe, an immense grey
+cat by a little Franklin stove with brass balls atop, and in the centre
+a round old-fashioned mahogany table piled high with various household
+linen.  We walked directly into this little home-like picture--a great
+relief after the lavish publicity of the immense halls--and as I
+greeted the housekeeper, who stood by the heaped table (with an actual
+note of apology in my voice for having mistaken her!) I noticed a
+little elderly man, a vague pepper-and-salt effect, sitting by a
+business-like desk in the corner, his hat and stick on the chair beside
+him, a book and pencil on his knee.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Vail, I rather hoped you might be here; let me
+present you to my aunt, Mrs.----"
+
+"Good heavens!" I almost said it aloud, for the vague pepper-and-salt
+took on familiar lines suddenly, and the matter-of-fact little features
+scattered so indistinguishably, as it were, though the boyishly round
+face became obviously one with the much-photographed trader-prince; it
+was Absolom Vail, the multimillionaire!  When had he...
+
+"Mrs. Leeth used to be Mr. Vail's housekeeper for many years," my young
+doctor's voice sounded reprovingly (had my jaw dropped?) "and he often
+looks in on her like this."
+
+"Oh!" I recalled the hat and stick and breathed again.  Not that I had
+any interest in the old gentleman, but he seemed a sort of public
+character, he and his "old stocking savings-bank," his "millions for
+deposit, but not a cent for speculation," his "every penny earned in
+honest trade," and all the rest of it.
+
+"Never forgot an old friend yet," he chirruped, and the housekeeper
+smiled gravely.  It was very decent and kindly and quite what one would
+have expected; I remembered that every employee always received a
+personally selected gift at Christmas and that he had stood godfather
+for seventeen (or was it twenty-seven?) children of labourers, born on
+the great eight thousand acre estate on the Hudson.
+
+My boy listened a moment to a call from the house-telephone, turned on
+his heel and swung hurriedly down the corridor.  I appeared to have
+been abandoned.
+
+The housekeeper's lips moved silently as she fingered the napkins on
+the further corner of the table; it was unnecessary, evidently, to
+include her in the social situation, though she would be perfectly
+capable of the inclusion if it should be thought best.
+
+"I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter in London last spring, Mr.
+Vail," I said.
+
+"Minnie?" he inquired, his shrewd little eyes on me.
+
+"I think so--the Countess of Barkington."
+
+"Yes, that's Minnie.  Well, Minnie's a good girl, I guess.  I haven't
+seen her much lately.  Not for some years, but once or twice.  Ever see
+Irene?"
+
+"I don't think so.  She married----"
+
+"She took an Italian.  She's a countess, too--contessa they call it
+over there.  The Contessa di Abbriglia.  Hannibal, her husband's name
+is--always seemed like a Newfoundland dog's name, to me.  He hasn't any
+such amount of land as Barkington, but the family's older, I believe.
+Hannibal's old enough, anyhow.  How old was the count, Mrs. Leeth, when
+Irene married him?"
+
+"Miss Irene was twenty-one, Mr. Vail, and Count Hannibal was forty."
+
+"You knew them both?" I asked her, caught by a sudden curiosity to see
+those deep, secret brown eyes once more.  The famous Absolom was just
+what I had supposed he would be, neither more nor less; the most
+interesting thing I could see in him was this simple, friendly kindness
+to an old retainer.
+
+"I dressed both the young ladies for their weddings," she replied
+quietly.
+
+"It must be very pleasant to you--these talks of old times," I hazarded.
+
+"It is," she answered.
+
+I thought of a number of remarks suitable to one or both of my old
+companions, but they all, somehow, seemed banal and excessive as I
+marshalled them to my lips.  A quaint, almost hypnotic quiet rose like
+the tide around us: all seemed said and agreed to.  A tiny fire
+flickered on the Franklin hearth; the iridescent fan-tailed fish bent
+and flattened and glided in the translucent globe; an old clock ticked
+restfully somewhere.  The two elderly friends there--for they were
+friends; one felt it.  And why not?  They were from the same class,
+undoubtedly, the hardware king and the housekeeper, the solid
+bourgeoisie that is essentially alike in all countries and
+centuries--these two friends exhaled an atmosphere of contented trust
+in each other and what life had left for them that spread like a
+visible cloud, a sort of sunset autumn haze, quite through the little,
+homely room, and took me under it, with them.  No wonder he liked to
+come there: it did not require much imaginative faculty to infer that
+neither Barkington nor di Abbriglia had been able to offer such an
+asylum to their father-in-law....
+
+Asylum!  How unconsciously I had fitted the original sense of the
+kindly old word to its technical uses!  Asylum: that was what it was, a
+refuge, a shelter, a little back-water in the great whirlpool of
+overstrained, nervous modern life.  And Absolom Vail had found one
+here, it seemed.  For he was unmistakably at home here; this was not
+the first nor the second visit, that was plain.  Such atmospheres do
+not grow from casual encounters.
+
+We exchanged comfortable, old commonplaces from time to time, while
+Mrs. Leeth sorted, and the hardware lord actually jotted down her notes
+as to necessary darning and replacing, in a worn red account book--it
+was almost too quaint for belief!  He chuckled at it a little, but not
+much; it was, after all, such a practical, sane sort of interlude in
+all the horrid, morbid confusion that the place, with all its
+conservatories and old mahogany and spacious vistas, necessarily
+included.  They were more than common normal, this simple, middle-class
+pair, on their friendly little housekeeping island, with this
+treacherous sea of pain and revolt forever lapping at the edges.
+
+I don't remember how he got to telling me of his early life, but I
+believe it is a habit of all that sort, and Absolom was no exception to
+his class and stratum.  I was particularly impressed by one little
+incident, the foundation, really, of his fortune--if any event can be
+selected in those lives which seem destined to exhibit the farthest
+possibilities of accumulation.
+
+"I had just exactly one hundred dollars," he said (he had the
+characteristic superstitious reverence for set sums, even decimal
+multiples of the national symbol) "that I'd saved up as carpenter's
+assistant in Greenwich, Connecticut.  I took it out of the savings-bank
+and I came to New York with a clean shirt and a tooth brush and my old
+mother's Bible, packed in a little basket with some boiled ham and
+bread.  I looked out a verse just as I stepped onto the train--what do
+you think it was?"
+
+"I have no idea, Mr. Vail."
+
+"No.  You wouldn't have.  Well, it was this: _Blessed shall be thy
+basket and thy store.  D'you see--basket_!  And I always intended to
+keep a store."
+
+He fixed me triumphantly with his twinkling Santa Claus eyes.
+
+"It's in Deuteronomy," he said.
+
+"The coincidence must have seemed very comforting to you," I suggested
+gravely.
+
+"It did.  It did," he answered, "and from that moment on, I never had a
+doubt.  Barkington didn't care much for that story, though--he says
+that the old fellows that translated the Bible away back in some king's
+time--King----"
+
+"King James," said the housekeeper quietly.
+
+"Yes, King James.  Well, he says that they didn't mean that kind of a
+store.  Maybe not.  But it did the job for me, that verse, just the
+same."
+
+The whole incident seemed very characteristic, very national, somehow,
+and I reflected gently upon it as we sat in silence, broken only by
+Mrs. Leeth's practical, dry voice as she announced:
+
+"Greek Key, Irish weave, spring, 1908, six dozen, fair order.
+
+"Thistle pattern, fall, 1906, four dozen, eight darned, ten badly worn."
+
+It seemed that I had been there a long time....
+
+At length I heard Will's quick, nervous step, and as it neared the door
+I rose, really reluctantly, and met him.
+
+"I am quite in the doctor's hands," I said, "and I see that he thinks
+it time for me to leave.  Good-bye, Mr. Vail"--he put his hand out for
+his gloves and cane--"if you are going, too, perhaps, can I take you
+back in town with me?  I motored out."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't," he replied, with his twinkling smile, "because
+I'm one of the ones that don't get out!"
+
+I stared at him blankly.
+
+"'That don't get out'!" I repeated stupidly.  "_That don't get out_?
+Why?"
+
+"Because I'm insane," he said placidly.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I don't pretend to any unusual share of equanimity, and it was not till
+we were back in the shelter of my own home, with the comfort of my own
+tea-tray before me and my own little applewood fire snapping on the
+hearth, that I brought myself to discuss the matter with Emily's boy.
+He had come back with me and we were going to the opera together later.
+
+"I suppose that was what you wanted me to see?" I said abruptly.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Just that.  I wanted your idea.  It's one of the most interesting
+cases--with all its complications--I ever knew.  Father's turned it
+over to me, practically.  He knows all about it."
+
+"But, Will, the man's as sane as I am!"
+
+"How much did you talk with him?"
+
+"Quite as much as with hundreds of other people!"
+
+He smiled thoughtfully.
+
+"Talk much with Mrs. Leeth?"
+
+"Oh, yes--she seems much more ordinary than her eyes, doesn't she?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, just commonplaces--I don't recall anything special...."
+
+"Well, try, won't you?  What _were_ the commonplaces?"
+
+I applied myself to recollection.  What, after all, _had_ she said?  As
+a matter of fact, beyond her linen tabulation I could not recall more
+than a dozen words.
+
+"Anyway," I remonstrated, "she makes you feel as if she talked!  She
+doesn't seem silent."
+
+"No," he admitted thoughtfully, "that's true.  But she never talks.
+She hardly speaks to the servants--they're all under her, you know--but
+they all seem to know what she wants.  I've tested lots of them: the
+cook, the laundresses, the furnace man, the steward--and when they come
+to consider, they can't recall a dozen words a day.  But they always
+insist, at first, that she gives them detailed orders and criticises
+them constantly.  It's funny."
+
+"Oh, well," I broke in impatiently, "never mind her!  Tell me about Mr.
+Vail--how long has he been there?"
+
+"He's been there six months!" Will announced triumphantly, suppressing
+a delighted smile at my amazement.
+
+"Six months!  And nobody knows?"
+
+"Nobody but the family.  Oh, he gets out, now and then: I or one of the
+doctors goes with him and he puts in a day at the office.  Everybody
+thinks he's travelling or taking electric light baths for his liver or
+Roentgen rays for his lungs or osteopathy for a cold in the head--Lord
+knows what!"
+
+"A day at the office?  But how can he, if he's insane?"
+
+"He's not too insane to make money."  His smile was deliberately
+intended to intrigue me, I thought.
+
+"He's no more insane than I am!" I cried.  "Who put him there?"
+
+"The Countess of Barkington--primarily.  Abbriglia agreed, but _they'd_
+never have done it alone--Irene's too fond of the old fellow."
+
+"Do you mean to say----"
+
+"Oh, don't get excited, aunty--he committed himself.  Nobody roped and
+gagged him."
+
+"But what doctor----"
+
+"Two besides me."
+
+"Besides you?  Why, Will!"
+
+"Oh, I didn't say that I recommended him to an asylum.  Not at all.  If
+he had fought it, I could have found reasons on the other side."
+
+"Like a corporation lawyer!"
+
+"Oh, well...."
+
+He began rolling cigarettes; they were his one weakness.
+
+"The question is," he said slowly, "what is insanity?  Medical
+insanity's one job, legal insanity's another....  Suppose your butler
+was convinced of the fact that he was Napoleon: would you care a
+continental, provided he buttlered as per contract?  So long as he
+didn't shout, '_Tête d'armée!_' as he passed the salad, what would you
+care?  It's quite possible that he has some such delusion, for all you
+know."
+
+"Of course, I see that."
+
+"There was that old nurse of ours--Esther, you know?  To the day of her
+death she swore that the druggist on the corner of Hartwell Street was
+Charley Ross--the child that was abducted long ago.  You couldn't argue
+her out of it nor laugh her out of it--she said she had a feeling.  She
+brought us up in it, you know, and for years I believed that he was
+Charley Ross and regarded him with veneration.  She was a perfectly
+good nurse, just the same.  But that idiotic fancy was part of her
+life--strengthened with every year of her life.  It was an _idée fixe_."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well.  Esther died a poor woman, but if she had left fifty thousand
+to--to a home for blind mulattoes, say, the first thing her nephews
+would have brought forward was that idea of Charley Ross."
+
+"Brought forward?"
+
+"To break her will.  They would have said that it proved her mentally
+incapable."
+
+"But it doesn't, Will, does it?"
+
+"That's just as you see it.  She wasn't incapable of looking after us
+and dressing mother and doing the marketing and keeping the accounts
+and making all her own clothes and some of ours.  But if you ask me if
+she had a perfectly normal mind, I should have to say no."
+
+"I see, Will."
+
+I was extremely interested: I seemed to see, glimmering far off, what
+we were getting to, and it was gripping, absorbing.  But I had no idea
+what we really were getting to--not then.
+
+"Now, we'll take another case," he said, at another cigarette.
+
+"I was at Lourdes last year, as you know, studying the Pilgrimage.
+Curious thing.  Not an atom of proof, you see, that anybody was ever
+cured of a headache there.  Not even sense enough to use the immense
+suggestive power that's massed there to do real good to neurasthenics
+and hysterics--in fact, they try to bar them.  They prefer goitre,
+which is _not_ cured by dirty baths, unfortunately.  The people who go
+away from there think they were cured from this, that and the other;
+whole business founded on a perfectly authenticated case of _dementia
+praecox_--as much a pathological condition as gout or insomnia.  I
+interviewed a prize case; she appeared before their bluff at a
+scientific council and presented affidavits of cure from consumption, a
+year previous.  I examined her later.  It was--as the man
+said--interesting if true, but the trouble was, it wasn't true, for she
+was nearly gone, then.  I gave her three months, and she died, I took
+pains to learn, in ten weeks.  Well: that was her delusion.  Was she
+sane?"
+
+"She was misinformed--mistaken."
+
+"Quite so--but she _knew_ she was cured, remember.  She felt it.  The
+rest of us didn't.
+
+"Now let's go a step farther, if you don't mind.  Beatrix tells me that
+the Almighty God, the creator of the universe, is the father of the son
+of a young Jewess, and sacrificed his son in order to save the world.
+This seems to me fantastic, frankly.  But mind you, aunty, though I
+know that druggist wasn't Charley Ross, and though I know that the
+miraculous baths of Lourdes didn't cure poor Marie Tremplin of her
+tuberculosis, I can't say that what Beatrix assures me she knows about
+the Deity isn't so!  It appears to me quite incapable of demonstration,
+but maybe it all happened as she says.  Only I don't believe with her
+that she _knows_ it.  I say she _believes_ it.  If it helps her, as she
+says it does, to be the good and lovely girl she is, all right.  It
+might help Parrott to stand straight to think he was Napoleon.  All
+right."
+
+"That's pragmatism," I suggested.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with one of his curious old smiles, "they call it
+different things different years, I suppose."
+
+He drew himself up, and I could see something was coming.
+
+"Now, aunty, attend to me.  I couldn't put Beatrix in an asylum for
+what I and many, many others consider _her_ delusion, could I?"
+
+"Why, Will, of course not!"
+
+"No, nor Marie Tremplin."
+
+"Equally of course not.  She has a right to her miracle, legally, I
+suppose, as well as Beatrix."
+
+"Precisely.  Well, here comes along Absolom Vail, and says _he's_ had a
+miracle, too.  He hasn't millions of people behind him, like Beatrix,
+nor thousands like Marie, nor even half a dozen, as our old Esther
+had--she converted all the servants and us children.  He has only
+one--himself.  A poor miracle, perhaps, but his own.  And Barkington
+lands him in an asylum.  The day of miracles is over."
+
+"Why, Will!  Why, Will..."  I murmured.  I seemed to feel myself on the
+edge of something very big and cloudy and confusing, but very
+necessary, somehow, to be understood.  The trap he had led me into so
+neatly had fastened softly, but with almost an actual click, upon me.
+
+"What--what _is_ his miracle?" I inquired, in a subdued voice.  I was
+beginning to feel a little afraid of this boy of ours.
+
+"I had hoped he'd tell you himself.  He will, if you ask him....  We
+ought to go and dress, oughtn't we?"
+
+There was no more to be got out of him that night: he was passionately
+fond of music and had no mind to lose the prelude to _Tristan_.
+
+But through all that evening the big, shadowy something he had stirred
+up in my mind grew and grew and troubled me increasingly.
+
+"A poor miracle, but his own..." it haunted me.  I went up with him
+again in two days' time, as he had expected me to, I have no doubt.
+
+In the little room with the gold fish and the Franklin grate everything
+was the same except that the piled linen on the table was new: it was
+being listed and stamped.  And at the little desk in the corner, his
+gloves and stick beside him on the floor, sat Absolom Vail, the
+hardware king, in a pepper-and-salt suit.
+
+"I brought my nephew up with me and thought I'd look in for another
+little chat, Mr. Vail," I said.  The housekeeper lifted her
+unfathomable eyes to mine for a moment, then dropped them.
+
+"Six dozen snow-drop twenty-eight inch breakfast napkins," she said
+quietly, but my mind received--I cannot explain how--a totally
+different impression from what the sound of these words conveyed.
+Afterward, I realized that I thought suddenly of the sea, great clouds,
+unheard of, enormous fish, and myself driving like the wind across
+high, tumbling waves ... it was extraordinary.  I had been literally
+lost in her eyes.
+
+"Always glad to see the doctor's friends," he chirped, and soon, as
+Will had said, he was talking.
+
+It was all very simple--simple and pathetic and typical enough.  The
+hall bedroom, the rising clerk, the new branch in Kansas City, the
+young, fresh wife, the little story-and-a-half frame house, the bigger
+one on a better street, the partnership, the two daughters, the private
+school, the invention of the new time-lock, the great factory, the
+Trust, the vice-presidency, the clear head in the panic, the board of
+directors, the mass of capital, the amazing power.
+
+"And of course we brought the girls up very different from what we'd
+had."
+
+"Of course."
+
+The old epic of America; the wonderful, cruel destiny of its sons and
+daughters ... I seemed to see them, climbing, climbing, their dainty
+feet on the bent, grey heads of the human stairway love had built and
+thrift had mortared and habit had hardened there!
+
+"It was all right while mother was with us," he went on.  "I used to
+get home late after one of those big dinners, and she'd be sitting up
+and warm me a little soup or something on the alcohol lamp (she'd never
+touch electricity, mother wouldn't) and I'd get my coat off and sit
+awhile; she'd send the servants to bed.  Minnie never liked that, but
+while mother lived, Minnie didn't have so much say.  Not but that
+Minnie wasn't a good girl and a good daughter, for a minute, mind you!
+Wasn't she?"
+
+He turned to his old housekeeper.
+
+"Miss Vail had a very fine mind," she said quietly, "a great deal of
+faculty."
+
+"That's it--faculty," he repeated contentedly.  "But Irene was easier
+to get along with.  A good deal easier.  You said you'd never met
+Irene?"
+
+"I never had that pleasure."
+
+"She was married over in Italy.  The Queen of Italy asked for it to be
+that way, and with mother gone, I didn't see it mattered much, though
+Minnie didn't like it.  But the Queen was Hannibal's godmother.  She
+was at the wedding.  We didn't think, when Irene used to lie in her
+little crib in the front bedroom in Kansas City, sucking on that rubber
+doll, that a queen would be at her wedding, did we?"
+
+I looked out of the window for a minute, frowning a little in the
+effort to adjust my ideas to the surprise of the Vails' having had a
+housekeeper in those early days.  When I turned my face to the room
+again, Mrs. Leeth was gone.
+
+"Minnie got me to give up the business, and after a while I did.  So
+long as I was working for mother and the girls, I'd never have stopped,
+but with them gone, and the rest I had to take, after the pneumonia, I
+sort of let things slide.  What's the use?  There's Vint, now--he kept
+at it till he died.  No one to do for, really--his girl had all her
+mother's money, too, and she gives it all to foreign missions, anyhow.
+
+"She's here, you know.  Thinks she's--well, I guess I couldn't tell a
+lady just what she thinks she is, poor thing!"
+
+"I see why she's here, Mr. Vail; but tell me, why do you stay here?" I
+cried suddenly; the quiet, sensible little man forced it out of me,
+fairly.
+
+He looked whimsically up at me--I sat higher in my chair than he.
+
+"Didn't the doctor tell you?" he asked quietly.
+
+"No, he said you would, perhaps."
+
+"Well, I don't mind.  It happened when she died."
+
+"Mrs. Vail?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Leeth."
+
+I jumped--I couldn't help it.
+
+"Wh--what?" I gasped.  What a horrible thing--like a bomb thrown into
+the quiet room!
+
+"Yes," he said placidly, "sounds queer to you, doesn't it?  Well, it is
+queer, I guess."
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty that I held myself to my chair.  My
+throat went perfectly dry, suddenly, and if I did not scream, it was
+merely because I have a fairly strong will and a horror of making a
+scene.  The little room had turned dreadful to me, all at
+once--dreadful and unnatural; Absolom Vail, in his pepper-and-salt, a
+nightmare.
+
+He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand out reassuringly.
+
+"Oh, I don't think she's dead, _now_!" he explained, "I'm not so crazy
+as all that comes to!  Goodness, no!"
+
+"Oh...," I faltered, soothed in spite of myself by his kindly smile.
+
+"No, no.  It was this way."
+
+He leaned forward slightly and tapped the arms of his chair
+rhythmically.
+
+"After mother left me, there wasn't much to keep going for, you see.
+Then Irene, she went off, and though she was mighty kind about it, and
+there'd always be a room for me, and all that, and I liked Hannibal
+well enough, still, I'd never be happy in Italy.  Hannibal saw it
+himself.  In a good many ways Hannibal used to see what I meant, now
+and again--funny, wasn't it, with him so foreign?  You'd have thought
+Barkington, now ... but that's neither here nor there.
+
+"Well, we stayed in the house together, Mrs. Leeth and me, and we got
+on very well.  She knew all mother's ways, and we used to talk about
+her, evenings, and she as good as gave me her promise she'd never leave
+me while I wanted her.
+
+"Then I had pneumonia.  We had three trained nurses, but I guess
+there's no doubt she pulled me through.  She was up all the nights.
+
+"Irene and Hannibal came right over--it seems they cabled.  Irene was
+expecting to have her baby, too, and it was in March, the worst time to
+cross the water.  But she came.  And Hannibal listened to the doctors
+and the nurses and then he turned to Mrs. Leeth--'How do you find Mr.
+Vail to-day?' he said.
+
+"'He'll live, sir,' she said, and he said, 'All right,' and that was
+all there was to it.  There was always something about Hannibal ...
+
+"Then _she_ came down.  Pleurisy.  I'd been South and got back, and I
+was well enough, you understand, but when they told me that they
+couldn't save her, something turned right over inside me, and I knew I
+couldn't bear it.  It was too much--everything just slipping away from
+me, one by one, and me all alone--no, I wasn't good for it, that's all.
+I suppose it sounds dreadfully weak to you, but there it is: I wasn't
+good for it.
+
+"I was sitting by her bed, looking at her, thinking of all the old days
+she could remember with me, and the girls she'd seen grow up, and
+mother, and all, and all of a sudden she opened her eyes and she knew
+me.  She was sinking fast, but she knew me for the first time in days.
+
+"'Mrs. Leeth,' I said, 'it's no use.  If you go, I'll go too.  I can't
+stick it out alone!  Must you?' I said.  'Must you?  Isn't there any
+way?'
+
+"'Wait!' she sort of whispered to me, 'wait!  There'll be a way, Mr.
+Vail--a way'll be found!'
+
+"And then her eyes closed.
+
+"I just sat there, staring ahead.  I was too miserable to notice
+anything different about her, though I knew she was very still.
+
+"By and by one of the nurses came in very soft and lifted up one of her
+hands--I had mine over the other.  She was a nice girl, that nurse--we
+both liked her real well.  Dr. Stanchon--the old doctor, not the boy,
+here--brought her, and he said to me, 'Now, Mr. Vail, here's the best
+nurse in New York: trust her.'  And we did.  She looked sharp at me,
+Miss Jessop did, and listened over her heart, then she put her cheek
+down to the lips.
+
+"'Why, she's gone!' she said.  'Mr. Vail, when did it happen?'
+
+"And then she called the doctor and he said yes, she was gone.
+_That's_ why I say Mrs. Leeth died."
+
+He looked calmly at me and I found to my surprise that during this
+story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy
+for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it.  It was most
+perplexing.  The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the horror
+had disappeared.
+
+"So I sat there.  The doctor said to let me stay, if I felt so.  And I
+just saw my whole life pass right by me like pictures in a book--if you
+see what I mean.  I saw Min when she graduated and Irene playing tunes
+to her mamma and me on the piano, and the day the new gold furniture
+came in, and Mrs. Leeth leading me by the hand out of mother's room
+after I'd sat all day and all night by her....
+
+"And I looked at the face lying so quiet there, and while I looked, it
+sort of shook--more like when you throw a little pebble into a
+pond--and the eyes opened.  And I knew mother was looking at me.
+That's all."
+
+Poor, lonely little man!  How could I have felt afraid of him?  It was
+not difficult to see how it had been.
+
+"Then she--Mrs. Leeth--had not really died at all, had she?" I said
+hastily, only to bite my lips at my tactlessness.
+
+But he smiled tolerantly.
+
+"That's what they said," he answered quietly.  "It was very
+interesting, they said.  The doctor was pretty hard on Miss Jessop, I
+thought.  But I guess they always lay it off on them.
+
+"They were all so excited about it, they didn't seem to notice what had
+happened.  And by and by I saw they never would notice it, anyway.  I
+just spoke a little about it to Irene and it frightened her, so I kept
+quiet.  She said she saw Mrs. Leeth was different, somehow, but it was
+the sickness, she thought.  They had to go right back.  He wanted the
+baby to be born in Italy.  That was all right, of course."
+
+"And Mrs. Leeth--what did _she_ say?"
+
+"Oh, she was never one to talk, Mrs. Leeth.  She talks less than ever,
+now.  I don't know as I put it very clear to you: it's a pretty hard
+thing _to_ put clear."
+
+He looked appealingly at me.
+
+"Of course, of course," I said soothingly.  "Those things are not to be
+set down in black and white."
+
+"That's just it.  When I say that mother looks out at me from her eyes,
+it seems to be more what I mean.  I seem to have 'em both by me, if you
+can see....  And when I look in her eyes, I understand it all--and I
+can wait," he added simply.  "You've noticed her eyes?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Does she ever speak...?"
+
+"I couldn't make you see what I mean very well, about that," he said
+contentedly.  "She just looks at me.  It's all plain, then.  Maybe
+that's how we'll all do, in the next life.  Don't you think so?"
+
+I found my way to Will's office through a mist of tears.
+
+"Well, what about it?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"I think it's one of the most touching things I ever heard."
+
+"Believe it?"
+
+"Why, Will!"
+
+"Oh!  Then you don't blame me any more for committing him?"
+
+"Certainly not.  What else could you do?"
+
+"Um-m-m.  That's what Minnie, Countess of Barkington, said.  She put it
+stronger than that.  When a man of that age spends half of his time in
+the housekeeper's room, sorting linen, she suggested, there's something
+wrong.  We shall certainly question the will--if he alters it."
+
+"Alters it?"
+
+"In favor of Mrs. Leeth, of course.  The fair Minnie hasn't lived among
+the English aristocracy for nothing."
+
+"Why, Will, how ludicrous--you mean that she suspects----"
+
+"Certainly she does.  And very hard-headed of her, too.  Stranger
+things have been."
+
+"But one has only to look at them!"
+
+"That's what Irene thought.  But not Barkington.  He suggested an
+asylum.  The doctor called me in.  (The doctor, by the way, swears the
+woman died, aunty.  'Only, of course, she couldn't have,' he always
+adds.)  To everybody's surprise Absolom agrees quietly, immediately.
+
+"'I wouldn't have Irene worried, as she is now, for anything,' he said.
+'I never meant to leave Mrs. Leeth a penny more than the thousand a
+year mother and I always planned, but if Minnie can't believe me, all
+right.'
+
+"Now, here's an odd thing, aunty.  No one of that family ever heard of
+this place, including Absolom himself.  Precious few people know about
+it, anyhow, you see.  It pays every one not to.  Well.  Mrs. Leeth is
+dismissed, arrangements made, I take him in a motor out here.  We walk
+through the hall, and the first person we meet here--Mrs. Leeth.  New
+housekeeper.  It seems the old one died of heart failure overnight.
+Dr. Jarvyse finds this one, by great good luck just out of a job.
+Highly recommended by Mr. Absolom Vail.  Never occupied just this post,
+apparently, but Jarvyse feels perfectly certain she's just the woman
+for it.  I don't know how he knew it, but she certainly is.  Best woman
+we ever had."
+
+"How perfectly extraordinary!  Was Mr. Vail surprised?"
+
+"Not at all.  He just smiled politely, and neither of 'em has ever
+discussed it."
+
+"What did the Countess have to say?"
+
+"Oh, she was furious, till I pointed out that we couldn't have the
+woman in a safer place, because every employee signs a bond on
+entering, never to receive by bequest or otherwise a penny from any
+patient.  We all sign."
+
+"What does the Italian Count think of it all?"
+
+"Hannibal?  He's all right, Hannibal.  He and I and Barkington had a
+little session in this very room about a fortnight ago.  I was saying
+something about the question of Mr. Vail's insanity.
+
+"'Question?' says Barkington.  'Question?  Why there is no question!
+As a man of science, Count Hannibal, you know as well as I do----'
+
+"'But I am not a man of science, my dear fellow--I'm a Roman,' says
+Hannibal, grinning away (those Italians speak wonderful English, you
+know).  'Very odd things happen in Rome, now and then, my good
+Barkington!'"
+
+I looked at him steadily.  He sat surrounded by his mysterious electric
+machines under shining glass domes, among costly leather-bound volumes
+whose very titles questioned the foundation of reason; telephones and
+telegrams ready to hand upon his orderly desk.  And it seemed to me
+that he smiled mockingly at me behind his baffling eye-glasses.
+
+"I don't understand you, Will," I said slowly, "you seem to be leading
+me to ... do you mean me to understand that you believe that Mrs.
+Vail's--spirit--entered--came back ... do you mean you think Mr. Vail
+is right, all the time?"
+
+"Not at all," he returned promptly.  "I acknowledge no such conditions.
+I know nothing of spirits nor what they do.  I do not know that there
+are any.  I study the human brain: when it ceases to respond to nervous
+stimuli, I cease to study it, that's all."
+
+"Then why do you--why do you look at me..."
+
+He struck his fist on the table.
+
+"I look at you," he cried, "because you amaze me so, you people who
+assume that you know all about the human brain, where I leave off!
+Granted your premises, yours and Trix's and the Barkingtons', why
+_don't_ you believe him?  I should.  Look at that woman's eyes!  Try to
+talk to her!  Do you suppose we haven't tried?  Ask Jarvyse what he's
+got out of her!  Get something out of her, yourself!  Then ask
+yourself: _if what Absolom says is so, how would she act differently
+from the way she does act?_
+
+"God!  I wish I _could_ believe him!"
+
+He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his glasses
+he scorned me for the nondescript I was.
+
+I went quickly out of the office into the corridor.  I would find Mrs.
+Leeth and have it out with her.  I would--she stood directly in front
+of me.
+
+"Oh--how do you do!" I stammered.  Her hands were full of cut flowers.
+
+"How--how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.
+
+The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the
+eyes met mine.
+
+And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths,
+hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette.  It grew and grew and
+surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and
+old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once.  I thought of the
+lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother's window, and her brown, brown
+eyes held mine and she--my mother, back again and smiling--filled my
+heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the
+school-bell and the other children's voices!
+
+It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had
+been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it
+all was.
+
+And then I knew the odour for what it was--hyacinth.  Hyacinths in a
+round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a
+stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the
+other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not
+begin again, my dearest!  No, no, there is plenty of time!
+
+And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me
+that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the
+dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me--I hope I may lie
+there, dead.  I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy
+was not born yet.  I said, "If he should die"--but of course I couldn't
+believe that he would.  And then--and then it was as if he had _not_
+died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too!  It was
+so calm, so simple--no shock at all.  Why had I never known?  And all
+this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave!
+I must tell his father....
+
+She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to
+steady myself.  My cheeks were all wet.
+
+"Mr. Vail seems very contented," she said.  "Of course, I am accustomed
+to looking after him."
+
+She stepped quietly through an open door, the keys jangling softly at
+her belt.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I went South with my husband for a fortnight, and on my return Will
+dined with us.
+
+"By the way," he said, "were you surprised at Vail's death?"
+
+It was three days' news and I had forgotten to mention it.
+
+"He never was the same after the pneumonia, and he worried about his
+daughter Irene.  She came through all right, though.  Well, he was over
+sixty."
+
+"How--what became of Mrs. Leeth?" I asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled oddly.
+
+"Nobody knows.  She's never been seen since the funeral."
+
+"Never been seen?  But who is the housekeeper, then?"
+
+"Oh, they've got another.  Never'll be Mrs. Leeth's equal, though.  She
+left on the first of the month."
+
+"But when she was paid off, didn't anybody inquire?"
+
+"She never was paid off," he said quietly.  "She never came for her
+money."
+
+
+
+
+THE UNBURIED
+
+The talk shifted at length--as it inevitably must--to women, and the
+unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged
+and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling
+shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the
+fairest cape.
+
+"There's no good asking 'why,'" said the great doctor slowly, "you
+might as well ask, 'why not.'  They're incomprehensible.  For thirty
+years I've studied them.  Thirty years...."
+
+He leaned forward over the table weightily.  The others unconsciously
+bent toward him.
+
+"Once I thought it was spasmodic--unrelated," he went on thoughtfully,
+counting his words, it seemed, "but not now.  No.  I believe there is a
+law--a big law--they follow, an orbit so extended that any examples one
+may collect count for too little to help.  They seem to vary..." he
+stared at the siphons and rings of wet on the table.
+
+Outside the club windows the rain fell, glistening and grey; it was
+making for dusk and the black stream of hansoms and umbrellas were
+homeward bound.  They motioned away the servant who had come to turn on
+the lights in their corner.
+
+"There are influences," Stanchon began again, abruptly, "currents ... I
+don't know--they feel them more than we do.  And they exert them more,
+too.  We admit one and doubt the other."
+
+He squeezed a half lemon into his glass with a beautiful, firm-wristed
+wrench, extracted the pips with one deft circuit of the spoon, and
+poured rock candy into the acid.  Over this he dropped in silence a
+measured amount from a squat foreign bottle at his elbow and filled the
+glass from a carafe of distilled water.
+
+"It's a queer thing altogether--I don't know what makes me think of
+it," he began, "and I wouldn't have dared tell it when it happened.
+Now I can tell anything--I suppose--being sixty and an eminent
+alienist.  Lord!  Times goes and goes, and just as you get to where you
+could use it to advantage--well, the young ones need the room.
+
+"Nervous!  What are nerves, anyhow?
+
+"Sometimes I think I know ... a little ... but the time is so short, so
+short!"
+
+He drank half his glass.
+
+"There comes a time," he said abruptly, "when you first discover what a
+gnat in a whirlpool you are.  I mean that after you've done everything,
+played perfectly fair and followed all the rules, arranged your
+combinations and observed the reasonable results for so long that you
+begin to think you've got hold of the System--something happens, and
+it's all upset again--flat anarchy.  We get it different ways, I
+suppose.  As if a runner bumped into a brick wall on the home-stretch
+... strange!
+
+"I was in one of those little cities--Detroit, Cleveland--it doesn't
+matter.  I've lived in both.  It's a good size for a doctor--I got all
+kinds--and I learned fast, there.  Nice people, too.  I always had an
+eye for real estate, and what I made, I put into that.  I had a good
+horse, and as I drove about I kept my eye on the property and the way
+the town was growing.  One day I noticed that an oldish looking,
+comfortable sort of house, a little off from the centre of things, was
+for sale, and it struck me suddenly that there was a pretty good sort
+of house to own.  It had trees around it and nice paths and a neat
+little new stable, and there was something in the long, low lines of
+it--no gingerbread or 'Jim Fisk' business or bands of coloured
+paint--that appealed to me.  It attracted me--you see?  Good God!
+
+"I saw the agent and he put a price that surprised me.  But the owner
+wanted to leave town immediately and had made it very low, to get the
+cash.  He'd had hard luck; his wife in a mess with another man, ran up
+big bills against him--he wanted to get away and never see the town
+again.  So I bought the place and asked the agent to rent it for me,
+for I was pretty busy just then.  A little later he told me he had seen
+an especially good tenant--a well-to-do jeweller and his family, who
+seemed disposed to take a long lease and improve the property.
+
+"'You certainly have the luck, doctor!' he said.
+
+"I remember I leaned out of my buggy and lectured him.
+
+"'Luck!' says I.  'Nonsense, man!  I get good tenants because I keep
+good repairs in good houses.  You put down two and two and you get back
+four.  Mathematics is under this world!'
+
+"Pompous, wasn't I?  But I was only forty.  Only forty..."
+
+His eyes gleamed at them from under his shaggy, grey brows; he seemed
+saturated with life, full of experiences.
+
+"Well, I got my rent every month, and I gave 'em permission to put an
+evergreen hedge around the place, and I paid half the costs of piping
+water into the stable; the jeweller kept a horse and runabout for his
+wife.  Then, just before the year was up, the agent called.
+
+"'I'm afraid we won't get any renewal on this, doctor,' he said.
+
+"'Why not?  Not good enough for him any longer?' said I.
+
+"'I'm afraid it's too good,' says he.  'You'll see it in the papers
+to-morrow, but I had it straight from him.  His wife has skipped with
+his head clerk and they've taken most of the stock and all the money.
+He's nearly crazy.'
+
+"'For heaven's sake!' said I.  'I thought they were a decent lot
+enough.'
+
+"'So they were, I'll swear to it,' said he, 'but lately--I've seen her
+off and on'--and he looked rather conscious, I thought--' she's struck
+me differently.  She's a queer woman.'
+
+"Well, the upshot of it was, I let him off as easily as I could--he had
+three children on his hands and big debts to pay--and I bought a lot of
+his stuff and paid for the evergreen hedge.  The woman never came back
+and he moved East.  So much for them.
+
+"I advertised the house, and that week the rectory of the principal
+Episcopal Church burned to the ground, and while they were building it
+again--in stone, of course--they decided to rent that house of mine,
+and of course I was pleased, because a lot of good, solid people see
+the property, in a case like that.  I've always thought I'd like to
+develop a whole new section somewhere ... I had ideas ... but I never
+got the time.  O Lord, the time!  Slipping, slipping, under your palms,
+between your fingers, crumbling and running away!"
+
+He shook himself like a big, loose-skinned bear, and long breaths were
+drawn all around the table.
+
+"One night my wife asked me if I thought the rector liked his new
+rectory.
+
+"'Why, I suppose so,' I said.  'I've had no complaints--why?'
+
+"'He doesn't stay in it very much,' she said, rather slowly, for her,
+and when a woman measures her words, I always listen very carefully.
+
+"'What do you mean?' I asked.
+
+"'He practically lives in the study at the church,' said she, 'working
+there on parish business all day, and a good many evenings, too.  That
+leaves her all alone, and that's not good for any woman.'
+
+"' What on earth do you mean?' I said.  'Are those long-nosed old
+tabbies gossiping already?  Shame on 'em!'
+
+"'Oh, John,' she broke down and cried.  'They're talking horribly!  It
+doesn't seem possible!  But why isn't she more careful?'
+
+"Well, there's no good going into that much further.  It was a very
+unpleasant business.  He was a pig-headed parson who wouldn't look
+after his own, and she, I thought, till my wife finally persuaded her
+to call me in, was simply one of those women who have mistaken their
+natural vocation.  They hadn't been in the town long and they didn't
+stay long, for as soon as I really understood her I put her into a
+sanitarium--the sanitarium boom had just begun, then--and he went into
+the Salvation Army.  He'd got his eyes opened, I fancy, and he made a
+great success in Chicago; he told me he never wanted to see another
+fashionable congregation in his life--said they were sinks of iniquity.
+But I don't think there was ever anything actually iniquitous in that
+business--it hadn't got that far.  Only for a clergyman's family, of
+course ...
+
+"You see, I got her out in time.  Ugh!  It makes me sick to think of
+it!  She was a nervous wreck.
+
+"That was the first time that Miss Jessop ever went back on me.  She
+was a trained nurse not long out of the training school, and nurses
+were scarcer, then.  A handsome, plucky creature--we worked together
+for years, and I got to depend a good deal on her.  But after a week of
+the parson's wife she flounced in on me with that regular bronze-mule
+look of hers and informed me she was leaving the next day--she had to
+go back East, home, she said.
+
+"I reasoned a bit with her--she had a great influence on women, Jessop,
+but it was no use.
+
+"'There are two good nurses for to-morrow, doctor,' she said, 'I happen
+to know.  I'd rather not argue about it.  I'm tired.  I need a change.
+I've had no vacation this year.  And that woman would be better off in
+a hospital, anyway.'
+
+"I was cross, and I kept my patient in her own house.  I thought she
+wasn't fit to move.
+
+"'I believe I'm going mad!' she used to tell me, with that glitter in
+the eye--gives the effect of a rearing horse--perfectly symptomatic.
+'I tell you I'm not responsible, doctor, for what I do!  You must keep
+me away from--people.  But don't leave me alone--oh, don't leave me
+alone!  Why don't the women come to see me?  Oh, I can't stay alone!'
+
+"And so on, and so on.  It poured out in the regular way--how the poor
+things spend themselves!--and I listened to it all.  They're perfectly
+typical under those circumstances, but one phrase struck me:
+
+"'I have fought--  Oh, I _have_ fought!  It's killing me, but I have
+fought!'
+
+"She had, poor little woman.  But what was she?  When I realised ...
+when I _knew_..."
+
+They sat now in a circle of dark.  The room was nearly empty; the rain
+had grown to a torrent and lashed the windows furiously.
+
+"Well, I couldn't help taking stock of the thing, and it looked odd,
+anyway you looked at it.  I remembered that the reason I got the house
+in the first place was very much the same reason that had emptied it
+twice.  Of course the agent remembered it, too.
+
+"'Where's those mathematics of yours, doctor?' he asked me with a
+good-natured grin.
+
+"'Stuff and nonsense!' I said to him.  'I'll get a tenant for that
+house, myself.'
+
+"You see, whether or not there was any sense in it, I couldn't let that
+house get a bad name.  There were neighbours and they will talk--they
+don't always know so much about mathematics as scientific men, you know!
+
+"What a great thing it is, if one could get hold of it and use it--the
+collective spirit of a community!  It's utilizable--or ought to
+be--like water power....
+
+"There was a woman in town then, a 'mental healer,' she called herself.
+I'd run across her more than once and she interested me very much.  She
+was a clever woman--sensible, too, which doesn't always follow, you
+know.  So far as I could tell, she never handled a case she wasn't able
+to attend to, which may seem an odd thing for me to say, but happens to
+be so.  I know of a dozen nervous, hysterical women--emotional
+spend-thrifts--that she bullied into shape and got so they could stand
+up without her behind them, too.  They were cured, and they stayed
+cured.  More than that, I sent more than one to her, myself!
+
+"'Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'there's nothing the matter with these women
+that I can see but pure, piggish, bone-idle selfishness.  I haven't got
+the courage to tell 'em so; if you have, and the long words you use
+disguise the fact sufficiently, go ahead and cure 'em, and God bless
+you!'
+
+"'Thank you, doctor,' she said, and she cured 'em.  They had no use for
+me after that.  No, indeed--they told my wife they'd found a higher law
+and that calomel was sinful.  But the poor old calomel wasn't so bad
+for 'em, after all, maybe.
+
+"Well, I met her on my rounds one day and I stopped and asked her if
+she was satisfied with her house--I knew the neighbourhood was rather
+running down, there--the darkies were creeping up.  She admitted she
+wasn't particularly, and, to make a long story short, I offered her
+this house of mine for two-thirds the regular rental.
+
+"'I want a good steady tenant, Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'and people may as
+well get used to bringing their headaches over there--I may move out
+there sometime.'
+
+"So she moved in and I never gave the matter another thought--I knew
+she wouldn't run off with anybody!  No, she'd had her lesson, I take
+it.  No blue-eyed woman gets as sensible as that woman was without a
+good, solid reason.  And the reason is pretty certain to wear trousers.
+
+"Well, sir, in a month she came to see me.  I can see her now: a firm,
+stocky woman, long body and short legs and big head--the efficient
+type.  She had the smooth pink cheeks and smooth forehead and straight
+eyes those healer-women have when they're first class of their
+kind--oh, there's a lot in it--a lot!  We fight 'em and get the law on
+'em and absorb 'em, finally, as we've fought every advance in medicine.
+It seems to be the only way in this world...
+
+"She always looked so clean and taut, that woman, never a loose end
+anywhere.
+
+"'Doctor,' says she, 'you must get a new tenant.  I'm leaving
+to-morrow.  How much will it cost me, giving no notice?'
+
+"'Why, what's the matter?' I began.  'Anything I can attend to?'
+
+"'Not a thing,' she answered promptly, 'and we won't discuss it, if you
+please.  The van is there, by this time.'
+
+"'Why, see here, Mrs. Mears,' I said seriously.  'This--this is hardly
+professional, it seems to me.  If there's anything wrong with my
+property, I want to know it.  Of course I know your theories--God's in
+his heaven and all's right with the world, and if you discuss it, the
+devil may creep in--I've read Emerson's Essays, myself.  I know what
+you think about medicine and surgery and hygiene--you think Emerson!
+And that's all right, as far as it goes.  But just for ten minutes,
+between you and me, what's the matter?  You can keep on being serene,
+after that, all you want.  Come now--as man to man!'
+
+"She flattened her lips a little and tried not to scowl.
+
+"'Put it that I don't like old houses, doctor,' she said finally.
+
+"'Ah!  House haunted?' I suggested, to tease her a little.
+
+"She turned on me.
+
+"'You said it, not I,' she answered, 'but it is true.  The house is
+haunted, doctor, and if I lived there a day longer, I couldn't do my
+work.  I didn't wish to discuss it--you know we don't believe in
+that--but you meant to do me a service.  It's a crime to rent that
+house.  It's slimy.  It crawls.'
+
+"'Slimy!' I cried.  'Why the agent told me that the cellar was new
+cemented, all whitewashed, every room new papered, fresh matting, hard
+wood on the lower floor, and I attended to the plumbing myself!  It was
+gone over thoroughly three years ago--there must have been a thousand
+dollars put into it.  It hadn't been lived in for years before that.
+Slimy!'
+
+"'You don't understand me,' she said quietly.
+
+"'For heaven's sake, what haunts it, then?  Who's the ghost?' I cried
+testily.
+
+"'Evil,' she said slowly, 'evil thought, evil lives ... you breathe it
+in ... it tangles you ... another night there ... I should have no more
+power, absolutely--I could help nobody.  I must ask you not to refer to
+it again, please.  I should not have mentioned it.  How much do I owe
+you?'
+
+"'You owe me nothing, of course,' I said shortly.  'I'll return you the
+amount of your cheque this afternoon.  I'll move into that house,
+myself.'
+
+"'You will be making a mistake,' she said very placidly, and left the
+office.
+
+"It took me about forty-eight hours to make my arrangements.  It was
+hot summer weather, fortunately, and I sent my wife off to the
+mountains, started in to have my own house renovated and decorated, as
+an excuse, left the housekeeper in charge there and moved my office
+paraphernalia into that old house with the evergreen hedge.  My wife
+was a Southern woman and we always had darky servants.  I took the
+waitress with me, a quiet little mulatto we'd had for more than a year,
+and sent for her mother, a very capable woman that I'd often used as
+nurse in cases where they couldn't pay a professional.  She could do
+anything, the way those Southern darkies can, and she would cook and
+look after things generally.
+
+"Well, in three days it seemed as if I'd always been there.  You know
+how quickly a man manages a change like that; it's hard to see where
+the women generate all the friction they make out of a move of that
+sort.  Althea was frying chicken contentedly and Mynie was sweeping and
+dusting as quietly as she always did.
+
+"She was a slender, oval-faced little yellow girl with almost straight
+hair, parted and drawn down like a madonna's, very low voiced and
+capable, with only one fault; she was almost too shy and always timid
+that she'd make some blunder--which she seldom if ever did.  She was
+devoted to her mother, who had brought her up particularly well, and
+delighted to be living with her.  The patients all liked her and she
+was especially tactful with children.
+
+"One day, after I'd been there a week, I strolled out in the kitchen.
+
+"'This strikes me as being a pretty good house, eh, Althea?'  I said.
+'New and clean.  Everything all right?'
+
+"'Yes, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh, it seems like a very good house,
+seh,' she answered respectfully.
+
+"'It's right surprisin' Mrs. Mears didn't like it!' says Mynie with a
+little giggle.
+
+"It struck me then that I had never known Mynie to speak, in her life,
+without being spoken to, and even so, when I had occasion to speak to
+her, she started and looked a little scared.  I supposed living with
+her mother had given her more confidence and felt rather glad of it.
+
+"It might have been a week later one morning, as I leaned out of one of
+the office windows to knock my pipe clean, I heard a low laughing and
+murmuring on the side porch, and glancing carelessly in that direction,
+what should I see but Mynie twisting the lapel of a young man's coat;
+his arm was around her waist.  It occurred to me that he was pretty
+well dressed for any beau she'd be likely to have, and as he turned his
+face partly, I realised with a disgusted surprise that it was George,
+my colored office-man.  It would be hard to make you feel the way I did
+then, and you'll probably smile when I tell you that I couldn't have
+been more shocked and startled if it had been any one of you--but it's
+the truth.
+
+"You see, George was a most exceptional fellow.  Everybody in--in the
+city I'm telling about--knew him and respected him.  Everybody among my
+patients knew that except for his colour he'd have been my regular
+office assistant long ago.  As it was, he knew more medicine than many
+a lad with his gilt shingle up, and his English was perfect--he'd been
+in school till he was eighteen and was a great reader.  He'd come to me
+as a coachman, but I soon saw his value and promoted him to the office,
+where he took all the telephoning, received the patients, got out the
+bills and kept all my accounts, personal and professional.  He'd helped
+me more than once in operations, and had a perfect genius for
+administering anaesthetics.  Nobody but our two selves knew what his
+salary was, but I never grudged a penny of it.  Why, the fellow read
+French and German almost as well as I did, and tact--Lord, I wished
+every day of my life I had George's tact and resource!  My wife was
+tremendously fond of him, and lent him all her books, and they used to
+have great discussions on political economy and theosophy and prison
+reform--oh, everything!
+
+"He had lots of white blood, of course, and his wife you'd never guess
+to be anything but pure American, she was so white.  One of the
+children, though, was black as my hat.  The other had almost golden
+hair and deep blue eyes--a beautiful little girl, brought up like a
+duchess, too.  They lived in a nice little house on the extreme edge of
+the negro district, and we all understood that when the little girl was
+fifteen or sixteen, she and her mother were going to move to Paris and
+train her voice; then if everything went well, George and the boy would
+join them and never come back--he was specialising in dentistry, mind
+you, in his spare time.  It's different, of course, abroad.
+
+"I'm telling you all this, so you can see how I felt; I'd had George
+nine years, and we'd always had darky servants, and--oh, well, to find
+him with that yellow streak in him after all, nearly floored me.  I
+could have sworn he wasn't that sort of pup, and when he came in for
+his orders I talked to him like a Dutch uncle.
+
+"'You've got to stop this, George,' I said directly, 'I can't have any
+such performances here.  To tell you the truth, I never thought it of
+you!  The idea--a quiet little thing like Mynie!  She's as timid as a
+kitten and as innocent.  Now I want your word of honour before you
+leave this office and I want it quick!'
+
+"He opened his mouth once or twice in a confused sort of way, looked at
+me curiously, and then gave his word quietly.  So far as I knew, he had
+never broken it.
+
+"But I wasn't satisfied with that and I spoke to her mother.
+
+"'You'd better keep an eye on Mynie, Althea,' I said carelessly.
+'She's a pretty girl, you know, and men aren't always too careful what
+they say to a girl as pretty as Mynie.'
+
+"'Yes, seh, I'll look out,' she said, 'I'll look out, doctor--ef I kin.
+Seems like I may have trouble, though.  Is Mis' Stanchon comin' back
+soon, seh?'
+
+"'Probably not,' I said.  'It's too hot for her here.  Why, what's the
+matter?  Anything wrong?'
+
+"'I guess not, seh,' she answered, hesitating.  'I try to do my best,
+doctor.  But I will sholy be glad when she comes back.  And would you
+mind to speak to Mynie yo'self, seh?' and she slipped away.
+
+"Well, I did speak to her.  I spoke when I ran across her, strolling
+with George in a deserted walk of an old park.  I called her right into
+the office the next morning.
+
+"'Mynie,' I said sharply, 'what were you doing yesterday afternoon?
+Out with it!'
+
+"She opened her eyes and looked full at me for a second--something she
+had never done.
+
+"'I reckon 'twas my afternoon out, doctor!' she said softly, and that
+was all.  But it was enough.  It wouldn't have made any difference what
+she said, anyhow--the look was enough.  It wasn't the look of our shy
+little Mynie; her eyes had never gone any farther than my breakfast
+table and the office door.  But these eyes were slanting, curious,
+audacious--conscious.  That's what it was, they were conscious of
+something--something I didn't know.  And for a quick moment I
+remembered, with no connection, apparently, that queer look in the eyes
+of the parson's wife--the one that had the house before.  I didn't know
+why, and I dismissed it as irrelevant, for that poor creature had been
+frightened to death, and Mynie was more self-confident than I had ever
+seen her and not at all pleasant with it.  I've never been of a temper
+to stand any nonsense from servants, and the class of Northern darky
+that was growing up in that city wasn't always easy to deal with.  But
+I remembered what a sterling creature the mother was, and I tried to be
+gentle with the girl.
+
+"'You understand, Mynie,' I said temperately, 'I only speak for your
+good.  I know the world better than you can and I don't want to see you
+get into bad ways.  Do you want to lose George his place?  You've got a
+good home, and you're with your mother, and there's no excuse for you
+if you slip up, you see.  Understand me?'
+
+"'Yes, doctor, I understand you,' she said, and walked out of the room
+with her head high and her hips swinging.  Something in her
+carriage--so different from the way she used to slip in and out--struck
+me all of a sudden, and there flashed into my mind an old story about
+Althea's being the direct descendant of one of the oldest African kings
+and a princess in her own right.  Absurd, of course, but it makes a lot
+of difference whether you regard those people as creeping up to our
+democracy or sliding down from their royalty, you see.  And with Mynie
+the scale had shifted suddenly, and it was the last of an old line that
+swung by me, not the first of a new one.  Straight across the
+commonplace air of my office a wind out of the jungle had blown, a
+whiff of something old and unmanageable, and beyond rules, or beneath
+'em, perhaps; something there wasn't any prescription for; something
+not to be weighed and measured by any of the new methods, because it
+antedated method.
+
+"Yes, it was all that.  I don't know if I make myself clear at all....
+You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert
+servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only
+that--Lord, no!  It was a great deal more than that, and it was just
+beginning; just beginning."
+
+There was no doubt that he had the strained attention of all of them:
+their hands held the glasses, but they did not drink, looking mostly at
+the wet rings on the polished table, or the little heaps of white
+ashes.  A servant passing through scratched a match with a rasping
+splutter, and they twitched angrily at the interruption, fearing it
+would throw him off the track--he was so easily quieted, and when once
+one of his great gulfs of silence received him, it was hopeless.
+
+But this time he went on.
+
+"After that the house got very still, by degrees.  Althea sang less and
+less and by and by not at all.  There seemed to be no clatter, no
+bustle, no homely, chattering machinery of life.  Sometimes I would
+step out through the dining-room and listen, purposely, to see where
+they were.  And it was always the same thing: Althea sitting in her
+clean kitchen, by her clean table, with a bowl or a pan or what not in
+her lap, her yellowish hands lax, her knees as still as marble, her
+eyes set ahead of her, thinking, thinking, thinking.  Her brows would
+be knit and her face all drawn.  She had the look of a fighter, a
+struggler with something--but there was nothing there.  And out on the
+side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the
+wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling,
+smiling, always smiling.  Sometimes she would hum a sort of low
+tuneless chant--it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all
+repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone.  And
+once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise
+flashed suddenly into my mind--incantation.  That was it, incantation.
+
+"Well!  All this sounds very feeble, doesn't it?  The truth is, I
+haven't got the right vocabulary--as a matter of fact, I don't think
+anybody has.  When you can describe a thing, a sensation, perfectly, I
+doubt if it's very important anyhow.  It's always so.  The big things
+simply elude description.  And yet we all know them.  Falling in love,
+for instance: God knows it's as definite as measles, but who ever
+described it?  The most these writing fellows can manage is to tell you
+what a lot of people did who happened to be in that way, and sometimes
+they catch a lot of the tricks, but that's all.  Then there's dying.
+There's a specific atmosphere about that--everybody knows it.  The
+people know it mostly, themselves.  I mean, if any one ever had
+occasion to die twice, he'd recognise the symptoms immediately.  But
+nobody can describe it, though plenty of us know what it is.
+
+"So with that house and the atmosphere in it.  Something was happening
+there.  Something so strong and so actual that it defied all
+appearances, all the ordinary influences that might be supposed to act
+on the imagination of, say, a sensitive, hysterical, under-occupied
+woman.  For as a matter of fact there was nothing morbid in the look of
+the house--nothing at all.  It was sunny and fresh and painted.  It was
+clean and dry.  But it ought not to have been.  No ... I've sat there,
+late afternoons, when it seemed to me if I touched the walls they'd be
+damp and the woodwork rotted and mouldy.  The boards should have
+creaked there and the stair-rails ought to have given under the
+hand--but they didn't.  I had them all repaired, you see!  But there
+were a few things I hadn't had the chance to repair and they ... oh,
+well, they were there, that was all.
+
+"There?  You'd have said so, any of you, if you'd seen Althea as I saw
+her one morning.  I stepped into the kitchen suddenly, to give an order
+for some beef-tea I wanted to take away with me, and there she sat,
+cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her
+shoulders and--of all things--a red and blue kerchief twisted into a
+turban on her head.  She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I
+give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that
+rig, swaying there!
+
+"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass
+earrings in her ears.
+
+"And all of a sudden it came to me--what was happening there: I felt
+very queer for a moment, I tell you!  Everything seemed to be rolling
+backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed.  Not I--I
+swear nothing touched me.  I was the same.  _So was the jeweller.  So
+was the parson.  So was the man before that..._
+
+"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there?  Take those rags
+off you!  Get up immediately!  I am ashamed of you.'
+
+"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's--it was nip
+and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me.  But
+she didn't; I won.  You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually
+controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.
+
+"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.
+
+"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.
+
+"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her
+pantry, shaking and muttering.  I waited till she came back, and she
+was quiet and trim again--herself.  She stuffed a bundle into the stove
+before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again.  She was
+a good woman, Althea was.
+
+"But the other--Mynie--well, the game was up with her.  Heavens, the
+change in that girl's eyes!  It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't
+that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it.  No,
+it was more than that--more and worse and deeper and older--  Oh, as
+old as Hell!  That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put
+it?  The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of
+animalism--the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all
+in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that
+Nature has coiled in every one of us.  The Old Lady wound us up with
+that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."
+
+The room was absolutely empty but for the four of them; they stared at
+him steadily, his rumbling, husky voice held them like a vise; they
+could not miss a word.
+
+"She got fat on it.  She bloomed in that infernal house like some
+tropical bog-flower; she expanded, she shot up.
+
+"Once, at twilight, I peeped out and saw her sitting on the side porch,
+her chin in her hand, staring and staring, and laughing, now and then,
+and shutting her eyes.  It made me shiver.
+
+"That warm, damp dusk was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to
+thicken, thicken, as I looked.  A quick instinct warned me to look for
+George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue
+... like a caught fly.  To let go--to drift in a warm, relaxing current
+...  I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net
+...  I felt for him so.
+
+"I went to her mother.
+
+"'Call that girl in!' I said roughly.  'What's the matter with her?'
+
+"She wouldn't look at me.
+
+"'Come, what's all this?  Out with it!' I said.  But she stood there,
+obstinate as a mule, and perfectly silent.  You can't do anything with
+them, then.
+
+"Well, it was like fighting filthy cobwebs: walking through them,
+breathing them, pulling them off from your mouth, your wrists, your
+ankles!  Not that I felt anything directly, mind you--I could have
+lived there for years--alone.  But it was all up with Mynie and George,
+they were done for, like the others ... like the others.
+
+"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast?  What terrible
+energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place?  What
+distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there?  How long ago?  _How long
+ago?_  Are there centres of negation?  Oh, I tell you, the
+table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply
+incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!
+
+"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer
+and taints endlessly?
+
+"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my
+eyes--ugh!
+
+"There had to be an end, of course.  I asked where she was going one
+afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.
+
+"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly.  'I'll settle with your
+mother.  Do you understand?'
+
+"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of
+the open window.
+
+"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly.  I could see
+poor George tremble--the porch vines shook.
+
+"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.
+
+"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said--but I didn't say
+'slut.'  And she went.  It was the only time I was ever brutal to a
+woman."
+
+He gulped the rest of his tumbler.
+
+"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was
+empty.
+
+"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day
+afterward.  'If you ever need any money----'
+
+"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh.  You couldn't help it.  But
+I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly.  And she was
+right enough, of course.
+
+"She knew.  They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've
+forgotten, I believe.  Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.
+
+"I never saw Mynie again.  She went off East, and George with her.
+They're both dead, now.  His wife stayed on in the cottage.
+
+"I gave her all the help I could ... it was my fault, I suppose.  And
+yet, God knows, I meant nothing.  I thought _I_ was undertaking that
+damned house, you see--how could I tell how the thing worked?"
+
+They watched him eagerly: his face showed that he had more to tell.
+Not a man moved, unless it were to knock the ash from his cigar or to
+light a fresh one.
+
+"There was a Catholic priest there, then," he said slowly.  "He's been
+moved higher up, since, and you'd all know his name, if I gave it.
+We'll call him Father Kelly--though that wasn't it, of course.  He and
+I were great friends--he was a little older than I was--and we used to
+have many a good talk together, meeting on our rounds, you see.  Often
+I'd take him miles on his way, and drop my driver out on the road, just
+for the pleasure of his company.  Of course we disagreed entirely on
+what he considered the most important points, but leaving them out, we
+were thoroughly congenial, and we were often glad of each other's
+opinion, I can tell you, for we often had the same patients.
+
+"Well, a day or two after I'd moved my stuff out of that cursed house,
+he came to the office with a drug case he was trying to reform: he'd
+persuaded the fellow as far as the pledge went, and I was to talk to
+him about diet and exercise and all the rest.  After the man left,
+Father Kelly looked at me once or twice, talked a bit about the
+weather, and finally pulled out his old blackened pipe and looked
+around the office.
+
+"'Have ye a bit of tobacco about ye, doctor?' says he.  'If so, and
+you're not too busy, I could do with a little rest--I was up all night.'
+
+"I was glad enough, for I felt blue and out of sorts, and we pulled our
+chairs in front of the fireplace, from habit, and after a few minutes I
+found myself telling him the whole business.
+
+"'Now what do you make of it, Father?' I asked.
+
+"'I make the devil out of it, doctor,' said he, very placidly.
+
+"'Oh, well,' I began impatiently, 'of course I can't be expected----'
+
+"'Now, wait a bit, doctor,' he put in.  'If you don't go with my
+diagnosis, what's your own?  What do you make out of it?'
+
+"Well, there he had me.
+
+"'Of course,' I said, 'it's a mere coincidence.'
+
+"'Ah,' says he, 'then would you be willing to go and live there with
+your wife?'
+
+"'Good God, no!' I burst out, before I thought.  And then I wouldn't
+back out of it.  You see, there had been five women.  Five good,
+ordinary, honest women--six, if you count Miss Jessop.
+
+"'I thought not,' said he quietly.
+
+"He sat and puffed awhile.
+
+"Finally, 'I'll have to be taking a look at your house, doctor,' he
+said.
+
+"'All right,' said I.  'When?'
+
+"'This evening,' he said, 'after my confessions.  Say about nine.  And
+I'll go home and have a nap.  I'm thinking I'll need one.'
+
+"And he knocked out his pipe and left.
+
+"I was busy all the afternoon, so busy that I almost forgot the whole
+thing, and as a matter of fact, I had had no time for dinner, when he
+called for me.  He was so fresh and bright and jolly that you'd never
+have suspected he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up,
+gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to
+the governor--oh, he was a remarkable man, that man!  And it's a
+remarkable institution, the Confessional.  We're learning to do more
+with it now than we did twenty years ago.  But they've always known ...
+they've always known..."
+
+He ruminated long, and crushed the ashes in the brass tray before him.
+The men nodded, but kept silence, dreading lest he lose the thread.
+
+"I had the horse ready and drove myself.  When I unlocked the door of
+the house I lighted the lamp in the hall, and so on in every room we
+went through, kitchen and all.  In every room there was a fresh shining
+lamp, filled and ready, for Althea had left everything like a new pin,
+and in every room that lamp was lighted, when we left it.  You know
+what a nice, warm glow an old-fashioned kerosene lamp gives a
+place--electricity's nothing to it, in my opinion.
+
+"'This seems a good sort of house, doctor,' said Father Kelly to me, as
+we came back and sat down in the pretty little sitting-room, with a
+palm in it, and cushions my wife had made, and books on the table.  'I
+can't see any harm here.'
+
+"'All right,' said I, 'then let's go home.  I missed my dinner.  Since
+you see there's no devil here----'
+
+"'I don't see that,' said he, calmly, 'I only see that I haven't found
+him yet.  If a woman has a cancer, doctor, you don't know it the moment
+you shake hands with her, do ye?  So with me and my patients.  Now
+let's think a bit, and if you don't object, I'll call a little
+consultation.'
+
+"So he takes a little black book out of his pocket, and actually sits
+there reading!  I humoured him, and smoked.  After a while he looks up,
+crosses himself, puts away the book and nods at me contentedly.
+
+"'Now, which room would all of these women use the most, doctor?' says
+he.
+
+"'The kitchen,' I said directly, thinking of Mynie and Althea.  Then,
+'No, no, for Mrs. Mears used this for her consulting-room.  But the
+parson's wife spent most of her time in her bedroom.  Still, the
+jeweller's wife didn't--they used the dining-room to sit in.  There's
+no one room, you see.'
+
+"'Unless they all had the same bedroom,' he suggested quietly.
+
+"'By George, they did, then!' I cried, 'for I gave it to Mynie and
+Althea because it was the coolest.  I always sleep on the ground floor.'
+
+"'Then we'll try the bedroom, doctor,' says he, and we went up-stairs.
+He was a stocky, short little fellow, strong as a bull, with iron-grey
+hair, very solid on his feet, yet quick and active, like a thin man.
+He sat down in the rocking-chair in the neat, empty bedroom and I
+brought in another lamp from across the hall.
+
+"'You don't think you'll need the dark for your materializations,
+Father?' I said, half laughing, as I set my lamp on the bureau.
+
+"'No, no, doctor,' he answered, smiling.  'The Church doesn't work in
+the dark, you know.  We're all for candles, and plenty of 'em.'
+
+"I had to grin at that.  He was as quick a man with his tongue as I
+ever met.
+
+"Well, we sat there, and sat there, and he shut his eyes and tipped
+back and forth in that chair like a woman, and I might as well have not
+been there.  I mean I was out of his consciousness entirely.  Finally I
+got nervous and bored.
+
+"'There's nothing here, Father,' I said, rather testily.  'Haven't I
+been here hours on end with the parson's wife?  Wouldn't I have known
+it?'
+
+"He never opened his eyes.
+
+"'Probably not, doctor,' he said pleasantly.  'It's not your job, you
+see.  You were thinking about her liver.'
+
+"'And you?' said I.
+
+"'Her life everlasting,' said he.
+
+"And his eyes shut, all the time!
+
+"So I shut my mouth and watched him.  And suddenly his lips began to
+work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were
+grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he
+prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you
+know.  After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the
+fireplace--I was counting the inches, to keep myself quiet--he stopped
+suddenly, opened his eyes and loosened his hands.
+
+"'I've got it now, thanks be!' he said, looking straight at me.  'It's
+this room, sure enough, doctor!'
+
+"'What do you mean, for heaven's sake?' I said, getting up and coming
+to him, interested enough, now, you can believe.
+
+"'_For hell's sake_, would be nearer the mark,' he answered me, gently
+enough, but his jaw was set and there was a light in his eye I'd seen
+there once or twice.  'This is a bad business.  This'll take more than
+sitting down, this will.'
+
+"And flat on his knees he plumped, ahead of his chair, and crossed
+himself and started praying in Latin.  He made no special noise nor
+movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead
+and his face was drawn and pale--and grew paler.  Every now and then
+he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on
+his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten
+minutes he was almost in the fireplace.  With anybody else I could
+never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly,
+and I can tell you that whatever prayers he prayed, they were no
+perfunctory mumblings: they took it out of him!  He was like a man
+fighting, blindfolded--he breathed like a prize fighter, I tell you!
+And just at the edge of the hearth, when I thought I must stop him
+(that sort of auto-hypnosis will take a person straight out of an open
+six-story window, you know) he stopped himself, opened his eyes with a
+jerk, and pointed ahead of him.
+
+"'Mother of God,' he said in a husky whisper, 'but it's there!'
+
+"'There!' said I.  'What's there, Father?  There can't be anything in
+that fireplace--I've seen a dozen fires in it.'
+
+"He got up from his knees as unconcerned as he'd gotten down on them
+and cleared his throat.
+
+"'Not in it, perhaps, doctor,' he said, 'but then, under it.  Or over
+it, perhaps.  But there, somewhere, it is.'
+
+"'You mean the bricks?' I cried, and he nodded his head like a man too
+weak to talk.
+
+"'Maybe,' he whispered.  'Look and see."
+
+"There was a full set of fire-irons there, and I took the poker and
+tapped all about the hearth, as excited as a boy on a treasure hunt,
+though of course I didn't believe in it, any more than the boy does,
+really.
+
+"'No, Father,' I said, 'there's nothing to show--' and then, just
+between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum!
+
+"'But there's no brick loose!' I cried, and he whispered, 'Then break
+it!'
+
+"It took more than a few blows and I broke the poker, but finally I
+loosened the mortar and there under the two centre bricks was an iron
+box, about seven inches square, made like a little trunk.  I fished it
+out and opened it--it opened from the side--and pulled out two thick
+handfuls of yellow letters, without envelopes.  I opened the top one
+eagerly, but it had no date nor address.  For signature there was only
+the name 'Olive.'"
+
+He stopped abruptly and stared at the thick-bellied decanter before
+him.  His voice sank lower.
+
+"I have never heard or read that name since," he said slowly, "without
+a thrill at my nerves like a picked violin string.  They were the
+wickedest letters ever written, I think.  Even for a woman, they were
+incredible."
+
+The men stared at him, mystified, confused, eager.
+
+"One, the third, I think, said something like this: '_They may bury me,
+now that you want me no longer.  They shall never bury these letters--I
+swear it.  Here in the room where I wrote them, they shall live after I
+am gone._'
+
+"And they lived--God, they lived!  As I pored over them, cross-legged
+by that little hearth, I believe that I was as lost to the world about
+me as Father Kelly had been a few moments before.  They were not
+written for me, they offered me nothing, the writer was beyond doubt
+dead and gone; but for the moment those yellow papers held me, soul and
+body, in such a grip as I have never known before or since.  I can't
+tell you ... I didn't know such things could be written...."  He shook
+his head slowly.
+
+"I'd always been fairly decent, you see--there were circumstances ... I
+couldn't take advantage...
+
+"Did you ever turn over a good old sunny rock, flat, a little mossy,
+but clean and wholesome?  And underneath it crawls--it crawls!  Black,
+slimy slug things ... muck of the Pit!
+
+"That was me.  And every time my eyes fell on one of those amazing
+phrases on that yellow page, I had to hold the rock down!
+
+"Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I jumped like a woman.  Father
+Kelly stood over me, and he looked, from where I sat below him,
+unhumanly tall.  He held out his hand.
+
+"'Give them to me,' he said.
+
+"'But, Father, you don't want to see them!' I burst out.  'I'm going to
+destroy them.  You--you mustn't see them!  Let me burn them----'
+
+"'Give them to me, my son," he repeated, and I gave them up like a
+child.  It was remarkable.
+
+"'At any rate, I warn you,' I began.  But he only smiled.
+
+"'When you are warned of fever in a house, do you pass it by, my son?'
+he asked me softly.  'But this is a different matter.'
+
+"I admit that I couldn't meet his eyes.
+
+"Well, he read them all through placidly, and then he sighed and shook
+his head.
+
+"'Poor things, poor things!' he said, 'and now we'll burn them.  There
+is nothing I can do.'
+
+"So we burned them there and put back the bricks and he muttered some
+short prayer or other and made the sign of the cross over the fireplace
+and then turned to me.
+
+"'Didn't I see some bread and ham and a cheese in that wire safe in the
+cellar, doctor?' says he.  'I had no supper to-night.'
+
+"We went down and got them and a bottle of Scotch, too, and I remember
+perfectly that we polished off half a small ham, a whole Edam cheese, a
+loaf of bread and nearly a bottle of the Scotch--the bottle wasn't
+quite full, to begin with, you see.
+
+"After we'd finished we had a smoke, and then I stared at him straight.
+
+"'What's the meaning of it all, Father?' I asked.
+
+"'I can't tell you, my son,' said he (he never called me so before or
+since that night) 'but you may be sure of one thing--God reigns.  And
+now, what are you thinking to do?'
+
+"'Burn down this house,' said I, 'and send for my wife to come back.'
+
+"'By all means send for your wife,' says he quickly, 'but if you're
+bound to destroy this house--which strikes me as a very good sort of
+house--why not give it me?'
+
+"'To you?' I cried.  'You don't mean that you'd use it?'
+
+"'I could put a parochial school for girls there next week,' he said
+cheerfully.  'We need one at this end badly, but I hadn't the money."
+
+"'And you'd put innocent girls in this place?'
+
+"'Give me a chance, and then come hear Sister Mary Eustacia sing with
+'em, next Sunday,' he said.
+
+"So I deeded it to him, land and all, and they had a great kick-up
+there with little boys in lace night-gowns, and incense and what not.
+And, by George, the girls did sing for me, too, with Sister
+Somebody-or-other bowing and blushing behind 'em--all in white they
+were, with blue sashes, and voices like larks ... I never had a
+daughter...."
+
+He half rose, heavily, leaning on his elbows.  "Mind you, there's
+something there!" he said slowly.
+
+"There's a Pit below--you have to count on it.  Perhaps we're
+shovelling it in, all the time, shovelling it in...
+
+"And the more you whistle, the better you'll work, of course.  Very
+well, then, whistle!  But don't mistake--it's there ... it's there."
+
+They drew long breaths and pushed away from the table; the rain had
+stopped.
+
+And still in silence they walked out together into the fresh, damp
+evening.
+
+
+
+
+THE ORACLES
+
+You'll wonder, no doubt, at me having the daring to make what you might
+call a sort of romance out of her life--now all's over.  And, of
+course, it's not in my way at all.  Not but what I've read enough of
+romance-books--many's the many!  My mother was always at me to lay them
+by and take up some bit of work that 'ud bring me in more in the
+end--and yet, there's no doubt it was my readings and dreamings and
+such-like that brought me about Miss Lisbet's friendship, at the first,
+and that friendship was the making of me, one way and another, as
+mother never denied.
+
+It was Dr. Stanchon that set me about it.  He came into my cottage, a
+matter of a month or so back, looking fair grizzled and white--the
+heat, he said.  And if I knew better, I never said so.  He never minded
+the heat till this summer.  And on his vacation at home, too!  But he
+showed his age, fair.
+
+"You haven't some kind of drink for me, have you, Rhoda?" he says, sort
+of faint-like.  "It's been a hard day at the hospital."
+
+Now that might do for some, but not for me, that's known the doctor
+fifty-four years come Easter.  I looked at the wheels of the gig, and
+they were all clay, red clay from the one road hereabouts that's made
+of it--the graveyard road.  And I knew where he'd been.  But of course
+I says nothing, but brings him a palm-leaf fan, and seats him out of
+the glare, in the entry that looks over the little garden, and I waters
+the red bricks of the porch with a spray or two from the garden-pot
+(nothing so cooling as watered brick, I say!) and hurries in to beat up
+his drink.  He settled down in the old chair I always keep for him--a
+Windsor, cushioned in some English chintz his wife brought me out from
+home, twenty years ago--and I heard him sigh and stretch as I got the
+lemons and the eggs.  I beat up the whites, stiff as silver, added the
+lemon juice by littles, dusted a bit of castor sugar, and stuck in a
+sprig of mint from my sunken half-barrel where the cress grows.
+
+"Ah, that makes a man new!" says he, handing back the glass.  "It's a
+pity you can't patent that, Rhoda!"
+
+And then he pulled out his old pipe, and smoked for a quarter-hour,
+without a word.  But he rested.
+
+"And how's Miss Jessop, these days, doctor?" says I, when I saw he was
+ready for talking.
+
+"Finely, finely!" says he.  "Her little girl wrote me a letter
+yesterday.  Ten years old!  Image of her father, that child.  You're as
+bad as Lisbet, though, that never would learn to change."
+
+"I'm sure I beg her pardon--Mrs. Weldon, of course, and her with a boy
+fourteen, too!" says I.  "How Miss Lisbet did take to her, surely!  I
+always thought having her to help with Master Louis's children when
+they were so bad, just helped poor Miss Lisbet to bear with her sorrow
+at not starting the hospital, and all that."
+
+"Yes, yes," he said and nodded.
+
+"She was a fine woman, Jessop was.  Best nurse I ever had.  Yes,
+yes--Weldon's a lucky fellow."
+
+The cress smelled strong in the heat, then, and I couldn't but say:
+
+"Do you remember when Miss Lisbet and I started the cress-bed, doctor,
+down in the Winthrop pond?"
+
+At first he didn't answer, and I saw the old times in his face.
+
+"How she did enjoy your cress-and-mustard salad!" he says, finally.
+"Mrs. Stanchon spoke of it this morning--have you a little mess I could
+take up to the house?"
+
+And so we passed to talking about her, and it eased us both.
+
+"It's like a sort of tale, sir, isn't it?" says I, thoughtful-like.
+"Often and often when my niece has left everything tidy, and made my
+tea and cakes, and put away the wash, and watered the brick, and gone
+home, and I sit here while the pot draws and there's only the cat for
+company (not that I complain!  I've my thoughts, and plenty of books,
+and all the old days to live over!) often and often, as I say, it'll
+come to me in a sort of tale, like, and I wish there was some one to
+take it down; it would read off like a book!"
+
+"And why not take it down yourself, Rhoda, my girl?" says he.  "There's
+one, as I needn't tell you, would have no little pleasure reading it."
+
+And so I began.  You'd be surprised at the many that's offered to help
+me, and piece out bits of her life that maybe I wouldn't know.  But I
+knew enough for what I had in mind to show, namely, what Miss Lisbet
+was always planning to do--and what she really did do.
+
+So now I'll begin at the beginning.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was the morning of the day I was ten years old that I first saw her.
+A Saturday it was, and a holiday, and mother gave me a piece of currant
+bread, buttered, for a treat, and the day free till sunset, after my
+morning tasks were through.  I was all that was left her--five others
+buried, in fifteen years--and she was very easy with me, for which you
+could scarcely blame her, poor soul!  Three lost in England, of the
+smallpox, and one that hardly opened his little eyes, and my sister of
+something that they had no name for rightly in those days, doctor says,
+but they call it appendicitis now.  I was born over here, and never saw
+England, though I've always loved to read about it and always called it
+"home," not thinking, as one often will.  Mother had black memories of
+the old country and was anxious for us to grow up little Americans,
+though I can see now that she went to work very wrong to bring that
+about, for we always curtseyed to the rector and old Madam Winthrop
+when she rode by in the coach, and never, in short, thought of looking
+higher than we were born.
+
+So when I saw a lovely young lady drive up in a pony cart, hand the
+reins to the groom, get out, and walk through the gate toward me, I
+held the currant bread behind me and dropped a little curtsey.
+
+"Is this Mrs. Pennyfield's house?" she says, stopping and staring at me.
+
+"Yes, miss, she's my mother," says I.
+
+"What is your name?" says she.
+
+"Rhoda Pennyfield, please, miss," says I, and then, the goodness knows
+why, for I was a shy enough little thing commonly, "It's my birthday!"
+
+"Why, how funny!" she says, smiling the loveliest smile in the world.
+"It's mine, too!  How old are you, Rhoda Pennyfield?"
+
+"Ten, miss."
+
+"Isn't that wonderful!" she cries out, blushing like a rose peony.  "I
+am ten to-day, too!  What were your presents?  Mine were the pony
+phaeton and this gold watch (she held it out to me on a chain about her
+neck) and a macaw from South America from my Uncle Mather, on an ebony
+perch.  And a French doll from my aunty in New York, but I don't care
+for dolls any more.  What had you?"
+
+Now, as you can see, if I had really been a little American, I should
+have been jealous and ashamed that things were so different between us,
+but such a notion never entered my head.
+
+"Mother baked currant bread, miss," I said, "and Madam Winthrop's
+gardener gave me a spotted kitten, and I have a string of blue beads
+and the day to myself.  I'm thinking I'll go up to The Cedars and Mrs.
+Williams will let me read some of the books from the library for the
+afternoon."
+
+"Why, that's where I live--The Cedars!" she says, surprised.  "Madam
+Winthrop is my aunt, and Mrs. Williams dresses me!  Come into the
+phaeton and I'll drive you there!"
+
+She had forgot the errand she came on, bless her, with the excitement,
+and if mother hadn't come out to inquire, there'd have been a great
+to-do.  There was a maid all over blotches at The Cedars, and a doctor
+and nurse was wanted, and mother was ready very quick, as she always
+was.  So I got into the phaeton and Miss Lisbet drove me to The Cedars,
+and I had a birthday dinner with her: roast fowl and mashed potatoes
+and new peas and a frozen pudding with figs and almonds in it.  I can
+see her now, at the head of the table, with me and Mrs. Williams on
+either side, and the macaw, all indigo and orange color and scarlet, on
+his perch opposite!  She had on a worked muslin frock with lace-trimmed
+pantalets, blue silk stockings, and black French kid ankle-ties.  Her
+hair, a light golden brown, was all in curls, and a blue velvet snood
+kept it back: the young girls today wear ribbons about their heads
+something like it.  Her eyes were a dark, bright blue, and her cheeks,
+like most American children's, a sort of clear pale, that flushed quick
+with her feelings.  She was tall and slim and looked quite three years
+older than me, that has always been stocky-like and apple-cheeked, even
+at sixty-four!
+
+She had been away at a school for two years, having lost her father and
+mother, and old Madam Winthrop had adopted her, in a sort of way, being
+her great-aunt, and was to leave her all her money.
+
+While we were eating, old Dr. Stanchon pops in, leading a little
+red-haired boy, very plain and clever-looking, by the hand.
+
+"Can this youngster have a bite with you, Mrs. Williams?" says he,
+looking worried like.  "That precious girl of yours has the fever, and
+I'll be busy some time.  I promised him the fish pond for a treat, for
+it's his birthday, to-day, and now perhaps Miss Elizabeth will take him
+there--hello, little Rhoda!  How fine we are!"
+
+The little lad pulls out a great pocket-knife and lays it on the table.
+
+"I am Dick Stanchon, and I'm ten years old to-day!" says he very quick.
+"I have this Barlow knife and the 'Arabian Nights,' and I'm to be a
+doctor, like my father.  Do you have frozen pudding often, here?"
+
+Well, you can see how startling it would be to three children to be at
+the same birthday together!  We couldn't be tired talking of it.
+
+"We will all be firm friends for the rest of our life," said Miss
+Lisbet, very excited, "and never have secrets from each other.  And
+when I get Aunt Winthrop's money, I will divide it into three parts,
+one for each.  And we will do a great deal of good in the world."
+
+"Come, come," says Mrs. Williams, sour-like, "not so fast, missy.
+You've not the money yet, nor shouldn't speak of it, and as for being
+friends, it's all right so far as Dick Stanchon is concerned, but I
+doubt if Madam will feel the same as to Rhoda Pennyfield!  So make no
+more plans till we know."
+
+But of course we did make plans, for all her stiffness.  We sat in the
+red cedar grove, playing at tea-parties with a beautiful china tea-set,
+and Master Dick was to marry her, and I was to live with them and be
+nurse to the children, with one named for me!
+
+Dear, dear!  I've forgot much that's come in between and many that's
+been kind to me (more shame to me!) but I can see the sun on her curls
+now and him sharpening his new knife on the granite rocks that were so
+thick in the grove.
+
+"Rhoda and Dick," says she, very solemn, after a little, "I'm going to
+tell you a great secret.  Come close to me."
+
+You can believe we listened with all our ears; we worshipped the ground
+she trod on, both of us, do you see, even then.
+
+"I mean to do a great deal of good in the world before I die," says
+she, "as I mentioned before, at dinner.  I don't mean just ordinary
+_being_ good, you know, but _doing_ it.  At school I always meant to go
+as a missionary, and I was saving all my money for a fund for it, but I
+couldn't seem to keep it, somehow.  Two or three of the girls were poor
+girls, and if they hadn't their birthdays remembered, it would have
+been dreadful.  And the cook's little boy was lame in his spine and he
+was so fond of flowers!  And I hadn't so much money, anyway.  Then, all
+my time was full, because we had to do things every hour, just so.  But
+now I'm to have a governess and I shall have a great deal of time, so I
+can study hard for a missionary and perhaps go to South America--if
+there are any heathens there, as I suppose there are."
+
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+
+"So now my new life is beginning," she says very low and solemn, "and I
+feel that everything will be different.  I wish I could be _sure_,
+though, that it would be!"
+
+"Why don't you try the larkspurs, miss," says I.  "They'll tell you."
+
+My mother, you must know, was a great believer in signs.  Not being
+much educated, she went by them, I suppose, the way plain people will,
+be it ever so.  There's no use saying it's against religion--mother was
+as religious as any one, take who you will--they will do it.  If a bird
+flew into the house, there was death for sure, and she never would let
+three candles be lighted, no matter whose the house.  And so my sister
+and I had many of these ways and signs, and always told how things
+would be by larkspurs.  So I told Miss Lisbet how to strip them off for
+"yes, no, yes, no," and she asked her question very solemn:
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"  And she stripped them off,
+mumbling-like to herself, "Yes, no, yes, no"--and the last off was "no."
+
+And then she cried, poor thing, and I with her, for we both believed in
+'em, but Dick only laughed and said it was all foolishness.
+
+"If you want to do different from what you have been, Lisbet, of course
+you can," says he, and then the old doctor came and fetched us both
+home.
+
+"I'm going to begin my studying, just the same!" she calls after us,
+and I watched the sun on her hair till the coachman's cottage cut us
+off.
+
+Well, the governess came and they'd lessons all morning long and music
+practising afternoons, but there was no missionary study, because she
+took it into her head that I must be educated and know all she knew--as
+if that was likely!  Still, I picked up a good bit, here and there, and
+the gardener's little boy, that was backward and dumb-like, isn't
+forgetting to-day what he owes to Miss Lisbet, I'll warrant.  Three
+days a week she'd read to him and spell the letters and sums plain--and
+him that was the mock of the scholars, so that he'd never go near the
+school, what is he now, I ask you?  Professor in Yale College, and
+helped Dr. Stanchon in the planning of a big school for those children
+that are backward-like, as he was, and many of them as bright as
+bright, really.  They manage such as them better than they did in those
+days, doctor says, and most of it owed to Henry Wilson's boy.
+
+Often and often we'd walk up to her tea from the lodge, her setting her
+little teeth to keep from crying at the time she was wasting, with all
+her heathen waiting for her in South America!
+
+"But I can't leave poor little Ezra Wilson, Rhoda, I just can't!" she'd
+cry out.  "Wait till these old music-lessons are over and I haven't to
+use those horrible dumb-bells every morning, and I'll do something for
+the world, yet!"
+
+"Surely, miss," I'd soothe her.
+
+Well, the time went by like sands in a glass, and we were grown maids
+before you'd think twice.  She looked full two years more than her
+seventeen, and Master Dick was away at Harvard College two years
+already, for he was wonderful forward and clever always, and first in
+all his classes.  What time she'd had from her lessons and her
+paintings and sketching (which she hated dreadfully, poor thing, though
+seeming a master of it, to my eyes!) she was teaching him French and
+German from her governess, for they didn't teach it in the village
+school and his mother couldn't spare him away, and those languages
+helped him a good bit in his studies at the college.  The old doctor
+was terrible proud of him.
+
+And then came the day that he came home so sudden.  It was a grand
+April morning and Miss Lisbet and I were directing Henry Wilson about
+changing the vines and laying them by for the house painting: Madam was
+scolding and fussing about, annoying everybody with her sharp ways, and
+I remember thinking that she was failing for sure.  I was sad, too, for
+mother had decided to put me out to service, after all, and that meant
+a parting for Miss Lisbet and me.  Mother felt that I was getting above
+myself, like, and spoiled for anything that would happen me in the
+usual course if Miss Lisbet ever changed, you see.  And who could deny
+that?  But the dear thing knew nothing of it, yet--I hadn't the heart.
+
+Well, Madam was scolding away famously.
+
+"Mind that wistaria, Wilson!" says she.  "There's not its equal in
+Westchester County!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Madam," says he, crusty-like.  "Why good-morning, Master
+Dick!"
+
+And there he stood.  At the first glance, I saw he looked different.
+Older and graver.
+
+"What's this, what's this, Richard?" Madam cries.  "Neglecting your
+studies?"
+
+"Studies?  Studies?" says he, as quick and sharp as she.  "What, is the
+matter with the people about here?  Are you dreaming?  Fort Sumter
+down, the flag insulted, the President calling for seventy-five
+thousand volunteers, and you talk of studies!  I'm going to try to get
+into the Seventh, and I'm only here to see Elizabeth before I go."
+
+"Nonsense, boy!" says Madam, trembling, though.  "We'll see what your
+father has to say, first."
+
+"My father only wishes he had a dozen sons, ma'am!" he told her, proud
+as Lucifer.  "Lisbet, can I speak with you?"
+
+She went directly to him, and they walked, holding hands, behind the
+cedar grove.  She told me afterward that he just said:
+
+"Will you wait till I come back, Lisbet?"
+
+And she answered, "Why, of course, Dick!"  They parted a promised
+couple.  Madam was all shaky, but she kissed him good-bye, and let him
+put a little blue-stoned ring on Miss Lisbet's hand--there was a splash
+of red paint on it from the house, and mother fair turned white when I
+told her.  "They'll never wed," she said, "that's certain sure!  Poor
+young people!"
+
+But the paint wasn't for blood, after all, for he never got a scratch.
+He was handsome enough in his new uniform, and more than one envied my
+Miss Lisbet when she waved him good-bye on the train--they were off for
+Baltimore.
+
+"Rhoda," says she to me, after a few weeks of waiting, "I can't bear
+this!  Us eating and drinking so easy, and those poor boys dying--it's
+not right.  I must and shall go as nurse!"
+
+And we could do nothing with her--she'd hardly sleep.  It was Dr.
+Stanchon found the way to handle her.
+
+"Dear child," he says at last, "why not do as I do--send a substitute?
+I sent my boy, because I'm the only doctor left here, now, and people
+must be born and die, you know, war or no war," says he.  "I'd far
+rather have gone.  Now, it's out of the question for you, for many
+reasons, but if your aunt would give you your dress-money and you gave
+up a summer at the mountains, you could pay a good, settled woman, of
+experience, and there's many would love to go."
+
+Well, she seized on that, the generous creature, and got it out of
+Madam, and we fitted out a respectable widow-woman mother often had to
+help her, and sent her to one of those Southern cities--I forget now.
+She wrote up only that there was mostly blacks for waiting on one, and
+food poor and scarce.  But Master Dick sent word that she kept the
+fever away for a mile around her, and the officers thereabouts gave her
+a long piece of writing and a medal after all was over, and the Rebels
+a silver cup--she cared for all alike, whatever the uniform.  The
+little house she had was built up into a hospital, later, and she lived
+and died there, and only came up to the north to beg money for it.  It
+was the only one in thirty miles around.  Eighteen years she lived
+there, and left the cup to Miss Lisbet; the medal to her daughter.
+
+Well, I must hurry on.  I could talk about those days forever, but in
+the books, I have taken notice often, they pick and choose.
+
+So I will pass to when it came to her of a sudden how she could collect
+clothes and food for the army, and keep one place open for the
+lint-scraping and bandage-rolling, as all the ladies were doing in the
+big cities.  She had a tongue of honey and every one knew about her
+having hired Mrs. Jarvis to go nurse, so she was sure to get what she
+begged for.  She took over a vacant office in the village, part of
+Madam's property, and I never saw her happier than the day we were
+fitting it up.  It was all cleaned and new furnished and there were
+desks and tables and nursing-books and shelves for the jellies and
+medicines, and everything to be sent orderly and where needed at the
+time, not rushed forward all helter-skelter as so much is at such
+times.  Dr. Stanchon saw all, and heard the plans, and patted her
+shoulder.
+
+"Well done, Blossom, well done!" says he.  "I might have let you go,
+after all!"
+
+And he offered to advise and find out the quickest and best trains and
+such like.
+
+It was July and a hot, clear day.  The notice was in the village paper
+for all the women that could help, to come to a first meeting and take
+hours for duty there, and routes to collect, and offer wagons if they
+had them, and give fruit for jelly, and Miss Lisbet led off with the
+old pony and cart for steady work.
+
+We were resting in the garden and she had just told me that she meant
+to give all her time to the "office," as we called it in a joking way
+(for nice young ladies didn't go to offices then, I promise you!  Madam
+thought little enough of it) and she put her hand on mine.
+
+"Rhoda," says she, "my dream is coming true--do you see?  I'm to do
+something for my country, after all!  Just as a man would--just as Dick
+does, Rhoda!  Isn't it a grand thing?"
+
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+
+"The change is coming now, Rhoda," she says, and then, laughing at
+herself, "I'm going to ask the larkspurs!"
+
+And she pulled a great stalk and held it over her head, as I had taught
+her seven years before.
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"
+
+And she stripped them off, _yes, no, yes, no_--and they said _no_!  The
+sweet face fell, and I hurried to comfort her.
+
+"Maybe they always say no hereabouts," says I.  "Let me have a try!"
+And I asked the same question, but it came _yes_, and that I knew must
+be true, though she did not.
+
+The next day, after she had made a speech like the Queen's (I thought)
+and every one wondering, with her so young, and a hundred dollars
+pledged, and all so eager to work under her--for she was one of them
+that's born to lead--who should run in but Henry Wilson, all out of
+breath, crying to her to hurry home, for Madam was down with a stroke,
+and one side of her all powerless!
+
+Well, to make a long story short, she never left her poor aunt for
+above an hour at a time till the fighting was over!  Madam, who had
+never seemed overfond before, was mad for her now, and she was pushing
+her chair or reading to her or stroking her hand or playing old tunes
+or sitting in sight, the livelong day.  They tried the sea and they
+tried the mountains and there was a nurse and a maid, but it was always
+Miss Lisbet behind it all.  She was rich, she had real French convent
+lace on her body-linen, and asparagus and peaches in winter, and a
+conservatory as big as a house, oh, yes.  But she was more tied down
+than many a poor girl 'prenticed for her living, and I often wonder if
+it's not that way with many of the rich ladies you see!  I know I was
+working hard with a dressmaker the first year--before they kept me as
+seamstress and mender at The Cedars--and _I_ wouldn't have changed with
+her, except for love of her, poor dear!
+
+I was back in The Cedars when Madam went off in her sleep one night as
+easy as a baby.  There was no need for grieving--'twas a blessed
+release, and just the soberness and the thoughts that must come to one
+when even an old body of eighty-odd passes away.  Poor old Madam hadn't
+many friends, for everybody was so afraid of her, and we all felt the
+best that ever she'd done was to leave the lonely old place to Miss
+Lisbet.  Master Dick was coming home, for the war was over, and the
+black men freed at last, and he was full captain, and never a scratch
+or a headache even, to show for the four years!
+
+We were in the garden waiting for him, she as lovely as ever I'd seen
+her in a white dress, all frilled from the waist down, with violet
+ribbons (Madam made her vow never to wear black for her) and a violet
+band in her hair.  She'd a great brooch of amethyst stones at her neck
+and Master Dick's blue ring on her finger.
+
+"Rhoda," says she, of a sudden, "what if we tried the larkspurs again?"
+and she smiled at me, a mischievous little smile, like a child's.
+
+"Nay, now, miss dear," says I, "what's the good of such games, and you
+a grown woman?  No doubt now but your way is clear to do as you like--a
+fine husband and plenty of money.  Let it be."
+
+"But I will," she says, reaching for a spray of the blue stuff, "I
+will, Rhoda, once more, for luck."
+
+"Well, then, miss," says I, "put the question different like, why not?
+Make it plainer--you're forever talking about 'a change in your life,'
+and there's always changes, you know."
+
+So she laughs and holds it up and sings:
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Am I going to be able now to use all this money to help some great
+cause?"
+
+And the flowers said, _no_!
+
+Well, I couldn't say I was sorry for that, just because she was all for
+schooling and helping the blacks, now they were thrown on themselves
+like; for old Dr. Stanchon would have it that they were bound to make
+more trouble now in the South than they had before, and that those who
+had freed them owed them a living--or something like that.  Most hated
+him for it around our parts, but doctor says the country has found his
+father was right, to-day.  Nevertheless, there's other uses for good
+family money than that, as we all know.
+
+"You've bewitched the larkspurs, Miss Lisbet," I said, laughing.  "Why
+not fool them a bit?  Pick a tiny short spray like this, and ask a
+question you _know_ the answer to, and then you'll see how things are."
+
+"Well," says she, "I'll ask 'If I'm to marry Dick'!"
+
+I didn't half like that, but I happened to peep out of the tail of my
+eye and who should I see but Master Dick himself, leaning over the low
+cedar hedge, looking for us.  He was out of her sight, and so I made
+haste and picked a tiny stalk with but three blossoms and handed it to
+her.
+
+"Quick, quick, Miss Lisbet, dear!" I said, knowing well what the answer
+would be.  She asked quick enough, but when she stripped them, _yes,
+no_--and stopped there, I saw that the third had somehow fallen off and
+lay on her white lap.  It gave me a turn, but she only brushed it away
+and laughed softly.
+
+"It _is_ foolish," she said, "isn't it, Rhoda?  For there he is!  Here,
+Dick, this way!"
+
+I started to leave them, but she wouldn't have it, and gave him her
+cheek to kiss as easy as a child--or started to, but there was a man in
+uniform behind him, just rounding the turn, and she drew back.
+
+"Major La Salle," says Master Dick, proud as Punch, you could see,
+"Miss Elizabeth Winthrop."
+
+She curtseyed and the Major bowed to the ground, and I couldn't but
+notice a tiny bald spot amongst his curly dark hair.
+
+"An old fellow for Master Dick's friend," thought I, and so he was,
+being all of thirty-six, and more like Dr. Stanchon's crony than his
+son's!  Thirty-six was something in those days, you see, and Master
+Dick was all ready to settle when the young men of his age to-day are
+playing their football games and heedless as school girls.
+
+The Major had lines about his mouth and eyes, and had buried a wife, we
+learned, three years before the war--a sad marriage, by Master Dick's
+accounts, as she wasn't worthy of him and had made him grave before his
+time.  Our young Captain couldn't talk enough of him and had written
+many's the letters about him before ever we saw him.  But we were both
+surprised to find him so much older than we had thought, and Miss
+Lisbet was afraid to talk much before him at first, for fear he'd find
+her missish and ignorant.  She didn't realize, the sweet thing, how any
+one would think, to see her at the head of that great house, managing
+all and doing so much good in the village, that she was the equal of
+any woman.
+
+They'd been but three days in the village, and all the time they had
+from the doctor's wife's proud tea-drinkings, to show off her boy,
+they'd spent with us.  She always had me by her, for Mrs. Williams was
+getting on, and best off by herself, and Miss Lisbet didn't feel 'twas
+quite as it should be for her to be off with them alone.  So when they
+spoke of Madam's will, I was sewing near by.
+
+Miss Lisbet was telling of her schemes for the poor blacks and the
+Major was agreeing with her, and said that Master Dick's father had the
+right of it.
+
+"Now, for heaven's sake, Louis, don't encourage Miss Winthrop in any of
+her plans for the human race," says Master Dick, laughing.  "It's bad
+enough to have my father executor.  All that money depends on me, you
+know, and I don't approve of women's rights as much as you do."
+
+"Depends on you?  What do you mean?" says the Major.
+
+"Why, unless she marries me she doesn't get Madam's money at all," says
+Master Dick.  "The old lady was afraid of unprincipled fortune hunters,
+and of me, at least, she knew the worst!"
+
+"But the larkspurs said I wouldn't marry you, Captain Dick Stanchon!"
+she cried, half laughing, half displeased, for she couldn't bear him to
+question what she said.
+
+The Major got up at that and walked away, and I left them, too, as was
+quite correct for a promised pair.
+
+It might have been an hour later that I walked to the cedar grove to
+find my thimble and saw Miss Lisbet hurrying there ahead of me.  I
+slackened a bit, and when I caught her up I saw she was talking with
+the Major--he must have been waiting there for her.  I thought it odd,
+but stooped over and looked through the grass, and all of a sudden they
+were level with me, the other side the hedge.
+
+"You sent for me?" said she, breathless like.
+
+"Yes.  Can you guess why?" said he, and my knees began to shake.
+
+"N-no, Major La Salle," said she, still breathing strangely.
+
+"I sent for you to tell you that the larkspur told you true,
+Elizabeth," he said, very deep.  "You will never marry Dick Stanchon,
+you will marry me."
+
+"Why--why..." she began, and I couldn't move then, try as I might.
+
+"As sure as that little star belongs in the moon's arms, Elizabeth, you
+belong in mine!" said he.  "Don't you know it?"
+
+"But, Dick," she said, still breathing as I had never heard her.
+
+"Dick is a boy," he said.  "You are fit for a man.  I loved you when I
+first took off my cap before you.  But I would never court an heiress.
+Could you come to a western army post and live on a Major's pay?"
+
+"It's not me--I could live on nothing, almost--it's how to tell Dick!"
+she began, crying and breathing that strange way, both together--and
+then I knew it was all over, of course.
+
+"My star!" I heard him say, and I crept away, somehow.
+
+Well, that was all.  One week, she was a great heiress and engaged to a
+bright young fellow with life opening out before him; the next she was
+married to a poor widower, fifteen years her elder, and off to some
+place in the western prairies, with only a chest of linen and silver
+and some old mahogany and her clothes!  It was like a dream.  But only
+to see her look at him, you'd know she'd met her master.  Before, she
+hadn't sensed things rightly, she told me.
+
+I was wild to go with her, but no such thing as a maid for his wife,
+the Major said, and anyway, mother was near doubled with the rheumatism
+and I couldn't be spared.  So I kissed her on the station platform and
+cried myself blind that night.  And Master Dick went off to Germany, to
+study, and never a word was mentioned: he held his head high, the
+Captain did!
+
+We got news regular from little Essie White, that Miss Lisbet's outworn
+dresses used to go to.  She used to read an hour a day, did Miss
+Lisbet, to Essie's mother, who went blind, and she stocked Essie with
+flannels and such, as she grew.  I trained her in as kitchen maid when
+I was at The Cedars, and when help turned out so poor and scarce in the
+West--all ignorant Paddies, as we called them then--she sent to me and
+I sped Essie out to her, and a good job, too, for she was in no state
+to be worrying out her precious health over dust and dirt and victuals!
+
+Essie wrote us long letters, how Miss Lisbet was the belle of the post
+and had a night school for the private soldiers started, with officers'
+ladies to teach, and took all the charge of the little hospital.  Mrs.
+Jarvis sent her rules and saving ways and many clever contrivances from
+all her experience in the South, and long after the La Salles left that
+post the night school was kept up--and may be now, for aught I know,
+for it seemed that all she planted, grew.  Balls they gave and private
+theatricals and riding parties, and Essie said she was happy as the day
+was long, but for that she felt she might have done so much for the
+world with Madam's money.  She wanted schools in all the army posts and
+the negroes taught farming and goodness knows what not, you see.
+
+But when little Louis came there was no time for all that, I promise
+you!  It broke my heart not to be with her, but mother was failing,
+slow but sure, and 'twould have been sin to leave her.
+
+But I heard all his sweet ways and when he was creeping, and how he
+called my poor old picture "Dody" (bless him!) and hardly was he ready
+for his kilts but his brother was stepping into his shoes!  Named for
+her father he was, and the image of the first, that was the image of
+the Major.  She took the care of them mostly, herself, for she didn't
+like the rough girls out there, and had only Essie and a woman for
+washing, and I didn't need Essie's letters to tell me she was tired and
+worn-like.  It seemed a poor kind of life for one that had had a half
+dozen of servants and gardens and grape houses and her
+saddle-horse--but she wouldn't have changed for Windsor Castle, I well
+knew.
+
+And next I heard, they were to move, very sudden, and the garden just
+planted and all, and worst of all, Essie had lost her heart to a
+corporal and was to stay behind.  At the time I blamed her sorely and
+wrote her a bitter letter, but, dearie me, life is life for all of us,
+and Miss Lisbet wasn't her treasure as she was mine.  We made it up
+later, Essie and me.
+
+My dear wrote me herself, the saddest letter that ever I had from her,
+I believe.  The old mahogany pieces had been stored, very careful, and
+burned in the storage, and the linen was out and the china broken, and
+the new baby would find but a poor house, she feared, when they should
+be settled.  Could I find her one for Essie's place?  And oh, if only
+she could see my face, for she dreaded her coming trial, with every one
+strange!
+
+I was sitting in my new black, when I read the letter, with poor mother
+free of her rheumatics at last, and all soft as I was from it, I cried
+and cried!
+
+I wrote her that I'd find some one, and then I went to the old doctor
+and we talked and twisted it this way and that, and he went up to The
+Cedars and called on Madam's heir-at-law, a crabbed old cousin that
+lived much to himself and saw only the doctor, and the end of it was
+that I was to pick out what I thought Miss Lisbet would like in the
+matter of furniture, for he used but a third of the rooms, and what
+linen and stuff his housekeeper thought could be spared.
+
+And wasn't I glad to hear that, for well I knew the housekeeper, a good
+woman who'd nursed turn about with mother for years, and had seen my
+young lady grow up!
+
+Well, if I do say it of myself, I stripped The Cedars thorough!  And
+yet a stranger would hardly know.  It was full, do you see, from many
+generations, and overflowing, and I furnished three bedrooms, complete,
+from the garrets!  Blankets I got, and a trunk of towels, and seven
+woven bedspreads, and a dining-table that Miss Lisbet's mother's mother
+had eaten a wedding dinner at, and the stuffed macaw on his ebony
+perch!  Eight dozen dinner napkins that had never seen the laundry, and
+carpets that the moths were sure to take if I didn't!  And brass
+fire-irons and a great chest of books and some heads of statues she'd
+always liked, and big engravings of foreign places, broken old ruins
+and such.  And her nursery fittings, that had never been touched, I
+took entire--fire guard and small chairs, Moses in the Bulrushes,
+little kneeling Samuel and all!  And nearly everything from her lovely
+bedroom--chintz valances, and the little South American
+dressing-cabinet, and the china-set in a strawed barrel.  _I_ knew what
+she loved--who better?  And the old doctor got the whole car-load
+across the country free as air for me, through a gentleman that had
+heard how much Miss Lisbet had done in the War, and that as good as
+owned the railroad.  He had us met with mules, too, at the end of the
+horrid, dusty trip; and when me and little Maria Riggs (niece of a tidy
+widow-woman Miss Lisbet had had chair-caning taught to, so that she had
+no need to come on the town) got to the new home, we found only a
+neighbor to give us the keys.  The Major was off on army matters for a
+week, and she had taken the two boys and gone on a visit to a new
+friend she'd made, and left things all hugger-mugger, from despair and
+tiredness, poor girl!
+
+I was quite as well pleased, and Maria and I swept and cleaned and
+nailed carpets and hung pictures and clear-starched muslin curtains and
+filled shelves and drawers, as happy as queens.  And round the house I
+planted out the five old vines I'd brought all moist and good in an
+open basket, from The Cedars, and in the garden that a fine,
+fresh-faced soldierman, English as could be, dug and spaded for me,
+what did I put in but _larkspur seeds_, amongst the sweet williams and
+pansies and mignonette!
+
+Well, she came back, expecting nothing, do you see, and there at the
+door was I, in black, with white cuffs and apron, and little Maria
+curtseying behind me.  And the old claw-leg card-table in the hall and
+the glass with the gilt eagle above it.
+
+"Rhoda!  _Rhoda!_" she screams, and gives one look at the statues and
+pictures and new carpet in the drawing-room and faints on the floor!
+And I nearly crazy for being such a fool at such a time!
+
+None the less, the third boy was born in his mother's old four-posted
+bed, as beautiful as a king, and her living picture.  Stanchon La Salle
+he was, for the old doctor, who never bore her a moment's grudge, mind
+you, on Master Dick's account.
+
+"He's a fine man, Rhoda, and I doubt if Dick could have managed her
+right," was all he ever said to me.  "She has a great spirit."
+
+And then the time went by like the water under a bridge.  She'd no more
+worries about drudging, for Maria and I did all, with the English
+soldierman for rough jobs; but she had her hands full with the boys,
+for the Major didn't want them sent back to the East to school, and she
+had all the teaching and training of them, to say nothing of the care
+of them, growing.  Nine years we lived there, and then Master Louis was
+off to West Point, and in two years more his brother, and one day--it
+seemed the next day but two or three!--we were packing Master
+Stanchon's trunk to go to Yale College, where his father went!  We
+rubbed our eyes and sat alone, and there was the macaw she got for her
+tenth birthday looking at us!  And I do assure you, I felt much the
+same as ever.  Which I had heard people say, as a girl, and felt to be
+unbecoming.
+
+The Colonel was pretty nigh to white hair, but firm and strong, and she
+was grey, but not a wrinkle, and very beautiful.  He was to leave the
+service and had been offered a post in government, somehow, at
+Washington, when just as we were beginning to worry if his eyes could
+stand the book-work, the lawyer's letter came.
+
+It seemed too good to be true.  Old, crabbed Mr. Hawkes was long ago
+dead, and The Cedars closed, and his heir, a very curious woman, had
+felt that Miss Lisbet was defrauded, and left everything to her in her
+will!  So we were to go back, and it cleared so many worries that we
+cried together.
+
+"And now, Rhoda, now for a chance to do something!" she says, suddenly.
+
+I only stared at her.
+
+"Why, Miss Lisbet, you've been doing since you were born!" I cried.
+
+"Oh, Rhoda, you know!" she says, coaxing, "only for those near me, and
+in such a small way!  Now the boys are started, and no more worry for
+the Colonel, and you and I can do something that will last!"
+
+And laughing like a girl, if she didn't fly out to the garden and find
+our frost-bitten, yellow larkspur, the last!
+
+"See!" says she, and began to wave it.
+
+"Oh, don't, don't!" says I, anxious-like, "and you to be a grandmother
+next year, maybe!" (for Louis was to be married to a New York young
+lady in the winter).
+
+But she would, and when she asked, half laughing, half frightened:
+
+"_Am I to do what I have longed for all my life, at last?_" and
+stripped off the rotting blossoms, _yes, no, yes, no_--the last one
+fell.
+
+And before ever we reached The Cedars the Colonel had gone blind!
+
+Well, for five years she was never from his side one half hour at a
+time.  He said he blessed the blindness that gave him her hand at every
+moment, and it was a beautiful sight to see them together.  Riches
+makes such an affliction as light as it can ever be, that's certain,
+and he lived in luxury.  He held Louis's twin daughters in his arms and
+hoped to "see," as he called it, smiling, the next brother's, but it
+was not to be.
+
+Dr. Stanchon, as I learned at last to call Master Dick, said that he
+couldn't have had a moment's pain, and his own boy, named for the
+Colonel, carried him to the grave with our three.
+
+Mrs. Stanchon was a sweet soul, tied to a wheel-chair for life after
+five years married, and Miss Lisbet was forever doing things for her
+entertainment and to make her forget, like.  She never did too much,
+but just enough, and didn't stop with grapes and books, as many rich
+folk will, you know, but sat with her every other day, at least, with
+the Colonel by her side, listening to her bright talk.  I doubt the two
+of them realized, at those times, how afflicted they were!
+
+She never talked as if he was gone--always as if they'd only parted for
+a little.  Her hair was soon whiter than his, and she walked and moved
+very slow, for her, but the boys seemed to see no difference.
+
+Louis's wife was delicate and came to us, finally, till he should have
+an easier post, and the twins were not strong, like our babies.  Once
+we nearly lost them, and after that Granny Lisbet (as they called her)
+never took her eye off them, and pulled them through.  It seemed the
+village was full of sick children that year, and the mothers were crazy
+for her to look at every one.
+
+She was anxious to set up a regular nurse for the district, and gave a
+room for that purpose, with a lending closet, and arranged money for
+the nurse to be paid for ten years.  (They are quite common, now, but
+hers was the first in our parts.)
+
+"She's working too hard, Rhoda, my girl," says Dr. Stanchon.  "Her
+heart's not what she thinks.  Keep her quiet, can't you?"  But what
+could I do?
+
+I nearly cried, last June, when I'd got her out in the garden, that
+day, for a bit of quiet, and she began on her plans for the villages to
+be taxed for nurses and doctors, to keep off sickness!
+
+"The babies are all well, now," says she, "and Louis comes for his
+family to-morrow, and the twins are no trouble.  The nurse is all
+started in the village and I am going to see the Governor at Albany
+next week--I have an appointment.  Isn't it strange, Rhoda, that I am
+all but fifty, and only ready now to do something with my
+opportunities?  I've ten good years before me, and the Colonel shall be
+proud of me yet!"
+
+I felt so weak and sad all of a sudden--God knows why.  She rarely
+spoke of him.  I held her hand.
+
+"Why, look, Rhoda, there's a stalk of larkspur out!" she said.  "Go
+pick it for me, will you?"
+
+I started to say no, but then I saw but one bud on it and I thought to
+myself, "I'll see her pleased for once, I will!" knowing she'd never
+notice, and so brought it.  She waved it, blue above her white head
+(and me only iron grey to-day!)
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you,_"
+
+she mumbled like, and I thought her voice sounded strange and far away,
+somehow.
+
+"_Is a change coming at last in my narrow little life?_"
+
+"Oh, hush, Miss Lisbet! you that have been so much to so many!" says I,
+sobbing at her dear stupidness, and then she begins, yes--and that was
+all.
+
+"Why, Rhoda!" she cries, "at last, at last I've won!" and half rises in
+the garden-chair.  Then suddenly her hands went to her heart.
+
+"Why, Louis--Louis!  My dear!" she said, staring at the cedar hedge.
+"_Can you see?_"  And fell back.
+
+The change had come, indeed, and I and all that loved her hope that now
+she knows what a life like hers meant to those she lived among and
+blessed!
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by 
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon,
+by Josephine Daskam Bacon
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
+       text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%;
+        font-size: small }
+
+P.letter {text-indent: 0%;
+          font-size: small ;
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+H4.h4center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
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+                margin-right: auto; }
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+</STYLE>
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+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by 
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+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: The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2010 [EBook #31202]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE CASES OF DR. STANCHON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly tightening.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="417" HEIGHT="638">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 417px">
+&quot;He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly tightening.&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+THE
+<BR>
+STRANGE CASES OF
+<BR>
+DR. STANCHON
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+AUTHOR OF
+<BR>
+"THE INHERITANCE," "THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY,"
+<BR>
+"THE MADNESS OF PHILIP," ETC.
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+<BR>
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+<BR>
+1913
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+<BR>
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons.<BR>
+Copyright, 1909, 1910, by Harper and Brothers.<BR>
+Copyright, 1911, 1913, by the Crowell Publishing Company.<BR>
+Copyright, 1911, by the Curtis Publishing Company.<BR>
+<BR>
+Printed in the United States of America
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TO
+<BR>
+M. A. T.
+<BR>
+WHO WATCHED MANY OF
+<BR>
+THESE STORIES IN THE MAKING
+<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 6.5em">J. D. B.</SPAN><BR>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap01">THE KEY</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap02">THE CHILDREN</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap03">THE CRYSTAL</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap04">THE GOSPEL</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap05">THE GYPSY</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap06">THE WARNING</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap07">THE LEGACY</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap08">THE MIRACLE</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap09">THE UNBURIED</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap10">THE ORACLES</A><BR>
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE KEY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The young doctor stamped vehemently up the marble steps, to warm his
+feet, and once in the warm, flower-scented halls, let a little shiver
+escape him.  The butler was new&mdash;he was always new, the doctor
+thought&mdash;and actually didn't know him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Allen is at bridge, sir, with a party: she asks to be excused,"
+he began mechanically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(<I>"That's good!" Stanchon felt tempted to say, "and I hope the girls
+are out, too!"</I>)  As if in answer to this indiscretion, the new butler
+droned on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Alida is at her riding-lesson and Miss Suzanne is&mdash;is engaged&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(<I>"Now, what particular infernal idiocy is Suzanne at, I wonder?"
+Stanchon pondered, still smiling lightly at the butler and warming
+himself at every breath.</I>)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Edmund is&mdash;I think he could be found, sir," the voice went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(<I>"I don't doubt it," Stanchon agreed mentally, "at the side board, no
+doubt; a nice time of day for a lad of twenty to be hanging about the
+house!"</I>)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But all he said was:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am the doctor.  I called to see Miss Mary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"  Even this new butler assumed a look of burdened intelligence; he
+leaned toward the visitor, "Oh, yes, sir&mdash;Miss Mary.  I understood that
+it wouldn't be possible for Miss Mary to see anybody, sir, but I
+suppose, the doctor&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," said Stanchon curtly.  "Please send word to her nurse that
+I am here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," but the man hesitated, even as he took the hat held out to
+him, "yes, sir, but&mdash;but ... it isn't Dr. Jarvyse, is it, sir?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slow, dark red spread over Stanchon's forehead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(<I>"So they've sent for Jarvyse&mdash;well, I might have known.  Nice,
+tactful crowd, aren't they!"</I>)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He scowled slightly and set his jaw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I'm Dr. Stanchon," he said.  "Dr. Jarvyse is coming later, I
+suppose.  Kindly let Miss Jessop know that I am here, will you?  I
+haven't much time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man sped swiftly down the hall, after depositing his hatless charge
+in a blue satin reception-room, and Stanchon stared, unseeing, at the
+old Chinese panels and ivory figures that dotted its walls and tables.
+The strong odour of freesias and paper-narcissus hung heavy in the
+room; the roar of the great, dirty, cold city was utterly shut away and
+a scented silence, costly and blue and drowsy, held everything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the nurse stood before him, smiling, and he saw that her
+usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and
+peaked cap of her profession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's all this?" he asked, and she shrugged her broad shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She told me to put it on to-day.  'You're really a nurse, you know,
+Miss Jessop,' she said, 'and if I require one, it might as well be
+known.'  Of course, I had it here, so I got it right out.  Poor Miss
+Mary!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see they've sent for Jarvyse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded uncomfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it's all over but the shouting, I suppose?"  Again she shrugged.
+The fatalism of her training spoke in that shrug, and the necessity for
+taking everything as it comes&mdash;since everything is bound to come!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm..." he meditated deeply, and all the youth went out of his face,
+suddenly: he might have been forty-five or fifty.  At such times the
+nurses and the other doctors always watched him eagerly; it was
+supposed that it was then that those uncanny intuitions came to him,
+that almost clairvoyant penetration of the diseased minds that were his
+chosen study.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is she?" he asked abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, very much the same, doctor.  I can't see much difference."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you see a little?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She moved uncomfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't say that ... it's nothing she says or does&mdash;but&mdash;sometimes I
+think she's a little more&mdash;a little less..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A little less normal?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rested, relieved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, just that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Across the broad halls came a wave of sudden sound: movement of
+drapery, faint clashes of metallic substances and glass, broken
+feminine cries and light, breathy laughter.  A difference in the air
+became noticeable, new perfumes floated in to the little blue room,
+perfumes and the odour of expensive, warm fur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+&mdash;"You don't mean to say that you discard from a strong suit&mdash;always?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear, I had nothing but that queen&mdash;nothing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+&mdash;"And that's why, as Elwell says...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+&mdash;"And so he absolutely refuses to play with women!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Evidently a door had been opened, somewhere.  The next moment brought a
+new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence
+again, sudden and profound, from the street-side.  A deep, almost
+dramatic voice silenced the confused babble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear, I'm frightfully sorry, but I simply could <I>not</I> manage to get
+here before!  Why weren't any of you at the lecture?  <I>Moyen Age</I>
+house-furniture and decoration&mdash;terribly interesting.  It's a shame to
+miss a thing like that.  Is my table all made up?  Never mind, I can
+cut in any time.  Yes, Mrs. Allen, I know, but really, you ought not to
+neglect the intellectual side, entirely, you know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door closed instantly, and again they stood alone in the heavy
+silence.  It was as if a curtain had been lifted swiftly on some
+bustling, high-lighted scene and dropped as swiftly.  Only a strong,
+heady scent floated in on them, troubling, suggestive, complicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is that?" Stanchon asked, sniffing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, one of those new Russian perfumes," the nurse said.  "I hate them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Russian?" he looked puzzled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you know it's a Russian season?" she instructed him.  "Dancers
+and music and hats&mdash;those high fur ones&mdash;and perfumes?  And all that
+Byzantine embroidery?  You must have noticed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"  He considered thoughtfully.  "I <I>had</I> noticed the perfumes.  But
+I didn't know why it was....  Well, am I to see Miss Mary?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know why not, doctor," she said.  "She always likes to see
+you.  And I suppose you'll consult with Dr. Jarvyse, won't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose so," he agreed, "though, of course, nobody's asked me.  Is
+she going out, this weather?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No: I wish she would.  She says it tires her too much.  It's a pity
+she hates the South so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They walked to the tiny tapestried lift, beyond the curve of the great
+stairs, and she pressed the ivory button that sent them up.  At the
+fourth floor the car settled lightly and they stepped out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's not speaking much," the nurse warned him, "but of course she
+may, for you.  Very gloomy, for two days, she's been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knocked lightly at a door and entered without waiting.  The room
+was very light, with bowls of cut flowers everywhere and a pair of
+green love-birds billing eternally on a brass standard: they chirped
+softly now and then.  A miniature grand piano filled one corner, and
+the light fell richly on the tooled leather of low book-cases, and
+slipped into reflected pools of violet, green and blood-red on the
+polished floor.  A great tiger skin stretched in front of a massive,
+claw-legged davenport, and in the corner of it, away from the cheerful,
+crackling fire, a black-haired woman sat, tense and silent, her eyes
+fixed in a brooding stare.  She was all in delicate, cunningly mingled
+tints of mauve, violet and lavender; near her neck tiny diamond points
+winked; magnificent emeralds edged with diamonds lay like green stains
+on her long white hands.  In her dark immobility, among the rich, clear
+objects scattered so artfully about the sun-lighted chamber, she had a
+marvellous effect of being the chief figure in some modern French
+artist's impressionistic "interior."  She gave a distinct sense of
+having been bathed and dried, scented and curled, dressed&mdash;and
+abandoned there, between the love-birds and the polished piano: a large
+gold frame about the room would have supplied the one note lacking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Miss Mary, and how goes it?" Dr. Stanchon said, sitting beside
+her and taking her hand easily, since she failed to notice his own
+outstretched.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She lifted her eyes slightly to his, moved her lips, then sighed a
+little and dropped her lids.  She might have been a young-looking woman
+of forty, or a girl of twenty-five who had been long ill or distressed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, now, Miss Mary, I hear you've given me up&mdash;wasn't I high priced
+enough for you?  Because I can always accommodate, you know, in that
+direction," Stanchon went on persuasively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again she raised her eyes, swallowed, appeared to overcome an almost
+unconquerable lethargy of spirit, and spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no use, doctor, all that.  I've given up.  It's all one to me,
+now.  Don't bother about me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon looked genuinely concerned.  He had worked hard over this
+case, and it cut his pride to have the great specialist, with his
+monotonous inflexible system, summoned against his express wish.  That
+meant they were all tired, disgusted, sick of the whole business.  They
+were determined to be rid of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you wouldn't look at it that way, Miss Mary," he said gently.
+"I don't believe you need give up&mdash;if you'll only make an effort.  But
+it's fatal to give 'way: I've always told you that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  You always told me that.  You were always open and fair," she
+said wearily, "but now you see it is fatal, for I <I>have</I> given 'way.
+Please go," she added nervously.  "I feel more like crying.  Ask him to
+go, Miss Jessop..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice grew peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left
+her.  It was too bad, but there was nothing to do.  Once or twice in
+his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness,
+realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping
+over him, too, and that he had no power to help.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, you can't win out all the time," he said to himself
+philosophically, "and it isn't as if she wouldn't have every comfort.
+Old Jarvyse looks after them well: I'll say that for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The new butler met him as the lift reached the drawing-room floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Edmund would like to see you a moment, sir," he murmured.
+"He's&mdash;he's in the dining-room, doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung
+apartment.  He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave
+under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the
+peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked
+him for a moment.  Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual,
+even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand
+had a positively insolent angle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!  How do!" he said discontentedly.  "Been upstairs, I hear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Stanchon answered briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, ... how about it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry to say your aunt is a little worse to-day; it may be,
+probably is, nothing but a passing phase&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, go on!" Edmund burst out.  "Phase, nothing!  She's as dippy as
+they make 'em, Stanchon, and I'm through with it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The older man looked his disgust, but Edmund scowled and went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After day before yesterday afternoon, I told Suzanne I'd come to the
+end of my rope, and I meant it.  I suppose you heard about it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Miss Jessop knows.  Upsetting a whole luncheon, and one the girls
+had worked over, too, I can tell you!  Why, they had three reporters on
+their knees to hear about that luncheon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really?" Stanchon inquired politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  But Alida wouldn't let mother say a word.  And that was all
+right, too.  And then what does Aunt Mary do but say she's coming?  And
+mother weakened and said we'd have to let her, because either she is
+all right or she isn't, and according to you, we're not to admit she
+isn't&mdash;yet.  So she comes, and what does she do but insult two of the
+biggest swells there, right to their face!  And when Suzanne tried to
+carry it off, she just turns stubborn and never opens her mouth again.
+Queered the whole thing.  Broke the women all up.  Suzanne says, never
+again!  And I'm with her.  I had Jarvyse called in and he's going to
+make his final decision today.  Of course, if he wants to consult,
+we'll be glad&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Jarvyse and I will settle all that, thanks," Stanchon interrupted
+coldly.  "I regret that your sisters should have been annoyed, but as I
+explained to your mother, inconveniences of this sort would be bound to
+occur, and the only question was&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The only question is," Edmund blustered, "are we to be queered in New
+York for good by a woman who ought to have been shut up long ago!  It's
+up to me, now, as the man of the house, and I say, no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He dabbed his cigarette viciously into a wet ring on the silver tray
+beside him and filled a tiny glass from a decanter; his hand shook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon's mounting wrath subsided.  The boy became pathetic to him;
+behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and
+rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly
+shadow of a sickly middle-age, a warped and wasted maturity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry for you all," he said kindly.  "Don't think I don't
+appreciate the strain ... your mother has tried her best, I'm sure.
+And&mdash;and go slow on those cigarettes, Allen, why don't you?  They won't
+help that cough, you know.  And you told me you'd cut out the Scotch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that's all right," Edmund assured him.  "I was seasoned in the
+cradle, doc!  Remember the old man's cigars?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon put on his gloves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your father was a very strong man," he said quietly, "and a hard
+worker.  And I've already reminded you that he didn't inhale.  And for
+more years than you've lived, Allen, he worked out of doors.  I don't
+want to nag at you, but just give it a thought now and then.  And let
+me know if I can do anything for you, ever.  My regards to your
+sisters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he paused at the curb, a short man in heavy motoring furs stumbled
+out of a luxurious landaulet and would have gone down on the
+treacherous pavement without Stanchon's quick arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, doctor, all right," he smiled, as he braced himself for the
+little man's weight.  "Glad I was here.  I've just left Mary&mdash;she's
+getting a little unmanageable, I hear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes," the little man panted, "she'll do better out of the family.
+Yes, yes.  They often do, you know.  Position's perfectly anomalous
+here, you know&mdash;constant friction."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Stanchon.  "Let me walk up to the door with you&mdash;I've
+practiced on the steps, once today.  You make it ..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, clear paranoia," Jarvyse finished the sentence promptly.  "They go
+right along, you know.  Perfectly typical.  Good days&mdash;yes.  Of course.
+Everybody encouraged.  Come to a ladies' luncheon&mdash;fat in the fire
+directly.  No keeping servants, you know.  All that sort of thing.
+Ever show you my card-catalogue of women between thirty-eight and
+thirty-nine?  No?  Ask me some day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The younger man pressed the electric button and turned the bronze knob
+of the outer door, wrought and decorated like some great public tomb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks, I'd be interested," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You knew the brother, didn't you?" Jarvyse went on, breathing easier
+in the warmth of the vestibule.  "Nothing out of the way there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Absolutely not.  He had the constitution of a bull.  But I fear he's
+not handed it on to his son."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ugh, no!  Nasty little cub.  Those families don't last.  Daughters
+always stronger.  I give him fifteen ... eighteen years," the alienist
+said placidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The inner door opened and Stanchon turned to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come up and see the patient," Jarvyse suggested, over his shoulder,
+one glove already off.  "Pleased to have you, and so would she, of
+course.  You'll find her much happier."
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+But Miss Mary was not happier.  Freed of the contemptuous <I>brusquerie</I>
+of Edmund, the thinly-veiled dislike of the girls, the
+conscience-stricken attempts of her sister-in-law, she had felt for a
+time the relief of a strain abandoned, the comfort of a definite
+position.  They had come to see her, too, and their timid overtures of
+interest, their obvious surprise at the ease with which this great
+change had been effected, their frank amazement at the luxury and
+silken routine in which they found her, had almost established
+relations long since fallen out of use.  But the novelty had faded, the
+visits grew fewer and shorter, the very telephone messages languished;
+and as she sat brooding alone, in the few unoccupied half-hours that
+the omniscient System left her, a slow, sure conviction dropped like an
+acid on the clouded surface of her mind: she was alone.  She was no
+longer a part of life as it was ordinarily lived.  She and the others
+who shared that rich, tended seclusion were apart from the usages and
+responsibilities of the World that was counterfeited there.  They were
+unreal.  Through all the exercise and repose, the baths and
+manipulations, the music and the silences, the courtesies and the
+deprecations, the flowers and the birds that brought an artificial
+summer within the thick walls, one idea clanged like a bell through her
+weary mind: <I>This is not real</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Dr. Stanchon, who came in the intervals allowed by his work, she
+seemed sadly changed.  It was not that her face looked heavier and more
+fretfully lined; not that her voice grew more monotonous; not that she
+seemed sunk in the selfish stupor that her type of suffering invariably
+produces.  He had seen all this in others and seen it change for a
+better state.  No; in Miss Mary the settled pessimism of a deep
+conviction had an almost uncanny power of communicating itself to those
+about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's in bad, that one," one of the gardeners said to him, on a windy
+March day when he had hunted for her over half-a-dozen guarded acres,
+and found her sitting in one of her heavy silences under a sunny ledge
+of rock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's quiet and easy, but she's one of the worst of 'em, in my
+opinion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when she turned to him a moment later and said quietly: "Tell me,
+once for all, Dr. Stanchon, do you consider me insane?" his voice
+expressed all the simple sincerity of his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Mary, I tell you the truth&mdash;I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you know they'll never let me out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He braced himself.  "How can they, Miss Mary, when you won't
+promise&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should I promise anything, if I'm not insane?  Would you promise
+never to state your opinion in your own house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see!" he said gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond them the gardener struggled with a refractory horse that refused
+to draw his load of brush and dead leaves.  She stared at the group
+dully: six months ago she would have flinched at the great clambering
+hoofs and the man's danger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And even if I did give up and promise everything, do you believe I'd
+get out, doctor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see no reason&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't need to lie to me," she interrupted.  "When I signed that
+paper, they fooled me: it was for good.  It said six months&mdash;but it was
+for good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt a great sympathy for her.  It was hard, very hard.  And yet,
+what they had been through with her!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If only you hadn't refused to travel," he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I agreed to&mdash;I agreed to, last month," she cried, "even though I'm
+never well travelling, I agreed to&mdash;and what happened?  Dr. Jarvyse
+said it wouldn't be best for me!  And you did nothing..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could I, Miss Mary?" he urged.  "You know the only reason I see
+you so often is that I acquiesce and don't interfere.  The moment I
+thought it would do any good&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean you're not sure, yourself!" she said keenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I'm your friend," he said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her whole face changed.  An almost disconcerting brightness flashed
+over it.  Through all the heaviness and fatigue and despair that had
+yellowed her skin, dulled her eyes, and taken, it seemed, the very
+sheen from her black hair, her lost girlhood flared a moment.  With the
+inconstant emotion of a child she smiled at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you are," she murmured confidingly, "and I'll tell you
+something, because you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Miss Mary?" he said, but he sighed as he said it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you see how I'm dressed?" she half whispered.  He looked,
+uncomprehending, at the long light ulster she wore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Underneath, I'm in black," she said softly, "a whole suit.  I have a
+little bag packed right under this rock, and I have ninety dollars in
+my bag, here."  She tapped her waist, where a small shopping bag
+dangled.  "And I have an umbrella.  I always sit near this gate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you do such things, dear Miss Mary?" he said sadly.  "It does
+you no good&mdash;please try to believe me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never did, until I had the dream," she answered calmly.  "This is
+the third night I've had it.  I dreamed I was near some gate, and I
+looked down, and right before me on the path I saw a key&mdash;a great,
+brown key!  So I started to pick it up, and then I realised that I
+wasn't prepared, that I had no money, and that I'd just be caught and
+brought back.  Then I woke.  But I dreamed it over again the next
+night, so I packed the bag and got it out here under this steamer-rug,
+and asked for some money to buy presents when that embroidery woman
+came from Lakewood.  And I got it, of course, and bought some.  She
+said she was coming again.  So I got more.  Last night I dreamed it
+again, and it looked like this gate, in the dream.  That's three times.
+Suzanne has those dreams, you know&mdash;she's like me, Suzanne&mdash;and they
+always happen.  So perhaps mine will.  I tell you, because you're my
+friend.  And you would never have put me here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon bit his lip.  A sudden disgust of everything seized him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I wouldn't have put you here&mdash;once," he said slowly, then rose
+abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hi, there, hold him! hold him, you fool!" he shouted.  "Sit on his
+head!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gardener's horse, beyond all control, now, was rolling furiously,
+neighing and snapping.  The man clung to the reins, keeping his
+distance, but as the animal gained his feet with a lurch, his finger
+slipped and he, too, rolled over and over down the little slope to the
+gravelled path.  Stanchon was after the horse before the attendant had
+picked himself up and was calling him angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be alarmed, miss," the man panted.  "The doctor and I can settle
+him!" and staggering to his feet made off to the rescue.  As he ran,
+something clinked and rattled about his boots, and a bunch of keys lay
+quiet on the gravel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary rose instantly, walked to them and put her foot over them,
+but the man was several yards away and Stanchon and the horse were
+struggling towards the wagon.  Miss Mary stooped down and lifted the
+keys; all had metal tags and the one in her hand read, <I>East Gate, by
+shrubbery</I>.  She stepped to the ledge, drew out a fair sized black
+hand-bag, tucked her umbrella under her arm and looked about her.  The
+nearest gate, set in dense shrubbery, lay in a direct line with the
+ledge, and as she slipped behind it the two men and the horse were
+wiped out of her vision.  With her usual quiet, long step she reached
+the gate, fitted the key, turned it and opened the gate.  She closed it
+behind her, considered a moment, then tossed the keys back among the
+thick, glossy rhododendrons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just as I dreamed," she muttered, "but where is the carriage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood on the edge of a road she had never seen, a quarter of a mile
+from the great wrought-iron entrance that had closed behind her half a
+year ago, and looked vaguely about her, at the mercy of Fate.  And
+Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the
+hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny
+little electric run-about of Miss Winifred Jarvyse, a handsome young
+Diana, who had never seen the inside of the great walled estate next
+her father's private grounds, so that she waved her hand cordially,
+stopped out of pure good feeling for the absent-minded stranger in the
+beautiful coat, and asked if she could drop her at the station!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, yes, thank you," said Miss Mary, still vaguely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's going to rain and I've no cover on," said Winifred.  "It's a pity
+about your coat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can turn it," said Miss Mary, and standing up for a moment she
+slipped the sleeves of the ulster, shook herself slightly and sat down
+a totally different woman.  So that when (such was the perfection of
+the System) a quick call to the ticket office set the agent searching
+twenty minutes later for a tall woman in a light tan coat, alone,
+without luggage, he replied very truly that no such person had entered
+his station.  Only a friend of Miss Jarvyse had come to the 2:15, a
+lady in a dark plaid ulster with bag and umbrella, in Miss Jarvyse's
+car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you found your friends&mdash;er&mdash;doing well?" said Miss Jarvyse
+delicately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, they were very well," said Miss Mary gravely.  And she took
+the 2:15 for New York.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing further than the immediate moment was in her mind.  To her
+thought, long confused and fleeting, the dreamlike character of this
+sudden change seemed natural and simple.  She had no plan of campaign,
+no route of escape, no future.  Her mind, relaxed from the quick
+decision that had cleared its mists in the moment of action, began to
+dull and settle and fall into its old rut of mechanical despair, when
+suddenly the voices of two women in the seat behind her grew louder and
+rose above the jar of the train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so she decided to get it over while he was in the hospital.  She
+thought the dye would have to wear off gradually, but there's a place
+on West Twenty-eighth Street&mdash;near Sixth Avenue, I think&mdash;where a
+French woman guarantees to remove any dye, perfectly harmlessly, in two
+hours.  So she had it done, and he was delighted.  My dear, she was
+fifty, and the grey hair really was more becoming to her.  Everybody
+thinks so.  But nobody knew her&mdash;I never saw such a change, at first.
+If you know anybody who wants it done, just send them there.  Some
+French name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And just as Miss Mary was drifting off to that dull world of grievances
+in which she dwelt habitually, a new idea, as strong and definite as
+that which took her through the gate caught and held her, and she wrote
+in a little leather book in her bag, "28th St. west, near Sixth."  Some
+primitive instinct of caution directed her to a street car in
+preference to a hansom or taxi-cab, and she found the French woman's
+small, musty establishment with an ease that surprised her.  Her coat,
+obviously "imported," the elegance of her bag and umbrella, the air of
+custom with which she submitted to others' ministrations, brought her
+quick service, and in less than the guaranteed two hours she left
+Madame, whose very considerable fee she paid with gloved hands, thus,
+through sheer inadvertence, concealing the one trace of her
+identity&mdash;her massive and beautiful rings.  For no one of Dr. Jarvyse's
+detectives could be expected to look at an iron-grey woman in black,
+when searching for a black-haired woman in blue plaid.  And none of
+them, not the great Jarvyse, nor her maid even, knew that Miss Mary had
+dyed her hair for ten years!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she stood by a little optician's, on one of the great avenues,
+later, gazing fascinated at her strange reflection in a large glass
+there, terrified at her daring, doubtful if her freedom could endure,
+two errand-girls, peering in with her in the imitative New York
+fashion, held her with an idle sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you know Miss Mahoney with those glasses?  I nearly fell over when
+I seen her, honest!  She was awful cross&mdash;the boss himself cut her
+dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, what do you think of that now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' they're only window-glass, too!  She told one o' the fitters.  She
+can stare at the ladies better she says, when they try to beat her
+down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They moved on, but Miss Mary entered the shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I get a pair of eye-glasses made of window-glass?" she asked him
+simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly, madam," and one would have supposed that leaders of fashion
+generally were wearing these articles, so swiftly and unsmilingly did
+he produce them and adjust them to her strong, dark eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wonderful how they change a person, though," he admitted.  "You
+wouldn't believe it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The price seemed very small to Miss Mary, whose last purchase in that
+line had been a tortoise-shell lorgnette for her sister-in-law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had eaten very lightly at luncheon, for food was tasteless to her,
+of late, and she had been so followed, tended and directed in all the
+operations of life that she actually failed to recognise her sensations
+as those of hunger.  But her unwonted exertions, the strain on her
+flagging brain, the stimulus of this unprecedented day, all combined to
+flush her cheek feverishly and she felt strangely weak.  For the first
+time it flashed over her cleared faculties that she must go somewhere
+and at once.  New York was too dangerous for her; she must leave it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A very panic of terror seized her and she half expected to hear Dr.
+Jarvyse's soft voice at her shoulder.  She started from the shop like
+one pursued, and hurried foolishly on and on in an ecstasy of flight.
+The streets were now dark, and Miss Mary, who had begun life in New
+York with her own private hansom, felt singularly out of place in the
+jostling crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped at the foot of an elevated railway station, and more
+because she was pushed up the steps by the hurrying mass of humanity
+that scurried like ants up and down, than for any other reason, climbed
+wearily up.  As she sat pressed against a dirty man with a bundle, a
+sudden inconsequent thought struck her, and she removed her gloves in a
+leisurely way, took off her rings, dropped them into a roll of
+chamois-skin in the large bag, added to them a diamond cross and
+pendant from the lace at her neck and put on her gloves again.  The
+dirty man stared at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she lifted her eyes to a large sign above the car-windows and the
+sign read:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Avoid the biting March winds.  You will find quiet, an even
+temperature and perfect seclusion among the pines at restful Lakewood.
+Take the ferry at 23d St.</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So that when the guard announced Twenty-third Street, Miss Mary got up,
+went down the stairs, tumbled with surprising facility upon a
+cross-town car and made for the ferry.  And the dirty man went down the
+stairs with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fate put Miss Mary on just the right boat for a Lakewood Special, and
+hunger cleared her mind to the extent of throwing her card-case over
+the rail on the way across.  Her umbrella and ulster she had left
+behind on the elevated train, not being accustomed to carry such
+things, and they were found by a thrifty old lady in the
+second-hand-clothing line, who annexed them silently and forever.  So
+that when she arrived at the Lakewood Station and fell among the
+cabbies and hotel touts she was the perfect type of the no-longer-young
+spinster, unaccompanied, awkward and light of luggage, presumably light
+of purse.  The cabbies left her therefore, unchallenged, to a lad as
+shy and awkward as herself, who mumbled something about quiet,
+reasonable rooms, and received her yielded bag with a surprise as great
+as her own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary was by now almost light-headed from hunger and excitement.
+At the slightest pressure she would have told her story to the first
+interested stranger, and thus ended her adventure, most surely.  But
+Fate led her to the door of one too full of trouble to heed Miss
+Mary's.  To Mrs. Meeker she was a lodger certainly, a boarder
+possibly&mdash;in any event, a source of income.  So long had she been
+waiting for Miss Mary that she fairly snatched her bag from her and
+pushed her up the faded, decent stairs into the faded, decent bedroom
+with the cracked china toilet-set.  Any one, <I>any one</I> would have been
+welcome to Mrs. Meeker, and Miss Mary's quiet elegance and handsome
+travelling-bag were far beyond her hopes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A real lady," she whispered to her nephew.  "Ask if she'd like a
+little something on a tray, Georgie.  I could poach that egg, and
+there's tea.  I won't say anything about a week in advance.  She looks
+tired to death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary's famishing senses cried out loudly at sight of the meagre
+tray, and as the egg and tea passed her lips a strange, eager sensation
+was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad
+she was alive!  She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could
+have wished it doubled; the cheap tea filled her nostrils with a balmy
+odour; she was hungry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And hardly had the food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head
+dropped forward.  Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her
+and she dozed in her chair.  But some instinct forced her to her feet
+as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and
+pocketbook, she held herself awake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to pay," she murmured, "and then I'll&mdash;I'll go to bed.  Will
+you send some one, please?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She meant some one to undress her, but Mrs. Meeker did not know this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's&mdash;it's twelve a week, with board," she said, her eyes lighting at
+the yellow bills in her lodger's hand, "and&mdash;oh, dear, yes, two weeks
+is ample, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My cards are lost," said Miss Mary fretfully.  "I can't think where I
+left them.  The man or somebody will know.  Ask&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She started to say, "Ask the doctor," for her memory was swallowed,
+nearly, by sleepiness, and a curious woman would have had her secret in
+a twinkle.  But Mrs. Meeker was too thankful to be curious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Mary," said the other, yawning, and the landlady repeated, "Yes,
+Miss Merry.  Can't I help you, you being so tired and all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she stuck out her feet for her shoes, just like a baby," she
+confided to Georgie, later.  "She went off before I got her undressed,
+really; her folks ought to 've sent some one with her, worn out as she
+was!  You go 'round the first thing in the morning and tell the agent
+I've got a fine boarder, and more expected.  I feel real encouraged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And all that night and all the next day Miss Mary slept dreamlessly,
+for the first time in years without a drug to help her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It did not seem unusual that Mrs. Meeker should have unpacked her few
+things and laid them in the drawer of the battered bureau: some one
+always unpacked her things.  And when, strangely weak and relaxed, she
+lay for three days more and ate dutifully from the tray, dozing between
+whiles, nobody questioned her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the fourth day she woke into a grey, despondent world again.  The
+old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible
+dumbness settling over her.  She had long ceased to fight it, now; she
+only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her.  But she never knew
+what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little
+woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands;
+she was dressed for a journey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My brother's down with a stroke," she said abruptly, "Georgie's
+father, and wants to see me.  I'll have to nurse him, prob'ly, and I
+s'pose his sending means he's friendly again.  It may just be I won't
+need to come back, and I'm glad, of course, for I'm worth my keep to
+him any day, and he'd ought to have took Georgie long ago.  I'll soon
+know, and I'll write you, and what I wanted to ask was, would you be
+willin' to wait till I find out?  It might be only temp'ry, and then
+I'd be sorry to lose a boarder.  Will you stay till you hear, anyway?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary nodded dumbly.  She could not speak and she was ashamed that
+she could not; <I>she had never been ashamed before</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's good," said Mrs. Meeker quickly, "and the lady next door'll
+give you meals.  I'll settle with her&mdash;Mrs. Palmer.  Her board's good,
+and I'll only charge you five for the room.  That makes a month you've
+paid for.  D'you see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again, Miss Mary nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I'll get right off.  It's Philadelphia I'm going to, and I'll
+write you as soon's I know.  But I count on you to stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I'll stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary forced the words harshly and it seemed that they would tear
+her lips, so hard they came.  But they came, and they sufficed for Mrs.
+Meeker, who went out of her solitary lodger's life as quickly as she
+had come into it, for Miss Mary never saw her again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On that day she dressed herself slowly, and with a certain clumsiness,
+took her little shopping bag and bought, with economy and taste, a very
+fair outfit of simple clothing for the seventy dollars she had gained
+on the strength of the peddler of embroideries; she passed the
+peddler's very shop on her way.  Underwear, a black dress, rubber
+overshoes and a plain umbrella&mdash;nothing was forgotten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When my money is all gone, I will begin to sell the jewelry," she
+thought, for she knew that she could live comfortably for the rest of
+her life on less than the value of the emeralds and diamonds.  She did
+her shopping in a public victoria and brought the parcels home in it:
+it was her only extravagance that day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she got out at the door of the little faded house and paid the
+driver, it occurred to her that she had left it unlocked during her
+absence, and in her remorse over this and the bustle of going to the
+strange dining-room for luncheon, whither she was summoned by a
+slatternly waitress, she forgot completely that on this day she had
+sworn to stay alone in her room, to conceal from strangers her malady
+of melancholy dumbness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm <I>not</I> that way&mdash;I'm <I>not</I>!" she whispered to herself in
+amazement, "why, I talked to the clerks all the morning!" And so she
+had, and none of the dozen at Mrs. Palmer's table that noon remarked
+anything further than that Miss Merry seemed a quiet, shy sort of
+person with a tendency to vagueness and little idea of passing the
+butter dish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sorted and arranged her purchases all the afternoon; the little
+roll of chamois-skin she kept carefully in the wrist-bag which never
+left her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At dinner Mrs. Palmer took her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss
+Mary's blood turned to water.  "She knows about me!" she thought and
+nearly fell to the ground from weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry I startled you," said Mrs. Palmer, "Mrs. Meeker said you
+weren't any too strong, I remember.  I only wanted to say that I've
+sent three more roomers over to your house&mdash;she'll be only too glad, I
+know.  You don't mind, Miss Merry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  I don't mind," she answered, and her heart gave a great pump of
+relief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It'll be more comfortable at night, too," said Mrs. Palmer.  "That
+makes the four rooms full, now, and I'll see that your room gets done
+up every day with the others.  I presume we'll hear from her soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day she approached Miss Mary with an open letter in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Meeker's to live with her brother, now, he's paralysed," she
+announced.  "She's sent me a check for the rent and you've paid
+twenty-four dollars, I see.  I'm going over to pack up her stuff and
+she'll sell me the rest reasonable enough.  I'm going to take her
+house, too.  There's a new roomer comes to-day&mdash;I think I'll put him in
+her old room.  Or if you," with a shrewd glance at Miss Mary, "wanted
+to economise at all.  I'd rent you hers for four dollars and give this
+gentleman yours.  And I'm usually paid in advance, so if you could make
+it convenient&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll attend to it," said Miss Mary, "but I'll keep the room, I think.
+I don't like change."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went up to her room, and Dr. Jarvyse would have been amazed at the
+easy quickness of her gait.  She had it all planned, now&mdash;the diamonds
+should go first, and then she would buy some fruit and a plant for her
+room.  She liked her room very much; she did as she pleased in it and
+no one spied on her or suggested ways of passing the time.  Was it some
+faint memory of her room as a girl, before her brother made his great
+fortune, that found this dull, half-worn chamber so home-like and
+soothing?  Every afternoon she dusted it, as the chambermaid suggested
+most ladies expected to, and once she had turned the mattress and made
+the bed, when the girl felt ill.  It gave her a sense of competence and
+executive ability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now she went to the little chamois skin roll, unpicked the tight knots
+carefully, opened it&mdash;and dropped on her knees.  The roll was empty.
+On the compartment where the diamond cross had fitted, stretched a
+soiled, streaked thumb mark; mechanically she sniffed it&mdash;it smelled of
+tar.  The dirty fellow with the bundle who had followed her down the
+elevated steps had smelled of tar, too, had Miss Mary remembered it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, it was over.  She never had a moment's doubt.  She had no means,
+she could not starve, nobody would keep her, and she must go back to
+Dr. Jarvyse.  She groaned in anguish as she looked about her dear, safe
+room and thought of the horrible luxury of that guarded prison, the
+birds and the flowers and cruel kindness of those strangers who knew
+every corner of her bureau, every word of her letters.  Still, it must
+be.  The Allens would never take her back, and after this, she would be
+watched as never before.  It must be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She met Mrs. Palmer on the threshold of what she had begun to call her
+home.  Mrs. Palmer looked worried and spoke sharply to the untidy
+cleaning-woman behind her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I do hope I can trust you," she said, "for I can't stay here to
+watch.  Three new gentlemen for meals, and I have no table for them!
+And this whole house to be cleaned!  And not a girl to be hired in the
+town!  I wish I had another room&mdash;I could rent it this afternoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can have mine," said Miss Mary quietly.  "I have no money and I
+must go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Palmer looked shrewdly at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What made you think you had, before?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had some valuable jewelry&mdash;I expected to sell it.  It must have been
+stolen before I got here.  I have nothing here to pay with, but I can
+send it back to you from New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Folks rich?" asked Mrs. Palmer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary nodded carelessly.  That people should be rich was nothing to
+her, and the practiced landlady saw this in a twinkling: no
+protestations could have proved so much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you don't get on well, I s'pose," she suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  We don't get on well," Miss Mary repeated dully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess it's often so," said the other.  Her placid acceptance of
+these facts was very comforting to Miss Mary.  She did not realise how
+different she herself was from the vague, scared woman of a week ago;
+nor how her quiet, well-dressed taciturnity impressed Mrs. Palmer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You find this agrees with you here, don't you?" the landlady asked,
+tapping her teeth with a key, thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I like it here.  I would have liked to stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Miss Merry, how'd you like to stay and help me?" said the
+landlady.  "To tell the truth, I've bit off more than I can chew, as
+they say.  I never had such a run of boarders, and it's all the girl
+can do to look after the other house.  What keeps my people is the
+cooking, you see, and that I do mostly myself.  I'm not fit to talk to
+the ladies and gentlemen, with my hair all stringy, and smelling of
+cooking.  I know it well enough.  I had some thought of asking Mrs.
+Meeker to go in with me and look after this house and take the head of
+the table, and keep the books.  But you could do it, if you wanted, and
+you'd look more&mdash;more&mdash;not that Mrs. Meeker wasn't a lady, of course,
+but&mdash;well, some people look the part better than others."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Mary's brain whirled.  The head of the table!  The books!  It was
+impossible.  Why, the woman didn't realise that she was talking to
+a&mdash;a&mdash;Patient, then!  (They were never called anything but Patients at
+Dr. Jarvyse's.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I'm afraid I haven't the experience," she began tremulously.
+"I&mdash;sometimes my head&mdash;I can't always talk to people&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you talk enough," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, kindly.  "That's just
+what it is: some talk too much.  Mr. Swartout (that's the literary
+gentleman in brown&mdash;the one with the grey moustache) said you were so
+quiet and dignified.  You know you sat at the end, today, for
+breakfast, and he said to me it would be pleasant if you kept that
+place.  That's what put it into my head, really.  And I guess you've
+had experience enough.  Miss Jenny, that went with you through the
+store when you bought those clothes (I know her, you see) said she'd
+never seen seventy dollars used with more judgment nor made to go
+further.  I noticed what she said."  She nodded shrewdly, as one who
+knew the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't want to urge, but will you or won't you?  I'd give board
+and lodging and, say, twenty-five a month, till I could do better.  The
+Palmer House has just got to the point where there'll have to be a
+change, or it'll get second-class."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, I will try," said Miss Mary huskily, and in a moment she
+was alone, for Mrs. Palmer was half across the side-yard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just boss that woman, then, and see if she can get the house clean by
+evening," she called over her shoulder.  "I leave her to you, Miss
+Merry, and it's a weight off me, I can tell you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Miss Mary had paused to think, she would have collapsed into tears
+and sent for the doctor, but she could not stop, for the cleaning-woman
+addressed her briskly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose everything better come right out and get a good beating?"
+she said, shouldering her mop; and Miss Mary controlled her quivering
+lips, pressed her hands to her head, which must not, <I>could not</I> fail
+her now, and agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late in the afternoon Mrs. Palmer dashed over, her hair flying, her
+dress untidy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, how'd you get along?" she began, but paused in the doorway of
+the fresh, aired house, taking in, at one eagle glance, the white
+curtains behind shining panes, the polished woodwork, the re-arranged
+furniture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess that cleaning-woman met her match," she announced dryly.  "You
+must be nearly dead, Miss Merry!  And all ready for dinner, too!  I've
+had a clean table cloth put on, and what do you think that Delia said?
+'I'll just rub out me apron an' press it off,' she said, 'for if
+<I>she's</I> to head the table, I can see she'll be particular!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing could have kept Miss Mary up but the fact that her own room was
+yet uncleaned.  The lust of soap and water had entered into her, and
+she ate and answered and passed the butter dish like one in a dream,
+looking forward with the last of her strength to sleeping in an
+immaculate chamber.  And at half-past one in the morning, she did so.
+The warm bath in the painted tin tub was a luxury she had never
+imagined; as the sheets received her tired body, aching in every joint,
+she tasted for the one moment before sleep blotted out consciousness
+the ecstasy of earned rest after steady, worried toil, and it was very
+sweet.  Privilege of the clumsiest hod-carrier, it was utterly new to
+Miss Mary, and she in her innocence, thought it due to delight at the
+prospect of board and lodging and, say, twenty-five dollars a month!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not know that she had hummed, unconsciously, during the
+afternoon, a song of her early girlhood; nor that the blood, long
+stagnant, that had raced through every vein as she stooped and beat and
+lifted and cleansed, was driving the crawling vapours from that
+mysterious grey tissue in her skull that had so long plagued and
+confused her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor did she know that the flowers on the table, the fresh chintz covers
+for the worn lodging-house furniture, so recklessly provided by her,
+the quick neatness of an apotheosised Delia and the gentle, reserved
+welcome of the new housekeeper herself, were lifting the commonplace
+boarding-house to a higher and still higher level.  She only knew that
+she worked harder and harder and never wept nor shuddered nor looked
+out of black apathy into a cruel tantalizing world, whose inhabitants
+had evil thoughts of her and wished and worked her ill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just as I always say," Mrs. Palmer observed, one afternoon in
+May, as, resting in frank gingham and enveloping apron, she permitted
+herself the luxury of a cup of tea in Miss Mary's own room.  "What's
+bred in the bones comes out in the blood.  I had a gift for cooking
+since I was ten, and there's little I'll thank a French chef to tell
+me, Miss Merry.  But I can't impress the boarders.  I never could.  And
+I can't get the work out of servant-girls without screaming at
+'em&mdash;never could.  And look at you!  Every man of 'em&mdash;that we
+wanted&mdash;coming up two dollars a week, like gentlemen.  And all for the
+privilege of having this house bachelor.  I thought they would.  And
+every man Jack of 'em booked for November first again.  I tell you
+what, Miss Merry, we'll paint both houses this fall, and I wouldn't
+wonder, what with this spring being so backward and the season so long,
+if we could paint and paper inside, right through, would you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said the housekeeper, rocking gently, luxuriating in the
+half-hour rest after a hard day on her feet with one servant gone.
+"No, I wouldn't.  That would be nice.  I have something saved.  You can
+take that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at you!" cried Mrs. Palmer.  "Saving on thirty a month!  We'll
+pretty near go halves, Miss Merry, from next November.  What's bred in
+the bone, as I said&mdash;you were born for the business!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the sister of Hiram Z. Allen, late Captain of Finance, blushed with
+pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+It was in March of the next year, as she sat at her neat desk in the
+little room they had made into an office when they created a sun
+parlour out of the side verandah, that Delia, responsible head of three
+maids now, ushered a gentleman in to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The doctor, Miss Merry, that came yesterday about the rooms for his
+patient in the cottage," said Delia softly.  "I can't seem to get the
+name, ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well," said Miss Mary and rose, plumper by eight or ten pounds
+than she had been, dignified in black broadcloth, only enough of
+reserve and weighing of her words about her to mark her off slightly
+from the most of her sex and business.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Merry?  I am Dr. Stanchon, I have been recommended most
+strongly&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She swayed before him, then sank into her chair, grasping the arms.  He
+looked courteously alarmed, stared, stared again, then snatched her
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not&mdash;it can't be&mdash;why, Miss Mary!"  She gasped and trembled.  The
+year dropped off from her like a loosened cloak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Dr. Stanchon, don't, <I>don't</I> tell him!" she moaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Him? him?" he repeated.  "Why, Miss Mary, were you here all the time?
+And your hair&mdash;you were ill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It used to be coloured&mdash;you never knew," she murmured.  "I mean
+Dr.&mdash;Dr. Jarvyse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you are the one Swartout described to me&mdash;the one he's in love
+with?  Miss Mary, it was wrong of you&mdash;I looked for months.  It was
+cruel.  And when they found the emeralds and the cross&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did they find them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, certainly&mdash;the stones were all listed, you know.  Didn't you read
+it in the papers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never see them," she said quietly.  She had gathered herself
+together for what must be the struggle of her life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell him?  I can't go back.  I'd die first!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why should you go back?" he asked in amazement.  "Surely you'll
+let them know?  They gave up hope long ago.  You needn't go back to
+them, if you're happy here, of course, and indeed, I wouldn't, Miss
+Mary&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't mean go back <I>there</I>," she interrupted gently, "I mean to
+the&mdash;to&mdash;Dr.&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know, of course, what's the matter," she said quietly, "but nobody
+here does.  They think I'm&mdash;I'm like anybody else.  I don't mind any
+more, since I've been so busy.  I haven't had time to worry over it.
+But still, I know it.&mdash;And so I told Mr. Swartout it would be
+impossible.  It wouldn't be right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanchon seized both of her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For heaven's sake, Miss Mary, what do you think's the matter with
+you?" he cried, his voice breaking in spite of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't it so?" she queried wistfully.  "Do you really mean it?&mdash;But who
+cured me, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are the wonderful person I've been hearing about all this time
+from Swartout," Stanchon said, trying to speak lightly, his grey eyes
+firm on her anxious brown ones, "I should say that working for your
+living did it, Miss Mary!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it may be he was right: as a diagnostician he has been widely
+commended.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CHILDREN
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It all came over me, as you might say, when I began to tell the new
+housemaid about the work.  Not that I hadn't known before, of course,
+what a queer sort of life was led in that house; it was hard enough the
+first months, goodness knows.  But then, a body can get used to
+anything.  And there was no harm in it&mdash;I'll swear that to my dying
+day!  Although a lie's a lie, any way you put it, and if all I've
+told&mdash;but I'll let you judge for yourself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I say, it was when I began to break Margaret in, that it all came
+over me, and I looked about me, in a way of speaking, for how I should
+put it to her.  She'd been house-parlor-maid in a big establishment in
+the country and knew what was expected of her well enough, and I saw
+from the first she'd fit in nicely with us; a steady, quiet girl, like
+the best of the Scotch, looking to save her wages, and get to be
+housekeeper herself, some day, perhaps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when Hodges brought the tray with the porringers on it and the
+silver mug, for me to see, and said, "I suppose this young lady'll take
+these up, Miss Umbleby?" and when Margaret looked surprised and said,
+"I didn't know there were children in the family&mdash;am I supposed to wait
+on them, too?"&mdash;then, as I say, it all came over me, and for the first
+time in five years I really saw where I stood, like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stared at Hodges and then at the girl, and the tray nearly went down
+amongst us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say you haven't told her, Sarah?" says Hodges (and that
+was the first time that ever he called me by my given name).
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's told me nothing," Margaret answers rather short, "and if it's
+invalid children or feeble-minded, I take it most unkind, Miss Umbleby,
+for I've never cared for that sort of thing, and could have had my
+twenty-five dollars a month this long time, if I'd wanted to go out as
+nurse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take the tray up this time, yourself, Mr. Hodges, please," I said,
+"and I'll have a little talk with Margaret," and I sat down and
+smoothed my black silk skirt (I always wore black silk of an afternoon)
+nervously enough, I'll be bound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The five years rolled away like yesterday&mdash;as they do now&mdash;as they do
+now&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw myself, in my mind's eye, new to the place, and inclined to feel
+strange, as I always did when I made a change, though I was twenty-five
+and no chicken, but rather more settled than most, having had my
+troubles early and got over them.  I'd just left my place&mdash;chambermaid
+and seamstress&mdash;in a big city house, and though it was September, I was
+looking out for the country, for I was mortal tired of the noise and
+late hours and excitement that I saw ahead of me.  It was parties and
+balls every night and me sitting up to undress the young ladies, for
+they kept no maid, like so many rich Americans, and yet some one must
+do for them.  There was no housekeeper either, and the mistress was not
+very strong and we had to use our own responsibility more than I
+liked&mdash;for I wasn't paid for that, do you see, and that's what they
+forget in this country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I've got you suited at last, Sarah," the head of the office
+had said to me, "a nice, quiet place in the country, good pay and light
+work, but everything as it should be, you understand.  Four in help
+besides the housekeeper and only one in family.  Church within a mile
+and every other Sunday for yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was just what I wanted, and I packed my box thankfully and left
+New York for good, I hoped, and I got my wish, for I've never seen the
+inside of it since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A middle-aged coachman in good, quiet country livery, met me at the
+little station, and though he was a still-mouthed fellow and rather
+reserved, I made out quite a little idea of the place on the way.  The
+mistress, Mrs. Childress, was a young widow, deep in her mourning, so
+there was no company.  The housekeeper was her old nurse, who had
+brought her up.  John, who drove me, was coachman-gardener, and the
+cook was his wife&mdash;both Catholics.  Everything went on very quiet and
+regular and it was hoped that the new upstairs maid wouldn't be one for
+excitement and gaiety.  The inside man had been valet to Mr. Childress
+and was much trusted and liked by the family.  I could see that old
+John was a bit jealous in that direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove in through a black iron gate with cut stone posts and old
+black iron lanterns on top, and the moment we were inside the gates I
+began to take a fancy to the place.  It wasn't kept up like the places
+at home, but it was neat enough to show that things were taken thought
+for, and the beds of asters and dahlias and marigolds as we got near
+the house seemed so home-like and bright to me, I could have cried for
+comfort.  Childerstone was the name of the place; it was carved on a
+big boulder by the side of the entrance, and just as we drove up to the
+door John stopped to pick some dahlias for the house (being only me in
+the wagon) and I took my first good look at my home for twenty years
+afterward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was something about it that went to my heart.  It was built of
+grey cut stone in good-sized blocks, square, with two windows each side
+the hall door.  To some it might have seemed cold-looking, but not to
+me, for one side was all over ivy, and the thickness of the walls and
+the deep sills looked solid and comfortable after those nasty
+brown-stone things all glued to each other in the city.  It looked old
+and respectable and settled, like, and the sun, just at going down,
+struck the windows like fire and the clean panes shone.  There was that
+yellow light over everything and that stillness, with now and then a
+leaf or so dropping quietly down, that makes the fall of the year so
+pleasant, to my mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house stood in beeches and the trunks of them were grey like the
+house and the leaves all light lemon-coloured, like the sky, and that's
+the way I always think of Childerstone&mdash;grey and yellow and clean and
+still.  Just a few rooks (you call them crows here), went over the
+house, and except for their cry as they flew, there wasn't a sound
+about the place.  I can see how others might have found it sad, but it
+never seemed so to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John set me down at the servants' entrance and there, before ever I'd
+got properly into the hall, the strangeness began.  The cook in her
+check apron was kneeling on the floor in front of the big French range
+with the tears streaming down her face, working over her rosary beads
+and gabbling to drive you crazy.  Over her stood a youngish but
+severe-appearing man in a white linen coat like a ship's steward,
+trying to get her up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, Katey," he was saying, "come, woman, up with you and
+help&mdash;she'll do no harm, the poor soul!  Look after her, now, and I'll
+send for the doctor and see to madam&mdash;it's only a fit, most like!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he saw me and ran forward to give a hand to my box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're the chambermaid, Miss, I'm sure," he said.  "I'm sorry to say
+you'll find us a bit upset.  The housekeeper's down with a stroke of
+some sort and the madam's none too strong herself.  Are you much of a
+hand to look after the sick?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not so clumsy as some," I said.  "Let me see her," and so we left
+the cook to her prayers and he carried my box to my room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I got into a print dress and apron and went to the housekeeper's room.
+She was an elderly person and it looked to me as if she was in her last
+sickness.  She didn't know any one and so I was as good as another, and
+I had her tidy and comfortable in bed by the time the doctor came.  He
+said she would need watching through the night and left some medicine,
+but I could see he had little hope for her.  I made up a bed in the
+room and all that night she chattered and muttered and took me for
+different ones, according as her fever went and came.  Towards morning
+she got quiet, and as I thought, sensible again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you a nurse?" she says to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Mrs. Shipman, be still and rest," I told her, to soothe her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm glad the children are sent away," she went on, after a bit.
+"'Twould break their mother's heart if they got the fever.  Are the
+toys packed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes," I answered, "all packed and sent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be sure there's enough frocks for Master Robertson," she begged me.
+"He's so hard on them and his aunties are so particular.  And my baby
+must have her woolly rabbit at night or her darling heart will be just
+broken!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rabbit is packed," I said, "and I saw to the frocks myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There's but one way with the sick when they're like that, and that's to
+humour them, you see.  So she slept and I got a little nap for myself.
+I was glad the children were away by next morning, for she was worse,
+the cook lost her head, and managed to break the range so that the
+water-back leaked and John and Hodges were mopping and mending all day.
+The madam herself had a bad turn and the doctor (a New York doctor for
+madam, you may be sure!) brought out a handsome, dark woman, the
+trained hospital nurse, with him.  Madam wasn't allowed to know how bad
+her old nurse was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it turned out that I'd been a week in the house without ever seeing
+my mistress.  The nurse and I would meet on the stairs and chat a
+little, evenings, and once I took a turn in the grounds with her.  She
+was a sensible sort of girl, not a bit above herself, as our English
+nursing-sisters are, sometimes, but very businesslike, as they say, and
+a good, brisk way with her.  She saw a lot more than she spoke of, Miss
+Jessop did, I'll warrant!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a good thing the children are sent away," I said.  "They always
+add to the bother when there's sickness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, are there children?" says she.  "Oh, yes, a boy and a girl," I
+answered, "poor old Mrs. Shipman is forever talking about them.  She
+thinks she's their nurse, it seems, as she was their mother's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish they were here, then," says she, "for I don't like the looks of
+my patient at all.  She doesn't speak seven words a day, and there's
+really little or nothing the matter with her, that I can see.  She's
+nervous and she's low and she wants cheering, that's all.  I wonder the
+doctor doesn't see it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night, after both patients were settled, she came up to my room
+and took a glance at the old lady, who was going fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Childress will soon have to know about this," she said and then,
+suddenly, "Are you sure about the children, Sarah?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure about them?" I repeated after her.  "In what way, Miss Jessop?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That there are any," says she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course," I answered, "Mrs. Shipman talks of nothing else.
+They're with their aunty, in New Jersey, somewhere.  It's a good thing
+there are some, for from what she says when she's rambling, the house
+and all the property would go out of the family otherwise.  It's been
+five generations in the Childress family, but the nearest now is a
+cousin who married a Jew, and the family hate her for it.  But Master
+Robertson makes it all safe, Mrs. Shipman says."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a queer thing," said she.  "I took in a dear little picture of
+the boy and girl this afternoon, to cheer her up a bit, and told her to
+try to think they were the real ones, who'd soon be with her, for that
+matter, and so happy to see their dear mamma, and she went white as a
+sheet and fainted in my arms.  Of course, I didn't refer to it again.
+She's quiet now, holding the picture, but I feared they were dead and
+you hadn't known."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," said I.  "I'm sure not," and then I remembered that I'd been
+told there was but one in family.  However, that's often said when
+there's a nurse to take care of small children (though it's not quite
+fair, perhaps), and I was certain of the children, anyway, for there
+were toys all about Mrs. Shipman's room and some seed-cookies and
+"animal-crackers," as they call those odd little biscuits, in a tin on
+her mantel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, we were soon to learn something that made me, at least, all
+the more curious.  The doctor came that morning and told Miss Jessop
+that her services would be no longer required, after he had seen her
+patient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Childress is perfectly recovered," he said, "and she has
+unfortunately conceived a grudge against you, my dear girl.  I need
+you, anyway, in town.  Poor old Shipman can't last the night now, and I
+want all that business disposed of very quietly.  I have decided not to
+tell Mrs. Childress until it is all over and the funeral done with.
+She is in a very morbid state, and as I knew her husband well I have
+taken this step on my own responsibility.  Hodges seems perfectly able
+to run things, and to tell the truth, it would do your mistress far
+more good to attend to that herself," he said, turning to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be a good thing for the poor woman to have some one about
+her, Dr. Stanchon," the nurse put in quietly.  "If there were children
+in the house, now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Children!" he cried, pulling himself up and staring at her.  "Did you
+speak to her about them?  Then that accounts for it!  I should have
+warned you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then they did die?" she asked him.  "That's what I thought."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid not," he said, shaking his head with a queer sort of sad
+little smile.  "I forgot you were strange here.  Why, Miss Jessop,
+didn't you know that&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me, sir, but there's no sign of your mare about&mdash;did you tie
+her?" says Hodges, coming in in a great hurry, and the doctor swore and
+ran off and I never heard the end of the sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I'm running on too long with these little odds and ends, as I'm
+sure Margaret felt when I started telling her all about it.  The truth
+is I dreaded then, just as I dread now, to get at the real story and
+look our conduct straight in the face.  But I'll get on more quickly
+now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Mrs. Shipman died very quiet in her sleep and madam wasn't told,
+which I didn't half like.  The doctor was called out of those parts to
+attend on his father, very suddenly, and Hodges managed the funeral and
+all.  It was plain to see he was a very trusty, silent fellow, devoted
+to the family.  I took as much off him as I could, and I was dusting
+the drawing-room the day of the funeral, when I happened to pick up a
+photograph in a silver frame of the same little fellow in the picture
+the nurse had shown me&mdash;a dear little boy in short kilts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's Master Robertson, isn't it?" I said, very carelessly, not
+looking at him&mdash;I will own I was curious.  He gave a start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;yes, certainly, that's Master Robertson&mdash;if you choose to put it
+that way," he said, and I saw him put his hand up to his eyes and his
+mouth twitched and he left the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't question him again, naturally; he was a hard man to cross and
+very haughty, was William Hodges, and no one in the house but respected
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That day I saw Mrs. Childress for the first time.  She was a sweet,
+pretty thing, about my own age, but younger looking, fair, with grey
+eyes.  She was in heavy crêpe and her face all fallen and saddened
+like, with grief and hopelessness&mdash;I felt for her from the moment I saw
+her.  And all the more that I'd made up my mind what her trouble was: I
+thought that the children were idiots, maybe, or feeble-minded, anyhow,
+and so the property would go to the Jew in the end and that his family
+were hating her for it!  Folly, of course, but women will have fancies,
+and that seemed to fit in with all I'd heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She'd been told that Shipman was away with some light, infectious
+fever, and she took it very mildly, and said there was no need to get
+any one in her place, at present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hodges will attend to everything," she said, in her pretty, tired way;
+"not that there's much to do&mdash;for one poor woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Things may mend, ma'am, and you'll feel more like having some friends
+about you, most likely, later on," I said, to cheer her a bit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head sadly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, Sarah&mdash;if I can't have my own about me, I'll have no others,"
+she said, and I thought I saw what she meant and said no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night the doctor and the legal gentleman that looked after the
+family affairs were with us and my mistress kept them for dinner.  I
+helped Hodges with the serving and was in the butler's pantry after
+Mrs. Childress had left them with their coffee and cigars, and as
+Hodges had left the door ajar I couldn't help catching a bit of the
+talk now and then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The worst of it is this trouble about the children," said the doctor.
+"She will grieve herself into a decline, I'm afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose there's no hope?" said the other gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No hope?" the doctor burst out.  "Why, man, Robertson's been dead six
+months!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be sure&mdash;I'd forgotten it was so long.  Well, well, it's too bad,
+too bad," and Hodges came back and closed the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must say I was thoroughly put out with the doctor.  Why should he
+have told me a lie?  And it was mostly from that that I deliberately
+disobeyed him that night, for I knew from the way he had spoken to the
+nurse that he didn't wish the children mentioned.  But I couldn't help
+it, for when I came to her room to see if I could help her, she was
+sitting in her black bedroom gown with her long hair in two braids,
+crying over the children's picture.  "Hush, hush, ma'am," I said,
+kneeling by her and soothing her head, "if they were here, you may be
+sure they wouldn't wish it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?  Who?" she answers me, quite wild, but not angry at all.  I saw
+this and spoke it out boldly, for it was plain that she liked me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your children, ma'am," I said, softly but very firm, "and you should
+control yourself and be cheerful and act as if they <I>were</I> here&mdash;as if
+it had pleased God to let you have them and not <I>Himself</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such a look as she gave me!  But soon she seemed to melt, like, and put
+out her arm over my shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a beautiful way to put it, Sarah!" says she, in a dreamy kind of
+way.  "Do you really think God has them&mdash;somewhere?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course, ma'am," said I, shocked in good earnest.  "Who else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you think I might love them, just as if&mdash;just as if&mdash;&mdash;" here she
+began to sob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Mrs. Childress," I said, "where is your belief?  That's all
+that's left to mothers.  I know, for I've lost two, and their father to
+blame for it, which you need never say," I told her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She patted my shoulder very kindly.  "But oh, Sarah, if only they
+<I>were</I> here!" she cried, "really, really here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, I know," I said, "it's very hard.  But try to think it,
+ma'am&mdash;it helped me for weeks.  Think they're in the room next you,
+here, and you'll sleep better for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall I?" she whispered, gripping my hand hard.  "I believe I
+would&mdash;how well you understand me, Sarah!  And will you help me to
+believe it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw she was feverish and I knew what it means to get one good
+refreshing night without crying, and so I said, "Of course I will,
+ma'am; see, I'll open the door into the next room and you can fancy
+them in their cribs, and I'll sleep in there as if it was to look after
+them, like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, she was naught but a child herself, the poor dear, and she let me
+get her into bed like a lamb and put her cheek into her hand and went
+off like a baby.  It almost scared me, to see how easy she was to
+manage, if one did but get hold of the right way.  She looked brighter
+in the morning and as Hodges had told me that Shipman used to do for
+her, I went in and dressed her&mdash;not that I was ever a lady's maid, mind
+you, but I've always been one to turn my hand easily to anything I had
+a mind to, and I was growing very fond of my poor lady&mdash;and then, I was
+a little proud, I'll own, of being able to do more for her than her own
+medical man, who couldn't trust a sensible woman with the truth!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She clung to me all the morning, and after my work was done, I
+persuaded her to come out for the air.  The doctor had ordered it long
+ago, but she was obstinate, and would scarcely go at all.  That day,
+however, she took a good stroll with me and it brought a bit of colour
+into her cheeks.  Just as we turned toward the house she sat down on a
+big rock to rest herself, and I saw her lip quiver and her eyes begin
+to fill.  I followed her look and there was a child's swing, hung from
+two ropes to a low bough.  It must have been rotted with the rains, for
+it looked very old and the board seat was cracked and worn.  All
+around&mdash;it hung in a sort of little glade&mdash;were small piles of stones
+and bits of oddments that only children get together, like the little
+magpies they are.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There's no use to expect any one but a mother or one who's had the
+constant care of little ones to understand the tears that come to your
+eyes at a sight like that.  What they leave behind is worse than what
+they take with them; their curls and their fat legs and the kisses they
+gave you are all shut into the grave, but what they used to play with
+stays there and mourns them with you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw a wild look come into her eyes, and I determined to quiet her at
+any cost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, there, ma'am," I said quickly, "'tis only their playthings.
+Supposing they were there, now, and enjoying them!  You go in and take
+your nap, as the doctor ordered, and leave me behind..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She saw what I meant in a twinkling and the colour jumped into her face
+again.  She turned and hurried in and just as she went out of sight she
+looked over her shoulder, timid like, and waved her hand&mdash;only a bit of
+a wave, but I saw it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under a big stone in front of me, for that part of the grounds was left
+wild, like a little grove, I saw a rusty tin biscuit box, and as I
+opened it, curiously, to pass the time, I found it full of little tin
+platters and cups.  Hardly thinking what I did, I arranged them as if
+laid out for tea, on a flat stone, and left them there.  When I went to
+awaken her for lunch, I started, for some more of those platters were
+on the table by her bed and a white woolly rabbit and a picture book!
+She blushed, but I took no notice, and after her luncheon I spied her
+going quickly back to the little grove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Madam's taking a turn for the better, surely," Hodges said to me that
+afternoon.  "She's eating like a Christian now.  What have you done to
+her, Miss Umbleby?"  (I went as "Miss" for it's much easier to get a
+place so.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Hodges," I said, facing him squarely, "the doctors don't know
+everything.  You know as well as I that it's out of nature not to
+mention children, where they're missed every hour of the day and every
+day of the month.  It's easing the heart that's wanted&mdash;not smothering
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What d'you mean?" he says, staring at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean toys and such like," I answered him, very firm, "and talk of
+them that's not here to use them, and even pretending that they are, if
+that will bring peace of mind, Mr. Hodges."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rubbed his clean shaven chin with his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well!" he said at last.  "Well, well, well!  You're a good girl,
+Miss Umbleby, and a kind one, that's certain.  I never thought o' such
+a thing.  Maybe it's all right, though.  But who could understand a
+woman, anyway?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's not much to understand," said I, shortly, and left him staring
+at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She came in late in the afternoon with the rabbit under her arm and
+there was Mr. Hodges in the drawing-room laying out the tea&mdash;we always
+had everything done as if the master was there, and guests, for the
+matter of that; she insisted on it.  He knew his place as well as any
+man, but his eye fell on the rabbit and he looked very queer and nearly
+dropped a cup.  She saw it and began to tremble and go white, and it
+came over me then that now or never was the time to clinch matters or
+she'd nearly die from shame and I couldn't soothe her any more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps Hodges had better go out and bring in the rest of the toys,
+ma'am," I says, very careless, not looking at her.  "It's coming on for
+rain.  And he can take an umbrella ... shall he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stiffened up and gave a sort of nod to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Hodges, go," she said, half in a whisper, and he bit his lip, and
+swallowed hard and said, "Very good, madam," and went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, after that, you can see how it would be, can't you?  One thing
+led to another, and one time when she was not well for a few days and
+rather low, I actually got the two little cribs down from the garret
+and ran up some white draperies for them.  She'd hardly let me leave
+her, and indeed there was not so much work that I couldn't manage very
+well.  She gave all her orders through me and I was well pleased to do
+for her and let Mr. Hodges manage things, which he did better than poor
+old Shipman, I'll be bound.  By the time we told her about Shipman's
+death, she took it very easy&mdash;indeed, I think, she'd have minded
+nothing by that time, she had grown so calm and almost healthy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Hodges would never catch my eye and I never talked private any more
+with him, but that was the only sign he didn't approve, and he never
+spoke for about a month, but joined in with me by little and little and
+never said a word but to shrug his shoulders when I ordered up a tray
+with porringers on it for the nursery (she had a bad cold and got
+restless and grieving).  I left her in the nursery with the tray and
+went out to him, for I saw he wished to speak to me at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Stanchon would think well of this, if he was here.  Is that your
+idea, Miss Umbleby?" he said to me, very dry.  (The doctor had never
+come back, but gone to be head of a big asylum out in the west.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Hodges," I answered.  "I think any doctor
+couldn't but be glad to see her gaining every day, and when she feels
+up to it and guests begin to come again, she'll get willing to see them
+and forget the loss of the poor little things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The loss of <I>what</I>?" says he, frowning at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, the children," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Master Robertson, of course, and Miss Winifred," I said, quite vexed
+with his obstinacy.  (I had asked her once if the baby was named after
+her and she nodded and went away quickly.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here, my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my
+benefit.  <I>I'm</I> not going into a decline, you know.  I know as well as
+you do that she couldn't lose what she never had!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never had!" I gasped.  "She never had any children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not," he said, steadying me, for my knees got weak all of a
+sudden.  "That's what's made all the trouble&mdash;that's what's so
+unfortunate!  D'you mean to say you didn't know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sank right down on the stairs.  "But the pictures!" I burst out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you mean that picture of Mr. Robertson Childress when he was a
+little lad and the other one of him and his sister that died when a
+baby, and chose to fancy they was <I>hers</I>," says he, pointing upstairs,
+"it's no fault of mine, Miss Umbleby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And no more it was.  What with poor old Shipman's ramblings and the
+doctor's words that I had twisted into what they never meant, I had got
+myself into a fine pickle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what shall I do, Mr. Hodges?" I said, stupid-like, with the
+surprise and the shock of it.  "It'd kill her, if I stopped now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's for you to decide," said he, in his reserved, cold way, "I have
+my silver to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I did decide.  I lay awake all night at it, and maybe I did
+wrong, but I hadn't the heart to see the red go out of her cheek and
+the little shy smile off her pretty mouth.  It hurt no one, and the
+mischief was done, anyway&mdash;there'd be no heir to Childerstone, now.
+For five generations it had been the same&mdash;a son and a daughter to
+every pair, and the old place about as dear to each son, as I made out,
+as ever his wife or child could be.  General Washington had stopped the
+night there, and some great French general that helped the Americans
+had come there for making plans to attack the British, and Colonel
+Robertson Childress that then was had helped him.  They had plenty of
+English kin and some in the Southern States, but no friends near them,
+on account of my mistress's husband having to live in Switzerland for
+his health and his father dying young (as he did) so that his mother
+couldn't bear the old place.  But as soon as Mr. Robertson was told he
+was cured and could live where he liked, he made for Childerstone and
+brought his bride there&mdash;a stranger from an American family in
+Switzerland&mdash;and lived but three months.  If anybody was ever alone, it
+was that poor lady, I'm sure.  There was no big house like theirs
+anywhere about&mdash;no county families, as you might say&mdash;and those that
+had called from the village she wouldn't see, in her mourning.  And yet
+out of that house she would not go, because he had loved it so; it was
+pitiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There's no good argle-bargling over it, as my mother used to say, I'd
+do the same again!  For I began it with the best of motives, and as
+innocent as a babe, myself, of the real truth, you see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can shut my eyes, now, and it all comes back to me as it was in the
+old garden, of autumn afternoons&mdash;I always think of Childerstone in the
+autumn, somehow.  There was an old box hedge there, trimmed into balls
+and squares, and beds laid out in patterns, with asters and marigolds
+and those little rusty chrysanthemums that stand the early frosts so
+well.  A wind-break of great evergreens all along two sides kept it
+warm and close, and from the south and west the sun streamed in onto
+the stone dial that the Childress of General Washington's time had had
+brought over from home.  It was set for Surrey, Hodges told me once,
+and no manner of use, consequently, but very settled and home-like to
+see, if you understand me.  In the middle was an old stone basin, all
+mottled and chipped, and the water ran out from a lion's mouth in some
+kind of brown metal, and trickled down its mane and jaws and splashed
+away.  We cleaned it out, she and I, one day, <I>pretending we had help</I>,
+and Hodges went to town and got us some gold fish for it.  They looked
+very handsome there.  Old John kept the turf clipped and clean and
+routed out some rustic seats for us&mdash;all grey they were and tottery,
+but he strengthened them, and I smartened them up with yellow chintz
+cushions I found in the garret&mdash;and I myself brought out two tiny
+arm-chairs, painted wood, from the loft in the coach house.  We'd sit
+there all the afternoon in September, talking a little, me mending and
+my mistress embroidering on some little frocks I cut out for her.  We
+talked about the children, of course.  They got to be as real to me as
+to her, almost.  Of course at first it was all what they <I>would</I> have
+been (for she was no fool, Mrs. Childress, though you may be thinking
+so) but by little and little it got to be what they <I>were</I>.  It
+couldn't be helped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hodges would bring her tea out there and she'd eat heartily, for she
+never was much of a one for a late dinner, me sewing all the time, for
+I always knew my place, though I believe in her kind heart she'd have
+been willing for me to eat with her, bless her!  Then she'd look at me
+so wistful-like, and say, "I'll leave you now, Sarah&mdash;eat your tea and
+don't keep out too late.  Good-bye&mdash;good-bye..."  Ah, dear me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I'd sit and think, with the leaves dropping quiet and yellow around me
+and the water dripping from the lion's mouth and sometimes I'd close my
+eyes and&mdash;I'll swear I could hear them playing quietly beyond me!  They
+were never noisy children.  I'll say now something I never mentioned,
+even to her, and I'd say it if my life hung by it.  More than once I've
+left the metal tea-set shut in the biscuit box and found it spread out
+of mornings.  My mistress slept in the room next me with the door open,
+and am I to think that William Hodges, or Katey, crippled with
+rheumatism, or that lazy old John came down and set them out?  I've
+taken a hasty run down to that garden (we called it the children's
+garden, after a while) because she took an idea, and seen the swing
+just dying down, and not a breath stirring.  That's the plain gospel of
+it.  And I've lain in my bed, just off the two cribs, and held my
+breath at what I felt and heard.  She knew it, too.  But never heard so
+much as I, and often cried for it.  I never knew why that should be,
+nor Hodges, either.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was one rainy day I went up in the garret and pulled the old
+rocking-horse out and dusted it and put it out in the middle and set
+the doors open and went away.  It was directly over our heads as we sat
+sewing, and&mdash;ah, well, it's many years ago now, a many and a many, and
+it's no good raking over too much what's past and gone, I know.  And as
+Hodges said, afterward, the rain on the roof was loud and steady....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know why I should have thought of the rocking-horse, and she
+not that was always thinking and planning for them.  Hodges said it was
+because I had had children.  But I could never have afforded them any
+such toy as that.  Still, perhaps he was right.  It was odd his saying
+that (he knew the facts about me, of course, by that time) being such a
+dry man, with no fancy about him, you might say, and disliking the
+whole subject, as he always did, but so it was.  Men will often come
+out with something like that, and quite astonish one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He never made a hint of objection when I was made housekeeper, and that
+was like him, too, though I was, to say so, put over him.  But he knew
+my respect for him, black silk afternoons or no black silk, and how we
+all leaned on him, really.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Margaret came, as I said, and it was all to tell, and a fine
+mess I made of it and William Hodges that settled it, after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Margaret wanted to pack her box directly and get off, and said
+she'd never heard of such doings and had no liking for people that
+weren't right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not right?" says Hodges, "not right?  Don't you make any such mistake,
+my girl.  Madam attends to all her law business and is at church
+regularly, and if she's not for much company&mdash;why, all the easier for
+us.  Her cheques are as sensible as any one's, I don't care who the man
+is, and a lady has a right to her fancies.  I've lived with very high
+families at home, and if I'm suited, you may depend upon it the place
+is a good one.  Go or stop, as you like, but don't set up above your
+elders, young woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she thought it over and the end of it all was that she was with us
+till the last.  And gave me many a black hour, too, poor child, meaning
+no harm, but she admired Hodges, it was plain, and being younger than I
+and far handsomer in a dark, Scotch way, it went hard with me, for he
+made no sign, and I was proud and wouldn't have showed my feelings for
+my life twice over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, it went on three years more.  I made my little frocks longer and
+the gold fish grew bigger and we set out new marigolds every year, that
+was all.  It was like some quiet dream, when I've gone back and seemed
+a girl again in the green lanes at home, with mother clear-starching
+and the rector's daughter hearing my catechism and Master Lawrence sent
+off to school for bringing me his first partridge.  Those dreams seem
+long and short at one and the same time, and I wake years older, and
+yet it has not been years that passed but only minutes.  So it was at
+Childerstone.  The years went by like the hours went in the children's
+garden, all hedged in, like, and quiet and leaving no mark.  We all
+seemed the same to each other and one day was like another, full,
+somehow, and busy and happy, too, in a quiet, gentle way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When old Katey lay dying she spoke of these days for the first time to
+me.  She'd sent up the porringers and set out glasses of milk and made
+cookies in heart shapes with her mouth tight shut for all that time,
+and we never knowing if she sensed it rightly or not.  But on her
+deathbed she told me that she felt the Blessed Mary (as she called her)
+had given those days to my poor mistress to make up to her for all
+she'd lost and all she'd never had, and that she'd confessed her part
+in it and been cleared, long ago.  I never loved any time better,
+looking back, nor Hodges either.  One season the Christmas greens would
+be up, and then before we knew it the ice would be out of the brooks
+and there would be crocuses and daffodils for Mr. Childress's grave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She and I took all the care of it and the key to the iron gate of it
+lay out on her low work table, and one or other of us always passing
+through, but one afternoon in summer when I went with a basket of June
+roses, she being not quite up to it that day, there on the flat stone I
+saw with my own eyes a little crumpled bunch of daisies&mdash;all nipped off
+short, such as children pick, and crushed and wilted in their hot
+little hands!  And on no other tomb but his.  But I was used to such as
+that, by then....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret was handy with her needle, and I remember well the day she
+made the linen garden hat with a knot of rose-colour under the brim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't think this will be too old, do you, ma'am?" she said when
+she showed it to my mistress, and the dear lady was that pleased!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a bit, Margaret," she said and I carried it off to Miss Winifred's
+closet.  Many's the time I missed it after that, and knew too much to
+hunt.  It was hunting that spoiled all, for we tried it....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet we didn't half believe.  Heaven help us, we knew, but we didn't
+believe: St. Thomas was nothing to us!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margaret was with us three years when the new family came.  Hodges told
+us that Hudson River property was looking up and land was worth more
+every year.  Anyway, in one year two families built big houses within a
+mile of us and we went to call, of course, as in duty bound.  John
+grumbled at getting out the good harness and having the carriage
+re-lined, but my mistress knew what was right, and he had no choice.  I
+dressed her very carefully, and we watched her off from the door, a
+thought too pale in her black, but sweet as a flower, and every inch
+full of breeding, as Hodges said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never knew what took place at that visit, but she came back with a
+bright red circle in each cheek and her head very high, and spent all
+the evening in the nursery.  Alone, of course, for I heard little quick
+sounds on the piano in the drawing-room, and the fairy books were gone
+from the children's book-shelves, and Margaret found them in front of
+the fire and brought them to me....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was only three days before the new family called on us (a pair of
+ponies to a basket phaeton&mdash;very neat and a nice little groom) and my
+heart jumped into my mouth when I saw there were two children in with
+the lady: little girls of eight and twelve, I should say.  'Twas the
+first carriage callers that ever I'd seen in the place, and Hodges says
+to me as he goes toward the hall,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is something like, eh, Miss Umbleby?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I felt odd and uncertain, and when from behind the library door I
+heard the lady say, "You see I've kept my word and brought my babies,
+Mrs. Childress&mdash;my son is hardly old enough for yours&mdash;only four&mdash;but
+Helena and Lou can't wait&mdash;they are so impatient to see your little
+girl!"&mdash;when I heard that, I saw what my poor mistress had been at, and
+the terrible situation we were in (and had been in for years) flashed
+over me and my hands got cold as ice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is she?" the lady went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that I went boldly into the library and stood by my mistress's
+chair&mdash;I couldn't desert her then, after all those years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where?  where?" my poor lady repeated, vague-like and turning her eyes
+so piteous at me that I looked the visitor straight in the face and
+getting between her and my mistress I said very calmly,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think Miss Winifred is in the children's garden, madam; shall I take
+the young ladies there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For my thought was to get the children out of the way, before it all
+came out, you see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, the look of gratitude she gave me!  And yet it was a mad thing to
+do.  But I couldn't desert her&mdash;I couldn't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, you see, mamma!" cried the youngest, and the older one said,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can find our way, thank you," very civil, to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Children have sharp eyes," said the lady, laughing.  "One can't hide
+them from each other&mdash;haven't you found it so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now what the devil does she mean by that?" Hodges muttered to me as he
+passed by me with the tray.  He always kept the silver perfect, and it
+did one's heart good to see his tray: urn and sugar and cream just
+twinkling and the toast in a covered dish&mdash;old Chelsea it was&mdash;and new
+cakes and jam and fresh butter, just as they have at home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know what they talked of, for I couldn't find any excuse to
+stop in the room, and she wouldn't have had it, anyway.  I went around
+to the front to catch the children when they should come back, and
+quiet them, but they didn't come, and I was too thankful to think much
+about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After about half an hour I saw the oldest one coming slowly along by
+herself, looking very sulky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's your sister, dear?" I said, all in a tremble, for I dreaded
+how she might put it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's too naughty&mdash;I can't get her to leave," she said pettishly, and
+burst into the library ahead of me.  My mistress's face was scarlet and
+her eyes like two big stars&mdash;for the first time I saw that she was a
+beauty.  Her breath came very quick and I knew as well as if I'd been
+there all the time that she'd been letting herself go, as they say, and
+talked to her heart's content about what she'd never have a chance to
+talk again to any guest.  She was much excited and the other woman knew
+it and was puzzled, I could see, from the way she looked at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now the girl burst into the talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mamma, Lou is so naughty!" she cried.  "I saw the ponies coming up the
+drive, and I told her it was time, but she won't come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gently, daughter, gently," said the lady, and put her arm around her
+and smoothed her hair.  "Why won't Lou come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can see that room now, as plain as any picture in a frame: the
+setting sun all yellow on the gilt of the rows of books, the streak of
+light on the waxed oak floor, the urn shining in the last rays.  There
+was the mother patting the big girl, there was Hodges with his hand on
+the tray, and there was me standing behind my mistress, with her red
+cheeks and her poor heaving bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why won't Lou come?" she asked the girl again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because," she says, still fretful, and very loud and clear, "because
+she is taking a pattern of the little girl's hat and trying to twist
+hers into that shape!  I told her you wouldn't like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My mistress sprang up and the chair fell down with a crash behind her.
+I turned (Hodges says) as white as a sheet and moved nearer her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hat!" she gasped.  "What hat? <I>whose hat</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There seemed to be a jingling, like sleighbells, all through the air,
+and I thought I was going crazy till I saw that it came from the tray,
+where Hodges's hand was shaking so, and yet he couldn't take it off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The hat with the rose-coloured ribbon on it," said the girl, "the one
+we saw as we drove in, you know, mamma.  It's so becoming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sarah!  Sarah! did you hear?  Did you hear?" shrieked my mistress.
+"She saw, Sarah, <I>she saw</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the colour went out of her like when you blow out a candle, and
+she put her hand to her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, oh, what pain!" she said very quickly, and Hodges cried, "My God,
+she's gone!" and I caught her as she fell and we went down together,
+for my knees were shaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I opened my eyes there was only Margaret there, wetting my
+forehead, for William had gone for a doctor.  Not that it was of any
+use, for she never breathed.  But the smile on her face was lovely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We got her on her bed and the sight of her there brought the tears to
+me and I cried out, "Oh, dear, oh, dear! she was all I had in the
+world, and now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you've got me, my girl, and isn't that worth anything to you,
+Sarah?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was William Hodges, and he put his arm over my shoulder, right
+before Margaret, and looked so kind at me, so kind&mdash;I saw in a moment
+that no one else was anything to him and that he had always cared for
+me.  And that, coming so sudden, when I had given up all hope of it,
+was too much for me, weak as I was, and I fainted off again and woke up
+raving hot with fever and half out of my mind, but not quite, for I
+kept begging them to put off the funeral till I should be able to be up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But this, of course, was not done, and by the time I was out of
+hospital the turf was all in place on her dear grave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+William had managed everything and had picked out all the little
+keepsakes I should have chosen&mdash;the heirs were most kind, though Jews.
+Indeed, I've felt different to that sort of people ever since, for they
+not caring for the house on account of its being lonely, to their way
+of thinking, made it into a children's home for those of their belief
+as were poor and orphaned, and whatever may have been, the old place
+will never lack for children now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never stepped foot in the grounds again, for William Hodges, though
+the gentlest and fairest of men, never thwarted me but once, and it was
+in just that direction.  Moreover, he forbade me to speak of what only
+he and I knew for a certainty, and he was one of that sort that when a
+command is laid, it's best kept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We've two fine children&mdash;girl and boy&mdash;and he never murmured at the
+names I chose for them.  Indeed, considering what my mistress's will
+left me and what his master had done for him, he was as pleased as I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're named after our two best friends, Sarah," he said, looking
+hard at me, once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I nodded my head, but if she saw me, in heaven, she knew who were
+in my heart when I named them!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE CRYSTAL
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In reviewing the matter dispassionately, it seems difficult to find
+anybody (anybody, that is to say, to whom her career was or is of the
+slightest interest) who omits to pronounce Molly Dickett's life an
+egregious and shameful failure.  I should be sorry for any one, for
+instance, who had the hardihood to address her mother on the subject,
+for Mrs. Dickett's power of tongue is well known in and beyond local
+circles; and since Eleanor married young Farwell, who stands in line
+for cashier of the bank forty or fifty years from now, if all goes well
+and a series of providential deaths occurs&mdash;indeed, ever since Kathryn
+became assistant-principal at the high-school (because, as her mother
+points out, a mere teacher's position, even in a high-school, may not
+be much, but an assistant-principal may be called to consult with the
+trustees any day and Kathryn has twice refused a college professorship)
+since these family adjustments, I repeat, Mrs. Dickett's tongue has
+grown steadily more incisive and her attempts at scaling the fortress
+of Mr. Dickett's wardrobe more encouraging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe it to be the simple truth to say that she literally never
+mentions her second daughter, and that Molly sends her letters direct
+to the factory to be sure that her father gets them&mdash;for Mrs. Dickett
+is Napoleonic in her methods and would really, I am afraid, stop at
+nothing.  Any woman who has borne three children and will learn to
+drive an electric runabout at the age of forty-five, for the purpose of
+taking her husband home from his office in it, is to be reckoned with,
+you will agree.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last time she is known to have referred to the girl definitely was
+when she announced the theory that her unfortunate name lay at the
+bottom of it all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Molly," she is reported to have said, "was named by her father&mdash;a
+mistake always, I think.  The fact that Eleanor was baptised Ella has
+little or nothing to do with it; there was never any 'Nellie' or
+'Lelie' about it, and at sixteen she began of her own accord to write
+it Eleanor.  Kathryn I named entirely myself&mdash;and after all, what can
+Aunt Ella be said to have done for Eleanor?  A silver ring and a
+bracelet when she graduated!  But it was always 'Molly Dickett' all
+over the town!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it must be confessed that this was so, if, indeed, the confession
+proves anything.  Nevertheless Mrs. Dickett cannot deny that for a long
+time, up to the period of her plunge into outer darkness, Molly was
+confessedly the flower of the family.  Eleanor was rather soggy, a
+creature of inertia, chocolate caramels and a tendency to ritualism
+which her mother could not have foreseen when she encouraged her
+entering the Episcopal communion ("I don't mind candles so much," said
+Mrs. Dickett, "but I must say I think it's very bad taste to call
+yourself an American Catholic, when you can't help but feel that
+Catholics should be foreigners").
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kathryn her mother pronounced "a very ordinary girl, very ordinary
+indeed," up to the day when she was graduated, head of her class, at
+the State normal-school.  She showed every sign, even after that, of
+snapping at the bait of a middle-aged widower with three children,
+simply because his hook was labelled <I>New York</I>; but when it became
+known, as a result of herculean detective efforts on Mrs. Dickett's
+part, that he employed but one servant, insisted upon the payment of
+what he termed "spot cash" for every article purchased in his
+establishment, and disapproved of the theatre, Kathryn yielded to
+reason and henceforth consulted her mother at each successive stage of
+her growing career until such consultation was frankly deprecated by
+the fountain-head itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Molly was neither soggy nor ordinary, being distinctly handsome in
+a grey-eyed, black-haired, white-skinned way, a clever student, an
+original conversationalist&mdash;in short, a personality.  Unlike the usual
+victim to an older and a younger sister, she managed to get quite her
+fair share of the family dignities and finances&mdash;was in fact accused by
+her sisters of using undue influence in persuading her father to send
+her to a woman's college.  It is most characteristic of her that at
+this accusation she refused the favour, interested her teachers in her
+cause so that they procured her a full scholarship at the college of
+her choice, and actually completed a four years' course there with no
+other means than her share of the twenty-five dollars yearly placed to
+his daughters' bank accounts by their father since the birth of each.
+On this slender sum, plus the accruing interest, eked out by college
+journalism, which began to be mentionable in those years&mdash;the early
+90's&mdash;strengthened further in the last terms by tutoring, did Molly
+Dickett triumphantly assert her independence,  and I tell it of her at
+this length so that none may throw "rolling stones" at her, in what
+followed.  A young woman of eighteen who can set her course in solitude
+and steer it alone, friendless, except for what friends her qualities
+can make her, absolutely unaided but for her own exertions, for four
+years, is not to be called lacking in application, I submit.  She got
+out of that business just what there was in it, <I>and so</I>, she insists,
+<I>she did at every stage of her subsequent history</I>.  Note this, for it
+is important.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here you see her, then, at twenty-two; handsome, accomplished,
+independent, well-rated on her particular 'Change&mdash;one fairly hears
+Dick Whittington's bells in the air!  Her mother, when Molly wrote home
+the news of her appointment as under-reader in the office of one of the
+new cheap magazines that began to appear with such frequency at about
+that time, spoke of her with the typical respect of the dependent woman
+for the wage-earner, and never dropped that note till the crash came.
+Mr. Dickett was head clerk by now, with an appreciable advance in
+salary; and Eleanor's wedding (it was in dressing the Roodscreen at
+Christmas that young Farwell met his fate), with her sisters as
+bridemaids, marked a distinct stage in the family's social career.  Old
+Mr. Farwell, who had long been nursing his only son's bank position,
+did the handsome thing for the young couple, and stomached, very
+decently, what must have been his regret at the boy's choice&mdash;for we
+all like our children to "look up and not down," as the motto suggests,
+in these matters.  And he was paid for it, for Eleanor made a man of
+the boy and a vestryman to boot, and quite won the old man's heart,
+though he never loved Mrs. Dickett.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the time Molly had been for two years at her post in <I>Slater's
+Monthly</I>, Kathryn had moved back to her normal-school as
+instructor&mdash;"and they paid well to get her, too," as Mr. Dickett
+informed his stenographer confidentially.  She had been invited to
+supper more than once, had the stenographer, in the old days, and there
+had even been a little talk of Kathryn's acquiring this accomplishment,
+once, but Mr. Dickett was far too wise to suggest her presence at the
+half-past six dinner now-a-days.  He was far too wise, indeed, to do
+anything that seemed likely to ruffle the increasingly easy currents
+into which his bark had drifted of late.  In a vague way he had always
+counted on supporting four women until three of them&mdash;or two, say, for
+Kathryn was plain and rather managing&mdash;should marry; and lo and behold,
+all three were off his hands in a twinkle, and there was a pretty
+little nest-egg growing for little Henry (for Eleanor had been very
+discreet about the first baby).
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So now we arrive at the day when Molly left her desk in the ante-room
+of Slater's, walked through the book department and the art offices and
+encountered Miss Spinner, the little dried and spectacled reader of
+forty-odd years, and centuries (or their equivalent) of magazine
+experience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Spinner," said Molly, "do you mind telling me what they pay you a
+week?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty-five," Miss Spinner replied promptly.  "Not at all.  Of course
+I'd been fifteen years at Franklin Square, and it was all that
+experience that made them offer me the three dollars raise.  So I left.
+But, of course, there are five magazines now where there used to be
+one.  In ten years I think there'll be ten.  So does Mr. Slater.  That
+means competition, and that means that experience will always be worth
+something to the new ones.  You started at fifteen, you see, and of
+course I only got ten ...  Gracious, isn't that Mrs. Julia Carter
+Sykes's voice?  Perhaps you'd better step out, my dear&mdash;Mr. Slater's
+talking with that English prison man and said that he wasn't to be
+disturbed if the Twelve Apostles came!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly went with her swift, unhasty step (she had long legs) and
+received Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes urbanely, as befitted the best paid
+woman novelist of her country.  Occasionally she had the fancy to "trot
+around to the office" as she called it: it was believed that she
+"picked up types" there.  And Molly knew how to keep her waiting
+without offending her, just as she knew how to dispose of the
+illustrators, from the Great Moguls who came in cabs to scold about the
+defects in half-tone processes, to the just discovered young genius who
+waited an hour in the outside hall, his great pasteboard square between
+his knees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're much too pretty to be here, my child&mdash;do you like it?" Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes remarked impertinently (she was supposed to believe
+that her manner was that of the English Aristocracy, and asked the most
+embarrassing questions of everybody with an income of less than fifteen
+thousand a year).
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not very much," Molly replied placidly.  "It's a little dull.  I'm
+thinking of going into journalism.  Couldn't you give me some letters
+to some of the editors?  I could do good special article stuff, I'm
+sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But certainly!" the novelist cried.  "You are too delicious!  I'll
+write you a card to Hecht himself this moment&mdash;I'm dining with him
+to-night&mdash;and I'll speak of you.  I'll tell him to send you to
+interview me at 'Bonnybraeside.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," said Molly laconically and rose to show the celebrity to Mr.
+Slater's sanctum.  The English prison man, emerging, took in the
+contrasted couple at a single glance, supposed them to be the whirlwind
+editor's wife and daughter, from his greeting ("Come in, come in, my
+dears, both of you!") and inquired of his wife, eight days later, how
+she explained a woman of that type, "strung with sapphires, literally,"
+and a daughter like a young duchess, with Irish eyes and a walk like
+Diana's.  His wife could not explain it at all, and said as much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly left Mr. Slater somewhat puzzled.  He raised her salary three
+dollars, might have been pushed to five, but she merely smiled
+deprecatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't exactly that," she said, "but there seems no outlook,
+somehow.  I don't think it's a very reasonable profession&mdash;if it is a
+profession."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He exploded into the name of a great English novelist who held
+precisely that position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  But I am not a great novelist, you see," said Molly, and cleared
+out her desk with the swift thoroughness that characterized her.  She
+put a clean sheet of green blotting paper on it before she left, and
+washed out the inkwell herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That stenographer spells worse and worse, remember," she remarked.
+"I'll look in for any mail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, aren't you going to stay at a hundred-and-three any more?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Pinner spoke with concern: she knew that the boarding-house
+recommended highly by Eleanor's rector (his sister had stayed there
+while studying singing) was very tautly managed, in an unobtrusive way,
+and that the sisters who directed it had a shrewd idea of the goings
+and comings of their "guests."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Molly.  "I'll be out at all hours, maybe, and they wouldn't
+like it.  Don't be worried&mdash;I'll look in now and then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, for a year, she did, and they were all delighted to see her,
+for few people likely to enter such offices can talk more amusingly
+than Molly Dickett.  She had always used her material well, when it was
+limited, and now, when it bumped into the Himalayas at one end  (her
+famous Rajah of Bhutpore interview)  and rounded the hitherto
+speechless promontories of Spud Connors' career, the champion
+heavyweight of the world (she actually drew vivid metaphors from him
+and he gave her a tintype of himself at eight years) the entire staff
+gathered 'round her when she came, and Mr. Slater, under a temporary
+financial cloud, wept literal tears because he could not afford to buy
+her back to them.  It was, of course, the "Bonnybraeside" interview
+that did it.  So cleverly was this column-and-a-half of chatty
+sharp-shooting manoeuvred that Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes sent hundreds of
+copies to her friends, while her fellow celebrities giggled among
+themselves, and the publishers wondered exactly what the Public really
+wanted, anyhow.  You couldn't tell, any more, they complained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just here began the little cloud on Mrs. Dickett's happiness.  For two
+years the family were very proud of Molly, and Eleanor gave a tea for
+her on one of her infrequent visits to them and got some people she
+could never have hoped for otherwise on the strength of her sister's
+celebrityship, for her Sunday morning column-and-a-half got to
+two-thirds of the town's breakfast tables, and her picture was at the
+head of it, now.  At twenty-five she was called (and probably
+correctly) the second highest paid woman journalist in the country, and
+she spoke familiarly of names that are head-lines to most of us and
+bought evening gowns at "little shops" on Fifth Avenue.  She lived with
+a red-haired friend, a clever illustrator of rising vogue, in a pretty
+little apartment, and Mrs. Dickett dined there one night with a really
+great novelist, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera House and a young
+Englishman whose brother was a baronet.  They had four glasses at their
+plates and the maid's cap and apron were tremendously interesting to
+Mrs. Dickett.  But when she learned the rental of the apartment, the
+wages of the maid, the cost of Molly's black evening-frock and the
+average monthly bill for Molly's hansoms, she no longer wondered that
+her daughter was always poor.  She had never spent seventy-five dollars
+for a single garment in her life, barring a fur-lined cloak, a
+Christmas gift from her husband, and to drink crême-de-menthe at a roof
+garden gave her a very odd sensation.  However, there was the baronet's
+brother...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at one of the songs at the roof-garden Mrs. Dickett drew the line,
+and the entire British Peerage, embattled, could not have persuaded her
+that it could possibly be the duty&mdash;not to suggest the pleasure&mdash;of any
+respectable woman to listen to it.  As she put it later to the
+red-haired girl and Molly, no unmarried woman could understand it and
+no married woman would want to, a simple statement which they persisted
+in treating as an epigram, to her annoyance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But nobody minded it but you, dear Mrs. Dickett," the red-haired girl
+soothed her, "and it's all in how you take those things, don't you
+think?  Of course, if you find it wrong, why then it is wrong&mdash;for you.
+But really, I assure you, I simply paid no attention to it..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you must allow me to say that I think you should have!" Mrs.
+Dickett snapped out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, come, mother, a woman of twenty-five is to all intents and
+purposes as capable of hearing&mdash;anything&mdash;as a married woman," said
+Molly lazily.  "I'm not a school girl, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that," her mother replied shortly, and might have added that
+Molly looked Kathryn's age&mdash;which she did, and Kathryn was twenty-eight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was, however, if anything, handsomer than when her cheek had its
+fuller curve, for her eyes looked larger and her mouth had more
+mobility: there was a stimulation in her tenseness.  Mrs. Dickett felt
+a little troubled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Although, of course, Molly admitted that the creature had no character
+and sang that sort of song purposely," she confided to her husband.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Imagine, then, her feelings when Molly's interview with the singer was
+printed!  She began a severe letter to her&mdash;and ceased midway of the
+first paragraph.  What possible hold had she over her daughter?  What
+did she know of her friends and associates, and what, had she known and
+disapproved, would it have mattered to Molly?  Since the day she won
+her college scholarship at eighteen she had been independent,
+financially speaking, and, though financial independence is not, of
+course, everything ... but it would almost seem that it is!  There must
+be some mistake here.  Mrs. Dickett chewed the end of her pen and
+thought as hard as she had ever thought in her life.  Nonsense!  What
+finally settles the thing is public opinion&mdash;Society.  If one's world
+turns the cold shoulder, one retracts, capitulates, acknowledges that
+the conventions are in the right of it.  Well; but Molly's world was
+not the suburban circle of the Dicketts and her world applauded her;
+she stood high in it; her interview with the unspeakable one was "a
+great hit," in their jargon.  Molly, in short, applied different
+standards, was in another class&mdash;was it, could it be, a Lower Class?
+And yet, the baronet!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett tore her letter through.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is quite true that they didn't see her for a year, after
+that&mdash;eighteen months, if you except Kathryn's flying luncheon with her
+at the time of the Convention of Associated Normal Schools.  Kathryn
+then informed them that the red-haired girl had married her teacher and
+left the apartment and that Molly lived alone there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm very glad," said her mother.  "I never liked that girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She seems to have been a bad influence," Kathryn agreed
+conservatively, and there, good, simple people as they were at heart,
+it would have ended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But here comes Eleanor upon the scene, Eleanor, with two boys, a
+probable Warden for husband, and a father-in-law who has become very
+respectably wealthy from long ago, almost forgotten investments in
+Southern Railroads.  And George is the only son.  Eleanor wonders that
+people can send their children to the public schools, and wishes that
+Kathryn had married that college professor, even though his salary did
+barely equal hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every woman ought to settle, you know&mdash;it's nonsense to discuss it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of
+housekeeping.  You don't get any time for anything else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"!!!" said Eleanor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows
+lifted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really, mother, I must say!  She must be crazy.  It's not right at
+all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As if that had anything to do with it!  I'm going down to see her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded.  The
+first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York
+society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the
+first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing
+line."  Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping,
+dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous
+at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at
+Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet
+backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman,
+swayed and whirled and beckoned.  A slender spiral of smoke rose from
+the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room.  Three
+or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men
+applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock
+of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge
+of technique to feel extraordinarily poignant and moving.  All but the
+dancer were smoking, and Molly sat on the floor (in copper-coloured
+chiffon, too!) her hands clasped about her knees, a cigarette in an
+amber holder between her lips and enunciated clearly,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bully!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In describing matters afterward Eleanor referred to Molly's reception
+of her as brazen.  There is no reason to believe that this word has any
+relation to Molly's state of mind: she saw nothing to be brazen about.
+When she said, "How lucky you dropped in today, sis!" she unaffectedly
+meant it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, rather!" one of the young men replied.  "Won't you have
+something, Mrs. Er&mdash;Oh, yes&mdash;Farwell?  Rhine wine cup, what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I thank you," said Eleanor frigidly.  "May I have a few minutes'
+conversation with you, Mary?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not just now, I hope," said some one, "for she's going to dance again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In that case I will not trouble you," said Eleanor, rather
+dramatically, one fears, and backed out to avoid the smoking violinist.
+It was a little trying, and Eleanor should have had tact enough to let
+the matter rest, but she was rather inelastic in her methods, and she
+had come to New York with a Purpose.  So Molly disappeared with her
+into the bedroom, and they had it out, with what result it is
+unnecessary to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was from that moment that a doubt as to whether Molly were an asset
+or a liability slipped into the Dickett family.  It is improbable that
+knowledge of the fact that "the disgusting foreign dancing woman" was
+born and bred in Bangor, Maine, and had never been farther than a
+stage-length from a vigilant mother, would have greatly affected their
+judgment.  And almost certainly the fact that the baronet's brother had
+asked her to marry him would only have irritated them the more&mdash;and
+perhaps with reason.  Had he ever wanted to marry Molly?  Maybe; she
+never said so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And here one must pause, to consider the interesting subject of Molly's
+Relations with Men.  It proved singularly lacking in richness.  To
+state that she had lived four years (as she did, ultimately) on the
+staff of the largest New York daily newspaper, hanging personally over
+the "forms" many a time, among the printers, from 10 P.M. until 3 A.M.,
+walking home with the milk-carts in the lead-blue morning; sitting in
+the outer office of one of the greatest city editors for three of these
+years; studying every "first night," every picturesque slum, every
+visiting or indigenous notoriety at close range&mdash;to catalogue a life
+like this, add that it was the life of a handsome, well-dressed,
+high-spirited girl, and pretend that it was an existence unqualified by
+male adjectives, would be the merest absurdity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hear that from the tiniest, most impudent printer's devil up to the
+Dean of College Presidents, who became so interested in her during his
+famous interview of "<I>After Democracy&mdash;What?</I>" that his wife asked her
+to luncheon and she spent the day with them, every man she encountered
+"swore by her," as they say.  In a novel, the editor-in-chief would
+have married her and Eleanor would have been delighted; but in a novel
+the editors-in-chief are handsome, athletic young bachelors (which
+rarely occurs, as a matter of fact) or magnificent widowers whose first
+marriages were tragic mistakes, so the emotional field is really clear.
+Now Molly's editor-in-chief was, so far as is known, quite happy with
+his wife, and his four daughters were not so much younger than Molly
+herself.  It is true, the art editor of the Sunday edition was supposed
+to be pretty far gone, but he was married, too, and even his
+stenographer, who was furiously jealous, admitted that Molly never gave
+him the slightest encouragement.  Such reporters as were free to do so
+are generally credited with proposals in strict order of income (there
+had to be some working system), but nothing but continued good feeling
+ever came of it; and the French portrait-painter who spent three days
+at the Metropolitan Art Museum with her out of the ten he vouchsafed
+America, declared openly that she was perfectly cold, a charming,
+clever boy in temperament&mdash;"absolutely insulated."  And perhaps she
+was.  She always said that she knew too many men to take them too
+seriously.  And yet when Kathryn remarked once that it was encouraging
+to observe how women were gradually growing independent of men, Molly
+laughed consumedly.  So there, as the great Anglo-American novelist
+says, you are!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Living, as she did, alone, utterly unrestricted in her goings,
+uncensored except by her own common-sense, one readily imagines that
+there may have been scenes ... how could they have been avoided,
+mankind being as it is?  But if her house was of glass, it was, by its
+very nature transparent, and I do not see how any one who didn't
+deserve it could have kept the consistent respect of the entire force
+of <I>The Day</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On her twenty-eighth birthday she came home from a very gay supper at a
+very gay restaurant with a hard pain at the back of her neck and a deep
+wrinkle from it between her eyebrows.  They had been harder of late,
+these headaches, and lasted longer, and this one not only failed to
+yield to the practised massage of her kindly housemaid, but baffled the
+nearest doctor and left her, finally, a pallid, shaken creature, who
+saw written on every wall in the little apartment, as she dragged
+herself about it:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>I must not take any coal-tar preparation because my heart simply won't
+stand it!</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And let me tell you this, Miss Molly Dickett," said the great
+specialist she had consulted as a matter of course (he ordered Trust
+Magnates to Egypt and consulted at Presidents' bed-sides, and if Mrs.
+Dickett had known that he never accepted a cent from Molly, what would
+she have said?) "let me tell you this.  You think you're a very
+remarkable young woman, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you, Dr. Stanchon?" Molly retorted placidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He patted her shoulder and capitulated.  "But you ought to be spanked,
+you know," he said.  "Now, listen.  For what was all this vitality and
+endurance given you, my child?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you mean twins," said Molly curtly, "I won't.  There are plenty of
+women to have twins, doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But there are not plenty of women to have <I>your</I> twins," said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She grimaced and blew a saucy kiss to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see why they all want you!" she told him.  "But, honestly, do
+married women never have headaches?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no good being clever with me, child," he went on, a little
+wearily (he seemed middle-aged beyond words to her).  "You are making a
+great mistake and when you find it out, it will in all probability be
+too late to remedy it, worse luck!  <I>That's</I> the real harm of all this
+Advanced Woman stuff: if you could only get it over before twenty-five!
+But when you wake up, you're nearer forty, and then&mdash;what's the
+difference?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll marry, then, maybe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear child, it doesn't matter a continental what you do, then," he
+said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave a little shudder, in spite of herself.  He sounded so final,
+and his eyes were so bright and deep.  She stared into them and,
+somehow, lost herself&mdash;the eyes turned to bright points in space, and
+Time seemed to stop, with a sort of whir like a clock that runs down...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, there!" his voice came roughly.  "None of that, my girl, none
+of that!  You <I>are</I> in a nice state!  Now, you march off on a vacation,
+and take it on a boat of some sort&mdash;do you hear?  And, listen to me&mdash;if
+I find a nice woman to go with you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" she interrupted mockingly, "the famous Miss Jessop!  Now I <I>know</I>
+you think I'm pretty bad!  You forget, doctor, that I've interviewed
+Miss Jessop&mdash;or tried to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's better," he retorted grimly.  "You hadn't much of a success,
+had you, missy?  And would you like to know what the famous Miss Jessop
+said about you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, you.  There are two sides to every interview, you know.  She
+said, 'If you don't see Miss Molly Dickett in your office before a
+year, doctor, I miss my guess.  She's a neurasthenic for you, all
+right.'  So what do you think of that, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think she was impertinent," said Molly, weakly, "and you can tell
+her so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bosh.  Now go and lie down," he commanded shortly, and the interview
+closed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A vacation seemed a simple remedy, and she started out, bent on one,
+with the kindest orders to make it long, accompanied by large credit;
+but the promised renewal of vitality did not come, and the taste seemed
+gone from everything.  The quaint and tiny little fishing hamlet she
+had fixed upon as a good place for gathering "material" by the way,
+proved all and more than she had been led to hope for, and when the
+greatest north-easter that had blown for fifty years bruised and tore
+the rugged little coast, she "wrote it up" as a matter of course&mdash;as a
+bird-dog points or a carrier pigeon wheels for home.  And then Molly
+Dickett received what was literally her first setback in ten years: the
+City Editor sent her copy back to her!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're too tired, my dear girl," he wrote.  "Why not wait a bit?  Or
+pad this out and point it up a little in the middle and send it to one
+of the magazines.  Peterson covered it for us, anyway, at
+Kennebunkport.  The cubs send you an officeful of affection, and we are
+all yours truly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the "cubs" never hung over her desk again, for Molly never returned
+to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," as she explained to them gently, "I lost my nerve&mdash;that's
+all.  If I hadn't sent the stuff, it would have been all right, later,
+I suppose.  But I did send it, and I thought it was O.K., and if it was
+as rotten as you said, why, how could I ever tell, again?  Anyway, I'm
+tired."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They protested, but the City Editor shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let her alone," he said shortly.  "It's straight enough.  I've seen it
+happen before.  She's gone too far without a check: I don't believe
+women can stand it.  Let her alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when the most talented of the cubs went next to interview Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes as to her recently dramatized novel, he was referred
+to her secretary&mdash;and it was Molly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For heaven's sake!" he said angrily.  "Are you insane?  Wasn't it true
+that Slater offered&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," said Molly negligently, "but I'm tired of offices."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you get time for writing your own stuff&mdash;on the side?" he
+suggested awkwardly, but Molly shook her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Writing seems bad for the back of the neck," she said, with a grey
+flash out of the tail of her eye for the cub.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're getting ready for the sanitarium this morning&mdash;sun-baths and
+Swedish Movement Cure and grape diet.  Of course you won't mention it,"
+she said.  "She can't possibly see you&mdash;I do all the interviews
+now&mdash;but if you come around to-morrow, after I get the house closed,
+I'll give you a good one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A solemn butler entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will be so kind as to cast your eye over the table for the
+ladies' luncheon, Miss Dickett?" he said weightily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's two orchids short and no time for getting more.  And the salt
+got into the mousse, I'm told by the cook&mdash;she wished to know if you
+could suggest anything.  And one of the ladies has been detained and
+cannot come&mdash;by telephone message.  Will you take her place, Miss
+Dickett?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Molly.  "Tell Mrs. Carter not to worry about the orchids,
+Halsey; I'll arrange something.  I must go and dress, now&mdash;come
+to-morrow," she added hastily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By George!" the cub gasped, and left, to electrify the office later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a darned shame," he ended, and the other cubs nodded sagely over
+their pipes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With her talent, too!" they said...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You will have understood, of course, why Eleanor dropped Molly after
+the unfortunate Greek dancer, but you may be surprised to learn of
+Kathryn's attitude when she learned of the secretaryship.  It wasn't
+dignified, she said, and she was greatly disappointed in Molly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kathryn was Dean of Women, now, in a co-educational college in the
+middle west, and was spoken of as Dean Dickett in the college journal.
+Of all her children Mrs. Dickett was proudest of Kathryn, because Molly
+frightened her and Eleanor patronized her.  Eleanor was getting up in
+the world a little too fast for her mother, nowadays, and knew people
+Mrs. Dickett would never have dreamed of meeting in the old
+days&mdash;people that she had grown used to the idea of never meeting, even
+now that Mr. Dickett was in the Firm.  Eleanor's little girl went to
+school with all the little girls on the Hill and was asked to attend
+their parties.  Her name was Penelope, after George's mother, who had
+never expected it&mdash;the name being so old-fashioned&mdash;and was
+correspondingly delighted and had given her much jewelry already.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eleanor, in so far as she mentioned Molly at all, had expressed her
+opinion that to live with Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes was the most
+respectable thing Molly had yet done, and added that there were
+exceptional opportunities in more ways than one for the woman who held
+that position&mdash;would perhaps even have called on her there, but Molly
+never asked her to.  Kathryn, to her parents' surprise, developed a
+stodgy but unblinking antagonism to her sister, for what she called
+Molly's lowering of her sense of what was due to herself, and said
+coldly that she had no doubt her sister's life was easier now, but that
+it was un-American.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Un-American it may have been, but easier it assuredly was not.  Unlike
+the factory-girls and clerks for whose benefit Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes
+gave readings from her unpublished works, Molly's hours were not
+limited, and her responsibility grew as her executive ability became
+increasingly manifest.  The thousands of women to whom the celebrity's
+manifold occupations, publicities, hospitalities and charities were an
+endless wonder and discussion might have marvelled less had they been
+able to follow Molly's crowded days and nights and peep through the
+littered desk and scribbled calendar of her study.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To amusement and interest, succeeded fatigue and interest, and to
+these, fatigue alone.  Each hurried, various day became a space of time
+to be got through, merely, and Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes's heavy sigh as
+she curled into her wicker-inset Circassian-walnut bed was no more
+heartfelt than her secretary's.  If Molly had ever envied Mrs. Julia,
+she had long ceased to, and indeed, on that final afternoon when she
+laid her dark, braided head on her arms and cried on her desk, she felt
+as sorry for the authoress as for herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Julia Carter Sykes (as many of his friends called him) sat opposite
+her, biting his nails.  He was well dressed, fond of auction-bridge,
+and travelled abroad in the interests of some vaguely comprehended firm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This will just about kill the madam," he said despondently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Sykes, but I really must&mdash;I must," Molly gulped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't money, is it?" he asked.  "Because though I'm not a popular
+authoress or anything like that, I could&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, goodness, no!" said Molly.  "It's not money at all.  Only I must
+get away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've never got on so well with any of the others," he went on
+jerkily, "and she's certainly awfully fond of you&mdash;the madam is.  She's
+taken you everywhere, I know, and all the dinners, and the car whenever
+you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Sykes has been very kind," Molly broke in dully, "but&mdash;oh, it's
+no use, Mr. Sykes.  It's got to be done, and putting it off only makes
+her worse.  So I'm going to-morrow.  She'll feel better about it later."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so, I'm sure," Mr. Sykes responded doubtfully.  "She was pretty
+bad when I left her.  That brain of hers, you know&mdash;it's a great
+strain, they tell me.  Hard on us all, in a way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly always smiled and sighed when she remembered him and the hunched
+shoulders that leaned drearily over the tonneau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where'll I tell him?" he asked, and she drew tighter the tight line
+between her brows, sighed, tried to speak, and found her mind quite
+utterly a blank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where'll I tell him?" Mr. Sykes repeated, looking curiously at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To save her life Molly could not have remembered where she had arranged
+to go!  A real horror caught her: was this the beginning of all the
+dreadful symptoms that few of Julia Carter Sykes's admirers suspected
+in their idol?  She must say something, and there flashed suddenly into
+her mind, otherwise blank of any image or phrase, an odd occurrence of
+the afternoon before, an occurrence she had been too tired to try,
+even, to explain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drive to the docks!" she cried sharply, and the chauffeur touched his
+visor, and her life poised for twenty minutes on its watershed,
+although she did not know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the motor it came back to her, that twilight not eighteen hours
+back, when in clearing out her desk ("the last desk I shall ever clear,
+I swear!") she had happened on the little transparent glass ball, a
+paper-weight, she supposed, and fingered it idly, void of thought or
+feeling, after the last emotional storm with her celebrity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she looked into it, staring, her tired mind seemed to sink and sink
+and submerge in the little clear white sphere till it drowned utterly,
+and only a rigid body, its eyes turned into its lap, sat in the still,
+dim room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, after what might have been hours or seconds, she seemed to
+gather into herself again, but could not wrench her eyes from the
+crystal ball, which looked opalescent now, and filmy, so that she
+shaded her eyes mechanically with the black scarf of her dinner-dress,
+to shut out the reflections of the room.  But they were not
+reflections, for there was bright blue in the ball, blue and white, and
+nothing of that sort was in the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She peered into the ball, and saw in it, clear and sharp and bright as
+the little coloured prints that are pasted to the bottom of such
+things, a tossing sapphire sea with little white-caps on it, a boat
+with a funnel, and little boats lashed to the side, a white rail, a
+tilted deck, and herself, Molly Dickett, in a striped blue and white
+frock and bare head, leaning over the rail on her elbows beside a
+broad-shouldered man with a cap such as officers on a boat wear.  The
+waves actually danced and glittered in the sun.  <I>But the room was
+nearly dark</I>, something whispered in her brain, and just then she had
+dropped the shielding scarf, and gasped back to a sense of reality and
+the ball was suddenly empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been no picture in the bottom of it, after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But on the bow of the little boat lashed to the side she had seen,
+written in tiny, tiny letters just as the Lord's Prayer is written in
+carved ivory toys of incredible smallness, the letters E-L-L-A, and
+these letters had fixed themselves in her mind, they had seemed so
+absurdly real and she had felt so absurdly sure of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which steamer, Miss Dickett?" the chauffeur inquired respectfully; all
+the employees of the Julia Carter Sykes establishment respected Molly,
+as well they might.  A sudden, happy irresponsibility flooded Molly's
+tired mind, and she smiled into the man's face&mdash;the old,
+not-to-be-resisted Molly Dickett smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The name of the boat is <I>Ella</I>, Pierce," she said cheerfully, "and
+it's a small boat, not a liner.  Look it up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as he disappeared she laughed aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still laughing softly when he returned, looking worried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you must have told me wrong, Miss Dickett, didn't you?" he
+began hurriedly, lifting out her small, flat trunk.  "It's the <I>Stella</I>
+you mean, isn't it?  There seems to be a misunderstanding; they said
+the stateroom was countermanded at the last minute, but the party's
+name was Richards.  It's all right now, but we nearly lost it&mdash;they're
+holding her for you.  There don't seem to be any more passengers&mdash;are
+you sure there's no mistake?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perfectly sure," said Molly, sober enough now.  "I'm very much
+indebted to you, Pierce."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave him a tip that caught his breath, walked up the gang-plank of
+the <I>Stella</I>, nodded easily to a severe official, and followed a pale,
+neat stewardess to her state-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is this boat going?" she asked of the pale stewardess, who
+gasped and replied,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"South America, ma'am.  Didn't you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I may have forgotten," said Molly, and then sleep overcame her and the
+days and nights were one for a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Stella</I> carried hides and fruit and lumber, and, occasionally, two
+or three passengers, for whose convenience the company had fitted up a
+stateroom or two, since the demand for these proved steady.  People, as
+Molly learned from the stewardess (whose sole charge she was) for whom
+a sea-voyage had been recommended for various reasons.  There had never
+been more than five at a time and two was the average; one, very common.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The long, blue days slipped by, she ate and slept and lay in the
+deck-chair that had been sent by the party named Richards, and spoke to
+the stewardess alone, who was used to tired and silent charges, and
+served her meals on a tray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was a quiet, refined woman with a hand often at her heart.  Molly
+found her gasping in the companionway once, fed her quickly from the
+little flask she pointed at in her pocket, and helped her to her berth,
+as clean and comfortable as Molly's own.  This produced confidences,
+and she learned that Mrs. Cope (every one called her that, she said,
+and treated her most respectfully) had made her first voyage as
+children's nurse to an English family bound for Rio, who had turned her
+off on arriving at that port.  The stewardess on that trip proved
+inclined to drink and sauciness, and at Mrs. Cope's suggestion they had
+given her the post in her stead and she had kept it for five years.  An
+easy berth, she said, good pay, good board, little to do and pleasant
+people.  She ate alone, was practically her own mistress, and the
+sea-air had saved her life, she knew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This Molly could well believe, for she had come to count the days of
+her ignorance of salt water for days of loss and emptiness.  The
+mornings of wind, the nights of stars and foam, the hot blue moons,
+sang in her blood and tinted her cheeks: she felt herself born again,
+the crowded past an ugly nightmare.  She says that she had never, till
+then, been alone with herself for ten years and that she had never had
+time to find out what she really liked best in the world.  We must
+suppose that she did at last find out, but it cannot be denied that the
+discovery was unusual.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Cope died at Buenos Ayres, suddenly, as she was serving Molly's
+supper, and Molly, piloted by the first mate, for she knew no Spanish,
+buried her there and put up a neat headstone over her grave: the
+possible lack of one had been the poor woman's one terror, and she had
+sent every cent of her wages to some worthless, mysterious husband
+whose whereabouts nobody knew.  This took all Molly's money but so much
+as was needed for her return trip, for it has to be confessed of her
+that she never saved a penny in her extravagant life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now we see her speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory
+salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious
+just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and
+horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess.  Two ladies
+waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in
+the <I>Stella</I> by the owners, and there is not a decent, respectable
+woman to be found on the whole coast of South America, to look after
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose you give me the job?" says Molly, quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looks her up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes
+the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear,
+grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim,
+broad-shouldered figure as security for fitness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you know your own business best," he says brusquely.
+"You're engaged.  What name do you wish to go by?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My own," says she, "Molly Dickett."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So now, you see!  The secret is out, and you may observe her again
+piloted by the first mate, scouting through the shops of Buenos Ayres
+for a blue-and-white striped cotton frock, broad enough through the
+shoulders.  Aprons she purchased and caps (larger caps than Mrs.
+Cope's, who compromised on white lawn bow-knots) and high-laced,
+rubber-soled, white canvas boots, only to be procured in English shops
+for sporting-goods.  Their price caused the first mate to whistle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the idea of all this?" he demanded suddenly.  "Of course, you
+know, you must be up to some game.  Your kind doesn't ship as
+stewardess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What game were <I>you</I> up to?" Molly replied quickly.  "Your kind
+doesn't ship as first mate, does it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What kind?" he said gruffly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The 'Dicky' kind," she answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He blurted out some amazed incoherence, and,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I've seen Harvard men, before," she assured him pleasantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly took the best of care of her two ladies and accepted their
+gratuities with a grave courtesy.  They confided to the captain, at New
+York, that she seemed unusually refined for her position, and he
+replied that for all he knew, she might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll never see <I>her</I> again," the first mate grumbled sourly, when she
+stepped off the gangplank, and the captain shrugged his shoulders
+non-committally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They did, nevertheless, but her mother never did.  After that one
+dreadful interview in the Dickett library (it had used to be the
+sitting-room in her college days) when Eleanor had cried, and Kathryn's
+letter had been read aloud, and Mr. Dickett had vainly displayed his
+bank-book, and her mother had literally trembled with rage, there was
+nothing for it but oblivion&mdash;oblivion, and silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A stewardess!  My daughter a stewardess!  I believe we could put you
+in an asylum&mdash;you're not decent!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett's cheeks were greyish and mottled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come, mother!  Come, come!" said Mr. Dickett.  "There's some
+mistake, I'm sure.  If you'd only come and live with us, Molly&mdash;we're
+all alone, now, you know, and Lord knows there's plenty for all.  It
+doesn't seem quite the thing, I must say, though.  It&mdash;it hurts your
+mother's pride, you see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry," said Molly, sadly.  It is incredible, but she had never
+anticipated it!  She was really very simple and direct, and life seemed
+so clear and good to her, now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To compare yourself with that Englishman is ridiculous, and you know
+it," sobbed Eleanor.  "What if he <I>was</I> a cow-boy?  He didn't wear a
+cap and apron&mdash;and it was for his health&mdash;and George is too angry to
+come over, even!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's for my health, too," Molly urged, trying to keep her temper.  "I
+never was the same after I went on that vacation to Maine&mdash;I told you
+before.  Life isn't worth living, unless you're well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you could have the south chamber for your own sitting-room, as
+George suggested, and do your writing at your own time," Mr. Dickett
+began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've told you I'm not a writer," she interrupted shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George would rather have paid out of his own pocket&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll leave George out of this, I think," said Molly, her foot tapping
+dangerously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you may leave me out, too!" cried George's wife.  "I have my
+children to think of.  If you are determined to go and be a
+chambermaid, this ends it.  Come, mother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett avoided her husband's grasp and went to the door with
+Eleanor.  It is hard to see how these things can be, but the cave-woman
+and her whelpish brood are far behind us now, and Molly's mother was
+cut to the dividing of the bone and the marrow.  The two women went out
+of the room and Molly stood alone with her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry, father," she said quietly.  "I can't see that I should
+change my way of life when it is perfectly honourable and proper, just
+to gratify their silly pride.  You must realise that I have to be
+independent&mdash;I'm thirty years old and I haven't had a cent that I
+didn't earn for more than ten years.  I have never been so well and
+so&mdash;so contented since I left college, really."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really?" Mr. Dickett echoed in dim amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really.  And mother never liked me&mdash;never.  Oh, it's no use, father,
+she never has.  I can't waste any more of my life.  I've found what
+suits me&mdash;if I ever change, I'll let you know.  I'll write you, anyway,
+now and then.  Good-bye, father.  Shake hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so it was over, and she jumped into the waiting "hack" ("it was
+some comfort," Eleanor said, "that she wore that handsome broadcloth
+and the feather-boa") and left them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps you had rather leave her, yourself?  Remember, she had dined
+the brother of a baronet (and dined him well, too)!  And George Farwell
+had never earned her salary on <I>The Day</I>.  Still, if you will stick by
+her a little longer, you may feel a little more tolerant of her, and
+that is much, in this critical civilisation of ours.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned over the rail in her striped blue-and-white, and the first
+mate leaned beside her.  The sapphire sea raced along and the milky
+froth flew off from their bow.  The sun beat down on her dark head, and
+there was a song in her heart&mdash;oh, there's no doubt of it, the girl was
+disgracefully happy!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fine trip, won't it be?" she said contentedly, and drew a deep
+breath, and washed her lungs clean of all the murk and cobwebs left
+behind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the first mate.  "My last, by the way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your last?" she repeated vaguely.  "Your last?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded and swallowed in his throat.  "Shall I tell you why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, tell me why," she said, and stared at the ship's boat, lashed to
+the side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've told you about myself," he blurted out roughly, "and my family,
+and all that.  It can't be helped&mdash;now.  We look at things differently.
+A man either wants to be an attaché fooling around Baden, or he
+doesn't.  I don't, that's all.  And I go bad in offices.  And I won't
+take money from them&mdash;or anybody.  This suits me well enough.  Probably
+I'm not ambitious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then if it suits you," Molly began, but he put his hand over hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It doesn't suit me to love any woman as much as I've loved you since
+Buenos Ayres," he said, "and feel that to get her I must give up this
+and settle down into a smelly office.  It doesn't suit me to find that
+life is just hell without her, but to know that if I know anything
+about myself I couldn't live any other way but this, and that no decent
+man could ask a woman to lead the rolling-stone life that I lead&mdash;she
+wouldn't, anyhow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly's eyes were fastened on the bow of the ship's boat; her heart
+pounded against the rail; she had never felt so frightened in her life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And suddenly she became aware that she was staring at the letters
+E-L-L-A, and they looked very tiny, like the letters of the Lord's
+Prayer written in carved ivory toys, and something she had not thought
+of since she first left New York flashed into her mind, and she
+trembled slightly.  Then all the vexed and broken, many-coloured
+fragments of her life clicked and settled into place, quietly and
+inevitably, as they do in a child's kaleidoscope, and the final pattern
+stood out, finished.  She smiled slightly and thinks that perhaps she
+prayed.  Then,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you give the woman a chance?" said Molly Dickett.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+Mr. Dickett pushed little Penelope gently off his knee and stroked a
+whitening whisker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Molly's baby was a boy, mother&mdash;I know you'd want to hear," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Dickett was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her husband's bought a third interest in the boat," he went on firmly,
+"and she says he'll probably be captain some day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed," said Mrs. Dickett.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They've stopped carrying passengers and the rooms are fitted up for
+them, quite private, she writes, and the boy weighed nine pounds.  I'm
+thinking of going down to see them, when they get in to this country
+again, mother.  Would you care to see her husband's picture?  He's a
+fine looking chap&mdash;six feet, she writes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care about it," said Mrs. Dickett, through thin lips.  "It is
+a relief, however, to learn that she is no longer a chambermaid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come, mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know,"
+Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly.  "It seems a roving sort of life, to us,
+I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I can't see any real
+harm..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tastes differ," said his wife grimly&mdash;and so, God knows, they do!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE GOSPEL
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+For the first few days of her stay there, she thought little enough of
+the strangeness of the situation.  To think of it, to marvel at the
+neat stillness, the quiet precision of all the domestic arrangements,
+would have been to let her mind dwell on just what she had to avoid.
+She was sick to her very soul of all that the words "domestic
+arrangements" implied; sick with an actual spiritual nausea.  It was
+honestly no exaggeration to say that she would gladly have died rather
+than take the trouble to arrange the details of living.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So every morning she woke when her dreams ended and lay staring idly,
+through the cross-bars of the primitive window-netting, at the swaying,
+sinking, tree-tops, and the floating white above them, so white between
+the blue and green; and then her breakfast came, fresh and chill and
+shining, with a flaming nasturtium on the snowy linen; and then a
+dreamy time, when thought ranged among stray lines of poetry and
+memories of childhood; and then some one rubbed and kneaded and ironed
+out her tired muscles and she slept again.  Sometimes foaming milk came
+in a beaded brown pitcher that smelt of dairies; sometimes luscious,
+quartered fruits, smothered in clotting cream, tempted a palate nearly
+dulled beyond recall; sometimes rich, salted broth steamed in a dim,
+blue bowl till she regretted to see the bottom of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And just at that time she was lifted into a long, basket chair and,
+propped in lavendered pillows, looked dreamily into the hills and
+pastures rolling out in front of her.  Cows wandered here and there,
+birds swooped lazily through the June blue, the faintest scent of
+grapevines hung on the wind.  But no human figures blotted the
+landscape; only the faint, musical clash of distant scythes (a sound as
+natural as the cawing and lowing and interminable twittering of the
+busy animal world all around) spoke of men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then one day (it might have been a week's time) she caught herself
+listening for sounds of household labour.  Where was the breaking, the
+slamming, the whistling, the quarrelling, the brushing and the rattling
+that these thin partitions ought to filter through?  Simply, it was
+not.  A little faint, suspicious worry came to her: the house was a
+tomb, then?  Did it have to be?  Was she as bad as that?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when her tray came next, some kind of savoury stew, by now, with
+fresh picked strawberries on a sea-green grape leaf, she looked
+directly at the woman who brought it to the bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How still this house is!" she said, and flushed with weakness, for it
+was her first real sentence, and it occurred to her that only little
+sighs of fatigue or groans of relief and halting exclamations of, "That
+feels good," or "No more, thanks," had passed her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman smiled.  She wore a straight gown of some cool stripe of
+white and grey and her eyes were grey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We live in a quiet place," she said, and lifted the pillows higher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it seemed that after that&mdash;perhaps it was because she listened&mdash;she
+began to hear faint sounds.  The clear falling of poured out water, and
+the tinkling of dish on dish, now and then, and later, the soft murmur
+of exchanging women's voices.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another day she spoke of the freshness of her morning egg, and that
+afternoon she leaned nearer the casement to catch the cluck of a
+motherly hen with her brood, and smiled at the scurry of wing and feet
+as grain was scattered somewhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It must have been at that time that the doctor came up to see her, a
+big brown man, whose beard hid his smile when he chose, but nothing
+could cover the keen, reading beam of the eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see you are doing well," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is wonderful," she answered him, "but I am sure it is not the
+world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The world is very large," he said, and went away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I never asked about&mdash;about anybody," she murmured, her eyes
+filling, "but I am sure they are all right, or he would have said!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was ashamed, afterward, to remember for how long she had thought
+the woman who attended on her a servant.  And yet she did think her so
+until the morning when it suddenly occurred to her that it was not
+possible any ordinary servant should be so deft and self-contained at
+once: servants were not so calm&mdash;that was it, so calm.  Even the best
+of them were hurried and anxious, and if they were old and valued, they
+got on one's nerves the more: one had to consider them.  Of course,
+this was a trained nurse.  She had decided suddenly that she felt equal
+to rising for her bath, and congratulated herself on discerning the
+nurse in time, for now she could ask for help, if she needed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will show me the bathroom," she said, "and will be there to
+help me over the edge of the tub, in case I feel weak&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will be there," said the woman, "but I must get it ready: the tub is
+not high."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when she stepped into the next room she realised, with a little
+smile, how far she was from white porcelain and tiled walls.  On the
+scrubbed deal floor there stood a white deal tub, clean as new milk,
+round and copper bound.  Towels and soaps and sponges were there in
+plenty, and great metal ewers full of hot and cold water, and nothing
+else but one chair in all the scrubbed cleanliness.  The woman poured
+the water over her as she crouched in the fragrant wooden pool and
+dried her gently and quickly in towels pressed away in lavender, with
+the deft, sure movements of one well practised in her business; but
+when she lay, just happily tired from the new exertion, among the
+fragrant sheets, a tiny shadow seemed about to haunt her sleep.  She
+placed the little discomfort with difficulty, but at length expressed
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That tub is very heavy, now," she said drowsily.  "Is there a man to
+lift it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time the woman smiled.  Till then she had been hands and
+feet merely, tireless and tactful, but impersonal: now she smiled, and
+her face was very sweet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall empty it," she said.  "I am quite strong.  Go to sleep, now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very soon again the doctor came, and at her quiet request gave her news
+of husband, children and home; all well, it seemed, and smoothly
+ordered.  Days of absolute stillness had broken the habit of insistent
+speech, and many things that once would have said themselves before she
+thought, now halted behind her lips and seemed not worth the muscular
+effort.  But one thing she did mention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ought not the nurses here to have more help?" she asked.  "Mine lifts
+out my bath-water every day.  Are there not servants enough?  I could
+pay for it..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are no servants here at all," he said, "and there is nobody you
+could pay more than you are already paying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then they are all nurses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are no trained nurses here, if you mean that," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then who&mdash;what is the woman who takes care of me?" she asked, vaguely
+displeased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is one of the daughters of the house," he said.  "She is no more a
+nurse than her mother is a cook or her sister a laundress.  They do
+what is to be done, that is all.  Each has done and can do the others'
+tasks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt in some way corrected, yet it was hard to say in what she had
+offended.  But Dr. Stanchon was an odd man in many ways.  "All the
+same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now.  I shall
+feel more comfortable.  Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me.  I
+believe I could get along with her, now.  I'm afraid I was childish,
+before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he only shook his head.  "The time for Miss Jessop has passed, dear
+friend," he said quietly.  "No nurse ever comes here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then this is a private house," she began again, "their own home.  And
+I do not even know their names!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is private because it is their own home&mdash;just that," he said.
+"That is what a home is.  It is a simple fact, but one that seems not
+to have been included in your education."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Dr. Stanchon, what can you mean?" she cried.  "My mother's
+hospitality&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that I do not consider an art museum a home, no matter how
+highly the chef is paid," he said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But there is the place on the Hudson&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is a country club, nothing more," he interrupted.  "Your mother
+dismissed a butler once, because, though he offered eight liqueurs to a
+guest, the guest asked for a ninth and the butler had neglected to
+order it.  I have attended her there for a really painful attack of
+sciatica when none of her visitors knew that anything ailed her, though
+she had been away from them for forty-eight hours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that is mother's house, not mine," she protested, "and I do not
+pretend to keep up&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not pretend to, because you could not do it," he interrupted
+again.  "Your father is a multi-millionaire and your husband is not.
+But it is your constant ideal, nevertheless, and your failures to
+realise it, even in the degree to which you have tried, have sapped
+your vitality to a point which even you can understand now, I should
+suppose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked doubtingly at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really mean, Dr. Stanchon," she began, "that this dreadful
+attack&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Attack'!" he muttered brusquely, "'attack'!  One would imagine I had
+pulled you through pneumonia or peritonitis!  If, after constant
+sapping and mining and starving-out the garrison, it gives way and
+falls defeated, you choose to call the day of surrender a yielding to
+an attack, then you have had an attack."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And again he left her abruptly, a prey to creeping, ugly doubts.  For
+she had been very sorry for herself and the fatality that had stranded
+her on the dreary coast where so many of her friends had met mysterious
+wreckage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has the doctor sent patients here before?" she asked her attendant the
+next morning, when she sat, fresh and fragrant in her invalid ruffles,
+at the window, watching the poultry yard, which somehow she had not
+noticed before, and the cow browsing beside the brook where the white
+ducks paddled, gossiping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, often," said the busy sister (she was Hester; the other was
+Ann).  "We are never without some one.  So many people are ill in the
+city.  Now I am going to clean your room, and perhaps you will feel
+like stepping out on the balcony?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Surprised, for she had not seen any such addition to the simple frame
+house, she stepped through a window cut down somewhat clumsily, but
+efficiently enough, and hinged to swing outward, onto a shallow, roofed
+<I>loggia</I> with vines grown from boxes on the sides and two long, low
+chairs faced to the view of the hills.  In one of these sat a woman,
+slender and motionless, whose glistening white wrapper seemed to melt
+in the strong sun into the white of the painted wooden balustrade that
+protected the balcony.  Flushed with an invalid's quick irritation and
+resentful of any other occupant, for her raw nerves were not yet
+healed, she was about to turn back hastily into the room when a second
+glance assured her that it was only one of her own white wrappers
+draped along the chair.  The face and hands that her vexed irritation
+must have supplied amazed her, in retrospect, with their distinctness
+of outline, and she trembled at her weak nerves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From inside the room came the swishing of water and the sound of
+scrubbing; soon the strong clean flavour of soapy boards floated out,
+and the flick of the drops into the pail; from where she sat she could
+see out of the corner of her eye the fluff of snowy suds that foamed
+over the shining bucket as Hester rubbed the milky cake of soap with
+the bristles.  Her strong strokes had a definite rhythm and set the
+time for the stern old hymn-tune she crooned.  The listener on the
+balcony obeyed her growing interest and turned her chair to face into
+the room.  The kilted Hester, on her knees, her brow bound with a
+glistening towel, threw her body forward with the regularity of a
+rower, her strong, muscled arms shot out in a measured curve; on her
+little island of dry boards she sang amid her clean, damp sea,
+high-priestess of a lustral service as old as the oldest temple of man,
+and the odour of her incense, the keen, sweet freshness of her
+cleansing soap, rose to the heaven of her hymn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You sing as if you liked it," said the watcher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so I do," said Hester.  "Things must be clean, and I like to make
+them so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, you are doing just what we did in the gymnasium the year I went
+there," cried the invalid, with the first real interest she had felt in
+anything outside herself.  "We kneeled on the floor and swept our arms
+out just like that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there were many of you, it must soon have been clean," said Hester,
+moving the rug she knelt on deftly.  "Oh, we were not cleaning it,"
+said the invalid smiling.  "It was only the same motion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed?  Then why were you doing it?" Hester asked, turning her
+flushed face in surprise toward the ruffled whiteness in the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stared at the worker, but even as she stared she frowned
+uncomfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, for&mdash;for exercise&mdash;for strength," she said slowly, and coloured
+under Hester's smile....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Later in the day she moved out again upon the balcony, regretful for
+the first time that no one of her own world could be there to talk with
+her.  Hester, wiping bed, chair and mirror with the white cloth that
+never seemed to soil, whipping the braided rag rugs below her on the
+green with strong, firm strokes that recalled the scheduled blows she
+had practised at a swinging leather ball, vexed her, somehow, and she
+was conscious of a whimsical wish that her delusion of the white
+wrapper stretched along the reclining chair had proved a reality.  The
+soft grey shadows of early evening covered the little balcony, the
+chairs were plunged in it, and it was with a cry of apology that she
+stepped into a grey gown, so soft and thin that she had taken it for a
+deeper shadow, merely, and had actually started to seat herself in the
+long chair where the slender woman lay.  Her own body appeared so
+robust beside this delicate creature's that pity smothered the surprise
+at her quiet presence there, and the swift feeling that she herself was
+by no means the frailest of the doctor's patients added to her
+composure as she begged pardon for her clumsiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I was the only patient here," she explained.  "Miss Hester
+and Miss Ann have a wonderful way of getting quiet and privacy in their
+little house, haven't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it so little?" the stranger asked.  She felt embarrassed, suddenly,
+and tactless, for she had taken it for granted that they were both of
+the class to which the modest cottage must seem small.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only meant," she added hastily, for it seemed that at any cost this
+gentle, pale creature must not be hurt, "I only meant that to take in
+strangers, in this way, and to keep the family life entirely separate
+requires, usually, much more space."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But do they keep it separate&mdash;the family life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+("Evidently," she thought, "they have not been able to give her a
+private room, like mine, or perhaps she eats with them.")
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think that is how they do it," the stranger went on, "by not having
+any separate life, really.  It is all one life, with them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All one life..." the other repeated, vaguely, recalling, for some
+reason, the doctor's words, "but, of course, in a larger establishment
+that would not be possible.  With servants..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose that is why they have no servants," said the stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a soft assurance in the tone, soft, but undoubtedly there.
+And yet what assurance should a woman have who did not find this house
+small?  She discovered that she was still a little irritable, for she
+spoke brusquely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People do not employ servants, I imagine, for the very simple reason
+that they cannot afford to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not always," said the other quietly.  "I have known Ann and Hester
+many years, and there has never been a time when they could not have
+afforded at the least one servant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tastes differ, I suppose," she answered shortly.  "I should have
+supposed that every woman would take the first opportunity of relieving
+herself from the strain of household drudgery, which any ignorant
+person can accomplish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you found so many of them to accomplish it for you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flushed angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Stanchon has been talking about me!" she cried with hot memories
+of her interminable domestic woes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed not," said the grey lady.  "I knew nothing....  I only asked if
+ignorant persons really accomplished their drudgery to any one's
+satisfaction nowadays?  They used not to when&mdash;when I employed them...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she had been wrecked beyond repair, this shadowy, large-eyed thing!
+She spoke as of a day long over.  The other woman felt ashamed of her
+suspicion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, indeed," she answered wearily, "that was an exaggeration,
+naturally.  But they might, if they would take pains.  They are paid
+enough for it, heaven knows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ann and Hester are not paid," said the voice from the dim chair.
+"Perhaps that is why they take pains."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman nodded fretfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is all very well," she said, "and sounds very poetic, but it
+would be rather impractical for us all to do, on that account."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impractical?  <I>Impractical?</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A hint of gentle laughter from the long chair.  "But it seems to me
+that Ann and Hester are the least impractical of people&mdash;are they not?
+They are surely less harassed than you were?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+("I must have been very sleepy: I don't remember telling her all about
+it," thought the woman, "but she seems to know.")
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she said aloud, "I was harassed.  Nearly to death, it seems.  I
+am hardly myself yet.  I suppose you have been through it all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been through a great deal, yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shadows deepened and a thin, new moon sank lower and lower.  The
+grey figure grew less and less distinct to her, and before she knew it,
+she slept.  When she woke, she was alone on the balcony, and the
+sunlight lay in blue-white pools upon the floor.  For the first time in
+her life she had slept alone under the stars, with no one to settle her
+into her dreams or to attend on her when she woke from them, and
+suspicion and displeasure darkened for a moment the freshest awakening
+she could remember.  Had they really forgotten her?  No one seemed to
+be coming, and after a quarter of an hour's impatient waiting she left
+the long, couch-like chair, opened the door of her room and went with
+quick determined steps down the narrow hall, down the stairs, straight
+to the sounds of women's voices in the distance.  They led her through
+a shining kitchen, where a patient, old clock presided, through a cool,
+dim buttery into a primitive laundry, or washing shed, with deal tubs
+and big copper cauldrons and a swept stone floor.  But no odour of the
+keen cleanliness she had learned to connect with Hester's soap ruled
+the wash-house this morning: a breeze from Araby the blest blew through
+the piles of dewy crimson strawberries that heaped themselves in yellow
+bowls, in silver-tinted pans, in leaf-lined wicker baskets, and brought
+all the gardens of June into the bare, stone room.  Hester's quick
+fingers twisted the delicate hulls from the scarlet, scented globes,
+and near her, measuring mounds of glittering sugar, stood a broader,
+squarer woman with greying hair, who smiled gravely at her, facing her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here she is, now," said this woman, whom she guessed to be Ann, and
+Hester, turning to her, added, as one who finishes a sentence, merely,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I was just getting ready a dish of strawberries for you.  Mother
+has stepped out for your egg: the brown hen has just laid.  The rolls
+are in the oven and mother has the chocolate ready.  I thought you
+would be early this morning, you were sleeping so soundly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Early? early?" she repeated, taken aback by their easy greeting of
+her.  "Why, what do you mean?"  And just then the clock struck seven,
+deliberately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why&mdash;why, I thought&mdash;then you did not forget&mdash;" she began, uncertainly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is nothing like the open air for sleeping, when one is ready for
+it," said Hester.  "Did you not notice the cover I threw over you?  You
+must have gone off before it grew dark, quite."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, because I was with&mdash;" then she stopped abruptly.  For it
+dawned on her that the other woman must have been a dream, since she
+perceived that she was unwilling to ask about her, so faintly did that
+conversation recall itself to her, so uncertain her memory proved as to
+how that other came and went, or when.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a dream, of course," she thought, and said, a shade resentful
+still,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never slept&mdash;that way&mdash;before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems to suit you," said Ann briskly, "for you have never left your
+room till now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it dawned on her suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I am well!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very nearly, I think," Hester answered her.  "Will you have your
+breakfast under the tree, while sister picks the berries?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To this she agreed gladly and found herself, still wondering at the new
+strength that filled her, under a pear-tree, in a pleasant patch of
+shadow, eating with relish from Hester's morning tray.  Ann knelt not
+far from her in the sun, not too hot at this hour for a hardy worker,
+and soon her low humming rose like a bee's note from under her broad
+hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The wash is all ready for you, sister, on the landing," she called.
+"Tell mother her new towels bleached to a marvel: they are on the
+currant-bushes now.  I'll wet them down and iron them off while the
+syrup is cooking, I think&mdash;I know she's anxious to handle them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you always busy, Miss Ann?" her guest inquired, for Ann's fingers
+never stopped even while she looked toward the house-door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Always in the morning, of course," she answered, directly.  "Every one
+must be, if things are to get done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But in the afternoon you are ironing, and Miss Hester tells me you do
+a great deal in the garden.  When do you rest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In my bed," said Ann briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was less sweetly grave than her sister, and it was easy to see that
+her tongue was sharper.  She would not have been so soothing to an
+invalid, but the woman under the pear-tree had her nerves better in
+hand by now, and felt, somehow, upon her mettle to prove to this broad,
+curt Ann that there were tasks in the world beyond her sturdy
+rule-of-thumb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely every one needs time to think&mdash;to consider," she began
+gently.  "Don't you find it so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To plan out the day, do you mean?" said Ann, moving to a new patch.
+"I generally do that at night before I go to sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," she explained, "not the day's work&mdash;that must be done, of
+course&mdash;but the whole Scheme, life, and one's relation to it..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't feel any call to study that out," said Ann.  "I haven't the
+headpiece for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but some people have, and so&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you?" said Ann.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She bit her lip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is surely every woman's duty to cultivate herself as far as she
+can," she began.  "Nobody denies that nowadays."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ann was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you agree with me?" the woman persisted.  "You surely know what
+I mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I know what you mean, well enough," Ann said at last.  "I
+know you have to cultivate strawberries, if you want to get more of
+'em&mdash;and bigger.  The question is, what do you get out of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flood of explanations pressed to her lips, but just as they brimmed
+over, some quick surmise of Ann's shrewd replies choked them back.
+After all, what had she got out of it?  What that she could show?  She
+rose slowly and walked back to her room, where the bath, fresh,
+uncreased clothes, and Hester's deft ministry waited ready for her.
+Later, she lay again in the balcony chair, not so soothed by her little
+pile of books as she had looked to be.  Beautiful, pellucid thought,
+deep-flowing philosophies, knife-edged epigrams and measured verse lay
+to her hand, but they seemed unreal, somehow, and their music echoed
+like meaningless words shouted, for the echo merely, in empty halls.
+She drowsed discontentedly and woke from a dream of the grey lady to
+see her stretched in the companion chair, herself asleep, it seemed,
+for it was only after a long doubtful stare from the other that she
+opened her great dark eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I almost thought I had dreamed of meeting you before!  Wasn't it
+absurd?  I am only now realising how ill I have been&mdash;things were all
+so confused...  I find that I can't even reply to Miss Ann as I ought
+to be able to, when she scorns the effects of culture!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does Ann scorn culture?" the grey lady asked in mild surprise.  "I
+never knew that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She scorns the leisure that goes to produce it, anyway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you give her a concrete instance of any special culture?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She moved uneasily in her chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;concrete, <I>concrete</I>!" she repeated deprecatingly.  "Must I be as
+concrete with you as with her?  Surely culture, and all that it
+implies, need not be forced to defend itself with concrete examples?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid that I agree with Ann," said the soft voice in the shadow.
+"I'm afraid that so far as I am concerned, culture needs just that
+defence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She tried to smile the superior smile she had mustered for Ann,
+kneeling in her checked sunbonnet, but this was difficult, with a woman
+so obviously of her own class and kind.  Still the woman was clearly
+unreasonable, and she was able, at least, to speak forcibly as she
+replied,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aren't you rather severe on the enormous majority of us, in that case?
+We can't all be great philosophers or productive artists, you know, and
+yet between us and Ann's preserved strawberries and Hester's scrubbing
+there's a wide gulf&mdash;you must admit that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger rose lightly from her chair and walked, with a swaying
+motion like a long-stemmed wild flower, toward the home-made
+window-door.  At the sill she paused and fixed her great eyes on the
+stronger woman&mdash;stronger, plainly, for the frail white hand on the
+china knob supported her while she stood, and she seemed to cling to
+the woodwork and press against it as she sank into the shadow of the
+eaves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wide gulf, indeed," she said slowly, in her soft, breathless voice,
+with an intonation almost like a foreigner's, her listener decided
+suddenly, "a gulf so wide that unless you can cross it with some bridge
+of honest accomplishment, it will swallow you all very soon&mdash;you women
+of culture!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She slipped across the sill and presently Hester's clear, firm voice
+was heard in the narrow hall,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" and the balcony was drowned in the dusk, and
+the woman on it yielded consciously to the great desire for sleep that
+possessed her.  But before she drifted off, not afraid, this time, of
+night under the sky, it occurred to her dimly that Hester's other
+patient must come through her own room whenever she used the little
+<I>loggia</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is she&mdash;an anarchist? a socialist?" she thought.  "I must surely
+ask Hester about her.  'You women of culture,' indeed!  What does she
+call herself, I wonder?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That next morning as she waited idly for bath and breakfast, the
+stranger possessed her thoughts more and more.  Only in such an
+absolutely unconventional place, she told herself, could a completely
+unknown woman appear (in her own apartments, really) and discuss with
+her so nonchalantly such strange questions.  In many ways this delicate
+creature's words seemed to echo Dr. Stanchon's, and this seemed all the
+more natural, now, since she was so obviously still his patient.
+Hester had said that he sent many there&mdash;this one was perhaps too frail
+ever to leave them, and felt so much at home that no one thought to
+speak of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A healthy hunger checked these musings, and more amused than irritated
+at such unusual desertion, she bathed and dressed unaided and went down
+to the kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They will soon see by the way I keep my temper, now," she thought,
+"and my strength, that I am quite able to go back.  I really must see
+how the children are getting on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Following the ways of her last journey through the house she found the
+kitchen, where an oven-door ajar and a half-dozen small, fragrant
+loaves in the opening showed her that though empty, the room was
+deserted only for a housewife's rapid moment.  She sat down therefore
+beneath the patient old clock, and waited.  Soon she heard a quick,
+bustling step, unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of
+Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh and tidy as a
+clean withered apple, was their mother.  She had a pan of new-picked
+peas in one arm and a saucer of milk balanced in the other hand,
+plainly the breakfast for the sleek black cat that bounded in beside
+her.  This she set carefully on a flagstone corner before she noticed
+her visitor, it seemed, and yet she did not appear startled at company,
+and showed all of the younger women's untroubled ease as she explained
+that a message from Dr. Stanchon had called them both away suddenly,
+very early.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was perhaps some other patient in the house?" the guest suggested
+curiously, with a vivid memory of the grey lady's frail white hand and
+breathless voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps," said the old woman equably, and tied a checked apron over
+the white one, the better to attack the peas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the shining pan she tossed the fairy green globes into the rich
+yellow bowl of earthenware at her side, with the quick ease of those
+veined, old hands that outwork the young ones, and her guest watched
+her in silence for a few minutes, hypnotised, almost, by the steady
+pit-pat of the little green balls against the bowl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when do you expect them back?" she asked finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," said the old lady, "but they'll be back as soon as the
+work is over, you may depend&mdash;they don't lag, my girls, neither of 'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure of that," she assented quickly.  "They are the hardest
+workers I ever saw: I wonder that they never rest, and tell them so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Time enough for resting when all's done," said the old lady briskly.
+"That was my mother's word before me and I've handed it down to Ann and
+Hester."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But then, at that rate, none of us would ever rest, would we?" she
+protested humourously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This side o' green grave?" the old lady shot out.  "Maybe so.  But
+podding peas is a kind of rest&mdash;after picking 'em!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And have you really picked all these&mdash;and in the sun, too?" she said,
+surprised.  "I trust not for me&mdash;I could get along perfectly..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old lady jumped briskly after her loaves, tapped the bottoms
+knowingly, then stood each one on its inverted pan in a fragrant row on
+the dresser.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peas or beans or corn&mdash;it makes no odds, my dear," she cried
+cheerfully.  "It's all to be done, one way or another, you see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An inspiration came to the idler by the window, and before she had
+quite caught at the humour of it, she spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should you get my breakfast&mdash;for I am sure you are going to?" she
+said.  "Why shouldn't I&mdash;if you think I could&mdash;for I don't like to sit
+here and have you do it all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not, indeed?" the old woman replied, with a shrewd smile at her.
+"Hester judged you might offer, and left the tray ready set."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hester judged?" she repeated wonderingly.  "Why, how could she,
+possibly?  How could she know I would come down, even?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She judged so," the mother nodded imperturbably.  "The kettle's on the
+boil, now, and I've two of the rusks you relished yesterday on the
+pantry shelf.  Just dip 'em in that bowl of milk in the window and slip
+'em in the oven&mdash;it makes a tasty crust.  She keeps some chocolate
+grated in a little blue dish in the corner and the butter's in a crock
+in the well.  The brown hen will show you her own egg, I'll warrant
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Amused, she followed all these directions, and poured herself a cup of
+steaming chocolate, the first meal of her own preparing since childish
+banquets filched from an indulgent cook.  And then, the breakfast over,
+she would have left the kitchen, empty just then, for the mistress of
+it had pottered out on one of her endless little errands, had not a
+sudden thought sent a flush to her forehead, so that she turned
+abruptly at the threshold and walking swiftly to the water spigot, sent
+a stream into a tiny brass-bound tub she took from the deep window
+seats, frothed it with Hester's herb-scented soap, and rinsed and
+dipped and dried each dish and cup of her own using before the old
+woman returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is surprising how&mdash;how <I>satisfactory</I> it makes one feel, really,"
+she began hastily at the housewife's friendly returning nod, "to deal
+with this sort of work.  One seems to have accomplished something
+that&mdash;that had to be done...  I don't know whether you see what I mean,
+exactly...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bless you, my dear, and why shouldn't I see?" cried the other,
+scrubbing the coats of a lapful of brown jacketed potatoes at the
+spigot.  "Every woman knows that feeling, surely?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never did," she said, simply.  "I thought it was greasy, thankless
+work, and felt very sorry for those who did it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did they look sad?" asked the old worker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a flash of memory they passed before her, those white-aproned,
+bare-elbowed girls she had watched idly in many countries and at many
+seasons; from the nurse that bathed and combed her own children,
+singing, to the laundry-maids whose laughter and ringing talk had waked
+her from more than one uneasy afternoon sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, no, I can't say that they did," she answered slowly, "but to do
+it steadily, I should think..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the steady work that puts the taste into the holiday, my mother
+used to say," said the old woman shortly.  "Where's the change, else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But of course there are many different forms of work," she began,
+slowly, as though she were once for all making the matter clear to
+herself, and not at all explaining obvious distinctions to an
+uneducated old woman, "and brain workers need rest and change as much,
+yes, more, than mere labourers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they tell me," said Hester's mother respectfully, "though of course
+I know next to nothing of it myself.  Ann says it's that makes it so
+dangerous for women folks to worry at their brains too much, for she's
+taken notice, she says, that mostly they're sickly or cranky that works
+too much that way.  Hard to get on with, she says they are, the best of
+'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!" she cried indignantly, "and I suppose to be 'easy to get on
+with' is the main business of women, then!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Lord above us, child!" answered the old woman briskly, dropping
+her white potatoes into a brown dish of fresh-drawn water, "if the
+women are not to be easy got on with, who's to be looked to for it,
+then; the children&mdash;or the men?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gathered up the brown peelings and bagged them carefully with the
+pea pods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For the blacksmith's pig," she said.  "We don't keep one and he gives
+us a ham every year....  Not that it's not a different matter with you,
+of course," she added politely.  "There's some, of course, that's
+needed by the world, for books and music and the like o' that&mdash;I don't
+need Hester to tell me so.  There's never an evening in winter, when
+all's swept and the lamp trimmed and a bowl of apples out, and Ann and
+I sit with our bit of sewing, that I don't thank God for the books
+Hester reads out to us.  One was written by a woman writer that the
+doctor sent us here for a long, long time&mdash;poor dear, but she was
+feeble!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She worked with the girls at everything they did, that she could, by
+doctor's orders, and it put a little peace into her, she told me.
+You've a look in the eyes like her&mdash;there were thousands read her
+books."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guest rose abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never wrote a book&mdash;or did anything," she said briefly, and turned
+to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't tell me!" the old mother stammered.  "Why, I made sure by
+your look&mdash;what made ye so mortal tired, then, deary?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must find that out," she said, slowly, her hand on the knob.
+"I&mdash;must&mdash;find&mdash;that&mdash;out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And on the balcony she paced and thought for an hour, but there was no
+calmness in her forehead till the afternoon, when alone with Hester's
+mother, for the daughters did not return all that day, she worked with
+pressed lips at their tasks, picking Ann's evening salad, sprinkling
+cool drops over Hester's fresh-dried linen, brought in by armfuls from
+the currant-bushes, spreading the supper-table, pressing out the
+ivory-moulded cottage cheese and ringing its dish with grape-leaves
+gathered from the well-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So intent was she at these tasks, that she heard no footsteps along the
+grass, and only as she put the fifth chair at the white-spread table
+(for the old mother had been mysteriously firm in her certainty that
+they should need it) did she turn to look into the keen brown eyes of
+the wise physician who had left her weeks ago in the bed above them.
+He gave her a long, piercing look.  Then,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so," he said quietly.  "We will go back to-morrow, you and
+I&mdash;I need your bedroom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through the open door she caught a quick glimpse of Ann and Hester half
+supporting, half carrying up the stairs a woman heavily veiled in black
+crêpe; Hester did not join them till late in the meal, and went through
+the room with a glass of milk afterward.  No one spoke further of her
+presence among them; no one thanked her for her services; all was
+assumed and she blessed them for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The doctor passed the evening with his new patient, and when she
+mounted the stairs for her last night she found her simple luggage in
+the room next hers: there was no question of helping her to bed, and
+she undressed thoughtfully alone.  The house was very still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her window was a deep dormer, and as she leaned out of it, for a breath
+of the stars, she saw Dr. Stanchon stretched in her chair on the
+balcony, his face white and tired in the moonlight.  In the chair near
+her, so near that she could touch it, lay the frail creature in the
+grey dress, black now at night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is his old patient!" she thought contentedly, remembering with
+vexation that she had absolutely forgotten to ask the house-mother
+about her and why she had not appeared; and she began to speak, when
+the other raised her hand warningly, and she saw that Dr. Stanchon
+slept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why she began to whisper she did not know, but she remembered afterward
+that their conversation, below breath as it was, was the longest they
+had yet had, though she could recall only the veriest scraps of it.
+For instance:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Mary and Martha?" she had urged, "surely there is a deep meaning
+in that, too?  It was Martha who was reproved...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One would imagine that every woman to-day judged herself a Mary&mdash;and
+that is a dangerous judgment to form, one's self," the other whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But to deliberately assume these tasks&mdash;simple because they clear my
+life and keep me balanced&mdash;when I have no need to do them, seems to me
+an affectation, absurd!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can a thing be absurd if it brings you ease?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't need to do them, really, for myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For some one else, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was then that another veil dropped from before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then is that why, do you think, people devote themselves to those low,
+common things&mdash;great saints and those that give up their own lives?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think so, yes."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a real relief to them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not? ..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fell asleep on the broad window-seat, her head on her arms, and
+when she woke and groped for her bed in the dark, the balcony was empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no bustle of departure: a grave hand-shaking from the
+daughters, a kiss on the mother's withered, rosy cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come back again, do," said the old woman and the doctor commented upon
+this as they sat in the train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is a great compliment," he said.  "I never knew her to say that
+except to a long-time patient of mine that stayed a long time (more's
+the pity!) with them.  'Come back,' said Mother to her.  'Come soon,
+deary, for the house will miss your grey dress so soft on the floor.'
+They would have cured her if anybody could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you don't consider her cured?" she said with a shock of
+disappointment.  "I am so sorry.  But it is surely a wonderful
+place&mdash;one can't talk about it, but I see you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I know," he said briefly.  "I saw you would pull through in
+great shape there.  This patient I spoke of used to tell me that the
+duty of her life, here and through Eternity, ought by rights to be the
+preaching of the gospel she learned there.  Well&mdash;maybe it is, for all
+we know.  If I could have cured her, she would have been a great&mdash;a
+really great novelist, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you could have&mdash;" she gasped, seizing his arm, "you mean&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that I couldn't," he answered simply.  "She died there.  I
+dreamed of her last night."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE GYPSY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Very early in the last century, while Napoleon still reigned over
+Europe and the people went journeys in post-chaises through England,
+John Appleyard, the only son of a thriving Sussex farmer, met, while
+walking across one of his father's fields, a troup of gypsies camping
+under a hedge.  Among them was a dark young woman, very lovely, with
+straight, heavy brows and a yard of thick blue-black hair, which she
+was drying in the wind at the moment, having washed it in the brook.
+John looked at her hard, walked by, turned, looked again, and stood
+staring so long that a surly gypsy father slipped a fowling-piece into
+his elbow and approached him menacingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My daughter, young sir," he said shortly, "may sleep in a wagon and
+not eat off chayny plates as the like o' you do, but I'll have none
+eying her like that, be who he may, for she's a good girl, she is, and
+the best man that walks is none too good to be her husband!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I good enough?" says John Appleyard, quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as a matter of fact he married her in the parish church in three
+weeks' time, and his mother cried herself sick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was no use trying to live at the farm, after that, for the
+neighbours smiled and pointed, and the old farmer was scandalised at
+his new relatives, and though he had nothing against his handsome
+daughter-in-law personally, felt himself a marked man and counted the
+spoons every night.  So John, who had never loved farming, compounded
+for half the outlying land, which he sold very shrewdly, left his only
+sister the farm, shook hands all 'round and sailed with Lilda, his
+wife, for the United States of America.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the voyage he made friends with the captain, who took a great liking
+to him (and had no dislike, the passengers said, for Mistress Lilda),
+and put him in the way of business with a thriving grain-merchant of
+Boston, Massachusetts, whom, after twenty prosperous years, he bought
+out, and founded the house of Appleyard.  He had fondly hoped that this
+house should outlast the century, but his only son was no merchant, and
+all for the sea and its constant change and chance, and John was too
+sensible to blame the lad's roving soul to any one but Nature.  So with
+a sigh and a thrill of how his old father must have felt, he bought a
+fine trading-packet for young John and established his daughter's
+husband (she was a steady, prudent girl) as his partner and heir.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John II did wonderfully well and found himself at fifty the owner of
+the most flourishing packet line in the States, with his only son
+prize-man at Harvard University and a daughter who nearly whitened his
+hair by her mad plan for acting in public on the stage.  The son went
+early into buying and selling on 'Change, and was a weighty bank
+president by the time his daughter had finished her schooling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a trifle more elaborate and thorough-going than most girls of
+twenty could boast at that time, and for three reasons.  First, because
+she had a brilliant mind and great powers of concentration; next,
+because John III was not a little vain, in a quiet way, of all his
+Greek and Latin and historical research; and had plenty of leisure for
+imparting them; last, because his son&mdash;and only other child&mdash;had been a
+disappointment to him in that line, not only failing to repeat his
+father's brilliant college record, but proving actually slow at his
+books and decidedly averse to study, though a steady, competent
+accountant and investor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Lilda, named for her great-grandmother by John III's lady (who,
+being of Knickerbocker descent, laid great stress on family names),
+added to the somewhat doubtful accomplishments of a fashionable
+finishing school a great part of what her own daughter, years later,
+learned at the then popular woman's college.  Nor was other and more
+practical lore neglected, for her maternal grandmother, a notable
+<I>hausfrau</I> of the old school, taught her, in two long summers at her
+great country estate on the Hudson River, all the household arts and
+duties that girls of her own age were beginning to despise.  So that
+when, after a brilliant début in New York and a winter season there in
+which her wit and beauty, to say nothing of her horsemanship and
+exquisite dancing had made her the belle of that critical metropolis
+(not too large, then, for one reigning toast), she married one of the
+country's most prominent young lawyers, already suggested for high
+posts abroad, it was felt that America would honour both herself and
+whatever Court should receive these two young fortunates from her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a picture of her in the Court dress in which she made her bow
+to Queen Victoria, standing at the foot of a Roman stairway of
+yellowish marble, near a fountain, her baby boy clinging to her hand.
+Under the blue-black of her heavy hair, her cheeks are tinted like
+wall-ripened peaches; her strong, curved figure is just the Flora and
+Juno of the ancient city's statuary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is still whispered, in a few old New York houses that have kept
+their white marble and black walnut, the audacious story of Lilda
+Appleyard's falling-in-love.  It was at the Philadelphia Centennial of
+'76, whither her father had taken her for a long visit, for its
+educational influences.  He used to say that women had little chance of
+acquiring practical information of the large and comprehensive order,
+and that no one would ever know without a trial what of all that sort
+their brains could or could not take in.  The progress of the world, he
+said, was no greater than the progress of its homes, "and that," he
+used to wind up, "is no more nor less than the progress of their women."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Miss Lilda studied the progress of all three at the Centennial, and
+took sage notes in a little red morocco book, and the proud banker read
+them in private for years afterward to his friends.  But she was not
+engaged in this interesting occupation by night as well as day, you may
+rest assured.  Many a ball and high tea did Philadelphia's ladies offer
+their visiting friends, and there was not one of any consequence that
+failed to beg the honour of Miss Lilda Appleyard's company.  And her
+luggage was by no means limited to the little red morocco book!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A party from New York had come in a special train to Philadelphia for
+three days at the Centennial, and the occasion was seized by the wife
+of an army officer to give a large ball in her great house in
+Germantown.  All visiting Knickerbockers who might expect to be asked
+anywhere were asked to attend this ball, and Lilda's maid assured the
+hotel chambermaid that she never had known her young lady so hard to
+suit.  And finally, after three different trials, to pick out that
+strange black mousseline-de-soie!  She looked like pictures of
+foreigners, to tell you the truth, her young lady did!  Of course, her
+grandmamma's pearls would make anything dressy, and there's no denying
+the black made her arms and neck look like ivory&mdash;but to snatch up that
+flame-coloured scarf her grandpapa had brought from India, and knot it
+over her shoulder at the last minute!  It was downright outlandish.
+Mrs. Appleyard would never have liked it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had a high, staglike carriage of the head, and as she was rather
+tall, she looked over most of her girl companions.  Halfway through the
+dance she raised this dark head a little higher and stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is that man?" she asked abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Elliot Lestrange," the girls told her, "but he doesn't care for women.
+He's very proud."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to meet him," she said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They tittered and teased her, but after all, she was a belle, and Mr.
+Lestrange was sent for.  The young dancing man who undertook the
+message told freely how Lestrange had said,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, hang it all, I'm not dancing to-night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she's Miss Appleyard, of Boston and New York&mdash;she's a beauty!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then she must have plenty of beaux, Clarke, without me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So young Mr. Clarke took his little revenge (for after all, he had used
+his dance with the dark beauty for this stupid errand and resented it),
+and in presenting the chilly hero, said maliciously,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here is Mr. Lestrange, Miss Appleyard&mdash;but he says you must have
+plenty of beaux without him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is just it," returned the calm Lilda, looking straight at the
+grey eyes that faced her under the thick honey-coloured hair
+(Lestrange, though of Huguenot descent, was curiously blonde).  "I have
+<I>not</I> enough beaux&mdash;without Mr. Lestrange!  Will you have the next
+waltz, Mr. Lestrange&mdash;Mr. Clarke's, I believe it is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, yes, and this schottische, too, if I may," says Lestrange.
+The young people standing about said that they never took their eyes
+off each other from the moment she spoke to him, and that they swung
+into the dance like automatons, leaving her lawful squire, a young
+Philadelphian, irate and ridiculous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These may be New York manners," he said sourly, "but they would never
+do in a <I>civilized city</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His opinion was a matter of indifference to the couple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They are supposed to have talked very little, but danced frequently
+together.  As the young ladies were putting on their capes and cloaks,
+just before the dawn, one among them shrieked suddenly across the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Lilda! where is your flame-coloured scarf!  You've lost it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I gave it away," she said briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens!" said another.  "He'll be proposing before you know it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He proposed at twelve," Miss Appleyard said placidly, "and I accepted
+him.  Will you be maid-of-honour, Evelyn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one had ever told her of John I and his gypsy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had a wonderful wedding-tour among the Italian lakes and came back
+after a three months' honeymoon to the solid "brown stone front" of the
+period, which, furnished from cellar to attic, had been John's wedding
+gift to his daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well!" some gossip had cried, "it's big enough, in all conscience!
+But I suppose Mr. Appleyard was thinking of the size of Elliot's
+family."  (He was one of eight children and had nine uncles and aunts.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None of us has ever had but two," said Lilda calmly, "and the
+Appleyards don't change, papa says."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as a matter of fact little Elliot Lestrange never had but one
+contestant for nursery rights&mdash;his fair-haired, gentle sister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder which of the children will be the 'wild one'?" Lilda asked
+her husband one night, as they sat opposite each other in the great,
+high-ceilinged dining-room.  They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike
+the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to
+break the monotony of five years of table tête-à-tête, they delighted
+in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together.
+They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so
+much and such varied entertaining, that they could not remember when,
+before, the attentive coloured butler had had but two glasses to fill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lestrange looked admiringly at his handsome wife.  Never had he ceased
+to bless the day he married her.  He was a proud man, conventional and
+ambitious to a degree, and at moments during his short betrothal period
+he had felt threatening chills of doubt when away from his enchantress
+as to the wisdom of such a feverishly short acquaintance, such a
+sudden, almost dramatic alliance.  Never for a moment would he have
+been satisfied with the standing of an ordinary lawyer; the career he
+had set before himself needed a larger background than any one city,
+even his country's metropolis, could offer, and in his future the
+position and qualities of his wife would count enormously.  Money,
+breeding and beauty he had always told himself he must marry, but to
+win brains and a loving heart into the bargain was more than even he
+could have expected, and he admitted the justice of his friends'
+half-earnest jealousy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To-night he raised his glass gallantly and drank to her bright dark
+eyes, noting with pleasure that she had remembered to have her new gown
+of the filmy black material he fancied so much!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should either of them be 'wild,' dearest?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Papa told me once, when I was a child, that every Appleyard that he
+had ever heard of had two children, a son and a daughter," she said
+thoughtfully, "and one of them was always staid and steady and&mdash;oh,
+well, looked up to in the community, you know, and the other always
+flighty and ... unusual, to put it mildly.  And certainly, as far back
+as <I>I</I> can remember, it has been so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was Aunt Adelaide.  Grandpapa found her one day acting in a play
+in the town hall in the little village where they went for the
+summer&mdash;right on the stage with all those travelling actors.  She
+actually wanted to go with them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Absurd!" said her husband, selecting and peeling for her a specially
+fine peach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But grandpapa himself," she went on thoughtfully, "threatened to go as
+a common sailor before the mast, rather than be tied down to
+business&mdash;papa showed me a letter he wrote once; he said it was
+sickening to him to think of putting up the shutters every night and
+heaping up money in a strong-box."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about your great-grandfather?" he asked idly.  "I don't know about
+him," she said, "except that I am named for my great-grandmother.  They
+were the first Appleyards to come to this country, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," he said politely.  He himself traced his ancestry to a cousin
+of Henry of Navarre, and was furiously proud of it, though wild horses
+could not have dragged from him an allusion to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They dipped into the heavy crystal finger bowls in silence.  Then, as a
+sudden curious idea struck him,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how do you account, on that theory, for your own generation?" he
+asked.  "Certainly no one could call Johnny wild?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor old Johnny!" she said, laughing, "no, indeed!  The wildest step
+he ever took was to put type-writing machines in the bank!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, is it you?" he demanded, and smiled gravely, for her dignified
+young matronhood was his pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may come out in me later," she threatened, "for Appleyards don't
+change, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But old Mr. Appleyard, who perhaps knew more instances of the tradition
+than he imparted to his daughter, died peacefully at seventy-two, the
+accepted Appleyard age for that process, convinced that he, at last,
+had produced two steady children: he was a little worried about his
+grandson, young Elliot, who displayed a freakish talent for composing
+and performing music for the violin, and an unfortunate preference for
+the society of professional musicians, of which his mother seemed
+almost culpably tolerant, not to say proud.  The arts were rising,
+socially, in that generation, and Elliot was actually excused from an
+examination in ethics for the purpose of attending a concert by the
+Boston Symphony Society.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By this time, of course, they had returned from their European period.
+It had been a brilliant ten years, and Mrs. Lestrange had met most
+royalties and all travelling Americans of any consequence&mdash;all with the
+same gracious dignity, the same delicate balance of charm and reserve
+that delighted foreigner and compatriot alike.  Her portrait was
+painted by a great German, her bust was modelled by a great Frenchman,
+the words of a little lullaby she had composed for her baby girl was
+set to music and made famous through Europe by a great Italian.  Queen
+Victoria complimented her on her devoted personal care of her children,
+and sent her an autographed <I>carte de visite</I>, as they were still
+called then, framed in brilliants.  The silver trowel with which she
+laid the foundation stone of her school for instructing the
+peasant-girls of her adopted country in the simple household arts is
+still a bone of contention between her two proud children.  A duke
+stood godfather to her little Wilhelmina and Royalty herself
+embroidered at least one frill of the baby's christening robe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the children were twelve and fourteen, however, the family
+returned; papered, painted and decorated the house anew from top to
+bottom, and settled down to the task that had brought them back&mdash;the
+bringing up of their boy and girl in an American tradition.  If Mrs.
+Lestrange ever missed the polish and variety of European social life,
+if she found the "Anglo-mania" (just then so fashionable in New York) a
+little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it.  Handsome and
+serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day,
+perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties
+of household, nursery, ballroom and <I>salon</I>, omitting nothing,
+excelling in all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No charity bazaar, no educational exhibition, no welcoming of
+distinguished foreigners, no celebration of the arts, was complete
+without Mrs. Elliot Lestrange.  For her son's sake she patronized music
+extensively, for her daughter's, she sat through endless balls and
+garden parties.  By the time they were both married, her dark hair was
+powdered with silver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a beautiful old lady mamma is going to make," Wilhelmina said to
+her brother, who had made a flying visit across the Atlantic and left
+the old Italian villa where he made music all day among the birds and
+orange-trees, to see his sister's baby son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think so?" he answered quickly, with his darting, foreign air.  "I
+am myself far from certain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?" she cried, looking up a moment from the
+lace-trimmed bassinet.  "What a thing to say!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed indulgently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you know everything I say always shocked you, Sister Mina," he
+said.  "What a joy it must have been to you and father when I left
+these Puritan shores for good!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," she began, but he tapped her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes!" he contradicted.  "Even to marry an opera singer, you were
+glad to see me go!  But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will
+sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside
+her, and hear this little lady in the bassinet here say her lessons?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," young Elliot said, reflectively, "all I can say is, I don't
+think so.  There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't explain it exactly," he said, "but she's very deep&mdash;mamma.
+Father doesn't understand her, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!" his sister contradicted.  "You
+remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of
+not sleeping last year.  She and mamma got on famously, from the first;
+she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping
+again.  She was used to it&mdash;the nurse, I mean&mdash;and didn't mind, she
+said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember asking her why she thought mamma should have insomnia&mdash;for
+there was nothing whatever on her mind, and they say that's the cause,
+you know.  She gave me the strangest look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Are you sure your mother has nothing on her mind?' she asked me,
+'your mother's very deep, you know!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What nonsense, Miss Jessop!' I told her.  'Mamma's as open as the
+day!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Elliot laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sensible woman, your Miss Jessop," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know.  She was very decided, certainly, and easy in her
+ways.  More so than I quite like in a trained nurse.  I will say for
+her, though, that the out-of-doors idea was hers.  Though father was
+quite alarmed about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what I say.  Father doesn't understand her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Elly, how can you?  Every one says there never were two people so
+suited to each other.  There's not one wish of father's she doesn't
+carry out, and never has been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't say not," he agreed, "but that merely shows what a good,
+clever wife she is.  That doesn't say he understands her.  He certainly
+never understood me, I know; Uncle John didn't either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you were always&mdash;always&mdash;<I>queer</I>, you know, Elly," she explained
+deprecatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was I?" he questioned lightly.  "Mamma understood me, all the same.
+So perhaps she's 'queer,' too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense," Wilhelmina said briefly.  "Mamma is like anybody else, only
+a great deal cleverer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe, maybe," he repeated thoughtfully.  "But she always gives me the
+impression of having something up her sleeve.  She said a strange thing
+to me after my little girls&mdash;the twins, you know&mdash;were born.  She was
+holding them out in the orange grove, and saying such sweet things to
+Maddelina, and then she turned to me suddenly and said,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Have I been a good mother to you, Elliot?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, madre, you've been perfect,' I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Is there anything more you think I could ever do for you?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Honestly, dear, I don't think there is,' I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That's all I wanted to know,' she said, and sailed the next day....
+What's the matter?  How strange you look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's only that she said just that to me, last week," Wilhelmina told
+him, "and left the next day for New York.  But I supposed it was to get
+back to father.  She depends so on him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really think so?" he asked curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But every one agreed with Wilhelmina&mdash;perhaps because Wilhelmina very
+seldom said anything that any one was likely to disagree with&mdash;and so
+every one was much surprised at the comparatively short time that Mrs.
+Lestrange spent in retirement after her husband's sudden death.  He had
+not the Appleyard habit of living to be seventy-two, it appeared, and
+succumbed to pneumonia, following fatigue and exposure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His wife's hair turned quickly to an iron-grey, soon after, but she
+moved steadily on among the many educational and philanthropic schemes
+with which she had begun to fill her time after her daughter's
+marriage.  Organized charity was developing rapidly, just then, and
+Mrs. Lestrange's clear common sense, executive ability and knowledge of
+European institutions of the sort made her, with her wealth and
+leisure, a leader on New York boards and councils.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was noted that the year after her widowhood found her less
+frequently in the public meetings, less willing to organise new centres
+of work, more determined to avoid presidencies and chairmanships.  For
+this she gave as an excuse the frequent trips abroad, which seemed to
+have no special purpose and displeased Wilhelmina, who frequently
+offered her a home in Boston.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot understand why she refuses," said Wilhelmina, on the occasion
+of Elliot's last flying trip to America.  "The children would love
+their granny to be with us, and she could have her own sitting-room.
+Can't you persuade her, Elly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid not," he answered absently.  "You know she's winding up all
+those boards and trade-schools and hospitals and things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a good thing, too," said his sister.  "Mamma's done enough for the
+community.  She ought to settle down.  And you see she's going to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that's the way it looks to you, Mina?" he asked, looking
+searchingly into her pale blue eyes, and shrugging his shoulders
+slightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gracious, Elliot, if you know so much more about mamma than I do, why
+don't you ask her to live with you and Maddelina?" she suggested
+sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wouldn't do any good&mdash;she'd never think of it," he answered simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, of course, she and Maddelina..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly," he agreed with his teasing foreign smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I'll tell you another thing," she went on; "all these sudden trips
+about the country and to Europe&mdash;what is the sense?  Mamma will be
+fifty in a few days, and anything might happen&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, nonsense, Mina," he laughed at her.  "Mamma is stronger than
+either of us, and you know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course she's never been ill," his sister admitted.  "But all this
+travel makes her nervous, just the same.  She's not like herself.  Why,
+yesterday, we drove out through the suburbs&mdash;she seems to want to be
+out doors all the time, you know&mdash;and under a big tree there was a camp
+of those horrid gypsies.  The horses were unhitched, and the dirtiest
+children playing all about, and they were cooking over a fire.  Nothing
+would do but we must stop the horses&mdash;the new bays, you know, and they
+hate anything queer&mdash;and mamma actually made quite a visit among them!
+They were English gypsies, from Sussex, they said.  One of the women
+ladled out some mess or other from the great pot and mamma actually ate
+it.  And it was odd, too, but they wouldn't take any money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Not from you, lady, not from you!' they said.  The woman put her
+hands behind her back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That <I>was</I> odd," said Elliot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  And as we drove off she looked after them and said the strangest
+things.  'Could any one be happier, do you think?' she said, and
+afterward: 'Life seems so unwrinkled, somehow, when one sees it lived
+that way!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what did you say to that?" asked her brother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course, there was nothing to say.  I only said that I couldn't
+conceive how any educated woman could be happy without a bath-tub."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you did," he murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what mamma said," she sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, she looked at me so queerly and said, 'Of course you would say
+that, Mina!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know what I've come over for?" he asked abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On business, I suppose," she answered idly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Uncle John sent for me, to ask if I had any idea of mamma's
+intentions.  And then there were papers to sign."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Papers?" she looked alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  I think you might as well know.  But we're not to discuss it
+with her, understand.  She's disposing of all her property."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Elly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's divided into thirds.  One-third to me, one-third to you, and the
+other third cut up into servants' legacies, one or two charities and
+enough for herself to give her a hundred pounds a year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pounds?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's in English securities.  It looks as if she meant to live in
+England.  Uncle John asked if he might tell us, and she said only on
+condition that we didn't discuss it.  She meant to travel for some
+years, she said, and she had arranged to have us notified immediately
+in case of any accident or difficulty.  She expected to write
+occasionally, too, she said.  You know how mamma is&mdash;she simply
+hypnotised the old gentleman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Elly! you don't think her mind..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bosh!  Her mind's better than ours will ever be!  Uncle John went to
+Dr. Stanchon about it and he said that mamma was in perfect health,
+good for twenty-five years more&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She always says 'twenty-two,'" Wilhelmina interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;And that she was not to be bothered or crossed in any way.  He said
+that at her age women often took odd fancies, and that with a woman so
+capable and determined as mamma, the best thing was to give her her
+way.  'Mind you, now, Appleyard,' he said, 'your sister consulted me
+long before you did, and whatever she does I justify in every way!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, of course, with mamma, there's nothing else to do," sighed
+Wilhelmina, "but&mdash;five hundred dollars a year!  Why, it's impossible!
+She can't travel on that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but she can't starve, either," said Elliot, philosophically, "and
+everybody was always telling her she could have earned her own living
+in a dozen ways&mdash;perhaps she's going to do that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Elly!" cried poor Wilhelmina.  He turned to go, then picked up a
+small blue-print from the top of a pile on a camera.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's all this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that's one of the photographs the children are always taking
+nowadays.  That one&mdash;why, that's one of mamma and the gypsies, that I
+told you about!  See, there's the gypsy woman handing her out the soup.
+They get very clear prints, now, don't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what an extraordinary likeness!" he exclaimed.  "Isn't it
+remarkable!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you mean mamma and the gypsy," she said indifferently.  "Yes, the
+children both noticed it at once.  The other gypsies did, too, I'm
+sure, from the way they pointed and stared.  Well, she always was that
+dark type, you know.  Would you like to keep it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks, if you don't mind," he said, and put it carefully in his
+pocketbook.  "It's better of mamma than any of the professional ones."
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+Nobody who attended the great dinner-party given for Mrs. Elliot
+Lestrange on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday will forget it
+readily.  It was as much a public as a private function, and around the
+great hotel dining-room used for the occasion stood many different
+tables for many different classes of people.  Between the party of
+girls trained years ago in her trade-school and the long table of
+boards of directors of different movements in which she had long been
+prominent, sat the entire cast of one of the theatrical successes of
+the season, the play being openly founded on one of the dramatic
+incidents of her life as a diplomat's wife, a generation ago, in
+Europe.  The old composer of her famous cradle-song shared with the
+publisher of her "Letters from an Attaché's Wife," and the prima-donna
+she had discovered and educated, a merry little Italian table where her
+musician son made the proud fourth.  A party of old pupils from the
+convent school where she had spent a year surprised the room with the
+valedictory verses she had written for the class, and at her
+bridesmaid's table only one was lacking&mdash;the saucy maid-of-honour,
+Evelyn, of thirty years ago!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A goodly fraction of what was just about to be known as the famous
+"Four Hundred" of New York society chattered and stared at the poets
+and novelists from Boston; and, for the sake of future memories,
+Wilhelmina's children and the olive twins from Florence gazed curiously
+from under their governesses' wings at the lights and roses and jewels
+and tinted glass that made the great room a scented fairyland to their
+round eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At every table was a vacant chair, and to each of these she moved in
+turn for the space of one of the courses of the elaborate dinners of
+the end of the nineteenth century, a majestic figure in black velvet,
+frosted to the waist with her grandmother's wonderful point-lace, her
+shoulders, firm and creamy still, twinkling with her father's wedding
+diamonds, her neck soft under her husband's birthday pearls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was said of her on that night that she was the one person in the big
+room who could have been perfectly at ease at every table there, and
+the pride of the children as she took her nuts and coffee among them
+was delightful to witness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have, indeed, lived every moment of a rich life, Signora," said
+the composer to her, in Italian, as he sat again after their graceful
+bows on the rendering of his now almost classic lullaby by the great
+singer.  "Is it not so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may be, <I>Maestro</I>, but there is, after all things, and for all
+people, a rest at last," she answered gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her son, who was dressing them one of his inimitable salads, looked up
+sharply at this, though the others only smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you start on your travels, it appears, after this triumph?" the
+<I>Maestro</I> inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And may we know..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I go alone," she answered, smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About each of her ecstatic granddaughters' necks she gravely clasped
+her pearl or diamond chains, as they stood at the foot of the stairs in
+her brownstone house long after midnight; in each grandson's hot,
+astonished palm lay a glittering ring or bracelet, "For your wife, some
+day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How strangely mamma is acting," Wilhelmina complained to her brother.
+"I suppose she is excited by all this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She appears perfectly calm to me," he answered.  "I have always told
+you, Mina, that you have a tendency to call any one excited who does
+anything that you don't expect."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their mother sat in silence in her room while her maid, a faithful
+mulattress of many years' service, undressed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that little tin box where I can get it?" she asked at last, when
+all was done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, madam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are the house-keys here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, madam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I shall not want you any more.  You have always been all that I
+could wish, Ella, and I shall miss you.  Take this, to remember me by,"
+and the woman stared at the watch and chain in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but&mdash;when you come back, Mrs. Lestrange, shan't I&mdash;shan't I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If ever I come back, yes.  But Miss Wilhelmina will make a good home
+for you.  Good-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Amazed, the woman closed the door, and the house lay in darkness, but
+for one lighted room&mdash;the room of its mistress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Lestrange went to a wardrobe, dragged out a small tin trunk, no
+larger than a leather case, opened it with a key from a private drawer,
+and turned out the contents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were two sets of plain, warm underclothing, some stout boots, a
+heavy skirt and jacket of coarse dark blue stuff, a mackintosh, a cheap
+wooden brush and rubber comb.  A sensible wallet for her hand and a
+canvas bag on a belt under the clothes which she put on quickly, held
+some notes and gold.  She fingered the coarse, plain handkerchiefs, the
+brown Windsor soap, the stout cotton umbrella, lovingly.  Over her
+thick iron-grey hair, twisted firmly into a plain knot behind the ears,
+she pinned a small round hat with a twist of cheap ribbon around it,
+slipped her hands into a pair of new cotton gloves, took a seat by her
+window overlooking the Central Park, and sat silently for an hour.  Her
+eyes were fixed on the shadowy bulk of the trees in the park; her hands
+were still on her lap: she waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon the air grew vaguely grey, then white, then a pearly pink.  The
+trees came out clear, the city sparrows and robins chirped.  The milk
+carts rumbled loud, and here and there, even in that wealthy quarter, a
+few early workers crossed the park paths.  It was day.  She rose, tied
+a thick green veil over her hat and face, lifted the tin box by its
+handle and opened her door softly.  In that house it was still
+midnight.  She went quietly down the corridor, through a service hall,
+down some narrow stairs, through the warm kitchen, clean for the new
+labour of the day, then took out a key from her wallet, turned it
+gently and stepped into the area-way.  This had an iron gate and a
+second key opened it: once through and the last gate locked, she put
+her hand through the bars and slipped both keys under the metal frame
+laid out ready for the milk bottles.  No one was in sight.  Alone in
+the street, she gave one comprehensive, quick glance at the great
+sleeping house, and drew a long, deep breath that seemed to stretch the
+very depths of her lungs&mdash;one would have almost thought she had not
+really breathed for a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she turned her back, and grasping the box and umbrella strongly, a
+plain, sturdy, middle-class figure of a travelling working-woman, she
+walked to a car-line, lifted her box beside her, and sitting between a
+negress with three children and a plumber's bag with a kit of tools,
+made her way to the downtown wharves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here all was activity: the day was well along for these labourers, and
+she had to push her way to reach the officer who would let her board
+the steamer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Second class," she said briefly, producing her ticket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ran down a list quickly.  "Number sixty-three," he said, "Mrs.
+Stranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she answered, and still carrying her box, went in the direction
+he indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not a large steamer and not very swift, and for ten days the
+sturdy figure lay inert on her chair, silent and absorbed.  She had no
+book, no friend, no knitting.  Silently she sat and stared at the
+purple horizon-line, silently she ate, silently she bestowed the modest
+gratuities that brought her what little assistance she needed.  Her
+only social act was the nursing of the two sisters who shared her
+cabin, and this was done so quietly and competently that they were
+certain she was a professional nurse on her vacation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the sisters, a head clerk in a great department store, offered
+her a newspaper on the third day out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's old," she said, "but you may like to look it over.  That's Mrs.
+Elliot Lestrange in the picture.  That was a grand banquet she had.
+I'll bet she was proud, with all that fuss made of her!  Isn't she a
+lovely lady?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is handsome lace," Mrs. Stranger agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My, it's a fortune!  I've waited on her.  She's fine&mdash;so aristocratic,
+but no airs.  I'd never have been here, but for her, maybe.  She and
+the other League ladies got us our vacations, they say, at our place,
+and she started the lending fund so those that need it can get the
+third week, by borrowing.  That gives us the trip both ways, you see.
+She must have a grand life&mdash;Sister says there's no house she couldn't
+go into here or the other side, and every hour of the day is planned
+out for her by a secretary she keeps.  Sister says she wonders when she
+ever has a moment to herself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps she will have&mdash;some day," said the other woman quickly.  "I
+agree with your sister, that she needs it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sister says you look like her," the clerk went on, with a laugh.  "The
+hair and eyes, she says.  Of course, I see what she means, but,
+gracious&mdash;if you could have seen her the day she came in last winter!
+A sable wrap to her knees, and her hair all waved, and besides, her
+figure was different&mdash;much taller."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All dark women with thick grey hair resemble each other, more or less,
+I think," said Mrs. Stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she walked down the landing plank to the Tilbury dock, Mrs.
+Stranger stood for a moment, scanning the little crowd that waited on
+the water's edge.  She appeared to expect some one, for her tin box lay
+at her feet, and she stood negligently by it, her head raised rather
+haughtily for a woman of her general appearance.  Suddenly she smiled
+oddly, drew again that deep-lunged breath of relief, stooped and picked
+up the box, and carried it unassisted to the great train-shed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From London she travelled south and west, and beyond purchasing at
+Salisbury a warm red-hooded cape bought nothing and transacted no
+business except for a brief cablegram to New York despatched from
+London, signed with initials only, and a telegram to a small town in
+the south of England.  On arriving at this town, she waited fully an
+hour at the little station, but if the time were wasted, she did not
+seem to feel the waste annoying, for she sat comfortably on a bench,
+her box and umbrella at her stout-shod feet, her eyes placidly on the
+distance.  A stray dog attached himself to her and laid his black head
+on her umbrella; she made no motion to drive him away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About noon a red-faced teamster drove into the square before the
+station, looked about inquiringly, caught her eye and dismounted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Name o' Stranger?" he asked gruffly; she nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you the wagon?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Horse ain't none too fond o' they engines," he responded.  "He's
+waiting by the Crown and Stirrup&mdash;will you step across?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the little sleepy inn stood a roomy, covered cart drawn by a solid
+middle-aged bay, with heavy brass tips on his high collar.  The vehicle
+had evidently been freshly painted, for the red and black twinkled in
+the sunlight and the harness looked strong and new.  As Mrs. Stranger
+lifted the back curtain and threw a quick, keen glance around the
+interior she smiled briefly.  Rows of tins, coppers and kettles hung
+there; bales of cotton prints, notions and such lay on narrow,
+fenced-in shelves on the sides; a sort of bunk filled one-half, covered
+with a neat patch-work quilt, and thick waterproof curtains' were
+rolled in readiness all around.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's oats in the box and a nose-bag," said the carter, "but there's
+good cropping all about.  Will that be your pup, Missis?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If no one else claims him," she said brusquely, and examined the horse
+carefully, foot by foot.  All seeming to suit her, she took a small
+canvas bag from her wallet and handed it to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Count it, please," she said and the carter with much biting and
+inspection of each gold piece, signed a receipt and handed her,
+formally, a new stout whip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll wet the bargain, I hope," the interested landlord suggested,
+and Mrs. Stranger having ordered a quart of his best ale, and gravely
+taken a glass, the carter finished the rest with due ceremony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She mounted the seat deftly, nodded all 'round, and drove off at a
+steady jog through the village, the dog under the cart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>That's</I> no new hand," said the landlord.  "It's well you provided a
+good animal, carter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First letter showed me I'd best do so," said the carter briefly.  "A
+tidy bit of savings she had, for a woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She'll earn as much more, <I>I'll</I> lay.  There's money on the road, as
+much as ever there was, for them as knows the business and don't
+drink," said the landlord.  "She'll be one of that gypsy sort, by her
+looks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Stranger drove steadily along through the countryside.  The road
+lay clear before her, the emerald grass and the white may of the hedges
+smelled sweet from a week's rain, the clap-clap of the big bay's feet
+and the birds' twitter were the only sounds.  She was between two
+villages, and only a straggling farm or two at either side broke the
+distant view; a grey church tower caught the sun far away.  The
+driver's eyes never left the road, as became a good driver, but they
+seemed to be turned inward, too, and to see more&mdash;or less&mdash;than that
+empty road offered to the ordinary sight.  One would have said that
+something other than the present unrolled before those absorbed brown
+eyes under the straight, dark brows, but whether it was the past or the
+future was not shown.  Either was full enough, probably, in the case of
+Mrs. Stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shortly after noon she began to study the roadside more carefully and
+soon, pausing by a particularly lush, green spot, she dismounted, led
+the horse off from the road and quickly traced the green area back to a
+tiny bubbling spring.  Unharnessing the horse deftly, she fastened him
+to a pointed iron picket she took from the cart and drove firmly into
+the ground, lifted out a little portable tin oven which she propped
+between two rocks, kindled a fire from some dried fagots tied below the
+axle-tree, and taking a slice of fresh beef from a stone crock on the
+seat, cut it slowly into small pieces with an onion and a yellow turnip
+from the crock.  She filled a small iron pot at the spring, dropped in
+the meat and vegetables, set a potato to bake in the ashes and measured
+out a little coffee from a cannister.  While the stew simmered, she
+watered and fed the horse, threw a bone to the dog, and then spread her
+red cloak on the ground, sat on it, and resumed her inward
+contemplation.  When the savoury fumes smelled rich enough, she threw a
+pinch of pepper and salt into the pot from another small cannister,
+poured boiling water from her kettle over the coffee, cut a slice from
+a fresh cottage loaf, ladled her stew out on a new tin plate, and ate
+and drank with a sort of eager deliberation, inhaling at intervals the
+aroma of the coffee and the cooking food.  When a generous plateful had
+vanished, she gave the anxious dog the rest, cut herself a block of
+orange-coloured dairy cheese and ate it with a handful of small
+biscuits from a square tin.  Then, leaning against the great rock from
+under which the spring gushed, she took from her ample pocket a small
+worn volume, opened it at random, filled and emptied her lungs with a
+third great breath, like only two others in her life, and began to read.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The book's title page read, "Compensation, and Other Essays, by R. W.
+Emerson," and on the fly leaf was written in a firm, masculine hand,
+"L. L. from her father, Boston, 1870."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The horse grazed quietly, the dog rested a grateful head on her skirt,
+the spring trickled on, and the woman read&mdash;if that can be called
+reading where the eyes wander inward after every sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little of this she was disturbed by a thick-set, middle-aged
+farmer rattling by in a springless cart.  At sight of her he stopped,
+stared, but not too curiously, got out and addressed her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peddler's goods, I see," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had you any thoughts o' going up Endover way?" he inquired, "it's out
+o' way, somewhat, but my wife was wishing only yesterday for some
+cooking ware, and but that you need to make village by dark&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not need to, unless I choose," she assured him; "my time is my
+own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, is it?" he said.  "There's few trades can say that, these
+days,&mdash;is that why you gypsies take to this one, maybe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe," she said, smiling gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're new to these parts, I think," he went on, "though there'll be
+plenty o' your kind before summer's gone&mdash;few as thrifty to look at,
+though.  I'll lay your cloth's not rotten."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's true," she said, rising and beginning to wash her simple
+cooking pots.  "Which turn for Endover, farmer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First to the left after Appleyard's woods," he began, and at her start
+and cry of "Appleyard?" he explained, "Why, yes, it's hard to change
+old names.  Appleyards ran out when I was a boy, but the name sticks.
+Hundred years ago, an old farmer Appleyard owned most o' what you'll
+see from here.  My granny knowed one of 'em well; a well-to-do woman
+she was, and her husband got all the land, or near it, account o' the
+brother's running away to foreign parts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her brown eyes held him and he warmed to his tale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've heard all this, maybe?" he hazarded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew there was such a family, once, somewhere about these parts,"
+she said, "but I did not know just where&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, it was just here," he went on slowly, looking around, "here and
+no other spot, whatever, Mrs. Peddler.  Here's what granny called
+'Gypsy's Spring,' 'account of their always searching the best water,
+you see&mdash;like yourself.  Gypsy Spring in Appleyard Lower Field, she'd
+tell us, and there was where he met the gypsy and the land changed
+hands and the name ran out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who met the gypsy?" she asked, her eyes large and mellow on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?  Why, young John Appleyard, Mrs. Peddler, and married her, and
+off with them both!  They're all for roaming, you see&mdash;<I>you</I> know.
+'But she'll be back, sooner or later,' my granny used to say: 'Come
+spring, back she'll be, if not him; for there's two things certain and
+they won't change, my time or yours,' she said.  'An Appleyard must own
+a good horse, and a gypsy woman must come back.'  But, you see, for
+once my granny was in the wrong of it, for 'twas a full hundred years
+ago, what I'm telling ye, and they never came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slow, satisfied smile crept over the peddler woman's firm lips.  Her
+eyes rested on the great, browsing bay; her strong sea-browned hand
+caressed the watchful dog's head; the odour of the may in the hedge
+filled her nostrils.  Life spread before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, farmer, your granny was right," she said gravely, "gypsy women
+always come back."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE WARNING
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Weldon leaned forward slightly in his chair, his hands loose between
+his knees, and faced the president steadily.  The moment had come.  All
+his rehearsals of it, all his tremours, all his incredulities must end
+here.  He felt a distinct surprise at his collected coolness, his
+almost amused grasp of the situation.  Except for the tense, guarded
+muscles that a month's racking, overworked strain had left conscious of
+their possible trickiness, he was absolutely himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, what had the doctor warned him?  To be very cautious when he
+felt so especially clear-headed and calm, after days of strain&mdash;yes,
+just that.  And when he had expostulated, "But, my dear Stanchon, how
+foolish!" had not the doctor replied, "All right, old man, but didn't
+you tell me that it was always after such little exaltations"&mdash;he had
+shrugged impatiently at the phrase&mdash;"that you were subject to these
+strange dozes you describe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly dozes," he had objected.  Dozes, indeed!  Those months and
+years of experiences that raced by&mdash;and one woke with a start, to
+realise that the clock was still striking!  It was this, too often
+repeated, that had sent him against his will to the rising specialist:
+he remembered so well the dark, sympathetic eyes of the office nurse
+who had brought him the much-needed stimulant after he had yielded to
+one of the curious fits at his very first consultation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After he had passed out from the inner office with echoes of that
+futile order to cease all business for six weeks (to stop, <I>now!</I> to
+leave with the fruit almost in his hand!) and commands as to a southern
+sea-trip stimulating his taut, trembling nerves, he had sunk for a
+moment into a chair near the door, just to rest his head in his hands a
+bit and dream of the future, and the nurse had appeared from a misty
+somewhere and stood beside him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't be discouraged, Mr. Weldon," she had said kindly.  "Your
+case is not so uncommon&mdash;really.  He has cured much worse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're very kind, Miss&mdash;Miss Jessop," he had answered gratefully (her
+rich, brown colouring was so restful, her hand on his shoulder so firm
+and deftly powerful).
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had thought of her all the way home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, curiously enough, perhaps because the president's desk was placed
+in the same position as Dr. Stanchon's desk had been, he thought of her
+again, irrelevantly.  That was the trouble&mdash;not to be irrelevant!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president's careless glance conveyed just such a tinge of critical
+surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender
+tortoise-shell paper-cutter.  The pendulum of the sombre, costly
+grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of
+the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and
+forgotten behind the bronze velvet curtains.  The president's voice
+sounded on&mdash;he seemed to Weldon to have been uttering pompous
+platitudes since time began.  His voice was as meaningless as a
+cardboard mask: how could people pay attention to him?  Weldon wondered
+irritably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"...Nor has it ever been my policy to render myself inaccessible to
+my&mdash;my corps of assistants.  No.  Not in the slightest degree.  Our
+interests..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Weldon's mind slipped softly from its moorings and drifted off on
+seas that soon grew tropic: should it be Bermuda, after all?  Oleanders
+and a turquoise bay&mdash;what a relief to pavement-gritted eyes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nevertheless, trivial, inconsequent interviews between one in my
+position and those of my&mdash;my corps of assistants who may so far forget
+themselves as to seek them, must always be deplored.  They tend only to
+weaken..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet this man had a reputation for cleverness&mdash;nay, it was no empty
+reputation.  Did not Weldon know what he could do, know better than any
+living man?  And yet, how he babbled!  Hark, here was his own name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You inform me, Mr. Weldon, that you have been ten years in the employ
+of the bank, a gratifying but by no means unusual record.  Our cashier,
+you know, is now in his twenty-third year, if I am not mistaken.  Yes.
+Was it to inform me of this only that you requested this interview?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Weldon wearily, for the president's voice hit like a dull
+hammer on his ear.  "No, it was not for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I trust, Mr. Weldon, that your mention of the fact that your salary is
+two thousand dollars was not intended in any way ... was not, in short,
+to be regarded in the light of..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, no," Weldon murmured impatiently, trying to shake off a
+compelling drowsiness that threatened him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because in that case ... in that case ... it was, I remember, only
+upon Mr. Bingham's urgent recommendation that it was made two thousand.
+The post has never carried but eighteen hundred.  But your exceptional
+work, according to Mr. Bingham ... I am glad to hear it is not a
+question of salary.  I never discuss..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Weldon's mind slipped off, and this time groves of palms hovered
+between the grooved Corinthian pillars of the president's office, palms
+and frosty coral wreaths.  To breathe that languid, blue-stained air!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... May I ask, then, Mr. Weldon, for what purpose you have requested
+this interview?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Consciousness returned with a flash and Weldon straightened in his red
+leather chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been waiting for some time the opportunity to tell you, sir,"
+he said coolly, and the angry start that greeted this positively
+strengthened him.  It was a natural start, at least.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Deeping," he continued, with only a little catch of the breath,
+"what you describe as my 'exceptional work' has led me to request this
+interview.  I believe it to be in many ways exceptional.  During Mr.
+Russell's illness I assisted Mr. Bingham, and after his recovery I
+continued this assistance in other ways.  Mr. Bingham has perhaps
+intrusted me with more responsibility than was in every respect
+wise&mdash;certainly with more than he realised.  I was enabled to give him
+some opportune help on the occasion of the last inspection, and this
+gave me a fairly general survey&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One moment, Mr. Weldon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president glanced at the clock and laid the paper-cutter down with
+a decisive motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me suggest to you that whatever assistance you may have rendered
+Mr. Bingham (for which, by the way, I consider you have received ample
+compensation), you rendered it entirely of your own volition and on
+your own responsibility.  It is quite your own personal affair.  I
+could not for a moment consider&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon's taut control snapped short under these booming syllables.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn it all!" he cried fiercely, "shall we talk here all night?  This
+should have been over long ago.  Listen to me, if you can.  I have been
+for a month convinced that there is something vitally wrong in this
+bank.  In the beginning I couldn't tell why.  Some men have an instinct
+for false figures, a sort of scent for rotten conditions, I suppose.
+I'm one of them.  I've been working at it for a month.  And now I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president laid the paper-cutter gently down again, and Weldon
+realised that he must have picked it up.  As it touched the polished
+desk one half of it was seen to be at the least angle from the other:
+it was in two parts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now you know, Mr. Weldon?" he repeated quietly.  "You surprise me.
+What do you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon smiled approvingly at him.  There was stuff in this babbler,
+this hypnotist, this phrase-maker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that one of the cleverest frauds in the history of banking has
+been accomplished in this bank, Mr. Deeping, and I know by whom and how
+it has been accomplished.  I know how Mr. Bingham has been used in the
+matter and how ignorant he is of the tool he has been.  I know how
+completely the directors have been deceived and how ably the books have
+been doctored.  I know precisely where the discrepancies are and how
+great they are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have been very diligent, Mr. Weldon," said the president gently.
+"I presume you to have the proofs of all you assert?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon put his hand into an inner pocket and drew out a slip&mdash;a small
+slip&mdash;of paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must, of course, have a memorandum by which to check this," he
+said a little huskily, but meeting the older man's eyes steadily, "so I
+made it as condensed as possible.  You will understand it, however, I
+am sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a moment's hesitation the president put out his hand and took
+the slip.  Weldon touched his thumb and it was like an icicle.  For a
+brief space he studied the close, tiny figures, then he raised his eyes
+from them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are to be congratulated, young man," he said, pausing slightly
+between his words, "on the possession of a very keen mind and abilities
+far from ordinary.  I believe you said you had no assistance in all
+this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not say so," Weldon replied, "but it is true."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And no confidants, I infer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Absolutely none."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be idle," said the president, "to assume ignorance of your
+motive in obtaining this interview."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon bowed in silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will merely inquire of you what guaranty I have, in case I arrange
+for the purchase of this slip from you, that the terms will be final?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only my word to that effect," said Weldon composedly, "which I do not
+think I have broken since I was eighteen.  Also the fact that I intend
+to leave the country&mdash;finally, to the best of my belief."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you must have a duplicate of this slip?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None.  I have a mass of rough memoranda, from which I could after some
+trouble reconstruct it, but this I should destroy.  After that, unless
+I had free access to the bank, I should be helpless.  And in six
+months, barring accidents, you will be able to set everything straight:
+you have left the way open admirably."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president folded the list small, and pushing aside the tail of his
+frock-coat, put the square of paper into his hip pocket&mdash;an odd
+selection, it seemed to Weldon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And where did you say you were going?" he inquired, in his perfunctory
+voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not say," Weldon returned, marvelling at the man's control, "but
+I am going south somewhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said the president quickly, still pushing the list deep into his
+hip pocket, "you are not.  You are going to die, Mr. Weldon," and
+something shone in his hand on the flap of the pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His elbow was crooked back; his muscles were those of an elderly man,
+not quite coordinated with his tongue.  In a breath, a space too short
+for thought, Weldon flung himself across the gap between them and drove
+his head and shoulders straight at the rounded, broadcloth vest: under
+his impact the elaborate swivel-chair slipped, swayed, crashed to the
+ground, and they went down together, Weldon's weight on the bent arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He raised himself cautiously, hands pressed on the fat shoulder under
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The old fox!  The old fox!" he muttered aggrievedly.  "Shoot me, would
+he?  Murdering old fox!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no heaving in the heavy body under him, but he was not to be
+easily hoodwinked now&mdash;he had had a taste of the man's mettle.  He held
+his breath and listened: the clock ticked tolerantly, wealthily; the
+flames flickered in the open, sea-coal fire; there were no other sounds
+at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Reaching with infinite care around the relaxed, portly body he felt for
+the hip pocket and drew out the small revolver, then sprang quickly
+backward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get up, Mr. Deeping!" he said softly, "get up, sir, some one may come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it seemed that for once the president was indifferent to
+appearances, for he did not move, but lay as he had fallen, with one
+bent arm.  Weldon walked over to him and lifted the coat-tail from his
+face.  Then he perceived that it was improbable that Mr. Deeping would
+ever get up again.  His face had long been a mask, but never had it
+been coloured in this way, and Weldon knew that the artist responsible
+for that tinting never worked on any subject but once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Between two ticks of the clock, it might be, Weldon saw himself leaping
+to the window, pouring water from the inner lavatory, calling for
+brandy, loosening the collar.  So vivid was this vision that it seemed
+he must be doing all this, actually, and he stood vacant-eyed, staring
+at the dead man.  Once he tried to take a step, but his very muscles
+seemed paralysed, and a voice, steady as the clock, seemed to tell him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How senseless!  The man is dead.  Dead.  You know it.  Let him alone.
+Think what to do.  How can you escape?  Think!  Think!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly his mind cleared and he laughed shortly, with relief.  He had
+felt literally guilty.  But he had not killed the president.  It was
+the president who would have killed him.  What had he done but protect
+himself?  If the shock of his defensive lunge had done for Mr. Deeping,
+how could he help that?  The man's time had come, that was all.  And it
+was a quick death, a good way.  He moved toward the body again and
+tried to lift it, but had not the strength.  He could not do it
+decently.  The revolver was still in his hand, and with a quick
+exclamation he pushed it into the hip pocket again, considered a
+moment, took it out, felt for his folded list at the bottom of the
+pocket, got it, and restored the revolver.  Moving toward the little
+mirror in the lavatory, he straightened his tie, wiped his face, then
+stood, thinking, between the body and the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Curiously enough, the figure on the floor hardly disturbed his
+consciousness.  It was difficult for him to take Mr. Deeping seriously,
+even in death.  He had, always been an absurdity; posturing,
+phrase-making, repellant.  Death conferred a dignity, he had supposed,
+but death had not done this for the president.  Another time-worn
+superstition, that: humanity had invented so many.  Suppose all those
+old ideas should turn out, on the event, to be as threadbare, and
+empty?  Remorse, for instance?  Would one dishonesty, one violent break
+with the canons of honour, never repeated, <I>oh, surely never repeated!</I>
+tincture all the future with a slow, spreading black drop?  If so ...
+but why imagine it?  It was unlikely.  A whip in the closet to frighten
+the timid children....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook himself briskly.  A clever business, to stand philosophising,
+with a dead man in the room, and all his work to do!  Now, what was the
+next step?  To see the directors?  There was Webb; would he be clever
+enough for Webb?  And yet, if Webb had not been able to detect the
+frauds that juggled along under his nose, how should Webb be a match
+for him, who had thus detected them?  It would certainly be to Webb's
+interest to keep this quiet till they could straighten it all out.
+Then they could divide what the president would have got.  And nobody
+would be a penny the poorer.  It was absurd to call it a crime&mdash;if the
+event proved successful.  And it would be more than absurd to refuse
+him the reasonable amount he would ask for: their gain would far exceed
+his, even if five of them should divide the whole.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stop a moment!  Suppose he could confront them with Deeping's own
+memoranda?  Suppose he should control the material the president must
+have had ready, in case ... why, he must have an incredible sum by him,
+all ready at a moment's notice, something he could convert in an hour
+into cash, before he fled.  He kept the revolver: he would have kept
+this.  He was ready for anything.  His pockets...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon pushed aside the coat flap, but his hands refused the further
+motions.  To go through another man's pockets!  And yet Deeping had
+done worse than this: what sums had he not twisted and turned, added
+and subtracted, borrowed and replaced?  But not an actual pocket.  No,
+no.  He cursed himself for a weak fool, but the pockets he could not
+touch.  The spirit indeed was willing, but the flesh, tyrant after
+years of honest, deep-indenting habit, travelled its accustomed grooves
+and would none of such muscular innovations.  Well, he must take his
+chance with the Board.  He flung open the door and seized a
+brass-buttoned official of many years' inferior but faithful service.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Run," he muttered, "run, Henry, for Mr. Dupont!  Mr. Deeping has had
+some sort of stroke.  Get him and call a doctor quickly&mdash;don't make any
+row now about it, you understand.  I'll stay here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man touched his cap and hurried off and Weldon stood nervously by
+the door.  A minute passed, two minutes.  Suddenly he turned, slipped
+the ornate brass bolt above the Yale lock, stepped quickly to the dead
+man's side, and went with rapid, tactful fingers from one pocket to
+another.  The clock ticked leisurely, and unconsciously he muttered,
+counting the strokes,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seven, eight, nine ... he must have them here...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A low knock at the door caught his strained ear.  His hand held a thick
+time-table; <I>New York, New Haven and Hartford</I> stared him in the face.
+The leaves fell apart as his hand for the first time shook, and between
+them&mdash;ah! there they were!  "Memoranda, etc.," was written on the top
+paper.  Thrusting the slender sheaf into his pocket, he threw the
+time-table on the desk and drew the bolt slowly, peering out between
+the bronze curtains with caution.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How is he&mdash;gone?" whispered Dupont, the dead man's brother-in-law,
+tiptoeing across the room.  "Heart, I suppose.  Henry's called the
+doctor, but he said he guessed it was no good, from your face.  Nobody
+has an idea of it&mdash;you managed very well, Mr. Weldon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at the body and said a few perfunctory words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well, we all have to go.  Sixty-one, I think.  Has any one sent
+for Webb?  I think Webb should be sent for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon glanced curiously at the mild, unimportant brother-in-law.  He
+was always thought of and mentioned in his capacity of brother-in-law.
+Why should he think of Webb?  Common-sense answered, why not?  Webb was
+immeasurably the head of them all.  Opening the door to discover if
+there were yet any disturbance in the bank, he confronted Potter, a
+fat, red-faced, many-millioned man, who puffed excitedly by him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Terrible thing, isn't it, Dupont?  Great shock to you.  Naturally.
+Has&mdash;has Webb been informed?  Quite right, quite right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He dropped into a chair and wiped his pink, fat forehead, looked once
+sharply at the body on the floor, then obstinately at his knees.  He
+appeared very excited to Weldon; more so than the death of his
+associate could properly explain, perhaps?  No, no: what folly!
+Probably it made them all feel rather shaky&mdash;overfed, weak-hearted old
+fellows, all of them.  They saw their end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A soft tap on the door followed, and as the two older men looked with
+one accord at Weldon, he pushed aside the portières and admitted Mr.
+Fayles, a thin, aristocratic, iron-grey man, who made himself one of
+them without a word.  Stepping to the body he looked a moment, then
+sank into the chair Weldon had occupied during his interview, fitted
+his gloves into his top hat, dropped it beside him, and with an
+extraordinary convulsion of countenance buried his face in his hands.
+After a moment's annoyed contemplation of his motionless figure, Weldon
+met Dupont's eyes inquiringly.  The brother-in-law shook his head, no
+wiser, evidently.  Weldon gestured imperiously toward the fat man, and
+Dupont tiptoed over to him, whispering hoarsely, "I didn't know he was
+so attached to Edward, did you, Potter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Potter pressed his puffy hands together till they streaked red and
+white.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens!  Good heavens!" he burst out, "this is awful!  Where can
+Webb be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dupont stared, then shrugged his shoulders vaguely and returned to his
+seat.  "I really didn't know he was so attached to Edward," he murmured
+to Weldon confidentially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They sat in silence.  The president's great bulk stretched among them
+like some sleeping, foreign animal in a zoological garden.  It was like
+a funeral; the funeral of some associate, attended with perfunctory
+punctiliousness.  The blow was financial, not human: it was the death
+of so much bank stock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another knock.  Again Weldon, recognised master of ceremonies now,
+opened the door, this time for the doctor.  It was the president's own
+doctor; Weldon wondered why it was that important men's doctors were
+always to be got so quickly.  Did they have a secret call in the event
+of a bank president's death?  What would happen in case one were called
+from the birth, say, of another bank president's son?  Imagine the
+doctor's state of mind ... he shook himself to dissipate such idiotic
+thoughts: his mind worked as the mind of one in a worried, hurried
+dream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-day, gentlemen, a sad errand for me," said the doctor gravely.
+"Ah, yes, a little more light, please?  Ah, yes.  Instantaneous, of
+course.  Half an hour, forty minutes, I should say?  Ah, yes.  I
+supposed so.  Any one present ... any shock or excitement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon spoke briefly.  He had been discussing bank matters with Mr.
+Deeping.  He had mentioned a few of the matters in discussion when Mr.
+Deeping had put his hand into his pocket, appeared to sustain some
+stroke, slipped back in his chair, and fallen dead-weight on the bent
+arm.  Just as they saw him.  It was impossible to move him, except to
+free him from the chair.  He appeared to have died instantly.  It had
+been made known immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes," said the doctor.  "Just as I expected.  I warned him of it.
+Not a month ago.  A great loss to the community, gentlemen.  All the
+arrangements, now ... Mr. Dupont, I suppose you ... or if you had
+rather that I...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you would, please," said the brother-in-law gratefully, "I am bad
+at that sort of thing&mdash;I&mdash;my head&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes.  Perfectly natural.  I will have the body removed, then, as
+soon as possible&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not till Webb gets here!" Potter broke out, twisting his hands
+convulsively, "wait for Webb.  I insist on Webb!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The doctor stared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Potter, I believe?" he inquired courteously.  Then turning to the
+others generally, "Do I understand that there is any reason&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No reason at all," Dupont interrupted irritably, "not the least.  Webb
+will be informed, fast enough.  If you are kind enough, doctor&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was obvious that he dreaded the chance of any personal
+responsibility.  What a rabbit of a man he was!  Weldon remembered
+suddenly that a night watchman had been dismissed for saying that Mrs.
+Dupont blew her husband's nose for him!  One could almost believe it.
+Hear him, now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Fayles will, I am sure, agree with me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With you?  With <I>you</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fayles's voice was hollow, tortured.  His face was wet.  He turned
+his red-rimmed eyes on the man before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What in God's name are you?" he said ferociously.  "Wait for Webb, of
+course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His head went back in his hands and they stared at one another.
+Fayles, the cold aristocrat.  Fayles, the unruffled!  The doctor's
+glance settled finally on Weldon, as a possible clew to the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is&mdash;this is&mdash;we make every allowance, of course," he began, "for
+such an unsettling occurrence.  Of course.  Mr. Webb, of course, would
+naturally ... and yet I hardly like the idea ... it seems..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a strange sense of tension in the room, not to be accounted
+for by that dead creature on the floor.  No, there was something else.
+Weldon with difficulty repressed a smile.  That fool of a
+brother-in-law knew nothing, clearly.  Potter was merely irritable and
+at sea generally, he was sure.  He could swear that whatever alarmed
+Potter alarmed him only through Fayles, whose collapse was
+unprecedented.  Did Fayles know?  Impossible.  Fayles stood for
+old-fashioned, delicate scruples, finical standards.  "As straight as
+Joseph Fayles," they said.  And yet, why....  He remembered that he had
+not yet answered the doctor.  How his thoughts ran away with him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Webb's connection, of course," he murmured, "principal director,
+you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ...
+undoubtedly he would have been notified.  Probably if the doctor were
+to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his
+colleagues be satisfied.  They depended on his judgment to such an
+extent..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The air of the room seemed to tighten round them.  That doctor was no
+fool.  He must feel something&mdash;what, how much?  He pursed his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just as you like, of course," he said briefly.  "It would seem that
+there can be very little difference in judgment as to the expediency of
+burying a dead man, however.  If that is what you mean.  I will do as
+this young man suggests.  These matters, of course, have a certain
+formality.  There are precedents....  Ah, yes.  Good-day, gentlemen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked toward the door, which Weldon, in his capacity of master of
+ceremonies, opened for him, and passed out, drawing a deep breath as he
+crossed the threshold and hurrying, it seemed to Weldon, down the
+corridor.  Did he want to be rid of them?  It seemed so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There they were.  All the directors but Webb.  All that counted, that
+is.  One would imagine it a meeting of the board.  Then why was he
+here?  Suddenly he lost himself in a great yawn, and realized that he
+was dying of sleepiness.  Neither last night nor the night before had
+he closed his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As there seems nothing more for me to do, gentlemen," he said
+abruptly, "I think I will go now.  There is no more assistance&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait for Webb," cried Potter nervously, "wait, won't you?  I&mdash;I insist
+on it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One felt really sorry for this rich, fat man.  How ludicrously he
+resembled his caricatures!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really wish you would wait for Mr. Webb, Mr. Weldon," Dupont assured
+him, "it would be a great convenience.  You could tell him just how it
+happened, you know.  Just.  You see, your being there, you know...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I will stay, if you desire it," Weldon answered gravely,
+wondering if he could keep awake.  His eyeballs fairly dragged down.
+The tall clock's tick confused itself with his thoughts: <I>one, two!
+one, two! one, two!</I>  Suppose he were to run now, with the "memoranda,
+etc.," and take whatever Mr. Deeping had been going to take?  That was
+folly, if the rest didn't know.  Then he would be a common criminal.
+If they did know, then he could leave his memoranda slip and they would
+understand and make up the sum amongst them.  Let Webb and Potter fork
+out, for once.  Let them bleed the depositors.  <I>One, two! one, two!
+one, two!</I> Why not? why not? why not?  His eyes fairly closed for a
+second.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a soft click of the door opened them.  There was no knocking here.
+The curtain moved and Mr. Webb was in the room.  Involuntarily they
+rose to meet him, and Fayles for the first time took his hands down.
+Tall and unnaturally thin, his sallow cheeks framed in lank, sandy
+hair, his eyes turned down, it was hard to realise that this almost
+slouching fellow held the attention of the shrewd in these matters as
+the certain head of them all, when the present great leader should have
+dropped his sceptre.  But this was the Webb in whose labyrinthine
+meshes the cartoonists delighted to picture the unhappy flies of their
+country's financial system; this was the weaver whose warp was of
+railroads and his woof the unhappy populace, in yet other pictorial
+fancies.  This was that Webb before which many patient Penelopes had
+sat through many Sunday editions, dressed in stars and stripes, a
+sorrowing, perplexed America, and gaped to find it unwoven by day,
+though thick patterned with rich promises in the evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All over, is it?" he said in his dry, sceptical voice, "too bad, too
+bad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eye shot out from its heavy lid and took them all in.  It lingered
+on Weldon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This the young man with him at the time?  Sudden shock, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon told his story again.  They had talked of business.  The
+president had put his hand in his pocket.  Handkerchief, probably.  Had
+experienced some shock and fallen, dead-weight, on his bent arm.  As
+you see him now.  Unable to lift him.  Notified Mr. Dupont immediately.
+Nothing more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Webb.  "As quickly as that!  Hard on you.
+Nothing handy, I suppose; only window up and water and such things?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the life of him Weldon could not help the slow red in his face.  He
+glanced at the window: it was locked.  For Heaven's sake, why lie?  He
+was no murderer.  And yet&mdash;any one, <I>any one</I> would have opened that
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did what I could," he said in a low voice, "but it was plain that
+Mr. Deeping was dead.  He never drew another breath."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No brandy about, I suppose?" pursued Webb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Potter interrupted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For Heaven's sake, Webb," he implored, "let all that go!  He's gone.
+You know he never touched a drop of anything.  Of course there was no
+brandy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Weldon interrupted, relieved.  Every one knew the
+president's views on that subject; he had forgotten them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Webb softly and glanced again at the window.
+An intense irritation flared up in Weldon: this man flicked him on the
+raw with every syllable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you have no further use for me, gentlemen," he began, but Webb
+waved his thin, small-boned hand negligently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One moment, Mr.&mdash;Mr. Weldon, I think?  What business did you say you
+were discussing with my poor friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fayles took a quick step and grasped his colleague's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake, Webb," he muttered huskily, "look at us!  Where are
+we?  What's to be done?  They've sent for the body by now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Potter seized the other arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell me what all this means, Webb?" he blustered, "what's the
+matter with Joe Fayles?  Is it possible that&mdash;is anything&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Webb's lids lifted and the snake-like swiftness of his glance at Fayles
+was not lost on the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Mr. Fayles," he began slowly, "has occupied himself in spreading
+the disquiet he has endured since he discovered (and imparted to me)
+the fact that my poor friend here carried a revolver about with him, he
+has done a mighty foolish job.  That's all I have to say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even Dupont was alarmed now.  It was with a grim amusement that Weldon
+watched them all.  Dupont suspected Potter, was staring malevolently at
+him and chewing his slight moustache nervously.  Potter never took his
+eyes from Fayles, whose clutch on Webb was the anguished clutch of the
+drowning man that has caught at sea-weeds.  They seemed to Weldon like
+actors in a play, and he was the spectator.  He observed them from his
+red plush seat, almost despising them for the entertainment they gave
+him.  How absurd they were, with their dead president and their
+suspicions.  They were mad to get at the pockets&mdash;he knew!  But they
+hadn't the nerve.  And Webb, crafty old Webb, was holding them in like
+dogs on a leash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he really carry a pistol?" he said gently, "let's see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned over the body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder why he wanted the pistol pocket?" he went on casually, "any
+idea, Mr. Weldon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A tiny, fine chill tingled at Weldon's heels and flew up to his hair.
+He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly
+tightening.  In an agony of regret he wished that he had not that sheaf
+of "memoranda, etc."  It was suddenly clear to him that he had stolen
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no idea, sir," his tongue answered stolidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, ... of course not," said Mr. Webb thoughtfully.  "Well, gentlemen,
+I can't see the need for any more discussion.  This is very
+deplorable&mdash;a great shock.  He was very methodical and no doubt
+everything is in easy shape...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They drew close to him and Weldon, though he caught the murmur of
+voices, distinguished nothing but the steady notes of the clock: <I>one,
+two! one, two!</I>  His head nodded a trifle and for one blissful second
+his eyelids fell.  The clock began to strike eleven.  <I>One!</I> he
+struggled, but it was too sweet.  <I>Two!</I>  He became dimly conscious of
+a rustling and movement by him.  <I>Three!</I> there was a light touch on
+his arm and Webb stood near the chair he had dropped into.  The others
+must have gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem exhausted, Mr. Weldon," he said quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I have missed my sleep lately," Weldon stammered, trying to control
+the motions of his mouth, his voice striking his own ear as mechanical,
+far away, laboured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly," said Webb suavely.  "And now, Mr. Weldon, <I>how much do you
+expect for those papers</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+Weldon drew his chair across the broad verandah in an aimless,
+leisurely way, anchored it in the shadow of a wicker table laden with
+cool glass pitchers and iced fruits, and sank into it, sighing
+restlessly.  The pillars of coral that supported the verandah roof
+framed, each pair of them, an oblong of sapphire bay; vivid masses of
+pink oleanders hedged the foreground; the tremulous sapphire crawled
+softly over a creamy crescent beach.  In the pleasant noon stillness
+the mild whine of a patient puppy, broken by the chuckles of some young
+human thing, rose on the air.  Jars of sweet flowers sent out their
+almost tropical odours with each tiny, invisible wind current: they
+seemed to puff it into his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great green and flame-coloured parrot, hung head downward in his
+yellow cage, began suddenly a mechanical, dry litany:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!</I>"  It was like a clock&mdash;passionless, regular,
+meditative.  Weldon shrugged his shoulders distastefully; he had never
+been able to conquer his dislike of steady, measured sounds.  It was an
+unreasonable weakness, but incurable.  He twisted uneasily in his white
+flannels as the bird droned on,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be still, Chico, be still, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A fair, finely grown boy took the coral steps two at a bound and
+threatened the parrot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Daddy, keep him quiet, won't you?  He frightens my white mice awfully.
+Why do mice hate parrots?  Do you know, daddy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon's face cleared and he threw his arm over the slender shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know, Pippo, I can't guess," he said.  "Where's your mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just beyond you," and the boy slipped away to his pets, grudging the
+time for her kiss in passing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood softly behind the wicker chair and laid her hand on his
+forehead.  Her lips were only a little smoother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still troubled, dearest?" she asked him in her pleasant voice.  "Still
+dreaming?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was very dark, with reddish lights in her thick, low-growing hair,
+and brown, broad eyebrows.  Under them her eyes shone, a frank, dark
+brown; she bore a curious likeness to that nurse he had seen in the
+doctor's office, so many years ago.  How strange that a passing fate
+should have set his ideal of dear and loving women forever!  She had
+even the same small dimple at the left of her mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She slipped to the floor beside him and laid her head in her wifely way
+against his knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so sorry it bothers you, Phil," she murmured, her cheek against
+his hand.  "One would think you were a superstitious boy, you silly!
+Hear baby&mdash;he's playing so dearly with those puppies!  He pats them and
+then pinches their tails so slyly!  Oh, Ted!  Oh, baby!  Call to mummy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the balcony above a shrill crow drowned the complaint of the
+puppies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doesn't he say it plainly!" she cried, flushing a beautiful
+mother-rose.  "And he is so strong, Phil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caressed her absently.  Ten years gone, and a dream had swept those
+years to one side as one would draw a bronze curtain, had opened the
+past as one would open a heavy mahogany door!  All night a tall, carved
+clock had ticked, ticked through his dreams, <I>one, two! one, two! one,
+two!</I>  A sinister, sandy face had mocked and probed him, a fat, animal
+face had irritated him, a pale, haunted face had pleaded with him.  He
+had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing
+beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk
+again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day
+through every clock-tick.  And now his brain was cloudy with it.  His
+hand lay listless on her shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A five-year-old girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the
+cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at
+the left of her mouth.  Running at his call she flew into his arms and
+dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder.  For the first time he
+smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from
+the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses.  Later she
+disturbed them reluctantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to say you are not at home," she said, "but I daren't quite do
+that, for he is from the States, dear, and it is important business.
+His name," dropping her eyes to the white rectangle in her hand, "is
+Webb.  Shall I send him out here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon put the child down from his knees and half rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said, clearing his throat, "send him out here.  And keep the
+children away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So this was it.  It had not been for nothing, that dream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tall, lank figure was before him, the ironical smile drooped on the
+tight lips.  Ten years had left him as they found him, but for a
+thought of grey in the sandy hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down," said Weldon briefly, "what is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've put on a little weight, I see," said Webb, nodding at the
+proffered chair, "but that's only proper in the president of a bank, I
+suppose.  You've done well, Mr. Weldon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did not come to Bermuda to tell me this, Mr. Webb, I think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Webb, "I didn't.  Ten years ago, Mr. Weldon, you called me a
+mind-reader when I had put two and two together once or twice, put
+myself in your place for ten minutes, complimented you by assuming that
+your course had been what mine would have been, and spoken to you
+accordingly.  Can't you do a little mind-reading on your own account,
+now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I confess myself unequal to it," Weldon said coldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Webb nodded indulgently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," he returned, "we'll take it that way, if you want to.  Mr.
+Weldon, I don't know if you read our papers down here at all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never opened an American newspaper since I left the country,"
+said Weldon briefly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see.  I suppose you know that Blickenstern's dying, though?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Weldon answered indifferently, "we all know that, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Well, Mr. Weldon, I'm supposed to inherit his shoes.  It's not
+much to you, of course, but a lot to me&mdash;and to a lot of other people,
+too.  Now for something you don't know.  In just about five days, Mr.
+Weldon, we're going to break through the crust and drop into the
+biggest panic since '93.  That and Blickenstern's death&mdash;he must go
+soon, now&mdash;and this fearful railroad business&mdash;I won't bore you&mdash;will
+put me into a bad hole.  A worse hole, I don't mind telling you, Mr.
+Weldon, than Blick's successor can afford to get into.  It's all a
+matter of balance now; pretty fine balancing, too, for the next week.
+In six weeks there'll be enough for most of us, but just now&mdash;well,
+there'll be dozens of us in the Street who'll be grateful for ten
+thousand in cash around the corner.  Think of it&mdash;ten thousand!  Now
+I'll be short.  I need some money&mdash;not stage money, Mr. Weldon, real
+money!  I wouldn't take Blick's name on paper for what I want this
+week&mdash;and getting it or not getting it means the top of the heap for
+me, or three years' fight for it.  I can't afford three years.  I
+wasn't a bank president at forty, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean you want the ten thousand pounds you gave me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so.  I want fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Weldon&mdash;for six weeks.  I
+hate to do it, honestly.  Nothing but this infernal panic could have
+driven me to this.  But I'm helpless.  And it's worth millions to me to
+have no one suspect it.  I can't touch a penny elsewhere&mdash;it's all tied
+up.  I must be able to produce it without any fuss, or disturbing the
+jack-straws a particle.  There's no use in going into the details."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No use at all," said Weldon stiffly, "for it will be impossible for me
+to lend you such a sum, Mr. Webb, impossible.  I have paid well for my
+position here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a good move, too," said the other heartily.  "You stand well,
+Weldon; none better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never been what you would call ambitious," Weldon went on, more
+passionately, now.  "When you yourself asked me why I demanded no more
+than the ten&mdash;the fifty thousand, you remember my answer.  I knew that
+it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a
+position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently,
+and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted.  I shall never be a
+rich man&mdash;by your standards.  I don't care.  I thought my brains and
+initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me.  I promised
+utter silence and have kept my word.  You promised the same and have
+broken yours.  I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to.  I'd
+rather not discuss it further."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mañaña! mañaña! mañaña!</I>" the parrot shrilled.  It still hung head
+down in the shining cage.  Weldon could have wrung its neck.  It was
+worse than a clock.  Webb sighed regretfully and raised his heavy lids.
+As the old snakish glance reached him Weldon felt the old net-like
+sensation, the old baffled rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sorry, Weldon, but I can't let it go.  It's no use&mdash;you can't
+afford it.  It's all like a house you build out of cards, you see, and
+you can't slip out one without the whole thing caving in.  Whatever I
+pull out I have to explain.  How do you suppose I got you your fifty
+thousand, back there?  You know I've never had much money&mdash;to call
+money.  It's brains&mdash;what you call mind-reading, you other
+fellows&mdash;that I've matched against the rest of them.  And I've got them
+where they're afraid of me.  I can't drop back.  Listen to me, Weldon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew his chair close and talked low and steadily for five minutes.
+The air seemed to grow dense; the rustling hiss of the foam on the
+creamy beach was the hiss and flicker of a sea-coal fire; the grotesque
+shadow of the wicker chair, black on the white verandah floor, was the
+spread, silent bulk of a dead man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The low voice ceased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about it, Weldon?" it added abruptly, "can you afford that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon pushed away his chair roughly.  "Come down to my room at the
+bank," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hours afterward he dragged himself into his bedroom, an older man by
+ten years than when he had quitted it.  His body seemed heavier, his
+face hollower, with pinched lips and sunken eyes.  The man who waited
+on him stared openly and mentioned the doctor, only to receive a curse
+for his pains&mdash;the first he had ever heard from his master.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the late dusk his wife found him asleep in a long chair with an
+empty decanter beside him and heavy rugs dragged up to his chin.  They
+tried, both of them, to make that nervous chill account for the change
+in him, but she watched him narrowly and he felt her eyes day and night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something tolled like a bell in him and never stopped for a moment:
+<I>six weeks! six weeks! six weeks!</I> all his waking movements went to
+that intolerable rhythm; he was like a man under a gallows, with a
+reprieve coming to him, at the mercy of all the elements.  It was
+observed at the bank that he worked harder and longer and much alone:
+they said the American blood was coming out at last, and smiled at each
+other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only mind you don't engage us in speculations, old man," said one of
+his colleagues jocosely, "'safe and sound,' you know!  Look at the
+States&mdash;a pretty mess that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon turned on him in a fury of anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speculation! speculation!" he cried harshly, "you know that I hate it
+like hell!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were genuinely anxious about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One morning he found his wife in his dressing-room, white-faced over
+something in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Philip!  Philip!" she whispered and clung to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put the shining little steel-eyed thing behind him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear, don't be foolish," he said quietly, "if I have my reasons for
+wishing a certain sort of protection for a few days, will you make me
+regret my sparing you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;you mean the bank?" she gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What else could I mean?" he said steadily, and in some quaint woman's
+reasoning she was appeased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of three weeks the strain eased a little.  He read a letter
+from Webb with a grim smile, bought an American newspaper, and passed
+an entire day away from the bank.  His wife held her breath as she
+watched him, but affected not to notice the change, and he blessed her
+for it: his nerves were raw.  Two days, three days went by.  He sent
+out for another newspaper and later in the day raised the tiny salary
+of the page who had brought it to him.  In the cool of the afternoon he
+rode with his wife, the boy on a shaggy pony beside them, and kissed
+her as she turned in the saddle in the shadow of the dusk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are the best wife a man ever had," he said, looking deep into her
+honest brown eyes, and she galloped away from him to hide her happy
+tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day he told the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the
+verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced
+tolerantly at its strident cry:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mañaña! mañaña!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Life is as it is, he thought, and can we hope to change it because we
+change?  Surely not.  Everything had its price, and he had really never
+paid the price of that ten-years-old bargain till now&mdash;he acknowledged
+it.  Out of that blue-stained air the messenger of fate had dropped and
+taken his toll of youth and candour and elasticity, and departed again,
+and now the weight was slackening from his chest and there were but
+fourteen days to wait.  The next day he found a second letter from Webb
+on his desk.  To relieve him from needless anxiety, said the great
+financier, he wrote to inform Mr. Weldon that six weeks had proved too
+wide a margin and he promised himself the pleasure of a complete
+settlement six days from the date of writing.  Weldon stared at the
+letter head: it had been three days on the way&mdash;that meant in three
+days&mdash;by the next boat!  The letter was grave, but subtly jubilant.
+The railroads were subdued.  Blickenstern was dead, the country hailed
+his successor.  A foundation of millions lay firm beneath his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president left his bank early and went home on horseback to
+luncheon.  His wife saw the husband of many days ago and asked no more
+of life, but sang among her flower jars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you come up to Government House this afternoon, dear?  It's weeks
+since you've been," she said, and he smiled and promised.  "I've a new
+frock," she confided shyly, like a girl, "and I think you'll like to
+see it&mdash;now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll be back before four," he told her, "a little late, but I promised
+one of our young fellows an appointment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She pouted as she had done in her courtship days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A young man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't disappoint him, sweetheart.  Youngsters feel those things.  He
+wants more money, and I really believe he's worth it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he entered his private room something struck him disagreeably.  He
+glanced about&mdash;a sea-coal fire burned in the tiny English grate.  He
+scowled and touched a bell.  Asked to explain, the page confessed that
+he had promised Mrs. Weldon to put a fire there whenever any dampness
+should threaten, and that to-day being noticeably damp he had kept his
+word.  The president nodded and the lad made his escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In another moment a slender young man entered, with a discreet knock,
+and faced him.  He seemed unaccountably excited&mdash;even blustering, for a
+young man in his position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The president took out his watch and counted the ticks to quiet his
+irritation.  We must be kind to the young ones&mdash;promotion means so much
+to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us look at all this a little quietly," he said, softened already,
+"believe me, I want to satisfy every reasonable claim.  It is to my
+interest&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught his breath.  Something in the young man's attitude as he
+faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on
+his hard young face, smote him to the very marrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is he thinking of me?" flashed through him.  The answer came like
+the shot from a cannon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it to your interest to satisfy every reasonable claim on the ten
+thousand pounds you borrowed from the bank last month, Mr. Weldon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The soft lines faded from his face and two grey streaks grew around his
+mouth.  The ticking of the watch in his hand rose and swelled and
+filled the room&mdash;<I>one, two! one, two! one, two!</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So this was the end.  Never a night of honest sleep again.  Never a
+free swell of the chest.  To go down in sight of land, to drop just
+outside the fort!  <I>All over!  All over!  All over!</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man was still talking, quickly, definitely enough, but it
+grew blurred as it reached his brain.  He found his tongue, dry and
+stiff in his mouth, asking questions mechanically?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Did any one know of this?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No, only the young man.  He was not inclined to be rapacious.  He had
+an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would
+establish him there.  He had thought it might be worth the president's
+while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds&mdash;considering
+everything.  Promotion was slow in Bermuda ... dead men's shoes....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tongue in Weldon's mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be
+protected against further demands.  The young man explained very
+clearly.  The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the
+recent transaction would be a ripple under water.  But during those few
+days ... he smiled disagreeably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fire whistled in the grate; the bank was utterly still.  They were
+alone in it.  In one second of time, years and the future itself
+wheeled before Philip Weldon's sunken eyes.  So the black drop <I>had</I>
+lasted, after all, and would tint his life as long as that life lasted
+on earth ... and longer?  Anything was possible.  Must the sordid drama
+play itself eternally, through the years and countries, till the final
+ripple hit the southern-most port of refuge?  Would this young man sit
+before a sea-coal fire in Gibraltar, one day, frozen, his life and
+honour nipped at the root by the triumphant hound who had tracked down
+his one fault?  Before God, it was <I>his</I> only one!  He was white beside
+some others who lived and died respected.  Prove the contrary, any one!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>One, two! one, two! one, two!</I>  That watch.  Either he was going mad
+or it could be heard in the street outside, it shouted so.  Who was he,
+anyway&mdash;Deeping or himself?  Who was that young man?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly his head cleared.  He moistened his lips and leaned forward,
+the watch crystal shivered in his grasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you are going&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To Gibraltar," said the young man briskly.  "I am glad that you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Weldon thoughtfully, "I am afraid you are not going to
+Gibraltar.  You are going to die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard
+little object there.  His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him
+reeling in his chair.  A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he
+fell heavily backward on his bent arm.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+His eyes opened.  He drew a deep breath.  A tall, carved clock in the
+corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have
+said something, for his voice was in the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must have had some papers&mdash;if there is anything wrong&mdash;good God,
+Webb, what shall we do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey.  Weldon sprang to his feet,
+pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now.  He was
+free!  He was free!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clock struck again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and
+pressed them upon Webb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want!
+And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an
+explanation that may help you with them.  I wish you good-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To get out!  To get out!  He burst through the portières and the door,
+as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it
+from without.  In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one
+sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and
+terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes
+fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with
+his snake-like eye.  Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in
+the room and the group dissolved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode
+down the corridor.  He threw himself on the outside door and as he
+opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the
+great clock strike eleven.  With a shudder he plunged across the
+threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE LEGACY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody
+believes this or not.  It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that
+I'm writing it, anyway.  And nobody needs to get the idea that I think
+I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that.  But there's not
+a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over
+her, if he wanted to&mdash;and he knows it, too.  Not that he's cocky about
+it, though.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of
+the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back,
+while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Style be damned," he said.  "You're long on facts, and that's all I
+want, my dear.  And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that
+C&mdash;&mdash;r's rot on me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it.  I
+took care of Mr. C&mdash;&mdash;r, the novelist, when he had his appendix
+removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always
+insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that.  But of
+course they weren't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own
+language.  I'd like to keep it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And of course anybody can do that.  Although Mr. C&mdash;&mdash;r told me once
+that that was the hardest job he ever tackled.  He said he could write
+like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself.  But he was always
+joshing, that man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Jessop," he used to say to me, "if I could write like
+myself, I'd have won the Nobel prize any time this last ten years!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he wrote awfully well, I always thought.  Hardly a patient I had
+that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, what's the last C&mdash;&mdash;r's?" and when I got to the parts I'd
+taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used
+to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case.  He 'phoned me to drop in at
+the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been
+shopping with her all the morning.  She had just invited me to go out
+to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the
+idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case
+that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue.
+It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any
+feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my
+own sister, almost.  She was lovely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes,
+though my suit-case was all packed for the country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's good," he said, "for I specially want you.  It's nothing to do,
+really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend.  There's a
+family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through
+the country&mdash;New England, I believe.  They've got a big, dressy car,
+and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the
+weather's reasonably good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do they want of a nurse?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening," he said.
+"They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, that sounded all right, and yet I got the idea that it wasn't the
+real reason, somehow.  I don't know why.  Those things are queer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course, there was no reason why it shouldn't be so: I spent a month
+on a private yacht, one summer, just to be there in case of sickness,
+and nobody wanted me all the time we were gone, for a minute.  As a
+matter of fact, the lady's maid took care of me the first three days
+out!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I never happened to be asked on a motor-trip in that way, and it
+seemed a little different.  For of course you could pick up a nurse
+almost anywhere, if you wanted one, on that sort of a tour, and every
+place in the tonneau counts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't there anything the matter with any of them?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a suspicious lot you nurses are!" he said, with his queer little
+chuckle (all the young doctors try to imitate it in the hospital).
+"The daughter's a little nervous, that's all.  It's for her they're
+taking the trip, to give her a change."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now look here, Dr. Stanchon," I said, "I'm here to tell you that I
+don't want any of your old dope cases, and I might just as well say so
+first as last.  That last young man of yours was about all I wanted.
+He was a sweet creature, wasn't he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This probably sounds very fresh to you, but everybody knows me: I speak
+right out, and if you want me, you have to stand it!  And the way I
+slaved over that boy, and he getting morphine from his valet right
+along&mdash;it was simply disgusting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's nothing like that&mdash;nothing at all," said he; "don't get so
+excited!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, very well," I said, "then I suppose it's melancholia.  Not for
+mine, if you please.  Perhaps you remember that charming woman that
+jumped out of the window?  I'm no clairvoyant, and that was enough for
+me, thank you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're getting saucy, Jessop," he said, "but it's not melancholia.
+But you certainly had a hard time with that one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I should say I did.  The foxy thing was as good as gold for three
+weeks, minded everything I said, fairly ate out of my hand, and got us
+so that we all believed she did better for me alone than when I had
+help handy.  Of course I kept my eye on her, but nevertheless, the
+other nurse just above gave up the job, and used to be off learning
+French from the governess they had, most of the time.  So when madam
+got us where she wanted us, she tied me to the door knob and jumped out
+of the window before my eyes!  And I can tell you, the thirty dollars a
+week that would get me on a case like that again, never left the
+Treasury!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I assure you it's not that at all," he said.  "It's a case of nerves,
+that's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nerves! nerves!" I repeated (I <I>was</I> pretty snippy, I suppose).
+"That's all right for the family, doctor, but what's the matter with
+her?  I've got to know, haven't I, some time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I must say you nurses are getting to be the limit," he said.
+"The truth is, I spoil you.  But there's something in what you say, of
+course.  Now here's the whole business.  This girl, and she's a sweet,
+lovely girl, too, had a maid, that was a sort of nurse, I believe, when
+she was a child, and had seen her grow up, and was very much attached
+to her, and all that.  Like all those old servants she was pretty well
+spoilt, I imagine, and seems to have had the girl under her thumb.  She
+always slept in the room with her.  Now; the maid had bad headaches and
+used to take all sorts of proprietary remedies for them&mdash;coal-tar, of
+course, and probably had weakened her heart with them.  Anyway, she
+waked the girl up one night with her troubles and the girl gets up and
+gives her an overdose in the dark, and the maid's dead in her bed in
+the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I see," I said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that
+suicidal woman.  "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame.
+An automobile trip will certainly do her a lot of good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there's a little more to it than that," he said.  "As a matter
+of fact, she's a very sensible sort of girl and she knows she's not to
+blame, really.  Of course it was pretty rough, but then, the maid had
+no business to expect her to wait on her, and she ought to have given
+careful directions about the dose, anyhow.  She might have gone off any
+time, and the girl knows it.  But the night of the funeral, after the
+girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of
+the bed, looking at her!  Of course she was overwrought nervously.
+Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the
+woman comes every night.  She knows it's hallucination, optical
+delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but
+she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do.
+They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried
+auto-suggestion&mdash;no use.  She's all right through the day, but at
+night, in any bedroom, under any circumstances, this thing appears and
+she just has to go through with it till morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why doesn't she have some one sleep with her?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It doesn't make the slightest difference," he said.  "One week she had
+a bed between her father's and mother's, but it was just the same, and
+of course they got pretty bad, out of sympathy.  They'd spend two or
+three ordinary fortunes to cure her&mdash;but it's one of the cases where
+money doesn't talk, unfortunately.  So there we are.  It came over me
+last night that I'd like to have you try what you can do with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, heavens and earth, what good will I be?" I said.  "Am I a
+ghost-catcher?  I never knew it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," says he, "but I'm sorry for the ghost that would run up against
+you, Jessop&mdash;honestly, I am!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Much obliged, I'm sure," I said, "but why doesn't she take her sleep
+in the daytime?  That would fool the ghost from her point of
+view&mdash;wouldn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I'll never forget the look he gave me.  "Listen to me, my girl," he
+said, running out his jaw in the way he does when he's in dead earnest
+and means you to know it, "listen to me, now.  If that young woman ever
+takes to living by night and sleeping by day, on that account, <I>she's a
+gone goose</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?" said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean it's all up with her, and she might as well engage a permanent
+suite in Jarvyse's little hotel up the river," he says, very sharp and
+gruff.  "I've staved that off for a month now, but they can't see it
+and they're bound to try it: Jarvyse himself half advises it.  And I'll
+risk my entire reputation on the result.  If she can't fight it
+out&mdash;she's gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waited a moment and put out his jaw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>She's gone,</I>" he said again, and I felt creepy when he said it, and I
+tell you I believed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'll try my best," I said, and I went on the case the next
+morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as I saw her I got the idea of her I've always had since:
+that's me, all over.  I went to a palmist's once with a lot of the
+other nurses and that's the first thing he said to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's first impressions with you, young woman," he said.  "Take care to
+trust 'em and act on 'em, and you'll never need to count on the old
+ladies' home!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, as soon as I saw Miss Elton she put me in mind of one of Mr.
+C&mdash;&mdash;r's heroines, looks and clothes and ways, and all, and I've never
+changed my mind.  Her things were all plain, but they had the loveliest
+lines, and she always looked as if she'd been born in them, they suited
+her so!  Her hair was that heavy, smooth blond kind that makes a Marcel
+wave look too vulgar to think about, and her eyes and complexion went
+with it.  And with all her education she was as simple as a child:
+there were any number of things she didn't seem to know.  She took to
+me directly, her mother said, and I could see she liked me, though she
+hardly spoke.  She had big rings under her eyes and seemed very tired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She got a nap after lunch&mdash;only two hours, by the doctor's orders&mdash;and
+it did seem a shame to wake her, she was off so sound, but of course I
+did, and then we walked for an hour in the park.  I didn't talk much at
+first, but I saw that she liked it, and so gradually we got on to
+different subjects, and I think she was entertained.  She seemed
+interested to hear about the nurses at the hospital and some of the
+funny things that happen there, and I could see that she was trying to
+keep her end up&mdash;oh, she was all right, Anne Elton was, and no mistake!
+There was nothing morbid about her: she was trying to help all she
+could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I came down for dinner there was a young man with them, a
+handsome, dark fellow, and he talked a great deal with me&mdash;I could see
+he was trying to size me up, and it was easy to see that he was pretty
+far gone as far as Miss Elton was concerned, and didn't care who knew
+it.  We must have seemed a strange party to any one who didn't know the
+ins and outs of the thing&mdash;only the five of us in that big dining-room
+with the conservatory opening into it; the mother, one of those
+stringy, grey New York women, that always wear diamond dog-collars,
+worried to death and nervous as a witch; Mr. Elton&mdash;he was Commodore of
+the New York Yacht Club at that time&mdash;fat and healthy and
+reddish-purple in the face; young Mr. Ferrau (he was from an old French
+family and looked it, though a born New Yorker) and me in my white
+uniform and cap next to Miss Elton, all in white with a big rope of
+pearls and pearls on her fingers.  She could wear a lower cut gown and
+look more decent in it than any woman I ever saw.  All her evening
+dresses were like that, perfectly plain, just draped around her, with
+long trains and no trimmings: her skin was like cream-coloured marble,
+not a mark or line or vein on it, but just one brown mole on the right
+shoulder blade, and that, as her mother said, was really an addition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nobody talked much but Mr. Ferrau and the old gentleman&mdash;there's no
+doubt he had been a gay old boy in his day!&mdash;for I never do talk when I
+dine with the family, and the mother was too nervous for anything but
+complaining of the food.  The Lord knows why, for it beat any French
+restaurant I ever ate in, or Delmonico's either, and Mr. Ferrau and I
+got quite jolly over how they put soft-boiled eggs into those round,
+<I>soufflée</I> sort of things with tomato sauce over them, without spilling
+the yolks.  Then they asked if I'd play bridge a bit, and though I
+don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my
+morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old
+gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted,
+sitting up straight as a poker on a gold sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It always makes me laugh when I read what some persons' ideas are of
+how rich people amuse themselves.  The nurses are always jollying me
+about my rich friends and playing the races and champagne suppers and
+high-flying generally, and I often wish they could have seen us those
+evenings at the Eltons, playing bridge&mdash;no money, mind you, and
+Apollinaris at ten!  The Commodore had to have ginger-ale, the ladies
+hardly ever drank, and I never take anything but water when I'm on a
+case, so Mr. Ferrau had all the champagne there was at that dinner.  At
+ten the masseuse came and rubbed Miss Elton to sleep, and I got into my
+bed next hers before she went off, not to risk disturbing her.  There
+was a night lamp in her bath and I could just make out her long braid
+on the pillow&mdash;the pillow cases had real lace insertions and the
+monograms on the sheets were the most beautiful I ever saw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went off myself about eleven, for I was determined to act perfectly
+natural: I knew I'd wake if anything was wrong.  And sure enough: all
+of a sudden I began to dream, a thing I seldom if ever do, and I
+dreamed that my suicidal case was clambering over me to jump out of the
+window, and woke with a start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Elton was sitting up in bed staring at me, breathing short.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I do anything for you?" I asked quietly and she gave a sort of
+gasp and said,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I think not, thank you.  I'm sorry to bother you, but the doctor
+told me to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course," said I, "that's what I'm here for.  Do you see
+anybody?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't say, "Do you think you see anybody?" for I never put things
+that way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she said, "she's there&mdash;Janet."  I glanced about, and of course
+there was no one, and I tell you, I felt awfully sorry for her.  It was
+all the worse that she was so pretty and calm and decent about it: I
+didn't like that a bit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is she?" said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right on the foot of the bed," she answered, in that grim, edgy kind
+of way they always talk when they're holding on to themselves.  Oh, how
+that morphine boy of mine used to begin!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me, Miss Jessop, but would you mind assuring me that there's
+nobody crouching under the bed?" he used to say.  "Of course I know
+there's not, but there appears to be, and I'd be obliged if you'd look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If I went under that bed once, I went fifty times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, to tell you the truth, Miss Elton, I don't see a thing," I said.
+"Shall I turn on the light?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;not yet," she said.  "The doctor said to hold out as long as I
+could.  Would you mind putting your hand there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a bit," said I, and I pawed all over the foot of her bed.  Finally
+I got up and sat there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What happens now?" I asked her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She just moves up and sits farther out," said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I couldn't think of much to say to that, she was so quiet and hopeless,
+so I waited awhile and finally I said,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would it help you any to talk about it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, if you didn't <I>mind</I>!" she cried out, and then the poor thing
+began.  It makes me tired, the way people treat a patient like that.
+There was that girl just bottled up, you might as well say, because
+they all thought it would make her worse to talk about it.  Her father
+pooh-poohed it, and her mother cried and asked her to send for their
+rector, and even Dr. Stanchon slipped up there, it seemed to me, for he
+advised her not to dwell on it.  Not dwell on it!  Why, how could she
+help it, I'd like to know?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I can't understand," she'd say, over and over, "is her coming,
+when it hurts me so.  Why, Janet loved me, Miss Jessop, she loved the
+ground I walked on, everybody said!  And she knows&mdash;she must know&mdash;that
+I wouldn't have hurt her for the world.  Why should I?  She took care
+of me since I was six years old&mdash;sixteen years!  She said to put in
+those powders in the box and I put them in.  How could I know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you couldn't know," I said, "she knows that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why does she do this?" she asked me, so pitifully, just like a
+child.  "Why does she, Miss Jessop?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you know, Miss Elton," I said, "you wouldn't believe me if I
+lied to you, now, would you?  And so I must tell you that I don't think
+she <I>does</I> do it: none of us do.  It's just your idea.  If Janet's
+there, why don't I see her?  You're overstrained and excited and you
+feel that she might not have died&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, but I didn't feel that the night she came!" she broke out, "truly
+I didn't.  Dr. Stanchon and all of them said I was very brave and
+sensible.  He talked to me and made me see: if Janet had been sleeping
+with one of the maids and waked her up and told her not to turn on the
+light because it hurt her head, but just to give her the powders in the
+box, that maid would have done it.  I can see that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't blame myself&mdash;really," she went on, and suddenly she looked
+straight to the foot of the bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Janet," she said, "the doctor said never to speak to you, and I never
+will again, but I must, this once.  Janet, <I>do</I> you blame me?  Are you
+really there?  Why do you come this way?  You're killing me, you know.
+I can't sleep.  You shouldn't have taken that strong medicine, and the
+doctor told you not to, you know, yourself.  Won't you go, Janet?  Not
+to please Nannie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Really, it would have melted a stone to hear her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still a moment and then she began to cry and whimper, and I
+knew that it had made no difference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She won't go&mdash;she won't go," she said, crying, "not even for Nannie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I talked to her and read to her and stroked her head, and by two
+o'clock or so she was off for an hour, and I got a nap myself.  But
+from three till nearly five she was awake again, and I had to light up
+the room; she said she hardly saw her then&mdash;only felt her, and that
+wasn't so bad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know that anything different took place for a week after that.
+We went through the same business every night, and I took a nap every
+afternoon when she did.  She told me, what I wasn't much surprised to
+hear, that she and Mr. Ferrau were engaged&mdash;or just about&mdash;when this
+precious Janet died, and that now she wouldn't hear of it and had
+refused to marry him till she was well again.  And I must say I think
+she was right.  Of course the old gentleman didn't see it that way, and
+we had many a discussion about it, he and I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God Almighty, Miss Jessop, my dear," he used to say to me, "you know
+as well as I do&mdash;I'm speaking, of course, to a woman of practical sense
+and experience, and therefore I speak plainly&mdash;you know as well as I do
+that the day after the wedding all this will be done for!  We'll never
+hear of that damned Janet nonsense again.  Now, would we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Commodore, maybe not, but you can't tell," I'd say.  "It's a
+good bet, but&mdash;it's a bet, after all.  It would be awkward if it didn't
+work out, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, bosh, bosh!" he'd burst out, and roll off to the Yacht Club.
+People that live in big houses like that, I've noticed, always have to
+go out to get a little peace, they say, and privacy.  It's funny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The weather was bad, so we didn't go on the motor trip at all, and that
+was just as well, for if we had, I should never have gone up to the
+hospital that day and never seen old Margaret.  She was an old darky
+woman that used to come in to clean the wards when they were short of
+help, and all the nurses knew her, because she used to tell fortunes
+with cards and a glass ball she looked into&mdash;pretty fair fortunes, too.
+I've known of some awfully queer things she told different nurses that
+were only too true.  She always liked me because I used to jolly her
+up, and I stopped to speak to her, and she asked me where I was working.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, a grand place on the Avenue, Margaret," I told her, "marble stairs
+and a fountain in the hall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the sickness, honey?" she asked, for those darkies are always
+curious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The patient's got a ghost, Margaret," I said, just to see what she'd
+say, "and I'm sorry to say we can't seem to cure her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Co'se you cayn't cure her," says she, "no stuff in bottles for that,
+honey!  What the ghos' want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing at all," said I.  "It just sits on the bed and looks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laws, honey, Miss Jessop, but that yer kine's the wors' of all," says
+she, staring at me.  "She'll jes' have ter leave it onto somebody else,
+that's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, can you do that?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure you can do it," she says.  "Was it one that loved her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They all say so," said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She struck her hands together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew it&mdash;I knew it!" she cried out.  "It's always that-a-way.  My
+ole mudder she had that ha'nt fer ten years, and it was her half-sister
+that brung her up from three years ole!  She'll jes' have ter leave it
+onto some one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'll tell her so," said I, just in joke, of course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do," says she, solemn as the grave, "you do, Miss Jessop, honey,
+an' she'll bless you all her life.  You get some one ter say they'll
+take that ha'nt off her <I>right w'ile it's there, so it hears 'em</I>, and
+w'ile there's a witness there ter hear bofe sides, an' you hear to me,
+now, she'll go free!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll certainly tell her, Margaret," I said, and I went on and never
+gave it another thought, of course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We went up to the Elton's camp in Maine all of a sudden, for Miss Elton
+got the idea she'd feel better there, and though it was cold as
+Greenland, it did seem for a little as if she got a bit more sleep.
+But not for long.  We slept out on pine-bough beds around a big fire,
+for that made more light, and that precious Janet seemed to be fainter,
+but she was there, just the same, and the poor girl had lost eighteen
+pounds and I felt pretty blue about it.  It didn't really look as if we
+got ahead any, as I told the doctor, and she hardly spoke all day.  I'm
+not much for the country, as a rule, it always smells so damp at night,
+but the Lord knows I'd have lived there a year if it would have helped
+her any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then came the night when Mr. Ferrau ran up to see how she was getting
+along.  It was too cold for Madam and the Commodore, so we were there
+alone except for a gang of guides and servants and chauffeurs and
+masseuses.  She had a bad night that night, for she got the idea that
+this lovely Janet was sitting up nearer and nearer to her, and she had
+it in her head that when she got to a certain point it would be all up
+with her.  And when I told the doctor that, over the telephone, all he
+said was:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too bad, too bad!"  So I knew how <I>he</I> felt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, she got talking rather hysterically for her, and I began to wish
+somebody else was around, when Mr. Ferrau jumps out of his door in the
+bachelor quarters and dashes over to us in a heavy bathrobe, white as a
+sheet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake, Miss Jessop, <I>do</I> something!" he said, but I just
+shrugged my shoulders.  There was nothing to <I>do</I>, you see.  She was
+all bundled up in a seal-skin sleeping-bag with a wool helmet over her
+head; her eyes certainly looked bad.  I just about gave up hope, then.
+The moon made everything a sort of bluish-white and we all must have
+looked pretty ghastly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I'll give her a little codeine," I said.  "Just stay here a
+moment, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knelt down by her bunk while I began to unwind myself from all the
+stuff you have to get into up there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Anne, my dearest, dearest girl," he said, "if only I could take
+this instead of you!  If only I could see her, and you not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you&mdash;would you, really, Louis?" I heard her say.  "You <I>do</I> love
+me, don't you?  But that would be too dreadful.  I couldn't allow that
+to happen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens, my dear girl, I'd take it in a minute, if I could!" he cried.
+"Oh, Anne, do try to look at it in that way&mdash;try to give it to me!
+Perhaps if you used your will-power enough for that&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That can't be, Louis," she said, "this is just my fate.  I must bear
+it&mdash;till it kills me.  But if it could be, I'll tell you this: I
+<I>would</I> give it to you, dearest, for you are stronger, and maybe a man
+could fight it better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was off to the main camp then, but when I got back with the codeine
+she was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he kneeled there till
+four without moving&mdash;he was game, that Mr. Ferrau, and no mistake!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She slept right through till eight, and I left them together all day,
+as much as I could, and I let her off her nap, she begged so.  I could
+see from the solemn way she talked that she was saying good-bye to him,
+as much as he'd let her.  She told me that as soon as it began to get
+on her brain, really, and she got worse (we always called it "getting
+worse"), she was going up to Dr. Jarvyse's place, and he wasn't to see
+her at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want him to remember me&mdash;as I was," she said.  It certainly was
+tough.  I used to cry about it, when I was alone, sometimes.  You get
+awfully fond of some patients.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stayed the next night, too, and I took my regular nap from ten to
+one.  I could nearly always count on that, and I'd got so I woke the
+moment she did.  I was fast asleep when I felt her touch me, and I
+woke, feeling scared, for she almost never did that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" I said, half awake.  "Is she coming nearer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Jessop, dear Miss Jessop, she isn't here at all!" she said,
+shaking and crying.  "I've been awake an hour, and she hasn't come
+to-night!  Oh, <I>do</I> you think, <I>do</I> you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I do," I said, though I was pretty excited myself, I can tell
+you.  "I believe you're getting better, Miss Elton, and now I think
+I'll have Miss Avidson rub you, and see if we can get through the night
+all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Swedish woman put her right to sleep, working over her head, and we
+never opened our eyes till nine.  One of the guides told me that Mr.
+Ferrau had been called to the city early, and had left quietly, not to
+disturb us, but we were both so delighted and yet so anxious not to be
+delighted too soon, that we didn't notice his going much.  She ate
+three good meals that day, besides her tea, and we walked five or six
+miles&mdash;I wanted to wear her out.  And that night she slept right
+through!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We waited one night more, to be certain, and then I 'phoned the doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hurray!" he yelled, so I nearly dropped the receiver.  "Bully for you!
+Keep out for a week and then move in&mdash;with a light.  Drop the light in
+another week.  Then I'll send 'em all off to Beachmount."  This was
+their Long Island place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, it all worked out perfectly.  She gained nine pounds in three
+weeks, and I don't know when I've been so pleased.  The old people came
+up to see her, and I spent most of my time convincing them that it was
+no case for tiaras and sunbursts, as I never wore them.  Mrs. Elton
+really looked almost human.  She cried so that I finally had to take a
+little string of pearls.  They were small, but all matched, and she
+said I could wear them under my blouse and I could always sell them.
+You'd have thought that I'd cured the girl, when, as I told them, the
+thing had just run its natural course, and her youth and good sense and
+the outdoor life had done the rest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course, there was no more use for me, and I went right off on a big
+operation case&mdash;a very interesting one, indeed.  I promised to come to
+the wedding, if I possibly could; she told me she would be married just
+as soon as Mr. Ferrau wished, she felt she'd made him go through so
+much in the last four months.  And it seemed that he <I>had</I> felt the
+strain more than they thought, for her mother told me that just as Anne
+recovered, he seemed to give way and got very nervous and had gone off
+on a yacht with some of his college friends to the south somewhere.  I
+was rather surprised not to see him at the house, and so was Miss Anne,
+I thought; but he sent the loveliest flowers every day and telegrams,
+and of course they were working on the trousseau and pretty busy,
+anyway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I couldn't get to the wedding, after all, for my patient was taken to
+Lakewood and simply refused to let me off, which was rather mean of
+her, for I could have run up for the afternoon as well as not.  But
+that's what you have to expect, if you go into nursing, and you get
+used to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Elton called me up once at the hotel, to see if I couldn't get
+away (they were going to send the car for me if I could), and I asked
+if Mr. Ferrau was all right again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really, Miss Jessop," said she&mdash;and I could just see how she must have
+looked, from her voice&mdash;"really, my dear, I am terribly, <I>terribly</I>
+worried about Louis.  He looks frightfully, so pale and nervous and run
+down.  And he simply <I>won't</I> see a doctor, and when I earnestly begged
+him to consult Dr. Stanchon, he flew out at me&mdash;he really flew out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can it be?" said I.  "What does Miss Elton think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, how can she know, my dear?" says the old lady.  "Only he assures
+her that it will be all right once they're married, and begs her so not
+to put it off, that she won't, though I don't entirely approve, myself.
+Really, you'd scarcely know Louis, Miss Jessop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It did seem too bad, but then, those things will happen, and I just
+thought to myself that probably there was more to that southern trip
+than the old lady knew, and let it go at that.  The doctor says that
+all the nurses have dime-novel imaginations&mdash;but where do we get them,
+I'd like to know, if not from what we see and hear?  The Lord knows we
+don't have to invent things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Elton was dreadfully disappointed that I couldn't be there for the
+wedding, and promised me they'd stop a minute at the hotel on their
+wedding journey and see me.  They were going on a motor trip, nobody
+knew just where, and Lakewood would only be a few miles out of their
+way.  Wasn't that nice of them?  But it was just like both of them.  So
+I was quite excited, of course, and when it poured rain all day, and
+got worse and worse, I did feel so sorry for them and never expected
+they'd leave town.  But, lo and behold, about five o'clock didn't the
+boy bring up their cards, and for a wonder my patient was decent and
+said she wouldn't want me till next morning&mdash;she had her own maid with
+her and really didn't need me but once a day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I ran down to one of the little reception rooms&mdash;I must say I like
+those big hotels&mdash;and when I saw them I nearly collapsed, for though
+she was looking perfectly beautiful and well as could be, poor Mr.
+Ferrau certainly did give me a shock.  He was all tanned, well enough,
+but as thin as a rail, and dreadful around the eyes.  And yet he looked
+very happy and seemed quite glad to see me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't she looking magnificent?" he asked me, and I said&mdash;I just have
+to say right out what I think&mdash;"Yes, she is, but I can't say the same
+for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I shall be all right&mdash;after a bit," he said, turning red and not
+meeting my eyes.  "Just let me get away with Anne for a while, and
+you'll see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They insisted on my having tea with them, and I couldn't help but think
+that she didn't realise how bad he looked and acted: his hand shook so
+that his tea-spoon jingled.  And yet he was as straight as a string, I
+was sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It kept on pouring so dreadfully that they gave up the idea of going on
+anywhere, and he engaged a suite at the hotel for that night, and I
+said good-bye to them, then, for they were to have their dinner served
+by themselves and I knew they'd want to get off quietly in the morning.
+My patient kept her word and didn't bother me, and I listened to the
+music for a while and then went up to my room and wrote some letters.
+About ten I put my boots outside the door and happened to notice the
+boots opposite and saw that they were Mr. Ferrau's&mdash;they were patent
+leather, with rather queer cloth tops.  So I knew that they had the
+suite opposite ours; there were only those two for the one little hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I couldn't seem to sleep that night at all.  I kept dreaming about that
+suicide of mine, even when I did sleep, and finally I put on my wrapper
+and decided to take a few turns up and down the corridor.  I opened the
+door softly and stepped out&mdash;and ran right into Mr. Ferrau!  He was
+stalking along in a bathrobe, his arms spread out, and tears rolling
+down his cheeks, and he was chattering to himself like a monkey.  His
+eyes rolled, and I could see he was just on the verge of a regular
+smash-up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Mr. Ferrau, what's the matter?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared at me like a crazy man.  "You here!" he said.  "For God's
+sake!  Go up to her&mdash;go to Anne&mdash;I'm all in," he said.  "Oh, Miss
+Jessop, it didn't work!  It didn't work!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pointed to his door, and I went through the private dining-room and
+the sitting-room and a dressing-room and a big marble bath, and there
+she was, crying like a baby in one of the beds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Elton&mdash;I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau&mdash;what <I>is</I> the
+matter?" I said, running up to her and taking hold of her hand.  "Are
+you ill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She only sobbed and held on to me and suddenly something struck me and
+I said, "You haven't seen Janet again, have you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no&mdash;but I wish I had!  I wish I'd never stopped!" she gulped at
+me.  "Oh, Miss Jessop, <I>Louis sees her</I>!  He sees her all the time;
+that's what makes him look so ill!  Ever since she stopped coming to
+me, he's seen her, and he never told."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For heaven's sake!" said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She sits on the bed, but she doesn't look at him&mdash;he only sees her
+profile.  He walked twenty miles a day&mdash;he did boxing and fencing and
+riding&mdash;it was no use&mdash;he thought when we&mdash;when&mdash;he hoped if we were
+married&mdash;oh, Miss Jessop, she came just the same!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For heaven's sake!" I said again.  It wasn't very helpful, but I
+simply couldn't think of anything else.  She was so pretty and sweet,
+and he was so plucky, and who would have supposed it would have got on
+his nerves so!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her night gown was solid real lace, and the front of it was sopping wet
+where she'd cried, and the top of the sheet, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I gave her to him, and he won't give her back&mdash;I can't make him!" she
+went on, gasping and sobbing.  "I begged him on my knees, but he
+wouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And don't you see her?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, I can't!" she cried.  "I try, but I can't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's something, anyway," I said.  "You wait till I go and
+speak to him again, and put some cold water on your eyes, why don't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For it just occurred to me that maybe I could do something with him,
+after all.  He was leaning against the window at the end of the
+corridor, and I never like to see excited people near windows, after my
+suicide woman, so I sprinted along till I got to him.  But I really
+don't believe there was any need for it&mdash;he wasn't that kind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here, Mr. Ferrau," I said, "do you really believe that Miss
+Elton&mdash;I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau&mdash;really gave that old Janet ghost
+to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe it? <I>believe it</I>?" he said, staring at me out of his red eyes.
+"No, I don't believe it, Miss Jessop&mdash;I know it!  I tell you I see the
+damned thing, in a brown dress, on the edge of my bed every night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then," I said, "do you think you could give it to anybody else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And just at that moment, and not before, I remembered old Margaret!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why&mdash;why, I never thought of that," he said.  "I&mdash;I wouldn't put any
+one else through such a hell, though&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, come, now," I said.  "Maybe they wouldn't think it was so bad as
+you do, Mr. Ferrau."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But who would&mdash;oh, it's too crazy!" he said, half angry, but all
+broken up, so he didn't much care how it sounded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, lots of people," I told him.  "Why, you might easily find some one
+with an incurable disease, you know, that hadn't long to live and
+wanted money&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course, this was all nonsense, but anything to humour people in his
+condition&mdash;it's the only way.  And what do you think?  He turned around
+like a shot and stared at me as if I'd been a ghost, myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That might be possible," he said, very slowly; "it's just possible I
+know ... excuse me, I'll go in and speak to my wife a moment!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He left me there and in a few minutes he came for me again, and I went
+into their parlour.  She had on a beautiful pale rose negligée all
+covered with lace and her braids were wound around her head: she'd
+wiped her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you perhaps play a little bridge with us, Miss Jessop?" says he,
+trying to keep calm.  "We think we'd better have some one with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So there we sat till four in the morning, playing three-handed bridge,
+and if anybody knows of a funnier wedding-night, I'd like to hear of it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose anybody would have thought us all crazy if they could have
+seen us, the next night, sitting, all three of us, by the bed of that
+queer old man that lived in old Greenwich Village.  (My patient let me
+off, for I told her it was a case of a young bride and groom, and she
+was delighted to oblige the Eltons.  She told me she should call on
+them after that!  She was a climber, if there ever was one, that woman.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was an old valet of Mr. Ferrau's father, and Mr. Ferrau was
+supporting him till he died in a little cottage there.  He had angina
+and was likely to go off any minute, and the Lord knows what Master
+Louis paid the old monkey&mdash;I'll bet it was no thirty cents!  He only
+talked French, but I could see he thought Mr. Ferrau was crazy&mdash;he
+looked at me so queerly out of his little wrinkled eyes and nodded his
+head as if to say, "What a pity all this is!  But we must humour him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Ferrau told me afterward that her husband promised him solemnly to
+take Janet back if he couldn't stand her&mdash;and he would have, too, and
+don't forget it!  He was a game one.  But the old fellow just kept
+saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Bon, m'sieu, bon, bon!</I>" and kept reaching for his envelope.  He was
+only afraid they'd change their mind, you see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Mr. Ferrau lay down on a cot next the old fellow's&mdash;he was kept
+very clean and neat by the woman that boarded him&mdash;and I stayed in the
+room while Master Louis gave that darned old Janet away.  He insisted
+that I should witness it, and to tell you the truth, when I remembered
+what black Margaret had said about having a witness, I <I>did</I> feel
+rather queer, for a moment.  But of course they were all crazy&mdash;as
+crazy as loons&mdash;so far as that one thing went.  You see, it was what
+Dr. Stanchon calls an <I>idée fixe</I>.  They had to be humoured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Ferrau and I went out, then, and walked up and down for an hour
+through the village with the chauffeur behind us, a little way, and I
+really thought I'd be dippy myself, before long, if I had to pretend to
+be serious about it much longer.  It's no wonder to me the doctors in
+asylums get touched themselves, after what I went through with those
+two.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In just about an hour he came dashing out and pushed us into the car.
+We didn't need to ask him&mdash;he looked ashamed, but oh, so different!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's get back to town," was all he said, and I never mentioned it to
+him again, any of it.  Of course, a sensible fellow like him <I>would</I>
+feel too ridiculous; knowing he had that silly idea in his head, yet
+not being able to get over it without such childishness&mdash;I felt sorry
+for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know that they didn't go back to Lakewood, for her maid packed up
+there, and a week after that the old lady wrote me from Long Island
+that they'd gone for a honeymoon tour in the car through Southern
+France, so I knew that father-in-law's valet hadn't gone back on his
+bargain.  I never knew what that old monkey made on it, but Mrs. Ferrau
+told me he was going to leave it to the Catholic church in Normandy,
+where he was born.  I hope it did some good.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went up to Greenwich that summer with a little boy who had
+tuberculosis of the spine (the sweetest little fellow, and so clever!)
+and on one of my afternoons out with him I stopped at the old cottage
+where the valet lived, just to ask after him.  The woman there told me
+he had passed away about ten days after I was there before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the night?" I asked, more for something to say than any real reason.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, in his sleep, in the afternoon," she said.  "He didn't sleep much
+at night, after his young gentleman came, I noticed.  He seemed to have
+bad dreams.  He'd be praying away and clicking those rosary beads half
+the night, sometimes.  But he went out easy, at the last.  I learned a
+little French when I was lady's maid to a party, once, so I could get
+along pretty well with him.  But I couldn't make out about those
+dreams, exactly; they seemed to be about something brown, with its back
+to him, on the bed.  But he was pretty contented by day, when he was
+awake; he kept telling me of all he was leaving to his church."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+... When you think about it, it was queer, wasn't it?
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MIRACLE
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"And are they all really insane?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Insane'?" he repeated, "'really'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was very young, but very clever, and I had known his mother well and
+listened to his letters from school many a time; she was intensely
+proud of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you what it is, aunty," he began, selecting a cigarette with
+the deft manual gesture of a born surgeon (he was only twelve years
+younger than I, and his phenomenal record of almost impossible
+accomplishment made him seem far older than his years; but we kept to
+the habits of his perambulator days, when I had been tremendously
+pleased with the title).  "I tell you what it is, aunty&mdash;I'm hanged if
+I know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He peered slit-eyed through the clouds of smoke, and I waited eagerly
+for what would come; when his eyes took on that look the boy seemed to
+me, frankly, inspired.  Twenty-three years (he had finished Harvard at
+nineteen) appeared so pitifully inadequate to account for him!  One was
+forced to the belief that he had directly inherited that marvelous
+"intuition" of his: that it was actually part of his famous father's
+experience&mdash;for he was Richard Stanchon's only son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, you know," he said quietly, "I see what they mean&mdash;most of
+'em.  I always do, somehow.  And the more you do that, the less insane
+they get to seem to you.  It's only you and I, a little warped, a
+little exaggerated.  My idea is that fewer and fewer of them will be
+sent to places like this, and more and more put out among families&mdash;oh,
+don't shiver, aunty, there's nothing to shiver at, I assure you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here&mdash;do you see that tall girl in the blue silk shirtwaist?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw her&mdash;she was reading <I>Punch</I> before the big library fire (it was
+furnished like a wealthy private club, the library), and just because
+she was so calm and high bred and Madonna-faced, I flattered myself
+that I could jump in the right direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does she murder babies?" I asked resignedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all," he replied, with a tiny grin for my cleverness, "not a
+bit of it.  She only insists on taking five baths a day and never
+touching any washable thing that's been handled.  She wears five
+changes a day and cleans the piano keys before she plays&mdash;plays very
+well, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but, is that all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every bit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why must she come here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, there are practical complications, of course.  She thinks
+most people are pigs, and says so.  Then her family is nervous&mdash;I
+notice most of them come from very nervous families&mdash;and they simply
+couldn't rub on.  She shampoos her head every day.  It's my firm
+belief, aunty, that if some steady-going German-American family without
+any nerves would give her two rooms and a bath and put up with her for
+a few months, she'd be all right.  Honestly, as it is, she's fretting
+herself crazy.  She's no fool, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens, Will!  Why, I can perfectly understand&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you can.  Not mother, though.  Mother won't hear about
+her&mdash;and the joke of it is, you know, aunty, mother takes her three
+tubs a day all summer and never shakes hands in warm weather!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Will, this is awful!  Why, we're all on the verge, if you look at
+it that way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged and put out his hand to a heavy-faced, ordinary woman of
+the well-groomed New York type.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good afternoon, Miss Vint&mdash;let me present you to my aunt, Mrs. Ba&mdash;oh,
+come, now, aunty's a woman of the world and she's married, too.
+There's no reason on earth why you shouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, doctor, you know what I am&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," he said kindly, and the real sympathy in his boy's eyes
+struck moisture into my own, "I know.  But you're living it down&mdash;no
+woman could do more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really?" she begged, her features working, "really, doctor?  Heaven
+knows I try!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you never slip back.  <I>You never slip back!</I>" he said slowly and
+emphatically.  "Just think what that: means, Miss Vint!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We nodded at each other and she hurried off, almost smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She looks no more insane than I do," I suggested, and again he
+shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's where it is," he answered quietly; "she's just a little over
+the line, that's all.  She's Levi B. Vint's daughter, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd hate to think what she pays a week.  What she's really worrying
+about, I believe, is the old man's money.  She insists he was all
+right, you know, and all this exposure business, though it couldn't
+shake her trust in the old scoundrel, got on her nerves and she got
+worrying over herself.  Everybody argued with her&mdash;the whole Vint gang
+are a set of bronze mules, you know&mdash;and finally she arrived at a
+definite <I>idée fixe</I>: I'm sure it could have been prevented.  Anyway,
+she thinks she's&mdash;she's all sorts of a bad lot, you know.  She won't
+speak to the girls here&mdash;not even to the maids.  She says she might
+corrupt them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How absurd&mdash;I mean how sad!  But she's so healthy; she'll soon
+recover?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," he said briefly, and something scared me in his voice.
+"She's a very hard case.  A bad age."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We walked in silence through a long glass-walled hall, a sort of
+conservatory, with palms and caged canaries chirping and trilling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hate those birds!" I cried nervously; he stopped and looked
+thoughtfully into me&mdash;it was no less than that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's interesting," he said abruptly, "I don't like 'em, either.  And
+you're one of the best-balanced women I know.  Mother, too&mdash;she doesn't
+care for them.  No&mdash;nor Beatrix."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beatrix was the hardy young woman who contemplated marrying him&mdash;a
+tremendous venture, it seemed to me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they seem to like 'em here.  The crazier they are (there's nobody
+bad here, you know) the more they like 'em, ...  Did you know mediums
+and spiritualists and all that sort can't live without 'em?  I never
+heard anybody mention it, but it's so.  When I went over to Lourdes,
+last year, I made a point of looking up the families of the people that
+had the visions, and they all kept larks in cages&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw he was following some train of thought and kept silence.  At
+length he shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that isn't what I asked you out for," he began.  "I thought you'd
+be interested in seeing&mdash;Oh, Mrs. Leeth, how are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, thank you, doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A busy, quiet, elderly woman, plainly dressed, cut across our path
+through the long conservatory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything all right to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything, I think, thank you, doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing to remark about her until she lifted her eyes, and
+then the curious, intense depth of them (like a dog who could speak, I
+thought), held me almost breathless with sympathy.  She looked,
+somehow, as if she had gone through more than would be right for her to
+tell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor creature," I said as she disappeared through a baize door.  "Tell
+me about her.  What is her trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has none that I know of," he replied quietly.  "She's the
+housekeeper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Heavens, Will!  I think I should go mad myself, if I lived here!
+How does one tell them apart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think one does, always," he remarked placidly.  "I sometimes
+think that accounts for a good deal!  There's a man, now&mdash;see that
+fussy little fellow getting out of his motor coat?  That's Jarvyse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>The</I> Jarvyse?  The great specialist?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," he grunted with a disrespectful grin.  "From my point of
+view, you know, aunty, he might about as well stay in, now he's here.
+I wouldn't go too near him, if I were you&mdash;he'll say you're a
+paranoiac, if you mention your prejudice against free silver or thick
+soup at dinner or steam heat.  Everything's been paranoia with him
+since 1902.  It's just as much an <I>idée fixe</I> as anybody's here.  If
+you object to anything he says, he diagnoses you immediately.  You
+couldn't build asylums fast enough to hold all Jarvyse's paranoiacs!
+That's why I'm here, by the way; the case I want you to see is really
+father's.  But he loses his temper so, when he meets Jarvyse, that he
+sends me up, instead.  The old boy doesn't bother me&mdash;'Morning, doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stepped into a noiseless lift and he ran it to the fourth floor.  At
+the end of the corridor an open door showed a pleasant little interior;
+a window full of red geraniums, goldfish in a globe, an immense grey
+cat by a little Franklin stove with brass balls atop, and in the centre
+a round old-fashioned mahogany table piled high with various household
+linen.  We walked directly into this little home-like picture&mdash;a great
+relief after the lavish publicity of the immense halls&mdash;and as I
+greeted the housekeeper, who stood by the heaped table (with an actual
+note of apology in my voice for having mistaken her!) I noticed a
+little elderly man, a vague pepper-and-salt effect, sitting by a
+business-like desk in the corner, his hat and stick on the chair beside
+him, a book and pencil on his knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning, Mr. Vail, I rather hoped you might be here; let me
+present you to my aunt, Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens!" I almost said it aloud, for the vague pepper-and-salt
+took on familiar lines suddenly, and the matter-of-fact little features
+scattered so indistinguishably, as it were, though the boyishly round
+face became obviously one with the much-photographed trader-prince; it
+was Absolom Vail, the multimillionaire!  When had he...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Leeth used to be Mr. Vail's housekeeper for many years," my young
+doctor's voice sounded reprovingly (had my jaw dropped?) "and he often
+looks in on her like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" I recalled the hat and stick and breathed again.  Not that I had
+any interest in the old gentleman, but he seemed a sort of public
+character, he and his "old stocking savings-bank," his "millions for
+deposit, but not a cent for speculation," his "every penny earned in
+honest trade," and all the rest of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never forgot an old friend yet," he chirruped, and the housekeeper
+smiled gravely.  It was very decent and kindly and quite what one would
+have expected; I remembered that every employee always received a
+personally selected gift at Christmas and that he had stood godfather
+for seventeen (or was it twenty-seven?) children of labourers, born on
+the great eight thousand acre estate on the Hudson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My boy listened a moment to a call from the house-telephone, turned on
+his heel and swung hurriedly down the corridor.  I appeared to have
+been abandoned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The housekeeper's lips moved silently as she fingered the napkins on
+the further corner of the table; it was unnecessary, evidently, to
+include her in the social situation, though she would be perfectly
+capable of the inclusion if it should be thought best.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter in London last spring, Mr.
+Vail," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Minnie?" he inquired, his shrewd little eyes on me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think so&mdash;the Countess of Barkington."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's Minnie.  Well, Minnie's a good girl, I guess.  I haven't
+seen her much lately.  Not for some years, but once or twice.  Ever see
+Irene?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think so.  She married&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She took an Italian.  She's a countess, too&mdash;contessa they call it
+over there.  The Contessa di Abbriglia.  Hannibal, her husband's name
+is&mdash;always seemed like a Newfoundland dog's name, to me.  He hasn't any
+such amount of land as Barkington, but the family's older, I believe.
+Hannibal's old enough, anyhow.  How old was the count, Mrs. Leeth, when
+Irene married him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Irene was twenty-one, Mr. Vail, and Count Hannibal was forty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You knew them both?" I asked her, caught by a sudden curiosity to see
+those deep, secret brown eyes once more.  The famous Absolom was just
+what I had supposed he would be, neither more nor less; the most
+interesting thing I could see in him was this simple, friendly kindness
+to an old retainer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dressed both the young ladies for their weddings," she replied
+quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It must be very pleasant to you&mdash;these talks of old times," I hazarded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," she answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought of a number of remarks suitable to one or both of my old
+companions, but they all, somehow, seemed banal and excessive as I
+marshalled them to my lips.  A quaint, almost hypnotic quiet rose like
+the tide around us: all seemed said and agreed to.  A tiny fire
+flickered on the Franklin hearth; the iridescent fan-tailed fish bent
+and flattened and glided in the translucent globe; an old clock ticked
+restfully somewhere.  The two elderly friends there&mdash;for they were
+friends; one felt it.  And why not?  They were from the same class,
+undoubtedly, the hardware king and the housekeeper, the solid
+bourgeoisie that is essentially alike in all countries and
+centuries&mdash;these two friends exhaled an atmosphere of contented trust
+in each other and what life had left for them that spread like a
+visible cloud, a sort of sunset autumn haze, quite through the little,
+homely room, and took me under it, with them.  No wonder he liked to
+come there: it did not require much imaginative faculty to infer that
+neither Barkington nor di Abbriglia had been able to offer such an
+asylum to their father-in-law....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Asylum!  How unconsciously I had fitted the original sense of the
+kindly old word to its technical uses!  Asylum: that was what it was, a
+refuge, a shelter, a little back-water in the great whirlpool of
+overstrained, nervous modern life.  And Absolom Vail had found one
+here, it seemed.  For he was unmistakably at home here; this was not
+the first nor the second visit, that was plain.  Such atmospheres do
+not grow from casual encounters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We exchanged comfortable, old commonplaces from time to time, while
+Mrs. Leeth sorted, and the hardware lord actually jotted down her notes
+as to necessary darning and replacing, in a worn red account book&mdash;it
+was almost too quaint for belief!  He chuckled at it a little, but not
+much; it was, after all, such a practical, sane sort of interlude in
+all the horrid, morbid confusion that the place, with all its
+conservatories and old mahogany and spacious vistas, necessarily
+included.  They were more than common normal, this simple, middle-class
+pair, on their friendly little housekeeping island, with this
+treacherous sea of pain and revolt forever lapping at the edges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't remember how he got to telling me of his early life, but I
+believe it is a habit of all that sort, and Absolom was no exception to
+his class and stratum.  I was particularly impressed by one little
+incident, the foundation, really, of his fortune&mdash;if any event can be
+selected in those lives which seem destined to exhibit the farthest
+possibilities of accumulation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had just exactly one hundred dollars," he said (he had the
+characteristic superstitious reverence for set sums, even decimal
+multiples of the national symbol) "that I'd saved up as carpenter's
+assistant in Greenwich, Connecticut.  I took it out of the savings-bank
+and I came to New York with a clean shirt and a tooth brush and my old
+mother's Bible, packed in a little basket with some boiled ham and
+bread.  I looked out a verse just as I stepped onto the train&mdash;what do
+you think it was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no idea, Mr. Vail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  You wouldn't have.  Well, it was this: <I>Blessed shall be thy
+basket and thy store.  D'you see&mdash;basket</I>!  And I always intended to
+keep a store."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fixed me triumphantly with his twinkling Santa Claus eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's in Deuteronomy," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The coincidence must have seemed very comforting to you," I suggested
+gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It did.  It did," he answered, "and from that moment on, I never had a
+doubt.  Barkington didn't care much for that story, though&mdash;he says
+that the old fellows that translated the Bible away back in some king's
+time&mdash;King&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"King James," said the housekeeper quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, King James.  Well, he says that they didn't mean that kind of a
+store.  Maybe not.  But it did the job for me, that verse, just the
+same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The whole incident seemed very characteristic, very national, somehow,
+and I reflected gently upon it as we sat in silence, broken only by
+Mrs. Leeth's practical, dry voice as she announced:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Greek Key, Irish weave, spring, 1908, six dozen, fair order.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thistle pattern, fall, 1906, four dozen, eight darned, ten badly worn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed that I had been there a long time....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At length I heard Will's quick, nervous step, and as it neared the door
+I rose, really reluctantly, and met him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am quite in the doctor's hands," I said, "and I see that he thinks
+it time for me to leave.  Good-bye, Mr. Vail"&mdash;he put his hand out for
+his gloves and cane&mdash;"if you are going, too, perhaps, can I take you
+back in town with me?  I motored out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid you can't," he replied, with his twinkling smile, "because
+I'm one of the ones that don't get out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stared at him blankly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That don't get out'!" I repeated stupidly.  "<I>That don't get out</I>?
+Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I'm insane," he said placidly.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+I don't pretend to any unusual share of equanimity, and it was not till
+we were back in the shelter of my own home, with the comfort of my own
+tea-tray before me and my own little applewood fire snapping on the
+hearth, that I brought myself to discuss the matter with Emily's boy.
+He had come back with me and we were going to the opera together later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose that was what you wanted me to see?" I said abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just that.  I wanted your idea.  It's one of the most interesting
+cases&mdash;with all its complications&mdash;I ever knew.  Father's turned it
+over to me, practically.  He knows all about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Will, the man's as sane as I am!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much did you talk with him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite as much as with hundreds of other people!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Talk much with Mrs. Leeth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes&mdash;she seems much more ordinary than her eyes, doesn't she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did she say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, just commonplaces&mdash;I don't recall anything special...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, try, won't you?  What <I>were</I> the commonplaces?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I applied myself to recollection.  What, after all, <I>had</I> she said?  As
+a matter of fact, beyond her linen tabulation I could not recall more
+than a dozen words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anyway," I remonstrated, "she makes you feel as if she talked!  She
+doesn't seem silent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he admitted thoughtfully, "that's true.  But she never talks.
+She hardly speaks to the servants&mdash;they're all under her, you know&mdash;but
+they all seem to know what she wants.  I've tested lots of them: the
+cook, the laundresses, the furnace man, the steward&mdash;and when they come
+to consider, they can't recall a dozen words a day.  But they always
+insist, at first, that she gives them detailed orders and criticises
+them constantly.  It's funny."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," I broke in impatiently, "never mind her!  Tell me about Mr.
+Vail&mdash;how long has he been there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's been there six months!" Will announced triumphantly, suppressing
+a delighted smile at my amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six months!  And nobody knows?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody but the family.  Oh, he gets out, now and then: I or one of the
+doctors goes with him and he puts in a day at the office.  Everybody
+thinks he's travelling or taking electric light baths for his liver or
+Roentgen rays for his lungs or osteopathy for a cold in the head&mdash;Lord
+knows what!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A day at the office?  But how can he, if he's insane?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's not too insane to make money."  His smile was deliberately
+intended to intrigue me, I thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's no more insane than I am!" I cried.  "Who put him there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Countess of Barkington&mdash;primarily.  Abbriglia agreed, but <I>they'd</I>
+never have done it alone&mdash;Irene's too fond of the old fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't get excited, aunty&mdash;he committed himself.  Nobody roped and
+gagged him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what doctor&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two besides me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides you?  Why, Will!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I didn't say that I recommended him to an asylum.  Not at all.  If
+he had fought it, I could have found reasons on the other side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like a corporation lawyer!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began rolling cigarettes; they were his one weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The question is," he said slowly, "what is insanity?  Medical
+insanity's one job, legal insanity's another....  Suppose your butler
+was convinced of the fact that he was Napoleon: would you care a
+continental, provided he buttlered as per contract?  So long as he
+didn't shout, '<I>Tête d'armée!</I>' as he passed the salad, what would you
+care?  It's quite possible that he has some such delusion, for all you
+know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I see that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was that old nurse of ours&mdash;Esther, you know?  To the day of her
+death she swore that the druggist on the corner of Hartwell Street was
+Charley Ross&mdash;the child that was abducted long ago.  You couldn't argue
+her out of it nor laugh her out of it&mdash;she said she had a feeling.  She
+brought us up in it, you know, and for years I believed that he was
+Charley Ross and regarded him with veneration.  She was a perfectly
+good nurse, just the same.  But that idiotic fancy was part of her
+life&mdash;strengthened with every year of her life.  It was an <I>idée fixe</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well.  Esther died a poor woman, but if she had left fifty thousand
+to&mdash;to a home for blind mulattoes, say, the first thing her nephews
+would have brought forward was that idea of Charley Ross."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brought forward?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To break her will.  They would have said that it proved her mentally
+incapable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it doesn't, Will, does it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just as you see it.  She wasn't incapable of looking after us
+and dressing mother and doing the marketing and keeping the accounts
+and making all her own clothes and some of ours.  But if you ask me if
+she had a perfectly normal mind, I should have to say no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see, Will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was extremely interested: I seemed to see, glimmering far off, what
+we were getting to, and it was gripping, absorbing.  But I had no idea
+what we really were getting to&mdash;not then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, we'll take another case," he said, at another cigarette.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was at Lourdes last year, as you know, studying the Pilgrimage.
+Curious thing.  Not an atom of proof, you see, that anybody was ever
+cured of a headache there.  Not even sense enough to use the immense
+suggestive power that's massed there to do real good to neurasthenics
+and hysterics&mdash;in fact, they try to bar them.  They prefer goitre,
+which is <I>not</I> cured by dirty baths, unfortunately.  The people who go
+away from there think they were cured from this, that and the other;
+whole business founded on a perfectly authenticated case of <I>dementia
+praecox</I>&mdash;as much a pathological condition as gout or insomnia.  I
+interviewed a prize case; she appeared before their bluff at a
+scientific council and presented affidavits of cure from consumption, a
+year previous.  I examined her later.  It was&mdash;as the man
+said&mdash;interesting if true, but the trouble was, it wasn't true, for she
+was nearly gone, then.  I gave her three months, and she died, I took
+pains to learn, in ten weeks.  Well: that was her delusion.  Was she
+sane?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was misinformed&mdash;mistaken."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so&mdash;but she <I>knew</I> she was cured, remember.  She felt it.  The
+rest of us didn't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now let's go a step farther, if you don't mind.  Beatrix tells me that
+the Almighty God, the creator of the universe, is the father of the son
+of a young Jewess, and sacrificed his son in order to save the world.
+This seems to me fantastic, frankly.  But mind you, aunty, though I
+know that druggist wasn't Charley Ross, and though I know that the
+miraculous baths of Lourdes didn't cure poor Marie Tremplin of her
+tuberculosis, I can't say that what Beatrix assures me she knows about
+the Deity isn't so!  It appears to me quite incapable of demonstration,
+but maybe it all happened as she says.  Only I don't believe with her
+that she <I>knows</I> it.  I say she <I>believes</I> it.  If it helps her, as she
+says it does, to be the good and lovely girl she is, all right.  It
+might help Parrott to stand straight to think he was Napoleon.  All
+right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's pragmatism," I suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," he said, with one of his curious old smiles, "they call it
+different things different years, I suppose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew himself up, and I could see something was coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, aunty, attend to me.  I couldn't put Beatrix in an asylum for
+what I and many, many others consider <I>her</I> delusion, could I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Will, of course not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, nor Marie Tremplin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Equally of course not.  She has a right to her miracle, legally, I
+suppose, as well as Beatrix."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely.  Well, here comes along Absolom Vail, and says <I>he's</I> had a
+miracle, too.  He hasn't millions of people behind him, like Beatrix,
+nor thousands like Marie, nor even half a dozen, as our old Esther
+had&mdash;she converted all the servants and us children.  He has only
+one&mdash;himself.  A poor miracle, perhaps, but his own.  And Barkington
+lands him in an asylum.  The day of miracles is over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Will!  Why, Will..."  I murmured.  I seemed to feel myself on the
+edge of something very big and cloudy and confusing, but very
+necessary, somehow, to be understood.  The trap he had led me into so
+neatly had fastened softly, but with almost an actual click, upon me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;what <I>is</I> his miracle?" I inquired, in a subdued voice.  I was
+beginning to feel a little afraid of this boy of ours.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had hoped he'd tell you himself.  He will, if you ask him....  We
+ought to go and dress, oughtn't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no more to be got out of him that night: he was passionately
+fond of music and had no mind to lose the prelude to <I>Tristan</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But through all that evening the big, shadowy something he had stirred
+up in my mind grew and grew and troubled me increasingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A poor miracle, but his own..." it haunted me.  I went up with him
+again in two days' time, as he had expected me to, I have no doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the little room with the gold fish and the Franklin grate everything
+was the same except that the piled linen on the table was new: it was
+being listed and stamped.  And at the little desk in the corner, his
+gloves and stick beside him on the floor, sat Absolom Vail, the
+hardware king, in a pepper-and-salt suit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I brought my nephew up with me and thought I'd look in for another
+little chat, Mr. Vail," I said.  The housekeeper lifted her
+unfathomable eyes to mine for a moment, then dropped them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six dozen snow-drop twenty-eight inch breakfast napkins," she said
+quietly, but my mind received&mdash;I cannot explain how&mdash;a totally
+different impression from what the sound of these words conveyed.
+Afterward, I realized that I thought suddenly of the sea, great clouds,
+unheard of, enormous fish, and myself driving like the wind across
+high, tumbling waves ... it was extraordinary.  I had been literally
+lost in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Always glad to see the doctor's friends," he chirped, and soon, as
+Will had said, he was talking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was all very simple&mdash;simple and pathetic and typical enough.  The
+hall bedroom, the rising clerk, the new branch in Kansas City, the
+young, fresh wife, the little story-and-a-half frame house, the bigger
+one on a better street, the partnership, the two daughters, the private
+school, the invention of the new time-lock, the great factory, the
+Trust, the vice-presidency, the clear head in the panic, the board of
+directors, the mass of capital, the amazing power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And of course we brought the girls up very different from what we'd
+had."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old epic of America; the wonderful, cruel destiny of its sons and
+daughters ... I seemed to see them, climbing, climbing, their dainty
+feet on the bent, grey heads of the human stairway love had built and
+thrift had mortared and habit had hardened there!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was all right while mother was with us," he went on.  "I used to
+get home late after one of those big dinners, and she'd be sitting up
+and warm me a little soup or something on the alcohol lamp (she'd never
+touch electricity, mother wouldn't) and I'd get my coat off and sit
+awhile; she'd send the servants to bed.  Minnie never liked that, but
+while mother lived, Minnie didn't have so much say.  Not but that
+Minnie wasn't a good girl and a good daughter, for a minute, mind you!
+Wasn't she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to his old housekeeper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Vail had a very fine mind," she said quietly, "a great deal of
+faculty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it&mdash;faculty," he repeated contentedly.  "But Irene was easier
+to get along with.  A good deal easier.  You said you'd never met
+Irene?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never had that pleasure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was married over in Italy.  The Queen of Italy asked for it to be
+that way, and with mother gone, I didn't see it mattered much, though
+Minnie didn't like it.  But the Queen was Hannibal's godmother.  She
+was at the wedding.  We didn't think, when Irene used to lie in her
+little crib in the front bedroom in Kansas City, sucking on that rubber
+doll, that a queen would be at her wedding, did we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked out of the window for a minute, frowning a little in the
+effort to adjust my ideas to the surprise of the Vails' having had a
+housekeeper in those early days.  When I turned my face to the room
+again, Mrs. Leeth was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Minnie got me to give up the business, and after a while I did.  So
+long as I was working for mother and the girls, I'd never have stopped,
+but with them gone, and the rest I had to take, after the pneumonia, I
+sort of let things slide.  What's the use?  There's Vint, now&mdash;he kept
+at it till he died.  No one to do for, really&mdash;his girl had all her
+mother's money, too, and she gives it all to foreign missions, anyhow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's here, you know.  Thinks she's&mdash;well, I guess I couldn't tell a
+lady just what she thinks she is, poor thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see why she's here, Mr. Vail; but tell me, why do you stay here?" I
+cried suddenly; the quiet, sensible little man forced it out of me,
+fairly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked whimsically up at me&mdash;I sat higher in my chair than he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't the doctor tell you?" he asked quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he said you would, perhaps."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't mind.  It happened when she died."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Vail?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Mrs. Leeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I jumped&mdash;I couldn't help it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wh&mdash;what?" I gasped.  What a horrible thing&mdash;like a bomb thrown into
+the quiet room!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said placidly, "sounds queer to you, doesn't it?  Well, it is
+queer, I guess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with the greatest difficulty that I held myself to my chair.  My
+throat went perfectly dry, suddenly, and if I did not scream, it was
+merely because I have a fairly strong will and a horror of making a
+scene.  The little room had turned dreadful to me, all at
+once&mdash;dreadful and unnatural; Absolom Vail, in his pepper-and-salt, a
+nightmare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand out reassuringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't think she's dead, <I>now</I>!" he explained, "I'm not so crazy
+as all that comes to!  Goodness, no!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh...," I faltered, soothed in spite of myself by his kindly smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no.  It was this way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward slightly and tapped the arms of his chair
+rhythmically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After mother left me, there wasn't much to keep going for, you see.
+Then Irene, she went off, and though she was mighty kind about it, and
+there'd always be a room for me, and all that, and I liked Hannibal
+well enough, still, I'd never be happy in Italy.  Hannibal saw it
+himself.  In a good many ways Hannibal used to see what I meant, now
+and again&mdash;funny, wasn't it, with him so foreign?  You'd have thought
+Barkington, now ... but that's neither here nor there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we stayed in the house together, Mrs. Leeth and me, and we got
+on very well.  She knew all mother's ways, and we used to talk about
+her, evenings, and she as good as gave me her promise she'd never leave
+me while I wanted her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I had pneumonia.  We had three trained nurses, but I guess
+there's no doubt she pulled me through.  She was up all the nights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Irene and Hannibal came right over&mdash;it seems they cabled.  Irene was
+expecting to have her baby, too, and it was in March, the worst time to
+cross the water.  But she came.  And Hannibal listened to the doctors
+and the nurses and then he turned to Mrs. Leeth&mdash;'How do you find Mr.
+Vail to-day?' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He'll live, sir,' she said, and he said, 'All right,' and that was
+all there was to it.  There was always something about Hannibal ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then <I>she</I> came down.  Pleurisy.  I'd been South and got back, and I
+was well enough, you understand, but when they told me that they
+couldn't save her, something turned right over inside me, and I knew I
+couldn't bear it.  It was too much&mdash;everything just slipping away from
+me, one by one, and me all alone&mdash;no, I wasn't good for it, that's all.
+I suppose it sounds dreadfully weak to you, but there it is: I wasn't
+good for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was sitting by her bed, looking at her, thinking of all the old days
+she could remember with me, and the girls she'd seen grow up, and
+mother, and all, and all of a sudden she opened her eyes and she knew
+me.  She was sinking fast, but she knew me for the first time in days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mrs. Leeth,' I said, 'it's no use.  If you go, I'll go too.  I can't
+stick it out alone!  Must you?' I said.  'Must you?  Isn't there any
+way?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Wait!' she sort of whispered to me, 'wait!  There'll be a way, Mr.
+Vail&mdash;a way'll be found!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then her eyes closed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just sat there, staring ahead.  I was too miserable to notice
+anything different about her, though I knew she was very still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By and by one of the nurses came in very soft and lifted up one of her
+hands&mdash;I had mine over the other.  She was a nice girl, that nurse&mdash;we
+both liked her real well.  Dr. Stanchon&mdash;the old doctor, not the boy,
+here&mdash;brought her, and he said to me, 'Now, Mr. Vail, here's the best
+nurse in New York: trust her.'  And we did.  She looked sharp at me,
+Miss Jessop did, and listened over her heart, then she put her cheek
+down to the lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, she's gone!' she said.  'Mr. Vail, when did it happen?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then she called the doctor and he said yes, she was gone.
+<I>That's</I> why I say Mrs. Leeth died."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked calmly at me and I found to my surprise that during this
+story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy
+for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it.  It was most
+perplexing.  The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the horror
+had disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I sat there.  The doctor said to let me stay, if I felt so.  And I
+just saw my whole life pass right by me like pictures in a book&mdash;if you
+see what I mean.  I saw Min when she graduated and Irene playing tunes
+to her mamma and me on the piano, and the day the new gold furniture
+came in, and Mrs. Leeth leading me by the hand out of mother's room
+after I'd sat all day and all night by her....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I looked at the face lying so quiet there, and while I looked, it
+sort of shook&mdash;more like when you throw a little pebble into a
+pond&mdash;and the eyes opened.  And I knew mother was looking at me.
+That's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor, lonely little man!  How could I have felt afraid of him?  It was
+not difficult to see how it had been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then she&mdash;Mrs. Leeth&mdash;had not really died at all, had she?" I said
+hastily, only to bite my lips at my tactlessness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he smiled tolerantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what they said," he answered quietly.  "It was very
+interesting, they said.  The doctor was pretty hard on Miss Jessop, I
+thought.  But I guess they always lay it off on them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They were all so excited about it, they didn't seem to notice what had
+happened.  And by and by I saw they never would notice it, anyway.  I
+just spoke a little about it to Irene and it frightened her, so I kept
+quiet.  She said she saw Mrs. Leeth was different, somehow, but it was
+the sickness, she thought.  They had to go right back.  He wanted the
+baby to be born in Italy.  That was all right, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Mrs. Leeth&mdash;what did <I>she</I> say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she was never one to talk, Mrs. Leeth.  She talks less than ever,
+now.  I don't know as I put it very clear to you: it's a pretty hard
+thing <I>to</I> put clear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked appealingly at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, of course," I said soothingly.  "Those things are not to be
+set down in black and white."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just it.  When I say that mother looks out at me from her eyes,
+it seems to be more what I mean.  I seem to have 'em both by me, if you
+can see....  And when I look in her eyes, I understand it all&mdash;and I
+can wait," he added simply.  "You've noticed her eyes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does she ever speak...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I couldn't make you see what I mean very well, about that," he said
+contentedly.  "She just looks at me.  It's all plain, then.  Maybe
+that's how we'll all do, in the next life.  Don't you think so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found my way to Will's office through a mist of tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what about it?" he asked abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it's one of the most touching things I ever heard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Will!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!  Then you don't blame me any more for committing him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly not.  What else could you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Um-m-m.  That's what Minnie, Countess of Barkington, said.  She put it
+stronger than that.  When a man of that age spends half of his time in
+the housekeeper's room, sorting linen, she suggested, there's something
+wrong.  We shall certainly question the will&mdash;if he alters it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alters it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In favor of Mrs. Leeth, of course.  The fair Minnie hasn't lived among
+the English aristocracy for nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Will, how ludicrous&mdash;you mean that she suspects&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly she does.  And very hard-headed of her, too.  Stranger
+things have been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But one has only to look at them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what Irene thought.  But not Barkington.  He suggested an
+asylum.  The doctor called me in.  (The doctor, by the way, swears the
+woman died, aunty.  'Only, of course, she couldn't have,' he always
+adds.)  To everybody's surprise Absolom agrees quietly, immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I wouldn't have Irene worried, as she is now, for anything,' he said.
+'I never meant to leave Mrs. Leeth a penny more than the thousand a
+year mother and I always planned, but if Minnie can't believe me, all
+right.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, here's an odd thing, aunty.  No one of that family ever heard of
+this place, including Absolom himself.  Precious few people know about
+it, anyhow, you see.  It pays every one not to.  Well.  Mrs. Leeth is
+dismissed, arrangements made, I take him in a motor out here.  We walk
+through the hall, and the first person we meet here&mdash;Mrs. Leeth.  New
+housekeeper.  It seems the old one died of heart failure overnight.
+Dr. Jarvyse finds this one, by great good luck just out of a job.
+Highly recommended by Mr. Absolom Vail.  Never occupied just this post,
+apparently, but Jarvyse feels perfectly certain she's just the woman
+for it.  I don't know how he knew it, but she certainly is.  Best woman
+we ever had."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How perfectly extraordinary!  Was Mr. Vail surprised?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all.  He just smiled politely, and neither of 'em has ever
+discussed it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did the Countess have to say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she was furious, till I pointed out that we couldn't have the
+woman in a safer place, because every employee signs a bond on
+entering, never to receive by bequest or otherwise a penny from any
+patient.  We all sign."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does the Italian Count think of it all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hannibal?  He's all right, Hannibal.  He and I and Barkington had a
+little session in this very room about a fortnight ago.  I was saying
+something about the question of Mr. Vail's insanity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Question?' says Barkington.  'Question?  Why there is no question!
+As a man of science, Count Hannibal, you know as well as I do&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But I am not a man of science, my dear fellow&mdash;I'm a Roman,' says
+Hannibal, grinning away (those Italians speak wonderful English, you
+know).  'Very odd things happen in Rome, now and then, my good
+Barkington!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at him steadily.  He sat surrounded by his mysterious electric
+machines under shining glass domes, among costly leather-bound volumes
+whose very titles questioned the foundation of reason; telephones and
+telegrams ready to hand upon his orderly desk.  And it seemed to me
+that he smiled mockingly at me behind his baffling eye-glasses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand you, Will," I said slowly, "you seem to be leading
+me to ... do you mean me to understand that you believe that Mrs.
+Vail's&mdash;spirit&mdash;entered&mdash;came back ... do you mean you think Mr. Vail
+is right, all the time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all," he returned promptly.  "I acknowledge no such conditions.
+I know nothing of spirits nor what they do.  I do not know that there
+are any.  I study the human brain: when it ceases to respond to nervous
+stimuli, I cease to study it, that's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why do you&mdash;why do you look at me..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He struck his fist on the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I look at you," he cried, "because you amaze me so, you people who
+assume that you know all about the human brain, where I leave off!
+Granted your premises, yours and Trix's and the Barkingtons', why
+<I>don't</I> you believe him?  I should.  Look at that woman's eyes!  Try to
+talk to her!  Do you suppose we haven't tried?  Ask Jarvyse what he's
+got out of her!  Get something out of her, yourself!  Then ask
+yourself: <I>if what Absolom says is so, how would she act differently
+from the way she does act?</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God!  I wish I <I>could</I> believe him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his glasses
+he scorned me for the nondescript I was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went quickly out of the office into the corridor.  I would find Mrs.
+Leeth and have it out with her.  I would&mdash;she stood directly in front
+of me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;how do you do!" I stammered.  Her hands were full of cut flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the
+eyes met mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths,
+hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette.  It grew and grew and
+surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and
+old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once.  I thought of the
+lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother's window, and her brown, brown
+eyes held mine and she&mdash;my mother, back again and smiling&mdash;filled my
+heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the
+school-bell and the other children's voices!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had
+been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it
+all was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then I knew the odour for what it was&mdash;hyacinth.  Hyacinths in a
+round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a
+stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the
+other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not
+begin again, my dearest!  No, no, there is plenty of time!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me
+that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the
+dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me&mdash;I hope I may lie
+there, dead.  I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy
+was not born yet.  I said, "If he should die"&mdash;but of course I couldn't
+believe that he would.  And then&mdash;and then it was as if he had <I>not</I>
+died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too!  It was
+so calm, so simple&mdash;no shock at all.  Why had I never known?  And all
+this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave!
+I must tell his father....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to
+steady myself.  My cheeks were all wet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Vail seems very contented," she said.  "Of course, I am accustomed
+to looking after him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stepped quietly through an open door, the keys jangling softly at
+her belt.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+I went South with my husband for a fortnight, and on my return Will
+dined with us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way," he said, "were you surprised at Vail's death?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was three days' news and I had forgotten to mention it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He never was the same after the pneumonia, and he worried about his
+daughter Irene.  She came through all right, though.  Well, he was over
+sixty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;what became of Mrs. Leeth?" I asked eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled oddly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody knows.  She's never been seen since the funeral."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never been seen?  But who is the housekeeper, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they've got another.  Never'll be Mrs. Leeth's equal, though.  She
+left on the first of the month."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But when she was paid off, didn't anybody inquire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She never was paid off," he said quietly.  "She never came for her
+money."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE UNBURIED
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The talk shifted at length&mdash;as it inevitably must&mdash;to women, and the
+unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged
+and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling
+shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the
+fairest cape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no good asking 'why,'" said the great doctor slowly, "you
+might as well ask, 'why not.'  They're incomprehensible.  For thirty
+years I've studied them.  Thirty years...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward over the table weightily.  The others unconsciously
+bent toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once I thought it was spasmodic&mdash;unrelated," he went on thoughtfully,
+counting his words, it seemed, "but not now.  No.  I believe there is a
+law&mdash;a big law&mdash;they follow, an orbit so extended that any examples one
+may collect count for too little to help.  They seem to vary..." he
+stared at the siphons and rings of wet on the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Outside the club windows the rain fell, glistening and grey; it was
+making for dusk and the black stream of hansoms and umbrellas were
+homeward bound.  They motioned away the servant who had come to turn on
+the lights in their corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are influences," Stanchon began again, abruptly, "currents ... I
+don't know&mdash;they feel them more than we do.  And they exert them more,
+too.  We admit one and doubt the other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He squeezed a half lemon into his glass with a beautiful, firm-wristed
+wrench, extracted the pips with one deft circuit of the spoon, and
+poured rock candy into the acid.  Over this he dropped in silence a
+measured amount from a squat foreign bottle at his elbow and filled the
+glass from a carafe of distilled water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a queer thing altogether&mdash;I don't know what makes me think of
+it," he began, "and I wouldn't have dared tell it when it happened.
+Now I can tell anything&mdash;I suppose&mdash;being sixty and an eminent
+alienist.  Lord!  Times goes and goes, and just as you get to where you
+could use it to advantage&mdash;well, the young ones need the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nervous!  What are nerves, anyhow?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes I think I know ... a little ... but the time is so short, so
+short!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drank half his glass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There comes a time," he said abruptly, "when you first discover what a
+gnat in a whirlpool you are.  I mean that after you've done everything,
+played perfectly fair and followed all the rules, arranged your
+combinations and observed the reasonable results for so long that you
+begin to think you've got hold of the System&mdash;something happens, and
+it's all upset again&mdash;flat anarchy.  We get it different ways, I
+suppose.  As if a runner bumped into a brick wall on the home-stretch
+... strange!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was in one of those little cities&mdash;Detroit, Cleveland&mdash;it doesn't
+matter.  I've lived in both.  It's a good size for a doctor&mdash;I got all
+kinds&mdash;and I learned fast, there.  Nice people, too.  I always had an
+eye for real estate, and what I made, I put into that.  I had a good
+horse, and as I drove about I kept my eye on the property and the way
+the town was growing.  One day I noticed that an oldish looking,
+comfortable sort of house, a little off from the centre of things, was
+for sale, and it struck me suddenly that there was a pretty good sort
+of house to own.  It had trees around it and nice paths and a neat
+little new stable, and there was something in the long, low lines of
+it&mdash;no gingerbread or 'Jim Fisk' business or bands of coloured
+paint&mdash;that appealed to me.  It attracted me&mdash;you see?  Good God!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw the agent and he put a price that surprised me.  But the owner
+wanted to leave town immediately and had made it very low, to get the
+cash.  He'd had hard luck; his wife in a mess with another man, ran up
+big bills against him&mdash;he wanted to get away and never see the town
+again.  So I bought the place and asked the agent to rent it for me,
+for I was pretty busy just then.  A little later he told me he had seen
+an especially good tenant&mdash;a well-to-do jeweller and his family, who
+seemed disposed to take a long lease and improve the property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You certainly have the luck, doctor!' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember I leaned out of my buggy and lectured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Luck!' says I.  'Nonsense, man!  I get good tenants because I keep
+good repairs in good houses.  You put down two and two and you get back
+four.  Mathematics is under this world!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pompous, wasn't I?  But I was only forty.  Only forty..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes gleamed at them from under his shaggy, grey brows; he seemed
+saturated with life, full of experiences.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I got my rent every month, and I gave 'em permission to put an
+evergreen hedge around the place, and I paid half the costs of piping
+water into the stable; the jeweller kept a horse and runabout for his
+wife.  Then, just before the year was up, the agent called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'm afraid we won't get any renewal on this, doctor,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why not?  Not good enough for him any longer?' said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'm afraid it's too good,' says he.  'You'll see it in the papers
+to-morrow, but I had it straight from him.  His wife has skipped with
+his head clerk and they've taken most of the stock and all the money.
+He's nearly crazy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'For heaven's sake!' said I.  'I thought they were a decent lot
+enough.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'So they were, I'll swear to it,' said he, 'but lately&mdash;I've seen her
+off and on'&mdash;and he looked rather conscious, I thought&mdash;' she's struck
+me differently.  She's a queer woman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, the upshot of it was, I let him off as easily as I could&mdash;he had
+three children on his hands and big debts to pay&mdash;and I bought a lot of
+his stuff and paid for the evergreen hedge.  The woman never came back
+and he moved East.  So much for them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I advertised the house, and that week the rectory of the principal
+Episcopal Church burned to the ground, and while they were building it
+again&mdash;in stone, of course&mdash;they decided to rent that house of mine,
+and of course I was pleased, because a lot of good, solid people see
+the property, in a case like that.  I've always thought I'd like to
+develop a whole new section somewhere ... I had ideas ... but I never
+got the time.  O Lord, the time!  Slipping, slipping, under your palms,
+between your fingers, crumbling and running away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook himself like a big, loose-skinned bear, and long breaths were
+drawn all around the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One night my wife asked me if I thought the rector liked his new
+rectory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, I suppose so,' I said.  'I've had no complaints&mdash;why?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He doesn't stay in it very much,' she said, rather slowly, for her,
+and when a woman measures her words, I always listen very carefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What do you mean?' I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He practically lives in the study at the church,' said she, 'working
+there on parish business all day, and a good many evenings, too.  That
+leaves her all alone, and that's not good for any woman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"' What on earth do you mean?' I said.  'Are those long-nosed old
+tabbies gossiping already?  Shame on 'em!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, John,' she broke down and cried.  'They're talking horribly!  It
+doesn't seem possible!  But why isn't she more careful?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there's no good going into that much further.  It was a very
+unpleasant business.  He was a pig-headed parson who wouldn't look
+after his own, and she, I thought, till my wife finally persuaded her
+to call me in, was simply one of those women who have mistaken their
+natural vocation.  They hadn't been in the town long and they didn't
+stay long, for as soon as I really understood her I put her into a
+sanitarium&mdash;the sanitarium boom had just begun, then&mdash;and he went into
+the Salvation Army.  He'd got his eyes opened, I fancy, and he made a
+great success in Chicago; he told me he never wanted to see another
+fashionable congregation in his life&mdash;said they were sinks of iniquity.
+But I don't think there was ever anything actually iniquitous in that
+business&mdash;it hadn't got that far.  Only for a clergyman's family, of
+course ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, I got her out in time.  Ugh!  It makes me sick to think of
+it!  She was a nervous wreck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was the first time that Miss Jessop ever went back on me.  She
+was a trained nurse not long out of the training school, and nurses
+were scarcer, then.  A handsome, plucky creature&mdash;we worked together
+for years, and I got to depend a good deal on her.  But after a week of
+the parson's wife she flounced in on me with that regular bronze-mule
+look of hers and informed me she was leaving the next day&mdash;she had to
+go back East, home, she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I reasoned a bit with her&mdash;she had a great influence on women, Jessop,
+but it was no use.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'There are two good nurses for to-morrow, doctor,' she said, 'I happen
+to know.  I'd rather not argue about it.  I'm tired.  I need a change.
+I've had no vacation this year.  And that woman would be better off in
+a hospital, anyway.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was cross, and I kept my patient in her own house.  I thought she
+wasn't fit to move.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I believe I'm going mad!' she used to tell me, with that glitter in
+the eye&mdash;gives the effect of a rearing horse&mdash;perfectly symptomatic.
+'I tell you I'm not responsible, doctor, for what I do!  You must keep
+me away from&mdash;people.  But don't leave me alone&mdash;oh, don't leave me
+alone!  Why don't the women come to see me?  Oh, I can't stay alone!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so on, and so on.  It poured out in the regular way&mdash;how the poor
+things spend themselves!&mdash;and I listened to it all.  They're perfectly
+typical under those circumstances, but one phrase struck me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I have fought&mdash;  Oh, I <I>have</I> fought!  It's killing me, but I have
+fought!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She had, poor little woman.  But what was she?  When I realised ...
+when I <I>knew</I>..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They sat now in a circle of dark.  The room was nearly empty; the rain
+had grown to a torrent and lashed the windows furiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I couldn't help taking stock of the thing, and it looked odd,
+anyway you looked at it.  I remembered that the reason I got the house
+in the first place was very much the same reason that had emptied it
+twice.  Of course the agent remembered it, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Where's those mathematics of yours, doctor?' he asked me with a
+good-natured grin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Stuff and nonsense!' I said to him.  'I'll get a tenant for that
+house, myself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, whether or not there was any sense in it, I couldn't let that
+house get a bad name.  There were neighbours and they will talk&mdash;they
+don't always know so much about mathematics as scientific men, you know!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a great thing it is, if one could get hold of it and use it&mdash;the
+collective spirit of a community!  It's utilizable&mdash;or ought to
+be&mdash;like water power....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a woman in town then, a 'mental healer,' she called herself.
+I'd run across her more than once and she interested me very much.  She
+was a clever woman&mdash;sensible, too, which doesn't always follow, you
+know.  So far as I could tell, she never handled a case she wasn't able
+to attend to, which may seem an odd thing for me to say, but happens to
+be so.  I know of a dozen nervous, hysterical women&mdash;emotional
+spend-thrifts&mdash;that she bullied into shape and got so they could stand
+up without her behind them, too.  They were cured, and they stayed
+cured.  More than that, I sent more than one to her, myself!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'there's nothing the matter with these women
+that I can see but pure, piggish, bone-idle selfishness.  I haven't got
+the courage to tell 'em so; if you have, and the long words you use
+disguise the fact sufficiently, go ahead and cure 'em, and God bless
+you!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thank you, doctor,' she said, and she cured 'em.  They had no use for
+me after that.  No, indeed&mdash;they told my wife they'd found a higher law
+and that calomel was sinful.  But the poor old calomel wasn't so bad
+for 'em, after all, maybe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I met her on my rounds one day and I stopped and asked her if
+she was satisfied with her house&mdash;I knew the neighbourhood was rather
+running down, there&mdash;the darkies were creeping up.  She admitted she
+wasn't particularly, and, to make a long story short, I offered her
+this house of mine for two-thirds the regular rental.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I want a good steady tenant, Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'and people may as
+well get used to bringing their headaches over there&mdash;I may move out
+there sometime.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So she moved in and I never gave the matter another thought&mdash;I knew
+she wouldn't run off with anybody!  No, she'd had her lesson, I take
+it.  No blue-eyed woman gets as sensible as that woman was without a
+good, solid reason.  And the reason is pretty certain to wear trousers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, sir, in a month she came to see me.  I can see her now: a firm,
+stocky woman, long body and short legs and big head&mdash;the efficient
+type.  She had the smooth pink cheeks and smooth forehead and straight
+eyes those healer-women have when they're first class of their
+kind&mdash;oh, there's a lot in it&mdash;a lot!  We fight 'em and get the law on
+'em and absorb 'em, finally, as we've fought every advance in medicine.
+It seems to be the only way in this world...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She always looked so clean and taut, that woman, never a loose end
+anywhere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Doctor,' says she, 'you must get a new tenant.  I'm leaving
+to-morrow.  How much will it cost me, giving no notice?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, what's the matter?' I began.  'Anything I can attend to?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Not a thing,' she answered promptly, 'and we won't discuss it, if you
+please.  The van is there, by this time.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, see here, Mrs. Mears,' I said seriously.  'This&mdash;this is hardly
+professional, it seems to me.  If there's anything wrong with my
+property, I want to know it.  Of course I know your theories&mdash;God's in
+his heaven and all's right with the world, and if you discuss it, the
+devil may creep in&mdash;I've read Emerson's Essays, myself.  I know what
+you think about medicine and surgery and hygiene&mdash;you think Emerson!
+And that's all right, as far as it goes.  But just for ten minutes,
+between you and me, what's the matter?  You can keep on being serene,
+after that, all you want.  Come now&mdash;as man to man!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She flattened her lips a little and tried not to scowl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Put it that I don't like old houses, doctor,' she said finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Ah!  House haunted?' I suggested, to tease her a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She turned on me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You said it, not I,' she answered, 'but it is true.  The house is
+haunted, doctor, and if I lived there a day longer, I couldn't do my
+work.  I didn't wish to discuss it&mdash;you know we don't believe in
+that&mdash;but you meant to do me a service.  It's a crime to rent that
+house.  It's slimy.  It crawls.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Slimy!' I cried.  'Why the agent told me that the cellar was new
+cemented, all whitewashed, every room new papered, fresh matting, hard
+wood on the lower floor, and I attended to the plumbing myself!  It was
+gone over thoroughly three years ago&mdash;there must have been a thousand
+dollars put into it.  It hadn't been lived in for years before that.
+Slimy!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You don't understand me,' she said quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'For heaven's sake, what haunts it, then?  Who's the ghost?' I cried
+testily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Evil,' she said slowly, 'evil thought, evil lives ... you breathe it
+in ... it tangles you ... another night there ... I should have no more
+power, absolutely&mdash;I could help nobody.  I must ask you not to refer to
+it again, please.  I should not have mentioned it.  How much do I owe
+you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You owe me nothing, of course,' I said shortly.  'I'll return you the
+amount of your cheque this afternoon.  I'll move into that house,
+myself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You will be making a mistake,' she said very placidly, and left the
+office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It took me about forty-eight hours to make my arrangements.  It was
+hot summer weather, fortunately, and I sent my wife off to the
+mountains, started in to have my own house renovated and decorated, as
+an excuse, left the housekeeper in charge there and moved my office
+paraphernalia into that old house with the evergreen hedge.  My wife
+was a Southern woman and we always had darky servants.  I took the
+waitress with me, a quiet little mulatto we'd had for more than a year,
+and sent for her mother, a very capable woman that I'd often used as
+nurse in cases where they couldn't pay a professional.  She could do
+anything, the way those Southern darkies can, and she would cook and
+look after things generally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, in three days it seemed as if I'd always been there.  You know
+how quickly a man manages a change like that; it's hard to see where
+the women generate all the friction they make out of a move of that
+sort.  Althea was frying chicken contentedly and Mynie was sweeping and
+dusting as quietly as she always did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a slender, oval-faced little yellow girl with almost straight
+hair, parted and drawn down like a madonna's, very low voiced and
+capable, with only one fault; she was almost too shy and always timid
+that she'd make some blunder&mdash;which she seldom if ever did.  She was
+devoted to her mother, who had brought her up particularly well, and
+delighted to be living with her.  The patients all liked her and she
+was especially tactful with children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One day, after I'd been there a week, I strolled out in the kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'This strikes me as being a pretty good house, eh, Althea?'  I said.
+'New and clean.  Everything all right?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh, it seems like a very good house,
+seh,' she answered respectfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's right surprisin' Mrs. Mears didn't like it!' says Mynie with a
+little giggle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It struck me then that I had never known Mynie to speak, in her life,
+without being spoken to, and even so, when I had occasion to speak to
+her, she started and looked a little scared.  I supposed living with
+her mother had given her more confidence and felt rather glad of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might have been a week later one morning, as I leaned out of one of
+the office windows to knock my pipe clean, I heard a low laughing and
+murmuring on the side porch, and glancing carelessly in that direction,
+what should I see but Mynie twisting the lapel of a young man's coat;
+his arm was around her waist.  It occurred to me that he was pretty
+well dressed for any beau she'd be likely to have, and as he turned his
+face partly, I realised with a disgusted surprise that it was George,
+my colored office-man.  It would be hard to make you feel the way I did
+then, and you'll probably smile when I tell you that I couldn't have
+been more shocked and startled if it had been any one of you&mdash;but it's
+the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, George was a most exceptional fellow.  Everybody in&mdash;in the
+city I'm telling about&mdash;knew him and respected him.  Everybody among my
+patients knew that except for his colour he'd have been my regular
+office assistant long ago.  As it was, he knew more medicine than many
+a lad with his gilt shingle up, and his English was perfect&mdash;he'd been
+in school till he was eighteen and was a great reader.  He'd come to me
+as a coachman, but I soon saw his value and promoted him to the office,
+where he took all the telephoning, received the patients, got out the
+bills and kept all my accounts, personal and professional.  He'd helped
+me more than once in operations, and had a perfect genius for
+administering anaesthetics.  Nobody but our two selves knew what his
+salary was, but I never grudged a penny of it.  Why, the fellow read
+French and German almost as well as I did, and tact&mdash;Lord, I wished
+every day of my life I had George's tact and resource!  My wife was
+tremendously fond of him, and lent him all her books, and they used to
+have great discussions on political economy and theosophy and prison
+reform&mdash;oh, everything!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He had lots of white blood, of course, and his wife you'd never guess
+to be anything but pure American, she was so white.  One of the
+children, though, was black as my hat.  The other had almost golden
+hair and deep blue eyes&mdash;a beautiful little girl, brought up like a
+duchess, too.  They lived in a nice little house on the extreme edge of
+the negro district, and we all understood that when the little girl was
+fifteen or sixteen, she and her mother were going to move to Paris and
+train her voice; then if everything went well, George and the boy would
+join them and never come back&mdash;he was specialising in dentistry, mind
+you, in his spare time.  It's different, of course, abroad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm telling you all this, so you can see how I felt; I'd had George
+nine years, and we'd always had darky servants, and&mdash;oh, well, to find
+him with that yellow streak in him after all, nearly floored me.  I
+could have sworn he wasn't that sort of pup, and when he came in for
+his orders I talked to him like a Dutch uncle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You've got to stop this, George,' I said directly, 'I can't have any
+such performances here.  To tell you the truth, I never thought it of
+you!  The idea&mdash;a quiet little thing like Mynie!  She's as timid as a
+kitten and as innocent.  Now I want your word of honour before you
+leave this office and I want it quick!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He opened his mouth once or twice in a confused sort of way, looked at
+me curiously, and then gave his word quietly.  So far as I knew, he had
+never broken it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I wasn't satisfied with that and I spoke to her mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You'd better keep an eye on Mynie, Althea,' I said carelessly.
+'She's a pretty girl, you know, and men aren't always too careful what
+they say to a girl as pretty as Mynie.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, seh, I'll look out,' she said, 'I'll look out, doctor&mdash;ef I kin.
+Seems like I may have trouble, though.  Is Mis' Stanchon comin' back
+soon, seh?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Probably not,' I said.  'It's too hot for her here.  Why, what's the
+matter?  Anything wrong?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I guess not, seh,' she answered, hesitating.  'I try to do my best,
+doctor.  But I will sholy be glad when she comes back.  And would you
+mind to speak to Mynie yo'self, seh?' and she slipped away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I did speak to her.  I spoke when I ran across her, strolling
+with George in a deserted walk of an old park.  I called her right into
+the office the next morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mynie,' I said sharply, 'what were you doing yesterday afternoon?
+Out with it!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She opened her eyes and looked full at me for a second&mdash;something she
+had never done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I reckon 'twas my afternoon out, doctor!' she said softly, and that
+was all.  But it was enough.  It wouldn't have made any difference what
+she said, anyhow&mdash;the look was enough.  It wasn't the look of our shy
+little Mynie; her eyes had never gone any farther than my breakfast
+table and the office door.  But these eyes were slanting, curious,
+audacious&mdash;conscious.  That's what it was, they were conscious of
+something&mdash;something I didn't know.  And for a quick moment I
+remembered, with no connection, apparently, that queer look in the eyes
+of the parson's wife&mdash;the one that had the house before.  I didn't know
+why, and I dismissed it as irrelevant, for that poor creature had been
+frightened to death, and Mynie was more self-confident than I had ever
+seen her and not at all pleasant with it.  I've never been of a temper
+to stand any nonsense from servants, and the class of Northern darky
+that was growing up in that city wasn't always easy to deal with.  But
+I remembered what a sterling creature the mother was, and I tried to be
+gentle with the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You understand, Mynie,' I said temperately, 'I only speak for your
+good.  I know the world better than you can and I don't want to see you
+get into bad ways.  Do you want to lose George his place?  You've got a
+good home, and you're with your mother, and there's no excuse for you
+if you slip up, you see.  Understand me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, doctor, I understand you,' she said, and walked out of the room
+with her head high and her hips swinging.  Something in her
+carriage&mdash;so different from the way she used to slip in and out&mdash;struck
+me all of a sudden, and there flashed into my mind an old story about
+Althea's being the direct descendant of one of the oldest African kings
+and a princess in her own right.  Absurd, of course, but it makes a lot
+of difference whether you regard those people as creeping up to our
+democracy or sliding down from their royalty, you see.  And with Mynie
+the scale had shifted suddenly, and it was the last of an old line that
+swung by me, not the first of a new one.  Straight across the
+commonplace air of my office a wind out of the jungle had blown, a
+whiff of something old and unmanageable, and beyond rules, or beneath
+'em, perhaps; something there wasn't any prescription for; something
+not to be weighed and measured by any of the new methods, because it
+antedated method.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it was all that.  I don't know if I make myself clear at all....
+You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert
+servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only
+that&mdash;Lord, no!  It was a great deal more than that, and it was just
+beginning; just beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no doubt that he had the strained attention of all of them:
+their hands held the glasses, but they did not drink, looking mostly at
+the wet rings on the polished table, or the little heaps of white
+ashes.  A servant passing through scratched a match with a rasping
+splutter, and they twitched angrily at the interruption, fearing it
+would throw him off the track&mdash;he was so easily quieted, and when once
+one of his great gulfs of silence received him, it was hopeless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But this time he went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After that the house got very still, by degrees.  Althea sang less and
+less and by and by not at all.  There seemed to be no clatter, no
+bustle, no homely, chattering machinery of life.  Sometimes I would
+step out through the dining-room and listen, purposely, to see where
+they were.  And it was always the same thing: Althea sitting in her
+clean kitchen, by her clean table, with a bowl or a pan or what not in
+her lap, her yellowish hands lax, her knees as still as marble, her
+eyes set ahead of her, thinking, thinking, thinking.  Her brows would
+be knit and her face all drawn.  She had the look of a fighter, a
+struggler with something&mdash;but there was nothing there.  And out on the
+side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the
+wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling,
+smiling, always smiling.  Sometimes she would hum a sort of low
+tuneless chant&mdash;it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all
+repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone.  And
+once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise
+flashed suddenly into my mind&mdash;incantation.  That was it, incantation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well!  All this sounds very feeble, doesn't it?  The truth is, I
+haven't got the right vocabulary&mdash;as a matter of fact, I don't think
+anybody has.  When you can describe a thing, a sensation, perfectly, I
+doubt if it's very important anyhow.  It's always so.  The big things
+simply elude description.  And yet we all know them.  Falling in love,
+for instance: God knows it's as definite as measles, but who ever
+described it?  The most these writing fellows can manage is to tell you
+what a lot of people did who happened to be in that way, and sometimes
+they catch a lot of the tricks, but that's all.  Then there's dying.
+There's a specific atmosphere about that&mdash;everybody knows it.  The
+people know it mostly, themselves.  I mean, if any one ever had
+occasion to die twice, he'd recognise the symptoms immediately.  But
+nobody can describe it, though plenty of us know what it is.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So with that house and the atmosphere in it.  Something was happening
+there.  Something so strong and so actual that it defied all
+appearances, all the ordinary influences that might be supposed to act
+on the imagination of, say, a sensitive, hysterical, under-occupied
+woman.  For as a matter of fact there was nothing morbid in the look of
+the house&mdash;nothing at all.  It was sunny and fresh and painted.  It was
+clean and dry.  But it ought not to have been.  No ... I've sat there,
+late afternoons, when it seemed to me if I touched the walls they'd be
+damp and the woodwork rotted and mouldy.  The boards should have
+creaked there and the stair-rails ought to have given under the
+hand&mdash;but they didn't.  I had them all repaired, you see!  But there
+were a few things I hadn't had the chance to repair and they ... oh,
+well, they were there, that was all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There?  You'd have said so, any of you, if you'd seen Althea as I saw
+her one morning.  I stepped into the kitchen suddenly, to give an order
+for some beef-tea I wanted to take away with me, and there she sat,
+cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her
+shoulders and&mdash;of all things&mdash;a red and blue kerchief twisted into a
+turban on her head.  She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I
+give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that
+rig, swaying there!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass
+earrings in her ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And all of a sudden it came to me&mdash;what was happening there: I felt
+very queer for a moment, I tell you!  Everything seemed to be rolling
+backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed.  Not I&mdash;I
+swear nothing touched me.  I was the same.  <I>So was the jeweller.  So
+was the parson.  So was the man before that...</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there?  Take those rags
+off you!  Get up immediately!  I am ashamed of you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's&mdash;it was nip
+and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me.  But
+she didn't; I won.  You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually
+controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her
+pantry, shaking and muttering.  I waited till she came back, and she
+was quiet and trim again&mdash;herself.  She stuffed a bundle into the stove
+before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again.  She was
+a good woman, Althea was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the other&mdash;Mynie&mdash;well, the game was up with her.  Heavens, the
+change in that girl's eyes!  It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't
+that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it.  No,
+it was more than that&mdash;more and worse and deeper and older&mdash;  Oh, as
+old as Hell!  That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put
+it?  The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of
+animalism&mdash;the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all
+in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that
+Nature has coiled in every one of us.  The Old Lady wound us up with
+that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was absolutely empty but for the four of them; they stared at
+him steadily, his rumbling, husky voice held them like a vise; they
+could not miss a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She got fat on it.  She bloomed in that infernal house like some
+tropical bog-flower; she expanded, she shot up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once, at twilight, I peeped out and saw her sitting on the side porch,
+her chin in her hand, staring and staring, and laughing, now and then,
+and shutting her eyes.  It made me shiver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That warm, damp dusk was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to
+thicken, thicken, as I looked.  A quick instinct warned me to look for
+George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue
+... like a caught fly.  To let go&mdash;to drift in a warm, relaxing current
+...  I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net
+...  I felt for him so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went to her mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Call that girl in!' I said roughly.  'What's the matter with her?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wouldn't look at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Come, what's all this?  Out with it!' I said.  But she stood there,
+obstinate as a mule, and perfectly silent.  You can't do anything with
+them, then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it was like fighting filthy cobwebs: walking through them,
+breathing them, pulling them off from your mouth, your wrists, your
+ankles!  Not that I felt anything directly, mind you&mdash;I could have
+lived there for years&mdash;alone.  But it was all up with Mynie and George,
+they were done for, like the others ... like the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast?  What terrible
+energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place?  What
+distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there?  How long ago?  <I>How long
+ago?</I>  Are there centres of negation?  Oh, I tell you, the
+table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply
+incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer
+and taints endlessly?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my
+eyes&mdash;ugh!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There had to be an end, of course.  I asked where she was going one
+afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly.  'I'll settle with your
+mother.  Do you understand?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of
+the open window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly.  I could see
+poor George tremble&mdash;the porch vines shook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said&mdash;but I didn't say
+'slut.'  And she went.  It was the only time I was ever brutal to a
+woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gulped the rest of his tumbler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was
+empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day
+afterward.  'If you ever need any money&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh.  You couldn't help it.  But
+I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly.  And she was
+right enough, of course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She knew.  They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've
+forgotten, I believe.  Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never saw Mynie again.  She went off East, and George with her.
+They're both dead, now.  His wife stayed on in the cottage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I gave her all the help I could ... it was my fault, I suppose.  And
+yet, God knows, I meant nothing.  I thought <I>I</I> was undertaking that
+damned house, you see&mdash;how could I tell how the thing worked?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They watched him eagerly: his face showed that he had more to tell.
+Not a man moved, unless it were to knock the ash from his cigar or to
+light a fresh one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a Catholic priest there, then," he said slowly.  "He's been
+moved higher up, since, and you'd all know his name, if I gave it.
+We'll call him Father Kelly&mdash;though that wasn't it, of course.  He and
+I were great friends&mdash;he was a little older than I was&mdash;and we used to
+have many a good talk together, meeting on our rounds, you see.  Often
+I'd take him miles on his way, and drop my driver out on the road, just
+for the pleasure of his company.  Of course we disagreed entirely on
+what he considered the most important points, but leaving them out, we
+were thoroughly congenial, and we were often glad of each other's
+opinion, I can tell you, for we often had the same patients.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, a day or two after I'd moved my stuff out of that cursed house,
+he came to the office with a drug case he was trying to reform: he'd
+persuaded the fellow as far as the pledge went, and I was to talk to
+him about diet and exercise and all the rest.  After the man left,
+Father Kelly looked at me once or twice, talked a bit about the
+weather, and finally pulled out his old blackened pipe and looked
+around the office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Have ye a bit of tobacco about ye, doctor?' says he.  'If so, and
+you're not too busy, I could do with a little rest&mdash;I was up all night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was glad enough, for I felt blue and out of sorts, and we pulled our
+chairs in front of the fireplace, from habit, and after a few minutes I
+found myself telling him the whole business.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now what do you make of it, Father?' I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I make the devil out of it, doctor,' said he, very placidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, well,' I began impatiently, 'of course I can't be expected&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now, wait a bit, doctor,' he put in.  'If you don't go with my
+diagnosis, what's your own?  What do you make out of it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there he had me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Of course,' I said, 'it's a mere coincidence.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Ah,' says he, 'then would you be willing to go and live there with
+your wife?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Good God, no!' I burst out, before I thought.  And then I wouldn't
+back out of it.  You see, there had been five women.  Five good,
+ordinary, honest women&mdash;six, if you count Miss Jessop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I thought not,' said he quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He sat and puffed awhile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Finally, 'I'll have to be taking a look at your house, doctor,' he
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right,' said I.  'When?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'This evening,' he said, 'after my confessions.  Say about nine.  And
+I'll go home and have a nap.  I'm thinking I'll need one.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he knocked out his pipe and left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was busy all the afternoon, so busy that I almost forgot the whole
+thing, and as a matter of fact, I had had no time for dinner, when he
+called for me.  He was so fresh and bright and jolly that you'd never
+have suspected he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up,
+gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to
+the governor&mdash;oh, he was a remarkable man, that man!  And it's a
+remarkable institution, the Confessional.  We're learning to do more
+with it now than we did twenty years ago.  But they've always known ...
+they've always known..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ruminated long, and crushed the ashes in the brass tray before him.
+The men nodded, but kept silence, dreading lest he lose the thread.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had the horse ready and drove myself.  When I unlocked the door of
+the house I lighted the lamp in the hall, and so on in every room we
+went through, kitchen and all.  In every room there was a fresh shining
+lamp, filled and ready, for Althea had left everything like a new pin,
+and in every room that lamp was lighted, when we left it.  You know
+what a nice, warm glow an old-fashioned kerosene lamp gives a
+place&mdash;electricity's nothing to it, in my opinion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'This seems a good sort of house, doctor,' said Father Kelly to me, as
+we came back and sat down in the pretty little sitting-room, with a
+palm in it, and cushions my wife had made, and books on the table.  'I
+can't see any harm here.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right,' said I, 'then let's go home.  I missed my dinner.  Since
+you see there's no devil here&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't see that,' said he, calmly, 'I only see that I haven't found
+him yet.  If a woman has a cancer, doctor, you don't know it the moment
+you shake hands with her, do ye?  So with me and my patients.  Now
+let's think a bit, and if you don't object, I'll call a little
+consultation.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So he takes a little black book out of his pocket, and actually sits
+there reading!  I humoured him, and smoked.  After a while he looks up,
+crosses himself, puts away the book and nods at me contentedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now, which room would all of these women use the most, doctor?' says
+he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'The kitchen,' I said directly, thinking of Mynie and Althea.  Then,
+'No, no, for Mrs. Mears used this for her consulting-room.  But the
+parson's wife spent most of her time in her bedroom.  Still, the
+jeweller's wife didn't&mdash;they used the dining-room to sit in.  There's
+no one room, you see.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Unless they all had the same bedroom,' he suggested quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'By George, they did, then!' I cried, 'for I gave it to Mynie and
+Althea because it was the coolest.  I always sleep on the ground floor.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Then we'll try the bedroom, doctor,' says he, and we went up-stairs.
+He was a stocky, short little fellow, strong as a bull, with iron-grey
+hair, very solid on his feet, yet quick and active, like a thin man.
+He sat down in the rocking-chair in the neat, empty bedroom and I
+brought in another lamp from across the hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You don't think you'll need the dark for your materializations,
+Father?' I said, half laughing, as I set my lamp on the bureau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No, no, doctor,' he answered, smiling.  'The Church doesn't work in
+the dark, you know.  We're all for candles, and plenty of 'em.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had to grin at that.  He was as quick a man with his tongue as I
+ever met.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we sat there, and sat there, and he shut his eyes and tipped
+back and forth in that chair like a woman, and I might as well have not
+been there.  I mean I was out of his consciousness entirely.  Finally I
+got nervous and bored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'There's nothing here, Father,' I said, rather testily.  'Haven't I
+been here hours on end with the parson's wife?  Wouldn't I have known
+it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He never opened his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Probably not, doctor,' he said pleasantly.  'It's not your job, you
+see.  You were thinking about her liver.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'And you?' said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Her life everlasting,' said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And his eyes shut, all the time!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I shut my mouth and watched him.  And suddenly his lips began to
+work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were
+grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he
+prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you
+know.  After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the
+fireplace&mdash;I was counting the inches, to keep myself quiet&mdash;he stopped
+suddenly, opened his eyes and loosened his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I've got it now, thanks be!' he said, looking straight at me.  'It's
+this room, sure enough, doctor!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What do you mean, for heaven's sake?' I said, getting up and coming
+to him, interested enough, now, you can believe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'<I>For hell's sake</I>, would be nearer the mark,' he answered me, gently
+enough, but his jaw was set and there was a light in his eye I'd seen
+there once or twice.  'This is a bad business.  This'll take more than
+sitting down, this will.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And flat on his knees he plumped, ahead of his chair, and crossed
+himself and started praying in Latin.  He made no special noise nor
+movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead
+and his face was drawn and pale&mdash;and grew paler.  Every now and then
+he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on
+his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten
+minutes he was almost in the fireplace.  With anybody else I could
+never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly,
+and I can tell you that whatever prayers he prayed, they were no
+perfunctory mumblings: they took it out of him!  He was like a man
+fighting, blindfolded&mdash;he breathed like a prize fighter, I tell you!
+And just at the edge of the hearth, when I thought I must stop him
+(that sort of auto-hypnosis will take a person straight out of an open
+six-story window, you know) he stopped himself, opened his eyes with a
+jerk, and pointed ahead of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Mother of God,' he said in a husky whisper, 'but it's there!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'There!' said I.  'What's there, Father?  There can't be anything in
+that fireplace&mdash;I've seen a dozen fires in it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He got up from his knees as unconcerned as he'd gotten down on them
+and cleared his throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Not in it, perhaps, doctor,' he said, 'but then, under it.  Or over
+it, perhaps.  But there, somewhere, it is.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You mean the bricks?' I cried, and he nodded his head like a man too
+weak to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Maybe,' he whispered.  'Look and see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a full set of fire-irons there, and I took the poker and
+tapped all about the hearth, as excited as a boy on a treasure hunt,
+though of course I didn't believe in it, any more than the boy does,
+really.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No, Father,' I said, 'there's nothing to show&mdash;' and then, just
+between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But there's no brick loose!' I cried, and he whispered, 'Then break
+it!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It took more than a few blows and I broke the poker, but finally I
+loosened the mortar and there under the two centre bricks was an iron
+box, about seven inches square, made like a little trunk.  I fished it
+out and opened it&mdash;it opened from the side&mdash;and pulled out two thick
+handfuls of yellow letters, without envelopes.  I opened the top one
+eagerly, but it had no date nor address.  For signature there was only
+the name 'Olive.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped abruptly and stared at the thick-bellied decanter before
+him.  His voice sank lower.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never heard or read that name since," he said slowly, "without
+a thrill at my nerves like a picked violin string.  They were the
+wickedest letters ever written, I think.  Even for a woman, they were
+incredible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men stared at him, mystified, confused, eager.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One, the third, I think, said something like this: '<I>They may bury me,
+now that you want me no longer.  They shall never bury these letters&mdash;I
+swear it.  Here in the room where I wrote them, they shall live after I
+am gone.</I>'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they lived&mdash;God, they lived!  As I pored over them, cross-legged
+by that little hearth, I believe that I was as lost to the world about
+me as Father Kelly had been a few moments before.  They were not
+written for me, they offered me nothing, the writer was beyond doubt
+dead and gone; but for the moment those yellow papers held me, soul and
+body, in such a grip as I have never known before or since.  I can't
+tell you ... I didn't know such things could be written...."  He shook
+his head slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd always been fairly decent, you see&mdash;there were circumstances ... I
+couldn't take advantage...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever turn over a good old sunny rock, flat, a little mossy,
+but clean and wholesome?  And underneath it crawls&mdash;it crawls!  Black,
+slimy slug things ... muck of the Pit!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was me.  And every time my eyes fell on one of those amazing
+phrases on that yellow page, I had to hold the rock down!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I jumped like a woman.  Father
+Kelly stood over me, and he looked, from where I sat below him,
+unhumanly tall.  He held out his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Give them to me,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But, Father, you don't want to see them!' I burst out.  'I'm going to
+destroy them.  You&mdash;you mustn't see them!  Let me burn them&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Give them to me, my son," he repeated, and I gave them up like a
+child.  It was remarkable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'At any rate, I warn you,' I began.  But he only smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'When you are warned of fever in a house, do you pass it by, my son?'
+he asked me softly.  'But this is a different matter.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I admit that I couldn't meet his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he read them all through placidly, and then he sighed and shook
+his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Poor things, poor things!' he said, 'and now we'll burn them.  There
+is nothing I can do.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So we burned them there and put back the bricks and he muttered some
+short prayer or other and made the sign of the cross over the fireplace
+and then turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Didn't I see some bread and ham and a cheese in that wire safe in the
+cellar, doctor?' says he.  'I had no supper to-night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We went down and got them and a bottle of Scotch, too, and I remember
+perfectly that we polished off half a small ham, a whole Edam cheese, a
+loaf of bread and nearly a bottle of the Scotch&mdash;the bottle wasn't
+quite full, to begin with, you see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After we'd finished we had a smoke, and then I stared at him straight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's the meaning of it all, Father?' I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I can't tell you, my son,' said he (he never called me so before or
+since that night) 'but you may be sure of one thing&mdash;God reigns.  And
+now, what are you thinking to do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Burn down this house,' said I, 'and send for my wife to come back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'By all means send for your wife,' says he quickly, 'but if you're
+bound to destroy this house&mdash;which strikes me as a very good sort of
+house&mdash;why not give it me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'To you?' I cried.  'You don't mean that you'd use it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I could put a parochial school for girls there next week,' he said
+cheerfully.  'We need one at this end badly, but I hadn't the money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'And you'd put innocent girls in this place?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Give me a chance, and then come hear Sister Mary Eustacia sing with
+'em, next Sunday,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I deeded it to him, land and all, and they had a great kick-up
+there with little boys in lace night-gowns, and incense and what not.
+And, by George, the girls did sing for me, too, with Sister
+Somebody-or-other bowing and blushing behind 'em&mdash;all in white they
+were, with blue sashes, and voices like larks ... I never had a
+daughter...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He half rose, heavily, leaning on his elbows.  "Mind you, there's
+something there!" he said slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a Pit below&mdash;you have to count on it.  Perhaps we're
+shovelling it in, all the time, shovelling it in...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the more you whistle, the better you'll work, of course.  Very
+well, then, whistle!  But don't mistake&mdash;it's there ... it's there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They drew long breaths and pushed away from the table; the rain had
+stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And still in silence they walked out together into the fresh, damp
+evening.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE ORACLES
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+You'll wonder, no doubt, at me having the daring to make what you might
+call a sort of romance out of her life&mdash;now all's over.  And, of
+course, it's not in my way at all.  Not but what I've read enough of
+romance-books&mdash;many's the many!  My mother was always at me to lay them
+by and take up some bit of work that 'ud bring me in more in the
+end&mdash;and yet, there's no doubt it was my readings and dreamings and
+such-like that brought me about Miss Lisbet's friendship, at the first,
+and that friendship was the making of me, one way and another, as
+mother never denied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Dr. Stanchon that set me about it.  He came into my cottage, a
+matter of a month or so back, looking fair grizzled and white&mdash;the
+heat, he said.  And if I knew better, I never said so.  He never minded
+the heat till this summer.  And on his vacation at home, too!  But he
+showed his age, fair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't some kind of drink for me, have you, Rhoda?" he says, sort
+of faint-like.  "It's been a hard day at the hospital."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now that might do for some, but not for me, that's known the doctor
+fifty-four years come Easter.  I looked at the wheels of the gig, and
+they were all clay, red clay from the one road hereabouts that's made
+of it&mdash;the graveyard road.  And I knew where he'd been.  But of course
+I says nothing, but brings him a palm-leaf fan, and seats him out of
+the glare, in the entry that looks over the little garden, and I waters
+the red bricks of the porch with a spray or two from the garden-pot
+(nothing so cooling as watered brick, I say!) and hurries in to beat up
+his drink.  He settled down in the old chair I always keep for him&mdash;a
+Windsor, cushioned in some English chintz his wife brought me out from
+home, twenty years ago&mdash;and I heard him sigh and stretch as I got the
+lemons and the eggs.  I beat up the whites, stiff as silver, added the
+lemon juice by littles, dusted a bit of castor sugar, and stuck in a
+sprig of mint from my sunken half-barrel where the cress grows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, that makes a man new!" says he, handing back the glass.  "It's a
+pity you can't patent that, Rhoda!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then he pulled out his old pipe, and smoked for a quarter-hour,
+without a word.  But he rested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how's Miss Jessop, these days, doctor?" says I, when I saw he was
+ready for talking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Finely, finely!" says he.  "Her little girl wrote me a letter
+yesterday.  Ten years old!  Image of her father, that child.  You're as
+bad as Lisbet, though, that never would learn to change."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I beg her pardon&mdash;Mrs. Weldon, of course, and her with a boy
+fourteen, too!" says I.  "How Miss Lisbet did take to her, surely!  I
+always thought having her to help with Master Louis's children when
+they were so bad, just helped poor Miss Lisbet to bear with her sorrow
+at not starting the hospital, and all that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes," he said and nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a fine woman, Jessop was.  Best nurse I ever had.  Yes,
+yes&mdash;Weldon's a lucky fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cress smelled strong in the heat, then, and I couldn't but say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you remember when Miss Lisbet and I started the cress-bed, doctor,
+down in the Winthrop pond?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first he didn't answer, and I saw the old times in his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How she did enjoy your cress-and-mustard salad!" he says, finally.
+"Mrs. Stanchon spoke of it this morning&mdash;have you a little mess I could
+take up to the house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so we passed to talking about her, and it eased us both.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's like a sort of tale, sir, isn't it?" says I, thoughtful-like.
+"Often and often when my niece has left everything tidy, and made my
+tea and cakes, and put away the wash, and watered the brick, and gone
+home, and I sit here while the pot draws and there's only the cat for
+company (not that I complain!  I've my thoughts, and plenty of books,
+and all the old days to live over!) often and often, as I say, it'll
+come to me in a sort of tale, like, and I wish there was some one to
+take it down; it would read off like a book!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And why not take it down yourself, Rhoda, my girl?" says he.  "There's
+one, as I needn't tell you, would have no little pleasure reading it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so I began.  You'd be surprised at the many that's offered to help
+me, and piece out bits of her life that maybe I wouldn't know.  But I
+knew enough for what I had in mind to show, namely, what Miss Lisbet
+was always planning to do&mdash;and what she really did do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So now I'll begin at the beginning.
+</P>
+
+<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%">
+
+<P>
+It was the morning of the day I was ten years old that I first saw her.
+A Saturday it was, and a holiday, and mother gave me a piece of currant
+bread, buttered, for a treat, and the day free till sunset, after my
+morning tasks were through.  I was all that was left her&mdash;five others
+buried, in fifteen years&mdash;and she was very easy with me, for which you
+could scarcely blame her, poor soul!  Three lost in England, of the
+smallpox, and one that hardly opened his little eyes, and my sister of
+something that they had no name for rightly in those days, doctor says,
+but they call it appendicitis now.  I was born over here, and never saw
+England, though I've always loved to read about it and always called it
+"home," not thinking, as one often will.  Mother had black memories of
+the old country and was anxious for us to grow up little Americans,
+though I can see now that she went to work very wrong to bring that
+about, for we always curtseyed to the rector and old Madam Winthrop
+when she rode by in the coach, and never, in short, thought of looking
+higher than we were born.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So when I saw a lovely young lady drive up in a pony cart, hand the
+reins to the groom, get out, and walk through the gate toward me, I
+held the currant bread behind me and dropped a little curtsey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is this Mrs. Pennyfield's house?" she says, stopping and staring at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, miss, she's my mother," says I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is your name?" says she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda Pennyfield, please, miss," says I, and then, the goodness knows
+why, for I was a shy enough little thing commonly, "It's my birthday!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, how funny!" she says, smiling the loveliest smile in the world.
+"It's mine, too!  How old are you, Rhoda Pennyfield?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten, miss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't that wonderful!" she cries out, blushing like a rose peony.  "I
+am ten to-day, too!  What were your presents?  Mine were the pony
+phaeton and this gold watch (she held it out to me on a chain about her
+neck) and a macaw from South America from my Uncle Mather, on an ebony
+perch.  And a French doll from my aunty in New York, but I don't care
+for dolls any more.  What had you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, as you can see, if I had really been a little American, I should
+have been jealous and ashamed that things were so different between us,
+but such a notion never entered my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother baked currant bread, miss," I said, "and Madam Winthrop's
+gardener gave me a spotted kitten, and I have a string of blue beads
+and the day to myself.  I'm thinking I'll go up to The Cedars and Mrs.
+Williams will let me read some of the books from the library for the
+afternoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, that's where I live&mdash;The Cedars!" she says, surprised.  "Madam
+Winthrop is my aunt, and Mrs. Williams dresses me!  Come into the
+phaeton and I'll drive you there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had forgot the errand she came on, bless her, with the excitement,
+and if mother hadn't come out to inquire, there'd have been a great
+to-do.  There was a maid all over blotches at The Cedars, and a doctor
+and nurse was wanted, and mother was ready very quick, as she always
+was.  So I got into the phaeton and Miss Lisbet drove me to The Cedars,
+and I had a birthday dinner with her: roast fowl and mashed potatoes
+and new peas and a frozen pudding with figs and almonds in it.  I can
+see her now, at the head of the table, with me and Mrs. Williams on
+either side, and the macaw, all indigo and orange color and scarlet, on
+his perch opposite!  She had on a worked muslin frock with lace-trimmed
+pantalets, blue silk stockings, and black French kid ankle-ties.  Her
+hair, a light golden brown, was all in curls, and a blue velvet snood
+kept it back: the young girls today wear ribbons about their heads
+something like it.  Her eyes were a dark, bright blue, and her cheeks,
+like most American children's, a sort of clear pale, that flushed quick
+with her feelings.  She was tall and slim and looked quite three years
+older than me, that has always been stocky-like and apple-cheeked, even
+at sixty-four!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had been away at a school for two years, having lost her father and
+mother, and old Madam Winthrop had adopted her, in a sort of way, being
+her great-aunt, and was to leave her all her money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While we were eating, old Dr. Stanchon pops in, leading a little
+red-haired boy, very plain and clever-looking, by the hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can this youngster have a bite with you, Mrs. Williams?" says he,
+looking worried like.  "That precious girl of yours has the fever, and
+I'll be busy some time.  I promised him the fish pond for a treat, for
+it's his birthday, to-day, and now perhaps Miss Elizabeth will take him
+there&mdash;hello, little Rhoda!  How fine we are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little lad pulls out a great pocket-knife and lays it on the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Dick Stanchon, and I'm ten years old to-day!" says he very quick.
+"I have this Barlow knife and the 'Arabian Nights,' and I'm to be a
+doctor, like my father.  Do you have frozen pudding often, here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, you can see how startling it would be to three children to be at
+the same birthday together!  We couldn't be tired talking of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will all be firm friends for the rest of our life," said Miss
+Lisbet, very excited, "and never have secrets from each other.  And
+when I get Aunt Winthrop's money, I will divide it into three parts,
+one for each.  And we will do a great deal of good in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come," says Mrs. Williams, sour-like, "not so fast, missy.
+You've not the money yet, nor shouldn't speak of it, and as for being
+friends, it's all right so far as Dick Stanchon is concerned, but I
+doubt if Madam will feel the same as to Rhoda Pennyfield!  So make no
+more plans till we know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But of course we did make plans, for all her stiffness.  We sat in the
+red cedar grove, playing at tea-parties with a beautiful china tea-set,
+and Master Dick was to marry her, and I was to live with them and be
+nurse to the children, with one named for me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dear, dear!  I've forgot much that's come in between and many that's
+been kind to me (more shame to me!) but I can see the sun on her curls
+now and him sharpening his new knife on the granite rocks that were so
+thick in the grove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda and Dick," says she, very solemn, after a little, "I'm going to
+tell you a great secret.  Come close to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You can believe we listened with all our ears; we worshipped the ground
+she trod on, both of us, do you see, even then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to do a great deal of good in the world before I die," says
+she, "as I mentioned before, at dinner.  I don't mean just ordinary
+<I>being</I> good, you know, but <I>doing</I> it.  At school I always meant to go
+as a missionary, and I was saving all my money for a fund for it, but I
+couldn't seem to keep it, somehow.  Two or three of the girls were poor
+girls, and if they hadn't their birthdays remembered, it would have
+been dreadful.  And the cook's little boy was lame in his spine and he
+was so fond of flowers!  And I hadn't so much money, anyway.  Then, all
+my time was full, because we had to do things every hour, just so.  But
+now I'm to have a governess and I shall have a great deal of time, so I
+can study hard for a missionary and perhaps go to South America&mdash;if
+there are any heathens there, as I suppose there are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So now my new life is beginning," she says very low and solemn, "and I
+feel that everything will be different.  I wish I could be <I>sure</I>,
+though, that it would be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you try the larkspurs, miss," says I.  "They'll tell you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My mother, you must know, was a great believer in signs.  Not being
+much educated, she went by them, I suppose, the way plain people will,
+be it ever so.  There's no use saying it's against religion&mdash;mother was
+as religious as any one, take who you will&mdash;they will do it.  If a bird
+flew into the house, there was death for sure, and she never would let
+three candles be lighted, no matter whose the house.  And so my sister
+and I had many of these ways and signs, and always told how things
+would be by larkspurs.  So I told Miss Lisbet how to strip them off for
+"yes, no, yes, no," and she asked her question very solemn:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"<I>Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,</I><BR>
+<I>Or never again I'll trust to you!</I><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"  And she stripped them off,
+mumbling-like to herself, "Yes, no, yes, no"&mdash;and the last off was "no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then she cried, poor thing, and I with her, for we both believed in
+'em, but Dick only laughed and said it was all foolishness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you want to do different from what you have been, Lisbet, of course
+you can," says he, and then the old doctor came and fetched us both
+home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to begin my studying, just the same!" she calls after us,
+and I watched the sun on her hair till the coachman's cottage cut us
+off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, the governess came and they'd lessons all morning long and music
+practising afternoons, but there was no missionary study, because she
+took it into her head that I must be educated and know all she knew&mdash;as
+if that was likely!  Still, I picked up a good bit, here and there, and
+the gardener's little boy, that was backward and dumb-like, isn't
+forgetting to-day what he owes to Miss Lisbet, I'll warrant.  Three
+days a week she'd read to him and spell the letters and sums plain&mdash;and
+him that was the mock of the scholars, so that he'd never go near the
+school, what is he now, I ask you?  Professor in Yale College, and
+helped Dr. Stanchon in the planning of a big school for those children
+that are backward-like, as he was, and many of them as bright as
+bright, really.  They manage such as them better than they did in those
+days, doctor says, and most of it owed to Henry Wilson's boy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Often and often we'd walk up to her tea from the lodge, her setting her
+little teeth to keep from crying at the time she was wasting, with all
+her heathen waiting for her in South America!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I can't leave poor little Ezra Wilson, Rhoda, I just can't!" she'd
+cry out.  "Wait till these old music-lessons are over and I haven't to
+use those horrible dumb-bells every morning, and I'll do something for
+the world, yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely, miss," I'd soothe her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, the time went by like sands in a glass, and we were grown maids
+before you'd think twice.  She looked full two years more than her
+seventeen, and Master Dick was away at Harvard College two years
+already, for he was wonderful forward and clever always, and first in
+all his classes.  What time she'd had from her lessons and her
+paintings and sketching (which she hated dreadfully, poor thing, though
+seeming a master of it, to my eyes!) she was teaching him French and
+German from her governess, for they didn't teach it in the village
+school and his mother couldn't spare him away, and those languages
+helped him a good bit in his studies at the college.  The old doctor
+was terrible proud of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then came the day that he came home so sudden.  It was a grand
+April morning and Miss Lisbet and I were directing Henry Wilson about
+changing the vines and laying them by for the house painting: Madam was
+scolding and fussing about, annoying everybody with her sharp ways, and
+I remember thinking that she was failing for sure.  I was sad, too, for
+mother had decided to put me out to service, after all, and that meant
+a parting for Miss Lisbet and me.  Mother felt that I was getting above
+myself, like, and spoiled for anything that would happen me in the
+usual course if Miss Lisbet ever changed, you see.  And who could deny
+that?  But the dear thing knew nothing of it, yet&mdash;I hadn't the heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, Madam was scolding away famously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind that wistaria, Wilson!" says she.  "There's not its equal in
+Westchester County!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes, Madam," says he, crusty-like.  "Why good-morning, Master
+Dick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there he stood.  At the first glance, I saw he looked different.
+Older and graver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this, what's this, Richard?" Madam cries.  "Neglecting your
+studies?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Studies?  Studies?" says he, as quick and sharp as she.  "What, is the
+matter with the people about here?  Are you dreaming?  Fort Sumter
+down, the flag insulted, the President calling for seventy-five
+thousand volunteers, and you talk of studies!  I'm going to try to get
+into the Seventh, and I'm only here to see Elizabeth before I go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense, boy!" says Madam, trembling, though.  "We'll see what your
+father has to say, first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My father only wishes he had a dozen sons, ma'am!" he told her, proud
+as Lucifer.  "Lisbet, can I speak with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went directly to him, and they walked, holding hands, behind the
+cedar grove.  She told me afterward that he just said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you wait till I come back, Lisbet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she answered, "Why, of course, Dick!"  They parted a promised
+couple.  Madam was all shaky, but she kissed him good-bye, and let him
+put a little blue-stoned ring on Miss Lisbet's hand&mdash;there was a splash
+of red paint on it from the house, and mother fair turned white when I
+told her.  "They'll never wed," she said, "that's certain sure!  Poor
+young people!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the paint wasn't for blood, after all, for he never got a scratch.
+He was handsome enough in his new uniform, and more than one envied my
+Miss Lisbet when she waved him good-bye on the train&mdash;they were off for
+Baltimore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda," says she to me, after a few weeks of waiting, "I can't bear
+this!  Us eating and drinking so easy, and those poor boys dying&mdash;it's
+not right.  I must and shall go as nurse!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And we could do nothing with her&mdash;she'd hardly sleep.  It was Dr.
+Stanchon found the way to handle her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear child," he says at last, "why not do as I do&mdash;send a substitute?
+I sent my boy, because I'm the only doctor left here, now, and people
+must be born and die, you know, war or no war," says he.  "I'd far
+rather have gone.  Now, it's out of the question for you, for many
+reasons, but if your aunt would give you your dress-money and you gave
+up a summer at the mountains, you could pay a good, settled woman, of
+experience, and there's many would love to go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, she seized on that, the generous creature, and got it out of
+Madam, and we fitted out a respectable widow-woman mother often had to
+help her, and sent her to one of those Southern cities&mdash;I forget now.
+She wrote up only that there was mostly blacks for waiting on one, and
+food poor and scarce.  But Master Dick sent word that she kept the
+fever away for a mile around her, and the officers thereabouts gave her
+a long piece of writing and a medal after all was over, and the Rebels
+a silver cup&mdash;she cared for all alike, whatever the uniform.  The
+little house she had was built up into a hospital, later, and she lived
+and died there, and only came up to the north to beg money for it.  It
+was the only one in thirty miles around.  Eighteen years she lived
+there, and left the cup to Miss Lisbet; the medal to her daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I must hurry on.  I could talk about those days forever, but in
+the books, I have taken notice often, they pick and choose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So I will pass to when it came to her of a sudden how she could collect
+clothes and food for the army, and keep one place open for the
+lint-scraping and bandage-rolling, as all the ladies were doing in the
+big cities.  She had a tongue of honey and every one knew about her
+having hired Mrs. Jarvis to go nurse, so she was sure to get what she
+begged for.  She took over a vacant office in the village, part of
+Madam's property, and I never saw her happier than the day we were
+fitting it up.  It was all cleaned and new furnished and there were
+desks and tables and nursing-books and shelves for the jellies and
+medicines, and everything to be sent orderly and where needed at the
+time, not rushed forward all helter-skelter as so much is at such
+times.  Dr. Stanchon saw all, and heard the plans, and patted her
+shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well done, Blossom, well done!" says he.  "I might have let you go,
+after all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he offered to advise and find out the quickest and best trains and
+such like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was July and a hot, clear day.  The notice was in the village paper
+for all the women that could help, to come to a first meeting and take
+hours for duty there, and routes to collect, and offer wagons if they
+had them, and give fruit for jelly, and Miss Lisbet led off with the
+old pony and cart for steady work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were resting in the garden and she had just told me that she meant
+to give all her time to the "office," as we called it in a joking way
+(for nice young ladies didn't go to offices then, I promise you!  Madam
+thought little enough of it) and she put her hand on mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda," says she, "my dream is coming true&mdash;do you see?  I'm to do
+something for my country, after all!  Just as a man would&mdash;just as Dick
+does, Rhoda!  Isn't it a grand thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The change is coming now, Rhoda," she says, and then, laughing at
+herself, "I'm going to ask the larkspurs!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she pulled a great stalk and held it over her head, as I had taught
+her seven years before.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"<I>Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,</I><BR>
+<I>Or never again I'll trust to you!</I><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she stripped them off, <I>yes, no, yes, no</I>&mdash;and they said <I>no</I>!  The
+sweet face fell, and I hurried to comfort her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe they always say no hereabouts," says I.  "Let me have a try!"
+And I asked the same question, but it came <I>yes</I>, and that I knew must
+be true, though she did not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day, after she had made a speech like the Queen's (I thought)
+and every one wondering, with her so young, and a hundred dollars
+pledged, and all so eager to work under her&mdash;for she was one of them
+that's born to lead&mdash;who should run in but Henry Wilson, all out of
+breath, crying to her to hurry home, for Madam was down with a stroke,
+and one side of her all powerless!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, to make a long story short, she never left her poor aunt for
+above an hour at a time till the fighting was over!  Madam, who had
+never seemed overfond before, was mad for her now, and she was pushing
+her chair or reading to her or stroking her hand or playing old tunes
+or sitting in sight, the livelong day.  They tried the sea and they
+tried the mountains and there was a nurse and a maid, but it was always
+Miss Lisbet behind it all.  She was rich, she had real French convent
+lace on her body-linen, and asparagus and peaches in winter, and a
+conservatory as big as a house, oh, yes.  But she was more tied down
+than many a poor girl 'prenticed for her living, and I often wonder if
+it's not that way with many of the rich ladies you see!  I know I was
+working hard with a dressmaker the first year&mdash;before they kept me as
+seamstress and mender at The Cedars&mdash;and <I>I</I> wouldn't have changed with
+her, except for love of her, poor dear!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was back in The Cedars when Madam went off in her sleep one night as
+easy as a baby.  There was no need for grieving&mdash;'twas a blessed
+release, and just the soberness and the thoughts that must come to one
+when even an old body of eighty-odd passes away.  Poor old Madam hadn't
+many friends, for everybody was so afraid of her, and we all felt the
+best that ever she'd done was to leave the lonely old place to Miss
+Lisbet.  Master Dick was coming home, for the war was over, and the
+black men freed at last, and he was full captain, and never a scratch
+or a headache even, to show for the four years!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were in the garden waiting for him, she as lovely as ever I'd seen
+her in a white dress, all frilled from the waist down, with violet
+ribbons (Madam made her vow never to wear black for her) and a violet
+band in her hair.  She'd a great brooch of amethyst stones at her neck
+and Master Dick's blue ring on her finger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda," says she, of a sudden, "what if we tried the larkspurs again?"
+and she smiled at me, a mischievous little smile, like a child's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay, now, miss dear," says I, "what's the good of such games, and you
+a grown woman?  No doubt now but your way is clear to do as you like&mdash;a
+fine husband and plenty of money.  Let it be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I will," she says, reaching for a spray of the blue stuff, "I
+will, Rhoda, once more, for luck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, miss," says I, "put the question different like, why not?
+Make it plainer&mdash;you're forever talking about 'a change in your life,'
+and there's always changes, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she laughs and holds it up and sings:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"<I>Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,</I><BR>
+<I>Or never again I'll trust to you!</I><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Am I going to be able now to use all this money to help some great
+cause?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the flowers said, <I>no</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I couldn't say I was sorry for that, just because she was all for
+schooling and helping the blacks, now they were thrown on themselves
+like; for old Dr. Stanchon would have it that they were bound to make
+more trouble now in the South than they had before, and that those who
+had freed them owed them a living&mdash;or something like that.  Most hated
+him for it around our parts, but doctor says the country has found his
+father was right, to-day.  Nevertheless, there's other uses for good
+family money than that, as we all know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've bewitched the larkspurs, Miss Lisbet," I said, laughing.  "Why
+not fool them a bit?  Pick a tiny short spray like this, and ask a
+question you <I>know</I> the answer to, and then you'll see how things are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," says she, "I'll ask 'If I'm to marry Dick'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I didn't half like that, but I happened to peep out of the tail of my
+eye and who should I see but Master Dick himself, leaning over the low
+cedar hedge, looking for us.  He was out of her sight, and so I made
+haste and picked a tiny stalk with but three blossoms and handed it to
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick, quick, Miss Lisbet, dear!" I said, knowing well what the answer
+would be.  She asked quick enough, but when she stripped them, <I>yes,
+no</I>&mdash;and stopped there, I saw that the third had somehow fallen off and
+lay on her white lap.  It gave me a turn, but she only brushed it away
+and laughed softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It <I>is</I> foolish," she said, "isn't it, Rhoda?  For there he is!  Here,
+Dick, this way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I started to leave them, but she wouldn't have it, and gave him her
+cheek to kiss as easy as a child&mdash;or started to, but there was a man in
+uniform behind him, just rounding the turn, and she drew back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Major La Salle," says Master Dick, proud as Punch, you could see,
+"Miss Elizabeth Winthrop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She curtseyed and the Major bowed to the ground, and I couldn't but
+notice a tiny bald spot amongst his curly dark hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An old fellow for Master Dick's friend," thought I, and so he was,
+being all of thirty-six, and more like Dr. Stanchon's crony than his
+son's!  Thirty-six was something in those days, you see, and Master
+Dick was all ready to settle when the young men of his age to-day are
+playing their football games and heedless as school girls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Major had lines about his mouth and eyes, and had buried a wife, we
+learned, three years before the war&mdash;a sad marriage, by Master Dick's
+accounts, as she wasn't worthy of him and had made him grave before his
+time.  Our young Captain couldn't talk enough of him and had written
+many's the letters about him before ever we saw him.  But we were both
+surprised to find him so much older than we had thought, and Miss
+Lisbet was afraid to talk much before him at first, for fear he'd find
+her missish and ignorant.  She didn't realize, the sweet thing, how any
+one would think, to see her at the head of that great house, managing
+all and doing so much good in the village, that she was the equal of
+any woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They'd been but three days in the village, and all the time they had
+from the doctor's wife's proud tea-drinkings, to show off her boy,
+they'd spent with us.  She always had me by her, for Mrs. Williams was
+getting on, and best off by herself, and Miss Lisbet didn't feel 'twas
+quite as it should be for her to be off with them alone.  So when they
+spoke of Madam's will, I was sewing near by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Lisbet was telling of her schemes for the poor blacks and the
+Major was agreeing with her, and said that Master Dick's father had the
+right of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, for heaven's sake, Louis, don't encourage Miss Winthrop in any of
+her plans for the human race," says Master Dick, laughing.  "It's bad
+enough to have my father executor.  All that money depends on me, you
+know, and I don't approve of women's rights as much as you do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Depends on you?  What do you mean?" says the Major.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, unless she marries me she doesn't get Madam's money at all," says
+Master Dick.  "The old lady was afraid of unprincipled fortune hunters,
+and of me, at least, she knew the worst!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the larkspurs said I wouldn't marry you, Captain Dick Stanchon!"
+she cried, half laughing, half displeased, for she couldn't bear him to
+question what she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Major got up at that and walked away, and I left them, too, as was
+quite correct for a promised pair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It might have been an hour later that I walked to the cedar grove to
+find my thimble and saw Miss Lisbet hurrying there ahead of me.  I
+slackened a bit, and when I caught her up I saw she was talking with
+the Major&mdash;he must have been waiting there for her.  I thought it odd,
+but stooped over and looked through the grass, and all of a sudden they
+were level with me, the other side the hedge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You sent for me?" said she, breathless like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Can you guess why?" said he, and my knees began to shake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"N-no, Major La Salle," said she, still breathing strangely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sent for you to tell you that the larkspur told you true,
+Elizabeth," he said, very deep.  "You will never marry Dick Stanchon,
+you will marry me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why&mdash;why..." she began, and I couldn't move then, try as I might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As sure as that little star belongs in the moon's arms, Elizabeth, you
+belong in mine!" said he.  "Don't you know it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Dick," she said, still breathing as I had never heard her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dick is a boy," he said.  "You are fit for a man.  I loved you when I
+first took off my cap before you.  But I would never court an heiress.
+Could you come to a western army post and live on a Major's pay?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not me&mdash;I could live on nothing, almost&mdash;it's how to tell Dick!"
+she began, crying and breathing that strange way, both together&mdash;and
+then I knew it was all over, of course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My star!" I heard him say, and I crept away, somehow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, that was all.  One week, she was a great heiress and engaged to a
+bright young fellow with life opening out before him; the next she was
+married to a poor widower, fifteen years her elder, and off to some
+place in the western prairies, with only a chest of linen and silver
+and some old mahogany and her clothes!  It was like a dream.  But only
+to see her look at him, you'd know she'd met her master.  Before, she
+hadn't sensed things rightly, she told me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was wild to go with her, but no such thing as a maid for his wife,
+the Major said, and anyway, mother was near doubled with the rheumatism
+and I couldn't be spared.  So I kissed her on the station platform and
+cried myself blind that night.  And Master Dick went off to Germany, to
+study, and never a word was mentioned: he held his head high, the
+Captain did!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We got news regular from little Essie White, that Miss Lisbet's outworn
+dresses used to go to.  She used to read an hour a day, did Miss
+Lisbet, to Essie's mother, who went blind, and she stocked Essie with
+flannels and such, as she grew.  I trained her in as kitchen maid when
+I was at The Cedars, and when help turned out so poor and scarce in the
+West&mdash;all ignorant Paddies, as we called them then&mdash;she sent to me and
+I sped Essie out to her, and a good job, too, for she was in no state
+to be worrying out her precious health over dust and dirt and victuals!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Essie wrote us long letters, how Miss Lisbet was the belle of the post
+and had a night school for the private soldiers started, with officers'
+ladies to teach, and took all the charge of the little hospital.  Mrs.
+Jarvis sent her rules and saving ways and many clever contrivances from
+all her experience in the South, and long after the La Salles left that
+post the night school was kept up&mdash;and may be now, for aught I know,
+for it seemed that all she planted, grew.  Balls they gave and private
+theatricals and riding parties, and Essie said she was happy as the day
+was long, but for that she felt she might have done so much for the
+world with Madam's money.  She wanted schools in all the army posts and
+the negroes taught farming and goodness knows what not, you see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when little Louis came there was no time for all that, I promise
+you!  It broke my heart not to be with her, but mother was failing,
+slow but sure, and 'twould have been sin to leave her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I heard all his sweet ways and when he was creeping, and how he
+called my poor old picture "Dody" (bless him!) and hardly was he ready
+for his kilts but his brother was stepping into his shoes!  Named for
+her father he was, and the image of the first, that was the image of
+the Major.  She took the care of them mostly, herself, for she didn't
+like the rough girls out there, and had only Essie and a woman for
+washing, and I didn't need Essie's letters to tell me she was tired and
+worn-like.  It seemed a poor kind of life for one that had had a half
+dozen of servants and gardens and grape houses and her
+saddle-horse&mdash;but she wouldn't have changed for Windsor Castle, I well
+knew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And next I heard, they were to move, very sudden, and the garden just
+planted and all, and worst of all, Essie had lost her heart to a
+corporal and was to stay behind.  At the time I blamed her sorely and
+wrote her a bitter letter, but, dearie me, life is life for all of us,
+and Miss Lisbet wasn't her treasure as she was mine.  We made it up
+later, Essie and me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My dear wrote me herself, the saddest letter that ever I had from her,
+I believe.  The old mahogany pieces had been stored, very careful, and
+burned in the storage, and the linen was out and the china broken, and
+the new baby would find but a poor house, she feared, when they should
+be settled.  Could I find her one for Essie's place?  And oh, if only
+she could see my face, for she dreaded her coming trial, with every one
+strange!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was sitting in my new black, when I read the letter, with poor mother
+free of her rheumatics at last, and all soft as I was from it, I cried
+and cried!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wrote her that I'd find some one, and then I went to the old doctor
+and we talked and twisted it this way and that, and he went up to The
+Cedars and called on Madam's heir-at-law, a crabbed old cousin that
+lived much to himself and saw only the doctor, and the end of it was
+that I was to pick out what I thought Miss Lisbet would like in the
+matter of furniture, for he used but a third of the rooms, and what
+linen and stuff his housekeeper thought could be spared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And wasn't I glad to hear that, for well I knew the housekeeper, a good
+woman who'd nursed turn about with mother for years, and had seen my
+young lady grow up!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, if I do say it of myself, I stripped The Cedars thorough!  And
+yet a stranger would hardly know.  It was full, do you see, from many
+generations, and overflowing, and I furnished three bedrooms, complete,
+from the garrets!  Blankets I got, and a trunk of towels, and seven
+woven bedspreads, and a dining-table that Miss Lisbet's mother's mother
+had eaten a wedding dinner at, and the stuffed macaw on his ebony
+perch!  Eight dozen dinner napkins that had never seen the laundry, and
+carpets that the moths were sure to take if I didn't!  And brass
+fire-irons and a great chest of books and some heads of statues she'd
+always liked, and big engravings of foreign places, broken old ruins
+and such.  And her nursery fittings, that had never been touched, I
+took entire&mdash;fire guard and small chairs, Moses in the Bulrushes,
+little kneeling Samuel and all!  And nearly everything from her lovely
+bedroom&mdash;chintz valances, and the little South American
+dressing-cabinet, and the china-set in a strawed barrel.  <I>I</I> knew what
+she loved&mdash;who better?  And the old doctor got the whole car-load
+across the country free as air for me, through a gentleman that had
+heard how much Miss Lisbet had done in the War, and that as good as
+owned the railroad.  He had us met with mules, too, at the end of the
+horrid, dusty trip; and when me and little Maria Riggs (niece of a tidy
+widow-woman Miss Lisbet had had chair-caning taught to, so that she had
+no need to come on the town) got to the new home, we found only a
+neighbor to give us the keys.  The Major was off on army matters for a
+week, and she had taken the two boys and gone on a visit to a new
+friend she'd made, and left things all hugger-mugger, from despair and
+tiredness, poor girl!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was quite as well pleased, and Maria and I swept and cleaned and
+nailed carpets and hung pictures and clear-starched muslin curtains and
+filled shelves and drawers, as happy as queens.  And round the house I
+planted out the five old vines I'd brought all moist and good in an
+open basket, from The Cedars, and in the garden that a fine,
+fresh-faced soldierman, English as could be, dug and spaded for me,
+what did I put in but <I>larkspur seeds</I>, amongst the sweet williams and
+pansies and mignonette!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, she came back, expecting nothing, do you see, and there at the
+door was I, in black, with white cuffs and apron, and little Maria
+curtseying behind me.  And the old claw-leg card-table in the hall and
+the glass with the gilt eagle above it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rhoda!  <I>Rhoda!</I>" she screams, and gives one look at the statues and
+pictures and new carpet in the drawing-room and faints on the floor!
+And I nearly crazy for being such a fool at such a time!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+None the less, the third boy was born in his mother's old four-posted
+bed, as beautiful as a king, and her living picture.  Stanchon La Salle
+he was, for the old doctor, who never bore her a moment's grudge, mind
+you, on Master Dick's account.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a fine man, Rhoda, and I doubt if Dick could have managed her
+right," was all he ever said to me.  "She has a great spirit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then the time went by like the water under a bridge.  She'd no more
+worries about drudging, for Maria and I did all, with the English
+soldierman for rough jobs; but she had her hands full with the boys,
+for the Major didn't want them sent back to the East to school, and she
+had all the teaching and training of them, to say nothing of the care
+of them, growing.  Nine years we lived there, and then Master Louis was
+off to West Point, and in two years more his brother, and one day&mdash;it
+seemed the next day but two or three!&mdash;we were packing Master
+Stanchon's trunk to go to Yale College, where his father went!  We
+rubbed our eyes and sat alone, and there was the macaw she got for her
+tenth birthday looking at us!  And I do assure you, I felt much the
+same as ever.  Which I had heard people say, as a girl, and felt to be
+unbecoming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Colonel was pretty nigh to white hair, but firm and strong, and she
+was grey, but not a wrinkle, and very beautiful.  He was to leave the
+service and had been offered a post in government, somehow, at
+Washington, when just as we were beginning to worry if his eyes could
+stand the book-work, the lawyer's letter came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed too good to be true.  Old, crabbed Mr. Hawkes was long ago
+dead, and The Cedars closed, and his heir, a very curious woman, had
+felt that Miss Lisbet was defrauded, and left everything to her in her
+will!  So we were to go back, and it cleared so many worries that we
+cried together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now, Rhoda, now for a chance to do something!" she says, suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I only stared at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Lisbet, you've been doing since you were born!" I cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Rhoda, you know!" she says, coaxing, "only for those near me, and
+in such a small way!  Now the boys are started, and no more worry for
+the Colonel, and you and I can do something that will last!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And laughing like a girl, if she didn't fly out to the garden and find
+our frost-bitten, yellow larkspur, the last!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See!" says she, and began to wave it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't, don't!" says I, anxious-like, "and you to be a grandmother
+next year, maybe!" (for Louis was to be married to a New York young
+lady in the winter).
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she would, and when she asked, half laughing, half frightened:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Am I to do what I have longed for all my life, at last?</I>" and
+stripped off the rotting blossoms, <I>yes, no, yes, no</I>&mdash;the last one
+fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And before ever we reached The Cedars the Colonel had gone blind!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, for five years she was never from his side one half hour at a
+time.  He said he blessed the blindness that gave him her hand at every
+moment, and it was a beautiful sight to see them together.  Riches
+makes such an affliction as light as it can ever be, that's certain,
+and he lived in luxury.  He held Louis's twin daughters in his arms and
+hoped to "see," as he called it, smiling, the next brother's, but it
+was not to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dr. Stanchon, as I learned at last to call Master Dick, said that he
+couldn't have had a moment's pain, and his own boy, named for the
+Colonel, carried him to the grave with our three.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Stanchon was a sweet soul, tied to a wheel-chair for life after
+five years married, and Miss Lisbet was forever doing things for her
+entertainment and to make her forget, like.  She never did too much,
+but just enough, and didn't stop with grapes and books, as many rich
+folk will, you know, but sat with her every other day, at least, with
+the Colonel by her side, listening to her bright talk.  I doubt the two
+of them realized, at those times, how afflicted they were!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She never talked as if he was gone&mdash;always as if they'd only parted for
+a little.  Her hair was soon whiter than his, and she walked and moved
+very slow, for her, but the boys seemed to see no difference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Louis's wife was delicate and came to us, finally, till he should have
+an easier post, and the twins were not strong, like our babies.  Once
+we nearly lost them, and after that Granny Lisbet (as they called her)
+never took her eye off them, and pulled them through.  It seemed the
+village was full of sick children that year, and the mothers were crazy
+for her to look at every one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was anxious to set up a regular nurse for the district, and gave a
+room for that purpose, with a lending closet, and arranged money for
+the nurse to be paid for ten years.  (They are quite common, now, but
+hers was the first in our parts.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's working too hard, Rhoda, my girl," says Dr. Stanchon.  "Her
+heart's not what she thinks.  Keep her quiet, can't you?"  But what
+could I do?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nearly cried, last June, when I'd got her out in the garden, that
+day, for a bit of quiet, and she began on her plans for the villages to
+be taxed for nurses and doctors, to keep off sickness!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The babies are all well, now," says she, "and Louis comes for his
+family to-morrow, and the twins are no trouble.  The nurse is all
+started in the village and I am going to see the Governor at Albany
+next week&mdash;I have an appointment.  Isn't it strange, Rhoda, that I am
+all but fifty, and only ready now to do something with my
+opportunities?  I've ten good years before me, and the Colonel shall be
+proud of me yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt so weak and sad all of a sudden&mdash;God knows why.  She rarely
+spoke of him.  I held her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, look, Rhoda, there's a stalk of larkspur out!" she said.  "Go
+pick it for me, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I started to say no, but then I saw but one bud on it and I thought to
+myself, "I'll see her pleased for once, I will!" knowing she'd never
+notice, and so brought it.  She waved it, blue above her white head
+(and me only iron grey to-day!)
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"<I>Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,</I><BR>
+<I>Or never again I'll trust to you,</I>"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+she mumbled like, and I thought her voice sounded strange and far away,
+somehow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Is a change coming at last in my narrow little life?</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, hush, Miss Lisbet! you that have been so much to so many!" says I,
+sobbing at her dear stupidness, and then she begins, yes&mdash;and that was
+all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Rhoda!" she cries, "at last, at last I've won!" and half rises in
+the garden-chair.  Then suddenly her hands went to her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Louis&mdash;Louis!  My dear!" she said, staring at the cedar hedge.
+"<I>Can you see?</I>"  And fell back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The change had come, indeed, and I and all that loved her hope that now
+she knows what a life like hers meant to those she lived among and
+blessed!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="finis">
+THE END
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by 
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
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+</BODY>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+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: The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2010 [EBook #31202]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE CASES OF DR. STANCHON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that
+was softly tightening."]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+STRANGE CASES OF
+
+DR. STANCHON
+
+
+BY
+
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"THE INHERITANCE," "THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY,"
+
+"THE MADNESS OF PHILIP," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+
+JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
+
+  Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
+  Copyright, 1909, 1910, by Harper and Brothers.
+  Copyright, 1911, 1913, by the Crowell Publishing Company.
+  Copyright, 1911, by the Curtis Publishing Company.
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+M. A. T.
+
+WHO WATCHED MANY OF
+
+THESE STORIES IN THE MAKING
+
+               J. D. B.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE KEY
+  THE CHILDREN
+  THE CRYSTAL
+  THE GOSPEL
+  THE GYPSY
+  THE WARNING
+  THE LEGACY
+  THE MIRACLE
+  THE UNBURIED
+  THE ORACLES
+
+
+
+
+THE KEY
+
+The young doctor stamped vehemently up the marble steps, to warm his
+feet, and once in the warm, flower-scented halls, let a little shiver
+escape him.  The butler was new--he was always new, the doctor
+thought--and actually didn't know him.
+
+"Mrs. Allen is at bridge, sir, with a party: she asks to be excused,"
+he began mechanically.
+
+(_"That's good!" Stanchon felt tempted to say, "and I hope the girls
+are out, too!"_)  As if in answer to this indiscretion, the new butler
+droned on:
+
+"Miss Alida is at her riding-lesson and Miss Suzanne is--is engaged----"
+
+(_"Now, what particular infernal idiocy is Suzanne at, I wonder?"
+Stanchon pondered, still smiling lightly at the butler and warming
+himself at every breath._)
+
+"Mr. Edmund is--I think he could be found, sir," the voice went on.
+
+(_"I don't doubt it," Stanchon agreed mentally, "at the side board, no
+doubt; a nice time of day for a lad of twenty to be hanging about the
+house!"_)
+
+But all he said was:
+
+"I am the doctor.  I called to see Miss Mary."
+
+"Oh!"  Even this new butler assumed a look of burdened intelligence; he
+leaned toward the visitor, "Oh, yes, sir--Miss Mary.  I understood that
+it wouldn't be possible for Miss Mary to see anybody, sir, but I
+suppose, the doctor----"
+
+"Certainly," said Stanchon curtly.  "Please send word to her nurse that
+I am here."
+
+"Yes, sir," but the man hesitated, even as he took the hat held out to
+him, "yes, sir, but--but ... it isn't Dr. Jarvyse, is it, sir?"
+
+A slow, dark red spread over Stanchon's forehead.
+
+(_"So they've sent for Jarvyse--well, I might have known.  Nice,
+tactful crowd, aren't they!"_)
+
+He scowled slightly and set his jaw.
+
+"No, I'm Dr. Stanchon," he said.  "Dr. Jarvyse is coming later, I
+suppose.  Kindly let Miss Jessop know that I am here, will you?  I
+haven't much time."
+
+The man sped swiftly down the hall, after depositing his hatless charge
+in a blue satin reception-room, and Stanchon stared, unseeing, at the
+old Chinese panels and ivory figures that dotted its walls and tables.
+The strong odour of freesias and paper-narcissus hung heavy in the
+room; the roar of the great, dirty, cold city was utterly shut away and
+a scented silence, costly and blue and drowsy, held everything.
+
+Presently the nurse stood before him, smiling, and he saw that her
+usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and
+peaked cap of her profession.
+
+"What's all this?" he asked, and she shrugged her broad shoulders.
+
+"She told me to put it on to-day.  'You're really a nurse, you know,
+Miss Jessop,' she said, 'and if I require one, it might as well be
+known.'  Of course, I had it here, so I got it right out.  Poor Miss
+Mary!"
+
+"I see they've sent for Jarvyse?"
+
+She nodded uncomfortably.
+
+"Then it's all over but the shouting, I suppose?"  Again she shrugged.
+The fatalism of her training spoke in that shrug, and the necessity for
+taking everything as it comes--since everything is bound to come!
+
+"H'm..." he meditated deeply, and all the youth went out of his face,
+suddenly: he might have been forty-five or fifty.  At such times the
+nurses and the other doctors always watched him eagerly; it was
+supposed that it was then that those uncanny intuitions came to him,
+that almost clairvoyant penetration of the diseased minds that were his
+chosen study.
+
+"How is she?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Oh, very much the same, doctor.  I can't see much difference."
+
+"But you see a little?"
+
+She moved uncomfortably.
+
+"I don't say that ... it's nothing she says or does--but--sometimes I
+think she's a little more--a little less..."
+
+"A little less normal?"
+
+She rested, relieved.
+
+"Yes, just that."
+
+Across the broad halls came a wave of sudden sound: movement of
+drapery, faint clashes of metallic substances and glass, broken
+feminine cries and light, breathy laughter.  A difference in the air
+became noticeable, new perfumes floated in to the little blue room,
+perfumes and the odour of expensive, warm fur.
+
+--"You don't mean to say that you discard from a strong suit--always?"
+
+"My dear, I had nothing but that queen--nothing!"
+
+--"And that's why, as Elwell says...."
+
+--"And so he absolutely refuses to play with women!"
+
+Evidently a door had been opened, somewhere.  The next moment brought a
+new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence
+again, sudden and profound, from the street-side.  A deep, almost
+dramatic voice silenced the confused babble.
+
+"My dear, I'm frightfully sorry, but I simply could _not_ manage to get
+here before!  Why weren't any of you at the lecture?  _Moyen Age_
+house-furniture and decoration--terribly interesting.  It's a shame to
+miss a thing like that.  Is my table all made up?  Never mind, I can
+cut in any time.  Yes, Mrs. Allen, I know, but really, you ought not to
+neglect the intellectual side, entirely, you know!"
+
+The door closed instantly, and again they stood alone in the heavy
+silence.  It was as if a curtain had been lifted swiftly on some
+bustling, high-lighted scene and dropped as swiftly.  Only a strong,
+heady scent floated in on them, troubling, suggestive, complicated.
+
+"What is that?" Stanchon asked, sniffing.
+
+"Oh, one of those new Russian perfumes," the nurse said.  "I hate them."
+
+"Russian?" he looked puzzled.
+
+"Don't you know it's a Russian season?" she instructed him.  "Dancers
+and music and hats--those high fur ones--and perfumes?  And all that
+Byzantine embroidery?  You must have noticed!"
+
+"Oh!"  He considered thoughtfully.  "I _had_ noticed the perfumes.  But
+I didn't know why it was....  Well, am I to see Miss Mary?"
+
+"I don't know why not, doctor," she said.  "She always likes to see
+you.  And I suppose you'll consult with Dr. Jarvyse, won't you?"
+
+"I suppose so," he agreed, "though, of course, nobody's asked me.  Is
+she going out, this weather?"
+
+"No: I wish she would.  She says it tires her too much.  It's a pity
+she hates the South so."
+
+They walked to the tiny tapestried lift, beyond the curve of the great
+stairs, and she pressed the ivory button that sent them up.  At the
+fourth floor the car settled lightly and they stepped out.
+
+"She's not speaking much," the nurse warned him, "but of course she
+may, for you.  Very gloomy, for two days, she's been."
+
+She knocked lightly at a door and entered without waiting.  The room
+was very light, with bowls of cut flowers everywhere and a pair of
+green love-birds billing eternally on a brass standard: they chirped
+softly now and then.  A miniature grand piano filled one corner, and
+the light fell richly on the tooled leather of low book-cases, and
+slipped into reflected pools of violet, green and blood-red on the
+polished floor.  A great tiger skin stretched in front of a massive,
+claw-legged davenport, and in the corner of it, away from the cheerful,
+crackling fire, a black-haired woman sat, tense and silent, her eyes
+fixed in a brooding stare.  She was all in delicate, cunningly mingled
+tints of mauve, violet and lavender; near her neck tiny diamond points
+winked; magnificent emeralds edged with diamonds lay like green stains
+on her long white hands.  In her dark immobility, among the rich, clear
+objects scattered so artfully about the sun-lighted chamber, she had a
+marvellous effect of being the chief figure in some modern French
+artist's impressionistic "interior."  She gave a distinct sense of
+having been bathed and dried, scented and curled, dressed--and
+abandoned there, between the love-birds and the polished piano: a large
+gold frame about the room would have supplied the one note lacking.
+
+"Well, Miss Mary, and how goes it?" Dr. Stanchon said, sitting beside
+her and taking her hand easily, since she failed to notice his own
+outstretched.
+
+She lifted her eyes slightly to his, moved her lips, then sighed a
+little and dropped her lids.  She might have been a young-looking woman
+of forty, or a girl of twenty-five who had been long ill or distressed.
+
+"Come, now, Miss Mary, I hear you've given me up--wasn't I high priced
+enough for you?  Because I can always accommodate, you know, in that
+direction," Stanchon went on persuasively.
+
+Again she raised her eyes, swallowed, appeared to overcome an almost
+unconquerable lethargy of spirit, and spoke.
+
+"It's no use, doctor, all that.  I've given up.  It's all one to me,
+now.  Don't bother about me."
+
+Stanchon looked genuinely concerned.  He had worked hard over this
+case, and it cut his pride to have the great specialist, with his
+monotonous inflexible system, summoned against his express wish.  That
+meant they were all tired, disgusted, sick of the whole business.  They
+were determined to be rid of her.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look at it that way, Miss Mary," he said gently.
+"I don't believe you need give up--if you'll only make an effort.  But
+it's fatal to give 'way: I've always told you that."
+
+"Yes.  You always told me that.  You were always open and fair," she
+said wearily, "but now you see it is fatal, for I _have_ given 'way.
+Please go," she added nervously.  "I feel more like crying.  Ask him to
+go, Miss Jessop..."
+
+Her voice grew peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left
+her.  It was too bad, but there was nothing to do.  Once or twice in
+his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness,
+realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping
+over him, too, and that he had no power to help.
+
+"Oh, well, you can't win out all the time," he said to himself
+philosophically, "and it isn't as if she wouldn't have every comfort.
+Old Jarvyse looks after them well: I'll say that for him."
+
+The new butler met him as the lift reached the drawing-room floor.
+
+"Mr. Edmund would like to see you a moment, sir," he murmured.
+"He's--he's in the dining-room, doctor."
+
+Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung
+apartment.  He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave
+under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the
+peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked
+him for a moment.  Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual,
+even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand
+had a positively insolent angle.
+
+"Oh!  How do!" he said discontentedly.  "Been upstairs, I hear?"
+
+"Yes," Stanchon answered briefly.
+
+"Well, ... how about it?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say your aunt is a little worse to-day; it may be,
+probably is, nothing but a passing phase----"
+
+"Ah, go on!" Edmund burst out.  "Phase, nothing!  She's as dippy as
+they make 'em, Stanchon, and I'm through with it!"
+
+The older man looked his disgust, but Edmund scowled and went on.
+
+"After day before yesterday afternoon, I told Suzanne I'd come to the
+end of my rope, and I meant it.  I suppose you heard about it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, Miss Jessop knows.  Upsetting a whole luncheon, and one the girls
+had worked over, too, I can tell you!  Why, they had three reporters on
+their knees to hear about that luncheon!"
+
+"Really?" Stanchon inquired politely.
+
+"Yes.  But Alida wouldn't let mother say a word.  And that was all
+right, too.  And then what does Aunt Mary do but say she's coming?  And
+mother weakened and said we'd have to let her, because either she is
+all right or she isn't, and according to you, we're not to admit she
+isn't--yet.  So she comes, and what does she do but insult two of the
+biggest swells there, right to their face!  And when Suzanne tried to
+carry it off, she just turns stubborn and never opens her mouth again.
+Queered the whole thing.  Broke the women all up.  Suzanne says, never
+again!  And I'm with her.  I had Jarvyse called in and he's going to
+make his final decision today.  Of course, if he wants to consult,
+we'll be glad----"
+
+"Dr. Jarvyse and I will settle all that, thanks," Stanchon interrupted
+coldly.  "I regret that your sisters should have been annoyed, but as I
+explained to your mother, inconveniences of this sort would be bound to
+occur, and the only question was----"
+
+"The only question is," Edmund blustered, "are we to be queered in New
+York for good by a woman who ought to have been shut up long ago!  It's
+up to me, now, as the man of the house, and I say, no."
+
+He dabbed his cigarette viciously into a wet ring on the silver tray
+beside him and filled a tiny glass from a decanter; his hand shook.
+
+Stanchon's mounting wrath subsided.  The boy became pathetic to him;
+behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and
+rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly
+shadow of a sickly middle-age, a warped and wasted maturity.
+
+"I'm sorry for you all," he said kindly.  "Don't think I don't
+appreciate the strain ... your mother has tried her best, I'm sure.
+And--and go slow on those cigarettes, Allen, why don't you?  They won't
+help that cough, you know.  And you told me you'd cut out the Scotch."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," Edmund assured him.  "I was seasoned in the
+cradle, doc!  Remember the old man's cigars?"
+
+Stanchon put on his gloves.
+
+"Your father was a very strong man," he said quietly, "and a hard
+worker.  And I've already reminded you that he didn't inhale.  And for
+more years than you've lived, Allen, he worked out of doors.  I don't
+want to nag at you, but just give it a thought now and then.  And let
+me know if I can do anything for you, ever.  My regards to your
+sisters."
+
+As he paused at the curb, a short man in heavy motoring furs stumbled
+out of a luxurious landaulet and would have gone down on the
+treacherous pavement without Stanchon's quick arm.
+
+"All right, doctor, all right," he smiled, as he braced himself for the
+little man's weight.  "Glad I was here.  I've just left Mary--she's
+getting a little unmanageable, I hear."
+
+"Yes, yes," the little man panted, "she'll do better out of the family.
+Yes, yes.  They often do, you know.  Position's perfectly anomalous
+here, you know--constant friction."
+
+"I see," said Stanchon.  "Let me walk up to the door with you--I've
+practiced on the steps, once today.  You make it ..."
+
+"Oh, clear paranoia," Jarvyse finished the sentence promptly.  "They go
+right along, you know.  Perfectly typical.  Good days--yes.  Of course.
+Everybody encouraged.  Come to a ladies' luncheon--fat in the fire
+directly.  No keeping servants, you know.  All that sort of thing.
+Ever show you my card-catalogue of women between thirty-eight and
+thirty-nine?  No?  Ask me some day."
+
+The younger man pressed the electric button and turned the bronze knob
+of the outer door, wrought and decorated like some great public tomb.
+
+"Thanks, I'd be interested," he said.
+
+"You knew the brother, didn't you?" Jarvyse went on, breathing easier
+in the warmth of the vestibule.  "Nothing out of the way there?"
+
+"Absolutely not.  He had the constitution of a bull.  But I fear he's
+not handed it on to his son."
+
+"Ugh, no!  Nasty little cub.  Those families don't last.  Daughters
+always stronger.  I give him fifteen ... eighteen years," the alienist
+said placidly.
+
+The inner door opened and Stanchon turned to go.
+
+"Come up and see the patient," Jarvyse suggested, over his shoulder,
+one glove already off.  "Pleased to have you, and so would she, of
+course.  You'll find her much happier."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+But Miss Mary was not happier.  Freed of the contemptuous _brusquerie_
+of Edmund, the thinly-veiled dislike of the girls, the
+conscience-stricken attempts of her sister-in-law, she had felt for a
+time the relief of a strain abandoned, the comfort of a definite
+position.  They had come to see her, too, and their timid overtures of
+interest, their obvious surprise at the ease with which this great
+change had been effected, their frank amazement at the luxury and
+silken routine in which they found her, had almost established
+relations long since fallen out of use.  But the novelty had faded, the
+visits grew fewer and shorter, the very telephone messages languished;
+and as she sat brooding alone, in the few unoccupied half-hours that
+the omniscient System left her, a slow, sure conviction dropped like an
+acid on the clouded surface of her mind: she was alone.  She was no
+longer a part of life as it was ordinarily lived.  She and the others
+who shared that rich, tended seclusion were apart from the usages and
+responsibilities of the World that was counterfeited there.  They were
+unreal.  Through all the exercise and repose, the baths and
+manipulations, the music and the silences, the courtesies and the
+deprecations, the flowers and the birds that brought an artificial
+summer within the thick walls, one idea clanged like a bell through her
+weary mind: _This is not real_.
+
+To Dr. Stanchon, who came in the intervals allowed by his work, she
+seemed sadly changed.  It was not that her face looked heavier and more
+fretfully lined; not that her voice grew more monotonous; not that she
+seemed sunk in the selfish stupor that her type of suffering invariably
+produces.  He had seen all this in others and seen it change for a
+better state.  No; in Miss Mary the settled pessimism of a deep
+conviction had an almost uncanny power of communicating itself to those
+about her.
+
+"She's in bad, that one," one of the gardeners said to him, on a windy
+March day when he had hunted for her over half-a-dozen guarded acres,
+and found her sitting in one of her heavy silences under a sunny ledge
+of rock.
+
+"She's quiet and easy, but she's one of the worst of 'em, in my
+opinion."
+
+And when she turned to him a moment later and said quietly: "Tell me,
+once for all, Dr. Stanchon, do you consider me insane?" his voice
+expressed all the simple sincerity of his eyes.
+
+"Miss Mary, I tell you the truth--I don't know."
+
+"But you know they'll never let me out?"
+
+He braced himself.  "How can they, Miss Mary, when you won't
+promise----"
+
+"Why should I promise anything, if I'm not insane?  Would you promise
+never to state your opinion in your own house?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
+
+"You see!" he said gently.
+
+Beyond them the gardener struggled with a refractory horse that refused
+to draw his load of brush and dead leaves.  She stared at the group
+dully: six months ago she would have flinched at the great clambering
+hoofs and the man's danger.
+
+"And even if I did give up and promise everything, do you believe I'd
+get out, doctor?"
+
+"I see no reason----"
+
+"You don't need to lie to me," she interrupted.  "When I signed that
+paper, they fooled me: it was for good.  It said six months--but it was
+for good."
+
+He felt a great sympathy for her.  It was hard, very hard.  And yet,
+what they had been through with her!
+
+"If only you hadn't refused to travel," he began.
+
+"But I agreed to--I agreed to, last month," she cried, "even though I'm
+never well travelling, I agreed to--and what happened?  Dr. Jarvyse
+said it wouldn't be best for me!  And you did nothing..."
+
+"How could I, Miss Mary?" he urged.  "You know the only reason I see
+you so often is that I acquiesce and don't interfere.  The moment I
+thought it would do any good----"
+
+"You mean you're not sure, yourself!" she said keenly.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"You know I'm your friend," he said simply.
+
+Her whole face changed.  An almost disconcerting brightness flashed
+over it.  Through all the heaviness and fatigue and despair that had
+yellowed her skin, dulled her eyes, and taken, it seemed, the very
+sheen from her black hair, her lost girlhood flared a moment.  With the
+inconstant emotion of a child she smiled at him.
+
+"I know you are," she murmured confidingly, "and I'll tell you
+something, because you are."
+
+"What is it, Miss Mary?" he said, but he sighed as he said it.
+
+"Do you see how I'm dressed?" she half whispered.  He looked,
+uncomprehending, at the long light ulster she wore.
+
+"Underneath, I'm in black," she said softly, "a whole suit.  I have a
+little bag packed right under this rock, and I have ninety dollars in
+my bag, here."  She tapped her waist, where a small shopping bag
+dangled.  "And I have an umbrella.  I always sit near this gate."
+
+"Why do you do such things, dear Miss Mary?" he said sadly.  "It does
+you no good--please try to believe me!"
+
+"I never did, until I had the dream," she answered calmly.  "This is
+the third night I've had it.  I dreamed I was near some gate, and I
+looked down, and right before me on the path I saw a key--a great,
+brown key!  So I started to pick it up, and then I realised that I
+wasn't prepared, that I had no money, and that I'd just be caught and
+brought back.  Then I woke.  But I dreamed it over again the next
+night, so I packed the bag and got it out here under this steamer-rug,
+and asked for some money to buy presents when that embroidery woman
+came from Lakewood.  And I got it, of course, and bought some.  She
+said she was coming again.  So I got more.  Last night I dreamed it
+again, and it looked like this gate, in the dream.  That's three times.
+Suzanne has those dreams, you know--she's like me, Suzanne--and they
+always happen.  So perhaps mine will.  I tell you, because you're my
+friend.  And you would never have put me here."
+
+Stanchon bit his lip.  A sudden disgust of everything seized him.
+
+"No, I wouldn't have put you here--once," he said slowly, then rose
+abruptly.
+
+"Hi, there, hold him! hold him, you fool!" he shouted.  "Sit on his
+head!"
+
+The gardener's horse, beyond all control, now, was rolling furiously,
+neighing and snapping.  The man clung to the reins, keeping his
+distance, but as the animal gained his feet with a lurch, his finger
+slipped and he, too, rolled over and over down the little slope to the
+gravelled path.  Stanchon was after the horse before the attendant had
+picked himself up and was calling him angrily.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, miss," the man panted.  "The doctor and I can settle
+him!" and staggering to his feet made off to the rescue.  As he ran,
+something clinked and rattled about his boots, and a bunch of keys lay
+quiet on the gravel.
+
+Miss Mary rose instantly, walked to them and put her foot over them,
+but the man was several yards away and Stanchon and the horse were
+struggling towards the wagon.  Miss Mary stooped down and lifted the
+keys; all had metal tags and the one in her hand read, _East Gate, by
+shrubbery_.  She stepped to the ledge, drew out a fair sized black
+hand-bag, tucked her umbrella under her arm and looked about her.  The
+nearest gate, set in dense shrubbery, lay in a direct line with the
+ledge, and as she slipped behind it the two men and the horse were
+wiped out of her vision.  With her usual quiet, long step she reached
+the gate, fitted the key, turned it and opened the gate.  She closed it
+behind her, considered a moment, then tossed the keys back among the
+thick, glossy rhododendrons.
+
+"Just as I dreamed," she muttered, "but where is the carriage?"
+
+She stood on the edge of a road she had never seen, a quarter of a mile
+from the great wrought-iron entrance that had closed behind her half a
+year ago, and looked vaguely about her, at the mercy of Fate.  And
+Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the
+hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny
+little electric run-about of Miss Winifred Jarvyse, a handsome young
+Diana, who had never seen the inside of the great walled estate next
+her father's private grounds, so that she waved her hand cordially,
+stopped out of pure good feeling for the absent-minded stranger in the
+beautiful coat, and asked if she could drop her at the station!
+
+"Why, yes, thank you," said Miss Mary, still vaguely.
+
+"It's going to rain and I've no cover on," said Winifred.  "It's a pity
+about your coat."
+
+"I can turn it," said Miss Mary, and standing up for a moment she
+slipped the sleeves of the ulster, shook herself slightly and sat down
+a totally different woman.  So that when (such was the perfection of
+the System) a quick call to the ticket office set the agent searching
+twenty minutes later for a tall woman in a light tan coat, alone,
+without luggage, he replied very truly that no such person had entered
+his station.  Only a friend of Miss Jarvyse had come to the 2:15, a
+lady in a dark plaid ulster with bag and umbrella, in Miss Jarvyse's
+car.
+
+"I hope you found your friends--er--doing well?" said Miss Jarvyse
+delicately.
+
+"Thank you, they were very well," said Miss Mary gravely.  And she took
+the 2:15 for New York.
+
+Nothing further than the immediate moment was in her mind.  To her
+thought, long confused and fleeting, the dreamlike character of this
+sudden change seemed natural and simple.  She had no plan of campaign,
+no route of escape, no future.  Her mind, relaxed from the quick
+decision that had cleared its mists in the moment of action, began to
+dull and settle and fall into its old rut of mechanical despair, when
+suddenly the voices of two women in the seat behind her grew louder and
+rose above the jar of the train.
+
+"And so she decided to get it over while he was in the hospital.  She
+thought the dye would have to wear off gradually, but there's a place
+on West Twenty-eighth Street--near Sixth Avenue, I think--where a
+French woman guarantees to remove any dye, perfectly harmlessly, in two
+hours.  So she had it done, and he was delighted.  My dear, she was
+fifty, and the grey hair really was more becoming to her.  Everybody
+thinks so.  But nobody knew her--I never saw such a change, at first.
+If you know anybody who wants it done, just send them there.  Some
+French name."
+
+And just as Miss Mary was drifting off to that dull world of grievances
+in which she dwelt habitually, a new idea, as strong and definite as
+that which took her through the gate caught and held her, and she wrote
+in a little leather book in her bag, "28th St. west, near Sixth."  Some
+primitive instinct of caution directed her to a street car in
+preference to a hansom or taxi-cab, and she found the French woman's
+small, musty establishment with an ease that surprised her.  Her coat,
+obviously "imported," the elegance of her bag and umbrella, the air of
+custom with which she submitted to others' ministrations, brought her
+quick service, and in less than the guaranteed two hours she left
+Madame, whose very considerable fee she paid with gloved hands, thus,
+through sheer inadvertence, concealing the one trace of her
+identity--her massive and beautiful rings.  For no one of Dr. Jarvyse's
+detectives could be expected to look at an iron-grey woman in black,
+when searching for a black-haired woman in blue plaid.  And none of
+them, not the great Jarvyse, nor her maid even, knew that Miss Mary had
+dyed her hair for ten years!
+
+As she stood by a little optician's, on one of the great avenues,
+later, gazing fascinated at her strange reflection in a large glass
+there, terrified at her daring, doubtful if her freedom could endure,
+two errand-girls, peering in with her in the imitative New York
+fashion, held her with an idle sentence.
+
+"Did you know Miss Mahoney with those glasses?  I nearly fell over when
+I seen her, honest!  She was awful cross--the boss himself cut her
+dead!"
+
+"Say, what do you think of that now?"
+
+"An' they're only window-glass, too!  She told one o' the fitters.  She
+can stare at the ladies better she says, when they try to beat her
+down."
+
+They moved on, but Miss Mary entered the shop.
+
+"Can I get a pair of eye-glasses made of window-glass?" she asked him
+simply.
+
+"Certainly, madam," and one would have supposed that leaders of fashion
+generally were wearing these articles, so swiftly and unsmilingly did
+he produce them and adjust them to her strong, dark eyes.
+
+"Wonderful how they change a person, though," he admitted.  "You
+wouldn't believe it."
+
+The price seemed very small to Miss Mary, whose last purchase in that
+line had been a tortoise-shell lorgnette for her sister-in-law.
+
+She had eaten very lightly at luncheon, for food was tasteless to her,
+of late, and she had been so followed, tended and directed in all the
+operations of life that she actually failed to recognise her sensations
+as those of hunger.  But her unwonted exertions, the strain on her
+flagging brain, the stimulus of this unprecedented day, all combined to
+flush her cheek feverishly and she felt strangely weak.  For the first
+time it flashed over her cleared faculties that she must go somewhere
+and at once.  New York was too dangerous for her; she must leave it.
+
+A very panic of terror seized her and she half expected to hear Dr.
+Jarvyse's soft voice at her shoulder.  She started from the shop like
+one pursued, and hurried foolishly on and on in an ecstasy of flight.
+The streets were now dark, and Miss Mary, who had begun life in New
+York with her own private hansom, felt singularly out of place in the
+jostling crowd.
+
+She stopped at the foot of an elevated railway station, and more
+because she was pushed up the steps by the hurrying mass of humanity
+that scurried like ants up and down, than for any other reason, climbed
+wearily up.  As she sat pressed against a dirty man with a bundle, a
+sudden inconsequent thought struck her, and she removed her gloves in a
+leisurely way, took off her rings, dropped them into a roll of
+chamois-skin in the large bag, added to them a diamond cross and
+pendant from the lace at her neck and put on her gloves again.  The
+dirty man stared at her.
+
+Then she lifted her eyes to a large sign above the car-windows and the
+sign read:
+
+_Avoid the biting March winds.  You will find quiet, an even
+temperature and perfect seclusion among the pines at restful Lakewood.
+Take the ferry at 23d St._
+
+So that when the guard announced Twenty-third Street, Miss Mary got up,
+went down the stairs, tumbled with surprising facility upon a
+cross-town car and made for the ferry.  And the dirty man went down the
+stairs with her.
+
+Fate put Miss Mary on just the right boat for a Lakewood Special, and
+hunger cleared her mind to the extent of throwing her card-case over
+the rail on the way across.  Her umbrella and ulster she had left
+behind on the elevated train, not being accustomed to carry such
+things, and they were found by a thrifty old lady in the
+second-hand-clothing line, who annexed them silently and forever.  So
+that when she arrived at the Lakewood Station and fell among the
+cabbies and hotel touts she was the perfect type of the no-longer-young
+spinster, unaccompanied, awkward and light of luggage, presumably light
+of purse.  The cabbies left her therefore, unchallenged, to a lad as
+shy and awkward as herself, who mumbled something about quiet,
+reasonable rooms, and received her yielded bag with a surprise as great
+as her own.
+
+Miss Mary was by now almost light-headed from hunger and excitement.
+At the slightest pressure she would have told her story to the first
+interested stranger, and thus ended her adventure, most surely.  But
+Fate led her to the door of one too full of trouble to heed Miss
+Mary's.  To Mrs. Meeker she was a lodger certainly, a boarder
+possibly--in any event, a source of income.  So long had she been
+waiting for Miss Mary that she fairly snatched her bag from her and
+pushed her up the faded, decent stairs into the faded, decent bedroom
+with the cracked china toilet-set.  Any one, _any one_ would have been
+welcome to Mrs. Meeker, and Miss Mary's quiet elegance and handsome
+travelling-bag were far beyond her hopes.
+
+"A real lady," she whispered to her nephew.  "Ask if she'd like a
+little something on a tray, Georgie.  I could poach that egg, and
+there's tea.  I won't say anything about a week in advance.  She looks
+tired to death."
+
+Miss Mary's famishing senses cried out loudly at sight of the meagre
+tray, and as the egg and tea passed her lips a strange, eager sensation
+was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad
+she was alive!  She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could
+have wished it doubled; the cheap tea filled her nostrils with a balmy
+odour; she was hungry.
+
+And hardly had the food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head
+dropped forward.  Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her
+and she dozed in her chair.  But some instinct forced her to her feet
+as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and
+pocketbook, she held herself awake.
+
+"I'd like to pay," she murmured, "and then I'll--I'll go to bed.  Will
+you send some one, please?"
+
+She meant some one to undress her, but Mrs. Meeker did not know this.
+
+"It's--it's twelve a week, with board," she said, her eyes lighting at
+the yellow bills in her lodger's hand, "and--oh, dear, yes, two weeks
+is ample, Miss--Miss----"
+
+"My cards are lost," said Miss Mary fretfully.  "I can't think where I
+left them.  The man or somebody will know.  Ask----"
+
+She started to say, "Ask the doctor," for her memory was swallowed,
+nearly, by sleepiness, and a curious woman would have had her secret in
+a twinkle.  But Mrs. Meeker was too thankful to be curious.
+
+"Certainly, Miss--Miss----"
+
+"Miss Mary," said the other, yawning, and the landlady repeated, "Yes,
+Miss Merry.  Can't I help you, you being so tired and all?"
+
+"And she stuck out her feet for her shoes, just like a baby," she
+confided to Georgie, later.  "She went off before I got her undressed,
+really; her folks ought to 've sent some one with her, worn out as she
+was!  You go 'round the first thing in the morning and tell the agent
+I've got a fine boarder, and more expected.  I feel real encouraged."
+
+And all that night and all the next day Miss Mary slept dreamlessly,
+for the first time in years without a drug to help her.
+
+It did not seem unusual that Mrs. Meeker should have unpacked her few
+things and laid them in the drawer of the battered bureau: some one
+always unpacked her things.  And when, strangely weak and relaxed, she
+lay for three days more and ate dutifully from the tray, dozing between
+whiles, nobody questioned her.
+
+On the fourth day she woke into a grey, despondent world again.  The
+old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible
+dumbness settling over her.  She had long ceased to fight it, now; she
+only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her.  But she never knew
+what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little
+woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands;
+she was dressed for a journey.
+
+"My brother's down with a stroke," she said abruptly, "Georgie's
+father, and wants to see me.  I'll have to nurse him, prob'ly, and I
+s'pose his sending means he's friendly again.  It may just be I won't
+need to come back, and I'm glad, of course, for I'm worth my keep to
+him any day, and he'd ought to have took Georgie long ago.  I'll soon
+know, and I'll write you, and what I wanted to ask was, would you be
+willin' to wait till I find out?  It might be only temp'ry, and then
+I'd be sorry to lose a boarder.  Will you stay till you hear, anyway?"
+
+Miss Mary nodded dumbly.  She could not speak and she was ashamed that
+she could not; _she had never been ashamed before_.
+
+"That's good," said Mrs. Meeker quickly, "and the lady next door'll
+give you meals.  I'll settle with her--Mrs. Palmer.  Her board's good,
+and I'll only charge you five for the room.  That makes a month you've
+paid for.  D'you see?"
+
+Again, Miss Mary nodded.
+
+"Then I'll get right off.  It's Philadelphia I'm going to, and I'll
+write you as soon's I know.  But I count on you to stay."
+
+"Yes, I'll stay."
+
+Miss Mary forced the words harshly and it seemed that they would tear
+her lips, so hard they came.  But they came, and they sufficed for Mrs.
+Meeker, who went out of her solitary lodger's life as quickly as she
+had come into it, for Miss Mary never saw her again.
+
+On that day she dressed herself slowly, and with a certain clumsiness,
+took her little shopping bag and bought, with economy and taste, a very
+fair outfit of simple clothing for the seventy dollars she had gained
+on the strength of the peddler of embroideries; she passed the
+peddler's very shop on her way.  Underwear, a black dress, rubber
+overshoes and a plain umbrella--nothing was forgotten.
+
+"When my money is all gone, I will begin to sell the jewelry," she
+thought, for she knew that she could live comfortably for the rest of
+her life on less than the value of the emeralds and diamonds.  She did
+her shopping in a public victoria and brought the parcels home in it:
+it was her only extravagance that day.
+
+As she got out at the door of the little faded house and paid the
+driver, it occurred to her that she had left it unlocked during her
+absence, and in her remorse over this and the bustle of going to the
+strange dining-room for luncheon, whither she was summoned by a
+slatternly waitress, she forgot completely that on this day she had
+sworn to stay alone in her room, to conceal from strangers her malady
+of melancholy dumbness.
+
+"But I'm _not_ that way--I'm _not_!" she whispered to herself in
+amazement, "why, I talked to the clerks all the morning!" And so she
+had, and none of the dozen at Mrs. Palmer's table that noon remarked
+anything further than that Miss Merry seemed a quiet, shy sort of
+person with a tendency to vagueness and little idea of passing the
+butter dish.
+
+She sorted and arranged her purchases all the afternoon; the little
+roll of chamois-skin she kept carefully in the wrist-bag which never
+left her arm.
+
+At dinner Mrs. Palmer took her aside and with the touch on her arm Miss
+Mary's blood turned to water.  "She knows about me!" she thought and
+nearly fell to the ground from weakness.
+
+"I'm sorry I startled you," said Mrs. Palmer, "Mrs. Meeker said you
+weren't any too strong, I remember.  I only wanted to say that I've
+sent three more roomers over to your house--she'll be only too glad, I
+know.  You don't mind, Miss Merry?"
+
+"No.  I don't mind," she answered, and her heart gave a great pump of
+relief.
+
+"It'll be more comfortable at night, too," said Mrs. Palmer.  "That
+makes the four rooms full, now, and I'll see that your room gets done
+up every day with the others.  I presume we'll hear from her soon."
+
+The next day she approached Miss Mary with an open letter in her hand.
+
+"Mrs. Meeker's to live with her brother, now, he's paralysed," she
+announced.  "She's sent me a check for the rent and you've paid
+twenty-four dollars, I see.  I'm going over to pack up her stuff and
+she'll sell me the rest reasonable enough.  I'm going to take her
+house, too.  There's a new roomer comes to-day--I think I'll put him in
+her old room.  Or if you," with a shrewd glance at Miss Mary, "wanted
+to economise at all.  I'd rent you hers for four dollars and give this
+gentleman yours.  And I'm usually paid in advance, so if you could make
+it convenient----"
+
+"I'll attend to it," said Miss Mary, "but I'll keep the room, I think.
+I don't like change."
+
+She went up to her room, and Dr. Jarvyse would have been amazed at the
+easy quickness of her gait.  She had it all planned, now--the diamonds
+should go first, and then she would buy some fruit and a plant for her
+room.  She liked her room very much; she did as she pleased in it and
+no one spied on her or suggested ways of passing the time.  Was it some
+faint memory of her room as a girl, before her brother made his great
+fortune, that found this dull, half-worn chamber so home-like and
+soothing?  Every afternoon she dusted it, as the chambermaid suggested
+most ladies expected to, and once she had turned the mattress and made
+the bed, when the girl felt ill.  It gave her a sense of competence and
+executive ability.
+
+Now she went to the little chamois skin roll, unpicked the tight knots
+carefully, opened it--and dropped on her knees.  The roll was empty.
+On the compartment where the diamond cross had fitted, stretched a
+soiled, streaked thumb mark; mechanically she sniffed it--it smelled of
+tar.  The dirty fellow with the bundle who had followed her down the
+elevated steps had smelled of tar, too, had Miss Mary remembered it.
+
+Well, it was over.  She never had a moment's doubt.  She had no means,
+she could not starve, nobody would keep her, and she must go back to
+Dr. Jarvyse.  She groaned in anguish as she looked about her dear, safe
+room and thought of the horrible luxury of that guarded prison, the
+birds and the flowers and cruel kindness of those strangers who knew
+every corner of her bureau, every word of her letters.  Still, it must
+be.  The Allens would never take her back, and after this, she would be
+watched as never before.  It must be.
+
+She met Mrs. Palmer on the threshold of what she had begun to call her
+home.  Mrs. Palmer looked worried and spoke sharply to the untidy
+cleaning-woman behind her.
+
+"Now, I do hope I can trust you," she said, "for I can't stay here to
+watch.  Three new gentlemen for meals, and I have no table for them!
+And this whole house to be cleaned!  And not a girl to be hired in the
+town!  I wish I had another room--I could rent it this afternoon."
+
+"You can have mine," said Miss Mary quietly.  "I have no money and I
+must go."
+
+Mrs. Palmer looked shrewdly at her.
+
+"What made you think you had, before?" she said.
+
+"I had some valuable jewelry--I expected to sell it.  It must have been
+stolen before I got here.  I have nothing here to pay with, but I can
+send it back to you from New York."
+
+"Folks rich?" asked Mrs. Palmer.
+
+Miss Mary nodded carelessly.  That people should be rich was nothing to
+her, and the practiced landlady saw this in a twinkling: no
+protestations could have proved so much.
+
+"But you don't get on well, I s'pose," she suggested.
+
+"No.  We don't get on well," Miss Mary repeated dully.
+
+"I guess it's often so," said the other.  Her placid acceptance of
+these facts was very comforting to Miss Mary.  She did not realise how
+different she herself was from the vague, scared woman of a week ago;
+nor how her quiet, well-dressed taciturnity impressed Mrs. Palmer.
+
+"You find this agrees with you here, don't you?" the landlady asked,
+tapping her teeth with a key, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, yes, I like it here.  I would have liked to stay."
+
+"Well, Miss Merry, how'd you like to stay and help me?" said the
+landlady.  "To tell the truth, I've bit off more than I can chew, as
+they say.  I never had such a run of boarders, and it's all the girl
+can do to look after the other house.  What keeps my people is the
+cooking, you see, and that I do mostly myself.  I'm not fit to talk to
+the ladies and gentlemen, with my hair all stringy, and smelling of
+cooking.  I know it well enough.  I had some thought of asking Mrs.
+Meeker to go in with me and look after this house and take the head of
+the table, and keep the books.  But you could do it, if you wanted, and
+you'd look more--more--not that Mrs. Meeker wasn't a lady, of course,
+but--well, some people look the part better than others."
+
+Miss Mary's brain whirled.  The head of the table!  The books!  It was
+impossible.  Why, the woman didn't realise that she was talking to
+a--a--Patient, then!  (They were never called anything but Patients at
+Dr. Jarvyse's.)
+
+"I--I'm afraid I haven't the experience," she began tremulously.
+"I--sometimes my head--I can't always talk to people----"
+
+"Oh, you talk enough," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, kindly.  "That's just
+what it is: some talk too much.  Mr. Swartout (that's the literary
+gentleman in brown--the one with the grey moustache) said you were so
+quiet and dignified.  You know you sat at the end, today, for
+breakfast, and he said to me it would be pleasant if you kept that
+place.  That's what put it into my head, really.  And I guess you've
+had experience enough.  Miss Jenny, that went with you through the
+store when you bought those clothes (I know her, you see) said she'd
+never seen seventy dollars used with more judgment nor made to go
+further.  I noticed what she said."  She nodded shrewdly, as one who
+knew the world.
+
+"Well, I don't want to urge, but will you or won't you?  I'd give board
+and lodging and, say, twenty-five a month, till I could do better.  The
+Palmer House has just got to the point where there'll have to be a
+change, or it'll get second-class."
+
+"Very well, I will try," said Miss Mary huskily, and in a moment she
+was alone, for Mrs. Palmer was half across the side-yard.
+
+"Just boss that woman, then, and see if she can get the house clean by
+evening," she called over her shoulder.  "I leave her to you, Miss
+Merry, and it's a weight off me, I can tell you!"
+
+If Miss Mary had paused to think, she would have collapsed into tears
+and sent for the doctor, but she could not stop, for the cleaning-woman
+addressed her briskly.
+
+"I suppose everything better come right out and get a good beating?"
+she said, shouldering her mop; and Miss Mary controlled her quivering
+lips, pressed her hands to her head, which must not, _could not_ fail
+her now, and agreed.
+
+Late in the afternoon Mrs. Palmer dashed over, her hair flying, her
+dress untidy.
+
+"Well, how'd you get along?" she began, but paused in the doorway of
+the fresh, aired house, taking in, at one eagle glance, the white
+curtains behind shining panes, the polished woodwork, the re-arranged
+furniture.
+
+"I guess that cleaning-woman met her match," she announced dryly.  "You
+must be nearly dead, Miss Merry!  And all ready for dinner, too!  I've
+had a clean table cloth put on, and what do you think that Delia said?
+'I'll just rub out me apron an' press it off,' she said, 'for if
+_she's_ to head the table, I can see she'll be particular!'"
+
+Nothing could have kept Miss Mary up but the fact that her own room was
+yet uncleaned.  The lust of soap and water had entered into her, and
+she ate and answered and passed the butter dish like one in a dream,
+looking forward with the last of her strength to sleeping in an
+immaculate chamber.  And at half-past one in the morning, she did so.
+The warm bath in the painted tin tub was a luxury she had never
+imagined; as the sheets received her tired body, aching in every joint,
+she tasted for the one moment before sleep blotted out consciousness
+the ecstasy of earned rest after steady, worried toil, and it was very
+sweet.  Privilege of the clumsiest hod-carrier, it was utterly new to
+Miss Mary, and she in her innocence, thought it due to delight at the
+prospect of board and lodging and, say, twenty-five dollars a month!
+
+She did not know that she had hummed, unconsciously, during the
+afternoon, a song of her early girlhood; nor that the blood, long
+stagnant, that had raced through every vein as she stooped and beat and
+lifted and cleansed, was driving the crawling vapours from that
+mysterious grey tissue in her skull that had so long plagued and
+confused her.
+
+Nor did she know that the flowers on the table, the fresh chintz covers
+for the worn lodging-house furniture, so recklessly provided by her,
+the quick neatness of an apotheosised Delia and the gentle, reserved
+welcome of the new housekeeper herself, were lifting the commonplace
+boarding-house to a higher and still higher level.  She only knew that
+she worked harder and harder and never wept nor shuddered nor looked
+out of black apathy into a cruel tantalizing world, whose inhabitants
+had evil thoughts of her and wished and worked her ill.
+
+"It's just as I always say," Mrs. Palmer observed, one afternoon in
+May, as, resting in frank gingham and enveloping apron, she permitted
+herself the luxury of a cup of tea in Miss Mary's own room.  "What's
+bred in the bones comes out in the blood.  I had a gift for cooking
+since I was ten, and there's little I'll thank a French chef to tell
+me, Miss Merry.  But I can't impress the boarders.  I never could.  And
+I can't get the work out of servant-girls without screaming at
+'em--never could.  And look at you!  Every man of 'em--that we
+wanted--coming up two dollars a week, like gentlemen.  And all for the
+privilege of having this house bachelor.  I thought they would.  And
+every man Jack of 'em booked for November first again.  I tell you
+what, Miss Merry, we'll paint both houses this fall, and I wouldn't
+wonder, what with this spring being so backward and the season so long,
+if we could paint and paper inside, right through, would you?"
+
+"No," said the housekeeper, rocking gently, luxuriating in the
+half-hour rest after a hard day on her feet with one servant gone.
+"No, I wouldn't.  That would be nice.  I have something saved.  You can
+take that."
+
+"Look at you!" cried Mrs. Palmer.  "Saving on thirty a month!  We'll
+pretty near go halves, Miss Merry, from next November.  What's bred in
+the bone, as I said--you were born for the business!"
+
+And the sister of Hiram Z. Allen, late Captain of Finance, blushed with
+pleasure.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was in March of the next year, as she sat at her neat desk in the
+little room they had made into an office when they created a sun
+parlour out of the side verandah, that Delia, responsible head of three
+maids now, ushered a gentleman in to her.
+
+"The doctor, Miss Merry, that came yesterday about the rooms for his
+patient in the cottage," said Delia softly.  "I can't seem to get the
+name, ma'am."
+
+"Very well," said Miss Mary and rose, plumper by eight or ten pounds
+than she had been, dignified in black broadcloth, only enough of
+reserve and weighing of her words about her to mark her off slightly
+from the most of her sex and business.
+
+"Miss Merry?  I am Dr. Stanchon, I have been recommended most
+strongly----"
+
+She swayed before him, then sank into her chair, grasping the arms.  He
+looked courteously alarmed, stared, stared again, then snatched her
+hand.
+
+"It's not--it can't be--why, Miss Mary!"  She gasped and trembled.  The
+year dropped off from her like a loosened cloak.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Stanchon, don't, _don't_ tell him!" she moaned.
+
+"Him? him?" he repeated.  "Why, Miss Mary, were you here all the time?
+And your hair--you were ill?"
+
+"It used to be coloured--you never knew," she murmured.  "I mean
+Dr.--Dr. Jarvyse."
+
+"But you are the one Swartout described to me--the one he's in love
+with?  Miss Mary, it was wrong of you--I looked for months.  It was
+cruel.  And when they found the emeralds and the cross----"
+
+"Did they find them?"
+
+"Why, certainly--the stones were all listed, you know.  Didn't you read
+it in the papers?"
+
+"I never see them," she said quietly.  She had gathered herself
+together for what must be the struggle of her life.
+
+"Will you tell him?  I can't go back.  I'd die first!" she cried.
+
+"But why should you go back?" he asked in amazement.  "Surely you'll
+let them know?  They gave up hope long ago.  You needn't go back to
+them, if you're happy here, of course, and indeed, I wouldn't, Miss
+Mary----"
+
+"I don't mean go back _there_," she interrupted gently, "I mean to
+the--to--Dr.----"
+
+He stared.
+
+"You know, of course, what's the matter," she said quietly, "but nobody
+here does.  They think I'm--I'm like anybody else.  I don't mind any
+more, since I've been so busy.  I haven't had time to worry over it.
+But still, I know it.--And so I told Mr. Swartout it would be
+impossible.  It wouldn't be right."
+
+Stanchon seized both of her hands.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Miss Mary, what do you think's the matter with
+you?" he cried, his voice breaking in spite of himself.
+
+"Isn't it so?" she queried wistfully.  "Do you really mean it?--But who
+cured me, then?"
+
+"If you are the wonderful person I've been hearing about all this time
+from Swartout," Stanchon said, trying to speak lightly, his grey eyes
+firm on her anxious brown ones, "I should say that working for your
+living did it, Miss Mary!"
+
+And it may be he was right: as a diagnostician he has been widely
+commended.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+It all came over me, as you might say, when I began to tell the new
+housemaid about the work.  Not that I hadn't known before, of course,
+what a queer sort of life was led in that house; it was hard enough the
+first months, goodness knows.  But then, a body can get used to
+anything.  And there was no harm in it--I'll swear that to my dying
+day!  Although a lie's a lie, any way you put it, and if all I've
+told--but I'll let you judge for yourself.
+
+As I say, it was when I began to break Margaret in, that it all came
+over me, and I looked about me, in a way of speaking, for how I should
+put it to her.  She'd been house-parlor-maid in a big establishment in
+the country and knew what was expected of her well enough, and I saw
+from the first she'd fit in nicely with us; a steady, quiet girl, like
+the best of the Scotch, looking to save her wages, and get to be
+housekeeper herself, some day, perhaps.
+
+But when Hodges brought the tray with the porringers on it and the
+silver mug, for me to see, and said, "I suppose this young lady'll take
+these up, Miss Umbleby?" and when Margaret looked surprised and said,
+"I didn't know there were children in the family--am I supposed to wait
+on them, too?"--then, as I say, it all came over me, and for the first
+time in five years I really saw where I stood, like.
+
+I stared at Hodges and then at the girl, and the tray nearly went down
+amongst us.
+
+"Do you mean to say you haven't told her, Sarah?" says Hodges (and that
+was the first time that ever he called me by my given name).
+
+"She's told me nothing," Margaret answers rather short, "and if it's
+invalid children or feeble-minded, I take it most unkind, Miss Umbleby,
+for I've never cared for that sort of thing, and could have had my
+twenty-five dollars a month this long time, if I'd wanted to go out as
+nurse."
+
+"Take the tray up this time, yourself, Mr. Hodges, please," I said,
+"and I'll have a little talk with Margaret," and I sat down and
+smoothed my black silk skirt (I always wore black silk of an afternoon)
+nervously enough, I'll be bound.
+
+The five years rolled away like yesterday--as they do now--as they do
+now----
+
+I saw myself, in my mind's eye, new to the place, and inclined to feel
+strange, as I always did when I made a change, though I was twenty-five
+and no chicken, but rather more settled than most, having had my
+troubles early and got over them.  I'd just left my place--chambermaid
+and seamstress--in a big city house, and though it was September, I was
+looking out for the country, for I was mortal tired of the noise and
+late hours and excitement that I saw ahead of me.  It was parties and
+balls every night and me sitting up to undress the young ladies, for
+they kept no maid, like so many rich Americans, and yet some one must
+do for them.  There was no housekeeper either, and the mistress was not
+very strong and we had to use our own responsibility more than I
+liked--for I wasn't paid for that, do you see, and that's what they
+forget in this country.
+
+"I think I've got you suited at last, Sarah," the head of the office
+had said to me, "a nice, quiet place in the country, good pay and light
+work, but everything as it should be, you understand.  Four in help
+besides the housekeeper and only one in family.  Church within a mile
+and every other Sunday for yourself."
+
+That was just what I wanted, and I packed my box thankfully and left
+New York for good, I hoped, and I got my wish, for I've never seen the
+inside of it since.
+
+A middle-aged coachman in good, quiet country livery, met me at the
+little station, and though he was a still-mouthed fellow and rather
+reserved, I made out quite a little idea of the place on the way.  The
+mistress, Mrs. Childress, was a young widow, deep in her mourning, so
+there was no company.  The housekeeper was her old nurse, who had
+brought her up.  John, who drove me, was coachman-gardener, and the
+cook was his wife--both Catholics.  Everything went on very quiet and
+regular and it was hoped that the new upstairs maid wouldn't be one for
+excitement and gaiety.  The inside man had been valet to Mr. Childress
+and was much trusted and liked by the family.  I could see that old
+John was a bit jealous in that direction.
+
+We drove in through a black iron gate with cut stone posts and old
+black iron lanterns on top, and the moment we were inside the gates I
+began to take a fancy to the place.  It wasn't kept up like the places
+at home, but it was neat enough to show that things were taken thought
+for, and the beds of asters and dahlias and marigolds as we got near
+the house seemed so home-like and bright to me, I could have cried for
+comfort.  Childerstone was the name of the place; it was carved on a
+big boulder by the side of the entrance, and just as we drove up to the
+door John stopped to pick some dahlias for the house (being only me in
+the wagon) and I took my first good look at my home for twenty years
+afterward.
+
+There was something about it that went to my heart.  It was built of
+grey cut stone in good-sized blocks, square, with two windows each side
+the hall door.  To some it might have seemed cold-looking, but not to
+me, for one side was all over ivy, and the thickness of the walls and
+the deep sills looked solid and comfortable after those nasty
+brown-stone things all glued to each other in the city.  It looked old
+and respectable and settled, like, and the sun, just at going down,
+struck the windows like fire and the clean panes shone.  There was that
+yellow light over everything and that stillness, with now and then a
+leaf or so dropping quietly down, that makes the fall of the year so
+pleasant, to my mind.
+
+The house stood in beeches and the trunks of them were grey like the
+house and the leaves all light lemon-coloured, like the sky, and that's
+the way I always think of Childerstone--grey and yellow and clean and
+still.  Just a few rooks (you call them crows here), went over the
+house, and except for their cry as they flew, there wasn't a sound
+about the place.  I can see how others might have found it sad, but it
+never seemed so to me.
+
+John set me down at the servants' entrance and there, before ever I'd
+got properly into the hall, the strangeness began.  The cook in her
+check apron was kneeling on the floor in front of the big French range
+with the tears streaming down her face, working over her rosary beads
+and gabbling to drive you crazy.  Over her stood a youngish but
+severe-appearing man in a white linen coat like a ship's steward,
+trying to get her up.
+
+"Come, Katey," he was saying, "come, woman, up with you and
+help--she'll do no harm, the poor soul!  Look after her, now, and I'll
+send for the doctor and see to madam--it's only a fit, most like!"
+
+Then he saw me and ran forward to give a hand to my box.
+
+"You're the chambermaid, Miss, I'm sure," he said.  "I'm sorry to say
+you'll find us a bit upset.  The housekeeper's down with a stroke of
+some sort and the madam's none too strong herself.  Are you much of a
+hand to look after the sick?"
+
+"I'm not so clumsy as some," I said.  "Let me see her," and so we left
+the cook to her prayers and he carried my box to my room.
+
+I got into a print dress and apron and went to the housekeeper's room.
+She was an elderly person and it looked to me as if she was in her last
+sickness.  She didn't know any one and so I was as good as another, and
+I had her tidy and comfortable in bed by the time the doctor came.  He
+said she would need watching through the night and left some medicine,
+but I could see he had little hope for her.  I made up a bed in the
+room and all that night she chattered and muttered and took me for
+different ones, according as her fever went and came.  Towards morning
+she got quiet, and as I thought, sensible again.
+
+"Are you a nurse?" she says to me.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Shipman, be still and rest," I told her, to soothe her.
+
+"I'm glad the children are sent away," she went on, after a bit.
+"'Twould break their mother's heart if they got the fever.  Are the
+toys packed?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I answered, "all packed and sent."
+
+"Be sure there's enough frocks for Master Robertson," she begged me.
+"He's so hard on them and his aunties are so particular.  And my baby
+must have her woolly rabbit at night or her darling heart will be just
+broken!"
+
+"The rabbit is packed," I said, "and I saw to the frocks myself."
+
+There's but one way with the sick when they're like that, and that's to
+humour them, you see.  So she slept and I got a little nap for myself.
+I was glad the children were away by next morning, for she was worse,
+the cook lost her head, and managed to break the range so that the
+water-back leaked and John and Hodges were mopping and mending all day.
+The madam herself had a bad turn and the doctor (a New York doctor for
+madam, you may be sure!) brought out a handsome, dark woman, the
+trained hospital nurse, with him.  Madam wasn't allowed to know how bad
+her old nurse was.
+
+So it turned out that I'd been a week in the house without ever seeing
+my mistress.  The nurse and I would meet on the stairs and chat a
+little, evenings, and once I took a turn in the grounds with her.  She
+was a sensible sort of girl, not a bit above herself, as our English
+nursing-sisters are, sometimes, but very businesslike, as they say, and
+a good, brisk way with her.  She saw a lot more than she spoke of, Miss
+Jessop did, I'll warrant!
+
+"It's a good thing the children are sent away," I said.  "They always
+add to the bother when there's sickness."
+
+"Why, are there children?" says she.  "Oh, yes, a boy and a girl," I
+answered, "poor old Mrs. Shipman is forever talking about them.  She
+thinks she's their nurse, it seems, as she was their mother's."
+
+"I wish they were here, then," says she, "for I don't like the looks of
+my patient at all.  She doesn't speak seven words a day, and there's
+really little or nothing the matter with her, that I can see.  She's
+nervous and she's low and she wants cheering, that's all.  I wonder the
+doctor doesn't see it."
+
+That night, after both patients were settled, she came up to my room
+and took a glance at the old lady, who was going fast.
+
+"Mrs. Childress will soon have to know about this," she said and then,
+suddenly, "Are you sure about the children, Sarah?"
+
+"Sure about them?" I repeated after her.  "In what way, Miss Jessop?"
+
+"That there are any," says she.
+
+"Why, of course," I answered, "Mrs. Shipman talks of nothing else.
+They're with their aunty, in New Jersey, somewhere.  It's a good thing
+there are some, for from what she says when she's rambling, the house
+and all the property would go out of the family otherwise.  It's been
+five generations in the Childress family, but the nearest now is a
+cousin who married a Jew, and the family hate her for it.  But Master
+Robertson makes it all safe, Mrs. Shipman says."
+
+"That's a queer thing," said she.  "I took in a dear little picture of
+the boy and girl this afternoon, to cheer her up a bit, and told her to
+try to think they were the real ones, who'd soon be with her, for that
+matter, and so happy to see their dear mamma, and she went white as a
+sheet and fainted in my arms.  Of course, I didn't refer to it again.
+She's quiet now, holding the picture, but I feared they were dead and
+you hadn't known."
+
+"Oh, no," said I.  "I'm sure not," and then I remembered that I'd been
+told there was but one in family.  However, that's often said when
+there's a nurse to take care of small children (though it's not quite
+fair, perhaps), and I was certain of the children, anyway, for there
+were toys all about Mrs. Shipman's room and some seed-cookies and
+"animal-crackers," as they call those odd little biscuits, in a tin on
+her mantel.
+
+However, we were soon to learn something that made me, at least, all
+the more curious.  The doctor came that morning and told Miss Jessop
+that her services would be no longer required, after he had seen her
+patient.
+
+"Mrs. Childress is perfectly recovered," he said, "and she has
+unfortunately conceived a grudge against you, my dear girl.  I need
+you, anyway, in town.  Poor old Shipman can't last the night now, and I
+want all that business disposed of very quietly.  I have decided not to
+tell Mrs. Childress until it is all over and the funeral done with.
+She is in a very morbid state, and as I knew her husband well I have
+taken this step on my own responsibility.  Hodges seems perfectly able
+to run things, and to tell the truth, it would do your mistress far
+more good to attend to that herself," he said, turning to me.
+
+"It would be a good thing for the poor woman to have some one about
+her, Dr. Stanchon," the nurse put in quietly.  "If there were children
+in the house, now----"
+
+"Children!" he cried, pulling himself up and staring at her.  "Did you
+speak to her about them?  Then that accounts for it!  I should have
+warned you."
+
+"Then they did die?" she asked him.  "That's what I thought."
+
+"I'm afraid not," he said, shaking his head with a queer sort of sad
+little smile.  "I forgot you were strange here.  Why, Miss Jessop,
+didn't you know that----"
+
+"Excuse me, sir, but there's no sign of your mare about--did you tie
+her?" says Hodges, coming in in a great hurry, and the doctor swore and
+ran off and I never heard the end of the sentence.
+
+Well, I'm running on too long with these little odds and ends, as I'm
+sure Margaret felt when I started telling her all about it.  The truth
+is I dreaded then, just as I dread now, to get at the real story and
+look our conduct straight in the face.  But I'll get on more quickly
+now.
+
+Old Mrs. Shipman died very quiet in her sleep and madam wasn't told,
+which I didn't half like.  The doctor was called out of those parts to
+attend on his father, very suddenly, and Hodges managed the funeral and
+all.  It was plain to see he was a very trusty, silent fellow, devoted
+to the family.  I took as much off him as I could, and I was dusting
+the drawing-room the day of the funeral, when I happened to pick up a
+photograph in a silver frame of the same little fellow in the picture
+the nurse had shown me--a dear little boy in short kilts.
+
+"That's Master Robertson, isn't it?" I said, very carelessly, not
+looking at him--I will own I was curious.  He gave a start.
+
+"Yes--yes, certainly, that's Master Robertson--if you choose to put it
+that way," he said, and I saw him put his hand up to his eyes and his
+mouth twitched and he left the room.
+
+I didn't question him again, naturally; he was a hard man to cross and
+very haughty, was William Hodges, and no one in the house but respected
+him.
+
+That day I saw Mrs. Childress for the first time.  She was a sweet,
+pretty thing, about my own age, but younger looking, fair, with grey
+eyes.  She was in heavy crepe and her face all fallen and saddened
+like, with grief and hopelessness--I felt for her from the moment I saw
+her.  And all the more that I'd made up my mind what her trouble was: I
+thought that the children were idiots, maybe, or feeble-minded, anyhow,
+and so the property would go to the Jew in the end and that his family
+were hating her for it!  Folly, of course, but women will have fancies,
+and that seemed to fit in with all I'd heard.
+
+She'd been told that Shipman was away with some light, infectious
+fever, and she took it very mildly, and said there was no need to get
+any one in her place, at present.
+
+"Hodges will attend to everything," she said, in her pretty, tired way;
+"not that there's much to do--for one poor woman."
+
+"Things may mend, ma'am, and you'll feel more like having some friends
+about you, most likely, later on," I said, to cheer her a bit.
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"No, no, Sarah--if I can't have my own about me, I'll have no others,"
+she said, and I thought I saw what she meant and said no more.
+
+That night the doctor and the legal gentleman that looked after the
+family affairs were with us and my mistress kept them for dinner.  I
+helped Hodges with the serving and was in the butler's pantry after
+Mrs. Childress had left them with their coffee and cigars, and as
+Hodges had left the door ajar I couldn't help catching a bit of the
+talk now and then.
+
+"The worst of it is this trouble about the children," said the doctor.
+"She will grieve herself into a decline, I'm afraid."
+
+"I suppose there's no hope?" said the other gentleman.
+
+"No hope?" the doctor burst out.  "Why, man, Robertson's been dead six
+months!"
+
+"To be sure--I'd forgotten it was so long.  Well, well, it's too bad,
+too bad," and Hodges came back and closed the door.
+
+I must say I was thoroughly put out with the doctor.  Why should he
+have told me a lie?  And it was mostly from that that I deliberately
+disobeyed him that night, for I knew from the way he had spoken to the
+nurse that he didn't wish the children mentioned.  But I couldn't help
+it, for when I came to her room to see if I could help her, she was
+sitting in her black bedroom gown with her long hair in two braids,
+crying over the children's picture.  "Hush, hush, ma'am," I said,
+kneeling by her and soothing her head, "if they were here, you may be
+sure they wouldn't wish it."
+
+"Who?  Who?" she answers me, quite wild, but not angry at all.  I saw
+this and spoke it out boldly, for it was plain that she liked me.
+
+"Your children, ma'am," I said, softly but very firm, "and you should
+control yourself and be cheerful and act as if they _were_ here--as if
+it had pleased God to let you have them and not _Himself_!"
+
+Such a look as she gave me!  But soon she seemed to melt, like, and put
+out her arm over my shoulders.
+
+"What a beautiful way to put it, Sarah!" says she, in a dreamy kind of
+way.  "Do you really think God has them--somewhere?"
+
+"Why, of course, ma'am," said I, shocked in good earnest.  "Who else?"
+
+"Then you think I might love them, just as if--just as if----" here she
+began to sob.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Childress," I said, "where is your belief?  That's all
+that's left to mothers.  I know, for I've lost two, and their father to
+blame for it, which you need never say," I told her.
+
+She patted my shoulder very kindly.  "But oh, Sarah, if only they
+_were_ here!" she cried, "really, really here!"
+
+"I know, I know," I said, "it's very hard.  But try to think it,
+ma'am--it helped me for weeks.  Think they're in the room next you,
+here, and you'll sleep better for it."
+
+"Shall I?" she whispered, gripping my hand hard.  "I believe I
+would--how well you understand me, Sarah!  And will you help me to
+believe it?"
+
+I saw she was feverish and I knew what it means to get one good
+refreshing night without crying, and so I said, "Of course I will,
+ma'am; see, I'll open the door into the next room and you can fancy
+them in their cribs, and I'll sleep in there as if it was to look after
+them, like."
+
+Well, she was naught but a child herself, the poor dear, and she let me
+get her into bed like a lamb and put her cheek into her hand and went
+off like a baby.  It almost scared me, to see how easy she was to
+manage, if one did but get hold of the right way.  She looked brighter
+in the morning and as Hodges had told me that Shipman used to do for
+her, I went in and dressed her--not that I was ever a lady's maid, mind
+you, but I've always been one to turn my hand easily to anything I had
+a mind to, and I was growing very fond of my poor lady--and then, I was
+a little proud, I'll own, of being able to do more for her than her own
+medical man, who couldn't trust a sensible woman with the truth!
+
+She clung to me all the morning, and after my work was done, I
+persuaded her to come out for the air.  The doctor had ordered it long
+ago, but she was obstinate, and would scarcely go at all.  That day,
+however, she took a good stroll with me and it brought a bit of colour
+into her cheeks.  Just as we turned toward the house she sat down on a
+big rock to rest herself, and I saw her lip quiver and her eyes begin
+to fill.  I followed her look and there was a child's swing, hung from
+two ropes to a low bough.  It must have been rotted with the rains, for
+it looked very old and the board seat was cracked and worn.  All
+around--it hung in a sort of little glade--were small piles of stones
+and bits of oddments that only children get together, like the little
+magpies they are.
+
+There's no use to expect any one but a mother or one who's had the
+constant care of little ones to understand the tears that come to your
+eyes at a sight like that.  What they leave behind is worse than what
+they take with them; their curls and their fat legs and the kisses they
+gave you are all shut into the grave, but what they used to play with
+stays there and mourns them with you.
+
+I saw a wild look come into her eyes, and I determined to quiet her at
+any cost.
+
+"There, there, ma'am," I said quickly, "'tis only their playthings.
+Supposing they were there, now, and enjoying them!  You go in and take
+your nap, as the doctor ordered, and leave me behind..."
+
+She saw what I meant in a twinkling and the colour jumped into her face
+again.  She turned and hurried in and just as she went out of sight she
+looked over her shoulder, timid like, and waved her hand--only a bit of
+a wave, but I saw it.
+
+Under a big stone in front of me, for that part of the grounds was left
+wild, like a little grove, I saw a rusty tin biscuit box, and as I
+opened it, curiously, to pass the time, I found it full of little tin
+platters and cups.  Hardly thinking what I did, I arranged them as if
+laid out for tea, on a flat stone, and left them there.  When I went to
+awaken her for lunch, I started, for some more of those platters were
+on the table by her bed and a white woolly rabbit and a picture book!
+She blushed, but I took no notice, and after her luncheon I spied her
+going quickly back to the little grove.
+
+"Madam's taking a turn for the better, surely," Hodges said to me that
+afternoon.  "She's eating like a Christian now.  What have you done to
+her, Miss Umbleby?"  (I went as "Miss" for it's much easier to get a
+place so.)
+
+"Mr. Hodges," I said, facing him squarely, "the doctors don't know
+everything.  You know as well as I that it's out of nature not to
+mention children, where they're missed every hour of the day and every
+day of the month.  It's easing the heart that's wanted--not smothering
+it."
+
+"What d'you mean?" he says, staring at me.
+
+"I mean toys and such like," I answered him, very firm, "and talk of
+them that's not here to use them, and even pretending that they are, if
+that will bring peace of mind, Mr. Hodges."
+
+He rubbed his clean shaven chin with his hand.
+
+"Well, well!" he said at last.  "Well, well, well!  You're a good girl,
+Miss Umbleby, and a kind one, that's certain.  I never thought o' such
+a thing.  Maybe it's all right, though.  But who could understand a
+woman, anyway?"
+
+"That's not much to understand," said I, shortly, and left him staring
+at me.
+
+She came in late in the afternoon with the rabbit under her arm and
+there was Mr. Hodges in the drawing-room laying out the tea--we always
+had everything done as if the master was there, and guests, for the
+matter of that; she insisted on it.  He knew his place as well as any
+man, but his eye fell on the rabbit and he looked very queer and nearly
+dropped a cup.  She saw it and began to tremble and go white, and it
+came over me then that now or never was the time to clinch matters or
+she'd nearly die from shame and I couldn't soothe her any more.
+
+"Perhaps Hodges had better go out and bring in the rest of the toys,
+ma'am," I says, very careless, not looking at her.  "It's coming on for
+rain.  And he can take an umbrella ... shall he?"
+
+She stiffened up and gave a sort of nod to him.
+
+"Yes, Hodges, go," she said, half in a whisper, and he bit his lip, and
+swallowed hard and said, "Very good, madam," and went.
+
+Well, after that, you can see how it would be, can't you?  One thing
+led to another, and one time when she was not well for a few days and
+rather low, I actually got the two little cribs down from the garret
+and ran up some white draperies for them.  She'd hardly let me leave
+her, and indeed there was not so much work that I couldn't manage very
+well.  She gave all her orders through me and I was well pleased to do
+for her and let Mr. Hodges manage things, which he did better than poor
+old Shipman, I'll be bound.  By the time we told her about Shipman's
+death, she took it very easy--indeed, I think, she'd have minded
+nothing by that time, she had grown so calm and almost healthy.
+
+Mr. Hodges would never catch my eye and I never talked private any more
+with him, but that was the only sign he didn't approve, and he never
+spoke for about a month, but joined in with me by little and little and
+never said a word but to shrug his shoulders when I ordered up a tray
+with porringers on it for the nursery (she had a bad cold and got
+restless and grieving).  I left her in the nursery with the tray and
+went out to him, for I saw he wished to speak to me at last.
+
+"Dr. Stanchon would think well of this, if he was here.  Is that your
+idea, Miss Umbleby?" he said to me, very dry.  (The doctor had never
+come back, but gone to be head of a big asylum out in the west.)
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Hodges," I answered.  "I think any doctor
+couldn't but be glad to see her gaining every day, and when she feels
+up to it and guests begin to come again, she'll get willing to see them
+and forget the loss of the poor little things."
+
+"The loss of _what_?" says he, frowning at me.
+
+"Why, the children," I answered.
+
+"What children?"
+
+"Master Robertson, of course, and Miss Winifred," I said, quite vexed
+with his obstinacy.  (I had asked her once if the baby was named after
+her and she nodded and went away quickly.)
+
+"See here, my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my
+benefit.  _I'm_ not going into a decline, you know.  I know as well as
+you do that she couldn't lose what she never had!"
+
+"Never had!" I gasped.  "She never had any children?"
+
+"Of course not," he said, steadying me, for my knees got weak all of a
+sudden.  "That's what's made all the trouble--that's what's so
+unfortunate!  D'you mean to say you didn't know?"
+
+I sank right down on the stairs.  "But the pictures!" I burst out.
+
+"If you mean that picture of Mr. Robertson Childress when he was a
+little lad and the other one of him and his sister that died when a
+baby, and chose to fancy they was _hers_," says he, pointing upstairs,
+"it's no fault of mine, Miss Umbleby."
+
+And no more it was.  What with poor old Shipman's ramblings and the
+doctor's words that I had twisted into what they never meant, I had got
+myself into a fine pickle.
+
+"But what shall I do, Mr. Hodges?" I said, stupid-like, with the
+surprise and the shock of it.  "It'd kill her, if I stopped now."
+
+"That's for you to decide," said he, in his reserved, cold way, "I have
+my silver to do."
+
+Well, I did decide.  I lay awake all night at it, and maybe I did
+wrong, but I hadn't the heart to see the red go out of her cheek and
+the little shy smile off her pretty mouth.  It hurt no one, and the
+mischief was done, anyway--there'd be no heir to Childerstone, now.
+For five generations it had been the same--a son and a daughter to
+every pair, and the old place about as dear to each son, as I made out,
+as ever his wife or child could be.  General Washington had stopped the
+night there, and some great French general that helped the Americans
+had come there for making plans to attack the British, and Colonel
+Robertson Childress that then was had helped him.  They had plenty of
+English kin and some in the Southern States, but no friends near them,
+on account of my mistress's husband having to live in Switzerland for
+his health and his father dying young (as he did) so that his mother
+couldn't bear the old place.  But as soon as Mr. Robertson was told he
+was cured and could live where he liked, he made for Childerstone and
+brought his bride there--a stranger from an American family in
+Switzerland--and lived but three months.  If anybody was ever alone, it
+was that poor lady, I'm sure.  There was no big house like theirs
+anywhere about--no county families, as you might say--and those that
+had called from the village she wouldn't see, in her mourning.  And yet
+out of that house she would not go, because he had loved it so; it was
+pitiful.
+
+There's no good argle-bargling over it, as my mother used to say, I'd
+do the same again!  For I began it with the best of motives, and as
+innocent as a babe, myself, of the real truth, you see.
+
+I can shut my eyes, now, and it all comes back to me as it was in the
+old garden, of autumn afternoons--I always think of Childerstone in the
+autumn, somehow.  There was an old box hedge there, trimmed into balls
+and squares, and beds laid out in patterns, with asters and marigolds
+and those little rusty chrysanthemums that stand the early frosts so
+well.  A wind-break of great evergreens all along two sides kept it
+warm and close, and from the south and west the sun streamed in onto
+the stone dial that the Childress of General Washington's time had had
+brought over from home.  It was set for Surrey, Hodges told me once,
+and no manner of use, consequently, but very settled and home-like to
+see, if you understand me.  In the middle was an old stone basin, all
+mottled and chipped, and the water ran out from a lion's mouth in some
+kind of brown metal, and trickled down its mane and jaws and splashed
+away.  We cleaned it out, she and I, one day, _pretending we had help_,
+and Hodges went to town and got us some gold fish for it.  They looked
+very handsome there.  Old John kept the turf clipped and clean and
+routed out some rustic seats for us--all grey they were and tottery,
+but he strengthened them, and I smartened them up with yellow chintz
+cushions I found in the garret--and I myself brought out two tiny
+arm-chairs, painted wood, from the loft in the coach house.  We'd sit
+there all the afternoon in September, talking a little, me mending and
+my mistress embroidering on some little frocks I cut out for her.  We
+talked about the children, of course.  They got to be as real to me as
+to her, almost.  Of course at first it was all what they _would_ have
+been (for she was no fool, Mrs. Childress, though you may be thinking
+so) but by little and little it got to be what they _were_.  It
+couldn't be helped.
+
+Hodges would bring her tea out there and she'd eat heartily, for she
+never was much of a one for a late dinner, me sewing all the time, for
+I always knew my place, though I believe in her kind heart she'd have
+been willing for me to eat with her, bless her!  Then she'd look at me
+so wistful-like, and say, "I'll leave you now, Sarah--eat your tea and
+don't keep out too late.  Good-bye--good-bye..."  Ah, dear me!
+
+I'd sit and think, with the leaves dropping quiet and yellow around me
+and the water dripping from the lion's mouth and sometimes I'd close my
+eyes and--I'll swear I could hear them playing quietly beyond me!  They
+were never noisy children.  I'll say now something I never mentioned,
+even to her, and I'd say it if my life hung by it.  More than once I've
+left the metal tea-set shut in the biscuit box and found it spread out
+of mornings.  My mistress slept in the room next me with the door open,
+and am I to think that William Hodges, or Katey, crippled with
+rheumatism, or that lazy old John came down and set them out?  I've
+taken a hasty run down to that garden (we called it the children's
+garden, after a while) because she took an idea, and seen the swing
+just dying down, and not a breath stirring.  That's the plain gospel of
+it.  And I've lain in my bed, just off the two cribs, and held my
+breath at what I felt and heard.  She knew it, too.  But never heard so
+much as I, and often cried for it.  I never knew why that should be,
+nor Hodges, either.
+
+There was one rainy day I went up in the garret and pulled the old
+rocking-horse out and dusted it and put it out in the middle and set
+the doors open and went away.  It was directly over our heads as we sat
+sewing, and--ah, well, it's many years ago now, a many and a many, and
+it's no good raking over too much what's past and gone, I know.  And as
+Hodges said, afterward, the rain on the roof was loud and steady....
+
+I don't know why I should have thought of the rocking-horse, and she
+not that was always thinking and planning for them.  Hodges said it was
+because I had had children.  But I could never have afforded them any
+such toy as that.  Still, perhaps he was right.  It was odd his saying
+that (he knew the facts about me, of course, by that time) being such a
+dry man, with no fancy about him, you might say, and disliking the
+whole subject, as he always did, but so it was.  Men will often come
+out with something like that, and quite astonish one.
+
+He never made a hint of objection when I was made housekeeper, and that
+was like him, too, though I was, to say so, put over him.  But he knew
+my respect for him, black silk afternoons or no black silk, and how we
+all leaned on him, really.
+
+And then Margaret came, as I said, and it was all to tell, and a fine
+mess I made of it and William Hodges that settled it, after all.
+
+For Margaret wanted to pack her box directly and get off, and said
+she'd never heard of such doings and had no liking for people that
+weren't right.
+
+"Not right?" says Hodges, "not right?  Don't you make any such mistake,
+my girl.  Madam attends to all her law business and is at church
+regularly, and if she's not for much company--why, all the easier for
+us.  Her cheques are as sensible as any one's, I don't care who the man
+is, and a lady has a right to her fancies.  I've lived with very high
+families at home, and if I'm suited, you may depend upon it the place
+is a good one.  Go or stop, as you like, but don't set up above your
+elders, young woman."
+
+So she thought it over and the end of it all was that she was with us
+till the last.  And gave me many a black hour, too, poor child, meaning
+no harm, but she admired Hodges, it was plain, and being younger than I
+and far handsomer in a dark, Scotch way, it went hard with me, for he
+made no sign, and I was proud and wouldn't have showed my feelings for
+my life twice over.
+
+Well, it went on three years more.  I made my little frocks longer and
+the gold fish grew bigger and we set out new marigolds every year, that
+was all.  It was like some quiet dream, when I've gone back and seemed
+a girl again in the green lanes at home, with mother clear-starching
+and the rector's daughter hearing my catechism and Master Lawrence sent
+off to school for bringing me his first partridge.  Those dreams seem
+long and short at one and the same time, and I wake years older, and
+yet it has not been years that passed but only minutes.  So it was at
+Childerstone.  The years went by like the hours went in the children's
+garden, all hedged in, like, and quiet and leaving no mark.  We all
+seemed the same to each other and one day was like another, full,
+somehow, and busy and happy, too, in a quiet, gentle way.
+
+When old Katey lay dying she spoke of these days for the first time to
+me.  She'd sent up the porringers and set out glasses of milk and made
+cookies in heart shapes with her mouth tight shut for all that time,
+and we never knowing if she sensed it rightly or not.  But on her
+deathbed she told me that she felt the Blessed Mary (as she called her)
+had given those days to my poor mistress to make up to her for all
+she'd lost and all she'd never had, and that she'd confessed her part
+in it and been cleared, long ago.  I never loved any time better,
+looking back, nor Hodges either.  One season the Christmas greens would
+be up, and then before we knew it the ice would be out of the brooks
+and there would be crocuses and daffodils for Mr. Childress's grave.
+
+She and I took all the care of it and the key to the iron gate of it
+lay out on her low work table, and one or other of us always passing
+through, but one afternoon in summer when I went with a basket of June
+roses, she being not quite up to it that day, there on the flat stone I
+saw with my own eyes a little crumpled bunch of daisies--all nipped off
+short, such as children pick, and crushed and wilted in their hot
+little hands!  And on no other tomb but his.  But I was used to such as
+that, by then....
+
+Margaret was handy with her needle, and I remember well the day she
+made the linen garden hat with a knot of rose-colour under the brim.
+
+"You don't think this will be too old, do you, ma'am?" she said when
+she showed it to my mistress, and the dear lady was that pleased!
+
+"Not a bit, Margaret," she said and I carried it off to Miss Winifred's
+closet.  Many's the time I missed it after that, and knew too much to
+hunt.  It was hunting that spoiled all, for we tried it....
+
+And yet we didn't half believe.  Heaven help us, we knew, but we didn't
+believe: St. Thomas was nothing to us!
+
+Margaret was with us three years when the new family came.  Hodges told
+us that Hudson River property was looking up and land was worth more
+every year.  Anyway, in one year two families built big houses within a
+mile of us and we went to call, of course, as in duty bound.  John
+grumbled at getting out the good harness and having the carriage
+re-lined, but my mistress knew what was right, and he had no choice.  I
+dressed her very carefully, and we watched her off from the door, a
+thought too pale in her black, but sweet as a flower, and every inch
+full of breeding, as Hodges said.
+
+I never knew what took place at that visit, but she came back with a
+bright red circle in each cheek and her head very high, and spent all
+the evening in the nursery.  Alone, of course, for I heard little quick
+sounds on the piano in the drawing-room, and the fairy books were gone
+from the children's book-shelves, and Margaret found them in front of
+the fire and brought them to me....
+
+It was only three days before the new family called on us (a pair of
+ponies to a basket phaeton--very neat and a nice little groom) and my
+heart jumped into my mouth when I saw there were two children in with
+the lady: little girls of eight and twelve, I should say.  'Twas the
+first carriage callers that ever I'd seen in the place, and Hodges says
+to me as he goes toward the hall,
+
+"This is something like, eh, Miss Umbleby?"
+
+But I felt odd and uncertain, and when from behind the library door I
+heard the lady say, "You see I've kept my word and brought my babies,
+Mrs. Childress--my son is hardly old enough for yours--only four--but
+Helena and Lou can't wait--they are so impatient to see your little
+girl!"--when I heard that, I saw what my poor mistress had been at, and
+the terrible situation we were in (and had been in for years) flashed
+over me and my hands got cold as ice.
+
+"Where is she?" the lady went on.
+
+At that I went boldly into the library and stood by my mistress's
+chair--I couldn't desert her then, after all those years.
+
+"Where?  where?" my poor lady repeated, vague-like and turning her eyes
+so piteous at me that I looked the visitor straight in the face and
+getting between her and my mistress I said very calmly,
+
+"I think Miss Winifred is in the children's garden, madam; shall I take
+the young ladies there?"
+
+For my thought was to get the children out of the way, before it all
+came out, you see.
+
+Oh, the look of gratitude she gave me!  And yet it was a mad thing to
+do.  But I couldn't desert her--I couldn't.
+
+"There, you see, mamma!" cried the youngest, and the older one said,
+
+"We can find our way, thank you," very civil, to me.
+
+"Children have sharp eyes," said the lady, laughing.  "One can't hide
+them from each other--haven't you found it so?"
+
+"Now what the devil does she mean by that?" Hodges muttered to me as he
+passed by me with the tray.  He always kept the silver perfect, and it
+did one's heart good to see his tray: urn and sugar and cream just
+twinkling and the toast in a covered dish--old Chelsea it was--and new
+cakes and jam and fresh butter, just as they have at home.
+
+I don't know what they talked of, for I couldn't find any excuse to
+stop in the room, and she wouldn't have had it, anyway.  I went around
+to the front to catch the children when they should come back, and
+quiet them, but they didn't come, and I was too thankful to think much
+about it.
+
+After about half an hour I saw the oldest one coming slowly along by
+herself, looking very sulky.
+
+"Where's your sister, dear?" I said, all in a tremble, for I dreaded
+how she might put it.
+
+"She's too naughty--I can't get her to leave," she said pettishly, and
+burst into the library ahead of me.  My mistress's face was scarlet and
+her eyes like two big stars--for the first time I saw that she was a
+beauty.  Her breath came very quick and I knew as well as if I'd been
+there all the time that she'd been letting herself go, as they say, and
+talked to her heart's content about what she'd never have a chance to
+talk again to any guest.  She was much excited and the other woman knew
+it and was puzzled, I could see, from the way she looked at her.
+
+Now the girl burst into the talk.
+
+"Mamma, Lou is so naughty!" she cried.  "I saw the ponies coming up the
+drive, and I told her it was time, but she won't come!"
+
+"Gently, daughter, gently," said the lady, and put her arm around her
+and smoothed her hair.  "Why won't Lou come?"
+
+I can see that room now, as plain as any picture in a frame: the
+setting sun all yellow on the gilt of the rows of books, the streak of
+light on the waxed oak floor, the urn shining in the last rays.  There
+was the mother patting the big girl, there was Hodges with his hand on
+the tray, and there was me standing behind my mistress, with her red
+cheeks and her poor heaving bosom.
+
+"Why won't Lou come?" she asked the girl again.
+
+"Because," she says, still fretful, and very loud and clear, "because
+she is taking a pattern of the little girl's hat and trying to twist
+hers into that shape!  I told her you wouldn't like it."
+
+My mistress sprang up and the chair fell down with a crash behind her.
+I turned (Hodges says) as white as a sheet and moved nearer her.
+
+"Hat!" she gasped.  "What hat? _whose hat_?"
+
+There seemed to be a jingling, like sleighbells, all through the air,
+and I thought I was going crazy till I saw that it came from the tray,
+where Hodges's hand was shaking so, and yet he couldn't take it off.
+
+"The hat with the rose-coloured ribbon on it," said the girl, "the one
+we saw as we drove in, you know, mamma.  It's so becoming."
+
+"Sarah!  Sarah! did you hear?  Did you hear?" shrieked my mistress.
+"She saw, Sarah, _she saw_!"
+
+Then the colour went out of her like when you blow out a candle, and
+she put her hand to her heart.
+
+"Oh, oh, what pain!" she said very quickly, and Hodges cried, "My God,
+she's gone!" and I caught her as she fell and we went down together,
+for my knees were shaking.
+
+When I opened my eyes there was only Margaret there, wetting my
+forehead, for William had gone for a doctor.  Not that it was of any
+use, for she never breathed.  But the smile on her face was lovely.
+
+We got her on her bed and the sight of her there brought the tears to
+me and I cried out, "Oh, dear, oh, dear! she was all I had in the
+world, and now----"
+
+"Now you've got me, my girl, and isn't that worth anything to you,
+Sarah?"
+
+That was William Hodges, and he put his arm over my shoulder, right
+before Margaret, and looked so kind at me, so kind--I saw in a moment
+that no one else was anything to him and that he had always cared for
+me.  And that, coming so sudden, when I had given up all hope of it,
+was too much for me, weak as I was, and I fainted off again and woke up
+raving hot with fever and half out of my mind, but not quite, for I
+kept begging them to put off the funeral till I should be able to be up.
+
+But this, of course, was not done, and by the time I was out of
+hospital the turf was all in place on her dear grave.
+
+William had managed everything and had picked out all the little
+keepsakes I should have chosen--the heirs were most kind, though Jews.
+Indeed, I've felt different to that sort of people ever since, for they
+not caring for the house on account of its being lonely, to their way
+of thinking, made it into a children's home for those of their belief
+as were poor and orphaned, and whatever may have been, the old place
+will never lack for children now.
+
+I never stepped foot in the grounds again, for William Hodges, though
+the gentlest and fairest of men, never thwarted me but once, and it was
+in just that direction.  Moreover, he forbade me to speak of what only
+he and I knew for a certainty, and he was one of that sort that when a
+command is laid, it's best kept.
+
+We've two fine children--girl and boy--and he never murmured at the
+names I chose for them.  Indeed, considering what my mistress's will
+left me and what his master had done for him, he was as pleased as I.
+
+"They're named after our two best friends, Sarah," he said, looking
+hard at me, once.
+
+And I nodded my head, but if she saw me, in heaven, she knew who were
+in my heart when I named them!
+
+
+
+
+THE CRYSTAL
+
+In reviewing the matter dispassionately, it seems difficult to find
+anybody (anybody, that is to say, to whom her career was or is of the
+slightest interest) who omits to pronounce Molly Dickett's life an
+egregious and shameful failure.  I should be sorry for any one, for
+instance, who had the hardihood to address her mother on the subject,
+for Mrs. Dickett's power of tongue is well known in and beyond local
+circles; and since Eleanor married young Farwell, who stands in line
+for cashier of the bank forty or fifty years from now, if all goes well
+and a series of providential deaths occurs--indeed, ever since Kathryn
+became assistant-principal at the high-school (because, as her mother
+points out, a mere teacher's position, even in a high-school, may not
+be much, but an assistant-principal may be called to consult with the
+trustees any day and Kathryn has twice refused a college professorship)
+since these family adjustments, I repeat, Mrs. Dickett's tongue has
+grown steadily more incisive and her attempts at scaling the fortress
+of Mr. Dickett's wardrobe more encouraging.
+
+I believe it to be the simple truth to say that she literally never
+mentions her second daughter, and that Molly sends her letters direct
+to the factory to be sure that her father gets them--for Mrs. Dickett
+is Napoleonic in her methods and would really, I am afraid, stop at
+nothing.  Any woman who has borne three children and will learn to
+drive an electric runabout at the age of forty-five, for the purpose of
+taking her husband home from his office in it, is to be reckoned with,
+you will agree.
+
+The last time she is known to have referred to the girl definitely was
+when she announced the theory that her unfortunate name lay at the
+bottom of it all.
+
+"Molly," she is reported to have said, "was named by her father--a
+mistake always, I think.  The fact that Eleanor was baptised Ella has
+little or nothing to do with it; there was never any 'Nellie' or
+'Lelie' about it, and at sixteen she began of her own accord to write
+it Eleanor.  Kathryn I named entirely myself--and after all, what can
+Aunt Ella be said to have done for Eleanor?  A silver ring and a
+bracelet when she graduated!  But it was always 'Molly Dickett' all
+over the town!"
+
+And it must be confessed that this was so, if, indeed, the confession
+proves anything.  Nevertheless Mrs. Dickett cannot deny that for a long
+time, up to the period of her plunge into outer darkness, Molly was
+confessedly the flower of the family.  Eleanor was rather soggy, a
+creature of inertia, chocolate caramels and a tendency to ritualism
+which her mother could not have foreseen when she encouraged her
+entering the Episcopal communion ("I don't mind candles so much," said
+Mrs. Dickett, "but I must say I think it's very bad taste to call
+yourself an American Catholic, when you can't help but feel that
+Catholics should be foreigners").
+
+Kathryn her mother pronounced "a very ordinary girl, very ordinary
+indeed," up to the day when she was graduated, head of her class, at
+the State normal-school.  She showed every sign, even after that, of
+snapping at the bait of a middle-aged widower with three children,
+simply because his hook was labelled _New York_; but when it became
+known, as a result of herculean detective efforts on Mrs. Dickett's
+part, that he employed but one servant, insisted upon the payment of
+what he termed "spot cash" for every article purchased in his
+establishment, and disapproved of the theatre, Kathryn yielded to
+reason and henceforth consulted her mother at each successive stage of
+her growing career until such consultation was frankly deprecated by
+the fountain-head itself.
+
+But Molly was neither soggy nor ordinary, being distinctly handsome in
+a grey-eyed, black-haired, white-skinned way, a clever student, an
+original conversationalist--in short, a personality.  Unlike the usual
+victim to an older and a younger sister, she managed to get quite her
+fair share of the family dignities and finances--was in fact accused by
+her sisters of using undue influence in persuading her father to send
+her to a woman's college.  It is most characteristic of her that at
+this accusation she refused the favour, interested her teachers in her
+cause so that they procured her a full scholarship at the college of
+her choice, and actually completed a four years' course there with no
+other means than her share of the twenty-five dollars yearly placed to
+his daughters' bank accounts by their father since the birth of each.
+On this slender sum, plus the accruing interest, eked out by college
+journalism, which began to be mentionable in those years--the early
+90's--strengthened further in the last terms by tutoring, did Molly
+Dickett triumphantly assert her independence,  and I tell it of her at
+this length so that none may throw "rolling stones" at her, in what
+followed.  A young woman of eighteen who can set her course in solitude
+and steer it alone, friendless, except for what friends her qualities
+can make her, absolutely unaided but for her own exertions, for four
+years, is not to be called lacking in application, I submit.  She got
+out of that business just what there was in it, _and so_, she insists,
+_she did at every stage of her subsequent history_.  Note this, for it
+is important.
+
+Here you see her, then, at twenty-two; handsome, accomplished,
+independent, well-rated on her particular 'Change--one fairly hears
+Dick Whittington's bells in the air!  Her mother, when Molly wrote home
+the news of her appointment as under-reader in the office of one of the
+new cheap magazines that began to appear with such frequency at about
+that time, spoke of her with the typical respect of the dependent woman
+for the wage-earner, and never dropped that note till the crash came.
+Mr. Dickett was head clerk by now, with an appreciable advance in
+salary; and Eleanor's wedding (it was in dressing the Roodscreen at
+Christmas that young Farwell met his fate), with her sisters as
+bridemaids, marked a distinct stage in the family's social career.  Old
+Mr. Farwell, who had long been nursing his only son's bank position,
+did the handsome thing for the young couple, and stomached, very
+decently, what must have been his regret at the boy's choice--for we
+all like our children to "look up and not down," as the motto suggests,
+in these matters.  And he was paid for it, for Eleanor made a man of
+the boy and a vestryman to boot, and quite won the old man's heart,
+though he never loved Mrs. Dickett.
+
+By the time Molly had been for two years at her post in _Slater's
+Monthly_, Kathryn had moved back to her normal-school as
+instructor--"and they paid well to get her, too," as Mr. Dickett
+informed his stenographer confidentially.  She had been invited to
+supper more than once, had the stenographer, in the old days, and there
+had even been a little talk of Kathryn's acquiring this accomplishment,
+once, but Mr. Dickett was far too wise to suggest her presence at the
+half-past six dinner now-a-days.  He was far too wise, indeed, to do
+anything that seemed likely to ruffle the increasingly easy currents
+into which his bark had drifted of late.  In a vague way he had always
+counted on supporting four women until three of them--or two, say, for
+Kathryn was plain and rather managing--should marry; and lo and behold,
+all three were off his hands in a twinkle, and there was a pretty
+little nest-egg growing for little Henry (for Eleanor had been very
+discreet about the first baby).
+
+So now we arrive at the day when Molly left her desk in the ante-room
+of Slater's, walked through the book department and the art offices and
+encountered Miss Spinner, the little dried and spectacled reader of
+forty-odd years, and centuries (or their equivalent) of magazine
+experience.
+
+"Miss Spinner," said Molly, "do you mind telling me what they pay you a
+week?"
+
+"Twenty-five," Miss Spinner replied promptly.  "Not at all.  Of course
+I'd been fifteen years at Franklin Square, and it was all that
+experience that made them offer me the three dollars raise.  So I left.
+But, of course, there are five magazines now where there used to be
+one.  In ten years I think there'll be ten.  So does Mr. Slater.  That
+means competition, and that means that experience will always be worth
+something to the new ones.  You started at fifteen, you see, and of
+course I only got ten ...  Gracious, isn't that Mrs. Julia Carter
+Sykes's voice?  Perhaps you'd better step out, my dear--Mr. Slater's
+talking with that English prison man and said that he wasn't to be
+disturbed if the Twelve Apostles came!"
+
+Molly went with her swift, unhasty step (she had long legs) and
+received Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes urbanely, as befitted the best paid
+woman novelist of her country.  Occasionally she had the fancy to "trot
+around to the office" as she called it: it was believed that she
+"picked up types" there.  And Molly knew how to keep her waiting
+without offending her, just as she knew how to dispose of the
+illustrators, from the Great Moguls who came in cabs to scold about the
+defects in half-tone processes, to the just discovered young genius who
+waited an hour in the outside hall, his great pasteboard square between
+his knees.
+
+"You're much too pretty to be here, my child--do you like it?" Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes remarked impertinently (she was supposed to believe
+that her manner was that of the English Aristocracy, and asked the most
+embarrassing questions of everybody with an income of less than fifteen
+thousand a year).
+
+"Not very much," Molly replied placidly.  "It's a little dull.  I'm
+thinking of going into journalism.  Couldn't you give me some letters
+to some of the editors?  I could do good special article stuff, I'm
+sure."
+
+"But certainly!" the novelist cried.  "You are too delicious!  I'll
+write you a card to Hecht himself this moment--I'm dining with him
+to-night--and I'll speak of you.  I'll tell him to send you to
+interview me at 'Bonnybraeside.'"
+
+"Thanks," said Molly laconically and rose to show the celebrity to Mr.
+Slater's sanctum.  The English prison man, emerging, took in the
+contrasted couple at a single glance, supposed them to be the whirlwind
+editor's wife and daughter, from his greeting ("Come in, come in, my
+dears, both of you!") and inquired of his wife, eight days later, how
+she explained a woman of that type, "strung with sapphires, literally,"
+and a daughter like a young duchess, with Irish eyes and a walk like
+Diana's.  His wife could not explain it at all, and said as much.
+
+Molly left Mr. Slater somewhat puzzled.  He raised her salary three
+dollars, might have been pushed to five, but she merely smiled
+deprecatingly.
+
+"It isn't exactly that," she said, "but there seems no outlook,
+somehow.  I don't think it's a very reasonable profession--if it is a
+profession."
+
+He exploded into the name of a great English novelist who held
+precisely that position.
+
+"Yes.  But I am not a great novelist, you see," said Molly, and cleared
+out her desk with the swift thoroughness that characterized her.  She
+put a clean sheet of green blotting paper on it before she left, and
+washed out the inkwell herself.
+
+"That stenographer spells worse and worse, remember," she remarked.
+"I'll look in for any mail."
+
+"Why, aren't you going to stay at a hundred-and-three any more?"
+
+Miss Pinner spoke with concern: she knew that the boarding-house
+recommended highly by Eleanor's rector (his sister had stayed there
+while studying singing) was very tautly managed, in an unobtrusive way,
+and that the sisters who directed it had a shrewd idea of the goings
+and comings of their "guests."
+
+"No," said Molly.  "I'll be out at all hours, maybe, and they wouldn't
+like it.  Don't be worried--I'll look in now and then."
+
+And so, for a year, she did, and they were all delighted to see her,
+for few people likely to enter such offices can talk more amusingly
+than Molly Dickett.  She had always used her material well, when it was
+limited, and now, when it bumped into the Himalayas at one end  (her
+famous Rajah of Bhutpore interview)  and rounded the hitherto
+speechless promontories of Spud Connors' career, the champion
+heavyweight of the world (she actually drew vivid metaphors from him
+and he gave her a tintype of himself at eight years) the entire staff
+gathered 'round her when she came, and Mr. Slater, under a temporary
+financial cloud, wept literal tears because he could not afford to buy
+her back to them.  It was, of course, the "Bonnybraeside" interview
+that did it.  So cleverly was this column-and-a-half of chatty
+sharp-shooting manoeuvred that Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes sent hundreds of
+copies to her friends, while her fellow celebrities giggled among
+themselves, and the publishers wondered exactly what the Public really
+wanted, anyhow.  You couldn't tell, any more, they complained.
+
+Just here began the little cloud on Mrs. Dickett's happiness.  For two
+years the family were very proud of Molly, and Eleanor gave a tea for
+her on one of her infrequent visits to them and got some people she
+could never have hoped for otherwise on the strength of her sister's
+celebrityship, for her Sunday morning column-and-a-half got to
+two-thirds of the town's breakfast tables, and her picture was at the
+head of it, now.  At twenty-five she was called (and probably
+correctly) the second highest paid woman journalist in the country, and
+she spoke familiarly of names that are head-lines to most of us and
+bought evening gowns at "little shops" on Fifth Avenue.  She lived with
+a red-haired friend, a clever illustrator of rising vogue, in a pretty
+little apartment, and Mrs. Dickett dined there one night with a really
+great novelist, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera House and a young
+Englishman whose brother was a baronet.  They had four glasses at their
+plates and the maid's cap and apron were tremendously interesting to
+Mrs. Dickett.  But when she learned the rental of the apartment, the
+wages of the maid, the cost of Molly's black evening-frock and the
+average monthly bill for Molly's hansoms, she no longer wondered that
+her daughter was always poor.  She had never spent seventy-five dollars
+for a single garment in her life, barring a fur-lined cloak, a
+Christmas gift from her husband, and to drink creme-de-menthe at a roof
+garden gave her a very odd sensation.  However, there was the baronet's
+brother...
+
+But at one of the songs at the roof-garden Mrs. Dickett drew the line,
+and the entire British Peerage, embattled, could not have persuaded her
+that it could possibly be the duty--not to suggest the pleasure--of any
+respectable woman to listen to it.  As she put it later to the
+red-haired girl and Molly, no unmarried woman could understand it and
+no married woman would want to, a simple statement which they persisted
+in treating as an epigram, to her annoyance.
+
+"But nobody minded it but you, dear Mrs. Dickett," the red-haired girl
+soothed her, "and it's all in how you take those things, don't you
+think?  Of course, if you find it wrong, why then it is wrong--for you.
+But really, I assure you, I simply paid no attention to it..."
+
+"Then you must allow me to say that I think you should have!" Mrs.
+Dickett snapped out.
+
+"Oh, come, mother, a woman of twenty-five is to all intents and
+purposes as capable of hearing--anything--as a married woman," said
+Molly lazily.  "I'm not a school girl, you know."
+
+"I know that," her mother replied shortly, and might have added that
+Molly looked Kathryn's age--which she did, and Kathryn was twenty-eight.
+
+She was, however, if anything, handsomer than when her cheek had its
+fuller curve, for her eyes looked larger and her mouth had more
+mobility: there was a stimulation in her tenseness.  Mrs. Dickett felt
+a little troubled.
+
+"Although, of course, Molly admitted that the creature had no character
+and sang that sort of song purposely," she confided to her husband.
+
+Imagine, then, her feelings when Molly's interview with the singer was
+printed!  She began a severe letter to her--and ceased midway of the
+first paragraph.  What possible hold had she over her daughter?  What
+did she know of her friends and associates, and what, had she known and
+disapproved, would it have mattered to Molly?  Since the day she won
+her college scholarship at eighteen she had been independent,
+financially speaking, and, though financial independence is not, of
+course, everything ... but it would almost seem that it is!  There must
+be some mistake here.  Mrs. Dickett chewed the end of her pen and
+thought as hard as she had ever thought in her life.  Nonsense!  What
+finally settles the thing is public opinion--Society.  If one's world
+turns the cold shoulder, one retracts, capitulates, acknowledges that
+the conventions are in the right of it.  Well; but Molly's world was
+not the suburban circle of the Dicketts and her world applauded her;
+she stood high in it; her interview with the unspeakable one was "a
+great hit," in their jargon.  Molly, in short, applied different
+standards, was in another class--was it, could it be, a Lower Class?
+And yet, the baronet!
+
+Mrs. Dickett tore her letter through.
+
+It is quite true that they didn't see her for a year, after
+that--eighteen months, if you except Kathryn's flying luncheon with her
+at the time of the Convention of Associated Normal Schools.  Kathryn
+then informed them that the red-haired girl had married her teacher and
+left the apartment and that Molly lived alone there.
+
+"I'm very glad," said her mother.  "I never liked that girl."
+
+"She seems to have been a bad influence," Kathryn agreed
+conservatively, and there, good, simple people as they were at heart,
+it would have ended.
+
+But here comes Eleanor upon the scene, Eleanor, with two boys, a
+probable Warden for husband, and a father-in-law who has become very
+respectably wealthy from long ago, almost forgotten investments in
+Southern Railroads.  And George is the only son.  Eleanor wonders that
+people can send their children to the public schools, and wishes that
+Kathryn had married that college professor, even though his salary did
+barely equal hers.
+
+"Every woman ought to settle, you know--it's nonsense to discuss it."
+
+"But I am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of
+housekeeping.  You don't get any time for anything else."
+
+"!!!" said Eleanor.
+
+Mrs. Dickett here intervened with news of Molly, and Eleanor's eyebrows
+lifted.
+
+"You don't mean to say she's living alone there?"
+
+Mrs. Dickett nodded uncertainly.
+
+"Really, mother, I must say!  She must be crazy.  It's not right at
+all, and I'm sure George wouldn't like it."
+
+"She's nearly twenty-seven," Kathryn put in coldly.
+
+"As if that had anything to do with it!  I'm going down to see her."
+
+It was certainly unfortunate that she should have gone unheralded.  The
+first wave of classical dancing had begun to lap the shores of New York
+society, and Molly's paper had got the first amazing pictures, the
+first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing
+line."  Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping,
+dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous
+at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at
+Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet
+backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman,
+swayed and whirled and beckoned.  A slender spiral of smoke rose from
+the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room.  Three
+or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men
+applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock
+of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required no knowledge
+of technique to feel extraordinarily poignant and moving.  All but the
+dancer were smoking, and Molly sat on the floor (in copper-coloured
+chiffon, too!) her hands clasped about her knees, a cigarette in an
+amber holder between her lips and enunciated clearly,
+
+"Bully!"
+
+In describing matters afterward Eleanor referred to Molly's reception
+of her as brazen.  There is no reason to believe that this word has any
+relation to Molly's state of mind: she saw nothing to be brazen about.
+When she said, "How lucky you dropped in today, sis!" she unaffectedly
+meant it.
+
+"Well, rather!" one of the young men replied.  "Won't you have
+something, Mrs. Er--Oh, yes--Farwell?  Rhine wine cup, what?"
+
+"No, I thank you," said Eleanor frigidly.  "May I have a few minutes'
+conversation with you, Mary?"
+
+"Not just now, I hope," said some one, "for she's going to dance again."
+
+"In that case I will not trouble you," said Eleanor, rather
+dramatically, one fears, and backed out to avoid the smoking violinist.
+It was a little trying, and Eleanor should have had tact enough to let
+the matter rest, but she was rather inelastic in her methods, and she
+had come to New York with a Purpose.  So Molly disappeared with her
+into the bedroom, and they had it out, with what result it is
+unnecessary to say.
+
+It was from that moment that a doubt as to whether Molly were an asset
+or a liability slipped into the Dickett family.  It is improbable that
+knowledge of the fact that "the disgusting foreign dancing woman" was
+born and bred in Bangor, Maine, and had never been farther than a
+stage-length from a vigilant mother, would have greatly affected their
+judgment.  And almost certainly the fact that the baronet's brother had
+asked her to marry him would only have irritated them the more--and
+perhaps with reason.  Had he ever wanted to marry Molly?  Maybe; she
+never said so.
+
+And here one must pause, to consider the interesting subject of Molly's
+Relations with Men.  It proved singularly lacking in richness.  To
+state that she had lived four years (as she did, ultimately) on the
+staff of the largest New York daily newspaper, hanging personally over
+the "forms" many a time, among the printers, from 10 P.M. until 3 A.M.,
+walking home with the milk-carts in the lead-blue morning; sitting in
+the outer office of one of the greatest city editors for three of these
+years; studying every "first night," every picturesque slum, every
+visiting or indigenous notoriety at close range--to catalogue a life
+like this, add that it was the life of a handsome, well-dressed,
+high-spirited girl, and pretend that it was an existence unqualified by
+male adjectives, would be the merest absurdity.
+
+I hear that from the tiniest, most impudent printer's devil up to the
+Dean of College Presidents, who became so interested in her during his
+famous interview of "_After Democracy--What?_" that his wife asked her
+to luncheon and she spent the day with them, every man she encountered
+"swore by her," as they say.  In a novel, the editor-in-chief would
+have married her and Eleanor would have been delighted; but in a novel
+the editors-in-chief are handsome, athletic young bachelors (which
+rarely occurs, as a matter of fact) or magnificent widowers whose first
+marriages were tragic mistakes, so the emotional field is really clear.
+Now Molly's editor-in-chief was, so far as is known, quite happy with
+his wife, and his four daughters were not so much younger than Molly
+herself.  It is true, the art editor of the Sunday edition was supposed
+to be pretty far gone, but he was married, too, and even his
+stenographer, who was furiously jealous, admitted that Molly never gave
+him the slightest encouragement.  Such reporters as were free to do so
+are generally credited with proposals in strict order of income (there
+had to be some working system), but nothing but continued good feeling
+ever came of it; and the French portrait-painter who spent three days
+at the Metropolitan Art Museum with her out of the ten he vouchsafed
+America, declared openly that she was perfectly cold, a charming,
+clever boy in temperament--"absolutely insulated."  And perhaps she
+was.  She always said that she knew too many men to take them too
+seriously.  And yet when Kathryn remarked once that it was encouraging
+to observe how women were gradually growing independent of men, Molly
+laughed consumedly.  So there, as the great Anglo-American novelist
+says, you are!
+
+Living, as she did, alone, utterly unrestricted in her goings,
+uncensored except by her own common-sense, one readily imagines that
+there may have been scenes ... how could they have been avoided,
+mankind being as it is?  But if her house was of glass, it was, by its
+very nature transparent, and I do not see how any one who didn't
+deserve it could have kept the consistent respect of the entire force
+of _The Day_.
+
+On her twenty-eighth birthday she came home from a very gay supper at a
+very gay restaurant with a hard pain at the back of her neck and a deep
+wrinkle from it between her eyebrows.  They had been harder of late,
+these headaches, and lasted longer, and this one not only failed to
+yield to the practised massage of her kindly housemaid, but baffled the
+nearest doctor and left her, finally, a pallid, shaken creature, who
+saw written on every wall in the little apartment, as she dragged
+herself about it:
+
+_I must not take any coal-tar preparation because my heart simply won't
+stand it!_
+
+"And let me tell you this, Miss Molly Dickett," said the great
+specialist she had consulted as a matter of course (he ordered Trust
+Magnates to Egypt and consulted at Presidents' bed-sides, and if Mrs.
+Dickett had known that he never accepted a cent from Molly, what would
+she have said?) "let me tell you this.  You think you're a very
+remarkable young woman, don't you?"
+
+"Don't you, Dr. Stanchon?" Molly retorted placidly.
+
+He patted her shoulder and capitulated.  "But you ought to be spanked,
+you know," he said.  "Now, listen.  For what was all this vitality and
+endurance given you, my child?"
+
+"If you mean twins," said Molly curtly, "I won't.  There are plenty of
+women to have twins, doctor."
+
+"But there are not plenty of women to have _your_ twins," said he.
+
+She grimaced and blew a saucy kiss to him.
+
+"I see why they all want you!" she told him.  "But, honestly, do
+married women never have headaches?"
+
+"There's no good being clever with me, child," he went on, a little
+wearily (he seemed middle-aged beyond words to her).  "You are making a
+great mistake and when you find it out, it will in all probability be
+too late to remedy it, worse luck!  _That's_ the real harm of all this
+Advanced Woman stuff: if you could only get it over before twenty-five!
+But when you wake up, you're nearer forty, and then--what's the
+difference?"
+
+"I'll marry, then, maybe!"
+
+"Dear child, it doesn't matter a continental what you do, then," he
+said simply.
+
+She gave a little shudder, in spite of herself.  He sounded so final,
+and his eyes were so bright and deep.  She stared into them and,
+somehow, lost herself--the eyes turned to bright points in space, and
+Time seemed to stop, with a sort of whir like a clock that runs down...
+
+"There, there!" his voice came roughly.  "None of that, my girl, none
+of that!  You _are_ in a nice state!  Now, you march off on a vacation,
+and take it on a boat of some sort--do you hear?  And, listen to me--if
+I find a nice woman to go with you----"
+
+"Oh!" she interrupted mockingly, "the famous Miss Jessop!  Now I _know_
+you think I'm pretty bad!  You forget, doctor, that I've interviewed
+Miss Jessop--or tried to."
+
+"That's better," he retorted grimly.  "You hadn't much of a success,
+had you, missy?  And would you like to know what the famous Miss Jessop
+said about you?"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you.  There are two sides to every interview, you know.  She
+said, 'If you don't see Miss Molly Dickett in your office before a
+year, doctor, I miss my guess.  She's a neurasthenic for you, all
+right.'  So what do you think of that, eh?"
+
+"I think she was impertinent," said Molly, weakly, "and you can tell
+her so."
+
+"Bosh.  Now go and lie down," he commanded shortly, and the interview
+closed.
+
+A vacation seemed a simple remedy, and she started out, bent on one,
+with the kindest orders to make it long, accompanied by large credit;
+but the promised renewal of vitality did not come, and the taste seemed
+gone from everything.  The quaint and tiny little fishing hamlet she
+had fixed upon as a good place for gathering "material" by the way,
+proved all and more than she had been led to hope for, and when the
+greatest north-easter that had blown for fifty years bruised and tore
+the rugged little coast, she "wrote it up" as a matter of course--as a
+bird-dog points or a carrier pigeon wheels for home.  And then Molly
+Dickett received what was literally her first setback in ten years: the
+City Editor sent her copy back to her!
+
+"You're too tired, my dear girl," he wrote.  "Why not wait a bit?  Or
+pad this out and point it up a little in the middle and send it to one
+of the magazines.  Peterson covered it for us, anyway, at
+Kennebunkport.  The cubs send you an officeful of affection, and we are
+all yours truly."
+
+But the "cubs" never hung over her desk again, for Molly never returned
+to it.
+
+"You see," as she explained to them gently, "I lost my nerve--that's
+all.  If I hadn't sent the stuff, it would have been all right, later,
+I suppose.  But I did send it, and I thought it was O.K., and if it was
+as rotten as you said, why, how could I ever tell, again?  Anyway, I'm
+tired."
+
+They protested, but the City Editor shook his head.
+
+"Let her alone," he said shortly.  "It's straight enough.  I've seen it
+happen before.  She's gone too far without a check: I don't believe
+women can stand it.  Let her alone."
+
+And when the most talented of the cubs went next to interview Mrs.
+Julia Carter Sykes as to her recently dramatized novel, he was referred
+to her secretary--and it was Molly.
+
+"For heaven's sake!" he said angrily.  "Are you insane?  Wasn't it true
+that Slater offered----"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Molly negligently, "but I'm tired of offices."
+
+"I suppose you get time for writing your own stuff--on the side?" he
+suggested awkwardly, but Molly shook her head.
+
+"Writing seems bad for the back of the neck," she said, with a grey
+flash out of the tail of her eye for the cub.
+
+"We're getting ready for the sanitarium this morning--sun-baths and
+Swedish Movement Cure and grape diet.  Of course you won't mention it,"
+she said.  "She can't possibly see you--I do all the interviews
+now--but if you come around to-morrow, after I get the house closed,
+I'll give you a good one."
+
+A solemn butler entered.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to cast your eye over the table for the
+ladies' luncheon, Miss Dickett?" he said weightily.
+
+"There's two orchids short and no time for getting more.  And the salt
+got into the mousse, I'm told by the cook--she wished to know if you
+could suggest anything.  And one of the ladies has been detained and
+cannot come--by telephone message.  Will you take her place, Miss
+Dickett?"
+
+"Yes," said Molly.  "Tell Mrs. Carter not to worry about the orchids,
+Halsey; I'll arrange something.  I must go and dress, now--come
+to-morrow," she added hastily.
+
+"By George!" the cub gasped, and left, to electrify the office later.
+
+"It's a darned shame," he ended, and the other cubs nodded sagely over
+their pipes.
+
+"With her talent, too!" they said...
+
+You will have understood, of course, why Eleanor dropped Molly after
+the unfortunate Greek dancer, but you may be surprised to learn of
+Kathryn's attitude when she learned of the secretaryship.  It wasn't
+dignified, she said, and she was greatly disappointed in Molly.
+
+Kathryn was Dean of Women, now, in a co-educational college in the
+middle west, and was spoken of as Dean Dickett in the college journal.
+Of all her children Mrs. Dickett was proudest of Kathryn, because Molly
+frightened her and Eleanor patronized her.  Eleanor was getting up in
+the world a little too fast for her mother, nowadays, and knew people
+Mrs. Dickett would never have dreamed of meeting in the old
+days--people that she had grown used to the idea of never meeting, even
+now that Mr. Dickett was in the Firm.  Eleanor's little girl went to
+school with all the little girls on the Hill and was asked to attend
+their parties.  Her name was Penelope, after George's mother, who had
+never expected it--the name being so old-fashioned--and was
+correspondingly delighted and had given her much jewelry already.
+
+Eleanor, in so far as she mentioned Molly at all, had expressed her
+opinion that to live with Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes was the most
+respectable thing Molly had yet done, and added that there were
+exceptional opportunities in more ways than one for the woman who held
+that position--would perhaps even have called on her there, but Molly
+never asked her to.  Kathryn, to her parents' surprise, developed a
+stodgy but unblinking antagonism to her sister, for what she called
+Molly's lowering of her sense of what was due to herself, and said
+coldly that she had no doubt her sister's life was easier now, but that
+it was un-American.
+
+Un-American it may have been, but easier it assuredly was not.  Unlike
+the factory-girls and clerks for whose benefit Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes
+gave readings from her unpublished works, Molly's hours were not
+limited, and her responsibility grew as her executive ability became
+increasingly manifest.  The thousands of women to whom the celebrity's
+manifold occupations, publicities, hospitalities and charities were an
+endless wonder and discussion might have marvelled less had they been
+able to follow Molly's crowded days and nights and peep through the
+littered desk and scribbled calendar of her study.
+
+To amusement and interest, succeeded fatigue and interest, and to
+these, fatigue alone.  Each hurried, various day became a space of time
+to be got through, merely, and Mrs. Julia Carter Sykes's heavy sigh as
+she curled into her wicker-inset Circassian-walnut bed was no more
+heartfelt than her secretary's.  If Molly had ever envied Mrs. Julia,
+she had long ceased to, and indeed, on that final afternoon when she
+laid her dark, braided head on her arms and cried on her desk, she felt
+as sorry for the authoress as for herself.
+
+Mr. Julia Carter Sykes (as many of his friends called him) sat opposite
+her, biting his nails.  He was well dressed, fond of auction-bridge,
+and travelled abroad in the interests of some vaguely comprehended firm.
+
+"This will just about kill the madam," he said despondently.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Sykes, but I really must--I must," Molly gulped.
+
+"It isn't money, is it?" he asked.  "Because though I'm not a popular
+authoress or anything like that, I could----"
+
+"Oh, goodness, no!" said Molly.  "It's not money at all.  Only I must
+get away."
+
+"We've never got on so well with any of the others," he went on
+jerkily, "and she's certainly awfully fond of you--the madam is.  She's
+taken you everywhere, I know, and all the dinners, and the car whenever
+you----"
+
+"Mrs. Sykes has been very kind," Molly broke in dully, "but--oh, it's
+no use, Mr. Sykes.  It's got to be done, and putting it off only makes
+her worse.  So I'm going to-morrow.  She'll feel better about it later."
+
+"I hope so, I'm sure," Mr. Sykes responded doubtfully.  "She was pretty
+bad when I left her.  That brain of hers, you know--it's a great
+strain, they tell me.  Hard on us all, in a way."
+
+Molly always smiled and sighed when she remembered him and the hunched
+shoulders that leaned drearily over the tonneau.
+
+"Where'll I tell him?" he asked, and she drew tighter the tight line
+between her brows, sighed, tried to speak, and found her mind quite
+utterly a blank.
+
+"Where'll I tell him?" Mr. Sykes repeated, looking curiously at her.
+
+To save her life Molly could not have remembered where she had arranged
+to go!  A real horror caught her: was this the beginning of all the
+dreadful symptoms that few of Julia Carter Sykes's admirers suspected
+in their idol?  She must say something, and there flashed suddenly into
+her mind, otherwise blank of any image or phrase, an odd occurrence of
+the afternoon before, an occurrence she had been too tired to try,
+even, to explain.
+
+"Drive to the docks!" she cried sharply, and the chauffeur touched his
+visor, and her life poised for twenty minutes on its watershed,
+although she did not know it.
+
+In the motor it came back to her, that twilight not eighteen hours
+back, when in clearing out her desk ("the last desk I shall ever clear,
+I swear!") she had happened on the little transparent glass ball, a
+paper-weight, she supposed, and fingered it idly, void of thought or
+feeling, after the last emotional storm with her celebrity.
+
+As she looked into it, staring, her tired mind seemed to sink and sink
+and submerge in the little clear white sphere till it drowned utterly,
+and only a rigid body, its eyes turned into its lap, sat in the still,
+dim room.
+
+Presently, after what might have been hours or seconds, she seemed to
+gather into herself again, but could not wrench her eyes from the
+crystal ball, which looked opalescent now, and filmy, so that she
+shaded her eyes mechanically with the black scarf of her dinner-dress,
+to shut out the reflections of the room.  But they were not
+reflections, for there was bright blue in the ball, blue and white, and
+nothing of that sort was in the room.
+
+She peered into the ball, and saw in it, clear and sharp and bright as
+the little coloured prints that are pasted to the bottom of such
+things, a tossing sapphire sea with little white-caps on it, a boat
+with a funnel, and little boats lashed to the side, a white rail, a
+tilted deck, and herself, Molly Dickett, in a striped blue and white
+frock and bare head, leaning over the rail on her elbows beside a
+broad-shouldered man with a cap such as officers on a boat wear.  The
+waves actually danced and glittered in the sun.  _But the room was
+nearly dark_, something whispered in her brain, and just then she had
+dropped the shielding scarf, and gasped back to a sense of reality and
+the ball was suddenly empty.
+
+There had been no picture in the bottom of it, after all.
+
+But on the bow of the little boat lashed to the side she had seen,
+written in tiny, tiny letters just as the Lord's Prayer is written in
+carved ivory toys of incredible smallness, the letters E-L-L-A, and
+these letters had fixed themselves in her mind, they had seemed so
+absurdly real and she had felt so absurdly sure of them.
+
+"Which steamer, Miss Dickett?" the chauffeur inquired respectfully; all
+the employees of the Julia Carter Sykes establishment respected Molly,
+as well they might.  A sudden, happy irresponsibility flooded Molly's
+tired mind, and she smiled into the man's face--the old,
+not-to-be-resisted Molly Dickett smile.
+
+"The name of the boat is _Ella_, Pierce," she said cheerfully, "and
+it's a small boat, not a liner.  Look it up."
+
+And as he disappeared she laughed aloud.
+
+She was still laughing softly when he returned, looking worried.
+
+"I think you must have told me wrong, Miss Dickett, didn't you?" he
+began hurriedly, lifting out her small, flat trunk.  "It's the _Stella_
+you mean, isn't it?  There seems to be a misunderstanding; they said
+the stateroom was countermanded at the last minute, but the party's
+name was Richards.  It's all right now, but we nearly lost it--they're
+holding her for you.  There don't seem to be any more passengers--are
+you sure there's no mistake?"
+
+"Perfectly sure," said Molly, sober enough now.  "I'm very much
+indebted to you, Pierce."
+
+She gave him a tip that caught his breath, walked up the gang-plank of
+the _Stella_, nodded easily to a severe official, and followed a pale,
+neat stewardess to her state-room.
+
+"Where is this boat going?" she asked of the pale stewardess, who
+gasped and replied,
+
+"South America, ma'am.  Didn't you know?"
+
+"I may have forgotten," said Molly, and then sleep overcame her and the
+days and nights were one for a long time.
+
+The _Stella_ carried hides and fruit and lumber, and, occasionally, two
+or three passengers, for whose convenience the company had fitted up a
+stateroom or two, since the demand for these proved steady.  People, as
+Molly learned from the stewardess (whose sole charge she was) for whom
+a sea-voyage had been recommended for various reasons.  There had never
+been more than five at a time and two was the average; one, very common.
+
+The long, blue days slipped by, she ate and slept and lay in the
+deck-chair that had been sent by the party named Richards, and spoke to
+the stewardess alone, who was used to tired and silent charges, and
+served her meals on a tray.
+
+She was a quiet, refined woman with a hand often at her heart.  Molly
+found her gasping in the companionway once, fed her quickly from the
+little flask she pointed at in her pocket, and helped her to her berth,
+as clean and comfortable as Molly's own.  This produced confidences,
+and she learned that Mrs. Cope (every one called her that, she said,
+and treated her most respectfully) had made her first voyage as
+children's nurse to an English family bound for Rio, who had turned her
+off on arriving at that port.  The stewardess on that trip proved
+inclined to drink and sauciness, and at Mrs. Cope's suggestion they had
+given her the post in her stead and she had kept it for five years.  An
+easy berth, she said, good pay, good board, little to do and pleasant
+people.  She ate alone, was practically her own mistress, and the
+sea-air had saved her life, she knew.
+
+This Molly could well believe, for she had come to count the days of
+her ignorance of salt water for days of loss and emptiness.  The
+mornings of wind, the nights of stars and foam, the hot blue moons,
+sang in her blood and tinted her cheeks: she felt herself born again,
+the crowded past an ugly nightmare.  She says that she had never, till
+then, been alone with herself for ten years and that she had never had
+time to find out what she really liked best in the world.  We must
+suppose that she did at last find out, but it cannot be denied that the
+discovery was unusual.
+
+Mrs. Cope died at Buenos Ayres, suddenly, as she was serving Molly's
+supper, and Molly, piloted by the first mate, for she knew no Spanish,
+buried her there and put up a neat headstone over her grave: the
+possible lack of one had been the poor woman's one terror, and she had
+sent every cent of her wages to some worthless, mysterious husband
+whose whereabouts nobody knew.  This took all Molly's money but so much
+as was needed for her return trip, for it has to be confessed of her
+that she never saved a penny in her extravagant life.
+
+And now we see her speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory
+salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious
+just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and
+horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess.  Two ladies
+waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation in
+the _Stella_ by the owners, and there is not a decent, respectable
+woman to be found on the whole coast of South America, to look after
+them.
+
+"Suppose you give me the job?" says Molly, quietly.
+
+He looks her up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes
+the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear,
+grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim,
+broad-shouldered figure as security for fitness.
+
+"I suppose you know your own business best," he says brusquely.
+"You're engaged.  What name do you wish to go by?"
+
+"My own," says she, "Molly Dickett."
+
+So now, you see!  The secret is out, and you may observe her again
+piloted by the first mate, scouting through the shops of Buenos Ayres
+for a blue-and-white striped cotton frock, broad enough through the
+shoulders.  Aprons she purchased and caps (larger caps than Mrs.
+Cope's, who compromised on white lawn bow-knots) and high-laced,
+rubber-soled, white canvas boots, only to be procured in English shops
+for sporting-goods.  Their price caused the first mate to whistle.
+
+"What's the idea of all this?" he demanded suddenly.  "Of course, you
+know, you must be up to some game.  Your kind doesn't ship as
+stewardess."
+
+"What game were _you_ up to?" Molly replied quickly.  "Your kind
+doesn't ship as first mate, does it?"
+
+"What kind?" he said gruffly.
+
+"The 'Dicky' kind," she answered.
+
+He blurted out some amazed incoherence, and,
+
+"Oh, I've seen Harvard men, before," she assured him pleasantly.
+
+Molly took the best of care of her two ladies and accepted their
+gratuities with a grave courtesy.  They confided to the captain, at New
+York, that she seemed unusually refined for her position, and he
+replied that for all he knew, she might be.
+
+"We'll never see _her_ again," the first mate grumbled sourly, when she
+stepped off the gangplank, and the captain shrugged his shoulders
+non-committally.
+
+They did, nevertheless, but her mother never did.  After that one
+dreadful interview in the Dickett library (it had used to be the
+sitting-room in her college days) when Eleanor had cried, and Kathryn's
+letter had been read aloud, and Mr. Dickett had vainly displayed his
+bank-book, and her mother had literally trembled with rage, there was
+nothing for it but oblivion--oblivion, and silence.
+
+"A stewardess!  My daughter a stewardess!  I believe we could put you
+in an asylum--you're not decent!"
+
+Mrs. Dickett's cheeks were greyish and mottled.
+
+"Come, come, mother!  Come, come!" said Mr. Dickett.  "There's some
+mistake, I'm sure.  If you'd only come and live with us, Molly--we're
+all alone, now, you know, and Lord knows there's plenty for all.  It
+doesn't seem quite the thing, I must say, though.  It--it hurts your
+mother's pride, you see."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Molly, sadly.  It is incredible, but she had never
+anticipated it!  She was really very simple and direct, and life seemed
+so clear and good to her, now.
+
+"To compare yourself with that Englishman is ridiculous, and you know
+it," sobbed Eleanor.  "What if he _was_ a cow-boy?  He didn't wear a
+cap and apron--and it was for his health--and George is too angry to
+come over, even!"
+
+"It's for my health, too," Molly urged, trying to keep her temper.  "I
+never was the same after I went on that vacation to Maine--I told you
+before.  Life isn't worth living, unless you're well."
+
+"But you could have the south chamber for your own sitting-room, as
+George suggested, and do your writing at your own time," Mr. Dickett
+began.
+
+"I've told you I'm not a writer," she interrupted shortly.
+
+"George would rather have paid out of his own pocket----"
+
+"We'll leave George out of this, I think," said Molly, her foot tapping
+dangerously.
+
+"Then you may leave me out, too!" cried George's wife.  "I have my
+children to think of.  If you are determined to go and be a
+chambermaid, this ends it.  Come, mother!"
+
+Mrs. Dickett avoided her husband's grasp and went to the door with
+Eleanor.  It is hard to see how these things can be, but the cave-woman
+and her whelpish brood are far behind us now, and Molly's mother was
+cut to the dividing of the bone and the marrow.  The two women went out
+of the room and Molly stood alone with her father.
+
+"I'm sorry, father," she said quietly.  "I can't see that I should
+change my way of life when it is perfectly honourable and proper, just
+to gratify their silly pride.  You must realise that I have to be
+independent--I'm thirty years old and I haven't had a cent that I
+didn't earn for more than ten years.  I have never been so well and
+so--so contented since I left college, really."
+
+"Really?" Mr. Dickett echoed in dim amazement.
+
+"Really.  And mother never liked me--never.  Oh, it's no use, father,
+she never has.  I can't waste any more of my life.  I've found what
+suits me--if I ever change, I'll let you know.  I'll write you, anyway,
+now and then.  Good-bye, father.  Shake hands."
+
+And so it was over, and she jumped into the waiting "hack" ("it was
+some comfort," Eleanor said, "that she wore that handsome broadcloth
+and the feather-boa") and left them.
+
+Perhaps you had rather leave her, yourself?  Remember, she had dined
+the brother of a baronet (and dined him well, too)!  And George Farwell
+had never earned her salary on _The Day_.  Still, if you will stick by
+her a little longer, you may feel a little more tolerant of her, and
+that is much, in this critical civilisation of ours.
+
+She leaned over the rail in her striped blue-and-white, and the first
+mate leaned beside her.  The sapphire sea raced along and the milky
+froth flew off from their bow.  The sun beat down on her dark head, and
+there was a song in her heart--oh, there's no doubt of it, the girl was
+disgracefully happy!
+
+"A fine trip, won't it be?" she said contentedly, and drew a deep
+breath, and washed her lungs clean of all the murk and cobwebs left
+behind.
+
+"Yes," said the first mate.  "My last, by the way."
+
+"Your last?" she repeated vaguely.  "Your last?"
+
+He nodded and swallowed in his throat.  "Shall I tell you why?"
+
+"Yes, tell me why," she said, and stared at the ship's boat, lashed to
+the side.
+
+"I've told you about myself," he blurted out roughly, "and my family,
+and all that.  It can't be helped--now.  We look at things differently.
+A man either wants to be an attache fooling around Baden, or he
+doesn't.  I don't, that's all.  And I go bad in offices.  And I won't
+take money from them--or anybody.  This suits me well enough.  Probably
+I'm not ambitious."
+
+"Then if it suits you," Molly began, but he put his hand over hers.
+
+"It doesn't suit me to love any woman as much as I've loved you since
+Buenos Ayres," he said, "and feel that to get her I must give up this
+and settle down into a smelly office.  It doesn't suit me to find that
+life is just hell without her, but to know that if I know anything
+about myself I couldn't live any other way but this, and that no decent
+man could ask a woman to lead the rolling-stone life that I lead--she
+wouldn't, anyhow."
+
+Molly's eyes were fastened on the bow of the ship's boat; her heart
+pounded against the rail; she had never felt so frightened in her life.
+
+And suddenly she became aware that she was staring at the letters
+E-L-L-A, and they looked very tiny, like the letters of the Lord's
+Prayer written in carved ivory toys, and something she had not thought
+of since she first left New York flashed into her mind, and she
+trembled slightly.  Then all the vexed and broken, many-coloured
+fragments of her life clicked and settled into place, quietly and
+inevitably, as they do in a child's kaleidoscope, and the final pattern
+stood out, finished.  She smiled slightly and thinks that perhaps she
+prayed.  Then,
+
+"Why don't you give the woman a chance?" said Molly Dickett.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mr. Dickett pushed little Penelope gently off his knee and stroked a
+whitening whisker.
+
+"Molly's baby was a boy, mother--I know you'd want to hear," he said.
+
+Mrs. Dickett was silent.
+
+"Her husband's bought a third interest in the boat," he went on firmly,
+"and she says he'll probably be captain some day."
+
+"Indeed," said Mrs. Dickett.
+
+"They've stopped carrying passengers and the rooms are fitted up for
+them, quite private, she writes, and the boy weighed nine pounds.  I'm
+thinking of going down to see them, when they get in to this country
+again, mother.  Would you care to see her husband's picture?  He's a
+fine looking chap--six feet, she writes."
+
+"I don't care about it," said Mrs. Dickett, through thin lips.  "It is
+a relief, however, to learn that she is no longer a chambermaid."
+
+"Come, come, mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know,"
+Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly.  "It seems a roving sort of life, to us,
+I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I can't see any real
+harm..."
+
+"Tastes differ," said his wife grimly--and so, God knows, they do!
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSPEL
+
+For the first few days of her stay there, she thought little enough of
+the strangeness of the situation.  To think of it, to marvel at the
+neat stillness, the quiet precision of all the domestic arrangements,
+would have been to let her mind dwell on just what she had to avoid.
+She was sick to her very soul of all that the words "domestic
+arrangements" implied; sick with an actual spiritual nausea.  It was
+honestly no exaggeration to say that she would gladly have died rather
+than take the trouble to arrange the details of living.
+
+So every morning she woke when her dreams ended and lay staring idly,
+through the cross-bars of the primitive window-netting, at the swaying,
+sinking, tree-tops, and the floating white above them, so white between
+the blue and green; and then her breakfast came, fresh and chill and
+shining, with a flaming nasturtium on the snowy linen; and then a
+dreamy time, when thought ranged among stray lines of poetry and
+memories of childhood; and then some one rubbed and kneaded and ironed
+out her tired muscles and she slept again.  Sometimes foaming milk came
+in a beaded brown pitcher that smelt of dairies; sometimes luscious,
+quartered fruits, smothered in clotting cream, tempted a palate nearly
+dulled beyond recall; sometimes rich, salted broth steamed in a dim,
+blue bowl till she regretted to see the bottom of it.
+
+And just at that time she was lifted into a long, basket chair and,
+propped in lavendered pillows, looked dreamily into the hills and
+pastures rolling out in front of her.  Cows wandered here and there,
+birds swooped lazily through the June blue, the faintest scent of
+grapevines hung on the wind.  But no human figures blotted the
+landscape; only the faint, musical clash of distant scythes (a sound as
+natural as the cawing and lowing and interminable twittering of the
+busy animal world all around) spoke of men.
+
+Then one day (it might have been a week's time) she caught herself
+listening for sounds of household labour.  Where was the breaking, the
+slamming, the whistling, the quarrelling, the brushing and the rattling
+that these thin partitions ought to filter through?  Simply, it was
+not.  A little faint, suspicious worry came to her: the house was a
+tomb, then?  Did it have to be?  Was she as bad as that?
+
+And when her tray came next, some kind of savoury stew, by now, with
+fresh picked strawberries on a sea-green grape leaf, she looked
+directly at the woman who brought it to the bed.
+
+"How still this house is!" she said, and flushed with weakness, for it
+was her first real sentence, and it occurred to her that only little
+sighs of fatigue or groans of relief and halting exclamations of, "That
+feels good," or "No more, thanks," had passed her lips.
+
+The woman smiled.  She wore a straight gown of some cool stripe of
+white and grey and her eyes were grey.
+
+"We live in a quiet place," she said, and lifted the pillows higher.
+
+But it seemed that after that--perhaps it was because she listened--she
+began to hear faint sounds.  The clear falling of poured out water, and
+the tinkling of dish on dish, now and then, and later, the soft murmur
+of exchanging women's voices.
+
+Another day she spoke of the freshness of her morning egg, and that
+afternoon she leaned nearer the casement to catch the cluck of a
+motherly hen with her brood, and smiled at the scurry of wing and feet
+as grain was scattered somewhere.
+
+It must have been at that time that the doctor came up to see her, a
+big brown man, whose beard hid his smile when he chose, but nothing
+could cover the keen, reading beam of the eye.
+
+"I see you are doing well," he said.
+
+"It is wonderful," she answered him, "but I am sure it is not the
+world."
+
+"The world is very large," he said, and went away.
+
+"And I never asked about--about anybody," she murmured, her eyes
+filling, "but I am sure they are all right, or he would have said!"
+
+She was ashamed, afterward, to remember for how long she had thought
+the woman who attended on her a servant.  And yet she did think her so
+until the morning when it suddenly occurred to her that it was not
+possible any ordinary servant should be so deft and self-contained at
+once: servants were not so calm--that was it, so calm.  Even the best
+of them were hurried and anxious, and if they were old and valued, they
+got on one's nerves the more: one had to consider them.  Of course,
+this was a trained nurse.  She had decided suddenly that she felt equal
+to rising for her bath, and congratulated herself on discerning the
+nurse in time, for now she could ask for help, if she needed it.
+
+"If you will show me the bathroom," she said, "and will be there to
+help me over the edge of the tub, in case I feel weak----"
+
+"I will be there," said the woman, "but I must get it ready: the tub is
+not high."
+
+And when she stepped into the next room she realised, with a little
+smile, how far she was from white porcelain and tiled walls.  On the
+scrubbed deal floor there stood a white deal tub, clean as new milk,
+round and copper bound.  Towels and soaps and sponges were there in
+plenty, and great metal ewers full of hot and cold water, and nothing
+else but one chair in all the scrubbed cleanliness.  The woman poured
+the water over her as she crouched in the fragrant wooden pool and
+dried her gently and quickly in towels pressed away in lavender, with
+the deft, sure movements of one well practised in her business; but
+when she lay, just happily tired from the new exertion, among the
+fragrant sheets, a tiny shadow seemed about to haunt her sleep.  She
+placed the little discomfort with difficulty, but at length expressed
+it.
+
+"That tub is very heavy, now," she said drowsily.  "Is there a man to
+lift it?"
+
+For the first time the woman smiled.  Till then she had been hands and
+feet merely, tireless and tactful, but impersonal: now she smiled, and
+her face was very sweet.
+
+"I shall empty it," she said.  "I am quite strong.  Go to sleep, now."
+
+Very soon again the doctor came, and at her quiet request gave her news
+of husband, children and home; all well, it seemed, and smoothly
+ordered.  Days of absolute stillness had broken the habit of insistent
+speech, and many things that once would have said themselves before she
+thought, now halted behind her lips and seemed not worth the muscular
+effort.  But one thing she did mention.
+
+"Ought not the nurses here to have more help?" she asked.  "Mine lifts
+out my bath-water every day.  Are there not servants enough?  I could
+pay for it..."
+
+"There are no servants here at all," he said, "and there is nobody you
+could pay more than you are already paying."
+
+"Then they are all nurses?"
+
+"There are no trained nurses here, if you mean that," he said.
+
+"Then who--what is the woman who takes care of me?" she asked, vaguely
+displeased.
+
+"She is one of the daughters of the house," he said.  "She is no more a
+nurse than her mother is a cook or her sister a laundress.  They do
+what is to be done, that is all.  Each has done and can do the others'
+tasks."
+
+She felt in some way corrected, yet it was hard to say in what she had
+offended.  But Dr. Stanchon was an odd man in many ways.  "All the
+same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now.  I shall
+feel more comfortable.  Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me.  I
+believe I could get along with her, now.  I'm afraid I was childish,
+before."
+
+But he only shook his head.  "The time for Miss Jessop has passed, dear
+friend," he said quietly.  "No nurse ever comes here."
+
+"Then this is a private house," she began again, "their own home.  And
+I do not even know their names!"
+
+"It is private because it is their own home--just that," he said.
+"That is what a home is.  It is a simple fact, but one that seems not
+to have been included in your education."
+
+"Why, Dr. Stanchon, what can you mean?" she cried.  "My mother's
+hospitality----"
+
+"I mean that I do not consider an art museum a home, no matter how
+highly the chef is paid," he said shortly.
+
+"But there is the place on the Hudson----"
+
+"That is a country club, nothing more," he interrupted.  "Your mother
+dismissed a butler once, because, though he offered eight liqueurs to a
+guest, the guest asked for a ninth and the butler had neglected to
+order it.  I have attended her there for a really painful attack of
+sciatica when none of her visitors knew that anything ailed her, though
+she had been away from them for forty-eight hours."
+
+"But that is mother's house, not mine," she protested, "and I do not
+pretend to keep up----"
+
+"You do not pretend to, because you could not do it," he interrupted
+again.  "Your father is a multi-millionaire and your husband is not.
+But it is your constant ideal, nevertheless, and your failures to
+realise it, even in the degree to which you have tried, have sapped
+your vitality to a point which even you can understand now, I should
+suppose."
+
+She looked doubtingly at him.
+
+"Do you really mean, Dr. Stanchon," she began, "that this dreadful
+attack----"
+
+"'Attack'!" he muttered brusquely, "'attack'!  One would imagine I had
+pulled you through pneumonia or peritonitis!  If, after constant
+sapping and mining and starving-out the garrison, it gives way and
+falls defeated, you choose to call the day of surrender a yielding to
+an attack, then you have had an attack."
+
+And again he left her abruptly, a prey to creeping, ugly doubts.  For
+she had been very sorry for herself and the fatality that had stranded
+her on the dreary coast where so many of her friends had met mysterious
+wreckage.
+
+"Has the doctor sent patients here before?" she asked her attendant the
+next morning, when she sat, fresh and fragrant in her invalid ruffles,
+at the window, watching the poultry yard, which somehow she had not
+noticed before, and the cow browsing beside the brook where the white
+ducks paddled, gossiping.
+
+"Oh, yes, often," said the busy sister (she was Hester; the other was
+Ann).  "We are never without some one.  So many people are ill in the
+city.  Now I am going to clean your room, and perhaps you will feel
+like stepping out on the balcony?"
+
+Surprised, for she had not seen any such addition to the simple frame
+house, she stepped through a window cut down somewhat clumsily, but
+efficiently enough, and hinged to swing outward, onto a shallow, roofed
+_loggia_ with vines grown from boxes on the sides and two long, low
+chairs faced to the view of the hills.  In one of these sat a woman,
+slender and motionless, whose glistening white wrapper seemed to melt
+in the strong sun into the white of the painted wooden balustrade that
+protected the balcony.  Flushed with an invalid's quick irritation and
+resentful of any other occupant, for her raw nerves were not yet
+healed, she was about to turn back hastily into the room when a second
+glance assured her that it was only one of her own white wrappers
+draped along the chair.  The face and hands that her vexed irritation
+must have supplied amazed her, in retrospect, with their distinctness
+of outline, and she trembled at her weak nerves.
+
+From inside the room came the swishing of water and the sound of
+scrubbing; soon the strong clean flavour of soapy boards floated out,
+and the flick of the drops into the pail; from where she sat she could
+see out of the corner of her eye the fluff of snowy suds that foamed
+over the shining bucket as Hester rubbed the milky cake of soap with
+the bristles.  Her strong strokes had a definite rhythm and set the
+time for the stern old hymn-tune she crooned.  The listener on the
+balcony obeyed her growing interest and turned her chair to face into
+the room.  The kilted Hester, on her knees, her brow bound with a
+glistening towel, threw her body forward with the regularity of a
+rower, her strong, muscled arms shot out in a measured curve; on her
+little island of dry boards she sang amid her clean, damp sea,
+high-priestess of a lustral service as old as the oldest temple of man,
+and the odour of her incense, the keen, sweet freshness of her
+cleansing soap, rose to the heaven of her hymn.
+
+"You sing as if you liked it," said the watcher.
+
+"And so I do," said Hester.  "Things must be clean, and I like to make
+them so."
+
+"Why, you are doing just what we did in the gymnasium the year I went
+there," cried the invalid, with the first real interest she had felt in
+anything outside herself.  "We kneeled on the floor and swept our arms
+out just like that!"
+
+"If there were many of you, it must soon have been clean," said Hester,
+moving the rug she knelt on deftly.  "Oh, we were not cleaning it,"
+said the invalid smiling.  "It was only the same motion."
+
+"Indeed?  Then why were you doing it?" Hester asked, turning her
+flushed face in surprise toward the ruffled whiteness in the window.
+
+She stared at the worker, but even as she stared she frowned
+uncomfortably.
+
+"Why, for--for exercise--for strength," she said slowly, and coloured
+under Hester's smile....
+
+Later in the day she moved out again upon the balcony, regretful for
+the first time that no one of her own world could be there to talk with
+her.  Hester, wiping bed, chair and mirror with the white cloth that
+never seemed to soil, whipping the braided rag rugs below her on the
+green with strong, firm strokes that recalled the scheduled blows she
+had practised at a swinging leather ball, vexed her, somehow, and she
+was conscious of a whimsical wish that her delusion of the white
+wrapper stretched along the reclining chair had proved a reality.  The
+soft grey shadows of early evening covered the little balcony, the
+chairs were plunged in it, and it was with a cry of apology that she
+stepped into a grey gown, so soft and thin that she had taken it for a
+deeper shadow, merely, and had actually started to seat herself in the
+long chair where the slender woman lay.  Her own body appeared so
+robust beside this delicate creature's that pity smothered the surprise
+at her quiet presence there, and the swift feeling that she herself was
+by no means the frailest of the doctor's patients added to her
+composure as she begged pardon for her clumsiness.
+
+"I thought I was the only patient here," she explained.  "Miss Hester
+and Miss Ann have a wonderful way of getting quiet and privacy in their
+little house, haven't they?"
+
+"Is it so little?" the stranger asked.  She felt embarrassed, suddenly,
+and tactless, for she had taken it for granted that they were both of
+the class to which the modest cottage must seem small.
+
+"I only meant," she added hastily, for it seemed that at any cost this
+gentle, pale creature must not be hurt, "I only meant that to take in
+strangers, in this way, and to keep the family life entirely separate
+requires, usually, much more space."
+
+"But do they keep it separate--the family life!"
+
+("Evidently," she thought, "they have not been able to give her a
+private room, like mine, or perhaps she eats with them.")
+
+"I think that is how they do it," the stranger went on, "by not having
+any separate life, really.  It is all one life, with them."
+
+"All one life..." the other repeated, vaguely, recalling, for some
+reason, the doctor's words, "but, of course, in a larger establishment
+that would not be possible.  With servants..."
+
+"I suppose that is why they have no servants," said the stranger.
+
+There was a soft assurance in the tone, soft, but undoubtedly there.
+And yet what assurance should a woman have who did not find this house
+small?  She discovered that she was still a little irritable, for she
+spoke brusquely.
+
+"People do not employ servants, I imagine, for the very simple reason
+that they cannot afford to."
+
+"Not always," said the other quietly.  "I have known Ann and Hester
+many years, and there has never been a time when they could not have
+afforded at the least one servant."
+
+"Tastes differ, I suppose," she answered shortly.  "I should have
+supposed that every woman would take the first opportunity of relieving
+herself from the strain of household drudgery, which any ignorant
+person can accomplish."
+
+"Have you found so many of them to accomplish it for you?"
+
+She flushed angrily.
+
+"Dr. Stanchon has been talking about me!" she cried with hot memories
+of her interminable domestic woes.
+
+"Indeed not," said the grey lady.  "I knew nothing....  I only asked if
+ignorant persons really accomplished their drudgery to any one's
+satisfaction nowadays?  They used not to when--when I employed them...."
+
+So she had been wrecked beyond repair, this shadowy, large-eyed thing!
+She spoke as of a day long over.  The other woman felt ashamed of her
+suspicion.
+
+"No, indeed," she answered wearily, "that was an exaggeration,
+naturally.  But they might, if they would take pains.  They are paid
+enough for it, heaven knows."
+
+"Ann and Hester are not paid," said the voice from the dim chair.
+"Perhaps that is why they take pains."
+
+The woman nodded fretfully.
+
+"That is all very well," she said, "and sounds very poetic, but it
+would be rather impractical for us all to do, on that account."
+
+"Impractical?  _Impractical?_"
+
+A hint of gentle laughter from the long chair.  "But it seems to me
+that Ann and Hester are the least impractical of people--are they not?
+They are surely less harassed than you were?"
+
+("I must have been very sleepy: I don't remember telling her all about
+it," thought the woman, "but she seems to know.")
+
+"Yes," she said aloud, "I was harassed.  Nearly to death, it seems.  I
+am hardly myself yet.  I suppose you have been through it all?"
+
+"I have been through a great deal, yes."
+
+The shadows deepened and a thin, new moon sank lower and lower.  The
+grey figure grew less and less distinct to her, and before she knew it,
+she slept.  When she woke, she was alone on the balcony, and the
+sunlight lay in blue-white pools upon the floor.  For the first time in
+her life she had slept alone under the stars, with no one to settle her
+into her dreams or to attend on her when she woke from them, and
+suspicion and displeasure darkened for a moment the freshest awakening
+she could remember.  Had they really forgotten her?  No one seemed to
+be coming, and after a quarter of an hour's impatient waiting she left
+the long, couch-like chair, opened the door of her room and went with
+quick determined steps down the narrow hall, down the stairs, straight
+to the sounds of women's voices in the distance.  They led her through
+a shining kitchen, where a patient, old clock presided, through a cool,
+dim buttery into a primitive laundry, or washing shed, with deal tubs
+and big copper cauldrons and a swept stone floor.  But no odour of the
+keen cleanliness she had learned to connect with Hester's soap ruled
+the wash-house this morning: a breeze from Araby the blest blew through
+the piles of dewy crimson strawberries that heaped themselves in yellow
+bowls, in silver-tinted pans, in leaf-lined wicker baskets, and brought
+all the gardens of June into the bare, stone room.  Hester's quick
+fingers twisted the delicate hulls from the scarlet, scented globes,
+and near her, measuring mounds of glittering sugar, stood a broader,
+squarer woman with greying hair, who smiled gravely at her, facing her.
+
+"Here she is, now," said this woman, whom she guessed to be Ann, and
+Hester, turning to her, added, as one who finishes a sentence, merely,
+
+"And I was just getting ready a dish of strawberries for you.  Mother
+has stepped out for your egg: the brown hen has just laid.  The rolls
+are in the oven and mother has the chocolate ready.  I thought you
+would be early this morning, you were sleeping so soundly."
+
+"Early? early?" she repeated, taken aback by their easy greeting of
+her.  "Why, what do you mean?"  And just then the clock struck seven,
+deliberately.
+
+"Why--why, I thought--then you did not forget--" she began, uncertainly.
+
+"There is nothing like the open air for sleeping, when one is ready for
+it," said Hester.  "Did you not notice the cover I threw over you?  You
+must have gone off before it grew dark, quite."
+
+"Oh, no, because I was with--" then she stopped abruptly.  For it
+dawned on her that the other woman must have been a dream, since she
+perceived that she was unwilling to ask about her, so faintly did that
+conversation recall itself to her, so uncertain her memory proved as to
+how that other came and went, or when.
+
+"It was a dream, of course," she thought, and said, a shade resentful
+still,
+
+"I never slept--that way--before."
+
+"It seems to suit you," said Ann briskly, "for you have never left your
+room till now."
+
+Then it dawned on her suddenly.
+
+"Why, I am well!" she said.
+
+"Very nearly, I think," Hester answered her.  "Will you have your
+breakfast under the tree, while sister picks the berries?"
+
+To this she agreed gladly and found herself, still wondering at the new
+strength that filled her, under a pear-tree, in a pleasant patch of
+shadow, eating with relish from Hester's morning tray.  Ann knelt not
+far from her in the sun, not too hot at this hour for a hardy worker,
+and soon her low humming rose like a bee's note from under her broad
+hat.
+
+"The wash is all ready for you, sister, on the landing," she called.
+"Tell mother her new towels bleached to a marvel: they are on the
+currant-bushes now.  I'll wet them down and iron them off while the
+syrup is cooking, I think--I know she's anxious to handle them."
+
+"Are you always busy, Miss Ann?" her guest inquired, for Ann's fingers
+never stopped even while she looked toward the house-door.
+
+"Always in the morning, of course," she answered, directly.  "Every one
+must be, if things are to get done."
+
+"But in the afternoon you are ironing, and Miss Hester tells me you do
+a great deal in the garden.  When do you rest?"
+
+"In my bed," said Ann briefly.
+
+She was less sweetly grave than her sister, and it was easy to see that
+her tongue was sharper.  She would not have been so soothing to an
+invalid, but the woman under the pear-tree had her nerves better in
+hand by now, and felt, somehow, upon her mettle to prove to this broad,
+curt Ann that there were tasks in the world beyond her sturdy
+rule-of-thumb.
+
+"But surely every one needs time to think--to consider," she began
+gently.  "Don't you find it so?"
+
+"To plan out the day, do you mean?" said Ann, moving to a new patch.
+"I generally do that at night before I go to sleep."
+
+"No, no," she explained, "not the day's work--that must be done, of
+course--but the whole Scheme, life, and one's relation to it..."
+
+"I don't feel any call to study that out," said Ann.  "I haven't the
+headpiece for it."
+
+"No, but some people have, and so----"
+
+"Have you?" said Ann.
+
+She bit her lip.
+
+"It is surely every woman's duty to cultivate herself as far as she
+can," she began.  "Nobody denies that nowadays."
+
+Ann was silent.
+
+"Don't you agree with me?" the woman persisted.  "You surely know what
+I mean?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know what you mean, well enough," Ann said at last.  "I
+know you have to cultivate strawberries, if you want to get more of
+'em--and bigger.  The question is, what do you get out of it?"
+
+A flood of explanations pressed to her lips, but just as they brimmed
+over, some quick surmise of Ann's shrewd replies choked them back.
+After all, what had she got out of it?  What that she could show?  She
+rose slowly and walked back to her room, where the bath, fresh,
+uncreased clothes, and Hester's deft ministry waited ready for her.
+Later, she lay again in the balcony chair, not so soothed by her little
+pile of books as she had looked to be.  Beautiful, pellucid thought,
+deep-flowing philosophies, knife-edged epigrams and measured verse lay
+to her hand, but they seemed unreal, somehow, and their music echoed
+like meaningless words shouted, for the echo merely, in empty halls.
+She drowsed discontentedly and woke from a dream of the grey lady to
+see her stretched in the companion chair, herself asleep, it seemed,
+for it was only after a long doubtful stare from the other that she
+opened her great dark eyes.
+
+"And I almost thought I had dreamed of meeting you before!  Wasn't it
+absurd?  I am only now realising how ill I have been--things were all
+so confused...  I find that I can't even reply to Miss Ann as I ought
+to be able to, when she scorns the effects of culture!"
+
+"Does Ann scorn culture?" the grey lady asked in mild surprise.  "I
+never knew that."
+
+"She scorns the leisure that goes to produce it, anyway."
+
+"Did you give her a concrete instance of any special culture?"
+
+She moved uneasily in her chair.
+
+"Oh--concrete, _concrete_!" she repeated deprecatingly.  "Must I be as
+concrete with you as with her?  Surely culture, and all that it
+implies, need not be forced to defend itself with concrete examples?"
+
+"I'm afraid that I agree with Ann," said the soft voice in the shadow.
+"I'm afraid that so far as I am concerned, culture needs just that
+defence."
+
+She tried to smile the superior smile she had mustered for Ann,
+kneeling in her checked sunbonnet, but this was difficult, with a woman
+so obviously of her own class and kind.  Still the woman was clearly
+unreasonable, and she was able, at least, to speak forcibly as she
+replied,
+
+"Aren't you rather severe on the enormous majority of us, in that case?
+We can't all be great philosophers or productive artists, you know, and
+yet between us and Ann's preserved strawberries and Hester's scrubbing
+there's a wide gulf--you must admit that!"
+
+The stranger rose lightly from her chair and walked, with a swaying
+motion like a long-stemmed wild flower, toward the home-made
+window-door.  At the sill she paused and fixed her great eyes on the
+stronger woman--stronger, plainly, for the frail white hand on the
+china knob supported her while she stood, and she seemed to cling to
+the woodwork and press against it as she sank into the shadow of the
+eaves.
+
+"A wide gulf, indeed," she said slowly, in her soft, breathless voice,
+with an intonation almost like a foreigner's, her listener decided
+suddenly, "a gulf so wide that unless you can cross it with some bridge
+of honest accomplishment, it will swallow you all very soon--you women
+of culture!"
+
+She slipped across the sill and presently Hester's clear, firm voice
+was heard in the narrow hall,
+
+"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" and the balcony was drowned in the dusk, and
+the woman on it yielded consciously to the great desire for sleep that
+possessed her.  But before she drifted off, not afraid, this time, of
+night under the sky, it occurred to her dimly that Hester's other
+patient must come through her own room whenever she used the little
+_loggia_.
+
+"What is she--an anarchist? a socialist?" she thought.  "I must surely
+ask Hester about her.  'You women of culture,' indeed!  What does she
+call herself, I wonder?"
+
+That next morning as she waited idly for bath and breakfast, the
+stranger possessed her thoughts more and more.  Only in such an
+absolutely unconventional place, she told herself, could a completely
+unknown woman appear (in her own apartments, really) and discuss with
+her so nonchalantly such strange questions.  In many ways this delicate
+creature's words seemed to echo Dr. Stanchon's, and this seemed all the
+more natural, now, since she was so obviously still his patient.
+Hester had said that he sent many there--this one was perhaps too frail
+ever to leave them, and felt so much at home that no one thought to
+speak of her.
+
+A healthy hunger checked these musings, and more amused than irritated
+at such unusual desertion, she bathed and dressed unaided and went down
+to the kitchen.
+
+"They will soon see by the way I keep my temper, now," she thought,
+"and my strength, that I am quite able to go back.  I really must see
+how the children are getting on."
+
+Following the ways of her last journey through the house she found the
+kitchen, where an oven-door ajar and a half-dozen small, fragrant
+loaves in the opening showed her that though empty, the room was
+deserted only for a housewife's rapid moment.  She sat down therefore
+beneath the patient old clock, and waited.  Soon she heard a quick,
+bustling step, unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of
+Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh and tidy as a
+clean withered apple, was their mother.  She had a pan of new-picked
+peas in one arm and a saucer of milk balanced in the other hand,
+plainly the breakfast for the sleek black cat that bounded in beside
+her.  This she set carefully on a flagstone corner before she noticed
+her visitor, it seemed, and yet she did not appear startled at company,
+and showed all of the younger women's untroubled ease as she explained
+that a message from Dr. Stanchon had called them both away suddenly,
+very early.
+
+"It was perhaps some other patient in the house?" the guest suggested
+curiously, with a vivid memory of the grey lady's frail white hand and
+breathless voice.
+
+"Perhaps," said the old woman equably, and tied a checked apron over
+the white one, the better to attack the peas.
+
+From the shining pan she tossed the fairy green globes into the rich
+yellow bowl of earthenware at her side, with the quick ease of those
+veined, old hands that outwork the young ones, and her guest watched
+her in silence for a few minutes, hypnotised, almost, by the steady
+pit-pat of the little green balls against the bowl.
+
+"And when do you expect them back?" she asked finally.
+
+"I don't know," said the old lady, "but they'll be back as soon as the
+work is over, you may depend--they don't lag, my girls, neither of 'em."
+
+"I am sure of that," she assented quickly.  "They are the hardest
+workers I ever saw: I wonder that they never rest, and tell them so."
+
+"Time enough for resting when all's done," said the old lady briskly.
+"That was my mother's word before me and I've handed it down to Ann and
+Hester."
+
+"But then, at that rate, none of us would ever rest, would we?" she
+protested humourously.
+
+"This side o' green grave?" the old lady shot out.  "Maybe so.  But
+podding peas is a kind of rest--after picking 'em!"
+
+"And have you really picked all these--and in the sun, too?" she said,
+surprised.  "I trust not for me--I could get along perfectly..."
+
+The old lady jumped briskly after her loaves, tapped the bottoms
+knowingly, then stood each one on its inverted pan in a fragrant row on
+the dresser.
+
+"Peas or beans or corn--it makes no odds, my dear," she cried
+cheerfully.  "It's all to be done, one way or another, you see."
+
+An inspiration came to the idler by the window, and before she had
+quite caught at the humour of it, she spoke.
+
+"Why should you get my breakfast--for I am sure you are going to?" she
+said.  "Why shouldn't I--if you think I could--for I don't like to sit
+here and have you do it all!"
+
+"Why not, indeed?" the old woman replied, with a shrewd smile at her.
+"Hester judged you might offer, and left the tray ready set."
+
+"Hester judged?" she repeated wonderingly.  "Why, how could she,
+possibly?  How could she know I would come down, even?"
+
+"She judged so," the mother nodded imperturbably.  "The kettle's on the
+boil, now, and I've two of the rusks you relished yesterday on the
+pantry shelf.  Just dip 'em in that bowl of milk in the window and slip
+'em in the oven--it makes a tasty crust.  She keeps some chocolate
+grated in a little blue dish in the corner and the butter's in a crock
+in the well.  The brown hen will show you her own egg, I'll warrant
+that."
+
+Amused, she followed all these directions, and poured herself a cup of
+steaming chocolate, the first meal of her own preparing since childish
+banquets filched from an indulgent cook.  And then, the breakfast over,
+she would have left the kitchen, empty just then, for the mistress of
+it had pottered out on one of her endless little errands, had not a
+sudden thought sent a flush to her forehead, so that she turned
+abruptly at the threshold and walking swiftly to the water spigot, sent
+a stream into a tiny brass-bound tub she took from the deep window
+seats, frothed it with Hester's herb-scented soap, and rinsed and
+dipped and dried each dish and cup of her own using before the old
+woman returned.
+
+"It is surprising how--how _satisfactory_ it makes one feel, really,"
+she began hastily at the housewife's friendly returning nod, "to deal
+with this sort of work.  One seems to have accomplished something
+that--that had to be done...  I don't know whether you see what I mean,
+exactly...."
+
+"Bless you, my dear, and why shouldn't I see?" cried the other,
+scrubbing the coats of a lapful of brown jacketed potatoes at the
+spigot.  "Every woman knows that feeling, surely?"
+
+"I never did," she said, simply.  "I thought it was greasy, thankless
+work, and felt very sorry for those who did it."
+
+"Did they look sad?" asked the old worker.
+
+In a flash of memory they passed before her, those white-aproned,
+bare-elbowed girls she had watched idly in many countries and at many
+seasons; from the nurse that bathed and combed her own children,
+singing, to the laundry-maids whose laughter and ringing talk had waked
+her from more than one uneasy afternoon sleep.
+
+"Why, no, I can't say that they did," she answered slowly, "but to do
+it steadily, I should think..."
+
+"It's the steady work that puts the taste into the holiday, my mother
+used to say," said the old woman shortly.  "Where's the change, else?"
+
+"But of course there are many different forms of work," she began,
+slowly, as though she were once for all making the matter clear to
+herself, and not at all explaining obvious distinctions to an
+uneducated old woman, "and brain workers need rest and change as much,
+yes, more, than mere labourers."
+
+"So they tell me," said Hester's mother respectfully, "though of course
+I know next to nothing of it myself.  Ann says it's that makes it so
+dangerous for women folks to worry at their brains too much, for she's
+taken notice, she says, that mostly they're sickly or cranky that works
+too much that way.  Hard to get on with, she says they are, the best of
+'em."
+
+"Indeed!" she cried indignantly, "and I suppose to be 'easy to get on
+with' is the main business of women, then!"
+
+"Why, Lord above us, child!" answered the old woman briskly, dropping
+her white potatoes into a brown dish of fresh-drawn water, "if the
+women are not to be easy got on with, who's to be looked to for it,
+then; the children--or the men?"
+
+She gathered up the brown peelings and bagged them carefully with the
+pea pods.
+
+"For the blacksmith's pig," she said.  "We don't keep one and he gives
+us a ham every year....  Not that it's not a different matter with you,
+of course," she added politely.  "There's some, of course, that's
+needed by the world, for books and music and the like o' that--I don't
+need Hester to tell me so.  There's never an evening in winter, when
+all's swept and the lamp trimmed and a bowl of apples out, and Ann and
+I sit with our bit of sewing, that I don't thank God for the books
+Hester reads out to us.  One was written by a woman writer that the
+doctor sent us here for a long, long time--poor dear, but she was
+feeble!
+
+"She worked with the girls at everything they did, that she could, by
+doctor's orders, and it put a little peace into her, she told me.
+You've a look in the eyes like her--there were thousands read her
+books."
+
+The guest rose abruptly.
+
+"I never wrote a book--or did anything," she said briefly, and turned
+to the door.
+
+"You don't tell me!" the old mother stammered.  "Why, I made sure by
+your look--what made ye so mortal tired, then, deary?"
+
+"I must find that out," she said, slowly, her hand on the knob.
+"I--must--find--that--out!"
+
+And on the balcony she paced and thought for an hour, but there was no
+calmness in her forehead till the afternoon, when alone with Hester's
+mother, for the daughters did not return all that day, she worked with
+pressed lips at their tasks, picking Ann's evening salad, sprinkling
+cool drops over Hester's fresh-dried linen, brought in by armfuls from
+the currant-bushes, spreading the supper-table, pressing out the
+ivory-moulded cottage cheese and ringing its dish with grape-leaves
+gathered from the well-house.
+
+So intent was she at these tasks, that she heard no footsteps along the
+grass, and only as she put the fifth chair at the white-spread table
+(for the old mother had been mysteriously firm in her certainty that
+they should need it) did she turn to look into the keen brown eyes of
+the wise physician who had left her weeks ago in the bed above them.
+He gave her a long, piercing look.  Then,
+
+"I thought so," he said quietly.  "We will go back to-morrow, you and
+I--I need your bedroom."
+
+Through the open door she caught a quick glimpse of Ann and Hester half
+supporting, half carrying up the stairs a woman heavily veiled in black
+crepe; Hester did not join them till late in the meal, and went through
+the room with a glass of milk afterward.  No one spoke further of her
+presence among them; no one thanked her for her services; all was
+assumed and she blessed them for it.
+
+The doctor passed the evening with his new patient, and when she
+mounted the stairs for her last night she found her simple luggage in
+the room next hers: there was no question of helping her to bed, and
+she undressed thoughtfully alone.  The house was very still.
+
+Her window was a deep dormer, and as she leaned out of it, for a breath
+of the stars, she saw Dr. Stanchon stretched in her chair on the
+balcony, his face white and tired in the moonlight.  In the chair near
+her, so near that she could touch it, lay the frail creature in the
+grey dress, black now at night.
+
+"It is his old patient!" she thought contentedly, remembering with
+vexation that she had absolutely forgotten to ask the house-mother
+about her and why she had not appeared; and she began to speak, when
+the other raised her hand warningly, and she saw that Dr. Stanchon
+slept.
+
+Why she began to whisper she did not know, but she remembered afterward
+that their conversation, below breath as it was, was the longest they
+had yet had, though she could recall only the veriest scraps of it.
+For instance:
+
+"But Mary and Martha?" she had urged, "surely there is a deep meaning
+in that, too?  It was Martha who was reproved...."
+
+"One would imagine that every woman to-day judged herself a Mary--and
+that is a dangerous judgment to form, one's self," the other whispered.
+
+"But to deliberately assume these tasks--simple because they clear my
+life and keep me balanced--when I have no need to do them, seems to me
+an affectation, absurd!"
+
+"How can a thing be absurd if it brings you ease?"
+
+"But I don't need to do them, really, for myself."
+
+"For some one else, then?"
+
+It was then that another veil dropped from before her.
+
+"Then is that why, do you think, people devote themselves to those low,
+common things--great saints and those that give up their own lives?"
+
+ "I think so, yes."
+
+"It is a real relief to them?"
+
+"Why not? ..."
+
+She fell asleep on the broad window-seat, her head on her arms, and
+when she woke and groped for her bed in the dark, the balcony was empty.
+
+There was no bustle of departure: a grave hand-shaking from the
+daughters, a kiss on the mother's withered, rosy cheek.
+
+"Come back again, do," said the old woman and the doctor commented upon
+this as they sat in the train.
+
+"That is a great compliment," he said.  "I never knew her to say that
+except to a long-time patient of mine that stayed a long time (more's
+the pity!) with them.  'Come back,' said Mother to her.  'Come soon,
+deary, for the house will miss your grey dress so soft on the floor.'
+They would have cured her if anybody could."
+
+"Then you don't consider her cured?" she said with a shock of
+disappointment.  "I am so sorry.  But it is surely a wonderful
+place--one can't talk about it, but I see you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know," he said briefly.  "I saw you would pull through in
+great shape there.  This patient I spoke of used to tell me that the
+duty of her life, here and through Eternity, ought by rights to be the
+preaching of the gospel she learned there.  Well--maybe it is, for all
+we know.  If I could have cured her, she would have been a great--a
+really great novelist, I think."
+
+"If you could have--" she gasped, seizing his arm, "you mean----"
+
+"I mean that I couldn't," he answered simply.  "She died there.  I
+dreamed of her last night."
+
+
+
+
+THE GYPSY
+
+Very early in the last century, while Napoleon still reigned over
+Europe and the people went journeys in post-chaises through England,
+John Appleyard, the only son of a thriving Sussex farmer, met, while
+walking across one of his father's fields, a troup of gypsies camping
+under a hedge.  Among them was a dark young woman, very lovely, with
+straight, heavy brows and a yard of thick blue-black hair, which she
+was drying in the wind at the moment, having washed it in the brook.
+John looked at her hard, walked by, turned, looked again, and stood
+staring so long that a surly gypsy father slipped a fowling-piece into
+his elbow and approached him menacingly.
+
+"My daughter, young sir," he said shortly, "may sleep in a wagon and
+not eat off chayny plates as the like o' you do, but I'll have none
+eying her like that, be who he may, for she's a good girl, she is, and
+the best man that walks is none too good to be her husband!"
+
+"Am I good enough?" says John Appleyard, quietly.
+
+And as a matter of fact he married her in the parish church in three
+weeks' time, and his mother cried herself sick.
+
+It was no use trying to live at the farm, after that, for the
+neighbours smiled and pointed, and the old farmer was scandalised at
+his new relatives, and though he had nothing against his handsome
+daughter-in-law personally, felt himself a marked man and counted the
+spoons every night.  So John, who had never loved farming, compounded
+for half the outlying land, which he sold very shrewdly, left his only
+sister the farm, shook hands all 'round and sailed with Lilda, his
+wife, for the United States of America.
+
+On the voyage he made friends with the captain, who took a great liking
+to him (and had no dislike, the passengers said, for Mistress Lilda),
+and put him in the way of business with a thriving grain-merchant of
+Boston, Massachusetts, whom, after twenty prosperous years, he bought
+out, and founded the house of Appleyard.  He had fondly hoped that this
+house should outlast the century, but his only son was no merchant, and
+all for the sea and its constant change and chance, and John was too
+sensible to blame the lad's roving soul to any one but Nature.  So with
+a sigh and a thrill of how his old father must have felt, he bought a
+fine trading-packet for young John and established his daughter's
+husband (she was a steady, prudent girl) as his partner and heir.
+
+John II did wonderfully well and found himself at fifty the owner of
+the most flourishing packet line in the States, with his only son
+prize-man at Harvard University and a daughter who nearly whitened his
+hair by her mad plan for acting in public on the stage.  The son went
+early into buying and selling on 'Change, and was a weighty bank
+president by the time his daughter had finished her schooling.
+
+This was a trifle more elaborate and thorough-going than most girls of
+twenty could boast at that time, and for three reasons.  First, because
+she had a brilliant mind and great powers of concentration; next,
+because John III was not a little vain, in a quiet way, of all his
+Greek and Latin and historical research; and had plenty of leisure for
+imparting them; last, because his son--and only other child--had been a
+disappointment to him in that line, not only failing to repeat his
+father's brilliant college record, but proving actually slow at his
+books and decidedly averse to study, though a steady, competent
+accountant and investor.
+
+So Lilda, named for her great-grandmother by John III's lady (who,
+being of Knickerbocker descent, laid great stress on family names),
+added to the somewhat doubtful accomplishments of a fashionable
+finishing school a great part of what her own daughter, years later,
+learned at the then popular woman's college.  Nor was other and more
+practical lore neglected, for her maternal grandmother, a notable
+_hausfrau_ of the old school, taught her, in two long summers at her
+great country estate on the Hudson River, all the household arts and
+duties that girls of her own age were beginning to despise.  So that
+when, after a brilliant debut in New York and a winter season there in
+which her wit and beauty, to say nothing of her horsemanship and
+exquisite dancing had made her the belle of that critical metropolis
+(not too large, then, for one reigning toast), she married one of the
+country's most prominent young lawyers, already suggested for high
+posts abroad, it was felt that America would honour both herself and
+whatever Court should receive these two young fortunates from her hands.
+
+There is a picture of her in the Court dress in which she made her bow
+to Queen Victoria, standing at the foot of a Roman stairway of
+yellowish marble, near a fountain, her baby boy clinging to her hand.
+Under the blue-black of her heavy hair, her cheeks are tinted like
+wall-ripened peaches; her strong, curved figure is just the Flora and
+Juno of the ancient city's statuary.
+
+There is still whispered, in a few old New York houses that have kept
+their white marble and black walnut, the audacious story of Lilda
+Appleyard's falling-in-love.  It was at the Philadelphia Centennial of
+'76, whither her father had taken her for a long visit, for its
+educational influences.  He used to say that women had little chance of
+acquiring practical information of the large and comprehensive order,
+and that no one would ever know without a trial what of all that sort
+their brains could or could not take in.  The progress of the world, he
+said, was no greater than the progress of its homes, "and that," he
+used to wind up, "is no more nor less than the progress of their women."
+
+So Miss Lilda studied the progress of all three at the Centennial, and
+took sage notes in a little red morocco book, and the proud banker read
+them in private for years afterward to his friends.  But she was not
+engaged in this interesting occupation by night as well as day, you may
+rest assured.  Many a ball and high tea did Philadelphia's ladies offer
+their visiting friends, and there was not one of any consequence that
+failed to beg the honour of Miss Lilda Appleyard's company.  And her
+luggage was by no means limited to the little red morocco book!
+
+A party from New York had come in a special train to Philadelphia for
+three days at the Centennial, and the occasion was seized by the wife
+of an army officer to give a large ball in her great house in
+Germantown.  All visiting Knickerbockers who might expect to be asked
+anywhere were asked to attend this ball, and Lilda's maid assured the
+hotel chambermaid that she never had known her young lady so hard to
+suit.  And finally, after three different trials, to pick out that
+strange black mousseline-de-soie!  She looked like pictures of
+foreigners, to tell you the truth, her young lady did!  Of course, her
+grandmamma's pearls would make anything dressy, and there's no denying
+the black made her arms and neck look like ivory--but to snatch up that
+flame-coloured scarf her grandpapa had brought from India, and knot it
+over her shoulder at the last minute!  It was downright outlandish.
+Mrs. Appleyard would never have liked it.
+
+She had a high, staglike carriage of the head, and as she was rather
+tall, she looked over most of her girl companions.  Halfway through the
+dance she raised this dark head a little higher and stared.
+
+"Who is that man?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Elliot Lestrange," the girls told her, "but he doesn't care for women.
+He's very proud."
+
+"I should like to meet him," she said simply.
+
+They tittered and teased her, but after all, she was a belle, and Mr.
+Lestrange was sent for.  The young dancing man who undertook the
+message told freely how Lestrange had said,
+
+"Oh, hang it all, I'm not dancing to-night!"
+
+"But she's Miss Appleyard, of Boston and New York--she's a beauty!"
+
+"Then she must have plenty of beaux, Clarke, without me!"
+
+So young Mr. Clarke took his little revenge (for after all, he had used
+his dance with the dark beauty for this stupid errand and resented it),
+and in presenting the chilly hero, said maliciously,
+
+"Here is Mr. Lestrange, Miss Appleyard--but he says you must have
+plenty of beaux without him!"
+
+"That is just it," returned the calm Lilda, looking straight at the
+grey eyes that faced her under the thick honey-coloured hair
+(Lestrange, though of Huguenot descent, was curiously blonde).  "I have
+_not_ enough beaux--without Mr. Lestrange!  Will you have the next
+waltz, Mr. Lestrange--Mr. Clarke's, I believe it is?"
+
+"Thank you, yes, and this schottische, too, if I may," says Lestrange.
+The young people standing about said that they never took their eyes
+off each other from the moment she spoke to him, and that they swung
+into the dance like automatons, leaving her lawful squire, a young
+Philadelphian, irate and ridiculous.
+
+"These may be New York manners," he said sourly, "but they would never
+do in a _civilized city_!"
+
+His opinion was a matter of indifference to the couple.
+
+They are supposed to have talked very little, but danced frequently
+together.  As the young ladies were putting on their capes and cloaks,
+just before the dawn, one among them shrieked suddenly across the room.
+
+"Why, Lilda! where is your flame-coloured scarf!  You've lost it!"
+
+"I gave it away," she said briefly.
+
+They gasped.
+
+"Good heavens!" said another.  "He'll be proposing before you know it!"
+
+"He proposed at twelve," Miss Appleyard said placidly, "and I accepted
+him.  Will you be maid-of-honour, Evelyn?"
+
+No one had ever told her of John I and his gypsy.
+
+They had a wonderful wedding-tour among the Italian lakes and came back
+after a three months' honeymoon to the solid "brown stone front" of the
+period, which, furnished from cellar to attic, had been John's wedding
+gift to his daughter.
+
+"Well!" some gossip had cried, "it's big enough, in all conscience!
+But I suppose Mr. Appleyard was thinking of the size of Elliot's
+family."  (He was one of eight children and had nine uncles and aunts.)
+
+"None of us has ever had but two," said Lilda calmly, "and the
+Appleyards don't change, papa says."
+
+And as a matter of fact little Elliot Lestrange never had but one
+contestant for nursery rights--his fair-haired, gentle sister.
+
+"I wonder which of the children will be the 'wild one'?" Lilda asked
+her husband one night, as they sat opposite each other in the great,
+high-ceilinged dining-room.  They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike
+the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to
+break the monotony of five years of table tete-a-tete, they delighted
+in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together.
+They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so
+much and such varied entertaining, that they could not remember when,
+before, the attentive coloured butler had had but two glasses to fill.
+
+Lestrange looked admiringly at his handsome wife.  Never had he ceased
+to bless the day he married her.  He was a proud man, conventional and
+ambitious to a degree, and at moments during his short betrothal period
+he had felt threatening chills of doubt when away from his enchantress
+as to the wisdom of such a feverishly short acquaintance, such a
+sudden, almost dramatic alliance.  Never for a moment would he have
+been satisfied with the standing of an ordinary lawyer; the career he
+had set before himself needed a larger background than any one city,
+even his country's metropolis, could offer, and in his future the
+position and qualities of his wife would count enormously.  Money,
+breeding and beauty he had always told himself he must marry, but to
+win brains and a loving heart into the bargain was more than even he
+could have expected, and he admitted the justice of his friends'
+half-earnest jealousy.
+
+To-night he raised his glass gallantly and drank to her bright dark
+eyes, noting with pleasure that she had remembered to have her new gown
+of the filmy black material he fancied so much!
+
+"Why should either of them be 'wild,' dearest?" he asked.
+
+"Papa told me once, when I was a child, that every Appleyard that he
+had ever heard of had two children, a son and a daughter," she said
+thoughtfully, "and one of them was always staid and steady and--oh,
+well, looked up to in the community, you know, and the other always
+flighty and ... unusual, to put it mildly.  And certainly, as far back
+as _I_ can remember, it has been so.
+
+"There was Aunt Adelaide.  Grandpapa found her one day acting in a play
+in the town hall in the little village where they went for the
+summer--right on the stage with all those travelling actors.  She
+actually wanted to go with them!"
+
+"Absurd!" said her husband, selecting and peeling for her a specially
+fine peach.
+
+"But grandpapa himself," she went on thoughtfully, "threatened to go as
+a common sailor before the mast, rather than be tied down to
+business--papa showed me a letter he wrote once; he said it was
+sickening to him to think of putting up the shutters every night and
+heaping up money in a strong-box."
+
+"How about your great-grandfather?" he asked idly.  "I don't know about
+him," she said, "except that I am named for my great-grandmother.  They
+were the first Appleyards to come to this country, you know."
+
+"I know," he said politely.  He himself traced his ancestry to a cousin
+of Henry of Navarre, and was furiously proud of it, though wild horses
+could not have dragged from him an allusion to it.
+
+They dipped into the heavy crystal finger bowls in silence.  Then, as a
+sudden curious idea struck him,
+
+"But how do you account, on that theory, for your own generation?" he
+asked.  "Certainly no one could call Johnny wild?"
+
+"Poor old Johnny!" she said, laughing, "no, indeed!  The wildest step
+he ever took was to put type-writing machines in the bank!"
+
+"Then, is it you?" he demanded, and smiled gravely, for her dignified
+young matronhood was his pride.
+
+"It may come out in me later," she threatened, "for Appleyards don't
+change, you know."
+
+But old Mr. Appleyard, who perhaps knew more instances of the tradition
+than he imparted to his daughter, died peacefully at seventy-two, the
+accepted Appleyard age for that process, convinced that he, at last,
+had produced two steady children: he was a little worried about his
+grandson, young Elliot, who displayed a freakish talent for composing
+and performing music for the violin, and an unfortunate preference for
+the society of professional musicians, of which his mother seemed
+almost culpably tolerant, not to say proud.  The arts were rising,
+socially, in that generation, and Elliot was actually excused from an
+examination in ethics for the purpose of attending a concert by the
+Boston Symphony Society.
+
+By this time, of course, they had returned from their European period.
+It had been a brilliant ten years, and Mrs. Lestrange had met most
+royalties and all travelling Americans of any consequence--all with the
+same gracious dignity, the same delicate balance of charm and reserve
+that delighted foreigner and compatriot alike.  Her portrait was
+painted by a great German, her bust was modelled by a great Frenchman,
+the words of a little lullaby she had composed for her baby girl was
+set to music and made famous through Europe by a great Italian.  Queen
+Victoria complimented her on her devoted personal care of her children,
+and sent her an autographed _carte de visite_, as they were still
+called then, framed in brilliants.  The silver trowel with which she
+laid the foundation stone of her school for instructing the
+peasant-girls of her adopted country in the simple household arts is
+still a bone of contention between her two proud children.  A duke
+stood godfather to her little Wilhelmina and Royalty herself
+embroidered at least one frill of the baby's christening robe.
+
+When the children were twelve and fourteen, however, the family
+returned; papered, painted and decorated the house anew from top to
+bottom, and settled down to the task that had brought them back--the
+bringing up of their boy and girl in an American tradition.  If Mrs.
+Lestrange ever missed the polish and variety of European social life,
+if she found the "Anglo-mania" (just then so fashionable in New York) a
+little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it.  Handsome and
+serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day,
+perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties
+of household, nursery, ballroom and _salon_, omitting nothing,
+excelling in all.
+
+No charity bazaar, no educational exhibition, no welcoming of
+distinguished foreigners, no celebration of the arts, was complete
+without Mrs. Elliot Lestrange.  For her son's sake she patronized music
+extensively, for her daughter's, she sat through endless balls and
+garden parties.  By the time they were both married, her dark hair was
+powdered with silver.
+
+"What a beautiful old lady mamma is going to make," Wilhelmina said to
+her brother, who had made a flying visit across the Atlantic and left
+the old Italian villa where he made music all day among the birds and
+orange-trees, to see his sister's baby son.
+
+"You think so?" he answered quickly, with his darting, foreign air.  "I
+am myself far from certain."
+
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?" she cried, looking up a moment from the
+lace-trimmed bassinet.  "What a thing to say!"
+
+He laughed indulgently.
+
+"Oh, you know everything I say always shocked you, Sister Mina," he
+said.  "What a joy it must have been to you and father when I left
+these Puritan shores for good!"
+
+"No, no," she began, but he tapped her lips.
+
+"Yes, yes!" he contradicted.  "Even to marry an opera singer, you were
+glad to see me go!  But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will
+sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside
+her, and hear this little lady in the bassinet here say her lessons?"
+
+Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted
+it.
+
+"Well," young Elliot said, reflectively, "all I can say is, I don't
+think so.  There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of."
+
+"Why, Elly, what do you mean?"
+
+"I can't explain it exactly," he said, "but she's very deep--mamma.
+Father doesn't understand her, you know."
+
+"Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!" his sister contradicted.  "You
+remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of
+not sleeping last year.  She and mamma got on famously, from the first;
+she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping
+again.  She was used to it--the nurse, I mean--and didn't mind, she
+said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.
+
+"I remember asking her why she thought mamma should have insomnia--for
+there was nothing whatever on her mind, and they say that's the cause,
+you know.  She gave me the strangest look.
+
+"'Are you sure your mother has nothing on her mind?' she asked me,
+'your mother's very deep, you know!'
+
+"'What nonsense, Miss Jessop!' I told her.  'Mamma's as open as the
+day!'"
+
+Elliot laughed.
+
+"Sensible woman, your Miss Jessop," he said.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  She was very decided, certainly, and easy in her
+ways.  More so than I quite like in a trained nurse.  I will say for
+her, though, that the out-of-doors idea was hers.  Though father was
+quite alarmed about it."
+
+"That's what I say.  Father doesn't understand her."
+
+"Oh, Elly, how can you?  Every one says there never were two people so
+suited to each other.  There's not one wish of father's she doesn't
+carry out, and never has been."
+
+"I don't say not," he agreed, "but that merely shows what a good,
+clever wife she is.  That doesn't say he understands her.  He certainly
+never understood me, I know; Uncle John didn't either."
+
+"But you were always--always--_queer_, you know, Elly," she explained
+deprecatingly.
+
+"Was I?" he questioned lightly.  "Mamma understood me, all the same.
+So perhaps she's 'queer,' too."
+
+"Nonsense," Wilhelmina said briefly.  "Mamma is like anybody else, only
+a great deal cleverer."
+
+"Maybe, maybe," he repeated thoughtfully.  "But she always gives me the
+impression of having something up her sleeve.  She said a strange thing
+to me after my little girls--the twins, you know--were born.  She was
+holding them out in the orange grove, and saying such sweet things to
+Maddelina, and then she turned to me suddenly and said,
+
+"'Have I been a good mother to you, Elliot?'
+
+"'Why, madre, you've been perfect,' I said.
+
+"'Is there anything more you think I could ever do for you?' she asked.
+
+"'Honestly, dear, I don't think there is,' I said.
+
+"'That's all I wanted to know,' she said, and sailed the next day....
+What's the matter?  How strange you look!"
+
+"It's only that she said just that to me, last week," Wilhelmina told
+him, "and left the next day for New York.  But I supposed it was to get
+back to father.  She depends so on him."
+
+"Do you really think so?" he asked curiously.
+
+But every one agreed with Wilhelmina--perhaps because Wilhelmina very
+seldom said anything that any one was likely to disagree with--and so
+every one was much surprised at the comparatively short time that Mrs.
+Lestrange spent in retirement after her husband's sudden death.  He had
+not the Appleyard habit of living to be seventy-two, it appeared, and
+succumbed to pneumonia, following fatigue and exposure.
+
+His wife's hair turned quickly to an iron-grey, soon after, but she
+moved steadily on among the many educational and philanthropic schemes
+with which she had begun to fill her time after her daughter's
+marriage.  Organized charity was developing rapidly, just then, and
+Mrs. Lestrange's clear common sense, executive ability and knowledge of
+European institutions of the sort made her, with her wealth and
+leisure, a leader on New York boards and councils.
+
+It was noted that the year after her widowhood found her less
+frequently in the public meetings, less willing to organise new centres
+of work, more determined to avoid presidencies and chairmanships.  For
+this she gave as an excuse the frequent trips abroad, which seemed to
+have no special purpose and displeased Wilhelmina, who frequently
+offered her a home in Boston.
+
+"I cannot understand why she refuses," said Wilhelmina, on the occasion
+of Elliot's last flying trip to America.  "The children would love
+their granny to be with us, and she could have her own sitting-room.
+Can't you persuade her, Elly?"
+
+"I'm afraid not," he answered absently.  "You know she's winding up all
+those boards and trade-schools and hospitals and things?"
+
+"And a good thing, too," said his sister.  "Mamma's done enough for the
+community.  She ought to settle down.  And you see she's going to."
+
+"So that's the way it looks to you, Mina?" he asked, looking
+searchingly into her pale blue eyes, and shrugging his shoulders
+slightly.
+
+"Gracious, Elliot, if you know so much more about mamma than I do, why
+don't you ask her to live with you and Maddelina?" she suggested
+sharply.
+
+"It wouldn't do any good--she'd never think of it," he answered simply.
+
+"Well, of course, she and Maddelina..."
+
+"Exactly," he agreed with his teasing foreign smile.
+
+"And I'll tell you another thing," she went on; "all these sudden trips
+about the country and to Europe--what is the sense?  Mamma will be
+fifty in a few days, and anything might happen----"
+
+"Oh, nonsense, Mina," he laughed at her.  "Mamma is stronger than
+either of us, and you know it."
+
+"Of course she's never been ill," his sister admitted.  "But all this
+travel makes her nervous, just the same.  She's not like herself.  Why,
+yesterday, we drove out through the suburbs--she seems to want to be
+out doors all the time, you know--and under a big tree there was a camp
+of those horrid gypsies.  The horses were unhitched, and the dirtiest
+children playing all about, and they were cooking over a fire.  Nothing
+would do but we must stop the horses--the new bays, you know, and they
+hate anything queer--and mamma actually made quite a visit among them!
+They were English gypsies, from Sussex, they said.  One of the women
+ladled out some mess or other from the great pot and mamma actually ate
+it.  And it was odd, too, but they wouldn't take any money.
+
+"'Not from you, lady, not from you!' they said.  The woman put her
+hands behind her back."
+
+"That _was_ odd," said Elliot.
+
+"Yes.  And as we drove off she looked after them and said the strangest
+things.  'Could any one be happier, do you think?' she said, and
+afterward: 'Life seems so unwrinkled, somehow, when one sees it lived
+that way!'"
+
+"And what did you say to that?" asked her brother.
+
+"Why, of course, there was nothing to say.  I only said that I couldn't
+conceive how any educated woman could be happy without a bath-tub."
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"Of course you did," he murmured.
+
+"That's what mamma said," she sighed.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, she looked at me so queerly and said, 'Of course you would say
+that, Mina!'"
+
+"Do you know what I've come over for?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"On business, I suppose," she answered idly.
+
+"Yes.  Uncle John sent for me, to ask if I had any idea of mamma's
+intentions.  And then there were papers to sign."
+
+"Papers?" she looked alarmed.
+
+"Yes.  I think you might as well know.  But we're not to discuss it
+with her, understand.  She's disposing of all her property."
+
+"Why, Elly!"
+
+"It's divided into thirds.  One-third to me, one-third to you, and the
+other third cut up into servants' legacies, one or two charities and
+enough for herself to give her a hundred pounds a year."
+
+"Pounds?"
+
+"It's in English securities.  It looks as if she meant to live in
+England.  Uncle John asked if he might tell us, and she said only on
+condition that we didn't discuss it.  She meant to travel for some
+years, she said, and she had arranged to have us notified immediately
+in case of any accident or difficulty.  She expected to write
+occasionally, too, she said.  You know how mamma is--she simply
+hypnotised the old gentleman."
+
+"Why, Elly! you don't think her mind..."
+
+"Bosh!  Her mind's better than ours will ever be!  Uncle John went to
+Dr. Stanchon about it and he said that mamma was in perfect health,
+good for twenty-five years more----"
+
+"She always says 'twenty-two,'" Wilhelmina interrupted.
+
+"--And that she was not to be bothered or crossed in any way.  He said
+that at her age women often took odd fancies, and that with a woman so
+capable and determined as mamma, the best thing was to give her her
+way.  'Mind you, now, Appleyard,' he said, 'your sister consulted me
+long before you did, and whatever she does I justify in every way!'"
+
+"Well, of course, with mamma, there's nothing else to do," sighed
+Wilhelmina, "but--five hundred dollars a year!  Why, it's impossible!
+She can't travel on that!"
+
+"No, but she can't starve, either," said Elliot, philosophically, "and
+everybody was always telling her she could have earned her own living
+in a dozen ways--perhaps she's going to do that."
+
+"Oh, Elly!" cried poor Wilhelmina.  He turned to go, then picked up a
+small blue-print from the top of a pile on a camera.
+
+"What's all this?"
+
+"Oh, that's one of the photographs the children are always taking
+nowadays.  That one--why, that's one of mamma and the gypsies, that I
+told you about!  See, there's the gypsy woman handing her out the soup.
+They get very clear prints, now, don't they?"
+
+"But what an extraordinary likeness!" he exclaimed.  "Isn't it
+remarkable!"
+
+"Oh, you mean mamma and the gypsy," she said indifferently.  "Yes, the
+children both noticed it at once.  The other gypsies did, too, I'm
+sure, from the way they pointed and stared.  Well, she always was that
+dark type, you know.  Would you like to keep it?"
+
+"Thanks, if you don't mind," he said, and put it carefully in his
+pocketbook.  "It's better of mamma than any of the professional ones."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Nobody who attended the great dinner-party given for Mrs. Elliot
+Lestrange on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday will forget it
+readily.  It was as much a public as a private function, and around the
+great hotel dining-room used for the occasion stood many different
+tables for many different classes of people.  Between the party of
+girls trained years ago in her trade-school and the long table of
+boards of directors of different movements in which she had long been
+prominent, sat the entire cast of one of the theatrical successes of
+the season, the play being openly founded on one of the dramatic
+incidents of her life as a diplomat's wife, a generation ago, in
+Europe.  The old composer of her famous cradle-song shared with the
+publisher of her "Letters from an Attache's Wife," and the prima-donna
+she had discovered and educated, a merry little Italian table where her
+musician son made the proud fourth.  A party of old pupils from the
+convent school where she had spent a year surprised the room with the
+valedictory verses she had written for the class, and at her
+bridesmaid's table only one was lacking--the saucy maid-of-honour,
+Evelyn, of thirty years ago!
+
+A goodly fraction of what was just about to be known as the famous
+"Four Hundred" of New York society chattered and stared at the poets
+and novelists from Boston; and, for the sake of future memories,
+Wilhelmina's children and the olive twins from Florence gazed curiously
+from under their governesses' wings at the lights and roses and jewels
+and tinted glass that made the great room a scented fairyland to their
+round eyes.
+
+At every table was a vacant chair, and to each of these she moved in
+turn for the space of one of the courses of the elaborate dinners of
+the end of the nineteenth century, a majestic figure in black velvet,
+frosted to the waist with her grandmother's wonderful point-lace, her
+shoulders, firm and creamy still, twinkling with her father's wedding
+diamonds, her neck soft under her husband's birthday pearls.
+
+It was said of her on that night that she was the one person in the big
+room who could have been perfectly at ease at every table there, and
+the pride of the children as she took her nuts and coffee among them
+was delightful to witness.
+
+"You have, indeed, lived every moment of a rich life, Signora," said
+the composer to her, in Italian, as he sat again after their graceful
+bows on the rendering of his now almost classic lullaby by the great
+singer.  "Is it not so?"
+
+"It may be, _Maestro_, but there is, after all things, and for all
+people, a rest at last," she answered gravely.
+
+Her son, who was dressing them one of his inimitable salads, looked up
+sharply at this, though the others only smiled.
+
+"And you start on your travels, it appears, after this triumph?" the
+_Maestro_ inquired.
+
+"To-morrow," she said.
+
+"And may we know..."
+
+"I go alone," she answered, smiling.
+
+About each of her ecstatic granddaughters' necks she gravely clasped
+her pearl or diamond chains, as they stood at the foot of the stairs in
+her brownstone house long after midnight; in each grandson's hot,
+astonished palm lay a glittering ring or bracelet, "For your wife, some
+day!"
+
+"How strangely mamma is acting," Wilhelmina complained to her brother.
+"I suppose she is excited by all this?"
+
+"She appears perfectly calm to me," he answered.  "I have always told
+you, Mina, that you have a tendency to call any one excited who does
+anything that you don't expect."
+
+Their mother sat in silence in her room while her maid, a faithful
+mulattress of many years' service, undressed her.
+
+"Is that little tin box where I can get it?" she asked at last, when
+all was done.
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"Are the house-keys here?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"Then I shall not want you any more.  You have always been all that I
+could wish, Ella, and I shall miss you.  Take this, to remember me by,"
+and the woman stared at the watch and chain in her hand.
+
+"But--but--when you come back, Mrs. Lestrange, shan't I--shan't I----"
+
+"If ever I come back, yes.  But Miss Wilhelmina will make a good home
+for you.  Good-night."
+
+Amazed, the woman closed the door, and the house lay in darkness, but
+for one lighted room--the room of its mistress.
+
+Mrs. Lestrange went to a wardrobe, dragged out a small tin trunk, no
+larger than a leather case, opened it with a key from a private drawer,
+and turned out the contents.
+
+These were two sets of plain, warm underclothing, some stout boots, a
+heavy skirt and jacket of coarse dark blue stuff, a mackintosh, a cheap
+wooden brush and rubber comb.  A sensible wallet for her hand and a
+canvas bag on a belt under the clothes which she put on quickly, held
+some notes and gold.  She fingered the coarse, plain handkerchiefs, the
+brown Windsor soap, the stout cotton umbrella, lovingly.  Over her
+thick iron-grey hair, twisted firmly into a plain knot behind the ears,
+she pinned a small round hat with a twist of cheap ribbon around it,
+slipped her hands into a pair of new cotton gloves, took a seat by her
+window overlooking the Central Park, and sat silently for an hour.  Her
+eyes were fixed on the shadowy bulk of the trees in the park; her hands
+were still on her lap: she waited.
+
+Soon the air grew vaguely grey, then white, then a pearly pink.  The
+trees came out clear, the city sparrows and robins chirped.  The milk
+carts rumbled loud, and here and there, even in that wealthy quarter, a
+few early workers crossed the park paths.  It was day.  She rose, tied
+a thick green veil over her hat and face, lifted the tin box by its
+handle and opened her door softly.  In that house it was still
+midnight.  She went quietly down the corridor, through a service hall,
+down some narrow stairs, through the warm kitchen, clean for the new
+labour of the day, then took out a key from her wallet, turned it
+gently and stepped into the area-way.  This had an iron gate and a
+second key opened it: once through and the last gate locked, she put
+her hand through the bars and slipped both keys under the metal frame
+laid out ready for the milk bottles.  No one was in sight.  Alone in
+the street, she gave one comprehensive, quick glance at the great
+sleeping house, and drew a long, deep breath that seemed to stretch the
+very depths of her lungs--one would have almost thought she had not
+really breathed for a long time.
+
+Then she turned her back, and grasping the box and umbrella strongly, a
+plain, sturdy, middle-class figure of a travelling working-woman, she
+walked to a car-line, lifted her box beside her, and sitting between a
+negress with three children and a plumber's bag with a kit of tools,
+made her way to the downtown wharves.
+
+Here all was activity: the day was well along for these labourers, and
+she had to push her way to reach the officer who would let her board
+the steamer.
+
+"Second class," she said briefly, producing her ticket.
+
+He ran down a list quickly.  "Number sixty-three," he said, "Mrs.
+Stranger."
+
+"Yes," she answered, and still carrying her box, went in the direction
+he indicated.
+
+It was not a large steamer and not very swift, and for ten days the
+sturdy figure lay inert on her chair, silent and absorbed.  She had no
+book, no friend, no knitting.  Silently she sat and stared at the
+purple horizon-line, silently she ate, silently she bestowed the modest
+gratuities that brought her what little assistance she needed.  Her
+only social act was the nursing of the two sisters who shared her
+cabin, and this was done so quietly and competently that they were
+certain she was a professional nurse on her vacation.
+
+One of the sisters, a head clerk in a great department store, offered
+her a newspaper on the third day out.
+
+"It's old," she said, "but you may like to look it over.  That's Mrs.
+Elliot Lestrange in the picture.  That was a grand banquet she had.
+I'll bet she was proud, with all that fuss made of her!  Isn't she a
+lovely lady?"
+
+"It is handsome lace," Mrs. Stranger agreed.
+
+"My, it's a fortune!  I've waited on her.  She's fine--so aristocratic,
+but no airs.  I'd never have been here, but for her, maybe.  She and
+the other League ladies got us our vacations, they say, at our place,
+and she started the lending fund so those that need it can get the
+third week, by borrowing.  That gives us the trip both ways, you see.
+She must have a grand life--Sister says there's no house she couldn't
+go into here or the other side, and every hour of the day is planned
+out for her by a secretary she keeps.  Sister says she wonders when she
+ever has a moment to herself."
+
+"Perhaps she will have--some day," said the other woman quickly.  "I
+agree with your sister, that she needs it."
+
+"Sister says you look like her," the clerk went on, with a laugh.  "The
+hair and eyes, she says.  Of course, I see what she means, but,
+gracious--if you could have seen her the day she came in last winter!
+A sable wrap to her knees, and her hair all waved, and besides, her
+figure was different--much taller."
+
+"All dark women with thick grey hair resemble each other, more or less,
+I think," said Mrs. Stranger.
+
+When she walked down the landing plank to the Tilbury dock, Mrs.
+Stranger stood for a moment, scanning the little crowd that waited on
+the water's edge.  She appeared to expect some one, for her tin box lay
+at her feet, and she stood negligently by it, her head raised rather
+haughtily for a woman of her general appearance.  Suddenly she smiled
+oddly, drew again that deep-lunged breath of relief, stooped and picked
+up the box, and carried it unassisted to the great train-shed.
+
+From London she travelled south and west, and beyond purchasing at
+Salisbury a warm red-hooded cape bought nothing and transacted no
+business except for a brief cablegram to New York despatched from
+London, signed with initials only, and a telegram to a small town in
+the south of England.  On arriving at this town, she waited fully an
+hour at the little station, but if the time were wasted, she did not
+seem to feel the waste annoying, for she sat comfortably on a bench,
+her box and umbrella at her stout-shod feet, her eyes placidly on the
+distance.  A stray dog attached himself to her and laid his black head
+on her umbrella; she made no motion to drive him away.
+
+About noon a red-faced teamster drove into the square before the
+station, looked about inquiringly, caught her eye and dismounted.
+
+"Name o' Stranger?" he asked gruffly; she nodded.
+
+"Have you the wagon?" she asked.
+
+"Horse ain't none too fond o' they engines," he responded.  "He's
+waiting by the Crown and Stirrup--will you step across?"
+
+By the little sleepy inn stood a roomy, covered cart drawn by a solid
+middle-aged bay, with heavy brass tips on his high collar.  The vehicle
+had evidently been freshly painted, for the red and black twinkled in
+the sunlight and the harness looked strong and new.  As Mrs. Stranger
+lifted the back curtain and threw a quick, keen glance around the
+interior she smiled briefly.  Rows of tins, coppers and kettles hung
+there; bales of cotton prints, notions and such lay on narrow,
+fenced-in shelves on the sides; a sort of bunk filled one-half, covered
+with a neat patch-work quilt, and thick waterproof curtains' were
+rolled in readiness all around.
+
+"There's oats in the box and a nose-bag," said the carter, "but there's
+good cropping all about.  Will that be your pup, Missis?"
+
+"If no one else claims him," she said brusquely, and examined the horse
+carefully, foot by foot.  All seeming to suit her, she took a small
+canvas bag from her wallet and handed it to him.
+
+"Count it, please," she said and the carter with much biting and
+inspection of each gold piece, signed a receipt and handed her,
+formally, a new stout whip.
+
+"You'll wet the bargain, I hope," the interested landlord suggested,
+and Mrs. Stranger having ordered a quart of his best ale, and gravely
+taken a glass, the carter finished the rest with due ceremony.
+
+She mounted the seat deftly, nodded all 'round, and drove off at a
+steady jog through the village, the dog under the cart.
+
+"_That's_ no new hand," said the landlord.  "It's well you provided a
+good animal, carter!"
+
+"First letter showed me I'd best do so," said the carter briefly.  "A
+tidy bit of savings she had, for a woman."
+
+"She'll earn as much more, _I'll_ lay.  There's money on the road, as
+much as ever there was, for them as knows the business and don't
+drink," said the landlord.  "She'll be one of that gypsy sort, by her
+looks."
+
+Mrs. Stranger drove steadily along through the countryside.  The road
+lay clear before her, the emerald grass and the white may of the hedges
+smelled sweet from a week's rain, the clap-clap of the big bay's feet
+and the birds' twitter were the only sounds.  She was between two
+villages, and only a straggling farm or two at either side broke the
+distant view; a grey church tower caught the sun far away.  The
+driver's eyes never left the road, as became a good driver, but they
+seemed to be turned inward, too, and to see more--or less--than that
+empty road offered to the ordinary sight.  One would have said that
+something other than the present unrolled before those absorbed brown
+eyes under the straight, dark brows, but whether it was the past or the
+future was not shown.  Either was full enough, probably, in the case of
+Mrs. Stranger.
+
+Shortly after noon she began to study the roadside more carefully and
+soon, pausing by a particularly lush, green spot, she dismounted, led
+the horse off from the road and quickly traced the green area back to a
+tiny bubbling spring.  Unharnessing the horse deftly, she fastened him
+to a pointed iron picket she took from the cart and drove firmly into
+the ground, lifted out a little portable tin oven which she propped
+between two rocks, kindled a fire from some dried fagots tied below the
+axle-tree, and taking a slice of fresh beef from a stone crock on the
+seat, cut it slowly into small pieces with an onion and a yellow turnip
+from the crock.  She filled a small iron pot at the spring, dropped in
+the meat and vegetables, set a potato to bake in the ashes and measured
+out a little coffee from a cannister.  While the stew simmered, she
+watered and fed the horse, threw a bone to the dog, and then spread her
+red cloak on the ground, sat on it, and resumed her inward
+contemplation.  When the savoury fumes smelled rich enough, she threw a
+pinch of pepper and salt into the pot from another small cannister,
+poured boiling water from her kettle over the coffee, cut a slice from
+a fresh cottage loaf, ladled her stew out on a new tin plate, and ate
+and drank with a sort of eager deliberation, inhaling at intervals the
+aroma of the coffee and the cooking food.  When a generous plateful had
+vanished, she gave the anxious dog the rest, cut herself a block of
+orange-coloured dairy cheese and ate it with a handful of small
+biscuits from a square tin.  Then, leaning against the great rock from
+under which the spring gushed, she took from her ample pocket a small
+worn volume, opened it at random, filled and emptied her lungs with a
+third great breath, like only two others in her life, and began to read.
+
+The book's title page read, "Compensation, and Other Essays, by R. W.
+Emerson," and on the fly leaf was written in a firm, masculine hand,
+"L. L. from her father, Boston, 1870."
+
+The horse grazed quietly, the dog rested a grateful head on her skirt,
+the spring trickled on, and the woman read--if that can be called
+reading where the eyes wander inward after every sentence.
+
+After a little of this she was disturbed by a thick-set, middle-aged
+farmer rattling by in a springless cart.  At sight of her he stopped,
+stared, but not too curiously, got out and addressed her:
+
+"Peddler's goods, I see," he said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Had you any thoughts o' going up Endover way?" he inquired, "it's out
+o' way, somewhat, but my wife was wishing only yesterday for some
+cooking ware, and but that you need to make village by dark----"
+
+"I do not need to, unless I choose," she assured him; "my time is my
+own."
+
+"Ay, is it?" he said.  "There's few trades can say that, these
+days,--is that why you gypsies take to this one, maybe?"
+
+"Maybe," she said, smiling gravely.
+
+"You're new to these parts, I think," he went on, "though there'll be
+plenty o' your kind before summer's gone--few as thrifty to look at,
+though.  I'll lay your cloth's not rotten."
+
+"That's true," she said, rising and beginning to wash her simple
+cooking pots.  "Which turn for Endover, farmer?"
+
+"First to the left after Appleyard's woods," he began, and at her start
+and cry of "Appleyard?" he explained, "Why, yes, it's hard to change
+old names.  Appleyards ran out when I was a boy, but the name sticks.
+Hundred years ago, an old farmer Appleyard owned most o' what you'll
+see from here.  My granny knowed one of 'em well; a well-to-do woman
+she was, and her husband got all the land, or near it, account o' the
+brother's running away to foreign parts."
+
+Her brown eyes held him and he warmed to his tale.
+
+"You've heard all this, maybe?" he hazarded.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I knew there was such a family, once, somewhere about these parts,"
+she said, "but I did not know just where----"
+
+"Why, it was just here," he went on slowly, looking around, "here and
+no other spot, whatever, Mrs. Peddler.  Here's what granny called
+'Gypsy's Spring,' 'account of their always searching the best water,
+you see--like yourself.  Gypsy Spring in Appleyard Lower Field, she'd
+tell us, and there was where he met the gypsy and the land changed
+hands and the name ran out."
+
+"Who met the gypsy?" she asked, her eyes large and mellow on him.
+
+"Who?  Why, young John Appleyard, Mrs. Peddler, and married her, and
+off with them both!  They're all for roaming, you see--_you_ know.
+'But she'll be back, sooner or later,' my granny used to say: 'Come
+spring, back she'll be, if not him; for there's two things certain and
+they won't change, my time or yours,' she said.  'An Appleyard must own
+a good horse, and a gypsy woman must come back.'  But, you see, for
+once my granny was in the wrong of it, for 'twas a full hundred years
+ago, what I'm telling ye, and they never came."
+
+A slow, satisfied smile crept over the peddler woman's firm lips.  Her
+eyes rested on the great, browsing bay; her strong sea-browned hand
+caressed the watchful dog's head; the odour of the may in the hedge
+filled her nostrils.  Life spread before her.
+
+"No, farmer, your granny was right," she said gravely, "gypsy women
+always come back."
+
+
+
+
+THE WARNING
+
+Weldon leaned forward slightly in his chair, his hands loose between
+his knees, and faced the president steadily.  The moment had come.  All
+his rehearsals of it, all his tremours, all his incredulities must end
+here.  He felt a distinct surprise at his collected coolness, his
+almost amused grasp of the situation.  Except for the tense, guarded
+muscles that a month's racking, overworked strain had left conscious of
+their possible trickiness, he was absolutely himself.
+
+And yet, what had the doctor warned him?  To be very cautious when he
+felt so especially clear-headed and calm, after days of strain--yes,
+just that.  And when he had expostulated, "But, my dear Stanchon, how
+foolish!" had not the doctor replied, "All right, old man, but didn't
+you tell me that it was always after such little exaltations"--he had
+shrugged impatiently at the phrase--"that you were subject to these
+strange dozes you describe?"
+
+"Not exactly dozes," he had objected.  Dozes, indeed!  Those months and
+years of experiences that raced by--and one woke with a start, to
+realise that the clock was still striking!  It was this, too often
+repeated, that had sent him against his will to the rising specialist:
+he remembered so well the dark, sympathetic eyes of the office nurse
+who had brought him the much-needed stimulant after he had yielded to
+one of the curious fits at his very first consultation.
+
+After he had passed out from the inner office with echoes of that
+futile order to cease all business for six weeks (to stop, _now!_ to
+leave with the fruit almost in his hand!) and commands as to a southern
+sea-trip stimulating his taut, trembling nerves, he had sunk for a
+moment into a chair near the door, just to rest his head in his hands a
+bit and dream of the future, and the nurse had appeared from a misty
+somewhere and stood beside him.
+
+"I wouldn't be discouraged, Mr. Weldon," she had said kindly.  "Your
+case is not so uncommon--really.  He has cured much worse."
+
+"You're very kind, Miss--Miss Jessop," he had answered gratefully (her
+rich, brown colouring was so restful, her hand on his shoulder so firm
+and deftly powerful).
+
+He had thought of her all the way home.
+
+Now, curiously enough, perhaps because the president's desk was placed
+in the same position as Dr. Stanchon's desk had been, he thought of her
+again, irrelevantly.  That was the trouble--not to be irrelevant!
+
+The president's careless glance conveyed just such a tinge of critical
+surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender
+tortoise-shell paper-cutter.  The pendulum of the sombre, costly
+grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of
+the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and
+forgotten behind the bronze velvet curtains.  The president's voice
+sounded on--he seemed to Weldon to have been uttering pompous
+platitudes since time began.  His voice was as meaningless as a
+cardboard mask: how could people pay attention to him?  Weldon wondered
+irritably.
+
+"...Nor has it ever been my policy to render myself inaccessible to
+my--my corps of assistants.  No.  Not in the slightest degree.  Our
+interests..."
+
+Here Weldon's mind slipped softly from its moorings and drifted off on
+seas that soon grew tropic: should it be Bermuda, after all?  Oleanders
+and a turquoise bay--what a relief to pavement-gritted eyes!
+
+"Nevertheless, trivial, inconsequent interviews between one in my
+position and those of my--my corps of assistants who may so far forget
+themselves as to seek them, must always be deplored.  They tend only to
+weaken..."
+
+And yet this man had a reputation for cleverness--nay, it was no empty
+reputation.  Did not Weldon know what he could do, know better than any
+living man?  And yet, how he babbled!  Hark, here was his own name.
+
+"You inform me, Mr. Weldon, that you have been ten years in the employ
+of the bank, a gratifying but by no means unusual record.  Our cashier,
+you know, is now in his twenty-third year, if I am not mistaken.  Yes.
+Was it to inform me of this only that you requested this interview?"
+
+"No," said Weldon wearily, for the president's voice hit like a dull
+hammer on his ear.  "No, it was not for that."
+
+"I trust, Mr. Weldon, that your mention of the fact that your salary is
+two thousand dollars was not intended in any way ... was not, in short,
+to be regarded in the light of..."
+
+"No, no, no," Weldon murmured impatiently, trying to shake off a
+compelling drowsiness that threatened him.
+
+"Because in that case ... in that case ... it was, I remember, only
+upon Mr. Bingham's urgent recommendation that it was made two thousand.
+The post has never carried but eighteen hundred.  But your exceptional
+work, according to Mr. Bingham ... I am glad to hear it is not a
+question of salary.  I never discuss..."
+
+Again Weldon's mind slipped off, and this time groves of palms hovered
+between the grooved Corinthian pillars of the president's office, palms
+and frosty coral wreaths.  To breathe that languid, blue-stained air!
+
+"... May I ask, then, Mr. Weldon, for what purpose you have requested
+this interview?"
+
+Consciousness returned with a flash and Weldon straightened in his red
+leather chair.
+
+"I have been waiting for some time the opportunity to tell you, sir,"
+he said coolly, and the angry start that greeted this positively
+strengthened him.  It was a natural start, at least.
+
+"Mr. Deeping," he continued, with only a little catch of the breath,
+"what you describe as my 'exceptional work' has led me to request this
+interview.  I believe it to be in many ways exceptional.  During Mr.
+Russell's illness I assisted Mr. Bingham, and after his recovery I
+continued this assistance in other ways.  Mr. Bingham has perhaps
+intrusted me with more responsibility than was in every respect
+wise--certainly with more than he realised.  I was enabled to give him
+some opportune help on the occasion of the last inspection, and this
+gave me a fairly general survey----"
+
+"One moment, Mr. Weldon."
+
+The president glanced at the clock and laid the paper-cutter down with
+a decisive motion.
+
+"Let me suggest to you that whatever assistance you may have rendered
+Mr. Bingham (for which, by the way, I consider you have received ample
+compensation), you rendered it entirely of your own volition and on
+your own responsibility.  It is quite your own personal affair.  I
+could not for a moment consider----"
+
+Weldon's taut control snapped short under these booming syllables.
+
+"Damn it all!" he cried fiercely, "shall we talk here all night?  This
+should have been over long ago.  Listen to me, if you can.  I have been
+for a month convinced that there is something vitally wrong in this
+bank.  In the beginning I couldn't tell why.  Some men have an instinct
+for false figures, a sort of scent for rotten conditions, I suppose.
+I'm one of them.  I've been working at it for a month.  And now I know."
+
+The president laid the paper-cutter gently down again, and Weldon
+realised that he must have picked it up.  As it touched the polished
+desk one half of it was seen to be at the least angle from the other:
+it was in two parts.
+
+"And now you know, Mr. Weldon?" he repeated quietly.  "You surprise me.
+What do you know?"
+
+Weldon smiled approvingly at him.  There was stuff in this babbler,
+this hypnotist, this phrase-maker.
+
+"I know that one of the cleverest frauds in the history of banking has
+been accomplished in this bank, Mr. Deeping, and I know by whom and how
+it has been accomplished.  I know how Mr. Bingham has been used in the
+matter and how ignorant he is of the tool he has been.  I know how
+completely the directors have been deceived and how ably the books have
+been doctored.  I know precisely where the discrepancies are and how
+great they are."
+
+"You have been very diligent, Mr. Weldon," said the president gently.
+"I presume you to have the proofs of all you assert?"
+
+Weldon put his hand into an inner pocket and drew out a slip--a small
+slip--of paper.
+
+"You must, of course, have a memorandum by which to check this," he
+said a little huskily, but meeting the older man's eyes steadily, "so I
+made it as condensed as possible.  You will understand it, however, I
+am sure."
+
+Without a moment's hesitation the president put out his hand and took
+the slip.  Weldon touched his thumb and it was like an icicle.  For a
+brief space he studied the close, tiny figures, then he raised his eyes
+from them.
+
+"You are to be congratulated, young man," he said, pausing slightly
+between his words, "on the possession of a very keen mind and abilities
+far from ordinary.  I believe you said you had no assistance in all
+this?"
+
+"I did not say so," Weldon replied, "but it is true."
+
+"And no confidants, I infer?"
+
+"Absolutely none."
+
+"It would be idle," said the president, "to assume ignorance of your
+motive in obtaining this interview."
+
+Weldon bowed in silence.
+
+"I will merely inquire of you what guaranty I have, in case I arrange
+for the purchase of this slip from you, that the terms will be final?"
+
+"Only my word to that effect," said Weldon composedly, "which I do not
+think I have broken since I was eighteen.  Also the fact that I intend
+to leave the country--finally, to the best of my belief."
+
+"But you must have a duplicate of this slip?"
+
+"None.  I have a mass of rough memoranda, from which I could after some
+trouble reconstruct it, but this I should destroy.  After that, unless
+I had free access to the bank, I should be helpless.  And in six
+months, barring accidents, you will be able to set everything straight:
+you have left the way open admirably."
+
+The president folded the list small, and pushing aside the tail of his
+frock-coat, put the square of paper into his hip pocket--an odd
+selection, it seemed to Weldon.
+
+"And where did you say you were going?" he inquired, in his perfunctory
+voice.
+
+"I did not say," Weldon returned, marvelling at the man's control, "but
+I am going south somewhere."
+
+"No," said the president quickly, still pushing the list deep into his
+hip pocket, "you are not.  You are going to die, Mr. Weldon," and
+something shone in his hand on the flap of the pocket.
+
+His elbow was crooked back; his muscles were those of an elderly man,
+not quite coordinated with his tongue.  In a breath, a space too short
+for thought, Weldon flung himself across the gap between them and drove
+his head and shoulders straight at the rounded, broadcloth vest: under
+his impact the elaborate swivel-chair slipped, swayed, crashed to the
+ground, and they went down together, Weldon's weight on the bent arm.
+
+He raised himself cautiously, hands pressed on the fat shoulder under
+him.
+
+"The old fox!  The old fox!" he muttered aggrievedly.  "Shoot me, would
+he?  Murdering old fox!"
+
+There was no heaving in the heavy body under him, but he was not to be
+easily hoodwinked now--he had had a taste of the man's mettle.  He held
+his breath and listened: the clock ticked tolerantly, wealthily; the
+flames flickered in the open, sea-coal fire; there were no other sounds
+at all.
+
+Reaching with infinite care around the relaxed, portly body he felt for
+the hip pocket and drew out the small revolver, then sprang quickly
+backward.
+
+"Get up, Mr. Deeping!" he said softly, "get up, sir, some one may come."
+
+But it seemed that for once the president was indifferent to
+appearances, for he did not move, but lay as he had fallen, with one
+bent arm.  Weldon walked over to him and lifted the coat-tail from his
+face.  Then he perceived that it was improbable that Mr. Deeping would
+ever get up again.  His face had long been a mask, but never had it
+been coloured in this way, and Weldon knew that the artist responsible
+for that tinting never worked on any subject but once.
+
+Between two ticks of the clock, it might be, Weldon saw himself leaping
+to the window, pouring water from the inner lavatory, calling for
+brandy, loosening the collar.  So vivid was this vision that it seemed
+he must be doing all this, actually, and he stood vacant-eyed, staring
+at the dead man.  Once he tried to take a step, but his very muscles
+seemed paralysed, and a voice, steady as the clock, seemed to tell him:
+
+"How senseless!  The man is dead.  Dead.  You know it.  Let him alone.
+Think what to do.  How can you escape?  Think!  Think!"
+
+Suddenly his mind cleared and he laughed shortly, with relief.  He had
+felt literally guilty.  But he had not killed the president.  It was
+the president who would have killed him.  What had he done but protect
+himself?  If the shock of his defensive lunge had done for Mr. Deeping,
+how could he help that?  The man's time had come, that was all.  And it
+was a quick death, a good way.  He moved toward the body again and
+tried to lift it, but had not the strength.  He could not do it
+decently.  The revolver was still in his hand, and with a quick
+exclamation he pushed it into the hip pocket again, considered a
+moment, took it out, felt for his folded list at the bottom of the
+pocket, got it, and restored the revolver.  Moving toward the little
+mirror in the lavatory, he straightened his tie, wiped his face, then
+stood, thinking, between the body and the door.
+
+Curiously enough, the figure on the floor hardly disturbed his
+consciousness.  It was difficult for him to take Mr. Deeping seriously,
+even in death.  He had, always been an absurdity; posturing,
+phrase-making, repellant.  Death conferred a dignity, he had supposed,
+but death had not done this for the president.  Another time-worn
+superstition, that: humanity had invented so many.  Suppose all those
+old ideas should turn out, on the event, to be as threadbare, and
+empty?  Remorse, for instance?  Would one dishonesty, one violent break
+with the canons of honour, never repeated, _oh, surely never repeated!_
+tincture all the future with a slow, spreading black drop?  If so ...
+but why imagine it?  It was unlikely.  A whip in the closet to frighten
+the timid children....
+
+He shook himself briskly.  A clever business, to stand philosophising,
+with a dead man in the room, and all his work to do!  Now, what was the
+next step?  To see the directors?  There was Webb; would he be clever
+enough for Webb?  And yet, if Webb had not been able to detect the
+frauds that juggled along under his nose, how should Webb be a match
+for him, who had thus detected them?  It would certainly be to Webb's
+interest to keep this quiet till they could straighten it all out.
+Then they could divide what the president would have got.  And nobody
+would be a penny the poorer.  It was absurd to call it a crime--if the
+event proved successful.  And it would be more than absurd to refuse
+him the reasonable amount he would ask for: their gain would far exceed
+his, even if five of them should divide the whole.
+
+Stop a moment!  Suppose he could confront them with Deeping's own
+memoranda?  Suppose he should control the material the president must
+have had ready, in case ... why, he must have an incredible sum by him,
+all ready at a moment's notice, something he could convert in an hour
+into cash, before he fled.  He kept the revolver: he would have kept
+this.  He was ready for anything.  His pockets...
+
+Weldon pushed aside the coat flap, but his hands refused the further
+motions.  To go through another man's pockets!  And yet Deeping had
+done worse than this: what sums had he not twisted and turned, added
+and subtracted, borrowed and replaced?  But not an actual pocket.  No,
+no.  He cursed himself for a weak fool, but the pockets he could not
+touch.  The spirit indeed was willing, but the flesh, tyrant after
+years of honest, deep-indenting habit, travelled its accustomed grooves
+and would none of such muscular innovations.  Well, he must take his
+chance with the Board.  He flung open the door and seized a
+brass-buttoned official of many years' inferior but faithful service.
+
+"Run," he muttered, "run, Henry, for Mr. Dupont!  Mr. Deeping has had
+some sort of stroke.  Get him and call a doctor quickly--don't make any
+row now about it, you understand.  I'll stay here."
+
+The man touched his cap and hurried off and Weldon stood nervously by
+the door.  A minute passed, two minutes.  Suddenly he turned, slipped
+the ornate brass bolt above the Yale lock, stepped quickly to the dead
+man's side, and went with rapid, tactful fingers from one pocket to
+another.  The clock ticked leisurely, and unconsciously he muttered,
+counting the strokes,
+
+"Seven, eight, nine ... he must have them here...."
+
+A low knock at the door caught his strained ear.  His hand held a thick
+time-table; _New York, New Haven and Hartford_ stared him in the face.
+The leaves fell apart as his hand for the first time shook, and between
+them--ah! there they were!  "Memoranda, etc.," was written on the top
+paper.  Thrusting the slender sheaf into his pocket, he threw the
+time-table on the desk and drew the bolt slowly, peering out between
+the bronze curtains with caution.
+
+"How is he--gone?" whispered Dupont, the dead man's brother-in-law,
+tiptoeing across the room.  "Heart, I suppose.  Henry's called the
+doctor, but he said he guessed it was no good, from your face.  Nobody
+has an idea of it--you managed very well, Mr. Weldon."
+
+He glanced at the body and said a few perfunctory words.
+
+"Well, well, we all have to go.  Sixty-one, I think.  Has any one sent
+for Webb?  I think Webb should be sent for."
+
+Weldon glanced curiously at the mild, unimportant brother-in-law.  He
+was always thought of and mentioned in his capacity of brother-in-law.
+Why should he think of Webb?  Common-sense answered, why not?  Webb was
+immeasurably the head of them all.  Opening the door to discover if
+there were yet any disturbance in the bank, he confronted Potter, a
+fat, red-faced, many-millioned man, who puffed excitedly by him.
+
+"Terrible thing, isn't it, Dupont?  Great shock to you.  Naturally.
+Has--has Webb been informed?  Quite right, quite right."
+
+He dropped into a chair and wiped his pink, fat forehead, looked once
+sharply at the body on the floor, then obstinately at his knees.  He
+appeared very excited to Weldon; more so than the death of his
+associate could properly explain, perhaps?  No, no: what folly!
+Probably it made them all feel rather shaky--overfed, weak-hearted old
+fellows, all of them.  They saw their end.
+
+A soft tap on the door followed, and as the two older men looked with
+one accord at Weldon, he pushed aside the portieres and admitted Mr.
+Fayles, a thin, aristocratic, iron-grey man, who made himself one of
+them without a word.  Stepping to the body he looked a moment, then
+sank into the chair Weldon had occupied during his interview, fitted
+his gloves into his top hat, dropped it beside him, and with an
+extraordinary convulsion of countenance buried his face in his hands.
+After a moment's annoyed contemplation of his motionless figure, Weldon
+met Dupont's eyes inquiringly.  The brother-in-law shook his head, no
+wiser, evidently.  Weldon gestured imperiously toward the fat man, and
+Dupont tiptoed over to him, whispering hoarsely, "I didn't know he was
+so attached to Edward, did you, Potter?"
+
+Potter pressed his puffy hands together till they streaked red and
+white.
+
+"Good heavens!  Good heavens!" he burst out, "this is awful!  Where can
+Webb be?"
+
+Dupont stared, then shrugged his shoulders vaguely and returned to his
+seat.  "I really didn't know he was so attached to Edward," he murmured
+to Weldon confidentially.
+
+They sat in silence.  The president's great bulk stretched among them
+like some sleeping, foreign animal in a zoological garden.  It was like
+a funeral; the funeral of some associate, attended with perfunctory
+punctiliousness.  The blow was financial, not human: it was the death
+of so much bank stock.
+
+Another knock.  Again Weldon, recognised master of ceremonies now,
+opened the door, this time for the doctor.  It was the president's own
+doctor; Weldon wondered why it was that important men's doctors were
+always to be got so quickly.  Did they have a secret call in the event
+of a bank president's death?  What would happen in case one were called
+from the birth, say, of another bank president's son?  Imagine the
+doctor's state of mind ... he shook himself to dissipate such idiotic
+thoughts: his mind worked as the mind of one in a worried, hurried
+dream.
+
+"Good-day, gentlemen, a sad errand for me," said the doctor gravely.
+"Ah, yes, a little more light, please?  Ah, yes.  Instantaneous, of
+course.  Half an hour, forty minutes, I should say?  Ah, yes.  I
+supposed so.  Any one present ... any shock or excitement?"
+
+Weldon spoke briefly.  He had been discussing bank matters with Mr.
+Deeping.  He had mentioned a few of the matters in discussion when Mr.
+Deeping had put his hand into his pocket, appeared to sustain some
+stroke, slipped back in his chair, and fallen dead-weight on the bent
+arm.  Just as they saw him.  It was impossible to move him, except to
+free him from the chair.  He appeared to have died instantly.  It had
+been made known immediately.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the doctor.  "Just as I expected.  I warned him of it.
+Not a month ago.  A great loss to the community, gentlemen.  All the
+arrangements, now ... Mr. Dupont, I suppose you ... or if you had
+rather that I...."
+
+"If you would, please," said the brother-in-law gratefully, "I am bad
+at that sort of thing--I--my head----"
+
+"Ah, yes.  Perfectly natural.  I will have the body removed, then, as
+soon as possible----"
+
+"Not till Webb gets here!" Potter broke out, twisting his hands
+convulsively, "wait for Webb.  I insist on Webb!"
+
+The doctor stared.
+
+"Mr. Potter, I believe?" he inquired courteously.  Then turning to the
+others generally, "Do I understand that there is any reason----"
+
+"No reason at all," Dupont interrupted irritably, "not the least.  Webb
+will be informed, fast enough.  If you are kind enough, doctor----"
+
+It was obvious that he dreaded the chance of any personal
+responsibility.  What a rabbit of a man he was!  Weldon remembered
+suddenly that a night watchman had been dismissed for saying that Mrs.
+Dupont blew her husband's nose for him!  One could almost believe it.
+Hear him, now.
+
+"Mr. Fayles will, I am sure, agree with me----"
+
+"With you?  With _you_?"
+
+Mr. Fayles's voice was hollow, tortured.  His face was wet.  He turned
+his red-rimmed eyes on the man before him.
+
+"What in God's name are you?" he said ferociously.  "Wait for Webb, of
+course."
+
+His head went back in his hands and they stared at one another.
+Fayles, the cold aristocrat.  Fayles, the unruffled!  The doctor's
+glance settled finally on Weldon, as a possible clew to the situation.
+
+"This is--this is--we make every allowance, of course," he began, "for
+such an unsettling occurrence.  Of course.  Mr. Webb, of course, would
+naturally ... and yet I hardly like the idea ... it seems..."
+
+There was a strange sense of tension in the room, not to be accounted
+for by that dead creature on the floor.  No, there was something else.
+Weldon with difficulty repressed a smile.  That fool of a
+brother-in-law knew nothing, clearly.  Potter was merely irritable and
+at sea generally, he was sure.  He could swear that whatever alarmed
+Potter alarmed him only through Fayles, whose collapse was
+unprecedented.  Did Fayles know?  Impossible.  Fayles stood for
+old-fashioned, delicate scruples, finical standards.  "As straight as
+Joseph Fayles," they said.  And yet, why....  He remembered that he had
+not yet answered the doctor.  How his thoughts ran away with him!
+
+"Mr. Webb's connection, of course," he murmured, "principal director,
+you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ...
+undoubtedly he would have been notified.  Probably if the doctor were
+to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his
+colleagues be satisfied.  They depended on his judgment to such an
+extent..."
+
+The air of the room seemed to tighten round them.  That doctor was no
+fool.  He must feel something--what, how much?  He pursed his lips.
+
+"Just as you like, of course," he said briefly.  "It would seem that
+there can be very little difference in judgment as to the expediency of
+burying a dead man, however.  If that is what you mean.  I will do as
+this young man suggests.  These matters, of course, have a certain
+formality.  There are precedents....  Ah, yes.  Good-day, gentlemen."
+
+He looked toward the door, which Weldon, in his capacity of master of
+ceremonies, opened for him, and passed out, drawing a deep breath as he
+crossed the threshold and hurrying, it seemed to Weldon, down the
+corridor.  Did he want to be rid of them?  It seemed so.
+
+There they were.  All the directors but Webb.  All that counted, that
+is.  One would imagine it a meeting of the board.  Then why was he
+here?  Suddenly he lost himself in a great yawn, and realized that he
+was dying of sleepiness.  Neither last night nor the night before had
+he closed his eyes.
+
+"As there seems nothing more for me to do, gentlemen," he said
+abruptly, "I think I will go now.  There is no more assistance----"
+
+"Wait for Webb," cried Potter nervously, "wait, won't you?  I--I insist
+on it!"
+
+One felt really sorry for this rich, fat man.  How ludicrously he
+resembled his caricatures!
+
+"I really wish you would wait for Mr. Webb, Mr. Weldon," Dupont assured
+him, "it would be a great convenience.  You could tell him just how it
+happened, you know.  Just.  You see, your being there, you know...."
+
+"Of course I will stay, if you desire it," Weldon answered gravely,
+wondering if he could keep awake.  His eyeballs fairly dragged down.
+The tall clock's tick confused itself with his thoughts: _one, two!
+one, two! one, two!_  Suppose he were to run now, with the "memoranda,
+etc.," and take whatever Mr. Deeping had been going to take?  That was
+folly, if the rest didn't know.  Then he would be a common criminal.
+If they did know, then he could leave his memoranda slip and they would
+understand and make up the sum amongst them.  Let Webb and Potter fork
+out, for once.  Let them bleed the depositors.  _One, two! one, two!
+one, two!_ Why not? why not? why not?  His eyes fairly closed for a
+second.
+
+But a soft click of the door opened them.  There was no knocking here.
+The curtain moved and Mr. Webb was in the room.  Involuntarily they
+rose to meet him, and Fayles for the first time took his hands down.
+Tall and unnaturally thin, his sallow cheeks framed in lank, sandy
+hair, his eyes turned down, it was hard to realise that this almost
+slouching fellow held the attention of the shrewd in these matters as
+the certain head of them all, when the present great leader should have
+dropped his sceptre.  But this was the Webb in whose labyrinthine
+meshes the cartoonists delighted to picture the unhappy flies of their
+country's financial system; this was the weaver whose warp was of
+railroads and his woof the unhappy populace, in yet other pictorial
+fancies.  This was that Webb before which many patient Penelopes had
+sat through many Sunday editions, dressed in stars and stripes, a
+sorrowing, perplexed America, and gaped to find it unwoven by day,
+though thick patterned with rich promises in the evening.
+
+"All over, is it?" he said in his dry, sceptical voice, "too bad, too
+bad."
+
+His eye shot out from its heavy lid and took them all in.  It lingered
+on Weldon.
+
+"This the young man with him at the time?  Sudden shock, eh?"
+
+Weldon told his story again.  They had talked of business.  The
+president had put his hand in his pocket.  Handkerchief, probably.  Had
+experienced some shock and fallen, dead-weight, on his bent arm.  As
+you see him now.  Unable to lift him.  Notified Mr. Dupont immediately.
+Nothing more.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Webb.  "As quickly as that!  Hard on you.
+Nothing handy, I suppose; only window up and water and such things?"
+
+For the life of him Weldon could not help the slow red in his face.  He
+glanced at the window: it was locked.  For Heaven's sake, why lie?  He
+was no murderer.  And yet--any one, _any one_ would have opened that
+window.
+
+"I did what I could," he said in a low voice, "but it was plain that
+Mr. Deeping was dead.  He never drew another breath."
+
+"No brandy about, I suppose?" pursued Webb.
+
+But Potter interrupted.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Webb," he implored, "let all that go!  He's gone.
+You know he never touched a drop of anything.  Of course there was no
+brandy."
+
+"Of course," Weldon interrupted, relieved.  Every one knew the
+president's views on that subject; he had forgotten them.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Webb softly and glanced again at the window.
+An intense irritation flared up in Weldon: this man flicked him on the
+raw with every syllable.
+
+"If you have no further use for me, gentlemen," he began, but Webb
+waved his thin, small-boned hand negligently.
+
+"One moment, Mr.--Mr. Weldon, I think?  What business did you say you
+were discussing with my poor friend?"
+
+Mr. Fayles took a quick step and grasped his colleague's arm.
+
+"For God's sake, Webb," he muttered huskily, "look at us!  Where are
+we?  What's to be done?  They've sent for the body by now."
+
+Potter seized the other arm.
+
+"Will you tell me what all this means, Webb?" he blustered, "what's the
+matter with Joe Fayles?  Is it possible that--is anything----"
+
+Webb's lids lifted and the snake-like swiftness of his glance at Fayles
+was not lost on the others.
+
+"If Mr. Fayles," he began slowly, "has occupied himself in spreading
+the disquiet he has endured since he discovered (and imparted to me)
+the fact that my poor friend here carried a revolver about with him, he
+has done a mighty foolish job.  That's all I have to say."
+
+Even Dupont was alarmed now.  It was with a grim amusement that Weldon
+watched them all.  Dupont suspected Potter, was staring malevolently at
+him and chewing his slight moustache nervously.  Potter never took his
+eyes from Fayles, whose clutch on Webb was the anguished clutch of the
+drowning man that has caught at sea-weeds.  They seemed to Weldon like
+actors in a play, and he was the spectator.  He observed them from his
+red plush seat, almost despising them for the entertainment they gave
+him.  How absurd they were, with their dead president and their
+suspicions.  They were mad to get at the pockets--he knew!  But they
+hadn't the nerve.  And Webb, crafty old Webb, was holding them in like
+dogs on a leash.
+
+"Did he really carry a pistol?" he said gently, "let's see."
+
+He leaned over the body.
+
+"I wonder why he wanted the pistol pocket?" he went on casually, "any
+idea, Mr. Weldon?"
+
+A tiny, fine chill tingled at Weldon's heels and flew up to his hair.
+He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly
+tightening.  In an agony of regret he wished that he had not that sheaf
+of "memoranda, etc."  It was suddenly clear to him that he had stolen
+them.
+
+"I have no idea, sir," his tongue answered stolidly.
+
+"No, ... of course not," said Mr. Webb thoughtfully.  "Well, gentlemen,
+I can't see the need for any more discussion.  This is very
+deplorable--a great shock.  He was very methodical and no doubt
+everything is in easy shape...."
+
+They drew close to him and Weldon, though he caught the murmur of
+voices, distinguished nothing but the steady notes of the clock: _one,
+two! one, two!_  His head nodded a trifle and for one blissful second
+his eyelids fell.  The clock began to strike eleven.  _One!_ he
+struggled, but it was too sweet.  _Two!_  He became dimly conscious of
+a rustling and movement by him.  _Three!_ there was a light touch on
+his arm and Webb stood near the chair he had dropped into.  The others
+must have gone.
+
+"You seem exhausted, Mr. Weldon," he said quietly.
+
+"I--I have missed my sleep lately," Weldon stammered, trying to control
+the motions of his mouth, his voice striking his own ear as mechanical,
+far away, laboured.
+
+"Exactly," said Webb suavely.  "And now, Mr. Weldon, _how much do you
+expect for those papers_?"
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Weldon drew his chair across the broad verandah in an aimless,
+leisurely way, anchored it in the shadow of a wicker table laden with
+cool glass pitchers and iced fruits, and sank into it, sighing
+restlessly.  The pillars of coral that supported the verandah roof
+framed, each pair of them, an oblong of sapphire bay; vivid masses of
+pink oleanders hedged the foreground; the tremulous sapphire crawled
+softly over a creamy crescent beach.  In the pleasant noon stillness
+the mild whine of a patient puppy, broken by the chuckles of some young
+human thing, rose on the air.  Jars of sweet flowers sent out their
+almost tropical odours with each tiny, invisible wind current: they
+seemed to puff it into his face.
+
+A great green and flame-coloured parrot, hung head downward in his
+yellow cage, began suddenly a mechanical, dry litany:
+
+"_Manana! manana! manana!_"  It was like a clock--passionless, regular,
+meditative.  Weldon shrugged his shoulders distastefully; he had never
+been able to conquer his dislike of steady, measured sounds.  It was an
+unreasonable weakness, but incurable.  He twisted uneasily in his white
+flannels as the bird droned on,
+
+"_Manana! manana! manana!_"
+
+"Be still, Chico, be still, sir!"
+
+A fair, finely grown boy took the coral steps two at a bound and
+threatened the parrot.
+
+"Daddy, keep him quiet, won't you?  He frightens my white mice awfully.
+Why do mice hate parrots?  Do you know, daddy?"
+
+Weldon's face cleared and he threw his arm over the slender shoulders.
+
+"I don't know, Pippo, I can't guess," he said.  "Where's your mother?"
+
+"Just beyond you," and the boy slipped away to his pets, grudging the
+time for her kiss in passing.
+
+She stood softly behind the wicker chair and laid her hand on his
+forehead.  Her lips were only a little smoother.
+
+"Still troubled, dearest?" she asked him in her pleasant voice.  "Still
+dreaming?"
+
+She was very dark, with reddish lights in her thick, low-growing hair,
+and brown, broad eyebrows.  Under them her eyes shone, a frank, dark
+brown; she bore a curious likeness to that nurse he had seen in the
+doctor's office, so many years ago.  How strange that a passing fate
+should have set his ideal of dear and loving women forever!  She had
+even the same small dimple at the left of her mouth.
+
+She slipped to the floor beside him and laid her head in her wifely way
+against his knee.
+
+"I'm so sorry it bothers you, Phil," she murmured, her cheek against
+his hand.  "One would think you were a superstitious boy, you silly!
+Hear baby--he's playing so dearly with those puppies!  He pats them and
+then pinches their tails so slyly!  Oh, Ted!  Oh, baby!  Call to mummy!"
+
+From the balcony above a shrill crow drowned the complaint of the
+puppies.
+
+"Doesn't he say it plainly!" she cried, flushing a beautiful
+mother-rose.  "And he is so strong, Phil!"
+
+He caressed her absently.  Ten years gone, and a dream had swept those
+years to one side as one would draw a bronze curtain, had opened the
+past as one would open a heavy mahogany door!  All night a tall, carved
+clock had ticked, ticked through his dreams, _one, two! one, two! one,
+two!_  A sinister, sandy face had mocked and probed him, a fat, animal
+face had irritated him, a pale, haunted face had pleaded with him.  He
+had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing
+beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk
+again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day
+through every clock-tick.  And now his brain was cloudy with it.  His
+hand lay listless on her shoulder.
+
+A five-year-old girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the
+cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at
+the left of her mouth.  Running at his call she flew into his arms and
+dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder.  For the first time he
+smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from
+the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses.  Later she
+disturbed them reluctantly.
+
+"I want to say you are not at home," she said, "but I daren't quite do
+that, for he is from the States, dear, and it is important business.
+His name," dropping her eyes to the white rectangle in her hand, "is
+Webb.  Shall I send him out here?"
+
+Weldon put the child down from his knees and half rose.
+
+"Yes," he said, clearing his throat, "send him out here.  And keep the
+children away."
+
+So this was it.  It had not been for nothing, that dream.
+
+The tall, lank figure was before him, the ironical smile drooped on the
+tight lips.  Ten years had left him as they found him, but for a
+thought of grey in the sandy hair.
+
+"Sit down," said Weldon briefly, "what is it?"
+
+"You've put on a little weight, I see," said Webb, nodding at the
+proffered chair, "but that's only proper in the president of a bank, I
+suppose.  You've done well, Mr. Weldon."
+
+Weldon bowed.
+
+"You did not come to Bermuda to tell me this, Mr. Webb, I think?"
+
+"No," said Webb, "I didn't.  Ten years ago, Mr. Weldon, you called me a
+mind-reader when I had put two and two together once or twice, put
+myself in your place for ten minutes, complimented you by assuming that
+your course had been what mine would have been, and spoken to you
+accordingly.  Can't you do a little mind-reading on your own account,
+now?"
+
+"I confess myself unequal to it," Weldon said coldly.
+
+Webb nodded indulgently.
+
+"All right," he returned, "we'll take it that way, if you want to.  Mr.
+Weldon, I don't know if you read our papers down here at all?"
+
+"I have never opened an American newspaper since I left the country,"
+said Weldon briefly.
+
+"I see.  I suppose you know that Blickenstern's dying, though?"
+
+"Yes," Weldon answered indifferently, "we all know that, of course."
+
+"Yes.  Well, Mr. Weldon, I'm supposed to inherit his shoes.  It's not
+much to you, of course, but a lot to me--and to a lot of other people,
+too.  Now for something you don't know.  In just about five days, Mr.
+Weldon, we're going to break through the crust and drop into the
+biggest panic since '93.  That and Blickenstern's death--he must go
+soon, now--and this fearful railroad business--I won't bore you--will
+put me into a bad hole.  A worse hole, I don't mind telling you, Mr.
+Weldon, than Blick's successor can afford to get into.  It's all a
+matter of balance now; pretty fine balancing, too, for the next week.
+In six weeks there'll be enough for most of us, but just now--well,
+there'll be dozens of us in the Street who'll be grateful for ten
+thousand in cash around the corner.  Think of it--ten thousand!  Now
+I'll be short.  I need some money--not stage money, Mr. Weldon, real
+money!  I wouldn't take Blick's name on paper for what I want this
+week--and getting it or not getting it means the top of the heap for
+me, or three years' fight for it.  I can't afford three years.  I
+wasn't a bank president at forty, you know."
+
+"You mean you want the ten thousand pounds you gave me?"
+
+"Just so.  I want fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Weldon--for six weeks.  I
+hate to do it, honestly.  Nothing but this infernal panic could have
+driven me to this.  But I'm helpless.  And it's worth millions to me to
+have no one suspect it.  I can't touch a penny elsewhere--it's all tied
+up.  I must be able to produce it without any fuss, or disturbing the
+jack-straws a particle.  There's no use in going into the details."
+
+"No use at all," said Weldon stiffly, "for it will be impossible for me
+to lend you such a sum, Mr. Webb, impossible.  I have paid well for my
+position here."
+
+"And a good move, too," said the other heartily.  "You stand well,
+Weldon; none better."
+
+"I have never been what you would call ambitious," Weldon went on, more
+passionately, now.  "When you yourself asked me why I demanded no more
+than the ten--the fifty thousand, you remember my answer.  I knew that
+it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a
+position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently,
+and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted.  I shall never be a
+rich man--by your standards.  I don't care.  I thought my brains and
+initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me.  I promised
+utter silence and have kept my word.  You promised the same and have
+broken yours.  I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to.  I'd
+rather not discuss it further."
+
+"_Manana! manana! manana!_" the parrot shrilled.  It still hung head
+down in the shining cage.  Weldon could have wrung its neck.  It was
+worse than a clock.  Webb sighed regretfully and raised his heavy lids.
+As the old snakish glance reached him Weldon felt the old net-like
+sensation, the old baffled rage.
+
+"I'm sorry, Weldon, but I can't let it go.  It's no use--you can't
+afford it.  It's all like a house you build out of cards, you see, and
+you can't slip out one without the whole thing caving in.  Whatever I
+pull out I have to explain.  How do you suppose I got you your fifty
+thousand, back there?  You know I've never had much money--to call
+money.  It's brains--what you call mind-reading, you other
+fellows--that I've matched against the rest of them.  And I've got them
+where they're afraid of me.  I can't drop back.  Listen to me, Weldon!"
+
+He drew his chair close and talked low and steadily for five minutes.
+The air seemed to grow dense; the rustling hiss of the foam on the
+creamy beach was the hiss and flicker of a sea-coal fire; the grotesque
+shadow of the wicker chair, black on the white verandah floor, was the
+spread, silent bulk of a dead man.
+
+The low voice ceased.
+
+"How about it, Weldon?" it added abruptly, "can you afford that?"
+
+Weldon pushed away his chair roughly.  "Come down to my room at the
+bank," he said.
+
+Hours afterward he dragged himself into his bedroom, an older man by
+ten years than when he had quitted it.  His body seemed heavier, his
+face hollower, with pinched lips and sunken eyes.  The man who waited
+on him stared openly and mentioned the doctor, only to receive a curse
+for his pains--the first he had ever heard from his master.
+
+In the late dusk his wife found him asleep in a long chair with an
+empty decanter beside him and heavy rugs dragged up to his chin.  They
+tried, both of them, to make that nervous chill account for the change
+in him, but she watched him narrowly and he felt her eyes day and night.
+
+Something tolled like a bell in him and never stopped for a moment:
+_six weeks! six weeks! six weeks!_ all his waking movements went to
+that intolerable rhythm; he was like a man under a gallows, with a
+reprieve coming to him, at the mercy of all the elements.  It was
+observed at the bank that he worked harder and longer and much alone:
+they said the American blood was coming out at last, and smiled at each
+other.
+
+"Only mind you don't engage us in speculations, old man," said one of
+his colleagues jocosely, "'safe and sound,' you know!  Look at the
+States--a pretty mess that!"
+
+Weldon turned on him in a fury of anger.
+
+"Speculation! speculation!" he cried harshly, "you know that I hate it
+like hell!"
+
+They were genuinely anxious about him.
+
+One morning he found his wife in his dressing-room, white-faced over
+something in her hand.
+
+"Philip!  Philip!" she whispered and clung to him.
+
+He put the shining little steel-eyed thing behind him.
+
+"My dear, don't be foolish," he said quietly, "if I have my reasons for
+wishing a certain sort of protection for a few days, will you make me
+regret my sparing you?"
+
+"You--you mean the bank?" she gasped.
+
+"What else could I mean?" he said steadily, and in some quaint woman's
+reasoning she was appeased.
+
+At the end of three weeks the strain eased a little.  He read a letter
+from Webb with a grim smile, bought an American newspaper, and passed
+an entire day away from the bank.  His wife held her breath as she
+watched him, but affected not to notice the change, and he blessed her
+for it: his nerves were raw.  Two days, three days went by.  He sent
+out for another newspaper and later in the day raised the tiny salary
+of the page who had brought it to him.  In the cool of the afternoon he
+rode with his wife, the boy on a shaggy pony beside them, and kissed
+her as she turned in the saddle in the shadow of the dusk.
+
+"You are the best wife a man ever had," he said, looking deep into her
+honest brown eyes, and she galloped away from him to hide her happy
+tears.
+
+The next day he told the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the
+verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced
+tolerantly at its strident cry:
+
+"_Manana! manana!_"
+
+Life is as it is, he thought, and can we hope to change it because we
+change?  Surely not.  Everything had its price, and he had really never
+paid the price of that ten-years-old bargain till now--he acknowledged
+it.  Out of that blue-stained air the messenger of fate had dropped and
+taken his toll of youth and candour and elasticity, and departed again,
+and now the weight was slackening from his chest and there were but
+fourteen days to wait.  The next day he found a second letter from Webb
+on his desk.  To relieve him from needless anxiety, said the great
+financier, he wrote to inform Mr. Weldon that six weeks had proved too
+wide a margin and he promised himself the pleasure of a complete
+settlement six days from the date of writing.  Weldon stared at the
+letter head: it had been three days on the way--that meant in three
+days--by the next boat!  The letter was grave, but subtly jubilant.
+The railroads were subdued.  Blickenstern was dead, the country hailed
+his successor.  A foundation of millions lay firm beneath his feet.
+
+The president left his bank early and went home on horseback to
+luncheon.  His wife saw the husband of many days ago and asked no more
+of life, but sang among her flower jars.
+
+"Will you come up to Government House this afternoon, dear?  It's weeks
+since you've been," she said, and he smiled and promised.  "I've a new
+frock," she confided shyly, like a girl, "and I think you'll like to
+see it--now."
+
+"I'll be back before four," he told her, "a little late, but I promised
+one of our young fellows an appointment."
+
+She pouted as she had done in her courtship days.
+
+"A young man!"
+
+"I can't disappoint him, sweetheart.  Youngsters feel those things.  He
+wants more money, and I really believe he's worth it."
+
+As he entered his private room something struck him disagreeably.  He
+glanced about--a sea-coal fire burned in the tiny English grate.  He
+scowled and touched a bell.  Asked to explain, the page confessed that
+he had promised Mrs. Weldon to put a fire there whenever any dampness
+should threaten, and that to-day being noticeably damp he had kept his
+word.  The president nodded and the lad made his escape.
+
+In another moment a slender young man entered, with a discreet knock,
+and faced him.  He seemed unaccountably excited--even blustering, for a
+young man in his position.
+
+The president took out his watch and counted the ticks to quiet his
+irritation.  We must be kind to the young ones--promotion means so much
+to them.
+
+"Let us look at all this a little quietly," he said, softened already,
+"believe me, I want to satisfy every reasonable claim.  It is to my
+interest----"
+
+He caught his breath.  Something in the young man's attitude as he
+faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on
+his hard young face, smote him to the very marrow.
+
+"What is he thinking of me?" flashed through him.  The answer came like
+the shot from a cannon.
+
+"Is it to your interest to satisfy every reasonable claim on the ten
+thousand pounds you borrowed from the bank last month, Mr. Weldon?"
+
+The soft lines faded from his face and two grey streaks grew around his
+mouth.  The ticking of the watch in his hand rose and swelled and
+filled the room--_one, two! one, two! one, two!_
+
+So this was the end.  Never a night of honest sleep again.  Never a
+free swell of the chest.  To go down in sight of land, to drop just
+outside the fort!  _All over!  All over!  All over!_
+
+The young man was still talking, quickly, definitely enough, but it
+grew blurred as it reached his brain.  He found his tongue, dry and
+stiff in his mouth, asking questions mechanically?
+
+Did any one know of this?
+
+No, only the young man.  He was not inclined to be rapacious.  He had
+an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would
+establish him there.  He had thought it might be worth the president's
+while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds--considering
+everything.  Promotion was slow in Bermuda ... dead men's shoes....
+
+The tongue in Weldon's mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be
+protected against further demands.  The young man explained very
+clearly.  The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the
+recent transaction would be a ripple under water.  But during those few
+days ... he smiled disagreeably.
+
+The fire whistled in the grate; the bank was utterly still.  They were
+alone in it.  In one second of time, years and the future itself
+wheeled before Philip Weldon's sunken eyes.  So the black drop _had_
+lasted, after all, and would tint his life as long as that life lasted
+on earth ... and longer?  Anything was possible.  Must the sordid drama
+play itself eternally, through the years and countries, till the final
+ripple hit the southern-most port of refuge?  Would this young man sit
+before a sea-coal fire in Gibraltar, one day, frozen, his life and
+honour nipped at the root by the triumphant hound who had tracked down
+his one fault?  Before God, it was _his_ only one!  He was white beside
+some others who lived and died respected.  Prove the contrary, any one!
+
+_One, two! one, two! one, two!_  That watch.  Either he was going mad
+or it could be heard in the street outside, it shouted so.  Who was he,
+anyway--Deeping or himself?  Who was that young man?
+
+Suddenly his head cleared.  He moistened his lips and leaned forward,
+the watch crystal shivered in his grasp.
+
+"And you are going----"
+
+"To Gibraltar," said the young man briskly.  "I am glad that you----"
+
+"No," said Weldon thoughtfully, "I am afraid you are not going to
+Gibraltar.  You are going to die."
+
+He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard
+little object there.  His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him
+reeling in his chair.  A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he
+fell heavily backward on his bent arm.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+His eyes opened.  He drew a deep breath.  A tall, carved clock in the
+corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have
+said something, for his voice was in the air.
+
+"He must have had some papers--if there is anything wrong--good God,
+Webb, what shall we do?"
+
+This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey.  Weldon sprang to his feet,
+pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now.  He was
+free!  He was free!
+
+The clock struck again.
+
+Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and
+pressed them upon Webb.
+
+"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want!
+And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an
+explanation that may help you with them.  I wish you good-day."
+
+To get out!  To get out!  He burst through the portieres and the door,
+as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it
+from without.  In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one
+sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and
+terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes
+fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with
+his snake-like eye.  Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in
+the room and the group dissolved.
+
+Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode
+down the corridor.  He threw himself on the outside door and as he
+opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the
+great clock strike eleven.  With a shudder he plunged across the
+threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGACY
+
+Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody
+believes this or not.  It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that
+I'm writing it, anyway.  And nobody needs to get the idea that I think
+I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that.  But there's not
+a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over
+her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too.  Not that he's cocky about
+it, though.
+
+"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of
+the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back,
+while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."
+
+"Style be damned," he said.  "You're long on facts, and that's all I
+want, my dear.  And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that
+C----r's rot on me!"
+
+I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it.  I
+took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix
+removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always
+insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that.  But of
+course they weren't.
+
+"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own
+language.  I'd like to keep it."
+
+And of course anybody can do that.  Although Mr. C----r told me once
+that that was the hardest job he ever tackled.  He said he could write
+like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself.  But he was always
+joshing, that man.
+
+"Why, Miss Jessop," he used to say to me, "if I could write like
+myself, I'd have won the Nobel prize any time this last ten years!"
+
+But he wrote awfully well, I always thought.  Hardly a patient I had
+that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:
+
+"Oh, well, what's the last C----r's?" and when I got to the parts I'd
+taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used
+to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!
+
+It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case.  He 'phoned me to drop in at
+the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been
+shopping with her all the morning.  She had just invited me to go out
+to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the
+idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case
+that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue.
+It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any
+feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my
+own sister, almost.  She was lovely.
+
+But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes,
+though my suit-case was all packed for the country.
+
+"That's good," he said, "for I specially want you.  It's nothing to do,
+really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend.  There's a
+family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through
+the country--New England, I believe.  They've got a big, dressy car,
+and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the
+weather's reasonably good."
+
+"What do they want of a nurse?" I said.
+
+"Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening," he said.
+"They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?"
+
+Well, that sounded all right, and yet I got the idea that it wasn't the
+real reason, somehow.  I don't know why.  Those things are queer.
+
+Of course, there was no reason why it shouldn't be so: I spent a month
+on a private yacht, one summer, just to be there in case of sickness,
+and nobody wanted me all the time we were gone, for a minute.  As a
+matter of fact, the lady's maid took care of me the first three days
+out!
+
+But I never happened to be asked on a motor-trip in that way, and it
+seemed a little different.  For of course you could pick up a nurse
+almost anywhere, if you wanted one, on that sort of a tour, and every
+place in the tonneau counts.
+
+"Isn't there anything the matter with any of them?" I asked.
+
+"What a suspicious lot you nurses are!" he said, with his queer little
+chuckle (all the young doctors try to imitate it in the hospital).
+"The daughter's a little nervous, that's all.  It's for her they're
+taking the trip, to give her a change."
+
+"Now look here, Dr. Stanchon," I said, "I'm here to tell you that I
+don't want any of your old dope cases, and I might just as well say so
+first as last.  That last young man of yours was about all I wanted.
+He was a sweet creature, wasn't he?"
+
+This probably sounds very fresh to you, but everybody knows me: I speak
+right out, and if you want me, you have to stand it!  And the way I
+slaved over that boy, and he getting morphine from his valet right
+along--it was simply disgusting.
+
+"It's nothing like that--nothing at all," said he; "don't get so
+excited!"
+
+"Oh, very well," I said, "then I suppose it's melancholia.  Not for
+mine, if you please.  Perhaps you remember that charming woman that
+jumped out of the window?  I'm no clairvoyant, and that was enough for
+me, thank you."
+
+"You're getting saucy, Jessop," he said, "but it's not melancholia.
+But you certainly had a hard time with that one."
+
+And I should say I did.  The foxy thing was as good as gold for three
+weeks, minded everything I said, fairly ate out of my hand, and got us
+so that we all believed she did better for me alone than when I had
+help handy.  Of course I kept my eye on her, but nevertheless, the
+other nurse just above gave up the job, and used to be off learning
+French from the governess they had, most of the time.  So when madam
+got us where she wanted us, she tied me to the door knob and jumped out
+of the window before my eyes!  And I can tell you, the thirty dollars a
+week that would get me on a case like that again, never left the
+Treasury!
+
+"I assure you it's not that at all," he said.  "It's a case of nerves,
+that's all."
+
+"Nerves! nerves!" I repeated (I _was_ pretty snippy, I suppose).
+"That's all right for the family, doctor, but what's the matter with
+her?  I've got to know, haven't I, some time?"
+
+"Well, I must say you nurses are getting to be the limit," he said.
+"The truth is, I spoil you.  But there's something in what you say, of
+course.  Now here's the whole business.  This girl, and she's a sweet,
+lovely girl, too, had a maid, that was a sort of nurse, I believe, when
+she was a child, and had seen her grow up, and was very much attached
+to her, and all that.  Like all those old servants she was pretty well
+spoilt, I imagine, and seems to have had the girl under her thumb.  She
+always slept in the room with her.  Now; the maid had bad headaches and
+used to take all sorts of proprietary remedies for them--coal-tar, of
+course, and probably had weakened her heart with them.  Anyway, she
+waked the girl up one night with her troubles and the girl gets up and
+gives her an overdose in the dark, and the maid's dead in her bed in
+the morning."
+
+"Oh, I see," I said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that
+suicidal woman.  "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame.
+An automobile trip will certainly do her a lot of good."
+
+"Well, there's a little more to it than that," he said.  "As a matter
+of fact, she's a very sensible sort of girl and she knows she's not to
+blame, really.  Of course it was pretty rough, but then, the maid had
+no business to expect her to wait on her, and she ought to have given
+careful directions about the dose, anyhow.  She might have gone off any
+time, and the girl knows it.  But the night of the funeral, after the
+girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of
+the bed, looking at her!  Of course she was overwrought nervously.
+Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the
+woman comes every night.  She knows it's hallucination, optical
+delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but
+she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do.
+They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried
+auto-suggestion--no use.  She's all right through the day, but at
+night, in any bedroom, under any circumstances, this thing appears and
+she just has to go through with it till morning."
+
+"Why doesn't she have some one sleep with her?" I asked.
+
+"It doesn't make the slightest difference," he said.  "One week she had
+a bed between her father's and mother's, but it was just the same, and
+of course they got pretty bad, out of sympathy.  They'd spend two or
+three ordinary fortunes to cure her--but it's one of the cases where
+money doesn't talk, unfortunately.  So there we are.  It came over me
+last night that I'd like to have you try what you can do with her."
+
+"But, heavens and earth, what good will I be?" I said.  "Am I a
+ghost-catcher?  I never knew it."
+
+"No," says he, "but I'm sorry for the ghost that would run up against
+you, Jessop--honestly, I am!"
+
+"Much obliged, I'm sure," I said, "but why doesn't she take her sleep
+in the daytime?  That would fool the ghost from her point of
+view--wouldn't it?"
+
+I'll never forget the look he gave me.  "Listen to me, my girl," he
+said, running out his jaw in the way he does when he's in dead earnest
+and means you to know it, "listen to me, now.  If that young woman ever
+takes to living by night and sleeping by day, on that account, _she's a
+gone goose_!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said I.
+
+"I mean it's all up with her, and she might as well engage a permanent
+suite in Jarvyse's little hotel up the river," he says, very sharp and
+gruff.  "I've staved that off for a month now, but they can't see it
+and they're bound to try it: Jarvyse himself half advises it.  And I'll
+risk my entire reputation on the result.  If she can't fight it
+out--she's gone."
+
+He waited a moment and put out his jaw.
+
+"_She's gone,_" he said again, and I felt creepy when he said it, and I
+tell you I believed him.
+
+"Well, I'll try my best," I said, and I went on the case the next
+morning.
+
+As soon as I saw her I got the idea of her I've always had since:
+that's me, all over.  I went to a palmist's once with a lot of the
+other nurses and that's the first thing he said to me.
+
+"It's first impressions with you, young woman," he said.  "Take care to
+trust 'em and act on 'em, and you'll never need to count on the old
+ladies' home!"
+
+Well, as soon as I saw Miss Elton she put me in mind of one of Mr.
+C----r's heroines, looks and clothes and ways, and all, and I've never
+changed my mind.  Her things were all plain, but they had the loveliest
+lines, and she always looked as if she'd been born in them, they suited
+her so!  Her hair was that heavy, smooth blond kind that makes a Marcel
+wave look too vulgar to think about, and her eyes and complexion went
+with it.  And with all her education she was as simple as a child:
+there were any number of things she didn't seem to know.  She took to
+me directly, her mother said, and I could see she liked me, though she
+hardly spoke.  She had big rings under her eyes and seemed very tired.
+
+She got a nap after lunch--only two hours, by the doctor's orders--and
+it did seem a shame to wake her, she was off so sound, but of course I
+did, and then we walked for an hour in the park.  I didn't talk much at
+first, but I saw that she liked it, and so gradually we got on to
+different subjects, and I think she was entertained.  She seemed
+interested to hear about the nurses at the hospital and some of the
+funny things that happen there, and I could see that she was trying to
+keep her end up--oh, she was all right, Anne Elton was, and no mistake!
+There was nothing morbid about her: she was trying to help all she
+could.
+
+When I came down for dinner there was a young man with them, a
+handsome, dark fellow, and he talked a great deal with me--I could see
+he was trying to size me up, and it was easy to see that he was pretty
+far gone as far as Miss Elton was concerned, and didn't care who knew
+it.  We must have seemed a strange party to any one who didn't know the
+ins and outs of the thing--only the five of us in that big dining-room
+with the conservatory opening into it; the mother, one of those
+stringy, grey New York women, that always wear diamond dog-collars,
+worried to death and nervous as a witch; Mr. Elton--he was Commodore of
+the New York Yacht Club at that time--fat and healthy and
+reddish-purple in the face; young Mr. Ferrau (he was from an old French
+family and looked it, though a born New Yorker) and me in my white
+uniform and cap next to Miss Elton, all in white with a big rope of
+pearls and pearls on her fingers.  She could wear a lower cut gown and
+look more decent in it than any woman I ever saw.  All her evening
+dresses were like that, perfectly plain, just draped around her, with
+long trains and no trimmings: her skin was like cream-coloured marble,
+not a mark or line or vein on it, but just one brown mole on the right
+shoulder blade, and that, as her mother said, was really an addition.
+
+Nobody talked much but Mr. Ferrau and the old gentleman--there's no
+doubt he had been a gay old boy in his day!--for I never do talk when I
+dine with the family, and the mother was too nervous for anything but
+complaining of the food.  The Lord knows why, for it beat any French
+restaurant I ever ate in, or Delmonico's either, and Mr. Ferrau and I
+got quite jolly over how they put soft-boiled eggs into those round,
+_soufflee_ sort of things with tomato sauce over them, without spilling
+the yolks.  Then they asked if I'd play bridge a bit, and though I
+don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my
+morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old
+gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted,
+sitting up straight as a poker on a gold sofa.
+
+It always makes me laugh when I read what some persons' ideas are of
+how rich people amuse themselves.  The nurses are always jollying me
+about my rich friends and playing the races and champagne suppers and
+high-flying generally, and I often wish they could have seen us those
+evenings at the Eltons, playing bridge--no money, mind you, and
+Apollinaris at ten!  The Commodore had to have ginger-ale, the ladies
+hardly ever drank, and I never take anything but water when I'm on a
+case, so Mr. Ferrau had all the champagne there was at that dinner.  At
+ten the masseuse came and rubbed Miss Elton to sleep, and I got into my
+bed next hers before she went off, not to risk disturbing her.  There
+was a night lamp in her bath and I could just make out her long braid
+on the pillow--the pillow cases had real lace insertions and the
+monograms on the sheets were the most beautiful I ever saw.
+
+I went off myself about eleven, for I was determined to act perfectly
+natural: I knew I'd wake if anything was wrong.  And sure enough: all
+of a sudden I began to dream, a thing I seldom if ever do, and I
+dreamed that my suicidal case was clambering over me to jump out of the
+window, and woke with a start.
+
+Miss Elton was sitting up in bed staring at me, breathing short.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" I asked quietly and she gave a sort of
+gasp and said,
+
+"No--I think not, thank you.  I'm sorry to bother you, but the doctor
+told me to."
+
+"Why, of course," said I, "that's what I'm here for.  Do you see
+anybody?"
+
+I didn't say, "Do you think you see anybody?" for I never put things
+that way.
+
+"Yes," she said, "she's there--Janet."  I glanced about, and of course
+there was no one, and I tell you, I felt awfully sorry for her.  It was
+all the worse that she was so pretty and calm and decent about it: I
+didn't like that a bit.
+
+"Where is she?" said I.
+
+"Right on the foot of the bed," she answered, in that grim, edgy kind
+of way they always talk when they're holding on to themselves.  Oh, how
+that morphine boy of mine used to begin!
+
+"Excuse me, Miss Jessop, but would you mind assuring me that there's
+nobody crouching under the bed?" he used to say.  "Of course I know
+there's not, but there appears to be, and I'd be obliged if you'd look!"
+
+If I went under that bed once, I went fifty times.
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, Miss Elton, I don't see a thing," I said.
+"Shall I turn on the light?"
+
+"No--not yet," she said.  "The doctor said to hold out as long as I
+could.  Would you mind putting your hand there?"
+
+"Not a bit," said I, and I pawed all over the foot of her bed.  Finally
+I got up and sat there.
+
+"What happens now?" I asked her.
+
+"She just moves up and sits farther out," said she.
+
+I couldn't think of much to say to that, she was so quiet and hopeless,
+so I waited awhile and finally I said,
+
+"Would it help you any to talk about it?"
+
+"Oh, if you didn't _mind_!" she cried out, and then the poor thing
+began.  It makes me tired, the way people treat a patient like that.
+There was that girl just bottled up, you might as well say, because
+they all thought it would make her worse to talk about it.  Her father
+pooh-poohed it, and her mother cried and asked her to send for their
+rector, and even Dr. Stanchon slipped up there, it seemed to me, for he
+advised her not to dwell on it.  Not dwell on it!  Why, how could she
+help it, I'd like to know?
+
+"What I can't understand," she'd say, over and over, "is her coming,
+when it hurts me so.  Why, Janet loved me, Miss Jessop, she loved the
+ground I walked on, everybody said!  And she knows--she must know--that
+I wouldn't have hurt her for the world.  Why should I?  She took care
+of me since I was six years old--sixteen years!  She said to put in
+those powders in the box and I put them in.  How could I know?"
+
+"Of course you couldn't know," I said, "she knows that."
+
+"Then why does she do this?" she asked me, so pitifully, just like a
+child.  "Why does she, Miss Jessop?"
+
+"Well, you know, Miss Elton," I said, "you wouldn't believe me if I
+lied to you, now, would you?  And so I must tell you that I don't think
+she _does_ do it: none of us do.  It's just your idea.  If Janet's
+there, why don't I see her?  You're overstrained and excited and you
+feel that she might not have died----"
+
+"Ah, but I didn't feel that the night she came!" she broke out, "truly
+I didn't.  Dr. Stanchon and all of them said I was very brave and
+sensible.  He talked to me and made me see: if Janet had been sleeping
+with one of the maids and waked her up and told her not to turn on the
+light because it hurt her head, but just to give her the powders in the
+box, that maid would have done it.  I can see that."
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"I didn't blame myself--really," she went on, and suddenly she looked
+straight to the foot of the bed.
+
+"Janet," she said, "the doctor said never to speak to you, and I never
+will again, but I must, this once.  Janet, _do_ you blame me?  Are you
+really there?  Why do you come this way?  You're killing me, you know.
+I can't sleep.  You shouldn't have taken that strong medicine, and the
+doctor told you not to, you know, yourself.  Won't you go, Janet?  Not
+to please Nannie?"
+
+Really, it would have melted a stone to hear her.
+
+She was still a moment and then she began to cry and whimper, and I
+knew that it had made no difference.
+
+"She won't go--she won't go," she said, crying, "not even for Nannie!"
+
+Well, I talked to her and read to her and stroked her head, and by two
+o'clock or so she was off for an hour, and I got a nap myself.  But
+from three till nearly five she was awake again, and I had to light up
+the room; she said she hardly saw her then--only felt her, and that
+wasn't so bad.
+
+I don't know that anything different took place for a week after that.
+We went through the same business every night, and I took a nap every
+afternoon when she did.  She told me, what I wasn't much surprised to
+hear, that she and Mr. Ferrau were engaged--or just about--when this
+precious Janet died, and that now she wouldn't hear of it and had
+refused to marry him till she was well again.  And I must say I think
+she was right.  Of course the old gentleman didn't see it that way, and
+we had many a discussion about it, he and I.
+
+"God Almighty, Miss Jessop, my dear," he used to say to me, "you know
+as well as I do--I'm speaking, of course, to a woman of practical sense
+and experience, and therefore I speak plainly--you know as well as I do
+that the day after the wedding all this will be done for!  We'll never
+hear of that damned Janet nonsense again.  Now, would we?"
+
+"Well, Commodore, maybe not, but you can't tell," I'd say.  "It's a
+good bet, but--it's a bet, after all.  It would be awkward if it didn't
+work out, you know."
+
+"Oh, bosh, bosh!" he'd burst out, and roll off to the Yacht Club.
+People that live in big houses like that, I've noticed, always have to
+go out to get a little peace, they say, and privacy.  It's funny.
+
+The weather was bad, so we didn't go on the motor trip at all, and that
+was just as well, for if we had, I should never have gone up to the
+hospital that day and never seen old Margaret.  She was an old darky
+woman that used to come in to clean the wards when they were short of
+help, and all the nurses knew her, because she used to tell fortunes
+with cards and a glass ball she looked into--pretty fair fortunes, too.
+I've known of some awfully queer things she told different nurses that
+were only too true.  She always liked me because I used to jolly her
+up, and I stopped to speak to her, and she asked me where I was working.
+
+"Oh, a grand place on the Avenue, Margaret," I told her, "marble stairs
+and a fountain in the hall."
+
+"What's the sickness, honey?" she asked, for those darkies are always
+curious.
+
+"The patient's got a ghost, Margaret," I said, just to see what she'd
+say, "and I'm sorry to say we can't seem to cure her."
+
+"Co'se you cayn't cure her," says she, "no stuff in bottles for that,
+honey!  What the ghos' want?"
+
+"Nothing at all," said I.  "It just sits on the bed and looks."
+
+"Laws, honey, Miss Jessop, but that yer kine's the wors' of all," says
+she, staring at me.  "She'll jes' have ter leave it onto somebody else,
+that's all."
+
+"Why, can you do that?" I asked.
+
+"Sure you can do it," she says.  "Was it one that loved her?"
+
+"They all say so," said I.
+
+She struck her hands together.
+
+"I knew it--I knew it!" she cried out.  "It's always that-a-way.  My
+ole mudder she had that ha'nt fer ten years, and it was her half-sister
+that brung her up from three years ole!  She'll jes' have ter leave it
+onto some one."
+
+"Well, I'll tell her so," said I, just in joke, of course.
+
+"You do," says she, solemn as the grave, "you do, Miss Jessop, honey,
+an' she'll bless you all her life.  You get some one ter say they'll
+take that ha'nt off her _right w'ile it's there, so it hears 'em_, and
+w'ile there's a witness there ter hear bofe sides, an' you hear to me,
+now, she'll go free!"
+
+"I'll certainly tell her, Margaret," I said, and I went on and never
+gave it another thought, of course.
+
+We went up to the Elton's camp in Maine all of a sudden, for Miss Elton
+got the idea she'd feel better there, and though it was cold as
+Greenland, it did seem for a little as if she got a bit more sleep.
+But not for long.  We slept out on pine-bough beds around a big fire,
+for that made more light, and that precious Janet seemed to be fainter,
+but she was there, just the same, and the poor girl had lost eighteen
+pounds and I felt pretty blue about it.  It didn't really look as if we
+got ahead any, as I told the doctor, and she hardly spoke all day.  I'm
+not much for the country, as a rule, it always smells so damp at night,
+but the Lord knows I'd have lived there a year if it would have helped
+her any.
+
+Then came the night when Mr. Ferrau ran up to see how she was getting
+along.  It was too cold for Madam and the Commodore, so we were there
+alone except for a gang of guides and servants and chauffeurs and
+masseuses.  She had a bad night that night, for she got the idea that
+this lovely Janet was sitting up nearer and nearer to her, and she had
+it in her head that when she got to a certain point it would be all up
+with her.  And when I told the doctor that, over the telephone, all he
+said was:
+
+"Too bad, too bad!"  So I knew how _he_ felt.
+
+Well, she got talking rather hysterically for her, and I began to wish
+somebody else was around, when Mr. Ferrau jumps out of his door in the
+bachelor quarters and dashes over to us in a heavy bathrobe, white as a
+sheet.
+
+"For God's sake, Miss Jessop, _do_ something!" he said, but I just
+shrugged my shoulders.  There was nothing to _do_, you see.  She was
+all bundled up in a seal-skin sleeping-bag with a wool helmet over her
+head; her eyes certainly looked bad.  I just about gave up hope, then.
+The moon made everything a sort of bluish-white and we all must have
+looked pretty ghastly.
+
+"I think I'll give her a little codeine," I said.  "Just stay here a
+moment, will you?"
+
+He knelt down by her bunk while I began to unwind myself from all the
+stuff you have to get into up there.
+
+"Oh, Anne, my dearest, dearest girl," he said, "if only I could take
+this instead of you!  If only I could see her, and you not!"
+
+"Would you--would you, really, Louis?" I heard her say.  "You _do_ love
+me, don't you?  But that would be too dreadful.  I couldn't allow that
+to happen."
+
+"Heavens, my dear girl, I'd take it in a minute, if I could!" he cried.
+"Oh, Anne, do try to look at it in that way--try to give it to me!
+Perhaps if you used your will-power enough for that----"
+
+"That can't be, Louis," she said, "this is just my fate.  I must bear
+it--till it kills me.  But if it could be, I'll tell you this: I
+_would_ give it to you, dearest, for you are stronger, and maybe a man
+could fight it better."
+
+I was off to the main camp then, but when I got back with the codeine
+she was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he kneeled there till
+four without moving--he was game, that Mr. Ferrau, and no mistake!
+
+She slept right through till eight, and I left them together all day,
+as much as I could, and I let her off her nap, she begged so.  I could
+see from the solemn way she talked that she was saying good-bye to him,
+as much as he'd let her.  She told me that as soon as it began to get
+on her brain, really, and she got worse (we always called it "getting
+worse"), she was going up to Dr. Jarvyse's place, and he wasn't to see
+her at all.
+
+"I want him to remember me--as I was," she said.  It certainly was
+tough.  I used to cry about it, when I was alone, sometimes.  You get
+awfully fond of some patients.
+
+He stayed the next night, too, and I took my regular nap from ten to
+one.  I could nearly always count on that, and I'd got so I woke the
+moment she did.  I was fast asleep when I felt her touch me, and I
+woke, feeling scared, for she almost never did that.
+
+"What is it?" I said, half awake.  "Is she coming nearer?"
+
+"Miss Jessop, dear Miss Jessop, she isn't here at all!" she said,
+shaking and crying.  "I've been awake an hour, and she hasn't come
+to-night!  Oh, _do_ you think, _do_ you----"
+
+"Yes, I do," I said, though I was pretty excited myself, I can tell
+you.  "I believe you're getting better, Miss Elton, and now I think
+I'll have Miss Avidson rub you, and see if we can get through the night
+all right."
+
+The Swedish woman put her right to sleep, working over her head, and we
+never opened our eyes till nine.  One of the guides told me that Mr.
+Ferrau had been called to the city early, and had left quietly, not to
+disturb us, but we were both so delighted and yet so anxious not to be
+delighted too soon, that we didn't notice his going much.  She ate
+three good meals that day, besides her tea, and we walked five or six
+miles--I wanted to wear her out.  And that night she slept right
+through!
+
+We waited one night more, to be certain, and then I 'phoned the doctor.
+
+"Hurray!" he yelled, so I nearly dropped the receiver.  "Bully for you!
+Keep out for a week and then move in--with a light.  Drop the light in
+another week.  Then I'll send 'em all off to Beachmount."  This was
+their Long Island place.
+
+Well, it all worked out perfectly.  She gained nine pounds in three
+weeks, and I don't know when I've been so pleased.  The old people came
+up to see her, and I spent most of my time convincing them that it was
+no case for tiaras and sunbursts, as I never wore them.  Mrs. Elton
+really looked almost human.  She cried so that I finally had to take a
+little string of pearls.  They were small, but all matched, and she
+said I could wear them under my blouse and I could always sell them.
+You'd have thought that I'd cured the girl, when, as I told them, the
+thing had just run its natural course, and her youth and good sense and
+the outdoor life had done the rest.
+
+Of course, there was no more use for me, and I went right off on a big
+operation case--a very interesting one, indeed.  I promised to come to
+the wedding, if I possibly could; she told me she would be married just
+as soon as Mr. Ferrau wished, she felt she'd made him go through so
+much in the last four months.  And it seemed that he _had_ felt the
+strain more than they thought, for her mother told me that just as Anne
+recovered, he seemed to give way and got very nervous and had gone off
+on a yacht with some of his college friends to the south somewhere.  I
+was rather surprised not to see him at the house, and so was Miss Anne,
+I thought; but he sent the loveliest flowers every day and telegrams,
+and of course they were working on the trousseau and pretty busy,
+anyway.
+
+I couldn't get to the wedding, after all, for my patient was taken to
+Lakewood and simply refused to let me off, which was rather mean of
+her, for I could have run up for the afternoon as well as not.  But
+that's what you have to expect, if you go into nursing, and you get
+used to it.
+
+Mrs. Elton called me up once at the hotel, to see if I couldn't get
+away (they were going to send the car for me if I could), and I asked
+if Mr. Ferrau was all right again.
+
+"Really, Miss Jessop," said she--and I could just see how she must have
+looked, from her voice--"really, my dear, I am terribly, _terribly_
+worried about Louis.  He looks frightfully, so pale and nervous and run
+down.  And he simply _won't_ see a doctor, and when I earnestly begged
+him to consult Dr. Stanchon, he flew out at me--he really flew out!"
+
+"What can it be?" said I.  "What does Miss Elton think?"
+
+"Why, how can she know, my dear?" says the old lady.  "Only he assures
+her that it will be all right once they're married, and begs her so not
+to put it off, that she won't, though I don't entirely approve, myself.
+Really, you'd scarcely know Louis, Miss Jessop."
+
+It did seem too bad, but then, those things will happen, and I just
+thought to myself that probably there was more to that southern trip
+than the old lady knew, and let it go at that.  The doctor says that
+all the nurses have dime-novel imaginations--but where do we get them,
+I'd like to know, if not from what we see and hear?  The Lord knows we
+don't have to invent things.
+
+Miss Elton was dreadfully disappointed that I couldn't be there for the
+wedding, and promised me they'd stop a minute at the hotel on their
+wedding journey and see me.  They were going on a motor trip, nobody
+knew just where, and Lakewood would only be a few miles out of their
+way.  Wasn't that nice of them?  But it was just like both of them.  So
+I was quite excited, of course, and when it poured rain all day, and
+got worse and worse, I did feel so sorry for them and never expected
+they'd leave town.  But, lo and behold, about five o'clock didn't the
+boy bring up their cards, and for a wonder my patient was decent and
+said she wouldn't want me till next morning--she had her own maid with
+her and really didn't need me but once a day.
+
+I ran down to one of the little reception rooms--I must say I like
+those big hotels--and when I saw them I nearly collapsed, for though
+she was looking perfectly beautiful and well as could be, poor Mr.
+Ferrau certainly did give me a shock.  He was all tanned, well enough,
+but as thin as a rail, and dreadful around the eyes.  And yet he looked
+very happy and seemed quite glad to see me.
+
+"Isn't she looking magnificent?" he asked me, and I said--I just have
+to say right out what I think--"Yes, she is, but I can't say the same
+for you."
+
+"Oh, I shall be all right--after a bit," he said, turning red and not
+meeting my eyes.  "Just let me get away with Anne for a while, and
+you'll see."
+
+They insisted on my having tea with them, and I couldn't help but think
+that she didn't realise how bad he looked and acted: his hand shook so
+that his tea-spoon jingled.  And yet he was as straight as a string, I
+was sure.
+
+It kept on pouring so dreadfully that they gave up the idea of going on
+anywhere, and he engaged a suite at the hotel for that night, and I
+said good-bye to them, then, for they were to have their dinner served
+by themselves and I knew they'd want to get off quietly in the morning.
+My patient kept her word and didn't bother me, and I listened to the
+music for a while and then went up to my room and wrote some letters.
+About ten I put my boots outside the door and happened to notice the
+boots opposite and saw that they were Mr. Ferrau's--they were patent
+leather, with rather queer cloth tops.  So I knew that they had the
+suite opposite ours; there were only those two for the one little hall.
+
+I couldn't seem to sleep that night at all.  I kept dreaming about that
+suicide of mine, even when I did sleep, and finally I put on my wrapper
+and decided to take a few turns up and down the corridor.  I opened the
+door softly and stepped out--and ran right into Mr. Ferrau!  He was
+stalking along in a bathrobe, his arms spread out, and tears rolling
+down his cheeks, and he was chattering to himself like a monkey.  His
+eyes rolled, and I could see he was just on the verge of a regular
+smash-up.
+
+"Why, Mr. Ferrau, what's the matter?" I asked.
+
+He stared at me like a crazy man.  "You here!" he said.  "For God's
+sake!  Go up to her--go to Anne--I'm all in," he said.  "Oh, Miss
+Jessop, it didn't work!  It didn't work!"
+
+He pointed to his door, and I went through the private dining-room and
+the sitting-room and a dressing-room and a big marble bath, and there
+she was, crying like a baby in one of the beds.
+
+"Why, Miss Elton--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau--what _is_ the
+matter?" I said, running up to her and taking hold of her hand.  "Are
+you ill?"
+
+She only sobbed and held on to me and suddenly something struck me and
+I said, "You haven't seen Janet again, have you?"
+
+"No, no--but I wish I had!  I wish I'd never stopped!" she gulped at
+me.  "Oh, Miss Jessop, _Louis sees her_!  He sees her all the time;
+that's what makes him look so ill!  Ever since she stopped coming to
+me, he's seen her, and he never told."
+
+"For heaven's sake!" said I.
+
+"She sits on the bed, but she doesn't look at him--he only sees her
+profile.  He walked twenty miles a day--he did boxing and fencing and
+riding--it was no use--he thought when we--when--he hoped if we were
+married--oh, Miss Jessop, she came just the same!"
+
+"For heaven's sake!" I said again.  It wasn't very helpful, but I
+simply couldn't think of anything else.  She was so pretty and sweet,
+and he was so plucky, and who would have supposed it would have got on
+his nerves so!
+
+Her night gown was solid real lace, and the front of it was sopping wet
+where she'd cried, and the top of the sheet, too.
+
+"I gave her to him, and he won't give her back--I can't make him!" she
+went on, gasping and sobbing.  "I begged him on my knees, but he
+wouldn't."
+
+"And don't you see her?" I asked.
+
+"No, no, I can't!" she cried.  "I try, but I can't."
+
+"Well, that's something, anyway," I said.  "You wait till I go and
+speak to him again, and put some cold water on your eyes, why don't
+you?"
+
+For it just occurred to me that maybe I could do something with him,
+after all.  He was leaning against the window at the end of the
+corridor, and I never like to see excited people near windows, after my
+suicide woman, so I sprinted along till I got to him.  But I really
+don't believe there was any need for it--he wasn't that kind.
+
+"See here, Mr. Ferrau," I said, "do you really believe that Miss
+Elton--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ferrau--really gave that old Janet ghost
+to you?"
+
+"Believe it? _believe it_?" he said, staring at me out of his red eyes.
+"No, I don't believe it, Miss Jessop--I know it!  I tell you I see the
+damned thing, in a brown dress, on the edge of my bed every night!"
+
+"Well, then," I said, "do you think you could give it to anybody else?"
+
+And just at that moment, and not before, I remembered old Margaret!
+
+"Why--why, I never thought of that," he said.  "I--I wouldn't put any
+one else through such a hell, though----"
+
+"Oh, come, now," I said.  "Maybe they wouldn't think it was so bad as
+you do, Mr. Ferrau."
+
+"But who would--oh, it's too crazy!" he said, half angry, but all
+broken up, so he didn't much care how it sounded.
+
+"Oh, lots of people," I told him.  "Why, you might easily find some one
+with an incurable disease, you know, that hadn't long to live and
+wanted money----"
+
+Of course, this was all nonsense, but anything to humour people in his
+condition--it's the only way.  And what do you think?  He turned around
+like a shot and stared at me as if I'd been a ghost, myself.
+
+"That might be possible," he said, very slowly; "it's just possible I
+know ... excuse me, I'll go in and speak to my wife a moment!"
+
+He left me there and in a few minutes he came for me again, and I went
+into their parlour.  She had on a beautiful pale rose negligee all
+covered with lace and her braids were wound around her head: she'd
+wiped her eyes.
+
+"Would you perhaps play a little bridge with us, Miss Jessop?" says he,
+trying to keep calm.  "We think we'd better have some one with us."
+
+So there we sat till four in the morning, playing three-handed bridge,
+and if anybody knows of a funnier wedding-night, I'd like to hear of it!
+
+I suppose anybody would have thought us all crazy if they could have
+seen us, the next night, sitting, all three of us, by the bed of that
+queer old man that lived in old Greenwich Village.  (My patient let me
+off, for I told her it was a case of a young bride and groom, and she
+was delighted to oblige the Eltons.  She told me she should call on
+them after that!  She was a climber, if there ever was one, that woman.)
+
+He was an old valet of Mr. Ferrau's father, and Mr. Ferrau was
+supporting him till he died in a little cottage there.  He had angina
+and was likely to go off any minute, and the Lord knows what Master
+Louis paid the old monkey--I'll bet it was no thirty cents!  He only
+talked French, but I could see he thought Mr. Ferrau was crazy--he
+looked at me so queerly out of his little wrinkled eyes and nodded his
+head as if to say, "What a pity all this is!  But we must humour him."
+
+Mrs. Ferrau told me afterward that her husband promised him solemnly to
+take Janet back if he couldn't stand her--and he would have, too, and
+don't forget it!  He was a game one.  But the old fellow just kept
+saying:
+
+"_Bon, m'sieu, bon, bon!_" and kept reaching for his envelope.  He was
+only afraid they'd change their mind, you see.
+
+Then Mr. Ferrau lay down on a cot next the old fellow's--he was kept
+very clean and neat by the woman that boarded him--and I stayed in the
+room while Master Louis gave that darned old Janet away.  He insisted
+that I should witness it, and to tell you the truth, when I remembered
+what black Margaret had said about having a witness, I _did_ feel
+rather queer, for a moment.  But of course they were all crazy--as
+crazy as loons--so far as that one thing went.  You see, it was what
+Dr. Stanchon calls an _idee fixe_.  They had to be humoured.
+
+Mrs. Ferrau and I went out, then, and walked up and down for an hour
+through the village with the chauffeur behind us, a little way, and I
+really thought I'd be dippy myself, before long, if I had to pretend to
+be serious about it much longer.  It's no wonder to me the doctors in
+asylums get touched themselves, after what I went through with those
+two.
+
+In just about an hour he came dashing out and pushed us into the car.
+We didn't need to ask him--he looked ashamed, but oh, so different!
+
+"Let's get back to town," was all he said, and I never mentioned it to
+him again, any of it.  Of course, a sensible fellow like him _would_
+feel too ridiculous; knowing he had that silly idea in his head, yet
+not being able to get over it without such childishness--I felt sorry
+for him.
+
+I know that they didn't go back to Lakewood, for her maid packed up
+there, and a week after that the old lady wrote me from Long Island
+that they'd gone for a honeymoon tour in the car through Southern
+France, so I knew that father-in-law's valet hadn't gone back on his
+bargain.  I never knew what that old monkey made on it, but Mrs. Ferrau
+told me he was going to leave it to the Catholic church in Normandy,
+where he was born.  I hope it did some good.
+
+I went up to Greenwich that summer with a little boy who had
+tuberculosis of the spine (the sweetest little fellow, and so clever!)
+and on one of my afternoons out with him I stopped at the old cottage
+where the valet lived, just to ask after him.  The woman there told me
+he had passed away about ten days after I was there before.
+
+"In the night?" I asked, more for something to say than any real reason.
+
+"No, in his sleep, in the afternoon," she said.  "He didn't sleep much
+at night, after his young gentleman came, I noticed.  He seemed to have
+bad dreams.  He'd be praying away and clicking those rosary beads half
+the night, sometimes.  But he went out easy, at the last.  I learned a
+little French when I was lady's maid to a party, once, so I could get
+along pretty well with him.  But I couldn't make out about those
+dreams, exactly; they seemed to be about something brown, with its back
+to him, on the bed.  But he was pretty contented by day, when he was
+awake; he kept telling me of all he was leaving to his church."
+
+... When you think about it, it was queer, wasn't it?
+
+
+
+
+THE MIRACLE
+
+"And are they all really insane?"
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+"'Insane'?" he repeated, "'really'?"
+
+He was very young, but very clever, and I had known his mother well and
+listened to his letters from school many a time; she was intensely
+proud of him.
+
+"I tell you what it is, aunty," he began, selecting a cigarette with
+the deft manual gesture of a born surgeon (he was only twelve years
+younger than I, and his phenomenal record of almost impossible
+accomplishment made him seem far older than his years; but we kept to
+the habits of his perambulator days, when I had been tremendously
+pleased with the title).  "I tell you what it is, aunty--I'm hanged if
+I know!"
+
+He peered slit-eyed through the clouds of smoke, and I waited eagerly
+for what would come; when his eyes took on that look the boy seemed to
+me, frankly, inspired.  Twenty-three years (he had finished Harvard at
+nineteen) appeared so pitifully inadequate to account for him!  One was
+forced to the belief that he had directly inherited that marvelous
+"intuition" of his: that it was actually part of his famous father's
+experience--for he was Richard Stanchon's only son.
+
+"Of course, you know," he said quietly, "I see what they mean--most of
+'em.  I always do, somehow.  And the more you do that, the less insane
+they get to seem to you.  It's only you and I, a little warped, a
+little exaggerated.  My idea is that fewer and fewer of them will be
+sent to places like this, and more and more put out among families--oh,
+don't shiver, aunty, there's nothing to shiver at, I assure you.
+
+"Look here--do you see that tall girl in the blue silk shirtwaist?"
+
+I saw her--she was reading _Punch_ before the big library fire (it was
+furnished like a wealthy private club, the library), and just because
+she was so calm and high bred and Madonna-faced, I flattered myself
+that I could jump in the right direction.
+
+"Does she murder babies?" I asked resignedly.
+
+"Not at all," he replied, with a tiny grin for my cleverness, "not a
+bit of it.  She only insists on taking five baths a day and never
+touching any washable thing that's been handled.  She wears five
+changes a day and cleans the piano keys before she plays--plays very
+well, too."
+
+"But--but, is that all?"
+
+"Every bit."
+
+"Then why must she come here?"
+
+"Oh, well, there are practical complications, of course.  She thinks
+most people are pigs, and says so.  Then her family is nervous--I
+notice most of them come from very nervous families--and they simply
+couldn't rub on.  She shampoos her head every day.  It's my firm
+belief, aunty, that if some steady-going German-American family without
+any nerves would give her two rooms and a bath and put up with her for
+a few months, she'd be all right.  Honestly, as it is, she's fretting
+herself crazy.  She's no fool, you know."
+
+"Heavens, Will!  Why, I can perfectly understand----"
+
+"Of course you can.  Not mother, though.  Mother won't hear about
+her--and the joke of it is, you know, aunty, mother takes her three
+tubs a day all summer and never shakes hands in warm weather!"
+
+I gasped.
+
+"But, Will, this is awful!  Why, we're all on the verge, if you look at
+it that way!"
+
+He shrugged and put out his hand to a heavy-faced, ordinary woman of
+the well-groomed New York type.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Vint--let me present you to my aunt, Mrs. Ba--oh,
+come, now, aunty's a woman of the world and she's married, too.
+There's no reason on earth why you shouldn't."
+
+"But, doctor, you know what I am----"
+
+"I know," he said kindly, and the real sympathy in his boy's eyes
+struck moisture into my own, "I know.  But you're living it down--no
+woman could do more."
+
+"Really?" she begged, her features working, "really, doctor?  Heaven
+knows I try!"
+
+"And you never slip back.  _You never slip back!_" he said slowly and
+emphatically.  "Just think what that: means, Miss Vint!"
+
+We nodded at each other and she hurried off, almost smiling.
+
+"She looks no more insane than I do," I suggested, and again he
+shrugged.
+
+"There's where it is," he answered quietly; "she's just a little over
+the line, that's all.  She's Levi B. Vint's daughter, you know."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"I'd hate to think what she pays a week.  What she's really worrying
+about, I believe, is the old man's money.  She insists he was all
+right, you know, and all this exposure business, though it couldn't
+shake her trust in the old scoundrel, got on her nerves and she got
+worrying over herself.  Everybody argued with her--the whole Vint gang
+are a set of bronze mules, you know--and finally she arrived at a
+definite _idee fixe_: I'm sure it could have been prevented.  Anyway,
+she thinks she's--she's all sorts of a bad lot, you know.  She won't
+speak to the girls here--not even to the maids.  She says she might
+corrupt them."
+
+"How absurd--I mean how sad!  But she's so healthy; she'll soon
+recover?"
+
+"I don't know," he said briefly, and something scared me in his voice.
+"She's a very hard case.  A bad age."
+
+We walked in silence through a long glass-walled hall, a sort of
+conservatory, with palms and caged canaries chirping and trilling.
+
+"I hate those birds!" I cried nervously; he stopped and looked
+thoughtfully into me--it was no less than that.
+
+"That's interesting," he said abruptly, "I don't like 'em, either.  And
+you're one of the best-balanced women I know.  Mother, too--she doesn't
+care for them.  No--nor Beatrix."
+
+Beatrix was the hardy young woman who contemplated marrying him--a
+tremendous venture, it seemed to me!
+
+"But they seem to like 'em here.  The crazier they are (there's nobody
+bad here, you know) the more they like 'em, ...  Did you know mediums
+and spiritualists and all that sort can't live without 'em?  I never
+heard anybody mention it, but it's so.  When I went over to Lourdes,
+last year, I made a point of looking up the families of the people that
+had the visions, and they all kept larks in cages----"
+
+I saw he was following some train of thought and kept silence.  At
+length he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But that isn't what I asked you out for," he began.  "I thought you'd
+be interested in seeing--Oh, Mrs. Leeth, how are you?"
+
+"Very well, thank you, doctor."
+
+A busy, quiet, elderly woman, plainly dressed, cut across our path
+through the long conservatory.
+
+"Everything all right to-day?"
+
+"Everything, I think, thank you, doctor."
+
+There was nothing to remark about her until she lifted her eyes, and
+then the curious, intense depth of them (like a dog who could speak, I
+thought), held me almost breathless with sympathy.  She looked,
+somehow, as if she had gone through more than would be right for her to
+tell.
+
+"Poor creature," I said as she disappeared through a baize door.  "Tell
+me about her.  What is her trouble?"
+
+"She has none that I know of," he replied quietly.  "She's the
+housekeeper."
+
+"Good Heavens, Will!  I think I should go mad myself, if I lived here!
+How does one tell them apart?"
+
+"I don't think one does, always," he remarked placidly.  "I sometimes
+think that accounts for a good deal!  There's a man, now--see that
+fussy little fellow getting out of his motor coat?  That's Jarvyse."
+
+"_The_ Jarvyse?  The great specialist?"
+
+"That's it," he grunted with a disrespectful grin.  "From my point of
+view, you know, aunty, he might about as well stay in, now he's here.
+I wouldn't go too near him, if I were you--he'll say you're a
+paranoiac, if you mention your prejudice against free silver or thick
+soup at dinner or steam heat.  Everything's been paranoia with him
+since 1902.  It's just as much an _idee fixe_ as anybody's here.  If
+you object to anything he says, he diagnoses you immediately.  You
+couldn't build asylums fast enough to hold all Jarvyse's paranoiacs!
+That's why I'm here, by the way; the case I want you to see is really
+father's.  But he loses his temper so, when he meets Jarvyse, that he
+sends me up, instead.  The old boy doesn't bother me--'Morning, doctor."
+
+We stepped into a noiseless lift and he ran it to the fourth floor.  At
+the end of the corridor an open door showed a pleasant little interior;
+a window full of red geraniums, goldfish in a globe, an immense grey
+cat by a little Franklin stove with brass balls atop, and in the centre
+a round old-fashioned mahogany table piled high with various household
+linen.  We walked directly into this little home-like picture--a great
+relief after the lavish publicity of the immense halls--and as I
+greeted the housekeeper, who stood by the heaped table (with an actual
+note of apology in my voice for having mistaken her!) I noticed a
+little elderly man, a vague pepper-and-salt effect, sitting by a
+business-like desk in the corner, his hat and stick on the chair beside
+him, a book and pencil on his knee.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Vail, I rather hoped you might be here; let me
+present you to my aunt, Mrs.----"
+
+"Good heavens!" I almost said it aloud, for the vague pepper-and-salt
+took on familiar lines suddenly, and the matter-of-fact little features
+scattered so indistinguishably, as it were, though the boyishly round
+face became obviously one with the much-photographed trader-prince; it
+was Absolom Vail, the multimillionaire!  When had he...
+
+"Mrs. Leeth used to be Mr. Vail's housekeeper for many years," my young
+doctor's voice sounded reprovingly (had my jaw dropped?) "and he often
+looks in on her like this."
+
+"Oh!" I recalled the hat and stick and breathed again.  Not that I had
+any interest in the old gentleman, but he seemed a sort of public
+character, he and his "old stocking savings-bank," his "millions for
+deposit, but not a cent for speculation," his "every penny earned in
+honest trade," and all the rest of it.
+
+"Never forgot an old friend yet," he chirruped, and the housekeeper
+smiled gravely.  It was very decent and kindly and quite what one would
+have expected; I remembered that every employee always received a
+personally selected gift at Christmas and that he had stood godfather
+for seventeen (or was it twenty-seven?) children of labourers, born on
+the great eight thousand acre estate on the Hudson.
+
+My boy listened a moment to a call from the house-telephone, turned on
+his heel and swung hurriedly down the corridor.  I appeared to have
+been abandoned.
+
+The housekeeper's lips moved silently as she fingered the napkins on
+the further corner of the table; it was unnecessary, evidently, to
+include her in the social situation, though she would be perfectly
+capable of the inclusion if it should be thought best.
+
+"I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter in London last spring, Mr.
+Vail," I said.
+
+"Minnie?" he inquired, his shrewd little eyes on me.
+
+"I think so--the Countess of Barkington."
+
+"Yes, that's Minnie.  Well, Minnie's a good girl, I guess.  I haven't
+seen her much lately.  Not for some years, but once or twice.  Ever see
+Irene?"
+
+"I don't think so.  She married----"
+
+"She took an Italian.  She's a countess, too--contessa they call it
+over there.  The Contessa di Abbriglia.  Hannibal, her husband's name
+is--always seemed like a Newfoundland dog's name, to me.  He hasn't any
+such amount of land as Barkington, but the family's older, I believe.
+Hannibal's old enough, anyhow.  How old was the count, Mrs. Leeth, when
+Irene married him?"
+
+"Miss Irene was twenty-one, Mr. Vail, and Count Hannibal was forty."
+
+"You knew them both?" I asked her, caught by a sudden curiosity to see
+those deep, secret brown eyes once more.  The famous Absolom was just
+what I had supposed he would be, neither more nor less; the most
+interesting thing I could see in him was this simple, friendly kindness
+to an old retainer.
+
+"I dressed both the young ladies for their weddings," she replied
+quietly.
+
+"It must be very pleasant to you--these talks of old times," I hazarded.
+
+"It is," she answered.
+
+I thought of a number of remarks suitable to one or both of my old
+companions, but they all, somehow, seemed banal and excessive as I
+marshalled them to my lips.  A quaint, almost hypnotic quiet rose like
+the tide around us: all seemed said and agreed to.  A tiny fire
+flickered on the Franklin hearth; the iridescent fan-tailed fish bent
+and flattened and glided in the translucent globe; an old clock ticked
+restfully somewhere.  The two elderly friends there--for they were
+friends; one felt it.  And why not?  They were from the same class,
+undoubtedly, the hardware king and the housekeeper, the solid
+bourgeoisie that is essentially alike in all countries and
+centuries--these two friends exhaled an atmosphere of contented trust
+in each other and what life had left for them that spread like a
+visible cloud, a sort of sunset autumn haze, quite through the little,
+homely room, and took me under it, with them.  No wonder he liked to
+come there: it did not require much imaginative faculty to infer that
+neither Barkington nor di Abbriglia had been able to offer such an
+asylum to their father-in-law....
+
+Asylum!  How unconsciously I had fitted the original sense of the
+kindly old word to its technical uses!  Asylum: that was what it was, a
+refuge, a shelter, a little back-water in the great whirlpool of
+overstrained, nervous modern life.  And Absolom Vail had found one
+here, it seemed.  For he was unmistakably at home here; this was not
+the first nor the second visit, that was plain.  Such atmospheres do
+not grow from casual encounters.
+
+We exchanged comfortable, old commonplaces from time to time, while
+Mrs. Leeth sorted, and the hardware lord actually jotted down her notes
+as to necessary darning and replacing, in a worn red account book--it
+was almost too quaint for belief!  He chuckled at it a little, but not
+much; it was, after all, such a practical, sane sort of interlude in
+all the horrid, morbid confusion that the place, with all its
+conservatories and old mahogany and spacious vistas, necessarily
+included.  They were more than common normal, this simple, middle-class
+pair, on their friendly little housekeeping island, with this
+treacherous sea of pain and revolt forever lapping at the edges.
+
+I don't remember how he got to telling me of his early life, but I
+believe it is a habit of all that sort, and Absolom was no exception to
+his class and stratum.  I was particularly impressed by one little
+incident, the foundation, really, of his fortune--if any event can be
+selected in those lives which seem destined to exhibit the farthest
+possibilities of accumulation.
+
+"I had just exactly one hundred dollars," he said (he had the
+characteristic superstitious reverence for set sums, even decimal
+multiples of the national symbol) "that I'd saved up as carpenter's
+assistant in Greenwich, Connecticut.  I took it out of the savings-bank
+and I came to New York with a clean shirt and a tooth brush and my old
+mother's Bible, packed in a little basket with some boiled ham and
+bread.  I looked out a verse just as I stepped onto the train--what do
+you think it was?"
+
+"I have no idea, Mr. Vail."
+
+"No.  You wouldn't have.  Well, it was this: _Blessed shall be thy
+basket and thy store.  D'you see--basket_!  And I always intended to
+keep a store."
+
+He fixed me triumphantly with his twinkling Santa Claus eyes.
+
+"It's in Deuteronomy," he said.
+
+"The coincidence must have seemed very comforting to you," I suggested
+gravely.
+
+"It did.  It did," he answered, "and from that moment on, I never had a
+doubt.  Barkington didn't care much for that story, though--he says
+that the old fellows that translated the Bible away back in some king's
+time--King----"
+
+"King James," said the housekeeper quietly.
+
+"Yes, King James.  Well, he says that they didn't mean that kind of a
+store.  Maybe not.  But it did the job for me, that verse, just the
+same."
+
+The whole incident seemed very characteristic, very national, somehow,
+and I reflected gently upon it as we sat in silence, broken only by
+Mrs. Leeth's practical, dry voice as she announced:
+
+"Greek Key, Irish weave, spring, 1908, six dozen, fair order.
+
+"Thistle pattern, fall, 1906, four dozen, eight darned, ten badly worn."
+
+It seemed that I had been there a long time....
+
+At length I heard Will's quick, nervous step, and as it neared the door
+I rose, really reluctantly, and met him.
+
+"I am quite in the doctor's hands," I said, "and I see that he thinks
+it time for me to leave.  Good-bye, Mr. Vail"--he put his hand out for
+his gloves and cane--"if you are going, too, perhaps, can I take you
+back in town with me?  I motored out."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't," he replied, with his twinkling smile, "because
+I'm one of the ones that don't get out!"
+
+I stared at him blankly.
+
+"'That don't get out'!" I repeated stupidly.  "_That don't get out_?
+Why?"
+
+"Because I'm insane," he said placidly.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I don't pretend to any unusual share of equanimity, and it was not till
+we were back in the shelter of my own home, with the comfort of my own
+tea-tray before me and my own little applewood fire snapping on the
+hearth, that I brought myself to discuss the matter with Emily's boy.
+He had come back with me and we were going to the opera together later.
+
+"I suppose that was what you wanted me to see?" I said abruptly.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Just that.  I wanted your idea.  It's one of the most interesting
+cases--with all its complications--I ever knew.  Father's turned it
+over to me, practically.  He knows all about it."
+
+"But, Will, the man's as sane as I am!"
+
+"How much did you talk with him?"
+
+"Quite as much as with hundreds of other people!"
+
+He smiled thoughtfully.
+
+"Talk much with Mrs. Leeth?"
+
+"Oh, yes--she seems much more ordinary than her eyes, doesn't she?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, just commonplaces--I don't recall anything special...."
+
+"Well, try, won't you?  What _were_ the commonplaces?"
+
+I applied myself to recollection.  What, after all, _had_ she said?  As
+a matter of fact, beyond her linen tabulation I could not recall more
+than a dozen words.
+
+"Anyway," I remonstrated, "she makes you feel as if she talked!  She
+doesn't seem silent."
+
+"No," he admitted thoughtfully, "that's true.  But she never talks.
+She hardly speaks to the servants--they're all under her, you know--but
+they all seem to know what she wants.  I've tested lots of them: the
+cook, the laundresses, the furnace man, the steward--and when they come
+to consider, they can't recall a dozen words a day.  But they always
+insist, at first, that she gives them detailed orders and criticises
+them constantly.  It's funny."
+
+"Oh, well," I broke in impatiently, "never mind her!  Tell me about Mr.
+Vail--how long has he been there?"
+
+"He's been there six months!" Will announced triumphantly, suppressing
+a delighted smile at my amazement.
+
+"Six months!  And nobody knows?"
+
+"Nobody but the family.  Oh, he gets out, now and then: I or one of the
+doctors goes with him and he puts in a day at the office.  Everybody
+thinks he's travelling or taking electric light baths for his liver or
+Roentgen rays for his lungs or osteopathy for a cold in the head--Lord
+knows what!"
+
+"A day at the office?  But how can he, if he's insane?"
+
+"He's not too insane to make money."  His smile was deliberately
+intended to intrigue me, I thought.
+
+"He's no more insane than I am!" I cried.  "Who put him there?"
+
+"The Countess of Barkington--primarily.  Abbriglia agreed, but _they'd_
+never have done it alone--Irene's too fond of the old fellow."
+
+"Do you mean to say----"
+
+"Oh, don't get excited, aunty--he committed himself.  Nobody roped and
+gagged him."
+
+"But what doctor----"
+
+"Two besides me."
+
+"Besides you?  Why, Will!"
+
+"Oh, I didn't say that I recommended him to an asylum.  Not at all.  If
+he had fought it, I could have found reasons on the other side."
+
+"Like a corporation lawyer!"
+
+"Oh, well...."
+
+He began rolling cigarettes; they were his one weakness.
+
+"The question is," he said slowly, "what is insanity?  Medical
+insanity's one job, legal insanity's another....  Suppose your butler
+was convinced of the fact that he was Napoleon: would you care a
+continental, provided he buttlered as per contract?  So long as he
+didn't shout, '_Tete d'armee!_' as he passed the salad, what would you
+care?  It's quite possible that he has some such delusion, for all you
+know."
+
+"Of course, I see that."
+
+"There was that old nurse of ours--Esther, you know?  To the day of her
+death she swore that the druggist on the corner of Hartwell Street was
+Charley Ross--the child that was abducted long ago.  You couldn't argue
+her out of it nor laugh her out of it--she said she had a feeling.  She
+brought us up in it, you know, and for years I believed that he was
+Charley Ross and regarded him with veneration.  She was a perfectly
+good nurse, just the same.  But that idiotic fancy was part of her
+life--strengthened with every year of her life.  It was an _idee fixe_."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well.  Esther died a poor woman, but if she had left fifty thousand
+to--to a home for blind mulattoes, say, the first thing her nephews
+would have brought forward was that idea of Charley Ross."
+
+"Brought forward?"
+
+"To break her will.  They would have said that it proved her mentally
+incapable."
+
+"But it doesn't, Will, does it?"
+
+"That's just as you see it.  She wasn't incapable of looking after us
+and dressing mother and doing the marketing and keeping the accounts
+and making all her own clothes and some of ours.  But if you ask me if
+she had a perfectly normal mind, I should have to say no."
+
+"I see, Will."
+
+I was extremely interested: I seemed to see, glimmering far off, what
+we were getting to, and it was gripping, absorbing.  But I had no idea
+what we really were getting to--not then.
+
+"Now, we'll take another case," he said, at another cigarette.
+
+"I was at Lourdes last year, as you know, studying the Pilgrimage.
+Curious thing.  Not an atom of proof, you see, that anybody was ever
+cured of a headache there.  Not even sense enough to use the immense
+suggestive power that's massed there to do real good to neurasthenics
+and hysterics--in fact, they try to bar them.  They prefer goitre,
+which is _not_ cured by dirty baths, unfortunately.  The people who go
+away from there think they were cured from this, that and the other;
+whole business founded on a perfectly authenticated case of _dementia
+praecox_--as much a pathological condition as gout or insomnia.  I
+interviewed a prize case; she appeared before their bluff at a
+scientific council and presented affidavits of cure from consumption, a
+year previous.  I examined her later.  It was--as the man
+said--interesting if true, but the trouble was, it wasn't true, for she
+was nearly gone, then.  I gave her three months, and she died, I took
+pains to learn, in ten weeks.  Well: that was her delusion.  Was she
+sane?"
+
+"She was misinformed--mistaken."
+
+"Quite so--but she _knew_ she was cured, remember.  She felt it.  The
+rest of us didn't.
+
+"Now let's go a step farther, if you don't mind.  Beatrix tells me that
+the Almighty God, the creator of the universe, is the father of the son
+of a young Jewess, and sacrificed his son in order to save the world.
+This seems to me fantastic, frankly.  But mind you, aunty, though I
+know that druggist wasn't Charley Ross, and though I know that the
+miraculous baths of Lourdes didn't cure poor Marie Tremplin of her
+tuberculosis, I can't say that what Beatrix assures me she knows about
+the Deity isn't so!  It appears to me quite incapable of demonstration,
+but maybe it all happened as she says.  Only I don't believe with her
+that she _knows_ it.  I say she _believes_ it.  If it helps her, as she
+says it does, to be the good and lovely girl she is, all right.  It
+might help Parrott to stand straight to think he was Napoleon.  All
+right."
+
+"That's pragmatism," I suggested.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with one of his curious old smiles, "they call it
+different things different years, I suppose."
+
+He drew himself up, and I could see something was coming.
+
+"Now, aunty, attend to me.  I couldn't put Beatrix in an asylum for
+what I and many, many others consider _her_ delusion, could I?"
+
+"Why, Will, of course not!"
+
+"No, nor Marie Tremplin."
+
+"Equally of course not.  She has a right to her miracle, legally, I
+suppose, as well as Beatrix."
+
+"Precisely.  Well, here comes along Absolom Vail, and says _he's_ had a
+miracle, too.  He hasn't millions of people behind him, like Beatrix,
+nor thousands like Marie, nor even half a dozen, as our old Esther
+had--she converted all the servants and us children.  He has only
+one--himself.  A poor miracle, perhaps, but his own.  And Barkington
+lands him in an asylum.  The day of miracles is over."
+
+"Why, Will!  Why, Will..."  I murmured.  I seemed to feel myself on the
+edge of something very big and cloudy and confusing, but very
+necessary, somehow, to be understood.  The trap he had led me into so
+neatly had fastened softly, but with almost an actual click, upon me.
+
+"What--what _is_ his miracle?" I inquired, in a subdued voice.  I was
+beginning to feel a little afraid of this boy of ours.
+
+"I had hoped he'd tell you himself.  He will, if you ask him....  We
+ought to go and dress, oughtn't we?"
+
+There was no more to be got out of him that night: he was passionately
+fond of music and had no mind to lose the prelude to _Tristan_.
+
+But through all that evening the big, shadowy something he had stirred
+up in my mind grew and grew and troubled me increasingly.
+
+"A poor miracle, but his own..." it haunted me.  I went up with him
+again in two days' time, as he had expected me to, I have no doubt.
+
+In the little room with the gold fish and the Franklin grate everything
+was the same except that the piled linen on the table was new: it was
+being listed and stamped.  And at the little desk in the corner, his
+gloves and stick beside him on the floor, sat Absolom Vail, the
+hardware king, in a pepper-and-salt suit.
+
+"I brought my nephew up with me and thought I'd look in for another
+little chat, Mr. Vail," I said.  The housekeeper lifted her
+unfathomable eyes to mine for a moment, then dropped them.
+
+"Six dozen snow-drop twenty-eight inch breakfast napkins," she said
+quietly, but my mind received--I cannot explain how--a totally
+different impression from what the sound of these words conveyed.
+Afterward, I realized that I thought suddenly of the sea, great clouds,
+unheard of, enormous fish, and myself driving like the wind across
+high, tumbling waves ... it was extraordinary.  I had been literally
+lost in her eyes.
+
+"Always glad to see the doctor's friends," he chirped, and soon, as
+Will had said, he was talking.
+
+It was all very simple--simple and pathetic and typical enough.  The
+hall bedroom, the rising clerk, the new branch in Kansas City, the
+young, fresh wife, the little story-and-a-half frame house, the bigger
+one on a better street, the partnership, the two daughters, the private
+school, the invention of the new time-lock, the great factory, the
+Trust, the vice-presidency, the clear head in the panic, the board of
+directors, the mass of capital, the amazing power.
+
+"And of course we brought the girls up very different from what we'd
+had."
+
+"Of course."
+
+The old epic of America; the wonderful, cruel destiny of its sons and
+daughters ... I seemed to see them, climbing, climbing, their dainty
+feet on the bent, grey heads of the human stairway love had built and
+thrift had mortared and habit had hardened there!
+
+"It was all right while mother was with us," he went on.  "I used to
+get home late after one of those big dinners, and she'd be sitting up
+and warm me a little soup or something on the alcohol lamp (she'd never
+touch electricity, mother wouldn't) and I'd get my coat off and sit
+awhile; she'd send the servants to bed.  Minnie never liked that, but
+while mother lived, Minnie didn't have so much say.  Not but that
+Minnie wasn't a good girl and a good daughter, for a minute, mind you!
+Wasn't she?"
+
+He turned to his old housekeeper.
+
+"Miss Vail had a very fine mind," she said quietly, "a great deal of
+faculty."
+
+"That's it--faculty," he repeated contentedly.  "But Irene was easier
+to get along with.  A good deal easier.  You said you'd never met
+Irene?"
+
+"I never had that pleasure."
+
+"She was married over in Italy.  The Queen of Italy asked for it to be
+that way, and with mother gone, I didn't see it mattered much, though
+Minnie didn't like it.  But the Queen was Hannibal's godmother.  She
+was at the wedding.  We didn't think, when Irene used to lie in her
+little crib in the front bedroom in Kansas City, sucking on that rubber
+doll, that a queen would be at her wedding, did we?"
+
+I looked out of the window for a minute, frowning a little in the
+effort to adjust my ideas to the surprise of the Vails' having had a
+housekeeper in those early days.  When I turned my face to the room
+again, Mrs. Leeth was gone.
+
+"Minnie got me to give up the business, and after a while I did.  So
+long as I was working for mother and the girls, I'd never have stopped,
+but with them gone, and the rest I had to take, after the pneumonia, I
+sort of let things slide.  What's the use?  There's Vint, now--he kept
+at it till he died.  No one to do for, really--his girl had all her
+mother's money, too, and she gives it all to foreign missions, anyhow.
+
+"She's here, you know.  Thinks she's--well, I guess I couldn't tell a
+lady just what she thinks she is, poor thing!"
+
+"I see why she's here, Mr. Vail; but tell me, why do you stay here?" I
+cried suddenly; the quiet, sensible little man forced it out of me,
+fairly.
+
+He looked whimsically up at me--I sat higher in my chair than he.
+
+"Didn't the doctor tell you?" he asked quietly.
+
+"No, he said you would, perhaps."
+
+"Well, I don't mind.  It happened when she died."
+
+"Mrs. Vail?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Leeth."
+
+I jumped--I couldn't help it.
+
+"Wh--what?" I gasped.  What a horrible thing--like a bomb thrown into
+the quiet room!
+
+"Yes," he said placidly, "sounds queer to you, doesn't it?  Well, it is
+queer, I guess."
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty that I held myself to my chair.  My
+throat went perfectly dry, suddenly, and if I did not scream, it was
+merely because I have a fairly strong will and a horror of making a
+scene.  The little room had turned dreadful to me, all at
+once--dreadful and unnatural; Absolom Vail, in his pepper-and-salt, a
+nightmare.
+
+He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand out reassuringly.
+
+"Oh, I don't think she's dead, _now_!" he explained, "I'm not so crazy
+as all that comes to!  Goodness, no!"
+
+"Oh...," I faltered, soothed in spite of myself by his kindly smile.
+
+"No, no.  It was this way."
+
+He leaned forward slightly and tapped the arms of his chair
+rhythmically.
+
+"After mother left me, there wasn't much to keep going for, you see.
+Then Irene, she went off, and though she was mighty kind about it, and
+there'd always be a room for me, and all that, and I liked Hannibal
+well enough, still, I'd never be happy in Italy.  Hannibal saw it
+himself.  In a good many ways Hannibal used to see what I meant, now
+and again--funny, wasn't it, with him so foreign?  You'd have thought
+Barkington, now ... but that's neither here nor there.
+
+"Well, we stayed in the house together, Mrs. Leeth and me, and we got
+on very well.  She knew all mother's ways, and we used to talk about
+her, evenings, and she as good as gave me her promise she'd never leave
+me while I wanted her.
+
+"Then I had pneumonia.  We had three trained nurses, but I guess
+there's no doubt she pulled me through.  She was up all the nights.
+
+"Irene and Hannibal came right over--it seems they cabled.  Irene was
+expecting to have her baby, too, and it was in March, the worst time to
+cross the water.  But she came.  And Hannibal listened to the doctors
+and the nurses and then he turned to Mrs. Leeth--'How do you find Mr.
+Vail to-day?' he said.
+
+"'He'll live, sir,' she said, and he said, 'All right,' and that was
+all there was to it.  There was always something about Hannibal ...
+
+"Then _she_ came down.  Pleurisy.  I'd been South and got back, and I
+was well enough, you understand, but when they told me that they
+couldn't save her, something turned right over inside me, and I knew I
+couldn't bear it.  It was too much--everything just slipping away from
+me, one by one, and me all alone--no, I wasn't good for it, that's all.
+I suppose it sounds dreadfully weak to you, but there it is: I wasn't
+good for it.
+
+"I was sitting by her bed, looking at her, thinking of all the old days
+she could remember with me, and the girls she'd seen grow up, and
+mother, and all, and all of a sudden she opened her eyes and she knew
+me.  She was sinking fast, but she knew me for the first time in days.
+
+"'Mrs. Leeth,' I said, 'it's no use.  If you go, I'll go too.  I can't
+stick it out alone!  Must you?' I said.  'Must you?  Isn't there any
+way?'
+
+"'Wait!' she sort of whispered to me, 'wait!  There'll be a way, Mr.
+Vail--a way'll be found!'
+
+"And then her eyes closed.
+
+"I just sat there, staring ahead.  I was too miserable to notice
+anything different about her, though I knew she was very still.
+
+"By and by one of the nurses came in very soft and lifted up one of her
+hands--I had mine over the other.  She was a nice girl, that nurse--we
+both liked her real well.  Dr. Stanchon--the old doctor, not the boy,
+here--brought her, and he said to me, 'Now, Mr. Vail, here's the best
+nurse in New York: trust her.'  And we did.  She looked sharp at me,
+Miss Jessop did, and listened over her heart, then she put her cheek
+down to the lips.
+
+"'Why, she's gone!' she said.  'Mr. Vail, when did it happen?'
+
+"And then she called the doctor and he said yes, she was gone.
+_That's_ why I say Mrs. Leeth died."
+
+He looked calmly at me and I found to my surprise that during this
+story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy
+for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it.  It was most
+perplexing.  The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the horror
+had disappeared.
+
+"So I sat there.  The doctor said to let me stay, if I felt so.  And I
+just saw my whole life pass right by me like pictures in a book--if you
+see what I mean.  I saw Min when she graduated and Irene playing tunes
+to her mamma and me on the piano, and the day the new gold furniture
+came in, and Mrs. Leeth leading me by the hand out of mother's room
+after I'd sat all day and all night by her....
+
+"And I looked at the face lying so quiet there, and while I looked, it
+sort of shook--more like when you throw a little pebble into a
+pond--and the eyes opened.  And I knew mother was looking at me.
+That's all."
+
+Poor, lonely little man!  How could I have felt afraid of him?  It was
+not difficult to see how it had been.
+
+"Then she--Mrs. Leeth--had not really died at all, had she?" I said
+hastily, only to bite my lips at my tactlessness.
+
+But he smiled tolerantly.
+
+"That's what they said," he answered quietly.  "It was very
+interesting, they said.  The doctor was pretty hard on Miss Jessop, I
+thought.  But I guess they always lay it off on them.
+
+"They were all so excited about it, they didn't seem to notice what had
+happened.  And by and by I saw they never would notice it, anyway.  I
+just spoke a little about it to Irene and it frightened her, so I kept
+quiet.  She said she saw Mrs. Leeth was different, somehow, but it was
+the sickness, she thought.  They had to go right back.  He wanted the
+baby to be born in Italy.  That was all right, of course."
+
+"And Mrs. Leeth--what did _she_ say?"
+
+"Oh, she was never one to talk, Mrs. Leeth.  She talks less than ever,
+now.  I don't know as I put it very clear to you: it's a pretty hard
+thing _to_ put clear."
+
+He looked appealingly at me.
+
+"Of course, of course," I said soothingly.  "Those things are not to be
+set down in black and white."
+
+"That's just it.  When I say that mother looks out at me from her eyes,
+it seems to be more what I mean.  I seem to have 'em both by me, if you
+can see....  And when I look in her eyes, I understand it all--and I
+can wait," he added simply.  "You've noticed her eyes?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Does she ever speak...?"
+
+"I couldn't make you see what I mean very well, about that," he said
+contentedly.  "She just looks at me.  It's all plain, then.  Maybe
+that's how we'll all do, in the next life.  Don't you think so?"
+
+I found my way to Will's office through a mist of tears.
+
+"Well, what about it?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"I think it's one of the most touching things I ever heard."
+
+"Believe it?"
+
+"Why, Will!"
+
+"Oh!  Then you don't blame me any more for committing him?"
+
+"Certainly not.  What else could you do?"
+
+"Um-m-m.  That's what Minnie, Countess of Barkington, said.  She put it
+stronger than that.  When a man of that age spends half of his time in
+the housekeeper's room, sorting linen, she suggested, there's something
+wrong.  We shall certainly question the will--if he alters it."
+
+"Alters it?"
+
+"In favor of Mrs. Leeth, of course.  The fair Minnie hasn't lived among
+the English aristocracy for nothing."
+
+"Why, Will, how ludicrous--you mean that she suspects----"
+
+"Certainly she does.  And very hard-headed of her, too.  Stranger
+things have been."
+
+"But one has only to look at them!"
+
+"That's what Irene thought.  But not Barkington.  He suggested an
+asylum.  The doctor called me in.  (The doctor, by the way, swears the
+woman died, aunty.  'Only, of course, she couldn't have,' he always
+adds.)  To everybody's surprise Absolom agrees quietly, immediately.
+
+"'I wouldn't have Irene worried, as she is now, for anything,' he said.
+'I never meant to leave Mrs. Leeth a penny more than the thousand a
+year mother and I always planned, but if Minnie can't believe me, all
+right.'
+
+"Now, here's an odd thing, aunty.  No one of that family ever heard of
+this place, including Absolom himself.  Precious few people know about
+it, anyhow, you see.  It pays every one not to.  Well.  Mrs. Leeth is
+dismissed, arrangements made, I take him in a motor out here.  We walk
+through the hall, and the first person we meet here--Mrs. Leeth.  New
+housekeeper.  It seems the old one died of heart failure overnight.
+Dr. Jarvyse finds this one, by great good luck just out of a job.
+Highly recommended by Mr. Absolom Vail.  Never occupied just this post,
+apparently, but Jarvyse feels perfectly certain she's just the woman
+for it.  I don't know how he knew it, but she certainly is.  Best woman
+we ever had."
+
+"How perfectly extraordinary!  Was Mr. Vail surprised?"
+
+"Not at all.  He just smiled politely, and neither of 'em has ever
+discussed it."
+
+"What did the Countess have to say?"
+
+"Oh, she was furious, till I pointed out that we couldn't have the
+woman in a safer place, because every employee signs a bond on
+entering, never to receive by bequest or otherwise a penny from any
+patient.  We all sign."
+
+"What does the Italian Count think of it all?"
+
+"Hannibal?  He's all right, Hannibal.  He and I and Barkington had a
+little session in this very room about a fortnight ago.  I was saying
+something about the question of Mr. Vail's insanity.
+
+"'Question?' says Barkington.  'Question?  Why there is no question!
+As a man of science, Count Hannibal, you know as well as I do----'
+
+"'But I am not a man of science, my dear fellow--I'm a Roman,' says
+Hannibal, grinning away (those Italians speak wonderful English, you
+know).  'Very odd things happen in Rome, now and then, my good
+Barkington!'"
+
+I looked at him steadily.  He sat surrounded by his mysterious electric
+machines under shining glass domes, among costly leather-bound volumes
+whose very titles questioned the foundation of reason; telephones and
+telegrams ready to hand upon his orderly desk.  And it seemed to me
+that he smiled mockingly at me behind his baffling eye-glasses.
+
+"I don't understand you, Will," I said slowly, "you seem to be leading
+me to ... do you mean me to understand that you believe that Mrs.
+Vail's--spirit--entered--came back ... do you mean you think Mr. Vail
+is right, all the time?"
+
+"Not at all," he returned promptly.  "I acknowledge no such conditions.
+I know nothing of spirits nor what they do.  I do not know that there
+are any.  I study the human brain: when it ceases to respond to nervous
+stimuli, I cease to study it, that's all."
+
+"Then why do you--why do you look at me..."
+
+He struck his fist on the table.
+
+"I look at you," he cried, "because you amaze me so, you people who
+assume that you know all about the human brain, where I leave off!
+Granted your premises, yours and Trix's and the Barkingtons', why
+_don't_ you believe him?  I should.  Look at that woman's eyes!  Try to
+talk to her!  Do you suppose we haven't tried?  Ask Jarvyse what he's
+got out of her!  Get something out of her, yourself!  Then ask
+yourself: _if what Absolom says is so, how would she act differently
+from the way she does act?_
+
+"God!  I wish I _could_ believe him!"
+
+He struck the desk again, and it seemed to me that behind his glasses
+he scorned me for the nondescript I was.
+
+I went quickly out of the office into the corridor.  I would find Mrs.
+Leeth and have it out with her.  I would--she stood directly in front
+of me.
+
+"Oh--how do you do!" I stammered.  Her hands were full of cut flowers.
+
+"How--how do you feel about Mr. Vail?" I demanded brusquely.
+
+The ordinary, stocky, black-dressed figure raised its head slowly; the
+eyes met mine.
+
+And suddenly I knew that the flowers in her hands were hyacinths,
+hyacinths and damp fern and mignonette.  It grew and grew and
+surrounded me with a penetrating cloud of rich perfume, perfume and
+old, sweet memories that cut and soothed at once.  I thought of the
+lily-of-the-valley bed under my mother's window, and her brown, brown
+eyes held mine and she--my mother, back again and smiling--filled my
+heart so full that I stood drowned in the old days and listened for the
+school-bell and the other children's voices!
+
+It seemed that it had all been a mistake, a long mistake, and she had
+been there all the time.... I cannot tell you how sweet and certain it
+all was.
+
+And then I knew the odour for what it was--hyacinth.  Hyacinths in a
+round, spaded bed, with a robin singing near, and myself picking a
+stalk, and the man stepping up behind me that had blotted out all the
+other men, who were mistakes and slipped away ... and yet we would not
+begin again, my dearest!  No, no, there is plenty of time!
+
+And just as I was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me
+that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the
+dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me--I hope I may lie
+there, dead.  I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy
+was not born yet.  I said, "If he should die"--but of course I couldn't
+believe that he would.  And then--and then it was as if he had _not_
+died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, too!  It was
+so calm, so simple--no shock at all.  Why had I never known?  And all
+this while the girls and I had kept flowers on that tiny, tiny grave!
+I must tell his father....
+
+She dropped her eyes to the hyacinths and I put my hand on a chair to
+steady myself.  My cheeks were all wet.
+
+"Mr. Vail seems very contented," she said.  "Of course, I am accustomed
+to looking after him."
+
+She stepped quietly through an open door, the keys jangling softly at
+her belt.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+I went South with my husband for a fortnight, and on my return Will
+dined with us.
+
+"By the way," he said, "were you surprised at Vail's death?"
+
+It was three days' news and I had forgotten to mention it.
+
+"He never was the same after the pneumonia, and he worried about his
+daughter Irene.  She came through all right, though.  Well, he was over
+sixty."
+
+"How--what became of Mrs. Leeth?" I asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled oddly.
+
+"Nobody knows.  She's never been seen since the funeral."
+
+"Never been seen?  But who is the housekeeper, then?"
+
+"Oh, they've got another.  Never'll be Mrs. Leeth's equal, though.  She
+left on the first of the month."
+
+"But when she was paid off, didn't anybody inquire?"
+
+"She never was paid off," he said quietly.  "She never came for her
+money."
+
+
+
+
+THE UNBURIED
+
+The talk shifted at length--as it inevitably must--to women, and the
+unalterable and uncharted mystery of their mental currents: the jagged
+and cruelly unsuspected reefs that rear suddenly under rippling
+shoal-water, the maelstrom that boils just beyond the soft curve of the
+fairest cape.
+
+"There's no good asking 'why,'" said the great doctor slowly, "you
+might as well ask, 'why not.'  They're incomprehensible.  For thirty
+years I've studied them.  Thirty years...."
+
+He leaned forward over the table weightily.  The others unconsciously
+bent toward him.
+
+"Once I thought it was spasmodic--unrelated," he went on thoughtfully,
+counting his words, it seemed, "but not now.  No.  I believe there is a
+law--a big law--they follow, an orbit so extended that any examples one
+may collect count for too little to help.  They seem to vary..." he
+stared at the siphons and rings of wet on the table.
+
+Outside the club windows the rain fell, glistening and grey; it was
+making for dusk and the black stream of hansoms and umbrellas were
+homeward bound.  They motioned away the servant who had come to turn on
+the lights in their corner.
+
+"There are influences," Stanchon began again, abruptly, "currents ... I
+don't know--they feel them more than we do.  And they exert them more,
+too.  We admit one and doubt the other."
+
+He squeezed a half lemon into his glass with a beautiful, firm-wristed
+wrench, extracted the pips with one deft circuit of the spoon, and
+poured rock candy into the acid.  Over this he dropped in silence a
+measured amount from a squat foreign bottle at his elbow and filled the
+glass from a carafe of distilled water.
+
+"It's a queer thing altogether--I don't know what makes me think of
+it," he began, "and I wouldn't have dared tell it when it happened.
+Now I can tell anything--I suppose--being sixty and an eminent
+alienist.  Lord!  Times goes and goes, and just as you get to where you
+could use it to advantage--well, the young ones need the room.
+
+"Nervous!  What are nerves, anyhow?
+
+"Sometimes I think I know ... a little ... but the time is so short, so
+short!"
+
+He drank half his glass.
+
+"There comes a time," he said abruptly, "when you first discover what a
+gnat in a whirlpool you are.  I mean that after you've done everything,
+played perfectly fair and followed all the rules, arranged your
+combinations and observed the reasonable results for so long that you
+begin to think you've got hold of the System--something happens, and
+it's all upset again--flat anarchy.  We get it different ways, I
+suppose.  As if a runner bumped into a brick wall on the home-stretch
+... strange!
+
+"I was in one of those little cities--Detroit, Cleveland--it doesn't
+matter.  I've lived in both.  It's a good size for a doctor--I got all
+kinds--and I learned fast, there.  Nice people, too.  I always had an
+eye for real estate, and what I made, I put into that.  I had a good
+horse, and as I drove about I kept my eye on the property and the way
+the town was growing.  One day I noticed that an oldish looking,
+comfortable sort of house, a little off from the centre of things, was
+for sale, and it struck me suddenly that there was a pretty good sort
+of house to own.  It had trees around it and nice paths and a neat
+little new stable, and there was something in the long, low lines of
+it--no gingerbread or 'Jim Fisk' business or bands of coloured
+paint--that appealed to me.  It attracted me--you see?  Good God!
+
+"I saw the agent and he put a price that surprised me.  But the owner
+wanted to leave town immediately and had made it very low, to get the
+cash.  He'd had hard luck; his wife in a mess with another man, ran up
+big bills against him--he wanted to get away and never see the town
+again.  So I bought the place and asked the agent to rent it for me,
+for I was pretty busy just then.  A little later he told me he had seen
+an especially good tenant--a well-to-do jeweller and his family, who
+seemed disposed to take a long lease and improve the property.
+
+"'You certainly have the luck, doctor!' he said.
+
+"I remember I leaned out of my buggy and lectured him.
+
+"'Luck!' says I.  'Nonsense, man!  I get good tenants because I keep
+good repairs in good houses.  You put down two and two and you get back
+four.  Mathematics is under this world!'
+
+"Pompous, wasn't I?  But I was only forty.  Only forty..."
+
+His eyes gleamed at them from under his shaggy, grey brows; he seemed
+saturated with life, full of experiences.
+
+"Well, I got my rent every month, and I gave 'em permission to put an
+evergreen hedge around the place, and I paid half the costs of piping
+water into the stable; the jeweller kept a horse and runabout for his
+wife.  Then, just before the year was up, the agent called.
+
+"'I'm afraid we won't get any renewal on this, doctor,' he said.
+
+"'Why not?  Not good enough for him any longer?' said I.
+
+"'I'm afraid it's too good,' says he.  'You'll see it in the papers
+to-morrow, but I had it straight from him.  His wife has skipped with
+his head clerk and they've taken most of the stock and all the money.
+He's nearly crazy.'
+
+"'For heaven's sake!' said I.  'I thought they were a decent lot
+enough.'
+
+"'So they were, I'll swear to it,' said he, 'but lately--I've seen her
+off and on'--and he looked rather conscious, I thought--' she's struck
+me differently.  She's a queer woman.'
+
+"Well, the upshot of it was, I let him off as easily as I could--he had
+three children on his hands and big debts to pay--and I bought a lot of
+his stuff and paid for the evergreen hedge.  The woman never came back
+and he moved East.  So much for them.
+
+"I advertised the house, and that week the rectory of the principal
+Episcopal Church burned to the ground, and while they were building it
+again--in stone, of course--they decided to rent that house of mine,
+and of course I was pleased, because a lot of good, solid people see
+the property, in a case like that.  I've always thought I'd like to
+develop a whole new section somewhere ... I had ideas ... but I never
+got the time.  O Lord, the time!  Slipping, slipping, under your palms,
+between your fingers, crumbling and running away!"
+
+He shook himself like a big, loose-skinned bear, and long breaths were
+drawn all around the table.
+
+"One night my wife asked me if I thought the rector liked his new
+rectory.
+
+"'Why, I suppose so,' I said.  'I've had no complaints--why?'
+
+"'He doesn't stay in it very much,' she said, rather slowly, for her,
+and when a woman measures her words, I always listen very carefully.
+
+"'What do you mean?' I asked.
+
+"'He practically lives in the study at the church,' said she, 'working
+there on parish business all day, and a good many evenings, too.  That
+leaves her all alone, and that's not good for any woman.'
+
+"' What on earth do you mean?' I said.  'Are those long-nosed old
+tabbies gossiping already?  Shame on 'em!'
+
+"'Oh, John,' she broke down and cried.  'They're talking horribly!  It
+doesn't seem possible!  But why isn't she more careful?'
+
+"Well, there's no good going into that much further.  It was a very
+unpleasant business.  He was a pig-headed parson who wouldn't look
+after his own, and she, I thought, till my wife finally persuaded her
+to call me in, was simply one of those women who have mistaken their
+natural vocation.  They hadn't been in the town long and they didn't
+stay long, for as soon as I really understood her I put her into a
+sanitarium--the sanitarium boom had just begun, then--and he went into
+the Salvation Army.  He'd got his eyes opened, I fancy, and he made a
+great success in Chicago; he told me he never wanted to see another
+fashionable congregation in his life--said they were sinks of iniquity.
+But I don't think there was ever anything actually iniquitous in that
+business--it hadn't got that far.  Only for a clergyman's family, of
+course ...
+
+"You see, I got her out in time.  Ugh!  It makes me sick to think of
+it!  She was a nervous wreck.
+
+"That was the first time that Miss Jessop ever went back on me.  She
+was a trained nurse not long out of the training school, and nurses
+were scarcer, then.  A handsome, plucky creature--we worked together
+for years, and I got to depend a good deal on her.  But after a week of
+the parson's wife she flounced in on me with that regular bronze-mule
+look of hers and informed me she was leaving the next day--she had to
+go back East, home, she said.
+
+"I reasoned a bit with her--she had a great influence on women, Jessop,
+but it was no use.
+
+"'There are two good nurses for to-morrow, doctor,' she said, 'I happen
+to know.  I'd rather not argue about it.  I'm tired.  I need a change.
+I've had no vacation this year.  And that woman would be better off in
+a hospital, anyway.'
+
+"I was cross, and I kept my patient in her own house.  I thought she
+wasn't fit to move.
+
+"'I believe I'm going mad!' she used to tell me, with that glitter in
+the eye--gives the effect of a rearing horse--perfectly symptomatic.
+'I tell you I'm not responsible, doctor, for what I do!  You must keep
+me away from--people.  But don't leave me alone--oh, don't leave me
+alone!  Why don't the women come to see me?  Oh, I can't stay alone!'
+
+"And so on, and so on.  It poured out in the regular way--how the poor
+things spend themselves!--and I listened to it all.  They're perfectly
+typical under those circumstances, but one phrase struck me:
+
+"'I have fought--  Oh, I _have_ fought!  It's killing me, but I have
+fought!'
+
+"She had, poor little woman.  But what was she?  When I realised ...
+when I _knew_..."
+
+They sat now in a circle of dark.  The room was nearly empty; the rain
+had grown to a torrent and lashed the windows furiously.
+
+"Well, I couldn't help taking stock of the thing, and it looked odd,
+anyway you looked at it.  I remembered that the reason I got the house
+in the first place was very much the same reason that had emptied it
+twice.  Of course the agent remembered it, too.
+
+"'Where's those mathematics of yours, doctor?' he asked me with a
+good-natured grin.
+
+"'Stuff and nonsense!' I said to him.  'I'll get a tenant for that
+house, myself.'
+
+"You see, whether or not there was any sense in it, I couldn't let that
+house get a bad name.  There were neighbours and they will talk--they
+don't always know so much about mathematics as scientific men, you know!
+
+"What a great thing it is, if one could get hold of it and use it--the
+collective spirit of a community!  It's utilizable--or ought to
+be--like water power....
+
+"There was a woman in town then, a 'mental healer,' she called herself.
+I'd run across her more than once and she interested me very much.  She
+was a clever woman--sensible, too, which doesn't always follow, you
+know.  So far as I could tell, she never handled a case she wasn't able
+to attend to, which may seem an odd thing for me to say, but happens to
+be so.  I know of a dozen nervous, hysterical women--emotional
+spend-thrifts--that she bullied into shape and got so they could stand
+up without her behind them, too.  They were cured, and they stayed
+cured.  More than that, I sent more than one to her, myself!
+
+"'Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'there's nothing the matter with these women
+that I can see but pure, piggish, bone-idle selfishness.  I haven't got
+the courage to tell 'em so; if you have, and the long words you use
+disguise the fact sufficiently, go ahead and cure 'em, and God bless
+you!'
+
+"'Thank you, doctor,' she said, and she cured 'em.  They had no use for
+me after that.  No, indeed--they told my wife they'd found a higher law
+and that calomel was sinful.  But the poor old calomel wasn't so bad
+for 'em, after all, maybe.
+
+"Well, I met her on my rounds one day and I stopped and asked her if
+she was satisfied with her house--I knew the neighbourhood was rather
+running down, there--the darkies were creeping up.  She admitted she
+wasn't particularly, and, to make a long story short, I offered her
+this house of mine for two-thirds the regular rental.
+
+"'I want a good steady tenant, Mrs. Mears,' I said, 'and people may as
+well get used to bringing their headaches over there--I may move out
+there sometime.'
+
+"So she moved in and I never gave the matter another thought--I knew
+she wouldn't run off with anybody!  No, she'd had her lesson, I take
+it.  No blue-eyed woman gets as sensible as that woman was without a
+good, solid reason.  And the reason is pretty certain to wear trousers.
+
+"Well, sir, in a month she came to see me.  I can see her now: a firm,
+stocky woman, long body and short legs and big head--the efficient
+type.  She had the smooth pink cheeks and smooth forehead and straight
+eyes those healer-women have when they're first class of their
+kind--oh, there's a lot in it--a lot!  We fight 'em and get the law on
+'em and absorb 'em, finally, as we've fought every advance in medicine.
+It seems to be the only way in this world...
+
+"She always looked so clean and taut, that woman, never a loose end
+anywhere.
+
+"'Doctor,' says she, 'you must get a new tenant.  I'm leaving
+to-morrow.  How much will it cost me, giving no notice?'
+
+"'Why, what's the matter?' I began.  'Anything I can attend to?'
+
+"'Not a thing,' she answered promptly, 'and we won't discuss it, if you
+please.  The van is there, by this time.'
+
+"'Why, see here, Mrs. Mears,' I said seriously.  'This--this is hardly
+professional, it seems to me.  If there's anything wrong with my
+property, I want to know it.  Of course I know your theories--God's in
+his heaven and all's right with the world, and if you discuss it, the
+devil may creep in--I've read Emerson's Essays, myself.  I know what
+you think about medicine and surgery and hygiene--you think Emerson!
+And that's all right, as far as it goes.  But just for ten minutes,
+between you and me, what's the matter?  You can keep on being serene,
+after that, all you want.  Come now--as man to man!'
+
+"She flattened her lips a little and tried not to scowl.
+
+"'Put it that I don't like old houses, doctor,' she said finally.
+
+"'Ah!  House haunted?' I suggested, to tease her a little.
+
+"She turned on me.
+
+"'You said it, not I,' she answered, 'but it is true.  The house is
+haunted, doctor, and if I lived there a day longer, I couldn't do my
+work.  I didn't wish to discuss it--you know we don't believe in
+that--but you meant to do me a service.  It's a crime to rent that
+house.  It's slimy.  It crawls.'
+
+"'Slimy!' I cried.  'Why the agent told me that the cellar was new
+cemented, all whitewashed, every room new papered, fresh matting, hard
+wood on the lower floor, and I attended to the plumbing myself!  It was
+gone over thoroughly three years ago--there must have been a thousand
+dollars put into it.  It hadn't been lived in for years before that.
+Slimy!'
+
+"'You don't understand me,' she said quietly.
+
+"'For heaven's sake, what haunts it, then?  Who's the ghost?' I cried
+testily.
+
+"'Evil,' she said slowly, 'evil thought, evil lives ... you breathe it
+in ... it tangles you ... another night there ... I should have no more
+power, absolutely--I could help nobody.  I must ask you not to refer to
+it again, please.  I should not have mentioned it.  How much do I owe
+you?'
+
+"'You owe me nothing, of course,' I said shortly.  'I'll return you the
+amount of your cheque this afternoon.  I'll move into that house,
+myself.'
+
+"'You will be making a mistake,' she said very placidly, and left the
+office.
+
+"It took me about forty-eight hours to make my arrangements.  It was
+hot summer weather, fortunately, and I sent my wife off to the
+mountains, started in to have my own house renovated and decorated, as
+an excuse, left the housekeeper in charge there and moved my office
+paraphernalia into that old house with the evergreen hedge.  My wife
+was a Southern woman and we always had darky servants.  I took the
+waitress with me, a quiet little mulatto we'd had for more than a year,
+and sent for her mother, a very capable woman that I'd often used as
+nurse in cases where they couldn't pay a professional.  She could do
+anything, the way those Southern darkies can, and she would cook and
+look after things generally.
+
+"Well, in three days it seemed as if I'd always been there.  You know
+how quickly a man manages a change like that; it's hard to see where
+the women generate all the friction they make out of a move of that
+sort.  Althea was frying chicken contentedly and Mynie was sweeping and
+dusting as quietly as she always did.
+
+"She was a slender, oval-faced little yellow girl with almost straight
+hair, parted and drawn down like a madonna's, very low voiced and
+capable, with only one fault; she was almost too shy and always timid
+that she'd make some blunder--which she seldom if ever did.  She was
+devoted to her mother, who had brought her up particularly well, and
+delighted to be living with her.  The patients all liked her and she
+was especially tactful with children.
+
+"One day, after I'd been there a week, I strolled out in the kitchen.
+
+"'This strikes me as being a pretty good house, eh, Althea?'  I said.
+'New and clean.  Everything all right?'
+
+"'Yes, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh, it seems like a very good house,
+seh,' she answered respectfully.
+
+"'It's right surprisin' Mrs. Mears didn't like it!' says Mynie with a
+little giggle.
+
+"It struck me then that I had never known Mynie to speak, in her life,
+without being spoken to, and even so, when I had occasion to speak to
+her, she started and looked a little scared.  I supposed living with
+her mother had given her more confidence and felt rather glad of it.
+
+"It might have been a week later one morning, as I leaned out of one of
+the office windows to knock my pipe clean, I heard a low laughing and
+murmuring on the side porch, and glancing carelessly in that direction,
+what should I see but Mynie twisting the lapel of a young man's coat;
+his arm was around her waist.  It occurred to me that he was pretty
+well dressed for any beau she'd be likely to have, and as he turned his
+face partly, I realised with a disgusted surprise that it was George,
+my colored office-man.  It would be hard to make you feel the way I did
+then, and you'll probably smile when I tell you that I couldn't have
+been more shocked and startled if it had been any one of you--but it's
+the truth.
+
+"You see, George was a most exceptional fellow.  Everybody in--in the
+city I'm telling about--knew him and respected him.  Everybody among my
+patients knew that except for his colour he'd have been my regular
+office assistant long ago.  As it was, he knew more medicine than many
+a lad with his gilt shingle up, and his English was perfect--he'd been
+in school till he was eighteen and was a great reader.  He'd come to me
+as a coachman, but I soon saw his value and promoted him to the office,
+where he took all the telephoning, received the patients, got out the
+bills and kept all my accounts, personal and professional.  He'd helped
+me more than once in operations, and had a perfect genius for
+administering anaesthetics.  Nobody but our two selves knew what his
+salary was, but I never grudged a penny of it.  Why, the fellow read
+French and German almost as well as I did, and tact--Lord, I wished
+every day of my life I had George's tact and resource!  My wife was
+tremendously fond of him, and lent him all her books, and they used to
+have great discussions on political economy and theosophy and prison
+reform--oh, everything!
+
+"He had lots of white blood, of course, and his wife you'd never guess
+to be anything but pure American, she was so white.  One of the
+children, though, was black as my hat.  The other had almost golden
+hair and deep blue eyes--a beautiful little girl, brought up like a
+duchess, too.  They lived in a nice little house on the extreme edge of
+the negro district, and we all understood that when the little girl was
+fifteen or sixteen, she and her mother were going to move to Paris and
+train her voice; then if everything went well, George and the boy would
+join them and never come back--he was specialising in dentistry, mind
+you, in his spare time.  It's different, of course, abroad.
+
+"I'm telling you all this, so you can see how I felt; I'd had George
+nine years, and we'd always had darky servants, and--oh, well, to find
+him with that yellow streak in him after all, nearly floored me.  I
+could have sworn he wasn't that sort of pup, and when he came in for
+his orders I talked to him like a Dutch uncle.
+
+"'You've got to stop this, George,' I said directly, 'I can't have any
+such performances here.  To tell you the truth, I never thought it of
+you!  The idea--a quiet little thing like Mynie!  She's as timid as a
+kitten and as innocent.  Now I want your word of honour before you
+leave this office and I want it quick!'
+
+"He opened his mouth once or twice in a confused sort of way, looked at
+me curiously, and then gave his word quietly.  So far as I knew, he had
+never broken it.
+
+"But I wasn't satisfied with that and I spoke to her mother.
+
+"'You'd better keep an eye on Mynie, Althea,' I said carelessly.
+'She's a pretty girl, you know, and men aren't always too careful what
+they say to a girl as pretty as Mynie.'
+
+"'Yes, seh, I'll look out,' she said, 'I'll look out, doctor--ef I kin.
+Seems like I may have trouble, though.  Is Mis' Stanchon comin' back
+soon, seh?'
+
+"'Probably not,' I said.  'It's too hot for her here.  Why, what's the
+matter?  Anything wrong?'
+
+"'I guess not, seh,' she answered, hesitating.  'I try to do my best,
+doctor.  But I will sholy be glad when she comes back.  And would you
+mind to speak to Mynie yo'self, seh?' and she slipped away.
+
+"Well, I did speak to her.  I spoke when I ran across her, strolling
+with George in a deserted walk of an old park.  I called her right into
+the office the next morning.
+
+"'Mynie,' I said sharply, 'what were you doing yesterday afternoon?
+Out with it!'
+
+"She opened her eyes and looked full at me for a second--something she
+had never done.
+
+"'I reckon 'twas my afternoon out, doctor!' she said softly, and that
+was all.  But it was enough.  It wouldn't have made any difference what
+she said, anyhow--the look was enough.  It wasn't the look of our shy
+little Mynie; her eyes had never gone any farther than my breakfast
+table and the office door.  But these eyes were slanting, curious,
+audacious--conscious.  That's what it was, they were conscious of
+something--something I didn't know.  And for a quick moment I
+remembered, with no connection, apparently, that queer look in the eyes
+of the parson's wife--the one that had the house before.  I didn't know
+why, and I dismissed it as irrelevant, for that poor creature had been
+frightened to death, and Mynie was more self-confident than I had ever
+seen her and not at all pleasant with it.  I've never been of a temper
+to stand any nonsense from servants, and the class of Northern darky
+that was growing up in that city wasn't always easy to deal with.  But
+I remembered what a sterling creature the mother was, and I tried to be
+gentle with the girl.
+
+"'You understand, Mynie,' I said temperately, 'I only speak for your
+good.  I know the world better than you can and I don't want to see you
+get into bad ways.  Do you want to lose George his place?  You've got a
+good home, and you're with your mother, and there's no excuse for you
+if you slip up, you see.  Understand me?'
+
+"'Yes, doctor, I understand you,' she said, and walked out of the room
+with her head high and her hips swinging.  Something in her
+carriage--so different from the way she used to slip in and out--struck
+me all of a sudden, and there flashed into my mind an old story about
+Althea's being the direct descendant of one of the oldest African kings
+and a princess in her own right.  Absurd, of course, but it makes a lot
+of difference whether you regard those people as creeping up to our
+democracy or sliding down from their royalty, you see.  And with Mynie
+the scale had shifted suddenly, and it was the last of an old line that
+swung by me, not the first of a new one.  Straight across the
+commonplace air of my office a wind out of the jungle had blown, a
+whiff of something old and unmanageable, and beyond rules, or beneath
+'em, perhaps; something there wasn't any prescription for; something
+not to be weighed and measured by any of the new methods, because it
+antedated method.
+
+"Yes, it was all that.  I don't know if I make myself clear at all....
+You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert
+servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only
+that--Lord, no!  It was a great deal more than that, and it was just
+beginning; just beginning."
+
+There was no doubt that he had the strained attention of all of them:
+their hands held the glasses, but they did not drink, looking mostly at
+the wet rings on the polished table, or the little heaps of white
+ashes.  A servant passing through scratched a match with a rasping
+splutter, and they twitched angrily at the interruption, fearing it
+would throw him off the track--he was so easily quieted, and when once
+one of his great gulfs of silence received him, it was hopeless.
+
+But this time he went on.
+
+"After that the house got very still, by degrees.  Althea sang less and
+less and by and by not at all.  There seemed to be no clatter, no
+bustle, no homely, chattering machinery of life.  Sometimes I would
+step out through the dining-room and listen, purposely, to see where
+they were.  And it was always the same thing: Althea sitting in her
+clean kitchen, by her clean table, with a bowl or a pan or what not in
+her lap, her yellowish hands lax, her knees as still as marble, her
+eyes set ahead of her, thinking, thinking, thinking.  Her brows would
+be knit and her face all drawn.  She had the look of a fighter, a
+struggler with something--but there was nothing there.  And out on the
+side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the
+wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling,
+smiling, always smiling.  Sometimes she would hum a sort of low
+tuneless chant--it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all
+repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone.  And
+once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise
+flashed suddenly into my mind--incantation.  That was it, incantation.
+
+"Well!  All this sounds very feeble, doesn't it?  The truth is, I
+haven't got the right vocabulary--as a matter of fact, I don't think
+anybody has.  When you can describe a thing, a sensation, perfectly, I
+doubt if it's very important anyhow.  It's always so.  The big things
+simply elude description.  And yet we all know them.  Falling in love,
+for instance: God knows it's as definite as measles, but who ever
+described it?  The most these writing fellows can manage is to tell you
+what a lot of people did who happened to be in that way, and sometimes
+they catch a lot of the tricks, but that's all.  Then there's dying.
+There's a specific atmosphere about that--everybody knows it.  The
+people know it mostly, themselves.  I mean, if any one ever had
+occasion to die twice, he'd recognise the symptoms immediately.  But
+nobody can describe it, though plenty of us know what it is.
+
+"So with that house and the atmosphere in it.  Something was happening
+there.  Something so strong and so actual that it defied all
+appearances, all the ordinary influences that might be supposed to act
+on the imagination of, say, a sensitive, hysterical, under-occupied
+woman.  For as a matter of fact there was nothing morbid in the look of
+the house--nothing at all.  It was sunny and fresh and painted.  It was
+clean and dry.  But it ought not to have been.  No ... I've sat there,
+late afternoons, when it seemed to me if I touched the walls they'd be
+damp and the woodwork rotted and mouldy.  The boards should have
+creaked there and the stair-rails ought to have given under the
+hand--but they didn't.  I had them all repaired, you see!  But there
+were a few things I hadn't had the chance to repair and they ... oh,
+well, they were there, that was all.
+
+"There?  You'd have said so, any of you, if you'd seen Althea as I saw
+her one morning.  I stepped into the kitchen suddenly, to give an order
+for some beef-tea I wanted to take away with me, and there she sat,
+cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her
+shoulders and--of all things--a red and blue kerchief twisted into a
+turban on her head.  She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I
+give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that
+rig, swaying there!
+
+"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass
+earrings in her ears.
+
+"And all of a sudden it came to me--what was happening there: I felt
+very queer for a moment, I tell you!  Everything seemed to be rolling
+backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed.  Not I--I
+swear nothing touched me.  I was the same.  _So was the jeweller.  So
+was the parson.  So was the man before that..._
+
+"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there?  Take those rags
+off you!  Get up immediately!  I am ashamed of you.'
+
+"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's--it was nip
+and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me.  But
+she didn't; I won.  You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually
+controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.
+
+"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.
+
+"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.
+
+"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her
+pantry, shaking and muttering.  I waited till she came back, and she
+was quiet and trim again--herself.  She stuffed a bundle into the stove
+before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again.  She was
+a good woman, Althea was.
+
+"But the other--Mynie--well, the game was up with her.  Heavens, the
+change in that girl's eyes!  It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't
+that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it.  No,
+it was more than that--more and worse and deeper and older--  Oh, as
+old as Hell!  That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put
+it?  The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of
+animalism--the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all
+in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that
+Nature has coiled in every one of us.  The Old Lady wound us up with
+that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."
+
+The room was absolutely empty but for the four of them; they stared at
+him steadily, his rumbling, husky voice held them like a vise; they
+could not miss a word.
+
+"She got fat on it.  She bloomed in that infernal house like some
+tropical bog-flower; she expanded, she shot up.
+
+"Once, at twilight, I peeped out and saw her sitting on the side porch,
+her chin in her hand, staring and staring, and laughing, now and then,
+and shutting her eyes.  It made me shiver.
+
+"That warm, damp dusk was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to
+thicken, thicken, as I looked.  A quick instinct warned me to look for
+George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue
+... like a caught fly.  To let go--to drift in a warm, relaxing current
+...  I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net
+...  I felt for him so.
+
+"I went to her mother.
+
+"'Call that girl in!' I said roughly.  'What's the matter with her?'
+
+"She wouldn't look at me.
+
+"'Come, what's all this?  Out with it!' I said.  But she stood there,
+obstinate as a mule, and perfectly silent.  You can't do anything with
+them, then.
+
+"Well, it was like fighting filthy cobwebs: walking through them,
+breathing them, pulling them off from your mouth, your wrists, your
+ankles!  Not that I felt anything directly, mind you--I could have
+lived there for years--alone.  But it was all up with Mynie and George,
+they were done for, like the others ... like the others.
+
+"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast?  What terrible
+energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place?  What
+distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there?  How long ago?  _How long
+ago?_  Are there centres of negation?  Oh, I tell you, the
+table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply
+incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!
+
+"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer
+and taints endlessly?
+
+"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my
+eyes--ugh!
+
+"There had to be an end, of course.  I asked where she was going one
+afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.
+
+"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly.  'I'll settle with your
+mother.  Do you understand?'
+
+"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of
+the open window.
+
+"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly.  I could see
+poor George tremble--the porch vines shook.
+
+"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.
+
+"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said--but I didn't say
+'slut.'  And she went.  It was the only time I was ever brutal to a
+woman."
+
+He gulped the rest of his tumbler.
+
+"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was
+empty.
+
+"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day
+afterward.  'If you ever need any money----'
+
+"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh.  You couldn't help it.  But
+I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly.  And she was
+right enough, of course.
+
+"She knew.  They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've
+forgotten, I believe.  Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.
+
+"I never saw Mynie again.  She went off East, and George with her.
+They're both dead, now.  His wife stayed on in the cottage.
+
+"I gave her all the help I could ... it was my fault, I suppose.  And
+yet, God knows, I meant nothing.  I thought _I_ was undertaking that
+damned house, you see--how could I tell how the thing worked?"
+
+They watched him eagerly: his face showed that he had more to tell.
+Not a man moved, unless it were to knock the ash from his cigar or to
+light a fresh one.
+
+"There was a Catholic priest there, then," he said slowly.  "He's been
+moved higher up, since, and you'd all know his name, if I gave it.
+We'll call him Father Kelly--though that wasn't it, of course.  He and
+I were great friends--he was a little older than I was--and we used to
+have many a good talk together, meeting on our rounds, you see.  Often
+I'd take him miles on his way, and drop my driver out on the road, just
+for the pleasure of his company.  Of course we disagreed entirely on
+what he considered the most important points, but leaving them out, we
+were thoroughly congenial, and we were often glad of each other's
+opinion, I can tell you, for we often had the same patients.
+
+"Well, a day or two after I'd moved my stuff out of that cursed house,
+he came to the office with a drug case he was trying to reform: he'd
+persuaded the fellow as far as the pledge went, and I was to talk to
+him about diet and exercise and all the rest.  After the man left,
+Father Kelly looked at me once or twice, talked a bit about the
+weather, and finally pulled out his old blackened pipe and looked
+around the office.
+
+"'Have ye a bit of tobacco about ye, doctor?' says he.  'If so, and
+you're not too busy, I could do with a little rest--I was up all night.'
+
+"I was glad enough, for I felt blue and out of sorts, and we pulled our
+chairs in front of the fireplace, from habit, and after a few minutes I
+found myself telling him the whole business.
+
+"'Now what do you make of it, Father?' I asked.
+
+"'I make the devil out of it, doctor,' said he, very placidly.
+
+"'Oh, well,' I began impatiently, 'of course I can't be expected----'
+
+"'Now, wait a bit, doctor,' he put in.  'If you don't go with my
+diagnosis, what's your own?  What do you make out of it?'
+
+"Well, there he had me.
+
+"'Of course,' I said, 'it's a mere coincidence.'
+
+"'Ah,' says he, 'then would you be willing to go and live there with
+your wife?'
+
+"'Good God, no!' I burst out, before I thought.  And then I wouldn't
+back out of it.  You see, there had been five women.  Five good,
+ordinary, honest women--six, if you count Miss Jessop.
+
+"'I thought not,' said he quietly.
+
+"He sat and puffed awhile.
+
+"Finally, 'I'll have to be taking a look at your house, doctor,' he
+said.
+
+"'All right,' said I.  'When?'
+
+"'This evening,' he said, 'after my confessions.  Say about nine.  And
+I'll go home and have a nap.  I'm thinking I'll need one.'
+
+"And he knocked out his pipe and left.
+
+"I was busy all the afternoon, so busy that I almost forgot the whole
+thing, and as a matter of fact, I had had no time for dinner, when he
+called for me.  He was so fresh and bright and jolly that you'd never
+have suspected he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up,
+gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to
+the governor--oh, he was a remarkable man, that man!  And it's a
+remarkable institution, the Confessional.  We're learning to do more
+with it now than we did twenty years ago.  But they've always known ...
+they've always known..."
+
+He ruminated long, and crushed the ashes in the brass tray before him.
+The men nodded, but kept silence, dreading lest he lose the thread.
+
+"I had the horse ready and drove myself.  When I unlocked the door of
+the house I lighted the lamp in the hall, and so on in every room we
+went through, kitchen and all.  In every room there was a fresh shining
+lamp, filled and ready, for Althea had left everything like a new pin,
+and in every room that lamp was lighted, when we left it.  You know
+what a nice, warm glow an old-fashioned kerosene lamp gives a
+place--electricity's nothing to it, in my opinion.
+
+"'This seems a good sort of house, doctor,' said Father Kelly to me, as
+we came back and sat down in the pretty little sitting-room, with a
+palm in it, and cushions my wife had made, and books on the table.  'I
+can't see any harm here.'
+
+"'All right,' said I, 'then let's go home.  I missed my dinner.  Since
+you see there's no devil here----'
+
+"'I don't see that,' said he, calmly, 'I only see that I haven't found
+him yet.  If a woman has a cancer, doctor, you don't know it the moment
+you shake hands with her, do ye?  So with me and my patients.  Now
+let's think a bit, and if you don't object, I'll call a little
+consultation.'
+
+"So he takes a little black book out of his pocket, and actually sits
+there reading!  I humoured him, and smoked.  After a while he looks up,
+crosses himself, puts away the book and nods at me contentedly.
+
+"'Now, which room would all of these women use the most, doctor?' says
+he.
+
+"'The kitchen,' I said directly, thinking of Mynie and Althea.  Then,
+'No, no, for Mrs. Mears used this for her consulting-room.  But the
+parson's wife spent most of her time in her bedroom.  Still, the
+jeweller's wife didn't--they used the dining-room to sit in.  There's
+no one room, you see.'
+
+"'Unless they all had the same bedroom,' he suggested quietly.
+
+"'By George, they did, then!' I cried, 'for I gave it to Mynie and
+Althea because it was the coolest.  I always sleep on the ground floor.'
+
+"'Then we'll try the bedroom, doctor,' says he, and we went up-stairs.
+He was a stocky, short little fellow, strong as a bull, with iron-grey
+hair, very solid on his feet, yet quick and active, like a thin man.
+He sat down in the rocking-chair in the neat, empty bedroom and I
+brought in another lamp from across the hall.
+
+"'You don't think you'll need the dark for your materializations,
+Father?' I said, half laughing, as I set my lamp on the bureau.
+
+"'No, no, doctor,' he answered, smiling.  'The Church doesn't work in
+the dark, you know.  We're all for candles, and plenty of 'em.'
+
+"I had to grin at that.  He was as quick a man with his tongue as I
+ever met.
+
+"Well, we sat there, and sat there, and he shut his eyes and tipped
+back and forth in that chair like a woman, and I might as well have not
+been there.  I mean I was out of his consciousness entirely.  Finally I
+got nervous and bored.
+
+"'There's nothing here, Father,' I said, rather testily.  'Haven't I
+been here hours on end with the parson's wife?  Wouldn't I have known
+it?'
+
+"He never opened his eyes.
+
+"'Probably not, doctor,' he said pleasantly.  'It's not your job, you
+see.  You were thinking about her liver.'
+
+"'And you?' said I.
+
+"'Her life everlasting,' said he.
+
+"And his eyes shut, all the time!
+
+"So I shut my mouth and watched him.  And suddenly his lips began to
+work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were
+grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he
+prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you
+know.  After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the
+fireplace--I was counting the inches, to keep myself quiet--he stopped
+suddenly, opened his eyes and loosened his hands.
+
+"'I've got it now, thanks be!' he said, looking straight at me.  'It's
+this room, sure enough, doctor!'
+
+"'What do you mean, for heaven's sake?' I said, getting up and coming
+to him, interested enough, now, you can believe.
+
+"'_For hell's sake_, would be nearer the mark,' he answered me, gently
+enough, but his jaw was set and there was a light in his eye I'd seen
+there once or twice.  'This is a bad business.  This'll take more than
+sitting down, this will.'
+
+"And flat on his knees he plumped, ahead of his chair, and crossed
+himself and started praying in Latin.  He made no special noise nor
+movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead
+and his face was drawn and pale--and grew paler.  Every now and then
+he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on
+his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten
+minutes he was almost in the fireplace.  With anybody else I could
+never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly,
+and I can tell you that whatever prayers he prayed, they were no
+perfunctory mumblings: they took it out of him!  He was like a man
+fighting, blindfolded--he breathed like a prize fighter, I tell you!
+And just at the edge of the hearth, when I thought I must stop him
+(that sort of auto-hypnosis will take a person straight out of an open
+six-story window, you know) he stopped himself, opened his eyes with a
+jerk, and pointed ahead of him.
+
+"'Mother of God,' he said in a husky whisper, 'but it's there!'
+
+"'There!' said I.  'What's there, Father?  There can't be anything in
+that fireplace--I've seen a dozen fires in it.'
+
+"He got up from his knees as unconcerned as he'd gotten down on them
+and cleared his throat.
+
+"'Not in it, perhaps, doctor,' he said, 'but then, under it.  Or over
+it, perhaps.  But there, somewhere, it is.'
+
+"'You mean the bricks?' I cried, and he nodded his head like a man too
+weak to talk.
+
+"'Maybe,' he whispered.  'Look and see."
+
+"There was a full set of fire-irons there, and I took the poker and
+tapped all about the hearth, as excited as a boy on a treasure hunt,
+though of course I didn't believe in it, any more than the boy does,
+really.
+
+"'No, Father,' I said, 'there's nothing to show--' and then, just
+between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum!
+
+"'But there's no brick loose!' I cried, and he whispered, 'Then break
+it!'
+
+"It took more than a few blows and I broke the poker, but finally I
+loosened the mortar and there under the two centre bricks was an iron
+box, about seven inches square, made like a little trunk.  I fished it
+out and opened it--it opened from the side--and pulled out two thick
+handfuls of yellow letters, without envelopes.  I opened the top one
+eagerly, but it had no date nor address.  For signature there was only
+the name 'Olive.'"
+
+He stopped abruptly and stared at the thick-bellied decanter before
+him.  His voice sank lower.
+
+"I have never heard or read that name since," he said slowly, "without
+a thrill at my nerves like a picked violin string.  They were the
+wickedest letters ever written, I think.  Even for a woman, they were
+incredible."
+
+The men stared at him, mystified, confused, eager.
+
+"One, the third, I think, said something like this: '_They may bury me,
+now that you want me no longer.  They shall never bury these letters--I
+swear it.  Here in the room where I wrote them, they shall live after I
+am gone._'
+
+"And they lived--God, they lived!  As I pored over them, cross-legged
+by that little hearth, I believe that I was as lost to the world about
+me as Father Kelly had been a few moments before.  They were not
+written for me, they offered me nothing, the writer was beyond doubt
+dead and gone; but for the moment those yellow papers held me, soul and
+body, in such a grip as I have never known before or since.  I can't
+tell you ... I didn't know such things could be written...."  He shook
+his head slowly.
+
+"I'd always been fairly decent, you see--there were circumstances ... I
+couldn't take advantage...
+
+"Did you ever turn over a good old sunny rock, flat, a little mossy,
+but clean and wholesome?  And underneath it crawls--it crawls!  Black,
+slimy slug things ... muck of the Pit!
+
+"That was me.  And every time my eyes fell on one of those amazing
+phrases on that yellow page, I had to hold the rock down!
+
+"Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I jumped like a woman.  Father
+Kelly stood over me, and he looked, from where I sat below him,
+unhumanly tall.  He held out his hand.
+
+"'Give them to me,' he said.
+
+"'But, Father, you don't want to see them!' I burst out.  'I'm going to
+destroy them.  You--you mustn't see them!  Let me burn them----'
+
+"'Give them to me, my son," he repeated, and I gave them up like a
+child.  It was remarkable.
+
+"'At any rate, I warn you,' I began.  But he only smiled.
+
+"'When you are warned of fever in a house, do you pass it by, my son?'
+he asked me softly.  'But this is a different matter.'
+
+"I admit that I couldn't meet his eyes.
+
+"Well, he read them all through placidly, and then he sighed and shook
+his head.
+
+"'Poor things, poor things!' he said, 'and now we'll burn them.  There
+is nothing I can do.'
+
+"So we burned them there and put back the bricks and he muttered some
+short prayer or other and made the sign of the cross over the fireplace
+and then turned to me.
+
+"'Didn't I see some bread and ham and a cheese in that wire safe in the
+cellar, doctor?' says he.  'I had no supper to-night.'
+
+"We went down and got them and a bottle of Scotch, too, and I remember
+perfectly that we polished off half a small ham, a whole Edam cheese, a
+loaf of bread and nearly a bottle of the Scotch--the bottle wasn't
+quite full, to begin with, you see.
+
+"After we'd finished we had a smoke, and then I stared at him straight.
+
+"'What's the meaning of it all, Father?' I asked.
+
+"'I can't tell you, my son,' said he (he never called me so before or
+since that night) 'but you may be sure of one thing--God reigns.  And
+now, what are you thinking to do?'
+
+"'Burn down this house,' said I, 'and send for my wife to come back.'
+
+"'By all means send for your wife,' says he quickly, 'but if you're
+bound to destroy this house--which strikes me as a very good sort of
+house--why not give it me?'
+
+"'To you?' I cried.  'You don't mean that you'd use it?'
+
+"'I could put a parochial school for girls there next week,' he said
+cheerfully.  'We need one at this end badly, but I hadn't the money."
+
+"'And you'd put innocent girls in this place?'
+
+"'Give me a chance, and then come hear Sister Mary Eustacia sing with
+'em, next Sunday,' he said.
+
+"So I deeded it to him, land and all, and they had a great kick-up
+there with little boys in lace night-gowns, and incense and what not.
+And, by George, the girls did sing for me, too, with Sister
+Somebody-or-other bowing and blushing behind 'em--all in white they
+were, with blue sashes, and voices like larks ... I never had a
+daughter...."
+
+He half rose, heavily, leaning on his elbows.  "Mind you, there's
+something there!" he said slowly.
+
+"There's a Pit below--you have to count on it.  Perhaps we're
+shovelling it in, all the time, shovelling it in...
+
+"And the more you whistle, the better you'll work, of course.  Very
+well, then, whistle!  But don't mistake--it's there ... it's there."
+
+They drew long breaths and pushed away from the table; the rain had
+stopped.
+
+And still in silence they walked out together into the fresh, damp
+evening.
+
+
+
+
+THE ORACLES
+
+You'll wonder, no doubt, at me having the daring to make what you might
+call a sort of romance out of her life--now all's over.  And, of
+course, it's not in my way at all.  Not but what I've read enough of
+romance-books--many's the many!  My mother was always at me to lay them
+by and take up some bit of work that 'ud bring me in more in the
+end--and yet, there's no doubt it was my readings and dreamings and
+such-like that brought me about Miss Lisbet's friendship, at the first,
+and that friendship was the making of me, one way and another, as
+mother never denied.
+
+It was Dr. Stanchon that set me about it.  He came into my cottage, a
+matter of a month or so back, looking fair grizzled and white--the
+heat, he said.  And if I knew better, I never said so.  He never minded
+the heat till this summer.  And on his vacation at home, too!  But he
+showed his age, fair.
+
+"You haven't some kind of drink for me, have you, Rhoda?" he says, sort
+of faint-like.  "It's been a hard day at the hospital."
+
+Now that might do for some, but not for me, that's known the doctor
+fifty-four years come Easter.  I looked at the wheels of the gig, and
+they were all clay, red clay from the one road hereabouts that's made
+of it--the graveyard road.  And I knew where he'd been.  But of course
+I says nothing, but brings him a palm-leaf fan, and seats him out of
+the glare, in the entry that looks over the little garden, and I waters
+the red bricks of the porch with a spray or two from the garden-pot
+(nothing so cooling as watered brick, I say!) and hurries in to beat up
+his drink.  He settled down in the old chair I always keep for him--a
+Windsor, cushioned in some English chintz his wife brought me out from
+home, twenty years ago--and I heard him sigh and stretch as I got the
+lemons and the eggs.  I beat up the whites, stiff as silver, added the
+lemon juice by littles, dusted a bit of castor sugar, and stuck in a
+sprig of mint from my sunken half-barrel where the cress grows.
+
+"Ah, that makes a man new!" says he, handing back the glass.  "It's a
+pity you can't patent that, Rhoda!"
+
+And then he pulled out his old pipe, and smoked for a quarter-hour,
+without a word.  But he rested.
+
+"And how's Miss Jessop, these days, doctor?" says I, when I saw he was
+ready for talking.
+
+"Finely, finely!" says he.  "Her little girl wrote me a letter
+yesterday.  Ten years old!  Image of her father, that child.  You're as
+bad as Lisbet, though, that never would learn to change."
+
+"I'm sure I beg her pardon--Mrs. Weldon, of course, and her with a boy
+fourteen, too!" says I.  "How Miss Lisbet did take to her, surely!  I
+always thought having her to help with Master Louis's children when
+they were so bad, just helped poor Miss Lisbet to bear with her sorrow
+at not starting the hospital, and all that."
+
+"Yes, yes," he said and nodded.
+
+"She was a fine woman, Jessop was.  Best nurse I ever had.  Yes,
+yes--Weldon's a lucky fellow."
+
+The cress smelled strong in the heat, then, and I couldn't but say:
+
+"Do you remember when Miss Lisbet and I started the cress-bed, doctor,
+down in the Winthrop pond?"
+
+At first he didn't answer, and I saw the old times in his face.
+
+"How she did enjoy your cress-and-mustard salad!" he says, finally.
+"Mrs. Stanchon spoke of it this morning--have you a little mess I could
+take up to the house?"
+
+And so we passed to talking about her, and it eased us both.
+
+"It's like a sort of tale, sir, isn't it?" says I, thoughtful-like.
+"Often and often when my niece has left everything tidy, and made my
+tea and cakes, and put away the wash, and watered the brick, and gone
+home, and I sit here while the pot draws and there's only the cat for
+company (not that I complain!  I've my thoughts, and plenty of books,
+and all the old days to live over!) often and often, as I say, it'll
+come to me in a sort of tale, like, and I wish there was some one to
+take it down; it would read off like a book!"
+
+"And why not take it down yourself, Rhoda, my girl?" says he.  "There's
+one, as I needn't tell you, would have no little pleasure reading it."
+
+And so I began.  You'd be surprised at the many that's offered to help
+me, and piece out bits of her life that maybe I wouldn't know.  But I
+knew enough for what I had in mind to show, namely, what Miss Lisbet
+was always planning to do--and what she really did do.
+
+So now I'll begin at the beginning.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was the morning of the day I was ten years old that I first saw her.
+A Saturday it was, and a holiday, and mother gave me a piece of currant
+bread, buttered, for a treat, and the day free till sunset, after my
+morning tasks were through.  I was all that was left her--five others
+buried, in fifteen years--and she was very easy with me, for which you
+could scarcely blame her, poor soul!  Three lost in England, of the
+smallpox, and one that hardly opened his little eyes, and my sister of
+something that they had no name for rightly in those days, doctor says,
+but they call it appendicitis now.  I was born over here, and never saw
+England, though I've always loved to read about it and always called it
+"home," not thinking, as one often will.  Mother had black memories of
+the old country and was anxious for us to grow up little Americans,
+though I can see now that she went to work very wrong to bring that
+about, for we always curtseyed to the rector and old Madam Winthrop
+when she rode by in the coach, and never, in short, thought of looking
+higher than we were born.
+
+So when I saw a lovely young lady drive up in a pony cart, hand the
+reins to the groom, get out, and walk through the gate toward me, I
+held the currant bread behind me and dropped a little curtsey.
+
+"Is this Mrs. Pennyfield's house?" she says, stopping and staring at me.
+
+"Yes, miss, she's my mother," says I.
+
+"What is your name?" says she.
+
+"Rhoda Pennyfield, please, miss," says I, and then, the goodness knows
+why, for I was a shy enough little thing commonly, "It's my birthday!"
+
+"Why, how funny!" she says, smiling the loveliest smile in the world.
+"It's mine, too!  How old are you, Rhoda Pennyfield?"
+
+"Ten, miss."
+
+"Isn't that wonderful!" she cries out, blushing like a rose peony.  "I
+am ten to-day, too!  What were your presents?  Mine were the pony
+phaeton and this gold watch (she held it out to me on a chain about her
+neck) and a macaw from South America from my Uncle Mather, on an ebony
+perch.  And a French doll from my aunty in New York, but I don't care
+for dolls any more.  What had you?"
+
+Now, as you can see, if I had really been a little American, I should
+have been jealous and ashamed that things were so different between us,
+but such a notion never entered my head.
+
+"Mother baked currant bread, miss," I said, "and Madam Winthrop's
+gardener gave me a spotted kitten, and I have a string of blue beads
+and the day to myself.  I'm thinking I'll go up to The Cedars and Mrs.
+Williams will let me read some of the books from the library for the
+afternoon."
+
+"Why, that's where I live--The Cedars!" she says, surprised.  "Madam
+Winthrop is my aunt, and Mrs. Williams dresses me!  Come into the
+phaeton and I'll drive you there!"
+
+She had forgot the errand she came on, bless her, with the excitement,
+and if mother hadn't come out to inquire, there'd have been a great
+to-do.  There was a maid all over blotches at The Cedars, and a doctor
+and nurse was wanted, and mother was ready very quick, as she always
+was.  So I got into the phaeton and Miss Lisbet drove me to The Cedars,
+and I had a birthday dinner with her: roast fowl and mashed potatoes
+and new peas and a frozen pudding with figs and almonds in it.  I can
+see her now, at the head of the table, with me and Mrs. Williams on
+either side, and the macaw, all indigo and orange color and scarlet, on
+his perch opposite!  She had on a worked muslin frock with lace-trimmed
+pantalets, blue silk stockings, and black French kid ankle-ties.  Her
+hair, a light golden brown, was all in curls, and a blue velvet snood
+kept it back: the young girls today wear ribbons about their heads
+something like it.  Her eyes were a dark, bright blue, and her cheeks,
+like most American children's, a sort of clear pale, that flushed quick
+with her feelings.  She was tall and slim and looked quite three years
+older than me, that has always been stocky-like and apple-cheeked, even
+at sixty-four!
+
+She had been away at a school for two years, having lost her father and
+mother, and old Madam Winthrop had adopted her, in a sort of way, being
+her great-aunt, and was to leave her all her money.
+
+While we were eating, old Dr. Stanchon pops in, leading a little
+red-haired boy, very plain and clever-looking, by the hand.
+
+"Can this youngster have a bite with you, Mrs. Williams?" says he,
+looking worried like.  "That precious girl of yours has the fever, and
+I'll be busy some time.  I promised him the fish pond for a treat, for
+it's his birthday, to-day, and now perhaps Miss Elizabeth will take him
+there--hello, little Rhoda!  How fine we are!"
+
+The little lad pulls out a great pocket-knife and lays it on the table.
+
+"I am Dick Stanchon, and I'm ten years old to-day!" says he very quick.
+"I have this Barlow knife and the 'Arabian Nights,' and I'm to be a
+doctor, like my father.  Do you have frozen pudding often, here?"
+
+Well, you can see how startling it would be to three children to be at
+the same birthday together!  We couldn't be tired talking of it.
+
+"We will all be firm friends for the rest of our life," said Miss
+Lisbet, very excited, "and never have secrets from each other.  And
+when I get Aunt Winthrop's money, I will divide it into three parts,
+one for each.  And we will do a great deal of good in the world."
+
+"Come, come," says Mrs. Williams, sour-like, "not so fast, missy.
+You've not the money yet, nor shouldn't speak of it, and as for being
+friends, it's all right so far as Dick Stanchon is concerned, but I
+doubt if Madam will feel the same as to Rhoda Pennyfield!  So make no
+more plans till we know."
+
+But of course we did make plans, for all her stiffness.  We sat in the
+red cedar grove, playing at tea-parties with a beautiful china tea-set,
+and Master Dick was to marry her, and I was to live with them and be
+nurse to the children, with one named for me!
+
+Dear, dear!  I've forgot much that's come in between and many that's
+been kind to me (more shame to me!) but I can see the sun on her curls
+now and him sharpening his new knife on the granite rocks that were so
+thick in the grove.
+
+"Rhoda and Dick," says she, very solemn, after a little, "I'm going to
+tell you a great secret.  Come close to me."
+
+You can believe we listened with all our ears; we worshipped the ground
+she trod on, both of us, do you see, even then.
+
+"I mean to do a great deal of good in the world before I die," says
+she, "as I mentioned before, at dinner.  I don't mean just ordinary
+_being_ good, you know, but _doing_ it.  At school I always meant to go
+as a missionary, and I was saving all my money for a fund for it, but I
+couldn't seem to keep it, somehow.  Two or three of the girls were poor
+girls, and if they hadn't their birthdays remembered, it would have
+been dreadful.  And the cook's little boy was lame in his spine and he
+was so fond of flowers!  And I hadn't so much money, anyway.  Then, all
+my time was full, because we had to do things every hour, just so.  But
+now I'm to have a governess and I shall have a great deal of time, so I
+can study hard for a missionary and perhaps go to South America--if
+there are any heathens there, as I suppose there are."
+
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+
+"So now my new life is beginning," she says very low and solemn, "and I
+feel that everything will be different.  I wish I could be _sure_,
+though, that it would be!"
+
+"Why don't you try the larkspurs, miss," says I.  "They'll tell you."
+
+My mother, you must know, was a great believer in signs.  Not being
+much educated, she went by them, I suppose, the way plain people will,
+be it ever so.  There's no use saying it's against religion--mother was
+as religious as any one, take who you will--they will do it.  If a bird
+flew into the house, there was death for sure, and she never would let
+three candles be lighted, no matter whose the house.  And so my sister
+and I had many of these ways and signs, and always told how things
+would be by larkspurs.  So I told Miss Lisbet how to strip them off for
+"yes, no, yes, no," and she asked her question very solemn:
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"  And she stripped them off,
+mumbling-like to herself, "Yes, no, yes, no"--and the last off was "no."
+
+And then she cried, poor thing, and I with her, for we both believed in
+'em, but Dick only laughed and said it was all foolishness.
+
+"If you want to do different from what you have been, Lisbet, of course
+you can," says he, and then the old doctor came and fetched us both
+home.
+
+"I'm going to begin my studying, just the same!" she calls after us,
+and I watched the sun on her hair till the coachman's cottage cut us
+off.
+
+Well, the governess came and they'd lessons all morning long and music
+practising afternoons, but there was no missionary study, because she
+took it into her head that I must be educated and know all she knew--as
+if that was likely!  Still, I picked up a good bit, here and there, and
+the gardener's little boy, that was backward and dumb-like, isn't
+forgetting to-day what he owes to Miss Lisbet, I'll warrant.  Three
+days a week she'd read to him and spell the letters and sums plain--and
+him that was the mock of the scholars, so that he'd never go near the
+school, what is he now, I ask you?  Professor in Yale College, and
+helped Dr. Stanchon in the planning of a big school for those children
+that are backward-like, as he was, and many of them as bright as
+bright, really.  They manage such as them better than they did in those
+days, doctor says, and most of it owed to Henry Wilson's boy.
+
+Often and often we'd walk up to her tea from the lodge, her setting her
+little teeth to keep from crying at the time she was wasting, with all
+her heathen waiting for her in South America!
+
+"But I can't leave poor little Ezra Wilson, Rhoda, I just can't!" she'd
+cry out.  "Wait till these old music-lessons are over and I haven't to
+use those horrible dumb-bells every morning, and I'll do something for
+the world, yet!"
+
+"Surely, miss," I'd soothe her.
+
+Well, the time went by like sands in a glass, and we were grown maids
+before you'd think twice.  She looked full two years more than her
+seventeen, and Master Dick was away at Harvard College two years
+already, for he was wonderful forward and clever always, and first in
+all his classes.  What time she'd had from her lessons and her
+paintings and sketching (which she hated dreadfully, poor thing, though
+seeming a master of it, to my eyes!) she was teaching him French and
+German from her governess, for they didn't teach it in the village
+school and his mother couldn't spare him away, and those languages
+helped him a good bit in his studies at the college.  The old doctor
+was terrible proud of him.
+
+And then came the day that he came home so sudden.  It was a grand
+April morning and Miss Lisbet and I were directing Henry Wilson about
+changing the vines and laying them by for the house painting: Madam was
+scolding and fussing about, annoying everybody with her sharp ways, and
+I remember thinking that she was failing for sure.  I was sad, too, for
+mother had decided to put me out to service, after all, and that meant
+a parting for Miss Lisbet and me.  Mother felt that I was getting above
+myself, like, and spoiled for anything that would happen me in the
+usual course if Miss Lisbet ever changed, you see.  And who could deny
+that?  But the dear thing knew nothing of it, yet--I hadn't the heart.
+
+Well, Madam was scolding away famously.
+
+"Mind that wistaria, Wilson!" says she.  "There's not its equal in
+Westchester County!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Madam," says he, crusty-like.  "Why good-morning, Master
+Dick!"
+
+And there he stood.  At the first glance, I saw he looked different.
+Older and graver.
+
+"What's this, what's this, Richard?" Madam cries.  "Neglecting your
+studies?"
+
+"Studies?  Studies?" says he, as quick and sharp as she.  "What, is the
+matter with the people about here?  Are you dreaming?  Fort Sumter
+down, the flag insulted, the President calling for seventy-five
+thousand volunteers, and you talk of studies!  I'm going to try to get
+into the Seventh, and I'm only here to see Elizabeth before I go."
+
+"Nonsense, boy!" says Madam, trembling, though.  "We'll see what your
+father has to say, first."
+
+"My father only wishes he had a dozen sons, ma'am!" he told her, proud
+as Lucifer.  "Lisbet, can I speak with you?"
+
+She went directly to him, and they walked, holding hands, behind the
+cedar grove.  She told me afterward that he just said:
+
+"Will you wait till I come back, Lisbet?"
+
+And she answered, "Why, of course, Dick!"  They parted a promised
+couple.  Madam was all shaky, but she kissed him good-bye, and let him
+put a little blue-stoned ring on Miss Lisbet's hand--there was a splash
+of red paint on it from the house, and mother fair turned white when I
+told her.  "They'll never wed," she said, "that's certain sure!  Poor
+young people!"
+
+But the paint wasn't for blood, after all, for he never got a scratch.
+He was handsome enough in his new uniform, and more than one envied my
+Miss Lisbet when she waved him good-bye on the train--they were off for
+Baltimore.
+
+"Rhoda," says she to me, after a few weeks of waiting, "I can't bear
+this!  Us eating and drinking so easy, and those poor boys dying--it's
+not right.  I must and shall go as nurse!"
+
+And we could do nothing with her--she'd hardly sleep.  It was Dr.
+Stanchon found the way to handle her.
+
+"Dear child," he says at last, "why not do as I do--send a substitute?
+I sent my boy, because I'm the only doctor left here, now, and people
+must be born and die, you know, war or no war," says he.  "I'd far
+rather have gone.  Now, it's out of the question for you, for many
+reasons, but if your aunt would give you your dress-money and you gave
+up a summer at the mountains, you could pay a good, settled woman, of
+experience, and there's many would love to go."
+
+Well, she seized on that, the generous creature, and got it out of
+Madam, and we fitted out a respectable widow-woman mother often had to
+help her, and sent her to one of those Southern cities--I forget now.
+She wrote up only that there was mostly blacks for waiting on one, and
+food poor and scarce.  But Master Dick sent word that she kept the
+fever away for a mile around her, and the officers thereabouts gave her
+a long piece of writing and a medal after all was over, and the Rebels
+a silver cup--she cared for all alike, whatever the uniform.  The
+little house she had was built up into a hospital, later, and she lived
+and died there, and only came up to the north to beg money for it.  It
+was the only one in thirty miles around.  Eighteen years she lived
+there, and left the cup to Miss Lisbet; the medal to her daughter.
+
+Well, I must hurry on.  I could talk about those days forever, but in
+the books, I have taken notice often, they pick and choose.
+
+So I will pass to when it came to her of a sudden how she could collect
+clothes and food for the army, and keep one place open for the
+lint-scraping and bandage-rolling, as all the ladies were doing in the
+big cities.  She had a tongue of honey and every one knew about her
+having hired Mrs. Jarvis to go nurse, so she was sure to get what she
+begged for.  She took over a vacant office in the village, part of
+Madam's property, and I never saw her happier than the day we were
+fitting it up.  It was all cleaned and new furnished and there were
+desks and tables and nursing-books and shelves for the jellies and
+medicines, and everything to be sent orderly and where needed at the
+time, not rushed forward all helter-skelter as so much is at such
+times.  Dr. Stanchon saw all, and heard the plans, and patted her
+shoulder.
+
+"Well done, Blossom, well done!" says he.  "I might have let you go,
+after all!"
+
+And he offered to advise and find out the quickest and best trains and
+such like.
+
+It was July and a hot, clear day.  The notice was in the village paper
+for all the women that could help, to come to a first meeting and take
+hours for duty there, and routes to collect, and offer wagons if they
+had them, and give fruit for jelly, and Miss Lisbet led off with the
+old pony and cart for steady work.
+
+We were resting in the garden and she had just told me that she meant
+to give all her time to the "office," as we called it in a joking way
+(for nice young ladies didn't go to offices then, I promise you!  Madam
+thought little enough of it) and she put her hand on mine.
+
+"Rhoda," says she, "my dream is coming true--do you see?  I'm to do
+something for my country, after all!  Just as a man would--just as Dick
+does, Rhoda!  Isn't it a grand thing?"
+
+"Yes, miss," says I.
+
+"The change is coming now, Rhoda," she says, and then, laughing at
+herself, "I'm going to ask the larkspurs!"
+
+And she pulled a great stalk and held it over her head, as I had taught
+her seven years before.
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Is there to be a great change in my life?"
+
+And she stripped them off, _yes, no, yes, no_--and they said _no_!  The
+sweet face fell, and I hurried to comfort her.
+
+"Maybe they always say no hereabouts," says I.  "Let me have a try!"
+And I asked the same question, but it came _yes_, and that I knew must
+be true, though she did not.
+
+The next day, after she had made a speech like the Queen's (I thought)
+and every one wondering, with her so young, and a hundred dollars
+pledged, and all so eager to work under her--for she was one of them
+that's born to lead--who should run in but Henry Wilson, all out of
+breath, crying to her to hurry home, for Madam was down with a stroke,
+and one side of her all powerless!
+
+Well, to make a long story short, she never left her poor aunt for
+above an hour at a time till the fighting was over!  Madam, who had
+never seemed overfond before, was mad for her now, and she was pushing
+her chair or reading to her or stroking her hand or playing old tunes
+or sitting in sight, the livelong day.  They tried the sea and they
+tried the mountains and there was a nurse and a maid, but it was always
+Miss Lisbet behind it all.  She was rich, she had real French convent
+lace on her body-linen, and asparagus and peaches in winter, and a
+conservatory as big as a house, oh, yes.  But she was more tied down
+than many a poor girl 'prenticed for her living, and I often wonder if
+it's not that way with many of the rich ladies you see!  I know I was
+working hard with a dressmaker the first year--before they kept me as
+seamstress and mender at The Cedars--and _I_ wouldn't have changed with
+her, except for love of her, poor dear!
+
+I was back in The Cedars when Madam went off in her sleep one night as
+easy as a baby.  There was no need for grieving--'twas a blessed
+release, and just the soberness and the thoughts that must come to one
+when even an old body of eighty-odd passes away.  Poor old Madam hadn't
+many friends, for everybody was so afraid of her, and we all felt the
+best that ever she'd done was to leave the lonely old place to Miss
+Lisbet.  Master Dick was coming home, for the war was over, and the
+black men freed at last, and he was full captain, and never a scratch
+or a headache even, to show for the four years!
+
+We were in the garden waiting for him, she as lovely as ever I'd seen
+her in a white dress, all frilled from the waist down, with violet
+ribbons (Madam made her vow never to wear black for her) and a violet
+band in her hair.  She'd a great brooch of amethyst stones at her neck
+and Master Dick's blue ring on her finger.
+
+"Rhoda," says she, of a sudden, "what if we tried the larkspurs again?"
+and she smiled at me, a mischievous little smile, like a child's.
+
+"Nay, now, miss dear," says I, "what's the good of such games, and you
+a grown woman?  No doubt now but your way is clear to do as you like--a
+fine husband and plenty of money.  Let it be."
+
+"But I will," she says, reaching for a spray of the blue stuff, "I
+will, Rhoda, once more, for luck."
+
+"Well, then, miss," says I, "put the question different like, why not?
+Make it plainer--you're forever talking about 'a change in your life,'
+and there's always changes, you know."
+
+So she laughs and holds it up and sings:
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you!_
+
+Am I going to be able now to use all this money to help some great
+cause?"
+
+And the flowers said, _no_!
+
+Well, I couldn't say I was sorry for that, just because she was all for
+schooling and helping the blacks, now they were thrown on themselves
+like; for old Dr. Stanchon would have it that they were bound to make
+more trouble now in the South than they had before, and that those who
+had freed them owed them a living--or something like that.  Most hated
+him for it around our parts, but doctor says the country has found his
+father was right, to-day.  Nevertheless, there's other uses for good
+family money than that, as we all know.
+
+"You've bewitched the larkspurs, Miss Lisbet," I said, laughing.  "Why
+not fool them a bit?  Pick a tiny short spray like this, and ask a
+question you _know_ the answer to, and then you'll see how things are."
+
+"Well," says she, "I'll ask 'If I'm to marry Dick'!"
+
+I didn't half like that, but I happened to peep out of the tail of my
+eye and who should I see but Master Dick himself, leaning over the low
+cedar hedge, looking for us.  He was out of her sight, and so I made
+haste and picked a tiny stalk with but three blossoms and handed it to
+her.
+
+"Quick, quick, Miss Lisbet, dear!" I said, knowing well what the answer
+would be.  She asked quick enough, but when she stripped them, _yes,
+no_--and stopped there, I saw that the third had somehow fallen off and
+lay on her white lap.  It gave me a turn, but she only brushed it away
+and laughed softly.
+
+"It _is_ foolish," she said, "isn't it, Rhoda?  For there he is!  Here,
+Dick, this way!"
+
+I started to leave them, but she wouldn't have it, and gave him her
+cheek to kiss as easy as a child--or started to, but there was a man in
+uniform behind him, just rounding the turn, and she drew back.
+
+"Major La Salle," says Master Dick, proud as Punch, you could see,
+"Miss Elizabeth Winthrop."
+
+She curtseyed and the Major bowed to the ground, and I couldn't but
+notice a tiny bald spot amongst his curly dark hair.
+
+"An old fellow for Master Dick's friend," thought I, and so he was,
+being all of thirty-six, and more like Dr. Stanchon's crony than his
+son's!  Thirty-six was something in those days, you see, and Master
+Dick was all ready to settle when the young men of his age to-day are
+playing their football games and heedless as school girls.
+
+The Major had lines about his mouth and eyes, and had buried a wife, we
+learned, three years before the war--a sad marriage, by Master Dick's
+accounts, as she wasn't worthy of him and had made him grave before his
+time.  Our young Captain couldn't talk enough of him and had written
+many's the letters about him before ever we saw him.  But we were both
+surprised to find him so much older than we had thought, and Miss
+Lisbet was afraid to talk much before him at first, for fear he'd find
+her missish and ignorant.  She didn't realize, the sweet thing, how any
+one would think, to see her at the head of that great house, managing
+all and doing so much good in the village, that she was the equal of
+any woman.
+
+They'd been but three days in the village, and all the time they had
+from the doctor's wife's proud tea-drinkings, to show off her boy,
+they'd spent with us.  She always had me by her, for Mrs. Williams was
+getting on, and best off by herself, and Miss Lisbet didn't feel 'twas
+quite as it should be for her to be off with them alone.  So when they
+spoke of Madam's will, I was sewing near by.
+
+Miss Lisbet was telling of her schemes for the poor blacks and the
+Major was agreeing with her, and said that Master Dick's father had the
+right of it.
+
+"Now, for heaven's sake, Louis, don't encourage Miss Winthrop in any of
+her plans for the human race," says Master Dick, laughing.  "It's bad
+enough to have my father executor.  All that money depends on me, you
+know, and I don't approve of women's rights as much as you do."
+
+"Depends on you?  What do you mean?" says the Major.
+
+"Why, unless she marries me she doesn't get Madam's money at all," says
+Master Dick.  "The old lady was afraid of unprincipled fortune hunters,
+and of me, at least, she knew the worst!"
+
+"But the larkspurs said I wouldn't marry you, Captain Dick Stanchon!"
+she cried, half laughing, half displeased, for she couldn't bear him to
+question what she said.
+
+The Major got up at that and walked away, and I left them, too, as was
+quite correct for a promised pair.
+
+It might have been an hour later that I walked to the cedar grove to
+find my thimble and saw Miss Lisbet hurrying there ahead of me.  I
+slackened a bit, and when I caught her up I saw she was talking with
+the Major--he must have been waiting there for her.  I thought it odd,
+but stooped over and looked through the grass, and all of a sudden they
+were level with me, the other side the hedge.
+
+"You sent for me?" said she, breathless like.
+
+"Yes.  Can you guess why?" said he, and my knees began to shake.
+
+"N-no, Major La Salle," said she, still breathing strangely.
+
+"I sent for you to tell you that the larkspur told you true,
+Elizabeth," he said, very deep.  "You will never marry Dick Stanchon,
+you will marry me."
+
+"Why--why..." she began, and I couldn't move then, try as I might.
+
+"As sure as that little star belongs in the moon's arms, Elizabeth, you
+belong in mine!" said he.  "Don't you know it?"
+
+"But, Dick," she said, still breathing as I had never heard her.
+
+"Dick is a boy," he said.  "You are fit for a man.  I loved you when I
+first took off my cap before you.  But I would never court an heiress.
+Could you come to a western army post and live on a Major's pay?"
+
+"It's not me--I could live on nothing, almost--it's how to tell Dick!"
+she began, crying and breathing that strange way, both together--and
+then I knew it was all over, of course.
+
+"My star!" I heard him say, and I crept away, somehow.
+
+Well, that was all.  One week, she was a great heiress and engaged to a
+bright young fellow with life opening out before him; the next she was
+married to a poor widower, fifteen years her elder, and off to some
+place in the western prairies, with only a chest of linen and silver
+and some old mahogany and her clothes!  It was like a dream.  But only
+to see her look at him, you'd know she'd met her master.  Before, she
+hadn't sensed things rightly, she told me.
+
+I was wild to go with her, but no such thing as a maid for his wife,
+the Major said, and anyway, mother was near doubled with the rheumatism
+and I couldn't be spared.  So I kissed her on the station platform and
+cried myself blind that night.  And Master Dick went off to Germany, to
+study, and never a word was mentioned: he held his head high, the
+Captain did!
+
+We got news regular from little Essie White, that Miss Lisbet's outworn
+dresses used to go to.  She used to read an hour a day, did Miss
+Lisbet, to Essie's mother, who went blind, and she stocked Essie with
+flannels and such, as she grew.  I trained her in as kitchen maid when
+I was at The Cedars, and when help turned out so poor and scarce in the
+West--all ignorant Paddies, as we called them then--she sent to me and
+I sped Essie out to her, and a good job, too, for she was in no state
+to be worrying out her precious health over dust and dirt and victuals!
+
+Essie wrote us long letters, how Miss Lisbet was the belle of the post
+and had a night school for the private soldiers started, with officers'
+ladies to teach, and took all the charge of the little hospital.  Mrs.
+Jarvis sent her rules and saving ways and many clever contrivances from
+all her experience in the South, and long after the La Salles left that
+post the night school was kept up--and may be now, for aught I know,
+for it seemed that all she planted, grew.  Balls they gave and private
+theatricals and riding parties, and Essie said she was happy as the day
+was long, but for that she felt she might have done so much for the
+world with Madam's money.  She wanted schools in all the army posts and
+the negroes taught farming and goodness knows what not, you see.
+
+But when little Louis came there was no time for all that, I promise
+you!  It broke my heart not to be with her, but mother was failing,
+slow but sure, and 'twould have been sin to leave her.
+
+But I heard all his sweet ways and when he was creeping, and how he
+called my poor old picture "Dody" (bless him!) and hardly was he ready
+for his kilts but his brother was stepping into his shoes!  Named for
+her father he was, and the image of the first, that was the image of
+the Major.  She took the care of them mostly, herself, for she didn't
+like the rough girls out there, and had only Essie and a woman for
+washing, and I didn't need Essie's letters to tell me she was tired and
+worn-like.  It seemed a poor kind of life for one that had had a half
+dozen of servants and gardens and grape houses and her
+saddle-horse--but she wouldn't have changed for Windsor Castle, I well
+knew.
+
+And next I heard, they were to move, very sudden, and the garden just
+planted and all, and worst of all, Essie had lost her heart to a
+corporal and was to stay behind.  At the time I blamed her sorely and
+wrote her a bitter letter, but, dearie me, life is life for all of us,
+and Miss Lisbet wasn't her treasure as she was mine.  We made it up
+later, Essie and me.
+
+My dear wrote me herself, the saddest letter that ever I had from her,
+I believe.  The old mahogany pieces had been stored, very careful, and
+burned in the storage, and the linen was out and the china broken, and
+the new baby would find but a poor house, she feared, when they should
+be settled.  Could I find her one for Essie's place?  And oh, if only
+she could see my face, for she dreaded her coming trial, with every one
+strange!
+
+I was sitting in my new black, when I read the letter, with poor mother
+free of her rheumatics at last, and all soft as I was from it, I cried
+and cried!
+
+I wrote her that I'd find some one, and then I went to the old doctor
+and we talked and twisted it this way and that, and he went up to The
+Cedars and called on Madam's heir-at-law, a crabbed old cousin that
+lived much to himself and saw only the doctor, and the end of it was
+that I was to pick out what I thought Miss Lisbet would like in the
+matter of furniture, for he used but a third of the rooms, and what
+linen and stuff his housekeeper thought could be spared.
+
+And wasn't I glad to hear that, for well I knew the housekeeper, a good
+woman who'd nursed turn about with mother for years, and had seen my
+young lady grow up!
+
+Well, if I do say it of myself, I stripped The Cedars thorough!  And
+yet a stranger would hardly know.  It was full, do you see, from many
+generations, and overflowing, and I furnished three bedrooms, complete,
+from the garrets!  Blankets I got, and a trunk of towels, and seven
+woven bedspreads, and a dining-table that Miss Lisbet's mother's mother
+had eaten a wedding dinner at, and the stuffed macaw on his ebony
+perch!  Eight dozen dinner napkins that had never seen the laundry, and
+carpets that the moths were sure to take if I didn't!  And brass
+fire-irons and a great chest of books and some heads of statues she'd
+always liked, and big engravings of foreign places, broken old ruins
+and such.  And her nursery fittings, that had never been touched, I
+took entire--fire guard and small chairs, Moses in the Bulrushes,
+little kneeling Samuel and all!  And nearly everything from her lovely
+bedroom--chintz valances, and the little South American
+dressing-cabinet, and the china-set in a strawed barrel.  _I_ knew what
+she loved--who better?  And the old doctor got the whole car-load
+across the country free as air for me, through a gentleman that had
+heard how much Miss Lisbet had done in the War, and that as good as
+owned the railroad.  He had us met with mules, too, at the end of the
+horrid, dusty trip; and when me and little Maria Riggs (niece of a tidy
+widow-woman Miss Lisbet had had chair-caning taught to, so that she had
+no need to come on the town) got to the new home, we found only a
+neighbor to give us the keys.  The Major was off on army matters for a
+week, and she had taken the two boys and gone on a visit to a new
+friend she'd made, and left things all hugger-mugger, from despair and
+tiredness, poor girl!
+
+I was quite as well pleased, and Maria and I swept and cleaned and
+nailed carpets and hung pictures and clear-starched muslin curtains and
+filled shelves and drawers, as happy as queens.  And round the house I
+planted out the five old vines I'd brought all moist and good in an
+open basket, from The Cedars, and in the garden that a fine,
+fresh-faced soldierman, English as could be, dug and spaded for me,
+what did I put in but _larkspur seeds_, amongst the sweet williams and
+pansies and mignonette!
+
+Well, she came back, expecting nothing, do you see, and there at the
+door was I, in black, with white cuffs and apron, and little Maria
+curtseying behind me.  And the old claw-leg card-table in the hall and
+the glass with the gilt eagle above it.
+
+"Rhoda!  _Rhoda!_" she screams, and gives one look at the statues and
+pictures and new carpet in the drawing-room and faints on the floor!
+And I nearly crazy for being such a fool at such a time!
+
+None the less, the third boy was born in his mother's old four-posted
+bed, as beautiful as a king, and her living picture.  Stanchon La Salle
+he was, for the old doctor, who never bore her a moment's grudge, mind
+you, on Master Dick's account.
+
+"He's a fine man, Rhoda, and I doubt if Dick could have managed her
+right," was all he ever said to me.  "She has a great spirit."
+
+And then the time went by like the water under a bridge.  She'd no more
+worries about drudging, for Maria and I did all, with the English
+soldierman for rough jobs; but she had her hands full with the boys,
+for the Major didn't want them sent back to the East to school, and she
+had all the teaching and training of them, to say nothing of the care
+of them, growing.  Nine years we lived there, and then Master Louis was
+off to West Point, and in two years more his brother, and one day--it
+seemed the next day but two or three!--we were packing Master
+Stanchon's trunk to go to Yale College, where his father went!  We
+rubbed our eyes and sat alone, and there was the macaw she got for her
+tenth birthday looking at us!  And I do assure you, I felt much the
+same as ever.  Which I had heard people say, as a girl, and felt to be
+unbecoming.
+
+The Colonel was pretty nigh to white hair, but firm and strong, and she
+was grey, but not a wrinkle, and very beautiful.  He was to leave the
+service and had been offered a post in government, somehow, at
+Washington, when just as we were beginning to worry if his eyes could
+stand the book-work, the lawyer's letter came.
+
+It seemed too good to be true.  Old, crabbed Mr. Hawkes was long ago
+dead, and The Cedars closed, and his heir, a very curious woman, had
+felt that Miss Lisbet was defrauded, and left everything to her in her
+will!  So we were to go back, and it cleared so many worries that we
+cried together.
+
+"And now, Rhoda, now for a chance to do something!" she says, suddenly.
+
+I only stared at her.
+
+"Why, Miss Lisbet, you've been doing since you were born!" I cried.
+
+"Oh, Rhoda, you know!" she says, coaxing, "only for those near me, and
+in such a small way!  Now the boys are started, and no more worry for
+the Colonel, and you and I can do something that will last!"
+
+And laughing like a girl, if she didn't fly out to the garden and find
+our frost-bitten, yellow larkspur, the last!
+
+"See!" says she, and began to wave it.
+
+"Oh, don't, don't!" says I, anxious-like, "and you to be a grandmother
+next year, maybe!" (for Louis was to be married to a New York young
+lady in the winter).
+
+But she would, and when she asked, half laughing, half frightened:
+
+"_Am I to do what I have longed for all my life, at last?_" and
+stripped off the rotting blossoms, _yes, no, yes, no_--the last one
+fell.
+
+And before ever we reached The Cedars the Colonel had gone blind!
+
+Well, for five years she was never from his side one half hour at a
+time.  He said he blessed the blindness that gave him her hand at every
+moment, and it was a beautiful sight to see them together.  Riches
+makes such an affliction as light as it can ever be, that's certain,
+and he lived in luxury.  He held Louis's twin daughters in his arms and
+hoped to "see," as he called it, smiling, the next brother's, but it
+was not to be.
+
+Dr. Stanchon, as I learned at last to call Master Dick, said that he
+couldn't have had a moment's pain, and his own boy, named for the
+Colonel, carried him to the grave with our three.
+
+Mrs. Stanchon was a sweet soul, tied to a wheel-chair for life after
+five years married, and Miss Lisbet was forever doing things for her
+entertainment and to make her forget, like.  She never did too much,
+but just enough, and didn't stop with grapes and books, as many rich
+folk will, you know, but sat with her every other day, at least, with
+the Colonel by her side, listening to her bright talk.  I doubt the two
+of them realized, at those times, how afflicted they were!
+
+She never talked as if he was gone--always as if they'd only parted for
+a little.  Her hair was soon whiter than his, and she walked and moved
+very slow, for her, but the boys seemed to see no difference.
+
+Louis's wife was delicate and came to us, finally, till he should have
+an easier post, and the twins were not strong, like our babies.  Once
+we nearly lost them, and after that Granny Lisbet (as they called her)
+never took her eye off them, and pulled them through.  It seemed the
+village was full of sick children that year, and the mothers were crazy
+for her to look at every one.
+
+She was anxious to set up a regular nurse for the district, and gave a
+room for that purpose, with a lending closet, and arranged money for
+the nurse to be paid for ten years.  (They are quite common, now, but
+hers was the first in our parts.)
+
+"She's working too hard, Rhoda, my girl," says Dr. Stanchon.  "Her
+heart's not what she thinks.  Keep her quiet, can't you?"  But what
+could I do?
+
+I nearly cried, last June, when I'd got her out in the garden, that
+day, for a bit of quiet, and she began on her plans for the villages to
+be taxed for nurses and doctors, to keep off sickness!
+
+"The babies are all well, now," says she, "and Louis comes for his
+family to-morrow, and the twins are no trouble.  The nurse is all
+started in the village and I am going to see the Governor at Albany
+next week--I have an appointment.  Isn't it strange, Rhoda, that I am
+all but fifty, and only ready now to do something with my
+opportunities?  I've ten good years before me, and the Colonel shall be
+proud of me yet!"
+
+I felt so weak and sad all of a sudden--God knows why.  She rarely
+spoke of him.  I held her hand.
+
+"Why, look, Rhoda, there's a stalk of larkspur out!" she said.  "Go
+pick it for me, will you?"
+
+I started to say no, but then I saw but one bud on it and I thought to
+myself, "I'll see her pleased for once, I will!" knowing she'd never
+notice, and so brought it.  She waved it, blue above her white head
+(and me only iron grey to-day!)
+
+  "_Larkspur, larkspur, tell me true,_
+  _Or never again I'll trust to you,_"
+
+she mumbled like, and I thought her voice sounded strange and far away,
+somehow.
+
+"_Is a change coming at last in my narrow little life?_"
+
+"Oh, hush, Miss Lisbet! you that have been so much to so many!" says I,
+sobbing at her dear stupidness, and then she begins, yes--and that was
+all.
+
+"Why, Rhoda!" she cries, "at last, at last I've won!" and half rises in
+the garden-chair.  Then suddenly her hands went to her heart.
+
+"Why, Louis--Louis!  My dear!" she said, staring at the cedar hedge.
+"_Can you see?_"  And fell back.
+
+The change had come, indeed, and I and all that loved her hope that now
+she knows what a life like hers meant to those she lived among and
+blessed!
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon, by
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
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