diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/51928-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/51928-0.txt | 3497 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 3497 deletions
diff --git a/old/51928-0.txt b/old/51928-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6234197..0000000 --- a/old/51928-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3497 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dark Fleece, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Dark Fleece - -Author: Joseph Hergesheimer - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51928] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK FLEECE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - - -THE DARK FLEECE - -By Joseph Hergesheimer - -New York Alfred A. Knopf - -1922 - -Copyright, 1918, By Alfred A. Knopf - -Published, April, 1918, in a volume now out of print, entitled “Gold and -Iron,” and then reprinted twice. - - - - -OLIVE - - -|THE house in old Cottarsport in which Olive Stanes lived was set midway -on the steepness of Orange Street. It was a low dwelling of weathered -boards holding close to the rocky soil, resembling, like practically all -the Cottarsport buildings, the salt weed clinging to the seaward rocks -of the harbor; and Orange Street, narrow, without walks, and dipping -into cuplike depressions, was a type of almost all the streets. The -Stanes house was built with its gable to the public way; the length -faced a granite shoulder thrust up through the spare earth, a tall, -weedy disorder of golden glow, and the sedgy incline to the habitation -above. - -When Hester and Jem and then Rhoda were little they had had great joy of -the boulder in the side yard: it was for them first impossible and then -difficult of accomplishment; but they had rapidly grown into a complete -mastery of its potentialities as a fort, a mansion impressive as that of -the Canderays' on Regent Street, and a ship under the dangerous shore -of the Feejees. Olive, the solitary child of Ira Stanes' first marriage, -had had no such reckless pleasure from the rock---- - -She had been, she realized, standing in the narrow portico that -commanded by two steps the uneven flagging from the street, a -very careful, yes, considerate, child when measured by the gay -irresponsibility of her half brother and sisters. Money had been no more -plentiful in the Stanes family, nor in all Cottarsport, then than now; -her dresses had been few, she had been told not to soil or tear them, -and she had rigorously attended the instruction. - -The second Mrs. Stanes, otherwise an admirable wife and mother, had, to -Olive's young disapproval, rather encouraged a boisterous conduct in her -children which overlooked a complete cleanliness or tidy array. And when -she, like her predecessor, had died, and left Olive at twenty-three to -assume full maternal responsibilities, that serious vicarious parent had -entered into an inevitable and largely unavailing struggle against the -minor damage caused mostly by the activities about the boulder. - -Now Hester and Rhoda had left behind such purely imaginative games, -and Jem was away fishing on the Georges Bank; her duty and worries had -shifted, but not lessened; while the rock remained precisely as it -had been through the children's growth, as it had appeared in her own -earliest memories, as it was before ever the Stanes dwelling, now a -hundred and fifty years in place, or old Cottarsport itself, had been -dreamed of. Her thoughts were mixed: at once they created a vague -parallel between the granite in the side yard and herself, Olive -Stanes--they both seemed to have been so long in one spot, so unchanged; -and they dwelt on the fact that soon--as soon as Jason Burrage got -home--she must be utterly different. - -Jason had written her that, if they cared to, they could build a house -as large as the Canderays'. Under the circumstances she had been obliged -to look on that as, perhaps, an excusable exaggeration, though she -instinctively condemned the dereliction of the truth; yet, more than any -other figure could possibly have done, it impressed upon her, from the -boldness of the imagery, that Jason had succeeded in finding the gold -for which he had gone in search nine years before. He was coming back, -soon, rich. - -The other important fact reiterated in his last letter, that in all his -absent years of struggle he had never faltered in his purpose of coming -to her with any fortune he might chance to get, she regarded with -scant thought. It had not occurred to Olive that Jason Burrage would -do anything else; her only concern had been that he might be killed; -otherwise he had said that he loved her, and that they were to marry -when he returned. - -She hadn't, really, been in favor of his going. The Burrages, measured -by Cottarsport standards, were comfortably situated--Mr. Burrage's -packing warehouse and employment in dried fish were locally called -successful--but Jason had never been satisfied with familiar values; he -had always exclaimed against the narrowness of his local circumstance, -and restlessly reached toward greater possessions and a wider horizon. -This dissatisfaction Olive had thought wicked, in that it had seemed to -criticize the omnipotent and far-seeing wisdom of the Eternal; it had -caused her much unhappiness and prayer, she had talked very earnestly -to Jason about his stubborn spirit, but it had persisted in him, and at -last carried him west in the first madness of the discovery of gold in a -California river. - -Olive, at times, thought that Jason's revolt had been brought about by -the visible example of the worldly pomp of the Canderays--of their great -white house with the balustraded captain's walk on the gambreled roof, -their chaise, and equable but slightly disconcerting courtesy. But she -had been obliged to admit that, after all was said, Jason's bearing was -the result of his own fretful heart. - -He had always been different from the other Cottarsport youths and men: -while they were commonly long and bony, and awkwardly hung together, -thickly tanned by the winds and sun and spray of the sea, Jason was -small, compact, with dead black hair and pale skin. Mr. Burrage, who -resembled a worn and discolored piece of driftwood, was the usual -Cottarsport old man; but his wife, not conspicuously out of the -ordinary, still had a snap in her unfading eyes, a ruddy roundness of -cheek, that showed a lingering trace of a French Acadian intermarriage a -century and more ago. - -Olive always regarded with something like surprise her unquestioned love -for Jason. It had grown quietly, unknown to her, through a number -of preliminary years in which she had felt that she must exert some -influence for his good. He frightened her a little by his hot utterances -and by the manner in which his soul shivered on the verge of a righteous -damnation. The effort to preserve him from such destruction became -intenser and more involved; until suddenly, to her later consternation, -she had surrendered her lips in a single, binding kiss. - -But with that consummation a great deal of her troubling had ceased; -spiritual vision, she had been certain, must follow their sacred union -and subsequent life. Even the gold agitation and Jason's departure for -Boston and the western wild had not given her especial concern. God -was the supreme Master of human fate, and if He willed for Jason to -go forth, who was she, Olive Stanes, to make a to-do? She had quietly -addressed herself to the task of Hester, Jem, and Rhoda, to the ordering -of her father's household--he was mostly away on the sea and a solitary -man at home--and the formal recurrence of the occasions of the church. - -In such ways, she thought, bathed in the keen, pale red glow of a late -afternoon in October, her youth had slipped imperceptibly away. - -A strong salt wind dipped into the hollow, and plastered her skirt, -without hoops, against her erect, thin person. With the instinct, bred -by the sea, of the presence in all calculations of the weather, she -mechanically dwelt on its force and direction, wrinkling her forehead -and pinching her lips--she could hear the rising wind straining through -the elms on the hills behind Cottarsport--and then she turned abruptly -and entered the house. - -There was a small dark hallway within, a narrow flight of stairs leading -sharply up; the door on the right, to the formal chamber, was closed; -but at the left an interior of somber scrubbed wood was visible. On -the side against the hall a cavernous fireplace, with a brick hearth, -blackened with shadows and the soot of ancient fires, had been left -open, but held an air-tight sheet-iron stove. The windows, high on the -walls, were small and long, rather than deep; and a table, perpetually -spread, stood on a thick hooked rug of brilliant, primitive design. - -Rhoda, in a creaking birch rocker, was singing an inarticulated song -with closed eyes. Her voice, giving the impression of being subdued, -filled the room with its vibrant power. She had a mature face for -sixteen years, vividly colored and sensitive, a wide mouth, and heavy -twists of russet hair with metallic lights. The song stopped as Olive -entered. Rhoda said: - -“I wish Hester would hurry home; I'm dreadful hungry.” - -“Sometimes they keep her at the packing house, especially if there's a -boat in late and extra work.” - -“It's not very smart of her without being paid more. They'll just put -anything on you they can in this stingy place. I can tell you I wouldn't -do two men's work for a woman's pay. I'm awful glad Jason's coming -back soon, Olive, with all that money, and I can go to Boston and study -singing.” - -“I've said over and over, Rhoda,” Olive replied patiently, “that you -mustn't think and talk all the time about Jason's worldly success. It -doesn't sound nice, but like we were all trying to get everything we -could out of him before ever he's here.” - -“Didn't he say in the last letter that I was to go to Boston?” Rhoda -exclaimed impatiently. “Didn't he just up and tell me that? Why, with -all the gold Jason's got it won't mean anything for him to send me away. -It isn't as if I wouldn't pay you all back for the trouble I've been. I -know I can sing, and I'll work harder than ever Hester dreamed of----” - -As if materialized by the pronunciation of her name, the latter entered -the room. “Gracious, Hester,” Rhoda declared distastefully, making a -nose, “you smell of dead haddock right this minute.” Hester, unlike -Rhoda's softly rounded proportions, was more bony than Olive, infinitely -more colorless, although ten years the younger. She had a black worsted -scarf over her drab head in place of a hat, its ends wrapped about her -meager shoulders and bombazine waist. Without preliminary she dropped -into her place at the supper table, the shawl trailing on the broad, -uneven boards of the floor. - -“The wind's smartening up on the bay,” she told them. “Captain Eagleston -looks for half a blow. It has got cold, too. I wish the tea'd be ready -when I get in from the packing house. It seems that much could be done, -with Olive only sitting around and Rhoda singing to herself in the -mirror on her dresser.” - -“It'll draw in a minute more,” Olive said in the door from the kitchen, -beyond the fireplace. Rhoda smiled cheerfully. - -“I suppose,” Hester went on, in a voice without emphasis that yet -contrived to be thinly bitter, “you were all talking about what would -happen when Jason came home with that fortune of his. Far as I can see -he's promised and provided for everybody, Jem and Rhoda and his parents -and Olive, every Tom and Noddy, but me.” - -“I don't like to keep on about it,” Olive protested, pained. “Yet you -can't see, Hester, how independent you are. A person wouldn't like to -offer you anything until you had signified. You were never very nice -with Jason anyway.” - -“Well, I'm not going to be nicer after he's back with gold in his -pocket. I guess he'll find I'm not hanging on his shoulder for a -cashmere dress or a trip to Boston.” - -“Pa ought to get into Salem soon,” Rhoda observed. “He said after this -he wasn't going to ship again, even along the coast, but tally fish for -Mr. Burrage. Pa's getting old.” - -“And Jem'll be home from the Georges, too,” Olive added, seating herself -with the tea. “I do hope he won't sign for China or any of those long -voyages like he threatened.” - -“He won't get so far away from Jason,” Hester stated. - -“I saw Honora Canderay today,” Rhoda informed them. “She wasn't in the -carriage, but walking past the courthouse. She had on a small bonnet -with flowers inside the brim and skimpy hoops, gallooned and scalloped.” - -“Did she stop?” Olive inquired. - -“Yes, and said I was as bright as a fall maple leaf. I wish I could look -like Honora Canderay-----” - -“Wait till Jason's back,” Hester interrupted. - -“It isn't her clothes,” Rhoda went on; “they're elegant material, of -course, but not the colors I'd choose; nor it isn't her looks, either, -no one would say she's downright pretty; it's just--just her. Is she as -old as you, Olive?” - -“Let's see, I'm thirty-six, and Honora Canderay was... she's near as -old, a year younger maybe.” - -“She is wonderful to get close to,” said Rhoda, “no cologne and yet a -lovely kind of smell----” - -“Not like dead haddock.” This was Hester again. - -“Do you know,” proceeded the younger, “she seemed to me kind of lonely. -I wanted to give her a hug, but I wouldn't have for all the gold in -California. I can't make out if she is freezing outside and nice in, or -just polite and thinks nobody's good enough for her. She had an India -shawl as big as a sail, with palm leaf ends, and----” - -“Rhoda, I wish you wouldn't put so much on clothes and such corruption.” - Olive spoke firmly, with a light of zeal in her gaze. “Can't you think -on the eternities?” - -“Like Jason Burrage and Honora Canderay,” explained Hester; “Honora -Canderay and Jason Burrage. They're eternities if there ever were any. -If it isn't one it's bound to be the other.” - -***** - -Olive's room had a sloping outer wall and casually placed insufficient -windows; her bed, with a blue-white quilt, was supported by heavy maple -posts; there were a chest of drawers, with a minute mirror stand, a -utilitarian wash-pitcher and basin, a hanging for the protection of her -clothes, and uncompromising chairs. A small circular table with a tatted -cover held her Bible and a devotional book, “The Family Companion, by a -Pastor.” It was cold when she went up to bed; with a desire to linger in -her preparations, she put some resinous sticks of wood into a sheet-iron -stove, and almost immediately there was a busily exploding combustion. A -glass lamp on the chest of drawers shed a pale illumination that failed -to reach the confines of the room; and, for a while, she moved in and -out of its wan influence. - -She was thinking fixedly about Jason Burrage, and the great impending -change in her condition, not in its worldly implications--she thought -mostly of material values in the spirit of her admonitions to Rhoda--but -in its personal and inner force. At times a pale question of her -aptitude for marriage disturbed her serenity; at times she saw it as -a sacrifice of her being to a condition commanded of God, a species -of martyrdom even. The nine years of Jason's absence had fixed certain -maidenly habits of privacy; the mold of her life had taken a definite -cast. Her existence had its routine, the recurrence of Sunday, its -contemplations, duties, and heavenly aim. And, lately, Jason's letters -had disturbed her. - -They seemed filled with an almost wicked pride and a disconcerting -energy; he spoke of things instinctively distressing to her; there were -hints of rude, Godless force and gaiety--allusions to the Jenny Lind -Theatre, the El Dorado, which she apprehended as a name of evil import, -and to the excursions they would make to Boston or as far as New York. - -Jason, too, she realized, must have developed; and California, she -feared, might have emphasized exactly such traits as she would wish -suppressed. The power of self-destruction in the human heart she -believed immeasurable. All, all, must throw themselves in abject -humility upward upon the Rock of Salvation. And she could find -nothing humble in Jason's periods, burdened as they were with a patent -satisfaction in the success of his venture. - -Yet parallel with this was a gladness that he had triumphed, and that he -was coming back to Cottarsport a figure of importance. She could measure -that by the attitude of their town, by the number and standing of the -people who cordially stopped her on the street for the purposes of -congratulation and curiosity. Every one, of course, had known of their -engagement; there had been a marked interest when Jason and a fellow -townsman, Thomas Gast, had departed; but that would be insignificant -compared to the permanent bulk Jason must now assume. Why he and the -Canderays would be Cottarsport's most considerable people. - -As always, at the merest thought of the Canderays, personal facts were -suspended for a mental glance at that separate family. There was no -sense of inferiority in Olive's mind, but an instinctive feeling of -difference. This wasn't the result of their big house, nor because the -Captain's wife had been a member of Boston society, but resided in the -contrariness of the family itself, now centered in Honora, the only one -alive. - -Perhaps Honora's diversity lay in the fact that, while she seldom -actually left Cottarsport, it was easy to see that she had a part in a -life far beyond anything Olive, whose consciousness was strictly -limited to one narrow place, knew. She always suggested a wider and more -elegantly finished existence than that of local sociables and church -activities. Captain Ithiel Canderay, a member of a Cottarsport family -long since moved away, had, from obscure surprising promptings, returned -at his successful retirement from the sea, and built his impressive -dwelling in the grey community. He had always, however different the -tradition of his wife's attitude, entered with a candid spirit into the -interests and life of the town, where he had inspired solid confidence -in a domineering but unimpeachable integrity. Such small civic honors as -the locality had to bestow were his, and were discharged to the last and -most exacting degree. But there had been perpetually about him the aloof -air of the quarter-deck, his tones had never lost the accent of command; -and, while Cottarsport bitterly guarded its personal equality and -independence, it took a certain pride in a recognition of the Captain's -authority. - -Something of this had unquestionably descended upon Honora; her position -was made and zealously guarded by the town. Yet that alone failed to -hold the reason for Olive's feeling; it was at once more particular and -more all-embracing, and largely feminine. She was almost contemptuous -of the other's delicacy of person, of the celebrated fact that Honora -Canderay never turned her hand to the cooking of a dish or the sweeping -of a stair; and at the same time these very things lifted her apart from -Olive's commonplace round. - -Her mind turned again to herself and Jason's home-coming. He had been -wonderfully generous in his written promises to Rhoda and Jem; and he -would be equally thoughtful of Hester, she was certain of that. People -had a way of overlooking Hester, a faithful and, for all her talk, a -Christian character. Rhoda would study to be a singer; striving, Olive -hoped, to put what talent she had to a sanctioned use; and Jem, a -remarkably vigorous and able boy of eighteen, would command his own -fishing schooner. - -The sheet-iron stove glowed cherry red with the energy of its heat, and -a blast of wind rushed against the windows. The wind, she recognized, -had steadily grown in force; and Olive thought of her father in the -barque _Emerald_ of Salem, somewhere between Richmond and the home -port.... The lamplight swelled and diminished. - -She got a new pleasure from the conjunction of her surrender -to matrimony and the good it would bring the others; -that--self-sacrifice--was excellence; such subjection of the pride of -the flesh was the essence of her service. Then some mundane affairs -invaded her mind: a wedding dress, the preparation of food for a small -company after the ceremony, whether she should like having a servant. -Jason would insist on that; and there she decided in the negative. She -wouldn't be put upon in her own kitchen. - -Her arrangements for the night were complete, and she set the stove door -slightly open, shivering in her coarse night dress before the icy cold -drifts of wind in the room, extinguished the lamp, and, after long, -conscientiously deliberate prayers, got into bed. The wind boomed about -the house, rattling all the sashes. Its force now seemed to be buffeting -her heart until she got a measure of release from the thought of the -granite boulder in the side yard, changeless and immovable. - -The morning was gusty, with a coldly blue and cloudless sky. Olive, -reaching the top of Orange Street, was whipped with dust, her hoops -flattened grotesquely against her body. The town fell away on either -hand, lying in a half moon on its harbor. The latter, as blue and bright -as the sky, was formed by the rocky arm of Cottar's Neck, thrust out -into the sea and bent from right to left. Most of the fishing fleet -showed their bare spars at the wharves, but one, a minute fleck of -white canvas, was beating her way through the Narrows. She wondered, -descending, if it were Jem coming home. - -Olive was going to the Burrages'; it was possible that they had had a -later letter than hers from Jason. It might be he would arrive that -very day. She was conscious of her heart throbbing slightly at this -possibility, but from a complexity of emotions which still left her -uneasy if faintly exhilarated. She crossed the courthouse square, where -she saw that the green grass had become brown, apparently over night, -and turned into Marlboro Street. Here the houses were more recent than -the Staneses'; they were four square, with a full second story--a series -of detached white blocks with flat porticoes--each set behind a wood -fence in a lawn with flower borders or twisted and tree-like lilacs. - -She entered the Burrage dwelling without the formality of knocking; and, -familiar with the household, passed directly through a narrow, darkened -hall, on which all the doors were closed, to the dining room and kitchen -beyond. As she had known he would be, Hazzard Burrage was seated with -his feet, in lamb's wool slippers, thrust under the stove. For the rest, -but lacking his coat, he was formally and completely dressed; his corded -throat was folded in a formal black stock, a watch chain and seal hung -across his waistcoat. Mrs. Burrage was occupied in lining a cupboard -with fresh shelf paper with a cut lace border. She was a small woman, -with quick exact movements and an impatient utterance; but her husband -was slow--a man who deliberately studied the world with a deep-set gaze. - -“I thought you might have heard,” Olive stated directly, on the edge of -a painted split-hickory chair. They hadn't, Mrs. Burrage informed her: -“I expect he'll just come walking in. That's the way he always did -things, and I guess California, or anywhere else, won't change him to -notice it. And when he does,” she continued, “he's going to be put out -with Hazzard. I told you Jason sent us three thousand dollars to get the -front of the house fixed up. He said he didn't want to find his father -sitting in the kitchen when he got back. Jason said we were to burn -three or four stoves all at once. But he won't, and that's all there is -to it. Why, he just put the money in the bank and there it lies. I read -him the parable about the talents, but it didn't stir him an inch.” - -“Jason always was quick acting,” Hazzard Burrage declared; “he never -stopped to consider; and it's as like as not he'll need that money. It -wouldn't surprise me if when he sat down and counted what he had Jason'd -find it was less than he thought.” - -“He wrote me,” Olive stated, “that we could build a house as big as the -Canderays'.” - -“Jason always was one to talk,” Mrs. Burrage replied in defense of her -son. - -Olive moved over to the older woman and held the dishes to be replaced -in the cupboard. They commented on the force of the wind throughout the -night. “The tail end of a blow at sea,” Bur-rage told them; “I wouldn't -wonder but it reached right down to the West Indies.” - -“I hope he brings me a grey satinet pelerine like I wrote,” said Mrs. -Burrage. She was obviously flushed at the thought of the possession -of such a garment--a fact which Olive felt, at the other's age, to be -inappropriate to the not distant solemnity of the Christian ordeal of -death. She repeated automatically: “... turn from these vanities unto -the living God.” She rose: - -“I'll let you know if I hear anything, and anyhow stop in tomorrow.” - -Outside, sere leaves were whirling in grey funnels of dust, the intense -blue bay sparkled under the cobalt sky; and, leaving Marlboro Street -with a hand on her bonnet, she ran directly into Honora Canderay. - -“Oh!” Olive exclaimed, breathless and slightly concerned. “Indeed if I -saw you, Honora; the wind was that strong pulling at a person.” - -“What does it matter?” Honora replied. She was wrapped from throat to -hem in a cinnamon colored velvet cloak that, fluttering, showed a lining -of soft, quilted yellow. In the flood of morning her skin was flawless; -her delicate lips and hazel eyes held the faint mockery that was the -visible sign of her disturbing quality. She laid a hand, in a short, -furred kid glove, on Olive's arm. - -“I am so pleased about Jason's success,” she continued, in a clear -insistent voice. “You must be mad with anxiety to have him back. It's -the most romantic thing in the world. Aren't you thrilled to the soul?” - -“I'm glad to--to know he's been preserved,” Olive stammered, confused by -Honora's frank speech. - -“You sound exactly as if he were a jar of quinces,” the other answered -impatiently; “and not a true lover coming back from California with bags -of gold.” - -Olive's confusion deepened to painful embarrassment at the indelicate -term lover. She wondered, hotly red, how Honora could go on so, and made -a motion to continue on her way. But the other's fingers closed and held -her. “I wonder, Olive,” she said more thoughtfully, “if I know you well -enough, if you will allow me, to give you some advice. It is this--don't -be too rigid with Jason when he gets back. For nearly ten years he's -been out in a life very different from Cottarsport, and he must have -changed in that time. Here we stay almost the same--ten or twenty or -fifty years is nothing really. The fishing boats come in, they may -have different names, but they are the same. We stop and talk, Honora -Canderay and Olive Stanes, and years before and years later women will -stand here and do the same with beliefs no wider than your finger. -But it isn't like that outside; and Jason will have that advantage of -us--things really very small, but which have always seemed tremendous -here, will mean no more to him than they are worth. He will be careless, -perhaps, of your most cherished ideas; and, if you are to meet him -fairly, you must try to see through his eyes as well as your own. Truly -I want you to be happy, Olive; I want every one in Cottarsport to be as -happy... as they can.” - -Olive's embarrassment increased: it was impossible to know what Honora -Canderay meant by her last words, in that echoing voice. Nevertheless, -her independence of spirit, the long nourished tenets of the abhorrence -of sin, asserted themselves in the face of even Honora's directions. “I -trust,” she replied stiffly, “that Jason has been given grace to walk in -the path of God----” She stopped with lips parted, her breath laboring -with shock, at the interruption pronounced in ringing accents. Honora -Canderay said: - -“Grace be damned!” - -Olive backed away with her hands pressed to her cheeks. In the midst of -her shuddering surprise she realized how much the other resembled her -father, the captain. - -“I suppose,” Honora further ventured, “that you are looking for a -bolt of lightning, but it is late in the season for that. There are no -thunder storms to speak of after September.” She turned abruptly, and -Olive watched her depart, gracefully swaying against the wind. - -***** - -All Olive's unformed opinions and attitude concerning Honora Canderay -crystallized into one sharp, intelligible feeling--dislike. The breadth -of being which the other had seemed to possess was now revealed as -nothing more than a lack of reverence. She was inexpressibly upset by -Honora's profanity, the blasphemous mind it exhibited, her attempted -glossing of sin. It was nothing less. In the assault on Olive's most -fundamental verities--the contempt which, she divined, had been offered -to the edifice of her conscience and creed--she responded blindly, -instinctively, with an overwhelming condemnation. At the same time she -was frightened, and hurried away from the proximity of such unsanctified -talk. She did not go to Citron Street, and the shops, as she had -intended; but kept directly on until she found herself at the harbor -and wharves. The latter serrated the water's edge, projecting from the -relatively tall, bald warehouses, reeking with the odor of dead fish, -cut open and laid in salt, grey-white areas to the sun and wind. - -A small group of men, with flat bronzed countenances and rough furze -coats, uneasily stirred their hats, in the local manner of saluting -women, and turned to gaze fixedly at her as she passed. Even in her -perturbation of mind she was conscious of their unusual scrutiny. She -couldn't, now, for the life of her, recall what needed to be bought; -and, mounting the narrow uneven way from the water, she proceeded home. - -Some towels, laid on the boulder to dry, had not been sufficiently -weighted, and hung blown and crumpled on a lilac bush. These she -collected, rearranged, complaining of the blindness of whoever might be -about the house, and then proceeded within. There, to her amazement, -she found Hester, in the middle of the morning, and Rhoda bent over the -dinner table, sobbing into her arm. Hester met her with a drawn face -darkly smudged beneath the eyes. - -“The _Emerald_ was lost off the Cape,” she said; “sunk with all on -board. A man came over from Salem to tell us. He had to go right back. -Pa, he's lost.” - -Olive sank into a chair with limp hands. Rhoda continued uninterrupted -her sobbing, while Hester went on with her recital in a thin, blank -voice. “The ship _J. Q. Adams_ stood by the _Emerald_, but there was -such a sea running she couldn't do anything else. They just had to see -the _Emerald_, with the men in the rigging, go under. That's what he -said who was here. They just had to see Pa drown before their eyes.... -The wind was something terrible.” - -A deep, dry sorrow constricted Olive's, heart. Suddenly the details of -packing her father's blue sea chest returned to her mind--the wool socks -she had knitted and carefully folded in the bottom, the needles and -emery and thread stowed in their scarlet bag, the tin of goose grease -for his throat, the Bible that had been shipped so often. She thought of -them all scattered and rent in the wild sea, of her father---- - -She forced herself to rise, with a set face, and put her hand on Rhoda's -shoulder. “It's right to mourn, like Rachel, but don't forget the -majesty of God.” Rhoda shook off her palm and continued in an ecstasy of -emotional relief. Olive hardened. “Get up,” she commanded; “we must fix -things here, for the neighbors and Pastor will be in. I wish Jem were -back.” - -At this Rhoda became even more unrestrained, and Olive remembered that -Jem too was at sea, and that probably he had been caught in the same -gale. “He'll be all right,” she added quickly; “the fishing boats live -through everything.” - -Yet she was infinitely relieved when, two days later, Jem arrived -safely home. He came into the house with a pounding of heavy boots, a -powerfully built youth with a rugged jaw and an intent quiet gaze. “I -heard at the wharf,” he told Olive. They were in the kitchen, and he -pulled off his boots and set them away from the stove. - -“I'm thankful you're so steady and able,” she said. - -“I am glad Jason's coming home--rich,” he replied tersely. Later, after -supper, while they still sat at the table, he went on, “There is a fine -yawl for sale at Ipswich, sails ain't been made a year, fifty-five tons; -I could do right good with that. The fishing's never been better. Do -you think Jason would be content to buy her, Olive? I could pay him back -after a run or two.” - -“He told you he'd do something like that,” she answered. “I guess now it -wouldn't mean much to him.” - -“And I'll be away,” Rhoda eagerly added; “you wouldn't have to give me -anything, Jem. Jason promised me, too.” - -An unreasonable and disturbing sense of insecurity enveloped Olive. But, -of course, it would be all right--Jason was coming back rich, to marry -her. Jem would have the yawl and Rhoda get away to study singing. And -yet all that she vaguely dreaded about Jason himself persisted darkly at -the back of her consciousness, augmented by Honora Canderay's warning. -She was a little afraid of Jason, too; in a way, after so long, he -seemed like a stranger, a stranger whom she was going to wed. - -“He'll be all dressed up,” Rhoda stated. “I hope, Olive, you will kiss -him as soon as he steps through the door. I know I would.” - -“Don't be so shameless, Rhoda,” the elder admonished her. “You are very -indelicate. I'd never think of kissing Jason like that.” - -“I will go over and see the man who owns her,” Jem said enigmatically. -“She's a cockpit boat, but I heard the wave wasn't made that could fill -her. And we have my share of the last run till Jason's here.” - -He paid this faithfully into Olive's hand the next day and then -disappeared. She thought he came through the door again: someone stood -behind her. Olive turned slowly and saw an impressive figure in stiff -black broadcloth and an incredibly high glassy silk hat. - -***** - -She knew instinctively that it must be Jason Burrage, and yet the -feeling of strangeness persisted. All sense of the time which had -elapsed since Jason went was lost in the illusion that the figure -familiar to her through years of knowledge and association had -instantly, by a species of magic, been transformed into the slightly -smiling, elaborate man in the doorway. She stepped backward, -hesitatingly pronouncing his name. - -“Olive,” he exclaimed, with a deep, satisfied breath, “it hasn't changed -a particle!” To her extreme relief he did not make a move to embrace -her; but gazed intently about the room. One of the things that made him -seem different, she realized, was the rim of whiskers framing his -lower face. She became conscious of details of his appearance--baggy -dove-colored trousers over glazed boots, a quince yellow waistcoat in -diamond pattern, a cluster of seals. Then her attention was held by his -countenance, and she saw that his clothes were only an insignificant -part of his real difference from the man she had known. - -Jason Burrage had always had a set will, the reputation of an impatient, -even ugly disposition. This had been marked by a sultry lip and -flickering eye; but now, though his expression was noticeably quieter, -it gave her the impression of a glittering and dangerous reserve; his -masklike calm was totally other than the mobile face she had known. -Then, too, he had grown much older--she swiftly computed his age: it -could not be more than forty-two, yet his hair was thickly stained -with grey, lines starred the comers of his eyes and drew faintly at his -mouth. - -“Are you glad to see me, Olive?” he asked. - -“Why, Jason, what an unnecessary question. Of course I am, more thankful -than I can say for your safety.” - -“I walked across the hills from the Dumner stage,” he proceeded. “It -was something to see Cottarsport on its bay and the Neck and the fishing -boats at Planger's wharf. I'd like to have an ounce of gold for every -time I thought about it and pictured it and you. Out on the placers of -the Calaveras, or the Feather, I got to believing there wasn't any such -town, but here it is.” He advanced toward her; she realized that she was -about to be kissed, and a painful color dyed her cheeks. - -“You'll stop for supper,” she said practically. - -“I haven't been home yet, I came right here; I'll see them and be back. -I'll bet I find them in the kitchen, with the front stoves cold, in -spite of what I wrote and sent. I brought you a present, just for fun, -and I'll leave it now, since it's heavy.” He bent over a satchel at his -feet and got a buckskin bag, bigger than his two fists, which he dropped -with a dull thud on the table. - -“What is it, Jason?” she asked. But of herself she knew the answer. He -untied a string, and, dipping in his fingers, showed her a fine yellow -metallic trickle. “Gold dust, two tumblers full,” he replied. “We used -to measure it that way--a pinch a dollar, teaspoonful to the ounce, a -wineglass holds a hundred, and a tumbler a thousand dollars.” - -She was breathless before the small shapeless pouch that held such a -staggering amount. He laughed. “Why, Olive, it's nothing at all. I just -brought it like that so you could see how we carried it in California. -We are all rich now, Olive--the Burrages, and you're one, and the -Staneses. I have close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” - -This sum was little more to her than a fable, a thing beyond the scope -of her comprehension; but the two thousand dollars before her gaze was -a miracle made manifest. There it was to study, feel; subconsciously she -inserted her hand in the bag, into the cold, smooth particles. - -“A hundred and fifty thousand,” he repeated; “but if you think I didn't -work for it, if you suppose I picked it right out of a pan on the -river bars, why--why, you are wrong.” Words failed him to express the -erroneousness of such conclusions. “I slaved like a Mexican,” he added; -“and in bad luck almost to the end.” She sat and gazed at him with an -easier air and a growing interest, her hands clasped in her lap. “What I -didn't know when I left Cottarsport was wonderful. - -“Why, take the mining,” he said with a gesture; “I mean the bowl -mining at first... just the heavy work in it killed off most of the -prospectors--all day with a big iron pan, half full of clay and gravel, -sloshing about in those rivers. And maybe you'd work a month without a -glimmer, waking wet and cold under the sierras, whirling the pan round -and round; and maybe when you had the iron cleared out with a magnet, -and dropped in the quicksilver, what gold was there wouldn't amalgam. I -can tell you, Olive, only the best, or the hardest, came through.” - -He produced a blunt, tapering cigar and lighted it expansively. - -“A lonely and dangerous business: every one carried his dust right on -his body, and there were plenty would risk a shot at a miner coming -back solitary with his donkey and his pile. It got better when the new -methods came, and we used a rocker-hollowed out of a log. Then four of -us went in partnership--one to dig the gravel, one to carry it to the -cradle, another to keep it rocking, and the last to pour in the water. -Then we drawed off the gold and sand through a plug hole. - -“We did fine at that,” he told her, “and in the fall of 'Fifty cleaned -up eighteen thousand apiece. Then we had an argument: we were in the -Yuba country, where it was kind of bad; two of us, and I was one of -them, said to divide the dust, and get out best we could; but the others -wanted to send all the gold to San Francisco in charge of one of them -and a man who was going down with more dust. We finally agreed to this -and lost every ounce we'd mined. The escort said they were shot by some -of the disbanded California army, but I'm not sure. It seemed to me -like our two had met somewhere, killed the other, and got the gold to -rights.” - -“O Jason!” Olive exclaimed. - -“That was nothing,” he said complacently; “but only a joker to start -with. I did a lot of things then to get a new outfit--sold peanuts on -the Plaza in 'Frisco, or hollered the New York _Tribune_ at a dollar and -a half a copy; I washed glasses in a saloon and drove mules. After that -I took a steamer for Stocton and the Calaveras. You ought to have seen -Stocton, Olive--board shanties and blanket houses and tents, with two -thieves left hanging on a gallows. We went from there, a party of us, -for the north bank of the Calaveras, tramping in dust so hot that it -scorched your face. Sluicing had just started and long Toms--a long Tom -is a short placer--so we didn't know much about it. Looking back I can -see the gold was there; but after working right up to the end of the -season we had no more than a couple of thousand apiece. There were too -many of us to start with. - -“Well, I drifted back to San Francisco.” He paused, and the expression -which had most disturbed her deepened on his countenance, a stillness -like the marble of a gravestone guarding implacable secrets. - -“San Francisco is different from Cottarsport, Olive,” he said after a -little. “Here you wouldn't believe there was such a place; and there -Cottarsport seemed too safe to be true... Well, I went after it again, -this time as far north as Shasta. I prospected from the Shasta country -south, and got a good lump together again. By then placer mining was -better understood; we had sluice boxes two or three hundred feet long, -connected with the streams, with strips nailed across the bottom where -the gold and sand settled as the water ran through. Yes, I did well; and -then fluming began. - -“That,” he explained, “is damming a river around its bed and washing -the opened gravel. It takes a lot of money, a lot of work and men; and -sometimes it pays big, and often it doesn't. I guess there were fifty of -us at it. We slaved all the dry season at the dam and flume, a big wood -course for the stream; we had wing dams for the placers and ditches, -and the best prospects for eight or ten weeks' washing. It was early in -September when we were ready to start, and on a warm afternoon I said -to an old pardner, 'What do you make out of those big, black clouds -settling on the peaks?' He took one look--the wind was a steady and -muggy southwester--and then he sat down and cried. The tears rolled -right over his beard. - -“It was the rains, nearly two months early, and the next day dams, -flume, boards, and hope boiled down past us in a brown mash. That left -me poorer than I'd ever been before; I had more when I was home on the -wharves.” - -“Wait,” she interrupted him, rising; “if you're coming back to supper -I must put the draught on the stove.” From the kitchen she heard him -singing in a low, contented voice: - - “'The pilot bread was in my mouth, - - The gold dust in my eye, - - And though from you I'm far away, - - Dear Anna, don't you cry!'” - -Then: - - “'Oh, Ann Eliza! - - Don't you cry for me. - - I'm going to Calaveras - - With my wash bowl on my knee.'” - -She returned and resumed her position with her hands folded. - -“And that,” Jason Burrage told her, “was how I learned gold mining in -California. I sank shafts, too, and worked a windlass till the holes got -so deep they had to be timbered and the ore needed a crusher. But after -the fluming I knew what to wait for. I kept going in a sort of commerce -for a while--buying old outfits and selling them again to the late -comers--a pick or shovel would bring ten dollars and long boots fifty -dollars a pair. I got twenty-four dollars for a box of Seidlitz powders. -Then in 'Fifty-four I went in with three scientific men--one had been -a big chemist at Paris--and things took a turn. We had the dead wood -on gold. Why, we did nothing but re-travel the American Fork and Indian -Bar, the Casumnec and Moquelumne, and work the tailings the earlier -miners had piled up and left, just like I had south. We did some pretty -things with cyanide; yes, and hydraulics and powder. - -“Things took a turn,” he repeated; “investments in stampers and so on, -and here I am.” - -After he had gone--supper, she had informed him, was at five -exactly--Olive had the bewildered feeling of partially waking from -an extraordinary dream. Yet the buckskin bag on the table possessed a -weighty actuality. - -***** - -She sat for a long while gazing intently at the gold, which, like a -crystal ball, held for her varied reflections. Then, recalling the -exigencies of the kitchen, she hurried abruptly away. Her thoughts -wheeled about Jason Burrage in a confusion of all the impressions she -had ever had of him. But try as she might she could not picture the -present man as a part of her life in Cottarsport; she could not see -herself married to him, although that event waited just beyond today. -She set her lips in a straight line, a fixed purpose gave her courage -in place of the timidity inspired by Jason's opulent strangeness--she -couldn't allow herself to be turned aside for a moment from the way of -righteousness. The gods of mammon, however they might blackly assault -her spirit, should be confounded. - - ”... hide me - - Till the storm of life is past.” - -She sang in a high quavering voice. There was a stir beyond--surely -Jason wasn't back so soon; but it was Jem. - -“What's on the table here?” he called. - -“You let that be,” she cried back in a panic at having left the gift -so exposed. “That's gold dust; Jason brought it, two thousand dollars' -worth.” - -A prolonged whistle followed her announcement. Jem appeared with the -buckskin bag in his hand. “Why, here's two yawls right in my hand,” he -asserted. - -“Mind one thing, Jem,” she went on, “he's coming back for supper, and I -won't have you and Rhoda at him about boats and singing the minute he's -in the house.” - -Rhoda, with exclamations, and then Hester, inspected the gold. “I'd -slave five years for that,” the latter stated, “and then hardly get it; -and here you, have it for nothing.” - -“You'll get the good of it too, Hester,” Olive told her. - -“I'll just work for what I get,” she replied fiercely. “I won't take -a penny from Jason, Olive Stanes; you can't hold that over me, and the -sooner you both know it the better.” - -“You ought to pray to be saved from pride.” - -“I don't ask benefits from any one,” Hester stoutly observed. - -“Hester----” Olive commenced, scandalized, but she stopped at Jason's -entrance. “Hester she wanted a share of the gold,” Jem declared with a -light in his slow gaze, “and Olive was cursing at her.” - -“Lots more,” said Jason Burrage, “buckets full.” In spite of the efforts -of every one to be completely at ease the supper was unavoidably stiff. - -But when Jason had lighted one of his blunt cigars, and begun a vivid -description of western life, the Staneses were transported by the -marvels following one upon another: a nugget had been picked up over -a foot long, it weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, and realized -forty-three thousand dollars. “Why, fifty and seventy-five lumps were -common,” he asserted. “At Ford's Bar a man took out seven hundred -dollars a day for near a month. Another found seventeen thousand dollars -in a gutter two or three feet deep and not a hundred yards long. - -“But 'Frisco was the place; you could see it spread in a day with -warehouses on the water and tents climbing up every hill. Happy Valley, -on the beach, couldn't hold another rag house. The Parker House rented -for a hundred and seventy thousand a year, and most of it paid for -gambling privileges; monté and faro, blazing lights and brass bands -everywhere and dancing in the El Dorado saloon. At first the men danced -with each other, but later----” - -He stopped; an awkward silence followed. Olive was rigid with -inarticulate protest, a sense of outrage--gambling, saloons, and -dancing! All that she had feared about Jason became more concrete, more -imminent. She saw California as a modern Babylon, a volcano of gold and -vice; already she had heard of great fires that had devastated it. - -“We didn't mine on Sunday, Olive,” Jason assured her; “and all the boys -went to the preaching and sang the hymns, standing out on the grass.” - -Hester, finally, with a muttered period, rose and disappeared; Jem went -out to consult with a man, his nod to Olive spoke of yawls; and Rhoda, -at last, reluctantly made her way above. Olive's uneasiness increased -when she found herself alone with the man she was to marry. - -“I don't like Rhoda and Jem hearing about all that wickedness,” she told -Jason Burrage; “they are young and easy affected. Rhoda gives me a lot -of worry as it is.” - -“Suppose we forget them,” he suggested. “I haven't had a word with you -yet; that is, about ourselves. I don't even know but you have gone and -fell in love with some one else.” - -“Jason,” she answered, “how can you? I told you I'd marry you, and I -will.” - -“Are you glad to see me?” he demanded, coming closer and capturing her -hand. - -“Why, what a question. Of course I'm pleased you're back and safe.” - -“You haven't got a headache, have you?” he inquired jocularly. - -“No,” she replied seriously. His words, his manners, his grasp, worried -her more and more. Still, she reminded herself, she must be patient, -accept life as it had been ordained. There was a slight flutter at her -heart, a constriction of her throat; and she wondered if this were -love. She should, she felt, exhibit more warmth at Jason's return, the -preservation, through such turbulent years of absence, of her image. But -it was beyond her power to force her hand to return his pressure: her -fingers lay still and cool in his grasp. - -“You are just the same, Olive,” he told her; “and I'm glad you're what -you are, and that Cottarsport is what it is. That's why I came back: it -was in my blood, the old town and you. All the time I kept thinking of -when I'd come back rich as I made up my mind to be, and get you what -you ought to have--be of some importance in Cottarsport, like the -Canderays. The old captain, too, died while I was away. How's Honora?” - -“Honora Canderay is an ungodly woman,” Olive asserted with emphasis. - -“I don't know anything about that,” he said; “but I always kind of liked -to look at her. She reminded me of a schooner with everything set coming -up brisk into the wind.” Olive made a motion toward the stove, but he -restrained her; rising, he put in fresh wood. Then he turned and again -seemed lost in a long, contented inspection of the quiet interior. Olive -saw that marks of weariness shadowed his eyes. - -“This is what I came back for,” he reiterated; “peaceful as the forests, -and yet warm and human. Blood counts.” He returned to his place by her, -and leaned forward, very earnestly. “California isn't real the way this -is,” he told her; “the women were just paint and powder, like things -you would see in a fever, and then you'd wake up, in Cottarsport, well -again, with you, Olive.” - -She managed to smile at him in acknowledgment of this. - -“I'm desperately glad I pulled through without many scars. But there are -some, Olive; that was bound to be. I don't know if a man had better say -anything about the past, or just let it be, and go on. Times I think one -and then the other. Yet you are so calm sitting here, and so good, it -would be a big help to tell you... Olive, out on the American, and God -knows how sorry I've been, I killed a man, Olive.” - -Slowly she felt herself turning icy cold, except for the hot blood -rushing into her head. She stared at him for a moment, horrified; -and then mechanically drew back, scraping the chair across the floor. -Perhaps she hadn't understood, but certainly he had said---- - -“Wait till I tell what I can for myself,” he hurried on, following her. -“It was when the four of us were working with a rocker. I was shoveling -the gravel, and every one in California knows that when you're doing -that, and find a nugget over half an ounce, it belongs to you personal -and not to the partnership. Well, I came on a big one, and laid it -away--they all saw it--and then this Eddie Lukens hid it out on me. He -was the only one near where I had it; he broke it up and put it in the -cradle, sure; and in the talk that followed I--I shot him.” - -He laid a detaining hand on her shoulder, but she wrenched herself away. - -“Don't touch me!” she breathed. She thought she saw him bathed in the -blood of the man he had slain. Her lips formed a sentence, “'Thou shalt -not kill.'” - -“I was tried at Spanish Bar,” he continued. “Miners' law is better than -you hear in the East. It's quick, it has to be, but in the main it's -serious and right. I was tried with witnesses and a jury and they let me -off; they justified me. That ought to go for something.” - -“Don't come near me,” she cried, choking, filled with dread and utter -loathing. “How can you stand there and--stand there, a murderer, with a -life on your heart!” - -His face quivered with concern; in spite of her words he drew near -her again, repeating the fact that he had been judged, released. Olive -Stanes' hysteria vanished before the cold stability which came to her -assistance, the sense of being rooted in her creed. - -“'Thou shalt not kill,'” she echoed. - -The emotion faded from his features, his countenance once more became -masklike, the jaw was hard and sharp, his eyes narrowed. “It's all over -then?” he asked. She nodded, her lips pinched into a white line. - -“What else could be hoped? Blood guiltiness. O Jason, pray to save your -soul.” - -He moved over to where his high silk hat reposed, secured it, and -turned. “This will be final.” His voice was hard. Olive stood slightly -swaying, with closed eyes. Then she remembered the buckskin bag of -not yellow but scarlet gold. She stumbled forward to it and thrust the -weight into his hand. Jason Burrage's fingers closed on the gift, while -his gaze rested on her from under contracted brows. He was, it seemed, -about to speak, but instead preserved an intense silence; he looked once -more about the room, still and old in its lamplight. Why didn't he go? -Then she saw that she was alone: - -Like the eternal rock outside the door. - -From above came the clear, joyous voice of Rhoda singing. Olive crumpled -into a chair. Soon Jem would be back.... She turned and slipped down -upon the floor in an agony of prayer. - - - - -HONORA - - -|HONORA CANDERAY saw Jason Burrage on the day after his arrival in -Cotarsport: he was walking through the town with a set, inattentive -countenance; and, although she was in the carriage and leaned forward, -speaking in her ringing voice, it was evident that he had not noticed -her. She thought his expression gloomy for a man returned with a fortune -to his marriage. Honora still dwelt upon him as she slowly progressed -through the capricious streets and mounted toward the hills beyond. He -presented, she decided, an extraordinary, even faintly comic, appearance -in Cottarsport, with a formal black coat open on a startling waistcoat -and oppressive gold chain, pale trousers and a silk hat. - -Such clothes, theatrical in effect, were inevitable to his changed -condition and necessarily stationary taste. Yet, considering, she -shifted the theatrical to dramatic: in an obscure but palpable manner -Jason did not seem cheap. He never had in the past And now, while -his inappropriate overdressing in the old town of loose and weathered -raiment brought a smile to her firm lips, there was still about him -the air which from the beginning had made him more noticeable than his -fellows. It had even been added to--by the romance of his journey and -triumph. - -She suddenly realized that, by chance, she had stumbled on the one term -which more than any other might contain Jason. Romantic. Yes, that was -the explanation of his power to stir always an interest in him, vaguely -suggest such possibilities as he had finally accomplished, the venture -to California and return with gold and the complicated watch chain. She -had said no more to him than to the other Cottarsport youth and young -manhood, perhaps a dozen sentences in a year; but the others merged into -a composite image of fuzzy chins, reddened knuckles, and inept, choked -speech, and Jason Burrage remained a slightly sullen individual with -potentialities. He had never stayed long in her mind, or had any actual -part in her life--her mother's complete indifference to Cottarsport -had put a barrier between its acutely independent spirit and the -Canderays--but she had been easily conscious of his special quality. - -That in itself was no novelty to her experience of a metropolitan and -distinguished society: what now kept Jason in her thoughts was the fact -that he had made his capability serve his mood; he had taken himself out -into the world and there, with what he was, succeeded. His was not an -ineffectual condition--a longing, a possibility that, without the power -of accomplishment, degenerated into a mere attitude of bitterness. Just -such a state, for example, as enveloped herself. - -The carriage had climbed out of Cottarsport, to the crown of the height -under which it lay, and Honora ordered Coggs, a coachman decrepit with -age, to stop. She half turned and looked down over the town with a -veiled, introspective gaze. From here it was hardly more than a narrow -rim of roofs about the bright water, broken by the white bulk of her -dwelling and the courthouse square. The hills, turning roundly down, -were sere and showed everywhere the grey glint of rock; Cottar's Neck -already appeared wintry; a diminished wind, drawing in through the -Narrows, flattened the smoke of the chimneys below. - -Cottarsport! The word, with all its implications, was so vivid in her -mind that she thought she must have spoken it aloud. Cottarsport and the -Canderays--now one solitary woman. She wondered again at the curious and -involved hold the locality had upon her; its tyranny over her birth and -destiny. It was comparatively easy to understand the influence the place -had exerted on her father: commencing with his sixteenth year, his life -had been spent, until his retirement from the sea, in arduous voyages to -far ports and cities. His first command--the anchor had been weighed on -his twentieth birthday--had been of a brig to Zanzibar for a cargo of -gum copal; his last a storm-battered journey about, apparently, all the -perilous capes of the world. Then he had been near fifty, and the space -between was a continuous record of struggle with savage and -faithless peoples, strange latitudes and currents, and burdensome -responsibilities. - -Her mother, too, presented no insuperable obstacle to a sufficient -comprehension--a noted beauty in a gay and self-indulgent society, she -had passed through a triumphant period without forming any attachment. -An inordinate amount of champagne had been uncorked in her honor, -compliment and service and offers had made up her daily round; until, -almost impossibly exacting, she had found herself beyond her early -radiance, in the first tragic realization of decline. Stopping, perhaps, -in the midst of slipping her elegance of body into a party dress, she -remembered that she was thirty-five--just Honora's age at present. -The compliments and offers had lessened, she was in a state of weary -revulsion when Ithiel Canderay--bronzed and despotic and rich--had -appeared before her and, the following day, urged marriage. - -Yes, it was easy to see why the shipmaster, desirous of peace after -the unpeaceful sea, should build his house in the still, old port -the tradition of which was in his blood. It was no more difficult to -understand how his wife, always a little tired now from the beginning -ill effects of ceaseless balls and wining, should welcome a spacious, -quiet house and unflagging, patient care. - -All this was clear; and, in a way, it made her own position logical--she -was the daughter, the repository, of such varied and yet unified -forces. In moments of calm, such as this, Honora could be successfully -philosophical. But she was not always placid; in fact she was placid -but an insignificant part of her waking hours. She was ordinarily -filled with emotions that, having no outlet, kept her stirred up, half -resentful, and half desirous of things which she yet made no extended -effort to obtain. - -Honora told herself daily that she detested Cot-tarsport, she intended -to sell her house, give it to the town, and move to Boston. But, after -three or four weeks in the city, a sense of weariness and nostalgia -would descend upon her--the bitterness of her mother lived over -again--and drive her back to the place she had left with such decided -expressions of relief. - -This was the root of her not large interest in Jason Burrage--he, too, -she had always felt, had had possibilities outside the local life and -fish industry; and he had gone forth and justified, realized, them. He -had broken away from the enormous pressure of custom, personal habit, -and taken from life what was his. But she, Honora Canderay, had not had -the courage to free herself from an existence without incentive, without -reward. Something of this might commonly find excuse in the fact that -she was a woman, and that the doors of life and experience, except -one, were closed to her; but, individually, she had little use for -this supine attitude. Her blood was too domineering. She consigned such -inhibitions to pale creatures like Olive Stanes. - -***** - -The sun, sinking toward the plum-colored hills on the left, cast a rosy -glow over low-piled clouds at the far horizon, and the water of the -harbor seemed scattered with the petals of crimson peonies. The air -darkened perceptibly. For a moment the grey town on the fading water, -the distant flushed sky, were charged with the vague unrest of the -flickering day. Suddenly it was colder, and Honora, drawing up her -shawl, sharply commanded Coggs to drive on. - -She was going to fetch Paret Fifield from the steam railway station -nearest Cottarsport. He visited her at regular intervals--although the -usual period had been doubled since she'd seen him--and asked her with -unfailing formality to be his wife. Why she hadn't agreed long ago, -except that Paret was Boston personified, she did not understand. In the -moments when she fled to the city she always intended to have him come -to her at once. But hardly had she arrived before her determination -would waver, and her thoughts automatically, against her will, return to -Cottarsport. - -Studying him, as they drove back through the early dusk, she was -surprised that he had been so long-suffering. He was not a patient type -of man; rather he was the quietly aggressive, suavely selfish example -for whom the world, success, had been a very simple matter. He was not -solemn, either, or a recluse, as faithful lovers commonly were; but -furnished a leading figure in the cotillions and had a nice capacity for -wine. She said almost complainingly: - -“How young and gay you look, Paret, with your lemon verbena.” - -He was, it seemed to her, not entirely at ease, and almost confused at -her statement. Nevertheless, he gave his person a swiftly complacent -glance. - -“I do seem quite well,” he agreed surprisingly. “Honora, I'm the next -thing to fifty. Would any one guess it?” - -This was a new aspect of Paret's, and she studied him keenly, with the -slightly satirical mouth inherited from her father. Embarrassment became -evident at his exhibition of trivial pride, and nothing more was said -until, winding through the gloom of Cottarsport, they had reached her -house. Inside there was a wide hall with the stair mounting on the right -under a panelled arch. Mrs. Coz-zens, Honora's aunt and companion, was -in the drawing room when they entered, and greeted Paret Fifield with -the simple friendliness which, clearly without disagreeable intent, she -reserved for an unquestionable few. - -After dinner, the elder woman winding wool from an ivory swift clamped -to a table, Honora thought that Paret had never been so vivacious; -positively he was silly. For no comprehensible reason her mind turned to -Jason Burrage, striding with a lowered head, in his incongruous clothes, -through the town of his birth. - -“I wonder, Paret,” she remarked, “if you remember two men who went from -here to California about ten years ago? Well, one of them is back -with his pockets full of gold and a silk hat. He was engaged to Olive -Stanes... I suppose their wedding will happen at any time. You see, he -was faithful like yourself, Paret.” - -The man's back was toward her; he was examining, as he had on every -visit Honora could recall, the curious objects in a lacquered cabinet -brought from over-seas by Ithiel Canderay, and it was a noticeably long -time before he turned. Mrs. Cozzens, the shetland converted into a ball, -rose and announced her intention of retiring; a thin, erect figure in -black moiré with a long countenance and agate brown eyes, seed pearls, -gold band bracelets, and a Venise point cap. - -When she had gone the silence in the room became oppressive. Honora was -thinking of her life in connection with Paret Fifield, wondering if she -could ever bring herself to marry him. She would have to decide soon: -it seemed incredible that he was nearing fifty. Why, it must have been -fifteen years ago when he first---- - -“Honora,” he pronounced, leaning forward in his chair, “I came prepared -to tell you a particular thing, but I find it much more difficult than I -had anticipated.” - -“I know,” she replied, and her voice, the fact she pronounced, seemed -to come from a consciousness other than hers; “you are going to get -married.” - -“Exactly,” he said with a deep, relieved sigh. - -She had on a dinner dress looped with a silk ball fringe, and her -fingers automatically played with the hanging ornaments as she studied -him with a composed face. - -“How old is she, Paret?” Honora asked presently. - -He cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner. “Not quite nineteen, I -believe.” - -She nodded, and her expression grew imperceptibly colder. A slight but -actual irritation at him, a palpable anger, shocked her, which she was -careful to screen from her manner and voice. “You will be very happy, -certainly. A young wife would suit you perfectly. You have kept -splendidly young, Paret.” - -“She is really a superb creature, Honora,” he proceeded gratefully. “I -must bring her to you. But I am going to miss this.” He indicated -the grave chamber in which they sat, the white marble mantel and high -mirror, the heavy mahogany settled back in half shadow, the dark velvet -draperies of the large windows sweeping from alabaster cornices. - -“Sometimes I feel like burning it to the ground,” she asserted, rising. -“I would if I could burn all that it signifies, yes, and a great deal of -myself, too.” She raised her arms in a vivid, passionate gesture. “Leave -it all behind and sail up to Java Head and through the Sunda Strait, -into life.” - -After the difficulty of his announcement Paret Fifield talked with -animation about his plans and approaching marriage. Honora wondered at -the swiftness with which she--for so long a fundamental part of his -thought--'had dropped from his mind. It had the aspect of a physical act -of seclusion, as if a door had been closed upon her, the last, perhaps, -leading out of her isolation. She hadn't been at all sure that she -would not marry Paret: today she had almost decided in favor of such a -consummation of her existence. - -A girl not quite nineteen! She had been only twenty when Paret Fifield -had first danced with her. He had been interested immediately. It was -difficult for her to realize that she was now thirty-five; soon forty -would be upon her, and then a grey reach. She didn't feel any older than -she had, well--on the day that Jason Burrage departed for California. -There wasn't a line on her face; no trace, yet, of time on her spirit or -body; but the dust must inevitably settle over her as it did on a vase -standing unmoved on a shelf. A vase was a tranquil object, well suited -to glimmer from a corner through a decade; but she was different. The -heritage of her father's voyaging stirred in her together with the -negation that held her stationary. A third state, a hot rebellion, -poured through her, while she listened to Paret's facile periods. -Really, he was rather ridiculous about the girl. She was conscious of -the dull pounding of her heart. - -The morning following was remarkably warm and still; and, after Paret -Fifield had gone, Honora made her way slowly down to the bay. The -sunlight lay like thick yellow dust on the warehouses and docks, and the -water filled the sweep of Cottar's Neck with a solid and smoothly blue -expanse. A fishing boat, newly arrived, was being disgorged of partly -cured haddock. The cargo was loaded into a wheelbarrow, transferred to -the wharf, and there turned into a basket on a weighing scale, checked -by a silent man in series of marks on a small book, and carried away. -Beyond were heaped corks and spread nets and a great reel of fine cord. - -When Honora walked without an objective purpose she always came finally -to the water. It held no surprise for her; there was practically nothing -she was directly interested in seeing. She stood--as at present--gazing -down into the tide clasping the piles, or away at the horizon, the -Narrows opening upon the sea. She exchanged unremarkable sentences with -familiar figures, watched the men swab decks or tail new cordage through -blocks, and looked up absently at the spars of the schooners lying at -anchor. - -She had put on a summer dress again of white India barège, a little hat -with a lavender bow, and she stood with her silk shawl on an arm. The -stillness of the day was broken only by the creak of the wheelbarrow. -Last night she had been rebellious, but now a lassitude had settled over -her: all emotion seemed blotted out by the pouring yellow light of the -sun. - -At the side of the wharf a small warehouse held several men in the -office, the smoke of pipes lifting slowly from the open door; and, -at the sound of footfalls, she turned and saw Jem Stanes entering the -building. His expression was surprisingly morose. It was, she thought -again as she had of Jason Burrage striding darkly along the street, -singularly inopportune at the arrival of so much good fortune. A burr -of voices, thickened by the salt spray of many sea winds, followed. She -heard laughter, and then Jem's voice, indistinguishable but sullenly -angry. - -Honora progressed up into the town, walked past the courthouse square, -and met Jason at the corner of the street. “I am glad to have a chance -to welcome you,” she said, extending her hand. Close to him her sense of -familiarity faded before the set face, the tightly drawn lips and hard -gaze. She grew a little embarrassed. He had on another, still more -surprising waistcoat, his watch chain was ponderous with gold; but dust -had accumulated unattended on his shoulders, and dimmed the luster of -his boots. - -“Thank you,” he replied non-committally, giving her palm a brief -pressure. He stood silently, without cordiality, waiting for what might -follow. - -“You are safely back with the Golden Fleece,” she continued more -hurriedly, “after yoking the fiery bulls and sailing past the islands of -the sirens.” - -“I don't know about all that,” he said stolidly. - -“Jason and the Argonauts,” she insisted, conscious of her stupidity. He -was far more compelling than she had remembered, than he appeared from a -distance: the marked discontent of his earlier years had given place to -a certain power, repose: the romance which she had decided was his main -characteristic was emphasized. She was practically conversing with a -disconcerting stranger. - -“Olive was, of course, delighted,” she went resolutely on. “You must -marry soon, and build a mansion.” - -“We are not going to marry at all,” he stated baldly. - -“Oh----!” she exclaimed and then crimsoned with annoyance at the -involuntary syllable. That idiot, Olive Stanes, she added to herself -instantly. Honora could think of nothing appropriate to say. “That's a -great pity,” she temporized. Why didn't the boor help her? Hadn't he the -slightest conception of the obligations of polite existence? He stood -motionless, the fingers of one hand clasping a jade charm. However, she, -Honora Can-deray, had no intention of being affronted by Jason Burrage. - -“You must find it pale here after California, if what I've heard is -true,” she remarked crisply, then nodded and left him. That night at -supper she repeated the burden of what he had told her to her aunt. The -latter answered in a measured voice without any trace of interest: - -“I thought something of the kind had happened: the upstairs girl was -saying he was drunk last night. A habit acquired West, I don't doubt. It -is remarkable, Honora, how you remember one from another in Cottarsport. -They all appear indifferently alike to me. And I am tremendously upset -about Paret.” - -“Well, I'm not,” Honora returned. She spoke inattentively, and she was -surprised at the truth she had exposed. Paret Fifield had never become -a necessary part of her existence. Except for the light he had shed upon -herself--the sudden glimpse of multiplying years and the emptiness of -her days--his marriage was unimportant. She would miss him exactly as -she might a piece of furniture that had been removed after forming a -familiar spot. She was more engrossed in what her aunt had told her -about Jason. - -He had been back only two or three days, and already lost his promised -wife and got drunk. The implications of drinking were different in -Cottars-port from what they would be in San Francisco, or even Boston; -in such a small place as this every act offered the substance for talk, -opinion, as long-lived as the elms on the hills. It was foolish of him -not to go away for such excesses. Honora wanted to tell him so. She had -inherited her father's attitude toward the town, she thought, a personal -care of Cottarsport as a whole, necessarily expressed in an attention -toward individual acts and people. She wished Jason wouldn't make a fool -of himself. Then she recalled how ineffectual the same desire, actually -voiced, had been in connection with Olive Stanes. She recalled Olive's -horrified face as she, Honora, had said, “Grace be damned!” It was all -quite hopeless. “I think I'll move to the city,” she informed her aunt. - -The latter sighed, from, Honora knew, a sense of superior knowledge and -resignation. - -After supper she deserted the more familiar drawing room for the chamber -across the wide hall. A fire of coals was burning in an open grate, but -there was no other light. Honora sat at a piano with a ponderous ebony -case, and picked out Violetta's first aria from Traviata. The round -sweet notes seemed to float away palpable and intact into the gloom. -It was an unusual mood, and when it had gone she looked back at it in -wonderment and distrust. Her customary inner rebellion re-established -itself perhaps more vigorously than before: she was charged with energy, -with vital promptings, but found no opportunity, promise, of expression -or accomplishment. - -The warm sun lingered for a day or so more, and then was obliterated -by an imponderable bank of fog that rolled in through the Narrows, over -Cottar's Neck, and changed even the small confines of the town into -a vast labyrinth. That, in turn, was dissipated by a swinging eastern -storm, tipped with hail, which left stripped trees on an ashen blue sky -and dark, frigid water slapping uneasily at the harbor edge. - -Honora Canderay's states of mind were as various and similar. Her outer -aspect, however, unlike the weather, showed no evidence of change: as -usual she drove in the carriage on afternoons when it was not too cold; -she appeared, autocratic and lavish, in the shops of Citron Street; she -made her usual aimless excursions to the harbor. Jem Stanes, she saw, -was still a deck hand on the schooner _Gloriana_. Looking back to the -morning when he had scowlingly entered the office on the wharf, she -was able to reconstruct the cause of his ill humor--a brother-in-law to -Jason Burrage was a person of far different employment from an ordinary -Stanes. She passed Olive on the street, but the latter, except for a -perfunctory greeting, hurried immediately by. - -The stories of Jason's reckless conduct multiplied--he had consumed -a staggering amount of Medford rum and, in the publicity of noon and -Marlboro Street, sat upon the now notable silk hat. He had paid for some -cheroots with a pinch of gold dust as they were said to do in the far -West. He carried a loaded derringer, and shot “for fun” the jar of -colored water in the apothecary's window, and had threatened, with -a grim face, to do the same for whoever might interfere with his -pleasures. He was, she learned, rapidly becoming a local scandal and -menace. - -If it had been any one but Jason Burrage, native born and folded in the -glamour of his extraordinary fortune, he would have been immediately and -roughly suppressed: Honora well knew the rugged and severe temper of the -town. As it was he went about--attended by its least desirable element, -a chorus to magnify his liberality and daring--in an atmosphere of -wonderment and excited curiosity. - -This, she thought, was highly regrettable. Yet, in his present frame of -mind, what else was there for him to do? He couldn't be expected to -take seriously, be lost in, the petty affairs of Cottarsport; beyond a -limited amount the gold for which he had endured so much--she had -heard something of his misfortunes and struggle--was useless here; and, -without balance, he must inevitably drift into still greater debauch in -the large cities. - -He was now a frequently recurring figure in her thought. In the correct -presence of her aunt, Mrs. Cozzens, in delicate clothes and exact -surroundings, the light of an astral lamp on her sharply cut, slightly -contemptuous face, she would consider the problem of Jason Burrage. In -a way, which she had more than once explained and justified to herself, -she felt responsible for him. If there had been anything to suggest, she -would have gone to him directly, but she had no intention of offering -a barren condemnation. Her peculiar position in Cottarsport, while it -indicated certain obligations, required the maintenance of an impersonal -plane. Why, he might say anything to her; he was quite capable of -telling her--and correctly--to go to the devil! - -A new analogy was created between Jason Bur-rage and herself: his -advantage over her had broken down, they both appeared fast in untoward -circumstance beyond their power to alleviate or shape. He had come back -to Cottarsport in the precise manner in which she had returned from -shorter but equally futile excursions. Jason had his money, which at -once established necessities and made satisfaction impossible; and she -had promptings, desires, that by reason of their mere being, allowed her -contentment neither in the spheres of a social importance nor here in -the quiet place where so much of her was rooted. As Honora Canderay -gazed at her Aunt Herriot's hard, fine profile, the thought of her own, -Honora Canderay's, resemblance to the returned miner carousing with -the dregs of the town brought a shade of ironic amusement to her -countenance. - -Honora left the house, walking, in the decline of a November afternoon. -She had been busy in a small way, supervising the filling of camphor -chests for the winter, and, intensely disliking any of the duties of -domesticity, she was glad to escape into the still, cold open. Dusk was -not yet perceptible, but the narrow, erratic ways of Cottars-port were -filling with dear grey shadow. When, inevitably, she found herself at -the harbor's edge, she progressed over a narrow wharf to its end. It had -been wet, and there were patches of black, icy film; the water near by -was grey-black, but about the bare thrust of Cottar's Neck it was green; -the warehouses behind her were blank and deserted. - -She had on a cloak lined with ermine, and she drew it closer about her -throat at the frigid air lifting from the bay. Suddenly a flare of color -filled the somber space, a coppery glow that glinted like metal shavings -on the water and turned Cottar's Neck red. Against the sunset the town -was formless, murky; but the sky and harbor resembled the interior of -a burnished kettle. The effect was extraordinarily unreal, melodramtic, -and she was watching the color fade, when a figure wavered out of -the shadows and moved insecurely toward her. At first she thought the -stumbling progressions were caused by the ice: then she saw that it was -Jason Burrage, drunk. - -He wore the familiar suit of broadcloth, with no outer covering, and a -rough hat pulled down upon his fixed gaze. She stood motionless while he -approached, and then calmly met his heavy interrogation. - -“Honora,” he articulated, “Honora Canderay, one--one of the great -Canderays of Cottarsport. Well, why don't you say something? Too set up -for a civil, for a----” - -“Don't be ridiculous, Jason,” she replied crisply; “and do go -home--you'll freeze out here as you are.” - -“One of the great Canderays,” he reiterated, contemptuously. He came -very close to her. “You're not much. Here they think you.... But I've -been to California, and at the Jenny Lind... in silk like a blue bird, -and sing-. Nobody ever heard of the Canderays in 'Frisco, but they know -Jason Burrage, Burrage who had all the bad luck there was, and then -struck it rich.” - -He swayed perilously, and she put out a palm and steadied him. “Go back. -You are not fit to be around.” - -Jason struck her hand down roughly. “I'm fitter than you. What are you, -anyway?” He caught her shoulder in vise-like fingers. “Nothing but a -woman, that's all--just a woman.” - -“You are hurting me,” she said fearlessly. - -His grip tightened, and he studied her, his eyes inhuman in a stony, -white face. “Nothing more than that.” - -“You are very surprising,” she responded. “Do you know, I had never -thought of it. And it's true; that is precisely what and all I am.” - -His expression became troubled; he released her, stepped back, slipped, -and almost fell into the water. Honora caught his arm and dragged him -to the middle of the wharf. “A dam' Canderay,” he muttered. “And I'm -better, Jason Burrage. Ask them at the El Dorado, or Indian Bar; but -that's gone--the early days. All scientific now. We got the dead wood on -gold... cyanide.” - -“Come home,” she repeated brusquely, turning him, with a slight push, -toward the town settled in darkness. It sent him falling forward in the -direction she wished. Honora supported him, led him on. At intervals he -hung back, stopped. His speech became confused; then, it appeared, his -reason commenced slowly to return. The streets were empty; a lamp shone -dimly on its post at a corner; she guided Jason round a sunken space. - -Honora had no sense of repulsion; she was conscious of a faint pity, but -her energy came dimly from that feeling of obligation, inherited, she -told herself once more, from her father--their essential attitude to -Cottarsport. At the same time she found herself studying his face with a -personal curiosity. She was glad that it was not weak, that rum had been -ineffectual to loosen its hardness. He now seemed capable of walking -alone, and she stood aside. - -Jason was at a loss for words; his lips moved, but inaudibly. “Keep away -from the water,” she commanded, “or from Medford rum. And, some evening -soon, come to see me.” She said this without premeditation, from an -instinct beyond her searching. - -“I can't do that,” he replied in a surprisingly rational voice, “because -I've lost my silk hat.” - -“There are hundreds for sale in Boston,” she announced impatiently; “go -and get another.” - -“That never came to me,” he admitted, patently struck by this course of -rehabilitation through a new high hat. “There was something I had to -say to you, but it left my mind, about a--a gold fleece; it turned into -something else, on the wharf.” - -“When you see me again.” She moved farther from him, suddenly in a great -necessity to be home. She left him, talking at her, and went swiftly -through the gloom to Regent Street. Letting herself into the still hall, -the amber serenity of lamplight in suave spaciousness, she swung shut -the heavy door with a startling vigor. Then she stood motionless, the -cape slipping from her shoulders in glistening and soft white folds -about her arms, to the carpet. Honora wasn't faint, not for a moment -had she been afraid of Jason Burrage, this was not a rebellion of -over-strung nerves; yet a passing blindness, a spiritual shudder, -possessed her. She had the sensation of having just passed through an -overwhelming adventure: yet all that had happened was commonplace, even -sordid. She had met a drunken man whom she hardly knew beyond his name -and an adventitious fact, and insisted on his going home. Asking him to -call on her had been little less than perfunctory--an impersonal act of -duty. - -Yet her being vibrated as if a loud and disturbing bell had been -unexpectedly sounded at her ear; she was responding to an imperative -summons. In her room, changing for supper, this feeling vanished, and -left her usual introspective humor. Jason had spoken a profound truth, -which her surprise had recognized at the time, in reminding her that she -was an ordinary woman, like, for instance, Olive Stanes. The isolation -of her dignity had hidden that from her for a number of years. She had -come to think of herself exclusively as a Canderay. - -Later her sharp enjoyment in probing into all pretensions, into herself, -got slightly the better of her. “I saw Jason Burrage this evening,” she -told Mrs. Cozzens. - -“If he was sober,” that individual returned, “it might be worth -recalling.” - -“But he wasn't. He nearly fell into the harbor. I asked him to see us.” - -“With your education, Honora, there is really no excuse for confusing -the singular and plural. I haven't any doubt you asked him here, but -that has nothing to do with us.” - -“You might be amused by his accounts of California. For, although you -never complain, I can see that you think it dull.” - -“I am an old woman,” Herriot Cozzens stated, “my life was quite normally -full, and I am content here with you. Any dullness you speak of I regret -for another reason.” - -“You are afraid I'll get preserved like a salted haddock. He may not -come.” - -***** - -Honora was in the less formal of the drawing rooms when Jason Burrage -was announced. He came forward almost immediately, in the most rigorous -evening attire, a new silk hat on his arm. - -“You had no trouble getting one,” she nodded in its direction. - -“Four,” he replied tersely. - -Jason took a seat facing her across an open space of darkly flowered -carpet, and Honora studied him, directly critical. Against a vague -background his countenance was extraordinarily pronounced, vividly -pallid. His black hair swept in a soft wave across a brow with indented -temples, his nose was short with wide nostrils, the lower part of -his face square. His hands, scarred and discolored, rested each on a -black-clad knee. - -She was in no hurry to begin a conversation which must either be -stilted, uncomfortable, or reach beyond known confines. For the moment -her daring was passive. Jason Burrage stirred his feet, and she attended -the movement with thoughtful care. He said unexpectedly: - -“I believe I've never been in here before.” He turned and studied his -surroundings as if in an effort of memory. “But I talked to your father -once in the hall.” - -“Nothing has been changed,” she answered almost unintelligibly. “Very -little does in Cot-tarsport.” - -“That's so,” he assented. “I saw it when I came back. It was just the -same, but I----” he stopped and his expression became gloomy. - -“If you mean that you were different, you are wrong,” she declared -concisely. “Just that has made trouble for you--you have been unable to -be anything but yourself. I am like that, too. Every one is.” - -“I have been through things,” he told her enigmatically. “Why look--just -the trip: to Chagres on the Isthmus, and then mules and canoes through -that ropey woods to Panama, with thousands of prospectors waiting for -the steamer. Then back by Mazatlan, Mexico City, and Vera Cruz. A man -sees things.” - -Her inborn uneasiness at rooms, confining circumstance, her restless -desire for unlimited horizons, for the mere fact of reaching, moving, -stirred into being at the names he repeated. Tomorrow she would go away, -find something new-- - -“It must have been horridly rough and dirty.” - -“A good many turned back or died,” he agreed tentatively. “But after you -once got there a sort of craziness came over you--you couldn't wait to -buy a pan or shovel. The bay was full of rotting ships deserted by their -crews, a thicket of masts with even the sails still hanging to them. The -men jumped overboard to get ashore and pick up gold.” - -She thought with a pang of the idle ships with sprung rigging, sodden -canvas lumpily left on the decks, rotting as he had said, in files. The -image afflicted her like a physical pain, and she left it hurriedly. -“But San Francisco must have been full of life.” - -“You had to shout to be heard over the bands, and everything blazing. -Pyramids of nuggets on the gambling tables. Gold dust and champagne and -mud.” - -“Whatever will you find here?” She immediately regretted her query, -which seemed to search improperly into the failure of his marriage. - -“I'm thinking of going back,” he admitted. - -Curiously Honora was sorry to hear this; unreasonably it gave to -Cottarsport a new aspect of barrenness, the vista of her own life -reached interminable and monotonous into the future. And she was -certain that, without the necessity and incentive of labor, it would be -destructive for Jason to return to San Francisco. - -“What would you do?” - -“Gamble,” he replied cynically. - -“Admirable prospect,” she said lightly. Her manner unmistakably conveyed -the information that his call had drawn to an end. He clearly resisted -this for a minute or two, and then stirred. “You must come again.” - -“Why?” he demanded abruptly, grasping his hat, which had reposed on the -carpet at his side. - -“News from California, from the world outside, is rare in Cottarsport. -You must see that you are an interesting figure to us.” - -“Why?” he persisted, frowning. - -She rose, her face as hard as his own, but with a faint smile in place -of his lowering expression. “No, you haven't changed; not even to the -extent of a superficial knowledge of drawing rooms.” - -“I ought to have seen better than come.” - -“The ignorance was all my own.” - -“But once----” he paused. - -“Should be enough.” Her smile widened. Yet she was furious with herself -for having quarreled with him; the descent from the altitude of the -Canderays had been enormous. What extraordinary influence had colored -her acts in the past few days? - -Mrs. Cozzens, at breakfast, inquired placidly how the evening before had -progressed, and Honora made a gesture expressive of its difficulties. -“You will create such responsibilities for yourself,” the elder stated. - -This one, it suddenly appeared to Honora, had been thrust upon her. She -made repeated and angry efforts to put Jason Burrage from her mind; -but his appearance sitting before her, his words and patent discontent, -flooded back again and again. She realized now that he was no impersonal -problem; somehow he had got twisted into the fibres of her existence; he -was more vividly in her thoughts than Paret Fifield had ever been. -She attempted to ridicule him mentally, and called up pictures of his -preposterous clothes, the ill-bred waistcoats and ponderous watch chain. -They faded before the memory of the set jaw, his undeniable romance. - -Wrapped in fur, she elected to drive after dinner; the day was cold but -palely clear, and she felt that her cheeks were glowing with unusual -color. Above the town, on the hills now sere with frost and rock, the -horses, under the aged guidance of Coggs, continually dropped from a jog -trot to an ambling walk. Honora paid no attention to the gait, she was -impervious to the wide, glittering reach of water; and she was startled -to find herself abreast a man gazing at her. - -“I made a jackass out of myself last night,” he observed gloomily. - -She automatically stopped the carriage and held back the buffalo robe. -Jason hesitated, but was forced to take a seat at her side. Honora said -nothing, and the horses again went forward. - -“I'd been drinking a lot and was all on edge,” he volunteered further. -“I feel different today. I can remember your mother driving like this. I -was a boy then, and used to think she was made of ice; wondered why she -didn't run away in the sun.” - -“Mother was very kind, really,” Honora said absently. She was relaxed -against the cushions, the country dipped and spread before her in a -restful brown garb; she watched Coggs' glazed hat sway against the sky. -The old sense of familiarity with Jason Burrage came back: why not, -since she had known him all their lives? And now, after his years -away, she was the only one in Cottarsport who at all comprehended his -difficulties. He was not commonplace, a strong man was never that; and, -in a way, he had the quality which more than any other had made her -father so notable. And he was not unpleasant so close beside her. That -was of overwhelming importance in the formation of her intimate opinion -of him. He had been refined by the bitterness of his early failure in -California; he bore himself with a certain dignity. - -“What'll I do?” he demanded abruptly. - -For the life or her she couldn't tell him. Except for platitudes she -could offer no solution against the future. Actual living, directly -viewed, was like that--hopeless of exterior solution. “I don't know,” - she admitted, “I wish I did; I wish I could help you.” - -“This money, what's it good for? I can't get my family to burn two small -stoves at once; they'd die in the kitchen if they had a hundred parlors; -I've bought more clothes than I'll ever wear, four high hats and so on. -Not going to get married; no use for a big house, for anything more than -the room I have. I get plenty to eat----” - -“You might do some good with it,” she suggested. The base of what she -was saying, Honora realized, was that he would be as well off with his -fortune given away. Yet it was unjust, absurd, for him not to get some -use, pleasure, from what he had worked so extravagantly to obtain. - -“Somehow that wouldn't settle anything, for me,” he replied. - -Coggs had turned at the usual limit of her afternoon driving, and they -were slowly moving back to the town. Cottar's Neck was fading into the -early gloom, and a group of men stared at Jason seated in the Canderays' -carriage as if their eyes were being played with in the uncertain light. - -“Have you thought any more about going West?” she inquired. - -They had stopped for his descent at Marlboro - -Street, and he stood with a hand on the wheel. “I had intended to go -this morning.” - -He held her gaze steadily, and she felt a swift coldness touch her into -a shiver. - -“Tomorrow?” This came in a spirit of perversity against her every other -instinct. - -“Shall I?” - -“Would you be happier in San Francisco?” Jason Burrage made a hopeless -gesture. - -“... for supper,” Honora found herself saying in a rush; “at six -o'clock. If you aren't bound for California.” - -She tried to recall afterward if she had indicated a particular evening -for the invitation. There was a vague memory of mentioning Thursday. -This was Tuesday... Herriot Cozzens would be in Boston. - -***** - -A servant told her that Mr. Burrage had arrived when she was but half -ready. She was, in reality, undecided in her choice of a dress for the -evening; but finally she wore soft white silk, with deep, knotted fringe -on the skirt, a low cut neck, and a narrow mantle of black velvet. Her -hair, severely plain in its net, was drawn back from a bang cut across -her brow. As she entered the room where he was standing a palpable -admiration marked his countenance. - -He said nothing, however, beyond a conventional phrase. Such natural -reticence had a large part in her acceptance of him; he did nothing that -actively disturbed her hypercritical being. He was almost distinguished -in appearance. She had a feeling that if it had been different.... -Honora distinctly wished for a flamboyant touch about him; it presented -a symbol of her command of any situation between them, a reminder of her -superiority. - -The supper went forward smoothly; there were the welcome inevitable -reminiscences of the rough fare of California, laughter at the -prohibitive cost of beans; and when, at her direction, he lighted a -cheroot, and they lingered on at the table, Honora's aloofness was -becoming a thing of the past. The smoke gave her an unexpected thrill, -an extraordinary sense of masculine proximity. There had been no such -blue clouds in the house since her father's death seven years ago. -Settled back contentedly, Jason Burrage seemed--why, actually, he had an -air of occupying a familiar place. - -It was bitterly cold without, the room into which they trailed -insufficiently warm, and they were drawn close together at an open -Franklin stove. The lamps on the mantel were distant, and they had not -yet been fully turned up: his face was tinged by the glow of the fire. -An intense face. “What are you thinking about--me?” she added coolly. -“Nothing,” he replied; “I'm too comfortable to think.” There was a note -of surprise in his voice; he looked about as if to find reassurance -of his present position. “But if I did it would be this--that you are -entirely different from any woman I've ever known before. They have -always been one of two kinds. One or the other,” he repeated somberly. -“Now you are both together. I don't know as I ought to say that, if it's -nice. I wouldn't like to try and explain.” - -“But you must.” - -“It's your clothes and your manner put against what you are. Oh hell, -what I mean is you're elegant to look at and good, too.” - -An expression of the deepest concern followed his exclamation. He -commenced an apology. Hardly launched, it died on his lips. - -Honora was at once conscious of the need for his contrition and of the -fact that she had never heard a more entertaining statement. It was -evident that he viewed her as a desirable compound of the women of the -El Dorado and Olive Stanes: an adroit and sincere compliment. She wanted -to follow it on and on, unfold its every exposition; but, of course, -that was impossible. All this she concealed behind an indifferent -countenance, her slim white fingers half embedded in the black mantle. - -Jason Burrage lighted another cheroot and put his feet up on the -polished brass railing of the iron hearth. This amused her beyond words. -She couldn't remember when she had had another such vitalized evening. -She realized that, through the last years, she had been appallingly -lonely; but with Jason smoking beside her in a tilted chair the solitude -was banished. She got a coal for him in the small burnished tongs, and -he responded with a prodigious puff that set her to coughing. - -When he had gone the house was hatefully vacant; as she went up to her -chamber the empty spaciousness, the semi-dark well of the stair, the -high hall with its low-turned lamp, the blackness of the third story -pouring down over her, oppressed her almost beyond endurance. Her Aunt -Herriot, already old, must be dead before very long, there was none -other of her connections who could live with her, and she would have to -depend on perfunctory, hired companionship. - -Honora saw that she should never escape from the influence which held -her in Cottarsport. - -In her room, the door bolted, it was no better. The interior was large, -uncompromisingly square; and, though every possible light was burning, -still it seemed somber, menacing. - -The following day was a lowering void with gusts of rain driving against -the windows. Mrs. Cozzens would be away until tomorrow, and Honora -met the afternoon alone. At times she embroidered, short-lived efforts -broken by despondent and aimless excursions through the echoing halls. - -She attempted to read, to compose herself with an elaborate gilt and -embellished volume called “The Garland.” But, at a Lamentation on the -Death of Her Canary, by a Person of Quality, she deliberately dropped -the book into the burning coals of the Franklin stove. The satisfaction -of seeing the pages crisp and burst into flame soon evaporated. The day -was a calamity, the approaching murky evening a horror. - -At supper she wondered what Jason Burrage was doing. A trace of the -odor of his cheroot lingered in the dining room. He was an astonishingly -solid, the only, actuality in a nebulous world of lofty, flickering -ceilings and the lash of rain. He might as well smoke in her drawing -room as in the Burrage kitchen. Paret Fifield would have drifted -naturally to the Canderay house, but not Jason, not a native of -Cottarsport.... With an air of determination she sharply pulled the -plush, tasseled bell rope in the corner. - -***** - -She heard the servant open the front door; there was a pause--Jason -was taking off his greatcoat--after which he entered, calm and without -query. - -“I was tired of sitting by myself,” she said with an air of entire -frankness. In a minute or so more it was all as it had been the evening -before--she held a coal for his cheroot as he tilted back beside her -with his feet on the rail. “You are a very comfortable man, Jason,” she -told him. - -He made no reply, although a quiver crossed his lips. Then, after a -little, “It's astonishing how soon you get used to things. Seems as if I -had been here for years, and this is only the third time.'” - -“Have you thought any more of California?” - -He faced her with an expression of surprise. “It had gone clean out of -my mind. I suppose I will shift back, though--nothing here for me. I -can't come to see you every evening.” - -She preserved a silence in which they both fell to staring into a -dancing, bluish flame. The gusts of rain were audible like the tearing -of heavy linen. An extraordinary idea had taken possession of Honora--if -the day had been fine, if she had been out in a sparkling air and sun, -a very great deal would have happened differently. But just what -she couldn't then say: the fact alone was all that she curiously -apprehended. - -“I suppose not,” she answered, so long after his last statement that he -gazed questioningly at her. “I wonder if it has occurred to you,” she -continued, “how much alike we are? I often think about it.” - -“Why, no,” he replied, “it hasn't. Jason Bur-rage and Honora Canderay! I -wouldn't have guessed it, and I don't believe any one else ever has. -I'd have a hard time thinking about two more different. It's--it's -ridiculous.” He became seriously animated. “Here I am--well, you know -all about me--with some money, perhaps, and a little of the world in my -head; but you're Honora Canderay.” - -“You said once that I was nothing but a woman,” she reminded him. - -“I remember that,” he admitted with evident chagrin. “I was drunk.” - -“That's when the truth is often hit on; I am quite an ordinary sort of -woman.” - -He laughed indulgently. - -“You said last evening I had some of a very common quality.” - -“Now you mustn't take that serious,” he protested; “it was just in a way -of speech. I told you I couldn't rightly explain myself.” - -“Anyhow,” she asserted bluntly, “I am lonely. What will you do about -it?” - -His amazement turned into a consternation which even now she found -almost laughable. “Me?” he stammered. “There's no way I can help you. -You are having a joke.” - -She realized, with a feeling that her knowledge came too late, that she -was entirely serious. Jason Burrage was the only being alive who could -give her any assistance, yes, save her from the future. Her hands were -cold, she felt absolutely still, as if she had suddenly turned into -marble, a statue with a heart slightly fluttering. - -“You could be here a lot,” she told him, and then paused, glancing at -him swiftly with hard, bright eyes. He had removed his feet from the -stove, and sat with his cheroot in a poised, awkward hand. She was -certain that he would never speak. - -“We might get married.” - -Honora was startled at the ease with which the words were pronounced, -and conscious of an absurdly trivial curiosity--she wondered just how -much he had been shocked by her proposal? She saw that he was stupefied. -Then: - -“So we might,” he pronounced idiotically. “There isn't any real reason -why we shouldn't. That is----.” He stopped. “Where does the laugh -start?” he demanded. - -Suddenly Honora was overwhelmed, not by what she had said, but by the -whole difficulty and inner confusion of her existence. She turned away -her head with an unintelligible period. A silence followed, intensified -by the rain flinging against the glass. - -“It's a bad night,” he muttered. - -The banality saved her. Again practically at her ease, she regarded him -with slightly smiling lips. “I believe I've asked you to marry me,” she -remarked. - -“Thank you,” said Jason Burrage. He stood up. “If you mean it, I'd like -to very much.” - -“You'd better sit down,” she went on in an impersonal voice; “there -ought to be a lot of things to arrange. For instance, hadn't we better -live on here, for a while anyhow? It's a big house to waste.” - -“Honora, you'll just have to stop a little,” he asserted; “I'm kind -of lost. It was quick in California, but that was a funeral procession -compared with you.” - -Now that it was done, she was frightened. But there was time to escape -even yet. She determined to leave the room quickly, get away to the -safety of her bolted door, her inviolable privacy. She didn't stir. An -immediate explanation that she hadn't been serious--how could he have -thought it for a moment!--would save her. But she was silent. - -A sudden enthusiasm lighted up his immobile face. “I'll get the -prettiest diamond in Boston,” he declared. - -“You mustn't----” she commenced, struggling still to retreat. He -misunderstood her. - -“The very best,” he insisted. - -When he had gone she remained seated in the formal chamber. At any rate -she had conquered the emptiness of her life, of the great square house -above her. It was definitely arranged, they were to marry. How -amazed Herriot Cozzens would be! It was probable that she would leave -Cot-tarsport, and her, Honora, immediately. Jason hadn't kissed her, he -had not even touched her hand, in going. He had been extremely subdued, -except at the thought of the ring he would buy for her. - -There were phases of the future which she resolutely ignored. - -Mrs. Cozzens came back as had been planned, and Honora told her at once. -The older woman expressed her feeling in contained, acid speech. “I am -surprised he had the assurance to ask you.” - -“Jason didn't,” Honora calmly returned. - -“It's your father,” the elder stated; “he had some very vulgar blood. I -felt that it was a calamity when my sister accepted him. A Cot-tarsport -person at heart, just as you are, always down about the water and those -low docks.” - -“I'm sure you're right, and so it's much better for me to find where I -belong. I have tried to get away from Cottarsport, and from the sea and -the schooners sailing in and out of the Narrows, a thousand times. But I -always come back, just as father did, back to this little place from -the entire world--China and Africa and New York. The other influences -weren't strong enough, Aunt Herriot; they only made me miserable; -and now I've killed them. I'll say good-bye to you and Paret and the -cotillions.” She kissed her hand, but not gaily, to a whole existence -irrevocably lost. - -With Jason's ring blazing on her slim finger she drove, the day before -the wedding, for the last time as Honora Canderay. The leaves had -been stripped from the elms on the hills, brown and barren against the -flashing, steely water. She saw that Coggs was so impotent with age that -if the horses had been more vigorous he would be helpless. Coggs had -driven for her father, then her, for thirty years. It was too cold -for the old man to be out today. His cheeks were dark crimson, and -continually wet from his failing eyes. - -Herriot Cozzens had left her; Coggs... all the intimate figures of -so many years were vanishing. Jason remained. He had almost entirely -escaped annoying her, and she was conscious of his overwhelming -admiration, the ineradicable esteem of Cottarsport for the Canderays; -but a question, a doubt more obscure than fear, was taking possession of -her. After all she was supremely ignorant of life; she had been screened -from it by pride and luxurious circumstance; but now she had surrendered -all her advantage. She had given herself to Jason; and he was life, -mysterious and rude. The thunder of large, threatening seas, reaching -everywhere beyond the placid gulf below, beat faintly on her perception. - - - - -JASON - - -|IN an unfamiliar upper room of the Canderays' house Jason stood -prepared for the signal to descend to his wedding. The ceremony was -to occur at six o'clock; it was now only five minutes before--he had -absently looked at his watch a great many times in a short space--and he -was striving to think seriously of what was to follow. But in place -of this he was passing again through a state of silent, incoherent -surprise. This was the sort of thing for which a man might pinch himself -to discover if he were awake or dreaming. In five, no, four, minutes now -Honora Canderay was to become his, Jason Burrage's, wife. - -A certain complacency had settled over him in the past few days, -something of his inborn feeling of the Canderays as a house apart seemed -to have evaporated; and, in addition, he had risen--Honora wouldn't take -any just happen so. Jason was never notable for humility. Yet who, -even after he had returned from California with his riches, could -have predicted this evening? His astonishment was as much at himself, -illuminated by extraordinary events, as at any exterior circumstance. -At times he had the ability to see himself, as if from the outside; and -that view, here, was amazing. Why, only a short while ago he had been -drinking rum in the shed in back of “Pack” Clower's house, perhaps the -least desirable shed in Cottarsport. - -Of one fact, however, he was certain--no more promiscuous draughts of -Medford. He recognized that he had taken so much not from the presence -of desire, but from a total absence of it as well as of any other mental -state. “Pack” and his associates, too, were now a thing of the past, -a bitterly rough and vacant element. The glass lamp on a bureau was -smoking: he stepped forward to lower the wick, when a knock fell on the -door. A young Boston relative of Honora's--a supercilious individual -in checked trousers and lemon-colored gloves--announced that they were -waiting for Jason below. With a determined settling of his shoulders and -tightly drawn lips, he marched resolutely forward. - -The marriage was to be in the chamber across from the one in which he -had generally sat. Smilax and white Killamey roses had been bowed over -the mantel at the farthest end, and there Jason found the clergyman -waiting. The room was half full of people occupying chairs brought from -other parts of the house; and he was conscious of a sudden silence, an -intent, curious scrutiny, as he entered. An instinctive antagonism to -this deepened in him: he felt that, with the exception of his father and -mother, he hadn't a friend in the room. - -Such other local figures as were there were facilely imitating the -cold stare of Honora's connections. He stood belligerently facing Mrs. -Cozzens' glacial calm, the inspection of a man he had seen driving with -Honora in Cottarsport, now accompanied by a pettish, handsome girl, -evidently his wife. His father's weathered countenance, sunken and dry -on its bones, was blank, except for a faint doubt, as if some mistake -had been made which would presently be exposed, sending them about face. -His mother, however, was triumphant pride and justification personified. -Then the music commenced--a harp, violin, and double bass. - -The wedding ring firmly secured, Jason stirred with a feeling of -increasing awkwardness. He glared back, with a protruding lip, at the -fellow with the young wife, at the small, aggressive group from Boston; -and then he saw that Honora was in the room. She was coming slowly -toward him. Her expression of absolute unconcern released him from all -petty annoyance, any thought of the malicious onlookers. As she stopped -at his side she gave him a slight nod and smile; and at that moment a -tremendous, sheer admiration for her was born in him. - -Honora had chosen to be unattended--she had coolly observed that she was -well beyond the age for such sentimentality--and he realized that though -the present would have been a racking occasion for most women, it -was evident that she was not disturbed in the least. He had a general -impression of sugary white satin, of her composed, almost disdainful -face in a cloud of veil with little waxen orange flowers, of slender -still hands, when they turned from the room to the minister. - -They had gone over the marriage service together, he had read it again -in the kitchen at home; he was fairly familiar with its periods and -responses, and got through with only a slight hesitation and half -prompting. But the thickness of his voice, in comparison with Honora's -open, decisive utterance, vainly annoyed him. He wanted desperately to -clear his throat. Suddenly it was over, and Honora, in a swirl of satin, -was sinking to her knees. Beside her he listened with a feeling of -comfortable lull to a lengthy prayer. - -Rising, he perfunctorily clasped a number of indifferent palms, replied -inanely to gabbled expressions of good will and hopes for the future -unmistakably pessimistic in tone. Honora told him in a rapid aside -the names of those approaching. She smiled radiantly at his father -and mother, leaned forward and whispered in the latter's ear; and they -followed the guests streaming into the dining room. - -There champagne was being opened by the caterer's assistants from -Boston. There were steaming platters of terrapin and oysters and fowl. -The table bore pyramids of nuts and preserved fruit, hot Cinderellas -in cups with sugar and wine, black case cake, Savoy biscuits, pumpkin -paste, and frothed creams with preserved peach leaves. A laden plate was -thrust into Jason's hand, and he sat with it in a clatter of voices and -topics that completely ignored him. He was isolated in the absorption of -food and wine, in a conversational exchange as strange to him as if had -been spoken in a foreign language. - -Honora was busily talking to young Mrs. Fifield--he remembered the name -now. Apparently she had forgotten his existence. At first this annoyed -him; he determined to force his way into their attention, but a wiser -realization held him where he was. Honora was exactly right: he had -nothing in common with these people, probably not one of them would come -into his life or house again. And his wife, in the fact of her marriage, -had clearly signified how little important they were to her. His father -joined him. - -“You made certain when the New York packet leaves?” he queried. - -“Everything's fixed,” Jason reassured him. - -“Your mother wanted to see you. But she got set and is kind of timid -about moving.” Jason rose promptly, and, with the elder, found Mrs. -Hazzard Burrage. “I'd like to have Honora, too,” the latter told them, -and Jason turned sharply to find her. When they stood facing the old -couple his mother hesitated doubtfully; then she put out her hand to -the woman in wedding array. But Honora ignored it; leaning forward she -kissed the round, bright cheek. - -“You have to be patient with them at times,” the mother said, looking up -anxiously. - -“I'm afraid Jason will need that warning,” Honora replied; “he is a very -imprudent man.” - -***** - -Jason's mind returned to this later, sitting in the house that had been -the Canderays', but which now was his too. Honora's remark to his mother -had been clear in itself, but it suggested wide speculations beyond -his grasp. For instance--why, after all, had Honora married him? He was -forced to acknowledge that it was not the result of any overwhelming -feeling for him. The manner of their wedding, the complete absence of -the emotion supposed to be the incentive of such consummations, Honora -herself, all, denied any effort to fix such a personally satisfactory -cause. That she might have had no other opportunity--Honora was not so -young as she had been--he dismissed as obviously absurd. Why---- - -His gaze was fastened upon the carpet, and he saw that time and the -passage of feet had worn away the design. He looked about the room, and -was surprised to discover a general dinginess which he had never noticed -before. He said nothing, but, in his movements about the house, examined -the furnishings and walls, and an astonishing fact was thrust upon -him--the celebrated dwelling was grievously run down. It was plain that -no money had been spent on it for years. The carriage, too, and the -astrakhan collar on Coggs' coat, were worn out. - -He considered this at breakfast--his wife behind a tall Sheffield coffee -urn--and he was aware of the cold edge of a distasteful possibility. -The thought enveloped him insidiously, like the fog which often rolled -through the Narrows and over the town, that the Canderays were secretly -impoverished, and Honora had married him only for his money. Jason -was not resentful of this in itself, since he had been searching for -a motive he could accept, but it struck him in a peculiarly vulnerable -spot--his admiration for his wife, for Honora. The idea, although he -assured himself that the thing was readily comprehensible, somehow -managed to diminish her, to tarnish the luster she held for him. It was -far beneath the elevation on which Cottarsport had placed the Canderays; -and he suffered a distinct sense of loss, a feeling of the staleness and -disappointment of living. - -The more he considered this explanation the more he was convinced of -its probability. A great deal of his genuine warmth in his marriage -evaporated. Still--Honora had married him, she had given herself in -return for what material advantage he might bring; and he would have to -perform his part thoroughly. He ought to have known that---- - -What he must do now was to save them both from any painful revelation -by keeping for ever hid that he was aware of her purpose, he must never -expose himself by a word or act; and he must make her understand that -whatever he had was absolutely hers. It would be necessary for her to go -to the money with entire freedom and without any accounting. - -This, he found, was not so easy to establish as he thought. Honora was -his wife, but nevertheless there was a well marked reticence between -them, a formal nicety with which he was heartily in accord. He couldn't -just thrust his fortune before her on the table. He hesitated through -the day, on the verge of various blunders; and then, in the evening, -said in a studied causality of manner: - -“What do you think about fixing some of the rooms over new? You might -get tired of seeing the same things for so long. I saw real elegant -furniture in Boston.” - -She looked about indifferently. “I think I wouldn't like it changed,” - she remarked, almost in the manner of a defense. “I suppose it does seem -worn to you; but I'm used to it; there are so many associations. I am -certain I'd be lost in new hangings.” - -Jason was so completely silenced by her reply that he felt he must have -shown some confusion, for her gaze deliberately turned to him. “Is there -any particular thing you would like repaired?” she inquired. - -“No, of course not,” he said hastily. “I think it's all splendid. I -wouldn't change a curtain, only--but....” He cursed himself for a -clumsy fool while Honora continued to study him. He endeavored to shield -himself behind the trivial business of lighting a cheroot; but he felt -Honora's query searching him out. Finally, to his extreme dismay, he -heard her say: - -“Jason, I believe you think I married you for money!” - -Pretense, he realized, would be no good now. - -“Something like that did occur to me,” he acknowledged desperately. - -“Really,” she told him sharply. “I could be cross very easily. You are -too stupid. Father did wonderfully well on his voyages, and his profit -was invested by Frederic Cozzens, one of the shrewdest financiers of his -day. I have twice, probably three times, as much as you.” - -She confronted him with a faintly sparkling resentment. However, -the pleasure, the reassurance, in what he had just heard made him -indifferent to the rest. It was impossible now to comprehend how he had -been such a block! He even smiled at her, which, he was delighted to -observe, obviously puzzled her. - -“Perhaps I ought to tell you, Jason, and perhaps it is too late already, -that I thought I married you because I was lonely, because I feared the -future. Anyhow, that's what I told myself the night I sent for you. You -might have a right to complain very bitterly about it.” - -“If I have, I won't,” he assured her cheerfully. - -“I thought that then; but now I am not at all sure. It no longer seems -so simple, so easily explained. I used to feel that I understood myself -very thoroughly, I could look inside and see what was there; but in the -last month I haven't been able to; and it is very disturbing.” - -“Anyhow we're married,” he announced comfortably. - -“That's a beautiful way to feel,” she remarked. “I appear to get less -sure of things as I grow older, which is pathetic.” - -He wondered what, exactly, she meant by this. Honora said a great many -little things which, their meaning escaping him, gave him momentary -doubts. He discovered that she had a habit of saying things indirectly, -and that, as the seriousness of the occasion increased, her manner -became lighter and he could depend less on the mere order of her words. -This continually disconcerted him, put him on the defensive and at small -disadvantages: he was never quite at ease with Honora. - -Obversely--the ugly shade of mercenary purpose dispelled--close at hand -his admiration for her grew. Every detail of her living was as fine -as that publicly exposed in the drawing room. She was not rigidly and -impossibly perfect, in, for instance, the inflexible attitude of Olive -Stanes; Honora had a very human impatience, she could be disagreeable, -he found, in the morning, and she undoubtedly felt herself superior to -the commonalty of life. But in the ordering of her person there was a -wonderfully exact delicacy and fragrant charm. Just as she had no formal -manner, so, he discovered, she possessed no “good” clothes; she dressed -evidently from some inner necessity, and not merely for the sake of -impression. She had, too, a remarkable vigor of expression; Honora was -not above swearing at contradictory circumstance; and she was so free of -small pruderies that often she became a cause of embarrassment to him. -At times he would tell himself uneasily that her conduct was not quite -ladylike; but at the same instant his amusement in her would mount until -it threatened him with laughter. - -There was a great deal to be learned from Honora, he told himself; and -then he would speculate whether he were progressing in that acquisition; -and whether she were happy; no, not happy, but contented. Ignorant -of her reason for marrying, he vaguely dreaded the possibility of its -departure, mysterious as it had come, leaving her regarding him with -surprise and disdain. He tried desperately, consciously, to hold her -interest and esteem. - -That was the base of his conception of their married existence, which, -then, he was entirely willing to accept. - -***** - -However, as the weeks multiplied without bringing him any corresponding -increase in the knowledge of either Honora or their true situation, -he was aware of a disturbance born of his very pleasure in her; an -uncomfortable feeling of insecurity fastened upon him. But all this he -was careful to keep hidden. There was evidently no doubt in the minds -of Cottarsport of the enviableness of his position--with all that gold, -wedded to Honora Canderay, living in the Canderay mansion. The more -solid portion of the town gave him a studied consideration denied to the -mere acquisition of wealth; and the rough element, once his companion -but now relentlessly held at a distance, regarded him with a loud -disdain fully as humanly flattering. Sometimes with Honora he passed -the latter, and they grumbled an obscure acknowledgment of his curt -greeting; when he was alone, they openly disparaged his attainments and -qualified pride. - -There were “Pack” Clower, an able seaman whose indolent character had -dissipated his opportunities of employment without harming his slow, -powerful body; Emery Radlaw, the brother of the apothecary and a -graduate of Williams College, a man of vanished refinements and taker of -strange drugs, as thin and erratically rapid in movements as Clower was -slow; Steven, an incredibly soiled Swede; John Vleet, the master and -part owner of a fishing schooner, a capable individual on the sea, but -an insanely violent drunkard on land. There were others, all widely -different, but alike in the bitterness of a common failure and the habit -of assuaging doubtful self-esteem, of ministering to crawling nerves, -with highly potential stimulation. - -Jason passed “Pack” and Emery Radlaw on a day of late March, and a -mocking and purposely audible aside almost brought him to an adequate -reply. He had disposed of worse men than these in California and the -Isthmus. His arrogant temper rose and threatened to master him; but -something more powerful held him steadily and silently on his way. This -was his measureless admiration for Honora, his determination to involve -her in nothing that would detract from her fineness and erect pride. -Brawling on the street would not do for her husband. He must give her -no cause to lessen what incomprehensible feeling, liking, she might -have for him, give life to no regrets for a hasty and perhaps only -half considered act. After this, in passing any of his late temporary -associates, he failed to express even the perfunctory consciousness of -their being. - -***** - -In April he was obliged to admit to himself that he knew no more of -Honora's attitude toward him than on the day of their wedding. He -recognized that she made no show of emotion; it was an essential part of -her to seem at all times unmoved. That was well enough for the face she -turned toward the world; but directed at him, her husband, its enigmatic -quality began to obsess his mind. What Honora thought of him, why she -had married him, became an almost continuous question. - -It bred an increasing sense of instability that became loud, defiant. -More than once he was at the point of self-betrayal: query, demand, -objection, would rise on a temporary angry flood to his lips. But, -struggling, behind a face as unmoved as Honora's own, he would suppress -his resentment, the sense of injury, and smoke with the appearance of -the greatest placidity. - -His regard for his wife placed an extraordinary check on his impulses -and utterance. He deliberated carefully over his speech, watched her -with an attention not far from a concealed anxiety, and was quick to -absorb any small conventions unconsciously indicated by her remarks. She -never instructed or held anything over him; he would have been acutely -sensitive to any air of superiority, and immediately antagonized. But -Honora was entirely free from pretensions of that variety; she was as -clear and honest as a goblet of water. - -Jason's regard for her grew pace by pace with the feeling of baffling -doubt. He was passing through the public square, and his thoughts were -interrupted by a faint drifting sweetness. “I believe the lilacs are -out,” he said unconsciously aloud and stopping. His surrounding was -remarkably serene, withdrawn--the courthouse, a small block of brick -with white corniced windows, flat Ionic portico, and slatted wood -lantern with a bell, stood in the middle of the grassy common shut in by -an irregular rectangle of dwellings with low eaves and gardens. The sun -shone with a beginning warmth in a vague sky that intensified the early -green. It seemed that he could see, against a house, the lavender blur -of the lilac blossoms. - -Then his attention was attracted by the figure of a man, at once strange -and familiar, coming toward him with a dragging gait. Jason studied the -other until a sudden recognition clouded his countenance, filled him -with a swift, unpleasant surprise. - -“Thomas!” he exclaimed. “Whenever did you get back?” - -“Yesterday,” said Thomas Gast. - -Well, here was Thomas returned from California like himself. Yet -the most negligent view of the latter revealed that there was a vast -difference between Jason and this last Argonaut--Thomas Gast's loosely -hung jaw, which gave to his countenance an air of irresolution, was now -exaggerated by an aspect of utter defeat. His ill conditioned clothes, -sodden brogans, and stringy handkerchief still knotted miner-fashion -about his throat, all multiplied the fact of failure proclaimed by his -attitude. - -“How did you strike it?” Jason uselessly asked. - -“What chance has the prospector today?” the other heatedly and -indirectly demanded. “At first a man could pan out something for -himself; but now it's all companies, all capital. The state's interfered -too, claims are being held up in court while their owners might starve; -there are new laws and trimmings every week. I struck it rich on the -Reys, but I was drove out before I could get my stakes in. They tell me -you did good.” - -“At last,” Jason replied. - -“And married Honora Canderay, too.” - -The other assented shortly. - -“Some are shot with luck,” Thomas Gast proclaimed; “they'd fall and skin -their face on a nugget.” - -“How did you come back?” - -“Worked my passage in a crazy clipper with moon-sails and the halliards -padlocked to the rail. Carried away the foretopmast and yard off the -Horn and ran from port to port in a hundred and four days.” - -The conversation dwindled and expired. Thomas Gast gazed about moodily, -and Jason, with a tight mouth, nodded and moved on. His mind turned back -abruptly to Eddie Lukens, the man who had robbed him of his find in the -early days of cradle mining, the man he had killed. - -He had said nothing of this to Honora; the experience with Olive Stanes -had convinced him of the advisability of keeping past accident where, -he now repeated, it belonged. He despaired of ever being able, in -Cottarsport, to explain the place and times that had made his act -comprehensible. How could he picture, here, the narrow ravines cut -by swift rivers from the stupendous slopes and forests of the Sierra -Nevada, the isolation of a handful of men with their tents by a plunging -stream in' a rift so deep that there would be only a brief glimmer of -sunlight at noon? And, failing that, the ignorant could never grasp the -significance of the stillness, the timeless shadows, which the -miners penetrated in their madness for gold. They'd never realize the -strangling passion of this search in a wilderness without habitation -or law or safety. They could not understand the primary justice of such -rude courts as the miners were able to maintain on the more populous -outskirts of the region. - -He, Jason Burrage, had been tried by a jury for killing Eddie Lukens, -and had been exonerated. It had been months since he had reiterated this -dreary and only half satisfying formula. The inner necessity filled him -with a shapeless concern such as might have been caused by a constant, -unnatural shadow flickering out at his back. He almost wished that -he had told Honora at the beginning; and then he fretfully cursed the -incertitude of life--whatever he did appeared, shortly after, wrong. - -But it was obvious that he couldn't go to her with the story today; the -only time for that had been before his marriage; now it would have the -look of a confession of weakness, opportunely timed; and he could think -of nothing more calculated to antagonize Honora than such a crumbling -admission. - -All this had been re-animated by the mere presence of Thomas Gast in -Cottarsport; certainly, he concluded, an insufficient reason for -his troubling. Gast had been a miner, too, he was familiar with the -conditions in the West.... There was a great probability that he hadn't -even heard of the unfortunate affair; while Olive Stanes would be -dragged to death rather than garble a word of what he had told her: -Jason willingly acknowledged this of Olive. He resolutely banished the -whole complication from his mind; and, walking with Honora after supper -over the garden in back of their house, he was again absorbed by her -vivid delicate charm. - -The garden was deep and narrow, a flight of terraces connected by a -flagged path and steps. At the bottom were the bergamot pear trees that -had been Ithiel Canderay's especial charge in his last, retired years. -Their limbs, faintly blurred with new foliage, rose above the wall, -against a tranquil evening sky with a white slip of May moon. The peace -momentarily disturbed in Jason Burrage's heart flooded back, a sense of -great well-being settled over him. Honora rested her hand within his arm -at an inequality of the stone walk. - -“I am really a very bad wife, Jason,” she said suddenly; “self-absorbed -and inattentive.” - -“You suit me,” he replied inadequately. He was extraordinarily moved by -her remark: she had never before even suggested that she was conscious -of obligation. He wanted to put into words some of the warmth of feeling -which filled his heart, but suitable speech evaded him. He could not -shake off the fear that such protestations might be displeasing to her -restrained being. Moving slightly away from him she seemed, in the soft -gloom, more wonderful than ever. Set in white against the depths of the -garden, her face, dimly visible, appeared to be without its customary -faintly mocking smile. - -“Do you remember, Jason,” she continued, “how I once said I thought I -was marrying you because I was lonely, and that I found out it wasn't -so? I didn't know why.” She paused. - -He was enveloped by an intense eagerness to hear her to the end: it -might be that something beyond his greatest hopes was to follow. But -disappointment overtook him. - -“I was certain I'd see more clearly into myself soon, but I haven't; -it's been useless trying. And I've decided to do this--to give up -thinking about things for myself, and to wait for you to show me.” - -“But I can't do that,” he protested, facing her; “more-than half the -time I wonder over almost that same question--why you ever married me?” - -“This is a frightful situation,” she observed with a return of her -familiar manner; “two mature people joined for life, and neither with -the slightest idea of the reason. Anyhow I have given it up.... I -suppose I'll die in ignorance. Perhaps I was too old---” - -He interrupted her with an uncustomary incivility, a heated denunciation -of what she had been about to say. - -“So you are not sorry,” he remarked after a little. - -“No,” she answered slowly, “and I'm certain I shan't be. I'm not that -sort of person. I would go down to ruin sooner than regret.” She said no -more, but went into the house, leaving Jason in the potent spring night. - -There was no longer any doubt about the lilacs: the air was laden with -their scent. An entire hedge of them must have blossomed as he was -standing there. He moved to the terrace below: there might be buds on -the pear trees. But it was impossible to see the limbs. How could Honora -expect him to make their marriage clear? He had never before seen her -face so serene. He thought that he heard a vague stir outside the wall, -and he remembered the presence of a semi-public path. Now there was -a cautious mutter of voices. He advanced a step, then stopped at a -scrambling of shoes against the wall. A vague form shouldered into view, -momentarily clinging above him, and a harsh voice cried: - -“Murderer!” - -Even above the discordant dash of his startled sensibilities rose -the fear, instantaneously born, that Honora had heard. All the vague -uneasiness which had possessed him at Thomas Gust's return solidified -into a recognizable, leaden dread--the conviction that his wife must -learn the story of his misadventure, told with animus and lies. Then a -more immediate dread held him rigidly attentive: there might be a second -cry, a succession of them shouted discordantly to the sky. Honora -would come out, the servants gather, while that accusing voice, -indistinguishable and disembodied by the night, proclaimed his error. -This was not the shooting of Eddie Lukens, but the neglect to comprehend -Honora Canderay. - -Absolute silence followed. He made a motion toward the wall, but, -oppressed by the futility of such an act, arrested himself in the -midst of a step and stood with a foot extended. The stillness seemed to -thicken the air until he could hardly breathe; he was seized by a sullen -anger at the events which had gathered to betray him. The crying tones -had been like a chemical acting on his complexity, changing him to an -entirely different entity, darkening his being; the peace and fragrance -of the night were destroyed by the anxiety that now sat upon him. - -Convinced that nothing more was to follow here, he was both impelled -into the house, to Honora, and held motionless by the fear of seeing -her turn toward him with her familiar light surprise and a question. -However, he slowly retraced his way over the terraces, through a trellis -hung with grape vines, and into the hall. As he hoped, Honora was on -the opposite side of the dwelling. She had heard nothing. Jason sat down -heavily, his gaze lowered and somber. - -The feeling smote him that he should tell Honora of the whole miserable -business at once, make what excuse for himself was possible, and prepare -her for the inevitable public revelation. He pronounced her name, -with the intention of doing this; but she showed him such a tranquil, -superfine face that he was unable to proceed. Her interrogation held for -a moment and then left him, redirected to a minute, colorful square of -glass beads. - -A multiplication of motives kept him silent, but principal among them -was the familiar shrinking from appearing to his wife in any little or -mean guise. It was precisely into such a peril that he had been forced. -He felt, now, that she would overlook a murder such as the one he had -committed far more easily than an intangible error of spirit. He could -actually picture Honora, in his place, shooting Eddie Lukens; but he -couldn't imagine her in his humiliating situation of a few minutes -before. - -He turned to the consideration of who it might be that had called over -the wall, and immediately recognized that it was one of a small number, -one of “Pack” Clower's gang: Thomas Gast would have gravitated quickly -to their company, and their resentment of his, Jason Burrage's, place -in life must have been nicely increased by Gast's jealousy. The latter, -Jason knew, had not washed an honest pan of gravel in his journey and -search for a mythical easy wealth; he had hardly left the littered -fringe of San Francisco, but had filled progressively menial places in -the less admirable resorts and activities. - -With so much established beyond doubt he was confronted by the -necessity for immediate action, the possibility of yet averting all that -threatened him, of preserving his good opinion in Honora's eyes. Clower -and Emery Radlaw and the rest, with the balance of neither property nor -position, lawless and inflamed with drink, were a difficult opposition. -He repeated that he had mastered worse, but out in California, where a -man had been nakedly a man; and then he hadn't been married. There he -would have found them at once, and an explosion of will, perhaps of -powder, would soon have cleared the atmosphere. But in Cottarsport, with -so much to keep intact, he was all but powerless. - -Yet, the following day, when he saw the apothecary's brother enter -the combined drug and liquor store, he followed; and, to his grim -satisfaction, found Thomas Gast already inside. The apothecary gave -Jason an inhospitable stare, but the latter ignored him, striding toward -Gast. “Just what is it you've brought East about me?” he demanded. - -The other avoided the query, his gaze shifting over the floor. “Well?” - Jason insisted, after a pause. Thomas Gast was leaning against a high -counter at one side, behind which shelves held various bottles and paper -boxes and tins. The counter itself was laden with scales and a mortar, -powders and vividly striped candy in tall glass jars. - -“You know well as I do,” Gast finally admitted. - -“Then we're both certain there's no reason for name-calling over my back -wall.” - -“You shot him, didn't you?” the other asked thinly. “You can't get away -from the fact that you killed a pardner.” - -“I did,” said Jason Burrage harshly. “He robbed me. But I didn't shout -thief at him from the safety of the dark; it was right after dinner, the -middle of the day. He was ready first, too; but I shot him. Can you get -anything from that?” - -“You ought to realize this isn't San Francisco,” Radlaw, the drug taker, -put in. “A man couldn't be coolly derringered in Cottarsport. There's -law here, there's order.” He had a harried face, dulled eyes under -a fine brow, a tremulous flabby mouth, with white crystals of powder -adhering to its corners, and a countenance like the yellow oilskins of -the fishermen. - -Jason turned darkly in his direction. “What have you or Clower got to do -with law?” - -“Not only them,” the apothecary interposed, “but all the other men of -the town are interested in keeping it orderly. We'll have no western -rowdyism in Cottarsport.” - -“Then hear this,” Jason again addressed Thomas Gast; “see that you tell -the truth and all the truth. My past belongs to me, and I don't aim to -have it maligned by any empty liar back from the Coast. And either of -you Radlaws--I'm not going to be blanketed by the town drunkards or old -women, either. If I have shot one man I can shoot another, and I care -this much for your talk--if any of this muck is allowed to annoy Mrs. -Burrage I'll kill whoever starts it, spang in the middle of day.” - -“That's where it gets him,” the ex-scholar stated. “Just there,” Jason -agreed; “and this Gast, who has brought so much back from California, -can tell you this, too--that I had the name of finishing what I began.” - -But, once more outside, alone, his appearance of resolution vanished: -the merest untraceable rumor would be sufficient to accomplish all -that he feared, damage him irreparably with Honora. He was far older in -spirit and body than he had been back on Indian Bar; he had passed the -tumultuous years of living. The labor and privation, the continuous -immersion in frigid streams, had lessened his vitality, sapped his -ability for conflict. All that he now wished was the happiness of his -wife, Honora, and the quietude of their big, peaceful house; the winter -evenings by the Franklin stove and the spring evenings with the windows -open and the candles guttering in the mild, lilac-hung air. - -***** - -Together with his uncertainty the pleasure in the sheer fact of his wife -increased; and with it the old wonderment at their situation returned. -What, for instance, did she mean by saying that he must explain her -to herself? He tried again all the conventional reasons for marriage -without satisfaction: the sentimental and material equally failed. Jason -felt that if he could penetrate this mystery his grasp on actuality -would be enormously improved; he might, with such knowledge, -successfully defy Thomas Gast and all that past which equally threatened -to reach out destructively into the future. - -His happiness, in its new state of fragility, became infinitely -precious; a thing to dwell on at nights, to ponder over walking through -the town. Then, disagreeably aware of what overshadowed him, he would -watch such passersby as spoke, searching for some sign of the spreading -of his old fault. Often he imagined that he saw such an indication, -and he would hurry home, in a panic of haste--which was, too, intense -reluctance--to discover if Honora yet knew. - -He approached her a hundred times determined to end his misery of -suspense, and face the incalculable weight of her disdain; but on each -occasion he failed as he had at the first. Now his admission seemed too -damned roundabout; in an unflattering way forced upon him. His position -was too insecure, he told himself.... Perhaps the threat in the -apothecary's shop would be sufficient to shut the mouth of rumor. It had -not been empty; he was still capable of uncalculating rage. How closely -was Honora bound to him? What did she think of him at heart? - -He couldn't bear to remember how he had laid open her dignity, the -dignity and position of the Canderays in Cottarsport, to whispered -vilification. Connected with him she was being discussed in “Pack” - Clower's shanty. His mind revolved endlessly about the same few topics, -he elaborated and discarded countless schemes to secure Honora. He even -considered giving Thomas Gast a sum of money to repair what harm the -latter had wrought. Useless--his danger flourished on hatred and envy -and malice. However exculpable the killing of Eddie Lukens had been, the -results were immeasurably unfortunate, for a simple act of violent local -justice. - -They were in the carriage above Cottarsport; Coggs had died through the -winter, and his place been taken by a young coachman from the city. The -horses rested somnolently in their harness, the bright bits of rubbed -silver plate shining. Honora was looking out over the harbor, a gentian -blue expanse. “Good Heavens,” she cried with sudden energy, “I am -getting old at a sickening rate. Only last year the schooners and sea -made me as restless as a gull. I wanted to sail to the farthest places; -but now the boats are--are no more than boats. It fatigues me to think -of their jumping about; and I haven't walked down to the wharves for six -weeks. Do I look a haggard fright?” - -“You seem as young as before I went to California,” he replied simply. -She did. A strand of hair had slipped from its net, and wavered across -her flawless cheek, her lips were bright and smooth, her shoulders -slimly square. - -“You're a marvelous woman, Honora,” he told her. - -She gazed at him, smiling. “I wonder if you realize that that is your -first compliment of our entire wedded life?” - -“Ridiculous,” he declared incredulously. - -“Isn't it?” - -“I mean I'm complimenting you all the time. I think----” - -“You can hardly expect me to hear thoughts,” she interrupted. - -He silently debated another--it was to be about the ribbon on her -throat--but decided against giving it voice. Why, like the reasons for -so much else, he was unable to say; they all had their root in the blind -sense of the uncertainty of his situation. - -Throughout the evening his thoughts shifted ceaselessly from one -position to another. This, he realized, could not continue indefinitely; -soon, from within or out, Honora and himself must be revealed to each -other. He was permeated by the weariness of constant strain; the peace -of the past months had been destroyed; it seemed to him that he had -become an alien to the serenity of the high, tranquil rooms and of his -wife. - -He rose early the following morning, and descended into a rapt purity of -sunlight and the ecstatic whistling of robins. The front door had not -been opened; and, as he turned its shining brass knob, his gaze fell -upon a sheet of paper projecting below. Jason bent, securing it, and, -with a premonition of evil, thrust the folded scrap into his pocket. -He turned through the house into the garden; and there privately -scrutinized a half sheet with a clumsily formed, disguised writing: - -“This,” he read, “will serve you notice to move on. Dangerous -customers are not desired here. Take a suggestion in time and skip bad -consequences. You can't hide back of your wife's hoops.” It was signed -“Committee.” - -A robin was thrilling the air with melody above his head. Jason -listened mechanically as the bird ended his song and flew away. Then -the realization of what he had found overwhelmed him with a strangling -bitterness: he, Jason Burrage, had been ordered from his birthplace, -he had been threatened and accused of hiding behind a woman, by the -off-scouring of the alleys and rum holes. A feeling of impotence thrust -its chilling edge into the swelling heat of his resentment. He would -have to stand like a condemned animal before the impending fatal blow; -he was held motionless, helpless, by every circumstance of his life and -hopes. - -He crumpled the warning in a clenched hand. How Cottarsport would point -and jeer at him, at Jason Burrage who was Honora Canderay's husband, a -murderer; Jason, who had returned from California with the gold fleece! -It wasn't golden, he told himself, but stained--a fleece dark with -blood, tarnished from hellish unhappiness, a thing infected with -immeasurable miseries. Its edge had fallen on Olive Stanes and left -her--he had passed her only yesterday--dry-lipped and shrunken into -sterile middle age. It promised him only sorrow, and now its influence -was reaching up toward Honora, in herself serenely apart from the muck -and defilement out of which he thought he had struggled. - -The sun, rising over the bright spring foliage, filled the garden -with sparkling color. His wife, in a filmy white dress, called him to -breakfast. She waited for him with her faint smile, against the cool -interior. He went forward isolated, lonely, in his secret distress. - -This communication, like the spoken accusation of a previous evening, -was, apparently, bare of other consequences. Jason's exterior life -progressed without a deviation from its usual smooth course. It was -clear to him that no version of the facts about the killing of Eddie -Lukens had yet spread in Cottarsport. This, he decided, considering the -character of Thomas Gast, the oblique quality of his statements, was -natural. He could not doubt that such public revelation, if threat and -intimidation failed, must come. Meanwhile he was victimized by a growing -uncertainty--from what direction would the next attack thrust? - -He smiled grimly to himself at the memory of the withdrawn and secure -aspect of the town when he had first returned from the West. To him, -striding across the hills from the Dumner stage, it had resembled an -ultimate haven. The seeming harmony and peace of the grey fold of houses -about their placid harbor had concealed possibilities of debasement as -low as California's worst camps. Now, successful, when he had looked for -the reward of his long years of brutal toil, the end of struggle, he was -confronted by the ugliest situation of his existence. - -He was glad that he had always been a silent man, or Honora would have -noticed and demanded the cause of the moroseness which must have settled -over him. They sat no longer before the stove in the drawing room, but -on a side porch that commanded an expanse of lawn and a high privet -hedge, while he smoked morosely at the inevitable cheroots, gloomily -searching for a way from the difficulty closing in upon him. - -Honora had been to Boston, and she was describing lightly an encounter -with her aunt, Herriot Cozzens. He was only half conscious of her amused -voice. Clouds had obscured the evening sky, and there was an air of -suspense, like that preceding a thunder storm, in the thickening dark. -A restlessness filled Jason which he was unable to resist; and, with -a short, vague explanation, he rose and proceeded out upon the street. -There, his hands clasped behind his back and head lowered, he wandered -on, lost in inner despondence. - -He turned into the courthouse square, dimly lighted by gas lamps at -its outer confines, and paced across the grass, stirring a few wan -fireflies. It was blacker still beyond the courthouse. He stumbled -slightly, recovered himself, and wearily commenced a return home. But -he had scarcely taken a step when a figure closed in upon him, -materializing suddenly out of the darkness. He stopped and was about to -speak when a violent blow from behind grazed his head and fell with a -splintering impact on his shoulder. He stood for a moment bewildered by -the unexpected pain; then, as he saw another shape, and another, gather -around him, he came sharply to his senses. His hand thrust into -a pocket, but it was empty--he had laid aside the derringer in -Cottarsport. - -His assailants grappled with him swiftly, and he swayed struggling -and hitting out with short blows in the center of a silent, vicious -conflict. A rough hard palm was crushed against his mouth, a head ground -into his throat, and a heavy, mucous breath of rum smote him. There was -muttered cursing, and low, disregarded commands. A cotton handkerchief, -evidently used as a mask, tore off in Jason's hand; strained voices, -their caution lost in passion, took unmistakably the accents of “Pack” - Clower and the Swede, Steven. A thinner tone outside the swirling -bodies cried low and urgent, “Get it done with.” A fist was driven again -Jason's side, leaving a sharp, stabbing hurt, a heavy kick tore his -thigh. Then he got his fingers into a neck and put into the grip all -the sinewy strength got by long years with a miner's pan and shovel. A -choked sob responded, and blood spread stickily over his palms. - -It seemed to Jason Burrage that he was shaking himself free, that he -was victorious; with a final supreme wrench he stood alone, breathing in -gusts. There was a second's imponderable stillness, and then the entire -night appeared to crash down upon his head... - -He thought it was the flumed river, all their summer's labor, bursting -over him. He was whirled downward through a swift course of jagged -pains, held under the hurtling water and planks and stones. He fought, -blind and strangled, but he was soon crushed into a supine nothingness. -Far below, the river discharged him: he was lying beside a slaty bank -in which the gold glittered like fine and countless fish scales. But he -couldn't move, and the bank flattened into a plain under a gloomy ridge, -with a camp of miners. He saw that it was Sunday, for the men were all -grouped before the tents singing. There was Eddie Lukens gravely waving -a hand to the beat of the melody: - - “'Don't you cry for me. - - I'm going to Calaveras - - With my wash bowl on my knee.'” - -It was undoubtedly Eddie, his partner, but he had never seen him so -white and--why, he had a hole over his eye! Eddie Lukens was dead; it -wasn't decent for him to be standing up, flapping his hands and singing. -Jason bent forward to remonstrate, to persuade him to go back--back to -where the dead belonged. Then he remembered, but it was too late: Eddie -had him in an iron clutch, he was dragging him, too, down. - -Jason made a convulsive effort to escape, he threw back his head, -gasping; and saw Honora, his wife, bending over him. The tormenting -illusion slowly perished--this was Cottarsport and not California, he -was back again in the East, the present, married to Honora Canderay. An -astounding fact, but so. Through the window of his room he could see the -foliage of a great horse-chestnut tree that stood by the side walk; it -was swelling into flower. Full memory now flooded back upon him, and -with it the realization that probably his happiness was destroyed. - -It was impossible to tell how much Honora knew of the cause of the -assault upon him. She was always like that--enigmatic. But, whatever she -knew now, soon she would have to hear all. Even if he wished to lie, it -would be impossible to fabricate, maintain, a convincing cover for what -had happened. The most superficial, necessary investigation would expose -the story brought home by Thomas Gast. - -The time had come when he must confide everything to Honora; perhaps -she would overlook his cowardice. About to address her, he fell into -a bottomless coma, and a day passed before he had gathered himself -sufficiently to undertake his task. She was sitting facing him, her -chair by a window, where her fingers were swiftly and smoothly -occupied. Her features were a little blurred against the light, and--her -disconcerting scrutiny veiled--he felt this to be an assistance. - -“Those men who broke me up,” he began dis-jointedly, surprised at the -thin uncertainty of his voice, “I know pretty well who they are. Ought -to get most of them.” - -“We thought you could say,” she rejoined in an even tone. “Some guesses -were made, but it was better to wait till you could give a statement.” - -“Am I badly hurt, Honora?” he asked suddenly. “Not dangerously,” she -assured him. “You have splendid powers of recuperation.” - -“I'll have to go on,” he added hurriedly, “and tell you the rest--why I -was beaten.” - -“It would be better not,” she stated. “You ought to be as calm as -possible. It may quiet you, Jason, to hear that I know now.” - -“You know what the town has been saying,” he cried in bitter revolt, -“what lies Thomas Gast spread. You've heard all the envy and malice -and drunken vileness of sots. It isn't right for you to think you know -before I could speak a word of defense.” - -“Not only what the town says, Jason,” she replied simply, “but the -truth. Olive Stanes told me.” - -“Then----.” An excited weakness broke his voice in a sob, and Honora -rose, crossing the room to his bed. “You must positively stop talking of -this now,” she directed. “If you attempt it I shall go away and send a -nurse.” - -He was helpless against her will, and sank into semi-slumberous wonder. -Honora knew all: Olive Stanes had told her. She was as noncommittal, he -complained to himself, as a wooden Indian. She might have excused him -without a second thought, and it might be that she had finished with him -entirely, that she was merely dispensing a charity and duty; and, moving -uneasily, or lying propped up in a temporary release from suffering, he -would study her every movement in an endeavor to gain her all-important -opinion of him as he had been lately revealed. It was useless; he was -always, Jason felt, in a state of disturbing suspense. - -He determined to end it, however, in spite of what Honora had said, on -an afternoon when he was supported down to the street and the carriage. -His wife took her place at his side, and they rolled forward into the -expansive warmth of summer. Jason was impressed by the sheer repetition -of life; and it seemed to him that this was the greatest happiness -possible--such a procession of days and drives, with Honora. - -Her throat rose delicately from ruffled lace, circled by a narrow black -velvet band with a clasp of remarkable diamonds; and he smiled at the -memory of how he had once thought she was marrying him for money. That -seemed years ago, but he was no nearer the solution of her motive now -than then. Her slim hands were folded in her lap--how beautifully they -were joined at the wrists; her tapering fingers were like ivory. As he -studied them he was startled at their suddenly meeting in a rigid -clasp, the knuckles white and sharp. He looked up and saw that they were -drawing near a small group of men outside the apothecary's shop. - -A curious silence fell upon these as the carriage approached: there were -the two Radlaws, one saturnine and bleak, the other greenish, shattered -by drugs; Thomas Gast; Vleet, the fishing schooner's master, and a -casual, familiar passerby. Jason Burrage stared at them with a stony -ominous countenance, at which Gast made a gesture of combined insolence -and uncertainty. Jason had sunk back on the cushions when he was -astonished by Honora's commanding the coachman to stop. It was evident -that she was about to descend; he put out a hand to restrain her, but -she disregarded him. His astonishment increased to incredulity and then -fear; he rose hurriedly, but relaxed with a mutter of pain. - -Honora, a Canderay, had taken the carriage whip from its holder, and was -walking, direct and composed, toward Thomas Gast. She stopped a short -distance away: before an exclamation, a movement, was possible she had -swept the thong of the whip across Gast's face. The blow was swung -with force, and the man faltered, a burning welt on the pallor of his -countenance. The coachman and Jason Burrage in the carriage, the men -together on the sidewalk, seemed part of an inanimate group of which the -only thing endowed with life was the whip flickering again, cutting and -wrapping, about a face. - -There was a curiously ruthless impersonality about Honora's erect -presence, her icy cold profile. Memories of old stories of Ithiel -Canderay, the necessary salt cruelness of punishment in ships, flashed -through Jason's mind. An intolerable weight of time seemed to drag -upon him. Thomas Gast gave a hoarse gurgle and lurched forward, but the -relentless lash drove him back. - -“You whisperer!” Honora said in her ringing voice, “you liar and -slabbering coward! It's necessary to cut the truth out of you. When you -talk again about Mr. Burrage and the man he shot in California don't -leave out the smallest detail of his exoneration. Say that he had been -robbed, the other broke one of the first laws of miners and should have -been killed. You'd not have done it--a knife in the back would be your -thought--but a man would!” - -She flung the whip down on the bricks. - -Thomas Gast pressed his hands to his face, and slow red stains widened -through his fingers. The apothecary stood transfixed; his brother -was shaking in a febrile and congested horror. The woman turned -disdainfully, moving to the carriage; the coachman descended and offered -his arm as she mounted to the seat. The reins were drawn and the horses -started forward in a walk. - -Honora's gaze was set, looking directly ahead; her hands, in her lap of -flowered muslin, were now relaxed; they gave an impression of crushing -weariness. Jason's heart pounded like a forge hammer; a tremendous -realization was forced into his brain--he need never again question why -Honora had married him; his doubts were answered, stopped, for ever. -He turned to her to speak an insignificant part of his measureless -gratitude, but he was choked, blinded, by a passion of honor and homage. - -Her gaze sought him, and there was a faint tremor of her lips; it grew -into the shadow of an ironic smile. Suddenly it was borne upon his new, -acquiescent serenity that Honora would always be a Canderay for him, he -must perpetually think of her in the terms of his early habit; she would -eternally be a little beyond him, a being to approach, to attend, with -ceremony. The memory and sweep of all California, the pageant of life -he had seen on the way, his own boasted success and importance, faded -before the solid fact of Honora's commanding heritage in life, in -Cottarsport. - - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dark Fleece, by Joseph Hergesheimer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK FLEECE *** - -***** This file should be named 51928-0.txt or 51928-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51928/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the -Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the -phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain -Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation.” - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right -of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - |