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diff --git a/old/53579-0.txt b/old/53579-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6c09acd..0000000 --- a/old/53579-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5561 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wisdom of Fools, by Margaret Deland - -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 Wisdom of Fools - -Author: Margaret Deland - -Release Date: November 23, 2016 [EBook #53579] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISDOM OF FOOLS *** - - - - -Produced by MFR, John Campbell and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE - - Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. - - Text in Old English (blackletter) font is denoted by =equal signs=. - - Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been - corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within - the text and consultation of external sources. - - All misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, - have been retained. - - - - -=Books by Margaret Deland.= - - - THE OLD GARDEN, AND OTHER VERSES. - Enlarged Edition. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. - - THE OLD GARDEN, AND OTHER VERSES. - _Holiday Edition._ Illustrated in color by - WALTER CRANE. Crown 8vo, $4.00. - - JOHN WARD, PREACHER. A Novel. 16mo, - $1.25; paper, 50 cents. - - SIDNEY. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cts. - - THE STORY OF A CHILD. 16mo, $1.00. - - MR. TOMMY DOVE, AND OTHER STORIES. 16mo, $1.00. - - PHILIP AND HIS WIFE. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. - - THE WISDOM OF FOOLS. Stories. 16mo, $1.25. - - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. - BOSTON AND NEW YORK. - - - - -THE WISDOM OF FOOLS - -BY - -MARGARET DELAND - -[Illustration: (Publisher colophon.)] - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY MDCCCXCVII - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1897, - BY MARGARET DELAND - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS, ’TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE 3 - - THE HOUSE OF RIMMON 66 - - COUNTING THE COST 136 - - THE LAW, OR THE GOSPEL? 191 - - - - -THE WISDOM OF FOOLS - - - - -WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS ’TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE - - -I - -“THE most delightful thing about our engagement is -that everybody is so pleased with it.” Amy Townsend said this, -smiling down at her lover, who, full length on the grass beside -her, leaned on his elbow, watching her soft hair blowing across her -forehead, and the color of the sun flickering through the shadows, -hot on her cheek; for she had closed her fluffy white parasol and -taken off her hat here under an oak-tree on the grassy bank of the -river. - -“I should have thought that the fact that we were pleased ourselves -was a trifle more important,” he suggested. But Miss Townsend paid -no attention to his interruption. - -“You know, generally, when people get engaged, there are always -people who exclaim: either the man is too good for the girl (and -you are too good for me, Billy!), or the girl is too good for the -man”-- - -“She is; there is no question about that,” the man interrupted. - -“Be quiet!” the other commanded. “But in our case, everybody -approves. You see, in the first place, you are a Parson, and I’m a -Worker. That’s what they call me,--the old ladies,--‘a Worker.’ And -of course that’s a most appropriate combination to start with.” - -“Well, the old ladies will discover that my wife isn’t going to -run their committees for them,” the parson said emphatically. -“Besides, if I’m a Parson, you’re a Person! How do the old ladies -bear it, that I haven’t any ancestors, and used to run errands in a -tin-shop? _I_’m a Worker, literally enough.” - -“You are a goose!” she told him calmly. “Don’t keep interrupting -me, Billy. What do ancestors amount to? I admit I’m glad that none -of mine were hanged (so far as I know), or that they didn’t run off -with other people’s money--or wives. (I’d mind the wives less than -the money, I must confess. I suppose you think that’s very mediæval -in me?) But what credit is their good behavior to me? You are a -credit to your people, whoever they were; and my own belief is that -they were Princes!” - -She had such a charming way of flinging up her head and looking -down at him sidewise, that he was willing to have had any kind of -ancestors, only to catch that look of joyous pride; and in his own -joyousness he was impelled to try to take her hand in his: but her -fingers were laced about her knee, and she shook her head. - -“Stop! I’m talking seriously; you mustn’t be silly. You must -listen to the other reasons why we are approved of: First, you -are a Parson, and I’m a Worker. Secondly, you are forty-two, -and ‘it’s high time’--high time, sir!--‘for you to be married’; -and I’m twenty-seven--and, really, you know, ‘my chances are -lessening’--(that’s what they say, my dear); and I ‘hardly deserve, -after all these years’”-- - -“And offers?” suggested her lover. - -“After all these _years_, Billy,--not to get a crooked stick in the -end.” - -“I am not crooked, I will admit,” he said. - -“Thirdly,” she proceeded, “you are very good-looking, and all the -old Tabbies say that a handsome minister ought to be married.” - -“The old Tabbies might find something better to talk about,” he -said, his face hardening. “Oh, Amy, that’s the kind of thing -that makes a man cringe!--I mean a minister. Here is this great, -serious, strenuous matter of living--the consciousness of God; -that’s what living is in its highest expression. And to further -that consciousness is the divinest human passion. A man tries to do -it, gives his life to it, and immediately he is food for chattering -old women! They gossip about his affairs, or his clothes, or his -looks, even!” William West sat up, his face stirred with anger and -pity. “But I suppose I must admit that the Parsons bring it on -themselves to some extent,” he ended, with a sigh; “we don’t mingle -enough with men; they distrust us, and think we talk twaddle about -overcoming temptations we know nothing about. So, being shut out -from masculine living, we do haunt tea-tables, and gabble about -vestments. I suppose there’s no doubt of it. Amy, I believe that -the old hunting, swearing parsons of three generations ago were of -more real value in the world than the harmless creatures that we -have now!” - -He had a certain stern way of thrusting out his lower lip when he -was very much in earnest, and drawing his strong brows together; an -impatient fire sprang into his beautiful dark eyes. He turned and -looked at her, claiming her understanding. - -“Yes,” she said; “yes, it is so. The belittling of the profession -of the ministry is a dreadful thing--a shameful thing. I once -heard a man say that ‘Elderly unmarried women always had to have -something to fuss over and coddle, something to lead around by -a blue ribbon. Sometimes it was a poodle; sometimes it was a -clergyman.’ And there’s truth in it, Billy.” - -“There is,” he said grimly. - -“Well, dear,” she reassured him, smiling, “your distinguished -rudeness to the ladies of your congregation has at least protected -you from the blue ribbon.” - -He began to protest, but the talk slipped back into their own -affairs, and somehow he succeeded in getting her hand, and by and -by they were silent, just for happiness, and because it was sunset, -and the river was flickering with light, and there was a faint stir -of leaves overhead. They were to be married in a fortnight, and -they were going to have all their lives together to say how good -life was, so there was no need to talk now. - -As the girl had said, it really was a very satisfactory match. -William West was a man whom every one honored, and many loved. -For fifteen years he had been settled in Mercer; first as an -assistant to old Mr. Brown, and then as rector of the church. -But he had taken his place in the community as a man of strong -judgment and high character; perhaps as a citizen, rather than as -a minister. Men felt that he was a man before he was a clergyman; -not knowing that his calling had given him his highest manhood. He -was singularly devoid of clerical affectation; consequently the -influence of his own reverence was not vitiated by a suspicion of -his common sense. In fact, his sanity in matters religious, joined -to his knowledge of human nature, made him a man of importance in -affairs municipal and social. That he had lived to be forty-two, -and had not married, was from no asceticism; he was a very human -person, and fully intended to have a wife; only, she must be just -what he wanted. And so far, that “not impossible She” who was to -possess his heart had never appeared. When she did, he recognized -her immediately, and would have proposed to her the next day, had -not a feeling of diffidence as to her sentiments deterred him for -nearly two weeks. At the end of that time, he told her--ah, well, -never mind what he told her! She, at least, will never forget the -passion of that claiming. - -Amy Townsend had come to spend the winter in Mercer, with a cousin. -Of course, the first Sunday she went to St. James’s, as everybody -who was anybody did. When she came home, her eyes were keen with -interest. - -“Do tell me about him, Cousin Kate,” she said. “I never heard that -sort of preaching; what does it mean? Is he a real person, or is he -just clever?” Mrs. Paul laughed. - -“Wait till you meet him! you’ll see.” - -But she also added to herself, “Wait till he meets you!” For Mrs. -Paul was one of those courageous women who rush in where angels -fear to tread; she was a match-maker. - -“Is he married?” the girl asked, naturally enough; but blushed -furiously the next instant, which made her angry. - -“No; but it is not for lack of opportunity,” said Mrs. Paul dryly. -“I declare, Amy, women are dreadful fools, sometimes! I should -think a clergyman wouldn’t marry, out of sheer disgust for their -silliness.” - -“Oh, he’s run after, is he?” Miss Townsend said coldly. - -“Well, I must admit he’s very attractive,” Mrs. Paul began, -remembering her scheme, and retreating a little,--for nothing will -put a girl against a man sooner than to know he is “run after.” - -Then she told his story: the boy had been a waif. (“His mother was -respectable, I think,” said Mrs. Paul, “but nobody knows anything -about the father.”) He had had that dreariest sort of childhood -which knows no other home than an institution. Then, somehow, -“quite like a story-book,” Mrs. Paul said, a gentleman took an -interest in him, and began to help him in one way or another. - -“It was that zoölogical man, Professor Wilson; you know who I -mean?” Mrs. Paul explained. “He looked after him. At first he put -him in a tinshop, if you please, as errand-boy,--fancy! this man -with the ‘grand manner.’” - -“Oh, I supposed he was a gentleman,” Amy Townsend said. - -“Amy, you are a snob,” her cousin answered hotly. “He is.” - -Mrs. Paul was so annoyed that she ended the story of Mr. West’s -career very briefly. “Professor Wilson offered either to start him -in business or put him through college; he chose to go to college.” - -“That was rather fine,” Miss Townsend agreed. - -“Fine? It just showed what sort of a man he was!” cried Mrs. Paul. -“He worked his way to some extent; that is, he was Professor -Wilson’s secretary, and he did a lot of tutoring. Professor Wilson -left him a good deal of money, but he gave away nearly half of it -at once, John says. Quite remarkable for a young man. Well, that’s -all; you see what he is to-day--a gentleman and a scholar: John -says there is no man in Mercer who has the influence that he has.” - -Miss Townsend, in spite of her careful indifference, was -interested. And later, when Rev. William West met her, he, too, was -“interested;” and all fell out as the most experienced romancer -could desire. - -Amy had a little money, much charm, a certain distinction that -answered for beauty, and a very true nature; there was, perhaps, a -certain hard integrity about her, but her impulses were gracious. -Also, as the old ladies said, she was a “worker.” She found life -too interesting not to meddle with it. - -So it had come to pass that these two, who, as Mrs. Paul said, -“were made for each other,” were going to be married. - - * * * * * - -“Just think, in two weeks!” he said, as they sat there under the -oak, the blossoming grass knee-deep about them, and the air sweet -with clover. “Amy, it does not seem as if I had been alive until -now.” - -“I wonder, does it go on getting--nicer?” she asked him, a little -shyly; “everything seems to be better, and more worth while.” - -“I understand,” he said. - -And they were silent for awhile, because understanding is enough, -when people are in love. Then the girl’s gayety began to sparkle -out. - -“Billy, Cousin Kate says if I’m not careful I’ll get to be a -managing Parsoness; she says I must devote myself to you, not to -your poor people.” - -“Mrs. Paul has given a great deal of good advice in her day,” the -Rev. Billy remarked meditatively, “and I really think very little -harm has come from it.” - -“She advised your being called to Mercer,” Amy retorted. “Did you -know that?” - -“Know it? My dear child! how often have I dined at the Pauls’? Just -so often have I heard it.” - -“Now, Billy, that’s not very nice in you.” - -“I but stated a fact; and I have a high regard for Mrs. Paul. Only, -when I think how many girls she has tried to make marry me!--but -they would none of them look at me.” - -“And in two weeks the opportunity will be gone,” she jeered. - -“Poor girls!” the minister commiserated; and was reproved for -vanity. Indeed, just because happiness is so serious a thing, they -became very frivolous, these two, sitting watching the sunset, -and the river. Amy told him a funny story about the parish; he -responded by another concerning Tom Reilly, a policeman; which -reminded Amy to tell him that poor Tom had had an accident, and -hurt his hand. - -“But it was very stupid in him,” she added, with a little of that -resentful goodness that one sees sometimes in women. “I’m not at -all sorry for him, because he deserved it. He had been drinking, -and as he went stumbling out of a car, he crushed his hand in the -door.” - -Her lover was not to be lured into professional comments; he -only muttered, “_Mauvais quart d’heure_”--which made her say -indignantly: “Now, Billy, really, that is _too_ much!” and insist -that they should go home immediately. “I cannot descend to such -levels,” she told him; and was very stern and forbidding when, -looking to the right and left, and seeing no man, he begged to be -allowed to kiss her. - -But this was all froth. Beneath, in the man’s life, were the great -tides of love, moving, noiseless and unchangeable, from out the -depths of his soul. In the girl’s life it was all shine and perfume -and glitter, like flowers blossoming on a rock; beneath, in her -heart, was the solid ground of reverence and faith. - - -II - -The two weeks that were to pass before the day that was to be the -Day of Days were very full. - -To get parish work ahead so that things would run themselves for -the month’s absence which had been granted the clergyman was -no small undertaking. William West was very busy, and a little -preoccupied in his endeavor to put his best thought, not upon his -own happiness, but upon committees, or Sunday-school matters, or -his assistant’s spiritual anxieties concerning his superior’s -indifference to the color of the lectern bookmarks; so it chanced -that he saw less of Amy than in the earlier part of their -engagement. He had but little time to think of her, and absolutely -no time to think of himself. - -They were to be married on Thursday. Late Monday afternoon Mr. -West, with great timidity, ventured into Mrs. Paul’s drawing-room, -with the bold purpose of abstracting his sweetheart for a walk. The -project was, of course, promptly crushed. - -“As though Amy had any time for that sort of thing!” said Mrs. -Paul. “Do you see those presents? She has got to acknowledge every -one of them! Amy, your cousin John and I will entertain Mr. West. -You can write your notes here, and let him look at you; that’s -quite enough for him.” - -Amy smiled at him across a barricade of silver bric-à-brac. - -“Billy thinks silver picture-frames and brushes and things are a -dreadful waste of money,” she said. “Just think how thankful you -ought to be, Billy, that I am making our manners for you; you -couldn’t say ‘Thank you,’ with truth.” - -“Oh, truth,” said John Paul, lounging about the room, with his -hands in his pockets--“truth, my dear little cousin, is governed by -the law of benefit; didn’t you know that? If it makes the donors -feel happy, tell them West has longed for nothing in the world so -much as a silver glove buttoner. Now, if you told them the truth, -fancy the shock! Ask the Parson.” - -“The Parson has no such base and cynical theory,” Miss Townsend -responded promptly; “have you, Billy? You don’t think truth is -governed by the law of benefit?” - -“I think truth-telling is,” he assured her. - -John Paul assumed that look of artless and simpering satisfaction -which one sees on the countenance of the unprotected male, who, in -the bosom of his family, finds himself indorsed by a higher power. - -“There, Amy, what did I tell you? I had an instance of it -yesterday. I”-- - -“Oh, here is a third asparagus fork,” murmured Amy; “what _shall_ I -say about it?” - -“What’s your instance?” said the minister. - -“Well, we’ve been looking for an assistant engineer, and there -have been the Lord only knows how many applicants. One fellow -impressed me very well; he seemed as straight as a string; honest -face, thoroughly decent-looking fellow. He was an Englishman, but -his references for three years were American. So much the better, -of course. I was going to engage him, when, bless my soul, if he -didn’t begin to stammer out something about having no references -from ‘Home’ (‘’ome,’ he called it), because he ‘’adn’t been over -steady,’ but he’d signed the pledge, and ‘he wasn’t afraid of drink -any more.’ I didn’t hire him. Now, I call that truth not governed -by the law of benefit.” - -“You don’t discriminate between being truthful and telling the -truth,” said William West. “You hadn’t asked him if he had ever -drank. I don’t believe you lost much, in not engaging him, poor -fellow.” - -“Oh, Billy, I think it was rather fine in him,” Amy protested, -looking up from her notes. - -“I don’t see anything fine,” the minister said simply. “In the -first place, there was a lack of reserve, a lack of privacy, in -rushing into confession, which betrays the weak nature. There was -also self-consciousness, in dwelling on his sin. And in the third -place”-- - -“This sounds like a sermon: firstly--secondly”--Amy murmured, -signing her name to her thanks for the third asparagus fork. - ---“in the third place, if the man has reformed, there was an -essential untruth in posing as a sinner.” - -“Well, I don’t quite agree with that,” began Mrs. Paul. - -“He’s right; he’s right,” John Paul declared. “I say, West, suppose -we went about confessing some of our college performances?” The -senior warden of St. James grinned, but his wife looked displeased. - -“I don’t believe you ever did anything very bad, John; but if you -did, I think you should have confessed to me.” - -“I stole some signs, Kate,” he told her; “can you forgive me?” - -Amy, listening, smiling, said with that charming sidewise glance at -her lover: “Cousin Kate is quite right. I should never forgive a -man who didn’t tell me everything! Billy, come here and confess. -Have you ever done anything wicked?” - -“We are all miserable sinners,” John Paul murmured. “I say so -publicly every Sunday”-- - -“But you don’t specify!” the minister reminded him, with a laugh. - -“Yes; but, Billy,” Amy Townsend insisted, “doesn’t it say somewhere -that ‘confession is good for the soul’?” - -“Perhaps it is,” he said dryly, “but, generally speaking, it’s -mighty bad for the mind.” - -There was an outcry at this from the two women. - -“Of course,” Mrs. Paul said, “simply gossiping about one’s self -isn’t confession; but don’t you think, Mr. West, in the really deep -relations of life, between friend and friend, or husband and wife, -there should be no reserves?” - -“My dear Mrs. Paul,” he answered, with quick gravity, “there must -be reserves--except with God. The human soul is solitary. But for -confession, that is different; justice and reparation sometimes -demand it; but, again, justice and courage sometimes forbid it. -Unless it is necessary, it is flabby vanity. That’s why I said it -was bad for the mind.” - -“Well,” said Amy, with some spirit, “I don’t believe in taking -respect, or--or love, on false pretenses. If I had ever done any -dreadful thing, I should want to confess; good gracious, for the -mere comfort of it I should have to! It would be like walking on a -volcano to keep a secret.” - -William West went over to the table where she was writing, and, -finding a place among the clutter of presents to lean his elbow, -sat down and looked at her with good-humored amusement. - -“Where are you going to draw the line? How far back are you going -in confessing your sins? Please don’t tell me that you slapped your -nurse when you were three. It would be a horrible shock, and make -me very unhappy to discover such a crime.” - -“I shall go all the way back,” said Amy, with decision; “if I had -done anything wrong, I mean very wrong, I should tell you,--if I -had only been a year old!” - -The minister laughed. “A desperate villain of one year!” he said; -but as he spoke a puzzled look came into his eyes. - -“I think,” Amy Townsend proceeded, “that honor and fairness demand -speaking out. And as for making some one else unhappy,” her voice -dropped a little, and the color came up into her face, “where -people love each other, they have a right to unhappiness.” - -“Listen to Amy clamoring for unhappiness!” John Paul commented. -“Don’t worry, my child; you’ll get your share. There’s enough to go -round, I’ve noticed.” - -Mrs. Paul laughed, but a note of reality had come into the careless -talk that gave her a sense of being a third party. - -“John, you are flippant,” she said; “come, let’s leave these two -poor things alone; they’re dying to get rid of us. And besides, if -Amy is going to confess her sins since she was one year old, it -will take time.” - -“That I consider a most uncalled for reference to my twenty-seven -years,” Amy retorted; “and besides, I’ve two more notes to write.” - -“And I must go home,” William West said, rising in a preoccupied -manner. - -“Why--but I thought you were going to stay to dinner!” Mrs. Paul -protested, with dismay. - -“Oh, you must stay to dinner,” Amy urged. - -But her lover was resolute. Nor did he, as usual, try to lure -her out into the hall that he might make his adieus. He said -good-night, stopped a moment to discuss with his senior warden -something about the appropriation for repairs at St. James, and -then, with a sober abstraction deepening in his face, went home -through the delicate June dusk, which was full of the scent of the -roses that grow behind the garden walls of the old-fashioned part -of Mercer. - - -III - -The Rev. William West went into his study and shut the door. He -was a man who was always accessible to his people, yet his lips -tightened with impatience when he found a parishioner awaiting him, -and saw a pile of notes on his writing-table. But it was only for -an instant; he listened to the anxieties of his caller with that -concentration of sympathy which can put self aside; and when the -man went away it was with the other man’s heartfelt grip of the -hand, his heartfelt “I thank you for coming to me; God bless you, -my friend, and give you wisdom.” - -The letters were not so easy; but he went through them faithfully, -answering them or filing them away: appeals for help, or money, or -work; two invitations; two letters from ladies of his congregation -about their souls; the unmarried and interesting clergyman knows -this sort of letter too well! He was aware of a sense of haste -in getting through with these things; a sense of haste even in -disposing of another caller, a boy, who came to say he had doubts -about the existence of God, and who felt immensely important in -consequence. “I tell you, Mr. West,” this youth declared, nodding -his head, “of course I don’t mean to be hard on the church; of -course I see the value of such a belief in keeping the masses -straight, but, for thinking men!” To treat this sort of thing -seriously and patiently is one of the trials of a thinking man who -happens to be a minister. Then the Tenor came to give his side of -the quarrel with the Bass, and the organist to say that quartette -and chorus were all fools. - -One does not prove the existence of God, or pacify wounded artistic -feelings easily; it was nearly midnight before the clergyman had -his library to himself. - -With a sigh of relief he shut the door, and walked once or twice -about the room, as though trying to shake off other people’s -affairs; then he bit off the end of a cigar, struck a match, and -sat down. He put his hands deep into his pockets, and stretched -his feet straight out in front of him. - -“It must be five years since I’ve thought of it,” he said to -himself. - -He held his lighted cigar between his fingers, his chin sunk on his -breast, his mouth set in that hard line which refuses to extenuate -or evade; his eyes narrowed with thought. Five years: Yes, the -memory had so faded and lessened that by and by it had ceased, and -now it was as though, as he walked along the level path of daily -life, a serpent suddenly lifted its evil head from the dust, and -struck at him, hissing. - -“I was eighteen,” he said to himself; “no, nineteen. And now I’m -forty-two! Twenty-nine, thirty-nine--it’s twenty-three years ago.” - -There is a hideous consciousness which comes to most of us men and -women at one time or another in our lives, of our inability to get -away from the past. From out of the “roaring loom of Time” comes -the fabric of our lives; white, run, perhaps, with a warp of silver -in our latter years; set, even, by the mercy of God, with deep -jewels of experience; spangled with golden threads of opportunity; -but back, in its beginnings--what stains, what rents! dragged -through what foul and primeval experiences of youth! Some, by -environment and temperament, have nothing to blush for but follies; -the joyous baseness of the young animal never broke through the -conditions of their lives, or the dullness of their minds. But for -most there are black spots from which, with wonder and disgust, the -adult turns away his eyes: the cruelty and impurity of childhood; -the ingratitude and meanness of youth. With the man, as with the -race, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is -natural. - -Twenty-three years ago: is there any connection between a fault -committed then and the William West of to-day? None! What has he in -common with the boy of nineteen? Nothing! - -Suppose he told Amy, would she understand that? Why, the very fact -that he had forgotten it meant that he did not belong to it, nor -it to him. And yet he wanted to tell her! - -William West got up with an impatient gesture. How absurd this -sort of mental posturing and agonizing was! What folly, to think -of burdening Amy with the miserable facts. Told now, twenty-three -years afterwards, their relation to his present life could not be -seen in true proportion. It would be an amazement and a shame to -her to think that her lover, her husband, had done thus and so. -Yet, it would not be her husband who was the sinner; it was that -poor, foolish, wicked boy of so many years ago; that boy upon -whom he looked back with the amazement and disgust of an outside -observer. What a curious untruth, then, in confessing it. He gave a -sigh of relief as he reached this conclusion; it was as if he had -stumbled for a moment, but had got his balance again. - -But, in spite of himself, his mind crept back to the brink of -that black abyss of memory: those were dreadful days, those days -of repentance twenty years ago. The remembrance of his sin would -surge over him at the most unexpected moments--in the midst of -work or study; when he was talking; when he was praying; when, -perhaps, he was helping some other human creature stagger along -under a burden of remorse. The deeper he went into the new life -he had begun to lead--the clearer the heavenly vision grew before -his eyes--the blacker the sin seemed. For years, the memory of -it used to come over him with a sudden sinking and sickening of -the soul. He remembered how inescapable the torment of his regret -had been. There would be periods of forgetfulness, when he was -plunged into work, and life, because it was service, seemed good -and sweet; then, at some word, or the look of the sky, or the -smell of a flower--the evil spirit of recollection would leap upon -him and tear him. Yet the periods of forgetfulness had lengthened -and lengthened. The pain and shame had faded and faded. The thing -that gave him this sick feeling, as he sat here in his study at -midnight, was not the fact that he had sinned; it was the memory -of how he had suffered for his sin. The sin itself, now, was too -remote, too separate from himself for any more repentance; it had -ceased to be real. But the suffering!--he could not bear to think -of that. - -“How mad this is!” he said to himself, with a curious terror lest -the old anguish should come back: the horror a man might feel who -sees the surgeon’s knife under which he has once agonized. - -For very fear of memory, William West drove his thoughts back to -the question of his duty to Amy; that was plain reasoning, and had -nothing to do with this nightmare. - -He lighted another match, but held it absently, until it scorched -his fingers, then flung it down with an angry exclamation. It -seemed as though the pain burned through all this fog of the past, -and showed him the facts which he must judge, and the folly of his -uncertainty. For, after all, what was this matter he was trying to -decide? Was it not merely the question of what was best for Amy, -not what was most comfortable for himself? It was that abstraction -called Honor, as applied to Amy’s happiness. - -What was for her happiness, or, as he had put it first, what was -his duty to her? To let her know his past, or to keep a secret from -her, and allow her to suppose that she knew his life as she did her -own? - -Admit that it was his impulse to tell her; what did that impulse -really mean? Primarily, that it would be a great relief to him; -the idea of having any reserves was most repugnant to him. For the -moment the instinct was again strong to tell her. But, frowning, -he went on with his argument: A relief to him; but what to her? A -pain and a shame; a memory that might outlast another twenty-three -years, perhaps. But she might want to know it? Well, that was no -reason. If she wanted poison, should he give it to her? And this -was poison. Did he not know that? Good God! - -But she had a right to know it? Here he was perfectly clear; -certainly not. It in no wise bore upon his relation to her. -Furthermore, the question of prudence was not involved; there was -no chance that some day, somehow, it might come to her ears. She -could never hear it, except from him. If this were not the case, of -course he would tell her. - -But was he deceiving her? Was he, as she put it, “taking her love -on false pretenses”? William West got up and walked the length of -his library; then he stopped by the open window, and looked out on -the silent street; a policeman on his beat glanced up and saw him, -and touched his helmet with two fingers. - -“Good-evening, sir; don’t know but what I’d better say -good-morning!” - -“What! Is it as late as all that, Reilly?” the minister said; and -added a friendly inquiry about the man’s hand, which seemed to be -hurt. Amy’s stern sense of the retributive justice of the accident -came into his mind, and he smiled involuntarily. The policeman -looked sheepish, as the clergyman meant he should, and turned the -conversation by remarking that he would “be lookin’ after the -rectory special when Mr. West was away on his weddin’ tower.” - -“Thank you, Reilly!” the other answered heartily. - -The policeman’s steps went echoing off into the night; a street -lamp flickered, and a puff of soft wind wandered into the window. - -_Deceiving her: taking her love under false pretenses._ - -Was he anything but the man Amy supposed him to be? Very humbly, -very truly, he said to himself that, by the grace of God, he was -an honest, pure, God-fearing man. That sin of twenty-three years -ago was not his sin. He, William West, forty-two years old, whose -honorable record in the community was spread through all these -years of service, was not that base, mean, wicked boy. The sin was -not his. It was a sin of youth; a sin almost of childhood. It meant -nothing to him now. - -“It is nothing now,” he insisted, passionately. Accustomed to -weigh other people’s actions and motives, he knew that he was -discriminating with almost judicial impartiality when he thus -looked himself in the face. “_A repentant man has no more to do -with his sin, for which he has repented and made reparation, than a -well man has to do with the disease of which he has been cured._” -He remembered that he had used this illustration once to some one -else; he must apply it now to himself. No; he was not deceiving -Amy. He was only sparing her--sparing her, to be sure, from a -pain she might wish to bear, but that had nothing to do with the -question. If she knew, she would suffer; not from a fact, but from -an illusion; for he would be confessing a sin which was not his -sin. Honor? The word seemed artificial as he thus put the situation -before him. - -No; it would be cowardly to tell her, and it would be untrue. There -was nothing for him to do but face the fact that, to spare her, -he must bear, for the rest of his life, the wretched burden of -realizing that he had a secret from her. - -Sanely, truly, this good man believed that his impulse to tell the -woman he loved was selfish and cowardly; it was an impulse to make -her share a burden which he deserved to bear alone. Furthermore, -it was the effect, not of reason, not of religion, not of -love; it was the effect, first, of the selfish desire to seek -relief by sharing a cruel knowledge; secondly, of a traditional -sentimentality, the weak and driveling outcome of that sense of -justice which is expressed in the willingness to bear consequences. - -Well, the boy who had sinned had borne the consequences; he had -suffered. - -For the man to suffer now, twenty-three years after, was -unreasonable, but inevitable. - -For a woman, who had no part or lot in that young past, to suffer -now, twenty-three years afterwards, was foolish and useless. - -If the man permitted it, he was a coward and a fool. - -This, at least, was what William West told himself. - - -IV - -The conclusion to which the Rev. Mr. West came was that, if his -love for Amy was deep enough and unselfish enough, he would hold -his tongue. He believed that confession, apart from reparation, was -the refuge of the weak mind. - -Having thus decided to bear alone the burden of his secret, he -went, early in the morning, and told the woman he loved. - -Of course, there is no explanation of this vacillation and -indifference to his own judgment, except the mere statement that he -was in love. - -“Amy is trying on her dress,” Mrs. Paul said, when he was ushered -into the library, “so, if you want to see her, you can go home at -once. But perhaps you may condescend to talk to me a little while?” - -“I must see Amy, please,” he said. He had a way of putting people -aside so gently and peremptorily that Mrs. Paul, who was not a -yielding person, never dreamed of protesting. - -“I’ll tell her. But she really can’t come down for ten minutes. Do -you mind waiting?” - -“Very much,” he said smiling. “Tell her to come down just as she -is, and let me see her frock.” - -“Indeed, she shan’t do anything of the sort,” said Mrs. Paul, with -indignation; but relented to the extent of letting him have the -library to himself, and going upstairs to send the girl to him. - -Amy came floating in with a snowy gleam and rustle, and stood -before him, bidding him not to dare to touch her; though, indeed, -being a mere man, he was far too uncomfortably awed to think of -taking this glorious white creature into his poor human arms. - -“You are magnificent, but you are not Amy,” he said; “do get on -some common clothes. I’m afraid of you.” - -“That is as it should be, sir!” she told him. “I shall dress -like this every day if it keeps you obedient. If I had had on my -wedding-dress last night, you would not have dared not to stay to -dinner when I--wanted you.” - -Her look, through the mist of tulle, of soft reproach and -challenge, was too much for fear, and he boldly kissed her; which -made her protest, and fly from further risk of crushing the bravery -of her wedding-day. When she came back again, in a blue cotton -gown, trig and pretty, with a bunch of pansies in her belt, there -was, fortunately, nothing to be hurt by being crushed. - -There was a moment of tender and passionate silence. His errand -faded from William West’s mind; the reality of life was here! his -past was no more to him than the eggshell is to the eagle. So -when, later, leaning forward in his chair, holding her hand in -his, looking into her pure eyes, he began to speak, it was almost -casually. Before the great fact of human love, the question of -telling her or not telling her of that old dead and buried sin was -suddenly unimportant,--they loved each other! - -“Dear,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you something. What you said -last night about having no reserves put it into my head. I had -forgotten it.” - -It was characteristic of the man that there was no preamble; -his words were simple, and he was perfectly matter-of-fact and -unanxious; so much so that Amy laughed. - -“Were you a year-old criminal? Well, tell me at once! I may -reconsider, you know.” - -There was something in the assurance of her gayety that jarred a -little, and he said seriously:-- - -“It is a wrongdoing of my youth, Amy. I’m not sure that it is not -selfish to tell you about it; but I can’t bear the feeling of -holding anything back from you.” - -An answering gravity came into the girl’s face, but she smiled. - -“Tell me anything; I am not afraid to hear!” - -Her innocent pride gave him a moment of sharp discomfort. Curiously -enough, what he had to tell her had not connected itself, in his -mind, with personal embarrassment; it had been too remote from -himself. He found himself hesitating for a word, and grasping -after that indifference to all but Love which he had felt but a -moment before. - -“Perhaps I am a fool to tell you,” he began; “it may make you -unhappy, and”-- - -A startled look came into Amy’s eyes; then the color flooded up -into her face. She lifted her head with a beautiful, imperious -gesture, and stopped him with a word. - -“I--understand. Don’t tell me. I--understand.” She bit her lip as -she spoke, and her eyelids quivered as though the tears had risen -suddenly. - -“You understand?” he repeated, in a puzzled voice; “do you mean you -don’t want me to tell you?” - -“William,” she said, in a low voice, “I do not think a woman has -any business with a good man’s life in the past; if--he was not -good. I am not a young girl. I am old enough to know that a man’s -life and a girl’s life are--different; but don’t tell me. I--love -you. Don’t tell me.” She trembled as she spoke, and then her eyes -sought his, filled with love and grief. - -A wave of tenderness made his whole face melt and quiver. He -murmured something of his undesert of such love as this:-- - -“You are not like other women,” he told her, as every lover has -told his mistress since the sun first shone on lovers. “That -sin, the mean woman does not forgive. And yet it is so much more -pardonable than some other sins! More pardonable, dear, than what I -want to tell you.” - -She drew a quick breath and smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m glad it -is not that!” Her relief was so apparent that he realized how -austerely sweet her face had been as she forgave him. - -“Go on and tell me,” she said; “I am not afraid to hear anything -now.” - -“That would have been the hardest thing to forgive?” he asked her. -She flashed a look of pride at him. - -“The things I could not forgive, you could not do!” - -This made him glow. After all, who would not confess anything, to -be met by such confident love as this? - -“This happened long ago, Amy; when I was nineteen. I forged a check -for five hundred dollars.” - -“Forged!” Her lips fell apart; she sat staring at him. - -He was holding her hand, lifting it to his lips sometimes, and -looking at it as it lay in his. He went on, quietly:-- - -“It was when I was at college; I needed money; and--poor, -desperate, wicked, silly young man--I forged Professor Wilson’s -name. I don’t know what I supposed would become of me when it -was found out. And I don’t know what would have become of me, -but Henry Wilson died before the month was out, and so, by some -strange chance, it never was discovered. If it had been--well, -you and I would not have been here to-day. Human justice would -have interposed before Divine mercy”--He looked up with a solemn -elation which seemed to put self out of his mind. “I might have -gone lower and lower! Who can say? It was an easy thing to do, -for I was his secretary, and he trusted me. That, of course, was -the most horrible part of what I did, the part that now seems to -me incomprehensible--the broken trust! Well, of course, I made -reparation, as I called it, out of the money he left me. I gave -away many times the amount I stole; but it was only because I was -scared at the risk I had run, and the thought of it harassed me. It -was a sort of expedient morality, you know; a sort of bargain with -my conscience for peace of mind. Then, about a year afterwards, I -met X----. I heard him preach, and life changed. How extraordinary -it seems to look back upon it now! Then I repented. Before, I had -only reformed. That was when I entered the divinity school. But -just think, Amy, just think of the difference! How life might have -gone--yet here I am to-day, your lover, your husband. Oh, the mercy -of God!” - -He was deeply moved. He got up and walked the length of the room. -Amy sat silently looking down at her hands in her lap. When he -came back, his eyes were full of peace. - -“That is all, dearest; now we will forget it. You know my life as -you do your own.” - -“Forget it?” she repeated, with a sudden, sobbing laugh, that tore -at the man’s heart. - -“Amy! dearest! have I shocked you so? Remember, it was twenty-three -years ago; I was only a boy. Let me tell you how it was: I was -madly in love with a woman; at least, it was not love, but I -thought it was; she fascinated me, and”-- - -“Oh, go on--go on!” she interrupted, hoarsely; “as if I cared about -that!” - -He tried to take her hand, but she made a pretense of arranging -the flowers in her belt; her head was turned a little from him. He -leaned forward, with a grave authority to command her attention, -took the pansies from her, and held them in his hand. - -“I was possessed to marry her. Of course, she would not look at -me--a penniless, charity student. But I strained every nerve to -win her. It was the old story. She took my flowers, or theatre -tickets, or anything I could give her. Curious, the mercenariness -of the woman did not revolt me! But I was mad about her. I thought, -at last, that if I had money I could give her some jewels she -wanted, and perhaps she would accept me. That was how it came -about. She took the diamonds, and eloped with a married man two -days afterwards.” - -As he told the story, the grossness of it all came over him,--the -offense to the exquisite delicacy of the girl beside him. - -“But I ought not to have told you this,” he stammered. - -“What?” she said dully. “About the woman? Oh, as if that mattered!” -She turned from him sharply, putting the back of her hand against -her lips as though to hide their quiver. - -Then she burst out: “Oh, why did you tell me? Why? why? Oh, I wish -you had not told me!” She shook from head to foot. “But it will -make no difference! I will not let it make any difference. I am -going to marry you. Only--_I never knew you_!” - -Those most terrible words, those words with which Love destroys -itself, came like a blow between the eyes. He grew very pale. “‘Not -make any difference’?” he repeated, blankly, “why, what difference -could it make?” - -She stopped crying, suddenly, and stood, panting, steadying herself -by her hands upon his breast, and staring at him. There was -something almost terrifying in this sudden pause and in her burning -look. - -“It’s the one thing,” she said, “don’t you see? that lasts. It -isn’t like--other things.” - -“But it was not I,” he said, mechanically. “Not I, the man you--you -thought you knew. It was a boy, twenty-three years ago. Amy, Amy! -Twenty-three years ago!” - -She did not listen; she kept repeating to herself: “It shall make -no difference. I will not let it make any difference.” Alas, it was -not for her to say! The difference was made; the jewel crushed -under foot is no more a jewel; the rose thrown into the fire is no -more a rose. The stained human soul is no more the innocent human -soul. - -“But you must listen to me, Amy,” he said. “No, I will not speak -until you are calm. Sit down. Look at me. Now, listen to what -I have to say.” He spoke slowly and gently, as one does to a -terrified, unreasonable child. - -“Dear, I had forgotten it. So little is it a part of my life that -I had forgotten it. When I remembered it last night, it was with a -sense of astonishment, a sense of pity for the mad boy who did it. -I had no personal shame,--it seemed to belong to some one else, -whom I watched with sorrow and indignation. I do not believe that -to-day, more than twenty years afterwards, I have any business to -think of it.” - -“Then why did you tell me?” she said wearily. “Oh, don’t talk about -it any more. I am going to forget it. Good-by. I am going upstairs. -I have a headache. Good-by.” - -She let her hand slip listlessly out of his, and left him standing, -blankly, his lips parted for another protest, and the flowers from -her belt between his fingers. - - -V - -As he went out past the drawing-room door, Mrs. Paul called to -him:-- - -“Do come here a moment, Mr. West. Isn’t Amy pretty in her -wedding-dress? You really must tell me what to do about something. -There is a family”--and she entered upon a puzzling question of -relief work, her forehead gathering into a frown, yet with her kind -eyes denying the severe common-sense of her statement, that if a -man will not work neither shall he eat. - -“But you see we can’t let the children go hungry,” she ended. - -The consideration of other people’s weaknesses and wickedness gave -William West time to get his breath; he threw himself into the -question with keen and intelligent sympathy. He pointed out this; -he suggested that; he cleared the puzzle out of Mrs. Paul’s face, -and all the time he was half deafened by a clamoring suspicion: -“Have I been a fool? She will never forget it! It will always be -between us. I’ve been a cowardly fool.” - -“Well, that’s all settled,” said Mrs. Paul, with an air of relief; -“now tell me, what day shall I have Amy’s things sent to the -rectory? And shall I take the silver from the bank the day before -you arrive? Is it safe to leave it at your house? I hate the -responsibility of other people’s silver!” - -“Oh, certainly, yes,” he answered, suddenly absent; and, with a -curt good-by, left her. - -Somehow or other, he hardly knew how, he got through the day. There -was a service in the afternoon, and there were other people’s -affairs and sorrows to remember; fortunately, there always is duty -for us poor human creatures as a refuge from our thoughts! Duties -to be done saved William West from desperately going back to Amy to -explain. For he was guilty of the impulse of “explanation,” the -babble with which the weak mind is forever annotating its remarks -or its opinions. - -Well, the day passed. In spite of a craving to see Amy that was -almost agonizing, he held on to his common-sense, and left her to -herself. In the evening, his lawyer came in, bringing some papers -in regard to certain property which it was the minister’s intention -to make over to his wife, and the looking these over, and the -business talk, was a relief to him. He began to feel that he had -taken Amy’s perturbation much too seriously; it would be all right; -she would see things clearly when the first dismay had passed. He -thought, tenderly, that he must not let her feel any regret for -having for a moment shown him her pain at what he had told her. Her -pain was only part of her exquisite goodness, that goodness which -held her, remote and lovely, like some pure and luminous star, so -far above the sordid meannesses and wickednesses of common life -that she could not understand them; perhaps even she could not pity -them. Only the sinlessness which was in all points tempted like as -we are can at once understand and pity; his thought, chastened and -passionate, fled back to his Master for comfort,--yet there was no -reproach of Amy in his mind. - -It must have been after ten, as he and Mr. Woodhouse sat before the -broad writing-table, with the litter of papers and memoranda before -them, that John Paul suddenly burst into the room. - -The senior warden’s strong, kind face was flushed; he was plainly -profoundly disturbed and upset. - -“West”--he said explosively, and stopped, seeing that they were not -alone. “My dear fellow,” he began again, stammering with agitation, -“can I see you a moment? A matter of business, Woodhouse, if you -don’t mind. Can we go into another room, West?” - -But the lawyer protested that he was just about to go home. “I have -married a wife; you’ll see how it is yourself, Billy, pretty soon! -Lois allows me twenty minutes leeway of the hour I name to get -home, and if I’m not back then, she threatens to send a policeman -after me. Good-night. Good-night, John.” And he went whistling off -into the night. - -The minister had not spoken. - -“Look here,” John Paul said, as the front door banged, “what -under the sun is this business? Good Lord, West, Amy’s sent you -a letter--Kate told me to break it to you, but I--confound it, -man--go and read it. The girl’s crazy. Go and read it. What are we -going to do?” - -Without a word William West took the letter and read it, standing -facing Mr. Paul. (“It looked,” John Paul told his wife afterwards, -“as though he died, then and there.”) - - “_You were right to tell me--only please--please don’t make me - marry you. I cannot. I could never forget. If it were anything - else--anything else--it would be different; but theft--oh, how - cruel I am to say that! but I cannot marry you. There’s no use - talking about forgiveness. I don’t want you to forgive me. I - want you to hate me; then you will suffer less. Hate me. I’m - not worth anything else. I’m going home to-morrow. It can be - said I am ill, and the wedding is put off. I am ill, it won’t - be a lie. Please don’t ask to see me. I cannot see you. Forgive - me._ - - _A._” - -William West sat down, folding the letter between his fingers. - -“There’s nothing to be said.” He spoke very quietly. Then he opened -the letter again, and looked down at it. - -“West, for God’s sake,” John Paul entreated him; “listen, man! -don’t take it like that. The girl is out of her mind. Here, pull -yourself together! It’s a passing whim; you will bring her to her -senses as soon as you see her.” - -“She will not see me,” he said. As he spoke his eye caught the -headlines of the deed of gift, and he read them absently:-- - - “=This Indenture= _made this ---- day of ----, Anno Domini - 18--, Witnesseth: that William West, the grantor, for divers - good and valuable considerations to him moving, has, and by - these presents does give, grant, and convey_”-- - -The fold in the deed hid the rest. - -“She’s got to see you!” John Paul said angrily. “What’s the matter -with her? Is she out of her senses? All I know is what Kate told -me. She asked me to bring you the letter. She said Amy had broken -her engagement. You could have knocked me over with a straw. She -wouldn’t give any reasons. But I’m touched by this business. If a -woman in my household suddenly forgets honor and common decency, -I’m touched by it! Unless you’ve given her cause?” - -He walked up and down, breathing hard, his hands thrust into his -pockets, jingling his latchkeys for the mere relief of doing -something. William West put the little note into his pocket. - -“I’ve given her cause,” he said. - -His senior warden stopped in front of him, and looked at him -critically. “You’re lying to me. I know you! It’s a girl’s whim, -and I’m touched by it, I tell you. She’s a member of my family. -I shall see her (she wouldn’t see me before I started here), and -straighten this business out. Kate is nearly dead with it. My wife -looked like a ghost when she came and told me--and the wedding day -after to-morrow! No; I’m going to straighten this thing out. What I -want you to do is to tell me, man to man, what started it?” - -“Amy is perfectly justified,” William West said dully. “I told her -this morning that I had committed a forgery.” - -“A--?” John Paul sat down, his mouth open, his plump hands on his -knees, his eyes starting from his head. - -“You are out of your mind!” - -William West laughed shortly. - -“I think, perhaps, I was when I told her. Yes; I was a fool. It -was twenty-three years ago; I had just about forgotten it. When I -remembered, I told her. It was too much for her. She is right to -stop now. If she can throw me over, thank Heaven she has done so!” - -The bitterness of it burst out in that last sentence. Then, -quietly, he told Amy’s cousin the story of that long-buried youth. -When it was done, John Paul said huskily:-- - -“West, I don’t know what to think of your telling her; but I know -what to think of you. And I know what to think of Amy.” - -William West said nothing; he took the little note out of his -pocket and turned it over and over. - -(“He seemed to go to pieces before my eyes,” John Paul told his -wife. “I tell you, Kate, I saw him lose his moral grip! Poor -West--poor fellow!”) - -Mr. Paul sat helplessly looking at his clergyman, until he had a -sense of indecency in watching the suffering of this silent human -creature. Then he said vaguely:-- - -“I suppose you want me to clear out? But just tell me; what do you -want me to do?” - -“Nothing.” - -“But don’t you mean to make any effort to bring her to her senses?” -burst out the other. - -“There’s nothing to be done,” the lover said. “It’s over--don’t -you see?” - -“It’s not over,” insisted Amy’s cousin; “I shall see her; this -thing can’t go on. I’ll send for you; you are well rid of her; it -will be all right, I”--Storming and protesting and contradicting -himself, he went out of the rectory, scarcely noticing that his -host saw him to the door, and let him out, in absolute silence. - -Then William West went back and locked himself into his library. - - -VI - -The senior warden of St. James was wrong when he said that his -minister lost his moral grip. There was, no doubt, a time of -upheaval and shock, a staggering under a calamity which seemed to -have no moral excuse, to be only a senseless shattering of a human -life. - -But he got his balance again. He made no effort to see Amy. This -was partly to spare her, and partly from a sense of the futility -of argument; the thing was done; if she married him ten times -over, it would not be the same. As she said, she had never known -him; and perhaps he had never known her. But, for that matter, who -of us knows the other? The question is, is it worth while to try -to attain, or to bestow, such knowledge? Gossip, of course, had -run riot when it was known that he had been jilted; but gossip, -after it reaches a certain point of insult and falsehood, becomes -a source of amusement to its victims. West, with his delicate -sense of humor, found other people’s opinions of his sufferings -not without interest. It being nobody’s business but his own, -only three people besides Miss Townsend and himself knew the -facts--the Pauls and his own lawyer; so no light was thrown upon -the subject to Mercer, which seethed and bubbled, and made itself -wildly ludicrous. The minister went away after that first fury of -parish excitement was over, and came back in four months, quite -brown, with a good appetite, and several very interesting pieces -of tapestry which he had picked up on the other side. He dined a -little less frequently at the Pauls’, and was never once reminded -that Mrs. Paul had been instrumental in bringing him to Mercer. - -He became, perhaps, a little more of a man’s man; a little more -impatient with his feminine correspondents; a little less polite -to the old ladies, who thought him less good-looking “since his -disappointment.” But he took a deep and passionate hold upon -affairs; the conditions of labor, the hideous problems of vice; the -reformation of the sordid politics of the small city in which he -lived,--these things filled his life. Were they enough? Who knows! -We make husks into bread when the soul starves. - -As for Amy, that is another story. - - * * * * * - -It was nearly two years after this that John Paul walked home one -night with Mr. Woodhouse, who was a fellow vestryman of St. James. -They had been sitting smoking by William West’s fireside, talking -over a strike which was on in one of the mills, where it seemed -as though the rights lay with the strikers; a fact which these -gentlemen believed to be unusual. It was nearly midnight when they -left the rectory and went along the empty, echoing street together. - -“It strikes me,” said Mr. Paul, “that you hadn’t much to say for -yourself to-night, Woodhouse. You’re the canniest fellow about -giving an opinion! Didn’t you want to commit yourself?” - -“I haven’t any opinion yet,” said the other man slowly; “and, -somehow, I got to thinking--I say, John, after all, what do you -make of West’s telling Miss Townsend that matter?” - -“I think she didn’t know which side her bread was buttered,” John -Paul said gruffly. - -“Oh, that’s another question,” the lawyer said. “I think almost any -woman is too good for almost any man. I wonder they don’t all think -better of it at the last moment, and throw us over!” - -“How long have you been married, Gifford?” the older man inquired -cynically. “I’ll tell you what Kate says: Kate says if Amy could -throw him over, she ought to have had the chance to. So she thinks -West ought to have told her.” - -“That’s like saying, if there is a chance of breaking your neck by -taking some preposterous leap, take it,” the lawyer commented. “But -as I look back at it now, and see how it has aged Billy, and--well, -hardened him a little, I think--it seems such an unnecessary -calamity; such a blunder! And yet”-- - -“Kate has views about heredity, and all that sort of thing,” Mr. -Paul explained. “She says a woman has a right to say her children -shan’t have a--shady character for a father. That was too much for -me; I don’t generally contradict my Boss; it isn’t peaceful. But -that was too much for me! Billy West shady! I gave my wife a piece -of my mind. I tell you, Woodhouse, women are hard.” - -“Well, but there’s something in that,” the lawyer protested. “A -woman has not only a right, but a duty, to think of her children, -and a possible moral taint”-- - -“Moral grandmother!” John Paul broke in; “West is one man in -a hundred. I think he’s well rid of Amy: I told him so at the -time. Why, look here; a man who has not repented of his sin has -no inclination to confess it. And, having repented and made -reparation, confession becomes a mere matter of expediency. Why, -good heavens, Gifford! is there to be no escape from sin? What’s -all this talk about forgiveness mean, if we’ve got to rake up -the past and agonize over it as long as we live? Isn’t there any -statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don’t believe any -large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues! And -yet,” he ended, suddenly cooling, “I swear it is a difficult -question, the telling or not telling the girl you are going to -marry.” - -“If you bring it down to expediency, it’s simple enough,” Gifford -Woodhouse said; “it was obviously inexpedient. Even if she had -married him, and simply remembered, would either of them have been -any better off? Would any end have been subserved by putting such -painful knowledge on her conscience as well as his own? It was -not as though there was a lady ‘with nine small children and one -at the breast’ somewhere round the corner in the Past, who might -turn up some day. That sort of sin affects the relation of the -man and woman, and it may be simple prudence to confess. Though I -think there is a question, even there. But in this case expediency, -you might even call it unselfishness, would make him hold his -tongue. The only thing is, perhaps there is something higher than -expediency?” - -They had reached Mr. Paul’s door; he pitched his cigar into the -street and pulled out his keys, shaking them on the end of their -chain. - -“You mean, abstractly, is it right or wrong, under circumstances -like these, where no third person is to be cleared or benefited, to -tell? Does honor demand confession?” - -“Yes,” said the vestryman; “was it a duty to speak, or a duty to be -silent?” - -There was a moment’s silence. - -“Was West a fool or a saint?” insisted the younger man. - -“I’ll be hanged if I know,” said the senior warden. - - - - -THE HOUSE OF RIMMON - - -I - -THE Rev. Silas Eaton was dead. - -It was May, and the little orchard behind the parsonage was like a -white and perfumed cloak flung on the shoulder of a bare hillside -which was, all the rest of it, rocky pasture. Under the trees, and -in the shelter of the stone walls, the grass was growing green. The -apple blossoms were just beginning to fall; in any breath of wind -single petals, white, stained outside with crimson, came down in -flurries, like gusts of warm and aromatic snow. There was a stir -of life everywhere. In the parsonage garden crown imperials had -pushed their strong stalks through the damp earth, and peonies were -reaching up long slender arms, each with its red curled fist of -leaves, reluctant to expand until certain of the sun. The ground -was spongy beneath the foot, and there were small springs bubbling -up under every winter-bleached tuft of last year’s grass. The air, -full of the scent of earth and growing things, was warm and sweet, -yet with an edge of cold--the sword of frost in a velvet scabbard. - -Life--life: and in the upper chamber of the parsonage the master -lay dead. - -One of the children had put a bunch of apple blossoms on the table -at the head of the bed. They were not appropriate--the soft, rosy -flowers beside the hard face there on the pillow; the face with its -thatch of gray hair over the narrow, domelike brow, seamed and cut -with wrinkles; the anxious, melancholy lips set in such icy and -eternal indifference--the face of the religious egotist, stamped -with inexorable sincerity, stern and cold and mean. Not a father’s -face. But his daughter had put her handful of snowy flowers on the -pine table, their little gnarled black stems thrust tightly down -into a tumbler of water. And then she went tiptoeing out of the -silent room. She heard her mother’s little, light voice downstairs -in the parlor, and Elder Barnes’s low, respectful murmur in -response. They were “making the arrangements.” Esther’s heart stood -still, not with grief, but with misery at the strangeness of it -all--her silent, meek, obedient mother saying what should or what -should not happen to--father! - -“And, Mr. Barnes, if it will not be a trouble, will you find out -for me how much it would cost to send a telegram to my brother in -Mercer?” - -Esther, leaning over the banisters in the upper hall, opened her -lips with astonishment. A telegram! It gave the child a sense of -the dreadful importance of this May day as nothing else had done. -The thought of the expense of it came next, sobering that curious -sense of elation which is part of bereavement. - -“Mother oughtn’t to do that. It will cost--oh, it will cost at -least a dollar!” - -This fifteen-year old Esther had a certain grim practicality, born -of a childhood in a minister’s family on five hundred dollars -a year. A dollar! And that uncle in Mercer, whom she had never -seen, who had quarreled with her mother because she married her -father, and who was so rich and powerful (according to a newspaper -paragraph she had once read)--this uncle, who had had no connection -with them in all these years--what was the use of wasting a dollar -in telegraphing him? She meant to say so; and yet, when she went -downstairs, after Elder Barnes had gone, and found her little -mother standing at the window, looking blankly out at the garden, -there was something in the mild, faded face that kept the girl -silent. She came up and put her strong young arm about her, and -kissed her softly. - -“Mother, won’t you lie down?” - -“No, dear; I am not tired. Mr. Barnes has been very kind in telling -me what must be done. I do hope everything will be as--_he_ would -wish.” - -They did not speak for a little while, and then Esther said, in a -low voice, “Mother, I don’t want to worry you, and--and perhaps -it’s very soon to speak of it, but have you thought at all of what -is going to become of us?” - -Her mother put up her hand with a sort of shiver. “No, no; not -yet. We mustn’t talk of that yet. Oh, Esther, he is dead! Poor -Silas--poor Silas!” She caught her breath like a child, and looked -up at her tall daughter in a frightened way. - -Esther nodded and cried a little; then she wiped her eyes, and -said, hesitating: “You’re going to get a crêpe veil, aren’t you, -mother, and a black dress? And I think I ought to have a black -dress.” - -“We haven’t any money for new clothes, Essie,” Mrs. Eaton answered -tremulously. - -“But I think we ought to wear black,” Esther protested. “It isn’t -proper not to.” - -The other sighed with anxiety. “I don’t see how we can. He would -not wish us to waste the money.” - -They were very intimate, these two; for each had found the other a -shelter from the fierce integrity which had ruled the family life. -And now instinctively they nestled together, panting and chirping -like two frightened birds, and saying to each other, “_He_ would -wish this, or that.” - -But he was dead, and the face of life was suddenly changed to them -both. The withdrawal of the dominant righteous will of husband -and father made an abrupt silence in their lives--a silence which -was as overwhelming in its way as grief. To the mother it was as -though having been borne helplessly along on some powerful arm, -she had been suddenly set down on her own feet, and bidden to lead -and carry others. Esther’s frightened question, “What is going -to become of us?” echoed in her ears like a crash of bewildering -sound. She had no answer; all she knew was that she must take care -of the children; work for them; fight for them--poor little weak -creature!--if necessary. She was thirty-five, this mother, but she -looked much older. Once she must have been pretty; one knew that -by the startled softness of her hazel eyes and the delicately cut -pale lips; but her forehead, rounded like a child’s, was worn -and full of lines, and her whole expression so timid and anxious -and deprecating that one only thought of what her life must have -been to cut so deep a stamp on such gentle and vague material. -It had been, since her marriage, a very uneventful life, its -keenest excitement the making both ends meet on her husband’s -salary. Before that there had, indeed, been the keen and exciting -experience of marrying in opposition to her father’s command, and -being practically disowned by her people. She was Lydia Blair, a -girl of good family, gentle and dutiful, as girls were expected -to be thirty years ago--one of those pleasant girls who let -their elders and betters think for them, and are loved as one -loves comfortable and inanimate things. And then, suddenly, had -appeared this harsh, fiery, narrow New England minister, of another -denomination, of another temperament--for that matter, of another -class; and she had developed a will of her own and married him. -Why? Everybody who knew her asked, “Why?” Perhaps afterwards she -herself asked why--afterwards, when he became so intent upon saving -his own soul that he had no time to win his children’s love or to -make love to his wife. By the time he came to die, very likely he -had forgotten he ever had made love to her. He called her “Mrs. -Eaton,” and he was as used to her as he was to his battered old -desk or his worn Bible. But when he came to die, he lay in his bed -and watched her as he had not done these fifteen years; and once -he said, when she brought him his medicine, “You’ve been a good -wife, Mrs. Eaton;” and once, “You’re very kind, Lily.” But this was -at the end, and the doctor said his mind was wandering. And then -the end had come, in the spring night, towards dawn; and now he -was lying still, as indifferent to the soft weather, the shower of -apple blossoms, the two children whispering about the house, the -wife staring, dry-eyed, out into the sunshine--as indifferent as he -always had been. - -Well, well; he was a good man, they said; and now he had gone to -find the God whom he had defamed and vilified under the name of -religion, imputing to Him meanness and cruelty and revenge--the -passions of his own poor human nature. - -And may that God have mercy on his soul! - - -II - -Robert Blair came into the dining-room, holding the “dollar -telegram” in his hand. His wife looked up at him, smiling. - -“It is really shameful the way business pursues you! I am going to -tell Samuel to burn all dispatches that come here. Your office is -the place for those horrid yellow papers.” - -“It isn’t business this time, Nellie; it’s death.” - -“Oh, Robert!” - -“Oh,” he hastened to explain, “it’s nothing that touches us. My -sister Lydia’s husband is dead. You have heard me speak of my -sister Lydia, haven’t you? It was long before your day, you baby, -that she married him. Ah, well, what a pretty girl she was!” He -sat down, shook his head when the man offered him some soup, and -opened his napkin thoughtfully. “Well, he’s dead. He was a most -objectionable person”-- - -Mrs. Blair looked at the butler’s back as he stood at the -sideboard, and raised her eyebrows; but her husband went on, a -wrinkle like a cut deepening on his forehead:-- - -“My father forbade it--did I never tell you about it?--but Lydia, -who had always been a nonentity, suddenly acquired a will, and -married him. My father never forgave her. She evidently didn’t care -for any affection that didn’t include him, and cut herself off from -all of us. Of course I’m sorry for her now; but I don’t feel that -I have anything to reproach myself with.” He tapped the table with -impatient fingers, and told the butler that he didn’t want his -claret _boiled_. “Haven’t you any sense, Samuel? You’re a perfect -fool about wine; here, throw that out of the window, and get me a -fresh bottle!” - -Mrs. Blair was a beautiful young woman, who, two years before, had -married this irascible, successful, dogmatic man, and (so Mercer -said) could wind him round any one of her pretty jeweled fingers -whenever she wanted to. He certainly was very much in love--and so -was she, though her particular world never believed it, alleging -that she was not indifferent to the loaves and fishes. - -But the fact was Mrs. Blair took the loaves and fishes with a -childlike delight which meant appreciation, certainly, but not -avarice. She enjoyed her wealth, and her life, and herself, -immensely and openly; and that was her charm to her husband, a -man immersed in large affairs, sagacious, powerful, and without -imagination. He was a cultivated man, because his forbears had been -educated people, of sober, comfortable wealth; hence he had gone -to college, like other young men of his class, and had traveled, -and had acquired an intellectual, or rather a commercial knowledge -of Art. But, until he married, every instinct was for power, and -the making of money. After that, though the guiding principle -remained the same, a sense of beauty did awaken in him. He never -flagged in his fierce and joyous and cruel passion for getting; -but he delighted in his wife--perhaps as one of his own enormous -machines might have delighted in a ray of sunlight dancing across -its steel shafts, and flickering through the thunderous whir of its -driving-wheel. He loaded the girl he married with every luxury; -almost immediately she found she had nothing left to desire--from -dogs to diamonds, houses, yachts, or pictures. She, poor child, -realized no deprivation in seeing every wish fulfilled, and -thought herself the luckiest and the happiest woman in the world. -Her money, combined with a good deal of common-sense, gave her -the power to interfere helpfully in the lives of less fortunate -people. She called it Philanthropy, and found playing Providence -to the halt, the maimed, and the blind a really keen interest. Her -impulse was always to “manage”; and so, when her husband, frowning, -and perhaps a little less satisfied with himself than usual, -began to talk about his sister’s affairs, Mrs. Blair was instantly -interested. - -“Of course her husband’s death will make a difference in her -income?” she said, as they went upstairs to the library. “A country -minister’s salary doesn’t amount to much anyhow; but”-- - -“Well, she made her bed,” he interrupted sharply; “she ought to be -willing to lie in it!” - -“Oh, yes, of course; but now the man is dead, it’s different. I -know you want to do something for her, you are so generous.” - -He pulled her pretty ear at that, and told her she was a flattering -little humbug. “What do you want, diplomat? You’ll bankrupt me -yet. Am I to build a palace for Lily? Look here, I wrote that West -Virginia college president to-day and told him I’d give him the -money he wanted. It’s all your doing, but I get the name of a great -educator.” - -“Oh, Robert, how good you are! I think that ought to silence the -people that say you ‘grind the face of the poor.’ I saw that in the -paper to-day. Beasts! and you are so generous! I tell you what -I want: I want you to have them come here, your sister and the -children”-- - -“You angel!” he said. “No; that’s dangerous. We mightn’t like the -brats. The boy’s name is Silas. I don’t think I could stand a cub -named Silas. But the girl wouldn’t be so bad. As for Lily (we -used to call her Lily when she was a girl), she is one of those -gentle, colorless women, all virtue and no opinions, whom anybody -could live with. Rather a fool, you know. But we’ll have them come -and make us a visit, if it won’t bore you. If we like it, we can -prolong it. Anyhow, I’ll see that poor Lil has a decent income. You -know, my father didn’t leave her a cent. The old gentleman said he -wouldn’t have ‘that hell-fire Presbyterian use any of his money for -his damned heathen!’ But I’ll look after her now.” - - * * * * * - -Thus it was that a home was prepared for Silas Eaton’s widow; -the offer of it came the day after the funeral, when she sat -down to face the future. She had gone over her assets, in her -halting, feminine way, counting up the dollars on her fingers, and -subtracting the debts with a stubby lead-pencil on the back of an -old envelope; and she had discovered that when all the expenses of -the funeral were paid she would have in the bank one hundred and -seventy-five dollars. If she could manage to sell her husband’s -very limited library, she might add a few dollars to that sum; but -very few. - -One hundred and seventy-five dollars! She must go to some city, and -go to work, so that Silas and Esther might be educated. She had -got as far as that when her brother’s letter came. He would have -come himself, he said, but was detained by an annoying strike in -one of his rolling-mills, and so wrote to ask her to come, with the -children, and visit him for a little while; “then we’ll see what -can be done; but don’t worry about ways and means. I will see to -all that.” - -She read the straightforward, kindly words, her heart beating so -she could scarcely breathe. Then she covered her face with her -hands, and trembled with excitement and relief. “Oh,” she said, -“the children won’t be poor! Robert will take care of us.” - - -III - -When Mrs. Eaton went to Mercer, the change in her life was absolute -and bewildering. Robert Blair’s enormous wealth was, at first, -simply not to be realized. The subdued and refined magnificence -of the house conveyed nothing to his sister’s mind, because she -had no standard of value. The pictures and tapestries implied not -money, but only beauty and joy, for she had never dreamed of buying -anything but food and clothes; so how could she guess that all the -money of all her sixteen years on a minister’s salary would not -have purchased, say, the small misty square of canvas that held in -one corner a wonderful and noble and peasant name? - -The first night in the great wainscoted dining-room, with a man -bringing unknown dishes to her elbow, with candles shining on -elaborate and useless pieces of silver, with the glow of firelight -flickering out from under a superb chimney-piece of Mexican marble, -and dancing about the stately and dignified room--the beauty -and the graciousness and the wonder of it was an overwhelming -experience, though she had not the dimmest idea of the fortune it -represented--a fortune notorious and envied the land over. That she -had had no share in it until now did not wound her in the least; -she was grateful for the warmth and the comfort and the kindness, -now they had come; she never harked back to the painful years of -silence and forgetfulness. - -Her brother and his wife watched her, amused and interested; her -dazzled admiration of everything was half touching, half droll. But -what a confession it was! Eleanor Blair realized this, and she said -to herself, warmly, that she would make up to Robert’s sister for -the past. She was in her element in arranging her sister-in-law’s -future; she made a dozen plans for her in the first week; but her -husband laughed and shook his head. - -“Wait,” he said; “time enough when we see how we get along.” - -But they got along very well. The children, after the first shy -awkwardness had worn off, were really attractive. Silas, an -eager brown-eyed boy of eleven, lovable in spite of his name, -made artless and pretty love to his pretty aunt, who found him a -delightful plaything. “The serious Esther,” as her uncle called -her, was a friendly little creature, when one came to know her; her -common-sense commended her to Mr. Blair, and her dressmaking and -her education were an immediate interest to her aunt. - -So it came about that the visit was prolonged, and the project of a -little establishment of her own for Mrs. Eaton gradually given up; -at all events, for the present. It was very satisfactory as it was. -The house was so big, they were not in the way; and Mrs. Eaton’s -mourning kept her in the background in regard to society--which -“was just as well,” Mrs. Blair admitted, smiling to herself--but -it made no difference in her usefulness. She was really quite -useful in one way or another; she could write an intelligent note -to a tradesman, or reply (by formula) to a begging letter; so, by -and by, she was practically her sister-in-law’s secretary, and -certainly the Blairs had never had either a maid or a butler who -could begin to arrange flowers for a dinner party as Mrs. Eaton -did. She was silent, and rather vague, but always gentle, and ready -and eager to fetch and carry for anybody. She so rarely expressed -any opinion of her own, that when she did the two strong and -good-natured people who made her life so easy for her could hardly -take it seriously. She did, to be sure, decline to change her son’s -objectionable name, on the ground that it was his name, and so -could not be changed; “and,” Mrs. Blair complained once, “she won’t -let me send Esther to dancing-school. I asked her if she thought -dancing was wrong, and she said, ‘Oh, no; but Mr. Eaton did.’ Isn’t -it funny?” - -Robert Blair laughed, and said he would straighten that out. But, -somehow, it was not straightened out. Esther teased, and Mrs. -Blair was just a little impatient and sarcastic. But Esther did not -go to dancing-school. - -“I’m sorry to displease you, Eleanor,” Mrs. Eaton said, shrinking -as she spoke, like a frightened animal which expects a blow, -“but--I can’t allow it. Mr. Eaton would not have wished it.” - -Yet, negative as she seemed, the little quiet woman was keenly -alive to the advantages of this full, rich life for the children, -and, indeed, for herself. Mere rest was such a luxury to her, for -she had lived and worked as only a country minister’s wife must. -So, to feel no anxiety, to have delicate food, to know the touch -of fine linen,--in fact, to be comfortable, meant more to her -than even her brother, enjoying his generosity towards her, could -possibly imagine. - -So life began for his sister and her children in Robert Blair’s -beautiful great house in the new part of Mercer,--the new part -which is not offended by the sight of those great black chimneys -roaring with sapphire and saffron flames, or belching monstrous -coils of black smoke, threaded with showers of sparks,--those -chimneys and roofs which are not beautiful to look upon, but which -have made the “new” part of Mercer possible. When Mrs. Eaton came -to her brother’s house, these unlovely foundations of his fortune -were still for a month. There was a strike on, and Mercer was -cleaner and quieter than it had been for many months,--in fact, -than it had been since the last strike. The clang and clamor of the -machine-shops, the scream of the steel saws biting into the living, -glowing rails, the thunderous crash of plates being tested in the -hot gloom of the foundries, had all stopped. - -“And, oh dear me,” said Mrs. Blair, “what a relief it is! Of course -it’s very annoying to have them strike, and all that, but when one -drives into town to get to the other side of the river, the noise -is perfectly intolerable. And when the wind is in that direction, -we can really hear the roar even out here.” - -She said this to her clergyman, who looked at her with a veiled -sparkle of humor in his handsome eyes. - -“So the puddlers shall starve to make a Mercer holiday,” he said -good-naturedly. - -“If they choose to strike, they must take the consequences,” she -replied, with some spirit. “Besides, they are the most ungrateful -creatures! Well, I’m sure I don’t know what we’re coming to!” - -“Something may be coming to us,” her visitor said, with a whimsical -look, but he sighed, and got up to take his leave. His charming -parishioner sighed too, prettily, and said with much feeling,-- - -“Of course, Mr. West, if there are any cases that need help, you’ll -let me know.” - -“But, Nellie,” said Mrs. Eaton, who had been sitting silent, as -usual, and quite overlooked by the other two, “is there any use in -helping the people who are in trouble because they are out of work, -and yet not letting them go to work?” - -Mrs. Blair laughed, in spite of herself, the protest was so -unexpected, and so absurd, coming from this meek source. “My dear,” -she said, “you don’t understand; they can go to work if they want -to.” - -“Well,” Mrs. Eaton said anxiously, “I should think, either they are -wrong, and so you shouldn’t help them, or they are right, and they -ought to get what they want.” - -Her sister stared at her, and then laughed again, greatly amused; -but William West put on his glasses and gave her a keen look. - -“Mrs. Eaton, don’t you want to help us on the Organized Relief -Association?” - -“Yes, sir,” said Lydia Eaton, “if there’s anything I can do.” - -“I don’t want to steal your services away from any other parson,” -he said pleasantly. “I suppose you belong to Mr. Hudson’s flock? -You are a Presbyterian, of course?” - -“No, sir, I am not,” she said, the color rising in her face. - -“Oh, then you do belong to me?” he said smiling. - -“I’m not an Episcopalian,” she answered, with a frightened look. - -“Then what on earth are you?” Mrs. Blair asked her, laughing. - -“I’m not--anything,” she said, her voice trembling; “but, Eleanor, -please don’t speak of it. The children must not know it. Mr. Eaton -would want them to be members of his church. So we must always go -there.” - -There was an instant’s awkward pause. Mrs. Blair looked very -disapproving. - -“Why, Lydia,” she said, “do you mean you don’t believe things? Why, -I never had a doubt in my life!” she exclaimed, turning to the -minister, who was silent. - -Mrs. Eaton caught her breath, and looked at him too, her mild eyes -full of pain. “Nobody ever asked me before. I am sorry, but I can’t -help it. The Bible says people go to hell; but God is good, so -I don’t believe the Bible. But Mr. Eaton would wish me to go to -church.” - -The perfectly simple logic, so primitive as to stop at “the Bible -says,” was irresistibly funny; yet, to William West, infinitely -touching. But he put the discussion aside quietly. - -“So you will come on our committee?” he said. “We shall be glad to -have you.” - -But when he went away he laughed a little to himself. “The iron -heel of Edwards, I suppose. But how direct! Two and two make four. -She is incapable of understanding that they sometimes make five.” - -But Mrs. Blair did not dismiss it so lightly. She was annoyed at -the protest about the strikers, and that impelled her to straighten -out Mrs. Eaton’s religious beliefs. There was some irritation in -her voice as she began, but she was in earnest, and stopped in the -middle of “proofs” to tell Samuel to say she was “not at home.” - -“But, Eleanor, you are,” Mrs. Eaton protested in a frightened way. - -“My dear, that is a form of speech.” - -“But it makes Samuel tell a lie,” she said nervously. - -“Oh, Lily, don’t be silly,” Mrs. Blair said impatiently, and then -jumped from hell to the strikers,--though, as it happened, the -distance between them was not so great after all. “Really, now, -Lydia, I don’t think you ought to speak as you did before Mr. West -about the men. In the first place, business isn’t philanthropy, and -Robert can’t give in to them. And in the second place, they are -behaving outrageously! I should think you would have more loyalty -to Robert than to seem to uphold them.” - -“I only meant”--Mrs. Eaton began breathlessly. - -“Oh, my dear, you don’t know what you mean,” Mrs. Blair -interrupted, laughing and good-natured again. “But just remember, -will you, how kind Robert is? It seems to me he is always doing -things for this ungrateful place. Look at the fountain in the -square; that’s the last thing.” - -“But wouldn’t the men rather have had running water in the -tenements?” Mrs. Eaton said; “there are only hydrants down in the -back yards.” - -However, as that first year in Mercer slipped by, there were very -few such jars. The strike ended early in the fall, and there was -nothing to call out any objectionable opinion from Mrs. Eaton on -that line. - -“As for Lydia,” Robert Blair said once, “you say ‘go,’ and she -goeth. She has absolutely no will of her own.” - -This was, apparently, quite true. At all events, she had a genius -for obedience, and a terror of responsibility. In the organized -relief-work which Mrs. Blair’s clergyman had proposed, obedience -necessitated responsibility sometimes, and no one knew how the -silent little creature suffered when she had to decide anything. -But she did decide, usually with remarkable but very simple -common-sense. - -“And always on the supposition that two and two make four,” Mr. -West said to himself. He found her literalness a little aggravating -just at first, but it was very diverting. He used to put on his -glasses and watch her anxious face when she talked to him or -received his orders (for such his requests or suggestions seemed -to her); and he would ask her questions to draw out her astounding -simplicity and directness of thought, and find her as refreshing as -a child. She used to sit up before him, saying, “Yes, sir,” and -“No, sir,” and looking, with her startled eyes, like a little gray -rabbit--for at the end of a year she took off her black dress, and -wore instead soft grays that were very pretty and becoming. Her -absolute literalness gave him much entertainment; but she never -knew it. If she had guessed it, she would have been humbly glad to -have been ridiculous, if it had amused him. - -And so the first year and a half went by. - - -IV - -It was the next winter that she asked her first question. - -“Mr. West,” she said, after making notes of this or that case that -needed looking after (for she was practically visitor for St. James -now),--“Mr. West, I would like to ask you something.” - -“Do, my dear Mrs. Eaton,” he answered heartily. - -“I would like to ask you,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, to lose -no shade of meaning in his reply, “do you think it would be right -for one person to live on money that another person had stolen?” - -“If they knew it was stolen, of course not!” he said, smiling. “Has -a pickpocket offered to go halves with you?” - -“No, sir,” she answered, so gravely that her listener’s eyes -twinkled. She made no explanation, but went away with a troubled -look. The next time she saw him she had another question:-- - -“But suppose the person who lived on the money the other person -stole needed it very much. Suppose they hadn’t anything else in the -world. Suppose their children hadn’t anything else. Would it be -their business to ask where it came from, Mr. West?” - -“If it was their business to spend it, it would be,” he told her. -“Oh, my dear lady, the question of complicity is a pretty big one!” -He sighed, thinking how little she realized that she was guessing -at the riddle of the painful earth. - -Again she went away, her face falling into lines of care. But -William West never thought of the matter again. Indeed, he had no -time to think of his quiet almoner; those were alarming days in -Mercer. The echoes of that storm which shook not only the town, but -the very State and nation, are still rolling and muttering in the -dark places of the land. - -Another strike had begun in October. As for the deep and -far-reaching causes, the economic and industrial necessities, the -vast plans of organizations and trusts, they have no place in -this statement of the way in which one ignorant woman regarded -their effects--a woman living quietly in her brother’s house, -doing her work, expending her little charities, trying to relieve -the dreadful misery of those wintry days, with about as much -success as a child who plays beside some terrific torrent and -tries to dam it with his tiny bank of twigs and pebbles. Robert -Blair’s sister had no economic or ethical theories; she had only -an anguished heart at the suffering in that dreary mill town, a -dreadful bewilderment at its contrast with the untouched luxury -of her brother’s house. That she should find a child in one of -the tenements dying at its mother’s barren breast, while her own -children fared sumptuously every day; that a miserable man should -curse her because her brother was robbing him of work, and warmth, -and decency, even, while she must bless that same brother for -what he was giving her, was a dreadful puzzle. As she understood -the situation, this misery existed because her brother would no -longer give even fourteen cents an hour to human beings who had to -stand half naked in the scorch of intense furnaces, reeking with -sweat, taking a breathless moment to plunge waist deep into tanks -of cold water; to men who worked where the crash of exploding slag -or the accidental tipping of a ladle might mean death; to gaunt -and stunted creatures, hollow-eyed, with bleared and sodden faces, -whose incessant toil to keep alive had crushed out the look of -manhood, and left them silent, hopeless, brutish, with only one -certainty in their stupefied souls: “_men don’t grow old in the -mills_.” ... That these things should be, while she was clothed -in soft raiment bought by wealth which these desperate beings -had helped to create--meant to this ignorant woman that there -was something wrong somewhere. It was not for her to say what or -where. She had no ambition to reform the world. She did not protest -against the “unearned increment,” nor did she have views as to -“buying labor in the cheapest market.” She did not know anything -about such phrases. The only thing that concerned her was whether -she, living on her brother’s money, had any part or lot in the -suffering about her? She grew nervous and haggard and more distrait -and literal than ever. She wished she dared lay her troubles before -the wise, gentle, strong man who, to her, was all that was good and -great. But it did not seem to her right to criticise her brother -to his clergyman. She never realized how amusing her simplicity -might be, laid up against the enormous complexity of the industrial -question; to her it was only: “If Robert is rich, and doesn’t give -his workmen enough to live on, are not the children and I stealing -from the men in living on Robert’s money?” - -This little question, applied to the relations of capital and -labor, is of course absurd; but she asked it all the same, this -soft, negative, biddable creature. She had gone to take some food -to a hungry household, and she went away burning with shame because -she was not hungry! It had been a cold, bright November day; she -went past one of the silent furnaces along the black cinder path to -the river-bank, where the flat cones of slag were dumped; some of -them were still slightly warm. - -It was quiet enough here to think: After all, Robert’s money did -so much good; there was the great fountain in the square, and the -hospital, and the free night school. And think of what he was doing -for Essie and Silas! Oh, it surely wasn’t her business to ask why -he cut the men’s wages down! - -There was a flare of sunset flushing the calm blue of the upper -heavens, and in the river, running black and silent before her, a -red glow smouldered and brightened. Behind her, and all along the -opposite bank, the furnaces were still. Oh, the misery of that -black stillness! If only she could see again the monstrous sheets -of flame, orange, and azure, bursting with a roar of sparks from -under the dampers of the great chimneys. It would mean work and -warmth and food to so many! By some unsuggested flash of memory the -parsonage garden came swiftly to her mind. It must be lying chill -in the wintry sunset; she could see the little house behind it, -with its bare, clean poverty; she wished she were back in it again -with the two children! The beauty and the luxury of her brother’s -house seemed suffocating and intolerable; and yet would it feed the -strikers if she should starve?--the vision of her own destitution -without her brother’s money was appalling. She sat down on a piece -of slag, a little faint at the thought. Just then, from down below -her, on the great heap of refuse, she heard voices. - -“Come farther up; they’re hotter higher up,” a woman said shrilly. - -Then a miserable little group came clambering over the great cones -of cooling slag, and a child cried out joyously, “This here one’s -hot, mammy!” - -The woman, catching sight of Robert Blair’s sister, though not -recognizing her, said harshly:-- - -“You bet hangman Blair has a fire in his house to-day. Well, thank -God, he ain’t made no cut in slag, yet; we can get a bit of warmth -here. I wish he may freeze in his bed!” - -Lydia Eaton answered, stammering and incoherent, something about -the cold weather; and then, she was so overstrained and nervous, -she burst out crying. “Oh, won’t you please let me give you this?” -she said, and put some money into the woman’s hand. - -She went away, stumbling, because her eyes were blurred with tears, -and saying to herself,-- - -“What _shall_ I do?” - -She almost ran into Mr. West on Baker Street, and stopped abruptly, -putting her hands on his arm, and, in her agitation, shaking it -violently, her whole face convulsed and terrified. - -“Tell me--you know; you are good: whose fault is it? Robert’s--for -all--this?” - -He understood instantly, and was very gentle with her. - -“My dear Mrs. Eaton, that is a very big question. It isn’t any one -man’s fault. It seems strange, but the weather in India may be -the reason we are all so wretched in Mercer. Your brother may be -forced to make this cut by great laws, which, perhaps, you cannot -understand.” - -“But _we_ go on being warm,” she said, “and it is cold. Oh, those -little children had to get warm on the slag! Oh, sir, I don’t -believe the Saviour would have been warm while the children were -cold!” - -She looked at him passionately, abruptly applying the precepts of -the Founder of his religion. - -“Ah, well, you know,” William West said kindly, “this whole matter -is so enormously complicated”--And then he stammered a little, for, -after all, how could he explain to this poor little frightened, -ignorant soul that we have learned how injurious to the race would -be the literal application of the logic of the Sermon on the Mount? -Nowadays the disciple is wiser than his master, and the servant -more prudent than his Lord; we know that to feed the five thousand -with loaves and fishes, without receiving some equivalent, would be -to pauperize them. But of course Mrs. Eaton could not be made to -understand that. The clergyman quieted her, somehow; perhaps just -by his gentle pitifulness; or else her reverence for him silenced -her. She did not ask him any more questions; and there was no one -else to ask, except her brother, and just now it would have been -hard to find the chance to ask Robert Blair anything. - -The strike had slowly involved all the mills owned by a syndicate -of which he was chairman. He had to go to South Bend, where the -great smelting furnaces are; he was mobbed there, though with no -worse results than the unpleasantness of eggs and cabbage stalks; -still, the wickedness of those dreadful creatures was something -too awful, Mrs. Blair said, crying with anger and fright over the -newspaper account. At still another mill town a ghastly box reached -him, labeled: “Starved by the Blair syndicate.” Robert Blair paled -and sickened at its contents, but he swore under his breath: “Let -them starve their brats, if they want to; it isn’t my business. -There’s work for them if they want it; but the curs would rather -loaf. This country can go to the devil before I’ll give in to them!” - -He did not get back to Mercer until December. “I wouldn’t let the -fools keep me from you on Christmas,” he told his wife savagely, -and caught her in his arms with a sort of rage. “Were you very -lonely? You’ve been nervous--I can see it in your face. You are -paler!” He ground his teeth; that those brutes should have made her -paler! - -“Of course I was lonely,” she said, smiling, though her eyes were -bright with tears, “and I’ve been frightened almost to death about -you, too. Oh, that mob!” - -“You little goose; didn’t I tell you there was no danger? I -always had two detectives. But I used to get anxious about you. I -telegraphed the mayor to detail an officer to be always about the -house. Heaven knows what’s going to be the end of this business, -Nell! Well, sweetheart, may I have some dinner, or must I go and -dress first?” - -“No. You’re dreadfully dusty, but I can’t lose sight of you for a -moment,” she said gayly. “Robert, I should have died if you hadn’t -been at home for Christmas!” - -His sister and the children met him at the dining-room door--Silas, -capering about with delight; Esther, prettier than ever, coming to -hang on his arm, and rub her cheek against his shoulder, and say -how glad she was to see him. - -“Robert, it’s perfectly disgusting,” Mrs. Blair complained, “but a -delegation insists upon seeing you to-night; they are coming about -eight.” - -“Oh, confound it!” he said frowning; “the strike, of course? A lot -of parsons meddling with what they know nothing about.” - -“There are parsons, I suppose,” she said, “but the mayor is coming. -Do get rid of them as soon as you can, so that I may have a little -of you.” - -She looked so pretty as she sat at the head of her table, -beseeching him, that he declared he would kick the delegation out -if they stayed over ten minutes; then he tossed a small white -velvet box across the roses in the big silver bowl in the middle of -the table, and watched her flash of joy as she opened it. - -“It seems to me I have some more boxes, somewhere,” he said -good-humoredly. “There, Essie! if your aunt Eleanor had packed me -off to get into my dress-suit, I wouldn’t have found this one in my -pocket. Lydia, you sober old lady, can you wear that? As for you, -Silas, you don’t want any gewgaws, do you? We fellows think more of -a bit of paper with three figures on it, hey?” - -“There! there’s the bell. It’s your horrid delegation,” Mrs. Blair -cried. “Just let them wait till you finish dinner. And do get rid -of them quickly. Mr. Hudson, Lydia’s minister, will be there; tell -him to wait a minute when the others have gone. I want to speak to -him.” - -“I thought little Hudson had more sense,” Robert Blair grumbled, -rising and going into the library to meet a dozen of his -fellow-citizens, some of them men with grave and startled faces, -who from pity for the three thousand fools who were turning Mercer -upside down, and from good-humored interest in the affairs of their -powerful townsman, were beginning to feel the sting of personal -alarm about their own concerns. - -These men were saying to each other what the newspapers had been -saying for two months, that Robert Blair, for vanity or obstinacy -or greed, was bringing alarming disaster not merely upon a few -thousand desperate and hungry and unreasonable puddlers, but upon -the respectable well-to-do business population of his city. - -“And he’s got to stop it!” the mayor said angrily. - -“It would be a good job if somebody would blow him up with -dynamite,” said the Baptist deacon, who was the wealthiest -merchant in town. “He’ll swamp us all, if we don’t look out.” - -As for the clergyman, he looked very miserable, for he had the -expenses of his church and his own salary in mind, and between -offending Mr. Blair and not protesting against the continuance of -the strike, the poor little man was between the devil and the deep -sea. - -“Gentlemen,” said Robert Blair, calm and hard (“as nails,” the -Baptist deacon said), “I appreciate the honor of your call, and I -hope I have listened with proper courtesy and patience to what you -had to say; but allow me to call your attention to certain facts -which seem to contradict your assertions that you suspect that I -am not acting for the public good in this matter of the strike. -Mr. Mayor, if my wealth had been gained by the subversion of law -and order, as you suggest, I am sure you could not have accepted -any of it for your campaign--ah--_expenses_. For you, Mr. Davis, a -church member, a deacon, if I mistake not, I need only remind you -of your willingness to borrow, I will not say how many thousands, -as the basis of your most successful business (though I would not -be thought to underrate your own prudence and economy in paying -your women clerks a little less than they can live on). And as -for my worthy friend here, the Rev. Mr. Hudson, if my money were, -as he has so delicately implied, ‘blood-money,’ I cannot think he -would have accepted the contribution I had the privilege of making -towards the alterations of his church. Gentlemen, you have felt -it your duty to remonstrate with me upon my way of making money; -so long as you are content to spend that money, I cannot believe -that your remonstrances are based upon anything else than the -inconvenience to yourselves of certain exigencies which I deeply -regret, but which result from methods which commend themselves to -me, and which, I observe, you apply in your own concerns: you all -pay as little as you can for what you want; I pay as little as I -can for labor. For your particular request that I submit to the -demands of the strikers, I can only say that when Mr. Davis will -give away in charity the fortune built upon the outcome of those -methods; when his honor the Mayor will refund the--ah--_expenses_ -of his recent successful campaign and call it conscience-money; -when the Rev. Mr. Hudson will give up improving his church--in -fact, when you will all consent to buy your shirts or your potatoes -in the dearest market--I will consent to alter the methods whereby -I have had the honor of serving you. We will all reduce together. -When we can do that, I will recognize a moral issue, as Mr. Hudson -so admirably expresses it. Until then I will try to mind my own -business. If it were not perhaps discourteous, I would recommend -a like course of action to this committee. Gentlemen, I bid you -good-evening.” - -He was pale with rage. He forgot his wife’s message to the -minister; he bowed, and stood with folded arms watching the -withdrawal of the humiliated and angry delegation, “with their -tails between their legs,” the little clergyman said to himself, -stung by the impudent injustice of it all. - -Mr. Blair went into the drawing-room, breathing hard with the -restraint he had put upon himself, for his coldly insolent words -had been no outlet to his anger. “Don’t talk about it,” he said -violently. “I won’t hear another word on the subject. Nell, I -thought that little Hudson was not entirely a jackass, though he is -a parson; he had the impertinence to say that ‘Brother West’ agreed -with him. I don’t believe it! But if it’s true, why, then, West is -a meddling idiot, like all the rest of these damned self-seeking -philanthropists.” - -“Robert, _dear_! the children,” murmured Mrs. Blair nervously. - -His face was dully red, and his blue, fierce eyes cut like knives; -one felt an unspoken epithet applied to the children, who watched -him furtively, with frightened glances, and moved about awkwardly, -speaking to each other in undertones. A moment before, everything -had been full of charm and graciousness; their pretty aunt sat, -indolent and graceful, on a yellow sofa, leaning back against some -ivory-satin cushions, with a great yellow-shaded lamp shining down -on her delicate dark beauty; the flicker of the fire behind the -sparkling brass dogs went leaping softly about the room, glowing -on the walls, which were covered above the white wainscoting with -yellow damask, on which the candle-light from the high sconces fell -with a yellow shine; everything was golden and bright and rich, and -the warm still air was delicate with the scent of violets. Then -into it burst this violent and angry presence. - -There is no embarrassment quite like the embarrassment of listening -to a person for whom one has a regard making a fool of himself. -Nobody spoke. Robert Blair tramped up and down, kicked a little -gilded stool half across the room, caught his foot in a rug, -stumbled, and then swore. Mrs. Blair’s fox-terrier, Pat, shrunk -under a table and looked at him, trembling. - -“Silas,” said Mrs. Eaton, “you and Esther must go upstairs.” - -“The trouble is,” said her brother to his wife, “these men don’t -know what they are talking about; they don’t know anything about -the market; they don’t know anything about the necessities of -trade; all they know is their dividends; if _they_ were cut, -there’d be a howl! But they presume to dictate to us; to tell us -the money is blood-money; all the same, they are ready enough to -spend it on their own carcasses!” - -Mrs. Eaton had closed the door on her children, and came and stood -by a little silver-cluttered table, under the big yellow lamp. “I -think Robert is quite right,” she said. - -The approval of this mild creature was like an edge laid against -the tense thread of Robert Blair’s anger. He burst into a laugh. - -“Bless your heart, Lydia, I didn’t know you were in the room. Well, -my dear, I’m glad you approve of me.” - -“I don’t, brother.” - -“Oh, you don’t? Where are the chicks? Sent them out of the room -because I used bad words? Well, I oughtn’t to swear in the -drawing-room, that’s a fact. _Place aux Dames!_ But after all, I -only dropped the ‘_place_.’” - -“Oh!” his wife said; and then, “you are very naughty;” and pouted, -and pulled him down on his knees beside her. - -“I thought it was very natural to be angry at the rug,” Mrs. Eaton -said breathlessly; “I’ve often felt like speaking that way myself”-- - -“Do, Lydia, do!” Mr. Blair interrupted, with a laugh. - -“--but Mr. Eaton would never have allowed the children to hear, -and”-- - -“Come, now! Haven’t I apologized? Don’t rub it in. I’ll give you -something extra to put in the plate on Sunday, because I did pitch -into your man Hudson like the devil! I told him so long as he spent -‘blood-money’ for his darned improvements, he couldn’t reproach me -for earning it.” - -“Oh,” Lydia Eaton said, her hands squeezed together,--“oh, no! -He is quite different from--me. It is _you_ who are spending -the--blood-money on the improvements. If he were spending it on -himself, like--like me, it would be different.” - -Her brother looked up at her from his footstool at his wife’s feet, -first amused, and then bored. - -“My dear Lily, I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about. -I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes about your parson. He means -well. Only he is a parson, so I suppose he can’t help being rather -ladylike in business matters. Do drop the subject; I am sick of the -whole thing. How is your conservatory, Nell? Are those violets the -result of your agricultural efforts?” - -“I think, Robert,” his sister said in her low voice, that shivered -and broke, “I must just say one thing more: I must give you back -this beautiful thing you gave me at dinner. And I must go away with -the children.” - -“What under the sun!” he began, frowning; then he got up and stood -on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire. “Lydia, I hope you are -not going to be a fool? What are you talking about? Sit down,--sit -down! You’re as white as a ghost. Lily, I’m afraid you’re a great -goose. What’s the matter?” He could not help softening as he looked -at her. She stood there by the little tottering table, loaded with -its dozens of foolish bits of silver, so tense and quivering that -even his impatient eyes could not fail to see her agitation. - -“Robert, you have been so kind to us; you are so good to us,--oh, I -don’t know how I can do it!” she broke into an anguished sob,--“but -I must. Mr. Eaton would never have let the children be supported on -money that was not--that was not good.” - -There was silence; the clock in the hall chimed ten. Then Eleanor -Blair, sitting up, pale and angry, said,-- - -“Well, upon my word!” - -Her husband looked at his sister with sudden kindness in his -eyes. “Lily, you don’t understand. When I said what I did to Mr. -Hudson,--of course, that has put it into your head,--I didn’t -really mean it. In the first place, I’m an honest man (I’ll just -mention that in passing), and it is not your business nor his -to judge my business methods. It isn’t a pretty thing to look a -gift-horse in the mouth, Lil.” - -“It isn’t what you said to Mr. Hudson,” she answered. “I’ve been -thinking about it for nearly a year. Robert, you pay them so -little, and I--I have all this.” - -She looked about the beautiful room with a sort of fright: it -seemed to her that the warm and stately walls hid human misery -lying close outside,--hunger and hatred, cold and sickness, and the -terror of to-morrow. The impudent luxury of this enormous wealth -struck her like a blow on the mouth. - -“They,” she said, with a sob, “_are hungry_.” - -Her brother, divided between irritation and amusement, was touched -in spite of himself. - -“My dear Lily,” he said, “you can’t understand this thing. To put -it vulgarly, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Look here, -the men can go to work to-morrow if they want to; but they don’t -want to. I offer them work, and they can take it or leave it. -Well, they leave it. It’s their affair, not mine.” - -But she shook her head miserably. “I don’t understand it. If you -were poor, too, it would be different.” - -“Well, really!” said Mrs. Blair. - -But Robert Blair was wonderfully patient. - -“There’s another thing you must remember, Lily; these people are -far better off on what I am willing to pay them than they were in -Europe, where most of them came from.” - -“But, Robert,” she said passionately, “because they could be worse -off doesn’t seem to be any reason why they shouldn’t be better off. -And--_it isn’t kind_.” - -“Kind?” Her brother looked at her blankly, and then, with a shout -of laughter, “Lydia, you are as good as a play! No, my dear; I -don’t run my mills for kindness.” - -“But,” she said, almost in a whisper, “whatsoever ye would that men -should do unto you”-- - -Mrs. Blair made a gesture of disgust. - -“--oh, brother, I didn’t mean to find fault with you. Only with -myself. I--I haven’t any right to spend money that I--don’t know -about.” - -“Well, anything more?” Robert Blair said, a little tired of her -foolishness. “My dear, like the parson, you mean well; but you are -a great goose!” - -As for his wife, she did not even answer Mrs. Eaton’s tremulous -“good-night.” - - -V - -The husband and wife looked at each other; then Robert Blair flung -his head back with a laugh. - -“She is perfectly delicious!” - -“She is perfectly ungrateful, and I believe she means it.” - -“Oh, nonsense! Lil hasn’t mind enough to mean anything; and I’ll -tell you another thing: in spite of her quiet ways, she really has -a good deal of worldly wisdom. She knows what it is to those two -children to have me interested in them. Don’t worry your little -head”-- - -“Oh, I don’t worry,” she answered. “If she is going to presume to -criticise you, I don’t want her under my roof; the sooner she -leaves the better!” - -“Spitfire!” he told her, kissing her pretty hand, and forgetting -all about his sister’s absurdity, and the strike, and the men and -women shivering in the tenements down in the miserable mill town. - -But he remembered it all the next morning at the breakfast-table, -for Lydia Eaton’s white face was too striking to escape comment. -Mrs. Blair was not present, preferring to be, at what she called -the “brutal hour of eight,” in her own room, with a tray and her -maid and a novel. - -“What’s the matter?” Mr. Blair said kindly. “Are you ill, Lily?” - -“It’s what I told you last night, Robert,” she said nervously. - -The solemn Samuel, all ears, but looking perfectly deaf, brought -a dish to his master’s elbow. Robert Blair closed his lips with a -snap. Then he said,-- - -“Please make no reference to that folly before Eleanor.” - -But of course it was only a respite. The folly had to be repeated -to Eleanor--discussed, argued, denounced, until the whole -atmosphere of the house was charged with excitement. - -Through it all Lydia Eaton came and went, and did her packing. - -“Well,” her sister-in-law said contemptuously, “perhaps you’ll tell -me how you mean to _feed_ Esther and Silas? You have a right to -starve yourself, but I have some feeling for the children!” - -“I am going to work,” the other answered, trembling. - -“Lydia,” Mrs. Blair said passionately, “next to your ingratitude -to your brother, I must say your selfishness in ruining your own -children is the most dreadful thing I ever heard of!” - -But Mrs. Eaton’s preparations went on. Not that there was so much -to do; but she had to find rooms, and then she had to find work. It -was the latter exigency which fanned Robert Blair’s contemptuous -annoyance, which refused to take the matter seriously, into sudden -flames of rage, for his sister saw fit to apply at a shop for the -position of saleswoman. Of course it came to his ears, and that -night the storm burst on Mrs. Eaton’s head. As for Robert Blair, -when the interview was over, during which he spared Mrs. Eaton no -detail of his furious mortification, he said savagely to his wife: -“I wish you’d go and see if West cannot bring her to her senses. -Get him to influence her to some decency. Tell him, if she’s set in -this outrageous ingratitude, I wish he would persuade her to let me -send her East, to some other place, and let her work (and starve!) -where she won’t disgrace me. Think of it, Eleanor--that man Davis -coming whining and grinning, and saying he ‘would do what he could -to give my sister a position as saleslady, but I knew the times -were bad’! Damn him!” - -“Good heavens, Robert! You don’t mean to say she’s been to Davis’s? -My dear, she is insane! Yes, I’ll go and see Mr. West to-morrow.” - -She went. It was a raw, bleak morning; the thin, chill winter -rain blurred the windows of her brougham, and the mud splashed up -against the glass; the wheels sunk into deep ruts of the badly -paved streets, and the uncomfortable jolt and sway of the softly -padded carriage added to her indignation at her sister-in-law. - -William West did not live in the new part of Mercer, with its -somewhat gorgeous houses; nor yet in the old part, which was -charming and dignified, and inclined to despise everything not -itself; but in the middle section, near the rows of rotten and -tumbling tenements, and within a stone’s throw of bleak and hideous -brick blocks, known as “Company boarding-houses.” He had come here -to live shortly after a certain crash in his own life; a personal -blow, which left him harder, and more silent, and more earnest. He -had been jilted, people said, and wondered why, for a while, and -then forgot it, as he, absorbed in his work, seemed also to forget -it. - -Mrs. Blair, her fox-terrier under one arm, stepped out of the -carriage, frowning to find herself in this squalid street; but -once inside the big, plain, comfortable house where William West -lived all by himself, her face relaxed and took a certain arch and -charming discontent; there was a big fire blazing in the minister’s -library, and the dignity and refinement of the room, the smell -of leather-covered books, the gleam of pictures and bronzes, and -a charming bit of tapestry hanging on the chimney-piece restored -her sense of mental as well as physical comfort. When he entered, -and dragged a big chair in front of the fire for her, and looked -at her with that grave attention which seems like homage, and was -part of the man, being called forth by his washerwoman as well as -by Mrs. Robert Blair, she felt almost happy again, and assured that -everything would come out right. - -“Mr. West,” she began, “you’ve got to help us; we’re in such absurd -difficulties! Will you?” - -“Command me,” he said, smiling. - -“You haven’t heard, then? It’s Lydia--Mr. Blair’s sister, you know. -She has taken it into her head that”--the color came into Mrs. -Blair’s face--“that she won’t let Robert support her, because she -thinks he isn’t treating the strikers properly. I’m sure I don’t -know what idea she has! But she won’t accept his money. Did you -ever hear of such a thing?” - -William West’s face sobered instantly. “I have not seen Mrs. Eaton -for a fortnight,” he said; “I had no idea”--He got up, frowning, -the lines about his lips perplexed and anxious. - -“I’m sure,” the pretty woman went on, growing angrier as she -spoke, “I don’t care what _she_ does,--I’ve lost all patience -with her,--but to throw the children’s future away! And it’s -so embarrassing for Robert.” Then she told him fully the whole -situation. “She keeps saying,” Mrs. Blair ended, “that ‘Mr. Eaton’ -wouldn’t have allowed the children to be supported on money that -‘_wasn’t good_.’ Did you ever hear such impertinence?” - -“Ah, well,” he protested good-naturedly, “I’m sure Mrs. Eaton does -not mean to be impertinent; and I’m sure she does appreciate her -brother’s kindness. Only, she is trying to work out a great problem -on an individual basis, which is of course very foolish. But the -dear little lady must not be allowed--And yet”--He paused, frowning -and perplexed. - -“Ah, but, Mr. West, when she has the assurance to quote the Bible -to her own brother--it seems to me that’s rather impertinent? -Fancy! something about ‘doing unto others’--and ‘being partaker’ if -she spent the money that had been ‘wrung from the strikers.’ Upon -my word! ‘Wrung!’ As I said to my husband, ‘Upon my word, I never -heard of such a thing.’” - -“Neither did I,” William West said dryly. “We are all of us in the -habit of taking our dividends, and not looking at the way they are -earned. Mrs. Eaton is certainly unusual.” - -“Well, do you think you can influence her?” Mrs. Blair insisted. “I -don’t mean to stay with us; I don’t think that would be possible or -desirable now. But to let Mr. Blair give her an allowance, so that -she can take care of the children. It is positively wicked to think -how she is ruining the children!” - -“Won’t she take any money from your husband?” - -“Not a cent, if you please! Not a penny. She keeps saying that if -she can’t feel that the source of the money is all right, she can’t -spend it.” Mrs. Blair cuffed her dog prettily with her muff, and -kissed his little sleek head. “Isn’t she a goose, Pat, you darling?” - -“Her principle would turn the world upside down,” the clergyman -said. - -“That’s just what I say!” cried Mrs. Blair. - -“If we all said we would have nothing to do with the ‘blood of -the just person,’ what would become of the railroads and the -coal-mines and the oil trusts? What would become of our dividends -from industrial stocks if we insisted on knowing that the workmen -were honestly paid? How could we eat meat, if we looked into the -slaughter-house?” - -Mrs. Blair looked puzzled. - -“And she is going to work for her living?” He was profoundly -moved. “Good heavens, out of the mouths of babes! What a primitive -expression of social responsibility! But surely, Mrs. Blair, we -must respect her honesty? As for her judgment, that’s another -matter.” - -Eleanor Blair’s blank astonishment left her speechless for a -moment; then she flung up her head haughtily. - -“Mr. West, do you mean to say”--she began. - -“My dear Mrs. Blair,” he said quietly, “I mean to say that little -Mrs. Eaton, in her simple way, puts her finger right on the centre -of this whole miserable question, in which, directly or indirectly, -we are all involved: she has recognized our complicity. Of course -she is going to work the wrong way--at least, I suppose she is. God -knows! But what courage,--what directness!” - -“Do I understand,” Eleanor Blair said, rising, “that you approve of -my sister-in-law’s extraordinary conduct?” - -“I approve of _her_,” he said, smiling. “If you ask me whether I -think she is doing right, I should say ‘Yes,’ because she is acting -upon her conscience. Is she doing wisely? No; because civilization -is compromise. We have either got to bow in the House of Rimmon, -or go and live in the woods like Thoreau and eat dried peas. I’ll -tell her so, if you want me to. But as for attempting to influence -her, I cannot do that. The place whereon we stand is holy ground.” - -Mrs. Blair picked up her dog and set her teeth; then she looked -slightly beyond the clergyman, with half-shut eyes, and said,-- - -“Will you be good enough to have my carriage called?” - - -VI - -“I never would have been brave enough,” Mrs. Eaton said meekly -to Mr. West, when the dreadful step was actually taken, “I never -could have done it, but I knew Mr. Eaton would have wished it; and, -besides, I felt I was taking the food of those poor people.” - -“Well, no,” he began, “that is really not reasonable”--But he -stopped; this timid creature could not reason--she could only feel. -“Fools,” he said to himself, as he left her, “rush in where the -political economist fears to tread. She is a fool, poor little -soul, but”-- - -The winter had passed heavily away. Mrs. Eaton had succeeded in -getting a place in Mr. Davis’s shop--“where,” the proprietor used -to say, “having Robert Blair’s sister for a saleslady is money in -my pocket! She’s better than a ‘fire-and-water bargain sale.’” -So she stood behind a counter and sold ribbon, and was stared at -and whispered about. But she had very keen anxieties about food -and clothes, and the children’s discontent lay like a weight upon -the mother’s heart--which ached, too, with the pain of the second -wrench from the affection and kindness of her family. Fortunately -her peculiar logic did not lead her to reject the Baptist deacon’s -money, which was certainly much more doubtful than her brother’s. -By some mental process of her own, the fact that she worked for it -seemed to make its acceptance moral. She had no leisure now to work -for Mr. West; but the remembrance of his patience and gentleness -always made a little pause of peace in her heavy thoughts. It was -a hard, bleak life for this silent little creature; and the rector -of St. James, himself a silent soul, watched her live it, and -pondered many things. - -The strike had broken in February. The men went back to their -work--defeat, like some bitter wind, blowing the flames of -resentment into fiercer heat, which “next time” would mean -destroying victory. - -“Will it be like Samson pulling down the temple upon himself?” -William West wondered, depressed and hopeless. - -It was night--a summer night; sweet and still over in the -old-fashioned part of Mercer, where the fragrance of roses -overflowed the high brick walls of the gardens. Here in the mill -district it was not sweet, and all night long the mills roared and -crashed, and the flames bursting out of vast chimneys flared and -faded, and flared again. - -William West was alone in his library. His sermon for the next -morning had been finished early in the week; he had looked it over -the last thing, and now the manuscript was slipped into its black -velvet cover. He sat, his head on his hand, tapping with strong, -restless fingers the arm of his chair. The old question, always -more or less present in the mind of this man, was clamoring for an -answer: How far are we responsible? Through how many hands must -dishonest money, cruel money, mean money, pass to be cleansed? -Is it clean when it comes to me--this dividend or that? Shall a -man, or a railroad, or a trust deal iniquitously with one of these -little ones, and I profit by it? Shall I trace my dollar to its -source, and find it wet with tears and blood, and reject it? Or -shall I decline to trace it, and buy my bread in innocence? Even -the chief priests refused the thirty pieces of silver! Am I an -accomplice? For that matter, is the Christian Church an accomplice? -What does it say to the philanthropy of thieves? Priests used to -take toll from the plunder of robbers, and say mass for their souls -in return. Nowadays--“I cover my eyes, but I hold out my hand,” he -said to himself. - -Well--well! The Reverend William West, in his way, was doubtless -as great a fool in asking unprofitable questions as was Lydia -Eaton. That the existing order would be turned upside down by the -introduction of the sense of personal responsibility there can be -no doubt. Such an introduction would be the application to the -complex egotism of the nineteenth century of the doctrines of a -Galilean peasant, who was a communist and the Saviour of the world. -It would be the setting forth in individual lives of the spirit of -Jesus Christ, the most revolutionary element that could possibly be -introduced into society. We are none of us ready for that. - -At least William West was not ready; he had no intention of making -himself ridiculous, no matter if he did ask himself unanswerable -questions; he was not ready to throw away present opportunities and -destroy his influence. Yet, as for Mrs. Eaton-- - -“Talk about martyrs!” he said to himself, as he sat there at -midnight thinking of her, of her hard life, of her splendid -foolishness. - -“Well, there is one thing I could do for her. Why not? Good God, -how selfish I am! I suppose she would think my money was clean? -Yes, I could at least do _that_.” - -This was no new thought. It had been in his mind more or less for -months. He only faced it that night more strenuously. - -So it came about that by and by he rose, his face set, his mouth -hard. He took a key from his watch chain, and opened a little -closet in the side of the chimney, and took out a box. He laid it -on the table, and again sat down in his revolving chair, and stared -blankly ahead of him. Then he opened it. There were some letters -in it, and a picture, and a crumbling bunch of flowers that looked -as though they had once been pansies; he held them in his hand, a -bitter sort of amusement in his eyes. The letters he put aside, -as though their touch stung him. At the photograph he looked long -and intently. Then he bent the card over in his hand, and it broke -across the middle. Hastily he gathered these things together and -went over to his fireplace. A fire had been laid during the cold -spring rains, and the logs were dry and dusty. At the touch of -a match, they sputtered and broke into a little roaring flame. -William West put his handful of letters and the flowers and the -picture gently down in the midst of it, and then stood and watched -them burn. When there was only a white film left, on which the -sparks ran back, widening and dying, he went over to his desk, -and with a certain strong and satisfied cheerfulness he began to -write:-- - - MY DEAR MRS. EATON,--You and I have spoken more than once of - your action in leaving your brother’s house, and you know, I am - sure, how profoundly I honor and respect your courage in acting - upon your convictions. It is this respect which I am venturing - to offer you in asking you to honor me by becoming my wife. - My sincere regard and appreciation have been yours ever since - I first knew you, and if you will consent to make a home for - yourself and the children in my house, it will be a home for - me, and you know what that will be for a lonely man. If you - will consent, I shall be always, - - Faithfully yours, - WILLIAM WEST. - -As he folded the sheet of paper and thrust it into the envelope -there was a whimsical look in his eyes. - -“A _love_-letter!” he said to himself; but his face was very gentle -and tender. - - * * * * * - -However, the answer to the letter was all that the most ardent -lover could desire. - - - - -COUNTING THE COST - - -I - -ANNIE GRAHAM, the young woman with whom this story -concerns itself, lived in a Western manufacturing town. Her home -was, both inside and outside, like hundreds and thousands of other -American homes, a cheap frame house, in a cheap, respectable -suburb; a house without any other beauty or refinement than -cleanliness and a certain amount of rather coarse comfort. Her -father was a workingman, as his father had been before him. He -was a gasfitter, and went to his work every morning with a greasy -leather bundle under his arm, and a cheerful heart in his breast. -First, because he had plenty of work and, having no imagination, -never worried about the future. But mostly because of a comfortable -fact to which, when not occupied with the practical details of his -trade, he devoted his thoughts; the fact being that there was a -certain tidy bit of money in the bank for his Annie,--money which -he had hoarded up, little by little, saved out of car-fares, and -tobacco, and clothes; money which meant privation and courage, and -slow, persistent, heavy toil. It amounted to a little over fifteen -hundred dollars, and he hoped it would be twenty-five hundred -before he died. What Annie would do with it when he was gone was -the only direction in which Johnny Graham’s fancy worked. Would she -rent a better house, maybe, than this little one they had lived -in since she was twelve; or would she get herself fine clothes or -a piano or books? He thought that she would probably get books. -Annie was so fond of reading! He was very proud of this fondness -for reading, and used to tell his fellow-workmen about it, and say -he had seen her turn over so many pages, in fifteen minutes by his -watch. He timed her, he said, and my! but she was the fast reader! -He had no idea of placing any restrictions upon the way in which -she should spend her inheritance when she got it; he had no feeling -about the money as anything but a means of future pleasure to Annie. - -“When I’m dead and gone, the afternoon, maybe, of the funeral, -they’ll tell her. ‘Annie Graham,’ the lawyer’ll say, ‘your father’s -left you a tidy bit of money. It’s twenty-five hundred dollars,’ -he’ll say; well, maybe it’ll be twenty-six hundred,--well, say -three thousand. ‘Miss Graham,’ he’ll say, ‘here’s three thousand -dollars.’ Well, Annie’ll jump. An’ it’ll comfort her,” Annie’s -father would think many times a day, smiling, and screwing in his -gas-fixtures with his blackened fingers, or scratching a match on -his trousers, and hunting for leaks. - -He had been father and mother to his little girl ever since his -wife died, when Annie was five. He had baked and scrubbed and -cleaned for them both when she was a child, and in his clumsy way -he had sewed on buttons and darned rents and washed her little -face and hands as tenderly as a woman could have done. And when -she grew into a big girl and went to the grammar school, he still -knew all about her hats and clothes; and he still tried to save -her pretty hands, and sifted the ashes, and waited on her, and was -proud of her just as he always had been. There was more than one -hard-working woman neighbor who would have been willing to “make -a good stepmother” to Annie, and who felt, in all honesty, that -the gasfitter was spoiling his girl, and that she just only hoped -nothing bad would come of it. - -“Them girls that’s taken such care of,--well, the dear only knows -what happens to them!” the neighbors said, with mysterious pursings -of the lips. But so far nothing out of the way had happened to -Annie. Nothing “bad” had come of the simple, faithful loving that -the child had had. - -Annie was eighteen. She was a fresh-looking girl, with an -intelligent face, though a little serious for her years. Her placid -gray eyes had a rather absent look sometimes, and there was a line -on her white forehead that told of thought. Johnny Graham knew -what that line meant. He knew with what intensity Annie had applied -herself to her studies when she was in school, and how, after she -had graduated, and had gotten a place as a “saleslady,” as Johnny -expressed it, she still worked and toiled over her books whenever -she could find time. - -“But she’s mostly figurin’,” he told his friends proudly. - -That Annie, at eighteen, had taught herself geometry, and had -yearnings for the higher calculus, was a matter of burning pride to -the gasfitter, though he had no idea what it was all about. - -“I suppose now, Annie, you know all there is in the arithmetics -on them subjects?” he said to her one night as he sat in his -shirt-sleeves smoking his pipe by the kitchen stove, and looking at -his daughter, who, with her pencil pressed against her lips, was -frowning over a sheet of calculations. Annie gave a little start -and looked up smiling. - -“Why, father, dear, I don’t know anything--comparatively.” - -“But, Annie, now what’s the good of them lines? Do you cut -patterns on ’em? I seen a advertisement saying they’d show you how -to cut out dresses on a chart. And there was a lot of them lines -drawed on it.” - -Annie came over and sat on his knee; she laughed, but she sighed, -too. - -“No; it’s just working them out that I like,” she said. “I guess I -like studying; that’s it.” - -“Well, you’re a real student, I guess,” he told her, and passed his -rough, grimy hand over her soft hair. “Did I pull your hair?” he -said, for it seemed as though she winced; but she only answered by -taking his hand and kissing it, which made her father protest, and -then cuddle her up in his arms and say, “Well, now, Annie, I think -you’re a real scholar.” - -They sat in the kitchen, but not because they had not a parlor, -like everybody else. There was a best room behind the kitchen, -and upstairs two bedrooms, and above them an attic, rented to -Dave Duggan, a steady young workman who had lodged with them for -nearly a year. Of course, obviously--propinquity being the root -of love--he had a tenderness for Annie; and he was referred to -by the women who were not Annie’s stepmothers as her “feller.” -The parlor, in which the gasfitter rarely sat, was as frankly -ugly as the outside of the small, narrow frame house. It had -been furnished according to Mrs. Graham’s taste, and it had been -religiously unchanged since her death. The tapestry carpet, with -its monstrous roses and broad green leaves, had worn and faded -into inoffensiveness, and the red rep furniture had suffered the -same kindly change; but the knitted tidies were new, and the -plush picture frames; and Annie had added the knots of china silk -on the chair-backs; and on the wall there was a snow-shovel, -painted and gilded and tied with pink satin ribbons, and also some -decorated brass placques; on the mantelpiece were two little wooden -shoes,--Dave Duggan’s gift,--gilded and adorned with blue satin -bows, and used as match-boxes. - -To Johnny Graham this terrible parlor stood for art and luxury. -As for Annie, she did not know enough to find the snow-shovel -painful, nor even the rolling-pin, another gift from Dave, which, -covered with plush, hung from one corner of the mantelpiece. She -merely thought of these things as “mother’s” and as “presents,” -and valued them accordingly. But she would never have dreamed of -occupying this fine room unless there was company; and, indeed, the -kitchen was far more homelike. - -She sat now nestling down against her father’s shoulder, listening -to his story of the day’s work: the fine house on the hill where he -had gone to mend a fixture; the nice young lady he had seen; and -the toilet-table all covered with silver things. - -“Why, Annie, now I tell you, there was brushes and combs made -out of silver; and there was five little sorts of silver boxes, -different sizes and shapes, hearts and rounds mostly. Didn’t seem -to have nothing in ’em. I had to move ’em to get at the bracket. -What do you suppose folks has such things for? Now a brush made -out o’ silver is no sense; it’s heavy. Annie, now, would you like -things like that?” - -“Indeed, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Think of the trouble they’d be to -keep clean.” - -“Well, the help does that in them houses, I suppose,” he ruminated. -“Annie, now, suppose you had a lot of money, would you buy them -things?” - -“Indeed, I wouldn’t!” Annie said again, laughing. “No, I know what -I’d do. I heard a girl talking about it. There’s a college for -girls somewhere in the East, just like there is for young men. I -would go to that college and study. My! wouldn’t I study!” - - * * * * * - -That was the beginning of what some people called the tragedy of -Annie Graham’s life, and some the success--it all depends on how -you look at it. - -Her chance remark about a girl’s college lingered in her father’s -thoughts; Johnny Graham had not known that there were such things -as women’s colleges. There were primary schools and high schools -and “pay” schools, where he supposed the swells sent their -children, but his knowledge never went farther than this. - -“A college for girls!” Well, why not? He believed girls was smarter -than boys any day in the year; anyway his Annie was. He thought -about it constantly, when, to save something for that inheritance -in the bank, he walked to and from his work; and he thought of -it while he worked. He spoke of it, when he had the chance, in -a tentative way to two or three persons for whom he was doing -jobs of gasfitting. Did they ever hear anything of them girls’ -colleges? What was they like? Did they cost money? Once, in the -big morning-room of an old-fashioned house, he spoke to an old -lady who sat by the fire while he screwed a lava tip on the burner -over the mantelpiece. She was an old woman and rich, and so she -ought to know about such things, Johnny Graham reasoned; so, with -the respectful guilelessness of the American workman, he cleared -his throat and said, he wondered, now, if she was knowing anything -about girls’ colleges? - -The old woman started, and seemed to see him for the first time, -and put on her glasses to inspect him. - -“What did you say, my good man?” she inquired. - -Johnny, unoffended by this offensive term, which means, “you are -not so good as I am,” repeated his question mumblingly, with the -old lava tip between his lips. - -“I have a girl I’m thinking of sending to one of them -institutions,” he explained. - -The old lady frowned and took off her glasses and tapped them on -the arm of her chair. - -“You will make a great mistake, my good man. It is a great mistake -to educate your daughter above her position.” - -Johnny took the lava tip out of his mouth and stared at her. - -“Well, now, ma’am,” he said in his slow way, “I don’t see how you -make that out. An American girl is an American girl; no matter how -you look at it. You can’t educate her above that.” - -Upon which the old lady nodded her head and said: “Yes, yes; of -course; this is what I’ve always said; this is what we are coming -to!” - -And Johnny Graham rolled up his tools in his greasy leather apron, -and went home, pondering deeply. He was not in the least angry at -the old lady; he was simply incapable of understanding her. But -that night he thought it over, and pointed out to himself that, -after all, if Annie’s mind was set that way, there was no use in -her waiting to spend her money till he was dead and gone. - -“I’ll probably be livin’ twenty years yet,” he thought, after some -calculation, “and Annie maybe would be too old for a girls’ college -then. She’d better go now; and anyway it might be a good investment -of the money; she might set up as a teacher, maybe, after she got -learned. They do say Councilman Welch’s daughter got four hundred -dollars for teachin’ in the Primary School; and that’s twenty per -cent. interest on two thousand dollars; I believe it’s a good -thing!” - -It was then that Annie came in, looking, it chanced, a little -pale, and, perhaps, a little wistful. Annie was not discontented; -she had no aspirations; only the child was vaguely aware of an -emptiness in her life. And she had stopped at the Public Library as -she came home from her work, and had read an article in a magazine -concerning a College for Women in another State. - -“That’s what I’d do if I were rich,” she thought, as she walked -home. “I’d go there and study.” - -So she was a little absent, even when she kissed her father, and -heard him tell all about the big house where the rich old woman -lived all by herself, because she had quarreled with her only -daughter. - -“Seems strange, now, to quarrel with your children,” said Johnny, -buttering his bread on the tablecloth, and then, tilting his chair -back, eating it with great contentment. - -After supper he told Annie what he had planned for her. Her -amazement at her father’s wealth was almost as keen a delight -to Johnny as was her impetuous refusal to use it, and her tears -because he was “so good” to her; almost as keen a joy as her final -yielding to the logic of his urging, that, after all, the family -would be better off if she could teach, and earn a big salary. “Six -hundred dollars, maybe,” he said, stretching his imagination for -the purpose of convincing her. - -So it was arranged. Annie Graham was to go away to study; she was -to fit herself to be a teacher; she was to be educated into her -father’s intellectual superior; she was to be raised “above her -station.” Would it be a failure or a success? Would she be happy or -most miserable? Would the little dull, loving, ignorant gasfitter -hold or lose his girl? - -Well, it all depends upon how you look at it. - - * * * * * - -The result of the talk that night was that in September Annie took -the long and expensive journey East, and entered on her four years’ -course of study. - -Of course, there was no coming home for the holidays; the fifteen -hundred dollars in the bank could not stand that; nor did she -have to come back in the long vacation, which would have been a -serious expense, for the president of the college, who was greatly -impressed by the girl’s ability and character, permitted her to -live in one of the college houses during the summer, and found for -her an opportunity to teach some little children. She earned enough -money to pay her board during those twelve weeks, and did not have -to draw on the cherished bank account. - -The beginning of that college life was a strange experience to -Annie,--the quiet, refined atmosphere, the beauty of culture, the -conception of spaciousness and dignity, and the awaking of that -sense of fitness which is called conventionality. To Annie these -things were like the opening of the eyes of one born blind. By -degrees the small niceties of life revealed themselves to her,--the -delicacies of serving, the delicacies of living, the delicacies of -manner and voice and thought. She felt them all with a passionate -sort of joy. - -It is curious to observe that by the pure and virgin mind these -things, which may be so worthless in their lifeless formality, -are seen in their real and fundamental nobility, and are accepted -with the instinct of religion. At first Annie was so normally -unconscious of her antecedents that it did not occur to her to -proclaim that all these things were new. And then, by and by, -having eaten of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there -came to her a certain deep spiritual experience; she recognized -that the root of conventionality, the beginning of the sense of -fitness, lay in character; therefore she knew no shame that her -father ate with his knife, or sat in his shirt-sleeves, or did many -unlovely things. She did not like them; but she knew no shame, only -love. But it was then that, very simply, she took occasion to say -that her father, who was a mechanic, had sent her here to college, -so that she might be fitted to support herself by teaching. She -said this because she recognized another point of view, and, -recognizing it, felt a certain lack of straightforwardness in -keeping silent; and also because she was proud of Johnny Graham. -Then she forgot it. It was too unimportant to think of. - -She assimilated all these new ideas, and felt them and lived them, -as though she had been to the manner born. Her very face reflected -them. She was almost a beautiful young woman. Her deep eyes looked -out from under her straight, pure brows with a certain high -directness of glance and tranquil self-poise which gave a sense of -breeding which was inescapable. The fact that she had said that she -was poor was only in its way another proof of her superiority--so -some of the college-girls said, who went into schoolgirl ecstasies -about her. - -“You know it’s vulgar to be rich,” a young man told her one -evening, as they talked together in the June dusk. It was Annie’s -fifth year, and for the first time she was going home in the long -vacation. A scholarship, and four summers of teaching some little -children in a country house on the outskirts of the village, had -meant that for the last two years Johnny Graham’s bank account had -been recuperating, a very, very little; at all events, there had -been no drain upon it. - -And now Annie was going home. She had won the highest honors of her -class, and had even been offered a position on the college staff, -and her happiness was as frank as a child’s. - -“In so many weeks I’ll see father. In so many days!”--she kept -saying to herself. And now it had come to Saturday evening, and she -was to start home on Monday. She was walking back from her little -pupils’ house, where she had said good-by until September. She was -not alone. - -A certain Dick Temple, a cousin of her pupils’ mother, had a way of -running down from town to spend Sundays with the Pauls, to play, -he said, with the children, and get in some rowing on the river, -and to exercise his cousin John’s polo ponies, and--to see Annie -Graham. - -But this last was not so stated in the bond. - -He had a way of appearing in time to walk across the campus with -her, after little Kate’s music lesson Saturday afternoon, and once -or twice he had beguiled her into his boat, and they had gone -floating down the river in the twilight, talking of everything in -heaven and earth. Being young, religion had been their first theme; -and then, by and by, love;--in the abstract, of course. A month -ago, they both had feared themselves incapable of experiencing this -beautiful emotion--Annie, because she was going to devote herself -to study and her father; Dick, because he had outlived such things, -and was very bitter and cynical and mysterious in his allusions to -life, which, he said, “he knew.” Sometimes they talked of their -future; and it was then that Annie had told him, smiling, that -she had no such luxurious prospects as those which he had been -outlining for himself,--travel, and study, and the philanthropic -opportunities of great wealth. - -They were walking slowly along under the great elms toward her -door; it had rained earlier in the day, and the worn bricks of the -narrow pavement held here and there shallow pools of water; the sun -struck across the wet grass in a low flood of gold; and there was -the scent of young leaves and roses in the air. - -“We are poor people,” Annie had said, with an amused look; “I’m -going to teach school and wear spectacles, and be very stern and -learned.” - -“Ah, well,” returned the young man, “it’s the thing to be poor -nowadays; it’s awfully vulgar to be rich! It’s queer, now, when you -think of it, Miss Graham, how many people in our class have lost -their money, isn’t it?” - -“We’ve never had it to lose,” Annie said; “the family fortunes are -to rise on school-teaching.” - -Dick glanced at her with quick admiration in his handsome young -eyes. He was twenty-four, but he blundered over his words like a -schoolboy. - -“Miss Graham,” he said, “you won’t mind if I say I think it’s -awfully fine in you, don’t you know, to teach, and all that sort -of thing? Of course, girls do things now. I mean nice girls, don’t -you know. Why, cousin Kate gave music lessons before she married; -and she was a Townsend. Still, it’s people like that, don’t you -know, that can afford to do things like that!” - -“I don’t suppose any one can afford to be dependent,” Annie said -simply, “and my father is really poor, Mr. Temple.” - -Her beautiful direct look as she said this made the young fellow’s -heart suddenly leap. He wanted to burst out and tell her how much -he admired her; admired? no, loved her! That was the word. Yes, he, -who had thought he had outlived all that sort of thing. All in a -moment he felt that he wanted to tell her this; but she seemed so -remote that he dared not speak. - -“I suppose I ought to get my governor to go and call on hers,” -he reflected; “these decayed gentlefolks are death on propriety. -But maybe she wouldn’t look at me, anyway,” he added to himself, -in a miserable afterthought; for she began to speak in such an -interested way of some mathematical work she had to do that night, -that he felt there was no room for him in her thoughts. He left -her at the college door and went back, ardent and despairing, to -confide in his cousin Kate, who, it must be admitted, had rather -a startled expression when he told her he was “all bowled over by -Miss Graham.” - -“But, Dick, what would your father say if it got serious? Cousin -Henry has such ideas, you know. She’s a charming girl, but we don’t -know anything about her people.” - -“We know they are poor,” Dick said boldly; “but that doesn’t matter -in the least. Surely you are not so narrow, Cousin Kate, as to -think it matters?” - -“No, that doesn’t matter, of course,” cousin Kate said doubtfully. - - * * * * * - -As for Annie, she went, smiling a little, and blushing a little, -upstairs to her room. But she did no work in higher mathematics -that night. - -Instead, she finished her packing, and wrote her last semi-weekly -letter of the term to her father. To be sure, he would get it just -a day or two before she came herself; but she would not have had -Johnny Graham miss that Saturday letter for a good deal. She knew -he would carry it about in his pocket, and read it over and over, -and put it on the wooden chair beside his bed at night. Perhaps it -was a little more affectionate, this last letter, than usual; she -told him about the weather, and that she would start on Monday, -and would telegraph him when to expect her. And something of the -progress of her two pupils; and how she had made an experiment in -the laboratory, and had burned her fingers; and--and that she had -met an interesting man, a cousin of Mrs. Paul’s. He had taken her -out rowing once or twice, she said. And, oh! she was so happy that -she was coming home! She could hardly believe that it was true, she -was so glad. And then she said she was always his little girl who -loved him--“Annie.” - -Then when it was written, she put her head down on her arms, folded -upon her writing-table; there were tears in her eyes when she -lifted it again. - -“When he said ‘our class,’ ought I to have spoken?” she asked -herself. “No, he must know; I told Mrs. Paul. No, no, I couldn’t!” -And all her love and all her pride for her father rebelled against -the slight to him which such a confession would have been; it would -have seemed to imply that he was less gentle in soul than Richard -Temple himself, or any one else. - -Mr. Temple saw her at church the next day and walked home with -her; although she kept all the while on Mrs. Paul’s right, while -Dick had to walk on the outside and could only look across at her, -which did not please him in the least. She did not talk to him very -much, but she seemed to have a good deal to say to his cousin, -which perplexed her adorer, for though he had a proper regard for -the stout and estimable Mrs. Paul, he could not see why Miss Graham -should talk to her with such apparent interest, when an intelligent -young man was really eager for a look or a word. He heard her -laughing a little about going home “like a stranger and foreigner,” -she said. - -“I haven’t seen South Bend for nearly five years; you know it is -such an expensive journey.” - -Mrs. Paul said yes, she supposed it was. “It takes four days -and five nights to get there, doesn’t it? It seems to me I -passed through it once. I suppose those Western places are very -progressive, aren’t they? They are not shocked at the idea of a -university education for women. One runs up against that here very -often.” - -Annie shook her head, smiling. “Isn’t it funny to think that people -do really feel that it is unfeminine; ‘threatening to the womanly -woman,’ as they say.” - -“I’ve come to think that the ‘womanly woman’ means the brainless -woman,” Mrs. Paul said. - -“What fools people are who feel that way about the higher education -of women,” Dick broke in. “It’s incredible! Miss Graham, I shall be -passing through South Bend in a fortnight or so; may I call?” - -“Of course; I shall be delighted to see you,” Annie said, “and my -father will be so glad to see any friend of Mrs. Paul’s; he knows -how kind you have been to me,” she ended, with an affectionate look -at Dick’s cousin. - -Then Mr. Temple, with an eager timidity so foreign to him that Mrs. -Paul suppressed a smile with difficulty, wondered if Miss Graham -would have time to go out on the river that evening? He knew she -would be awfully busy; but it would be a heavenly evening on the -river! He was so promptly assured that she should not have time -that the poor fellow looked very blank; in fact, he was distinctly -cross in the family circle for the rest of the day. At night he -softened and tried to be amiable, for he was constrained to be -confidential, and he knew that “Cousin Kate” would not hesitate to -snub him unless he made himself agreeable. - -“Now, really, don’t you think she’s very unusual?” he insisted, -after having told Mrs. Paul all the pleasant things which he could -remember that Miss Graham had said to him about her two little -pupils. - -“If you mean Miss Graham, why, yes, I do think she’s unusual, Dick.” - -“Did you ever notice,” said the fatuous Dick, “how softly her hair -grows around her forehead? And her eyes--what color are her eyes?” - -“I’m sure I can’t say,” Mrs. Paul answered dryly. “Dick, would you -mind going in and getting me a shawl? It’s rather cool out here on -the terrace.” When he came back she had made up her mind how to -proceed. “Now, Dick, listen, I’m not a snob, but”-- - -“If you are going to say anything about that beautiful creature’s -working for her living,” Dick threatened, “you might as well stop -on the spot.” - -“Of course I’m not going to say anything about her working for her -living; why should I? I worked for my living before I married John. -You know I’m not a snob, but I do believe in class. I don’t mean -to be unkind, and certainly she is a charming girl, and--ladylike. -But--there is something, I can’t tell what it is--that seems as if -she had not always been used to things”-- - -Dick Temple said something between his teeth, and his cousin flung -her head up. - -“Dick!” - -“Well, it makes a man want to be emphatic, Cousin Kate,--such -nonsense! Class? We’re Americans, thank the Lord! And talk about -ancestors, I never saw descent so plainly. Look at the way she -carries her head! And her voice, her manner! Darn it, because a -girl’s poor”-- - -“Good-night, Richard,” said Mrs. Paul, rising with great dignity. - -“Oh, hold on! Don’t get mad. Hold your base. I apologize; only, it -seems pretty hard to be down on a girl”-- - -“You know I’m not down on her; I like her very much; I respect her -very much.” - -“Well, then, what’s the matter?” demanded Dick boldly. - -“I don’t know. Only I have a vague recollection that when she -came to teach the children she mentioned, in a casual sort of -way, something about--about her home, or her father and mother, -or something. I can’t really remember, but I know I gained the -impression that she was”-- - -“Poor?” Dick burst in. “Of course she’s poor. She has never made -any secret of that. Why should she? Only a cad would do that.” - -“I don’t mean poor,” Mrs. Paul said, frowning. “I wish you would -have some manners, Dick, and not interrupt. I merely mean that a -young man has no right to pay attention to a girl in another class -unless he means to follow it up. I despise a trifler, Dick.” - -“You don’t despise him any more than I do,” Dick returned loftily. -“But there isn’t any question of class here. We don’t have any -higher class than hers; and as for ‘following it up,’ as you -say--if a fellow thought there was any chance for him with that -woman he’d follow it up quick enough, and ask her to marry him! -Yes, and he ought to do it as formally as though she were a -princess. She _is_ a princess! He ought to go and ask her father -if he might ask her. Her poverty, which seems to trouble you so -much, Cousin Kate, has no bearing on the situation.” - -Poor Dick was smarting with Annie’s apparent coldness and his -cousin’s snobbishness--so he called it; but there was really no -excuse for bursting out at Mrs. Paul in this way; and it was no -wonder that she said good-night with some asperity, and went -upstairs and told her husband that Dick was a perfect goose, -besides being rather a cub. - -“He’s twenty-four and old enough to know better,” she said. “Oh, -dear, I do wish his father was here!” - -“You’d better wish her father was here; then you’d know the pit -whence she was digged,” John Paul said. “Of course, if he ever sold -cotton by the yard, Dick’s future happiness would be imperiled.” - -“Now, John, don’t be horrid,” said his wife impatiently; “you know -perfectly well what I mean. I’m not a snob, as I told Dick, but -there is such a thing as class.” - -“If Dick’s worth anything,” pronounced John Paul, standing before -his glass and ripping his collar off the stud with a vicious tug, -“he’ll marry that girl if her father is a hod-carrier.” - - -II - -Five years! It was a long time. Johnny, standing in the railroad -station, his heart beating high with pride and joy, couldn’t help -crying out when he saw her:-- - -“Why, how you’ve growed, Annie! Bless my heart, if you ain’t -growed!” But his eyes were misty, so perhaps it was that made -his little Annie look so tall. He had not recognized her for a -moment,--this lady who, with the tears trembling in her eyes, came -up to him and took his hands and cried out, “Father!” Afterward he -said he didn’t know why he had taken her for a lady, for, sakes -alive, her clothes were plain enough. He was quite distressed about -her clothes. - -“You’ve stinted yourself, Annie,” he reproached her as they went -home in the street cars. “You ought to be havin’ a silk dress, -lookin’ the way you do. Why, I took you for a lady, Annie. You -ought to have fine clothes, my pretty; we’ll take some money out of -the bank and get you a regular silk dress,” he told her, scolding -her and loving her, and bursting with pride, and taking up their -intercourse just where it had paused, five years ago. She was a -pretty girl and a great learner, Johnny thought; but she was just -his Annie. - -It was late when they got home. He had left the kitchen fire clear -and ready for the steak Annie would broil, and the gas was flaring -wide from new burners, and Johnny had bought a long plush scarf for -the top of the mantelpiece over the kitchen range. When Annie was -fairly in the house, and the door was shut, it seemed as though -the happiness of heaven had come into the little kitchen. Johnny -laughed, and drew the back of his hand across his nose, and sniffed -and blinked, and the tears ran freely down his little cheeks. He -walked round and round Annie in critical inspection; and ran her -from room to room, even up to Dave Duggan’s attic, to show her how -unchanged everything was. He made her come into the parlor and -showed her the faded ribbons and tottering plush frames. - -“I dusted ’em every Sunday, Annie,” he said. And then he told her -how he had turned out the person to whom he had rented her old -room. “Well, now, he was set on stayin’,” Johnny said; “he was -always sayin’ he wanted to see you, but I guess Dave Duggan was -just as well pleased not to have him round. Dave ain’t married yet, -Annie.” Then Johnny laughed very much, and added, winking at his -own joke, that he guessed Dave had forgotten her, she’d been away -so long. - -The wonderful thing about it all, and the beautiful thing about it -all, was that this little man did not in the least care that his -Annie was an educated woman; he did not even know it. - -It seemed as if Annie could not enough show the tenderness that -made her heart ache with its swelling. She sat beside him, holding -his work-roughened hands in hers, and told him over and over about -these five years which he had given her; she knew, and she was -feeling as she spoke, how every joy of study, and every pang of -the happiness of appreciation had come from these patient, loving, -grimy old hands. “You’ve given me everything,” her heart was -saying, “and I love you! I can never say how much.” But it seemed -as though it were saying, also, “Why, why did you put me where I -was to learn that you were you, and I was I?” - -One looks on at such a situation and says, “If it could stop here, -it might be possible.” But it cannot stop there. It is not the -adjustment of the relations between parents and child which is -the difficult thing. The acceptance of a different point of view -by these three may even come without much pain. No; it is the -outsiders who make the situation impossible--the father’s cronies, -the mother’s friends, the acquaintances of the untaught girlhood. -The impossibility revealed itself that very night when Dave Duggan -came in to welcome her home. Annie gave him her hand, flushing and -paling at his familiarity, his boisterous, facetious “Hollo, Annie! -How you was?” In him, after that easy greeting, the first note of -the difference made for all time was struck; for he grew conscious -and uneasy, and scuffled his feet, and cleared his throat, and -laughed in a silly way. Yet all the old admiration spoke in his -eyes. Johnny was full of significant jokes, and kept elbowing Annie -and winking; and Dave’s loud rebukes of his host’s “fun” were even -more meaning. - -At nearly midnight Annie went upstairs, tired, white, smiling; and -lay open-eyed until dawn. - - * * * * * - -Dick Temple’s intention of “passing through South Bend in a -fortnight” was a little delayed. Cousin Kate’s vague misgivings -took the form of a postscript in a casual note to his mother; there -was no more than a word or two about Dick’s _tendresse_ for a -pretty college-girl who had been the children’s governess during -the last three summers while they were out of town; that was all. -But it was enough. And Mrs. Paul felt she had done her duty. - -“And perhaps prevented Dick from doing his,” her husband commented -grimly. - -“If he can be prevented, he’d better be; for he wouldn’t be good -enough for Annie Graham!” cousin Kate declared with much spirit, -and immediately became, in her own mind, the champion of the -incipient love affair. - -Her letter was passed on by Dick’s mother to Dick’s father, who -said good-naturedly that the boy was a jackass. - -“The young lady is probably too good, for him,” said Mr. Henry -Temple, “but I’m not going to have that boy marrying John Paul’s -governess without a few remarks from me.” - -Mr. Temple telegraphed his son not to leave town on the day he had -arranged, as he wished to see him; and then he came all the way -from Old Chester for the purpose of making the remarks, which, of -course, were to be general; it would give the matter too much -importance to treat it as particular or probable. So, in a casual -way, he referred to cousin Kate’s letter, and enjoined his son -not to be a fool. Dick’s instantly aggressive attitude and skill -in “answering back” were most surprising to Mr. Temple. A man is -always surprised at his son’s ability in this direction; it is -as though his own hand or foot suddenly acquired individuality. -Furthermore, Richard was very sentimental, and had much to say of -his father’s un-American point of view and of his own readiness -to marry a “woman he loved” (if she’d have him) if she were a -washerwoman. - -“As for Miss Graham,” said Dick, “I’ve no right even to speak of -her; but she’s a lady, and an angel”-- - -“Oh, Lord!” groaned Mr. Temple. “I wonder if I ever was as young as -you, Dickon?” - -But he was really disturbed, and wrote to a friend who owned the -great South Bend Rolling and Smelting Furnaces, and might be -expected to know who and what the Grahams were. - -Meantime, Dick Temple, twice as much in earnest for his father’s -not unreasonable expostulation, packed his things and started for -the West. It was a hot July afternoon when he arrived in South -Bend; he was fretted by the heat and his own impatience and the -stupidity of the landlord of the hotel in being unable to tell him -where Mr. Graham lived. - -“There’s no family by that name on the hill, sir,” he said. -“Graham--Graham--there’s some Grahams here in the directory; what’s -the gentleman’s business, sir?” - -“I don’t know,” Dick said, fuming. “What sort of a place is this, -anyhow, that you don’t know where people live? It’s small enough -for you to know everybody”-- - -“We’ve twenty thousand inhabitants, young man,” said the landlord -with much offense. “The only Graham I know is Johnny; he’s a -gasfitter, and does odd jobs here once in a while”-- - -“Have your clerk copy all those Graham addresses,” said -Dick coldly. “I’ll go round till I find the person I wish. -Unfortunately I don’t know the gentleman’s first name. Have you got -any kind of conveyance in this place? Just have a hack called, will -you?” - -He spoke with the insolence of tone peculiar to well-bred young -men, and he walked to the open door and stood waiting for the -carriage and frowning out at the passers-by. There was a red glare -from the furnaces on the other side of the river, shifting and -fading on the coils of black smoke which lay motionless in the -still, hot air. The street was the narrow unlovely street of the -small manufacturing town of the West. - -“It’s a beastly place,” Dick said to himself with an irritation -which had its root in some formless apprehension; and he got into -the lumbering, rattling hack and slammed the door with vicious -emphasis. “What on earth does her father live here for, anyhow?” he -said to himself. - -The carriage drew up first at a small market, where piles of faded -vegetables, flanked by glass cases of meats, jutted out upon the -pavement; a man in a dirty white butcher’s frock leaned against -the door-post, and two jets of gas flared and flickered from long -iron stand-pipes. - -The driver leaned down from his box and called out in friendly -tones to know if this was the place. - -“Idiot!” said Dick under his breath. “Of course not. Try the next -address.” - -This was a forlorn, untidy-looking house on a side street. Lodgers’ -heads were thrust out of the windows as Dick climbed the steps and -inquired whether Miss Annie Graham lived there? He was conscious -of a distinct relief when he went back again to the carriage. They -went to two other houses, but there was no Miss Annie Graham. - -“I guess,” said the hackman, “we’ll have to cross over to the other -side of the river. There’s a Graham over there, at Jack’s Corners. -Jack’s Corners is a fine suburb, sir.” - -Dick’s heart rose. - -“All right; go on,” he said. “Can’t you hurry those beasts of yours -up?” - -And so it was that, about seven o’clock, the cabman drew up before -a small, detached frame house on the Mill Road. It was so hot -that the kitchen windows were wide open, and one could see the -table drawn up between them, and a little man in his shirt-sleeves -eating his supper. Opposite him, by the other window, was a girl -with a fan in her hand, and between them were two other persons, -for Johnny was entertaining that night. Dave Duggan, uncomfortable, -he knew not why (although it certainly was not the weather, for -he had, with great good sense, removed his coat), sat on Annie’s -left; and next to him, beside Johnny, was an enormously fat woman, -in a sort of loose white sack. This was Mrs. Pugsley, who was one -of those neighboring ladies of thwarted stepmother potentialities. -“But you never know what’ll happen,” Mrs. Pugsley often remarked, -and dropped in this hot July night in a friendly way to see if -Annie was making her father comfortable. It was Mrs. Pugsley’s -opinion that all this learning wasn’t no good. “Better know how -to dish a meal’s victuals,” said Mrs. Pugsley, “than be readin’ -story papers all the time. That’s what them high-school girls does -mostly.” - -The room was faintly lighted by a kerosene lamp on the mantelpiece; -but the real radiance was in Johnny’s face, as he looked across a -bunch of roses in the middle of the narrow table at his Annie. - -“Annie walked out two miles to get them flowers,” he said. - -“Must ’a’ wanted something to do,” said Mrs. Pugsley. - -“I’d ’a’ got ’em for you, Annie,” Dave said bashfully, “if I’d -a-known you wanted ’em.” And it was just then that the carriage -drew up at the door. - -Dick, hot and disappointed and disgusted at the coachman’s -stupidity in bringing him into this obviously mechanic’s suburb, -leaned out to say, “Drive on!” And then he saw her. - -There was a flutter in the tenement at seeing a hack draw up. -Johnny Graham rose, seeing in a burst of fancy an important and -hasty job, and a carriage sent to convey him to a wilderness of -leaks or broken tips. Mrs. Pugsley conceived the hack to be a -summons from a lady friend who had expected to need her services -on a felicitous occasion, and was instantly agitated, and got up -panting, and saying:-- - -“Goodness! they’ve sent!” - -But Annie knew. - -One wonders if she flinched, there in the twilight. She rose at -once and went to the front door, her hand outstretched in pleased -welcome. - -“Why, Mr. Temple! This is very pleasant,” she said. “Father, dear, -this is Mr. Temple.” - -Dick’s face was white. He took Johnny Graham’s hand and bowed, with -some murmured reference to pleasure. - -“This is my friend, Mr. Duggan, Mr. Temple,” Annie went on -placidly, “and Mrs. Pugsley.” - -Dick bowed twice. He saw dimly, in the dusky kitchen interior, two -other figures, one of which, assisted by the other, was struggling -into a coat. - -“Why, now set down, sir,” Johnny said joyously; “take a seat and -set down. Annie, now, can’t you make room there by Dave? We -was just setting out to eat our tea, sir; it’s so hot, we was -late,--but it’s the style to be late, I hear! I guess we ain’t eat -up everything, have we, Annie? I guess there’s something left for -your gentleman friend.” - -“You’re very kind,” Dick protested feebly; but he sat down, too -bewildered to find any excuse. - -Annie put a plate before him, and told him he must have some iced -tea. - -“It’s the only thing that makes life possible in this weather,” she -said; “but I can’t make father believe it; he takes his boiling.” - -“Well, sir,” said Johnny, “you had quite a jaunt to get out here, -hadn’t you? But I don’t mind the walk myself, back and forth from -my work, for it’s fresher out here.” - -“I didn’t know your address,” Dick said, not looking at Annie; -“I’ve been driving round”-- - -“When I saw that carriage drive up,” Mrs. Pugsley said, still -panting, “I thought a lady friend of mine had sent for me; it give -me such a start!” - -“Tell me how you left Mrs. Paul,” Annie asked. - -“Oh, thanks, very well,” Dick assured her; and there was a moment’s -pause. Mrs. Pugsley and Dave were blankly silent. Annie talked -against time. - -“It was so nice to get home. Just think, I had been away five -years,” she said; “that’s a pretty long time not to see one’s -father; father didn’t know me when he met me at the station;--now, -I would have known you anywhere!” she reproached Johnny, with a -loving look. - -“Well, but now, you’d growed, Annie; that’s what I said when I saw -her. I says, ‘Why, Annie, you’ve growed!’ Dave, here, don’t see no -change in her. But I do,” Johnny ended proudly. - -“You must have missed your daughter very much,” Mr. Temple murmured. - -“Well, indeed, an’ he did,” Mrs. Pugsley said resentfully; “but she -would be studyin’. She’s that set on it.” - -“Miss Graham is devoted to mathematics,” Dick began miserably, -“and--and that sort of thing”-- - -He stopped so abruptly that Mrs. Pugsley’s hoarse whisper to Dave -Duggan was audible to all,-- - -“Say, is he Annie’s feller?” - -“Hush!” said Dave Duggan. - -Dick drank his tumbler of iced tea with violent haste, and even -Johnny looked disconcerted. Annie said something about the roses. - -“The thing I miss most in South Bend are the gardens,” she said. -“You know we are all working people on this side of the river, and -there are no old houses, so there are no beautiful big gardens. I -had to walk far out into the country for those.” - -“Won’t you have anything more?” Johnny inquired hospitably. “Take -another helping of something? You won’t? Oh, now, take a taste of -this! No? Well, let’s go into the parlor, Annie.” - -If Annie held back, no one saw it. They went into the best room, -where Johnny set all the gas burners flaring, that the full glories -of the decorations might strike the visitor, who, indeed, saw -nothing but Annie’s set face. - -“Miss Graham,” he said, “you are coming East again in September, -aren’t you?” - -“I think not; I think I must never leave father again. He is not -very strong, and I want to be with him.” - -“Oh, yes, quite so,” Dick answered, “but”-- - -“But what, Mr. Temple?” - -“Oh, nothing; I only thought--I thought you were to teach in the -college, and”-- - -He did not know how to end his sentence; he caught Dave Duggan’s -eyes glowering at him, and Johnny’s rather obsequious smile. Johnny -had the true American veneration for wealth, and he felt that this -gentleman who kept a hack waiting for an hour was a rich man. - -“I shall never leave my father,” Annie said, in a low voice. - -Now Richard Temple was not a mean or unworthy man; he was a -well-born, well-bred, well-educated young American gentleman; but -he had been placed suddenly at a cruel disadvantage; his presence -of mind deserted him--he was bewildered and confounded. His plans -and hopes were all adrift. He could not meet Annie Graham’s eyes -again; he said good-night, at first effusively, and then haughtily; -and sneaked out to his carriage, anxious only to escape from an -intolerable situation. - -“Hope you’ll come again and talk over old times with Annie, sir,” -Johnny said, shaking Dick’s hand all the time that he was speaking; -“you’ll call again, sir?” - -“Oh, certainly, yes, of course,” Dick answered wretchedly. - -But Annie knew better. - - * * * * * - -Dave Duggan had watched Annie’s visitor with burning eyes. He -followed the conversation with painful intentness, and a sense of -speed which made him breathless. He wished to join in it,--and kept -moistening his lips and clearing his throat, but he never found the -courage to speak. His shyness probably prevented him from being -rude; for his feeling about Dick was rage, pure and simple. - -“He’s a blamed dude,” he thought to himself again and again; but he -could think of nothing to say which would convey this opinion, and -yet fit into the conversation. But when Dick had slunk back to his -carriage Dave’s feelings burst forth. For a few moments, indeed, -the little group (except Annie) talked, in their excitement, all -together. - -“Ain’t he handsome!” Johnny said proudly; he was proud of anything -connected with Annie. - -“He’s real rich, Annie, ain’t he? Ridin’ in hacks?” Mrs. Pugsley -demanded. - -“He’s a blamed dude; that’s what he is,” Dave said fiercely. - -“I thought he was your feller, Annie,” Mrs. Pugsley declared, -panting and fanning herself. - -“Well, now, he’s none too good to be,” Johnny announced, chuckling. - -“Father, dear, wouldn’t it be nicer to sit out on the steps, where -it’s cooler? I’ll put the tea things away, and then I’ll come, -too. Please--_go!_” she ended. Johnny looked at her in surprise, -sensitive to every change in her voice. - -“Why, now--Annie?” he faltered. - -“I’ll be through with the dishes in a few minutes, father, dear,” -she said; and so Johnny led the way to the front door and placed a -chair on the hard, black earth at the foot of the steps for Mrs. -Pugsley, and told Dave to take off his coat again. - -“It’s that hot,” Johnny said, “there’s no good wearin’ coats.” - -“Now that dude’s gone, I suppose there’s no harm being -comfortable,” Dave agreed angrily. - -They sat there in the dusk, Johnny and Mrs. Pugsley talking the -visit over. They could hear Annie moving about in the kitchen, -washing the dishes. After a while Dave Duggan got up and with -painstaking and elaborate efforts not to attract attention went, -with creaking, clumsy steps, into the kitchen. Annie stood by the -sink, with her back to him. He heard her draw in her breath in a -broken sob; and then he saw--he saw that tears were running down -her face. - -“Annie!” he said; “oh, now, Annie, don’t, don’t mind, Annie, dear!” -He put out his hands beseechingly, his face red and wincing with -feeling. Annie turned her shoulder toward him, and set her teeth. -She drew her wrist across her eyes. - -“It’s that dude’s hurt your feelin’s, Annie--darn him! but never -you mind, he ain’t worth”-- - -“Oh, please go away, Dave,” Annie said; “you don’t know what you -are talking about! Please go back to father.” - -“Annie,” he burst out, “look here: he ain’t worth it. I say, Annie, -will you take up with me?” - -“I really don’t know what you are talking about. Mr. Temple--if you -are referring to him--has not hurt my feelings in the least. I--I -had something on my mind, and”-- - -“Oh, Annie,” poor Dave said, “what I’m wanting to know”--He stood -there in his shirt-sleeves beside the sink, his voice trembling, -one big red hand opening and shutting the hot-water spigot. “I’m -just wanting to know if you’ll marry me, Annie. Say, now, will you?” - -She shrank from him, a sort of horror in her face. - -“_You?_” - -“You ain’t mad?” he entreated. - -“It is quite impossible,” she answered hoarsely; “quite, quite! -Never speak to me of such a thing”--Her face was stinging, her -voice was broken, as a woman’s might be to whom some insulting -thing had been said. “You will go, if you please,” she ended, her -head high, and with a certain gesture that confounded him. - -“But look a-here,” he insisted, following her as she moved away -from him; “Annie, look a-here; that fellow ain’t a-goin’ to marry -anybody but a rich lady; his kind ain’t goin’ to marry you.” - -“Well, I shan’t marry my kind, then! You can just understand that,” -she cried, with a sudden almost coarse fury. “There’s no use for -you to think of such a thing. Don’t ever dare to spake to me that -way again!” - - * * * * * - -This is as far as Annie Graham has lived her story. She and Dave -practically summed the matter up between them: “His kind will not -marry you;” and “I will not marry my kind.” - -The story is unfinished; one waits to see what will happen. - -There are three things open to Annie: She may live out her life -in South Bend; teaching, perhaps, in the public school, gradually -refining the terrible little house, rejoicing Johnny’s heart, and -never interfering, merely for her own æsthetic necessities, with -the unlovely habits of Johnny’s fifty years of unlovely living; she -may learn to accept his intimates as her acquaintances, his Mrs. -Pugsleys and Dave Duggans as household friends, starving all the -while for the companionship of her equals. Or-- - -She may shake off these intolerable surroundings which make her -shrink as instinctively as an open eye shrinks from dust; she -may turn her back on South Bend, and the tenement house, and the -painted snow-shovel, and her father’s shirt-sleeves, and her -father’s tender heart, and go out into the world to live her own -strong, refined, intellectual life, perhaps as a teacher in her -old college; marrying, after a while, some one who has never seen -her father, and coming into the soul-destroying possession of that -skeleton in the American closet--the vulgarity of the preceding -generation. Or-- - -She may, because of sheer misery in the struggle between the new -and the old, and for the dreadful suffocating comfort of it, fall -back into the pit whence she was digged and try to forget the upper -air. - -What is the child’s duty? To live her own life, or to live some one -else’s life? Is she to accept success or failure, fulfillment or -renunciation? - -People differ as to what constitutes success; some go so far as -to say that the highest fulfillment lies in renunciation; and -certainly there was once a life that might have been called a -failure because it ended upon a cross on Calvary. - -I suppose it all depends on how you look at it. - - - - -THE LAW, OR THE GOSPEL - - -I - -EVERYBODY in Mercer knew Sara Wharton; in the first -place, she was Edward Wharton’s daughter; the Edward Wharton of -the Wharton & Blair Company, whose great Rolling and Smelting -Mills darken Mercer’s sky with vast folds of black smoke, and give -employment to two thirds of Mercer’s population. In the second -place, she was a very charming young lady, who was too pretty to -pass unnoticed when her victoria went rolling along the river road -on fine afternoons. And in the third place, she was the president -of two girls’ clubs, and the organizer of the Boys’ Alliance, and -the Young Men’s Literary Association, and the founder of the Y. W. -C. T. U., and the kindly autocrat of all Mercer’s rough, grimy, -under-fed young people. She was a sweet-hearted, wholesome-minded, -impulsive, dear child; the kind of girl who loved a party just as -much, and planned her pretty dresses just as anxiously, and adored -her father and mother just as unreasonably, as though she had never -heard of a committee, and was indifferent to the Cause of Humanity. -All Mercer knew her, and believed in her; and so when, one gray -November afternoon, she was seen to go quietly up the steps of a -certain house on Baker Street--a house which decent folk affected -to ignore when they passed it by at midday, but at which they -glanced curiously after nightfall--when Sara Wharton went into this -house, those who chanced to see her said only, “Well! what won’t -that girl do next?” - -The woman who answered her ring opened the door scarcely more than -a crack, and peered out at her sourly. - -“I want to see Nellie Sherman,” said Miss Wharton. - -“There’s no person by that name here,” the woman answered. - -“Let me in, please,” Sara Wharton said. She put her hand against -the door, which yielded a little and then stopped; the woman inside -had braced her foot against it. - -“She ain’t in.” - -“I will wait until she comes, then,” returned the young lady -pleasantly. - -“I don’t know why you’re comin’ here lookin’ for a girl,” the woman -cried out, in sudden, shrewish rage; “this is a respectable house; -there’s no Sherman girl here!” - -“Let me in at once,” said Sara Wharton, “or I shall get a -policeman, and have a warrant served. I know Nellie Sherman lives -here, and I want to see her. You had better let me in without -further talk. I am Miss Wharton.” - -“I don’t care if you are Queen Victoria,” the keeper of the house -declared angrily; “well, you can come in, though there ain’t no -Nellie Sherman here; there’s a Nettie Sherman,--if she’s the girl -you’re looking for.” - -“Tell her I want to see her, please.” - -“She’s up in her room. You can go up.” Miss Wharton’s instant’s -hesitation made her add, “There ain’t nobody there.” - -The halls and stairs were nearly dark; one or two frowzy heads -peered over the banisters, and drew back quickly; there was a loud -guffaw of laughter from behind a closed door, and all the air was -heavy with the reek of stale tobacco. - -“Her room’s the third floor back,” the woman called up after the -visitor, who went swiftly over the stairs, intent upon her errand, -yet with a faint shudder, a sort of physical shrinking, that made -her gather her cloak close about her, lest it might touch the wall -or banisters. - -“I’m glad I told Thomas to wait,” she said to herself, thinking -of the brougham at the door, with the respectable, long-suffering -Thomas on the box. At the third floor back she knocked, and waited -for a reply; then she knocked again. - -“What is it?” a muffled voice asked; “is that you, Mamie? Go ’way! -I’m busy.” - -“It is I; Miss Wharton; a friend of your aunt’s. Let me in, -Nellie.” There was a breathless pause, and then a quick step, and -a bolt was snapped back. A slight, startled-looking girl stood in -the doorway. Sara entered with a certain fine, regal step that she -had, that gave at once a sense of the uselessness of opposing her. - -“Shut the door,” she commanded cheerfully, “and let me see you. -Come, we will sit down and have a little talk. Oh, open that window -first; there is some dreadful perfumery in the room. Ah, that’s -nice; fresh air is the nicest sort of perfumery; don’t you think -so?” - -The girl stared at her without an answer. She was a -delicate-looking creature, rather pretty, except that just now her -face was stained with tears, and there was a sullen look about her -little pale lips. But she had fair hair in a sort of aureole around -her low forehead, and shading her really beautiful eyes; and she -wore a crimson silk waist,--spotted, to be sure, and ripped on the -shoulder, but bringing out the fairness of her skin, and the blue -veins on her delicate temples. - -“I’m sure I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance,” she said -airily; but she was trembling. - -“I know your aunt, Mrs. Sherman,” her visitor said; then there -was a moment’s silence. Sara Wharton looked about the untidy -room,--with its banjo hung with ribbons, its looking-glass rimmed -with cards and tintypes stuck edgewise within the frame; its litter -of cigarette ends, and its half-empty, uncorked bottle of beer on -the marble-topped centre-table. - -“Your aunt told me about you, my child,” she said, with a deep, -kind look full into the girl’s face. - -The color rushed into Nellie’s pale cheeks; but she only said, with -vast indifference, “Is that so? Well, she’s very kind, I’m sure.” - -“I don’t know that she has always been very kind,” Sara Wharton -answered thoughtfully. “Now shut that window behind you; I don’t -want you to sit in a draft; and the fresh air has driven out the -perfumery. Why do you use perfumery, Nellie? Nice girls don’t.” - -The girl looked at her blankly. - -“Yes; your aunt told me about you. She told me how she had taken -care of you ever since your mother died; and how she had sent -you to school, and bought pretty dresses for you, and done the -housework herself so that you shouldn’t spoil your hands; and how -she took in washing so that you might go to dancing-school. She -loved you very much, Nellie; but I am not sure that she was kind. -Perhaps if you had had to work you wouldn’t have come to this -dreadful house, and brought shame and disgrace to Mrs. Sherman. -You’ve broken her heart, Nellie.” - -The girl’s face paled and flushed; and then quivered suddenly into -a storm of tears. - -“_I_ don’t like it here. But I can’t help it. I lost my place in -the shop. I was late, and they discharged me. And I was afraid to -go home and tell my aunt, she jaws at me so. That was four weeks -ago. It was the third place I’d lost. So I--came here. I don’t -like it. I was just crying when you came in!” She squeezed her -handkerchief into a damp ball and pressed it against her eyes, -sobbing. “The woman is so cross. And--and I owe her for board.” - -Sara was silent. - -“But there ain’t anything I can do; I’d die rather than go back to -my aunt’s. She’d never forgive me. I don’t blame her. But _I_ don’t -like it here.” - -“Perhaps your aunt will forgive you?” Sara said gently. Nellie -rocked back and forth, sobbing. - -“I’m too wicked,” she recited; her eyes roved over Sara’s dark -dress, and inspected her pretty little bonnet, and dwelt on the -glitter of an amethyst pin at her throat. “Oh, dear, I wish I -hadn’t; I wish I was dead,” she said helplessly. - -Sara Wharton’s face lit with a quick tenderness. She put her arm -over the child’s bent shoulders, and drew the wet cheek down -against her breast. “My dear, if you are sorry, if you know that -it is wicked and dreadful, then the worst is over. Don’t wish to -die--wish to live, so that you may be good. I know you _can_ be -good!” she ended, with a burst of courage in her voice, that -struck some answering chord in the poor, half-developed little soul -at her side. Nellie looked up. - -“Oh, I will be good--if I can; just get out of here! I’m just about -sick, anyway; I’ve got such a pain under my left shoulder; and I’m -just tired of it--and Mrs. Smith is so cross. But I can’t go home. -My aunt’ll jaw at me. Oh, I can’t ever go home!” She whimpered a -little, and looked at her pretty finger nails critically. - -“I’m _sure_ your aunt will forgive you!” Sara said, impetuous and -tender. “Let’s go and ask her to, now.” - -“Mrs. Smith won’t let me go, I guess,” Nellie sighed; “I owe her -two weeks board.” - -“I will pay her.” - -“I’ll come to-morrow,” the child demurred. - -“Nellie, dear, I want you to come now! Oh, Nellie, won’t you begin -this minute to be good?” - -“I’m not so very bad,” Nellie protested, “and I can’t come now, -truly. I haven’t any sack. I--sold it.” The tears welled up in her -soft eyes at the remembrance of her poverty. - -“You don’t need a sack. You’ll come in my carriage, and I’ll wrap a -rug around you.” - -“My!” said Nellie, “is your carriage here? One of the club girls -told me it had satin cushions. Is that so, Miss Wharton?” - -Sara bit her lip. “Never mind about the cushions. Oh, Nellie, dear, -don’t think of things like that! Only just try with all your might -to be good. Will you, Nellie?” - -“Why, certainly,” said Nellie. - - * * * * * - -Sara Wharton drove home with a very serious look on her face. She -had induced Nellie to leave that dreadful house; indeed, the girl -had yielded with that fatally facile willingness to do what she was -told which should have forbade any of the joy that may be felt over -the one sinner that repenteth. But in the glow of “saving” the poor -child, it was not easy for Sara Wharton to realize that Nellie’s -first experience of sin had only reached the stage of the young -smoker’s disgust with his first cigar. The young lady, with her -carriage and her satin cushions, had come at the right moment--the -moment when the expediency of morality had forced itself upon the -girl’s little, flimsy common-sense, and she was willing to go -shuddering back to comfortable decency; but as for any spiritual -perception of sin, and righteousness, and judgment, it did not -exist. - -Nellie had received her aunt’s forgiveness as though she were -conferring a favor. Indeed, she sighed with some impatience when -Mrs. Sherman wept over her; and she said again, fretfully, in -response to Miss Wharton’s assertions that _now_ Nellie was going -to be good,--“Why certainly, yes;” and looked about wearily, as if -she wished the scene might come to an end. - -“Nobody shan’t never know, my darling,” Mrs. Sherman told her, -her voice breaking with tenderness; “I’ll say you’ve been away, -visiting friends.” - -“A’ right,” said Nellie. And neither the aunt nor the niece -understood Miss Wharton’s quick protest against trying to hide one -sin by another. - -Sara, driving home, tired and saddened by the emotions of the -afternoon, acknowledged to herself that the easy repentance was -made of still less value by the easy forgiveness. - -“But some day she will repent, really and truly,” she told herself; -but she sighed, and dropped the window of the brougham, leaning -forward to get the dash of wet, cold wind in her face. It seemed -to her as though she still felt the lifeless air of those horrible -halls and stairways, and the scent of musk, and tobacco smoke, and -stale liquor. - -“The only thing to do, the only way to save her is to love her,” -Sara Wharton said to herself, “and I’m going to love her!” - -When she reached home, and came in out of the cold dusk into the -firelit hall, this divine intention of loving shone on her face -with a beautiful solemnity. Her seriousness was so marked that her -mother, who was just saying good evening to a departing caller, -noticed it and said, with some anxiety:-- - -“My dear, there is nothing the matter, I hope?” - -“No, mother darling,” the girl reassured her, with a glance at the -tall fellow who stood with his hat and stick in his hand, waiting -for Mrs. Wharton’s bow. - -“Sara, my dear, this is Dr. Morse. My daughter, Dr. Morse.” - -“I ventured to come and tell a sad story to your mother, Miss -Wharton,” said the young man, “a dispensary story. I’ve just come -on duty at the dispensary; but Mrs. Wharton’s kindness was so -proverbial, that when I stumbled on a hard case, I came at once to -tell her about it.” - -“I’ve no doubt she was delighted to hear of it,” Sara said; “mother -would really be dreadfully unhappy if everybody was prosperous; her -occupation would be gone.” - -“Why, Sara! Sara! you mustn’t say such things,” Mrs. Wharton -reproved her, looking at her daughter over her gold spectacles, -with the horrified protest of a simple and literal mind. - -The other two laughed, feeling suddenly very well acquainted. - -“So long as she lives in Mercer, Mrs. Wharton’s happiness is -assured,” the doctor said; and went away, saying to himself, “What -a girl! I don’t wonder people rave about her; she’s stunning! But -I’m afraid she’s a professional philanthropist.” - -“So that’s the new doctor?” Sara said, pulling off her gloves; “he -has a nice face, rather. Did you like him, darling?” - -“Yes,” her mother answered doubtfully, “only, Sara, my dear, he -seems rather a stern young man. I wanted to give him a check for -this poor woman he came to tell me about; but he said that I must -let her clean windows, or something, to earn it. And you know, my -dear child, that would interfere with James’s work. I’d much rather -give the check than arrange for work.” - -Sara kissed her, and cuddled her, for Mrs. Wharton was a little, -roly-poly, comfortable sort of woman, and told her she was behind -the times. - -“Nowadays,” announced the young lady, “the ‘gave to him that -asketh’ method is hopelessly unscientific; bless your dear -old-fashioned heart!” - - -II - -The saving of Nellie Sherman became an intense and passionate -purpose in Sara Wharton’s life. Day by day, hour by hour, she -watched and fought and prayed. She invented (according to the -most approved charity methods) work for the vain and shiftless -child; she had her taught to sew; she was careful to provide -plenty of bright and wholesome amusement for her; by and by -Nellie felt yearnings to be a bookkeeper, and Sara Wharton sent -her to a commercial school. “You can pay me back when you get -work,” she said, as cheerfully as though she believed that Nellie -was capable of feeling a money obligation. She entered Nellie’s -name at her Girls’ Club; she took her to concerts, and sent her -books, and planned and thought and hoped; and always, always -prayed. Furthermore, she loved the girl. That is to say, she -called it love; and perhaps it was, in its way; at least it was -that greater love that is content to give and not receive. Sara -gave her very self--her power, her charm, her sweet and generous -enthusiasms--fully and freely into the little, mean hands that -were held out to take all they could get. “Because,” she said to -herself, again, “the only way to reach her is to love her. Love is -the greatest thing in the world! I’ve no doubt I would have been -just as bad as Nellie if I hadn’t had so much love.” This thought -made the girl rise, and go and push her mother’s sewing aside, and -kiss her, with a little half laughing break in her voice, and her -eyes suddenly wet with tears. - -“What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Wharton said breathlessly, adjusting -her spectacles, which the impetuous embrace had disturbed; “is -anything the matter, Sara?” - -“No,” her daughter answered, with a laugh, winking away the tears, -“I was just thinking how lucky I was to have you for a mother, you -darling! If I’d had some cross old mother I should have been--I -should have been a fiend! I haven’t a doubt of it. I’d have been -just as wicked as poor Nellie Sherman.” - -“Nothing of the sort!” retorted Mrs. Wharton, much ruffled; “please -remember what kind of people your grand-parents on both sides were, -and don’t say such unladylike things, Sara. Dear, dear, I don’t -know what girls are coming to in these days. When I was young, -young ladies didn’t know that such improper persons existed as your -Nellie Sherman. I wish you would have nothing to do with her.” - -Sara, on her knees beside the little, rosy, kindly lady, pulled her -cap straight, and scolded her for making her forefinger rough with -so much sewing. - -“You are always making petticoats for poor people,” she said -severely, “instead of talking to me about my winter clothes. I -want a new dinner dress, ma’am, and you’ve got to buy it. I’ve -used up all my allowance, and borrowed from father on the next -quarter; so please help the deserving poor of your own household. -Charity begins at home, let me tell you! Who is to have this -petticoat?--while your own poor child is in want of a satin gown!” - -“Well,” Mrs. Wharton said, with some confusion, “the fact is, -Nellie looks so sickly I am afraid she is not warmly enough clad”-- - -Sara shrieked with laughter. “Consistency, thy name is Mother,” -she cried; and began to pour out her plans for Nellie, which Mrs. -Wharton amended several times, objecting to Sara’s assertion that -Nellie should repay the money expended for her tuition at the -commercial college. - -“The poor thing will have so little money, anyhow,” she entreated. -But Sara held to her theory. - -“We’ll make it up in other ways,--petticoats, and things, but she -must feel it a loan,” she said. - -However, Miss Wharton’s theories were far too fine for the material -with which she worked. When the three terms at the commercial -college were over, Nellie was languidly grateful, but she doubted -whether she should like bookkeeping; she was, however, willing to -“give it a trial;” so Sara found a place in a shop for her, and, -as the proprietor (another friend and dependent) could not pay -the full wages, made up the sum herself. But it never occurred to -Nellie to begin to pay her debt; and Sara, fearful of antagonizing -the child, cast her theory to the winds, and did not suggest it. - -So the first year passed. The anxious, courageous, artificial fight -never flagged; and Nellie, for twelve months, was “straight.” There -had been great expenditure of time and strength and money to save -the little creature; and in a purely negative way the effort had -been successful. Nellie was “straight.” - -Yet Sara Wharton was sometimes dreadfully discouraged; she could -not see a single large or noble trait in the girl, although it was -her sweet and loving theory to believe in what she did not see. - -“Goodness is there, somewhere!” she used to say to herself, with -a beautiful and courageous belief which was part of her own -character; and then she fell back on what she had called “the -greatest thing in the world:” “Goodness is there, and I’ve got to -_love it out_!” She took Nellie’s latent goodness for granted, -especially in her effort to overcome the child’s enveloping -selfishness. She was constantly trying to make her realize the -happiness of sacrifice. - -“Nellie,” she said once, “now that you’ve got your place as -bookkeeper, and are earning some money, of course you want to pay -me; but I think, even before that, you must want to pay for your -board at your aunt’s. She has been so good to you, you know; and -I’m sure you’ll be glad to help her along a little?” - -“Oh, certainly!” Nellie replied, with a blank look. - -“How much do you think you can pay?” Sara suggested cheerfully. - -“Well, just now,” Nellie demurred, “I really have to have a new -dress; perhaps, later, I can give her a little something.” - -Sara looked at her wistfully. “Don’t you _want_ to, Nellie? I -should think your very first thought would be to do something for -her. Just think what she has done for you!” - -“Of course, I mean to,” Nellie said, tossing her head, “but I’ve -got to have a dress--and things.” - -“If only,” Sara reflected, “she could once understand how awfully -nice it is to give!” and then she planned that every Saturday -Nellie might come to the greenhouse and get some roses from the -gardener,--“and take them to the hospital. It is delightful to -do that!” she said. And Nellie smiled faintly, and said, “Oh, -certainly;” but only came once for the flowers. - -Nevertheless, Nellie Sherman had been “rescued.” Almost the same -sort of rescue would have been achieved if Sara had fastened her -into a strait-jacket and locked her into a room. But with Miss -Wharton on one side, and her aunt on the other, day and night, the -strange, boneless, unmoral little nature “kept straight;” and in a -glimmering way the girl even began to see that there were certain -views which were thought admirable, and once in a while she tried -them on, as it were, and regarded herself in the mirror of Miss -Wharton’s warm and joyous approbation. - -“I was so sorry not to see you at the club last night, Nellie,” -Sara said to her one day, dropping in to buy a pair of gloves at -the shop where Nellie kept the books. - -“My aunt wasn’t well,” said Nellie, “and I stayed at home to take -care of her.” Such a light came into Sara Wharton’s sweet face, -such tenderness and triumph and quick hope, that Nellie looked at -her curiously. - -“That was right, Nellie, dear,” she said; “I’m so glad you did it. -I’m _so_ glad,” she repeated, and went away, her eyes misty and her -heart lifted up. She could not help going in to see Mrs. Sherman, -making the excuse of bringing her some fruit because she was ill, -but really to share her exultation. - -“Sick?” said Mrs. Sherman, “why, no, ma’am, I’m not sick, no -more than I always am with worry about that there Nellie. She -didn’t come home from the club last night until after eleven, and -I was scared to death for fear she’d gone off with them Caligan -girls--they’re fast girls, that’s what they are; and she’s struck -up a great friendship with ’em. My, she’ll worry me into my grave, -Nellie will. But she said you’d kept her late to help you putting -away the club books,--and of course that was all right.” - - -III - -“You owe something to your family, my child,” Mrs. Wharton said one -day; “you make us all very anxious and worried by overworking so; -it’s your duty to take a little rest.” - -“Mother, darling,” Sara began to protest, “I really can’t go away -now; the Girls’ Club and”-- - -“You needn’t begin the list, my dear,” her mother interrupted--“I -know them all. Dear, dear! Sara, when I was a girl, young women -owed some duties to their parents, as well as to all the -shiftless, worthless, improper people in the world.” - -“I trust I’m not a Borrioboola-Gha person,” murmured Sara. - -“Don’t be foolish, my child,” Mrs. Wharton said, “and use long -words when your poor old mother don’t know what they mean”-- - -“You darling!” said Sara, and hugged her so tightly that Mrs. -Wharton remonstrated. - -“It would be a great deal more to the point if, instead of kissing -me, you would be an obedient child. You worry me almost to death, -working so hard. I want you to come to Florida. I asked Dr. Morse -if he didn’t think you were doing too much, and he said you took a -great deal of unnecessary trouble; so you see he agrees with me.” - -“Mother, dear, how you adore doctors! Dr. Morse doesn’t know what -he’s talking about. But you might tell me what else he said?” - -“Oh, some nonsense about--about your being of so much value to -Mercer,” Mrs. Wharton admitted, with evident fear that one -statement might lessen the effect of the other. - -But whether it was Dr. Morse’s understanding of the value of her -work, or whether it was her mother’s entreaties, Sara at last -agreed to go away for a little while, though it was hard work -to get things in running order for a three months’ absence of -their head. Nellie was her greatest anxiety; three months without -oversight and guidance--who could tell what might happen! So Sara -made many plans; the girl was to be guarded on this side and on -that: she was to have steady work, and she was to have frequent -amusement; pleasure and profit were all arranged. And before she -went, Sara had a little talk with her. She had sent for the girl, -who came up into her bedroom, where, just before dinner, Miss -Wharton was sitting in the firelight. The pretty room was full of -dusky shadows; its faint scent of roses, its deep, soft chairs, the -shimmer of silver on the toilet-table, all its delicate luxury, -was evident enough to Nellie. The sullen upper lip swelled out as -she looked enviously about her. She liked the touch of the silk -cushions, the feeling of the soft white rug under her feet; the -color of Miss Wharton’s crimson tea-gown fed her eyes with delight. -She hardly heard what the young lady was saying. - -“Nellie, dear, I want you to try your very best to be good while -I’m away.” - -“Oh, certainly,” said Nellie, with a sigh. - -Sara clasped her hands together over her knees, and held her lip -between her teeth, drawing in her breath; Nellie watched her rings -wink and flash in the firelight. - -“Nellie” (Sara was saying to herself, “Oh, I _hope_ I will say what -is wise. I _hope_ I can touch her!”), “Nellie, you know how I have -always believed in you, and hoped for you, and loved you; and just -because I have, and because I am truly, truly your friend, I want -to ask you to do two things for me while I’m away: first, promise -me not to tell another lie; oh, Nellie, you don’t know how unhappy -you made me when you told me that lie about the club.” - -Nellie dropped her head upon her breast, and made no answer. - -“And then,” Sara went on, “I want you to try not to be so selfish. -I am so grieved to have you indifferent to Mrs. Sherman’s kindness -to you. She told me that you had only given her one dollar and -seventy-five cents since you went to work. And don’t you see, you -have been receiving everything she could give you, of love and -care, and yet you have given her nothing! You haven’t even been -kind to her, Nellie.” - -“_Oh!_” said Nellie, “well, I wish I was dead. Everybody’s always -finding fault. I’m sure there’s lots of girls worse than me. But -I’m always being picked at. I wish I was dead.” - -Sara was nervous and overstrained; besides, she was conscious of a -sort of physical disgust at this poor, repulsive little being; her -self-reproach brought the tears to her eyes. “I didn’t mean to be -hard on you, Nellie,” she said, “only I want you to try.” - -“I _always_ try,” said Nellie. - -“And,” Sara’s brave young voice went on, “I do want you to feel -that--that Christ cares; that God cares, Nellie, that you shall be -a good, true, dear girl. Will you just think of that, Nellie?” - -“Why, of course,” Nellie answered resentfully, wiping her eyes. “I -do always. My aunt makes me go to church every Sunday. Miss Sara, -do you think you have any pieces of velvet in your rag-bag?” - -Sara started. “Rag-bag?” she repeated vaguely, “velvet?” - -“I thought I could trim my hat over,” Nellie explained. “You’ve got -so many things,” she ended sullenly. - -Sara was silent for a few minutes, reasoning with herself. After -all, Nellie was young; it was natural for her to like pretty things. - -“Yes, I can give you some velvet, I think,” she said cheerfully; -“and, Nellie, I have a plan for you; what are you going to give -your aunt for a Christmas gift?” - -Nellie looked up blankly. - -“I know you’ll want to give her something,” Sara went on, “and I -was thinking of a nice chair. What do you think of that?” - -“A chair!” repeated Nellie in astonishment. “Why, I wouldn’t buy a -chair for myself!” - -Sara sighed. “But you would like the fun of buying one for somebody -else, wouldn’t you?” - -“Well, I ain’t got any money,” the girl said uneasily; and then -Miss Wharton unfolded her plan, which was that she should give -Nellie five dollars, and Nellie would add what she could, and a -present should be purchased. - -“Add something, if it’s only a dollar,” Sara said pleadingly; “a -good, comfortable chair can be bought for six dollars.” - -“A’ right; I don’t mind,” Nellie agreed, in a wearied way. She did -not understand all this talk; she saw no reason in Miss Sara’s -giving Mrs. Sherman a chair, and saying it was Nellie’s gift; -still, she didn’t mind. - -“You’ll like to do that, won’t you, Nellie?” Sara said anxiously. - -“Oh, certainly,” said Nellie, and then she rose, for Miss Wharton -was silent, and that seemed a sign of dismissal. - -Sara rose, too, and stood looking at her visitor for a moment; -then, suddenly she put her arm around the little thin shoulders, -and drew the girl to her, and kissed her. “Oh, Nellie,” she said, -her voice passionate and trembling,--“Oh, Nellie, _dear_! I--I -wish I knew what to say, to show you--to make you feel”--her voice -broke; Nellie was greatly embarrassed;--“but just believe _I love -you_, won’t you? and be good!” - -“Why,” said Nellie, with a sigh of fatigue and reproach, -“certainly!” Then she added, “Well, good-by; hope you’ll have a -delightful time, I’m sure,” and closed Miss Sara’s door, with a -sense of relief that was like the lifting of some harassing weight. -She came slowly downstairs, pulling on her soiled gloves, and -walking with a mincing step. Escaped from Miss Wharton’s room, -she felt as if all the luxury of this great house--the color, -the lights, the soft carpet under her feet, the sparkle of the -firelight in the hall below--was hers, and so she assumed the -gait and the manner which she conceived to belong to an owner. The -inside-man was just lighting a lamp under a big rose-colored shade, -and Nellie threw up her head with a haughty look, and drew down the -corners of her mouth, sweeping past him toward the door. James, -however, smiled with great politeness. - -“Oh, g’d evening, Miss Sherman,” he said. “My! it does seem to get -dark early these days, doesn’t it?” - -Nellie’s lofty coldness melted instantly. She simpered and said, -“Is that so?” - -“It’s quite late for a young lady to be out alone,” James remarked -with grave solicitude. - -“Oh, that’s a’ right,” Nellie protested. - -She was smiling, and holding her head coquettishly, and looking up -at him with great archness. She dropped her handkerchief as she -reached the front door and James picked it up, and handed it to her -with an elaborate bow. He caught her fingers in his own as he did -so, and they both giggled, and Nellie said, “Now, you stop that!” - -They lowered their voices with an apprehensive look towards the -staircase; James opened the door and stepped out on the porch with -her. “Well, you oughtn’t to be severe, Miss Sherman; it’s such a -little hand, a gentleman can’t help it; Miss Sara’s is twice as -big.” - -“Is that so?” said Nellie; and then they both looked up at the -sky, and James observed that the weather was threatening, and it -certainly _was_ too dark for a young lady, a beautiful young lady, -to be out alone. - -“Oh, that’s a’ right,” Nellie reassured him politely. - -James in an absent-minded way put his arm round her, and said he -thought ladies ought always to have gentlemen escorts. - -“Is that so?” Nellie answered, simpering; and, with the same -apparent absence of mind, sidling closer to him, which induced -his easy caresses; “well, I must be going along,” she announced, -giggling. - -“Well, good-by, Miss Sherman,” said the chivalrous James, and gave -her a hearty kiss, which made Nellie slap at him with one hand, -and say, “Now you stop that!” and go off, still giggling, into the -darkness. - - * * * * * - -Sara Wharton, upstairs by her fire, had dropped her face in her -hands, and was saying to herself, “I must trust her more, and -believe in her more! Oh, I am sure she tries--poor little Nellie.” - -And certainly poor Nellie was not conscious of any lack of trying, -so far as the episode with James was concerned. To her, as well as -to him, it was very harmless, that kiss in the porch. And really to -call such a thing “sin” is to lift it to a level where it does not -belong. - -But probably Sara Wharton was constitutionally unable to understand -that. - -The people who try to make silk purses out of inadequate materials -rarely can understand it. - - -IV - -The Whartons did not get back until April, and the improvement in -Sara’s color, and the clear, glad look in her eyes, showed how -much she had needed the change. She was all ready for her brave, -happy work for other people. Her very first visit was to Nellie’s -aunt. When she climbed up to the top tenement, stopping to open a -window on a landing half way up, so that the sweet spring air might -turn out the odors of the hall-sink, and of the dirt in the corners -and on the stairs, she came into Mrs. Sherman’s room a little -breathless, but with a soft rose-color on her cheek. - -“Well!” she called out cheerfully, “here I am again, Mrs. Sherman; -how are you; and how is Nellie?” and then she discovered Nellie -sitting close to the stove, on which was a tin boiler full of -steaming soapy linen, which Mrs. Sherman, bare armed and draggled, -pushed down once in a while with a broom-handle. - -“There!” said Mrs. Sherman, “well! my sakes, Miss Wharton, it do do -me good to see you. Look at that there girl!” - -Nellie sunk her head on her breast and began to cry. Sara was -instantly serious. “Is anything wrong?” she said gravely. - -“Wrong!” cried Mrs. Sherman shrilly. “Well, I guess! I told her I’d -keep her till you come home, though she’s a shame to any decent -woman. My! what I’ve put up with for that there child!” She put her -apron over her head, sobbing and vociferating: “I told her I’d tell -you. I ain’t let her out of that door since. I’ll keep her straight -now, as long as _I_ live”-- - -Nellie, her face drawn and pale, sat plucking at the fringe of the -shawl about her shoulders, her sullen lips compressed, her eyes -cast resolutely down. - -“Nellie?” Sara said. There was no answer. - -“What has happened, Nellie?” - -Silence. - -“Tell me; I won’t be hard on you, Nellie. Have you--gone wrong -again?” - -Nellie crossed her feet and made no reply. - -In despair Sara turned again to Mrs. Sherman, who, with tears, -declaring first that Nellie should leave her house that night, -and then that she would never let her out of her sight, told the -shameful fact of another fall;--another reformation. - -“She’s sick, that’s what’s the matter; that’s all her reformin’ -amounts to,” the aunt said; “she was bleedin’ from her lungs, so -she come home. She was gone a week. It was two weeks last Thursday -she come back. Well, I thought she was dyin’. I was up with her -three nights. I sent for that there doctor at the dispensary. He -give her some stuff. That’s it in the bottle on the mantel. Well, -I didn’t let on to him how she’d been carryin’ on! Shame on her! -I’m done with her. She can go out to the gutter. That’s where she -belongs”-- - -“Oh, Mrs. Sherman,” Sara protested, her color coming and going. -“Nellie, how could you! oh, Nellie!” She looked over at the girl -with a sort of passionate disappointment and pity, yet with that -physical shrinking which the good woman feels in the presence of -the bad woman. With illness Nellie’s vanity had ebbed; she was -untidy, her hands were dirty; she had not frizzed her hair for -days, and it hung about her dull face in lifeless strands. - -“Well,” Mrs. Sherman burst out, “there! She’s broke my heart. -Nellie, it’s time for your medicine. She ain’t got no appetite, -Miss Wharton. I don’t know what I _shall_ do!” The woman’s worn -face quivered with tears. Nellie got up and took her medicine; she -glanced at the hem of Miss Wharton’s skirt, but would not lift her -eyes any higher. The clothes on the stove boiled, and the suds -splashed over and sizzled on the hot iron. Mrs. Sherman, talking -and crying, rammed them down with the clothes-stick. - -“I couldn’t believe it at first. She’d kep’ straight for more ’an -a year an’ a half. But she got to goin’ with a lot o’ them fast -girls, and she spent every cent she had on her back”-- - -Sara looked around suddenly. “Did she give you a present of a chair -at Christmas?” - -“A chair? No; she never gave me nothing. Not a thing. You told -her she’d got to pay me board. I’d ’a’ been satisfied with that, -and not ’a’ wanted no presents of chairs. Well, I took her out of -her dyin’ mother’s arms, and I’ve lived to see the day I wished -she’d a-died then, with my poor, blessed sister. _She_ made a -misstep, I will say; and the man made off and left her. But she was -expectin’ to marry him. It was different from this one. _I’ve_ been -a respectable woman all my life, and I can’t stand the shame of -this,--the neighbors’ll know,” she rambled on, crying and jabbing -at the steaming clothes, and looking with furtive, dumb love at the -little, sick, mean face on the other side of the stove. - -As for Sara Wharton, she went home heart-sick, but gathering up her -courage and her faith for further effort; this time to save the -body as well as the soul. - -The first thing to be done was, plainly, to see the doctor at the -dispensary, who had already examined Nellie. - -“I’ll have to tell him the truth about her,” Sara thought, -frowning. But it never occurred to her to shirk this. - -“Yes, I remember the case, I think,” said Dr. Morse; “incipient -phthisis, I believe. Just let me look it up; yes, that was it; -anæmia, also; I gave her a tonic.” - -“Phthisis?” Sara repeated, her color paling. “Oh, Dr. Morse, -doesn’t that mean--consumption?” - -“Not yet,” he answered, with all the cheerfulness of scientific -indifference. “It will doubtless develop into consumption.” - -“But that means she will _die_?” Sara said, her dark eyes full of -fear. “Oh, is it as bad as that?” Her lip trembled. The young man -looked at her with attention. - -“I am sorry I told you so abruptly; I did not realize that the -young woman was anything to you, personally; and I assure you the -case is not hopeless.” - -“Is there any hope? Oh, Dr. Morse, it is so awful to think of her -dying _now_! What must be done? How uneven things are! There was I, -a strong, well woman, down in Florida, and this poor girl”-- - -“There is perhaps some difference in the value of the two lives,” -the doctor objected, smiling. Sara brushed this aside as unworthy -of an answer. - -“What can we do?” - -“Well, I suppose if she could go away into the country, and live -a quiet, regular life, with plenty of milk to drink, and plenty -of fresh air and proper exercise, she would at least be greatly -benefited. Possibly cured. There are no marked lesions, I think, in -the lung.” - -Sara listened with frowning intentness; then she drew a long breath -of relief. “I am so thankful that it is not hopeless. But I think -that--that in prescribing for her, I mean planning for her, you -ought to know--all there is to know, about her.” - -“Yes, that is advisable,” the doctor agreed easily. The charming -color of her cheek, the bunch of violets on her shoulder, her -beautiful, troubled brown eyes, were not lost upon this young man. -“I thought her a vain little thing,” he went on, “and rather brutal -to the good woman who was taking care of her. But illness makes us -all selfish.” - -“I am afraid she is vain, poor child,” Sara said, “and selfish, -too, rather. But the worst of it is, she has--she has not been -good, Dr. Morse.” - -“Ah!” said the young man. - -“I did hope she had reformed, but while I was away--it happened -again.” - -“I see. I see.” - -“Of course, in sending her away that has to be considered. She must -be among people who will do her good.” - -“And to whom she will not do harm.” - -Sara looked a little startled. “Of course; but I had not thought of -that.” - -“It seems to me that is very important,” he said, smiling. -“Speaking of sending people away, I wish I might tell you of -another case which needs the country; or are your hands too full to -consider any one else?” - -“Alas, it is my purse which is not full,” she said ruefully; “but -is it very bad?” - -“It is a poor soul, a hard-working, honest little creature, who has -an old mother and an imbecile brother to support; and she’s nearly -at an end of her strength. She needs to be braced up.” - -“I wish I could send her away too,” Sara said pitifully; “but I’ve -begged and begged for my cases until, positively, I haven’t the -face to ask for any more money. My friends fly when they see me -approaching, for fear I’m going to say ‘give, give!’” She laughed a -little, and the doctor looked at her with critical amusement. - -“But of the two, you’d give the--you’d give Nellie Sherman the -chance for health?” - -“Why, it’s only ‘bracing up’ that your poor woman needs,” Sara -said, with a surprised look, “and you say Nellie will die if she -doesn’t go away?” - -“Perhaps that would be the best thing that could happen.” - -“Dr. Morse! Would you have me let Nellie Sherman _die_, that three -people should be made comfortable?” - -“I would, indeed,” he said, with a whimsical smile. - -She looked at him in silent dismay, and he thought she shrank a -little. - -“My dear Miss Wharton,” he said quickly, “just look at the -situation: your poor Nellie is a moral leper; she is a contagion; -she’s had her opportunity to get well (I speak spiritually); -she has had a year and a half of the most patient and earnest -effort expended upon her; but she hasn’t profited by it, and the -probability is she is incurable. On the other hand, here is a woman -who is a centre and source of moral health. Each needs physical -restoration: one for her life, the other for her usefulness,--and, -later, no doubt, her life, too. To which shall the chance be given?” - -“To the one who might die!” Sara said impetuously. - -She got up to go, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes; the young -man rose, too, and stood leaning back against his office table, his -hands in his pockets, and a good-natured smile on his lean, strong -face. “I don’t see,” his visitor went on, “how you dare to say any -soul is incurably bad”-- - -“I only said the _probability_ was that your Nellie was incurable; -and, after all, if you have only a certain amount of medicine, will -you give it to the moribund or the person who is just coming down -with an illness?” - -“I don’t think the illustration is good,” Sara answered loftily; -“we are speaking of souls. And we have no right to say we know the -limit”--her voice fell a little--“of God’s power.” - -Dr. Morse looked as though he were about to speak, but apparently -thought better of it. - -“I’m very sorry for your poor woman,” Sara said, “and I’ll try to -see if I can’t arrange a little rest for her; but first of all, -life must be saved.” - -Then she went away, her lip between her white teeth, and her breath -quick. “Horrible man!” she said to herself, “the idea of reasoning -about a thing like that--a human life! Dreadful person! I hope I -shall never see him again.” - -Dr. Morse, in his office, thrust his hands down into his pockets, -and stretched his feet out, and reflected. “I suppose she -thinks I’m a brute. I might have known better than to talk to a -sentimental girl as though she were a rational being. She’ll keep -that creature alive long enough to bring two or three fellows -down to the gutter, and, possibly, even continue her physical and -moral characteristics in a child (though that’s not likely, thank -heaven), and then feel that she’s done _her_ duty! Good Lord, the -harm these philanthropists do!” - -Nevertheless he softened a little when a short and formal note came -from Miss Wharton, with a small sum of money for “the case of which -he had spoken.” - -“She’s got a good heart, that girl,” he told himself. “Her ten -dollars won’t do much, though; and to think of that little squalid -Nellie Sherman having a hundred spent to keep her worthless body -alive!” - - -V - -So Nellie’s summer outing was arranged: she was to have four months -in a quiet place in the country; plenty of fresh air, and good -milk, and wholesome food. - -No wonder the little pale cheeks grew round and faintly pink; that -her eyes seemed darker and brighter; her pinched, white lips -fuller and redder. In a month it was evident that the quiet life -which Sara had taken such pains to find was good for her; her whole -miserable, sickly body began to thrive. It was a “quiet” life. -From the girl’s point of view it was perfectly intolerable. She -endured, in her way, the misery of the intellectual man or woman -cut off absolutely from books or study of any kind, or of a clean -person obliged to live in filth. The contrast was as great. The -fact that it was in favor of righteousness did not make it any -the less painful. Nellie’s sudden removal from the cheap and base -excitements of her life caused absolute suffering. Such suffering, -untempted reformers argue, is good for the soul. - -But to Nellie the sweet drift of silent summer days was maddeningly -dull; she brooded over what she felt was the hardship of her lot, -and looked back upon her Mercer life as a time of freedom, and -of a strange sort of importance,--which was as near self-respect -as she could come. At least, in Mercer she was not “trod on,” as -she now felt herself to be; she could go and walk the street on -fine afternoons with the Caligan girls, three abreast, arm in -arm, strutting and jostling each other, and looking into the shop -windows; laughing loudly, or glancing haughtily at the passers-by, -or giggling at “gentlemen friends.” It was all so harmless and -so pleasant! Of course, Mrs. Smith’s on Baker Street, that was -different; but just to meet lady and gentlemen friends, and talk -and “carry on”--what was wrong in that? She did, to be sure, feel -nervous about her health; but if it were necessary to go into the -country, why couldn’t she have gone to a hotel, where she could -have had some fun? It seemed a cruel life to Nellie! She came to -feel toward Sara Wharton, instead of the uncomfortable resentment -which in such natures takes the place of gratitude, a venomous -hatred. Sara seemed to this poor, mean soul, a powerful enemy, -one who interfered with every joy, and, not content with that, -who “talked;” and Nellie hated talk. Like most of her class, -except when in a rage, she had little to say beyond exclamations, -and Miss Wharton’s impetuous flow of words, her entreaties, and -rebukes, and suggestions, had only bewildered and irritated the -girl; for Sara, like most of her class, had never taken Nellie’s -mental deficiencies into account; she treated her always like a -rational being. Like a “Soul,” Sara herself would have said. - -So, up on the farm, as her fright about her health subsided, poor -Nellie raged against her benefactor and her cruel fate. She fell -into fits of weeping, or, what was worse to the quiet husband and -wife in whose charge she was, into long silences, broken only by -fitful flashes of black temper. Yet in spite of this, her bodily -health increased. Very likely there would have been open rebellion, -and a break for liberty by midsummer, if an unexpected interest -had not come into her life. Two students, with their tutor, came -to camp out near the farm; and after passing them once or twice -in the road, and giggling with them over the posting of a letter -in the office, poor Nellie grew better tempered. She frizzed her -hair with keener enjoyment, and practiced airs and graces before -her glass all the long hot forenoons; and in the afternoons walked -in to the village on the remote chance of meeting the two boys. -She did not see them often, but to know they were near gave her -something to think about in the deadly monotony of farm life, and -she was much happier. On the rare occasions of their meeting she -would roll her eyes, and talk in her simpering, nasal voice of the -weather, or the novel she had been reading, or how her “guardian” -had sent her into the country for her health. The boys said to each -other that she was pretty, and ripping good fun; and used to laugh -over her silliness with their tutor. They were too busy and too -wholesomely happy to give very much thought to her. - -Thus the summer passed. The health which Sara Wharton so earnestly -desired had returned, temporarily at least. When at last the -first of September came, and Miss Wharton’s letter arrived to -say she might come home,--such a gentle, friendly, sympathetic -letter,--Nellie was wild with delight. She could hardly remember -to say good-by to the kind people who had looked after her for the -last few months; she almost forgot the boys; she was tremulous with -joy. - -“Oh, I’m so _glad_ to go back--oh, I hate, hate, _hate_ the -country!” she kept saying; while the husband and wife looked at -each other wonderingly. - -So, strengthened and invigorated, panting for excitement, unchecked -by any moral perceptions, by gratitude, by love, even by fear (now -that she was well again),--she came back to Mercer. - - -VI - -One night in December, Sara Wharton, coming home from a dinner, was -told that Dr. Morse was waiting for her in the library. She went -in at once, pulling off her long gloves, and with her white cloak -falling back from her pretty shoulders. She had not seen the doctor -since that talk about Nellie, and she had forgotten her indignation -with him. She had heard too much of his goodness among the poor -people to harbor resentment. - -“Oh, I am so sorry to be so late,” she said. “Have you been waiting -very long? Oh, this room is cold! Why haven’t they kept the fire -up?” She turned, with a pretty, hospitable impulse to summon a -servant, but Dr. Morse stopped her with a gesture. - -“I am quite warm. I will only detain you for a few moments. I want -you to help me.” - -“Indeed, I will; has anything gone wrong?” - -“Yes,” he said, with a hard look. - -“One of your poor people?” she asked. She sat down by the fire, one -silken foot on the fender; her cloak had slipped down behind her, -and she was pulling out her gloves, and smoothing them on her knee. -She looked up at him with a charming smile. - -“Yes,” he said, “one of my poor people--and yours. Miss Wharton, -can you tell me anything about Nellie Sherman?” - -“Nellie?” Sara Wharton’s face began to change. “Oh, Dr. Morse, I -wish I could tell you anything encouraging about her. She quarreled -with her aunt, and went to work at a factory in North Mercer. She -hardly ever comes home, I’m sorry to say; she is boarding with a -respectable family, I believe, and I think she does not depend on -Mrs. Sherman for any money. But I’ve lost my hold on her--if I -ever had any! She has only been to see me once since she came home -in September. You know I sent her away in the summer? And she got -well, Dr. Morse!” she ended triumphantly. - -“Yes; she did,” he said with stern significance. - -“What is the matter? Is she sick again? is she--_dead_?” - -“Dead? I wish she were.” - -“Dr. Morse!” - -“Miss Wharton, that miserable creature has lived long enough to -corrupt and seduce an innocent boy. Young Jack Hayes has--I beg -your pardon, this is plain talk--but I am a physician and you -are--a philanthropist, so we need not mince words,--Jack has gone -off with her. I have come to-night from his mother’s bedside. Mrs. -Hayes has just heard what he has done--her innocent boy.” - -Sara rose, shrinking and wincing as though he had struck her. - -“I thought it possible,” he went on, “that you might know where she -was living, and perhaps I could get on her track. She met Jack up -in the country; he was there with a tutor; of course, she had no -difficulty in finding him when he came back to town. He went off -with her on Sunday, we think--at least, one of the Clay boys saw -him with her Sunday night, and he hasn’t been at home since.” - -“I don’t know where she is,” Sara said brokenly. - -“I went to see Mrs. Sherman before I came here, and do you know -what she said to me? She sat, poor woman, with the tears streaming -down her cheeks: ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘if I could only know she was -dead! If she was just safe in her grave!’” - -Sara shivered. - -“I thought to myself, ‘She would be, you poor soul, if some of us -wise people had not interfered.’ I reproach myself,” he went on -savagely, “that I did not try to dissuade you when you told me you -meant to keep the girl alive. We ought to stamp such vermin out--or -let it die out, at least. Instead, you philanthropists and we -doctors do all we can to keep them alive,--that they may propagate -their kind! Fortunately, nature generally prevents that,--but -Nellie’s mother was a fallen woman, you may remember? Poor -Jack--poor Mrs. Hayes! Miss Wharton, our hands are not innocent of -that boy’s blood.” - -Sara was very white; she still trembled, but she lifted her head -and looked full at him. “Dr. Morse, are you God, to kill?” - -“Or you, to make alive?” he interrupted. “I did not ask you to -kill--I asked you not to interfere--to allow God to work in his own -way. I asked you to use that judgment which, in ordinary affairs, -is so excellent--to consider _probabilities_; you do as much as -that in refusing to leave a lighted candle in a powder magazine. -What would you think of me, if I turned a smallpox patient loose -in a crowd? Nellie is far more dangerous than smallpox. Don’t you -see--surely you must see! that it would have been better for the -community if she had died last summer?” - -“Better for the community,” Sara said passionately; “but what about -Nellie? Would it have been better for Nellie?” - -“It could hardly be worse, could it?” he answered dryly; “but if it -were worse, better one lost soul than two or three.” - -“God doesn’t lose souls so easily,” she cried; but he pressed the -logic of her hope home. - -“Then why not have trusted Him, and let her die? Death isn’t -the worst thing in the world! And may I remind you”--they had -both risen; and from a cruel sort of justice on his part, and a -horrified dismay on hers, anger was arising in their eyes--“may I -remind you of a poor woman of whom I spoke that day you came to see -me about Nellie? She is in the hospital, broken down absolutely; -her brother is in the almshouse, and her mother living on charity. -But Nellie Sherman, a thief, a liar, a prostitute, a moral -imbecile, is in good health!” - -“You have no right to say such things,” Sara said, in a low voice. -“I had to give that poor creature a chance to save her soul; and to -do that I had to save her body”-- - -“And ruin Jack--body and soul”-- - -“That was not my business,” she flung back at him. - -“It was your business!” he said. “It was your business to weigh -probabilities. Oh!” he ended, impetuously, “the trouble with us -is, nowadays, that we make too much of _life_, and too little of -_living_. It is living that is important, not existing! I tell you, -Miss Wharton, there is only a limited amount of power in the world; -only a limited amount of opportunity, or of money, for that matter; -and we are bound to put power and opportunity and money where they -will do the most good! Did you put them where they would do the -most good?” - -Sara flinched, then rallied all her faith. “Dr. Morse, I did the -duty which came to my hands; I had no choice.” - -“No choice?” he repeated. “There is always choice! that’s where -responsibility comes in. The good woman and the bad woman may not -come and stand hand in hand before you, each asking aid. But the -good woman, abstractly, is always dying (or--being tempted to turn -into a bad woman, for that matter!), so there is always choice. -We’ve got to consider moral economics; we’ve no business to gratify -our selfish sentimentalism at the expense of society!” He was so -much in earnest that he did not see how tensely she was holding -herself, or what a look of terror had come into her young face. - -“The Gospel of Love is all I can plead,” she said, in the voice of -one insisting to herself; “but it is the salvation of the world!” - -All the stern anxiety of his face melted into an exaltation as -intense as her own. “Law is the salvation of the world! And -law means that the good of the whole, not the comfort of the -individual, shall be considered; it means a love so sane as to -permit the mercy of death.” - -Sara put her hands over her face to hide a burst of tears. Her -accuser ground his teeth in helpless discomfort. - -“I’m right,” he said doggedly, “but I’m a brute; I wish you would -forgive me.” - -She turned from him, unable to speak. He wanted to follow her, to -comfort her; to say, as one does to a child or a woman, “Never -mind,”--but he dared not. - -“I’m sorry I’ve wounded you,” he said again miserably; “I hope you -will forgive me?” - -“Forgive you?” she turned and faced him, the tears on her face; “I -haven’t anything to forgive. Do you suppose I care how you talk to -_me_?--if I am right? oh, _if_ I am right!” - - - - - =The Riverside Press= - - CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A. - ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY - H. O. 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