The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories

All That a Man Hath

I

The pen slipped from Philip’s fingers and unheeded rolled across the table, while with a sigh of weariness he abandoned himself to idleness. Resting his elbows upon the table, he sunk his chin into the palms of his hands and gazed listlessly out of the window on the street below. The cold gray light of the dull October afternoon was almost at an end; already the street-lamps were beginning to flare forth redly in bold relief against the gathering gloom of the coming night.

To Philip it was a dispiriting and cheerless prospect, heightened by the winter’s first chill breath. He had seen it all so often; if he could only see the last of it. Each year brought back those same dull days, with their leaden skies to fit into his worst mood of despair and longing and unfulfillment. He felt himself starved in mind and experience. He was conscious always of a fierce desire for something different—that broader life to which he could not go, and which would not come to him.

*Written at the age of 20.

Slowly his eyes came back to the table and a settled seriousness stole into them as he looked at the manuscript lying upon it.

“I fancy it will be a go this time,” he thought, “but”—a bit sadly—“I have thought that so many times, and somehow I am just where I was in the start. No nearer success, no nearer anything—except perhaps the end of my hope and faith in myself.”

He had risen and now stood looking down at the table with its litter of paper, pens and letters... and rising from the midst of the disorder—a mountain of hope—the pile of manuscript. It had meant days and weeks of labor: days when he had striven with enthusiasm for its completion; days, too, that had been given up to the savage denying of his mistrust and doubt. Through these and his varying moods he had toiled, and at last his task was approaching its end.

Turning, Philip left the room and descended to the narrow hall below. Here it was already quite dark. He fumbled about until he found his hat and overcoat, and after getting into them made his way back through the parlor and sitting-room to the dining-room where his mother was arranging the supper table.

“Oh, it is you, Philip,” she said, glancing up from her work. “I heard you in the hall and thought it must be the girls returning.”

Mrs. Southard was a woman of fifty with a strong placid face that had taken comparatively few lines. Her dress was of the simplest black, and severely plain. It had been black ever since Philip could remember, for his father had died when he was a baby.

While Philip was conscious that his small world had changed much in the years that marked the limits of his memory, his mother was still precisely the same as he recalled her, returning to his first vague impression of people and things. She was not and had never been an intellectual woman perhaps, but to him she stood for that which was most steadfast and purposeful. Nor was she hard with all her splendid strength. Her judgments were infinitely more generous than those of most women.

“You are not going out, Philip?” his mother asked, observing that he was ready for the street. “It’s almost supper-time.”

“I won’t keep you waiting, mother; I am just going down-town to post some letters.”

“Yes, dear, but do be here for supper.”

“I shall be.”

He turned back into the sitting-room, intending to leave the house by the side door. His mother followed him, and on the threshold he faced her again.

“What is it?” he asked, “anything you want from down-town?”

“No, dear, only I haven’t told you, and I wish to now. I expect Anson home to-night. He will remain over Sunday. Do be nice to him.”

She spoke appealingly, for Philip’s face darkened at the news.

“Am I not always nice to him? I mean to be for your sake.”

“Yes, but you seem so far apart, and you are brothers.”

“Oh, it’s all right, mother, and we get along peaceably enough, considering how we hate each other. There, dear, you can’t reconcile the utterly unreconcilable, so don’t spend your precious strength in trying to.”

And Philip, closing the door after him, went down the steps and into the street. “So,” he muttered, “Anson will be here to-morrow and I shall have to endure his presence for at least a part of one penitential day.”

The one cordial emotion that the brothers shared in common was hatred one for the other. As children they had eased this rancor by a frequent exchange of blows, but now, unhappily for their peace of mind, they were past that sort of thing.

The street Philip was following took him straight to the center of the town and into the midst of Saturday’s crowd. It was such a gathering as one might see in almost any country town on the last day of the week: self-conscious and uncomfortable, in ugly ill-fitting “best clothes”. The business of the day was over, and the crowd paraded up and down the main street, or back and forth across the Square. Philip pushed his way into it with assertive elbows. He crossed the squalid Square with its soldier’s monument and its few stunted trees that stubbornly declined to grow and as stubbornly refused to die. From the Square he turned into a side street that led past the post-office. Here he posted his letters and paused in front of the building, undecided where next to go. As he stood there a man who had been leaning against an iron railing that surrounded an area way left his position and slouched up to Philip’s side. The latter scanned the shabby figure with some uncertainty, then he said: “Oh, it’s you, Lester?”—and held out his hand. His greeting was so lacking in cordiality, however, that Lester ignored the proffered hand.

“If you prefer to be alone,” he growled, “why don’t you say so?”

Where they stood the lamplight fell upon his face—the face of a lad of twenty-two or three—stupid and sullen and debased. But Philip saw a look of such abject loneliness in his eyes that he placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder: “Come on, Lester,” he said, and together they went down the street and away from the town. “What are you doing?” Philip asked presently.

“What I have always done—nothing.”

“When one hasn’t anything else to do it’s about the most agreeable of all occupations,” Philip observed. He noticed that his companion’s unsteady gait indicated a recent debauch, but this did not prejudice him since he attributed all moral delinquencies to a lack of sense, and so readily condoned them on the grounds of inferior judgment.

A boyish friendship, almost forgotten, was all they had in common. Philip searched his mind for some topic of conversation that might interest his companion, but finally gave it up and they trudged along in silence.

They reached the outskirts of the town in this manner and Philip was about to turn back.

“Let’s go on to the end of the road,” said Lester with sudden interest. “It isn’t far,” he added, for his companion hesitated.

“Oh, all right, only I hope you don’t take this walk often, Lester,” Philip said with a laugh, for the road ended at the graveyard.

Five minutes later and they were standing before the cemetery gates. The pale light of the October moon fell among the naked trees, while the dead leaves rustled in the wind. There was the ghostly white of tombstone and monument and the dismal black of contrasting pine trees. Philip leaned against the fence and surveyed it all critically. He owned that he was grateful to Lester for having brought him there. It gave him a distinct sensation.

“I am rather set against graveyards as a rule, but this is nice and curious and lonely,” he said. Lester did not answer him and Philip continued: “I haven’t been out here in years. I guess not since we buried Mr. Benedict. Do you remember when we buried Mr. Benedict, Lester? I recall it as one of the most gratifying events of my childhood. I got a whole day from school in honor of the affair.” Philip raised himself on tiptoe and peered over the fence.

Lester paid no heed to Philip nor to what he was saying. He leaned silent and sullen against a tree that stood by the path, and gazed off into the frosty distance in the direction of the town. Out of this distance there floated a confusion of sounds—harmonized and softened by time and place; while through it all, clinging to the heavy atmosphere, drifted the odor of burning leaves and the musty scent of dying vegetation. There was a touch of sad regret in the night as though something that had been beautiful was ended. The boy felt this in its kinship to the ruin he had wrought in his own life.

“You are no doubt wondering why I spoke to you,” he said at last.

Philip nodded his head: “You know, Lester, we haven’t had much to do with each other in some while.”

“I want to talk with you.”

“Well, go ahead, for it has just occurred to me that I promised to be home in time for supper.”

Lester turned a pair of bloodshot eyes full on Philip and asked: “You think I have been a fool, don’t you?”

Philip shifted his feet uneasily. He felt that truth played such an insignificant part in the exercise of civility.

“You think I have been a fool?” Lester repeated.

“Before I answer that I’d like to know why you ask. You see the reason that prompts an inquiry is more than apt to determine its answer with me. I always wish to give satisfaction.”

“I ask because I’d like to know what you think of me. I don’t suppose you have any sort of use for me. You don’t know, Philip, how bad I have wanted some one to talk to for days and days—some one who is not like myself. And when I saw you to-night, I made up my mind that you should hear what I have to say. I can’t keep it any longer—my head will burst if I do—can you listen?”

“Go ahead,—I’m listening.”

“For the most part it’s nothing but what you know. It’s just about my being such a fool. Yes, yes—and it’s more than that!”

Philip saw that he was powerfully excited, that there were tears in the eyes of this boy, with a man’s heavy burden of sin on his shoulders.

“You know about the money I got when I came of age; the money my father left me when he died. I—you know what a circus I made of myself. How every last cent of it is gone?”

“Yes, it’s the gossip—and I hear it.”

Lester paced back and forth in front of Philip for a moment, and then leaned dejectedly against a tree.

“When you talked about how it used to be when we were boys, I could have choked you. I wish I were back to it, with these last years to live over!” He paused, trembling with excitement and sorrow. “When I got hold of my money you shook me off and would have nothing more to do with me.”

“I hadn’t the time, Lester. I was busy and you were not. Our tastes had ceased to be the same, that was all. You should not bear me a grudge on that score.”

“I don’t—I like you the better for it—you are the only fellow I can talk to. I know if you have any sympathy for me it rests on what I was when we tramped around the country in vacation time. How I wish I might go back to it and be a boy once more—once more!”

With a gesture of anguish he drew his hand across his face. Perhaps he sought to hide some part of the pain that was plainly stamped upon his woebegone visage. He had been so proud of his very misdeeds—and now——

“I have a lot of sympathy for you, Lester; just a lot, and I am sorry for you, too.”

“Thank you, Philip; I suppose I deserve all I get. I have been such a cad!—such a cub! I spent in two years and less what it took my father all his life to save. It will be a long while before I get hold of such a lump again, and if I have to make it, probably never. You know how, when I came of age, I was taken up by fellows much older than myself. My head was completely turned by my popularity—well, it lasted for a while then quite suddenly I found myself with empty pockets and no friends. People discovered all at once that I was shockingly immoral. They might have known it all along if they had cared to. I never made any bones about it. I was no better and no worse than those I went with. Now I am an outcast. The fellows who helped me on to this don’t see me any more. I have the road to myself when I go down-town: everybody gets out of my way, but this is nothing—if it were no more than this I should not mind.”

“What else is it that’s wrong?” said Philip, beginning to find the boy’s confession interesting.

He was feeling a certain solicitude for the harvester of wild oats. They had been close friends once, and at not so very long ago either. Lester’s plunge into folly had terminated their intimacy—the friendship had become irksome to both—for months they had scarcely exchanged more than greetings when they chanced to meet, and all in an instant Lester was sweeping him back to the years when they had been inseparable. With a palpable effort Lester continued:

“I’ve got all sorts of habits that are ruining me, as sure as I stand here—they are—and I can’t stop. If I can get the money I am going away. Maybe it will be better then.”

“Come, come—brace up! There is no good in running away. I doubt if it will improve matters.”

“No, I can’t stay.”

“I should if I were you. I should wait for a fitting opportunity and get even with all my former acquaintances in some dazzling fashion.”

Philip spoke cheerfully enough, but the tone of his voice was pleasantly suggestive of manslaughter as the method he would recommend.

“What do I care for the damned Judases!” Lester burst out. “All I want is to see the last of them.” Then suddenly he relapsed into sullenness; “I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble,” he said. “I might just as well finish it off and be done with the whole thing one time as another. I have thrown my money to the dogs and my chances with it. I may as well let the rest follow.”

“Nonsense! You don’t mean what you’re saying. Stop drinking and behave yourself and you’ll discover that you have plenty of friends left. It won’t benefit you to whine about it. That you have played the fool concerns you alone. You can’t make the town responsible for what you’ve done yourself.”

Philip being the older, had always in a manner dominated Lester. Even in the days of their youth Lester had required a large amount of encouragement to keep within the wide limits of what Philip had marked off as the straight and narrow path in the field of his moral perceptions. For Philip had never aspired to any close companionship with the sterner virtues and he was consistent in advising no lines of conduct he was not himself willing to follow.

“Damn the town and everybody in it! There is not another such spot on the face of the earth.”

Evidently Lester did not find being an outcast agreeable, and he viewed himself as an injured individual, since his behavior had offended no one, until his riches were gone. Philip passed his hand through Lester’s arm and led him down the path.

“You go home and when morning comes, bringing with it a clear head, think it over and arrive at the only sensible conclusion within your reach... to go it straight and steady.”

“Do you think I am soft to unburden myself to you like this?” Lester asked.

“My dear boy, I regard you as the opposite of soft.”

On their entering the town, Lester reverted to his former silence and Philip, commenting on the change, thought: “It was the enlivening associations of the tomb that made him talkative.” Neither spoke until they separated in front of Lester’s home. Then Philip said: “Good night, don’t worry, it won’t help you in the least.”

“Good night.”

“If you should happen to want some one to discuss your affairs with, look me up. I shall always be at your service.”

“Thanks,—I will.”

Lester turned from the gate by which he had been standing and went toward the house. Philip followed him with a sympathetic glance.

“Poor boy,” he thought, “he’s in hard luck, and though there is no one to blame but himself, it doesn’t make it easier to bear.”

Then he called aloud: “Good night. I’ll expect to see you soon.”

Lester waved his hand as he paused in the sudden burst of light from the opened door. Then the door closed, and Philip stood alone, staring thoughtfully at the darkness where but a moment before the streaming light had been: “I am sorry for him—but, suppose he avails himself of the proffer of companionship I was rash enough to make and eats up hours and hours of my precious time—what’s going to become of my work? This won’t do. A wretched creature who has squandered his fortune in riotous living comes along, makes a brutal assault on my feelings, and I weakly succumb—amiable ass that I am!”

There never was a bridge Philip did not cross in advance of his coming to it—never a bridge he did not go back to and recross after he was once safely over. So he stood thinking of the hours he was no doubt destined to waste on the unhappy Lester. At last he went his way reproaching himself with the unwisdom of having displayed a tender and susceptible nature.

He reached home while still engaged in abusing himself; with his hand upon the knob he halted a moment before opening the door. He wished to put his faculties in a state of repose so that he could meet his brother pleasantly and with no outward sign that he desired to kick him. This generally demanded a previous arrangement with himself. Assured that it was accomplished, he pushed open the door. The sitting-room was empty, but the noise coming from the dining-room told him that the family was at supper. His mother, hearing him enter, called: “Is it you, Philip?”

“Yes, mother. I’m late. I really meant to be back long ago.” Then to Anson as he passed from one room to the other: “How are you, old fellow?”

Their mother’s eye was upon them and the brothers exchanged greetings in a friendly enough fashion. Anson even declared himself as delighted to see Philip:—a gratuitous bit of lying for which the latter thanked him profusely as he took his seat. About the table was grouped the entire Southard family. Philip, his mother, Anson and the two girls—Katherine and Florence. The “inharmonious whole”—as Philip was wont to call them. Anson was the eldest—his brother’s senior by five or six years and verging close on thirty—handsome, too, in his way, by all odds the most prepossessing member of the family. But his original advantages were somewhat marred by his unfortunate mannerisms, the result in part of his occupation—that of confidential clerk in the office of a manufacturing concern. His every act, serious or the reverse, was performed with a petty and aggravating secrecy. It was displayed in everything he did. He even ate in a confidential manner, seeming to tell a business secret to each mouthful he swallowed. Philip, stealing covert glances at him, decided that he had never seen him quite so abominable. Yet, it struck him for the first time that Anson was a disappointed man—the world had not yielded him all that he had been coached to think it would. He had been brought up in the belief that he was a marvel of human perfectibility. As a child, he had been so precocious in pursuit of the virtues, great and small, that much had been predicted of him. Now when the glamour of youthful goodness was changing into the fixity of a shining light, he was held to be a model worthy of prayerful emulation by all right-minded people—and so he was. If he had been stuffed with straw, he could not have been freer from flesh-begotten sin.

Despite this he was a disappointed man. He had been such a remarkable boy that when he reached maturity he was in much the same unhappy plight as a little Alexander with no more worlds to conquer. That which had been so astonishing in the child, that uncanny goodness that caused elderly females to throw up their hands at the mere mention of his name and launch forth in praise of him, excited no especial comment in the man. It never occurred to him that he had been nourished on thin air. His whole education was such a mistake—such an injustice—How could any one thrive beneath the load of useless rectitude he had set out to carry like a fool,—mainly because it placed him in the ranks of other highly proper monstrosities.

Philip, slowly eating his supper, came to a realization of this and something not unlike pity stole into his heart.

It was such a remote chance, so removed from the realm of the possible that Anson would ever succeed in distinguishing himself more than he had done, and what would become of him?

As he speculated on the outcome, the two girls and Anson talked back and forth across the table, and he stopped thinking to listen.

It was the usual discussion of ways and means they carried on. This bill to be met—its fellow to be evaded until the end of the month. The evidences of a not over-lovely existence, but hard and precarious—close to the ragged edge of want. The much spent on the worthless shams—the little on the solid comforts of a good living.

“As if any one is deceived or thinks us richer than we are,” Philip thought. “We are more or less like our neighbors and they estimate our income to the last penny, just as we do theirs.” There was something so hopeless about the aspect life took on, something so perilously near to the perpetual grind of downright poverty, that it made him revolt and he burst out angrily: “Why, in heaven’s name, don’t you find some more cheerful subject to discuss! Must it forever be debts and bills, as if there was only the one purpose in living—to squirm through somehow until the end of the month!”

“I guess,” Katherine, the elder of the girls, said, her eyes snapping viciously, “that some one has to think of such matters, though I am sure no one wants to; and Anson is here so seldom and he is the——”

“Katherine!” Her mother spoke sharply, warning her not to finish the sentence.

Philip looked down at his plate and bit his lips. He knew what his sister would have said had their mother not interfered—that Anson was the family’s mainstay—but her mother’s warning stopped her.

It was by no means a loving family, nor was there any special graciousness in their intercourse. Philip barely tolerated his sisters. Katherine was undeniably mean and spiteful. To her natural tendencies she had added an exceedingly bigoted habit of thought which she referred to as “her faith”.

Its acquirement, if she was to be credited with telling the truth, had cost her many sleepless nights and great self-sacrifice. It was exercised chiefly in a rabid criticism of her species in which she recently delighted.

Florence was rather better in sweetness of temper and disposition, but to hear her talk was maddening torture to him. She had all a woman’s misplaced and indiscriminate adjectives. Everything was “grand” to her, from hot pop-corn to a clap of thunder.

The connecting link holding the four together was Mrs. Southard, whose force of will kept them united after love and affection had ceased to exist.

The first strong emotion they had known had been hate, one for the other. They were so different in every quality of soul and body; they saw and were on the opposite side of every conceivable question. But one thing they had in common, an admirable tenacity, which rendered them insensible to either courtesy or reason where their prejudices were at stake.

The home, such as it was, existed only by grace of Mrs. Southard’s strength of character. For while their mutual dislike reached a degree of bitterness hard to comprehend, they all loved her, each in his or her own way.

“What detained you, Philip?” his mother asked when Katherine was restored to composure.

“I took a walk with Lester Royal.”

“I don’t think him a very good person to be seen with,” Katherine interposed. She felt bound to raise a disturbance on moral grounds.

“Don’t you?—why not?” Then as a happy after thought: “There are certain people who should be restrained from thinking.”

Katherine ignored his remark and returned to the charge.

“What sort of a reputation has he, I should like to know! But of course you are superior to a trifle like that.”

“I fancy it’s what it should be.”

“You know very well he has no reputation at all. But I suppose you don’t mind—you are so liberal.”

“Then I am sure there is nothing wrong with it since it doesn’t exist.”

“It does exist and is most unsavory!”

“Well, even an unsavory reputation is a decided improvement on no reputation at all.”

“I don’t think——” Katherine began.

“I am glad you don’t, Kate; it was never intended you should,” Philip made haste to say.

At this point Florence took up the cudgels against Philip:

“I should think you would have been ashamed to let people see you with him—he’s simply horrid!”

“I wasn’t seen with him, so don’t distress your conscience with the idea that I was.”

“No thanks to you that you weren’t,” said Katherine.

“Your penetration does you credit, Kate. I don’t happen to possess your inordinate respect for appearances.” He was waiting to make a telling retort. This always stimulated him.

“I suppose you can’t select men of good character for your friends,” Katherine snapped.

“Freedom from vice is more a question of ignorance than anything else.” Unconsciously he glanced at Anson as he spoke.

“I should be ashamed to think it,” said Katherine.

“Perhaps my spiritual insight has become blunted by my unfavorable surroundings.”

“I suppose that’s a covert slur at me and my religion,” with heat. “The things you say are disgraceful!”

“I don’t see how mother can permit it,” Florence said, bent on being in the row.

“For pity’s sake, girls, can’t you let Philip finish his supper in peace, without going out of your way to complain of what is no affair of yours?” It was Mrs. Southard who spoke.

Philip pushed back his plate. “I am through and will take myself off,” he said. He kissed his mother, and with an indifferent good night to the rest, left the room. A moment later the street door closed with a bang.

“I wish to gracious he was already married to Barbara. I’ll bet he’d know pretty quick he wasn’t any better off,” said Florence.

“There—there,” Mrs. Southard objected wearily. “Can’t you find something else to talk about?”

II

The Southard’s belonged to that great division of the human family—the eminently respectable. As far as they went they were above reproach—nor were they without a certain prestige. As Katherine was wont to remark: “They knew the best.”

Furthermore, it was tradition that once upon a time they had been very rich, or rather their remote ancestors had been so blessed, and vouching for this former grandeur, there remained to them a considerable and distinguished connection.

These distinguished relatives, whom Philip hated cordially, were much addicted to the habit—while on their periodic gyrations about the country—of stopping with his mother, when by so doing they could break long and possibly fatiguing trips.

On these occasions the relatives spent most of their time in curl-papers or smoking jackets. Whenever Mrs. Southard ventured to suggest some mild festivity in their honor they refused to be entertained, with: “We beg you won’t, Cousin Jane. We are here simply for a nice quiet visit with you and the children. Later on we shall be forced to be so very gay, you know....” On these occasions when the guests divided their time about equally between eating and sleeping, their entertainers’ mode of living was ordered on such a scale of magnificence and reckless extravagance that they were almost invariably brought to the verge of ruin, and they generally atoned for the temporary burst of luxury by months of close economy. Then when the rich and distinguished relatives had taken their leave, the Southards would cut down expenses and try to convince themselves that the departed guests were the most charming people imaginable. Some little fiction of the kind was positively indispensable when the grocery bill came in.

One member of this contingent happening to die—the only disinterested action of a singularly selfish career—had bethought him of the Southards in his last moments and had strangely enough remembered them in his will with a legacy for each of the children. It was a matter of some hundreds apiece and the two girls and Anson had straightway spent their portions.

Philip, at the time of this windfall, was in business: it gave him the opportunity he had long coveted. He planned three years of liberty in which to follow up his inclination to write.

No one appreciated the courage this involved and Philip went his course without help from any one. He told himself that if he came to grief there would be but scant loss—a little money and the waste of days.

He had been by no means a success in commercial pursuits, and if he failed with his pen, why, it was no more than he was apt to do in other things. For a year his labors in the field of literature went unrewarded, and many times he was tempted to give up the struggle in disgust. Then at last, when his small legacy was all but gone, the first meager returns filled him with renewed hope and energy.

Slowly, very slowly, he saw his tiny bank balance swell until it reached the grand total of a thousand dollars. Upon that day there came to him the satisfying though distant vision of success.

It was not to be a selfish success he told himself: he would shirk no obligation when it came—all should profit by it. But he could do so much with a different environment. The appreciation his brother and sisters gave him was so tainted by an indiscriminate disapproval of his aims, and their recognition of his poor triumphs so niggardly, as though any reference to them was an acknowledgment of superiority on his part. In spite of this he would do what he could for them—when he could. Most of all would he do for his mother. She should have the thousand things, big and little, women loved and wanted. She had done so much for him—for all of them. She had brought them up unaided, through a struggle against poverty, the hardness of which he could only dimly divine. He would have counted it the blackest treachery not to have thought of her.

Then when the girls were married—and marry they must—he intended to get husbands for them, even if they had to be bought—she would come and live with him.

They had talked it over a hundred times—he and Barbara—and knew just how it was to be arranged.

He never questioned his ability to do all this, for his faith had become perfect and abiding.

In the kindly benevolence of his castle-building he even wished well to Anson. After all, they were brothers. Anson had a fondness for travel; he would give him the means to indulge that taste, he should travel—more than this, he should travel always—the farther away the better.

When he left home, Philip betook himself into the presence of his betrothed. As he entered the parlor where Barbara sat—idly turning the leaves of a book, she looked up at him and smiled.

“I am glad you came,” she said. “I was just beginning to think I shouldn’t see you to-night.” Philip drew a chair near to hers as he answered. “So am I, but I should be at work.”

“Guess who has called this afternoon?”

“Why do you make me exert myself—why don’t you tell me at once if I am to know?”

“Mr. Shelden.”

“Well, and what had he to say? Do you know, Barbara, I object, for it just occurs to me that he is without a wife... having already disposed of one. Truly I object to his calling on you.”

“But he is papa’s friend——”

“Oh, is he? Well, he is a precious old fool—that’s my opinion of him.”

Philip, conscious of the slightness of the claim he had upon her, dreaded a possible rival. He knew the sanction to his suit was only passive—the least thing might bring about the most pronounced opposition.

“He is not so very old: he is only forty-five. He regards himself as still youthful, for he assured me this was the age of the young man,” said Barbara.

“It’s the age of the damn fool,” Philip grunted savagely, and then penitently: “That was a case of justifiable damn: it was wrung from me, Barbara. It’s so exasperating to hear such twaddle.”

“I believe you’re jealous, Philip. I really believe you are!”

“Of course I am! I am no better than a pauper—and he——”

“How inconsistent of you. The other evening you said you should never care whom I saw. Do be consistent.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of an idiot. Because I say or do a thing once, am I to be tied to it for the rest of my days?”

“But it is quite impossible to keep track of your beliefs.”

“Pardon me, I have opinions, but no beliefs. What else did he say?”

“You mean Mr. Shelden?”

“Yes. What other shoddy nineteenth century-ism did he repeat?”

“He said any number of things. He spoke about you.”

“Old gossip! What did he find to say about me?”

“He asked what you were doing.”

“I hope you had the courage to tell him it was none of his business.”

“I didn’t do anything so rude. I told him you were writing. He seemed deeply impressed and said he had always liked you.”

“Humph! He’s a startling novelty.”

“I thought it very lovely of him to be so sympathetic, for of course he knows. I have an idea papa tells him everything.”

“What else, Barbara? Can’t you tell me all?”

“I told him about your book—and then we discussed books in general. He reads a great deal, so he told me.”

“Probably—Thoughts for a Christian on Losing his Hair—for I have observed he is getting bald.”

“How mean of you!”

“Oh, Barbara, what in heaven’s name is going to happen if some one comes between us—some one who has money and all that’s worth while?”

“You know there is something that no one can have but you.”

She leaned forward, holding out her hand for him to take. “I have given you so much love that you must have it all, or I shall keep it for you untouched forever.”

And Philip, looking into the face so close to his, saw that she meant the words she spoke. But beyond the words he seemed to see that a cloud could not rest long upon her. She was created for love and brightness, and in his heart he knew that they must be together soon or he would lose her.

“What is it, Philip?” she asked after a short silence. “What are you thinking?”

“That I am happy,” he answered, smiling. “Only that?”

“Could it be more? How glad I am that you are as you are. I would not have you changed.”

“It’s not because I am so good, is it? For you know I am not.”

Before he could answer a door opened and closed in the adjoining room. The sound had an instantaneous effect on Philip.

“Here is your father, Barbara; we’ll speak of the weather. It is a matter upon which I am disposed to agree with any one—always excepting the pious Anson.”

“Why do you pretend to dislike your brother? I think him very nice,—very fine-looking.”

“Hate is as essential to certain natures as love—and much more satisfying.”

“But you can’t hate him. You are far from honest.”

“People form such queer notions of me. They are eternally thinking I am not sincere, and yet, Barbara, I mean all I say—while I am saying it. Could integrity carry me to greater lengths?” She looked at him with knitted brows. He was unlike any one she had ever known.

“Are you really afraid of him?—of papa?” she asked.

“The relations existing between us are strained; he may at any moment send me from the house for good and all.”

Barbara laughed. “I am quite sure he is guiltless of any such intention.”

“I regret to say that I am not.”

Philip regarded Mr. Gerard as a person of one idea, and that invariably a wrong one. It was neither safe nor agreeable to be so at his mercy, for he held Philip’s happiness in the hollow of his hand, and that young gentleman was much oppressed by the suspicion that he was not popular with Barbara’s parent. When he questioned her she always assured him that her father respected him most thoroughly, but Philip doubted this.

It must be admitted that now and then he detected a pugnacious quality in Mr. Gerard’s manner toward him, which he stubbornly declined to notice or take exception to, as every other consideration was minor to the great one of gaining time in which to place himself beyond the reach of interference, so he put his pride in his pocket and strove to prevent a clash.

Mr. Gerard appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“I wish you would come with me into the library, Philip,” he said. “There is a little matter I should like to discuss with you. Barbara will, I am sure, excuse you for a few moments.”

Philip came to his feet on the instant. The parable of the spider and the fly presented itself to him.

“How do you do,” he said. He was not at his best when Mr. Gerard was about.

“Just follow me into the library, if you please.” For Philip was gazing stupidly at him.

“Oh, certainly.” From the door he glanced back at Barbara, and she saw that his face was clouded with apprehension.

While she was wondering what it all meant, and what her father could have to say to Philip, there drifted in to her the murmur of their lowered voices, coming from the room that had conferred upon it the name of library in recognition of the fact that its furniture consisted in the main of a desk, some leather-covered chairs given over to decay, and a bookcase, containing an encyclopedia, a dictionary, and by actual count ninety-six novels. The room was also adorned—as the complete triumph of intellectuality—by a bust of Shakespeare.

Here Mr. Gerard was supposed to do his thinking.

Barbara’s mother was an invalid and seldom left her room. This was another tangle in the snarled arrangement of Philip’s hopes, for Barbara’s father had severe Spartan ideas on the duties of children to their parents. And Mrs. Gerard was so busy with her symptoms, real or imaginary, that she never concerned herself in domestic matters. She left all that to her husband, who ran things with a high and often heavy hand.

Barbara controlled her curiosity as best she could. Finally the conference was at an end. She heard her father remark in his ordinary strident tones:

“You appreciate the justice of my course, Philip.”

A few minutes later, Philip reentered the parlor.

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

He crossed the room and stood leaning against the mantel, looking down at her in silence.

“What is it, Philip?” she repeated.

“Your father says that I must be ready to marry you within a year or else——” he paused.

“Or else what?” she asked anxiously.

“The worst. I shall have to give you up.”

Philip saw her face pale. She arose and stood at his side, her hand upon his shoulder, her head tilted so that she could look into his face.

“It shall be only you, Philip. If it is not you it shall be no other.”

He gazed at her in silence, trying to read the depth of her faith in her eyes. The thought that she was beautiful and that he loved her came strongly to him.

“You believe in me, Philip; you trust me?”

“As I do no one else—as I never shall another. It is you and only you. Everything is centered or ends forever in you.” And then he laughed lightly. “After all, it is not so bad. Perhaps this will force our happiness upon us sooner than we have dared anticipate.”

“How long did he say?”

“Within a year, and it is so short a time,” he said, with a deep breath.

“Within a year,” she repeated slowly. “But I can’t be forced away from you. He can’t make me give you up.” And she shook her head in defiance.

“Can’t he, Barbara? Can’t he, dear?” And Philip bent toward her, speaking softly.

“I belong to you.”

Philip straightened up, saying somewhat grimly: “I must work. I shall be forced to see you less often.”

“Must you?”

“Yes. This admits of no delay. And no matter how hard I work... even then it’s all doubt and uncertainty.”

“Why do we have to wait?”—with a sigh. “I could help you so much if I were with you. I know I could.”

Philip ground out between his set teeth the one word, “Money,” and Barbara was silent.

“We are most unfortunate,” he continued. “We both belong to what are called prosperous and well-to-do families and yet beyond a well defined point there is not an extra penny, every cent being swallowed up in the wretched sham of appearances. I own frankly I am poor, and as if this were not misfortune enough in itself, my poverty is allied to a worthless sneaking respectability that is maintained at the cost of constant sacrifice. I have the added ignominy of knowing that the very appearances on which is squandered everything, deceive no one. How destructive to self-respect to live a lie unbelieved even by the most credulous! If it accomplished its beneficent mission, there would be a worthy excuse for it, but to run the risk of damnation for the sake of a lot of unsuccessful deceits makes my soul sick.”

“What do we care for people? If we are happy what does it matter?” She pressed close to his side. “What do we care?”

“Do you mean you would marry me now, if you could, and disregard the doubtfulness of the future?”

“But you haven’t asked me yet... how can I tell?”

“Would you, dear?”... tenderly.

“Try me. It would be such fun to live just as we could, and not have to make believe. I imagine the worst of poverty is in the thought that some one else knows. Tell me what father said.”

“I have already told you, Barbara.”

“But tell me how it came about. How he led up to it and what you said.”

Philip thought for a moment. When he spoke his manner suggested weariness, as if the recent ordeal had been too much for him.

“Really I am quite collapsed, quite annihilated. What a stunning advantage a young woman’s father has over his daughter’s ‘young man.’.rdquo;

“Won’t you answer me?—what was it papa said?”

“Well, we kept clear of sentiment from the start—we canvassed the situation from a purely business basis.”

“But you know nothing about business.”

“I talk intelligently enough on a good many subjects of which I know nothing.”

“What else did he say?”

“Oh, that I was a very proper young man, and all that sort of thing.”

“And then what?”

“After an exchange of compliments he gave me to understand that business was business. Then, Barbara, with startling brevity and great solemnity, tempered with severity, he informed me that this waiting was unjust to you, that it unduly compromised you, to all of which I agreed. He again alluded to my virtues; during their enumeration, my feelings were of the ghastly jolly order, for I thought that this formed the prelude to a blessing and dismissal—but it didn’t. He wound up by asking me what my resources were. Of course I shuffled about and tried to daze him by a complicated explanation, filled with glittering generalities, though I own they did not glitter, for he held me to the subject in hand and I marshaled up my prospects for his inspection. I confess I was governed by no intention to be honest. I lied outright wherever I could and where I couldn’t I maimed or strangled the facts. If I had only had warning—a little time for preparation, and the memorizing of imaginary statistics—I should have made a better showing. I simply could not stick to the truth; but it stuck to me in fragments. I felt as though I were pasted all over with it.”

“But what did you say to papa?”

“I told him what my income was—I had to name a sum so small I am sure he believed me at once. Lastly I told him of my expectations,—and there was where I lied. With the result that, providing I shall increase my earnings sufficiently to warrant such a course, I am to marry you within a year,—otherwise I don’t.”

And Philip dropped into a chair dejected in body and mind.

“Now, what the dickens does he expect? I can’t become famous on twelve months’ notice. However, I must work morning, noon and night with no let-up whatever.”

“And what’s going to become of me then?” asked Barbara.

“You know, dear, we can’t sacrifice the future for the present. It’s a beastly short time in which I am to make a substantial addition to my earn ings, and your father most expressly stipulates that I bring them up to some appropriate figure. In the event of my being able to do this he will entrust your happiness to my care, feeling assured I am and will continue to be worthy of the trust he reposes in me—and so on and so forth through the easy let-down that he gave me. On the whole he was fair... most fair.”

Philip was silent for a moment, then he said:

“That I have a thousand dollars and better in the bank was a point in my favor—if it had not been for that the chances for a respectful hearing would have been slim.”

“It is quite a sum,” Barbara said. “Lots of people here, nice people, too, live on small salaries and never get anything ahead. Of course there are others, like the Perkinses, who are rich.”

“It’s pitifully small!” said Philip, and looked his disgust.

“I don’t know—one can do lots with a thousand dollars. You can buy a very pretty little home here for that,” said Barbara practically.

“Of course your father knows the money was left me and that I didn’t make it. He hinted that it was about time that I got into something certain. He even said that as soon as I did we might marry. It’s awfully lucky about that money. I hope to goodness nothing will happen to the bank, for if there should, I might just as well quit.”

Both laughed at the idea.

“Isn’t it absurd!” said Barbara dolefully.

“No, it’s very serious, dear. Let’s think what I can do to get a salary out of the town. I wish I could go away, but I simply can’t do that. I must stay and help out at home. I suppose I’d better try and bone the papers for more work. That’s the only sure thing in sight. I can always get that in small doses, because it helps the sale. My friends are willing to pay something for the opportunity to criticize the drivel—it’s about the only opportunity they have had yet. It’s a great thing to be a literary man in a small town, Barbara!”

“I hate to think I am to be bought,” Barbara said angrily. “That it all rests on money, as though love were valueless.”

“It’s a commercial age.”

“You seem to believe in nothing.” There was marked disfavor in her glance.

Philip raised his eyes to hers. “I believe in your happiness and mine if I succeed. I have every confidence in myself.”

“But not in me—you never speak of that!”

“Yes, dear, in you, too!”

“You don’t say it as if you meant it!”

“I am not accustomed to saying things I mean seriously.”

“I wish you would pay me the compliment of being serious.”

“I do.”

And truly beneath all the flippancy his heart-was heavy—and as lead.

III

It was Sunday morning. Philip pushed into the church as the congregation streamed out through the wide doors. He made his way up to the choir loft where a man had just risen from his seat before the organ. This was Franz Becker.

“You are late, Franz,” he observed.

“It is Communion Sunday,” Becker said in a deep beautiful voice. “That makes it late.”

“See here,” said Philip, “I wish you would ask me to dinner with you. Anson’s home and I want to avoid him if possible.”

“Certainly,” answered Becker,—“by all means come with me.”

They went down and out of the church: Philip, light and active in all his movements; Becker, ponderous and slow—but masterful always, a man for the big things of his art. A warm friendship existed between the two. Philip had an intense admiration for the musician, who seemed to dwell in a state pretty evenly divided between abject despondency and settled rage. He respected this temperamental constancy. They were both friendless in a marked degree, neither of them being calculated to invite an extensive or varied acquaintance. Few people enjoyed Philip’s conversation. Indeed, it was a special point with him that they should not. Nor did Becker rejoice in any great popularity. He was wholly repellent in his attitude toward the small world in which he moved—with a savage pride that was ever on the alert. He might have been in a primitive sort of way something of a social lion, but his taming was too imperfect to admit of it. His rudeness and barbarities comprised the most interesting anecdotes the town could furnish. Becker came of a class where poverty was the unvarying rule—meanness and commonness had been his earliest companions and in a moderated form these two kept their place at his side, chaining and crippling him, running him to the earth where he would have soared—a clog upon his steps forever.

Just how he had acquired his mastery of music none could tell. It was part instinct—part study—that in its feverish intensity was all but incomprehensible. His father had been a musician of more than passing note in the little German capital where he had lived, hoped and died, leaving the promise of his genius unfulfilled. There, his mother, after a brief widowhood, had married again, a man much beneath her in every respect. The marriage was followed by a speedy emigration to America, where a brother of her second husband had settled. Franz’s stepfather was a shoemaker and had wished Franz to follow his trade; but as the boy grew and as inclination became purpose, and purpose in turn work, that which was locked up within him found expression. He could think and feel and dream. Best of all, perhaps, he discovered that his rare talent had a moneyed value that he was quick to profit by—then came the rush of ambition that was to carry him on and place him with the masters. It spent itself and he was left where it had found him—exhausted and wearied by the fruitless effort he had made. He could only go so far and no farther—circumstances drew in like a narrow circle about him. He was a giant set to do a dwarf’s labor. From the start his mother and stepfather had strenuously opposed him on every hand.

However, when he had proved that music possessed a money value that he turned readily to account, they ceased to object—for money, like religion, is sacred, and not to be made light of.

But his determination to rise above the dependent and precarious position of an instructor they persistently combated. Enough to live on comfortably to them represented enough for soul and body alike. That his art meant to him expression and development, they never guessed and he never sought to explain. He was very patient with them and forgiving.

So, silently and without complaint, he drudged away as teacher and organist, his burden made heavy by innumerable younger brothers and sisters whom he was pushing with him into humble respectability.

Going back into the past he could recall the hard bitter season that came in his childhood and youth: there were things done then, want endured and privation, that even in the comparative luxury of his success made his heart sick with a deadly sense of shame and humiliation.

He could remember the death of a little baby sister that happened shortly after the family’s arrival in the town. The memory of that event stood forth distinct and minute down to the least particular. It was one of those hopelessly miserable experiences he would have liked to forget, but could not.

There were many little ones then and they were very poor, indeed. His stepfather had not been able to pay for the assistance which is customary at such times, but had shaped a coffin with his own hands for the little body, and when all was ready, borrowing a horse and wagon from a neighbor, had driven to the graveyard, holding the pine box across his knees. As his mother was ill, and could not go, Franz had ridden alone with the shoemaker, who, even then, to all appearances was an old man bent and gray from much confinement to his bench. The small boy rode crouching in the bottom of the wagon, for there was not room for him upon the seat. He was long haunted by the vision, ineffaceable and clear, of his father, as he drove along, bending sadly over the burden in his lap, gray and somber, with the poor dignity of grief.

Their way took them past his uncle’s store, for in a squalid fashion the brother was well-to-do. As they passed his place the child who huddled drearily in the bed of the cart, oppressed by an indefinite sense of sorrow, saw his uncle standing beside his open door in his shirt-sleeves—the center of a lounging group of idlers—and when the man became conscious of the nearness of the two, the wide-eyed child and the father, driving the horse, the coffin in his lap, he laughed aloud.

It was years afterward, when his uncle had quitted the town for a larger field somewhere in the West that the brooding solitary boy comprehended the full meaning of that day’s ride, and it gave him an insight into the quality of human sympathy that one can safely rely upon receiving in the hour of need, far beyond his age. It served to augment a peculiar harshness of belief—a wish to keep to himself and from contact with others.

The family’s poverty, which was beyond denial or subterfuge, only intensified this characteristic. His pride was like a raw sore;—the kindest touch was positive pain for him. Anything that savored of patronage or of condescension met with an instant and rude rebuff.

The Beckers—for the family was known by this name—a tacit recognition of Franz’s importance and the family’s unimportance that offended no one more than it did Franz—were extremely imposing as to numbers, with a majority in favor of the sterner sex, and the old shoemaker’s patriotism had been evinced in the naming of his numerous offspring.

On the particular Sunday in question the midday meal was rendered more cheerful than otherwise by Bismarck and Von Molke, the two most youthful of Franz’s half-brothers, who upset divers mugs of milk as well as pretty thoroughly smearing their small features with chicken gravy. Bismarck was finally ordered from the table by his father in very broken English because of some flagrant breach of good manners.

His exodus was shortly followed by that of his brothers and sisters who were in transit through that state of physical incompleteness, the sign of which is seen in the combining of long legs with diffidence.

These had eaten as though on a wager and one by one as they finished their meal slipped from their seats and took themselves off, the last mouthful in process of mastication.

Soon there remained only the old shoemaker, his wife, Franz, Philip and Von Molke—who still toiled manfully, albeit wearily, with a spoon tight-clutched in his chubby fist at whatever came within reach.

Bismarck had reappeared upon the scene. Into his small soul neither modesty nor diffidence had ever seeped even in microscopic quantities and he skirmished noiselessly about the room, always heedful of his father’s guttural command to “go away”—promptly exiting at one door to appear as promptly at another with recriminations hoarse upon his lips against Von Molke, whose appetite, generaled with a nice knowledge of its capacity, bade fair to outlast the pudding.

With cold malignancy the latter’s periodic cry of, “More, please,” would sound, and up would go his plate in spite of his brother’s muffled entreaties that he should desist. In this manner Bismarck saw the last fragment of the pudding disposed of, which sight so maddened him that he forgot all caution and darted at Von Molke intent upon wresting the coveted prize from his possession.

In the moment of victory the strong arm of paternal law was interposed between the combatants and the assailant, hotly pursued by the assailed, was borne from the room in his father’s arms to meet his punishment in the back yard.

“Come,” Franz said, rising. “Come, let us go to my room.”

And Philip followed him, hearing him mutter as he went: “Can he not wait when my friend is here?”

It was a large bare apartment they entered, carpetless and curtainless, with an iron bedstead at one side and a hideously ornate stove at the other.

Philip lounged down into a chair, searching in his pocket for pipe and tobacco.

Without—for the room overlooked the back yard—they could hear Bismarck and his father. The former was crying, while his parent was expostulating with him in mixed German and English, but the sounds of grief continued with no show of abatement.

“He has a vile temper,” Franz said, “when he is angry. The little boys are not bad as such little beasts go.”

“I think them amusing,” Philip responded. “The way in which a child profits by the presence of guests to gorge himself on dainties is a fair example of uncontrolled human nature.”

Just then they heard the patter of small feet beyond the door and a faint voice saying: “I want in!”

It was Bismarck, and he waited for no answer, but inserted himself ingratiatingly into the room, presenting a countenance whereon grief and gravy had combined with disastrous results.

He was still sobbing but managed to gasp:

“I ain’t hurt. It ain’t that—but I do hate to have a darned old foreigner bang me about—it hurts my feelings!”

And he made a dive into Franz’s lap, burying his head against his breast where for exactly three minutes he remained with wriggling legs a victim of keen despair.

“There is Americanism for you with a vengeance, Franz,” said Philip.

The three minutes having expired and native depravity having usurped the place of anguish, Bismarck was forcibly expelled from the room and withdrew to more congenial fellowship with his brothers.

Philip broke the silence that succeeded Bismarck’s expulsion in which they had both been actively engaged.

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t seen you for a whole week, Franz. However, I don’t suppose you have anything good to tell me.” Franz made a savage gesture that fully expressed a large disgust.

“Do you know, Franz,” Philip continued, “we haven’t originated much over here except the Declaration of Independence and a beastly bargain-counter spirit in relation to the arts.” He paused a moment, then added laughingly: “One knows so much at twenty-four. I am frequently astonished at the scope of my critical capacity. It must be hereditary with me,—you know my father was a minister. They are the only class of men who enjoy the delightful privilege of unrestricted judgment. In that profession simple ignorance is not a hindrance, but rather a help.”

Franz was in no mood for frivolity. “You are more than apt to offend people by what you say. Of course with me it makes no difference. You should be more thoughtful.”

“I offend people, my dear fellow; that’s what I am living for.”

Becker voiced the thought that was uppermost in his mind: “My father and mother think I am as successful as any man need be. They do not comprehend that what I am doing now is drudgery, a present makeshift only—that my career is all before me. The only opportunity I have had, and I should scarcely call it that, was five years ago when I went to New York, thinking, for I knew no better, that I might accomplish something there. I tramped the streets for days in my effort to get a hearing. I offered my manuscripts to any one who would print them, as a gift. Bah! it was the same always—native work had no value. If I could only get to Europe—there they know what is music and what is rubbish. My father and mother do not wish to be unkind but they are not informed in these matters, and when I came back beaten and more humiliated than I can say, I saw they were glad of my failure. Their thought was that I should have been satisfied, and their one regret was for the money I had expended in so vain an undertaking.”

His strong face showed plainly the pain that was his—the hunger and the longing.

Philip thought of those innumerable younger brothers. It would be years before any of them could come to the front and ease the load that kept Franz’s shoulder to the wheel; meanwhile he was chained to a spot that could only give him suffering. There was danger, too, in the waiting. He might lose the very power to utilize his liberty when it did come. Men sometimes survive their inspiration and their genius.

Becker threw himself back in his chair: “We spend years in toiling for a little money that we may purchase opportunity and then—then, we die. Bah! what a fool one is to hope when the chances are all against him.”

“Did you ever speculate on the final adjustment? God’s apology to man?”

Franz shook his head: “What presumption, to suppose God keeps any record of us—such atoms as we are!”

“Not at all. My religion holds the splendid comfort of conceit and is based on the thought that man—and by man I mean primarily myself—is all, that my work, my good resolutions—which are a source of constant annoyance and distress to me—entitle me to certain favors in this world and the world to come. To be sure, opposition to the divine will is rather useless—at best we can but squirm like very small fish over a hot fire. Still, I shall make reparation for the absurdity of my beliefs by the dignity and persistency of my revolt, on much the same principle that prompts me to swear when I hurt myself by a foolish attempt to walk through an obstructed doorway in the dark, not that it does any good, but just to express my contempt for the inexorable.”

Franz smoked his pipe thoughtfully. Philip occasionally shocked even his liberal ideas of propriety. They sat looking at the hideous little stove for a space and neither spoke. At last Philip said:

“Why, I say, haven’t you a sort of a half-uncle in the West who could help you if he would? Can’t you bone him for a start?”

Franz’s brow darkened instantly: “You mean my step-father’s brother? Don’t speak of him.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Philip made haste to say. “The fact is, I can stand almost anything in the shape of misfortune myself, except my relatives, but I thought it might be different with you.”

“You do not comprehend. This person I loathe. It is nothing to him, of course. He is a rich man. I wonder what good money can do a brute like that?”

He looked out of the window, watching the dead leaves the wind was blowing into drifts against the fence in the yard below, and added almost sadly: “I think hate has been a more potent factor in my growth than love—at least it has stirred my heart the deepest.”

“So your uncle is out of the question even though he should be willing to aid you?”

Becker struck the ashes from his pipe, remarking as he did so: “What can I do that will give me the longed-for opportunity? You are usually prolific in good advice.”

“You might marry money.”

“Never!” Franz interposed quickly. His friend’s love-affair met with his strongest disapproval.

Philip ignored the interruption: “Now there is Mrs. Monroe. I have young Perkins’ word for it that she admires you immensely. I am creditably informed she enjoys a fair income and she is still handsome and shapely—thanks to God and her tailor! Even the tooth of time has been dulled on her hardy anatomy. Franz, there is your chance.”

“Don’t be a fool! Do you think I——”

Franz was interrupted by the sound of an exceedingly pleasant voice that arose from the hall below. The voice was assuring some one that its owner was perfectly familiar with the way to Franz’s room and was declining all proffers of assistance in finding it, with profuse thanks.

Becker and Philip had paused to listen, and now the latter said: “I rather fancy it’s Perkins.” A moment after a gentle tap sounded on the door, accompanied by, “May I come in?”

In response to Becker’s bidding the door opened and Perkins stood before them.

Now there are awful depths of oblivion that may be sounded in a small town, and not to know the Perkinses was one of these depths, for that was to argue yourself unknown. Yet, to his credit be it said that Perkins was a modest youth, despite his temptation to gloat in the fact that his family represented two generations of riches; which was by far the most splendid incident in their history.

Young Perkins was not adapted to gloating. He was a youth with a supersensitive conscience and sandy side-whiskers, which grew out stubbily from an equally sandy complexion, and he would be polite to everybody, which was a sheer weakness on his part and not to be excused on any plea whatever.

What Perkins did not do his mother in nowise remedied, for she quarreled with her kind on a footing of perfect equality charming to behold, setting herself up for no better than the rest.

Perkins stood before his friends, breathless from his run up the stairs, his whole appearance indicating unusual excitement. He dropped down into the chair Franz pushed toward him, saying:

“Wait a minute till I get my wind. I am quite floored because of several things that have taken place to-day.”

He wiped his florid face vigorously with his handkerchief.

“I—you see—that is, my mother received word yesterday from Madame Dennie, of Paris—Paris, France, you know—that she is in America. In New York, I think. Madame Dennie is the widow of Gabrielle Honore Dennie, who was a very distinguished man in France, prior to his death. I am sure I don’t know what he did and my mother has never told me, but whatever it was I am certain he did it and it was uncommon. There was a stack of money in it. He was a banker, you know.”

“Look here, Perkins,” Philip remonstrated. “What is this all about?”

“But, you don’t catch what I am driving at,” Perkins cried eagerly; “he married my mother’s cousin.”

“Who did?” Philip asked.

“Monsieur Dennie.”

“Oh,—well, go ahead.”

“That’s exactly what I am trying to do. He married Miss Ballard, my mother’s cousin. That was before he died, of course. My mother was a Ballard and as you are both aware, that’s my first name, and they were very celebrated people.”

Perkins was still polishing his freckled features till they fairly glistened. He finally tucked his handkerchief resolutely into his pocket and folded his hands.

“I must get this straight, I am quite excited. Permit me to get my breath.”

And he gazed benignantly at his friends from under his white lashes, a beaming smile playing over his countenance and dying away in the stubby growth of his side-whiskers.

“You fellows must have mercy upon me a moment longer. What I wish to tell you is this: On Saturday Madame Dennie is supposed to have left New York for this place. I assure you we were completely overwhelmed by the news, for while we—my mother that is—is her only living relative in America, the family connection has been allowed to languish. Heretofore my mother has made it a point to fight industriously with every Ballard with whom she came in contact. That’s a distinctly Ballard trait, and in addition to the inherited and warlike instincts of her race, my mother’s element is hot water. Very hot, you know, and I must admit it is seldom you find a person who spends less time out of her element than my mother. However, she has told me it will be the proudest moment of her life when Madame Dennie enters her house, so I am hopeful the hatchet will be buried blade down.” With a stifled gasp, Perkins came to a pause.

“See here, Perkins,” Philip said, “what is it you are trying to tell us? Come, don’t keep it all to yourself. Let us into the secret. That’s a good fellow.”

“My dear Philip, I pledge you my sacred word of honor my one wish is to enlighten you, but I appear little better than a candle whose light is placed under a bushel.” He looked pathetically from one to the other of his auditors. “Allow me to get started right. I trust I have made it clear to you that I have a cousin, Madame Dennie and she is a widow lady.”

“Widow alone is sufficient. It establishes her sex beyond dispute. Don’t use the word lady when you can possibly avoid doing so. It’s a hard worked word these days,” Philip advised.

“Oh, pardon me. Well, Madame Dennie, who is a widow, has announced her intention of coming to us and we are overwhelmed by the honor, for of course my cousin is a woman of the greatest elegance and culture. Must be, you know. But what”—and his voice rose in a quaver of nervous objection—“but what have we to offer her either in our mode of living or in a social way that will please her? It will all seem so stupid here after what she has been accustomed to.”

“Don’t abuse the town,” Franz said. “It will be a liberal education to her.”

“Along a very illiberal line,” Philip added.

“Oh, hang the town! It’s how we are going to entertain her that gets me.”

“You are a host in yourself, Perkins, and very funny,” Becker remarked laughingly.

“When is she coming?” Philip asked.

“Oh, yes, I didn’t tell you that, did I?” Perkins shook off his dejection. “The letter was received yesterday. In it she simply said she would like to visit us if convenient and be our guest for a little while. We were to wire our answer and our answer was, ‘Come.’ What the dickens else could we have said even if we had wanted to? All this that I have told you took place yesterday and since then consternation has reigned supreme. My mother’s hair has been done up in curl-papers for the last thirty-six hours, tight twisted, and has given her a raging headache. The house is no better than a howling wilderness. I pledge you my sacred word of honor that I ate my supper last night on the back-stairs off a sewing-board held in my lap and I was mighty thankful to get it then. This morning I went without breakfast. Dinner I ate from a shelf in the back pantry with a soup ladle and all because Madame Dennie is somewhere between here and New York contemplating a descent upon us. I have taken curlpapers out of the water pitcher, and as I hope for mercy hereafter there was one in the cold soup forming the bulk of my dinner to-day.”

Perkins became pensive for just the briefest space possible and a rather melancholy smile overspread his face.

“I say, did you fellows ever eat soup—cold soup—with curl-papers? Because if you never did—don’t. It’s about the most thoroughly revolutionary thing a man can do.”

“You haven’t told us yet when she is coming,” Philip remarked. “When will it be, to-morrow?”

“That’s what we are looking forward to.”

“How old is she, anyhow?” And Philip propounded one of the inquiries a young man is almost sure to make sooner or later concerning a woman.

“Oh, dear me, I can’t tell. Forty or fifty though, I should say at a guess.”

Philip yawned. Madame’s age made the whole affair seem very tame and unattractive to him. Perkins rambled on:

“That’s the deuce of it. She will be old enough to take an interest in me. Women are forever taking an interest in me—a controlling interest you know—forever thinking I should be at work at something or other, just to keep me out of scrapes. And that’s all bosh! I don’t think there’s any use for me to work, except perhaps to kill time, and I really couldn’t do that, for in the end time will kill me and I shall be laid out stiff you know, quite dead, with tuberoses—”

“Limp you mean,” growled Franz correctively. “Where the devil did you ever get the notion that you could be stiff?”

“I hope I didn’t seem vain when I said women were interested in me, you know I mean those who are old enough to know better,” Perkins ventured with much meekness, folding his hands over a stomach of which Philip was wont to remark, much to its owner’s agony, that it was coming rapidly to the front.

“Of course you will invite us up to the house when your cousin comes,” the latter said. “Franz and I shall be immensely happy to call.”

Perkins brightened visibly. “I thought you rather slumped when I told you her age. To be sure you are to call. Did I ever speak of her brother to you—Geoffrey Ballard? I know a good deal more about him than I do about her. He has been in America frequently. In fact, as far as France goes, he is an exile: got into some difficulty and was forced to leave the country.”

This was said with studied carelessness; nevertheless it was plainly discernible that Perkins was accessible to the mild glow of pride which a perfectly respectable and well conducted youth usually feels in those of his family who have won their laurels in the shaded realms of the disreputable.

“I guess he is a very bad lot. Once my father chanced to meet him in New York. My father was fascinated by him and on the strength of the good impression he had made, Ballard borrowed several hundred dollars. He told a very plausible tale about a remittance from home that he was expecting. No sooner had he obtained an advance on what was coming than he got out of the way and it was the last father ever saw of him. He must have been very clever though, because you know my father was never a very great hand to lend money.”

His friends were too courteous to inform him of their perfect acquaintance with his father’s posthumous reputation for close-fistedness, but Philip could not resist saying casually:

“I can readily believe that Ballard must be a very remarkable fellow.”

“Oh, no,” Perkins responded innocently, delighted that he was commanding Philip’s attention; “we heard afterward he was a wild one—that he gambled and did all sorts of dishonorable things. Of course I wouldn’t like to have either of you mention it, but once he pretty nearly killed a man in a duel. It was over a woman, you know.”

And he looked highly scandalized—proud and happy, too, for it’s not every day one can tell of a cousin who fights duels.

It was getting dark; the afternoon was drawing to an end and while Perkins was still giving the details of which he was master, that related to Geoffrey Ballard’s career, Philip had arisen from his chair.

“I shall say good night,” he remarked. “It is time I was on my way home.”

IV

That afternoon while Perkins was busy discussing with his two friends the expected arrival of his mother’s cousin, the Perkins’ home, some six blocks distant, was the scene of violent Sabbath-breaking. It is but fair to state that the house-cleaning was done with a careful regard for the moral sentiment of the community, being of a secretive nature. In the house, in the midst of the disorder she had created, moved Mrs. Perkins, appareled in a gown decidedly the worse for wear and whose frayed train was momentarily collecting deposits of dust on its under edge.

Mrs. Perkins had been a beauty of the magnificent order. Perkins’ sandy hair, complexion and freckles, were the gift of his father. The curlpapers to which her son had made honorable reference were conspicuous objects in her disordered costume, while her face was embellished with sundry dabs of dirt.

The Perkins’ home was the finest in the town, but now it was in a state of wild confusion. The furnishings from the numerous rooms had been dragged into the halls where they accumulated in defiant heaps. Mrs. Perkins surveyed the ruin. “Where, where did it all come from?” she asked tragically.

At that moment had Mrs. Perkins lent a listening ear she might have heard, disturbing the Sunday quiet that filled the broad street outside with its peaceful repose, the distant rumble of wheels, foretelling the approach of some heavy vehicle.

“I think, Anna,” and she addressed herself to her principal assistant, “I think, Anna, this will be a lesson to me!—a lesson I shall not soon forget. What are you looking at?” For Anna was staring fixedly out of the window paying no heed to her mistress’ remarks.

Even as she spoke Mrs. Perkins caught the sound of wheels as they rolled over the hard gravel of the carriageway below the window.

“I believe they have come,” Anna said, her nose against the glass. “I declare it looks like them. There are two of them and both are in black.”

At the news Mrs. Perkins sank down upon a chair completely overcome. “No, you can’t mean it, Anna! For heaven’s sake, look again!”

“There’s two of them,” Anna answered triumphantly. “They’re both getting out. It’s them.”

Whereat Mrs. Perkins let fall two tears which plowed their way through the dust upon her cheek and fell with a muddy splash to the folded hands in her lap.

“That I should have lived to see this day!” she moaned.

“Shan’t I go down and let them in?” asked Anna.

“No. I shall go myself.”

Mrs. Perkins arose, summoning up all the majesty of bearing at her command, and surveyed the faded silk wrapper that hung limply and dustily to her figure with profound disgust.

“I suppose I must—but, what an impression I shall give her. Run to her room and make sure all is right there. Thank heaven! I had the wisdom to see to that, and there is a quiet spot to which she can retire.”

So speaking Mrs. Perkins hurried down-stairs in response to the bell that was sounding for the second time. With a final desperate clutch at the curl-papers, a hasty adjusting of her skirts together with a last shake to free them from dust and lint, she opened the door. Mrs. Perkins afterward described her sensations as startling.

In common with her son she had anticipated welcoming a woman of mature years: instead she saw two women. Both were in black, but one wore the especial garments custom has made the sign of widowhood. The heavy veil was thrown back, revealing a face at once youthful and beautiful but of an extremely pallid coloring though it was touched with just the faintest glow, born perhaps of expectancy and excitement.

This was all Mrs. Perkins’ bewildered faculties had time to grasp for the stranger said with a sweet little dignity that became her well, advancing a step as she did so: “I am Margaret Dennie.”

Her voice was beautifully soft, and in its enunciation suggestive of her foreign birth and education.

“I was expecting some one twice your age,” Mrs. Perkins said, laughing in sheer surprise. Her astonishment had so much the better of any reserve she had decided to show in the company of her distinguished kinswoman, that she simply used the words that came most readily to her tongue.

“Why, you are nothing but a child, a mere child, and you are Madame Dennie?” As she spoke she held out her hand. “But do come in; the man wants to get by with your baggage.” And she drew her into the hall, the maid following, leaving the steps to the driver and the trunks.

That evening was destined to remain forever more or less of a blank in Madame Dennie’s memory. She was conscious only of the warmth of her welcome and an overpowering sense of fatigue.

Her real comprehension of events commenced on Monday morning when she was aroused from her sleep by the pelting of rain against the west windows of her room, accompanied by the steady and persistent drip, drip, of the water-spout’s overflow beneath the eaves to the sodden ground below.

She had been in America ten days and in all that time had seen but one streak of murky sunshine stealing from behind the masses of vapor that drifted above the wet earth. Wind and rain had seemed to pursue her with absolute ill will as though the weather itself was determined to drive her out of the country and compel her to seek her usual winter’s asylum in the south of France.

Raising her head from the pillows, she surveyed the room. A fire was burning brightly upon the hearth, the curtains at the windows were drawn, shutting out all evidences of the season’s inclemency, save the steady and unceasing sound made by the storm.

Staying in bed offered superior advantages to getting up. With a sigh of contentment she nestled down drawing the covering about her, then closing her eyes and soothed by the contrast between the storm from without and the cheerful crackling of the fire upon the hearth, she gave herself up to thought.

The look upon the small face resting pallid and white against the whiteness of the pillows was far from happy, for madame dwelt much upon the unprofitableness of her past.

There were many reasons that might have induced the young girl to marry a man fifty years her senior—many reasons—and yet all of them were far removed from the realm of the affections. This Margaret Dennie knew well, and to her sorrow.

She would have liked to forget it all—indeed, the wish had extended over the last three years and resulted only in the positive knowledge that one can forget anything provided one wishes to remember it, or it is useful. Bitterness alone is defiant in the presence of forgetfulness.

She had at nineteen married Monsieur Dennie and had endured two years as his wife, then, mercifully for her, he had died.

A woman differently constituted would have thanked God for the release and set about enjoying herself, making merry with her late lord’s wealth. In her case, however, three years had been spent in a vain effort to rid herself of some portion of the horror begotten in her soul by the sacrifice she had made. There had been but one governing motive in the ill-omened marriage—to get money for her brother.

Monsieur Dennie had promised to pay well for her charms and had kept his word with the result that Goeffrey Ballard had been freed from his pressing debts and given a new start and another chance to wreck himself—a chance of which he had availed himself most speedily, so that six months after the marriage no mortal could have said wherein lay the profits or where his condition was any better than before the crime had been consummated.

Margaret wondered often how she had survived those years of misery,—not that Monsieur Dennie was unkind; he had simply never succeeded in inspiring his young wife with one single spark of love. It had resolved itself from the first into dumb and uncomplaining sufferance on her part.

Nearness to him had caused her but one feeling—a dreadful repulsion—a horrible desire almost exceeding her control to cry out as if in pain, whenever he had touched her.

Under this strain she had lived for two long years, then came freedom; but the iron had entered her soul. Her whole nature was saddened and embittered beyond forgetfulness.

A morbid dread that she had confided to no one had taken possession of her; she was completely at the mercy of her own distressing fancies and had come to regard her marriage as a sin unpardonable, as something unforgivable in the eyes of God.

At best, marriage is an ordeal for any woman, and a loveless marriage is an abominable institution of torture. Not content with what could not be banished, try as she might to live away from it, she had some vague idea of a recompense to be made, an indefinite conception of earthly punishment which she was to inflict upon herself.

It was this conviction that prompted her to wear the deepest mourning as a matter of penance, for it reminded her of the awfulness of those years, accenting and keeping the recollection always before her as a sin she must not condone.

This was what drifted through her mind while she was in the drowsy state that is neither sleeping nor waking. With something like a sob she came to herself at last.

“Russell!” she called.

Her maid came from the adjoining apartment where for the last hour she had been busy unpacking trunks and arranging her mistress’ wardrobe. She was a plain featured English woman who had served Margaret faithfully in the two capacities of nurse and maid.

“Will Madame dress?” she asked.

“Is it late?”

“The family has breakfasted.”

“I hope you told them I did not care for anything before luncheon?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And it is raining again. It has done nothing but rain since we landed.”

While they were speaking Margaret had got into a long loose gown and moved to the fire, where Russell had already placed an easy chair for her. Wrapped in the voluminous folds of the garment she had donned she seemed quite small and very slight. Her face was wholly lacking in color except for a faint flush that at times burned on either cheek. Her hair, in two massive braids that fell below her waist, was a rich warm brown in the shadow, and golden where the light touched it. Her hands were small and beautifully shaped.

Most apparent was a fragile quality of face and form as if a breath might wither her.

Sitting in the great armchair and shrinking down toward the fire for warmth, shivering too, in unison with every gust of wind or rain that spent its force against the window, one could but marvel that she had known so much of life.

Russell brushed her hair gently, taking care the strain should not rest upon the dainty little head.

Margaret gazed thoughtfully into the fire. A certain sad aloofness was expressed in her manner as though all her sorrows had been borne without friend or confidante.

“I wonder if it’s like this every day—without sunshine or clear skies,” she murmured.

Russell did not respond to the direct question, but finished dressing her hair and stepped to the door, saying:

“There is some one knocking. Perhaps ma-dame’s cousin.”

As she spoke, she opened it and Mrs. Perkins asked from the threshold: “May I come in?”

For answer Margaret, turning in her chair, extended her hand, a smile upon her lips: “If you don’t mind my dressing. I fear you will think me lazy. It must be late.”

Mrs. Perkins bustled to her side. A very becoming morning toilet contributed its due proportion to that lady’s ease and comfort. “Really, my dear, I never felt so strongly drawn to any one as I am to you.” As she spoke she bent and kissed Margaret with great stateliness and ceremony. “You are not at all like the Ballards who were military people and much given to combativeness. Your poor dear mother and I used to hold most violent controversies. We had such a capacity for differences; it always came to the surface when we were thrown much together. But then it was a family trait and I suppose I should revere it accordingly. To be sure, your mother was a Ballard only by marriage, but she was an active partaker in the traditional characteristics. Dear! dear! how antagonistic we were, and yet, a real affection existed between us. Now, can’t you tell me something about yourself?”

Mrs. Perkins drew up a chair and Margaret took one of her hands caressingly in her own: “But what shall I tell you?”

“About yourself, my dear. About yourself, by all means.”

“Ah!”—and she made a little depreciative gesture—“I am such an ordinary person. There is nothing more to tell.”

Mrs. Perkins shifted her position: “You can’t fancy how amazed I was when I saw you. I had understood always that Monsieur Dennie, your late husband, was a man of very—what shall I say?”—she paused looking into Margaret’s eyes, seeking earnestly for the right word, but the allusion to Monsieur Dennie did not stimulate any great burst of animation on the part of his widow, and she was forced to finish her incomplete sentence with, “a man of very advanced age.”

“He was seventy years old when we were married,” Margaret said quietly.

Mrs. Perkins elevated her eyebrows. “Why, you are young enough to be his granddaughter!”

“I was nineteen.” Her face had hardened perceptibly when Mrs. Perkins spoke her husband’s name, and at the mention of her marriage this changed to a look of the keenest distress. Mrs. Perkins surmised that it had not been an occurrence of the utmost happiness to the girl-wife.

Intent upon getting away from what she conceived to be a disagreeable subject, though still with subdued inquisitiveness, she said:

“You have not been a widow then so very long?”

“Three years.” With unmistakable relief—“I have lived in the south of France during that time, but my home is in Paris. Since Monsieur Dennie’s death I have not cared to return to it.” A pause followed.

Mrs. Perkins tapped the floor with her foot. She knew that any more questions would be in very bad form, as Margaret had shown that she was adverse to constituting herself the sole center of interest. Truth to tell, Mrs. Perkins was rather abashed. As a rule she had no compunctions when it came to catechising newcomers in the town as to their past and possible future. Her position, which was unassailable, made it quite safe to seek to put at rest all uncertainty under which she might be laboring. But Madame Dennie was distinctly of another world. Suddenly she bethought herself of her son. He was, as she knew, in the library engaged in stroking his immature side-whiskers and wondering if,—“she would like him, anyhow.”

Sunday evening had been spent in the society of his friend Becker and when he had presented himself at his own door shortly after ten, he found his mother waiting for him, with a glowing account of the splendor, beauty and culture of their young relative who had just withdrawn for the night.

“I think I have not told you of Ballard, my son, you know,” said Mrs. Perkins. “May I?”

Madame Dennie inclined her head by way of response, and Mrs. Perkins continued: “He is wild to meet you. For of course when he came in last evening, I had so much to tell him about you. He so regrets that he should have been absent. If we had only known when to look for you he would have been waiting for you at the train.” Margaret entreated her to make no excuses. The kindness she had met with all but overwhelmed her as it was, she said, but Mrs. Perkins was not to be turned aside now that she had got a fresh start with plain sailing ahead of her.

“My dear, he so regrets he did not know of your coming in season to meet you. Not to have done so seems to us so very inhospitable.”

Margaret pressed her hand gently. “You are most kind. I am sure I shall love you dearly and perhaps,” wistfully, “perhaps, you will grow to like me.”

“My dear, I do that already. I am drawn to you as I never was before to a—”

“A stranger you would say?”

“Yes, and no—for, after all, you are my cousin’s child and that means much to me.”

Madame Dennie appeared a trifle helpless and as though she was incapable of meeting these advances. A repellent feeling—a wish to keep from close friendships had grown up in her heart—springing from the sure consciousness that she stood in need of sympathy and love and would be weakly dependent upon it once it was hers; but fearing always that she might tell those things her mind most fed upon, she shrank from intimacies.

Mrs. Perkins vacated her chair, and said with a trace of self-denial in her voice: “I shall let you dress now.”

With this she quitted the room and joined young Perkins in the library. She found him standing on a corner of the hearth-rug, lost in meditation.

“I hope she is all right, mother,” he said.

“Oh, yes—she will be down presently.”

“Is she much of a stunner by daylight?” he inquired.

“I wish you would be more select in your expressions, Ballard. She is a woman of the greatest elegance.”

“You like her, don’t you, a lot?”

“I confess I do. There is something indescribably winning in her manner. I think her marriage was not at all a happy one.”

Perkins shook his head wisely: “He must have been too old for her, you know.”

“He was fifty years her senior, she has told me.”

Perkins was expressing his amazement at such a marriage, when the door opened and Margaret appeared on the scene. An embarrassed silence fell upon him at once. He barely managed to answer the greeting she gave him.

Long before that Monday was ended Ballard’s interest in his cousin’ had become tremendous. When night came he was her abject slave,—her worshipful admirer who demanded but one privilege, that he might still be allowed to worship—yet no one could have asked for less than she. She was almost timidly sensitive about being a care or burden to him or to his mother. Despite her habitual shrinking from nearer contact or sympathy, Perkins sat for the most of the day on a small corner of his chair, his knees tight together and his toes turned most resolutely in, like a plump little saffron-headed Trojan, heroically resolved on her amusement. The tension under which he put himself, was so stupendous that he absent-mindedly twisted every available button from his coat. He talked on innumerable topics: told her all about himself, “Not because I think myself at all unusual,” he had been careful to explain, “but because I am so perfectly acquainted with the subject.”

He racked his brain for fluent descriptions concerning his loftier emotions—told her his most cherished ambitions—“things I should never dream of telling any one else,” he said very truthfully. “But don’t you know, I guess you call for the best that is in me.”

He launched forth in quest of miscellaneous data and was soon telling her of Franz Becker and Philip Southard. When he told her Becker was a musician and Margaret told him that music was the one thing she loved above all else, he felt as happy as though he had discovered a gold mine in the coal scuttle. So fascinated was he that during the ensuing half-hour he talked a good deal more music than he knew, and at last, in answer to a question she asked, he found himself manfully seeking to formulate a concise history of the United States.

In short, Perkins did much that day that a Solomon would have feared to undertake. Late in the afternoon the wind died down and the rain ceased. The clouds drifted from before the slowly sinking sun, and his crimson flames burned in the red west.

Together they went into the yard. It had become quite warm with the approach of the evening, but Margaret was folded in a great fur wrap. “I am always cold,” she had said.

For a time they had strolled about the grounds, which were very extensive, and Ballard had taken her into the conservatory where the gardener—who with the rest fell immediately under her gentle sway—picked for her a bunch of lilies-of-the-val-ley. Then they had gone into the house again where she shared her bouquet with Ballard—giving him a spray of white for his buttonhole. Much to his sorrow Perkins found it necessary to leave her and go down-town. With his departure Margaret was left quite to herself. The repairing of the preceding days’ havoc demanding Mrs. Perkins’ supervision, and tempted by the outer brightness, she summoned Russell and wandered into the grounds about the house and from the grounds into the street. Both found much to wonder at in the little western city. It was so different from anything they had either of them ever known. As they passed down the street they came to a church—the door stood open and there came from within a burst of melody. Perhaps some service was in progress. Margaret turned, and followed by Russell, entered the building. They found it empty save for one man who was just visible as he sat with bowed head before the organ, his hands upon the keys.

Madame Dennie was no mean judge of music. She had heard the greatest masters of the world and she knew that this player, whoever he might be, was not one of the least. He was improvising and from his own fancies drifted into Bach’s first prelude. While his fingers were wandering through the opening bars, a sound stole out of the vacancy behind him.

The player turned and saw her standing in the aisle—the little gloved hands folded in unconscious devotion—the head thrown back with its delicate halo of golden hair, while through a stained glass window, high up beneath the arched roof, a single beam of light came to touch and transform the upturned face that stood forth boldly outlined against the surrounding shadows and the darkness that was gathering swiftly.

The final note was dying away, lingering out its sweetness lovingly upon the silence and the expression of rapt intenseness was fading from her face, when for the first time her eyes met his to be withdrawn instantly. A moment later and Margaret with her companion stole noiselessly from the church. Within the organ was sounding again, throbbing like a great heart that had awakened from its sleep to life and love.

V

Madame Dennie had expressed the hope of avoiding all social obligations. And Perkins had barely ventured to ask her meekly if he might not invite his two most intimate friends to the house—he was “morally certain” she would like them immensely, they were such charming fellows. So in due season he had presented Franz and Philip, and to them Margaret was most gracious.

After their first meeting with Madame Dennie, the young men had walked home in a subdued frame of mind. They stopped at the Beckers’ to smoke a farewell pipe and while under the stimulating influence of the weed Philip proceeded to analyze his emotions and indulge in critical comment.

“Didn’t it strike you that Perkins was just a bit sappy to-night? How his tongue did rattle along and always about himself.” Philip meditated for a moment. “Perhaps I am uncharitable. I think my main grudge against him rests on this—I wanted to talk about myself.”

Franz was smoking his pipe. There was a faraway look in his eyes and he was paying little attention to what his companion said.

Philip continued: “How did you like Madame Dennie? She is very beautiful, don’t you think? A woman of culture and great spirituality.” Franz was still silent. “There is something about her that impressed me as being touchingly sad and pathetic—I can’t describe it, but it’s there. I should say though she had an infinite capacity for happiness.”

Becker removed the pipe from his mouth. “I have seen her before,” he said simply.

“Oh!” Philip regarded him curiously.

“It was at church. In the evening while I was at my practise.” He paused abruptly.

“I am afraid Perkins is in a fair way to make a precious ass of himself,” Philip observed. “He is at the beginning of a bad business and ought to saw off. Perkins is all right, you know, but even his own mother would have to admit that he is freckled and fat. If he goes to falling in love with his cousin—”

By a sharp decisive blow Franz knocked the ashes from his pipe: “I shall have to say good night, Philip. I don’t propose to send you home but—”

“Oh, that’s all right. What’s wrong? Have I said anything I shouldn’t?”

“Shall I go down or will you be able to find your way out by yourself?” Franz asked.

He held open the door and Philip passed from the room. At the foot of the stairs he turned and called back his good night. Becker answered him cordially enough. When he found himself in the street Philip came to a stand.

“I declare he fairly put me out. As I live,” he finally cried, “as I live he is in love with her himself.”

During the succeeding weeks they both saw much of Madame Dennie.

Usually Philip prided himself on his ability to shock people, but with her he carefully eschewed all levity. Nothing could have induced him to advance the sacrilegious theories with which he delighted to offend. Such was his unblushing apostasy that Mrs. Perkins, who had long viewed him as one of the lost sheep, (chiefly by reason of the fact that for some years her son had at intervals favored her with scattered gems from his friend’s remarks as well as with his scandalously unorthodox criticisms of vital questions) presented him with a volume of sermons.

Philip accepted this token of unexpectedly kindled solicitude with a stately gravity far surpassing the donor’s, while Ballard went off into a series of convulsions that brought with them unworthy prominence and attendant disgrace. Furthermore, he was detected by his mother in the shameless act of winking at Becker.

Philip derived great good from those sermons. They gave him a convenient supply of paper for the lighting of fires in his room.

Those were delightful evenings they spent together when Philip would drop in on his way home from Barbara,—for the Perkinses were nothing if not fashionable and kept later hours than any other family in the town.

The young men would form a half-circle about Madame Dennie, where she nestled in an easy chair beside the fire for the warmth she loved and needed, and they would stand, looking down at the slight black-robed figure and sweet pure face, talking the while very boyishly of their hopes and their aims. Philip and Perkins especially had much to say of themselves. Indeed, there existed at first a very pronounced rivalry as to who should say the more.

They told her their desires, their ambitions—everything, and to their confessions she listened with a certain quaint little display of friendliness and affection that completely captivated them.

There was this peculiar feature noticeable in the devotion she inspired,—it was unselfish always for it was possible to love her in a manner that exacted nothing in return; possible to lay all at her feet, and ask but the joy of giving.

The fall and early winter were unusually inclement and a troublesome cough kept Margaret confined within doors. Perhaps resulting from this and the anxious care Russell took of her, they divined that she was not strong. It was solely by indirection they came to know that the frail little body had worn itself out to the verge of exhaustion. But the undisturbed quietness in which her days were spent pleased her fancy vastly better than any gaiety could have done. The latter she had known to the point of surfeiting while her husband lived and she recalled it as something to be avoided.

Thus it came that the weeks covering her stay in the small western city were the happiest she had ever known.

She enjoyed her companionship with Perkins and Philip,—she could like them unreservedly and in return be treated to a sincere admiration not without its gratification to the starved little heart.

She stood more in awe of Franz, and he kept his thoughts of her a secret. She could not guess that they lay too close against his very soul for utterance; but there was a remarkable gentleness in his bearing when in her presence—a reverent quality far removed from his customary brusk-ness.

Cling as she would to the past, Margaret was slowly growing away from it. She was almost happy. In course of time she might have been entirely so, but for the existence of her brother Geoff, who skulked on the outskirts of decency—and who only indicated that he thought of her when he showered her with begging letters.

In all the mad indulgence of his worthless career he had done no generous deed. He had burdened some one always, taking to himself the lion’s share of the fruits and shirking all the toil.

It was to pay his debts, to give him a fresh start, that Margaret had been coerced by her mother into marrying Monsieur Dennie. That sin occurred at a day when Geoffrey had squandered the last of his patrimony and had embarrassed his mother’s and sister’s fortune besides.

Then it was that Margaret, but little more than a child, was taken from the school near Brussels and brought to Paris that Geoff might play her as his last card in the losing game of chance that was swallowing up their possessions.

He had cast about that he might effect a suitable alliance (to him a suitable alliance meant one that should not be scant of profit to himself) and had fastened upon Monsieur Dennie, who yielded up the price of purchase with the utmost readiness. More than this, while he lived, Geoff’ was well provided for and if he had not been a chronic spendthrift could have thrived exceedingly. Unfortunately, he had no intention to be on easy terms with his good luck, but was forever making unreasonable demands upon his elderly brother-in-law for money, and for yet more money. The result was that when the old banker came to die he put his property in such shape that by no scheming could Geoff get his hands upon it.

Monsieur Dennie’s methodical bestowing of his worldly belongings did not stop there. He arranged that an annuity should be paid Geoffrey and his mother. It was further stipulated that in the event of the latter’s death Geoff should also have her portion.

Mrs. Ballard had not long survived her son-inlaw, and though Geoff had availed himself of the addition to his means her death gave him, the doubled amount was as insufficient as had been his previous lesser allowance.

After her husband’s death Margaret was left to live her lonely life without interference from her brother. He went his course and she hers, though it was his habit to appear from time to time a seedy, shabby beggar and take from her every cent she could get together. Then he would vanish, no one knew where, until he again needed money. Nor was this all. He had married—much as he did everything else—to gratify some vacillating whim, and when the novelty of the relation wore off he had forsaken his family with never a regret, leaving the broken home for his sister to maintain.

For years Margaret had cared for his wife and children—“Kate and the three boys” were always in difficulties, more or less pressing, difficulties of the sort only money—blessed balm that it is—could alleviate. In short, there were more drains, more attacks made upon the wealth of Monsieur Dennie, deceased, than one could enumerate in a long talk. These just referred to were of the unceasing, never-ending variety, that came clamorously with each month, came again until they were satisfied.

But of all, Geoffrey Ballard was much the worst. He was seldom stationary or confined to any place by tie or occupation. He came and went at will; there was never any getting away from him.

Had it not been for Russell, Margaret would have been utterly defenseless, but the maid was a strong and reliable character, who strenuously resisted the wholesale absorption of her mistress’ property. When madame’s bankers remitted her income, Russell would take into her keeping the sum she deemed adequate for their proper support, and no one could take this from her.

With the bulk of what remained Geoff generally made off.

One evening while Margaret was alone in the library at early dusk, the room unlighted by other flame than the glowing of coals upon the hearth, there came a tapping at a long French window opening upon the porch. She looked up quickly, startled by the sound, and saw a man standing in the half shadow.

One glance sufficed,—it was Geoff.

Frightened and trembling, she arose and went to the window, pushing it aside that he might enter. Without a word, he stepped into the room.

“How damnably cold it is,” he grumbled. “Throw another lump of coal on the fire, will you? What a beastly climate—rough on a man who does not boast an overcoat. Thanks.” For Margaret mutely complied with his bidding.

The flames leaped up, disclosing a man of nearly forty, shabbily dressed in garments once of the greatest elegance, but which from hard usage were now nearly ragged.

He was of fine physique with a handsome countenance that, like his clothes, showed unmistakable symptoms of wear, for a record of the degrading course he had pursued so assiduously was stamped upon it.

He glanced around the room, taking in its appointments. They met with his approval, for he said:

“This is not at all bad. You do get your share of the good gifts of this world while I spend most of my time standing in the rain waiting to gather up the crumbs you scatter. Here I traveled from New Orleans to New York, thinking of course I should find you there. Imagine my predicament. All I had went to the pawn-shops, and I just managed to scrape through.”

This was said with an aggrieved air as though the fault was hers. “Now, what can you do for me?” he continued; “I want money. I think my dress bears out the statement—” And he took a disgusted survey of himself in a small mirror hanging above the chimneypiece.

On her deathbed, at the close of a very foolish life, Mrs. Ballard had wrung from her daughter the promise that she would never abandon her brother, and Margaret, who was the victim of sentimentality where her mother’s last wish was concerned, had carried it out blindly without stopping to consider its injustice. The profligate brother now spread out his hands behind his back to catch the heat from the fire, and ensconced himself contentedly on the hearth-rug.

As his sister had vouchsafed him no response he returned to the charge. “I don’t wish to force my needs upon you,” he said. “You must know it’s hard for a man of my age to get down on his knees for the money to keep himself going.” Margaret raised her eyes to his, and stared at him, silent and miserable for a moment.

“Well?” Geoff asked impatiently, “what are you going to do for me—what may I count on?”

“When I saw you in New York, I told you distinctly what you were to expect, Geoff.”

Her tone while not unkind was positive. Gentle as she was and tender in all her dealings and judgments, a show of firmness had to be maintained in her relationship with this spendthrift, and too, she felt as bitter a sense of injury as her forgiving nature could harbor for the wreck he had made of her girlhood. She added almost hesitatingly:

“I—I am so sorry you have followed me here.” To him this seemed to denote such outrageous treachery that he was really hurt—and showed it. She went to his side, and placing an arm caressingly about his neck, said, “Forgive me, Geoff. I did not mean quite that, but I have been so happy here. If you could only be as I am then you would like it too, but you know you are so restless. That is what I meant.”

He shook off her arm rudely. “I understand, this sort of thing is useless—I’m not deceived.” She looked at him pityingly. How mistaken he was in every impulse and ideal.

“I have not tried to deceive you, Geoff. Why should I attempt to? But it is so sad that we should waste our lives, when there are such possibilities within us if we would only consent to make the most of them. We have both lived so untrue to what is best.”

This elicited only a contemptuous shrug from Geoff.

Margaret clasped her hands, while a spot of red burned in each cheek. “Why can’t we go back?—back into the past so far we shall forget the wretched years we have wasted so wickedly?”

Geoff was excessively bored.

“I presume you are referring to your marriage.” He retorted angrily: “The utter thanklessness in which you hold that piece of luck amazes me. I should like to know what the devil would become of us if it wasn’t for Dennie’s money. Of course the old fool tied it up with such nasty restrictions one can just get at the income, but I am pleased to be able to assert that I am not ungrateful. I regard your marriage as the very best thing that could have fallen to your lot, and I consider that I did what was honorable. Therefore—your evident dissatisfaction rather astonishes me. Under the circumstances, I scarcely anticipated it.”

He settled himself in a chair, stretching out his feet toward the fender. His handsome head, fine as to shape and size, was thrown back and the firelight fell upon the beautiful evil face. About the eyes were heavy circles. These were the visible traces dissipation had left. A few gray hairs showed among the profusion of dark curls.

“I don’t intend to reproach you,” Margaret said.

“I should think not, when you reflect what I have done for you,” he answered coldly.

“But at what a cost—at what a dreadful cost!” she cried quickly, and her voice vibrated with the intensity of her grief.

Geoff was deeply resentful, but offered no further interruption. She would be more pliable with such treatment. He centered his rather sleepy vision earnestly upon the carpet and endeavored to gain relief in partial abstraction.

Margaret crouched on the floor beside his chair, watching the warm glow turn to ashes as in her own heart the gold had turned to gray. There was nothing left.

“I don’t mean to reproach you, Geoff,” she said at last. “I have never even told you how hard and unbearable it has been for me—the horror or the haunting sense of sin and shame. Perhaps you did mean it for the best. I hope you did for your own sake, not for mine; I hope you did!—but I have suffered so.

“There has been such a stain upon my soul since the days of my loveless marriage, it would not wear away, it has only grown less since I came here. I wish to forget—I wish to begin again and there is no one who should be so near as you, no one to whom I can so justly look for protection. Shall we not begin again, Geoff? I am so sure we may be happy if we only will, and the life you lead, dear, is such an awful mistake—it can bring you nothing but pain, and to have you come to me worn and jaded, drags me down more than I can tell. I am constantly fearing that serious trouble may overtake you, I live in continual apprehension about you. Is it right that I, who have so much to make amends for, should support this load, too? Can I not grow back into some measure of innocence, without having sin and evil brought forever to me—Geoff—Geoff!”

She looked up appealingly.

His eyes were closed and his breathing proclaimed him to be half asleep.

With a sudden uncontrollable feeling of repulsion she shrank away from his side; then she stood erect.

Her movement aroused him. With a yawn he opened his eyes and glanced about stupidly as though he could not quite remember where he was.

“Really, I beg your pardon,” he said with lazy politeness. “But the heat made me drowsy. Positively I could not keep my eyes open.”

He thought it about time to bring matters to a crisis. He drew himself together and made ready to terminate the interview.

“How much can you let me have? I am aware that your bankers won’t remit for a while yet, but can’t you do something for me temporarily? As you see, I am abominably shabby and it’s no way for a gentleman to appear.”

“How much do you need?” Margaret asked.

Geoff promptly dropped the whine in which he had previously spoken, becoming suddenly and wonderfully buoyant.

“Oh! a few hundreds. I’ll spend them well, and I’ll agree not to bother you again until your money gets here. I’ll hang about quietly until it comes, then you can fix me up and I will bolt the place. Now I call that fair—and you would better”—he grew strangely sinister—“you would better do as I ask or you may get let in for more than the mere loss of cash.”

“I will go to Russell and learn what can be spared.”

“The old cat!”

Margaret left the room. In the hall she encountered Perkins.

“I was coming to find you,” he said. “It’s nearly dinner-time and dark as the deuce. I say,” in surprise, “is anything the matter?”

For Madame Dennie’s face was more than unusually pale—more than unusually sad.

“Where are you going, Ballard?”

“Into the library. That is I was going there, but if you don’t mind, I’ll just go along with you.”

“Instead will you do me a service?”

Perkins instantly made a gesture of assent. “Whatever you ask,” he said eagerly.

“It’s very little. Please don’t be curious, and don’t allow your mother or the servants to enter the library while I am up-stairs.” Perkins seemed mystified and she added: “Some one is there, some one I would rather not have you see.”

At this his face cleared. He made haste to say, “I shall do exactly as you ask. Nobody shall enter the library until you are willing that they should.”

“Thank you so very much.” And she vanished up the stairs.

Perkins glared fixedly at the library door, his freckled features assuming a belligerent expression.

Margaret returned immediately and came down the stairs quite breathless.

“Shall I stay here and keep the rest away until he goes, you know?” he asked.

She gave him a thankful glance, and he added:

“There, don’t you worry. No one shall disturb you.”

He held open the door as he spoke and shut it carefully after her, so that no portion of a conversation clearly not for him should find its way to his ears.

Ten minutes later when Geoff had taken his leave Margaret found Perkins still at his post, pacing the hall with dignified step. Something akin to intuition informed him it would be well not to allude to recent happenings, so he remarked:

“I think dinner is waiting for us. Suppose we go see.”

It was after dinner when Margaret was alone with Perkins and his mother that she crept close to the latter saying: “I think I shall have to go away.”

Mrs. Perkins let fall her sewing and gazed at Margaret in blank astonishment.

“My dear, you surely don’t mean it!” she cried at last.

Whatever traits Mrs. Perkins had inherited from her military ancestors, to Margaret she had been womanly and loving, and the friendless little wanderer had received from her more motherly care than she had ever before known.

“I think,” she began again timidly, and her voice was perilously near to the point of breaking, “I think it is much better for me to go at once.”

“But do you wish to go—that is—must you?” Mrs. Perkins insisted: “Dear! dear! I had never even thought of your leaving us, and yet it is scarcely probable you will be content to remain here always.”

“I fear it is better for me to leave you, but I do not wish to go—it’s not that—believe me it’s not!”

“Then, my dear, Ballard and I will never hear to it.”

It was then Margaret broke down entirely, and not knowing what else to do sought refuge in Mrs. Perkins’ arms and from that safe vantage told of her brother.

“And he is coming back. I—I had hoped he would not, unkind and ungenerous as it may seem!”

“Very well. He shall come here,” Mrs. Perkins said.

“Oh, no! oh, no! you must know—I must tell you that his actions may be hard to explain. They are often reckless in the extreme. I can not make my burden yours. You would grow to hate me if I did.”

“Indeed we shan’t,” Perkins burst out. “I’ll look after him when he comes. I can handle him. You have no idea how clever I am. You just turn him over to me—I’ll manage him.” And he shook his head knowingly, while under his breath he whispered: “If he cuts up and annoys her I’ll punch his damned nose!”—which was very violent language for him.

“I so regret—” Margaret began again, but Mrs. Perkins would hear no more.

“There, my dear, we understand perfectly, so don’t distress yourself at all about it. You are going to remain here, whatever happens.”

“Of course you are!” Perkins chimed in. “We want you to feel that this is your home and that you are to stay here as long as ever you wish to. The idea!—the very idea—”

“You are so good,” Madame Dennie murmured gratefully. “So kind! It is beautiful to be so loved.”

“It is more beautiful to have you with us, you know,” Perkins remarked, “and to be permitted to love you.”

“If I remain you must grant me one favor in advance.” And she looked at Perkins, seeing in him a victim for the wily Geoff.

“A million if you like,” he answered rashly.

“You are not to lend my brother money. You must promise me this.”

“I shall be guided wholly by you,” Perkins assured her.

This ended all mention of Geoff, but late in the night when they had all retired, Mrs. Perkins was aroused by Russell rapping on her door and entreating her to come at once to Madame Dennie; who was very ill.

Mrs. Perkins found the poor persecuted one crouching down in her bed frightened and shivering, though her head burned as with a fever.

She had had a dreadful dream, and she could not free herself from the nameless fear.

While his mother was soothing Margaret, young Perkins in a disordered state as to costume, but even more so as to mind, skirmished about the hall demanding half-minute bulletins through the keyhole. He was eventually induced to withdraw when it was announced that his cousin was resting easily, and reluctantly sought his room, while his mother and Russell, sitting by Margaret’s bedside, discussed the situation in muffled tones.

“It is nervousness,” the maid said. “When you know her brother you will not wonder in the least why seeing him should so work upon madame.” And needing sympathy herself she proceeded to give Geoff a character that made Mrs. Perkins shudder.

Russell was as sure as her mistress had been that he would come back, arguing that the remittance from Paris would prevent his removing himself to any distance until he had his grasp, “his greedy and rapacious grasp,” as she termed it melodramatically, on the money. She also, warming up to her theme, repeated every disreputable anecdote, every questionable transaction with which his name had ever been associated. These, if properly compiled and edited, would have filled a large book and the contents would have been extremely spicy.

So startling was the narrative that Mrs. Perkins reproached herself because of the fatal promptitude with which she had undertaken his lodgment.

At such times, however, she had but to look at the slight figure tossing restlessly upon the bed to feel that for Margaret’s sake she would gladly assume any risk.

VI

Philip had the street to himself as he walked up-town from the Perkins’, where he had been spending the evening, but as he came to his own gate, he saw a man lounging beside it.

It was Lester Royal.

Since the night when they had met for the first time in months, Philip had not seen him, and he had ceased to command any portion of his thoughts in the pressure of work and newer interests, but the sight of the boy leaning dejectedly against the fence revived the memory of their former interview.

“Why, Lester, it’s you, is it?” he said with a marked display of cordiality for he was not averse to a little human intercourse at that particular moment. “Beastly cold, isn’t it?” he added.

“I am frozen,” Lester said, and he shivered. “I have been waiting to see you for an hour or more. Take me indoors, will you, where it’s warm?”

Philip took his hand. It was like ice. “I should say you are frozen. Come along with me!”

They turned into the yard and Philip with his night-key unlocked the house door and led the way up to his room where a bright fire burned in the grate—his one luxury. He pushed Lester down into a chair before it and said:

“Now what’s up?”

He saw that his visitor was pale and worn, with dark haggard lines about his eyes, and the hands he held out toward the blaze were thin and tremulous.

“Have you been ill?” he questioned.

The younger boy shook his head.

“What’s wrong then?”

For answer Lester cried hoarsely in a voice choked with emotion and grief, “I am done for, Philip—done for! I am dying by inches—I!—and a year ago I thought I should live forever.”

He buried his face in his hands, sobbing like a child.

The spectacle of a man in tears was not at all soothing to Philip. Perhaps there might have been times when he would have done the same thing, but that was no excuse for Lester.

He had done and probably would continue to do a great many things that he could not pardon in another.

“Come! come! this won’t do. Be a man,” he said coldly.

He was really very sorry for the boy, but Lester had no earthly right to make such a violent assault upon his feelings; besides he had a lurking suspicion that he was harrowing up his sensibilities with the sole object of asking for a loan. Whatever his object, Lester paid no heed to him, and Philip, after taking a turn about the room, halted at his side.

“I say what’s the matter, anyhow?”

“You think I am a baby as well as a fool!” came in stifled accents from the sufferer.

“Oh, no!” Philip remarked politely, “only it’s rather unconventional, you know. Just a bit surprising—not to say startling. I am hardly prepared for it. If you could manage to slow up a little I should be very grateful.”

Lester raised his head and looked up into his friend’s face.

The suffering that Philip saw in the face before him caused him to push a chair close to the boy’s and seat himself. Then with one hand half clasping Lester’s, half resting on the arm of the chair, he said kindly: “Tell me, old fellow, what it is?”

“I can’t! I can’t! You will know some day. You will find out for yourself when—” He broke off abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“Very well, don’t say more than you wish,” Philip answered. It was too serious for any display of curiosity on his part he felt. He gazed pityingly at Lester who looked pale and wan. Thus for a time they sat, neither speaking. At last Lester said:

“I’ve got to talk with some one—my brain swims with it—for the one idea whirls and whirls till I am dizzy and blind. I am wretched, Philip, wretched; and there is no help for it. I’ve brought it all on myself. Do you think it very hard to die?”

“Easy, but not agreeable. Why do you ask such infernally gruesome questions?”

“I’ve got to die.”

“I can’t see where you are an exception to the rule. It’s expected of everybody—the nasty act of termination. What a vulgar thing death is!”

Lester stood erect—the firelight flashing over his worn countenance. “It’s different with me. I’ve got to die now—now!” With a groan of anguish he flung himself back into the chair while Philip looked at him in astonishment.

“See here. What morbid fancy has hold of you?” he asked. “I must admit I don’t like this sort of talk.”

But Lester’s face was buried in his hands, only his dry hard gaspings were audible. He gained a degree of control over himself and again faced his companion, saying: “Don’t you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t, and that’s a fact.”

Lester was silent. Some sentiment of reserve stood between him and the confession he was seeking to make.

“Have you been drinking lately?” Philip questioned gravely.

“Yes—but not to-day.”

“You shouldn’t do it. It’s anything but good for you.”

“Do you think I am fool enough not to know that?” Lester replied with almost savage earnestness.

“Then why in the name of sense don’t you keep straight?”

“I resolve to, and then go and get drunk against my will. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Philip regarded him sadly. There was a heavy melancholy in the boy’s whole attitude that distressed him—a spirit as of dumb submission to the inevitable. It was only lifted when he indulged in his wild bursts of grief.

“What’s the good!” Lester continued. “I can keep up for a day or two, but I go back to it every time.”

Philip shrugged his shoulders, saying with a poor attempt at lightness: “I suppose one should not resist the flesh. Our most virtuous moments are those which come when we have tired the devil out within us and are basking in the splendor of the good resolutions that tread upon the heels of satiety.” He would have given anything to recall the words once they were spoken, for Lester shrank from him.

“I didn’t think you would talk to me so—not now,” he said.

There was the dull glint of anger in his lack-luster eyes, but it faded away almost immediately. Once more he became stupidly quiet.

“Forgive me,” Philip ventured penitently. “I didn’t mean to wound you.”

“It’s all right,” Lester said indifferently. “It’s all right. I presume you are thoroughly sick of me.

“No, I am not. I’d like to help you if I knew how, but you don’t tell me what your trouble is. It’s blind guessing with me. I don’t know how to give you a lift.”

“It’s too late, I tell you. I’m done for.”

“Do you mind explaining just what you mean?”

“I’ve squandered what should have lasted me a lifetime. I am a bankrupt in brain, body and purse. My God!”—with a gesture eloquent of despair and misery—“I’ve ruined myself! There is nothing left for me but death.”

And Philip, understanding something of the other’s need, said: “It’s not so bad as that. You can pull yourself around, but if it’s as you declare it to be, you can’t be too quick about it.”

“The doctors say not. It’s all up with me according to them.”

“Damn the doctors! What do they know?”

“They say it’s too late.”

“Siuff. They lie! It’s never too late.”

“There, Philip, don’t—don’t let’s discuss it. I am not afraid, but it’s terrible. I have thought I had years and years before me, and they were all wasted in a day.”

To his horror Philip saw that his friend was in a measure reconciled to death. This to a pagan like Philip, was incomprehensible.

Now that he had talked more freely, Lester was calmer and his dejection was not so pronounced as at first. Silence had fallen on them and they sat looking into the fire, each busy with his own thoughts.

“Let’s talk about when we were boys,” Lester finally said. “You do the talking just as you did when I saw you last. Do you know if I can’t sleep nights—and I can’t most of the time—I like to think about it: the past that stops where my folly began. In all the years since I came of age, there is nothing I want to remember—it’s all agony to me. Talk about when we were boys, Philip—about what we did in vacation. You were always such a good old chap!”

He put his hand on Philip’s arm and let it rest there affectionately while Philip in a low voice began to speak of the past,—and at the telling much that was hard in his own nature grew soft. A strange gentleness came into the hearts of both, as Philip talked of their boyhood. When the winding country roads knew the marks of their bare feet in the dust; when, stripped of clothing and shame, they lay lazily upon the hot sand by the river’s brim, and afterward took the long walk for home through the scented dusk. Back to the days when they were dirty and happy—when respectability knew them not at all—Philip carried them. And Lester saw in the fire, the red of the sunshine; in the smoke, the darkness of night,—the warm summer nights that were filled with peace and sleep.

Surely, it was better then—and as he listened his head fell over on his shoulder, his eyes closed, while still as in a dream he heard the murmur of Philip’s voice, saw the pictures he drew, and then he slept.

Philip moved noiselessly to the table where the lamp burned. This he blew out so that only the firelight filled the room, the firelight and the colder brightness the moon sent stealing in through the windows.

As the hours wore on, he kept his watch at the sleeper’s side, thinking and wondering what it all meant and what the end would be.

It was almost day when Lester woke.

“Better, Lester?” he asked.

“Yes. I wish I were back to it. I wish I were a boy again. I am sick of the present, and the future has nothing for me. You know I can’t keep from the very things that are killing me. I try and try and then I fail.”

“You must keep from them if you are ever to be all you were, all you promised to be.”

Lester shook his head.

“It will never be, Philip. It is too late—I am done for.”

“That’s absurd, Lester. There! I can tolerate any one except the man who differs from me in his opinions. For him I have the heartiest contempt.”

“It’s not all cowardice with me,” Lester said miserably. “Now that the time has gone forever, I want what I have never had. I am desperately sick of myself.”

He looked at Philip wistfully, and the remembrance was torture to Philip long afterward. “Did you ever want to be good? Can you imagine what this desire is in a fellow like me?”

“Why do you stir me up on these lines of sloppy sentiment?” Philip retorted. “No, I never want to be good. My digestion is perfect. Piety does very well for children and invalids.”

Lester made no response to this and his friend added in an injured but more temperate tone: “You talk like a man on his death-bed. I can only give you temporal consolation. I can only tell you what seems to me the wisest course to pursue.”

“Perhaps I am nearer that than you think for—nearer my death-bed,” the boy answered, helplessly, drearily.

“Stuff!” Philip cried hotly.

Lester seemed to take small comfort from his words, but Philip made a last attempt to cheer him up. “As to the doctors,” he said, “you can’t depend on them; and that about your dying is rank nonsense. If folly and sin were so fatal, our race would have become extinct long ago. You may be in a very bad way—I don’t say you are not, but anything is possible in this world. You are more apt to get well than to die. You made a mistake, though, when you consulted a doctor. As long as a man can remain in ignorance of those operations that are going on inside of him, he is in the enjoyment of a very considerable blessing.”

Lester turned away.

“Well, I shall go home now if you will let me out,” he said drearily.

“Are you going to keep clear of those indulgences that are, as you think, killing you?”

“If I can I shall.”

“If you can—you must!” Lester’s glance checked him:—“I’ll walk home with you,” he said gently, and as he saw Lester was going to protest, he made haste to add:

“It’s no odds to me that it’s late.”

And together they left the house.

A week later it occurred to Philip that Lester had not lived up to the assurance he had given him at parting, that he would come around soon and report upon his troubles.

“Now I suppose I should go look him up,” he thought, “and find out why he has dodged the agreement in this fashion. It’s just my misfortune to be of an abominably conscientious temperament which causes me to feel morally responsible for his well-being. I really am conscientious,—even stupidity can not be urged in extenuation. In the present instance I know perfectly well what I should do: I should dismiss Lester from my mind. But I am too much of a conscientious ass.”

In support of the truth of this Philip started at once in search of Lester.

First he visited his home, and found that he had not been there in several days, but it occasioned no alarm, as the boy’s habits were decidedly those of a vagabond.

This was in the morning. At noon Philip was in such a state of preoccupation that he got through his dinner without an exchange of hostilities with either of his sisters.

In his search that morning he had encountered no one who seemed to remember having seen Lester recently.

He could not free himself from the belief that his disappearance was a serious matter. The recollection of their last meeting oppressed him with an unpleasant distinctness all at once. He roused himself from his abstraction to say to his mother: “Do you know, I am worried about poor Lester Royal.”

Katherine sniffed aloud at this: “Lester Royal, indeed!”

“I’ve been looking for him all the morning and I can’t get track of him,” he continued.

“Perhaps he is too drunk to be seen. It would be no new thing if he were,” said Katherine.

Philip was using such a character as his sister in some work he was doing, and he was interested in examining her capacity for abusive speech when spurred by anger. Here was an opportunity: “Well, if he wants to get drunk it’s his privilege.”

“He should be locked up instead of being allowed to disgrace himself and everybody else.”

“Oh, no, Kate—you would be too severe. What you foolishly take to be a religious conviction is simply a woman’s prejudice at seeing a man enjoy himself.”

“Of course you call intoxication enjoyment. Your views are so broad.”

“Are they?”

“You think they are, but if I were in your place I should exercise some selection in the choosing of my associates.”

“Would you really? How nice!”

“My friends should be my equals. Neither low Germans nor drunkards.”

“But men are only equal when they are drunk.” From her seat at the head of the table, Mrs. Southard sent him a look of mute entreaty, and it struck him for the thousandth time that the wrangling in which he and Katherine indulged was hard for his mother to bear. He promptly abandoned the attack, finished his dinner in grim silence, and started out again, bent on finding Lester, but grumbling as he went that he should be so weak as to care about the boy.

He devoted an hour or so to investigating the various resorts Lester was known to frequent, and eventually learned that he had been seen very much the worse for drink on the day following the night they had spent together. Since then no one knew what had become of him. The opinion of the loafer who furnished the information was that he had gone off somewhere to sober up.

“The ass!” thought Philip bitterly. “The brainless ass! Here I get into a pretty state over his woes and this is the extent of his reformation. He goes and gets drunk, which is a good reason for his not going home or caring to see me.”

It was a bright fall afternoon—brisk and bracing—with touches of winter in the air. Philip turned his back on the town. It was just the season for a tramp into the country, and since the greater part of the day had been wasted as far as writing was concerned he proposed to amuse himself.

As he strode along thoughts of Lester would come to him, and in the end pity had replaced his momentary bitterness toward him.

“Poor fellow!” he muttered. “Maybe he can’t help it, after all. Unless one has ambition or hope there isn’t much to keep one up. I wish I knew where he has hidden himself. If I just knew that, I wouldn’t bother.”

He crossed from the road he had followed since leaving the town and kept his way by the river’s bank. In the gaunt leafless weeds and bushes choking the narrow path he seemed to see flitting on before him Lester’s tragic face.

Soon the town was far in the distance behind him, only the smoke rolling up from the factory chimneys could be seen, and still he tramped on and on, going to the many favorite haunts where he fished or swam as a boy. Each turn in the road marked some event especially prominent in his memory.

In spite of the chilliness in the air he strolled slowly forward for a mile or two, when the yelping of a dog attracted his attention, suggesting possibilities of companionship. He went in the direction from which the sound came. The passing of a bend in the river brought the dog into view, a small yellow creature crouching on its haunches on the bank and howling dismally. When it saw Philip this was changed to short jerky barks and it bounded down the bank and began to tug at a dark object that lay in a thin scum of ice formed about it in the still water near the shore.

From where Philip stood, a little farther down the stream, a curve in the line of its flow placed him almost opposite the object.

“It’s a bit of old clothing,” he told himself. And he called aloud: “Bring it out, sir! Fetch it here!”

The dog, stimulated by his voice and presence, barked more furiously than ever, while Philip fell to throwing stones at the thing in the water with the double idea of encouraging the dog and cutting the ice that held it.

All at once the dog, as though frightened, put its tail between its legs and ran up the bank, where it squatted on its haunches and resumed its yelping.

“I wonder,” thought Philip, “if it’s my duty to go tear the thing loose, for my esteemed acquaintance, the yellow dog.”

He armed himself with a stick. Thus prepared he made a circuit of the shore. The dog testified to its appreciation of his evident intention in a most unmistakable manner.

“Glad of a little help, are you?” said Philip aloud to the yellow dog as he went toward the object in the water.

“It has a funny look,” he thought, “a very funny look.”

With his stick he poked at it.

The object with a light silly motion bobbed up and down in the water. Philip poked more vigorously. “Come loose!” he insisted. “Come loose!”

Then all in an instant the stick slid from his grasp into the water and glided away ‘beyond his reach.

The thing had turned—‘turned with a ghastly sickening semblance of life, disclosing a blue discolored hand so poised that it was outstretched straight and stiff. As it swept past it touched Philip.

“It’s a man!” he cried, shrinking away. “As I live it’s a man!”

The object, turning farther, floated free upon its back and lay so, and he saw the bloated, hideously swollen face of Lester Royal. There was no mistaking it.

Philip uncovered his head and leaned back upon the shelving bank. The dog crept to his side, and he caressed it silently.

There was no sound save that of the river where it fretted against its gravelly bed and the call of crows from the deserted corn-fields.

“It’s all up with him now,” unconsciously Philip spoke aloud.

He paused and gazed down upon the body of his friend. The dog crept closer and would have licked his face. This roused Philip from his reverie.

There yet remained for him to summon aid,—men and a wagon, and accompanied by the idle throng that gathers at such times, to go back into the town.

VII

Geoff spent exactly a week in the East, where the money Margaret gave to him was judiciously used as the basis for certain operations of a shady nature, and he took to himself several large sums on which he had no shadow of a claim, viewed even from the broad latitudes of sport.

With this influx of wealth he had proceeded to enjoy himself, which duty discharged, he did what his sister had feared he would do, he came and overran the Perkins’ household. He brought with him a valet, an accomplished rascal meagerly patterned on his master’s more splendid dimensions. This, coupled to the many airs he gave himself, sufficed for a local sensation and Geoff’s vanity was pleased in the supremest degree. To be stared at and to excite wide-eyed admiration and envy was one of the pinnacles of bliss he liked to scale when luck was with him. When it was not, he was more than content to slink through several grades of shabby genteel ruffianism, attracting just as little notice as possible. There were four people, however, who refused to accept him at the current valuation, and Perkins led the list—Perkins, who watched him as a cat does a mouse, and who fell foul of him innumerable times each day: while Mrs. Perkins, mindful of Russell’s revelations, tried hard, but failed miserably, to be hospitable.

Nor did Philip and the prodigal prove congenial. They amused themselves by a frequent interchange of scantily veiled insults, staying perpetually and perilously near downright trouble of the head-breaking sort.

But the most pronounced ill will was felt by Franz.

No man fancies seeing the woman he loves controlled and commanded, with scant appreciation of her rights, by another, even when that other is her brother. This Franz had to witness, and his soul was not particularly prolific in patience either.

Just how often in the course of an evening he would have liked to take Geoff by the throat rose nightly into a handsome aggregate, for the impulse flourished mightily.

As for Geoff, his selfishness was on the alert. His sister had never known young men and here were three, and of the three, one was unmistakably in love with her, and supposing she should marry again. The thought was like a chilly devil. It gave him the shivers. Clearly Margaret must be removed from the Perkins’ home and the Perkins’ influence.

Fortunately, at this juncture, Madame Dennie’s bankers in Paris forwarded a considerable sum of money, and notwithstanding his many resolutions to the contrary he permitted his habits to get the better of his purpose and with the major portion of the remittance in his possession, vanished from the quiet he had threatened to disturb.

Then was experienced a sense of relief by all. They had been happy until he came. Margaret had imparted to their intercourse the charm of refinement—the gentlest of companionship, and this is the best of friendship and the best of love.

It was a night or so after Geoff’s departure. Perkins and Franz were in the library waiting for Margaret to join them. The former was worthily engaged in an attempt to improve the passing moments by vitriolic comments upon the morals of the profligate, a singularly congenial theme with him. He had aired his grievance against Geoff, and was basking in the agreeable glow of Franz’s approval, when the door opened and Margaret entered the room. On seeing her he cried as if in astonishment:

“Why! What———-”

For Margaret was gowned entirely in some soft white fabric. He had never seen her in anything but black.

“Why!—I say—” It was Perkins who spoke, surveying her with the greatest admiration. “I say, you never looked half so dear or beautiful!”

Perkins was a privileged character, and said a good deal the rest could not but wish they might.

“Now,” he began again plaintively, “I call this rough—very rough, indeed. I’ve got to go to the Monroes’ and say good-by to Bessie’s sister and her two young ones... but, I’ll be back in three-quarters of an hour. You see, to-night her sister and the two young ones go home and I have rashly agreed to see that they get safely started on their journey. I don’t and didn’t want to do this, but Bessie’s mother said it would be a nice thing for me to do, and she is a woman you can’t say no to. One of these days I must tell you about Bessie’s mother, as she is the most remarkable lady of my acquaintance. She is always wanting a franchise. When it isn’t a franchise it’s an amendment and that’s something you add to something else to make it different. She is interested in abolishing whatever she disapproves of, which I think myself would be a fine way to get rid of what you don’t like. She is a member of more societies than I can recall, and she won’t wear song-birds in her hat—you simply couldn’t induce her to. I think if she could she would manage everybody’s business except her own, which doesn’t interest her. It is currently reported that she talked Mr. Monroe, who was a very superior man with a cork leg, straight into his coffin—from all accounts the place for him, because he drank like a fish. I assure you it’s with the utmost difficulty that I keep her from calling on you. I don’t think I ever mentioned it, but where Bessie and her mother are concerned I am but little better than ripened fruit. Now I must go.”

And before Margaret could reply to his outburst, Perkins was gone.

Franz had seated himself at the piano, idly fingering the keys. Margaret had taken her place beside the fire. She was rather wishing that Mrs. Perkins, who had slipped out an hour before, “to be gone five minutes,” would return.

All at once, Franz turning from the piano, looked at her as if trying to solve some problem.

Was she still absorbed by thoughts of the past, or did the present speak louder to her? Did her change of dress bear any significance... could she possibly forget the social barriers that stood between them? What a fool he was not to know more of woman’s ways. All the locked secrets of her heart were hidden from him, he could but guess and wonder.

“Won’t you play for me?” Margaret asked.

It was a new experience, that of being left alone with Becker; she was not quite easy in it. Franz turned to the keyboard. “What would you like to have me play?” he asked.

“Whatever you are in the mood for.”

Franz’s fingers rested caressingly upon the keys. “I shall improvise for you.”

Then low and soft, as though each note was a love word, he began—his fingers shaping into sound his thoughts. As he played these changed from doubt to certainty and the blood rushed tingling through his veins.

The all but imperceptible rustle of Margaret’s dress caused him to look up. The song of doubt, entreaty and of triumph stopped abruptly. She was standing at his side, pale and breathless, as though drawn there by a spell.

Then the red burned upon her cheeks—she would have turned away.

“Don’t go! Don’t leave me—you must not! Not until I know!”

He caught one of her hands into his own and held it firmly, but she offered no resistance.

“You must tell me now—now,” he said. “I can wait no longer, Margaret!—Margaret!”

“What shall I tell you?” she asked in tones so low he could scarcely hear. It gave him courage as hers seemed to ebb, for she was pale and trembling.

“That you love me!” he cried, “that you love me, Margaret! That you love me and will be my wife.” And he drew her into his arms. “Margaret! Margaret!” repeating her name in an ecstacy of delight. “Is it so? Do you love me, dear?”

She put up her hand appealingly as if she entreated him to say no more.

Slowly he loosed his arms from about her and she sank down into a chair, while Franz regarded her with a troubled brow.

“Let me think!” she gasped. “Oh! let me think!” Then sadly: “I have lost my friend. I am so sorry—so sorry.”

“Yes,” Franz answered steadily, “you must choose now and forever between your friend and your lover.”

On the table beside Margaret’s chair lay the book she had been reading that afternoon. A black bordered handkerchief was visible where it rested in the leaves of the half-opened volume marking her place. In their nervous wanderings her eyes fell upon it and their roving glance was instantly arrested.

The memory of what had been fell like a cloud, blotting out the present.

Franz saw the handkerchief, too, saw that she shrank from it. He stretched forth his hand and took up the bit of black and white. He held it in his tightened grasp until it was a crushed and crumpled heap in his broad palm, then it was dropped to be whirled up in momentary brightness by the fire.

Margaret gave a little cry. What it meant he knew, for it was glad, free and bouyant, as if a load had been lifted from her by the single act.

She put out her arms and Franz sank down on his knees before her. A new feeling surged into his heart. He had felt a man’s desire for possession—now, when the victory was won, this was changed to infinite tenderness. He looked up into her face and saw what a woman’s love was like, and he was well content.

“Margaret,” he said, “Margaret, has it all ended—the past? Has the new day dawned for us—for both of us?”

And Margaret, her hand resting on his shoulder, answered, “Yes.”

How long they were together after that neither of them knew. The happy moments are those that are never counted. Only misery has time to note the flight of time and to curse its slowness, grumbling at the lagging seconds.

But she had space to tell him of the life she had lived, the life that took its place that night with the things to be forgotten.

Perkins, returning from seeing his friends started on their journey, chanced to open the library door quietly and saw something which he subsequently described to Philip as “paralyzing.”

His face grew very red—so red, that the freckles on it looked white and sickly by comparison.

He closed the door softly and tiptoed to the opposite side of the hall where he stood for a long time lost in profound thought. He might have stood there for an indefinite period had he not heard some one come up the steps and fumble around in the outer darkness for the bell.

It was Philip, and before he succeeded in finding what he was searching for, the door was opened by young Perkins who, seizing him by the neck, whispered hoarsely in his ear:

“Don’t utter a sound! Don’t!—or I shall strangle you on the spot.”

With no further explanation Philip was dragged back through the hall—Perkins executing a wild dance the while—and up to Perkins’ apartments. Here he was relinquished from his friend’s forceful grasp, becoming once more a free agent.

“What’s got into you, Perkins?” he asked, adjusting his collar and cravat.

“It’s settled!” Perkins said excitedly; “they have arranged it—and here I figured all along that I should have to do it for them, which just shows what a billy-goat I am. Aren’t you glad, old fellow?”

“Look here, Perkins,” Philip remonstrated reproachfully, “why don’t you tell me what you are talking about?”

“You fool! Haven’t you got any sense?—Franz has gone and done it!”

Whereat, instead of being offended at such unusual language as applied to himself, Philip clutched Perkins much as Perkins had previously clutched him and they danced madly back and forth across the room.

“I pledge you my sacred word of honor,” Perkins managed to gasp in the midst of their careering, “I pledge you my sacred word of honor I felt as though I should faint—actually faint. I was paralyzed.”

“Why, see here!” and Philip came to a stand, struck by an idea he had long cherished but had lost sight of for the moment—“I thought you were in love with her yourself.”

“So I am. I adore her! positively adore her, you know, but what’s a fellow to do when he feels himself thoroughly unworthy, like the dust beneath her feet?”

He folded his fat hands resignedly over the central region of his plump person—their favorite resting-place.

“You see, Philip, I could never satisfy her as Franz can and will; besides it’s the most monstrous presumption to imagine even that she could care for a badly freckled specimen like myself. Dear old Franz! he will have his opportunity now, for you know she is very rich, has something tremendous a year, and she will gain a defender who will protect her from that blackguard of a brother of hers. Altogether, it is too lovely for words—quite ideal, you know.”

Philip looked at him admiringly. “I declare you are a good little beggar!”

Perkins winced at the adjective “little”. He did not like it applied to himself. He shook his head reflectively.

“My dear fellow, it could never have been me—and, too, there is Bessie. It has become solely a question of ripened fruit between us. Besides”—manfully—“I have from the first considered Margaret as so far above me that I have never wearied in my affection for Bessie—or her mother,” he made haste to add.

Philip laughed.

“Particularly her mother.”

“I simply include Mrs. Monroe, because it is impossible to leave her out. She is so accustomed to mixing in things.”

“I suppose they will live abroad pretty much,” Philip said. “It’s the place for Franz.”

“I say,” Perkins burst out blankly, “that’s so, isn’t it? You know she thinks him a great composer.”

“And so he is,” Philip replied.

Perkins gazed at him mournfully, blinking his eyes, and when he spoke it was in gloomy accents.

“He will take her away, won’t he? Having her here forever is all up. Do you know I hadn’t thought of that—not till this minute. Really, it very much distresses me, just the mere thought.” Vouching for the truth of what he said, a tear trickled languidly down his nose, and after hanging reluctant upon its very tip as though undecided as to its ultimate course, fell to his clasped hands where it glistened like a dewdrop in May.

“I—this is very overpowering. I had lost sight of the future entirely in my great pleasure at what has taken place. Bless me! I never speculated on the results—never once.”

He raised his glance pathetically to his friend’s face. “It’s a damn poor showing for cousins, isn’t it?”

The round face with its stubby fringe and blinking eyes shaded by their colorless lashes destroyed Philip’s gravity.

“Why don’t you get them to adopt you?” he said.

“Do you fancy they would?”—with a gleam of hope. Then as he saw the smile playing about the corners of Philip’s mouth: “You are jollying. Please don’t, old fellow—not now.”

“We shall have to get our comfort from the belief that this is for their great good,” Philip said.

“So we must,” Perkins acquiesced cheerfully. “What a disgusting pig I am to think of myself when they are so happy.”

Later, on going down-stairs, they encountered

Franz and Margaret in the hall, and Philip, glancing at Margaret as she stood just beneath the tempered light falling from the chandelier, decided he had never seen any one so beautiful—except Barbara, who was incomparable. He divined that now to her, life seemed to hold much—to be so fine a gift.

The two young men left the house together. Philip at first tried to talk, but Becker made his replies with such indifference that he soon abandoned the trial as useless.

Franz’s elation was scarcely concealed by his silence or his reserve. It spoke in the exultant heaving of his breast, in his quick elastic step, in his every movement. As they came to his door he broke the silence with:

“I shall go on with you, Philip, and see you home.”

“As you like, old fellow,” Philip answered.

No more was said until they bade each other good night.

Franz turned back alone—but not to retrace his steps. Instead he rambled through the streets of the sleeping town—to find himself—he knew not how, a dozen times beneath her window. So he wore out the night, and when at last the day broke, it found him going in the direction of his home.

VIII

Philip was looking from his window out upon the street where the first snows of winter lay slowly melting in the sunshine, when a cab rattled up through the mud and slush. It stopped before the house and his interest became active.

“It’s the saintly Anson! This is, indeed, penance for my sins.”

Almost with the thought Anson stepped from the cab and was followed by a gentleman who had no small trouble in wriggling through the narrow door.

Philip, with a groan of disgust, recognized the junior member of the firm employing his brother.

“As if Anson were not affliction enough,” he thought, “he brings Mr. Hale to bore us—especially me, by prosy recitals of his own worth.”

He promptly put himself beyond his brother’s range of vision, as he wished to avoid the necessity of going down-stairs until the last moment.

He resumed his work, and for an hour or more wrote steadily on, then he threw down his pen and was resting his eyes, his hands before them, when the door opened and his mother entered the room. He knew who it was without looking up, since she was the only one of all the family who ever invaded his privacy.

“What is it, mother?” he asked.

“May I see you, Philip? Are you very busy?”

There was something in her voice that caused him to glance around quickly. “Why, what is it, mother?”

He left his chair and went to her side. He saw that her face was red and swollen as though from much weeping. “What is it, dear?” He put his arms about her. “Does Anson bring bad news of any sort?”

By a sudden gesture she freed herself from his embrace, covering her face with her apron.

“Oh! Philip, it’s awful.” And she began to cry softly.

“But what is it—why don’t you tell me?”

He tried to draw the apron away that he might see her face again, but she resisted his gentle force.

“What is it, dear? Is it Anson—is he ill?”

“It’s worse than that! Oh! a million times worse!”

At her words the desperate sickening feeling begotten of some great and unknown calamity, the forerunner of actual knowledge, came into his heart.

“You must tell me, mother, or how can I ever help you?”

“I shall, only wait a minute until I am calm, for you must know—and you must save him!”

“I save him! What do you mean? What has happened to him?”

“You won’t blame him? Promise me you won’t be hard, now before I tell you. That you won’t say of think unkind things of him? Promise me, promise me, Philip!” For he had hesitated.

“I promise, mother, for your sake.”

“No! no! for his own.”

“For his sake then. It is all one.”

“It is difficult to tell even you, Philip.”

He put his arms about her once more. “There, you don’t mind me, you know,” he said tenderly. “Dear little mother, so brave and good, you really can’t mean you mind me?”

It was in a hushed strained voice, as though she feared the shameful secret she had to confide would find a listener in the very air, that she told Philip of his brother’s fall from grace.

“He has taken money from the firm. A thousand dollars. It was not stealing.” She was quick to shield him. “He expected—he fully expected to pay it back, down to the last penny, but the amount grew and grew, and soon it was beyond him. He meant to be honest. He has been so good always, no one would dare accuse him of stealing. You know it was not; say it was not! Say you don’t think it!”

She had given way utterly to her grief, and to quiet her he said:

“Of course it wasn’t stealing.”

“There!” reassured and rendered almost happy. “There, I knew you would understand. Why, even Mr. Hale speaks of it in the kindest way. He knows Anson to be perfectly reliable—he doesn’t dare question it. Everybody knows how good he is, he wouldn’t think of doing wrong. He has explained it all. At first he took the money as an advance upon his salary and then the indebtedness grew. He was never able to make good what he had borrowed. It was so easy to take what he needed—so easy to think he could repay it. He meant to do what was right: I am sure of this. If I were not it would kill me.” She paused for an instant. “It was unfair to put such a pitfall in any man’s path, no matter how honest. It was unjust, and they should suffer, but—but”—looking up appealingly into his face—“we must save Anson, must we not? For if we don’t—he will be arrested and then every one will know. The whole town. Think of the disgrace—the awful humiliation! We must save him. He is your brother, and deep in your heart you love him. Say you do!”

Philip, looking at her, bowed, broken, crushed, scarcely daring to raise her eyes to his, answered that he loved his brother, but in his soul he cursed him for the suffering he had caused.

“Mr. Hale assures me that if the money is returned at once, it shall be kept a secret—not even the girls need know. You are the only one who can do this, Philip. It all rests with you. Will you save him?”

“For his own sake and for yours—but, most of all for yours, dear, yes.”

In an instant he remembered what that money was to do for him. More than money ever did before. The thought made him sick with a deadly nausea. He saw his hope sink lower and lower until it entirely ceased to be and despair stood in its place. He had all but won in the struggle, and now to have the fruits snatched from him at the last moment! He had saved for another to scatter.

“What will become of Anson?” he asked. “Where will he go? Of course he can’t remain with the firm. It wouldn’t be permitted, I suppose, nor pleasant.”

“He has a friend in the West—some place in California—in business there. He has been urging Anson for months to come to him, and now, it is all most fortunate, he has decided to go. He can’t very well stay here. If he should there is danger the secret might be discovered: he would have to get a new position and people would wonder, but once he is gone, they will forget all about him and then there will be no talk. No one will ever learn why he left.”

Philip looked at her commiseratingly. With his hand he brushed away the white hair lying in disorder upon her forehead.

“Poor mother, poor mother! and you have been so proud of him!”

“As I shall always be. My poor Anson! As I shall always be—as I am of all of you.” She smiled bravely through her tears.

“I shall go for the money. I’d better go at once or I may find the bank closed.”

He spoke collectedly and his mother did not divine from any words of his that he was preparing to make the greatest sacrifice possible to him. Nor would he have her know. There was misery enough for her as it was. Yet the thought of what he had to do brought him unspeakable agony. It was not the loss of money, for money of itself was nothing to him, but everything in his little world was held in place by what he was giving up.

“I shall get the money,” he repeated quietly. “I shall go for it at once.”

“You are so good!” she cried. “You were always my comfort. I can rely upon you more than on the others.”

She reached up and kissed him again and again. “Though no one ever knows of the sacrifice you make, Anson and I will, and we will honor you for it. Do not think that we undervalue it.” He kissed her softly. No amount of praise could have wrung the money from him, but her tears had been more potent.

“You don’t care,” she questioned, “that the girls are not to be told of what you do for Anson?”

“No, dear. Glory of that sort does not in the least appeal to me. I have no objections to being deprived of it. What I do I do quite willingly. I am satisfied with your thanks and the consciousness that I have in a measure eased this burden for you.” He smiled sadly down upon her. “Now I will go,” and unclasping her arms from about his neck, he turned and left the room.

After a few moments’ waiting to regain her composure, Mrs. Southard went down to the parlor where Anson and Hale sat, the former crestfallen and not over-confident of Philip’s generosity.

To Hale she said: “My son will be back in a few moments with the sum you require. He has just gone for it.”

Anson’s face lit up with joy. He was safe! How lucky it was that Philip had kept his money instead of spending it!

They did not have to wait long for Philip’s return. His mother, who had been watching from the window, saw him as he came into the yard, and quitting the room, joined him in the hall.

“You have it? You were in time?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes,” he said, placing a bundle of bills in her hand. “It is a thousand dollars you need, is it not?”

“Yes. It is so good of you. How can I ever tell you what it means to me!”

With a heavy step, as if all the vigor had left him, Philip slowly mounted the stairs leading up to the floor above.

“Won’t you come in and see Mr. Hale?” his mother called.

“I had rather not, dear,” he answered.

He walked as one in a dream, mechanically closing the door behind him as he entered the room. Then he dropped wearily into his chair beside the table.

He was overwhelmed by the catastrophe. A comprehension of it all, and the probable results, began to come to him. He threw the few hundred dollars remaining of his little fortune on the table. They were worthless, so far as the purpose for which they had been saved was concerned.

Stunned and stupid he gazed at the little heap of paper. Each dollar represented some privation in his daily life.

With savage fervor he brought his clenched hand down on the little heap, while from between his set teeth he ground out curses, for now came a frenzy of disappointment.

It soon subsided, as all violent emotions are bound to do.

Only a dull pain remained. Still he kept his gaze fastened on the money before him. It reminded him of what the sum had once been—and was no longer. He must begin again,—go through the round of petty self-denial, the soul-stunting process of small economy.

“It will be so long—so very long until I get so much again,” he thought. “While I am about it a thousand things may happen to rob me of the inspiration of her love. And all for the theft of a wretched paltry pittance, so small it could have done Anson no good, and yet so large it may be the ruin of my hopes. It is unjust that I should suffer for him! A thousand dollars! Bah! The commonplaceness of it!”

With his fist hard pressed upon the table and his eyes fixed on vacancy, he sat and thought; thought with a brain mad and drunk with grief. He would have liked to turn his face toward the wall and give up. He was worsted. The props with which he had sustained himself were gone.

How he hated Anson! The fool!—who had lived in a false world of pious frauds; whose manhood had failed at the one test to which he had been put; who had succumbed to temptation at the first opportunity.

To cover up this—to put a patch upon the torn garment of his brother’s honesty he must suffer. How he hated him!

He heard Hale leave the house, but dared not look to see him go. He took all his hope, all his aspirations with him. And now how would it all end? Could he ask Barbara to wait much longer? How would he meet her father’s exactions? What excuse was there to offer for the sudden vanishing of his savings? Mr. Gerard would think he had been lied to from the start.

Down-stairs the girls and Mrs. Southard were making ready for Anson’s departure. It had been arranged that he should leave at once. They moved about noiselessly, talking in whispers, the girls wildly curious, yet not venturing to question their mother. The whole atmosphere was as though some one had died. It pervaded the entire house. Where he sat in his room, Philip felt it. In fancy he saw his mother packing Anson’s trunk—saw her tears fall silently as she folded away his clothes—and as his fancy saw it, so he knew it must be in reality.

Despite the load that lay upon him crushing him to earth, he was glad she had been spared the greater humiliation and disgrace that but for him would have come to them. The realization of this lessened the extent of his own anguish somewhat, at least it was a consolation to feel that he had shielded her, no matter at what cost.

It was dark when his mother finally knocked at his door and told him that supper was ready.

“I’m not hungry,” he answered.

She opened the door and came in, saying in some surprise as she did so, for his lamp was unlighted:

“Why, Philip, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, dear, nothing. Why do you ask?”

“You don’t begrudge the money that kept us all from shame—you don’t regret that?” She put her hand upon his shoulder.

“I regret nothing. For you I would have done a hundred times what I did to-day, and counted it a small recompense for what you have given me all these years.”

“You mean it, Philip?”

“Certainly. I was sitting here in the dusk thinking it over—thinking how glad I am that it was in my power to do this for you—and him. No matter what the outcome may be, I shall not regret it for one instant.”

Her hand caressed his cheek softly: “Won’t you come down to supper?”

“What’s the use? I couldn’t eat now.”

“But you will not see Anson again. It may be years before he comes back to us. Do come down.”

“I shall go with him to the train. Won’t that do just as well? I wish to think a while longer, here in the dark by myself.”

“I know he will be delighted to have you,” she said. “Poor Anson! It has been a terrible blow to him.”

Philip smiled queerly to himself. He doubted the delight Anson would derive from his company just then, but he made no response.

“It seems unfair to ask any more of you,” his mother said with reluctance, “but Anson is almost penniless. If you could only help just a little it might make it easier for him.”

Philip gathered up the bills that still lay on the table where he had thrown them. “Here are one or two hundred dollars,” he said, “he may as well have them. They are of no use to me, and you will feel so much better to have him go, if you know he has something to fall back on!”

She took the money gratefully. “He has promised to repay all he has had from you, so don’t worry about not getting it back.”

“Ah! dear,” and he laughed, “that does not worry me in the least. I don’t bother about what he will or will not do.”

She turned to the door: “I shall call you then when he is ready.” And she left him to his solitude.

Philip wondered when he was once more alone what his mother’s action would have been had she known what that money was to do for him. On the whole he concluded it was just as well she did not know. He became reflective. With practise it might be possible for him to acquire a habit which would enable him to derive a melancholy pleasure from being miserable. He laughed aloud.

“I never knew that farce and tragedy touched hands,” he thought.

It was quite late when his mother called from the foot of the stairs: “Anson is ready, Philip. If you will come, he will be so pleased to have you go down to the station with him.”

He went down and found her waiting for him in the hall. “You will be kind,” she whispered anxiously. “You won’t say anything hard, when you are alone with him? Poor boy! he feels it so keenly. You will be considerate of him?”

“Yes, dear. Don’t distress yourself. I shall be as kind as I know how.”

They went into the sitting-room where Anson was bidding good-by to his sisters. Philip had no wish to witness his mother’s farewells. He picked up a valise his brother was to carry with him, saying: “I shall start on ahead, Anson.”

“All right. I shall be along presently,” his brother answered.

Philip escaped into the open air. Soon he heard Anson coming, waited until he caught up, and the two brothers, without a word, set off for the station very much as though they were trying to run away from each other, but had foolishly elected to go in the same direction while about it.

Their destination was reached before either had framed a speech diplomatic enough for the occasion.

Anson went to ascertain how much time he had and returned almost immediately to say that he had ten minutes left.

“But,” he added, “you needn’t wait on my account.”

“I’ll see you off. I told mother I would.”

“Of course—if you like. I thought you might want to go home.”

They fell to pacing back and forth across the platform, still apparently trying to get away from each other. Neither spoke, and it was only when the train rushed in with a trailing echo of sound from out the darkness, that Anson found courage to say hurriedly from the door of his car:

“Mother told you, didn’t she, that I would pay up all I have had from you? I intend to and shall, but I can’t do it at once.” The whistle of the engine broke in upon him. “I’ll do it sure, Philip, I won’t forget.”

“There is no haste,” his brother answered. “Don’t sacrifice yourself because of me.”

He extended his hand. “Good-by and good luck to you.”

The train began to move.

“It was awfully good of you. You have done a lot for me. I——”

The train bore him swiftly away, but standing as he did on the rear platform of the last car, the door at his back, Philip saw him wave his handkerchief and he responded in a like fashion, wishing he were certain Anson could see him as plainly as he saw Anson.

And so he stood until long after the train had vanished, a miserable lonely feeling within him.

It was all hopeless—the whole affair.

His mother would never be quite the same again, she could never live beyond the memory of that day. At last he muttered:

“Poor devil! I am positive he didn’t mean to harm any one, nor did he mean to be bad. He has not the sense in the first place. What he did, was simply the blundering clumsy conduct of a fool.”

IX

Changes occurred in view of the altered relations between Franz and Margaret.

It came to be Perkins’ nightly custom to formulate labored excuses that would enable him to retire to his own apartments, for as he said to Philip: “Just suppose it was one of us!”

Nor did the change stop here. Mrs. Perkins suddenly found it convenient to spend her evenings in the back parlor where the arrangement of lights was more to her taste and where she could sew without straining her eyes.

Perkins was treating himself to a few remarks one evening before taking Philip—who had just come in—up-stairs for a smoke:

“I think I got off a very good thing to-day,” he was saying, “not too amusing, but very bright and to the point. When you take into account that it comes from a fellow who lays no claim to being a wit, why it’s not half bad. If you are all dying to hear, I might be induced to repeat it.” He did not wait for their entreaties however. “You see, it was this. It’s quite complicated and calls for a lot of explanation. I was at Bessie’s this afternoon and a Mrs. Cavendish came in. Philip and Franz know her, but, of course, you don’t.” This last was to Margaret. “Well, we were talking about family. Mrs. Cavendish is great on family—she has been separated from her husband—that is part of the story, and it’s got to be remembered.” Perkins came to a stand-still. “Now, isn’t it strange that only the most gifted intellects can master the intricacies of a funny story. Really, you know, I am getting it all wrong. Oh, yes, this is it. Bessie was speaking of some one—I forget who, luckily that doesn’t matter—and Mrs. Cavendish said—‘He was a connection of mine by marriage.’ And I said—to Bessie of course, ‘I suppose she would call him a disconnection by divorce now.’.rdquo;

Philip turned to Margaret: “Have you met Bessie yet?”

“No; Ballard refuses to bring her to the house.”

Perkins shook his head. “My mother and Bessie don’t get on.”

“Is it settled, Perkins?” Philip asked laughingly.

“I suppose it is. You see a fellow hasn’t a ghost of a chance when a girl and her mother regularly set out to marry him. When that’s the case he might just as well beg them to name the day—for they are bound to divide the spoils. Yes,” with placid resignation, “I really suppose I am as good as done for. I know it from the way their cook treats me. When the cook treats you with a deference you suppose she would only bestow on the heavenly host, you may be altogether positive your intentions have been discussed in the kitchen by members of the family.”

Philip turned from Perkins to gaze gloomily into the fire. He was wondering, as he had many times of late, how he would ever summon the resolution to tell Mr. Gerard of his altered fortunes.

Perkins, surveying the faces of his friends with an angelic smile upon his own freckled features, noted his abstraction.

“What’s the matter, Philip?” he asked. “Nothing. I am simply in the depths to-night. I fear I am not very desirable to have about in my present mood.”

“Is it the work?” asked Margaret.

“It’s everything!” He roused himself with an effort. “Utter and complete dissatisfaction with my surroundings for one thing—the feeling that I am dying with dry rot. I suppose to you it seems fresh and interesting. You can’t fancy what it is to those who have to live here. The narrowness and meagerness of it all!”

“It’s not so bad,” Perkins said. “The town has lots of intelligent and charming people and if you didn’t go about with a chip on your shoulder, you would find them out.”

“I detest intelligence,” Philip retorted. “We have filled up the valleys by pulling down the mountains—when we get a dead level the millennium will be reached. All that will be left for the unfortunates who live then to do, will be to lie down and long for death.”

“I say,” said Perkins interrupting him, “what’s wrong with intelligence, anyhow?”

“Everything’s wrong with it. I can respect ignorance. As with any deformity it has its own pathetic dignity, but this thin spread of middle-class intelligence, which is one part enlightenment to nine parts of stupid prejudice, goes far to make me an ardent supporter of gaggings, clubbings and burnings at the stake.”

Margaret laughed: “Is intelligence so dreadful as that?”

“I think it is——” then he stopped abruptly, for the door opened and Geoffrey Ballard appeared upon the threshold.

With an attempt at dignity he moved toward his sister’s chair. No one spoke. The surprise was too intense. But they observed that he walked as though tired.

Margaret shrank from him, her face paling. Every particle of happy color had fled from it when he entered the room. As Geoff bent and kissed her, Franz came to his feet with what sounded like a smothered oath upon his lips. After the perfunctory greetings with his sister were disposed of, Geoff swung around languidly to the others. First, he shook hands with Perkins with much cordiality. Next he saluted Philip:

“I am very glad to see you again, Mr. Southard,” he said.

“Thanks awfully,” growled Philip. He resented this intrusion. Besides he was not in a good humor. He didn’t propose to be decent to a man he disliked. That was asking too much.

Silently and avoiding the danger of words, Franz and Geoff acknowledged each other’s existence. They consoled themselves with looking their hate.

While they were thus engaged, Perkins stood on tiptoe at Philip’s side and said in a hoarse whisper: “What business has he coming here sticking in and spoiling our fun! Damn him! Why doesn’t he stay away? I should like to punch his head for him jolly good and well. That’s what I would! I came mighty near doing it, too, when he shook hands with me.” And Perkins bristled pugnaciously.

Such was the prodigal’s return and such his welcome.

Not many days elapsed before there dawned upon him a premonition of what had happened during his absence, and a chilly and uncomfortable premonition it was.

Most assuredly an understanding had been established between Margaret and the German. Whether it was love or a deepened friendship, he could not decide and he was reluctant to inquire. Until now he had never felt the least wish to familiarize himself with the emotions that swayed her, and he did not know just how to begin.

Geoff finally hit upon Perkins as a likely source of information. He sought him out and asked to be enlightened as to the relationship between his sister and “that Dutchman,”—and Perkins informed him,—becoming more and more pleased as gloom spread over the face of his questioner. Geoff was seriously alarmed. But if any one thought that after selling his sister at so great an advantage to himself as he had done he was going to sit supinely down and not endeavor to save the purchase money, they did him a rank injustice.

He began to urge upon his sister the advisability of their being domiciled elsewhere. He didn’t demand any radical move to start with, simply that they obtain a house. This he urged on the grounds that they were wearing out their welcome at the Perkinses.

“We can’t impose upon their good nature much longer, you know,” he said. “And since you are so very well satisfied here, don’t you think we had better settle ourselves in some more permanent fashion?”

Margaret demurred, but what he said about the Perkinses made an impression upon her.

“I think,” Geoff continued, “you would enjoy a home of your own, where you could be mistress. Russell could, of course, relieve you of every burden. She is fully competent to order a much more extensive establishment than you will care to maintain. I find there is just such a place as you would fancy. It is furnished and ready for occupancy. The owner is holding some political office in Washington, his family is with him, and their home is for rent, providing a proper tenant can be found.”

He did not think it worth while to explain that he had learned the chief reason why the house stood vacant was that the location was unhealthful, especially during the winter months. He was positive he should experience no ill effects from this and he could afford to take a few risks with his sister.

“I wish you would think it over, Margaret,” he urged.

“Why can’t you remain here?” said Margaret. And her glance wandered wistfully over the room. He was asking a great deal. She was very happy.

“I don’t begin to have your knack at getting on with people. I trust you will not speak of this until you know what you will do.”

All this while Geoff was wonderfully circumspect. Never before had he been so considerate or kind. He seemed to have undergone a thorough reformation. He knew if he did not accomplish what he was striving for he would find himself face to face with ruin. This steadied him astonishingly. He showed no inclination to leave and for the moment conquered his tendencies to dissipation. He even ceased to be disagreeable to either Perkins or Philip, but he made it his duty to see that the interviews his sister had alone with Becker were few and far between—and as brief as possible.

So it happened, when one afternoon in December Margaret announced she had taken the lease of a house and intended going into it immediately,—that Perkins and his mother listened to her in horror-stricken amazement. They could scarcely believe it.

“What!” cried Perkins: “what! leave us, you know! A house of your own! Why, you can have all of this one if you will only include mother and me in the bargain.”

“What place is it?” Mrs. Perkins asked.

Margaret turned to her brother: “What did you say the name was, Geoff?”

Geoff braced himself mentally as he answered: “The Springer property.”

He was tolerably sure they knew the house and its reputation. Nor was he in error. What people in a town of ten thousand or less don’t know of their neighbors’ affairs isn’t worth mentioning. They knew all there was to know of the house in question.

“Why, look here!” Perkins stuttered, his words falling over one another in their haste for utterance. “You can’t go there, you know. It will never do, you see. The house is damp as all get out from cellar to garret, and it’s so mildewy in some of the rooms that the paper won’t stick to the walls. I have been there lots of times and have seen it. Why, I say, you should just see the Springer children. They are sick all the time. You can’t go there. We won’t let you.” And he fell to pacing the floor, his thumbs tucked in his waistcoat, as was his wont when nervous or excited.

Geoff watched him from between narrowed lids. There was a steely glitter in the look, and a baleful twitching at the corners of his mouth, as though he had it strong within him to express a good deal more than was policy just then.

“You have been most kind to us,” he said; “you overwhelm us with your goodness. Still I know my sister will be better contented in her own home. As for the dampness of which you speak, I will see to that. It is a small matter and can be readily overcome.”

“Aren’t you contented here?” Mrs. Perkins asked quickly, turning to Margaret. “You know we will do anything for you—anything.”

Margaret seized both her hands and clasped them to her breast, then raised them to her lips while her eyes glistened: “I have never been so happy. Not in all my life. Oh, you are so dear and kind! How shall I ever thank you for all you’ve done for me!”

“We can not possibly add to the sense of gratitude beneath which we are already struggling,” Geoff interposed. He spoke coldly and insolently. He wished to stop this burst of sentiment or else it might go to dangerous lengths. He succeeded in mortally offending Perkins, who said hotly and with the bottled-up acrimony of many days in his tones:

“Why do you cut in when my mother and Margaret are talking! You are always cutting in where you haven’t any right to.”

This outburst quieted things down for the moment and no more was said about Madame Dennie’s plans for the future, but in two minds at least the thought of her pending departure was uppermost.

When Geoff quitted the library a few minutes later, Mrs. Perkins, excusing herself to Margaret, followed promptly in his wake, and at once returned to the charge with unabated zeal.

“Are you going to take that child there and selfishly jeopardize her health? Are you? Answer me.”

“That’s exactly what I am going to do, my dear Mrs. Perkins, and the sooner the better, if you will allow me to say so.”

“Then,” said Mrs. Perkins, “you are the most contemptible—the most thoroughly contemptible of living creatures! That’s what I think of you, and I am the easier for having said it!”

“Don’t you think, my dear Mrs. Perkins, that you rather strain the case?” Geoff retorted. “After all, one’s own business is about the only business one should undertake.”

Mrs. Perkins flushed, but she put a check upon herself. “I positively decline to quarrel with you. I don’t, for I see through you. I won’t quarrel no matter what you do and you needn’t try to make me.”

“Your conception of what constitutes incompatibility would prove entertaining,” Geoff replied. “I have the impression that that stage of disagreement has already been reached. The only course open for my sister is to leave.”

Mrs. Perkins fairly gasped at the deftness with which he made their dislike of him embrace Margaret as well, but being of an emotional temperament she trusted herself to speak no further and retired to her own rooms where she could weep in solitude.

And so it was decided that Margaret should leave the Perkinses.

When the day came—and it came quickly, as Geoff’s patience was all but exhausted—she wept as she passed out through the wide doors that had opened so hospitably to receive her.

“We shall see a great deal of each other, shall we not?” she said to Mrs. Perkins. “You will come to me whenever you can? I fear the cold will keep me somewhat confined, but you won’t mind it as I shall, and you will come often to see me?”

Perkins and his mother went down to see that she was properly installed in her home, and then sadly took their leave of her just as the night came on. Geoff, being inordinately elated by his success, was absent, celebrating his victory in a spree.

In spite of the fires and a superheated furnace below stairs, the house had a musty odor and the big rooms held a damp chill that could not be warmed out of them.

Finally Geoff came in, with unsteady step and bloodshot eyes, to add what he could to the load resting on the poor little shoulders, which for years had been so weighted down with care and weariness. He found her lonely, miserable and in tears. This exhibition of weakness, as he termed it, he took in very bad part.

The initial dinner was a meal long remembered, with Geoff, stupid and maudlin from too much drink, constantly going to sleep and as constantly waking to growl his complaints.

When it was finished, he took himself from his sister’s sight, while Margaret waited for Perkins and Franz to come as they had said they would.

Eight o’clock brought them and the evening was passed pleasantly enough.

Madame Dennie had been suffering from a cold for some days, and the next morning she was quite ill. Her brother took no notice of this, and for several days did nothing but press forward to the goal at which he aimed. He pursued his former tactics with the utmost industry, seeing that his sister never had a moment alone with her friends; and wishing to discourage their devotion, was aggressive and rude to such an extent that Philip made just one call on Margaret and then in unmistakable language announced his intention of not repeating the experiment.

“I don’t intend to walk half-way across the town simply for the delirious joy of letting that fellow insult me!” And he kept to his word.

To be sure, with Perkins and Franz, it was different. They were blind to affronts and proof against the insufferable. For Margaret’s sake they were willing to endure the unendurable, but the ordeal was too much for them to live down without an inward revolt at least.

Franz became habitually morose and sullen. Perkins waxed shockingly profane and his mother spent most of her time on the verge of tears; and all this while Margaret’s condition grew rapidly worse.

When brother and sister were alone it was the eternal harping on the one theme. Geoff wished her to go East with him—anywhere. He gave her no peace. Morning, noon and night, he stuck to the dreary round of argument and objection.

This continued for a week. Margaret’s cold developed into an alarming cough. She was confined to her room and could see no one but Mrs. Perkins and Russell.

Having space for deliberation, Perkins was seized with a brilliant conception: a project that anticipated nothing less than the getting of Geoff drunk and starting him on what Perkins called “a protracted spree.”

He reasoned that a man of his cousin’s inclinations could only hold up so far in combating the unholy charms of a properly presented temptation.

But Perkins was not called upon to assume the tempter’s rtle. Geoff accomplished his downfall himself.

There was one fatal quality in all his plotting. He invariably gave out before the final blow was dealt.

He now exemplified this by going away when there was most cause for his remaining. He could not stand the quiet longer. He would have one bout, he told himself,—just one. When it was over with he would return and Margaret should go with him where he pleased. He felt almost safe in leaving: she was so ill.

X

Then,” said Philip shortly, “if I understand you aright, you wish me to discontinue my visits?”

Mr. Gerard was rather taken aback by the directness with which Philip put it. To be sure that was what it amounted to, but—“You see, you keep other men at a distance: you take up most of the leisure she has to devote to society. I don’t mean to be hard. I trust you appreciate the delicacy of my position—the peculiarity of it. I want to be fair to you and at the same time just to Barbara. It occurs to me that I can only accomplish this by having you——” He was very much mixed—very red and very miserable.

The cause of all his annoyance stood before him—cool and collected, but it was the calm of desperation.

The comfort of knowing this was, however, denied to Mr. Gerard. He took up the tangled thread of his discourse. “My dear boy, you must know I don’t want to seem hard”—getting a fresh start—“I don’t want to interfere with your happiness, but where my daughter is concerned I must be just. I can’t be remiss in my duty there. Now I leave it to you—to your sense of fairness. You know what I think—do what you consider right.”

“I suppose you can not understand just how I got rid of my money,” Philip said grimly.

“I confess I can’t,” Mr. Gerard replied nervously. “Your admission has been a great surprise to me. It was only a month or so ago that you had quite a large sum saved and now you inform me it’s all gone, and you don’t tell me where.”

“I can not, Mr. Gerard.”

“Of course—of course. That is your business. I appreciate that—I ask for no explanation—and I do like your frankness in coming to me at once,” but there was small favor in the glance he bestowed upon Philip. “If it’s gone—why——-” he came to a stop again.

“It is gone. Every penny of it.” Philip said relentlessly.

“It’s very unusual, very.”

“And you had rather I slow up on my visits?”

“I leave it entirely with you, as I said before. I don’t understand and I am not satisfied. I—really it may be as well for you to keep away. But do whatever you think proper.”

“You put it to me in such shape that there is just one thing I can do, and that is keep away and stay away.”

“My dear boy, I——”

Philip cut him short by turning on his heel. “You have no objection to my calling this afternoon?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. It’s right that you should.”

“Thank you,” said Philip, and took himself off, leaving Mr. Gerard puffing and agitated in the door of his office.

Philip was glad that he had carried off the honors of the interview where calmness and dispassion were involved, but he knew that the triumph was a small one, and that Mr. Gerard’s turn would come later, when he himself could but compress his lips and suffer.

He was thinking of this and bitter revolt was in his heart when he presented himself to Barbara. His face told plainly what he felt. Indeed, it was so apparent that she silently followed him into the parlor.

He threw his hat down upon a chair and stood in the center of the room looking at her, wondering how it would be possible to exist, deprived of her companionship.

“What is it, Philip? Why don’t you tell me?” she at last found courage to ask.

“It’s what I have known would happen all along. Your father——”

“What has my father done?” she interrupted him.

“He has told me I must stop coming here.”

Barbara’s eyes blazed. Her diminutive figure was drawn wrathfully up to its fullest height. “Has he dared to do that—has he dared!”

“I felt in honor bound to tell him I had been compelled to spend my savings. He said—he was very kind—that a continuation of my attentions would compromise you, and since my future was very uncertain——”

“My life is mine—it belongs to me!” she interposed. “And if I choose to give it to you, it’s mine to give. I know what I need better than he does.”

“I wish I could have told him how the money went. He evidently attributes my poverty to wild and reckless extravagance. I could see it completely finished me off in his estimation. I wish I could have told—but I couldn’t. I can’t even tell you.”

“It’s nobody’s affair but your own, and if we are satisfied I don’t see what it is to him.”

“Just the same, Barbara, he has made it his affair. He is your father, and it is his privilege.” Her little foot tapped the floor angrily. His submission offended her.

“It’s all right, Barbara.”

“It’s not all right,” she burst out. “Is it all right that our happiness should be wrecked?”

“I don’t say that. I refer to his requesting me to cease coming here. He evidently regards me as not the proper sort of person.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There is but one thing I can do.”

“And that?”

“Respect his wishes.”

“If you do, what is going to become of me?”

Philip put his hand to his aching head. That was more than he could tell. He had thought of it, too. His personal pain and anxiety gave him no concern. He had become accustomed to it, but it would be so hard for her. She had not his training in disappointment. What could he do?

“What will become of me?” she repeated, with tears in her eyes.

“As soon as I have the money it will be as it was before. The separation will be but temporary—unless you forget me.”

“I shall never forget you. I love you.”

“Then as soon as I succeed even partially, I shall come back to you. I shall work so hard, it shan’t be for long. I will succeed.” And he set his teeth. “I know I shall and it will be no ordinary success when it does come. You have faith in me?”

“Yes! yes! but that’s so far off! Think of the time we have already waited.”

“I know, dear, but I am making every effort. I know, too, that despite all his efforts a man may fail—absolutely—and through no fault of his own. He may get down and never rise, though he struggle ever so hard. There is a savage remorseless quality to life, a cruel indifference to work and worth. This risk we are compelled to take. In any business or profession it would be the same. It does not apply alone to one who thinks he can write——”

He was striding back and forth across the room. “Yet I can’t bring myself to believe that I am to be one of the failures, all I want is time—time! I know I can do so much. You must have faith in me, Barbara!”

“It has been so long,” she said sadly, going to his side and clasping both her hands about his arm, “and I am afraid. I don’t quite know of what—but I am afraid.”

“Can’t you be brave just a little longer—just a little longer?”

“I try to be—I really do, but——”

“But what?”

“I am afraid he wants me to marry Mr. Shel-den. He does not say so, but I know.” And she began to cry again, clinging to Philip the while. “I know it! I know it! and unless you save me I shall be forced into it. I can’t stand black looks and constant coercion. I shall yield. I know I shall, and my whole life will be ruined.”

“So that’s it, is it?” Philip’s voice was hoarse and dry. “So that’s it? That’s what it signifies? He wants to get me out of the road, does he?” And after a brief pause: “Do you like him in the least, Barbara?”

“I hate him.”

“He has money and all that sort of thing.”

“It’s nothing to me. I can only care for you.”

“Has your father made any positive statement of his preference, Barbara?”

She shook her head. “Of course he does not speak of it, but I know.”

“Well, I’ll go in for work harder than ever, dear—we need not despair, for we are sure of each other.”

“But—but—if I don’t see you——”

“Can’t you keep your love alive and not see me?”

“I suppose so, but you are so different from me. You don’t feel the same.”

“I feel with my whole soul, Barbara. Can I do more?”

“It breaks my heart to think I am not to see you.” She glanced up into his face. “Not to see you at all—why how shall I manage to endure it?” Her eyes grew wide, filled with a pathetic grief that made him desperate. “And now scarcely a day passes, that I do not catch a glimpse of you.”

“It can’t be for long, Barbara.”

“It may be forever.” This was said in a stifled voice.

“It’s not as if I were going away—not as if I were to leave the town. We shall see each other constantly.”

“It’s worse than if you were going away. It’s a great deal worse. Then I could make up my mind to it and could, I suppose, bear it somehow.”

“Dear,” he spoke softly, “dearest, please look up. I want to talk to you. Can’t you listen to me? Please, dear, it’s not so bad. It might be worse.”

“It’s bad enough!” without lifting her head from where it rested upon his arm. “It couldn’t be worse. I couldn’t suffer more.”

“Can’t you be hopeful? Can’t you try?”

“I do try.”

“It is coming nearer all the while. I am making money—I shall make more. Don’t you believe in my ability?”

“It’s not that. I am confident of the future, but the present is so horrible, with all manner of doubt. Do you,” looking up and letting her glance meet his for a moment, “do you honestly think it will ever be as we hope?”

“Yes. It can not be otherwise. It only means patience—only a little waiting.”

“Tell me what papa said.”

“He asked me to stop coming here until such time as I am in a position to be accepted formally as your intended husband.”

“And when will that be?” shaking her head.

“It can’t be so very far off and it comes closer with every day. If I could only give you some of my hope—if I only could!”

“You do—but—”

“I do, but it fails in its mission.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“It all amounted to this. I must forego the pleasure of seeing you, except very infrequently.”

“Is it good-by you are saying to me? Is it? Is it?”

“I fear it is. You must forgive me, but I have to show some little pride, and there is but one course open to me. It’s not choice, but necessity that influences me in my decision.”

“Does he want to make me hate him! I shall.” She gave way utterly to her emotions and Philip did the best he could to soothe her as she stood within the protecting circle of his arms.

“I have exhausted my patience. I am tired—tired. How do I know it will ever come. It has been years already,” she said at last.

“It is no more doubtful than anything else would be. I am putting forth all my energy.”

“I am tired. I am tired.”

“I have this to reproach myself with. I thought in the beginning success would come sooner. I have kept on and on, and now I am as far from it as ever. It has been four years, Barbara, four years. I am so sorry, dear, so sorry.”

“If you go I shall never see you again. Something will happen. I shall be driven into something dreadful. I shall be at papa’s mercy, and I haven’t any strength of character. He can do what he likes when you are gone, and I shall give in. I always do.”

Her whole attitude was one of weak complaint. It was fast forcing Philip to the verge of madness. As if she divined what his thoughts were, she said: “You don’t respect me. You think I don’t amount to anything.”

“I love you!” he said gravely. “And now I must go.”

“You are not going!—not yet!—not yet!”

“I shall write you every day when I don’t happen to see you, so you will know how I get on.”

“Yes! yes! but are you going?”

“I must go sometime and it’s better over with. We shall write each other and we shall meet quite often at various places. I shall go where I know you will be.”

She was crying violently.

“You must not leave me! You must not, Philip!”

But he moved slowly to the door.

“I can’t tell you how hard I shall work. Just be brave and good as you have been from the start and it will come out all right.”

“I can’t wait forever—and I need you now.”

“You will have to, dearest.”

“Doesn’t it make you furious?”

“What, Barbara?”

“Furious, that he can interfere with us. It’s our life—our love. We only ask to be left alone. Oh—I can’t bear it!”

“I’m afraid we must bear it for a while. We won’t be altogether separated—we will see each other now and then!”

“No! no! what will such meetings be—with people about—people who will stare at us with silly senseless curiosity!”

“Good-by for the present, dear—for to-day.”

“No—no!”

“We shall meet often. Try to think of that.”

“I am not brave and I invariably give in. He knows it. I shall have no peace if you go like this. Promise me you will come back!”

“I can not, Barbara.”

“Then the blame for whatever follows falls on you. You go willingly.”

“You are unjust.”

“You go willingly,” she insisted. “You desert me. You leave me for him to torture into doing what he wants! Is it nothing to you?”

“I love you,” he answered simply.

“And if we drift apart?”

“I don’t know what you mean. How can we drift apart?”

“People do.”

“Are we like them?”

“Are we?”

“I thought we were not,” he said.

“Why should you think that?” she answered. “I don’t know. Perhaps we are the same as the rest. Perhaps I only imagine the difference.”

“You are going?” she said in alarm as he moved toward the door.

“Yes, Barbara.”

But Barbara threw herself down into a chair and commenced to cry afresh. This drew Philip back to her side in an instant.

“Won’t you say good-by, Barbara, just for the present? Won’t you say good-by, dear?” He sought to remove the hand she held before her face.

She gave him no answer and he turned from her, at first irresolute and then with more decision, for his mind was made up. After all, her sense of resentment would lighten her grief for the moment. It would be easier to bear because of it.

He stepped into the hall, the door closed, and Barbara heard his footsteps growing fainter. He was gone!

Curled up in the easy chair she sobbed out her sorrow and anger, for it was a mingling of both. At last she raised her head and looked about. She was still sobbing brokenly.

Suddenly she sat erect. It was growing late. She remembered that her father was to bring Mr. Shelden home with him to tea.

“I hate him!” she thought. “I hate everybody, but I shall have to see him and be agreeable, and I suppose I look like a perfect fright with my eyes all red. Of course while he is here, I shall have to pretend that I am enjoying myself, and my head hurts and I am miserable. I want Philip, and no one else!”

In proof of which she commenced to weep.

And so for an hour or more she lay curled up in the chair, a doleful little heap.

XI

I told them they must have a doctor,” Perkins explained to Franz, “and in spite of my mother’s objections I called one in. Mother has been dosing her for a week now.”

Young Perkins and his mother practically lived with Margaret, now that Geoff was gone, and it was on the second day of their installment as members of her household, when Perkins, asserting himself in defiance of the paternal mandate, announced his intention of summoning a physician—“Right off, and with no more dependence on luck,” by which it is to be inferred that his mother’s remedies did not inspire him with much confidence.

“He is with her?” Franz inquired, having just come in.

“Yes, if it hadn’t been for my interference, I am certain my mother would have kept on dosing Margaret with her nasty home-made concoctions until doomsday. Poor Margaret would never have rebelled: she would have swallowed the stuff until it killed her rather than wound my mother by showing lack of faith.”

At this juncture they were joined by the doctor, a gray puffy man, reeking of stale tobacco smoke and staler drugs, who took the ills flesh is heir to as a personal grievance.

“Well?” Perkins interrogated him.

The doctor emitted a sound that could have been either a grunt or groan: “It won’t do,” he said gloomily; “she must be sent South. She has not the stamina for this climate. It’s using her up. Unless something is done she will not live through the winter, I’ll stake my reputation.”

“Then she should go to Florida?” Perkins questioned.

“I said she must be sent South,—if you are interested in keeping her alive—and I suppose you are.”

“Good lord, yes!” Perkins gasped.

“I don’t say her illness is critical at its present stage, but if you are going to do what I recommend, don’t put it off. I don’t want to be blamed. Good night.”

He snorted angrily at the inoffensive Perkins, picked up his hat and medicine-case and departed, leaving the young men staring apprehensively at each other.

Perkins jerked his head in the direction the doctor had gone. “He’s a confounded fool! That’s what he is. If he had waited a minute, I’d have said so. He doesn’t have to scare us to death.”

Franz was busy with his thoughts. How could she go and how could she stay threatened by danger? The problem swung between the two alternatives and refused to be solved.

Suddenly Perkins cried joyously: “I’ve got it, Franz! You must marry her right off and take her South yourself—otherwise she will be left to the mercy of her brother. You love her,—I know all about it, old fellow. I saw it by accident and I take just stacks of interest in you young people.”

He put his hand on Franz’s shoulder. His demeanor was both patronizing and affectionate. He looked as cupid might, grown to sturdy manhood, so thrilled was he by his purpose.

“If you are the least diffident, I’ll adjust it. I’d. dearly love to, and won’t it be a jolly little earthquake for Mr. Geoffrey Ballard,—won’t it?” And he hopped around gleefully, proving there can be two good and sufficient reasons for a man’s acts, namely—to please himself, and to annoy his fellow: and who shall determine which is sweeter?

Franz had felt his heart leap at the suggestion, but what would Margaret say?

Perkins plunged ahead vigorously: “What will you do; will you wait for Geoff to come and spoil it all?”

Before Franz could answer Margaret herself entered the room, accompanied by Mrs. Perkins. Instinctively they turned to her. Never had she looked so slight and fragile.

With an anxious throb of his heart Franz started toward her with outstretched hands. Perkins was no fool. He stepped into the hall, motioning his mother to follow. Then he shut the door, remarking: “I guess they would appreciate being by themselves,” and he winked with peculiar emphasis.

Left with Margaret, Franz arranged a chair for her. She watched his rather clumsy placing of wraps and pillows with an amused smile.

“You will make a baby of me, and I shall be a bother always,” she said. She was pathetically grateful for the slightest display of love or devotion.

“How do you feel, Margaret?” Franz asked.

Margaret reclined languidly in her seat. The excitement of getting down-stairs had passed and she felt tired and weak.

“Tell me about yourself, Franz,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in days. To-night I insisted that they should let me dress, I wished to see you so much.”

“What did the doctor tell you, Margaret?”

“That I must go South, but”—hastily—“I can not do that—I can not leave you!”

“But, if it is for the best, dear?”

“Surely it can not be best for me to be cut off from my friends, when they are so few—” She spoke in a frightened voice, as if appalled at the idea. “I should simply die of loneliness.” She glanced up at him appealingly, her lips quivering. “You would not have me go, would you, Franz? I am such a coward. What would become of me, without you?”

“I shall go with you, Margaret, if I may,” he said softly. “It all rests with you, dear. The grief of your going, if you went alone, would be quite as hard for me to bear as for you.”

For a space she was silent, then her reserve gave way entirely.

“If I go, Franz, it must be with you. I can not leave myself open to my brother’s persecutions—I can not endure them! The doctor said—but he told you, too?”

“Yes.”

“I wish to live”—clasping and unclasping her hands nervously. “I never before minded what happened to me, life is so hard—but your love has changed everything. I wish to live for your sake—not for mine.”

“Are you willing to trust yourself to me?” Franz gently interposed.

Margaret’s head half rested on the chair-back, half upon his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and the hands he held within his own burned feverishly. At last she whispered:

“Take me with you. It is best we go together. I am sick—sick—and he is killing me. If you would have me, you must take me now....”

The next day as Philip was at work, Franz entered his room unannounced. Seeing who it was, Philip put down his pen, turning from the pile of manuscript over which he had been toiling.

“Are you busy, Philip?” Franz asked.

“Not very. Why?”

“Because I should like a moment’s talk with you.”

Philip nodded.

“Just knock those books off a corner of the bed and sit down—dump them on the floor. What is it, old fellow?”

Franz, having complied with the suggestion, said: “You know that Margaret is ill?”

“I knew she had a cold. I hope it’s not serious.”

“Her physician advises that she spend the remainder of the winter in the South. This she will do as soon as she recovers sufficiently.”

Again Philip nodded.

“It’s very unexpected, isn’t it? I should consider it risky.”

“She is not to go alone.”

“Oh, I presume Mrs. Perkins is to go with her?”

“It would not be paying much of a compliment to your intelligence if I thought to surprise you by saying that I love Margaret.”

“Precious little,” Philip admitted laconically.

“Well, I shall surprise you. We are to be married immediately. The situation is so grave as to permit of no delay. Her health and the probable reappearance of her brother make it necessary.”

“Bless mel I never figured on this.” Philip looked his amazement. “What will you do then, Franz?”

“When she is able to travel, I suppose it means Florida, or the Bermudas.”

Philip had risen and gathered himself together while making the circuit of the room.

“I declare, I didn’t congratulate you, did I? To be sure, old fellow, the thought of losing you is not agreeable.”

“If you will, Philip, you can be of great service to me.”

“I was about to volunteer,” said Philip heartily, “but you swept me squarely off my feet.”

On the authority of Perkins—“It was a mighty jolly wedding.”

The ceremony was performed in Margaret’s own room and during its progress she lay upon a lounge, looking as fair as the lilies-of-the-valley in her hands, which Perkins had given her, after liberally bedewing them with his tears dropped in sentimental secrecy.

The sun was sinking far across the white fields, and the gold of its dying flames stole in through the windows, lighting up the room, as Franz, standing at Margaret’s side, gave her his name and the protection of his love.

Mrs. Perkins and Franz’s mother wept profusely, and Perkins disgraced himself in his own estimation by sobbing aloud in stifled tones be vainly sought to suppress on peril of choking. He finally retreated to the hall, where he encountered Russell with a limp handkerchief—“making an ass of herself, too.”

A little later Philip drew the curtains in front of the windows to exclude the darkening sky and Perkins said, “When you get screwed up to it a wedding is really more festive than a funeral, though they seem to have much in common. Now I am in a measure familiar with the ordeal, I venture to predict this has been the most blissful day I shall ever know—when one of my dearest friends is married to another of my dearest friends.”

Here he had difficulty with his words.

“Doubtless you all think me a driveling idiot, but I feel like I don’t know what—and I can’t really help it.”

Everybody laughed at this and Philip shook hands with him, saying he was the finest fellow in the world, while Margaret bestowed upon him a generous share of her bouquet. The gift bore with it a grateful little speech that caused him to weep afresh.

It was very late, indeed, when they separated.

“I assure you,” Perkins informed Philip when they had reached the Perkins home, “I assure you, it has been the most satisfactory event in my life, and it’s a source of stupendous joy for me to reflect that my dear cousin Geoff is destined to undergo a severe mental shock in consequence. I think I am entitled to all the comfort I can get.”

Philip smiled appreciatively.

“What a funny little fellow you are! Such a good chap, too,” he added.

“Well, I am glad she has Franz to look after her, and he will have the means to go on with his studies,” continued Perkins.

“He is fortunate,” Philip replied. “We so seldom get what we want—generally it’s what we don’t want that comes to us.”

Perkins looked at him curiously, his head well to one side and his chubby hands buried in the depths of his trousers pockets.

“I say—what’s up? Aren’t you happy?”

“I am blue, and not so decent as I should be. I am always and everlastingly thinking of myself. I am wretched—but you know what’s wrong with me, so don’t discuss it. I can’t stand it.”

“As you prefer, Philip. Still, don’t you believe it will be all right in the end?”

“It’s not the future that troubles me. It’s what may occur while I am flat on my back. I am fairly desperate!”

Perkins gazed at him sorrowfully. Philip added:

“I can’t seem very generous to you when I flop into the dumps on no greater provocation than seeing those who are contented and at peace. My nature is not sweetened by adversity, it’s being pickled in it.” He struck the floor savagely with the heel of his shoe. “I feel like running off from everything, and if I could include my miserable self among what I left behind, I’d not remain undecided.”

“I hope you won’t go any place, Philip!” Perkins said in alarm. “What the dickens will become of me? It will be absolutely forsaken when Franz and Margaret go.”

“You will see all you want of me. I shall unquestionably stay for a time at least.”

“Why—have you been actually thinking of leaving?”

Philip smiled grimly.

“Don’t distress yourself; you can safely depend on having all you desire of my cheerful company. And now if you’ll help me into my overcoat, I’ll start home.”

No sooner was Philip gone than Perkins took from his waistcoat pocket, where he had secreted them, the lilies-of-the-valley Margaret had given him. As he gazed at them a telltale moisture mounted to his eyes. He could only shake his head mournfully and deposit them again—not next his heart—but near an equally important organ and one he knew more of, even though he was in doubt as to its exact location.

Poor Perkins! He was learning that a disinterested love has its griefs. It’s not unmitigated bliss to witness another’s rapture.

XII

Time jogged forward. The year grew to its fullest age and died—the old giving birth to the new, and as the days went on Philip worked at his task, worked and struggled with what courage he could find.

He had at first seen Barbara quite often, but the frequency of their meetings gradually lessened. This, he knew, was the result of her father’s interference.

Had his ears been open to the current gossip of the town, he might have been shocked by a rumor that even his mother forbore to tell him. He toiled away through the days, running his race with chance and fate, and when hope was once more beginning to burn within him, the blow fell. Spread out on the table before him was her letter. For the hundredth time he read it.

“You will hate me, but I told you how it would be. My father is determined that I marry Mr. Shelden. He is determined, and I have decided to do as he wishes. You will despise me, but I have tried to be hopeful and true to you—I have tried so hard, so very hard, Philip. I can only see that the future is doubtful and uncertain. Perhaps it is best as it is. If you achieve the success you deserve, I am unworthy to enjoy it with you. If you fail—you know I am not suited to poverty. I believe in your goodness, in your generosity, most firmly, as I have from the start, and I feel it will comfort you, when I say that the thought of marrying Mr. Shelden does not distress me in the least. I am not altogether unhappy that I am so soon to be his wife.”

Again and again Philip read it, until the words were jumbled together in meaningless confusion.

“No, she is not entirely unhappy—I can see that,” he thought. “What will she gain? A house on the best street; a man twice her age, and her father’s blessing. Bah! It isn’t much, though it counts for more than I.”

He turned and gazed out of the window. How many times he had done so when his day’s work was finished and he was happy, tired, satisfied. He was looking on a different world—a world he had never viewed before. The coldness was only cold. There was no contrasting thought of warmth and cheer. It was bleak and lonely—only that!

He raised the letter to his lips suddenly and kissed it.

“I loved her!” he thought. “I still love her—and I hope she is happy.” He drew forward a sheet of note-paper, took up his pen, and dipping it in the ink, began to write an answer to her letter—his farewell to her and love, and the hope born and created of love.

When the letter was written, he put her letter—the last he should ever receive—with others of hers that he had kept.

“When she is his wife, I shall burn them,” he muttered. “Till then, I shall keep them here. It can do no harm.”

He marveled how he got through the days that followed. They came and found him, unable to write, wretched, but so composed his mother imagined his grief less than it was. But he was madly restless. There was no peace for him save in movement. Night after night he tramped the streets. Day after day, with a gun on his shoulder, he roamed the woods, about the town and by the river. The gun served for an excuse. It was never fired. In fact it was never even loaded.

He could not work—and work was usually his refuge in periods of distress. Now it was changed. He could only await the day she would marry Shelden.

“When it is over with it will be the same as if I had not loved her,” he assured himself.

One afternoon as he was going toward his home, he came on Geoffrey Ballard face to face. Not the splendid creature to whom he had been accustomed, but Geoff, the seedy and disreputable.

Geoff had just arrived. He had been wandering through back streets and alleyways for an hour or more, waiting until the darkness of evening should settle down that he might slink unobserved into his sister’s presence and demand money sufficient to make himself presentable.

There was a moment of defiant silence on the part of the prodigal met by a contemptuous indifference from Philip. Then Geoff spoke:

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Southard.”

“Are you? Well, you don’t look it.”

Geoff would have passed, but Philip detained him.

“Hold on! I have something to tell you.” Geoff came to a stand. “Have you heard from your sister during your absence? If you haven’t there is a surprise in store for you. She has been dangerously ill and she is married to Becker. That was two or three weeks ago. They are preparing to go South, as soon as she is able to take the journey. Hold on!”—but Geoff moved rapidly away.

His sister married—and to the German! It put all other considerations out of his mind.

Perhaps Philip had lied. This was the meager hope with which he endeavored to sustain himself. He entered the house, and brushing past Russell, whom he encountered on the stairs, ran up to his sister’s room. She was in bed and alone.

“Geoff!” she cried in alarm.

His face was purple with rage; he could not control his voice as he poured forth a volley of incoherent abuse, from which she shrank, frightened and shuddering.

“Is it so? Are you married?” He was a trifle calmer when he asked the question.

“Yes, Geoff.”

She answered steadily, but her cheeks were colorless. She feared him more than she even admitted to herself. Still it was well to have it over with. Franz was not by.... If he would only stay away until Geoff was through was her prayer.

“This is the advantage you took of my absence!”

“Oh, hush, Geoff,—” she implored. “He will hear you! It will be the same as it has always been—you have the claim on me you have always had—there is no change. I’ve only got a little happiness,—surely you don’t begrudge me that!” Perhaps she appreciated the weakness of her plea, for she continued with dignity. “You forget yourself,—and what is due me—-”

As she spoke, Franz entered. He had caught the sound of Geoff’s high-pitched voice in the room below.

“You don’t seem to realize that your sister is ill,” he said coldly. For Margaret’s sake he was prepared to endure much. “If you have any reproaches to make you must choose another occasion. She is not in condition to listen to you at present.”

The German’s quiet demeanor sobered Geoff on the instant. “I have nothing to do with you,” he answered sullenly. “You have only done what any man would in your position, I suppose. It was an opportunity and you made the most of it. I am not blaming you, but”—turning hotly to the bed where Margaret lay—“I blame her for having no better sense than to do a thing like this without consulting me. It was my right, as her brother, to know!”

“But you were not here,” Margaret interposed. She was anxious to draw all the trouble that was brewing upon herself. Geoff’s mood boded harm.

He paid no heed to her. He twirled a cane of flexible rattan he carried between thumb and forefinger, and glared at Becker. Stupidity, anger and partial drunkenness were in the glance.

“I say to you,” Franz began evenly and quietly, “I say to you that your sister is sick, and I insist upon your leaving the room.”

“I have nothing to do with you, Becker, though you did sneak into my place. For a fellow such as you it was a chance not apt to come again.” Franz flushed scarlet, but he managed to speak without perceptible emotion. “Whatever you may wish to tell your sister must be deferred. This is not the time.”

He deliberately pushed Geoff from the room, closing the door after them.

In the hall they confronted each other. Franz was sternly self-possessed. He would exercise all the tolerance at his command, at no matter what cost to his pride.

Within the room they had just quitted, Margaret lay breathless and listening, but when there penetrated to her ears the echo of Geoff’s insulting speech, she arose with a dizzy aching head and with trembling fingers began to dress.

The two men were standing at the head of the stairs. Geoff was saying sneeringly: “For a fellow of your stamp you have done well. I can congratulate you even if I can’t my sister.”

Franz was silent. He simply looked from underneath straight brows at his tormentor, biting his lips.

“You have done a fine thing for yourself. My sister’s money will find more uses than ever. Of course, it was the main attraction.”

Still Franz was silent.

“Why don’t you deny the truth of what I say?” Geoff insisted. “Why don’t you tell me I lie, you fool?”

“If you speak to me like that again, I’ll not be responsible for what I do,” said Franz evenly.

“I congratulate you—you have done a fine thing for yourself. It means ease and plenty.” He stretched out his hand mockingly.

Franz struck the extended hand roughly with his fist. “What you insinuate is a lie! You are a coward to get behind the advantage you have of me—a coward!”

Geoff dropped back a step. With his cane he hit Franz lightly at first, and then made as if to repeat the blow.

Forgetting everything but his hate for the man before him, Franz put out his hand to take Geoff by the throat. It was then the cane descended, striking him across the temples. Instantly foot and hand alike were stayed. He reeled as though he would fall,—putting up both hands to his eyes.

Geoff saw the door of his sister’s room swing open, and turning with an oath from Franz, who stood swaying unsteadily, he ran down the stairs.

In the hall Franz lurched from side to side, his hands to his face. “Franz,” Margaret called, “Franz, dear! what did he do?”

With staggering uncertain steps he started toward her.

“Franz!” she called. “Dear Franz! what is it?”

He gave no answer. He only groped his way nearer, and she saw the cruel red welts just above his eyes. He had come almost to her, when he sank to his knees at her feet.

“Franz, dear!” she cried, “what is it? Are you hurt, my love? Are you hurt?”

She put her cool palm against his forehead, and kneeling beside him slipped an arm around his neck. She felt him tremble as though every nerve and muscle in his body were wrenched and torn.

As she clung to him a chill stole into her own heart. She, too, could only crouch and cower and shudder.

Finally he spoke in strange hushed accents. “Margaret, I can’t see! It is all black—black as night in front of me!”

She pressed close in his arms, and with her little hand she chafed his brow where the red line burned and stung.

He stood erect once more and slowly turned about as if in quest of something.

“Margaret, how does the light come? Is it there?” He faced the wall—the window at his back.

She had moved with him, her glance fastened upon his eyes.

They were fixed in a stony glare.

“Where is the window?” he asked appealingly.

She was sobbing now.

“Margaret, I can’t see—I am blind—blind!”

He felt her fall lax in his embrace. The sobs ceased abruptly.

She was unconscious.

XIII

Franz knew that Margaret must die.

She weakened visibly with the moments that had the single mission—to kill.

He knew but too well what passed before him in his darkened world. He knew that since his blindness, she had sunk through stupor to stupor, each to drag her farther and farther from him.

There were intervals—seconds that might have been ages, when she would sit erect and call his name, but there were no conscious periods.

She was sinking by slow degrees, and the blind man held a dark vigil.

In the still room the other watchers came and went noiselessly, with the question continually on their lips: “Is she better?”

During those long days, when it was neither life nor death, Philip came frequently to make his inquiries, to be confronted by the vision of Mrs. Perkins’ tear-stained countenance or, what was worse—to encounter Perkins.

He would wander in their company aimlessly from room to room, or with them listen at her door, seeing in his fancy Franz sitting, a blind sentinel, counting the minutes that stole up out of the lap of time to bear her away.

It was the evening of the fourth day. The doctor had just left the sick chamber to be met at the foot of the stairs by the three anxious friends.

“What are the chances?” Philip asked.

He shook his head. Then addressing Philip: “It may be well for you to stay here to-night. She is failing rapidly.”

Philip looked at him stupidly.

Perkins seized the doctor by the shoulder almost savagely: “Why don’t you save her?” he demanded. “Why don’t you?”

“I am doing all I can. The cure should have commenced weeks ago. I said then what should be done.”

He pushed past them, glad of the opportunity to escape that their momentary panic afforded; but Philip followed him from the house, and as the doctor turned—a lighted match between his fingers, for he was arranging to make his walk home comfortable with a cigar, Philip said, “Do you mean she will die? Is there no hope?”

“None whatever.”

“How soon will it be?” Philip questioned with a stolid curiosity which was a source of astonishment to himself.

“In an hour or so, I think.”

Philip twice essayed to speak and failed. The doctor puffed reflectively at his cigar. He added: “She was never strong, and the shock of Becker’s blindness will prove too much for her. She was in no condition to meet it.”

Philip mopped his brow. It was damp and clammy. Of a sudden he dripped at every pore. “What do you mean to do?” he asked.

“I’ll drop in later. I would remain if it wasn’t for an old party up on the edge of town who can’t last. His folks have sent for me a dozen times to-day. He insists he won’t die unless I come to help him off, and I guess the family’s afraid he will stick to his word.” And the man of pills laughed softly at his modest little joke. “I am of no use here. All has been done that can be—only keep an eye on Becker. He doesn’t take it right. He is too undemonstrative. Good night.”

And he strode up the street, leaving an odor of tobacco smoke in his wake.

Philip went into the house, shutting the door quietly behind him. It was all like a hideous nightmare, and he felt himself as unreal as all the rest. He found Perkins seated on the lowest step of the stairs. His face was buried in his hands.

“What else did he say?” Perkins asked, shifting his position, and looking up.

“It was merely a repetition of his former statement.”

“I wish it were I!” Perkins blurted out. “I wish it were! Why can’t we do something for her—for him! You love her, too, don’t you?”

“Yes, I love her; maybe not with your unselfish devotion, but I have your desire to be of service.”

Perkins shook his head. “It’s all up,” he sobbed. “Think of it—Margaret dying!”

Philip regarded his friend pityingly, and took to pacing back and forth in front of him.

Imperceptibly he moderated his step until he no more than tiptoed up and down the hall.

Perkins, worn and wretched with four nights of sleeplessness, slumbered against the newel post, his hands idly folded in his lap, his hair roughened and disordered, his dress creased and crumpled, his whole attitude one of utter dejection.

The solitary gas-jet in the center of the hall burned feebly.

The light, stealing through the colored globe, imparted to Perkins’ features a semblance of shrunken ghastliness. More than once Philip had a compelling impulse to turn it up, and had stepped to the chandelier to do so only to be resisted by an invisible force that possessed him, a chilling apathy that revolted at any change.

The least noise had a powerful fascination for him. The ticking of a clock—and numberless clocks appeared to be ticking with jarring clangor, some close by, some far off in the distance—or the footfall of an occasional belated wayfarer on the street without, would cause him to pause and listen breathlessly with a vague unexplainable fear. His sensations were so distressing that for the sake of personal contact he wedged in at Perkins’ elbow on the steps. In spite of his care he aroused his companion, who stirred fretfully to ask sleepily: “What is it? Do they want me?”

“I wished to sit down. I didn’t intend to disturb you.”

“Oh! that’s all right.” And almost immediately Perkins was dozing as before.

In the room above, the watcher and watched kept their place.

Franz clasped her hands fast in both of his, as though through sheer physical strength he would keep her with him. As yet she had indicated by no sign that she understood what was going on about her. It was always the same tired tossing, but with greater weakness there slowly succeeded greater calm.

With a fixed rapt look Franz’s gaze sought her face and never wavered; it preserved its direction as steadily from beneath his broad straight brows as though he really saw.

She turned restlessly for the thousandth time, and as he had a thousand times already, he whispered softly, “Margaret.”

Hitherto his words had fallen on deaf ears, now the head moved upon the pillow—the sweet wan face was raised to his.

“Margaret,” he said, “Margaret, do you hear me? My little wife! My little wife!” As he spoke her eyes opened.

The room was unlighted save for the night-lamp burning on the table, and peering at her in the gloom with those sunken sightless eyes of his, was her husband.

She remembered all. “Franz! Franz!” she cried, in a voice so faint as scarcely to be audible. “It was not a dream? I meant you should have so much,—say you forgive me!”

“You must not grieve, dear,” he said tenderly. “You must not think of me now.”

“It was all so beautiful until he came,” she said dreamily; “I have been so happy with you, dear, so happy.”

There was infinite regret and infinite tenderness in her all but inarticulate speech.

They were silent for a while, then Margaret said: “It is good-by we are saying, Franz. Who would imagine there would be so little to say?”

Franz bent over her, desolation in his soul.

“What was that?” she asked, her voice fainter than before.

“I thought it very quiet, dear,” he answered. “Perhaps it is the wind.”

“How many days ago was it?” she questioned.

“You mean when you were taken ill, dear? It was four days ago.”

“So many days ago as that? Where are the others?”

“They are here. My mother, Mrs. Perkins, Ballard and Philip. Would you like to see them, dear?”

“Only you, Franz. Take my love to them.”

Her voice had become the gentlest of murmurs, but the small white hand continued to stroke his face, though with a faltering movement. Then the soft caress stopped; a sigh escaped her; she appeared to slip from his grasp—to shrink within his arms.

“Margaret!” he said. “Margaret!” and his lips were ashen and tremulous.

He allowed her to fall limply to the pillow.

He waited a moment, then springing to his feet he started for the door. And as he groped his way, there burst from his quivering lips a great cry. “Margaret! Margaret!”

XIV

It was the second evening after Margaret’s death, and the night of Barbara’s marriage to Shelden.

To Philip the day had come, as all days must, where one exists for them alone, with no other interest in their passing than that they go swiftly. What was in store for him he wondered. Even supposing he eventually succeeded, it would be the bitter satire of success. What could fame or money give him!—he was robbed of every inspiration. At least he could turn to his work for forgetfulness. That was something, even if it yielded him no further recompense. He looked at his watch. “It must soon be over with. They must soon be married,” he thought, and slipping into his hat and coat started down-stairs. His mother heard him and came into the hall.

“Are you going out, Philip?” she asked.

“Yes, dear. I want to see Franz. I haven’t been there to-day. I’ll not be out late.”

“It’s very cold.”

“I shall not care.”

She put up her lips to kiss him, then pressed her cheek to his. “I’m so sorry, Philip!” she whispered. It was the only expression of pity she had ventured.

“Don’t, mother. I can’t endure it. Not now—not yet.”

With a hasty good-by he hurried off.

Ten minutes later and he stood with Perkins before the door leading into the room where Margaret lay.

“Where is Franz?” Philip asked.

Perkins nodded toward the door. “We can’t induce him to leave her,” he said.

“Why should you seek to? Poor fellow!”

They were silent, gazing at each other, a depth of sorrow in their glance. Finally Perkins said, with a show of control:

“Have you seen her, Philip?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I had decided to keep the memory I have of her unchanged. It is as I saw her when they were married. She was so happy, poor little thing!”

“There is more than happiness in her face now,” Perkins observed thoughtfully. “Do you believe in a hereafter?”

“What odds can it be? It’s in the present our lot is cast.”

“Don’t you like to think you are destined to meet those you love again?”

Philip placed his hand irresolutely upon the knob.

“I shall go in. Perhaps I shall be able to determine what I do believe.”

As he entered the room, a rush of cold air met him, for the windows were partially raised—the outer shutters only being closed. The dim light filled the apartment with shadowy indistinctness.

Slowly and overpoweringly objects became plain in the somberness of his surroundings.

Margaret lay upon a couch in the center of the room. She might have been asleep.

At her side sat Franz, regardless of the stinging gusts of wind that came in between the shutters.

Philip stepped to the couch and looked down upon the beautiful face, then he moved back quietly, and would have quitted the room, but Franz detained him by saying: “Is it you, Perkins?”

“It is I,” Philip answered.

Franz arose instantly, putting out his hand, and Philip clasped it eagerly.

Without the wind sighed drearily. The sound was depressing.

The naked branches of a tree growing in a corner of the yard lashed the house incessantly. The single lamp burned with a flickering flame.

“What is it?” Franz questioned, for twice Philip had essayed to speak.

“I am so sorry, Franz. So sorry,” he cried in broken tones.

“I know you are,” Franz answered simply.

“There is this that I want to tell you, Franz, if I may,” Philip continued.

“Yes?”

“Barbara is to be married to-night.” He came to an abrupt stop. “I have determined to go East,” he went on presently. “It will mean greater opportunity. A garbled version of that affair of Anson’s has got abroad and my mother is equally anxious to break up here. What I wished to ask you is, won’t you join me, dear old fellow?”

“And allow my blindness to be your affliction?”

“You are more to me than I can express. First my mother—then you, and after you—Perkins.”

Franz swept his hand across his forehead.

“Wait! How can I think of the future? My very world is ended! Wait.”

Philip stole out of the room and from the house. It was snowing heavily. The ground was already covered. It had been bare at supper-time. He kept on up the street until he was opposite the Gerards.

The house was brilliantly lighted, but the wedding party was still absent at the church. He must see her once more!

So he waited in the cold, half hidden by the falling snow that clung to him and that drifted about the quiet and empty streets.

Yes, Franz should live with him and his mother. Comfort was possible with favoring circumstances where happiness was not.

Presently, disturbing his reverie, the dull rumble of wheels was audible, muffled and deadened by the fall of snow.

The carriages rolled into view.

He saw the many figures moving about, as the guests streamed into the house, and straining his eyes he saw Barbara. She stood in the open door, and as she turned to answer some one who had spoken on the walk—her voice reached him, gay and bright.

The guests had disappeared, yet he waited. He would wait until she entered her carriage to be driven to the station. It could not be very long, and then he, too, would forget.

Suddenly the doors swung back. He saw her, attended by her friends, clinging to her husband’s arm, and then—she was whirled away and it was over.

Turning he went directly home and to his room, and took from the drawer the bundle of letters. One by one he burned them—and as the last letter left his hand, far off in the distance pealed the shrill shriek of the whistle that announced the approach of the train.

The sound drew him to the window. He opened it and leaned upon the ledge.

He heard the shrill whistle once again, the creaking of the wheels upon the frosted rails, the ringing of a bell—and she was gone! gone!

A desperate sense of wrong and injury—of pain and grief swept over him.

He turned from the white night and threw himself upon the bed,—abject, lonely, miserable! If he could only die—if he only could! but it was the sickness not of death, but of life, that was on him.

For a time he was unable to think or to throw off the stupor possessing him.

His mother came into the room, but he did not look up.

She closed the window, saying: “Philip, if you intend to lie there, you must be wrapped up, or you will take cold.”

He did not speak, and she added: “It’s late. It’s almost midnight. Won’t you go to bed?”

He shook his head.

“My poor boy! my poor boy!—I am so sorry!”

“The worst is over with,” he said.

“Can’t I help you? It hurts me to see you so. I wish——”

“Please go. You can’t help me—nothing can. Please go!” His voice was full of entreaty.

“How could she treat you so, Philip!”

“It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust her. I was a coward! She would have taken any risk had I asked it of her, but I was afraid, and this is my punishment.”

“Won’t you let me spread a blanket over you?”

“No, no. I’ll get up in a few moments.” He lifted his white drawn face to hers: “Please go, mother. Please go. I—I—can’t talk about it.” Reluctantly his mother left him to his solitude. For a while he rested motionless on the bed, then he came to his feet and went to the table, taking his seat beside it, his elbows propped upon its blotted and discolored top. He pictured his altered life. There remained to him one solace if he willed it. He could cheat time by work, and so, perhaps, win fame to fill the place of love, and for the rest—the world could go hang!

So he pictured his future, a future vastly less successful than the reality was destined to be, and when he had built his new ideal—buttressed it with hope and courage—he picked up his pen, cleared it of the black rust that had gathered on its point, and commenced to write—to finish the work he had abandoned when the blow fell.

All through the night and into the dawn, to and fro across the long pages, with a cheerful little murmur of approval, the pen scratched and labored.

The End