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Harvard College
Library
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UM ACAN
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ONE OF THREE
CLIFFORD, RAYMOND





O'N E OF THREE
BY
CLIFFORD RAYMOND
AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF
HARTLEY HOUSE," ETC.
NEW CDH YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


W 131212.157
LIBRARY
Copyright, 1919,
By C. S. Raymond
Printed in the United States of America


ONE OF THREE





ONE OF THREE
W THEN, the day before Christmas, a close
gray sky suddenly yielded to the wings of
a northeast wind a perfect tumult of snow, we felt
the pleasant glow which perfect conditions can
kindle for genial prospects.
We were going to the Brownings' for Christmas,
for Christmas eve, and for such a Christmas as the
Brownings would have and could give. Hope and
Richard had access to a peculiar fund of hospi.
tality. Its graciousness was a subtlety, a subtlety
which escaped exact definition. The physical ele-
ments of it could not easily be identified. They
were not so different from the physical conditions
we encountered elsewhere.
There was something in the atmosphere of the
Browning home, attributable to Hope or to Rich-
ard, or to both, which was both jovial and benig-
nant. It was the definite projection of an idea, and
it could have come only out of some richness and
exquisiteness of human nature.


CO
ONE OF THREE
The physical and material aspects of the Brown.
ing home were entrancing, but there again we came
to the human factor. They were entrancing be-
cause wonderful people had made them so.
I have an idea that most people who might have
been taken by the geniality of the household would
have ascribed the dominating qualities to Richard
rather than to Hope. I had the other idea-that
somewhere in the placidity of Hope there was a
clear well of character so extraordinary, so remark-
able, that it could, without self-betrayal, produce
the phenomenon observable in the Browning fam-
ily.
It was a real benevolence of nature which pro-
duced the snow storm for our Christmas eve. We
ask, with all the demands of our illusions, for this
beneficent decoration for an occasion so emotional-
ly significant as Christmas.
It came so tumultuously out of the close gray
sky, starting early in the morning and continuing
all day, with great wet flakes, that we were able
to follow an impulse, a happy impulse, and make
our trip to the Brownings' by sleighs.
I do not know any human mood which finds
greater satisfaction in the present or a ruddier
glow in the immediate prospect than the mood
which pertains to travel undertaken with an objec-
tive which connotes food with gusto, genial socia-
bility—such as might have been indicated in the


ONE OF THREE
old post days by a fat and smiling innkeeper in an
inn with red curtains at the windows, a glowing fire
in the grate, and a reputation for baked fowls. To
reach such a place through inclemency is to in-
crease its qualities of attractiveness. There is
aroused the sense of struggle towards shelter, the
conditions being fictitious as to discomforts, real as
to comforts, conditions in which the ill is illusion
and the benevolence real-a reversal of much of
the rule of life, in which the benevolence is illusion
and the ill real.
It was a seven mile drive from Appleton to Qua-
tuck, where the Brownings lived. Appleton was
our village; Quatuck was merely a cluster, or, rath-
er, a string, of small houses along a willow lined
country road. Its nucleus, as a community, was a
country store and postoffice, a story and a half
frame building such as is familiar in rural Ameri-
can experience one with a sign across the front
reading “Gen'l Mcds-Hardware Post Office.”
Old Simon Parr ran it, as our colloquialism indi.
cated the business operation, and Sarah Parr, his
wife, ran Simon.
When I look back upon the drama of Quatuck I
find that Simon and Sarah come out of the mists
not at all with the comic mask, not at all as two
lean-souled villagers of small experience and no
emotions, but portentously as the Greek chorus.
You would have difficulty reconciling Sarah,


10
ONE OF THREE
with her pursy body filling and over-filling her
rocking chair, with her teeth in a glass, with her
dew-lapped jaws working and her mind searching
for its next vindictiveness-in reconciling Sarah
with any idea of a Greek chorus, but, in retrospect,
she sits in the purple of tragedy for me.
Quatuck itself defies any one to explain why Qua-
tuck. We said carelessly that it was an Indian
name. It was reasonably established that the
name first applied to the Browning home, and then,
as the little community came, it took the name of
the house, but what led the Browning who built
the house to call it Quatuck? More than that,
why did he call it anything?
Very long ago a Browning had come north from
Virginia for some economic reason and he had
bought the eighty acres of Quatuck. Possibly a
Virginia idea of the personality of a place, a Vir-
ginia idea that any establishment of a home with
acres surrounding it could be sufficiently distin-
guished for identity by a name, explained why it
had been named, but we should have to know much
more than we did of this early Browning from Vir.
ginia to know why Quatuck.
Appleton itself was a suburb of many pleasing
characteristics, but so intentionally and obviously
suburban that there always was an oddity suggest-
ed by the fact that Quatuck could exist in reality
only seven miles west of it by country roads.


ONE OF THREE
11
By traveling the seven miles one went from the
gasoline engine to the oxcart, deep into the old
American countryside by a mere thrust of seven
miles, from stiff little lawns to great fields of grain,
from the delphinium to the old fashioned pink.
In winter to make this ride was to take a journey
from the steam boiler to the base burner and the
wood stove.
We made it late in the afternoon in sleighs. The
storm had ceased but the heavy gray sky was a
snow sky in the gray hour of winter afternoon just
before twilight. We rode over the serene white-
ness of a land dressed for the illusions with the
lure of a genial objective which would show as a
log fire seen from without through windows, as
a light cast into the dark along a pathway, as a
warm, pleasing odor of meats upon a spit. A true
welcome at a journey's end has a savor of a land-
lord's in a wayside inn.
There were twelve in the party when we started.
I do not remember all of the people, but they were
all intimates of the Brownings—the Renwicks,
George and Ruth-the Wilders, Sallie Persons,
Frank Dorsey-I can't recall the others-probably
Arthur and Alice Farwell, Edith Adams, Erskine
Prior, or any others of a dozen who might have
had a full year's invitation to Christmas at the
Brownings'.
We were twelve, I know. We were to stop at


12
ONE OF THREE
Simon Part's to pick up Dr. Arthur-Dr. Arthur
Arthurma whimsical perversity must have seized
his father and mother when their son, in his first
pink demand of life, aske.. for a completion of
his identity.
Dr. Arthur gave the only medical attendance
which Quatuck received. There were only thirty
families in the little community and they had con-
fidence in home medication—from carrying a horse
chestnut for rheumatism to taking a blood thin-
ning medicine in the spring as a purge of winter's
congestion of the corpuscles.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding pain killer taken
and liniment applied for appendicitis and mustard
plasters put on for acute gastritis, notwithstand-
ing that nine times out of ten an invading dis-
ease was defeated before it had assailed these hu-
man Gibraltars, they did need a physician.
Dr. Arthur as a boy, when his parents were
abroad, had spent two years in Quatuck with Si-
mon and Sarah Parr, and this attachment, a sen-
timental importance, kept him devoted to the need
and call of Quatuck.
One of the few real emotions which Simon and
Sarah ever had felt had been for the boy and was
for the doctor. When he went to Quatuck he had
a room with the Parrs, the little room under the
roof, upon which the beat of the rain had so fas-
cinated him when he was a boy.
n


ONE OF THREE
13
It is an inconsequentiality that I recall the Parr
home so distinctly this Christmas eve. Later the
night became memorable for sufficient reason, but
there was no specific significance in anything which
Simon and Sarah contributed to it.
They were in their kitchen—which had a great
wood range, then ruddy. Dr. Arthur sat in one
rocking chair, Simon in another. Sarah was mix-
ing the stuffing for the Christmas turkey. Simon
had killed it that morning. It was on the kitchen
table, the whitest, fattest fowl I ever had seen.
The geraniums at the windows, the glow of the
fire in the wood stove, old Simon in his stocking
feet in his rocking chair, old Sarah at work with
sage, onions, toasted bread, and chestnuts the
odor and primitive comfort of the place, the wrin.
kled Simon, Sarah competent but hard, and Dr.
Arthur Arthur talking to the two old folks while
he waited for us.
Upon this scene and into these odors our party
came. We had, for our gratification, a mere flash
of this old kitchen and these old folk. Then we
carried Dr. Arthur Arthur away.
Quatuck, the house, was two miles outside of
Quatuck, the village. There we arrived, thirteen
to the party.
I never had seen Hope look more serene and
beautiful than she did as she came to meet her
guests. It was an extraordinary charm which she


14
ONE OF THREE
possessed. People might think that it was the in-
gratiating Richard who filled that home with the
staples of human comfort, but I knew they came
from Hope.
Hope and Richard always, if they could, met
their friends at their gateway. They never allowed
a servant to open a door to a person welcome to
their home if either one or the other could open
that door. Their greetings began at the horizon.
There was a fine old stand of Norway spruce
directly outside the windows of the living room
of the house, and the spruce was heavy with snow.
Some early Browning had a gusto in eating. He
had wanted to satisfy an imaginative quality as
well as his appetite. Possibly it was that early
Virginia Browning who had bought the acres of
Quatuck and had built most of the establishment.
The dining room was large and built and ar-
ranged to suggest, to insist, that eating for human
beings was the social core of existence. In form,
substance, color, and in essence the Browning din.
ing room insisted upon the importance of this so-
cial function, not only recognized it but asserted
and declared it.
The fireplace would take three ten foot logs, and
in the great chimney was a Swedish fireplace oven,
a wonderful deep oven in which loaves could be
baked. I had seen them taken out on a long han-
dled, broad bladed wooden ladle. I also had seen


ONE OF THREE
15
the logs dragged by a horse for the fireplace. It
had deep chimney seats and—the essence of its
gusto-grills and spits.
Sometimes the meat and bread of a Browning
dinner came baronially from the fireplace to the
table.
This Christmas eve Hope had young turkeys
grilled over wood embers in the fireplace, young
four and five pound birds, split, partly roasted, and
then put on the grill.
They were browning as we sat in the chimney
seats and Richard served drinks—sherry, an old
and fine bourbon, and a cocktail of fruit juices and
gin. Hope mixed the Christmas punch in a bowl
on a table in front of the fireplace.
Whenever possible the Browning home permit-
ted a view or a glimpse or a suggestion of prepara-
tion. Thus without at all giving the impression
of strained overelaboration which my description
may convey, but which the reality did not, there
was asserted the whole idea of robust geniality, not
gross but cordially robust, a benevolence such as
is indicated by a harvest, by bins filled with corn,
by a flock of turkeys moving towards a roosting
place, by pumpkins lying yellow in a field of corn
in shock, by apples in barrels, by the hickory wood
smoke curling up out of a smokehouse in which
hams and bacon are being smoked.
Two clumps of spruce stood outside the dining


ONE OF THREE
17
not moving, tense in the position in which the
cry had found us.
“What was that?” George Renwick asked.
“Surely some one in distress,” said Ruth.
We listened, in the stupidity which frequently
affects people both startled and puzzled, for some
sound of voice or movement which might be an
explanation.
“It had the sound of Hope's voice,” George said.
“Where is Hope?”
Richard came in at that moment.
“Didn't I hear a scream?” he asked. “Where
is Hope? Is anything the matter?”
His manner was not agitated, but his expression
revealed an alarm which his restraint tried to con-
ceal.
"It was Hope's voice," I said.
"I'll find her,” said Richard.
At that moment Hope appeared.
"O, I'm terribly sorry,” she said. "Really, I'm
all right."
She held a handkerchief to her mouth. It had
red spots showing beside her hand. She did not
take her hand down as she spoke. I saw that there
were red marks on each side of her throat.
"Hope!” Richard exclaimed. “Hope! What has
happened?"
She went to him and put her hand on his shoul.
der.


18
ONE OF THREE
"Please, Richard," she said, "don't be alarmed.
I'm not hurt. I was frightened for a moment. I'm
all right.”
"Yes, Hope,” said Richard, putting an arm
round her protectingly and reassuringly, "but
what happened ?”
"I had gone to my bedroom," said Hope. “There
was a man in a black mask at my jewel case. It
astonished me so that I could not cry out or move,
and before I could have done either he sprang at
me, took me by the throat, and struck me in the
mouth. I screamed. He released me and ran down
the stairway to the kitchen."
“He's on the premises now,” said George.
The girls gathered around Hope. The men in-
stantly by impulse hurried in different directions.
My impulse carried me outside. So did Richard's.
We found ourselves together going around the
house. No paths had been made through the snow
except to the servants' house, to the woodpile, and
to the barn and roothouse, where the winter's sup-
ply of potatoes and vegetables was stored.
We circled the entire establishment, and in the
deep, fresh fall of snow there were no footprints,
no tracks of any kind except the faintest sugges-
tion of the tracks of our horses and sleighs. There
had been a fall of snow after our arrival and it had
nearly obliterated the trail we had left coming in.


ONE OF THREE
19
“That's conclusive,” said Richard. "He's some
where about here now."
Because the early Browning was a Virginian he
had built a number of houses for various domestic
purposes near by the large one. The servants had
a house. There was even a guest house.
The question of searching the barn arose.
“I think all the men are at dinner,” said Rich-
ard. “We ought to get them out to help.”
We had been tramping through the heavy wet
snow and had come, circling about, to the path
from the house to the barn. It had been shoveled,
but a film of snow had fallen since then.
“Look !” said Richard; "that's conclusive again.
No need to search the barn."
No one could have entered the barn since the
time of Hope's experience with the man. There
were no footprints.
“Our fellow is in this house at present,” said
Richard. “That's certain. Come with me.”
He led the way to the servants' house, where
the five men and four women employed at Quatuck
were having dinner-a very genial dinner, happy
and jovial-an impression that arose as Richard
opened the door abruptly and revealed the dining
room. The servants all were seated at the table
and at our sudden incursion they looked up in
astonishment.
Richard had been growing nervous in spite of


20
ONE OF THREE
his efforts at restraint and there was a quality of
drama in the method and purpose of his appear.
ance before the servants which had further excited
him, but his exquisite manners saved him.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” he said as he stood
in the doorway. He could still smile and it was
still ingratiating. “Could I ask all of you not to
leave the house until you have heard from me
again? I have a very important reason for this. It
will be explained later. And another request
which will seem, for the present, unreasonable-
except possibly to one of you."
Richard's smile here left him and his face for
an instant darkened in anger, an expression which
quickly gave way for the return of the smile.
“What I ask each of you to do is to clench your
fists and hold them above the table, while I look
at them.”
The men and women, in stupefaction, did as he
asked them. He went around the table looking
at each hand, with particular attention to the
knuckles.
“Thank you,” he said, when he had looked at
them all. "Now one other thing. Has any one
of you been here less than fifteen minutes?"
They looked at him and each other wonderingly.
Myra, the big, comfortable, wholesome looking
cook, answered for them.
“We have been running forth and back between


ONE OF THREE
21
the houses," she said. “We sat down to dinner less
than ten minutes ago.”
"All right, Myra, thanks,” said Richard. "Sorry
to have broken in on you, but something has hap-
pened that has puzzled us and distressed us."
As we went back to the house he said: "I'm
convinced, Phil. One of the servants did that. I
thought I might find a fresh cut on the knuckle
of the man who did it. It's a hideous thought, but
he hit Hope in the mouth and he might have cut
his knuckle on her teeth. I didn't find that, but
you can see for yourself no one has gone through
this snow except to the servants' house, and if we
don't find the fellow hiding in the big house he
must be one of the servants. I'm going to have
a couple of the boys patrol the outside while we
ransack the inside. Come on in with me. I'd
rather have you inside."
We made a search of the house which, large
as the house was, was as convincing as anything
could be that Hope's assailant had made his es-
cape from the house, and the untracked snow out-
side was even more convincing evidence that he
had not left the grounds.
"Well, there we are,” said Richard finally, stand-
ing with his back to the living room fireplace and
facing his perplexed and distressed guests. “There
is only one explanation. I am sorry, but you can
see that it was one of the servants. I do not know


22
ONE OF THREE
which one. I do not know any way of finding out
which one. They all must be discharged instantly,
unless Hope can identify the man. Where is
Hope?”
“Ruth is with her," said George.
“If she is able to come in, ask her to, will you?”
George went for the two girls. Hope crossed
the room to Richard's side.
"Richard," she said, "I don't want you to worry
about this. I ought not to have been so afraid. I
wasn't harmed at all and I have been silly."
"You have been perfectly wonderful, Hope," said
Richard, kissing her on the forehead, “but it is a
serious matter. It was one of the servants. Could
you identify the one? Do you think you could
recognize him? If you think so, I'll have them all
come in again.”
“No! no! Richard,” Hope exclaimed in distress.
“I know them all. How could I have failed to
recognize the man at first if I could recognize him
at all at any time? I could not do them the in-
justice of bringing them in.”
“Then it is hopeless,” said Richard. “All the
servants are to be discharged instantly.” With a
finesse of equity he instantly met the challenge of
his fairness which arose within, I think all of us,
certainly within me. “It is unfair to all but one,"
he said, “but servants come and go. We never have
been able to maintain the same household six


ONE OF THREE
23
months running—and because we are being unfair
to eight out of nine we'll not give the slightest hint
of why it's done, and we'll give them two months'
wages.
“So they come and go, and all these have to go.
We can't have this undiscovered man on the prem-
ises. Here's my solution, Hope. They are given
their discharge and a good allowance of unearned
wages, because the day after Christmas you and I
are going south. You see, we are closing the estab-
lishment because we want to spend the three win-
ter months south. We do want to do that. I'll
put in a new caretaker and a couple of new men
for the stock. So all's attended to.”
“But, dearest,” she said, “can't we keep Myra?
We shall come back and where shall we get such
à cook? I suppose you are right, but can't we keep
Myra? She is really devoted.”
"Sorry, darling,” said Richard, “but really they
all have to go. Now, fellows, this has been a dis-
agreeable thing to happen, but it's over and it's
still Christmas eve, and if Hope can forgive us I
think we ought to begin again on our carols."
"I'll say for Hope,” said Ruth, “that she is going
to bed, and I am going with her."
"No! No! Ruth! I'm all right!” Hope ex-
claimed in protest.
"You are not,” said the gentle Ruth, suddenly
become decisive.


ONE OF THREE
“We have had a wonderful Christmas eve.
Please know that we did. Richard, you will know
that we did. Now, whatever it is that has hap-
pened, it has happened all to Hope, and we are
going to get her to bed. You boys can do any-
thing you like. You can sit up and talk and drink
and smoke if you want to. But Hope is not going
to try to play through. We are going to bed."
"I agree absolutely with Ruth,” said Arthur,
“and I speak as her physician.” His glance en-
veloped her for an instant with the greatest affec-
tion. “I say the fellows ought to sit up and have
a grand time by the fire and the girls ought to go
to bed. I have to go back to Simon Parr's, because
I promised, and I think the old folks are sitting up
for me, and Phil promised to go back with me.”
I had not promised; I had not even been asked ;
but if Arthur made a point of this fiction he had
a reason, and I agreed by saying nothing.
"I'll drive you back in a cutter, Arthur,” said
Richard.
“No, if you don't mind,” said Arthur, "Phil and
I will walk.”
“But I'd love to, and it's really hard walking in
this deep snow."
“But, Richard, it's Christmas eve, near mid-
night,” said Arthur, "and a walk of two miles
through the snow is the very thing that two such
illusionists as Phil and I need.''


ONE OF THREE
25
“Take snow shoes, Arthur,” Hope cried. “Rich-
ard, get them snow shoes. It will make it really
harder, but they'll have so much more fun.”
To give us snow shoes happened to satisfy Rich-
ard's insistent idea of service. He probably would
have loved the walk, thus, himself, and conse-
quently felt satisfied for us.
We tied the shoes on our feet and stood awk.
wardly in them on the front porch. Hope and
Richard came out with us. The others stood
massed in and behind the doorway.
Arthur took Hope's hand with a tender courtesy,
friendliness, and gracefulness.
“It has been a wonderful evening, Hope," he
said. "I am sorry for your bad fright and your
hurt—but get a good night's rest and keep the girls
with you and forget everything except the pleasure
you have given us. Good night. Good night, Rich-
ard."
To a chorus of good nights we solemnly waded
away into the white expanse of snow. The sky
had cleared. The stars were showing—Sirius a
steel blue flame in the south, Orion to the north
and west of him—the great galaxy of winter won.
ders which, of a winter night, make man, the ob-
server, at once insignificant and grand. It was
Christmas eve, near the stroke of 12. Therefore,
even facing the steel blue light of Sirius, we were
grand.


ONE OF THREE
“You'll probably do up a few muscles you didn't
know you had,” said Arthur after I had waddled a
quarter of a mile.
“I probably shall,” I said, having premonitions,
“but it's a nice night for it. Moreover, I'm going
to take them off in a minute and walk on my real
feet. Why are we on our way in this fashion-or
any other fashion?”
“I promised Sarah and Simon I'd come back,"
said Arthur. “They are sitting up for mera curi-
ous rudimentary sentiment—but it's Christmas eve
-and they are old-and they wanted it-and so."
“But why me?” I asked.
“I wanted your company—and I had an idea you
wouldn't mind.”
“It had nothing to do with anything that hap-
pened to-night?”
“Not a thing."
We came to the crest of a little slope along the
road. It was just midnight. From the direction
of the Browning house a bell sounded clearly, being
tolled. I had stopped to take my snow shoes off.
and was kneeling in the snow as the sound reached
us.
The far away sound of a bell is always beauti-
ful, even if sometimes melancholy, and this sound,
reaching as at the first moment of Christmas in
the white expanse of countryside, reaching us as
we halted at the top of the little hill, and thus had


ONE OF THREE
geraniums and their cat, their robust foods, their
buckwheat cakes, their home made sausage, the
maple sirup which they boiled down from the sap
from the trees they tapped in March, the salt pork,
and the hams and bacon from the two pigs which
Simon butchered and which Sarah pickled and
cured-an elaboration of the primitive and sub-
stantial—that was the Browning art.
Arthur tapped gently on the glass and old Simon
looked up, saw our faces at the window, glanced at
Sarah, saw that she had not been aroused, put a
finger on his lip to caution us to be quiet, and came
softly in his stocking feet to open the door.
“You got to be quiet,” he said, “because if she
doesn't catch me I'm going to do it, I am, by God-
frey. I've been waiting up for it. Don't stumble
over nothing. Sit down quiet and wait."
He let us in and I followed Arthur's example.
Arthur, as a familiar in the Parr household, would
know what to do in such an emergency as this pre-
sented by Simon's mysterious but desperate deter-
mination to do something which could be done if
Sarah slept and could not be done if she awakened.
The lean old man developed a feline stealth and
quietness in his stocking feet. He opened the door
to the back porch of the kitchen. He reached out
and got a cold jug, snow chilled, such a jug, for
temperature, as Horace might have offered to Mae-
cenas.


ONE OF THREE
29
With feline stealth he put this on the table, got
the glasses Arthur and I sitting motionless-
tilted the jug, poured out three glasses of cider,
nearly full, and then, with greater stealth, opened
the pantry door and came back with a pint bottle
of whisky and a tablespoon.
He uncorked the bottle and into each glass of
cider he measured two tablespoons of whisky.
“There, by Godfrey,” he said in a whisper, “I've
done it once every year somehow, and, by Godfrey,
I always shall."
As he handed Arthur and me our glasses of this
socially, domestically, and digestively dangerous
drink and was prepared to take his own, Sarah
gently stirred in her chair.
“Simon," she said, "I can't excuse this, but if
you'll put a pan of it on the stove and warm it and
put a teaspoonful of pain killer in it, aside from
what you've got in it, it may do my indigestion
good.”
While Sarah's mixture was heating, she pro-
duced from one pocket of her dress a pipe and
from another a sack of tobacco. She filled the
pipe, and as she put the stem in her mouth, started
with an indignant movement toward Simon.
"You let me go to sleep again with my teeth in,”
she said.
“Ding it all, Sarah,” said Simon, stirring a tea-
spoonful of pain killer into the hot pannikin of


30
ONE OF THREE
cider and whisky, “I'm not responsible for your
teeth."
“You'll be the means of me swallowing them
some night when I go to sleep.”
Sarah got slowly out of her rocking chair. She
was heavy in the burdensome fashion which af-
flicts women as age and inactivity both put on flesh
and weaken pectoral and abdominal muscles.
“I've got to see what you've to bring over from
the store to-morrow morning,” she said. She went
to the pantry, taking a lamp from the top of a
chest of drawers.
“What kind of a time did you have over to the
House to-night?" Simon asked.
“Have you a pencil and paper, Simon?” Sarah
called from the pantry.
“Yes," he said, in testy untruth.
“The allspice is all,” Sarah called it was almost
a chant as the inventory proceeded—"and the cof-
fee is almost all.” We could hear her handling
the tins and boxes-shaking them to gauge their
contents. “There's enough salt, but the vinegar is
all. Put down cloves and cinnamon."
“Wait a minute-hold your horses—don't get in
such a rush.” Simon, still testy and without a pen-
cil or paper, was losing touch with the situation.
Arthur handed him a prescription pad and a pen-
cil.
"Now go ahead," said Simon.


ONE OF THREE
31
“What have you got down?” Sarah asked.
“I ain't got nothing."
“The allspice is all.” Sarah started all over
again and Simon made strange notes. Presently
Sarah ceased to call and Simonjasked again:
“Did you have a good time over to the House
to-night?"
In the village they always referred to the house
of Quatuck as the House.
“Yes,” said Arthur, “with some unpleasantness.”
Sarah, with her wrinkled face witchly lighted by
the lamp she carried, came to the pantry door.
“What did you say, Arthur?” she asked.
“I said there was a little unpleasantness, Sarah.”
“What kind of unpleasantness ?”
“Hope was attacked and hurt by a man she
found at her jewel case.”
“Did they find the man?” Sarah asked.
"Richard knows it was one of the servants, but
does not know which one.
“Richard and I went all around the house and
there were no tracks in the snow. The man re-
mained on the premises."
Sarah sat down in her rocking chair and sipped
her cider and whisky, made moral but doubly atro-
cious by the pain killer. She tamped her pipe with
her forefinger.
“Simon," she said, "don't you know it's all hours


32
ONE OF THREE
of night? It ain't even Christian to set up this
way.”
"If we're doing it, it's because you want to," said
Simon. “It's the first time you've let me in a half
year. She goes to bed as soon as she gets the
kitchen red up and then she bawls down the stairs
every five minutes so I can't keep my mind on what
I'm reading. Other night I was reading about
Jupiter, and Jupiter was shining right out through
that there kitchen window above that old elm, but,
by Godfrey, the woman wouldn't let me be. You're
sitting up to-night because you wanted to hear what
they did to the party at the House."
“Well, I haven't heard much,” said Sarah, "and
I'm going to finish this pipe while I do hear. Now,
Arthur, you say what happened.”
He told the story and Sarah smoked. From time
to time Simon put a stick of wood in the stove.
Arthur used all the details which could be pleasing
to a gossip without making themselves an offense
for the friend who told them. When he, thus, had
told everything, Sarah knocked the ashes of her
pipe into the palm of her hand, and put the pipe
on top of the chest of drawers. Then she lighted
two small lamps, taking a paper spill from a glass
jar, and lighting it at the stove.
“Now go up to bed, and, Simon, I hope you pay
for this dissipation to-morrow with a good touch of


ONE OF THREE
33
your lumbago. Arthur, you show Philip Kline
where he sleeps. Good night to you both.”
“But, Sarah,” said Arthur, looking at her, as he
sat leaning forward in his chair, with hands on his
knees—his whole attitude and expression the atti-
tude and expression of intense interest—"what do
you think of what I've told you?”
Sarah had picked up a lamp and again her face
was in the witch lights.
"Richard was right,” she said. “The man was
in the house.”


IT
D ROM the name of Quatuck to the habits of
T Simon and Sarah, this little community stag-
gered any one to explain, understand, or believe its
reality.
Simon did refuse to sell two and a half yards of
yellow silk to Mrs. Parsons because, if he sold it,
he would be out of stock. He did push his spec-
tacles up on his forehead and then spend an hour
searching for them among the papers of his clut-
tered desk, in the potato bin and the apple barrels,
on the shelves and through the wondrous clutter of
the store.
When, one or twice a week, Simon was observed
to be going in a fumbling, absent-minded fashion
about the place, softly saying "By Godfrey !" it
would be known that he had his glasses back on his
forehead and was hunting for them in the dried
apples and on top of the bolts of gingham and
calico.
He did sit at the stove with old man Nichols and
old man Hart and chew tobacco and fight politics
while children sent on errands stood about, not
knowing how they could explain their long absence,
34


ONE OF THREE
35
and not daring to insist that they be allowed to buy
what they were sent for.
Sarah did take her teeth out and put them in a
glass of water to rest her mouth, and once, when
she put them on a table at home, and when she and
Simon had fallen asleep in their rocking chairs, the
cat knocked the false teeth off the table, Simon,
awaking, did-he having taken off his shoes and
sockscut his foot on them.
Simon was lean, tall, stooped, wrinkled, sinewy,
and, in his seventieth year, seemingly possessed of
the qualities of eternal endurance in eternal old
age. Sarah was wrinkled but heavy on her feet.
Something, something dropsical, might break
Sarah down some day, but you felt that Simon was
a permanent human fact.
The essence of their unbelievable reality was
their strict conformity to the formula of rural
comedy. I have emphasized the statement that
Simon did do certain things because such conven-
tional conformity to the formula of rural humor
does distinguish Simon as an unusual character,
I pumped rain water out of a cistern Christ-
mas morning, carried the basin into the kitchen,
and washed my face and hands at the little bench
by the roller towel near the door, just as Simon
had done half an hour earlier, and as he did every
day.
There was tonic in the air. The countryside was


36
ONE OF THREE
glistening in white. The Parr kitchen, spacious
and generous, had a rag carpet. The wood range
was ruddy again. The kitchen was kitchen, din-
ing room, and, part of the time, living room. There
was, as the Parrs called it, a setting room and then
a parlor. The parlor was opened when the minis-
ter called.
The sitting room had a base burner, and when
rigorous weather was upon them Simon and Sarah
used it in their brief evenings after their early
supper. When temperatures, even in winter, in
early winter, were mild, they preferred the great
kitchen with its range, its red-curtained windows,
its geraniums, its capacious pantry, its rocking
chairs, and its intimations and assertions of the
flesh pots.
Wonderful spicy odors filled the old house and
seemed to concentrate in the kitchen. They seemed
to arise as the essence of all that ever had been
good in the appetent lives of the people who had,
or might have, lived in the house-a savor of be-
nignant antiquity-as if every turkey which had
browned under Sarah's basting, all the mincemeat
which had been spiced by her, all the apples which
had baked in her oven, all the pumpkins which
had been put into pies by her, had, with all the
fruits, meats, and vegetables which had come into
the kitchen, left an odorous and highly spiced es-
.


ONE OF THREE
37
sence to give to the kitchen a savor of the richness
of life.
It was such a Christmas morning as children
love, deep with snow, flooded with sunlight. Ar-
thur and I sat down in the rocking chairs as Sarah
was stirring up the batter of buckwheat cakes
and frying pig sausage of Simon's butchering and
of her seasoning.
The sense of physical well-being permeated the
place and was a solid human foundation. Inutile,
for the time, were strivings and passions, longings,
even achievements. The fullness of life was to
sit in a rocking chair by Sarah's red geraniums,
listening to the sizzling of the pork sausage in the
skillet, sniffing the rich odors of this field of con-
tent in which the new savor joined its ancestors,
enriching them as they enriched it, watching Sarah
ladling out her buckwheat batter into the greased
frying pan—to do this and have it Christmas morn-
ing
Arthur and I were to return to the Brownings'
soon after breakfast.
"If they find that fellow, I want to know," said
Sarah.
"I do not suppose the girls rested any too well
last night under the idea that a woman-beating
thief was in the household,” I suggested.
“Apparently he was there, but rather tamed, I'd


38
ONE OF THREE
guess,” said Arthur, "by Richard's onslaught upon
the whole establishment.”
“You knew the Browning home when you were
a boy, didn't you, Arthur?” I asked.
“Yes, when I lived here with Simon and Sarah.
I knew Richard when he was 8 years old and Hope
when she was 5. The place had a fascination even
• for a child's imagination.”
"Esther Browning was a fine woman,” said Si.
mon, “fine looking, clever and handy in her ways,
and open-handed.”
“She was clever in a way,” said Sarah, "but a
bit soft. I never took with her reading books so
· much-love stories and poems. I don't go with
those who say that reading, except the Bible, is
against religion, but it's a fault if it ain't a sin.
And Esther Browning would have done better if
she had kept her mind serious and away from
vanities.”
“Sarah,” said Simon severely,
“That's a tight shoe for you,” said Sarah, inter-
rupting him. “If it's yours, you wear it, sitting
up to immoral hours reading un-Christian things
about the stars. You'll have it to answer for. I've
tried to stop it, and it isn't on my soul.”
"It isn't, Sarah. If you get credit for every
time you've gone to bed like a dog in the manger
and spoiled my reading by yapping down the stairs


ONE OF THREE
39
every five minutes, you're going to be pretty close
to St. Peter's right elbow for all kingdom come.”
Old Simon seemed to find a grim amusement in
his retrospection.
"You have persevered in good deeds,” he said,
and I reckon you will till the land of grace calls
you. But you outspeak yourself when you have
Philip Kline think that you held anything against
Esther Browning Arthur knows better, and he
wouldn't pay any attention to you. The fact is,
Philip, that Sarah ,never had a real softness for
anybody but Esther Browning, and if she miscalls
her feeling for her, she hurts herself.”
Sarah, turning cakes on the griddle, was silent a
moment. Then she said:
"You'd better fill your mouth with your cakes
and not with your words. Come to your break-
fast.”
The table had a red cloth. The dishes were of
the heaviest stoneware. Simon sat in a rocking
chair. The cakes had the real buckwheat sourness
which invites butter and repels sirup. The sausages
were rich with the sweetness of seasoned pork-
the sturdy food of strong digestions.
"Sarah,” said Arthur as he finished his tenth
cake and fourth sausage, “there's only one thing
which could save me from the consequences of this.
It will save Phil, too. We'll make your walks."
"It will save me, too,” said Simon. “I've got to


40
ONE OF THREE
open up the store for two hours, and I've got to do
it now, and there's two hours' work making paths
around here. If Sarah has to wade out in this
snow, it's going to be Fourth of July for me and
not Christmas. You'll find shovels in the wood-
shed.”
For an hour we made paths—to the chickens,
through a growth of damson and greengage plums;
to the wood pile, to the barn, to the root house-
through a foot of heavy snow. It was back break-
ing work, but it saved us from the cakes and sau.
sages and Sarah could go about her chores. We
also carried in wood and pitched down hay for
the horse and cow.
When we were ready to take the two mile walk
to the Brownings Sarah wanted us both to come
back for the night.
"I've half promised to,” said Arthur; "can't you
do it? The party will be breaking up this eve-
ning. Sarah and Simon want us. I think I'll do it.
I hope you will. We can get away in the morn-
ing."
The lure of Sarah's red curtained kitchen was
enough to make me willing.
“Sarah will have cold roast turkey and cold
mince pie,” said Arthur, “and we'll sit up to the
immoral hour of 9:30 and have indigestion in the
feather beds the rest of the night."
Arthur and I walked the two miles from the


ONE OF THREE
41
ca.
village to Brownings, hard walking—we carried
the snow shoes back-but in the most delightful
Christmas morning conditions imaginable. With
the rise and at the top of every hillock or knoll
along our plodding way we had a slightly changed
aspect of the snow covered country, the smoke from
ranges roasting the Christmas goose or turkey aris-
ing from the near or distant farmhouses—the
whole scene one of illusion, impalpable blessing, of
unknown good, or real benevolence, set in the white
of a Christmas snow, flooded with the benignity of
the Christmas idea.
On the Browning place, not far from the house,
we found our friends in the ridiculous postures of
awkward skiing. We heard their shrieks of amuse-
ment before we came in sight. Ruth Renwick had
just attempted a small hill and had gone head
foremost into a drift. George and Richard had
pulled her out.
We went, all together, back to the house. The
girls' cheeks were flushed with extraordinary but
healthy exercise. Air, scene, prospect, and reality
were tonic to the sensation and imagination.
They threw their awkward skis on the front
porch and filled the living room with animation.
Hope had on a sweater. When she took it off she
revealed a high neck dress—to conceal the marks
on her neck, I thought. Her upper lip was swollen,
but she was happy and serene.


42
ONE OF THREE
Richard made the joviality of the home, with
Hope as a placid background. He was the radia-
tion; she was the essential element.
Ruth Renwick told us, Arthur and me, that she
had spent the night with Hope; she had insisted
upon it—"Hope needed woman company,” she said,
"and I knew it. I made her take me for the night.
She resisted the suggestion, but I think she was
relieved. At first, in spite of herself, she was very
nervous. Then she seemed to quiet down and go
to sleep. Some time in the middle of the night
I was awakened with a sense of having passed,
unconsciously, through an experience which would
have terrified me if I had been given all of it and
did terrify me because I had had so little of it.
“Hope was awake and tense by my side. “Did
you hear that?' she asked. The only thing of this
experience of which I was at all conscious, on
awakening, was that I seemed to have heard some-
thing before I awakened.
“I told Hope I had not heard anything. I put
my arm around her, and she relaxed. Just then
there was, unmistakably, a dismal sound-quiver.
ing, terrifying—as the call of a wolf or of some
savage animal. It seemed to be in the house
some one crying out in a nightmare. I had no doubt
that was what it was, but it startled me.
“Hope quivered all over, but I tightened my hold
on her and she quieted down again.


ONE OF THREE
43
“Are you sure the door is locked?' she asked.
I was, but I got up to make sure. It was. Then
Hope seemed satisfied, and presently we both fell
asleep again."
The people started on their sleigh ride back to
Appleton at 6 o'clock, to drop Arthur and me at
the Parrs.
“I don't want to leave Hope,” Ruth said to me
before we went. “I wonder if we could not induce
them to come with us."
At my suggestion, George asked Richard if he
and Hope could not take the ride with them and
spend the night.
“Ordinarily, yes, George,” said Richard, “but not
with this unexplained event in the house."
Ruth was solicitous for Hope, who merely smiled
out of her beautiful serenity.
It was reassuring to see them as we did as we
drove away-Hope and Richard in their doorway.
The tinge of regret in their farewells was a cor-
diality; it indicated their appreciation of something
we had done by coming to them, a regret that this
something had its hours and could not live on.
Richard's arm was around Hope's waist.
"I don't believe you need worry about leaving
them," said George to Ruth. It did not seem as if
we need to.
The light from the Parr kitchen again was a shaft
across the snow when Arthur and I got out of the


44
ONE OF THREE
sleigh to say good-by to our friends. I was glad to
avoid the sudden transition from Quatuck to Apple-
ton with its suburban and, therefore, metropolitan
suggestions.
Sarah and Simon had eaten all they could hold of
the great white turkey Simon had killed and Sarah
had stuffed. Consequently they had dozed in their
rocking chairs half the afternoon, in heavy inertia,
but they had awakened and both had done their
chores. The cow was milked, the chickens fed, the
wood was in, Simon had his book by the lamp,
Sarah had her teeth in a glass and her pipe in her
mouth, and both were glad to see us.
The old folks might have been lonesome of a
Christmas night, in their suggestion to us, if they
had not been so fundamentally established upon the
essentials rather than the superficial emotions of
life. They constantly maintained, by their demea-
nor, that a funeral was productive of temporary
vexation-many guests, much eating, chairs moved
in from the neighbors', a jovial undertaker, etc.
—and that cabbage and salt pork were enduring.
Diocletian loved his cabbages, and where is Dio-
cletian? But there, indubitably, are cabbages.
Without knowing anything of such an existence
as Diocletian's, Simon and Sarah intimated that
there are enduring facts, of which the individual
human life is not one, although there always, prob-
ably, will be cabbages.


ONE OF THREE
For the reasons thus indicated, and because of
the conditions thus revealed, we were glad to spend
this Christmas night with Simon and Sarah, an-
other night of sheer whiteness without and with a
ruddy glow within.
To my own astonishment, I, considering that I
had eaten a breakfast at the Parrs' which might
have been food for a week and then had eaten a
late dinner at the Brownings' which might have
been food for a month, began to think appetently
of the cold turkey which Arthur had said Sarah
would bring out as supper.
We sat in all the revealed comforts of the big
kitchen and Sarah asked if the man had been found.
We told her that he had not, but Arthur told her
of the sounds which had disturbed Hope and Ruth
in the night.
"You do remember the old garden at the Brown-
ings', Arthur, when you were a little boy?” Sarah
asked, sucking at her pipe.
"I do,” said Arthur. “I've had it in mind all day
-to remind you of it and to tell Phil. When we
were children it was the most impressive thing at
the Brownings.!!
«Arthur went over to play with Hope and Rich-
ard when they were children,” said Sarah, "and
Richard came over here. Hope didn't come much."
“She was shy as a child,” said Arthur.


46
ONE OF THREE
"She wouldn't leave Esther Browning,” said
Sarah.
“Philip Kline won't know what you are talking
about,” said Simon, "unless he knows that Esther
Browning took Hope when she was a three months
old baby and brought her up. Hope's mother was a
widow woman that Esther Browning knew, and she
promised her when she was dying that she would
take care of Hope. There was a boy, too, but Esther
Browning didn't take him. And she wouldn't let
Hope think that she was her own daughter.”
"I always misdoubted that,” said Sarah. "Hope
would have been better off if she had thought she
was Esther Browning's natural daughter instead
of a taken-up child.”
“You're always misdoubting something," said
Simon. “You misdoubt what I know about Jupiter
and what the minister tells you about the Sermon
on the Mount.”
"I don't take up with Baptists, if that's what you
mean,” said Sarah. "If the minister does, that's
on his own soul as a Methodist, but I don't; and I
don't thank any young whippersnapper for coming
into my parlor and telling me that Baptists might
be Christian folks, not even if he is ordained. I
have my own opinion of Baptists."
“And the Baptists, mebbe, have their own opinion
of you, but that's neither here nor there. What
Arthur was trying to tell Philip Kline was about


ONE OF THREE
47
the old garden that used to be at the Browning
place.”
"Well,” said Arthur, "it was only this: The gar-
den was sunken. Use had been made of a hollow
back of the house. The garden is there now, but
not in the fashion it was when Esther Browning,
the mother, was alive.
"Esther Browning, we thought, was the most
beautiful, tender, loving woman who ever lived.
She gathered helpless things and tender things
about her in a perfect passion of love for them.
Anything if small, sick, bested by elements, mis-
treated by events, unable to make its fight for life,
instantly called forth her perfect passion of sym-
pathy.
“She gathered children to her as if she were the
eternal mother, and all children came to her if she
opened her arms. Her compassion was touched by
a homeless dog, by a forlorn kitten, by a bird which
might have flown against the window, by anything
which came to hurt or misfortune, or was exposed
to hurt or misfortune by its helplessness.
“So Quatuck frequently had the strangest con-
geries of animal oddities—dogs that had been lost,
kittens that had been thrust out to fend for them.
selves, birds with broken wings—but they were too
fragile and wild for her ministry, and always
stabbed her by dying under her care. A sick horse
in the stable made her sad. A lamb too feeble to


48
ONE OF THREE
get on its feet brought a real gush of emotion from
her.
“She was too sensitive to be fitted for life. She
was fairly diseased by her emotions, but so lovely,
wonderful, beautiful, and glorious in her beauty.
She would have gone to the cross or the stake for
what she loved. When she was involved she was
pure Samurai—the sword could have her any time,
but a rough word could not touch anything she
loved without hurting her, and she loved every.
thing young, innocent, and helpless.
“Children adored her, would sit fascinated at
her feet or entranced on her knees. She had a low,
soft, gurgling laugh as she put her arms about a
child. Richard's father had been a dark, undemon-
strative, gloomy man, a misfortune even a tragedy
-to the gentle, loving Esther.
"He must always have seemed cruel and hard to
her; she must always have seemed neurotic and
silly to him. He died when Richard was a year old.
Several years later her compassion enveloped Hope,
a forlorn little orphan baby, the daughter of two
fine young people who had made a failure of life
in every respect other than in their love for each
other and in their character. Orphan asylums were
terrible things in those days, but Hope would have
gone to one if Esther had not reached out for her.
“Esther evidently did not think it right that
Hope should be deceived as to her parentage. I


ONE OF THREE
49
had an idea that she felt the little girl must con-
stantly keep a sanctuary for her father and mother.
When the baby was old enough to understand she
was made to understand that Esther was not her
mother, but merely one who loved her.
“Esther's generous idea of saving for Hope the
memory of her parents was defeated by its own
purposes. As Hope, adoring the lovely woman who
to her was her mother, came to know that the love
which encircled her was a gift of pure gold, her
adoration increased. She sat at Esther's feet as in
a temple. Esther was her religion.
“There were half a dozen children who frequent-
ly played with Richard, two of us here in the
village and others who came from the city. Esther
never dominated a group of children, although she
was always at its edge, or, if the children, as they
frequently did, volubly demanded her, in the midst
of the group.
“Richard, although a strong boy, frequently was
ill. Often when we came Esther would meet us
sadly and say that Richard was not well enough to
play.”
"That's a lot about everything except the gar-
den,” said Simon. “I guess Phil's wondering where
the garden comes in.”
Arthur laughed as if his ramblings had amused
him.
“I got to thinking aloud, I guess," he said.


50
ONE OF THREE
"It was the garden I started to tell about. It
had the fascination of a mystery. I don't recall
that we ever were told not to go down into it. I
think it was open to us, and yet we went down only
once in a great while, and then timidly, timorously.
“The garden forced this suggestion upon us be-
cause, in spite of the fact that it was lovely, it
was deep, dark, full of odors at once wonderful and
mysterious. They had a pungency which comes
from a luxuriance in deep shadow, the damp luxu-
riance of an odorous jungle penetrated by shots of
sunlight but never fully bathed in it.
“The way from the house to the garden was by
flagstone steps, and the flagstone walks in the gar-
den were fern banked. These flags were nearly al-
ways moist. Behind the banks of ferns were or-
chids, our own lady-slippers, masses of the pink
lady-slipper, which is rarer with us than the yel-
low, and then other masses of orchids of a sinister
beauty. In spots which got the most sun there were
moss roses and tuberoses, and on a wall which real-
ly had sunlight there were crimson rambler roses.
“With the dampness and the luxuriance of things
growing in heavy moisture, with great mosses and
lichens, the wet flagstones and with the spots and
streaks of sunlight, with the heavy odors and with
bees droning in the spots and patches of sunlight,
tapping the sirup cups of the flowers, the garden
was witchy.


ONE OF THREE
51
“We saw above it the old woman on a broom, and
in it elves and little goblins. The ruby-throat
humming-bird was an elf; the brown mole was a
brown goblin.
"Here was where the Sleeping Beauty might have
slept. The Prince Charming might have come
through the hawthorns beyond the garden and have
climbed its wall to find her. Cinderella might have
fled after midnight through such a garden on her
return to her ashes.
“Lizards sunned themselves on stone benches;
toads hopped across the flagstones; little harmless
snakes wriggled into the ferns, and the spot, with
its rich and exotic perfumes, made us timorous to
enter it.
“On the level of the house above this garden Rich-
ard and Hope had a playground where we could
throw a ball, play croquet, and even crack the whip
and play duck on a rock.
"Now I am coming to the strangest feature of it
all. In large cages hung against the garden wall,
up where they got the sun, were a number of par-
rots, brilliant paroquets, and monkeys.
“Esther had a brother who was a sea captain,
and, his trade lying in South America, in Brazil,
he seldom came back with a cargo that he didn't
send to our inland place these paroquets and mon-
keys, which in the summer could be kept in the
sunken garden.


52
ONE OF THREE
“They made chattering, screaming noises-some-
times, even to children, who love noises, it seemed
unbelievable. It, of course, fascinated us, gave us
an eerie sense of unreality in our very real world.
A child's world is at once very real and very un-
real, and when the familiar, real world is touched
by things related to the world of the imagination
and fancy there is a profound impression.
"Just such an impression was made by this dark,
fern grown, orchid filled, perfumed sunken garden,
with its paroquets, parrots, and monkeys, at the
Brownings'. And it was only occasionally that
we went, of our own wish and upon our own deci-
sion, down the great flagstone steps into this won-
derful place where moisture always was in the
stones of the walks.
“At times the noises from the birds and animals
were terrific and almost terrifying. Esther Brown-
ing once said that she wished that her brother Jas-
per would not send so constantly so many paro-
quets and monkeys.
“She loved all animals. I never have loved a
monkey, but the Lord could not make anything,
from a Gila monster to a ruby-throat, from a man-
eating shark to a goldfinch, that Esther Brown-
ing could not and would not love.
“These exotic pets had such hard times over win-
ters, and so many of them died, and each death


ONE OF THREE
53
tortured Esther Browning, but Jasper sent them
and their cries filled the garden.
“That's what I started to say about the garden,"
Arthur said, “and have said it rhetorically-prob-
ably because the garden itself always was rhetori-
cal to the child's imagination.
“When Richard was fifteen years old Esther
Browning took him and little Hope to Italy, and
they lived there three years. While they were
gone the garden lost its old characteristics. Esther
had wanted it opened up more to the sunlight. It
lost its esoteric significance. It is there now, with
roses and hollyhocks, delphinium and foxglove, tu-
lips and hardy narcissus in the spring, cornflow-
ers and Shasta daisies, and all the conventional
perennials. But the witchy atmosphere is gone, the
sunlight is in the place, the wonderful ferns and
the lizards sunning themselves on the stone benches
are gone-the whole meaning of the place, from its
orchids to its animals, from its odors to its curious
dampness, is gone.
“When Richard came back with his mother and
Hope from Italy, the place was utterly changed.
Probably the outstanding indication of the change
was the disappearance not so much of the floral
characteristics of the damp gardens as the dis-
appearance of the chattering, shrieking birds and
animals."
“There was a reason for them,” said Sarah.


III
D ICHARD and Hope went south a few days
L after Christmas. Richard acted with determi-
nation and finality. The servants were released,
some caretakers were brought in, and Richard took
Hope away. Dr. Arthur Arthur and I saw them
in the city the night before their going. They had
closed up the house, except for the caretakers' quar-
ters, and they wanted Arthur and me to join them
in town for dinner.
Richard was a man of the most genial enthusi-
asms. His fancy had been taken for tarpon fishing,
and in the afternoon he had been about town get-
ting equipment and information. At dinner he
talked a good deal of this fishing, with an eager-
ness of expectation which was enviable, and I did
envy him. He seemed to have the secret of a de-
lightful perpetuity of youth, an ingratiating cor-
diality of manners, springing from an amiability of
temperament constantly heightened by an enthusi-
asm for what he found himself about to do and
what, at the moment, he wanted most to do.
It was extraordinary that Richard constantly
found himself about to do what at that moment he


ONE OF THREE
រ
most wantea to do. I never knew whether it was
because he was an unconscious tyrant of the hours
and always followed his own inclinations to the
top of his bent, or whether it was because of a mar-
velous ability to adjust himself with enthusiasm
to conditions he was about to meet and to do with
all his heart what he was about to do.
Hope, as we always found her, was a beautiful
serenity. Richard's enthusiasms kindled a respon-
sive interest in her. She was a reflection of his
mood, with her own graciousness added, always
adding her charm to what interested him.
They had our best wishes and our regret was real
that they were withdrawing from our winter the
zest and charm which they could give it by their
friendship. Hope's lip, I noticed, was still a little
swollen and a cloth collar covered her neck.
Occasional letters later came from them, letters
of placid friendship from Hope and of ecstatic en-
thusiasm from Richard. He was fishing for tarpon
and sharks. Experience with the sea was new to
him, and delightful. He was both childlike and
shrewd in his impressions, fascinated both by the
natural and the social phenomena suggested by the
roll and sweep of the waters, by what sailed on
them, and by what could be taken from them.
"A highway and an inexhaustible source of food,"
he wrote. “Wonderful to consider the sea as the
means by which people give to each other what one


56
ONE OF THREE
has and the other needs, and which itself gives to
them the most bounteous supplies of food.”
Then came a letter in the most depressed tone.
They were returning north. This was in late Feb.
ruary. They would be home by the middle of
March. Hope had had an experience which spoiled
the south for them. She had been strolling in the
pines and had been attacked by a Negro. He had
seized her by the throat and had struck her in the
mouth.
Richard had cautioned her against wandering
about the countryside alone, as she wanted to. The
place they had chosen was not a frequented resort.
Richard had been afraid that Hope allowed herself
too much liberty in going about. She did not al-
ways accompany him when he fished, but went by
herself into the pine woods, which fascinated her as
the sea fascinated him.
What had unstrung both of them, even more than
Hope's experience, was what had happened to the
Negro suspected of having made the attack. He
was hanged by the men of the community. Hope
had not been asked to identify him. She had been
so broken down nervously by her experience that
they did not want to inflict this ordeal apon her,
and the circumstances sufficiently revealed the Ne-
gro who had done it.
Richard wrote that he thought the system of
punishment was not particular as to the identity


ONE OF THREE
57
of a Negro. What was sought was the maintenance
of a condition of order and security, which was to
be maintained by the punishment, by the execu-
tion, of a Negro, or several Negroes, every time a
crime was committed by any Negro. It was best,
but not necessary, to get the guilty one. It was
important to get one. That maintained the morale
of the community. It impressed the Negro senti-
ment, and the whites, if they properly impressed
the sentiment, however violently and with whatever
disregard of the precise justice, attained their ob-
ject, which was the stability of community order.
Hope, however, learning that a Negro had been
hanged for the attack upon her, had collapsed ut-
terly, and could not remain longer in the south.
She was in a very bad state of health and they
were coming home. Richard said she needed chiefly
to get away from the scene, which now had such
terrible associations for her. He knew that the
excruciating memory would be effaced at Quatuck.
Later he wrote again, saying that he had given
Hope's requirements more consideration, and in
consequence he would take her to New York for a
month. This letter he wrote from Asheville. They
had come north into the Blue Ridge.
Richard said that because our early spring was
cold and inclement he was certain that Quatuck
would not be the place for Hope, probably not until
May, and, moreover, he thought that Hope's mind


58
ONE OF THREE
might be rid the quicker of its unpleasant ideas
and impressions with such distractions as he could
provide for her there.
I went with Arthur Arthur to Quatuck a num-
ber of times in the late winter and early spring to
spend a day and night with Simon and Sarah, to
sit in the red curtained kitchen in a rocking chair
by the geraniums, to eat Sarah's buckwheat cakes
and sausages. These days were always delightful
—some of snow, some of rain, some of close gray
skies, some dazzling in the most brilliant of sun.
light—that of February.
I was at Quatuck at sugaring time, when Simon
tapped the sugar maples and when Arthur and I
carried the great copper boiling kettle out of the
woodshed for Sarah and set it up in the maple
grove back of the barn,
We built the fire under it in the snow, carried
wood and kept the pot boiling the days that Sarah
sugared the sap in the snow. Downy and hairy
woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches were all
about, and I remember having a genuine esthetic
thrill to see a cardinal in a patch of witch hazel,
poplar saplings, and viburnum, when a new fall
of snow was glistening as the perfect setting for his
exotic beauty.
Hard and unsympathetic as Sarah's moral and
material universe was, and ineffectual as Simon
was as an expression of benignancy, neither the


ONE OF THREE
59
failure of the latter as a positive force nor the
success of the former as a negative one could even
diminish the essential and robust joviality of all
this human good.
Sarah might be dour, hard, and stern, unbend-
ing, uncomprehending, unsympathetic, unrelenting
-have all or any of the qualities which make a
person indurated to the suggestions of benevolence
--but at her wood range, whether with cakes in the
skillet or with cabbage and salt pork in a pot, or
with a fowl in the oven, she had to be, by the
successful insistence of her surroundings, a part of
and a performer in the success of this rural drama
of content.
In late March we dug wintered parsnips out of
the frozen ground with mattocks, and when Sarah
had fried these sweet roots we knew that nothing
else the earth produced could have such succulence.
Sarah's potato soup alone was worth the ride to
Quatuck. Her mince meat was worth a trip across
the continent.
Every evening Simon went to the cellar-the
cellar door was at the far end of the kitchen-
you raised the door out of the floor, hooked it
against the wall, and descended the stairs care-
fully, lighting your way with a lamp—and got an
apple from a barrel. He baked the apple on the
back of the range and read while it baked. It was
his own little ceremony. He never asked us to


60
ONE OF THREE
join him and never expected Sarah to bake his
apple for him.
Several afternoons I spent in the store with
Simon, watching him lose his spectacles by pushing
them up on his forehead, listening to the arguments
about the stove and enjoying all the eccentricities
of his proprietorship.
One afternoon, when there was a close gray sky
and when the brown earth contained intimations
but not signs of spring, I sat in Sarah's kitchen
reading, but surreptitiously at times openly-
watching her as she, heavy on her feet but adept
with her hands, drew, cleaned, and stuffed a fat
goose, made mince pies, kneaded bread, filled a pan
with bread rolls, and served the cheerful ministry
of the kitchen range.
Out of the window she had a view up the road,
the willow lined country road along which the
few houses of the village were lined. She glanced
out of this window from time to time as she passed
it and, finally in doing so, stopped and made a lit-
tle sound, ejaculatory in significance, but not in
tone or volume, made by suddenly sucking in her
cheeks.
Up the road she had seen a horse and buggy
approaching.
"The minister,” she said, “and he's coming here.
Drat the luck."
There was always a fire laid in the wood burning


ONE OF THREE
61
heater in the parlor and the parlor never was
opened unless the minister called.
"Drat the luck,” said Sarah, and went, waddling
as rapidly as she could, opening the door into that
chamber of sepulchral chill called the parlor, the
only room in the house in which Sarah would have
received the minister. Unhappy minister, I
thought, condemned to parlors, such as Sarah's,
seeing his human folk in their slippery, chill, hair-
cloth upholstering when he would like to sit for a
moment with them by the wood range and gera-
niums in the red curtained kitchen with the cellar
door at the far side suggesting apples, jellies, and
damson preserves, and the whole odor of the room
one of comfortable, competent life. His room,
unhappy minister, was the room in which Sarah in
exasperation and unhappiness was trying to light
the first fire it had known for three months.
"Yon, Philip,” she called. “Come here and light
this fire for me and when the minister rings the
bell you open the door and let him in and set here
in the parlor with him. I'll get dressed.”
I lighted the fire. I received the minister, an
earnest young man whose face, I thought, indicated
relief as well as astonishment when he saw me at
the door instead of Sarah. His duties, geographi-
cally, were large if he performed them scrupulous-
ly, as I thought this young man would.
Quatuck was too insignificant a village to sup-


62
ONE OF THREE
port a church, but its collection of souls had to be
important to the minister, however distant, whose
charge they were, and to the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore a
charge was a charge, and his congregational visit-
ing brought him from Wheeling, six miles away,
to Quatuck, which was in his charge.
I wished I might take this earnest young man
and do something human with him-take him out
while I split some logs or fed the chickens-being
a son of Anak, I should have loved to give him a
drink-to sit down with him where we could talk
cold turkey if he knew what that meant-had him
out to dig up parsnips or had him in the red cur.
tained kitchen.
I had to sit with him stiffly in the chill parlor, an
unbelievable chill chamber of gloom with Sarah's
haircloth furniture defying us to sit on it, and the
crayon portraits of Sarah's ancestors, on the walls,
daring us to.
The kindled wood in the wood heater did snap
and crackle, but that merely suggested heat and
did not supply it. I thought that Sarah must die
if she sat in this room and received a pastoral
visit, and that the church would be burying a min-
ister and calling another within the next few days.
The young man could be nothing but serious-
received, roomed and seated as he was and I felt
the impossibility of doing anything—with Sarah's
pink shells making a mockery of human desire for


ONE OF THREE
63
decoration, the hard cloth sofa making a mockery
decoration, the crayon portraits makană desolation
of remembrance, and the utter chill and desolation
of the room making the kitchen seem as if it were
the inspired achievement of another breed of hu-
mans.
I recall that even in these dismal, cold and for-
bidding conditions the young Mr. Dinsmore did say
that he had on his conscience a matter of inatten-
tion to the big house of Quatuck. He had
heard that Mrs. Browning was not well and that
some strange occurrences had tapped her strength
badly-I wondered how he had that information-
how widely it might be spread and where it origi-
nated-and he wondered frequently if some pas-
toral consolation and encouragement might not be
necessary.
“The difficulty,” he said, with a look of discour-
agement in the face of obstacles perceived but not
understood, “is that I do not know the persuasion
of Mr. and Mrs. Browning. They never have been
to the church in Wheeling and I hesitate to offer
them the help of a Methodist minister unless they
are ready to receive it."
Sarah entered at that moment, majestically and
solemnly, decorated as for a religious rite, in a
white lace edged stomacher and in a white lace
cap, in a black satin dress, heavy of feet, large of
abdomen, heavy jowled but with her teeth in place,


64
ONE OF THREE
prepared to endure this young whippersnapper of
a minister, but to destroy him if he suggested that
she ought to believe the Baptists could be Chris-
tians.
I bowed to Mr. Dinsmore and left him to Sarah.
I went back to the glow and warmth and cordiality
of the kitchen and contemplated the fundamentals
of human good as appreciated by simple folk, and
as typified by a goose Sarah had in the oven. I was
to baste it from time to time.
The pastoral visit was brief-not more than ten
minutes. The Rev. Mr. Dinsmore took his depar-
ture and was on his way to another communicant,
to be received in another parlor, by another lady,
old or young, in the best dress she could put on
while she kept him waiting.
Sarah fairly bristled as she came out again into
the kitchen. She had first to see to her goose, and
then to take off her black satin and lace.
“The minister said something about the Brown-
ings," I suggested as she opened the oven to see how
well or badly I might have been taking care of the
rich, fat bird.
“Drat the minister,” said Sarah. "I don't hold
with him at all. He's soft. He hasn't any religion.
He's all for forgiveness of our enemies and love of
everybody and endurance of evil done us. A young
whippersnapper coming around here to tell me
14.


ONE OF THREE
65
what's o'clock and how to tell spinach-well, you
watch that goose while I get out of this dress.”
"I said he mentioned the Brownings," I reiter-
ated as Sarah closed the oven door.
“I reckon he did,” said Sarah. “You mind that
fire and that goose while I get into something com-
fortable again. Arthur and Simon are coming home
with an appetite for that goose because they knew
we were going to have it, and nothing gives a man
an appetite like knowing he's going to have some-
thing he wants. I'm going to get out of this dress."
When Sarah came back again she was as I usu-
ally had seen her.
“If Arthur had married Hope, as he ought to
have,” said Sarah, “there wouldn't be any young
whippersnapper asking about the Brownings, be-
cause there wouldn't be any Brownings to ask
about."
"But Arthur never wanted to marry Hope," I
said.
“O, didn't he!” said Sarah.
There was a stamping on the little porch and
Simon opened the door, entering followed by Ar-
thur.
"I stopped for him at the store,” said Arthur,
“and it's a good thing I did. He was in a checker
game which would have lasted another hour if I
had not broken it up."


66
ONE OF THREE
"It will last three or four weeks as the result
of your breaking it up,” said Simon.
Arthur said he had to go to New York, telling
us when we were full of the goose and Sarah's dress-
ing and mashed potatoes. He did leave the next
day.
He came back in two weeks. He had seen Rich-
ard and Hope. Hope, he thought, had looked tired,
but otherwise seemed to have no ill effects from the
experience which Richard had described. If she
were nervous she had too much control to reveal
it, but Arthur thought there was an occasional rev-
elation of pain or horror in her eyes. These revela-
tions were not related to immediate circumstances
or events, were not attributable to things said or
to be seen at the time.
As an instance, he said, they were dining in a
very pleasant restaurant and every circumstance
was agreeable. Richard was in high spirits, chatty,
laughing, interested in his surroundings—had
been keen to order a particularly well chosen din-
ner-as he knew how to do and was at his ami-
able best.
His attentiveness to Hope was a delicacy which
revealed his affection and consideration. Hope was
smiling and happy. Now, the only thing that hap-
pened that could be related in any fashion—that
could be distorted into a significance or a distress-


ONE OF THREE
67
ing import to Hope's recollection or imagination,
Arthur said, was the entrance of two Japanese.
They passed near by—two scrupulously attired
Japanese gentlemen—and Arthur was certain that
they could not have suggested even an unpleasant-
ness in experience to Hope. Arthur thought it
was beyond comprehension that they should have
revived the recollection of the Negro who had at-
tacked her and who had been lynched in the south.
Certainly the hue and physiognomy of a Japanese
would not start a recollection of such a nature.
Arthur knew that the experience had shocked Hope
profoundly. Richard had told him the circum-
stances the day he met him in New York and had
asked him to try to avoid all suggestions which
might revivify the pain for Hope.
Richard had said that it was very difficult to
avoid this because so many unsuggestive ideas had
the power to start Hope's mind in this unfortunate
direction. Her wonderful consideration for others,
her control of herself, for the sake of others, her
denial of herself, submergence of her emotions, of
pains when she had them, of sadness if it came to
her, kept her from displaying, except involuntarily
and for an instant, any spiritual distress which her
experience might have left.
Richard had told Arthur that he knew the dis-
tress was there and that it asked their kindest con-
sideration. He had said that Hope, he knew, easily


68
ONE OF THREE
might have survived the experience as it related
merely to her. It was the lynching of the Negro
that had nearly destroyed.
With all these things considered, it was to Arthur
inexplicable that, as they sat in the pleasant res-
taurant, anything could have happened which in
itself could have produced the phenomenon giving
him a startled glance into the terrified soul of Hope.
It could not have been related to the Japanese.
Arthur said that he thought that at times-some of
them very awkward times for Hope even as this
must have been an awkward time-her success in
controlling both her mind and her actions broke
down-merely for an instant. For that instant she
became a sensitized photographic plate and a pic-
ture was revealed—just for a second, and that the
picture came out of indelible experience, so horrify-
ing, that the recollection could not be erased.
It was extraordinarily mysterious and unhappy,
he said.
We were sitting with Simon and Sarah in the
Parr kitchen as he, on his return from New York,
told us of this. Simon's apple was on the range,
frying in its little pan. Sarah's teeth were in a
tumbler of water on the red clothed kitchen table
by the side of her rocking chair.
She smoked and rocked. The cat lay in her lap.
The one consideration I ever knew Sarah to ac-
cord the sensitiveness of any living thing was


ONE OF THREE
69
shown to the cat. She deliberately blew the smoke
from her pipe so it would not drop into the cat's
nose. That was the one concession of Sarah Parr
-So far as I ever had been able to observerto
the amenities of life.
She had listened to all Arthur had been saying
—and without a comment. She looked very grim
and perspicacious—a suggestion of the unutterable
wisdom and understanding of a dozing cat. The
suggestion of infinite knowledge given out by the
cat on her knees radiated from Sarah. She rocked
gently-so gently and easily as not even to annoy
the cat-and smoked, taking a long pull, and then
several little quick ones that was her only evi.
dence of real animation.
I began to feel a sense of awe of Sarah, getting
an idea of her quite unsympathetic comprehension
of something beyond our grasp. She, I thought,
had listened to Arthur as a physician might listen
to the awkward description of symptoms by a
patient, knowing exactly what they indicated, but
patiently listening on to the distressed words of
the perplexed sufferer, who knew only that some-
thing, which might be anything, had happened to
him.
Thus Arthur himself, I imagined, in his field
of knowledge, had listened to many such an old
woman as Sarah. The difference was this-that
Arthur, having been attentive and patient, had a


70
ONE OF THREE
word of encouragement, of explanation and direc-
tion. Sarah, with the knowledge which I began
to feel she had, would put the cat off her lap,
slowly and heavily arise, knock the heel tap out of
her pipe, put the pipe on the top of the chest of
drawers, and say a sharp word to Simon about eat-
ing his apple and going to bed.
I had begun to feel that the red curtained
kitchen, with its wood range and its geraniums,
its connoted ideas of many roast fowls and
many buckwheat cakes, was overcharged with an
element of tragedy-that fine phrase of tragedy
which consists of the knowledge of an act or con-
dition; suppressed for reasons sufficiently good.
Sarah thus became portentous to the fancy-
although only a fat, heavy, wrinkled old woman.
There was a heavy dashing rain outside, which
beat against the windows and made shelter—a roof,
walls, and inner warmth and comfort-appreciable,
directly apprehended.
"Well,” said Simon, “after all you’ye said, Ar-
thur, what was it all about? I've heard that you
had your dinner and that two Japs came in-New
York must be a queer place—but what's it all
about? You've got us expecting something, but,
by Godfrey, I don't know what. I think you're
lighted, son, but I don't think you're going to ex-
plode.”
"It isn't much," said Arthur. “It isn't anything.


ONE OF THREE
71
It was only the look of utter horror that suddenly
came in Hope's eyes. She was listening to some-
thing Richard was saying and I was looking at
her. Suddenly her eyes opened wide. You saw the
horror in them—just a flash, but of terrible anguish
-of the mind or soul-something dreadful. Then
she closed her eyes, swayed almost imperceptibly,
and instantly was herself again, smiling, beautiful
and serene. Richard had been planning something,
in his ingratiating amiability and enthusiasm-
something pleasant to do. “Yes, Richard,' Hope
said, 'I think that would be wonderful.' That was
all.”
"I knew you had lighted a squib,” said Simon.
I watched Sarah. She did precisely what I had
thought she would do. She arose. She knocked
the heel tap out of her pipe.
"You eat your apple and go to bed,” she said
to Simon.
Simon arose and went to the corner where the
broom stood. He picked a stout broom straw from
it, rejecting several before he found one which sat-
isfied him as to its fiber and stoutness. Simon had
a comfortable slouch as he walked. When he went
about the kitchen in his slippers he suggested mo-
tion on its easiest terms. He had eliminated every
act in motion which might be exacting. If it
was comfortable to droop at the shoulders and


72
ONE OF THREE
drag his feet he drooped at the shoulders and
dragged his feet.
With his straw he came back to the range and
plumbed the depths of the apple which simmered
in its own juices in its little pan.
“It ain't done yet," he said, when he had stuck
in the broom straw and had withdrawn it several
times. "It's fifteen minutes from being done."
"I never knew one to take so long to cook," said
Sarah.
"You can't always tell about apples,” said Simon.
“There's a difference in the fire. We don't always
have the same heat and they don't always do as
fast as other times. Then there is a difference in
apples. Some bake better than others.”
It was amusing to see Simon's stratagem. Until
he had cooked his apple he was a free soul. When
once it was done he was given a mere respite. The
time he could take in eating it was circumscribed.
Then he was the prey of Sarah. A woman, no
matter how tyrannous, always recognizes the para-
mount claim of a man's appetite. It is upon the
fact that she at her kitchen range satisfies his appe-
tite that she bases her whole empire of dominion
over him.
When Simon established the habit of roasting or
frying an apple after supper he established claim
upon an hour of freedom which he might never
have obtained otherwise. Sarah, a feministic ty-


ONE OF THREE
73
rant, had to recognize the assertions of Simon's
stomach. Simon was a good provider. There al-
ways was enough in the house in fact and prospect.
There was in Sarah's conception of life one great
duty which a woman owed to a man who saw that
the larder was full. That was to see that his stom.
ach was full when he wanted to fill it.
The complete relations of the sexes, their obliga-
tions to each other in life, were thus revealed-
that the man should keep the wood box and the
pantry full, the smokehouse and the roothouse
full, the roof entire and rain proof, and that the
woman should keep the man's stomach full.
Therefore, when Simon stuck his broom straw
into the apple and announced that it was not baked
to his satisfaction he had the only assertion of his
independence which he could have made success-
fully. Sarah had to recognize it.
She sat down again and Simon, with a sly grin
at Arthur Arthur and me, took his chair.
"What did you think, Arthur," he asked, "made
Hope have the bad time she had in that restau-
rant?"
“I know it had nothing to do with what she could
have seen,” said Arthur, "and nothing to do with
anything which was suggested by what was around
her. She simply must have had an inexplicable re-
vival of an unpleasant recollection, the stirring of
something in her mind which distressed her and


74
ONE OF THREE
made her show it physically. The fact that the two
Japs came along had nothing to do with it, I am
sure. That was merely a coincidence.”
Simon took a dishcloth and, taking the pan off
the stove, put his apple in a dish. Then he sat
down and began to eat it, slowly, with a mind for
mischievous delay.
Arthur looked at Sarah and I thought he had the
same idea which gained a place in my mind. He
looked at Sarah as if he were looking at a key with
which he might unlock a door, which was an ex-
planation of a puzzle which it would be important
to solve.
“What do you think of it, Sarah ?” he asked.
'I think Simon ought to eat his apple and I
know he is going to bed,” said Sarah.


IV
~ PRING came slowly to Quatuck, but it came
wonderfully, with the meadow lark in the
fields, with hepatica making the hill slopes white
and pink, with maples flowering, with bloodroot
and trilliums, blossoming thorn and orchards in
bloom, the air heavy with odors, buds on the white
oaks, hermit thrush in the dead leaves, and then
with the full song of wood thrush.
Simon and Sarah took their annual blood thin-
ning medicines, their sassafras and sulphur and
molasses. The wild geese went overhead, new grass
gave the fields their radiance of green, wrens came
back to their houses, the blue bird sang from a post,
grackles were in sound as many gates swinging on
rusty hinges and the land was rich again to all the
senses.
Sarah's old gnarled lilac bushes were in full
bloom when Richard and Hope came back to Qua-
tuck. Richard's first idea was to fill the house with
guests, with his old friends.
By this time I had a slightly unpleasant feeling
regarding Quatuck-the house--and from this feel.
ing Quatuck, the village, was not wholly removed.
75


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ONE OF THREE
There was a premonition of something about to hap-
pen, and I could not rid myself of the idea that old
Sarah knew what it was, sitting as she did in her
red curtained kitchen with the old cat look of om.
niscience and indifference on her face.
But some time, and some time soon, a rat would
run out of a hole in the house of Quatuck and old
feline Sarah-if it were the last thing she were
able to do, and if it were the last thing she did-
would make one spring, with her teeth in her mouth
and not in the tumbler on the red clothed kitchen
table—and she would get that rat.
I never have been able to explain why I had this
idea of Sarah. At that time I knew nothing of her
history. I did not know anything of her relation
to Esther Browning-I was merely an occasional,
welcomed—because of Arthur Arthur's affection for
me — casual visitor in the charming old Parr
kitchen, eating there and sitting there whenever I
had the opportunity, sleeping in the great feather
bed under the eaves, with the timbers cracking in
the dead of winter, the acorns dropping in the
fall-trivial causes of outrageous trepidation; sug.
gestive of a hostile outdoors and the need of trust-
worthy oak bar at the trustworthy oak door-and,
most delicious of all sensations with which to go
into the pleasant land of drowsyhead slowly, appre-
ciatively, with every sense succumbing slowly—the
sound of a spring rain beating on the shingle roof


ONE OF THREE
77
two feet above your head—a different thing if the
shingles leaked. They didn't. Simon was a care-
ful upkeeper of his property and his roofs and
walls were stanch.
All the idea of the Parr house was the idea of
comfort and yet the stern old Sarah, for me, sat
in it as an octogenarian cat, a fat and lazy old cat,
who ultimately would catch her rat, waiting for
that rat, knowing where to expect it-merely not
when—but patient, unescapable, and dominating.
The lilacs were perfuming the air when Richard
and Hope came home. Instantly the house of Qua-
tuck was opened to the widest extent of its charm-
ing and peculiar hospitality. Richard never had
been in better form.
He had had a wonderful time in the south. He
had had a wonderful time in New York. He had
an active but an incomplete historic sense. He
was fascinated by a thing that was old in human
experience. I can imagine him in a sublimated
state of emotion even as a child when, in Rome,
Esther took him to see the Coliseum by moon-
light. Old peoples continued to live for him
in the vestiges of their lives. And his acquain-
tance, in his boyhood, with the Coliseum, the Acrop-
olis, Roman roads in England, Westminster Ab-
bey, etc., did not in the slightest diminish the reve
erence with which he could stand in Trinity church
yard, with the gusto with which he could eat a


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fish dinner in the Bowery-it was always old, never
new to him—or the appreciation with which he
went up the shore of the tidewater country of the
Hudson.
He had had a very good time and was especially
charming, especially delicate and considerate in his
attentions to Hope, who was the most robust, smil-
ing, beautiful, placid invalid I ever have seen. She
could be exasperated only by too much attention
to her supposed ills—of nerves or what not—that
presumably made her susceptible to special atten.
tion.
She beautifully received the special attentions
which Richard wanted to give her, evidently be-
cause she knew how much it satisfied him to give
them, but the slightest word from others of us
justified words of inquiry, assuming, as we must,
that she had not been well-produced an emotion
which was, very plainly, vexed. She could not be
unkind even in her vexation, but she could repel,
in the most kindly, sweet, and wonderful fashion,
inquiries of such a nature.
One got the idea that Hope found a moral fault
in anything which detracted from her unobtrusive
normality of being well, placid, serene, and uncom-
plaining. She was extremely sensitive upon this
point and any one who wanted to please her as-
sumed that she was well.
We had several very happy parties with all the


ONE OF THREE
79
old friends and there was only one untoward event.
It was astonishing—when it occurred that I con.
sidered it abstractly or detachedly—now I had
come, unconsciously, without well defined reason or
explanation, to look for something, of ill meaning
and import, to happen in this pleasant household.
No household could have been more cordial, wel-
coming, genial, or jovial. No mistress of a house-
hold could have been lovelier than Hope. No head
of a household could have been more ingratiating
than Richard—and yet I sat in it as I might sit in
a theater waiting the raising of a curtain upon thë
act which would explain the play.
The untoward incident was hardly an incident.
It was merely a sound, a sound that Arthur and I
heard. The others seemed not to have heard it.
Richard was not in the living room with us at the
time, but he came in presently. He went to Arthur
unobtrusively.
“I fancied I heard something," he said. “Did
you?"
“Nothing of any significance,” said Arthur. “I
couldn't have distorted it into a meaning."
“But you did hear something?”
“Not in the sense of its being 'something,'” said
Arthur.
Hope, who had been gone from the room, came
back at that moment and, as she invariably did,
went to Richard's side.


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“Did you hear a little noise, Hope?” Richard.
asked her. “Something like a scream? Not loud
-muffled.”
“No, Richard," said Hope. "Let's don't get ideas
of hearing things. It will make the house intol-
erable and we are so happy to be back in it again.”
She and Richard turned to their other guests and
Arthur and I looked at each other. There had been
a scream and we had heard it.
Later in the evening Arthur confessed himself
worried.
"I wish Hope were candid when her own troubles
are concerned,” he said, "but she can't be and re-
monstrance does no good at all. I have tried it
several times for various purposes and it merely
offends some delicacy. She thinks that an ailment,
a difficulty or trouble is a moral fault and her in-
stinct is to fight it out by herself as if it were a
dereliction made the worse by infliction even upon
the attention of others.
“There is some trouble here to which Hope has
been exposed. That incident of last Christmas eve
was not isolated. At least, I am convinced it was
not. I thought at the time that it was, but now I
am convinced that it was not. I may be wholly
imaginative, but I don't think so. There is some-
thing that Hope is concealing from Richard-un-
selfishly, of course—to keep him happy and undis-
turbed.”


ONE OF THREE
81
“Your idea sounds extravagant, Arthur," I said.
You will torture a significance out of simple
events.” I denied, thus, my own convictions. For
some reason I did not want to encourage Arthur to
think as I thought.
"I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm getting desperately
sure of just the opposite. If Hope would deal can-
didly and unselfishly with me she would let me help
her. I can see why, in her sensitiveness to Rich-
ard's happiness and serenity, she might feel con-
strained to conceal her dilemma from him. But
she knows that she has no friend who loves her as
I do and it is almost my right as such a friend
to be allowed to help her. If I should not be
ashamed to seem to pry into things here I'd under-
take an inquiry, but that wouldn't do at all.”
“I think you are extravagant," I repeated. “You
have known Hope virtually all her life. You have
known Richard nearly all of his. Now you are
trying to knit together some loose ends of incident
into a fabric of romance, of menace and hidden
danger as if Hope had a Secret, a capital letter
Secret, destroying the beauty of her damask cheeks
and dulling the lustre of her eyes by eating at her
soul. I think you need the air.”
"I am not a romancer," he said, with a laugh of
protest. “I am a pill toting doc who feels pulses
and gives powders to simple people who would get


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sick less and get well sooner if they didn't have
me.”
We went outside and walked by a lilac-lined path
toward the road. The hylas were singing and the
odors were heavy on a south wind, a night of su-
preme charm in all its revealed facts and in all its
intimations, with exquisite subtleties, the subtleties
of intimation.
The great facts of full summer were revealed by
portent. The moon was at full. The woods, not
being as yet in full foliage, allowed the mellow
light to flood the landscape. The full foliage per-
mits merely patchings and lines of light. There is
charm in both periods. We love the evanescence of
our beauties, the moment of fact, the imminence
of change.
Arthur and I stood a hundred yards, I should
guess, from the house, looking toward it. All its
lights blazed into the night, illuminating a majes-
tic shell. The sound of voices came to us, rising to
laughter, dropping to a low murmur. I felt a sud-
den sense of detachment not only from the party
but from myself. I could feel that the social con-
vention known as Philip Kline was in the house,
possibly standing beside the piano bench by Ruth
Renwick-it must have been Ruth who at that mo-
ment struck the chords of the C sharp Minor Pre-
lude but outside, as if outside of his clothes, skin,
and away from his bones, from his conventions and


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for us that we had come out a moment into the
moonlight.
“They thought a fire would be nice," said Rich-
ard. “I love to get wood and build a fire always
do it myself if I get half a chance. So I put on a
sweater and came out for the logs. Hope was to
have come for the kindling, but I guess she's been
delayed getting a coat to put on over her dress, but
now you fellows are here one of you can take some
kindling and I'll carry in logs.”
I had been almost as much taken in as Arthur,
and when we were back in the house all I felt at
liberty to do was to grin at him.
It was the following week when Arthur and I,
having been at the Parrs' over Saturday night
and having started to walk to the Brownings for
Sunday dinner, came thus early upon something
which began to change our ideas and speculations.
Arthur had wanted some of Sarah's pie-plant
cooked into a pie as she knew how to cook it, and,
as the season was getting towards the prime of
the plant, which soon would become too coarse
for the best Sarah could do with it, he had been
promised a great, deep pie.
Sarah always watched the weather from the view-
point of her kitchen range. It was a real bit of
artistry, indicating that somewhere in the soul of
this adamantine old lady, indurated against nearly
all the suggestions of sentiment and emotion-a


ONE OF THREE
85
realist of the fewest illusions I ever knew—was the
tincture of an artist.
It all, I know, came back into the realm of her
realism. Sarah, I thought, heard the meadow lark
in the spring and she watched the purple martins
coming into the houses which Simon had built for
them. She saw the warblers in the autumn. She
was sensitive to every impulse which made ecstasy
for us, but it was a part of her realism.
If Arthur or I had been compelled to earn our
food by the necessary processes of slaughter, we
inevitably would have been vegetarians. We could
eat Sarah's blood puddings. We could not have
caught the blood spurting from the veins of the
freshly killed animal. Sarah could not have under-
stood our inhibitions, restraints, perplexities, neu-
roticism, or whatever you want to call it.
She stood at her kitchen range and made her
plans with a fine appreciation of weather. She
knew the intimate relationship of weather and ap-
petite. It happened that this day, which was espe-
cially devoted to a pie-plant, had turned gray and
cold about noon. There are days in late spring or
early summer which suddenly project themselves
back into early March.
Sarah had seen this and, with the artistic presci-
ence which marked her conduct of the domestic
essentials, had provided a dinner of spare ribs and
sauerkraut. When Sarah cooked spare ribs and


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ONE OF THREE
sauerkraut they were, for people liking the robust
foods of life, delightful.
If it had been a sultry spring day she would have
given us anything other than robust foods. That is
why I say that she had artistic perceptions but may
not have known it.
We had the kraut and the spare ribs and the pie
plant and a pleasant evening with Simon and
Sarah. The next day, shortly before noon, we
started to walk to the Brownings. We had not
gone far when Arthur called my attention to two
men. They were probably 300 yards ahead of us
when we first saw them, walking slowly.
In a community which is tightly knit and inti-
mately acquainted the consciousness of a stranger
is insistent. We knew, being familiar enough with
Quatuck, that these two men ahead of us were
strangers, and it was curious that we thought of
them as significant strangers.
Arthur said afterwards that he had this feeling.
I know that I had. There was a significance about
the two men which was not related to any prob-
ability of their relation to us or any one we knew,
or to their presence on the road.
Presently they sat down by the roadside and
rested. As we came closer to them, close enough to
know that they were talking earnestly to each other
-or, rather, I thought that one was talking ear-


ONE OF THREE
87
nestly to the other—they arose, climbed over a
fence, and went off across a field.
We went on to the Brownings' and I forgot the
incident, if it was an incident.
Later that day at the Brownings’ the two men
we had seen on the road appeared. It was a most
unexpected appearance, we could see instantly, for
every one for whom it had meaning. "
They came to the door, and a servant, answering
the ring of the bell, came back to Hope with a
whispered announcement. Hope arose with a curi.
ous vibrancy of hospitality, curious because it had
in it both great joy and a certain apprehension.
Of course, I did not know then that the an.
nouncement was of the arrival of the two men
whom we had seen on the road, but it proved soon
that this was the case. They were ushered in, and
I recognized the two who had been walking ahead
of us, who had sat by the roadside until we were
nearly upon them, and who then had gone into the
field.
One, the one who had been talking so earnestly
to the other, proved to be Esther Browning's
brother. The other was Hope's brother.
I have spoken of Esther Browning's brother, Jas-
per, the sea captain who sent the parrots, parro-
quets, and monkeys, Jasper Lord. He came to
Quatuck and he brought with him a person of
whose existence I had not known-Hope's brother.


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ONE OF THREE
Esther Browning, it seemed, had taken Hope and
had persuaded her brother Jasper to take an older
child. She feared to risk care of him herself. The
child had an infantile truculence that dismayed
Esther. She had to rule, if at all, by love, and this
child, the few times she had seen him, had made her
feel incompetent. He was what no child ever had
been before, intractable and impervious to her in-
fluences.
She could not desert the child and she had per-
suaded Jasper, who was devoted to her, to take him.
The boy's name was Gerald. The family name had
been Arnold. Gerald retained it. Jasper had re-
fused to adopt him. He had raised him and had
tried to discipline him-had taken him to sea and
with a sternness which was not unkind, which was
even fatherly, he had tried to produce a depend-
able man out of the truculent child.
It was not his fault that he had failed, but you
could see that he had the moment you saw Gerald,
whose expression asserted a gross selfishness, a
hard egotism, disdain for opinion, and determina-
tion to get what he wanted. It revealed a low cun-
ning, and, I thought, a decided ferocity. I imag-
ined that when he was at his pleasantest he would
be merely stupid and silent, when he was still en-
durable he would be merely sullen, and that from
these phases he could proceed to unbearable degrees
of selfish, brutal behavior.


ONE OF THREE
89
It did not seem possible that the same parents
could have been the mother and father of two such
children as Hope and Gerald. .
Richard never had seen Hope's brother before,
and his astonishment as he observed the perceivable
character of the man betrayed him into an expres-
sion of disgust. He recovered instantly from that
and tried to make Gerald and Jasper welcome.
They dropped on Hope out of the blue sky and we
were of necessity observers of the little drama.
Both Hope and Richard were admirable-Rich-
ard nonplused for the moment, but recovering in-
stantly–Hope never ruffled. Now I imagine that
if I had been a woman, mistress of such a house-
hold, and had been obliged suddenly to subject such
a man as Richard to such a brother as Gerald I
might have shown at least an instant's confusion
or even dismay, but not Hope.
Jasper won his way instantly. He was as Esther
Browning's brother would have been, obviously a
man of resource, determination, and courage, but
of kindliness and fine courtesy, able to maintain
discipline with justice and without bluster, eager
to extend courtesy without ostentation; you liked
him upon seeing him.
He was not the man, I thought, to have subjected
Hope to this experience if he could have avoided it.
He would have sent her a message. He would have
informed and warned her. If we could see in a


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moment that Gerald was a sullen, surly, selfish,
inconsiderate lout or brute, whose appearance
could only give his sister embarrassment or pain,
how much better did he know it who had raised
Gerald ?
It was extraordinary, and I knew it was subject
to explanation, which the quiet, capable man would
give when it could help others but not exculpate
himself. There is a fine quality of courage which
is possessed only by the finest natures. It is the
courage to endure being misjudged and misunder-
stood when to set one's self right adds nothing to
the solution of an incident and merely gratifies the
egotistic instinct to be right.
In a flash I had Capt. Jasper Lord's moral meas-
ure. He had done something he had to do, and he
would let it appear that he wanted to do it.
As usual, Arthur and I were going back to the
village to spend the night with Simon and Sarah.
To my astonishment Capt. Jasper Lord said he
would go with us.
"If you think they have room for me,” he said.
“I am very fond of Simon and pretty fond of Sarah.
I guess I'm awful fond of Sarah, but I'd hate to go
on her rocks."
Arthur said that there was plenty of room.
"I'm reasonably sure of my welcome,” said Capt.
Jasper, "and as I'll not be here long I'll take a
chance."


ONE OF THREE
91
He could have been sure of his welcome. Simon
made, and Sarah almost made, a demonstration on
his arrival.
“Well, I've got to serve grog,” said Simon.
"And he dreads it,” said Sarah.
She got us a cold supper of her own hard sau-
sages, rye bread, cheese, and a deep apple pie,
every one of us protesting that we could not eat and
every one of us gorging. Simon and Jasper had
cider and whisky—I do not think Jasper liked it
-and Sarah, as on the other occasion, had some
heated in a pannikin with the moral addition of
pain-killer.
Finally we were comfortably seated by the wood
range, Sarah and Capt. Jasper smoking their pipes.
I do not know why I had the idea, but had it, that
Capt. Jasper had something to say bearing on his
appearance at Quatuck with Gerald, but I had the
idea-was, in a conscious fashion, anticipating-
and he did have something to say. I knew it would
not be in apology, and it wasn't.
"I am sure I couldn't find any better friends of
Hope Browning anywhere," he began, "and I've
more or less got to say something because some of
her friends ought to know. I can't tell her. She's
a peculiar child and she would freeze me up.
“The point is that I did not come here with
Gerald. I followed him and found him here. He


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left ship nearly a year ago and I've been so wor-
ried I've even had detectives on him at times.
“He is a very undisciplined man. I would have
tried to make a ship captain out of him if I had
not been afraid for the men of the crews he would
have. There's possible murder in him. That's a
flat statement of it. He's a cruel, violent man, and
he'll do some damage some day for which I don't
want to be even remotely responsible.
“Not to let a longish story get longer, Gerald
had been a pest. The worst thing Esther ever did
was to hamper me with him, but she couldn't help
it and neither could I, and, thank God, in a large
fashion I'm rid of Gerald-except, the worry for
what he'll do some day.
“Now, there has been something between Hope
and Gerald for a number of years. I've had one
guess and then another guess, and as nearly as I
can come to knowing anything positive about it
it involves Hope's mother's engagement ring.
Hope's father once was well enough to do, and
when he became engaged to Hope's mother he gave
her a big diamond ring. It was all the poor woman
had to leave and she left it to Esther for Hope.
“When Gerald learned that Hope had this he
said that he, as the elder child, should have it.
Gerald never got rich at sea and he wants money
most awfully. Now, Hope would just as soon part
with both hands as with her mother's ring. It was


ONE OF THREE
93
left to her by some one she would have loved if
she could have known her. I suspect that she paid
Gerald several times the value of the ring, but I
know him. He would take the money, and the next
month he would be back with his bullying insis-
tence for the ring. There's enough savage dogged-
ness in his nature to keep him bullying Hope just
for the joy of it.
“Well, he left ship and disappeared. That was
last December. I think he came out here, but I
am not sure. I know he went south when Hope
and Richard were there, and that he followed them
to New York. I've been afraid because I know
something about his character. Then I heard that
Hope had been hurt, and, honestly, I got too scared
to be quiet.
“Now, I may have some wrong ideas, but I
thought I'd better come out here and see some of
Hope's friends, and here I find Gerald on his way
to the house. We'd have had a fight on the way out
if I hadn't been his master long enough for him to
know that I am his master. Now I'm here, I don't
know what to do. Gerald's in the house. I ought
to speak to Richard, but that's going to make Hope
so unhappy that I can't do it. I can't talk to her.
All I can do is to talk to her friends.
“Maybe one of you can get Richard to want Ger-
ald to leave-encourage him a little to want it. Of
course, he wants it now, but I'm afraid he'll toler-


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ate Gerald because he is Hope's brother. A friend
might manage it. Maybe I ought to have stayed
there to-night, but I saw this chance to talk to you
folks, and I do not believe that Gerald will under-
take anything to-night.”
"I'm going back,” said Arthur, arising decisively.
“But what can you do?” I asked.
“At least I know what is in the house,” said Ar-
thur. “I'm going. I can say that we were too
crowded here, and that I wanted the captain to
have his visit with Simon and Sarah."
He got ready to start forth.
"I wouldn't worry about Gerald and the ring,”
said Sarah, knocking her hot heel tap into her cal-
loused palm. “He's the least of Hope's worries.”


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along, was the revelation-it was a revelation-
of Hope's terrible moral dilemma. No wonder she
nearly fainted in the pleasant New York res-
taurant! No wonder she could not get rid of the
impression. No wonder she had the flashes of full
recollection and comprehension!
“Couldn't you see it?” Arthur asked. The man
whom she had found at her jewel case Christmas
eve was her brother. And worse-much worse-
the man who had attacked her in the south was
her brother. For this a Negro had been lynched.
And there was nothing to do about it.
The Negro was dead. It could only have destroyed
Richard, morally destroyed him because he stern-
ly acquiesced in this form of swift and necessary
justice if he were told that an innocent man had
paid for a taint in the blood of Hope's unfortunate
family. She couldn't tell that. She loved him too
much. His happiness was too dear to her. The
possession of him was too exquisite a joy to her.
She could not tamper with such things just or
unjust, events had to take their form and have
their consequence, except, Arthur said, that if Hope
could have saved the Negro's life by revealing
what really had happened she would have done so.
But the Negro was dead. She probably had, se-
cretly, reimbursed any one dependent upon him;
but couldn't you see the terror of the things for


ONE OF THREE
97
her? This terrible secret! And the man was in
the house.
Arthur said that the panic of the thought made
him almost delirious. He, the only person aside
from Hope who could be in the house and know
what Gerald really was and what Hope's dilemma
really was, had two miles to go and something
might happen any minute. Terror of this nature
is distorting and unbalancing. Arthur said he re-
gained sufficient command of himself to approach
the house under control, as if his purpose in coming
back were really what he was about to say it was.
Life, he said, is an anticlimax. Here he had
come in a delirium, or near one, wishing he had
wings, desperate in his ideas of what had and what
might happen, and Hope and Richard—the only
people of the party still awake and about—had
been seated calmly by the fire, as indifferent to the
unpleasantness, the menace, of the situation as if
Gerald had been a year old baby! Arthur said he
was glad he had managed to get control of himself.
They were astonished to see Arthur back again,
but glad to see him; and his explanation of why he
had come was accepted as adequate. With what he
had on his mind he was afraid it was flimsy.
They had been discussing Gerald. Richard said
that Hope was distressed—that there should have
been a veritable irruption of this unpleasant man.
“It is unfair to Richard to subject him to Ger-


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ald,” said Hope, "and yet I don't know what to do
about it. We can't turn him directly out of doors
and we can't be unpleasant to him, but he is the
last thing I should have asked to happen."
“I've been telling Hope that she is foolish to be
concerned,” said Richard. "I'll admit that Gerald
is not a prepossessing person, but he's nothing to
worry about, and Hope is too sensitive. We'll sur.
vive his visit.”
The consideration which Hope and Richard had
for each other was wonderful, Arthur thought, but
he could understand why Hope was concerned. Ar-
thur himself did not see how he could be of much
service, but he had resolved to sit up all night and
whatever service a wakeful, informed man could
give he would give. At least there would be some
one awake who knew what had happened and what
might happen in the house.
When Hope and Richard were ready to retire
Arthur said he was not sleepy and for a while
would sit up and read. The intention caused no
astonishment, and presently Arthur was left in the
quiet of a house which, for him, contained possibil-
ities of the greatest disquiet.
At first he was too apprehensive to read. When a
great house settles into a condition which we com-
monly describe as one of absolute quiet, it in real-
ity permits the arising of small and, to the appre-
hensive ears, significant sounds which would have


ONE OF THREE
99
been submerged under the ordinary action about
the place. They arise with such suggestions as the
apprehensions are prepared to receive, and Arthur,
although not a person of uneasy nerves, found
that he was prepared to receive so much that at
first he could not fix his attention on a book. He
tried to, in a comfortable chair, but at every little
sound, whether within or without, he started as if
preparing himself for a dreaded revelation. He
was too acutely perceptive at this period of the
night to be merely a watcher. His mind was reach-
ing out for signs and portents and finding them in
insignificant causes.
Capt. Jasper Lord's story had convinced him
that Gerald, as some monstrous brute, had made
the attacks upon Hope. He was in the house, pro-
tected by Hope's desire to protect Richard.
Arthur wanted to make regular and continuing
rounds of the house he would have preferred to
sit at Hope's door with a shotgun—but he realized
that his watchfulness must seem to be so casual
as not to seem to be watchfulness.
He did make several cautious trips up the stair.
way to where he could, by switching on the lights,
have a view of Hope's door. His inclination was
to sit at the head of the stairs with a view of the
corridor in this wing open to him, but the strange-
ness of such procedure, even contemplated, embar-
rassed him.


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101
sions, and he said he did have an entirely new
series of sensations-some that even gave him a
crinkly feeling of the skin, the sensation which is
that of a light, cold, and impalpable finger drawn
quickly down the spine.
He had quieted himself down for his long watch
and had been reading with placidity and enjoyment
for a half hour when he was brought out of his
chair in a great bound by a startling noise at his
very ear. He said that the uncontrollable fright
was a revelation of his state of nerves and its
cause was ludicrous. He had been sitting close to
one of the screened windows. A cat had jumped
at the beetles buzzing there and in hitting the
screen had made a noise that no watchful and ap-
prehensive man's nerves could have endured pla-
cidly.
When Arthur recovered his poise, having sprung
out of his chair in alarm and turning in a posture
of defense, the cat, with legs outstretched, claws
clinging to the screen, was looking at him with
eyes yellow in the light. With a ripping sound it
pulled its claws from the wire mesh and dropped
out of sight.
Arthur said that this experience almost sent
him to bed. He was so ashamed of having starts
and fidgets because of beetles and cats that he
began to feel ridiculous.
It was then after 2 o'clock in the morning and


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cocks began to crow nearby and in distant parts of
the countryside. These sounds, although having
such intimations as may relate to the crowing of
the cock as Peter denied his Master—and thus be
associated with the supremacy of the ultimate
human animal instinct over spiritual nature—have
nevertheless a dimly consoling connotation for the
perplexed mind-the conveyed idea of the barn-
yard, of the certain sunrise, of the disappearance
of vapors and darkness, and of the return of light
and perception and understanding
Thus a person struggling through the unaccus-
tomed phases of a watchful and restless night, of
painful and distressed hours of darkness, may find
in the nearby or faraway crow of the cock some
triumphant signal of a release from darkness and
perplexity, a homely symbol of the permanency of
life and its brightness and purpose.
Arthur said that, having experienced the moment
of awed stupefaction when the cat jumped at the
screens to get one of the provocative beetles, he
felt the application of a spiritual balm when short-
ly thereafter the cocks nearby and far away began
calling from barnyards, across meadows saturated
with placid human experience and expectation, and
thus declaiming the certainty of human prospects.
The cat sprawled against the screen at the win-
dow had given him a start, he had to admit. The
cheerful crowing, cock answering or defying cock,


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103
from far to near was exhilarating to optimism and
quieting to nerves.
He had had so many ridiculous starts and fidgets
that he began to lose a sense of the validity of his
alarm. To sit reading with a consciousness that
nothing but beetles and a cat, a few harmless
night prowling animals, were making sounds, with
the sounds of the chicken yard and barnyard insis-
tent, with only this for significance, was to relax
from a sense of apprehension and enter a region
of drowsiness and comfort.
Arthur said that he was just about to reach up
and extinguish his reading light when he became
conscious of the sensation of being observed by a
human being. The fact that later it was proved that
he was observed at this moment never quite proved
to him that there is such a sense. There may be.
There may be a human sensitiveness which, with-
out the employment of any of the ordinary senses,
detects the presence, merely because the presence is
there, of another human being.
Arthur, although conscious that another human
being, without any of the noises of the cat which
had startled him, without even a tenth of the noises
of the beetles which had annoyed him, was obsery.
ing him, insists that this sensation was not a true
revelation of what happened to be true.
He knew later that a man was observing him at
the time, but he still thinks that it was pure co-


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incidence that he should have had the apprehen-
sive sensation and that it should have been the
fact. He thinks that he was in the mood to have
such fancies and that it happened at that precise
moment that his fancy and the fact were one.
There is not much reason to doubt that he was
being watched at that moment. He may have been
under observation for a long time and his sense of
being so watched may have grown out of some deli-
cate perceptions to which he, later, was too ready to
deny validity.
His idea was that the man had been standing in
the doorway of the room and had just stepped out
of sight. The significance of him remained, invisi-
ble but apprehended.
Arthur went quickly to the door, which opened
upon the main hallway, which was lighted only by
the light from the room in which he had been sit-
ting. Across the hall was the large living room,
which was dark, Arthur went into the darkness
of this room and stood still, listening.
A presence, unindicated as to place or purpose,
remained in suggestion. Arthur said it might have
been revealed as another cat, soft footed and per-
ceptive in the darkness. For a while Arthur stood
still, still and tense. At one instant he was sure
he heard rustling, a soft footfall, breathing, some
sound of life-at another instant certain that he
was alone in the room, alone awake in the house.


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105
Then there was an unmistakable sound of a per-
son stumbling against an obstacle, a piece of fur-
niture, hitting it unexpectedly—unmistakably the
sound of something--presumably a person-mov-
ing about.
Just as this revelation of one presence was given
Arthur became aware of another. It was some-
where behind him. The sound which confirmed his
suspicions had confirmed the suspicions of a third
person. There were three persons in the room, or,
at least, close by each other—he and the two others
-none able to see either of the other two, each one
evidently watching for the others.
Arthur said that the situation thus uncovered
so startled him that it may have been a minute be-
fore he came sufficiently to his senses to find a light
switch. When he had turned on the light he was
the only person in the room. He went from room
to room, turning on lights, but no one was revealed.
That was all there was. Arthur said that its
nothingness was the most appalling attribute it
had—if there had been something one could have
met it and tried to understand it; but there was
simply nothing, a few sounds, some beetles, a pro-
voked cat, and a piece of furniture touched by
some one who was trying not to make a noise, all
this supplemented by the even more alarming sen-
sation that there was a third person in the room.
It came to nothing more that night. Arthur


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could have his suspicions, but in all the search
he made_simply tossing all precautions to the
winds—he found no cause and no explanation. He
had, he said, an idea that he had distressed the
plans for at least one of the other two watchers,
and, of course, he knew that Gerald was one of
the two. Gerald might not have been, but Arthur
would have been convinced that he was.
He came back to Simon and Sarah the next
morning late he took a little sleep after it came
daylight and came to the Parrs late. Sarah, who
sometimes asked us to do chores—as she ought,
we being such sponges upon her hospitality-
wanted a piece of the garden spaded up for an
early planting of peas. Arthur and I did it, and
he said that there was a definite reassurance for
folk in the handling of the soil. There was, he
said, a substantiality about it which seemed to dis-
sipate vapors of emotion, of fear, and of appre-
hension and foreboding. Reality was the founda-
tion of life, and the soil was reality. To work in
it-to have a part in its processes—was to be well
founded. Then a superstructure of illusions could
be erected.
He was going back to spend the night with the
Brownings, he said. Did I think I'd care to go
with him? He was not exactly timid in the house
alone-alone in the sense that he was its only
guardian awake-but there was an incomprehen.


ONE OF THREE
107
sibility about the trouble it was a real trouble
which distressed a man sitting up alone to meet it.
The cat jumping on the screen at the beetles,
he said, was enough to suggest the desirability of
a companion-if I could spare the time and if I
cared to remain awake. Of course I could doze in
a chair if I wanted to, merely if I were where I
could be aroused. He might doze himself. But
if two men were clothed and ready at an instant's
alarm to do what they could they might rid Hope
Browning of something horrible in her life with-
out deeply involving her in the method of the rid-
dance.
Gerald had only twenty-four hours more to re-
main in the house. He had indicated that he did
not want to stay longer. He had some reason for
going. Arthur knew that he had only one reason
for remaining. The family had every reason for
wanting him to go.
We had been spading for an hour in the soft
earth and-nearly done with our work-stopped
to kick the soil off our shoes. A bluebird was sing-
ing on a post. Chewinks were in the trees over-
head. Sarah was hanging dishcloths on a line by
the kitchen porch. Benignancy was in every ap-
parent commonplace. Yet there was the overtone
of malignancy, suggested by Arthur's ideas and ex-
perience.
“Of course you think it is Gerald,” I said.


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“That's rather obvious, isn't it?” he said.
“You know, we made a search of the premises
Christmas eve, Richard and I, in a fresh snow,
and there were no tracks in the snow. Whoever
hurt Hope remained in the house.”
“That's simple,” said Arthur. "Hope enabled
Gerald to conceal himself. She will not have this
disaster bared to Richard. She will risk anything
and do anything rather than subject him to the
unpleasantness of knowing it. I imagine she feels
a personal taint in having such a brother. Prob-
ably she thinks she can bring him to reason—with
money, no doubt. He is beyond any other per-
suasion.”
I did not think Gerald, wretched and truculent
as he apparently was, was our answer. Out of a
sense of the extraordinary strangeness of the sunk-
en garden, as it had been described, with its exotic
birds and animals, its strange, heavy, moist per-
fumes, had come another suggestion—to me. It
was too wild to tell Arthur.
He had been conscious, he said, of two pres-
ences when he became aware that he was being
watched. He referred to them as persons. One
probably was Gerald-as Arthur thought. My
idea as to what the other could be was-as I have
said—too wild to mention. But it was not the
idea of a person. It was an idea so extravagant
that there, in Sarah's pleasant garden, with the


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the kitchen. Sarah again was cooking spareribs
and her homemade sauerkraut.
“I thought I was going to the Brownings for din.
ner,” said Arthur, “but this settles it. The 'kraut
is too much for me. Phil and I will go after we've
had supper, if you'll let us stay here."
I followed Simon into the cellar when he went
down to get some jelly for Sarah. I explained
that I wanted to see the cellar. I did. As a re-
pository of Sarah's preserving it was entrancing.
Simon carried a lamp and did so quite indifferent
to consideration of me. I struck my head on a
swinging shelf.
“I ought to have told you to mind those boards,"
he said. “They're all fired bad to hit in the dark,
but the mice and rats can't get to them.”
"I'll mind them,” I said. “I'll stand right here
and mind them.”
The cellar really was a repository of content. A
granary, a roothouse, a cellar, any place in which
ants, squirrels, or humans have made provision out
of abundance for lean months has this suggestion
of providence and sufficiency. The storms may
come and the ground be deep in frost, but there is
provision against all the rigors.
“Did Capt. Jasper Lord, or any one." I asked
Simon, as I stood in the darkness of the cellar and
as he held the light above his head some feet away,


ONE OF THREE
111
“ever give Esther Browning-or Hope or Richard
-anything larger than a monkey ?”
“She said to get quince jelly, didn't she?" Simon
asked. “There's everything here but quince.
Here's wild grape and crabapple and currant-
what did you ask me, Philip? I know the quince
jelly is all."
"I asked you if any one ever had given the
Brownings anything larger than a monkey?”
“What do you mean by larger? A cow or some-
thing of that kind ?”
“No. I mean did Capt. Jasper Lord ever send
them an ape-a big monkey?”
"Yes, I think he did once," said Simon. “Sarah
can tell you. I know the quince is getting. I'd
rather have damson preseryes, anyway."
He took a jar from a shelf and lighted the way
up out of the cellar.
“The quince is getting," he told Sarah. “I
couldn't find any. Here's some damsons; and
Philip Kline wants to know if the Brownings ever
had an ape.”
“Yes, they did, some years ago," said Arthur.
“Some man that Jasper Lord knew sent one. I re-
member how much trouble it made when Hope and
Richard got it. They didn't know what in the
world to do with it. It was a huge, morose, vicious
sort of a thing. I remember when it disappeared.
Everybody was relieved. A small circus company


ONE OF THREE
113
as
"Did you read it in the Bible?” Sarah asked.
That was Sarah's idea of reality. Reality was
what had happened within her experience. Knowl.
edge was what had come to her from her dealings
with the law of cause and effect. If a thing lay
outside that experience, she asked for its creden.
tials. She would admit the evidence of the scrip-
tures.
This attitude towards life gave her tremendous
importance to me. If Sarah knew a thing, it ex-
isted. If she knew it, she had encountered it. If
she had encountered it, it existed. Otherwise, un-
less it had authority in the Bible, it was gammon.
Thus she lived in a world of reality.
With respect to what puzzled us at Quatuck
house, I was convinced that she had a great deal
of knowledge which she was keeping to herself.
I had no reason for this conviction and could not
imagine why, if Sarah knew anything, she could
not tell it. She was not taciturn. She loved her
opinions and her gossip.
“What put that heathen monkey idea in your
head?” she asked me, finally. I knew she was going
to ask me that question.
"I was just thinking about the sunken garden
and the strange things in it,” I said.
Sarah made no comment. She kept on munch-
ing her food, with many wrinklings of the skin
over her pouched jaws.


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“Why shouldn't Philip ask about a monkey if he
wants to?" Simon asked, defiantly. "You're get-
ting so you take folks up if they say they know any.
thing or if they want to know something."
“The wood is all,” said Sarah. “You go out and
get some.”
When Arthur and I were walking to Quatuck
house, he suddenly asked: “Why did you suggest
that question about the ape?”
“You are sure it is that savage brother, aren't
you?” I asked.
“As sure as I can be of anything,” he said.
"I'm not at all," I said.
“I see.”
We walked on a hundred yards without saying
anything. Silence is a provocative argument. Fre-
quently it angers more than words.
“Why don't you say it?” I asked, finally.
“I'm trying not to laugh,” said Arthur.
“Laugh as you like.”
“But really, Phil,” said Arthur, "with all the
plain simple evidences of a plain brutal human
fact before you, you don't insist upon something
swinging in over the trees to attack Hope, do you?”
"I don't insist on anything,” I said, "except this:
I know that there is something involved here that
is not ordinarily found in a police court record.
You are hunting for a police case, and I have just


ONE OF THREE
115
sense enough to know better. That's why I asked
about the ape.”
"It doesn't seem absurd to you that Hope would
not tell of such an outrageous thing? You de-
prive her of motive. I grant her one-a noble one,
of self-sacrifice.”
“When we find out this secret nothing will seem
absurd," I insisted. “That's my feeling.”
“Well, we may find out to-night,” said Arthur.


ONE OF THREE
117
it travels back to the Murders of the Rue Morgue
-unconsciously when I got it.”
We were by this time within 300 yards of the
house. Then we were paralyzed for the instant,
held motionless, by a cry of fright, a human cry
which had in it that quality of terror contained in
the scream of a horse, which is the sound of great
horror because it comes from an animal which
does not frequently make a sound of any kind.
At that instant the southern sky again opened
up in abysses of incandescent heat, and this time
a roll of thunder filled the air. In our confusion
I could not be certain what I heard, but I thought
that, following the cry of terror and covered by
the roll of thunder-nevertheless audible in this—
there had been an animal scream-the savage cry
of a savage beast.
I could hear the gasp of Arthur's breath. He
took me by the elbow.
"You heard that?” he asked.
"I heard something," I said.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
"I thought I heard a man yelling,” I said.
“It was a man's voice,” he said as if infinitely
relieved. "I thought so. You're sure of it? A
man's voice?"
Arthur seemed unwilling to ask the next ques-
tion, evidently for fear that the answer might con-
firm a suspicion or strengthen a conviction.


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“Did you hear anything but that cry?” he asked
timidly.
"No," I said, lying, “nothing but the sound of
a man's voice, a voice yelling at something."
“I'm glad we're here, anyway,” he said. “I did
think for a second I heard something different-
something I'd call animal.”
"You have laughed at me, but now you are con-
fessing the power of suggestion,” I said. “I men.
tioned a theory that you think is absurd. Now
you are beginning to be affected by it."
I was much more affected than Arthur could
have been, but I wanted to protect him-as my
friend and as Hope's friend from the presumably
idle terrors of my own thought. I did not want
him to have the sensations I had the emotions or
the suspicions.
I had begun to think of Arthur in new terms.
He was nothing, in his own consciousness, but
Hope's friend; but he was, in his orderly, con-
trolled, certain, and undemonstrative way, much
more than that. She remained indelibly in his
mind, imagination, and affections. She was, and
yet she never could be, all the things she was to
him, and he, a self-disciplined man, restrained-
a realist as well as a romanticist-took his life
without tears, complaint, or grumbling.
Sarah had opened for me a door into Arthur's
sanctuary. He had become in a real fashion


ONE OF THREE
119
strange-strange because with so profound an emo-
tion hidden he had been so commonplace—the dis-
covery of a volcano crater in a geranium bed.
He so little suggested drama. He was so placid,
80 apparently content and happy, so satisfied, with
such a complete life, seemingly, and yet under his
placidity he was discovered in a complex of emo-
tions not at all revealed. He might have suffered
a great deal, excruciatingly, in the lion's den of the
emotions into which people are thrown occasion.
ally and out of which they do not come untouched.
We came to the house. Gerald was sitting with
Hope and Richard-if so truculent an attitude as
his could be called communion of any sort. Ger.
ald, I saw, made few compromises and had few
hypocrisies. Such social graces he ignored. He
was sullen and in spite of circumstances remained
sullen.
Hope and Richard were both in their best mood
-towards us. They may have been having a very
disagreeable time with Gerald, but they did not
show it.
Gerald was an anomaly in the house. I could
not imagine these three sitting down in the condi-
tions which we knew to be so genial.
Richard wore a sweater and had laced boots on
and was smoking a pipe by the fire.
Gerald was a big hulk in another chair. His
hands grasped the chair arms. I noticed not only


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their suggestions of power but the extraordinary
length of the fingers. He was holding the chair
arms so tightly that the skin whitened over his
musclesas if in his thoughts he were strangling
something—but his expression was not unusually
unpleasant. I even thought that he looked as
nearly amiable as he ever could.
“Gerald has been telling us-or rather me-
stories of Uncle Jasper,” said Hope. She had tried
from the time her brother came to accept him as
a normal person and by her acceptance have others
see him as such-a generous and kindly imposition
of her sweetness upon the intelligence of others-
as if she were to say, “This skunk cabbage is a
rose," and have you see it as such.
Richard said he would change his clothes-put
on house slippers instead of the boots and a house
coat instead of the sweater. He had been out, he
said, fixing some things against the coming storm.
He found pleasure in doing some of the things
about the place, as if he were its sole means of
provision and prevision for comfort and security.
He sat with us, in the careless but always gra-
cious habit which so well became him, unlacing his
boots.
“Being out and seeing to things on a night like
this,” he said, “is like reefing sails before a storm.
You get a sense of danger and you have a feeling
that with a little luck and some ordinary precau-


ONE OF THREE
121
tions you'll survive it in comfort. I like it. It's
going to be a beautiful storm. I'll be down again
in a minute.”
"While you were out did you hear a strange
noise?” I asked. “We were up on the hill and
heard something."
"Yes, I did," he said. “Nothing particular, but
a man yelled and a horse screamed from the stables
-just about the same time. I remember it be-
cause I hate to hear a frightened horse.”
“I imagine that's what we heard,” I said.
"It sounded as if something had terrified the
horse, but I can't imagine what,” said Richard,
“something animal. If we had wolves around here
you might think that was it. I noticed it but didn't
give it much thought.”
He got up and said he would be back in a min-
ute.
Gerald had said nothing. He had acknowledged
our presence by a glance. His hands rested on the
arms of his chair, strangling something-powerful,
long fingered hands. You did not expect Gerald
to say anything. The peculiar quality of his sullen
taciturnity was its normality. His presence did
not inject anything abnormal into a gathering. He
was so much what you instantly expected him to
be that he was therefore a piece of furniture. You
accepted him, made a point of not running into
him, and could then forget him—that was true or


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would have been true for people who did not have,
as Arthur and I had, reason for thinking that he
might be responsible for the attacks upon Hope.
For an instant his long fingers stopped stran-
gling the arms of the chair and he half raised up
and, to my astonishment, began to speak.
"I think I'll go to bed,” he said.
“All right, Gerald,” said Hope. "I know you
are tired.”
At that moment one of the servants, a woman,
came in with the breathless abruptness which de-
clares a reason for ignoring ordinary decorum.
“Mrs. Browning !” she exclaimed.
Richard had gone upstairs. The rest of us
looked at the woman with curiosity.
“Yes, Milly,” said Hope.
“One of the men has something I think he ought
to tell you, but he's timid and backward and he's
been scared and doesn't want to do it. I think
he ought to."
The Brownings establishment had been entirely
changed, the servants being all of date since the
return of Richard and Hope from the south, but
Hope's influence was such that it soon gave new
people a sense of attachment. Hope could be forced
to reorganize her household every six months, as
she had, and yet keep within it all the values of
long establishment.
“Who is it, Milly?” she asked.


ONE OF THREE
123
“Abner," said the woman. “I'll admit he isn't
the brightest thing in the world, but he's honest,
and he's been honest scared.”
“What scared him?” Hope asked.
“That's what he ought to tell you," said Milly.
“Can't you tell it—if he is backward ?”
“I could tell you what he has told us, but you
ought to hear what he would tell you.”
“Ask him if he won't come in,” said Hope. “Tell
him we want him to."
"I'll tell him you say he's got to.”
"No, don't do that,” said Hope. “Just say we
want him to tell us. I think he will."
Milly looked disappointed, as if she wanted to
be in suggestion and power a posse comitatus, but
she went on a merely persuasive errand.
Gerald, his sullen face showing an interest which
might have been one of curiosity or suspicion, set-
tled back in his chair and his long fingers again
strangled the upholstering. Presently Milly came
back with a man, young, sturdy, awkward, timid,
still frightened, and in his embarrassing duty of
narration very reluctant.
“Thanks, Abner,” said Hope. “Milly says you
were startled by something that we ought to
know."
“Yes, ma'am," said Abner, looking at her, then
around the room, and then at the floor.


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“Take that chair by you," said Hope. “Milly,
you stay. And, Abner, you tell us what it was."
Abner sat on the edge of the chair and looked over
his shoulder towards the door by which he had
entered—as if he were making sure of an open ave.
nue of escape. He looked steadily at the floor for
a while, but presently, turning his eyes towards
Hope, he seemed to find the encouragement he
needed and thereafter during his story looked at
her.
He had been in the barns, he said, doing his
evening's work, a little later than usual because he
had had to make a trip to Appleton and had been
delayed in getting home. The storm—which had
not yet broken-was gathering. The horses were
nervous and excited, he said. At first he thought
it was the storm.
The two thoroughbreds that were used as saddle
horses were on edge-Jim particularly. He was so
fidgety that Abner had to be careful in going into
his stall.
"He r'ared and plunged bad, Mrs. Browning,”
said Abner, "and quivered, and Aster wasn't much
better. Jim got to raring and kicking and I
couldn't get them quiet. It was thundering low,
and the thoroughbreds hate the thunder. Three
of the dogs was with me that snappy little fox
terrier Minx, and Bob, the mongrel collie, and Tam
Car, the Airedale."


ONE OF THREE
127
cept for the flashes of lightning it was utterly dark,
but he knew the paths and ways so well that he
could go into the orchard without a lantern.
He had been impressed but not startled by the
demonstrations in the stable. It at once takes a
great deal and requires very little to disturb the
equilibrium of such minds. A great deal of dis-
turbance which is wholly normal or explicable nor-
mally is accepted normally. The barn on fire would
not have excited Abner unusually. A bat, unex-
plained, in the hayloft might have terrified him.
He had found the saw. He had just picked it
up. He was then conscious of a rustling near him.
There was no wind at that moment, but something,
something with bulk and substance, moved close
to him. He thought it was an animal, and he
thought that it was not an animal he might expect
to find in the orchard-not a dog or a cow or one
of the sheep.
Abner in telling tried to be precise and utterly
realistic. I am reading much of my imagination
into his stuttering narrative. Abner, on the edge
of his chair, never ceased to be embarrassed and
never ceased to falter.
What had happened to him he hardly knew.
There had been the distinct and appreciated pres-
ence. It was animal. It was not animal in a sense
he was accustomed to.
"I kind of thought,” he said slowly, with his eyes


ONE OF THREE
129
told everything I know and maybe some things I
don't know. But if I was to take my solemn oath
I'd say that something hairy jumped at me and
tried to grab me by the throat.”
“Thanks, Abner," said Hope. "I'm glad you've
got a lantern and are not afraid. In the dark a
lot of things can seem to happen.”
"Maybe, Mrs. Browning,” said Abner, arising
awkwardly. "I'm willing to believe so. I've got
a lantern and the dogs have come out of the stable
and are waiting for me. I wish I'd had them with
me in the orchard, because if there was a thing
they'd have got it, and if they didn't get it there
wouldn't have been anything."
“May I look at your neck?” Arthur asked.
“Sure, if you want to,” said Abner.
Arthur went over to him, looked at his neck,
put his hand heartily on Abner's shoulder, and
said :
"You're right, Abner. The dogs would have got
it if they had been there-if they could have
climbed a tree and got one of the branches."
"I didn't want to seem like a fool,” said Abner,
“but Milly said you ought to know it.”
"I wanted to know it,” said Hope, "and thank
you for telling it.”
Abner and Milly went out, Abner looking as if
he had been betrayed into revelations of his emo-


ONE OF THREE
131
place a dreadful name. We'll have it haunted in
a short while. Abner had better go before he sees,
smells, and feels something else that doesn't exist."
"That isn't quite fair, Richard,” said Hope.
“Abner didn't want to say anything about his ex-
perience. It was dragged out of him. We can't
punish him for that. He is not in fault."
"I'm not particular about Abner,” said Richard.
“We could go away for the summer, close up the
place, and get rid of the whole establishment. I
don't want a lot of frightened servants giving the
place a bad name.”
"It will be all right, Richard, I'm sure," said
Hope. “Just have a little patience.”
"I don't want to seem unreasonable,” said Rich-
ard, “but can't you see that these alarms destroy
the very thing we want so much to create here, the
sense of benignant comfort?”
Richard walked over to the fireplace and stood
with his hands behind his back.
Hope looked at him and for an instant I thought
that there was in her look a suggestion of that in-
visible feminine government to which most males
are subjected most when they suspect it least. The
suggestion was in the inquiry of her look. It was,
I thought, a search for the method of management,
directed with great affection and wisdom. Was old
Sarah Parr, with her feline wisdom, unfathom-
able wisdom, anything more than the dowager?


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Hope was young, Sarah old. The difference was
merely one of experience.
"If we don't want things exaggerated, Richard,”
she said, “do you think we ought to exaggerate
them ourselves?"
Richard stood a few seconds longer in his per-
plexity, and then his ingratiating smile came back.
“No, Hope,” he said. “I don't want to be a fool
about it. We'll forget it-for the present at least.”
Gerald, whose sullen stolidity had been unmoved
by the perplexity he saw in the house, again said
he would go to bed. Again Hope said:
"Yes, Gerald. I know you are tired. We'll all
go to bed soon."
Nothing, seemingly, could have been less impor.
tant to Gerald than the general condition or pur-
pose of the household. He said good night-he
did make that concession to the rest of us—and
withdrew.
Presently Hope and Richard said they would
leave us to our own intentions—if we did not mind
-that they were tired—and we were left together
downstairs, with the intention, unknown to them,
of sitting up, whether we slept or not, to be as
ready as we might for possible disturbances in the
house.
When people prepare themselves in an attitude
of watchfulness they expose themselves, especially
if they are untrained and inexperienced, to sug-


136
ONE OF THREE
enigma alarmed by us, or was merely the noise of
the thunder.
There was a flash of lightning—the most vivid
I ever have seen. There was a terrifying, appalling
clap of thunder. There were noises and lights
which utterly confused the perceptions. There was
a suggestion of close danger, of outrageously
strange menace, an utter collapse of rationality,
and we were in darkness and the only sound was
the click of the electric light switches as Arthur
pushed them.
Just as we needed light the storm had interfered.
Helplessly we stood—1, at least, quivering—in the
dark. Then there was a flash and flood of light
over the house. The lights had come back.
We were alone. There were several overturned
chairs-otherwise nothing out of order—no indi-
cation of anything that might have been near us,
no movements anywhere-nothing significant or
startling except the expression on Arthur's face.
“I ran into it,” he said, as if he were afraid of
what he had to say. “I ran into it and touched it.
And it was hairy.”


VII
M HE next morning the house was its pleasant
reality again. The sunshine swept and cleared
it. The phantasmagoria of night went with the
darkness. The room where Arthur and I had stood
conscious, with the storm at its height, of unseen
and unexplained presences, of things or persons
moving, where Arthur had touched something hairy
- or thought he had—was in the morning light a
place where no such things could happen.
Day made unreal every reality of the night and
made fantastic every intimation of the night.
Arthur and I had sat through the night waiting
other demonstrations or suggestions of evil, but
the storm subsided to a gentle fall of rain which
presently ceased and the house was quiet. We had
both fallen asleep in our chairs. Arthur was still
sleeping when I awoke and I went outside alone
into the oak woods and sat on a bench. Deeper
in the woods oven birds were calling. Overhead
intimately a scarlet tanager flashed from tree to
tree.
After the rain the world was fresh, new and
sweet smelling and it was not within comprehen.
137


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ONE OF THREE
sion that all the beauty perceivable and all the
geniality and benevolence of life revealed here at
Quatuck had something malignant in it or back
of it or suspended over it which threatened to de-
stroy it.
Each morning which comes with light and fra-
grance and song comes with an empty pack and
the pack is refilled each day. Night is the old and
heavy laden age of the world and morning its eter-
nally renewed youth.
The moment was a denial of all that had hap-
pened and had been feared at Quatuck.
When I reëntered the house Arthur was awake.
He was standing by a large chair. Across the chair
some one carelessly had thrown an almost shaggy
wool sweater. It was more a sheepskin coat than
a sweater.
Life at Quatuck was robust rather than precise.
In making the most of outdoors the house fur-
nished for its guests and visitors a great wardrobe
of knockabout garments. Hope could go to a room
and return with clothing for almost any number
of people for almost any occasion at any time of
the year.
The genial carelessness tolerated and even en-
couraged a general littering up of the place. The
servants from time to time reduced it to order,
but they expected to find books, garments, glasses,


ONE OF THREE
139
dishes, pipes, cigars, ash trays, etc., almost any
place at almost any time.
Richard had no sense of order. He discarded a
thing the moment he had no further use for it at
the place where that moment found him.
Arthur was looking at the sheepskin or rough
wool sweater in amused speculation. He motioned
to it with a smile which explained his thought.
“It's been there all night,” he said.
The suggestion in a manner irritated me. “And
once or twice got off the chair and moved around
making noises,” I said.
Arthur touched the coat, brushed it lightly with
his hand, struck it, rested his hand on it, seemed
to be trying in various fashions to do what he
might have done in the night and get the same sen-
sation-one which would satisfy him that it was
the coat he had touched. The experiment was un.
satisfactory.
“Circumstances are not the same," I suggested,
betraying my own case out of friendship and sym-
pathy for him and knowing what he was trying to
do. “You can't reproduce now the state of perves,
the alarms, the thunderstorms, the lights failing
in the flash of lightning, our apprehensions, and
dreads. They all would have significance in the
sensation you got from touching a thing unexpect-
edly in the dark. Now you see it and know what


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ONE OF THREE
it is. Then you didn't know what it was and you
didn't see it."
“You know, Phil,” said Arthur, "you'll finally
convince me that this outrageous ape idea "
"Which is not outrageous and isn't an idea,” I
objected, “which is merely something to be consid-
ered as a possibility.”
« is mine and not yours. You are trying to
convince me that what you have suggested and
what I do not believe is not true. But—that coat
is not the thing I touched in the dark last night
because what I touched had movement and life
underneath it. It wasn't something on the back of
a chair."
Hope came downstairs. She always rose with a
morning fragrance as if she were the essence of
spring flowers and the embodiment of all whole-
some ideas which would live in clean air and morn-
ing sunlight. She always wore gingham in the
morning, of bright checks, and a fresh, bright ging.
ham always to me seemed to come out of the early
summer sunrise.
"You two were not in bed last night,” she said.
“We sat up talking,” I tried to confess with guilt,
"and fell asleep in our chairs. I talked until I
put Arthur to sleep and fell asleep myself. We just
woke up a little while ago."
“That is not true," said Arthur, inconsiderate of
my feeble tactics.


ONE OF THREE
141
“I know it is not,” said Hope, “because you have
not been to bed for two nights."
"And you know why,” said Arthur. “I'll be
frank if you won't. I sat up one night and Phil
and I sat up last night together because we wanted
to find out what threatens you."
Hope put out her hand as if to steady herself
in her effort to control herself completely. She
put it on the sheepskin coat, but just at the contact
with the wool sharply drew it back as if in reac-
tion to a shock.
I thought that she looked terrified, as if she
would ask mercy of Arthur, ask him not to be cruel
in his kindness and affection.
"You won't be frank," Arthur continued, "and
you have been in danger. I will be frank—this
much. When that brother of yours leaves the house
I as your best friend shall feel a little more secure."
"He is going today,” said Hope. I thought that
she had experienced a revulsion of emotion when
she touched the coat and a relief of emotion when
Arthur spoke of Gerald. She did not say anything
more, which also I thought was strange. Arthur
had challenged abruptly the presence of her brother
in her home. Her answer was merely that he was
leaving it
Richard tried very hard to be nice to Gerald that
morning. It seemed to weigh on his sense of hospi.
tality that, whether he had revealed it or not, he


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ONE OF THREE
had not wanted this man in the house and now that
the man was going away Richard wanted to extri-
cate himself from his own suggestions that he had
been selfish.
He took Gerald about the place. He showed him
the barns and granaries, the orchards and berry
patches. He tried to tell him of Quatuck horticul-
ture, of the flowers, berries, fruits, and vegetables
in which they took pride. He showed him the stock
and made every amiable effort to interest him.
Gerald went with him and said nothing. He
looked and was silent. I thought I never had seen
such bright beady eyes in a face so otherwise sul.
len and morose. Inactive opposition to everything
genial and cordial was expressed in Gerald's fea-
tures and attitude until you saw his eyes.
They revealed hard, shifty cunning and acquisi-
tiveness, low cunning and determined purpose.
"It can't be done,” Richard said finally in despair
to Hope. “I'm sorry, dear, but I really don't know
what to do more. He is extraordinary. I don't
believe he's said two words since he entered the
house. I'm sorry, but there just doesn't seem to be
anything to do about it.”
“You've been perfect, Richard,” said Hope. "I
suppose Gerald was moved by curiosity to see his
sister and maybe he has been so embarrassed that
he could not do anything but what he has done.


ONE OF THREE
143
But he is going and you have been wonderful to
him.”
Gerald went shortly before noon. Arthur said he
had a sick child to see in the village and he told me
that he was so dead for the lack of sleep that he
would go to Simon's and take a long nap through-
out the afternoon. He asked me to go back to the
Parrs' with him.
We rode with Gerald to Quatuck village and
there found the Parr household in a turmoil.
Sarah had lost her teeth. Simon had lost his glass-
es. The store and the postoffice were taking care
of themselves. old man Nichols and old man Hart
might be and probably were eating all the dried
apples, crackers, prunes, and cheese. Two or three
boys might be standing about hopeless for the lack
of a sack of salt, a pound of coffee, a spool of thread
or a package of pins to take home.
Simon could not be there because Sarah had lost
her teeth and Simon was known to be the prime fac-
tor in the loss. He had lost his glasses again, but
Sarah knew where they were and so did we as soon
as we entered the kitchen. He might as well have
searched for them in the store as in his home. They
were back on his head. Sarah was too exasperated
to tell him.
“Drat the man,” said Sarah, "I think he threw
out the glass of water I had them in."


ONE OF THREE
145
"I don't,” said Arthur, “but I know if you did
that's where you threw it. I've watched you too
many times.”
“Well, I didn't,” said Simon, "but I did empty
a glass of water into the dishwater, and if they
were in it Sarah threw them out herself.”
“That accounts for it,” said Sarah, going to the
kitchen door and outside into the yard. She came
back presently with her teeth and Simon grinned.
“Now we're both as good as new again,” he said.
“Sarah was specially keen about having her teeth
to-day because she's got some ham hock she's got
to eat. You can make this a professional call, Ar-
thur. How much do we owe you for it?”
"If the ham hocks are as good as they always
have been I'll say a supper for Phil and me and a
chance to sleep a couple of hours.".
Sarah grinned.
“It's cheap enough for our teeth and eyes,” Simon
said. “We might give a tramp that much-if he'd
sleep in the barn and take all the matches out of
his pockets.”
Sarah with a tooth brush was scrubbing her
teeth in a basin of hot water.
“I ought to see that he drinks some dish water,"
she said. “I'd like to see anybody who wants their
teeth thrown in the dish water and then out in the
yard.”
“Who threw them out in the yard?" Simon asked.


ONE OF THREE
147
“Phil will tell you,” said Arthur. "He didn't
lose much sleep.”
He went in the "setting” room, closed the door
and went to sleep on the couch. Sarah said that
if I would get some cherries she would make some
cherry pies.
“The birds are getting them,” she said, "and
Simon puts off picking them. The first thing he
knows we won't have any for his cherry bitters.”
“Are Simon's bitters really-bitter?” I asked.
“A teetotaler could cure a spell of stomach ache
with them,” said Sarah. “Simon's right smart, but
if he thinks I don't know the smell of corn liquor
he's an awful fool. A man is an awful fool.”
I got a ladder and picked cherries, to the annoy.
ance of the robins and bluejays. With two buckets-
ful I returned to the kitchen and helped Sarah
take out the pits. Then I sat and watched her roll
her crust, profoundly content to be in such an at-
mosphere, sitting in one of the rocking chairs and
looking at Sarah, a durable human fact, at work
which means simple human pleasure.
A person who has been little in touch with the
processes of fruition and husbandry, who has
known nothing of its long hours, hard toil, tacitur-
nity, monotony, and weariness, may love a brief but
seemingly intimate touch with productiveness. To
pick the cherries was an illusion of such a nature.


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ONE OF THREE
“What did keep you up at the house?” Sarah
asked as she rolled her crust.
“You know what Jasper Lord said of Hope's
brother," I suggested.
“I heard what he said. I want to know what
Arthur has on his mind and what scared him and
what happened.”
I tried to tell her what Arthur had in his thought
and what I had in mine.
“There is something the matter," I said. “Hope
Browning has been terrified in some way by some-
thing. I don't know what it is. I know I have
heard strange noises at the house. I know that I
had a fantastic idea. And I know that Arthur said
that in the dark he touched something living that
was hairy-and he did not believe in the idea I had
and yet he had the experience. So I don't know
anything."
Sarah rolled her crust and lifted it into her pie
tins, pinching the edges. She put in the cherries
and sprinkled sugar over them.
Whenever Sarah thus worked she was a perfect
Gibraltar of enduring human benevolence. She
worked and nothing, you knew that absolutely noth-
ing, could destroy her significance. It was out of
human consideration that Sarah baking cherry pies
could be removed permanently from the kitchen.
She and it were too solid in their importance. They
represented the permanent essence of life.


ONE OF THREE
149
Sarah cannot die, I thought as I watched her at
work. A neurotic person with a distorted perspec-
tive, with an agonized imagination, with a subjec-
tive world all askew and an objective world all
horrid, would find asylum in Sarah's kitchen-be
cured there and be given that normality of benev-
olent illusion needed for healthy life.
Sarah was unflinching. I knew that she had
gone, years before, to a tooth puller, and, sitting
down in his chair, had endured the extraction of
twelve teeth-without a jump, without a sound-
the pulling of one after another-and arose un-
steady from the shock but indomitable.
“I can't seem to get any one to tell me what did
happen,” she said, returning to that subject. “They
tell me what they think happened, but not what
did.”
“When we do not know what happened and can
only think what happened, how can we tell more
than we know or anything but what we think?”' I
asked.
"I can think for myself,” said Sarah, “but I
wasn't at the house Christmas eve and I wasn't
there last night.”
Sarah put her pies in the oven, took her pipe
from the top of the chest of drawers, filled it from
a tin can of tobacco, took a paper spill from a
glass jar on a shelf near the range, lighted the spill


150
ONE OF THREE
at the range, lighted her pipe, and sat down in a
rocking chair for a smoke.
Sarah had become, to me, more significant than
the strange and terrifying animal noises I had
heard at Quatuck, more significant than the fero-
cious lout, Gerald, more significant than the hide
which Arthur touched in the dark and which had
seemed to live.
Sarah the dowager cat, the prescient dozing
dowager, dozing but alert, knowing, and unemotion-
al-a Manchu dowager heavy with years, sluggish
of sympathy, but prescient, knowing, patient, and
waiting. She could see in the dark which blinded
us. With such a conviction regarding Sarah I
looked at her with a certain awe.
She really gave portentousness to the events at
Quatuck which otherwise might have been dis-
missed with rational explanations.
What, after all, had happened? In the first place
Hope had been hit in the mouth and nearly stran-
gled by a thief. That was her story. It was ra-
tional. Such things could and did happen. We
did not want them to happen to Hope, but they did
not terrify a whole life.
Hope had been attacked by some man in a south-
ern pine grove. Some inexplicable sounds and
movements had astonished and dismayed us at Qua-
tuck. To explain it there was Gerald, the ferocious
lout with his sullen cupidity aroused by a valuable


ONE OF THREE
153
W
“I never knew any one to treat servants better
than Hope and Richard do," I suggested.
“I guess they are real clever to them,” said Sarah,
“but they don't keep the same ones.”
“Richard always seems to thank any one who
does anything for him.”
“Yes, he's real clever.”
"He and Hope are so happy together," I said.
“Richard always was a good provider," said
Sarah. “I don't know what I'm thinking of-get-
ting the flour out. I can't make these biscuit for
an hour and a half yet. It's only 4 o'clock, and
Arthur's asleep and when he wakes up he's got to
see the Clayton girl who broke her arm, and Simon
won't close the store till 5:30."
She took up her pipe again and lighted another
spill at the range.
“The wood is getting low," she said. “You, Phil,
go out and get me an armful from the wood pile.”
When I came back she said:
“If you'd get enough to fill the box, that chore
would be done for the night and Simon would be
much obliged.”
I filled the box. I understood why Richard so
liked' personally to have charge of the wood sup-
ply. It promoted a sense of primitive luxury, it
recalled the chores of boyhood, it suggested use.
fulness in connection with the simplest essentials.


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ONE OF THREE
When the box was filled, Sarah wanted me to go
over to the store and get some baking powder.
"It's all,” she said.
That was an errand which could have been done
leisurely in five minutes and required a half hour.
Simon was playing checkers with old man Hart.
Five children were waiting-two for the mail, one
for salt pork, one for a spool of thread, and one for
dried apples.
Simon's detachment, when he did detach himself
-as he did a dozen times a day-from his commer-
cial and governmental pursuits, was a complete
thing. When he came back he came back gropingly.
I think the two children who came for the mail
went home with salt pork and thread and that the
mail went where the dried apples and the salt pork
was wanted, but after a half hour I got the baking
powder and carried it in triumph to Sarah.
“Arthur got up and went to see the Clayton girl,
who's got a broken arm,” said Sarah. “They live
a mile and a half down the road and he walked.
He's got to stay there near an hour or Mrs. Clay.
ton will think he's not earning his money. She
doesn't think he's much of a doctor, anyway, be-.
cause he wouldn't cure her chickens of the pip."
“Did Arthur ever ask Hope to marry him," I
asked, “before she married Richard ?"
“He wanted her,” said Sarah.
“Didn't she care for him ?”


ONE OF THREE
155
“I guess she fancied him a little."
“But she fancied Richard more?''
“I guess it didn't make much difference. What a
woman wants is a good provider and a steady man.
Any one will do if he provides. They're all alike.”
“But you believe in love," I suggested.
“He didn't give you the right baking powder,"
said Sarah.
“I'll take it back.”
"It will do. He might send a codfish back with
you the next time. He's got two baking powders
and he knows the kind I want. Let it.”
“But you believe in love,” I insisted.
“If you're trying to rile me, Philip,” said Sarah,
"you can't do it. What would a woman married
since she was 18 have to do with such nonsense?
It's something the children find printed on the pep-
permint hearts, isn't it? I've seen them.”
“But you love Simon, don't you?” I persisted.
"I'm a church member,” said Sarah sternly, “and
I'm married to Simon, who has been a thorn at
times but mainly a good provider. We have been
decent people and no one could ever truthfully say
a thing against us. I don't know what you are talk-
ing about, but I'll have you know that I never loved
anybody. I'm a Methodist.”.
“But,” I persisted, thinking I might confuse her,
“Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel."


ONE OF THREE
157
even unhappily, but certainly and I thought eter-
nally.
He did not bay at the moon. He did not have a
mean idea. He was not constantly agonized. He
could be happy and placid, but he was so in love
with Hope, had been in love with her so long, would
remain in love with her so long, that it was and
would remain the essence of his life to love her.
Arthur came back before Simon had closed the
store and sat for a while in silence in the kitchen,
watching Sarah at work.
“You know,” he said, finally, "I woke up from
that nap with a queer sort of inspiration regarding
this thing.”
I knew what “this thing” was.
“Occasionally,” he said, “I find that you wake
up with a vividness of ideas you never have at any
other time. This idea was almost terrifying.”
"Anything you are going to tell?” I asked.
"No, it isn't a thing I'm going to tell. It's too
preposterous, but it's also too plausible. I've
thought it all over and the worst thing about it is
that its plausibility outgrows its preposterousness.
I'll say this, anyway. There are three explana-
tions at Quatuck. It's one of three."


VIII
I TOPE and Richard went away for the summer
I just when Quatuck had begun to enter upon
its period of luxuriance. The white oaks were comº
ing to full leaf. The leafing of these woods was a
progression from filament to fullness, from lacery
to lushness, and the deep green was just reëstab-
lishing itself when Richard closed the house and,
dismissing all the servants, again took Hope away.
This method of dealing with the troubles of Qua-
tuck, whether they were incidental or fundamental,
seemed to me unsatisfactory. By going away for
the winter the Brownings had accomplished noth-
ing. I had no assurance that they would accom-
plish anything by going away for the summer.
I knew that Richard's fastidiousness demanded
a cleaning of the premises. To close the house was
a delicate way of giving it an airing, morally and
mentally. That was what he had done before. I
recalled that he had said that they had done it at
other times which were out of my knowledge that
they never were able to keep servants long.
"I never had given it any significance,” said Ar.
thur, “but I believe they have closed the house twice
158


ONE OF THREE
159
a year and have started afresh thus for a number
of years."
Richard was keen for mountains and, as usual,
his enthusiasm was contagious. We discussed
mountains until I was engrossed, as was Arthur.
Richard wanted congenial, not majestic moun-
tains.
“Heights—but intimate," he said. “Laurel and
not snows-nothing distant or difficult-something
exalted but domestic-wild but friendly.”
His incongruities were comprehensible. He
wanted the Berkshires rather than the Rockies, the
Catskills rather than the Andes—a brown bear in
the blueberries and not a grizzly on the stone
slopes.
His trick of making his ideas and enthusiasms
vivid never was better employed. Hope beamed on
him and I began to see lakes set as jewels in green
mountains, winding trails by jack pines and spruce,
hard maple and oak, places where arbutus would
be found in the spring, fringed gentians in the fall.
“There was a story by Frank Stockton about all
this,” said Richard. “What was it? It wasn't
Squirrel Inn? Or was it? Anyway it was a place
up in the hills—the cordial mountains-wonderful
place to live in. That's what Hope and I will find
if we can and we'll come back in the early fall be-
fore the white oaks start to color."
There was ouch contagion in his enthusiasm and


ONE OF THREE
161
A housewife who needs a sack of salt, a package
of pins, a pound of dried apples, a pound of crack-
ers, a piece of salt pork, or a pound of coffee needs
something essential in life and the person who can
provide her with it is consciously serving the proc-
esses of human social organization and consciously
recognizes the importance of this service. Many
ostensibly important men are far removed from
reality.
Simon, as overseer, kept Quatuck operated up to
the handle. He detected and stopped a blight in
the orchard. He destroyed a half acre of potatoes
to kill the quack grass and saved the remainder of
the potatoes.
Sarah grumbled all the time he was busied so
much with Quatuck and yet I knew that she wanted
him to do it and was glad that he could do it so
well.
Arthur and I spent as much time as we could at
Quatuck-I because I loved it, and Arthur, I
knew, because he loved the associations. If he
could not see Hope he wanted to be where there
were associations which constantly reminded him
of Hope.
Richard wrote urging us to visit them. He de-
scribed the place entrancingly. Arthur and I had
hoped to join them if only for two weeks. I did
not know the mountains and wanted to. What
Richard wrote in description was tantalizing. In


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ONE OF THREE
his enthusiasms he was extraordinarily vivid. You
got a sense of slope and height and covert, of water-
fall, stream and pool, a sense of benignant isola-
tion, physical well-being, physical vibrance, and il-
lusioned human good.
We wanted to go, but it did not, at any time,
seem possible. We could sit with Simon and Sarah
in the Parr kitchen and discuss the trip, even plan
it, but it remained beyond our reach. We were
both, fortunately for us, latitudinarians in habit
and circumstances but nevertheless Arthur was a
physician with a routine and I an architect with a
business.
We were forced to forego the Berkshire experi-
ence but we were in Quatuck throughout the sum-
mer as much as possible. It furnished all the ex-
periences of the summer from the first green peas to
the first roasting ears of sweet corn, from the string
beans to the tomatoes, from the late raspberries to
the early potatoes.
Sweet corn was roasting ears to Sarah because
in the tradition of the country and sometimes in
its habit the sweet corn was roasted in its husks
in hot ashes. Evergreen was the variety we raised
principally. I have had it roasted and although or-
dinarily we went into the garden and brought it in
fresh for a pot of boiling water, I never tasted
sweeter corn than when it came in its husks from
the ashes.


ONE OF THREE
163
Nothing could have been more alluring than the
various processes of Sarah's garden to me, from
the first green onion and the first delicate white
radish to the last tomato before frost. Arthur and
I did as much of the garden work as we could-for
the joy of earning what we ate. We cultivated and
weeded. We put the turnips in after the green
peas had gone. We watched the lima beans with
appetent eyes and the cabbages with solicitous ones.
We killed potato bugs and sprayed the tomato
plants.
In September a small circus came into the neigh-
borhood. Quatuck was too small even to get its
bills, but Arthur and I discovered that it was show-
ing in the neighboring towns and decided to take
Sarah and Simon.
It was to be in Windsor, eight miles away, the
thirtieth of September, which was Friday and we
decided that Simon could close his store, or he
could have old man Hart sit in it—regardless of
the cheese, crackers, and dried apples he would eat
and regardless of the post cards he might read.
Simon had a soul for adventure and a willing-
ness to compromise with respectability and obliga-
tion. There was something of Vasco de Gama and
Christopher Columbus in Simon, also something of
Darius Green.
We persuaded Sarah because she knew it was
wicked and because she had not been consciously


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wicked for so many years that she was beginning
to feel, as well as be, old. Sarah as a believer
she never went to church, so I doubt that she could
be called a church member—knew that a circus was
wicked. Therefore she decided to risk her immor-
tal soul by going to one.
The only unholy adventure Sarah had had in
twenty years before was one that took her to the
county fair. It was an adventure and it was wicked.
The bucolics had as an added attraction to the har-
ness races a competition of lady bicyclists-in
tights.
We drove over to Windsor, starting early in the
morning, to be unhurried for the afternoon per-
formance. It was one of the fascinating small cir-
cuses which have a few animals—a moth worn lion,
some monkeys and apes, a small elephant, an os-
trich, a camel-a wild man and a bearded lady, a
great deal of sawdust, some dappled ponies, some
white horses, two clowns, some acrobats and slack
wire walkers and a small band of music—with, un-
officially, an aggregation of sharpers, gamblers,
and patent medicine men.
Sarah felt her wickedness early and was grimly
happy. Simon's only unhappiness was that he was
not free to roll dice, try the shell game, throw balls
at the negro's head, ring canes, and feed peanuts
to the elephant. Sarah had enough consciousness
of wickedness without allowing Simon to acquire


ONE OF THREE
165
much and, besides, she, being heavy on her feet,
wanted to sit down and remain sitting down.
It was so much an adventure for Sarah and Si-
mon that it would have been an adventure for Ar-
thur and me but it would not have been significant
if one of the acts had not been that of a trained
ape-a grotesque performance in which the ape,
dressed as a sailor and accompanied by a man
dressed as a sailor, imitated the proceedings of a
riotous shore leave, in the course of which proceed-
ings the ape, endeavoring to steal a ring from the
man, simulated an attack upon him, pounding and
then strangling him.
This was unimportant—but the man was Gerald.
I was certain that I recognized him, but I looked
at Arthur to see, if I could, what he thought. His
face was really white. I knew that it was Gerald
and that Arthur knew it was Gerald.
There are odd reticences in the mind. Neither
Arthur nor I spoke of Gerald at the time. I did
not want to concede even to myself that I had seen
this savage lout near Quatuck in the unbelievable
masquerade of a circus clown with a great ape. If
I conceded that to myself I had to entertain the
most extravagant ideas of experiences and pros-
pects. If I did not want to concede it to myself, I
did not want to speak of it to Arthur. I knew he
must feel the same way.
However strange it was, each of us had seen and


ONE OF THREE
167
story had sprung up that the ape had strangled
him. That was because the ape was such a sullen
beast and so powerful. He had seemed much more
amiable since Gerald-Jake—had been with them
- possibly—one said with a grin—because the man
was so much more sullen than the beast. The con-
trast favored the animal—might have made it seem
amiable.
The man had the ape's favor, in any case. That
made Gerald important. The act was a popular
one and although Gerald was unpopular with the
circus people they were glad to have him because
none of them cared to do what he did with the ani.
mal, and some one had to.
Because I told them that I knew him and his
relatives they were interested in finding him for
me and it was astonishing that they could not.
He did not have much time for leisure, they said.
He might have walked away for a little while, but
there were few objectives—the town hardly offered
an attraction-he was a man of sullen but robust
appetite and supper would soon be served out of
the big kettles and ovens.
Just then a man who had been obliging in his
search for Gerald came back with something which
his face announced before he said what he had to
say. I imagine circus people are not emotionally
expressive. If a man or woman hangs by the heels
from a swinging trapeze, walks the slack rope, en-


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ONE OF THREE
ters a cage of lions, spends a part of the working
day in mid air with hands outstretched for the
clutch which means attachment, in another pair
of hands, to something sustaining—the only thing
sustaining reachable-with such people verbal ex-
pression of emotion may be undeveloped-at least
controlled and restrained.
“The ape's gone, too,” he said.
The group of circus people scattered at that. I
waited and presently a man-one of the trapeze per.
formers—came back. He was a good natured, ami-
able man or he would not have remembered that I
was interested and would not have thought of me
again.
“The ape is gone,” he said. “Its cage is open.
It may be about the place and Jake may be around
here, too. The people are interested because there
are bad stories about the ape. It will probably
make them nervous to think that the beast is loose.
I think that if you took a peg to him once there
wouldn't be any trouble, but I suppose the women
particularly don't sleep well if they have to try
to sleep thinking of a hairy ape at large somewhere
about the place. But he is gone. And Jake's gone.
What did you call him? Gerald? They're gone."
I thanked the man and waited for Sarah, Simon,
and Arthur to come out of the tent. A young
farmer from Quatuck drove into the field where the
tents were pitched. I went over to him and asked


ONE OF THREE
169
him if he intended staying for the night perform-
ance.
“That's what I came for," he said. “I thought
maybe I could hitch here, but it looks like a bad
place because the horse is skittish and he's ner-
vous from the smell of the animals. I guess I'll find
a barn."
"It is a bad place for her," I said, “but if you're
going to stay I wonder if you'd do something for
me?"
“If I can I'd like to,” he said.
“Then tie up to something for a minute and come
with me," I said.
We found the man who had told me of the dis-
appearance of the ape and I asked him if he would
let the young farmer know whether the ape had
been found and whether Gerald had come back.
The young farmer was staying for the night per-
formance, I said.
Then I asked the young fellow, who had to pass
the Parr place, to stop in if he saw a light there as
he drove by. If he didn't we would see him the
next day. The circus was going out that night. I
wanted to know whether Gerald and the ape went
with it.
Sarah, Simon, and Arthur came out of the tent
along with the people who had tried, as they had
done, to prolong the ecstasy of the circus into the
anti-climax of the concert. Arthur looked at me


ONE OF THREE
171
Simon as we started home, "was a sight for me.
Being a creature of sin I liked it. But how Sarah
endured it is beyond me. If they'd had another
concert she'd have stayed to see if something
wouldn't happen to sanctify it."
“You've got the milking to do,” said Sarah, "and
the pigs and chickens to feed. You'd better ask
Arthur to get you home as soon as he can.”
"Sarah,” I said, "Arthur and I are sure we saw
Hope's brother there—the clown with the ape.”
“What of it?" Sarah asked.
“We may have been mistaken," I suggested.
"Maybe you were,” said Sarah, “but I wasn't.
I saw him.”
“Are you sure?” Arthur asked.
“I'm not blind yet,” said Sarah.
“But how could you recognize him?" I asked.
“You didn't see him when he was at the Brown-
ings."
“I have seen Hope's brother before,” said Sarah.
“I knew him."
We had a simple supper of bread and butter,
schmierkäse, damson plum preserves, cold meat,
and coffee. It was not often that cold meats were
used in the Parr household, but Sarah was tired
after the wickedness of the day and Arthur had
been successfully dictatorial. He would not allow
her to get what she would recognize as a "regular
meal.”


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ONE OF THREE
He treated her with mock imperiousness and I
could see that she enjoyed it. She knew the intent
to be one of sympathetic and considerate regard
for her own comfort. The demonstration was one
of the masculine empire. Sarah seemed to enjoy
the sensation of being a subject in the presence of
a king. It was one she infrequently had, not being
given much to suggestion and self-hypnosis.
She went to bed early, stopping a moment at the
foot of the stairs to give Simon a stern caution
against sitting up until all hours.
Simon himself was tired and therefore meek.
Ordinarily he was rebellious, but he wanted to go
to bed early, and he did. Arthur and I sat up
reading. Later Arthur, going to the water bucket
for a drink, found the bucket empty. The pump
was fifty feet from the porch, by a flagstone walk
and close to the grape arbor.
Arthur took the bucket and went to fill it, with-
out taking a light. The night was dark, but he
knew his way perfectly. The pump had a rusty
hinge and squeaked on each push at the handle.
I heard this noise several times. Then the sound
stopped. When you know that a sound will con-
tinue a certain time the abrupt cessation of it is
significant. I knew that Arthur had not filled his
bucket but had stopped pumping.
That attracted attention and I looked up from
my book. There was, I am certain, a face at the


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the sound stopped. I looked up and there was
something at the window.”
“What?” he asked.
“I don't know," I said. "I may have imagined
it. I thought there was a flash of something there
-eyes—the suggestion of a face. I was—at least
startled. I could hear you at the pump. So I took
the light and went to see.”
“I had the feeling that there was something
about,” said Arthur. “I couldn't see anything of
course. I don't know that I heard anything. But
I was morally certain that I smelled something-
something—from a circus-from the menagerie. I
was glad you came to the door with the light.”
"What I imagined I saw at the window suggested
the circus,” I said. “I think we are dreaming
again.”
The pleasant reality of the Parr kitchen made an
incongruity of such ideas as related to Gerald
and the performing ape, but we had seen Gerald
and the ape and we knew that they had disap-
peared.
“There's a horse coming down the road,” said
Arthur.
“It may be our young farmer," I suggested.
“He'll stop when he sees the light.”
We could hear footsteps coming up the walk. At
such a time of night, after such experiences, in
circumstances such as aroused the curiosity, small


ONE OF THREE
177
time. We did not then know that the Brownings
had returned to Quatuck. They had come back that
afternoon.
They had stopped at the Parrs' for a moment and
had found every one gone. Sarah was not in the
house. Simon was not in the store.
We were at the circus. Richard and Hope had
gone on to open up the house of Quatuck.


IX
HEN we found Hope we thought she was
dead. She was lying in a clump of hazel
bush, a quarter of a mile from Quatuck house,
inexplicably there, but apparently dead. There
were dark marks on her neck, finger marks, and her
lips had been bleeding. The blood clots had formed.
The blood had trickled down her throat.
Arthur and I had gone for hickory nuts. It was
an excuse for a glorified revival of boyhood. The
night before we had been through the experiences
which suggested that something outrageously
malevolent was in the outskirts of our pleasant
knowledge of Quatuck.
We had had such experience before. It came out
of the darkness. It evaporated with the daylight.
We had had it at the Brownings'. We had found
the night saturated with intimation of evil. Day-
light always had made intimation absurd. There
was Quatuck, house or village, in the daylight,
beautiful or commonplace, beautiful in many of its
commonplaces, in its placidity and assurances and
guarantees.
The night had been malevoleni-- by suggestion
178


ONE OF THREE
179
and indication-but to go to bed under the old roof
had been reassuring. There was a black oak over-
spreading part of the house. It was dropping
acorns. After I was in bed several acorns hit the
shingles with solid thumps. Explicable sounds
were reassuring.
In the morning when we came downstairs to take
the basin out to the pump for water and to come,
with face dripping, to the roller towel, Sarah was
making muffins and frying salt pork. That was
pleasant reality.
We had planned to go for hickory nuts that day,
and after we had helped with the chores about the
place we started. It was a glorious day. The
maples had colored. The soft oaks were turning.
The sumac was aflame. The small shagbarks al-
ready had dropped all their leaves, and there was
that assertion of benevolence which attends autumn
and precedes winter rather than attends spring
and precedes summer. The full granary is the
benevolent fact. Autumn is the full granary.
There were some butternuts to be had, and we
got some hazelnuts. We had a sack, and when we
came to the hickory trees we knocked the nuts down
by throwing clubs into the trees. It was a rare
sport. We had been going toward Quatuck house.
About a mile from it we came upon some boys of
the village who knew Arthur. They were club-


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bing hickory nuts out of two richly laden trees.
They recognized Arthúr and shouted at him.
"Did you know the Brownings got back last
night?” one boy called. "Getting any nuts?”
“Some," said Arthur. “That's astonishing," he
said to me. “I thought they'd let some of us know
and make some preparations before they came
home. I wonder if it's true.”
“The boys probably know,” I suggested. “They
have been roaming all over the place.”
"I couldn't have been very easy in my mind if
I had known they were here last night,” said Ar-
thur. “That makes it really bad.”
“You still think Gerald is the explanation,” I
said.
“I don't know,” said Arthur. “It's one of three,
and all three are here now—by the most inexpli-
cable twist of fate. I think it is Gerald, but I don't
know.”
“The ape's obviously another. What's the third ?”
“I wouldn't dare say,” said Arthur. “It makes
me chill even to think of it. It isn't possible. It
is possible, but it isn't believable.”
We had been going across country, climbing
fences, going through groves and across pasture
land.
“Of course we'll go over to the house,” Arthur
said.


ONE OF THREE
181
Then, in a clump of hazel bush, a quarter of a
mile from the house, we found Hope.
She was stretched out on the ground, apparently
lifeless. She had put on a sweater and tall walk-
ing boots and a khaki skirt she frequently wore
outdoors. By her side was a small sack with some
hazelnuts in it.
Dead as the beautiful face of Hope seemed, it
was not so lifeless, I thought, as the face of Arthur
as he stood, for an instant, palsied, motionless,
dead, dead on his feet, dead not only physically,
it seemed, but emotionally, spiritually.
We had come through the clump of hazel and
viburnum, edged with helianthus and wild asters,
with an occasional oak sapling—the whole effect be-
ing one of dense thicket touched at the margin with
color—and the discovery of Hope's body was one
of curiously cumulative effect upon the perceptions.
Vision itself is incomplete. Perception is wholly
inadequate. A startling phenomenon — unex-
plained-only partly seen-a foot protruding from
a thick growth of tall helianthus stems—the edge
of a khaki skirt—a woman's body, revealed by part-
ing the wild sunflower stalksa body motionless,
the head, with hair lovely but disheveled, resting
on an outstretched arm—as if the woman were
asleep—the dark marks on the throat-the blood
at the lips—the stains-and the woman Hope.
Dead as Hope seemed, when vision and percep-


ONE OF THREE
183
stirred and moaned a little, but did not open her
eyes.
The taciturnity of country folk never seemed
more admirable than it did in the conduct of this
farmer who had driven up so fortunately for us.
He was sympathetic without inquisitiveness, ten-
der and helpful, but not exclamatory. Something
had happened. He could be of help. That, for the
time, was enough for him. I knew that he would
be garrulous later, but that did not matter. He was
perfection at the moment when he was most needed.
Another wagon, driven toward the village, came
just as we were lifting Hope into the wagon box.
Two farmers were on the seat. It was natural that
they, seeing the body of a woman being lifted into
a wagon and laid seemingly lifeless on the straw,
should stop.
They did, and one of them jumped down.
“It's Mrs. Browning!” he exclaimed. “What's
the matter?”
“We found her over in that clump of hazel,” I
said. “We don't know what happened. She's been
unconscious all the time.”
“She's been hurt,” said the man. "Look at her
neck and at the blood. Some one has hurt her.”
“That's what we think,” I said, “but we don't
know anything about it.”
The man's face became curiously and grimly en-
nobled by an emotion which took all the common.


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places of his life away and substituted for them the
idea of a whole breed. He was unconscious of it,
but his expression became one of uncompromising
retribution. It was the expression of generations of
men from whom he had obtained his traditions and
his ideals.
"It would go rather hard on the fellow that did
this if he was found around here,” he said. “We've
heard two or three stories about things happening
to Mrs. Browning. She's been well liked around
here."
“I've been thinking about that man and that
monkey from the circus,” said the man whose
wagon we were using. For the first time I recog.
nized him as the young farmer who had brought
us word from the circus.
“We must first get Mrs. Browning home,” said
Arthur, who had been putting a blanket ander
Hope's head. “Please, let's hurry.”
We went on toward the house. The other men
went on toward the village. We learned later that
they went to the store and told the strange occur-
rence to Simon. They repeated our young farmer's
remark regarding the circus man and the ape. Si-
mon not only told them who the circus man was
—that he was Hope's brother—but told them that
there had been difficulty regarding a ring-and
that some fears as to Hope's security had arisen


ONE OF THREE
185
before because of the brother's presence in the
neighborhood.
Simon not only did that, but he forgot to tell
Sarah anything of the occurrence. Simon had these
tricks of forgetfulness. Sarah dealt very little
with gossip or news as a distributor, but she was
as eager an auditor as any distributor ever had, and
Simon, with what she thought was utter incon-
siderateness of her comfort and pleasure, frequent-
ly forgot to tell her the most important thing he
had heard during the day at the store. Just as fre-
quently, Sarah discovering it, it made trouble for
Simon. He forgot to tell her this.
When he went home he told her, with a detail
that fatigued her, all about his efforts to get some
satisfaction from the C., M., P. & R. railroad for
two barrels of sugar smashed in unloading from the
local freight, but he did not tell her that Hope
Browning had been found in the thicket of hazel
and viburnum. Simon afterward could not explain
this himself.
He had told the stern farmers what he knew of
Gerald-that Gerald had been with a circus in the
neighborhood and had gone with an ape-and he
had not told Sarah, who had the whole secret and
was waiting to act—to act upon precisely such in-
formation-had not told her anything except of
two broken barrels of sugar.
Arthur and I, thinking only of Hope, had not


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realized what might be the consequences of arous-
ing a rural community to indignation. I might
have perceived if I had really seen what was in the
farmer's face when his personality disappeared
from his expression and when his traditions stern-
ly entered.
We drove up to the house and found a new per-
plexity. Hope and Richard, having come back only
the day before, had opened it without servants.
Richard was not there. We felt helpless.
The young farmer again was helpful.
“I'm only a little way beyond,” he said. “I'll get
my wife to come over. It won't take but a minute.”
We carried Hope to a divan, and Arthur tried
simple restoratives. I got compresses for him, and
basins of water.
“This is no place for her,” he said impatiently. “I
hope that young fellow's wife gets here soon.”
Hope was alive but not conscious.
“Nervous shock,” said Arthur. “Sort of cata-
lepsy. We've got to bring her out of this coma
without producing another shock. If she comes
to consciousness and returns to the state of mind
she was in when she was in terror it's going to be
bad. I hope that woman comes soon."
I knew that in an emergency in which a woman,
merely a human being, was reliant upon Arthur, a
human being merely a physician, he would not have
hesitated an instant to do anything required.


ONE OF THREE
187
The young farmer came to the door with his wife,
a strong, comely woman with that instantly ex-
pressed and serviceable affection which women have
for each other in certain kinds of distress. She ran
to Hope with strong, capable arms outstretched,
and Arthur's apparent relief was that of a man
who had come out of difficulties he did not know
how to meet and had remaining only difficulties
with which he could deal.
Hope had moved several times. I even thought
once that her eyes had opened—at least that the
eyelids had moved as if they were opening.
“We'll carry her up to her room," said Arthur.
“Then Mrs. Simons will get her into bed. Can you
do that, Mrs. Simons?”
“Yes,” said the woman eagerly.
"If you can find her things,” said Arthur, “make
everything just as if she had gone to sleep in bed.
If it can be done, I want her to come out of this in
a way which suggests that she is just waking up in
the morning. Now, Phil, if you'll help me.”
We carried Hope upstairs and laid her on her
bed. Mrs. Simons remained to undress her. Si-
mons, the young farmer, begged to be allowed to do
anything useful.
“There isn't a person about the place,” said Ar-
thur, “and we can't send any one anywhere. If
you could drive to Appleton and get Mrs. Renwick


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ONE OF THREE
and take some prescriptions to a drug store for
me.”
Simons was anxious to do so.
"It won't take you two hours to make it,” said
Arthur, "and Mrs. Renwick can drive her car over
in half an hour if you find her at home. I hope
you do. Leave word for her to come as soon as
possible if she is not at home.”
I knew by the fashion in which the young farmer
went that it would not take him two hours to go to
Appleton.
“I gave her a hypodermic,” said Arthur. “She'll
probably come out of a sleep rather than out of a
terror-but then I shan't know what to do. It's
out of my province. What possessed them to come
back here and open up the house without any
help?”
“Where do you suppose Richard is?” I asked.
"Irresponsibly wandering off somewhere in the
country, I suppose,” said Arthur. I felt that, how-
ever blameless Richard might be, Arthur, this aloof
lover of Hope, had to be impatient, for an instant,
with him. “And then,” said Arthur, “maybe he
isn't. How do I know? I wish I did. I wish I
knew a lot of things. I'm thinking too many and I
don't know enough."
"I know one thing,” I said. “We've come to the
end of this. We've got to have an answer now."


ONE OF THREE
189
“We've got to,” said Arthur. “I'm just wonder-
ing whether we're going to get it."
“But Hope knows.”
“I suppose she does. I'm just wondering whether
she's going to tell.”
We were much more at ease with Mrs. Simons
in the house. Arthur was sure that, with the opi-
ate, Hope would not come to consciousness for some
hours. By that time Ruth Renwick would be with
us—we could be certain.
I think we felt a conscious relief that the inev-
itable, or what we regarded as the inevitable, had
at last come to an issue. This event had to have
a solution. It could not possibly be ignored. Out
of all the shadows which had been in corners, out
of all the intimations which had been in darkness,
something explicable now had to come.
If it became necessary, if there were no other
way out, Hope must tell. Whatever had happened,
it had happened in the daylight and must have
been known to her. She must have seen her as-
sailant. She could not longer hope, no matter what
benevolence guided her self-sacrifice, that she could
offer herself for immolation after this.
We had—I know I had—this curious sense re-
garding the thing we did not understand at Qua-
tuck—that it was not chance—that it was not inci-
dental brutality—that it did not have a casual
causation—that it did not get real intimation in


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the causeless terrors of a dark night, and that it
was a moral beatification of Hope.
These ideas had saturated my shadowy compre-
hension of the mystery. Without them it was a
trivial mystery. If I had not known by every in-
stinct and intuition which can possibly guide the
judgment that we had in this affair a great moral
justification of a human life, I could not have been
so held in the grasp of the incomprehensible horror.
It never had been a horror tangibly. It had been
startling. It had had moments which startled the
imagination and moments which terrified the
imagination, but the revealed facts were common-
place, no matter how disagreeable.
I knew that the revealed facts were not the facts,
and that is why as Arthur and I waited impatient-
ly for Richard to appear, for Ruth Renwick to
come, for the time when Hope could be allowed to
come out of her now drugged coma—that is why I
knew the condition with a significance beyond our
understanding.
Arthur was restless when he could not be of serv-
ice and restrained whenever he went upstairs to
see how Hope progressed. Mrs. Simons sat con-
stantly with her. Arthur would go up, find that
Hope remained unconscious—in these visits being
the imperturbable physician-and, coming down-
stairs, be the distracted friend of Hope, wandering
restlessly over the entire downstairs, looking out of


ONE OF THREE
191
windows, betraying every nervous symptom of dis-
ordered mind, collecting and restraining himself
whenever it was advisable, even permissible, that
he go upstairs.
I knew he did not want to talk, and therefore
said very little to him.
“I wish I knew where Richard was," he said
once.
“I'm rather glad he is not here," I said. "He
could not possibly be of any help, and he would
be so distracted that he might be merely an added
disturbance. I'd like to get the thing partly
straightened out before we have him on our hands."
“So would I, and yet I'd like to know where he
is,” said Arthur.
He stood for a few moments looking out of a win-
dow which gave a view of the road.
“I wonder if she'll tell,” he said.
“Sarah?” I asked.
“What has Sarah to tell ?” he asked. “Of course
I mean Hope.”
“I've an idea that Sarah was the one who would
tell," I said.
Arthur stood looking out of the window, and
paid no attention to me.
“I wish Ruth would come,” he said. “I wish we
knew where Richard was."
He went upstairs again, and came down more
perplexed.


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“I really don't know whether to give her another
hypodermic or not,” he said. “I don't want her
to grasp the full consciousness of the thing until
Richard is here. I don't want her to have the con-
sequences of the morphine to contend with when
she does make her effort.”
I was standing at the window having a view of
the road.
“Richard's coming," I said.
Arthur joined me at the window. Richard was
approaching by a bit of road of which we had a
view. He had a heavy stick over his shoulders and
from it was hung a burlap sack. We knew that he
had been out for hickory nuts. He had knocked
down as many as he could carry comfortably and
was coming slowly home.
"It's strange,” I said, “that if they both went for
hickory nuts they did not go together.”
“Evidently they didn't,” said Arthur. “I wish I
didn't have to tell Richard what's happened to
Hope."
Richard came slowly into the grounds and up to
the house. He spread his hickory nuts out upon
the roof of a small shed, emptying them out of the
sack and spreading them out to dry before he
husked them.
All this was within view from the window and
Arthur watched him. I watched Arthur, Richard


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time to hear what Sarah had to say, but I am not
sorry that I missed the other elements of the trag-
edy. I had known that Sarah had the solution
although even Arthur had not seen that. This por-
tentous old lady, with her dropsical body, with her
removable teeth, with her hard morals and hard
life, with her pipe and in her wonderful kitchen,
had been, to me, always the solution of what had
come to be, to me, an ultra-violet mystery. It had
been so commonplace in all its facts. It had been
so imponderable in all its truths.
I had a most hopeless search. I could not even
get on the track of the posse of farmers. I
found plenty of evidence that it had been formed
hastily. No men were in the neighborhood. The
women came to the gate or the door, but the men
had gone.
The women-I stopped at a half dozen places-
were exalted in a grim fashion. I never knew
comprehensively before how Hope had endeared
herself to every one within ten miles around.
She had done something, unobtrusively, for
every family. I got a scattered record of it. It
came from women of whom I made inquiries. It
was fragmentary and most of the time ejaculatory.
The women were glad their men were on the search.
They were glad they had taken their rifles or shot-
guns.
Hope had set through the night with this child


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197
which had pneumonia while its mother got some
sleep. She had brought a doctor from the city for
this one which was wasting away in malnutrition.
She had come in at childbirth, when a child had
the croup, when it had the measles, when it had a
broken arm.
She had been everywhere over the neighborhood
and we never knew it. This foster daughter of
Esther Browning was Esther Browning again in
the flesh. She was adored and worshiped and the
women were glad that their men had gone with
guns to run down the assailant who had attacked
this sweet, beautiful woman who had been benevo-
lent and wonderful.
I knew what these grimly indignant men could
do with such a back of grim femininity. I got to
Three Oaks and found nothing. It was true, the
women there said, that a strange man and an ape
had been seen, but only a glimpse had been had of
them. The farmers had come hunting for them and
had gone on.
It was getting towards evening. Three Oaks was
four miles from Quatuck village and six miles from
the Brownings'. In an hour it would be dark and
it was hopeless for me to continue traversing the
countryside at random. Occasionally we must con-
cede everything to futility and start back home.
It was strange to be impatient on such a walk
at such a time of year. The maples and the soft


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oaks had already turned to color. The ash had
turned to wine. The cottonwood had lost its leaves.
The witch-hazel was beginning to put out its yel-
low blossoms.
Blackbirds were flocking in a grove of willows
by a little stream. The landscape was flooded
with mellow light from the sun at the horizon.
The light diffused through a mist.
There were snap dragons and button rockets,
wild asters and helianthus, in bloom and the late
afternoon was such an afternoon as invites a walk
with a pleasant objective.
Every pleasant illusion of life was peering
through the faraway autumn mists and the road
ahead was a white ribbon which went down into
gentle valleys and gently climbed the slopes of
hills. There would have been nothing but placid-
ity if there had been no prospect except one of
Sarah's supper, no expectation except that of her
red curtains and geraniums and rocking chairs by
the wood range.
The farmers had gathered under one of the im.
pulses which occasionally move a rural community.
The men who had met us as we carried Hope's
body to the road, who had been driving to the vil-
lage as we put her in the young farmer's wagon,
had gone on to Simon's store.
Simon had told them of Gerald and the ape.
They had met several other men and the resolu-


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why the boys of Quatuck did not accompany their
elders on this strange search which so fascinated
their imaginations and horrified them with its pros-
pects.
The party, dividing into three groups, spread
out fan-shaped with three nuclei, over the coun-
try. The group which found Gerald and the ape
was composed of eight men. Six of them were
armed, the two unarmed were the farmers we had
seen when we carried Hope to the road. They
were the organizers, but they were unarmed.
Three of the other men in this group had shot-
guns, one a rifle, one a revolver and one, who had
come from his barnyard, the pitchfork he had been
using
The three groups were at times in touch with
each other-or in sight. Twenty men moving
across country as if beating game out of the brush
operated by an instinctive sense of organization
and tactics. They had three cores of action and
a liaison which made them a unit.
The two men who had organized the search were
Robison and Furth. They were the unarmed men.
It was their party which first heard of Gerald and
the ape.
The radiant of their action was a road which
stretched away as a white ribbon from a ridge into
valleys, over other ridges, by woods and meadow,
farm houses and grazing fields.


ONE OF THREE
201
I knew the road. It was a fascinating ribbon
into the prospect, running to the west as if run-
ning to the future, to the sunset.
The eight men, deploying from this radiant of
action and stirring up the brush, searching the
barns and tool sheds, stalking their game in the
thickets and woods, came upon evidence.
Their first encouragement was given them by
a child. He was sitting at the rural delivery mail
box at the road side of a small frame house which
stood in a small yard close to the road.
Robison was taking the road itself and as he
came along something expressed in his face caused
the child, which had been sitting on the grass with
one arm about a small dog, to set up a shriek of
distress. It was an inexplicable bawl of acute
juvenile agony—unaccountable, unless allowance
were made for what really was expressed in Robi-
son's face. If the child's instinct read the pur-
pose of the man's instinct there was cause for this
wail of terror.
Robison did not have a gun. That might have
startled a child. He was merely walking along a
country road and a child sitting by the road wailed,
having looked at his face, so that the little dog
jumped courageously at the disturber, barking
frantically as little dogs do, and trying to destroy
the occasion of all this terror by dashing in be-
tween kicks for a nip at the shin or calf.


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Robison probably would have stopped at the
child's wail. He had to stop because of the dog's
anger. A woman, hearing the noise, came run.
ning from the house.
“What's the matter now?” she asked.
"I don't know," said Robison-I am telling all
this as he told it to me later-or as nearly as it
can be told as he told it. “Call your dog off be-
fore I have to kick him.”
The woman picked the child up. It struggled
so violently in her arms, so screamed and kicked,
that she asked Robison to wait a moment until she
carried the little boy indoors. She called the small
dog which, as she went towards the house, ceased
to dance about Robison and ran after her.
Robison waited until the woman returned. He
was losing his alignment with the men who were
going forward by field and woods, but there had
been something significant, he thought, in the
woman's request that he wait.
She came back in a moment. The child was still
wailing in the house, but she did not seem to mind
that. At least he was as safe as she could make
him.
“What's the matter with him?" Robison asked.
"He got badly scared this morning,” she said.
“It doesn't sound reasonable, but he says he saw
some big monkey that walked like a man. We
get our drinking water, except in the winter, from


ONE OF THREE
203
a spring just at the edge of the willows over there.
We got a pump but that spring's so sweet that
when it's running clear my man likes to have his
drinking water from it. About six o'clock this
morning I sent little Walter over for a bucketful
and he came running back screaming.
"He said there had been a big monkey walking
like a man that had come out from behind a wil.
low tree. Little Walter was almost scared to
death. He couldn't even run and he couldn't yell.
The big monkey walking like a man started to-
wards him. That's why he's so fidgety, I guess."
“What happened then?” Robison asked.
“Is there anything the matter?” the woman
asked, seeing for the first time that plain legend
of retribution in Robison's face.
“Nothing,” said Robison, "except we're hunting
for that monkey and the man with him.”
“There was a man,” said the woman. "He had
been sleeping under the tree. Little Walter says
that a man got up from the ground just as the
big monkey started for him and that the monkey
stopped when the man said something sharp to
him.
“Then little Walter started running and scream-
ing. When he got near the house he stopped and
looked back and he saw the man and the monkey
going out of the willows across the fields and in
that direction.”


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The woman pointed in the direction in which the
men had moved in their fan-shaped search.
"That's why the boy screamed when he saw
you,” she said. "He's still scared—the poor little
fellow."
His sobbing screams still sounded from the
house but his mother, assured as to his physical
security, seemingly could endure his emotional
distress.
“What are you hunting them for?” she asked.
“We just want them,” said Robison. “The boy
said he saw them going that way?”
He pointed in the direction the searchers had
been following.
“That way,” she repeated, pointing.
"I'll be going on,” said Robison.
The child was crying inside the house. The lit-
tle dog, also inside, was yelping and barking. The
woman stood at the edge of the yard and watched
Robison going quick step down the road.
Robison had to hurry. His companions were
nearly a half mile ahead of him. Several of them
could be seen as faraway figures, climbing the
slope of a treeless pasture, which at its ridge made
the horizon line just there. He had the informa-
tion they needed. They were directly in the right
line of search.
The next evidence Robison came upon was in the
next half mile. The men were going ahead, but


ONE OF THREE
205
he was rapidly overtaking them, he by the road
and they taking the rough ground, the fences,
ditches, and ridges.
Robison could keep them in sight, and he hurried
along the road.
What stopped him was the sight of a farmer
out in one of the road corners of a pasture. He
was looking at a shambles of dead sheep.
Robison instantly knew that he had another
trace of the man and the beast.
“What's the matter?” he asked.
“Enough," said the farmer, "and queer enough.
I certainly hate to lose these sheep.”
I had often admired the reticencies and taci.
turnities of the country people, but never more
when Robison told me, as he did later, of this.
Here was an infuriated man, bent in catching and
punishing-lynching-a desperado. Here was an-
other man who saw the bodies of most of his cher-
ished flock of sheep. Both men were angered to
the core. Both were impatient to strangle the hu-
man being upon whom they wanted to lay hands
just then.
“What's happened ?” Robison asked.
“Strange enough thing,” said the farmer. “I
just saw the finish of it. I didn't even see that.
I heard a noise. I was over in the south forty
that I've got mostly in corn, and I heard a lot
of blatting and a man yelling. The sheep were


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blatting like a dog was at them. So I ran over,
and as I got nigh I saw a man and a thing that
must have been a big monkey going over the pas-
ture land there. And this is what I found.”
Farmers, although they deal with elementals
of life, with the processes of provisioning, can be
sentimental. This man looked ruefully at his slain
sheep.
"I guess the thing escaped from the circus,” said
the farmer, "and the circus will have to pay for
it, if I can catch up with it, and I think I can. My
brother-in-law is the sheriff of the next county,
where they're showing to-morrow, and I guess
they'll pay. But they can't pay enough.”
It had been his prized merino ram, he said,
which had, he thought, opened the door to the
shambles. The ram, a courageous animal, had
been kept in an inclosure by himself, away from
the ewes until the proper breeding season, and the
ape, coming out of the woods with Gerald, must
have entered this inclosure. The ram must in-
stantly have charged him.
The farmer thought he knew what had hap-
pened. The ape might have been startled by the
first rush. He might have taken to the security
of a post and then have become slowly but fero-
ciously enraged as the ram butted at the post. He
may have descended with every muscle alert and


ONE OF THREE
209
saw him. She bolted the door in alarm and set
the dinner gong, a bell raised on a pole, which
could be rung by a rope pulled from within, ring-
ing violently. Gerald and the ape fled, but Ger-
ald, in going, in futile vindictiveness, set fire to
a hay rick. The ape, as if he were a part of Ger-
ald's vindictiveness, leaped into a chicken run and
wrung the necks of a dozen fine barred Plymouth
Rock hens.
The two, the man and the beast, were sullen in-
struments of destruction. When Robison and his
men got to this farm they were joined by two more
armed men, this farmer and his 19-year-old son.
When this searching party, of which Robison
was the controlling genius, finally closed in upon
their quarry they found both the man and the
beast-the man, at least, in desperation, hiding
behind a straw pile. Gerald knew that the pur-
suit was over. It had been inevitably successful
from the beginning. Flight had been inevitably
hopeless, incumbered as he was by association with
the perfectly outrageous animal. He must have
known how hopeless it was. He must have known
how at every encounter the ape made it impossible
for him to escape.
Alone he might have escaped notice, but how
could he with this outrageous beast doing extraor-
dinary damage everywhere they went? He could
not escape from the ape. It was fastened upon


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the people, killing the sheep and the chickens, had
started the machinery of primitive justice and that
he would be held responsible to the farmers.
I doubt, from what Robison told me, that Ger-
ald appreciated the real danger of his position.
We knew later that he, being attached sentimen-
tally to the ape-a strange attachment which had
arisen between the two brutes—and meaning to
leave the circus, had opened the gate of the ape's
cage without taking consequences into considera-
tion.
It was a part of his irresponsible egotism. He
wanted a thing or he wanted to do a thing and if
he could he did it or got it, without any percep-
tion of what consequences might be. He wanted to
open the door of the ape's cage and he had done
so. Later he found that the ape was attached to
him and that the two were an outrageous pair of
beasts, with the countryside alarmed and hunting
for them.
I think his original idea must have been to re-
turn to the Brownings'. The circus was so near
Quatuck and he knew how he could impose him-
self upon Hope and how he could terrify her and
how he could get money from her. Then he acted
upon impulse-it may have been an impulse of
kindness.
He had gone to see the ape before he went and
the beast had made such demonstrations that he


ONE OF THREE
213
did not want to leave it behind him. He opened
its cage and made his disaster.
Gradually, Robison said, Gerald began to sense
the real seriousness of his situation. The ape was
buried, but the farmers were not appeased. The
other two groups had been called in and Gerald
was surrounded by men who had business with him
which he did not understand-or seemed not to
understand-Robison said.
Robison had been affected and he was deter-
mined that there should not be an act of violence
at the first tree limb which hung out over the road.
Inasmuch as he was the organizer of the search,
he maintained a control over the men and they
obeyed him. He merely asserted himself domi-
nantly and they did what he told them to do.
Gerald, as they took him back towards the
Brownings', began to have a feeling, apparent and
indicated, of his own personal insecurity and to
know that it had nothing to do with the depreda-
tions which the ape had committed.
Robison told him what the charge was against
him. He said, with much earnestness but in great
terror, that he had not seen Hope and that he had
not been guilty of the attack upon her.
Robison said that the decision was with Hope
that she would know who had been guilty and he
promised Gerald that no harm would come to him
until he had been proved guilty. He said that all


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the men believed him to be guilty but that no ac-
tion would be taken upon that belief. The fact
would have to be proved. If it was proved, Robi-
son told Gerald, the men would dispose of the mat-
ter in the quickest fashion.
“We don't know whether it was you or not,"
Robison told him. “Mrs. Browning does know and
she'll say. Possibly she won't. But nothing will
be done until she does.”
They had walked three miles, with Gerald in
the center of the group, when they came to a small
town and got automobiles. Then they went on to
Quatuck rapidly.
It was growing dark and they wanted to dispose
of the matter as quickly as possible.
In this fashion the secret of Quatuck was
brought towards its disclosure. The ape was dead.
Gerald was being taken to the Brownings' by a
group of men who intended to lynch him.


XI
W H AT now proceeded with a cold, hard cer-
VV tainty to reveal itself was, to me, so aston-
ishing that in telling of it I should like to know
that the people to whom I told it had my own
background of sympathy.
With such a background we are on common
ground. I did not see the action. I was told of it,
as I am trying to tell of it.
Hope had remained in a stupor. Arthur was
encouraged by that. He knew that she had some
tremendous difficulty to meet when she came to
consciousness, and he wanted her to regain con-
sciousness slowly and without shock.
This lovely girl had endured agonizing martyr-
dom, which had come to a critical period. It might
be more agonizing for her to realize that she could
not continue to conceal the facts than to continue,
concealing them, to endure them. Arthur was
convinced that she had to reveal. She might in-
vent a plausible story, but that did not seem pos-
sible. The country was being combed for Gerald
and the ape. Unless they had traveled far or hid-
den successfully they would be caught.
215


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ONE OF THREE
Richard was in a murderous rage. Arthur did
not think he would be successful in coming up
with the searchers, but he would be involved in
the situation if the searchers caught and brought
back their quarry.
I had gone ahead of Richard and did not see
him. I did not see the searchers. I had trace of
them occasionally, but the futility of trying to find
them became apparent. A sense that my useful.
ness was back at Quatuck became insistent. If any.
thing important to us happened, it would happen
there.
The day which had begun with the finding of
Hope's body in the hazel and viburnum thicket was
coming to late afternoon in one of the magic hazes
which make the sun a visible shape. Late golden-
rod and helianthus, wild asters and snap dragon
seemed to give something to this haze and to get
something from it. It joined earth and sky in an
intimacy which could not exist in the white light
of midday.
I went back by way of the village and stopped
at the Parrs'. Simon had just come in from the
store, and he had just remembered to tell Sarah
what he knew of the new attack upon Hope and of
the search for Gerald.
Sarah was making cornmeal mush in a large
iron pot. She had taken off a stove lid and had
set the pot on the hottest wood fire she could get.


ONE OF THREE
217
When the water was bubbling she had wrapped a
towel around her right hand, in which she had a
large wooden spoon, and with her left hand was
dropping yellow cornmeal into the boiling water.
It was the old stone ground cornmeal, which
they got from a neighborhood mill, and it had the
real qualities of the great grain. It popped as
it hit the hot water. It might become lava from
the volcano of the large iron pot. That was why
Sarah had her stirring arm done up in a cloth.
Globules were likely to fly upwards, burning deep-
ly if they touched the skin. It was her art to
smooth all the lumps as she made the mush-and
to avoid being burned by the volcanic globules.
Simon was glad to see me when I came to the
door. Sarah was imperturbable. She continued
to stir yellow meal into the water boiling in the
iron pot. There would be no supper in the Parr
house that night, but nevertheless Sarah's thrift
could not endure the loss of a pot of mush which
ten more minutes would cook—not even if she were
at a desperate decision, as she was.
When the mush was cooked it was there to be
fried. Sarah was an aged daughter of the tribe
of Fabius, Cato, Napoleon, and Bismarck. She
could keep undisturbed her ideas of relative values
and of ultimate results. Just now she was dealing
with the relative values ni completed cornmeal


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ONE OF THREE
mush fit for frying and of ten minutes' time im-
portant to a mission she had to perform.
She remained imperturbable stirring the mush.
Simon was very glad to see me.
“Here's Philip,” he said, welcoming a diversion.
“This man of mine,” said Sarah, “has just told
me that Hope Browning was hurt again to-day.”
“Arthur and I found her in a clump of bushes,
unconscious.”
“I didn't know they were home,” said Sarah.
“They got home yesterday and came here while
we were at the circus.”
“I'd better go out and get some wood,” said Si.
mon.
“You don't need to,” said Sarah. “You need to
go hitch up the mare. You are going to drive me
over to the Brownings' as soon as I take this pot
off the fire."
I knew that the dowager cat had her rat. This
heavy eyed Manchu dowager, now stirring mush,
was about to act out of her plenary knowledge.
She always had given me the suggestion that she
would be the deity from the machine.
"I'm going to have my supper,” said Simon.
"You'll find some summer sausage in the pan-
try,” said Sarah, “and that'll be your supper. Drat
the man! He loses his mind more often than he
loses his specs. If he could push his head off his
shoulders he'd do it.”


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comforter out of the bedroom. I'm going with the
minister.”
"I'll hitch up and get you over there,” said Si-
mon.
"I'm going with the minister,” said Sarah. "You
hitch up and come after me."
I got the shawl and comforter for Sarah. I
helped her out to the minister's buggy, helped her
into it, and wrapped her in the comforter and put
the shawl about her shoulders.
“Tell Simon to eat some sausage,” she said.
“Make him hitch up quick. Put that stove plate
back over the fire. I forgot it. And you, minister,
you drive to the Brownings as if hell's fire was
about a rod behind you."
I watched them go-for a minute. The minister
was courageous, desperate, and futile. Sarah was
knowing and capable.
“Durn me if I understand this,” said Simon
when I went back into the kitchen. “She
didn't even put the lid back on when she took the
pot off, and she's been mad as a jaybird at me be-
cause I didn't remember to tell her about this
thing."
“We'd better hitch up and go along," I said.
“But I want my supper,” said Simon.
“Get the summer sausage," I said, “but we must
be going.”
Sinon seemed to submit to the inevitable. He


ONE OF THREE
221
did not want to drive to the Brownings'. He did
want his supper. He did not understand what
anything meant. His disposition was too amiable
for grumbling. The phenomenon of Sarah disap-
pearing was extraordinary, but Simon had a na-
ture proof against wonder. He hitched up and we
followed Sarah.
Simon had taken a link of sausage with him,
and as we jogged along he cut pieces from it and
ate them. The old mare had one gait. It was not
what one would choose for such a purpose, but it
was hers and it was satisfactory to Simon. The
occasion was nothing to him but an annoyance.
“If some one would tell me the reason for all
this, I'd be obliged,” he said. “What the woman
thinks she's gaining for anybody by running away
without getting supper I don't know. I wish some
one would tell me. I don't see the sense in missing
supper. There's none in it. It's the first time in
twenty years that it's been done.”
“What do you think Sarah knows about the
Brownings?” I asked Simon. “It's something she
knows that has sent her to them now, where there
is a great deal of trouble.”
"I don't know,” said Simon. “Sarah's got a close
mouth. She's free enough with what she thinks,
but darn tight with what she knows. Esther
Browning told her a lot of things. I know that,


ONE OF THREE
225
was the very essence of his life that Hope should
be somewhere within the horizon of his days. Rich-
ard might take her away. With one of his domi-
nating impulses he might say that the place was
accursed and close it. He might sell it, and Hope
would be a stranger, possibly forever, to the place
in which Arthur probably would spend his days.
Arthur's affections were of extraordinary deli-
cacy, but they were in the core of his life and he
knew that if he did not permit, even help, Hope
to carry her courageous deception through suc-
cessfully the impetuous Richard might take her
away forever.
"How were you hurt, Hope?” he asked.
She looked at him with candor and honesty and
said:
"I remember stepping on a loose stone and fall-
ing. I think my head hit another stone. I know
there was a terrific blow as I fell, and now this is
the first I have known since."
Arthur said afterwards that he never had ex-
perienced such a sensation of futility. He never
before had such a feeling of horror. He looked
at Hope's candid and honest face and he heard
her tell what was not true and tell it in such a
way that he knew there lay back of her placidity
a decision resolutely to be followed.
“I was gathering hazel nuts,” she said, looking
at him and meeting his involuntary challenge with-


226
ONE OF THREE
out disquiet, "and there was a steep slope. The
bushes were at the top of it. I fell in trying to
reach them.”
“Where was Richard?” Arthur asked.
“He wanted a long walk and I had to go back
home. I couldn't spend the day with him. We had
said good-by ten minutes before and I would have
been on my way home if I had not seen the bushes,
which seemed to have so many nuts on them."
Arthur said that the situation was unbelievably
appalling. With honest eyes and untruthful lips
she was telling something which sacrificed herself,
and she intended to go on sacrificing herself.
If she carried her purpose through she would
appear that evening as if nothing had happened to
her. Violence such as had been used on her this
time might kill her another time.
Arthur told her that she would not be able to
arise and appear naturally for an hour or more.
He suggested, to gain time and not to arouse her
determination, that she rest longer and, later, if
it were possible, he would consent to her appear-
ing and he would agree to silence or to as much of
the truth as she wanted to tell Richard. If she
wanted to tell him that she had fallen and bruised
herself they would conceal the fact that she had
been found unconscious-so long as they could.
He did not tell her that the farmers were hunt.
ing for Gerald. What he needed was time.


ONE OF THREE
227
“Make her listen to reason, Ruth,” he urged.
“She will,” said Ruth. “She just does not want
Richard worried. We'll help her.”
Arthur went back to the living room. The dusk
was coming, the radiance fading in the white oaks
to the west, but there was still light. A man came
in with logs and made a fire in the fireplace. Then
Arthur had the place to himself and his perplexi-
ties, looking out of the window at the growing
darkness.
When I think of this scene I have a picture of
forces converging to a focus. There were coming
towards Quatuck at that moment the farmers with
Gerald, the minister driving over with the pre-
scient Sarah, the minister desperate and resolved,
Sarah placid but determined, Richard in whatever
mood he might be in, old Simon and I jogging
along, with Simon eating summer sausage and I
wishing that the mare had a greater range of
speeds.
Thus you see action coming to a head, thus con-
verging towards a central point, with decisions
there to be made and determinations to be arrived
at, and waiting for them was a man hopelessly in-
volved in perplexity and perceiving all the struc-
ture of his life crumbling about him.
Arthur heard the sound of the automobiles com-
ing. They turned into the Browning driveway.
He could not see them until they were close to


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229
the door and asked the man to state his business.
This other banality was also stupendous.
“We have a man here," said the farmer, "and
we want Mr. Browning or Mrs. Browning to iden-
tify him."
“Suppose you all come in," said Arthur.
The man went back to where the automobiles
were parked in the drive and presently the whole
group of men, with Gerald in their midst, came
portentously to the porch. Arthur admitted them
to the living room.
The fire was burning brightly by this time.
Darkness had come and the room was lighted only
by the fire. Arthur had the men enter with their
prisoner and then switched on two lights which did
not fully illuminate the room, but which made
patches of light in it.
“This is the man,” said Robison. “We don't
want to make a mistake. Do you know him ?”
“He is Mrs. Browning's brother, Gerald,” said
Arthur.
“That's enough,” said one of the men.
“No, it isn't,” said Robison. “That proves who
he is, but not what he has done. Mrs. Browning
can tell that.”
“But Mrs. Browning is not well enough to be
subjected to such a scene," Arthur protested firm-
ly. “She had a terrible shock. She regained con-
sciousness only a while ago. I couldn't allow you


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to take her brother to her and ask if he had
knocked her senseless. She would know what your
purpose was. It's apparent. You are trying to
protect her, but you would do more damage by that
than you could remedy in a lifetime. Don't you
know that, even if this man were not her brother,
and even if he had attacked her, such a woman as
Mrs. Browning would nearly die if you took jus-
tice into your own hands?”
“You say that Mrs. Browning has come to con-
sciousness?" Furth asked suddenly.
“Yes, but only a little while ago."
“You asked her what hurt her?”
“Yes."
"Now we're getting at something. What did she
say?"
“She said she had stepped on a stone, and that
it rolled under her feet, and that she fell, hitting
her head against another stone."
“Do you believe it?”
“No, I don't,” said Arthur honestly.
"I'm glad you don't,” said Furth, “because Robi-
son and I saw the finger marks on her throat."
“But that is what she says," Arthur insisted,
"and if she says so she has a purpose. In defeat-
ing that purpose you may be more brutal to her
than the brute who attacked her, whether it was
this brute or another. Can you imagine a woman


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231
not telling the truth in such a case unless she had
some great reason?”
"She is imposing on herself,” said Furth. “She
can't do anything else. That's why we have to do
something."
“What else can it be?” the man asked with al-
most angry energy. “Here are all these stories,
and every time Mrs. Browning is hurt this man is
heard of around here. He looks like a cutthroat,
and I know he is.”
"Have you men considered," Arthur asked, "that
if the prosecuting attorney is worth his salt you'll
be in the most serious difficulty of your lives if
you go ahead with your purpose?”
'I'll take my chance with the sentiment of this
part of the country,” said another farmer. “All
I need is just a little more conviction that this
fellow did it.”
"You need more than you'll be able to get,” said
Arthur. “You men ought not to trust yourselves
in your present mood. You are as dangerous as
criminals."
Arthur then turned to Robison.
“You have leadership here and a sense of respon.
sibility. Use them."
"I think you see I'm trying to,” said Robison.
"If the man is guilty, I'll take the consequences as
the leader in what we do. If he is not guilty, I
do not want responsibility on me.”


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At this moment Richard entered. He had come
to the house alone, disheveled and muddy. He had
lost his cap. He had worn a sweater, but had torn
it across the shoulders. He had been in brambles,
and his hands and face were cut.
Arthur said that the situation had been so tense
without him that his appearance almost unbal-
anced them. Arthur had gained what he hoped was
a successful control of the group of men. They
were hesitating and not sure of their purpose.
They had not heard Richard enter. He sud-
denly appeared in the room. He was wild with
rage, Arthur said. He horrified even the men
whose purpose had terrified Arthur.
Gerald shrank from him as a child might from
some terrible apparition.
Irthur said that it seemed to him, even then,
when his faculties responded slowly, being almost
benumbed, that Richard had a feline stealth. He
instantly dominated the scene. The men merely
looked at him, and he did not say anything. He
approached Gerald, and that poor wretch visibly
wilted, shook with fear, as Richard approached
him.
Then Richard stood still. Arthur said his hands
were opening and closing slowly, but otherwise,
for what may have been ten seconds or ten min-
utes, for all Arthur could judge afterward, he did


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233
not make a movement and no one else in the room
was capable of a movement.
One of the incongruities, Arthur said, was that,
when Richard did speak, he merely said:
“I see you have him."
No one replied.
“That is good,” said Richard. “I will deal with
him myself. This is my work. I wish I had
caught him, but he is here."
He looked about at the static group of farmers.
The man nearest him had a shotgun. Richard took
it from him with a powerful jerk. Arthur said
that there was not a person in the room who could
move, raise a hand, or cry out, and they knew what
Richard intended to do.
Hope had heard the sounds of the men coming,
and she knew, although not hearing what was said,
that they remained in the house. Ruth said that
Hope at first was not alarmed, but that the sig-
nificance of it began to grow and to disquiet her.
She insisted that Ruth find out what was happen-
ing. Ruth tried to quiet her. She became more
insistent, nervous, and determined.
Ruth was not alarmed, but Hope, in a sudden
frenzy of fear-Ruth said that, to her consterna-
tion, it became that-passed out of all restraint
and sprang out of bed. She could not be kept in.
Ruth did not have the physical strength to hold
her, although she tried.


XII
M HEY told me that Hope stood in the doorway
1 holding tightly to the top of a chair. They
said she did not seem to see anything in the room,
but a great deal beyond it, a great deal that in
other years had been in it.
I knew what they meant to picture-Hope with
her decision made, forced but accepted; with the
whole fabric of her life coming down; failure of
her life unavoidable failure, but a terrible calam-
ity in failing.
She had been devoted to a purpose, hopefully-
a Spartan—she had been forced to accept futility.
All her painful suppression of fact, all her cour-
ageous deception everything that she had done
and made important in her life—had come to dis-
aster. Events had not only betrayed her. They had
made her betray herself.
She stood holding to the top of the chair, seeing
with all comprehensive vision not the scene in the
room, but everything that had preceded it and all
she had hoped to avoid.
They told me that Richard had drooped for an
instant as if he were a tired child. The shotgun
235


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ONE OF THREE
would have fallen from his bands if one of the
farmers had not taken it. This group of men had
been full of purpose and determination. The men
now were awkward and without decision.
Richard seemed to crumble as an old brick wall
under blows. He gave every evidence of great
physical and mental shock, but he did not look to-
wards Hope. He had been in a frenzy. Now his
knees sagged under him and he swayed on his feet.
They told me that he seemed as if he were a
person awakening in the dark—as if he were a
somnambulist coming to consciousness in the dark,
not knowing where he was or why he was there,
how he got there, or how he could escape.
He wilted. He faded from his frenzy into a
trembling horror-it was a horror of himself, they
thought-a sudden shock of horror which had pene-
trated a distracted mind.
He swayed back and forth on his feet, having
loosed the gun from his grasp. He took two un-
steady steps and tottered. Two of the men, with
the instinct for helping anything so infirm, stepped
close to him and supported him. He raised his
hands and clutched at the air as if he were trying
to find support in something intangible.
The horrifying thing, they said, was what he
then did, shaking, weak, destroyed as a human
being, destroyed as he obviously was. He began to
cry out as an animal, to mew, to chatter, finally to


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death, but the realization of that had only made
him more sluggish. Every one was stunned, Ar-
thur said.
What broke the situation down was the arrival
of Sarah and the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore. The min-
ister was panic stricken and came bolting into
the house. Sarah followed him as rapidly as an
old woman, heavy on her feet, could move.
The minister was shaking with fear of a thing
he had to prevent and might not be able to pre-
vent. He saw that he was in time. He had feared
he might not be. He did not know that Gerald's
safety had been assured by Hope's intervention.
He saw the armed men in what may have seemed
to him to be an instant of indecision, and he ran
into the room with apraised hand and cried:
“Gentlemen, I implore you, avoid this crime!"
The incursion was so unexpected, so irrelevant
to the requirements of the scene, that it distracted
attention sufficiently from the horror to permit
action. The minds of the people in the room as
well as their bodies had been fixed in a state of
terror. This was release.
"I am the dictate of your conscience and of your
religion,” the minister shouted in an exalted fer-
vor. “You must not do this thing.”
At that moment Sarah appeared in the doorway.
Arthur said she was imperturbable undisturbed
by what she saw, and he knew that her mission


ONE OF THREE
241
'Yes, Arthur,” said Richard.
“You are not well,” said Arthur.
“I know it,” said Richard.
“These gentlemen will sit with you-in case you
need anything.”
“Tell them I am obliged to them.”
“And you will not mind it-because you are real-
ly very sick."
Arthur said that probably the hardest, cruelest
thing of the entire experience came in the instant
when Richard's glazed eyes cleared—just for a
flash-and he said:
“I am mad! I am mad!"
He went quietly with Arthur, Robison, and
Furth to his room. They put him to bed. He was
docile and submissive, but as Arthur was going
from the room Robison came to him and said:
“I wish he would close his eyes.”
He and Furth were to sit in the room for a
while.
Simon and I came at that moment and found
Sarah sitting by the fire.
“Did Simon get his summer sausage, Philip?"
she asked.
“I did,” said Simon. "If you ask me did I want
it, I didn't. If you ask me if I know why I had
to have it, I don't. What are we doing here?”
“Has nothing happened?” I asked. “Where's the
minister? Haven't the men brought Gerald back?


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"I hate a new clay pipe,” said Sarah, "but it will
be better than nothing.”
Arthur found one for her and gave her a can of
tobacco. She filled her pipe and lighted it.
“Now, then,” Arthur urged.
“I was to tell this,” said Sarah, "if Esther Brown-
ing's boy ever got so bad that he really threatened
Hope. Esther Browning knew that I could keep
my mouth shut. She didn't know any one else who
would. Some one had to know it. Esther Browning
thought I was hard, but she knew I was honest,
so she told me. If I'd have died you, Arthur, would
have found a letter with my will and it would have
told you because you would have kept your mouth
shut until it was time.
“When the time to tell came I nearly missed it
because this man of mine loses his mind as often
as his specs."
"Just a minute, Sarah," said Arthur, “until I
see how Hope and Richard are."
He went upstairs and we waited for him, Sarah
sitting in the big chair by the fire and Simon con-
tentedly eating his cold beef, cold chicken, and
bread and butter. I had known that Sarah was our
Greek chorus. She now was on the stage.
Arthur came back.
“Neither one is asleep,” he said, “but both are
quiet. I'll leave them that way for a while. As
soon as the folks get here from Appleton I'll let


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247
Robison and Furth go. They ought to be back
on their farms, but they are willing to stay as
long as they are needed.”
“Why didn't you keep the minister?” Sarah
asked. “He ought to be some good.”
"He wasn't quite sure that Gerald was safe,"
said Arthur. “He went with the men to make
sure."
"I hope he doesn't get his supper,” said Sarah.
“A minister is a hearty feeder. He won't think so
much about the Baptists if he doesn't get his sup-
per."
“Excuse me for running away, Sarah,” said Ar-
thur, "and now tell us what you know."
Arthur's face was in the full light of one of the
lamps. I saw how tired and strained his expres-
sion was. He was in control of himself, but was
in great distress-possibly in a real agony.
“Esther Browning had the birds and beasts in the
sunken garden," said Sarah, "because her boy was
crazy. He was born crazy. Every once and a while
he made noises like an animal. Esther Browning
was a very proud woman.”
“She was a very kind woman,” said Simon.
"I didn't say she wasn't,” said Sarah. "I said
she was a very proud woman. That's true. This
boy was a nice boy part of the time and something
terrible other times. I guess he never was really
mean, but Esther Browning told me he sometimes


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was like a monkey. Then he would be like a cat
or a painter. He made noises and screeched like
a tom cat or a hoot owl.
“So Esther Browning put a lot of animals about
the place the kind that make awful noises-like
parrots, and when her boy made the noises she
thought it would be blamed on the animals.
“Part of the time he was all right. He would
play with the other children and behave nice.
When he was good he was a good boy, but Esther
Browning watched him like a hawk. She got so
she could tell when his spells were coming on.
Then the other children couldn't play with him.
Esther Browning was a weak woman."
“You mustn't say that, Sarah,” said Simon.
“I do say it,” said Sarah, “because she knew
that boy of hers was mad and she tried to keep
other people from knowing it. It wasn't right and
I'll always say so."
“But, remember, Sarah,” said Arthur, "he was
her son and she helped everything she could."
"I am not her judge,” said Sarah, “but I say she
did wrong. Richard was very bad when he was lit-
tle, but he got better as he grew older. Esther
Browning adopted Hope and took both the children
over to Europe. Esther Browning said that she
never sang so much in her life as she did when her
boy had month after month of being just a boy."
“They went to Italy, didn't they?” said Arthur.


ONE OF THREE
249
“Foreign parts are foreign parts to me,” said
Sarah. “It's all the same. They were somewhere
in Europe, and Richard, who was beginning to grow
up, was beginning to act natural.”
At times Esther Browning seemed to me to be the
biggest figure in this tragedy. She was a figure of
fear and tenderness, nursing a sparrow on her
hands, compelling a starved alley cat to come to
her, having her hands—and face-licked by a for-
lorn doghurt by the sight of a crushed snake-
too much tenderness—but I was glad that she had
a time when she could sing.
Nature must have been constantly cruel to her.
What greater injustice can the processes do than
to produce people to whom the processes are con-
tinual agony?
Esther Browning did not complain, but she suf-
fered without complaining, and Mrs. Partington
never swept at the ocean with more energy than
Esther Browning used in fighting to save what she
saw in distress from the law which caused the dis-
tress.
I am glad that she is in the background of this
story, and for me she dominates it. It was a con-
solation to hear Sarah say that there was a time
when she sang.
"Esther Browning knew that she would not live
long,” said Sarah. “Her man died while she was
over in Europe. She couldn't get back to the fune-


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ral, so he was buried without her, and I guess it
didn't matter. Esther Browning had been real
clever to Hope, and Hope was a good girl to her
for a poor farm child.”
“She never was a poor farm child," said Simon,
who had finished his supper.
“She was, except for Esther Browning,” said
Sarah.
“What Sarah means,” said Arthur, “is that Hope
worshiped Esther Browning and would have given
her life for her any time.”
“I mean what I say,” said Sarah. “Esther
Browning was clever to Hope, and Hope would do
what Esther Browning wanted her to do. Esther
Browning wanted Hope to marry Richard and
Hope did it. The reason Esther Browning wanted
Hope to marry Richard was to keep Richard out
of the insane asylum. Esther Browning knew that
she could keep him out as long as she lived, but
she knew that she did not have so long to live. So
she wanted some one to do after she was dead what
she was doing while she was alive.”
“Did Hope know this?” I asked.
“Esther Browning was a weak woman."
“Don't say that again in this house," said Simon.
He was so intense-suddenly-in his protest that
he stood up before Sarah and seemed to be a moral
reproach of her. "Don't say it. It is not true.”
Sarah, I thought, was affected, but she did not


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ing to her. It left her so completely isolated, as
she thought, in her knowledge and so unsupported
in her task of protecting Richard.
I wanted to ask Sarah if she thought Hope had
been happy with Richard, but she would not have
understood the question.
"I knew when Hope first began having trouble,"
Sarah continued, “what had happened. The old
trouble was coming back on Richard. He had been
out of it so many years I thought he was cured. I
reckon Hope thought he was cured.”
"I wonder if that attack Christmas eve was the
first,” said Arthur, “I mean the first after he had
been normal for so long.”
"I sort of reckon so,” said Sarah, "but Hope's
the only one who would know and I don't think
she'll ever tell.”
“I don't think she ever will either,” said Simon.
“What do you know about it?" Sarah demanded
of him.
'I know Hope Browning,” said Simon.
“What are we going to do?” Arthur asked.
His tone was so full of dismay-horror, I might
say—it had in it such consternation-it was so in-
dicative of questions he was asking himself-that I
suddenly realized what a moral dilemma had been
brought to this fond lover of Hope Browning.


XIII
D UTH came down stairs for a moment to tell
I Arthur that Hope was alarming her by the
rigidity in which she held her body and by the un-
seeing intensity with which she kept her sight di-
rected at one spot, a place on the wall where there
was nothing to see except a blank wall space.
“I have tried not to annoy her,” Ruth said she
was admirable in the control of her own shaken
nerves—"but I have talked to her when I thought
it could possibly do any good. If she could only
speak or move or close her eyes! I think she is
living a life time in a minute. I'm afraid she will
go mad.”
The control which spiritually disciplined people
have over their emotions is proof of the durability
of the race. Arthur's distraction-his spiritual and
moral disturbance must have been just then-
the most paralyzing emotion he ever had known-
but he was self-contained, as if he were a country
practitioner called in by a patient whose distress
was merely that of a patient.
"I don't want to drug her more than I must,
· Ruth," he said. “You might do something with
253


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massage. It will suggest relaxation to her and pro
mote it. I'll telephone to town for a masseuse to
come out in the morning. Try it yourself just now.
Don't exhaust yourself but see if she will not sub-
mit to what you can do and if she does not relax
more I'll stupefy her with drugs."
Ruth went back to Hope. Women have such a
wonderful reserve of serviceability, kindness, be.
nevolence, love-a reservoir of fundamental kind-
ness, of self-effacement, of important service when
most needed—that all the petty little egotistic ex.
pressions, scruples, ambitions, jealousies and small
meannesses of their nature disappear in the great
crucible which reveals, as its product, pure gold.
Ruth was wonderful in her service. She went up-
stairs to do as well as she could what Arthur had
told her to do. The driver who had gone to Apple-
ton for our friends came back with George Ren-
wick and Frank Dorsey, the only two who were at
home. The driver had told them what he knew
which was, with some inaccuracies, virtually every.
thing except what Sarah had told us. George and
Frank came with that look of consternation, solici-
tude and sympathy which people bring to a house
suddenly struck by calamity. It is a look which is
a declaration of earnest willingness to be of ser.
vice and also a confession of futility.
Arthur, who was emotionally outraged as none
of the others possibly could be, no matter how


ONE OF THREE
255
much pain and sorrow, was nevertheless the one
who kept the situation unstressed by emotion.
"I'm glad it's you two,” he said, "and just you
two. We sent for everybody but it would have
been a mistake if they had come. Ruth is with
Hope, George. Frank, can you stay all night?”
“Certainly, if I am needed.”
“You and George can go to Richard and the two
farmers can be relieved. They ought to go home
to their work and, besides, there's too much of a
suggestion of custody in their presence to be good
for Richard."
"I don't know how to act towards him," said
Frank.
“He is suffering. If I am not mistaken he is so
morally detestable to himself that he has a horror
of himself. He is out of his seizure but he knows
he has been disclosed. He had a great deal of
cunning in his seizures and what he did in them.
We cannot very well blame him. He was strug.
gling to maintain his life. Now a sense of moral
guilt has come with disclosure. We could not be
so unnatural as to pretend to him that nothing
monstrous has happened. We can assume that he
is very sick-that as a very sick man he will re-
ceive every attention from the people who have been
his friends. That, for the present, is, I think, all
we can do."


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Arthur and the four of us had been in the hall.
As we closed the door on the two farmers and went
back into the living room where Sarah and Simon
were sitting, I thought of the extraordinary excite-
ment which must be in the homes for miles around
this night-the women and even the children hear.
ing from their men what had taken place during
the day-ending with the disclosure of Richard,
the maniac, by Hope, his wife.
“I'll have another pipeful, Arthur," said Sarah.
“I don't know where you put the can of tobacco."
Arthur got it for her and she filled the long
stemmed clay pipe, affectionately as a real pipe
smoker does, tamping down the tobacco gently so
that it should hold the first just right-be as near-
ly perfect as possible for combustion and for the
drawing of the smoke.
There was a newspaper on the table near her.
“Is this an old paper?" she asked.
“I'm sure everybody's through with it whether
it's old or not,” said Arthur. “Why, Sarah ?”
“She wants to make a spill.”
"I'll take a back page,” said Sarah. She tore
off a piece and rolled it.
"Here's a match, Sarah,” said Arthur.
“That's a sinful waste,” said Sarah.
“But it's lighted,” said Arthur, striking it.
“That's your doings, not mine," said Sarah, go-
ing to the fireplace with the long paper spill.


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“You know, don't you, that Hope will fight this
through to the end. You know that even now she
is planning-planning to take Richard away where
people will not know him or his history—to efface
this and save him—if she can-and she can't save
him. She can't save him. Possibly I can."
“How can you?" I asked.
“I am not an alienist. So I don't know. It may
be possible. I'll go and see how everything is up-
stairs."
As I sat alone by the fire the outrageous details
of all that had happened gained vividness in retro-
spect. Events had come as blows and as blows
they had a benumbing power. They dulled the
comprehension. Each one had required that some-
thing definite be done instantly and nothing which
thus was required to be done had any broad appli-
cation to the whole situation.
Thus, there were a number of acts demanded, all
of them peremptory and none of them more than
palliatives. When we had done everything that
could be done, we had done virtually nothing. All
of it had to be dealt with over again and dealt with
fundamentally and not superficially.
My perception of Arthur's dilemma was this:
For an instant Hope stood almost within touch of
Arthur's imagination if it acted as imagination
will. She had been always so close to his affections,
always so far from his prospects and suddenly


ONE OF THREE
263
walls were broken down—and there was Hope-
not beyond his horizon but at the end of his out-
stretched arms.
Something which he, in his delicacy of emotion,
would not have permitted within the compass of
his thought or expectation, had happened.
Richard was destroyed. Within the term of years
Jacob served for Rachel there was the possibility
of Hope, restored to herself, freed from the con-
dition which, whether she had accepted it loving-
ly, adoringly or self-effacing, was terrible.
There was release undoubtedly with sorrow for
her—possibly with hope for him-but release re-
lease and the prospects of a new life opening-no
matter how distantly. Then there came to him the
knowledge that he of all the friends of Hope and
Richard was the one who might be able to pre-
serve them for each other. His advice might save
Richard.
As I sat there I seemed to hear him saying again:
“She can't save him. Possibly I can.”
That was his decision. For him there could not
have been any other. But even for him there could
have been a dilemma-one of emotional turmoil,
with desire straining in one direction and with his
obligations straining in another.
There may have been a moment or an hour when
Arthur regarded himself as a strange monster,
astounded by the thoughts and expectations he


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found starting so tumultuously within him, so fe-
verishly and dominatingly.
Sarah, whose prescience always touched me with
a sense of dread of her, said afterwards: "I am
glad Arthur didn't get her that way.”
Arthur came down from upstairs and said that
Hope had gone to sleep-exhaustion and the drugs
had given her release for the time being. A tray
of food had been taken to Ruth who had made her-
self comfortable in a dressing gown and who would
spend the night reading or dozing on the couch
near Hope's bed.
George and Frank had taken a guest room op-
posite Richard's. Richard had relaxed and closed
his eyes. They thought he slept.
“That ought to be as satisfactory a solution for
the night as we could make," said Arthur. “I
didn't want the boys to take all of the watch but
they insisted that with what Arthur had during the
day they would take the responsibility for the night.
They will be where they can watch Richard's room
and yet not impose their presence on him if that
disquiets him.”
One of the servants came in.
“Do you suppose," he said, “that there is any.
thing we could do for Mr. and Mrs. Renwick and
Mr. Dorsey or”—he hesitated just a little-"for
Mr. and Mrs. Browning? We have taken a tray to


ONE OF THREE
265
Mrs. Renwick. The gentlemen say they do not care
for anything to eat.”
“Thanks,” said Arthur. "I know that if you
took a bottle of Scotch, some ice and charged water
to Mr. Renwick and Mr. Dorsey they'd be glad to
have it and we wouldn't mind if we had the de-
canter of bourbon and some water."
· It must have been a trying time for the servants
even if the excitement-or terror-of it had inter-
ested them. The man seemed glad of something to
do for us.
“There'll be nothing else for any one to do," said
Arthur when the man brought our whisky. “Every-
thing is arranged for the night. Please tell every-
body that we are obliged for their attentiveness
and consideration, that Mr. and Mrs. Browning are
asleep and that we think everything will be all
right.”
“We all hope so," said the man.
“You don't mind spending the night here, do
you?" Arthur asked after we were alone and each
had poured a drink of bourbon. “We'll be within
call and can get some sleep. I don't think any.
thing will happen but we don't know.”
"I haven't had a chance to talk to you,” I said. “I
don't understand how this could be. We're sitting
here in this room. We've known Richard in this
room for years. His cordiality always fascinated


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me. A few hours ago we heard him moaning and
shrieking.”
"Richard is a multiple personality,” said Ar-
thur. “I had begun to suspect it but I couldn't be-
lieve it. One of his personalities was purely ani.
mal.”
“You mean that some of the noises we heard?_”
“Yes—and the hairy thing I touched in the night
-the hairy thing which sprang at Abner-the
thing that terrified the horses—that was Richard.
I know enough now about it to know that when he
became animalistic he wanted to feel the touch of
hair about him as if it were growing on him. He
had the shaggy wool sweaters and possibly some
other skins we'll find. He had to get out and
shriek. He wanted to prowl about the house at
night. He wanted to attack people.”
“You sat up here one night alone with him want-
ing to attack you.”
“Gerald, I'm sure, was trying to steal any valu-
able he could lay his hands on that first night,
and Richard was stalking him. They both saw
me and Gerald was scared back to his room before
Richard had exhausted the pleasure of creeping
after him.
"Richard, I think, was subconsciously cautious,
all the time. One personality may be submerged
and another in the ascendancy at the same time
the submerged personality may exercise a definite


XIV
IT was an hour to daybreak, that hour in which
I sometimes is concentrated the agony of human
comprehension and experience, when people may
awaken to a keenness of perception which denies
illusion, when, thus awake, they may find reality
with them in what they remember or what they
can expect or when, having been awake, in dis-
tress, they think that the distorted background of
darkness is interminable in their expectation.
I awoke, in the cumulative discomforts of an arm
chair, to the disarray of memory and thought which
snaps with a terrible military precision into the
order of consciousness and recollection.
There is an instant, in such awakening, when the
slate is clean. There is another when it is covered
with quick and moving figures but blurred. Then
it clears for reading and, if the tale be doleful, both
mind and spirit are as if, suddenly, a burden, heavy
and painful, which had been escaped for a while,
had been put on again.
“I don't know how it happened," I heard George
saying. “Neither Frank nor I have been asleep.
Neither one of us closed our eyes at the same time.
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271
We have sat at our door watching the door of Rich-
ard's room. From time to time we went in his
room. Each time he was quiet, with his eyes closed.
A minute ago we went in. He was gone. We don't
know how.”
“The window,” said Arthur and ran upstairs.
Always the one of us the most exposed emotion-
ally, he was always the first to know what to do.
“We must keep as quiet as we can,” I suggested.
“It would be unfair to give Hope this new shock.”
We stood in the hallway at the foot of the
stairs and waited. Arthur came down in a few
minutes.
"He went by the window-must have made the
drop from the porch."
“We might go out and see if he made the drop
safely,” said George.
The mind is a faulty, erratic instrument of hu-
man needs. The obvious requirement—the first
thing we could do—was to go out and see whether
Richard had broken a leg dropping from the porch
—and yet it was suggested to us as action worth
taking into consideration. Only minds and bodies
trained to thought and action—to decision and
action-keep out of fog and perplexity in emer-
gencies.
Arthur was on his way to the door as George
spoke. We followed him outside. At the edge of
the porch there was a wide border of cosmos in


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bloom. Richard had dropped into this border.
Arthur always carried an electric flash light with
him. His necessary habit, as a country practi-
tioner, was one of readiness for many events.
He lighted the places where Richard might have
dropped and we found the place where he had,
where the tall feathery cosmos stems were broken
and crushed.
The lawn was not wide at this side of the house.
A white oak grove, unthinned and untrimmed,
thickly set second growth, with witch-hazel and
hazel undergrowth, was within a hundred feet. Into
it was the probable direction of Richard's flight.
The late night was dark to the depth and inten-
sity of blackness. The sky was overcast. A soft
wind which had instants of gust to shake the leaves
revealed the approach of a storm.
At the edge of the grove we stopped to listen.
There was only the sound of the wind and, then,
deep in the grove, the quaver of a screech owl.
Then, far off, the bay of a coon dog.
Somewhere into the darkness of a late night filled
with sounds which sensitive imaginations could not
escape as portents, the gracious host and terrible,
animalistic maniac of Quatuck had fled, in what
mood we did not know-possibly in that mood
which demanded a sheep skin coat or something of
shaggy wool-possibly in horror of himself.
I think we all must have been equally susceptible


ONE OF THREE
273
to the tangible and intangible revelations and inti-
mations. I think we must all, the four of us, as
we stood at the edge of the woods—the wind now
soothing, now bristling, the owl quavering, the
dog baying—a voice which came from across the
Styx-we all must have felt impelled to run into
the woods, into the darkness-out into the coun-
try—to reclaim at least the live body of this de-
moniac soul.
“There's nothing we can do now,” said Arthur,
with his incisive decision and reassuring calmness.
“We want to-of course—but we'd waste time.
We'd better go back to the house."
He led us back and went directly upstairs. Pres-
ently he came back.
“So far as I can tell," he said, "nothing has
alarmed Hope and Ruth. Ruth said she would let
us know if Hope did not sleep or rest quietly. It
will be daylight in an hour or so."
Just then the wind which had been soft except
for gusts of violence, turned sharply violent and
sang in the eaves, shaking the windows and seem-
ing to beat against the walls. A few minutes later
the rain came-as an attack. It was so wind driven
and so heavy that it was an attack.
We had the kindness for each other not to speak
what was in our thoughts. Somewhere out in this
wind and rain swept world of stygian sounds was
the maniac whom we had loved as Richard Brown-


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ing. He might be hiding in the futile covert of a
thicket-tightly hugging a tree trunk—wallowing
in a ditch-running shrieking—and falling-across
a field-mad—with horror of himself or from his
malady.
“I'm glad Hope doesn't know,” said Arthur. "I'm
afraid she'd go mad herself."
“The morning is coming,” I had to suggest.
“Phil," he said, "I have begun to feel that if I
can get through minutes I have done all that is
possible.”
He told me later that he knew Richard had gone
through the window and he knew the mood in
which he had gone. The men could not tell how
Richard had gone because he had closed the win-
dow after him. Arthur had locked all the win-
dows. Richard had unlocked one and escaped.
If he had left it open behind him Arthur might
have thought that he had gone in a delirium, in
a return of his madness, but finding that the win-
dow had been unlocked and closed from the out-
side, he concluded that Richard was sane when he
made his escape and dropped to the ground.
I did not think that Arthur's reasoning was good
because in all we knew of Richard's madness-
now—we could see how he had been shrewd when
he was animalistic. That attack upon Hope on
Christmas eve-hadn't he protected himself, re-


ONE OF THREE
275
covering in an instant, by being the solicitous hus-
band?
There had always been as I remembered-a
cautious, highly egotistic, self preserving reserve in
his madness—and he attacked Hope because it was
safe.
It happened, however, that Arthur was right. I
think we all were willing to concede that he was
right, after what we saw. If his premises did not
justify his conclusion, the conclusion justified his
premises.
There is in mere insanity a moral obloquy. Some-
times the causes of insanity justify this assumption
of obloquy. Sometimes they do not; but always, I
think, there is the human moral judgment pro-
nounced against the madman, the judgment against
mental leprosy, the cry against the unclean.
Richard was not of the insane who become state
wards or who go into private custody. He was the
most involved of multiple personalities, with two
alternating—by periods of many years or by peri-
ods of few days—in the ascendancy—the gracious
Richard—the animalistic Richard—but always
whether in one condition or the other—whether in-
fluenced by one of his two major characteristics or
by one of the minor characteristics, thinking of his
security with the instincts of a fox.
This, I think, was the great point in our involun-
tary judgment against Richard—the one we could


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not escape. He had been thoughtful and resource-
ful in satisfying the demands of his animalism. He
had carried this resourcefulness and thoughtfulness
into the times when he was rational. The animal
always was urging the human not to spoil their
pleasures. The human always was protecting the
pleasures of the animal. This idea made Richard
morally hideous.
Arthur, as I have said, told me afterwards that
he was positive it was the human Richard who was
out in the night-running away in moral hatred
from himself.
This fox sense of self security had broken down
under revelation. Richard saw himself as, I have
explained, we had to see him.
The torture must have been compelling. He
wanted to destroy himself. I hope Esther Brown-
ing, who once sang, could have no spiritual vision
of her boy for whom the sunken garden had been
given shrieking birds and chattering monkeys and
to whom, for his own protection, Hope had been
given for a wife.
Arthur was right. We knew that when we found
Richard. He had gone from the house to escape
his own leprosy, his own detestation of himself. It
could not have been prevented-his escape-if it
could have been at that moment it would not have
been at some other time. Probably we ought to


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Once he had attacked a servant, Abner, whose
story we had heard, but his cunning had asserted
itself. That was why Abner escaped so easily, with
a mere scare-contact with a hairy beast, a clutch
at the throat, a sharp tussle and the thing disap-
peared.
We sat and waited for daylight. It was only a
short while-less than an hour—but it seemed very
long. Then the black began to lighten, by sugges-
tion more than in fact, in the beginning, it seemed
-but gradually gray, drenched morning came. The
wind had subsided. The rainfall was light but
steady.
“I think we can go now,” said Arthur. “I think
I know where some raincoats and boots are. I'll
get them.”
He came back presently with his arms full-of
coats and boots.
"See if these will do,” he said. “It is probably
useless for us to try this alone but if there is the
slightest chance of our finding Richard without
alarming the neighborhood and distracting Hope
again I think we are justified in taking a little
time to try for that chance."
We went out before the servants were up, in the
gray light-or half light-of a rainy October morn-
ing. All the autumn glories were blurred.
“I think we can only have an hour,” said Arthur.
“The house soon will be astir. Hope and Ruth


ONE OF THREE
279
I was
1:
will ask questions. Our absence may be worse, in
effect, than what we have to say. But we have an
hour. Phil and I will go due west through the
woods. If you and George, Frank, will go south by
the road I think we shall have taken the two best
offerings of a very small chance."
Arthur and I found Richard within the hour.
We went through the woods-across fields and
meadows, through fields of standing corn, across
some newly ploughed land and came towards a
clump of willows. Beyond the willows was an old
mill.
It had not been used for several years but was a
solidity of good masonry and black walnut beams
and the dam and race were in good condition. The
stream was a small one, in places as narrow as
twenty feet but it had a good fall. I remember
once trying to paddle a canoe in the pool above the
dam, where the surface seemingly was placid, and
of being carried, in spite of my most energetic
efforts, slowly but irresistibly backwards until I
was spilled on the top of the dam and had to swim,
crawl and climb out.
Arthur turned towards the willows. His per-
sisting idea was that the human Richard, in a
moral agony, had carried the animalistic Richard
off and had killed both. He knew that this pond
above the mill dam was a perfect place.
We had just pushed our way through a thick
is priza


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set growth of aspen on the bank of the stream when
we saw Richard. His body had been carried to
the crest of the dam, only a foot or two from the
shore on the side of which we stood. The current
had washed the body in shore and had fastened it
securely against some jagged rocks so that the
head was nearly all out of water and one arm
was flung out, backwards, as if in farewell.
The light rain was beating down on the up-
turned face of our friend. A bittern croaking arose
out of some marsh weeds as we approached and
flew away.
We waded the few feet necessary into the pool
and lifted the body out. Arthur made examina-
tions which even I knew were not needed.
“He is dead,” he said.
Fifty feet away, up a small slope, was a road.
"I think the best thing to do," Arthur said, "is
for us to carry the body to the roadside. I will go
to the nearest farmhouse and get the farmer to
hitch up a wagon. It's less than a mile and half
from home.”
We put the body of Richard behind a clump of
aspen and beech and spread our raincoats over it.
Arthur went down the road to a nearby house from
the chimney of which smoke was arising. I stood
by the roadside and waited.
Arthur told Hope. He thought that was his
task-as her physician and friend. He said she


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Browning and not Richard dominated Quatuck for
Hope.
We stood by Richard's grave on an October
afternoon as the minister was saying the words
which precede the shovels of earth. The minister,
to Sarah's discontent, was the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore.
After the funeral Arthur went away.
Hope did two strange things. She kept Quatuck
open, with a full complement of servants, and she
went to live with Simon and Sarah.
Arthur sent letters to Sarah every two weeks.
He went to Europe. He went to Egypt.
“Why does Hope keep Quatuck open?” I asked
Sarah. “It seems so unlike her."
The idea of waste was so repugnant to Sarah
that what she said was significant of her deeper
feminine perception. She was not offended by this
extravagance of Hope.
“Well,” she said, "Hope lives with us for com-
pany for a while but she wants to know that the
old place is open so that Esther Browning won't
be lonesome.”
I continued to go to the Parrs' as often as possi-
ble and saw how heroically Hope took her distress.
To sit with the old people, to deal with them in
their simple elementals, was, probably, the best
thing in the world for her.
Her life, for some time, had been wholly fantas-
tic. Their life always had been simple and never