CIHM Microfiche Series (Monographs) ICMH Collection de microfiches (monographies) H Canadian Instituta for Hiitorical Microraproductioni / Inat'tut Canadian da microraproductioni historiquaa 1996 Technical and Bibliographic Notes / Notes technique et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of ttiis copy wtiicti may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checked below. rTl Coloured covers / ' — ' Couverture de couleur D D D D D □ n Covers damaged / Couverture endommagee Covers restored and/or laminated / Couverture restaur^ et/ou pelticulee Cover title missing / Le litre de couverture manque Coloured maps / Cartes geographiques en couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black) / Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) Coloured plates and/or illustrations / Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material / Reli^ avec d'autres documents Only edition available / Seule edition disponible Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin / La reliure scrrc? peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de la marge interieure. Blank leaves added during restoratkxis may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout^s lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, torsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont pas ete filmees. L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur examplaire qu'il lui a ete possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exem- plaire aui sont peut-§tre uniques du point de vue bibli- ographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modifications dans la m6th- ode normaie de filmage sont indiquds ci-dessous. j I Coloured pages / Pages de couleur I I Pages damaged / Pages endommagees I I Pages restored an*or laminated / ' — ' Pages restaurees et/ou pellicultes D D n D Pages discoloured, ste.ned or foxed / Pages decolorees, tachetees ou piquees Pages detached / Pages detachees Showthrough / Transparence Quality of print varies / Qualite inhale de I'impression Includes supplementary material / Comprend du materiel supplemental re Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc., have been refllmed to ensure the best possible image / Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont 6te filmees a nouveau de fagon a obtenir la meilleure image possible. Opposing pages with varying colouration or discolourations are flMed twice to ensure the best possible image / Les pages s'opposant ayant des colorations variables ou des decol- orations sont filmees deux fois afin d'obtenir la meilleur image possible. D Additional comments / Commentaires suppl^mentaires: This item is filmtd at the reduction ratio cheeked below/ Ce document est fWmi »u ttux de rMuetion mdiqui ci-dessous lOX 14X 18X 22X 2«X XX y 12X 16X XX 24 X 28 X 3 Th* copy filmad hara hu baan raproduead thanki to tha oanarotitv of: National Library of Canada L'axairplaira film* fut raproduit grlea i la gan4rotit* da: Blbllotheque natlonale du Canada Tha imaga* appaaring hara ara tha baat quality poasibia conaidaring tha condition and lagibillty of tha original uopy and in kaaping with tha filming contract apaciflcationa. Original eopiaa in printad papar covara ara fllmad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or llluatratad impraa- lion, or tha back covar whan approprlata. All othar original eopiaa ara fllmad baginning on tha firit paga with a printad or llluatratad impraa- aion, and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or llluatratad impraaaion. Tha laat racordad frama on aach microficha ihall contain tha lymbol —^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha tymbo. ▼ (maaning "END"), whiehavar appliaa. Laa imagaa suivantaa ont M raproduitas avac la plua grand toin. compta tanu da la condition at da la nattata da raxamplaira filmt, at an conformity avac laa conditions du contrat da filmaga. Laa axamplairaa originaux dont la couvartura an papiar aat imprimaa (ont filmas »n eommancant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant toit par la darnitra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'impraaalon ou d'illuttration, soit par la sacond plat, salon la eaa. Tous laa autras axemplairas orlginaux sont fllmto an comman9ant par la pramiira paga qui comporta una amprainta d'imprassion ou d'illustration at an tarminant par la darniara paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. U'< 4aa symbolaa suivants apparaltra sur la darnitra imaga da ehaqua microficha. talon la cat: la symbola —^ signifia "A SUIVRE". la aymbola ▼ signifia "FIN". Mapa, platas, charts, ate. may ba fllmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba antiraly includad in ona axpoaura ara fllmad baginning In tha uppar laft hand cornar. laft to right and top to boRom, as many framas aa raquirad. Tha following diagrama illuatrata tha mathod: Las cartaa. planchas. tsblaaux. ate. pa'ivant itra filmts t daa taux da reduction diffarants. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour itra raproduit an un saul clicha. il ast filma t partir da I'angla suptriaur gaucha. da gaucha it droita. at da haut an bas, an pranant la nombra d'imagaa nacasaaira. Las diagrammas suivants illustrant la mathoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MICROCOCY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) _^ APPLIED \MA3E Inc ^K 165J East Main Street S^S Rochester. New Vork 14609 USA "-Sa {7?6) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^= (716) 288 - 59B9 - Fo« 'tin dpnsffj die s -*<" r.72iar(/ 'Clhlkinv, -^jm* ■ Tht Cat foragtd tireltisly ' 1 ;;>f UNDERSTUDIES Mort fttorita By MARY E. WILKINS Author pf "Jerome" "Pembroke" "Madtlon" "Jam Field" etc. ILLUSTRArEO TOR ONTO WILLIAM BRIGGS J 53 "T '^ ^ .Jopynght, i^oi.by Harper & Brothb Ml Hekli rtttrmd. CONTENTS The Cat '"J The Monkey j„ The Squirrel ,. The Lost Dog -, The Parrot g. The Doctor's Horsk 5. Bouncing Bet „ 99 Prince's-Feather ,23 Akethusa ,._ 147 Mountain-Laurel i., P^™^ 193 MoRNING-GlORY 217 ILLUSTRATIONS "THK CAT FORAGED TIRELESSLY" . . . f^„„i^^ "THE BOV AND THE MONKEY LOOKED R.D.CULOUSLV ALIKE" ^^,„^ ^ ^^ ' HE WAS A VIBRATION OF LIBERTY " " THE BIRD-FANCIER WATCHED HIM " "THEY CHATTERED ANGRILY" ... .. ^^ '■BOTH THE DOG AND THE MAN WERE "^ TIIOROUGHBRKDS " „ , , 56 HE S COMING, MARTHA!"' '"WHY, MARTHA! WHAT IS THE MAT^ '^ TEE .)' " . _ "SHE OVHRLOOKED HER SUPPLY OF ^^ LINEf. " .... " A WOMAN OF AFFECTIONATE GLIBNESS •• " ^g "BUT INWARDLY HER VERY SOUL STORMED AND PROTESTED " ,1 ■ ■ • 80 HE WAS A FIRM AND HARD MAN IN THE PURSUANCE OF HIS DUTY" .. ,,« HE THUNDERED ALONG THE ROAD" . " " ■'"^ "" SURVIVOR WAS A WOMAN " ! ■■ .qj ILLUSTRATIONS "SH£ USED TO SIT IN HER BAY - WIN- M . . facing*' DOw" ^'^ THE OLD LYMAN HOMESTEAD .... "EUGENE AND CAMILLA WERE SEEN DRIVING together" "THE MUST AMIABLE WIFE IN THE world" "THERE CAME ANOTHER MAIDEN TO VISIT her" " • DO YOU MEAN FOR MK TO KISS 44 HIM?'" "A LAST ASSERTION OF HER MAIDEN FREEDOM " "THE MILTON HE PORFD OVER FOR 44 hours" "'I'D LOOK PRETTY CLIMBING MOUN- TAINS, wouldn't I ?' " "ARABELLA HAD QUITE AN ORCHARD" . "HE USED TO VIEW HIS SMALL IMAGE* "'HERE,' SAID SHE, 'HERE'S YOUR ring!'" lOb 112 130 142 148 154 166 186 200 204 220 228 !2S >l'l THE CAT yHE snow was falling, and the Cat's 1 fur was stiffly pointed with it, but he was imperturbable. He sat crouched, ready for the death-spring, as he had sat for hours It was night-but that made no difference- all times were as one to the Cat when he was m wait for prey. Then, too, :.e was under no constramt of human will, for he was liv- «ng alone that winter. Nowhere in the world was any voice calling him; on no hearth was there a waiting dish. He was quite free except for his own desires, which tyran- nized over him when unsatisfied as now. uL ^^^ ''^'^ hungry-almost fam- «hed, m fact. For days the weather had been very bitter, and all the feebler wild things which were his prey by inheritance, toe bom serfs to his family, had kept, for the most part, in their burrows and nests and the Cat's long hunt had availed him UNDERSTUDIES nothing. But he waited with the incon- ceivable patience and persistency of his race; besides, he was certain. The Cat was a creal ■ of absolute convictions, and his faith in his deductions never wavered. The rabbit had g^ .le in there between thase low-hung pine boughs. Now her little door- way had before it a shaggy curtain of snow, but in there she was. The Cat had seen her enter, so like a switt gray shadow that even his shp.rp and practised eyes had glanced back for the substance following, and then she was gone. So he sat down and waited, and he waiteil still in the white night, lis- tening angrily to the north wind starting in the upper heights of the mountains with distant screams, then s\\ cUing into an awful crescendo of rage, and swooping down with furious white w'ngs of snow like a flock of fierce eagles into the valleys and ravines. The Cat was on the side of a mountain, on a wooded tenace. Above him a few feet away towered the rock ascent as steep as the wall of a cathedral. The Cat had never climbed it — trees were the ladders to his heights of life. He had often looked with wonder at the rock, and miauled bitterly and resent- fully as man does in the face of a forbidding 4 THE CAT Providence. At his left was the sheer prec- ipice. Behind him. with a short stretch of *o«xiy growth between, was the frozen per- pendicular fall of a mountain stream. Be- fore hun was the way to his home. When little cloven feet could not scale such un- broken steeps. So the Cat waited. The P^ce m which he was looked like a maelstrom o the wood. The tangle of trees and bushes clingmg to the mountain-side with a stem clutch of roots, the prostrate trunks and bran- , the vmes embracing everything «ith. - ng knots and coils of growth, had a cunous . -ect, as of things which had whirled for ages m a current of raging water, only It was not water, but wind, which had dis- posed everything in circling lines of yielding to Its fiercest points of onset. And now over all this whirl of wood and rock and dead trunks and branches and vines descended the snow. It blew down like .smoke over the rock-crest above; it stood in a gyrating column like some death-wraith of nature on the level, then it broke over the edge of the precipice, and the Cat cowered before tht fierce backward set of it. It was as If ice needles pricked his skin through his 5 UNDERSTUDIES beautiful thick fur, but he never faltered and never once cried. He had nothing to gain from crying, and everything to lose; the rabbit would hear him cry and know he was waiting. It grew darker and darker, with a strange white smother, instead of the natural black- ness of night. It was a night of storm and death superadded to the night of nature. The mountains were all hidden, wrapped about, overawed, and tumultuously overborne by it, but in the midst of it waited, quite un- conquered, this little, unswerving, living patience and power under a little coat of gray fur. A fiercer blast swept over the rock, spun on one m.ghty foot of whirlwind athwart the level, then was over the precipice. Then the Cat saw two eyes luminous with terror, frantic with the impulse of flight, he saw a little, quivering, dilating nose, he saw two pointing ears, and he kept still, with every one of his fine nerves and muscles strained like wires. Then the rabbit was out— there was one long line of incarnate flight and ter- ror — and the Cat had her. Then the Cat went home, trailing his prey through the snow. 6 THE CAT The Cat lived in the house which his mas- ter had built, as rudely as a child's block- house, but stanchly enough. The snow was heavy on the low slant of its roof, but it would not settle under it. The two win- dows and the door were made fast, but the Cat knew a way in. Up a pine-tree behind the liouse he scuttled, though it was nard work with his heavy rabbit, and was in his little window under the eaves, then down through the trap to the room below, and on his master's bed with a spring and a great cry of triumph, rabbit and all. But his mas- ter was not there; he had been gone since early fall, and it was now February. He would not return until spring, for he was an old man, and the cruel cold of the mountains clutched at his vitals like a panther, and he had gone to the village to winter. The Cat had known for a long time that his master was gone, but his reasoning was always sequential and circuitous; always for him what had beer would be, and the more easily for his marvellous waiting powers, so he always came home expecting to find his master. When he saw that he was still gone, he dragged the rabbit off the rude couch which 7 UNDERSTUDIES was the bed to the floor, put one little paw on the carcass to keep it steady, and began gnawing with head to one side to bring his strongest teeth to bear. It was darker in the house than it had been in the wood, and the cold was as deadly though not so fierce. If the Cat had not re^ ceived his fur coat unqueftioningly of Prov- idence, he would have been thankful that he had It. It was a mottled gray, white on the face and breast, and thick as fur could grow The wind drove the snow on the windows with such force that it rattled like sleet and the house trembled a little. Then all at once the Cat heard a noise, and stopped gnawing his rabbit and listened, his shining green eyes fixed upon a window. Then he heard a hoarse shout, a halloo of despair and en- treaty; but he knew it was not his master come home, and he waited, one paw still on the rabbit. Then the halloo came again and then the Cat answered. He said all that was essential quite plainly to his own com- prehension. There was in his cry of re- sponse inquiry, information, warning, ter- ror, and, finally, the offer of comradeship- but the man outside did not hear him, be^ cause of the howling of the storm 8 THE CAT Then there was a great battering pound clt d'r I:.*;'" ""''^^^^' ^-^ another.'^?;' Cat dragged his rabbit under the bed The blows came thicker and faster. It was a weak arm wh.ch gave them, but .t was nTrved by desperation. Finally the lock yielded and the stranger .ame in. Then thrS;' peenng from under the bed, bl",th1 The "ran ' '?" 1'^ ^'"" '^'^ — -^ about The Cat saw a face wild and blue -th hunger and cold, and a man wh^Lk^ poorer and older than his poor old masteT erty and lowly mystery of antecedents; Vnd he heard a muttered, unintelligible voicing of distress from the harsh, piteous mouth but L r". L" " '"^'^ P^°^^"-'^ -d prayer; but the Cat knew nothing of that The stranger braced the door which he had orced, got some wood from the stock in the comer, and kindled a fire in the old stove as ow. He shook so pitiably as he worked that the Cat under the bed felt the tremor of U Then the man, who was small and feeble and he had pulled down upon his own head, sat 9 UNDERSTUDIES down in one of the old chairs and crouched over the fire as if it were the one love and de- sire of his soul, holding out his yellow hands like yellow claws, and he groaned. The Cat came out from under the bed and leaped up on his lap with the rabbit. The man gave a great shout and start of terror, and sprang, and the Cat slid clawing to the floor, and the rabbit fell inertly, and the man leaned, gasping with fright, and ghastly, against the wall. The Cat grabbed the rabbit by the slack of its neck and dragged it to the man's feet. Then he raised his shrill, insistent cry, he arched his back high, his tail was a splendid waving plume. He rubbed against the man's feet, which were bursting out of their torn shoes. The man pushed the Cat away, gently enough, and began searching about the little cabin. He even climbed painfully the lad- der to the loft, lit a match, and peered up in the darkness with straining eyes. He feared lest there might be a man, since there was a cat. His experience with men had not been pleasant, and neither had the experience of men been pleasant with him. He was an old wandering Ishmael among his kind; he had stumbled upon the house of a broth- 10 THE CAT was^"faf ^ ^""^^^ ''^ "°* ^* ^°"'^- ^"'^ ^^ He returned to the Cat, and stooped stiffly arched like the spring of a bow Then he took up the rabbit and looked at Jt eagerly by the firehght. His jaws worked He could almost have devoured it raw He fumbled-.,he Cat close at his heels-around some rud. shelves and a table, and found with a grunt of self-gratulation, a lamp with oJm.t. That he hghted; then he found rJhwr^'T ^"'^ ^ ^"'^^' ^"'J skinned the rabbit, and prepared it for cooking, the Cat always at his feet. th.^.^l" ^^1^°' °^ *^" """^^'"S flesh filled wolfish The man turned the rabbit with one hand, and stooped to pat the Cat with He loved him with all his heart, though he had known himsuchashort time, and though the man had a face both pitiful and sharply set at variance with the best of things It was a face with the grimy grizzle of age upon It, with fever hollows in the cheeks and the memories of wrong in the dim eyes' but the Cat accepted the man unquestioning- II I UNDERSTUDIES ly and loi^ed him. When the rabbit was half cooked, neither the man nor the Cat could wait any longer. The man took it from the fire, divided it exactly in halves, gave the Cat one, and took the other him- self. Then they ate. Then the man blew out the light, called the Cat to him, got on the bed, diew up the ragged coverings, and fell asleep with the Cat in his bosom. The man was the Cat's guest all the rest of the wmter, and winter is long in the moun- tams. The rightful . >vner of the little hut did not return until May. All that time the Cat toiled hard, and he grew rather thin him- self, for he shared everything except mice with his guest; and sometimes game was wary, and the fruit of the patience of days was very little for two. The man was ill and weak, however, and unab'o to eat much, which was fortunate, since he could not hunt for himself. All day long he lay on the bed, or else sat crouched over the fire. It was a good thing that fire-wood was ready at hand for the picking up, not a stone's- throw from the door, for that he had to at- tend to himself. The Cat foraged tirelessly. Sometimes he 12 THE CAT was gone for days together, and at first th. man used to be terrified ^1,;^. , ^"^ never return; i^e^tfJ^TZrZT miliar crv af t\y^ j . '"^ fa- feet and let h^^'r'T^"'^ f^^-^le to his One day the Cat had luck-a JhW, tndge, and a mouse. He couTd not' ''"" them all at once, but finallv h^ u\ T"" together at th^ I, "' ""^''^ "e had them but n "'^ *'°°''- Then he cried out no one answered All ti,„ '^ '^"ea, streams were loosen^^ and thl • '"°""l^'" of the ffure-Ie of I ^^ ^"' ^«« f"» °^:ta':„ta:nHrrt/'r- ™ "^^ ""tn his insistent triumph 13 w ? UNDERSTUDIES and complaint and pleading, but no one came to let him in. Then the Cat left his little treasures at the door, and went around to the back of the house to tht^ pine-tree, and was up the trunk with a wild scramble, and in through his little window, and down through the trap to the room, and the man was gone. The Cat cried again — that cry of the ani- mal for human companionship which is one of the sad notes of the world; he looked in all the corners ; he sprang to the chair at the window and looked out; but no one came. The man was gone, and he never came again. The Cat ate his mouse out on the turf be- side the house ; the rabbit and the partridge he carried painfully into the house, but the man did not come to share them. Finally, in the course of a day or two, he ate them up himself ; then he slept a long time on the bed, and when he waked the man was not there. Then the Cat went forth to his hunting- grounds again, and came home at night with a plump bird, reasoning with his tireless persistency in expectancy that the man would be there; and there was a hght in the 14 THE CAT window and when he cried his old master opened the door and let him in ,h.r rf !"■ ^'^ "''""S comradeship with the Cat, but not affection. He never patted h.m hke that gentler outcast, but he C a pnde m h>m and an anx.ety for h,s welfare, though he had left him alone all winter with^ ^Ihrn" '■ "' '^^"-^ '"'' •^-"'^ --fortune s"t?e'7."T '", ^"^ ^«^' ^''-^h he was so large of h,s kmd, and a mighty hunter Therefore, when he saw him at the door in a 1 tSZff " f "^ "'"'^^ ^°^*' ^^^ -h^" h.s own face ht up with welcome, and the Ca embraced his feet w.th his sinuous body vi brant with rejoicing purrs ter'Jad'^h!!''' ''" '"' '" '^''"^^"' ^^ ^s mas- IZ^ .7" ""PP^'' ^'■■^^''y cooking on ^e stove. After supper the Cat's masterfo^k Z^l^' u"'' '°"eht a small store of tobacco which he had left in his hut over winter He had thought often of it; that and the Cat seemed something to come home to in the Efeft ^tV' *°'""° '''' ^''-'- -! ^ aust left. The man swore a little in a grim monotone, which made the profanity lose ^ customary effect. He had Ln, and was a hard dnnker; he had knocked aC 'he 15 . UNDERSTUDIES world until the marks of its oiiarp comers were on his very soul, which was thereby calloused, until his very sensibility to loss was dulled. He was a very old man. He searched for the tobacco with a sort of dull combativeness of persistency; then he stared with stupid wonder around the room. Suddenly many features struck him as being changed. Another stove- lid was broken; an old piece of carpet was tacked up over a window to keep out the cold; his fire-wood was gone. He looked, and there was no oil left in his can. He looked at the coverings on his bed; he took them up, and again he made that strange remonstrant noise in his throat. Then he looked again for his tobacco. Finally he gave it up. He sat down be- side the fire, tor 'May in the mountains is cold; he held his empty pipe in his mouth, his rough forehead knitted, and he and the Cat looked at each other across that impas- sable barrier of silence which has been set between man and beast from the creation of the world. THE MONKEY 1 THE MONKEY He was tie "7 ""' '^' Bird-Fanccr". was the only monkey there It «-.» somewhat elooin^r i;<.i u ^^^^ a key liveS so TarT . "P' ^"'^ "'*= *^°"- heLs ii Te^r;,^'' '^•^^'-^k of U that and Vi'bb. s ThT fana "' ^■'''^' '"'^^■• inev^dencethan the'^JtlnXlkr T rabbits, of course hn,i ''"•*°'«nts. The neither ^ad;he;h.te mice Th' '° "^' ^"'^ either too sulky o jTsL Jhe parrots were for the exercise of ht tal^? ""^" ^'^S^ «;t^:hir^'^«^" ofsuch^n^L^t^rni^^^^^^^^^ the canaries were indomitable Thd^' „,„ f enca,esweresmal,fortheirfeathlt;;S;:;- 19 fi UNDERSTUDIES but no bars could hold their songs, which floated in inimitable freedom forth into the city street. The Monkey seldom raised his voice at all. When he did, it had a curious effect. As a rule, people looked everywhere except at him for the source of it. It had a strange, far-off quality, perhai)s from its nat- ural assimilation with such widely different scenes. Of a right il belonged to the night chorus of a tropical jungle, and was a stray note from it, as out of place as anything could well be in this nearness to commonplaceness and civilization. It was very dark in the Monkey's den. He peered out at every new sound, at every new step and voice, with his two yellow circles of eyes, which were bright with a curious blank brightness; they seemed not to have the recognition of intelligence until the ob- ject was within a certain distance. The Monkey stayed for the greater part of his time in a swing fixed in the middle of his cage. He crouched thereon, folding his arms around the wires by which it was sus- pended. He crossed his hands upon his breast, and leaned his head forward in an attitude of contemplation. He might have been half i.sleep. and he might have been 20 THE MONK, Y closed eyes andthTr ,'^^^ '"''' ^^^ to. choice f«- '"' "»' «"»l»ken One to whom he d:vuip«l ti.= ii.._ "iTt:^"hi?hi"-'"= Boy. ■•Vol o„. of ,e^ ^ r^,"", '■» '"e rr^SelT^"--*^'^'S";,- was in the daytime, the wife and ihn ij 21 f-'J UNDERSTUDIES ing, the old cousin knitted, for she was never Idle, and the old wife dozed in her cha.r, and the Boy was of course not there, as he only stopped in the shop on his way to and from school. The B,rd-Fa„cier had no more audience than .f he had been himself an i^! habitant of some distant jungle, and removed by force to a cage of civilization; but that did not disturb h,m at all. A true theorizer needs no sympathy unless he has an over- weening conceit, and the B,rd-Fancier was modest. He talked on, and never kn.w thai he had no intelligent listeners. "Tell ve his chair, with his eyes fixed as upon some far-off teacher, "I have thought it all out Is simple enough when you know You've all seen how berries and flowers run out My brother Solomon, he had a beautiful strawberry- bed, berries as big as ducks' eggs, and the next year they had run out not much bigger than pease. And my broth- er Solomon he had an asparagus-bed served him the same way; and you all know how pansies run out, till they get back to violets AH those little things in the shop are men and women run out. They ain't the begin- ning, as 1 have heard some say they believed, 22 THE MONKEY but they are the end. When a man dies suppose he hasn't hved just the best kind of a tie, but suppose he hasn't been wicked not enough to be burned ahve in fire and brimstone t„ all etermty, but suppose he am t fitted to go into a higher sphere, sur> pose he wouldn't be happy there, let alone anythmg else; suppose he's just sort of no- accouiit and little, not bad enough for hell but not. great enough for heaven, but there he •s, and he's got to be somewhere Well souls that don't go straight to heaven or hell have got to go again into bodies; there am't any keeping of them apart; might as well try to keep the three things that go to make up air apart. Into bodies those little souls have got to go, but they've got so much smaller through living no-account lives that they won t fit human bodies, so into the cats and the birds, and the monkeys, and all the rest hey go. They are folks run out. Thev are the end, or they will be when they finally die out, and all the animal races do. Take that Monkey. Just look at him. He's thousands of years old. He is just as likely as not one of the Bible Pharaohs run out See him! When he looks up because he hears a noise, that noise brings back things 23 UNDERSTUDIES thf Mn^ u' '^'^"'" '^'^ Bird-Fancier regarded he made pets of none of the little creature " aerea at the other women who camp inf^ tu shop and talked to the b.rds a " a '? h.m with devotion, and he proved ft l2 to buy dehcaoes for the Monkey-fruit and 24 THE MONKEY loaf-sugar and iJeanuts H,. ously narrow heieht of f i , ^ "'"" ;Pr>er.p,a„dtSt;rr';Slth'1 outgrown his clothes anH v f "^ *''''' jacket sleeves were too sho ^' ?f '■■' '''"^ with hitches of Zco° forrL""' '^^ ""^-^ tightness. He cameTf ^ ''""" °^ ^^^^ who.theu„„re.2L;^s;enrg';r"'^° was an unwr,#f„„ -^ ending of money -nt. The"Lr ^.Td'e k"^ ^°'"-"'^- ary; there were two L k "* «mall sal- stores. The Bov h ^^"Sh'^--^. employed in companions atTchool " Hr'" ""°"^ '^'"^ ^nop. He^stopped on his way to \\ UNDERSTUDIES and from school, and he usuallj' secured a few minutes at the noon intermission. He would pass by the canaries and the parrots and the rabbits, and he had a deeply rooted aversion for he Angora cats. Straight to the Monkey's little den he would go, crouch down before it, and begin a curious, silent, mouthmg motion of his face. Then the Mon- key would raise himself alertly, dart to the side of his cage nearest the Boy, and respond with an exactly similar motion. Now and then he would reach out one little hairy hand and it would cling around the Boy's fingers like a baby's, and all the time the two kept up that silent, mouthing communication, which meant Heaven alone knew what to the Monkey or the Boy. The Boy was the only one whom the Monkey ever noticed in such wise. No matter what were the blan- dishments of any other visitor, he would do no more than sit upon his swing, rub his hands aimlessly, and stare over the visitor's shoulder, as if he saw his shadow instead of his personality. But for the Boy he always made that lithe dart to the side of his cage, and began that silent mouthing. The Boy and the Monkey looked ridiculously alike at those times, and the Bird-Fancier used to 26 THE MONKEY eye them with shrewdness, but no mirth boraetimes he told his nodding old wife and her industrious cousin in the evening that he beheved that the Boy was kind of running out and proving his theory. Once he asked the Boy why he did not buy the Monkey but the price was fifteen dollars, and the Boy could as soon have purchased an ele- phant. One day the Boy brought a little looking- glass and fastened it to the side of the Mon- key's cage. Some one had told him that monkeys were very cunning with looking- glasses; but the result was somewhat pa- thetic, and strengthened the Bird-P.mcier in his theory. "He remembers the time when there was something at the back of the look- mg-glass, or he wouldn't act the way hedoes " he told his nodding wife and her illustrious cousin. The Monkey was wont to make a sudden dart at his reflection in the looking- glass, and stretch out both poor little arms WM It in a piteous, futile effort of embrace. Then he would retreat forlornly to his perch Sometimes the Boy got on the other side of the glass and grasped the little outreaching hands, and that seemed to satisfy the Mon- key to a certain extent. 27 M UNDERSTUDIES Towards niyhl the Monkey became thor- oughly alert. L.fe tingled in every nerve and muscle of his little hairy bodv. He was sdent as ever, but he swung himself from end to end of his cage with curious doublings and undoublings. Doubled, he lotiked like a httle man; undoubled, there was a sudden revelation of a beast. He clung to the wires • he revealed his chest, which was a beautifu' blue color; the frown over m ■ yellow eyes in- creased; he reached out for evei', thing near his cage. If by any chance he could catch hold of anything, he was rejoiced. He was never let out of his cage. He was a gentle monkey, but his owner had a per- fect faith in his desire for mischief. There was one superb black and white An- gora cat which had the liberty of the shop and was not confined in a cage, and he used sometimes, though at a wary distance, to pass the Monkey's cell. Then the Mon- key broke silence. He chattered with rage he reached out a wiry little claw to incred- ible distances. Once he tweaked the cat's eai, and it fled, spitting. "That Monkey would kill the Cat if he got loose," said the Bird -Fancier, and the Monkey would mdeed have been rejoiced to kill the Cat He 28 THE MONKEY of the other inhabitants of the shop, though not so .nuch because he hated the^n Tfi cause of the longing for destruction whict was .n h,s blood. It was hard for a thing ...sed to the wild hbcTty of the jungle to l^- kept ,n a little den under the counter of a c>ty shop In the jungle he could at leas have torn leaves to shreds, ho could have Sf '^"f '° "^"^h, festooning himself ,n wonderful leaping curves of liff he could have killed those things which werj weaker than himself, or have fl'ed chatX' with futile rage before those which were stronger, or he could have died in unequal combat. It would have been .something/ have had the liberty of death. The deadlv monotony of his life wrought up the gentle httle creature to the point of madnesslhen H ^^ ^uu "' ^'^'■''' ^"'^^ «' the canaries and the rabbits, he showed all his teeth at the Bird-Fancier w-hen the old man gave him the banana which was his nightly meal and clutched it through the wires with viSous greed. Then he would tear off the rind, and so doing catch a glimpse of the monkey in the lookmg-gla.ss, and drop his supper, and 29 UNDERSTUDIES spring for him, and reach out tlioso [athetic little empty arms. "He is the gentlest monkiv 1 ever saw " said the Bird -Fancier; "but for all that I wouldn't let him loose in the shop." The Bird-Fancier had owned the .Monkey alxnit a year, when one nif;ht, through .some oversight, the case dmr was left unfastened and the Motikey escaped. I le worked at the catch for a long time, and at last it yielded and he was free. It was about two o'clock in the morning and the full moonlight lay in the shop and besides that was the white glare of electricity from across the street. It was .so li^ht that occasionally a canary thought it was day and woke and chirped, and the parrots stirred uneasily, and shrieked or laughed. The Monkey slipped out of his cage, and the greatest joy which he had ever known was upon him. Me was a vibration of liberty • not a nerve in his little body but thrilled with the utmost delight .f life and freedom. He went about the shop with long lopes. He did not look so much like a little man as like a beast. The beautiful black and white Angora cat was sleeping peacefully on top of the white -nice cage, and the Monkey 30 THE MONKEY spied him, and made one leap for his back. Then he rode him furiously around the shop, winding his wiry arms in a strangling em- brace around his neck, but the Cat escaped by a wild plunge through the window, and the Monkey slid off. He could have followed, but he had other things to attend to. He flew at a little golden ball of sleeping canary in his tiny cage, then at another, and another, then at the gold-fishes. The parrots he let alone, after he had shrewdly eyed their hooked beaks. He had thoughts of the rabbits which stood aloof in their cages with dilated pink eyes of terror, and supplicating hang of paws, and quivering nostrils, but they were as large as the Monkey, and he had no knowledge as to their powers of defence; besides, he could not easily get at them. But he loved to pull the gold-fishes out of their crystal bowls and watch them gasp on the floor, and he enjoyed the flutterings of the canary- birds. It was quite a long time before the cousin ui>stairs awoke. She woke first, because she was the lightest sleeper. Then she spoke to the Bird-Fancier, and told him that some- thing was wrong in the shop, and all three hurried down, thinking it was fire. But 3i UNDERSTUDIES it was only a little spark of liberty let loose to work its own will. The Monkey had wrought considerable destruction; several canaries would never trill again, and a nuniter of gold-fishes lay strewn about the floor. The Bird-Fancier whipped the Monkey back to his cage, and fastened the door, and the little animal caught sight of his reflection in the looking- glass and darted towards it with outstretched arms. "That Monkey has destroyed more than he is worth," the Bird-Fancier told his wife and her cousin. " There is no profit in keep- ing monkeys." The next morning he gave the Monkey his breakfast as usual, and said nothing by way of reproach, being alive to the absurd futility of it. But he looked at him, and the Monkey showed all his teeth, and clutched his little dish of bread and milk and flung it on the floor of his den. When the Boy came in on his way to school the Bird-Fancier, contrary to his custom, waxed loquacious. He pointed to the bodies of the dead canaries and the gold-fishes. "See what your Monkey has done in the night," he said. 32 THE MONKEY The Boy looked soberly at the dead birds and the fishes, then at the man. "He has killed more than he is worth," said the Bird-Fancier. Then the cousin, who was cleaning the cage of one of the dead canaries, piped up in a slender, shrill voice, not unlike a bird's- "Yes, only see! And if I hadn't woke just as I did, he would have killed the whole shop- ful. Better leave monkeys in their woods where they belong." The Boy looked from one to the other, but he said nothing. Then he went as usual to the Monkey's den, and the Monkey came to the side of it, and the two mouthed at each other silently with perfect understanding. When the Boy was leaving the shop the Bird -Fancier stopped him. He had been having a whispered consultation with his wife. "See here," he said; "if you want that Monkey, you can have him." The Boy turned pale and stared at him. "I will put him in an old parrot-cage," said the Bird- Fancier, " and you can stop and get him this noon." "For nothing?" gasped the Boy. "Yes, for nothing," replied the Bird-Fan- C 33 UNDERSTUDIES cier. "lam tired of keeping him. Monkeys ain't very salable." "For nothing?" repeated the Boy. "Yes, you needn't pay a cent," said me Bird-Fancier, looking at him curiously. Such an expression of rapture came into the Boy's face that it was fairly glorified. It was broadened with smiles until it looked cherubic. His brown eyes were like stars. "Thank >ou," he stammered, for he was at that tim of life when he was ashamed of saying thank you. Then he went out, and to school, and for the first time in months learned his lessons with no effort, and seemed to see truths clearly, and not through a fog. He had a great happiness to hve up to, and for some minds happiness is the only dispeller of fogs ; the Boy's was of that sort. After school he ran all the way home to make sure that the Monkey would be wel- come, and that his mother would not refuse him shelter, then he went without his din- ner to fetch him. When the Boy arrived at the Bird -Fan- cier's the Monkey was all ready to depart, ensconced in the old parrot-cage. The Boy went out of the store, dragged to one side with the weight of his pre >us burden, and 34 I THE MONKEY for the first time in his hfe the ecstasy of pos- session was upon him. He had never fairly kno^vn that he was aUve until he had come mto the ownership of this tiny Ufe of love The Bird-Fancier watched him going down the street, and turned to his wife, who was stroking the Angora cat, and the cousin, who was feeding a canary which had just arrived. The Boy, going down the street, had his face bent over the Monkey, and the two were mouthing to each other. "I am nght, you may depend upon it," he said. " There goes one monkey carrying another. " THE SQUIRREL THE SQUIRREL •yHE Squirrel lived with his life-long mate 1 near the farm-house. He considered himself very rich, because he owned an Eng- lish walnut-tree. Neither he nor his mate had the least doubt that it belonged to them and not to the Fanner. There were not many hke It in the State or the whole country. It was a beautiful tree, with a mighty spread of branches full of gnarled strength. Near- ly every year there was a goodly promise of nuts, which never came to anything, so far as the people in the farm-house were concerned. Every summer they looked hopefully at the laden branches, and said to each other, " This year we shall have nuts, " but there were never any. They could not understand it. But they were old people- had there been boys in the family, it might have been different. Probably they would have solved the my.stery. It was simple 39 UNDERSTUDIES enough. The Squirrel and his mate con- sidered the nuts as theirs, and appropriated them. They loved nuts; they were their natural sustenance; and throuifh having an unquestioning, though unwitting, be- lief in Providence, they considered that nuts which grew within their reach were placed there for them as « natter of cour.se. There were the Squirrelh, and there were the nuts. No nuts, ;-o '\juirrels. The conclusion was obvious t( such simple intelligences. As soon as the nuts were ripe the Squirrel and his mate were busy all day, gathering the nuts, and then carrj'ing them to their little storehouse under the wood - pile. Bad and forth they sped with such smooth swift- ness that it was no more perceptible than the passing of a beam of light. The Squirrels were very near the color tones of the tree, which, moreover, held its leaves late; only a boy would have been likely to spy them out. "It is a strange thing about those nuts," the Farmer's Wife often said to her husband, peering up at the tree with her dim old eyes, and he assented. The old couple were given to sitting out on their porch after supper as long as the evenings were warm enough, 40 THE SaUIRREL and it was a late autumn that yea:. There were occasional frosts, but summer-like days between. The Farmer and his Wife were a fond old couple. They had never had any children, and the symi)athy of their own natures had drawn them more closely together throuKJi the long years. They lY RESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1^ 1^ ■f m 2.0 _^ APPLIED IM^GE In ^K 1653 East Main Street S^ Rochester, Ne* York 14609 USA ■^— (716) *82 - 0300 - Phone ^^ C^ie) 288 - 5989 - Fo. THE PARROT 'pHE parrot was a superb bird— a vo- ciferous symmetry of green and gold and ruby red, with eyes like jewels, with their identical irresponsibility of fire, with a cling, not of loving dependence, but of ruthless insistence, to his mistress's hand, or the wires of his cage, and a beak of such a fine curve of cruelty as was never excelled. The parrot's mistress was a New England woman, with the influence of a stern training strong upon her, and yet with a rampant force of mdividuality constantly at war with It. She lived alone, except for the parrot m a sharply angled village house, looking upon the world with a clean, repellent glare of wmdows and white broadside of wall, in a yard whose grass seemed as if combed al- ways by one wind, so evenly slanted was It. There was a decorously trimmed rose- bush on either side of the front door and E 65 UNDERSTUDIES one elm-tree at the gate which leaned de- cidedly to the south with all its green sweep of branches, and always in consequence gave the woman a vague and unreasoning sense of immorality. Inside, the house showed stiff parallelo- grams of white curtains, and dull carpets threadbare with cleanliness, and little pools of reflected light from the polished surfaces of old tables and desks, and one glass-doored bookcase filled with works on divinity bound uniformly in rusty black. The woman's father had been a Congre- gational clergyman, and this was his old hbrary. She had read every book over and over with a painful concentration, and after- wards admitted her crime of light-minded- ness, and prayed to be forgiven, and have her soul so wrought upon by grace that she might truthfully enjoy these godly publi- cations. She had never read a novel; she looked upon cards as wiles of the devil ; once, and once onlj', had she been to a concert of strictly secular music in the town-hall, and had felt thereby contaminated for days, having a temperament which was strangely wrought upon by music, and yet a total ignorance of it. She felt guilty under the 66 THE PARROT influence of all harmonies which did not through being linked to spiritual words, tuni her soul to thoughts of heaven; and yet sometimes, to her sore bewilderment, the tunes which she heard in church did not so sway her wayward fancy; and then she ac- cused herself of being perverted in her com- prehonsion of good through the influence of that worldly concert. This woman went nowhere except to church, to prayer-meeting, to the village store, and once a month to the missionary sewmg-circle, and to the supper and sociable m the evenmg. She dressed always in black her face was delicately simre, her lips were a compressed line of red, and yet she was pretty, with a prettiness almost of youth from that undiminished fire of the spirit which dwelt within her, as securely caged by her training and narrowness of life as was the parrot by the strong wires of his house. The parrot was the one bright thing in the woman's life; he was the link with that which was outside her, and yet with that which was of her truest inwardness of self. This tropical thing, screaming and laugh- ing, and shrieking out dissonant words, and 67 UNDERSTUDIES oftentimes speeches, with a seeiningly dia- bohcal comprehension of the situation, was the one note of utter freedom and irrespon- sibilitj' in her hfe. She adored him, but al- ways with a sense of guilt upon her. Often she said to herself that some judgment would corae upon her for so loving sucii a bird, for there was i« truth about him as much utter gracelessness as can be conceived of in one of the lower creation. He swore such oaths that his mistress would fairly fly out of the door with hands to her ears. Always, when she saw a caller coming, she would remove his cage to a distant room and shut all the doors between. She felt that if any one heard him sending forth those profane .shrieks, possibly to his spiritual contaminake morsels of food from between her thin lips. When she talked to him with that lan- guage of love wliich i ,ery soul knows by in- stinct, and which is intelligible to all who are not too deadened and deafened with self, he would cock his glittering head and look at her with that inscrutable jewel-eye of his. Then he would thrust out a claw towards her with that insistence ivhich was ruthless, and yet not more ruthless than the insistence of love, and often say something which con- founded her with its apparent wisdom of sequence, and then the doubt and the con- viction which at once tormented and en- raptured her would seize ujjon her. She tried to conceal it from herself, she held it as the rankest atheism, she thought vaguely of the idols of wood and stone in the hymn-book, of Baal, and the golden calf, and the witch of Endor, and every forbid- den thing which is the antithesis of holiness, and yet she could not be sure that her parrot had not a soul. Sometimes she wondered if she ought to speak of her state of mind to the minister, and ask his advice, but she shrank from doing that, both because of her natural reserve and because he was unmar- 69 UNDERSTUDIES ried, and she knew that people had coupled liis name with hers. He was of suitable age, and it was urged that a match for him with the soUtary daughter of the former min- ister would be eminently appropriate. The woman had never considered the pos- sibility of such a thins;, although she had heard of the plan of the parish from many a female friend. She had had her stifled dreams in her early youth, but she had not been one to attract lovers, being perchance botmd as to her true graces somewhat too much after the fashion of her father's old divinity books. No man in her whole life had ever looked at her with a look of love, and she had never heard the involuntary break of it in his voice. Sometimes on summer evenings, she, sitting by her open window, saw village lovers going past with covert arms of affection around slim, girlish waists. One night she saw, half shrinking from the sight, a fond pair standing in the shadow of the elm-tree at her gate, and clasped in each other's arms, and saw the girl's face raised to the young man's for his eager kiss- es, the while a murmur of love, like a song in an unknown tongue, came to her ears. It was a warm night, and the parrot's cage 70 THE PARROT was slung for coolness on a peg over the win- dow, and he shrieked out. with his seemingly unholy apprehension of things, "What is that? What is that? Do j'ou know what that is, Martha?" Then ended his query with such a wild clamor of laughter that the lovers at the gate fled, and his mistress, Martha, rose and took the bird in. She set him on the sitting-room table along with the Bible and the Concordance, and a neat little pile of religious papers, while she lights 1 a lamp. Then she looked half affrightedly, half with loving admiratioi., at the gorgeous thing, swinging himself frantically on the ring in his cage. Then, swifter than lightning, down on his perch he dropped, cast a knowing eye like a golden spark at the solitary woman, and shrieked out again : " What was that? What was that, Martha? Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha. Polly don't want a cracker; Polly don't want a cracker ; Polly will be damned if she eats a cracker. You don't want a cracker, do you, Martha? iMartha, Martha, Martha, want a cracker? Whatwas that, Martha? Martha, want a cracker? Martha will be damned if she eats a cracker. Martha, Martha, Martha ! ' ' 71 UNDERSTUDIES Then the bird was off in such another ex- plosioii of laughs, thrusting a claw through his wires at his mistress, that the house rang with them. Martha took the extended claw tenderly ; she put her pretty, delicate, faded lace to that treacherous beak; she murmured fond words. Then ceased sud- denly as she h(»rd a step on the walk, and the parrot cried out, with a cry of sharpest and most sardonic exultation : "He's coming, he's coming, Marthat" Then, to Martha's utter horror, before she had time to rcn; )v .; the bird, a knock came on her front door, which stood open, and there was the minister. He had called upon her before, in accord- ance with his pastoral duty, but seldom, and always with his mother, who kept his house with him. This time he was alone, and there was something new in his manner. He was a handsome man, no younger than she, but looking younger, with a dash of manner which many considered unmin- isterial. He would not allow Martha to re- move the parrot, though she strove trembling- ly to do so, and laughed with a loud peal like a boy when the parrot shrieked, to his mis- tress's sore discomfiture : 12 • Ill's loiiiiiig, M,ii//ut ' " THE PARROT "He's come, Martha, damned if he ain't. Martha, Martha, where in hell is that old cracker?" Martha felt as if her hour of retribution had come, and she was vaguely and guiltily pleased and relieved when the minister not only did not seem shocked with the free s|)eak- ing of her bird, but was apparently anuistxl. She watched him touch the parrot caress- ingly, and heard him talk persuasively, coaxing him to further speech, and for the first time in her life a complete sense of hu- man comradeship came to her. After a while the parrot resolved himself into a gorgeous plumy ball of slumber on his perch, then his mistress sat an hour in the moonlight with the minister. She had put out the lamp at his request, timidly, and yet with a conviction that such a course must be strictly proper, since it was proposed by the minister. The two sat near each other at the open window, and the soft sweetness of the sum- mer night came in, and the influence of the moonlight was over them both. The lovers continued to stroll past the gate, and a rule of sequence holds good in all things. Pres- ently, for the first time in her life, this soli- 73 \ g UNDERSTUDIES tary woman felt a man's hand clasping her own little slender one in her black cashmere lap. The minister made no declaration of love in words, but the tones of his voice were enough. When he spoke of exchanging with a neigh- boring clergj'man in two weeks, the speech was set to the melody of a love-song, and there was no cheating ears which were at- tuned to it, no matter if it had been long in coming. When the minister took his leave, and Martha lighted her lamp again, the parrot stirred and woke, and brought that round golden eye of his to bear upon her face flushed like a girl's, and cried out : "Why, Martha I why, Martha! what is the matter?" Then Martha dropped on her knees be- side the cage, and touched the bird's head with a finger of tenderest caressing. "Oh, you darling, you darling, you pre- cious!" she murmured, and began to weep. And the parrot did not laugh, but continued to eye her. "He has come, hasn't he, Martha?" said he. Then Martha was more than ever inclined 74 H'Aj', MaiHui : /;•/„,/ ,s //,^ iiiatUr / ' It ■ THE PARROT to think that the bird had a soul ; still she doubted, because of the unorthodoxy of it, and the remembrance of man and man alone being made in God's own image. Still, through having no friend in whom to confide her new hope and happiness, the parrot became doubly dear to her. Curious- ly enough, in the succeeding weeks he was not so boisterous, he did not swear so much, but would sit watching his mistress as she sat dreaming, and now and then he said some- thing which seemed inconceivable to her simple mind, unless he had a full understand- ing of the situation. The minister came oftener and oftener; he stayed longer. He came home on Sun- day nights with her after meeting. He kissed her at the door. He always held her little hand, which yielded to his with an indescrib- ably gentle and innocent maidenliness, while he talked about the mission work in foreign lands, and always his Hghtest speech was set to that love-melody. Martha began to expect to marry him. She overlooked her supply of linen. Visions of a new silk for a wedding-dress, brown in- stead of black, flashed before her eyes. She talked more than usual to the parrot in those 7.S UNDERSTUDIES days, using the words and tone which she might have used towards the minister, had not the restraints of her New England birth and training enclosed her like the wires of a cage, and the parrot eyed her with wise attentiveness which grew upon him, only now and then uttering one of his favorite oaths. Then suddenly the disillusion of the poor soul as to her first gospel of love came. She went to the sewing - circle one Wednesday in early spring, after the minister had been to see her for nearly a year, and she wore her best black silk, thinking he would be there, and she had crimped her hair and looked as radiant as a girl when she entered the low vestry filled with the discordant gab- ble of sewing-women. Then she heard the news. It was told her with some protest and friendly prepara- tion, for everybody had thought that the match between herself and the minister was as goo,, as made. There was a whispered discussion among groups of women, with sly eyes upon her face ; then one, who was a leader among them, a woman of affectionate ghbness, approached her, after Martha had heard a feminine voice lingering in the out- skirts of a sudden hush say : 76 ' She ovir looked her supply of linen " THE PARROT " And she's got on her best silk, too, poor thing." Martha now looked ip, and her radiant face paled slowly as the woman began to talk to her. The news seemed to smite her like some hammer of fate, her brain reeled, and her ears rang with it. The minister was engaged, and had, in fact, gone to be married. He would bring his bride home the next week ; another min- ister was to occupy his pulpit the next Sun- day. He was to marry a woman to whom he had been attached for years, but the mar- riage had been delayed. Martha listened, then suddenly the color flashed back into her white cheeks — she had stanch blood in her. "Well, I am glad to hear it," she said, and lied with no compunction for the first time in her life, and never repented it. " I have always thought it was much better for a min- ister to be married," she said. "I have al- ways thought that his usefulness would be much enhanced. Father used tc say so." Then she took out her needle and thread and went to work with the others. The women eyed her furtively, but she made no sign of noticing it. When one said 77 UNDERSTUDIES to her that she had kind of thought that maybe the minister was shining up to her, she only laughed, and said gently that they were very good friends, but there had never been a word of anything else between them. She overheard one woman whisper to an- other that, "if Martha was cut up, she would deceive the very elect," and the other reply, "that maybe he had told Martha all about the woman he was going to marry." Martha stayed as usual to the supper and the entertainment. A young couple sat on a settee in front of her while some singing was going on, and at a tender passage she saw the boy furtively press the girl's hand, and she set her lips hard. But at last she was free to go home, and when she had unlocked the door and entered her lonely house, down upon the floor in her sitting-room she flung herself, with all the floodgates of her New England nature open at last. She wept and wailed her grief and anger alov.d like a Southern woman. Then in the midst of it all came a wild wail- ing cry from the parrot, a cry of uncanny S3nmpath-' and pain and tenderness outside the pale of humanity. 78. ii THE PARROT "Why, Martha! why, Martha! what's the matter?" Then the woman rose and went to the cage her deHcate face and lips so swollen with gnef that she was appalling; slic had even trailed her best black silk in the mud on her way home. She was past the bounds of decency m her frenzy of misery. She opened the cage door, and tie parrot flew out and to her slender shoulder, and she sobbed out her grief to him amid his protesUng cries. "Poor Martha, why, poor Martha," he said, and she felt almost certain that he had a soul, and she no longer felt so shocked by her leaning towards that belief, but was com- forted. But all of a sudden the parrot on her shoul- der gave a tweak at her liair, and shrieked out: "That was a damned cracker, Martha," and her belief wavered. She put him back in his cage and locked up her house for the night, and put out her lamp and went to bed, but she could not go to sleep, for the loss of her old dream of love gave the whole world and all life such a hol- lowness and emptiness that it was like thun- 79 UNDERSTUDIES der in her ears, and forced its waking realiza- tion upon her. All during the next week, if it had not been for the parrot, she felt that she would have gone mad. She wi 't out in her small daily tracks to the villaj^ store, and the prayer- meetings, and on Sunday to church, her ag- ony of concern being that no one should know that she was fretting over the minis- ter's desertion of her. She talked about the engagement and mar- riage with her gentle statcliness of manner, whi-^h never failed her, but when she got home to her parrot, and the healing solitari- ness of her own house, she felt like one who had a cooling lotion applied to a burn. And she wondered more and more if the parrot had not veri'y a soul, and could not approach her n-iih a sympathy which was better than any human sympathy, since it was so beyond all human laws, but she was not fully convinced of it until the minister brought his new wife to call upon her a few weeks after his marriage. She hrd wonder-; J vaguely if he would do it, if he could do it, but he came in with all his dashing grace of manner, and his bride was smiling at his side, in her wedding silks, 80 i i THE PARROT and Martha greeted them with no disturbance of her New England calm and stiffness, but inwardly her verj' soul stormed and protest- ed; and as they were sitting in the parlor there came of a sudden from the next room, where he had been at large, the parrot, like a very whirlwind of feathered rage, and, with a wild shriek, he dashed upon the bridal bonnet, plucking furiously at roses and plumes. Then there was a frightened and flur- ried exit, \vith confusion and apologies, and screams of baffled wrath, and rueful smooth- ing of torn finery. And after the minister and his bride had gone, Martha looked at her parrot, and his golden eyes met hers, and she recognized in the fierce bird a comradeship and an equal- ity, for he had given vent to an emotion of her own nature, and she knew foreverraore that the parrot had a soul. nm THE DOCTOR'S HORSE 1 I THE DOCTOR'S HORSE "THE horse was a colt when he was pur- chased v 'h the money paid by the heirs of one of the doctor's patients, and those were his days of fire. At first it was opined that the horse would never do for the doctor: he was too nervous, and his nerves beyond the reach of the doctor's drugs. He shied at every wayside bush and stone; he ran away several times ; he was loath to stand, and many a time the doctor in those days was forced to rush from the bedsides of pa- tients to seize his refractory horse by the bridle and soothe and compel him to quiet. The horse in that untamed youth of his was like a furnace of fierce animal fire; when he was given rein on a frosty morning the pound of his iron-bound hoofs on the rigid roads cleared them of the slow-plodding coun- try teams. A current as of the very freedom and invincibility of life seemed to pass through 85 UNDERSTUDIES the taut reins to the doctor's hands. But the doctor was the master of his horse, as of all other things with which he came in contact. He was a firm and hard man in the pursuance of his duty, never yielding to it with love, but unswervingly stanch. He was never cruel to his horse; he seldom whipped him, but he never petted him; he simply mastered him, and after a while the fiery animal began to go the doctor's gait, and not his own. When the doctor was sent for in a hurry, to an emergency case, the horse stretched his legs at a gallop, no matter how little in- clined he felt for it, perhaps o . a burning day of summer. When there was no haste, and the doctor disposed to take his time, the horse went at a gentle amble, even though the frosts of a winter morning were firing his blood and every one 'of his iron nerves and muscles was strained with that awful strain of repressed motion. Ev^n on those mornings the horse would stand at the door of the patient who was ill with old- fashioned consumption or chronic liver dis- ease, his four legs planted widely, his head and neck describing a long downward curve, so expressive of submission and dejection 86 ,=»! '•//. u'.,. fl>v« „n.i l,„rd man in t/,, p,„-s,uuue ej nti tiuty " *% I II THE DOCTORS HORSE that it might have served as a hieroglyphic for them, and no more thought of letting those bounding impulses of his have their way than if the doctor's will had verily bound his every foot to the ground with unbreak- able chains of servitude. He had become the doctor's horse. He was the will of the doctor, embodied in a perfect compliance of action and motion. People remarked how the horse had sobered down, what a splendid animal he was for the doctor, and they had thought that he would never be able to keep him and employ him in his profession. Now and then the horse used to look around at the empty buggy as he stood at the gate of a patient's house, to see if the doctor were there, but the will which held the reins, being still evident to his conscious- ness, even when its owner was absent, kept him in his place. He would have no thought of taking advantage of his freedom ; he would turn his head and droop it in that curve of utter su'omission, shift his weight slightly to another foot, make a sound which was like a human sigh of patience, and wait again. When the doctor, carrying his little medicine- chest, came forth, he would sometimes look at him, sometimes not; but he would set 87 r ',=■. UNDERSTUDIES every muscle into an attitude of readiness for progress at the feel of the taut lines and the sound of the masterly human voice be- hind him. Then he would proceed to the house of the next patient, and the story would be repeated. The horse seemed to live his life in a perfect monotony of identical chapters. I lis waiting was scarcely cheered or stimulated by the vision and anticipation of his stall and his supper, so unvarying was it. The same stall, the same measure of oats, the same allotment of hay. He was never put out to pasture, for the doctor was a poor man, and unable to buy another iiorse and to spare him. All the variation which came to his experience was the uncertamty as to the night calls. Sometimes he would feel a slight re- vival of spirit and rebellion when led forth on a bitter winter night from his stolidity of repose, broken only by the shifting of his weight for bodily comfort, never by any per- turbation of his inner life. The horsj had no disturbing memories, and no anticipa- tions, but he was still somewhat sensitive to surprises. When the flare of the lantern came athwart his stall, and he felt the doctor's hand at his halter in the deep silence of a 88 THE DOCTORS HORSE midnight, he would sometimes feel himself as a separate consciousness from the doctor, and experience the individualizing of con- trary desires. Now and then he pulled back, planting his four feet firmly, but he always yielded m a second before the masterly will of the man. Sometimes he started with a vicious emphasis, but it was never more than mo- mentary. In the end he fell back into his state of utter submission. The horse was not unhappy. He was well cared for. His work, though considerable, was not beyond his strength. He had lost something, un- doubtedly, in this complete surrender of his own will, but a loss of which one is uncon- scious tends only to the degradation of an animal, not to his misery. The doctor cften remarked with pride that his horse was a well-broken animal, some- what stupid, but faithful. All the timid women folk in the village looked upon him with favor; the doctor's wife, who was ner- vous, loved to drive with her husband behind this docile horse, and was not afraid even to sit, while the doctor was visiting his patients, with the reins over the animal's back. The horse had become to her a piece of mechan- 89 UNDERSTUDIES ism absolutely under the control of her hus- band, and he was, in truth, little more. Still, a furnace is a furnace, even when the fire runs low, and there is always the possibility of a blaze. The doctor had owned the horse several years, though he was still young, when a young woman came to live in the family. She was the doctor's niece, a fragile thing, so expo.scd as to her net-work of supersensi- tive nerves to all the winds of life that she was always in a quiver of reciprocation or repulsion. She feared everything unknown, and all strength. She was innately sus- picious of the latter. She knew its power to work her harm, and believed in its desire to do so. Especially was she afraid of that rampant and uncertain strength of a horse. Never did she ride behind one but she watched his every motion ; she herself shied in spirit at every wayside stone. She watched for him to do his worst. She had no faith when she was told by her uncle that this horse was so steady that she herself could drive him. She had been told that so many times, and her confidence had been betrayed. But the doctor, since she was like a pale weed grown in the shade, with no stimulus of life 90 THE DOCTORS HORSE except that given at its birth, prescribed fresh air and, to her consternation, daily drives with him. Day after day she went. She dared not refuse, for she was as compliant in her way to a stronjier will as the horse. But she went in an agony of terror, of which the doctor had no conception. She sat in the buggy all alone while the doctor vi.sited his patients, and she watched every motion of the horse. If he turned to look at her, her heart stood still. And at last it came to pas.s that the horse began in a curious fashion to regain some- thing of his lost spirit, and met her fear of hmi, u.id became that which she dreaded. One day as he stood before a gate in late au- tumn, with a burning gold of maple branches over his head and the wine of the frost in his nostrils, and this timorous thing seated behind him, anticipating that which he could but had forgotten that he could do, the knowledge and the memory f it awoke in him. There was a stiff northwester blowing. The girl was huddled in shawls and robes ; her little, pale face looked forth from the midst with wide eyes, with a prospectus of infinite dan- ger from all life in them ; her little, thin hands clutched the reins with that consciousness of 91 «t UNDERSTUDIES helplessness and conviction of the horse's power of mischief which is sometimes like an electric current firing the blood of a beast. Suddenly a piece of paper blew under the horse's nose. He had been unmoved by fire-crackers before, but to-day, with that current of terror behind him firing his blood, that paper put him in a sudden fury of panic, of self-assertion, of rage, of all three com- bined. He snorted ; the girl screamed wild- ly. He started; the girl gave the reins a frantic pull. He stopped. Then the paper blew under his nose again, and he started again. The girl fairly gasped with terror; she pulled the reins, and the terror in her hands was hke a whip of stimulus to the evil freedom in the horse. She screamed again, and the sound of that scream was the chmax. The horse knew all at once what he was — not the doctor, but a horse, with a great pow- er of blood and muscle which made him not only his own master, but the master of ail weaker things. He gave a great plunge that was rapture, the assertion of freedom- freedom itself — and was off. The faint screams of the frightened creature behind him stimulated bin to madder progress. 92 ii THE DOCTOR'S HORSE At last he knew, by her terrified recognition of it, his own sovereignty of liberty. He thundered along the road ; he had no more thought of his pitiful encumbrance of servitude, the buggy, than a free soul of its mortal coil. The country road was cleared before him; plodding teams were pulled frantically to the side; women scuttled into door-yards; pale faces peered after him from windows. Now and then an adventurous man rushed into his path with wild halloos and a mad swinging of arms, then fled pre- cipitately before his resistless might of ad- vance. At first the horse had heard the doctor's shouts behind him, and had laughed within himself, then he left them far behind. He leaped, he plunged, his iron-shod heels touched the dashboard of the buggy. He heard splintering wood. He gave another lunging plunge, then he swerved and leaped a wall. Finally he had cleared himself of everything except a remnant of his harness. The buggy was a wreck, strewn piecemeal over a meadow. The girl was lying unhurt, but as still as if she were dead ; but the horse which her fear had fired to new Ufe was away in a mad gallop over the autumn fields, and his youth had returned. He was again him- 93 f i I N UNDERSTUDIES self — what ae had been when he first awoke to a consciousness of existence and the joy of bounding motion in his mighty nerves and muscles. He was no longer the doc- tor's horse, but his own. The doctor had to sell him. After that his reputation was gone, and, indeed, he was never safe. He rnn away with the doctor. He would not stand a moment unless tied, and then pawed and pulled madly at the halter, and rent the air with impatient whinnies. So the doctor sold him, and made a good bargain. The horse was formed for speed, and his lapse from virtue had increased his financial value. The man who bought him had a good eye for horse-flesh, and had no wish to stand at doors on his road to success, but to take a bee-line for the winning-post. The horse was well cared for, but for the first time he felt the lash and heard curses ; how- ever, they only served to stimulate to a fiercer glow the fire which had awakened within him. He was never his new master's horse as he had been the doctor's. He gained the repu- tation of speed, but also of vicious nervous- ness. He was put on the race-course. He made a record at the county fair. Once he killed his jockey. He used to speed along 94 THE DOCTOR'S HORSE the road drawing a man crouched in a tilting gig. Few other horses could pass him. Then he began to grow old. At last, when the horse was old, he came mto his first master's hands again. The doctor had grown old, older than the horse, and he did not know him at first, though he did say to his old wife that he looked some- thing like that horse which he had owned which ran away and nearly killed his niece. After he said that, nothing could induce the doctor's wife to ride behind him; but the doctor, even in his feeble old age, had no fear, and the sidelong fire in the old horse's eye, and the proud cant of his neck, and his haughty resentment at unfamiliar sights on the road pleased him. He felt a confidence m lus ability to tame this untamed thing, and the old man seemed to grow younger after he had bought the hor.se. He had given up liis practice after a severe illness, and a young man had taken it, but he begaii to have dreams of work again. He never knew that he had bought his own old horse until after he had owned him some weeks. He was driving him along the country road one day in October when the oaks were a ruddy blaze, and the sumacs hke torches 95 1^. UNDERSTUDIES along the walls, and the air like wine with the smell of grapes and apples. Then sud- denly, while the doctor was sitting in the buggy with loose reins, speeding along the familiar road, the horse stopped; and he stopped before the house where had used to dwell the man afflicted with old-fashioned consumption, and the window which had once framed hir, haggard, coughing visage reflected the western sunlight like a blank page of gold. There the horse stood, his head and long neck bent in the old curve. He was ready to wait until the consumptive arose from his grave in the churchyard, if so ordered. The doctor stared at him. Then he got out and went to the animal's head, and man and horse recognized each other. The light of youth was again in the man's eyes as he looked at his own spiritual handi- work. He was once more the master, in the presence of that which he had mastered. But the horse was expressed in body emd spirit only by the lines of utter yielding and patience and submission. He was again the doctor's horse. BOUNCING BET IN July Bouncing Bet came again, appear- ing silently, with iniperccirtible grada- tions of progress, as was her wont. There were first an upflinging and outreacliing as of tender naked fingers and arms; then came the unfolding of her stout, oval-lanceo- late leaves; then the swelling of her buds; then that morning when the sun was hot and the wind blew in frequent soft gusts fri. u the south she was present for the first time that year in her old place. She was almo.st identical with herself of the year before; there were no changes in her except those inevitable ones which pertain to the sequence of existence. She might be a little stockier, her roots might have thickened, but there were those same corymbs of loosely flapping, rose -colored flowers crowning ' er stout growth, exualing the same odor, which was merely the breath of fresh life, not a com- 99 ^^•^ UNDERSTUDIES pclling fragrance, as was the case with her cousins of the same race. She was far- removed kin to the garden pinks, exiled, none knew in what prehistoric age of flowers, from close relationship with them to the dusty, pilgrim ranks of the world, yet hold- ing to life with undaunted zeal, and main- taining her own creed of bloom in spite of scorn and slights. It was not so long since that she had been held in some honor ; she had been planted and watered and tended; she had hi; cncd a welcome guest in a colonial garden. She was now like a dainty rag and shred of past fashion, left fluttering by the wayside from the passing of some former pageantry, but she knew no difference between her former estate and her last, being onlj' a flower. Since her first setting in motion in her little cycle, her pendulum-swing between life and death, she had simply obeyed her law of creation. She was, indeed, obedience itself manifested in a clump of oval-lanceolate leaves of dusty green, and a meek, crowned head of delicate rose-colored flowers. Behind Bouncing Bet was the remnant of the old garden where she had first seen life. Old Parson Lyman had planted the seeds, 100 BOUNCING BET which he had brouRht over from Kn^land, in a border of his garden. The parson had been a gentle soul, fond of (rontle thinis's, like flowers and singing - birds and murinurinK brooks and green grass. He had preached fire and brimstone with qualms of unix.'lief which he stro\e hard to swallow, and he died re|)enting with his last breath, and humbly confessing his inability to doubt the loving kindness and mercy of the Lord. Often in the i)arson's day the flower used to be over- shadowed jy a slender height of benignity, and regarded with affection by eyes which had not dwelt long upon things more material than flowers in the world. However, that made no difference to the flower, which was simply a thing set in motion by the old man's will, but immovable as to its principle of ex- istence by any sentiment of his. The flow- er put to bloom by the man was as free as the man put to bloom by God. This old parson had been a rich man, and his house had been accounted a mansion. After his death his married son came there to live. Hehadfourdaughtersandtwosons, one of whom afterwards died in the French and Indian War, Then came a time when, had the flower been alive in the fullest sen.se, loi UNDERSTUDIES she would have seen to reiiiL'rnber. The (gar- den was adorned by fairer thinv;s than flowers —by damsels in hoo|)ed petticoats of silks more gorgeous than the roses ; there was an arbor where lovers sat, and the air was full of the mystery of love. Then all that passed, and more of the same, and the past lay more and more thickly buried under the past, and finally, when Houncinjj Bet returned in this hot July, everything was so changtxl as al- most to have passed that limit of change where identity ceases. The road had widened, the old garden had retreated. Bouncing Bet was far beyond the precincts in the common highway along with the common weeds, herself a weed, if she were ranked with her intimates. The stately old house leaned heavily towards its fall, its gambrel roof sagged, there were patches of moss and mould in the hollows, its walls were flapping with gray shingles, and in it lived alone the last survivor of the line of the old parson who planted the flower. The last survivor was a woman, of course. It is generally the woman who survives, either from her pliability of strength, which no storm nor stress can affect, or from the fact that she holds to existence with less te- 102 P^mt^ . ,-1* ' JVic /lis/ su/-,-/:'i>r 7vtis a uv BOUNCINr. BET nacity of grasp, and so does not waste her life with her effort to save it. . Be that as it may, she hved alone there, her hr:sband and children being so long dead that she thought of them with the utter peace of acquiescence. She had, indeed, acquiesced , with no questioning, in most of the decrees of fate. She had a placid temperament, and was disposed to get her honey from small things in lieu of great ones. People said that she had not felt her trials as most would have done, and, in proof of it, pointed to her face, young beyond her years, with a blowsy, yet delicate, bloom of round cheeks, a calm clear- ness of blue eyes, and smooth crinkles of • yellow hair. " Any woman that can go through what Ann Lyman has gone through and not have a gray hair hasn't got feelings, ' ' said they, especially Mrs. John Evarts, who lived in her daughter's new house across the street. Mrs. John Evarts, who kept house in the north side, used to sit in her bay-win- dow and watch proceedings over the way. She was the one who instigated the plan to take Ann from her old home and have iier board with Mrs. Jackson Smith, with whom the town occasionally boarded people whose former estate and some remnant of present 103 -■■-»-»^ UNDERSTUDIES \l'' means seemed to prohibit from the town fann. Mrs. Jackson Smith was, moreover, a distant relative of the Lynians, and that made it seem a milder measure. " It won't seem anything but going to live with her cousin," said Mrs. John Evarts. She furthermore said that she had lain awake nights worrying over it. She knew Ann Lyman would set herself afire, she would starve to death, she would bring an epidemic of typhoid into the neighborhood, lixing the way she did. Poor Ann Lyman's easy acquiescence in circumstances extended to conditions of nat- ural dirt and disorder. It is possible that it might have extended as well to original sin had her lines been cast in different places. Her neighbors, the rigorously tidy village women, said that Ann Lyman couldn't see dirt; possibly she might not have seen sin had it come in her way; but it never had. That had not been so inevitable. The dust of life had not come in her windows to settle on her soul, but the dust of the country roads had entered and settled on her furniture, and she let it remain. "I don't believe you ever dust, Ann Ly- man," Mrs. Evarts said one day. 104 BOUNCING BET Ann only laughed. "Do you?" insisted the other woman, scowling above her forced smile. "No," said Ann. Ann might have argued, with justice, that she had not much worth dustincc. Piece by piece the stately old furniture of the mansion- house had been disposed of to the dealers. There was now little left ; the paint was worn from the line panel-work, and rags of carpets clung to the nails on the edges of the slanting floors, but Ann could accomplish a great multiple of disorder with few factors. The interior of the old house resembled nothing so much as the interior of a wrecked ship. Its broken furnishings were all set askance at one another, every shred of former splen- dor was in full and defiant evidence, and, in addition, there was a general effect of all the lines of construction being awry and off their true levels. There was not a horizontal line in the whole house ; there were only the reck- \e •, slants of waste and destruction by that fiercest storm of the world, the storm of time. But all this did not trouble Ann in the least. When a rocker of her old chair, in which she had sat by her favorite window for more than forty years, gave out, she put a stick of wood 105 ■! UNDERSTUDIES in its place, and sat still, and concluded that she fancied that better than rocking. When tl e glass was broken out of her favorite win- dow, she moved over to another, and thought the new outlook pleasanter. Every new groove of life had fitted this easily sliding, jelly-like old woman; she took her shape from circumstances; nothing rubbed her to her discomfort ; she was the happiest woman in the village. But her une came. The afternoon the sel tmen, headed by Jonathan Lyman, the far-away kinsman of the old Lyman family to which she and the old house belonged, came to interview her about the proposed change in her way of living, there was a transformation. This smoothly-oscillating- at- every- touch creature became of a sudden vibrant with pure indi- viduality. Her flaccid muscles seemed to harden, the faint bloom on her cheeks blazed, her loosely smiling mouth was rigid, her mild eyes pointed as with the glitter of steel. All human beings, however unassertive they may be, have some footholds of self, impreg- nable against assault. Ann's had been touched, and she stood firm with a great shock of revolt. She stood up, clinched and stiffened ; her voice rang out with . ch 1 06 ■S/u- mal to sit /„ //,, h„y..„.,;,^^ BOUNCING BET an echo that the selectmen turned simulta- neously and stared over their shoulders. There were three of the selectmen; two were elderly, the third was young Lyman. He had been pushed forward to do the speak- ing to Ann. He had opened glibly enough. He was confident by nature, and of an im- perious turn. Then, too, his sweetheart was Mrs. John Evarts's granddaughter, and she had advised this measure. He stated, pitilessly candid, and yet with no thought that his candor was pitiless, being one of those to whom the truth is its own vindication, the facts of the case. He point- ed out to this lone woman her poverty, her untidiness, her lack of thrift, her indolence ; he descanted upon the injury to herself and others; he descanted upon the superior ad- vantages of the home which had been pro- vided for her; he mentioned the fact that the savings-bank held an overdue mortgage on the property; he concluded by ordering Ann to be in readiness to move the next day. But even he, as well as his colleagues, was aghast at the result. When they turned to face Ann after that first incredulous glance over shoulders for some other source of that unexpected voice, each had the same help- 107 UNDERSTUDIES less gape of astonishment. They listened speechless, too amazed to shuffle in their chairs. "This old house," said Ann, with a --ing- mg eloquence of desperation—" this old house has belonged to my father's family for over a hundred years, and you talk about turning me out of it! Me! Me! Why don't you turn the chimney out? Why don't you pull down the door-po.st? I'm as much a part (jf It. Root up the bo.\ out in the yard ; pull up that clump of pinies; tear up the lilac bush- es ; chop down the poplar-tree that my grand- father planted! Pull down, root up, but I tell you leave me be! I belong here! I am the live thing that keeps it together. What if I ain't neat? What's neatness to things that belong to life itself, I want to know? What if I ain't orderly? Ain't I ahve? I tell you I'm the soul of this old place, and you want to turn a soul out of a body! I was born here, and my father before me, and my grandfather before him. I hved right along here when I was married; ray children were born here, and they all died here. Talk about the savings-bank hold- ing a mortgage ! What's a mortgage? You can't mortgage things with any show of rea- io8 ill BOUNCING BET son that are a part and parcel of a human Iwing. Turn me out! Me! Me!" Suddenly Ann sat down in her broken rocking-chair again, and a curious defiance of immovability seemed to settle over her. She actually looked as if it would need more than human strength to dislodge her. She in he- rockinged on behind. As for Eugene himself, he was radiant, fairly resplendent. He sat beside the driver, and, although the other man was over the average- size, he seemed to be head atid shoulders above him. He looked abroad with a gay confidence in admiration which compelled it. Mis handsome face was delicately pink and white, with a daintily curving golden inu.s- tache. His close croj) of curly golden hair was exposed, for he was constantly waving his hat to people on the road. They returned his salutations with the surly abashedness of the rustic, then stood back and stared and stared again. "Who was that?" one said to another. "It wa.sn't Eugene ilolding. Why, he's workin' in Philadelphia. He can't be home this time of year, and all dress- ed up that way. " The hue of Eugene's coat "5 UNDERSTUDIES had struck awe and disapproval to the hearts of the men. There was no other coat of that color in the village. Before .sundown the next day Eugene's mother liad told the new.s to Mrs. William Holmes and to Mr.s. Catherine Woods, and they did the rest. The whole village knew, as by a flash of simultaneous intelligence, that Eug tie Holding had made money and had come home rich. " He will not need to do anything more as long as he lives." said Eugene's mother. She had a face harsh in color and outline, yet, curiously enough, exceedingly gentle in expression; she was slender and tall, with a .settled stoop which was not ungraceful, being lateral. One meeting Mrs. Holding thought involuntarily of a strong starboard wind, and realized dim- ly an incongruity between her attitude of body and her motionless ukirts. Mrs. Hold- ing was unusually precise as to her choice of language, Ix-ing punctilious as to her will nots a!id shall nots, and disdaining contrac- tions. Pajple ill consei:uence called her af- fected. They were inwardly resentful and skeptical when they saw her triumph over her son. " How did he make hi.s money?" asked Mrs. William Holmes, with a cold stare, 126 PRINCES-FEATHER though she widened her mouth in a smile of congratulation. "My son has been exceedingly fortunate m a business venture, and he will not need to lift his firger again unless he wants to," said Mrs. Holding, adjusting a lacy crocheted hood which she wore over her head. "How did you say he made it?" repeated the other woman. " By a fortunate business measure " re- plied Mrs. Holding. "Seem.s to me Eugene is pretty young to make such fortunate business ventures, "said Mrs. Holmes. "How did you say he made ms money?" " By a fortunate business venture " said Mrs. Holding. That was all she ever would say, and Eu- gene, in spite of his aggressiveness of frank- ness, was no more communicative as to the source of his wealth, about which there seemed to be no doubt. He commenced immediately to improve his house, and he purchased a fane horse and carriage. It was an imposing spectacle when Eugene drove forth in the cool of a summer evening, at first with his mother resplendent in a new silk, a beflow- "7 II UNDERSTUDIES ered bonnet, and a jetted mantle, by his side, and, lat'.T on, Camilla Rose. Camilla Rose's father had been the richest man in the village; she had money in her own right, and had "enjoyed advantages," as the neighbors put it. "Cood reason why Ca- milla Rose can l(H)k .so nice and apjiear so pretty," said they. "She ought to; she's been to boarding-school, and she's travelled in EuroiK.'." They were enviously acquies- cent when she and Eugene began to be seen in each other's company. " Birds of a feather flock together," said they. "Of course, now Eugene has got money, Camilla will think he's beautiful. The Roses always had an eye for money. Besides, his family counts for something. The Holdings and the Roses ahvays held their heads above common folks." This Camilla Rose was a tall, brown-eyed girl, with a pouting redness of lips, and a reluctiuit smile, which gathered charm from its reluctance. Whoever made Camilla smile at him was con.scious of a dis- tinct victory. Camilla snuled upon Eugene rarely, yet often enough to keep alive in him a supix)rting sense of encouragement. However, it would not have been easy for her to have discouraged Eugene Holding PRINCE'S-FEATHER Anything like the joyful sanguinity of this young fellow was seldom seen. He seemed furnished by nature with some armor of the spirit which rendered him impervious to slight and repulse. His mother was proud of this peculiarity in her son. " If anybody has ever said no to Eugene, he has gone right ahead and acted as if he had said yes," said she. "Then there is another thing about Eugene— if ever he ha.s been so situated that he could not have something that he set his heart upon, another would do just as well, and he never seemed to know that he had not got what he wantcxl. 1 remember once when he had been longing for a new jack-knife, somebody gave him a top instead, and he went right to spinning it, and never seemed to know he wa.s not whittling. 1 never heard him mention the knife again. Eugene al- ways gets ahead of his happening.s, and he always will. Nothing that can ever happen on this earth is going to conquer him. He is bound to be in the lead of his fate." Mrs. Holding was something of a philosopher, and talked sometimes beyond her neighbors. That and her precise English caused them to regard her half with admiration, half with the defensive ridicule of inferiority. They I 129 UNDERSTUDIES regarded Eugene in something of the same fashion. "He ain't so smart, for all he cuts such a dash," said they. "His mother needn't think he is; he ain't." They looked at him as he drove by, or walked with a gen- tle swagger, and a jaunty swing of a slender cane, and frequent flourishes of his silk hat, yet, after all, they felt a certain admiration and liking for him. It was impossible not to like Eugene Holding. His utter confi- dence of approval commanded it. One would have been a churl not to smile back at this forever-smiling young man, not to return with some cordiality his imperious, but wholly charming, even affectionate, saluta- tion. "Eugene Holding acts as if he was the lord of all creation," said they, yet with a certain self-gratulation at having been so genially accosted by one of such high pre- tensions. Eugene and Camilla were such a hand- some couple that they were a delight to the eye when they were seen driving together. Eugene was taller than the girl ; his golden curly head gleamed beside her brown one. Camilla's beautiful face was shaded by a great cloud of brown curls, and a blue feather floated from her Leghorn hat. She was as 130 mM- ■-'V-'-: '"./ C.,>,m, u.re ..,.. ./,-n,„. ,„,,,, ■'«!' lo^ilAcr' PRINCES-FEATHER pleasantly conscious of the people whom they met, and iheir admiration, as she was of the young man at her side. Eugene thought Camilla perfection. He adored her beauty, yet the memory of it never dimmed for a moment the image of his own face in the mirror. He alway.s saw her pretty gowns and hats, and the sight sent his con- sideration with the swift recoil of vanity to his own apparel. Eugene hurried forward the improvements on his house ; they were completed in July, and he and Camilla were to be married the first of August. The villagers passing the renovated house used to turn back and stare, and that made Eugene and his mother, sitting on their new jwrch, proudly con.scious. Eugene t(X)k an especial delight in the lit- tle cupola which crowned the tower. The cupola was purely ornamental, and the roof was i)aintcd a bright crimson color, not un- like that of the prince 's-fcfither in the garden. Indetxl, it might have been unconsciously suggested by it. Eugene used to stand out in the front yard and stare happily at this brilliant cujiola. "Your new cupola looks very gay," said Camilla's mother to Mrs. Holding one after- 131 UNDERSTUDIES fA ! r-wn as the two ladies sat m the porch. She did not speak critically; lliat was not her way. She simply mentioned facts, and left her hearers to deduce disparagement or flat- tery as they chose. Mrs. Holding, like her son, generally deduced flattery. " Y-r it is a beautiful color," said she. "Eup^.ie has always been .so fond of bright colof." As she spoke Eugene and Camilla came across the yard on their way from the garden, and Eugene had a sprig of prince's-feather waving against the lapel of his coat, he had also stuck a great spike of it like a plum* in Camilla's curls. As the two neared the porch Camilla reached up her hand and pulled out the prince'.s- feather and flung it away. " I never liked that flower," she remarked. "It is the prettiest flower in the garden," declared Eugene, but he only laughed at her scorn of it, and flung an arm around the girl's wai.st, and they came thus towards the two mothers. There was a strong south wind blowing, and the two tall figures stiffened themselves against it. Camilla seemed in a whirlwind of white flounces and ribbons, out of which her beautiful face looked with un- smiling complacency, which was, in effect, 132 PRINCES-FEATHER a smile at herself. Eugene had just given her some diamond ear-droiB, which glittered through her curls ; she had everything which she wanted; a measureless satisfaction with herself, the whole world, and the Providence which had created her was over the girl, and no less over the young man. Both of them looktxl invincible by any fate. They had the mien of conquerors as they came across the yard, with the two elders watching them, the one with |)erfect accord, the other with I)ride and delight, yet with lx;wilderment. Camilla's mother was sometimes bewildered almost to the point of fear by her daughter. She herself had never been capable of such a haughty confidence in the good-will of Providence, but was rather prepared for a sanctified and gentle acquiescence towards hard usage on its part. Mrs. Holding real- ized dimly that Camilla had an almost con- temptuous, and her lover a joyfully nnperious mcredulity that the tree of life could grow anything but plums for them, and she her- self was conscious of a guilty wonder if it would not be unworthy so to do, in the face of such superb confidence. Mrs, Holding, while she had the greatest pride m Camilla, yet felt herself more in UNDERSTUDIES sympathy with her younger daughter Jane, although she had a peevish tein[)cr, and was semi-crippled. One of Jane's limbs was shorter than the other, and she limped about with a painful absurdity of guit, which tort- ured her soul even more than her body. Jane would never walk beside Camilla. She u.sed to watch her sister set out to drive with her handsome lover, as some utterly irre- deemable Cinderella might have done, it did not seem as if exi.stence could ever hold glass slippers and a gold coach for her, least of all a prince; but such things are always unexpected, and her day came, though in what might have seemed a half-hearted and second-rate sort of fashion. The week be- fore Eugene and Camilla were to be married, the young man came to visit his sweet- heart one evening, and he was gayer and more unconcerned than ever. They went to drive, and it was like a triumi)hal >)r<)gress. Eugene Ixjwed to every one with that charm- ing, almost royal, assurance of conferring a favor and a grace. Camilla .sat beside him like a queen. It was not imtil they reiched her gate on their return that he told her the news, laughing as he did so, as if it were the pleasantest thing in the w<)rld. 134 PRINCE S-FEATHER "The mine has gone to pieces," said he, easily. " What mine?" asked Camilla, in bewilder- ment. " What do you mean?" " The mine has gone to pieces, or, rather, there isn't any mine. There never was. Isn't it a joke, eh?" "What mine?" "The one 1 put the little money we had left in," said Eugene, smiling. "That was how 1 got my tnoney, you know, or, rather, my prospects. 1 never got much money, but nobody ever had such prospects. Why, Camilla, we mit;ht have had the earth. Never was such a mine as they made that out to be. " Camilla had turned very jiale. " What do you mean?" she said, slowly. "Haven't you got any money, Eugene?" "Not a dollar," he returned, laughing; "had two big dividends, and paid for the cuix)la and things, and mother's clothes and mine, and your diamonds— tliat's all. Not a dollar left. 1 didn't tell you what my money was in, you know, because the prospects were so big. 1 wanted to surprise you. Never were such prospects Camilla, you ought to haxe seen the diamond brooch 1 was look- ing at for you last week." I3S MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) lUII^^ y, ^2 11^ tri^ it U£ 111^ 1.6 _^ TIPPLED INMGE Inc ^^^ 1653 East Moin Street S'.S Rochester, New York 14609 U5A "-gg= (?16) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S '^'6) 288 - 5989 - Fax U: n UNDERSTUDIES "Are you going to work in your old place again?" asked Camilla, in a queer voice. "Oh no," Eugene replied, cheerfully. "I am going to stay on here, and raise early vegetables. 1 think I can make a good thing with early vegetables. 1 dare say you'll get that brooch before the year is out, after all, Camilla." " You don't expect to marry me next week ?' ' she said. "Why— why not?" cried Eugene, not with dismay, but a merry, childlike incredulous- ness that she could mean what she said. Camilla said no more. She motioned to get out of the carriage, and Eugene sprang out to assist her. He caught her in his arms and kissed her. "Good-night," he called after her as she went up the path. "I'll be around to-morrow night." Then he drove away, and his merry whistle floated back above the rattle of the wheels and the tap of the horse's hoofs. The next evening, when Eugene came to take Camilla driving, she did not meet him at the door as usual, all ready in her pretty gown and hat. He sat waiting, several people passed, and he saluted them in his ordinary manner, and 136 PRINCE'S-FEATHER they returned it and went on whispering They had heard the news that he had lost his money-that he had never had any money. He had been more confidential over his loss than over his acquisition. He had told every- body at length all the details of the spurious rammg venture, and had not a word of re- proach for those who had deceived him. On the contrary, he seemed to feel nothing but gratitude. "They told me there was a wonderful pros- pect ahead, and so there was," said he Then he would add that if it had not been for that he might have worked in a factory all his days, and never been led to think of raising early vegetables, in which scheme he had even more confidence than he ever had in the mine. He had in his pockets some pack- ages of seeds which he had purchased that afternoon, though he could not plant them until the next spring. He took them out and examined them delightedly as he wait- ed. He had brought them to show to Ca- milla. But Camilla did not appear. He was just about to get out and go to the door when it opened, and the younger sister Jane stood there. 'Hello, Jane," Eugene called out. 137 1# * I* ■ UNDERSTUDIES "Tell Camilla to hurry. Dick doesn't like to stand. The flies plague him. " Jane did not answer, but came painfully hmping out to the carriage. Then she spoke, looking at him with terror and distress, and something else, which was adoration, but he did not know it. "Camilla isn't going to drive with you, Eugene," said she. " Isn't going to drive with me? Why not? Why, what makes you look so pale, Jane? Are you sick?" "No. Camilla isn't going to drive with you, Eugene." "Is she sick?" "No, she isn't sick. She isn't going to drive with you." "Why not?" Eugene stared. Suddenly he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a little pink note "See here," he cried, "I had this letter from Camilla, but I didn't dream she meant it. She didn't mean it, did she?" Jane's face quivered a little, though her eyes were hard. "Yes, she did," said she. "Camilla has always meant it, if she is my sister." "She meant it?" repeated Eugene, in- 138 PRINCE'S-FEATHER credulously. "Why, 1 never dreamed it. She say.s," he continued, eying the letter, "that she can't marry me on account of the change in my prospects. Why, my prospects haven't changed! She says she feels that she is not suited to be the wife of a poor man. Why, I am not a poor man, and my pros- pects haven't changed! Say, Jane, did she tell you about the early vegetables?" Jane did not reply to that. She only re- peated, in a sort of mechanical fashion, "Ca- milla isn't going to drive with you." "Oh, non.sensel" cried Eugene; "of course she is. Go in and tell her, that's a good girl, Jane. Tell her I want to show her the seeds I've got. I guess she won't think my pros- pects have changed, then. Go in and tell her, Jane, do." " I can't,'' said Jane, half angrily, half pite- ously. Her little face was a study of con- flicting emotions. "Well, then," said Eugene, good-humor- edly, "I must go in and fetch her myself. Stand by the horse a minute, will you, Jane?" Jane threw up her hand to stop him. " No, " she cried out. "No, no! It's no use! Oh, it isn't any use, Eugene!" Eugene stared at her. " Why isn't it any 139 UNDERSTUDIES H It I hi It'll be all right use? Of course she '11 go. when 1 tell her." "Camilla isn't at home," faltered Jane. "Camilla isn't at home?" "No, she has gone to Boston. She went over to Barnstable to get he noon train." With that Jane began crying. Eugene was silent for a minute. His bright face had the obscured look of a flower when the shadow of a cloud passes over it, but it soon cleared. He looked at Camilla's sister, who stood before him, balancing herself painfully on her unequal limbs, trying to control her tears, and he laughed with his unconquerable gayety and good humor "Oh, well," said Eugene, "if Camilla has gone to Boston, she has lost a fine drive, and why don't you go instead, Jane'" "Me?" "Yes, why not? Run and put on your hat, for the horse doesn't like to stand. The flies plague him." When people saw Eugene Holding driving with Jane Rose instead of her sister, they could not credit their own eyes. Indeed, several were always incredulous, and believed it to have been Camilla, and the plain giri at- tired in a hat and gown like her beautiful 140 PRINCES-FEATHER sister's did bear at a distance a curious re- semblance to her. It was the same resem- blance which a mis, hapen flower bears to an- other of the same family. They skimmed along the smooth country road. Suddenly Eugene cast a startled look at his companion. " Why, you look like Ca- milla, Jane!" he cried, "I declare you do. Did any one ever tell you so?" "No," gasped Jane, "Well, you do," said Eugene, "and I de- clare, Jane, you look more like her than you did when I sjwke first, I want to show you these seeds I have got. It's odd that Camilla should have thought I have lost my pros- pects," To this iX)or little Jane the prospect of a crown and a throne would have been as noth- ing beside the fact of the prince, Eugene married Jane the ist of September, In the mean time Camilla returned from Bo.s- ton betrothed to another man. She had al- ways more than one string to her bow, Eu- gene heard the news with a face which de- fied the scrutiny of even Jane's jealous eyes. He did not shun Camilla at all; he even jested about her engagement and his own, "You would not have me, Camilla/' he 141 ■•■•*'"*^-''-"'-1 UNDERSTUDIES said, "because you thought my prospects were changed. You were wrong as to that, for my prospects are not changed ; they are better than ever. But that has nothing to do with it. We are both suited, after all. I hear you will have a fine husband, and as for nie, I'm going to be in your family, just the same. I've got your sister, and she's a dar- ling. ' never dreamed what a darling she was, and I would never have known if it hadn't been for you. She is going to make me a wonderful wife, and she looks like you. " Camilla stared at him, but he smiled back at her. He was speaking from the depths of his impregnable and innocently unconscious egotism, which surpassed her own, and she felt herself overmatched. Later on Eugene's wife became an invalid. Her peevishness increased, and even love and happiness could not transform her. Eu- gene would have led a sorry life with her had he known it, but he never did. He firmly believed that he had the loveliest and most amiable wife in the world. His vegetable scheme failed ; then he tried bees, then small fruits. Everything failed except his hope and faith in himself and his future success. That never for a moment failed him. There H2 "Tilt most ami.ihlf r.v/',- hi llie :,vrlj PRINCE'S-FC.ATHER was somethiriK splendid about the man. He becami', as it were, a very Napoleon of his own foi tunes. Nothing in the hand of fate could d junt him. He was invulnerable to circun.stances, half laughed at, half ad- mired by all who knew him. His mother died, his means decreased, he often went without the necessaries of life, his house, which he had so improved, became a shabby travesty on his former fortunes, he grew old, but new mountain-tops of hope never failed to enliven his failing eyes and encourage his faltering feet. Thie garden at the right of the Holding house grr.v old, unplanted, and untended, but the prince 's-feather never failed to come to the front, proudly waving in all its first splendor above the disordered hosts of flow- ers and weeds. And always to the front in tne unfai'ling spring of all his winters of de- feat pressed the man, raising aloft his shining head, which never grew bald, nor gray, nor wise, as raany believed, perhaps justly, hav- ing that inconsequence which is fatal i.:- suc- cess, yet blessed with that fairy gift held by few — the power of keeping unbroken, with all its rainbow hues intact, the bubble of his own life. ARETHUSA nm ARETHUSA JN whatever month Arethusa, the nymph of Ehs, fled from her lover Alphe- us, (he river god, her namesake the flow- er, pursued and overtaken by her des- tiny of hfe, arrived in May. She paused on the border of the marsh, tremulous in the soft spring wind, clad in her single leaf-gown of green, drooping delicately her lovely head, exhaling her sweet breath deeply, like one who pants after running, until it might well have betrayed her pres- ence. But it is seldom that any man sees the flower arethusa, for she comes rarely to secluded places, and blooms to herself. Of all the spring flowers, arethusa IS one of the rarest and the most beautiful of the great wild orchid family to which she belongs; she is the maiden. In that great orchid family are many flowers in semblances of strange and uncanny things, UNDERSTUDIES of fiends, and elves, and dragons, and un- classed beings, but arethusa comes in the likeness of a fair and delicate nymph. There is about her no horror of the gro- tesque and unnatural, only tender, timid bloom, and maybe a gentle dread of love and a repellent curve of her rosy lip. Every spring when arethusa appeared there came another maiden to visit her in her shy fastness. She belonged to a family living on the country road, a mile across the fields. It was a rough way to travel, but the girl trod it with the zeal of one friend hastening to see another for the first time after a long absence. She was small and spare, with a thin, rosy-cheeked face, and a close-braided cap of silky dark hair. Everything about the girl except her hair seemed fluttering and blowing. She wore ruffled garments of thin fabrics, and she walked swiftly with a curious movement of her delicate shoulder-blades, almost as if they were propelling her like wings. Her eyes had an intent expression of joyful anticipation and unrestrained impulse of motion. She wore gay -colored gowns- blues, and pinks, and greens— and she was exquisitely dainty. She was an only 148 .'f H .«' J V ■_ ^\l vHk nfc jfei-' ^^ Ml ud #«, ^4., ■ r/if/t ciiiiu anot/nr muuUn la visit her ' I t fflS ARETHUSA daughter, and her mother's chief dehght was to adorn her with fine needle -work This needle -work seemed the only fully opened gate between the mother and the daughter, for their two natures were so widely at variance that even love could only cramp them painfully together. The mother was a farmer's widow, carrying on a great farm with a staff of hired men and a farmer She was shrewd and emulative, with a steady eye and ready elbow for her place in the ranks. The only fineness of detail about her was her love for daiiuy needle- work and her delight in applying it to the decoration of love. Through the long sum- mer afternoons the mother used to sit beside her window, plying her needle on fine cam- brics, and linens, and muslins, and felt vaguely that by so doing she kept herself more nearly abreast with the object of her lo^• ■ and adoration. Sometimes she used to ,sigh in a bewildered fashion when she saw the girl, whose name was Lucy, flut- tering away across the field, for she was to her incomprehensibly fond of long solitary walks; then she would turn for a solace to the fine hem of her frock, and so seem to follow at a little distance. As for the girl, 149 UNDERSTUDIES when she danced away across the fields, a curious sense of flight from she knew not what was always over her. Her heart beat fast. She half amused, half terrified herself with the sound of imaginary foot- steps behind her. When she reached the green marsh, she felt safe, both from real and imaginary pursuers. Arethusa stood on the border of the marsh, else the girl could not have penetrated to her hiding-place. Once there, she stooped and looked at her. She bent over her and inhaled her fragrant breath, which seemed to her like a kiss of welcome. She never picked the flower. She never quite knew why she did not. "There is such a beautiful flower in the swamp now," she told her mother. "Where is it?" asked her mother. " Oh, in the swamp." "Didn't you pick it?" "Oh no." "Why didn't you?" "1 don't know." "Well, Edson will go after supper and get it for you; maybe there are more," said her mother. "Oh no, no!" the girl cried out, in terror, 150 ARETHUSA "1 wouldn't have it picked for anything, mother. It would die then, and it is such a beautiful flower!" "You are a queer child," her mother said, adoringly but wondcringly. "Let me try on your nev.' dress now; 1 can't sew the sleeves in till 1 do." When Lucy slipped her thin girlish arms into the ruffled muslin, she cried out with delight. "Why, that is just the color of the flower!" she said. "You ought to have it to wear with it to the party to-morrow night, .hen," said her mother. "Oh, mother, 1 wouldn't have it picked for anything!" cried Lucy. Lucy did not want to go to the party, though she would not tell her mother so. She was gently acquie-icent towards all wishes of others. Indeed, the girl herself seemed but a mild acquiescence towards existence and the gen- eral scheme thereof. She had no more vi- tal interest in the ordering of daily village and domestic life than the flower arethusa over in the swamp. With her feet of a necessity in the mould, her head seemed thrust well outside the garden-pale of com- mon life. ISI I m UNDERSTUDIES She had no real mates among girls of her age. Her mother was anxious that she should have, and had made little parties for her, but from the first, even when she was a child, Lucy had never come out of her comer of gentle aloofness. When it came to lovers, the girl's beau- ty and sweetness, and prosfjcctive property had lured many, but one after another withdrew, strangely discomfited. They might as well have sat on a meadow -stone and wooed a violet as this girl. She was unfailingly sweet, but utterly unresponsive. The village young men began to say that Lucy Greenleaf wasn't as smart as some. They could explain in no other way her lack of comprehension of that untaught but self-evident language of love and pas- sion in which they had addressed her. However, when Edson Abbot came, he was persistent, both because he was in- credulous as to any girl being unlike other girls, and because he always seized with a grip, which made his own fate, upon anything which seemed about to elude him. ^ "I wish she would fancy you, Edson, but I'm afraid it isn't any use," Mrs. Greenleaf told him. 152 ARETHUSA "A girl's fancy dcfjends mostly upon a man's," he replied, 'and I can hold inv fancy to the wheel longer than some men I shouldn't have given up like Willy Slo- sum." "It isn't so much because she won't as because she neither won't nor will," said her mother, with a sigh of bewilder- ment. This woman, who had been insen- sibly trailed by all her circumstances of life to regard a husband like rain in its sea- son, or war, or a full harvest, or an epidemic something to be accepted without question if offered, whether good or bad, as sent by the will of the Lord, and who had herself promptly accepted a man with whom she was not in love, without the least hesitation and lived as happily as it was in her nature to live ever after, could not possiblv com- prehend the nature of her own daughter. She was, moreover, with that passionate protectiveness which was the strongest feature of her mother-love, anxious to see this httle ewe lamb of hers well settled in life with some one to shield her from its storms before she herself was taken from her. Edson Abbot, the young man who took charge of the fanii and lived with 153 UNDERSTUDIES them, entirely filled her ideal of what Lucy's husband should be. He was handsome, with a strong masculine description of good looks which appealed to her power- fully. He came of a fine family, but treated the tillage of the earth from a scientific stand-point. He had books and papers about, which were as Greek to Mrs. Green- leaf, but which impressed her still more with his unusual ability to take care of her darling. "I don't want to hurry you, Lucy," she said to her daughter one day. "I know you ain't very strong, but Edson is one man in a thousand, and it doesn't seem right for you to let him slip Uu"ough your fingers, just for want of a kind w>''d. You don't pay any more attention to him than you do to that strange bush at the gate." Lucy looked at her mother, then at the syringa-bush standing, all clothed in white like a bride, at the gate. "What do j'ou want me to do, mother?" she asked. "Do, child? Why, treat Edson Abbot the way any other girl in this town would treat him, and give all her old shoes for the chance." 154 ' 1 .1 * l>o you iiuan for uw to kiss hun f ' 1 .; ARETHUSA The soft red mounted slowly over the girl's face, as she still looked at her mother. " Do you mean for me to kiss him?" whis- pered she. " I don't feel as if I could. " A swift blush came over the older woman's face. She laughed, half in embarrass- ment, half in dismay. "I never saw such a baby in my life as you be," said she; will you never be anything but a baby, Lucy? It scares me to think of leavin' you some day, if you ain't different. You am t fit to take care of yourself, and Edson IS a good man, and he thinks a heap of you, a- ' mother wants to make sure you're t£ . i care of— that's all. Don't vou feel as 1. 'ou might be willing to marry Edson some ume if he asked you, Lucy?" The girl shook and trembled, and eyed her mother with a strange intentness as of fascmated fear. "Oh, mother, I don't want to," she said. " I don't want to marry any- body. I don't like men. 1 am afraid of them. I want to stay with you." "You can stay with me. You can go nght on living with me, dear child. You shall never leave mother as long as she lives, and she will never leave you." 155 UNDERSTUDIES "1 want to just live with you," said Lucy; "1 don't like men." "Girls are apt to feel that way," said her mother, "but you'd come to feel dif- ferent after a while. It's the way people were meant to do; to be married and given in marriage. You know what it says in the Bible. And then you would be sure to have somebody to take care of you as long as you live." "Wouldn't I have God?" asked Lucy, with an indescribably innocent rounding of her soft eyes at her mother. "God sends people to take care of folks," replied her mother, judicially. "Pie can't come down to earth and see to it that your fires are kindled, and your paths shovelled out, and your wood chopped, and all the heavy things of life hfted oil your shoulders. Think of the way Susan Dagget Uves." Lucy was unconvinced and unmoved by all this reasoning. She was much more convinced by the steady broadside of a strong mascuUne will brought skilfully to bear upon her at all times and seasons. Edson Abbot was a most able young man, of great strength of character, and even some talent. He was something of a dip- 156 ARETHUSA lomat in his wooing. He never frightened this fine, timid creature, who never looked at him without the impulse of flight in her eyes, like a rabbit or a bird. He was ex- ceedingly gentle, but she was made to feel always his firm, unrelaxing will towards her, and his demand for her obedience. V/henever he saw that his presei.ce was awakening beyond control the wild im- pulses which always underlie timidity, he pressed her no further; he withdrew, but when she needed him he was always there Insensibly, she began to depend upon him for services which had always come from her mother. Then he had a ready skill to invent some of his own. It was Kdson who conceived the idea of a wild garden for her in a corner of the field, who had a minia- ture pond of lilies made for her for a birth- day surprise. Lucy acquired the habit of looking at him as she had always looked at her mother for confirmation and encourage- ment. He humored her in all her little idiosyncrasies. When her mother feared to have her take a long, solitary- ramble, since a tramp had been seen in the neigh- borhood, he took her part and bade her go, and himself followed, unseen, at a dia- ls? imm UNDERSTUDIES tance to protect her. She came gradually to think of him as always on her side, even against her own mother. When one day he again asked her to many him, though she still looked at him with flight in her eyes, she listened. He pleaded well, for, although he wondered at himself, he loved this slight, frail sirl, who, in comr.nrison with others of her age and time, seemed either to have scarcely arrived upon the same level or to have passed it. Edson got no answer to his suit that night, but the next, coming home from the village, he saw a white flutter at the gate, and Lucy came slowly down the road to meet him. It was the first time such a thing had happened. It was full moon- light, and he could see her face quite plainly when she reached him and paused. It expressed the utmost gentleness and docile assent; only her body, which still shrank away from him, and her little hands, which she kept behind her like a child who will not yield up some sweet, betrayed any- thing of her old alarm. "I will," she said, tremulously; "I will, Edson. Mother says I ought to, and I will." It was not a very flattering acceptance 158 ARETHUSA of a lover's suit, but if the grasp of pos- session be strong enough it precludes the realization of any lack of pressure on the other hand. Edson found no fault with it. His heart seemed fairly to leap forward and encompass the girl, but he no more dared touch her than he would have touched a butterfly whic' had settled uiwn his hand. He could always keep a straight course on the road to his own desires. " You shall never regret it, darling," he said, and so con- trolled his voice, even then, that only a look of startled wonder came into the girl's eyes. Then she walked home with him content- edly enough, fluttering along at his side. There was undoubtedly something about the love and tenderness of thi.s handsome, strong fellow which pleased her after a fashion. She had something in common with others of her sex. She might be cold, if such a negative state could be .lied cold, but she loved, or she had not dwelt on the earth at all. It was only when he pursued her too ardently that she re- belled. Edson and Lucy went in to the girl's mother, who began to cry when she saw them coming. " Oh, you dear child ; mother 159 UNDERSTUDIES \li is so glad," she said, and held Lucy closely and kissed her. After Mrs. Greenleaf had gone to bed, the young man and the girl sat side by side on the door-step in the moonlight. Her little hands were folded in her lap. He looked longingly at them. Suddenly Lucy siwke, fixing her child- like eyes fully uiwn his face. "I found that beautiful flower, for the first time this year, to-day in the swamp," said she. "What flower, sweet?" Edson asked, and took advantage of the unwariness of her thoughts to lay his hand over hers, which fluttered a little. "Ought 1 to let you hold my hand be- cause you are going to marry me?" said she. "Of course. Go on. What was the flow- er, darling?" "That beautiful flower that comes every spring, you know. " "Did you bring it home?" "Bring it home! No, 1 wouldn't pick it for an3-thing in the world." "I'll get you some to-morrow; 1 guess I know the flower you mean. The swamp l6o ARETHUSA is too wet for you to go far. I will find a whole bouquet of those flowers for you." Lucy pulled her hand away fiercely. " If— if you do that, if you pick that flower, 1—1 will never marry you, Edson Abbot." The young man laughed, though a little uneasily. For the first time a doubt as to the actual normal mental state of the giv' came into his mind, then he dismissed it. She was simply, as he had told himself a hundred times, poetical and ultra-imagi- native, a fine elusive moonlight sort of nat- ure, grafted into the shrewd, practical New England stock. She was like a maiden out of a midsummer -night dream, but she was only the more precious for that. " Darling, " he said, " I would no more pick that flower, if you did not want me to do so, than 1 would hurt you." The marriage was fixed for a year later. Mrs. Greenleaf herself pleaded for time. "She is young, and not strong, Edson." she said. "1 think she ought to have time to get used to the idea. Then, too, I want to make her outfit." Edson yielded easily enough. He him- self had doubts as to the wisdom of smft proceeding with Lucy. Then, too, he was L i6i UNDERSTUDIES nv : IM ambitious. He was putting in some hot- houses, and he wished to be sure of a larger income before setthng himself in matrimony. He had put in some money, and was to work the farm on shares. Mrs. Greenleaf grew prouder than ever of her prospective son- in-law. She was thoroughly happy. She stitched away on Lucy's dainty garments, and every stitch seemed one towards the com- pletion of her own wedding attire. She had never been in love herself, and now that came to her for the first time, through her loving imagination over her daughter. Edson Abbot was the sort of man whom she might herscu have loved, and she, being so bound up in unselfish love for the girl, could in a measure grasp all her hap- piness, and so, in a sense, she grasped her lover. As for Lucy, she did not seem unhappy. She was peaceful and docile. She sewed a little on her wedding lothes, she went walking and driving with Edson, she sat with him sometimes a little while after her mother had gone to bed ; she always smiled readily at him with her sweet, evasive sort of smile. She acquiesced, with the great- est docility, in her mother's suggestion that 162 ARETHUSA she should leam something more of house- wifery than she had hitherto known. She spent hours cooking and setting the house in order. She had not done much of that, being delicate, and always shielded by her strong mother; and that had been one of the grounds of complaint against her in the neighborhood. Now, however, she surprised everybody. "She's taken hold as well as anybody 1 ever see," reported the extra help whom Mrs. Greenleaf had hired Thanksgiving week. "She's real smart. She made as good a plum-puddin' as I ever eat." Indeed, there seemed to come to the girl an awakening either of latent cleverness or inherited instincts. She seemed to take a certain pleasure in her new tasks, and she thrived under them. She grew stouter; her cheeks had a more fixed color. Abbot was triumphant. He realized less and less that anything was .anting to the sum of his happiness. Such was the force of his own will that, once on the turn towards possession, he comprehended no other coun- ter-current. The wedding-day was fixed in the month of May. The ceremony was to take place at eight o'clock in the even- 163 rJ' UNDERSTUDIES ing. When that hour came all the guests were assembled, the bridegroom, brides- maids, and minister were waiting, but the bride had disappeared. Her wedding-gown lay on her bed with her veil ; her little white shoes stood prettily toed out side by side, but the bride was gone. Her mother and Edson conferred in Lucy's chamber. "They mustn't know it, if we can find her without it," said Mrs. Creenleaf. Her face was white and set ; she jerked her black- silk elbow towards the floor, indicating the company assembled below. Edson looked palely at her. "Where do you think she is?" he said. "1 don't know. I've looked everywhere. She ain't in the house." For once Edson Abbot seemed dazed. He stared at Mrs. Greenleaf. " You don't think — " he began. "1 don't know but we've made a mistake," said the woman, brokenly. " I don't know as Lucy ought to have had anybody but her mother." Then the young man made an impatient exclamation. "It is too late to talk about that now," he said. " I'm going to find her. " He strode out of the chamber and down 164 ARETHUSA the back stairs, lest the company see him. The sound of their voices floated after him as he slipped out of the house. He did not know where to begin his search, but some in- stinct took him into the field behind the house. He hastened across it, a handsome, stalwart figure in his wedding -suit. His face was pale, his brows bent; he felt as if he had met a wall of gossamer with a shock of ala- baster. The utter docility and gentleness of the girl made this frightful. He felt no alarm for her safety. He seemed to understand that she had set herself against him in a last assertion of her maiden freedom. The sun was low in an ineffable rosy sky, with dregs of violet at the horizon line. One great star was burning through the idling radiance. A fragrant, damp coolness was rising from the earth; a silvery film of dew was over all the grass. He heard in the distance the sound of a cow-bell and a boy whistling. All these familiar sights and sounds served to enrage this man whose feet were set so firmly in the regular tracks of life still further with this savor of the ir- regular and the unusual which had come to him. He felt for the first time a fierce im- pulse to bend forcibly this other will which i6.S UNDERSTUDIES had come into contact with his own. He thought, with a sort of fury, of all those wait- ing people. Then he saw coming towards him across the field, with her singular half- flying motion of the shoulders and arms, the girl whom he was seeking. He strode forward rapidly to meet her, and grasped her roughly by her slender arm. "Lucy, what does this mean?" he asked, frowning down at her sternly. She looked at him with such terror that it intimidated him more than any defiance could have done. He weakened, for, after all, he loved her. "Lucy," he said, gently, "you should not have goie off like this. Don't you know what time it is?" " Is it eight yet?" she gasped. "Of course it is, and after." "I thought I had time," she faltered. "Time for what?" " To see if that flower had come. I thought if it had, it would be gone before we get back. I thought I had time, Edson." "You ought to have picked that flower just this once to wear to your wedding, you think so much of it," said Mrs. Greenleaf. "Oh, mother!" said Lucy. i66 •T/u- liist aMcrlion ' lur iiuiiiUii fi ,yiIu, "■^"""-"-'■^'f w^^ I! ARETHUSA lau'I?" "^ * ''"**' '^^'^■" •>«' '""ther said, Jaughmg m an odd, embarrassed fashion Along wuh her great tenderness towards h" Utle ewe Iamb of hers, she felt that night a «mgular awe and shame and wonder, almos" as .f she herself stood in her ph.ce. ' stairs l^T^'V" '''■■' ''"^^•^"«>''«-'-'"'d"wn. stairs people drew long breaths. S>he looks like an angel," one woman whispered, so loud that L^y ZJdZr There was. m fact, that a Jut the g.r 's J^rf'^r^l""""' among them in he lunun. She apparently did not realise th-,t mtl '^^ ''''■ ^"degroom before the minister as unconscious as arethusa over yon! the flowers was m her checks; in her eves were as mysterious depths of sweetness. "^ She looked as handsome as a picture " the ne,ghbor.s said, gomg home wC The departed. But she don't look quite right somehow Wonder what made her so JeV" They further mentioned this and that trjrl who, m their estimation, would have made a -re reliable hclpmecuhan Lucy (JreStr 167 UNDERSTUDIES However, Lucy seemed, as time went on, to prove them mistaken. She filled her place as wife and mother well to all appear- ances. There were two handsome children, with Edsou'.s sturdy beauty. They bore not the slightest resemblance to their mother. "They are all Edson's," Mrs. Greenleaf used to say. Lucy loved them, and they loved her, yet they went from the first more naturally to their father and grandmother. "They act more like your children than your daughter's," the neighbors said. "Lucy takes good care of them," her mother re- turned, jealously. That was quite true. Lucy neglected nothing and nobody. She performed all her duties with a fine precision. She seemed happy, yet always she had that look of her youth, the look of one who, with her feet on the common earth, can see past common horizons. And every spring she went by herself, when she could, stealing away unnoticed, to see that great orchid in bloom in the swamp for the tirst time that year. She never allowed her childreh to follow her ; if the little things tried to do so, she sent them back. Her husband also for- bade them, indulging, as he had always done, hi • wife in what he considered a harm- i68 ARETHU A less idiosyncrasy, not drea;ii' if that i. had its root in the very depths of her nature, and that she perhaps sought this fair neutral ground of the flower kingdom as a refuge from the exigency of life. In his full tide of triumphant possession he was as far from the realization of the truth as was Alpheus, the fabled river god, after he had overtaken the nymph Arethusa, whom, changed into a fountain to elude his pursuit, he had fol- lowed under the sea, and never knew that, while forever his, even in his embrace, she was forever her own. Every spring this woman, growing old as to her fair, faded face, went to see arethusa, coming upon her standing on the border of the marsh, clad in her green leaf, drooping delicately her beautiful purplish-pink head, with the same rapture as of old. This soul, bound fast to life with fleshly bonds, yet for- ever maiden, anomalous and rare among her kind, greeted the rare and anomalous flower with unending comfort and delight. It was to her as if she had come upon a fair rhyme to her little halting verse of life. hi .'is 11 fl MOUNTAIN-LAUREL TADD'S MOUNTAIN was to the east- L^ ward of the village, consequently the sun rose behind it. When the full radiance crowned it at last, the dewy depths of the shadows were revealed; great mysterious lights as of the very watch-fires of the day gleamed out, and here and there silver threads of mountain torrents dazzled as with diamonds. But the i-turel, of course, could not be seen from the- village; only to the farer in the mountain - ways were" its gorgeous thickets displayed. There was a marvellous growth of it on Ladd's Moun- tain. Young people used to make parties to climb the mountain, and go home laden with great bunches of the superb chintz- patterned blossoms. In the winter its glossy evergreen leaves were in high de- mand for Christmas wreaths and decora- Uons. But Samuel Ladd v , .s the one who set 173 UNDERSTUDIES the greatest value upon it. It had reached for him its highest beauty, being more to him than itself, and having, in a sense, flowered out beyond its own natural scope, in a far-reaching influence upon a human soul. Samuel Ladd actually owned the moun- tain, and was land-poor in the fullest sense. Formerly a wide stretch of fertile meadows on the river- bank below had belonged to his family ; now only the mountain remained. There was scarcely an acre of hay or past- urage on its rocky sides. Even the wood was of scanty growth and undesirable kinds. There was more laurel than anything else on Ladd's Mountain. The Ladd house was half-way up the southern slope of the mountain, where the rough road ended and the rougher path to the summit began. The house stood on a narrow level of cultivated fields, a natural terrace of the mountain. There Samuel Ladd had been bom, and there he had lived his whole life; he was nearly forty years old. He had been one of a large family— six brothers and three sisters— but every one was gone. Only the two oldest sisters had lived until middle life. 174 MOUNTAIN-LAUREL They -two round-shouldered, hopeIes<, patient-faced women-died of conVump: After that he hved alone, except during the busy season of the year, when he hired help from the village. Although a young man, he never sought companions. He never cared for any of the village merry- makmgs. Through the long winter evZ ings and the long stonns he remained alone over h.s one fire, listening to the shriek- ing of the mountain wind around the old farm-house, but he was never, in the fullest sense lonely He posses.sed an imagina- tion that jomed to the other qualities of bram needful, might have made him a great poet lo this man none of his family were really dead but lived in a sublimated and wonderful fashion. His father's poor body lay m the graveyard over in the village, but m his stead sat, for the son's fancy Llif^T '^'^^ '^' '^^^'th, a splen- did, sta wart figure, radiant with the enjoy- ment of life; and instead of the feeble and worn mother was a grand creature as full of strength and grace as a mountain pine And the two round-shouldered women his sisters, who had dragged away their love- 175 UNDERSTUDIES 1 r i h less lives in this mountain solitude, reap- peared to the fair fancy of their young brother in all their lost loveliness and hope of youth. Samuel never imagined them as they had really been but always as they might have been had time and trouble not touched them. One might have wondered if the boy, through hi.s affection, had always seen his lost dear ones as he afterwards pictured them to himself, and had actually never realized their true aspects in other eyes. On moonlight nights in summer, as he sat peacefully on the step of the door overlook- ing the valley, seeing the village below as through the waves of a shifting silver flood, his beautiful young sisters used to come and sit beside him, and, as they talked together, Samuel's sisters were much more companions for him dead than when living, since he was so at liberty to reanimate them into accord with himself. In life, they had paid little attention to their younger brother. They had had their whole strength taken and exhausted by their treadmill of narrow duties, and the slow grinding of their hearts on the wheel of disappointment of the main ends of life. They had become breathing 176 MOUNTAIN. LAUREL as stup.a,, .,fish S::i"''or"h ■" z ^andnjg and feeding places as J" Z, Samuel had invested then, both, when thev were gone and, maybe, when they were s .11 drudg,ng along their narrow paths no eJen in .H ? ^^'--^^oWe. in them, not e^en in their di.n orthodox imamna .nin ?i '"■ '''""'"^ '"'-'^^ °^ them shapes •nfimtely „:ore desirable than those of thrir own conception, and transcended, as loJetn of^n do. the. dreams ev.„ of the^ol" lasUiSrh'TdSTpiror-^^^-'"^ was a strange young girl, such a beau' v girl ooked hke his .jsicr Eunice. crediTstarf r '"^"' ^^''^ ^ '- of about SalTel's ageTuVofS '^"°" *» 177 UNDERSTUDIES and was earning enough money to buy a farm in the village and marry. "She looks as my sister Eunice used to," said Samuel. "Your sister Eunice? Good Lord I" cried the man. "Your sister Eunice? Why, your sister Eunice was as thin as a lath, and stooped till she was most double, and her skin was yellow as saffron, and her eyes like a fish's! That girl look l=ke your sister Eunice Y( ;i , e stun-blind, Sammy. " Samuel gazed at the t'nl. who was seat- ed with her companions on the stone wall across the road, resting before they began ♦he harder part of the ascent. He com- pared her laughing eyes, her sweet, rosy cheeks and lips, her yellow hair, her lovely young shoulders, with his memory of his poor dead sister's, and, wrought upon by some divine alchemy of love, he found the same likeness as before. " 1 should almost take her for Eunice, if I didn't know." he said, with mild persistency. "You're a fool," said the hired man. Samuel made no reply; he was meditat- ing, his forehead knitted over his deep-set, pale -blue eyes. When the party had left their resting-place on the stone wall, and 178 MOUNTAIN. LAUREL had disappeared „p (he mountnin-a,th he went promptly into the house. "Ben't you goin' to turn that hay?" the hired man called after him. wonderingly Ao. said Samuel, gently but decisively after he d.«r closed behind Samuel, then he wh.stled and slouched off to the hay- field at the riKht of the house When the little party returned, Samuel was brushed hjs long, sallow locks, he had put on a clean sh.rt, with an obsolete, raspin", col" W and a t.e which his sister Eunice had made for h.m out of a piece of her black-silk iHT'f ,u ^"" '''''^ one which had belonged to h,s father, and it hung in loose folds on his lank figure. Besides all this, Samuel wore in h.s button-hole a sprig of mountain-laurel I he long-unu.sed parlor was open, and the paper curtains flapM in the wind like flow- ered green sails. The hired man out in the fidd saw them blowing, and made an errand around to the front of the house to get a drink ofwaterfromthewellintheyard. Hegulped u down, w.th long stares over the brim of he dipper. When he passed the parior windows! he cast a shrewd and comprehensive stare 179 UNDERSTUDIES at the interior and went on, whistling again. Samuel had set a greixt glass pitcher of milk on the mahogany card-table in the parlor. He had looked forlornly in his bachelor larder for some dainty to accompany the milk, but there wa.s nothing except cold vegetables, a ham-bone, some eggs, and cheese. Then he had .searched the cellar, and brought up, triumphantly, two little tumblers of currant- jelly which had survived since his sister Eu- nice's time. He set these out on the card- table beside the milk, with six of the best china plates, and six teaspoons. After that he hastened out behind the house and broke of! branches of the mountain-laurel, which was in full blossom. He filled an old copper- gilt pitcher, which was precious, though he did not know it, with the laurel, and stuck the sprig in his coat. Then he was ready. He stood on his front door-step when the four girls and the two young men who made up the p.irty reached it. He was flaming with bashfulness, but resolute in his pur- pose. He invited them all in to have some refreshment. There was a moment's hesi- tation; the girls stared at him, then at one another, with covert smiles. Samuel Ladd's name had become a synonym in the village i8o MOUNTAIN-LAUREL for rustic uncouthncss and abashedness, and this was unprecedeatod. Then the beauty, who was a school-teacher from an- other town, took the lead. She acceincd the invitation promptly, and followed Siimuci into the house and the Ix'.st parlor. Covert smiles became, in the case of two hy.sterical girls, almost oi)en merriment at the sijrht of the refreshment spread Ixfore them, but the school-teacher's manner was perftvt. "Mow delicious!" she cried; "new milk! And 1 don't know when I have had any cur- rant-jelly! It is currant-jelly, isn't it, Mr. Ladd? Yes, 1 thought .so." When 'he quests left, the school-teiichcr bort ,. irn;,,. ,h the beautiful coppci-gilt pitc ici ,\]nJu she had admi-cd, and which Samuel had urged ujion her acceptance. One of the young men carried for her the great bouquet of mountain-laurel. Samuel stood looking after them. He had never been in his whole life so happy after the fashion of other men. That evening he stole down the mountain to the farm-house at the foot where the school- teacher boarded. He was going courting for the first time in his life. He was dressed in his best ; he wore an ancient silk hat which i8i i UNDERSTUDIES had belonged to his father when a young man, he had a fresh sprig of laurel in his button- hole, and he carried a superb bunch of it. But just as he reached the gate of the farm- house where the school-teacher boarded an- other man was going up the flower-bordered path to the front door, and he recognized him as one of the party who had climbed the mountain in the afternoon. He was a stran- ger from the city who was in the village on some engineering business. Samuel waited in the shadow of a bush at the gate until the other man had been admit- ted, then he turned away, but not before Mrs. Cutting, the woman of the house, had espied him. She was crossing the road from the field with a basket of greens, and she hailed him. " Hullo, Samuel !" said she ; " couldn't you get in? The school-teacher is there. 1 should have thought she would have gone to the door. Did you knock?" Samuel stood before the woman, and he seemed to be settling down into his very boots with an abashedness which was almost ignominy. "1 guess 1 won't go in," said he. "1 guess she's got company." Mrs. Cutting laughed significantly. " Well, mebbe you 'd better not, if he's come," 182 MOUNTAIN-LAUREL said she. "It's JVIr. Crane, 1 s'pose. He's payin' attention to her. He comes every night. Mebbe you'd better not go in — still, as long as you've come — " "I guess I won't go in," replied Samuel, with a pathetic, breathless kind of dignity. He was quite pale. He extended the great bunch of laurel. "Mebbe you'll give her these flowers by-and-by, when he's gone," said he. "Land!" cried the woman, "she's got a bunch as big as my head now. I don't see what she can do with any more. But she'll be jest as much obliged to you, Samuel." "All right," said Samuel. Samuel went up the mountain with his despised offering of laurel. When he reached the terrace upon which his house stood, he paused and looked down over the valley, the cultivated fields and gardens, the river, and the white village bej'ond, all waver- ing under the silver film of moonlight into outlines of imaginary beauty. "Seems to me I never knew this house stood so high," he muttered. Without knowing it, he had reached a new spiritual outlook, and even a material landscape seemed farther be- neath his materied mountain. i8j ' Q UNDERSTUDIES There was still a pained expression on his face when he entered his house, but it vanished at once. A moonbeam lay- athwart the kitchen floor, and in it stood, white and fair, and radiant with smiles, beautiful beyond her utmost compass of pretty youthfulness, the same girl who was at that moment sitting with her lover in the farm-house in the valley. "Lord, I forgot that," said Samuel Ladd. "I can always have her this way as long as 1 live." Presently the few people who came up the mountain wondered what had started Samuel Ladd fixing up his house. He took a little hoard from the savings-bank, put the old place in perfect repair, and made some improvements. There was a new portico at the front door, with a chmb- ing-rose trained over it ; lace curtains swayed at the parlor windows. People began to surmise that Samuel Ladd was going to get married, but they were at a loss for the bride. None of them dreamed that the man had refurnished his house, not for a bride, but for a home for the most precious imagination of his soul. And the refurnish- ing did not extend to his house alone, for 184 MOUNTAIN-LAUREL ever afterwards he was dainty, even to punctiliousness, in his attire. No man in the village wore more carefully brushed and mended clothes, or was more religiously shaven, and that, although he lived days and weeks on his solitary farm with no human eye to look upon him. The pretty school-teacher did not return after the close of the spring term. She married the young engineer, and went to live in a distant city. Samuel saw the notice of her marriage in the paper; he cut it out and pasted it on a fly-leaf of his copy of Paradise Lost. He hesitated awhile be- tween that and the Bible, but finally de- cided in favor of the fonner. Samuel had a small assortment of books, mostly of a religious character, with the exception of a history of Massachusetts. He cared especially for the Bible and the Milton. The Milton he pored over for hours at a time, but mostly for purposes of comparison after he began to write himself, which he did soon after the school-teacher left the village. This pretty, usual girl became, without knowing it, in a humble, ahnost ludicrous, fashion, a species of Laura to this rustic, inglorious Petrarch. Almost I«5 UNDERSTUDIES i =:! simultaneously with Samuel Ladd's love there awakened within him that desire which has from all time awakened in such wise — to achieve and succeed and v'n fame for love's sake. This male of his species had found, along with his love, his song, albeit it was a poor and discordant one. He looked at the laurel bushes, and a faint conception of their eternal symbolism came to hv.n. He had no creative talent, so he follo\"Kl the one poet whom he knew, afar off, with pompous halts and hitches of imi- tation. He filled reams of foolscap with trite sentiments and weighty platitudes, in a babel of strange rhymes and sonorous syllables and swollen metres. Samuel was fond of marching up and down, either in his orchard or his parlor, and mouthing his own poetry with solemn emphasis, his hands clasped rigidly behind his back. Sometimes his hired man used to overhear him, and stand aloof and listen, grinning. Gradually the report spread that Samuel Ladd wasn't quite in his right mind, though he seemed sane enough in all his business dealings. Occasionally the yoimg people passing the house on their way to the sum- mit used to hear "amuel declaiming, and 186 I I 'The union lie pored tK'er" MOUNTAIN-LAUREL stopped and stared and nudged one another. These young creatures, travelling along the common track of daily life, with all its wayside weeds as giant trees to their per- spectives, saw much to jest at in the pain- ful and futile efforts of this poor brother to raise himself above their level. When he fell back, or thought him.self above when he was still below, they were keen to see the absurdity of it, being themselves ac- curately balanced to detect any eccentricity of orbit. However, they were kind to him. Often they used to stop, on their way down the mountain, and leave the remnants of their luncheons for the poor old bachelor with no woman to cook the village dainties for him. Samuel was fond of presenting them, in return, with copies of his poems. Samuel never essayed the publication of his poems in a legitimate fashion by a pub- lisher. He spent all his little savings, and went without necessary food, to have them printed at his own expense, in paper-covered volumes, by a local printer. These he used to give away; he never sold them — he was above that. He went about the village leav- ing the book at the doors, and it was the proudest day of his whole life. He knew of 187 ''t it 1 1 UNDERSTUDIES nothing wanting, not even the girl whom he loved. He was conscious of possessing something beyond uer, which still included her— that which he had made of himself for her sake. One May, long after the pretty school- teacher had married and gone away, she came back to the village, and one afternoon she joined a party for climbing the mountain and gathering laurel. Samuel, sitting in his doorway, saw her, and never knew her; and she had forgotten him. She had grown old, and all her pretty individualities, her dia- mond facets of character, had been rubbed smooth into utter commonness by the friction of an utterly common life. Her youthful bloom had gone, and something more— the essential perfume which had crowned and winged the bloom. Samuel looked at her as she passed, then he turned away; and she looked at him, and turned away also. "That's Samuel Ladd," said a woman at her side. "He writes poetry; he's sort of crazy." " He looks queer," assented the other. She had seen neither Samuel as he was, nor be- side him her own glorified image, that self to which she could never attain on earth, fade- i88 MOUNTAIN-LAUREL less in transcendent youth, while she, coarse and common, passed on. Samuel held a volume of his poems in his hand; he had been reading them aloud to himself. Utter dross though they might be, they had yet not failed in the mission of perfect art. They had filled a soul with the conviction of work well done and the elation of success. After all, the worker is more than the work, and he who does his best with poor tools may crown himself with genuine laurels. Samuel had planted laurel closely around his house, and his windows were almost hid- den by it. All Samuel's rooms were, sum- mer and winter, in a green twilight with the laurel, as was perhaps his mind. He loved it at all times, but especially in its blooming season as now. Between those great bushes, resplendent with their white and rosy stars and evergreen leaves, sat the poor poet and lover, who had fed all his life upon the honey in his own soul in lieu of any other, and perhaps nourished himself to his own waste, but to his own hap- piness. No happier soul was there in the valley below, no happier soul ever came May- ing up the mountain-side. Sitting there be- neath the shade of his splendid symbolic 189 UNDERSTUDIES flowers, with his fadeless ideal to wife, and his consciousness of an artist soul invincible by any poverty of art, he was one of the hap- piest crowned heads in the world. ind ble ap- PEONY Ii1 I; 'I iTTTT'' PEONY -pHE peony returned with the rose to her old haunt in the garden The garden was m the front yard; the long rectangle on either side of the front walk was laid out in box-bordered beds of flowers prominent among which were the rose^ and the peonies. The roses were the old- fashioned kinds-great single red and white ones and blushing-roses. The peonies were themselves exaggerated copies of the roses hke coarse country wenches following in the (rack of the queen, clad in a tawdry, flaunt- ing imitation of her fine, royal splendor Ihey, too. were colored red and a delicate rose and white, and their great petals curved hke the rose's, but they had nothing of her subtle fragrance. However, Arabella Lam- bert did not believe that. To her the strong sweetness of the rose-colored and the white ones, and the simple rxlor r,f the red, full of N 193 UNDERSTUDIES the healthy virihty of the flower, was much finer than the scent of the rose. She was fond of plunging her face into the great inflorescence of color, and inhaling with loud sniffs of rapture. "Folks that want to smell of roses, can," she was wont to say. " Roses to me are sickish, and apt to give a head-cold. To my mind, the peony goes far beyond them, and it is enough sight handsomer flower, too. Roses is short-Lived, and apt to be eat by rose-bugs. Look at them blushing -roses; it's seldom they ever blow out perfect; but look at the peonies I" The neighbor to whom she was descant- ing would profess admiration, if she were given to polite concealment of her own \iews, but her outside comment would be different. " No wonder Arabella Lambert likes peonies better than roses," she said; "she's as coarse as one. Arabella is dreadful coarse; she always was." All around Arabella lived extreme types of her countrywomen, thin and pale, with closely shut, thin lips, delicately sharp chins and noses, and high, narrow fore- heads, from which the hair was strained back with fierce pulls of nervous, veinous hands. They looked like ascetics, and 194 PEONY were, nourishing their souls only on un- watered and unsweetened doctrines and aws and their bodies on bread and pastry In them the fine and intense strain of New England obtained in full force. They were delicate yet more enduring than their sturdy husbands and sons. The women in the vii- age always outliv«l the men. Some of these women had lived so long and worked so hard that they se. ned like automatons kept in motion by some past .Tort of the will. They were the survival of the type of women who had breasted the eariy hard! Sr ,u^' '"""'■■y' '^'^' ^^^ were getting thin but they endured through wilhintm':' ''-' ^^'""^ --"- °^ «PJ" To such women as these Arabella Lam- bert was an anachronism, belonging to an- other time and type. She was as foreign as •f she had been bom at the antipodes Th!s great, overblown, rosy, easy, sen.suous crea" Z J u^"^ "^'^ ^^'="'^' she spent or saved who never cared, nor even knew Trnot" 'h" ';r "^^ '^'^' -'i ^--S or not, who did not even seem much con- cerned as to the salvation of her immortal soul, was to them a perpetual scandal aS 195 I; UNDERSTUDIES rock of offence. Then, too, her lack of self- repression, her exuberance of emotion before every stress of life, whether of joy or sorrow, shamed them with a curious vicarious shame. They blushed as they spoke in mortified whispers of this or that wliich Arabella Lambert had said or done. But Arabella herself never dreamed of their state of mind, and, if she had, would never have been disturbed by it. Her own life was enough for this woman, and yet it was an exceedingly simple li.'e, consist- ing of little more than the simplest and most primitive delights. Arabella loved dearly to sit on her door-step, in the shade of her green-hooded porch, and doze; she loved to sleep all night in her high feather- bed in the south chamber; she loved to eat some simple fare which did not require much labor to prepare; she loved to potter around her flower-garden; and she loved to give things away. Araliella was as prodigal of her belongings as the peony out in the yard of its bloom. She had no power of reserve, whether of herself or her earthly possessions. When an afflicted neighbor came to her with an account of her trials, Arabella gave way to such wild 196 PEONY sympathy of grief that the woman was abashed and alarmed, and turned comforter herse f ; and she gave so lavishly to tramps that they avoided the house, thinking she "^uu'^^.A"^^^^^ "^'^'^ «•"""= i" a fine old house filled with a goodly store of furni- ture still, though it had been considerably diminished. Arabella had had some mon- ey m the bank, but she had given most of It away. She had never married, and it was confidently believed that she had never had a chance. As one woman astutely remarked, if any man had ever asked Ara- bella to marry him, she would have felt so badly to say no that she would have had him whether she had wanted him or not Arabella was believed never to have refused any Imng creature anything which she had the power to give, and she had had ample opportuni ies. Though Arabella had no nearer relatives than one niece, her sister's daughter, she had a host of far-away ones. This tender heart had been besieged for years by an army of cousins, twice and thrice removed and especially the Stebbinses. Years be^ fore, Arabella's second cousin Maria had 'named a Stebbins. He had at the time 197 UNDERSTUDIES four children by a former marriage, and Maria two. From this marriage came four more children. Now the three sets of chil- dren had long ago married and had families, and there had been few deaths, consequent- ly the Stebbins family, with ramifications, numbered a multitude. Strangers were be- wildered by the number ol Stebbinses in the village. Most of them were in strait- ened circumstances, if not actually needy, and they made the most of Arabella, though they met with one obstacle in the shape of her niece, who was a smart, sharp, single woman, a school-teacher in a town seven miles distant. This niece had some property of her own and was earning a good salary, and so was herself in no need of Arabella's assistance. She kept as sharp a watch as possible that her aunt should not be robbed by her impecunious rela- tives. She used to say much about it to Ara- bella. " You know. Aunt Arabella," she would say, "that you h .e not enough yourself to give -so much. One of these days you will be stranded without a cent, and nobody will thank you for it. There is no sense in your u-iving so much." "Erastus Stebbins has been real sick and not able to work, Sarah," the old woman 198 PEONY replied, "and Abby Ann came over here and cried." " Let her cry, " replied the niece. She had a delicate face which could be pitiless. "She felt dreadful bad," said Arabella, and she wiped her own eyes, overflowing at the recollection. "I'd die before I'd come crying to any- body," said the niece; "but that isn't all. You gave away all the wood on the south wood lot to Sam Stebbins last week. Aunt Arabella." " I had to, I really had to, Sarah," replied Arabella, eagerly. "Samuel's son Billy, he'd been and signed a note, and couldn't get enough money to pay, and Sam, he had to help him out, and it took every cent he had, and they were actually suffering for wood. They actually were, Sarah, and there was Billy's wife with that little baby." "Let them suffer, then. Better to suffer tlian to steal." "Oh, Sarah, it wasn't stealing." " Yes, it was. The door of your heart is always open, and they walk in and take ad- vantage of it," returned Sarah, stoutly. "But they would have suffered, Sarah- Billy's wife and that little baby." 199 1: M w UNDERSTUDIES "Let them suffer; it doesn't hurt peopk to suffer." *^*^ "But you wouldn't want that httle baby to freeze, Sarah?" "I guess they could have kept that little baby warm without stealing your wood," replied Sarah, contracting her lips. She had come over to spend a week of her vacation with her aunt, her school having closed earlier than usual on account of the measles. The next week she was to visit a cousin; then she was going on an excursion to the mountains. " You had better go with me. Aunt Arabella," she said, presently. "It would do you good, and it isn't going to cost much— only twenty-five dollars— and we can be gone ten days. Lottie White, the grammar-school teacher, is going with me, and you could go, too, just as well as not.'' Arabella laughed. Her enormous bulk quite filled up the doorway where she sat. Sarah was in a straight chair on the porch beside her. Arabella gave a facetious glance at the swelling slant, unbroken by any waist- line, which swept from under her double chin to her widely planted feet in their cloth slip- pers. " I'd look pretty climbing mountains wouldn't 1?" said she. Then she laughed 200 • rj look fir.tly climbim 'S mounlains, wouldn't It' i\ ! PEONY flS' fu^'^T^^ '^^* '='>"^'*'«= disturbing the depths of her great body Sarah did not laugh in response. She had not a quick sense of humor. Other O^n heir deeds. She could discover .no- bves for everyth,ng else with greater suc- cess. You would not have to climb, of course, she rephed, gravely. "You could nde eveo^where. Of course, you could not climb mountams. Aunt Arabella " "Well, 1 guess I couldn't go, anyway. 1 m just as much obliged to you for thinkin' otit, said Arabella." "If it is the money," said Sarah, slowly I must say I don't feel right about your gomg without things to give to an able-bod- ied man hke Sam Stebbins, but I've got ^ough, and it's only twenty-five dollars- "Oh no thank you; you're real good, Sarah, but I couldn't take it, nohow. I've got the money; it ain't that. It's only be- cause I don't think it's best." "Why don't you think it is best?" asked the niece, bluntly. Arabella colored all over her great face of overlappmg curves like a rose or a peony. 201 UNDERSTUDIES " There are reasons," said she, with a curious attempt at dignity. "Well," said Sarah, coldly, "I don't want to pry into your secrets. Aunt Arabella, but I think it would do you good, and I see no sense in your goint,' without everything for the sake of the shiftless, begging Stebbinses." "Now, Sarah, Eben Stebbins ain't shift- less; nobody ever said he was. He's always worked hard, but he's been dreadful unfortu- nate. He's had fire and sickness, and he's sick himself. Look how lame he is with the rheumatism, poor man!" "Well, I wasn't saying anything against Eben Stebbins," admitted Sarah; "but if he comes begging, he's no better than the rest of them— a man begging of a woman!" " He hasn't, Sarah," Arabella cried, eager- ly. " He hasn't said a word, but I know if he has a wheel-chair, he could get around in it. But nobody has said a word about it. That was what I thought I'd use the money for. Poor Eben has had a dreadful hard time, and I'm dreadful sorry for his daughter Minnie, too." "What about her?" " Nothing, only she was going to get mar- ried to that Leavitt boy, and he'd just got his 202 PEONY nice new little house built, and he nad enough money saved up to buy the furniture, and the bank he kept it in has failed up, and he's lost every dollar, and they've Kot to put off the weddin'. i:i)en offered to take them in with him, but the young man has got to live on his farm; you know it's three miles out of the village. Minnie said she didn't mind if there wasn't any furniture except the little her father could spare her— he hasn't got much, you know— but the young feller is real proud, and says she sha'n't live so, and he won't borrow. They feel dreadfully about it, and I should think they would. I've al- ways heard it was a bad sign to put off a weddin'." " Well, I don't sec what you can do about it," said Sarah. She looked suspiciously at her aunt, who fidgeted a little and made an evasive answer. " I don't know as I can do anything," said she, meekly. She was rather afraid of her niece. She was, on the whole, relieved when she went away the first of the following week. She found it very peaceful to sit undisturbed in her disordered room, and not have Sarah raising a dust with the broom and making her move to facilitate the sweeping. She did 203 ; t| UNDERSTUDIES not like a way Sarah had of always shutting the doors. She loved her doors to be open, and her windows. She felt aggrieved when Sarah insisted on having the windows on the sunny side of th house shut, though she said nothing. Tb minute Sarah was gone Arabella waddled about softly and ponder- ously, flinging wide open doors and windows to admit anything which chose to enter- sunshine, winds, flies, stray cats— anything. Arabella minded nothing, not even bats or bumble-bees or hornets. She made every- thing which chose to enter her home welcome, being instinct with a spirit of hospitality which included the httle as well as the great. Arabella was no heartier in her welcome to the minister than to the old ragman to whom she sold no rags, but with whom she shared her dinner. It was not very much of a dinner. Arabella did not get up very elaborate repasts, but they were plentiful. She boiled vegeta- bles or greens, she had baker's bread, eggs, and fruit, currants in their season, and apples. Arabella had quite an orchard. The village boys had the run of it It was only through their generosity, which spared Arabella some of her own bounty, that she had any apples from her own orchard. The boys used to 204 i' Arabella had (juile an oitliaiU" « PEONY pick some for her, and bring them to the house, and she was exceedingly grateful, and never once thought that they had dis- charged any obligation towards herself by so doing. Once she spoke to one of the boys' mothers about it, and the woman looked at her wonderingly. "Why, 1 don't see that it is anything for you to thank them for," said she. "1 told Franky that he and Al- bert and George ought to go to work and pick your apples for you, you had been so good about giving them so many. Franky has come home with his ix)ckets stuffed day after day. 1 shouldn't have thought you would have had enough to make any pies." "Oh, I never make any pies ; it's too much work," said Arabella; "and the boys have been real good. They have brought ever so many to me. Sometimes 1 have been afraid they have robbed themselves." "Good land!" cried the woman "Whose orchard is it?" When she went home she told her sister she didn't know as Arabella Lambert was altogether right. The village children descended lilce a flock of birds upon Aralxilla's garden, and pillaged it at their will. They did not seem to care as 205 I ! UNDERSTUDIES much about the peonies as about the other flowers, like roses or pinks. Their mothers told them not to bring those great coarse things home; they were in the way. Ara- bella was glad it was .so. She would have suffered had the children been too free with the peonies ; she might have forbidden them. Her one streak of parsimoniousness showed Itself in the case of those great fully blown flowers. She used to watch jealously lest the children trample them. The peonies were in bud the week after Sarah went away, and in full blossom the week after that, and they still endured when Sarah came up the walk one afternoon about five o'clock. Arabella put on her glas.scs and stared in a bewildered fashion at the .straight, slim genteel figure m the black India silk coming up the box-bordered jjath. She herself was sitting as usual in her dd at her nicxe, and her ex- pression of dismay deeix;ned. "1 wouldn't bother aljout them, Sarah, "said she, frankly. "Seems to me 1 wouldn't. It would be a good deal of work, and you must be tired out." "I am not half .so tired when I am doing something," replied Sarah, firmly. She made as if to enter, but her aunt Arabella did not move aside to allow her to d.) .so. "1 guess I'll go in and lay aside my bon- 207 'r ' W\ UNDERSTUDIES Still Arabella did net," remarked Sarah, not move. Sarah looked at her in growing surprise, but she .spoke easily enough. "I guess if you will just move a little, Aunt ArabeUa " said she, " then I'll go in." Arabella did not stir. She sat perfectly still, filling up the doorway. Her eyes were fixed upon a great clump of red peonies be- side the path. The thought came to Sarah that possiljly her aunt's hearing was failing. She spoke m the loud, clear, imi)erative voice which she used in the school-room. "If you will move a little, please. Aunt Arabella," said she, " 1 will go in and lay aside my bonnet " Arabella did not move. The look of aston- ishment on Sarah's face deepened to alarm She touched her aunt, leaning over her, and shook her gently by the shoulders. " Why Aunt Arabella," she shouted, "what i.s the matter? Can't you hear anything I say? "Yes, Sarah, I hear every word," replied Arabella, unexfxxtc-dly. "Well, then, why don't you move a little and let me go in? I want to take off my bonnet." 208 PEONY Arabella sat immovable, with her eyes riv- eted upon the clump of peonies. Then Sarah straightened herself and stood stanng at lier aunt in consternation and astonishment which almost convulsed her si-3dy face. Arabella wore an old-fashioned mushn covered with a large pattern in purple cross-bar.s, between which were little bunches of pink roses. This voluminosity of purple mushn o^er .Vrabella's bulk filled up the doorway completely with the apparent light- ness of a fi,mer. Out of the soft frills of the mus m arose Arabella's creasy neck and her large, rosy, imperturbable face. Noth- ing could exceed the obstinacy of gentleness and mildness on that face ; it was a power of a kmd to stop an army. Sarah continued to stare. "Don't you want me to go in. Aunt Arabella?" she asked, finally. Arabdla made no reply, but her face witched. It was the first time in her whole life that she had ever held the door of her house against her own kith and kin. "Well," said Sarah, in a high, thin voice that trembled .slighfl", " if you don't wcuit me to go m your house, perhrips I had better go home only it is tw late for the stage-coach, and If I go to any of the neighl>jrs to stay all o 209 I UNDERSTUDIES night, they may think it strange that I don't stay here." Arabella made no reply to that. She was afraid of her niece witn the uni-casoning and uncalculating fear of a child. She held that door, knowing all the time that it was a futile measure, that her niece must finally enter, that the evil day was only postiwned. Sarah stood for a moment longer undecided. Then she gave her bonneted head a toss and straight to the sitting-room windows she went. They were wide open, and the shut- ters thrown back. Sarah gave a long look through a win- dow, then she turned to her aunt, who kept her eyes fixed on the clump of peonies as if she found strength and sui)ix)rt therefrom. "There are only that little card-table, and the shovel and tongs, and two chairs, and a cricket left in the sitting-room," said Sarah. Arabella said nothing. Sarah went to a iiarlor window and raised herself on tiptoe to look therein. Then she turned to her aunt. "All the parUir furniture is gone," .said she. Then Arabella siwke, "I knew how you'd feel about it," .said she, "and 1 hated 210 PEONY to have you know, but Minnie she came of W ''"''/•''^."''^'J- She didn't think of havin my fum.ture, but she cried, and the next mommg I got J„nas Tibbets and he loaded the furniture into his ex-' press -wagon and carric-d it over to the new house. ''^« the imrlor furniture, and almost all the sutmg-room gone." sa.d Sarah, slowly, as It she were mformmg herself. han two at a tm.e ever come into the sit! Tr'u'.f"'' ' '^^" «'' °" the cricket-' said Arabella. ' fu^-tlr""" ^'"" '•^"" '""^ ^•'-"'-- " The srjare-chamber furniture, I suppo.^er- Ves, I did. You know I never have any company to stay all night, except yoi, Sarah; and you know you always like the east roou, bc-tter; that ain't touched." Well," said Sarah. grin.Iv. "I sha'n't have to do i,p the s,«re-chamber spread and curtauis." sa^A'-''. 7"''' *"'*'■" ^''' ^ ■^'«'" ^'f ^v-ork." said Arabella, eagerly. 211 UNDERSTUDIES Sarah stepped forward. "Well," said she, "it was j'our own furniture, and I suppose you had a right to do what you wanted to with it vVhen you have given away the roof off v ur house, and the clap- boards and shingiL>s, and the floor -boards, as you'll be sure to do before you die, you can come to my house, I suppose, and I won't sit in the door ^d keep you out. Now, Aunt Arabella, if that was the reason why you didn't want me to go in, I know now, and there is no reason for keeping me out any longer. If you will move a little now, I'll go in and lay aside my bonnet." Arabella moved, half rising, and the slim, black silk-clad figure of her niece pressed past her into the house. Then Arabella sat down again, and a beatific expression was on her face. She looked like a child who had escaped a scold- ing, and was radiant and triumphant in the supremacy of its own way, and beyond that look was another, which comes only to the face of the giver, out of all the faces of earth. She sat there filling up the doorway with her vast bulk, overspread with waves of purple-barred muslin, a woman with no 212 PEONY fine development of imagination or intellect a woman whose whole scheme of existence was on hnes so simple that they wej f^ coarse, hke those of the ,x-onv beside the Sh! Z I ^'°''""'" °^ ""'^'' revelation, ^he only knew enough to bloom like the t mattered not, so long as it was to her fa^ thest compass, and to yield unstintingly all ^r largess of l.fe to whomsoever crosst^ he path with a heart or hand of need for it. MORNING-GLORY MICKOCOPY KESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) A /-APPLIED ItvMGE In ^^^ 1653 Eost Moin Street ^^S Rochester, New York 14609 USA '^St (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^= (716) 288 - 59B9 - ro« MORNING-GLORY All over the stone wall in front of the •'* Bemis house the morning-glories thrived, and not only there, but on the trel- lis-work over the east door. They even trailed along the ground their garlands of purple, and rosy, and white blossoms, when support failed them. The morning-glory prefers a prop for her tender growth, but such is her rapture of youth and morning that she blossoms anywhere. From the face of the rock, from the depths of the dewy grass, from tree, and trelUs, prone in the dust of the highway at the mercy of the feet of men, the morning-glories shout out their great silent chorus of triumph through a hundred trumpets of delicate bloom. The morning-glories had always been a distinctive feature of the Bemis place. Madam Bemis, as she was called, was very fond of them. Madam Bemis was the daughter of 217 UNDERSTUDIES if I I f'.'i old Squire Bemis, and she had married her • own cousin, the son of Minister Dcniis. Now, squires were out of date, and even ministers of as many years' settlement as her hus- band's father had lost prestige, but there was still recognition on the part of the vil- lagers for the descendants of such notables, hence the "Madam Bemis." They were emulous of her notice, and they had a pride which was like feudal loyalty in Alexander. Alexander's father had died when he was a child too young to remember him clearly. The little boy always had a face appear to his mental vision whenever the dead man's name was mentioned, but whether it was true or not he never knew. This vision was not in the least like a portrait of his father, done crudely in oil, which hung in the best parlor. This portrait represented his father as a very young boy, with a face as puffed out with a wind of innocent gayety as a cherub's. He was dressed in the artlessly grotesque fashion of a former generation, in an awkward little nankeen suit, with a wide frill around the neck, and strapped shoes. " I could never see the least resemblance to your father after he was grown up, in that portrait," Alexander's mother used to say ; " but I suppose he 218 MORNING-GLORY must have been like that when he was a child, for a ^ood artist painted it. Your father nc\cr looked in the least like you, Alexander." When Madam Bemis said that she would gaze up at her son with a perfect assent of admiration with which she had never gazed at his father. Her married life had not been altogether satisfactory to her. I ler husband had been something of a disappointment. He was very much a Bemis, as was she, and there had been a constant, wearying echoing of familj' traits. "I wish, Addison, when you lose your temper, you would not lose it in exactly the same way that 1 d" " she told her husband once. The tastes of the two had been so similar that they gave rise to that curious discord which may result from harmony. With such an identity of hereditary tastes, there was at once a loss of individuality, and a maddening intensifying of it as in a convex mirror, and the result was either weariness or a mon- strous egotism. In the woman's ca.se it was weariness; in the man's, egotism. The woman, when her son came, had for the first time in her life a distinct interest in some- thing outside herself, and yet belonging to 219 i« UNDERSTUDIES her. She did not have to admire or dislike in the child her own appearance and traits, or her husband's. He was essentially dif- ferent from both parents, or appeared to be so. Certainl", he differed from them physically. Both Alexander's parents were small, with fair hair, and he was exactly the reverse. Madam Bemis said that he resembled her own father, who had not been a true Bemis, but had inherited from the mother's side! "My father was the first dark Bemis who ever lived, so far as I know,'" she said, "and he was like my grandmother, who was a Morril, and was said to have Indian blood. Alexander seems more like father than he does like me or his own father. ' Then Madam Bemis concluded, as she always concluded eveiything, all her paragraphs of hfe, with, as it were, a little tail-piece of a look of boundless admiration at Alexander. Alexander was accustomed to that look, and not on his mother's face alone. Every- body whom he met looked at him in that fashion. He was never at any time par- ticularly elated by it. He merely acquiesced in it as his rightful due, and had done so from the first. Alexander had been a very precocious child, and not in the least slow 220 J.' •He used to view his small ima^-e MORNING-GLORY to recognize his own relation to his environ- ments. Long before people thought that he understood, when they talked before his face of his beauty and brilliancy, he was fully ahve to the situation. "Oh, that baby can't understand what we say," one woman replied to another who remonstrated with her for her outspoken admiration in the presence of the child "He doesn't know what p beauty he is, do you, darling?" But Alexander, who coxdd speak few words, and understood many, and who, be- sides, had as keen an intelligence for varia- tions of voice and expressions of face as a dog, would look at her with his wonderful contemplative black eyes and understand perfectly. He knew that he was a beautiful, marvel- lous httle boy; that no other child in the vil- lage could equal him; and everybody ad- mired him. He used to view his small image in the mirror with no vanity, but entire compre- hension of its beauty. There had really never been such a beautiful child as Alex- ander in the village, or perhaps in the State There was somethmg about tViat noble, 221 I 'I f" 1 ! I? - if' ' UNDERSTUDIES Rcntlc little face liKhtcd with those >rreat black stars of eyes, and that little fiirtire full of the touchir.}; majesty of innocence and childhood, which made a woman's heart ache with love and desire, and a man's with ambition and desire. " That boy is going to Ix- something, if he lives," they said. They rerwalcd his bright sayings, which were many. He was a tal- ented child. When he went to school he soon outstripix;d those of his own age, and graduated the youngest of his class, and was ready for college at ;, -ventcen. Madam Bemis went to college with Alex- ander. She could not bear her be"-itiful, noble son to be lonq, out of her sight. The Bemis place was shut up during the long terms, and Madam Bemis hved in the college town, and made a home for Alexander. But when the morning-glories were in blossom the two were home again, and Alexander, resplendent wiih new clothes, and new stat- ure, and new knowledge, was passing in and out of the east door, under the trellis, purple, and rosy, and white with the trumpet-shaped flowers. The admiration of Alexander grew and grew. He was making a brilliant record at 222 ORNING-GiO.IY college; he seemed to Ix- inovini; on an as- cendent scale in everytiiiiiK— mind, look; and attairi.nunts. Peot)le Ix'^an to thinl' that he mi^ht in time Ix.'come almost any- thinc: rei)resentative, senator, i)erliaps even President, at least tfovernor of the State. His mother had the fullest faith in it. " There is no reason why vou cannot lie anythmR that you want to be, Alexander," she woidd say, and Alexander would fla.sh ufion her one of his brilliant, contemplative looks, and make no dissent. There was in reality somethintr sublime in the boy's con- .sciousness of his own jxiwer. It was com- pletely reiriovcd from v;mity. It was a sim- ple, ingenuous recognition of the truth. "Alexander Bemis does think he's awful smart," said one sharp-tongucd, di.s.senting young girl to another, who retorted : " Well, he IS awful smart." "I would rather he didn't know it," .said the first. "Then he wouldn't be :5right," .said the other. Alexander was worshipped afar olT by the young girls of the village, but he made a sweetheart of none of them until he had graduated from college. He came home 223 11 UNDERSTUDIES laden with honors. He had won prize after prize. He had been mentioned in the news- paiiers. Madam Uemis was so proud of him that hfe was to her like a triumphal march. If the church-bell in this httle New England village, which never rang in the interest of any individual, unless his house was on fire or he was on his way to his tomb, had pealed for joy when Alexander came home from col- lege, she would have considered it quite ap- propriate. What demonstration in greeting of such magnificent promise as that of her son could be out of place? However, although the bell was not rung, Alexander was made much of in his native village. Young as he was, he was elected a member of the school committee, and was made chairman of the selectmen. At every public meeting he was called upon as "our talented and promising young townsman" to speak. He sat upon the platform with the local dignitaries; his name, prinked out with laudatory adjectives, appeared often in the local paper. Alexander at that time could scarcely sit down, or stand up, or eat his breakfast but it was made the subject of admiring chronicle. He could not speak without a listening hush. He held undis- 224 MORNING-GLORY puted moral sway over the whole vill »ge but his head was not in the least turned' Me bore all his honors with the magnif- icent ease and unconcern of one born to a crown. The year after Alexander graduated Aman- da Doanc came to live in the village. Her tather was a rich manufacturer, who bought out the little factory, and established a i- gantic plant, which might in time con- t the small town into a city. His daughter was a beauty of a coarse, emphatic type. iVot a hne wavered, not a color was indetermi- nate. Her loud, clear voice never faltered in the expression of her opinions. Alexander lost his heart to her at once. The village people quite approved of the match, but Madam Bemis hesitated. For the first time a doubt as to whether the king could not do wrong seized her. When her son told her of his engagement, she looked at him uncer- tainly. "Why, what is the matter, mother?" Alexander asked, with wonder. " She is not like the women of our family," Madam Bemis replied, falteringly. Alexander laughed. "She is a lady at heart," he replied, "and as for the rest, she P 225 ■J i UNDERSTUDIES can acquire it. Not that 1 am not entirely satisfied," he added, generously. But Amanda Doane acquired nothing. She remained a fact, settled and incontro- vertible. Her period for receptivity had passed. Although she was still young, her character had formed and developed to a perfect flower of resistance to all outside influence. The engagement was not to be a long one; the wedding-day was set. Then one after- noon Amanda appeared at the Bemis house. Such was her almost brutal directness of action when her mind had once formed a pur- pose, that she came, rather than send for Alexander. " 1 don't care if you stay in the room," said she to Madam Bemis; "I would just as soon you heard." Then she confronted the two, the splendid young fellow and his adoring mother, and made her little speech, which was full of rev- olutionary eloquence. It was the revolt of a daughter of the people — of the modem con- ditions of things against all inactive su- periority. The girl did not speak good English, but she spoke with a force which made her own language. "Now, you look at here, Alexander Bemis," said she. "I've 226 MORNING-GLORY promised to marry you, and I'm most ready clothes all bought an' everything 1 don't know what you will say, an' I don't know what folks will say, and I can't help it, and 1 dont care. I'm goin' to back out. I've got to look out for myself, and my father's money, that he's worked so hard to get with- out a dollar to start with. I'm goin' to back out. I ve hked you, an' I like you now, an' It ain t none too easy for me, an' I've laid awake some nights thinkin' of it but it's better for both of us. I ain't goin' to marry you. You're good and steady and hand- some, and you're awful smart, but you ain't doneanythin' but talk smart, an' look smart an be smart; you ain't never acted smart' an I don t believe you ever will. You haven 't done anythin'. You've jest laid right back on your reputation, an' that's what you're gom to do right along. I'd rather have a man with less smartness than you that can use what little he's got. There's no use I'm goin to back out." The girl's voice broke a little; there were tears in her indignant blue eyes; her red lips pouted into sobs, which she resolutely restrained. Alexander towered over her pale and magnificent and quite silent. His 227 UNDERSTUDIES mother shrank into a little, faintly breathing, wide^yed heap in a comer of a sofa. Aman- da pulled the engagement ring, a little ancient pearl hoop, an heirloom in the Bemis family, from her finger. " Here," said she — " here's your ring. I'll always wish you well." Alexander took the ring between a long thumb and forefinger — Amanda's were short and stubbed— and looked at it, then at the girl, with a sort of pained and stately acqui- escence. " Very well, Amanda, " he replied, quite calmly, but his lips were white. Gen- tleman bom and bred, diametrically different by nature and training, he had been very fond of this girl, who defied, with her coarse but splendid vigor, all laws and mles of growth and advance to which she did not herself subscribe. "Why ain't the kind of EngUsh I speak as good as yours?" she had demanded of him once. They would always have spoken two languages had they lived together for a life- time, but that had not seemed of much mo- ment to him. She had, perhaps, supplied some inherent need of his nature, and been to him a sort of spiritual trellis-work, which had been essential for his future growth 228 MORNING-GLORY -'^™anda soon marriwl o father. Alexander used „f! . ^ ^^ driving in her s.^^ "Ih . "! ''^^ '«>king, alert husto^d g^'h^^iH t'^'^"- onhesawheruHfV, " "^ "« ade. Later who w^SSriS^^l-f^^f children, who raised a shrill Stel S ^^ ^^' multiple of thej^ther?^ "" '"""' ^« ^ -tt^\:Sdirt^--^^'^^no ally to lose faith ,-nT' ^P '*^^" ^adu- -o^erS:,'''*Se"Sh'r^^5^^*""^ prop for that of ott^^ Then Tf f ^ ander dronned «m1 . ^'""^'y ^l^^- high estlte^,;,^ i"^^^"^ ^^^y ^^°™ his tain un4i:Ur4^? «'>-' f h a cer- «9 UNDERSTUDIES of morning-glories, and people, seeing him, used to speak in this wise: "That is Alex- Euider Bemis. Everybody used to think he was going to be something great, but he never amounted to anything at all. He has never done anything. He used to speak in town-meeting; we thought he would be a Daniel Webster or a Charles Sumner, and go to Congress, but he never did. When he was young everybody thought there was nobody like him in town, but he never came to any- thing." Every spring the morning-glories came again and sent forth their great silent chorus of youth and victory from their hundred trumpet mouths. Then at noon they closed and slept, and remained asleep until the next morning, when they awoke again to their chorus of victory, and Alexander passed beneath them, still old and wrecked and defeated. But the day of a man is longer than that of a flower. THE END him, Alex- ik he it he ; has ik in be a id go ! was body any- :ame torus icired losed the in to issed and inger