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32X

AN EARNEST TRIFLER,

EAKNEST TEIFLEE.

MISS E. SPRAGUE.

TORON^TO:
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO.

MDCCCLXXX.

C. B. ROBINSON,

PRINTER,

JORDAN STRBBT, TORONTO.

BROWN BROS.,
BINDERS,
KING STRBBT, TORONTO.

INDEX.

CHAPTER.

PAQE.

I- 9

"■ I*

"'• 28

I^ 48

^- <8

^" 88

^"'- • • • 94

I^ 101

^ 109

116

™ 129

-^"I 161

^I^ 155

X^- 173

^^^ 189

X^" • 211

-^'^™ 217

■''^^ 223

^^ 241

/ i^

'^^' 'Mi^ 'J//aii

7 yy vW

'S^t^j^i<J

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

CHAPTER I.

A FINE, gray mist was rising from the river, and a fine,
gray twiliglit was falling from above, hushing in their
gray fold the diligent activities of the country, when two
vouniT men, who had tliat evenincf arrived in the moun-
tains, were left in possession of their new and imfamiliar
quarters. As the door closed behind them, the elder, a tall,
plain, and unpretentious man, who excited little inquiry
and who made few inquiries himself, crossed the room and
looked out upon the loonnng hills as if his interest were
in their dark outlines rather than in his more iuniiediate
environment ; while the other, an alert and more lightly
built young fellow, glanced over the walls and furniture
as if what he saw was but tributary to impressions already
surprising and favourable.

"Who would have thought," he began, "that we would
bring up in such a tender locality ? Are these the simple
natives, and is this the shanty you promised me ? " And
again he glanced carelessly over the high-hung pictures
and the lion's claws which here and there protruded out
of the mahogany. " I call it no better than the civiliza-
tion we left, — it's older if anything."

AN EARNEST TRIPLER.

I 'i

" It is a wild countrj'," returned the man at the window,
irrelevantly, — " a wild country ! I <lon't recall a worse lock-
up anywhere around."

" I thought we were to get off in it somewhere and live
like pioneers," pursued the first speaker. "What is the
use of working a man up to the stoical point and then
putting him to l^ed in a room like this ? " And walking
up to a portrait of a military-looking genJeman, he sur-
veyed it a moment with the able criticism that he brought
to bear upon so many faulty objects. " British 1 " he ex-
claimed, in condemnation. Then, as if in search of features
of less heavy and offensive nationality, he went over to a
long, bisected mirror, where, after duo optical refreshment,
he adjusted his coarse but finely fitting clothes.

But the elder, Jared Dayton, was not to be diverted
from the landscape by the humours of his friend. He was
a man of affairs, and at all times, perhaps, a trifle irre-
sponsive. He went on staring and speculating. " For
twenty miles," he shortly observed, " it is as impractical)le
as you see it yonder. No wonder they ran the road into
the side of a mountain and left it. "

" You'll get through it soon enough and carry emi-
gration with you," rejoined the young fellow, declining
the tacit invitation to look out. " I suppose you are long-
ing to go at it with that brutal energy of yours ; but you
can't begin to night. You'd better make yourself com-
fortable while you can. If we get that shanty of ours
with its ennobling destitution we won't have the same

conveniences.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

With easy accoininodation to now s'lrroiindinj^'H, wliioli
was evidently habitual, lie seated hiinselt' Ix^t'ore a hu»;e
hair-cloth sofa on which their luggage was deposited ; and
opening a portmanteau with his slender nervous hands,
displayed its contents. "This is a tine lot of traps," he
said, "to bring into a gcnitlenian's house."

"Guerrin wouhl insist on our coming here," said the
otlier, turning and looking indifferently at the properties
to which his attention was thus called. " There seemed
to be no clioice. We nnist look around."

"They might domesticate you," su;^'::'sted his comrade,
"after twenty years of hotels and ot]i« / dens. He still
ble.sses you, don't he, for running Ihat rid liru tlu'ough
his lan<^ ? Did you stay here thv.n ? "

" Here ? I ? No, of course not," excl.iinied Dayton, as if
protesting against the rich imagination which could con-
ceive such an out of character question.

"Then you never met the daughter?" continued his
companion, still giving his imagination vent.

"It isn't likely she was born then."

The young man laid aside an assortment of brushes of
the kinds best qualified to remove obnoxious particles
from the person and clothing of a fastidious citizen, and
took a cedar- wood box of rectangular shape from the folds
of a coarse, gray blanket. " Don't you believe it," he said
smiling. "She is older than that. She may look like
twenty, or less, but she has an eye-beam that resembles
twenty-five. She sees. Who sees at twenty ?"

Dayton gave it up.

l-f^

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

ii'

t \

" I believe her long-f ringed glance is sticking somewhere
through me yet," said the other, his humorous intention
growing broader, " She is fair-looking for the hills."

A low tattooing recommenced upon the casement gave
a grudging assent. It was, in fact, one of ma^-^v topics
broached by his friend, on which Dayton had no opinion.
He went on inspecting the horizon as if loth to relinquish
the forms which the night was absorbing, and it is not
impossible that the loss of such v^isible objects left him
frequi itly at a loss for satisfactory subjects of contem-
plation. His common blue eye rested upon nothing more
intently than mountains awaiting his skill, and the young
man's susceptible and dissipated vision struck him as a
doubtful gift, like a musical talent or an hereditary in-
temperance.

"I would like to know," continued the younger, who
who was also the brighter man, " what this family has
ever done that it should be sequestered here. What
the"

"I have heard," said Dayton, his comrade pausing for
a desirable word, " that it was originally for the killing
of a king. It was some ancestor, — the regicide, not the
king. He came here to hide."

The young fellow laughed. " That beats me," he said,
perhaps referring to some pretensions of his own in the
way of ancestry. Then leaving the cigar-box and the
brushes upon the bureau, he too went up to a second win-
dow, as if drawn by the persistent interest of his chief in
what lay without.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

Before him were spacious private grounds in which an
effort at landscape gardening had once been made, but
corrected by subsequent neglect. A semicircular road
and a straight path led to the house from three arched
gateways, and everywhere beyond rose the pine-covered
mountains. He looked through the trees, and up and
down the deserted road, but plainly failed to take a profes-
sional interest either in the narrow valley or the gloomy
sierras.

" And do they call this wilderness a town ?" he inquired.

" There are a few down below," replied Dayton ; " half
of them have steeples. If we can't do any better, per-
haps we can get one with a steeple. We'll look'around. "

To this repeated proposition the young fellow assented.
"By all means," he said. "We'll never know any of the
delights of barbarism here. There can't be any barbarism
where there are women," — and he lauijhed ai^ain. Pres-
ently, however, he returned to the idea with more serious-
ness than he had yet shown. "You are right about it,"
he declared. " I want to get away. I can't get far enough.
I am not far enough yet. I'd rather go into camp with
you bacic on the ridges, or anywhere else, than to go back
to France. I've been drawn around, and drawn around,
with my pesky susceptibility to drawings till I've lost
my direction. This place is very inviting, but it isn't the
inviting we are after. It's discipline. It's hardihood. It
isn't enough, I take it, that we get out of Boston and
begin to dig again. We want to dispossess ourselves of
state ideas and habits, — to rehabit ourselves. I say we.

Ilf—

mmmm

AN EARNEST TRlPLER.

I mean me. You never have any stale ideas and habits.
Yours are the sort that improve with age."

Of whatever sort, they were plainly so far improved
with age that their owner did not start to quick interest
in flattering discussions about himself, and for the twen-
ticith time the young man went on, " As for me," he ex-
claimed, " I am after some with the dew on them. That's
why I favour the camping project."

As they talked, a tall and slim young girl came along
the road and passed (juickly into the house. Then there
was a knock at the door, and Dayton admitted a servant
with lamps.

The yftung fellow still lingered by the window. In the
fresh mud of the road and across a corner of the soggy
turf were the prints of the young girl's feet. The toes, he
idly observed, were narrow, the heels somewhat pointed,
and he said to himself that however primeval her heart,
she had shod her simplicity with the shoes of sophis-
tication.

The mist crept up. The darkness crept down. Only
things near at hand revealed themselves. Here and there
in the turf near the footprints, were the heads of earth-
smelling blossoms. The spring was far advanced.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

CHAPTER II.

A FEW hours before, these two well-dressed strangers
had arrived at the little railway station of Beaiideck,
with vigour in their well-knit frames, and with a serene
hardihood of temper that was in nowise disturbed by the
doubtful question of their immediate lodgings.

They were the only passengers, but the wonder was not
at the smallness of their number, but at the fact that so
desolate a terminus should be treated as a possibly ob-
jective point for discriminating travelers. Mountains
rose on every side, and only an ox-team, lumbering down
the declivity of an ancient covered bridge, betrayed a
probable habitation of the valley. The small station-
house, resembling a powder-magazine, was bare and empty,
and as they stood upon the platform, looking across the
turbid little river, even the train which brought them,
consisting of an engine and caboose, backed away round
the hills with a prolonged hoot of its shrill whistle, indica-
tive of derisive joy at thus leaving them in a trap like
those of their own construction.

" Which way is the village ? " asked the younger, after
taking a brief survey of the lonely situation.

" My dear fellow," answered Dayton, " this is it. You're
in it now."

" Then, good heaven, which way is the country ?" he

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

ii!

rejoined. And with a short suggestion of his sense of
humour, Dayton led the way back along the track, from
beneath whose unballasted ties the water oozed toward
the bridge in which the dust lay thick as the mud without.

Coming thence upon a highway bordered on one side
by sycamores and on the other by foot-hills, they had
proceeded something like half a mile, when they were
approached by a slight gentleman, well buttoned up in a
beaver coat which shone in spots. He wore a tuft of
gray beard on his chin, and about his mouth were grave
depressions which had been dimples when he was younger,
and might be so designated still when he smiled, though
in his sober moments they were but tokens of the hollow-
ness of things grown old. He had mild blue eyes, and a
manner in which great geniality struggled with a
diffidence not wholly surmountable. His movements
were nervously quick, as, descending from a smart road-
waggon, he advanced toward Dayton with outstretched
palm.

" Ah, glad to see you," he said, changing from a dull to
a brighter red. " Was on my way over," indicating the
station. " I'm late, or more probably the train's early ,-^
comes in most any time. We are looking for you, — told
my wife you'd be along to-day. You never met my wife.
She don't get about much. The men all here — two
hundred of them ; came in on a gravel train. Everything
ready. And this? " he added, taking the younger man's
hand in one of his while he rested the other on his
shoulder and looked cpiestioningly at Dayton.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

"Is my friend, Nathan Halstead. Mr.Gnerrin," an-
swered Dayton.

" Glad to see you too, sir," Mr. Guerrin went on, still
holding him by the hand and forearm. " Understood
there would be two of you ; told my wife so. This is
my waggon. I've just driven up from the falls, — a good
twelve miles. Get in, both of you. Place almost in
sight."

" Thank you, but " — began Dayton.

" Get in and we'll talk about it. Ground's damp,"
pursued Mr. Guerrin, and lifting one leg across the knee
of the other, he looked for illustration at the sole of his
boot. " I calculated to take care of you while you're
here, with your indulgence," he continued. " Big house,
not many in it. Not here much of the time myself ; too
much doing at the falls, but when I'm u[) would like to
talk it over with you. You're in the countiy now, you
know — no hotel. You will have to take quarters where
you find 'em. It's five o'clock ; nearly supper time. We
have dinner at six, — call it supper to please the Misses
Desborough, — dinner at six too irregular, you know," and
he nodded with a smile as one who knew an easy path
around rough places. "Find things much changed, eh ?"

" We are on our way to the Center, — there is a place
they call the Center," Dayton began, with one hand on
the waggon, ready to mount, " if you will be so kind as
to take us there."

" What for ? A straw-stack ? They are the only
lodiriniis left."

mumm

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Nothing so luxurious as that," said Halstead. " We've
talked of a tent — of anything — of camping out."

Mr. Guerrin untied a silk bandanna that was wound
about his neck and looked curiously from one to the
other. Then catchiniif somethinf; of Halstead's reiuvenat-
ing smile, " Not in Beaudeck," he said with decision ; and
nodding in the direction of Dayton, he added, " He don't
count much on his friends, I take it."

The house to which they were thus rapidly and un-
ex})ectedly driven was one owned and occupied by the
ancient family of Desboroughs, and but recently, as one
might say, and perhaps incongruously, invaded in a
matrimonial way by the hospitable gentleman who was
now doing its honours. It was a large house — large,
respectable, and embowered, with huge wings on either
side, spread as if ready for flight. The Desboroughs had
always made every preparation for flight, first from
English officers, then from hostile red men, then from a
too great security which was also obscurity ; but this
flight they had never taken. They were like a big bird
which fails to carry out its eagle intentions, and grows
old and inactive on the spot where it built its first nest.

Across the front of the house and across each wing
were columned porches facing in three directions, and
with three tiers of steps leading down to the yard. The
wings were each a single stoiy, but the fluted columns of
the facade reached past the upper windows and upheld
the gable of the roof. It was painted gray, and its
shingles curled up under the elms.

AN EARNEST TRIFLED.

A family tree heavily laden with Desboroughs hung
in the wide front hall, and portraits of their soldiers and
their niisionaries looked darkly down from the panelled
walls. High, straight - backed chairs were arranged
against the wainscotting ; flowers were in the windows,
and the stairway, wound upward past a window, also
filled with flowers. It was a house to lend character
even to frivolous inmates. But its inmates were not
frivolous. They were still as in the beginning, smooth-
browed and grave, and since the days of Cromwell had
laid claims to distinction. Their father was the great
Desborouorh who fled from En dand after the Restoration,
owing to his assistance in the death of Charles the First ;
and the fact that in the intentions of the monarchists he
was beheaded, quartered, and burned in pitch at Charing
Cross, did not prevent his establishing a family in the
wilds of America, where instead of killing kings they
engaged in the no less hazardous occupation of growing
up with the country and endeavouring to convert the
Pokanokets.

They were a very different family from the unheroic
Guerrins, who manuf^ictured countless buttons in an
adjoining village, and the alliance between their young-
est member and the head of the button establishment had
not, even after many years, entirely lost a certain in-
congruity. But then, perhaps, any marriage with any
Desborough would in itself, at any time, have seemed
slightly incongruous.

The two young men, engineers by profession, who had

AN EARNEST TRIELER.

illl

thus been turned from their purpose by the button
manufaeturer, were shown with brief ceremony into the
large and heavily furnished Desborough parlour, where
they were shortly joined by three gentlewomen of about
the same age and bearing close resemblance to each other.

Th(;se gentlewomen were plainly by custom tolerant of
such freaks on the part of the nominal head of their
household, and lent themselves with resignation, if not
v/ith wilful pleasure, to his schemes of entertainment.
Two of them bowed a trifle stiffly, gauging as far as
possible in an instantaneous survey the sincerity of their
welcome, but the other, apparently less fearful that
cordiality might do violence to her conscience, extended
a soft hand to the new-comers whose acquaintance she
was invited to make. Her features were long and
straight, and L ;r composure was that of a person in
whom the seriousness of life precluded a vain self-
consciousness.

" My husband frequently brings strangers home with
him," she said, addressing Dayton iji a soft, monotonous
voice. " They are about the only ones we see. We live
very quietly here. Too quietly, he thinks. He is a
quiet man himself, but he likes talkers. Perhaps you
are a talker."

Dayton seated himself in a straight-backed chair in-
stead of the low upholstered one offered him, and shook
his head at expectations so contrary to the fact. " I am
afraid not," he answered, regretfully.

" We were expecting you yesterday," she went on,

AN EARNEST THIFLER.

with the same monotonous composure. " You are to
have the wing. My husbancl always wants strangers put
in the north wing. He h^s a great many friends. We
don't know where he picks tliem up. The last gentleman
who came was from the west, Oswego, I think. He was
a starch man. He told us some very interesting things.
We think ourselves it is more interesting when people
come. You are from Boston, 1 believe."

" I can't exactly say I live there," said Dayton. " I
am at a loss to say where I am from, — from one place
about as much as another."

To be addressed by a lady much older than himself,
who nicely blended distance with friendly overture, was
not without a certain charm to him, though it seldom
failed inwardly to embarrass him. In fact, when the
attention of any woman was fixed upon him exclusively,
the resources of his common imperturbable strength
seemed to take wings, and in tlie midst of his polite
reception of such favours he felt a little helpless.

" That is very strange," said Mrs. Guerrin with puzzled
earnestness.

" Oh, you mustn't think from that," he said, hastening
to correct an adverse impression, " that I am a deliberate
renegade. It is my misfortune to have claims on no
locality."

" One has a claim on the place where one is born," she
answered conclusively.

" I'm afraid my birthplace wouldn't know me," said
Dayton, moving his feet about on the much tiuwered and

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

|i'

faded volvct of the carpet. " It was in South America,
amon<^ tlie Portuguese."

"That is very strange," repeated Mrs. (jruerrin, witli
faint disapproval.

" I can't lay claims to such a foreign spot as that, you
know, without seeming more astray than ever," he went
on still apologetically. " It's my business. Another
occupation would have fixed me somewhere."

Mrs. Guerrin picked up her knitting work, and held
it, without knitting, in her liamls. " We are very much
interested in your business," she said, giving up the dis-
cussion of locality with one of such wild and irrational
habits. " It will be a very great change for us. The
town won't be wdiat it has been. Mr. Guerrin has been
very active in it. He thinks of it at night. It is his pet
scheme, and he has done a great deal for it. We think
sometimes he has done too much for his own good."

" I hope not," ans vered Dayton, reassuringly.

" It seems thus far as if the road had only served to
take our people oW. They have had a fever for the
prairie lands. Joseph Morgan was the last who went.
He was a, very useful man, and one of his sons is in
India now, doing mission- work. When the people go
they go to the farthest places they can hear of. My
husband says when the road runs through others may
come in, but we are afraid they won't."

" It will be a great line," he declared.

"Hannah calls it progress," said Mrs. Guerrin. "I
suppose it is."

iill

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

Dayton looked with revorenco at tlio person thus
referred to as holding advanced opinions, and at tliat
moment the dining-room door opened.

Preliminary to any movement in that direction, Mr.
Guerrin hesitated and looked about him. " Where is
Rachel ?" he inquired.

" I'm coming, father," some one answered, and there
entered, with slight precipitation, a slender, blooming girl.
She had her hat in her hand, and a brown setter followed
at her heels. Going up to Mr. Guerrin he took her head
in his hands and kissed her, while the elder women
glanced up with a Hutter of the eyelids. She had their
height, the same lack of self-consciousness, the same
straightness of nose, the same contour of f^ice, but in the
different expression she gave them she seemed almost to
make light of the family features. She carried with
confidence the bowed head of her forefathers. She raised
from time to time the ancestral eyebrows. She allowed
a restless light to shine in the gray Desborough optics,
and destroyed with a reckless smile their careful gravity.

Dayton bowed as he was presented, a bow of proper
depth and deference, but nevertheless a bow of blind
indifference, — the bow of one who expected nothing of
the new acquaintance, — of one introduced to no new
impressions. There was in his quiet glance no recognition
of her fairness, and he immediately went on talking with
her mother.

Halstead, also, in his turn, made a bow of proper
depth and deference, — a quiet bow, accompanied by a

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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quiet glance ; but by the time hia eyes had fairly made
their delicate observatioas, she was connected in his mind
with the freshness of the spring, and the on-coming
warmth of the summer.

" My daughter," Mr. Guen-in had stated, " and these
are the gentlemen of whom I told you."

" You are to blow up our hills," said Rachel with her
smile.

" If you wish," murmured Halstea<l, with such direct-
ness as struck three of them, at least, as of tremendous
import.

Mr. Guerrin had, indeed, been somewhat surprised
when he surveyed at his leisure the young fellow whom
Dayton had brought with him. He was not what might
be expected ; younger, lighter, easier, more picturesque ;
the sort of a fellow to look for in a drawing-rooai, not in
a railroad corps, roughing it in the mountains. He did
not remember ever to have met any one like him, but he
shook him by the hand and had no mif^givings.

Not so the others. They looked at him closely, askance,
questioningly, and when he murmured, " If you wish,"
they could almost have put their fingers in their ears, so
loudly and with such far reverberations did it seem to

ring.

"Who is this Mr. Halstead?" asked Miss Hannah later,
coming into the sitting-room with a basket piled high
with underwear.

" That is not quite clear yet," answered Mr. Guerrin,
turning, with his hands behind him, and facing the only

AN EARNEST TRIFLEU.

ied

tribunal of practical consequence to him. " He came
with Dayton. Dayton i.s very reliable. He seems a
clever sort of young man."

" He is too clever, too everything," she said, drawing to
its distant end her thread of darning cotton.

" All the more reason why you ought to like him,
Hannah," he returned, eagerly seizing the thought.

" Hannah may lik{; him, and still not think he will do
good here," began the elder Miss Desborough.

" There is Rachel," suggested Miss Hannah, delicately.

" Oh, it's Rachel, is it ? " he cried, the light breaking in
upon hii:.. "I can make it right with Rachel. She'll
treat him well."

The youth under discussion had in reality a good though
slight figure, and a fine head, well set on his shoulders.
One of his white teeth was broken ; there were two
vertical lines in the middle of his forehead, and he
was slightly near-sighted ; but those who knew him
thought him enhanced by these as well as more serious
defects. Wherever there was a flaw in him there was
also an added charm. His faults were the most becoming
faults of which youth could be guilty, and the man or
the woman had yet to be found who would not forgive
him his graceful trespasses. A commercial friend of his
had once frowned upon him with impatience and an angry-
sense of wrong, when Halstead looked up with his dis-
arming smile. " Whatever fault you have to find with
me," he said, " now is the opportunity."

" It is a very good oppoi*tunity," said his friend pre-

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sently, as he turned away, "but I have no stock." It
was always so when they came to designate his short-
comings.

Nothing, apparently, had ever gone deeply \vrong with
him ; or if there had, — and he was twenty-eight, w^hich
made it probable, — he interposed so many interests be-
tween his present self and his memory of disaster, that he
seemed to have escaped mischances ; there were, at least,
no outward signs of that accumulation of disappointments
which seems necessary to give the soul at twenty-eight
the proper consistency.

His vitality was always aglow. His sensibilities were
always abroad. When he walked out under the twink-
ling heavens he observed both the stars above and the
cowslips below, and if the one were sometimes obscured
and if he sometimes knocked the head off the other, he
whistled and went on. He was remarkable for always
going on. Even when he stood momentarily in the
attitude of a spectator, it was as a spectator who could
easily seize anything he wanted, if his ardour came to the
assistance of his indifferent wishes.

His mother, a stately and ambitious woman, had sent
him to the Boston Institute of Technology, and then to
the Central School of Arts and Manufactures in Paris,
where he spent five years. Apart from his acquirements
as a student, which, in truth, were not prodigious, she
intended him to be something brilliant in a social way.
She also meant him to prosper in business, to be rich, to
be talented, to be politic ; and he intended some day to

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indulge these whims of his mother. His father, decea^sed,

had been inclined toward prodigal living, spending much

money in the greed of that inclination, and the son

developed a taste for pleasure which as his father's son

rendered him liable to suspicion. Once or twice he had

fancied elegant women older than himself, and it was

said that for so young a man he had made some extensive

journeyings in pursuit of these superb objects of his

interest,— beside other things indicative of great strength

of fancy.

On the other hand, he considered dissipation a sense-
less pastime, and it must be admitted that he had a ca-
pacity for application and a degree of uprightness that
might carry him through.

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CHAPTER III.

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OEVERAJ^ (lays later Dayton aiul Halstead again found
fO themselves together in the quarters now grown famil-
iar, Halstead having made himself acquainted with even
the most distant views, and Dayton having more than once
recruited his energy and lost sight of the hills in chairs
which seemed kindly disposed to acconnnodate themselves
to every peculiarity of the human back. They harl boei^
days of unusual exertion, and while each had kept flow-
ing a small current of lighter thoughts, they h&d been
deterred by certain unforeseen eccentricities in th )se cur-
rents from a free interchange of impressions.

Halstead on this occasion was seated by a table near
the window, endeavouring to catch the last rays of light
upon some sheets of card-board which he was systema-
tically defacing, when Dayton came wandering in from
the side piazza, with the look of one from whom the
lethargy had recently been shaken. He prepared the
lamp ready for lighting, arranged some news and other
papers, placed advantageously for the light one of the
comfortable and reverie-breeding receptacles for his per-
son, and then as if these preparations for the evening
were slightly in advance of the evening itself, or as if he
were in no mood for immediate subsidence, paused on his
way for a match and squared himself upon the rug.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" The young lady here is something unusual for this
locality, isn't she ?" he began as if it were the first time
the subject had been mentioned. " Have you seen much
of her?"

" You have looked at her, finally, have you ?" said
Halstead, adding some corrective touches to the wayward
lines upon his paper.

" I have looked at her, yes — perhaps not finally,"
returned Dayton.

Halstead glanced up, suspending his implement mid-
way between his eye and card-board, and suppressing a
whistle, not to express too rude a surprise. Then catch-
ing his comrade's uncommon and unbusiness like air he
bent to his work again, to hide his impudent insight.

" Have you talked with her much ?" Dayton in-
quired.

"No, — scarcely at all in fact."

"I supposed you would know" her well by this time.
We have been here three days, man I"

"I don't. You've begun it !"

" Begun what ?"

" Her acquaintance. If you make it, it opens that
pasture to the rest of us, doesn't it ?"

Dayton laughed, a short, half-amused laui^h. "It is
full of greenness," he returned.

" I dare say."

" Not what you mean by greenness. I am no judge of
that, — freshness, you know."

" I dare say," repeated Halstead.

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" Come," said Dayton, " you would like her."

Halstead went on diligently with his unintelligible
draft. " Well ?" he said presently, without lifting his
glance.

" Well what ?" echoed Dayton.

" Go on if you are going to"? Where did you see her ?''

"Just now. We came down through the jjorge over
yonder. There is a road through. I heard there was a
house up there we could get, and went up for a walk to
look at it. It's a good mile."

" Too far," said Halstead;

"Rather far," assented Dayton, resuming his usual
manner, " but it might do. It is in pretty good repair*
only the windows broken. Four rooms. Good spring
and fine view. You could lie outside and apostrophize
the planets, — I believe you like that sort of thing.
Rather breezy, but we won't object to breezes soon."

"Never mind the house," interrupted his charming
listener dryly.

" Whoever lived there probably blew away," continued
Dayton.

" The pretty, hectic girls went the rest of the way up,"
conjectured Halstead, "and the men went west. Go on
with your story."

" That is all of it."

" What was she doing ?"

" She seemed to be swinging her hat."

" She feels easier, apparently in the company of her
hat."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

To this Dayton made no response. He glanced idly
about the room. He was still in no hurry to proceed
with his usual evening occupations.

" Confound it !" exclaimed Halstead, " what did she
say ?"

" She talked away. It is very pleasant out."

" What did you say then ? — one is pretty sure to re-
member that."

" There was a foolish brook," answered Dayton, getting
a match but not striking it, " and I wanted to help her
across. I told her I had never known a woman yet who
did not fall in when an opportunity presented itself,
' Fall in what ?' she said."

" What did you say to that ?"

" I told her, ' Whatever chasm there was.' She didn't
let me help her."

" No wonder. She couldn't very well after that, you
know. Was she alone ?"

" There was some ragamuffins with her. The Dan
Druey's she called them, — it seems they live on the place.
She introduced them as if they were a pair of grandees.
They were driving some sheep, and we walked down
through the gorge together. It couldn't be helped."

Halstead rose abruptly with his hands full of pencils.
" To think of you my dear fellow," he cried with mocking
incredulity, " playing the part of a rustic. I thought I
knew you. What next ? Where are your sheep, and
what have you done with the shepherdess ? It is beastly
wet for driving sheep, eh ?"

AN EARNEST TRIFLKR.

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" What do you think of the house ?" asked Dayton.
He wondered if he had been a trifle ridiculous. He
thought he might have been. Halstead's sense on such
points was unerring.

" I confess I haven't thought of it at all," he replied.
** I haven't had time. Your subsequent bucolic drove it
out of my head. I imagined 3"ou had given it up, you
have been so long about it."

" I thought you didn't care for it," Dayton rejoined.

" I ? It 's you !" said Halstead going back to his
desk.

" The trouble with you," began Dayton after a time, as
if their thought in the dark pursued the same channel,
*' is that you don't know how to make an acquaintance
in the ordinary sense. It is one of the few things that
you do with excessive thoroughness ; the rest of us are
satisfied to be tolerably superficial in that line ! If you
are entertaining any such purpose don't say I began it.
There are some of your lighter pursuits that I am proud
to inaugurate, you know ; but when it comes to a bit of
skilled labour, like the making of an acquaintance, on
which you exercise your peculiar gifts, you needn't point
back at me. It is more than I bargained for."

" You are too modest," said Halstead.

" Well, your conscience is clear," retorted the elder.

" You are right, I'm not modest, I admit," cried Halstead,
/,nd as he spoke he had a certain pleasant sense of
j^xexfcinguishable brightness. To be an easy fellow, a
clever fellow, a fellow who kept his lights well burning,

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

seemed to him too charming a destiny to be nmffled in
modesty.

" When 1 think of some of your acquaintances," began
Dayton again, a little uncomfortably —

" Don't think of them if it makes you uneasy, — what's
the use ?" interrui)ted his frank assistant. And to all
appearances Dayton concluded to accept this piece of
cheerful advice.

He went on smoking and there was a second long
interval of silence, till, completing a portion of his draw-
ing, Halstead hold it out and carefully surveyed it at
arm's length.

" I suspect," he said slowly, — and for a moment Dayton
thought he was reading from the card-board, — " I suspect
that the Desborough economy has blossomed into an
extravagance. Their sobriety has fermented. Their
grays have grown rosy. Their tameness is running a
little wild. There is some life and colour in the last
member of the family. It is amusing to see her appre-
hensive elders look at her ; have you noticed ? They are
afraid she will ruffle their profound serenity. She
whispers in the ears of the sleepers ! You are a sleeper ;
you would better look out ; she might begin talking to
you ! I say, it isn't much she wants of us, is it ?" he
went on, adding a line here and there to his work. " We
did not come to seek her or to be entertained by her, and
she scorns to take advantage of the accident that brought
us to her house for lesser purposes. Perhaps she takes
us lor her father's clerks !"

' • mp i vfm <■ " < »■ * *■ "

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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It was Dayton's turn now to whistle but he, too, for-
bore.

" I thought you had taken her measurement," he said
and then he composed himself among his papers, running
his unarrested eyes up and down the columns.

The chances of conservation were at an end, and after
a time Halstead tipped back in his chair, and with his
hands clasped behind his neck, looked out at the gloaming.
It was the hour when, for eighteen years, he had turned
from his multifarious occupations to his multifarious
pleasures, and the remission of the latter filled him with
a burdensome impatience at the former. He looked out
idly, leisurely at first, then frowning, restlessly. The
white gate-way raised its arms aloft and beckoned him in
the gloom. The deserted road urged him away. A gap
in the horizon offered him an easy transit. But those
familiar avenues would but trick him into a deeper dull-
ness. There were no tickets taken at the gate-way, no
flights of steps, no gas-jets, no voices awaited him at the
end of the high-road, and no novelty of adventure in the
mountains, and turning away from the raw country scene
with its raw depressions he sauntered out into the m.ain
hall of the house. Through the open door of the sitting-
room came the smooth sound of desultory music ; and
catching the air on his iEolian spirit he presented himself
at the threshold, and was bidden to enter by Miss Hannah
herself.

Mrs. Guerrin was there, still engaged with her soft
blue wools ; Mr. Guerrin was deep in the wisdom of the

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

''Springfield Republican," the great staple of his reading ;
Miss Desborough was going through an epistolary
struggle with her desk upon her lap, and Rachael was
seated at the piano, on which much abused, domestic
instrument she was playing, as to herself, some very
undomestic arias.

It was to Miss Hannah that our young gentleman first
addresssed himself in lively pantomime. Indeed, from
the very beginning and with wisdom greater than he
knew he had adressed himself largely and effectively in
that direction, and it was not until her approbation
seemed the chief object of his visit that he permitted
himself to go on to the piano.

Rachel continued her uninterrupted measures for some
moments, while Halstead stood near, listening perhaps,
perhaps merely waiting. Presently and almost imper-
ceptibly her fingers faltered, and the consistent melodj'
seemed to scatter, to lose itself in chords and disconnected
notes ; then, from some disturbing cause, it discomposed
into the silence that originally held it, and she looked up
at him over the score.

" Are you a musician ?" she asked.

It is rather a matter of by-gones," he replied, readjust-
ing himself in an attitude of fresh interest. " I played
the violin at one time in a college band ; and I was once
guilty of owning a guitar."

" There is a guitar somewhere about the house," said
Rachel.

" You should not tell me that as an isolated fact," he

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

rejoined. " You should add that you would resurrect it,
and that we would throw open the windows and have a
summer garden. There is an immense amount of music,
among other things, in a summer garden."

" Is there ? I was never in one."

" Whatever one wants up here one must make, even to
an orchestra," he declared. '' To-day I wanted a rope,
and we twisted it of straw ; one can get most anything if
one twists up the straws."

" I don't know about that," said Rachel, rising. But
her doubt did not extend to the confident and smiling
young man who affirmed it, and compared with whose
knowledge her own hearsay seemed vapid and valueless.

There was no particular i-eason why she should have
risen. It was an unreasonable impulse of which she had
no warning. It was the first time this strange, young
foreign native had sought ind addressed her, yet at the
first available moment some struggling motive in her
sought to put an end to it She wondered greatly about
him, and on some of her recent animated strollings she
had speculated upon that larger life which he so ably
epitomized. She expected to know him well before the
summer was over, but was conscious of satisfaction in its
delay, its slow beginning. He looked at her with a
certain bright deliberateness which had in it no element
of impertinence, yet in the light of this experienced gaze
she seemed singularly ignorant and elementary ; and
when he spoke to her she felt she could only help him in
short and desultory sentences, since the smallness of her

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

range when compared with his extensive familiarity, must
make wide silences between them. Perhaps it was in
anticipation of some such coming silence that she so
suddenly broke off their brief dialogue, and rising, hesi-
tated.

" How is the road, Halstead ?" asked Mr. Guerrin,
hearing the stir from behind the " Republican." And
Halstead advancing, explained to him some of their
enorineerinjj* difficulties ; wdiile Rachel iroinuf over to the
windows dropped the damask curtains as if the spreading
of their crimson arabesques had been the duty which she
found it impossible longer to postpone.

" It's heavy work, heavy work, no doubt about that,"
said Mr. Guerrin shortly, rubbing a thin hand over his
sharp knee, " but there is nothing like work for a young
man."

" I suppose not," answered the young man lightly. " It
is what they all tell us. We have to come to it in
self-defence. Life soon ceases to give us satisfaction
gratuitously."

Rachel drew near again. Epigrams upon life had a
great attraction for her. She would have liked herself
to be able to make them. Whenever she heard one,
which was -not often, her imagination took it up and she
tried to conceive the vivid and varied existence condensed
into that compact and portable form. She had never
seen any one who seemed himself such an epigram as
young Halstead, — who had observed everything, and who
had so well digested human-kind. If the princes of the

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" Arabian Nights" liad been mentioned, she would have
expected liirn to twist his moustache and say, " Ah, yes, I
know them ; once when in Arabia " — Perhaps it was
the Paris in liim. She had heard he had been in Paris.
Parisians knew everj'thing ; smiled at everything.

Miss Hannah also raised her regular and inflexible
features. To her this light generalizing seemed to imply
years of anterior recreancy. It was as if he had poked
his nose in many crooked alleys and then coming out
up(m the highway, sniffed the air, exclaiming, " How
sweet it smells."

" It isn't to this life that one must look for satisfac-
tion," she said, closing her lips upon the sentence as if
to suppress otliers that would follow in case of contra-
diction.

" True, madam," said Halstea*!, forestalling them with
a little bow.

" When I was in the senate," said Mr. Guerrin, " every
other man I met seemed to be a shirker. They were all
after soft places — no work and good pay."

" You have been in the senate, then, sir ?"

" For a term only. From the manufacturing district.
I took my family with me to Bostoa, but my wife did not
like it. She missed her sisters, and she couldn't bear the
people slipping alx)ut the hotels. She thought they
seemed guilty. I rather liked it myself, but after all it
didn't pay. Whatever you do, sir, never go into politics.
Better loaf, and be done with it. It's cheaper and more
certain."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

the

" Oh, I've tried that !" said Halstead, with wliat seemed
to Miss Hannah to be the beorinnin<; of endless confession.
" I might, perhaps, be at it yet if it were not for Dayton.
He took me by the shoulders and set me to work, without
even saying ' By yoin- leave.' I had begun to yawn when
he came alung. He was riglit ; he is always right. I
was a <^reat idler. He thinks a <rreat deal of makinjjc
money, Dayton. »ioes. I don't know why. He don't care
for it, much less for what he can get with it. It's habit
with him. He is devoted to his profession, and it seems
to enable him to dispense with other pastimes. You see
it isn't merely that he desires a fortune ; he desires to
make it by high methods. He stubbornly does his best,
— that's habit, too ! "

"It is a good one to fall into," remarked Miss Han-
nah.

" I don't see how he comes by it," said Mrs. Guerrin.
" He has led a very irregular life. He told me himself
he was from South America. It seems to me, and I
am sure it must seem so to you, too, Hannah, that
good habits don't come with much moving about, —
they are like moss, — they don't grow on rolling stones."

" Oh, he is no rolling stone," cried Halstead. " He has
really been about very little. With the exception of a few
years in California, he has lived all ids life right around
here, between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. Besides,
wherever he goes he has the same general purpose. When
he moves off with his valise in his hand, he is all there ;
purpose, energy, outfit, his darling, which is his profession,

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— everything. He leaves nothing. It is like the motion
of the earth ; everything moves with him, so he feels no
motion at all. He is no rolling stone !"

" I don't accuse him," said Mrs. Guerrin, bewildered at
the likeness between her accusation, if she had made one,
and its defence. " We all think highly of him, — ask
Hannah, ask Mr. Guerrin. We think very highly of him,
indeed, — only it is strange that with his drawbacks he is
what he is. He " —

Halstead, who had remained standing, happened to look
down at his boots, and his averted attention seemed to
relieve her from words that were suggested and vocalized
only through his appealing amiability, and she stopped,
paralyzed by the diminutive and door-yard view that
she was asked to take of a large part of the Western
Continent.

" I believe it was in California that he made his
reputation," said Mr. Guerrin, bringing the conversation
back to a safe basis. " He made a good one."

" Without a blotch," assented Halstead, " or rather
without a botch."

Again he looked at Rachel with his bright deliberate
gaze.

" So perfect as that ?" she said, thinking something was
expected of her.

" Oh, it will do for me to find him perfect," he answered.
'* It becomes me. Men generally approve him whether
they like him or not, but they don't expect to foist their
unqualified approbation upon those from whom he him-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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ras

self don't ask or deserve it. He isn't a woman-hater, nor
even a woman shunner. He is a woman ignorer. It
wouldn't be fair with such a defect as that to ask you to
think him perfect, too. My sister gets more responses
from him than any one I know. She is older than I, and
married, and she talks to him upon some widely imper-
sonal subject, like the copper mines of Michigan, or the
cockatoos of the Molucca Islands. Copper mines are safe ;
cockatoos are safe. Nothing personal about that. He
has been known to go up there with me to dinner when
we were in Boston."

" You are friends, then, as well as business associates ?"
conjectured Mr. Guerrin.

" Friends first and foremost. I am under obligations to
him. Perhaps I can repay him some day, but I doubt it.
He is obstinate ; he goes his own way, and you can't do
much for him. I would like to catch him some time
under stress for help, and clap a favor on him before he
knev/ it. You think you are doing something for him,
and th(? first thing you know ygu are over head and ears
in his debt ; and he doesn't seem to intend it either. Just
now, sir, he permits }umself under obligations to you, but
in the end you can't tell where you'll be."

"You are mistaken," said Mr. Guerrin with more
positiveness than he generally ventured upon. " I am
unH'^'- obligations to him now and all the time, — with
long arrears of interest. Doxi't let me hear any more
about that. All you liave to do is to make yourselves
comfortable if you can."

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" The wing," began his wife tentatively, " is cold in
winter, but it is generally considered pleasant in sum-
mer."

" Delightful," assented Halstead.

" Then use it," said Miss Hannah, with the brevity of
one who assumed ?n almost tragic responsibility.

Rachel, under the lamp-light, continued her gentle
occupation, paying no further attention to the conver-
sation or to the novel central figure, who from his posi-
tion on the rug, which seemed to serve him as a sort of
stasfe, turned first to one and then to another of her
serious elders. He was not without a certain sense of
dramatic effect upon his audience, and that that eflfect
was not wholly unfavorable he felt assured from Miss
Hannah's dictum ; but what it might be upon the passive
embroiderer who was rather withdrawn from the circle,
he had scant means of knowing. " Never," he said to
him as he went to his room, " was there a girl so amply
fathered and mothered, particularly mothered. Three of
them, — heavens !"

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

CHAPTER IV.

IT was the first Sunday after their arrival in Beaudeck
and Halstead found the time rather heavy on his
hands. He spent the morning as he spent his evenings,
bending over the table on which lay the symbols of his art ;
and from this position he saw the remnant of the historic
Desboroughs go down the long walk to the sound of bells,
from the economy of whose resonnance he argued a corre-
sponding frugality in the feast to which they gave sum-
mons. He put his elbows on the table and his pencil
behind his ear, and presently there floated to him on the
hopeful morning air a despairing psalm, to which incon-
irruous entertainment he listened with amused benevol-
ence. It seemed to him that he had never since his birth
been caught in such profound stilhiess as followed the
sinking of that psalm. He even felt a difficulty in breath-
uig it, and resorted to drubbing as a precaution against
fws I'hyxia.

ba\> it was in the afternoon that the length as well as
the depth of thr stillness most impressed him. He went
out upon the piazza and watched for a while the holy sun
in its slow progression from the zenith to the mountain-
tops, till blinded by that pastime he went within and
turned over some old volumes that crowded the book-
shelves in his room. Selecting one of the lightest, he fin-

■ < m

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

iiJ

ally composed himself for literary improvement, but, as
was often the case with him, his composure proved greater
than his mental activity. While the subject of the
sketch was still a boy in London, Halstead's mind wan-
dered, and when he came to, as he expressed it, the
obscure infant had grown to eminent maturity. How he
did it Nathan never new. He closed the book and
picked up his hat.

" This won't do," he said to Dayton, as he passed him
on the piazza; "we j- -'• go down to Boston another
Sunday."

" What's the matter ?" answered Dayton ; " I confess
I don't see the attractions of that famous metropolis,"

" Do as you please," rejoined the other; " I can't stand
a vacuum like this."

" Like what ?" said Dayton; but Halstead did not
Htop to make himself intelligible to such perverse sto-
lidity.

Going down the steps he followed the semicircular
road a short distance, looking down at himself as if his
interest were in the pleasing exercise of his legs ; then he
swung himself across the lawn ; then he turned at right
angles and went down toward the garden gradually losing
his vivacious restlessness in a leisurely, Sunday inquisi-
tiveness. He had never been down in the garden, and
pausing midway among the herbs, he broke off a tansy
leaf, and looked back at the house. There was no one at
any of the windows, no one on any of the porches. It
stood there trustful and vacant; and feeling himself alone

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

on unexplored territory, he went on down the path walk-
ing with his hands behind him as men will on Sunday.
Behind the garden, which was devoted to domestic and
floral purposes, was 'an orchard, to which he admitted
himself through a hingeless gate, and again looked about
him.

A number of lots had evidently been sold off the place
where it bordered on the village street, but it extended
back of th ese for a long lean distance down the river. In
the angle thus formed and behind the town lots was a low
stone embankment, whose singular position attracted his
loose -flying curiosity, and strolling in that direction he
came upon an old and populous grave-yard, long since
disused, and overgrown with vines and brambles. It was
drearily old. Time there was over, and eternity had set
in. The grave-stones had ceased fco be painstaking and
elegant, and had fallen into shiftless attitudes. The very
ghosts were taking their ease, and the grief, the anguish,
the joy, the senses which afflict mankind seemed distilled
into mellow humor and overhanging sunshine. Its
manifest disuse, its sunny neglect, its evident desire to
bury its own remains under the sods and creepers : its
tottering monuments once upright and firm as the low-
lying Christians ; its baby- stones sunken like mumble-
the-pegs, — all gave the impression that death itself was
so old and so obselete as to have lost its sting. Halstead
hailed it as the secret spot from which emana,ted the
stillness and solemnity which flooded the valley and re-
viewed its tangles with the confidence of assured immor-

ii^

•i ,

:. )

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

P II

tality. He was fashioned according to the latest pattern
of life, and he smiled at the quaintness of death. He
seemed to himself to be talking aloud, so clearly did his
thoughts flow in that otherwise thoughtless silence.

One hand was on the branch of a crab-apple tree, and
he was about to mount to the higher level of the ancient
dead, when a daub of invisible blue such as nature never
paints upon her grave-yard walls struck across his eyes.
Pushing aside the brambles he discovered that the for-
eign coloring was the dress of Miss Rachael Desborough
Guerrin. She was seated upon a monument of slate that
had fallen face downward upon the wall. Her back was
turned toward him, and her sophisticated shoes projected
a few inches into the r[)aces of the orchard. Observing
this the trespasser behind her suddenly turned and went
off strolling down the river, wondering as he came within
range of her vision if her clear-sighted eyes were look-
ing at him over the top of her magazine. He was sure
they were, and also sure of a certain picturesqueness in
his appearance as he followed a meandering path by
the water's edge.

But the channel of his inquisitiveness was changed,
and coming after a time to some marshy ground he re-
traced his steps, and without any deliberate intention of
so doing he turned again to the wall near the effective
smattering of blue.

" I supposed," he said, as he lifted his hat, " that you
had ixone to some afternoon service. I heard more bells.
It seems i was mistaken."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

}

" Yes," assented Miss Guerrin, smiling sufficiently to
lead him to make a further remark.

" I congratulate you upon your absence," he went on,
still holding his hat, and pausing as if for a mere momen-
tary discontinuance of his strolling.

" It was the sunshine," said Rachel, expecting him to go.

" The true religion is in it," he waited to say.

" Oh, it wasn't that," she answered, " I didn't analyze
it to better my excuse."

" I not only congratulate you," pursued Halstead, " I
congratulate myself too. You look so harmonious, you
make one ashamed of one's distempers."

" Did you have a distemper ?"

"Yes."

" You found it dull," suggested Miss Guernn.
" Very," he replied, putting on his hat.
" You will get used to it," she declared.
" I hope not."

" You should rather hope you would. We are all used
to it."

" Should I ?" he inquired, coming forward and leaning
against the wall.

" Then it wouldn't seem dull any more."

" What would prevent it ?"

"You would begin to hear the chickens, for one thing,"
she answered with an expression which puzzled him.
" They make it very lively."

"Happy day!" exclaimed Halstead, half suspecting
her of wit.

smm

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

ill

I'D

" They would take the place in your ears of whistles
and omnibusses and the sounds of the streets," she went
on. " It is really very noisy here. When the crickets
and frogs begin, you can scarcely hear yourself think."

" What do you do when it is the liveliest ?"

" Oh, I am a part of it," she answered, — " of the buz-
zing and droning and croaking."

" And blooming," he added, looking straight ahead of
him at the many mounds of many lengths.

She made no reply, apparently losing him altogether
in the sweep of the river, and he wished he had not been
so ready with his shallow compliment. He also thought
that if she, too, had lived within the sound of the streets
and had said, " Oh, I'm a part of it, — of the bowing and
smiling and acting," she could not have done it with more
charming grace.

" I imagine," he began again, " that it wasn't alto-
gether because of the sunshine that you happened to be
here. Isn't it the least bit prosy yonder in your hal-
lowed rendezvous ? The whole congregation sing alto, eh ?
Down here thev don't. You like this better."

" Are we a congregation ?" she inquired.

" You a,nd I and Deacon Mayflower, Concurrence Prim-
rose, and all the rest," he replied, as if reading the names
from the stones about them. ** I didn't know there were
any graveyards in America. I thought they were all in
Europe."

" I am a very good friend of all those people in there,"
she said, indicating the abode of the obsolete.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Are you ? Well, their singing could never offend any
one.

" They are my intimates pursued the girl, keeping
her eyes upon the mounds. There is Hannah Fletcher,
who has been only nineteen since seventeen hundred and
eleven."

" Have you learned the art of remaining nineteen for
that length of time ? "

" I have missed my opportunity for that," she de-
clared.

" Ah 1 " observed Halstead.

"I am twenty-two. Is it proper to tell how old one is ?"

" If one is only twenty-two. We make distinctions."

" We ? " she repeated.

" We who do what is proper," answered the young
man.

" We think we do what is proper, too," said Rachel,
" but I fear our rules are different. We tell how old we
are till it gets to be terrible."

" You are a terrible family," returned Halstead. " You
have no respect for vanity. You make no allowance for
youth. You endeavor to be always the same wise age.
You are good. We are proper. There is a difference."

" I wonder if that is true," said Rachael.

" I am surprised that you should even wish to remain
nineteen," he continued. " If you would avoid the twen-
ties after the manner of your quiet friend yonder, I am
afraid you don't appreciate your advantages. Perhaps
you are not getting the worth of your time."

AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

i!!

" I didn't say that I wished it," replied the girl, with
some reserve.

" Did you never tliink you would like to meet some one
who was absolutely living ?" he pursued. " Would one of
the present century be distasteful to you '"

" To what century do you suppose I belong ?"

" I have no right to suppose anything about you," said
Halstead, raising his discriminating, humid eyes from
the boots, with whose type he had long been acquainted,
to the face of whose type he acknowledged himself a
stranger. " I have been trying for days to keep my sup-
positions away from you. My ignorance of you is pro-
found."

But Rachel did not seem further inclined to enlighten
him.

" Why did you say," she presently asked, " that you
hoped you wouldn't get used to it, — to the dullness ?"

" I thought that implied accepting it with resignation,
— partaking of it, in short," he answered. " I could'nt do
that without a struggle, you know. I should look about
me. I should adopt some means — do something — enjoy
something. One only needs to be a little ingenious. You
mustn't fear, though, that I am always going to call upon
you for relief."

" You woul<J be too ingenious for that," she replied.
" You know that always would be too often for success."

Halstead looked at her with astonishment which was,
perhaps, slighly patronizing. He thought her remark
exceeding pertinent, and wondered if she knew how per-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

tinent, or if it were one of the truths, such as fall from
the mouths of babes and sucklings.

" I don't know how to take that," he said. " I shouldn't
wonder if jou were clever."

" Oh, yes, you would," protested Rachel, " you would
say to yourself. That can't l)e."

" Upon my word I wouldn't, — not now. I am con
vinced. I suspect you have inherited the brightness extin-
guished below," and he nodded again toward the populous
inclosure.

" I wish I had," said the girl.

" What would you do with it ?"

" I would shine," she answered.

" Before men ?" asked Halstead, half inquiringly, half
affirmatively.

Her idea, however, had not the definiteness he gave it,
and not knowing whether to accept or repel a suggestion
capable of such varied import she said nothing. He
thought he had never seen a young woman capable of
such sudden and complete silences. She did not even
seem to be trying to say anything. Her thoughts, he
would have said, were going on unembarrassed, without
help or hindrance from without, and about those thoughts
he was still curious.

"Are you going to let me remain in .<7 ignorance ?"
he inquired, " or are you going to tell me what your life
has been like ? "

. " Like nothing with which you are familiar," she re-
plied.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

I'M

!i^

^ f

- ii

" T am familiar with several varieties of life," he per-
Histed. " Perhaps I could be made to understand."

" I don't doubt that," Rachel declared. She looked
down at his light moustache and at tlie cameo ring on his
finger, and again her imagination went off into the spaces
through wliich the smiling person before her had care-
lessly come. She peopled them with charming figures,
all rai)idly gliding about. With exquisite women nod-
ding their acquiescent heads, with ambitious, quick-step-
ping men, with beggars, with drivers — tliey were all
drivers — with buyers and sellers, with loafers, with pas-
sengers, and in the motley assemblage her interest made
no marked distinctions.

" You have always lived here ? " asked Halstead, as if
to make the contrast greater.

" For generations."

He would have liked next to ask her where she got
her dresses and who sent her her hats, which becoming
articles seemed to have no possible connection with Beau-
deck ; but he contented himself with mute speculation
upon these important points.

" Except when I was away at school," she added,
shortly.

" Ah ! " he exclaimed, " that is it. Were you away
long ? "

" The difference was not so great as you may sup-
pose. It was veiy much like this, — more so if any-
thing. The house was larger. It was farther in the
country. From the top of the hill you could see only

AN EARNEST TRIELEB.

hills. It was the country, — everywhere the country.
There was even a grave-yard across the road." Rachel
smiled. She seemed to be talking of herself in the half-
humorous spirit of a third person, and he felt that he
was being taken into her inner confidence. There was an
emptiness there which made him luugh. She laughed too.
She didn't know why. They seemed to be putting their
heads together over the very simple record of a very
simple person.

" I visited once in Indiana," she went on, " and once in
Iowa. "

" My poor child ! " he interrupted.

"That was when I was very small," she continued,
taking no notice of his pity. " I was in Boston, too, one
winter, but we knew scarcely any one. When I walked
about among the shops I laughed to think how green I
was. It was all I could do to keep the proper colors
on the surface."

"There is no doubt about the propriety of the colors
on the surface," said Halstead, — "art or nature, — in their
perfection the resemblance is very close." And again he
looked away to give his speech a greater indirection.

All the same it seemed to have the effect of checking
Rachel's light confession, and there was another pause.

" I beg your pardon," said Hah.tead shortly. " I won't
do that again. I meant it, but it offends perhaps the —
the greenness underneath. If you were used to it you
wouldn't mind."

"Then what is the use of getting used to it ?" she inquired.

r^^-^^

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

"You require a man to be more than honest," he re-
turned. "I confess my standard has been much lower.
I haven't always been even that. With you I'll go far-
ther. I'll be punctilious."

The afternoon sun struck athwart the crowded stones
and filled the sunken graves with shadows. It also stnick
athwart the river, the garden, and the lithe figure of Miss
Guarrin, and Halstead with his arms folded across the top
of the wall, took into his now appeased consciousness the
various charming features on which the sunshine slanted.
He did not know when he liad been contented with so
little. He was not even smoking nor thinking of smok-
ing. From somewhere on the hills came the cries of sheep,
and not a moment of silence intervened between the suc-
cessive bleats now near and now far. The tender leaves
of grass were very green. A little breeze came along and
rustled the birches. A bumble-bee buzzed out of a tulip.
A plover whistled down among the water-grasses.

"Do you know," he began, "I like it here immensely.
There is a perpetual lullaby crooning through these val-
leys. The mountains for one's friends; the sunnuer for
one's sweetheart, — it is delightful."

Rachel began to laugh. " To be sure," he added, catch-
ing at her meaning, "it isn't an hour since I thought it
tame, but that doesn't prevent my liking it now. To de-
cry a thing one moment and like it the next is nothing
unusual ; beside it has ceased to be tame. "

" I like it too," said Rachel, "except sometimes.'*

" And why not sometimes ? "

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" We seem so vinnecessary, yo\i Iniow."

"That shows that you are self-seeking; that you have
feeling ; that you would like to be appreciated. I would
never have accused you of that. You will have to resort
to the living. There is nothing, to my notion, like the
voice that says, Come on, my friend."

"Come," said Rachel rising, "we must go back."

"Do you mean to say it then ?"

" Say what, sir ? "

" Come on, my friend."

"I had not thought of it."

"I would like to insist upon the formula."

"I would never think," she said, "of taking the lead
like that, and calling back to you."

"Then with yoiu* permission, I'll do it myself," and he
held up his hands to lift her from the wall.

Halstead found Dayton just where he left him, and on
comin<? out of the inner room where he had been washinti:
the tansy off his hands (he was very particular about his
hands), he recounted in part his afternoon experience. He
was in a royal good humor, and although his royal good
humors never betrayed themselves aggressively, Dayton
generally enjoyed his society best when his spirits were
low. At their highest, he felt like an alien, at their level
he felt cheered, entertained, but at their lowest, which
was after all but a slight recognition of the more serious
thoughts with which spirits are freighted, he felt drawn
toward him with a friendship which was perhaps the
strongest attachment of his detached life. " God never

AN EARNEST TRIELEIt.

made but one Nathan Halstead," he once exclaimed, in an
ebullition of sentiment, To which Nathan, when his sis-
ter repeated it, responded " No wonder he quit."

On this present occasion, his humor was so good as to
seem almost fantastic to the sober mind of his friend.
"Well," he began, "I let down the bars of that pasture
this afternoon, and went in, — a good ways in. The pas-
ture you described as Miss Guerin's acquaintance," he
added, seeing the blankness upon Dayton's face. " is a
delightfully rural spot, — no worn places, no hollows, no
swamps. You get in and you are in no hurry to get out
again. Something detains you. You have a fresh, leis-
urely feeling. You feel like a boy up the creek on a
Saturday. She is more simple than I supposed, — more so
than you would think from her make-up, particularly her
shoes. I am bound to believe from the style of her shoes,
tV t there is a bit of the boulevard in her intentions. She
knows nobody She loves the weather. She listens to the
chickens, the frogs, and the crickets. But back of it all I
am bound to believe she quietly craves our monstrous
amusements. She looks like it. She smiles like it. Her
profile alone would make it impossible for her to be happy
in obscurity. When she projects it on the vision of a
feeble man like me, he is afraid. I think she must have
bent her full face upon you the day you drove the sheep ;
if I remember rightly you were not intimidated. I talked
to her for an hour, and, unlike you, I remember what she
said. She said she was twenty-two. She said she had
been away at school. She said she would like to shine.

AN EARNEST TRIFLEK.

.■>7

me.

She had on a hat that came over her eyes, and a hhie
flannel dress."

"You should tell all that to her mother," said Dayton,
without looking up.

" Or to her aunts. There is always a perspective of
aunts ! " agreed Halstead.

"But whatever you do," the young fellow rambled on
in his original tone, " you nuistn't bow and pay her com-
pliments. She doesn't know what to do with pretty
speeches like most of her sisters. I tried it, naturally
enough, and she rejected them with silence. I tell you
that you may avoid a like profanity."

" You needn't put your remarks in the form of advice,
luiless you mean to foUow it yourself," interpolated
Dayton.

"You said you had looked at her, but perhaps not
finally," returned his comrade.

" Nonsense ! " said Dayton, who was made strangely un-
comfortable by this pleasant recital. He remembered sit-
tinor once near a shrill clarionet, when he felt the same
way. " If it is profanity to discuss her personal qualities
in talking with her, hadn't we better di'op her ?"

That very same evening, Halstead again saw her upon
the front piazza, where she hed been walking up and down.

"You want to give a greater value to my time," she
said to him when he asked permission to join her.

"And to mine," he answered. " I am one of those gre-
garious mortals to whom solitude means time wasted. You
live in New England, you ought to hate waste of any sort. "

AN EARNEST TKIFLEK.

" I ought to hate it for myself, but to encourage it in my
neighbors."

" Do you mean to say, then, that solitude on my part
would be to your advantage ?" ,

" If I did I could not say it so well as that. "

" But did you ? "

" What I really think," she said, slackening her pace
and putting her hands upon her elbows, " is that it would
be much to my advantage that you would not be solitary.
I would like to know the things that you do."

" No you wouldn't," he answered. " I know some things
that I would rather not know — myself, some tolerably
burdensome things. I am coming to you to revive my
ignorance. I haven't been so ignorant in ten years as I
was this afternoon."

"Ignorance isn't so — so communicable," she rejoined,
pausing at the end of the piazza.

" Yes it is," he gently insisted, raising one arm against
a pillar, " it is a feeling, — a young, humble sort of feeling."

Rachel raised her glance to his face and found him
slightly smiling, rather with his eyes than with his mouth.
She wondered why it was that in their conversation they
both so constantly smiled. " It isn't that with me," she
replied ; " it is a greedy, hungry feeling. I want to feed it."

"Don't do it," he said.

"Why not?"

" Don't do it, " he repeated.

" One would not expect you to feel humble and to like
it," said Rachel at length.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

him
louth.

they
" she

Nlit."

" Neither would one expect you to be rapacious," he re-
torted.

" I am not, — not always."

" Nor am I humble always, — only when the sim shines
on grave-yard walls. Then I would like to be a Puritan,
— a Puritan peasant."

'"And when it goes down behind the hills," returned
Rachel with a wish born upon the instant, " I would like
to be a woman of the world."

" There are many different species of that beautiful be-
ing," answered Halstead.

"Of course I would like to be the finest."

" It is down now," he cried, his affinity for women of
the world stealin<j: over him. He looked throuufh the warm
dusk at the brin-ht horizon, and back acjain to the face
turned toward him with parted lips ; then gathering a
handful of the summer etlier he blew it back toward the
golden west with a careless, contemplative air. "The
world, if you had it," he said, " might not please you more
than so much atmosphere."

" Oh, I have breathed miles upon miles of the atmos-
phere," daid Miss Ptachel Guerrin. " I know the pleasure
of that 1 "

" And I have been over miles upon miles of the nether
territory, and know the pleasure of that. That is why I
envy you."

. " You envy me for amusement," she answered. "That
is where you show your ingenuity again."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Upon my word !" exclaimed the young man, thinking
liow efficacious in this case his ingenuity was.

" You make me feel blank, — unfurnished," the girl went
on, surprised at her own communicativeness. " I told you
I was twenty- two but, on review I am only eleven. I
wish that a great deal had happened to me, and that 1
had seen and known a great many people and places, but
I haven't. You see I have thought of myself a great deal.
Mine isn't much of an ambition, of course," she added ;
" but it seems to me that if one is too comfortable to have
an occupation which one follows for dear life's sake, the
next best thing is to be very, very gay in a social way, —
to know a great many people and places as you do."

" Don't put it in that way," said Halstead. " There are
only two classes of persons that it is worth while to be
One is the women whom men conspire to lift above all
' occupation for dear life's sake ;' as you say ; and the other
the men with the ability to keep them there."

" I wonder if that is true," said Rachel.

" Just as you like," answered Halstead. " It is a matter
of opinion. I give you mine. Meanwhile," he continued,
" before you attain the full dimensions of the resplendent,
but perturbed being you desire to be, I would like to learn
the secret of your present serenity."

" For that you should go to aunt Hannah," she ad-
vised.

He hesitated a moment, then laughed rather to him-
self. " I believe I should," he declared. " I'll go now."

He went down the steps, and ascending the piazza of

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

the wing, walked its length, then retraced his steps.
Dayton was within and he tapped upon the window.

" I believe," he said, " that I'll go up and look at that
house. Which way is it."

" All right," answered Dayton, " I'll go with you." And
the two friends started up the road together.

There was nothing said on the way about the object of
their journey, and it might have been supposed during
the first quarter of an hour that they were a couple of
Turks in the mountains of Roumania with such close
interest did their conversation keep to the war then in
progress between the Sultan and the Emperor of all the
Russias. From this it branched off to the management
of the Suez Canal ; thence using M. de Lesseps as a con-
junction, to the Grand Central Asiatic Railway Society
and the projected road between Orenburg and Peshawur
by way of Samarkand. Halstead, slipping his arm in
that of his chief with a virtuous sense of carrying out a
well-advised resolution, told some anecdotes of the oil-
wells on the Caspian Sea ; which Dayton followed with
some peculiarities of the river Oxus ; and when they
came to the object of their expedition they were still
rambling over the Asiatic steppes. Through the dilapi-
dated gate of their proposed residence they re-entered
once more the land of the free and the home of the brave,
and Halstead boldly said he thought they might remove
their effects at once — unless it was altogether too far
from the village, — and did he, Dayton, suppose it would
be possible to find a cook.

AN EARNE.ST TTITFLER.

Dayton produced a key, and thej^ went Miroiigh the
rooms of the lower Hoor, making an immense noise
through the dark recesses.

Halstead would have walked with a lighter tread, and
have spoken with a less tremendous voice, but his com-
panion was no such respecter of the musty silence. He
opened the door of the stair-way and shouted through
the reverberating passage that it was not worth while to
go into the attic, that the rooms below were more than
enough.

" It would be a great lark," echoed Nathan with an
irrepressible chill. And then lighting their cigars they
trudged back through the gorge.

When they were again in their room with the curtains
drawn, Halstead put his hands behind him and looked
around, as in a gallery, at the antiquities on the wall.
" If we do stay," he finally observed, " we must send the
Cesnola Collection to our hostess in the fall."

/o^l^^^^i

k-ts?^

i!;
li.

-.1 !''

AN KARXEST TRTFLER.

CHAPTER V.

EARLY each morning Dayton and Halstead went off to-
gether to their'bridges and tunnels, returning only at
night, or, as was frequently the case, not returning for
several days. There was some exceedingly heavy work
to be done in the vicinity of Beaudeck which bid fair to
detain them in that section for months to come.

The village itself, with its gangs of laborers, began to
look more like a mining station in Arizona, than a res-
pectable New England town ; but the sight of the men
as they tramped in ragged procession, was beautiful in
the eyes of the hopeful townsmen. Great waggons, load-
ed with dynamite, pavssed mysteriously through the
streets in the dead of night, and at intervals during the
day, loud explosions ripped throiigh the aged silence of
the valley. Everywhere there was progress and bustle.

At the Desborough place, as elsewhere, a new and
livelier atmosphere was created, and a breeze fresh from
Boston seemed to be blowing through the house. Rachel
no longrer carried a sense of loneliness around with her,
and never once felt that her youth was going to waste.
Although learning nothing new of her own knowledge,
she felt that something was slowly happening, — some-
thing with great power to awaken and to agitate. She
no longer even cared to get beyond her usual circumfer-

AN EARNEST TRIFLEK.

eiicu ; and instead ol going out into the great unknown,
she would close the valley at both ends, lest some of its
charm should ooze away.

During this time, she heard a great deal of worldly
talk, which kept a commotion in her veins, — the sort of
commotion it seemed which went on in city thorough-
fares. When she went out upon the piazza, or upon the
lawn after tea, her presence seemed to conjure another
presence into the same vicinage ; and if she stopped to
look at a butterfly, or a lady-bird, she was sure not to
remain alone in her brief admiration of those fly-away
objects ; even when she called her dog he never came
unaccompanied. She heard Von Billow compared with
Liszt. She heard of the Grand Opera in Paris, and the
people who walked in the foyer. She heard of George
Sand ar»d Alfred de Musset. She heard of a steerage
passenger who, going ashore at the last moment for some
forgotten bundle of rags^ was left by the departing ship,
which carried her seven little paddies to an unknown
land. She heard of a boot-black whose name was Alex-
ander Von Humboldt ; and she heard of certain roulette
tables. " 1 only had ten dollars in the pool," Halstead
said to her with a grimace, " and if I had won I would
have a thousand. I call that doing pretty well for me.
It is as near as I ever came to a fine speculation."

He told good and bad in the same tone, and with a
strange indiflference to their boundary lines, as drawn in
Beaudeck ; and Rachael listened with wide eyes and un-
appeased appetite. Now and then there were deep rifts

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

in the smiling; surface of his meaninj; over which she
lightly skipped without looking down ; and now and
then there were subtle barbs which seemed to aim at
susceptibilities in her nature that had hitherto been hid-
den in the dark.

" There isn't much of me to know," she said to him
one day, " but there is a ;fesit deal to experiment upon.
I believe what you like best in me is the visible effect of
your own wit."

" Never mind," he said, " what I like best in you. I
hesitate to inquire. You are a very misleading person.
By nature you are one thing ; by education another. You
should forego one or the other, and stand out clearly for
what you are. You carry a watering pot and a trowel,
but I suspect you of the deepest arts. While you pre-
tend to care immensely to hear of the outside world, you
and your garden together are obscuring what fragmen-
tary memories I have. Is it these fragrant stuffs, these
infernal herbs, whose roots you dig about ? I am losing
both mind and ambition. All I ask is to vegetate in
your garden. The other day down at the junction, there
came up to me with outstretched hand a sloek fellow,
with an eye-glass, and hair brushed back like one of Ger-
many's transcendental sons. I felt like saying, 'Who
are you ?' Yet we were intimate in January. I am for-
getting, — I don't even remember what I am forgetting.
Those professions of yours are all humbug. You don't
care a marigold for Paris. You shrug your shoulders
at Boston. What you want is a disciple who finds re-

Ay EARNEST TRTFLER.

flections in liollylifXjk.H, and tak«!s plcj^sin*' in [)a.stLiri;s !
You wan^ me to eat youi poppies."

" I want nothing of the kind," quickly protested Rachel.
" Ve<^etate if you like, but don't accuse nie of arts that 1
have not, and would not have. I hate arts."

" Now you speak like the holder of the waterinij^-pot,"
cried Halstead. " All women have arts."

" They don't willfully ase them," she answered warmly.

" That might come from the mouth of the watering-pot
itself. I think they do. You, for instance, with yours,
might do me good," he added gently. " The countryman
you create is better than the civilian that was."

" I would not pretend to do you good. You are too
finished, too, — w^hat .shall I say ? All the good that
could be done you was done long ago. It isn't wuth you
yourself I have to do. It is with what you have seen,
with what you have heard."

" Your argument," .said Halstead, " is a little close. Do
you think you can quite make the distinction, capable as
you are ? Do you mean to accept the parts and repudiate
the whole ? I am a mere man. You must think well or
ill of me, myself."

Rachel did not immediately answer. Then she called
her dog. " Here, Duke ! " .she said. " Watch this poor
gentleman who has lost his mind. I am going ii t1
house."

But Rachaei did not remain in the house. She no 1 no
fancy for the house, and a few evenings later found her
again raising her head among the sprays of the garden.

AN EARNEST TRTFLKR.

It was going to rain, and sliu looked about Iut at the
clouds. The air was moist and warm and heav^y. There
was no dew and not much light.

The two engineers were upon the side piazza, smoking,
reading, idling, and hoth from time to time looked toward
tlie lilacs and the peonies. Halstead frowned ov^er his
paper, and the angry coal crept fast the length of his
cigar. Dayton read on. It seemed to the younger man
that before he could descend the piazza steps he must
first knock down his chief. Dayton's presence was at
times a most unpleasant protest, — none the less that he
was ignorant of it. But on this occasion he was not
ignorant of it, for presently he rose and looked directly
at the figure moving about among the intersecting paths.
It seemed as if he would say something if he could find
words sufficiently exact. She had on no hat and was
swinging her hands in front of her, as she walked, with
slow, inaudible claps. Even at that distance she was an
attractive object.

Miss Rachel Guerriu was neither light nor dark. When
her nature was entirely in repose, which was not often,
her complexion was clear, almost pale ; and in the multi-
tudes of other times it depended entirely upon what her
emotions were, — their nature, their extent. She had a
small head well poised upon her shoulders, and the brown
hair which grew thick about her forehead had waves
peculiar to itself. Her incomparable profile, with the
chin well up, suofgested a nature in search of the higher
and more vigorous virtues ; but her full face belonged to

AN EARNEST TRIFLER

a less exacting and less formea character, and the eager
expressions chasing each other across it betrayed those
forces witliin which conflict with our sliffht intelli<xence
and give life its sharpness. She looked about her with
eyes that apparently wanted to see more than was pre-
sented to a casual glance, in full confidence that she must
see much if her vision were nicely adjusted to the depths.
Perhaps after all lier attractiveness was not due so much
to her features as to a certain completeness, a succinct
individuality and an air of appreciative attention which
she bestowed upon the world in passing. She dressed
well, perhaps a trifle severely, since there was about her
no floating, diaphanous drapery, and no random curls or
ribbons. Her figure as yet was rather thin, and it was
doubtful if it would ever round to the fullness of the
woman serene. Halstead thought not.

Dayton stared a few moments rubbing his chin, then,
as if the desired words did not come to him, turned on
his heel and started toward the door.

" You needn't take yourself in," said Halstead look-
ing up. " I would go just as soon with you gaping after
me."

" Why don't you go, if you are going ? " retorted Day-
ton. " I'm not your keeper. I hate to feel that you
suspect me of spying after you with secret reproach. I'm
not your keeper. It's no attair of mine. If she chooses
to show you all the ants and fish-worms about the prem-
ises bv all means let her. No doubt she likes it. So do
you. So do I ; but it irritates me to be a third party,

AN EARNKST TRIFLKR.

an on-looker, whom yon suspect of sneaking opposition.
Ten chances to one she is expecting you now while you
sit there arguing. My dear fellow, I am not braced on
the side of old women and strait-jackets. She waits,
Maud waits. The red rose cries, the white rose weeps,
and the black bat, night, does something else. Why are
you here ? Why don't you travel ? I believe in you.
My faith could move mountains. Bestir yourself I beg
of you go, if you arc going."

" You think," said Halstead, " that the attentions of a
young man of society are bes i bestowed upon those accus-
tomed to their happy inconsequence. You think that I
am turning the hospitality of your friends into a diversion
for mytelf."

" I don't, if you don't," returned Dayton. " You know
yourself best."

" Sometimes I fancy that she is coolly studying mie^'
Halstead rejoined. " You may be sure she gets as much
diversion as she gives."

" I don't doubt that."

''■ What is it you doubt then ? I have a conscience, —
you are too serious."

" You are losing time," said Dayton. " Miss Guerin, T
think, has found a l)eetle." And nodding toward the
stooping figure in the garden, he turned and went within.

Halstead drew his hat down over his eyes, passed down
the steps, and a moment later was bowing before the
young woman under discussion.

About an hour afterwards, when their walk had led

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

them down to the river and back again to a seat between
two beeches, Halstead, moved perhaps by thoughts which
Dayton suggested, aided by contrition for sundry hand-
some speeches, of more recent date, suddenly broke otf
his discourse, and began again a dry, light tone.

" I don't know," he said, " what I am running on like
this for. I don't know why I came out here, where the
fire-flies kindle the air. I don't know why, when I get
here, my tongue should run as it does, or why you should
sit listening there, with that ingenuous air. What are
we doing it for, — do you know ? And why did you tie
that pictorial handkerchief around your head ? "

" Why ;" said Rachael, smiling as one whose only
thought was entertainment, " there is nothing you like
so well as talking, — don't I listen to suit you."

" I have taxed you a great deal of late," Halstead went
on, in the same light accent, " and you have borne it
with great patience, — commendable patience. But there
comes a time in every acquaintance, you know, when the
stream of expression ceases, and the vacuity that is be-
hind it all is allowed to be frankly apparent. It may
please you to hear that no man's ideas hold out for more
than six montlis, and that after that he respects the
peace of his friend, and begins to babble his say over
again to strangers. You are not going I "

" If you can find a period," replied the girl, who liad
risen. " I don't want to seem rude."

" It is now some weeks since I met you," said Hal-
stead, retaining his seat, and taking no notice of the op-

AN KARNEST TRIFLER.

portunity afforded for his verbal activity to give place to
physical exercise, " and the more you let me talk to you,
the sooner you will be through with me. I don't know
that you will gain anything by economy. Words, you
know with me, are what bung-holes are to wine barrels,
and when they have served their momentary purpose,
the barrel is empty. Each time it is refilled it is with a
new vintage. 1 hope you don't think that they have
meaning ! — tliat they are part and parcel of the perman-
ent substance of the man. I have no permanent sub-
stance, Miss Rachael Desborough Guerrin, companion of
fire-flies, mother of marigolds, and keeper of the dead !
I talk seriously when I am lightest, and lightly when I
am most serious ; idly a^ all times."

" You need not tell me that. You must not be afraid
that I will find undue meaning in you."

" Now I a)ti afraid," he said.

" Sir," said Rachael, " you are spoiling my honey-
suckle."

" Once," Halstead went on, " I knew a woman who had
eyes like you, and who peered about her as you do, as
if she would find some deeper meaning than lay upon the
surface. She looked at me like that, — Like you, but with
eyes less innocent. She was what you want to be, and
can't (1 assure you that you can't, — it isn't in you), — and
what little meaning there was in me, she found and took
away with her. The only needle in the hay -stack, she
has sticking in her bosom. You are going then :* — don't
go. See what a night this is. 1 hear a hawk."

'.At
''■ii

; i-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

ii.

^ r

; r

" I must. It i.s getting late."

" You think me very light," he conjectured with sud-
den compunction.

" So light," she agreed, after a pause which sought in
vain for contradiction, " that the shadows falling now
must seem heavy to you," — and for a moment she seemed
to see through him into the air, scarcely less thin beyond.

" Come, I like that !"

" It is time we were out of them."

" Would you leave me here, — your guest ! How swift
the river is ! "

" We should not have come, perhaps," she said, a little
doubtfully.

" Not timid, Juliet, in this familiar old garden ? Your
father's garden ! Your luother showed me the other day
a chair, grown fast high up in an apple-tree, which she
said was near the ground when you used to sit in it. I
should say you knew every twig, and every goblin here,
—except me. Am I the goblin that sends you to the
house ? If I were a bouncer now, like Dayton, you
might go."

" If you were Mr. Dayton I would stay. It isn't really
late. I don't care for that."

" What ! have you been making up with Dayton ? That
can't be."

" He doesn't talk to hear himself, you know."

" If anything could make him talk, it would be you.
He once grew eloquent about you. But he is dumb, he is
dumb. Dayton is a capital fellow. All the secrets of his

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

reticent heart doubtless do him honor. All his intentions
do him honor too. He is very clear about his intentions.
Taking him through and through, he is the most respect-
able man I ever knew."

" All your friends know that," said Rachel.

" But he would never be out here," Halstead resumed.
" He shuts himself up and preserves his balance. This is
a bewildering place. Please sit down again. I have no
peace of mind while you stand like that. I want to tell
you that I am going to Boston to-morrow."

" What ?"

" I am going to Boston to-morrovv'."

" To stav ?" asked the mv], sittinof down.

" For a time. Tell me, in politeness, you are sorry I
am going and will be glad when I return."

" Must you go ? "

" I am a restless fellow."

" Ves, I know."

" Besides I am sent. You won't say it then ? You
are not like me. You are close-mouthed. You arc indif-
ferent."

" I may be different," she answered, " I am not indif-
ferent."

" I am sorry to leave," said Halstead.

" I wonder if that is true," said Rachel.

" You are always wondering if what I say is true ; not
off'ensively, but as if you were groping after a standard
more accurate than mine. Well, what do you conclude ?"

"All I ever knew or thought was true has turned to

n,i

i5i

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

wonder since you came," said Rachel lightly, smoothing
with both hands her ruffled hair. " When I quit won-
dering I will have a new set of thoughts. The wind is
stirring."

And she held out her hands, palms upward, to inquire
for the rain.

" What are you going to give me before I go ? " per-
sisted the young man. " Some souvenir would be in
order. A ribbon or a hair-pin is neat. We are having,
you know, a sort of flirtation, and no flirtation is com-
plete without at least an exchange of geranium leaves.
It is very touching. It fills to repletion the worldly
heart. I have known men and women by scores so satis-
fied with a sprig of geranium that they never craved any-
thing more. If you had such a thing about you now " —

'• Come," cried Rachel. " It is beginning to rain. I felt
a drop on my hand."

" Give me that ?" said Halstead v/ith genuine thirst
But Rachel gathered up her skirts and started back along
the walk.

There were lights moving about the door-yard as she
reached it, and Dayton, advancing from the region of the
stables, held a lantern aloft.

•' Halloa ! " cried Halstead, from behind. " What's

Dayton stopped, and the lantern illumined Rachel's
face with the silk bandanna about her head. She looked
exceedingly bright, restless, spirited. •

" What's up ? " repeated Halstead.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

' ".

^at's

" The horses got out," answered Dayton, dropping the
light. "I have been helping to turn them in. They
were tearing up the yard."

" I thought at first," said Nathan, " that you were try-
ing the Diogenes game."

" Wliat is the matter with the house ?" asked Rachel,
looking up at the dark front. " No lamps lighted."

" The ladies were called away. Didn't Halstead tell
you ?

" No."

" Somebody lay sick with a fev^er. Perhaps Simon
Peter's wife's mother."

" That poor woman was buried ages ago," Rachel ob-
served.

" Ah, yes, I remember," he rejoined. " I heard the
bells."

But finely as he felt they were getting on, Halstead
almost wished that Rachel would receive his remarks a
little less as they were meant ; that she would answer in
a way a little less light and bright ; that she would be a
little less unconscious ; and a little less unembarrassed, as
he strolled with her about the garden in the early evening.
She did not seem to mind his presence quite as it was to
be presumed she would.

lel's
iked

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

CHAPTER VI.

A DAY or two after Halstead's departure, Dayton re-
ceived a letter from him, in which, after the prelimi-
nary business matters, he said : —

" My sister, Mrs. Sterling, with her family and some of
her friends, are looking about during this bumble-bee
weather for a retreat among the mountains, and having
heard me in unguarded moments upon the subject of the
Pocumtuck and the scenery adjacent, think they might
be pleased in Beaudeck. My dear friend, forgive and
help me ; together we may avert the invasion.

" They say, I believe, that the change would do them
good, — they all need it. Young women, you know, can
evolve from the mystery they miscall their health some
physical excuse for any trip whatever, and on the short-
est possible notice. Their constitutions are trained to
it ; their well-being is and must be synonymous with
their pleasure. There is no doubt about it ; go they
must ; but, hist ! where ? By all means, I think, to some
noxious, sulphurous spring ; to some beach washed by the
kindly Atlantic for fashionable uses ; to some staring,
sylvan resort, where on wide, white verandas they can
enjoy their flounces, their peopled solitude, and a blessed
immunity from active thought. Beaudeck you know is
a trifle austere. Her streams may be limpid, her skies

I I

AN EARNEST TllIFLER.

I ']

lies

cerulean, but she has a serious and searching air, and she
tlirows one back upon one's self in a way that would not
be tolerated in a watering-place.

" I have told them there was no hotel there ; but with
preverse amiability they abominate hotels, and beg me
to ask you to find quarters for them at some country
house. I have told them, too, that they would tind no
comforts and no anmsements, but only to learn that they
have always been as averse to comfort and amusement as
to hotels. 1 have even told them that since the days of
King Philip's War, the country has never been free from
brandishing tomahawks, and that the once frenzied people
still put on their hats with a sense of gratitude for crowns
to cover. It was no go. They are solidly in favor of
the Indian, with all his traditionary privileges.

" I give it up. It is your turn now. There will be six
or seven in the party, children, nurses, and all, and as
they want to return with me, there is no time to lose.
Genial friends, of course, in Boston, — genial friends any-
where ; but what would they do off there on the border,
and how could we entertain them, till frost relieved us ?
Invention would fail. It is a trifling matter, but I am
not in the mood. I am selfish. I am narrow, — narrow
as the valley up yonder, — and I have no lodgings to
let.

" My cousin Margaret Duncan is one of them, and by
her practical side one could preserve an undisturbed
parallel for any number of summers ; but Miss Mason is
the other, — you remember Miss Ma.son. Then Jim Meade

'■m

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

and Mr. Sterling would, of course, as in duty bound,
occasionally appear.

" As your talents point in every direction rather than
toward finesse, let me suggest that you write immediately
and say how it is, — no possible accommodations, and so
on. I would be obliged to you, and you may, beside, give
thanks to yourself."

When Dayton read this he straightened himself with
instant decision, and in that decision he coincided with
his friend. With women, Jared Dayton was exceedingly
reluctant, and when their society was proposed to him
he was apt to raise an averting hand and shake his head.
During the time Halstead had known him, he had never
known him extend to them other than common
civilities ; but what lay back of that time he could not
tell, and whether the restrictions that bound him, were a
matter of temperament, or the result of dear experience,
she could not even guess. Dayton rarely talked of women.
He did not, in truth, even cultivate thoughts of them.
When by chance he was thrown in their society, he
appeared sufficiently well not to come under the ban of
even the most fastidious, but he did not seek occasion to
be alone with any one of them. He was slow ; recently
he had pronounced himself slow to excess, — imnecessarily
slow, — infernally slow. He had the manner of a man,
chiefly intent upon minding his own business. He was
as earnest as if nature forbade him to look lightly upon
this grinding world, and as much at his ease as if he
expected to live in it always, and was making the best of

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

it. He never rebelled. He never exulted. Apparently
he had concluded that insensibility was the wiser role.
When a mere boy, the necessity of making money had
forced itself upon him with absoluteness, and he had been
endeavoring to make money ever since, with vague and
passionate intentions regarding the time subsequent to
fortune. But he was thirty-six, and his fortune was not
yet made. He had no time for deviation. His eyes were
fixed. His hand was on the plough. He loved his pro-
fession silently, fervently. He was one-sided, — developed
only in the direction of what was least sentimental and
emotional. In fact whatever touched his emotions
seemed to have ruinous designs upon his happiness, and
he had a very clear notion, born of a season in the past,
and of certain well-defined tendei\cies of his closetted
being, that that way storms lay.

Occasionally he envied young Halstead those traits
wdiich signalized him : his ability to pursue to advantage
several interests at once ; his social adi-oitness, the dexter-
ity with which he created the opportunities he wanted ;
and that peculiar temper, constitution, or whatever it was
that commanded such ready and warm response. He
envied him now the facility of his letter, and tried to
imagine himself answering it with equal ease, and to the
desired effect. Either way, to come or not to come, the
idea of his personal intei'position, irritated him. Finally
he read it again slowly, and with greater care. " Mason ?
Mason ?" he said.

" That was the name.'

\\i

AN EAPVFST TRIFLER.

Then lie made a brief statement of the contents of the
note, and asked, experimentally, if there was nny placi' in
the vicinity where they took summer boarders.

" Yes," said Miss Hannah with great promptness, —
such promptness as was calculated to remove indecision ;
" year before last a family stayed three months or more
at Mrs. Anderson's. That is the nearest place, — a mile,
or thereby, up the north road. She is a good woman, and
she has a large h ouse. I think she would like the lielp
It would be a kindness. She is a widow. We know her
through the church. Her husband died of the consump-
tion, — they all do. She has two boys who w^ill have it
too. To live among those w^ho have consumption makes
people strange and wistful. If your friends don't care
where they go, it would be well for them to go there. It
would be doing good. The rich and poor should lit
together. You might drive up there now ; the carryall is
in front. Perhaps Rachel will take you. Rachel!"

" Certainly," said Rachel, wondering how she would get
through a drive alone with the august engineer, but glad
to be of service to one who asked so few favors of his
fellow-men.

Dayton hesitated, unprepared to have his nebulous plan
thus framed and ready for instant execution. Rachel
stood before him with her hat. He bowed, expressed
his thanks ; and they started off together.

" Do you w^ant these people to come ?" he asked, as
they settled back in their places on the front seat of the
carryall, " because if you don't we won't have them, that

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

is all. It would be easy. Just say the word. I must
tell you that HaLstead does not care about it. He said
I was to tell them there was no room." " But there is
room," said Rachel ; " we won't do that."

" There is no room if you don't want them. It is your
territory."

" I would be ashamed not to want them," she answered.
" Don't you want them ?"

" Yes ; on the whole I want them."

" You know them, then ? "

" Slightly."

" And like them ? "

" Mrs. Sterling," he said, " is bright. Her husband and
brother are both my friends. Her circle is a pleasant one
to live in, if one has plenty of time."

" And the others ? "

" Miss Mason I have only seen once or twice."

" Where did you see her ? "

" At Mrs. Sterling's."

" Is she pretty ? "

" She is tall and pale ; taller than you, and very much
paler. She wears odd jewelry and stuff's from India."

" She is stylish then."

" Probably."

'' But that is not saying that she is pretty."

" I have heard her called strikinor."

" Then she is more than pretty."

" More,— -and less, ^he has fine manners. She holds
her head high."

.1^

'.''

'HI

H 3

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Young, is she ? " said Rachel, bending down and
brushing something from lier dress.

" She may be twenty-four or five, — perhaps twenty-
four or five hundred."

" That isn't very close guessing. Which does she seem
to be?"

" Her face is young."

" She can't very well be older than her face."

" Oh yes, slie can. Her smile belongs to a woman of
the Roman Empire in its decline. It is very strange and
melancholy. It distorts her features."

" Perhaps her health is pool*. I have seen women look
like that when they had poor health."

" Perhaps," c>aid Dayton ; " I never lieard it men-
tioned."

" Does she seem well ? "

" She goes a great deal."

" Goes where ? " /

" To the opera, to the shops, to dinners, to Saratoga.
Where is it that young ladies go ? "

" Why does she want to come here ?"

" Now, 1 can't answer. Her motives are deeper than 1
can get."

" Who called her striking ? "

" llalstead. She is a friend of his. She is rich. Shi^
is alone, — as much alone as one who is rich can conveni-
ently be. She has a gi-eat deal at her command."

" And yet you say he does not care to have them come.
Perhaps she is lacking somewhere else. She may not be

■

AN EARNEST TRIFLKR.

agreeable. She may be tiresome. Perhaps she is only
striking in her looks."

And she looked at liini with keener inquiry in her face
than lay in her sentences. Dayton did not seem to relish
it.

" And do you too," lie asked with an assumption of
lightness, " lay such stress on the agreeable, the versatile,
the striking? Is there no homely quality that recommends
itself to you ? What is .'our opinion of fidelity ? How
would single-mindedness strike vou V

" Do you sup})ose," said Rachel, " that slie is like that ? "

" 1 don't know, " answered Dayton with sudden coolness.
" I don't suppose anything about it. We will give her
the benefit of the doubt."

Rachel neither assented nor dissented, and presently
Dayton a.sked her if she read much, with an abrupt with-
drawing from intimate conuuunicatiou, and a safe return
to exoteric topics, which frecpiently marked his conver-
sation. She thought he iisked it as friends of her father's
had been wont toa.sk her how ohl she was, or if she went
to school ; and recalled what Halstead had (mce sai<l about
the coclcatoos and coal mines.

WHien however they ha<l reached the u{)per valley and
had come within sight of Mrs. Anderson's house, Dayton
again reverted to the strangers.

" Suppose," he said, " wo drive on past. W^e needn't
troubh; ourselves. T assure v ,n they will turn the vallev
upside down. Every day there will be a picnic. They
devise the most atrocious pleasures, from whicli there is

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

no escape. They reach out their slim hands and draw
whoever they want into their schemes. I feel as if I were
assistin<^^ in a plot, and I am clumsy at plots. Are you
(]uite sure that you want them ? — I leave it to you.
Imagine you see them drivini^ along the highway every
time you look up. Imagine them under your elms.
Tliey leave the gates open. They stir up Ijreezes, They
might stir up a hreeze which would take your l)reath
away 1 We can turn l>ack yet ; Mrs. Anderson luis no
prevision of our errand. We can take our drive and go
liome. 1 should consi<ler the drive in it/self a sufficient
end and aim. You still have the opportunity to back out."

" I don't want to back out," said Rachel. " The more
you say the more I want them to come."

"Miss Guerrin," cried Dayton, "you are a brave girl.
I am going to give you a laurel blossom." And getting
out of the carriage he ascended the steep side of the
mountain that rose above them and brought back a be-
lated sprig of that honorable Hower.

" And you feel no hesitation," he asked as he handed it
to her ; " you want them all, — the whole powerful posse
comitatus ? "

" All," she answered, wondering at his change of manner.

" We will transport the town," he exclaimed. " I will
build them an hotel myself."

" Of course," she said thouglitfully, " it is pleasant to
liavo stranijers here."

" Then 1 am happy in being one, " he answered.
" How long may one hope to preserve that })leasant but

\'i.

? '

AN EARNEST TRIELER.

transitory relation ? What a pity that one must so soon
degenerate into a friend, even though one fall no further 1"

" I should say," said Rachel, doubtful of a speculation
so intru.~:ive, " that no one could preserve it longer than
you."

" But since you have declared it pleasant," said ho, " T
should still hesitate to advance. That is offering a pre-
mium on distance."

And that night Dayton wrote to Halstead saying :

1 can't be of any use to you in this matter. I have
inquired about here in the interest of your friends with
effect contrary to your suggestion. They can find very
tolerable accommodations at a large and finely located
house a mile or more from the village toward 8paz. If
that will do why not hav • them come ?"

Even after getting th.>: ofi* his mind he sat up quite
late. He was not satisfit 1. Kitlier wav matters were
not going to suit him. T \ere was an irritation in the
wind. His profession <lid not abs(jrb him with its old
kin<lness and closeness, anc he vvishetl he had not med-
dled with what did not coni 3rn liim.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

CHAPTER VII.

THE venerable stage that went to the train on an even-
ing shortly following was crowded for the first time
in years, — it being like everything else in the vilage, many
sizes too large for its ordinary uses. It lumbered slowly
across the bridge and along the shaded road, while from
its windows peered the animated heads of blue-veiled
strangers ; their long kid-gloves slipped in the faded
hand-rests, their fingers swaying with the motion, their
attention divided between the scenery and the vivacious
discussions conducted by young Halstead within. They
expressed themselves pleased with everything, — the hills,
the river, the cattle in the fields, the very stones by the
roadside, — and declared they would forego the seashore
and stay there all summer. They even hunnued an air
from " Mignon " illustrative of their mood. As *he sole
occupants of this ancient vehicle (a relic of past prosper-
ity, and a decayed stage route) the}'^ already felt the con-
fidence of possession, the freedom of adventure, the eas«' ot
accustomed travellers, and the spirit of powerful patrons
who, by their late example, wouhi lift a lapsed village a
century forward. In the midst of this talking and gaz-
ing and approving and rolling at easo, the coach sud-
denly turned through an arched gatt^way. stopped a
mor'^ent before a structure made up of steps, of col-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

umns, of wings, and a great deal of faded gray paint;
then rolled on again leaving Dayton upon the steps bow-
ing his adieux to its occupants, while Halstead with his
hat in his hand made a low salute to a bare-headed, grace-
ful girl upon the piazza.

" Why, where are we?" asked Mrs. Sterli'ig, looking
(juickly back through the olnis.

"This is whore we live," answered Halstead. "The
home of the unique, the antique Desboroughs."

" I thought at first it was some asylum," observed Miss
Duncan.

" So it is, — for disabled engineers," sairl Halstead.

" T)isaV)lcd I " exclaimed Miss Mason.

" For those with a halt in their resolution," replie<l
TSathan.

" And was that Miss Guerrin :* ' Mrs. Sterling inquired.

" The very same, dear sister."

" Why didn't you t(^ll us ? "

" Tell you what ? "

" About her. Who would have expected to see her
like that ? "

Nathan laughed, as if his own judgment had been
indirectly confirmed by a competent critic. " You wouhl
not have believed me if I had," he said. " You would
have tliought that pastoral associations had got the bet-
ter of me. I scarcelv believe in her mvself vet."

" It isn't nt^ceasary that you should," observed his sister.
I expect her to appear «ome morning prim, angular
and crude," the young man went on.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

a f'

" I hope she may for her own sake," Mrs. Sterling
declared, — " that is if you flutter about her much."

" Is she an intelligent person ? " inquired Miss Duncan,
who invariably asked after a person's intelligence.

" You must be the judge," said Halstead deferentially*

" Then your opinion nmst be a good one," commented
the lady. " No (me ever withholds one that is averse."

" She shall come to call upon you," Nathan asserted.

There was a little pause and then Mrs. Sterling took
up the conversation.

" It is astonisliinj^ to me about these villacje ijrirls," she
said. " I have noticed it before. They live narrow little
lives, and yet, when occasion permits, they step grace-
fully out, self-possessed, as good as the best, and not even
behind in the fashions. 1 confess I don't understand it.
I should think it would take them years to mortify
themselves to good manners. 1 keep expecting J;hem to
do something queer. I confess 1 havi> a prejudice against
anything queer. It makes me squirm. That is, any-
thing queer in the way of manners. I stayed once at a
place in the White Mountains where the daughters of the
house taught school in the winter, and waited on the
boarders in summer. One of them was told to pa,ss the
rolls, and, with the utmost gravity, put one down beside
my plate as if it had been a piece of cludk. That is the
sort of thing I mean. You can't always tel 1 what to expect."

•'My dear sister," cried Halstead. with emphasis, "it is
you this time who are a trifle off. For mercy's sake, —
rot in this connection !"

AN KARNEST TRIFLEU.

"Oil, no, not in this connection, of course," a.ssentci I
Mrs. Sterling; "nothing so bad as that I but once, too, I
made calls witli a popular young belle from a country
town, and she gave our cards to the lady herself whom
we went to call upon. You can't tell. In everything
else she was unexceptionable."

"My dear sister," protested Halstead again, "spare

I "

"Of course, I ought not to feel so. T confess it is
prejudice on my part. I mean to overcome it. I
have always said I would overcome it. Nobody likes
a fresh young girl b(3tter than I do. Miss Guerrin may
have the best of manners ; better than ours even. She
may never 'do any tiling out of the way, — you seem to
tliink not. I don't pretend to say ; l)ut you must admit
she has no great advantages for observation."

" She shall come to call upon you," repeated the young
man.

" Of course, I will bo glad to have her. Vou are
peculiarly situated. I shall treat her as 1 would a Knick-
erbocker."

" Theoretically, I assiu'c you I hey would make no con-
cessions to the Knickerboekers."

" So bad as that!" eye* Jmed Miss Mason, lookincr over
the top of her fan, with her pale blue eyes.

" You are missing something, by the way," said Hal-
stead. " You should be looking out. We are now in the
heart of Beaudeck. We are about to leave the mail-batrs
at the grocery. The.se small boys under our wheels repre-

AN EARNEST TUIFLER.

sent the cler<;,'y and tlie foroi^^n cleniont, Imt for wliom
there would be no shinney in the streets and no accidents
in the mill-dam. What do you think of the place :* "

After throwin*,^ off the mail-l>ags, in whose capacious
pockets a few lonely letters rattled, the coach swept
grandly around, and doubling upon its course for a short
distance began its rumbling ascent through the gorge to
the upper valley. The western sunlight struck through
the overhanging trees, birds rose in the air, and the l)rook
whose ravages had made this exit practicable, tumbled
and roared and dashed itself into spray against the rocks.
It seemed as if a road so innocent must lead to a retreat
as peaceful.

But that evening, when the frogs were in vociferous
chorus, and the crickets were sawing their tuneful legs,
when Halstead had taken his departure and tlic ladies
had gone up to their scpiare, bare rooms, Louise Mason
dropped down upon a stool with her hands clasped before
her, and with a gloomy sort of apathy watched the
motions of the other ladies as they impacked their trunks
and spread their voluminous dresses upon the bed.

" Come, Louise," said Mrs. Sterling, " why ar'n't you
unpacking ? "

" It seems too ridiculous," said Louise, " all that stuff
up here. Whatever possessed us to hunt up such an
owl's nest as this to summer in ? " — and rising she began
to walk about, with an irritated air and a clouded brow.

" You will like it better by to-morrow, — by daylight,"
said Mrs. Sterling, with cheerful reassurance.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

dents

icious
swept

short
rge to
irough

brook
inibled
! rocks,
retreat

iit'erous
111 legs,
latlies
Mason
before
led the
trunks

n't you

hat stuff
such an
le began
:l brow,
aylight,"

" I shall go back," cried Louise. " What I don't like
to-day suits me still less to-morrow."

" You are vexed about something, or about nothing,"
pursued the other. What has come over you ? I think it
is deliglitful. You will think so too, shortly. Come,
unpack."

" My dear Helen," said Miss Mason, " you are too ami-
able. You think everything delightful. You said the
same thing about our landlady and about the cream on
our strawberries. You keep yourself always ready to be
tickled by delight. I believe if a pin scratched you, you
would l)leed tlelight. If you have any other feeling I
don't know where you hide it. You are like your
brother."

" Then you mean to C(jmpliment me ! 1 am sure you
approve my brother."

" Oh, 3^es, you are very sure. You are all too sure. I
tell you I shall go back."

" We have engaged board here for most of the season,
you know," observed Miss Duncan.

" We can pay for it and leave, 1 suppose."

" You were as anxious to come as any of us," suggested
Mrs. Sterling. " Who was it that hrst advocated Beau-
deck ? "

" 1 was that miserable being," assented the girl. " But
this isn't Beaudeck. This is the heart of nowhere. We
are further from Beaudeck now than we were in Boston.
We should have brought our horses."

" I will take out your dresses for you if yon say .'^o,"

'la

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

offo.od Margaret. " They are packed in here like sar-
dines ; wlio packed them ? "

" Mother. SIk^ always packs."

"What did you do hofore you had a mother?" said
Helen Sterling;, looking up from the drawer she was
arranging.

" I had to wait (m mysell", " answered Louise, turning
hack with a short laugh. " My poor little mother! She
didn't want me to try the country. 'Louise,' she said,
'you will be bitten by gnats.' She thinks it most ter-
rible to be bitten by gnats."

" What lovely clothes I " said Mrs. Sterling, as Mar-
garet set aside a tnnik tray. " When you have nothing
else to do, Louise, you can tiy new ett'ects in costume."

" I imagine that will be most of the time. What are
we to do anyway ? "

" Do ? All sorts of things. Nathan will tell us. He
knows all that is worth doing in any locality."

"He has his hands full already," answered the girl.
" Anybody can see that."

" It is for you to empty them then."

" 1 am afraid we have made a mistake," said Louise,
going to the window again, and looking oft' over the
swaying tree-tops. " I am afraid we have made a mis-
take. Oh, these owls ! "

Miss Mason was twenty-six years old. For several of
these years she had known Nathan Halstead, during
which time her smiles had grown old though her face vras
still young. He could be very refreshing when he chose,

AN EARNEST TRIFLRR.

and he ha<l I'litcred lier wealthy, inert and stranded
existence, like a salt breeze blowing through a close
drawing-room. The burden of inanity with which she
was weighted had sensibly lightened under his sallies, and
she had felt great shocks of animation when he paid her
audacious c()m})liments in the conservatory after supper.
They were the only shocks she had ever had, and they in
some way ha<l seared her smiles. And Halstead had
greatly admired the style of her exotic dresses ; her
a.ssured bearing ; the lining of her pha3ton ; perhaps the
dividends from her investments ; but he straightened
himself and looked attentive when it was suir<'ested tliat
she should come to the country. Then his hands stole
into his pockets and he strolled away.

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

]

CHAPTER VIII.

LET it not be supposed that in the minds of the Des-
borough sisters all was untroubled and serene. They
were too conscientious for so much light enjoyment as
was going on within their serious precincts, and in reality
were sorely puzzled as to Rachel's immediate future. It
was not that they would have her live on as they had
done ; it was not that they would have her go away ; it
\^^as not that they would have her marry ; all these courses
had very objectionable, insufficient, and profane features.
Had they carefully reared, tendered, watered, and brought
her to her beautiful state of inflorescence, only to find that
nothing was good enough for her the rest of the way ?
To their over-reflective and scrupulous minds it seemed so,
and while trying to conceive and arrange some adequate
future for her, they felt with alarm that her future was fast
stealing upon her, and that she might even be over before
they had decided upon the sort of superior celebration her
days were to be. And not only were they puzzled about
the mature destiny of their rare oflspring, but there was
also inherent qualities in her character and person which
perplexed them still more, — qualities that had not ap-
peared to confuse their own straightforward careers, — a
superfluity of beauty, a disqualifying imagination, an
eagerness for pleasure, a certain independence of under-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

standing, and a ready assimilation with new elements.
They felt feeble to deal with her. They had trained her in
childhood with great nicety ; they had sent her to school ;
they had taken her to Boston ; 1/ut they had not meant to
produce quite such extreme and irrepressible results.
They regretted that of late years, which included the
whole of Rachel's life, they had allowed their outside
connections to become so few and slight, and wished that
she might have companions of her own age, and the
pleasures due her young womanhood ; yet when chance
brought a fluttering and elegant party right there to the
village, their foreboding maternal hearts found in it as
much cause for anxiety as congratulation. They especially
shrank when they thought of Mr. Young Halstead, as Miss
Hannah called him ; but no sooner would their fears con-
demn him than, in a desire to do him justice, they would
give him every praise. These fears were not wholly dis-
guised.

"We don't like it that he should be so constantly with
Rachel," said Mrs Guerrin to her husband. " We wish
you would speak to him."

" Speak to him ! And what should I tell him ?" in-
quired that gentleman.

" Tell him, — tell him" — and there she stopped.

" It will be time enough to speak to him when we can
think of something to say to him," said Mr. Guerrin.

" It will be too late then."

" Then I don't see what we are to do."

" We thought you might warn him."

>w\:

TTf

: H|

AN EARNEST TRIFLEH.

" We iHuan liiiii well and he iiiean.s us well. You can't
warn honest people against honest people without slander-
ing somebody."

"But is he honest?" she said, trembling with the
possible guiltiness of her suspicion.

" It is only fair to think him so," he answered and
then she felt condemned, — condemned and still uneasy.

That afternoon as she sat in the sitting-room stitching,
Rachel came in, and leaning over the centre table began
eating some white cherries from a green majolica dish. A
tall, old clock, w^hich pointed to six, was loudly ticking a
slow and solemn protest against all light uses of time, in
a way which v.ould not be tolerated for an hour in a
French time-piece, whose style of clock opera invites to
everything rapid and gay, and Mrs. Guerrin's mind was
ticking in unison with its serious seconds.

While they were thus engaged some one came up the
walk and they both looked quickly out ; but it was not
the engineers, whose arrival was momentarily expected.
It was a messenger who, after a loud tap at the brass
knocker, gave notice that the gentlemen who stayed there
had gone up to the tunnel and would not be back for
several days.

" What a pity," exclaimed Rachel when he had gone,
" and their friends here such a short time too !"

"It would be better if they had never come," said
Mrs. Guerrin timorously. " We are afraid they are too —
too vvorldly."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" They are not too worldly for me," said Rachel. " I
like it. I am worldly too."

" We don't object so much to the ladies," said Mrs.
Guerrin, borne to greater lengths by this sad avowal,
" but there is Mr. Halstead ! He may never have done
anything wrong ; we don't say he has, but he doesn't seem
to have any moral constitution. Hannah said herself,
that he didn't seem to have any moral constitution. No
moral constitution, and no serious thoughts, Hannah
thinks."

" He has some beautiful ones," ventured the girl.

" Could it be that you w^ere a little, — a little" —

Rachel's face grew as red as her mother's was pale.

" I like him," she cried. " I never get tired of him.
There is nobody like him ; he has seen so much, done
so much. He goes more easily than he stands. I enjoy
him!"

" It isn't safe, — it isn't safe !" said Mrs. Guerrin, trem-
bling.

" Oh, no, it isn't safe," repeated Rachel gayly.

The next two days crept along with strangely retarded
motion. The evenings dragged : the noon time scarcely
stirred. It took an hour for the clock to strike twelve ;
and an hour for each team to pass. When a rooster
])egan to crow he finished day after to-morrow ; and eaci
sun that came up set the week after next. They were
the longest days of Rachel's slow-paced life. On the
evening of the second she wandered idly around the house,
her thoughts coming and going lik6 tlocks of high-flying

TP"

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

^S 1

birds which appear out of the dim, southei-n skies, and,
sweeping overhead, are lost again in the northern dis-
tance.

Presently she looked down the still road at the white
cottages with green blinds ; then at the covered bridge
spanning the brook ; then at the opening in the mountains
leading to the upper valley, and at the carriage slowly
descendinof througrh the sroroe. She recalled the bountiful
braids of Miss Mason, also the commanding manner of
that lady. She thought of asking them all down to. the
Desborough place, and wondered what she should wear
on that occasion, and what sort of a repast she should
have. Then she pictured their flounces under the trees,
and Miss Mason walking out to the dining-room, her
hand upon the arm of Mr. Halstead and her silk dress
trailing behind. Ladies of the elegant society sort had a
wonderful attraction for Rachel, — as great an attraction
as epigrams upon life. She enjoyed their habitual graces ;
their full trimmings, their aflable manners, and the care
they took to make all things appear their best ; but the
thought of Miss Mason was like a bird of another feather
among the sky-flyers of her imagination.

Strolling round the north wing, something upon the
side of the house claimed her attention, and leaning
against a trellis, she fixed her eyes upon the knot-hole
through which a swarm of vagabond bees were trying to
domesticate themselves under the weather-boards. While
this was going on young Halstead came driving rapidly
up the road, and, heedless of the approaching carriage,

11 !i

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

s, and,
^n dis-

white
bridge
ntainH
slowly
intiful
ner of
to. the
i wear
should
3 trees,
m, her
: dress
1 had a
action
rraces ;
le care
mt the
eather

on the
eaning
)t-hole
ing to
While
apidly
rriage,

turned in at the gateway. His restless, rapid glance swept
the premises, but seeing no one, he entered the front hall
and went through the parlor to the wing. He tried to
persuade himself that he wanted some estimates, and
wondered meanwhile where Kaehel Guerrin way. A
restless desire, which, howcAcr probable in others, he had
not anticipated in himself, had come over him while
away ; and, as he rarely omitted that which would make
life easier, he had returned in obedience to it. As he
went over to his desk with absent mind he caught a
glimpse of a figure by the trellis, and crossing to the
window, like one at whose feet his wish had fallen, seated
himself in front of it, leaning upon the sill with his hat
in both hands.

" Good evening," he said. " What chance is this ?"

"I thought you were down the road," said Rachel,
in some confusion caused by her position so near his
window.

" So I am," he answered.

" You were not to be back till to-morrow."

" Neither will I."

" You are at work there ?"

" Yes. I am also here. When one has to be in two
places at once his most habitual self is given the prefer-
ence, isn't it ? Did you ever hear of a man hiring a
substitute to take a pleasure trip for him while he over-
worked himself in peace ? I drove up. If you will per-
mit me I will come out and join you."

Rachel waited. She waited some moments ; then

100

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

started toward the piazza. Slie met Halstead upon the
steps coming toward her, but he looked annoyed, and said
something at random about the hilly roads. He was
evidently disconcerted, and the joyous freedom of liis
manner had given place to a bored constraint.

In fact, as he left his room the moment before, throw-
ing wide open the door in his haste, lie confronted Dayton
upon the threshold, and a certain obliquity came into his
restless, eager glance.

" I thought," said Dayton, " that you wxtc at the
quarry."

Halstead recovereci himself and answered likewise.
" And I thought you w^ere at the tunnel."

" I found I had to be at the cut to-morrow," answered
Dayton impenetrably, " so came along on the train. How^
did you get in ?"

"Drove," replied Halstead, and something possessed
him to add, " It is the first fruit of your candor. Now
that our Boston friends are here w^e can't desert them."

fciXj

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

101

CHAPTER IX.

IMMEDIATELY after supper Halstead attired liiiii.self
in garments of recent importation, and started on
foot up through the gorge, forgetting in his annoyance
the horse and waggon in the stable yard. He did not ask
Dayton to go with him, and Dayton did not offer.
Neither did he mention his departure to Miss Guerrin.
He walked slowly, and instead of the dashing manner
with which he had driven into the village kept his eyes
upon the road before him, and his thoughts upon the
circumstance that propelled him in default of an animat-
ing will. He called himself a fool, — doubly a fool. A
fool to have driven eleven miles over a rough mountain
road, and a fool to have cheated himself out of his folly
lest Dayton should discover it. He laughed in self-deri-
sion ; then, on the principle that if a man is a fool and
acknowledges it he ceases to be one, considered that he
had ceased to be one. And still the idea would recur to
him. He was very much out of sorts.

When he arrived at Mrs. Anderson's he discerned the
dresses of his friends out near the borders of the orchard
where he joined them. But in a little while, finding
himself in no humor for polite conversation, he wandered
off with his sister's childi'en, and when the ladies stai'ted
back to the house he was lying unseen upon the grass,

fTT

1 !!

102

AN FARNEST TRIFLER.

and the boys were building a fort around him with the
stones that had once formed a wall between the orchard
and meadow. He raised his head to look after their re-
treating figures with a feeble thought of following them,
when Tommy, who was still in petticoats, sat down upon
him in obedience to his brother's orders, and this light
obstacle confirmed his lack of purpose.

He listened to the swallows and tree-toads ; he looked
at the pines on the mountains. How sweet the hay was!
And a cloud on the horizon had a wonderful complexion !
Yet in the gray depths of the evening there was a hope-
less perfection, and in the blankness of space an equili-
brium like death. How patient the hills were ; what
were they waiting for ? How breathless the valley ?
What suspension I What great, what divine indifier-
ence ! What negation, what sleep ! It depressed him ;
it had in it a species of anguish. If the world were made
out of nothing there seemed plenty of material left,
around, above, and within him for another efibrt, — some-
thing better yet. When his bones crumbled and he be-
came a peraianent part of a hillside, he might waste him-
self on inanimate things. In the mean time the evening
was escaping him. He shook himself. He did not lie
easily on the grass. What he cared for was friends, —
friends strong and active, and beauty of the sort that
laughs and caresses and bereaves. There was Rachel
Guerrin ; what was she probably doing ? Why should a
man stint himself the moment he found something sweet ?

He raised himself up, but his foot demolished part of

AN EARNKST THIFLP:il.

103

the fort like a Krupp gun, and it took him some momenta
to repair the breach and pacify the garrison. Tlien he
led a sortie against an invisible enemy, and debouching
among the currant bushes, betrayed his compatriots into
the hands of their mother.

He would have gone on his way, but at that moment
Louise Mason came out. It seemed unavoidable, so he
lingered for a moment upon the square and unadorned
verandah.

Louise had on a dress of sonu; dull blue fabric, and
over her shoulders was a dull blue shawl, which an uncle
had brought her from Ispahan. Dress as she would, how-
ever, she looked strange to him in Beaudeck, — like a
gala-rosette on a work-day, he said, and he missed her
usual background of cushions. The rufftjed surroundinnfs
brought out a certain want of nerve in her, and it was
always on the end of his tongue to tell her, in handsomely
clothed language, to brace up.

" We are glad to see you back," began Louise, who had
failed to carry out her intention of going home. " When
did you come ? " *

" An hour or two ago. You see I lost no time," an-
swered Halstead, making a virtue of his unpremeditated
promptness. " You knew we were away then ? I am
glad of that."

" Miss Guerrin told us," said Louise.

"Did sfte ?" said Halstead, negatively.

" We have quite made the acquaintance of your

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AN EAUNKST THIFLKK.

1 1

friemls," Mrs. Sterling ri'iiiarkiMl, " Miss Giu-rriii was
here again yesterday."

" What did she say i" " tlie young man inquired, still
negatively.

" Notliing ])rilliant," Mrs. Sterling assured him, with
sisterly candor. " Nothing that wasn't altogether young
ami commonplace."

" Don't be hard on her," protested Nathan, " She is
more generous. She said some pretty things of you."

" Ah ! she tried that, did she ? And ho>v did you re-
ceive it ?"

" I thanked her, and told her the resend)laiice was
very great."

" Then she made her point ? "

" No. She didn't ao-ree w ith me. She sai<l she couldn't
see any resemblance what(;ver."

" When she flatters you, then, she doesn't do it through
me ? " pursued his sister.

" She declines to flatter me," asserted Halsteatl.

" Or Mr. Dayton, either, it would appear. She agreed
with Margaret that he was very stiff. All the burden
of his defence rested with me."

" So he is," Nathan assented. " With her he is stifTer
than ever, — not so much stiff, perhaps, as remote. He
always speaks to her from a fourth story window. How
did she look yesterday ?"

" I am bound to say she looked well. Has she really
always lived here, and never seen any society except

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

lO.-)

I ' i

was

itiffer
He
How

that of centenarians ? I don't suppose she ever even
saw a German !"

" I fear not," answered Halstead with mock pity.

" We ought to get up one for her benefit," suggested
Mrs. Sterling, her propensity for getting up benefits over-
ruling every other consideration. " What a godsend
you must be to her ? What do you do for her enter-
tainment ? "

" You forget," said Halstead, " that I am not hero
pleasuring. Dayton is pushing thincrs like mad. He
works all day on the road, and sits up lalf the night
over his figures. He ha.s a passion for figures. For my
part I never see one that 1 don't w&ni to knock it down,
— partly I'.irly 5's."

" Why didn't he come up here with you ? " asked
Louise.

" I don't know. I didn't ask him, and he didn't vol-
unteer."

" Perhaps he preferred to stay with Miss Guerrin,"
observed Mrs. Sterling.

Halstead paused, looked at her curiously a moment,
then laughed a short refutation of so improbable a sug-
gestion.

Mrs. Sterling passed on into the house, and Halstead
still stared at the spot where she had been. Raising his
glance it fell upon Louise Mason, in whose dull, pale eyes
there was a larger vacuum than usual, and he seemed to
feel called upon to stir himselt to greater social exertion.
He had been moving about on the porch ; now lie sat
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106

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

down, picked up her fan, which was also of a dull blue,
and proceeded to adjust it to her chatelaine with an air
of long but delicate familiarity.

" You wear such bewildering things," he said gently,
disengaging at the same time her vinaigrette. " ^^^hat is
the use of this ? Any warmth in it ? Will you probably
faint if I retain it a few moments ? " '

" It is possible," answered Louise.

" Very well," he said, sniffing the salts up his high-
bred nostrils. " Please proceed."

Louise recrossed her feet (her shoes were cut out in
slats to show her dull blue stockings) and smiled, — a
smile shot with crow's feet. Halstead looked at it and
wished she wouldn't.

" How do you like your quarters ? " he inquired, with
secret chafing at the delay.

" It is pleasant enough," she replied, glancing off down
the valley, " pleasant but uneventful."

" I knew you would find it so," he declared. " I don't
suppose you ever before spent a week in which nothing
happened. You see what it is ! "

" It isn't every occurrence these days that has the effect
of something happening," she said. " The ordinary run
of events at home was scarcely more eff*ective than their
absence here. I can't say I miss them."

His ear caught something not in her words. " You
have a way of emphasizing ' these days ' as if they had
reference to some more propitious then, or other. Why
do you ?" he cried bravely. " Now ! then I when ! they

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

107

never resemble each other. You mustn't do it. It isn't
progressive."

" I'm not progressive, and you know it," she answered
coolly, shaking her long sapphire earrings.

" Where have you been since I saw you last ? " he
asked, dropping the former subject, as if he feared it
might grow hot.

" No place in particular. We have driven about a
good deal. It has been warm."

" I should think it had. For genuine hot weather
commend me to the forty-fifth parallel. Down where
we have been the thermometer went up to where it says
mules die. Up here it is better. What do time-servers
do in the country when it is too warm for pic-nics ?
Can't we think of something new ? What do you say
to going down to the point where we are at work ?
Don't you think there might be some amusement in
that ? "

" Certainly," said Louise. " When could we go ? "

" I leave the day to you."

" On Saturday ? "

" Saturday is as good a day as any. They are all the
same size."

Some one w ithin lighted a lamp which streamed across
the veranda. Louise got up to move her chair within
the shadow, and Halstead took the opportunity to look
at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He too arase, and
making some liasty excuse abruptly took his leave.

The moonlight was white upon the narrow road, and

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

he strode along at a rapid pace as if a board of directors
were waiting for him in special session. When he
reached the point above the mill where the road began
its steep descent, he peered through the trees at the
great gray house whither he was bound. The lights
were all burning ; so he ran along more rapidly than be-
fore. When he reached it the gate closed behind him
with a click. Then Dayton appeared in the lighted door-
way ; then Rachel.

Halstead suddenly felt very warm and much excited.
He took off his hat and passed the finest of cambric
handkerchiefs across his forehead.

But he vsaw Rachel no more that night.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

109

CHAPTER X.

IN the course of the preparations for the tea-drinking
at the Desborough place, Miss Desborough, the elder,
sent Rachel to the wing to inquire of a servant engaged
there as to the whereabouts of a misplaced cream-jug,
which was of rare and homely shape and covered with
beasts of paleozoic pattern. The maid was in an inner
room, and Rachel advanced as far as the dressing bureau,
where she turned mechanically to give a few touches
before the mirror to the loose locks about her shapely
head. In doing so her eyes fell from her own reflection
to Miss Mason's vinaigrette lying at ease upon the silk
pin-cushon, and the deft touches to her waving hair
changed to a slight pressure of the palms upon her
temples. Through one of the links of its chain there ran
a long scarf-pin, and near by, like an arrogant sentinel,
stood a short, much bloated and impertinent vial labelled
Pommade Hongroise pour fixer les Moustaches. E. Cou-
dray, Parfumeur, a Paris. Such association tells endless
stories which are either exceedingly sad or exceedingly
sweet ! It seemed to indicate to Rachel either great
tenderness or a very sportive friendship between its owner
and treasurer, and to bring back to her mind the appre-
hensions of the night before which had been fore-
shadowed by Dayton.

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110

AN EARNEST TBIFLER.

And yet, that evening, after tea-drinking, when Mr.
Guerrin was showing the place to Mrs. Sterling and Hal-
stead to Miss Mason ; when they had gone through the
blooming geometry of the garden to the river bank, stroll-
ing in groups of two or three, and when Rachel, step-
ping behind the others, straightened a spear of wild grass
in front of her, remarking upon its length, Halstead left
Louise, and under pretext of cutting the stalk kneeled
down at her feet.

"Commend me — commend me!" he said.

" For what ?" asked Rachel.

" Don't you see ? For exemplary conduct. For polite-
ness to your guest. If it is lost upon you I may as well,
with your permission, walk with you. Don't you remem-
ber that I have not seen you for days ? "

She thought again of the vinaigrette, and wondered if
he gave to every one the same impression of eager prefer-
ence. She lost herself in wondering, her color mounting,
and Nathan waiting. Then, " Nothing that you do is
lost upon me," she said. " You must go on."

And later, when they were all seated with summer
informality upon the porch, and when Halstead with his
guitar was walking up and down on the pavement, sing-
ing, " Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," to the air of
Martha, and with the manner of Fra Diavolo singing in
the inn, she wondered anew that she could ever have
attainted him with saspicion of hoUowness. All the
world loved him and the great Jehovah smiled upon him.

After the ladies had driven off, Dayton went to his

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

Ill

room, where Halstead shortly followed him, carrying a
long, green blade in his hand.

" What is that ? " asked Dayton.

" Gra^ss."

" So I inferred from the looks of it."

" Grass," repeated Halstead, putting it over a picture
of a faded British general. "Grass as graceful as Miss
Guerrin herself. She is a beautiful reed. She strikes
you as something singularly pliable, yet you know that
somewhere, you can't tell just where, you would find her
wholly inflexible. I would like to go to the end of her
favor to find where her rigor begins. You can't tell what
a woman is like till you know her severities."

" It strikes me," said Dayton, " that you are following
the line of her favor tolerably fast." '^

"Bah!" rejoined Halstead, "she fancies me in a way,
if that is what you mean. I am a novelty to her. The
best thing of the kind that she has seen. I am her opera,
her charity ball, her coupe, her six-button gloves, her
train, her white satin slippers, her servant, — things she
has never had and would like, but not things necessary
to her. I fill in her mind the place of those fashionable
accessories. I am everjrthing which she has missed, and
which, therefore, she is curious about. I touch her in-
(piisitiveness. These imiuisitive people have no hearts.
I tell you that girl is cold."

" You omit an item," said Dayton dryly.

"What?"

" You vshould say you were her opera, her slippers, her

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AN EARNEST TRIWiER.

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servant, her lover, — things she has never had, but not
things necessary to her."

Halstead hesitated for a moment in indecision, then,
" So I should," he frankly confessed.

" Then what are you going to do about it V

" Do ? Nothing. What can I do ? It can't be, — you
don't suppose " — He stopped as if his ideas were inex-
pressible by ordinary methods ; then stroked the ends of
his moustache. " You arc the most practical fellow that
ever lived," he cried. " No, I haven't lost my wits yet.
There is no chance of that. It is impossible.

"Why is it ?" persisted Dayton sharply.

Halstead hesitated aofain, castinor about in his mind for
some one reason among the many. " We call ourselves
pop:," he said, at last.

" You have something from your father, and you have
your position. For that matter I am going back to Cali-
fornia and you can step into my place here."

" No more of that !" said Halstead with heat. " I owe
you too much already. Imagine me marrying and sail-
ing up to you with the orange blossoms on my arm, say-
ing, * Here W' e are ! Help please. Two of us, — take us
up tenderly !' Not if I know myself When I marry I
must see my way to all the comforts and some of the
refinements of life without dependence on conditions.
One should live in luxury with the woman one loves.
Thanks to you all the same. This is the first I have
heard of your going back to California."

" Nonsense," returned Dayton, rising. " Besides, most

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

113

any one would think he could do the handsome thing on
what you have ; it is quite a fortune."

" My dear friend," said Halstead, his nostrils dilating,
his expression growing keener, and his thoughts of Rachel
fainter, " I am not most any one. I am a small minority.
Most any one may do as he sees fit, — marry when he
likes and as often as he likes ; no doubt he is a very re-
spectable and courageous person. I have no fault to find
with him and no improvement to suggest. I am simply
not he. We all know how your poor domestic devils
live, — the meagre, wearing fashion of it. We see men
every day putting their brides in cottages to wear them-
selves and their wedding dresses out. Is that the hand-
some thing you would have me do ? I shrink before the
very idea of a homely household belonging to me. I
hate to see a woman poor. I hate even their pitiful
economies. And to make one so, and to support her in a
stingy way would be blight itself. She would repent it ;
they all do ; and that fatigued, uninterested look I so
abominate on women's faces would get into her eyes and
streak her forehead. I simply could not endure it. You
would see a notice in the * Advertiser ' some fine day,
* Found Dead. In a barrel of Venetian red, one Nathan
Halstead, M. E.' " He began in his turn to walk about
the room, while Dayton with his back to the mantel-
piece glowered upon him as if in his uncertain, fanciful
pacing he might at any moment come too near.

" It. makes all the difference in the world," the young
man went on, " whether one faces the possible or the

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

'I 'S

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irrevocable, — the difference between a continent and a
prison. The moment I knew I was bound I would want
to get loose. I can't settle down and make an end of it
yet. After thirty, perhaps, one loses one's hopes and
vagaries and accepts without blindness what only the
loss of his wits would induce him to accept in his youth.
I'll wait for that dull period ! It is coming ; I feel it,
but I have a year or two yet to run."

" And in the mean lime what ? " cried Dayton, with
evident self-suppression. " Since when was the blinding
passion so submissive to argument ? "

" Since I left Paris," answered Halstead with a frown.

" That woman never cared for you," said Dayton, refer-
ring to some old confidence between them.

Halstead wert over to the window and stood looking
out for a few moments, then turned and came back. " I
know what you are after," he said, " but you mistake.
Neither does Rachel Guerrin care for me, — particularly.
Let your mind rest easy."

" Ask her, and be done with it," Dayton demanded.

*' And then ? Suppose she does, what then ?"

"If necessary you could wait a year or two" —

" Or three or four or five ? That is another wretched
piece of business. Think of being engaged through sixty
moons to the beloved of your heart ; holding her on one
side till you were tired, then twisting her round to the
other, and whispering, ' When I am rich, love, we will be
married.' No, brother. Neither have I come to that.
What a strait-laced country it is," he added. " You no

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

115

sooner observe that a young lady is pretty, than some
one comes up and asks you what you are going to do
about it. I am going to do nothing about it. I mean
her no harm, you may be sure of that 1 "

" No harm ! Good Lord, no harm ! He means her no
harm ! " and Dayton's face curled up into such a sinister
expression as left no trace of his usual self. His eyes,
never large, grew smaller, and his inauspicious temper con-
tracted his brows and drove the color from his lips. He
did not look handsome against the black mantel-piece.

He took his hat and bolted out into the night air.

When he returned Halstead still sat moodily where he
had left him. He seemed to have passed the time in un-
satisfactory contemplation. He looked up at Dayton as
he came in, but they separated for the night without
wasting further words.

III

1 1

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116

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

III

CHAPTER XI.

TT was several days before Halstead again saw Rachel
-■- save in the all-pervading ])resence of her friends and
relatives. He watched her furtively and was always in
her vicinity, but made no effort as formerly to talk with
her alone. He frowned frequently and without reason.
He avoided Dayton, and was eneasy everywhere. He
avoided Louise Mason as well, and no sooner decided
upon one thing than he changed his mind and did an-
other. He seemed suspicious, irresolute. He talked of
going away, and yet he stayed. He meditated self-sacri-
fice, but sacrificed nobody.

Rachel did not know what to make of him, and waited
as for the breaking of a fairer day. Meanwhile there
came a letter for her irom a great-aunt, — great, not only
as regards propinquity, but as regards her position, her
appointments, and her opinion of herself as well ; and she
wrote to invite her niece, whom she had not seen for ten
years, to spend the rest of the season at her house. And
yet the girl said she did not care to go. Rachel, whose
highest pleasure it had been to go, ever since she was
born ! It was incredible, but was set down at once by
her relatives on her mother's side to the strange perver-
sity of the Guerrin mind. The Guerrins, although their
name was misspelled in this country, were originally
French, and were therefore capable of — aijy thing if you

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

117

are English and your ancestors were ever missionaries to
the Pokanokets!

" Go?" said Rachel ; " I would not care to go to paradise
just now ! "

That was certainly French. The Desboroughs had al-
ways wanted to go to paradise, and nothing but the divine
will detained them. But what was it that could keep even
a French girl from paradise ?

It was on the evening of the day they had gone down
the road in fulfilment of the engagement made between
Halstead and Miss Mason, that engagement having been
postponed to await the arrival of the gentlemen from
Boston. The party, reinforced by Messrs. Sterling and
Meade, had gone down on a gravel car sent for that pur-
pose, with Halstead in the cab in the post of engineer, and
had spent several hours in conversation, in strolling, and
in inspection of the difficult engineering feats which it
had been their object to see. They were at the station
waiting for the evening up-train, which was veiy late,
and while waiting walked up and down the platform ;
examined the placards on the walls, and read over and
over again the advertisments of the Fall River Line, with-
out which the scenery of the New England and Middle
States would be unadorned. They discussed the rates to
Omaha; they balanced themselves on the rails, and in
short indulged in the common pastimes incident to the
situation and practiced by all intelligent travellers ; while
a pair of slanting blue eyes belonging to a little figure in
a calico dress surveyed them through a friendly aperture.

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" What aro you doing here, Margot?" asked Halstead,
addressing it when the others were without.

"Nothing," she replied.

" Then you would hotter go home, " lie sai<I. " It is get-
ting late."

At nine o'clock the real business of waiting set in, and
they seemed in a fair way to pay pretty dearly for iueir
short diversion. Evidently the station was for the use of
the workmen only, since not a house nor even a road was
in sight. Everywhere rose the dark, overshadowing pines.
Below them lay the river. To the right was a high and
curving bridge for temporary use, while another half con-
structed struck obliquely across to the opposite mountain
range. The cramped and narrow valley was full of fallen
timbers, of huge abutment stones, of derricks, and of dis-
abled cars, some of which were occupied by the families of
the laborers.

Halstead was in a worse mood than ever. In fact his
waiting, his self-restraint and his principles were fast
becoming insupportable to him, and while resolutely ad-
ministering to Miss Mason's entertainment he was con-
sumed by a desire to appease his spirit uy talking with
Kachel Guerrin, who was then leaning against a pile of
ropes with Dayton by her side.

It grew later and later. It was unendurable. When
the night, in his opinion, was far spent, and jocund day
might at any moment have been expected upon the moun-
tain-tops, it happened that the various little coteries broke

AN EARNEST TRIFLEH.

110

up and that Racliel for a inoniont stood alone upon tho
platform.

Halstead immediately crossed over to her. " Can noth-
ing ruffle you ? " he said, half smiling, half f ^ owning. " You
are too amiable, — too easily pleased. You can never be
more than happy you know, and it is simple to be filled
with it because the night happens to be mild and because
all these people who ought to be at home are dancing
around you. Be discontented like me ! Be rapacious, —
be irritable I"

"What is the matter?" said Rachel. "What has been
the matte: ? "

" ComCi" said Halstead, "tell me what Dayton has been
saying to you to make the time fly."

"He told me," returned the girl, "that the ropes we
leaned upon were from Yucatan, from a town called Mer-
ida, — was it?"

" Zounds ! Was he so sentimental as that?"

"He is never sentimental," said Rachel.

" You think him prosy, do you?"

" Well, no, not prosy. "

"What then?"

"I don't know. Must one be either sentimental or
prosy?"

" Matter-of-fact, perhaps. "

" He is certainly matter-of-fact."

"What else?"

" I don't know him very well. "

" Not as well as you do me?"

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120

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

"No."

" He has been here as long as I. "

"That is nothing," she assured him,

"Perhaps," said Halstead, "you would take my arm.
We might walk a little before morning. I have been
wanting to see you to restore me. Say something to me,
can't you ? Pacify me, make me glad. "

"I? How can I?" she asked, beginning to walk with
him along the platform.

From this lonely staging high up on the steep moun-
tain side even the attentive stars looked strange.

" I am out of patience, out of spirits, out of sorts, out
of conceit, out of my head, out of tune, — out generally,"
the young man went on capriciously, as if carrying the
thoughts of an old mood into a new and happier temper.

" I thought that with you those things were always at
home," said Rachel.

" Come, be serious. "

" I don't know when to be serious with you ; you never
seem to be."

" What do you mean by sentimental?" continued Hal-
stead. "What is it that I am and Dayton is not?"

" I did not say that you were that."

" No, but you think it all the same. In fact you are
quite right. What is it to be sentimental? Is it to be a
trifle maudlin in one's ideas ?"

" That depends upon how you use it.'

" Well how do you use it ?"

"Not that way."

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AN EARNEST TIUFLEll.

121

my arm.
ave been
aor to me,

ralk with

jep moun-

e.
sorts, out

renerally,"
rrying the
er temper,
always at

you
nued Hal-

lOt?"

ict you are
s it to be a

"Is it to be liampered with impotent sensibilities?
Here in America a man should have no more ideas than
he can promptly make use of in a practical career."

" Oh, yes, he should The more the better."

" They fetter him you see. They make a weakling of
him. They interfere with action."

"They make him interesting," added his companion.

Halstead paused a moment. Then, " I have an idea,"
he said, " that Dayton has a fancy for you himself."

" What do you mean by that ? " inquired Rachel.

" I suspect that he would like to monopolize you. That
if you would knock he would let you in. I imagine that
even now, while he commits himself about the cables
yonder, he is pondering your eyebrows. Jove ! I wouldn't
say what he wasn't pondering."

"You shall not say such a thing," cried the girl, her
face growing slowly red.

" He would like to let himself go," declared Halstead.
" He would like to fall in love with you."

"You have no right" — she began; but she was unable
to say further what his infringement was. Her indig-
nation was lost in thoughts fast following, and stopping,
she half withdrew her hand from his arm.

Halstead, raising his own arrested it. " Wait a mo-
ment," he said, and going on a few steps farther into the
deeper and less populous darkness, he stopped beside the
pile of ropes, while liis thoughts, his prospects, his desires,
and all the wandering tendrils of his being coiled about
the spotrmore closely than the cables.
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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" He would like to monopolize you," he persisted, still
holding her unwilling fingers. " And he would like to
see me in Jericho. This is my opportunity. I should go
to Jericho. But I don't do it. It is a case where senti-
ment prevents action. You wanted an illustration."

" Oh," said Rachel, changing color again, " you were
illustrating, were you ? It is too absurd ! "

" But if it were so ? " persisted the young man.

" I should think that your going would be more senti-
mental than staying. What difference would it make ? "

" None, if you say it would make none."

" Of course, it would make none," she answered, with-
drawing her hand.

" Then I needn't go,"

" Is that what you have been thinking of ? *' she asked.
" You are too good. I thought," — but she didn't say
what she thought. She laughed a little instead. " You
are sentimental truly," she added. " Is that all that has
made you out of sorts ? "

" No," said Halstead, looking down at the fog forming
over the river, " I have been more sentimental even than
that. I have had a fit of self-disorust, and a lonfrinof for
something better, — that is the height of sentiment, isn't
it ? It sounds almost maudlin when you read it in the
books. I have a desire for respectability and substance.
I would like to define myself by a definite position and
belongings like those of other men ; to rate my capacity
by what I can do ; to plod along ; to be contented ; to form
ties ; to be practical. I have run around till I have had

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123

a surfeit of impressions, — till I am covered with them. I
am like an old-clothes shop in the East, hung with the
vivid rags and heroic tatters of all manner of people. I
would like to throw them off, whitewash the native
structure, and begin again. What would you think of
such a project ? "

" I ? " said Rachel, " I can only say, ' Ah ! ah ! ' as
people do to what is strange to them."

" It is you who urge me to it."

" I urge you to nothing. Your disgust is new. Your
longing is new. I doubt if they will ever be old."

" You are beautiful," said Halstead ; " that urges me !
You rob the common lot of its forbidding common-place-
ness ; that urges me ! You don't know your capacity. I
want you to exert it ; to do your utmost, — to push me to
extremes ; to hurry me headlong. I will submit to your
influence like a man."

" However you begin," returned Rachel, flushing again,
" the end is the same, — some pretty speech, like a strain
blown up a hill. I may like them, but I don't like my-
self so well for liking them."

"What is that but urging me?" exclaimed Halstead.
" That is very strenuous. You will bring the truth to a
point whw'e belief is inevitable."

" I have no wish to push you to extremes," she went on
with vehement denial. " If you want to be practical, be
practical , if you want to begin anew, begin anew ; but
don't assume that I have an influence which I have not,
or that I would wish to use it if I had it."

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

A dingy lamp placed in a dingy window made a line
of lighter shade across the platform where Dayton was
promenading with Mrs. Sterling, and Halstead uncon-
sciously waited till they were near the farthest limit of
their route ; then, " You look about you," he said, " with
such avidity that one wants to respond to your inquiring
glances with all that he knows and is. If I have responded
more fervently than pleases you, and added to what
I know and am a little that I feel and hope to be, you
have only your eye-beam to blame. It offers to look in-
to one and to take one at one's best. I thought if I
showed you all it would be only too little. You seem to
be looking for some ideal entertainment, for some sub-
limated sentiment, for something that should justify the
candle, and I would simply contribute m^^self whole to
help you find it. It seems that I can be of no consider-
able use."

The inquiring eye-beam was fixed upon him then as
never before, — upon his eager expression and his facile
mouth. " When I think the entertainment has come,"
she said with agitation, "and that I am in the midst of
it, you smile and tell me there is no such thing."

"We might find it together," he answered ardently.

From a distance there came the shrill wUistle of a
locomotive and the rushing sound of a train. A man
came out of the station with a lantern which he swung
violently to and fro. Then the head-light threw its clear,
full glare upon them and the coils of various sorts about
them. It affected Halstead like the brilliant, perspicacious

AN EARNEST THIFLER.

125

. *!

stare of the critical world, and frowning like one who had
been surprised in a rhapsody, he went forward, saying,
" Here we are at last ! "

Meanwhile Louise Mason, murmuring something about
the dampness, had gone within, where she presently
became aware that she was not alone.

The one smoky lamp but faintly illumined the barren
interior, but the four walls designed to sepulchre such
unfortunates as were obliged to do their waiting there
offered few facilities for concealment ; and going over
toward the door she descried in one comer, behind the
counter and sitting curled up against the window, the
slim girl who had made them the object of her slanting
observation earlier in the evening.

She was apparently indulging in silent and solitary
state some dim idea of intercourse with the gifted com-
pany in whose midst she had hidden her easily-hidden
self. She sat with her head against the wall, but from
time to time leaned forward and looked out upon the high
society on the platform, and seemed to find rare but
melancholy entertainment in the spectacle of their light
pedestrianism in the heart of the region where she called
herself at home. No shuffling of heavy feet, no swing-
ing of over-long arms, no ungainly slouching across the
boards, such as she was used to seeing there, but the easy,
graceful strolling of the clavss that promenades ! She did
not seem to mind the presence of Louise or to take
the slightest account of herself as a waif in a strange
position.

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Do you belong here ? " asked Louise, accosting her.

** No. I came up to see," answered the girl.

"To see what?"

" You and all."

" Where did you come from ? "

" Down there," and she no Ided toward the valley.

" Won't your family miss you ? It is nearly mid-
night."

" I haven't any family, only father."

" Won't he miss you ? "

" No."

" Did you come over the bridge ?"

" Yes 'm."

Thus disturbed Margot got down from her seat and
stood with her hands behind her back absorbed in the
contemplation of Miss Mason's elegance, and as unaware
as ever of her own singular person. Her person was
probably never much noticed, and she shared in the
common opinion of its unworthiness. She was small and
thin. Her cheek bones were high. There were freckles
over her nose; and her eyes were drawn down at the
corners as if they had been imported from Tartary
generations back. Her hair, which was light and thin,
was parted evenly and braided in a tight, circumspect
braid, which ended happily in a bit of ribbon almost
new. She wore a dark cotton dress and her feet were
lare.

lialstead had looked at her feet one day, when he was
standing near the station talking with Hodson, the

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

127

contractor. Hodson was telling him an anecdote.
Hodson told remarkable anecdotes, with a jovial laugh
and his thumbs under his arms. In the course of the
story Halstead observed, with partial consciousness and
inattentive sense, a pair of brown and shapely feet stand-
ing near, like the extremities of some half-sized statue,
exhumed from the statue-cumbered soil of Greece ; and
when the anecdote was finished and the laugh over, he
raised an artistic eye to cover the rest of the relic, but
found it protected from observation by a drapery of
brown and spotted calico. It was not from Greece, but its
posse was admirable. It was watching him. It was
strangely self-oblivious. Presently it turned away and
was lost among the firs.

She bent some such look now upon^Miss Mason's well-
moulded figure and complex costume.

"Are you his folks ?" she presently asked.

" Whose folks ?" inquired Louise.

"His, — the engineer's ?"

" Mr. Dayton's ?"

" No, —the other."

" Yes."

" Has he always lived among such as you ? " And
she surveyed the costume once more. " He showed me
how to make them things," she added presently, pointing
to a shelf behind the counter on which were ranged
some rough figures fashioned in clay. " I make 'em and
he looks at 'em when he comes up here noons."

" Howyong have you been at it ?" asked Louise,

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AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

V-

• " Most ever since we came. He spoiled some once and
paid me for 'eiri ; then he took liis hat off, bowed and
laughed and went away. Those are his. He is very
kind."

" He is always kind," said Louise, " very kind, and if
you die of it, it is your own fault."

" When he goes away does he go where you are ?"

Louisa went over and took her by the hand. " You
should go home," she said, very gently for Louise.

Presently the girl started and slipped out a side door
behind the counter, and then the train came puffing in.

When it had gone on she came back in front of the
station and looked after it until even the sound no longer
reached her. Then she started off across the bridge, the
fog creeping up about her feet, obscuring the depths
below.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

129

CHAPTER XIT.

•

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*' VTATHAN,
--^ "what

" Yon pan'f.

" said Mrs. Sterling a few days
cn^e you saying to Rachel Guerrin ?"

nnonsft inft of sflviricr rniinli nf aiivth

later,

incr fn

her within forty-eight hours," replied that young gentle-
man, with an effort at indifierence. " Neither Dayton
nor I came up last night."

" You hover about her in a way that can't be mis-
taken," continued his sister. " I have seen you do it too
often."

" So do you. So does Dayton. So does every one."

" I suspect you of cultivating a little tenderness in
that quarter," she went on, not noticing his irrelevant
suggestion.

Halstead pulled his hat down over his eyes, perhaps to

cover a frown, and held his head higher than ever.

* Given Rachel Guerrin, an endless summer, and the

little naked God that goes everywhere unbidden, and

what else could you expect ?" he inquired.

" She is too pretty," said Mrs. Sterling, warningly.

" She is very pretty," assented Nathan, chafing.

" She is not insensible."

" To what ? "

" To you."

" What are you trying to get at ? " he cried, with irri-
tation.

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130

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" It can't be, — surely you are not serious."

" No !" shouted Halstead.

They went on a few minutes in silence.

" Why shouldn't I be ?" he asked indifferently again.
" I hate the fashion of coolly weighing such a point."

" She is too simple, — too — too agricultural," responded
Mrs. Sterling, with a fine, discrinjinating smile which
expanded her nostrils.

" She is neither, — superlatively," answered the young
man.

" Mother would be horrified," observed his sister, with
a look which reminded him of the stare of the locomo-
tive two evenings previous.

" It wouldn't be the first time."

" You refer to my marriage. But she didn't send me
to Paris. She didn't expect anything brilliant of me.
Your wife must be the flower of creation ; an exceedingly
tall and brilliant flower. And she must have money and
influence at her back."

" No matter what she expects."

" You forget Louise."

" Excuse me, I don't forget her," answered Halstead,
coldly.

The fragment of conversation was on the mountain
back of Mrs. Anderson's house, whither the friends of
our acquaintance had gone, — that mild effort at moun-
taineering being all that the weather and the limited
time of the engineers would permit.

It was toward the close of a July da}^ and scarcely a

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

181

leaf stirred in the woods through which they passed.
The circuitous road by which they ascended was one
used for getting out timber in winter, was carpeted with
the softest green, and shaded by pines and birches, and
led them by a gradual inclination to the wood-choppers'
camp upon the summit. In fact the mountain, as it was
called, hardly deserved that special distinction, as
it was merely the centre of a group of taller fellows
that rose above it in all directions, and on the top it
expanded in a waste of wild and rugged country made
picturesque by gigantic rocks and a small, clear lake sup-
plied by hidden springs.

That evening, when Mrs. Sterling, with Rachel already
in the carriage, had driven to the depot for the engineers,
in pursuance of his wife's scheme for a pic-nic, Dayton
had entered at once, oblivious of his former abhorrence of
that pastime; while Halstead, with his hand on the car-
riage door, had looked about him as if in search of some
supernatural interposition. Finding none, however, and
meeting Rachel's smile, he too entered. But while he
counterfeited his usual spirits, and lent himself indis-
criminately among his friends on his way up the moun-
tain, he still remained at heart uneasy, irresolute rapa-
cious.

"And this is it?" he exclaimed, appealing to Rachel
when they paused upon the shore of the melancholy
lake. " This is it ; the place where unfortunate Beau-
deckers come ! How many annually ? It is very con-
venient. Why didn't you bring us here sooner ? We

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

have lived longer than necessary within reach of such
advantages."

" You are still wilfully wasting breath," said Mr. Ster-
ling. But Mr. Sterling was one of those to whom
Nathan's existence was not a necessity.

"Oh," said Halstead lightly. "I make no leaps. If
ever there was a temporizer T am one."

" It is beautiful," said Louise, " quite like Switzerland!
But it is melancholy, isn't it ? Was there ever a suicide
here?"

" Never," said Rachel, smiling. " Mr. Halstead will be
the first."

" Not he," said Louise.

A crane upon the farther shore stalked away, and
some wild ducks swimming in the shadows rose in alarm,
and, flapping their wings upon the dusky air, went
swiftly in search of more desolate pools, their shapes as
long and linear as if they flew on a Japanese screen.

" Come," said Mrs. Sterling, " let us have our supper.
There is no time to lose." The Anderson boys, who
carried the commissary stores, were already building a
fire and unpacking the baskets ; arni she turned to their
assistance, followed by several of the party.

Mr. Meade and Margaret Duncan, however, pursued
the path a short distance along the margin of the lake.
Mr. Meade was the gentleman to whom Miss Duncan
was engaged, and although he was as homely as if
Tom Nast had made him and presented him to his
parents, she highly approved him, even to the plainness

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

133

of his visage and the gentle slope of his n.arrow shoul-
ders. He was about forty years of age, and a partner in
a wholesale establishment for the sale of silks. After
telling that a man is from Boston one is heartily sony
to add that he sells silks ; but some one has to sell silks,
even in that metropolis, and Mr. Meade was unfortu-
natelv selected to follow that calling. Doubtless, if he
had not become engrossed with gi'os grains at an early
age, he might have developed into a professor of the
South Sea languages, or might have lectured upon ethics
at Tremont Temple ; but having fallen, when a mere boy,
from this high, though common, destiny into the silk
trade, there he remained, and at the end of twenty-five
years, considered himself financially compensated for his
intellectual abasement. There, too, Margaret agreed
with him, and kindly consented to share his fortune
while maintaining her own high scholarship. She read
Herbert Spencer, but acknowledged that even a fine
mind might be more at home in a lower atmosphere, like
that surrounding her worthy lover.

Halstead retailed these facts to Rachel, detaining her
upon the rocks for that purpose.

"They have been engaged," he added, with amiable
ridicule, "for seven years."

" So long as that ? " said Rachel.

." Well, thereabouts."

" It isn't possible ! " disclaimed the girl.

" Not possible ? Why not ? Why shouldn't two per-
sons who love each other b3 engaged for seven years, or

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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for seven times seven years ? Don't you think, it indi-
cates great sincerity and great — warmth ? "

" I don't know," said Rachel looking after them.

"Perhaps you wonder that they didn't break it off
long ago."

" Oh, no, not that."

" That is the usual way."

" I don't believe it," she declared, smiling incredu-
lously.

" I am afraid," he went on in a light but caressing tone,
" that you don't know much about that rich and varied
association that admits of many repetitions, of many
repairs and breakages ; which is made up of heart-barn-
ings, smiles, pangs, festivities, and a good-by, love, we
part never to meet again."

" I am afraid I don't," assented Rachel, feeling in her
heart a delicious freshness of susceptibility.

" Pshaw ! " pursued Halstead, still in the same gentle
and mocking vein. " At your age you should have had
more experience. You should be sharper, more world-
hardeped. You should powder ; you should have a box
or two of sweet-scented letters laid away. You should
sigh and tap your fan ; and you should have a few cynic-
isms to air occasionally."

" I might attain those perfections," she said lightly ;
" they seem easy."

" Then I would understand you. I would be used to
you. I would know what to do," he cried. " As it is I
am afraid of you."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

135

off

The fire which the boys had made roared and crackled
sending thousands of spruce needles toward the zenith in
an ecstasy of flame ; and Joe Anderson was dispatched to
the bank to summon the parties there to the repast then
ready.

" I haven't seen anything to equal this since I left the
army," said Mr. Sterling, as they gathered about the
table. "It refninds me of some nights in the Cumber-
lands, — the heat-lightning and all. The air is full of it.
When we went down " — He paused, raised his flexible,
quizzing eyebrows, and looked at his wife.

" Go on," she said, " our friends are lenient, and I am
used to it."

" She don't permit it," he explained, shaking his head.
" I know better."

" Those stories once begun, last a day and a night, you
know," returned his wife. " If you will kindly abbre-
viate.

" I have abbreviated," lie replied. " Where are your
sandwiches ? "

Mr. Sterling wa^ tall, .slow-stepping, robust. He was
a lawyer, able iiii'l successful, not because he was par-
ticularly astute, but because he was large-hearted and
jovial, and difliculties seemed to resolve themselves into
justice, or into nothingness, in passing thr'^ ugh his mind.
•"m; ially he aided and abetted his wife ; indeed he aided
and abetted everybody. In his presence no uneasy gaps
yawned in the conversation ; pavI if, on the present
occasion, Halstead lay in compaiativp. silence, watching

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

the almost impalpable agitation of the lake, it made
much less difference in the c:eneral tone than mio:ht be
expected.

When the supper was over and the cigars finished, the
confused preparations for descent at once began. The
fire died away. The heat-lightning played more and
more brightly, and the ghosts of d«"^parted Narragansetts
gathered around the encampment.

The bovs started down. Mr, Meade and Margaret
Duncan started down. The delicious evening was almost
over. Tlie summer lightning flashed across the pool. It
was growing dark. It was growing rapidly dark, and
clouds were scudding across the sky.

Rachel stooped to pick up her alpine stock, and when
she rose Halstead was standing by her side. He pushed
back some faintly-pungent spruce boughs and took a few
steps forward. " Where is your hat ? " he asked, halting
and barring the path.

" In the wood-chopper s hut."

" In the hut ? " he repeated.

" We will get it on the way."

" On the way," he echoed, absentl3^ " Have you
everything else ? " She assured him she had everything
else, but ho did not move. He stood looking about him
in a dazed sort of fashion, while the sound of voices and
retreating footsteps grew fainter and fainter. A wind
sprang up somewhere from the treasury of winds, and
the trees upon the shore waved in the solitude.

"There will be a storm," he observed mechanically.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

187

''1

after a time. And then the silence closed about them.
The voices and the footsteps were gone.

" It is coming fast," said the girl in the same accents.

" How it lightens," he exclaimed with a white face.
And a flash broke over them.

" Rachel," he cried, in the tone he would have used had
he sworn he could not live without her. " Do you like
to see it lighten ? "

All about them were the branches of a fallen spruce,
and she leaned against one of them as if for support.
They were alone upon the mountain.

" Rachel," he whispered, " Rachel .' " And still he did
not look at her. He seemed to b^ gathering passion from
the vivid light.

" To-whit ! to-whoo ! " screamed a distant owl.

Rachel's heart-beats were almost audible. They seemed
to be again at the station near the coil of ropes, and
she. began to tremble as at the sequel of that time. The
wind died away. The desert came near to listen. It
ft ;.is strangely still. It continued strangely still.

iltlstead began to walk up and down the path as if to
brii'T h'f; thoughts to the relief of his agitation.

'* Rachel!" he cried again, "this is a grand mountain.
Do 5'ou like thr lightning? Does it meander through
your veins ? It will be a grand storm, — will you like to
watch it with me ? "

Blindly she picked up her stick which had fallen from
}r r hand.

" Don't go, Rachel," he said, his head held high, his

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

forehead frowning, his white lips smiling. " Let us stay,
Rachel."

She started forward but he threw himself in her way,
prone upon the ground, murmuring words unintelligible
to her ears. She did not stay to comfort him. She
i^a-ow paler, and suddenly darted down the path.

Presently he shook himself, rose, got her hat, and started
down the road, wondering that she should have flown
so rapidly. Then he broke into a run, and still he did
not overtake her. Kd aght of calling her, but the
rest of the party, now not far in advance, would hear
him, and he would hate that. It would make a beastly
racket. In a moment a streak of lightning revealed the
hurrying company of his friends, but no Rachel Guerrin,
and turning he ran up the mountain as rapidly as he had
run down. It could not be helped, so he began to halloo
in very different accents from those he employed among
the spruce branches, but the rising wind derided his
feeble shouts. He was at his wit's end when he heard an
answer coming from down the mountain. He rushed for the
ox-path again, and a few minutes later a hand was laid
upon him, and Dayton shar[)ly incjuired what had become
of Miss Guerrin.

He sharply replied that that was what he was trying
to find out. That she had started down before him, and
had he, Dayton, seen anything of her ?

The party ahead had heard hishallooing. " Somethino-
may have happened," said Mrs. Sterling ; "do please some-
bodysee about it,"— and Dayton, pleasing, was already gone.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

139

pying
and

bhing

He looked closely at Halstead for a moment when he
heard his reply, then turning on his heel, struck into the
woods, taking an oblique direction downward, and mak-
ing his way among the bending trees and along the un-
certain ground till he came out upon some clear sheep
lands, dotted with rocks and extending far and wide.
It did him good to shout. He had no scruples against a
beastly racket.

In a little while he struck a path which he began to
ascend, the summer lightning playing in white sheets
about him, and flashing over the blown and desolate
pastures ; and shortly at a distance he saw a figure moving.

"Is that you, Mr. Dayton?" asked Rachel, as he
came up.

He noted an excitement which was not fear in her
manner, and looking past her across the valley he seemed
to observe there the same peculiarity in nature which
King David recorded long ago in the words : " Why hop
ye so, ye high hills ? " or " What ails ye, ye mountains
that ye skip like rams ; and ye little hills like lambs ? "

" Do you know just where we are ?" he asked.

" Not exactly. I started wrong."

" It will be safe enough to go down by this path, I
take it/' he observed pi actically. " It can't take us far
out of our course. Can you follow ? "

Near the lower border of the pasture there was an eld
and empty sheep-fold and toward this he directed their
hurrying steps, but before they reached it the rain be-
gan to fall.

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" This is too poor a place for you," he said, " but it is
better than the inhospitality outside."

He threw down some corn stalks for her to sit upon,
then went back and walked up and down in the rain,
like a picket guarding the entrance way.

Presently Rachel came out and touched him lightly on
the arm. "I must insist upon going home. I am no
more afraid of the rain than you. What I object to is
keeping dry while the drops drizzle off your hat. Let

us go on.

" Oh, I am comfortable," he answered, " I am divinely
comfortable. I haven't been so comfortable for weeks.
My discomforts are not of the weather. I am very
tough."

" So am I, and I am going."

" You cannot very well, alone," he said, drawing her
back under the roof. Then, muttering something about
finding the path, he disappeared.

When he returned the clouds had broken, the rain had
ceased, and the lights of the house were visible not far
away.

They descended the intervening fields, passed through
an old sugar-camp, whose troughs stood full of water,
struck the road, and had nearly reached Mrs. Anderson's
when a man rose from somewhere near the gate. He
was not a pleasant object as he came slouching near ; but,
recognizing Dayton, he stopped irresolutely and took oft'
his hat. He was an immense fellow in stature, — lank,
angular, and with a beiird like a Norseman.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

141

" Well, Braut," said Dayton, " what can I do for you ?"

" I ain't got nothin' agin you," said the man sullenly
putting on his hat again, and looking vaguely and
uneasily ahout him.

" I know you are in trouble," said Dayton. " What
can I do for you ? I heard you left to-day."

" Yes, sir. I can't stay no longer. I wanted to see
them as saw her last. Mebbe the lady, sir, was one of
them ?"

" I ?" said Rachel, thus strangely appealed to,

" I liad a daughter," the man went on, a little wildly,
" the same that made the liggers. She warn't much big-
ger nor they, an' when I left she war as cold. She war
drownded, in the river there."

" I heard of it to-day," said Rachel, recalling a rumor
that had floated to the village from the lower station.
" I was very sorry for her."

" I war a youngster," the man rambled on, " when she
war born, an' I alius took her round with me. I had
nowheres to leave her, an' she war a quiet little thing, —
quiet till that fellow got to showin' her about them Ag-
gers, and then there warn't any more quietness in her.
She went in an' out, an' in an' out, an' them sparks came
in her eyes, an' she put a ribbin in her hair. An' I keep
thinkin' mebbe she didn't drownd quite accident like.
Noboddy knows, unless it's some of you. It war in the
night, an' she'd been over the biidge to look at you. I
war sleepin' heavy as if she could take care o' herself
like a water-rat, an' she war drownding. There warn't

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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no harm in her, an' I couldn't rightly find that there war
harm in him, but when he came smiling round she war
taken with him. As I might 'a knowed. An' is he
here ?" he added, a sullen fire breaking through his grief.

" No, he isn't here," answered Dayton.

" I don't wish him no luck," cried the man, pulling at
his sandy beard, and again looking vaguely and uneasily
about him.

" Look here, Braut," said Dayton steadily, " I'll answer
for him. He w^ould no more do harm to you or yours
than I would. If he has done it he does not know it
He would not mean it. He intended to do good. It is
his misfortune to be too clever."

" I don't wish him no luck," repeated the fellow dog-
gedly. " There ain't no such innocence. He meddled
with what war nothin' to him. He'd 'a been in better
business to 'a let her be. I ain't got nothin' ag'in you,
sir, but I don't wish him no luck."

Dayton drew Rachel toward the gate, which he closed
behind her ; and then he went back where the fellow
still stood shaking his head menacingly and with a vague
desire to avenge upon some one the calamity which had
befallen him.

She went mechanically to the house, and when she
looked back they had disappeared.

Presently Halstead came wandering in from the regions
back on the mountains, ?nd her explanations had to be
gone over again. He seemed in n© degree surprised to
find her already there.

AN EARNEST TllIFLEK.

143

" I have felt all the time that I was fioiinderino- aljout
without a shadow of a chance," he replied, unable wh<,illy
to suppress his discoinfiture. " When Dayton starts ott"
like that he gets what he goes for. I saw him do it once
before when there was a strike on the road ; and when
he came back he brought three hundred men. Did he
pick you up on a fork of lightning ?"

"I don't knowhowhe did it,"said Rachel," but here I am."

"And where is he ?"

" There was a man at the gate," said Rachel briefly.
" He stopped to speak to him."

" He was a terrible looking fellow," said Mrs. Sterling.
" He was here a few minutes ago asking for you ?"

" For me ?"

" He looked like a tramp. I think he had been drink-
ing. He wouldn't tell what he wanted. I thought he
would never go, but suddenly away he bolted."

" He said his name was Braut," said Mr. Sterling, —
" probably one of the road hands."

"Braut?" repeated Halstead. "Braut, was it? He
probably wanted help. I hope Dayton will do something
for him."

" Who is he ?" inquired his sister.

" One of the hands down at the bridge. It is a very
sad case. He stuck his shovel in the ground to-day and
left for parts unknown. They lived in one of the freight
cars you saw down there, he and his daughter, who was
drowned a day or two ago. They say he took her loss
hard"

rife

144

AN EARNEST TllIFLER.

11' 1

!i';'^

" I saw her," cried Louise, suddenly starting up.

" You ! When ?" exclaimed Halstead.

"The night we were down there. J st before we
came home."

Halstead instinctively raised his head as if he had
boen unjustly accused. " Is that'so ?" he said. " What
was she doing ? "

" Nothing."

" What did she say ? "

*' She showed me some images she had made," said
Louise, concisely.

" Her bucket of clay is drying up," said Halstead'
calmly, as one who would freely tell all he knew. " She
was the kind of a waif you read about but never see in
this country, — an artistic waif, artistic, plastic, tragic.
I saw her when T first went down there dabbling in a
clay bank with a plaster Hol}^ Mother in her hand.
Think of a poor, plain, and arid little V>eing such as she
with vague reachings out toward art as if she would
climb by it ! And she didn't even know its name ! 'Art ?'
she said, 'What is art ?' I couldn't tell her, but I gave
her some suggestions about her models. I am sorry for
her father. They say he takes her loss hard. I hope
Dayton will do something for him. I believe I'll go and
find him."

For him the subject of Margot was closed. He had
nothing to reproach himself with. He had been very
scnipulous.

As he started out, Rachel ran after him. " Don't go,"

AN EARNEST TRIFLEK.

145

she said, excitedly ; " please don't go. You can do no
good. It will only make it worse. He wasn't looking
for you for any good."

Nathan straightened himself and looked down u})on
her.

" Now, I iuiist go," he said. " Do you think me a
coward, or what do you think me ? "

She gazed after hift a moment as he went down the
path, with his confident erectness, and his irreproachable
rectitude, then turning, went back into the liall.

Mrs. Sterling, who was bustling about to restore the
comfort of their shattered part}', bethought herself of
Rachel's wet feet and drabbled skirts. " You must go to
my room right away, my dear, and dry them," she said,
" while I have another tire made down here. I never
allow anybody about me to take cold. I never have a
cold myself. It is because I avoid draughts and damp-
ness. And your shoes are thin, too. You wear very
pretty shoes, my dear. My room is on the right. Louise
and Margaret are both there. Louise just went up."

Rachel, nothing loth, went up-stairs, but Louise and
Margaret were not there. There was no one there, and
instead of going to the freshly kindled fire sh 'at down
on a stool near the window and buried her lace in her
hands. She felt crushed, humiliated, she scarcely knew
why ; and there was a cessation in her desire for worldly
experience. She seemed benumbed. She could not cry.
She could not think.

She took no note of time, but presently her hands

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AN EARNEST TRIB^LER.

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were quietly removed and Louise stood before her, tall
and fair, but with something fierce in the place of her
former languor.

" And you, too ! " she said, with a sort of light scorn.

" Oh, we all listen, and we all bury our faces in our
hands like that. You are only one. I do it, that little
Braut ghost did it, and now you. You are only one.
We are of all classes and conditions. And your hands
don't cover any more happiness than ours. He is com-
plicated, you know, — complicated. He has no simplicity
of heart, no singleness of mind. He wants and he does
not want. He holds loosely. He woos idly. But I
hope you don't think there is any evil in him ? He is
fine, refined, superfine. Nothing would induce him to be
other than a gentleman. You need never fear that.
You are not hiding your face because you, for one mo-
ment, suspect him, but because you yourself are dis-
appointed, shabbily, miserably disappointed."

" Yes," said Rachel, allowing her passive hands to be
held by the older woman, " I believe I am disappointed."

" I knew you would be when we left you on the
mountain," pursued Louise. " All your pleasant ways
for weeks have lead to the supreme, the critical moment ;
and when, to-night, you reached it, it was still and dry.
He may love you in his way, but he will never ask you
to marry him. It isn't in him. He isn't made of that
simple stuff. If your are wise you will take your hands
down and never put them up again on Nathan Halstead's
account. The raptures of that fine young man are as

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

147

fluent as his phrases. Come, what did he do ? What
did he say to you ? "

" I don't know," she answered helpleSvsly ; thon she
caught something of the light scorn of her companion
and added, " He said something touching to my shoe
buttons."

" Oh, there are hopes of you," cried Louise, half wrap-
ping herself in the scant chintz curtains and leaning her
hep*d against the casement. " You are not taking it so
seriously as I supposed; not so seriously as I did. Did
you wonder why I came here ? You know now. You
may as well know. I don't tell you because I expect
you to make any concessions to m- . I expect you to do
your best for yourself, but your best won't be good
enough. It won't interfere with me. I don't expect him
to love me, but, my child, I have hundreds of thousands
of dollars. He thinks now that he does not care for
money, but I don't believe it. I keep mine before him
and it has its eflfect. I can see that it has its effect. He
is prudent, prudent, prudent. His prudence is deepest
of all. He is a rich man now. He acts and feels like a
rich man ; and the fact that the money belongs to me
gives him none the less sublime a sense of unobtrusive
wealth. Do you think all this hideous ? Perhaps it is.
I don't know why I tell you, but you seemed so secure ;
as if no one had been before you and no one would come
after. I have been before you and I will come after 3'^ou.
He has but one rose-bush for us all, and he lets us sit by
it in happy summer rotation, while he treats us like a

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

i..

!■

priest and talks to us like a lover ; but when it comes to
marriage, it woti't depend upon the lengths of our eye-
lashes or the outlines of our chins. You are pretty. It
has been terrible to me to see how pretty you were, but
for all that you can be unhappy. If I did not love him
I would hate him, but I love him and I can't change. I
have only one idea. I never had but one. Most of my life
I hadn't auy. If you have one I advise you to get rid of
it. This is no place for fixed ideas. They grow tedious
as mine is tedious. Heavens how tedious it is. I myself
seem tedious. Everything is tedious, tedious, when one
waits."

Louise leaned out the window as if she would find
relief in the cooling rain, and for the moment seemed to
have forgotten in her own vehemence the more moderate
infelicities of the younger girl.

" Does he know it ? " asked the latter with solicitude.

"Know it!" said Louise. "He could repeat it word
for word. He has it set to music. I have heard him
humming it."

" What are you trying to do ? " cried Rachel. " To put
him in a shape that do one would look at ? How do you
know that all you have been saying is true ? Do you
suppose he means nothing that he says, and that he
makes up the manners and the very tones of feeling ?
We overreach our mark and accuse him of what nobody
could do. We might at least have the grace to wait. We
call ourselves his friends, yet hear us ! Hear his friends ! "

" I am sure he means what he says, — to your shoe-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

149

buttons," answered Louise. " Perhaps lie swore by them.
He may have said, By thy buttons I love thee."

Rachel had no response. She looked for a moment out
the window. There were two %ures coming up the walk.
"It seems to me," she said, "that those who abhor him
might praise him more,"

"And did you think him perfect?" asked Louise in pity
of such inexperience.

"I thought him charming," said Rachel. "T am not
sure I thought him anything else."

" He is nothing else, but that is too considerable. Wliat
else? Your needs must be very great. If he were but
half as charming only one of us need sicken for him."

"Do 1 look sick?" inquired the younger girl lifting
her face.

Louisa rose and turned up the light. " You look bright,
— over-bright about the eyes," she said. "Your symp-
toms are very bad."

" They will lead to nothing, — like signs in dry wea-
ther," returned Rachel. She rose and smoothed her hair
as if to descend; but the disorder of the evening was not
to be at once subdued.

"And your wet feet!" said Louise. They had forgot-
ten all about her feet except as the salient at which Hal -
stead had thrown himself down.

"It makes no difference," she replied; " wi3 must go
home." And she began once more to repair her toilet.

Louise wrapped a blue shawl about her and stood back
a step. "You don't look just right yet," she said, " not

" ; :|

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150

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

as if we had been talking about preventives for colds.
Can't you put on a little dullness?" And bending over
she kissed her, adding, " That is for dulness 1"

At the door Rachel stopped and turned. " I can't help
feeling," she said, " that you will have use for your for-
tune. "

" But when ! But when !" returned Louise. " Please say
that I won't be down again to-night. Say that T .1 not
well, — say anything you choose except the truth.

Halstead and Daytcn were both in the parlor, and both
of them wet and silent. The neat and chilly fire-board
had been taken out, and some pine sticks burned cheer-
fully upon the hearth ; but, though eveiything had been
done for their delectation, it .seemed impossible to restore
the broken harmony of the evening, at least as far as
r .ncerned these gentlemen. When Rachel came in with
her wraps on they both immediately got their hats.

" Come and let us look at you, my dear," said Mrs.
Sterling. " Where is Louise ? "

" She is not feeling well," Rachel answered.

"Are you quite sure that you are?" inquired that lady
looking at her critically.

" I am always feeling well," she declared.

" It is raining a little again," said Margaret. " I wonder
where the umbrellas are I You will want one to go to the

carriage.

" Umbrellas, dear Margaret, are always a source of won-
der," remarked Nathan from tlie mantel-piece.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

151

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f ;

CHAPTER XIII.

IT was about this time that there was a meeting- in Bos-
ton of the directors and bondholders of this i]^reat
railway, which was so largely to enhance the prosperity
of New England, when Nathen Halstead, who waited
upon them to submit some reports, rather distinguished
himself. The office in which the meeting was held was a
crimson and oak apartment, on a scale of magnificence
everywhere demanded by the truly railroad mind ; and
there were present about a score of the very large and
very small men, who by some strange correlation seem
best fitted to conduct the very large railroad schemes
made public, and the very fine railroad schemes kept pri-
vate. There was the tall and portly gentleman who seemed
to have grown big with his own extraordinary projects,
whose idea of true greatness involved the handling of
millions upon millions, whose family lived upon a Parisian
boulevard and who frequently went across himself; and
there was the small, thin banker, grown thin with shrewd-
ness, who frequently coughed behind a first mortgage trust
deed, and of whom there was not much loft ))ut assets.
There was the dignitary who had influence with senators,
who carried members of the House in his wallet, and who
of late "years had found it difficult to cross his legs : and
there was the sharp and meagre rail-road king who was

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152

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

always urging that abstruse operation, to which is given
the salubrious name of watering. They were all men of
substance and of high, high standards, particularly as
regards the great subjects of personalty and reality, and
as such Halstead regarded them with deep respect, —
respect enhanced by the confidence reposed in his own
discretion.

He did not think that he himself was destined ever to
become that golden object, a moneyed man. " I have no
grasp," he said. " I have no grasp," — and for the moment
his regret was tempered by this snug discovery of what
he lacked, — but it pleased him to see how money was
made in splendid sums ; how transmitted, and how re-
tained in quantities that told upon the stock exchange.
He liked to sit in a crimson chair among railway grandees,
and look down upon the noisy street with its throng of
citizens, each hurrying to reach some one of the thousand
doors through which the flying hours escape, — half-atten-
tive to what went on within the room, half to what went
on without, and half to his own reflections (he had more
halves than most men, had Nathan Halstead), but it
chanced on this occasion that his own affairs were by far
the most engrossing.

The night was warm, the business diy. His mind had
entirely gone, both from the scenes without and within ;
his study had assumed the hue called brown, and his atten-
tion was fixed upon the conflict now almost chronic in the
arena of his bosom, when one of the rotund gentlemen
called upon him in a familiar way to send some telegrams

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

153

had
thin ;
[,ten-
the
Allien
rams

on behalf of the company. He rose with a promptness,
rather physical than mental, crossed the crimson floor,
stepped into the hall, closed the oaken door behind him,
turned the key, and dropping it into his unconscious
pocket descended to the street.

He felt he must see Rachel Guerrin again, but for
what ? His voluminous purposes were narrowing omin-
ously. He scarcely dared go back to the mountains.
He must go back. He longed to store her unfurnished
life with gay experiences, her roomy heart with intense
affections. He thought it a pity, an intolerable pity
that her radiance should be fanned and consumed by
idle, country breezes only, such as drank up springs,
rotted cabbages, and wafted dandelions into glory. He
wondered as he walked along how she would appear in
Boston. He thought he would like by chance to see her
on a flagstone pavement, shading her tulip freshness
under an umbrageous parasol ; and he would like to
touch his hat to her, making meanwhile his mental com-
ments as he did upon other women whom he passed. It
might be that his judgment was a little blind, and that
however beautiful and even tasteful she might seem
among her native hills, the invidious lights of Boston
might disclose some fatal lapse of form. Of all the
women he had ever known he thought her the most diffi-
cult to treat with satisfaction to himself.

The way was long, affording him much time for medi-
tation. He could imagine nothing more enchanting than
to start with her on a tour of initiation, making her

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154

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

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open wide her ignorant eyes at some of the more refined
among the spectacles to which young men refer when
they speak of seeing life. He felt morally certain that
she was no more cold than she was dull, and yet she had
never seemed to kindle on his account except when he
had become flame to reach her. He was willing to be-
come flame for that purpose, a harmless light-blue flame,
such as flickers over spirits on rare occasions, but was he
willing to become fire-unquenchable, such as consciously
or unconsciously she seemed to insist upon ? And put-
ting his hands in his pockets as he strode along, he drew
out a strange object which he did not remember to have
seen before, and for whose secretion he could not account.
It recalled him suddenly.- He never carried keys. It
could not be — it was ! And rushing back past intermin-
able blocks of houses, and through streets never so devoid
of conveyances, he found his caged lions pacing about their
handsome den, having ineflectually moved to adjourn
some time before.

Halstead's apologies were profuse ; and though they
consisted of little more than a bow and the Washington -
ian confession, " Gentlemen, I*did it," they seemed, as all
his apologies did, sufticient.

" There is some woman at the bottom of it, Haistead,"
exclaimed one of them, — the same whose family preferred
the Boulevard Haussmann to Beacon Street. "What
young man keeps his wits in the world where they are ! "

And this incident was all his friends in Beaudeck ever
heard of him during his unaccountably prolonged absence.

AN EARNEST TRITLER.

165

fined
uvhen
that
} had
en he
,0 be-
flame,
ras he
iously
d put-
5 drew
3 have
jcount.
^s. It
^rmin-
ievoid
t their
ijourn

they
igton-
as all

itead,"
tferred
What
are;

ever
)sence.

CHAPTER XIV.

IT was a beautiful, hopeful Sunday morning, and even
the grasshoppers were keeping it holy. The river
flowed with a light serene ; the weeds by the roadside
stood reverently erect ; clouds of yellow butterflies hov-
ered here and there, and a cat prowled softly about the
premises with true Sunday sloth and receptivity. Day-
ton, who, for the first time was spending the day alone in
the village, and who, perhaps, had some fond previsions
with regard to it, sat at his window as if he too were
stricken with the smiling, shining, hopeful stillness. He
looked down the road past the bridge at the neat little
rows of sister houses, and up the road past the mill, on
whose steps some broadclothed boys were swinging their
Sabbath-breaking legs. Every one in Beaudeck who
believed in the God of Israel wore broadcloth on Sun-
day. The town had a pensive air. It seemed to have
its hands above its eyes and to be looking out upon the
wide-spread summer-weather by way of occupation.

Dayton was glad to be alone. He thought it strange
he should be alone, but since he was alone he gently
stroked the ends of his moustache, as if to keep a potential
smile beneath it from growing unduly broad. Presently,
as his eyes rested on the highest point of the north road,
he saw a team winding over the hill, followed by an-

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156

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

other, and another, and another ; as if in answer to his
half -formed question, the ladies of the household went
down the walk and up the shady street holding the
skirts of their black silks in one hand, their parasols in
the other, and hugging their gilt hymn-books against
their bodies. Then the idea of church dawned upon
him.

Dayton rarely went to church. Within the past year
he had been but twice : once in San Francisco, when he
had gone to hear a popular preacher, and had seemed to
sit somewhere outside in a silence of his own, watching
through dusty spaces the troubled face of the multiform
sinner ; and once in New York, when he had strolled to
Old Trinity, and had seemed to sit somewhere outside in
the silence with the strange lights of a variegated angel
falling athivart him from an expensive window, and had
watched a great divine standing in a high place like an
allegorical figure of Plenty, shedding plenty of wisdom
upon the bowed heads of his wealthy congregation. But
after both of these occasions he had felt a strange need
of spiritual refreshment. In some respects he acknow-
ledged himself a very benighted fellow ; yet when thu
sun-shades disappeared, a longing took possession of him,
and taking his hat he started in the same direction.

The church was very white and had very green blinds,
and as he entered, not without fear of intrusion, the out-
side of the building seemed to turn inward too, so nearly
did its interior correspond to its external aspect in white-
ness and greenness. He took a seat far back, and dur-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

157

1
1

to his
. went
Lg the
sols in
Lgainst
upon

st year
hen he
!med to
atching
iltiform
Dlled to
tside in
i angel
bnd had
like an
wisdom
But
re need
,cknow-
len the
of him,

n.
hlinds,

,he out-
3 nearly
white-
d dur-

ing the singing of the second psalm, the congregation
rose and suddenly turned, surprising him in his observa-
tions; but realizing after some perturbation, that it was,
perhaps a custom of the people, and not an expression of
general amazement at hit presence, he too turned, and gave
himself up to reluctant contemplation of the cabinet organ.
Gradually as the services advanced his first impressions
softened. The best bonnets appeared to be sincere and tit-
ting church offerings instead of mistaken exhibits oT
fashion ; and on closer acquaintance he rather liked the
primitive windows and a mural ornament that resembled
a gigantic mantel-piece. He looked at the fly-leaf of his
hymn-book, where he learned that it was to Mary Adams
from her devoted friend Joseph Bluebaker, at a some-
what distant date ; and some childish hieroglyphics and
moon-faced sketches just below made him hope that
Joseph had not given it to Mary in vain.

The Desborough pew was in the middle of the church,,
and Rachel in the far end of it, the open-eyed centre, as
it were, of this old time flower of Calvinism, was to him
the sole sweet prospect of a future. He tried to persuade
himself that he had not read aright the signs that bris-
tled around him. Why, if prosperous in his love affairs,
should Halstead be away ? It was barely possible that
he was not prosperous.

Pleasant country sounds came in at the windows. A
warning voice slowly rose and fell beneath the vast
mantel-piece ; and Dayton again sat somewhere outside
in a silence of his own, stroking the ends of his moustache,

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

as if to keep the smile beneath it from coming prema-
turely. He walked home with Miss Hannah, and de-
lighted her with some kindly though hazardous remarks
about the sermon. The church was her peculiar posses-
sion. Did she not settle its dissensions and its bills, and
preside at some of its services ? And beside, the mission-
ary societies to follow the retreating Indians, had she
not instituted a temperance movement that spread far
and wide ? To be sure, this field of usefulness was not
large, as cider-mills were the only things in disrepute ;
but good work had been done among them, and several
of the oldest and most reprobate presses had been turned
to better uses.

It was her favorite topic, and she touched upon it on
the way. "We cannot see now," she said, "that we
make much progress, but we keep working. It is slow,
like the format.ioR of rock in the beds of rivers, — very
slow. But we don't give up. We are not discouraged."
Even the geological periods were but spans to Miss
Hannah's patience.

All this time Dayton cherished the idea of spending an
hour or two with Rachel while Halstead was still safely
beyond the south-eastern horizon ; but he found the day
drawing to a close without having realized his hope.

It was evening when Mr. Guerrin with hospitable in-
tent asked him to walk down to the lower end of the
village and look at some cattle he owned there, — a pro-
position which he did not accept with alacrity.

" How far is it ?" he asked for want of something better.

le m-

^f the

pro-

A> EARNEST TRIFLER.

159

" About fe mile."

" A mile !" and in looking about him his eyes fell upon
Rachel on the front piazza. " I was wanting," ho said
with hesitation, " to talk to your daughter." But taking
his hat he started down the steps toward the gate as if
he would forejnro that desire. He seem«?d to be turninj' a
further confidence over in his mind. " I would like," he
added, when they were out of hearing of the house, " to
marry your daughter."

Mr. Guerrin stopped short. " Eh T' he said. " Not
Rachel ?"

" That is what I would like," said Dayton, relent-
lessly.

Mr. Guerrin fitted the ends of his fingers togethei look-
ing vaguely about him. "Soho!" he softly exclaimed.
He bad had a gloomy prescience of some such moment
as this, but it never occurred to him that the blow
might come from such a quarter.

" I thought you ought to know what sort of a man it
was you were harboring under your roof," continued
Dayton. " I have designs."

" I half exi> acted it from Halstead," said Mr. Guerrin,
moving on, " but I never thought of it from you."

Dayton seemed to wish to take the edge ofi' this
reproach. " I could take good care of her, sir," he said.

" It isn't that, — it isn't that !" said the elder, who felt
that fathers should be left in undisturbed possession of
their daughters, — at least in Massachusetts.

" She doesn't know anything about it," said Dayton, to

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AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

be honef\ "Perhaps she wonld not look at me, as a
husband." The word applied to himself seemed to
])leaae him. " I would make her a good husband, sir,"
he said with smilling ardor. " 1 would have more re-
spect for myself if there were some one dependent
upon me."

They had reached the gate, and Dayton .stopped with
his hand on the arch, as if that were the terminus of his
walk. " I would like to have her know about it soon,"
he resumed. " A man ou^ht to ixive a woman time to
think seriously of him and not wait for a grand climax
in which to make his appeal and get his answer in a
breath."

*' Why man," cried Mr. Guerrin, as if he suddenly saw
a clear and unexpected solution of his difficulty, " Rachel
is going away. She has made all her plans. You are
too late. She isn't thinking of marriage, — and the
observation plainly gave him satisfaction. " I have no
objection to you, but she isn't thinking of marriage."

" Going away !" ejaculated Dayton.

" Yes, — to her great-aunt's. Another Des borough that
was."

" How long to be gone."

" The rest of the shmmer. You see the letter mi
some time ago, but she only decided yesterday Me
day before, and now she can't get away soon enou^ I
am glad to have you here. I hope you'll stay, but she ib
going."

Rachel still walked slowly up and down the long

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

161

'no .-i
he
I
iti

>ng

piazza, her arms folded hehind her back, her chin up.
She seemed toha/<> a great many tliouj^dits. But Instead
of joining her, Dayton went back to the wing. " Going
away!" he reiterated, and dissolution secmiMl already to
set in. Everything excopt the column he leaned
against seemed to be receding out of his reach, and for
perhaps the first time in his life he felt the futility of
effort.

Dayton was tall, broad shouldered, full chested, and
with the look of a man who never dwelt upon himself,
and had no apparent intentions with regard to his ap-
pearance. He dressed well, yet was never heard to
mention the subject of clothes. He had fair manners,
yet never commented upon the habits of the vulgar.
He spoke tolerable English, yet no deviations gave him
pain. ' Even his morals seemed to escape comparison in
his mind with the nefarious practices of his fellow-men.
He seemed to have a certain *-cit sense of the ineptitude
of error ; and a practical perception of the fitness of the
correct for him, and his fitness for the correct stood him
instead of myriads of tastes and principles. He took no
credit to himself for being whatever he was, except what
concerned his reputation as an engineer, and perhaps his
early and decided bias for superior work had been a
large grace in the life of a man in whom the animal
nature had plainly not been eliminated that the intellec-
tual might prosper.

His hair was short, dark, dry, and thin. His skin was
brown, and not without a suggestion of leather ; and his

162

AN EARNEST TRIPLER.

mouth was over large. His usual expression was that of
a worker of problems, but when he smiled the problems
blew away. He was not smiling now, and Rachel re-
marked his present effort of solution, which was appar-
ently connected with the mountain range before him ;
then she turned and went into the house.

Presently Dayton knocked upon the window and
asked if he might come in.

" It seems you are going away," he said, as he crossed
the threshold and advanced into the room.

"Who told you ?" she asked.

" Why didn't you tell me yourself?"

" It is no great news," said Rachel.

" Yes, it is. It is astounding," he insisted.

Rachel smiled, and agreed with him that perhaps it
was. " We don't travel much," she said.

" Isn't it rather — sudden ? "

" Any departure is sudden for us. I feel as if 1 were
breaking something. '

" So do I," said Dayton.

"Won't you sit down ?" she asked, observing that he
was still standing without any apparent purpose.

But Dayton had a les formal intention. " I would
rather not," he answered ; " let us go."

*'Go where?"

" Wherever you like. There are no destinations about
here. We might for once go out without one. Did
you have enough of a walk outside ? You sometimes
stroll."

AN EABNEST TBIFLER.

163

" I did not know," said Rachel, " that you ever did
anything so aiialess."

She went with him out upon the piazza, and with her
elbows in her hands began to walk up and down again in
much the same fashion as before, looking out between
the columns with half averted face.

" That won't do," said Dayton, resenting his slight con-
nection' with her promenade. " I expect you to take my
arm. I want to talk to you. You have yet to say good-
by to me. How are you going to do iL ?"

" I am not going to do it," said Rachel. " I don't
believe in it. It is a sorrowful, foolish word. We
shed our salty tears over it when we are really glad
to go."

" I won't object to the tears," observed Dayton.

" But I would," she answered smiling ; and he felt
himself drawn by her smile from the seriousness of the
future to the fascination of the hour.

" If we are going to walk out here," she went on, " you
ought to smoke. You always smoke when you walk.
It would seem more natural."

Dayton stopped, took out a cigar and lighted it.
" This," he said, " is a brand which I import myself.
There is a masterful notion in this country that what one
imports one's self is better than anything accessible to
the public. I have a friend who imports the most exe-
crable wines at an enormous price, and another who
smuggles pictures. We are all alike ; we would distin-
guish ourselves by the compliment of a special importa-

■' !

164

AN EARNEST TRIPLER.

tion. My specialty is cigars. This one, you will find,
burns slowly, — it takes from three to five hours."

Rachel laughed ; and this time she took his arm.

" Explain it to me," he presently begged in an easier
tone than he would have thought possible a few minutes
before. " Explain it to me. What takes you away just
now ? Haven't we made it as pleasant for you as you
have made it for us ?"

'• You have made it very pleasant," she assented, with
slight constraint.

" You will have a whole life-time in which to get
away. You can go in '83 or in '91. Great-aunts are
patient. They can wait."

" Mine isn't of that sort. She can't wait."

" Is she so desperately fond of you ? "

" She wouldn't know me if she saw me."

They reached the end of the piazza, and turned to
retrace their steps. " Perhaps she anticipates a great
deal from your visit," conjectured Dayton. He seemed
to be speaking of some remote event which failed just
then to impress him with the force of fact.

" On the contrary, I'm afraid the thought of it makes
her nervous." And Rachel turned her face again toward
the gate -ways.

" Is your aunt a nervous person ?" he inquired min-
utely.

" They tell me she is very nervous."

They walked on a few minutes more in silence. " I
thought," said Rachel, " that you wanted to talk to me."

fli

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

165

Dayton roused himself. " So I did/' he cried. " So I
do. I am in a constant state of wanting to talk to you.
I am haunted by an idea that I have a great deal to say
to you. I am no talker, you know. I listen to these
fluent people in amazement, and wonder where it all
comes from and what starts it. It is a great thing to
have vagrant ideas always blowing across your minds in
an easy breezy fashion."

" Not exactly great," the girl assented.

" As for me," resumed Dayton, " I have no sentiments
except those that are alive with some agitation. I occa-
sionally get a little glibness when something stirs the
pools, but I can't dip m at any cool moment and produce
a nice observation. I don't perceive, except under the
influence of feeling. I am either sluggish, or I know no
bounds. For the life of me I can't talk about the moon.
I have very rarely known there was a moon."

" I have heard enough about the moon," she declared.

" What haven't you heard about ? If there is any-
thing in my line " —

" You were born in Rio Janeiro ; you might begin
there," said the girl.

"Who told you that?"

" Mr. Halstead. He told me too that you did remark-
able things to the rivers in California, — making tliem
run up hill, or something like that. And there wtis a
wonderful bridge over a stream that ran nothing but
quicksand, — miles of quicksand. Oh, he gave me some
great ideas I " «

166

AN EARNEST TBIFLER.

"He did, did he? But the highly colored ideas he
gives one of others are always accompanied by most
agreeable impressions of himself."

" He can't tell anything otherwise," she replied.
" I would rather furnish you the baldest facts," vsaid
Dayton.

" Does your family still live in South America ? " she
inquired.

" My family ? I haven't any," — and he laughed a
little. " All I remember of the time when I belonged to
a family is going down-stairs one night with my mother
to call a Portuguese woman, and rousing all the dogs and
negroes that slept in the entrance way. I assure you,
though, we were very nice people, if that is what you
would like to know."

" Yes," said Rachel ; " I would like to know that."
" Oh, you needn't be afraid that we were common. I
suspect that my mother was almost elegant."

" I siiould not wonder," said Rachel, thoughtfully.
She had begun to look before them along the line of
the piazza.

" "While we lived as a family," he said, " we lived
well. We had the refinements. But it did not last.
My father was a ship captain, running between New
York and Rio, but he died when I was a youngster, and
my mother soon followed him. She always followed him
when he was going to stay in port for any length of
time. She was very fond of him."
" What became of you ?" ,

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

167

" I was sent to my grandfather's in a New Hampshire
town."

"Did you live there ?"

" No longer than I could help," said Dayton. " I ran
away." Rachel had turned quite around and to be thus
ardently questioned seemed quite auspicious. He ex-
amined his cigar. It had gone quite out.

" And then what ? " pursued the girl.

" I went to Boston."

" Well ? " ■

" You don't want me to tell you the rest, do you ? The
romance dies out when I come to the front. It grows
prosy to the last degree. Ask me something later. I
don't know how well you could stand the first few years
of my career."

" Try me."

" I prefer not to try you in any way. I am timid."

Rachel seemed to think him humorous. " You must
have been poor, then," she said.

" I would rather like to give the lad I was then a lift,"
assented Dayton. " During the war I was in an engineer
regiment. Since then I have been in California, and here,
there, and most anywhere on the frontier line of a rail-
road. Hadn't we better quit this ? It is too egotistical."

" Had you friends in Boston ? " she persisted.

"Only those I made. I have always had friends
among men. It has been among men that I have lived.
I haven't known many families, — not many women. I
have knocked about a great deal in the western country

mm^

111
ii

I :<

168

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

where there were none to speak of. I believe I have had
rather a rough time of it, without knowing it till now."

" I went up last night to say good-by to Mrs. Sterling,"
said Rachel, as if her mind found some easy connection
between the topics, — probably considering Mrs. Sterling
the one woman of his acquaintance.

" Good-by ? " repeated Dayton.

"I go to-morrow, you know. Didn't you see my
trunks ? "

She seemed to expect some sympathetic good wishes
for her journey, but D?.yton stopped and looked down
Upon her with his problematic air. " Is that settled ? "
he asked.

" Settled ? Yes, of course."

Dayton took hold of a bench before him making it
creak. " Settled ! " he said, and he seemed to wish to
shake in like manner the decision that was closed against
him. While he considered it I^achel took a short turn
by herself, looking out among the elms again.

" Do you know," she began impersonally, " I think you
have had a fine sort of life."

"Are you trying to congratulate me ? " asked Dayton.
" Come ; as a life how does it strike you ? Looking at it
impartially, what do you think of it, — of its symmetry,
its completeness, its exquisite finish ? — of its conception,
its execution ? Nothing mechanical about it. No lob-
sidedness, no crudity. Oh, it is truly fine ! — a destiny,
don't you think, that a man might be proud to have
carved for himself? And I haven't been more than

ton.
at it
try,
ion,
lob-
iny,
■lave

han

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

109

forty years about it, either. It has the beauty, I should
say, of a trestle-work. It looks as if it had been made
by an inspired money-seeker with an axe. You set me
up. You make me feel vain."

Rachel flushed a little. He seemed to bo deridins: her
excessive simplicity. " It seemed fine to me," she said,
with modast sincerity.

"It occurs to me at last," continued Dayton, "that
amonjj other hufje tilings I have made a huofe mistake.
It is the hugest of all I thought once that if a man
could build bridges, he could build anything, — do any-
thing. We bridge only brooks, and it only leads to the
bridging of more brooks. It has no earthly connection
with achievement in finer directions. I thought if I
could build my bridge and cross it, I would be a powerful
fellow. You don't mean to tell me that I am a powerful
fellow, Miss Guerrin. You can't exactly say that I have
much influence with you, for instance. I wish now that
I had spent a good part of my time weaving webs. You
can't weave webs with grappling irons. I am a failure.
Mine has been a heavy, crude performance, one-sided,
ridiculous, — ending in nothing."

" Is success, then, so disastrous ? " asked Rachel, as if
the facts compelled her to look lightly upon his pheno-
menal and satirical despair. " If you give up, the rest of
us need never begin."

" Oh, I shall not give up. I know nothing else than

to keep on. I shall go back to my bridges, and you will

go on to your ftunts, That is the arrangement, isn't it ?
12

'■I

,1', .i:

■.^ ■

170

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

We both, I think, have the gift of continuance. Who is
this aunt that you are so enamored with ? And where
does she live ? Suppose we sit down and talk about her.
You love your aunts as I love my bridges. My heart is
full of bridges with roaring cataracts under them. Sit
down and I will tell you about them. And you shall
tell me about your aunts, particularly the one with the
nervous aflfection. I think that I perhaps have the same
malady."

" Not you ! " said Rachel. She was still smiling vaguely.
" Not you ! " she said.

" I can't tell," said Dayton, " till I hear the diagnosis.
She can't wait, that is one thing."

He was often puzzling to her. She met his intent
gaze a moment, her own becoming briefly as intent. " I
know you less and less," she finally said.

" Whose fault is that ? " he asked.

" Your's, when you talk like that," she answered,
beginning her faltering smile again.

" You should be so kind as to tell me what my pros-
pects are ? "

'• Prospects ! I don't know much about prospects. 1
have done no prospecting to speak of."

" So long as a man is in pursuit of a livelihood," con-
tinued Dayton, "the result maybe somewhere in pro-
portion to his endeavors, but when he demands a senti-
ment, he gets it or not, as it happens. Affinities and
subtleties beyond him come in about that time, and
aid him or thwart him, as the case may be. That is

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

171

rs. 1

con-
pro -
Isenti-
and
and
lat is

where our tracks run up trees. My track has run up
a tree."

" There is a mistake somewhere," said Rachel ; " there
is a mistake somewhere ! "

" Where ? " exclaimed Dayton.

There was that about him that Rachel had never seen
before ; a fervor, a recklessness, a willingness to harbor in
his hitherto independent and solitary being whatever of
warmth or familiarity might be allotted to him ; a desire
to command it even, though he might thereby lay him-
self open to disappointment and rebuff. He seemed to
include her, and her only, in his new freak of passionate
hospitality.

The door of the hall stood open. She thought of going
in. She thought of what Halstead had said.

" Know me better ;*know me well ; — good might come
of it," he cried. " How is it that men find their way
into the regard of women ? However it is, that is what
I want. I would like to be the ring that binds people
together. Can't you make room for mo somewhere near

you r

" You don't know" — Rachel began.

" Yes, I do," he answered, interrupting her. " I know
all about it. That is the trouble with me. I know it
isn't I whom you have been considering. I am not
seeking your confidence. I would rather not have it
just now ; it might dispirit me. All I ask of you is to
take some account of my pretensions when you are
making up your plans. I want you to think well of me,

1 ;-) ■

"ill

172

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

and to remember that on all possible occasions I lay
claims to your attention. I want to help you enjoy your
life."

" I can't think of it," said Rachel, with deep excite-
ment. " I can't think of it." She felt, indeed, a certain
sense of self-disparagement in listening to words of such
similar import at such short intervals from both these
strange gentlemen.

" But you will," said Dayton, with persistent hopeful-
ness. " If you were altogether happy you would not be
going away. I don't ask you to begin now. I only
want to impress your opportunities upon you. When
you come back we will begin anew. Wasn't it in
J/ our programme that I should be here when }0U came
back ?"

" No," she answered, with hesitation.

" No matter," he rejoined. " You can put it in now.
Wherever I am I shall turn up here again." He had
taken her hand, she did not know just when, and was
looking fervidly down upon her.

From somewhere in the back of the house Miss
Hannah was heard advancing, putting down windows
and fastening bolts as she came ; and Rachel releasing
Jaerself, shadowed along the piazza,

} '

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

173

]l\

1 !

CHAPTER XV.
HEN Rachel got off the train at the city of H-

an old gentleman with uncertain manner looked
her over in eager inspection, then veiled his inquiring
glance behind the usual guise of strangers, waited till
the passengers had all alighted ; passed and repassed her
with slow steps, leaning on liis cane, till finally, meeting
her face to face, he came forward with outstretched hand.

" Well, well !" he said, " I believe it is," and he laughed
slightly as if it were a joke on somebody. " Your aunt,"
he presently ex})lained, "is waiting ou:side. She sent
me in to find you. She told me — well, no matter what
she told me !" and he lau^died again.

"This, Sabra," he said, stopping before a landau in
which sat a thin oldish lady with very precise manners,
" this is the little villager whom you were expecting.
You will be relieved to see her. And this, my dear,"
turning to Rachel, " is your great-aunt." And depositing
her satchels on the seat, he looked from one to the other
as if he had prepared some witty surprise.

" I don't see, Robert," returned the lady, " what you
find to be amused at. My husband," she added apologeti-
cally, '•* is amused at everything. And he will call me
Sabra. I am glad, my dear, that they gave you a better
name, though Rachel, to be sure, is not quite fashionable

'• t.:

t <i

174

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

now, I am glad to see you, and Mr. Cotter, I know, will
be pleased. He is very fond of young people. I would
be, too, but my health, 3'ou know, is not the best. 1 am
troubled a great deal witli asthma. Ar'n't you going to
ride up, Robert ?"

" No," replied Mr. Cotter. " I will hunt up her — her
bandboxes. I will be there by the time you get the
dust off." And closing the door he went away, smiling
still.

" You haven't been in the city before," began the lady,
as they started up the sti'eet. Drive slowly, Matthew. I
understand you have always lived in the country.
Beaudeck is a very shut-up place. 1 spent my own
girlhood there, strange as it may seem. I hope it will do
you good to get away. You ought to see more. Our
streets are not very lively now. A great many of our
best people are away, though some prefer to go south
winters and stay at home in the hot season. I didn't
suppose you would care, not being used to it. I thought
we might have a quiet time among ourselves. I told
Mr. Cotter you wouldn't care for society, but, come to
see you, you look as if you might. You are one of the
straight-nosed Desboroughs, after all. I didn't know but
you might be something of a Guerrin. You have your
father's expression, though — something about the eyes,
or is it the mouth ? Matthew, more slowly. Mr. Cotter
will be glad to have you with us, I am sure. He is a
very peculiar man. I have no children of my own, you
know. They died when they were very small, and it

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

17.')

can't be helped now. I think Mr. Cotter feels it is my
duty to supply the liouac in some way with youn^^ people.
We have everything else, but he isn't satisH* <i. He
would have the house stretched open from morninj.^ till
night, even on the Sabbath, I am afraid, if he had his
way. I try not to let him have his way in all things.
He has his way a gieat deal. It was he proposed to send
for you. He gave up his practice much too soon, though
he is older than he seems. We both are. When he had
his business he didn't care so much for other things —
Matthew, Matthew ! Are you afraid of horses, my dear :"
1 never like to jolt across these tracks. I wcn^lci' that
the people tolerate street-cars. They are the ruin of the
streets. T heard they took a great deal of pains with
you, sending you away to school and so on, but that
wouldn't have given you your complexion or your nose.
Probably it helped about your dresses. You certainly
look very nice. I have some friends, my dear, that I
would like to introduce you to. I could almost wish
now that it was a gayer season. I would like to have
them see what I was like at your age. After all, there
are a good many left, — some of the best. The Hannas
are still here. But they are always here. They hate
travel. We will have our friends come and see you.
Mr. Cotter, I think, will like it too. It would keep him
at home more. I can't tell you how many times a day
he goes down street ; and he always walks. He won't
even have his newspapers brought to the house. He
goes out and buys them. Every time a paper comes, he

iji

176

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

Ih '

goes out and buys it. If there were many more papers
he would never be at home. It isn't that he reads them
all. Half of them he stuffs in his pockets. It is a great
waijte. I believe he does it on account of the newsboys.
It is the same way with the barbers and shoe-blacks. He
will want you to go out with him a great deal. Do you
walk ? I never walk. Mr. Cotter says I would be
better if I would go out, but I have gone out and was no
better. He has the rheumatism himself, but he won't
admit it. Rheumatismdoesn't show unless it is very bad.
He has it worse than he pretends. Anybody can tell the
asthma. I hope you will like our city. It isn't large,
but some of our stores are very fine. There is a great deal
of wealth here. 7 will take you to the stores myself. We
haven't many young people. I don't think there are as
many young people as there used to be ; but I know a few,
and they know others. I suppose I might take the time
to go out more, but servants are always careless unless
watched."

It was with this familiar sort of allocution that Mrs.
Cotter beguiled the time between the depot and her
house, and to which her neice now and then responded as
opportunity was afforded her. They were admitted by a
sable servant, and Rachel was left for a moment in the
closed and darkened drawing-rooms, in which she felt too
formal even to look about her. They were in wonderful
order, and it would have been a bold person who could
even take a chair without murmuring something to the
effect that necessity knew no law. It seemed as if their

•r

AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

177

occupants were dead, and cverythinfif was lovely. Pres-
ently she was shown iip-stairs to a large front room by
a maid, who hastily explained that as a change had been
made in her apartment, things might not be quite as neat
as they might be ; though Rachel, in looking about her,
could see nothinfj further to be desired. She thouijht it
the finest room she had ever been in. It had a chande-
lier hancjinir over the dn^ssinfr-case, and a lace coverlet on
the bed, with neither of which 'Uxuries she was familiar.

"I forgot to ask," began Mi>, Cotter, later, softly bust-
ling around as they came out of the dining-room, "about
your mother and her sisters, my nieces, or rather my
half-nieces or step-nieces. It is a pity for families to
seimrate so. I wish now that I had known vou all
along. I might have advised them about your education.
I suppose you know Latin ? I learned some Latin myself
at the hill school, but* it hasn't beim of much use to me.
There isn't much Latin floating about in conversation. I
don't see the use of learning: things vou have to cover
up. Sit here, my dear. 1 alvvnys said that accomplish-
ments were as ^'ood as anything lor girls. Robert, will
you open that other window ? "

Mr. Cotter opened the other window and spread apart
the curtains with an expression of humorous obedience.
They were long windows opening, on very small bal-
conies. As he did so, something down the street caught
his eye, and going out he stepped dr-vn to the gate.

"There he goes again," said Mrs. Cotter, " and without
his hat." Something seeuied also to catch ht-r eye, and

178

AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

she bent far forward over her la]^. " I do hope," she
went on, as if conmuining with herself, " that he will
wait and speak to him. It would be as good a time as
any to tell him."

Rachel, sitting in front of one of the windows, also
looked out.

Across the sti'eet was a large, dark house, in an
immense yard, surrounded by a high fence. The gate
was onc-n, and a gentleman was walking; down the road-
way picking his ti*eth. Mr. ('Otter, at his own gate, was
waiting the approach of a breathless boy who had news-
papers und(^r his arm. when the dark gentleman w^ho
had come from tht? opposite house sauntered along and
stopped to exchange sentences with him. He then re-
turned to the drawing-room, carrying a damp evening
sheet.

" Did you ask him in :*"' inquired his wife, when he
reappeared at the door.

"Ask whoni in?"

" Jerome, of course."

" No."

" Nor even tell him to call ?"

" No," again admitted the delinquent.

"Well, that shows!" .said Mrs. Cotter, re[)roa(^ifidly.
" But he saw you, my dear. That is what he stopped
for," and she nodded her head at Rachel.

" He was greatly atfected at seeing the windows open,"
returned her husband, as if poking some one in the ribs.

He looked down his paper; then went out again,

AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

179

shortly retiirninnr as before. " I told Matthew to brincj
back the hor.ses," he announced. " T am going to the
club. They have some pictures to show for the benefit
of — I forget now what. I would like to take the young
lady with me."

'* Robert !" protested Mrs. Cotter. " She's too tired."

" Oh, no, I am not tired," said Rachel.

" It's no place to shoAv her first."

" Put a veil on, then," pursued that gentleman. " You
can Uii^'cil her to-mori'ow at church with all the more
cfi^cct. \V<^'11 have it in the papers."

Rachel had risen with smiling readiness, and Mrs.
Cotter slowlv rose also. " If vou iviU ijo," she said, alter
some hesitation, " I ou<iht to ffo too. It mav not stufi*
me up muc/t, and perhaps the -evening would be a little
long."

"Good!" said Mr. Cotter, a.s f wonders would never
cease.

As they crossed the pavement o the carriage the same
dark gentleman came strolling back, and Mrs. Cotter
stopped to speak to him. As s e left him she nodded
several times. "And bring your mother with you," she
said, nodding again f?om the t irriage. "Why don't
you irKpiire who that is ?" she- as, ed of Rachel as they
drove away.

" I don't know," replied the girl. " Who is it ?"

"You are — let me see, you must l)e over twenty. How
old, Robert, should you think Mr. Janna was V

" I don't see that it makes uiiicl diflference how olu he

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180

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

h;,

is," returned her husband. " He is forty odd. Probably
the young lady is not much interested in the ages of old
men?"

" He is not a favorite of Mr. Cotter's," explained the
lady. " I don't know why. He is an estimable young
man. He is a warden in the church, and he has always
been very good to his mother. We are neighbors. She
and I have always been veiy friendly. She is not a pleas-
ant person, but what she says has great weight. Jerome
looks after h-ir property for her. He is a good son."

"Has he no other business?" asked Rachel, making
conversation.

" He tends some to other people's," said Mr. Cotter
amiably.

No man in the small metropolis where he lived was
better known than Robert Cotter. (He was always
spoken of as Robert Cotter.) He was nothing if not a
citizen ; and though his usefulness lay chiefly in the past,
— consisting now in reputation in his connection with
subscription lists, and the imposing presence which he
frequently lent to public assemblies, he was regarded by
the people with a kindly and reasonable pride. He liked
well-worn flag-stones, whittled pea-nut stands, crowded
passage-ways, green -groceries trespassing on the pave-
ment, and streets blocked with traffic. He liked working-
men's meetings, historit-al societi»-'s, cobblei's' associations,
drum-corps, scientiflc assemblies, polls, station-houses,
lecture-rooms, barber shops, — all sorts of urban and sub-
urban sights and sounds ; and it was only as it fllled the

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

181

stomachs of the town that he took an interest in the
country. It was told of him that sauntering one morning
along the busy main street, he was accosted by a friend,
who inquired after his welfare. " I am perfectly happy,"
returned Mr. Cotter, *' perfectly happy ; I haven't even a
thouirht." His form was erect, his iace smooth-shaven,
his hair white, aud he habitually w^ore a swallow-tailed
coat, and a white tie. A picture of him was frescoed upon
the walls of the court-house, and he frequently paid it his
respects, as if to by-gone talent and virile strength. He
had married early, aud had discovered almost simultane-
ously that he was strangely alien to feminine perfections,
"Perfection cannot change," he said; "I can." He
changed very much, but from some peculiar association
he had not been in Beaudeck for a quarter of a century.
He married in Beaudeck. And in the years since then
the wife of his youthful bosom had cotue to bear alniut
the same relation to that bosom that a damson plum
bears to Covent Garden.

It was said that he had been intem})erate, though no-
body seemed to know exactly when.

The twinkliuir eves that had taken such varied scenes
upon their restless retinas were somewh*t tlim. The
sonorous voice that made the tiesh creep alon^ the backs
of juries was somewhat husky. His step was slow, and
when he spoke he generally stopped as if it were growing
diiBcult to cany on both processes at once. And the
hand w]\icli held his newspaper was unsteady, though the
markets were still quoted as tirm. " Where are ail the

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182

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

young people, the gay people ?" he asked, one clay. And
this was the origin of the letter to Raehel.

Mrs. Cotter liad regular features, a dark complexion,
black eyes, and a nose rather apt to be red from October
till May. She came out of her room every morning in a
pair of soft slippers, with a soft worsted shawl about her
shoulders ; poured the coffee without a droj) upon the
cloth ; told her dreams and her illnesses in a soft flannel
voice in her well moments, — otherwise in rather wheezing
tones ; gave her orders to her servants ; footed up her
accounts (Robert Cotter always laughed at these accounts),
and then occupied herself in bringing some detail of her
house to that point of severe nicety which is only possible
in the absence of children and external interests.

She had looked forward with considerable anxiety to
Rachel's visit, fearing she might be mortified by the
crudities of a young creature from the hills, and shrinking
from the idea of an awkward relative, since kinship with
a common j)erson illustrates unpleasantly the accident of
one's own elegance. She might conscientiously have
faced an ill-dresiied niece, but she would have suffered
much from it at night, and would have explained to
every one how it happened. She was fond of ex])hiining
how things happened, and could always trace misfortune
to j)eisonal im})ru(lence, — everything except asthma,
whieh was sent dii'ect from Heaven. There was very
little in the world which she could not ex[)lain, and in
colds, bankrupteies, misfits, and all sorts of wretchedness
she was very apt. Mr. Cotter, on the other hand, found

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

183

much that was inscrutable here below, and ignorantly
believed that many persons, even poor sick persons, were
quite blameless. Furthermore he never told his wife
when he felt a twinge of rheumatism, or when he met
with any loss.

The experiment, however, with the young creature
from the hills, who proved a charming and beautiful
creature, was eminently satisfactory ; and finding Rachel
a credit to her, — a neat and unexpected compliment to
her family, — Mrs. Cotter sought to do the proper thing
by her in every respect. Not only were the piano and
shutters left open, the furniture covers permanently
removed, and an injurious draft allowed in the halls, but
she soon introduced her to her finest and most terrible
friends, without reluctance or reservation, and was sur-
prised to find how many young persons, particularly
young gentlemen, there were connected with the families
of her acquaintance. Liveried footmen brought cards to
the door, and elaborate toilets trip})ed up the s.teps ; while
short, broad backs, and tall, straight backs ci'ooked at
evening over the low iron gate hunting the unfamiliar
latch. This pleased the greatest of aunts, who laid aside
some of her soft woolens, tri^w better in health, and
quietly puiNued a proji'ct nc \ unconneet«'d with a nei^dl-
boring estate incnml)en'(l with a bachelor. It was very
exciting. It seemed many years to Mis. Cotter since
virgins married bachelors.

To Rachel Guerrin herself the first day or two of her
visit seemefl as flavorless as real life when oi»e lays down

, r*

184

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

a vivid romance. She had come. She would stay. She
wished to plunge with all her heart into her new diver-
sions, but she did not find herself as interested as she had
expected to be in a discursive view over this larger and
more poi)ul()us field. The city was full of strangers, the
extent of whose strangeness she had not yet measured,
but which she believed to be very deep ; yet the process
of lesseninii that strangeness was not absorbing?, and when
alone her thcjughts centred upon what was already
familiar to her.

When she had been there some days she stepped out
the front door on<3 afternoon upon the flight of stone
steps which was savagely guarde*! by lions ; satisfied
herself that the third button of her glove was securely
fastened ; looked down at the fine horses and the glitter-
ing spokes of the equipage in waiting ; also at the smiling
party there assembled for an excursion, and realizetl that
she was part of the gay, philandering world of w^hich
Nathan Halstead had always belonged, and of which
she too had wished to l)e a member. She knew that
wherever she went friends waited to attend her, and
when she stopped a small court gathered round her.
She knew, too, that when she went down a room full
of people, heads fell off, — heads cropped close like gladi-
ators. And she took no notice. It was owing to her
Greek nose.

" Rachel," said Mrs. Cotter one day, ** you should Vjegin
to think of being married. There are gentlemen here —
not too young, who ought to satisfy a girl much more

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

185

ambitious than you, and if you arc wise you will look
about you."

" But I am not wise," answered Rachel.

" I will be wise for you," offered her aunt.

" Oh, please don't," said the girl in alarm.
I It was that very evening that young Oarrotson, wliose
locks were cropped very close indeed, paused at the door
as he was about to take his leave, and putting his hands
to his head (perhaps to sustain an emptiness there), said
to her, " I am infatuated. I love you." He had hereto-
fore had an extremely dull summer.

" I am very sorry," saifl Rachel, sincerely, but a trifle
disdainfully, as she raised her protile against the curtains.
She wondered if this were illustrative of Mrs. Cotter's
wisdom.

When the door closed behind liiin she fell into a rev-
erie. After a time the disdain disappeared. Even her
brightness was obscured. Her face grew softer, and
she sat witli her han«ls in her lap in a dreaming attitu<le.
She sat a long time, and it is not impossible that her
desire for the varied social life had changed to a dn^am of
the fuller and intenser heart-bfe to which the young and
the rustic look vaguely forward.

It was in a letter to MaiL;aret Duncan that Rachel set
down some of her impressions of this time. ]\rargaret
had in fact taken that soit of fancy to her whicli very
plain and practical women will sometimes take to those
who are beautiful and whom they suspect of being unset-
tled at heart. She wished in some way to help her shift
13

1 1

186

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

I i

through with her beauty and sensibility into the superior
condition of homeliness and matter-of-factness, and mean-
while wove about her that romance which nature forbade
her to weave round herself.

In answer to a letter, Rachel told her she was glad to
hear from her ; was glad to be missed ; and was sorry to
have dropped so suddenly out of theii* summer. " What
am I doing, do you ask ?" she went on. " Realizing my
dreams, thank you. It is a severe ordeal. I have met
more people than I can name or recall at sight, and I
shift from one engagement to another as fast as I can get
ready. At first I thought the visiting, of which we do a
great deal, quite tame, but now I think it the reverse of
tame. By we, I mean my aunt and me. She always
goes with me, and likes, I think, to revive her social
accomplishments. Formalities please hor greatly, and
when I want to be altogether agreeable I call her madam .
Perhaps most women beam upon those who call them
madam, — do they ? She regrets the fallow years I spent
among the hills, my walks, my rides, my everything else
that I mistook for enjoyment ; and commiserates me that
I never had any engraved cards — n<jthing witli Tuesdays
or any other day of the week on it. But this, and some
of my other glaring deficiencies, have long since been
made up, and she is so kind as to want to dispose of the
brief remainder of my wasted days in her own way. She
is even more kind to me than I would be to myself, and
takes care of me as if I were something very fragile.

" We keep quite an open house, and a good many visi-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

187

»
, 1

tors invited and uninvited come every day. Some of
them are Mrs. Cotter's friends ; some of them their de-
lightful daughters, and some a club of young men, call-
ing themselves by a big name, and doing everything in
the most uniform and tire-department manner. There is
a gentleman here, not oi' the club, who s;>.ys he has met
"Mrs. Sterling ; a Mr. Hanna, Jerome Hanna, I believe, is
his name. He lives near, and seems long to have been
in Mrs. Cotter's favor. He does a great deal to please
her, including taking me to ride on a tine horse that he
calls a genuine Hambletonian, whatever that is. Not to
know the merits of a genuine Hambletonian implies
great ignorance, 1 infer. He was here to dinner again
yesterday, and. afterward in th(3 library he asked me if 1
knew the origin of the term Welsh-rabbit. 1 hurried
and said No, what was it ? but just then some others
came in, and I did not get to hear. We are invited to-
morrow to his mother's, — perhaps he may tell me there.

" All this, of course, is an old story to you, but to me,
please remember, it is (piite, (piite new. It reminds me
of former occasions when, alone years ago in the garden
at home, I played the great lady with aunt Hannahs
])arasol above me and trumpet Howers drawn on my
lingers for gloves. I was Anna C^orr Mowatt then, and 1
visited Joan of Arc, who lived on a tiower-pot under the
asparagus bushes. 1 don't know who 1 am now, and 1
meet no one who resembles Joan. I like it, yet every
once in a while I find myself wanting to recreate in the
extensive silence about my home. Here one has no

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188

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

time to think, and I am not acclimated to so much
gaiety.

" Among other things my aunt is soon to give me a
party, which will fill both the house and the yard, — I
must tell you about the yard. There is very little of it
in front, and that little is filled with balconies and rail-
ings and vases ; but back of the house there is a large
court, full of fragrance and shade, and the whole is sur-
rounded by a brick wall ten feet high, like a convent of
old. Whenever I have any leisure I retire to my con-
vent with my uncle, who is a fine, genial gentleman. He
has been a fine, genial gentleman for seventy-five years.

" Soon after the party we are going to the Isles of
Shoals, where Mr. and Mrs. Cotter go every year, and
after that I am going home. Sometimes I think I must
go before. I heard a priest say once that women always
want to be whei o they are not."

It happened that Halstead heard this letter discussed
at Mrs. Anderson's, where he sat one eveninor meditatin.""
upon his past record and the summer scene before him.
In the course of it he remembered that he, too, had once
known a young fellow residing in that city, and pausing
a moment in intent retrospection he recalled his name.
It was M. D. Short, according to his signature, and Miss
Demeanor Short, according to the vernacular of his club,
in which a certain rattling adventure on the part of that
gentleman had once made some noise.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

189

CHAPTER XVI.

THE neighbor mentioned in the foregoing came to din-
ner frequently, and indeed his relations with Mrs.
Cotter's family seemed to be such as would admit his
presence there at almost any hour of the day or evening.
He seemed to Rachel a sort of social cactus, and she won-
dered that her aunt should take pleasure in cultivating
in a friendly way such a brown-stone-hot-house product.
He lived alone with his mother, who cherished him as
the cactus of her bosom, and they occupied a gloomy
penitentiary across the way, which was surrounded by a
tall iron fence and an osage-orange hedge to keep out the
gaze of the impudent populace.

The estate as yet was the mother's, and she regarded
her son as she did her lands, as property not to be dissi-
pated, or to pass out of the family without her consent,
but as he was forty and still uninvested, she once con-
ferred with Mrs. Cotter about it.

From time to time during the past twenty years Jer-
ome had emerged from his greatness and gloom to pursue
for a season the acquaintance of some young woman who
caught his fancy, but even that as a rule did not last
long. " No woman," he once declared, " can really enter-
tain a man for an hour, — by her conversation," and men
he sometimes spoke of as conceited beggars. Upon tha

. I

ITT^

190

AN EARNEST TRIELER.

whole he went through life lonely a^nd suspicious, like a
man with a lantern, — a lantern that illumined a small
circle about him, but left the outer darkness peopled with
shapes all more or less dubious^ He did not approve
mankind. He had never had any business beyond the
care of the family property, but, though content with
mediocrity from day to day, he was, and always had
been, a great man in the future. Among other things,
he meditated a voyage of discovery up the Nile, an
article on Catholicism in the " North American Review,"
and a lecture on finance at Cooper Institute, and he was
about to begin, when one day he saw Rachel pass the
lions opposite, and go into the house. He waited, but
she did not reappear, and he shortly made an excuse to
cross the street. After that he fell into a habit of going
over there. He rode horseback with her, sent her mag-
nificent flowci's from the greenhouse and baskets of fruit
from his orchards, in. all of which she saw a high and
mighty form of neighborliness from the chief friend of
the family. It had much to do with her popularity,
since the young lady whom Jerome Hanna distinguished
became at once an object of interest and solicitation, —
and had not Mrs. Hanna, who so rarely gave dinners,
given a dinner for her ?

But it was toward the night of Mrs. Cotter's party
that his gifted mind came to a focus on one of the minor
points bearing upon a great career, and he determined to
distinguish that evening from the mass of evenings, as
he distinguished the fair Miss Guerrin from the mass of

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

191

mag-

■women. The old house was completely rejuvenated on
that occasion, and all its dark solemnity hustled out-of-
doors, even beyond the high wall encircling the bril-
liantly lighted court. Rachel, radiant with an irrepres-
sible bloom, stood near her aunt, talking to some of the
last arrived, while Jerome watched her from a position
near the piano, waiting for the moment to come when,
her duties over, he could take her among the dancers, or
better yet, among the Chinese lanterns in the garden,
under whose exotic auspices he would bring to light the
burden of his soul. It seemed to him that the guests
would never assemble, and that they were greatly in ex-
cess of the number necessary to celebrate his intentions.
To pass the tedious time he addressed an acquaintance
here and there, or, relapsing within himself, strolled
through the thronged and decorated rooms as if they
were an unbroken solitude ; always returning beneath
Mrs. Cotter's smiles to his position near the piano, on the
top of which instrument he beat a light tattoo. As he
stood there looking at Rachel he was more certain than
ever that she suited him ; slender, yet not too slender ;
easy, yet not too easy ; vivacious, yet not too vivacious ;
with something in her sentences like intelligence, — a
woman's intelligence, of course, not cold, not bold, — at
that very moment there was a flush spreading over her
face. And then a alight confusion occurred among
Hanna's ideas.

A stranger entering late in the company of young
Short extended to her an immaculate white glove, and

192

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

If i]

a voice, to which her color had never been wholly insen-
sible, said, "Good evening, Miss Guerrin," Her eyes
scarcely rose above the white cravat, certainly not above
the light moustache, and then she introduced him to Mr.
and Mrs. Cotter, and that lady frowned. Halstead was his
name, and she said he was from Beaudeck, — all of which
seemed to make upon young Short a profound impression.

Nathan took in at a glance the costume of the fair mrl
before him, her bare, white arms, lier ardent face, and the
pale roses that lolled upon her bosom. She was a country
girl no longer, and confronting her at his full height, way
up among the lights of the chandelier he seemed to be,
he felt his eye, his clear mind's eye, losing sight of every-
thing within the rotundity of heaven except the woman
with whom he was in love. He was slightly pale, and
there was a new mobility about his mouth, but excite-
ment of that sort was to him only an in tenser self-posses-
sion, and the critical observation bent upon him from the
piano could see only a trim, well-dressed man, wonder-
fully at home in such a situation for an inhabitant of
Beaudeck.

" We have heard of you often, Mr. Halstead," said
Mrs. Cotter, with a thin and too intentional smile.

" Have you ? That is always pleasant," answered
Nathan.

" Not always," she responded.

" The young man means," said Mr. Cotter, " that it is
always pleasant to hear of him, in whicsh I think he can-
not be mistaken."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

193

" It is always a favor at any rate to discover a meaning
in a young man's weak remarks," said Halstead, turning
his indescribably genial face toward his host.

Then other guests arriving they stepped aside till Mrs.
Cotter, touching Halstead on the arm with her fan, asked
him if he would not be introduced to some of her friends.

" I would be most happy," said that diplomatic fellow,
and Rachel being left thus free, Mr. Hanna immediately
came forward.

" You have a friend here," he said, as he offered his
arm to lead her throuorh the loner drawinu^-vooms.

•' I have several," replied Rachel briefly.

" But one from Beaudeck," said Jerome.

•' He is from Boston, — from everywhere," said Rachel.

" He does not live in Beaudeck then ? "

" He has been for a short time in our family."

" Is the aiTanorement — ah — permanent ? "

" On the contrary, transient. None of his arrangements
are permanent. There are a great many people here,"
she went on, looking around her, " and my aunt told me
I was to be agreeable to everybody. You must tell me
where to begin."

" You are to begin with me," he assured her ; " didn't
she tell you that ? There is my mother," he added, " you
might begin with her and finish with me. It is a
triumph to please my mother. She is the most pene-
trating of women. She finds you out like an east wind."
He laughed a little. Rachel did not think he had a plea-
sant laugh.

194

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

They paused before a mass of red and white carnations
which some florist had thought proper to arrange in the
form of a huge spheroid, and Hanna made a pretence of
smelling it. " The flowers," he said, " are very fine."

As they turned, a tall and imposing woman, with a
round, white and deeply lined face, rose from a sofa near
by and made a slight beckoning motion, inviting their
approach.

" I have been waiting to see you, my dear," she said,
as Rachel came up. " You will excuse an old woman's
scrutiny with her flattery. You are looking well.
Jerome should be delighted."

" I am, mother," he replied impressively.

Rachel speculated upon the slim connection that could
exist between her appearance and any additional delight
which might locate itself in the mind of Jerome Hanna,
but before she shaped her idea Mrs. Hanna went on,
fumbling meanwhile with a cascade of ancient lace that
descended from her throat. " Mrs. Cotter," she said
" tells me that this is your first party."

" I have been to one or two at the Falls," said the
young debutante.

" The Falls ? " repeated Mrs. Hanna.

" Baker's Falls," Rachel explained.

For a moment there was a cessation of the lady's fum-
bling; then it began again. "I don't think," she said,
" that I ever heard of Baker's Falls."

" It isn't a very large place," said Rachel, smiling at
the crudity of her former social ventures.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

195

" Probably the parties were not very large."

" Not very," assented the girl.

" I was quite sure Mrs. Cotter told me this was your
first," Mrs. Hanna affirmed. " I am sure because I was
glad to hear it. It seems to me, now," she went on,
" that an entii-e absence of experience is better than any
for a young lady to begin with, — at least, better than
any she would be apt to get in tliis country. I used to
think that there was nothing like a few years in France,
but the last young lady we knew — one who was educated
a short distance out of Paris — committed an enormous
breach when she came back here. All rules fail. I have
had a good many rules but they have all failed. It is
very difficult. I am sure you must " —

"You forget, mother," said Jerome, looking at his
gloves, " the lack of experience on which you are con-
gratulating Miss Guerrin."

" Her appearance makes me forget it," said Mrs. Hanna
blandly, still fumbling at her lace. " Might we not sit
down a moment ? " and she looked behind her at the sofa
she had vacated. The extreme edge of it was occupied
by a stout young woman in a very tight dress who
immediately rose and slipped away.

But very shortly Rachel, making some excuse, left
them, crossed a portion of the room, and went up to her
uncle who was standing by the mantel-piece.

" I have come over here to get warm," she said, with
an open smile.

I:.

t !

196

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" To get warm ? " he repeated, looking instinctively at,
the closed grate

"I have been with Mr. Hanna and his mother," she
added. " Everybody leaves me alone when I am with
them. I wish they wouldn't."

"Oh, that is it, is it?" he said with a laugh. "Well,
come, we will go. We will go and look for Mrs. Cotter
and your friend. "

" I don't want to go there, either, " she replied.

"Not there? where then?" he asked; but by that time
several younger men had collected round her barring her
progress, and Halstead again went by, still on the profit-
able tour which was to acquaint him with the acquaint-
ances of the Cotter family.

Halstead, who had suffered all manner of restlessness
after Rachel's departure, contended severely with himself
before following her, making up his mind finally that
such a course was wholly inadmissible and out of the path
of reason ; but, fifteen minutes before the train left, looked
at his watch, and finding to his great alarm that it was
so late, hastily packed his valise, and with a nervous chill
lest tardiness should defeat him, started hurriedly to seek
a further respite from the torment of absence whirjh had
so racked him. There is no other way," he said, which
was the formula he always used when temptation was too
strong for him.

The first thing he did, after his arrival, was to look up
young Short, an object most readily accomplished by lin-
gering upon the steps of the principal hotel of that not
over-grown city; and among the first things that young

with

AN EAUNEST TRIFLER.

107

Short said to him, after mentally reviewing his distin-
guished history, and casting a critical eye over his trim,
alert, and well-dressed figure, was that there was to be a
grand fandango there that evening, and if he would go he
would rejoice to introduce him. " I will make a lion of
you I" he cried, "a lion fresh from the jungles!" And
after consulting the time-tables Halstead had kindly con-
sented.

And now he was there, what? The outer angle of the
stair-case was piled high with exotics, and from some-
wdiere in that region came a flood of waltzes ; long trains
and pretty feet delicately shod swept over the floor, and
handsome men were in full pursuit of beautiful women
in eveninjT dress. All that was familiar enouofh to his
experience. He waltzed occasionally with pretty damsels
he had never seen before, — it Avas generally a bore to
waltz with strange damsels, however pretty, — and his
bland partners smiled upon him. He had always been
smiled upon. Yet it is safe to say that no one there
laboured more deeply under the inexplicable but fervent
intoxication of the scene than he. He w^ore the manners
of composure over the pulse of a young roisterer, and car-
ried a twofold consciousness, one fold of which attended
to the minutia of ball-room etiquette and the other to the
<letails of Rachel Guerrin's movements. While he moved
>slowly and talked candy, great currents of thought and
feeling surged within, and he vaguely wondered at the
mystic serenity that sorrounded his intensely palpitating
life. He seemed to be in a strange atmosphere, laden with

I ^ -I

If"

198

AN EARNEST TRirLER.

imponderable things that quieted his body and excited
his brain, — music, fragrance, passion ; and he felt himself
all afloat save for one remaining cable, — his sense of what
was due from man to woman in the way of social ball-
room conventions, — a cable that would hold until such
time as Rachel might be disengaged and he saw a chance
to join her. And after that, what? After that might
come what would. He was a trifle reckless. He was to
conduct himself with care to her side ; she was to take
his arm ; and his responsibility in this cold and circum-
spect life was to end when the weak vessel that contained
him drew so near that she might lay her hand upon him.
Meanwhile he drifted about with a young lady in a
glory of orange faille and point applique, wiio was strongly
commended to him by his friend Short. Short called her
Isabel, and introduced her as Miss Flood, a detail to which
Halstead felt strangely indifierent. It seemed to him
almost superfluous to name her, since she would serve his
turn as well without a name. Beside, he knew her; he
had always known her, or some one so like her that dis-
crimination was unnecessary. She was bright ; she was
incisive ; she had had years of balls, ohe was so gayly
self-assured that she could spare her wits from home to
play among her neighbors, and she treated him with im-
measurable frankness to anecdotes illustrative of human
maladroitness. She picked up her train without the least
fussiness with reference to her petticoats, and recovered
the ends of her yellow braids with equal unreserve; while
at supper, where she ate a great deal, she treated her appe-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

199

tite with the same freedom she bestowed upon the amiable
foibles of her friends. It was during supper that she first
distinctly attracted Nathan's notice as a clear and definite
individual. They were sitting at one of many little tables
upon a wide porch extending across the rear of the house.
At one end of the porch was a conservatory where a foun-
tain played, some palm-trees grieved, and some poor rela-
tions of the banana family found refuge, and at the other
end steps descended to the lighted court ; while within the
long windows of the parlor there was the continuous whirl
of the dancers. They were near one of ti' windows, and,
as the oriole-colored Isabel devoured h3i peaches, Hal-
stead permitted his glance to wand . over the floating
pupulall ■ in the rooms.

" Who is the gentleman," he said, " with the portentous
eyebrows ? "

"Talking to Miss Guerrin?"

"Yes."

" He I why that is Mr. Hanna. You have surrly heard of
the great Hannas I here two hours and asking who Jerome
Hanna is ! He is devoted to the young lady with Mrs.
Cotter's approval."

" Who, and what, is he ? What must a man be to be so
approved?"

" He belongs to an old family, a family of mummies,
embalmed. They were sitting in their niches here when
the town was discovered, and by some pre-historic right
owned all the land. He is ric^, cultivated — it would be
a pity to think that one so rich wasn't cultivated, — and

200

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

can do what he pleavses ; which is nothing as yet. "We are
holding our breaths and waiting for him to begin."

"Aurora!" exclaimed Halstead.

"You may well say Aurora!" assented Miss Flood.

"What is left to desire?"

" A wife, I believe. It is thought fit that he should
have a wife, and they have been selecting her this many
a day. Mrs. Cotter, you see, has it in her power to make
her niece very desirable over and above her personal
attractions. It may make a match ; he proposes to some
one every other summer, and this is the propitious
season."

" What becomes of his propositions then ? "

" They fall with the leaf. He reconsiders them, or his
mother objects. He has a perpetually objecting mother.
This time, however, it stands a chance of being tinal.
Mrs. Cotter and Mrs. Hanna conspire ; you and I conspire ;
all who are here conspire ; that is what this party is for.
The gentlemen are here to show him off to advantage,
and tlie ladies that she may shine by comparison. It
will all be settled between them before the evening is
over, with our assistance. Will you call a waiter, please ? "
I will have some grapes, — Delawares, — I always prefer
the Delawares."

" This little dialogue struck Halstead somewhat hea-
vily, so that once or twice within the ten minutes follow-
ing he lost himself in vagueness and rallied only with an
effort. And later, when a large gentleman, perceptibly
over-heated, claimed the hand of Miss Flood, lie strolled

* fi

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

201

mg IS

down into the court to collect himself under the
influence of the cooler air. He went on throuiifh a loner
arbor covered with grape-vines, and past rows of neatly
trimmed raspberries that grew along the wall, till ho
came to the lower end of the enclosure. Here, a little
aside from the path and under a low-drooping tree, was a
seat toward which he directed his steps ; but with the
fatality attending those of whom stories are told, found
some one there before him.

" I thought this bench was unoccupied," he explained.

It was Jerome Hanna who rose, and each saw with
chagrin his own image in the face of the other. " Be
seated," said the darker image politely. " It is cooler out
here." »

" Your cigar is out," said the other, as if he had been
seeking a place to smoke. "Allow me to offer another."

" Thanks, I don't smoke. I came here for comfort. It
is what one doesn't often find at parties or they would be
more endurable. No man should countenance them after
he is twenty."

" I take it we came with full knowledge of what
awaited us, bringing our years with us," Halstead ob-
served.

" It is" a concession that we make to women," said
Hanna. " It isn't till the woman question is settled with
him that a man can show what stuff he is made of."

" The sooner he settles it then the better," carelessly
asserted image number two.

Number oftc agreed with him. "You are a stranger

r.Ti

202

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

'II

here," he added abruptly. " A friend of the young lady
who visits the house. So she told me."

" In whese honor we recreate at midnight under Mr.
Cotter's fig-tree. I don't know but, all things considered,
we might honor her -n a more appropriate fashion."

" There are half a dozen round her now, never fear."

" The best man," declared Nathan, " will be a favorite
of fortune."

Jerome rose with a short laugh. " Are you going in ?"
he inquired.

" Presently," Halstead replied, seating himself for the
first time ; but when Hanna had disappeared he too went
in. He felt himself a strong man, who could smile, if he
chose, at the pretensions of an arrogant rival, but who, if
he would smile must first show his strength.

When, after a circuit of the rooms, — a circuit which
always remained in his mind a blank, — he discovered
Rachel, she had gone into the supper-room with Hanna,
and he was obliged to wait again. He next saw them
near the entrance of the conservatory, where a couple in
passing had stopped to speak to them, and advancing he
joined the group. Jerome turned with the unreadiness
of manner whith results when one is recalled from
personal affairs to social blandishments, and in the first
pause Halstead ofiered Rachel his arm, nmrmuring some-
thing about a waltz then in progress.

" It has been intolerable in the village since you left,"
he said, leading her away. " I had to follow you to find
a place that was not intolerable,"

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

203

" You are very kind," she answered, fanning herself.
" Are you glad to see me ? — that is the question. You
have not said so."

" I am too astonished even to be polite yet."
" I don't know why you should be."
Rachel did not answer, and coming to the end of the
porch Halstead desired her to go down.

" Surely we have had enough of gardens," she said.
" We did not come from Beaudeck to stroll in a garden.
There is another sort of garden on the carpets inside.
We might go in and walk on the Axminster nosegays."
She seemed to wish to treat him lightly and simply as
at first, but he knew and she knew that when the
simplicity was real they strolled in the garden as a
matter of course.

Halstead did not smile, and made no motion to turn
back. " You are not sincere," he said. " That sounds as
if you had made great progress. No woman of the
world could turn a refusal more neatly than that." And
any one to look at him might have thought he was
talking about the Chinese lanterns. He gave no cause
for gossip among the passers.

" I have made bold to come and see you," he said.
" Perhaps I have made too bold ?"

" I was not expecting you," she declared.

" Will you be at home soon ?"

" In a few weeks."

" So long as that!"

He was much in earnest. She was beginning to doubt ;

m. n.

tk i

204

AN EARNEST TRIFLEK.

to doubt his lightness this time, and it filled her with
vague alarm.

He descended a step or two " Did you mean," he
began, " to break off our acquaintance when you came
away, or what did you mean ? Do you think a day's
journey would put an impassable distance between us, or
what did you think ? I have not seen you since I lost you
on the mountain. It seems to me that in sincerity, and
in the respect we accord our friends, you owe me a lit-
tle less abruptness. Is it not possible that you have done
me some injustice V

He held out one honest hand to lead Ikt down, point-
ins: with the other to the court below. What had he to
say to her, so late ? Gay groups of gaily dressed people
fluttered about through the inclosure ; the music
careered through the shrubbery, and he stood waiting,
pointing wdth eloquent gesture.

" Come," he said, as one whose urgency precluded pal-
try excuse ; and Rachel descended among the throng.

" You ought to show me over your convent," he said.
And then, to Rachel's relief, they began talking of it
lightly as if it were a convent.

"And you are to stay here yet for wrecks?" he pres-
ently asked. "When you return the summer will be gone.
I will be gone. Everything will be changed."

" That sounds like my reason for coming," she replied.

" Did you mean it ? Did you wish it to be so ? " he
cried. " Do you think it ever really fair to abandon in a
twinkling those who are attached to us ? You should

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

205

pal-

pres-
gone.

have told me you were going. You should have left
some message. Did you suppose I would consent to an
end like that ? I have come. I love you. What do
you do with those who love you ? "

" Is it for to-night ?" said Rachel, " or, for to-night and
to-morrow too ?" And again, although apprehension seized
her, she seemed to wish to defeat his earnestness by her
smile.

If she did she was wholly unsuccessful. They had
reached the end of the walk. Halstoad stopped, releas-
ing and facing her, and the wary sentiments which for
years had held him, let go their grip. "I love you," he
said. " I cannot do without you. Marry me, Rachel."

Her gathering apprehensions pressed closely upon her,
and she covered her face with her hands. She, then, was
the one at fault. Hers the unready, recalcitrant heart !
Hers the inactive conscience ! Hers the obliquity. She had
herself done that of which she had been accusing him.

" I love you," he went on fervently. " I have come.
I am here knocking at the sacred common door and
eager to get in. It is the prison of prisons. Marry me,
Rachel."

The girl let fall her hands and looked at him breath-
lessly. " Did you come to tell me this ?" she asked.

" Yes," he answered, lying, without a qualm and with-
out a sign. "I came to tell you." He smiled faintly
down upon her flushed and ardent face. "I tell you,"
he said, " because you are dear to me, and my days and
nights are full of you, — because there is a fatality among

206

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

men to love women, — it came to us long ago and will
pursue us forever. There is no escaping it. It is strong-
est of all, and our plans, our ideas, and all that puny
category bum up in it like wisps in a bonfire. Tell me
that you love me ; tell me that you will marry me, and
then "—

He moved nearer her and his eyes shone down upon
her like stars in hot weather.

Her look was still searching him. Somehow it seemed
to her that he had talked a great deal. Then, " I had quit
thinking of you," she said.

" Your opportunity is over," he cried. " You must
begin and think of me again."

" I don't know what to think," she replied. Indeed^
there seemed to be inextricable confusion within.

Halstead narrowed his eyelids, wondering at the cold-
ness he did not expect, but looking at the lolling, throb-
bing roses on her bosom. " There is no longer occasion
for you to analyze me," he said. " You know me well.
Think of me warmly. Let me kiss you and think of
that, — or better still, cease to think, and love me."

Other voices were coming near, and she seemed to be
listening to them rather than to him.

" To-morrow all may be different again," she finally
said.

" You are afraid," returned Halstead, stiil confidently,
though feeling a creeping, physical disappointment, as
she drew away from him. " This is only the beginning.
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow you will see

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

207

the reality of it. They have not involved you in any
other scheme down here, have they ?"

" I don't know that they have tried."

" Don't you ? Well they have. What is it you doubt.
Which of us, — you or me, Rachel ?" He would have
taken her hands, but she put them again to her face for
a moment ; then waived them in adieu, and ran into the
house by a back entrance.

The young man did not smile. " She is afraid," he
assured himself.

For the next hour, Halstead lingered in Rachel's near
vicinity, and though he neither addressed or apparently
observed her, he made her keenly, vividly conscious of
those currents of strife and passion which flow through
such seemingly complacent assemblies. She seemed to
have put her thoughts aside for future consideration.
But of Hanna she would have none.

The last carriage drove away with its limp load and
its sleepy coachman. The bass viols were wrapped in
their green baize cerements ; the violins laid in their cas-
kets ; and the fat, red-faced musicians, disorganized and
dispirited, shuffled mournfully away as if the last sad
rites had been performed, and they could turn once more
to cheerfulness and peace.

" It has been a great success/* said Mrs. Cotter, " a
great success !"

And Rachel, going to her room, mechanically repeated,
" a great success."

She went to her window and leaned oat to get the

'' i it

208

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

:■•

'■1<

night air. Slie wasn't very familiar with the air of three
o'clock in the morning. It was deadly quie •.. The very-
breezes seemed jisleep. Presently the watchman passed,
striking the kerbing stone here and there with his mace ;
and close upon his heels followed a second and a much
more vigilant walker, who stopped in the shadow and
looked up at the window where Rachel leaned, still in her
silken party attire. She rose, took oft' her gloves, catch-
ing sight of herself in the glass under the soft chandeliers ;
then put out the lights and threw herself in a deep easy
chair ; her face in her hands, her dress trailing over the
rugs.

Everything in that gray dawn seemed strange and
doubtful and complicated.

Presently a little twittering began to stir in the throats
of many birds. The light began to tinge the clouds.
The yellow tuneful flood spread over the sky and fell into
the street. And in the new day all the incidents of the
evening seemed made of the warp and woof of a fete
rather than the warp and woof of serious life.

The sun grew warm, the singing wild ; and Rachel, still
at the window, forgot the unreal entanglements which
had made the night both terrible and festal, and fell peace-
fully asleep, the sunshine floating over her bright-hued
dress, — over the roses in her hair and on her bosom.

Halstead had fully intended to return the next morning,
but the time for the train came and went, leaving him
still in his room. The streaks of morning sunlight that
lay across the floor when he first awoke slowly receded

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

200

t ^

under his distrait gaze, and it was high noon before he
roused himself sufficiently to recall the hour, to rise, dress,
and saunter down to breakfast.

In the hall he met young Short, who accosted him in
lively, jovial tones. But Halstead put his hands to his
ears in mock protest, and motioned him away. " Softly !"
he said. " Let me down easy. I am just up and the
daylight tastes like warm water. Where was it you took
me last nifjht ?"

" The very waiters shall talk poetry to 3'ou," said
Short, " if you will come in and dine with me."

But Nathan declined, and had recourse again to the time-
tables ; after which he sought his solitary cup of coffee.

In the afternoon, however, he saw Rachel drive past
the hotel in a landau, and immediately the necessity of
seeing her again was forced upon him. He idled about
waiting for the carriage to reappear, but, disappointed in
that, waited till the fine line of a new moon floated in
the west, and then betook him in her direction. A sable
servant admitted him, and he was at once struck by the
different aspect everywhere presented.

Every vestige of the festive decorations had disaj^peared,
and it was difficult to believe that they had ever been.
Mrs. Cotter was there conferring with a plaintive widow
in black, and bowled to him, as he afterwards expressed it
from the top of the Himalayas. Rachel was shaking hands
with a gentleman and lady whom he did not remember to
have seen before, but with whom he had recently talked
during an entire quadrille ; and a youth was talking with

;

210

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

Miss Floor! at the window. The latter rose at his approach
with such cordiality as miirht have led a conceited man to
suppose she wasthere in the hope of seeing him, and he at
once joined them, taking a share in the conversation but
keeping himself informed by some secret process of
Rachel's every attitude. "And to think," he reflected,
" that until recently she was watching the cattle on the
hills grow into money." He meditated upon her success-
ful transfer to the social medium, and thought he would
like to have her always adorning just such fine and truly
stately parlors, full of company and light. Where the
fine and truly stately parlors were to come from no longer
troubled him. He had the sublime and lover-like faith,
that where his sweetheart was there the parlors would be.

It soon became plain that he would not be able to see
her alone, so, even before the necessity of the time-tables
demanded, he rose to take his leave. He was much more
tranquil than he had btcn the evening before. The edge
was taken off" his eagerness. Indeed, he preferred to look
upon his success as ultimate rather than imminent, and
for some fastidious reasons relished the idea that she did
not drop into his hands with too willing precipitation.

" I must go," he managed to say to her. " I am about
to leave Beaudeck, but will go there to see you as soon as
I may when I learn that you are there. I hope you will
believe me in earnest. I shall continue to hope for you."

It afterwards struck her as strange that a man should
assure the woman he asked to marry him that he was
in earnest. In earnest ! What else could he be ?

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

211

•oach
an to
heat
1 but
3S of
jcted,
1 the
3cess-
v^ould
truly
e the
onger
faith,
lid be.
■jO see
tables
imore
J edge
olook
t, and
he did
on.

about
oon as
►u will
: you."
should
le was

CHAPTER XVII.

ONE evening, a few days later, when the callers had
gone, Mrs. Cotter came softly back into the parlor.
She dressed with great care at this time, and had a softly-
bustling, interested manner, as if something were going on.

" Rachel," she began, not, however, as if the matter
were of much importance, " I have ask(;d Mr. Hanna to
go with us."

" To go with us where ? " inquired her niece.

" To the Shoals," replied Mrs. Cotter, straightening the
furniture for the night. " He said he would, with thanks.
He seemed quite willing. I think he expected it."

" My dear aunt," said Rachel, presently, with some con-
fusion, " I do not think that I can go."

" Not go !"

" I think I must go home."

The lady hesitated a moment. Then, " My child, you
are crazy," she said, with benevolent toleration. " Or
perhaps you are only tired. Go to bed. We will think
of it to-morrow." There was something in Rachel's voice
she did not like.

The next morning, however, she returned promptly to
the subject.

" I don't understand," she said, more confidently than
she felt, " what the trouble is. It isn't that you do not
want the gentleman to go, is it?"

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212

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" He can go or not," rejoined Rachel, in the same tone
slie had used the night before. " You are very kind, but
I think I must go back."

" Of course lie wouldn't go if you didn't ; but you must
see yourself that you miglit carry matters a little too far.
You can't rely too much on him. He has to be treated
well. With him one girl is about as good as anoc'ner, he
has seen so many ; and if you are rather prettier than com-
mon you musn't put him too much out of the way. He
might not go to Beaudeck."

" I hope he never will," said Rachel.

Mrs. Cotter, who was repairing a minute defect in a
napkin, paused a moment at this inscrutable assertion, and
then went on again, softly and quickly, as if she would
forestall in her niece any precipitancy of resolve. " My
dear child," she began, " what is the matter ? You should
be a little moderate, a little cautious. I don't want to
pry into your affairs before you came here, but I was in
hopes you had never had any that would interfere with
your prospects. I have inquired about Mr. Halstead, too.
It seems that he saw a great deal of a Madam Somebody
in Paris. He spent a great deal of money there, they say,
— more than he could well afford. There are a great
many men like him in the cities, though not perhaps with
all his advantages. They are not usually marrying men,
unless you take them very young or very old, and he is
neither very young nor very old."

" He is not in Beaudeck," said Rachel positively. " He
has gone away."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

213

"He

"I arr sure," resninod the lady, as if aftor a sHirht and
mistaken digression, " tliat you liave ba«l evervtliinjjj your
own wa}'. At the Shoals you niii^dit be still uunv ])opular.
I must say, though, that your manner is mther distant
at times. Mr. Hanna said himself that your manner was
not quite encouraging, — thougli you cannot always tell
from a girl's manner, — he realizes that. There is a great
deal said against coquettes. I hi ve said a great deal
against them myself. But without saying anything,
everybody knows it is a great deal worse to have no
offers."

" It is toe ridiculous," said Rachel. " Wlu>n it comes
to that I hate it."

" Oh, they don't mean anything by it half the time.
They don't really expect it to come to anything. I am
afraid you are expecting something deep. You may
have read too much. You must take men as they are.
They are ncne too good ; but nine chances out of ten the
best man is the one who can make you the most comfort-
able. There isn't a better house in the city than Mr.
Hanna's, and it is safe to say there isn't a better man.
If you had been indifferently raised you would see it so ;
Jerome, I think, is serious."

" I don't want to have anything to do with him," the
girl insisted. " I never will."

" There is young Garrotson," suggested Mrs. Cotter,
experimentally. " He is rather dissipated, but his father
is a very fine man."

" I don't think he wishes me to marry his father."

214

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

, '>I'U

" He admires you very much," said the lady soothingly.

" I believe it makes me a little sick," said Rachel.

" What makes you sick ? "

But she did not seem to find it easy to define at once
whence her sickness rose. " It will be a blow to Jerome,"
continued her aunt. " He isn't used to it. The very best
girls we have accept him."

" And then, what ?"

" If it isn't one thing it is another. His mother is hard
to please."

Rachel made no comments on this astonishing frequency
of events she was accustomed to regard as exceptional,
and from her silence Mrs. Cotter took hope. " We might,
at least, go to the Shoals and have him folio v/ us," she said
" then if you should refuse him people would at least
know it. As it is they may think he is at his usual
tricks. Next to accepting him nothing could start you
better than to be known to have refused him."

" It seems to me," said Rachel, " tliat when I love any
one I shall know it. I don't want to be pretending or
trying."

" You don't love Mr. Halstead then! I was afraid, — I
didn't know, — I couldn't help seeing that you wrote to
him a day or two ago ; and you haven't been in your
usual spirits."

The young girl's face colored up in the usual man-
ner, perhaps resenting such forcing of her confidence.
But Mrs. Cotter did not so interi^ret it. She looked at
her closely, her own face undergoing a change of expres-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

215

hingly.
1.

it once
jrome,"
sry best

is hard

squency
ptional,
3 might,
she said
at least
is usual
art you

)ve any
ding or

raid, — 1

rote to

in your

al man-

itidence.

oked at

expres-

sion, and then went on with her minute repairing. " I
did not get you soon enough," she said regretfully. " It
will be a severe lesson — more severe than it ought to be
for the first. And it will take a great deal of your time.
You should have told me you were engaged to him."

" I am not engaged to him," said Rachel, violently.

And again Mrs. Cotter glanced up. " My poor child,"
she repeated, " I did not get you soon enough."

"I don't want to marry him any more than I want to
maiTy Mr. Hanna," aflSrmed her niece.

This was very puzzling. The lady had never known
just such a case. She had always had a feeling that her
protege was a trifle difficult to understand, to advise, and
to lead, but she had not realized till now what she had
undertaken. She was as a leader who had not yet found
the leading-strings, and who could only sport a little
timidly about the pretty erratic creature she would con-
trol. " You are not in love with the village minister, or
anything like that ? " she finally inquired.

" No," said Rachel, growing more laconic and more
florid.

" You are a queer gii'l," exclaimed Mrs. Cotter, in wliose
mind queerness covtired a great deal of ground. " Per-
haps you have refused him," she went on making one
more venture. '* And he may have made you feel un-
pleasantly. Of course he would make something of a
fuss. My dear lamb, you could not hurt either of them
much. Their hearts would recover long before your con-
science. In some things you are veiy inapt."

216

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

As she spoke the door opened, and Mr. Cotter entered,
his boots freshly blacked, his face newly shaven, and the
morning papers under his arm. Rachel went over to him
her face brightening, but he instantly perceived by a
glance at his wife that something was amiss.

When the trouble was explained to him, he hemmed,
smiled, and rolled his papers into their ultimate compa vs.
" Quite right, quite right," he said. " The girl knows
what she is about. Let her suit herself. I would rather
like, myself, to see her take Hanna down a peg, but if
she is too good for it we can't insist. I believe in letting
her do what she likes. She won't be apt to do much
better by doing what somebody else likes."

And on the occasion of a subsequent visit the irresis-
tible Jerome Hanna found to his intense surprise that he
was no more. He had tested his powers one season too
many, and found a foolish young woman to whom his
wealth, his prestige, his brains, and his melancholy per-
son were as nothing ; so he retired once more into seclu-
sion, and, with the point of a neatly sharpened pencil,
traced out the route to Karnak, thence onward to the
fresh waters of the Victoria Nyanza. If he could lose
himself in Africa he might yet be a happy man, a free
man, a man without a mother, without pretensions to
sustain, without obligations to genius, — and in this fore-
casting of the future he was almost glad tha/c Rachel was
so blind. He made up his mind to start in December.
In the meantime he would write some political papers.
Women were never insensible to fame.

^;:i

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

217

CHAPTER XVIII.

AT the last small station before reaching Beaudeck
Rachel looked eagerly out from the car window.
The bridge was there and the net- work of ropes was there,
but there was no one about, whom she knew : and neither
was there any one at the depot when she arrived at home.
The train was late and she was not expected. She al-
most wished that she had written.

As the stage stopped in front of the house, she fancied
there was some one watching her from the window of
of the wing, but she did not look again to assure herself,
and ran quickly up the steps. Even within she asked
few questions of the ladies who welcomed their beautiful
offspring, but kissed them demonstratively and ate her
suppper with smiling cheerfulness. She inquired where
her father was, but her father was not at home. Except
to the eye of faith there was no one at home save the
three ladies.

It was late, and Miss Hannah had already remarked

upon the dissipation of the hour, when Rachel crossed

the dark hall, and standing in the open door looked out

upon the mountains. The branches of the elms swayed

gently to and fro, and some whirling bats made their

swift excursion round the upper columns. The half

moon was shining. A light was also shining in the wing,
15

I (

218

W I

I \

i !

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

and Rachel, her lips half-parted, leaned against one of
the pillars, breathing the soft illumined air.

There was a step across the porch, and starting, hesi-
tating, she slipped back through the passage to the
parlor, but had scarcely reached it when Dayton entered.

She did not advance to meet him, but stood rooted to
the floor while he crossed the intervening distance. He
looked like a man who suppressed more joy than he
showed, and saying something about her return took her
hand. Her fingers were quite cold.

"I saw you come," he said. "You had an ominous
twist to your veil."

" Ominous ? " she replied, finding her voice.

" Stylish, or dainty, or something," he explained, still
holding her hand, — "as if you had gone over to the
fashionable world whence no woman ever willingly
returns."

" I am very fashionable now," she declared.

But there was a flutter about her that stirred his
heart to see. He was not to be discouraged. "What
brings you home just now ? " he asked. " You are ahead
of your time. We liad prepared our patience for another
two weeks. We were to wear along, you know, till
sometime next month. Did the Isles of Shoals go down ?
I believe I heard that they were swamped."

" I did not go to the Isles of Shoals," said Rachel.
She seemed to think that, in view of the fact, she might
be accorded the privilege of reserving her reasons. But
Dayton had no generosity.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

219

hesi-
o the
itered.
ted to
5. He
lan lie
ok her

minous

id, still
to the
llingly

red his
What
ahead
another
ow, till
down ?

Rachel,
might
. But

" Why not ? " he inquired. " Did you grow inconstant
to your aunt ? . Or did you feel a little sickness for your
mountains ? I have heard that people, the Swiss, for
instance, pined when away from their homes. Do you
suppose, Miss Guerrin, that any absence could make you
pine ?

Rachel opened her fan, a new and large one, with bul-
rushes on a pink ground, and held it open against her
breast.

" I ran out of money," she said, with reluctant in-
vention.

Dayton rather doubted the validity of this excuse, but
disappointed in that direction began immediately in an-
other. " I was afraid," he remarked, " that you would
not come till we had gone. Some of us have gone already,
— did you know ? "

" Yes," said Rachel, " I knew. Where did they go ? "

He tried to recall the small matter of their exact
locality, looking at the face which appeared above the
bulrushes. " Miss Duncan," he finally remembered, " has
gone home. Halstead went West."

" West ! "

" Yes. He thinks of going West to stay. He dis-
solved with me. He has grown ambitious. I couldn't
keep him any longer."

Rachel's thoughts seemed to go West too, distressingly ;
and to bring them nearer home he looked about for seats.
" Tell me about your visit," he said abruptly, taking one
near her.

I !
i I

220

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

" Well, what about it ? " she asked, leaning forward,
and resting the hand that held the fan across a table.

" 1 don't care to know that you drove to-day, dined in
state yesterday, and danced the night before, — you are
not a slip on which such programmes are printed, like
most pleasure-seekers ; I want to know the effects you
have brought away with you."

" It was like riding an elephant," she said, with a
smile which was pre-eminently un-Desborough-like.

" Good ! " he exclaimed. " I am glad it was as an
elephant you liked it."

" I am afraid you expect me to say that I found
society hollow. But I didn't. I never found anything
yet which was hollow."

" What was it full of ? " he inquired. " Tell me about
its virtues and its peccadilloes. I have had seme
experience in its vices."

" I have been gone five years," she declared.

" Do you find me much changed ? Am I wrinkled ?
Am I very gray?" — and he smoothed his hair behind

"You are somewhat gray," she said, looking at his
head, but not meeting his eyes.

" But I am still a young man," he asserted. " My eyes
are young. My ear-drums are young ; and I have the
immoderation which belongs to youth,"

-achel took no notice of the intemperance of his
Tivver, and her eyes, which shone over the top of the
Lulrashe^, steadily sought the figures of the ancient wall-
paper. " I should not have thought," she said, turning

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

221

ward,
e.

aed in
>u are
I, like
s you

rith a

as an

found
yt^ing

about
seme

nkled ?
behind
at his

y eyes
ve the

of his
of the
wall-
[•ning

the conversation back a little, " that you had had much
experience in its vices."

Dayton assured her he had had a share of that common
misfortune, and she wished to know where his social
experience had been. He told her in San Francisco.

"Were you dissipated?" she inquired. "Have you
great powers of alternation ? "

" I have no great powers," he disclaimed.

" Did you float about ? " she went on ; " and were you
engaged to a gi*eat many girls off and on, — charmed for
an afternoon and heart-broken for a couple of minutes ?
Were you what they call complicated, — good and bad,
serious and not at all serious, in beautiful patchwork ? "

Her remark seemed to bear upon something which had
come under her own observation rather than upon him,
and he did not answer. He looked at her instead with
devouring eyes.

" I should think," she said, " that if you were bad, you
would be very much so, and if you were good, you could
no£ very well be otherwise."

" Well, which is it ? " said Dayton, who was not much
given to considering his moral status, — " heads or tails ? "

" At any rate," continued Rachel, " there would be
some depth to it."

"A man does not want to be too good," observed
Dayton ; " it is not poetic."

" No, not poetic. You are not exactly poetic," declared
the girl. " Nobody has ever made you rhyme."

." Are you going to ? " he asked.

222

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

> I
1 I

"Am I ?" she repeated, suddenly rising.

Dayton followed her to the door where she seemed
desirous of looking out upon the night, and descending a
step brought his face upon a level which interfered with
her observation. He seemed to be a very large man as
he stood there obscuring- the moonlicjht.

" We are to be friends," he said hoarsely. " You have
not forgotten that ?"

" We couldn't very well be anything else," said Rachel
logically.

" We are to be what you will," he cried, — " what you
will."

And then he left the night unobscured.

Later, as he walked restlessly about, he saw the light
from Rachel's window falling upon the grass, and went
out under the elms near where it fell. About his neck
he had twisted a handkerchief which she had left in the
hall, and stretching himself full length upon an old settee
he smiled up at .the stars.

The dream was upon him.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

223

CHAPTER XIX.

THE following week ran its rapid course.
Every evening Dayton saw Rachel more or less alone,
with no one to warn hiin, no one to check him, no one
to interfere with him, and nothing whatever in his hopeful
way. Mr. Guerrin, when at home, was sometimes silently
beseeching under his assiduity, but Dayton looked joy-
fully upon it as a favorable omen, and even had the har-
dihood, once, to remind him of their earlier conversation*
"You know what I am about," he said, " and you cannot
blame me if after all I should succeed. It is possible
that in time I may succeed."

Halstead had gone. That was the chief, the glaring
fact. He had gone to the iron regions West, and many
men who went to the iron regions West never again dis-
turbed the serenit}'' of the East. Whatever his affinity
for Rachel had been it had resolved into separation, and
Dayton was satisfied to rest upon it. His day had come
and he would make use of it, irresistibly, if possible, to
secure his happiness, sure that in the end he could secure
hers.

The securing of that happiness, however, even without
intervention, seemed as difficult as it was delicate ; and
while, for purposes of genial comradeship, Rachel seemed
ready to bestow her society upon him, he always found
himself derided, cheated, swindled in some way out of

]''

224

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

his passionate imperative moods. He never knew how
it was done, or why the designs that were in him failed
to find expression, but blessed, even while baffled, the
time wore on, and he submitted with a sort of tragic
intensity to the influences that delighted and tormented
him. She had a way of suddenly summoning a third
party into their walks, and a way of treating him as an
auxiliary to her more absorbing occupations. She was
never so busy, and never had so much company from the
village. She permitted him to follow when she went
with the Dan Drueys to the orchard, where the yellow
apples came sv)ftly thumping about them on the sod. She
let him go with her to do her errands, getting out of the
carryall every fifteen rods. But she let nothing interfere
with her important duties. She sewed with zeal. When
there was nothing else she fanned herself with passion.
She came and went unexpectedly, and left him when he
thought they had hours before them. Indeed he could never
keep her with him very long at a time. She made little
excursions with him out from the porch in the starlight,
but these excursions seemed as short and fleeting as
the excursions made by the bats.

Once, when he had vainly endeavored to lure her out
of the sitting-room, where she was persistently playing,
he went back to the wing, and waited till he saw her go
out with a book to the further end of the portico, where
there were some easy chairs and rugs spread over the flag-
stones. Then he went through the parlor, and coming
upon her corner seated himself without speaking.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

225

Rachel read on for a page or so, but presently half-
closed her book as if induced to do so from consideration
outside her will.

"It can't be helped," said Dayton, gravely, seeming
aware of the motion, without taking his eyes from the
landscape. " I have no compunctions. I would not hesi-
tate at such a little thing as persecution. 1 impose
myself upon you without scruple. You are at a great
disadvantage in having such good manners. If you were
a shrewish, rude woman, now, I would not browbeat you
in this way. Perhaps, I wouldn't wish to. But being
slight and refined, I don't stop at anything. I can't afford,
you know, to neglect any tricks, even the most nefarious.
Do you know I have been here four months ? "

Rachel submitted to be thus browbeaten without great
resentment, but perhaps she did not wish to concede to
him all the advantage that he claimed. " There are
many ways," she said, " by which a woman, even the

most polite and fragile, may excuse herself."

He took her book as she spoke, and opened it where

her finger had been. " You were on page one hundred

and fifteen," he said, laying it down on the other side

of him. " Do you know I have already been here four

months ?"

" Four months, have you ? " she replied, resorting for

occupation to her fan. " Four months, after all, is a very

short time."

" Short for what ? " asked Dayton bluntly. " Great

events may happen in much less time. A man dies in a

' !

226

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

moment. I have heard that in a twinkling he may fall
heir to eternal blessedness."

" It seems to me," she said, " that time is very long.
There are oceans of it."

" And it seems to me," he rejoined, " that there is very
little left. Were you never in any haste ? Was there
never anything for which it taxed all your powers to
wait ? I half believe you dread a change, a rupture,
a scene."

" Indeed," she answered, flushing warmly and general-
izing coolly, " I think that for most things which happen
we would do well to wait."

He took from her hands the fan with which he had
shared her attention, giving an air of inadvertence to his
touch upon her fingers. " Do you think very much of
this trifle ?" he asked, bending forward.

" No," she answered, simply enough ; " I bought some
prettier ones when I was away."

" Then, perhaps," he said, " you will give it to me."
And putting his thumb in the middle of the sticks he
snapped them in two. " It is wonderful," he went on,
over the fragments, " the amount of industry that can
be put into the handling of a fan ! Is it such a nice
operation that all one's heart should go into it ? It
seems to me that one might run a much more elaborate
machine with less solicitude."

And he looked at her as if seeking for toleration of his
violence. " You should at least leave me the pleasure of
fanning myself," she presently observed.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

227

"At least!" he repeated, with deprecating cynicism.
" It wears a beautiful dress. Its color comes 'and goes,
and it fans itself for pleasure with a pink fan. What
life, what a range of feeling it has !"

But Rachel was not by such means to be betrayed into
warmer sensibilities. She would rather see him angry
than to see him ferven.u. She was, indued, something
more tlian half afiaid of the vehemence which lie but
half concealed under his gentleness, and she knew liow
feeble were the checks that she could impose upon it.
He never lost a stej) he gained, and he gained a little
every day. " One is sometimes reduced to great straits,
you know, sir," she replied, growing white in spite of
herself. " You forget thac I came out here to read.
You are unreasonable."

" Yes," he assented, " I am unreasonable. If I were
reasonable I would be happy to sit here three or four
feet away from you while you read and kept yourself
cool. But I am not reasonable."

She rose, and he thought for a moment that she was
going away, but she only crossed over to the nearest
pillar, and coming back resumed her place. It was plain
that she was willing to linger with him in the deep
twilight, and looking at her brilliant face he felt assured
that however she might refuse to listen to his ambitious
passion, it did not so far offend her that she could not
find life exquisite in its close proximity. He felt sure
she undei'stood him, sure he understood her ; and, after
all, what wonder was it that a fresh, young girl should

228

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

i II

resist the stranger who at best must crush her freshness
against his lieart. He would perhaps have constrained
himself to endure much longer the poignant delight of
her nearness and distance, permitting her to grow used
to him and imposing upon her a slower familiarity ; but
the season of his opportunity was shortening ominously.

" Do you know," he said shortly, as if in explanation of
his importunity, " that my work here is almost finished ?"

It had in fact been done three days.

" Where are you going then?" inquired Rachel, with
quicker interest than she had yet shown.

" I cannot say. It hangs by a thread. I think some
of continuing on the line, and some of going to the
Sandwich Islands."

•* The Sandwich Islands ! " exclaimed the girl.

" Well, call it South Africa, then," he suggested. " In
the meantime it is not surprising, is it, that I should
depend upon you to ameliorate my last days in Christen-
dom ? What else could you expect of even a reasonable
man who was closeted with you in so small a town as
this ? There isn't much to entice one out into the village,
you know."

* It does not look very inviting from here," remarked
Rachel, looking up the road.

" It is as deserted as a private race-track or a temper-
ance billiard saloon," said Dayton, following her glance.

" What do you know of private race-tracks and tem-
perance billiard saloons ? " she asked.

'* Upon my soul, nothing," he disclaimed, as if any

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

229

connection with those peculiar institutions were par-
ticularly compromising.

" I suppose your acquaintance is with the other sort."

" It strikes me now," said Dayton, " that I have here-
tofore called some very gross and dull amusements
pleasure. The real article, it seems, has a peppering of
anguish in it."

" What will you do in the Sandwich Islands ?" she
inquired.

" Heaven only knows," he answered. " I may never
go. My mind doesn't work clearly on that possibility.
Go ? I do not mean to go. I have an idea of a home
with the stars shining on it all night — like this."

Rachel did not dare to look at him. " But if you
should ?" she persisted, pulling at a rose-tree.

" I am not going," he declared. He moved nearer.
He had a violent consciousness of her nearness, and of
her lips, which had been smiling and now were trembling.

" I believe I must go in," said the girl, rising and look-
ing over her shoulders as women do when they suspect a
ghostly chill of striking i^hem.

" You must have a shawl," he cried. " Let me bring
you one ?"

" No," said Rachel. " I will get it."

" You wdll not come back."

•* No. j-night, I think," she answered gently.

Dayton glowered at the elm trees, detaining her ,; then
loosened his hold upon her hand. "I re ver spent such
days as these," he presently said raore gently. " If they

k
F

230

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

ever end it will be with a terrible shock. I am not used
to it. I am believing in you deeply, deliciously. You
could deceive me like a charm. Don't dare be polite to
me without a purpose. I beg of you don't smile this
way unless you mean it. What you say must be true
forever, and if you look at me you must swear to it. It
is as much as my life is worth for you to let your color
come and go for nothing. And if you are happy you
must have an immense resource of wretchedness behind
it in case the happiness fails. You are smiling now.
You are fairly happy. Lord ! how I count upon such
simple things as that ! "

" I know it, sir," she answered simply and fervently.

And remaining behind among the bats and columns
where she left him, he smiled in a warm and broad and
in-spite-of-all fashion, blessing himself with that expect-
ant happiness which is so greatly in excess of happiness
itself. The wintriness and rigors had gone out of him.
He was like a liard-workins^ man, abandoned to the grace
of noon. He watched the tender light caress the hills ;
he listened to the sentimental cries of the whippoorwills ;
he considered the solitary set in families, and believed
that he, too, might yet become a part of the jovial, lusty
world.

The next evening, after Rachel had walked once or
twice up and down the path with only her Gordon setter,
she went to tlie side portico and knocked at the door.
•' Are you not coming ? " she asked, as Dayton opened it.
" It is a beautiful evening."

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

231

" Yes, I am coming ! " he cried. But he hud meant not
to go. He had been afraid of taking too much for granted.
And at the first pause that beautiful girl had knocked at
his door ! That knock was certainly honest. And her
eyes were altogether honest. She wanted him.

They had not gone far, howevt^r, when they met a car-
riage containing Mrs. Sterling and Louise Mason coming
up the drive, and, with some growling on Dayton's part
to which Each el would not assent, they turned back.

" Mrs. Sterling," she said, as they followed the carriage
h: ek to the house, " is a charming woman."

" Is she ? " returned Dayton, reluctantly. " I am not
sure that I know a charming woman when I sec one."

*' Th?n I might as well not be charming ! " exclaimed
the ffirl with a laucjh. But she never looked at him
when she made a remark like that.

When Mrs. Sterling returned home somewhat late
that nicrht, Joseph Anderson handed her a letter. She
read it iP.retully, then read it again and folded it with
contr,%ctei' brows.

" iliOUi.iv.%" she said, "Nathan will be back to-morrow!"

Louise '^:^;pped into a chair by tlie window, "Well
let him come," she replied.

" And why here ? Why here from some point in Mis-
souri ! He could see us nearly as soon at home, if that
is w'lat he want^s."

" ■ crhaps that is not it," suggested Louise.

" lie may imagine that we are going to stay some time
longer," pursued Mrs. Sterling. " He does not know that

\f7

232

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

we intend to leave the day after to-morrow. Do you
tliink we can get off as soon as that ? I don't want to
stay any longer, and I don't think Nathan especially needs
the country air. Too much country air dulls one's wits.
I'll telegraph him the first thing to-morrow that we will
meet him in Boston, and then he can come or not, as he
chooses."

" He generally does as he chooses," rejoined Miss Mason,
with her desolated smile.

" I should have telegraph* to-night," pursued Mrs.
Sterling. " What an unconscionable time we stayed down
there ! Rachel Guerrin seems very innocent. She is not
at all innocent. She is smarter than any of us. I would
have great respect for her if I were not afraid of her."

Early the next morning Mrs. Sterling drove briskly
through the town to the depot, in whose recesses the
telegraph office was secreted. The place was closed, and
there was no one to be seen except a philosophical super-
numeraiy who sat in the sun near the water-tank, and
whose office was apparently to keep the secrets of the
road and prevent the station and tank from being stolen
by suspicious-looking individuals, like the one who now
presented herself before him.

" Where is the telegraph operator ? " she inquired.

" He ain't here," replied the man, resuming his study
of the river, as if the subject contained no further interest
for him.

" Where can I find him ? "

" Home," explained the fellow, still on the defensive.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

233

you
at to
leeds
wits,
i will
as he

[ason,

Mrs.

down
is not
would
er.

)riskly
es the
d, and
super-
k, and
of the
stolen
10 now

study
nterest

ensive.

He had evident contempt for the feverish impatience
that resorted to the telegraph when there were such
worlds of time for more rational communication.

But Mrs. Sterling was not discouraged. " Where does
he live ? " she persisted.

" Yonder," he replied, nodding toward the north pole.

And finally learning that the homestead in question
was a few farms away in the northeast distance, she
started hurriedly in that direction, and toiled up to a
cottajxe on the summit of a distant hill, where she airain
asked for the operator.

" He is out in the fields," said the woman. " But if you
want to send a dispatch, you can write it here, and he'll see
to it when he comes up to dinner." And she deposited
some paper and a bottle of blue mould on the kitchen
table, like a person who knew that business was business.

Amazed at the deliberateness that waited upon elec-
tricity in that region, Mrs. Sterling explained that it was
a matter requiring the greatest haste, and finally suc-
ceeded in dispatching a boy across the fields for his de-
linquent parent.

Yet when the train came in that night, Halstead
alighted, his hat drawn over his eyes, his head as erect
as the sky-scraper of a clipper ship, and, getting into the
stage, caused himself to be driven past the Desborough
place and up the north road.

" Nathan," began his sister, when she saw him alone
for a moment after supper, " did you get my telegram
this morning ? " ^

234

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

'■' i

" Your telegram ? " he said indifferently.

" We are going back to-morrow. I thought you might
not care to come for so short a time."

*' My dear friend," he returned, after reviewing her
critically for a moment, " nothing would have prevented
my coming. You mistake the pretext for the reason. I
had a profound desire to come."

"Louise " — she ventured —

"Had nothing to do with it," he interrupted, extin-
guishing the faint hope.

" You have come a long way."

" Do you call this long ? You don't know the lengths
I am prepared to go."

" It is not difficult, then, to guess the goal for which
you have set out."

Halstead shrugged his shoulders in a way to indicate
his keen perception of the strange extremity to which he
was driven. " It might be veil," he said deliberately, as
if picking the words from the tree of knowledge, " if I
had never come here ; yet having come, I must go through
the chain of consequences. I have tried to resist it. I
ran away from it every other day all summer, but never-
theless I followed her to the city, and here I am follow-
ing her back. She is too beautiful for me. I don't
marry because I want to, you know. I marry because
I am in love."

" You will regret it," warned his sister, with despair.
Indeed, the family of this gay young man regarded his
vocation in life o,s similar to that of the idyllic youths

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

235

night

y her
ented
)n. I

extin-

engths

which

idicate
lich he
ely, as

"if I
irough

it. I
never-
bllow-

don't
)ecaiise

lespair.
led his
youths

on the cover of " Harper's Magazine," and that he should
assume heavier responsibilities than scattering blooms
and bubbles over a grateful universe seemed an act of
self-destruction almost criminal.

" Of what use to us, in these matters, is our little inch
of foresight ? " he exclaimed, with one of his thousand
smiles.

There had been a storm that afternoon, which had
left the air full of moisture, with airy coteries of clouds
floating in all directions. Clouds rose from the river and
from the soggy pastures ; they rolled over the gardens
and lingered in the lilac bushes ; they drifted along the
eaves and crept into the upper windows ; they brushed
the hills and reconnoitered the water-courses, till it looked
as if the country had surrendered to a mackerel sky.
One of these airy pufls had drifted into the porch at Mrs.
Anderson's, and, passing through it, Halstead looked
first at the sky and then at the muddy road.

"I am going to drive down presently," said Mrs.
Sterling, "and if you are going I might take you, I
suppose."

But even presently seemed too long to his eager im-
patience, and he set out on his walk.

When he reached the Desborough place, Miss Hannah
told him he would find Rachel in the parlor, and he
entered without further formality. She was there alone,
and the lamps were not yet lighted.

" You are not surprised ? " he said, as the young girl
rose. " I told you in the city that I would come as sure

236

AN EARNEST TBIFLER.

'i,i

! ;

as fate. I am quite as sure, since I would play the part
of fate to you, — what could make a man so sure as that !
Dear Rachel, my beautiful Rachel ! " he cried. " You
are the same ; the same, are you,* to me ? " And again
his eyes shone down upon her like stars in hot weather.

" Did you get my letter ? " she asked. Her very lips
were white. She looked for once like a Desborough.

Dayton was standing behind her in the dusky doorway
leading from his apartments, as if he were entrapped in
the gloom. Volition had deserted him on the threshold.
His brows were knit ; and a spiritual darkness seemed
to pervade him.

Halstead forbid himself a moment, in obedience to
something in Rachels face, and then his quick eye fell
upon his friend, — fell unwillingly, apprehensively.

"Ah, Dayton," he said, advancing, "you are a lucky
man. I did not know you were still here. It ought to
be the best built bit of road in New England."

Dayton did not take the proffered hand. In fact, he
did not see it. He went over to the window, where he
stopped again,, and looked at Rachel, as if he begged of
her some explanatory sign which should turn his ardent
chattering into a vapid joke.

But Rachel was entirely grave, — preoccupied, even,
and her eyes and ears were for Halstead only. " When
did you come ? " she asked.

"To-night. You don't suppose I have been in the
neighborhood long. I am not to stay long, either, which
is more to the point."

AN EARNEST TRIELER.

237

" Your sister, perhaps, was not expecting you," Dayton
managed to say.

" She thinks that when one goes West he must follow
the sun till he reappears to eastward," chattered the clever
fellow. " She doesn't know how easy it is to double on
one's tracks. I went out to look around, as they say
out there. I looked around, — to some purpose too, I as-
sure you, — and here I am. How is the road, Dayton ? "

" Done," replied Dayton, briefly. " Done." And cross-
ing the room he went out into the hall, and thence into
the street.

He had not gone far, hovvever, when Mrs. Sterling
drove up to the curb-stone. She beckoned to him with
her fan, as she sent her driver with some message into a
low frame house, which was set far back in a yard. There
were geese in the yard, and they came strutting and
hissing out to the fence, thrusting their necks between
the palings, and filing out the gate to repulse the in-
truders. Mrs. Sterling put her head out of the carriage
window and desired him to enter, which he declined.
She seemed to have a great deal to say, and it mingled in
some way in his mind with the hissing of the geese that
were about his legs.

" It is about as bad as it can be," she said, with her
pleasant, lively loquacity. " I thought it had all blown
over ; but not a bit of it. We have deceived ourselves.
They are going to be married. He is very sly. He went
to the city to see her, and now she brings him back here.
It will be a love match. It doesn't make any difference

238

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

whether we ^o to Boston, or stay here till October, though
of course he would stay if we did. And he ought to be
at his business. He says she is too beautiful f v him.
That isn't all of it, perhaps. She isn't artful, but she
certainly isn't artless. She has the sense of her own
fascinations. She is cleverer than any of us. I should
think you would have known when you came here how
it would be, — not that I blame you, of course. But it is
so terribly different from what we expected for him.
That is what took him West, you see. We thought it
queer at the time. They will live in one of those be-
nighted Western towns, where they don't care what a
man's advantages have been ; all they care for is what he
can do. Something may happen, but I am afraid it
won't. Perhaps he means to take her back. He is very
much in love. I suppose you left him there ? "

A man came out of the gate bearing a huge white bun-
dle through which appeared innumerable fluted ruffles,
and Mrs. Sterling disposed of it on the seat beside her.
"I am sorry," she said, nodding again to Dayton from
the window, " that we are going so soon, but I suppose
you are about to leave too."

Dayton saw it all then ; and the geese which followed
him saw it all. The hopes he had cherished in patience,
in felicity, and in secret turned and pointed their long,
fine fingers at him ; and he strode down the street like a
wretch who laughs, and at whom all sane things laugh.
He wished to creep away, to hide himself and his derange-
ment of grief.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

239

On his return, near midnight, he passed a rapid walker
whom he recoifnized luit who did not recomiize liim ;
then, as he went up the path toward the side piazza, he
saw the lamp still burning in the parlor, and a shadow
movinff about in the half liffht, — a shadow whieh he
knew. He went to his room and crossed it, as if he
would once more a<lmit himself into the presence of love
and midnight, but just inside the door he stopped, the
expression of self -derision curling his lips anew. What,
after all, could he say to iier ? What could he say to her
in the light from which Nathan Halstead had just slip-
ped ? What had he to say to the sweetheart of his friend ?
He had no dexterity, no complaisance. He hated com-
plaint. He hated petitions. He hated the hopeless tur-
moil in his own breast and the smiling responses awarded
it by the exquisite Rachel Guerrin. The passionate
discourasfement which she had mven him had been sin-

O CD

cere, and the pretty countenance which she liad some-
times shown his ardor had been but a part of the sweet
craft inseparable from the nature of, a beautiful woman.
Perhaps she would again w^oo him wdth her innocent and
dainty deceit if he should enter. She was still so near,
still so sweet. He had visions of her approaches, her
gestures. He heard the rustle of her dress, and i- it the
breath of the air as she swept past him. Then he laughed
again, and packed his valise.

The next morning, as he w^as going out, Rachel de-
scended the stairs. She was very late, and she came
slowly. He waited for her by the heavy walnut newel,

;

240

AN EARNEST TRIFLE R.

and then ofTered her his hand. " I know no way to take
leave of you," he said. " The common adieux won't set
me adrift."

There was something lurking in his face that changed
the brightness of the morning into a sullen, surcharged
blackness, and she stood dismayed, as he turned abruptly
and went down the path toward the gate.

" Why didn't you say good-by to him ? " inquired Miss
Hannah, passing briskly through the hall. " He is not
coming back."

" Not coming back ? " cried Rachel, incredulously.

Presently she ran down through the garden, and
watched with unbelief the train that carried him away
wind along the river-bank. It was a shining September
day, and the ivy and sumac were red upon the grave-
yard wall. She leaned over it among the brilliant, expir-
ing leaves, and the hush about her grew deep, the soli-
tude dense.

Mrs. Sterling, upon the train, was calling attention to
her brother's indisposition. " He came in very late, last
night," she said, with amiable raillery.

" I got caught in the evergreens," he responded, with
his intrepid smile.

CL:^::1^^=^=^=:$^::iJ>

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

241

CHAPTER XX.

IN October Dayton started for California. It seemed
to him that if he could put the Rocky Mountains be-
tween him and the scene of his ineffectual passion he
might begin to multiply the years with some hope of for-
getfulness. New England was too small. He could at
any time stretch himself and touch the hem of Rachel
Guerrin's dress, — a touch in which there would be no
healing. Th^ cities were full of faint resemblances to
her, and at every })oint there was a possible intersection
of their paths. He found himself thinking of her as he
strode past the flower-stands. He foimd himself looking
for her among the pedestrians who hurried along the
sidewalks, and among the pretty frequenters of shops.
He was too near. There was danger that he might meet
her, and it was possible that he might not. He specu-
lated upon the idea of meeting her, and wondered in
what dumb fashion he would stand it to see her again
come near and again sweep past him. Once, when he
thought he saw her, he looked again, but it was only a
shabby little girl casting an eager, long-fringed glance
over some engravings in a window ; and once, impelled
by an irresistible likeness, he followed a tall, slight figure
into a palace car. It was after that he determined to go
back to California.

242

AN EARNEST TRTFLER.

Not long before ho left Mrs. Sterling saw him upon the
street in Boston, and driving up to the pavement offered
to take him in her victoria to whatever point he was
bound.

" I am on my way to San Francisco," he said, lifting
his hat.

" Very well, get in," she responded, making room for
him by a new disposition of her flounces. " I am going
in that direction."

He took the place beside her, and they rolled west-
ward down the avenue. " Going to San Francisco ! " she
exclaimed, smiling at him under her pretty parasol. " I
am sorry to hear it. We can't afford to lose you. We
haven't much to lose in the way of your society, to be
sure, but we feel that you help give a solid support to
the light, social superstructure. And then I am expect-
ing Rachel Guerrin. I thought that if you did neglect
me, — and you have, you know, unpardonably, — you
would summon some principle and call upon her. Where
have you buried yourself ? Your habits are the most
incorrigible I ever knew. They are worse than bad ones.
A reprobate caii reform, but a good man never. I have
been trying for years to mitigate your seclusion, and the
moment I have some positive obligations on my side you
escape to the Pacific slope ! I give you up."

" I have given myself up," he said ; " I am going on the
twenty-seventh."

" She may be here before that ! " the lady returned.

" I have written to her to come risfht away.

. Na-

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

243

than isn't here now," she added, smiling. '* But then if
that affair ever should come to anything, as I suppose it
must, I should like to have shown her every attention.
At any rate, it can do no harm. We will give you a fare-
well dinner."

" Don't think me uncivilized," he answered, " but I
will be very busy. You mustn't count on me."

And after that he was in a fever to be off. Even
when seated in the car in the compartment assigned him,
it seemed to him that the train would never pull out,
and from the window his eyes roved over the passengers
coming and going, in the hope and fear of resting for a
moment upon the figure of the woman who could com-
ma,nd his resolution.

He was in the great West, where some bleak winds
were blowing, before he felt that he had truly started,
leaving the summer far behind him.

His fever then abated. His haste gave place to a
strange dull leisure. It was a great country, and it made
no difference where he went or when he got there, if he
ever got there. He thought of Rio Janeiro and of New
Orleans with greater longing than of San Francisco, and
his mind, which had been running in a deep and narrow
sluice, suddenly broke in a shallow inundation all over
the Western plains. Time seemed endless, and economy
of it as absurd as it was useless. When he found him-
self in California, what then ! His legs were cramped
with long sitting, and as the train stopped in one of the
far Western cities he rose, tock his valise, and sauntered

244

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

out without a purpose into the noisy depot. The wind
was still bleak. The gas-lights burned dimly, while
waiting for the later darkness. The streets looked un-
familiar. It was the unfamiliar he wanted ; and hailing
a cab he desired to be driven to a hotel which he named.

He registered his name, was assigned a room, ate his
supper, and strolled back to the rotunda reconnoitring
in his indifference for a mode of spending the evening".
He was not good at picking and choosing among entt
tainments. Too often there was a large deficit between
social amusement and his unamused spirit, — a deficit
which measures the degree one is bored. He bought an
evening paper from habit, and not because he wanted it,
and was about to withdraw Irom the office when a brisk
young mai. entered, and singling him from among the
many loungers crossed the checkered marble with a ring-
ing stc^.

Dayton surveyed him at arm's-length, feeling that in
stopping short of tb'^ Sierras he had allowed himself too
short a radius. The two had not met for weeks, and in
this sudden encounter there seemed to be the shock of
forces still conflicting. Their old and genuine friendship
had collapsed like a balloon, and they shook hands as
strangers ; one a tall, plain, and unpretentious man, and
the other a trim, alert young fellow, with one tooth
broken and two vertical lines between his eyes.

" I saw you get oflf the train," said Halstead. " I was
looking for you. I am here to meet you. I have been

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

245

expecting you for weeks. You have been in the air.
Have you had your supper ? "

" Those who know you best shouldn't be surprised to
see you anywhere," said Dayton shortly. " You look
well and prosperous. Where are you from ? "

" From the furnaces south. I am building one. My
sister writes me you are on your way to California."

" Yes."

There was a short, speculative pause on Halstead's
part. Then, " What are you going to do to-night ? " he
asked.

" I have made only a slender provision," replied Day-
ton, holding up his paper, and glancing with an involun-
tary contraction of the brows at ihe head-lines.

"Nothing in it," said Nathan, "unless you read the
crimes and casualties. Nobody wants to live out here ;
or if they do, they don't want anybody else to. There
is an opera," he added, after another speculative pause.
" * Aida,' — arranged for the successors of the purple Pha-
raohs. Suppose we go."

Dayton cared about as much for the opera as he did
for the Pharaohs, but his ears were waiting in suspense
for communications from "this readily communicating
young man.

" Very well," he assented. " But we must make haste."

A few minutes later they were seated in the parquet,
from which they immediately addressed their attention
to the stage with an appearance of absorbing interest
■vvhich struck Halstead as grotesque in its gravity, — a

246

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

gravity, however, which his sense of the grotesque failed
to relieve. The dress of the princess, which was of a
peculiarly scant and oriental order, secured his admir-
ation for a few moments, and as one by one the unhappy
warbler^ fell with heavy thuds upon the boards, he was
momentarily drawn from his reflections ; but upon the
whole the brilliant portrayal of love and defeat failed to
beguile him from the realities it counterfeited. When the
noble imitation princess writhed around the dark pilas-
ters of the royal imitation palace, wringing her hands in
imitation anguish, he involuntarily turned to his com-
panion ; but Dayton might as well have been sitting on
the side portico, looking professionally at the Beaudeck
mountains, for all his face betrayed; so repressing the
comments which were upon his tongue, he turned again
to the lively painted spectacle.

After the opera was over they returned to the hotel,
and went into the reading-room, which was empty. It
was growing late, and still they did not separate. The
purpose which had brought them together seemed not
yet to have completed its design.

" Dayton," said Halstead, abruptly, leaning over one of
the tables, " how about Beaudeck ? Have you ever been
back ? "

" No."

" Not since the morning we left there together ? "

" No."

" Nor I. I have had it on my mind to say something
10 you about that matter," he proceeded. " I couldn't

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

247

let you get away witliout it. That is what I am here
for. I can't afford to feel shabby and discreditable be-
fore you, and I owe you a bit of delicate frankness. I
should have told you then and there. I knew it, but I
sneaked away with honors, perhaps, that did not belong
to me. I thought you would find it out for yourselves,
but I am afraid you haven't. My sister, I know, labors
under a delusion. As for you, you suspect me either of
being a trifling character or a great success. I don't
know which."

Dayton looked black. He could scarcely endure this
incisive young man among his wounds, and he was slow
to take in his meaning. " I suspect you of both," he
said ; " first one, and then the other. Let us make short
work of this."

" It was a dead failure," the young man proclaimed.
" There is no diversion in making love to such beauty as
hers. You might as well go up to a torch. I don't
pretend to say that I was above lightly abusing their
hospitality at first, but in the piixd I was as serious as —
as you. T know it, and so do you. There were two of
us, and only a chance for one, and I wouldn't get out of
your way, even when I knew you were in earnest and I
wasn't. 1 had the start of you, but I lost somewhere on
the road. I never knew just where. Perhaps" —

" Perhaps what ? " said Dayton, interrupting the fine
analysis which was lasting all night. " Perhaps this !
Perhaps that ! Perhaps a thousand things ! Do you
suppose I would ask a wife at the hands of even a brilliant

248

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

fellow like you ? That I would win her by such pro-
pitious means as your getting out of my way ? You have
done me no wrong. Perhaps she is going to maiTy you,
and perhaps she is not, — that is the point."

" She is not," declared Halstead.

" Not ? " repeated Dayton.

"■ It was a dead failure," Halstead went on, as if to
finish more elaborately while the mood was on him ; " I
tried, and could not make it. I followed her when she
went away, and asked her to marry me before I knew
it ; then followed her back to Beaudeck, and asked her
again, knowing it that time. Jove ! the effect of failure
is out of all proportion to the effect of success, if a fellow
had it ; I would have grown used to success in half the
time I have spent groaning over the nothingness of this
result. It seems she wrote me a letter, which I did not
get till later, — a half -penitent letter it was," he added,
with a singular laugh. " But when I went back the last
time, she wouldn't even compromise with me for a longer
trial. It was better I should have asked her. I think
that after all she was glad to know I wished it. It rather
put me right with her ; and I believe she thought her re-
fusal would only put her right with me. Perhaps you
had something to do with it. I suspect, without reason,
mind you, that you had. Yet here you go to San
Francisco. What takes you there ? "

Dayton stared at him as at a sentimental acrobat.
" Nothing takes me anywhere," he stammered, the light
breaking in upon him.

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

249

you,

light

" You, of all men," cried Nathan, with eloquent
mockery, " to be crossing the Continent by express, — to
swing your valise, and cry Westward, ho ! A passionate
pilgrim ! A fugitive from fortune, from felicity ! Go
back to Boston. Rachel Guerrin is there. Go back and
make yourself glad. I wish I had your chance. You
have been fooled by your modesty, — by that fine reserve
of yours. Even you can be a fool. If any one deserves
his heart's desire, it is you. Go back and get it. You
to migrate ! You to be going West ! " And, rising
hastily, he crossed the room, gesticulating as he went.

" Halstead ! Halstead ! " Dayton shouted after him.
He wanted to embrace him. But the young man had
gone.

Dayton sank back in his chair, and with that cerebral
trick which mingles the slightest conceits with the
deepest emotions, recalled the cry of an auctioneer which
he had heard that evening in passing : " Going ! going !
Easy as the wind blows, easy as the water flows. He
who says nothing wins nothing." Presently his face re-
laxed, and took on the same expression it had worn in
the short and tender season of his hopefulness. Then
the fire came into it, and going to the oflice he inquired
when the first train left for the East.

On the early evening of the day he arrived in Boston,
he was admitted into Mrs. Sterling's library. That lady
was toasting a pair of very pretty slippers, before the
fire, while a blonde student, with a timid manner and a
bouquet in his button-hole, seemed to be serving as an
17

250

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

incentive to a conversation, between her and Rachel. At
first he thofight the young girl changed and somewhat
colorless, but a moment later wondered that he could ever
have thought her pale. She wore a long black dress very
high about the throat, and her hair was twisted in the
fashion in which she had arranged it in the mountains.
Yet the sor soundings were new. There was an indefin-
able difference, and she seemed further from him than at
any time since he left the reading room of the Western
hotel. What wild idea was that of tender familiarity
toward her? The very precision of her dark costume for-
bade him.

When the stir of his unexpected arrival was over, they
began talking of California, whither he was still supposed
to be going shortly. They talked about the winds, the
droughts, the rich iihagination of Nordhoff ; about the
Chinese, the tea-trade ; about the Sutro tunnel ; about the
climate of Santa Barbara, — till the timid scholar, who from
time to time had urged himself into saying something, rose
and bowed himself away.

When the door closed behind him, Mrs. Sterling again
placed upon the fender slippers of the size and style which
require the constant application of heat, and began in an
expository way to set forth some of the peculiarities of
the learned man who had just gone, and whom she spoke
of as Archie Pennefeather.

She told Dayton she meant yet to give him his farewell
dinner, and getting a pencil and bit of paper wrote on it
the names of several pei*sons whom she would like to

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

251

I. At
ewhat
dever
s very
in the
atains.
idefin-
hau at
estern
liarity
[le for-

r, they
pposed
ds, the
ut the
Dut the
o from
g, rose

; again
which
L in an
ties of
spoke

rewell
\ on it
ike to

invite on that occasion, asking his approval of each one
with gracious deference. She told him, too, how glad her
husband would be to see him, and insisted that he should
remain till his return.

Presently, however, she began to wonder at a call
which, for him, was so unprecedented in length ; and
judging it best, she heard a sound that called her, tem-
porarily, to another room.

Rachel went to the window and looked out for Mr.
Sterling ; but that, of necessity, was a respite which could
not last long. When she came back the room seemed
strangely small, and Dayton confronted her with the old
imperative fervor.

" I heard you were here," he said. " I have come in
search of you."

" I am not hard to find at any time," she replied.

" But you may be easy to lose. I thought I had lost
you. Will I lose you if I prove a little too glad to see
you ? How glad shall I dare to be ?"

" Oh, quite glad," she said, negatively still.

"As glad as this?" he asked, taking her hands. He
meant, if possible, never to let them go, but he needed to
explain it to her. He wanted to tell her that he had
made a grim mistake, which had torn him from the moun-
tains, and sent him far on his way toward the Pacific.
That if she would ever make room for him near her she
must do it then. That he loved hei:. That if it were
possible she would ever marry him, she must give him a
hint of it to live upon. But the words for this immensity

252

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

of conversation seemed scattered through a lost language,
and he only stared at her with his imperative fervor.
The lights burned faintly. She was very near him. He
raised her hands to his shoulders. His imperative passion
compelled him, and he put his anus around her.

Three days later Nathan Halstead presented himself at
his sister's door.

" You' were hardly expecting me, I suppose," he said to
her. " I have been travelling for days, for weeks, for
months. There is a friend of mine whom I never see that
he doesn't tell me how far he has travelled within a given
time. * Two thousand miles in the month of June,' he
will say ; or, ' I've been East twenty-nine times since a
year ago the tenth of November.' I smell railroad smoke
whenever I see him. But I excuse him. I wonder now
that I ever fancied him a bore."

" Come into the library," said Mrs. Sterling, to whom this
last surprise promised a solution of the phenomenon pre-
ceding. * * Which would you prefer, — a lounge or a lunch ? ' '

" I have lunched, thank you," he replied, as he followed
her into the cosier room, which was fitted for greater con-
fidences. But instead of taking the lounge, he stood with
his back to the fire, his eyes wandering through the open
doors. " What is going on ?" he asked. " What is your
latest item ? Where is Rachel Guerrin ?"

" Rachel ? She has gone."
' "Gone!"

" Yes, — home. She left this mominef. Did you expect
to see her?"

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

253

" I wanted to take another look at her. It is what I
came for. And Dayton/' he added, "has he been here ?"

" Yes."

There was an interval during which a perceptible
shrinkage took place in Halstead's expansive being.
" Well, go on," he said. " What success did he have ?
Tell me all the horrible particulars."

"They are engaged," said Mrs. Sterling. But her
listener received this abrupt disclosure as if prepared to
hear it.

"Where were they?" he inquired; "and when was it,
— noon or midnight? Was she as beautiful as ever?
You never thought, did you, to warn him against the
regrets which might overtake him ? How often did he
see her ? "

"Twice, — night before last and last night."

Halstead drew his brows more closely together.
" And a revolver," he said presently, " is no longer the
proper thing. Neither is a bed of charcoal. We are
taught in these milder days that time is full of redress,
and that susceptibility is our genius. I have still much
time. I have still great susceptibility." And he laughed,
as if in his insight into his susceptible nature he found
something pitiable and humorous. But in spite of his
shrug and his smile, there was something in his voice and
in his eyes indicative of real disappointment and regret,
and seeing it, his sister asked no questions.

Presently he took from his pocket two letters, — one
from Rachel Guerrin, and one, still sealed, from Paris,

254

AN EARNEST TRIFLER.

directed in a Ldy's hand. He dropped them both into
the grate. " What is there," he asked, " to occupy a man
who has an evening on his hands ? Is there any place
to which you care to go ? What is at the theatres?"

" There is Louise," suggested Mrs. Sterling.

" My dear sister, I can't do it," he said, replying rather
to her significance than to her suggestion for the evening.

" She was terribly disappointed over you."

" We are all disappointed," Halstead observed, begin-
ning again to generalize brilliantly. " The difference is,
that some of us rally and some of us don't. The part of
wisdom is to rally. " I feel destined," he added, " to be a
little, light old man."

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