JC-N 
 
 ,OKJ 
 
 ASCARLL: 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER STORIES 
 

A Scarlet Poppy 
 
 and 
 
 Other Stories 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1894 
 
HARPER S AMERICAN STORY-TELLERS. 
 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental. 
 
 THE WATER GHOST, AND OTHERS. By JOHN 
 KENDRICK BANGS. Illustrated. #i 25. 
 
 NOWADAYS, AND OTHER STORIES. By GEORGE 
 A. HIBBAKD. Illustrated by the Author. $i 25. 
 
 THE STORY OF A STORY, AND OTHER STO 
 RIES. By BRANDER MATTHEWS. Illustrated. $1 25. 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE. Three Stories. By HENRY 
 JAMES. $i oo. 
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME. Three Stories. By HENRY 
 JAMES. $i oo. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
 ESP" The above works are for sale by all booksellers, 
 or iv ill be sent by tJte publisher*, postage prepaid, to 
 any part of the United States^ Canada, or Mexico, on 
 receipt of the price. 
 
 Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights rtset-veJ. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A SCARLET POPPY , . I 
 
 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 29 
 
 AN IDEAL 87 
 
 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON . . . .107 
 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS . . .175 
 
 THE COMPOSITE WIFE 215 
 
 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW. . 263 
 
 394428 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 "!T was only a quarter of a dollar, 
 Mark." 
 
 " Only a quarter of a dollar! It isn t that 
 quarter I complain of ; it is its multiplica 
 tion. Four of them make a dollar. How 
 often have I told you, Helena, that the lit 
 tle foxes " 
 
 " Oh, so often that I d like to be in at the 
 death of them all, and hang up the last 
 brush on the wall !" 
 
 " Very likely. That s quite in character. 
 I fancy there d be no wall to hang it on by 
 that time, though. That s all," pushing back 
 his coffee-cup. 
 
 " How perfectly absurd you are, Mark ! 
 Because I buy a scarlet paper poppy with a 
 black curled paper heart, eight inches in 
 diameter, to hang outside a lamp-shade, and 
 pay twenty-five cents for it, you are brought 
 
4 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 to the verge of bankruptcy and I am to be 
 reduced to beggary !" 
 
 " It isn t the poppy at all. It s" 
 
 " It seems to me that I might commit that 
 extravagance every day if I wished and not 
 ruin you. Three hundred and sixty -five 
 quarters ninety-one dollars a year. How 
 poor you must be if ninety-one dollars a 
 year can put you into insolvency ! But I 
 don t wish. I " 
 
 " It isn t the poppy at all "his face 
 growing purple. 
 
 " Oh no, it isn t the poppy ; it s the twen 
 ty-five cents. It isn t this poppy ; it s the 
 next one," clasping her pretty hands behind 
 her head, as she leaned back in an insolence 
 of attitude. 
 
 " It isn t the poppy at all ; it s the prin 
 ciple," cried the exasperated Mr. Dunmore 
 at last, raising his voice so that it could be 
 heard over his wife s treble, and over the 
 screaming of the wild March gale outside. 
 
 "Oh, of course," said his wife then, "if 
 you choose to talk to me in that tone, it s 
 the end of argument. I can t roar, and the 
 strong lungs have it. But it s very ungen- 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 5 
 
 tlemanly and unhandsome. It s quite as 
 mean as grudging me the original twenty-five 
 cents for a decoration to my lamp-shade." 
 
 " Helena, I can t allow you to go on in 
 this way." 
 
 " You can t allow me ! As if I were go 
 ing to ask you to allow me ! I should sup 
 pose it was time you entered sufficiently into 
 the spirit of the age, Mark, to know that 
 wives nowadays are not slaves. They are 
 not allowed or disallowed. And they can 
 spend twenty-five cents without asking ; es 
 pecially if it s their own," added Mrs. Dun- 
 more, with sharp emphasis, her great blue 
 eyes sparkling in a way that great blue eyes 
 can on occasion. " Go, lie down, Sauveur !" 
 as the big St. Bernard, aware that something 
 was wrong, came and laid his nose on her 
 arm. 
 
 "Very well, then, Helena," said Mr. 
 Dunmore, with great severity ; " since 
 you drive me to it when it is your own." 
 
 "Really?" said the young woman, with a 
 severity quite as cold as his own. " How 
 long since my own income ceased to be mine ? 
 I don t think my poor father when he left 
 
6 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 me my little property ever had an idea that 
 any one was going to deny its being my own. 
 1 Free from marital control, he said," cried 
 Mrs. Dunmore, triumphantly. " Free from 
 marital control, " she repeated, with force. 
 " Does that mean that you, or that I, have 
 the spending of it ?" 
 
 " You, assuredly, Helena," said Mr. Dun- 
 more, with more calmness. " How many 
 times this year have you had the spending 
 of it already ?" 
 
 " I must say, Mr. Dunmore, I fail to un 
 derstand you." 
 
 "I will enlighten you. When you made 
 your Christmas presents on a scale entirely 
 incommensurate with our means, and I re 
 monstrated, you said you were going to pay 
 for them all yourself out of your January div 
 idends. But when your January dividends 
 came in, the bill for your new cloak came 
 also and took the whole sum." 
 
 " Most men pay for their wives cloaks 
 themselves," said Mrs. Dunmore, with some 
 bitterness. 
 
 "Not when their wives order four- hun 
 dred-dollar cloaks, and they can only afford 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 7 
 
 one -hundred -dollar ones without running 
 into debt." 
 
 " You have brought me up here into this 
 frigid zone of a climate, Mr. Dunmore, and 
 I certainly expected before I came to be 
 clothed sufficiently to meet the rigor of the 
 weather." 
 
 " You are," said her husband. " And you 
 were before you spent the whole of your 
 January dividends to pay for a seal -skin 
 cloak. However, that s neither here nor 
 there. It became necessary then, after the 
 system of genteel beggary in our civilization, 
 to make Laura Kerna a wedding present." 
 
 "We didn t have any wedding presents 
 ourselves, I suppose !" said the wife, wither- 
 ingly. 
 
 " And I thought one of the twelve ladles 
 that were given to us would do." 
 
 "The idea! So perfectly disgraceful! 
 Some men haven t any sentiment," address 
 ing the universe. 
 
 " And you insisted on nothing less than a 
 gold-mounted vinaigrette." 
 
 "Dear knows she ll need it, if all hus 
 bands are alike." 
 
8 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 " And you would pay for it out of your 
 January dividends," said her husband, not 
 noticing her interpolations. " But close upon 
 that came my birthday, and you wished me 
 to make myself a present of a new watch ; 
 and when I said it was impossible, you said 
 you would pay for it out of your dividend." 
 
 " If I ever heard of such unparalleled 
 
 meanness ! 
 
 " A little later, when we were getting a 
 fresh carpet for the drawing-room, and I 
 thought Brussels would do, and you declared 
 for Wilton, you assured me that you were 
 to pay for that out of your dividend." 
 
 " Well, if I couldn t carpet my own house, 
 I wouldn t twit my wife for doing it." 
 
 " You said the same about the India rug 
 you ordered home without consultation, at 
 two hundred and fifty dollars. It is a beauty, 
 of course ; I admit your taste ; it is soft as vel 
 vet, and colored with sunbeams. But I knew 
 if I paid for that I must go without paying 
 for something else ; and you said you would 
 pay for it yourself with your dividend." 
 
 " Pshaw !" 
 
 "You must remember that you wanted 
 
A SCARLET POPPY g 
 
 some moonstones, when they came into 
 fashion ; for luck, you said ; and about the 
 same time a tall piano-lamp ; and, not long 
 after, a big Limoges vase ; and in spite of 
 my reluctance " 
 
 " Reluctance !" 
 
 " You got them all, and charged them to 
 your dividend again." 
 
 " But, Mark" 
 
 " Pardon me ! The next thing that arose 
 was the necessity of educating that young 
 lad in art ; and as I didn t have that money 
 to spare, you drew the money from the 
 house-keeping fund, and said you would re 
 place it from your dividend. Then you 
 started to go down to the city and attend 
 the Friday afternoon concerts, for which 
 your ticket cost thirty-five dollars, and that 
 of a companion thirty-five more ; and when 
 you were snowed in on the train, in just such 
 a storm as this, if there ever was such a 
 storm before, and obliged to have a doctor, 
 and a set of bills ever so little ashamed, 
 perhaps, that your folly had brought about 
 such unlooked-for expense you said you 
 could settle all that with your dividend. 
 
10 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 How many times do you think you have 
 used up your dividend money already ? Do 
 you think, this March morning, there is 
 twenty-five dollars or twenty-five cents of it 
 left ? And don t you know that my one wish 
 in life is to keep out of debt, that if I am 
 called off suddenly there may be something 
 to take care of you with? you who spend 
 recklessly many times your own income 
 every year, and would mine if you could 
 get at it ! I shall make a will the next time 
 I go to town, Helena," said Mr. Dunmore 
 solemnly, " in which I shall put every dollar of 
 my property in trust ; for you are not fit to be 
 charged with a bank-note. Money melts out 
 of your hands like morning dew, and you may 
 be the most beautiful and winning woman 
 in the world, but in money matters you are 
 a child. You never go into a shop without 
 telling the dealer how cheap his goods are, 
 and asking him if he can t take a little more." 
 " I won t listen to another word you say," 
 cried Mrs. Helena, springing to her feet. 
 " I knew you were so careful as to be canny. 
 I never knew a person with Scotch blood in 
 him that wasn t. So proud of your Scotch 
 
A SCARLET POPPY n 
 
 blood as you are! But I didn t suppose 
 you looked askance at your own wife s doc 
 tor s bills. I ll pay them myself out of my 
 very next dividend, that I will ! I never 
 imagined you wanted me to stay stived up in 
 a prison-house, going without pleasure or 
 society. If it costs you so much more than 
 you can afford to keep me, I can go to my 
 aunt Potter s. And I will go, this very day." 
 
 " Hardly," said Mr. Dunmore, looking out 
 of the window at the storm, whose clouds 
 of flying snow hid even the great mountain 
 shapes from view. 
 
 " I don t know why the storm should stop 
 me. It isn t any colder than my husband s 
 heart," said Mrs. Dunmore. " And I d as 
 lief hear it now as hear you. It will be April 
 and spring to-morrow, and no storm to be 
 seen, but it will always be winter in your 
 heart. You can leave your money, that 
 you treasure so much more than you do 
 my happiness, where you please. I don t 
 want any of it, or anything else that belongs 
 to you. I wish I was dead and out of your 
 way ! You can keep it for your second wife 
 to spend, if she can get hold of it, which is 
 
12 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 more than I can do. I never want to look 
 upon your face again ! If there s anything 
 in the world detestable to me it s mean 
 ness and stinginess and parsimony and mi 
 serliness and And here, words failing 
 her and tears coming in their stead, Mrs. 
 Dunmore rushed from the room and sought 
 the seclusion of her bedchamber, where she 
 hid her head in the pillows and cried her 
 self into hysterics. And Mr. Dunmore, feel 
 ing that the house was far too hot to hold 
 him, strode into the hall, and put on his great 
 fur overcoat, and buckled the hood about his 
 ears, and slammed the door behind him, re 
 fusing to wait for the stout cob that usually 
 bore him, and going out afoot into a storm 
 that was no fiercer than the one raging with 
 in him at that moment. 
 
 A pretty sort of a home he had! his 
 thoughts ran. The hospitality of the tem 
 pest was gentleness beside it. A shrew and 
 a vixen and a spendthrift for a wife, who 
 cared nothing for him but what she could 
 get out of him, and made no acknowledgment 
 of that ; who scorned and flouted and fleered 
 him, had no regard for his feelings, called 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 13 
 
 him called him names ! What a fool he was 
 to submit to it ! Why didn t he send her 
 why didn t he send her back to her aunt Pot 
 ter s, and sell out, and clear out himself ? This 
 life he lived was it was no use saying what 
 it was ! It was the life to come, and he had 
 been damned into it ! He wished he had 
 never seen her face ! What an idiot a man 
 was to give up his peace, his liberty, his pleas 
 ure, his everything, for the sake of compan 
 ionship with a woman who thwarted him at 
 every turn, in his feelings, his wishes, his 
 will, till there was no peace in the house, and 
 a struggle with the wildest storm that ever 
 blew was rest, was relief from home and her ! 
 And in a white heat of angry commotion he 
 plunged along, he hardly knew and hardly 
 cared whither, although really bound for the 
 upper fields, in order to give some directions 
 to the shepherds of the great sheep farm he 
 carried on. And the wind roared above him 
 and about him unheeded as, with head bent 
 forward and hands clenched in his pockets, 
 he labored on ; and the snow whirled and fell 
 and rose again, and built up its fantastic 
 drifts on either side, and, occupied in his 
 
I 4 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 bitter musings, he saw and heard none 
 of it. 
 
 And none of it did Mrs. Helena hear or 
 see, with her head buried in her pillows, cry 
 ing now partly with pity of her own wretch 
 edness, partly in the subsidence of her anger 
 at she hardly knew what, and partly with the 
 unspent force of her nervous agitation. Oc 
 casionally she sat up and twisted the long 
 coil of her fallen hair, and enjoyed a sensa 
 tion as if she were in some manner wringing 
 her hands and tearing her hair. She called 
 herself the most miserable woman under the 
 sun, condemned to a living prison, bound to 
 a man who detested her, and whom she 
 yes, whom she detested ! A man ? A brute ! 
 Oh, why had she ever given herself up to 
 such a fate ? What was there she had seen 
 in him in the first place ? \Yhy hadn t she di 
 vined his sordid and tyrannical nature then ? 
 Why had she let herself be overcome by his 
 false promises, his smile, his face that used 
 to seem to her like the face of a god, and 
 now was that of a satyr yes, of a satyr ! A 
 great bluff wind - blown satyr ! How infa 
 mously he had talked to her about her divi- 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 15 
 
 dend ! He grudged her the clothes she put 
 on ; she was a burden to him, and he made 
 her feel it, and, quite unconscious of the un 
 commonly congenial feeling in this regard, 
 she wished she had never laid eyes on him. 
 It was a shame for a man to treat his wife 
 so ! And there was more crying and wring 
 ing of hands ; and then the great shoulder 
 of the gale came pushing against the house 
 so it startled her and made her shudder, 
 and she lay back silent a moment, and then 
 bunched the pillow about her ears, and in 
 five minutes, worn out with her temper and 
 her tantrum, was fast asleep. 
 
 And Mr. Dunmore, with the gale whistling 
 about his ears, ploughed his way along the 
 hillside to the upper farms, more to satisfy 
 himself that the sheep were all folded than 
 for anything else, now and then shaking the 
 snow from his shoulders as a shaggy dog 
 shakes off water-drops, and again bending his 
 head and working onward, the new snow 
 already ankle-deep and drifting wildly with 
 the wind that at every gust seemed to blow 
 more fiercely. At last he reached the little 
 house of the shepherds, all glowing with his 
 
16 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 successful struggle with the storm, and half 
 forgetful of the rage with which he at first 
 dashed into it ; quite forgetful before his 
 business with the shepherds was entirely fin 
 ished, having disburdened his mind of all 
 that had been weighing on it, feeling in a 
 somewhat forgiving mood towards his irate 
 little wife, who, after all, was not so much to 
 blame, he said to himself ; only a pretty wom 
 an a little spoiled, who liked to have pretty 
 things about her. He would go into town 
 himself to-morrow, and get her that Royal 
 Worcester she had been longing for, the 
 poor child ! Perhaps he had been too se 
 vere : it was the coffee strong coffee al 
 ways did fire up his nerves. A man was 
 a wretch to talk so to a woman, anyway. 
 And thus rambling on in his thoughts, 
 he took the path down the hill, hardly re 
 membering the tempest that hurtled round 
 him, until all at once he felt as if it were 
 making him its ral lying-point, and found that 
 it was all he could do, by summoning his 
 strength, to stand up against it, while it sift 
 ed its fine icy particles under his coat and 
 in about his neck and shoulders and ears in 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 17 
 
 a way to make him eager to get out of its 
 reach. No matter ; a storm on the last day 
 of March couldn t amount to much, even up 
 in these New Hampshire hills. It would 
 soon blow over. He would leave the ex 
 posed and winding highway, take the short 
 cut across the fields and down through the 
 sheltered piece of wood, and so get home 
 in time for lunch. He rather pictured Hel 
 ena to himself, as forgiving as he was, 
 dressed in her pretty tea -gown of green 
 plush and white and gold, waiting for him 
 at the head of a lunch-table set with espe 
 cial nicety. 
 
 But Mr. Dunmore made a mistake when 
 he left the open road. Let it wind about as it 
 would, it had its protected sides and places, 
 and at the end arrived. But these pathless 
 wastes of the open pastures, snowed over 
 and utterly unprotected, arrived nowhere. 
 Turning his back once or twice on some 
 broader pressure of the blast, he failed to 
 orient himself; he could not see a rod be 
 fore him for the driving snow ; he ought by 
 this time to be near the end, but there was 
 nothing of the little piece of wood to be seen 
 
IS A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 or guessed ; he attempted to go back and re 
 cover the main road ; he paused at length, a 
 mere atom in all the wide whirl and bluster 
 of the storm, uncertain if the way led to left 
 or right, before him or behind. He began 
 to feel some slight apprehension then. He 
 remembered all the dreadful stories he had 
 read of Highland shepherds and their sheep 
 in mountain snow-storms; and all at once he 
 saw that he, too, in the bitterest blowing gale 
 of the winter, had lost his way upon the hill. 
 Very cold and very tired, half-desperate too, 
 he thought a moment of sitting down to 
 rest. But that would never do, and he took 
 heart of grace and plodded and struggled 
 on, only succeeding in making sure that he 
 was going down the hill and not up, but not 
 at all sure that he was not skirting the hill 
 to arrive at the stream and the houseless 
 banks of the other side of the mountain ; not 
 at all sure either that in the dizzy blindness 
 of the snow the next step might not lead him 
 over some precipitous rock and out into noth 
 ingness. He paused to thrill at the thought, 
 and then he lurched on again. At any rate, 
 his only salvation lay in keeping in mo- 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 19 
 
 tion ; it was of no use to halloo ; although 
 he tried it once or twice, the gale blew his 
 voice back down his throat and made him 
 feel a more powerless mote than before, and 
 he plunged along conscious that he must 
 have wandered wide of the mark, and that 
 the day must be drawing to a close. Hel 
 ena, in her pretty gown at that pretty lunch 
 eon-table, began to fade out of his mental 
 view. She had waited for him, doubtless, 
 hoping he would come back in better hu 
 mor. She had forgiven him. She would be 
 thinking he was still in a rage with her. She 
 she might never know that he had for 
 given her. 
 
 For Mr. Dunmore was now acknowledg 
 ing to himself what he had only dimly and 
 unconsciously felt before, that it was doubt 
 ful if the night did not overtake him up here 
 in this pathless wilderness of snow and wind 
 and fury, and bring death to him upon its 
 wings. But not if he could help it. His 
 heart beat up strongly with his determina 
 tion, and he swung his arms and shook his 
 shoulders, and still waded downward through 
 the drifts. It was hard to move one foot be- 
 
20 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 fore the other in the heavy snow-fall ; hard 
 to breathe in the force of the gale ; impos 
 sible to hear anything but the resonance of 
 the great gusts through the thick sky ; im 
 possible to see before him, the light growing 
 less, not with the gale alone now, but with 
 the declining day. Night was coming on, 
 and he was lost in all the tumult of the 
 tempestuous elements. 
 
 Still he labored along. They were bitter 
 thoughts now in Mr. Dunmore s mind. He 
 must keep going. Helena would never know 
 Helena would always think and he so 
 young, so well, so strong, to die like a dog 
 of the cold like a beast on the plains. If 
 he could only find himself on level ground 
 once more ; if only the storm would cease 
 roaring; if a friendly light would shine out 
 anywhere ! How trivial here seemed all the 
 concerns about which he had vexed himself ! 
 What mere dust and ashes ! It wasn t possi 
 ble he was the man that had those undigni 
 fied, those cruel, words with his wife this 
 morning ! This morning ? Oh, it seemed a 
 year ago ! If he ever reached home again, 
 it would be another man ; he would not 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 21 
 
 suffer the winds of heaven to visit her too 
 roughly. Then the beads of cold sweat 
 broke out on him an instant to think that 
 possibly now he should never reach it. His 
 knees trembled ; his feet were like balls of 
 ice ; he moved them as if they belonged to 
 somebody else. Every few steps he stumbled 
 he fell and every time it was harder to 
 rise. At last, utterly helpless, he lay there, 
 numb, freezing, breathless, hardly con 
 scious, the storm whistling and screaming 
 over him, the drift covering him. A dull red 
 light swam across his sight ; yes, he thought 
 vaguely, the glow before his eyes of the 
 blood bursting upon his brain. And yet, he 
 thought again presently, life reviving with 
 in him, was that the way death by freezing 
 came ? This red glow, was it not possibly 
 some lantern, some lamp, with its little blaze 
 magnified by the driving of the snow ? If he 
 could halloo and make any one hear him 
 He tried again and again, and yet again; 
 but his voice fainted, and he fell back, 
 slowly losing consciousness of all things but 
 that red glow, as it shone and broke and 
 formed again under the shifting clouds of fly- 
 
22 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 ing flakes. How soft and rich its ruby 
 warmth, like the heart of some great flower 
 of some great poppy ! And then the truth 
 smote the wretched man, smote him with a 
 crueler blow than any smiting of the storm. 
 He was doomed, he was dying, he was freez 
 ing to death, two rods from his own door ! 
 
 Tired out with her temper and her tears, 
 Mrs. Helena slept for several hours the 
 sleep of those whose cause is just, her head 
 buried in the down, deaf to all the noises of 
 the outside world. When she woke at last 
 it was some stronger thrust of the turmoil 
 of the tempest that made her suddenly sit 
 up on the bed and shiver with an indefin 
 able terror. She hurriedly bathed her face 
 and smoothed her hair, and ran down-stairs 
 where the maids were, and the cats, and the 
 great St. Bernard dog, a need of some sort 
 of companionship overpowering her in this 
 war of the elements. 
 
 But the maids were busy, and Sauveur was 
 asleep, and the cat sat on the window-sill 
 watching the eddying snow in an uncanny 
 way, and the only thing to reassure her was 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 23 
 
 the portrait of her husband over the fire 
 place, the handsome, smiling, loving face, 
 the eager, tender eyes that seemed to follow 
 her. She looked away angrily, and then she 
 looked back in spite of herself, and then she 
 fell into her own low chair, and covered 
 her face with her hands, and tears began to 
 trickle through her fingers tears of lone- 
 someness, of down-heartedness, of yes, of 
 repentance, repentance that she could ever 
 have said what she had said that morning 
 to her husband. How kind he had always 
 been to her ! how indulgent ! how fond ! 
 And just because he had felt a little cap 
 tious and irritated she had insulted and out 
 raged him, and abused him in her thoughts 
 afterwards, and had let him go off in the 
 storm, thinking she never wanted to see his 
 face again. She had said yes, she had said 
 she never wanted to see his face again. 
 Oh, what if Fate took her at her word, and 
 she never did ? What sort of a thing would 
 life be to her without him ? What But she 
 could not let herself think such a thought. 
 She ran up-stairs and put on her pretty green 
 gown, and brushed a fresh curl into her yel- 
 
24 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 low locks, and picked some of her geraniums 
 to lay on the luncheon - table, and had the 
 fire brightened, and went to the piano and 
 began to play his favorite love -songs, and 
 when she ceased the luncheon-time had long 
 passed, and yet her husband had not come. 
 It was later than she had thought ; it was 
 wearing into the afternoon ; the gale was in 
 creasing. If it was like this up here among 
 the hills, what must it be down on the sea- 
 coast, with the sailors clinging to the icy 
 shrouds ? Ah, what must it be here to any 
 one out on the hills alone in these blowing 
 clouds of sleet and snow ? Her heart stood 
 still with the thought. Was Mark out yet ? 
 No ; he had only gone off in a pet ; he had 
 stayed out just to frighten her. Was it pos 
 sible that he could do so ? For a pause her 
 anger flashed up again ; and then with a 
 wild, stifled cry she began to walk the floor 
 like a wild woman. No; it was not possible. 
 Mark had always tried to save her from all 
 worriment and vexation. He would have 
 come back if he had not been hindered. He 
 never stayed angry an hour. He had gone 
 up the mountain to the shepherds, and he 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 25 
 
 had become bewildered and had lost his 
 way. 
 
 In a heart-beat now, Mrs. Dunmore had 
 the house alarmed, and the servants sent 
 out in all directions, only to return report 
 ing that it was out of the question to catch 
 the breath in the wind and snow, and that 
 Mr. Dunmore must long since have taken 
 shelter somewhere, for no man alive could 
 undertake to weather such a gale as this. 
 No man alive, Mrs. Dunmore kept repeating 
 then. Perhaps he was not alive ; perhaps 
 he had gone down under the stress of the 
 mighty blast, and the drifts had deepened 
 over him her husband, her darling, her 
 Mark ! She sat a little while looking into 
 the fire stupidly, while a thousand scenes of 
 their younger days started up before her 
 eyes summer mornings in the boat upon 
 the narrow, shadowy river ; winter evenings 
 in each other s arms ; long, slow drives 
 about the flowery country lanes ; strolls on 
 starry nights ; the love, the hope, the joy, 
 in those days when they were all in all 
 to one another, and wanted nothing more ; 
 and then she started and ran to the window 
 
26 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 and searched the storm, so thick and white 
 as to be impenetrable ; and suddenly now 
 so gray, so dark, in the quick falling of the 
 night, as to be full of horror. 
 
 Oh, to think that she, with her sharp 
 tongue, her evil temper, had shut her hus 
 band out into such a wild night as this ! 
 How wicked ! how infamous ! If he did not 
 come soon her heart would break. If she 
 could only put her arms round him once 
 again and beg him to forgive her ! 
 
 Sauveur came and stood with her, gazing 
 as wistfully into the storm, and whining soft 
 ly. And the maid lighted the lamp with the 
 red poppy shade upon it ; and then she could 
 see nothing but the flakes sweeping by the 
 pane, like sparks of fire ; and she sank on 
 her knees by the window, the dog beside her, 
 and knew and felt nothing but blackness. 
 
 Suddenly she felt the dog trembling 
 through all his great shaggy frame ; he sat 
 up, his ears pricked and alert, and then all 
 at once he sprang to the door with a single 
 bound and a sharp cry ; and she sprang after 
 him, calling the maids and the man, and 
 threw wide the door and rushed out, regard- 
 
A SCARLET POPPY 27 
 
 less of all things but the one, the others be 
 hind her, floundering, falling, without breath, 
 up again, on, till the dog s glad cry told the 
 story, and among them they had Mr. Dun- 
 more s shoulders up, and they dragged him 
 inside the gate and the porch, and shut hard 
 the door against the storm, and felt ready 
 and willing to faint, but knew there was no 
 time to do it in. 
 
 Mr. Dunmore had his breakfast in bed the 
 next morning, languid, but uninjured by so 
 much as a serious frost-bite, and feeling su 
 premely blest among his pillows, with the 
 fire crackling on the hearth, the flowers 
 blooming in the window, and the storm 
 still roaring on outside, while his wife fed 
 him with daintiest morsels, and Sauveur 
 now and then laid a caressing nose on the 
 coverlid. 
 
 u To think," she said, "that I ever could 
 have spoken so to you, my darling ! I must 
 have been out of my head. Oh, I will never 
 spend a cent again without consulting you 
 first, Mark dear !" 
 
 " You never spent a cent too much in all 
 your life, my precious !" he exclaimed. " Did 
 
28 A SCARLET POPPY 
 
 I say you did ? Some evil spirit took pos 
 session of me. It was never I 
 
 "Just think what you have suffered oh, 
 just think of it, dearest ! And all for the 
 sake of a red paper poppy ! I will go and 
 throw it into the fire this moment" 
 
 "You will do nothing of the kind," he 
 cried. " I never in all the world saw any 
 thing so beautiful as that red paper poppy. 
 It was a lucky day you bought it ; it was 
 my preserver and benefactor ; it gave me 
 strength to halloo and be heard. I mean to 
 treasure it all my life, and have it buried 
 with me at last." 
 
 " And with me too," she cried, falling on 
 his neck, to the danger of the breakfast 
 things ; " for we will be buried in one grave." 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 CERTAINLY it was a charming home, that 
 in which Mr. Pearmain had installed his 
 young wife : a stone cottage with mullioned 
 windows from floor to ceiling, with pointed 
 gables and divers roofs and vanes, and with 
 an infinitude of prairie-roses and Virginia- 
 creepers planted beside the walls, to grow 
 in the future till the house should be a bow 
 er. And inside it was what all good house 
 keepers called fairy- land. Here Mr. and 
 Mrs. Pearmain had given full scope to their 
 notions, whose name was legion ; not a bit 
 of paint in the house to be cleaned, no car 
 pets to secrete poison, but hard-wood, inlaid 
 floors and rugs, and then a conservatory 
 and grapery on a tiny scale, and closets with 
 out counting; while as for the kitchen, the 
 conveniences there were simply miraculous. 
 And when all this was done and inspected 
 
32 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 and occupied and enjoyed, it was no won 
 der that Mr. and Mrs. Pearmain looked 
 about for something else on which to ex 
 pend their whims and vagaries. Their way 
 of life was so good that it would have been 
 selfishness not to wish others to share it. 
 Little Harry Pearmain was exactly three 
 years old when they had fully decided to 
 convert to that way their next neighbor, but 
 lately arrived, a school-mate of Mrs. Pear- 
 main s who had married a dear old friend of 
 Mr. Pearmain s little Mrs. Morley, whose 
 black eyes had a strange sharp snap in 
 them when things displeased her. And it 
 was one morning when Mrs. Morley had 
 come over to profit by her friend s expe 
 rience in the matter of dainty needle-work 
 that the campaign began. 
 
 " I always meant, when I could have 
 things as I chose," said Mrs. Pearmain, as 
 they sat and sewed, " to order my table so 
 that not one ounce of flesh should ever sul 
 ly it. I don t proselyte my neighbors; be 
 cause I believe in individual liberty ; but 
 since you inquire, I will say that I ve tried 
 it long enough to feel sure, and as there 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 33 
 
 never has been a piece of meat cooked in 
 my house, so there never shall be !" and 
 she nodded her pretty head like a piece of 
 mechanism. 
 
 " But what does Mr. Pearmain say ?" 
 asked the other. 
 
 "Oh, he agrees about it, fortunately, so 
 there is no difficulty there. In fact, it was 
 Mr. Pearmain s remarks, before we mar 
 ried, that first led me to think seriously of 
 the subject. He always used to call it can 
 nibalism whenever the beef was cut and the 
 blood followed the knife. And I thought so 
 much of his opinion I began to turn the 
 matter over." 
 
 " Well, I declare ! I don t believe I shall 
 ever think so much of any man s opinion," 
 said Mrs. Morley. " And did Mr. Pear- 
 main s conviction really affect your appe 
 tite ? What an idea ! And you ceased eat 
 ing meat in consequence of Mr. Pearmain s 
 conviction ?" 
 
 " Well, in consequence of my own con 
 viction," said the priestess. " It grew dis 
 gusting to me. We boarded together, you 
 know, and when my plate came, and I be- 
 
34 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 gan to help myself to salt, Mr. Pearmain 
 would glance at it, and say, Dead flesh. " 
 
 " I should think that would have been 
 disgusting." 
 
 "I did feel vexed a little at first, but 
 presently I was saying the words to myself. 
 And presently I couldn t taste it at all." 
 
 " The idea !" said Mrs. Morley, hunting 
 for her lost needle. 
 
 "Oh, if you just run the matter over 
 yourself, you won t be so scornful, Teresa. 
 If you remember every time you take a bit 
 of mutton that you are eating death and cor 
 ruption " 
 
 " Well, I never !" said Mrs. Morley, catch 
 ing her breath. 
 
 " Why, only think of it !" said Mrs. Pear- 
 main, warming at her work. " How can you 
 expect anybody to be good that is constant 
 ly fed and nourished and kept alive on a 
 lower form of life ?" 
 
 " But, bless my heart," cried Mrs. Mor 
 ley, struggling up from under the avalanche 
 of words, " vegetables are a lower form of 
 life, and one must live on something." 
 
 "Vegetables are innocent life, at any 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 35 
 
 rate, with no vile propensities or impure 
 parts. And, moreover, we are half vege 
 tables ourselves." 
 
 " We ? Oh, what in the world do you 
 mean, Emily ?" exclaimed Mrs. Morley, in 
 a terrified manner, as if she had just re 
 ceived a revelation as to how fearfully she 
 was made. 
 
 "Certainly. Didn t you know that?" 
 said Mrs. Pearmain, with a superior air. 
 "The movements of our bodies that are 
 voluntary are animal ; those that are invol 
 untary are vegetable, such as the circula 
 tion, and all the processes that go on while 
 we sleep." 
 
 " Isn t it dreadful ?" gasped Mrs. Morley. 
 
 " Dreadful ? I think it s beautiful. It s 
 a sort of union in ourselves of the three 
 kingdoms vegetable, animal, and spiritual ; 
 for when the nerves come in and control 
 the great brute muscles " 
 
 " But, really, Emily " 
 
 " Now don t be silly, Teresa. A woman 
 of your power of mind has only to look at 
 the thing rationally to feel just as I do. 
 For, as I was saying, how can those people 
 
36 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 be good who receive all their increase from 
 a lower animal form, from brutal instincts 
 and actions how can they help receiving 
 those instincts and being tempted to those 
 actions, and becoming, under the guise of 
 men and women, a baser sort of animals 
 themselves?" 
 
 "I don t know perhaps so," said Mrs. 
 Morley, a little moved, it may be, by the 
 reference to her power of mind. 
 
 " There must be an inherent principle in 
 man that will rise whether or no, or else we 
 never should have gotten along as far as 
 we have. But it would be so much faster, 
 so much further, if it wasn t for this food 
 on which we sustain our growth. And 
 while we eat it, I don t see how the great 
 perfect race can ever come at all. It 
 never will come, Teresa," said Mrs. Pear- 
 main, resting on her elbow and looking 
 through her friend as if to the far- 
 distant future " it never will come till 
 people cease to eat flesh, and live on the 
 things that nature provides without pain 
 or slaughter. To think, every time you sit 
 down to table, that some creature which 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 37 
 
 enjoyed life has had to give it up for your 
 appetite ! That makes me sick !" said Mrs. 
 Pearmain. 
 
 " Well, it s very wonderful. I never 
 thought of it before. I really will look it 
 all over. But I don t see what there is 
 to live on I should starve on bread and 
 butter." 
 
 " Butter ! We only allow butter as a 
 rarity." 
 
 " Well, milk, then." 
 
 " Milk, indeed ! Do you suppose that, 
 while cows are kept in the unnatural condi 
 tion in which the milker keeps them, we 
 should drink their milk ? Oh no, indeed, 
 seldom milk, seldom cream, do we touch." 
 
 " My goodness ! Then you ve nothing 
 left but eggs." 
 
 " Well, once in a while an egg ; but 
 rarely. I never can get over feeling that 
 to break an egg is the murder of an inno 
 cent." 
 
 " Why, then, you can t have cake, or " 
 
 " What do you want that for ? unhealthy, 
 indigestible, poisonous no, we never 
 have it." 
 
38 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 " Nor doughnuts ?" 
 
 " Doughnuts !" with ineffable scorn. 
 
 " And you can t have pies ?" 
 
 " Never. But we have delicious sauces 
 apple, cranberry, grape, and all those." 
 
 " But what in wonder do you do when 
 you have company ?" 
 
 " Oh, you have no idea of how many de 
 licious ways there are in which the grains 
 can be cooked, or of how many delicious 
 forms of bread there are. You can get up 
 a perfectly harmonious dinner of the vari 
 ous vegetables that really leaves you noth 
 ing to desire ; mushrooms are as good as 
 steaks ; beans can be made to imitate roast 
 beef ; and with fruits and sauces, as I said, 
 there is enough of everything, and those 
 who want meat needn t come to us." 
 
 " I should die !" 
 
 " Not after you were used to it," said 
 Mrs. Pearmain, seriously. " You would 
 learn to like the new way and detest the 
 old." 
 
 " It would set free a great deal of money, 
 to be sure, to be used on other things," 
 mused Mrs. Morley. 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 39 
 
 " Oh, a great deal ! And then you would 
 be twice as healthy and strong, and your 
 children would be an improvement on you. 
 In fact, it is for the sake of Harry chiefly 
 that we are so strenuous about following 
 up the matter. It may not make a mighty 
 difference with me, beginning after twenty, 
 but I expect to see Harry I can t help 
 seeing Harry a very different person from 
 other people s boys. And if he could only 
 find and marry, when he grows up, a woman 
 who had been nourished on the same sort 
 of food just think, Teresa, what we might 
 expect of their children ! It would be the 
 beginning of a race that would conquer the 
 world, the beginning of that great perfect 
 race which will do such wonderful things as 
 pass our comprehension." 
 
 " What makes you talk so ecstatically of 
 that great perfect race, Emily ? How do 
 you know anything about it?" 
 
 "Why, don t geology and those things 
 show us that race after race of animals has 
 passed away, and only left its bones be 
 hind it ? And should we suppose that 
 man would be an exception to the general 
 
40 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 fate ? But as each race passes, something 
 takes its place a little superior to it, sprung 
 from it, perhaps ; and this great perfect race 
 is to take the place of man, sprung from 
 man and woman, but from the first man and 
 woman that ceased to eat death and cor 
 ruption. Oh, Teresa," said Mrs. Pearmain, 
 her cheeks and her eyes glowing, "if it 
 should be your child and mine !" 
 
 The last stroke did the work. Mrs. Mor- 
 ley, it might be said, threw up the sponge ; 
 she was a convert from that moment to 
 Mrs. Pearmain s theories. She went through 
 the house that very day ; she inquired into 
 everything ; she took notes of everything ; 
 she learned how to do everything ; and she 
 r went home at night all prepared to convert 
 Mr. Morley, and to give her Louise to be 
 married to Harry if it happened to be 
 Louise. 
 
 Poor Mr. Morley ! He loved his juicy 
 steak ; he rolled under his tongue the sweet 
 morsel of the oyster out of a side bone ; he 
 considered pepper-pot a dish fit for the gods ; 
 he was fond of broiled liver and a rasher of 
 bacon ; a cold pickled shoulder of pork he 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 41 
 
 thought good enough to invite the king to 
 partake. In fact, he was a murderous can 
 nibal, pure and simple, according to Mrs. 
 Pearmain s lights, who enjoyed his dinner 
 without being, as he thought himself and 
 as we think, so we are either exactly an 
 epicure or a glutton. 
 
 But it was of no use. When Mrs. Morley 
 unmasked her batteries that night, and went 
 over Mrs. Pearmain s plan of campaign, with 
 a whole added troop of exclamation and 
 emphasis and entreaty and embracing, he 
 knew he must surrender. He made a faint 
 resistance, but on the whole he didn t be 
 lieve it was to be a permanent affair with 
 his little Teresa ; he didn t like to deny her 
 anything just now either ; it was probably 
 only an incidental whim that would pass, 
 and so he yielded handsomely, and prom 
 ised that she should have her own way. 
 And then the idea of marrying his girl 
 to Pearmain s boy was a pleasant one : 
 Pearmain was rich and generous and 
 good, the friend of years. Yes, he would 
 promise. 
 
 " Kiss the book !" cried Mrs. Morley. 
 
42 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 "No, I won t do that," said he. "I ll 
 promise, and my word s as good as my 
 bond." 
 
 " Well, then, George, you ve as good as 
 taken an oath, and I expect you to keep it." 
 
 "I mean to keep it," he replied "at 
 least, till you release me." 
 
 " That will be forever, then." And she 
 plumed herself like Victory just lit upon a 
 banner. 
 
 But it was a dismal breakfast to Mr. Mor- 
 ley next day, when dry toast preceded oat 
 meal, and butterless baked potato without 
 salt brought up the rear ; a dismal dinner, 
 when watery squash and lumpy turnip were 
 the only variation of a table gorgeous with 
 carrots and beets and silver. " I ll give my 
 whole mind to it," said Mrs. Morley, cheer 
 fully. " Mrs. Pearmain will lend me all her 
 experience, and we shall have it very pala 
 table yet." But he hankered after the flesh- 
 pots. 
 
 It was shortly after the beginning of the 
 new regime that Miss Louise Morley came 
 into the world, and there was much rejoic 
 ing at the christening, although the christen- 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 43 
 
 ing-cake consisted of a sort of sweet bread 
 with raisins in it, of which Mr. Morley par 
 took so eagerly that he made himself ill, 
 and became presently so prostrate that the 
 doctor, being summoned, ordered per 
 haps at his whispered suggestion a course 
 of beef-tea. 
 
 Mr. Morley attended to that beef-tea him 
 self. He was not going to be put off with 
 slops and dissolved Liebig ; he had pounds 
 of the thick red steaks laid before him on 
 the slab in the kitchen, where he went, and 
 fairly gloated over its preparation. But his 
 rapture was of short duration. Mrs. Pear- 
 main, running over one day on an errand, 
 saw him whetting his knife, and flourishing 
 it like a savage, and tiptoed away to find 
 Mrs. Morley. " Oh, my dear," she said, 
 " you never can see the evil effects to bet 
 ter advantage. Look at him ! That is the 
 very way the primitive butchering people 
 whetted their knives over a victim s throat. 
 Oh, it is dreadful ! it makes me shudder. 
 It is like a mania for blood ; it is certainly 
 near insanity ; he will be murdering you in 
 your bed." 
 
44 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 " I am ashamed of you, Emily !" said Mrs. 
 Morley, tartly. " My George, indeed ! Why, 
 the doctor ordered it." 
 
 " But the doctor didn t order it forever. 
 The very ferocity shows he has had enough 
 of it. I should take it away and put him 
 on cream-of-tartar water directly. Don t be 
 offended, Teresa ; I am speaking for his 
 good and the children s. These men 
 they have to be managed ; Mr. Pearmain 
 is a singular exception." 
 
 Mrs. Morley did not allow her displeasure 
 to overcome her principles ; and when Mrs. 
 Pearmain brought her visit to a close, Mrs. 
 Morley brought the administration of beef- 
 tea to a close too. For Mr. Morley s inten 
 tion being to be as good as his word, it 
 needed only a little argument and some 
 tears to convince him that the beef-tea was 
 a breach of contract. 
 
 It would be hard to tell what Mr. Morley 
 suffered in going about his business in town 
 from day to day for many a month there 
 after. The sight of the wild-duck, hanging, 
 with his wide wings and brilliant breast, at 
 a poulterer s door, almost broke his heart ; 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 45 
 
 the men who came up out of the victuallers 
 cellars, wiping their mouths, excited in him 
 a feeling akin to hate ; and he had to skip 
 by the kitchens of the Revere House and 
 the Tremont so rapidly, in order to escape 
 the tempting smells which they cast forth, 
 that finally he altogether eschewed Bull 
 finch Street, and every other that command 
 ed a restaurant kitchen. For Mr. Morley s 
 particular vanity, as you know, was that he 
 was a man of his word. 
 
 Every once in a while Mr. Morley made 
 a feeble remonstrance, futile as feeble ; for 
 Mrs. Morley had the whole thing pat now, 
 and was, moreover, a woman with whom it 
 was idle to argue, for when obliged to 
 abandon her position logically, she always 
 did physically also, and either banged out 
 of the room, or else came round where he 
 sat, put an arm about his neck, and if kiss 
 es wouldn t stop his mouth, stopped it, to 
 the accompaniment of much laughing and 
 teasing meanwhile, with his handkerchief. 
 
 " A devilish pretty breakfast !" said Mr. 
 Morley once, pushing back his plate in a 
 pet. " Pea-nuts !" 
 
46 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 " I don t complain of pea-nuts, George," 
 said Mrs. Morley. " On the contrary, I am 
 thankful for them. They re sweet and sound 
 and well-baked ; there are plenty of them. 
 I am sure they are a very poetical food ; 
 and then they re a national one ; we can 
 always think, you know, when we eat pea 
 nuts, that we are encouraging the poor freed- 
 men down in North Carolina." 
 
 " Oh, hang the freedmen !" groaned Mr. 
 Morley. " How do you expect me to go in 
 and out of the city every day on such food 
 as this ? I ll have no strength left in a year 
 living on husks." 
 
 "Look at those oxen, George, dragging 
 that immense load after them. There s 
 strength and it all comes from husks." 
 
 " I m not an ox !" roared Mr. Morley. 
 
 " No? Anybody d say you were a Bull 
 of Bashan." 
 
 " Mrs. Morley, can t you apply a little 
 reason 
 
 " Not a scrap. Not now. You know this 
 is a subject on which I don t want conver 
 sation before Louise," as that little dam 
 sel demanded her groats, and looked with 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 47 
 
 wondering eyes from one to the other. " I 
 don t want her ever to hear her diet called 
 in question." 
 
 "Me likes me s bwekus," said Miss 
 Louie, with some comprehension of the 
 coil. 
 
 " It s more than I do," muttered her 
 father. 
 
 " Take some of Louie s groats, then. Like 
 them, precious?" 
 
 " Berry mush," said Louie, with some 
 point, and pushing the dish towards her 
 father, with a dim idea that her mother was 
 abusing him. 
 
 " I really can t understand what the dif 
 ference is between eating these oats and 
 eating the flesh of the animal that is made 
 out of these oats." 
 
 " A horse s flesh, for instance. But you 
 wouldn t eat that if it was set before 
 you." 
 
 "I don t know that I shouldn t," said 
 Mr. Morley, grimly. " People who are 
 starving eat anything. People wrecked and 
 on a raft eat each other," said he, looking 
 at his wife as if it were not impossible he 
 
48 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 should eat her. " Sometimes," said Mr. 
 Morley, " I feel dangerous." 
 
 " A depraved nature," said Mrs. Morley. 
 " See what flesh has done for you," while 
 he gave a glance at Louie that might have 
 made a weaker woman shudder. 
 
 " She s fat, isn t she ?" said Mr. Morley, 
 whose mind really seemed now to run on 
 morbid things, and with the air of one who 
 smacks his lips. And then, as he caught 
 the chubby hand and carried it to his 
 lips, Mrs. Morley found herself watching 
 him with a breathless scrutiny for it 
 really crossed her mind that Mrs. Pear- 
 main might be right, and Mr. Morley s 
 wits might be a little wandering until 
 he had kissed the little dimpled fist and 
 laid it down again. "For my part," said 
 he, " if I were to have a plate of roast veal 
 set before me (and I used to despise it) 
 roast veal, brown, and swimming in gravy 
 swimming in gravy," he repeated, unctu 
 ously I don t think I should eat it like a 
 civilized being I ve left off being a civil 
 ized being, eating nuts and prunes and 
 things that don t require any civilization : 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 49 
 
 a savage never needed to reach the boiling- 
 point to eat them I should put my face 
 down and wallow in it, and eat it like a 
 dog." 
 
 And then Mrs. Morley snatched Louie, 
 and ran out of the room in virtuous wrath. 
 
 Unhappy Mrs. Morley ! The path of vir 
 tue was a thorny one, but she persevered 
 in it even with bleeding feet. And if she 
 was not ready with an answer, she always 
 had what her husband called her knock 
 down argument of leaving the room. And 
 she had one last resort, better than the 
 others, which she used at such times as 
 those when Mr. Morley, recurring to the 
 charge, wanted her to see that you might 
 scatter pulverized marble over a soil for 
 ever and do it no good ; but if you scattered 
 the pulverized bones of beasts there the 
 harvest became trebled, plainly showing 
 that matter which had passed through a 
 form of organized life was superior to that 
 which hadn t, and that inasmuch as ani 
 mals were higher in the scale of organized 
 life than vegetables, the grain that was con 
 verted into beef was nobler food than the 
 
50 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 grain that had never known that higher 
 form, and so Then Mrs. Morley had 
 ready the best answer of all, and it con 
 sisted in simply maintaining silence so rig 
 orously that nothing short of thumbscrews 
 could extract a syllable from her, while she 
 looked the serene embodiment of pretty 
 scorn. 
 
 But Nature will take her revenges, and in 
 her own way. One night Mr. Morley did 
 not return from town. Mrs. Morley sent 
 the carriage to every train ; it came back 
 with nothing but the Skye sitting up on the 
 seat erect as a shako. Mrs. Morley sent one 
 servant up to the Pearmains , and another 
 over to the Farwells 1 they knew nothing 
 of Mr. Morley. She could learn nothing 
 from the train hands ; the gentlemen going 
 up and down every day had not seen Mr. 
 Morley. She telegraphed to the town sta 
 tion with no better result ; she telegraphed 
 to the counting-room, and received no reply 
 at all. It had never happened before. She 
 was wild with alarm ; lights were dancing 
 about the house till cock-crow ; she walked 
 the floors all night. Mr. Morley had fallen 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 51 
 
 unnoticed in the dark between the cars, she 
 was sure, and train after train had rolled 
 over his mangled remains, and her mind 
 could not fix him in any single spot, so 
 great an extent of surface was he covering. 
 Or else he had been delayed in the count 
 ing-room till dusk, and had been garroted 
 on his way to the station, and robbed 
 and murdered and tossed up an alleyway. 
 Or perhaps he had fallen and broken a leg, 
 and, tortured with pain, lay in the black 
 street at the mercy of passing wheels. 
 Could it be possible that Mr. Morley had 
 tired of her and her whims, and had left for 
 parts unknown ? Had Mr. Morley s fancy 
 ever strayed from little Louie s mother? 
 She could not say ; for the man that hank 
 ered after butcher s meat as he did was 
 proof against no temptation. And yet 
 her George as he did hanker, how s-he 
 had made him suffer ! If she only had 
 him there, she would cook the reddest beef 
 in the servants larder for him with her own 
 hands ! In a wild whirl her fears and fan 
 cies, her indignation and affection, chased 
 each other up and down in her mind till 
 
52 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 day broke. And then, by the common ac 
 cident of ill-luck, there was an informal 
 conclave of the neighbors at the front gate, 
 and Mr. Pearmain, going in, volunteered a 
 journey to town in search of Mr. Morley, 
 and was welcomed by the wretched wife 
 with bursting tears. " If I only knew," 
 she sobbed, "whether he is dead or alive, 
 I could endure it." 
 
 " There is no need of any alarm of that 
 sort, Teresa," said Mrs. Pearmain, who had 
 come down early. " Anybody without much 
 moral force is sure to be a backslider. Mr. 
 Morley has merely been eating meat, and is 
 ashamed to face you." 
 
 It was too true at least the first part of 
 the statement ; the second part was a work 
 of imagination : Mr. Morley would have been 
 only too glad to face his wife, for, stretched 
 on a bed of sickness, and tossing with pain 
 and fever, his wife s presence would have 
 been like cold water to his burning lips. 
 He had indeed fallen from grace. On his 
 way to the station a friend a long-unseen 
 friend, worse than any garroter had begged 
 him to dine with him; he had listened, 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 53 
 
 longed, hesitated, yielded ; he could at any 
 rate enjoy his friend s society, if he could 
 not dine, and could return to Teresa by a 
 later train. Vain thought ! When that mul 
 ligatawny soup steamed in its tureen, when 
 that striped bass in its port-wine sauce lift 
 ed its handsome side, when that breast of a 
 mongrel duck saluted his famished eyes, 
 when that single sip of Chateau Yquem 
 made him think the world well lost, Mr. 
 Morley fell. Four hours of delicious ban 
 queting; twenty-four hours of dust and ash 
 es. The stomach so long used to husks 
 spurned the rich offering of blood and gra 
 vies, sauces and condiments ; and no drunk 
 ard after a debauch ever suffered in body 
 and in soul what Mr. Morley was suffering 
 after this not too luxurious good square meal. 
 Mrs. Morley buried her head in her hus 
 band s bosom when Mr. Pearmain, with the 
 kindliness of a man and the severity of a 
 regicide, having carried her to the place next 
 day, closed the door upon the interview 
 and surely we cannot do less than Mr. Pear- 
 main did. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Morley ! It is to be hoped 
 
54 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 that her husband promised better fashions. 
 But on what was she to rely ? On his word? 
 A broken reed and he had broken it. 
 Poor Mr. Morley ! He was thoroughly 
 wretched. He went about with a craven 
 air, conscious of suspicion. What is life 
 without respect? And he knew that his 
 wife s respect was doubtful, that the Pear- 
 mains was not at all doubtful, and felt 
 that even little Louie might learn to de 
 spise him. And, meantime, all the neigh 
 bors, aware that something very much out 
 of the way had taken place and had been 
 hushed up, regarded him as the culprit of 
 a veritable escapade, of some vague and 
 awful departure from rectitude, and looked 
 upon this quiet, sober, steady citizen, who 
 paid his taxes, went to church on Sundays, 
 voted the right ticket, and never did any 
 thing very wrong in his life except when 
 he gave his wife the trusteeship of his 
 diet as little other than a regular Don 
 Juan. 
 
 Really one cannot help thinking that it 
 was too bad of Mr. Morley. He had prom 
 ised his wife, and lulled her into false se- 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 55 
 
 curity, declaring that his word was as good 
 as his bond ; and he was a business man, 
 and knew what his bond meant. More 
 over, he knew that his wife had grown to 
 have the affair very much at heart, being, 
 like all converts, wonderfully bigoted, and 
 convinced that it was a matter of life and 
 death. " Why do you worry so over it, 
 Teresa ?" asked Mrs. Pearmain once. "You 
 have established your own and Louie s hab 
 its. There is no likelihood of your failing 
 for yourself, or of your not securing her 
 great destiny for her yes, her great destiny. 
 And why not let him return to his idols ?" 
 
 " My George ! oh, Emily, how can I ? I 
 had rather go with him. What satisfaction 
 to me is it to be any better than he is ? I 
 want his blood to be pure, his life long. I 
 want him to rise with me, and if all this is 
 to separate us and make us a different race 
 at last, I will have fried pork on my table 
 every day, and eat it too ! I wish I had 
 never heard a word about it all ! I don t 
 see that it makes us a bit better. George 
 and I used to agree about everything, and 
 now we quarrel about everything !" 
 
56 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 Evidently indignation was not the weapon 
 with which to meet this outbreak, and Mrs. 
 Pearmain wearily went over all her fantas 
 tic premises and logical sequences till she 
 had at length triumphantly welded the 
 chains afresh on Mrs. Morley s reason, and 
 Mr. Morley s oesophagus. 
 
 Of course, while all these agitations went 
 on, time went on as well, and Harry Pear- 
 main and Louie Morley were not standing 
 still : their childhood was passing too. They 
 were really beautiful children, and whether 
 or not animal diet is good for the rest of us, 
 their bright eyes, round limbs, and rosy 
 cheeks, their boundless grace and happy 
 natures, showed that the opposite diet was 
 good for them. But then, on the other 
 hand, nobody could dispute the fact that 
 little Fanny Farwell s cheeks were just as 
 rosy, her pretty flesh as sweet, her grace as 
 airy ; and Fanny had been fed on the rich 
 est of steaks and the fattest of oysters ever 
 since she had cut her teeth. They were 
 the three best friends in the world, and the 
 only drawback to the felicity of certain of 
 the parents was, that Harry always per- 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 57 
 
 sisted in calling Fanny his little wife, and 
 Louie his dear sister, although it is uncer 
 tain if he were stimulated to that nomencla 
 ture by the gibraltars and the silver pieces 
 that Mr. Morley now invariably bestowed 
 upon him whenever he heard it. Sister or 
 wife in the future, they were exceedingly 
 affectionate in the present ; they ran across 
 the grounds to each other with their games 
 and their secrets, and Louie was as much 
 at home in Harry s house as Harry was in 
 hers ; and Mrs. Pearmain used to look ex- 
 ultingly at Louie as upon her especial work, 
 portray the future to herself, and rejoice 
 over a daughter-in-law after her own heart. 
 Meantime Mrs. Farwell had some thoughts 
 of her own, the character of which may be 
 known by the pitiful way hi which she used 
 to smooth Fanny s sunshiny curls as she 
 remarked to her husband upon the incon 
 veniences attending the preparation of two 
 different tables, that it was a pity if what 
 was good enough for our grandparents 
 wasn t good enough for our grandchildren, 
 that, after all, women were nothing but the 
 slaves of men s caprices, and that the whole 
 
58 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 of these new-fangled reformatory notions 
 had not succeeded in making Louie Morley 
 half so pretty as her Fanny : though when 
 she had had her say, it is not impossible 
 that the complacent sparkle in her eye as 
 she now and then overlooked the Pear- 
 main property was due to the consideration 
 that it was her Fanny who might one day 
 queen it over that fair demesne. Mrs. Far- 
 well, however, if she pondered these things 
 in her heart, kept them there so well that 
 it never entered the heads of the other 
 two mothers that any power could possibly 
 arrange matters differently from the way 
 in which they had arranged them them 
 selves. So the three happy things grew up 
 together, the girls skating with the boy 
 in winter, and Bird-nesting with him in 
 summer, the boy playing house with them, 
 doing their examples and threading their 
 needles at times, astonishing them with his 
 daring feats in riding and shooting and 
 wrestling, while Louie s great black eyes 
 and brilliant colors gave her a certain 
 prominence in their counsels, and her dash 
 ing courage made her assimilate most to 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 59 
 
 the boy s ways, and Fanny s tenderness 
 and timidity and soft sweetness moved his 
 heart in quite another fashion. They were 
 happy years to the children ; they were 
 years of apparent contentment with the 
 Pearmairxs ; they were years of a perpetual 
 and open struggle with the Morleys. If 
 Mr. Morley missed a train, or was delayed 
 by conversation at the station, if he were 
 late in returning from town-meeting or from 
 the lodge, Mrs. Morley s nerves began to 
 twitter and her heart to flutter; now he 
 comes, and now he doesn t come ; this foot 
 fall was his till it went by, this one surely 
 was, and her heart beat like a forge, and 
 fell with a mighty blow at the disappoint 
 ment. " It is killing me, I know it is," she 
 would say to herself. " All this hope and 
 fear and doubt and worry keep my pulses 
 going so that I shall have a dreadful heart- 
 disease fastened upon me. It really does 
 not seem as if the good our plan may do 
 outweighs the evil it does do." And then 
 she would take her work and run up to 
 Mrs. Pearmain s for some words to forti 
 fy her. Mrs. Pearmain always had them. 
 
60 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 More than once she had intimated that 
 that was her branch of the business, and 
 had even admitted that the person who 
 furnished all the ideas ought not to be ex 
 pected to furnish practice too, like those 
 old-fashioned temperance lecturers who 
 aroused their energies with a good nip 
 of brandy before converting their audience 
 to do away with brandy altogether. 
 
 " Never mind, never mind, Emily," she 
 would say. " It is worth any amount of 
 heart-ache. It isn t that it will so much 
 benefit you and me it would do little hurt 
 to our plan, I suppose, if we took our 
 bone in our cupboard but our example 
 is necessary to keep the children at the 
 mark." 
 
 " I don t know about that," said Mrs. 
 Morley. " Length of days is as desirable 
 for us as for the children ; and when we dis 
 card Death from our diet, he has to stop 
 long enough to seek some other approach, 
 at any rate." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Pearmain, " that is true. 
 I feel as if these children might acquire 
 immortality at least return to such age 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 6l 
 
 as Melchizedek s and Methuselah s. And 
 just think what work might be accom 
 plished in such lifetimes as that will bring 
 about ! Now a person no sooner knows 
 how to handle his talent, his inventive skill, 
 or his learning, than off he goes, snuffed out 
 like a candle ; but then the man who invents 
 a spring for a railroad car at thirty, at three 
 hundred will be ballasting a road to the 
 moon. What a period it will be after a few 
 such generations ! There will be no such 
 thing as typhoids and diphtherias and all 
 that ilk ; we shall have killed off the plants 
 that nourish the germs of parasitical dis 
 ease ; the organs of our bodies, no longer 
 clogged with foul matter, will run on undis 
 turbed indefinitely ; the reducing of the tem 
 perature of the blood and abstracting the 
 stimulus of strong flesh will abolish another 
 class of disease and all the hereditary hor 
 rors that spring from it ; and I can t see 
 that there will be anything but sudden acci 
 dent to stop the machine any more than to 
 stop a planet." 
 
 " Well, that is for them, not for us. They 
 will never give us a thought, nor dream of 
 
62 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 all our trouble and struggle to achieve it for 
 them. They will only despise us as we do 
 the wretches who sawed human bones with 
 flint for the sake of the marrow." 
 
 " I think such a race will have no room 
 for contempt. They will pity us with every 
 fresh gain. Why, Teresa, I can even think 
 the time may come when there will be no 
 eating at all, but science will have learned 
 the required elements of food, the nitrates 
 and phosphates and all that, and supply 
 them to us in gaseous shape, great reser 
 voirs feeding our houses through pipes : we 
 will open the tubes in the dining-room, and 
 sit a certain length of time together there, 
 talking gayly, stimulated by the gas we are 
 all breathing together, of which the system 
 will take only what it needs, and then go 
 our ways again without soil, grease, or trou 
 ble." 
 
 " But, goodness, Emily, our teeth, our 
 stomachs !" 
 
 " Well, teeth are useful in various ways. 
 And as for our stomachs, they may be 
 turned to the secretion of now don t you 
 laugh at me, Teresa I have really read a 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 63 
 
 paper about it to the secretion of wing 
 material " 
 
 " Wings !" 
 
 " Yes, wings why not ? If the first fish 
 that ever dreamed of being a bird had seen 
 a penguin with his flippers, transmigrating 
 fins, he wouldn t have thought himself vis 
 ionary. But being determined to be a bird, 
 he became a penguin ; and some penguin 
 probably determined upon becoming an 
 eagle. We only have to be determined, 
 Teresa, and we can do anything in time 
 allowing, you know, that the eternal years 
 of God are ours to work in." 
 
 " We can determine upon being angels," 
 said Mrs. Morley, slyly. 
 
 " And become so in time. How do you 
 suppose the bodily idea of angels arose, if 
 not from the forefeeling of those wings ? It 
 isn t for you and me, Teresa, but it is for 
 Harry s and Louie s descendants to have as 
 fine 
 
 Sustaining wings of skyey grain, 
 Orange and azure deepening into gold, 
 
 as any angel of them all." 
 
64 HEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 " It will be very awkward for dress-mak 
 ers," said Mrs. Morley, her needle on her 
 lip, and rather too well accustomed to won 
 ders from her friend s lips for much surprise. 
 
 " On the contrary, it will simplify dress 
 making." 
 
 " But, Emily, it will take more than our 
 Harry and Louie to bring all this about. 
 Their children will have to marry among 
 the flesh-eaters, and all our work goes for 
 nothing." 
 
 " I know it. And that perplexes me a 
 great deal. Really it doesn t seem right to 
 throw up the matter for that. Still it was 
 an awful oversight. Sometimes it almost 
 reconciles me to the bouillon and chops that 
 Dr. Bonnamy ordered last fall." 
 
 " Last fall ?" 
 
 " When I grew so poorly from eating the 
 lemons, you know." 
 
 " Oh yes, to keep your bones " 
 
 " From turning to chalk. I went too far. 
 Oh, if we could only live up to our theories!" 
 said Mrs. Pearmain, with a sigh. 
 
 "I can, and I will," cried Mrs. Morley. 
 " And George Morley must." 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 65 
 
 " Now if we had only found two other 
 mothers to begin life as we did, we should 
 have been quite secure," said Mrs. Pear- 
 main, reflectively. " Then there would have 
 been no need of abandoning our experi 
 ment." 
 
 " Abandoning ! Who talks of abandon 
 ing?" cried Mrs. Morley, with snapping 
 eyes. " If it is right to do, I shall do it ir 
 respective of the possibilities of Harry s and 
 Louie s descendants." 
 
 " But it is for them we are doing it. And 
 all that wars against us is appetite no, not 
 even appetite, but the mere sense of taste. 
 Why in the world cannot science take up 
 the thing, and invent flavors for us, so that 
 with a few drops of this extract we can give 
 the flavor of roast fowl to this vegetable, 
 with a few drops of that turn our porridge 
 into turtle-soup, and with another get all 
 the satisfaction out of a biscuit that we 
 should out of a chop ? But no," said Mrs. 
 Pearmain, wearily, " it never will, and I for 
 one am almost tired of going against the 
 stream, when all our work is to end like 
 those rivers which are lost upon the desert." 
 s 
 
66 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 Then it was Mrs. Morley s turn to exhort, 
 to assure her friend she had been over 
 worked, and was morbid, and must have a 
 dish of strong gruel made immediately, and 
 must stimulate herself with some cress 
 and onion and tomato-salad, and presently 
 must go away from home on a little visit. 
 " Change of scene to us is like change of 
 food to others," said Mrs. Morley, and Mrs. 
 Pearmain thought there was a great deal of 
 wisdom in what her friend said. And so 
 Mrs. Pearmain went away to a water-cure, 
 where, as the authorities could not find any 
 thing the matter with her back, they began 
 to concern themselves about her brain, upon 
 which she returned home in high dudgeon. 
 
 She had been gone just long enough. A 
 great deal of mischief can be accomplished 
 in three months when people are seventeen 
 or eighteen years old between which years 
 Louie now hyng ; and Mrs. Morley s atten 
 tion had been called off by a series of ter 
 giversations on Mr. Morley s part that had 
 threatened not only to make her a widow, 
 but to destroy her system of operations. 
 Her own nerves had been badly shattered 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 67 
 
 by his behavior, and by the impossibility of 
 knowing her fate from dinner to dinner, and 
 subsequently by the long watching and wait 
 ing that his illness devolved upon her when 
 indulgence in corned pork and cabbage 
 at a restaurant had produced an inflam 
 mation of the stomach that nearly proved 
 fatal to him. On his recovery a demon of 
 hunger had seemed to be gnawing at Mr. 
 Morley s vitals, and all the fancy grits and 
 groats in the market did not meet his de 
 mand. Mr. Morley no sooner returned to 
 business than a porter-house steak learned 
 to expect him on the noon of every day. 
 
 But you may be sure that this was very 
 mortifying to Mr. Morley. " Skulking round 
 a corner like a lean dog for his bone," as 
 he used to grumble, was enough to make a 
 sneak of any man, and he had always been 
 proud of his uprightness. The consciousness 
 that he was sacrificing his birthright for 
 a mess of pottage made him exceedingly 
 morose ; and, convicted of his own derelic 
 tion, he was daily and hourly trying to find 
 some fault in Mrs. Morley that should bal 
 ance it, till life became little but crimination 
 
68 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 and recrimination in the household where it 
 had been expected to bring about the millen 
 nium. Not in all this time being able to sum 
 mon the courage to fight it out with his wife, 
 he was every now and then swearing off 
 again, every now and then suffering a relapse, 
 making himself a martyr to dyspepsia and 
 remorse ; and, forgetting all old ties, he was 
 encouraging something like hatred of the 
 Pearmains, with every pang that came from 
 yielding the right, from abandoning the pleas 
 ant, or from indigestion. Good Mr. Pear- 
 main went on his patient, plodding way with 
 out giving Mr. Morley and his struggles a 
 second thought; but Mr. Morley, in turn, 
 never gave a second thought to the atmos 
 phere of conciliation that of late years had 
 seemed to grow up about Mrs. Pearmain s 
 manners. Things were imbittered for him, 
 too, by the knowledge that the world had 
 so well prospered with him that he was fully 
 able to gratify his wishes, but with all his 
 good luck and good bank account was 
 obliged to live, on prison fare. He lived, 
 though, only in the hope of one day break 
 ing his bonds; and the thought that his 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 69 
 
 darling girl was being reared to belong to 
 anything belonging to the Pearmains grew 
 daily more obnoxious to him. 
 
 Mrs. Morley, however, had but a slight 
 knowledge of what went on in the little cos 
 mos of her husband s emotions ; she had no 
 doubt that he broke faith with her frequently 
 in the matter of his diet ; she used to make 
 scornful observations as to the freedom of 
 a man to do wrong unobserved, but she had 
 no idea to what extent that faith was broken, 
 and only once in a while dimly felt herself 
 trembling on the edge of a rebellion before 
 whose outbreak she would go under. She 
 was not at all happy, only triumphantly 
 right, and she nailed her colors to the 
 mast, and swept bravely forward. 
 
 Mr. Morley had little pleasure at home 
 in those years ; somehow all conversation led 
 to the one theme, as all roads lead to Rome. 
 He found hardly any other satisfaction than 
 in walking with Louie in the woods, or else 
 taking his book on the windy upland of the 
 hill behind the two estates of Pearmain and 
 Morley, and in dreaming his life away in the 
 sun, now and then bursting out of calm repose 
 
70 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 into a storm of expletives that must have 
 startled the ground-mice and the birds, as he 
 thought of the pleasure he might have taken 
 with his dear little Teresa "if that Pear- 
 main woman had never fallen foul of her." 
 
 Once, just as he was relapsing into quiet 
 after such a burst, an arm stole round 
 his neck, and a soft dimpled brown hand, 
 with a big pearl on it, laid itself over his 
 mouth. "Aren t you ashamed, you dear 
 profane Pa Morley ?" cried Louie, and her 
 laughing face came round in front till the 
 great black eyes looked into his little gray 
 ones. " Where do you expect to die when 
 you go to ? What makes you swear so, sit 
 ting up here in the sun ? Is it some tender 
 reminiscence connected with a beef-bone? 
 Listen ! I m going to tell you a great secret. 
 Do you know, I think turtle-soup is almost 
 as good as mock-turtle !" 
 
 "Louie !" he gasped. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," she said, with the gayest 
 sort of a mischievous laugh, pulling herself 
 round by the sod to her father s side. " I 
 mentioned that to show you how high up I 
 am in the graduating class. Turtle -soup 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 71 
 
 and terrapin are like a degree cum summd 
 laudfr in the comestible line. I should like 
 mutton-broth and gumbo every day when I 
 didn t have oyster-stew or chowder." 
 
 It is true that in the instant, despite his 
 own wishes, Mr. Morley recoiled as from 
 a cockatrice inadvertently hatched in his 
 bosom. 
 
 " Now, Pa Morley," whimpered the sweet 
 voice, in distress, " as if you weren t really 
 glad of it !" 
 
 " But but, my dear" 
 
 "Oh, now stop, please. I ll tell you all 
 about it. And it isn t our fault at all. Ma 
 drove us to it." 
 
 "Our?" 
 
 "Well, yes, Harry s or mine. When we 
 found out what ma and Mrs. Pearmain were 
 after How would you like it, I want to 
 know, Pa Morley," she suddenly cried, " to 
 have folks manoeuvring about you in that 
 way; to be set apart from everybody else 
 in the world in that indelicate, indecent 
 way ; to be talked over as the the 
 the beginner of a great future perfect 
 race" 
 
72 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 " It s nonsense ! it s nonsense !" cried Mr. 
 Morley, springing to his feet. 
 
 "Now, pa, you just be quiet. I am. And 
 I m the party most directly concerned," and 
 she coaxed him down beside her again. " I 
 don t care anything about that great future 
 race. This race is good enough for me. And 
 I think ma and Mrs. Pearmain might be 
 ashamed of themselves. And so does Harry." 
 
 " What ! you ve talked it over ?" 
 
 " We ve heard them talking it over oh, 
 times ! And, pa dear, now don t you go to 
 being cross ; it s of no sort of use to speak 
 to them about it ; and and the fact is, I 
 like Harry very much indeed, very much, 
 and so does he like me, but there s some 
 body I like worlds, worlds, worlds better." 
 
 "Oh, there is, is there?" And her fa 
 ther caught her shoulders in his two hands, 
 and held her at arm s-length till the face 
 drooped and the eyes veiled themselves, and 
 the little brazen thing was blushing and half 
 crying. " And I know who it is !" he cried, 
 releasing his hold and clasping the pretty 
 head all at once into his breast, to the great 
 damage of crimps and starch. "You don t 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 73 
 
 suppose I ve seen Dr. Bonnamy s gig wait 
 ing round these lanes so long for noth 
 ing?" 
 
 "You don t care, do you, pa?" she whis 
 pered, looking up from her resting-place. 
 
 " I don t know about that," he answered, 
 smoothing the rich hair in a reckless way. 
 "What am /going to do ?" 
 
 "Threaten ma with a lunatic asylum, and 
 make her behave herself." 
 
 " No, no , ma has her rights. She be 
 lieves in her principles thoroughly, and so 
 do I. But the trouble is I never did have 
 any backbone." 
 
 " Nobody could have, or any other bone, 
 living as we do." 
 
 " I m I m ashamed of it, but my senses 
 are too much for me. Your mother ought 
 to have married a better man." 
 
 " For shame, Pa Morley ! As if she 
 could !" 
 
 " She d have been a great deal happier, 
 and perhaps have founded her great race. 
 It does seem a shame that such a mighty 
 plan should be thwarted just because I love 
 gravy. She ll say, Louie, that the reason 
 
74 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 you love soup is because of the rebellion of 
 my senses against the " 
 
 "Acquiescence of your reason." And 
 then they both laughed like two children. 
 " It isn t only soup, though," said Louie. 
 " I love everything that s good, and take it 
 whenever I can get it chicken, calf s-head, 
 pork and beans 
 
 " O Lord ! we might as well give up, then," 
 groaned Mr. Morley. 
 
 " We might as well give up," repeated 
 Louie, with great cheerfulness. " And you ll 
 help us, pa?" 
 
 " I ? I ? Why, how can I" 
 " Oh, I know how ! Just say you will." 
 " If if I dare to, my darling." 
 "Well, I won t trouble you much; not 
 till after it s all done, and can t be helped. 
 I love John Bonnamy, and I hate the great 
 future race " and all of a sudden she burst 
 out crying inextinguishably, and it was all 
 her father could do to kiss her and soothe 
 her into calmness before walking away with 
 her, her little elastic step hardly crushing 
 the grass, into the wood where John Bon 
 namy was waiting. 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 75 
 
 It was an hour or two later in the day, 
 just as the first tinge of sunset began to 
 transmute all the summer world, when Mr. 
 Morley came walking back alone over the 
 brow of the hill, very quiet, very dazed, a 
 little stunned it may be, a little wondering 
 if nature were not on his side and requiting 
 his wrongs after all. For what was this he 
 had heard in the wood as if Louie s story 
 were not marvel enough ? Harry Peannain, 
 Fanny Farwell those two children ; he not 
 a day more than twenty-one, she less than 
 his Louie s age just seventeen ; a secret 
 whose seal no one dared to break. He didn t 
 know how to believe it all. It was like a 
 dream. He felt that he must have a night s 
 sleep on it, and see if he dreamed it again, 
 before he dared to think of it. He saw a 
 great vista of release opening before him, 
 if he could but find a sword to hew through 
 the first hedge. 
 
 There was a shorter cut down the hill, 
 that took him round under the Pearmain 
 windows those pretty mullioned windows 
 all opening on the ground ; he followed it. 
 And he never knew what fate it was that 
 
76 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 suddenly made him turn, and tiptoe tow 
 ards a certain window of them all, and 
 pause there, looking in whether some ar 
 resting sight had caught his eye and di 
 rected his feet while his conscious thoughts 
 were otherwhere, or whether it was simply 
 perverse curiosity. Whatever it was, he 
 delayed there some seconds, his eyes glar 
 ing out of his head, his nose flattened 
 against the pane of the narrow pantry win 
 dow till it shone leprously white and blue. 
 And in that plight, as if magnetized by the 
 fixity of his gaze, Mrs. Pearmain turned 
 and surveyed him. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Morley! Mr. Morley !" she 
 cried, as well as the circumstances allowed 
 her to enunciate. " Don t, don t betray 
 me!" 
 
 Mr. Morley chuckled. It was a moment 
 of glorious recompense. Here was his 
 sword. He pushed up the sash. " I ll 
 take a bite," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Pearmain stared in a sort of stupor 
 a moment. " I I can t help it, Mr. Mor 
 ley," she stammered then, with pale and 
 shaking lips. 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 77 
 
 " It s very well done," said Mr. Morley. 
 " It shows a good deal of experience 
 
 " Oh, the doctor ordered it long ago, and 
 the habit grew upon me ; and although I 
 gave up hope for myself, I ve tried to keep 
 the way straight for the others " 
 
 " Straight and narrow," said Mr. Morley, 
 wiping his mouth. 
 
 " And I ve talked and written about it, 
 talked to every one, argued with every one 
 you know I have, Mr. Morley," she cried, 
 breathlessly, the tears gushing " tried to 
 convert every one " 
 
 " Enough to strike a balance. I under 
 stand whited sepulchres, Pharisees, and 
 all that. You ve been like the hero of the 
 ballad who sat in the corner eating his 
 Christmas-pie. You ve been the means of 
 starving me for nearly twenty years on oat 
 meal mush, while you ve picked your bones 
 and " 
 
 " Mr. Morley ! you can still insult " 
 
 "Not at all, not at all. I don t wish to 
 insult you. On the contrary, I think you ve 
 shown the first ray of sense I ve seen in 
 you for twenty years. Only," said Mr. 
 
78 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 Morley, lifting his finger impressively be 
 fore his victim s eyes, " now there s to be 
 no backing down." 
 
 A stormy half-hour afterwards Mr. Mor 
 ley might have been seen springing over 
 the railing between the grounds as light as 
 a boy, and he ate his supper of oatmeal 
 mush with the relish of Jack sitting at the 
 foot of the bean-stalk he was about to fell ; 
 for he never meant to partake of that viand 
 again in his life. 
 
 The phaeton was coming round to the 
 door to take Mrs. Morley, in the long twi 
 light, to one of her poor women whom she 
 helped on certain vegetarian conditions. 
 The pony was rather gay, and pranced a 
 good deal as Thomas held the bridle. " It 
 is wonderful the strength these animals 
 get out of grains," said Mr. Morley, art 
 fully. 
 
 " Wonderful !" said Mrs. Morley, falling 
 delightedly into the trap. 
 
 "And the weakness other animals get," 
 continued Mr. Morley. " My dear, did you 
 know that Mrs. Pearmain had been ailing 
 for some time ?" 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 79 
 
 " Triflingly," said Mrs. Morley, drawing 
 on her gauntlets. 
 
 " My dear, if you saw Mrs. Pearmain 
 standing behind her pantry door, holding 
 in one hand part of a cold sausage, the 
 rest of which was in her mouth, and in the 
 other hand a pickled martinoe " 
 
 " Do talk common-sense, Mr. Morley." 
 
 " I call that very common sense on Mrs. 
 Pearmain s part. As I was saying, in such 
 case what should you think ?" 
 
 " I shouldn t think at all ; I can t reason 
 on impossibilities." 
 
 " Do you believe it would make any dif 
 ference as to your tyranny over me?" urged 
 Mr. Morley, with a laugh. 
 
 " Tyranny, George !" said Mrs. Morley, 
 turning her still charming face wonderingly 
 upon her husband. 
 
 " I said it advisedly," replied Mr. Morley, 
 with sudden acrimony. 
 
 " Is that tyranny to which your reason so 
 fully consents ?" asked Mrs. Morley, pulling 
 off her gloves for a combat, in reverse of the 
 custom of those knights who, before the 
 fray, " pulled their ringing gauntlets on." 
 
80 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 "Teresa," said Mr. Morley, with a firm 
 ness that surprised himself, * I adore your 
 principles, but I abhor your practice. Don t 
 pull off your gloves, my love ; that poor 
 woman is famishing for her porridge. Go 
 your ways, child ; but if on your return you 
 run over to Mrs. Pearmain s I think you 
 may learn something to shall I say your ? 
 no, to my advantage." 
 
 And little Mrs. Morley went her ways, 
 with her mind in a state of bewilderment, 
 and shivering as she remembered that the 
 ancients held high spirits to be a presage of 
 sudden death. 
 
 " Louie," said Mr. Morley, when his wife 
 was out of sight, " it is very wrong to dis 
 obey your mother." 
 
 " Yes, pa." 
 
 " But if your mother has given no orders, 
 you can t disobey them." 
 
 " No, pa." 
 
 " And it is equally wrong to disobey your 
 father." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, pa, dear." 
 
 " And if your father gives you orders, you 
 can do nothing else than obey them." 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 8l 
 
 " Certainly, pa, of course." 
 
 " Very well, then, I order you to take a 
 goose which you will find in the servants 
 larder, and tell Jane to dress it and roast 
 it at once. And when that is done I shall 
 have some further orders to give you." 
 
 When Mrs. Morley returned from her 
 visit the house stood dark, with open doors 
 and windows, and the fragrance of the 
 honeysuckles blowing all about it, but with 
 nobody inside it. She remembered what 
 her husband had said, and hastened across 
 the lawn and up to Mrs. Pearmain s lighted 
 mansion, arriving there just as Mr. Pear- 
 main descended from the coach that had 
 brought him to the end of a long journey. 
 She spoke with the worthy man, looked up 
 at him admiringly in the dusk, and yet 
 paused one instant to think that her George, 
 of whom no one stood in awe, was a pleas- 
 anter person for a husband after all. In 
 the next instant a sound of revelry smote 
 her ears, smote Mr. Pearmain s too, and 
 they went in together. The sound came 
 from the dining-room. What odor was 
 this that never before had profaned that 
 
82 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 pretty room ? What sight was this that sa 
 luted the outraged eye ? 
 
 There stood Mr. Morley, at one end of 
 the freshly laid and glittering table, with his 
 fork in the breast-bone of the goose and 
 his knife in the air. There sat Mrs. Pear- 
 main, pale, with traces of tears, daintily 
 picking apart, but with no appetite what 
 ever, a slice of the brown breast. There sat 
 Fanny Farwell, blushing like a rose, with 
 Harry s protecting arm just thrown across 
 her shoulder. There stood Louie Morley at 
 one side of her father, flourishing a drum 
 stick^ and her great black eyes dancing to 
 the music of Dr. Bonnamy s merry laughter 
 as he stood upon the other side. 
 
 "My dearest love," said Mr. Morley, 
 laying down his knife and waving his hand 
 towards the remnants of the goose, " allow 
 me to reintroduce to you an old but unfor- 
 gotten acquaintance 
 
 " Oh, indeed !" cried Mrs. Morley, too 
 much stupefied to express indignation, " as 
 if I had not seen a goose every day of my life 
 for twenty years !" 
 
 " Not roasted. Pardon me ; your look- 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 83 
 
 ing-glass reflects, but does not roast. Per 
 mit me also to remark that in future this 
 acquaintance shall always be a welcome 
 guest at our table, to which while I ac 
 cord you personally all liberty of groats 
 so help me Heaven, I never mean to sit 
 down again without a joint ! I told you this 
 afternoon that I admired your principles, 
 my dear Teresa. If I had known Dr. Bon- 
 namy earlier and better, I never should 
 have made so foolish a speech, and we 
 should have been spared some years of 
 trouble. Let me see. You declare that I 
 inject dead flesh into my veins when I par 
 take of this delicious morsel," refreshing 
 himself with a bit of the goose. " Do you, 
 when you manure your hill of corn with 
 barn -yard compost, inject that disgusting 
 material into your ear of corn ? No ; the 
 chemistry of sun and air absorbs from that 
 compost only the proper constituents of 
 corn. The stomach is a fine laboratory ; it 
 acts in the same way ; it sends no dead 
 flesh to the veins, but it separates that food 
 into its elements, and sends merely the 
 proper constituents of life along to their 
 
84 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 absorbents. Moreover," continued Mr. 
 Morley, wiping his forehead, and amazed 
 at his eloquence and temerity, " you urge 
 me to live according to your ideas, be 
 cause comparative anatomy shows that an 
 imals with cellulated colons are herbiv 
 orous, and man has a cellulated colon 
 man and the ape. Is that right, Dr. Bon- 
 namy ? I am now convinced that the first 
 ape that forsook his herbivorous diet and 
 smacked his lips over some smoking flesh 
 began to differentiate into man ; and you 
 may send this cellulated colon to Mr. Dar 
 win as the missing link 
 
 " Bravo, papa, bravo !" 
 
 "And now, Mrs. Pearmain," said Mr. 
 Morley, " shall I speak for you ?" 
 
 "I I can t speak for myself," said Mrs. 
 Pearmain, bursting into tears, and seeing 
 twenty husbands with twenty valises all 
 about to leave her forever, and gazing at 
 her with awful austerities of farewell. 
 
 " Mrs. Pearmain, as Dr. Bonnamy will 
 assure you," said Mr. Morley, "was ordered 
 by that physician, in whom you all believe 
 so heartily, to resume her pristine diet some 
 
BEST-LAID SCHEMES 85 
 
 years since. This she stoutly refused to do; 
 but learning that her life depended on it, I 
 have brought this bird over here, and, as I 
 may say, have forced her to share it with us. 
 The rest," continued Mr. Morley, happier 
 than he had been for years, "I hope ex 
 plains itself. Let me introduce this young 
 lady" as the little thing shrank closer and 
 closer to her proud and defiant young hus 
 band "formerly Miss Fanny Farwell, but 
 for this three months past waiting an op 
 portunity to confess herself Mrs. Harry 
 Pearmain. And that done, let me present 
 to you, my dear wife, Dr. Bonnamy, who 
 became your son-in-law an hour ago." And, 
 quite out of breath. Mr. Morley sat down. 
 
 The whole English language failed to do 
 justice to the occasion. There was silence 
 in heaven for half an hour that silence 
 echoed here for half a moment, perhaps, 
 but it seemed longer. 
 
 " I hope you will all be very happy," said 
 Mrs. Morley, then, with majesty, but a 
 tremulous voice. "And as you have shown 
 yourselves so capable of it without me, I " 
 
 " Now, mother, mother," said Mr. Mor- 
 
86 BEST-LAID SCHEMES 
 
 ley, bending over the goose and waving his 
 knife and fork affectionately towards her, 
 " you know it would have been of no sort 
 of use to talk with you, and it was a great 
 deal better to clear your skirts of all re 
 sponsibility." Mr. Morley stopped and 
 regarded the -others. Mr. Pearmain, wide- 
 eyed and open-mouthed and silent till this 
 juncture, had suddenly broken the spell, 
 dropped his valise, and bent and taken his 
 wife in his arms. " Emily, my darling," 
 he was saying, " why didn t I hear of this 
 before ? Do you suppose I would have sac 
 rificed your precious health, your life, for 
 a whim ?" And he kissed the weak woman 
 tenderly before turning to the others. "And 
 as for these children," said he. 
 
 "Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Morley, hila 
 riously. 
 
 " Hear ! hear !" cried Louie, who had 
 never been afraid of Mr. Pearmain. " And 
 will you sacrifice us for a whim, ma ?" 
 
 " My dear," said Mr. Morley, pouring out a 
 bumper, " here s to the great future perfect 
 race. Let us wish it long life and posterity. 
 We have only postponed it a generation." 
 
AN IDEAL 
 
AN IDEAL 
 
 AGE comes to some people only like the 
 wider opening of the rose, the gentle droop 
 ing of the creamy outer petal ; and one 
 must needs think of this in looking at Mrs. 
 Fernalde. " I have had my threescore and 
 ten," she used to say. "I have had all 
 that nature has to give, and now I am 
 living on grace." It was a sunny spirit 
 that informed her, a lightsomeness that 
 never let the substance of a tear penetrate 
 beneath the surface that could endure noth 
 ing but happiness. Her unfailing good-nat 
 ure was like a fairy wand that smoothed 
 every trouble out of her way and out of the 
 way of every one about her. If her hair 
 was white, no great sorrow had made it so ; 
 and its contrast with the soft brilliancy of a 
 black eye and the velvet flush of a cheek 
 unwritten by many lines, made her perhaps 
 
9 AN IDEAL 
 
 as lovely as one standing in all the full 
 radiance of youth. As for Mr. Fernalde 
 tall, dark, spare he was by no means un 
 attractive, and his courtly manners had a 
 unique elegance. He loved his ease ; and 
 annoyances, when they chanced to break 
 through the magic circle his wife drew 
 about him, vexed him, as they usually do a 
 nervous person. For the rest, he was one 
 of those men who, having led a singularly 
 fortunate life, maintain to themselves a 
 fancy that they have just missed the last 
 stroke to make the crystal complete, who 
 have a vanishing ideal always just beyond 
 sight and reach. 
 
 The Fernaldes were neighbors of ours. 
 Wealth required no exertion of them, and 
 advancing age secluded them in some meas 
 ure from general society ; their home was 
 always cheerful; they were always in it; 
 and if there had been no such person as 
 crabbed old Mrs. Talliafero, who had spent 
 the last six months with them, it would 
 have been hard to see how heaven itself 
 could be much improvement on it. How 
 ever, she was going at once, and then 
 
AN IDEAL 91 
 
 where would be the crumple in the rose- 
 leaf? 
 
 These old people loved young people. 
 " The new generation lends us a part of its 
 freshness," they used to say. They always 
 welcomed any of us, and indeed made me 
 so particularly conscious of their flattering 
 favor that I spent a good portion of my 
 time with them, threaded the sweet little 
 lady s needles, read and wrote more or less 
 for Mr. Fernalde, and was gradually taken 
 into their confidence, which I am about to 
 violate. 
 
 " Could I imagine a happier old age than 
 this, my child, with my wife, my health, my 
 flowers, our birds and pets and friends ?" he 
 said once, repeating my question. " Why, 
 yes, my dear, it was much happier before 
 my wife brought Mrs. Talliafero to stay 
 with us. Some old school-mate or girl 
 friend of hers I don t quite know for 
 the fact is she nettled me so the first day 
 she came that I wouldn t ask Rosalie a 
 word about her, for fear I should show my 
 displeasure at her having brought her home 
 when she turned up. It is astonishing how 
 
92 AN IDEAL 
 
 an invisibly small thorn will destroy your 
 equanimity. And then this woman has a 
 quality that would turn honey into vinegar, 
 I do believe. She has changed our quiet, 
 peaceful, sunshiny life, that seemed like 
 one long day in June, into a sharp, raw 
 day in November. There is something 
 very rasping about her. I don t see what 
 my wife invited her to spend such a season 
 with us for. I wonder if she thought that 
 at the end of the time I should press for a 
 continuance ? My dear, I have counted 
 the days it sounds sadly against all hos 
 pitable rites I have counted the days till 
 I should see her consult a railway time 
 table, as she did yesterday, about going 
 home to-day. I believe she is not in affluent 
 circumstances now. I would be glad to 
 meet the expense of boarding her at Buck 
 ingham Palace if that would keep her away! 
 I am speaking strongly. Yes, Rosalie," 
 looking at his laughing wife, " I know you 
 say too strongly. But it is argument, as 
 sertion, contradiction, differing, bickering, 
 finding fault with the servants who have 
 suited us half a lifetime, questioning the 
 
AN IDEAL 93 
 
 expenditure, disordering the arrangements 
 from one day to the next. Think of it, 
 when she comes into my study and inveighs 
 about my wife s patience in enduring such 
 a den of disorder in her house. She won 
 ders that I do not wear a scratch. She 
 warns me of indigestions, she threatens 
 me with nightmares, she reminds me of 
 my age, she interferes with my pipe ! And 
 then she wants so much fresh air ! Thank 
 Heaven ! her time is up to-day, and my 
 wife will not invite another guest for a 
 half-year without giving me time to arrange 
 a residence elsewhere ! And such a voice, 
 too ! When one hears it, one longs for the 
 proper infirmities of age that dull the hear 
 ing sharp as a file, piercing as a locust s 
 whirr! What are you laughing at, Rosa 
 lie ?" 
 
 "Ah, you are not quite just, my love," 
 said the sweet little old lady. " Mrs. Tallia- 
 fero has a fine mind. She is really waking 
 us up. She prevents our sinking down into 
 a jelly-like existence, as so many of our age 
 do. She keeps us bubbling." 
 
 "There, there, there, my dear! Don t 
 
94 AN IDEAL 
 
 say another word about your Mrs. Tallia- 
 fero ! Go and spend a season with her 
 at Saratoga, if you ever want to see her 
 any more. I ll go to Richfield. Bubble ! 
 She d make sulphuric acid bubble out of 
 the sands of the desert ! I ve no doubt she 
 worried Talliafero, poor man, into the gravel 
 But there, I ve said too much," he added, 
 directly. " I beg your pardon, my sweet, if 
 I hurt your feelings about an old friend, but 
 really Now, Rosalie, my love, if you don t 
 care to go over these accounts, our young 
 friend will." And then Mrs. Fernalde trip 
 ped off with as light a foot as a girl of 
 seventeen, and I drew up the great folding- 
 screen around our chairs, stirred the fire a 
 little, and took pencil and paper to add up 
 the figures Mr. Fernalde was to read out to 
 me. 
 
 But Mr. Fernalde was in a brown-study 
 for a little, and I let him stay. 
 
 " It was strange you should have asked 
 me that question, child," he said at length. 
 " I used, at your time of life, to imagine a 
 very different old age from this, if I may so 
 call that imagination, for, in fact, old age 
 
AN IDEAL 95 
 
 never entered into my calculations. I imag 
 ined nothing about the passage of time, 
 only of the continuance of a condition. 
 And that condition was the perpetual para 
 dise of Alicia s smiles." 
 
 " Rosalie, you mean," said I. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Mr. Fernalde, 
 shortly. " I mean Alicia." 
 
 " Alicia ?" 
 
 "Alicia, who, when I was twenty, was 
 the light of my eyes and the loadstar of my 
 life." 
 
 " I don t know what you mean, sir." 
 
 " Of course you don t, of course you 
 don t. I ve half the mind to tell you, though. 
 It s a long tiirj,e ago a long time and no 
 harm done. One is perhaps a fool at sev 
 enty," said Mr. Fernalde presently again. 
 " I m not quite eighty. One is certainly a 
 fool at twenty. I was, at any rate ; but I 
 didn t know it, and I walked in a fool s 
 paradise. And to be a fool and not know 
 it ! Is there, on the whole, any further 
 paradise ? Pretty, pretty as a peach !" he 
 began again, after another pause. " Ah ! 
 that would have sounded to me then like 
 
96 AN IDEAL 
 
 profanity. That heavenly fair face ! those 
 eyes like the stars in a blue midnight ! that 
 smile of exquisite innocence and purity ! I 
 used to tremble before her sometimes as 
 before some young saint stepped from a 
 shrine one that I dared to desecrate by 
 loving. Ah, how I loved her ! The sight of 
 certain flowers brings her back to me now ! 
 When the apples are in blossom, that pink 
 and white snow, that ineffable delicacy of 
 perfume, calls her before me like a revela 
 tion ! There are times when this eternal 
 smoothness of things in my life palls on me 
 times when I cannot bear the sound of 
 evening bells coming across the water. It 
 so renews for me that evening that even 
 ing when I lost her when I lost her, if I 
 found Rosalie !" 
 
 " You lost her, then ?" I said, to break 
 the silence that followed. 
 
 " I will tell you. The two were insepa 
 rable. If I walked or rode or sailed with 
 one, the other was not far away. Rosalie 
 was a little gay, tormenting sprite ; Alicia a 
 pensive saint. It was Alicia s home ; her 
 father was a man of wealth, and Rosalie 
 
AN IDEAL 97 
 
 was visiting her. Rosalie had no home, no 
 fortune ; she had just finished school and 
 was to be a governess, dreading it as a but 
 terfly might dread being broken to harness, 
 dreading it all the more for this glimpse 
 of luxurious life in her friend s home since 
 school. I myself had a fortune in my own 
 right, and had been guilty of the follies 
 of most of the jeunesse doree of that peri 
 od, which, if comparatively innocent, were 
 troublesome enough to the authorities of 
 my college to need discipline, and I was 
 passing a year of most unhappy rustication 
 in the place adjoining Alicia s home. Never 
 shall I forget the first moment in which I 
 saw Alicia running down one of the orchard 
 aisles with her white garments fluttering 
 about her, and her fair head bent over the 
 branch of apple-blossoms in her hand. If 
 lightning had fallen, the revolution that 
 seized me could not have come more 
 quickly. I seemed to be changed in a 
 twinkling, to have been borne into another 
 planet. I felt as if sunshine had pierced 
 and penetrated once impenetrable gloom. 
 When I fell asleep in the grass of that 
 
98 AN IDEAL 
 
 orchard, and woke with that heavenly creat 
 ure bending over me, I rose only to walk 
 on air. The little brown face of Rosa 
 lie, with its carnations, with the glint and 
 glance of its great brown eyes, with its 
 flood of brown curls that had a touch of 
 gold on them, with the glittering teeth of 
 its beautiful laugh, was just over her shoul 
 der, but I merely know I saw it by remem 
 bering it afterwards. She was only a shad 
 ow to me in those days ; and as for me, I 
 was only Alicia s shadow myself. She lived 
 and moved in some exalted atmosphere, to 
 my perception. She does now. Her father 
 wore the front of Jove ; I could not say 
 that he did not carry the thunders. I felt 
 myself a mote in the broad beam of their 
 sunshine, as though I were something hardly 
 visible in their large range of vision, as if 
 it required an effort to make myself per 
 ceived by them. I hesitated to make the 
 effort I worshipped from afar. When she 
 spoke to me my heart beat so I had hardly 
 voice to answer ; when she touched my 
 hand it thrilled me through and through. 
 And I asked no more. I thought of no 
 
AN IDEAL 99 
 
 more for a while than just to continue so 
 forever ; to see her from my window walk 
 ing under the long aisles of the low- 
 branched orchard, like some mediaeval pict 
 ure ; to walk beside her sometimes; now 
 and then to venture reading from the same 
 page with her, now and then to be her 
 partner in the dance. That Rosalie should 
 be about with me, riding here, strolling 
 there, walking to church, reading with the 
 old pastor, in whose charge there was a fic 
 tion that I was, and so, in a way, studying 
 with me that was all a matter of common 
 place ; she was sweet, she was fresh, she 
 was charming. But what was all that when 
 an angel was in the room ? 
 
 " One night I was on the gallery just out 
 side their drawing-room, looking in at the 
 long window, and Alicia was singing. Ah, 
 how delicious was that voice ! The cheru 
 bim and seraphim who continually do sing, 
 if I ever hear them, will not sing so sweet 
 ly. I wonder to whom that voice is sing 
 ing now ! Beside her, that night, was the 
 scamp who had come to the place more 
 than once a proud, commanding fellow in 
 
100 AN IDEAL 
 
 his undress uniform, a man whom her father 
 plainly intended she should marry. I can 
 see the scene now the rich and dimly 
 lighted room full of purple shadows, the 
 air laden with the scent of flowers ; Alicia 
 in her white drapery, more mystical, more 
 beautiful, more holy, as she sang, than if 
 revealed in the glow of her beauty ; outside, 
 the violet depths of the sky, and the moon 
 just falling, like some great golden flower, 
 low in the west ; and as Alicia s voice be 
 came silent, a choir of bell -tones coming 
 far and fine and free across the water, like 
 echoes of her song in heaven. My heart 
 swelled with a fulness of rapture , life 
 seemed too rich, too sweet, too sacred 
 and then I saw that man stoop and kiss 
 her brow ! 
 
 "The action turned me to stone for a 
 moment, till he came sauntering to the 
 window, and I knew no more what I was 
 doing than that bronze Perseus in the cor 
 ner would if he moved. I lifted the hand 
 that had seemed stone, and as he passed 
 me I struck him on the mouth the mouth 
 that had done the profanation." 
 
AN IDEAL toi 
 
 And Mr. Fernalde was quiet a little while. 
 
 " And that was the end of all things," he 
 resumed. " The fellow laughed at me for 
 a mad boy. Her father launched one of the 
 thunderbolts, and forbade me the house. 
 What a stricken day and night of wretch 
 edness ! What a week of hopelessness, of 
 annihilation ! But perhaps Alicia felt dif 
 ferently from these creatures. Why should 
 I not discover ? Why should I suppose she 
 had any other sympathy with that wretch 
 than the sympathy of the star with the worm ? 
 And if my glad peradventure were true 
 why then we could fly from these places 
 that should know us no more ; the world was 
 before us , heaven s gates were open to us. 
 And I wrote my hand trembling at its 
 sacrilegious daring just a dozen lines, with 
 out address, without signature. She would 
 know what it meant. And I sent it by the 
 parson s boy. And I waited for her, lying 
 on the grass beneath the orchard trees, in 
 the deep gloom just gilded by the influence 
 of the unseen moon. There came the rus 
 tling of garments, the tripping of a foot ; my 
 heart beat, my eyes grew dim. Was it she 
 
101 AN IDEAL 
 
 coming up behind me, as I lay lifted on my 
 elbow, kneeling and putting her arms about 
 me, raining swift kisses on my face ? 
 wild sweet kisses in that shadow ; wild 
 passionate whispers in that silence ! And 
 then a great pang smote me ; and I rose 
 and went out with her into the less dim 
 darkness and it was Rosalie. 
 
 " She never knew," said Mr. Fernalde, 
 " she does not know to-day, that I died that 
 night. I can t say how I lived through 
 those moments even. They were but mo 
 ments she had stolen away. She had to 
 return at once. We parted at the foot of 
 the mock-orange walk, and I went to my 
 bed and lay there in a trance of despair. 
 Perhaps sunlight brought some relief. The 
 parson told at the breakfast-table the news 
 that Alicia was betrothed to the army offi 
 cer I had seen. I wrote a word, saying 
 I was called away. And I was gone a 
 week or more. But in that blank I must 
 have something to love me to have an 
 interest in. Better Rosalie than the ab 
 solute negation of those days. She thought 
 nothing of my absence after my return. 
 
AN IDEAL 103 
 
 She was as full of romance as a flower of 
 nectar. And, to sum it up, if she was not 
 the rose, she had lived with the rose. One 
 day we married ; and here we are. A long 
 life, a happy life, and I have never regret 
 ted the day in it that made her my wife. 
 After all, one cannot marry among the an 
 gels clay must mate with clay. 
 
 " What do you say ? Not love her, my 
 child ? You never were more mistaken. I 
 love her tenderly, absorbingly. She is a 
 perfect woman. She has been a perfect 
 wife. She has made me calmly and com 
 pletely happy. If once in a while the old 
 hope, the old dream of a passion arises and 
 sweeps before me in its bloom and light, it 
 is because it means youth to me that youth 
 which we do not know till we are old is 
 itself the ideal that it holds up for worship. 
 Yet, perfect as my wife is, fifty years of this 
 smooth life with her wear something of the 
 common-place, and if across their dead level 
 of same content sometimes gleams the shin 
 ing of Alicia s face, it is not in any disloy 
 alty to her. I often wonder what became 
 of the lovely creature. Once 1 could not 
 
104 AN 
 
 have spoken of her. At seldom times, when 
 I sit alone by the fire, she comes and sits 
 beside me, and gleams of light and shadow 
 make a face with her sweetness, her beauty, 
 her pensive and ethereal grace. Dear girl ! 
 I suppose she sleeps in her grave by this ; 
 but she is a shaft of the light of heaven in 
 my memory !" 
 
 And Mr. Fernalde rose, walking to the 
 window, just as the screen began to trem 
 ble, and a smothered cough, and then an 
 undisguised one, betrayed to me, if not to 
 him, that Mrs. Fernalde had heard the 
 chief part of the monologue. 
 
 "And I had heard it in fragments and 
 sections more than once before," she after 
 wards told me with her pleasant smile. " I 
 know it means nothing that he is just as 
 wholly mine as I am his that our love is 
 the imperishable sort that we are welded 
 into one by fifty years together. And per 
 haps it was ignoble of me to break the 
 pretty bubble, to take away his little ideal, 
 with which he has found comfort whenever 
 I would have my own way too much. Yet 
 I thought it was about time." 
 
AN IDEAL 105 
 
 But she said nothing of this at all as 
 she came bustling round the corner of the 
 screen that morning. 
 
 " There is such a gale blowing outside," 
 she said, "that the dust really rises in the 
 house fit to choke one." 
 
 " You haven t caught cold, Rosalie ?" 
 said her husband, turning in concern. 
 
 " Not the least. But I shall if the hall- 
 door is open another moment. There she 
 comes now. Make haste, and bid Alicia 
 good-bye, my love. She is just going." 
 
 " Who ?" he cried, suddenly opening his 
 eyes like lamps in their deep settings. 
 
 " Alicia Mrs.Talliafero dear. She mar 
 ried again, you know. Oh, it has been a 
 fine jest," she cried, with her low laugh, 
 " to think that you should not have recog 
 nized Alicia in all these weeks and months !" 
 
 Mr. Fernalde was silent for a few mo 
 ments, looking at the cruel little lady be 
 fore him, with her color like the half-tar 
 nished rose, with the soft brilliancy of her 
 smile. Then he crossed over the hearth 
 before me, and he took her hands and bent 
 down and kissed her mouth. 
 
106 AN IDEAL 
 
 " My Rosalie," said he, " will you not 
 make my adieus to Mrs. Talliafero your 
 self? Tell her tell her I have gone to the 
 funeral of an old friend !" 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 SHE always carried it about with her ; but 
 it was not her bones. And as this is not a 
 conundrum, I may as well say at once that it 
 was well, it was connected with her domes 
 tic difficulties. 
 
 Nobody, casually observing Mrs. Claxton, 
 would have dreamed her to be the possessor 
 of so disagreeable an article, least of all one 
 that was constantly a companion, and that 
 could not be locked up in a closet, and left 
 behind when she went where folks were gay 
 and happy. 
 
 For my own part, understanding how un 
 reasonable it would be to expect any lot to 
 be a perfect thing, and inclining towards the 
 old saw about a skeleton in every closet, I 
 sometimes used to wonder what earthly ma 
 terial there was from which Mrs. Claxton 
 could get one up ; yet felt tolerably sure, for 
 
1 10 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 all her smiles and her pleasant manners, for 
 all her fineries and luxuries, that there must 
 be something to make her resigned to the 
 necessity of one day surrendering her hold 
 upon those desirable things surrounding her 
 at present in such abundance. 
 
 For why should Mrs. Claxton be an excep 
 tion ? Look up and down the hills, with the 
 familiar sight that neighbors have, and you 
 could have seen trouble in too many houses 
 to be able to believe the Claxton house 
 exempt. For in this house bitter, grinding 
 poverty and pride had their perpetual battle 
 ground ; that house death had robbed of its 
 sunshine ; in the next house the disgrace of 
 a defalcation had made life a burden ; still 
 beyond, a cloud of insanity hung, ready to 
 fall ; here a drunken son, there an unfaithful 
 husband ; in such a house a frivolous wife, in 
 such another idiotic children : up and down 
 the streets, in every house, something ; no 
 matter what the compensations were, no mat 
 ter how much happiness otherwise ; yet al 
 ways some one bitter thing, perhaps to give 
 a better relish with its tang to all the sweet. 
 
 So what could Mrs. Claxton s trouble be ? 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON m 
 
 She lived in the finest place in the town, 
 her handsome house upon a sightly knoll, 
 a shaven lawn dotted with noble trees slop 
 ing away from it on all sides. Within, it 
 seemed to our rustic eyes a witch-land of 
 beauty and of all the cunning appliances 
 of art for comfort. She had her open lan 
 dau and her span for summer driving, her 
 sleighs full of costly robes for winter, her 
 servants, her overflowing purse, her husband 
 and children, her dresses. Yes, her dresses ; 
 no one in Claxtonberg had any to compare 
 with them. She had the glory of setting the 
 fashion, and of holding a lofty pre-eminence 
 in it, and the bliss of knowing that the last 
 new wrinkle in her pouf, or her sleeve, or 
 her back hair was being studied every Sun 
 day with an assiduity that put the prayer- 
 book to open shame. And besides all this 
 Mrs. Claxton was very pretty : everybody 
 admired her ; everybody else loved her. 
 She had company when she pleased, so far 
 as we knew ; she went on journeys when she 
 chose ; and when the bishop came he al 
 ways stayed with her. What was there out of 
 which Mrs.Claxton s skeleton could be made? 
 
112 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 It could not be that this skeleton had 
 found existence because her husband was 
 not a distinguished man in politics, for no 
 woman who had any regard for her own 
 happiness, or his either, would want her 
 husband in politics ; and Mrs. Claxton had 
 the greatest regard for the happiness of 
 both. It could not be because she had no 
 children, for she had four, fine ones. It 
 could not be because her children were not 
 boys or were not girls, for there were two 
 sisters and two brothers among them. It 
 couldn t be because her husband was still 
 in business, since his mills brought him in 
 a royal revenue every year, and he would 
 be lost without the business. It could not 
 be because her husband was tired of her, 
 for everybody in Claxtonberg knew to the 
 contrary, knew that he surrounded his wife 
 with everything heart could wish, knew that 
 the breath of scandal had never approached 
 him. It could not be because of any im 
 pending disease that was to darken her 
 house, for they were all in a state of no 
 torious health. What in the world could 
 this skeleton be ? 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 113 
 
 I had just as lief tell you as not if you 
 will listen. 
 
 When this lady first met the gentleman 
 who became her husband, his high-bred 
 courtesy, his knightly manner, rivalled that 
 of the great dignitaries around them ; he, 
 not any of them, seemed to her the true 
 nobleman ; and, not to weary you, she ac 
 cepted him the moment he asked her. She 
 was the governess of a friend s children, and 
 the family were staying at some wonderful 
 foreign baths where the marble basins were 
 more than a mile around, and where the court 
 came to bathe. Every morning the Majes 
 ties and Sublimities and high and mighty 
 Excellencies went into the bath, king and 
 queen and chamberlains, grand duchesses 
 and princesses and ladies-in-waiting, and 
 from unobserved chinks the commonalty 
 watched the shoal of nobility disporting it 
 self. And what a scene it was to watch ! 
 For the flannel bathing suits were under 
 water, but out of water what elaborate hair- 
 dressing, what a blaze of jewelled tiaras and 
 coronets, what flashing diamond necklaces 
 upon white throats, what point-lace fichus 
 
114 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 and berthas overlaid with strings of resplen 
 dent gems to the water s edge, what loading 
 of bracelets on bare arms, what glancing of 
 rings on fingers ! for the court was in full- 
 dress in the presence of the sovereign. 
 
 As Mr. Claxton looked from the window 
 of his room upon the brilliant scene he felt 
 a lofty republican contempt indeed, con 
 tempt was Mr. Claxton s forte which was 
 not lessened when the crowd of commoners 
 went in, in their turn, aping the bediamonded 
 ways of those who went before. One young 
 girl among the throng, who wore only the 
 dress suitable to the occasion, and was with 
 out any other ornament than the shrouding 
 veil of her own long hair, attracted him in 
 the first place by her simplicity, and in the 
 next place by a manner that seemed to be 
 at once sweet and stately : there was a sort 
 of shy and startled look in her great soft 
 brown eyes if one addressed her; there was 
 so rich a color on her cheek too; and the 
 features of her lovely face were so finely in 
 keeping with that half-defiant carriage of 
 the perfect head. In such a pack of frip 
 pery her plain attire was pre-eminence to 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 115 
 
 Mr. Claxton, whose feelings were exceed 
 ingly ruffled ; for he was accustomed to ob 
 sequious consideration at home, and here 
 he was less than a cipher; and revenging 
 himself by despising the whole affair, he 
 knew no better way of proclaiming it than 
 by passing over all the titled and spangled 
 beauties, and devoting himself to this simple 
 young girl. If, meanwhile, the titled beau 
 ties did not know of his existence, that was 
 something he never suspected, and he lost 
 no time in making the young girl s acquaint 
 ance. It mattered not to him that she was 
 a governess, as it would not if she had been 
 a beggar and had attracted him. He was 
 one of those men who consider their actions 
 their own justification ; his desires were a 
 law to themselves. After he married her 
 she would be Mrs. Claxton a glory which 
 every Claxton that had ever married felt to 
 be quite capable of blotting out all that might 
 ever have gone before in the lives and his 
 tories of the poor brides. As for the young 
 girl, treated kindly by her friend, but kept in 
 the background, and not wont to have the 
 attention of young men, and with that vague 
 
H6 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 longing for it natural to girls, somewhat 
 lonely, and altogether dependent, her heart 
 leaped up in gratitude to this stranger, with 
 whose family and antecedents her friend 
 was well acquainted. People said he was 
 like a young prince : she never remembered 
 to think, in liking to hear them, that princes 
 are the masters of slaves, and that for a 
 plain private to be a young prince simply 
 meant that he was a person who would have 
 his own way if he had to be a tyrant to do 
 it. When he proposed she accepted him, 
 as I said; she already loved him with de 
 votion ; she married him in all haste to re 
 pent in all leisure. 
 
 And Mr. Claxton, making the tour of Eu 
 rope like a good American, was suddenly 
 summoned home by an event which left him 
 the possessor of the great mills and the great 
 business, and he installed his wife in his 
 great house, and he felt that he had done 
 more for her than she had a right to ask, 
 and he expected from her thenceforward a 
 slavish obedience. 
 
 To tell the whole truth, though, Mr. Clax 
 ton did not know that he expected a slavish 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 117 
 
 obedience. His intention was to do right 
 exactly, and perhaps lean to mercy s side. 
 He had been reared in a school that held 
 the wife to be, so to say, a chattel, and he 
 would have been as much surprised to find 
 his wife differing from him as he would 
 have been to hear his wooden din ing-table 
 speak up and complain of the dinner: he 
 looked for absolute agreement. If you had 
 asked him if he believed that a man had 
 a right to beat his wife, he would have 
 indignantly answered no, and demanded 
 of you, furthermore, what it was you took 
 him for; but if he himself had chanced to 
 strike his wife, he would not have felt it an 
 act to be questioned by anybody. His wife 
 was his. That he did not put a rope round 
 her neck and sell her in open market was 
 out of his abounding condescension. He 
 allowed her many favors such, for instance, 
 as the liberty to breathe. For her to re 
 ward him by having an opinion of her own 
 on any subject would have astounded him. 
 If he had chosen to take her children away 
 from her he would have thought her com 
 plaint monstrous ; if he had knocked down 
 
Il8 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 her own mother and trodden on her he 
 would have thought her remonstrance cul 
 pable, and would have punished her for it 
 to the best of his ability, not by whips 
 and stocks, not by imprisonment or depri 
 vation, but by withholding his royal favor 
 in some signal manner. In fact, in Mr. 
 Claxton s ideal household there was but 
 one will, one mind, one identity, and that 
 was Mr. Claxton s. And that household was 
 a not at all uncommon instance of an un 
 recognized tyranny worse than Diocletian s 
 own. 
 
 In spite of all this, if you can believe me, 
 Mr. Claxton loved his wife not as he did 
 his own soul, indeed, but next to that, one 
 might say. She had only to ask but ask 
 she must to have her wish gratified. If 
 she were ill, he knew no peace, and let no 
 one else know any, till she were well again. 
 He admired her beauty, her lovely manner, 
 her stately air; he did not object to that 
 soupfon of spirit when directed towards other 
 people ; he felt that she added a lustre to 
 his station. He was, in short, very proud 
 of her ; but he would not for the world have 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 119 
 
 had her know it. For where would disci 
 pline be then ? 
 
 Well, it might perhaps have answered 
 with somebody else, but it did not answer 
 at all with Mrs. Claxton. In truth, Mr. 
 Claxton had been married hardly a year be 
 fore he began to suspect that he had a rebel 
 in his house, or, as he phrased it, a viper in 
 his bosom ; and he prepared to take extraor 
 dinary measures. 
 
 As for Mrs. Claxton, her feeling for her 
 husband was of the warmest ; she regarded 
 him for a long time as the best and greatest 
 man alive, and by far the handsomest. She 
 knew he had faults, but understood that all 
 men abounded in faults, and presumed that 
 other men s faults were very much worse 
 than his. She thought it likely that he 
 could not have written the Iliad, but then 
 she didn t know that it was desirable to 
 have written the Iliad ; yet she was sure 
 he could have written Tillotson s Sermons, 
 or Macaulay s Essays, or Mill s Logic, and 
 that he could be President of the United 
 States on any day he wished it, and confer 
 new dignity upon the office. There was 
 
120 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 only one thing she would have liked differ 
 ent about him : she would have liked him 
 to consider her more on an equality with 
 himself. 
 
 And yet at first she used to question if that 
 were not an unreasonable exaction on her 
 part she, who had been nothing but a poor 
 little governess, to demand so much, and he 
 the owner of the vast Claxtonberg mills, the 
 descendant of the old Claxtons of Claxton 
 berg, a castle across the water that had de 
 fied assault for generations, and in which 
 monarchs had held state, if the Claxtonberg 
 legends could be trusted. Though, between 
 ourselves, I always imagined that the person 
 whom Mr. Claxton s grandfather employed, 
 after he had acquired wealth, to hunt up his 
 family traditions for him, his coat-of-arms 
 and crest, found only and exactly what his 
 employer wanted him to find. 
 
 However that might be, Mrs. Claxton s 
 eyes used to follow her husband with an 
 adoring look in them. His noble figure, 
 his lofty bearing, the large, fair comeliness 
 of his fresh face and its aquiline contour, 
 his great gray eyes and his bright, curling 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 121 
 
 hair, seemed to her a representation of the 
 noblest type of manhood ; the sound of his 
 voice was music, the sound of his foot-fall 
 was something she always ran to meet 
 that is, in the first year. 
 
 It was an odd little circumstance that 
 caused Mrs. Claxton s cloudy suspicion of 
 her husband s injustice to settle into an 
 absolute curd of sourness. Odd, because 
 so slight : it was the naming of their first 
 child. 
 
 " You are looking peculiarly well, my 
 love," said Mr. Claxton, condescendingly, 
 happening to see his wife in the glass as he 
 drew his razor over the hone. " Like a 
 flower in full bloom," jocosely. 
 
 Mrs. Claxton blushed and looked lovelier 
 yet. " I am so glad you think so," said she. 
 " I was really afraid I was falling off. And 
 that would be such a shame, for I want the 
 baby to remember me when I look my best." 
 
 " Let me hear him," said Mr. Claxton, 
 gayly, " expressing any opinion other than 
 my own on that subject, if he thinks best !" 
 And he kissed his wife as she came and 
 stood beside him while looking for some- 
 
122 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 thing in the dressing-case drawer, and then 
 he plunged into the business on hand. 
 
 " I think," said Mrs. Claxton, after a few 
 moments, looking up timidly, from the seat 
 she had taken, to the spot where her hus 
 band stood holding the tip of his nose with 
 one hand while he flourished his razor be 
 neath it with the other for Mr. Claxton 
 never risked his greatness sufficiently to 
 have a valet de chambre "I think Henry 
 would really be the fit name, after all, being 
 yours, and your father s and your grand 
 father s too, wasn t it ? And then, do you 
 know, it was my father s also. And I 
 should so like to unite them all in one !" 
 
 I doubt if Mrs. Claxton would have vent 
 ured to reopen this subject, after a previous 
 conversation, but for the little compliment 
 she had received, and for the fact that when 
 a man stands holding the tip of his nose in 
 one hand, with his upper lip stretched like 
 an apron beneath it, he is not altogether an 
 object of awe. 
 
 But Mr. Claxton did not give an imme 
 diate answer. He seldom did ; whether to 
 signify that he was on such an altitude 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 123 
 
 above common mortals that it took some 
 time for the sound of their voices to reach 
 him, or whether it cost him an effort to ac 
 knowledge the independent existence, and 
 therefore the voluntary remarks, of anybody 
 else in the universe, though just now he had 
 the excuse of a delicate use of his razor. 
 When he sought his shaving-paper, however, 
 he turned and looked at his wife in some 
 displeasure, reminiscent of that previous 
 conversation. 
 
 " This is quite unnecessary, my love," he 
 said. " I told you I intended to revive an 
 old family name sunk in desuetude." 
 
 " But, my dear," persisted Mrs. Claxton, 
 "it would be so nice to continue the one 
 name for four generations ; it is a sort of 
 immortality in itself as if Henry Claxton 
 never died." 
 
 "Never died!" cried Mr. Claxton, net 
 tled, since this very thing had been a temp 
 tation to him before resolving to rekindle 
 the ancient family grandeur with one of the 
 legendary names " Never died ! What 
 blasphemy is this !" And he made himself 
 livid with fresh lather. 
 
124 MRS - CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 " Blasphemy ? How you talk ! Why, 
 you know what I mean, dear." 
 
 " Pray how should I know what you 
 mean ? I know what you say. And it 
 shocks me." 
 
 " Well, never mind ; it s of no conse 
 quence." 
 
 " Of no consequence that you shock me ?" 
 began the young prince. 
 
 " Oh, no, no, indeed !" said the trem 
 bling subject, shocked herself at offending 
 him. "I mean it is of no consequence 
 what I say. I talk so heedlessly, you 
 know." 
 
 " Indeed, I have reason to know it," was 
 the severe ejaculatory. 
 
 " And I am really sorry about it. I try to 
 think twice before I speak, but 
 
 " I wish you found more success in the 
 trial. A year ago it would have been less 
 matter, but now Mrs. Claxton should never 
 forget the dignity of her station, and that 
 inconsiderate babbling detracts " 
 
 "Oh, I don t think I do anything like 
 that !" 
 
 " When you say that it is of no con- 
 
125 
 
 sequence whether you shock me or not, 
 you do." 
 
 " But I didn t say anything of the sort." 
 
 " Don t contradict me again, if you 
 please." 
 
 " Don t you allow people to defend them 
 selves ?" said Mrs. Claxton, opening her 
 brown eyes in a spirited way. 
 
 " I don t allow people to insult me." 
 
 " Insult you ! What nonsense !" cried 
 the wife at last. " But that is neither here 
 nor there. We were speaking of the ba 
 by s name. I am sure I had no intention, 
 no idea, of offending you by suggesting a 
 choice in the matter. It would give me 
 such pleasure to remember my father in 
 the name, and unite yours with it Henry 
 Claxton, Fourth," said Mrs. Claxton, mus 
 ingly, her thimble on her lip. 
 
 " We have had enough of that," said Mr. 
 Claxton, firmly, and quite vexed with her 
 persistency. " The child s name is Reg 
 inald." 
 
 Mrs. Claxton stood up a moment in one 
 of her sudden little angers that she was 
 always under the necessity of humiliating 
 
126 
 
 herself about afterwards, and looked at the 
 man as he engaged himself just then with 
 his chin in a manner that made silence im 
 perative, and she took advantage of the 
 opportunity. 
 
 " I never heard of anything so outra 
 geous in my life !" she exclaimed, passion 
 ately. " Anybody would suppose your wife 
 was a mere bondwoman, the mother of 
 your child a nonentity, that it was not as 
 much mine as yours, more mine than yours ! 
 It is an odious piece of tyranny !" 
 
 Mr. Claxton gathered his mug and ma 
 terials with one sweep of his hand, and 
 faced her. " When you apologize to me 
 for your utterly inexcusable language," said 
 he, " I shall re-enter this room, but not be 
 fore." And he intrenched himself in a spare 
 chamber. 
 
 And after a couple of days of blank si 
 lence and loneliness and misery, of course 
 Mrs. Claxton gave in, and apologized with 
 tears for her utterly inexcusable language. 
 But the peculiarity of the dialogue was 
 that at the time of its occurrence the 
 child to whom reference was made was 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 127 
 
 not born, and when it was born it was a 
 girl! 
 
 But Mr. Claxton was made of flesh like 
 the rest of us, and when he was called into 
 his wife s darkened room, and the little 
 bundle of flannel was put into his arms 
 and declared to be his daughter, he kissed 
 it fondly, and laid it on the pillow beside 
 his wife , and as he saw her so pale and 
 faint, so starry-eyed and beautiful, looking 
 as if she might vanish out of his sight at 
 any moment, he bent and hid his face be 
 side her own. 
 
 " My dear love," said he, in magnanimous 
 concession, some little while afterward, "we 
 will call this baby Henrietta." 
 
 Now of all the names in or out of the 
 calendar the one that Mrs. Claxton the most 
 detested was Henrietta. Mrs. Claxton, 
 however, accepted the concession in the 
 spirit in which it was made, offering, in 
 deed, on her part, an exchange of Henrietta 
 for Regina, which offer was not listened to 
 for a moment; and during her convales 
 cence her husband so invested her with 
 kindness that she looked forward to a hap- 
 
128 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 piness of which she haL begun to despair in 
 the midst of that wilderness of rebellion 
 and altercation where she had almost lost 
 herself. 
 
 But it was an easy thing for Mr Claxton 
 to be kind to a sick person ; since it is the 
 part of an invalid to have no will, to receive 
 favors, and obey orders. And if Mrs. Clax 
 ton had been an invalid all her life, para 
 doxical as it sounds, she would have had 
 no skeleton. But, on the contrary, she was a 
 healthy young thing, and in a few weeks was 
 as rosy and vigorous as. ever, as spirited, 
 and perhaps as wilful. The presence of her 
 baby, though, turned her thoughts, more 
 from herself, and she anticipated in her ab 
 sorption less opportunity for strife than 
 before. Accordingly she was very much 
 discomposed when one day her husband 
 being present, accidentally and for the first 
 time, at Miss Baby s toilet which the 
 mother found as much pleasure in attend 
 ing to herself as she used to find in playing 
 dolls he insisted that everything should 
 be done precisely the other way : that the 
 water should be cold and not tepid, that the 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 129 
 
 soap should be castile and not scented, 
 that the towel should be a crash and not a 
 damask one. 
 
 " I never heard of such a thing !" cried 
 the young mother 
 
 " There are probably many things of which 
 you have not heard, my love," replied the 
 young father. 
 
 " But a rough towel on this little soft 
 flesh !" 
 
 "It will make it the firmer and healthier." 
 
 "It will take the skin off. And castile 
 soap why, the doctor says it should never 
 be used except for healing , it is too drying 
 for a healthy skin." 
 
 " My mother used it invariably." 
 
 " Now don t begin to quote your mother 
 the way men always do ; don t imagine 
 your mother knew more than the doc 
 tor." 
 
 " I imagine," said Mr. Claxton, feeling it 
 worth while to control his vexation for the 
 child s sake, " that her experience was as 
 good as his books." 
 
 "Well, your mother did as she chose, and 
 this child s mother will do as she chooses. 
 
i3o MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 Crash towels, castile soap, and cold water ! 
 Cold water, indeed !" 
 
 "Certainly. And don t repeat my words 
 in that offensive manner, if you please. Any 
 moderate intellect would understand that if 
 the child is to be strong, it is to be early 
 inured " 
 
 " I never shall use it never !" 
 
 " Indeed, my darling, you are mistaken. 
 You always will use it in the future." 
 
 "Well, we will see," said Mrs. Claxton, 
 laughing and shaking her head. " Cold 
 water on such a mite of a baby ! That is 
 all men know." 
 
 " Decidedly we shall see. For I shall 
 make it a point to be present until it has 
 become an established custom." 
 
 "Then I shall take my baby and run 
 away. The law gives every woman her 
 child at least, till she has weaned it." 
 
 " I don t think I shall have recourse to 
 the law for possession of my own child." 
 
 "Take it!" cried Mrs. Claxton, in a pas 
 sion ; and she dumped the little naked mor 
 sel into its father s arms, and was running 
 from the room. 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 131 
 
 " You are a wicked and unnatural wom 
 an !" cried Mr. Claxton in his absolute be 
 wilderment, not considering such remark at 
 all in the light of inexcusable language when 
 used by himself, and completely at a loss 
 what to do with the thing that he found him 
 self as free to handle as if it had been a 
 jelly-fish. And in another moment she was 
 running back, snatching her baby, hugging 
 it to her throat, and crying over it. 
 
 " You are making yourself sick with your 
 temper, and will hurt the child accordingly," 
 said Mr. Claxton, calmly now. For a person 
 can very well be calm after having wrought 
 the opposite party to a fever. 
 
 " It is your temper," she retorted. " As 
 if a mother didn t know how to dress her 
 own baby without a man around !" 
 
 " I shall not be moved by anything you 
 say in such a mood," said the husband. 
 " But as the child is mine, I claim the right to 
 see it properly attended to. And to resume : 
 I want, in the first place, all the pins abolish 
 ed that I observe you using in its flannels." 
 
 "Pins! Why, everybody uses them. They 
 are everyone shield-pins, and couldn t prick 
 
132 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 her if they tried. Why, Queen Victoria her 
 self invented them." 
 
 " I don t care who invented them," said 
 Mr. Claxton, possibly regarding royalty rath 
 er in the light of rivalry. " I want them 
 abolished. Strings are equally as good." 
 
 "Oh no, indeed," said Mrs. Claxton, 
 quite forgetting her temper ; " they make 
 knots, and the knots are so hard for the 
 little soft body to lie on." 
 
 " Then sew the things on when you dress 
 her. The needle is likely to prick only in 
 the sewing, the pins all day and all night." 
 
 " It is sheer nonsense, Henry. I assure 
 you the pins couldn t prick if they were 
 alive. Do you suppose I want to hurt my 
 own baby ?" 
 
 "That is nothing to the purpose." 
 
 " Well, I will compromise with you," she 
 said, laughing now as easily as she had 
 cried before. " I declare, if you re not per 
 fectly ridiculous ! Come, I will sew on her 
 flannels and things every day, trouble as it 
 is, if you will forego the cold water." 
 
 " I shall make no compromise as to my 
 rights. I insist on the cold water, on the 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 133 
 
 castile soap, the rough towels, and that no 
 pins shall be used." 
 
 " I should like to see you hinder it !" said 
 Mrs. Claxton, stoutly. 
 
 "Very well," said Mr. Claxton, and he 
 took up the pin-cushion to show her; and 
 as at the same instant his wife darted for 
 it, he began to strip it of its pins in a haste 
 very disagreeable to a man of his deliber 
 ate dignity. But unable to retain the ac 
 cumulating pins in his unhandy hands, he 
 suddenly turned away from her and slipped 
 a few of them into his mouth for great men 
 can be driven to desperate expedients; and 
 just as suddenly swallowing his breath, per 
 haps in amazement, he found himself obliged 
 to cough or to strangle, when Nature took the 
 matter into her own charge, and the pins flew 
 in every direction, so wildly and so instanta 
 neously that one of them, he was morally sure, 
 had lodged in his throat. " Help ! help !" 
 he gurgled; "I have swallowed a pin." 
 
 Mrs. Claxton tossed the baby into the 
 cradle and ran to slap his back, in a terri 
 ble alarm ; and Jane, answering her screams, 
 burst into the room with a dish of crusts 
 
134 MRS - CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 and a pitcher of water. And only after the 
 coughing-fit was over, and he had examined 
 his throat with a hand-glass and a powerful 
 light, did he convince himself that there 
 was no pin there, and become as grand and 
 majestic once more as he could be with 
 shoulders that were nearly black and blue 
 from the pounding that Jane had perhaps 
 been only too glad to administer in the ef 
 fort of dislodging the suspected pin. 
 
 But Mr. Claxton was very sore. His 
 wife had contradicted him, had resisted 
 him, had threatened him with the law, had 
 threatened him with desertion, had thrown 
 the baby in his face, had all but said, 
 " Bother your mother !" had hazarded his 
 life with that pin, and, worse than all, had 
 made him ridiculous to himself, to her, and 
 to a servant he, the great Mr. Claxton ! A 
 fish-bone would have been bad enough, but a 
 pin ! He felt as if there were nothing nobler 
 in the world than he, when, seeing that he 
 could not spend another moment from the 
 business that had been waiting, he started to 
 go, and turned at the door to say : " Your 
 conduct has been, this morning, of the most 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 135 
 
 reprehensible description. But you are the 
 mother of my child, and I will not leave 
 you in anger, and as such I forgive you." 
 
 " I don t want any of your forgiveness," 
 said the sinner. " I shall do just as I 
 please with my own baby, for all the men 
 in the world. So !" And then she ran 
 and sprang upon the seat of a chair, and 
 threw an arm round his neck, and turned 
 his chin up and his great sulky face, and 
 laughed at him, and kissed him. " Oh, I m 
 a little wretch !" she cried. " But, indeed, 
 you mustn t ask me to use the cold water. 
 It would break my heart to do it." And 
 somehow Mr. Claxton felt his august de 
 meanor of no sort of consequence beside 
 this little hysterical creature hanging about 
 his neck, and well, he kissed her. 
 
 " Why didn t you say so in the beginning, 
 then ?" he said. " I will overlook the cold 
 water ; but I insist about the pins !" And he 
 returned to his own dressing-room, which he 
 had left for the sake of a little pleasant con 
 versation. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Claxton ! If she thought she 
 had reached the end of her troubles in her 
 
136 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 happy convalescence, she was sadly mis 
 taken. Previously she and her husband had 
 really nothing material to dispute about. 
 Now they had the baby ; and it was an un 
 failing source. If the baby had the colic, 
 and she wanted to use anise-seed, Mr. Clax- 
 ton s mother had used gin ; and as anise 
 was innocent and gin deleterious, of course 
 the struggle was to the knife. If it had 
 the croup, and she wanted homoeopathic 
 treatment, it was altogether certain that 
 Mr. Claxton s mother had used the allo 
 pathic, and of course in their mutual opin 
 ion the difference involved life and death. 
 If it were ill through teething, and she 
 wanted to administer a remedy, Mr. Clax- 
 ton would have the child go into fits, 
 though his own heart ached, rather than 
 have anything done before the doctor came. 
 If she wished to rock it, Mr. Claxton was 
 strenuously opposed, and she might declare 
 till she was tired that the process had not 
 injured Daniel Webster or Martha Washing 
 ton ; he would declare in return that at any 
 rate his child should not have its brains ad 
 dled on a pair of rockers, although I do 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 137 
 
 not think he said "addled" he said "un 
 dergo tabefaction." In fact there was no 
 aspect of the child s existence, from its 
 being sung to sleep to its being kissed by 
 strangers, that they did not differ about. 
 And when the twins came, the differing 
 was not merely doubled, but tripled. After 
 that, too, Mr. Claxton in some way be 
 came haunted by the fear that his wife s 
 beauty would be impaired by care and ill 
 ness. He fancied he might have been neg 
 lectful of her in his concern for his chil 
 dren, and experienced a sensation as near 
 remorse as became a Claxton, and then 
 a new cause of dispute arose : he under 
 took to separate her from her children, 
 he insisted that their perpetual presence 
 occasioned a feverish nervous solicitude, 
 and he contrived one or another method 
 of isolating her from them in the daytime ; 
 and, let them cry their little hearts away 
 at night, he would not allow her to go to 
 them ; they had a nurse apiece, the very 
 best to be had ; Jane and he himself were 
 to be called if the matter were serious, 
 and that must answer ; for his wife, he as- 
 
138 
 
 sured her, was worth more to him than all 
 the children in Christendom, and if she 
 wouldn t take care of herself he must take 
 care of her which, of course, made Mrs. 
 Claxton as happy as he thought it should, 
 and kept her from wearing herself to a white 
 shadow ! 
 
 Mrs. Claxton had by this time divined 
 that one way to have your will was to sub 
 mit in pale patience. Sometimes she was 
 able to practise it, and sometimes, as Paul 
 says, she kicked against the pricks ; gener 
 ally, indeed, she kicked, and in this affair 
 she kicked to such purpose that after one 
 of the twins had had a night of convul 
 sions in her absence, Mr. Claxton found 
 that a strait -jacket would conquer the 
 mother s instinct sooner than he would, and 
 the household was allowed to resume its 
 normal condition. 
 
 Its normal condition was a wrangle. 
 Should baby-talk be addressed to the ba 
 bies, or sound English ? Should the milk 
 be boiled in the coffee or not, when cream 
 was not to be had, and should the coffee 
 be settled with an egg or with fish skin ? 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 139 
 
 Should the crusts be given to the poor, or 
 should money be given to the poor and 
 the crusts saved for a bread - pudding ? 
 Each day brought its fresh point of de 
 bate. If Mrs. Claxton had expressed the 
 first opinion, Mr. Claxton s natural ten 
 dency was to differ, both because she had 
 no right to the first opinion, and be 
 cause he wished her to understand that 
 her judgment was unsound ; but having 
 expressed that opinion, Mrs. Claxton was 
 bound to maintain it till the sky fell ; and 
 there it was. If she wanted the horses, 
 she must mention it at breakfast, and 
 go over the matter with statement and 
 question and answer till she wished she 
 had gone afoot without speaking of the 
 thing ; but if she did go afoot, then woe 
 betide her ! she had thrown a shadow 
 on the Claxton name which it took a 
 day and night of Claxton severity to 
 brighten. 
 
 And what else could be expected of 
 a man in a place, as Mrs. Claxton some 
 times thought, where a thousand men 
 hung on his will for a livelihood, where 
 
140 MRS. CLAXTONS SKELETON 
 
 the doctor kowtowed to him, and where 
 the minister would have lain down and let 
 him walk over him ? 
 
 If on one day Mrs. Claxton wanted to 
 send the children to walk in the millstream 
 woods, then Mr. Claxton was sure they 
 would be kidnapped. And if on another 
 day Mr. Claxton suggested their picnicking 
 with the nurses up on the lovely reservoir 
 grounds, then Mrs. Claxton was sure they 
 would be drowned. 
 
 " Drowned !" cried the husband, indig 
 nantly for the reservoir was his especial 
 plaything, having been constructed under 
 his supervision to turn the mill-wheels by 
 damming into one basin the course of two 
 small streams, and insult to that was felt 
 like insult to himself. " Drowned ! Pray 
 what should drown them ?" 
 
 "Water," was the short reply. "I ve 
 heard that it could." 
 
 " I really don t know how it could in this 
 instance," replied Mr. Claxton, with great 
 disdain. 
 
 " By bursting that absurd dam !" cried 
 the mother, out of patience. " It will burst 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 141 
 
 some day, and it may as easily be to-day as 
 another, and sweep them away in a breath. 
 I m sure I wake with every tap of the vine 
 on the pane all night, sure that now it s 
 going !" 
 
 " Let me hear no more talk of the sort," 
 said Mr. Claxton. " It is enough to de 
 moralize the whole valley. If such things 
 were known to be uttered by my wife I could 
 not keep a hand. There is no more likeli 
 hood of that clam s bursting than of the 
 mill s falling. On the whole, though, I don t 
 know that it is a good place for the chil 
 dren to visit. They might, as you say, be 
 drowned, and without waiting for the dam 
 to burst." 
 
 " What under the sun can drown them, 
 I should like to know, if the dam does not 
 burst?" 
 
 " Water," replied Mr. Claxton, in his 
 turn. 
 
 " Water ! As if they could tumble in with 
 all that slope of the green banks a mile 
 above them, and the nurses with them too ! 
 I should as soon think of fire." 
 
 " I presume that would be quite possible 
 
142 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 to an inconsequential mind," said the lofty 
 party of the first part. 
 
 " I never pretended to any sort of a 
 mind. If I had But I know how to 
 take care of my children," she cried, sud 
 denly. "And certainly neither of the twins 
 could climb if the carriage left them at the 
 foot of the hill itself, and Retta always 
 obeys." 
 
 " Henrietta, my dear. Understand that 
 I will not have any abbreviations used 
 in my family. The names given in bap 
 tism are their only names, and are those 
 by which my children must and shall be 
 known." 
 
 " Well, you can call her what you please, 
 and I ll call her what I please." 
 
 "You seem entirely to forget, Caroline, 
 that I am the head of this house." 
 
 " I don t know how I can forget it. You 
 reiterate it often enough." 
 
 " I reiterate it !" he cried, in a blaze; for 
 his magnanimity was one of his darling 
 virtues, and though he might taunt till he 
 was tired concerning the benefits he con 
 ferred, he not only wished it held that he 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON i 43 
 
 never taunted, but believed himself that he 
 never did, probably because his unused ca 
 pabilities of taunting were so much greater 
 than those he used. 
 
 "Yes, you do," she responded. "And I 
 don t care anything about the house. The 
 family, at all events, is as much my family 
 as yours, and if I choose I shall use pet 
 names there to the end of time. So !" 
 
 " Is it possible that I comprehend you 
 that under my own roof you defy me in this 
 manner, and dare to say you will do this or 
 you won t do that ?" 
 
 " Yes, it is !" cried Mrs. Claxton, with a 
 burning face and a trembling voice. " I 
 wonder if I sha n t have to ask you next if 
 I may breathe through my nose or my lips. 
 Let me tell you, sir, you married the wrong 
 person when you thought you would have 
 an abject slave in your wife. I had rather 
 have stayed a governess all my days than 
 endure the life you lead me ! And I rue the 
 hour I ever set my eyes on you !" she cried, 
 in her passion. And then, to give confir 
 mation to her words, her lips began to 
 quiver and her breath began to catch, and 
 
144 MRS - CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 she sank in a little heap in the arm 
 chair, sobbing fit to dissolve herself in 
 tears. 
 
 As for Mr. Claxton, he dared not trust 
 himself to reply. He felt as if he must 
 shake her, and if he shook her he was very 
 much afraid he should do something worse, 
 and so the noblesse oblige of the Claxton dig 
 nity took him from the room speechless, 
 but glaring. 
 
 " I wish I was dead," sobbed Mrs. Clax 
 ton, growing more hysterical with every sob. 
 "Or else I wish But she did not finish 
 the sentence. 
 
 By this time you have doubtless become 
 quite well aware of the nature of Mrs. Clax- 
 ton s skeleton, and see how it was that it 
 walked abroad when she did, and always 
 ran before and opened the door for her 
 when she came home; and she was slowly 
 growing to see its likeness in her face every 
 time she looked in the glass that pretty, 
 gracious face, where the lines had yet hardly 
 deepened into settled frowns. She felt her 
 self stripped of identity and all personal 
 importance made a mere puppet ; she was 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 145 
 
 not sure of peace from one moment to the 
 next ; she had no fixed happiness in life 
 but the love of her children ; and she was 
 convinced that the moment they were old 
 enough to exercise intelligence, the habit of 
 contempt would be caught, and they too 
 would set her at naught. Every day of her 
 life she wished herself free, and she began 
 to recognize the phantom of a perception 
 that the only escape from her skeleton was 
 through the door of death death for one 
 or the other of them ; sometimes she could 
 not have been sure that she was altogether 
 unready to say which one, and that it would 
 not be herself. She thought that she was the 
 victim of a wicked injustice on the part of 
 fate, for she realized what it might be to 
 have the love of a husband who regarded 
 her as an individual, as a mate, who, far 
 from tyrannizing over her as an odalisque 
 and a piece of acquired property a little 
 more valuable than Towser or Dash, wooed 
 her still with kind observances and unfailing 
 respect. She loved her husband, but her 
 temper and his vainglory were always cross 
 ing swords in the way of the love ; she 
 
140 MRS. CLAXTONS SKELETON 
 
 loved him, and she hated him ; she was har 
 assed by opposing forces and feelings night 
 and day. For all her sweet smiles and her 
 tranquil manners out-doors, she was an ex 
 ceedingly wretched woman within the house. 
 
 As for Mr. Claxton But words fail to 
 convey the emotion of that good man when 
 convinced of the rebellion in his household 
 the cockatrice upon his hearth ! 
 
 Mr. Claxton was indeed at a loss in his 
 own thoughts. He was so much aghast at 
 his wife s outbreak that he did not know 
 how to formulate the statement of affairs to 
 himself. He felt unable to reach a solution 
 of the problem as to what could have caused 
 such a mood of mind in her, and his powers 
 were inadequate to devise a fit punishment 
 till he should have looked the affair over 
 more coolly. He stayed in his counting- 
 room that afternoon a good while beyond 
 business hours, partly to reflect on these 
 matters, and partly because a thunder 
 cloud had burst over the valley and among 
 the hills, and he knew that his wife was 
 apt to be utterly prostrated by fear of 
 thunder, and thought it best to give her 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 147 
 
 a more realizing sense of her dependence 
 on him through his absence at such a 
 crisis. 
 
 However, he would not have been able 
 to say what contradictory impulse it was 
 that made him at last, while the heavens 
 were still pouring a thick, suffocating sheet 
 of rain, throw over his shoulders an old 
 pilot-cloth coat hanging in the place, and 
 sally forth for home. Certainly he had rea 
 son to regret it directly afterwards, for in 
 three minutes the rain had penetrated his 
 umbrella and it was only a sodden rag, and 
 he shut it to find that in three minutes more 
 he should be wet to the skin, if not to the 
 bone. Then the question was, should he 
 return ? No, " returning were as tedious 
 as go o er." To retrace one s steps was to 
 acknowledge one s error. Then should he 
 run ? Run ? Mr. Claxton run ? Well, 
 let him run never so swiftly, the rain was 
 swifter yet ; he would be just as surely 
 wet, since it was some distance. If he 
 could not retain his comfort, he might re 
 tain his dignity, he might solace himself 
 with the reflection that either Plato or Per- 
 
148 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 icles or Aristotle presented a much more 
 preposterous appearance with the tail of his 
 gown turned up over his head in a shower. 
 And accordingly he stalked along in great 
 strides, his hat ruined, his clothes too heavy 
 to carry, the rain running a cold river down 
 his back and into his boots, blinding his 
 eyes, and streaming off a hundred little points 
 of his hair, and most humiliatingly off the 
 end of his nose and chin, feeling ignomini- 
 ously like Lot s wife in a rain-storm, and 
 hearing an ignorant little boy in the distance 
 hoot at him. Certainly he was not at all a 
 worshipful object; no clod-hopper ever pre 
 sented a more abject appearance. Of what 
 value to him at that moment was his money ? 
 Of what value were his horses and carriages ? 
 He was as wet as the nakedest man that 
 ever swam. And as he had really, after all 
 his anger with her, been hastening home on 
 Mrs. Claxton s account, he transferred to 
 that account all the chagrin arising from the 
 situation, the more readily that it was of no 
 use to be angry with the elements, and he 
 was very angry with something, with the in 
 dignity practised upon him by the weather, 
 
149 
 
 with his wetness, his general discomfort, and 
 with the little boy. 
 
 And of course, when at length he reached 
 the house, the rain still raining a deluge, 
 and the lightning falling round him every 
 step of the way, he expected doors to be 
 thrown open before him, and a tumultuary 
 welcome to make itself heard, in which all 
 the disagreements of many days would be 
 forgotten. He expected the house-servants 
 to run this way and the nurses that, and 
 the children to shout and prance about him, 
 and his wife to fall on his neck, and hot flan 
 nels and toddy and dry clothes to appear 
 by magic. Instead of all which not a soul 
 was to be seen, not even the dogs ; the ser 
 vants had the children in some remote part 
 of the house, where they were telling of 
 dreadful deaths by lightning, and awful ap 
 paritions in the heavens ; and he marched 
 along to his room, solitary and unheard, his 
 feet squelching his soft French boots like 
 pulp, conscious of every separate toe, and 
 the water dripping from his clothes in pud 
 dles upon the bright carpets as he stepped. 
 He saw himself in this plight in a long mir- 
 
150 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 ror of the hall, and surely for one instant 
 the starch was taken out of Mr. Claxton 
 a limp and helpless filter of rain-water. Pos 
 sibly if anybody other than that thing in the 
 glass had seen him, he would have dropped 
 on the floor and resolved into a dew ; but 
 no one did, and the moment he had closed 
 his bedroom door he was all buckram again. 
 For there was Mrs. Claxton in bed, with the 
 room darkened, utterly oblivious of his com 
 ing or staying, her head wrapped about with 
 the blankets, deaf to the bubble and squeak 
 of his boots, deaf to the thunder too, blind 
 to the image he presented, blind to the light 
 ning, totally unaware of his return, and in 
 different to his condition. This was what 
 a man got for exposing himself in thunder- 
 gust ! Mr. Claxton did not swear : the Clax- 
 tons never swore ; possibly because if they 
 had sworn it would have been seen that they 
 could not have things all their own way, or 
 else they would not swear about it : but he 
 slipped himself out of that entanglement of 
 dripping garments and into dry ones with 
 as much desperate haste as became him ; 
 and without uttering a word save a muttered 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 151 
 
 vow that there should not be a feather-bed 
 left in his house by to-morrow, he went down 
 to the dining-room. There dinner, in spite 
 of the delay, had not yet been served ; partly 
 because it had waited for him in the first 
 place, and partly because the storm was so 
 tremendous that all minor interests had been 
 forgotten in it, and partly because Mrs. Clax- 
 ton had been lost to the household in the 
 sheltering recesses of that feather-bed. Din 
 ner, however, after his exertions, was not a 
 minor interest to Mr. Claxton, and he forth 
 with proceeded to raise Those readers 
 whose faulty housekeeping may have dis 
 covered to them the possibilities of the 
 hungry and infuriate animal can supply the 
 hiatus. 
 
 So Mr. Claxton ate his dinner in what 
 Thomas afterwards called " single cussed- 
 ness," having declined the proffered com 
 pany of Miss Henrietta which he would 
 not have, for the sake of feeling like the 
 forsaken merman and having refused to 
 let Mrs. Claxton be disturbed, goading him 
 self with every mouthful into a completer 
 sense of the outrageous way in which he 
 
152 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 was being rewarded for his magnanimity 
 in overlooking the morning s occurrences, 
 in getting wet through for his wife s relief, 
 in making himself a ridiculous spectacle, 
 in enduring the hootings of that little boy 
 in the distance. He read his evening pa 
 per, and turned over the evening mail ; 
 wrote a few letters, in which I am afraid 
 he wreaked a poor sort of vengeance on 
 his correspondents, for want of other op 
 portunity to relieve his surcharged spleen ; 
 and finally went to bed, to be greeted by 
 the pleasant sight of Mrs. Claxton enjoy 
 ing a peaceful sleep after the weariness of 
 her day s emotions. 
 
 For Mrs. Claxton had had her headache 
 that always attended an electric storm, had 
 cried herself into a worse one with her fear 
 of the lightning, and with the fact that, for 
 the first time, her husband had failed to 
 appear and to sustain her through the 
 thunderous trial, and when, later, one of 
 the nurses happening into the room, had 
 mentioned Mr. Claxton s return, and she 
 saw that he had designedly left her to suf 
 fer alone, indignation dried her tears ; and 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 153 
 
 having satisfied herself that the children 
 were safely upon their pillows, she made 
 her own toilet for the night, and went to 
 bed with her wrath, to fall asleep instantly 
 with her fatigue. 
 
 But Mr. Claxton was tired himself a 
 man is not hooted at by little boys with 
 out some wear and tear of the sensibili 
 ties. He did not attempt to wake his wife, 
 but followed her example, and slept sound 
 ly till just before daybreak, when, in the 
 gray dawn, he was disturbed by one of 
 those little noises that disturb nobody but 
 a householder. It was only a faint and 
 rather pleasant murmur an incessant drip, 
 drip, drip; but there was no occasion for 
 such a murmur, since it was not raining 
 then, and he listened anxiously to discover 
 the cause of it. It was not long before he 
 surmised that it came from the overflow 
 of the tank in the roof. That was a mat 
 ter easily remedied by opening the pipes, 
 though some slight damage had already 
 been done, and he rose to investigate the 
 matter with some inward grumbling about 
 there never being anybody but himself to 
 
154 MRS CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 see to such things. Having concluded his 
 investigation, and having done all there was 
 to be done at present, he was so thorough 
 ly awakened that it did not seem worth 
 while to go back to bed again ; so he 
 dressed himself for the day noiselessly, and 
 went out to the stables for his horse. The 
 overflow of the tank had suggested to him 
 the advisability of a visit to the great reser 
 voir between the hills, and an inspection of 
 the state in which the thunder-storm had 
 left it. It occurred to him, too, that thus 
 early he might surprise the keeper off duty, 
 which idea had an alluring relish to him ; 
 and then it would be a pleasant morning 
 ride, and he would be back to find break 
 fast ready, and his wife perhaps amiable, 
 and the domestic storm as well blown over 
 as the thunder-storm. 
 
 As Mr. Claxton rode forth the sun had 
 just sent a blush over all the skies in ad 
 vance of his coming, and the world was 
 at that heavenly hour before the full yel 
 low lustre pours over the edge when all the 
 softer shades of color the pure pale roses 
 and grays and purples seem striving to 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 155 
 
 convince you how much lovelier they are 
 than the brilliant gold and azure of broad 
 day; the birds were warbling full-throated 
 still, and all the boughs were glittering with 
 dew and with the last drops of the night s 
 shower, till the whole earth looked as if 
 it had been freshly made that morning. I 
 don t know that Mr. Claxton thought pre 
 cisely that it was a special demonstration 
 on the part of Nature in honor of his early 
 ride, when the colors grew more and more 
 gorgeous and the grand transformation scene 
 finally sublimated itself into one central 
 spot of ruby fire, out of which the sun came 
 rolling up in majesty ; but he certainly had 
 an idea that the common people turning 
 out to their work did not have such sunrises 
 every morning, and he rode forward brisk 
 ly, with a gratified sense of being in a spe 
 cies of partnership with Nature if she got 
 up the show, he got up the appreciation, 
 and if the sunrise was the greatest thing 
 in that valley, he, at any rate, was the next 
 greatest. 
 
 It was a pretty path, in its steep ascent, 
 up which he rode, a bridle-path where the 
 
156 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 velvet sward, with its sparkling cobwebs, 
 only half disclosed the traces of old foot 
 prints, every here and there turning out of 
 its way to wind round some huge mossy 
 bowlder. Overhead the young birches and 
 maples were waving their boughs, as if 
 groping for the light that fell on the tree- 
 tops far above, now tossing the dew down 
 on him from the brink of some sheer face 
 of rock, now shaking in the sweet wind in 
 cranny and crevice of the cool wet wall 
 upon the other side, and yet in shadow. 
 At one point the path descended into a 
 little hollow, a green dimple of fern and 
 brake ; then it rose rapidly, and passed 
 beneath a group of gigantic oaks that had 
 braved the storms of centuries, the Century 
 Oaks they were called, indeed, their roots 
 twisting into the ribs of the solid rock it 
 self; and at length it came out beside the 
 brook that went leaping down the hill from 
 the gateway on the east side of the reservoir, 
 fuller that morning than he remembered 
 to have seen it now dark and strong, and 
 now, where a sunbeam touched it, a swift 
 sheet of foam and rainbows. " It takes 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 157 
 
 such a storm as yesterday s to swell a brook 
 like this," said Mr. Claxton to himself, as 
 his horse s feet left the velvet sward and 
 began to clatter o ver the pebbles, and the 
 great face of the reservoir, with the green 
 sod of its bank, rose over the wood like the 
 vast base of some mighty unbuilt tower. 
 " We must have an immense backwater 
 now," he said ; " enough to run the mills if 
 there should be a drought till the fall. I ll 
 take one good look at the dam before I go, 
 if it does spoil the waffles." 
 
 It was just as Mr. Claxton uttered these 
 words, half aloud, that a shiver ran from 
 head to hoof through the good beast that 
 bore him, and which stood still with planted 
 feet and head erect so suddenly as nearly to 
 dismount his rider. Mr. Claxton looked on 
 this side and on that for the object of alarm, 
 saw nothing, and sprang to the ground. The 
 shiver was in the ground : a thrill, a slow and 
 terrible thrill, was pulsing through the earth, 
 that seemed to shake like a shaking breast, 
 that was rising to meet him to meet him 
 who was trembling like a reed himself. 
 
 For what was this ? The end of the 
 
158 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 world ? He gave one look at the awful 
 glory up there at the crest of the hill, the 
 awful deathly glory of the bristling, rush 
 ing, monstrous thing smitten with the full 
 splendor of the risen sun, and then threw 
 himself into the saddle again, wheeled about, 
 and spurred his horse down the valley like 
 a madman. But the muffled thunder of 
 his horse s hoofs in his ears was drowned 
 by a louder sound a dull growl, a hollow 
 roar, a whistling of all the winds that blow 
 in heaven ; and fast as he fled a fierce foe 
 followed faster. 
 
 In the great Claxton house upon its 
 knoll, with the trees softly bending and 
 bowing below it, the morning light had 
 gently entered, and it fell upon the portrait 
 of Mr. Claxton just as Mrs. Claxton was 
 opening her eyes. It was a handsome por 
 trait of him, with all that bright and ruddy 
 comeliness that made his youth so impos 
 ing to her. It seemed to her at that mo 
 ment that the face was smiling on her as it 
 used to do at the time when she hung the 
 picture at the foot of her bed, that it might 
 be the first object on which her eyes should 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 159 
 
 open. In a forgetful recurrence of the old 
 emotion she did not immediately call up 
 the events of later days, and was smiling 
 back at it, when all at once memory re 
 sumed its play, and she turned to behold 
 the other pillow vacant. 
 
 It was something like dismay that over 
 came Mrs. Claxton, for seldom had Mr. 
 Claxton s displeasure survived a night s 
 sleep. " He has gone away in anger, then !" 
 she exclaimed. But directly her own anger 
 ran to the rescue. " If I had shown a 
 proper spirit in the first place," she said, 
 " he would never have presumed to abuse 
 me so. I had rather be a kitchen girl than 
 such a slave as he makes me. The sport 
 of all the kitchen girls ! I had rather die 
 than live so any more ! I don t care what 
 happens if I can only escape from this. 
 Nothing can be worse !" And with such 
 ejaculations hovering round her like Venus s 
 doves, Mrs. Claxton bathed and dressed, 
 and, fresh and fair as any flower, for all her 
 troubles, went to find her babies. 
 
 But the babies were lovely enough to dis 
 tract her thoughts for the time ; and it was 
 
160 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 only after a frolic with them, in all their 
 dimpling rosiness and laughter, that, some 
 what softened, she went down with them 
 clinging about her, Henrietta ushering the 
 procession, and the baby astride her shoul 
 der, to find the breakfast on the table, and 
 Mr. Claxton she knew not where. He had 
 saddled the red horse himself, the man said, 
 to get a plumber, maybe, for the pipes had 
 been leaking from the pressure. 
 
 From the pressure. Mrs. Claxton glanced 
 up at the window, half startled, yet her face 
 bright with a hovering triumph on the point 
 of pouncing. Then he had probably gone 
 up to see after the reservoir, she thought 
 not so sure of the dam after all ! And 
 she went to the window to look up the 
 valley road. Yes, there was an object dis 
 cernible against the bare face of rock, mov 
 ing far up the hill, just beyond the Cen 
 tury Oaks; it was going up no, it was 
 standing still ; now it had just turned about. 
 A horse and rider. Yes, without doubt, that 
 was Mr. Claxton : he had been up there to 
 see his pet construction, but hunger was re 
 calling him to breakfast : he hardly deserved 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 161 
 
 that she should keep it hot for him. Now 
 she could see plainer. Oh yes, that was Mr. 
 Claxton and the red horse. But why were 
 they coming so fast ? Was there a gust up 
 there ? It looked as though a thick whirl 
 wind were behind him. Mrs. Claxton lifted 
 her eyes to the sky, looking for clouds ; as 
 she did so, they rested one second on the 
 top of the hill. In that second great God 
 in heaven ! in that second she saw the 
 whole east side of the reservoir move out in 
 one mass, and a flood, a stupendous volume 
 of water, pour in one prodigious leap, this 
 instant transfigured in the sunshine like a 
 supernal apparition, and the next instant 
 precipitating itself, a dark and horrible tor 
 rent of clay and water and stone and tree, 
 tumbling and boiling down the valley, strip 
 ping bare the rock behind it, driving the 
 earth before ! 
 
 One shrill cry from Mrs. Claxton s lips, 
 " It has come at last !" one bewildered look 
 for somebody to lean on, and that was all 
 the weakness she allowed herself. Imme 
 diately she had summoned the servants, 
 and had the outside hands all rushing into 
 
162 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 the kitchen from garden and stable, two of 
 them sent back to bring the long ladder 
 into the main hall, and the others hurrying 
 to bolt doors and drop windows and put up 
 shutters. 
 
 "Up -stairs now!" cried Mrs. Claxton, 
 seizing her baby, just as the alarm-bell of 
 the mills began to ring. " If the water 
 comes so high, we can retreat to the roof. 
 No, no"- as the girls began to cry and 
 show hysterical tendencies " we are safe. 
 The house must stand. It is stone. The 
 walls are thick ; and the force will be part 
 ly spent before the flood reaches us. It 
 isn t we who will suffer ; it is your master, 
 who is out in the way somewhere ; it is our 
 neighbors whose houses stand in the plain. 
 Plant the ladder beneath a second -story 
 window, Thomas quick, I say ! that they 
 may see the wisdom of running here. You 
 simpletons ! Can water run up the lad 
 der ?" 
 
 " She s the right stuff," said Thomas to 
 Jane. And she was hardly obeyed when 
 the neighbors were seen running for the 
 knoll and springing up the terraces, men 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 163 
 
 with their mothers, and women with their 
 children, people saving themselves wher 
 ever they chanced to be, tripping and fall 
 ing and fainting and dragged along, unable 
 to make for the hills on the valley sides, 
 and seeking the nearest security as it was 
 offered by the great Claxton house upon its 
 terraced knoll, thronging at last into the 
 doorway which Thomas stood ready to close, 
 and scattering through the upper rooms, 
 these in a dumb horror, with wringing hands, 
 and those with sobs and screams and cries 
 for one another. 
 
 They were still running for the house 
 when some were seen to fall as if pros 
 trated by a furious wind behind them. 
 There was a moment of intense stillness in 
 the house, as the gazing groups beheld it, 
 and into that stillness crept the whisper, 
 the muffled rumble and roll, the wide roar 
 of the open flood-gates. Thomas slammed 
 the door, and sprang up the stairway af 
 ter his mistress and the rest. " Say your 
 prayers," said he, putting his arms round 
 Jane, who hid her head in them, " for here 
 it comes !" And with the word they saw a 
 
wall of water pushing down the valley, too 
 swift to break and fall yellow and polished 
 as a jewel through all its burnished front, 
 its crest curling in a terrible foam of ruin, 
 where toppled uprooted trees, struggling, 
 drowning men, crashed roof and rafter, and 
 capsized dwelling and in another heart 
 beat the whole wide valley was afloat, and 
 the flood was upon them, billowing and bel 
 lowing and surging on over the main road, 
 over the hay field, across the gardens, up 
 the knoll, the waters piling themselves like 
 light from terrace to terrace. Would they 
 rise higher ? Would the house go, too ? 
 There was not time to ask it before they 
 were foaming up the lawns, were rushing 
 round the door-steps, were carrying away the 
 ladder, were pouring through the windows. 
 A shock it was a long beam swirling in 
 the torrent and grazing the house. Anoth 
 er shock the ground vibrating to it and 
 they saw the great mills swing and totter 
 and fall in a cloud of wreck, and wash 
 away. And then one long tremor that 
 made the hair stand on end : the shoul 
 der of the great water was pressing full 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 165 
 
 on them. One dizzy, swimming moment 
 they felt the strong stones and timbers 
 quiver, felt them lift and strain and rise 
 and settle, and then, with a great cry of 
 joy, they saw that the house, opposing its 
 angle to the tide, had divided its volume, 
 and the waters flowed on either side and 
 left it safe. 
 
 It was not a half-hour since Mrs. Claxton 
 had seen the bursting of the reservoir be 
 fore she gathered her children into her own 
 room and shut the door, leaving the rest 
 of the house to its sudden guests and the 
 watchers of the passing and subsiding flood, 
 that she might betake herself to her knees. 
 She and her children were safe ; but her 
 husband God alone knew where he was ! 
 She did not fall on her knees, though ; she 
 walked up and down the room like a wild 
 woman, stopping at every turn to embrace 
 one child or another, to exclaim in misery 
 with a storm of tears. A half-hour ago she 
 had seen him turn about, dashing home 
 ward with that horror behind him dashing 
 homeward to save himself perhaps, perhaps 
 to save her and the children. Now the 
 
166 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 waters must have gone over him. He must 
 have fallen before them. And the terror 
 and agony he had endured in that dreadful 
 moment when he saw there was no help for 
 him rose before her like clouds of darkness 
 and enveloped her. One hour passed, and 
 another ; the nurses had come in and taken 
 the frightened twins; the baby fell asleep, 
 and little Henrietta kept awe-struck guard 
 over him. But Mrs. Claxton saw nothing 
 that occurred. She was realizing what her 
 bereavement would be ; she was seeing all 
 the mistakes of her life suddenly, as if 
 lightning had stamped the whole thing on 
 her; she was suffering a torture of remorse; 
 she was thinking how her husband might 
 possibly have escaped, wondering about 
 him, contriving for him ; she was crying out 
 that she should never see his face again ; 
 she was falling upon the bed and hiding 
 her face in his pillow, and wetting it with 
 scalding tears. Yes, she had told him she 
 rued the hour she ever laid eyes on him 
 well, perhaps she would never lay eyes on 
 him again ! And then a striking clock 
 seemed to be tolling a knell. The baby 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 167 
 
 awoke and cried ; little Henrietta tugged 
 and pulled it off the bed, and, clasping it 
 in her chubby arms, lugged it, in a fashion, 
 from the room : her mother never noticed 
 her. She had sat down to listen for the 
 clock again. Clang, clang, clang, it meas 
 ured out noon : now it was impossible that 
 he should have escaped and not be there. 
 Yes, she was free free from all her trou 
 bles; she was no longer a slave; the mis 
 tress of her own house at last. But oh, to 
 what purpose ! There was no more a skele 
 ton in that house, only in its stead a fearful 
 phantom to rise and shake its gory locks at 
 her. For it was she who had caused her 
 husband s death, if he were dead ; and she 
 started up to walk the floor again in a sus 
 pense that was worse than certainty. It 
 was her sharp anger yes, yes, it was her 
 contentious tongue of yesterday that drove 
 him forth this morning. Ah, great Heaven ! 
 but for her wicked words he would have 
 been at home when the reservoir burst ; he 
 would be safe and thankful now. She had 
 murdered him, and she had murdered her 
 own peace her own words were the flam- 
 
iGS MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 ing swords that shut her out of hope and 
 happiness forever. She loved him. And 
 she had lost him. Oh, what was a little 
 matter of every day to contend about, be 
 side the great love of a life, the praise, the 
 encouragement, the sympathy, the tender 
 ness ! and she remembered how he had 
 seemed to adore her once ; how she had 
 leaned on him and believed in him once; 
 what warmth there used to be in his smile, 
 what comfort in his presence. And she 
 should never have them again. She had shut 
 him out from the light of day, from home, 
 from children, from life. He had left her, 
 too, in anger; he had gone out without 
 kissing her ; he was unreconciled with her 
 in death ! 
 
 "Oh, do not let it be death !" she cried. 
 " Spare him, Lord ! save him ! Do not let 
 it be too late ! Give me back my husband !" 
 She flung herself down in wild supplication, 
 yearning and agonized, praying for him in 
 a passion of prayer, and growing still and 
 silent in that ecstasy as if she were turning 
 to stone. 
 
 There was movement and bustle now 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 169 
 
 about the house, for the waters had passed, 
 leaving only their slime behind them, thick 
 mud on carpet and floor, ropy filth on wall 
 and wainscot, and the people had left shel 
 ter, and were wading through the knee-deep 
 mud in search of the spot that had been 
 home. The servants were already begin 
 ning to see if there were any possibility of 
 setting things to rights where the tide had 
 flowed through below - stairs, crushing par 
 titions and sweeping doors before it, and 
 \vondering where to find the shovels, when 
 in the going and coming a poor creature 
 staggered into the door, and, just as Thomas 
 came picking his way along in high boots, 
 fell on the floor at his feet a poor creat 
 ure, bruised and bleeding and in rags, 
 caked with the ooze and mire, a noisome 
 and disgusting wretch more vile than any 
 thing else on earth. 
 
 " Look here, you !" said Thomas, touch 
 ing him with the end of his stick. "Get 
 out of this, will you ? It s no place for to 
 be lying about drunk, and no day neither. 
 Get out, I say, or I ll set the mastiffs on 
 you. Here, Towser ! here, Dash !" And in 
 
170 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 a moment the snarl of the dogs was heard 
 as they made for the despicable object. 
 
 " Thomas !" cried a feeble voice, as the 
 poor creature rose on one elbow. 
 
 " Oh, good Lord above us, Thomas !" 
 cried Jane, on the stairs. " Don t you know 
 who it is ?" 
 
 And in a moment the other men had 
 been called, and among them they got that 
 sorry fusion of humanity and alluvial de 
 posit up the stairs and into the bath-room. 
 
 But nothing of all this stir did Mrs. 
 Claxton hear. In that ecstasy of petition 
 ing she was lost to all that went on ; listen 
 ing for some voice out of heaven, she heard 
 no earthly sound. There was a chorus from 
 the children outside, but she did not hear 
 it ; the door opened again, but she did not 
 know it ; and then two arms were about 
 her, two tired and trembling arms, and a 
 face over which the tears were pouring was 
 beside her own. She started back quaking 
 as if it were an apparition ; and then she 
 flung herself upon her husband s neck. 
 
 " Oh, He has heard me ! He has heard 
 me !" she cried. 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 171 
 
 " My darling," he was murmuring, " can 
 you ever forgive me ?" 
 
 " Oh, my dear one," she was sobbing, 
 "how are you and God ever going to for 
 give me ?" 
 
 " I saw it all," he said, presently, as she 
 sat on the bedside where he lay, " while I 
 was buffeting that water, and just as I had 
 given up and was swept into the arms of 
 the old Century Oak the only one of them 
 that stands now, Caroline. I was nothing 
 but a mote, a speck, in that great surge, 
 and all my arrogance and evil pride, all my 
 abuse of you, seemed to be bearing me 
 down into the flood. Oh, my child, I prayed 
 to Heaven to save me that I might be a 
 better husband to you ! And when I came 
 to the door my own dogs didn t know me." 
 And Mr. Claxton cried again. 
 
 It was some mornings after that, when 
 things were in a degree restored to place, 
 and the family breakfasting together alone 
 for the first time, that Mr. Claxton gazed 
 smilingly at his wife, and thought, with a 
 little self-congratulation, that he really was 
 a better husband to her than he had been, 
 
i;2 MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 
 
 as she beamed back at him all smiles and 
 velvet blushes. He had never seen himself 
 as he was, he thought, before that calamity 
 overtook him ; it had needed what they call 
 an act of God to open his eyes. And now 
 Between ourselves, I don t believe he be 
 came an angel all at once, for that despotic 
 principle was bred in his bone, and Noah s 
 flood itself could not have washed it out. I 
 should not be surprised if he were still apt 
 to be found a very exasperating man, and I 
 imagine that she was always liable to the 
 reproach of the vixens, though if that tem 
 per of hers ever struck fire again, remem 
 brance of one morning s agony could not 
 but quench the spark. 
 
 " How happy we are !" said he. " I don t 
 feel prepared to call the accident a calam 
 ity, after all that is, so far as we are con 
 cerned," said Mr. Claxton. checking him 
 self. " People have supposed us enviable 
 beings for a good while, Caroline, never 
 dreaming of the skeleton in our closet. But 
 in the future we shall be enviable indeed." 
 
 " Why, so we are now !" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Claxton. 
 
MRS. CLAXTON S SKELETON 173 
 
 "That old bickering of ours was a sad 
 skeleton to carry about it was like a babe 
 in the arms to you, wasn t it ?" 
 
 " I made as much of it !" she said. 
 
 "Well, let us thank God that there is 
 nothing to hold its bones together ; let us 
 thank God, my love, that there is no longer 
 a skeleton in the house, and that we have 
 buried it" 
 
 " Fathoms deep," she cried. 
 
 " in the mire of the flood." 
 
 And at that Mrs. Claxton looked at him, 
 and her lips began to tremble and her eyes 
 to fill, and she forsook her chair and ran to 
 her husband, who, once ready to be shocked 
 at such an indecorum, now clasped her in 
 his arms with tender whispers, stroked her 
 hair a moment as her head rested on his 
 breast, and then led her back to her seat 
 with a lofty sort of courtesy, but paused to 
 kiss the tears off her cheek. 
 
 And Miss Henrietta, recalling the scene 
 in after -years, wondered what in the world 
 the skeleton could have been over whose 
 burial her father and mother were making 
 such an ado. 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 THERE is no use in making any pretences 
 about it. It was no dark and splendid young 
 pirate fascinated by a rosy rustic maiden. 
 It was no foreign prince in disguise attract 
 ed by the grace of an unfettered shape bal 
 ancing water-pails at the spring, and ready 
 to override all the conventions of society 
 and make the girl his wife. It was Binns, 
 the butcher-boy. 
 
 A scrap of a fellow he was ; so short, 
 so slight, so pale, so insignificant, that it 
 seemed as if, should he take off his long 
 blue blouse, there would really be nothing 
 left of him but his freckles. And Roxy, she 
 was half again his height, and buxom and 
 blooming, not to say blowsy, deep-colored, 
 and altogether with a great deal of her. 
 
 If Roxy were not Roxy, the cook, talking 
 at the kitchen storm-door with Binns, whose 
 scraggy horse dropped his head so low with 
 
178 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 the dropping of the reins that he looked as 
 if he would drop in the street altogether if 
 the authorities did not interfere if Roxy 
 were not Roxy, but were Gladys tossing 
 a rose over the drawing-room balcony to 
 the gallant young cavalry officer on his 
 prancing Abdallah that had carried him 
 through the terrific skirmishes of an Indian 
 campaign, then I will admit that more en 
 tertainment and much finer company might 
 be had out of the affair. The dinners which 
 we might attend together in the course of 
 our acquaintance would be very different 
 from the surreptitious turnovers and cus 
 tards with which Roxy regaled Binns ; the 
 music we might hear would have far other 
 charms than those strains which Roxy, in 
 her hours of leisure, called out from a bit 
 of comb wound with a bit of paper ; the 
 dresses, too, would be far more satisfactory 
 to the soul and the soul s eye than Roxy s 
 dirt-colored calicoes, bought to wash and 
 hide the dirt as long previously as might 
 be ; and we will say nothing of the dia 
 monds, the pictures, the operas, and all the 
 rest that we might arrive at in our expe- 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 179 
 
 riences ; for Roxy had no diamonds but 
 her tears, and very few of them in the 
 beginning ; no pictures but cuttings from 
 the comic weeklies, which she pinned up 
 about the kitchen; and as for the dinners, 
 again, I doubt if we should bring better 
 appetites to our sumptuous banquet, with 
 terrapin and canvas -back and champagne 
 frappe, than Binns had when grinning over 
 his apple turnover, wiping his mouth on his 
 blue sleeve after it, and giving Roxy a re 
 sounding smack, to receive in return as re 
 sounding a slap. " She s a clipper, I say," 
 Binns would chuckle, as if it were a love- 
 pat after his own heart. Meanwhile not an 
 opera of all the list is to be heard with more 
 satisfaction than that wont to be evinced by 
 Binns as he sat, during his evenings " on," 
 while Roxy, after her voluntary upon the 
 comb and paper, which she kept in the 
 drawer of the kitchen table with the nut 
 megs and allspice, sang in her loud and 
 clear, if somewhat nasal, voice the simple 
 ballad of " Whoa, Emma !" or 
 
 " I don t know why I love him, 
 He does not care for me, 
 
ISO THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 But my poor heart will wander 
 
 Wherever he may be. 
 If I had minded mother 
 
 I d not been here to-day; 
 But I was young and foolish, 
 
 And easy led astray " ; 
 
 or reverted to older tunes " Oh, where 
 have you been, Lord Ronald, my son ?" and 
 * Drownded, drownded, in the middle of 
 the sea," with other like tearful selections. 
 To be sure, Binns s delight was chiefly 
 manifested by a frequent use of his coat- 
 sleeve in the manner of lachrymose indi 
 viduals without a handkerchief, in a very 
 luxury of woe ; for if the comb and paper 
 tickled the cockles of his heart, as some 
 mellow flute or honeyed violin might do, the 
 enjoyment was just as ecstatic which made 
 the tears pour forth over the sad fate of the 
 lovers " Way down in Salem town," while 
 he thought nothing of an unprotected out 
 right boohoo, with his face twisted into all 
 sorts of a coil, over the last words of the 
 wretched person who implores, 
 
 "Oh, make my grave quick, brother, make my 
 
 grave deep; 
 The sooner I lay there the sooner I ll sleep; 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 181 
 
 For why should I wait from this sad world to part, 
 When the girl that I love so has broken my heart ?" 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not of love, at any rate 
 not of love of Roxy, that Binns would ever 
 die. Roxy s turnovers and gingersnaps 
 and five - fingered doughnuts, her liberal 
 bowls of coffee and secret draughts of min 
 eral water, were very agreeable variations 
 in his daily fare. When Roxy asked him to 
 come in and spend an evening with some 
 friends of hers and have a game of forty- 
 five, he saw visions of the same run of 
 dainties, and was much pleased by the rosy 
 apples and tingling cider and roasted chest 
 nuts of the regale. Come again ? Of course 
 he would come again one did not need to 
 be asked twice to things of that sort. He 
 came again, and this time the nuts were 
 butternuts, and there were cookies as nearly 
 pound-cake as it is the nature of cookies to 
 approach, and Binns munched and cracked 
 and picked and sipped, and thought that 
 Roxy was a mighty cute body to be able to 
 have the kitchen to herself at this hour, and 
 to have whatever she chose in it, moreover. 
 And so he came again. 
 
182 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 Was it Roxy s cakes and ale alone, then, 
 that allured Binns ? Was not the face re 
 flected in the pewter platter she scoured, 
 as she sang her doleful ditties, as fair to 
 him as the face of Gladys thrown up from 
 a golden salver would have been to the 
 cavalry officer ? Sooth, I know not. I only 
 know that a cosey kitchen, with a hot stove 
 and bright tins, is a pleasant place, and a 
 capacious rocking-chair with long rockers, 
 in which you are allowed to travel all about 
 the kitchen, is a comfortable thing, and that 
 hands never look more kindly than when 
 pressing toothsome dainties upon you, and 
 that if one has nothing better to do one is 
 rather inclined to repeat such experiences 
 than not. If, then, it is suggested, very pal 
 pably suggested, to one, in return, that the 
 old butcher s nag should be hitched into 
 the pung, with the horse-blanket for a robe, 
 and a sleigh-ride should be given the gen 
 erous purveyor of doughnuts and peanuts, 
 could one do less ? And as for scaring 
 Roxy from any repetition of the suggestion 
 by tipping her over into a crusty snow-drift, 
 one s mind would have to move a great deal 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 183 
 
 more quickly than what answered Binns for 
 a mind was able to do in order to be up to 
 such an opportunity. 
 
 " I ll tell you what," said Roxy. " The 
 riext time, Binns, I ll take the big red com 
 forter off my bed for an extra robe, and a 
 couple of hot flat-irons or bricks would be 
 better, wouldn t they? wrapped in news 
 papers, and we ll be as warm as toast. Say 
 Friday. There ll be a first-rate moon. And 
 we ll have a real egg-and-cider flip with the 
 hot stove-lifter in it when we get back." 
 
 " If if he ll let me have the horse," said 
 Binns, doubtfully, and not with radiating 
 pleasure. 
 
 " Oh, of course he will. Now you put the 
 blanket on him and come in, and we ll have 
 some hot hash I ve got some left over all 
 ready to warm up and a little taste of 
 sangaree." 
 
 If I should say that Roxy s sangaree was 
 made of vinegar and hot water and brown 
 sugar and nutmeg and other like substances, 
 you would not believe how Binns smacked 
 his lips over it ; so what is the use of say 
 ing anything of the sort ? But it is true 
 
184 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 that Binns went away repeating to himself, 
 " Well, for getting sunthin outer northing, 
 she s a beater !" And so I am sure in 
 view of Binns she was. 
 
 When hardly knowing how to help it, 
 Roxy having taken it so for granted, feeling 
 that he was driven by an inexorable fate 
 when Roxy said that on Monday the moon 
 would be good, as if the moon wasn t al 
 ways good Binns asked for the horse the 
 third time, his master slapped him on the 
 back with a force that sent him half across 
 the shop. " Well, Binns," said he, " so you ve 
 got a girl, you sly dog ! I never thought 
 you d muster face enough for that. Have 
 the old horse and welcome , there s no dan 
 ger of fast driving when two folks are in 
 love." During this kindly if not altogether 
 delicate address, Binns was pink and purple, 
 yellow, green, blue, and white, by turns, 
 with fright, with shame, with gratified van 
 ity, with a sense of manly power, but, above 
 everything else, with a prevailing awe and 
 terror of it all, anyway, as the full meaning 
 of his master s words overcame him, and 
 the gulfs of the future yawned before him. 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 185 
 
 To eat Roxy s turnovers was one thing 
 to marry her was quite another. The possi 
 bility had not occurred to him before , only 
 a vague consciousness of the impossibility 
 of anything else was beginning to oppress 
 him all the more vaguely, perhaps, because 
 of his extreme unwillingness to utter any 
 thing of the sort even to himself. 
 
 If Binns had not had to stop at the house 
 for the dinner order, it is doubtful if he 
 would have seen Roxy that day. But " there 
 was no going back on the shop," he said to 
 himself, and, looking like a sheep, he went 
 prepared to take the order for beef. 
 
 " Roxy !" the old gardener called, opening 
 the door for Binns, on the idea of getting it 
 over with, was a little earlier than common, 
 and Roxy was not upon the outposts as 
 usual " here s your young man !" 
 
 " Roxy !" cried the mischievous and vulgar 
 Kitty, " here s your feller !" 
 
 " You go along !" said Roxy, making her 
 appearance, and wiping her hands on her 
 pink print apron. And there stood Binns, 
 as pink as the apron; and he stammered 
 something about to-night at half-past seven 
 
1 86 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 sharp, and hurried off, forgetting all about 
 the order. He had to come back, of course, 
 and he found Roxy sitting on the edge of a 
 water-pail inside the storm -door, with her 
 pink apron thrown over her pink face, sob 
 bing fit to break her heart. 
 
 "Why why Roxy why, what s the 
 matter, Roxy ?" he exclaimed. But Roxy 
 only sobbed, the sob none the less affecting 
 to a tender-hearted hearer because broken 
 by a hiccough. " Why, Roxy why, what 
 on earth has anybody been a-hurting of 
 you ? Why don t you tell me ?" 
 
 But Roxy s sobs still preserved the se 
 cret. 
 
 Mr. Binns really began to feel bad him 
 self. What man unmoved can see lovely 
 woman shed tears ? " Come now, Roxy, 
 don t you be a-fretting," he urged. " You 
 just wipe your eyes and tell me all about 
 it." 
 
 "Oh! No! I I can t." 
 
 "Oh, come now, Roxy." 
 
 "It s it s that hateful that oh, I 
 can t that spiteful Kitty a-calling you 
 my feller." 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 187 
 
 "Well," said Binns, " ain t I?" 
 Wretched Binns ! To have taken pains 
 not to call Roxy dear, to tell her to wipe her 
 eyes, not her bright eyes, and to be caught 
 in this unguarded way by three chance 
 words ! It was all over now; he was in for 
 it, he saw plainly ; he might as well give up 
 handsomely. And yet he couldn t. All 
 that he could do was to take to his heels 
 and clip down the steps and into the pung 
 and drive away as if Wild Ladies or some 
 thing else were after him. It was Roxy s 
 voice that was after him, shrill as a view- 
 halloo : "Oh, Binns! A tenderloin roast! 
 First cut ! Don t forget ten pounds " 
 
 But Binns had to face the music that 
 night or else Mr. McMasters would have 
 to get another butcher-boy, as otherwise he 
 would not dare face Roxy to-morrow, and 
 there had been too much trouble from peo 
 ple needing employment in those overcrowd 
 ed days for him to give up his place for a 
 trifle. Well, he would go. And he would 
 say, " Roxy, now let s be friends, two friends, 
 two fellers together, two folks bound to have 
 a good sleigh-ride, with no sparking about 
 
l88 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 it, no nonsense, no you know no spoon 
 ing. You re a first-rate girl, and I don t 
 know such a hand at turnovers in all the 
 kitchens I see ; but that s no reason we 
 should be a couple of fools with nothing to 
 be fools on. If I was in the marrying way, 
 there s nobody I wouldn t marry quicker n 
 you," and here he knew his conscience 
 would twinge him, but he would say it. 
 " But I ain t, and you ain t, and so we ll 
 just continue the services as we were go 
 ing on before." 
 
 And did he say it? Did Binns say it? 
 Not a word of it ! Roxy was at the gate, 
 all alert, peering out, with the bright red 
 comforter over her arm; and running back 
 for the hot bricks, she had whisked into 
 that pung, and tucked the comforter about 
 them, and chirruped to the old nag, all in a 
 moment, and Binns found himself slipping 
 along the road without a word, but I am 
 ashamed to tell it with a shrewd suspicion 
 that somehow he had better not lean back, 
 for that was Roxy s arm behind him. 
 
 "I declare!" said Roxy. "Splendid 
 sleighing, splendid moonlight, warm as 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 189 
 
 toast, and your your you know who 
 beside you, a- driving as if he could turn 
 round on the point of a pin I don t know 
 as any one needs to be any happier." 
 
 Perhaps the compliment on his driving 
 was soothing to Binns s perturbed soul ; 
 but he was naturally reticent, and at that 
 moment he did not commit himself. One 
 thing was safe music; and presently he 
 had piped up a warlike song : 
 
 " Ne er shall oppressors brave us, 
 Or foreign power enslave us ; 
 Our stripes and stars shall wave us 
 
 To glory or the tomb ! 
 Hark ! tis the war-trump sounding !" 
 
 followed by another effort indicative of the 
 leadings of his fancy, whose refrain rang : 
 
 "Pride of the pirate s heart!" 
 
 This failure of Binns to improve his op 
 portunity evidently struck no chill to Roxy s 
 ardor. They were approaching Trimble s 
 Hollow, where a bridge crossed the frozen 
 mill-stream, and Binns leaned forward for 
 the whip in order to accelerate their motion 
 
igo THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 one could not say speed when suddenly 
 Roxy flung herself a little on one side, cry 
 ing out, " No, no, now, you mustn t begin 
 that!" 
 
 " Mustn t begin what?" said Binns, gruffly. 
 
 " Kissing me at every bridge we come to, 
 just as all the other boys do. It s some 
 thing I never did approve of." 
 
 "Nor I nuther," said Binns. But what 
 if you don t approve of a thing when a 
 rosy cup of wine is held to your lips, and 
 the fire tingles there, and the color sparkles, 
 and the aroma is that of a garden of flow 
 ers under your nose, do you always have 
 the strength of mind to set that cup down 
 instantly? Instantly; for the man as well 
 as the woman who hesitates is lost. And 
 Binns, with those sparkling eyes sparkling 
 into his, that rosy cheek close beside his 
 own, those wholesome rosy lips I am sure 
 that neither you nor I would have done the 
 like but Binns was only Binns. And what 
 you have done once it is so easy to do again. 
 Before they reached home, that wicked 
 Binns the poor guileless little fellow felt 
 himself quite on the way to become what, 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS igr 
 
 in his ignorance of the existence of Don 
 Giovanni, stood for the same thing. But 
 as for Roxy, she felt very well satisfied with 
 herself and her excursion. Binns was hers ; 
 he himself had said it that morning ; and on 
 the sleigh-ride that evening he had conduct 
 ed very much as, in her imagination and 
 belief, all lovers should conduct. The horse 
 was blanketed at the hitching -post, and 
 Binns was brought in whether he would or 
 no, and some sequestered turkey-bones were 
 grilled, and a flip was made, and there had 
 been daring possession taken of a mince- 
 pie, the goodly share of which transformed 
 into a part of Binns might have caused a 
 procession of the ghosts of all his grand 
 mothers since the Flood to walk across his 
 counterpane that night. And Binns ate 
 and drank, and actually made several little 
 jokes, and apropos of the pastry he sang : 
 
 "When Washington was but a boy 
 
 As big as you or I, 
 He climbed his mother s cupboard, 
 And he stole her apple-pie," 
 
 appearing to Roxy as he sang as delightful 
 
IQ2 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 a personage as an end man. And when he 
 went away Roxy bent and put her arms 
 about his neck, and gave him a good fair 
 kiss on his mouth, as any girl should kiss 
 her sweetheart. 
 
 It was not in these days Binns dealt Roxy 
 the hearty smack, and received the no less 
 hearty slap in return ; that was when smacks 
 and slaps meant nothing, and in the inno 
 cence of his heart Binns was treating Ruxy 
 as he did most of the other kitchen girls 
 upon his rounds. Later on, when the nat 
 ure of Roxy s attentions, and of her inten 
 tions too, became more pointed, these little 
 occurrences were susceptible of misconstruc 
 tion; and Binns had even been embarrassed 
 as to the return he should make for her tarts 
 and jellies, without, however, being able to 
 forego the dainties offered by the assiduous 
 charmer. But now well, if one must be 
 kissed, Roxy s was a sweet and wholesome 
 mouth, and that whip of frothy cream with 
 plum preserve at the bottom of it was sweet 
 and wholesome too. 
 
 It was generally understood in the house 
 hold now that Roxy and Binns were " keep- 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 193 
 
 ing company," and no one was surprised 
 to see Roxy always, in the afternoon hours, 
 with a piece of white cloth in her hand, 
 sometimes a part of what appeared to be an 
 elaborate trousseau made chiefly of tucks 
 and insertings and edgings, sometimes a 
 table-cloth she was hemming, or towels 
 she was fringing, with a pride of possession 
 that needed no bashful concealment. She 
 had a sewing - machine of her own in her 
 attic chamber, and who would have had 
 the heart to stop its low melodious thun 
 der, long after every soul in the house was 
 in bed ? If it were Gladys, softly stitching 
 folds of lace on sheer lawn, and you saw 
 the light in her lattice, she would indeed 
 have been a subject of romantic interest. 
 
 It was not exactly a pleasant thing, all 
 this unreserve of Roxy s. And it was really 
 a relief to know that it had its side of 
 maidenly delicacy and diffidence. This was 
 exhibited in some faint degree when one 
 afternoon Binns, who had been belated, 
 stopped at the door, with a cargo of up- 
 country calves, to take the order for next 
 day s provision, and suddenly there was a 
 
I 9 4 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 hurrying and scurrying, and Roxy was hid 
 ing something white and bunchy under her 
 apron, and then throwing it under the table, 
 very red in the face herself, half giggling, 
 half crying, and Kitty, making a dive, was 
 drawing the article from its temporary ref 
 uge, and holding it up in the face of all 
 creation. 
 
 " What s that ?" said Binns. 
 
 " Oh my, Kitty ! Oh, don t ! How can 
 you, Kitty ? Ain t you shamed ?" cried 
 Roxy. And up went the apron across the 
 hair, making a muss of all the crimps that 
 had cost her an hour over kerosene lamp and 
 slate-pencil when the kitchen work was done. 
 
 " Why, what s all the fuss about that ?" 
 said Binns, good - naturedly, with Kitty s 
 contagious laugh. 
 
 "As if you didn t know!" said Kitty. 
 
 " I don t see anything particular in a cot 
 ton bag," said Binns. 
 
 " It s house-keeping goods, you stupid !" 
 cried Kitty. " Isn t it, Roxy ?" 
 
 " Well, what if it is ?" 
 
 " Oh, Binns !" cried Roxy, pulling down 
 the apron and showing a face where the 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 195 
 
 mismated eyes were full of liquid brightness, 
 and the ruddy cheeks were redder still with 
 blushes. " It s it s ours !" 
 
 " Ours !" 
 
 " And I ve got a dozen of them !" 
 
 " A dozen" 
 
 " I ve a dozen of everything," cried Roxy, 
 exultantly, all barriers burned away, " ex 
 cept towels, and I ve six dozen of them. I 
 sent up to the great sale where Rivers is 
 running linen goods against Black s running 
 of gloves, and got em for ninepence apiece. 
 Think of that !" 
 
 A long whistle escaped from Binns s 
 pursed-up lips, round as which his eyes had 
 opened, and then, without another syllable, 
 the astonished bridegroom and prospective 
 householder darted down the back steps 
 and into his cart, and galloped away, look 
 ing as nearly like one of the calves inside 
 the rack as a human being could. 
 
 It must have been a rather tremendous 
 moment for Binns. Up to that interview 
 with one of the dozen of them he had been 
 comparatively a free man, with nothing def 
 initely pledged, with everything that was 
 
196 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 really decisive so far away that he could 
 look at it without shutting his eyes, and 
 with all the contingencies of time and space 
 between. But now house-keeping goods ! 
 Bought and paid for ! Every article of them 
 was like a winding-sheet that bound him 
 hand and foot. He felt himself fettered, 
 with all the world for witness ; and even if 
 he could have escaped otherwise, here in 
 some mysterious manner, a complication of 
 moral forces, were the great firm of Rivers 
 and the great firm of Black, in the great 
 metropolis, brought in as restraining in 
 fluences. Something like this must have 
 wrought on Binns s inner consciousness as 
 nothing ever did before, for he wound him 
 self up to the pitch of coming that very 
 evening for a voluntary and unappointed 
 call upon Roxy, who, sitting on the back 
 steps for it was late in the spring had 
 just put the last thread that she could see 
 into her hemstitching. 
 
 " Roxy," said Binns, after a preliminary 
 skirmish, " you re a great seamstress. But 
 don t you think, say that that this is a 
 little previous ?" 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 197 
 
 " I m so glad you feel so, Binns," said 
 Roxy, demurely, taking only the latest usage 
 of the word. And then, looking up with her 
 happiest smile, she added, " I think it s a 
 little previous myself." 
 
 " Then what in the world are you doing 
 it for ?" blurted out Binns. 
 
 " Doing it for ?" said Roxy, in amaze 
 ment. " Why, for our house for us." 
 
 " Don t you think we re a couple of fools, 
 Roxy?" he said, in a tremulous voice, look 
 ing in the direction of Europe or Africa, or 
 anything but Roxy. 
 
 " A couple of-fools ?" 
 
 " Not to let well enough alone," he con 
 trived to add before his voice failed and 
 went out. 
 
 " I don t know what you mean, Binns," 
 said Roxy. 
 
 " Well," said Binns, moistening his lips 
 in order to articulate, " I mean you re very 
 well off as you be, and so m I at home. 
 And how are we going to live with noth 
 ing to live on ? And where ? And what s 
 the use of all your house-keeping goods ?" 
 
 " Binns !" cried Roxy. And there was 
 
198 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 ominous silence for a moment before the 
 floodgates of her eloquence were opened. 
 " When we only want three rooms ! M she 
 cried. " And can hire them in your own 
 mother s house. And I ve money enough 
 put by for a carpet and a cooking-stove 
 and a rocking-chair. And I ve got a cham 
 ber-set of my own, and a sewing-machine, 
 and a dozen napkins, and six table-cloths, 
 and a dozen sheets, and a dozen pillow 
 cases, and six dozen towels, and four blan 
 kets, and a comforter I made myself, and 
 patchwork quilts enough to make a circus 
 tent, and two worked motters, and no end 
 of braided mats for I ve always, always 
 been getting ready ! And there s all the 
 wedding-presents yet, and clothes enough 
 to last me a couple of years and more, 
 and I ll never come upon you for any. 
 And you with six dollars a week and some 
 hens, and I able to run a kitchen -gar 
 den myself while you re at the shop, and 
 raise all the vegetables we ll use, and the 
 ladies of the house here going to give me 
 their clear-starching to do, anyway, and 
 you to have your clothes mended and your 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 I 99 
 
 washing done with no expense, and no 
 board to pay 
 
 " I don t pay board now," stammered 
 Binns, his words a straw upon the flood. 
 
 " And after a little we could take a cou 
 ple of boarders, you know, or I would have 
 shoes to bind from the shop, or we could 
 do both, and have the cheerfulest kind of 
 evenings, and you could get your butcher s- 
 meat first cost, of course." 
 
 " How many turnovers and whips and jel 
 lies and sangarees and hearts and rounds 
 and doughnuts do you think we could get 
 on six dollars a week ?" asked Binns, with 
 courageous sarcasm. 
 
 " Well, I guess we sha n t go without 
 doughnuts," answered Roxy, scornfully. 
 " And as for turnovers, there s apple-trees 
 right in your mother s yard." 
 
 " But they re mother s." 
 
 " What if they are ?" 
 
 " I guess you d find out if you went to 
 picking mother s apples for your sauce." 
 
 "Well, then, we can set some out our 
 selves. And as for sangarees, I rather 
 think I know how to make them as cheap 
 
200 THE TRAGIC STORY OF RINNS 
 
 as the next. And maybe we can keep a 
 cow after a little. / // milk her, Binns. 
 And I m sure I mean to have a couple of 
 little black pigs. And by-and-by, if we can 
 manage to raise turkeys, it will be money 
 in our pockets. Yes, Binns, there isn t any 
 doubt about it it will be money in our 
 pockets to go to house keeping right away, 
 and I make no question I will have silver 
 spoons given me here, and money and ev 
 erything. And then, Binns, you re noth 
 ing now but McMasters s butcher-boy 
 but then you ll be a married man McMas 
 ters s man ; and they won t be calling you 
 by your given name, and ordering you 
 round. You ll be somebody, and receive 
 consideration ; and I think the sooner we 
 set the day the better, on account of get 
 ting the garden started. What do you say 
 to this day fortnight? That 11 give me 
 time for the cake." 
 
 "I I ll see," cried the agonized Binns, 
 who may have felt as if an anaconda had 
 swallowed him. And he stood up and lis 
 tened to a lad whistling as he went up the 
 road unseen behind the high garden wall, 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 2OI 
 
 his hands in his pockets, a free spirit, while 
 he- 
 He turned and looked at Roxy. She was 
 not attractive-looking, she was only good- 
 natured ; her teeth were uneven, although 
 her mouth was wholesome, her skin was 
 rough and red, her hair was frowsy, her 
 snapping eyes were not a pair. He sat 
 down upon the steps again, and hid his face 
 in his hands, and groaned aloud. " I I 
 don t see how I can leave my mother," he 
 said. 
 
 Poor Binns. He was no beauty himself, 
 with his red head and his freckles, his pale 
 eyes and lips, and his dwarfish stature ; and 
 it is doubtful if another girl in town would 
 have thought of him as lover and husband. 
 But what did he care for that ? He had not 
 thought of another girl. Nor of this one 
 either. And how it had all come about he 
 was sure he did not know. It seemed to 
 him as if he were in a dreadful dream, where 
 one thing happens and another follows with 
 out any relation, till it all becomes a night 
 mare. 
 
 The next day no Binns arrived to take 
 
202 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 the dinner order. And on the following 
 
 o 
 
 day a tall, thin fellow, who looked like 
 Binns pulled out and flattened, appeared at 
 the storm -door in his place; and on the 
 third day we learned that Binns was sick in 
 bed at home. 
 
 Anything like Roxy s importance and 
 bustle now was seldom seen in the house. 
 At first her reddish hue waned, and then 
 she went about her work with one tear trick 
 ling after another along her nose and glit 
 tering suspended on its tip. At last, how 
 ever, nature gave way, and Roxy sat down 
 in a corner of the kitchen and gave way 
 too. 
 
 " Well, if ever !" said Kitty. " If you ain t 
 as big a baby as Binns is !" 
 
 "I guess you d cry, * whimpered Roxy, 
 " if if your " 
 
 " Well ? My" 
 
 " Your sweetheart was suffering at 
 home and he might as well be in Egypt, 
 with that mother of his and you didn t 
 know" 
 
 " As if twas worse for Binns than for the 
 rest of us to have a toothache or his head 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 203 
 
 hurt him ! What on earth are you worry 
 ing about it for, anyway ?" 
 
 "Because it s my duty to," said Roxy, 
 severely. And it being her afternoon out, 
 she put on her things and stalked up the 
 road to Binns s home, where she made her 
 self and her errand known, and remained 
 till after nightfall ; to everybody s surprise 
 Binns himself returning with her. 
 
 Binns and Roxy, however, did not oc 
 cupy the whole attention of the family, and 
 after the first glance it was not observed 
 whether they came into the kitchen or 
 went strolling down the vegetable garden 
 together. But some time after the house 
 should have been closed and Roxy should 
 have been reposing by Kitty s side, it was 
 found that she had not come in, and the 
 hat and feather with which she exaggerated 
 her stature were seen conspicuously touched 
 by the ray of the late - rising moon outside 
 the high street fence. Needless to say that 
 Binns was not seen at all. 
 
 But Binns was present all the same, as in 
 the active conversation going on out there, 
 in answer to Roxy s shrill expostulations, a 
 
204 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 gruff little growl seemed to rise from the 
 bowels of the earth the voice of Binns. 
 
 " But I m all ready, Binns. I ve got 
 everything except the carpet and the cook 
 ing - stove, and I haven t asked you to 
 get a thing, and I ve spent all the mon 
 ey, except enough for them, that I ve laid 
 up since I ve been having my wages my 
 self/ 
 
 " You needn t/ said the unseen owner of 
 the growl. " Nobody asked you to." 
 
 " I didn t wait for anybody to ask me. It 
 isn t my way. I like to be generous. I 
 meant to surprise you and please you, and 
 show you that I came to you pretty fore 
 handed." And here Roxy s voice was ap 
 parently drowned in tears. 
 
 " I can t help it," muttered Binns, in the 
 pause. " Mother says it s ridic lous ; she 
 says side by side we look like a clothes-pin 
 and a clothes -pole, and we ll have every 
 body laughing at us." 
 
 " I ll have everybody laughing at me," 
 sobbed Roxy, her voice rising to the sur 
 face again. "They ll say I don t know 
 what they won t say ! And that spiteful 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 205 
 
 Kitty ! And oh, Binns, when I d counted 
 on such a happy home !" 
 
 "Mother says there never was such a 
 tall woman in the family," growled the bass 
 tones again. 
 
 "As if tallth made any difference in 
 hearts !" cried Roxy, very reasonably. 
 
 " And I ain t old enough to go and be 
 married. And I don t want to be, either. 
 I never said yes, hi, or no about it. And 
 when I don t want to be, I don t see 
 
 "Binns," said Roxy, solemnly, "I could 
 sue you for breach of promise to-morrow " 
 as she paused an inarticulate rumble 
 spoke for Binns s shudder " if I was so 
 mean as some folks," she added. 
 
 "Then you ain t going to," he said. 
 " And besides, what good d it do you ? I 
 ain t got nothing." 
 
 " Your mother has," answered Roxy, with 
 repeated solemnity, as became the implied 
 and dreadful threat, which again gave Binns 
 pause. " But I d scorn it," said Roxy, after 
 letting the idea work a moment. " I don t 
 hold my affections so slight that any mon 
 ey Oh, Binns ! If you feel too young to 
 
206 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 settle yet, and want to have your fling out, 
 I ll wait" 
 
 "There s no use in waiting," ejaculated 
 Binns. 
 
 " That s just what I say," cried Roxy, in 
 a sudden flush of hope and misinterpreta 
 tion. But the dead silence told her mis 
 take. " Do you mean to say it s all off ?" 
 she cried, in despair. 
 
 " It s all off," growled Binns, in the 
 boldness of desperation. " My mother 
 says-" 
 
 " Oh, bother your mother !" exclaimed 
 Roxy. 
 
 Perhaps Binns looked aghast at such a 
 proposition, for she added at once, " I 
 mean I don t mean any disrespect to 
 her. But I never knew that mothers 
 could" 
 
 " Mine can," said Binns, comprehending 
 the hiatus, and still under the impulse of 
 his last access of courage. " My moth 
 er stood by me when I couldn t stand 
 alone. And now I m going to stand by 
 her." 
 
 " I never asked you not to !" cried out 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 207 
 
 Roxy. " I d be as good a daughter to her 
 as any she s got. I know she d like my 
 short-cake. And oh, Binns, it would have 
 been so nice and cosey for you when you 
 came home, and I had onions all smother 
 ing in the spider, and there s nobody can 
 fry the rind any crisper than I can." And 
 at this juncture a rush, a stumble, a quick 
 patter of footsteps, might have been heard, 
 and Binns had resorted to his last refuge, 
 as usual, and was running away up the 
 street and out of sight as fast as his little 
 legs could carry him. And Roxy came into 
 the house, and sat down by the kitchen 
 window in the moonlight, and cried as if 
 she were doing the weeping for all the 
 disconsolate damsels in the world, and got 
 up and found herself some tarts, and ate 
 them with a relish, feeling in every mouthful 
 that Binns would never have those tarts 
 to-morrow, and went to bed and to sleep. 
 
 The next day an air of expectation kept 
 Roxy all alert, and her hope that possibly 
 Binns had run home to ask his mother, after 
 all, alternated with her despairing certainty 
 that she should never see him again. Oc- 
 
208 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 casionally she burst forth in a song that 
 showed the drift of her thoughts : 
 
 " Go ask your mother for fifty cents 
 To see Bill Barnum jump the fence," 
 
 the quickly following tears obscuring the 
 rest of the words that had once come home 
 with her from a circus. But the despairing 
 certainty became a fixed one when a week 
 passed, and the long, thin young man still 
 came to take the orders. She made no at 
 tempt at pride or concealment. She tried to 
 do her work, and she failed. And she went 
 away at last, saying her heart was broken, 
 and she could live no longer in a place full 
 of cruel associations. 
 
 A year afterwards, Roxy having been 
 heard of as established in another home, 
 and paying her attentions to another ob 
 ject, it was presumed that the old wound 
 was healed ; and her former mistress, hap 
 pening to meet her one day in the street 
 car, was pleased with the smiling face that 
 towered over her under its tall hat and 
 scarlet feather. This lady had what she 
 called a warm interest in humanity, but 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 209 
 
 what her husband was daring enough to 
 call an intense curiosity, and the unexpect 
 ed meeting with Roxy inspired her with a 
 keen desire to know something further of 
 the tragic story of Binns. But she could 
 not bring herself to the fateful point, and 
 was spared the trouble by Roxy herself ask 
 ing her if Binns came for the dinner orders 
 nowadays, and closing the brief conversa 
 tion that ensued by turning a melancholy 
 eye upon her former mistress, and sighing, 
 as she left the car, 
 
 " Oh, it hurts there still !" 
 
 And so one year passed and another, 
 and the world rolled over on its sunny side, 
 and rolled over again on its dark one, and 
 the clouds of sorrow broke in their sad del 
 uge, and the sun burst forth again, filling 
 the horizon with transformation, and new 
 points in every landscape rose in brilliancy 
 or sank into shadow, and Roxy was one of 
 the points that sank into shadow the shad 
 ow of forgetfulness. 
 
 It is a singular liability we have, after 
 losing sight of any in whom we have had 
 interest, to feel as if they remained exactly 
 
210 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 where we left them, heedless of the way in 
 which the forces of the universe are build 
 ing up and tearing down, and of the fact 
 that fate and fortune never let us remain 
 at rest. If any of the old household thought 
 of Roxy, it was still as some one s kitchen- 
 girl laying her sieges and approaches to 
 an unwilling heart. Is not Gladys, in our 
 memory, still at her lattice gazing after the 
 cavalry officer ? But fate and fortune, de 
 spite our indifference, were conscious of 
 Roxy as an integral atom of the great cos 
 mos, and in the interval of forgetfulness 
 were as busy with her as with any other 
 of the lovers whose loves give the raison 
 d etre to the universe. 
 
 It was late one summer afternoon, a few 
 years after that eventful night when Binns s 
 footsteps had been heard pattering up the 
 street, that Roxy s former mistress, having 
 been taken by her liege lord on a little tour 
 of their native county, passed slowly along 
 a rural lane, some dozen miles away from 
 home, and held the reins while her husband 
 paused to throw back the top of the phae 
 ton, looking about the soft afternoon land- 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 211 
 
 scape meanwhile. On one side, a thick 
 woodland shut off the view and the easterly 
 winds, but on the other was a rolling hill- 
 country broken by farms and orchards, and 
 just at hand was a tiny cottage, with open 
 windows and blowing curtains that allowed 
 sight of the interior and its various mottoes 
 framed upon the walls. A cow grazed in 
 the grass-plot beyond ; there were symptoms 
 of a pig-sty, and a decided hennery in the 
 rear ; and there were lines of cabbages like 
 great green roses, and potatoes and onions 
 and beans and blushing beet-tops, and a hon 
 eysuckle and a rose-bush, and a bed of sweet- 
 peas and a beehive, and a gigantic elm- 
 tree overtopping everything. What a picture 
 of content and comfort it was! "What a 
 country this is," said the lady in the phaeton, 
 "where the poorest can have such a peaceful 
 home as this, where some happy young farm 
 er has brought home his timid little wife, 
 and their cares are few, and they have noth 
 ing to regret, and little left to wish for !" 
 
 Somebody was bustling about inside the 
 pretty nest, a white cloth was spread upon 
 the table, there was a clatter of dishes, and 
 
212 THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 
 
 then there stole forth an odor an odor of 
 nectar and ambrosia to the hungry travel 
 lers a dozen miles from home an odor of 
 onions smothering in the spider. Suddenly 
 a figure appeared at the side window beck 
 oning some one, a tall, an immensely tall 
 and gaunt young woman, and on her face, 
 her reddish face, with its snapping, un 
 paired brown eyes, surmounted by a wil 
 derness of slate-pencil crimps, a smile that 
 could only be the habitual smile of perfect 
 satisfaction. " Stop a moment," said the 
 lady in the phaeton " one moment. Surely 
 - that must be it is Just then the 
 young woman sat down by the window, and 
 began to beguile the tedium of her waiting 
 with music nasal, to be sure, but still a 
 familiar tune. " Hark !" said the gentleman. 
 " Did I hear a bagpipe ?" 
 
 " A comb and paper," said the lady. " I 
 wonder if she keeps it still in the drawer 
 with the nutmegs?" 
 
 I don t know why neither of that guilty 
 couple cared at that crisis to leave the 
 phaeton. It would seem natural to have 
 delayed a little, to have asked some ques- 
 
THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 213 
 
 tions, to have tasted, perchance, the con 
 tents of that redolent dish, to have learned 
 if there are any in the world to whom their 
 very wishes give them not their wish, to 
 have learned if cruel fate were as cruel to 
 any in the fact as in the fear. But the lady 
 shrank into her corner, and the gentleman 
 laid an urgent hand upon the reins, and 
 they went on and up the winding road. 
 Who is it cares to see the struggle of the 
 fly in the web ? For at the moment that 
 they started up, as if for the capping race 
 at Coulterlee, there appeared, coming slow 
 ly round the row of pole-beans, the person 
 who had been beckoned a little scrap of 
 a fellow, stout and stocky in his long blue 
 blouse, pale-eyed, red - headed, freckled, 
 holding in his arms a teething baby, which 
 he soothed with a monotonous melody as 
 he sang, half under his breath, 
 
 " If I had minded mother 
 
 I d not been here to-day ; 
 But I was young and foolish, 
 And easy led astray." 
 
 Unmistakably it was Binns. 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 WHEN Mr. Chipperley lost his wife he was 
 for a time very unhappy. He felt a little 
 angry when he saw other women walking 
 in the sunlight. He missed the flattery, the 
 affection, the object of love. And he seemed 
 to think all that furnished him with suffi 
 cient reason for marrying again, which he 
 did speedily. He lived very happily with 
 the next venture, although now and then the 
 pale and pretty young face of her predeces 
 sor slipped in across his mental vision of the 
 other, and it was a little difficult to separate 
 them. And when a third young woman ruled 
 his affections, it was an effort for him to 
 say if it were May s lower lip that looked as 
 if a bee had stung it, or if it were Mary s 
 upper lip that had the Cupid s-bow curves, 
 or if it were Maria that smiled with the deep 
 Greek corner in the mouth ; and in his 
 
2l8 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 memory gleams of Mary s eyes shot through 
 May s glance, veiled with Maria s long 
 lashes. May s pale cheek wore the rose 
 bloom of Mary s ; the outline of Mary s 
 broad brow melted into the oval of Maria s 
 Madonna-like forehead ; and in this com 
 posite memory of a wife May s frown and 
 Maria s smile were fast becoming indistin 
 guishable when he first laid eyes on Honor 
 Humphreys, who overshot the whole pict 
 ure with her great shining hazel eyes and 
 black brows, her full red lips, and the fault 
 less teeth that flashed with white light in the 
 dark countenance where the rare red only 
 now and then blossomed a tall and superb 
 young creature, whose health and vitality 
 and lustre completely wiped out the whole 
 mental photography of poor May and Mary 
 and Maria. 
 
 " Gracious !" said Honor to her gentle 
 cousin, Marian Marcy. " Don t talk of him ! 
 He s married all to pieces. Do you suppose 
 I will take a fragment of a husband ? Am I 
 going to make one of a harem ? What does 
 papa mean ? The idea of my marrying an 
 old man like that !" 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 219 
 
 Poor Mr. Chipperley was only forty-five, 
 but such is the point of view of youth that 
 forty-five was all the same to her as one 
 hundred and forty-five. 
 
 " I don t care if he is made of money !" 
 cried Honor. " He looks as if he were of 
 old bank-bills." 
 
 "Old bank-bills," said Marian, " make a 
 slag, you know, almost as splendid as pre 
 cious stones." 
 
 " He hasn t reached the slag stage. The 
 fancy of his daring to send me roses !" as 
 her cousin opened for her a box that had 
 just come in. " Put them all back in the 
 box, Maddy, right away ; I won t touch one 
 of them !" 
 
 " But, Honor, look at these great beau 
 ties an armful the stems more than half 
 a yard long. Why, they cost a dollar and a 
 half apiece," laying one with its soft reflec 
 tion on the pale oval of her cheek. 
 
 " I don t care if they cost a fortune apiece. 
 Wear his roses, indeed ! I d rather have a 
 green leaf of Ted s picking. Here, Pinky, 
 take them away; throw them out, every one !" 
 
 "What a gorgeous twenty -five- dollar 
 
220 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 breast-knot Pinky will wear with her best 
 young man to-night." 
 
 " I hope Mr. Chipperley will see her then. 
 Make haste back, Pinky; you must have the 
 rose-red chiffon out presently there ! I de 
 clare, what can papa be thinking of not only 
 to be willing I should accept that old Mor 
 mon, but to want me to ! Why, I might as 
 well go out to Utah, where they drive their 
 wives forty abreast, and be done with it !" 
 
 " But, at any rate, Mr. Chipperley has the 
 decency to drive his wives tandem." 
 
 " No, he hasn t. The law compels him. 
 Oh, you make me shiver !" she exclaimed, 
 with a mock shudder, as she turned over 
 the laces and ribbons in the drawer be 
 fore her. " The idea of going tandem with 
 three ghosts ! Poor ghosts poor dead wom 
 en ! They must have lost all identity by 
 this time. Mrs. Chipperley Mrs. Theodore 
 Chipperley which of them all of them 
 none of them ! And to be a fourth, and put 
 on their name ! I should feel that I was put 
 ting on their shroud ! Oh, oh, oh, I hate the 
 ground he walks on !" 
 
 " And love the ground Ted dances on." 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 221 
 
 " Poor Ted ! Poor Ted ! Oh, Maddy, 
 what does make all the inequality ? That hor 
 rid Chipperley man with millions, and Ted, 
 the delightful, the original, the good, the 
 brilliant Ted, without a penny to his name 1" 
 
 "Mr. Chipperley has been brilliant enough 
 to make a fortune." 
 
 " Well, he may keep it," smoothing out a 
 Honiton flounce. " I don t want it." 
 
 "As if you could do without a fortune, 
 Honor, you who have always had so many 
 luxuries that you don t know what the ne 
 cessities are. Look at that flounce 
 
 "I know it. I should never have an 
 other inch of real lace if I married Ted. 
 And well will you tell me, Maddy, why 
 Ted doesn t say anything?" her face the 
 color of a damask rose " I can t ask a man 
 to marry me 
 
 " I could, if need were." 
 
 " You ! Well, for a demure little cat that 
 dares to look at a king you would take a 
 prize in a tabby show," said Honor, folding 
 away the flounce, and leaning both round el 
 bows among the rings and pins of the toilet 
 cushions, while she looked at a dark and 
 
222 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 handsome siren in the glass. " I shall never 
 forget, Maddy, how you went and took your 
 mother s necklace off my mother s neck. I 
 think that did papa good to the core of his 
 heart. And when mamma got over being 
 startled she always rather admired you for 
 it. Only she will be even with you some 
 day." And then she fell to tying bows and 
 snipping ribbons with twinkling fingers. " I 
 should make a capital milliner if oh, if! 
 Well, Ted does everything except say the 
 word." And again the flood of color. 
 
 " How can he say the word ? What would 
 he do with a wife? Just think, Honor! 
 Why, he d be a wretch if he did speak ! A 
 man with no more possibilities than Ted 
 and with so many attractions, ought not to 
 come where you and Helen and Teresa and 
 the rest are you butterflies who have only 
 fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life." 
 
 "Marian, you are just an old maid a 
 puritanic, conscientious, cantankerous old 
 maid ! There don t you think these little 
 lavender and mignonette bows add to the 
 butterfly appearance of this particular but 
 terfly?" 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 223 
 
 " You are perfectly hopeless, Honor. You 
 forget there is a future. You just dance 
 in the beam to-day. Your father s interest 
 in the Humphreys estate dies with him. 
 It s a big interest to-day; but it reverts to 
 the co-residuaries, and all his children in 
 herit is the nice little family quarrel that 
 has given the General occupation ever since 
 lawyers and surrogates and the rest ate up 
 the whole of your mother s fortune and a 
 parcel of most expensive tastes and habits. 
 And here is Mr. Chipperley, a nice young 
 man " 
 
 " Old Chipperley !" dropping the scarf 
 over her hair, while Marian colored and 
 coughed. 
 
 "Young ah comparatively," stammered 
 Marian. 
 
 " Twice my age, at all events," tying the 
 scarf with a bewitching knot. 
 
 "A worthy gentleman!" exclaimed Mari 
 an, the blush still enlivening her fair cheek, 
 " against whom there is nothing to be said, 
 and who offers an ante-nuptial settlement 
 of a million dollars. And you have been out 
 three years, and have let Ted keep every 
 
224 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 eligible man away. And your father feels 
 his life insecure and you ve all lived so at 
 the top of the wave that there won t be a 
 dollar left the day after his funeral " 
 
 "Marian Marcy !" turning on her with a 
 diamond stick-pin in each hand. " How can 
 you talk so? My dear old father! How 
 can you be so indelicate so, so cruel ? 
 
 " I hope you are not going to stab me. 
 I am not cruel. I am speaking for your 
 good " 
 
 "Great good !" with half a sob and half a 
 laugh. " I shall have a hysteric if you don t 
 take care !" and the eyes were flaming and 
 the teeth flashing. 
 
 "Have twenty if you want to." And 
 Marian stood up beside her and looked her 
 in the face with steady gray eyes that had 
 a steely point behind their dewy softness. 
 " When it comes to the point," she said, " and 
 you are married to a poor man, and your 
 mother and Helen and Teresa and the boys 
 are homeless and penniless, do you believe 
 you won t regret Mr. Chipperley ?" 
 
 " What a mercy it would be, Maddy, if 
 you were struck dumb." 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 225 
 
 Marian laughed. " I m not angry," she 
 said, " because your temper shows that you 
 are beginning to listen to reason. You mar 
 ry Ted to-day, and have a happy year or 
 two. And presently you are shabby. And 
 presently care and anxiety about making 
 bricks without straw have taken off your 
 bloom, and given your face lines. You go 
 nowhere no balls and dinners and operas 
 for you with nothing to wear. You grow 
 irritable. He finds other places pleasanter 
 than home. He reproaches, you cry. You 
 reproach, he goes off. And you are more 
 lucky than I think you ll be if you settle 
 into anything like tolerable content with 
 him at last, if you don t leave him and go 
 off and earn your living as a milliner or a 
 lady s maid." 
 
 " Marian !" 
 
 "But you marry Mr. Chipperley you 
 have, possibly, a bad quarter of an hour, 
 regretting a handsome face and a dashing 
 manner. But you meet with absolute devo 
 tion. You tread on rose-leaves and eat and 
 drink nectar and ambrosia, and wear pur 
 ple and fine linen. You have your palaces, 
 
226 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 your horses, your servants, and your path 
 through life is a perfect milky-way of dia 
 monds." 
 
 " I never knew you could be so eloquent, 
 Marian," with sarcastic seriousness. 
 
 " And the long and the short of it is that 
 you become accustomed to the way in which 
 your husband surrounds you with sweet ob 
 servances, and you are grateful to him, and 
 have a friendly feeling for the rest of your 
 life. And that is about all you would come 
 out on in the end if you had married your 
 ideal." 
 
 " And you leave out all the companion 
 ship, the oneness, the the " 
 
 " Three uncommonly nice women have 
 found companionship with Mr. Chipperley 
 very satisfying." 
 
 " Yes ; they had all they wished of it early, 
 and left for parts unknown. Oh, how bored 
 they must have been !" 
 
 " Bored ! With Mr. Chipperley !" 
 
 " I believe that you are in love with that 
 man yourself, Maddy !" 
 
 "Well, now, Honor, I ve said all I had 
 to say. If you think it over quietly, and 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 227 
 
 remember that all this time Ted hasn t whis 
 pered a word 
 
 " Oh yes, he has whispered a plenty." 
 
 " He hasn t spoken out." 
 
 " And not to do that ?" 
 
 " Is very unmanly." 
 
 "And if he had?" 
 
 " It would be very scoundrelly." 
 
 " Marian Marcy, I ll never speak to you 
 again !" 
 
 " Till next time," said Marian, as she left 
 the room. " There !" she murmured, her 
 face taking on more than its usual pallor, as 
 the door closed, " I believe I ve said every 
 word my uncle asked me to say." 
 
 And Honor burst into tears, tore off her 
 lace scarf, and hid her face in it, and 
 snatched it away, conscious in the midst 
 of her trouble that every tear was a spot 
 upon the ribbons, and sobbed out to the 
 image of herself in the mirror : " Oh ! oh ! 
 I am so afraid I shall be tempted into 
 marrying Mr. Chipperley !" And she rum 
 maged out a photograph of Ted from a 
 chaos of sachets and beads and ribbons 
 and laces, and looked at it, magnified and 
 
223 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 haloed through the mist of her tears ; and 
 then she had to bathe her eyes in hot water, 
 and then in cold, and to powder the lids, 
 and to pale them, by comparison, with a 
 little rouge upon her cheeks, before Pinky 
 returned and clothed her in the gown the 
 color of the heart of a damask rose, in 
 which she went off to dinner, where she 
 was to meet Mr. Chipperley, who hated 
 the color of the heart of a damask rose. 
 
 Mr. Chipperley s wives had all been pal 
 lid women, dressing in pallid colors. One 
 or two of them would have liked to wear a 
 grass-green gown, or one even of sea-blue ; 
 one more daring than the rest had appeared 
 in a primrose-colored silk, but it aroused 
 such uncomfortable remarks that she only 
 wore it once. No ; soft grays and mauves 
 were the only wear for them ; and now 
 when their likeness rose on his memory, 
 the fawns and drabs of their garments were 
 the only distinct thing about it. Those, 
 too, as delicate eyebrows had merged into 
 dark, positive lines, as blue eyes had be 
 come gray, and now darted forth hazel 
 gleams, were swiftly suffusing themselves 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 229 
 
 with deep reds and dazzling pinks and 
 glowing purples. And he felt as though 
 he had forbidden it, and May and Mary 
 and Maria were wearing these colors in 
 spite of his expressed will. It had the ef 
 fect of unmarrying him more than any 
 thing else more than death itself; and he 
 was decidedly displeased with himself to 
 find that he was more wildly and passion 
 ately in love with this brilliant creature in 
 her burning reds and yellows than he had 
 been with all his tender little pearl-gray and 
 indistinct wives put together. It seemed 
 to Mr. Chipperley that he had been an in 
 distinct man himself till now ; he found 
 himself growing to the measure of his love ; 
 he had had to stoop before ; now he must 
 climb ; this gorgeous, glowing young wom 
 an was like a light in the sky ; one must 
 aspire to her, not stoop ; that was a new 
 sensation. She spoke of politics, and the 
 kingdoms of the earth made new combina 
 tions, and the destinies of nations rearranged 
 themselves. She talked a little theosophy ; 
 he felt this world enlarged to all the bor 
 ders of the vast unknown. She spoke of a 
 
230 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 symphony, he entered into the secrets of 
 music that he had not dreamed existed. 
 She sang, and he heard the trumpets on 
 heaven s ramparts sound. Yet she knew 
 next to nothing of politics, or theosophy, 
 or music; he rose only to the demands of 
 his imagination concerning her. If some 
 times the exercises were a trifle wearisome, 
 there was Marian s gentle denseness to fall 
 back on and find restful. 
 
 One thing, however, concerning Honor, 
 he had not yet learned to explain, and 
 hardly to endure. How could she love ani 
 mals in the way she did ? Four great Per 
 sian cats haunted her every footstep in the 
 house ; there they lay on their cushions in 
 the drawing-rooms, in the music-room, in 
 the library; a sleepy, snowy creature, like 
 some half-animated ostrich plume; a sa- 
 tanic black thing with fiery eyes that to Mr. 
 Chipperley s perception were informed with 
 the very bottomless flames ; another like a 
 golden fleece, caressing, half human ; and 
 a little mouse-colored imp, whose bounds and 
 springs and feathery tail-lashings not only 
 did infinite damage among the Venetian 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 231 
 
 and Dresden knick-kriackerie, but among 
 Mr. Chipperley s nerves. And Mr. Chip- 
 perley hated cats. They gave him nausea; 
 they made him sneeze ; he had an inde 
 scribable antipathy to them ; he was, as 
 Honor said to Marian, afraid of them. He 
 schooled himself to lay a very gingerly 
 hand on the white one, feeling a chill up 
 and down his spine as he did so; to suffer 
 the yellow one to rub against his shoe, al 
 though that also made his flesh creep ; he 
 said nothing about certain scratches given 
 him by the little gray Astarte devil, as he 
 called it, for Honor s eye was on him ; but 
 when the black Asmodeus looked him in 
 the face, Mr. Chipperley quailed. Then, 
 too, there was a great buff-bodied and black- 
 muzzled mastiff, and a spitz, and a poodle, 
 and goodness knows what else ; a parrot, 
 an owl no bigger than your fist, a little silk 
 en marmoset. Sometimes, when Mr. Chip 
 perley saw her, in a gown the hue of a 
 pomegranate, with her cats in her arms or 
 on her chair, and her dogs fawning around 
 her, he had a moment of such feeling as he 
 might have had were she Circe and he anoth- 
 
232 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 er lover just undergoing the enchantment, 
 and about to become one of them himself. 
 
 " Well, if s of no use," Circe had said. 
 " He admires the colors he hates ; he ca 
 resses the cats he fears ; he loves the dogs 
 he detests. It does look as if he were 
 hypnotized. Can t I undo the spell ?" 
 
 " You talk like a silly girl," said her fath 
 er. " Mr. Chipperley does you the honor to 
 make you a proposal of marriage " 
 
 " A proposal ? Twenty proposals !" 
 
 " And I wish you, I advise you, I com 
 mand you to accept it." And General 
 Humphreys looked at her with eyes accus 
 tomed to authority, gleaming from the 
 shadow of a pair of brows like epaulets 
 that gave a military force to his glance. 
 But his daughter had seen that glance be 
 fore, and knew just how much it meant. 
 
 " The Humphreys, papa," said the young 
 rebel, " have not been in the habit of being 
 commanded. I should hardly like to break 
 the family traditions." 
 
 " You are a disobedient and insolent 
 girl !" 
 
 " Nor have the Humphreys been bought 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 233 
 
 and sold in the past do you think I will 
 be the first one placed upon the market? 
 I wouldn t marry Mr. Chipperley if he were 
 made of diamonds and set in the sky !" 
 
 " I don t know how you could in that 
 case," said her father. " But you know, 
 without any more words about it, what the 
 circumstances are, what is likely to become 
 of your mother and the rest of the children 
 at my death, and that it is in your power, 
 with the settlements I call for, to make 
 their condition all that it has been." 
 
 " That is to say, you sell me and my hap 
 piness for their ease and comfort. It is 
 pleasant to know which you care for the 
 most. It leaves me quite free. No, Mr. 
 Papa Humphreys, you needn t promise to 
 deliver what you can t get hold of ! You 
 will have to go very long indeed on this 
 particular block ! I heard De Puy say once 
 it was a good plan to go short on a rising 
 market!" And just then the name of Mr. 
 Theodore Dane was announced, and the 
 father s eyes flashed fire at the daughter, 
 and the daughter s eyes flashed fire in re 
 turn, and cousin Marian was not the only 
 
234 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 one who knew how much Mr. Theodore 
 Dane had to do with the fortunes of Honor. 
 
 " Oh," said Honor to Marian, when this 
 conversation and struggle with her father 
 had been reported and summed up with 
 her mother s dark hints that her supplies 
 should be cut off, that she should be sent 
 into the country, or shut up in her room till 
 she promised different fashions, and bal 
 anced against her own declaration that me 
 diaeval customs were impossible in this Jin 
 de stick period "oh," said Honor, "if I 
 could only dress you in my clothes and 
 make you pass for me, and marry you off 
 to Mr. Chipperley, how I should like it !" 
 
 " And I, too," said the poor Marian. 
 
 "Marian ! Could you really endure the 
 thought of marrying that man, for one in 
 stant ?" 
 
 " What an idiot I should be if I couldn t !" 
 
 Honor looked at her a moment, large-eyed 
 and silent. " Marian Marcy !" she cried, 
 then, " you shall ! You shall marry Mr. 
 Chipperley, you shameless dear!" 
 
 " How strangely fate moves," said Honor 
 to her mother a little later. " Here is Ma- 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 235 
 
 rian Marcy, pale and drab, just like all the 
 women he naturally prefers, wearing pale 
 and drab gowns, thinking pale and drab 
 thoughts, doing pale and drab things ex 
 actly the one Mr. Chipperley ought to mar 
 ry ; she would melt into that composite wife 
 of his without a wrinkle. And here he is 
 possessed to marry one who sets all his 
 ideals at defiance, whose whims and ways 
 would eventually drive him mad, whose col 
 ors would startle him blind, who would be 
 as much a blight on his life as strong sun 
 on tender grass. 1 
 
 " I never heard such indelicate and im 
 proper remarks from a young girl s mouth 
 before. Marian think of marrying Mr. Chip 
 perley when he has not asked her !" 
 
 " My goodness ! Oh, my goodness !" 
 cried Honor, teeth and eyes flashing out 
 of that brown face in one dazzle of light 
 along with her ringing laugh. " Oh !" she 
 cried, running from the room, " if I die the 
 next minute I shall have had my share of 
 satisfaction ! I mean to make Marian do the 
 one thing in her life that shall be neither 
 pale nor drab !" 
 
236 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 But if Marian was a timid and conven 
 tional person in the main, she had more 
 than once proved herself capable of rising 
 to the occasion, and certainly she was do 
 ing something unusual and daring when un 
 invited she took Ted Dane s arm one night 
 as he stood, rather dark and dour in the 
 face, leaning against a window, and walked 
 with him into Mrs. Roberts s orchid-house. 
 " Oh, there is Honor !" she said, as they 
 paused where a swarm of rosy flower-but 
 terflies fluttered in their faces. " Is it not 
 wicked that such a girl should be sacri 
 ficed" 
 
 "Should be sold!" said Ted, suddenly 
 beaming on her, with his blue eyes shining 
 and his manner for the first time showing:. 
 
 O* 
 
 as he bent from his lofty height, that here 
 was an unexpectedly delightful person in 
 that Humphreys family. " It is infamous !" 
 
 " I dare say he would make a very good 
 husband." 
 
 " He ought. He has had enough experi 
 ence in that line." 
 
 " Then I should think he d see how very 
 unfit she is." 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 237 
 
 "Unfit? For that beggar? No, no; 
 Chipperley s a good fellow but there s no 
 one good enough for her." 
 
 "At any rate, she doesn t love him," hid 
 ing her face in the butterfly flowers. 
 
 " She doesn t ? Look at her, then !" gaz 
 ing at Honor down a vista, where she stood 
 graciously extending her hand like some 
 young queen, with Mr. Chipperley bending 
 over it like some seigneur swearing fealty. 
 
 " Very well. They are obliging her. It 
 isn t worth while for her to quarrel with a 
 man on whom she may be forced to rely for 
 all the happiness she can have." 
 
 " Forced ! Who can force her ?" 
 
 "Father, mother, a whole household. 
 And break her heart." 
 
 " Has she any heart ?" biting his mus 
 tache as if he meant it an injury. 
 
 " Heart ? Honor Humphreys ! She 
 well, you are the last person to deny it !" 
 
 " I ? What have I to do with it ?" 
 
 "Oh, certainly if you have been mean 
 ing nothing" frightened into the propri 
 ety she had forsaken in her desire to help 
 both Honor and herself. 
 
238 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 "Meaning nothing? I? What do you 
 mean ?" exclaimed Ted, suddenly facing 
 her. "You know I am meaning something! 
 You know I love Honor with all my heart 
 and soul ! You know I would spend my 
 life for her ! You know I haven t a dollar 
 in the world " 
 
 " I know she loves you, whether you have 
 a dollar in the world or not !" And the 
 next instant Ted Dane, in a thoughtless, 
 breathless ecstasy, had clasped Marian to 
 his heart for one swift second. On such an 
 avowal it was impossible not to embrace 
 some one. 
 
 "Oh, Marian," he said, "you are the best 
 friend a man ever had." 
 
 " No, no, no !" she gasped, pink with her 
 blushes. " What do you do such things 
 for ? Oh, I am sure Mr. Chipperley saw 
 you." 
 
 "What if he did? What do I care for 
 Chipperley? Oh, Marian, you have made 
 me the happiest man in the world !" And 
 Mr. Chipperley, whom some dancing fellow 
 had robbed of Honor, saw the act and heard 
 the words, as he came down the orchid- 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 239 
 
 house, and noticed for the first time that 
 Marian Marcy, in her misty toilet of laven 
 der satin and tulle, was really a most attract 
 ive person and most becomingly dressed. 
 He knew that Marian had little or nothing 
 of her own except her mother s jewels, and 
 that it was owing to Honor s determined 
 insistence that she had everything as if she 
 were a daughter of the house, and it only 
 made Honor seem more charming still. How 
 well that young woman would spend a big 
 income, with what generosity, what nobility ! 
 
 As for Ted, when Honor had finished 
 that dance he was awaiting her. And what 
 took place out in the grand hall where two 
 people sat on the pedestal of the Psyche 
 and Eros group, in the broad glare of the 
 candles, one opening and shutting her fan, 
 the other leaning towards her eagerly and 
 taking the fan into his own hands at last, 
 all the world might see, but only two of all 
 the world might know. 
 
 " It is time," said old General Humphreys 
 to his daughter, a week, perhaps, after that 
 night, " that Mr. Chipperley had a definite 
 answer. He is very impatient. Your mother 
 
240 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 thinks your conduct is fast becoming scan 
 dalous." And he cleared his throat and 
 straightened his collar in preparation for 
 the fray. " Yes, fast becoming scandalous." 
 
 " She will think it is quite scandalous be 
 fore I am through, I fear." 
 
 " I can t imagine your objection to a man 
 of Mr. Chipperley s worth 
 
 " Oh, he is worth too much." 
 
 "This is not an occasion for trifling, 
 Honor." 
 
 " Well, then, the chief objection is that 
 I prefer some one else," said Honor, care 
 lessly swinging her lorgnon. 
 
 " Some one else !" and the eyebrows, like 
 epaulets, lifted themselves and fell again 
 ominously. 
 
 " Yes. I presume that at least my pref 
 erences are my own." 
 
 " May I ask who this some one is ?" 
 
 " How can I hinder your asking, papa ?" 
 
 " Let me know the name at once !" 
 
 "It is Theodore Dane." 
 
 " Great heavens !" cried the general. " A 
 fellow with nothing but a pedigree ! A man 
 of family without a penny, a lawyer with- 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 241 
 
 out a brief, an idle, dancing, driving, shift 
 less" 
 
 " I wouldn t talk so, papa, about a man 
 to whom you may by-and-by stand in the 
 relation of a father," said Honor, calmly. 
 
 " Never ! The day you married that fel 
 low you would cease to be my daughter !" 
 
 " Nonsense, papa ; you are just like my 
 mastiff ! Old Proudfoot s bark is very much 
 worse than his bite. How can I ever cease 
 being your daughter ?" And then she had 
 her arm about the old hero s neck. " You 
 know very well, papsy, you would never wish 
 to make your dear unhappy." 
 
 "No, certainly, no; of course not, no," 
 disengaging himself. " And this is the very 
 reason I wish you to marry a man quite suit 
 able in himself, and who can indulge all your 
 extravagant tastes, and hinder you by-and- 
 by from the unhappiness of seeing your 
 mother and your sisters deprived of all their 
 gratifications on my death." 
 
 " How absurd, papa ! As if you were go 
 ing to die ! It s perfectly ridiculous !" 
 
 " I m glad you find it so amusing." 
 
 "Hale and hearty and strong and good, 
 
242 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 Hvith a father and mother that lived to be 
 ninety, and their father and mother before 
 them. I won t listen to such talk ! Besides, 
 if worse came to worse, mamma and the 
 others could live with us. We shall have a 
 home of some sort " 
 
 " Shall ?" 
 
 " Yes, we shall live in an old house of Ted s 
 in the country an old place on a river 
 quite a place once and had such lovely gar 
 dens. He will come into town to his office 
 every day, and I shall raise asparagus." 
 
 4 You, Honor !" he groaned. " Do you 
 know what you are saying? Is it all cut 
 and dried ?" 
 
 " Yes, papa," she said, " the plan, not the 
 asparagus." And again she made the move 
 ment to imprison him. But General Hum 
 phreys caught her in time, and held her off at 
 arm s-length, looking straight into her eyes. 
 
 " Do you mean to say you can talk this 
 way without a blush " 
 
 "You know I can t blush, papa. I m 
 too dark. I can turn purple, if you want 
 me to." 
 
 " I ve as good a mind as ever I had to 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 243 
 
 eat to call in a justice of the peace and 1 
 marry you out of hand." 
 
 " I wish you would," she exclaimed, " to 
 Theodore." 
 
 But as he released her she flung herself 
 upon his breast. " Papa, papa !" she cried. 
 " You must help me ! I love Ted I hate 
 that old Mormon ! And oh I should think 
 you would find it such fun to get the bet 
 ter of mamma and you remember the 
 traverse she worked on you when you want 
 ed De Puy to marry Kate Appleton, and 
 she arranged it all for Henrietta von 
 Frump " 
 
 " I don t know what that has to do with 
 this case. Your mother has much the best 
 sense of all of us. De Puy s has turned out 
 a very comfortable marriage, if he is a little 
 hen-pecked. Yours " 
 
 " Oh, papa, I shall simply throw myself 
 in front of the train if you make me mar 
 ry Mr. Chipperley ! I should like to have 
 some identity of my own. Just think of 
 my being a band of sisters with those three 
 poor ghosts hovering round old Chipper- 
 ley !" And as the ghosts did not seem to 
 
244 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 move her father, she had resort to the last 
 argument tears. 
 
 "There, there, there!" said her father. 
 " You know very well that I abhor tears," 
 taking her in his arms. I I will confess 
 that I had just as lief let your mother see 
 that I had a will of my own as not. But 
 the fact is, you will be a pauper. And I can t 
 think of that." 
 
 " I told you, papa, that we that Ted has 
 a house. It will be the greatest pleasure 
 in the world to make it habitable. And 
 you ve no idea how profitable my aspara 
 gus beds are going to be." 
 
 " Honor !" 
 
 " Oh, we have figured it all out. It s a 
 delightful old place. Maddy and I went 
 out to see it." 
 
 " Maddy there s another thing. What 
 is to become of Marian, as well as all the 
 rest, if you persist in this course ?" 
 
 "Why shouldn t Marian marry Mr. Chip- 
 perley, papa, and keep the money in the 
 family ?" 
 
 " Simply because he doesn t want her." 
 
 " He does. She is just and exactly the 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 245 
 
 very thing he wants. Only he doesn t know 
 it yet. He would find it out. For Marian 
 is precisely the sweet, pale, quiet nun that 
 would make him feel as if it were all a bad 
 dream that he had ever had any other wife 
 as if they were all nothing but different 
 phases of one woman. He is bejuggled 
 with me just now, but oh, he would so re 
 gret it in a little ; my canary and ruby col 
 ors would drive him wild, and he wouldn t 
 live a year with all the exactions and exas 
 perations that I should bring to him. Can t 
 you reason with him, papsy ?" 
 
 " I could reason with him a great deal 
 better than I could with your mother." 
 
 " Well, we won t try to reason with mam 
 ma. I ve heard you say many a time that 
 she never would hear reason. Of course 
 you know, darling, I m not doing anything 
 imprudent. Ted is only waiting for Mr. 
 Lorton to come home to have his appoint 
 ment as attorney to the Creamery Trust, 
 with a salary of I don t know how many 
 thousand a year ; and a family that can t live 
 on that ought to starve. And, besides, that 
 is only a beginning. When people see what 
 
246 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 Ted is the big cases will come in, and we 
 shall have an income to astonish you. That 
 ought to content mamma. And it isn t as if 
 Helen and Teresa wouldn t marry. Now, 
 Papa Humphreys, you are an old soldier, 
 you named me Honor because Honor was 
 the dearest thing on earth to you. And 
 I m not going to ask you to do a living 
 thing contrary to your principles, only to 
 take mamma on a little journey, to Washing 
 ton or to New Orleans anywhere. You 
 press that button, and I ll do the rest." 
 And it was at the end of a delightful half 
 hour that Mrs. Humphreys found Honor 
 sitting on her father s knees, all smiles and 
 tears and tangles. 
 
 " I suppose," said Mrs. Humphreys, 
 "from the appearance of things, that your 
 good sense has come to the rescue, my 
 child. Of course, Mr. Chipperley s fortune 
 is our last consideration. It is himself, his 
 intelligence, his breeding, his goodness that 
 we think calculated to make you happy. 
 But it is outside of the possibilities that a 
 young girl should refuse the settlements he 
 offers-" 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 247 
 
 " Well, mamma," said Honor, moving 
 from her pleasant seat and twisting up her 
 hair, " I give you fair warning that when 
 I marry Mr. Chipperley I will not accept a 
 settlement of any sort." 
 
 " My child !" 
 
 " No. No man shall think I marry him 
 for his money." 
 
 " But, Honor, what an absurd, high-flown 
 notion !" 
 
 " No matter, mamma. I give you my 
 ultimatum. If you want me to marry Mr. 
 Chipperley, no settlement, no gifts, not a 
 ring, not a flower. And you may tell him so." 
 
 " Humph ! I suppose he can give it to 
 you afterwards, just the same. But I must 
 say it is the most quixotic nonsense 
 
 " Never mind about that. You are will 
 ing to sell me but I have some rights, 
 some feelings I will arrange the terms 
 myself !" And she swept out of the room. 
 
 " Well," said her mother to the old gen 
 eral, who stared confused, not quite accom 
 modating his ideas to Honor s words, but 
 keeping a wise silence in the presence of 
 his superior officer, " I am so glad, so re- 
 
248 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 lieved that she consents at all, that I will 
 say no more at present. You had best see 
 Mr. Chipperley at once, and give him to 
 understand that she must be approached 
 most delicately." 
 
 " My love, you would do all that much 
 better yourself a man s blundering blud 
 geon your dainty rapier " 
 
 " Very well, then ; leave it all to me," 
 said Mrs. Humphreys, with great good- nat 
 ure. And, satisfied that events were shap 
 ing to her mind, she wrote a note summon 
 ing Mr. Chipperley, and when he came she 
 gave him to understand that at last his suit 
 was accepted, but that, in fact, as some one 
 in Shirley said of all women, Miss Honor 
 was very kittle-kattle, and there must be no 
 mention of gifts or settlements, or, in fact, 
 of the understanding itself. " My daughter 
 is exceedingly sensitive, and the idea that 
 it might be thought your wealth was a fac 
 tor in this happy conjunction " 
 
 " Oh, precisely, exactly," said the de 
 lighted Mr. Chipperley. " I understand, I 
 understand," and did not understand in the 
 least. 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 249 
 
 Poor Mr. Chipperley ! It was not really 
 a blissful period to him that followed this 
 rather peculiar betrothal in which the bride 
 had given no promise, signified no assent, 
 and expressed no feeling. He would have 
 liked to press that hand of hers, but it was 
 snatched away before he had more than 
 icily touched it. He would have liked to 
 drop the opera-cloak on those lovely shoul 
 ders, but that officious Ted Dane was 
 allowed to be before him. He longed to 
 fold his arms about her and press one kiss 
 upon those luscious lips he would as soon 
 have offered such a familiarity to the Tint 
 ed Venus. When he saw her at a charity 
 concert, playing on the violin, looking like 
 one of Fra Angelico s angels, in a long red 
 gown, spangled with golden stars, with the 
 loose sleeves falling open over an arm fit 
 for a tawny young Cleopatra, he wanted to 
 cry out to all the world, " She is mine ! She 
 is mine !" But you would have thought she 
 had never seen him before. All the same, 
 he was quite positive that when she was his 
 wife, fast and sure, she should never wear 
 a red gown again. In this red gown she was 
 
250 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 so unlike his dreams, so brilliant, so over 
 powering, so effacing, that she gave Mr. 
 Chipperley the singular sensation of being 
 unfaithful to a wife ; he felt as if there 
 really was something unlawful in his passion, 
 and it was far from being agreeable to him. 
 " It it were anything but herself," he 
 thought, " I should declare that gown could 
 be worn only by the Scarlet Lady. It puts 
 out a man s sight. It almost puts out his 
 love. How much more womanly, how much 
 fairer and softer that silvery thing her cou 
 sin wore a very sweet woman, that Marian 
 Marcy. I must really speak to Honor about 
 her vivid toilets. As for the gentle cousin, 
 she s altogether too nice to waste on Ted 
 Dane ! * A creature, not too bright or good 
 for human nature s daily food. " And 
 then vaguely and obscurely Mr. Chipperley 
 thought what a pity it was that a man 
 might not marry two women at once. 
 
 Somehow or other Marian Marcy was 
 always in the room now when Mr. Chipper 
 ley was admitted to the presence. It was 
 not so much of an effort to follow Marian 
 as he had found it to keep up with Honor s 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 251 
 
 flights and vagaries ; she soothed him after 
 the attempt ; she always agreed with him ; 
 and he felt with half an uncertain sigh that 
 Ted Dane was going to have a very restful 
 person for a wife. 
 
 " Mr. Lorton has returned, and we are 
 talking of their domino party," said Honor. 
 " A wilderness of flowers and Seidl s or 
 chestra. Maud Van Wieck is going as 
 Catherine de Medici, and Rose as Cather 
 ine of Russia, and Belle Devers as Cather 
 ine of Aragon " 
 
 " And you ?" said Mr. Chipperley. 
 
 "We thought first of Petrucio s Kather- 
 ine and Camoens s Catharina " 
 
 " Sweetest eyes were ever seen, " quot 
 ed he. 
 
 " And then of Iris and Charmien, pearls 
 and asps, and all that, you know. But it s 
 too much trouble. We will go just in our 
 brown dominos." 
 
 " * I ll wear my brown gown, and never 
 dress too fine, " quoted Marian. 
 
 " Yes, we will just go in our brown dom 
 inos. That is exactly the way I should 
 like to be married," Honor said, suddenly, 
 
252 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 looking up with a flash of eyes and teeth. 
 " No fuss, no feathers, no company, no 
 cards. Just Ted and you and Marian and 
 I, all at one time, all our own witnesses 
 stealing out from the ball, going to the min 
 ister s, and going our own way afterwards !" 
 
 " It would be admirable !" cried Mr. 
 Chipperley. " It is one of your brilliant 
 thoughts. No need of waiting for parapher 
 nalia ; that can be had in Paris. A hand-bag 
 in the carriage, and over to the Utopia s 
 dock directly afterwards ; she sails at sun 
 rise that night I mean morning." 
 
 " What do you say to it, Ted ?" asked 
 Marian, as that young man joined them. 
 
 " What do you say to it ?" 
 
 " Oh, whatever Mr. Chipperley thinks 
 best." 
 
 And to Mr. Chipperley it seemed that he 
 was about to enter a charming family, where 
 even the remote cousins were so engaging. 
 
 " A capital notion," said Ted. " For of 
 all things to be dreaded the marriage cere 
 mony is chief. If one could take ether 
 now, or nitrous oxide, and wake up ancj 
 find it all over " 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 253 
 
 " Pshaw !" said Mr. Chipperley, before 
 he thought, " it s nothing at all, nothing at 
 all." 
 
 Still, Mr. Chipperley was not displeased 
 with the anticipated privacy and quietness. 
 For, feel as you may, the world will have a 
 little fun over a man s fourth nuptial. And 
 then the elopement-like process gave a color 
 of poetry to the affair which it otherwise 
 lacked. When they parted, Mr. Chipperley 
 made haste to send his berth- trunk and 
 steamer-chairs and rugs on board the Uto 
 pia, and to secure the best state-room to 
 be had for money, and Ted to see about 
 the licenses and the minister. It gave Mr. 
 Chipperley a jolly feeling of being young 
 and rash and reckless and romantic. 
 
 " I shall wear my glory gown," said 
 Honor, when she and Marian were alone. 
 " It will stun him out of his wits when I 
 open my domino. You have the hardest 
 part, Marian. Oh, how I pity you !" 
 
 "You needn t," said Marian, quietly. "I 
 am equal to it." 
 
 " But you dread it just a little." 
 
 " Just a little. I would rather not, if it 
 
254 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 could be arranged in any other way. But 
 I sacrifice myself," she said, with a quiet 
 laugh, "to my aunts and cousins." 
 
 " Marian, to say you are a trump is to 
 say nothing at all. You are a whole straight 
 flush !" 
 
 The day before the Lortons domino 
 party Mrs. Humphreys saw two of Honor s 
 trunks taken down on an expressman s back 
 before her very eyes, under the supposition 
 that they were either Pinky s or her own 
 packed for the Washington trip with the 
 General, which her cold had deferred. An 
 other trunk was sent later from the house 
 of the Humphreys to the steamer. And it 
 wanted hardly a couple of hours to sunrise 
 when Ted and Mr. Chipperley, with two 
 dominos masked an mcrveil, left the Lor 
 tons lights and flowers and music, entered 
 the coach in waiting, and drove across to 
 the Church of St. Peter-cum-Paul. 
 
 There was but a dim and solitary light 
 burning at the altar. The rector, who had 
 been napping in his study, was hardly more 
 than half awake now. He examined the 
 licenses perfunctorily, and hurried through 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 255 
 
 the service, as he had been begged to do, 
 as if he were expecting a policeman to in 
 terrupt him. For the first time Mr. Chip- 
 perley took with permitted tenderness the 
 hand, he thought, that he had so often 
 longed to take. Joyful moment when it re 
 turned the pressure, when he heard a whis 
 pering voice in the responses, when those 
 swift and sleepy tones pronounced them 
 husband and wife. He hastened down the 
 dusky aisle with a trembling, clinging shad 
 ow beside him. Ted delayed a moment or 
 two for the certificates, following with the 
 other domino, and then, the curtains of the 
 carriage closely drawn, they drove through 
 the gray morning twilight of the empty 
 streets that seemed to belong to some other 
 life, breathless, wordless, over the ferry and 
 to the pier. 
 
 The gray was growing silver on the silent 
 water as they crossed. A star was melting 
 back into the light like a pearl dissolving 
 in a cup of gold. Suddenly a ray lit all the 
 mast-heads and tipped them every one with 
 fire. And it was in that moment, as they 
 stood on the deck, that Honor flung open 
 
25 6 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 her domino and let the sunshine kindle all 
 the radiance of her glory gown a sheen 
 of satin of an intense yellow, embroidery 
 of gold-thread rippling all over it in lines 
 of lustre, the breast, the throat, the hair, 
 the waist, a blaze of deepest tinted Spanish 
 topazes, with here and there a ruby. So 
 dark, so rich, so splendid in the full light, 
 the brown skin, the great luminous eyes, 
 the flash of the laughing teeth Ted s heart 
 stood still as he glanced at her and looked 
 away and glanced back, finding it hard to 
 believe he was awake, that he saw her, that 
 she was his. 
 
 But it was with no such eyes that Mr. 
 Chipperley beheld her. That yellow gown 
 it should be food for fishes as soon as 
 they were in deep water ! Those burning 
 topazes and rubies he was very tired from 
 want of sleep, from hurry, from uncertainty, 
 from emotion they forced his eyes open 
 and pinned the lids back ! As she stood 
 there, for one swift second she seemed to 
 Mr. Chipperley an embodiment of the sin 
 of the world. 
 
 And he was bound hand and foot at the 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 257 
 
 chariot of the blazing creature. He saw in 
 stinctively that he would never be master 
 again. The three Mrs. Chipperleys rose 
 wavering before him, wringing their hands 
 and vanishing into thin air. He felt, while 
 he gasped and tried to collect himself, that 
 he should like to go to sleep and never 
 wake. 
 
 But Marian also had thrown off her dom 
 ino and mask, and she stood, in a soft 
 moonlight-colored velvet, a shawl of white 
 blond lace, pinned on her blond hair, falling 
 about her like a veil while she gazed at him. 
 " Ah, now," thought Mr. Chipperley, " she 
 looks like a bride, she does. But that yel 
 low abomination ! Why, Ted Dane was 
 right when he said of her once she dazzled 
 
 O 
 
 when, the sun is down and robs the world 
 of rest. She s about to rob my world of 
 rest!" 
 
 But all this was in the twinkling of an 
 eye intuition, not thought while Marian 
 was hanging her domino over her arm and 
 Honor was folding hers about her again, as 
 people came hurrying by, and the confusion 
 of starting became noticeable; no one paus- 
 
258 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 ing to think twice of a gay party accustomed 
 to going and coming, who had hastened on 
 board in their ball dresses. 
 
 " Well, Marian," said Ted, " here is your 
 certificate. No ; this is Honor s and mine. 
 You will find it all right, Mr. Chipperley. 
 Honor and I will be thinking of you in these 
 moonlight nights as you go parting the 
 smooth seas. You ll be quite in time for 
 the carnival. You have helped us in a way 
 not to be forgotten, ai*l we we Honor 
 and I shall always associate you -with the 
 happiness of our lives." 
 
 "I who what what is this ?" stam 
 mered Mr. Chipperley, hearing Ted s voice 
 like a voice in a dream, and at the same 
 time looking over Marian s shoulder at the 
 scroll of paper she unfolded. " Theodore 
 Chipperley Marian Marcy. There is a 
 mistake here. There 
 
 " No, no," said Ted, calmly. " Nothing 
 of the sort. No mistake. That would be 
 impossible. I have married Honor and 
 you have married Marian, just as we in 
 tended. We could never have overcome 
 Mamma Humphreys if you hadn t entered 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 259 
 
 so fortunately into our scheme. It s of no 
 use to try and thank you ; we can t. There 
 go the last people off there isn t a mo 
 ment good-bye, good-bye !" There was a 
 hurried shaking of hands, a hurried em 
 brace of Marian and Honor, and Ted and 
 one of the dominos were on the pier waving 
 farewells, and the Utopia was slowly sliding 
 seaward. 
 
 For an instant Mr. Chipperley stared at 
 them, at Marian, at sky and water, all 
 aghast, and then his eye rested on Marian 
 again in her soft pearl color and lace, and 
 in the midst of the whirl in his brain the 
 words of an old, old lover came back to 
 him: "And her eyes are doves." Yes, her 
 eyes were doves. And then he was caught 
 in a wild revulsion of feeling, a sense of 
 having cast off a gyve, a sense of having 
 come home into peaceful twilight after long 
 revel and riot, with thick wines honey sweet, 
 flowers, and burning sunshine among Circe s 
 beasts. He remembered the reds and yel 
 lows, the mastiff, the spitz, the poodle ; no 
 more treading on a soft fur in the dark 
 hall, and having it turn and rend you; 
 
260 A COMPOSITE WIFE 
 
 no more sitting down on some softly-cush 
 ioned seat, and hearing a yell and a snarl 
 from the cushion ; no more tracing of re 
 semblances between yourself and a marmo 
 set ; no more starts, no more dazzles, no 
 more nips from the paroquet, no vociferation 
 of canaries, no staring out of countenance 
 from the owl, no menagerie in his house, no 
 mother-in-law, with her courtship that al 
 ways seemed to mask an assault! He took 
 Marian by the hand and led her into her 
 state-room. "May," he said, "Mary I beg 
 your pardon Maria I mean Marian! you 
 have made a great sacrifice for me. You have 
 perhaps saved me from a great unhappiness. 
 Let me recover my equipoise, and the de 
 votion of a lifetime shall repay you. You 
 knew me better than I knew myself. I was 
 benumbed ! I was bewitched ! I was blind ! 
 It may take me a little time to get that 
 other image out of my mind, but I shall do 
 it it had not become a habit. Be patient, 
 and you shall find a tender husband. Great 
 powers ! to think that I might have yield 
 ed to that sort of temptation, and been dis 
 turbed, wearied, wretched for life ! I thank 
 
A COMPOSITE WIFE 261 
 
 Heaven for your wisdom and courage that 
 rescued me. You could never have done it 
 if you had not loved me. I thank Heaven 
 that you are Mrs. Chipperley!" And May s 
 smile played around Marian s mouth, and 
 Marian s eyes looked up with Mary s gentle 
 imploration, and echoes of Maria s voice 
 fluted in Marian s tone, and Marian s lips 
 trembled with a kiss he had known before, 
 and Mr. Chipperley, with a deep and quiet 
 satisfaction, felt again that he had never 
 been a widower. 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER 
 IN-LAW 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN- 
 LAW 
 
 THE Van Nores were present at the crea 
 tion of the world. Some people say they 
 made it; but one really knows better than 
 that. If it had not been for their unac 
 countable belief that the builder of the ark 
 that rested on Mount Ararat was a Jew, and 
 their unutterable contempt for the race of 
 Spinoza and Mendelssohn, of Heine, Auer- 
 bach, and Disraeli, to mention no greater, 
 they would not have hesitated to conceive 
 that the family name of the Patriarch was 
 Van Nore. 
 
 At any rate, you may understand that the 
 Van Nores were an immensely ancient fam 
 ily, so old as to be really worm-eaten. In 
 the dust of the Van Nores there were soldiers 
 and statesmen, and even a less regarded 
 author or two. In this century there was 
 
266 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 nothing at all to speak of. If, however, any 
 one says their family tree was like one of 
 those old, wide, and deep-rooted fir-trees 
 sometimes seen, with but a single gnarled 
 and lichened branch left of all its forest 
 glory, the best part of it underground, you 
 can see that the person is no friend of the 
 Van Nores, but one whose eyes have been 
 hurt by the dazzle of their splendor, who 
 has been forgotten at their banquets, looked 
 at with a stony glare upon the street, or 
 possibly knocked down and bruised and ig 
 nored by their fast horses. 
 
 Being immensely ancient, immensely dis 
 tinguished, and also immensely wealthy, it 
 goes without saying that the Van Nores 
 thought immensely well of themselves. 
 They never soiled their garments by con 
 tact with the crowd ; they bought their pict 
 ures and statues straight from the manu 
 facturers before they had been profaned by 
 the vulgar gaze , they would have liked the 
 gold they spent cast with a Van Nore de 
 vice, and the die broken. They could not 
 hope to keep all the knowledge in the uni 
 verse to themselves ; but they did not care 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 267 
 
 so much for that there were always tu 
 tors and chaplains to be had, after the 
 custom of certain of the South Sea Isl 
 and chiefs, who maintain a Fila-oma or 
 Talking Man of Knowledge. If, once in a 
 while, they allowed themselves to come be 
 fore the public in a matter of suffrage, it 
 was not altogether without the sensation of 
 some wicked scribe who has written the 
 Sacred Name with unwashed hands ; and, 
 being usually defeated, they relapsed into 
 a more profound contempt of the people 
 than before, and talked glibly of the ad 
 vantages of a monarchy, although not with 
 out an undercurrent of feeling that in the 
 event of a monarchy the Van Nores would 
 be monarchs. They intermarried, of course, 
 only with families of a pedigree and assump 
 tion one degree less than it could not be 
 more than, and could hardly be equal to 
 the Van Nores. 
 
 Judge, then, of the bewildered and amazed 
 wrath of the Van Nore family when the son 
 of the house, the heir of the name, the last 
 of the name, the only male Van Nore left 
 to go down the ages with the weight of the 
 
268 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 family illustriousness upon his shoulders, 
 married a young girl in the West, unknown, 
 obscure, poor, and a Jewess ! 
 
 Nore Van Nore had a sister older than 
 himself a dark and imposing creature 
 with the Van Nore nose. He had a sister 
 younger than himself, pallid, bloodless, with 
 her mother s delicacy of feature, and with 
 nothing about her but her haughtiness to 
 distinguish her from the herd of young 
 women. He had one Van Nore cousin, a 
 little apple -blossom hardly coming up to 
 the family requirements. He had four Van 
 Nore spinster aunts, who, if they quarrelled 
 among themselves like birds in a wood, 
 presented an unbroken phalanx of family 
 integrity to the public, and who, with the 
 idea that they had the manners of duchess 
 es, really gave some reason to believe them 
 directly descended from the Patriarch, they 
 looked so extremely like the wooden wom 
 en in the children s toy arks. His father 
 embodied all the dignity, pomposity, and 
 grandeur of all the Van Nores before him, 
 as if he were the flame of their ashes ; he 
 had but one gift, and that was a faculty for 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 269 
 
 satirical speech, which he exercised with 
 impunity upon his wife his wife, the line 
 of whose descent was so long that it had 
 worn to a colorless, attenuated thread in 
 her ; a thin, pale, languid woman, of whose 
 condition it expressed little to say she 
 dared not call her soul her own, because, 
 in looking at her, or looking through her, 
 rather, it was not clear that she had a soul 
 a woman without intellect, without indi 
 viduality, and almost without vitality. Into 
 this assemblage Nore Van Nore had dared 
 introduce a person absolutely without a 
 grandfather, and whose grandfather, had 
 she had one, would have been named Sha- 
 cabac ! 
 
 Mr. Van Nore and his household would 
 treat this vile and vulgar intriguer, who had 
 thrust herself upon them, and had thought 
 to lift herself by pulling them down, as she 
 deserved. In their heart of hearts they had 
 a complete, if inarticulate, consciousness 
 that no one could have married the bride 
 groom in question for any other purpose. 
 And Nore Van Nore received a letter of 
 repudiation from his father, disowning and 
 
270 MR. VAN NORES DAUGHTER- IN LAW 
 
 casting him forever into the outer darkness 
 of the world of people who were not Van 
 Nores. 
 
 And who was Nore Van Nore? He was a 
 young man of twenty-six years, whose men 
 tal processes had mastered the rudiments 
 of learning to such an extent that he could 
 read the newspaper and could make change. 
 All attempts to cultivate those mental proc 
 esses much further had failed ; if he en 
 tered the university at last, it was because 
 tutors and proctors and family influence, a 
 fortuitous chance, and perhaps money, all 
 wrought together. Entrance was all, how 
 ever. Before the first term closed Mr. Van 
 Nore had private but authoritative informa 
 tion that unless he wanted expulsion for 
 stupidity approaching imbecility were not 
 the exact words he had better withdraw 
 his son. In a hot and self - righteous 
 fury Mr. Van Nore turned the tables 
 and expelled the university. He with 
 drew his son with a wild show of anger 
 and scorn for faculty, curriculum, endow 
 ment, and career. " They have graduated 
 no man who comes to anything in the last 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 271 
 
 twenty-five years !" he said. And that the 
 matter might be the sooner forgotten, he 
 gave Mr. Nore Van Nore a purse and a 
 travelling companion, and despatched him 
 to the Far West. It was probably but a case 
 of retarded development ; perhaps he would 
 do a little exploring and discovering; when 
 he should return the affair would have quite 
 blown over, and he would marry him to 
 some maiden who had been so well brought 
 up that she would feel herself taking a 
 proper place among dominations, princes, 
 and powers by marrying a Van Nore of any 
 calibre. All the same, he did not fail to 
 make his wife s life a burden to her by sar 
 casms on her feeble wit that had been 
 strong enough to adulterate the strength of 
 the Van Nore ; while the very sense of his 
 son s incapacity, thus forced upon him, was 
 another argument against the woman who 
 would marry an imbecile for the sake of 
 climbing into his rank and position. 
 
 It was not altogether to be wondered at, 
 then, if his wife did not fully sympathize 
 with him in this extremity, and if, being of 
 an affectionate disposition so far as she 
 
272 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 had anything to impart, having imparted 
 that also to her son she wrote a little sur 
 reptitious letter she who had usually not a 
 thought nor a deed nor an emotion of her 
 own : 
 
 " MY DARLING BOY, I send you all my love. 
 Any wife you choose to marry will be the dear 
 daughter of your mother." 
 
 That was the letter written so secretly ; it 
 meant volumes to her ; it meant volumes to 
 her boy. She was frightened to a trem 
 bling ghost of her ghost-like self when she 
 stopped the carriage and asked the footman 
 to drop it in a street-box, for she felt that 
 if her husband knew it it would not be im 
 possible for him to blow out her flickering 
 rlame of life altogether, or stamp its feeble 
 spark into the earth. He never had struck 
 her; but she never knew what he might do 
 yet. 
 
 The father s letter, when it came, was not 
 at all unexpected by Hero Van Nore ; nor 
 was the mother s a surprise. She was a 
 girl of twenty, superbly tall and fair. Her 
 mouldings would have fed a sculptor s eye 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 273 
 
 with rapture, her coloring would have driven 
 wild another than Titian ; the great braids 
 upon her head seemed made of strands of 
 spun gold ; she wore them like a crown, as 
 became a daughter of the royal tribe of 
 Judah she was undoubtedly a Jewess 
 but as Miriam, as Deborah, as Susannah 
 may have done she had the large beauty 
 of that Clytie in her sunflower whom some 
 think to be Isis in her lotus. She waited in 
 her father s shop ; and she sold Mr. Van 
 Nore a pair of gloves there. 
 
 He had given his purse, with his conge, 
 some time since to his travelling companion, 
 and he was waiting in this little place till 
 he should receive a fresh remittance from 
 his father. When he saw Hero he had 
 something else to wait for. He hung round 
 the shop corners, and when she went home 
 he followed her. Vera incessn patuit dea 
 she stepped as if the earth were air ; he said 
 to himself that it was because his heart was 
 under her feet. He knew intuitively that 
 she would not give him a second look. 
 What were the Van Nores out here in the 
 wilderness ? He was able to see, for all his 
 
274 MR - VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 deficiency, that she was on a higher plane 
 of being than his own. But if he could not 
 hope he could at least suffer ; he could gaze 
 at the star he might not win. He bought 
 another pair of gloves. Ah, heavens ! to 
 feel the touch of those pointed fingers of 
 hers as they stretched the kid from side to 
 side on his hand ! The next day he bought 
 another pair. Before he was through he 
 had bought the whole stock of gloves in 
 the shop. 
 
 Of course this attracted her attention, 
 and she made some inquiry concerning him. 
 " You had better go away," she said, when 
 he came in again. " You do not need gloves, 
 or ties, or any of our goods. You are mak 
 ing yourself ridiculous." 
 
 " I have nothing to do with it," he re 
 plied. " I was made so when I was born." 
 
 And so one word led to another, and in 
 the course of time he had told his story, 
 which somehow seemed full of wrongs 
 the story of a rather feeble - minded 
 youth who had been browbeaten and ill- 
 used by a disappointed father from his 
 birth. Her heart was stirred with pity ; she 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 275 
 
 let him come to the house. Hope bounded 
 within him. If the star should fall from 
 the sky to his arms ! He wrote his father 
 I forgot to say that he could write that he 
 wanted his influence to help him marry the 
 most lovely, the most virtuous, the most 
 brilliant of women, who waited behind the 
 counter of her father s little Jew-shop. The 
 answer to his letter made his hair stand on 
 end. Sneering, vindictive, cruel, threaten 
 ing. What should he do but show it to 
 her ? Her blood would have been cold and 
 thin stuff had that not made it boil. " I 
 can never go back to him," said Nore. " I 
 never will go back to him. It is the last 
 blow he shall strike me." 
 
 " Would you be happier here in the shop 
 helping me ?" she asked. 
 
 " Beyond measure !" he cried. 
 
 So she told him to see her father that 
 night. She meant about the situation. He 
 meant about a wife. And her father, in as 
 good and strong contempt as Mr. Van Nore 
 himself could feel, ordered the fellow from 
 the house. 
 
 " The worthless varlet !" cried the old 
 
276 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 man. " Can he earn his salt ? What do I 
 care for his name and his family and his 
 entailed moneys the dog of a Christian ! 
 He can have them all ; but he cannot marry 
 my girl to an idiot !" 
 
 "He is not an idiot, father," said Hero. 
 " There is more in him than any see," and 
 she calmly canvassed the subject. " He 
 has been made to look up till he does not 
 know how to look straight ahead. Some 
 day he will assert himself " 
 
 " You ?" said her father. " You ? I be 
 lieve you care for the lout ! When you have 
 sweethearts to fill a regimeni ! When you 
 can marry any man in the county !" 
 
 " I don t know," she said. " I am sorry 
 for him. I care to have him happy he 
 has had so much unhappiness." And at 
 that moment they heard a groan outside, 
 and they ran to the door to pick up Nore 
 Van Nore, helpless and just returning to 
 consciousness, with a broken leg. 
 
 Hero installed herself as his chief attend 
 ant. In the long hours of patient pain, in 
 the devotedness of his silent worship for 
 her, something stirred her heart that was 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 277 
 
 not pity. Heaven knows what it was ! 
 There are some strong natures that must 
 wrap themselves about the weak. The first 
 time that he could stand upon his feet 
 again they were married. And then Nore 
 Van Nore went down to help her wait be 
 hind the counter in the shop, where she 
 consulted him and referred to him and 
 honored him till she was likely to make 
 others share the strange respect she had 
 for him. " He is single-hearted," she said 
 to one of her old lovers in that primitive 
 community, who felt the right to make some 
 outspoken complaint. " He is upright. He 
 is unselfish. He is kind to the fly on the 
 wall. He loves me and no other. What 
 more do I want in a husband ? He suits 
 me. And as for his religion, what does 
 that signify when, at any rate, we both wor 
 ship the same God ?" 
 
 A year from that time Hero did not go 
 to the shop much ; she had a little son 
 and not such a very little one either a 
 bouncing, magnificent boy, with his moth 
 er s colors and eyes, full of life and joy and 
 spirit, and quite the most remarkable baby 
 
278 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 in the world. And so, when the child was 
 six months old, it seemed to Nore Van 
 Nore, in his happiness, that he was wrong 
 to deprive his family of the blessing of 
 knowing of such a blessing, and he wrote 
 home for the third time; but this time to 
 his mother. 
 
 This was shaking the red rag in the face 
 of the bull. Mr. Van Nore trampled up 
 and down his wife s sitting-room awhile, 
 reared and stamped and snorted and bel 
 lowed, and not till he had reduced her to 
 tears for having brought such a son into 
 the world, and had pursued it till she 
 gasped for breath, and had to have the 
 maids and ether and hot bottles, did he 
 subside into silence and thought. 
 
 That this son of a beggarly shop-girl of a 
 Jewess should be the Van Nore ! Never, 
 never, if he had to put out the light of all 
 the Van Nores at once ! Jocelyne, his el 
 dest daughter, should marry young De Vere, 
 and he should take the name of Van Nore. 
 For a sum of money Nore should break the 
 entail and renounce his name, taking, in 
 stead, that of his low-born wife. And so 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 279 
 
 Jocelyne s son, who was a foregone conclu 
 sion in Mr. Van Nore s mind, should be 
 the great Van Nore to come. He had a 
 satchel packed within an hour, and he 
 slept that night, for the first time in his 
 life, in a vulgar sleeping-car, always before 
 having left the train at nightfall rather 
 than be one of the promiscuous canaille 
 sleeping a common sleep. Days and nights 
 and days and nights of this wretched con 
 tiguity. It was a hard experience for Mr. 
 Van Nore. He added it all up against 
 his son. And the selfishness of the mod 
 ern traveller did not tend to increase his 
 appreciation of his kind. His kind ? Not 
 the least bit his kind ! Mr. Van Nore was 
 more than ever persuaded that he was a 
 superior integer of the race marking, per 
 haps, one of those points of progress from 
 which one development steps to a higher. 
 
 At last he stood in the presence of his 
 daughter-in-law. 
 
 A shapeless little greasy Jewess, selling 
 old clothes or a stately young goddess 
 assuming a human smile ? One convulsive 
 sensation thrilled across him of pride in 
 
280 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 Nore s taste at least, souring instantly to 
 anger to think that taste was all. And then 
 he opened the subject. 
 
 " No, father-in-law," said Hero, firmly, 
 despite his wincing, and after the fashion 
 of speech in use among her people "no, 
 father-in-law. We do not want your money. 
 Nor will we surrender our name. It is our 
 name by all right and law that it is yours. 
 And, as for your grandson, we have no 
 power to forswear his birthright for our 
 mess of pottage." 
 
 It was a will as strong as his own that 
 opposed him. Storming was of no use 
 here. He left the house without another 
 word, and left Hero dancing her crowing 
 boy in the broad transfiguring sunbeam, 
 looking up proudly at her husband, yet 
 fondly, to see if really she and the boy 
 compensated him for all he had lost. 
 
 An hour afterwards Mr. Van Nore was 
 brought back to his son on a stretcher. Two 
 trains had collided, and he was among the 
 killed and wounded. An artery had been 
 nearly severed, and before a physician could 
 reach him he was bleeding to death. 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 28 1 
 
 When at length the flow was stanched, 
 and he lay fainting and sinking away, " It 
 is almost hopeless," said the surgeon. 
 " There is little blood left in his body." 
 
 The sight of his dying father had changed 
 the current of Nore s irate feeling. " If I 
 could but give him mine !" he cried. 
 
 " It would do him small good," said the 
 doctor, looking at the pale and spindling fel 
 low with an anatomist s contempt. And from 
 him the glance travelled to Hero, standing 
 near in her abundant life, with the dancing 
 boy in her arms, still followed by the sun 
 beam. Hero read the glance in a moment, 
 and had given the child to her husband. 
 
 " Here, doctor," she said, baring an arm 
 that Hebe, carrying life and nectar to the 
 gods, might have lifted. 
 
 " Do you know what it means for you," 
 said the doctor, " and for your child, per 
 haps ? Loss of strength, it may be of 
 health-" 
 
 "I know it is my husband s father, my 
 child s grandparent," she said, slowly. " If 
 my blood can save him, it is right that he 
 should have it." And when she came to 
 
282 MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 
 
 herself after the first fainting-fit of her life, 
 save for fatigue and languor, she did not 
 know that she felt much the worse, and her 
 father-in-law was smiling at her with lustre 
 in the eyes that she so lately saw nearly set 
 in death. 
 
 Strange and awful moment to Hero ! She 
 had given life to this man. She had gone 
 behind the veil of death and darkness, and 
 worked with the forces of creation. There 
 was a bond between her and him such as 
 there could be between no other people in 
 the world. For half a fainting heart-beat 
 she thought she had made him ; for half as 
 long again he thought she had. She felt 
 her heart irradiate with a tender warmth 
 towards her husband s father. She fell on 
 her knees beside him and kissed his hand. 
 "Oh, my father," she said, "you must for 
 give us, for we love you !" 
 
 As for Mr. Van Nore, I never saw any 
 body happier than he was, some weeks 
 afterwards, on his way home with his party. 
 His son accompanied him, with the nurse 
 of a superb rosy baby folded in white fleecy 
 wools, and a lady, stately as any princess 
 
MR. VAN NORE S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 283 
 
 ought to be, but seldom is, with her black 
 fox robes about her. " She is very teach 
 able." thought Mr. Van Nore. " A month 
 of our life will give her all the savoir 
 faire she needs. Her tact is inestimable." 
 And then he wondered if she could hold her 
 own with Jocelyne. " My grandson, the fut 
 ure Van Nore," he said to every acquaint 
 ance he came across, and they all seemed 
 to be travelling on various portions of that 
 trip. " Hero, my dear ! My daughter-in- 
 law, Mrs. Van Nore. My daughter-in-law. 
 A great addition to our circle, I assure you. 
 An old family, an old family. We we are 
 not exactly, so to say, related, but we 
 we we have some of the same blood in 
 our veins !" 
 
 THE END 
 
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