MY LOVE AND I 
 
 ALICE BROWN- 
 
ALVMNVS BOOK FYND 
 
 AJ 
 
MY LOVE AND I 
 
o. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK . BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
MY LOVE AND I 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE BROWN 
 
 "MARTIN REDFIELD" 
 
 Kefo gotk 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1914 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1912. Reprinted 
 November, 1914. 
 
 . 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 
 
MY LOYB AND I 
 
 I AM allowing myself the free-handed luxury of 
 writing what seems to me the truth. So far as facts 
 go, the narrative is to be as literal as I can make it, 
 and that, dealing with so shifting a phenomenon as a 
 life, is about as difficult a piece of work as you could 
 well undertake. For the minute we look attentively 
 at our own actions, the great temptations begin to 
 sway us. Our sympathies with our own doings are 
 magnets, and draw the mobile human shape to this 
 side and that, to make it fit some model of the meri- 
 torious man. We are seized with that childish and 
 pathetic desire to account for ourselves to our own 
 credit. If there are smudges on the page, it would be 
 almost beyond human fortitude not to rub them out. 
 
 So far also as emotions go, this account is to be as 
 exact as I can make it. And here it may be I shall 
 not get so far out of the way. For I am a writer, and 
 if ever the human machine is cognizant of itself, if 
 ever it can record its own speed, its erratic by-play and 
 recovery, it is that machine made up of varying facili- 
 ties which a writer uses in his work. It is of a sort 
 
 B 1 
 
2 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 that records unconsciously the scratches of time, the 
 wash of the years, in a way comparable only to the 
 inscribing of palimpsests. There are the records, one 
 over another. Finally the brain snatches them out 
 and knits them into her intent. Some are even used 
 as they are, in what stands for imaginative work, 
 but all are likely to be transmuted by some magic 
 deftness of the mind, and made to serve. This talent, 
 or genius, if you will, in the few unforgettable cases, 
 this habit of hoarding impressions and working them 
 over like precious lumber, is of a delicate sort and 
 really feminine. It betrays the feminine responsive- 
 ness to emotion, the feminine absorption in detail. 
 For whereas a man of normal temperament may be 
 passionately in love, for example, and when he is out 
 of love retain only a blurred disorder of memory, a 
 man with the equipment to achieve the written word 
 has automatically recorded the weather of his passion, 
 and could paint you the cloud wrack of it on a day of 
 calm. Therefore, it being my trade to write, I have 
 some hope of reproducing the complexion of my past 
 so that I may see the tale is, if not good, at least faithful 
 to what was. 
 
 I am told there are no adequate memoirs. That 
 may very well be. Our confidences become instinc- 
 tively a game of excuse and accusation. We love 
 ourselves too well, or we are at least too deeply grounded 
 in the long game of self-nurture and defence. We 
 kicked over the traces, did we? Well, we must fish 
 
MY LOVE AND I 3 
 
 up a reason for it, and the reason cannot, in the spec- 
 tacular nature of things, be said to take root in our 
 own meanness or self-love. We have to paint our- 
 selves for exhibition as we hope God is painting us every 
 day for presentation to his angels in that personal 
 last judgment which, to our ingenuous egotism, centres 
 about each one of us. That being so, that we are 
 creatures bound in some degree to seem as well as to 
 be, we can hardly hope for more than partial candor. 
 But we may do what we can to draw the lines straight 
 enough to satisfy our inward censor, knowing that, 
 if a man has lived without vanity (the normal degree 
 of it necessary to prop self-preservation and keep his 
 feathers oiled for the public eye), he stands more than 
 the average chance at painting his own portrait without 
 flattery. 
 
 I was born in New England, of the ordinary self- 
 respecting farmer and his wife, and I, unlike them, 
 was urged from the beginning of conscious life, by the 
 desire to advance, to go somewhere that is not here, 
 to know something that is not this, and to do unproven 
 things, all probably included in the phrase my mother 
 used when she presented the case to my father : "make 
 something" of myself. They could do nothing for me 
 beyond keeping me well fed and reasonably obedient. 
 They had summoned me into the world with no hesi- 
 tancy over the sort of creature I was likely to prove, 
 and I disconcerted them, not because I was so clever 
 
4 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 or so pious or so phenomenally anything, as that I 
 wanted things I did not have. But after all, these 
 hungers were for roads. I wanted to climb into roads 
 and travel in them. The school reader hinted of roads. 
 There were singers, it implied in a maddening by-the- 
 way (it should either have said more or nothing at all !), 
 painters, men that wrote music and men that wrote 
 poetry. I never read even these commonplaces of 
 invitation without a foretokening thrill. I think per- 
 haps it was the sense of wonder in me, the urge of an 
 unproven self that wanted it knew not what. And 
 sometimes I read poetry of a sort the bigger poets 
 I hardly heard of until I grew up and that gave me 
 another kind of thrill, the one you might have if you 
 came upon a regiment of men, taller than any you had 
 ever seen, and in armor perhaps, marching. You 
 would know you could not be among them because 
 you were not tall enough and you had no armor, but 
 the sight would be tremendous to you. I can see now 
 that I was a lonely boy because of this desiring things 
 that were not. I was, too, by the grace of God and my 
 mother's kindness, a wholesome one, more solitary still 
 in the brutal curiosities of the country school. I was 
 a sinewy whelp, loving all the things outside four 
 walls, and I grew up big-limbed and strong. I do not 
 think I loved my father and mother very much until 
 I was perhaps fifteen, and then my father died, and I 
 found myself wondering a good deal, in uncounselled 
 work about the farm, as to what kind of man he had 
 
MY LOVE AND I 5 
 
 been. He seemed, in dying, to have cast upon me a 
 heavy and yet a worthy task of being something more 
 than I had expected to be while I was yet a boy, of taking 
 on myself the necessity of standing beside my mother 
 very stiff and strong. And then I began to see that 
 my mother was dear to me and needed kindness in her 
 lack of bodily courage, and that gave me so much 
 tenderness for her that it was a poignant thing, and I 
 loved the sight of her, and would sometimes touch her 
 dress as she went by me, with a shy affection ; but that 
 perhaps she never knew. I had thought of myself as 
 working on the farm in the summer and teaching 
 school in the winter, to put myself through college in 
 the way the older generations did. It all seemed per- 
 fectly easy, because I saw no end to my rushing vitality, 
 the force with which the blood pelted through my veins, 
 and I knew I should suffer no stone in my track to turn 
 me, no mountain even. I had found that men were 
 turned back sometimes by pebbles too. I did not 
 know then that some pebbles are magnetized to an 
 unexpected power. But these dreams, if dreams they 
 were, so did they clothe themselves in the bright veil 
 of certainties, had to yield. With my father's death 
 I was suddenly the man on whom the course of life 
 depended, pushed forward by life itself into the van 
 of homely action. Even in the winter I was too 
 busy foddering the cattle, shovelling paths, cutting 
 wood, to follow the routine of district school without 
 long breaks: to go away to an academy, as I had once 
 
6 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 intended, was impossible. But I studied long and 
 hard in the winter nights, with a futile selection of 
 books packed away in the house. I studied algebra, 
 and knew Gibbon almost by heart, " Paradise Lost," 
 too, and " Pilgrim's Progress." Still hi the midst 
 of my young despair, I had an idea I should at- 
 tain, that I should sometime sight the beginning of 
 those foreordained roads that lead to unseen goals, 
 lands that are not so much happiness, perhaps, as 
 broader spaces, free air, and the chance to find more 
 roads, and these interminable. Sometimes I felt an 
 unreasoning anger against the barriers that hemmed 
 me in. This was not because I thought for a moment 
 of stepping out of my place as my mother's man, but 
 because the odds against my getting learning and ad- 
 vancement grew so horribly great. And then there 
 came the February morning when my mother could 
 not get up from her bed, and the next morning when 
 she died and left me groping in a world forlorn. I had 
 not relinquished my ambitions, if ambitions they were, 
 this quest of the unknown road, but I suddenly saw they 
 had no point. The little warm glow that kept the 
 heart of them beating was gone. I came flat up against 
 a hundred easements I had promised myself to buy for 
 my mother when I at last made good. I had meant 
 to take her away from the farm, and settle her in a little 
 suburban house how philistine my choice would have 
 been then I know well a little house, because she 
 had always done her own work, and would not have been 
 
MY LOVE AND I 7 
 
 at ease with hired service, a house where there was yard 
 enough to hang the clothes and make a garden, but it- 
 self chiefly to be recommended for its sunny kitchen and 
 running water and all the other aids to comfortable 
 tasks. She was also to have a black silk dress and a 
 cameo pin my tastes were regulated by the prosper- 
 ous in our surroundings and now she had gone in a 
 kind of cruel haste, and I had hardly money enough to 
 buy her coffin. I remember the one small comfort I got 
 at the time was from Jessie Brown, the minister's 
 daughter, because she cried hard at my mother's funeral, 
 and the next day came over while I was eating the 
 remains of the funeral dinner with a dry mouth and 
 wondering if all food was going to taste like this for- 
 ever now that mother was not here Jessie arrived 
 running, the sun on her thin freckled face, and eager- 
 ness in her eyes, to say her mother wanted me to come 
 over to dinner. There was apple pudding, and it was 
 real good. I shook my head. I found it hard to speak. 
 And Jessie lingered a few minutes and seemed about to 
 cry. But though I was grateful to her for crying as she 
 had yesterday it seemed a tribute to my mother to 
 find the minister's daughter set her at such worth - 
 I felt I could not bear it to-day. So I told her the apple 
 pudding would be cold, and she suddenly stopped look- 
 ing sorry and said I was a horrid boy, and went home. 
 
 Now I had my life before me, and kindly farmers 
 came to tell me what to do with it. But what I did 
 do was to pack a queer old bag with my clothes and 
 
8 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 mother's little thin teaspoons, and tell uncle Hardy 
 he might carry on the farm and give me whatever my 
 half of it would bring in. And I took train for Boston, 
 with exactly seven dollars in my pocket, and that was 
 borrowed. Uncle Hardy had just that amount in his 
 old desk, and he gave it to me as soon as I asked him. 
 And when I found out that seven dollars would last 
 me, and that by living on bread alone, about two 
 weeks in Boston, I shipped on board a vessel bound 
 for the West Indies, and after being well mauled and 
 inducted into the use the world has for an ignorant 
 young lubber with magnificent muscles trained to 
 nothing, I left her at Trinidad, and there, after the 
 Fair Weather had sailed, I got work at the stables of 
 the Hotel Tivoli, and in this I continued some months 
 until a good man got hold of me. This was Egerton 
 Sims, an Englishman who had been a sport in his day, 
 and was a scholar as well. But now he found himself 
 cruelly crippled by a misfortune that was not so much 
 a fear with him as something he had to provide 
 against, as you would take a stout stick with you if 
 you were going to encounter a hostile beast. He had 
 attacks of an excruciating pain of the heart, and for 
 that reason he was disinclined to be alone in the open 
 and far from help. Yet it chafed him to assume a 
 keeper, a man of inferior parts who would obtrude 
 upon him an unsympathetic presence. And one day 
 it was I who brought his horse to him, and he made 
 some remark about the girth, and I answered him in 
 
MY LOVE AND I 9 
 
 perhaps too free a way for custom: for, being New 
 England bred, I could never get away from New 
 England's old ideas. He looked at me suddenly and 
 sharply. My tone was respectful enough, I am sure, 
 for I had no pleasure in holding myself above my busi- 
 ness; but that all men are, so far as their rights go, 
 equal, ran with my blood. He asked me my name, and 
 I told it, my full name, Martin Redfield. And the next 
 day some one else was sent up with his horse, and he 
 asked for me. And then he arranged to have "the 
 boy Redfield" ride with him. At first it was a little 
 behind him, very properly, and then, as he questioned 
 me, I had to edge nearer, and finally we rode abreast. 
 I rode like a lout, though I could manage a horse, being 
 both strong and having a delicate touch and some 
 general sense of an animal's nature. But he set him- 
 self to teach me, with great patience, to ride like a 
 gentleman. It was not long before he succeeded to a 
 nicety, and then he was pleased, and regarded me with 
 an especial kindness, as we look upon our own work. 
 He was a very handsome man, so I heard the kitchen 
 wenches say, but I should have known myself that he 
 satisfied to the full every idea of what a gentleman 
 should be. He had a distinguished profile, he was 
 iron-gray, and his bearing I coveted for myself, even 
 if I must have taken his years with it. (Gladly would 
 I have done that, for when we are young and malcon- 
 tent we have no hesitation in lightly bidding for the 
 state of the old. To us it is no more than a nearness 
 
10 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 to a dramatic end.) For a time he asked me no further 
 question than where I was born, how old I was, and why 
 I had come to Trinidad. He himself had come, he 
 said, because he had been ordered to a tropical climate, 
 and this, being under English rule, suited him, or, as 
 I afterwards interpreted, left him less forlorn. But 
 one day he asked how I would like to leave the stables 
 and become his personal attendant. 
 
 " A valet?" Tasked. 
 
 I pronounced the word according to my own ideas, 
 but he gave no sign of noticing, since we were as yet 
 master and pupil in the matter of horsemanship only. 
 Yes, he supposed it was being a valet, if it had to be 
 defined. I shook my head. In those days I set up 
 queer distinctions. I had no bones about being stable 
 boy, but I fancied personal attendance on even so ex- 
 celling a personage as this ill fitted what was before me. 
 He pressed the question. Why didn't I want to be 
 a "man"? And it came out that I didn't know, but 
 that I vaguely felt it wouldn't quite do. It seemed 
 to block the road to somewhere. And then it was that 
 he asked me bluntly: 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do ?" 
 
 And I, like a simple ass, said I was going to write 
 books. We were near home then and he reined in his 
 horse a little and glanced round at me. 
 
 "So!" he said gravely. 
 
 I must have looked a softie, with nothing apparent 
 of power about me but the strength of my arms and legs. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 11 
 
 The cook had told me only that morning that I had 
 handsome eyes. I hated her for it. It was almost as 
 if she had laid hands on me, and I hurried out of the 
 kitchen at an undignified trot, hearing all the way the 
 repetition, 
 
 " Handsome brown eyes, Redfield!" 
 
 Probably, for I had had no hardening yet, save that 
 of grief, they might have looked like the soft eyes of 
 an animal still wild, sometimes with fear of civilization 
 in them, sometimes beseechment that I might not be 
 caught. I have often thought of myself since as I 
 must have seemed to Egerton Sims : what a mush of 
 youth and asininity, all puppydom, and he hardened 
 to the game of life, up to its tricks every time, and him- 
 self playing fair if his adversary were the devil. He 
 looked me over as if he were going to buy me, looked 
 even down to the horse's legs as if he might buy him. 
 A black woman with a parrot on her wrist got in the way, 
 in her eagerness to sell the bunch of feathered gold and 
 scarlet, and while we drew aside for her some coolies 
 went past, all a dusk and silence of the East. I often 
 think of the picture because it was the background 
 when my life was mapped. Then the little coil of cir- 
 cumstance untangled, and we rode on. Egerton Sims 
 said no more then, but that night he sent for me to 
 come to his room where he sat smoking. I remember 
 now that he asked me to sit down, and that previously, 
 when I had been summoned to take orders about the 
 horses, I had been allowed to stand, very appropriately 
 
12 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 though awkwardly, for I was at that time chiefly at 
 ease when I was using my hands in the open. I must 
 have looked a lout to him, but he asked me with a 
 kind consideration I have always loved him for, and 
 very gravely, - 
 
 "How would you like to be my private secretary?" 
 
 To my everlasting discredit, I have to remember that 
 this didn't seem to me in the least preposterous, as it 
 was. It only seemed unfit, and I summed up my 
 colossal disabilities quite simply by saying, 
 
 "I don't write a very good hand, sir." 
 
 Perhaps a twinkle did come into his eyes. I hope 
 so, I am sure. I hope he had the reward of humor at 
 my young expense. 
 
 "Let us see," he said. 
 
 He drew forth paper and pen, and asked me to copy 
 an extract from a book. I began to copy, and perhaps 
 he watched me. But I did not think of that as material. 
 I had been caught by the rhythm of what I was reading, 
 and as I wrote on, I forgot him altogether, and won- 
 dered where I could lay my hands again on a book like 
 that. It was the "Golden Treasury," and the poem 
 he had given me to copy was one of Herrick's. 
 
 "Well, Martin," said he kindly, and I came out of 
 my discoverer's dream and gave him my script. 
 
 I had been taught to write by an old system in country 
 school, whereby the writer moves the arm in arcs of 
 circles, and has for pattern the be-all and end-all of am- 
 bition, one who can draw with unconsidered strokes a 
 
MY LOVE AND I 13 
 
 bird of paradise, tail and all, as easy as the unproficient 
 can write John. I had set myself this task, but my 
 hands, not in those days obedient to ordered work with 
 so fine a tool as the pen, essayed flights of then- own, 
 and it was a sorry chart I handed him. But he looked 
 at it, laid it aside, as no worse than he had expected, and 
 said he thought he could find a use for me. He offered 
 me a cigar, as if to show me we were in the same room 
 of the house of life. But I shook my head. I admired 
 him very much, and perhaps it looked to me as if we 
 were going too fast. He seemed well enough satisfied 
 with that, and as he smoked, told me what money I 
 should have. This left me staring. I didn't know 
 unlicked cubs ever had so much for coming out of a 
 stable and into a room with books of poetry in it. That 
 was all, he said. He would speak to the Tivoli man, 
 and no doubt it could be satisfactorily arranged. He 
 would see me again to-morrow. 
 
 II 
 
 TO-MORROW came, and he did speak, to the end that 
 I was given an outfit of new clothes, on account of 
 which I insisted that my money salary now, not 
 wages should be docked; and though under what 
 pressure of persuasion I never knew, I was put into a 
 room adjoining that of Mr. Egerton Sims. Then we 
 began our life together, and it came upon me tardily 
 that I was not serving him so much as he was forming 
 
14 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 me. I had fixed hours of study, and there were other 
 hours when we read together. Except when we rode, 
 there was no time that I could see when I actually 
 served him. This I haltingly represented to him, not 
 knowing, as yet, how to meet his air of serene equip- 
 ment, and he stated briefly that he was in process of 
 making me what he considered valuable. That I ac- 
 cepted with humility, because I could readily see that, 
 raw material as I was, I could not be, at this point, of 
 any value to him. Then I proposed that I should not 
 take money from him until I was capable of earning 
 it, and this also he put aside with a perfect dignity. 
 But it was unearned money, all the same, and with 
 some idea that I might return it to him at a moment 
 when I had learned how to encounter his calm, I saved 
 it with a rigid penury, and watched him, from what 
 was, I am now sure, a great devotion, to fulfil some 
 extraordinary service, since I was so unfitted for the 
 lesser obvious ones, if he should ever ask it of me. But 
 he never did. We were simply, for five years, master 
 and pupil, an older man and the son of his choice. 
 
 In that time his bodily state became less and less 
 secure, and for this reason we settled more methodi- 
 cally into the pursuits of the scholar. He knew a little 
 Latin, and that he taught me. It was, his part of it, 
 chiefly like opening a gate into a country he had not 
 fully explored and had little curiosity about. Nor did I 
 care so fervently for the country, though I was conscious 
 of inquisitiveness and wonder. That may have been 
 
MY LOVE AND I 15 
 
 because his own tastes marked me so deeply. But for 
 Greek I did care, as he did. It was our happiness, our 
 rest, our worship. We read the English poets, too, and 
 some history, and he gave me a fair knowledge of Angli- 
 cized French. German I taught myself to read, also 
 Italian; but no native would have recognized his 
 tongue, in either case, if I had been so barbarous as to 
 speak it. I am not going to talk about the island, or 
 our pursuits there. It was always alien to me, though so 
 beautiful. There was something in me that quickened 
 under its soft enchantment. I saw not the island of 
 the present day, but all the tropical unknown seas. 
 I was a discoverer, always aglow with wonder. But 
 through it all, in moments of inquietude, I felt the 
 spell of the cold north. When I saw lianas dragging 
 at succulent lush trees, growth fighting for its standing 
 room, sun and moisture in their terrible tyranny domi- 
 nating the atoms and making them rage toward the 
 consummation of life, sometimes I would find suddenly 
 before my mind's eye the fretwork of bare branches on 
 a New England ridge against the gold of an autumn 
 sun. Certain things I never got used to : the sunrise, 
 the sunset, so swiftly done, without the lingering pag- 
 eant I had known behind the hilltops from my father's 
 farm, the painted macaws, the strange fruits, bland 
 and cloying to the tongue, the look of the dark passion- 
 ate skies and the brightness of the stars all these 
 inspired me with a perennial excited joy, yet a joy that 
 I could never sink into and make really mine. I had 
 
16 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 always the sense that I was there for a little time, a 
 proving perhaps, and that then we might go elsewhere, 
 and I should be able to serve my friend more completely, 
 to return him what he had given me. For always I had 
 the sense of hoarding something for him, as a child 
 enriched with pennies would save them against the day 
 when the dear giver might need even so small a thing. 
 
 Since my mother's death I had grown niggard of 
 affection. The circle of it had narrowed to this one 
 man. Women I knew not at all, for he had nothing 
 more than a courteous civility for the shifting crowd 
 at the hotel ; and though I might reasonably have 
 shared in any brief connection he made there, I had a 
 strong feeling that I ought every time to say that I 
 had been promoted from the stable. And that was 
 too much trouble, besides being ridiculous and not 
 according with the self-respecting traditions of my 
 birth. I was, too, inordinately shy. It was anguish 
 for me to encounter the womenfolk of my former life 
 below stairs, and, with a fiendish intelligence, they 
 knew it and paid me out to the tune of titters and 
 mock-admiring chaff. One black-eyed jade, a laun- 
 dress, barred my way once in a passage out of the 
 kitchen when I was taking a short cut to the stable, 
 and vowed I should stay there till I kissed her; and 
 when I would have pushed past her she threw herself 
 upon my shoulder and clung there with feline claws, the 
 while her truly awful cries summoned her ready mates. 
 And they, knowing her game, and being as tickled as 
 
MY LOVE AND I 17 
 
 she, yet affected horror of my liberties with a pretty 
 girl, and when I tossed her against the wall and went 
 my way, they rocked back and forth and cried, I believe, 
 with joy of me. And I must have been a silly, for I 
 was all aflame with anger; and even Egerton Suns 
 saw it an hour after, when I tried to read my Greek. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked. "What is it, 
 Martin?" 
 
 If I could have blubbered straight out, it might 
 have done me instant good. I'm sure I felt like it. 
 But I told him, with a stiff lip, that a fool of a girl 
 in the kitchen There I stopped. It was not 
 worth the pains. But upon this hint that I had in 
 some way been making free with wenches, he looked 
 grave, and set to work to instruct me, so that life 
 should henceforth hold no surprises for me. And 
 though I listened at first with the hot intent of roar- 
 ing out that he was doing me wrong, and I had not 
 stepped a step toward their hateful blandishments, I 
 presently sank into the awed and humbled quiet of a 
 youth who hears an older man, with some pains to 
 his own habit of reticence, inducting him into the 
 dignity of life. That hour was the crowning one in 
 my love for Egerton Sims. He talked to me about 
 the body, and he talked, though under no such term, 
 about the soul. I was made to see that the tyranny 
 of the one must never threaten the mastery of the 
 other. In the decent man there was no divided house. 
 There were to be no secret and disordered chambers. 
 
18 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 And he gave me to understand that the reward of the 
 undivided house was, if it came to pass, an honorable 
 marriage with a cleanly mate. If it did not come to 
 pass there he paused, and the sudden startled, 
 tired pallor of his face smote into me the certainty 
 that he had said what he must, in his fastidious duty 
 to me, but that the path had led him into lonesome 
 chambers he did not enter willingly. He rose and 
 left me, and I saw him no more until dinner, when he 
 was his unchanged gentle self. 
 
 It was a hot night, and we were sitting on the hotel 
 veranda, a little table before us with cooling drinks. 
 Others were there, too, at little tables. A tourist 
 steamer had come in that day, and the island echoed 
 to the high American voice. I might long for the 
 fretwork of trees against the sky, but not yet did I 
 crave my countryman as he showed himself on his 
 incursions. Such a communication as my friend and 
 master had to make to me might have been more fitly 
 broached in some other scene in the silence of our 
 island home. But he did make it here. 
 
 "Martin," he said, "I think we'll go to England." 
 
 I felt a sudden lifting of the heart, a sense of great 
 coolness and space, welcome to me in that latitude. 
 I did not answer, but my eyes felt hot. He looked at 
 me, and he must have seen how I felt. 
 
 "Why, boy," said he in his kindest voice that was 
 ever kind, "I believe you're glad." 
 
 I suddenly recognized not only that I was glad, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 19 
 
 but that I was indeed a boy who had been homesick 
 for a long time. My heat must have been very wel- 
 come to him in his own longing, and under the throb 
 of it, as if I had struck out a spark, he told me some- 
 thing in a sudden confidence and sense of the identi- 
 fication of our desires that he might otherwise have 
 meant to keep. 
 
 "I might as well say, " There he paused. I 
 thought it concerned his health, failing, it seemed to 
 me, of late, and I urged him. 
 
 "What? What is it, sir?" 
 
 "I may as well tell you I am going to England on 
 a business matter. Concerning you." 
 
 " Concerning me?" I could only repeat the last 
 two words. What business there might be to concern 
 me in England or indeed the world, I could not guess. 
 
 "I have determined," said he, in his stiff, grave way, 
 "to make you, so far as I can, my heir. I shall have to 
 go back to England, to run over certain details and 
 technicalities, really to find out how much I can do." 
 
 I was conscious of a crimson heat about my face 
 and in my eyes. All the blood I had had gone into 
 my head and my hands were icy cold. I spoke, and 
 my voice sounded strange to me, even angry. 
 
 "You mustn't go back to England, sir." 
 
 "Why not?" He had always a manner of speech 
 of the most moving gentleness. 
 
 "You can't risk it. That's why you were sent 
 here for the climate." 
 
20 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I was telling him what he had previously told me. 
 He answered in rather a tired voice, one I had not 
 heard from him. It seemed to say the play was over, 
 and he was weary and was going home, whether the 
 home were England or another port. And again I 
 was angry, with the unreasoning passion of terror 
 that comes when we see the beloved slipping irrev- 
 ocably away. 
 
 " Don't go, sir," I said. " Don't go." 
 
 Whether I meant to England, to brave its chill, 
 or whether I meant to the heaven I thought him 
 wholly fitted for, I did not know. Only I wanted 
 him not to break the crystal of our present life, here 
 in a midstream of being, satisfied with our books 
 and the course of little things. 
 
 "It won't make any difference, boy," he said, and 
 I saw I had pleased him by my impetuous outcry. 
 "It's nearly finished." 
 
 And I understood he meant his life. He said no 
 more, and I sat with youth's sickening grief upon me, 
 the shadow of things to come. I hardly thought at 
 all of what his generosity held out to me, and really 
 only as it showed his pervasive kindliness. I had 
 known he loved me, known it from day to day in his 
 careful fostering of me, his insistence on my learning 
 every formula relative to life as it is lived; but he 
 might have been constrained to that by his own great 
 sense of duty. This confidence of his made it an 
 affection the more immediate and urgent. I felt 
 
MY LOVE AND I 21 
 
 madly proud, as if he had chosen me to represent 
 his name and the duties of his blood. Presently we 
 said good night, and I got away into the hot dark to 
 think it over, to meet face to face the omnipotence 
 that says, "Thus shall it be." I felt as I had when 
 I saw my mother slipping, and had not been able to 
 snatch her back from the trap where we find ourselves 
 at last. And the night waned, and I was absurdly 
 hungry and thirsty, like a child, with my battlings 
 against Almighty God, and I went home and to bed. 
 But in the morning I found he had died, suddenly it 
 seemed and perhaps without much pain. 
 
 Ill 
 
 IT was all over very quickly, and no one, not even 
 he was so dead as I. The haste of it stunned me; 
 the impossibility of living for a long time without 
 him left me feeling small and young. A connection 
 of his in an official position at St. Thomas came at 
 once, and my friend was buried. He had given orders 
 that if he died on the island he should be left there, 
 and though his cousin, a man of puffy importance and 
 an exaggeration of the rights of kin, professed to be 
 shocked by the irregularity of this injunction, he ful- 
 filled it with a solemn haste, glad, it seemed to me, to 
 waste no more time over it. Me he seemed to regard 
 with some suspicion as a person unreasonably and ca- 
 priciously promoted from the company of horseflesh to 
 
22 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 a presuming familiarity with gentlemen's ways. It 
 was as if I had not come by them honestly. At the 
 end, when, with the look of another task well over, he 
 went back to his work, he gave me a nod of dismissal, 
 and I felt in that as in everything that had happened 
 to me since my friend died, a dismissal from the island 
 as well. I had not thought really for an instant of 
 what I was to do ; but that same day a boat touched 
 there on its way to New York, and I withdrew my 
 savings from the bank and went on board. Many 
 were kind to me at parting, but to all of them I felt a 
 sort of numbness. I felt as if an arm had been cut 
 off, my right arm, and I was bleeding. It gave me 
 no uplift or sense of youthful wonder to think the 
 roads were opening before me, the roads I had seen in 
 my childish discontents. It was only that my friend 
 was dead, and that I was going elsewhere to be as 
 much like him as I could. On the boat I talked with 
 one and another about the States which I knew as 
 little, except for the New England country, as if I 
 had been born in Trinidad, and from an old-fashioned 
 man and his wife, a lady who belonged to a great 
 many phases of advanced thought, I gathered that 
 the life I intended to pursue could be lived in Boston 
 better than New York. For I wanted to live cheaply, 
 to be a student. This I told them, not having the 
 audacity to assert my further intention of being a 
 writer. A kind of maiden shame was on me about 
 writing and would be, I felt, until I had proved 
 
MY LOVE AND I 23 
 
 myself. I did not know then that it is so intimate a 
 dearness of the heart that one must always keep it 
 rather close, like secret love. 
 
 When I saw the bare, bleak shore of my land, I was 
 glad, very glad. I don't hesitate to say that New 
 York scared me and roused in me a very pretty case 
 of homesickness. I was disgustedly sure I was a 
 mollycoddle, and after two days I took the boat for 
 Boston; and there, through the Captain's recom- 
 mendation, I fell at once into a lodging-house that 
 was trying with all its jolly might to make itself a 
 home. It was on Burke Street, and aunt Cely kept 
 it. This I heard her called three times over by three 
 different persons within half an hour of my arrival. 
 I thought I must say Mrs. Cely, but she smiled the 
 catholic smile of a large woman whose feet are peren- 
 nially tired and to whom small things have ceased to 
 be of any account, and told me Celia was her given 
 name. Everybody called her by it, and she shouldn't 
 hardly know who they meant if they said Mis' Black- 
 stone. She was of no age because she was so fat and 
 so flushed all over the fine skin of her face that not a 
 mark would hold, and I liked her at once so well that 
 I was glad to say aunt Cely. I don't remember all 
 the people in the house at that time ; but Mary Owen 
 was there and Mr. Haley. Mary looked to me a 
 woman quite into middle age; I believe she was 
 thirty-three, but she had worked so hard that the 
 fine bony framework of her face made itself too evi- 
 
24 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 dent under the tawny skin, the skin a pleasant 
 color, always with freckles on it. She had a fine 
 profile, Mary had, and a large mouth with white 
 teeth. (It was a mercy, she told me once, that they 
 had no crack nor blemish, because a dentist would 
 have been the one last straw.) And she had fine 
 brown hair, a quantity of it, coiled round and round 
 in a way to save time in doing up. It was straight, 
 yet capriciously it had little wisps of curl sometimes 
 near the face when Mary was very hot or the day 
 grew humid. She was rather gaunt, but she had 
 good shoulders and a splendid long stride. Mary was 
 probably what the dressmakers and appraisers would 
 have called a striking looking woman, one that would 
 pay for dressing. But the truth was, she had so little 
 consciousness of herself, such an absolute nullity of 
 interest in frills and things, that, in its foolish imita- 
 tiveness, the eye passed by her. In this matter of 
 admiration of the sexes, we do chiefly what we are 
 commanded. If a woman flings an audacity over 
 her, we look again. We say she must have some- 
 thing extraordinary to recommend her or she'd never 
 have the gall. I have, in my business of looking on 
 at life, seen plain women who might have been ex- 
 pected to keep a piteous solitude from their lack of 
 commodity; but that instinct of advertising led them 
 to the public eye, they endured your gaze and de- 
 fied it, and instead of saying, "Poor toad," as Mary 
 would have said, you wondered a little at them and 
 
MY LOVE AND I 25 
 
 thought, "Well, what if, after all!" It's a species of 
 hypnosis. 
 
 Mary was eternally busy. She worked in a lawyer's 
 office down town, and all the confusion of her life 
 never moved her ordered calm. Besides that, she was 
 up early when aunt Cely was stalled with rheumatism 
 and some new slavey had proved incompetent, doing 
 up the rooms at that interval while the lodgers were 
 at breakfast. And she had other interests outside, 
 such as I learned later. Mr. Haley I met on the stairs 
 the first day of my stay, a red-haired, paunchy looking 
 person in a plaid waistcoat, and I thought in my 
 innocence, and judging from the fitness of things, 
 that he was probably a bartender. I found out after- 
 ward that he did some sort of work for a missionary 
 society down town. Aunt Cely and Mary were talk- 
 ing about him a little later that morning across a 
 brush and dustpan at my door. 
 
 "You'll have to marry him," said aunt Cely, as a 
 reasonable proposition. 
 
 "Mercy !" said Mary, not aghast, yet as if it were 
 a project she might have to entertain. Mr. Haley's 
 sister had died, she explained to me. 
 
 "She was a widow, and he's had to take the baby. 
 If he can't get it brought up in the country well.!" 
 
 Her brows crinkled. Poor Mary ! I saw at once 
 she had no desire whatever to marry him. But with 
 hypothetical babies wailing for her she might have to. 
 
 Manners in the lodging-house were of the easiest 
 
26 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and kindest. It was a natural custom of the evening 
 for me to stop at the open door of Mary's little room 
 if I went past while she sat there desperately putting 
 on dress braids and things; and once she offered to 
 take a stitch in the frayed end of my cravat. I let 
 her with the unformulated ease and gratitude men 
 accord to women who offer no challenge to the eye. 
 What Mary would have been with consciousness of 
 any sort either of her sex or the possibilities of her 
 healthy nature I do not know. She had abso- 
 lutely none. She kept a fine shyness of her own, too. 
 Life, so far as she seemed to see it, might have been 
 a hand to mouth existence on an island, where every- 
 body's absorbing duty lay in services of one wrecked 
 mariner for another. She was lifting all the time, 
 carrying starved kittens to their lawful refuge, con- 
 ducting the old and the blind across the street I 
 believe she went shopping with an unknown grandame 
 one day and lost the borrowed hour for getting her 
 own new hat and this with no priggishness or 
 official philanthropy. She was always looking about 
 with her clear, rather frowning, puzzled gaze, to see 
 what manner of world it might be and, not liking it 
 very well, trying honestly and wistfully to wash it a 
 little cleaner, iron it out, and shine it up a trifle here 
 and there. One effect she had. She made me feel 
 at home, and without doing anything about it. I 
 found the world much warmer because she was near. 
 She asked me frankly what I did, because it was the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 27 
 
 custom of the people she knew to do something, do 
 it desperately, indeed : for if they did it in any desul- 
 tory fashion they were likely to have their time on 
 their hands. I told her as unreservedly and with no 
 sense that it was unusual, that I had saved a little 
 money and I meant to live on that until it was gone, 
 and then I should go to work. Mary drew her brows 
 together and looked serious. I seemed to her an idle 
 apprentice, and she asked me directly whether I was 
 run down or whether that was because I had got the 
 ways of warm climates, and why I didn't go to work 
 at once. I explained that I didn't know anything. So 
 I was going to study until I did. 
 
 "You could go on a paper," said Mary, her clear 
 gaze on me, all the sibylline lore of the mother in her 
 eyes. "You don't have to know anything for that." 
 Then she seemed to think a minute we were in the 
 lower hall, separated by the frightful elaboration of the 
 newel-post, the smell of the backstairs oil-cloth in our 
 nostrils. "I think," said Mary, as if she were called 
 upon to prescribe for me, "you'd better get acquainted 
 with Mr. Blake." 
 
 Who was he ? 
 
 "He has the back attic," she explained. "He's 
 very learned. He writes poetry." 
 
 I had no drawing toward inchoate young men no more 
 of a student than I meant to be, if it came to that, with 
 uncrowned verse upon their knees. So I was beginning 
 to go up the stairs to escape her kindness even if I must 
 
28 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 evade her in the doing, and at that moment the front 
 door behind us opened, propelled by a man who couldn't 
 get his key out because he was so in a hurry, and 
 John Blake himself came in. He was tall, strong 
 enough, capable of being athletically developed if he 
 gave his mind to it, black-eyed eyes so velvet soft 
 I had never seen a great rugged forehead and a nose 
 that might have allowed him to be anything at the top 
 of the scale. 
 
 "That's a statesman's nose/' I should have said if 
 I'd caught it in the open. 
 
 But the mouth with its scrubby line of black above 
 there were the emotions in John Blake's mouth, 
 clean ones, all of them, and some so exquisite they'd 
 need the intimate delicacies of verse to tell about them. 
 Mary turned to him at the opening of the door, and his 
 face flashed all over at the sight of her red fire in the 
 eyes, curves in the mouth, and the least little delicate 
 uplift of the brows in a pleased interrogation. That, 
 as I noted it, seemed to indicate that he liked Mary 
 very much. And so he did; but his nature was a 
 responsive one, swiftly played upon. He often seemed 
 to be answering when his nerves were only saying, "I 
 hear." And the things they heard were far away from 
 us who made the circuit for him. He couldn't share 
 them with us. We didn't even, most of the time, get 
 an echo. That was why, though you might adore 
 Blake, you were so eternally lonesome with him. I 
 had really halted, staring at the splendid vision of him, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 29 
 
 and before I turned, Mary had me by the name and 
 was introducing us. His face darkened in civility. 
 "What the devil " it seemed to say. " Who's this ?" 
 But when Mary pelted out that I was a young man 
 just come from a warm place as if it had been the 
 fabled destination of sinners and that I was going 
 to study and write books she made it poetry he 
 gave me a smile a cut below Mary's, but still very sweet 
 and full of curves. 
 
 "Come up to my room," said he to me. "Let's 
 talk it over." 
 
 Mary turned away content, possibly to go down the 
 oil-clothed stairs to the basement and make something 
 cleaner, and Blake and I mounted to his attic room with 
 one window approached by a tiny platform and giving 
 a view of the sunset sky and the Charles. It was a 
 meagre, hideous room in all the lines of its furnishings, 
 yet faded through age to a uniform and according dul- 
 ness that was not unpleasant. And it was very clean. 
 I found out afterward that he raged and stormed 
 if he was not given his share of hot water and soap. 
 You might starve him, but he must find the world 
 scrubbed. The dignity of the room for it had 
 dignity lay in the lavishness of books, piled on a 
 great square table under the light of the party wall, 
 books in ordered heaps all round the floor. Blake 
 threw off his coat and hat I had flung my hat into 
 my room in passing pointed out two shabby old 
 chairs by the grate, evidently his own, and poked 
 
30 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 about among the papers on the table, his long supple 
 fingers threading in and out. 
 
 "A fellow left a cigar here the other day/ 7 he said, 
 as if in an interested quest which absorbed him more 
 than the value of what he might find by it. "It 
 seemed to me rather a good one. Ah!" 
 
 He had come on it. He held it out to me with a 
 fascinating smile of eager generosity. I hesitated. 
 
 " Don't you smoke?" I asked. There seemed not 
 to be two cigars. 
 
 " No." He looked rueful, like a child ashamed. "It 
 acts like the devil on me, just like tea and coffee. I 
 can't have any vices. I've been addicted to bread 
 and water. They've undone me." 
 
 I took the cigar and held it, took the match he gave 
 me, for I knew after that first minute he wouldn't 
 know whether I smoked or not. His mind, having 
 concerned itself with the anxious cares of the conven- 
 tionally polite, would settle down with a long breath 
 to its abiding interests. The cigar would find its way 
 back to the table, and the next visitor would see it 
 innocently introduced to him as a rather good one a 
 fellow left there. Blake sat down at ease, as if the only 
 troublesome thing connected with my visit were well 
 over in his having essayed the proffer of a customary 
 joy. Now he looked approximately happy. His fore- 
 head smoothed out. His eyes took on the calm of the 
 man who feels himself at home in a spot that has long 
 offered him the serenity of ordered pursuits. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 31 
 
 "What sort of things are you doing?" he caught 
 himself back to ask me. His mind had been stretch- 
 ing away, I know now, to the great names he was 
 always marching with. 
 
 "Nothing," said I. 
 
 He nodded, as if in an easy comprehension. 
 
 "Fallow time? One of those infernal spells when 
 you think you never'll write another stroke and sweat 
 and groan and curse yourself? It'll pass. It always 
 does. Read some poetry. That's what brings the 
 fever on." 
 
 I felt most deplorably lacking in all he might expect 
 of me. 
 
 "I don't write/' I said. "I've never written at all." 
 
 He stared at me. 
 
 "Mary said you did." 
 
 "I told her I wanted to." 
 
 Here was a drop from the high land of desert. I was 
 no better than the lads and misses dancing out of uni- 
 versities to dip their pens and plunge. The interest 
 not only faded out of his face but ebbed suddenly, 
 leaving it as flat as such a nobly proportioned harmony 
 of features could well be. His only wish, I could see, 
 was to get me out of the room. Suddenly I was as 
 fiercely determined not to go. There was treasure 
 for me in that room, coaxing possibilities, the problem 
 of his hidden mind, the books, the sealed silences of 
 it all. Desperate, I opened my lips and spoke. I 
 talked about the only thing I knew Trinidad and 
 
32 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the tropics. He got interested, not in me but in the 
 world of life and growth. I bade him remember what 
 an island was to the great Elizabethans when they 
 dreamed of them and beheld the ocular proof of their 
 rich fantasy of leaves. He took fire and quoted 
 Shakspeare and the " still vex'd Bermoothes." Not 
 a question did he ask me about the prospects of com- 
 merce as it concerned the United States, nor whether 
 the importation of sugar would affect our sales. No: 
 but he knew of the great silk cotton tree, he was avid of 
 news about the flashing of colors on the heads of macaws ; 
 and were the humming-birds extinct? He knew the 
 tropical jungle, that, breathing air and sun, reared itself 
 and flung arms and trailed ropes of gorgeous potency. 
 He had heard of the swamps where mandrakes stand 
 with their bare leafless legs in water and multiply and 
 make their impenetrable barrier. And he had a theory 
 I knew I could not shake him in, that the stars of the 
 tropics are not to be mentioned with ours, flaming, 
 golden worlds. Indeed they are different, but not in 
 the degree his poetic mind had pictured. I believe 
 he would not have been surprised if I had told him I 
 had seen the palpitant birth of a new star, the atoms 
 rushing together out of the Milky Way and the round 
 orb hurled on its ordered course. Nothing surprised 
 John Blake, nothing splendid and audacious. But I 
 snatched at the first pause, and asked him about his 
 poetry. What had he done? He gloomed a little, 
 and I saw his achievement only mocked at his amazing 
 
MY LOVE AND I 33 
 
 dreams. He took up a thin gray volume and handed 
 it to me. These were small perfect lyrics, with nothing 
 of his colossal thirsts and imaginations in them. That 
 I could see at one race over the pages. But the men- 
 tion of it had led him into another path, one dangerous 
 to me. For now he began to put me through my ex- 
 amination. It was all unconsciously done, just as he 
 would have sounded me on any topic where we had 
 kindred tastes. The seventeenth century was his 
 playground. He had lived there until its lyrics were 
 at his tongue's end, the dates of birth and death in- 
 dubitable, and the obscurest question fitted with his 
 ripe theory. Did I think this or that? Poor lout, 
 I thought nothing at all. There was not for me, there 
 never had been, any cult of literature as a sacred thing. 
 I began to see I had looked on it as the mirror to life, 
 the medium; but after all, life was the bigger thing. 
 All the mountains and lakes, all the " cloud-capped 
 towers" of the whole earth, even the symphonies and 
 poems might be swept away, but life, warm life would 
 last, pulsating behind the veil, and clothing itself in new 
 forms, by sheer vibration. This I could not tell him. 
 I only felt a hurt resentment when I saw him marking 
 me down lower and lower. It was in a way, a funny 
 way, as if a Boston man met you in the face of the 
 Jungfrau and asked you anxiously if you had known 
 the Thises and Thats before he could exchange the 
 platitudes of awe. John Blake, the living breathing 
 machine dedicated to immortal things, was more to 
 
34 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 me than the seventeenth century with the beautiful 
 dried leaves of fantasy it had left. He was life, and 
 they were only immortality. But I was made that 
 way. He was made to adore the written word. I was 
 set in the midst of the pageant of life, and I adored that, 
 or rather I looked upon it with wonder and felt the 
 littleness and the greatness of the atom that made 
 a part of it. I was the atom. Once he referred to 
 men of leisure "like you," and I got hot over it. 
 
 "I'm not a man of leisure," I said. "I've just three 
 hundred dollars left, and what I've had I've been years 
 saving up. But I've got to get to work and do it 
 within a year." 
 
 When he found I was humble and not cocky, and that 
 I meant to pitch in and grind, he fanned up a waning 
 respect for me. And I was gleeful to an ungodly ex- 
 tent to find he had no Greek. But I told him humbly 
 I was going to the Public Library to study the seven- 
 teenth century, and then he was mild with me, and 
 told me I couldn't do better, but that I mustn't do it 
 unless it called to me. Every man must take his own 
 line. Then the talk had one of those drops that come 
 from having lived too long, and nothing would rescue 
 it. Blake frankly yawned, and I took my leave in a 
 let-down state of mind he would have deplored if he 
 had known it. He was one of the kindest hearts. 
 But he frankly had no more interest in me as a possible 
 dweller in the chambers where he was most at home. 
 I learned afterward not from his speech, for I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 35 
 
 think he never recognized this, but from watching 
 him with how eager a desire he put out antennae 
 to discovery, delicately testing to see who knew more 
 about poetry than he did and ready to call out Hail! 
 He was a born hero-worshipper, and generous of praise. 
 But I simply had not won my spurs, and never should, 
 he must have seen : for the questions of literary casuis- 
 try he propounded were dull to me, the dry shards of 
 delicate achievement. I went away galled, sure he 
 would never want to see me again. But he called 
 down the stairs to me : - 
 
 "I think you'd better let me take you round to the 
 Toasted Cheese. To-morrow night." 
 
 I could go at any time. I had no engagement any- 
 where save with the seventeenth century. 
 
 " Is it a play?" Tasked. 
 
 "No," said Blake. "It's a club." 
 
 IV 
 
 ON the way to the Toasted Cheese not far, a 
 basement in that same neighborhood I learned that 
 Blake himself was a journalist "of sorts." He spoke 
 of it as one might own to driving a cab by day, to the 
 end of keeping his nights for divine pleasures. At 
 present he was on a weekly paper intended strictly 
 for the middle class of wits, the folk also who like to 
 be in the swim of what passes for thought and, having 
 no thinking apparatus, take their cramming in pillules. 
 
36 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 It was really a hortus siccus, the pressed flowers of litera- 
 ture and comment. Blake said it might have been 
 called the Borrowed Plume because it never paid for 
 anything but collating. Or you could call it the 
 Mother Dove, or the Maternal Pigeon, because it selected 
 and moulded and worked over and imitated, with a 
 mechanical deftness, preparing nourishment for squabs. 
 As we went along, he found more names for it, and 
 seemed to vent a good-natured spite against it. It 
 was the Masticator, the Pigeon Crammer, the Squabs' 
 Delight, or what pleased him best, the Bally Thief. 
 His own part in it was quite simple and easy to perform. 
 He chewed over science and presented it in doses 
 suited to the reading clubs of Lower Centreville. He 
 selected verse of a type calculated to send a large pro- 
 portion of any population into luxurious tears over the 
 Baby's Shoe, The Convict's Child, or Mother's Gingham 
 Gown. All this drudgery Blake viewed with a colossal 
 scorn, and yet he did it, as taking less time than a 
 salaried position of more honor, and talked about it in 
 a mood of light-running irony, as if he didn't object so 
 very much on the whole, and might even be tossing 
 his hat up while he worked. I have seen a devout 
 Christian reading his guide-book in a church of another 
 kidney while the misguided carried on their service, and 
 this in no discourtesy, since he had the monopoly of 
 the ecclesiastical deity whom they worshipped amiss. 
 God wasn't attending to them, and with that vast 
 precedent why should he ? So it was with Blake. He 
 
MY LOVE AND I 37 
 
 didn't even see the little gods he was striding over to 
 the stubble where he earned his necessary bread. The 
 high gods of poesy were his, all gold and ivory, cloud 
 and fire. He might even have consented to run little 
 pewter images in moulds to please the children of a 
 meagre age. 
 
 In the midst of his drollery, we came to the Toasted 
 Cheese, in a shabby house with windows all unwashed. 
 These rooms they might be able to keep longer than 
 common, said Blake, being in the basement : unless, 
 indeed, sound had a trick of mounting. They couldn't 
 afford second floors or thirds, and wherever they'd 
 had attic rooms they were hastily asked to leave, 
 because lodgers didn't like to be kept awake. They 
 had been turned out of house after house, but that 
 didn't really matter because the club had no furnish- 
 ing beyond a few tables and chairs, and each member 
 carried his own mug. These rooms had their separate 
 entrance, and Blake threw open the door on a crowd 
 of fellows all talking competitively. They were young 
 men. I found afterward that most of them prided 
 themselves on giving cause to newspaper paragraphs : 
 Les jeunes were doing so and so, les jeunes being really 
 the Toasted Cheese. Blake took me at once to a 
 short, thick-set fellow by himself at a table in the 
 corner, an Irishman, Johnnie McCann, with upstand- 
 ing light hair and a humorous mouth, but eyes per- 
 petually roaming and blinking and ready to go crazy 
 over the thoughts behind them. He made me hos- 
 
38 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 pitably welcome, though in an absent-minded way, 
 as if his musings were of more value to him than any 
 stimulus outside, but began to talk at once to Blake. 
 He used untainted English though with the slightest 
 possible Gaelic twist. 
 
 "I was up till four last night," said he. 
 
 Blake was ordering me some beer. 
 
 "Any luck?" he asked, as if he understood what 
 hunt it was. 
 
 "Three songs," said McCann. "One, Ireland in 
 Chains, one on the lines of the Dark Rosaleen, the 
 other no good. When the clock struck four, I got 
 up and went to the window, and if I had been over 
 any decent hole in the world and not a back alley, I 
 would have thrown myself out." 
 
 Blake nodded gravely, then shook his head. He had 
 a glass of beer by him, but I noticed he didn't drink. 
 He had an invincible repugnance to deluging or cram- 
 ming himself when he was neither hungry nor athirst. 
 
 "I don't think much of the prowess of the stomach," 
 I once heard him say. 
 
 "Can't do that, Johnnie," said he now. "Look out 
 for yourself." 
 
 "Why can't I do it?" urged McCann contradic- 
 tiously. He had all the air of entering upon an argu- 
 ment old to him and Blake. Now he explained to 
 me. "It's my mania of self-destruction. The boys 
 see me through it when they're round, but there'll 
 come a time when they won't they won't." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 39 
 
 He fell into gloomy musing and began drawing 
 circles with his finger from a little lake of beer on the 
 table. 
 
 Blake had been called away to one of the other 
 tables, and McCann, under some sense of the claims 
 of a newcomer, roused himself and turned to me. 
 He had a shiny smile. 
 
 "Yes, the boys take turns seeing me through it," 
 he confided to me. "Sometimes a fit doesn't come on 
 for six months. One or other's detailed to see me 
 through. That's according as they're at liberty. I 
 don't thank 'em for it. They're all right, though," 
 said he, warming. "You bet they're all right." 
 
 Then there was a petition for a song from McCann, 
 and I wondered whether it had been judged best to 
 quiet his nerves by melody. He yielded instantly, 
 and began Vilikins, in a beautiful tenor, and the boys 
 came in stormily on " Toorul-lul-loorul-lul-loorul- 
 lullay." When I had caught it and could come in 
 too I felt more grown up than I had since Egertori 
 Sims began to treat me like an equal and a gentleman. 
 Blake asked me some questions across the table about 
 Trinidad, and I knew he thought it was the only 
 thing I could talk about. Indeed it was, but I went 
 about it rather sulkily, because I wanted, in that 
 atmosphere, to be " sporty " and literary, and even to 
 disclose a suicidal mania if that would recommend me. 
 Suddenly, when they had allowed me to act the part 
 of the honored guest for ten minutes or so, little Jake 
 
40 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Rand accosted me. He was an atomy of a man with 
 a perfect genius for imitation : he could imitate any- 
 thing from your own face when you heard the bank 
 had failed or Chloris was waiting for you down by the 
 brook, to the styles of all the classic and living writers. 
 He leaned across the table and said to me in his im- 
 pudent voice you never could resent because it came 
 from an atomy : - 
 
 "Say, Redfield, how did you grow up so damned 
 old-fashioned?" 
 
 There was an instant's pause. I felt my face scorch- 
 ing, but there came a little chorus of chuckles as if 
 everybody saw how pat it was. And nobody ever 
 resented anything in the Toasted Cheese. I had 
 learned that already. They tried to be men with all 
 their swagger and armor of off-hand good humor, 
 though they were by election jeunes. But it was not 
 temper I felt. He had suddenly thrown me back 
 five years, and I felt the breath of the Tropics and 
 heard the voice of my old friend. I found my own 
 voice and lost my shyness. 
 
 "I'll tell you," said I. "I'll tell you all. I was a 
 stable boy down in Trinidad. A man fifty years old 
 took me out of the stable and taught me all he knew 
 - all but his magnificent manners and the things he 
 couldn't teach me because they were his and I wasn't 
 big enough to reach 'em. He taught me all I know, 
 and I suppose I've imitated him till maybe I seem 
 like a man of fifty. Well, if that's why, I'm glad I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 41 
 
 do." I got up with the hot haste of the young and 
 lifted my borrowed mug. "I drink/' said I, thinking 
 of the cavalier he had been, "to Egerton Sims." 
 
 There was something in it that caught them. 
 
 "Good for you," they were yelling, perhaps also 
 because they liked to yell and seized a pretext. 
 
 "Good boy!" said McCann, coming out of his 
 muse over his drink. And we each put a foot on the 
 table and drank to Egerton Sims : and Tommy John- 
 son, who was writing plays full of blood and silk and 
 swords and glove strokes in the face, in an ecstasy 
 of seeing the times he loved come so awake, threw 
 his mug behind him, and the glass bottom broke, 
 and he picked it up and stuck his small hand through 
 it, and cut himself, and we passed from our emotion 
 to instant delight and hailed him martyr. 
 
 And so was Egerton Sims, the gentleman, away 
 somewhere in his pilgrimage among greater folk than 
 we, toasted in our bare New England. 
 
 I DIDN'T get over being a little old-fashioned. I 
 could play with the rest of them, but I had always a 
 slight stiffness of demeanor, a copy of my friend's 
 large and noble way of taking things. I didn't know 
 this from any sifting of myself, but I did see it from 
 time to time in my effect on other people. And it 
 troubled me. I would rather have been Johnnie 
 
42 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 McCann, ready with his ballad to sing or a chord to 
 strike on any instrument, even if I found myself saddled 
 also with a suicidal mania. I thought I could have 
 managed that and cast it from me. But then I had 
 an impregnable physical health, and until that is 
 shaken, we always think we could still the tremors of 
 our blood, its erring current. I had a good deal of 
 time here and there with Blake. He seemed to think 
 me a decent fellow, though I still knew nothing about 
 the seventeenth century, and Mary brought us to- 
 gether. She was our friend, the friend of all among 
 us. She seemed to know the aggregate members of 
 the Toasted Cheese, one man passing along the fame 
 of her to another, and I thought they all regarded 
 her as I did, as an excellent fellow who might as well 
 have been a boy. 
 
 But one day Jake Rand came into the Toasted 
 Cheese really tight because an inconsiderable man at 
 a removal of three from a manager had thought he 
 could get one of his serious plays read. Jakie could 
 write as fast as he could run, for high schools and 
 girls' sewing clubs, and really got paid rather well, 
 because his farces accumulated so ; but what he really 
 wanted to do was to bring folk out of Gibbon, and 
 Miss Strickland, and make them spout and die. He 
 used to go around with big tomes of popular history 
 under his arm, and we sang an adaptation of "the 
 devil clapped his paw on the little tailor," to "his 
 Gibbon under his arm," with a rising swell of voices 
 
MY LOVE AND I 43 
 
 and a brave da capo. He used to drop down on 
 benches in the Common to read, when the weather 
 would admit it, and old ladies would take him for a 
 rising young student, and search into the causes of 
 his pallor, and Jakie would tell them flaming stories 
 of the wearing result of literature on a little oatmeal. 
 But this day when he was tight on hope and unac- 
 customed mixtures, he took me by the arm and in- 
 quired with gravity, 
 
 "Say, when you goin' to propose to Mary?" 
 
 Perhaps I looked immovable. I suppose I tried to, 
 for that was the way Egerton Sims would have met 
 like impudence, and he was the solvent always in my 
 mind. Jake insisted upon it out of his drunken fervor. 
 If I hadn't proposed to Mary I must go and do it at 
 once. Then when I was betraying my disgust of 
 him, Johnnie McCann came up and frowned him off, 
 implying meanwhile to me that I mustn't "get mad." 
 There was no offense in it, no offense in the world. 
 
 "Besides, it's a fact," said he, "we all propose to 
 Mary. If you haven't been rejected by Mary, there's 
 one more thing you've got to go through, that's all." 
 
 It struck me that there was truth in it. They 
 weren't making light of Mary. They actually did 
 propose to her. It had become a necessity or a fashion. 
 I suddenly saw Mary in the light of a spouse very 
 capable, eternally getting other fellows in to bind 
 up their wounds or cook messes for them or tell them 
 she'd sit up at night and copy that article and be paid 
 
44 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 when it was accepted. The article so born seldom 
 was accepted. Mary in that aspect, the only one I 
 knew her in, looked very attractive to me in a general 
 way, though not at all conducive to any immediate 
 personal passion. 
 
 "Mary rejected you?" I said, trying in my heavy 
 style to keep up the jest. 
 
 "Had to," sa'id Johnnie, "because we've all asked 
 her. All but Blake. He's the only one that" 
 Here he stopped, constrained, I saw, by decency, and 
 I could not but think he meant, the only one with 
 any chance. And immediately I felt the searching 
 pang of sudden jealousy, put on my hat and went 
 home to see Mary. She was not there. I knew she 
 wouldn't be at that hour of the afternoon, but my 
 instinct had been to get at once on her track. By 
 the time she did come, rather wistful because she 
 was so tired, but really happy in that she carried a 
 bandbox and was so fain of it she had to open it in 
 the hall and show me her fruit plucked from the tree 
 of life, she looked her old dear commonplace self to 
 me, not at all a Mary to burn the topless towers of 
 anything for; but all the same I was still hot with 
 jealousy. The raging male was all awake in me, 
 sworn to have her lest another should. At that 
 moment I would have fought every other son of the 
 pack and desired her until I forgot they wanted 
 her. 
 
 "See my hat," said Mary. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 45 
 
 It was a modest brown thing exactly right for a 
 serviceable Mary, turning down to shade the eyes 
 and trimmed with a soft ribbon that wouldn't muss 
 except under the greatest provocation, or feel the 
 rain. Under the practical brim her kind eyes looked 
 at me a little anxiously. 
 
 "Am I r " they might have said, "is it possible I 
 could be a little prettier than I think I am?" 
 
 "Mary," said I, "will you marry me?" 
 
 The dear maidenly look died out of her eyes, and 
 she took off the hat. 
 
 "The idea!" said Mary. "Those boys have been 
 putting it into your head." 
 
 "Nobody has put it into my head," said I, in the 
 wild and glorious bombast of my mood. "Mary, 
 you've got to have me. I shan't let you alone till 
 you say yes." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you will," said Mary, rather wearily. 
 She was laying the baby hat back in its box with a 
 tenderness that indicated she had an unchanged con- 
 sideration for it, though none for me. "Have you 
 seen Mr. Blake ? He's got a job for you on his paper." 
 
 "Don't talk to me about Blake," said I. "I've 
 no use for him." 
 
 Every minute I was growing more infantile and yet 
 more consistent in my part. 
 
 "No use for Mr. Blake? Yes, you have, too," 
 said Mary. "Don't be a silly." 
 
 But her face went all over a deep miserable red, 
 
46 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the hue that hurts because the blood that hangs out 
 that flag knows how to tell the brain its secret is abroad. 
 I ceased my stare at her and ran up to my room, hurl- 
 ing back over my shoulder, "I never shall give it up." 
 
 In my room I stood at the window, hands in my 
 pockets, and glowered. If there had been a pack of 
 other male creatures so much as desiring to desire 
 Mary, and I had had them out there in the dusty 
 street where the boys were beginning marbles, the 
 carnival of spring, I knew I should have challenged 
 them all, head down, bellow war-defying, and we 
 should have locked horns and I should have been the 
 conqueror. I felt very shaggy and savage and alto- 
 gether invincible. I didn't really stop to think at all 
 how Mary looked to me; but I was fighting for her 
 and I liked it. 
 
 At that moment, when I was liking it most, John 
 Blake appeared in my doorway, and I turned upon 
 him with a dramatic roughness I considered rather 
 well done. But when I saw how tired he looked, 
 ashen, indeed, with that almost exultant spark he 
 always had in his eyes when he had been hammering 
 at his verse, the fool died out of me and I felt my 
 temperature running down to its normal degree of 
 very serious respect. It was no use our pretending, 
 any of us, that Blake wasn't as far as floating clouds 
 above us, and that we didn't regard him with an un- 
 bounded fealty. There were days when we knew 
 perfectly well he wasn't coming near us, and if we 
 
MY LOVE AND I 47 
 
 met him we needn't speak ; but those were his apoca- 
 lyptic raptures. He withdrew, we felt, into a high 
 mountain, and there the burning precepts of art and 
 beauty were delivered to him. But on the days when 
 he was slashing his verse, already in the rough, and 
 welding and fitting it to deeper harmonies, we might 
 speak to him. We knew he was still at one with us. 
 
 "Do you want a job ?" asked Blake. 
 
 Only that morning I had realized that my little 
 capital was dwindling like the mischief. I had been 
 looking into the jaws of a world singularly unrespon- 
 sive in the matter of bed and food. 
 
 " They've started another fool column on the paper," 
 said he. 
 
 " Your paper ? The Bally Thief f " 
 
 He passed a hand over his tired face and seemed to 
 wipe from it the remembrance and the stress of the 
 beautiful things he might be doing save for these man- 
 dates of the tiresome day. 
 
 "It's book reviews and a letter from New York. 
 Do you want it?" 
 
 "I don't want to go to New York," I paltered. My 
 homely corner began to look very cosy to me, on ac- 
 count, I thought, in my new-found pose, of Mary. 
 
 "You needn't go to New York. They wouldn't 
 know what to do with stuff written on the spot. Keep 
 track of the New York papers and fake the rest. 
 
 "But is it" I blurted out, "do you think that's 
 square?" 
 
48 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 He hardly looked at me. Trumpets were calling 
 him or small sweet pipes to far dim isles of harmony. 
 The time given to the crude tasks of life was all waste 
 hours to Blake. He would be forever in seclusion 
 learning how they sang, if he might, they who sang the 
 songs he loved. He took no particular notice of my 
 question except, perhaps, if I might put it so, the out- 
 side of it. Blake would have slain the man who dared 
 to alter a line of Shelley. I have heard some of his 
 remarks on gentlemen who ventured to do it, and if he 
 had written them down, they must have scorched the 
 page. He would have sat up all night and many a 
 night fussing over the interpolation of a comma in 
 Keats. But the ways of earning bread by manipulat- 
 ing dull things, in order that a man might live to 
 write big verse, these he regarded drearily indeed, but 
 as not even touching the outmost aura of the globe of 
 life. What must be, must, that a man of gifts might 
 eat bread enough to keep up to the mark of perceptive 
 rhythm. 
 
 "I don't know," said he. " You'll have to settle 
 that for yourself. You can go round to the office if 
 you want to know any more." 
 
 I did go round within an hour, saw Wadham, the 
 frog-like editor and publisher in one skin, he of the light 
 blue eyes and stiff hair upstanding and the aggressive 
 spectacles. All of us knew Wadham. He was dis- 
 gustingly rich from the instinct he had of picking up the 
 crumbs and cigar ends and using them thriftily. He 
 
MY LOVE AND I 49 
 
 could never have edited a big magazine, but he was the 
 very devil of cleverness for stealing and rehashing other 
 men's editing. At once on hearing of the place, I had 
 a passion for work, and not even he could quench it in 
 me. I looked upon him, perhaps by the hypnosis of 
 my admiration for Blake, as the dull ass that was to 
 carry me over the stream. We talked, and for some 
 obscure reason he seemed to regard me as a find. Per- 
 haps Blake had said artfully hopeful things of me, the 
 more roseate in that his mind was jumping away from 
 the commonplace to the gardens he was always grow- 
 ing. Wadham set before me the assurance of a good 
 weekly sum, and I ran home tickled as a child to play 
 with my new, scarcely worthy, toy, and prove myself. 
 Something was bitter in me, some gall of discontent, 
 because I knew well enough the fellows did not prize 
 me save as the chum of an idle hour. I had simply 
 done nothing, nor did I in my shyness talk about doing 
 things, and I had no special line of arrogance. It was 
 not necessary to have distinguished yourself, in the 
 Toasted Cheese. You might even swear yourself blue 
 with the desire to distinguish yourself. And my high 
 resolves on a stiff course of reading had borne no bud. 
 I did read, I did cram. But the pageant of the day 
 was more to me than the smell of age and ink. I tried 
 to beat Blake at his own game, or to run neck and neck 
 with him. Why shouldn't I worship and suck at the 
 seventeenth century? Why shouldn't I be conver- 
 sant with the nicer points of criticism? But it was 
 
50 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 of no use. My heart wasn't in it. The scholar's metic- 
 ulous pains but irritated me. I didn't care whether 
 Keats was born within a twelvemonth of the hour 
 Blake defended. To have stood on the precise spot 
 where Dr. Johnson shed his filial tears would not have 
 moved me. But the old dog's personality did, and 
 Keats's verse, so that I sat up at night raging because 
 I couldn't do such divine stuff, or, indeed, any stuff at 
 all. And I liked to walk, to pelt through a snowstorm 
 with Mary and love her all the more I really loved 
 her in a warm way if I didn't feel I had to rush her off 
 from the boys when the snow feathers got in her 
 neck and tickled her. A robust growth of the boyhood 
 I never had came back to me in the company of Mary 
 and the Toasted Cheese, and I got boisterously wild 
 on Christmas Eve when we ran after the Waits and 
 put our pagan noses into a church long enough to smell 
 the evergreen. Life had me by the hah", the throat 
 even ; it was a chance whether life did not yet lay me 
 by the heels. And all the time Blake, like an engine 
 of incalculable power, was going on, beat, beat, doing 
 his abhorred task and spilling his life blood over the 
 enchanted page. Sometimes I saw the verse he was 
 writing. He had no shame or shyness, as he had no 
 conceit. These lines he was plucking out of the air, 
 out of the infinite intention, he tremulously hoped. 
 Once on his table in the gnarled small script of his hand, 
 they were open to us all, as much our property as his. 
 Sometimes I thought he regarded them with an inno- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 51 
 
 cent wonder. They seemed to him so dear, so exquis- 
 ite, so small, like indestructible snow-wreaths that had 
 somehow taken their whirling orbit to his paper, that 
 I believe he, in his humility and lack of self-appraise- 
 ment, only wondered why they should have come that 
 way, and if he should lose them in the warm air of 
 praise. And about this time it was that uncle Hardy 
 died, and I went down to the funeral and found the 
 widow and her son, he half my age, land poor and deep 
 in debt. So I sold my sad old farm, crying out to me 
 from every windy corner to come back and talk things 
 over, for a neat but inadequate sum of ready money, 
 and this I turned in toward uncle Hardy's debts. It 
 might have been more if I had waited stolidly and 
 made a better trade. But that is like me, ever in the 
 haste that is its own undoing. They looked wan and 
 "wee" to me, those two, as I had felt when my father 
 and mother went the same quick gait; and besides 
 I was in a cowardly haste to get away from the appeal- 
 ing face of meadow, road, and brook, and, at the same 
 time, to leave the mourners not uncomforted. 
 
 VI 
 
 I DID my task on the Bally Thief, trippingly at first, 
 in the way we have of adventuring a new thing, and 
 then as the necessary concomitant to getting my money. 
 I do not like to remember how long a time I did it, and 
 this, I note, is the first trace of cowardice in my con- 
 
52 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 fession. For though I used those years in warm and 
 innocent living, it looks to me now as if I ate them up 
 in waste, as the spring is wasted if the farmer gathers 
 but does not sow. I was enchanted the worn word 
 of Johnnie with living, and highly indulgent of my 
 normal tastes in it. I ought to have bound myself to 
 the printed page, studied languages, forced open gates 
 that lead to the world's high offices. This, if I was to 
 find myself ever in command. But I read only the books 
 I liked, chiefly poetry which I grew to know by heart, 
 and turned away with a deft persistency from mental 
 discipline. I wrote verse, too, when my blood moved 
 too fast for prose, insensate stuff, and burned it when 
 my saner mood came back. Anything did for a starter : 
 a tramp through the snow, the taste of frozen apples 
 on the tree, the tingling of the stars, Orion's glorious 
 regnancy. My verse, I suspected even then, was the 
 flower of a perfect physical health that went to my head 
 and had to "out" at my finger tips, since I couldn't 
 be forever tramping. 
 
 Time stood still with us. Blake withdrew a little 
 more persistently to his attic, and it smelled the more 
 of books. The Toasted Cheese changed its quarters 
 two or three times, but the boys kept their status of 
 vociferous ambition and bald accomplishment. We 
 felt the kick of our legs, and we were young. There 
 was time to burn. Mary, I sometimes thought, looked 
 thinner. I see now she had begun to show the pre- 
 mature brutality of time. And that was as it had 
 
MY LOVE AND I 53 
 
 to be : for she was the only one of us who loved and 
 suffered. 
 
 One spring came and found us all as ready as ever for 
 our little games, our small excursions into the green to 
 come back with waving boughs for Mary and aunt 
 Cely this on the days when Mary had extra copying 
 and could not go. Sometimes Mr. Haley wanted to 
 go, but we never allowed it after the one murderous 
 moment in his adopted kiddy's infancy when he stood 
 at Blake's elbow all through a slow-moving and apoca- 
 lyptic sunset and told us how well the baby was getting 
 on, and how you couldn't believe but these artificial 
 foods were more or less dope until you'd tried them. 
 We all had a chivalry about protecting Blake and his 
 perennial conception and memorizing, we hoped, of 
 new-born verse, and no "bloomin' he-incubator" as 
 Johnnie called Haley was allowed to approach him 
 after that. Blake didn't really mind. He hadn't 
 heard it, nor did he hear most of us anyway : but it 
 hurt us to see him instigated to mind. 
 
 Then one afternoon Jake Rand went down to Romney 
 and came back with a proposal that set us all stark 
 crazy. It was long, broad country, with a few decent 
 hills, he said, a great deal of space everywhere because 
 you could see it all. Jakie was Cockney, and his 
 descriptions of nature were seldom lucid. She wouldn't 
 have known her face after he'd done with her, any more 
 than some of you would under the veil of Blake's 
 impressionism, he who saw her as the child of God. 
 
54 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 But the point of Jake's discovery was that there was 
 an old yet tight and praiseworthy barn down there, 
 once used by a colony of young musicians, when a 
 master he knew had taken his way thither, pupils in 
 his train. The master taught no more now. He had 
 gone abroad and the pupils were scattered, but the barn 
 remained and all its cubicles where, with a pallet of 
 husks and a washstand, we could ead the one life 
 and gluttonize on air. There was a prime boarding- 
 house, the Apple Tree, not half a mile away, and there 
 we could get our food. We gasped and accepted it. 
 The simplicity of the proposition indicated an impera- 
 tive beckoning finger. We at once realized how cramped 
 and stultified we were in Burke Street, and how the 
 walls of the barn opened out into a heaven of lethargy. 
 Only Mary could not go It was she who made that 
 discovery, not we, who, on the threshold of our pilgrim- 
 age, hailed her the queen of it. 
 
 "Why, I can't go down there with you boys," said 
 Mary, when we made it evident, in our uncouth and 
 varying fashions, that she was absolutely one of us and 
 this summer business included her. "I've got a novel 
 to copy. It'll take me a month." 
 
 That it would take her flying fingers the half of that 
 wasn't true, and so we accepted the reason behind and 
 groaned over it, and she tried to comfort us by saying 
 we could bring her up a fresh egg now and then, or a 
 clod of turf. 
 
 All this time I had been doing my task, the more 
 
MY LOVE AND I 55 
 
 bunglingly, because Wadham was dissatisfied. He 
 wanted a lighter touch, more "go," a variety of facets 
 that I didn't cut upon my work because, plainly, I 
 didn't know how. I didn't suit his public. But then 
 there was Blake who was never chidden. How could 
 he suit it, he who set aside his vast apprehension of 
 worlds and forgot cryptic phrases to collate the bald 
 and thuddy things philistia took with gravity ? 
 
 "Oh, well!" said he. He began to consider the stuff 
 he pieced together, to consider it really for the first time, 
 perhaps, since he undertook it, and this only to drag 
 me out of my bog. Blake was very accessible to hu- 
 mans when they were yelling loud enough to catch 
 his ear. It had to be a literary difficulty, though, to 
 haul him actually back from the dead centuries, nothing 
 less. If you were hungry or cold, he would empty 
 his pockets for you and walk on. But the written 
 word commanded him. "You know you mustn't 
 think of it. If you do, you can't do it at all. Get a 
 photographic idea of what Wadham wants, hang it 
 up in your workroom, and set your brain going by it. 
 You can do it and let your mind off, can't you ? See 
 how a man uses a pickaxe the man in the street, not 
 the man after gold. He isn't thinking of the pickaxe. 
 He's conscious of Mary Ann somewhere, or wondering 
 if his dinner pail's got pie in it." 
 
 "But what's the matter with the stuff?" said I. 
 
 He dragged a copy of the Bally Thief out of my 
 pocket and began to read it seriously. I could see he 
 
56 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 had never compassed a word of mine before. This was 
 meagre, being in the Thief y but it was mine, and the 
 neglect pricked me. I thought he might have done 
 it because it was mine, to test my mettle and smell 
 out the good in me. He chucked the paper back into 
 my pocket. 
 
 "Why," said he, "it's old-fashioned." 
 
 There it was again, the stigma coming out red all 
 over me. 
 
 "Wadham wants a lighter touch," I said weakly. 
 
 "Oh, he! of course he does. He wants something 
 mother can lay on the kitchen table and read without 
 difficulty while she chops the hash. Tell him to shut 
 up. He'll like you the better for it. But you are 
 old-fashioned. There's no doubt of it." There it was 
 for the third time. "You could write perorations. 
 You know how they used to go booming along. Not 
 all of them. Once or twice they soared. I bet you 
 might soar a little, too." 
 
 I took all the comfort I could out of this pinched 
 encomium, though I didn't see how I could ever soar. 
 I was shy before the flamboyant, the word that doesn't 
 fit our every day, as a suburban Odd Fellow shudders 
 when he goes, pompous and strutting, down the street 
 to join the procession, yet knowing the stare of all the 
 wives, the very moral of his own wife, satirical jades; 
 is upon his feather and the gimcrackery he has set out 
 to play in. The fear of slipping over the boundary of 
 life as it is on this present earth was ever quieting me. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 57 
 
 If I began to write and a showy and accepted theat- 
 ricality tried, at Wadham's call, to clamber into it, I 
 had to stop. My pen got mawkish and wouldn't work. 
 I felt myself a fool. Life, I knew, was an immensity of 
 tragedy, but not so obvious, so clean cut round the 
 edges as Wadham and his following would have me 
 think. It went stalking on, hurling out retribution in 
 the face of sin which was only an imperfect under- 
 standing of rules and in the long, long run correcting 
 sin, but this only by heavenly inconsistencies. And 
 since it was all a matter of a man's own deserts and the 
 deserts of his father and his grandfather and the blood- 
 red burden they bequeathed to him, how was I going 
 to write neat little dramas suited to the apprehension 
 of Wadham's circulation and his wives with then* minds 
 on bargain day and the lore of clothes? Yet I made 
 no mistake of finding myself too big for the job. I was 
 well aware that minds existed so sworn to simplicity, to 
 the sympathetic kindliness of knowing what other folk 
 feel that they could even satisfy Wadham, though in a 
 key Wadham himself had never dreamt of playing in. 
 No, I wasn't too big for it. I was simply too stiff, too 
 loutish and untrained to catch the step of life. 
 
 One morning in my russet mood over this and my 
 lack of "go," I wandered down to the North End, and 
 there at a corner I came on an Italian lad, all black 
 eyes and shining hair and sewer mud from his work, 
 saying good-by, in melting intonations and musical 
 vowels, to a girl. Over that one man played the in- 
 
58 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 herited emotional genius of a nation that no sooner 
 feels than it expresses, and indeed, under the necessity 
 of expression, embraces the histrionic moment with 
 ardor, give it ever so fleeting a cause. This, I saw, was 
 no parting of the hour. Some fate, some grim sibyl, 
 had stepped between these two and, with great out- 
 spreading palms, was thrusting them apart. It might 
 have been a sibyl, or it might have been a sordid task- 
 mistress, the inexorable mandate from the lips of the 
 world that bids us eat and see to it that we provide 
 enough. The boy might have had his little money 
 stolen by some bunco banker of his own blood. The 
 girl might know her natural guardians were waiting 
 to shuffle her hand into a dry weazened one that yet 
 could play the game of chinking coin. I turned away 
 from them indeed, I had turned away instantly, 
 having no business in their solemn fane of parting, - 
 went home and wrote it down, their story, in a patois 
 of illiterate English tailed by the vowel a. This, 
 though having no special belief in it, I carried in to 
 Wadham the next morning, and he loved it. 
 
 "Do me a dozen, Redfield, do me a dozen/' he 
 wheezed, his blue eyes starting. " And let 'em end well. 
 Don't have any tragedy. Our readers don't like it." 
 
 Well, I didn't want any tragedy myself, if I was 
 going to create these simple, vulnerable people by the 
 gross. Let them be happy if they could, on my page 
 at least. They did not look to me very palpably 
 happy in actuality. At that time, having the pristine 
 
MY LOVE AND I 59 
 
 strength of all my senses, legs adequate to run, blood 
 in a splendid steady rush, I hadn't thought much about 
 the positive happiness sprung from a vital body and 
 desires that tally with the earth's great promptings. 
 That was my commonplace. Delight lay in the un- 
 attained. I thought nobody could be happy unless 
 he was on the road to being a poet, or at least to foot- 
 hold on some terraced height of art ; and my Italians, 
 as I saw them, lived meagrely. But I could make 
 stories out of them with a facility that surprised me, 
 and I did it without a thought of the integrity of letters. 
 I could paint a certain kind of picture in little, paint 
 it hastily, but so it caught the eye. So far as the pains 
 and faithfulness of creation went, the picture was a 
 fake. If I had been ambidextrous, I could have done 
 two at once, so ready was my brain, and Wadham 
 would pay me thirty dollars apiece. This was, in a way, 
 a mechanical facility. Under it the strangeness and 
 wonder of life wrought upon me movingly. As I have 
 said, I was well and currents ran swiftly to my brain 
 and carried loud news of the outer world. The chang- 
 ing phases of the world were tumultuous and, as they 
 concerned me, untried, prophetic. Sometime, I felt, 
 an avalanche would start. A whisper would release 
 it from the creative stillness, and as it rushed upon me, 
 I should know it was an avalanche of joy. It would 
 overwhelm me, very likely, sweep away my little house 
 of life ; but being joy it could leave me for a century 
 under its frigor and then some destined spring would 
 
60 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 come and I should rise up still unchangeably young 
 and I should be satisfied. Timidly I told Blake some 
 of these thoughts: that the world looked to me like 
 a procession of flowers, a blossoming so fecund that 
 we too, being its children, had to share the fruits. 
 We couldn't be disinherited. He wasn't much inter- 
 ested, and no wonder: for by word of mouth this mist 
 of feeling got laughably thinned out, and it was in 
 itself foreign to Blake's conceptions. He never com- 
 plained of the present state of things, but he did feel 
 alien to it. The earth as God sent it out and for a 
 good many aeons afterward drew his fancy mightily. 
 But he hated the horrible artificial barriers man has 
 devised in his honest attempts at good housekeeping. 
 "You can look at the stars," Blake said, "and still see 
 God. But you've got to keep your eyes away from 
 men and their damned contrivances." He hated the 
 cumbrous machinery of what we call civilization; but if 
 you asked him how we were going to exist on this planet 
 that refuses us even protection from the cold, without 
 policemen and telephones and undertakers and the 
 gross burden of food, he would swear a large oath and 
 walk off. But about what he called life, in his larger 
 sense, he was ready enough to talk. He held that all 
 life throws off life by the energy of its being, and he 
 argued that humanity had, in absolute madness, 
 woven a veil for the face of nature and so cut itself off 
 from the apprehension of God. It had fabricated a 
 scheme of religion and politics and social ethics, and it 
 
MY LOVE AND I 61 
 
 would have been nearer God if it had staid on a moun- 
 tain top with a shepherd's crook. 
 
 "Mount Washington?" Jakie suggested. "You 
 couldn't camp out on mountain tops in this climate 
 without your winter flannels. And that would call 
 for a woollen factory down below, and an express to 
 bring you the flannels, and the big driving wheel would 
 be whirring again." 
 
 But this Jakie said with a sort of shamed candor, 
 because, so compelling was Blake's personality, that 
 we couldn't flout him without feeling we had made light 
 of something that had a mystic value in unknown 
 courts. 
 
 "Poetry," I ventured humbly to suggest. "Men 
 made poetry." 
 
 "Poetry," said Blake, "is a dweller in the air. She 
 lives in heaven really, but when, of her own compassion, 
 she curves nearer us, a few of her pinions drop, now and 
 then, weighted with our grime the smoke of our 
 chimneys where we make things to keep our insides 
 muddy these pinions flutter down to us and we 
 snatch at them and stick them in our caps. But we 
 no more see Poetry as she is in the skyey regions where, 
 a maid in her Father's house, she wanders at her happy 
 tasks, than we see the soul here clamped into a gross 
 body." 
 
 I accepted what he said about poetry as I should 
 about the composing of music and everything that was 
 immeasurably above me. Poetry was, to my concep- 
 
62 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 tion, an ecstasy of divine according, a stream that 
 flowed without let 'from some fount of sacred lineage. 
 I didn't quite believe that poets coaxed their inspira- 
 tion and turned the coat of a phrase and made it over 
 and trimmed it here and there, took a little homesick 
 adjective out of one line and gave it lodgment in another. 
 When Blake was hammering, as he said, I thought it 
 was his bluff way of characterizing the secondary pains 
 of creation, polishing the sword that has been welded, 
 but in no wise altering its shape, and still with that 
 big cosmic rage of certainty and intuition. I had a 
 queer inner rhythmic life of my own. When I was 
 afire with the warm blood of a tramp just long 
 enough to make the nerves and muscles cry for more and 
 yet not long enough for that other ecstasy of quies- 
 cence and the apathy of tire swift phrases came to 
 me that I liked to repeat to myself to the rhythm of it 
 all, the motion we call living. But I humbly never 
 thought of them as neighbor even to poetry. They 
 would have to spring full-fledged from the Titan work- 
 shops of inspiration before I could capture them and 
 bring them into the market-place. 
 
 I was working hot and hard now, doing my stories 
 of Little Italy, and Wadham was printing them, one a 
 week, and the boys were clapping me on the back and 
 frankly implying they didn't know I had it in me. 
 They didn't specify what it was I had in me: some- 
 thing, I fancied, they didn't wholly respect. Blake 
 said nothing. One day when they had been pressing 
 
MY LOVE AND I 63 
 
 him to praise me, he did take up a paper and run 
 through one of my things. But his face never changed 
 beyond its dogged and kindly earnest. He had not 
 much opinion of prose except in the great essays. 
 Modern scratching seemed but to deface the walls of 
 time, 
 
 "You've lost your old-fashioned flavor," he said, 
 and he threw the paper down. 
 
 I couldn't tell whether he considered it desirable that 
 I should have lost it. Perhaps he thought if I were 
 patient and lived out the normal good in me I could 
 write an essay. And then the incredible happened. 
 An emissary he seemed to me angelic then, though 
 he came in string tie and eccentric collar, smoking a 
 cigarette an emissary of one of the great New 
 York magazines came to our door and was let in by 
 Mary. He wanted me to write some more Little Italy, 
 and he would pay me such a price that I leaped at the 
 thought of a velvet dress for Mary and a house in the 
 country to be known as the Toasted Cheese. As I said, 
 Mary had let him in, and she came up to my room and 
 told me savagely Fortune had arrived. I believe she 
 could have etherized me there and left me on my own 
 bed while she led Blake down to the offer of rewards, 
 if that could be. Mary, like all of us, had a fury of 
 partisanship for Blake up there in his workshop. He 
 would never advance himself, we knew. If we could 
 have pushed him, his name would have been on all the 
 literary banners of our tongue. He would have been 
 
64 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 famous even before he had earned it, such was his 
 personal quality and the integrity of the promissory 
 notes that inner power of his was always fluttering. 
 At any rate, I was made, I saw with a kind of bewilder- 
 ment, and in another week came a second herald from 
 the land of ink and I was made again. There was 
 never anything warmer than the outcry and Growings 
 of the boys over my distinguished luck. I deserved it, 
 they said. These were neat little tales, one or more with 
 a tendency to Maupassant with clothes on ; but they had 
 to allow for that direct and subtle combination out- 
 side the knowledge of men, known as luck. It had to 
 be taken into account. So when they went down to 
 Romney, I was left sticking to my desk like a fly enam- 
 oured of the ink-pot, while I got a suitable batch ready 
 for my publishers to bolt. This Blake recommended. 
 Editors were fickle, though passionate, folk, he said. 
 They would engage without qualifications to-day and 
 to-morrow, in cooler blood, say what you sent was not 
 up to the standard of the sample that had caused you 
 to be desired. Therefore, lest some newer god attract 
 their errant fancy, it was best to do their stunts to- 
 day. So I stayed mewed up in my hot room and aunt 
 Cely toiled up with cool drinks and Mary, too, after 
 her work was done : dear Mary, with her haggard face 
 and her mother eyes that cried for assuagement for all 
 the children of men. To-day I never hear ice clinking 
 when weather is hot or answer the call of a crackling fire 
 when it is cold, without thinking of our mothering Mary. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 65 
 
 We had letters from the boys in the barn. They 
 were enchanted with it, Johnnie said. They had at 
 last got speech with the Ivory May. 
 
 " What's this ?" I was trying to read it out. Blake 
 was up for the night doing some proof and meaning 
 to curse Wadham on the morrow. He had to be 
 brutal with him, for Wadham would have turned the 
 Batty Thief into all kinds of a fatuous goat with bells 
 and ribbons whenever his fancy changed. He was 
 mild and humble before Blake though, who had occa- 
 sionally to take him to pieces and put him together 
 again lest the Thief become even too wobbly for his 
 own distinguished services. " What's this?" I said. 
 "It looks like Ivory Ivory May?" 
 
 "It's a girl down there," said Blake. He was tired 
 and was smoking, something he did now when he had to 
 reconcile himself in some special way to life. He and 
 Mary and I sat out in the back yard, and the moon 
 was over us and a piano execrably strummed Egmont, 
 and aunt Cely within pared pineapples for the pre- 
 serving. 
 
 "Pretty?" said Mary. 
 
 This was quick as lightning. I thought, as she 
 pounced, she looked jealously at Blake. For he had 
 just come from the atmosphere of the Ivory May. 
 He gave her no satisfaction, though this was not by 
 intent, but only because he was tired. 
 
 "Elkins" this was the artist among us who had 
 a color theory and couldn't draw "Elkins says her 
 
66 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 color's remarkable. She's very slim. Waist no bigger 
 than your wrist" -I could see Mary picturing his 
 sacred hand held out to span it " Yellow hah- no, 
 golden. And a blanched ivory look. You'd think 
 it would be unhealthy. But it's not. It's very 
 effective." 
 
 I laughed, to lighten Mary up. 
 
 "She might be a tapestry," said I. 
 
 "So she is. She's decorative. She's somebody's 
 companion or secretary or nurse, and she totes the old 
 lady in a wheeled chair. Jakie trails along after her. 
 So does by George, I believe they all do." 
 
 "How does the old lady like it?" asked Mary cut- 
 tingly. 
 
 "She likes it, on the whole. She's got something 
 the matter with her speech, but she's the dickens for 
 curiosity. Jakie tells her anything that comes into his 
 head. She had one of your stories, Redfield, open on 
 her knee. Jakie told her you got five to seven hundred 
 apiece for 'em. When you coming down?" 
 
 "To-morrow," said I. It was really without refer- 
 ence to the girl all gold-colored hair and whiteness. I 
 had finished my present job and I was sick of the city, 
 of Wadham and my pretty prospects. Only it seemed 
 a pity to leave Mary alone in the dust and heat. "But 
 what is it they call her ?" I went back to it and to the 
 letter. " Ivory May. Is May her name ? " 
 
 Blake was on his feet now, staring at the moon, not 
 Mary, and Mary looked wistfully at him, seizing the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 67 
 
 chance because he also might go on the morrow, and 
 his every gesture even she wanted to have thriftily 
 by heart. 
 
 " That's Jake. He's just found out 'may' is archaic 
 for maid, and he's running it hard." 
 
 " What's her real name?" asked Mary, pat on the 
 heels of this. I thought she hoped it was Sapphira 
 at the least. But Blake didn't remember, and when 
 he told her so, she smiled. 
 
 VII 
 
 HER name was Mildred Lee. I went down to Romney 
 the next day though urged by no curiosity to see 
 her and found the boys lying round on new-mown 
 hay : for Johnnie McCann had borrowed a scythe and 
 hacked off about a quarter of an acre of grass, and the 
 fragrance of it had got into their nostrils and their 
 imagination, and they couldn't have enough of it. The 
 barn was a delightful place, a gallery built round it 
 inside and little cubicles opening from it like monkish 
 cells, each with a window to a view over the incredibly 
 green fields. I felt the old country allurement, its 
 tyranny upon me at once, the aching ecstasy of home, 
 and also the conviction of the boy brought up on a 
 farm and never quite escaping that before playtime he 
 has got to rake the grass and feel the stubble toughen- 
 ing his toes, and know again the thirst of the sweltering 
 day and the taste of warm " sweetened water" under 
 
68 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 a tree. It had had a different effect on the others. 
 They, being town bred, took it as they saw it, a picture 
 made for playtime, and determined on founding a 
 brotherhood, of themselves alone, so far as I could see, 
 and living here in the shade of trees, listening to a 
 perennial thrush in an unfading wood and going once 
 a day to the Apple Tree to dinner, and once to intercept 
 the Ivory May, when she conducted her charge to take 
 the air. I reminded them that the trees they laid lien on 
 for a hospitable roof would in December be the " bare 
 ruined choirs " that yield no shelter from the snow they 
 were not reckoning with. But they told me to shut up 
 and sank back into their lethargy of summer realized, 
 and I could see that time was not for them because the 
 present did supremely well. We lay on the grass that 
 morning and talked intermittently and foolishly. 
 Jakie was caught by the aura of my glory in short 
 stories, and was writing some of his own. But they 
 wouldn't do because he had the teasing James habit, 
 and they were full of " lucidity" and the antiphonal 
 chant of "wonderful." Blake had told him it wouldn't 
 do, Blake who read Mr. James not for business but in 
 a wild and glorious debauch, he loved him so, and who 
 had the sense to know we groundlings never could 
 adequately do the trick. But Jakie was not to be 
 deterred. He was hammering away at a sketch of an 
 old lady who had a likeness to a gargoyle on Notre 
 Dame and had conceived a hatred for her niece who 
 featured an angel there. Nobody could tell what it 
 
MY LOVE AND I 69 
 
 was about, to speak humanly, or what the outcome 
 proved to be, which was the point, Blake said, of sorry 
 difference between Mr. James and his following. You 
 could always tell what Mr. James was about, if you 
 lived long enough, though not all of it. You were 
 likely to discover a year or two after you had run over 
 the fine lines of the palimpsest that there were equally 
 fine ones underneath. These things we talked of that 
 morning as we spread ourselves on the drying grass 
 and I nuzzled it and Jakie read his stuff and nobody 
 but me listened because they had heard it several times 
 before. I told him it was good, my drowsy eyes shut 
 and my lying mouth down in the grass. 
 
 "It's not," said Jakie. "You know it, too." 
 
 "Maybe I do," said I, out of the grass. 
 
 "But when it comes to that, your own Little Italy 
 stuff ain't worth shucks," said Jakie. "It's a crying 
 shame to take money for it." 
 
 "Oh, I know it," said I. And really I did. It 
 was incarnate wonder to me to think of the configura- 
 tion of the heads that wanted my Little Italy. 
 
 "It's false, that's what it is," said Jakie, raging. 
 "False from nave to chime. You haven't got inside 
 that organ and monkey contingent down there. You 
 don't live under their skins. You never even went 
 there for a dish of macaroni." 
 
 "I know that," said I. The sun had got to my 
 knees, my face was in a green shadow, and the scent 
 of earth was in my nostrils and the birds sang. 
 
70 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "By golly!" said Tilford Weston. He was a con- 
 scientious little fellow grinding out household notes 
 for the Kitchen Friend, and hoping to rise to editorial 
 work and have his lass come home from the West to 
 marry him. " There she is." 
 
 Instantly they were on their feet, and I was on 
 mine, from the mere force of example, as men eat 
 oatmeal or go to war. 
 
 " What is it?" I inquired. 
 
 They paid no attention to me. They walked in a 
 body straight across the field and over a stone wall, 
 and I followed. If there were going to be more scents, 
 more birds or any added affluence of spring, I meant 
 to be first at the fount. Then I saw her coming along 
 the country road, Mildred Lee, walking beside the 
 wheeled chair where her charge grotesquely reigned. 
 Mildred had one hand upon the chair as if she guided 
 it through some force of inner magic : for the actual 
 propulsion was accomplished by him we knew, Johnnie 
 McCann, who had, the others saw ragingly, bought 
 off the customary man and piously fallen into his 
 place. A hatred, livid as the constraining spark of a 
 million feuds, came upon our men, hatred for Johnnie 
 who had done them and who was serenely tooling 
 along, piety and softness upon his lips and the devil's 
 own spark in his eyes, for he, too, knew they had 
 been done. But after bareheaded prostrations, so 
 deep were they, to the old creature of the chair and 
 the picture of youth and spring that walked beside, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 71 
 
 they fell upon Johnnie with chorusing protests of false 
 friendship. 
 
 "That's too heavy for you, old man," saidWeston 
 meltingly. "Give me a hold." 
 
 And Jakie took a hold without asking. But no- 
 body had presented me, and I walked along, saying 
 nothing; but as I walked I looked with the instancy 
 of the man who sees no possibility of doing otherwise, 
 at Mildred Lee. I have in my mind to-day the picture 
 of her as she walked under the trees : a girl in seem- 
 ing, though really she was a little older than I, a girl 
 with a pale face of an enchanting shape, especially 
 about the chin, blue eyes not warm eyes but such 
 as might hold reserves of light behind them and a 
 careless way of using a red-lipped mouth, not a 
 full mouth, none of the bud about it, or the pout of 
 provocation, the "Don't you wish you might, sir," 
 that nature sets upon some rose-red mouths in spite 
 of them. This way with her mouth I can't really 
 explain it, but it was as if she knew and yet was not 
 vain of the exceedingly perfect teeth within, and so 
 might show them in full flood of laughter or let them 
 peep as they would. And as I looked at her, I thought 
 she once or twice glanced at me with a welcoming 
 grace, as if introductions didn't matter, but at the 
 same time she owed me, of her plenty, a welcome to 
 the house of spring and all the gay world of which she 
 was rightful chatelaine. The burden in the chair, 
 Miss Harpinger, I heard her called, was coquetting 
 
72 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 with Jakie who was playing up to her brazen assaults 
 for gallantry in order, it was plain, to keep on her 
 right side, which was the side of him who should push 
 the chair next time. Mildred Lee was telling Weston 
 she knew about his household work. She said she'd 
 been asking the cook at the Apple Tree how many 
 things could be made with corn meal. There were 
 dozens of them. The cook would lend him her book, 
 and he could make almost a column, she was sure. 
 Her voice I pondered upon that. It was low and 
 of an excellent quality, but there was also something 
 resonant, metallic, golden, I thought. This, I told 
 myself, was the well of reserve in her nature, what, in 
 spite of that graciousness, due to the need of others, 
 hid the sweet warm springs of her own beauty. I 
 fell behind them, and with an instinct that rose from 
 the propulsion of my blood toward the spring and 
 toward her who was the priestess of it, I gathered 
 maple twigs from the saplings by the way, and plaited 
 a garland, and this I brought her, holding it in both 
 hands. And without a blush or the trembling of her 
 dignity, she bent her head a little, as one used to 
 crowns, and I set it on the gold of her hair, and it 
 fitted, every leaf of it, to the hollows and shines be- 
 neath. I was not deft with my hands, but this had 
 been a special commission from the god of luck who 
 put the pretty task upon me, and he had directed me 
 and I had scored. The boys looked on and envied a 
 little yet admired more, as we must when some one 
 
MY LOVE AND I 73 
 
 has done a better thing than we think to do. They 
 were chiefly proud of me as the one of them who had 
 thought to crown the spring. Once Mildred came to 
 the front of the wheeled chair to tuck the light rug over 
 Miss Harpinger's feet, and the old lady caught sight of 
 the green circlet on the golden head. 
 
 " What's that, Miss Lee?" she had to know, " what's 
 that? Has everybody got crowns on? Nobody's 
 given me a crown." 
 
 Whereupon she simpered, and Johnnie McCann 
 was the only one who had the spirit to rush into the 
 brake and bring an apple bough and present it fatu- 
 ously, kneeling in the dusty road. He told her it 
 was her sceptre, and whatever she commanded we 
 must do. I have never seen a more unhappy spec- 
 tacle than that of old Mary Harpinger in her wheeled 
 chair, playing the game of youth. She was inert and 
 heavy afterward, when I knew her, I found she 
 had an eager interest in her food and she cherished 
 an avid curiosity about the smallest happenings of 
 life. If one could have thought her mind a little 
 faded, compassion might have taken the place of a 
 quick aversion to her. We might have seen the in- 
 evitability of the erring track of her mind, and tried 
 to shade it with the green boughs of a pitying toler- 
 ance. But she had all the mind she ever had, pre- 
 sumably, only she had let the fair flowers of aspira- 
 tion go quite to waste, and choked herself with the 
 coarse weeds that flourish in decay. I could hardly 
 
74 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 bear to think of what must be the suffering of a nature 
 like Mildred Lee's, almost too fragile in its delicacy of 
 perception and desire, under the daily attrition of 
 this service. I thought it accounted for what I called 
 the veil of her face and manner, something shielding, 
 guarding the blossomy currents within, the wells of 
 living water that such feet might foul. She, the real 
 Mildred, seemed, not to be in hiding there was 
 nothing furtive about it but behind a barrier. I 
 could see how her high maiden honor dwelt there 
 proudly alone, with the tawdry clamor of Mary Har- 
 pinger's remembered scandals and appetite for fresh 
 ones surging about it, up to its very portals, like a 
 turgid stream going nowhere. Altogether the seeing 
 her was almost more painful than joyous, as you 
 might go on a pilgrimage to a statue foreshadowed in 
 your dreams, and find it in process of siege by a brutal 
 soldiery. We went back to the Apple Tree with her, 
 and when we left her, she gravely calm and Mary 
 Harpinger ogling to the last, I turned away with a 
 great and exalted sadness on me. I wondered how 
 Blake could have described her as he did, with a com- 
 monplace touch, how he should have spoken of her 
 at all, she belonged so to the great sacred silences. 
 The others did not feel this as I did. They talked 
 and chaffed and tossed their hats at butterflies, and 
 when they were out of sight of the house, fell upon 
 Johnnie who had pushed the chair and buffeted him 
 full sore. But I could not talk. I had seen Mildred Lee. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 75 
 
 VIII 
 
 THAT afternoon, when the first warmth had gone, 
 I left the fellows and went again into the road, with 
 a presentiment that I should see her. Back and 
 forth from the willow trees to the maples I walked, 
 almost in sight of her house at the one end and our 
 barn at the other, and as I did this, always with an 
 expectant heart, I saw her coming. She wore the 
 same white dress, and over her shoulders a little scarf 
 of faintest blue. As I went forward to her, she was 
 charmingly though not warmly smiling, and a pace 
 away she put out her hand. Neither of us, I thought, 
 was hindered in swift friendliness by not having been 
 named to each other in the common way. We seemed 
 to have prescience, as of those who had to meet. I 
 turned about with her, and we walked on, I very happy 
 in a fashion I had not known. Only I wished afterward 
 Egerton Sims could have been there and shared my 
 delight in her and the honor of my state. She often 
 came out, she said, for a little walk when Miss Har- 
 pinger was asleep. It was her only time. I kept 
 myself from saying how horrible Miss Harpinger 
 seemed to me, and she went on into the boundaries 
 of my own life, as if, to please me, we must talk of 
 me. 
 
 "I've been reading your Little Italy." 
 
 I wondered how she had come on Wadham's banal 
 publication, and she explained that the boys had 
 
76 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 loaned her a copy or two among other things to read 
 to Miss Harpinger. They had had a couple of copies 
 perhaps and then Miss Harpinger sent for more for 
 a file, in fact. I felt a sudden distaste at having the 
 Little Italy side of me the one she was to know. I 
 implied that I didn't think much of those enterprises. 
 
 "Oh, but the big magazines think something of 
 them," she reminded me. " You've had splendid 
 offers." 
 
 The big magazines, I told her, even they, wanted 
 to print what the many-headed liked to hear. They'd 
 shave a good many corners of popularity before they'd 
 throw out what the many-headed were barking for. 
 
 "But it's a splendid chance," she insisted. "Now 
 you can get anywhere." 
 
 This, instead of glorifying my outlook, depressed 
 me instead, until I reflected that the goddess of spring 
 need not necessarily be endowed with all gifts, among 
 them a correct literary taste. 
 
 "Blake doesn't think anything of them," I said. 
 "You've seen Blake." 
 
 I felt that was enough. Her brows drew together 
 slightly at the mention of Blake, and immediately I 
 wondered whether there were something in him that 
 did not march with the most crystalline ideals. Yet 
 not so, for Mary loved him. Mary would have rushed, 
 tooth and claw, upon any who denied his poetic 
 and unimpeachable godhead. Mildred Lee hesitated 
 before answering, and then she seemed to be stepping 
 
MY LOVE AND I 77 
 
 round Blake delicately as a feline creature, observing 
 him from every point. 
 
 "A man might write splendid poetry, mightn't 
 he, and yet not be a critic?" This she put to me 
 with a highly flattering implication of my infallibility. 
 
 "Oh, yes/' I said. "But Blake knows such a lot. 
 He goes digging into the centuries. If there's any- 
 thing there, in any rubbish heap, Blake's sure to find 
 it." 
 
 "But mightn't that make him all the more unlikely 
 to understand his own century?" 
 
 It might, but try as I would I could not snatch 
 content from her charming consolation. I knew 
 Blake. But I wanted her to talk about other things 
 that she only knew. I could test literature in its 
 shop, take it from the lips of its disciples ; but I wanted 
 this creature made of such rare sweetnesses to tell me 
 how she juggled the spring into coming, what she 
 heard from the birds that morning, where the fairy 
 queen was at this moment. I wanted her to sing to 
 me "old, far-off, forgotten things." I knew she could 
 sing, perhaps in strange intervals with that low moving 
 voice of hers, intervals the world has forgotten in its 
 march from fairyland. (As a matter of experience 
 and after proving, Mildred Lee could not sing; but 
 that made no difference to my assumptions that 
 afternoon.) But she was talking again by implica- 
 tion about Blake and me, ranging us side by side. 
 She was not so sure of the value, she said, of these 
 
78 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 researches into the past. Give her a live man's im- 
 pressions of the world as it is. 
 
 "But that isn't my Little Italy stories," I told 
 her sadly, and yet with a tender gratitude for her 
 championship. "They're not real. They're a kind of 
 fake." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "That's your modesty," said she. "The publishers 
 know, or they wouldn't be ready to exploit you." 
 
 I dragged her away from Little Italy, dragged her 
 by the main force of insistency. I was determined to 
 know things about her, and since I was sure no such 
 creature as she would feel tenderness for Mary Har- 
 pinger, I asked her bluntly 
 
 "Do you like Miss Harpinger?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said she, in the unmoved monotone of 
 her sweet voice. "She's very nice." 
 
 Then I saw loyalty constrained her, but I pushed 
 on into the breach. 
 
 "It's a horrible thing," I said hotly, "horrible, for 
 you to be tied to a creature like that." 
 
 She put out her hand. I thought for a happy 
 moment of implied intimacy she was about to lay it 
 on my arm. But it was only a girl's movement, un- 
 considered, free, and she withdrew it. 
 
 "How good you are," she said. 
 
 It would be of no use for me to try recording the 
 things we said that day, on that walk of perhaps an 
 hour, but the hour was painted for me in fadeless 
 
MY LOVE AND I 79 
 
 hues, not the prismatic glitter of youth, but all the 
 soft and gentle lendings of accumulated memories of 
 poetry and song. Whatever I had learned, whatever 
 I unconsciously aspired to, broke into blossom that 
 day, or crested in rainbow colors on the sea of life. I 
 knew nothing about the seventeenth century; but I 
 had attained. We parted at the turn of the road, 
 for I could see she hesitated at having me go farther, 
 and I could fancy Mary Harpinger risen from her 
 nap and cackling at the window over her companion's 
 acquisition of a young man. There was in my atti- 
 tude the passionate implication and the acquiescence 
 in hers that we were to meet again. I stood at the 
 turn and watched her, and she waved her hand to me. 
 Then I took an hour's walk by myself, plunging through 
 fields and once encountering a marsh, because the road, 
 with its possibilities of one or two passers, looked too 
 populous, and I got home to the barn to find the boys 
 in riotous concoction of a gigantic rarebit made out 
 of all the cheese in the neighborhood. I was morose 
 to a ridiculous degree. They could not stir me out 
 of my sulks, and when Jakie tipped a wink at Johnnie 
 McCann and said, "He's got it bad," I laid my hand 
 incidentally on the stick somebody had cut in a walk 
 and gripped it, feeling temporary easement in know- 
 ing I was big enough to warm them both. 
 
 The next day was a gray day, although the sun shone 
 to a marvel, because Miss Harpinger had an indiges- 
 tion, and Mildred Lee just looked out of doors for five 
 
80 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 minutes on me hanging like a fool in the croquet-con- 
 secrated yard ; and that night Blake came. The boys 
 must have told him about my deplorable state, for he 
 was very kind to me in a gentle, considering way. It 
 was almost as if he saw me in a nearer perspective than 
 he had since that night when he had hope of the seven- 
 teenth century. After it had grown dusk and the moon 
 came out distractingly splendid, he sauntered to the 
 door and called me. 
 
 "Come on out, Redfield. There's something doing 
 here." 
 
 I went, relieved to flee the rest of them who were 
 ignoring the moon and torturing a mandolin nobody 
 knew how to play, yielding it from hand to snatching 
 hand. Blake and I struck into the road and began 
 to walk at a good pace. I watched the darkness with 
 straining eyes, and my face grew hot at the thought 
 that she, too, might escape for a fit communion with 
 Diana. She could not and yet! Blake began to 
 talk, and to my amazement he was confiding in me. 
 He was writing a play, a play in blank verse of an ideal 
 kingdom governed by a regent, the mother of the young 
 prince, and really governed by the young poet who had 
 resung the old folk-songs of the harvest field and the 
 plough and let the songs of steel and valor crash into 
 oblivion. And this was Arcady until the brutal world 
 and war came hurtling in, and Arcady went down be- 
 cause the world is not yet ready for it. I was listening, 
 although my eyes were still straining for Mildred Lee 
 
MY LOVE AND I 81 
 
 and my heart beat madly for her. Whatever your 
 mood, Blake had to be listened to. He was so great 
 that his call had to be answered like the call of kings, 
 or the bugle that summons an army. Wouldn't 
 Napoleon's army rise now if the bugle sounded ? The 
 soldiers may be asleep or dead, but they come. There 
 are those men whose inner force is so potent that they 
 have to be listened to. It was not vanity in me, 
 though I might have been proud to be singled out for 
 Blake's confiding. It was because this was Blake. 
 Afterward I suspected him of breaking his rule of soli- 
 tary conception because they had told him I was under 
 the madness of foolish first love and he generously 
 wanted to recall me to what seemed to him the greater 
 mystery. 
 
 "It must be stunning," I said at last, when he had 
 worked up one of his scenes for me. 
 
 For answer he did what I had never known Blake 
 to do before. He began repeating his poetry, not 
 spouting it, as we might irreverently have said of a 
 lesser man, not declaiming it, but simply talking it out 
 in a low, almost wondering voice, as if he were rather 
 amazed at himself for doing it, or at the beauty of it, 
 being done. We both felt the rhythm of it, and our 
 feet set themselves to it or paused at the will of our 
 delighted minds when it broke up into anapestic 
 fervor. But alas for his selection, if he had meant to 
 draw me out of love to his dear art : for he had fallen 
 upon the scene where it was all love, and the world 
 
82 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 well set to its fulfilment. There was ever something 
 austere about Blake's genius; yet he saw the earth 
 as it was, inevitably, his eye was so keen. He saw 
 with a patient compassion the great web nature spreads 
 for us that her spaces may be peopled and her fecundi- 
 ties eaten up, the veil, the film she lays upon the eyes 
 of girl and boy that they may desire each other over- 
 whelmingly. Not feeling it himself, save as a call 
 from wildest nature he refused, he yet recorded inevi- 
 tably the thrill of the nerves, the ecstasy of the exhila- 
 rated brain under the spell of nature the omnipotent, 
 love the sorcerer. And this scene he repeated to me 
 was nothing but a love poem full of the madness of life 
 and the desire of its continuance. And as his grave 
 exultant voice went on exultant because he, the 
 lucky one, had found such harmonies the earth was 
 my master and my plaything. I was at one with all 
 her purposes. And yet it did not seem to me the earth. 
 It seemed a region as lucent and new discovered as a 
 planet swinging that night in the palpitant air. I was 
 the first man, and I had been spared Eden and the 
 climbing steps through being to a paradise attained. 
 I was in paradise at a leap. When he finished, I 
 couldn't speak. Then he seemed to see what he had 
 done. His voice, grave and gentle, for a moment 
 it sounded like the voice of my old friend in counsel 
 recalled me. 
 
 "But that," said he, "is the love of the prince. It 
 is only earthly love. When we come to the last act 
 
MY LOVE AND I 83 
 
 there will be the love of the poet, and that is the 
 heavenly." 
 
 "But the prince," I said, like a green boy; "you'll 
 let the prince be happy." 
 
 "No," said Blake, "he can't be. He's under the 
 spell of the earth. You see that. He's got to share 
 all her gigantic treacheries, the crumbling of her atoms, 
 the disintegration of the tangible. And then he struggles 
 through that, reaching up, always reaching up, until he 
 reaches kingship and the great calls and duties." 
 
 "But the princess," I said. She seemed to me 
 Mildred Lee, and my eyes were hot with tears for her 
 set in this barren spot of kings attaining to kingship 
 through the downfall of their love. I wanted her 
 to live in a garden of sweet sun and shade. "She 
 can't reach up." As I saw her, I knew she mustn't. 
 She was made for delicate uses, for weaving and wear- 
 ing the garlands of life, not to grow gaunt in the service 
 of it. His voice grew harsh, I thought. 
 
 "Then," he said, "she'll have to be left behind." 
 
 I remembered what he said of the poet. 
 
 "What do you mean," I asked, "by the heavenly 
 love?" 
 
 Blake stopped and looked up into the sky. The 
 moon was riding there, conquering wreath after wreath 
 of cloud and carrying with her her own iridescent mist. 
 I followed his eyes, and then mine came down to his 
 face. It was thrown back at the angle that, in a pic- 
 ture, might have suited adoration. I could see the 
 
84 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 liquid gleam of the eyes. The lips were slightly parted. 
 He looked magnificently alive with noble feeling, and 
 I wished Mary could see him, Mary who challenged 
 no more from him than gentle kindliness. But he had 
 no answer for me. Blake was absorbed in the aspect 
 of creation, of re-creation, the flux of things, stern 
 prophecies. He had not a momentary doubt of the 
 continuous wonders of the world. To be bored, to be 
 dissatisfied in a universe like this, all ceaseless activities, 
 would have been to him banal beyond expression. He 
 was always anxiously looking anxiously because he 
 was afraid of escaping something his eyes were meant 
 to see always waiting on the Lord of the aspect of 
 things to see what might be doing next. But he re- 
 called himself, turning back to me. 
 
 "Redfield," he said, and there was a note in his 
 voice that touched me profoundly, of fellowship, of ten- 
 derness even, "come back to town with me. You'd 
 better." 
 
 Why had I better? I asked stupidly. The ache 
 and glow had gone out of me. He had been challeng- 
 ing me to higher issues than entrance to the earth and 
 her green bowers, and it tired my mind and my will. 
 Whatever there was of renunciation in this pursuit of 
 the heavenly love, I did not want it, if it meant surrender 
 of one kiss in the moonlight here. Furthermore, my 
 love for Mildred Lee was heavenly, of itself, by birth 
 royal, as hers should be for me. Besides, the hour was 
 getting on and the road was un tenanted save for our two 
 
MY LOVE AND I 85 
 
 pacing figures. I had turned at each end of a rather 
 long tether and made Blake go back and forth, lest we 
 should miss her. But she was not coming. I felt 
 dull and cold. 
 
 "Come," said Blake, even more persuasively, as we 
 reached the barn and were about to enter the mandolin 
 tortured atmosphere, "come back with me to-morrow." 
 And then he added, as if this also he might venture, 
 "Think it over." 
 
 IX 
 
 PERHAPS I did not once think it over. It may have 
 seemed to me that there was nothing that could be 
 deliberated upon without doing violence to so great a 
 theme, but everything to be lifted to a supersensual 
 zone of ecstasy where the body and soul are one. I 
 went back to town because my task was calling me, 
 and there I distinguished the first day of what seemed 
 to me my exile from Mildred Lee by being cross to 
 Mary. This was because I wanted her to let me alone, 
 and I can see now the sudden grieved darkening of her 
 honest eyes. Nobody ever had eyes of such an appeal- 
 ing candor, such clarity of intent as Mary. She went 
 away quite softly and thoughtfully (I believe she had 
 brought me something cool to drink), and when she 
 had gone, I threw myself down on the bed in my hot 
 room and perfunctorily cursed myself for a boor: but 
 it was indeed mechanical cursing because it was only 
 
86 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 decent that I should be condemned. Really with the 
 live part of my mind I was down at Romney breathing 
 a finer air, and crowning Mildred Lee with the lush 
 tribute of the spring. I had no purposes about her. 
 She was, and I had found her, by the exquisite chance 
 of the hour, and as soon as might be I was going back 
 to her. I fancy Blake told Mary I was in the toils of 
 this young passion, for she was very gentle to me when 
 we met, quite as if I had been through some alarming 
 physical experience and was not yet strong. She bore 
 no malice for my mood. Mary, by nature flavored all 
 through with the essence of wifehood and motherhood, 
 never did bear malice. She hoped all things, believed 
 all things, and was kind. I had notes for a dozen 
 stories of Little Italy, but when I sat down to write I 
 could only lay my dull head on my arms upon the table 
 and wish and wish for Mildred Lee. And on the even- 
 ing of the third day, when I had tried with every nerve 
 and impulse in me to whip up flagging imagination 
 and spur my pen to do its task, I saw it was of no use 
 whatever. I was not half a man without her not 
 half? Not an inch of me was good for fight. And 
 I took my bag and stole out of the house so that Blake 
 and Mary should not know. I got a train at seven, and 
 in the early dusk I was walking up the road to her fast, 
 fast, my heart beating as hearts beat only once or twice 
 in a whole long life. That night is with me now, the 
 feel of it, the smell, and the ache of my young blood. 
 It was all hurry, hurry, to be where alone was peace, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 87 
 
 and would be, so I knew, forevermore. I went straight 
 to the Apple Tree, where ladies, multitudinous ladies, 
 it seemed to me, were sitting on the veranda singing 
 "Old Folks at Home." I passed the ordeal of their 
 questioning eyes, and went into the little parlor vilely 
 tinged with the kerosene of its lamp, and after I had 
 sent up my name by an overalled boy, I stood there 
 conscious only of the life of the beating heart. At once 
 she came, in white as I had seen her before, but in an 
 incredible deshabille, her long hair braided and hang- 
 ing to her belt. She had evidently gone up for the 
 night, but she ignored being unprepared to see a 
 stranger, such as I might well have seemed to her. 
 Only I was at once aware that I was not a stranger, 
 though I was humbly ready to accept my place. There 
 was an understanding between us, a thrill of quickened 
 life, it might be, or was it only, as I wondered after- 
 ward, her miraculous comprehension of me and her 
 acceptance, as something that was to be? I put out 
 my hands to her and took both hers and clung to them 
 because she was my help. My own grasp must have 
 seemed like fetters, it was so desperate. And I said 
 her name twice, " Mildred! Mildred!" 
 
 She did not answer a word, nor did she withstand 
 me. She listened a second, I saw, her head inclined 
 ever so little to the veranda where the song had ceased 
 and there was a confused suggestion of, "What shall 
 we sing now?" 
 
 "Come," she said then, in a low, moving voice (ah, 
 
88 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 how athirst I had been to hear her voice ) and she was 
 stepping softly yet quickly to the side door and I was 
 following. 
 
 How my hands had been persuaded to leave her 
 wrists I did not know; but she was free and I was 
 following, shaken to my soul, understanding at last the 
 terrifying impact of the soul upon the body and the body 
 on itself. Out through the dark we went and along 
 a little path I took again afterward to the orchard 
 where there seemed to be light indeed, but the light 
 of the apple blooms themselves. And there she 
 stopped and said, " You came back!" in that low voice, 
 not moved perhaps by wonder or delight, and yet 
 thrilling me to both, and I said her name again, and at 
 that, with her consent, bewilderingly with it, for it was 
 a part of this heaven-made night, my arms were 
 about her and my lips on hers. And then silence and 
 again the beating of my heart. And she said in a 
 whisper, and I could have cried out with the wonder 
 of its being so near and the breath of it on my cheek, 
 
 "I must go." 
 
 I held her. Go now, when we had but met ? 
 
 "She's very nervous to-night," said Mildred. 
 
 She ? Miss Harpinger ? I felt myself wince at that 
 name brought like an ill breath into our paradise. 
 
 "Their singing on the piazza bothers her frightfully," 
 she explained. 
 
 And though I implored her by words and the bold 
 touch of her cheek to throw that obligation to the winds, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 89 
 
 go she would. And she forbade me to return to the 
 house. There was a way, she said, across the wall and 
 into the road. That I must take. And I must get 
 back to town that night. There was an express at ten. 
 I obeyed her without question, stipulating only that 
 she should leave me when she must, and I would go 
 with her to the dusky confines of the orchard and 
 watch her across the path of light from the lamp within. 
 And she did go at once, gently inexorable against my 
 childish pleas, and I watched her as I had desired, and 
 her whiteness slipped away from me and was lost. 
 Then I, scarcely looking my happiness in the face as 
 yet, walked the country road until there was scant time 
 to take the train, and did get it, and at something after 
 eleven was in my own hot little room again, wondering, 
 wondering at the world for being so beautiful so 
 beautiful and so secret, for I had never seen it so before 
 and myself for having attained its chief of wonders. I 
 wrote to her before I slept, and while I sat there throw- 
 ing off page after page of fervid asseveration, Mary 
 and aunt Cely sat down there in the yard below in a 
 monotone of talk. 
 
 Next morning I was a new man. I could work 
 again. I must work, my triumphing heart told me, 
 for now I had thrones and altars to build, and woman's 
 soft needs to satisfy. And as I am a living man, not 
 knowing to this day how I did it, I wrote two stories 
 of Little Italy before nightfall, to the tune of four 
 hundred dollars each, and they were of my best, and 
 
90 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I knew I could do the same every day with that great 
 golden bribe of heaven's making to draw me on. And 
 that night of course I wrote to her again. 
 
 X 
 
 Now it might easily be disbelieved that, from this 
 time until I married Mildred Lee I saw her only six 
 times in all. Those incredible six times, each one 
 starred and written in red in the book of my heart ! 
 once in the orchard, once on a hot Sunday when 
 I came down to be with the boys and walked with 
 them and her interminable miles in the space of 
 half an hour, silent and raging because I could not 
 speak to her alone, once on the veranda of the inn 
 when the rain was whirling and the old ladies had all 
 gone into the dining room to play cards and knit. 
 That day had been darkness itself without her, and 
 when twilight came and the rain with it, I had thrown 
 my papers together on my table in the little Burke 
 Street room, and desperately, whether I was to find 
 welcome or not, run to the station and gone to the 
 Apple Tree door with a purpose of demanding her, 
 as if even the little boy in the overalls wanted to 
 keep her from me. But she, heaven sent, I knew, 
 had strayed to the door for a breath and met me, 
 and now came out and put her hand on my arm and 
 we paced back and forth, back and forth in silence, 
 and my tempest calmed. I can feel to this day the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 91 
 
 wet breath of the wind as it lashed at us when we 
 turned by the woodbine to go back again, and still I 
 could say nothing, nothing for was not her com- 
 pany all I asked? And twice there were really long 
 talks, long, serious talks in the pine woods behind the 
 house, pacing back and forth and settling what our 
 Me together was to be. This was after Miss Har- 
 pinger had been told and had gone into unbridled 
 tantrums at Mildred Lee for leaving her when Mary 
 Harpinger had thought she had engaged her for a 
 mortal span, and against me for daring to pluck her 
 servitor away from her. All this I knew by letter. 
 Miss Harpinger was unappeasably angry. She had 
 taken to her bed. She caterwauled like an affronted 
 beast. She offered every inducement to be good if 
 only Mildred Lee would stay with her. We wrote 
 daily, Mildred in her firm square hand always dis- 
 passionate chronicles of the latest that had occurred, 
 and I in love's rhythm. And to this she said not a 
 word save in a postscript twice, a little line, "You are 
 a silly boy." And this I thought very gracious of 
 her, and very tender indeed for one so highly set. 
 But it was she who summoned me for the first talk in 
 the orchard, and met me there on the moment. She 
 wore a light blue dress, and I put into her hands the 
 white roses I had brought. Foolish, ill-done perhaps, 
 to bring the florist's nurslings into this surging coun- 
 try life. But I had to bring her something, and as 
 yet nothing had seemed good enough to buy. There 
 
92 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 was the little ring, a turquoise and two tiny diamonds 
 - how alive the stones were on her white hand ! - 
 but really nothing but flowers looked worthy of her. 
 She held the roses to her breast, and we walked, my 
 hand touching her bare elbow, softly, because as yet 
 I had a noble fear of her. It was a beautiful fear, 
 more wondrous then to me than the heights of pos- 
 session as I saw them. This day we talked of many 
 things. The wedding day was set, and had been for a 
 week, the third of September, and now we were in 
 June. But she could not possibly, she said, leave 
 Miss Harpinger before. That would give her time to 
 get reconciled, and Mildred time to hire a new com- 
 panion and break her in. 
 
 "I wonder, " she said then, so hesitatingly that I 
 thought this was shyness and I had found a new 
 beauty ip. her, "I wonder if we could consider having 
 her live with us." 
 
 "Who?" I asked stupidly. 
 
 "Miss Harpinger." 
 
 I could only repeat the name, again stupidly. I 
 could as easily imagine a person who had escaped 
 Miss Harpinger deliberating over a return as I could 
 the trainer of his own will taking an afternoon nap in 
 the lion's mouth. 
 
 "She is not a young woman," said Mildred, not as 
 if she were persuading me, but perhaps setting the 
 case before us both impartially. "She hasn't long to 
 live. I've asked the doctor to tell me that quite 
 
MY LOVE AND I 93 
 
 frankly. She's rich, you know, oh, really rich. She 
 could live anywhere, but she'd give her little finger 
 to be with us. She'd make it up to us. She's got no 
 relatives." 
 
 The sequence of things flashed into my head, and 
 with it the shameful implication that I was being 
 tempted: not by her no, no, but by my own base 
 nature that could do its little sum and come to the 
 result that Mary Harpinger, helped gently down the 
 grade of years, might pay for kindness at the end. 
 
 "No," I said, the more violently that I was ashamed 
 with a shame Mildred could never share, "no, no." 
 
 She seemed to accept that at once, gently, temper- 
 ately, as she always met me, and answered : 
 
 "There'd be room enough, you see. We haven't 
 talked houses yet, have we?" 
 
 No, we hadn't talked them, but I had my little plan. 
 There was a new apartment house on the corner of 
 Burke Street and Palm. Its windows, some of them, 
 overlooked the garden where aunt Cely and Mary 
 held thek summer powwows. We might even see 
 them there paring pineapples in the season. I thought 
 Mary would like that. I knew I should. And the 
 new apartments had modern conveniences. The sign 
 said so. All this about the size of the apartments and 
 their having a place to dry washing on the roof, I 
 poured out to Mildred and she listened with her un- 
 varying interest, and at the end she said: 
 
 "Have you ever noticed those houses on Osborne 
 
94 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Street, the ones with the big knockers and the fanlights 
 over the doors?" 
 
 Osborne Street! we could as well go to Russia as go 
 to Osborne Street. I gasped as much. 
 
 " Dearest," I said, in an agony over having to deny 
 her, "you ought to have everything, but I'm poor." 
 
 She put up the roses and slapped my cheek with 
 them, a petal slap, all velvety and fragrant. 
 
 "You go in, when you get back, and take a look at 
 them," she said; "34 and 36 are vacant." 
 
 What good would it do me to take a look at them? 
 But I did go, and I did take a look, and the calm beauty 
 and coolness of them in the summer day wrapped me 
 round beguilingly. I wandered up and down in number 
 34 that had the view of the west over the water 
 and thought I was dreaming about how it would seem 
 if the dining-table could be here, and her boudoir there, 
 and wonderful little intimate corners up and down. 
 I gave myself quite up to it, this dreaming, so that 
 I could write her about it that night like a beautiful 
 fairy story of what we could have if we only could. 
 But when I sat down to the table to write it, the words 
 got twisted, and instead of telling it like a dream I told 
 it as if it were true, and next day I went and signed the 
 lease for it, and behold all the little intimate corners in 
 it were to be ours after all. 
 
 Another time I saw her was when, in a madness of 
 young love, I dashed down to Romney and summoned 
 her to the parlor with its tidies and mottoes, only to 
 
MY LOVE AND I 95 
 
 ask her if she had loved anybody before she loved me, 
 and then in the same breath adjured her if she had 
 never to let me know. But paying no manner of heed 
 to this last, she was answering, so simply and directly 
 that my heart blessed her for it, that she had once been 
 engaged to marry "a sort of cousin, Tom Gorham, who 
 had gone to South America and taken a position 
 there." 
 
 "To make money." My jealous heart prompted my 
 jealous lips. "To make money to let you marry. 
 Where is he now?" 
 
 She didn't know. His uncle, in whose banking house 
 he had been, had had a dreadful and complete failure, 
 and she had written Tom that it was useless for them 
 to think of marrying after all. So the engagement 
 was broken, and Tom had married out there a 
 colored person, she believed. I was immediately no 
 more jealous of Tom. Othello could not have com- 
 passed passion in the face of her precision of detail, and 
 his marrying a colored person perhaps without delay. 
 
 But while I was whirling through paradise at such 
 a pace, so that even the flowers there made a blur of 
 brightness only, the boys knew nothing about the struct- 
 ural strength of the palace I had built. They were 
 very good to me in a gentle, humane, patient way, as 
 if I were still having an illness and must be humored. 
 That amused me when I thought of it, but really I 
 thought of it, or of them, only incidentally : for I saw 
 everything through fog at this time, everything but 
 
96 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Mildred Lee and the house. As to the house itself, 
 I had no idea how I was to pay for it ; but that gave 
 me no manner of discomfort. One miraele had hap- 
 pened, and the succession of miracles was easy. The 
 old logical sequence of life was interrupted, and now 
 I had every reason to know I was thenceforth to be 
 treated like a prince of the blood. This was not my 
 desert, I was still humble enough to guess. It was 
 only because my life had been linked to Mildred Lee. 
 
 One day in July when I was doing great stunts at 
 journalism for I had caught on after a fashion on a 
 daily paper and was down on the wharfs and in the 
 thick of the car strike I met Johnnie McCann, he 
 going down the harbor, as he instantly told me with 
 cheerfulness, because he felt one of his suicidal fits 
 coming on, and he thought a whiff of salt air might do 
 him good. 
 
 "Great luck, these days, for the Toasted Cheese," 
 said he. He was carrying his straw hat in his hand 
 it had an absurd red, white, and blue ribbon and he 
 looked like the merriest of little grigs instead of a fellow 
 chronically challenging the last change. I thought he 
 meant my luck, and asked him how he knew. 
 
 "Why, all of us know/' said he. "I should take it 
 mighty unfriendly of him if we didn't. " 
 
 "Of him?" 
 
 "Of Blake. You're in the house with him. You 
 ought to know." 
 
 I hadn't seen Blake for a fortnight, and I was ashamed 
 
MY LOVE AND I 97 
 
 to say that, or that I didn't know. But Johnnie was 
 full of his subject, and had to enlarge upon it in a way 
 equivalent to telling me. Blake, it seemed, had as 
 good as sold his poetic drama to Montresor, who called 
 himself the leading actor of the day. They were to 
 meet when Montresor got back from Europe, to go 
 over certain finical details hi the second act. But 
 that was all, absolutely all that had been challenged 
 in the play, and Montresor had practically taken it. 
 Johnnie wasn't thinking about me, and I was relieved be- 
 cause now I needn't excuse myself, and nettled in that 
 they hadn't missed me more. But when I got home 
 that night I ran up to Blake's room and found him sizz- 
 ling over proof. 
 
 "I've had this set up," he said to me. "My play, 
 yes. Confound the thing. No, no, I don't dare to 
 cuss it. But it's given me an awful lot of bother. I 
 don't know now whether my rhymes rhyme or my feet 
 march. I've mulled over it till I'm blind to it and 
 heard it till I'm deaf." 
 
 He looked tremendously excited and worried, too, 
 not in the least like a man who has had good fortune. 
 I plunged into that his good fortune and he 
 answered me absently. 
 
 "Yes, of course it's great luck. Nobody could do 
 anything with it anything I could bear but 
 Montresor. Of course he's the top of the tree. But 
 after all, that isn't the point. The point's the thing 
 itself. If it's good, if it's perfect Redfield," here 
 
98 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 he grew intimate, in a way exalting me, for Blake seemed 
 such a very great person indeed that I felt myself 
 growing perceptibly since he could confide in me 
 "Redfield, I give you my word I don't know now 
 whether it's good or whether it isn't. Suppose it limps. 
 Suppose it isn't winged at all, but goes thud, thud, words 
 tottering out to their own destruction. I could give up 
 the ship if that's so. Yes, I could give up the ship." 
 
 He was talking wildly and at random. I wondered 
 what giving up the ship would mean : but he was not 
 capable now of telling me connectedly, and I said, as a 
 species of rather trivial comfort, 
 
 "You read me the love scene. That was great. 
 You know that, don't you?" 
 
 Here he brooded and didn't answer this at all. I 
 wished he would let me read it, but I was too shy to ask 
 it, and thought I knew his opinion of me too well. 
 
 "Are you working for the Bally Thief?' 1 I said, 
 and he started out of his maze, as if in wonder that I 
 could ask. 
 
 "No," he said, "oh, no. I haven't had time. I've 
 been reading a lot of Greek translations, worse luck. 
 I thought it would help, get me into the spirit of the 
 third act. No, I shan't have time to do that sort of 
 thing any more." 
 
 Here he forgot me altogether, and I grew rather 
 frightened at seeing how gaunt he looked, as if he hadn't 
 eaten for days, and how his eyes shone. So I ran 
 downstairs to see Mary, and ask her what she thought 
 
MY LOVE AND I 99 
 
 we could do for him. But Mary, aunt Cely said, had 
 been gone a week on her vacation. She had a month 
 this year, and she was spending it in the village where 
 Mr. Haley boarded his sister's boy. The boy wasn't 
 very well, and Mr. Haley thought he should feel easier 
 if Mary would take a look at things. Mr. Haley had 
 run down over Sunday. He could give the last news 
 of Mary. Dear man! he'd be glad to, he was so pleased 
 to think the boy was under Mary's eye. At this I was 
 miffed, and wouldn't have asked him at any price. It 
 was plainly an impertinence for a little, round, redheaded 
 man to absorb our beneficent Mary, especially if Blake 
 needed her. But next day, when I went to Blake's 
 room, he had gone to New York, aunt Cely said, to meet 
 that actor, she believed, something about a play. So I 
 delivered myself over to romances converging on Little 
 Italy, and just before, the very day before Mildred was 
 to come up to buy furniture and rugs, appeared a mirac- 
 ulous emissary of Rees and Dresser, the big New York 
 publishers, with a proposition : to buy me and my work 
 for the space of a year and pay me proportionately for 
 my lost liberty. Journalism was to get its walking 
 ticket. I was not a business man, nor have I ever 
 become one; but that day, with the vision of house 
 rent to pay and multitudinous furniture looming up 
 against me and the Angel in the House imminent to 
 weave the fabric of her future and look at beauties and 
 comforts with sweet unworldly eyes, not recking what 
 they cost : with this tumultuous circumstance against 
 
100 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 me I was galvanized into some sort of shrewdness and 
 fought for money as if it were my life. And the emis- 
 sary went up surprisingly in his bid, and left me gasping. 
 So that when Mildred came up to buy her furnishings, 
 I could go with her in some semblance of security, and 
 that was the sixth time I saw her and the last before 
 she met me at the church. 
 
 XI 
 
 AND after all I never told Blake, the man I loved best 
 after Egerton Sims, that I was to be married ; and the 
 day even came and he had not been told. But having 
 gone to New York to work out his play with Mon- 
 tresor, he stayed there, and even Mary could give me 
 no more news. I have a theory she could not write 
 him because she missed him, the vital presence of him, 
 too much to say so in any form and even to keep from 
 saying so if she once gave herself leave to write. I might 
 have written him myself, but I was hammering away 
 at Little Italy, feeding it into the hopper and snatching 
 it out at the other end in rugs and chairs and curtains, 
 mysterious lendings that Mildred came up to order, 
 and that I believed in as a part of the ritual of the new 
 worship. In that last interview she had said to me, 
 something to my bewilderment, 
 
 "We ought to decide where we are going to church." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 That was all I could say. I had gone devoutly in the 
 
MY LOVE AtfD I. 101 
 
 island because Egerton Sims had assumed it as a part 
 of the propriety of conduct, but I had an idea that I 
 had laid it aside with other alien rigors of his dutiful 
 life. They were garments that fitted him, not me. 
 But as to Mildred and me, I had not thought of us as 
 leaving our domestic paradise to go to church. 
 
 "Miss Harpinger," said she, "goes to Doctor Ever- 
 est's." 
 
 Perfect as she was, I wished she would not quote 
 Mary Harpinger. The woman was a blot, wilfully 
 disfiguring the page of life. I could see she had gone 
 on deepening her hue, making herself blacker and 
 blacker all the useless days she lived. 
 
 "So," said Mildred, "I've seen more or less of the 
 people. They're brainy, all of them, and very well 
 placed. They've got money to spend, and they read. 
 I think we'd better settle on them." 
 
 "You don't mean money to spend on my books," 
 I said, in a foolish mirth, because even now I knew 
 how unstable my beginnings of books seemed to me. 
 But Mildred did not smile, and my joke immediately 
 dwindled in my eyes. 
 
 "I really think," said she, "I think we'd better make 
 up our minds to Doctor Everest's. And we'll be 
 married there." 
 
 I had been born and grounded in the custom of the 
 lover and his lass driving to the country minister to 
 be married, with a casual witness drawn in from the 
 kitchen or the barn. But this, I knew, argued me a 
 
102 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 groundling. I had no traditions of a dignified type, 
 and if I could have bought it for her, Mildred should 
 have been married in a cathedral under the blazon 
 of stained glass. Though she had no kindred save the 
 unfortunate Tom who had declined upon a colored 
 person, I knew from innate certainty how perfect her 
 traditions were. Therefore I humbly accepted my 
 tryst with her at Doctor Everest's church, and when 
 she told me by letter that two friends of Miss Harpinger, 
 a man and a woman exceedingly well placed in Boston, 
 were to stand up with us, I accepted that, too, though I 
 should have liked Blake for my own best man. But Blake 
 was hidden in the fastnesses of his poetic rapture there 
 in New York, and I dared not summon him forth even 
 by the bugle note to Mildred Lee's wedding. And all 
 the other fellows of the Toasted Cheese, dear as they 
 were, yet seemed more fitted to the tinkling calls of life, 
 and after Blake, I might as well have an unknown as 
 anybody. I did tell the boys, though late. I pur- 
 posely made it late because I didn't want any healths 
 drunk at the Cheese, any gay felicitations. This joy 
 of mine seemed a secret and a solemn thing. I could 
 have no profaning feet upon the pavement of my dream. 
 But meeting Johnnie McCann in the street, two days 
 before we went to church, I threw him the great news 
 impulsively and asked him to tell the others. I need 
 not have feared too loud a note of sympathetic joy. 
 He looked at me as if I had struck him stiff and sense- 
 less. Then he muttered, "Good God!" apparently 
 
MY LOVE AND I 103 
 
 to himself, and hurried on, pursued, I made no doubt, 
 by his old mania. I smiled at it then. I told myself 
 Johnnie was a funny boy. But he and the others were 
 funnier than I thought, or than they did, either; for 
 the next day I got notice from a popular furnishing 
 store that an oak sideboard had been bought for me 
 and was awaiting my directions before being sent : 
 " Compliments of the Toasted Cheese." I telegraphed 
 this information to Mildred, my heart so soft over the 
 fellows that I wanted to invite them to the ceremony. 
 And Mildred telegraphed back: "Have price of side- 
 board put to your account. Wedding private. How 
 could we invite them?" Well, how could we? I 
 saw that at once, but I felt cold-hearted and shilly- 
 shallying not to have treated the boys as well as they 
 had treated me. I saw, too, her point about the side- 
 board. She had her sideboard, a rather magnificent 
 antique affair that cost half a story, and she had but 
 one dining room and two sideboards couldn't very well 
 fight it out together there, since we must have place 
 to eat. But I wouldn't turn the sideboard into my 
 account. I loved it heartily because the boys had 
 given it to me, and I went out and stealthily, I thought 
 with a wry smile, hired a corner of a store-room in a 
 warehouse and put my sideboard there. And so re- 
 minded of the unloosed ties of life, I wrote Mary a 
 letter, warm as I could make it, and told her I was 
 going to be married and she must meet my wife. 
 
 The night before my marriage whether I was in the 
 
104 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 body or not I did not know. I didn't smoke, usually. 
 It was partly the reaction of Blake and Egerton Sims 
 on what was still my imitative youth ; but that night 
 I sat by the window and watched the western sky and 
 my pipe was by. The sky kept me company from rose 
 and blood color to its virgin star, and it was all a symbol 
 of what was soon to be. First the rose of our heaven- 
 descended passion and then the stars, mysterious ward- 
 ers set to light our hope, the guardians of our blended 
 life. For I knew this blush was but the splendor of 
 the marriage eve. I knew the actual world was dark 
 like night, and we two were to find our way through it 
 together. Yet those heavenly warders would be always 
 there. And the life in me became almost an anguish, 
 it was so keen; for chiefly I was afraid, and it was all 
 for her. How could I make her happy, this softest 
 creature, this snow and fire and dew of womankind? 
 how could I ease the path before her tender feet ? how 
 should I keep the outcry of the world from battling 
 at her casement? I looked to myself a rough chap 
 indeed to have essayed so brave a charge. What would 
 she find me in a month or so of my blunt-witted levity ? 
 And then, driven by the wonder and sharp joy and 
 pain of it all, I sat down at my table with no purpose 
 save that the soul in me had to speak, and wrote it down: 
 all I could catch of it from the heavenly voice that 
 seemed to be dropping fears and longings into my heart, 
 dropping them all over my room indeed, for they were 
 like angels too heavily laden with blooth, so that the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 105 
 
 petals fell. And it was lyric, the falling of these petals, 
 and it beat into lines, and I saw, with no interest be- 
 cause the laden angels were of so much vaster import 
 than what I had been able to gather of their scattered 
 store, that I was writing verse. And after I had put 
 into it what I was able to gather in both hands of 
 the blossom shower the rose of the sky and the 
 warder stars and my delight in the coming of the bride 
 and my fear of her austere state and my vow that so 
 far as I, her servitor, could guard it, her path should 
 be made plain I dropped my head on my arms on 
 the table and slept there, and after a minute, it seemed, 
 it was morning and this was my great day. And the 
 rest of it passed like a dream, with a correct stranger 
 standing at my side in the church, and the touch of 
 Mildred's hand and her promising irrevocable things 
 in her calm voice. And we drove to our own house 
 and found luncheon set by the "accommodator" she 
 had engaged to serve us until she had time to look 
 about her and arrange her household. And there I 
 found my bag, brought over from aunt Cely's that 
 morning, and -strangely that seemed to me the most 
 incredible circumstance of all and the most final. 
 Here were the last of my traps. I had sent the others 
 before. The bag marked the line between the old life 
 and this uncharted one. I had told aunt Cely where 
 I was going, and why I had given up the room the week 
 before, and she had put up her colossal arms and 
 wrapped me in them. I dare say she would have 
 
106 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 kissed me if I had bent to it, but I wanted no kisses 
 save from one. 
 
 "You are a good boy/' said aunt Cely. "I know 
 she's a good girl. What does she do ?" 
 
 In Burke Street we all did something, man and 
 woman. There were even a few laundresses at the less 
 hopeful end of it, who carried home parcels in checked 
 gingham to fortify husbands that took their sedentary 
 recreation in the Common. 
 
 " She is a princess," said I, in the pride of my crown- 
 ing. 
 
 "Well, well!" said aunt Cely. She always knew 
 what you meant, even if you did speak in figures. 
 Though she weighed two hundred and twelve, she had 
 been born in Arcadia those sixty years ago. "Well, 
 you tell her to be good to you." 
 
 "Tell me to be good to her," said I like lightning, and 
 she was as ready. 
 
 "You will that. You're a good boy. Wait a sec- 
 ond." She toiled back into the parlor and brought out 
 a little cup of the three left from her old set. "Here," 
 said she, "I wish 'twas more, but the other two are for 
 John Blake and Mary some day. Bring your wife 
 to see me. Tell her I'd come myself, but it's hard for 
 me to get round." 
 
 So I had gone to my new home with the cup hung 
 on one finger and some books in the other hand. The 
 little cup moved me tremendously, thinking how good 
 everybody had been to me always, and for no desert of 
 
MY LOVE AND I 107 
 
 mine. And that afternoon, when we had broken bread 
 together, Mildred and I, at our own table, I brought 
 out the little cup and told her how nice aunt Cely had 
 been, and how we must go round to call on her in a day 
 or two. I can see Mildred now sitting there in her 
 perfect light gray dress, turning the cup in her delicate 
 fingers. 
 
 "Lowestoft," she said. 
 
 Later, when the west was aflush again, I remembered 
 the crumpled papers thrust into a book in that instant 
 of leaving Burke Street, and took them out, looked at 
 them, and they seemed something mine and yet partly 
 strange to me. But it was hers, too, the half of it, nay, 
 all, for the call of her spirit to mine had generated it 
 and called the petals and the wings. 
 
 "Come here," I said. "I want to read you some- 
 thing." And I led her to the western window and 
 drew her down beside me on the window-seat and kept 
 my arm about her. I seemed to have grown very stern, 
 like iron in my tenderness. I did not know the man I 
 had become. And I read her all the long poem, and 
 she listened in that stillness of hers that always seemed 
 to be waiting and never to have adequate impulses of 
 its own to break it. And as I read I wondered. It 
 was not mine, I knew. It belonged to that upper air 
 where the stars have ordered courses, and it kept an 
 inevitable flow and rhythm such as I could not imagine 
 altered. It was one of the things that are. You can- 
 not change them. If you try, they fly back like a 
 
108 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 growing branch, bound down in its first spring vigor, to 
 the curve its healthy cells have made. I finished, and 
 I wondered what she would say. 
 
 "What do you call it?" she asked me, still in the 
 clear voice that told no tales of her. 
 
 " Nothing. Yes, it's an epithalamium. That's all." 
 
 " Where are you going to send it?" 
 
 Send it ? Then the answer came in a rush from my 
 hot heart to my brain. This was the answer, "I 
 have sent it in reading it to you. I have sent it to the 
 red heart beating under your white breast." But my 
 lips could not utter that. They were sealed by my 
 great fear. 
 
 XII 
 
 WHEN I look back at the months after my marriage, 
 I see chiefly a succession of days spent in the hardest 
 work I had, up to that time, done. In moving into 
 the house on a street above my worldly status, I had 
 set in motion gigantic machinery that would not stop, 
 and indeed had to be fed lest it should slacken. Life re- 
 solved itself into a demand for money. There were people 
 below stairs, working very hard I was willing to believe, 
 so that Mildred and I, in our pretty state at our pol- 
 ished table, could eat of the best, suitably served. 
 There were other persons in an obscurity outside our 
 vision, ransacking the earth for luscious fruits, making 
 the coldest of storages for perishable products, killing 
 
MY LOVE AND I 109 
 
 animals that we might gather in enough proteids, 
 keeping an unvarying temperature in greenhouses that 
 we might have violets, and weaving and spinning and 
 embroidering that our state should be clothed. And 
 for all this intricate system of congested production 
 I had to work, sometimes by night as well as by day, 
 to find my just equivalent. When I flagged for a 
 moment in invention never in endurance, for I was 
 very strong even then I never thought of the pos- 
 sibility of being less at ease in the hostelry of the world. 
 So far I had not thought longingly of the goods of the 
 earth. I liked the crude abundance at aunt Cely's, also 
 the honest dearth. When we had an ice sent in there, 
 it had seemed like an enormous festival, like the snow 
 brought from the mountains for Persian kings. But this 
 sitting in the centre and letting the goods of the earth 
 revolve past, stopping benignly for us to take a portion, 
 always paying that toll I sometimes found it hard to 
 satisfy, this seemed to me a monstrous ordered confusion, 
 but something that had got to be kept up. I was still 
 turning out my stories of Little Italy, and it was com- 
 monly said that I was astonishingly prolific. It was 
 dull work, sometimes hateful work. I was following 
 my recipe as exactly as a horse in a treadmill puts 
 down his feet. The stories must be short, full of 
 sentiment, tinged with optimism, and there should 
 be that little snap of surprise at the end. I could do 
 them with my eyes shut, and almost with my mind 
 asleep. Mildred would say something to me across 
 
110 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the coffee cups, something that either charmed or hurt 
 me she hurt me only when I felt we were hallooing 
 to each other from different continents of foreign minds 
 and I could sometimes actually make two stories out 
 of it, one of misunderstanding made miraculously plain 
 and one of perfect understanding glorified. And in the 
 middle of the winter I had grippe and my mind went to 
 sleep, all but the vague trouble of feeling it was not at 
 its post feeding the industrial hopper of the world ; 
 and when it woke up I heard a hated voice from the 
 floor below giving orders as if it were much at home. 
 Mildred was setting my medicine table in trim in the 
 deft way she had, not a shade less tranquil for the extra 
 burden she must have carried. 
 
 "Who's that?" I said. 
 
 The effort seemed to send me singing off in waves 
 of ebbing nothingness. 
 
 She did not hesitate. 
 
 "Miss Harpinger," said she. 
 
 I tried again to speak, but words would not serve me, 
 and I gave an unbridled sound comparable to the speech 
 of the lower animals, and this, I suppose, was a groan. 
 I thought I understood. I must have been ill for 
 months. (It was only two weeks, but that I could not 
 compass.) I thought she, the queen of my luxurious 
 little kingdom greening on the edge of an abyss, had 
 been terrified at seeing me, the purveyor of life, laid 
 flat, and she had called in this raucous element of the 
 world of money to stand by us in our need. It was 
 
MY LOVE AND I 111 
 
 pitiful to me, because so ineffably sweet of Mildred. 
 For of course the labor of it all would come on her. 
 To be that unfortunate and uncatalogued thing, a com- 
 panion, was her only industry, her way of meeting the 
 world, delicate child as she was. So she had taken the 
 raw product which was Mary Harpinger, into what was 
 the stillness of our expensive walls, to foster her and 
 fulfil her outrageous claims. All the demands of 
 Mary Harpinger seemed to me outrageous because I 
 could not consider that the hateful fungus of her dis- 
 torted will might easily be overlooked by a pity greater 
 than mine, that saw how she was cut off by her disease 
 from the normal attitude of life. I made a clutch at 
 my own normal life then by resolving as definitely as so 
 weak a thing could do, that the day I stood on my feet 
 again Mary Harpinger should leave the house. So I 
 shut my eyes and gave myself up to the healing and 
 strengthening powers as far as I might, because this 
 one domestic shock was enough to show me I must 
 conserve my wasted force to the end of getting "fit." 
 I ate prodigiously as soon as hunger came to me, and 
 encouraged it and slept savagely, burrowing down 
 into lethargy because, as I was now, my brain found 
 no fecund impulses toward stories of Little Italy, 
 even to the end of buying the weekly butter. And 
 one day I felt much like myself, and got on my clothes 
 with unaccustomed hands, and sat by the window feel- 
 ing foolishly small. 
 
 " Any letters?" I asked. 
 
112 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Mildred was covering my knees with the green and 
 blue plaid cape I had once seen her wear in a rain at 
 Romney, and it brought back the swelling love of that 
 new time, when I scarcely dared look at her wet cheek 
 for thinking what the touch of it would be in its fresh 
 cool bloom. I took up her hand as it dropped the 
 plaidie over me, and I kissed it, and thought she too 
 must be knowing what my memory had been. 
 
 " Yes," said she, "there are letters. I opened them." 
 She brought them. There were business letters. 
 One had held a check, and this she had deposited. 
 That was right. There were two offers from magazines 
 for stories. These I could not consider, because I was 
 sold outright to Rees and Dresser. But there was one 
 small envelope with an eccentric neat writing I knew. I 
 felt the blood come into my cheeks. I felt like a lover. 
 It was from Blake, and a part of me loved him more than 
 almost anything on earth, in a certain way. I could 
 almost smile, in a tender fashion, over this love of mine 
 for Blake. It belonged to the side of me that saw 
 literature a long way off, like an accomplished structure, 
 a thing architecturally beautiful and strong to last, 
 to which all the nations had brought then* tribute, one 
 a stone and another a frost-work of frieze. A warm 
 wave of pleasure came over me. So he had known I was 
 ill, and he had written me to say he was sorry. But the 
 letter itself threw me into a wonder. It was no such 
 curt, kind heartening as Blake might have written, the 
 hail of man to man. It was a hot panegyric on some- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 113 
 
 thing I had done, full of flaming adjectives, laudations, 
 extravagant, indeed, but tempered by what I could see 
 he was sure was the justice of them. It was written 
 with the measured beat of great prose, as if he felt the 
 subject-matter demanded his finest periods, as if he 
 could not, in the presence of perfection, chant its 
 laudations in any but the purest measures. I felt my- 
 self exhilarated by it, upborne as on the angels with 
 four wings to highest ether, and though I was conscious 
 of having done nothing to deserve it, yet I felt beatifi- 
 cally conscious that I must have done something after 
 all, since Blake must know. I read a phrase of it here 
 and there to Mildred, who was putting the room in 
 order as she had an accurate habit of doing. Her 
 touch upon a room was like a pianist's upon keys, 
 always to the end of harmony. 
 
 "Hear this/' I said. "What does it mean? 'Noth- 
 ing more exquisite since Keats/ ' Perhaps Keats himself 
 never compassed that sense of the dewy beginnings, 
 the march out of sunrise across the plain of day.' 
 'More love in it than anything but the one immor- 
 tal lyric' oh, what does he mean, what does he 
 mean?" 
 
 She was standing by the table, putting jonquils into 
 a vase, and she looked over at me, a jonquil in her hand. 
 Standing there, her slim young figure against the gray- 
 green of the wall, no line of emotion graven in her face, 
 she was illusory as spring and as mysterious. That 
 veil we call beauty, our wonder and our despair, was 
 
114 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 over her from the crown of her bright head to her 
 perfect foot. Yet I did not know what she was thinking 
 any more than I knew whether the spring itself was 
 cognizant of worship. And perhaps from my weakness, 
 I felt far away from her, and pity for us both that her 
 soul, too, must go uncomprehended. When I was at my 
 physical best, blood currents running free and some 
 reckless abandon in me, this illusiveness of hers gave 
 me a sense of something to attain. But now I was too 
 weak to take even one conquering step toward her, and 
 it saddened me. In my physical poverty I was clinging 
 to her like a child, and I put out my querulous plaint to 
 be illumined, reassured. 
 
 "Look here," I said. "Read this. What does he 
 mean?" 
 
 "I've looked at it," said she, as if it were a matter of 
 no moment. "It's the Epithalamium he means." 
 
 "I haven't written any - There I stopped. Had 
 the leaping flame of that pre-nuptial night somehow 
 been caught, the flare of it only, by alien profane eyes ? 
 Even John Blake's, the very pulse of poetry, even his eyes 
 were profane if they had seen those words, that were 
 the trysting of my soul with hers. Had I, in the 
 vagueness or even the delirium of this hateful illness, 
 in some mad moment sent them to him? 
 
 "Mildred," I implored, "what does he mean?" 
 
 She had been running her duster over the polished 
 table and then regarding it with righteous care to catch 
 the maid in service slackly done. The little frown over 
 
MY LOVE AND I 115 
 
 her estimate smoothed momentarily, and she took up a 
 magazine from the table and brought it to me as suffi- 
 cient answer. 
 
 "Here," she said. She turned the leaves in her deft 
 way whose every motion counted, and held it for me. 
 There were black spots swimming before my eyes, but 
 I could read the page. "An Epithalamium, by 
 Martin Redfield." And then began the lines that had 
 been so much a part of the sunset and the dark that 
 I was like a fool surprised that type could echo them. I 
 looked up at her, and the vision of her swam in con- 
 fusion: for my eyes were full of tears. I was un- 
 speakably humble before her. It was inconceivable to 
 me that I could have done a thing like that, even in the 
 madness of physical overthrow, and she still regard 
 me with her unmoved favor. 
 
 "I didn't " I began in miserable disclaimer. 
 "Yes," I said, "I must have sent it, but I didn't 
 know." 
 
 She shut the book with one of her serviceable, swift 
 motions. 
 
 "Now," said she, "you must have your egg." 
 
 I had to go back to bed presently. The doctor came, 
 and seemed to think me unreasonably tired. He asked 
 if I had had any worry or a shock of some sort, and I 
 said, "no." 
 
 I never answered that letter from John Blake. Even 
 when I was on my feet and rather doggedly turning out 
 more Little Italy, because we had fallen far behind in 
 
116 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 our expenses, even then I would not read the poem. 
 The magazine lay there on the table until one day, 
 when I was alone, I fell upon it and tore it with fury, a 
 little ashamed of my passion and glad nobody saw me 
 thrust it on the fire. And that afternoon Mildred 
 came to me when I was sardonically inventing a senti- 
 mental turn to the end of a story, and asked : 
 
 "Do you know where the Torch Bearer is? Miss 
 Eliot wants to see your poem." 
 
 Miss Eliot was a tall, long-footed, erudite person of 
 locally imperishable blood who was feeding upon 
 lectures with a rounded certainty that they made the 
 intellectual life, and came to share them with Miss 
 Harpinger in sips. The only redeeming feature I had 
 thus far seen in Miss Harpinger was her brutal scorn of 
 Mattie Eliot, who, she said, was a fool that had got the 
 idea books were invented yesterday. 
 
 "Do you know where it is?" Mildred asked. She 
 was still searching. 
 
 "No," said I. 
 
 I made a surprised note of it as the first lie I had told 
 her. My eyes were at that moment frowningly on the 
 gray, slaty disorder of the burned paper in the grate, 
 like a hornet's nest in ruins. I found myself smiling 
 at the significance of that. Her eyes followed mine 
 to the grate. 
 
 "You've been burning your papers!" said she. 
 "Don't you think you'd better put them in the basket ? 
 When they're in the grate they blow so." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 117 
 
 "Yes," said I. "I'll put them in the basket after 
 this." 
 
 That day it was, Mildred told me Miss Harpinger 
 wanted to come to the table. Heretofore her meals had 
 been served in her room, but she had an idea my con- 
 versation might be amusing, and she was willing to 
 make the painful effort of getting down. 
 
 "I thought," said Mildred, "you could help O'Neil 
 carry her." 
 
 O'Neil was the furnace man, a benevolent, smoky 
 visitant. Even through the pipes I got his amazingly 
 bad tobacco, and though I had kept him supplied with 
 my own brand, he had accepted it as something well 
 meant and kept on with his own choice. 
 
 "We can't do that," said I, in a hurry. 
 
 "Why can't you?" Mildred asked. "She'd appre- 
 ciate it very much." 
 
 "O'Neil smells like the dickens," said I, being a 
 coward. I was willing enough to put it on O'Neil. 
 I'd have put it on Gabriel to keep Mary Harpinger 
 out of the dining room. 
 
 "I told her so," Mildred said, "but she's very sweet 
 about it. You'll have to be here about twenty minutes 
 earlier than usual. That'll give you time to dress for 
 dinner, and get her down in season. She'd really ap- 
 preciate it very much." 
 
 Then I broke down and implored her not to let this 
 thing be, not to make me see her waste her youth in 
 tendance on that egotistical old shell of what had never 
 
118 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 been a human creature worth the saving. If she was 
 doing it for compassion alone, as I believed, would she 
 not shift her tenderness to me even if not to herself in 
 conjunction with me ? Mary Harpinger, the sound of 
 her, the thought of her, was poisoning my home. 
 
 " Martin," said my wife, "wait a minute. She pays 
 us twenty-five dollars a week." 
 
 It was true, then, this was my dear's sacrifice to the 
 gods of home. I took her hands and kissed them. 
 
 "Mildred," I said, "if that's it, get her out to-morrow. 
 I can plug twice as hard as I'm doing now. With the 
 house to ourselves, I shall be another chap altogether. 
 You can't tell her she's got to go. Let me tell her." 
 
 "No," said Mildred. Her face settled into a still sort 
 of look it had at times, deeper than its daily calm. 
 "No. We can't do that." 
 
 And we didn't do it for that winter, and next summer 
 she went down with Mary Harpinger to Romney, and I 
 stayed in the cool, lonesome city house, and went down for 
 week ends only. And some week ends I didn't go at all. 
 I said I had work to do, and Mildred never questioned 
 whether it could have been deferred. The line had been 
 effectively passed, since the day I gave her that first 
 false No. It was easier, in domestic exigencies, to offer 
 conventional reasons, and I was not long in learning 
 that these were the only ones she ever expected. For 
 a time I felt like a scoundrel, knowing she would not 
 give such reasons to me. But by and by I began to see 
 she did give me such reasons, and it shocked me out of 
 
MY LOVE AND I 119 
 
 all telling for a while. And then I accepted it as a part 
 of the scheme of social life, a necessary interchange of 
 courteous subterfuge. 
 
 I must go back to say that we had not been long 
 married before I again told Mildred how aunt Cely would 
 gladly call on her but for her poor feet, and proposed 
 we should run round together straightway and see the 
 house. It would be very pleasant, she said. Some- 
 time we might. To-morrow night, I urged. Not 
 to-morrow night. Miss Harpinger would need her. 
 And though I proposed many a night as nights came, 
 there was always one or another reason, and we never 
 went. And toward spring I ran in alone, with a tardy 
 remorseful courtesy, and spent an easeful two hours 
 with aunt Cely, who professed herself as understanding 
 perfectly how little time a young wife had. 
 
 "The house itself s enough," said aunt Cely, and 
 then she went off into a disquisition on her increasing 
 weight and the inadequacy of her poor feet. I saw 
 she had a vision of Mildred cooking the chop for dinner 
 and, head tied up in a towel, sweeping a floor. I left 
 that picture undisturbed. I saw that the probabilities 
 were against their ever meeting, and it gave me some 
 ease to think of Mildred, in aunt Cely's eyes, too 
 irrevocably bound to tasks to think of neighboring. 
 But I did not see Mary. She was working at the li- 
 brary, aunt Cely said, verifying some difficult proof, 
 the last being my version of her outspoken scorn that 
 printers "spelled so." And Blake was in New York. 
 
120 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 He had been back but once since his going, and then he 
 looked like a "shadder," and Mary, after sight of him, 
 had looked as if she cried all night. 
 
 XIII 
 
 So Mary Harpinger went to Romney with my wife 
 and I stayed at home in the house that felt very large 
 and still and barren of warm pleasures. I had gone 
 down two days before and looked at the rooms to see 
 if they were really right, but Mildred had resisted my 
 desire to be there at her coming and see her settled. 
 It was very pretty of her, for, as I understood, it was 
 because she knew how hateful Miss Harpinger was to 
 me. I was partly grateful and also ruefully conscious 
 of being, with no will of hers, under penance, and only 
 when I found she was disposed to take one of the maids 
 to unpack for her did I cease feeling remorse. I had 
 learned that she was constantly thinking of me in an 
 unerring, practical way, of my fitness for my work, of 
 my conditions for doing it. She had done a good deal 
 of exacting, steady drudgery herself, and she often 
 gave me the feeling that I was a machine set to do 
 certain tasks and to be oiled and kept in condition 
 therefor. 
 
 It was a brilliant day when she went, with the lindens 
 heavily sweet, and I walked moodily upstairs and sat 
 down at my table where the ragged edge of a story 
 pressed me to trim it into shape. And as I began with 
 
MY LOVE AND I 121 
 
 the mechanical precision of a brain that has been accus- 
 tomed for a long time to working at one sort of task, 
 I was conscious that I didn't want to do it at all. And 
 my mind, which had not ceased clicking dutifully for 
 all the months of my marriage, opened its mouth and 
 yawned and stretched its arms and liked the freedom 
 of it, and I sat and considered my life and could not 
 even see the outline of those fake lives I was concocting. 
 I felt as if I had been pent for a long time in some 
 atmosphere foreign to me, and now was the hour to 
 breathe another air. I thought back over my amazing 
 success : how I, who had started on my journey a rough 
 farm lad with no traditions save to be honest and clean, 
 was living in a spacious, really a lordly house, so far 
 as my deserts were concerned. I had a wife who walked 
 and spoke and dressed like a princess, and I was her 
 willing servitor. Not glad, not eager: nothing had 
 broken the bonds of my olden rigor of behavior and 
 feeling. There had never been for me, save that night 
 before my marriage, such torches burning, such sharp 
 scents and savors, such dreamlike worship. But I had 
 found myself a citizen of a well-managed community. 
 Everything in my house was done to the tune of a per- 
 fect accord with ordered life. We had excellent persons 
 to dinner, and sometimes stupid ones. My wife had be- 
 come acquainted with them in the church or through 
 the offices of Mary Harpinger, who continued to be "well 
 placed," and they were all of Mary Harpinger's choice. 
 Sometimes I even fancied that the associates of Mary 
 
122 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Harpinger's youth had done with her in her debased 
 old age. Only the compassionate ones had time and 
 eyes for her. I began by poking candid fun at these 
 musty residents, and even proposed having in Johnnie 
 McCann and some others of the Toasted Cheese to 
 start a little leaven in their density. But Mildred 
 gently implied that the Toasted Cheese would not do; 
 and when I saw she regarded our heavy medium with 
 entire seriousness, I ceased trying to lighten it for her. 
 On Tuesdays she was "at home," and the same follow- 
 ing dropped in. Once I did meet Johnnie McCann 
 in the street and took him in with me to such a func- 
 tion ; but when we had got fairly within the circle and 
 he heard what they were talking about personal- 
 ities, mingled with retrospective European travel 
 Johnnie grew very red, wrung my hand, and hurried 
 back into the hall. I followed him, suspecting mania, 
 and found him halfway out of the door, shut into the 
 crack indeed by the impulse of his conflicting desires 
 to explain and yet escape. 
 
 "Ask her to excuse me," said Johnnie. I saw he 
 meant Mildred. "I know that lot. Can't stand 'em. 
 Seen 'em on the boat going down to Nahant. Heard 
 'em talk. I feel it coming on." 
 
 They had brought on his suicidal mania. That was 
 more of a feat than I had ever seen within their reach. 
 I used to wonder what was the matter with them, or 
 what was the matter with me for not coalescing. Vain 
 query. It went back every time to Mildred's rigorous 
 
MY LOVE AND I 123 
 
 censorship. She simply would not recognize new 
 blood, and the really old blood she was privileged to 
 worship only through society notes, was flowing 
 another way, tides of it uniting to form the "swim." 
 She was thrown back on pottering respectability, a 
 motley " neither here nor there," save in its bank 
 account and crusted axioms, and with an iron nerve 
 made no complaint of its sad quality. I used to tell 
 Mildred she never knew when folks were dull. It 
 seemed an adorable nescience in her, sprung, of course, 
 from kindliness. I had an idea there were charming 
 folk about us, if we could know them for the unconven- 
 tional asking. I met men down town that looked to me 
 the best kind of good fellows ; but their wives doubtless 
 had their own system of exclusion and wouldn't know 
 Mildred, and I was too busy to build up acquaintance- 
 ship away from home. But I did wish Mildred could 
 have taken in the Toasted Cheese. Johnnie never came 
 again, and I had no time to hunt out the fellows in 
 concourse. As the phrase goes they the dear fellows 
 of the other time dropped out of my life. My own 
 intercourse with the familiars of my house sometimes 
 made a nervous sweat break out over me, and again 
 roused me to a murderous irritation. I would come 
 down early from my study because Mildred asked me to 
 be there, and find her in a gown of diaphanous sim- 
 plicity, pouring tea and looking with her limpid candor 
 into the eyes of some high-born tortoise, and Mary 
 Harpinger in her wheeled chair a little apart receiving 
 
124 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the court of gossip from men and women who had a 
 community of feeling from having been born in the 
 same habitat with the same armor of prejudice. And 
 as soon as I entered the circle about my wife I began 
 to be pelted with tribute : stereotyped compliments 
 on my stories of Little Italy, queries about what I was 
 doing now, and imperative mandates that I should 
 never do anything but " dialect." At first I was 
 bewildered and much flattered, I who had never ex- 
 pected to be in the centre of any concerted admiration. 
 Then I began to be a little irritated, being forbidden 
 to write in any style but the one that earned my costly 
 bread, and I set about to see why these people would 
 swallow what they called dialect stories with a mild 
 placidity while they even resented the same passions 
 put under the skin of persons of their own ilk. Was 
 it because my " dialect" stories had the simplicity of 
 nature? They had nothing of the sort. They were 
 hidebound sophisticated guesses at the pabulum the 
 monied public was bound to like. But if ever I tried 
 a story of the folk I saw at afternoon teas, even if I 
 liberated the creatures and tried to infuse into them the 
 blood of common life, my public would have none of it. 
 I had spent a good many vagrant minutes in wondering 
 why, and I had come to the conclusion that they re- 
 sented emotion put into the mouths and hearts of men 
 and women outwardly like themselves. It made them 
 shamefaced. You couldn't tuck in a sly flip of humor 
 at them ; they resented it. But thrust their own emo- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 125 
 
 tion under a workman's blouse, and they thought it 
 very pretty indeed, or very moving. 
 
 Now that I was left alone, should I write what I 
 wanted to? And what did I want to write? Not 
 verse. Not a full stanza had beaten into my sluggish 
 brain since the night the Epithalamium had woven its 
 web to the sound of wings. That feat I accounted a 
 miracle. Poesy was too shining a bird for me to dare 
 recapture her. The sheen on her breast and wings 
 would have scorched me. But I did hear her some- 
 times overhead, flying otherwhere, I knew, and my 
 heart stopped beating until she passed. Sometimes 
 on a clearest morning, when the city streets were lucent 
 with the breath of dawn, she would toss me a word, 
 a phrase, and I would "catch" hi a rapt expectancy. 
 But it was never any more. The highest lot of all was 
 not for me. 
 
 After I had sat at my table for a comforting time and 
 mused and wondered in the way of the introspective 
 whether I was dumb at the loss of Mildred or only 
 relieved at the wider space now Mary Harpinger had 
 gone, I suddenly got up without volition and went 
 round to Burke Street and rang the bell. The late 
 afternoon was very tranquil and sweet, and the dust 
 of traffic at the foot of the hill transmuted the sunset 
 light in the river to a glow of faerie. I had a sense of 
 anticipation upon me, the sort that comes in earlier 
 youth than mine then was, of something approaching, 
 something to augment or assuage the ache of years and 
 
126 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 so to be wondered at in its advance. The door opened 
 to me at once, as if some one had seen my coming. 
 Aunt Cely stood there, her adipose bulk quivering, her 
 pink cheeks wet from an excess of tears. 
 
 11 Go right up," said she. " Mary's with him. She's 
 been there all night and all day. Maybe you can make 
 her lay down and get a mite o' sleep." 
 
 I made no doubt it was Blake she meant, but starting 
 up the stairs I stopped, caught by the look of the hall. 
 Bare enough before, it was dismantled. 
 
 "You're not moving?" I said. 
 
 She nodded speechlessly. But as it was evident I 
 couldn't stop to question, she called after me that she'd 
 always meant to give up the house when she could 
 afford it, and " board." But, she cried, it had come 
 at the wrong time. It was turning him out. I ran up 
 the stairs fast yet as softly as I could, not knowing 
 what I should find, to John Blake's room. There was 
 no sound. At the open door I paused. Blake, dressed, 
 lay on the outside of the bed, and Mary knelt beside 
 him. Her arm was under his neck, and his face, like 
 the face of a dead man, had sunk against her shoulder. 
 Anything like the extreme and terrible meaning of 
 those faces I had never seen. Blake's was like death 
 itself, a piercing mask of sorrowful death, death by 
 starvation of soul or heart. The sweetness of the re- 
 laxed mouth, the pathos of the closed lids, the wan 
 hollows where grief had pinched her little marks, 
 these had made John Blake's face such as I had never 
 
MY LOVE AND I 127 
 
 seen it. If I had not known him, if I had come upon 
 the face in wax or clay, I should have said it was that 
 of one rejected by a world he loved, the poet rebuffed, 
 even the Redeemer crucified. And Mary's face 
 there was but one name for it : the Mother of Sorrows, 
 the immemorial type of compassionate grief, of one 
 who loves with all her being and sees what she loves 
 dying before her and is denied the supreme solace of 
 herself dying for what she loves. My glance upon 
 them drew her eyelids up. She had not "lost herself. " 
 She was watching. Her mouth smiled a little upon 
 me and her pupils widened, but she did not move. I 
 understood. She had a faint, unconfirmed hope that 
 Blake might be asleep. 
 
 XIV 
 
 I SAT there with Mary and watched. She paid no 
 more attention to me, but our community of vigil was 
 welcome to her. That I knew. And after so long a 
 time that I felt sympathetically the cramp in my own 
 shoulder, knowing how she had held him in a fostering 
 she would not share, he did really sleep, and then she 
 cleverly slipped away her arm, and gave him to his 
 pillow. I rose, and as softly she preceded me. We 
 went down the stairs, and Mary led me into her 
 own room. There where she could break without 
 likelihood of his hearing her, she did get hurriedly into 
 a chair, and put her hand for a moment to her face. 
 
128 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 How wan she was! It did not need the trembling of 
 her dear mouth to show me how long and deeply she 
 had felt the stress that had culminated in this vigil; 
 but I was full of anxiety to know. 
 
 "Mary," said I, " what is it?" 
 
 This recalled her to the needs of life. Mary had no 
 time for tears. She wiped her face in a practical way, 
 and answered me rather dully, 
 
 "He's broken down, that's all." 
 
 "Overwork?" 
 
 "No!" She spoke hotly, as if the mother in her 
 raged at the wrong done her young. "No. Trouble. 
 Work never hurt John Blake yet. Work is his life." 
 
 This was pretty stiff for Mary, who had no habit of 
 intemperate speech. For so calm a creature, calm by 
 habit and the requirements of the day, she was beside 
 herself. 
 
 "Tell me, Mary," said I. 
 
 She began the recital dispassionately. Montresor 
 had virtually taken the play. Blake had gone on to 
 New York, as I knew, to watch the rehearsals, to act, as 
 he innocently thought, as interpreter to Montresor's 
 conception of the part. Montresor hadn't been able 
 to say enough about the play. It was "great," the 
 best thing written in a century. He challenged nothing 
 at the start, verse, construction, nothing whatever. 
 But the minute he began to rehearse, he challenged 
 everything. Blake was not a fool, though a poet. 
 Something of this he had expected. Montresor had a 
 
MY LOVE AND I 129 
 
 knowledge he hadn't. It would have been incredible 
 if the written word had borne the test of the spoken one. 
 Yes, he had expected to tinker his play, had gone on 
 to New York really to do it. But he was not to tinker 
 it after his own concept. Montresor was to dictate 
 to the last phrase. And Montresor, who seemed a 
 boyish enthusiast as he flashed a telegram of praise, in 
 action proved to be more or less of an ass, every kind 
 of an ass. He not only looked upon himself solemnly 
 as the be-all and end-all of the drama, he might have 
 stopped there, and you could have stomached him, 
 but he had no humility before other forms of art. He 
 would march with ruthless buskin into Blake's own 
 field, and tell him what to weed and where to plant 
 the flowers of rhetoric. And Blake had been patient, 
 raging inwardly, but patient, Mary was sure, counsell- 
 ing himself to respect a temperament unlike his own. 
 But every day it grew on him more and more indubi- 
 tably that Montresor was an ass, so that he shuddered 
 to think of his play in those profane hands at all ; and 
 on that came the climax. 
 
 "He wanted," said Mary, her face hot now and her 
 voice again raging, " Montresor wanted the end changed. 
 He found out he wasn't getting enough of a part. You 
 know how the play ends. The poet lives. Everybody 
 lives, just as they do in life." Here Mary was a little 
 sweeping, but I knew what she meant. "Mr. Blake 
 never talked about it to me. But I copied it." There 
 was the anguish of an old hurt here. Mary was never 
 
130 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 invited into the happy garden of Blake's toil. She had 
 to filch little twigs of his achievement over the wall 
 between them. What that cost her, only Mary knew. 
 "Any way, Montresor'd got to die all over the stage. 
 My God!" For Mary to call upon her God, a strictly 
 esoteric deity locked into some secret shrine within her, 
 showed how far she had strayed outside her equable 
 frame of mind. 
 
 "Well?" said I. 
 
 She was listening for a sound from Blake, and had 
 to be reminded to go on. 
 
 "That's all," said she, resuming her impassive voice. 
 "Mr. Blake took the play away from him. From what 
 we knew of Mr. Blake, I guess he damned him well. 
 Then he came back, came home, and got on to his bed 
 and stayed there like a dead man as he is now." 
 
 I was so young, so strong with all kinds of strength, 
 that to me the thing seemed impossible. I essayed 
 a prosaic comfort. 
 
 "Well," said I, "it's outrageous, but he'll get over 
 it. He'U sleep it off." 
 
 "He hasn't slept for five days and four nights," 
 said Mary. 
 
 "He's sleeping now." 
 
 "That's bromide." 
 
 "Have you called a doctor?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "What does he say?" 
 
 "Says he must have had a shock and that on the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 131 
 
 top of overwork and underfeeding oh, yes, he's 
 had a shock all right." 
 
 My first thought was of money, but I hardly dared 
 say so. Blake was the last man to have saved a dollar. 
 Mary would have hoarded in anticipation of his need, 
 but she must not be allowed to open her too-worn purse. 
 But I put that aside to ask: 
 
 "Is he going to stay on here?" 
 
 " No," said Mary. " He can't. Aunt Cely's moving. 
 Besides, he's ordered away, into the country. He's to 
 go as soon as he can pull himself together and get a 
 little sleep. The doctor said sanitarium, and he refused. 
 You've heard his No. There's nothing to be said after 
 that." 
 
 "No, you can't stay here," I said, remembering 
 aunt Cely in the hall. 
 
 "No," said Mary, indifferently it seemed, but really 
 because she had thought so much over the situation that 
 she was numb to it. "I moved last week. I can give 
 him my room and find another place. But he'd die 
 there of the heat." 
 
 Then the thought came to me. It was so natural, so 
 welcome to me that I wondered I hadn't spoken at first 
 seeing her the words I said now. 
 
 "You must come to me both of you." 
 
 Mary looked unfeignedly shocked, touched then, as 
 if she thanked me for my part in it, though not seeing 
 how it could be accepted. 
 
 "Oh, no," said she, "we couldn't do that." 
 
132 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "I'm all alone," I assured her. " We'll get a cook." 
 
 Mary brightened. I saw the look leap into her eyes. 
 So I was alone ? It seemed feasible. 
 
 "My wife will be delighted," I hastened to say, per- 
 haps a little stiffly, because I saw Mary had doubted 
 my wife. 
 
 "Thank you," said Mary. "We'll come. But you 
 don't need a cook. It's my vacation. I can do for 
 us." 
 
 And at dusk I sent a carriage, and Blake, wondering 
 apparently why he was so weak and was being guided 
 hand and foot, came up my steps leaning on Mary's 
 arm, and I was a proud and happy man to have used 
 my house to such purpose. I had not yielded to Mary's 
 protest that she could do it all. Our Lydia, who came 
 back that day for the last consignment of her clothes, 
 before betaking herself to the shore, proved unex- 
 pectedly dazzled by the wage I offered her and con- 
 sented to see me through, a part of the way at least. 
 Mildred had never liked Lydia. She said the girl had 
 no idea of her place, and she should not take her back 
 in the autumn. But Lydia, though a little satirical 
 in her manner of looking out of her pale eyes and under 
 her coarse red hair, suited me very well, and I was 
 thankful for her. She had asked whether Mrs. Red- 
 field meant to come back, and when I said No, it was 
 then she consented. 
 
 Blake was put to bed in a still, dark room with the 
 wistaria waving at the window, and he looked about 
 
MY LOVE AND I 133 
 
 him wonderingly and said but these words, "The 
 Pilgrim Chamber." Of Mary and me he took no notice 
 at all. We were so familiar to him from older times, 
 that I believe we only made a part of his blurred vistas. 
 The human creature was ever little to him save in its 
 heroic aspect of playing a part set down for it in his 
 embroidered words. 
 
 That night I wrote to Mildred, a warm letter, full 
 of the human tenderness these two saddened ones had 
 started up in me, and including her in the magic circle 
 of our community of help. It was wonderful to me 
 to have a house and comforting drinks and a Lydia 
 to share with these dear people. It quite waked me 
 out of my pen-driving somnolence. The house was 
 Mildred's and mine, and together we were giving it. 
 So I told her. 
 
 Next day Blake waked to some realizing of his situa- 
 tion topographically, though his condition he would 
 not accept. "Ridiculous!" he called it, but was too 
 weak to get up, too weak to laugh, as he would scorn- 
 fully have liked to do. I believe when he was con- 
 fronted with his breakfast on a tray, and felt unequal 
 even to that, he cried a little on Mary's shoulder, this 
 to his own unmeasured horror. But he ate the breakfast 
 in bits, doggedly, to prevent Mary's feeding him. 
 
 About ten o'clock I went into the room and found 
 him lying flat, eyes closed, and Mary sitting by him 
 in a perfect stillness that seemed a device of hers for 
 making herself invisible. It was all yearningly benig- 
 
134 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 nant, yet so humble, as if she were quite sure she would 
 have to be forgiven in the end for being there. Blake 
 opened his eyes and saw me. 
 
 " You're a brick," he said. "This is incredible, im- 
 possible. I shall be on my feet in a day or two." 
 
 "Yes," said I, in the accepted way of meeting an 
 invalid's unsupported hopes, "in a day or two." 
 
 Mary looked at me with the pleading eyes of some 
 uncomprehended animal. 
 
 "Don't you think," said she, "when he goes into 
 the country, I mean I could go too to see to 
 him?" 
 
 "Stuff!" said Blake. He had to condense meanings. 
 He was too weak to amplify them. 
 
 "I've got to see to him," said Mary, angrily. She 
 was half crying. I knew she had no regard for the 
 speech of men. In her working world she thought she 
 lived outside it, in a simpler, kinder place. But though 
 Blake, too, lived outside, I knew he would not suffer 
 this, and so said nothing. I was right. 
 
 "You can't go travelling round with fascinating 
 young chaps like me," he said. "You can't, dear girl. 
 I'll pull out somehow. Besides, what could you do for 
 me?" 
 
 "I could do everything," said Mary, still angrily. 
 She was terrified, I saw, afraid of his downhill course 
 if she left him to himself. What should a long-legged 
 chap like him, with his soul in his brains, in sunsets and 
 rhymes and mythic tragedy, know about milk and eggs 
 
MY LOVE AND I 135 
 
 and so many naps a day, Nature's humiliating poultice 
 after she has been defied ? 
 
 "You can't do it," said Blake, as if he were dizzy 
 and clutching at the words as the wheel went round. 
 "You can't travel with foundered chaps unless you're 
 married." 
 
 "I'd do that," said Mary, humbly. "I'd marry you." 
 I protest she spoke it as she could have spoken to no 
 man in health : only to one gone back by reason of his 
 weakness to the state of infancy. I have since learned 
 that in this sickness of his she never expected Blake to 
 recover. Or, at least, she fancied his mind would not 
 come fully back. Besides, she craved the supreme 
 delight of tending him. To me, so simply were the words 
 said, that they brought no shock, no uneasiness because 
 I was there. I simply looked to see how Blake would 
 take them. He had shut his eyes, but he muttered 
 the same word twice: "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" And 
 then something, a familiar sound perhaps, a step I knew, 
 an aura I had learned to recognize, made me look up. 
 And there in the doorway I saw Mildred. My first 
 thought was that she must be prevented from coming in. 
 She would hardly guess, even from his looks, how little 
 Blake could bear, and there must be no greetings and 
 no commonplaces. There she stood an instant in her 
 gray dress, her hat with the long white veil, a diapha- 
 nous, almost a bride-like figure, looking, as she always 
 did to me, as if she brought the spring. Her face, in 
 its fine pallor, had nothing of the joyousness of spring ; 
 
136 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 but she belonged, I always thought, to the first pale 
 days before the buds half know the sun will love them. 
 Mary saw her, following my eyes, and started. I got 
 up and hurried out. I took Mildred's hand and drew 
 her away with me and shut the door. And then, we 
 two in the hall alone together, I felt there must be 
 passionate endearment born of my surprise at least, 
 and I put my arms about her and kissed her, first 
 on her cool, velvet cheek, and then on her curving lips. 
 And they, too, were cool. And suddenly, from the un- 
 expectedness of her coming and the warm memory of 
 Mary's unthinking love for Blake, I found myself 
 urging, "Love me a little, Mildred. Love me." It 
 was the first time I had ever put into thought even a 
 reproach lest she did not love me, and as I spoke, the 
 words surprised me. But Mildred had not heard them 
 at all, or if she did, she regarded them absently, as she 
 accepted my caress. She it was who led me now, into 
 our room, and there she unpinned her hat and drew off 
 her gloves with the extreme nicety that always marked 
 her. To my eyes she seemed to be thinking something 
 over, as if she had it to say and had not yet determined 
 upon the discreet or tactful way of saying it. As for 
 me, I felt absurdly, awkwardly like a lover who does 
 not know his own deserts. 
 
 "Are those the people?" she said at last. And yet 
 she had met Blake in that other spring. 
 
 "Didn't you get my letter?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, I got it this morning." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 137 
 
 "Well, then, you know, dear," I reminded her. "I 
 wrote you. It's Blake and Mary. You know Blake." 
 
 " What is the woman's last name ?" she inquired. | 
 
 I thought an instant and then laughed out. I really 
 had forgotten Mary's last name. She had been Mary 
 to all of us. 
 
 "By George, I don't know," said I. Mildred looked 
 at me in a small, frigid doubt. But she waived that for 
 more immediate issues. 
 
 "Of course they can't stay here," she remarked. 
 "You'll have to tell them." 
 
 "Not stay here?" 
 
 I felt my heart beating to suffocation. "For the 
 present surely. In this empty house?" 
 
 Mildred looked at me in a kindly tolerance. 
 
 "It isn't right, you know," she said. "It isn't 
 decent." 
 
 The last word hit me hard. I felt it hurting Mary, 
 though she didn't hear it. But I tried to get hold of 
 myself. 
 
 "The circumstances are peculiar," I said. "Blake 
 may not be at the point of death, but he's in the clutch 
 of the kind of death he'd fear most : the only kind he'd 
 fear. He hasn't lost his reason, but he's lost the power 
 of using it. And Mary she's an angel." 
 
 "Will you tell them?" said Mildred, with her 
 strange patience. 
 
 I forgot that she was Mildred. It was not that Blake 
 was dearer to me, or that Mary was ; only I saw such 
 
138 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 ineffable helplessness and its guardian goodness so 
 coldly menaced. 
 
 "No," I said. "I shan't tell them." 
 
 "Very well," said Mildred. She rose, and again 
 appeared to consider how she should do it. "Then 
 I will." 
 
 Before 1 knew any more than she what I was about 
 to do, I got up and stood with my back to the door, 
 thus facing her. 
 
 "No, Mildred," said I, "you mustn't tell them." 
 
 A faint surprise came into her face, some wondering 
 respect for me, too, I have thought since. 
 
 "Why not?" she inquired, the same slight curiosity 
 in her voice. 
 
 "Because I shan't allow it." 
 
 This was no male assertiveness. It was only the 
 simplest statement of the things I felt it impossible to 
 disclose: they were such big things, so much bigger 
 than I, the greatness of Blake's need, the magnifi- 
 cence of Mary. Mildred came moving toward me with 
 her usual slow grace. 
 
 "Nonsense," she said. "Of course I shall be consid- 
 erate. The woman will understand. I dare say she 
 is all right. She simply doesn't know." 
 
 But I stood immovably at the door. I had no 
 pride in the situation or my potential mastery of it. I 
 merely felt ridiculous ; and yet knew I could not yield. 
 
 "I shall have to ask you," said Mildred, "to stand 
 aside and let me pass." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 139 
 
 I did not answer her, nor did I move. I seemed able 
 to do neither the one nor the other. She sat down, 
 now in a chair nearer me, and looked at me, still thought- 
 fully. 
 
 "You said Lydia was here," she remarked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I can't allow Lydia to stay. She understood 
 perfectly she wasn't coming back." 
 
 "It's an emergency," I pleaded. I was glad to plead 
 with her for anything. "Lydia sees it is. She'll be 
 a perfect trump. You see if she isn't." 
 
 Mildred turned and looked at the clock. 
 
 "I have to take the two-thirty," she said. "Miss 
 Harpinger is very nervous to-day." 
 
 I frankly damned Miss Harpinger, and was glad to 
 relieve my feelings thus impersonally. Mildred rose 
 again. 
 
 "No," she said, "I won't dismiss Lydia. But I'll 
 ask her to give me some lunch." 
 
 And again I knew I could not let her go, untrammelled 
 by my commands, outside that door. I laughed, and 
 wished I were a better actor. 
 
 "Mildred," said I, "it's ridiculous, but I'm going to 
 ask you to let me take you out to lunch." 
 
 She looked at me for a full minute, always thought- 
 fully, and then she said this extraordinary thing, 
 
 "I am to be confined hi the fall." 
 
140 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 XV 
 
 WAS ever bright gift so strangely alloyed by the 
 manner of bestowal ? It was almost as if the mother- 
 hood in her misprized the value of what it had to give. 
 Instantly I was at her side, on my knees there, my arms 
 about her. All the passion of my nature surged into 
 one deep channel : worship of that ineffable creature 
 set aside by mystic consecration from the sordidness 
 of life the mother. She looked at me calmly and 
 rather particularly, and I had suddenly an absurd idea 
 that she wished I would take my arms away because 
 the day was growing warm. Such eerie thoughts had 
 got into the way of jumping into my mind like ill-inten- 
 tioned sprites. I had to keep batting them on the head 
 and tossing them away as reason and good taste should 
 counsel. I kept my arms about her, and as in that day 
 when they had found her first, I said her name. All the 
 wonder I had felt that other spring gushed up, a fount of 
 adoration. I felt again exultant passion, but passion 
 mixed with a new mystic worship. Suddenly she smiled 
 at me a little, and then my happiness was sealed. Mil- 
 dred seldom laughed, indeed, perhaps never with an 
 abandoned will, but her smile was nicely pretty. 
 
 "Now will you let me speak to the woman?" she 
 inquired. It was almost as if she had said, "Now I 
 have given you something very nice, do you mean to 
 pay?" 
 
 I did not think that at the time, though somehow 
 
MY LOVE AND I 141 
 
 the words hurt me. I took my arms away not un- 
 tenderly. Could I ever be untender to a gift-bearer 
 such as this ? I looked at my watch. 
 
 "We'll have a carriage," I said. "And a glorious 
 lunch. Will that suit you " I wanted to add, 
 "Little Mother?" But I did not dare. 
 
 She yielded definitely. I fancy she had come up 
 against something in me she did not suspect, and had 
 need to think it over. 
 
 "Very well," said she. 
 
 So she put on her hat again, and I took mine in pass- 
 ing, and we went out together to the carriage stand at 
 the corner, I very loving of her and wondering in my 
 tumultuous heart how I could show her that I had not 
 meant to coerce her and that it was hateful to me. I 
 knew I had only forced her to the way she would have 
 taken if she had understood Blake's need and Mary's. 
 
 We had a good little lunch in a secluded corner, and 
 talked much as two familiar friends might have done. 
 But my eyes were ever on her face, in their new wor- 
 ship, though this she did not seem to know. 
 
 "I'm going down to Romney with you," I said, when 
 we were again in the carriage and on our way to the 
 train. 
 
 "No," said she definitely, "you mustn't do that. 
 Besides, Miss Harpinger would be distressed if she 
 thought I'd got to give up any more time." 
 
 Again I cordially cursed Miss Harpinger, and in- 
 quired, with all gentleness, because I now knew that 
 
142 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I must be gentle to her forevermore, whether she 
 wouldn't tell Miss Harpinger at once that last winter's 
 arrangement couldn't possibly continue. Let her be- 
 gin now and make her plans for the autumn. 
 
 "I couldn't do that," said Mildred, definitively. 
 "What she pays in makes a serious difference to us. 
 I don't know how we could get along without it." 
 
 "I can settle my own bills," I said, rather roughly, 
 "and yours, too. I can work harder than I'm working 
 now, Mildred. I feel as if I could work twenty-four 
 hours in the day." 
 
 "I sometimes think you don't get the prices you 
 might," said Mildred, thoughtfully. "I don't believe 
 you question what they offer. Now when I sold the 
 Epithalamium, I plainly sent them back their check 
 and told them it was not enough." 
 
 My heart began to thump. 
 
 "The Epithalamium?" I said. "What did you 
 have to do with it?" 
 
 We were almost at the station gate and she had more 
 to say. So I suppose she answered hurriedly and care- 
 lessly, to put the topic by. 
 
 "Why, I had everything to do with it. You were 
 sick, and I came on it in my drawer and sent it, and I 
 got the check for it and made them double it. You 
 could do that, time after time. Your name would 
 stand it." 
 
 My heart, I thought, had stopped, like a misused 
 watch. But I could not believe what it seemed I must 
 
MY LOVE AND I 143 
 
 believe. I had accepted my publishing of the Epitha- 
 lamium as among the sorry inexplicable things of life ; 
 and since I must have done it in the coming delirium 
 of my illness, I was not to blame. It was simply an ill, 
 unchancy deed. But that the bride to whose white 
 consciousness it should have been the gift of prophetic 
 opening of gates that the queen of innocence and beauty 
 might pass through this I could not believe. Yet 
 I must accept it, for she herself told me it was true. 
 
 "You mustn't work too hard," she was saying now. 
 
 "No." I took her slim, gloved hand, moved by her 
 thought of me. 
 
 "It just defeats itself, overwork," she said. "You 
 give out, and its worse in the end. Martin " the 
 carriage was drawing up, and she regarded me quite 
 earnestly, "is your life insured?" 
 
 I knew what she was thinking : of the child and his 
 pathetic, hungry little needs. 
 
 "Yes," I said. "I carry rather a heavy insurance. 
 I thought I'd told you. I'll double it, though. Don't 
 fear, darling. We'll make him safe." 
 
 Then I went with her to the train, holding her hand 
 all the way, quite confident that the universe itself 
 must know we were lovers, and again she refused to 
 have me go with her. But just as I was leaving her 
 she said in a practical way she had, as if the thing didn't 
 matter much, but nevertheless she would undertake 
 to carry it out, 
 
 "I shall be up again on Tuesday. I've some shop- 
 
144 , MY LOVE AND I 
 
 ping to do. Your friends will be gone then, won't 
 they?" 
 
 Well, I didn't mean to see that they were gone, but 
 how could I tell her so, with that roseate dawn about 
 us? Instead I bent over and whispered the words in 
 her ear, "Little Mother," and then I left her. 
 
 I made speed home, for I did not know how self- 
 possessed Mary would be in my absence, nor whether she 
 would order food. But Lydia had served lunch, it was 
 well over, and Blake was by himself and Mary waiting 
 for me in the big room below. It went the length 
 of the house, and Mildred, who never erred in taste, 
 had kept it in gray and green, and in winter warmed it 
 with blazing logs and flowers. But now it was a cool 
 retreat, to the eye as to the feeling, and when Mary got 
 up from the deep couch in the darkest corner and came 
 forward to meet me, I felt she ought to look more 
 comfortable than she did. She had got back her air 
 of accuracy and crispness in her freshened business 
 suit. In her shirt waist and linen skirt she might that 
 moment have been going to her day's work; yet she 
 was not out of keeping with the beautiful simplicity of 
 the room. Mary carried her own atmosphere, and it 
 was ever a noble one. I gave her hand a pat, and we 
 went in and sat down in that darkest corner. But I saw 
 her face was worried. It had lost its acute anticipative 
 premonition when I had taken her home here and as- 
 sured her that all was well. Now her dear brows were 
 knitted again and her mouth had its lonesome curve. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 145 
 
 But she smiled at me. Mary never let it be seen if 
 she was down. She began at once to reassure me, as 
 she thought. 
 
 "I've telephoned Ellen Tracy." 
 
 I didn't know who she was, and Mary, seeing that, 
 went on : 
 
 "You've heard of Ellen Tracy. She's got loads of 
 money, and she keeps vacation homes for well, for 
 folks like me." Mary looked at me with her brave 
 smile that waved its banner and shouted at you that 
 she was poor in the world's goods, knew she always 
 should be poor, and you might as well classify her. 
 
 "There's nobody like you, Mary," I said, seizing upon 
 the most obvious part of her speech. 
 
 "Not exactly," said Mary. "Praise be. But Ellen 
 Tracy has started three homes in three different places, 
 and there's a vacancy at her own big house at Hopeful 
 Sands. So I'm going to take Mr. Blake there to- 
 
 morrow." 
 
 I was relieved, of course. But I was also unreason- 
 ably disappointed. Here was my house Mildred's 
 and mine here were Blake and Mary in their need. 
 I had meant to be selfishly happy as a king, endowing 
 them with all that was mine. Mary read my face. 
 She got up and came to me. She took my hand and 
 kissed it, thanking me in the quick little caress for lov- 
 ing Blake as I did and for wanting to give what she 
 wouldn't let him take. She betrayed no hint of having 
 seen Mildred in the doorway. She never spoke of that. 
 
146 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Yet I knew. And this was why, in the extremity of 
 their need, she was flying off to Ellen Tracy. 
 
 "I know," said Mary. "It's dear of you. And 
 it's a wonderful house. Nothing could be better, 
 except the country, of course. You see that's it. 
 Mr. Blake must be got into the country." 
 '>. And then we settled down to talk about Blake. 
 Didn't she think, I asked, that a few weeks would set 
 him up and he'd be his old self ? Mary was afraid not. 
 
 "But what the mischief does it mean," I said, "for 
 a man of Blake's inches to give out like a sick girl 
 because he's had a disappointment? He's simply 
 found out that Montresor's an egotistical dolt." 
 
 "Ah yes, you might think so," said Mary. "But he'd 
 been overworking for a couple of years at least. He's 
 a perfect child about his food " 
 
 Yes, I agreed, Blake always seemed rather bored 
 when he was called upon to eat. Felt queer, and when 
 you reminded him it was lunch time, thought lunch 
 was a superfluity. 
 
 "Yes. And living alone in New York without aunt 
 Cely or me to spudge him up, think what it must be. 
 And then, you see, when the crash came, he was just 
 down enough to believe it meant he hadn't made good. 
 Montresor that great big Moloch of a matinee idol, 
 with his valet and his dinners well, Montresor just 
 dominated him then and made him think what he 
 pleased. Montresor wanted to get out of the play, and 
 he said it was no good and Mr. Blake believed him." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 147 
 
 " Believed him," I repeated stupidly. " Believed 
 he hadn't made good. Believed he never could. For 
 all the best of him was in that play and if that was 
 rot " 
 
 "Yes," she concluded, in answer to my look. "That 
 was what Montresor said." 
 
 So we sat silent, Mary and I, and considered, each 
 on a separate road, what could be done to get back 
 the soul of a man after it had been mishandled. But 
 the roads met presently. 
 
 "Shall you stay down there?" I asked. 
 
 "A while," said Mary. "I was just thinking that. 
 He could be made to believe I was going anyway for 
 my vacation." 
 
 Then I asked a stupid question, but I protest I did 
 not at the moment remember just what had called 
 forth the word I had in mind. I could only hear Blake 
 saying it. 
 
 "What did he mean, Mary, by saying 'Sacrilege, 
 sacrilege/ that time?" 
 
 And at once I remembered, and would have recalled 
 my question if I could. Mary met it bravely. 
 
 "Why," said she, "he meant marrying me. That 
 would be sacrilege because he doesn't love me. Mr. 
 Blake is very religious about those things. And of 
 course," said Mary, simply, "it would be sacrilege. 
 But if he was to die or lose his mind or give out so he 
 couldn't earn anything, why, I shouldn't care about 
 that. I should be on hand, that's all." 
 
148 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Mary had no elastic ideas of right and wrong, but 
 some things looked very big to her, and others, such as 
 her own desert, very small. She sat gazing at me in 
 such simplicity of devotion and worried reflection over 
 Blake that I could not tell her what I thought of it all. 
 There was nothing so simple in its beneficence as Mary, 
 nothing save the bounty of the earth. But that has to 
 be wrung out of the earth, which is as ready to be cruel 
 as kind. And you had only to look a normal wish for 
 Mary to wonder whether she could get it for you. It 
 made the old planet seem warm and sweet, that and 
 what I had just so strangely heard. It was, I thought, 
 a beautiful world, and my heart said to me with a voice 
 of its own, a voice I had never quite imagined until now, 
 "Little Mother." 
 
 XVI 
 
 IN two days more we went down to Hopeful Sands, 
 Blake wanly distrusting the scheme, but yielding to 
 us because he had lost all his old assertion, and we, I 
 suppose, seemed too crudely strong for him. Hopeful 
 Sands had not been discovered by the philistines. 
 When they did discover it at last, Ellen Tracy had 
 bought up the entire island and was safe. That is not 
 so rapacious as it sounds. She would never have wanted 
 privilege. Only she did work very hard to safeguard 
 the solitude and birds and greenery that were to make 
 a heaven for her vacation houses. Hopeful Sands, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 149 
 
 though it did not look it at first glimpse, was an island ; 
 but it was joined now to the mainland by a willow- 
 embowered causeway never flooded except in spring, but 
 wet at high tide. When you had passed the causeway, 
 you fell into a marvellous undergrowth of alder, button- 
 bush, azalea, all the beauties the wild world throws 
 out to tangle our hearts nay, for the wild world 
 thinks nothing of us at all. It breathes, and drinks in 
 water and sun, and the atoms move, and there is beauty. 
 The day was hot when we went down, and at the far 
 end of the causeway a phaeton met us. Blake was tired 
 from the trip, but even he waked slightly to the vivid- 
 ness of all this bourgeoning, and I could see his nostrils 
 tremble with the fragrance of azalea and warm pine. 
 It was a short drive through a winding way, always 
 bosky, and suddenly we came out on velvet turf and a 
 gray, gambrel-roofed house rich with carmine roses, 
 and in the doorway, under the shade of the white 
 pillared porch, Ellen Tracy stood awaiting us. I had, 
 on seeing her, the strangest sensation, one I cannot now 
 describe. I can only say even to myself, that it was as 
 if I had known her before, and in finding her, it was as 
 if I had just come home. She was rather a tall woman, 
 with dark hair, soft and with shadows deeper than its 
 blackness, parted and made into a knot of an old sim- 
 plicity. Her features were delicately drawn, yet noble, 
 her mouth was large, and her smile beautiful. She 
 had a majestic way of carrying herself, a wonderful 
 trick of holding her head, I found myself repeating, 
 
150 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "a neck like a tower," -and yet in all this panoply 
 of womanliness, she was, I had to remind myself, just 
 a girl. Ellen Tracy was young, but she was enabled 
 to take her own way through the lone pathways of 
 her lovingness to mankind by the aura of something 
 emotionally mature. I was in a state of tense feeling 
 that had not gone down in me since Mildred had brought 
 me her gift, and quite naturally, it seemed, as it does 
 in dreams, when we traversed the lovely pathway to 
 the lovely house, I saw, for an instant, Ellen Tracy 
 with my child in her arms. And yet perhaps it was not 
 my child. Perhaps it was the symbol of the eternal 
 child, the perpetually expected and beloved that my 
 heart placed next her heart to be cherished there. She 
 wore a white dress made with the greatest simplicity, 
 and about the neck was a fine chain of gold. I suddenly 
 wondered what Mary was thinking, and I turned to see. 
 Mary had for the moment forgotten Blake. She was 
 leaning forward, her lips parted, a shade more of color 
 in her cheeks, and through the lips her breath came fast. 
 But as we neared and drew up at the steps, the spell 
 broke. Ellen Tracy did not seem less beautiful, only 
 entirely human. She smiled at us in a welcome that 
 warmed us, and came down a step to give her hand to 
 Mary and then to me. Of Blake she took not the slight- 
 est notice beyond the one quick glance that told her 
 he was the patient and now sore spent. A maid came, 
 and a man to take up the trunks that were behind us 
 in a cart, and Ellen Tracy herself carried off Blake and 
 
MY LOVE AND I 151 
 
 Mary to their rooms, leaving me in the cool, sweet house, 
 furnished with such simplicity in colonial lines, with 
 panels and fireplaces and all the reverenced reminders 
 of an olden time that I seemed to be sinking happily back 
 into the company of my forbears. I had a time-table 
 with me, and I meant to take the next train back, 
 walking over the causeway to the station, to give no 
 trouble. I wandered about the darkened room, picking 
 up a book here and there. Of books there were plenty, 
 selected, as I began presently to guess, to fit all com- 
 plexions of mind rather than one catholic taste. There 
 was the Golden Treasury, a pile of anthologies, and in 
 a set of shelves between windows, set where light would 
 fall on them invitingly, novels, the oldest and the new- 
 est aspirant. There was a case of fairy tales, and 
 modestly on a more secluded wall, history and the poets. 
 It looked very much as if the one who had selected 
 this store were saying to the reader, with some diffi- 
 dence, " Don't feel obliged to be academic. Here are 
 the stories. Take a bite. But if you're really hungry 
 for something else, why, just go and look for yourself." 
 And this was Ellen Tracy's fixed and even passionate 
 determination : that her house was not her own but an 
 inn to be arranged for the ease of guests. As this 
 dawned on me more and more, she came, and seeing 
 that I had but waited to take leave of her, she said to me 
 at once : 
 
 " You'll stay to luncheon. There's a good train 
 about five, the cool of the day." 
 
152 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I ought to have been busy at home earning bread for 
 my little son from the first moment I knew he was 
 to be a son and buying Mildred's release from 
 Miss Harpinger, but I wanted so immeasurably to 
 stay that I made no question of it. I could work that 
 night with a pen quickened by this richness of new 
 circumstance to spur it on. 
 
 "Come out here," she said. 
 
 She opened a door to a vine-shaded veranda, and there 
 beyond were trees and trees and promise of bosky 
 coverts, and, not the sea, but still water like a river at 
 full flood. She took my silence for the pleasure it was, 
 and smiled. 
 
 "We have breakfast out here," she said. "We 
 almost live here. Now, Mr. Redfield, won't you tell 
 me about your friends?" 
 
 We were in wicker chairs by the rail, turned slightly 
 to face each other, and I considered what I could tell. 
 Her eyes, full of a sweet seriousness, questioned mine. 
 I understood her perfectly. She wanted no confidential 
 gossip over their needs, to classify them in a physician's 
 officious usage. No, she wanted only a hint that 
 should help her own hospitality to offer and not to urge. 
 "What did Mary tell you ? " I asked. Again I sought 
 about absurdly for Mary's last name and found it. 
 Mary Owen. Yes, that was it. "Miss Owen," I 
 supplemented. 
 
 "She said he was broken down. Said he'd had a 
 shock." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 153 
 
 "Do you know who he is?" 
 
 I put this at a venture. Blake had had so exactly 
 the fate of the living poet that I could not expect even 
 a woman who looked as this one did to have heard of 
 his thin book. 
 
 "Why, yes!" She was amazed at me. The answer 
 leaped to her lips. "He's Blake, the poet." 
 
 "Good for you!" I was pleased, though not for 
 Blake. He could afford to wait a half century or so 
 for his bays. I was content with her, because she was 
 fulfilling every promise. "Well, Blake has broken down. 
 Overwork, disappointment, shock. And Miss " 
 
 "I see you call her Mary," she said, with her swift 
 coming smile. "Call her Mary to me." 
 
 "Mary is his friend, just as she's the friend of every 
 lame dog of us. And she's seeing him through." 
 
 She nodded in what seemed a perfect comprehen- 
 sion, looked thoughtful a moment, and then glanced 
 up at me with that sudden, heavenly smile. 
 
 "Well," said she, "they must stay here as long as 
 ever they like. There'll be no other guests in this house 
 for the present. And aunt Patten's coming to-night. 
 She's an old lady, very wise." 
 
 Did she then, I wondered, take Mildred's view that 
 the circumstances were unusual, and had aunt Patten 
 been sent for to give the situation countenance? But 
 at least this was her way of doing it. The guardian 
 aunt was summoned from the deeps of old-lady discre- 
 tion. The unclassified were not turned away. And 
 
154 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 then I realized that I had Mildred up before the bar 
 of this comparison, and was ashamed. Miss Tracy 
 was speaking now with a quick sincerity, as if she had 
 to reassure something in my own mind. 
 
 "You know I'm perfectly well aware that this is a 
 great honor to me." 
 
 "What is, Miss Tracy?" 
 
 "It's an enormous honor to have John Blake here 
 in my house, with the chance of getting him into shape 
 a bit by air and rest. And as for this wonderful 
 Mary, why, anybody can see what she is." 
 
 I was laughing a little at her headlong eagerness. 
 
 "What is she?" I asked. "What is Mary?" 
 
 She laughed back at me. Her face became delicious 
 when she did that. It lost its grave maturity, and grew 
 all innocently fair. I believe it even found a dimple 
 or two, a beguiling irregularity of its own, to throw it 
 into kinship with the smiles of the common world. 
 
 "Mary is a wonder," said she. "I never saw such 
 a face. How the child must have lived to have got 
 such things into it so young." 
 
 The child! was Mary young, then? I felt my igno- 
 rance of her, and was again ashamed. Perhaps Mary 
 had been too long one who was to serve and never be 
 given her natural birthright of maiden regnancy. 
 Perhaps Mary needed to reign a little, and not be under 
 every foot, even the foot of Blake, the mighty. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Miss Tracy. "I'm very lucky to 
 have got hold of Mary. I shan't let her go in a hurry." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 155 
 
 Then, with no persuasion but that of her warm and 
 willing mind, I began and told her the story of aunt 
 Cely's family boarding-house, always with Mary as 
 the centre of kindly service, and drifted naturally on to 
 the Toasted Cheese, and sketched the boys as well as 
 I might. Of Johnnie McCann and his suicidal mania 
 she could not have enough. When I first saw Ellen 
 Tracy I had guessed she was saint or angel. Now I 
 began to suspect that humor a kindly, sweet perception 
 of the ironies of life threaded her through and through. 
 She seemed determined to understand Johnnie, the natal 
 bent of him, not that he was Johnnie, but because he 
 was queer. 
 
 "You don't think it's a pose?" she queried alertly, 
 when I had given an instance of his perfectly practical 
 dealings with his mania. 
 
 "Oh, no, I'm sure it isn't." 
 
 "You think he really feels like killing himself?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 Why ? I hadn't gone into Johnnie to that depth. 
 
 "I haven't the least idea," I said. "I've taken it for 
 granted. Prenatal, I suppose." That sounded rather 
 reasonable, and I felt I had made good until she said: 
 
 "Wouldn't hypnotism set him right ?" 
 
 I was startled. We were going into things with a 
 vengance. 
 
 "But, bless you," said I, "I don't think Johnnie wants 
 to be cured." 
 
156 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "You don't?" She stared at me. 
 
 "No. It's a part of him, like his taste for lychee nuts 
 and his lavender shirts. Why, no. You mustn't take 
 away Johnnie's mania. He'd be as lonesome as the 
 deuce." 
 
 Then she got into a gale of laughter, and I began to 
 learn about her what I found afterward to be supremely 
 true : that she was possessed by the most sweet and 
 inordinate interest in human creatures. It was not 
 that she wanted to pick and steal their secrets or to 
 profane what was theirs. She loved them, that was 
 all. She laughed at them, but so gently, so sweetly 
 that it could not hurt, as women possessed by the love 
 of children go into passionate gusts and barter knowing 
 smiles over "cunning" ways. We talked fast and hard 
 that morning. I do not think I ever talked so runningly 
 with any one. And yet we said nothing really about 
 ourselves. I did not mention Mildred, though that 
 ecstatic secret was warm at my heart and throbbed 
 with it and made my words flow in a happier order and 
 my laughter more exultant. And I could even have 
 wished Ellen Tracy had known this thing about me save 
 that, in a way, it never seemed necessary for her to be 
 told facts at all, much as she might love them. Her 
 sympathy was perfect without. I had assumed, on 
 Mary's tale of her general kindliness, that she had a 
 theory of life, of the division of goods, so far as that might 
 be, of rules to make the community thrive. Nothing of 
 the sort. I questioned her boldly, thinking she had 
 
MY LOVE AND I 157 
 
 a system and would love to set it forth. Not at all. 
 She was not to be classified. She was neither philan- 
 thropist with a passion, socialist nor Christian with a 
 nostrum. She just, she said, in a homely phrase that 
 brought sparks into her eyes, liked to have company. 
 She had a good deal of money and no folks but aunt 
 Patten. And then she suddenly gave over talking 
 about it, as if it were, if not distasteful to her, surpris- 
 ingly out of the way. 
 
 Luncheon time came, and Mary joined us, looking 
 rather timid, but with an air of almost ardent expect- 
 ancy, as if this were a fairy house and she trembled 
 at the next step into another room. The luncheon went 
 off a homely sweet way, where everything was so 
 fastidious. It seemed to be understood that Blake 
 was to have his trays in his own room. I didn't see 
 him before going, but at something after four the car- 
 riage came and I said good-by to my hostess and Mary. 
 Mary looked a little frightened. What was I doing, 
 her eyes seemed to ask, leaving her in the company of 
 all this hospitality and angelhood ? 
 
 "Come again," said Miss Tracy, in a simple common- 
 place. "Mr. Blake will want to see you." 
 
 So I left them standing on the doorstep, she in her 
 angelhood and Mary like a humble servitor, and went 
 to town. That night I sat up late to write. But I 
 couldn't write at all, though the need of my earning 
 money had grown a hundred times more urgent. I had 
 too many things to think over. They came pressing 
 
158 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 upon me, the wonder of what Mildred had told me, and 
 other things I could not let myself consider. The 
 Epithalamium! She had sold it. Mildred had sold 
 it. That was as far as I let myself go. My mind kept 
 telling me that, and there, with the bare fact, I stopped 
 it every time. It should make no comment. But 
 toward midnight, when I was about throwing over the 
 bad job of writing, I got up to go to bed, sat down 
 again, drew my paper toward me and began a novel. 
 I wrote the title fair and large : Ellen Tracy. That 
 was not to be its name of course, and it was not really 
 about Ellen Tracy, for I knew nothing about her at all. 
 But I somehow felt as if I were devoting the manuscript 
 to noble ends if it had her name at the top. 
 
 XVII 
 
 MILDRED did not come up the next Tuesday as she 
 had threatened. (That is an ungracious word, but 
 I let it stand.) I had written her at once that Blake 
 and Mary had gone, and the matter of their brief stay 
 never again came up between us. I was madly at work, 
 not on short stories, though Rees and Dresser spurred 
 me in almost daily letters, but on my novel. So far, I 
 thought it rather good. It surprised me, when I read over 
 the pages born of a night's ferment, not alone because 
 it went so well but because it was so foreign to anything 
 I had done or even thought. These things I was setting 
 down in a pelting haste were perhaps not extraordinary, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 159 
 
 but they were different things from what I had previously 
 found in myself. Had I been living, I asked myself, a life 
 my outer self knew nothing about? Were there all 
 the time forming in me working forces like the inner 
 growth of a tree, and should I never quite know what 
 they were until I called my pen to liberate them? If 
 that was so, then it was even a more wonderful thing 
 to be a writer of any degree than I had guessed. 
 
 I had been twice to see Blake and Mary, and the 
 second time met aunt Patten, an extraordinary little 
 creature with white hair ani a hook nose who looked 
 you through and through and said the most amazingly 
 abrupt things : one that she hoped to heaven she could 
 die before snowfall. She thought the chances were 
 greater in summer, you ran such a gantlet of microbes 
 and heat. Ellen Tracy only smiled when she said these 
 things, in an ineffably tender way that meant, I thought, 
 an intimate understanding. But Mary, who seemed 
 now to be working all over the house, said boldly: 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Patten, do you want to die?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Patten, clicking her needles. "And 
 so would you if you were seventy -three." She looked 
 me through and through. "So you're the author," 
 she said, not unkindly, and I acknowledged I was. 
 
 But Ellen Tracy never hinted at my author's work. 
 Finally I got a little fractious about it, and wondered 
 whether she knew what a conspicuous person I was. 
 I didn't care. I didn't want her to speak of the 
 specious things, but I did want to know whether she 
 
160 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 took the trouble to place me anywhere. In these two 
 visits I went up to a top balcony where Blake lay 
 all day in fine weather watching the flooding river or 
 the bright green marsh. He was pathetically not 
 himself, glad to see me, yet not in his old half -absent, 
 funny way, as if, now a human creature had come 
 within his range, he wanted to do the expected thing for 
 him. But at the last visit he roused himself to ask, as I 
 was leaving, 
 
 "Look here, am I living on Mary?" 
 
 "No," said I, "you're not living on anybody." 
 
 He frowned, more in perplexity than distaste. 
 These things, said his pinched face, were too much for 
 him to untangle. Another look dawned painfully in 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Not," he said, "not on her? I'm not living on 
 Miss Tracy?" 
 
 That, I saw, would never do. I answered then, and 
 did it badly ; but it served. 
 
 "If you will have it, Blake, you're my guest here. 
 You can stand that, can't you ?" 
 
 His face cleared. He thought a moment. 
 
 "All right," he said, "for the present." 
 
 And I saw what a wise thing it was that I had lied, 
 though in a way I meant to make good by turning it 
 into fact. It had roused him. He was indebted to me. 
 He would live to pay me. I realized I must see Miss 
 Tracy before I left the house, and I found her in a 
 corner of her river balcony. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 161 
 
 "You must let me pay Blake's board," I said. 
 
 She looked up rather surprised at the brusqueness 
 of it, and I told her how I had taken it into my own 
 hands, and she must bear me out. 
 
 "Of course/' she said, at once. "The bill shall be 
 sent to you." 
 
 I knew that there had not been any idea of bills. 
 She and Mary had been accomplishing it together in 
 then- mother way, but she accepted the correction as of 
 no particular moment, though right if I thought it so. 
 Then she smiled at me in her sudden irresistible fashion 
 and I, with no reason, smiled too. You had to when 
 Ellen Tracy smiled. Her face was so serious not 
 sombre in a noble way that, when it took on light 
 and color, it was like a sad landscape under the sun, 
 like those English moors where a glint brings out the 
 rose of heather and the gold of gorse. 
 
 "What makes you laugh when you look at me?" 
 she asked, in an almost boyish fashion of direct attack. 
 
 "Do I ?" was my stupid answer. I could have told 
 her that to look at her was to hear the singing of birds 
 and to know the world was shouting paean to the spring. 
 This was not as I used to think of Mildred, the Spring 
 herself, a delicate creature all tender hues, come walk- 
 ing in from uncharted coverts. This other woman 
 brought the spring in her open hands, the largess of 
 sun and shower, to give it freely. But all I could say 
 was: 
 
 " Do I ? It's very rude of me." 
 
162 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "It's the way you look, Ellen." This was in aunt 
 Patten's voice from the other end of the veranda. I 
 had forgotten all about her. "You're always smiling. 
 People have to smile back." 
 
 "Dear me," said Miss Tracy, in an honest puzzle as 
 if she must really change it altogether. "I didn't 
 know I smiled." 
 
 Then Mary came in, and Miss Tracy took her by 
 the hand, as if in some sort of pledge, and said to 
 me: 
 
 "I've got her. She's going to stay with me." 
 
 Mary's face, a pretty pink, and rounder than I had 
 ever seen it, grew serious and sweet. She seemed to 
 want to impart a great deal of incredible well-being, 
 but could only manage : 
 
 "I'm Miss Tracy's secretary." 
 
 "Not drudging any more?" I hurled at her de- 
 lightedly. 
 
 "Drudging constantly," said Miss Tracy. "Drudg- 
 ing for me. Managing my business. I'm in luck." 
 
 I gave some sort of hurrah, and they were pleased 
 with me for being sympathetic. And yet I wondered, 
 as I went away, how it would be about Blake. Would 
 they turn him out of his Pilgrim Chamber whole and 
 sound, and would Mary then wish she were back in 
 some stuffy attic where the conventions would not 
 deny her ministering to him ? 
 
 That night in going back I bought a paper and saw 
 first of all, as if the print had been a letter to me, the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 163 
 
 death of Mary Harpinger. So that meant my not 
 going home, but driving across the city and taking 
 train to Romney. 
 
 What a different little place from that I had seen when 
 I came in the plenitude of youth and untouched emo- 
 tion to find Mildred like spring walking. Now it was 
 late summer, parched and faded, and something in me, 
 too, had faded. I could account for that. I was 
 married and grown up. The Apple Tree had its old 
 aspect of secluded groups on the veranda, and I, con- 
 scious that every newcomer was whispered over, made 
 my way round to the side door, and there I met Mil- 
 dred in her hat and gloves, and the carriage was coming 
 from the barn. She was pale, there were shadows under 
 her eyes, and I felt, with a sudden compunction, that 
 I should have been with her. Some of this, the hard 
 details, I surely might have saved her. 
 
 " Where are you going ?" I asked. I did not even 
 kiss her. She looked too wan and tired; but I knew 
 how I would cherish her. 
 
 "Back to town," she said, and then I saw her trunks 
 were coming down the stairs. "I tried to telephone 
 you." 
 
 "I was away," I explained, and then, awkward over 
 Blake and Mary, "out of town." 
 
 When we were in the carriage I asked her if I couldn't 
 do anything by coming back and staying. There 
 must be things to do. 
 
 "No," she said wearily. "Mr. Floyd came down." 
 
164 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 He was Miss Harpinger's man of business. "He did 
 everything. He took her away to-day." 
 
 We talked no more, and I would not question her 
 because I saw she was too tired. And after all, what 
 could I say about Mary Harpinger ? My every spoken 
 word when she was alive had been an offence against 
 her, for I had frankly hated her. I wished now, in 
 the humility we suffer before the dead, that she had not 
 to go so long a journey to earn my softened feeling, and 
 that since I could offer it in an unflawed kindliness, 
 I might do something to help her poor body on its way. 
 Such warmth of heart I had toward Mildred that no 
 service seemed too arduous to buy her a little ease from 
 care, nor any rite too insignificant to be remembered. 
 In the train I laid my hand on hers, so pitifully small for 
 the tasks it did. But the hand did not waken to return 
 my clasp. It was, I thought, too tired. But in the 
 carriage, driving home, she turned to me almost pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 "Martin," she said, and her voice trembled. With 
 love, I knew, and my heart answered : love, so late, love 
 begged for in every beat of my hungry heart, love from 
 the wife the bride had never waked to be. I looked at 
 her in the ardent expectation she used to find weari- 
 some, I knew. Now she showed me unashamed a face 
 of such intensity of feeling that I wondered at it. "Do 
 you know what she has done?" she asked me in that 
 same tone of passionate energy. 
 
 "Who, Mildred?" 
 
MY LOVE AND I 165 
 
 "Miss Harpinger. She has left me every cent she 
 had in the world." 
 
 I seemed suddenly to; have grown cold. Tumultuous 
 denials rushed to my lips, but never crossed them. We 
 did .not want her money. Whatever she had left we 
 would not have it. It was a stigma, money with no 
 love, no kinship. But all I said was: - 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "She told me," said Mildred. "She promised me. 
 If I would see her through she would leave it all to me. 
 She was rich. I know that for a fact." 
 
 I felt impelled to ask questions to keep her from see- 
 ing how far my mind had run from hers. 
 
 "How do you know it ?" I said. 
 
 "Mr. Floyd told me." 
 
 "You talked it over with him?" 
 
 "Not the will. No, I never told any one of that. 
 About her property in general. It is more than three 
 hundred thousand." 
 
 She leaned her head back in the carriage in excess 
 of joy and weariness, and I said nothing and I believe 
 thought nothing. But I remember how the city street 
 looked to me as we drove along to our own door. The 
 day had been warm, and now in the cool of dusk every- 
 body had wandered out. A caretaker in the house next 
 ours sat on the steps, her dressing-sack turned away from 
 her creased throat, a palm leaf fan in her plump hand. 
 Two children were trailing wearily by, from an after- 
 noon in the Common, the elder very small and with a 
 
166 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 world of motherly responsibility in her face, the younger 
 numb with coming sleep yet keeping a tight clutch on 
 something green, no more than grass and plantains, 
 but to him the largess of the summer day. I felt a 
 yearning throb at sight of them, poor little unshielded 
 bodies getting home by their wits through the traffic 
 of the streets. And then I looked upon myself with 
 wonder, at the unsuspected cravings of fatherhood in 
 me. Some mechanical instrument was banging away 
 at a distance, and to-day I cannot hear the waltz it 
 travestied so lustily without the same quick pang it 
 brought me then. For Mildred said, as the carriage 
 stopped and her voice chimed against the bars of the 
 waltz : 
 
 "At least three hundred thousand. But that's very 
 little nowadays. Almost nothing. " 
 
 XVIII 
 
 WE went, in all decorum, to Mary Harpinger's 
 funeral. It was a sparse assemblage. She had no 
 relatives, and nobody was yet in town, so Mildred 
 told me. Floyd was there, a red, tubby man, almost 
 sooty in his black. I wondered if Mildred thought 
 his sartorial woe as overdone as I; but she greeted 
 him with a sympathetic melancholy, and in due form 
 we who did not love Mary Harpinger consigned her 
 to the dust. Then we waited a week, two, in what I 
 could but think differing ferments of impatience, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 167 
 
 Mildred half in triumph, half a tremor that was not 
 really fear, and I resolutely determining not to cross 
 that bridge until we came to it, but wondering what 
 I should actually do if I were bombarded by this 
 golden shower of Mary Harpinger's. I dreaded the 
 effect on Mildred of a prolonged watching. She grew 
 wretchedly uneasy, and schooled herself into an 
 alarming rigidity of mind; but she would not go out 
 of town again, and the hot days told on her. At last 
 it came, the news unheralded by any personal note, 
 but staring out boldly from the evening paper. It 
 was Mildred who found it and, with a shaking hand, 
 she passed the sheet to me. I glanced at it merely 
 to see the heading, "Will of Mary Harpinger," and 
 then I threw it down and held my wife to my heart : 
 for her face was ghastly and she was trembling. But 
 it needed more than the comforting of caresses to 
 minister to her. I got her to a couch and telephoned 
 the doctor, and that night, prematurely, my son was 
 born. As for Mary Harpinger's will, I never knew 
 about it until days afterward, when Mildred was 
 doubtfully said to be out of danger. I did not forget 
 it, because it meant infinitely to me now in the shock 
 it had brought her, and its provisions were something 
 I might have to cope with. I need not have feared. 
 Mary Harpinger had left her property, without one 
 reservation, to her business man, Joseph N. Floyd. 
 Then I was glad. At least that burden of ill-gotten 
 money was rolled away. My son, who was puny 
 
168 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 from his untimely summons into the world, would 
 grow, my wife would get back the strength this sordid 
 bargain had drained out of her. 
 
 I went in to see Mildred, my heart on my lips, 
 knowing I could allow myself untrammelled joy. 
 Can any man forget what pain, what terror, what de- 
 light, rises up in him at the wan beauty of the mother 
 of his child? Yet no man, even if he has learned to 
 weave in words, can tell. It is one of the incommuni- 
 cable secrets, the giant dread that she might not have 
 returned from the gates of that awful wrestling, the 
 vowing of service to her, of the brooding tenderness 
 due to this white majesty. There she lay, so in- 
 effably frail, so invincible in her spiritual empery, so 
 appealing in the pathos of her powers undone. Her 
 long braids of hair were on her shoulders, her delicate 
 hands were crossed. Even now, in the face of the 
 good cheer of my summoning, I could not forbear a 
 poignant wonder lest after all she was still nearer 
 death than life. I sat down by her, and the nurse 
 went away. Mildred opened her eyes upon me, and 
 at once I saw in them a trouble unfitting the mother's 
 heavenly calm. Her lips formed a word. I bent to 
 listen, and she said, like an accusation : 
 "She promised. That woman promised." 
 I was concerned at the effect on her. Here was 
 she at her weakest still brooding on what assaulted 
 her. I called desperately on my own resources, and 
 I believe some instinct gave me the right clew. Prac- 
 
MY LOVE AND I , 169 
 
 tical, cool common sense had been Mildred's prime 
 staff and friend. I had savagely deplored it in her. 
 It had been the inexorable housewife that had sent 
 me out of doors of the house of life when I would fain 
 have gone singing through its halls, and strown its 
 beds with rose-leaves. If it had been the primal im- 
 pulse in her it was the strongest one, and that I would 
 call on now. I bent to her. 
 
 "Mildred," said I, " listen to me. You've been very 
 sick." 
 
 Her eyes were on my face and seemed to give assent. 
 She could bear the truth, I knew, and she must have 
 it. Only the truth would save her. 
 
 "You are very sick still. You have got to stop 
 thinking about what frets you. You've simply got to 
 do it. When you get well" I sought about for com- 
 fort crude enough, practical enough to meet her defi- 
 nite brooding "we'll make money. There are ways 
 enough. We'll find the way." 
 
 '\ She understood me, and I saw compliance in her 
 eyes. She would dismiss her trouble. She had the 
 will to do it. And so she would get well. I felt with 
 a curious pang of enlightenment over the ways of life 
 that at that moment she was more at one with me 
 than she had ever been indeed, I suspected, through 
 that sudden blaze of knowledge, that she had never 
 before been at one with me at all. I had always been 
 trying to drag her, in a perhaps cruel ravishment, to 
 the fields of my romantic passion, and now I had at 
 
170 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 last opened the gate and come to visit her where she 
 lived. I saw myself doing it, as in a vision of an 
 afternoon call : coming to see her in her house of life 
 that she was practically seeking to make a more pre- 
 tentious one, or even, to do her justice, to set on a 
 more firm foundation. This, I saw, was probably 
 marriage as it exists: a defensive alliance for prac- 
 tical gain in a condition of life where the business of 
 man is to live in conformity. I did smile a little at 
 the vanishing of visions as I went out, warned by the 
 coming of the nurse. I had gone into the room, my 
 inner self an ecstasy of poetry and love, and I had 
 left with a promise to the mother of my child that we 
 would thrive. Then I went to see my son; this was 
 the second time I had sought him. He looked very 
 small and very funny. I did not like him especially, 
 which was a shock. I had cherished the feeling that 
 a man had dormant in him some natural affection for 
 his offspring. Nothing of the sort. This little creature 
 was not only uninviting to the eye, but so fragile that 
 it would be a brave father indeed who should crave 
 the privilege of touching him. So I escaped to my 
 study from these imperfectly comprehended develop- 
 ments of the marriage state, and, still with that ironic 
 tendency to smiling upon me, sat down to earn money. 
 I knew perfectly well how the publishers wanted me 
 to do it. I had only to put some of the chaotic ecstasies 
 of my heart when I saw Mildred's face on the pillow 
 into the heart of a Paolo or Luigi, and write a story 
 
MY LOVE AND I 171 
 
 of Little Italy for the paymasters to pronounce it 
 " corking" and urge me on to more. So I took my 
 pen. But instead of the story of Little Italy, I went 
 on with the story of Ellen Tracy. That was the 
 only road my pen would take, now it had smelled it 
 out. And this work I could do in a merry, almost a 
 mischievous mood. It brought the mood with it. I 
 took liberties with the remote Miss Tracy. I abducted 
 her from the pleasaunce where she walked in maiden 
 meditation, and made her fall irresponsibly in love 
 with some one. Could it be with me? That was a 
 part of the witch-work of it all. I was doing this 
 book for my own pleasure, "for fun," I told myself. 
 Heaven itself knew I had had no fun thus far in my 
 halting way, prodded on by necessity to do faking 
 tales, and with only my one poem, the Epithalamium, 
 to make the higher type of man in my own guild take 
 off his hat to me. But that poem the gods had given 
 me, and I didn't dare even think of it now; I didn't 
 dare recall so much as its sacred first line, so did I 
 fear the soreness of the memory of its publishing. 
 The gods had given it, and lived I ever so worthily I 
 could not believe there was that in me to persuade 
 them to accord me another line more. For there is 
 something queer and inexorable about this matter of 
 poetry. The gods give it, or they do not. It is 
 absolutely not a question of attainment. Are they 
 wanton in their choice? Is it that, on some brightest 
 day in Olympus, they feel light-minded, play jokes, 
 
172 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and rifle Apollo's scrip and toss heavenly measures 
 down to earth like butterflies or shooting stars, letting 
 them hit at will? Or do they pine with momentary 
 longing, and feel fain of earthlings, with their red, 
 warm hearts, like Diana fain of her shepherd boy, 
 and stuff a lad's wallet full of words and measures, 
 snatch him away perhaps to the mountain of song, 
 drug his ears with melodies, and lull his earthly sense, 
 so that when he wakes cold on the barren slopes left 
 by their heavenward flight he recalls dun echoes of 
 what he clearly heard and chants it haltingly, yet to 
 the ravishment of those who never hear the clear 
 initial note? Yes, the gods give it. I think they 
 give it wantonly. 
 
 But I would have some fun. I would write exactly 
 as I felt like writing about this warm, goddess-hued 
 creature called Ellen Tracy, and she, who seemed so 
 free, with sovereignty over herself, should walk the 
 paths I laid for her. She was too free, perhaps, too 
 glad with festival, too untouched by earthly hungers. 
 So, as I let her walk into the snare of life, I quite 
 naturally invited her to walk first of all into love. 
 And the man she loved, and who did not love her 
 was it I ? Why not, since I was writing for fun what 
 only I should read ? It was an old-fashioned, serious 
 fellow. Was it I? No. When the discovery came 
 to me, a flood of memory broke also. It was Egerton 
 Sims. I do not mean that I consciously made it 
 Egerton Sims. With the honest workman this never 
 
MY LOVE AND I 173 
 
 happens, or, if it does, portraiture is a botch compared 
 with the semblance of the image that rises, product 
 of a hundred sensations, sum of fecund years, on the 
 palimpsest of the brain. But when I saw it was like 
 him, I went on writing with a warmth I had not felt 
 for long, the glow of greeting a friend returned after 
 absence, of getting into touch once more with what 
 has brought us good or happiness and realizing how 
 alive it is. Ellen Tracy loved him with a direct im- 
 pulse of the heart, and he, for reasons lying in his own 
 humility, never knew it, would not know it indeed, 
 but died poor in this world's acclaim. The only 
 trouble was, I was afraid of making him the shadow 
 of Colonel Newcome. Egerton Sims was like that 
 Christian gentleman, and the portrait once done, 
 nobody can do more than paint copies. 
 
 For a long time I held to this in an ecstasy of haste, 
 because I knew well it was my pastime, and I must 
 speedily set about redeeming my promise to Mildred 
 and making money. And my faith in her strength 
 and control was fulfilled. She got slowly up from 
 her bed, and taking great care of herself, as I did of 
 her, was soon as well as ever. The baby, too, justified 
 my faith in his powers : for he ate and slept and threw 
 off, as it were with scorn, all imputations of being 
 puny. He would be, the doctor said, a lusty fellow. 
 My sun of domesticity was shining brightly now. 
 Blake, whom I had not had time to see of late, was 
 improving, Mary's letters told me. The letters, 
 
174 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 though, when you read between the lines, were sad. 
 I made a mental note that Mary wanted pulling out 
 of a hole, and I must see to it the minute I could get 
 to her. Why hadn't Ellen Tracy done it, she who 
 had a million horse-power for pulling? I laughed 
 out here, thinking if Ellen Tracy didn't walk Spanish, 
 I'd pay her out for it in my novel, the novel that 
 was getting so personal now that there was no hope 
 or danger of her seeing it. And while I sat at my 
 table wondering if I really could grind out another 
 story of Little Italy that should not disgrace me, so 
 painfully alike had they become, the maid ran up to 
 say a gentleman was downstairs. He had asked for 
 Mrs. Redfield, but she was driving, and so he asked 
 for me. I went down with the thought of Blake in 
 my mind, and found in the hall, as if he had escaped 
 from the larger room to be near the door, a small, 
 set-looking man in roughish clothes, walking back 
 and forth in the circumscribed space of the hall and 
 seeming persistent. That was the way he struck me 
 at the first glance, as a man who, denied at the door, 
 would have said, "You won't ask me in? Well, I'm 
 coming in. You don't remember me? I'll make 
 you, sir." He was all of a color, clothes and all, a 
 sort of yellowy brown even to the whites of his eyes 
 they might have grown jaundiced from a warmer sun 
 and smooth black hair. He was not an ill-looking 
 chap, only weather-worn, frowning, and giving me at 
 least this swift impression of an indomitable per- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 175 
 
 sistency. It may not have been the bulldog quality. 
 He was perhaps not ugly enough for that. It might 
 have been the terrier that hangs on. 
 
 "My name," he said at once, "is Gorham, Thomas 
 Gorham." Then, as that probably brought no answer- 
 ing gleam from me, he added, "Milly's cousin." 
 
 At that, an illuminating memory bade me recall 
 that Mildred had once been engaged to him, and I 
 said, like a boor, "Good Lord!" adding, in as swift 
 reparation as I might, "I'm Redfield, you know. 
 Come in here." 
 
 "Pleased to meet you, sir," was his contribution to 
 my cordiality, and I continued :- 
 
 "Mildred is not at home. She will be presently. 
 She's out with the child." That's a facer, I thought, 
 you obstinate chap. Mildred isn't the Mildred she 
 was when you called her Milly. She's the mother of 
 a remarkable person I respect and look upon with 
 some hope of a near intimacy when he is less mollus- 
 cous, whom I call my son. 
 
 So we sat down, and Gorham told me he had just 
 landed. Come home to stay, he thought. Had 
 enough of it. You got tired of banging round the 
 world. Wanted to settle down when you were thirty- 
 five. But he was nervous to his finger-tips. That 
 was over the prospect of seeing Mildred. At last she 
 came, lovely, a little languid from the warmth, and 
 after her the retinue, the nurse and my son. Gorham 
 forgot all about me the minute he heard her voice in 
 
176 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the hall. A keen anticipation darted into his face, 
 and he got up and met her at the foot of the stairs. 
 
 "Well/' I heard him say. His voice, that voice 
 with the tense fibre in it, almost the twang of a fight- 
 ing quality, was greatly moved. "Well, Milly, I've 
 come back." 
 
 XIX 
 
 I HAD followed him with an instinct of courtesy to 
 them both, and I could have sworn that when Mildred 
 saw him she was afraid. She shrank a little, and I, 
 after that one look at her face, ranged myself beside 
 her and touched her hand remindingly. If she had 
 been apprehensive, she pulled herself together, and 
 greeted him with a cousinly frankness. The baby, 
 whom, from a fatuous paternal instinct I had hoped 
 to bring into the foreground, went upstairs coma- 
 tose in the arms of nurse, a state evidently considered 
 most admirable by nurse herself, though I thought it 
 hardly picturesque enough to impress a wandering 
 cousin. Then Mildred and the cousin and I went 
 into the drawing-room again, and Mildred, sitting 
 down, took off her gloves with the nicety of motion 
 that might have been the despair of women less equipped, 
 and turned toward him with a pretty solicitude for 
 news of his voyage and his present destination. As I 
 sat by, watching her absently, I thought if I were 
 called away from her and had to conjure up pictures 
 
MY LOVE AND I 177 
 
 of her, for my consoling, I should always find it easiest 
 to summon the vision of Mildred taking off her gloves. 
 Cousin Thomas dismissed the voyage as "well enough," 
 and announced his intention of staying for the present 
 "right here." So fixed was the determination of his 
 tone that I could well believe he meant to spend the 
 remainder of his life in that very room, in that chair, 
 indeed. I was solid enough, dull enough in my sedate- 
 ness, heaven knows ; but he was so much less ductile 
 that he inspired me with a light-hearted and flippant 
 sympathy. I felt almost gamesome before him. Here 
 was a man who would accomplish his aims because he 
 would never cease to believe that they were weighty. 
 And after all it would not be from any intrinsic ap- 
 proval of the aims themselves. It would be because 
 he had decided they should be accomplished for the 
 petty triumph of "making good." Yet one thing he 
 had not brought to bear. He had not married Mildred. 
 I wondered, when that thought came to me, how much 
 the defeat meant to him. 
 
 He stayed to dinner, and I tried hard to get up 
 some simulating pretence of talk. Indeed, there were 
 things he knew that I sorely coveted. He had seen 
 strange quarters of the world, and I wanted to rifle 
 his brains. I told him so frankly. 
 
 "It would be money in my pocket," I said, "if I 
 knew some of the things you do. I could use 'em 
 very comfortably in my business." 
 
 Mildred looked up with her alert consideration of 
 
178 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the practical issue. I could see that if I wanted that 
 stock in trade she meant to get it for me. We were 
 business partners, an alliance made, I knew, against 
 the world. 
 
 " You're on a paper, ain't you?" asked cousin 
 Thomas. 
 
 "Not now," I told him, and I believe I said it with 
 some shame. In the face of cousin Thomas's strides 
 through primeval forests in search of cash, it seemed a 
 piffling thing indeed to write stories for the entertain- 
 ing of an idle public. 
 
 "Travelled much?" he continued. 
 
 "Not at all," I owned. I had lived hi Trinidad. 
 That was the only picture I had to contribute to 
 portfolio views of foreign parts. He woke to a brief 
 interest in me then when he asked if I knew anything 
 about the shoe trade there, and dropped me as not 
 immediate to his purposes when I owned that the 
 only shoes I had made acquaintance with were the 
 pair on my own feet. He thereafter devoted his 
 attention in a perfectly open and even childlike fashion 
 to Mildred. And indeed, toughened as he was, seasoned 
 by all kinds of commercial and adventurous wind and 
 weather, he was, in the intercourse of social life, as 
 ingenuous as a child. His interest in Mildred was 
 perfectly undisguised. He asked her all sorts of 
 questions, brusque questions a husband might have 
 resented from another sort of man, but that from 
 cousin Thomas seemed distinctly droll. How was she 
 
MY LOVE AND I 179 
 
 fixed ? he asked her as if the question of her fixity in- 
 cluded nobody else, certainly not a chap who was present 
 and might have been held responsible, or the young 
 lordling upstairs. Mildred answered gravely, look- 
 ing at me for confirmation, and a little disconcerted, I 
 thought, at the amusement probably evident in my 
 face. " We're quite comfortable," she said, in a charm- 
 ing compliance with his way of putting it. "Of 
 course we have to be careful, the cost of living is so 
 great." 
 
 "You on a salary?" he inquired, turning to me. 
 "Or do you take contracts?" 
 
 This was too much, even from cousin Thomas, who 
 meant no offence, and I didn't answer, but rose and 
 brought some tobacco : for now dinner was over and 
 we were in the drawing-room drinking our coffee. I 
 served him, with a superfluous courtesy, to cover my 
 lack of response, but it did me no good. For when 
 he was frowningly puffing away, as if the cigar also 
 were an enemy he meant to put in its proper place by 
 annihilating it, he merely looked round at me and reit- 
 erated :- 
 
 "You on a salary?" 
 
 I laughed outright and capitulated. 
 
 "No," I said, "I'm not on a salary." 
 
 "What do you invest in?" said cousin Thomas. 
 "I suppose you go in for the non-taxables." 
 
 Now I did feel small, because I invested in nothing 
 save my life insurance and daily bread : irritated, too, 
 
180 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 for how was cousin Thomas to know that the circum- 
 stance of having taken a house and beginning to live 
 like other men fitted to such houses, kept me on a mad 
 gallop, hearing at all hours, and even sometimes 
 through my dreams, the hissing of the lash that drove 
 me? "Great heaven, cousin Thomas," I felt I might 
 say, if I were as frank as he, " don't you know I have 
 to buy an inconceivable quantity of beeves and fish? 
 Don't you know the innocent chop that appeared on 
 your plate bought in its finicky collarette of fringed 
 paper was Trenched' and incalculably more expensive 
 than the chop unpretendingly hacked from the loin 
 and indebted to no tissue paper adorning, nature's own 
 chop, in fact? Do you know the cost of accommoda- 
 tors when maids fly off at an hysterical tangent? Do 
 you know what the doctor asks for training a puny 
 child into a potential prize-fighter?" But these were 
 the queries and confidences I reserved for my pillow 
 about the first of the month when I let Mildred open 
 the bills because I actually didn't dare. She never 
 knew I was afraid. At least I assume she didn't. At 
 that time I hoped she took it as a way of helping me, and 
 leaving my mind free to stroll about in Little Italy 
 on its own poetic and commercial tours. 
 
 When cousin Thomas rose to go and it was not 
 early he said to Mildred: 
 
 "Til be round some time to-morrow. Take you for 
 a ride, if you say so." 
 
 Mildred hesitated. I thought she was going to 
 
MY LOVE AND I 181 
 
 yield because she must ; but she explained in a moment 
 that she always took the baby out for a drive, and she 
 was not quite strong yet, and stayed hi the rest of the 
 day. 
 
 "All right," said cousin Thomas. "I'll be in some 
 time in the forenoon." 
 
 Then he went away, and in the silence between us 
 a sleepy silence for me, since I had found cousin Thomas 
 less and less exhilarating as the evening wore I could 
 hear his quick decisive steps echoing down the street. 
 Mildred was questioning my face. I felt that, though 
 my eyes were closed, and I thought she wished, hi the 
 manner of the spouse left by the outer world in marital 
 seclusion, that brutal confidence of the wedded, to 
 know how cousin Thomas struck me. I was willing 
 to oblige her, but he seemed, however dynamic, to 
 mean very little to us personally, and I was sleepy. 
 Out of my coma I spoke. 
 
 "Is cousin Thomas your second cousin or your 
 third?" 
 
 "Why," said Mildred, hesitating over it, "he must 
 be my second cousin." 
 
 "Must be?" said I, really thinking of the heavenly 
 surges in my legs and wishing the bed were under them. 
 "You know, don't you?" 
 
 "We were almost like brother and sister," said 
 Mildred. "I never should think of resenting anything 
 Tom did or said." 
 
 "Brother and sister? I thought you were engaged." 
 
182 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 This out of my coma. 
 
 "Did I tell you that?" said Mildred. She seemed 
 annoyed. "Well, if we were, he's forgotten all about 
 it now, and so have I." 
 
 "Don't you think it," said I. "Cousin Thomas 
 never forgets anything he ever decided to remember." 
 She turned on her way to the door, and regarded me 
 with a quick look, of surprise, I thought, at my clever- 
 ness. I was winking my eyes open and I saw the look. 
 
 "Martin," said she, "how do you know that? 
 You've only seen him this one evening. How could 
 you possibly know it?" 
 
 I got on my feet and shook my sleepy mantle off. 
 
 "Why, anybody could see what cousin Thomas is," 
 I said. " Besides, it isn't one evening. It's hours and 
 hours and years he's been here. But you were a brave 
 girl, Mildred, to break your engagement to him. I 
 should as soon have thought of getting away from an 
 octopus fastened neatly and securely to a rock." 
 
 Then Mildred gave me a surprise of her own and quite 
 unwittingly. 
 
 "No," she said thoughtfully, "I don't believe I could 
 have broken it if he'd been here." 
 
 "You don't?" I was broad awake now and staring 
 at her. "Why don't you ?" 
 
 "Why, it's just what you said. Tom makes up his 
 mind to get a thing and he gets it. Or he makes up his 
 mind to keep it and he keeps it. He wouldn't have 
 let me go." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 183 
 
 "He wouldn't?" I said, in a sudden heat, and yet 
 ashamed of it even in its inception : for who was cousin 
 Thomas to stir a man's blood? But I added, as the 
 man for whom the engagement had been quashed, 
 "Then I'd have broken his head." 
 
 At that moment, before Mildred could say, as she 
 did sometimes wearily when I let any sort of passion 
 get the better of me, "Don't be silly, dear," the tele- 
 phone rang and I answered it, perhaps a little glad to 
 be excused from my posture of high tragedy. And of 
 all surprising things, it was the voice of Blake. He was 
 at the Toasted Cheese. Would I come over ? Blake, 
 whom I saw last lolling on a balcony and fed with 
 possets! Of course I'd come. I ran up to tell Mildred, 
 who was now in her room, that I was going out to meet 
 a fellow ; I had never mentioned Blake to her since she 
 saw him in our house. It was not fear that constrained 
 me; it was not resentment. I loved Blake and I 
 simply couldn't. I had my shyness of emotions that 
 would have been perhaps, to the outer eye, mere coward- 
 ice. But they were a part of me and not to be resisted 
 lest I lose with them some softness I was rather glad to 
 have. Mildred stood there without her gown, her long, 
 pale hair already about her shoulders. She looked, as 
 I went in, like a slim girl, and my heart went out to her 
 as a man's heart always must to what is moving in its 
 gentleness. But as I approached her, I saw her face 
 was not like a girl's at all. It was rigid, haggard, set. 
 This look I knew. It meant something definite, some- 
 
184 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 thing I recognized. She was planning, planning, and 
 I cursed the needs of common life that they should force 
 a delicate creature to spend her springtime in the cal- 
 culation of the store for summer and the snow. I took 
 up a tress of the pale, soft hair and kissed it, and Mil- 
 dred seemed to waken from her muse. 
 
 "It's stopped coming out," she said. 
 
 I suddenly felt the savage in me. 
 
 "Mildred," I said, " Mildred, why don't you meet 
 my love ? When I kiss your hair, for God's sake - 
 I didn't know how to end the cry. What did I want 
 her to do ? What that I could tell her ? Only, perhaps, 
 to see that at that moment her hah- was the veil of her 
 beauty, the waving, living, floating cloud about it, 
 symbol of it, and so alive that to touch it with my lips 
 made a child of me. She looked straight into my eyes, 
 not fiercely as I was looking at her, not in shrinking as 
 might well have been, but as if she wanted to under- 
 stand me, to know what would best serve between us. 
 
 "Should you like me better?" she asked. 
 
 I held out my arms to her. Like her better! At 
 that moment, in her cool gentleness, she looked unat- 
 tainable, and I felt the impossibility of ever telling her 
 how beautiful seemed to me that inner citadel of her 
 being, which I had never seen. It must be the heart of 
 love, for had it not in blossoming made her outward 
 beauty? It was precious to be so defended. But 
 I stretched my arms to her, and she came to me of her 
 own will, and gave three kisses to my lips, such as the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 185 
 
 sun gives when he is too cruel in the south. This from 
 her, who had never come to my arms in willing haste, 
 who was the mother of my child, and yet whose lips, 
 I had known too well, were not my eager subjects but 
 my prey. Then she seemed to slip from my arms and 
 turned from me. Yet I should not have gone to Blake 
 that night save that when she turned she went to her 
 dressing-table and began practically brushing her hair. 
 And her face, as the glass betrayed it to me, was not soft 
 with afterglow, but tired and old. If she had drawn her 
 hair about her like a cloud, even if she had not looked 
 at me again, I should have known my lady's bower 
 was mine. But the room was a quiet bedroom hi an 
 autumn night, with a grave, mysterious lady brushing 
 her hair, and scorn got hold of me and gave rout to my 
 passion, telling me I was not base enough to sue for 
 favors coldly given. But outside the door I halted, 
 and after brief schooling of myself, called to her: 
 
 "When you were engaged to him " I stopped, 
 and she said, "Well?" with a faint curiosity hi her 
 tone. 
 
 "Did you accept him when he was in South America 
 or when he was here ?" 
 
 "In South America." 
 
 "By letter?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Then I went downstairs and out of the house, ashamed 
 of betraying myself : for when a man shows his primal 
 jealousy to a woman, he needs to be comforted by her 
 
186 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 lips, her royal favor, to keep his self-respect. But I 
 was glad. Cousin Thomas had not kissed her. Cousin 
 Thomas was well enough, but to see him and his dry 
 way was not to fancy him even in the outer courts of 
 one's liege lady. 
 
 When I got to the Toasted Cheese I found things 
 in full swing, and everybody slightly off his head : for 
 Blake had come back and it was a great night for the 
 club. Blake himself was at a corner table eating 
 nothing, no mug even before him, and Johnnie McCann, 
 opposite, watched him with the eyes of a liegeman or 
 an adoring dog. Blake was changed, as he could not 
 well help being, after his total downfall ; but he looked 
 a different man from the supine creature Mary and I 
 had carried off to Hopeful Sands. Pale, though not 
 perhaps so thin, for the recuperative diet of Ellen 
 Tracy's house had been directed to the bettering of his 
 nerves by padding them, he yet showed a shade of un- 
 certainty in his movements, a pathetic indirection 
 which was not like the old Blake at all. He had 
 experienced that most disconcerting blow to the 
 man regardless of his body, so that it served his 
 soul : a knockout before the prime of life. A delight- 
 ful look of welcome ran over his face, and he got up 
 and struck hands with me. Johnnie slipped away, and 
 now I was in the opposite chair studying Blake's face, 
 my own, no doubt, boyishly eager, for I surely loved 
 him. 
 
 "But what are you up here for, old chap?" I re- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 187 
 
 proached him. "How do you dare? You were to be 
 secluded and stuffed for six months or more. This is 
 dangerous." 
 
 But it wasn't dangerous, his shining eyes assured me. 
 They were the eyes of one to whom something has 
 happened : revelation, joyous, inspiriting change. 
 What secret had he learned at Ellen Tracy's, what note 
 more vivifying even than the Muse's call had he heard 
 over her river at sunsets and at dawn? But he was 
 putting aside my question very practically. 
 
 "I couldn't stay there/' he said. 
 
 I thought I could have stayed there many a long day 
 if I had been Blake, and watched Ellen Tracy and 
 written poetry. He hadn't sacrificed to the boiling 
 of the pot as I had. Though he had helped glut the 
 Bally Thief he had done it absently with the upper 
 chambers of his mind always open to the winds of song. 
 As soon as he got a heart-beat stronger from Ellen 
 Tracy's wine and oil and the beauty of her river balcony, 
 he should have begun singing about her. 
 
 "You're not up here for good?" I questioned. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Doctor say so ? Let you come ?" 
 
 "Doctors be eternally malpracticed on and crammed 
 with their own specifics," he retorted. "You don't 
 suppose I'm going to talk to a doctor when I feel like 
 this?" 
 
 "How do you feel?" 
 
 He gave a low laugh, full of exultant recognition of 
 
188 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the things that are to be. Nothing but the future has 
 power to move a man like that. 
 
 " Young," he said. " Simply young. Young and 
 full of the devil of life." 
 
 "What do you mean by the devil?" I asked practi- 
 cally. I wondered whether it was an ill devil he meant 
 that whacks us on to inchoate deeds for the mere lust of 
 life, or whether he was flourishing a figure of speech. 
 
 "I mean," said he, "the devil that keeps this present 
 world moving, the fire, the impulse, the surge of life. I 
 feel young." 
 
 He might feel young, but he was not, I saw, strong 
 with the strength of life: only intoxicated with its 
 ferment. 
 
 "What does Mary say?" I ventured. 
 
 His face darkened, not angrily, but rather with a 
 wistful musing. 
 
 "Mary ? I haven't seen her." 
 
 "Isn't she at Hopeful Sands?" 
 
 "No. But then I'm not either." 
 
 "Mary told me she was going to live there. Miss 
 Tracy told me so and Mary acted as if she was made." 
 
 He lowered more darkly. 
 
 "Well," he said, "that was the plan. But she gave 
 it up. She came back." 
 
 "Back here?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Before you did?" 
 
 "No. After." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 189 
 
 Then I understood. True to her worship, Mary's 
 allegiance led her to be near him. 
 
 "No," said he, reading my assumption, "that's not 
 the reason. I wish you'd see Mary, persuade her to go 
 back." 
 
 "Where's Mary living?" 
 
 He told me : a house a few doors away from the one 
 aunt Cely had kept for our comfort, and where she now 
 herself lodged in proud competency. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "of course I'll go and see Mary. I 
 want to see her." 
 
 "Persuade her to go back," said Blake, frowning 
 more and more in an irritation against some plight he 
 could not offer me in its entirety. "It's all wrong, all 
 wrong." 
 
 Then he fell into a frowning muse and woke to ask, 
 with a quick look that seemed to trap me : 
 
 "How much do I owe you for my board down 
 there?" 
 
 I stumbled, but honestly, because I didn't know, and 
 told him I hadn't got the bill. 
 
 "It's all straight, is it ?" he challenged me. "You're 
 not playing it on me?" 
 
 I had recovered my bravado now, and assured him 
 it was straight. Miss Tracy was to send me the bill, 
 and she hadn't yet done it. 
 
 "Very well, then," said Blake; "when she does, hand 
 it over." 
 
 What had he to bank on, beginning with scanty 
 
190 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 strength after his downfall? I approached that hi 
 haste, because this seemed the easiest way, and he 
 cut me short with the plain fact: - 
 
 "I've gone back to the Bally Thief. Wadham has 
 advanced me something." 
 
 Well, it was like a resurrection to see him there talk- 
 ing, in his right mind, and so the others felt it. They 
 crowded round us when we rose to go, and with a touch- 
 ing gentleness, as if he must not spend his strength on 
 them, shook hands with Blake ; and though their faces 
 shone on him, they seemed to know no other way to tell 
 him what a great old boy he was and how reverently 
 regarded. And I got him away because it was evident 
 to common sense that he ought to be in his bed. And 
 I walked home with him to a mean street far from 
 Mary's, and bade him good-night at the door. It was 
 an obscure looking house that might well have some air 
 from the gulf of railway tracks flanking it, though it 
 must be noisy also, and that I hesitatingly asked him. 
 Could he work there, I said, so near the tracks ? 
 
 " Well enough," he said carelessly, his key in the lock. 
 " Besides, I shall be at the libraries grinding for the 
 Thief. Go and see Mary to-morrow," he bade me, the 
 previous trouble of his manner returning upon him. 
 "Coax her to go back. Not from me. From you. 
 Mary '11 hear to you." 
 
 When I went softly upstairs in my own house, I found 
 Mildred asleep, the child hi his cot beside her. Her 
 hands were clasped on the coverlet, yet I took happiness 
 
MY LOVE AND I 191 
 
 in thinking that if there were alarum in the quiet room 
 they would be stretched forth invincibly to guard the 
 child. I kissed the hands lightly, once, twice, but they 
 did not stir. She was far away from me in sleep. 
 
 XX 
 
 THE next forenoon I went to see Mary at a dull little 
 house, in looks the twin of the one Blake had found, and 
 was told by the incrusted slavey that she was at work 
 and wouldn't be at home before five. So at five I went 
 again, and found Mary on the steps, the old look of 
 weariness in her eyes, the day's lending from the com- 
 mercial chase. She was beautifully, even gratefully, 
 glad to see me. I should have said, in the common 
 phrase, that when her eyes met mine she looked as if 
 she hadn't a friend in the world. But they cleared 
 in the recognition that here was one at least. She 
 turned about instantly, and said: 
 
 " Couldn't we go into the Common and sit down?" 
 I must have looked my question, for Mary added, "I've 
 nowhere to see anybody here." And then I realized 
 that the freedom and ease of aunt Cely's realm had 
 only been preserved because it really had been the reign 
 of a responsible aunt Cely. Mary was tired, and I 
 noted her flagging walk and set about wondering 
 whether I should take her away at all, when an empty 
 hansom passed us and I hailed it and bade her get in. 
 I told the man to drive to the Fenway and drive slowly, 
 
192 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and Mary, in the very moment of saying, "I mustn't 
 do this," sank back in the seat and sighed in pure 
 delight. 
 
 "I suppose it's the fall heat," she said, as we jogged 
 away. "Or it's my vacation. I don't believe vaca- 
 tions do you good," said Mary, laughing, yet angrily, 
 as if she felt her powers undone. " They just under- 
 mine you and keep you thinking of things : how the 
 river looks and how the salt air smells." 
 
 " What are you here for, anyway ? " I asked, roughly, 
 to make her speak. But her frank eyes set themselves 
 on the distance and I saw the tightening of her mouth. 
 "You'd given up your job," I said. 
 
 "Got it back," said Mary. 
 
 "They were glad enough to have you, I suppose." 
 So I raged. "They won't find anybody else to work 
 over-time and then take letters home." 
 
 "No," said Mary simply, "they won't. But that," 
 she said, with her air of candor, "was only in the busy 
 season." 
 
 "I thought you were settled with Miss Tracy. Fixed 
 for life." 
 
 "I changed my mind," said Mary, and again her lips 
 made themselves firmer, as if there were things she 
 knew and bade them not to tell. 
 
 "Don't you like her?" I asked daringly, and again 
 Mary turned to me. 
 
 "Oh," she said, her face flooded with quick feeling, 
 "I do love her." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 193 
 
 "Then, Mary, what in thunder are you acting like 
 this for?" 
 
 But though she smiled tenderly, as if I were a good 
 chap and meant well, though so stupidly, she said 
 nothing, and I went on complaining. 
 
 "Here are you and Blake safely tucked into paradise, 
 and he appears without warning, even to his doctor, 
 and now here are you." 
 
 "Have you seen him ? " The last words leaped from 
 her. 
 
 "Yes, saw him last night." 
 
 "What did he tell you? No, no. Don't say it. I 
 mustn't know." 
 
 This was a wail so anguished that I said as gently 
 as I could : 
 
 "There's nothing you couldn't hear, Mary. You 
 know all there is to know." 
 
 "Yes," said she, in a miserable acquiescence, "I 
 know all there is to know." 
 
 "But why," I went on, changing my tack but con- 
 tinuing my persistent chase of her, "why Blake should 
 look made over, come to life with his resurrection face 
 on, why you should look like a soul unjustly consigned 
 to the pit " 
 
 "Oh," said Mary sharply, though without bitterness, 
 "I can tell you why he looks so. He's in love with Ellen 
 Tracy." 
 
 I did not move a muscle nor utter a word of the shock 
 it brought me. Blake in love, Blake the giant, the re- 
 
194 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 mote, uncompanioned creature, the poet! I am glad 
 to remember my first thought was, not the effect it 
 would have on his poetry but on Mary. 
 
 "But you mustn't go away," I said. "You mustn't 
 leave her. Not yet." 
 
 There was never a doubt in my mind that Ellen 
 Tracy loved Blake as swiftly as he had even looked at 
 her. It all shows what we thought of Blake hi those 
 days, and I shall be the richer for remembering. I 
 made no question that Ellen Tracy would marry him, 
 but I hoped Mary would stay with her until then. 
 Now that I had seen Mary in green pastures I couldn't 
 tolerate the thought of her going back to harness. 
 
 "I had to come," said Mary, hi a dull assertion. 
 "I couldn't stay." 
 
 Was it because the sight of Ellen Tracy's beauty was 
 too bitter to be endured ? My pottering among the 
 emotions in my journeys in Little Italy had not taught 
 me that. Mary would have died to buy Blake's happi- 
 ness, this I fully knew. But perhaps she was not strong 
 enough to stay there and see the blooming of the flower 
 when her need of tending it was done. 
 
 "I wonder ' There I stopped. I had no busi- 
 ness to wonder about the way of it nor what road it 
 would take. I ended lamely. "I wonder at Blake's 
 getting on his feet so soon." 
 
 " It's his soul," said Mary, in her simple seriousness, 
 as if she marvelled that I didn't know a thing so evi- 
 dent. "Mr. Blake's body doesn't mean much to him, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 195 
 
 anyway. His soul is all alive." That last word 
 she whispered, as if in awe of the thing Ellen Tracy had 
 done to it. 
 
 We drove for a long time, in silence now, and I wished 
 I could take her home with me to dinner. I believed if 
 Mildred could know this workaday Mary as she was, 
 this product of the kind, common earth, sweet as its 
 blossoms and with its strong pith of service, she would 
 open wide our doors, and see how blest we were to have 
 her there. But it couldn't be thought of. Mary 
 mustn't be hurt by rebuff. So we stopped at her door, 
 and I told her I was coming again and we'd repeat 
 the drive. We were hardworking folk, and the air would 
 do us good. But Mary shook her head and I knew she 
 meant finality. 
 
 "No," she said, "you're a dear, but don't you come." 
 
 In my own hall I found a note from Blake. He 
 would be at the office of the Thief until eight. Would 
 I telephone him there and tell him if I'd seen Mary? 
 I telephoned him at once. Yes, I had seen Mary, but 
 she didn't propose going back. 
 
 "She's got to go back," he fumed, at his end of the 
 line. "She mustn't lose a chance like that." 
 
 "Well," said I, the more bluffly that I felt, if Blake 
 had got Ellen Tracy, he had the world and the moon and 
 seven stars and could stand a little roughness from us 
 here below, to equalize his lot, "you make her, then. I 
 can't." 
 
 "I can't make her," he growled, "and you know it." 
 
196 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Very well, then," said I, the more daring with only 
 the impersonal wire between us, "make Miss Tracy do 
 it." 
 
 There was silence, and I almost believed he had cut 
 me off. But when I was about to hang up, I heard him 
 again, his voice, even with the travesty of the alien 
 medium, palpably moved. 
 
 "You don't know what you're talking about." 
 
 No, I didn't really. I only felt at that moment that 
 if Ellen Tracy loved a man, it would be a heavenly 
 assault, a vast surprise, to make her yield in any one 
 small way; for she would be swift in yielding because 
 she loved him. From this hot speculation I escaped, as 
 having no right to entertain it, and then Blake's voice 
 came again, pleadingly : 
 
 "Redfield, you go down and see her." 
 
 "See whom?" 
 
 "Miss Tracy." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "Tell her about Mary, how plucky she is, how she 
 never 'd say die, how she'd keep on typewriting till the 
 day of doom if nobody dragged her out of her chair and 
 eased things up for her." 
 
 "What's the use?" I bellowed, so that Mildred, 
 coming down the stairs in white for dinner inquired 
 gently, "Why do you roar so?" 
 
 "Haven't you said all that yourself?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why didn't you?" 
 
MY LOVE AND I 197 
 
 "I didn't know Mary was going away." 
 
 "Well, say it now, man. You're the one. Don't 
 you know you are ?" 
 
 I could almost think he groaned at this, but he threw 
 back angrily: 
 
 "Will you go or won't you?" 
 
 "Yes," I said, also on the verge of something that 
 seemed like anger. "I suppose I can." 
 
 Why was I. to interfere ? Yet he and Mary were so 
 dear to me with the exasperating dearness of our flesh 
 and blood that I could not refuse him. Then I went 
 in to dinner and begged Mildred, waiting in her con- 
 ventional state, to pardon my not dressing. She was 
 very scrupulous about those observances and I liked it 
 in her. It seemed to set her far above me, the height I 
 loved. I fancied if I had not been born on a farm and 
 worn overalls the year round, it would have seemed 
 more important to me to sit down in state. 
 
 "Who was it?" she asked, as we began our soup. 
 
 "A man I know," I said, despising myself because I 
 could not say Blake. "A friend of his has lost a job. 
 He wants me to interfere." 
 
 "Cousin Thomas has been in," she volunteered. 
 
 "Yes. He said he was coming." 
 
 "He's an awfully clever business man." 
 
 "Yes. I assumed so. He seems to be retiring." 
 
 "Don't you think, if you talked things over with him, 
 he could make some suggestions?" 
 
 "Suggestions?" I stared at her. Pale, cool sea- 
 
198 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 nymph she looked, the white of her dress set off by 
 green and by the necklace she wore, a rivulet of 
 light green stones. "What about? You don't think 
 he's gifted in proof-reading, do you?" 
 
 "About prices." She lifted her eyes to mine. "You 
 see he knows how to deal with men. I suppose it's 
 a knack, like any trade. You're not a business man. 
 He is. Let him advise you how to talk to pub- 
 lishers." 
 
 I had finished my soup, but my spoon dropped with 
 an unnecessary clang. I was frankly amused at her. 
 In her state of mother bird, seeking about for provender 
 for her young, she seemed to me pathetically dear. 
 But I saw cousin Thomas bearding the publisher in 
 his den, and sitting down in immutable obstinacy 
 until he had gained his advance, and I could not choose 
 but laugh. 
 
 "I don't believe we'll set on cousin Thomas yet 
 awhile," I said. "I rather think he knows more about 
 shoes than manuscripts. I never saw that chain 
 before. Where' ve you kept it hidden?" 
 
 I got up and went round the table, ostensibly to see 
 the chain, but really to touch her hair and soften the 
 effect of my laughing at cousin Thomas. For after 
 all she was the dear mother bird. She looked up at 
 me and laid her hand on the bell to summon the maid, 
 but kept it there patiently till I should have con- 
 cluded this tender ebullition. I never could get over 
 the horrified amusement I had at Mildred's looking 
 
MY LOVE AND I 199 
 
 so poetical and yet treating the garlanded approaches 
 to romantic feeling with such amazing sense. 
 
 "He gave it to me," she said. 
 
 "He?" 
 
 "Cousin Tom." 
 
 I had lifted it and was looking at the stones, letting 
 the green glitter run through my hand, when the 
 clasp came undone, an astounding laxity in a clasp 
 selected by Thomas, and I laid the thing on the 
 table in a shimmering pool. Then I said, and I hardly 
 knew my own voice, "Give it back to him." 
 
 I went round to my seat and she rang the bell, and 
 the maid came in and set before me an admirable fish. 
 After we were both served and the maid had gone 
 for when we were alone the farmer boy in me petitioned 
 for the removal of that alien silent spook, Mildred 
 said with perfect practicality: 
 
 "It's not very valuable. He said so. He remem- 
 bered I wore green. And he's my cousin." 
 
 True, he was. I felt rather an ass for my pains, 
 and made my penance. I got up again, walked round 
 the table, clasped the chain about her neck and kissed 
 the top of her head. But I wouldn't apologize. 
 
 "How your hair shines," I said. "It looks like 
 wimpling brooks." 
 
 "I'm using brilliantine," said Mildred, with a 
 serious responsive interest. "I rather like it myself." 
 
 And I laughed out, and for a wonder was not angry 
 because she reduced my rapture over her to some- 
 
200 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 thing in a vial or a box. But her mind was on cousin 
 Thomas, though now she hesitated in preferring her 
 idea. 
 
 "I told him," she said, "the baby isn't named." 
 
 I had petitioned that our son should be named for 
 Egerton Sims, but Mildred had asked me to delay. 
 Still I had believed that it was to be, and I looked 
 upon it as a grave disappointment if I had to be denied. 
 
 " Isn't he named, the little chap?" I said, trying 
 to take it lightly. "I had an idea he was." 
 
 "If you are going to name a child after a person, it 
 ought to mean something," she reasoned. 
 
 "But that would," I told her. "It would mean a 
 lot. To me, to you through me. You know what 
 Egerton Sims stands for in my eyes." 
 
 "Yes," she objected, "but he's dead. And it 
 ought to mean something to the child himself, some- 
 thing definite." 
 
 I looked at my plate, while I felt the blood heating 
 my forehead. I couldn't hear the rest of it. If she 
 meant to tell me our son was to be named for cousin 
 Thomas that Thomas might endow him, I frankly 
 didn't feel able to hear it. I didn't feel the suffocat- 
 ing prospect of anger: only a great distaste that such 
 a thing could be and a certainty that it could never 
 be with my consent. So I said nothing; but that 
 night when she looked her fairest standing by her 
 child's bed, I went up to her and turned her to face 
 me. I had saved the words until then when I knew 
 
MY LOVE AND I 201 
 
 I could not by any response be led into outer harsh- 
 ness. 
 
 " Mildred," I said, "if you meant you wanted to 
 name him after your cousin, I can't agree to it, that's 
 all. If you don't want the name I did, I'll meet you 
 on another. But not for him." 
 
 She looked very reasonable over it, and kind. 
 
 "After all, it wouldn't do/' she said. "I asked 
 him, and he said he didn't want it. He practically 
 refused." 
 
 "You asked him ? When ? " 
 
 "This evening." 
 
 "Where was I?" 
 
 "Why, upstairs writing. Tom ran in a minute. 
 He's all by himself here in the city. He's lonesome." 
 
 "Well, he's a decent fellow to refuse," I said, "with 
 an idea of the proper thing. But why, may I ask, 
 why wouldn't he?" 
 
 Mildred drew the soft blanket an inch higher over 
 the little form. 
 
 "He doesn't seem to care about the baby," she 
 owned. "He said he wasn't interested in him." 
 
 "Only in you." 
 
 "Why, yes," she said, "he's always been interested 
 
 in me." 
 
 I was going off to my study for an hour's work, 
 but I stopped outside the door and thought. My 
 mind had run back, in the capricious way minds have, 
 to the past, and brought up from the sea of thing sub- 
 
202 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 merged, a tone, a word, something it had, perhaps, un- 
 known to me, been searching for. 
 
 "Why, Mildred," I called, "where's the colored 
 person?" 
 
 "What colored person?" she answered, in the 
 absent tone of her who hangs her cherished skirt up 
 properly. 
 
 "The colored person cousin Thomas married." 
 
 "Oh, he didn't marry her. It was something in a 
 letter that made me think he would." 
 
 XXI 
 
 THE next day I did go down to Hopeful Sands. It 
 had to be in the late afternoon, because I was pos- 
 sessed by my novel, and when I had sat down to it 
 for an hour at nine o'clock I found the time ran on to 
 twelve. 
 
 I was tired of my pen and the race of my fancy, 
 and the long sweep of sand looked beautiful to me 
 and the air off the marshes quickened me. The 
 causeway lay silent under the pale sunlight, and the 
 island itself was still. It looked to me, fresh from 
 city activities, like a land where it must seem "always 
 afternoon," and I went up the pathway to the house 
 treading on dead leaves and fain of their savor, won- 
 dering whether I might go on and on, not stopped by 
 inquiring service, to the river balcony itself and find 
 Ellen Tracy at the end. It pleased me, this fantasy 
 
MY LOVE AND I 203 
 
 of a sleeping palace, and I was smiling at it in my 
 thought, when suddenly I turned with that prescience 
 we have at an unheralded presence, and saw her. It 
 was through a vista between evergreens; there on a 
 knoll of light green turf, green enough for spring, she 
 lay in an abandon of nymph-like grace, supported on 
 her elbows and silently watching me. Somehow in 
 spite of the supine grace of her body that might have 
 been luxuriating there in solitude and ease, I did not 
 get the idea that she was delighting in her indolence. 
 It seemed to me rather the pose of a woman who had 
 thrown herself down hi an abandon of despair or 
 warmer grief. But she had heard me, she was watch- 
 ing me as a wood animal watches, and she did not 
 mean to be discovered. Nevertheless with an im- 
 pulse as strong as the counter one hi her, I turned 
 and pressed through the evergreens in impetuous haste. 
 But before I reached her she was on her feet, and was 
 standing in a conventionally welcoming attitude, hand 
 outstretched and face alight, not, I was amazed to see, 
 with the expected smile, but more. It was ablaze with 
 welcome. Yet that face was thinner than when I had 
 seen it last. There were fine lines of pathos under the 
 eyes, and the eyes themselves, in spite of what looked 
 to be their tragic joy, bore the signs of a tragic grief. 
 I took her hand, and looking into her eyes, I said, in a 
 rough inquiry: 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 I declare that what I said to Ellen Tracy then or 
 
204 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 for many a day after was out of my power to say 
 otherwise. With her I was off my guard. She seemed 
 so different from all created things, not only through 
 her own nature, but the profession of universal kind- 
 liness she had set herself, that I could not for a moment 
 think of her as a woman to be safeguarded from the 
 clearest truth from man. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked again. "What's the 
 matter ?" I , 
 
 A faint smile touched her lips, and the eyes looked 
 at me almost gratefully, I thought, and with the 
 languor of pain past. 
 
 "Come into the house," she said. "Aunt Patten 
 is there." 
 
 "I don't want to see aunt Patten," I said, remem- 
 bering Mary and Blake and my queer errand. "I 
 want you. Isn't that a seat through there? Can't 
 we sit down and talk?" 
 
 She had flushed delightfully when I said I wanted 
 her alone, and new life seemed to flow into her. I 
 was beginning to learn what marvellous changes were 
 in her, and how enchanting her variability could be, 
 like the sun on rosy moors. She led the way to that 
 other covert where were seats, and where we looked 
 down into a glade of mighty loosestrife and hypericum, 
 and there she folded her hands upon her knee and 
 waited. I could see that she was not unhappy any 
 longer, and for me, I was topfull of a calm content. 
 But I thought it was the autumn day and my escape 
 
MY LOVE AND I 205 
 
 from city turmoils. I tried to speak, and found I was 
 breaking into an embarrassed laugh. 
 
 "I don't know," said I, "how to begin. I've come 
 to say something, but I am afraid I shan't manage it, 
 after all." 
 
 " Never mind," she returned, in the softest voice, 
 and I thought she added, "This is enough." 
 
 But as that didn't pertain, I made up my mind 
 she couldn't have said it, and tried again to break 
 through that mood of hers which seemed as if it wouldn't 
 help me. Indeed, how could it, since she didn't know 
 how difficult it was, the thing I had to say ? I plunged. 
 
 "It's about Mary." 
 
 I thought her face settled into a less vivid expec- 
 tation. 
 
 "Yes," she said gravely, "you've seen her?" 
 
 "I saw her and talked with her, and she told me 
 she's not to be with you." 
 
 "No," said Miss Tracy, quietly. "She is not." 
 
 "But we're awfully disappointed," I urged awk- 
 wardly, "Blake and I." 
 
 At Blake's name her face waked again, ran over in 
 a vivid flash of consciousness if nothing more, and I 
 went on, "You see we're worried about Mary. We 
 worry like the deuce. She's had such a life of it. 
 It's gone on too long. It simply mustn't go on much 
 longer, or there won't be any Mary. And you seemed 
 such a special providence. We can't really let you 
 off." 
 
206 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 She was smiling at me very kindly, with that gentle, 
 impersonal look she had had for us all at first; but 
 she shook her head. 
 
 "I'm afraid it's got to be," she said. "We can't 
 any of us make your Mary stay against her will." 
 
 "It isn't really her will," I urged. "She adores 
 you. She thinks you're the best thing ever made." 
 
 "And I think she's the best," said Miss Tracy. 
 "But as things are, I believe she's right. She'll stay 
 away from me for a time. Maybe then she'll come 
 back. Maybe I can persuade her. But not now. 
 It wouldn't do the least good to try it now." 
 
 I dug my heel into the ground and muttered some- 
 thing. It seemed to amuse her. 
 
 "You're not used to being refused," she said, in 
 that soft voice. 
 
 "It's Mary I'm thinking of," I said, "Mary and 
 Blake." 
 
 Her face took on the veil of soberness that was, I 
 could swear, the pattern of the sombre face that had 
 broken into welcome at my coming. She answered 
 gravely and with a candid simplicity, making no pre- 
 tence at subterfuge. 
 
 "Yes. Mr. Blake. That's another matter." 
 
 How great a matter was it to her, I wondered, and 
 hardly dared look at her. I was irritated with my 
 own budget of fact I could not use. Since I could 
 not confess to her I had been told Blake was in love 
 with her, and that I did not need telling to know 
 
MY LOVE AND I 207 
 
 Mary was in love with Blake, what was the use of 
 going on through this haze of indirections I believed 
 she hated as much as I? 
 
 "Mary'll come out safe and sound," she said. "So 
 shaU I." 
 
 There was a touch of bitterness in this, and what 
 bitterness there was for such a lady I could not see. 
 Ruth there might be for those who loved her and must 
 be denied even a moment of her fair presence, but 
 not bitterness. 
 
 "We're women," she went on. "It's our birth- 
 right. But Mr. Blake ! And it isn't even because 
 he's a man and not strong it's because he's a poet." 
 
 "Did he seem to you strong enough to go back to 
 work ? " I asked, taking a path removed from subtleties. 
 
 "No, oh, no. He's by no means strong enough." 
 
 "Couldn't you persuade him?" I asked boldly. 
 
 And now she answered with some rigidity of pur- 
 pose, as if rather reproaching me for making her say it. 
 
 "He had to go. He may not be the worse for it, 
 after all. It's better to be a man than a poet." 
 
 And again her face ran over with that sun of smiling 
 candor. It had an appeal in it, a certainty of your 
 answering. "I'm sure you agree with me," it said. 
 "I'm so grateful for it. But if you have one reserva- 
 tion, sweep it away, I beg of you. Do agree with 
 me." 
 
 I was out of conceit with my errand and myself. 
 I was a little jealous, if that could be, that she should 
 
208 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 so deify the mission of poets and have nothing to say 
 to a poor prose writer who was, after all, doing his 
 best to boil the pot. I really think that was the first 
 time I had ever wanted anybody to commend my 
 Little Italy, except perhaps some publisher's emissary 
 who might advance me ten per cent on futures. 
 
 "You seem to think mighty well of poets," I said. 
 
 "They're the blood royal," she returned, with a 
 bombast I liked. It started my pulses, for I thought 
 so, too. "The rest of us ought to be taxed, and heavily, 
 to keep them in green valleys." 
 
 "Spouting all the time," I jeered. 
 
 "Fluting, if you like. Or making big symphonies 
 and booming away at us with the noise of thunder 
 and water-spouts." 
 
 It was foolish talk, but I liked it. 
 
 "Well," I said, and I said it earnestly, for I felt I 
 had a right, through my love of Blake, to those pre- 
 mature good wishes known blatantly as congratula- 
 tions, "you've the game in your own hands. You 
 can keep your poet in his green valley. You can 
 plant lilies there and when he's tired of fluting, 
 you can put on a white gown and go and play the 
 Muse to him." 
 
 She was looking at me in a gently reproving way, 
 as if I were treading too lightly among intimacies. 
 
 "No, Mr. Redfield," she said, "I can't. You know 
 I can't." 
 
 And I saw that she believed Blake had been talking 
 
MY LOVE AND I 209 
 
 to me, that he had told me he loved her and told me 
 further that she did not love him. It startled me 
 out of self-command. That any woman should not 
 love Blake, the mighty, when he sued, I could hardly 
 believe. That this woman, all fire and the fantasy 
 and even childishness of romance, should not love 
 him, was not to be understood. 
 
 " Don't you mean to marry Blake?" I asked, in a 
 rush of ill-regulated feeling. 
 
 "Why, no," she said, adding in what sounded like 
 a wondering reproach, "You know I don't." 
 
 "By God !" I said, and got up and walked about. 
 
 The words were a mild commonplace compared 
 with my feelings, only an inadequate reference of this 
 amazing circumstance to the only intelligence that 
 could comprehend it. I stopped before her and looked 
 down at her where she sat, almost meekly feminine, 
 with no implication of having dominion over the 
 hearts of men. I was remembering his face as I had 
 seen it that night at the Toasted Cheese, the vivid- 
 ness and triumph of it. 
 
 "But Blake doesn't know it," I said. "He thinks 
 you will." 
 
 She looked pained at that, but she did laugh. 
 
 "Oh," she said, in what seemed a tender exaspera- 
 tion, "what a child you are." 
 
 But she was not repulsing me and I blundered on 
 insanely. 
 
 "He's another man. As Mary says, he's all soul, 
 
210 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and his body's got to toe the mark. And you say 
 you oh, next thing you'll be telling me he hasn't 
 fallen most terribly in love with you. I've no patience 
 with you womenfolk." 
 
 Her eyes were dancing. She seemed willing to for- 
 get Blake. 
 
 "Oh, do have patience with us," she mocked. " Do 
 have patience." 
 
 "But you mustn't be hard on Blake," I reminded 
 her, "you merciless womenfolk. We must remember 
 he's a poet." 
 
 She saddened all at once. 
 
 "That's it," she said, "he is a poet. He mustn't 
 waste himself on anything that does him no good. 
 Tell him so. He'll listen to you." 
 
 "Oh, no," I countered, "he won't listen to me. 
 He'll listen to you." 
 
 And here she sighed, and I got a pretty plain idea 
 that Blake had thrown his love at her like a great 
 blinding shower, had asked no answer, and gone away 
 to his task to come back again and put his man's 
 question to her : this when his prospects would half 
 warrant it. And I felt like a great, soft boy as I stood 
 before her, pleading for my friend in such sentimental 
 phrasing as I had thought I could only throw half 
 cynically into Little Italy. 
 
 "You've got to love him," I said. "You've got 
 to, Ellen Tracy." 
 
 She looked up at me with I know not what in her 
 
MY LOVE AND I 211 
 
 eyes, not reproach, not reminder, not confession; but 
 as they touched the answering messenger of my own 
 for a second, a strange thing happened. I lost count 
 of time and recognition of this place. I forgot Blake, 
 forgot my most dear son to whom I meant to be as 
 honorable an example as Egerton Sims had been to 
 me, forgot Mildred with the brilliantine on her hair, 
 and even forgot the conscious me to whom I daily 
 referred my acts. I was simply in a large place 
 green it was, with the boles of trees thereabout and 
 the sound of falling water and Ellen Tracy was 
 there, and all the wistfulness had gone out of her 
 face and given room to a sweet placidity. The cur- 
 rents of life ran evenly, and we desired according 
 things, and what we desired the earth was fain to 
 give us. That must, I thought, in a by-current of 
 my mind, have been like the days in Eden bower. 
 And I knew with a deeper thankfulness than I could 
 express, that the old life of harried feeling and im- 
 perfect effort was done with, and that this was hence- 
 forth peace. But as I stood there in that equilibrium 
 between joy and pain, I heard her voice, in trouble, 
 in persistent recall to some other state she did not 
 trust herself to leave. 
 
 "No," she kept saying, "no, no." 
 
 Then I came awake though indeed I had seemed 
 to be more completely awake before and there were 
 the trees about us, though not the trees of my other 
 vision, and the garden seats and the flowers below us, 
 
212 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and there was she, her face all broken by a strange 
 illuminated anguish of delight. 
 
 "What was it? " I asked her. 
 
 I think I whispered. She shook her head. 
 
 " Did I " but I had to know " did I touch you ? 
 touch your hand?" 
 
 She broke out at this into a great sob of something 
 like thankfulness. 
 
 "No," she said, "no ! Of course not. No !" 
 
 I tried to laugh and managed it badly. 
 
 "I must have got too much sun," I said. "It was 
 pretty hot on the causeway." 
 
 But it hadn't been hot, and she knew it and so did 
 I. And I said laughing :- 
 
 "All this talk about poets !" 
 
 But something in me, something nobler, more in- 
 domitable, more real than all these sham conventions, 
 rose in me, and would satisfy itself. 
 
 "Tell me," said I, "do you feel as if you and I had 
 met before?" 
 
 She made no subterfuge. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she said, quite simply. 
 
 "And known each other?" 
 
 She nodded with the same candor, as if she owed 
 fealty to our common memory. 
 
 "When did it seem so first?" 
 
 "When you came." This she stated without emotion 
 of any sort. "When you came with them." 
 
 "Did you feel as if you had met Blake before that 
 day?" 
 
MY LOVE AND I 213 
 
 I had a mad desire now to know. But curiously 
 the desire was its own defeat. For as this personal 
 longing dominated me, it seemed to shatter the con- 
 tent between us, and to terrify her in some way and 
 break the pure lucidity of her thought. But she 
 answered me. 
 
 "No," she said, "I had not seen him." 
 
 "Nor any one in that strange way," I persisted, 
 "any one but me?" 
 
 And though it seemed a cruelty that tortured her, 
 she answered out of her gentleness :- 
 
 "Not any one but you." 
 
 A madness of joy had possession of me. She and I 
 alone had actually been in that Eden we had now 
 summoned about us with an unwitting will. But 
 something, the same look of the place we stood in 
 now, took hold on me like a reminding touch, and I 
 knew I must leave it and leave her before I tried to 
 drag her back with me to that forbidden heaven. I 
 believe I was going without another word, but some 
 movement of hers made me turn, and I saw her again 
 with the late afternoon light lying upon her through 
 the trees, and her sweet mouth a-quiver. And mad 
 as the thought was, I could believe her face, her half- 
 expectant pose, was an innocently passionate question 
 tome. "Why must you go?" it said. At least that 
 is what it said to me. And because I could not touch 
 her hand or say good-by in any way set down by rule, 
 and yet would have her know how divinely well I 
 
214 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 wished her, I found myself saying what I had never 
 said to anybody before, and heretofore should have 
 been inept hi saying: "God bless you." Then, walk- 
 ing as fast as I could, I went away. 
 
 XXII 
 
 THE next day this did not seem to me a dream, but 
 an exquisite verity that made the sky brighter and 
 the earth's response to transcendent things the more 
 assured. I walked lightly, and I found myself gay at 
 breakfast time, and chaffed Mildred about her son 
 and his certainty of being brought up in some obscure 
 sect because I knew she advocated the religions that 
 left us well placed. But looking gravely at me, she 
 conjured me not to laugh at sacred matters, and I 
 asked her if she considered the Unitarians she affected 
 as serious matters, and laughed the more. It all, the 
 whole fluent scheme, looked very gay to me that 
 morning. I seemed to have made a discovery of 
 more things hi heaven and earth than I had dreamt 
 of. It was unnecessary to define them. I suspected 
 that then: very preciousness would cause them to 
 elude definition, and that if I looked at them closely 
 they would be gone. I had known a man at Trinidad 
 who, with cataracts beginning on his eyes, could, by 
 not looking directly at it, still get the sunset glow. I 
 was like that purblind creature ; if I turned my eyes 
 another way the glow was there. I didn't like to 
 
MY LOVE AND I 215 
 
 carry out the simile. Was I blind from some growth 
 of custom or false belief? And could divine, swift 
 surgery sometime cut the veil and free me? Mean- 
 time I poured myself into my novel and the glow was 
 there, indirect but splendid, illuminating the page. 
 I went to see Mary again, and found her much like her 
 old self. She had, with the pitiful patience of woman, 
 settled into the decreed or chosen rut, and was making 
 the best and smoothest of it. 
 
 "Let me get my hat," she said, as we talked un- 
 thinking commonplaces in the hall. She came down 
 in her outdoor things, and we walked away into the 
 Common. Mary had had time to put aside her own 
 coil of circumstance and think, in her dear way, of 
 me because I was a friend. 
 
 "I don't believe I ever wrote you a word about the 
 baby," she said. " Things were pretty bad just at 
 that time and then," said Mary, in a burst of honest 
 betrayal, "I didn't know how to do it." 
 
 "He's a nice chap," said I. "Named for Egerton 
 Sims." 
 
 For that had actually come to pass, and I had 
 heard Mildred tell a well-placed caller, a friend of 
 Mary Harpinger, that Egerton Sims was an English- 
 man of rank who had been my earliest friend. It 
 made me wince a little ; but after all, in a way it was 
 true, and I had got into the habit of discounting 
 Mildred's pathetic efforts to make our social mantle 
 as warm as possible. I was sure she had merely a 
 
216 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 pretty way of presenting facts, right end forward. 
 She wasn't all the time hitting you in the face with 
 them, but offering you the smooth handle, so that 
 the fact could be used to an excellent purpose. I 
 knew what Mary meant about not knowing how to 
 hail the advent of my son. She could hardly do it, 
 unconventional as we all were, with no message to his 
 mother; and his mother, in that moment of cool 
 scrutiny in her own house, had driven Mary out of it 
 in every sense. 
 
 "Did you tell Blake?" I asked, with a father's 
 insensate pride. 
 
 "No," said Mary. "I don't believe I did. He was 
 too sick. He didn't notice things. Nor Miss Tracy. I 
 don't tell her things," said Mary, in a burst of generous 
 wonder over Ellen Tracy, " personal things. She never 
 asks questions. She makes you feel they're ill-bred." 
 
 And yet she had run a race of question and answer 
 with me about Johnnie McCann and the entire circle 
 of the Toasted Cheese. It seemed then as if she had 
 to know. Indeed it had seemed as if she and I hadn't 
 needed to put up any fences of discretion while we 
 talked. We had to talk. 
 
 "Have you seen Mr. Blake?" Mary was asking. 
 
 "Once. Have you?" 
 
 "Yes. He's taking on at a great rate about my not 
 going back." Mary sometimes returned with a quaint 
 wholesomeness to the speech of her country days. 
 "He looks pretty well." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 217 
 
 "He'll overdo, I suppose," I contributed. 
 
 "Yes," said Mary, philosophically, "but that won't 
 hurt him. He's got hope now. It'll carry him 
 through everything till his next breakdown." 
 
 Evidently I hadn't the breeding of Ellen Tracy, to 
 the end of suppressing natural curiosities. 
 
 "Mary," said I, "is he going to get her?" 
 
 "No," said Mary, coolly, "she doesn't care anything 
 about him." 
 
 Of that I also had a certainty, a certainty as calm and 
 even sad, because I couldn't without revolt contem- 
 plate anything that meant suffering for Blake. 
 
 "Do you know that?" I asked her. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mary. 
 
 "Did she tell you?" 
 
 "Tell me ? She ? Do you think she would ? " 
 
 No, I didn't think so, but I liked to have Mary con- 
 firm it. It gave me a pride I had never felt in any pos- 
 session of my own to think of Ellen Tracy's pride, that 
 set her on the farthest hills. I saw her there, without 
 the coldness of the hills themselves, but throwing on 
 their snow a rosy dawn. 
 
 " She's daft over his poetry," I persisted, " as daft as 
 we are." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mary, rather wearily. "But that 
 isn't being daft over him. He'd give all his poetry just 
 now for her prizing him in another way prizing him 
 because he's a man." 
 
 I wondered if her "just now" meant that she ex- 
 
218 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 pected the pendulum to swing back and the poet to 
 forget his vast desires. Mary was very wise, with a sad, 
 homely wisdom, and I felt she knew. 
 
 " You needn't put me in. I'm not daft over poetry," 
 said Mary, as if it in no way availed her to get more than 
 her due. "It's only because he cares about it." 
 
 So I walked home with her through the November 
 twilight, a pale yellow sky showing the bare trees like 
 "ruined choirs," and a lambent gleam in the pond. 
 And as it usually happened now, I found cousin Thomas 
 established in the library, sitting upright, his head 
 dropped a little, his hands tormenting a pencil for 
 he never relaxed in any sense and Mildred, pale 
 with weariness, yet scrupulously pleasing, in her chair 
 by the fire. I was often sorry for her in these days of 
 besetment by cousin- Thomas, irritated, too, because 
 I felt she had herself to thank and she had only to be a 
 little less ingratiating, a little less compliant, to send 
 him to the rightabout. He was the most uncompro- 
 mising of guests. He would come at ill-considered 
 times, perhaps half an hour before luncheon or dinner, 
 and yet would never sit down with us. Rather he 
 waited, in a perfect silence, not, I was persuaded, open- 
 ing book or magazine, but sitting in the same rigidity, 
 perhaps entranced with financial dreams, perhaps, 
 though that I hardly like to consider, occupied with the 
 tragedy of his disdained heart. Sometimes the invis- 
 ible picture of him there, awaiting the return of Mildred 
 to engage her in their almost wordless intercourse, was 
 
MY LOVE AND I 219 
 
 too much for me. My food choked me, and I let the 
 dishes pass. And again it moved me to a nervous 
 laughter that I had to summon words to cover. But 
 always Mildred behaved perfectly, if she was bored 
 never confiding the anguish of it to me, and always 
 treating him with a scrupulous consideration. To- 
 night he chose his accustomed part of waiting until 
 she had dined ; but some spirit of the outer world was 
 in me, some infection perhaps of Mary's homespun 
 delightfulness or the nearer memory of Ellen Tracy, 
 and I would have none of it. I urged him, even bois- 
 terously, to the table; but he was inflexible in the 
 degree that I was exigent. He would simply "sit 
 right there," and he did, until, having by nervous con- 
 sent made a short meal of it, we came back to him. I 
 was about to exchange a word or two, according to my 
 wont, and then betake myself upstairs to write, but 
 he detained me. Ignoring my humble mention of 
 some news in the evening paper as common pabulum 
 whereof we might partake, he intimated that he had 
 something to present to me. Would I sit down? So 
 invited, and guessing from an uneasy consciousness in 
 Mildred's look that she knew what was coming and 
 would fain get it over, I sat down at my own hearthside 
 and offered cousin Thomas a cigar. He refused it briefly. 
 I had gathered that the comfortable palliatives of life 
 meant very little to him. He was most temperate in 
 the matter of indulgences, and took his dinner in the 
 middle of the day to "get it over." I myself was not 
 
220 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 devoted to creature pleasures. Indeed, if I had been, 
 my memory of Egerton Sims would have made me a 
 little ashamed of it. Yet I did like the business of 
 satisfying our stomachs to be accomplished as delicately 
 as possible. Cousin Thomas looked up at me, and I felt 
 guiltily that having caught me contemplating the top 
 of his shiny black head, he must also know what my 
 attendant thought had been : the wonder how that head, 
 with its direct, accurate processes, felt inside. 
 
 "I've been speaking to Milly," he began, and it 
 annoyed me again to hear a creature so divinely tall 
 called Milly. "I've been telling her I want to settle 
 something on her." 
 
 I felt most horribly embarrassed. I didn't want to 
 assume for an instant that I could think he meant money, 
 and yet I knew he did. We were in for it, I thought, 
 troubled refusals on Mildred's part and mine, warranted 
 to hurt nobody's feelings, not even a Thomas home 
 from foreign parts with a good heart and an imperfect 
 knowledge of things as they are, for good reason or 
 otherwise, done. I bowed, vaguely, I hoped, implying 
 that the next step was his. It evidently involved ex- 
 planation, persuasion indeed, if that proved necessary. 
 And Mildred began to fidget, if a creature divinely 
 tall may do so, and I knew she wished, like me, the 
 moment were well over. So I tried to shorten it for 
 her. I believe I proffered some personal banality to 
 the effect that he was very kind, which seemed to en- 
 courage him. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 221 
 
 "Fm pretty well fixed myself," he told me, as he 
 had before, "and you're not likely to do much better 
 than you're doing now. Do you think you are ?" 
 
 I answered with a becoming humility, because I was 
 so tickled with the sheer genuine honesty of him, that 
 it might well be I should not. 
 
 "I've been looking into your branch of business," 
 said cousin Thomas, "and it appears to me as if it was 
 one where you've got to make a hit at the start, or you 
 don't get into the game." 
 
 Here Mildred, in a belated loyalty, I thought, came 
 in saggingly to suggest that I really had made a hit at 
 the start. There were my stories of Little Italy! 
 
 "I know all that," said cousin Thomas, as if it were 
 an argument between them, whereof my part was to 
 stand modestly aloof. "But how much does it amount 
 to? How much can you count on?" he tendered me, 
 seeming to find it his privilege to be answered. "How 
 much?" 
 
 "How much indeed!" I echoed, in an exclamatory 
 acquiescence ; and having waited for a definite answer, 
 he went on. . 
 
 "I don't know whether you're insured." 
 
 This was partially interrogative, and I tried to look 
 mildly interrogative myself, as if being insured were a 
 virtue that might be imputed to any man, but for 
 myself I didn't know. 
 
 "Let that be as it will," he concluded, "Milly's got 
 to be safe and I'm going to make her so. I'm going to 
 
222 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 settle something on her. She can't touch the principal, 
 and you can't either. But she'll be sure of a little in- 
 come three thousand a year." 
 
 Here we were up against it, and I was the one to speak, 
 with the more direct approach to indignation that I had 
 to do it because it looked as if Mildred were party to 
 the knowledge of what he was going to say, and had, 
 it appeared, from his good faith, accepted it. 
 
 "But, my dear fellow," I said, '"on what ground 
 could you do it ? or on what ground could it be accepted? 
 It's tremendously generous, but on what ground - 
 
 He looked at me in a serious consideration, as if 
 wondering if I really didn't see. 
 
 "I told you," he said. "I'm well fixed. I want to 
 see Milly the same. That ain't all I mean to do for her. 
 But for the present it's all. I want her to be comfort- 
 able and I want her to be safe." 
 
 It did touch me to the soul, the confounded good- 
 will of him, the pig-headed determination to make his 
 money serve the purpose for which he had bred it. I 
 hope I answered gently, and certainly I did with more 
 explicit yielding to his questions. 
 
 "She will be comfortable. I shall see to that. And 
 if I die, she won't be left stranded. I am insured." 
 
 He nodded. He approved of me a trifle more, I could 
 see, as an unpractical fellow who had yet the wit to 
 protect his own. 
 
 "Well," he said, "that's all right. So much the 
 better for Milly. And I'll settle something on her, and 
 then we'll see." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 223 
 
 I wasn't at cross purposes with him now, because he 
 was unconsciously letting me look more and more 
 closely into the processes under his shiny hair, and 
 I knew he had so set himself to one desire, to get 
 money for his wife Milly, that when that vision was 
 reft away from him, he still clung with deathless tenac- 
 ity to the fact that the money should be devoted to 
 Milly though she was not his wife. I have never been 
 able to settle to my own satisfaction whether cousin 
 Thomas loved Mildred then, though love is such a 
 chameleon creature that it may well take color from 
 the mind that harbors it. Perhaps he had for her no 
 fervid emotion, no romantic dream ; still the desire to 
 guard and foster her that was forming his primal spring 
 of action at that time might well be called by so high 
 a name. But it had gone far enough, and I had to 
 meet him bluffly. 
 
 "It's no use," I said. "You're an awfully good 
 fellow, and I'm no end obliged. But you can't, you 
 know." 
 
 Here he sounded a note of irritation, though all 
 abroad as to the motive of it. 
 
 "I tell you I can do it," he said. "I can do it easy." 
 
 "But I can't," I threw back at him, short and sharp, 
 "I can't allow it." 
 
 Mildred gave a little pathetic sound, but I didn't 
 look at her. Our eyes were meeting, his and mine. We 
 were the fighting males, and the cause of our measured 
 glance was far outside the field. It was absurd, and 
 
224 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I felt foolish, but this was the way it had to be done. 
 Cousin Thomas stared at me, no hostility indeed hi his 
 face, but pure surprise. 
 
 " You don't want Milly to take it," he said. "Why 
 not?" 
 
 "I won't let her take it," I amended. "You're a 
 good fellow, but that won't make it possible. Such 
 things aren't done. Is there any convention under 
 heaven to allow a man to settle money on another man's 
 wife?" 
 
 Cousin Thomas stared. I was mad, he thought, the 
 mad writer of foolish tales. And his next words con- 
 fessed it virtually. 
 
 "I don't know what you're talking about," said he. 
 He got up, staring at me fixedly, and seemed to sum- 
 mon all his forces to the problem. But they were 
 insufficient. "Well," said he, "I'll go and get some 
 supper." 
 
 And though I followed him into the hall and, con- 
 scious of the absurdity of it with a man who had refused 
 to dine, begged him to stay and have something served 
 him here, he shook his head and struggled into his over- 
 coat, like all his clothes, mysteriously too small. And 
 I went back to Mildred, fancying we were perhaps to 
 assume an according view and regard him with a 
 whimsical gratitude, and found her as I never had 
 before. She was angry. In every exigency of domestic 
 upheaval over my own shortcomings, she had been 
 sweet decorum itself, she had lived inside a reserve I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 225 
 
 admired and feared to break. But now there was a 
 tiny scarlet spot on each cheek, and her eyes hurled 
 at me a shaft that hurt in striking. If I had had to 
 "name it, I should have called it scorn. 
 
 " You can throw away money if you like," said she. 
 
 And as I did not know her look, I felt I did not know 
 her voice. I found myself speaking. There seemed a 
 necessity to cast in words to stem the flood of hers. 
 What I said was foolish, but might serve. 
 
 "I don't throw away money, dear." 
 
 "The question is," she went on, "whether you've 
 a right to throw it away when it belongs to me." 
 
 "Belongs to you?" 
 
 "Yes. He is giving it to me. He isn't giving it to 
 you. It belongs to me." 
 
 "But Mildred," I said, "you belong to me." 
 
 She did not answer. She only looked at me. Fierce 
 unspoken denial blazed in her eyes. I had never seen 
 anything so white, so passionless as her lovely face 
 awaken to such life. This extremity of anger always 
 looks like scorn. The heart that feels it withers and 
 grows cold. I felt myself a wretched fellow indeed to 
 have earned a look like that. Now the old common- 
 places we jeer at because they are the flower of senti- 
 ment have the truth in them, after all. We turn away 
 from the ranting couple on the stage who are recon- 
 ciled by the voice of a child. But it's the truest thing 
 in life. Suddenly I thought of the boy up there in his 
 innocent sleep. We couldn't tear and rend and scorn 
 
226 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 each other. We were his, if not each other's. That 
 was an eternal pact. I crossed the space between us 
 and took Mildred in my arms. 
 
 " Don't, dear," I said. " Don't do it. The boy- 
 he'll hear us." 
 
 That was a silly fiction, but I believe I felt the soul 
 of him, far off in his sleepy heaven, would hear the 
 clamoring souls of us. She suffered me to hold her so, 
 and as I kissed her cheeek, she began to sob, wildly, 
 tempestuously. I had never seen her cry, and it 
 brought a terror to me. I comforted her, and she en- 
 dured my comforting, and presently left me to go to her 
 own room. I thought she maybe went to the boy to 
 get solace from his sweetness, and though I longed to 
 follow her I would not, because it was through me her 
 hurt had come. But when at midnight I went to her, 
 she was asleep in pale placidity. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 FROM that time I seemed to be living Blake's life 
 with him, because I read the inner secret of it; and 
 I knew it for a high destiny to be the lover of Ellen 
 Tracy. Looking at him through the glamor that 
 always divided him from me, I could not believe Mary 
 was right when she said he would not get her. Of 
 course he would get her, he that came into the world 
 endowed with privilege. He was working very hard, 
 not at poetry, I guessed, but, like the rest of us who 
 
MY LOVE AND I 227 
 
 had the domestic mouth to fill, at crude tasks for money. 
 One day I met him by chance, and thought he looked 
 another man, stern, dauntless, with the fighting grip 
 about the mouth, and hope, trembling hope, in the eyes, 
 the look of one who has at last given hostages to for- 
 tune and thenceforth must hang on the will of heaven 
 because he has so much it can destroy. He stopped 
 me and spoke peremptorily. 
 
 "You've never sent me that bill." 
 
 I feigned stupidity and forge tfulness. If he meant 
 his board bill from Ellen Tracy, I hadn't got it. 
 
 "Then get it, man," he ordered. "Don't you see 
 I can't?" 
 
 Of course I saw that. His heart full of lilts to her 
 perfection, he couldn't ask her to let him pay for what 
 he ate. So I promised to attend to it, and he left me 
 after a sudden question I felt horribly like an assault 
 on inner chambers whereof the door was never opened 
 now. 
 
 "Why aren't you writing poetry?" 
 
 I may have looked sick and even terrified, for he 
 added, in a kindly afterthought, "Perhaps you, are. 
 Perhaps you're not publishing. That's a good idea. 
 Save it and pour it out pellmell all at once and get some 
 better judgment on it than this mean time. It's a day 
 of little things. But I tell you, the fellow that can do 
 your Epithalamium he's got the seeds of immortal- 
 ity inside his skull." 
 
 My Epithalamium! That was the moment of my 
 
228 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 life I never meant to think of again, for it led me a way 
 I dared not go : to the knowledge that my wife had sold 
 it and that she saw no reason why I should not have 
 rushed with it to the publisher's instead of timorously 
 unrolling it before her eyes. Certain men, the best 
 men I knew, never forgot that the Epithalamium was 
 my triumph; but to me it was sore defeat. And I 
 wrote no more poetry because no more came, and I was 
 still of the opinion that the Muse must not be beckoned. 
 She might not even be hailed when she came wandering 
 down my way, the dew of Parnassus wet on her un- 
 bound hair. Only then I could throw myself at her 
 feet and while she breathed the exhalation of my wor- 
 ship, devoutly wonder whether one of her wilding leaves 
 might fall on me. I have wondered whether, for an 
 old-fashioned chap like me, there was ever one so steeped 
 in the romance and worship of things. Was it youth 
 alone ? I think not, for I was getting beyond first youth. 
 And early and late I wrought on my novel, until "The 
 End" was inscribed, and then I copied it in mad haste, 
 changing the name of Ellen Tracy to one conformable 
 to the market. And letters came from Rees and 
 Dresser, reminding, even censuring, letters. I was 
 sending them nothing. They begged to suggest that 
 the output of the year was surprisingly below that of 
 the six months previous. But my mishandled brain 
 had not lost its cunning, and because I could always 
 imitate when I would stoop to do it stoop from the 
 eminence I thought Egerton Sims had bade me hold 
 
MY LOVE AND I 229 
 
 I began to imitate myself, and as I had held my mood 
 of gay acquiescence in life ever since Ellen Tracy and 
 I had seemed together to open the door into lands 
 unseen, so now I wrote from its accession of a strange 
 power and did better work, my taskmasters told me, 
 than even their foresight had conceived. But I knew 
 it was not sound work. It was at last made after a 
 pattern, and though I had myself cut the pattern in the 
 first place, I could feel no heart in such a deed. I had 
 need to make good in the market-place, for cousin 
 Thomas, with his freely offered affluence, was always 
 rousing in me a counter irritation that needed for its 
 assuaging the making of more money. I was heartily 
 sorry for Mildred, brought up hard against my old- 
 fashioned prejudices, which might not, I was per- 
 fectly willing to believe, fit modern shades of conduct. 
 She wanted cousin Thomas's money, and he was craving 
 to endow her with about all she could in decency sail 
 under. I often, with that ironic habit my mind had, 
 saw her sitting in a shower of checks, always lovely, 
 always irreproachably gentle and right, and the checks 
 all bore the name of cousin Tom. 
 
 One day on my own doorstep, when a flurry of snow 
 seemed to offer us all the pretext for the conversation 
 we needed to show our good-will, he stared me earnestly 
 in the face and said : 
 
 "Look here, I want to give Milly a car." 
 I thought it more comfortable to steer clear of heroics 
 this time and take him on solid ground. 
 
230 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Oh, we can't set up a car," I said. " We're in no 
 position. It isn't the initial cost, you know. It's 
 everything." 
 
 "Sure," said cousin Thomas. "But it's everything 
 I mean, chauffeur, repairs, chauffeur's board. Oh, 
 I wouldn't give it to her without the fixings." 
 
 I looked at him, and he met my eyes in a transparent 
 innocency. He was unconscious of having proposed 
 anything to earn him chiding or even gratitude. I was 
 understanding more and more indubitably every day 
 that when he had selected Mildred as the presiding 
 goddess of his life, he had done it for all time. I have 
 never known anything more unswerving than the 
 allegiance of cousin Thomas. And yet I still had not 
 determined whether he had for Mildred a survival of 
 that fire he had named love, or whether his peculiar 
 nature called upon him to make good emotionally, as he 
 had in the ways of trade. 
 
 "See here," said I, "you don't know how I hate to 
 wet blanket all your little plans. But I can't let you 
 give my wife a car. I can't do it myself, and I can't 
 let you." 
 
 But looking at me from his irrefragable innocence, 
 cousin Thomas inquired, with the air of a pioneer 
 obligingly finding another way round : 
 
 "Should you rather it would be a carriage and a 
 man?" 
 
 I lifted up my voice and laughed, and the snowy 
 street might well have echoed to the sound of it. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 231 
 
 "No," I said. "No, you muttonhead, you blooming 
 idiot, neither horses nor oxen nor asses nor anything 
 money can buy. You can say to yourself I 'm a maniac 
 if you like. I am a queer fellow. But that's the way 
 I am. Keep your money. Fall in love with a nice 
 girl and marry her and spend your pelf on her. We 
 don't want it." 
 
 And as he plodded, grave, yet no less persistent, down 
 the snowy street, I went in and divested myself of as 
 much sleet as possible so that I might run up without 
 delay to exchange idiotic and eccentric words with my 
 son. For I adored my son. I even talked some bas- 
 tard language to him, because plain English was in- 
 sufficient for our needs, and the nurse, having seen like 
 aberration in minds o'erthrown, suffered me. But 
 to-day Mildred detained me, with a warmth of greet- 
 ing foreign, I knew, to her equable nature, and so, 
 though I should once have hailed it fervidly, not quite 
 welcome to me. I did not understand my wife, and I 
 had grown to believe in the truism that nobody under- 
 stands even the creature that lives nearest him. At 
 first it had hurt me horribly. I regarded my island of 
 exile as a place of lonely doom. But I had acquiesced. 
 If it was so for other men, why was it not inevitably 
 so for me ? But I had great need of tenderness from 
 the woman who had given herself to me, and some- 
 times want of whirling winds of a supreme avowal that 
 tells us we are kin to another beating heart. Yet now 
 when she offered me warm lips I almost, save for 
 
232 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 shame lest I bring upon her the pang of love misprized, 
 turned aside because, beat down the suspicion as I 
 might, it lifted up its head and told me she was earning 
 something. Was it her car, a thing of mechanical 
 contrivance made by man to melt the wax on many a 
 winged Icarus was it for that she offered me her lips ? 
 But she asked me no questions, and I wondered whether 
 she and cousin Thomas had been talking car. 
 
 And then in a day or two the impartial trend of cir- 
 cumstance seemed to offer cousin Thomas overwhelm- 
 ing argument for his benevolence. There was a cab- 
 man's strike, and Mildred and I had to set forth on 
 foot and in the snow to a dinner she had pronounced 
 upon as most important for me. She was holding up 
 her train with difficulty under her cloak, and being 
 very sweet and kind to me who had kept her from speed- 
 ing behind her own chauffeur, and I was paying banal 
 compliments and venturing poor jokes in the fatuous 
 trickery of the husband who must conciliate, when, half- 
 way upon our snowy road, we met Ellen Tracy. It 
 struck me like a blow, the surprise of it, the incongruity 
 of Ellen Tracy in city streets. Yet the raiment inci- 
 dent to them most beautifully became her, for she too 
 was in fine lendings with chinchilla fur, and her head, 
 nobly borne, was bare of all save that invisible crown it 
 always wore. We came upon each other suddenly in the 
 clear twilight and it was, for the joy it gave me, as if, 
 within the obscuring mists of outer paradise, I had 
 chanced upon a face beloved and lost. And her face, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 233 
 
 too thin, too grave, I thought in that first instant, 
 flushed into the radiancy which is comparable to nothing 
 but hope. And I had her hand in mine, as she let her 
 skirt fall with a little swish of silk, and then I had 
 named my wife, and the light went out of Ellen Tracy's 
 face, and it challenged me with what .1 thought one 
 swift glance of wonder, a white surprise as if some 
 creature lurking unsuspected near had her at last 
 irrevocably, and she begged of me to help. But the 
 glance was as swift as the passing of a star, and then 
 she was herself, my gracious lady, exchanging polished 
 commonplaces with Mildred, who was almost agitated, 
 in some inexplicable fashion, by the significance of the 
 meeting. Mildred was urging her to come to see us, 
 and naming her day at home, and Ellen Tracy was 
 wafting her back the pretty graceful commonplaces 
 required. Instantly I had an overwhelming desire to 
 see her in my house and oh, wonder ! to invite her eyes 
 to rest on that small young prince of hope within it. 
 
 "Come," I found myself saying. "You must. I 
 want you to see my son." 
 
 She looked at me gravely and smiled, a fine mysteri- 
 ous sort of smile, and answered gently: 
 
 "Yes, I'll come and see your son." 
 
 And we had touched hands again perfunctorily and 
 had gone our own way. But Mildred did not abate 
 her excited interest. 
 
 "You knew Ellen Tracy," she said, "and didn't tell 
 me?" 
 
234 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Why hadn't I told her ? Was it too remote an inter- 
 est, or was it too immediately connected with Blake 
 and Mary, names tabooed between us. 
 
 " Where did you know her?" she insisted, and I 
 confessed that I had carried Blake down to her house 
 some months ago. But how did Mildred know about 
 her? She scorned me for my dulness. Everybody 
 knew Ellen Tracy by name, she was so rich, so well 
 born, and so benevolent. We must have her to dinner. 
 
 And hi a day or two, rather early in the afternoon, 
 this, I guessed, to find my son awake, though she thereby 
 might lose the chance of meeting his father, Ellen Tracy 
 came. I was in my room, and at my window, gloom- 
 ing at the opposite wall and wondering about that look 
 of hers, when I saw her cross the street to my door. 
 I ran down and opened it to her before she could touch 
 the bell. I felt like a boy gleefully excited, to whom 
 Christmas has come and happy adventure and great 
 risk. 
 
 "He's just come in," I said, and she laughed all over 
 her face, in that way she had, understanding just what 
 it was to me to show my son. 
 
 She mentioned Mildred with a polite little inquiry 
 of the eyebrows, and I said: 
 
 "Oh, yes, she's about somewhere." 
 
 I persuaded her to slip off her fur coat that made her 
 look like a princess from far-away, and led her up the 
 stairs. And in the big, warm room, beside the open fire, 
 was the boy on the hearthrug, doing great feats with 
 
MY LOVE AND I 235 
 
 sprawling and rhetoric, while the nurse did some deed 
 with empty dishes that had made him so content. He 
 had just come in from the air, and his red cheeks and 
 clear eyes were all I could desire ; and when Ellen Tracy 
 crouched and invited him and he wiggled about, as if 
 any way were the way so it were quick enough, I felt 
 like sending out barbaric cries like his, for joy of it. 
 She loved the baby and the baby, even if for the 
 warmth and sweetness of her alone, loved her back, 
 and they did mysterious things with the language and 
 cheek laid to cheek. She forgot me, so I thought, and 
 seemed to find such abundant comfort in the child 
 that I felt my eyes hot with the mysterious pity of it. 
 And then suddenly she rose with one of her swift ulti- 
 mate gestures and put by the child, he crying lustily after 
 her, and she was gone, and I outside the door still 
 begged her to come for a moment into my study and 
 wait for Mildred. No, Mildred was not in, I owned, 
 but she would be presently. 
 
 "You said " she confronted me with those clear 
 eyes full of reproach, and I laughed, yet not ashamed, 
 and owned I had said it, but that was because I was 
 afraid she wouldn't come in at all. At that she laughed 
 indulgently, as if I were as much a child as young Eger- 
 ton, still grieving up there, and whatever we both wanted 
 was a small matter anyway. 
 
 "You are an absurd person," she said. "Yes. I'll 
 look out of your study window." 
 
 The light was burning there, and for the first time 
 
236 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I appraised it as a room calculated to please the eye. 
 It had a big dormer looking into the western gold, and 
 its furnishings were sumptuous and plain. I remem- 
 bered now that Mildred had augmented them when a 
 photographer came to add the print of it to his Homes 
 of Authors. A foolish outlay I thought then, for it 
 served me well enough with two chairs, a table, and a 
 couch. But now I was glad, for the pure, good lines 
 of the furnishings fitted this lady well. She walked to 
 the window and faced the west. 
 
 "Yes," she said, in that gentle voice with the thrill 
 in it. "I like your sky. And I like your son, Mr. 
 Redfield. And now will you tell Mrs. Redfield, please 
 She was drawing a card from the interleaving 
 paper in its case, but I was beset by all the spirits of 
 delay to keep her with me. 
 
 "You can't go yet," I said. "I want to tell you 
 something." 
 
 She was holding the card now and looking at me with 
 that grave air of waiting interest. 
 
 "Did you know," I said audaciously, "that I write 
 books?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said she. "I've read them. Everybody 
 knows that." 
 
 Immediately I guessed that, reading the books, she 
 yet thought small things of them ; but the knowledge, 
 instead of depressing, made me exhilarated to an absurd 
 degree. Here, I said at length, were true values. 
 
 "But Fve written one book you haven't read," I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 237 
 
 told her. "I've written a novel. And it's about 
 you." 
 
 "About me?" The color faintly tinged her cheeks, 
 and she looked as if she wondered whether after all I 
 needed to be reproved. 
 
 "Yes. It's about you. It's so much about you that 
 all through it I called you Ellen Tracy. And now I've 
 changed the name, but it's you just the same. Will 
 you read it ? Will you do that for me ? " 
 
 I fancied her breath came a little faster, and she 
 looked perplexed and even troubled. 
 
 "Why should I read your novel?" she asked. 
 
 I found a reason. My real reason was, I think, that 
 I wanted her to take it in her hands, to know it, to 
 know me a little, to see I could do something that was 
 at least sincere after my wretched makeshifts for the 
 market-place. 
 
 "You must tell me whether it's an offence," I said, 
 "whether the likeness is anywhere near you. Whether 
 the people that know you would say, ' That's Ellen 
 Tracy.'" 
 
 She seemed to consider that. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "I'll read it. But maybe I 
 shouldn't know. We don't any of us know ourselves, 
 they say." 
 
 "I've not made you happy," I said, in the desire I 
 had had from the first when I was with her of telling 
 her everything under the sun. "I made you love 
 somebody that didn't love you. But that had to be. 
 
238 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 You were too proud. Your pride had to be destroyed, 
 hadn't it Miss Tracy?" 
 
 There rushed into her face the stricken look I had 
 seen there once before, the moment after we had met 
 that other night. I had hurt her. How had I hurt 
 her? Was she so intrenched in her pride that she 
 could not bear even an imaginary moment of maiden 
 shame? But it was gone in an instant, whatever it 
 was, that hurt appeal, and she had righted her com- 
 posure like a noble ship. 
 
 "Let me have the manuscript," she said. " Cer- 
 tainly I'll read it." 
 
 "It's heavy," I told her. "I'll send it to you." 
 
 To that she agreed with a slight air of relief as if, 
 after all, I might not send it ; and she told me she was 
 going back next day to Hopeful Sands, she and aunt 
 Patten, who adored the snow and sleeping in the 
 balcony, and that they were to take down with them 
 a couple of girl students who were overworked. And 
 shortly now she was gone, and I stood in the open door 
 looking after her, my forehead tingling with a sense of 
 the riches that had come to my house. Halfway down 
 the street she met Mildred, and I watched them with a 
 foolish sense that she might return. But they sepa- 
 rated, and Mildred came on alone, rather excited as 
 she had been before at the nearness of so indubitable 
 a personage, and yet irritated because Hopeful Sands 
 would prevent Miss Tracy from dining with us for 
 weeks to come. Mildred was showing me every day, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 239 
 
 with the utmost simplicity, that she prized an affilia- 
 tion with men and women of high degree; and so 
 beguiling is candor in its own ingenuousness that I 
 found myself saying from time to time, " After all, why 
 shouldn't she? She likes people socially equipped. 
 Why shouldn't she run them down ?" 
 
 But for the first time, I thought she did well in her 
 pursuit. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 I SENT the manuscript to Ellen Tracy, and I also 
 sent her a plea for Blake's bill, explaining that, awkward 
 as it was, I begged she would help me out by rendering 
 it. I had to see Blake, I told her, and I couldn't face 
 him until my meddling in his affairs had been justified 
 by her concurrence, and so on the way to being for- 
 gotten. The bill came, an actual bill, I saw with ap- 
 proval, a price no lower than might reasonably have 
 been charged at any boarding-house of good standing, 
 though, to be sure, not sanitarium prices. His pride 
 was, at all hazards, to be saved. The bill I sent to 
 Blake, and he mailed me a check, evidently determined 
 to avoid a direct money transaction with her. And 
 I sent the check to Ellen Tracy, and got back her bill, 
 receipted, and next day, the manuscript: this also 
 without a word. I was disconcerted. Yet, I told 
 myself, what could she say? But to say nothing was 
 the cut direct. 
 
240 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 And just then I met Blake, and he was in new clothes, 
 a fine suit worn with bravado, and Wadham, he told 
 me, had raised his salary, and he was that afternoon 
 going down to Hopeful Sands. I put out my hand to 
 him at that, and he gave it an impulsive grip. I knew 
 what he was going for, and his answering handshake 
 meant he acquiesced in my knowing. He was going 
 down to ask Ellen Tracy to live on his increased salary. 
 I plodded home feeling somehow "wee," as my mother 
 used to say, as if I were of no particular account to 
 anybody, and other fellows were reaping all the grain, 
 snapping off all the flowers by then* beautiful heads to 
 garland themselves withal. And I went softly upstairs 
 - cousin Thomas was in the library sitting upright and 
 not talking, and Mildred was engaged in a mild patter 
 of words that sounded consolatory of something. I 
 went into my den, sat down at the table, and thought 
 it over. It would be a wonder if others had not dis- 
 covered about me what I was now learning about my- 
 self, that I was a soft fellow, not even yet inured to 
 life, not having caught the way of luck for luck is a 
 law though little understood and pitifully at the 
 mercy of my feelings. When I had been forced to 
 deny Mildred her way, it must not be supposed I did 
 it without payment of a very heavy cost. It hurt me 
 like a knife to refuse her, and it was a discomfort I had 
 to force myself to face to live with her in the ordinary 
 ways of life after I had denied. I had yielded to her in 
 all matters concerning us two alone. I had lived after 
 
MY LOVE AND I 241 
 
 the fashion that pleased her, though I had been forced, 
 in managing it, to pour out stories until I shuddered 
 at the output. And I could not conceal from myself 
 that even in the matter of the stories I was on the verge 
 of being a back number. I had sold my birthright of 
 striving for the higher slopes, and I had gained no foot- 
 hold on the steps below. I sat there touched to the 
 soul by the dry rot and mildew of life, the consciousness 
 that, neither in the things of the earth nor the things 
 of the spirit had I made good. Not even in love but 
 when I got there, according to the loyal decency of men 
 I went no further. Love was not the world I had fore- 
 seen in my vision, the vision that had blossomed in 
 the Epithalamium. Yet that I accepted with the sad 
 certainty that so all men had found it. The vision 
 of the woman-soul that was illusion, but it led us on, 
 if only to this arid track where I jogged to-day. The 
 vision of the fecund happy earth that was another 
 illusion, but of course everybody knew a world was 
 fruitful because somebody dug in it and kept away 
 the weeds. I was engaged in digging. And I drew 
 my paper toward me and wrote the title of another 
 story. The stories came almost full-fledged now. I 
 scarcely had to modify them at all. I had learned the 
 recipe. But I wished Ellen Tracy had said a word 
 about my manuscript. Ellen Tracy! Was she, too, 
 that blossomy air about her, that scent of sweet good- 
 will, was she, too, an illusion? But I had not gone 
 far enough in my doubt to doubt that also. She shone 
 
242 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 above me like the fostering sun and I wrote my 
 story. 
 
 In about a week after this came a note from Mary. 
 She had moved. She was in Blake's lodging-house 
 now, and had taken a sitting-room. I could really call 
 in proper form. I went at once, judging she needed me. 
 It was the early evening, and I found her in the sitting- 
 room, which seemed not to justify its pretensions. It 
 was a rep-furnitured box lined with three-ply carpet, 
 Mary said, with an ironic pride, and a ceiling that had 
 once known whitewash. I had met Blake at the door, 
 so sad a contrast to the Blake of the new clothes that I 
 must have stared at him, for he asked sharply, 
 "What's the matter?" adding, " Going to see Mary? 
 Come round to the Cheese at ten." 
 
 He strode away to his task, and I watched the back 
 of his seedy old overcoat and the dejected slouch of his 
 walk. 
 
 "What's the matter?" I asked Mary, when she had 
 seated me and said she was glad I came. "Matter 
 with Blake, I mean." 
 
 Mary seated herself opposite and gripped the tape 
 arms of the camp chair with her two capable hands. 
 She looked worn but, as she always did, crisp and neat 
 in her fresh business suit that had the ah 1 of being 
 ready to go into action. She regarded me in a grave 
 community of concern. 
 
 "Why, she's rejected him, that's all." 
 
 "Did he tell you?" 
 
MY LOVE AND I 243 
 
 "No. He doesn't need to tell me." 
 
 "Well," I said. 
 
 "It was bound to come," said Mary. "I'm glad 
 it's over." 
 
 I too was glad it was over, and in some mad way, it 
 seemed, fortunately, rapturously, over. I had wanted 
 Ellen Tracy to marry Blake, because it seemed as if we 
 must all do what Blake's genius required of us; but 
 if she could not, if she would not, if she was to be Ellen 
 Tracy still my blood surged and blinded me, and 
 choked my breath. 
 
 "But he'll go under," Mary was saying. "As sure 
 as you're a living soul, he'll go all to pieces. You step 
 in now and take a hand." 
 
 What was I to do? I felt her maternal quality so 
 strongly that it became not only maternal devotion 
 and authority but all-knowingness. 
 
 "He's got to be encouraged to print his play." 
 
 "Print it ? I thought he burned it." 
 
 "Yes, he did. But when I copied it, I did a carbon 
 copy. I kept the carbon." 
 
 "Miraculous Mary!" I said. "Whatever warned 
 you to do that?" 
 
 She answered rather wearily. I fancied she was 
 glancing back over the long road of her service to 
 Blake. 
 
 "Oh, I always did that with his things. He's very 
 careless. I never knew what would happen." 
 
 "Have you saved it all, all his verse?" 
 
244 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 " Every thing that isn't printed. After it was printed 
 there was no sense in saving it." 
 
 I looked at her in man's perennial admiration and 
 wonder over the fostering maternal. 
 
 "And he doesn't know it?" 
 
 "Why, no," said Mary. She seemed suddenly shy. 
 
 "I'll tell him, if you won't." I wanted, in my blun- 
 dering zeal, at least to earn her his gratitude. 
 
 At that Mary went all to pieces in a way I thought she 
 didn't know. I must not. I should do him no good. 
 I should do her only harm. 
 
 "Very well," I said. "Don't cry, Mary, for God's 
 sake. I should as soon expect to see a sunset crying 
 or a beech tree." 
 
 " They do cry," said Mary, with a touch of a smile 
 through the tears on her lashes, "in a rain. You hear 
 to me, Mr. Redfield. It's my secret, and you're not 
 to tell. You've no right." 
 
 Well, I had no right ; but I still badgered her to ex- 
 plain to me why so simple and yet so faithful a friendli- 
 ness must not be disclosed. She answered with a lovely 
 dignity. 
 
 "He wouldn't like it, that's all. I mustn't make him 
 take favors. He can't return them." 
 
 He couldn't return them because she did them in love, 
 and Blake couldn't love her. I heard again the mut- 
 tered "Sacrilege, sacrilege," of that dark hour of Blake's 
 downfall, and saw Mary's acceptance of his chosen dis- 
 tance from her. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 245 
 
 "Mary," I said, "you're a darling. I'll go to the 
 Toasted Cheese and find him. And if he should 
 happen to ask me who's his guardian angel, why, I 
 won't tell." 
 
 She brought out from the table drawer, where she 
 had it in readiness, the neat copy of his play. This 
 she gave me. 
 
 "Ask him to publish it," she said. "He'll say there 
 isn't a copy. Tell him there was an extra one lying 
 round and you found it. Then give it to him." 
 
 "He'll suspect you. He'll know I've just come from 
 here." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Mary, drily. "He won't suspect 
 me. He won't think of me unless you lug me in." 
 
 But that I considered unjust. Blake did often think 
 of her, in a tender friendliness. I left her standing 
 there a little wan, because she was not used to tears and 
 they took a good deal out of her, yet relieved at having 
 set things in motion, and hurried away to the Toasted 
 Cheese, where I found Johnnie McCann reading a poem 
 of his own and inquiring why it wasn't as good as 
 anybody's. It was evident that nobody was listening 
 very hard before I came, but now they gave up listening 
 at all, to fall on me as a stranger who after all didn't 
 deserve a welcome because I had become a greasy 
 citizen. How many teas did I go to in the course of an 
 afternoon ? they demanded. And did I have a sitting 
 in a church, and was I by chance a deacon yet? I 
 liked them so well that I probably did nothing but grin 
 
246 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 in answer, though I shook them off as soon as might 
 be to get to Blake, who was sitting in a corner, patiently 
 tutoring a little white-faced lad in the reasons why his 
 first manuscripts hadn't been salable. 
 
 "It's too good," Blake was pelting at him. "It's 
 too infernally good." And then, when the lad's face 
 shone all over transfigured, as if he were avid and had 
 never yet tasted praise, Blake added, "And it's too 
 infernally bad. You've written after the old models. 
 Nobody wants that now. And well they shouldn't. 
 If you've got life in you, let it out, if you have to take 
 your jackknife and rip up your veins to show your 
 blood." 
 
 And the boy looked now like a hero of high resolve 
 or a sacrificial victim led to a slaughter he adored. He 
 took his manuscript back, said "Thankyou, Mr. Blake," 
 and went away with his consecrated look, doubtless 
 to find a place to write in. 
 
 "How are you, Redfield?" said Blake. 
 
 He passed a hand across his forehead, but it could not 
 smooth the knots there. I think he had forgotten 
 having seen me before that night. I rushed pell-mell 
 into my mission. 
 
 "Blake," said I, "aren't you going to publish your 
 play?" 
 
 He glanced at me darkly, as a man might if his 
 child had died and another man had used the child's 
 name roughly. 
 
 "There isn't any play," he said. "I burned it." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 247 
 
 The look of remembered suffering came upon his 
 face. The minute when he had burned the play was, 
 I saw, forever present with him. 
 
 " There was an extra copy kicking round," I said, as 
 bluffly as I could. "I came on it to-night. I've 
 brought it to you." 
 
 I pulled it awkwardly forth, and laid it down before 
 him. Who save those of us who try to climb that 
 steep, knows the power of the written word upon the 
 weaver of the webs of mimic life? His eyes glittered 
 as if he were starving and saw food, his lips quivered 
 like the lips of the man who remembers his dead love, 
 and thinks he sees her wraith before him. He broke 
 open the cover now Johnnie McCann was singing a 
 song about an Irishman who got the better of the 
 devil and ran over the leaves rapidly. He had 
 been stale from work on it, I could well believe, and 
 now, coming back to it fresh from his grind at the 
 Thief, it struck him anew with all the dewy simplicity 
 of its worth. His face gained color. He was young. 
 And having run through it to see that none of its 
 divinity was lost, he furled the leaves and slapped 
 them to and confronted me, triumphant eye to in- 
 quiring eye of mine, and said: 
 
 "Redfield, I never'll forget this of you. And Red- 
 field, I tell you it's it's great stuff." 
 
 Was he going to put his head down on the table 
 and cry? Was I going to see two images of strength 
 and potency give way in one night? But Blake was 
 
248 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 not that kind. He simply did up the manuscript, 
 tied it with an artisan's care, leaned back in his seat, 
 breathing a little faster, and still with that transfigur- 
 ing color in his face, and said : - 
 
 "Dry up, Johnnie." 
 
 It was nothing to me whether Johnnie sang or held 
 his peace. I was speculating on Blake, trying to 
 understand. What was this thing so real that it 
 broke his torpor of despair, that he, his heart all love- 
 lies-bleeding, should rise to his feet at a mere hail 
 from the Muses, ready not merely to stagger on again, 
 but walk or run? How had I missed it, the divine 
 worship of it, so that hearing the beat of stanzas in 
 my ears I should hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more? Had I sacrificed to the wrong gods? This 
 was something to think over. And yet I had not 
 missed it wholly. It was ever with me, a divine 
 regret, a malaise, as of him who having once heard 
 the horn on magic mountains, thenceforth languishes 
 sickly for its note again. But I had chosen, I told 
 myself. I had chosen wife and child. And let who 
 dare forswear the natural tie for immortality. 
 
 XXV 
 
 THE spring came and early summer, and I took a 
 house in the country, with the purpose, though I 
 knew it was ruinously extravagant, of transporting 
 all my cumbersome household machinery there. I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 249 
 
 revolted at this inwardly. I didn't see why we should 
 need to dine in such scrupulous state in the months 
 when we had escaped the house of bondage, nor really 
 why there must be delicate courses and silent servi- 
 tors, and even the aprons I resented, they were of 
 such a gloss. Besides, I was scared at the expense of 
 it all, and I drifting every day nearer the status of a 
 back number. But when I asked Mildred if she 
 wasn't going to be a sport and come into the wilder- 
 ness with me for one summer I ached for a tent 
 and the taste of fish scorched over the coals she 
 looked at me in a mild surprise and asked if I didn't 
 want Egerton to be within reach of a doctor, and if 
 I thought you could live too comfortably for a grow- 
 ing child. Well, I thought you could ; I remembered 
 there were brown, happy children that played naked 
 in the sand, and never had their temperatures taken. 
 Yet he was my child, and I was as fond and foolish 
 over him as doating father ever managed to be ; and 
 we were civilized and not savages, and since she told 
 me to be afraid, I was as afraid as she. And just as 
 we had accomplished the moving of our equipage, I 
 had an exceedingly good offer to go to England on 
 some investigating for Rees and Dresser. I suspected 
 they were tired of my Little Italy, and had cast about 
 for some live job to pufme on. When I got the letter 
 I had time, on- the way upstairs to Mildred, to go 
 quite daft over it. I was to see England, and she 
 would see it with me. To my unbounded surprise 
 
250 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 striking athwart my pleasure, she would not go. Was 
 it the boy ? We should take him too, of course. 
 
 "Let the house go hang," I said. "We can sublet 
 or shut it up and pay the rent" but here she stopped 
 me. 
 
 It was not the boy. But he and she would stay 
 quietly in New England. It was better for him. 
 And to that I reconciled myself, really because I 
 must, and also because there was no time to gainsay 
 anything, such was the haste of my departure. And 
 like a dream the good-bys were over and I was on 
 blue water and mad with freedom and delight. What 
 did I mean by the freedom I rejoiced in? Not free- 
 dom from her and my dear son. I was bound to them 
 every day with triple-plaited cords, by the fibres of 
 habit, by the tyrannical strands of fostering duty. I 
 had made my life, and I would not have it otherwise : 
 yet I was free. Mildred had summoned an ancient 
 aunt from somewhere in the middle west to bear her 
 company. The hypothetical aunt, I called her: for 
 I had never guessed of her until this exigency, and if 
 I had not heard cousin Thomas also refer to her as 
 aunt Rule, I shouldn't have been able to visualize her 
 at all. He hadn't the imagination for a hypothesis. 
 Her name predicted that she was of his lineage. 
 
 If anybody seeing me on that fairy voyage after- 
 ward remembered me, it must have been as a dazed, 
 cranky fellow, wild with the sea, and boorish in his 
 inattention to the rules of the sea-going game. I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 251 
 
 tramped and stared. When we got into port I was 
 starved for sleep. The night had put her spell on me, 
 and the stars I had forgotten in my city toil. And 
 then England, beneficent, our mother, adored with 
 every inner fibre of us, England took me to her breast, 
 and I swore, in the first week, I would " return no 
 more." Mildred and the boy should come over, and 
 we would live on our enthusiasms. This I wrote to 
 her, but she replied at once that it wasn't to be thought 
 of. I already had a position in America. To abandon 
 it with no hope of making a new way was unpardonable 
 folly. So I did my two months' work to the tune of 
 all the accumulated memories in me, and, last act 
 of my happy stay, made pilgrimage to Kent where 
 Egerton Sims was born. I found it, the house, im- 
 memorially old, and full of dignity. The owner was 
 not at home. Perhaps I should not have presented 
 myself to him as in any way demanding special recog- 
 nition if he had been. But I went into the church 
 and saw the Egerton tombs and the recumbent an- 
 cestors my friend had told me of, and only when I 
 put my name in the visitors' book at the house did I 
 permit myself to write after my name, " Trinidad." 
 I think I vowed something over those Egerton graves : 
 perhaps it was a vow of fealty to him, my feudal lord, 
 and perhaps it concerned my son. The thought of 
 my son was very strong upon me in those days, be- 
 cause I was turning toward home, and now the West 
 drew me as potently as the East had done. And 
 
252 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 when I stepped on board the steamer, homeward 
 bound, I heard a voice that moved me like a call to 
 things beloved : Ellen Tracy's voice, and it stirred 
 me, I believed, not only because she was such a lady 
 paramount, but because she was a part of home and 
 the things to be. There she stood on deck, a Viking's 
 daughter, clad in blue, the proud serenity of her air, 
 the wholesome well being of her, such as in no other 
 woman I had seen. The others might have come 
 from mountain climbing or the tonic of the sea, but 
 beside her they paled. She was simply life, life of 
 the body, life of the mind and soul, concentrated will 
 and movement and delight. All this I thought before 
 I got to her among the high-voiced groups, and I 
 almost put my hand on the arm of her blue coat, I 
 was so glad. But aunt Patten saw me, she in a par- 
 ticularly obstinate bonnet, insisted on in loyalty to 
 the olden time, and in a laughable contrast to some 
 Parisian mantle that had taken her eye. I was to 
 find out that this was aunt Patten's sartorial line. 
 Her life was a series of ardent impulses and old devo- 
 tions, and she would wear the latest thing in stubborn 
 company with an ancient preservation. Aunt Patten 
 was delighted, plainly. She liked young men. Not 
 that I was so callow then, but sufficiently young by 
 contrast with the long avenue of her recollections. 
 
 " Ellen," she said, grasping my hand decisively in 
 her small one, " Ellen, do you see?" 
 
 Ellen turned, but just then others surged between, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 253 
 
 and when we could really meet, I found Miss Tracy 
 was greeting me rather gravely and with a composure 
 almost stiff. But aunt Patten talked for two. She 
 was delighted to see me, so she said. I reminded her 
 of her native land. Let her once get back to her 
 native land, and you'd see whether she'd leave it 
 again. She'd no doubt she should adore Europe if 
 she could ever find it in its ordinary clothes, not 
 overrun by a million Americans and spouting tea at 
 every pore. 
 
 "But you want to get back to your Americans," 
 her niece reminded her. She had the air of treating 
 her like a much indulged child. 
 
 Oh, Americans were well enough in their habitat, 
 said aunt Patten. It was only when they began to 
 scurry over Europe, staring at things, that they made 
 her nervous. And was that her trunk going by ? She 
 should perish if she couldn't get at her chinchilla 
 and so talking, they left me, with a quiet little bow, 
 too formal, I thought, from Ellen Tracy. 
 
 It proved that we were not neighbors at table, and 
 they didn't appear on deck that night. The meeting 
 had left me thoughtful. Miss Tracy was not on the 
 ground where I had left her. This, I felt with a 
 tendency to reproach, was not fair. Where was the 
 old familiar intercourse of Hopeful Sands? It was 
 almost as if she had some reason for repulsing me. 
 What had I done ? Was it the matter of the novel ? 
 That I would boldly ask. 
 
254 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 It was two full days before she came on deck, and 
 then aunt Patten, a limp wraith of a creature, clung 
 to her, and after a stoical twenty minutes had to be 
 carried down again. This I did she was a feather 
 weight and all the time she kept up a protesting 
 motion of her hand, an action which meant, she told 
 me afterward, that I was not to speak to her. If 
 anybody spoke, she said, to her, to anybody, she was 
 prepared to die. And it was another full day before 
 Ellen Tracy appeared again; but when I saw her 
 pacing the deck with a lithe swiftness that means the 
 delight in freedom, I made for her at once, and asked 
 if I might walk with her. She accepted me, rather 
 as an infliction, I thought, and we strode on, equally 
 alive to the glory of the tumbling waves under us and 
 the taste of the spray-wet breeze. If she had resent- 
 ment against me she couldn't hold it in the face of 
 such a day, and presently we were talking fast : about 
 Mildred first. I had to tell where I had left her and 
 the boy, and whether they were well. It wasn't 
 simulated, this interest of hers, to fulfil the canons of 
 accepted life. She really cared to know how Mildred 
 was. She really cared about the boy. After I had 
 fatuously rehearsed some of the boy's precocious 
 aptitudes, I did have the grace to own my common 
 failing with the world of fatherhood. Yet he was 
 my boy, and of course he did seem different. 
 "Of course/' she said. "He's splendid." 
 And I believed she had seen him so. I told her 
 
MY LOVE AND I 255 
 
 incidentally what I had been doing in England, and 
 she warmed to that and said it was wonderful that 
 now every man was a citizen of the world. He wasn't 
 fighting isolated problems in his own corner. He was 
 covering land and sea to find out what other men did. 
 She quite glowed over that. I fancied she would like 
 an adventurous wandering, and she owned as much. 
 Only she wasn't willing to get very far from aunt 
 Patten. By the time the sunset came, and we had 
 talked about sailing into the golden west with the 
 old adventurers, I felt we were really very good friends 
 indeed. Her early stiffness had gone, and when it 
 seemed in danger of coming back, I found I could 
 dissipate it, for some unknown reason, by a mention 
 of Mildred and the child. And after dinner I sought 
 her again very far forward in a dark spot of her own. 
 The wind had come up, and few were on deck, the 
 major part preferring the stuffy seclusion of the music 
 room and a dissonant clamor of popular songs. The 
 moon was out, and the waves were breaking in foam. 
 What with the motion of the water and the flying 
 clouds and the wind on our faces, we seemed to be 
 racing. I found a high excitement in it and so, I 
 think, did she. I was in accord with it, daring enough 
 for anything, and so I said: 
 
 "What made you send back my manuscript with- 
 out a word?" 
 
 She was silent so long that I doubted whether she 
 was going to answer at all. The cloaked figure be- 
 
256 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 side me grew to be an inscrutable one that might 
 never speak. Suddenly when I was listening for a 
 word, a little whip of her hair got loose and lashed me 
 across the cheek. That seemed a kind of answer, 
 and the thought pounced on my quieter consciousness 
 that if it did it again I should like to take it in my 
 teeth and hold it there. And I laughed, with some- 
 thing savage in the feel of the laughter, and for this I 
 was not prepared. 
 
 "What is it ? " she said. " Why did you laugh ? " 
 
 It was impossible to meet her with small subter- 
 fuges. You felt she understood everything and would 
 understand, and your soul could walk before her un- 
 ashamed. 
 
 "Your hair," I said. "It hit me like a whip." 
 
 Instantly she did some furling of her headgear, and 
 I repented of my honesty: for I should have liked 
 the little whip to flick at me again. 
 
 "I didn't write to you," she said at length, as if 
 it were the statement of a fact I asked for. 
 
 "No, I know you didn't. Why didn't you?" 
 
 She didn't seem to know, and in a moment she 
 said that exactly. 
 
 "I don't really know." 
 
 "Did you think I had made a portrait of you?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "I could see you had tried." 
 
 "But was it a good portrait? That's what I asked 
 you to tell me. Would anybody, would aunt 
 
MY LOVE AND I 257 
 
 Patten, for instance, looking at it, have said, 'That's 
 very like'?" 
 
 She laughed a little, suddenly. 
 
 "Mr. Redfield," she said with a delightful candor," 
 "the woman is tremendously charming. She charmed 
 even me. And I read the book with the greatest 
 prejudice in the world." 
 
 "You did? Why, now?" 
 
 "Because you said she was like me. So I was pretty 
 nervous over it. I expected to meet all my faults." 
 
 "And did you?" 
 
 "No. The creature hadn't one." 
 . "There !" I cried, in an unreasoning triumph, as if 
 I had proved something. "You see." 
 
 "She hadn't a fault. But the way she was like me 
 was in little tricks, the way I feel things, the inside 
 part of me." 
 
 "So she was like you. Now why couldn't you say 
 that at the time?" 
 
 "It was puzzling. She seemed a portrait of the me 
 I thought nobody knew but me. I don't know that 
 I'd ever seen that me before. I don't believe I think 
 about myself so very much. But there she was. I 
 got quite embarrassed with her." 
 
 I was in high triumph. At last I had done some- 
 thing that nature itself owned for faithfulness. 
 
 "Was that all the reason you wouldn't talk about 
 her?" I persisted. "She was too like too beauti- 
 ful to fit your humility?" 
 
258 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "No/' she said, "it wasn't all." 
 
 I could hear no niceties of tone in her voice, what 
 with the rush of water and the small tumult of the 
 wind. She might have been indifferent or she might 
 have been subtly moved and yet bent from necessity 
 on making me hear. 
 
 "What was it, then?" I asked, and she made no 
 answer. "Had I made you angry?" I insisted. 
 "Had I somehow hurt your pride? You're very 
 proud, you know." 
 
 "Am I?" she said, perhaps wistfully. "You said 
 that before. Am I proud?" 
 
 "Wasn't the woman in the book proud?" 
 
 "I didn't see it. She seemed to behave just as 
 she must behave in the circumstances, that's all." 
 
 "You see," said I, again from my triumph. "It 
 only seemed natural to you. So you see you would 
 have behaved in just that way. Yes. She was 
 proud. And you're proud, too, I can tell you." 
 
 She murmured something that sounded like, "Dear 
 me !" and I imagined the tone was one of concern. 
 
 "Come," I said, "there was another reason. What 
 was it?" 
 
 The moon came out divinely from the flying fleece, 
 for the bright purpose, it seemed to me, of lighting 
 Ellen Tracy's face for me to read. And it was sad, 
 not passionately so, but patiently, as if with a sad- 
 ness she had accepted. It was thoughtful, too. 
 
 "I ought to have written," she said. "I see that. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 259 
 
 I didn't fully realize it meant something practical to 
 you. You want to publish the book. You wanted 
 to see whether it offended me. It doesn't. Publish 
 it, by all means." 
 
 But I felt I must know more, not for the book's 
 sake, but somehow for my own. 
 
 "And it didn't make you angry?" I persisted. 
 
 "Oh, no." 
 
 "But" I knew this "it made you sad." 
 
 A touch of the pride I had accused her of came 
 into her port here. She lifted her head with a little 
 toss and then, perhaps because she had been so accused, 
 abased it. 
 
 "It's a beautiful book," she said conclusively, with 
 an impersonal kindliness, and I knew I was to ap- 
 proach no nearer to her inner mind. But that was 
 heaven to hear. 
 
 "Is it a beautiful book?" I cried. "Do you really 
 think so?" 
 
 "I know so." 
 
 She was answering with the indulgence of one who 
 saw what praise would mean to the workman and was 
 willing to accord him generously his due. Yet no 
 more than his just due. Art was too sacred to her. 
 She would not demean it by the tinsel showers of 
 flattery. An enormous hunger, a great egotism, pos- 
 sessed me, and I craved knowing just where she put 
 me among men. 
 
 "But you don't think my other work was beautiful ? " 
 
260 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I dared. " You said you'd read it. There's no beauty 
 there." 
 
 She paused. I knew why. It was because she 
 was so kind. 
 
 "You mustn't trust to me," she said, at length. 
 "I'm no critic." 
 
 "But you know !" I was sure that out of the in- 
 tegrity of her life, the sanity and dutifulness that had 
 never once let her accept a show for substance, from 
 her sensitiveness, too, she was the truest critic. "You 
 know, and so do I. My books are rot." 
 
 "No." She was glad to combat me. "It's work a 
 lot of people care about. They care for it tremen- 
 dously. I've been asking people since I knew you, 
 and I assure you they do care." 
 
 "The doctor who says he can't read tragedy ? He 
 sees enough of that in real life. The broker that 
 says he wants something pleasant to take his mind 
 off?" 
 
 I spoke laughingly, but, to my own surprise, with 
 bitterness. I knew exactly where my stories stood before 
 the god of work. I thought far worse of them than she 
 would let herself say ; but when she did even so lightly 
 reflect my scorn of them, a great bitterness rose in me 
 and tinged the words. It was strong and I could taste 
 it. They were fakes, those stories ; but so much time 
 had gone to the making of them ! 
 
 "Not all," she said gently. "Aunt Patten loves 
 them." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 261 
 
 "Well," I said, in my ironical self -scorn, "I shall 
 write henceforth to boil the pot as usual and to 
 please aunt Patten." 
 
 She had retreated from the rail, as if she meant to 
 leave me, but I could see she had also, perhaps with 
 purpose, turned so that the moon no longer had do- 
 minion. Her face in shadow, she said, as if it had to 
 be, because she had hurt me, and yet there was no way 
 of saying it : 
 
 "Mr. Redfield, if you did only one thing in a life- 
 time like the poem, the Epithalamium, it would be 
 enough." 
 
 My eyes were hot with tears, not unworthy tears 
 of a hurt pride, but love of her sweet kindliness. 
 
 "Did you read it?" I asked absurdly, for of course 
 she had. 
 
 "The other day. I couldn't read it twice," she 
 said, with a little broken laugh. "It is so sacred, so 
 sacred to you to life. It's it's like holy books 
 that only the priests can read. Good-night." 
 
 She had thought she comforted me by that high 
 praise, but I stood there bleeding inwardly at know- 
 ing what she must think of me for imprinting my 
 living heart on a magazine page. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE next day I did not see her until we were near- 
 ing port, and my hunger for her grew until I could 
 
262 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 scarcely tolerate my own fretful company. The day's 
 programme, walking the deck, a smoke, a parley with 
 men for there were good fellows on board these 
 were only nervous irritants. What was I doing, I asked 
 myself in the midst of them, letting the time slip 
 when Ellen Tracy was in reach of my voice, and after 
 this I might meet her no more? I saw her at the 
 dinner table though I had to turn to do it, thereby 
 deflecting my neighbor's commonplaces because she 
 judged rightly I was not listening. There sat Ellen 
 Tracy with her air of attentive calm, her small, beau- 
 tiful head in what I called its pose of pride. She wore 
 a black dress that showed her neck, and there was 
 the sparkle of yellow gems about her throat. I felt 
 the tempestuous rising in my own throat when I 
 looked at her that once. It was enough, for now I 
 could carry the picture of her in my innermost mind, 
 and I turned to my huffy neighbor and placated her, 
 beginning the talk again cheerfully. I had thought 
 of a foolish way for seeing Ellen Tracy again that 
 night. I would put my will on hers and call her up 
 on deck. For a moment of hot fancy that seemed 
 valiant doing; and then my blood cooled and I re- 
 membered that what shines like temerity in one mood 
 is sheer moonshine in another. So I rose early from 
 my seat and went over to her as she was leaving hers. 
 A new look, vivid and yet not comprehensible to me, 
 leaped into her face when she saw me. But she greeted 
 me with her careful courtesy, and I said at once: 
 
MY LOVE AND I 263 
 
 " Won't you come on deck?" 
 
 She hesitated, and mentioned aunt Patten, as if 
 she caught at aunt Patten for a reason. Then, to my 
 own bewilderment, but inevitably, I found myself 
 commanding her. 
 
 "Get your coat," I said. "I'll meet you where 
 we were before." 
 
 She went out of the saloon without a word, and I 
 ran for my cap and a rug for her and did meet her, 
 not where I had said, but at the head of the com- 
 panion way. I took her to a sheltered place where 
 there were the chairs I had ready, and I was at last 
 content. Ever since our talk of the night before, I 
 had thought of her with a great longing and hope. 
 That was it. My hope was in her. If anybody could 
 drag me out of the mire where I stuck with my Chris- 
 tian's pack of bad literature on my shoulders, it was 
 she, because she had clarity, and to be honest was 
 an article of her faith. She might not know how to 
 show me the road to Parnassus itself, but she would 
 at least let me look in the clear mirror of her appre- 
 ciation and see how little I satisfied her. We are 
 very like children, we men, when we come on a creature 
 that draws and dominates us as the mother soul alone 
 can do. Why should I not be dominated and led? 
 The mother soul knew the way, and without her I 
 could not find it. But I began, not about myself 
 but about Blake, perhaps because reference to the 
 tribunal of just judgments inevitably included him. 
 
264 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Blake's book is coming out/' I said. 
 
 "Yes," she answered unguardedly. "He wrote me." 
 
 Ah ! I thought, and so he writes you. He has not 
 given up the quest. And out of some pang it gave 
 me I should have said then because I wanted to 
 stand so near them both and it hurt me to be ignorant 
 of their relation to each other out of this I spoke 
 roughly :- 
 
 "Are you in love with Blake?" 
 
 "No," she said as quickly, in a short and sharp 
 reprisal drawn from her, I knew, because I had pounced. 
 "How can you?" she added, in an instant compunc- 
 tion, "How can you make me say it?" 
 
 This gave me a delicious sense of power. 
 
 "Did I make you say it?" I asked, in a small 
 triumph I was at once ashamed of. But I would not 
 forego it. "He'll make you love him," I challenged 
 her. "He'll make you marry him." 
 
 She was silent for a moment, and I knew she was 
 getting hold of herself. It was a high game, and I 
 was light-headed, but I did not feel that I was wrong. 
 It had turned, this big desire of mine to know whether 
 she would have me forswear my work, into the game 
 of sex. And now she answered lightly, and in a way 
 that said, "Stand off, you other mind, you other 
 soul:"- 
 
 "This kind of talk isn't very profitable." 
 
 I saw I had lost ground with her, the ground I had 
 unwittingly won last night, and I cursed myself for 
 
MY LOVE AND I 265 
 
 the foolery of being misled by racing blood. And I 
 said the only thing that could be said, " Forgive 
 
 me." 
 
 She didn't answer that, but with a thought of her 
 own dignity, perhaps, that would not let her leave 
 the topic, went back to Blake. 
 
 "You've read his play/' she said. "I know you 
 have, for he wrote me it was through you it's coming 
 out." 
 
 "No," said I, "that's all Mary." And I went on 
 and told her what Blake must never know : how 
 Mary had kept his nurslings under her warm wing 
 lest they suffer lack. 
 
 She was quick to answer. 
 
 "Ah, that's dear of her, that's dear. But it's the 
 kind of thing she'd do. I haven't given up hope of 
 getting her to stay with me this winter. I think I 
 
 can." 
 
 "I don't know," I said. "She thinks Blake needs 
 her." 
 
 Then she surprised me. 
 
 "I can't tell whether it makes me impatient or 
 whether it doesn't," she said, "to have her pouring 
 out her blood for him." 
 
 "But you said," I reminded her, "when he broke 
 down, you know you said his genius had to be kept 
 alive at any cost. Well, so Mary thinks." 
 
 "I don't know," said she. "Sometimes I think 
 genius is a heaven-descended thing. And then again ' ' 
 
266 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Then again?" 
 
 "Why, I think it's only a tremendous aptitude, 
 and if it gives a man a sense of privilege, if it conjures 
 up a big temptation ! What would it profit Blake to 
 write a song a song " 
 
 "The song the morning stars sang together," I 
 prompted her. 
 
 "Yes, that song, if he smashed Mary's life and 
 strung his harp out of her heart-strings?" 
 
 "But you must remember he doesn't want to break 
 her heart," I said. "We've got to be fair to him. 
 He's found her heart under his feet, millions of times, 
 and picked it up gently and given it to her. I've seen 
 him do it." 
 
 "Isn't it wretched?" she said, and there were tears 
 in her voice. "Isn't it cruel? And Mary is the 
 softest thing, the most vulnerable. If she loves you, 
 you can hurt her with a breath." 
 
 "Blake can't hurt her," I denied. "She's got 
 beyond that. She's simply the watch upon his path, 
 the messenger to do his errands. No, he can't hurt 
 her, because there isn't a thing she expects from him 
 or, after all, a thing she'd take." 
 
 "It's splendid, isn't it?" she owned. "Will it 
 ever be any different?" 
 
 "Will he ever love her, do you mean? You ought 
 to be the one to tell me that." 
 
 She answered in a sudden royal exasperation with 
 me for my persistency. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 267 
 
 "Well, then, I do tell you. He never will love her. 
 And if he offered her any of those expediencies men 
 do, a home, an affection, loyalty," her voice dropped 
 here as if in awe over what a woman might renounce 
 "why, Mary wouldn't take it, that's all." 
 
 "You think she'd stick for the big thing or nothing ?" 
 
 "Yes. If she could marry him and be a kind of 
 mother and upper housemaid to him, she would. But 
 if she thought he was trying to give her things he hasn't 
 got to give no, Mary wouldn't have them." 
 
 "You think Mary's great stuff." 
 
 "Oh, it isn't for herself so much. It's for him. She 
 wouldn't have him debase the currency. The minute 
 he did why, I believe she'd kill herself, or run away. 
 She'd know she'd hurt him." 
 
 And all this showed me that, if Blake was such a 
 knight peerless, here was the woman for him, com- 
 prehending, a light upon the bosom of life. I said it 
 daringly. 
 
 "The more you talk about them, the more I see you're 
 the only woman Blake could possibly love." 
 
 "Oh, no, I'm not," she said wearily. I fancied I 
 could see in the weariness vistas of sad, perplexing 
 thought over this very thing. Could she or could she 
 not? "I'm a million miles away from him. I adore 
 him just as you do, as Blake; but for the rest, I'm 
 a million miles away." 
 
 Then I found myself saying hotly on the heels of her 
 speech: 
 
268 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Then it's because you love another man." 
 
 "Yes," she said in a tired tone, and sad, oh, infin- 
 itely sad, "it's because I've loved another man." 
 And here she laughed, not mirthfully, but as if the 
 laugh came because she had need of it and called it. 
 "You're absurd. Why must it be because I've loved 
 another man? Must any woman love your Blake 
 if she's not bespoke ?" 
 
 "You must," I said, angry with her and myself, I 
 knew not why. "You're a mad enthusiast about him. 
 You could have taken one more step, and there you'd 
 be. But you've filled your heart up with another 
 man." 
 
 I spoke brusquely, and she answered in a soft reproof. 
 
 "Tell me, don't you think there's any more in love 
 than that?" 
 
 "That" weighed nothing when she said it, a scornful 
 gossamer cast to the winds. And I forgot I was 
 married to a woman whom, I had thought in that 
 earlier spring, it had been heaven's intention I should 
 love. 
 
 "No," I said, "I don't believe it." 
 
 "You don't believe love is destiny?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You don't believe if you had once felt it you would 
 be immune, I'll say, till you and she met a million 
 years from now ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Poor child," she breathed. " Poor child." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 269 
 
 I wondered if she meant me ; the words were sweetly 
 tender. And yet she might. Her compassion embraced 
 the earth, and for aught I knew, the stars. And I sat 
 there, quivering under some sense of revolt against life 
 that had the power to make it seem other than it was, 
 that could generate in us such beliefs, show us such 
 entrancing visions, and then, when we had fulfilled its 
 purposes, let the leaves fall and disclose to us the bare, 
 ugly trellises of our arbor of delight. But while I 
 thought thus, there came upon me that sensation I had 
 felt once before, of intimate communion with Ellen 
 Tracy, of a perfect understanding that might well 
 make us both laugh at the chances of space and time. 
 
 "Tell me," I said. Without my will I said it, yet 
 everything in me was so acquiescent to our intercourse 
 that I saw no reason why it should not be said. "Tell 
 me," I said again, "do you remember?" 
 
 "What?" She asked it clearly, yet I felt she was 
 approaching with me a barrier she was afraid to near, 
 and that she saw it as I did not. But she had evi- 
 dently determined that it was better to look upon the 
 barrier together in order not to take that step again. 
 
 "Do you remember that day," I said, "when I asked 
 you if we had known each other before?" 
 
 "Yes." She might have been reassuring a child, so 
 patient was her tone. 
 
 "Where was it?" I stumbled on. "Where were 
 we?" 
 
 "Why," she said, "we were as we are now." 
 
270 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 As we were then. Where were we ? In a beautiful 
 place, my thankful heart told me, in a safe place, for 
 it could be entered by no one but us two. 
 
 " Is it a garden?" I asked her. 
 
 The moon was coming now, in a heavenly sky. 
 There was singing below, the foolish gregarious pas- 
 times of the world that loves the artificial habits it has 
 made. We two were alone in our garden and the world. 
 She was speaking gravely, but a thrill shot through her 
 voice. 
 
 "I do believe we've known each other before. But 
 we mustn't think of it. It's not not healthy." 
 
 "Did it frighten you the other time?" I asked her, 
 and she answered without hesitation, " Yes." 
 
 "Do we go away?" I groped, "out of our bodies?" 
 
 "Don't think of it," she bade me, earnestly. "Our 
 bodies were given us to live in. We simply mustn't 
 think of going out of them." 
 
 "Tell me," I persisted. "Was it ever so before 
 with you?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 She was putting off my question, I could see, and 
 yet I meant to have it answered. 
 
 "We'll say we've gone into a garden. It seems like 
 that to. me. Did you ever go there or anywhere 
 like this, with anybody else?" 
 
 She waited a long time, and I seemed to know what 
 she was thinking. It, was, as we are assured in dreams 
 of our best beloved, that we may be our kindest, our 
 
MY LOVE AND I 271 
 
 truest, our most loving, and it will not be misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 "No," she said slowly. "It has been so with no- 
 body else. I don't understand it. I can't. But I 
 don't think of it. I mustn't. And you mustn't. 
 The only thing we can think is that we've seen we 
 see how splendid things are. And now," her 
 voice broke a little, into a laugh half tears, "I'm going 
 down to aunt Patten." 
 
 She seemed, rising, to take me with her out of our 
 paradise. 
 
 "But where am I going?" I said, not knowing how 
 I could let her leave me. 
 
 "We're all going home as fast as we can go," said 
 the kind voice. "I'm going with aunt Patten, and 
 you're going to Mildred and your son." 
 
 With that she went away, and with her the last ray 
 of supersensual light had left me. I knew she said 
 "Mildred," though she had never called her so, because 
 she wanted to bring her remindingly near. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 AFTER that, I had no chance to see her at all; only 
 to do her some slight service in the matter of the cus- 
 tom-house and a carriage, and she said good-by to me 
 with a tranquil sweetness that left me, too, at ease. 
 So full was I of unspoken certainties of the biggest sort 
 that I should have been a child to whimper. I felt 
 
272 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 grounded in some hope, poised in the equal balance 
 of just and noble things. Indeed, I hardly know how 
 to tell the scope and measure of my changed mind. 
 It was simply inseparable from my knowing Ellen 
 Tracy, and I was the more a man. 
 
 I sped down to the Port, trying to recall myself to the 
 fact that Mildred and my son were there, for every- 
 thing seemed strange to me. America, too, looked 
 strange, its bright, lambent air, the sharp outlines and 
 raw expedients. At the Port I drove up to the ample 
 house we had taken, and Mildred met me at the steps. 
 She was very thin. In her dress of a strange gray-blue 
 she was also lovely in a remote way; and yet, as I 
 kissed her, it was with a shock, as if she were a stranger. 
 
 "Where is he?" I kept saying while we walked in, 
 my arm about her. Now, so near my son, I was afraid 
 to delay another second, lest, having waited for me so 
 long, he should have gone off into some land of ever- 
 during loss. "He's well, Mildred? Just say he's 
 well." 
 
 "Oh, yes," she told me, in her even voice, "he's well, 
 but he got his shoes full of sand and nurse is taking 
 them off." 
 
 I heard a voice above, a peremptory voice of one to 
 whom sandless shoes were less than lunch delayed, and 
 I ran upstairs and snatched my boy to my arms, and 
 he roared at me and fought me, and I liked his passion, 
 and we had a great old time together. The nurse 
 laughed, and Mildred came and tried to recall him to 
 
MY LOVE AND I 273 
 
 his more praiseworthy self; this I didn't permit, and 
 after we had fought, he accepted me, and then I left 
 him to his lunch and was roared after because now he 
 liked me well. 
 
 When Mildred and I were seated at table in the cool 
 seclusion of an eastern room and it was wonderful 
 to see what a low note she always managed hi a house, 
 what quiet service, what trim maids, what a subduing 
 of necessary light I seemed to miss something I had 
 expected to see. 
 
 "Oh," I said, "where's aunt Rule?" 
 
 "She went to-day," Mildred told me, "back to the 
 West." 
 
 "And where's cousin Thomas ? You haven't spoken 
 about him at all." 
 
 "Haven't I?" said Mildred. She was fanning her- 
 self, and I noted the slenderness of her delicate wrist, 
 and interrupted her reply to ask : 
 
 "Aren't you well ? You're awfully thin." 
 
 Oh, yes, she was well, she told me. The heat had 
 rather worn on her. Besides, there'd been a good deal 
 of social life. 
 
 "Social life!" I repeated. How far it seemed, after 
 my knocking round among men and then the intimate 
 solitudes of the sea to this little world of eating food in 
 special clothes. "I should think summer was the time 
 to escape that sort of thing." 
 
 "There are very good people down here," she said, 
 still wearily. "I've made you some valuable friends." 
 
274 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Well/' said I, " where's cousin Thomas?" 
 
 "He's here." 
 
 "Here, at the Port?" 
 
 "At the Hillsdale House. Though he had been 
 staying with us a good deal, till aunt Rule went." 
 
 "Till to-day." I must have said it satirically, for 
 I felt it so. 
 
 "He's left his car here," she threw in, and now she 
 did not look at me. 
 
 "Had it here all summer?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Leave it here for you to use ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Chauffeur goes with it, I suppose." 
 
 "Of course," said Mildred, plucking up a tone more 
 matter of fact. "I can't run a car. I knew you 
 couldn't, either." 
 
 "No," I said, "certainly I couldn't." And the devil 
 put it into my mind to add, "Certainly not cousin 
 Thomas's car." I was not so touchy as to balk at any 
 man who might have loved my wife ; of cousin Thomas 
 with his persistencies I did have a perennial distrust. 
 
 But that I did not say, and while we waited for a 
 course unduly delayed, if I could judge from the slight 
 deepening of the new line between Mildred's brows, 
 I watched her because I felt I had to. I could do it 
 with no challenge of blush or answering gleam from her. 
 She was tired, and there was, in meeting me, some 
 slight strain. She was changed. Was it to my outer 
 
MY LOVE AND I 275 
 
 or my inner eyes ? I might even have called her hag- 
 gard, if the line of her cheek and chin had not charmed 
 the eye to its deception, the low-toned coloring and the 
 lovely hollows with their soft, pathetic shadows had not 
 offered their own beguiling. 
 
 "I've brought you some aqua marines," I said. 
 "And some jade. I'm going to hang you all over with 
 jewels like a squaw." 
 
 A faint rose came into her cheeks and she gave me 
 a little, smiling nod. And presently, when we left the 
 table, I put my arm again about her, and asked her if 
 she wouldn't come up and show me where she meant 
 me to write. She agreed, perhaps rather too patiently, 
 and we went up to a long, low western room where the 
 sun came sweetly through diamond panes. And after 
 we had talked a little about my voyage and I had 
 opened my trunk, I hung all the trinkets about her 
 neck as I had foretold, and she sat down to take them 
 off again for closer seeing, and fingered them in the light 
 and let it run through them in little rivers. Her face 
 lighted too, to match them, and I had to say to her: 
 
 "You're an awfully pretty woman. Anybody ever 
 tell you so?" 
 
 She laughed, and I laughed, and we seemed to be 
 only a short way from that courting time gone by; 
 only I was conscious that a part of me sat there dis- 
 passionately unmoved, while another part of me paid 
 compliments to reward the pretty creature who had 
 put on her poetic gown to please me. 
 
276 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Come, talk," I said. "We haven't had a good old 
 gossip for a long time. Sit here." .' 
 
 I wheeled up a big chintz chair to the window and 
 myself stretched out on a divan there. The steamer 
 was still beating in my blood and I carried in my 
 memory in my body, too, I felt the strong savor 
 of the sea. I felt a careless certainty of my own 
 strength. We all know what that is when we have come 
 back from the farther intimacies of the earth and air. 
 I felt equal to throwing the light burden of my woman 
 on my shoulder and taking her with me, if she wouldn't 
 choose to go, where I at last saw it was best we should 
 be. For since the night when Ellen Tracy and I had 
 talked of my work, I knew what must befall it. There 
 must be no more stories of Little Italy. I must write 
 out of my deepest integrity, though I starved to do it, 
 and it would be to my wife's honor if she starved with 
 me. There was the child : he should be brought up 
 to coarse, clean tasks, even though he lost dancing school 
 with others' sons well placed. Thinking of that, I 
 laughed and Mildred lifted her brows inquiringly. 
 
 "I was thinking," I said, "that young Egerton will 
 probably have to be an expressman or a plumber." 
 
 She let the stones ripple through her hands and asked 
 me idly, as knowing it was a part of the chaff I affected 
 when I was ill at ease with her: 
 
 "What do you mean by that ?" 
 
 It was a poor time to pelt her with discontents, now 
 I had just come home; but I was at my bravest, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 277 
 
 she was at her prettiest, and I felt she could under- 
 stand. 
 
 "Mildred," I said, "I've been thinking a lot of 
 things." 
 
 "When?" she asked, so appositely that I was 
 comically brought up with my own haste. 
 
 Last night, it had all been since last night. But that 
 I couldn't stay to answer. 
 
 "Do you know," said I, "I'm an awful fake?" 
 
 She shook her head slightly. Her eyes gathered 
 a shade of distaste. 
 
 "My stories," said I, "aren't worth the paper they're 
 written on." 
 
 "You get better prices," said she, instantly, "than 
 all but three men in this country. I know, for one of 
 the firm was on from New York, dining here, and he 
 told me." 
 
 I couldn't stop to fight that stuffed image of an argu- 
 ment. I rushed on pell-mell, sure I saw before me the 
 gleam of the path I had never yet traced quite clearly. 
 
 "I've got to work at a different sort of thing. Maybe 
 I can't sell anything at all. Maybe I can't even work 
 without sitting on the eggs till they're addled, I'm so 
 stale. No, they're so stale and I'm such an old, old 
 hen. But no more pot-boiling, no more fakes." 
 
 The look in her face, which I sought honestly, seemed 
 to be of an unfeigned annoyance. "Here," it said, 
 "are you when everything has been perfectly clear for 
 two months, muddying up the stream." 
 
278 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I tried another tack. Because I felt it all so keenly, 
 this new-discovered path, because an almost awful 
 earnestness was on me to take the road now I saw it, 
 I said chaffingly: 
 
 " Mildred, don't you want me to be a great man ?" 
 
 "Yes," she said without hesitation. "Have you 
 found some other opening in England ? You thought 
 you would. " 
 
 "Well, you know," said I, in a foolish, pedagogical 
 fashion, "the great men don't inherit this earth. They 
 inherit another. They don't have houses and lands 
 and limousines " at that instant, as if it were a play 
 and the sound came appositely, I heard a motor whirl- 
 ing out of the yard. "What's that ?" I asked. 
 
 "It's cousin Tom's car. It's going to meet him at 
 the train." 
 
 "Does he keep it here?" I interrupted my flow of 
 idealism to ask, with a childish annoyance of which 
 I was ashamed. 
 
 "Oh, yes. There's so much room," she answered 
 instantly. 
 
 I went on, but the wind of my intent had died, and 
 my sails dropped dolorously. 
 
 "I don't know whether I can ever do anything very 
 good or not. I don't know whether it's in me. But 
 I've got to try." 
 
 Her forehead was a labyrinth of lines. I thought 
 immediately she must have had anxieties while I was 
 gone, the fair map of her face had changed so grievously, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 279 
 
 even if so subtly. I hurried on now : for if compunc- 
 tion came into it, I was lost, and could never make my 
 run at all. 
 
 "Mildred," said I, "we've got to live on less." 
 
 It was a shock, I saw, but she met it steadily. 
 
 "How much less?" she asked. 
 
 "I don't know. It's got to be a different scale 
 altogether." 
 
 "Have you lost money?" she inquired. The deli- 
 cate pink my first facer had brought was augmented 
 by a shade. 
 
 "No, no. I shall have quite a pocketful. I've 
 come home with all my wages, like a good boy. But 
 after this, I want to live simply. I want to get up in 
 the morning without feeling I've got to earn just so 
 much money before night." 
 
 "I thought all men felt that," said she, with an emi- 
 nent common sense. "I thought they had to." 
 
 "So they do. So do I have to ; but I want to strike 
 on luxuries. Don't you see?" 
 
 "People will say you're not doing as well. They'll 
 think you're a back number. You've said that your- 
 self." 
 
 So I had. I was always forecasting the moment 
 when my miserable little fictions would pall on a public 
 waiting to get something real from the new giants sure 
 to be born. 
 
 "I don't care what they say," I threw out, in terms 
 of an old futility. I had a sudden vision of the sacri- 
 
280 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 fices men had made to write what they would, paint 
 what they would, how they had slept without knowing 
 they had slept at all, because waking vision pressed so 
 hard upon sleep and sleep gave way to vision, how they 
 had lived upon pulse and water. " Mildred," I said, 
 and I felt my throat choking up, " Mildred, it's an 
 awful stunt. It's a big, brave deed. You do it with 
 me." 
 
 "What do you mean to do?" she asked, and the 
 lines between her brows tightened themselves by a 
 shade, and her eyes besought me not to withhold the 
 worst. 
 
 "I want to write one line," I said, out of the bathos 
 of my belated dreams, " just one line that's good enough 
 to live." 
 
 "Why can't you sit down in your chair in your com- 
 fortable study and write it?" she asked practically. 
 
 "The study costs too much," I said. "The whole 
 outfit costs too much. When I sit in that study I know 
 the expensive cook downstairs is making expensive 
 entrees I've got to pay for. And you can't write undy- 
 ing lines with that kind of a whip held over you." 
 
 Mildred fished up a neat illustration from her school 
 days. 
 
 "Doctor Johnson," said she, "wrote 'Rasselas' to 
 pay the expenses of his mother's funeral." 
 
 "Did he?" I retorted flippantly, out of the passion 
 of my desire. "Well, did you ever read 'Rasselas ' ?" 
 
 "I don't believe anybody could carry on a house like 
 
MY LOVE AND I 281 
 
 ours any more economically than I have done it," 
 she said. 
 
 "I know it, dear," I made haste to own. "You're 
 a wonder. That's the point. It's too big a house. We 
 must live in a smaller one." 
 
 She looked suddenly so full of extreme misery of a 
 controlled sort, that I was bitterly sorry for her, and 
 wondered if the undying line ought really to be bought 
 at such a price. She spoke, and the tone seemed to 
 bite me. 
 
 "Do you mean," she said, "that we're to live on a 
 street like like the street where you were when I 
 first knew you?" 
 
 "No, no," I told her eagerly. "I'd thought we might 
 go into a suburb." 
 
 "And live among people that have baby carriages 
 standing in the front hall ?" 
 
 Her tone told me that this was the acme of squalor. 
 
 "Egerton won't need a carriage much longer," I 
 blundered on in my poor armor of facetiousness. "So 
 we needn't have a carriage in our hall." 
 
 Mildred looked then from the window at the lovely, 
 wide prospect with the line of sea for its objective. 
 Her face hardened like a fine mask. 
 
 "I think," she said, "you must be crazy." 
 
 Perhaps I was ; but of this madness of creative fervor 
 had come certain things in the world by which alone 
 the world has lived. "Do you expect me," she asked, 
 "to keep a servant ?" 
 
282 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Yes, oh, yes, " I assured her out of my humility at 
 having made her suffer. "I should think we might 
 have two. And there'd be a vegetable garden, and I'd 
 work in it." 
 
 This last was a tinsel touch, but my idyl needed it 
 only to strike her to the soul. She looked down at her 
 delicate hands, holding the forgotten gems. The light 
 of day lay on her rosy, glistening nails. Those hands 
 seemed to me the frailest things and yet the most 
 invincible. A man might have to spend his soul to 
 keep them white. A mad fancy came into my mind 
 that perhaps such hands were whitened by men's blood, 
 and the slender fingers were strong enough to wring 
 the heart they held and squeeze out more and more. 
 
 If marriage, the living together in an iron bond, 
 teaches us anything, it is that there is a decent control 
 which must be snatched at as soon as certain danger 
 signals fly. Mildred had on her armor now of gentle 
 speech and a composed face, and I, too, got a firmer 
 grip. 
 
 "I might as well tell you," she said, in that mastered 
 voice, "that I never shall do it. Never." 
 
 "You won't go with me into my suburban pram- 
 infested villa?" I asked, from my foolish last resort of 
 gayety. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Suppose I go ? " This was in idle rallying. "Sup- 
 pose I take Egerton ? " 
 
 "I should keep up the house," she replied instantly. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 283 
 
 "I shall never leave you actually. People could think 
 you had gone into the country to write." 
 
 "How could you keep up the house?" was my in- 
 voluntary inner comment on this. "How could you 
 keep it unless I kept it for you ?" 
 
 But this I could not ask her. I got up and went to 
 her in a contrite haste. 
 
 "Never mind, old darling," I said. "We'll talk of it 
 again." 
 
 "No, " said she firmly, and she gave me her cheek, not 
 grudgingly, but as if it were a fair, bloom-covered tract 
 I had purchased. "I shan't talk about it again. I've 
 said all I have to say." 
 
 A magnificent car came up the drive, and looking 
 at it absently, my hand still on her shoulder in a caress 
 the shoulder was too patient to shake off, I saw cousin 
 Thomas sitting in it, smaller than ever in his summer 
 clothes and a large and doubtless invaluable panama. 
 He seemed, looking down upon him as I did, to have 
 shrunken somehow. I gave him a robust, "Halloo!" 
 conscious of all the ways I had of disappointing Mildred 
 and determining that coolness to cousin Thomas should 
 not make one of them this time. Though he glanced 
 at me, he made no response in kind, but left the car 
 and came up the stairs. He was the same little terrier 
 of a man, but worn, inconceivably older. 
 
 "Thought I'd come in and pass the time o' day," he 
 jerked at me, and I shook hands with him and asked 
 him if the summer'd done well by him. But he had 
 
284 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 no special thing to say and seemed, his cordial dues 
 over, bent on getting off; in a moment more he was 
 spinning away again down the drive. 
 
 " Cousin Thomas doesn't look very fit/' I said to 
 Mildred ; but she seemed not to have noticed him. 
 
 " Shall we go down to the shore?" she asked me. 
 "We always go about this time." 
 
 "Egerton?" 
 
 "Yes, and nurse." 
 
 Of course I'd go down to the shore, for a casual 
 glimpse of my old friend the sea who had just inducted 
 me into such strange rebelliousness. But Mildred, as 
 she went with me, seemed relieved to change our meet- 
 ing ground. My blood, too, had cooled. I didn't 
 seem to myself any more a fellow demanding great 
 things of life, but a fellow who didn't know how to use 
 what he had. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 MY firm had sent forme to go on to New York, and had 
 generously told me that what I had done had pleased them. 
 More than that, they offered me another plum. Some 
 disturbance was beginning in Eastern Europe. Did 
 I want to run over there as special correspondent ? I 
 hesitated, and petitioned for delay. Then, as this 
 admitted no tarrying, did I want to take a year's work 
 at least in Africa ? Might I think of it ? Oh yes, for 
 a fortnight. They wanted to assure me again that 
 
MY LOVE AND I 285 
 
 they valued my services deeply and would meet my 
 wishes in every possible way. 
 
 I went back to Boston but not immediately to the 
 Port. Instead, I walked into the empty house on 
 Osborne Street, threw open windows and invited 
 light and dust into its obscurity. I went to my study 
 last, and when I had let the air in and waked it from 
 sleep to what I felt was a welcoming response to me, I 
 sat down by my desk to think out my life. Was I a 
 blatant egotist because I was regarding my life as an 
 entity, as a man might look upon the picture or book 
 he had not yet finished, and that I felt it was important 
 that it should be finished according to what might 
 be the first design ? Had I within me the seeds of that 
 great desire which springs up in some form of the 
 created thing? And how far could I cherish that? 
 what could I draw from the big reservoir, to pay it back 
 in my accomplished deed? I knew very well that I 
 was a poor citizen. I was not active in municipal 
 matters, nor was I always conversant of what the 
 v/orld was doing. It was true that I had just been told 
 I had done brilliant work in England ; but that was 
 because something had waked me, I knew, perhaps 
 England's inherited illustriousness, and I had really 
 looked upon things well worth my reverence. But 
 there is no doubt that, if I had a talent, even if I had 
 none for verse, it was a talent for writing out the lives 
 of individual men and women, a little talent, perhaps 
 a serviceable one. That was the poor, tiny talent I was. 
 
286 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 thinking about now, planning for its future, as I planned 
 for my son. Neither of them might justify so much 
 consideration, but I was fond of them. They seemed 
 tremendously important to me. And as I should not 
 sacrifice my son for my talent, I began to think I should 
 not sacrifice my talent for my son : that is, if it meant 
 buying more expensive meats for him than a son of 
 mine had any right to eat, when he should come to the 
 carnivorous stage. I was sick of the whole show, as 
 Johnnie McCann was wont to say when he abandoned 
 his grip on the life line the Powers hold out to us. I 
 didn't like the system of things. It seemed to me now, 
 as to Blake, a mean age given up to ways of living 
 conveniently, a time of little things. There was no 
 place for a man who sat down to write what was honestly 
 in him without reference to that banal huckster, the 
 selling list : unless indeed his bread was bought for him 
 beforehand. What I had told Ellen Tracy was true: 
 I had got my popularity and my prices because I was 
 a muddleheaded sentimentalist. I "had it come out 
 well." The doctor who came home from clinic after 
 letting blood, could read one of my stories and go off 
 into his well-earned sleep with a fatuous credulity that 
 perhaps the world was doing very decently after all. 
 And it wasn't that I didn't believe the world was doing 
 excellently. I believed it was, in the large. I be- 
 lieved there was God, and that He knew what He was 
 about. But I saw the immediate struggle was grim and 
 awful, and I wanted to be able to paint it so, if I minded, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 287 
 
 without being told realism in my form wasn't "maga- 
 zinable. Hadn't I some more of my purely idealistic 
 sketches?" And if it hadn't been for that carnival 
 of cookery in the kitchen and roses all over the house 
 and the general embroidery of life, I should have replied, 
 No, I hadn't an idealistic page, and the page I had 
 written was exactly what I meant to write at that 
 moment. Wasn't there some limbo, my hot soul in- 
 quired of itself, where a man might write out what was 
 in him and patiently put it in a book to be read or not 
 read, as destiny decides ? I was dotty that night, as 
 Johnnie again would say. I thought of the great im- 
 mortalities straining to be born, and nobody striving 
 to snatch them out of their matrix : the poem waiting 
 in the stillnesses, the pictures painted invisible for us 
 to call them out when we had purified our sight. And 
 how could we purify it? Why, by ceasing to eat fat 
 dinners and to pursue the blatant littlenesses of the day. 
 And there at my study table I went mad all over again, 
 as I had on board ship, and resolved that I, at least, 
 would get out of the mMee and that my wife and son 
 should go with me. Exalted because I had resolved 
 it and Mildred was not there to say me nay, I took up 
 the little gray volume of Blake's drama, and read it 
 through. Ah, here was work. This was written as 
 the man's integrity would have it, and with the full 
 authoritative sound of one who knew the genesis of 
 verse. He could tell you what other hands had struck 
 the chords to such measures, as a composer takes a 
 
288 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 foregoing masterpiece and improvises, though his own 
 theme is still his own. I wondered if the world knew 
 just how important this business of the poet is. Here 
 they were in their market-place, everybody buying 
 and selling, the strident clamor of it drowning out the 
 small, low pipe of the man who can only sing. The 
 poet couldn't invent appliances to make the wheels 
 go faster. He could only make verse, and it seemed 
 to me that when it was verse like Blake's there' d better 
 be silence to hear it. There'd better be long hours, 
 not at the fag end of the maltreated day when nobody 
 wanted anything but a literary anodyne, but hours 
 when the best within us came to the poet and besought 
 his page to sing. And then I bethought me suddenly 
 of my novel : it was because I had thought first of 
 Ellen Tracy. I often had these unsummoned fancies 
 about her, as if she came into the room. I pulled the 
 novel out of the little wooden chest I had bought for 
 it before I went away, and where it had stayed locked 
 as in a chamber of its own. I looked at it with an 
 uncomprehending eye. Was it good stuff ? I couldn't 
 tell. It was certainly " queer," if to be queer is not to 
 fit any of the recognized rules. So I put it away again, 
 and knew suddenly I wanted to talk with Blake. I 
 telephoned the Thief and found he had just gone out. 
 So I left a message for him that if he came in he was 
 to dine with me at a place we knew. Otherwise I 
 begged he'd come round in the evening, or I'd go to 
 him, anywhere he said. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 289 
 
 About eight o'clock he came, and I ran down to open 
 the door to him. There he was, the tall, distinguished 
 figure beginning to stoop a little now, not because he 
 was yet even in the prime of life, but because he carried 
 a complexity of burdens. He was thinner in the face, 
 too; lines had graven themselves there, the indubitable 
 witnesses of disappointment and sad revery. The look 
 of the happy bridegroom he had worn when he went 
 off in his new clothes to woo Ellen Tracy had settled 
 into a subdued acquiescence. It was patent that Ellen 
 Tracy would have none of him. He had accepted his 
 defeat. Henceforth the world was not for him; but 
 I could well believe those eyes would light up their 
 cavernous solitudes if you talked to him about poetry. 
 And this I at once began to do, eagerly, for I was an- 
 hungered to have him, from his land of verse attained, 
 blow for me the horn of old desire. We had gone at 
 once up to my study, and I, having conjured up some 
 ice, set before him a big pitcher of the only drink his 
 temperance craved. For a moment after he sat down 
 he seemed to forget me; but he recalled himself, 
 glanced about him, and apparently approved the 
 dignified quiet of the room. 
 
 "This is good," he said. "You do your work here?" 
 "Yes," I told him, feeling exceedingly shamefaced 
 over it when I remembered his only solitude was the chaos 
 of his tawdry lodging-house. I was cut off from the 
 noises below, if there ever were any, I added, by the 
 double door. My wife had so arranged it. 
 
290 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Ah," said he, reflectively. "You're a fortunate 
 fellow, Redfield." 
 
 I owned dutifully that I was, though at that moment 
 I was inwardly seething in discontent. 
 
 "I shall never attain any kind of comfort, any decent 
 solitude/' he said. Then he voiced my answering 
 thought, continuing, "I earn enough, but I don't 
 know how to spend it. I couldn't plan a thing like this. 
 Ah, well!" 
 
 Mary had told me once that he had in the country 
 antipathetic relations to whom he was patiently faithful. 
 Most of his money went to them. How had he thought 
 he could take home to his lodging-house a bird of para- 
 dise like Ellen Tracy ? But in the dawn of a wild hope 
 everything lies in light. 
 
 "You know how to get along with the earth," he 
 said, "with things as they are. You've succeeded." 
 
 There was no bitterness in this. He wasn't lay- 
 ing to his soul the unction that, because he hadn't 
 thriven, he was the better man. He knew as well as I 
 that in these days of bruiting of values not only does 
 the little man creep into place but the great man does 
 sometimes get his hire. My mind, as he spoke, rapidly 
 ran over the inventory of what I had. I lived softly, 
 I accepted an acquaintance with the world which also 
 lived softly. I might lie under, if I would, that most 
 insidious mould and canker, the sense of privilege. 
 Yet I was eaten up and spurred and lashed by a dis- 
 content such as I had never imagined. I felt I had 
 missed the way. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 291 
 
 "I couldn't do it," said Blake. "I don't know how. 
 I couldn't marry. She'd only have been miserable. 
 It's just as well." 
 
 His head sank forward on his breast in the acquies- 
 cence of age, and his sad eyes went dreaming on in antici- 
 pation of the years without her. I understood what 
 was within him: the perfectly well knowing mind that 
 told him he could not play the game as lesser men of 
 us played it, and yet the heart that ached for her. But 
 he knew and I knew that if Ellen Tracy had loved him 
 he would not have needed to play the game of place 
 and privilege. She was so understanding in fine, still 
 ways that she would have created for him a paradise 
 of his own. That was what made the loss of her a 
 sharp regret. 
 
 "Blake," I said, "I want to talk about poetry." 
 
 He woke at once. 
 
 "Been writing?" he asked. 
 
 No, I hadn't been writing. I'd been earning food. 
 This last I didn't tell him. 
 
 "But it seems to me," I said, "I've got to do some- 
 thing or die. I've gone the wrong road." 
 
 He was looking at me with interest. 
 
 "So," said he, "you feel it, too." 
 
 Had he felt it for me? My mouth was dry as I 
 realized how near I had come to losing him, how I 
 might have him yet, the friendly judgment, the com- 
 munity of equal hopes. Had he seen me earning 
 money out of my infernal botches and thought that 
 
292 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 was my high water mark of the things I judged it 
 righteous to do ? At least he should know what things 
 I saw to be most excellent. 
 
 "I'm not like you," I said stupidly. "Certain 
 things aren't important to me. First editions aren't. 
 But poetry is, Blake, poetry is. And, by God, I be- 
 lieve I might have had it." 
 
 He was broad awake to me. 
 
 "Your Epithalamium is immortal," he said. "It's 
 already immortal. Nobody can shake it." 
 
 "I don't care for that," I told him. 
 
 He opened his eyes at me. 
 
 "You don't care for it, man? Then you're an 
 
 ass." 
 
 But I couldn't follow that road. It wasn't a poem to 
 me. It was a vision of my woman- worship, and the 
 world had been invited to look at my vision and I had 
 been given money for it. 
 
 "I can't tell you what I mean," I said. "But I wish 
 I had lived simply and given myself a chance to put 
 down the things that came to me. They came at 
 first ; and then, I suppose because I was too busy earn- 
 ing money, they stopped coming." 
 
 "It is queer," he said meditatively, as if struck anew 
 by the justice of the gods. "The old saws are true. 
 It does seem as if you couldn't have both things. You 
 can't have the earth and immortal life." 
 
 To hear his confirmation made me wilder than ever 
 in my ecstasy. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 293 
 
 "I've got to be free, Blake/' I said, "free to see what's 
 
 in me." 
 
 "But you can't be free," he said, looking at me with 
 a shrewd practicality that came curiously from him. 
 "You couldn't leave this." He glanced now about 
 the room comprehensively, as if it indicated the house. 
 "All this means a pile of money. You couldn't reduce 
 your scale." 
 
 "Why couldn't I ? " I retorted. "Try me." 
 
 He nodded. He was thoughtful. 
 
 "Yes, you could," he said, "if you were both agreed. 
 But you'd have to be of the same mind." 
 
 At that moment, even in the face of Mildred's re- 
 fusal to go my way, I felt, if I could ask her once more, 
 she would go with me joyously, "singing along the 
 road." As I conceived it there in Blake's company, 
 I felt capable of eloquence even, of the winged words 
 that should lead her also into the land of my heart's 
 desire. For that it was not her heart's desire I did not 
 think. It was so goodly a land, so rich in sacred prom- 
 ises, I believed she had only to see the arras of leaves 
 waving on its hills, the gleaming of its streams, and she 
 would choose to go. 
 
 "Mildred may be alone next year, anyway," I ex- 
 plained. "I'm going back to consult her. It'll really 
 be as she says." 
 
 Then I told him about my offer to go as special corre- 
 spondent, and he listened gravely and nodded in assent 
 from time to time. And I told him rather shyly, as if 
 
294 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 I had been much younger than he and indeed I was 
 very young compared with his inheritance of that land 
 I longed to enter I told him how my tiny voyage 
 had waked me, the seeing a new people and a foreign 
 land. It had stirred thoughts and feelings in me, and 
 they had beaten themselves out into lines of verse, and 
 I felt more voyaging, more hand-to-hand acquaintance 
 with the earth might prove me further. 
 
 "Yes, go/ 7 he said, as if I were a lad and he my 
 mentor. "It'll make a man of you." 
 
 I smiled rather grimly ; but I was not offended. So 
 I was not a man yet, he thought, though my first years 
 had gone. Well, he was right. I was not. I had 
 taken life as it came to me, and had, in a mild-tempered 
 certainty that it knew more than I, given what it 
 expected of me. If I had wanted my life to be of one 
 complexion or another, I should have decided, in 
 my own proper person, what it was to be. I fancied 
 I began to see how the stupendous freedom of it 
 swept over us like winds and nourished us like rain 
 and ripened us like the sun. We were free to choose, 
 and the One that made the vastness of it, though He 
 was hi the intimate atoms, yet sat outside to let us 
 choose. 
 
 "I'm afraid," said I, haltingly to Blake, "I'm a good 
 deal at the mercy of things." 
 
 He nodded. He understood perfectly without many 
 words. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I've been there. We all are, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 295 
 
 more or less. But when we begin to understand how 
 things go, we're at their mercy less and less*" 
 
 "Do you think/ 7 I was speaking to him even implor- 
 ingly, as we interrogate our wise elders when we are in 
 distressful doubt, " do you think we can govern life ? " 
 
 He had come broad awake out of the sleep of his 
 genius which commonly kept him lulled to mortal 
 things. He was smiling at me, a wonderful smile. 
 How could Ellen Tracy have resisted him ? 
 
 "Don't you know what it is you have to learn ?" he 
 asked. "It's the freedom of the will. Learn that, 
 and you're just as light as if you were sailing the blue 
 
 air." 
 
 I thought of the ranks behind ranks of creatures that 
 expected me to do things. Mildred expected me to 
 earn money and to go to church. It was right for me 
 to earn money to keep my roof-tree from leaking and 
 my hearthstone from stains, but not money enough 
 to bring down snow from Everest and fruits from 
 Cathay and jewels from the mine. And it was right 
 for me to go to church, if I found it good for my soul 
 and believed my Master God would be pleased by 
 prostrations or even intellectual essays; but not be- 
 cause other men went in frock coats and top hats and 
 might buy my books the sooner if they passed the plate 
 to me. Then there were the ranks of people who 
 wanted me to write soporific tales, to make them think it 
 a good old world and they needn't concern themselves 
 so very much about it, with the humor that titillates 
 
296 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 and none of the big ironies that might make them 
 suspect they possibly were illumined by its play. 
 And there were the editors who wanted me to be 
 "magazinable," and my publishers who had fatally 
 discovered just what the public wanted of me and were 
 prepared to serve that very dish and no other. I fancy 
 I spoke rather querulously, piteously, even, to Blake, he 
 looked so detached, so capable, for that reason at least, 
 of keeping his own will free. 
 
 "That sounds awfully well, but it isn't so. Things 
 push and push. You might as well tell me a man that 
 works twelve hours a day can go out into the country 
 and look at the lilacs. He can ; but if he loses his job, 
 he starves." 
 
 "That's it," said Blake. "He starves." 
 
 His eyes were bright with the consciousness of illim- 
 itable reaches. He had seen them, the gallant walks 
 of paradise, the gardens of the soul. And his lips were 
 set as if, like the lips of a statue, they were carved for 
 furthest time. 
 
 "But," I cried, in my futile chase of him across these 
 plains of light where he seemed to see his way perfectly 
 and I was all a-dazzle, "his wife and children starve." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Blake, unmoved, save that his eyes 
 seemed to be seeing farther still, "that's of course." 
 
 "Well," said I, "that can't be. Do you think that 
 can be? He's pledged himself, hasn't he? He's 
 given hostages to fortune." 
 
 "It's the freedom of the will," he repeated, as if 
 
MY LOVE AND I 297 
 
 from some haunting ecstasy, "the freedom of the 
 will." 
 
 I got up and lighted a cigar. I believe I swore a little. 
 If it was this to be a poet, I couldn't follow him. Did 
 he mean to tell me I wasn't pledged to my son with 
 every fibre of the being that had called him forth? 
 My son was dear to me, dear as were the ruddy drops 
 of my heart that lost a beat or two if he fell and bumped 
 his little nose. But suppose he had not been for 
 I thought I had seen fathers who regarded their off- 
 spring incidentally should I not have been as indis- 
 solubly pledged ? I thought so. And Mildred, too, was 
 pledged to him. We seemed to me, at that point of 
 our married life, vowed, not so much to each other as 
 to him. But Blake had done thinking of the freedom 
 of the will, as he might have done writing a poem, and 
 come out from the maze of it. 
 
 "Have you seen Mary?" he asked. 
 
 "No," I reminded him. "I've just come home, you 
 know." 
 
 "She's overworked," said Blake. He had taken on 
 a look of very human worry. "She has worked too 
 hard, too long, spent herself for everybody." 
 
 "I wish she could have gone to Miss Tracy," I ven- 
 tured. 
 
 "Well, why couldn't she?" said Blake, irritably. 
 "Mary was simply perverse there." 
 
 I couldn't say to him, Mary didn't go to Miss Tracy 
 because you were in love with Miss Tracy. I thought 
 
298 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 him exceedingly stupid not to have seen that. I 
 thought I should have read a woman's heart better than 
 that. But had I ? Had I read Ellen Tracy's ? I was 
 to learn something about that in time to come. 
 
 Blake was looking at me in an engaging candor. 
 
 "Redfield," said he, "I wish there was someway for 
 me to take care of Mary." 
 
 "There isn't/' said I, and then played my best card, 
 " except one." 
 
 I didn't know whether he heard me or not. He was 
 glooming on about Mary. 
 
 "She hasn't a cent ahead. I believe she's sending 
 clothes now to Haley's brat. Haley's lost his job." 
 
 I ventured a stroke I thought portentously clever. 
 
 "She won't marry Haley, will she?" But it had no 
 adequate effect. 
 
 "I don't know," said Blake. He drained his tumbler 
 at a gulp and rose to go. The other mood had come 
 upon him, the vision of flower-sprent fields and freedom 
 of the will to roam in them, but lacking the slightest 
 capacity for telling you how you were to roam without 
 being a criminal or a lout. That was why he was a poet. 
 But my mind stretched itself, and took in a deep breath 
 and permitted itself to wonder whether the poets that 
 were coming the unborn who are to lighten our dark 
 in springs to be whether they won't see the earth 
 as it is and the heavens as they are, and out of the 
 completed vision of the two, give us a more infallible 
 note to get the pitch of. And they are going to be 
 
MY LOVE AND I 299 
 
 even greater poets than Blake who jumped the issue 
 he didn't find himself able to explain. 
 
 On the doorstep he looked up at the stars for a 
 moment, again forgetting me. I made no doubt he 
 was going home to write big things. But I dared to 
 drag him back into the earthly coil. 
 
 " Blake," said I, and wondered how I dared, "I wish 
 you'd take care of Mary." 
 
 Then I shut the door between us. I went in to smoke 
 and meditate. You couldn't smoke with much com- 
 fort before Blake, knowing he thought it an uncleanly 
 fashion. I was not sure but I did, myself, but it helped 
 me through. I sat there in my bedroom, thinking, 
 thinking on into the night. I could not unravel the 
 coil of liberty, the liberty of the free creature to fulfil 
 his most righteous impulses without sacrificing to the 
 gods of time and change. And neither, I believed, 
 could Blake. For though he told me his will was free, 
 I perceived that it wasn't free to let him leave the Thief: 
 for if he had left it, not only would he have starved, 
 which was immaterial to him, but so would those 
 dismal relations in the country. I was sorry I hadn't 
 taunted him gently with his sacrifice to the Thief: yet 
 I knew what he would have said. He would have 
 evaded the direct issue, and without knowing he shirked 
 it, for he didn't even see it. He would have looked 
 over the valley of this world to the height of his ideal- 
 isms beyond. This was what it must be to be a poet, 
 and seeing this world as I did, I wondered if I could 
 
300 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 ever be a poet at all. But before I slept I had written 
 a sonnet, slapdash, with a free hand, because it clamored 
 to be done. It was about a woman, her hair streaming 
 behind her on the wings of her going, so fast she ran. 
 She was running into the future to keep there a beauti- 
 ful tryst, and the hair was the hair of Ellen Tracy. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 I DIDN'T go back to the Port until the afternoon, 
 for I wanted to see Mary, and went round to her 
 office to take her to lunch. I found her presiding 
 over three young acolytes at the typewriter, herself 
 working a wondrous machine that ground out the 
 notes a puissant broker had been speaking into it. 
 This was a different Mary from the one I had left; 
 she was haggard, worried about the eyes like a creature 
 that has run too hard, chased by some dog of evil 
 chance. She gave the acolytes a reprieve, and put on 
 her hat at once to go with me. Mary's shabby clothes ! 
 I wasn't in the habit of noticing women's gowns, 
 though I did know Mildred's were exquisite. I had 
 learned it through several varieties of argument, the 
 two prime ones being that her fabrics were delicate as 
 smoke or young untarnished leaves, and that they 
 cost so much. This last was actual demonstration. 
 Ellen Tracy's clothes seemed to me like the most 
 beautiful plumage. I can't explain it; they simply 
 did. But Mary, my dear Mary wore a hat that even 
 
MY LOVE AND I 301 
 
 to me looked battered, and though her soldierly uni- 
 form of shirt waist and skirt was put on with its old 
 exactness, even I could see that it would scarce pass 
 muster. 
 
 " Where shall we go?" I asked her. Would she 
 come to the club ? 
 
 No, she was quite firm about that. She knew a 
 fish grill not far away where we could get the freshest 
 lobster. I rather insisted on the club because it 
 would be quiet; but Mary shrank from it and 
 upheld her grill, and to that we went. It was a 
 quaint, good little place that did itself no perjury 
 in advertising everything as strictly fresh. You 
 went through the fish shop itself where crustaceans 
 and fins lay on immaculate slabs ever being sluiced, 
 and so to a shaded room on an alley where you 
 might sit by a window looking on a wall and find your 
 brow cooled by the zephyr from electric fans. Mary 
 was so tired that she took off her hat at once and 
 hung it up, in a business-like way, and I ordered the 
 luncheon, a procession of all the fish I could compass, 
 with ginger ale, the only bottled goods provided. 
 After that, I looked across at Mary and found her 
 smiling at me, her dear, well-wishing smile, as if she 
 liked me very much. 
 
 "Mary," said I, "you won't marry Haley, will you?" 
 
 She broke out laughing. 
 
 "Mysakes!" said Mary. "Who told you I wanted 
 to marry him?" 
 
302 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Not wanted to," I amended. "That's the trouble 
 with you. You don't want to marry anybody. Every- 
 body wants to marry you. But don't you marry 
 Haley. You promise me." 
 
 She was still laughing, quite light-heartedly indeed, 
 and with so total a lack of embarrassment that, if 
 Haley had been there, even he would have seen his 
 chances dwindle. 
 
 "What in the world put that into your head?" 
 she challenged me. 
 
 I was a blundering ass. 
 
 "Blake was in to see me last night," I said. "We 
 agreed you'd do anything to help a fellow out, and 
 we were afraid you'd marry Haley. On account of 
 the kid, you know." 
 
 I saw what I had done. The laugh went out of 
 her eyes. Hurt pride came into them. 
 
 "Mr. Blake has no business to talk me over," she 
 said. 
 
 And then the clam broth came, and I could only 
 weakly and contritely murmur over mine: 
 
 "O Mary, it isn't as you think. I believe I said it, 
 anyway. Blake said the finest things of you, stunning 
 things. He'd lay down his life for you." 
 
 "He needn't," said Mary, frigidly. "I don't want 
 any lives laid down." But her cheeks were burning. 
 
 "I came home on the steamer with Miss Tracy," I 
 told her, and she looked at me in a quick new pain of 
 interest. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 303 
 
 "Then she's come," said she, and I said, without 
 much consideration of the wisdom of it, but hurt in 
 my turn for Ellen Tracy: 
 
 " You don't like her." 
 
 "I do," said Mary. "I adore her." 
 
 "Then why do you speak of her so grudgingly? 
 Why won't you go and live with her?" 
 
 Mary had no small vanities, no reserves ready to 
 defend her secrets. 
 
 "I speak of her as I do because I want her either to 
 marry Mr. Blake or stay out of the country and not 
 come back here torturing him. And I won't live with 
 her because she won't marry him and I can't bear 
 to see her." 
 
 This last confession burst from her by its own 
 force, and I believed it was an honest one. Mary 
 herself didn't know she was tortured by Ellen Tracy 
 not because Blake couldn't get her but because he 
 wanted to. 
 
 "I don't believe you need pity him so very much," 
 I said. "I don't call him broken-hearted." 
 
 "Does he talk about her?" 
 
 The question leaped at me. 
 
 "No," I owned, "but he does talk of poetry, and 
 he looks as if he were thinking about the things that 
 make him write." 
 
 "What things?" she asked, as if she were hungry 
 to know all that might make her understand him 
 better and lessen her pathetic distance from him. 
 
304 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Things outside this world," I told her. "Things 
 Blake seems to know about and nobody else, just at 
 present." 
 
 "Did she talk of him?" she asked, "Miss Tracy?" 
 
 "She spoke of him. She's devoted to his poetry." 
 
 "But not to him," she insisted. 
 
 "No, Mary," I owned, "not in the way you mean." 
 
 "Then you think she isn't in love with him the 
 least little mite and he'll get her by and by?" 
 
 "No," I said. "I know she's not in love with 
 him." 
 
 "Women change," she persisted, and I answered : 
 
 "Not Ellen Tracy." 
 
 "How do you know so much about her?" Mary 
 countered shrewdly. "I should think she was in love 
 with you." 
 
 Now she said it rather roughly, rather brusquely, 
 and meaning not a whit of it, but it struck me full in 
 the consciousness of what was and might not be, and 
 I seemed to lose my breath and looked at her aghast. 
 She was eating her lobster and took no note of me. 
 
 "No," she said then, in her own frank voice, "I 
 suppose she never will care enough. But I'm tired 
 - I'm tired of seeing him suffer." 
 
 Mother-weariness was in her voice, the world-old 
 yearning of the creature who has brought life into 
 the world and found it so niggardly a place that the 
 creature must go bare. I tried to be wise, and if not 
 that, gentle. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 305 
 
 "Mary," I said, "did you ever think he doesn't 
 suffer as much as you or I, if we were cut off from 
 what we loved?" 
 
 "No," she said shortly. "Of course he suffers. He 
 suffers more." 
 
 "No," I said. "We've just our aching hearts, and 
 he's got besides something that's like a musical in- 
 strument. It's his art of making verse. Don't you 
 know if you could fiddle, when you were tired or for- 
 saken you'd put your fiddle under your chin and 
 play and play, and maybe go to sleep playing ? That 
 would be the only way you could go to sleep at all." 
 
 "Yes," said Mary, dreamily. "I've often thought 
 if I had a piano "she roused herself. "But don't 
 you suppose he thinks of her all the time?" 
 
 "Maybe," I said, "but I'm sure he thinks of his 
 poetry all the time. The poetry's the treble. She 
 his loss, his despair, whatever he calls it in his mind 
 that's the bass. It comes tum-tumming in when 
 the treble needs it." 
 
 "I see," said Mary, rather injured, "you don't 
 think he's got much depth of feeling." 
 
 '/God forgive me if I said a thing like that," I told 
 her. "I only mean she may be the most beautiful 
 thing on earth to him, and yet she's a thing outside 
 himself. His poetry isn't a thing outside himself. 
 It is Blake. I saw it making in his eyes last night. 
 He's a dear fellow, Mary. He thinks you work too 
 hard." 
 
306 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Suddenly she looked shy and softened. I might 
 have brought her a gift from the Fortunate Isles, his 
 kindness seemed so dear. 
 
 "I guess I have to," she said simply. "I haven't 
 laid by anything, you see. I've got to now." And 
 then suddenly chary of this personal trend, because 
 we had perhaps been too frank, we talked of England 
 and I told her I might go to Africa. I began to find 
 that the more precious as I saw Mary's marvel over 
 it. Africa seemed to hold in her eyes the place it 
 had in her geography days. 
 
 "Well," she said, "what chances you men do have. 
 I don't know what aunt Cely would say." 
 
 Aunt Cely, it seemed, was living in the country, 
 guardian of Mr. Haley's incubus. And at that news I 
 dared again, as I was leaving Mary at her office door, 
 and adjured her, "Don't you go down there, Mary, or 
 you'll find the kid bawling and getting crumbs on the 
 floor, and you'll marry Haley." 
 
 And Mary laughed this time and, as we shook 
 hands heartily, told me I was a good boy. 
 
 "There's nobody just like you," she said in her 
 heartening way. "You're a good boy." 
 
 Nobody just like me ! Well, considering the blun- 
 ders I had made, and the paradises I had managed 
 not to enter, I hoped not. 
 
 I went down to the Port that afternoon, and I arrived 
 there at a moment when the glory and freshness of the 
 summer seemed to be resurrected, under an added 
 
MY LOVE AND I 307 
 
 robe of grace. I shall never forget that day, the out- 
 ward loveliness of it like a symbol of more than tran- 
 sient beauty, the assuaging softness in the air, the 
 indescribable promise far more solemn than the promises 
 of sleep. This was the laying of the earth to rest for 
 an awakening. I felt singularly young, fit from my 
 sea voyage, the tan of it not yet off my face, and my 
 blood bounding to the tune of something to happen. 
 There was going to be a new heaven and a new earth 
 for me, my spirit told me. I was going to reach for 
 and attain the freedom of the will : for though I 
 thought tenderly and lightly of Blake's evading the 
 issue of the will and life, I knew he had got hold of 
 things by the right handle. I took a carriage up from 
 the station, and found the house sleeping, like the 
 world. My son, I knew, would be on the beach at 
 this time, and Mildred might be with him. But she 
 was not with him. She was at her desk in the large, 
 cool living room, closing envelopes with a swift motion. 
 A little pile of them was at her side : bills, I thought, 
 for her check-book lay at hand. When my step 
 invaded the stillness, she looked up quickly, almost 
 had to recall herself, and I had time to see how tired 
 her face had grown. What hard battle had she fought, 
 what had there been so exacting in being wife of mine ? 
 But she smiled at once and her forehead smoothed 
 itself. She came to me, less in haste than obedience, 
 and, moved by the pallor of her forehead, where should 
 have sat happiness, a woman's crown, I took her in 
 
308 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 my arms and kissed her fervently. Then I pulled 
 out a big chair and bade her rest in it, and myself 
 straddled her own chair at the desk. I was in haste 
 now to tell my news. I wonder if every man child 
 is in as hot a mood to run with his tidings to the ma- 
 ternal heart that waits him. I have always been a 
 creature homing to the woman spirit to tell her what 
 I had brought: first to my mother, then to Mildred, 
 and, with my novel, to Ellen Tracy. 
 
 "I've got a big chance, " I told her now. 
 
 She was unfeignedly in haste to hear. Africa, I 
 added, for six months at least. 
 
 "How much do they offer?" 
 
 This was her instant query. I told her. I felt a 
 little drop in temperature, though I hardly knew why. 
 Perhaps I expected first an outcry, "Africa for six 
 months!" But her geographical instinct was not so 
 primitive as Mary's, and perhaps Africa seemed to her 
 less of a divagation. She was considering. 
 
 "They won't give you more?" she said. 
 
 I couldn't ask more, I told her. It was generous, it 
 was sufficient. I wasn't really worth more. I should 
 be, I hoped, when I came back, but now I was mighty 
 proud and pleased to get that much. 
 
 "When do you sail?" she asked, with the instancy 
 of the wife ready to buckle on her husband's sword. 
 
 I felt another drop, but I tried to speak chaffingly, 
 still my old habit with her when I saw no thoroughfare. 
 
 "Well, am I going at all? That's the question." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 309 
 
 " Haven't you told them?" 
 
 "I told them I'd got to ask my wife." 
 
 That was gallant and tender. I looked to see the 
 answering glow. But she was still considering. 
 
 "You can't do better," she said, lifting serious 
 eyes to mine. "You can't do better, I should say, 
 now can you?" 
 
 "No," I said, feeling curiously mortified, as a person 
 who had assumed great things as his deserts, "no, I 
 can't in all probability do better." 
 
 We might have been two business partners talking 
 out the conditions of a deal. But after all, I sum- 
 moned my common sense to remember, marriage is a 
 business partnership of a sort. Her face cleared and 
 brightened as that of one who has reached a fair 
 conclusion. 
 
 "Then," said she, "you'll go." 
 
 "Yes," said I, with a dull ache in the region of my 
 breathing apparatus, "I'll go." 
 
 But I called upon my heart not to be a ninny, though 
 I did permit myself the reflection, "It seems an awfully 
 long time. The boy '11 have grown into knickers." 
 
 "Oh, no, he won't," said Mildred, practically, and 
 again I was unreasonably dashed at her having the 
 sense I lacked. I found I had wanted to go to en- 
 large my horizon, to look on men arid things; but I 
 had depended on leaving an ache behind me. It was 
 ridiculous, and I would buck up and be a man, and as 
 practical as she. 
 
310 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Now," said I, "let's talk things over. What I'd 
 like is this. I'd like to give up the Osborne Street 
 house and you and the boy go into a flat not a 
 little one, a good one with conveniences and a view - 
 and when I come back we could either go on with the 
 flat or do something else. Time enough to decide 
 that then." 
 
 I ended rather weakly, for she had raised her eye- 
 brows until her eyes looked large and portentous, 
 almost the eyes of rage. But she was not enraged. 
 She was only looking full at me with the measure of 
 her wonder. 
 
 "Give up the Osborne Street house?" she repeated. 
 "Why, I shouldn't think of it for a moment." 
 
 The difference that was a skirmish the other day had 
 got to be fought all over again, as a battle, this time. 
 
 "I've been talking to Blake," I began, my mind 
 running back to that errant interchange as something 
 that would teach her what I meant if she could only 
 see my mind as Blake did. 
 
 "About Osborne Street?" she inquired, with the 
 smallest tinge of satire in her tone. 
 
 "He agrees with me that the thing for me to do is 
 to live a simpler life," I floundered. "And do better 
 work," I ended, in a banal simplicity. 
 
 "Where does Mr. Blake himself live?" she asked, 
 with rather an elaborate appearance of interest. I 
 told her miserably, knowing the weight of the argu- 
 ment was on the wrong side for me. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 311 
 
 "I fancied so," she said, a delicate conclusiveness 
 in her tone, "or that it was a street of that sort. I 
 don't believe Mr. Blake is the person to weigh the 
 advantages of living in Osborne Street." 
 
 "Mr. Blake," I cried out irritably, "is a great poet." 
 
 "Well," said she, "do you propose being a poet?" 
 
 I couldn't answer. You could hardly say, at my 
 age, "I propose now being a poet. Go to. I will 
 sit down and be one." Could I tell her that I felt 
 within me the stirring of indeterminate impulses, 
 futile, shamefaced so far as their intrinsic outcome 
 went, yet as real as the answering fibre in the young 
 bird's wings when his elders push him out of the nest ? 
 
 "I had an idea Blake rather believed in me," I 
 hedged. "If he thinks I can do it, I can. That's the 
 way I believe in him." 
 
 "Is it his belief," she asked, "that poetry can't be 
 written in Osborne Street?" 
 
 I had no idea she could speak so incisively. I had 
 a moment of miserable admiration. 
 
 "That's not it," I said clumsily. "It's only that 
 if you insist on living on Osborne Street with no more 
 income than we've got, you have to hustle to the 
 exclusion of poetry. It isn't that I work too hard, 
 Mildred. It's that I'm worried about money all the 
 time, and I keep muddling over how to get a dollar, 
 and it debases my mind like the mischief. I suppose 
 if I were a big chap, a full-fledged poet with wings 
 like iron, I shouldn't be muddled. I should get out 
 
312 .MY LOVE AND I 
 
 of bed with a sonnet ready to serve up for breakfast 
 and I could turn out a lyric as I walked down town. 
 But I'm likely not a big man. I see no signs of it. 
 Only I want to be as big as I can." 
 
 She seemed to be thinking, her eyes on the gray 
 wall in front of her, which might have been illimitable 
 space for all she saw of it. I had got used to that 
 look. It meant that Mildred was brooding over the 
 fortunes of the house of Redfield, and weaving to 
 better them. 
 
 "Very well, then," said she. There was ultimate 
 conclusion in her voice. "This is what I'll agree to 
 do. I'll stay in Osborne Street until you come home, 
 and then we can talk again." 
 
 That is, we were exactly where we had been when I 
 put my plea. 
 
 "You can make me," she continued, "the same 
 allowance you would make for a flat." 
 
 "But you can't live in Osborne Street for any less 
 than we're spending now," I argued, feeling myself a 
 brute to have it to say, "and spending less is exactly 
 what I want to do. I want to retrench." 
 
 "I can live in Osborne Street for less than we are 
 spending now," she insisted. "Or perhaps" she 
 seemed to throw this in not as believing it but, it 
 truly seemed, to hurt me "perhaps you didn't pro- 
 pose making me any allowance at all." 
 
 "Don't," I begged her. "Don't, dear. I don't say 
 you haven't done awfully well. You're a tip-top 
 
MY LOVE AND I 313 
 
 manager." I took up her check-book as I spoke, 
 and turned to her balance. She came out of her seat 
 with a lithe motion and was upon me, not with a 
 a spring but a delicate furtiveness I didn't like. 
 
 "Here!" she said breathlessly. "Give it to me. 
 It's mine." 
 
 But I had seen, and I did not give it to her. It 
 was not the book of the bank where I had left her 
 account and where I was making regular deposits for 
 her. It was another bank of high standing, and her 
 balance was incredible. I had never had so much 
 money together in my life, and here was the witness 
 of it, staring up at me, and the last check drawn was 
 to the name of her dressmakers. All this time she 
 stood staring at me and I stared at her. She had no 
 breath. She looked like a woman horribly afraid. Her 
 hand was on one corner of the check-book, but my 
 hand held the book, though lightly. She might have 
 snatched it if she had had the bad manners, but I 
 knew she wouldn't for another reason. She was 
 afraid. I had no whim of tormenting her, but I drew 
 the book gently from her touch and put it in my pocket. 
 We could talk more candidly, I thought, when the 
 actual record was not between us. For after all, the 
 book was not the issue. It was abstract values we 
 were to meet upon, as high as heaven, as unseen also. 
 
 " Sit down," I said to her. 
 
 She retreated to her chair, and there she sat, upright 
 and rigid. It was I who was trembling. My hand 
 
314 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 shook. I felt the nausea of nervous overthrow, and I 
 realized I was in the rage where men slay, if not their 
 enemy, then something hi themselves. I don't like 
 to return to that moment of finding myself outside 
 my accustomed frame of mind, of obediences to the 
 world as men have judged it right to make it. 
 Whether I had returned to the brute I cannot say, 
 whether my higher faculties were suspended. I only 
 know I was another man and a most miserable one, 
 my heart throbbing until it seemed to run away with 
 my life, my nerves hi revolt, my head whirling. All 
 the accustomed channels of life seemed to have run 
 dry. The sun was shining, but it shone with no 
 answering recognition from my dull eyes. My bread 
 and water I knew would henceforth be the food of my 
 physical frame. There would be no answering paean 
 within me: " Bless God for bread. Bless Him for 
 water and the sun." Yes, something had been knocked 
 senseless in my brain. The higher faculties were be- 
 numbed and the natural man was having his brutish 
 way. Yet I was thinking fast. I saw what was, in 
 the brilliant light of certainty. All this time, while I 
 seemed to be accommodating myself to the new, dread- 
 ful world where I found myself, I must have been 
 looking at her and without a word. For she seemed 
 to wither and grow old, though she still kept her up- 
 right pose in the chair, and out of this miserable mask 
 that had been her spring-tide face, came a dead voice: 
 "Do you accuse me?" The voice fell, and then 
 
MY LOVE AND I 315 
 
 flew out in anger, a sharp, despairing anger, like an 
 animal that springs. "It's your own fault. You forced 
 me to it." 
 
 The words sickened me anew. I had to speak. I 
 couldn't have her babbling on in horrible accepted 
 terms. I felt myself shuddering all over. It might 
 well have been, for my physical overthrow, as if I 
 were the one to be accused. 
 
 "Don't, don't," I said. "Don't speak." 
 
 If she would not incriminate herself for a moment, I 
 might pull myself together and think what to say. 
 And then, when heart and flesh seemed failing me, a 
 hand came to me out of the living past. I thought of 
 Egerton Sims. What would a courtly gentleman like 
 Egerton Sims have done when he found his wife cloth- 
 ing herself out of the substance of another man, with 
 a background she and the other man alone knew ? 
 
 "Mildred," I said. I called her name again. 
 
 At the sound of my voice, raucous in my ears, 
 gentle as I tried to make it, she plucked up courage. 
 Perhaps, seeing me so undone, she found the balance 
 of strength on her side and foresaw my overthrow. 
 
 "Give it back to me," she said, and I laughed, for 
 that made it seem again as if the book were the issue 
 between us. "What business have you to keep it?" 
 
 "I shall keep it," I said. "You can get another. 
 But I've got to hold this for reference." 
 
 She rose to her feet, and I rose with her. Rage 
 came upon me again, and I crossed the distance be- 
 
316 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 tween us at a stride and took her wrists in my hands, 
 those slender wrists with the a^ure veining I had so 
 often kissed. There we stood manacled together by 
 the law and by my rage, and she was trembling. 
 
 "When did he give it to you?" I asked. 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 "The date in the book is June," I told her. "June 
 fifteenth. Was it then?" 
 
 She bent her head in affirmation. 
 
 "June fifteenth," I said, "two weeks after I had 
 sailed." And yet was it June fifteenth after all ? for, 
 why should I believe it ? and after all, what difference 
 did it make when he had endowed her? "You must 
 give it back to him," I said. 
 
 She did not answer, but I saw immovable resolu- 
 tion in her face. She would not give it back, let me 
 plead how I might. 
 
 "The car was yourg, too, I suppose," I said. Things 
 were pretty bad with me if I could sneer at her. "The 
 car and the chauffeur, and the chauffeur's food. And 
 it looked as if it were your cousin's car, and he had 
 lent it to you, to you and aunt Rule. But it was 
 yours. That was understood between you. Only 
 aunt Rule wasn't to know, she and the poor clown of 
 a husband coming home with the beggarly sum he 
 had earned for you." 
 
 While I let my rage run itself out in this vaporing, 
 I was perfectly conscious that Egerton Sims would 
 not have met a blow like this in this wild way. He 
 
MY LOVE AND I 317 
 
 was there, a grand figure in the vaporings of my mind, 
 but I could not get him clearly. 
 
 "Sit down there," I said to Mildred. "Sit down 
 at the desk." 
 
 She obeyed me, chiefly glad, I think, to get rid of 
 my touch upon her wrists. I took out the check- 
 book and laid it before her. 
 
 "Make out a check," I said, "for the entire amount." 
 
 She sat dumb as a statue, looking at the bright red 
 cover of the book. 
 
 "Open it," I said. "Make out the check." 
 
 She did open the book, and, with a lifeless hand, 
 wrote the number and the date; it was a straggling 
 scrawl. She was afraid, I knew, and I was merciless 
 in my acceptance of her fear. It was a weapon on 
 my side. She filled in the figures carefully, exactly 
 as I had told her. It was the entire sum. Then she 
 looked up at me. 
 
 "What name?" she asked. 
 
 "My name," I said. "His name isn't to be spoken 
 between us. Make it out to me and I will take it to 
 him personally." 
 
 She laid down the pen. 
 
 "You won't ?" I said. "You won't ?" 
 
 She made no answer. I felt as if she had decided 
 not to speak to me again at all. I will not tell what 
 murderous impulse came over me. It was not mur- 
 derous against her, but against the world, everything 
 that lay outside me to torture me. I felt blind hate. 
 
318 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 Again I told her to do it, and again, while she sat 
 still, her eyes fixed even meekly on the desk, I be- 
 sieged her with questions whether she meant that 
 she actually would not do as I had bidden her. 
 
 "Then," I said, "if you won't, if you're going to 
 eat the bread of one man and let another man clothe 
 you, by God, I'll leave you." 
 
 And at that instant I heard a little crinkling sound 
 on the gravel of the drive. It was young Egerton 
 coming home from the shore with his nurse, and the 
 sound was that of his little cart. Did the sight of 
 him soften my mind toward the woman who had 
 brought him into the world? Not for an instant. 
 He made another weapon of hate. 
 
 "And," I said to her, "I'll take my son with me." 
 
 I turned from her swiftly because she was a part 
 of the world I hated, and I got out of the house before 
 my son could reach me, though he bellowed, seeing 
 me, until the nurse was fain to hurry. But I would 
 not meet him. I took the other turn of the drive and 
 I heard his voice, aggrieved, following after me, and 
 the nurse as she tried to comfort him. At the gate 
 I met the car, Mildred's car. The chauffeur had 
 stopped it at sight of me, and now he asked me civilly 
 if I had ordered it. I looked at him for a blank minute. 
 He seemed a part of the world in conspiracy against me. 
 
 No, I said, we shouldn't need it this afternoon. 
 We were going away. Would he find Mr. Gorham 
 and tell him we shouldn't need it again, and that I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 319 
 
 would see Mr. Gorham personally, in a day or two, 
 and settle with him. 
 
 Then I walked on, as fast as I could stride, for I 
 knew now where I was going. I saw where this had 
 pushed me, where all the years had led me, and at 
 once I was deliriously light-hearted and light-headed 
 in the measure of my former madness. For I was 
 going to Ellen Tracy. 
 
 XXX 
 
 I WENT in town soberly enough, and bought a paper 
 on the way, really to persuade my mind into following 
 the accustomed grooves of life. I sat there reading 
 about trivialities and disasters, and all the time some- 
 thing within me kept chanting, "I am going to 
 Ellen Tracy." 
 
 At the station I took a carriage to cross the city, 
 and it was not until I was two-thirds of the way to 
 Hopeful Sands, with the dusk now glooming, that fear 
 struck upon me lest she should not be there at all. 
 What could I do if she were not ? I felt the sickness 
 of that premonitory chill. I looked out of the car 
 window as we fled, at little homesteads brooding down. 
 I knew, none better, the life hi those farm-houses at the 
 supper hour, mother stewing things and making the cheer 
 of warmth, and father coming in from the chores and 
 bringing the twilight chill: for it was cool at dusk 
 though the day had been like summer. These were 
 
320 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 the intimate sanctities of homely life. I knew the 
 smell of supper-time, and saw the shining lamp. I 
 was the little boy by the hearth, feeling his calloused 
 toes where the ungracious earth had " stubbed " them. 
 He had thrown away his shoes and stockings when the 
 day turned out so warm and gone back to summer's 
 " barefoot," and spite of what mother might say, he'd 
 "stick it out" till bed. But after all, was I the boy? 
 No, I was something happier and more free than "bare- 
 foot," for I had escaped and I was going to Ellen 
 Tracy. In a preposterous daring I thought I might 
 take my son to her to-morrow, and it looked sane and 
 right. I made no doubt that, in her obedience to other- 
 worldly values, she would receive him until I could 
 provide for him afar from the strange woman who had 
 given him birth. 
 
 When we stopped at Hopeful Sands it was dark, and 
 I took a carriage and drove, under the rising moon, to 
 her gate. There I dismissed the man. I would find 
 my way unannounced by the sound of wheels. I went 
 in haste through the driveway's winding length, a 
 lamp here and there emphasizing the intervals of dark, 
 and the bitter smell of leaves ripening pungent upon 
 the air. The door was open, and no one in sight. For 
 some reason that seemed to me a bright omen, and I 
 walked through the hall to the terrace, and there she 
 was, all in white, like an angel, and aunt Patten sitting 
 near. Aunt Patten's presence was no more to me in a 
 deterrent way than if she had been a creature of imper- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 321 
 
 vious senses, or sworn to be absolutely sympathetic 
 with what I sought. I crossed the room and knelt 
 beside Ellen Tracy and bent my head upon her arm. 
 The one glance I had taken at her face showed it 
 almost luminously white and the eyes wide and shining. 
 Had she, through some hidden channel of sense, ex- 
 pected me, or would my sudden coming have been 
 inevitably moving to her ? And at that same instant 
 I heard the soft swish of silk and light retreating foot- 
 steps ; aunt Patten had left us to our talk. I think 
 I had put my arms about Ellen Tracy, and she sat there 
 as still as a woman of stone. Only things were not still 
 in that beautiful kingdom of her body. I could hear 
 her heart, and it ran a race with life. As for me, I had 
 come home. That I knew. And now I spoke and what 
 I think I said was this : 
 
 "I have left her. I have come to you." 
 What I expected I do not know, but whatever I ex- 
 pected, my exaltation of soul told me it would be 
 righteous. I was in that state when we seem to have 
 escaped the earth to breathe a higher ether where, 
 whether fallaciously or not, our hungers tell us there is 
 liberty. If she had put her arms about me, I swear 
 I should have taken it for an acceptance as heavenly 
 as my mother's comforting: or perhaps an angePs. 
 The angel doesn't debase you. She makes you stronger 
 to go on. Only the dilemma is to know who the angels 
 are; and I thought I knew. What Ellen Tracy did 
 was to say in a perfectly steady voice: 
 
322 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "Get up," adding in a kind entreaty that asked for- 
 giveness for too harsh a mandate, " Please!" 
 
 And I got up, not mortified from her repulse, but very 
 anxious to obey, as we are when mother calls us. The 
 maternal in her was speaking to the child in me. We 
 are little children when we love very much, and I did 
 love her. I think she knew she must mother me and 
 command me, so natural was her wisdom, and unspoiled. 
 
 "Sit there," she said, and I sank into the chair aunt 
 Patten had left vacant. Suddenly I felt tired and sad 
 and forlorn indeed. I was even hungry. Then 
 Ellen Tracy, as if she felt she had been hard enough 
 on me, smiled, and clasped her hands about her knees 
 and bent forward to me, and said: - 
 
 "We mustn't sentimentalize, you and I. We can't 
 fall into that trap. And how is young Egerton ?" 
 
 She seemed to be recalling me, in that tenderly 
 laughing reminder, to the biggest tie of honor I had; 
 and she was right. I knew that. But I wished I had 
 some hand to lay hold of in my queer loneliness. The 
 very little hand of Egerton might have been enough. 
 I was not to lay hold of Ellen Tracy's hand. That 
 I saw, and I smiled a little ruefully at her command 
 of me. 
 
 "I think I'd better tell you about it," I said waver- 
 ingly ; and now I was light-headed. 
 
 "Better not," said she, brusquely. Then she broke 
 down herself. "Oh," she said, "let me have that to 
 remember. Let me remember you kept all the loyal- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 323 
 
 ties, all the commandments. You know what things 
 we expect of men. They don't do them, not once 
 a lifetime. Don't be weak. Be splendid!" 
 
 I tried to pull myself together. I was very far from 
 being splendid, and the banner of it waved at me didn't 
 seem to draw me on. It made me rather dizzy. I 
 seemed to be groping, and I thought I saw realities 
 that were the roots of life, not the gay bourgeoning 
 that lies in being splendid. I felt she'd got to be con- 
 vinced and I had one argument she was ignoring. 
 
 "But," I said quite practically, for there was no 
 sense in subterfuges with a person like her, "you see 
 I love you. That's why I came." 
 
 "Yes," said she, just as simply, "I know that. And 
 I do you. But this is the last time we can ever say it." 
 
 I was immediately at peace, though there was no 
 marvel of assuagement in her saying she loved me. I 
 must have known it always, I thought, in the 
 challenge of eternity that goes with sudden love. I 
 repeated the words: - 
 
 "You do love me, then ? " 
 
 "Yes," she said. There were tears on her cheeks, 
 and her eyes seemed to implore me to understand their 
 sadness, since she would fain have hidden it away. 
 "Of course I do. But till that day I met you in the 
 street I didn't know you were married." 
 
 Well, she had been quicker to recognize me than I 
 to give my allegiance to her its rightful name. Yet I 
 had known it was allegiance. It was the same thing. 
 
324 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "And when you gave me the novel to read," she said, 
 as if she had wondered passionately whether this she 
 could ever tell, and now it came pelting out, "I thought 
 you'd seen it hi me seen I cared too much and that 
 was your kind way of telling me to be proud." Her 
 mouth grieved now, as her eyes remembered hours and 
 days hidden from me then and to be hidden now. 
 
 I was following back the path of her girlish shame. 
 
 "You thought that," I said. 
 
 And I could say no more because my ruth over her 
 was so great. Now she wiped her eyes in a common- 
 place way and smiled at me. 
 
 "That's all," she said. "I suppose I wanted you to 
 know that. I wanted you to know I thought you were 
 as free as I you looked so, somehow! I had to 
 have you know I wasn't so weak or bold in thinking 
 you the best and bonniest ever." 
 
 I? What fantasy had invested me with such a 
 lustre? 
 
 "But," she said, "you're not free. You're bound 
 in every possible way, and this is the last time you and 
 I are to speak so to each other." 
 
 Delight was in my soul. 
 
 "You can't prevent my loving you," I told her. 
 
 Any woman, it seemed to me, might have allowed 
 herself a wave of joy at being loved so much. Not 
 she. It had made her sad. She spoke almost as if to 
 herself. 
 
 "I've often wondered what I should do if a thing like 
 
MY LOVE AND I 325 
 
 this happened a thing that was so overwhelming it 
 could even make itself seem right." 
 
 "It is right," I cried. "I have been mistaken. I 
 have left her. I am free." 
 
 She shook her head, looking at me now. 
 
 "Do you think you can break your promises?" she 
 said. "Why, you're not even free to talk to me like 
 this. I am not free to talk to you." 
 
 And then a man came in with a tray and on it were 
 sandwiches and coffee. The smell of the coffee was 
 good to me, and I felt that I must be a weak chap 
 indeed, for perhaps this was "feeling faint." She told 
 the man to draw up a little table and place the tray 
 there; and when he had left us, she poured a cup of 
 coffee and put it into my hand. And while I drank 
 it and ate she talked about aunt Patten, who, she said, 
 always knew by instinct whether a guest had come in 
 haste and dinnerless, and was always sending in trays. 
 I thought it might not have been instinct but the sight 
 of my face : for if it looked as I had felt, it must have 
 been distraught indeed. 
 
 When I had set down my cup, with new strength 
 in me, I turned to her. She was more than a beautiful 
 woman. To my eyes there was an aura about her, the 
 emanation of what I knew to be her love and truth. 
 She was clad not only in her own beauty but in the 
 mantle my eyes had lent her, and I forgot all other 
 womanhood. Nobody seemed to have power to harm 
 me any more, nor even to give me pain. All the steps 
 
326 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 of my life had been leading me here, to her gate and 
 to her feet. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me," I said in my accession of 
 joy triumphant, "that I am not to tell you I love you ? " 
 
 And immediately I saw I had given her pain. Her 
 face that, a moment ago, had had a sadness of its own, 
 quivered into a mute grief. 
 
 "Don't/ 7 she said. 
 
 I saw she had lost something she desired passionately 
 to retain. Was it that she had placed me on an emi- 
 nence, and I had stumbled from it ? Well, it was better 
 that she should know me as I was. What could either 
 of us gain by my telling her sophisticated lies when I 
 loved her and I believed, if I lived chastely for her sake, 
 I had a right to tell her so ? I would tell her what lay 
 behind my flight to her. 
 
 "Mildred " I began, but she stopped me with a 
 passionate outcry. 
 
 "No! no! Keep her secrets. You must be true 
 to her or I shall die." 
 
 I seemed to myself to be floundering round in the 
 bog of her denial, trying to find the path to take me to 
 her. Was it not right for me to insist a little ? 
 
 "She doesn't love me," I said. "I don't believe 
 she even loves the child. Isn't it right for me to take 
 the child and go?" 
 
 She looked at me dumbly. I saw she was bent, in 
 this fantasy of hers, to prove me a hero, bent on my 
 deciding my destiny in the way a hero should. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 327 
 
 "I won't ask anything of you," I told her, " except 
 just to let me love you. To see you sometimes. To 
 know you remember this night, when you said " 
 
 "We shan't forget." This leaped from her. It was 
 said before she could quench the fire that kindled it. 
 "There's no danger. We shan't either of us forget." 
 
 "No," I said in an answering glow. 
 
 And immediately I knew I wanted her head upon 
 my breast. She was right. There was no middle 
 ground for us. We must say good-by that night, or 
 tread the poor, worn path of tawdry sentimentalizing 
 and expedient, the love that lies, saying, "I am friend- 
 ship," the passion that cloaks itself in subterfuge. 
 The world, I began to see, was a desert of hungers. If 
 the desert could be watered by the tears of our true 
 repentance, would it bloom? I thought not. For 
 tears, I remembered, were salt. But now Ellen Tracy 
 turned from me and walked to the rail and looked out 
 upon the night. She stood very still, as if she were 
 listening, and I listened with her. The wind had 
 changed and there was commotion out there at sea 
 beyond the bar. The buoys were waking up. Even 
 the river felt the trouble of the great water to which 
 it was tributary, and I heard its slap-slap on the beach. 
 Ellen Tracy turned and walked back to me. I wish I 
 could tell what dear change had come upon her face, 
 how young it was, how like a child's, how piteous in 
 the hope that I would help her. 
 
 "I've got to tell you a lot of things," she said. She 
 
328 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 was faintly smiling at me, in that wistful way of one 
 who beseeches tolerance for confession. "Sit down." 
 
 So I seated myself opposite her again, and we were 
 near, so near that I could see the widened pupils of her 
 eyes. And she surprised me first of all. 
 
 "I'm not a prig," said she. "I'm not trying to save 
 my own soul." 
 
 "No," I said, "no. Your soul doesn't need any 
 saving." 
 
 She shook her head impatiently. 
 
 "My soul is like other souls. It has its temptations. 
 It knows how to deceive itself. But I am not going 
 to be deceived." She looked at me in the anguish of a 
 creature who is being drawn somewhere against its 
 will. "If it would help you," she said most piteously, 
 "I would leave the whole world and go with you." 
 
 Was this my gracious lady, this girl with the quiver- 
 ing face, begging me not to ask her to go because she 
 longed so inconceivably to yield? I began to feel 
 something of her terror lest I should beseech her, lest 
 I should lose the lady I had loved and see eternally 
 the quivering creature I had killed. 
 
 "Why," said she, still the girl, still youth and tender- 
 ness incarnate, "I would die for you." And again, 
 "Do you think I am trying to save my own soul ?" 
 
 "No," I said, moved beyond all but the power of 
 reassuring speech, "no, child." But eager love got the 
 better of me, and I cried, "And I'd die for you. Yes, I'd 
 die eternally." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 329 
 
 "That's it," said Ellen Tracy, as if I had given her 
 the very clew she wanted. "You think you would. 
 And I think I would for you. We'd be blotted out 
 gladly. But we can't. God won't let us." 
 
 At last she'd got hold of something to stand by her 
 God and her face shone. "You see," she said, "I've 
 heard so much of it, people trying to find some other 
 way round, when there's no way but one the straight, 
 true way. I'm afraid I should die if you deceived your- 
 self or if I let you do it." 
 
 She was speaking in all a child's simplicity. She 
 looked at me with a child's unspoiled clarity of glance. 
 I began to see that Ellen Tracy was somebody for me 
 to take care of, to protect, even from what was surely 
 her love for me. I tried to speak very calmly now. 
 
 "You're not willing I should tell you about it, what 
 made me come to you ?" 
 
 She looked doubtful, but she shook her head. 
 
 "Better not," she said. "Anybody " I knew she 
 meant Mildred " anybody would be hurt if she knew 
 her affairs were carried to another woman." 
 
 I felt a grim impulse to laugh. That sense of irony 
 that Mildred was responsible for fostering in me came 
 to the surface and bade me remember that Mildred 
 might be perfectly willing to hear that Ellen Tracy was 
 the arbiter of her fate, because Ellen Tracy was so 
 "well placed." 
 
 "Then," I said, "there's nothing for me but to do 
 my sum and get the answer as best I can." 
 
330 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 She hadn't been to district school, but she took me 
 as quickly as Mary would have done, smiling at me 
 a smile that seemed all tender gratitude. 
 
 "I'm not to see you often?" I put tentatively. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "But you don't say," I emboldened myself to urge, 
 "that I'm not to see you at all." 
 
 "We haven't met very often in the past," said 
 Ellen Tracy, proudly, I thought, as if she couldn't be 
 making trysts with a man who was in love with her. 
 "We shan't do so any more in the future. You have 
 your wife and son, and I am busy." 
 
 Strangely her brusqueness did not hurt me. It made 
 me feel such loving ruth for her because she had to stab 
 herself and me, that she seemed very little to me and 
 most dear. My love for her was of the nature of the 
 love I had for my little son. By that I suppose I mean 
 it was compact of all loves, and the tender side blos- 
 somed at that instant. 
 
 "Ellen Tracy," I said I always had to use her two 
 names together. I had felt from the first as if I had 
 a right to that "do you remember those two times 
 when you and I seemed to escape from our bodies and 
 to meet in a garden?" 
 
 She nodded. She was looking at me as if fascinated 
 by fear. She had been afraid, I saw, that I would 
 ask this. 
 
 "Could we" I hesitated, for now I was more 
 afraid of intensifying that look on her face than of 
 
MY LOVE AND I 331 
 
 anything else in the world "could we meet in that 
 garden?" 
 
 "No," she said violently, "no." 
 
 "Why not, Ellen Tracy?" 
 
 "Because it's unwholesome. And so it's wrong." 
 
 "Ah, but how can we help it?" I urged, swept out- 
 side my care for her again by the tide of my passion, 
 "if we're not to meet in the flesh if we could dream 
 about each other and meet so " 
 
 "No," she said again. 
 
 "You can't prevent my coming," I told her, "to 
 the garden to find you." 
 
 "I can refuse to be there," she said. " I do refuse it." 
 
 "You were there on shipboard. You didn't refuse 
 then." 
 
 "No. The temptation was too great. And I 
 thought you didn't know." 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 "Know we were lovers." She said it solemnly, 
 and not a heart-beat of my own told me it was wrong 
 for her to say it. 
 
 But it could never be said again. The very tone 
 of it, the measureless solemnity, had told me that. 
 
 "But you knew it," I besought her. 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 Then she seemed to shake off the spell of this ecstasy, 
 and got up from her chair, went to a little desk and 
 looked at a paper there. She came back holding it in 
 her hand, and stood before me smiling. It was a time- 
 
332 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 table, and her smile seemed to beg forgiveness for 
 bringing its decrees into our talk. 
 
 "Now," said she, "I find there is a train in town in 
 forty minutes. I'll order the car." 
 
 I got on my feet and tried to meet her smile with as 
 brave a one of my own. 
 
 "No," I said, "I don't want your car. Ellen Tracy, 
 is this the end?" 
 
 She looked at me, and I thought she was entreating 
 me to comprehend the things she would not say. I 
 thought I had got somewhere at last; but she must 
 help me. 
 
 "There couldn't have been the garden," I said, "un- 
 less there were other places other worlds other 
 lives" 
 
 "So I think," she said. "I know it." 
 
 "Then," I said, a feeling on me such as the Norse- 
 man might have had when he drained his glass before 
 the burning ship engulfed him, "here's to our meeting 
 then. It's a long road but you be there." 
 
 Then I turned away and left her, not even offering 
 to take her hand. I knew she would like it better so. 
 And some late pride had risen in me to show her that I 
 too was ready to play for the greater stake, run for the 
 farther goal. She walked with me across the hall and 
 to the outer door, where the night was troubled with 
 driving clouds and there were faint stars under them. 
 On the step I turned, and now she spoke tumultuously, 
 eagerly, like the child she really was. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 333 
 
 "They're all such cowards in the books! I want you 
 to do the straight thing. I want you to be" again 
 she used the word that evidently glowed for her 
 "splendid." 
 
 And now I did take her hands and they did not re- 
 sist me. I bent and kissed them, first the right hand, 
 then the left. 
 
 "Good-by," I said, "my Lady, my dear Lady. I'll 
 be there." 
 
 And whether I meant I would be at that tryst in a 
 life after our waking from this, or whether I meant I'd 
 fulfil what she besought of me, I do not know. But 
 she knew I had faith, because the mother heart of her 
 was wiser than my tongue, and I left her, I believed, 
 not unhappy as I went out to my task. But I did not 
 take that next train back to town. I chose a path that 
 led off from the driveway and descended steeply, for 
 I believed it would lead me to the strip of shingle where 
 the water lapped the sands and where the sound of the 
 sea would be more articulate. The path broke sheerly 
 off at a breezy declivity, and this I scrambled down, 
 and came plunging out on the sand. And there the 
 water was lapping in a friendly monotone, and black 
 to the sight, and I seemed to be in a silence with it and 
 cries of the warning buoys, and above me were the 
 lights on my lady's balcony. I paced up and down 
 there, at first mad with joy, and I believe I sang and 
 called aloud, and mouthed great lines out of the poets, 
 deifying the sea. And then I quieted, and found my- 
 
334 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 self a cavelike indentation of the shore, and sat there 
 in my solitude like primal man begun to be cognizant 
 of destinies. The night seemed to be light about me 
 because the earth itself was lighted. I saw into vast 
 reaches, and knew that the final destiny is not yet, 
 however long we live. And having seen that the final 
 destiny is not yet, it was for the present enough. I was 
 light-headed with the bright mystery of creation which 
 seemed to give man, in the end, whatever he strongly 
 seeks. I had indeed only begun to make my petitions 
 to the god of wishes. I had desired that life should 
 not be so tawdry and mean as it had been, and that I 
 should put my hand on the topmost fruit of the tree of 
 life, which I had thought then to be poesy; but now 
 I had the topmost fruit and it was Ellen Tracy's love. 
 Poesy might come, too, for I began to see the gifts are 
 endless. You had only to desire and the noiseless 
 lock of the treasury slipped and the treasure lay dis- 
 closed. And then the air grew chill, and I felt my 
 clothes were damp, and, as it is toward morning, the 
 currents of my life ran slowly, and it came upon me 
 that though I had Ellen Tracy's love, another woman, 
 that stranger woman, was my wife. And my son was 
 her son, too, and we were pledged to him. And think- 
 ing that, I soberly, in the autumn chill, got me along 
 the country road, now veiled by a raw mist, and so to 
 the station and to town again. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 335 
 
 XXXI 
 
 AFTER I had gone home to Osborne Street and 
 changed my clothes and eaten a giant's breakfast at an 
 hotel, I went to Blake's lodgings, and found him where 
 I expected, in bed. He was either in bed till noon 
 or working like a horse, and this was one of the days 
 when the bed had him. I had posted up to him in 
 despite of the loyal slavey who said he was to sleep till 
 twelve, and found him under the clothes, his great 
 eyes glowering, his hair a tangled shock. On the floor 
 were some sheets of thin blue paper covered with 
 short lines in small, beautiful script. I had never seen 
 him so unkempt, like a wonderful, strong animal in its 
 Ian*, and it came over me that it would be a brave 
 woman who should marry him, if she expected the 
 small understandable usages of daily life except Mary, 
 of course. Mary was the only one to marry him, 
 because she was the only conceivable woman who 
 would expect nothing. At once her name was on his 
 lips. 
 
 "I have asked her to marry me," he said, and I got 
 the impression that having done it he was exceedingly 
 scared. "Mary." 
 
 I waited, looking down at him. 
 
 "Well," I prodded. "What's she say?" 
 
 "She's thinking it over," said Blake. 
 
 I felt as if I had great, new knowledge of women and 
 their love of men. I felt as if Blake knew no more 
 
336 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 about it than I had yesterday, and that he must be in- 
 formed or he'd unwittingly break fragilities. 
 
 "She sets her life by you/' I said, going back, in my 
 solemnity, to a phrase of our old neighborhood. 
 
 His brows knitted, and under them the eyes grew 
 dark. 
 
 " Don't tell me that," he said, and I could have 
 laughed, for I saw he was terrified. He could ask her 
 to marry him, that he might buy bread for her to eat, 
 and also perhaps to satisfy that silent mandate of her 
 own nature which laid upon him the bonds of its devo- 
 tion ; but if she loved him too much, that he couldn't 
 face. For where was the coin in his treasury to redeem 
 so rich a guerdon? Coined, minted for Ellen Tracy, 
 and because she would have none of it, poured into the 
 sea. But Mary did love him just that much, the whole 
 measure of her soul, and that he'd got to face. Else 
 where would she come out in this bankrupt bargain ? 
 I thought wisely of it since I had learned a great deal 
 of the love that promises and cannot pay. What had 
 I not promised to Mildred in that other springtime? 
 And what had I to pay with ? We should see. 
 
 "Mary adores you," I said obstinately. Things had 
 gone too far for niceties in keeping Mary's secret, 
 which even the breezes that fanned her might know, it 
 was so mirrored in her honest eyes. "You've got a 
 chance to make her awfully happy." 
 
 "I haven't got it yet," he growled, and I saw that if 
 he could in dignity have withdrawn under the bed- 
 
MY LOVE AND I 337 
 
 clothes he'd have done it to escape me. "Go away. 
 I've got to get up." 
 
 But I sat down hi the chair by the bedside, first 
 removing the blue paper and pencil waiting for more 
 verse, and holding it while I talked. I had grown sud- 
 denly bold with him, my own problem was so stiff. 
 
 "Blake," said I, "if I should want to stay in Boston 
 this winter, do you think I could find a job ?" 
 
 "I thought you were halfway to Africa/ 7 he said. 
 "Has that gone to pot ?" 
 
 "I don't know," I told him. "The job hasn't gone 
 to pot, if that's what you mean. It's mine still if I'll 
 take it. But I don't know whether I shall take it." 
 
 "Then you're a fool," said Blake, summarily. "I 
 suppose she's put a damper on it." 
 
 He never spoke of Mildred by her name, but only 
 with the aid of that half -grudging pronoun. He dis- 
 approved of her, I had known for a long time, disliked 
 her heartily. I had known it, as I say, though I had 
 not owned it to myself ; but now, at the pace life was 
 taking, I permitted myself to recognize it plainly. 
 But he went on. 
 
 "If you're staying for sentimental reasons, I've 
 nothing to say. Every man has got to settle that him- 
 self. But if it's money if you want a better job 
 don't come to me." 
 
 His eye was straying to the blue sheets on the floor. 
 I believe he had caught an adjective he wanted to anni- 
 hilate and he most heartily wished me elsewhere, I 
 
338 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 was the deterrent, the atom between him and his be- 
 loved task. Would Ellen Tracy have been an atom 
 just the same if she had broken a crystal mood ? And 
 how about Mary? But that, I saw, could never be. 
 Mary knew nothing about moods, but she would have 
 scented them out as keenly as if she did, so did her soul 
 rush in a glow of love to serve the soul of Blake. She 
 would be forever present with the bread and wine of 
 physical life, with the pillow for his head; but when 
 there was a certain look in his eyes, then Mary would 
 be forever absent silent, breathless, dumb. After 
 all, if he had a big work to do, as I fully believed, hadn't 
 he a right to that passionate service though he could 
 give only dog's wages, the task to follow humbly and 
 watch him from an uncomprehending eye? Wasn't 
 the life of one woman very little to throw into the 
 nourishment of a great poet? I wasn't sure. But 
 I was answering Blake. 
 
 "I don't want more money/' I said. "I refuse to 
 have more than I can get without selling myself. But 
 I may have to cry small and go into close quarters. 
 Could I get something on the dailies here?" 
 
 "It's a feather in your cap to have done that work 
 in England," he said. "Yes, I suppose you could get 
 something." 
 
 "Then, " I asked him, "would you speak to Wadham 
 about it that is, if I want you to tell him the best 
 you think of me, and see if he'd give me a boost ?" 
 
 Yes, he would do that. We both knew it would go 
 
MY LOVE AND I 339 
 
 a long way. Wadham was hooted in the courts of 
 real literature, if they ever heard of him; but among 
 the dailies he was looked upon as a conjurer fitted out 
 with the formula for piling the circulation to the mil- 
 lions. Commercially he was reverenced. And Wad- 
 ham in his turn had almost a feminine, a fanatical 
 adoration of Blake, who could do the things Wadham 
 couldn't, write poetry and despise the dollar. It was 
 a pretty strong pull. Wadham's former knowledge of 
 me might help or it might not, but Blake's recommen- 
 dation would go far. 
 
 So I left him, and he didn't wait for me to get out of 
 the room before lunging over the side of the bed, to 
 change the adjective, I knew. And I went home to 
 Osborne Street, to sit down and think it all over, and 
 then I meant to go down to the Port and tell my wife. 
 To tell her what ? That was what I had to think over. 
 I didn't know. The moment I had closed the door 
 behind me and stood there in the hall, absently wonder- 
 ing if I wanted to look at any of the circulars pushed 
 through the letter slit to the floor, I knew by that un- 
 named sense we have that somebody was in the house. 
 I walked softly into the drawing-room. The drawers 
 of the desk were open, small pictures lay with their 
 faces to the table, and a cabinet of rather precious 
 lacquer was open, the key in the lock. I looked into 
 the dining room. Nobody was there. Then, as softly, 
 I went upstairs, to the guest chamber first of all. And 
 there stood Mildred, her sleeves turned back from her 
 
340 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 slender arms, folding curtains. Other curtains lay 
 on the bed where she had piled them. All the careful 
 packing of the spring was being overhauled. I think 
 I could hardly have made sound enough to attract her ; 
 but she too was drawn by that sense of an unexpected 
 presence. She turned, and seeing me there in the door- 
 way, gave a little cry. And then I knew just how I felt 
 toward her. I had wondered, on the way to the house. 
 It had seemed to me I must know exactly, before I saw 
 her. Now I knew. I was sorry she could scream at 
 sight of me for it was I particularly and not because 
 I had startled her and that such a look of fear could 
 throb into her eyes. I walked into the room and she, 
 never forgetting to face me, stepped round the other 
 side of the bed. It was a crude, tell-tale movement. 
 She was putting something between us. 
 
 "I didn't know you were here," I said. 
 
 "No." 
 
 Then her agitation seemed so out of proportion to 
 my coming that I began to think, and I saw why she 
 was there in this haste of preparation. She was going 
 away, and she was packing up what things she might 
 of those that had endowed our house, to take them 
 with her. And I was sorry for her. My heart was so 
 low in me that this heaviness of sorrow was all I could 
 manage. I couldn't think of Ellen Tracy or of that 
 gigantic passion of the sea : all that was as a great 
 goddess, always regnant, always to be worshipped, but 
 withdrawn behind a veil that I might do homely tasks 
 
MY LOVE AND I 341 
 
 and mend the kitchen fire. And I saw my way plain. 
 I was always to mend the kitchen fire. The ever- 
 burning altar blaze was not for me. Blake and his 
 brother poets would tend that, and I should see its 
 glow, and worship, too. But I had taken upon me the 
 homely things whereby the earth the earth owned by 
 every man, not the planet swinging before the poet's 
 rapt regard that this earth may live in cleanliness 
 and wholesome life. I pointed to a chair. I felt, if I 
 had taken one to her she would have run from me 
 anywhere, like a distraught animal into the wall, or 
 toward me to beat upon my breast with her impotent 
 hands. She did sink into the chair and I took another 
 and asked her, trying to make my voice the one she 
 knew before our dreadful yesterday : 
 
 " Don't you think we'd better leave things as they 
 are till we pack up for good ?" 
 
 She gave a little gasp, still of fear, I thought, and 
 could not answer me. I tried again. 
 
 " You'll think I'm a brute, but I've got to fight it 
 out about this house. We can't live here. We can't 
 afford it another minute." 
 
 With necessity her courage rose. 
 
 "There's no question of my living here," she said. 
 "I'm going away." 
 
 "Where are you going?" I asked her, and she an- 
 swered: 
 
 "I don't know yet. I may go abroad. It doesn't 
 matter very much while you're in Africa. There 
 
342 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 couldn't be any scandal. I think I shall go abroad 
 with Egerton." 
 
 "No," said I, " you'll not go abroad. You won't 
 go anywhere. You'll stay with me." 
 
 "You are going to Africa," she said, and at once I 
 knew what I had decided. 
 
 "I am not going," I told her. 
 
 She gave a little cry of what seemed utter exaspera- 
 tion. 
 
 "Have you given that up ?" 
 
 "Yes," I told her, and she asked, "Why?" adding, 
 with a flooding reproach, "How could you, a chance 
 like that?" 
 
 Then I saw, whether wisely or not, that there had 
 better be no paltering between us. At the moment 
 of seeing her I had realized again that she was alien to 
 me, a strange woman with whom I was yet, by my own 
 vow, condemned to live. And I knew at last, and was 
 ashamed of knowing, that she had a fear of me. She 
 would never fight out an issue in the open, though she 
 would eternally dodge and quibble if I were not to 
 know. Her apprehension seemed almost as crude a 
 thing as physical fear, and feeling that, I had a sickness 
 of compassion for her : for surely it was terrible that 
 a creature of that delicate poise should recoil at sight 
 of me in my brutality of brawn. But things had got to 
 be understood between us and on that understanding 
 we must act. 
 
 "Mildred," I said, and at her name she glanced 
 
MY LOVE AND I 343 
 
 shrewdly up, as if it showed some new softness in me. 
 "Will you give Gorham back his money?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Her lips formed the word, but noiseless though it 
 came, she looked immutable. 
 
 "Then," said I, "I've got to retrench, and pay it 
 back myself." 
 
 Her face distorted in an ugly emotion I would not 
 try to name. 
 
 "You must be a fool," she said, and having said it 
 she stood ready to fight me on my own ground. She 
 plucked up argument. "If you are going to take that 
 on your shoulders, why do you give up the very con- 
 tract you could make money by?" 
 
 I threw out the shameful truth. 
 
 "I can't be away." 
 
 "You mean I am not to be trusted?" she asked. 
 "You've got to watch me ? " 
 
 Something broke in me, and I found myself talking 
 hot and fast. 
 
 " You are going to live in the house with me and eat 
 the bread I earn for you. You are going to clothe 
 yourself with the money I earn. If you keep Gorham's 
 money, you will keep it as it is, intact. You will give 
 me an account of it from time to time. If I see by the 
 bank's balance that it has diminished, by God, I 
 Here I stopped. It seemed to me there was no measure 
 to what I should do. Yet, after all, what could I do ? 
 I did not know, and even if she had not been overborne 
 
344 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 at the moment by something in me that did unmis- 
 takably cow her, neither could she have told. 
 
 "You think I ought to be punished," she said, "and 
 you have arranged that for my punishment. To keep 
 the money and not use it: that's your idea?" 
 
 "I don't ask you to keep it," I said. "I beg you not 
 to. I beg you by every good thing that's been between 
 us. There's the boy- I stopped here. I was 
 desperately moved, and as she saw it she grew colder 
 and more easy in the certainty of having for the moment 
 the whip hand. 
 
 "How have I hurt the boy ? " she inquired contempt- 
 uously, and now the balance had shifted and I felt 
 awkwardly at a loss before her: for nothing makes a 
 man more foolish in seeming than to bring forth un- 
 formulated emotions before one who is scanning them 
 judicially. 
 
 "0 Mildred," I said, "let's think of the boy, let's 
 think of nothing else. He can't grow up in our atmos- 
 phere and not get tainted unless we're square. He 
 can't be allowed to live with a man that's a coward - 
 and I should be a coward if I let another man support 
 you. He can't live with you - 
 
 Her face sank to a deeper pallor and she threw me 
 the furtive look that had given me the sickness of sheer 
 fright. It seemed to ask whether I knew her fully, and 
 when it challenged me thus, my soul violently denied 
 that I could ever know her, lest the knowledge should 
 be to the undoing of my own endurance. Perhaps I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 345 
 
 was a coward, but I knew I could fight better in the 
 dark. I felt I had made the only appeal I knew how 
 to make in the name of the boy. 
 
 " Won't you do it ?" I asked her. "Won't you give 
 that money back ? " 
 
 She was tired of my persistency. I had worn her 
 out, and now she had a hard, metallic No for me. 
 
 "Don't ask me that again," she said. "My money 
 is my own, and I shall keep it. As to not spending 
 it" 
 
 She paused and I answered wearily : 
 
 "Yes, you can spend it, too, I suppose. It's all one 
 if I pay him back." 
 
 And she looked as if again she could have called me 
 a fool. I took out my watch and summoned again my 
 manner of command. Poor as it was, it seemed to 
 serve. 
 
 "Now," I said, "we'll put these things back or pack 
 'em ready to move, as you like. For before October 
 first we clear the house. Shall we put them back?" 
 
 For a long time she seemed to be considering, her 
 eyes bent on her hands lying in her lap. She was mak- 
 ing her decision, I saw, perhaps for good and all. My 
 gaze followed hers and fell upon the blue veining of her 
 wrists, for the hands lay palm uppermost. The vein- 
 ing of her wrists I had kissed a thousand times. It had 
 been one of the foolish, dear ceremonials between us, 
 wherein, I could see now with the added light of that 
 great globe above me like another sun, she had only 
 
346 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 acquiesced from some sad reason of sex triumphant. 
 Could I kiss the channel of that blood now, the blood 
 that seemed then to flow inevitably toward me and now 
 as palpably away from me ? No. To do it would be 
 the blasphemous ceremonial of a rite outworn. What 
 had been was the child of an old self, and the old self 
 had died. Yet out of that mood had come a living 
 creature, infinitely pathetic in that he looked now for 
 his nurture to two who could not generate between 
 them the warming sun of love, the sheltering cloud. 
 
 " Mildred," said I, "can't you and I be a good father 
 and mother to the boy?" 
 
 She spoke coldly, and again as if she were tired of 
 it all. 
 
 "I don't know why you should accuse me of not 
 being a good mother." 
 
 "I don't," I said, and I did remember how healthy 
 the little chap looked, how absolutely perfect, like a 
 child of sun and air. "But I don't mean that. I mean, 
 can't we pitch in and make the kind of atmosphere 
 he ought to live in? that sort of thing?" 
 
 But now she was looking at her watch. 
 
 "It is nearly twelve," she said. "If I am going to 
 the Port, I must telephone for a cab." 
 
 I made a leap at domination. 
 
 "We won't go this noon," I said, with an assurance 
 I didn't feel. "We'll go round and look at a house I 
 saw yesterday, with a sign in the window." 
 
 "Where?" she asked. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 347 
 
 It was a modest street, a sort of suburb of our own. 
 The houses were small, and fit because they were on an 
 old model carefully restored, and I had looked at them 
 longingly, as dwellings where I might feel at ease, 
 because there I could pay my scot without straining. 
 And to my infinite surprise she actually went 
 doggedly, I thought, but still with an outward ac- 
 quiescence. She went over the little house and a 
 good little house it was ' precise as to its detail and 
 sharp-eyed for flaws. We seemed in these practicali- 
 ties to have reached some community of interest ; but 
 when we had left the house she was again distraite, and 
 the pall of silence fell between us. There was no time 
 for a leisurely luncheon if we were to get a good train, 
 and so I took her in a cab to the station and we had 
 something there and were presently on the way to the 
 Port. I was glad we had to be hurried. The little 
 intimacies of a luncheon in a place where the world was 
 making a pretence at delicate enjoyment would have 
 been too much for us. And at the Port again we took 
 a cab and in silence drove to the house. There I left her 
 and waiting only until she had got in drove to the Hills- 
 dale House where Gorham made his home. He was in, 
 they told me, and my name was taken to him, and im- 
 mediately I was conducted to his room. It was a wan, 
 dreary room, transformed, doubtless through the sheer 
 force of his habits, into something like an office. He 
 had introduced a roll-top desk with its concomitants 
 of letter file and cards in drawers. I don't know what 
 
348 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 he catalogued, but I believe he couldn't live without 
 the outward flourishes of a commercial life. To say 
 that he was surprised at my coming is not enough. 
 He was stricken into an intense discomfort, and through 
 the first part of our interview remained visibly uneasy. 
 At once the telephone bell rang, and when he had 
 taken down the receiver I heard my wife's voice. It 
 was unmistakable. She was asking if he were alone. 
 
 "No," he said, with the shortness of embarrassment. 
 "Got a caller." 
 
 And he hung up summarily. I did not sit down, and 
 
 because I would not he propped himself by the mantel 
 
 and stood there looking gloomily into the grate. I was 
 
 right in thinking cousin Thomas had greatly changed. 
 
 The crude ambition of his clothes had altered to the 
 
 unexacting lines of a business suit that had evidently 
 
 seen much travel. His shiny black hair was too long, 
 
 his tie a narrow string of black. Between his brows 
 
 abode the lines of care. And he did not look at me. 
 
 That was of no special importance to me; but I did 
 
 feel that he was suffering an extreme of nervousness. 
 
 "Gorham," I said, "I've come round to have a talk." 
 
 "Well," said he, rather bitterly, "spit it out." 
 
 And after all I didn't know how I was going to say 
 
 it. I had better be brief. I was willing to give offence. 
 
 "You have lent my wife some money," I said. "It 
 
 was unnecessary, but we won't go into that. I'm 
 
 going to make you a payment on it, give you my note 
 
 for the rest, and tell you it won't be necessary again." 
 
MY LOVE AND I 349 
 
 He turned upon me. I think he was glad to have 
 come to an issue, to find himself up against a man's 
 formulae and escape a woman's casuistry. 
 
 "Look here," he said. "I didn't lend her that 
 money. I gave it to her." 
 
 "No," said I. "You lent it to us both. That's 
 the only way we could take it. That's why I'm paying 
 you." ' 
 
 He looked inexpressibly haggard, in a yellow sort of 
 way, and baited as he was, as if he were going to cry. 
 
 "Good God!" he said irritably, not to God indeed, 
 but really to the snarl of circumstance. "I can't be 
 paid back. That would be the last note!" 
 
 "You mustn't say that again, Gorham," I warned 
 him, "to me or anybody else." 
 
 "'Course I shan't say it," he returned. "Do you 
 s'pose I go round talkin' about a thing like that ?" 
 
 "You won't say it to me again," I said. I felt 
 myself growing hot. "If you do, I shall be obliged 
 to lick you as I'd lick any little cub for doing what 
 he was forbidden." 
 
 "Well, I know you forbid it," said he. "Needn't 
 tell me that." The worried look intensified. "Do 
 you suppose I meant " And there he stuck. 
 
 So he had remembered I forbade it ! How had he 
 been persuaded ? 
 
 "That'll do, Gorham," I warned him. "We don't 
 want a row in this damned boarding house." 
 
 But he was not afraid, though I overtopped him. 
 
350 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 A little fellow, yet he would hang on with all the 
 terrier in him. 
 
 "Now, look here," said he. "I've thought about 
 Milly for years. 77 
 
 "We won't bring names into it," I said stiffly, 
 foolishly perhaps. 
 
 "But we've got to," said cousin Tom, screwing up 
 his face again. "Milly's all the world to me." And 
 immediately I felt a queer tolerance of him, he seemed 
 so well-meaning and so at the mercy of a woman's 
 lust for power. "I've thought about her all my life, 
 practically. Why, I made my money for her. I 
 come back, and she's married, and I've got my money 
 on my hands. Good Lord !" 
 
 It looked to him monstrous. Here he was with 
 the initial ambition of his life fulfilled. He had stored 
 his money, and the goddess he had meant to heap it 
 before was removed from her niche, and his largess 
 could only be poured out in the temple of an angry 
 god. I thought I understood him in that minute 
 better than I had in any of my approximations. Here 
 was Mildred, the apex of his fulfilled desires. He had 
 meant to climb the mountain and find her there. He 
 had climbed, his gold heavy upon him, and the goddess 
 had demanded tribute. The mandate of the angry 
 god wouldn't sound very terrifying when Mildred 
 looked upon him with her spring-tide face. Had he, 
 who had thought business dilemmas were the only 
 knots in life, found himself up against life itself ? Why 
 
MY LOVE AND I 351 
 
 did he have that look of downfall and decay? I was 
 sorry for the man in him gone to blank ruin and regret. 
 
 "The one thing you've got to do," I said, "is to 
 give me your word of honor you won't give or lend 
 to my family anything that is yours either your 
 checks or your bank stock or your motor or your 
 chauffeurs. You've got to accept us as acquaintances 
 who, from some inherited prejudice, are going on their 
 own. And frankly, since you may find it hard to 
 withhold your hand, you'd better cut us altogether." 
 
 He was looking at the grate again thoughtfully and 
 as if we were settling the most definite and weighty 
 of business propositions business always. He looked 
 up at me sharply. "Forbid me the house ?" he asked. 
 
 "We're going to move," I said. "I suggest that 
 you cut us. That's all." 
 
 I sat down at his table now and made him out a 
 check for as much as I could well afford, for the 
 moment, a broad slice out of my three months' pay. 
 I also signed my note for the remainder of the sum put 
 to Mildred's credit and passed him the slips together. 
 
 "There," I said. "That square?" 
 
 He took the paper waveringly, miserably indeed ; 
 but I didn't stay to debate his hesitancies. 
 
 "That's all," I said, and I opened the door and shut 
 it after me before he could reply. But when I was 
 down three steps, he had flung open the door and 
 called to me. He was yellow with some emotion that 
 seemed to do with a desire to placate. 
 
352 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "See here/' he said, "come back a minute." 
 
 I did go back. He shut the door again. 
 
 "See here," said he it was a phrase that seemed 
 to start him "you think Milly hadn't ought to have 
 taken that ? If I thought I'd made trouble for Milly " 
 
 "Make your mind easy," I said curtly. "You've 
 made no trouble none you can save her from." 
 
 He was considering miserably. 
 
 "I meant well by Milly," he said, shaking his head 
 over his own mischance and much moved for her. 
 "I never thought it would come to this." 
 
 "You've simply been a fool." I had an angry pity 
 for him, a desire to bid him put the earth between us 
 and forget. But all I could say was this again, - 
 "You're a fool, a fool." 
 
 And I left him staring down at my back, I could 
 believe, and tramped away. 
 
 Yet what had she asked me in the first moment of 
 betrayal? "Do you accuse me?" The words had 
 poisoned me, and the poison gave me, I believed, that 
 same sense of sick dismay I had seen in the man I 
 called a fool. 
 
 XXXII 
 
 MY hit in England served me well, and so did Blake's 
 and Wadham's clever offices. I got a job on one of 
 the big dailies, an editorial stunt that would keep 
 me awake to the farthest stretch of my powers. I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 353 
 
 couldn't say I "didn't much care if there was dis- 
 affection in Persia so long as the sunset held red/' as 
 Blake had been known to say, and as I truly used to 
 feel. Whether the modern game was big or little, of 
 vast import or a brief skirmish for place and power, 
 I was in for playing it. When I told Mildred I'd got 
 my job, she showed a decent interest. That was all 
 I could expect of her. She couldn't know that if I 
 hadn't walked into that warm pocket of a place I 
 should have been as desperate as a starving rat. For 
 I had that big necessity on my shoulders to release her 
 and to release myself from all slightest obligation to 
 cousin Thomas; meantime she and the child had 
 to be fed. I had taken the little house, this in a haste, 
 the strange twin to that of our beginnings when I had 
 leased the one on Osborne Street. It was I who did 
 the moving. Mildred, at that juncture, had seemed 
 to falter and give out in a sudden way, and I urged 
 her to go down to a quiet hotel by the sea for the last 
 autumn days, she and the boy, and let me set up our 
 gods alone. She did it without question, in great 
 relief, it seemed to me. Perhaps she really could not 
 bear the strain of seeing our belongings go out of the 
 big house and into the little one. I would do the best 
 I could, I told her, to get the furniture placed as she 
 would have it, and when she came back she could 
 shift it round again. To this she assented, more than 
 half indifferently. I had an idea that she perhaps 
 never cared for houses in that intimate, unreasoning 
 
354 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 way women have, though she knew so unerringly how 
 to clothe and coax them into harmony. And since 
 the little, common house where we were going was not 
 likely to attract our social betters, she had no interest 
 in it at all. But here, in a sense, I wronged her, for 
 when she came back she did shake it into the best 
 shape possible, though without eagerness of pleasure. 
 She had a dutiful sense of the exactions of civilized 
 life. That never failed her. 
 
 One late afternoon while she was still away and the 
 furniture stood about like friendly visitants come to 
 afternoon tea and trying to recall a past association, 
 I stood in the middle of the dining room and wondered 
 whether I was accomplished enough to unpack the 
 china and set it up. There were no expert movers' 
 services for me this voyage. I was saving even my 
 small change for cousin Thomas. The current of my 
 thought shifted from the china as I noted the space 
 between the windows where the magnificent sideboard 
 spread too far. I laughed a little, softly, remember- 
 ing the dear philistine oak one still in storage. I 
 wondered whether we might not sell this inlaid monarch 
 of a thing, this dignified reproach to our humbler 
 state, and bring in that kind reminder of the love of 
 friends. No, it wouldn't do. It would jar the reverend 
 chairs and table until they might forget their mor- 
 tising and fall apart. Besides I wasn't prepared to 
 call upon Mildred to suffer daily wretchedness of that 
 sort. I might take away her high affiliations, but I 
 
MY LOVE AND I 355 
 
 wouldn't thrust her into the abyss with an oak side- 
 board. And while I smiled at my own philistine taste 
 and the diversity of the gods we worshipped, again 
 out of the wrong side of my mouth, there was a ring 
 at the door, which was ajar, and having thus announced 
 herself, in walked Mary. 
 
 "I saw you through the window," she said. "I 
 knew you were alone by the way you looked." 
 
 If ever I wanted to take comfort and kindliness 
 into my arms, I wanted at that moment to take Mary 
 in her shabby dress. It is the height of midsummer 
 poetry to talk about " queen lily and rose in one." 
 Mary was aunt and mother in one, and that, when you 
 are moving to a house your wife despises, is a tonic to 
 the soul. But I didn't spill over with my grateful 
 redundancies. I just took her bag, no doubt stuffed 
 full with work to be done after hours, and made her 
 sit down in a chair strayed from reception days and 
 looking very haughty inside such modest walls. Mary 
 glanced about her with a practical eye. 
 
 " Looks as if I could give you a hand here," she 
 said. "What's in that box? china?" 
 
 Oh, yes, it was china, but that wasn't Mary's busi- 
 ness. She was too tired. 
 
 "Sit there a minute," I told her, "and we'll go to 
 dinner somewhere." 
 
 But a quite animating red had run into her cheeks. 
 She unpinned her hat and carefully turned back her 
 cuffs. 
 
356 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "You let me help'," said she. "I should admire to. 
 It drives me just crazy to fix up a house. I helped 
 aunt Cely to break up ; though that was kind of sad. 
 But this settling business !" She looked as if nothing 
 could be more delirious. 
 
 I let her do it. Indeed you couldn't have stopped 
 her. Time was when some stiff propriety might have 
 told me that Mildred wouldn't want another woman 
 disposing her cups on their shelves. Diaphanous 
 scruples of that sort had passed, with scores of other 
 things. I even thought that Mildred might be prac- 
 tically glad to have the deed done, no matter by 
 whose hand, and I also considered, with a very real 
 emotion, that if any hands could bring a consecration 
 to this little makeshift house, the hands were Mary's. 
 So she stood at the cupboard and I unpacked dishes 
 and passed them to her, and she wiped them and set 
 them up and we talked happily. 
 
 "I suppose they ought to be washed, by good rights," 
 said Mary, "but I'll give 'em a lick and a promise 
 now, and we'll just get 'em in so you'll know where 
 you are." 
 
 With the last light of sunset they were all in handy 
 places, and I could breathe. Tables and chairs I 
 knew how to tackle, as being more a man's size. 
 
 "Now," said I, "time's up. We'll go to dinner." 
 
 So we washed our hands and wiped them on a 
 corner of the towel Mary had been using, and got 
 quite merry over it. I began to feel as if there were 
 
MY LOVE AND I 357 
 
 some gay spots in houses, after all. But when Mary 
 had pinned on her hat, and I was waiting for her, I 
 could see she was very grave indeed. 
 
 "Oh, dear!" said she, "I haven't said a word I 
 came to say." \ 
 
 I sat down at once, leaving her to do it after me as 
 the best persuasion I could offer that I wasn't in a 
 hurry. It was something, I could see, that couldn't 
 be said as we went along. Mary sat down and took 
 a letter from her bag. It was stamped and ready for 
 the post, and she kept looking at it thoughtfully. 
 
 ^This," she said, "is to Mr. Blake." 
 
 I knew what it was. It was an answer to that 
 half savage, half pathetic cry of his, "I have asked 
 Mary to marry me." 
 
 "You haven't been in a hurry to answer him," I 
 said, not knowing how far she meant to let me in. 
 "Mustn't keep a poet in suspense, Mary. It's bad 
 for him." 
 
 "I couldn't help that," said Mary. Her eyes were 
 sadly troubled, and yet they looked as if she had 
 known what she was about. "I've told him No." 
 
 "The dickens you have !" I said. I was half hurt 
 for him and terribly sorry for her who was losing 
 him. 
 
 "I want to put it to you," she went on, "whether 
 I haven't done right. He doesn't love me." This 
 she said with a gentlest dignity that admitted no 
 argument from me. 
 
358 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 "You're dear to him, Mary," I said, "most awfully 
 dear." 
 
 "I know it," said she. "So I am to you. We've 
 weathered a good many gales together, all of us. But 
 that isn't love." 
 
 This, too, she said with an indescribable beauty of 
 emphasis. It was as if all her lifelong pondering upon 
 the hunger of the heart had run into the one word 
 and made it bloom. 
 
 "But," I said for I wanted, if I could, to push 
 Mary inside the door of heart's content "we're 
 none of us under thirty. We don't demand the same 
 things " 
 
 "Don't we?" asked Mary, in a flash. 
 
 "I mean," I stumbled on, "there is a kind of affec- 
 tion quite different from first love. It's well worth 
 having. It's a warm, sweet thing. He could give 
 you that, Mary. It would never fail you." 
 
 "Would you take it in my place?" she countered. 
 "Would you?" 
 
 "No," I said. 
 
 She smiled at me. I had contented her. 
 
 "That's it," she owned. "I can't let him give me 
 anything less than the best. It isn't because I'm 
 proud. I'd be glad and thankful to die for him this 
 minute. But it would be bad for him. Why, Mr. 
 Redfield, you know it would." 
 
 I did know it. I knew Blake had got to keep to 
 his own hard pallet of Life, his bread and water of the 
 
MY LOVE AND I 359 
 
 untarnished will. So only could he write his verse. 
 I could see Mary padding his cell of caged affection : 
 but it would be a cell. This was a bird of the air, 
 an eagle. If he had found his true mate, and they had 
 together made their eyrie, the air would still have been 
 his home. We would not chain him to a perch. But 
 there was Mary, too, to think of. I couldn't shut the 
 door of paradise on her. She was trying to shut it 
 and I was keeping it open with my toe. 
 
 "He'll be awfully forlorn," I said. 
 
 " Well," said Mary, quickly, as if she'd thought it out, 
 "men of that kind have got to be. So far as I can see, 
 he's got to be lonesome and he's got to be poor and he's 
 got to grow old. But he'll have his poetry. You said 
 that yourself." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "he'll have his poetry." 
 
 "And if I let him do a thing like that what he 
 asked me, you know he'd be stepping down. He 
 wouldn't be the same man. And it would eat into him. 
 And that would hurt his poetry, now wouldn't it?" 
 
 How earnest she was I cannot describe. This was the 
 biggest thing that had ever come to her, and she was 
 meeting it with all the brain and all the will and all the 
 love she had. "Now isn't it so ? " she insisted. "Don't 
 you think I'm right?" 
 
 Well, I did think she was right. Blake was our 
 knight peerless. We wouldn't take him off his horse, 
 even though it was to set him down to a well-filled 
 trencher with a kind maid to wait upon him. He should 
 
360 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 go out into briery ways and suffer hunger, if need were, 
 and thirst and cold. But he should go singing. 
 
 "Then," said Mary, "I'll mail my letter. Now let's 
 start. You're hungry as a bear." 
 
 And having consigned our knight to exile, we set 
 out, our hearts very warm toward each other and the 
 pathetic world. And in the west above the rose-flush 
 there was a star, and it came to me that this might be 
 the star that had led the dancing measure when I had 
 written my nuptial song, and the sight of it shook 
 me to my soul. For it had a message for me still. 
 The other day was dead, and the woman for whom I 
 wrote the nuptial song loved me no more and perhaps 
 had never loved me. But the star still lived, and 
 love lived in an imperishable splendor, flung to me 
 from the star. The world was full of lovers, some 
 false, but many true. And Ellen Tracy was in the 
 world, as shining as the star. Indeed, it seemed to 
 me that there was a beaming pathway from the star 
 straight down to her, and my love, if it were great 
 enough, might climb upon it. And though we had 
 turned Blake into exile, and cut Mary off from the 
 task she longed for, sheer humble service for him, 
 even he didn't seem to me forlorn, but rather crowned 
 by his great, lone destiny. And Mary and I didn't 
 seem forlorn, though we were a little like two babes 
 in the wood unfriended by roofs and walls. For she 
 had shot her arrow at the gold of the supreme right, 
 and after that there's very little more that you can 
 
MY LOVE AND I 361 
 
 have. And I, though I might never set my lips to 
 love, had the star and Ellen Tracy. But of Mildred I 
 did not think at all. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 I UNDERSTOOD perfectly that I was not to see Ellen 
 Tracy, and for a time the prohibition looked easy. We 
 all know what it is when the beloved have just left 
 the room in our house of life. Something of their 
 aura remains behind. There is the trembling of the 
 draperies moved by the wind of their departing. 
 The air is still in rhythm from their motions. The 
 scent of their divinity is upon the breeze. It seems 
 easy to live without them and fulfil their biddings, to 
 such an exalted obedience have they left us. But 
 the room settles down to its impersonal calm. It 
 forgets. It responds to other visitants. Then we 
 know we are bereft. 
 
 For a time I was superbly indifferent to any warmer 
 need than that of fulfilling the highest will of Ellen 
 Tracy. Then the virtue went out of me, and I knew 
 I was alone. I harbored a bitter reproach of her, 
 because I believed that if she had not cast me out of 
 her thought, I should have got news of her by the 
 underground service of according minds. I had, I 
 see now, felt very righteous toward Mildred, whom I 
 had been upholding to an ideal of conduct imposed 
 upon us both; but now, in my desolation, I recog- 
 
362 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 nized a childish need of her. I could have laughed 
 to think of it. I did laugh sometimes in a wry fashion, 
 as they say, "out of the other side of my mouth." 
 For the ironies of life were pretty hard upon us both. 
 Here were we, pent up together to live out our span of 
 years. I regarded another woman with an adoring 
 worship, every voice within me crying out louder and 
 louder every day to go to her and telling me with the 
 sound of many trumpets that it was righteous for 
 me to go, and I was living in the intimacy of home with 
 the woman who did not love me, who could not, per- 
 haps, love any man, but who had a fierce ingrained 
 desire to establish herself in the world. It was like 
 the tiger's steel-sinewed fight to live. She was, I had 
 learned, a creature of a cool virginity; but I believed 
 she would sell herself to climb to the apex of social 
 life. Whether she had sold herself, I could not let 
 myself think; but sometimes I woke at night, that 
 question of hers hissing into my ears like an ever- 
 wakeful snake. Sometimes after the snake had hissed 
 at me and I lay there hot under a man's abased sense 
 of a home invaded and his son's inheritance shattered, 
 I would hear her stirring in the next room, doing some- 
 thing for the boy, and I had to wonder whether she 
 loved him. But she was a perfect mother. The 
 visitors all said so, though there were fewer of them 
 now. Miss Harpinger's contingent had dropped off 
 when we moved into a humbler house, but the dear 
 old church people kept on coming. Some came who 
 
MY LOVE AND I 363 
 
 had never come before. I believe they had guessed 
 at our fallen fortunes and sought us out because of 
 them. I loved them for it. It seemed to me they 
 would help Mildred's social soul to live, now she was 
 stranded on her island of discontent. I didn't mind 
 now whether they asked me why I wasn't doing my 
 beautiful dialect stories. I replied quite humbly, and 
 even said I might sometime; and one day when a 
 warm-hearted pack of them had gone I said to Mildred, 
 in my gratitude for their upholding, " Almost thou 
 persuadest me to be a Unitarian." 
 
 But she looked at me seriously and said, with a 
 musing doubt in her tone: 
 
 "I've been thinking of leaving Doctor Everest's and 
 going to Saint Jerome's." 
 
 "For God's sake, why?" I said, accepting my be- 
 lated cup of tea. I had been so eagerly and ingratiat- 
 ingly entertaining, and had passed so many cups to 
 ladies I hoped would come again and please Mildred, 
 that I had forgotten to take any sustenance of my own. 
 "You aren't changing your creed, are you?" 
 
 She was looking past me and deliberating, on creeds, 
 I innocently thought. 
 
 "You see," she said, "we made a mistake. If we 
 had gone to Saint Jerome's in the first place, I should 
 have got into the charities there. I should have known 
 a set of people I never shall know now, living as we 
 are " She stopped abruptly, and left the room. I 
 had guessed she had made a resolve not to complain 
 
364 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 of our humbler style of living, this when she accepted 
 it, and she had never broken through. There were 
 some admirable things about Mildred. 
 
 This need of mine for Ellen Tracy, whom I loved, and 
 of Mildred, whom I didn't love, were strangely, tiringly 
 blended in me. My path to Ellen Tracy was straight 
 as a beam of light. I could see every inch of the ra- 
 diant way until it found me in her arms, as I was, I 
 knew, locked in her heart But my need of Mildred 
 was a curious thing. Our interests, in all the outward 
 issues of life, were identical. She assured me of my 
 comfort. I made for her protection. We had the 
 converging interest of our son. I frankly needed her 
 to be kind to me. I couldn't bear to live in the deso- 
 lation of her lack of favor. My hearth was swept, but 
 it was not warm. I sometimes thought if we could 
 get into the depths of each others' minds we should 
 not have been so poor. If she could have told me 
 whether I was to think her stained or clean, and I 
 could have believed her, if I could have set her appre- 
 hensive mind at rest by saying, "I shall never offer 
 you my love again ; it has gone beyond my will to fet- 
 ter," if we could have talked over the inchoate busi- 
 ness of our lives with the perfect frankness of business 
 partners then, I felt, we should neither of us have 
 felt so desolate. But in this community of speech 
 touching my defection and her defection of another 
 sort there seemed to be an indecency I couldn't face, 
 even if we could have compassed it. For there was 
 
MY LOVE AND I 365 
 
 young Egerton Redfield, looking at us now impartially 
 with the calm, glad eyes of perfect health, and saying 
 virtually, "What a nice, warm, milky bready world 
 you have created for me, you two old dears. What 
 a high time we shall have when I grow up, and we can 
 all three sit down and talk it over. We could now, 
 except that I'm not speaking your eccentric language." 
 How in the face of his wholesale acceptance of us, could 
 I say to Mildred, "I don't love you. I am awake 
 night and day with mad desire for one who is not you. 
 I am trying to think I am waiting to possess her in para- 
 dise; but I want to possess her now"? How could 
 Mildred make to me that other sad confession the ques- 
 tion told me she could make, not that she was a wanton 
 through the beguiling of her blood, but that she had 
 overthrown a decent man's intention to keep his word ? 
 No. Egerton had us quite under his tiny thumb. I 
 found at that time that the god I worshipped regularly 
 was decency, plain decency. I loved the little, common 
 ways of life with an ache in my throat. I loved to 
 see the man in the street sitting down to his dull dinner 
 on the sidewalk, because I knew dutiful hands had 
 packed it in its pail. They might not have been loving 
 hands, but 'they were worn hands that were, uncon- 
 sciously to themselves, but with the patience of in- 
 herited habit, holding up the roof of the edifice we have 
 built to live in. I had at times wild impulses to tell 
 Mildred she might leave me and I would still support 
 her. That would set her free from what I could but 
 
366 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 feel was my reproachful presence. It would free her 
 breath that came so dutifully calm while we had our 
 commonplaces of talk. But was it to leave her free ? 
 I knew it was not, in that soul within my soul that still 
 told me the truth when I would listen to it. It was so 
 that I might, with less reproach from Ellen Tracy, 
 invade my lady's heart, even her domain of thought 
 by letters only, and pour my passion out upon the page. 
 
 But after I had been thinking these things out for 
 a day or two and was on the brink of the abyss of wild 
 disclosure, young Egerton would put his head against 
 his mother's arm, and she would bend her pale cheek 
 down to him, and they made the world-old picture of 
 the Mother and the Child. And I would turn my 
 forces of revolt upon myself and ask what flowering 
 of my passion which, I surely knew, had roots 
 within the deepest earth could compensate me for 
 seeing my little son begin his life with a stained inheri- 
 tance? While he drank his milk and went out to re- 
 gard the world with his arrogant baby stare, we should 
 be preparing this tawdry fardel for him to take upon 
 his young shoulders and bear through all his life. And 
 then I would go tamely off to work, the give-and-take 
 of arduous days among men cleverer than I with a 
 devilish up-to-date appositeness, and for days again 
 Ellen Tracy, to my tired and tamed endurance, would 
 seem but as a miniature I wore within my breast. 
 
 Of the more tumultuous days verse came and was 
 still-born. When I lay in my bed looking at Orion, 
 
MY LOVE AND I 367 
 
 the king of the heavens, measured lines beat into my 
 brain. They were sonnets, all but complete, and they 
 were, as I could catch at the cloak of beauty fugitive, 
 the soul and flesh of Ellen Tracy. They sang of her, 
 her hair, her eyes, her body which was mine, through 
 earth's determinate word, and her dear soul that sat 
 inviolate to guard the gates. But I never wrote those 
 sonnets down. I let them pass, like beautiful birds 
 flying rhythmically, the sun upon their wings. Some- 
 times they stooped to me divinely. They hovered, 
 brooded. Sometimes even the silence had a voice, and 
 questioned whether they were not to stay. I even 
 thought they were saddened because I would not hold 
 them by one pinion, and put them in the gilded cage 
 of print to sing for immortality. Sometimes I ago- 
 nized in doubt whether I had authority to fan the flight 
 of wings so beautiful. But Ellen Tracy seemed to 
 have laid bonds upon me. They were stronger and 
 stronger as the time of my exile from her dragged along, 
 as if I too were augmenting them by welding of my own. 
 I thought I saw dimly what I was here for, in this 
 toilsome world, or what, being here, I was to do. I 
 was to do the simple, honest tasks. I was to feed my 
 wife and child, to uphold the sane decency of the cove- 
 nant we had entered into. If I had strength beyond 
 this for warmer deeds, deeds all red and gold with 
 blazonry, incredibly happier I. But I must see to the 
 stability of my own house. I must look to its founda- 
 tions, and until they were laid, I couldn't go any higher. 
 
368 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 If Almighty God wanted His poems written, he would 
 send angels with pens and angels with trumpets, and 
 angels with authority to command the trumpets to 
 blow and the pens to write. I, Martin Redfield, had 
 to take care of my wife and child. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THIS chapter is about literature, and the reader who 
 has a vague yet confident impression that literature 
 is the cupboard where you find reading for an idle hour, 
 or a tool for cramming on special subjects, a cinch for 
 getting a livelihood or seeming brighter than your 
 neighbors, had better skip it, unregretfully. He won't 
 in the least understand what I am going to say, not 
 because it is so profound for it is self-evident but 
 because it is a certainty bred in an atmosphere that is 
 foreign to him. I understand that the atmospheres 
 of different planets are of unlike densities, and it is 
 therefore plain that a being bred in one density could 
 not live in another, if he were transported to it. This 
 is not to the discredit of his apparatus for living. He 
 is calculated for one environment and might as easily 
 have been turned out for another. Only he wasn't. 
 Therefore you who accept the making of books as one 
 of the industries, prolific in praise, passez outre, as saith 
 the prince of women warriors, Jeanne d'Arc. There 
 is nothing for you here. 
 
 It is to be understood, first of all, that certain men 
 
MY LOVE AND I 369 
 
 and women have a passion for the arts, for music, 
 painting, and the printed word. Genius is something 
 more than the capacity for taking pains. We take 
 pains because the something more is there : the fervid 
 aptitude that, in its extreme, is passion. It is the 
 passion for the written word that makes what we call 
 the literary man. Words are sentient creatures to 
 him. He regards them with the unreasoning love the 
 bibliophile has for even the backs of books. It is a 
 besetment, a fantasy, if you will all the manifesta- 
 tions of a tremendous aptitude. It hurts him if you 
 fall down upon a false quantity; he is even undone 
 when a comma is misplaced. His mind is ever upon 
 the highest planes of attainment, where sound and 
 sense accord in that inevitable beauty which comes 
 we knew not whence, but is of God. Some men are 
 born to such a mastery of the word, such a recognition 
 of their own passion for it, that we name them master. 
 Such was Blake. He came into his vocation full- 
 fledged. I came more slowly. At first, as I have said, 
 life beguiled me. But the form of beautiful words 
 wrought upon me more and more until I was like the 
 shepherd on the mountain who, guessing at the shapes 
 of gods in clouds and nymphs in watercourses, comes 
 down to ancient Athens and sees the gods in stone. 
 He learns the worship of the god in marble, the lan- 
 guage man has chosen for saying to other men, "This 
 is the god defined." The cloudy god may be the real 
 one ; but he slips away, the night can banish him. But 
 
 2B 
 
370 . MY LOVE AND I 
 
 once get the god into marble and you have him for all 
 time, and your children shall inherit him. So with 
 the wonder of the earth and the affairs of man. You 
 are knocked down by them, their delightsomeness, 
 their mystic value. And then you learn they can be 
 reproduced in words, and it makes a new music for you, 
 and that is literature. It is life, warm life, poured 
 into lovely molds. 
 
 Now this matter of literature is of the greatest impor- 
 tance. It is important that the man with the aptitude 
 should retain the rich, keen zest of life to impart to 
 life's great moving image. Yet "this was sometime 
 a paradox. " He should be walled into solitude for the 
 performance of his task, a peace tremulous with leaves 
 and birds. Yet if you cloister him, it will be to the 
 deed's undoing : for he of all men needs the view of 
 life from mountain tops, the hand-to-hand encounter 
 with it in valleys and on plains. He needs to know the 
 feel of its big knocks, the smell of gardens and decay, 
 the depletion of hungers, the madness of every vehe- 
 mence of thirst. For he cannot communicate what 
 he has not received, and he has chosen or God has 
 chosen for him, by giving him the aptitude to 
 interpret life to you. And how shall he interpret 
 what he does not fully know ? 
 
 I have often thought the man of letters should have 
 two full lives : the life of action when he flings himself 
 about the world, listening, fighting, laughing, crying, 
 and the life of the scribe who, within his cell, scarce 
 
MY LOVE AND I 371 
 
 has time to hear the bee's murmurous pollen talk out- 
 side the window. And the bee is the simile. He flies 
 far, and he comes home thick with honey-dust. He 
 comes home and loses himself in the community to 
 store his load away. And there it is, the community, 
 the perfect expression of the common life. No man 
 liveth unto himself, not even the privileged man of 
 letters. 
 
 I have told how I learned at one point in my life that 
 poetry was, for me, the supreme reward. One step 
 led but to another, and, that other once attained, I was 
 telling myself that, after all, the supreme reward was 
 the love of Ellen Tracy. But now at last and I 
 have not yet seen another step beyond I believed, 
 dear as these goals must ever be, that there was a 
 narrow land I had to live in and that was mine inevi- 
 tably. Perhaps it was a road, for the life-long vision of 
 the road was ever with me ; and this, I saw, I had to 
 follow, not knowing where it led. It was a road where 
 neither poesy nor love could light me in any earthly 
 sense, and it led from my house to the office and back 
 to the house again. I couldn't be out challenging the 
 world to yield me lovely types for literature. I had 
 to let life hammer at me as I ran, and I had no clois- 
 tered seclusion of the mind to slip into when I got home, 
 even to tell how these knocks had felt. The persua- 
 sion that moved me, day by day, was not the inner 
 persuasion to write verse, but to keep myself in form, 
 to make my wife as content as might be and my son 
 
372 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 in love with us. In my first youth I had followed the 
 call of life. I had heard its summons louder than the 
 printed word. Now I loved the printed word most 
 dearly, but I was back again at the beginning. Life, 
 I knew, was more than literature. 
 
 Perhaps you wonder why, if I had the aptitude I 
 talk about, I couldn't write my poetry as an avocation. 
 If lines were singing through my ears, it would be a 
 child's task to scratch them down. But this matter 
 of poetry is a matter of emotion, of vibration, of the 
 human machine throwing off the waves of over-generat- 
 ing. And I hadn't any surplus energy. I was still 
 strong as a man need be ; but I had none of that wild 
 life of the brain that poets know. It sounds rather 
 sickly to say it, but I was simply enduring ; I wasn't 
 living, in any vivid sense. I wasn't even suffering 
 vividly. For I had found that if I chose to disregard 
 Ellen Tracy's prohibition and give my mind full rein 
 and think of her, I was undone. Out of that mood 
 of wild revolt and quickened pulses, I might indeed 
 have written poetry. But I could not have gone to the 
 office, a sane man, and held my place, competing with 
 younger men whose hearts were strong enough to race 
 toward tragedy and still maintain the serviceable beat 
 of warm blood to the brain. They had the advantage 
 of me every time. They liked their work, most of 
 them. They went at it slap-dash, life was so new to 
 them, it had so much to tell. I had to keep my face set 
 stiffly toward one goal, the " making good." To that 
 
MY LOVE AND I 373 
 
 end I put Ellen Tracy away, deep in my heart, as if 
 indeed she had died, and I must not dare to think of her 
 until the moment of my following. I saw once a 
 hollow apple tree filled up with gravel and cement to 
 the end that it might bear more fruit. I saw it other 
 years, and it did bloom and bear divinely; but I was 
 conscious of a hurt in looking upon its patient, kindly 
 health, for I knew how heavy it was at heart. In 
 my heart too was heaviness sealed in; but warmth 
 also, sometimes a warmth quite wonderful to feel, and 
 I knew what this was. It was Ellen Tracy's heart, 
 sealed in and beating there. I think there is a pitiful 
 misconception in our looking upon men who have put 
 away an image they have worshipped. It is not that 
 they forget, but that they cannot keep it before their 
 eyes and in the exaltation of daily longing, live. And 
 live they must, unless they shirk the game. 
 
 So far as literature went, a nobler passion had been 
 born in me and I could neither fulfil it nor return upon 
 the old tracks that had given me sustenance. I could 
 no more have written a story of Little Italy now than 
 I could have sat down with an easy mind to fox-and- 
 geese. And if I could, the magazines would none of 
 me, save for a scattering periodical now and then that 
 could not pay for the last new thing in authors. Others 
 had arisen, some of them working after my own precise 
 recipe. There were Armenian stories now, Chinese 
 stories; and I knew from inner evidence that they 
 were faked. No Armenian could have looked into 
 
374 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 their mirror and seen his own face; no Chinaman. 
 New men had simply hit on the old tool and used it 
 with the brilliant energy of youth. So the base task 
 I would none of, and the high task would none of me. 
 The Muses are jealous jades. - They will accept no 
 fragmentary dole. You may be earning bread for 
 little sons and paying off unwelcome cousin Thomases, 
 but they make no distinction. You simply have had 
 strength to crawl to the spring, or time and money to 
 motor there, or you have not. You've got to be very 
 fascinating indeed for them to bring the cup to you. 
 And I was no young sprig of promise. I hadn't a 
 fascination left. 
 
 As to the matter of my refusing the poems that came 
 to me out of my love for Ellen Tracy, I cannot tell 
 whether that was a mistake or not. Perhaps I decided 
 it out of my heart, in the first exaltation of finding and 
 losing her, and not out of the clearness of the mind. 
 But that was done and over. The love songs came no 
 more. And whether it was right or whether it was 
 wrong, the deed of a wastrel or the blind sacrifice of a 
 lover who must serve his lady, I burned the novel once 
 called " Ellen Tracy" because it was so personal to her 
 and to me. That she had not required of me ; but I 
 did it for her sake. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 375 
 
 XXXV 
 
 THE time had gone on until young Egerton clattered 
 in one day and threw his skates down and announced 
 that he'd begun algebra. I was standing in the dining 
 room doorway, talking to Mildred about the price 
 of coal, and she was sitting at her desk very much as 
 she had been that day at the Port when I had learned 
 my exile from her. Mildred had lost her spring-tide 
 face. She had faded, not to the beauty of the petal that 
 withers in the sun, but to a spiritless forecast of old 
 age. I have seen dropped larkspur petals that are like 
 blue jewels, almost transcending the living flower, and 
 I have seen the faces of women where wifehood and 
 motherhood have burnt into a white ash of ethereal 
 loveliness. Yet what bright coals are glowing under- 
 neath that veil! There was, I thought suddenly, in 
 one of the moments of bitter truth we tell ourselves, 
 nothing in her face nothing perhaps but discontent. 
 I had been able to put nothing into it, and I could draw 
 nothing out. 
 
 I gave young Egerton a little push toward her. 
 
 "Go and tell her," I said. "I don't even know 
 what algebra is. Don't talk to me about it. It makes 
 me shy." 
 
 He went, hooting at my bluff: for if there was one 
 person who knew everything in the heavens above and 
 the earth beneath, from the way the fire engines go 
 to the deeds of the Greek heroes, that person, in the 
 
376 MY LOVE AND I 
 
 eyes of young Egerton Redfield, was I. He didn't 
 know how hard I'd had to cram for him. 
 
 His mother felt knowingly at a button coming loose, 
 and turned him about in the salutary way mothers have, 
 and as I stood there watching them, my eyes filled 
 achingly. Perhaps they did it the more easily because 
 I had seen Ellen Tracy's face that morning, and it was 
 wet with tears. I had been to aunt Patten's funeral, 
 unsummoned, but because I had to go, and I had seen 
 my beautiful lady, and across her tear- wet face there had 
 run a little smile at sight of me. That smile seemed 
 to have broken some of the bands about my heart. I 
 had come home with my eyes opened to the secrets 
 of other faces, and my heart all warm to give ease to 
 other hearts. As I stood there, my mind ran back 
 over the days since I had spoken with Ellen Tracy: 
 for the last time had been that night down at Hopeful 
 Sands when she had laid upon me her dear, unreasoning 
 will to keep on being " splendid." In that time Mil- 
 dred had withered, Mary had turned into a lodging- 
 house keeper for she got rheumatism and her fingers 
 wouldn't serve her at the typewriter Blake looked like 
 a wreck, but still of noble dignity (and now nobody 
 bought his poetry at all, it was so full of mystic won- 
 ders), and cousin Thomas, indescribably seedy, had set 
 up an office with the name of a South American mine 
 on the door, and sat there, being persistent, and dread- 
 ing, I fully believed, to see my checks come in, as a 
 man dreads retributive lightning. 
 
MY LOVE AND I 377 
 
 I didn't know how I looked, myself. I hadn't any 
 time for mirrors. I knew I had done two novels of the 
 way life seemed to me down town, and nobody was 
 reading them because they were " unpleasant." I knew 
 I had in my desk a book of sonnets that told, in an 
 abstract way, what I thought I believed about the 
 great game of life. I meant to leave the sonnets there, 
 and after I was dead my son could do what he liked 
 about publishing them. They bore testimony to what 
 I had learned : but now as I dwelt on Mildred's withered 
 face and remembered the sweet bloom of Ellen Tracy's, 
 I thought I had one more sonnet to write. For stronger 
 than any impulse in me that day, stronger than my 
 answering joy at sight of Ellen Tracy's face and its 
 subtile assurance that she had not forgotten, stronger 
 than my ever-during belief in my eternal tryst with her, 
 or my satisfaction in my son's stout legs and hard 
 cheeks and his assault upon algebra, stronger than all 
 these was my sudden sorrow that Mildred was not 
 happy. What could I bring her to call light and color 
 into that dull face ? Not man's love for woman : my 
 love was given away. And if it had not been, she did 
 not want it of me. There was nothing to offer her but 
 the tender compassion that responds to every call, 
 the world-sorrow that wakes at sight of the world-pain. 
 
 "Don't you think that's wonderful?" I said to her, 
 and she looked up at me and her face quickened in 
 an unexpected way, perhaps at the quickening of mine. 
 "All this algebra business? Don't you think it's 
 wonderful Little Mother ? " 
 
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 Cloth, I2tno, $f.JS ne *>' postage extra 
 
 An up-to-date story, rich in character portrayal, in incident and human 
 appeal, and which will, in all probability, be more popular than either 
 "Nathan Burke" or "The Legacy," two novels which met with such 
 wide favor. The hero, Van Cleve, is a young man who finds himself 
 obliged, at the age of twenty, to support a family of foolish, good-hearted, 
 ill-balanced women, and one shiftless, pompous old man his grand- 
 father, aunt, cousin, and uncle. Out of this situation the story grows 
 which will be welcome to the many admirers of Mrs. Watts. 
 
 The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne 
 
 BY KATHLEEN NORRIS, author of Mother " 
 
 Decorated cloth, I2mo, $1.25 net; postage extra 
 
 A story with a gripping theme, which vividly recalls the author's great 
 success, " Mother." 
 
 The Jugglers 
 
 BY MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL, author of " The Ladies' Battle," etc. 
 Decorated cloth, I2mo, illustrated, $1.00 net 
 
 The varied experiences of a travelling band of singers and dancers just 
 before and during the time of the Franco-Prussian War is the theme of 
 this colorful story. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publisher 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
IMPORTANT NEW FICTION 
 
 The Healer 
 
 By ROBERT HERRICK, Author of " Together," " The Com- 
 mon Lot," etc. Cloth, i2tno, $1.35 net 
 Mr. Herrick's new novel might be termed a complement to 
 Together. Like that book, it deals with certain questions that 
 belong specifically to America to-day, in the broadly realistic spirit 
 that made Together one of the most notable contributions to 
 American fiction. In this field Mr. Herrick is regarded by many 
 critics as the leader among present-day writers of English fiction, 
 and it is safe to expect that The Healer will arouse more than 
 ordinary interest. 
 
 The Believing Years 
 
 By EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 
 
 D corated cloth, izmo, $1.25 net 
 
 This story of the doings of a group of country boys shows that 
 along with his wonderful understanding of the boy nature, the 
 author has, what is just as important, a vivid memory of his own 
 boyhood. Without such a memory he could never write as he 
 does of the charmed circle of youth, into which no man may enter, 
 no matter how well he may appreciate the faiths and superstitions 
 of its members. The book has humor and incident, but its charm 
 resides in the startling fidelity with which it recalls the very spirit 
 of youth of " the believing years." 
 
 "BARBARA'S" New Story 
 The Love that Lives 
 
 By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT, Author of "Poppea of the 
 Postoffice." With a frontispiece in colors by H. C. WALL. 
 
 Decorated cloth, ismo, $1.30 net 
 
 Whenever Mabel Osgood Wright sets out to tell a love story she 
 succeeds as do few novelists. Her new novel is simply a love 
 story, full of the vivid character sketches for which she is so well 
 known, and more rapid in action perhaps than anything she has 
 ever written. It concerns the endeavors of a man and wife to 
 mold the careers of their three children. How the individual 
 instincts of the children turn them from the ways planned for them 
 by their forebears, and, how they love, and in the end, prove their 
 right of choice, is the backbone of the story. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York. 
 
JAMES LANE ALLEN'S 
 
 The Doctor's Christmas Eve ciotk, /**, 
 
 " Kentucky in its rural aspects and with its noble men and women forms the 
 scenery for this romance of quainmess and homeliness which lovingly interprets 
 the career of a country doctor who has lost faith in life but not in ideals. Inci- 
 dentally the author has interpreted the new spirit of American childhood in its 
 relation to the miracles and legends and lore of other lands and older times, 
 which have through the centuries gathered about the great Christmas festival 
 of the Nativity." New York Times. 
 
 " What so many have so long hoped Mr. Allen would do he has accomplished 
 in this work, namely, a description of Kentucky and the blue-grass farms as 
 seen by a youngster." New York American. 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE'S 
 
 A Certain Rich Man cioth, /**, $1.50 
 
 " This novel has a message for to-day, and for its brilliant character drawing, 
 and that gossipy desultory style of writing that stamps Mr. White's literary 
 work, will earn a high place in fiction. It is good and clean and provides a 
 vacation from the cares of the hour. It resembles a Chinese play, because it 
 begins with the hero's boyhood, describes his long, busy life, and ends with his 
 death. Its tone is often religious, never flippant, and one of its best assets is 
 its glowing descriptions of the calm, serene beauties of nature. Its moral is 
 that a magnate never did any real good with money." Oregonian, Port- 
 land, Ore. 
 
 OWEN WISTER'S 
 
 Members of the Family Decorated doth, /**, $/.^ net 
 
 " Thrilling and unusual tales of life on the Western prairies. Mr. Wister has 
 shown himself a master in this class of fiction." Critic. 
 
 The Virginian Decorated cloth, I2mo, $i.jo net 
 
 " The vanished West is made to live again by Owen Wister in a manner which 
 makes his book easily the best that deals with the cowboy and the cattle coun- 
 try. ... It is picturesque, racy, and, above all, it is original." The Philadel- 
 phia Press. 
 
 Lady Baltimore cioth, /*<>, 
 
 "After cowboy stories innumerable, ' The Virginian ' came as the last and defi- 
 nite word on that romantic subject in our fiction. ' Lady Baltimore ' will serve 
 in much the same way as the most subtly drawn picture of the old-world dig- 
 nity of the vanished South." The New York Evening Mail. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S NOVELS 
 
 Each, cloth, gilt tops and titles, $1.30 
 
 A Modern Chronicle illustrated 
 
 This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is 
 throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It 
 is frankly a modern love story. 
 
 11 The most thorough and artistic work the author has yet turned out. A very 
 interesting story and a faithful picture of character . . . one that will give rise 
 to much discussion." New York Sun. 
 
 Mr. Crewe's Career illustrated 
 
 " It is an honest and fair story. ... It is very interesting ; and the heroine is 
 a type of woman as fresh, original, and captivating as any that has appeared 
 in American novels for a long time past." The Outlook. 
 
 The Celebrity An Episode 
 
 " No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for years. 
 ... It is the purest, keenest fun." Chicago Inter- Ocean. 
 
 Richard Carvel illustrated 
 
 " In breadth, massing of dramatic effect, depth of feeling, and rare wholesome- 
 ness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed by an American romance." 
 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 The Crossing Illustrated 
 
 "A thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting adventure and senti- 
 mental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in detail and in spirit." 
 
 The Dial. 
 
 The Crisis v Illustrated 
 
 "A charming love story that never loses its interest. . . . The intense political 
 bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties, are shown understandingly." 
 
 Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 " A lighter, gayer spirit and a deeper, tenderer touch than Mr. Churchill has 
 ever achieved before. . . . One of the truest and finest transcripts of modern 
 American life thus far achieved in our fiction." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
Recent Works by Jack London 
 SOUTH SEA TALES 
 
 Illustrated, decorated cloth, izmo, $1.25 net 
 
 Jack London's stories of the South Seas have a sense of reality 
 about them which, even if the author were obscure and his goings 
 and comings unknown, would prove that he had been on the 
 ground and had himself taken part in the combats, physical and 
 mental, which he describes. The present volume is a collection of 
 vivid tales, which, both in their subject matter and in their setting, 
 give the author free hand. 
 
 THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK 
 
 Illustrated with over 150 halftones from photographs 
 by the author and a frontispiece in colors 
 
 Decorated cloth, 8vo, boxed, $2.00 net 
 
 One of the most adventurous voyages ever planned was that of 
 Mr. Jack London's famous Snark, the little craft in which he and 
 Mrs. London set forth to sail around the world. Mr. London has 
 told the story in a fashion to bring out all the excitement of the 
 cruise, its fun and exhilaration as well as its moments and days of 
 breathless danger. 
 
 ADVENTURE 
 
 Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 
 
 This story is just what its title indicates a rousing adventure tale, 
 with lots of excitement, no little humor and considerable sentiment. 
 While there is something doing from first to last, the reader is not 
 conscious of that straining after effect which is evident in so many 
 stories of rapid and exciting plot. 
 
 WHEN GOD LAUGHS 
 
 Illustrated, decorated cloth, izmo, $1.50 net 
 
 A remarkably stirring volume into which have entered all of th 
 elements which have gone to make its author one of the most 
 widely read novelists of his time. To depict graphically "the 
 struggles of strong men in a world of strong men," a reviewer once 
 declared to be Mr. London's special province. Certainly it is the 
 province which he has selected for himself in this book. " When 
 God Laughs," the initial tale, deals with a novel conception of the 
 love of man and wife. What this love is, and what it brings to 
 pass, make a yarn which is as finished and complete a piece of 
 work as one often finds in the much discussed short-story field. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
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 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
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