The I 
 
 
THE AVERAGE WOMAN 
 
In One Volume. Crmvn 8? 0, 6s. 
 
 S S^AULAHKA 
 
 ,A Tale of Weit and Sast 
 
 By 
 RUDYARD KIPLING 
 
 and 
 WOLCOTT BALES TIP R 
 
 LONDON: WM. H El N EM ANN 
 
A COMMON 
 STORY RE 
 
 AVERAGE FF EY *CAP 
 
 TAIN MY CAP 
 
 WOMAN TAI N! 
 
 BY 
 
 WOLCOTT BALESTIER 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL 
 SKETCH BY HENRY JAMES 
 
 LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 MDCCCXCII BEDFORD STREET W.C. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v ii 
 
 REFFEY . t 
 
 A COMMON STORY . . . . 7g 
 
 " CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN !" IO5 
 
 292650 
 
WOLCOTT BALESTIER 
 
 THEY have a place apart in the record of the 
 dead, the young names which represent less 
 for the big indifferent public than for a knot 
 of friends who remember and regret, and yet 
 on behalf of which we discreetly plead for 
 some attenuation, in the general memory, of 
 the common fate. So far as they are spared 
 by oblivion they form a ghostly but enviable 
 little band the company of those who were 
 estimated early and rescued early, who created 
 expectations and cherished hopes, and for 
 whom there remains no question of dis 
 appointment or of failure. We can think of 
 them as it most pleases us to think, allude to 
 them with unchallengeable faith, and give 
 
 vii 
 
Wolcott Balestier 
 
 our imagination the luxury of filling out the 
 vague disc of the possible. Charles Wolcott 
 Balestier, who died in Dresden on the 6th of 
 December 1891, just before he had reached 
 his thirtieth year, participates in this dim 
 distinction, and becomes one of the mute 
 appealers to whom we are indulgent in pro 
 portion as we recognise that what there is to 
 "show" for them accounts but imperfectly 
 for our plea. We make the plea for the plea s 
 sake, and because that is fairer than not to 
 make it. He had not had time, though he 
 had so many of the other conditions, and 
 this particular use of a little of the time 
 that we ourselves feel half-ashamed to have 
 gained as if we had gained it at his ex 
 pense presents itself as an act of common 
 generosity. 
 
 Wolcott Balestier loved literature better 
 
 than anything but his friends, and he had 
 
 found opportunity to testify to this in a 
 
 career as eagerly active as it was short. He 
 
 viii 
 
Wolcott "Balestter 
 
 left behind him a youthful unpublished novel, 
 which is, conspicuously, to see the light ; 
 three very short tales, and the vivid mark of 
 his collaboration with Mr. Rudyard Kipling 
 in The Naulahka. His memory therefore 
 may take its stand on a certain quantity of 
 performance ; but I confess that it is not 
 mainly under the impression of this little sum 
 of literary achievement that I find myself 
 moved to speak of him. What he wrote, 
 what he would have published, will be 
 largely and sympathetically scrutinised, but 
 there are persons for whom it will remain 
 both only the smaller part of what he did 
 and the pledge of a talent smothered at the 
 very moment it had begun to expand. He 
 was conscious that he had only begun, and 
 it would be an unkindness to his memory to 
 represent that, in spite of the extreme vivid 
 ness of " RerTey " and of " Captain, my 
 Captain ! " his slender relics were very sacred 
 in his own eyes. They are interesting, and 
 
Wolcott Halestier 
 
 in glimpses original, but their greatest merit 
 is perhaps that by making him for the hour an 
 actuality they give us a pretext for attempting 
 to preserve some little record of his benefi 
 cence. He was a man of business of 
 altogether peculiar genius, and it was in this 
 light that he figured, with singular intensity, 
 to a large number of charmed, befriended 
 people during the part of his brief life in 
 which I judge that he had lived more than in 
 all its preceding time, the three crowded 
 London years that began in December 1888. 
 This was the period of my acquaintance with 
 him ; my personal relations with him became 
 close, and I speak of him, of course, essen 
 tially as I had the good fortune to know him. 
 I freely confess that I should not add my 
 voice to the commemorative hum if it were a 
 question of taking any less affectionate a 
 point of view. 
 
 I speak of his having " figured " in London, 
 because he was from the first, in his bright 
 
Wolcott TSalestier 
 
 young ingenuity, his suggestion of immediate 
 capacity, an apparition essentially salient. 
 This was what he remained to the end, 
 unmistakably an influence exotic and curious, 
 dropped down from without, not thrown up 
 from within. He made London, on the 
 ground on which he dealt with it, so extra 
 ordinarily his own that the contrast between 
 the spirit and the matter, the agent and the 
 medium, could only grow more striking and, if 
 I may frankly say so, more amusing. Nothing 
 feeds more actively some of our reflections 
 than the sight of that animated symbol, the 
 " cultured American," entangled for the first 
 time in the dense meshes of the great 
 London net. The manner in which his 
 native faculty deals with them is often an 
 instructive spectacle. We see it, however, 
 for the most part, exercised in a merely 
 contemplative or " sight-seeing " way, in the 
 interest of leisure and shopping, or at the most 
 of patriotism and consolation. But Wolcott 
 
 xi 
 
Wolcott <Balestier 
 
 Balestier, at twenty-seven, with a very com 
 plicated and characteristic American past 
 already behind him born at Rochester, 
 N.Y., in 1861, he had haunted colleges, 
 administered libraries, started "businesses," 
 explored territories, conducted theatricals, 
 edited periodicals and published "works" 
 this penetrating representative of a peculiarly 
 transatlantic interest in books alighted in the 
 formidable city, in the dusky void of Christ 
 mas week, on no merely passive errand. He 
 had a specific mission, business to transact 
 for an American publishing firm, but I trust 
 I do no injustice to the perfection with which 
 he transacted it if I say that such things could, 
 in the nature of the case, give him only his 
 pretext and his introduction. What he had 
 really come for, as it turned out, was to find a 
 field large enough for his admirable spirit. 
 The field was largest in London because 
 London was an extension without being a 
 substitution. It "took in," as it were, the 
 xii 
 
Wohott TSalestier 
 
 great agglomerations he had left beyond the 
 sea, and added others to them. It had in a 
 word it always has the advantage of being 
 the biggest box at the theatre, the highest seat 
 of observation of the English-speaking multi 
 tude as a whole with nothing less than which 
 was Wolcott Balestier prompted to concern 
 himself. 
 
 I met him, accidentally, soon after his 
 arrival, and was struck with his happy per 
 ceptions and with his acute appreciation of 
 London. Young and fresh as he was, he 
 rejoiced in the dim vastness of the great city 
 this was a quality which he found altogether 
 inspiring. He delighted in space and num 
 ber, and dealt with the latter element in 
 particular in a way which, at his age, was 
 already masterly. He never was so happy as 
 when he had too many things to do, and he 
 could view the infinite multiplication of de 
 tail with pure exhilaration. This is partly 
 what I mean by his admirable spirit, which 
 
Wolcott ^alestier 
 
 was his love of handling large things, of 
 handling everything in a large way. In the 
 poor little three years to which the best of his 
 activity was restricted he of course had estab- 
 ished but imperfectly his independence ; but 
 they were sufficient to give the measure of his 
 capacity. It was those who knew him best 
 who " chaffed" him most about his Napoleonic 
 propensities his complete incapacity to re 
 cognise difficulties, his immediate adoption 
 of his own, or, in other words, of an original 
 solution. It never could have occurred to him 
 that there was not a way round an obstacle 
 so long as a way was inventible, and the in 
 vented way, which in almost all cases was the 
 one he embraced he suspected stupidity, 
 with which he had no patience, in the ready- 
 made always proved in fact the most amus 
 ing. This was a high recommendation to 
 him, for, observant and genial as he was, he 
 liked to enjoy transactions for themselves, as 
 one is happy in the exercise of an implanted 
 
 xiv 
 
Wolcott ISalestier 
 
 faculty, quite apart from purpose and profit. 
 The Copyright Bill had not yet been passed, 
 and it appeared to him that there might be 
 much to be done in helping the English 
 author in America to a temporary modus 
 vivendi. This was an idea at the service of 
 which he put all his ingenuity an ingenuity 
 sharpened by his detestation of the ignoble 
 state of the law. This acute and sympathetic 
 interest in the fruits of literary labour, as they 
 concern the labourer, generalised and systema- 
 tised itself with extraordinary rapidity, and 
 became, by the time he had been six months 
 in London, a very remarkable and singularly 
 interesting passion, a passion which, for those 
 who had the advantage of seeing it in ex 
 ercise, quickly assumed all the authority of 
 genius. 
 
 It was a faculty altogether individual, and 
 one of the most original I have ever known. 
 It consisted, in its simplest expression, of an 
 extraordinary agility in putting himself in the 
 
Wolcott Walestier 
 
 place of the man, and quite as easily, when the 
 need was, of the woman, of letters ; and it 
 sprang from an intense and curious apprecia 
 tion of the literary character and an odd, 
 charmed, amused acceptance of the dominion 
 of the book. Nothing could be quite ultimate 
 for a spirit so humorous, but Wolcott Balestier 
 found in the importunity of the book the ele 
 ments of a kind of cheerful fatalism, a state 
 of mind that went hand in hand, in a whim 
 sical way, with the critical instinct. To see 
 the book through almost even through the 
 press was a perpetual pastime to him, and 
 one that varied of course according to what 
 the book might be. It was far greater in 
 some cases than in others ; but in the free 
 play of his ingenuity he could faire un sort, 
 prepare a kind of respectable future, for 
 almost anything newly printed and published, 
 take a peep from any point of view that passed 
 muster as literary. In this way, in our 
 scribbling hours, he multiplied immensely 
 
 xyi 
 
Wolcott ISalestier 
 
 his relations with the pendriving class, even 
 in the persons of some of its most pathetic 
 representatives, of whom he became, in the 
 shortest space of time, the clever providence 
 and kindly adviser. Signs were not wanting 
 from many of these after his death, signs of 
 their mourning for him as the most trusted of 
 friends. And all this, on the young man s 
 part, in a spirit so disinterested and so sincerely 
 sympathetic that one hardly knew what name 
 to give to the genius of the market when the 
 genius of the market appeared in a form so 
 human. 
 
 He had the greatest appetite for success, 
 and had begun to be a man of business of the 
 very largest conceptions, but I have never 
 seen this characteristic combined with so 
 visible an indifference to the usual lures and 
 ideals of commerce. As the faithful repre 
 sentative of others, he could only be jealous of 
 their interests, but a high and imaginative 
 talent for affairs could not well have been 
 
Wolcott Ttalestier 
 
 associated with less reverence for mere 
 acquisition. He had in fact none at all he 
 seemed to me to care nothing for money. 
 What he cared for was the drama of business, 
 the various human game. To make money, 
 up to a certain point, would have been con 
 venient to him, and if he proposed to do so it 
 was simply because this meant freedom free 
 dom to make a very different use of his time 
 when (at no very distant day, as he hoped), 
 the hour should strike. Much as he was ab 
 sorbed in the literary affairs of other people, 
 he was excusable for keeping a commodious 
 chamber of his brain open to his own ; and 
 he had the most definite purpose of hammer 
 ing away at the modern, the very modern 
 novel, as soon as he should get out of the 
 glare of the market-place and be able to com 
 mand the conditions. He had already given 
 pledges in this direction had published two 
 boyish fictions before coming to England, and 
 in the intervals of his busy first year in London 
 
Wolcott ^alestler 
 
 had put together a long story of much maturer, 
 of really confident promise. An intimate 
 personal alliance with Mr. Rudyard Kipling 
 had led to his working in concert with that 
 extraordinary genius, a lesson precious doubt 
 less and wasted, like so many of his irrepres 
 sible young experiments wasted, I mean, in 
 the sense of its being a morning without a 
 morrow. 
 
 Wolcott Balestier s death came too soon, 
 in my judgment, to permit of a just calcula 
 tion of what he might have done ; we must 
 recognise the limits of the evidence that his 
 talent was real and remarkably capable of 
 growth evidence confirmed, on the part of 
 those who knew him, by the sense of his 
 acuteness and his ambition. He was all for 
 the novel of observation, the undiscourageable 
 study of the actual ; he professed an intense 
 relish for the works of Mr. Howells and there 
 is little reason to doubt that if he had lived 
 to give what was in him the followers of some 
 
Wolcott <B ales tier 
 
 of the ancient ways would have had many a 
 bone to pick with him. The prospect of 
 picking such bones was, for himself, a thing 
 to add zest to the existence he was not 
 destined to enjoy. His imagination, so far as 
 he had given a hint of it, was all American, 
 and a long stay in the Far West, a familiarity 
 with mining-camps and infant cities, had 
 given it, for the time at least, the turn of the 
 new convention. He was prejudiced in favour 
 of American humour it was his only pre 
 judice that I can remember ; fortunately it is 
 not one that is fatal to intellectual growth. 
 He liked little raw new places only one degree 
 less than he liked London, where he had 
 established himself, in the heart of West 
 minster, under the Abbey towers, just within 
 the old archway of that Dean s Yard which 
 makes a kind of provincial backwater, like the 
 corner of a cathedral close, in a roaring 
 " imperial " neighbourhood. But when once 
 it had begun to go, his talent would pro- 
 
Wolcott Italestiei 
 
 bably have had many moods and seasons. I 
 remember thinking (on first observing what 
 dreams he had of becoming a literary artist), 
 that as the presumption is always against the 
 duplication of a special gift, it was not par 
 ticularly probable that the subtle secret of 
 creation had been vouchsafed to a man who, 
 in his natural mastery of affairs, might already 
 account himself fortunately equipped. What 
 community was there, in the same mind, 
 between the noisy world of affairs and the 
 hushed little chamber of literary art ? That 
 question was eventually answered there could 
 be none unless such a mind should be a rare 
 exception. This was indeed the fact with 
 Wolcott Balestier, and it made him, in my 
 experience, unique. 
 
 I have known literary folk who were full, 
 for themselves, of the commercial spirit, but 
 I have in no other case known a commercial 
 connection with literature to have had a twin- 
 ship with an artistic one. Wolcott Balestier, 
 
Wolcott Walestier 
 
 however, was commercial, as I may say, for 
 others ; it was for himself that he cherished 
 the hope of achieving some painted picture of 
 life. Moreover, the technical term seems 
 invidious as applied to a part played so easily 
 and gracefully, with such friendly personal 
 perceptions. This function cost him nothing 
 intellectually it was too instinctive and, in 
 cidentally, as I have said, too suggestive. It 
 had advantages from the point of view of 
 what he intended when a better day should 
 have begun ; it meant perpetual contact 
 with the world of men and women and 
 innumerable opportunities for observation. 
 In this he ironically exulted, and indeed it 
 made him enviable. He had a particular 
 aptitude for the personal part of affairs, for 
 arranging things in talk and face to face. He 
 had instincts and ideals of rapidity, and a 
 talent for dispensing with the matter of course 
 (which seemed to him flat and prosaic), cal 
 culated often to bewilder the children of a 
 
Wolcott ^alestier 
 
 postponing habit. And it was given to him, 
 moreover, to encounter the human, not to say 
 the supposedly literary spirit, bared of facti 
 tious graces, in the simple severity of some of 
 its appetites. He saw many realities and had 
 already learned not to blink many uglinesses. 
 Young as he was, he had perceived what was 
 of the essence. He was a well of discretion, 
 and it was charming and interesting in him, 
 that even when he was most humorously 
 communicative his talk was traversed by little 
 wandering airs of the unsaid ; nevertheless, 
 he was not without nameless anecdotes and 
 illustrations of this same tenacity of grasp 
 all the more striking that in general no man 
 could be less prejudiced in favour of the 
 publishing interest. Such an incident as the 
 quick foundation of the " English Library " 
 an association for the larger diffusion on 
 the Continent of English and American books 
 not only was a remarkable example of his 
 fertility of resource (his idea always became a 
 
Wohott TSalestier 
 
 fact as soon as he could personally represent 
 it and act for it), but brought with it an exten 
 sion of experience of the sort which was really 
 most remunerative to him, and as to which 
 he could be independently and delightfully 
 descriptive. It was partly on business con 
 nected with this happy undertaking and 
 partly exactly to do nothing at all to rest 
 from a torment of detail and a strain of 
 responsibility that he made, sadly unwell 
 when he started, in November 1891, that 
 excursion to Germany from which he was not 
 to return. He had only once or twice in his 
 life been gravely ill, but those who were fond 
 of him were never persuaded by his gallantry 
 of optimism about himself, reinforced as it 
 was by a thoroughly consistent and charac 
 teristic ingenuity in neglecting dull pre 
 cautions, to think of his slender structure as 
 really adequate to the service the formidable 
 service of his generously restless spirit. It 
 was not, in fact, and the disparity made him 
 
 xxiv 
 
Wolcott <Balestier 
 
 touching makes his present image so in 
 memory, though he doubtless would have 
 carried on the brave deception much longer 
 had it not been for the miserable typhoidal 
 infection, from an undiscoverable source, that 
 he bore with him from London, and to which, 
 in happy unconsciousness, he succumbed. 
 
 It is vain to attempt to exclude the egotis 
 tical note from a memorial like the present, 
 and the better course is frankly to enjoy the 
 benefit of it. I may therefore mention that 
 during the last year of his life in particular I 
 saw him so often and so closely that, as I 
 write, my page is overscored with importunate 
 reminiscence and picture. These things are 
 the possession of the private eye, but one 
 would fain reflect something of their clearness 
 in one s words. A wet winter night in a windy 
 Lancashire town, for instance a formidable 
 " first night " at a troubled provincial theatre 
 to which he had made a long and loyal 
 pilgrimage for purposes of "support" at a 
 
Wolcott Walestitr 
 
 grotesquely nervous hour such an occasion 
 comes back to me, vividly, with the very 
 quality of the support afforded, lavish and 
 eager and shrewd; with the pleasantness of 
 the little commemorative inn-supper, half- 
 histrionic and wholly confident, and with the 
 dragged-out drollery of the sequel next day, 
 our sociable, amused participation in a collec 
 tive theatrical fitting, effected in pottering 
 Sunday trains, besprinkled with refreshment- 
 room impressions and terminating, that night, 
 at an all but inaccessible Birmingham, in 
 independent repose and relaxed criticism. 
 He had taken, the summer before his death, 
 a house on the Isle of Wight on the 
 south shore, well on the way to the Fresh 
 water end and I cannot withhold the 
 emphasis of and allusion to a couple of 
 August days spent there with him. One of 
 them had a rare perfection, and made the 
 purest medium for the high finish as if it 
 were a leaf out of an old-fashioned drawing- 
 
Wolcott ISalestier 
 
 book of the little pencilled island. It was 
 given all to a long drive to Freshwater, much 
 of the way over the firm grass of the great 
 downs, and a lunch there and a rambling 
 lazy lounge on the high cliffs, with the full 
 sense of summer, for once, in a summerless 
 year, and a still lazier return in the golden 
 afternoon, amid all sorts of delicacies of effect 
 of sea and land. He loved the little temporary 
 home he had made on the edge of the sea, 
 and even the great wind -storms of the early 
 autumn, and no season of his life, probably, 
 in spite of haunting illness, had given him 
 more contented hours. Now he lies in the 
 last place he could have dreamed of, the 
 bristling alien cemetery, contracted and 
 charmless, of the foreign city to which he had 
 made his feverish way only to die. There 
 was something in him so actively modern, so 
 open to new reciprocities and assimilations, 
 that it is not fanciful to say that he would have 
 worked originally, in his degree, for civilisa- 
 
Wolcott <Balestier 
 
 tion. He had the real cosmopolitan spirit, 
 the easy imagination of differences and hin 
 drances surmounted. He struck me as a bright 
 young forerunner of some higher common con 
 veniences, some greater international trans 
 fusions. He had just had time to begin, and 
 that is exactly what makes the exceeding pity 
 
 of his early end. 
 
 HENRY JAMES. 
 
 XXVlll 
 
THE AVERAGE WOMAN 
 
 REFFEY 
 
 I 
 
 AVE LEWIS ran passenger train 
 No. 14 over the range one day, 
 and brought back passenger 
 No. 3 the next. No. 14 dined at Topaz and 
 suppered at Mitcham s, as they said on the 
 road; No. 3 reversed the arrangement. Hev\as 
 required to report his train from Mitcham s, 
 where he knew the manager of the eating- 
 house, and the telegraph-operator. Both were 
 young women. 
 
 For the last two months Reffey Deacon had 
 not been sending in meals to the telegraph- 
 operator when she was busy. For the same 
 length of time Mattie Baker had forgotten to 
 
 A I 
 
The dvcrage Woman 
 
 send Reffey s provision order to Denver until 
 the next day. Reffey used the post now, and 
 Mattie came to the hotel dining-room for her 
 meals, like anybody else. Lewis had jilted one 
 girl for the sake of the other. 
 
 The two lived alone at Mitcham s ; other than 
 the servants, they were the only inmates of the 
 house and the entire population of the town, 
 which began and ended at the eating-station. 
 Their nearest neighbours lived ten miles away, 
 on a ranch up among the hills behind the hotel. 
 The front windows of the hotel looked out on a 
 cliff. It was a thousand feet high, and Reffey 
 and Mattie did not see the sun in the mornings 
 until it shone vertically down into their nest. 
 The eating-station, which was also a hotel, had 
 been placed at the exit from Red Rock Canon, 
 as being the only spot within thirty miles large 
 enough to accommodate it. The floor of the 
 valley lying between the canon wall on one 
 side and the hills that climbed, beyond the 
 river, toward a rugged grazing country on the 
 
other was not above a couple of hundred 
 yards in width ; the structure which the railway 
 company had erected on this grudging space 
 was an oblong frame building two stories high, 
 painted a railroad grey, and containing only ten 
 practicable bedrooms, in addition to the big 
 dining-room, the refreshment-room, and the 
 ticket-office and telegraph-office, occupying the 
 ground-floor. But in the canon, through which 
 the railway had stolen a perilous way, there 
 was room for nothing larger than the huts of 
 fla^-men or track-walkers ; and these structures 
 were likely to hang out over the river, propped 
 at the fringe of the ledge along which the track 
 wriggled and balanced. In the summer parties 
 of fishermen came to whip the Red Rock River, 
 the stream that boiled and shouted through the 
 canon, and rooted night and day at the base of 
 the rock on which the hotel was built. Holiday 
 parties from the East, railroad-men in special 
 cars, and English tourists, armed with expensive 
 guns, also came at certain times, and spent a 
 
 3 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 week or two at Mitcham s troubling the echoes 
 among the hills. But at other seasons the two 
 women lived alone. The situation demanded 
 an amiable relation between them, and it was 
 intolerable without it. 
 
 Dave and Reffey were to be married as soon 
 as he could build her a proper house at 
 Maverick. Reffey (the name represented her 
 mother s fantastic shortening of Rebecca) had 
 her own ideas regarding a fit residence, and was 
 in process of imposing them upon Dave and 
 upon his builder. Lewis was now " knocking 
 down " more fares than before his engagement 
 to Reffey ; instalments on the house were 
 coming due ; he was beginning to look at 
 furniture ; and Reffey was in other ways an 
 expensive young lady. Her standard of the 
 presents to be expected from a lover in Dave s 
 position was high. 
 
 The drummers, who had dared each other 
 for a month to try it on with Le\\ is when he 
 had first been promoted from the ticket-office 
 4 
 
at Denver, smiled at each other now when they 
 met, and they winked at Lewis. Lewis, on 
 these occasions, fixed his eye intently on the 
 ticket in the hands of the passenger in the next 
 seat, keeping the responsive wink for the 
 baggage-car, the upper corner of the smoker 
 and the refreshment-counter at way-stations, 
 \vhere he came by cigars and drinks easily. 
 Drummers who had once, long ago, stayed over 
 a train or spent an extra night in a town rather 
 than travel by his train, now exchanged jokes 
 with him on the purity of his first month s work 
 on the road. The atmosphere was easy-going 
 and friendly on Dave Lewis s train now that 
 they all knew him for one of the boys, and the 
 men who had lost money by betting during 
 that first month that he had been put on the 
 road by the company to spot the crooked work 
 of other conductors, now made him stand 
 treat. 
 
 Dave asked them what they had taken him 
 for, and they asked him how he expected them 
 
 5 
 
Tke Average Woman 
 
 to tumble all at once to the fact that he was one 
 of themselves when he came straight from the 
 Denver ticket-office. They quoted the other 
 conductors as having shared their idea, and 
 they wanted to know why he had kept them so 
 long in suspense. 
 
 " Why, boys, to tell the truth, I was the 
 young and blushing maiden of that situation. 
 I had to wait until I was asked." 
 
 "The drooping violet of Maverick that s 
 what you were the shy little Denver Daisy. 
 Remember the cigars and talky-talk I wasted 
 on you before I got up sand to offer you three 
 dollars for a five-dollar fare ? One seventy-five 
 is all you get out of me these days, you old 
 fraud. We ve got to make you sweat some 
 where for that shrinking violet business eh, 
 boys ? Well, here s my regards ! " 
 
 Einstein, whose line was cloaks and trim 
 mings, blew the foam off his beer and drank to 
 Dave. 
 
 These regular patrons of the road (who were 
 6 
 
Reffey 
 
 accustomed to take the trains run by the right 
 sort of fellow, without purchasing a ticket, pay 
 ing a proportion of the fare to the complaisant 
 conductor, who in his turn pocketed the entire 
 sum, and made nothing of such amusing pas 
 sengers in his report to the company), these 
 steady customers of the company, forgave them 
 selves slowly for their obtuseness ; but since the 
 suspicion had been lifted from Lewis, they 
 made it a point of honour to treat him as if it 
 had never been. Now that they had proved 
 his innocence, there was not a more popular 
 conductor on the road. It was true that he was 
 not thought exclusive enough since his engage 
 ment to Reffey. He now distributed his favours 
 over a wider area, and almost any traveller who 
 was a little "fly" could make a deal with him. 
 It was a poor system for the company, but it 
 worked well for Reffey ; and if Dave ever had 
 any doubts about it from a moral point of view, 
 they were more than solaced in her society. 
 The company charged passengers too much 
 
 7 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 and paid him too little, so that whichever way 
 he looked at it he was a remedial agent ; this 
 was probably the dumb reasoning with which 
 he satisfied his conscience. But, on the whole, 
 it would be easier to say how a murderer 
 excuses his crime than how a man sophisticates 
 such stealings. The one point clear to Dave 
 was that they were Jiot stealings. Certainly 
 he never called them so, and since no one else 
 did, since even the company had no word for 
 practices of this nature, and no remedy for 
 them but dismissal, and since cases like his 
 never got into the courts, nor even, oddly 
 enough, into the newspapers, he was at liberty 
 to create his own moral world. In this world 
 he and his wants were easily chief, and the 
 railway (from which everything you got was so 
 much clear gain, nnd even clear righteousness, 
 yet which was, conveniently too, a disem 
 bodied, soulless, dividend-paying corporation, 
 that nothing could injure) was easily last. 
 Reffey had not been able to help letting Dave 
 
Reffey 
 
 see from the first that she cared for him. It 
 had begun on the day she arrived from Topeka 
 (where she had acted as head-waitress of a 
 hotel) to take charge of the eating-house at 
 Mitcham s ; and it may have been her evident 
 preference for him which first flattered him into 
 treason to Mattie. But his passion for her had 
 not long needed a better reason than her own 
 charms; once within the immediate range of 
 them her beauty inflamed him, and he was 
 snared by the strange, gipsyish, baleful witchery 
 of a temperament scarcely more different from 
 Mattie s than from his own. Her imperious, 
 ardent loveliness ruled and fascinated him; 
 Mattie s housekeeperly order of spirit and 
 blessed calm of mind had merely cradled 
 him. 
 
 He found the excitement of being engaged to 
 Reffey a strain at times on a slow, mild dispo 
 sition, the actual need of which was a peaceful 
 harbour, but, save when his conscience accused 
 him for his faithlessness to Mattie s simple trust, 
 
 9 
 
The dverage Woman 
 
 he was aboundingly happy in the change. The 
 characteristic quality of his feeling for Reffey 
 was a huge admiration, and if he had been a 
 woman, and she a man, he would have crawled 
 at her feet ; as it was he let her worship him. 
 But he continued to admire her. After a 
 month s engagement she remained wonderful 
 and inscrutable to him ; entirely apart from his 
 love, he couldn t help feeling that he had made 
 an astonishing bargain. Whatever else might 
 happen she was sure to remain the only person 
 off her own piece of goods ; and it was from 
 this point of view, rather than out of the usual 
 lover s feeling of his unworthiness, that be tried 
 to live up to her. Every act of his life was 
 penetrated with the thought of her, and none 
 more than his daily reckoning up of his accounts 
 with the company. 
 
 He was accustomed at the end of the day to 
 find his way to the last seat in the smoker, 
 which was likely to be vacant, and to pour out 
 upon it the contents of his pockets, consisting 
 
Reffey 
 
 of the tickets and money gathered from pas 
 sengers on the trip. After counting and noting 
 the tickets for his report, he told over the money 
 for what he called a "division of the spoils." 
 In these divisions, to which but one of the bene 
 ficiaries was a party, the company " got what 
 was right" that is, a little more than the least 
 it was likely to accept without grumbling. But 
 delicate questions often arose : there was not 
 always enough to go around ; the point of safety 
 was not definite, nor was it invariable ; it wasn t 
 even ascertainable, for yesterday s return might 
 have aroused suspicion, while, on the contrary, 
 it might have been so large as to form the germs 
 of habit in the company mind. The business 
 had its good and its bad days, like another ; 
 when " commercial " travel was large, and Dave 
 encountered other friends besides his drummers, 
 the day was a success : if to this was added, by 
 chance, a considerable flock of passengers who 
 had forgotten to buy their tickets, and who paid 
 the full fare in the simplicity of their hearts (he 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 gave them a duplex ticket, of course, but all 
 contributions helped the exchequer), Dave re 
 marked mellowly to himself that it was " a good 
 day for ducks." If it had been possible to keep 
 trade up to a really high standard, Dave would 
 have become shortly a Railway King, by 
 methods not widely dissimilar from those 
 generally recognised ; but, with all its faults, 
 it remained a lucrative business. 
 
 He liked best to divide with the company 
 when he was making the Western run, as every 
 moment, in this case, brought him nearer to the 
 object of these divisions, and to the object of all 
 that he did. On these days he would usually 
 begin his reckoning at the eastern end of the 
 canon, that he might know when he saw her 
 what he had been able to do for her that day, 
 even though he couldn t speak of it to her. 
 
 He celebrated an unusually good day by 
 treating himself to the best cigar that had been 
 given him on the trip, lolling back on the front 
 seat of the smoker, and making pictures of the 
 
Reffey 
 
 smoke during the long run through the canon, 
 in which no stations occurred to disturb him. 
 After a thirty-dollar day he usually put another 
 story on the house, in these reveries, bought the 
 big Persian rug which he had envied at Daniel s 
 and Fisher s in Denver, laid it on the parlour 
 floor, seated Reffey in a deep wicker-chair on top 
 of it, made the dull, rich red of the rug harmo 
 nise with the bronze red of her complexion, and 
 with the flush of happiness on her cheek, caused 
 her eye to rove from the rug to the furniture 
 (red plush to match the rug lots of gold on the 
 chair legs), and from the furniture to the bright 
 blaze he lighted on the hearth (their hearth !), 
 and from the hearth to himself. The look of 
 gratitude and love she gave him made his head 
 swim in his vision, and not to stint himself, he 
 closed the scene by making her give him a royal 
 hug of her own accord, just as the whistle 
 sounded for Mitcham s and, down at the end 
 of the canon, Rt ffey was taking her place behind 
 the lunch-counter. 
 
 3 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 On the days when Dave brought No. 14 over 
 the range from the East, Reffey went about her 
 usual occupations with an attent ear. Long 
 before the train came in sight on the bridge by 
 which it crossed the river a couple of hundred 
 yards from the hotel, a whistle rolled down to 
 her out of the heart of the canon, multiplied in 
 howling echoes. The whistle went to her heart, 
 and, wherever she was, her dining-room girls 
 would see her pause in her quick, commanding 
 movements, arrested like a listening deer. 
 Then she would go on proudly, giving the last 
 neat touches to the dining-room tables, over 
 which a hungry riot was immediately to sweep. 
 A girl who had giggled in her palm one day 
 when the whistle blew had shrunk away, 
 scorched by a dozen words from Reffey, and 
 had left Mitcham s that night, with her trunk, 
 on the up-mixed-freight. 
 
 No. 14 stopped twenty minutes at Mitcham s, 
 and the better part of the passengers for this 
 reason preferred a regular supper in the hotel 
 14 
 
Reffey 
 
 dining-room to the chances of the lunch- 
 counter. It was therefore from behind this 
 comparatively unfrequented counter that Reffey 
 usually directed her smile of greeting at Dave ; 
 the counter was of marble, and the triangular 
 slices of pie were on the plates, the beans 
 waited under their covers, and the ham sand 
 wiches reared their pile of masonry. 
 
 She had spent a nervous half-hour behind 
 this counter one warm spring afternoon, waiting 
 for the whistle (she couldn t, of course, ask 
 Mattie how late the train was), when the re 
 sounding blast always given, under arrange 
 ment, by Dave s engineer, leaped on her ear. 
 As the echoes began to roll back on themselves 
 into the canon she gave a last polishing rub to 
 the glass bell protecting her jelly-cake, trimmed 
 the spirit-lamp under her monster coffee-urn, 
 and put up a hand to the bunch of green 
 bananas over her head to stop it twirling. 
 Then she leaned over the counter, on her 
 elbows, between the sandwiches and the cake to 
 
The dverage Woman 
 
 nod happily to Dave, as his train rolled up to 
 the solitary eating-house and he followed his 
 passengers in. 
 
 In this attitude he restrained himself with 
 difficulty from giving her a real hug she 
 looked so splendidly, satisfyingly beautiful to 
 him. As a matter of fact, Reffey was unmistak 
 ably handsome in her large arc-lamp fashion. 
 She had uncommonly brilliant and beautiful 
 eyes, passionate, liquid, beguiling, and shiningly 
 resolute. Her face was not delicate, but it was 
 strong with the same glow one saw in her eyes 
 a glow slightly crude, and perhaps more than 
 slightly vicious, but richly alive. As she leaned 
 over the counter her black, fluffy hair seemed 
 nearer her heavy eyebrows than usual, her fore 
 head looked lower, and her broad shoulders and 
 abundant figure lost none of their value. She 
 had a square, man s chin and decided com 
 pressed lips. She was carefully dressed, as was 
 usual with her, in a figured cambric, without 
 the apron worn by her dining-room girls. 
 16 
 
She threw a smile at him, and began at the 
 same time to attend rapidly and capably to the 
 orders humbly suggested to her by the dozen 
 passengers who had chosen the lunch-counter 
 in preference to the dining-room. Dave threw 
 a leg over the last stool in the row before the 
 counter, and waited, with his elbows on the 
 marble, for her to hand him the tender loin- 
 steak and fried potatoes she was accustomed to 
 keep for him. The steak came up through the 
 dumb-waiter in a moment, smoking hot, and 
 their hands met under the plate, as she set it 
 down before him. 
 
 "What s Henry McKelway come up on the 
 seven for ? " 
 
 "To take my train to Portoe s Junction," 
 returned Dave, wiih a smile. " It s a change- 
 off I fixed up with him. Any objection ? " 
 
 She looked up from the plate and pretended 
 to examine the idea disinterestedly. 
 
 "Just as livs, ;; she said, as she swept a 
 bewildering smile over her adorer, who 
 B i 7 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 shivered where he sat with a sensation of 
 pure joy. 
 
 She turned from him to snatch a bottle of St. 
 Louis lager from a shelf high above her head. 
 Dave wanted to vault over the counter, pull it 
 down for her, and take her about the waist in 
 just this attitude. Instead, he watched her, as 
 she stood on tiptoe, swing her arm up to it with 
 the sureness and grace of all her movements, 
 and deposit it before him, after whirling it once 
 in the air under the counter and catching it by 
 the neck, with a laughing glance at him. Then, 
 without another look in his direction, she moved 
 away to attend to other customers, only re 
 turning to ask as he finished his steak and his 
 lager : 
 
 " Want some pie mince, apple, blackben y, 
 blueberry, pumpkin, custard ? " She radiated 
 love at him through her waitress manner : and 
 Dave, giving back her look, dreamed into for- 
 getfulness of pie, until she called herself back 
 with a sharp "Well?" 
 18 
 
Rejfey 
 
 " Ain t you got none of my patent brand ? " 
 " Not allowed. Bad for the complexion." 
 " It ain t hurt yours any as I notice." 
 " Just you mind your own complexion, Dave 
 Lewis." 
 
 " I use Madame Neckar s Frozen Balm night 
 and morning. What do you want ? Say, gimme 
 some of that lemon meringue pie, now, you, and 
 be quick about it." 
 
 She remained staring imperturbably at him 
 through her lustrous, laughing eyes. 
 
 Dave knotted his fingers under the hand she 
 spread out on the counter. " Come," he said 
 worshippingly, " get a move on, will you ? " 
 
 She popped her head under the counter and 
 drew forth the double slice of thick lemon pie 
 she had been keeping for him 
 
 41 There, Greedy i " she said affectionately, 
 under her breath, as she slid it toward him over 
 the marble, with the twist she used for cus 
 tomers. 
 
 When the train had gone on in charge of 
 
 19 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 McKelway, and Reffey had straightened up her 
 lunch-counter, she put on a sun-hat and followed 
 him along the track toward the bridge over the 
 river. The hat was large and daringly trimmed, 
 but it became her exceedingly, and during the 
 fir.-t minutes of their walk she used all the 
 advantage it gave her over his stunned admi 
 ration. 
 
 She stepped from tie to tie with a long, free, 
 swinging step, taking two ties at a time, while 
 Dave contented himself with one. Mattie, 
 watching them from the window of her tele 
 graph-office, told herself sadly that they were a 
 fine couple, and Reffey, glancing at Dave as 
 they walked, said to herself that he was hand 
 some. Dave was straight and well made ; his 
 face had the regular beauty, his black hair the 
 fetching curl, his fine eyes the appealing, tender, 
 conquering light which women love. He had, 
 moreover, the gallant carriage of a calling in 
 which, more than in almost any vocation of 
 peace, except that of a sea-captain, a man gains 
 
Refey 
 
 the habit of command and of responsibility. 
 His train was always going on or stopping at 
 his word, in Reffey s thought of him ; when he 
 was away from her she pictured him with an 
 authoritative hand in the air, waving his train 
 forward or back, or, with a despotic lantern, 
 flashing upon the engineer orders that might 
 kill or save a hundred souls. She found no 
 difficulty in reconciling his careful habit of dress 
 to this conception of an heroic calling ; that 
 touched the social side of his work, which de 
 manded that a man shouldn t look like a fright 
 in taking up tickets from ladies and gentlemen. 
 She liked his little air of correctness, and the 
 black clothes, which made him singular among 
 men engaged in ordinary affairs and even a 
 little singular among his fellow-conductors, the 
 heavy gold watch-chain, the accurate, flat, black 
 bow which he wore under his celluloid collar at 
 an angle not intended to conceal the rhinestone 
 collar-button above it ; above all she liked his 
 crisp, jaunty, almost rakish moustache. 
 
The JIverage Woman 
 
 Reffey, who often took the airs of a good- 
 natured Czarina with him, now made him 
 account to her for every minute that had passed 
 since they had last met ; and in return, with the 
 charming condescension of the President s wife 
 talking to a master mechanic, gave him the 
 news of the road, of which she often knew more 
 than he by reason of her favourable post of 
 observation. Every brakeman, conductor, 
 engineer, and fireman on the Topaz division 
 passed her eating-house regularly, and as all 
 trains stopped, and as the trainmen were in 
 timately dependent on her good-nature for the 
 quality of their rneals, her shrewd eye and ear 
 had their opportunities. She made the men talk, 
 listening, watching and deducing pitilessly. Her 
 judgments were harsh ; she did not believe in 
 people. It was, perhaps, for this reason that she 
 believed with such abandonment in Dave with 
 a kind of prostration and abasement with a total 
 and unreckoning gift of a nature wildly proud. 
 
 To both of them the road was a world j they 
 
tofy 
 
 thought of its hundreds of miles as having- a 
 local existence, and all their speech recognised 
 the people who officered and worked it as the 
 population of a single community. Both knew 
 every person employed by the railway, his 
 history, his present situation, and his prospects, 
 as if he had been their fellow-townsman. They 
 did not always sleep in the same place, this 
 town population, but they all slept sometimes 
 in the same place, and, going or coming, they all 
 took the same meal at the same time and place 
 every day. The unity of the life, like the unity 
 of a regiment s life, was its real quality ; its 
 scattered and diversified air was its superficial 
 aspect. 
 
 She told him, now, that they were to have 
 three new " moguls" and a couple of new " hogs" 
 on her division, and asked him, in a detached 
 way, if he was likely to be affected by the change 
 in the boundary of the division at present end 
 ing at Maverick. Engineer Demarz had been 
 transferred from engine 210 to 403, as one of 
 
 23 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 the consequences of the change ; Cockleman 
 was running 210 now, and Vigart was firing for 
 him. William Masten, Mark Kites, and Fred 
 Decker were to be the " hostlers " at Maverick. 
 The round-house foreman at Portr e s Junction 
 was to be married next week. How did Dave 
 like Hammet to get ahead of him like that ? 
 Had he met the California horse-special that 
 went through yesterday to take the trotters on 
 to the Eastern race-meetings ? The smelter at 
 Rexiana had shut down, and the road wasn t 
 hauling any more ore there ; the coal-field at 
 Cannel was sending through thirty cartloads a 
 day, though. The boys said there was to be 
 a new time-table out in a fortnight; but she 
 didn t believe it would affect him, anyway. 
 
 " Look out there," shouted Dave, as she 
 stepped out gaily on the railway bridge. " Let 
 me go first." The river which ran through the 
 canon took its course here through a deep gorge, 
 a hundred feet below the level of the track. The 
 bridge spanning it was of wood, and a single 
 24 
 
Reffey 
 
 plank was laid loosely over the ties, between 
 the rails, for the use of track- walkers. The 
 crossing of the bridge by this plank was a 
 dizzying business, requiring experience and a 
 cool head. Reffey, who had been brought up 
 in a prairie country, had never seen such a 
 bridge until two months before, and she had 
 been accustomed to let Dave go ahead and 
 give her a guiding or supporting hand where 
 she needed it. But she was in a mood to-day 
 to make him wince under her power, and per 
 versely, at the same time, in a mood of humble 
 ness and frankness which made her wish to 
 show herself to him as she really was. 
 
 "Pooh ! " she cried, looking back at him over 
 her shoulder, as she balanced on the plank 
 above the gorge, in a way that turned Dave 
 pale. " Think because you run trains over this 
 bridge you ve got to run me over too ? Pm the 
 conductor of this train." 
 
 She moved out a dozen steps further, taking 
 care how she put down her foot, as indeed she 
 
 2 5 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 must, but giving an effect of recklessness to her 
 motions that made Dave sick with fear. He 
 started to follow her out upon the plank ; but 
 she screamed peremptorily : 
 
 " Stay where you are till I say you may come. 
 Don t you move, Dave Lewis." 
 
 " You re mad, Reffey ! you re mad ! Wait 
 till I can get to you." He made another 
 movement to set forth towards her, but she 
 shouted : 
 
 " If you take another step before I tell you 
 I ll go out on the ties." 
 
 She made as if to suit the action to the word, 
 and Dave s tongue hung limp in his mouth as 
 he managed to cry back hoarsely, " All right, I 
 won t." 
 
 He stood regarding her slow, balancing 
 motions with horror. He had advanced some 
 paces on the plank himself, and when he let his 
 eyes drop he saw the river gleaming between 
 the ties, a hundred feet beneath. Out there, 
 under the spot where Reffey stood, the stream 
 26 
 
Rcffey 
 
 tossed and whitened over a scattered mass of 
 rocks. She was not looking down ; her head was 
 up, her arms out, her eyes straight before her, 
 and she was feeling for the plank with her feet. 
 His heart melted in his breast as he gazed after 
 her. 
 
 Suddenly he saw her stoop, as she passed the 
 water-barrel placed on wooden bridges as a 
 precaution against fire. She crept out upon 
 the platform on which the barrel stood, and, 
 gathering her skirts under her, sat down at the 
 edge of it, dangling her feet above the river. 
 Then she looked around at him calmly, and 
 called out : 
 
 " You can come now," 
 
 Dave drew a long breath, and ran out toward 
 her on the plank. Long use had made the feat 
 easy to him, and he was quickly at her side. 
 
 " Well, I ll be ! " he said, standing above 
 
 her. 
 
 She looked about at him with a challenging 
 smile. 
 
 27 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 " Don t be. It s more fun out here. 
 
 " You re a wicked girl." 
 
 " Yes, I know that," she answered, con 
 templating the toe of her boot, as she swung it 
 out over the abyss. " Did I worry you ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " You killed me. I wouldn t go through what 
 you just made me go through, again, for a 
 thousand dollars." 
 
 " Well, I won t charge you that. Won t you 
 be seated ? " 
 
 She mimicked the parlour manner in a 
 niminy-primini voice, and drew in her skirts to 
 give him room on the platform. He sank down 
 beside her, and seized her hand fast in his. 
 
 " Promise never to do it again," he demanded 
 huskily in her ear. 
 
 She gave a little squeal of pain. 
 
 " Le go my hand." 
 
 " Promise." 
 
 She looked into his eyes. "All right, Dave ; 
 I promise." 
 28 
 
Reffey 
 
 " And you ll never do it again ? " 
 
 " Never. Not the same thing. I m tired of 
 that." He gave her a look of deep reproach, 
 before which she lowered her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, Dave ! ;; she murmured, as she cuddled 
 her head on his breast ; " I am wicked. You 
 don t figure enough on that. It was partly to 
 show you how wicked I am that I did it." 
 
 The need for a faith on his part answering to 
 her utter faith in him caused her, at times, to 
 test his belief in her wilfully. She had told 
 him scores of things about herself in the fear 
 that he would find them out and cease to be 
 lieve in her. She was accustomed to heap up 
 the tale of her proud, passionate, selfish, jea 
 lous nature in the nervous longing to make sure 
 of his love, once for all, by exhausting in ad 
 vance the possibilities of accusation. 
 
 They sat silent for a moment after this, while 
 Dave took her to him, and they kissed in a 
 long, reconciling embrace. 
 
 " You don t know me, Dave Lewis," she said, 
 
 29 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 "and I don t suppose you ever will till I make you 
 hate me by doing something that ll hurt you so 
 bad that you ll never have anything more to do 
 with me. It ll be something I can t help doing ; 
 and I ll love you all the same oh, yes, I ll love 
 you fast enough but I ll have to do it. And 
 then I ll spend the rest of my life wishing I 
 hadn t. I ve got a regular black heart, Dave 
 that s what I have ; and the sooner you know it, 
 the better." 
 
 Dave laughed easily. " I always take mine 
 black," he said. 
 
 She patted his hand as she looked up at him. 
 " Well, I only hope you always will." 
 
 " I know what you are thinking of," he said. 
 
 She enveloped him in the sultry atmosphere 
 of one of her rich glances. " I ll bet you don t," 
 she answered with her head up. 
 
 " You re thinking of Mattie you re thinking 
 we didn t do right by her. I often think that 
 myself." 
 
 " Do you, Dave Lewis ? That little meek, 
 30 
 
Refty 
 
 chalk-faced hussy. .... Well, then, / don t. 
 Do you hear that ? / don t. I hate her, I do. 
 Understand ? I hate her. I d like to t;<ke a 
 dozen men from her, one after the other, and 
 toss her their old hats for keepsakes. I d like 
 to have her out here where we re sitting that s 
 all." 
 
 " Great Scott, Reffey ! You ought to want to 
 be good to her. We ve done her harm enough. 
 Anyway, / have. If I knew a thing to do for 
 her that wouldn t hurt her worse n leaving her 
 alone, I d do it too quick." 
 
 " Look here, Dave Lewis, if you want to go 
 back to her, you ve got an easy chance. Just 
 take that plank and march back to the hotel. 
 You ll find her in the telegraph-office, and glad 
 to see you I shouldn t wonder." 
 
 " I ain t hankering to go back to her," he said, 
 sulkily. 
 
 " Well, then ! " ejaculated Reffey, decisively. 
 
 " You don t expect a man to play a trick like 
 that on a woman and like it, I hope." 
 
 31 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 " Don t I, though ? Depends a little on who 
 he plays it on, and who he does it for, I should 
 say ! If it were some girls I know and some 
 men, I should think they d just go wallowing 
 around it. I only wish it had been my chance 
 to give her the mitten. I d have worked some 
 prickles into it." 
 
 " What a girl you are ! exclaimed Dave. He 
 said it admiringly, though he had intended to 
 say it upbraidingly. 
 
 " Well, I told you I wasn t good. I ain t. I 
 better tell you the kind of girl I am, I guess. 
 You know I come from Topeka, but you don t 
 know how I come to be there, nor what it was 
 that drove me into the business. I ain t an eat 
 ing-house manager by profession. My father 
 my own father kept a store in Kansas City. He 
 used to speculate in land. We was rich once, 
 like other people. But the bottom dropped out 
 of land in Kansas City, my father died, and my 
 mother married again. My new father lived at 
 Wichita. He had more education than my 
 32 
 
Reffey 
 
 own father, but less brains. First we didn t 
 like each other, and then we hated each other 
 like mad ; but I used to work for him like as if 
 I d loved him. I got up every morning at four 
 o clock to get his breakfast and send him off to 
 his machine-shop (mother wasn t much good 
 those days) ; and he was always rowing me 
 about my cooking. The cooking was all right, 
 if I do say it. That wasn t the trouble. He s 
 one of these kind of men that d find fault with 
 the Garden of Eden if the sun was under a 
 cloud, and the next day d be praising Sunday- 
 school picnic lemonade. You couldrit please 
 him ! Well, one morning I was frying some 
 bacon for him in the kitchen, because he d said 
 the day before that if there was one thing he 
 did like it was bacon, and I never give it to 
 him. He came out into the kitchen, where I 
 was heating myself up over the stove for him 
 and first he didn t like bacon, never eat it, and 
 never would eat it ; and then he began to 
 criticise around about the way I was frying it. 
 c 33 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 That got my blood up, but I didn t say nothing ; 
 then he went sniffing at it, and bending over to 
 look at it close, and telling me to turn it this 
 way and that, and showing me how he wanted 
 it cooked, till I was ready to fly out of my skin. 
 And I told him ! Says I, Look here ; you 
 know I got a notorious temper. I ain t got no 
 control of myself if you rouse me. Just take 
 warning now, Jim Phelan (that s what I always 
 called him), or it ll be the worse for you. 
 
 "He just smiled at me and went on, and then 
 I up with the whole boiling skillet of fat and 
 grease and let him have it. It took him full in 
 the face, and he dropped into a chair as if he d 
 been shot, howling with the pain like a wild 
 animal, and I just looked at him and asked him, 
 Well? How do you like it? I didn t have 
 no more bacon to cook, and I could give my 
 entire attention to him. He shrieked for a 
 doctor (mother wasn t to home that day), and I 
 smiled at him. Then he knelt down on the 
 kitchen floor, with that grease dripping all down 
 34 
 
Reffey 
 
 his face and out of his beard (you don t know how 
 funny he looked), and regularly prayed me to 
 do something for him. But I told him I wasn t 
 running for doctors so much this week as I was 
 last, and it did me good all through. Well, 
 then I ran away, of course, and went to Topeka, 
 and got a place as dining-room girl. After six 
 months or so they found I could run girls, and 
 they made me head- waitress. You just see 
 what I am, Dave. I ain t good. I love my 
 friends and hate my enemies; and when it 
 comes into my head to do a thing I do it, and 
 if I m mad I ll do anything. Sometimes I don t 
 think a girl like me is going to bring you happi 
 ness, Dave. But then I remember how I love 
 you, and after that I think of some one else 
 
 having you, and " She bit her white little 
 
 teeth together. "Well, about that time I m 
 willing to make you miserable." 
 
 Dave refused the prospect of wretchedness 
 she offered him, of course, and denied her 
 capacity to furnish it. He said how she was 
 
 35 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 his life, his happiness, and his only hope ; and 
 said it, as they sat on their dizzy perch, with a 
 thousand circumstances of endearment. The 
 narrow mountain torrent chafed against its 
 walls down there at the bottom of the gorge, 
 further beneath them than Reffey really liked 
 to make sure of with her eyes. It tormented 
 itself upon the rocks with moans and eery cries ; 
 it split and bubbled in showers of spray, and 
 raced on to a crashing death over the fall in 
 sight from the bridge. The crags rose on either 
 side of their resting-place into pinnacles that 
 hid the sun and made an early twilight in the 
 canon. 
 
 II. 
 
 MEANWHILE Mattie sat in her little telegraph 
 and ticket office, " visiting " with Kate Farley, 
 the operator at Red Rock, the station at the 
 other end of the canon. They held conversa 
 tions like this over the wire daily, during slack 
 hours after the day s markets had been sent 
 36 
 
Reffey 
 
 through, and when the line was not much in 
 use for commercial work. Their acquaintance 
 had begun with an inquiry from Kate about the 
 geraniums in Mattie s window. She telegraphed 
 her that her " steady," Milton Drew (who had 
 just been promoted from his position as fireman 
 of 192 to that of engineer of 308), had noticed 
 them blooming in her window on his journeys 
 back and forth, and had twitted her on the poor 
 show hers made beside those in the office at 
 Mitcham s. Kate wanted to know how Mattie 
 made hers grow, and Mattie, who was the most 
 good-natured person possible, had told her. 
 They knew all about each other s affairs now, 
 and were bosom friends, though they had never 
 met. 
 
 They even described their offices to each 
 other ; and Kate knew that Mattie had her 
 walls papered with cuttings from The Illustrated 
 London News, left by one of the English visitors 
 to the Hotel (Kate s walls were covered with 
 fashion-plates) ; that there was a rag-carpet on 
 
 37 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 the floor, a "busy bee" clock on the shelf, a 
 bear-skin under Mattie s feet, and by her side a 
 window-box covered with a piece from one of 
 her mother s trousseau dresses. She also knew 
 that her chief possession was a dog, an Irish 
 setter, which she kept constantly by her Kate 
 pictured the little room as the neat, quiet, 
 domestic spot it was; and rightly imagined it 
 as like Mattie. 
 
 It was to Kate, as her nearest friend, that 
 Mattie had first told the news of her engage 
 ment to Dave, and Kate had telegraphed back 
 a hug, and a rattle of applause not in the Morse 
 alphabet. Then she had fired questions at 
 Mattie, who had ticked back her answers with 
 shy jerkiness. She told her friend that Dave 
 was the best and dearest fellow in the world, 
 and Kate had shown her teeth from Red Rock, 
 and laughed back that she supposed as much. 
 Kate made Mattie give her daily news of the 
 progress of the affair after this ; it superseded 
 their geraniums as a theme of conversation, and 
 38 
 
Refey 
 
 Mattie bore Kate s electrical digs and gibes 
 without attempting retaliation in kind. Kate 
 wasn t at all shy about Milt, which made all the 
 difference ; and, indeed, Mattie liked the subject 
 of Dave too well to grudge the expense of 
 teasing for the right to talk him over. They 
 talked almost as much of clothes as of Dave, for 
 Mattie was doing in the office her own sewing 
 for the wedding, and she could ask Kate s 
 advice at the end of any seam by reaching out 
 her hand. When the trains came in, she put 
 her tell-tale needlework carefully away, wrapped 
 (with her dreams) in the fair linen cloth she 
 kept for the purpose ; stood up in her little box, 
 raised the rolling front of her ticket-rack, slid 
 up the window separating her from the prose of 
 the outer world, and was a woman of affairs 
 again. 
 
 She stamped tickets with a business-like 
 bang of her little fist, and rattled off train- 
 messages, and received orders and reports, as 
 if nothing of the Dave kind or of the love kind 
 
 39 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 existed on the planet. When the train was 
 Dave s, and he leaned over her counter to sign 
 his name in the train-book, a perception of facts 
 of this order certainly got into her eyes ; but 
 this was all she allowed herself in business 
 hours. On Dave s day off, when he came over 
 from Portoe s Junction, he loafed about her 
 office, watching her movements affectionately 
 while she attended to her duties, and made 
 plans with her, when she was not busy, for the 
 time after their marriage. When No. 3 had 
 passed (Dave s train every other day) Mattie s 
 time became her own, and it was their custom 
 to take long evening walks in the canon or 
 among the hills. On the nights when their 
 walks led them into the black and awful beauty 
 of the canon Mattie liked Dave to pilot her over 
 the bridge, though her mountain-bred step was 
 surer than his railway-man s nimbleness. The 
 moon, rising late for wayfarers in depths a 
 thousand feet below the world that saw its first 
 beams, would often discover a pair of lovers, far 
 40 
 
Reffey 
 
 down in that rocky dimness, whispering to each 
 other. These were sweet evenings to Mattie, 
 and, until Reffey came, they were not less dear 
 to Dave. 
 
 When he threw her over she seemed at first 
 like one mortally stricken. Afterward she 
 roused herself and went on, in order to rightly 
 hate Reffey. It was the woman who had taken 
 him from her whom she blamed, of course ; 
 Dave could never have turned false if she had 
 left him his senses. She had bewitched him, 
 and the fault was no more his than if a serpent 
 had fixed a fatal eye on him. The deep forces 
 of a still, temperate nature were alive in Mattie 
 now ; she had not the habit of valuing herself, 
 nor of regarding herself as entitled to things, 
 and she had almost no aggression, but Reffey 
 had roused a tiger in her. She daily found 
 new ways of hating her and new reasons for 
 hating her. Reffey s assured and familiar air 
 with Dave, as if it were to her that he had been 
 long engaged, the easy impudence with which 
 
 4* 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 she had accomplished her theft, even the per 
 ception that Reffey would have borne the hurt 
 much better if it had fallen to her lot, sharpened 
 her rancour. She fancied, with gnashing teeth, 
 how cleverly Reffey would have made a triumph 
 of being jilted, so that every one would think it 
 precisely what she had all along been desiring ; 
 she saw Reffey showing herself gaily the next 
 day at an engineer s ball or a firemen s excur 
 sion with a defying face and a rollicking smile 
 for the boys ; and Mattie loathed herself for not 
 being strong enough for this, though she had 
 no heart to answer back, so far as Dave was 
 concerned, nor any real wish to shine with this 
 impossible address. Toward Dave no pride, 
 nor savageness of stolidity, nor mere conceal 
 ment, nor any other maidenly defence came to 
 her aid ; the wound he had dealt remained open 
 and palpable to him ; if he looked her way he 
 could not fail to see his work, and perhaps this 
 touched him more than any hardness could 
 have done. 
 42 
 
She suffered to herself; her mother was long 
 dead ; Mitcham s was her only home, and, un 
 less she excepted Kate, she had no friends. 
 The difficulty of telling Kate was finally the 
 cruelest measure of his cruelty ; for a week she 
 continued to answer questions about her dresses, 
 and even about him, with a breaking heart. 
 She simply had not the courage to tell her ; and 
 when she brought herself to it at last, Kate 
 wired back furiously that she wasn t " sending " 
 decently; how did she expect her to "take" 
 from such work, especially when what she 
 seemed to be trying to tell her was so interest 
 ing ? Then certain male operators on the line, 
 who made daily bets with each other on the 
 " game," and who wanted to talk over the drub 
 bing Chicago had given New York (they had 
 not let them get a run), cut in to ask if trios 
 girls were going to gabble all day ; and Mattie 
 gave it up. 
 
 Mattie watched Dave hanging on Reffey s 
 words as he had been used to hang on hers, 
 
 43 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 gazing into her eyes with the fond smile that 
 had once belonged to her alone, using the thou 
 sand little tricks of affection that had once 
 seemed invented for her (poor fool ! ) and con 
 secrated to her; and she saw Reffey bloom 
 under these stolen blessings. It was hard to 
 see them together, but much harder when she 
 did not see them, and her fancy was left to gnaw 
 bitterly upon itself. Their walks in the canon, 
 or among the hills, brought tortures with them 
 that seemed, each time, to leave a permanent 
 mark on her spirit. To-day she had watched 
 them from her window leave the hotel arm in 
 arm, then separate, and step from tie to tie, dis 
 appearing in the direction of the bridge. She 
 knew from the wires that a "special" was on its 
 way over the range, bearing certain Eastern 
 railway officials in their private car ; and she 
 knew that Dave and Reffey did not know it, 
 and supposed the last train to have passed, 
 until the hour when the evening express was 
 due. She followed them with gleaming eyes ; 
 
 44 
 
Refey 
 
 it wasn t her business to tell them. Dave was 
 able to look after his new lady-love for himself, 
 she supposed. They might meet the train in a 
 part of the canon where there was room, like as 
 not ; and if it came around a curve before they 
 knew, or caught them on the bridge, they d en 
 joy dying in each other s arms. It wasn t her 
 lookout. They didn t ask advice from her 
 about their walks ; they hadn t invited her to 
 follow them. 
 
 " Three s a crowd ! " whispered Mattie to her- 
 sel r , pressing her face against the pane. 
 
 She would be a murderer What ? 
 
 Sitting in her office, looking out of the window ? 
 That was a good joke. 
 
 But she would. 
 
 "Who s doing anything?" muttered Mattie 
 to the window. 
 
 Kissing and spooning they were having a 
 good time in there between the canon walls. 
 Better not interrupt them ! 
 
 The thought of Dave came over her smother- 
 
 45 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 ingly ; she gasped. It was not her Dave, nor 
 RefTey s Dave merely Dave. She loved him. 
 She could not let him die like that. She threw 
 a shawl over her head and laid a hand on the 
 knob of the office-door. Then she stopped. 
 Could she save them for each other? Could 
 she bear to see them happy later, and know it 
 to be through her? If they died together 
 they wouldn t ; it was crazy to think that a 
 railroad-man, and a clever fellow like Dave, 
 wouldn t have more hustle about him than that, 
 but if they did, it blotted out her trouble ; it 
 stopped the pain in her breast. She needn t 
 turn the knob. Her hold relaxed. The grim 
 thought that followed made her tighten it 
 again ; she turned the knob and went out and 
 down the track. What had come to her was 
 that Dave would not be happy with Reffey no, 
 never in this world and that, if she wanted her 
 revenge on both of them, she would save them 
 to marry each other. When she came to the 
 bridge and saw them seated there in the 
 
affectionate attitude already described, she 
 halted, and had almost turned back ; but her 
 thought came to her again ; and she called 
 out sullenly, from the edge of the gorge : 
 
 " Better come off there ! " 
 
 They looked up at the sound, and together 
 saw the little figure on the bank of the river a 
 small pale face framed in a tightly drawn 
 shawl, which fell down the straight lines of an 
 almost tiny form. Her dog was standing by 
 her side. 
 
 They recognised her together, and Reffey 
 gave a shrill laugh. Dave laid a hand on her 
 arm for silence. 
 
 "What s the matter?" he called back to 
 Mattie. 
 
 "Special!" 
 
 " The devil ! Get up, Reffey." 
 
 "Don t I look like it?" 
 
 " You look like a mad woman. Do you want 
 to be killed out here ? " 
 
 Reffey made her rosy mouth into a point. 
 
 47 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 " I don t want to be saved not by her," she 
 said swinging her legs. 
 
 " Good heavens ! what do you want ? " 
 
 "This suits me pretty well," she said, glancing 
 up at him, with a tantalising smile. 
 
 " Come, no fooling ! There s a train coming, 
 I tell you ! " 
 
 " Well, get out of the way of it, then." 
 
 " Do you suppose I m going without you ?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Look here, Reffey Deacon, get up off there 
 and come along with me, or I ll carry you." 
 
 " I wouldn t do that," she responded quietly. 
 
 "Why not ? " asked Dave, stupefied. 
 
 "I ll jump." 
 
 Dave uttered a raging oath, and looked about 
 him helplessly. 
 
 " Well, say what you do want me to do then, 
 and say it quick." 
 
 " Get out of the way of the train, I tell you, if 
 it s coming. Go over to your friend there. I ll 
 take care of myself." 
 
Refey 
 
 " You ll be killed." 
 
 Reffey pushed out her lower lip quickly, and 
 dropped her eyes. 
 
 Dave laid a hand on her shoulder ; she looked 
 around at him. 
 
 " If I go, will you save yourself?" 
 
 " That s just what I ll do," she said, pursing 
 her lips and nodding her head. " I don t have 
 to ask Mattie Baker to do it for me." And, after 
 a pause, " Nor you either, Dave Lewis, when she 
 sets you on ! " 
 
 "Well, I ll be ! " began her lover. 
 
 She turned and nodded at him. " Good 
 bye ! " " Oh, good-bye ! " shouted Dave, turn 
 ing on his heel, and going swiftly toward 
 Mattie. 
 
 At the same moment Reffey got deliberately 
 upon her feet, slipped out to the central plank, 
 holding on by the barrel, and turning her back 
 upon him and upon Mattie, began a progress to 
 the other bank best described as a saunter. 
 
 In building the bridge and making the curve 
 n 49 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 in the track, on the bank opposite that on 
 which Mattie stood, a deep hollow had been 
 excavated in the face of the rock. Reffey had 
 noted it from her seat above the river. She 
 stepped off the bridge and tucked herself into 
 it, as the special roared by her, darted out upon 
 the bridge, and swept by Dave and Mattie, on 
 the other side. The wind it made caught her 
 dress as she crouched back in her shelter, and 
 blew it tight about her. She held her big hat on 
 with one hand, and looked across the chasm to 
 see the negro porter waving a greeting to her 
 from the rear platform of the last car, and to 
 catch sight of Dave, standing on the opposite 
 bank talking earnestly to Mattie, who was 
 turning away. 
 
 He was thanking her with embarrassment, or 
 trying to say how they could never thank her 
 enough. If Reffey could have heard him 
 including her in the obligation, she would not 
 have remained under the shadow of the rock 
 until they parted. 
 
 % 
 
 50 
 
Mattie was saying, with lowered eyes, " I 
 guess you don t want to be very thankful to 
 me, Mr. Lewis, and I guess I don t want to 
 have you." 
 
 "Of course. You hate me. /know that. It s 
 only natural." 
 
 Mattie shook her head and rubbed the gravel 
 backward and forward with her foot. "No, 
 Mr. Lewis, I don t hate you." 
 
 "Well, then, it s because you re too good. 
 I ve given you cause enough, Heaven knows. 
 Mattie, I ve been wanting this long time to tell 
 you only, somehow, I never got the chance- 
 that I don t think any more of myself than you 
 do ; not a bit ; I had to ; I wasn t responsible. 
 I can say that ; and it s the best I can say. But 
 it don t excuse me any." 
 
 " There ain t any need of excuses as I know 
 of," responded Mattie, with dignity. 
 
 " Well, then, there ought to be. If a woman 
 had treated me the way I ve treated you, I 
 wouldn t think excuses was in it much ! 
 
 Si 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 You re a first-class, nickel-plated angel, Mattie ; 
 that s what you are ! " 
 
 Mattie shut one lip upon the other. " I guess 
 I rather get what praise I do get somewheres 
 else, Mr. Lewis," she said quietly. 
 
 "All right. But I ll never get over what I 
 done to you, Mattie. I want you should know 
 that never ! If it s any comfort, you can know 
 that what I did ain t always such a comfort as it 
 might be." 
 
 Mattie looked up, with a spark in her eye. 
 " You mean her ? " 
 
 " Well, I was thinking how it hurt me all the 
 time to remember bout you." 
 
 "You needn t," interposed Mattie, for very 
 shame, though the pretence of a hardihood 
 in which she knew he couldn t believe (how 
 could he, when he knew her, when he had 
 made her tell him a thousand times how she 
 loved him?) did not give her the smallest 
 pleasure. 
 
 " But perhaps it ain t so far from true of the 
 52 
 
Reffey 
 
 other either," Dave pursued thoughtfully. He 
 had not even heard her protest. 
 
 Mattie drew her shawl together as if to 
 leave him. She looked into his eyes a 
 moment. 
 
 " You ain t going to be happy, Dave." 
 
 " You mean I oughtn t to be after what I ve 
 done?" 
 
 " I mean you ain t going to be," repeated 
 Mattie doggedly ; and with this she turned and 
 left him. 
 
 Next morning she received, through the usual 
 channel, a communication from Kate ; and when 
 Reffey knocked at the window of her ticket-office, 
 in the course of the morning, Mattie raised it, 
 and met her with a new look in her eyes. 
 
 " The less we have to say to each other the 
 better," Reffey began from outside, imme 
 diately the window was raised ; " but I just 
 come to say you needn t do that again. Pd 
 rather stay and take my chances with the 
 cow-catcher twenty times over." 
 
 53 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 Mattie surveyed her for a moment and they 
 exchanged glances of cold repugnance. 
 
 " I ain t very likely to," said Mattie at last, 
 measuring Reffey scornfully. 
 
 The manager of the eating-house was looking 
 offensively well tall, commanding, buxom, 
 rich-coloured, satisfied, prosperous. Mattie 
 looked out at her from the other side of the 
 window, conscious of her own pinched face, 
 haggard with weeping and with wakeful nights, 
 and a burning throb of jealousy went through 
 her. All that fairness, and health, and well- 
 being seemed stolen from her, too, as her lover 
 had been stolen. A frenzy of loathing seized 
 her, and the news that had saddened her half 
 an hour before rejoiced her now with the hope 
 of bruising that haughty happiness with it. 
 
 " Well, see you don t ; that s all," rejoined 
 Reffey. "I can get along, I guess, without 
 being beholden to you for my life, and so can 
 Dave. Oh, I know what you did it for ! 
 " I didn t do it for you." 
 54 
 
Refey 
 
 " You didn t get the chance. / was ready for 
 you." 
 
 " Nor for him, either," continued Mattie, 
 without raising her voice. 
 
 "What then, please?" demanded Reffey, 
 briskly. 
 
 " I didn t want either of you to get killed," 
 pursued Mattie steadily. " I wanted you to 
 live." 
 
 "Z>/Y/you?" 
 
 "To marry each other," Mattie went on 
 quietly. " You re going to marry a thief ; did 
 you know that ? " 
 
 Reffey blew an amused, derisive sound 
 between her lips, glancing carelessly down at 
 Mattie from her superior height. 
 
 " Yes, you re going to marry a thief. Heaven 
 won t let such things be as you ve done and 
 nothing to pay. Be sure of that, Rebecca 
 Deacon ! You ve swindled me out of Dave, but 
 you can t swindle the powers above. Your 
 house is being built with stolen money." 
 
 55 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 Reffey s face went quickly to a ghastly pallor. 
 " Who says it ? Who dares ? " 
 
 "/ do. Do you want any one worse to 
 know it than me. I guess I enjoy it as much 
 as most any one would. You didn t rob me 
 of such a prize after all, did you, Miss 
 Deacon?" 
 
 Reffey s face grew whiter, and then an un 
 wholesome dusky blue. Rage choked her. 
 She thrust her arms quickly through the ticket- 
 window, seized Mattie by her narrow little 
 shoulders, and shook her viciously. 
 
 " Aw, you " she stammered, breathlessly 
 
 with passion. "You J But she could not 
 
 piece another word to it. 
 
 Mattie wriggled out of her strong grasp, and 
 retreated against the corrugated black-walnut 
 roller of her ticket-rack. 
 
 " That s all right," she said, gasping, but still 
 quietly. " But he s knocking down fares every 
 day, all the same, ard you ll live in a house 
 that s built with them." 
 56 
 
Reffey 
 
 Reffey leaned through the window with blaz 
 ing eyes, and hurled these words at her : 
 
 " Don t think it ! Hear ! Dorityoit think 
 it! You re a liar, Mattie Raker ; but if you 
 weren t, and lived in hopes of that sweet sight 
 to comfort your sore eyes, you d be the most 
 almightily left little girl between here and Salt 
 Lake. I m on in this scene. See! I m right 
 here, and that ain t my sort. Cast off !...." 
 she ended between her teeth, in an indescribable 
 fury of scorn and malice. Then she went. 
 
 Six weeks later Reffey and Dave were married. 
 She had not questioned him ; not only because 
 she wouldn t do Mattie so much honour, but 
 because she didn t believe it, and if she did, 
 Dave was too clever to be found out, so that it 
 wouldn t be true, anyway. As to whether Dave 
 was actually a thief or not, she cared practically 
 nothing ; and besides, what he was doing, ?/he 
 
 57 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 was doing it (which he wasn t), was not thieving. 
 It was well, it was "knocking down," which 
 was nothing out of the way unless discovered. 
 Then it was stealing fast enough ; but she didn t 
 take herself for fool enough to be in love with a 
 man who would do such a thing, and be found 
 out. Hardly ! 
 
 They were married in the dining-room at 
 Mitcham s by a clergyman whom Dave dead 
 headed over from Portoe s Junction. All the 
 dining-room girls were there, and the new 
 eating-house manager, who had been transferred 
 from Maverick to take Reffey s place ; so were 
 all the men on Dave s division who could get 
 off. Reffey looked as beautiful and sumptuous 
 and perfect in her bridal dress as Dave could 
 have wished or fancied ; and he quieted the 
 accusing pang of memory, as he looked about 
 him and saw that Mattie wasn t there, with his 
 deep satisfaction in the situation as it stood. 
 He beamed on all his friends, in fact, as became 
 a bridegroom, and no one who looked at his 
 
Refey 
 
 cheerful face could have supposed that a corner 
 of his breast was given over to a heavy and 
 dispiriting remorse. Mattie s words mixed 
 themselves hideously with the words of the 
 marriage service. "You ain t going to be 
 happy, Dave," the clergyman seemed to be say 
 ing : Dave was uncertain in the responses. 
 
 The " collation," which Reffey had prepared 
 with her own hands, kept them, with other 
 festival matters, until No. 3 stood at their door, 
 like a bridal chariot, waiting to speed them 
 over to Maverick. They had the compartment 
 in the Pullman to themselves, of course ; and it 
 was one of the brakemen who got on the roof, 
 while the crowd was shouting farewells on the 
 eating-house platform, and shied rice at them 
 through the ventilator. 
 
 They were not going to take a wedding 
 journey, unless the trip over the range to 
 Maverick could count for that. Dave couldn t 
 well get off for a long enough time to make it 
 worth while. 
 
 59 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 Jake Riker, the station hackman whom Dave 
 had been accustomed to employ for his hasty 
 conferences with his builder, was waiting for 
 them on the platform at Maverick by Dave s 
 orders. The newly made husband gave the 
 order to drive to the house he had prepared for 
 Reffey with a nervous twitch in his voice ; he 
 was taking his wife home the word sent a 
 pleasant tingle through him but would she 
 like what he had done for her ? He knew by 
 this time Reffey s capacity for not liking things. 
 Suppose she shouldn t like this ? Suppose it 
 should all prove useless the affectionate 
 planning, the solicitous overseeing, the choosing 
 and buying and thought and work ? As they 
 were whirled along toward the house, and 
 Reffey s hand lay moist in his, he remembered 
 hours stolen from sleep to get half a day at 
 Maverick for a talk with his builder, and the 
 weary days at Denver with furniture-men and 
 carpet-dealers and paper-hangers, and the 
 prospect of a disappointment for Reffey at the 
 60 
 
end of it all, disheartened him. If she would 
 only like it, how little he should grudge his 
 pains ! The notion of " surprising " her with it 
 all, which had possessed so rich an interest for 
 him, now seemed silly. It was only by remind 
 ing himself that, in any event, she couldn t have 
 left her work at Mitcham s long enough to 
 advise at Maverick or Denver that he got up 
 the cheerfulness to leap from the carriage when 
 they drew up before the house, to throw open 
 the front door for her, and then, as she came up 
 the walk to him, to lift her over the threshold 
 with a bouncing swing and to welcome her, 
 within, gaily. 
 
 She gave him his kiss when the hack had 
 driven away, the door was shut behind them, and 
 they stood in their little parlour, alone with each 
 other. It was a fierce, devouring kiss, claiming 
 him and making him hers, and hers only, for all 
 and for ever. She- clutched him to her tight, 
 possessing him with a savage tenderness ; she 
 put back his head to gaze into his eyes ; her own 
 
 61 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 swam in a soft languor. Then she rumpled 
 his hair over his forehead, making inarticulate 
 murmurs of love ; she kissed him again once, 
 twice, and then very many times. 
 
 "Oh, darling, darling, dear darling, I love 
 you ! " she whispered. " Did you know that ? I 
 love you." 
 
 Dave caught her to him rapturously, and then 
 held her away, and let his eyes feed long on her 
 brilliant, ardent beauty. The adoring face, in 
 which she let him read for the first time all her 
 love, was dizzying, blinding. He snatched his 
 gaze from it. 
 
 "You haven t looked at the room yet?" he 
 said. 
 
 " Haven t I ?" she returned dreamily, cradling 
 herself in his arms. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well ? " cooed she contentedly. 
 
 " Oh, well, there s plenty of time." 
 
 " Lots. Only think we re going to live here." 
 
 " Yes together." 
 62 
 
Reffey 
 
 Together !" she murmured. 
 
 A long pause fell. 
 
 " Well, I suppose I may as well," she said at 
 last, with a deep sigh. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " See what you ve been doing for me, 
 you old goose." She gave his cheek a play 
 ful cuff, and turned to survey the room, taking 
 off her bonnet as she did so, and laying it 
 on the sofa. Dave watched her in pain and 
 doubt. 
 
 " Oh, Dave ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes. What ? " 
 
 "Youdfear/ You Jim Dandy ! You out and 
 outer ! " 
 
 He laughed in uneasy relief. " I did as well 
 as I knew how, without you." 
 
 She heaved a deep breath. " W-e-1-1 ! " she 
 said, spreading the monosyllable out to the 
 thinness of ecstasy, " it s my size ! " 
 
 Dave trembled with happiness, and he let her 
 kiss him in stupid unresponse. 
 
 63 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 She darted away from him to the couch she 
 saw over his shoulder. 
 
 " So you went and got the white and gold 
 and thin legs after all ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She stamped her foot on the red Persian 
 rug, letting her shoe sink confirmatorily into 
 its thick pile. 
 
 "And this?" Dave nodded. She gave a 
 little shiver of luxury as she cast an inclusive 
 glance round the room, and said, " If you ask 
 me, Dave Lewis, / believe you ve bought all the 
 things you told me you couldn t afford." 
 
 Dave laughed. " Shouldn t wonder." 
 
 " Well, you re a beaut from Lovelyville, David, 
 and I don t care who knows it." 
 
 " Better see the rest of the house before you 
 make too sure. Come on upstairs." 
 
 He lighted the huge parlour-lamp, with its 
 
 duplex burner and immense red shade, and she 
 
 followed him. There were plenty of smaller 
 
 amps in the house, but he had a fancy that some 
 
 64 
 
Refey 
 
 of the things he had bought would look best 
 through red, and, at all events, he wanted to 
 show her the lamp at once. It had an imme 
 diate success with her ; she praised it all the 
 way upstairs, where, however, further examples 
 of her husband s lavishness and taste won away 
 her applause. She went about hanging on his 
 arm and patting it softly, with whispers of 
 delight and gurgles of gratitude and pleasure, 
 as he held the lamp aloft in his other hand, 
 flashing it into rooms which they presently 
 visited, illuminating corners and closets, and 
 turning it on objects which he had bought 
 expressly in the hope that she would like them. 
 She always liked them, she liked everything, 
 and Dave, his fears put to shame, was ready to 
 break his red shade in embracing her. 
 
 Returned to the ground floor, he ushered her 
 into the dining-room, which she greeted with a 
 shout of approval. 
 
 She tossed her chin teasingly at him. " Laid 
 yourself out on that buffet, didn t you ? " It was 
 E 65 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 a monstrous black walnut structure, over which 
 thick varnished bunches of machine carving 
 were plastered ; the top was of an ugly red 
 marble ; the wood-work terminated above the 
 mirror in a point, on which a seedy angel 
 pirouetted. 
 
 Dave grunted serenely. He had got beyond 
 the articulate expressions of gratification. Reffey 
 went up to the imposing piece of furniture and 
 drew her hand reverently over the marble. 
 After a moment she stooped to look at herself 
 in the mirror, smoothing her hair. 
 
 " Well ; I ve served things from buffets like 
 that," she exclaimed, "and I ve worked for 
 people that owned them ; but I never thought 
 to have one for my very own." 
 
 She opened the doors below the marble, and 
 peered in at the shelves ; she espied the silver 
 and dragged it out and sprawled it on the table, 
 rummaging it lovingly over under her hands. 
 " Roll plate ! " she said, under her breath, 
 " twelve table, two dozen tea, and yes, a dozen 
 66 
 
Refey 
 
 dessert. Oh, I ve always wanted dessert ! " 
 She sprang on him, and gave him such a hug 
 as he would never have dared to picture in his 
 reveries. 
 
 " Well," she said immediately, as she pushed 
 him off to regard him properly, " you have done 
 it!" 
 
 "I don t know as I ve spared money," said 
 Dave modestly. 
 
 She looked fondly at him. "You ve spent 
 it through a hose, David. Come into the 
 kitchen." 
 
 The kitchen also seemed good to her better, 
 if possible, than the things that had gone before. 
 It appealed to her on the professional side : she 
 saw opportunities in the shining rows of fresh 
 tins, the blue enamelled ware, the pots and pans. 
 She turned them over skilfully, and sounded 
 them with her knuckles, and lifted a lid from 
 the cooking-stove, and sniffed at the sink. Then 
 she took his arm and drew him into the parlour, 
 and made him sit in the wicker chair before the 
 
 67 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 fire, where he had always planted her in fancy, 
 and, for herself, dropped on the floor, and leaned 
 an arm on his knee, while she looked up at him 
 in a rapture of content. 
 
 The fire of pinon logs blazing in the grate 
 cast a ruddy glow upon her face, out of which 
 the sinister lines seemed for the moment puri 
 fied. She took a newspaper from the table, in 
 idleness, and glanced up and down its columns 
 .with the indulgent glance women give news 
 papers. It was a copy of the Maverick Sentinel 
 "Have you subscribed, Dave?" 
 " Yes ; I thought it ud make us feel sort of 
 home-like *to find a paper in the house, as if we d 
 always lived here." 
 
 "You sweetums! You ve thought of every 
 thing. I wonder if every girl is so lucky. She 
 mused a moment, as her eyes returned to the 
 paper. " They ve got a railroad column, haven t 
 they ? " she commented, pointing to a series of 
 items headed " Track and Round-House Cin 
 ders," and surmounted by a cut of a locomotive. 
 68 
 
Reffey 
 
 " Yes ; that s the advantage of living at the 
 end of the division. We ll get all the news." 
 
 "That s the kind," said Reffey approvingly. 
 " Why, here s your name ! " She started up. 
 " But Dave ! " 
 
 " Well ? They got a grind on me about the 
 ceremony? Preacher, county clerk, and fur 
 nished house for two ? I supposed as much." 
 
 Something in her averted face startled him. 
 " Why, what s the matter, Reffey ? " He forced 
 her to turn toward him, and she faced him with 
 a gaze of reproach and bitterness that searched 
 his soul. He snatched up the paper and read 
 for himself : 
 
 " Dave Lewis, the popular conductor of Nos. 
 3 and 14, has got the- grand bounce from head 
 quarters, we understand. Moving cause, the 
 good old custom of knocking down. As he 
 has just led to the altar Miss Reffey Deacon, of 
 Mitcham s, well and favourably known as the 
 manager of the railroad eating-house at that 
 
 69 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 place, the g.b. comes at a bad time for the 
 happy pair. 
 
 He looked up and encountered Reffey s hard 
 eye, still fixed on him. 
 
 "Don t look that way, Reffey. What s the 
 dif.? They all do it." 
 
 " I know that," answered she hoarsely. "But 
 the rest don t get found out ! " 
 
 He turned from her accusing and scornful 
 gaze. " I suppose you re afraid I can t get 
 another situation. You needn t be. I ve got a 
 place offered me on another road ; I ve had it 
 this long time. I ll take that." 
 
 " Oh, I ain t worrying about you none. Don t 
 you fret. Where s my bonnet?" She turned 
 and found it on the sofa where she had left it, 
 and clapped it on her head, adjusting it with a 
 vigorous movement, and jamming in the long 
 pins in her haste as she could. 
 
 " Where are you going?" 
 70 
 
Reffey 
 
 " Out of this house." 
 
 " Don t be a fool ! " 
 
 " Well, I m going to try hard not to be, Dave 
 Lewis." She gave him a quick look. "You 
 coming ? " 
 
 " Didn t know as I was invited," he responded 
 with a ghastly effort at gaiety. 
 
 "Well, you are. Tain t you I m running 
 away from." 
 
 He dropped the paper and stared at her. 
 "What then?" 
 
 "This house." 
 
 " What!" 
 
 " That s what I said," returned Reffey coldly, 
 drawing her wrap over her shoulders. 
 
 Why ? " 
 
 She shut her lips. " Mattie Baker." 
 
 "See here, Reffey Lewis, are you a rip- 
 roaring maniac, or a sensible woman and my 
 wife?" 
 
 Reffey came and stood before him, with blaz 
 ing eyes. 
 
The <Average Woman 
 
 " Do you think I could live an hour in a house 
 that Mattie Baker could say was built with 
 knock-downs ? " 
 
 The ferocious pride and malignity of her tone 
 beat him down. He could not lay his tongue to 
 a word. 
 
 " How do I know ?" he said at last, sulkily. 
 
 " Well, then, put on your hat." 
 
 " Now look here !" he began with renewed 
 anger as he found himself. 
 
 " Don t I tell you I can hear her saying 
 it? I ain t responsible for myself just about 
 now, I give you notice, Dave Lewis. Come 
 on!" 
 
 He restrained an inclination to clasp his hands 
 about her fair throat and draw them tighter, till 
 she begged for mercy. 
 
 " What kind of woman are you, anyway ? " 
 he cried in rage, as she gathered the strings 
 within her cloak and caught them about 
 her waist, where she tied them with a vicious 
 jerk. 
 72 
 
Reffey 
 
 " The kind that don t take a man from another 
 woman and then give her the chance to say 
 she s better off without him than I am with him. 
 The kind that don t give any living mortal 
 a whip over her the kind that ud kill her 
 self with a smile before she give it to Mattie 
 Baker. The sort that hates, if you want to 
 know ! " 
 
 She was drawing on her gloves rapidly. 
 Dave regarded her in helpless admiration and 
 fascination as she gave vent to this astounding 
 outburst. She was the only one off her piece of 
 goods ! 
 
 " I know that Reffey ! I know it," he said 
 soothingly. " But you ain t going to leave our 
 house on our wedding-night the house I ve 
 built and furnished for you, the house I ve 
 worked so to please you with. You don t know 
 what it s cost me the work and the money ! 
 Oitr house, Reffey ! Ours, however it come ! 
 Ours ! That sounds pretty good to me ; I don t 
 know how it does to you." 
 
 73 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 He stooped over her shoulder and tried to 
 kiss her, but she pushed him off. 
 
 " Ours ! Not much it ain t ! A house that 
 any one can point at and nudge the person with 
 him, and smile, and say Pretty tidy house that 
 know how it was built, I suppose ? A house 
 that Mattie Baker ll know thaPs happening to 
 every day! Ours ! It s hers, I tell you hers! 
 /don t belong to her to pity, though not yet! 
 Come along if you re coming ! " 
 
 She strode from the room, and Dave could 
 only follow her. She waited at the gate while 
 he locked the door ; then they walked on to 
 gether in silence toward the railroad from which 
 they had come an hour before. A full moon 
 shone down on them out of the fathomless, 
 steely blue of these altitudes, blanching the 
 snowy hills behind them to the whiteness of 
 light. It was midnight and the radiance fell 
 upon a silent town expressing its raw, hap 
 hazard outlines with the bareness and cruelty of 
 daylight. The moonshine turned molten on 
 
 74 
 
Reffey 
 
 the tin roofs, which grew upon the eye in 
 the similitude of floating vessels of silver. 
 The stillness was broken suddenly by a crash 
 of brass instruments, which cleared itself in 
 a moment into the strains of " He s gone and 
 he s married Yum-Yum" ; the sound came from 
 the outskirts of the town. Dave guessed 
 that " The Independent Maverick Brass 
 Band Sons of Veterans" was on its way 
 to serenade them at the house they had just 
 quitted. 
 
 Reffey was pushing hurriedly on with a long, 
 nervous stride ; her face was absorbed and 
 white ; she had not heard the band. He was 
 about to call her attention to it, when she turned 
 suddenly upon him. 
 
 " Lem me have your key. I ve forgotten 
 something." 
 
 Her voice was harder than before ; but, deep 
 down in it, he thought he detected a sob. Per 
 haps she was relenting. 
 
 " Lem me take it," she repeated nervously. 
 
 75 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 He handed it to her. " Wait here," she said, 
 and went quickly back to the house. 
 
 She put the key in the door, and pushed in to 
 the parlour. The fire was still burning brightly 
 in the grate. With the tongs she snatched it 
 out upon the floor one log and then another, 
 until they lay, scattered, flaming on the Persian 
 rug. The pile was thick ; the rug did not catch 
 instantly. She went to the window, tore down 
 the lace curtains hanging there and fed them to 
 the flame. Seeing the Sentinel still lying on the 
 table, she added it. Then the pile leaped up. 
 
 At the door she paused for a last look at 
 the dear room fresh, lovely, habitable a mo 
 ment before; now melting into flames before 
 her eyes. She made an instinctive motion for 
 ward as if to stop it ; then checked herself 
 proudly, and, without another look behind 
 her, locked the door, and walked back to 
 rejoin Dave. 
 
 She gave him the key. " Better go to the 
 hotel, hadn t we ? " 
 76 
 
Reffey 
 
 He looked at her curiously. " Yes ; I suppose 
 so. 3 
 
 They went on in silence. As they reached 
 the railway platform, where the hotel stood, 
 Dave looked up, perceiving the light in the sky 
 that was not the light of the moon. He 
 wheeled about and gazed behind him. 
 
 "Good God, Reffey! What s that?" He 
 clutched her arm. 
 
 " The house." 
 
 "What? How do you know ? Who who 
 did it ? " the poor fellow stammered. 
 
 " / did," she answered coldly. 
 
 He turned a pale, staring, sick face upon her. 
 
 " You ! " 
 
 " H m, hum ! " nodded Reffey comfortably. 
 
 A cold feeling tightened about his heart. 
 The vision of a long life with the woman beside 
 him seemed to stretch away and away into a 
 hopeless blackness. 
 
 He gazed at the mounting flame that was 
 swallowing up his work, his love, his happiness, 
 
 77 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 his honesty. The town was alive now ; the 
 shouts came to him ; the gong on the hurrying 
 engine seemed sounding on his soul. 
 
 " You ain t going to be happy, Dave, " he 
 said to himself, softly. 
 
 "What? 3 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 7 s 
 
A COMMON STORY 
 
 MILTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 
 October 3, 1889. 
 
 AM thirty-two. I am not mar 
 ried. Yesterday I found a 
 grey hair. My hair is light ; 
 it should not begin to turn 
 so early. I am young. Isn t 
 thirty-two young ? We don t talk of age to 
 gether. But of course he knows. I am not 
 young; I have to remember that. By village 
 standards, by marriage standards, I am just not 
 middle-aged ; that is, there is hope for me still. 
 Oh ! oh ! oh ! for the time when there will no 
 longer be hope, for the day when they will all 
 give me up the mother (dear mother!), the 
 aunts, my girl friends who have married, the 
 
 79 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 men who notch off birthdays in their cane- 
 bottomed chairs in front of the Iroquois 
 House. 
 
 The girl friends are the worst though there 
 is always mother. But mother is happy. Her 
 marriage is a success. The marriages of the 
 girls have been failures in various keys. Mother 
 came in under the old arrangement. What do I 
 mean by the old arrangement ? I don t know ; 
 but the arrangement under which Sallie Beau 
 mont was not married. Yes ; that s it the 
 simple, natural arrangement. You should have 
 heard Sallie s reason for marrying Fred Maxim ; 
 they weren t simple, I promise you. Even to a 
 journal I shouldn t like to tell all those reasons. 
 When I think that Fred might some day come 
 to know what they were, I shrivel into a pucker. 
 I wonder if men would ever dare to marry 
 women if they could know all their reasons for 
 consenting? Sometimes, perhaps. But none 
 of the girls whose courtships, and engagements, 
 and marriages I have watched from my maidenly 
 80 
 
Common Story 
 
 watch-tower my old maidenly watch-tower, I 
 should begin to call it now, I suppose would 
 like to be called upon to explain to their hus 
 bands all that was in their hearts ;is they went 
 up the aisle on their father s arm. That I 
 know. Perhaps I know too much. I know a 
 great deal too much to make marriage the simple 
 thing for me that it was for mother. 
 
 I wish to Gracious that every one wouldn t 
 tell me everything, and I especially w;sh that I 
 hadn t be n ob iged to go through Sallie Beau 
 mont s engagement with her Sallie s engage 
 ment, do I say? Dear me! Kate Duffle. d s, 
 Margaret Hart s, Daisy Monteith s, Helen 
 Everard s, Sadie Macafee s what of them? It 
 frightens me just to set them down. But it 
 ought to strengthen me to think that I m here 
 after it all. 
 
 Every one has his misfortunes. It has been 
 
 mine to be the only girl in Milton who has not 
 
 at some time between her twentieth and thirtieth 
 
 year been engaged. I don t mean that my not 
 
 F 81 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 having been engaged has been a misfortune ; 
 much the contrary. But my freedom from all 
 such bother has given me time to look after 
 the engagements of other girls. At least they 
 have thought it did. Sallie couldn t have brought 
 her trouble about Fred Maxim and Jimmy 
 Dexter (she was in love with Jimmy, and she 
 knew she ought to marry Fred Sallie was 
 always intelligent) to Kate or Daisy. Kate 
 was trying to think herself into love with Ned 
 Fellows just then ; and Daisy but I could 
 write a novel about Daisy s case. It was this 
 way : The other girls were busy, and they each 
 saw that I wasn t at least not in that way. 
 Their doubts and their hesitations, and their 
 woulds and their wouldn ts, and their final 
 plunge well, they were awfully interesting 
 But they were wearing. I used to go upstairs, 
 after Sallie had been proposing unanswerable 
 problems about Fred and Jimmy for an hour in 
 our parlour, and go to bed. Mother used to 
 wonder what kept me so miserable. The truth 
 82 
 
Common Story 
 
 was, I was suffering sympathetically for those 
 girls. Perhaps you don t know what it is to 
 decide to confide your future to six men at once. 
 I didn t. But I know now. Twelve, I ought to 
 say ; for each of the girls had her doubts about 
 some other man. But we declined him ; so that 
 really only makes six. 
 
 October 4. I thought I could never keep a 
 journal. I was sure that as soon as I tried to 
 journalise this life I lead it would escape : the 
 things that you can t say (that your hand gets 
 too tired, and ink too shallow, and paper too 
 small, to say) are so many, many more than the 
 things you can say. And yet the things that 
 you manage to fix are so interesting that, if you 
 know how to fill up the blanks as I do, you find 
 it fun, on the whole. That is the advantage of 
 writing for your own eye alone : you don t have 
 to fill up the blanks ; and yet when you come 
 to the real point, you can talk it down to bare 
 bones with yourself, without caring for propor 
 tion, or perspective, or the relative importance 
 
 83 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 of one of your doings to another. The relative 
 importance of one s doings is just what one 
 thinks it, of course. My last winter s trip to 
 Southern California (it was delightful) would 
 make more of a figure in a biography of me 
 than the way Dick looked at me last evening 
 when he said "Good-night," I suppose; but 
 that only shows the stupidity of biographers. 
 How can they know ? Which brings me to the 
 real point : Why should I care how Dick looks 
 at m- when he says "Good-night"? Or no ; 
 that isn t the real point. The real one is, Do I 
 care ? Well, I guess I care. But you, Journal, 
 are the only one who shall ever know it. 
 
 He has come back ; it is two years since he 
 was last in Milton. The last time he had a 
 month s holiday, which left him three weeks 
 here ; the other week was spent in going and 
 coming, for he was in Nebraska then. He says 
 he feels like an Easterner now, for his work has 
 taken him to Missouri (he builds trolly-car lines, 
 like those in Boston, I believe, for the little cities 
 84 
 
Common Story 
 
 out there); but Missouri hasn t seemed far 
 enough East to let him come back oftener than 
 when he first went West. When he first went I 
 did not care so much, I suppose ; at least I didn t 
 reckon time greedily. How strange it seems 
 now ! but it is true : whole weeks went by in those 
 days when I didn t think of him. Yet we were 
 friends then too ; quite as good friends as now. 
 Only I felt differently about him, I suppose ! 
 Suppose? Oh, don t let us pretend to each 
 other, you safe, safe pen and paper, and my 
 heart ! To some one, to some thing, I must 
 speak! Somewhere I will be all myself ! I 
 love him ! I love him ! . . . . How dared I 
 write that? It s a frightful word. But I m 
 glad. I wanted to look the dreadful thought in 
 the eyes. I ve seen it now ; perhaps it will 
 do me good. I m not afraid to love him, 
 though the word scares me. And, besides, no 
 one knows. 
 
 October 6. Yes, it is really true. No one 
 knows. And how do you suppose I am sure of 
 
 85 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 that ? Why, because every one mother, and all 
 the girls that I ve helped to engage and marry 
 and settle, even the one I ve seen through her 
 separation from her husband (that s Daisy) all, 
 all are poking me and pinching me and nagging 
 me into accepting Dick ! Ah, I ve played the part 
 of old maid too well. These twelve years in 
 which I ve fought and scorned them, and swept 
 my skirt clear of their odious ideas of marriage, 
 have convinced them of too much. They have 
 come to believe that because I don t look at 
 the wrong ones, there never will be a right one. 
 I have found the right one now, and he has not 
 found me. I tell you the plain fact in that way, 
 dear Journal. I don t mind adding that it s 
 not in this way I tell it to my pillow. He came 
 a fortnight ago to-night. When did I last 
 sleep the night through ? It was on a Wednes 
 day. He came on a Wednesday. Oh me! 
 how hot and wet one s pillow gets by two in the 
 morning ! And there is still the long night. 
 They wonder why I get up so early. It s not 
 86 
 
Common Story 
 
 because I m rested. Oh, I m tired, tired ! How 
 do other girls do who love men who don t love 
 them? They don t. They don t allow them 
 selves to. They have their pride. I ve lost 
 mine. And then they don t have a whole village 
 at their heels, begging them to like the man just 
 a little, entreating them to give him a chance. 
 There, I ve said it. Give him a chance ! I 
 blush even to write it. How can I ? 
 
 October 10. You see what I mean, you poor, 
 patient Journal. I am being thrown at the 
 head of the man I love (Oh, Dick, under my 
 breath hear me say how I love you !) upon their 
 wicked and revolting theory about marriage. 
 I am to trade upon the weakness of men ; 
 I am to bring him to my feet ; I am to allure, 
 to call him on, to snare him why not say it ? 
 I am to make love to him ; I who love him, I 
 who would die ten deaths rather than that he 
 should know it. Oh, is it likely ? 
 
 October 13. Dick is just a little younger than 
 I am, perhaps a year. We went to the village 
 
 87 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 school together long ago. We were in the same 
 class. He used to bring me apples; we ate 
 them together straight on through the season, 
 from the blossom to the Baldwin. And then 
 there was the strawberry apple, which was good 
 too, with its pretty streaks of red through the 
 centre. Dick used to call them blushes, and to 
 make comparisons. He doesn t make compa 
 risons since he came back this time, and he is 
 otherwise much changed. I like the changes. 
 They only make him more utterly Dickily Dick. 
 Well, Journal, you would like him too if you 
 could see him. 
 
 What is he like 1 What is any young girl s 
 dream like ? What is the love of a youthful spin 
 ster like ? Like the nicest thing there is. Dick is 
 a man, you know. That s it. Except my father, 
 he is the only quite man I know. There are male 
 beings and men. He was a man even as a boy, 
 when he fought Tommy Maeder for me, and 
 charged a snowballing mob of boys in my de 
 fence, single-handed. I liked him then. He 
 88 
 
Common Story 
 
 knows that ; he believes I still like him. I don t ; 
 but he will never know the difference. Mamma 
 and Aunt Caroline and the girls have arranged 
 all that. Every time I meet him I say to myself : 
 " I will conquer this feeling I will. I will be 
 natural with him. I will be myself." And every 
 time it is the same old story. I am not myself ; 
 I am not any one at all. He doesn t recognise 
 me. I can see it. Why should he ? I don t 
 recognise myself. I am like a person who longs 
 to shout, and can only produce dumb sounds. 
 All the natural outflow of my nature there 
 really used to be one seems dammed up the 
 moment we meet now. I am baffled. I almost 
 think I used to have a sort of charm for him 
 once ; and if I ever had, it is there still 
 perhaps. But it might as well not be. It will 
 never reach him ; the wires are down. It all 
 appears so strange that it somehow seems at 
 times as though it could not concern me. At 
 these times it seems another girl s story the 
 story of a girl not less cruelly helpless at which 
 
 89 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 I look on sadly. Ah, I ve listened to other girls 
 so long ! 
 
 I shake mother ; but what good does that 
 do? It s a feeling. You can t shake a feeling. 
 It sounds like a simple thing to say to these 
 eager, urgent, watchful girls, who come to see 
 me every morning, and talk of nothing else. 
 " It s not urging I need. What I need is his 
 love, and you are making it impossible." But 
 the only simple thing about it is its brevity. I 
 could never say it, of course, and if I could they 
 wouldn t understand. Didn t I engage them 
 and marry them? Don t I know their im 
 possible ideas about marriage ? the ideas com 
 mon among women, I mean ? And my mother s 
 ideas yes, even my own dear mother s are 
 the same. In a way, I bear it better from her. 
 As I said, her marriage has been a success. 
 The results of the marriages of the others make 
 advice from them an impertinence. I have 
 learned that it isn t, though ; it is simply the 
 married woman s view of marriage, which is 
 90 
 
Common Story 
 
 one and the same the world over. They mean 
 it for my good they always make that plain 
 when they pluck at me in private and throw 
 me at his head in public ; and that they 
 are killing me, instead, is just what I can t tell 
 them. 
 
 They treat us as if we were engaged. I 
 believe they come to the house when they 
 know Dick is coming, in order to go away on 
 his arrival and leave us tete-a-tete. They nod 
 kindly to me as they make their adieus on 
 these occasions, and include us both in a look 
 of understanding. If we go out together and 
 on the whole it is less conscious, I have decided, 
 to accept Dick s invitations than to refuse them 
 we are isolated at once by common consent, 
 as if I weren t already cut off from him enough 
 by my own feelings ! Perhaps it is merely the 
 unskilled rural way of doing a thing which 
 might be carried off naturally enough in town ; 
 but it gives me the cold shivers. And do you 
 think I can speak a natural word to Dick that 
 
 91 
 
The .Average Woman 
 
 evening ? I don t know that I am more than 
 common shy (though I m not brazen either), but 
 I have my woman s senses. I can t help that. 
 And these things simply stupefy and paralyse 
 all our intercourse. 
 
 In a village it is easy to bring the entire 
 population to agreement upon questions of a 
 certain kind. Since Dick s arrival my mother, 
 my aunt, and the girls have unintentionally 
 made it as plain to every one as if they had 
 posted it at the town-hall, that they look upon 
 Dick Lester as a man whom I might capture 
 if I would. I put it grossly. They state it 
 more prettily to me ; but this is really what they 
 mean. They are accustomed to add that it is 
 my last chance again putting it more politely. 
 
 Last night at the Unitarian fair I helped 
 them out as " Rebecca at the Well," and from 
 behind my curtain had the satisfaction of hear 
 ing young Mrs. McGregor (the wife of our 
 doctor) say to Dick, " Isn t Miss Devius coming 
 this evening?" I said that they treat us as if 
 92 
 
Common Story 
 
 we were engaged. I should have said that 
 they treat us as if we were married. And 
 they think this the way to throw me into his 
 arms ! Of course be sees ; an owl must see. 
 Imagine our graceful, natural, and easy con 
 versation ! Ugh ! 
 
 October 17. I have just learned that Dick s 
 vacation expires a week from to-day. 
 
 October 18. Yes, of course he sees. My too 
 amiable mother made up a party yesterday to 
 go over to the lake. I declined to make one of 
 the carriage company. But mother insisted. 
 They put us together on the front seat, of 
 course, and made Dick drive. I believe 
 mother thinks Dick is the driver of his trolly 
 cars. He does drive very well, because he 
 does everything well, and on this occasion he 
 gave his whole mind to it. I saw he had 
 begun to feel my inexplicable conduct ; but he 
 said nothing then, and I could say nothing. I 
 don t think we exchanged fifty words on the way 
 to Lake Mesowree. 
 
 93 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 After luncheon on the shore it s really a 
 beautiful lake, hemmed in by the most gor 
 geous old hills the company divided into row 
 ing parties. You can imagine how they arranged 
 it for Dick and me. He pulled for a mile or 
 two in a silence which I made a number of 
 efforts to break. But I could not force myself 
 to speak. It has come to that. I can no longer 
 so much as break a silence with this man whom 
 I love, and whose reading of me I dread in every 
 nerve. How he must wonder ! But I am help 
 less. Stiff, formal, lifeless that is what all our 
 talk has become. It s a blight. I can do 
 nothing with it. Two years ago, when he had 
 been three years in the West, and came home 
 on his first vacation, it was all so different. We 
 met then on the sure footing of our childish 
 friendship ; there was the common liking to 
 which we could both trust, and the common 
 understanding. That is gone now, and we have 
 nothing in its place. We have merely drifted 
 into the doldrums. 
 94 
 
Common Story 
 
 If they had let us alone, I don t say that the 
 other would have come ; but things have their 
 natural way of blossoming, and love has come 
 before of such relations. I suppose I must have 
 loved him then that is, before he went away. 
 I was sure of it when he took my hand a little 
 more than two weeks ago, the night he came 
 back for this second time, and said in that deep, 
 good, honest voice of his, " Well, Ellen ? " Ah, 
 if they would but let me have him if they 
 would not snatch my love away, and cry it in 
 the streets, so that every natural act becomes a 
 shame to me, and I must seem to propose to 
 him with every civil word I give him well, 
 everything might be different ! 
 
 Oh, I say might ! I don t know. He might 
 care ; he might not. But I could give him the 
 chance my mother talks of in her awful ignorance 
 of her daughter. I mean I could be myself; I 
 could let things take their course. It is all that 
 a woman has that right : it does not seem a 
 great privilege, does it ? But I am denied it. 
 
 95 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 This is the sort of thoughts that keep racing 
 through my head when I am with Dick. I was 
 watching him pull silently on with big sweeps 
 of his strong arms, and I ought to have been 
 cha ting \\ith him, like the sensible and lively 
 person I really am, but I was thinking instead, 
 and thinking thoughts which never helped any 
 one to such conversation thoughts which I 
 hardly dared think in the same boat with him. 
 It always seems to me that he must see through 
 the thin partition between such thoughts nd 
 him, his eyes are so clear ; and something he 
 saw in my face seemed actually to make him 
 speak after a moment. I remember very well 
 that it was at that moment that I was making 
 my eyes seem to see him far, far away again, 
 and wondering how I should bear it. He was 
 drifting, drifting steadily out of my reach in my 
 fancy it was the boat, I suppose, that gave me 
 that idea and I was standing on a beach 
 stretching my helpless arms out to him, and 
 crying after him to come back ; and he was 
 9 6 
 
Common Story 
 
 willing, or not unwilling, but he too was help 
 less. He was being quietly, and steadily, and 
 pitilessly carried away from me. His question 
 brought me back to an actual lake, and to a 
 real Dick who was asking me ever so gently, 
 in a kind way which is like no one s else, why I 
 was so different lately. Of course I had known 
 this must come some time ; but between my 
 sad vision and my surprise at the suddenness of 
 the question, I was in a panic, and had to think 
 how to make myself appear quite calm before I 
 could answer his question. 
 
 I said the very idlest and stupidest thing I 
 could have said, naturally. 
 
 "Ami changed?" I asked. 
 
 Then it lay with him to show me how I was 
 changed ; and he didn t lack circumstances for 
 the accusation. It was impossible to answer 
 him ; I knew that from the start. But I really 
 think it would have been easier if he hadn t 
 been so generous through it all, so anxious not 
 to wound me, and so solicitous for our old 
 
 G 97 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 friendship. He would hate to lose it, he said ; 
 he hoped I felt the same about it. O Dick ! 
 Dick! 
 
 For that one moment I wanted to be a man. 
 In that one moment I would have given every 
 thing I possessed for the man s right to be 
 honest. 
 
 I don t know what I said to him. I was 
 thinking one thing and saying another, and 
 what I said doesn t count except for its effect, 
 which was to give him the impression that I 
 was changed, and was conscious of it, and that 
 there was a reason which I would rather not 
 tell him. I can see now that that impulse in 
 defence of modesty, which to women is like the 
 instinct of self-preservation, forced me to let 
 him believe that the change, if there was one, 
 was perhaps the dumb protest of a decent 
 woman against the intention he must perceive 
 in those about me. I saw that, whatever I had 
 intended he should believe and I can never be 
 sure now what it was this was what he did 
 98 
 
Common Story 
 
 finally arrive at. I saw it from the sympathy 
 and the respectful understanding implied by his 
 tone, his manner, everything. And as I sat 
 there, watching him row on and on, I grew 
 coldly, deadly sure that if there had ever been 
 a chance for me to fight my way back to our 
 old understanding an understanding which 
 now should include the new it was gone. 
 The half-truth he had got hold of was worse 
 than any whole error. For half-truths there are 
 no explanations. 
 
 Dick s glad, cordial manner a complete 
 change from the Dick of the drive over was 
 in itself a definite and kindly assurance that 
 no explanations were needed. If he could have 
 known how I longed to explain, and how 
 miserably unexplained I remained after he had 
 understood everything ! That friendly effect of 
 having understood everything was in all his 
 bearing towards me until we parted that night 
 in the cool darkness at my mother s door, and 
 there he confirmed it in his lingering and 
 
 99 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 speaking hand-clasp. We drew near in spirit 
 at that moment, and again, as in the boat in the 
 afternoon, I seemed to see our destinies taking 
 form. But this time I saw clearly that we 
 might be all in all to each other, that he could 
 love me, that he must love me, if we could 
 know each other s hearts. But what his hand 
 clasp was actually saying was that he under 
 stood and everything ! Good heavens ! 
 Everything ! 
 
 October 21. My mother has seen that we 
 have entered on a new phase. I think my be 
 haviour, as she always calls it when it is a 
 question of men, had begun to discourage even 
 her ; not in itself, but through its obvious effect 
 on Dick. But since Dick has understood he is so 
 different, and we are so different together, in 
 appearance, that mother has taken heart. She 
 sees the kindness for me in all his bearing, 
 which now no one could help seeing; what 
 she does not see is that she and the others 
 have made it impossible for me to assist at the 
 
A Common Story 
 
 change of that kindness to anything nearer, in 
 the way that all women assist at their love 
 affairs by merely consenting to them. If I was 
 incapable of a natural attitude with him before, 
 what do you suppose I am now ? If I could not 
 let him love me before, has it been made easier 
 for me? But mother, naturally, cannot see 
 this, and I certainly cannot tell her. So she 
 has been going over the whole matter with me 
 this morning again, making a last despairing 
 appeal. As if I could do for appeals what I 
 can t do for my own heart. 
 
 Yet I pity mother. Even if she doesn t under 
 stand, I pity her. Ah ! understand ? You and 
 I and our tears understand one another, don t 
 we, Journal ? 
 
 Dick comes daily now, and stays a long time, 
 and is infinitely, tirelessly, agonisingly kind. 
 Sometimes he is so kind that I feel as though I 
 must scream. I really can t keep it up much 
 longer. If he had not already set a day for 
 going, I believe I should beg him to do me the 
 
 ior 
 
The Jtverage Woman 
 
 final kindness the only one in his power and 
 go at once ! He would even do that for me. 
 He does like me ; we talk of each other s lives ; 
 we have such heart-searching talks about 
 everything but the only thing that matters ; we 
 find each other s thoughts and feelings intui 
 tively ; we get along. Why shouldn t we ? We 
 were made for each other, weren t we ? That we 
 are not going to carry out the arrangement 
 well, that s not our fault, is it ? At least it s not 
 mine, and I m sure it s not Dick s. I forgot to 
 say that I am quite, quite clear now that Dick 
 
 would have loved me 
 
 Octoler 24. He came to see me last. He 
 wanted me to be his last impression of home, 
 he said. It was a chilly morning, such as comes 
 up here in the mountains towards the last of 
 October. The leaves on the hill we see from 
 our front windows have all fallen ; they were 
 very gay three weeks ago when he came. The 
 Seckel pears are just ripe. He wouldn t come 
 in ; he held his hat in his hand as he came 
 1 02 
 
// Common Story 
 
 into our hallway for a moment. In his other 
 hand he carried a small hand-bag. 
 
 " So you re really going ? " I said. He had 
 said the night before that he would look in on 
 his way to the station, and all the morning I 
 had waited his coming, imagining just this 
 scene. But, now that he was here, it was this 
 that I found to say. 
 
 He looked into my eyes Dick s honest, 
 staunch look and said, " Yes ; it s been good 
 to be at home." 
 
 " But it s good to be going back to work, too," 
 I said. I did not find the courage for a look like 
 his ; my eyes halted at his chin. 
 
 " Of course ; work is always good. But the 
 best thing is old friends. These have been 
 happy times, Ellen, seeing you again. I sha n t 
 soon forget our talks. I shall have time to re 
 member them in Missouri." 
 
 "But you have the new friends there?" I 
 wanted to hear him say it, and of course he said 
 it, as he looked into my eyes and took my hand. 
 
 103 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 " They re not like the old," he said. 
 
 "No? "asked I. 
 
 " No. Good-bye." He took my hand in a 
 wonderful, strong, warm, hearty grasp, and re 
 leased it almost instantly. 
 
 " Good-bye," I said, following him to the door 
 as he put on his hat. 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 At the gate he kissed his hand to me. 
 
 104 
 
CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN!" 
 
 I. 
 
 ERNA was not allowed to see the 
 papers until the tenth day. Then 
 she read the story of his death 
 in his own paper. Terror crept 
 over her as she read, and she 
 cast the Telepheme from her and buried her 
 weak head in her hands, living over the an 
 guish of that moment. She shuddered again 
 with the hideous crash of the collision, and 
 went whirling in his embrace down, down 
 into a dizzy blackness, and then lay at the 
 bottom of the Canon, the wreck piled on top of 
 them and round about them ; the air loud with 
 the cowing noise of escaping steam, and wild 
 with the shrieks of the dying. His poor white 
 face stared up at her from under the wreckage 
 
 105 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 yearning with love, horrid with pain, and his 
 tortured lips framed the words which imposed a 
 sacred duty on her future : 
 
 " Keep up the fight ! " 
 
 Aleck had left her everything he owned, they 
 told her, and she knew why. It was not only 
 as his promised wife, it was as the inheritor of 
 his work; and a week later, when she was 
 carried downstairs for the first time, she sent 
 for Rignold, who had got out two issues of the 
 Telepheme since the death of his chief, with no 
 help but Barton s, and asked him to put her 
 name at the head of the paper. For the next 
 week s issue Rignold set up this legend to 
 appear above the editorial notices : 
 
 "Hbe IRustler Gelepbeme." 
 
 BY 
 
 BERNA MINTERMAN DEXTER. 
 FOUNDED BY ALEXANDER CHESTER. 
 
 Rignold turned his rules around the concluding 
 line, making an oblong frame of black for it. 
 106 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 In making this explanation, we should not feel 
 honest toward our readers in attempting to con 
 ceal a fact, no doubt already known to many of 
 them, viz., the relation subsisting between the 
 late and the present editor. It is due to all 
 concerned that we should mention this, as it is 
 because the present writer feels herself to be, in 
 a true sense, the widow of the late editor, that 
 she presumes to attempt the undertaking of 
 carrying on a paper which, in his hands, has 
 been such a power for good in this community. 
 
 This difficult post, assumed most reluctantly 
 in response to a dying wish, we need not say is 
 not taken up with any feeling of competence to 
 the labours before us, nor with any feeling but 
 that many others would fill the position more 
 adequately and wisely. We are led to take 
 hold of this work, where it was left off by Alex 
 ander Chester, solely out of respect for his 
 memory, and with the belief that one who was 
 privileged to know the hopes and plans for this 
 town and this community which beat in that 
 108 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 great heart, may be able to carry them forward 
 feebly indeed, but with a sympathy and under 
 standing impossible to any stranger. The 
 present editor, in printing her name at the head 
 of this column, consecrates her life to the work 
 which fell a fortnight since from the palsied 
 hand of Alexander Chester. All Rustler knows 
 what that work was. The entire future of the 
 town is bound up in it. We must have the 
 railroad. The Three C s must come our way. 
 Into this cause Alexander Chester poured his 
 life-energy ; to it he gave all he was, or hoped 
 to be. As the officer on the field of battle 
 snatches up the weapon that has fallen from his 
 dead captain, and presses on, so we take up 
 this work, with malice toward none, and with 
 chanty for all ; but presenting a solid front to 
 the common enemy, resolved that Topaz shall 
 not be allowed to accrete to herself this new 
 source of wealth and strength. It is a life and 
 death struggle : we know it, and Topaz knows 
 it. United and unanimous as we are, we have 
 
 109 
 
"The Average Woman 
 
 only to continue to assert our rights and to 
 make the advantages of Rustler duly known, to 
 secure the Colorado and California Central 
 without a doubt. 
 
 In conclusion, the writer wishes to thank per 
 sonally all the late editor s fellow-townsmen for 
 the generous tribute of sorrow and regret at his 
 death manifested by one and all. She accepts 
 it not merely as a tribute to a noble man, but to 
 the purpose which he had most nearly at heart. 
 The value and importance of that purpose to 
 Rustler could not be more clearly shown than 
 by these unsolicited tributes. They warm the 
 heart of his successor in this editorial chair, and 
 strengthen us for the work before us. That it 
 may be worthy, in however humble a degree, of 
 the man who has gone from us, and of the town 
 of Rustler, is the hope of 
 
 BERN A MINTERMAN DEXTER. 
 
 The " copy" from which this was to be set up 
 had reached Rignold stained with the tears it 
 
tl Captain, ?ny Captain ! " 
 
 had cost her. He read it through with a queer 
 feeling in his throat, then closed and locked the 
 office (Barton, the foreman, and the boy had 
 gone for the night), and lighting the lamp over 
 his case, set it himself. The careful, girlish 
 manuscript, traced among the tell-tale blurs, on 
 little sheets of pink note-paper, impressed at 
 the top with a twisted " B. M. D." in gold, was 
 not a sight for other eyes than his. 
 
 The sense of what was and what was not 
 good newspaper work had rubbed off on Rig- 
 nold in eight years service as one of the 
 compositors, and five years as the foreman, of a 
 New York evening paper. The weekly he had 
 come West to establish had failed ; but that was 
 because he had chosen the wrong town. Drift 
 ing back eastward by way of Colorado, he had 
 been content to accept Chester s offer, and on 
 another man s paper had displayed the qualities 
 which, if the mines of his Idaho town had 
 panned out richer, would have made his own 
 journal successful. Chester and he had become 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 friends, and had remained so, though it was 
 Chester who finally won Berna ; and it was 
 not the smallest testimony to the love that 
 dared warm to life again with the tragic death 
 of his friend, that, denying himself the habit of 
 thought bred by his newspaper experience, 
 Rignold now set Berna s article without an 
 attempt to edit it, and without so much as a 
 preliminary mechanical motion toward the 
 waste-basket. To know so well what his old 
 managing editor would have done with the 
 poor girl s editorial did not make it less 
 pathetic. The thought caused her rather to seem 
 more helpless and more dependent on him, and 
 gave him reason to notify to himself in plain 
 terms that the Telepheme was to be made a 
 success under its new editor, if it cost a leg. 
 As his sensitive printer s hand, with its five 
 eyes, wove back and forth over the case, he 
 smiled fondly to himself at the little literary 
 graces of her writing, as he often did at the 
 little literary frills of her talk. They were so 
 
 112 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! 
 
 much part of all his knowledge and thought of 
 her that he could not have dissociated them 
 from her without doing violence to the sanctuary 
 in which he kept his love. Her faults were as 
 dear to him as her virtues dearer perhaps, 
 because more accessible than the lofty qualities 
 for which he adored her. He couldn t smile 
 affectionately upon her virtues ; her faults 
 seemed warm and near. 
 
 Nevertheless, he declared to himself, as he 
 stooped beneath the lamp that gathered its 
 rays under the scorched green shade to throw 
 them on Berna s pages, that he was a fool a 
 chartered, twice-dyed and double-branded 
 idiot to allow himself to have any business 
 dealings with a woman. Looking out through 
 the window of the Disbrow Block, from which 
 the Telepheme regarded the town whose life it 
 recorded, he wondered how they would take it 
 the people of Rustler, going in and out, and 
 to and fro, below there. The town, engaged 
 under an electric noonday in the feverish play 
 
 H 113 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 which, in mining camps, is so much more active 
 to the outward eye than the day s business, 
 would make up its mind precious quick ; Rig- 
 nold only wondered which way. Would their 
 sympathy for her situation, their liking for the 
 grit with which she faced it, their reverence for 
 womanhood, carry her through ? Would these 
 excellent sentiments weigh against more vital 
 considerations when it came to the scratch? 
 Would they finally feel that they could afford 
 them? The Telepheme was of cou/se the 
 fighting organ through which the railroad was 
 to be brought to Rustler, if it was brought at 
 all. Would they trust the fight to a woman ? 
 Rignold sighed his heavy doubt to the dumb 
 types in their boxes, and went on setting 
 Berna s exotic editorial, with its singular mix 
 ture of easily-come-by newspaperese and far- 
 brought literosity, and its still stranger mingling 
 of shrewd reasoning and high-flown inconclu- 
 siveness. 
 
 When he had pulled the first copy of that 
 114 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 vveek s paper on the old Washington hand-press 
 which Chester had originally brought from the 
 East with him, he sent it down to Berna, who 
 lived alone with her mother near the end of the 
 main street of Rustler. The house was an un- 
 clapboarded two-storey frame structure, painted 
 a reddish brown, not unlike the colour of the 
 rocks jutting from the mountain that hung 
 above the roof. If you think of a giant pair of 
 pincers standing upright and wide open, you 
 will know how Rustler lay ; Big Chief sprang 
 into the air on one side, Ticknor s Mountain 
 on the other : between was a narrow crotch, 
 and deep down in it cuddled the town. The 
 greater part of the inhabitants lived on Berna s 
 street ; but the miners cabins, built beside the 
 shafts of a hundred mines, carried a steadily 
 rising overflow up the flanks of the two moun 
 tains. The house in which Berna lived was 
 set close to the street, six feet from the board 
 side-walk that ran in front of her pink palings. 
 Within this narrow space she had tried, before 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 Aleck s death, to make a bed of pansies grow 
 with the help of water from the irrigating ditch 
 that raced by the house on its way to the main 
 ditch, supplying Topaz with its water ; but the 
 flowers had withered since the accident. As 
 she lay on the sofa in her parlour, torn alter 
 nately by her grief for Aleck and by her own 
 pain, she heard, after each shift at the mines, 
 the clumping noise of miners boots go by 
 on their way to or from the Elegant Booze, 
 the Honeycomb, and Uncle Dick s establish 
 ments where one got two glasses of beer for a 
 quarter and a good deal of faro for a ten-dollar 
 bill. 
 
 The injury which she had sustained in the 
 railway accident left her good hours, but oftener 
 put her to the torture; and when her mother 
 handed her her first issue, she was unable to do 
 more for the first hour than gaze steadfastly 
 at the heading. The sight of the familiar title 
 made the thought of Aleck overwhelmingly 
 poignant ; tears welled into her eyes as she 
 116 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 stared at the folded white sheet lying outside the 
 blue Navajo blanket that covered her, and she 
 turned at last from the sight in misery. 
 
 She was nevertheless helpless against the 
 literary pleasure that tingled through her when 
 she finally took courage to read over her 
 editorial, though she was ashamed of it. It was 
 not for the excitement and interest of writing 
 that she had determined to keep the Telephemc 
 alive, and to shape it into a force which should 
 carry on Aleck s work, as a son carries on the 
 work of his father. It was as Aleck s child that 
 she was to watch over it. She reproached her 
 self, but finally forgave herself, with the thought 
 that it was through his own pleasure in his work 
 that Aleck had succeeded, and that she must 
 find a like joy in it, if she was to be in any sort 
 worthy to follow in his steps. She did not need 
 to stimulate a happiness in writing ; she liked 
 it ; until she had become engaged to Aleck it 
 had been her ambition to be a " magazinist." 
 Berna was ne of the half-turned-out women 
 
 117 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 who begin to be common in the West. Her 
 mind had been educated ; but her intelligence, 
 her taste, her perceptions, remained to all in 
 tents as undeveloped as a Kaffir s. She was 
 charming ; but if she had been as cultured as 
 she supposed herself, it would have been im 
 possible to associate with her. Her charm lay in 
 her simple-mindedness, in her unselfishness and 
 kindness and devotedness and pluck ; but what 
 she really liked in herself was her complicated- 
 ness. Some of this she had endeavoured to ex 
 plain through the Iowa magazine which printed 
 her earliest contributions to the press, just after 
 she had " been graduated," as she called it, from 
 Miss Drewett s New England seminary. The 
 contributors to this magazine were almost 
 all women, and were, without exception, com 
 plicated. 
 
 Her mother came in as she laid down the 
 paper to ask if she would see Ben. Berna drew 
 her shawl about her, and nodded, brightening 
 with pleasure. The room in which she lay was 
 
 118 
 
" Captain, my Captain / 
 
 stiffly furnished in a stamped red plush, but a 
 comfortable old sofa, covered with chintz, had 
 been moved in for her out of the dining-room. 
 On the walls were two cheap paintings of the 
 Yosemite, Berna s graduating diploma under 
 glass, and a photograph (framed in a deep black 
 walnut moulding) of her father in the uniform of 
 a lieutenant of volunteers : the artist had picked 
 out the epaulettes in gold and touched the 
 cheeks with carmine. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter asked if she didn t think it would 
 fret her to see Ben. 
 
 "You know the doctor said " 
 
 " Yes ; I know, mother. But if I am to carry 
 on this work I mustn t mind the doctor. Perhaps 
 it will kill me ; but if it does, it must. I shall 
 only give in my report to Aleck a little sooner." 
 
 The tears, against which she had not yet 
 learned to school herself, once more stood in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Gracious, child ! I don t believe Aleck ever 
 in this world expected you to go on with the 
 
 119 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 Telepheme. How could he think a woman could 
 do such a thing?" 
 
 " I don t know, mother. But he trusted me to 
 do it, and I can t be false to him." 
 
 "Well, you ll kill yourself," she repeated, 
 weakly. " Why can t you let Ben do it ? He s 
 willing and able." 
 
 " How can you suggest such a thing, mother ? 
 You know he s a stranger in the town." 
 
 " I don t care if he is. He knows printing." 
 
 " Of course. But he can t feel as we Rustler- 
 ites do, mother. You know that. The railroad 
 is nothing to him." 
 
 " No ; I suppose not," she owned, downcast. 
 But in a moment she added, with more spirit, 
 " There s lots of folks in the town that it s plenty 
 to, though. Some of em would be glad to edit 
 the paper if you d let em." 
 
 " They wouldn t know how." 
 
 " Well, do you know how ? " 
 
 " No," answered Berna, shaking her hair loose 
 from her face, raising her head, and drawing in 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! 
 
 a deep inspiration ; " but I ve heard Aleck 
 talk!" 
 
 " Oh dear ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dexter, rising 
 with the feebleness of rheumatic limbs, wearied 
 with a life s hard work, " I suppose we ve got to 
 bear it. But I do hope you ll be careful of your 
 self, and not overdo. I wish I wasn t so afraid 
 you d lose the little money your father left us in 
 the Sons of Honour/" she added, pathetically. 
 
 " But I sha n t, mother. I ve explained that 
 so often. I shall only use Aleck s money. He 
 left me enough to keep up the paper with. 
 When I ve sold the Lady Berna mine I shall 
 have plenty." 
 
 " I know you say that, Berna, and you think 
 you mean it. But when once you get started 
 you can t tell what you ll do. Look at Aleck ! 
 I m sure he would have pawned the coat off his 
 back any minute for the sake of his paper ; and 
 I don t believe you ll do any less for his sake 
 when the time comes." 
 
 "Yes, mother," said Berna, soothingly, laying 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 a hand in her mother s work-roughened palm. 
 " Show Ben in ; won t you, please ? " 
 
 Rignold appeared at the door in a moment, 
 halting on the threshold with his slouch hat in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Come in, Ben ! " Her voice was still feeble. 
 Mrs. Dexter pushed him gently in from behind. 
 " I m so glad to see you," Berna continued, put 
 ting forth her wasted hand from under the shawl. 
 " Be seated, won t you ? " 
 
 But Rignold did not immediately seat himself. 
 He stood looking down into her face with a 
 tender studiousness. The high colour, which in 
 health shone brilliantly against the creamy pallor 
 and childlike smoothness of skin that often goes 
 with auburn hair and blue eyes, had gone in her 
 illness ; her usual roundness of figure and 
 plumpness of cheek were gone also. What 
 remained was the bright vitality of her deep 
 blue eyes, and the extraordinary beauty of her 
 abundant hair, which she was wearing coiled in 
 thick, burnished masses of reddish-brown or 
 
"Captain, my Captain/ 1 
 
 brownish-red, as one chose, or as the light 
 served. 
 
 The man standing above her was tall and 
 spare, with a fine figure, a little stoop-shouldered 
 from bending at the case, but erect when he 
 stood. He carried his large round head well 
 back ; his dark hair curled a little in receding 
 from a high, clear brow ; his brown eyes en 
 countered the observer with a singularly honest, 
 straightforward look. He shook hands as if he 
 meant it. 
 
 " I didn t feel as if I ought to come. But I 
 didn t see my way to not coming," he said. 
 
 " I see I must tell you one thing right away, 
 Ben. You re not to think of me as a woman." 
 A distressed whimsical smile appeared on his 
 face, which she answered with, " I mean, I m 
 an editor like anybody else. There are plenty 
 wiser and more adequate, as I said in my editorial. 
 I shall be incompetent in a good many ways at 
 first, and I m sure to do foolish things. But 
 there are men in the profession who began with 
 
 123 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 less knowledge than I have now, and who have 
 succeeded ; and there are others who began 
 with more knowledge, and have failed. I ask 
 no favours that were not accorded to them. I 
 only wish to be judged fundamentally on the 
 same basis." 
 
 " I don t feel any call to judge you, Berna," 
 answered Rignold, with a smile, as he took a 
 chair. " But if I did, I don t see but I d have to 
 judge you as a woman. It s all right to say 
 think of you as a man. But you ain t a man, 
 and that s just what I like about you, and what 
 makes me want to help you, if I can. You are 
 a woman, but you ve got a man s sand." 
 
 " Don t say that, Ben. I haven t got 
 Aleck s." 
 
 "See here! Do you think Aleck, or any 
 other man, for the matter of that, would have 
 taken up a job like this two weeks after he d lost 
 the only thing that made life worth while to him, 
 and taken it up without turning a hair and with 
 out ruffling a feather to call attention to it ? If 
 124 
 
" Captain, my Captain / " 
 
 you do, you size men up for a better breed than 
 they are." 
 
 A groan burst from her, and she covered her 
 face quickly with her hands. 
 
 " I am a fool to talk like that ! " he cried. 
 
 "No, no! It does me good. You under 
 stand. Every one won t, perhaps. They won t 
 think it decent the ladies particularly. They 
 will say I don t mourn truly for Aleck ; as if this 
 weren t the best and only mourning for him ! 
 As if it weren t just because I care so much that 
 I can t justify myself in wasting his time in tears ! 
 That s the way I feel, Ben that husband and 
 wife have a double time in this world ; and be 
 cause both times belong to them and to God 
 while they both live, it s the happiness and the 
 sacred responsibility of the survivor to answer 
 for both times when one time is is frus 
 trated." 
 
 Rignold, resolved as he was to keep his wish 
 to help her disinterested and separate from his 
 love for her, could not help wincing at this, 
 
 125 
 
The Jtverage Woman 
 
 while he smiled at her words. He saw, as if 
 looking into the future through a rift in the 
 curtain, how they would be constantly running 
 up against this spectral third presence in their 
 intercourse, and how he should be "stumped" 
 by it perhaps for always. It was a presence 
 that he had loved in life ; but the presence of 
 the man she had preferred to him, while it was 
 still open to her to choose, and the presence of 
 the man who he must believe was to be per 
 manently dear to her. He wanted to cry out 
 against this folly of devotion ; he wanted to say 
 how crazy it seemed to him this duty to the 
 dead, this conscience about a ghost. Perhaps 
 he might have said it, if he hadn t guessed in 
 time that what he took for moral indignation 
 was probably a good deal more like simple 
 jealousy. With his accustomed squareness, he 
 said to himself that if he had gone the way of 
 Aleck he should have hungered for just such 
 devotion in his place. Perhaps it wouldn t last 
 for ever, and if it did, it was still good to look 
 126 
 
" Captain, my Captain > 
 
 f" 
 
 forward to the prospect of working by her side, 
 helping her where he could. 
 
 He spoke the sympathetic words that came to 
 him in answer to her declaration ; and then he 
 said : " I suppose you ve figured out how you re 
 going to work this thing lying down ? " 
 
 II. 
 
 BERNA S first issue was published on the fol 
 lowing morning, and by afternoon fifteen new 
 subscribers had handed in their names at the 
 office of the Telephemc. One or two enthusiasts 
 even paid up long overdue subscriptions, and 
 ordered the paper sent them for the following 
 year ; and Mrs. Dexter was kept busy informing 
 the ladies who called on Berna that as yet she 
 could see nobody. The town was in a state of 
 emotional sympathy which it would gladly have 
 expended in taking the horses from Berna s 
 carriage, and dragging it through the streets, if 
 
 127 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 the plucky young editor had owned the carriage 
 or the horses. 
 
 Rustler still trembled with the memory of the 
 accident ; it had scarcely buried its dead, and 
 the desolation of the bereaved families echoed in 
 its one mountain street. Chester had enjoyed 
 with the inhabitants the repute of a vigorous 
 personality, offering its strength unreckoningly 
 to the town s ambition ; and Berna, who had 
 been less popular hitherto in the town on her 
 own account, had, before the publication of her 
 first issue, gained, through the circumstances 
 surrounding her lover s death in her presence on 
 the day before their wedding-day, an honour 
 beyond anything that Chester had known. It 
 was only necessary that she should rise from her 
 bed of pain, and, in the midst of her grief, take 
 up Aleck s work, to constitute her a heroine. 
 Rignold had been sure that they would like her 
 " sand," but he had not reckoned sufficiently, he 
 found, with their pleasure in piecing a romance 
 out of any event which concerns a woman 
 128 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 publicly. Her devotion to Aleck s memory, 
 which to the women of the place seemed (against 
 Berna s expectation) "just splendid," won the 
 profane praise of the men at the Elegant Booze 
 and on the street comers, not merely as showing 
 the right stuff, but as showing it on behalf of the 
 town. They rolled her name relishingly on their 
 tongues in their perception of this final right- 
 ness ; like the Greeks, it warmed their loyal 
 pride to know that even their women were 
 patriotic. They saw Berna looking well in a 
 newspaper article on Rustler ; and this created 
 her part of the town s "material," part of its 
 capital for booming purposes. 
 
 Berna was made very happy by her success, 
 and slept that night the sleep of those widowed 
 queens who have had to doubt for the first 
 tremulous hour of sovereignty the allegiance of 
 subjects that mourn a king. Aleck s path lay 
 freely before her ; she had only to tread it 
 worthily. The town where she had first known 
 Aleck and where they had made a grave for him, 
 i 129 
 
The ^Average 
 
 the town which he had loved and served, the 
 town for which he had been ready to shed 
 his blood and for which she was now so willing 
 to shed hers, the town that he had left to her 
 care the town had accepted her. But she put 
 aside merely agreeable thoughts, and day-dreams 
 of what she would yet do for Rustler, with the 
 morning, and settled down soberly to her work. 
 It was very well for every one to wish her luck, 
 but Berna had a hard-headed little theory that 
 she must make her own luck, and she went about 
 the preparation of a rousing railroad editorial in 
 Aleck s old manner. 
 
 The system on which the paper was to be 
 conducted had been fixed upon between her and 
 Rignold at their conference. Its policy was, of 
 course, to be guided wholly by her ; she was to 
 take complete charge ; all the leading editorials 
 were to be hers, and she was to supervise the 
 news columns. Rignold was to look after 
 the "locals," write the minor editorials, find 
 advertisements, superintend the job printing and 
 130 
 
" Captain, my Captain / " 
 
 manage the business department, and in general 
 represent her to Rustler. Berna had certainly 
 cut out a large undertaking for herself; but in 
 her ignorance she had let Rignold load upon his 
 wiling shoulders an heroic proportion of the work. 
 He could not tell her how glad he would have 
 been to double his stint for her sake ; but he 
 could go forth to scour the town for emotional 
 advertising ; and (not to let Berna s boom pass 
 without immediate practical result) he did this 
 on the morning her first number was published. 
 Sensible of the vicissitudes to which such 
 enthusiasms as Rustler s for Berna are liable, 
 he declined to accept any advertisement, under 
 present conditions, for a shorter period than one 
 year ; if they wanted a newspaper they must 
 expect to pay for it, he said ; and if they really 
 believed in the town, and had the courage of 
 their convictions, they would probably pay for 
 it in advance. His theory did not meet with 
 universal acceptance, but it met with nearly six 
 columns worth of acceptance, and this, as he 
 
The t/fverae Woman 
 
 explained in the next issue under the heading of 
 " Our Boom," struck him as handsome. He let 
 slip, in the course of this brief editorial, enough 
 restrained self-gratulation on behalf of the Tele- 
 pheme, and enough general good feeling and 
 modest sense that Topaz would never have toed 
 the mark so squarely in a similar emergency, to 
 have filled one side of the paper, diluted as an 
 inferior man would have diluted it. Rignold 
 wrote carefully, with the feeling constantly upon 
 him that he was working for larger issues than 
 the success of Rustler or the Telepheme. He 
 found Berna in the point of his pencil when he 
 would muse on his next sentence, and the white 
 paper was covered with her name before he 
 wrote a line upon it. 
 
 He had not needed to inquire his fate in the 
 time before Berna s engagement to Aleck ; and 
 he withheld himself now with a sensitive scrupu 
 lousness from so much as the semblance of love- 
 making. He felt in the weeks that followed 
 that he must not allow himself to think directly 
 133 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 of her yet ; but the habit of thinking of her in 
 directly lapsed at times into the most straightway 
 regard of her. At these seasons, however, her 
 own attitude corrected his unconsciously; for 
 the profound preoccupation of her whole being 
 with Aleck s memory must have baffled the 
 warmest lover. Rignold s love for her, in fact, 
 made him feel almost foolish in her presence, 
 as if he were trying to catch the attention of an 
 oblivious animal or child. Her detachment 
 from the ordinary affairs of the world sometimes 
 frightened him ; she was eating her heart out 
 for her lost lover, and the only sign of it that 
 she allowed any one to see was her joy in events 
 which would have given him joy. It was, of 
 course, chiefly in connection with the Telepheme 
 that Rignold witnessed the daily expressions of 
 her simple faithfulness to his dead friend ; and 
 it was in work for the Telepheme that is, in 
 work for her that he tried to forget her devo 
 tion to the spirit of another man, or tried to 
 wish that she might never lose it. He could 
 
The .-Average Woman 
 
 like it, as he liked everything about her, though 
 it made him miserable and impatient. 
 
 It was perhaps his good fortune that, though 
 Berna made it difficult for him to manage him 
 self, this soon became, on the whole, rather 
 simpler than to manage her paper. His young 
 editor s word was "development," and it was 
 pathetic to him to see how she pursued this idea 
 of Aleck s, as she did other ideas derived from 
 the same source, without the strength or the 
 balancing sense and shrewdness which had 
 enabled Aleck to give such words actuality. 
 She became, as the months went by, and as she 
 gained a measure of wisdom from her mistakes 
 and successes, by no means a hopelessly bad 
 newspaper man (as she liked to call herself). 
 She had enterprise and assiduity, and the wish 
 to print the news ; and her still stronger wish to 
 make her " diction elegant " she did not allow 
 to interfere seriously with these good qualities. 
 Her real trouble, from a financial point of view, 
 was that she wished to print more news than 
 
" Captain, my Captain / " 
 
 the paper could afford, or than Rustler could 
 pay for. Having imbibed from Aleck his 
 belief that the best was none too good for 
 Rustler, she endeavoured to give the Telepheme 
 the catholic tone of the weekly edition of a New 
 York daily. Refusing Rignold s earnest sug 
 gestion, that they rely upon a patent outside, or 
 at worst upon plate matter, for the better part 
 of their miscellany, she spent the long hours on 
 her sofa, scissors in hand, culling interesting 
 items of news, and what she had learned from 
 Rignold to call " good stories," from her ex 
 changes guided in her selection, it is to be 
 feared, by the taste of Miss Drewett s rather 
 than by a vision of what Rustler would probably 
 like to read. Scandals, hangings, prize fights, 
 murders, and all other items of a too vivid 
 interest she excluded ; and the Telepheme 
 became that ensample of purity and social 
 health for which we all pretend we are longing. 
 One whose reading was confined to Berna s 
 paper might conveniently have imagined him- 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 self resident in a good and harmless world, 
 in which was no evil, save that engendered by 
 Topaz. She tried to atone for this, which 
 Rignold taught her to regard, from the counting- 
 house standpoint, as the deadly sin, by engaging 
 a weekly telegraphic letter from Denver. It 
 was sent on the morning the paper went to 
 press, and contained all the latest news. 
 
 About this they had many discussions, 
 wherein she met Rignold s objections with 
 arguments in which Aleck s slangy wisdom often 
 mingled curiously with her graduating essay 
 view of life, and her knotted pink-ribbon 
 manner of expression. His suggestion that the 
 Denver letter constituted an expense not justi 
 fiable by a circulation three times their own, 
 and (as it didn t bring them a subscriber) that 
 it involved a loss rather larger than the other 
 loss it was designed to set right, she met with 
 something like impatience. 
 
 " Do you mean to advise me," she asked, " to 
 do the little thing rather than the great one? 
 136 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 Do you really wish me to run a paper on any 
 thing but large ideas ? Do you expect me to 
 give our readers only what they already want 
 and have learned to expect? The man who 
 attempts to be merely up to the day in the 
 West is going to get left ; he must be up to 
 to-morrow ! " 
 
 As the town looked on at these developments 
 in the Telephone^ its first sentiment of en 
 thusiasm began to take a very faint chill of 
 bewilderment. The catholic tone by which 
 Berna set such store was indifferent to its 
 citizens, and they could have got along with less 
 diction if they could have been furnished with 
 more sensation. They fortunately continued, 
 however, to admire and rejoice in her railroad 
 editorials. Heaven knows how she wrote them ! 
 Her own theory was that she didn t ; she 
 ascribed their authorship reverently to the in 
 spiration of Aleck. It was true, at all events, 
 that he never seemed so near to her as when 
 she was penning them ; and if for no other 
 
 137 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 reason than this, the conduct of the Telepheme 
 would have given her great happiness. Her 
 glib denunciations of Topaz, her ready magnifi 
 cations of Rustler, her solid reasoning about 
 the advantages which the Three C s would 
 enjoy if it should finally come where the 
 Telepheme was edited, had a man s cogency 
 and fire ; the thin substance of her cleverness 
 seemed penetrated as she wrote on the theme of 
 the railroad by a kind of trance horse-sense. 
 On the streets of Rustler these editorials were 
 sometimes called "corkers," and sometimes 
 " howlers " ; but this did not represent a divided 
 mind. They were, in a way, more effective 
 than any similar work by a man would have 
 been, for no man could have been so impudent 
 or so ferocious. The seal of their success was 
 at length set upon them when the other papers 
 of the State began copying them. Berna of 
 course copied back thier praise into the 
 Telepheme, and the town simply licked its 
 chops. To have given the quarrel between 
 138 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 Rustler and Topaz the dignity of a State fight, 
 at which the whole population of Colorado 
 might be fancied to be looking on, was a service 
 for which it was felt Berna deserved well (if 
 everybody could know the real merits of the 
 case, no one could doubt which way the railroad 
 would go) ; and she began at once to retrieve 
 some of her lost popularity. 
 
 When, therefore, beginning at the end of a 
 few months to sit up a little every day, though 
 still not strong enough to go out, she broached 
 the plan of re-organising her old "Culture 
 Club," she met with such a response from the 
 ladies as she had not dared expect. 
 
 The club had gained but a mild success 
 before the illness of its founder ; the subjects 
 were felt by the ladies to be rather stiff; but 
 even the new members now took kindly to the 
 young editor s proposal of papers on " The 
 Heroines of George Eliot," and " England s 
 Early Mythic History," and to a suggested 
 conversation, .to be led by Berna, en "The 
 
The <Average Woman 
 
 Relation of Men and Women in Homer." 
 Perhaps, however, Berna s announcement of a 
 kind of learned game to be played at their 
 meetings in off-weeks, in the evenings, when 
 the men came late for oysters, proved more 
 distinctly popular. Rignold, observing these 
 things, and looking on the success of the club 
 as a sign, began to hope that, in spite of a 
 mad system of expenditure, the paper might 
 pull through without borrowing capital beyond 
 the $2000 obtained from the sale of the " Lady 
 Berna." 
 
 These were happy days of prosperity and 
 power and influence for Berna ; the circulation 
 of the Telepheme increased, and the town itself 
 began to grow again after a long season of de 
 pression. Berna allowed herself to ascribe both 
 growths in part to her own exertions, and looked 
 on the new-comers (for Aleck) with a double air 
 of proprietorship, as Telepheme population and 
 as Telephone subscribers. She instituted a 
 quiet monthly census of her own, publishing the 
 140 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 results when favourable, and this became one of 
 the most popular features of the paper in Rustler, 
 being the better liked when it began to excite 
 the uneasy derision of Topaz. The truth was, 
 that the mines of Ticknor s Mountain and Big 
 Chief, always fairly well to do, were now mak 
 ing large shipments of high-grade ore, and as 
 the Telepheme never concealed anything of this 
 sort, a certain tendency of the floating popula 
 tion of surrounding towns toward Rustler began 
 to be observable. 
 
 Rignold, though he could not share his editor s 
 confidence in the continuance of these good 
 times for the town and the paper, made them as 
 good as he knew how for himself by seeing a 
 great deal of Berna. He helped and served her 
 about the paper with untiring energy and a 
 simple patience, and she recognised his good 
 ness with gratitude \ but he knew that she con 
 ceived of it all as done for Aleck, in the same 
 way that she did it all for Aleck, and he knew 
 that she was grateful on Aleck s behalf. The 
 
 141 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 situation offered so little satisfaction to him that 
 he found it hard to be sorry in the first moments, 
 when the change came. But in fact he was 
 sorry, and if not for the change, then for her. 
 
 The current, which had turned in her favour, 
 gave signs for a month of turning the other way 
 before it finally did turn ; but when the change 
 came it fell upon her with the suddenness of a 
 thing unexpected and unimagined. The first 
 word of it reached her one evening as she sat 
 by her lamp thinking out the editorial for the 
 next week s issue, while she rocked to and fro 
 in her spacious rocker, walled in by her mother 
 with pillows, and ran through her State ex 
 changes. 
 
 " It is rumoured that Rustler is to have a new 
 paper. They are getting tired, it seems, of hav 
 ing the town represented by a woman." 
 
 Her eye fell upon this item in one of the 
 papers which two months before had copied ex 
 tracts from her railroad editorials with approval. 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! * 
 
 Rignold, looking in a quarter of an hour later 
 for his customary weekly chat with her about 
 the contents of the next issue, found her still 
 staring dumbly at the newspaper. She looked 
 up at him with blind eyes. Then in a moment 
 she asked : 
 
 " Did you know about this ? " 
 
 "What?" pretended Rignold. 
 
 She tapped the paper decisively with her fore 
 finger without speaking, while she gazed at him 
 in silence. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Why didn t you tell me ? " 
 
 " I didn t see what good it could do." 
 
 " You would have told Aleck ? " 
 
 " That s so." 
 
 " Then why not me ? " 
 
 " Why, it s altogether different, Berna." 
 
 " Different ? Sit down. How different ? " 
 
 " Every way. I didn t want to hurt your 
 feelings." 
 
 "You mean I was a woman. That s true. 
 
 143 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 But I haven t any less at stake on that ac 
 count. I ve more twice as much. You for 
 get Aleck." 
 
 " I m not likely to do that," retorted Rignold, 
 stung. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Good Heaven, Berna ! Don t take it like 
 this ! " 
 
 "You mean I should remind you of him if 
 you forgot. I suppose you re right. I should. 
 I do talk of Aleck. I m editing his paper ; I m 
 trying humbly to live out his life for him. How 
 can I help it ? I can t forget him if the town 
 does." 
 
 " Pshaw, Berna ! The town ain t forgetting 
 him. But it has to think of itself, or it thinks it 
 has." 
 
 " And so they try to kill his paper ? " 
 
 Rignold dropped his eyes. ** I suppose they 
 don t think it s his paper." 
 
 Berna started in her seat. " Have I put my 
 self forward too much ? Have I made too much 
 144 
 
" Cap fain, my Captain!" 
 
 of myself and too little of him ? Yes j I was 
 afraid of that." 
 
 " No, no ! Lord knows you ve made enough 
 of Aleck. You ve put him first everywhere. 
 The town just don t want a woman for an 
 editor. There s the whole of it, Berna, without 
 trimmings. I know it s hard on you awful 
 hard, after all you ve done and spent and suffered 
 to give em a good paper, and to keep up Aleck s 
 name, and boom the town and bring the rail 
 road. But towns ain t grateful ; you know that 
 as well as I do ; and I don t suppose Rustler s 
 any exception. Look here ! this is the way it is. 
 They want the Three C s, don t they ? Well, 
 they think they stand a better show to get it if 
 they have another sort of paper and have a man 
 to edit it. They think it ll look better outside. 
 I suppose it will. But they won t get a paper 
 the equal of the Telephone in a hurry not if 
 they put two men on to edit it." 
 
 " Oh, what do I care how much better or worse 
 it is ? They won t let me do Aleck s work," 
 
 K 145 
 
The ^Average Womnn 
 
 " They can t stop it." 
 
 "They don t want it. It s the same thing. 
 I ve offered the town my life ; I ve offered them 
 all my love and all my service ; and they " her 
 lip trembled " they don t want it. It s not for 
 myself I m hurt ; it s the rejection of Aleck 
 through me. They don t want him either. 
 He s done all he could for them, and they re 
 done with him. He brought them to a place 
 where they could get along without him ; and 
 now I ve brought them a little farther, and they 
 can do without me. Oh, Ben ! " 
 
 She gave a little gasp and gulph, and suddenly 
 buried her face. 
 
 Rignold leapt forward from his chair and laid 
 a hand on hers. " Drop it, Berna ! Give 
 it up and let them go their own ungrateful 
 way. You re wasting your life on them, and 
 what could they ever give you in return, if they 
 did their best?" 
 
 " Give me ! Do you suppose I want any 
 thing ? " She looked up fiercely through her 
 
" Captain, my Captain!" 
 
 tears. " I ve got to get my living and Ma s out 
 of the paper, and that I ll take, for the laboure 
 is worthy of his hire. But that s all. Aleck 
 worked for the love of it ; he fought for the 
 town the same way a soldier fights for the 
 flag. He wasn t thinking of rewards. It ain t 
 boodle I m after. He always used to say it, 
 and it was true. And after that, do you think I 
 could could" (she caught her breath and 
 stifled a sob, as her rhetoric returned to her with 
 her self-command) " could palter with the ques 
 tion of recompense ? I don t want to be paid, 
 Ben. I want to be let do it." 
 
 "Well, no one can prevent you. It s a free 
 country. You can go on publishing the Tele- 
 pkeme just the same, if they do issue another 
 paper alongside of it. Plenty of towns have two 
 papers that can t rightly support one." 
 
 " I know it, Ben I know it ! Foolish towns, 
 wicked towns towns that have no respect for 
 themselves or their cause ! They divide their 
 forces in the face of the enemy, and fight each 
 
 147 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 other when they ought to be fighting the 
 common foe. That shall never be said of 
 Rustler. It was the town that Aleck loved ; it 
 wasn t his paper, and it wasn t himself. And I 
 should be unworthy of him if I couldn t be glad 
 to bury my pride in the paper, and all the ties 
 that bind me to it through Aleck, and kill the 
 Telepheme to-morrow, if it can help the town. 
 If I can serve Rustler better by lying down and 
 letting it trample on me, than by standing up 
 and fighting for her, that s my place. I only 
 want to be sure." 
 
 " Don t you be sure of it, Berna ! Don t you 
 think it ! It ain t true. But; all the same, I d 
 give it up. The town can t support two papers, 
 that s a fact ; and if it don t, and if it s the 
 Telepheme that goes to the wall, you will have 
 spent all the money that Aleck left, and perhaps 
 your mother s insurance money too, before 
 you re done, and have nothing left to live 
 on I don t want to see you come to that, 
 Bcrna ; and, if you re willing for yourself, you 
 148 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 won t be for your mother, if you think a 
 minute." 
 
 " Stop ! stop ! I m not going to spend Ma s 
 money. When I ve spent Aleck s I ll give it 
 up. But what you say puts my duty before me. 
 I must spend Aleck s ! I mustn t, I daren t 
 take the town s word for it that they re tired of 
 Aleck and of me, until I ve spent all that s left in 
 giving them a chance to take that back for 
 Aleck s sake ! " she added devoutly. " They ve 
 changed once ; they may change again. Who 
 knows ? What was it that made them change 
 this time, Ben ? " she inquired, as if coming to 
 the question of Rustler s altered temper for the 
 first time. 
 
 " Oh, silliness ! You don t want to know. 
 
 "Ben!" she cried, incriminatingly, "stop 
 sparing me ! Tell me." 
 
 "Topaz kept joking them on their lady 
 editor. You must have seen the Telegram." 
 
 " Of course. But what then ? " 
 
 " Why, the other papers took it up. A weekly 
 
 149 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 paper s got to have copy. You know that, 
 Berna." 
 
 " Certainly ; I ve seen all that, as it came 
 along in the State exchanges from week to 
 week. But I never thought the town would be 
 cowardly enough to mind it. Oh, shame on 
 them 1 " 
 
 " No ; that ain t fair, Berna. It seems 
 foolish ; but it wasn t for themselves, really. 
 You can see that, if you stop and think. They 
 were afraid of its effect on the railroad. A town 
 that wants a railroad can t afford to be made 
 fun of by the press of the whole State. A rail 
 road s a serious business ; you ve got to be 
 worthy of it all round." 
 
 " Of course. But my railroad editorials aren t 
 a bit poorer than when the whole press of the 
 State quoted and praised them, and Rustler 
 went wild with delight over them. Nothing has 
 changed." She paused thoughtfully. " But I 
 don t want Rustler to be made fun of not on 
 my account, nor anybody s. It will hurt the 
 150 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 town. I must stop that. But they might have 
 trusted me to ! Why didn t they come to me 
 squarely, and tell me that I was injuring the 
 place ? They might have believed that there 
 are some things I care more for than myself; 
 they might have known I d have remedied the 
 trouble, or stepped down and out. Do you 
 mean to say, Ben, that they have the courage 
 to give this as their reason? Why, they ll 
 hurt the town more that way than any way. 
 They ll be the laughing-stock of every paper 
 in Colorado, from that one-page little rag 
 they re getting out in the new camp on Eagle 
 River what s it s name ? Flux, to the Rocky 
 Mountain News." 
 
 " No," said Ben, dropping his eyes into the 
 soft hat he twirled round and round in his 
 fingers, " they don t say that s their reason ? " 
 
 " What do they say ? " 
 
 " If you ll excuse me, Berna, I guess I won t 
 go into that." 
 
 " But I can t excuse you. 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 " Oh, well began Rignold, desperately, 
 
 and stopped. 
 
 "Why, what s the matter, Ben?" she asked 
 in bewilderment, watching the uneasy flush 
 mount to his forehead. "Is it something per 
 sonal ? Is it something disgraceful ? " 
 
 " Good heavens, no ! It ain t disgraceful. 
 But it ain t a thing for me to tell you, unless I 
 tell you something else at the same time." 
 
 " Tell me both things." 
 
 Ben shook his head. " You wouldn t like it." 
 
 " Try me," said Berna, persuasively. 
 
 The breath was coming fast in Rignold s 
 throat. He made two beginnings, and paused 
 helplessly. " It wouldn t do any good," he said 
 at last. 
 
 "Why, Ben, I never saw you behave like 
 this. What s the matter ? " 
 
 " Oh, love s the matter, Berna love for you, 
 
 that s killing me. You don t want it. You ve 
 
 got no more use for it than Rustler has for the 
 
 Telepheme. I tell you because you ask me ; 
 
 152 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! * 
 
 but I know \vell enough there ain t room for 
 another paper in your town. I know the field 
 belongs to Aleck. It s right ; I ain t got 
 nothing to say against it." He lowered his 
 eyes again. 
 
 " Ben ! " gasped Berna. Then in a moment 
 she added another name. 
 
 " Of course ! Of course ! I know it, I tell 
 you ! I was a fool to say anything. But you 
 would have it. The town says it ain t right that 
 we should be so much together, and work the 
 paper alongside each other, and not be married. 
 They don t think I m in love with you. They 
 never guess that. And they know what you feel 
 about Aleck, anyway. All they say is, it ain t 
 proper. I couldn t tell you the one, you see, 
 without telling you the other. I ve told you both 
 now, and I guess I might as well go." 
 
 He rose to his feet, but Berna stopped him. 
 " Wait, Ben ! " She laid on his coat sleeve the 
 hand which would have detained him at the 
 gate of heaven. " Good Ben ! Sit down again 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 won t you ? and we ll talk of this. It s awful- 
 coming so suddenly. Give me a moment." He 
 dropped back into his seat with reluctance. 
 
 She locked her hands distressfully in her lap. 
 " But I don t see how we re going to talk of it ! 
 
 " Sure ! It ain t treating him right even to 
 discuss it. I was his friend, and you were the 
 same as his wife. I know that s the way you 
 feel ; and partly that s the way I feel myself. 
 And so it ain t decent what I tell you but it s 
 the truth. I love you, Berna, and I have loved 
 you ever since long before Aleck and you were 
 engaged. I held my tongue then, and I gave 
 you up to him in my own mind, and if he d 
 lived you d never have known what your mar 
 riage cost one man. But he didn t live. I wish 
 he had. I can say that truly. I never wished his 
 death ; and when he was brought home to us 
 here, that awful day, I took a hurt I haven t got 
 over yet. But he is dead, Berna ; and I m alive, 
 and if I m to go on living, I can no more do it 
 
"Captain, my Captain!" 
 
 without loving you, than I could go on living 
 with my heart wanting in my side." 
 
 " Oh, Ben, I m very sorry. You ve been so 
 good to me so good ! I ve always thought it 
 was for Aleck. But if it was for me, and you 
 were saying No to this feeling all the time, and 
 keeping it back for his sake, then I honour you 
 for it, andand I thank you. But what are 
 we going to do, Ben ? " 
 
 Rignold could not keep back a smile at this 
 question of a child. " Oh, girlie ! if you leave it 
 to me " 
 
 She gave him a long, absent look. " Yes, I 
 know," she said at last. "Of course, I can t 
 leave it to you in that sense. But you must 
 help me to arrange, to plan to do the other. 
 I ve no one else to turn to; I haven t had any 
 
 one since " She blushed. " You must help 
 
 me against yourself." 
 
 " All right ! " returned Rignold with dreary 
 readiness, from some outer place. He had been 
 wishing himself far away somewherein space, like 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 Aleck. He would exist for her if he could die, per 
 haps. But he added, " We ll keep up the fight ! " 
 She contemplated him for a moment re 
 flectively. " No," she said. " I will. But you 
 mustn t. The town is right, perhaps, but whether 
 it s right or wrong, we couldn t go on together if 
 they think that ! No ; 1 will go on alone, and 
 we will see what happens. I won t believe that 
 every one has deserted me all at once. I won t 
 believe that towns, as you say, have no gratitude, 
 and no memories. Why, memory is the life of a 
 town : how can it look forward to a good future 
 if it forgets its good past? I ll fight it, and I ll 
 fight it on that line, Ben. I ll make them remem 
 ber ! They shall learn that if they re going to 
 forget Alexander Chester, they ve got to do it 
 publicly and shamefully and to my face." 
 " You have got sand ! " 
 " I ve got the sand to be true, and if I ve got 
 to be true that way why, I must ; that s all. 
 There s no one else." 
 
 " Why, Berna ! " he exclaimed in pain. 
 156 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 " Oh, Ben ! Forgive me. There is you, and I 
 know how gladly you d do it. But don t you see 
 how you re cut off from trying, and how every 
 one is cut off but me ? Besides, I m the one who 
 can do it ; it s for him, and that gives me the 
 wisdom and the strength ; and it s for him, and 
 I know how he would want it done. But 
 Ben . . . ." Her face lighted up. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Listen ! This is what you can do for me. I ve 
 got an idea. Who has been selected to edit the 
 other paper ? " 
 
 "Why " 
 
 " I see. They have asked you. That makes 
 it so much the simpler ! " She leaned forward 
 and touched his arm again. " Edit it, Ben ! 
 Edit it ! 
 
 " Look here, Berna, what do you take me for ? 
 You won t let me be all the friend I d like to be 
 to you ; but I m not going to make myself your 
 enemy." 
 
 " You re going to be twice my friend. Don t 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 you see ? If I must have an opponent, I like you 
 best." 
 
 "But I should have to fight you, Bern a." 
 
 " Of course. But you d fight fair. The other 
 man might not." 
 
 He regarded her for a moment, stupefied, while 
 many thoughts raced through his head. " All 
 right ! " he said at last. " All right ! You re 
 giving me a hard row to hoe, and yourself a 
 still harder. Goodness knows how you ll get 
 out the paper from a rocking-chair, with nobody 
 to help you. But I suppose you ll manage 
 somehow. You ve got the pluck for anything? 
 
 " Good ! Then that s settled. Now tell me, 
 who is fomenting this trouble ? " 
 
 Berna would still hnve liked a good, round, 
 sham-literary word on her way to the stake, and 
 Rignold s directness would still have been 
 puzzled and amused by it. He half smiled now 
 as he told her that McDermott, of the Chicago 
 Clothing House, B. G. Franks, the shoe man 
 Martin, of the European Hotel, Beck Kruger, 
 158 
 
" Captain, my Captain I " 
 
 the grocer (who she would remember was 
 always taking a column in the Telepheme to 
 announce the arrival of a fresh consignment of 
 Grand Junction peaches), and Dibble, the lately 
 appointed postmaster, were at the head of the 
 movement for a new paper. 
 
 "What!" she exclaimed, "Mr. Dibble one 
 of the recreants the man who took my father s 
 place, the man for whose appointment we 
 worked so hard on the Telepheme, Ben ? You re 
 mistaken ! " He shook his head. " But they 
 have all pretended they were my friends. 
 Don t you remember how enthusiastic Martin 
 was at first ? And McDermott ? They took 
 half a column apiece, though neither of them 
 needed it, and promised to stand by the paper 
 through thick and thin. They thought I could 
 be useful to them then, I suppose ; and now 
 they think some one else will be. That s all. 
 No matter, Ben." She gave him her hand. 
 " You be the some one else ! I ll promise not 
 to hate you. But I ll fight you tooth and nail, 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 until until I know. The day I can make 
 myself sure, the day I feel I can face Aleck 
 without shame, and say : The town doesn t 
 want us, and know I say truth that day I give 
 the paper up. The day I know that the 
 Telepheme can t help the town, I shall know it 
 will hinder it, and I will never publish another 
 issue. Till then it s war ! " 
 
 She smiled a pallid smile from among her 
 pillows, as she shook hands again, and he saw 
 that she had overstrained herself. 
 
 " Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night, Berna. Good-night ! We 
 sha n t meet any more for talks about the paper. 
 I suppose we sha n t meet at all except in 
 editorials, where we ll give each other down the 
 banks. I m sorry. The worst, though, is being 
 afraid for you. For God s sake, take care of 
 yourself ! " 
 
 Berna looked up at him shrewdly. " You 
 think I ll be careless about my health, and over 
 tax my strength, with no monitor by to keep 
 160 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! 
 
 me straight. Well, then, I promise you I ll be 
 careful. That shall be my thanks for all the 
 care you ve taken of me, Ben. / can t afford to 
 be ungrateful ! " she added wistfully ; " I haven t 
 friends enough. Good-night, dear, kind Ben ! " 
 
 III. 
 
 HE got himself out ; and the next morning went 
 to the committee whose advances he had 
 declined and told them that, if they were still of 
 the same mind, he would undertake the editor 
 ship of the paper and furnish the capital. That 
 afternoon he telegraphed East for a balance of 
 his savings, amounting to $600 all that he had 
 remaining in the world ; and when the money 
 arrived he bought the necessary materials type 
 press, paper, and office furnitureopened his 
 office in the Bloxham Block, opposite the office 
 of the Telepheme, and published the first issue 
 of the Apex. The name, which was chosen as 
 a tribute to the fact that Rustler lay under the 
 L 161 
 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 shadow of the Continental Divide, was sug 
 gested by Dibble, the postmaster, who saw a 
 kind of dual symbolism in it. 
 
 " Apex means on top, don t it ? " said 
 Dibble. "Well, then! And ain t Rustler on 
 top on top of the backbone of the Continent, 
 on top of her rivals, on top when it comes to 
 railroads, on the tip-top when it comes to news 
 papers ? That s right Apex it is." 
 
 Rignold didn t care what they called it ; it 
 was his paper, but it was her experiment. His 
 care was for the paper itself; and he took 
 immense pains with the first issue. 
 
 "Oh, well!" explained Dibble, "who ever 
 heard of a first issue being much ? The 
 machinery don t work, the type s all fresh, the 
 staff hasn t settled to work, the whole thing s 
 loose. That s been true of every paper from 
 the beginning of the world. It ll shake down ! 
 It ll shake down ! Trust Rignold for that. He s 
 the stuff. Why, it s worth two of that measly 
 female sheet across the road, now. We ll get a 
 162 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 railroad with this paper, and we ll get some 
 sense about politics. No woman business ! " 
 
 But the first number of the Apex was really 
 not so much better than the Telepheme which 
 Berna published the same day ; being set in 
 larger type, it contained less news ; the mis 
 cellany was made up from " plate matter," as 
 Rignold had always urged that the Telephemtfs 
 should be ; and there was no such extravagance 
 as Berna s telegraphic letter from Denver. 
 There was more advertising in the Apex than 
 in the Telepheme^ because the business men, 
 having decided on a new paper, threw all their 
 advertising into Rignold s hands ; and though 
 Berna ordered all the " dead " patent medicine 
 cuts in the office, and all the old land office 
 notices that remained standing, to be inserted 
 as fresh advertising, her advertisement columns 
 still looked rather hollow. But this gave her so 
 much the more room for news (which she had 
 now learned to make of the Rustler standard) 
 and for miscellany, in the matter of which her 
 
 163 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 judicious habit of selection went far. On the 
 whole, as the town would have said, if it had 
 not been trying hard to say the other thing, the 
 Telepheme was " the better nickel s worth." 
 
 Her editorial was an embodiment of what she 
 had said to Rignold, expressed with dignity and 
 with just sufficient feeling. It was extremely 
 direct and uncompromising, though tactful, and 
 if the organisers of the new paper did not wince 
 that evening upon their hearthstones, it was 
 because they had determined not to in advance. 
 That which really troubled them was the per 
 ception, forced upon them with the second issue 
 of the Apex, that the Telepheme was not yet 
 stamped out, nor very obviously in a way to be. 
 They had taken Berna s editorial for her swan- 
 song, believing that, in depriving her of the 
 assistance of Rignold, they had adopted the 
 surest mode of stopping a paper which had 
 become an injury to the good standing of the 
 town. But Berna went on, with depleted ad 
 vertising columns, but with ever-fattening news 
 164 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 columns, and with a resolved and untroubled 
 air which invited victory, if it did not predict it. 
 At Rignold s suggestion, she had found a sub 
 stitute for Barton, who, released from his 
 mechanical duties, gathered local news for her, 
 and looked after the advertising. Barton could 
 not actually replace Rignold, but, in common 
 with many Western men, he balanced an in 
 capacity to do anything very well by an inability 
 to do anything very badly ; and soon discovered 
 that faculty for thinning out one local item into 
 four, and imagining one out of nothing, which 
 is the bulwark of the Rural Press. With his 
 help Berna got out a very creditable paper. 
 Removed from the office, and informed only by 
 Barton s report of the system by which the 
 matter outside her own department was 
 gathered, she was often driven to wonder, as 
 she held a fresh issue in her hand, where all the 
 good things had come from. Her judgment 
 told her that it was in fact quite as presentable 
 a sheet as in the good days when Rignold was 
 
 165 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 by her side ; but though she would have been 
 glad to believe this for the sake of the future, she 
 denied it to herself resolutely, with a sentiment 
 of loyalty to her old associate ; and out of the 
 same feeling, coupled with a knightly unwilling 
 ness to think ill of a rival, put away from her the 
 doubt whether the Apex was, after all, as good a 
 paper as her own. 
 
 Rignold had never worked harder than he 
 was now working on the Apex. He had never 
 reached the Telepheme office so early as he now 
 reached the office of the Apex, nor left it so late. 
 He had promised himself not to see Berna again 
 for a long time to come ; his news of her came 
 by wa of the town. All that he knew of her 
 was gathered from observation of the outside of 
 her home, as he passed it, morning and night, 
 on his way to or from his canvas-roofed cabin 
 on Ticknor s Mountain. Three months passed 
 without giving him a sight of her, until, passing 
 her house after midnight one night on his way 
 home from the office, he saw a light burning in 
 166 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 her bedroom, on the upper floor, and knew 
 that she was sitting up, writing. The gravel 
 which he threw softly against the pane brought 
 her instantly to the window. For a moment 
 she looked bewilderingly about in the un 
 accustomed darkness, straining her eyes first 
 upon the road where Rignold was standing in 
 the shadow, and then over toward the huge 
 black frame of Ticknor s, swelling up behind the 
 opposite row of houses, and darkening against 
 the starless sky. 
 
 "Well, Telepheme?" 
 
 The figure in the window drew back 
 startled ; but in a moment the answer came 
 softly : 
 
 "Well, Apex?" 
 
 He came out of the shadow. 
 
 "Is that you, Ben?" 
 
 "Yes!" said Rignold. "Remember your 
 promise." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Go to bed ! " 
 
 167 
 
The ^Average Wo?nan 
 
 "Oh!" She laughed; and her laugh 
 seemed to Rignold to widen musically into 
 the night in waves of pure joy. " All right ! 
 She leaned out of the window for a moment 
 in silence. "Why aren t you in bed your 
 self?" 
 
 " Been fighting you." 
 
 " Well, that takes time. How s the Apex ? " 
 
 " Blooming. How s yours ? " 
 
 " I ve lost a good deal of advertising." 
 
 " They tell me half the circulation s gone. Is 
 that true ? " 
 
 " Yes. But my courage isn t nor my money. 
 I think I like aggression." 
 
 " Hope the Apex gives you plenty." 
 
 " Yes ; enough. But I don t want to beg off. 
 Ben ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I m glad we made that arrangement. You 
 give me all I want to do sometimes ; but you do 
 fight fair!" 
 
 " I ve got a scorcher on you in my next 
 168 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 "Have you?" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "Then I must go to work. Good-night, 
 Ben ! " 
 
 " Oh, see here, Berna ; don t do that ! " 
 
 " Do you want me to let the Apex have it all 
 it s own way?" 
 
 "No; but you ain t going to do any more 
 work to-night. Look here I ll put it off to the 
 issue after next." 
 
 "Well! Will it keep?" 
 
 " Keep ? An article against you ? Like ice at 
 zero ? " 
 
 " Then I won t prepare my answer till next 
 week. Good-night. Oh, Ben ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I m preparing a surprise for the Apex? 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " Yes. You remember my speaking of that 
 girl with the strange character, who used to go 
 to school with me at Kansas City before I went 
 East to Miss Drewett s Dodo McFarlane? 
 
 169 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 She s just married to Mr. Mutrie, the president 
 of the Three C s, and she s coming here on her 
 wedding journey. I had her letter to-day, and 
 I ve written to invite them to stay here with 
 me." 
 
 Rignold allowed an expressive whistle to 
 escape into the darkness. 
 
 " It is interesting, isn t it?" continued Berna. 
 
 " Interesting ? It s a scare-head sensation 
 news item. I ll have to get to work myself. 
 Good-night ! " 
 
 She leaned a little further out of the window. 
 " You won t divulge my secret, of course. I m 
 keeping it to surprise the town." 
 
 " Oh, I won t give you away. Go to bed ! " 
 
 " I will. I m so glad to have seen you again, 
 Ben." 
 
 " That s right. Good-night ! " 
 
 He disappeared up the dark road, and Berna 
 closed her window. 
 
 When Rignold reached the Bloxham Block 
 next morning he found Dibble in the narrow 
 170 
 
" Captain^ my Captain ! " 
 
 stall he had partitioned off from the composing- 
 room for his office. His visitor dropped his feet 
 from the table to the floor as he entered, and 
 rose, folding up a copy (Berna and Rignold of 
 course exchanged) of the last issue of the Tele- 
 pheme. Dibble shook himself down into his 
 trousers with a frown. 
 
 " Morning," said he. 
 
 Rignold nodded as he swept a space clear on 
 his desk, and settled down to work. 
 
 "Been losing Hymee, the hatter," I see," 
 continued his visitor, dusting his hand with 
 Berna s paper. 
 
 " Mr. Hymee has seen fit to withdraw his 
 advertisement, if that s what you mean, Mr 
 Dibble." 
 
 "Yes; I ve been around to see him this 
 morning. He says he wants to see our paper 
 succeed. He ain t got nothing against it, and 
 he ain t going to support our lady contemporary 
 anyway. But, See here, now, he says, your 
 
 paper " 
 
 171 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 "My paper, please, Mr. Dibble." 
 " Well, yours, if you like to call it so." 
 " I like to stick to facts, if it s all the same to 
 you. Has anybody got a dime in the Apex 
 besides me ? " 
 
 "Certainly not. But we feel as if we were 
 supporting you. I suppose you don t mind our 
 holding up your hands ? " 
 
 " Not if you leave them free," returned 
 Rignold, whirling about in his swivel seat, tilt 
 ing it back, and thrusting his hands into his 
 pockets. " What does Hymee say ? " 
 
 Dibble did the Telepheme up into a newspaper- 
 carrier s wad, as if he were meditating throwing 
 it over a subscriber s fence into a front yard, 
 before he answered : " Why, it s this way. 
 Hymee says that woman -mush across the way, 
 that some folks in this town call a newspaper, 
 is knocking the stuffing out of us fellows, and 
 we don t know what s happening to us. He s 
 opposed on principle to a lady paper, but he 
 goes in for straight talk, and he says there ain t 
 172 
 
"Captain, my Captain! 
 
 no comparison between the Apex and the Tele- 
 pheme, and that every one says so." 
 
 "That s just what we ve always supposed, 
 ain t it?" 
 
 " Not Hymee s way. He tried to prove to me 
 that there wasn t the hustle of a dead steer 
 about our whole outfit ; he says the Apex, as at 
 present conducted, hasn t fire enough to keep a 
 corner warm in hell, nor the romp and the 
 razzle-dazzle to run an engine down a two- 
 hundred-foot grade, let alone pulling the Three 
 C s into Rustler. Now, don t get riled ! He 
 didn t mean you, of course." 
 
 "I m all right, Mr. Dibble," said Rignold, 
 raising his eyebrows. " Go on." 
 
 " That s all. But it occurred to me I was 
 
 wondering " 
 
 "Yes. Well?" 
 
 "He s away off. We know that. But it 
 simply occurred to me that it was a sort of 
 hint. Perhaps we con Id put more 
 
 " Work ? " 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 " No, sir. You work. But more roar and 
 slam-bang, more git up and howl. That s what 
 does the business ! " 
 
 Rignold surveyed him thoughtfully for a mo 
 ment, as a silence fell. 
 
 " Do you want to buy the paper, Mr. Dibble ?" 
 
 " Well, no no. I can t say as I do." 
 
 " Know any one else that wants to buy it ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " All right, then. I ll run it myself. Good 
 morning. 3 
 
 Two more small advertisements were with 
 drawn within a week from the Apex; and the 
 day after the publication of the succeeding 
 issue, B. G. Franks, dealer in boots and shoes, 
 who had been one of Rignold s original sup 
 porters, called at the office to say that he felt 
 forced to withdraw his advertisement tempo 
 rarily, as an expression of his disapproval of the 
 course of the Apex:; but should be happy to 
 restore it as soon as Rignold saw his way to 
 making a better paper. Rignold perceived 
 174 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! 
 
 Dibble s hand in this, and smiled ; it was what 
 Dibble would have called "bringing pressure." 
 No more advertisements from members of the 
 original committee were discontinued ; but sub 
 scriptions began to fall off. Even from the 
 surrounding country orders reached Rignold to 
 stop the paper ; and no new subscriptions were 
 recorded. 
 
 A month later, when Mutrie reached Topaz 
 with his young bride, and stopped over a day, 
 Rustler gnashed its teeth. Dibble, who had 
 now turned frankly against Rignold, swore out 
 right. The news was discussed on the corners 
 of the mountain street by excited groups, like 
 another Bull Run. It represented, stated in 
 the soberest terms, nothing less than disaster to 
 the town that the President of the Three C s 
 should stop at Topaz, and not so much as pass 
 through Rustler. A committee, consisting of 
 Dibble, McDermott, and Franks, was formed 
 to go down to Topaz by the afternoon train, 
 and invite the President to at least take a look 
 
The ^Average Woman 
 
 at the town. But before they could start, 
 Berna, who had been holding back her edition 
 of that week for a telegram from Mrs. Mutrie, 
 making all sure, got the Telepheme upon the 
 streets. It set forth her news so modestly that 
 at first no one would believe it. The office of 
 the paper was instantly filled with inquirers- 
 Dibble among the first. 
 
 " She s got a telegram, I tell you ! " said 
 Barton. 
 
 " Shoot your telegram ! Let s see it ! " 
 Barton left them clamouring, and went to ask 
 Berna s permission. As he came back up the 
 street, holding the fluttering bit of paper aloft 
 in his hand, the group outside of the office gave 
 an uncertain cheer ; then, as Dibble snatched it 
 and read it aloud, they howled with glee. Some 
 were for going straight to Berna s house, and 
 offering her the cheers at closer quarters ; 
 but every one was in favour of a drink, and for 
 the moment it resolved itself into that. It was 
 about eleven o clock that night when a little 
 176 
 
" Captain, nty Captain / >J 
 
 torch-light procession made its way to Berna s 
 house, and relieved in complimentary song its en 
 thusiasm, its happiness, its renewed goodwill to 
 Berna, and perhaps a little shame-faced re 
 pentance and regret. 
 
 She was obliged at last to appear in her 
 doorway ; but, apparently overcome by emo 
 tion, could say nothing until, as she stood 
 swaying on the threshold, she caught sight of 
 Rignold s white face in the midst of the flicker 
 ing lights on the fringe of the crowd. Then, 
 plucking up courage, she began tremblingly : 
 
 " FELLOW-TOWNSMEN, I am grateful to you 
 for this unexpected honour. Believe me, it 
 touches me deeply. But I must not, even for a 
 moment, take it to myself. It belongs, you 
 and I both know, wholly to another. I lay it 
 proudly at the feet of Alexander Chester." 
 
 Rignold s face suddenly disappeared, and a 
 voice from the crowd shouted. " No ! no ! " As 
 she lost sight of the sustaining eye on the out 
 most circle of her audience, something seemed 
 
 M I 77 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 to give way within her ; the denial roused her, 
 however. 
 
 " But I say Yes. Let no one, thinking to 
 please me, refuse to Alexander Chester the 
 praise and the reward that are so utterly his 
 due, and which belong to him, and him 
 alone. Fellow-townsmen, it was he who first 
 fought your battle for the railroad ; it was he 
 who first led you to dream of the possibility of 
 bringing the Three C s to Rustler ; it was he 
 whose ringing words, going forth from week to 
 week in the columns of his paper, have made 
 the coming of the road practical, and realisable, 
 and near ; and he it was, too, whose labours for 
 the town, in co-operation with the strong and 
 willing hands of those I see before me to-night, 
 have brought Rustler to a position where she 
 deserves the railroad." (" Good ! Deserves ! 
 That s the ticket ! " murmured the crowd.) 
 " Whatever I may have been able to do has 
 merely been in humble following of his foot 
 steps. If he had not lived, in all human pro- 
 178 
 
"Captain, my Captain/" 
 
 bability, none of us would be here to-night. 
 When you say a word in praise of me, I must 
 take it, therefore, as intended to be two for 
 him ; for he is not only the source and inspira 
 tion of everything that I may do, but even in 
 death he watches over us the guide, the coun 
 sellor, the Captain of our town ! " 
 
 She paused ; and the crowd burst into wild 
 cheers. 
 
 "The Captain! Hip! Hip! Hurrah! 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Tiger ! " 
 
 Berna smiled upon them from her doorway 
 beatified. 
 
 IV. 
 
 AN hour later, against all protests from her 
 mother, she left her home for the first time in 
 many months. Strength came to her with her 
 need ; that one sweet little moment of success, 
 which compensated for all that she had borne 
 for the town, and for all she had suffered at its 
 hands, seemed to give a lost physical soundness 
 
 179 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 and courage back to her. She felt strong enough 
 for anything ; and, with that wine of happiness 
 coursing through her veins, she certainly felt 
 strong enough to drive to Barton s. The depres 
 sion of the past months, since the launching of 
 the Apex, had made her nervous and doubtful 
 about prosperity ; she dared not trust any one 
 to take it by the hand but herself. To be ready 
 for the demand on the morrow, she meant to 
 get Barton to go to the office and to print at 
 once, before morning, on Aleck s old hand-press, 
 five hundred copies of the new issue of the 
 Telepheme; and to make quite sure, she meant 
 to drive to the office with him, and see the 
 fresh edition started. The paper had not been 
 obliged to print twice since Aleck s time. She 
 must watch her boom. Her heart beat high. 
 
 At Barton s there was no one but his wife. 
 She said her husband was already at the office. 
 
 " Seems to me," she lamented, " he s always 
 at that office! I suppcse his new work s a 
 good thing ; but it takes him away a sight of 
 180 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 time. I don t believe he s been a night at home 
 since he began it ! " 
 
 Berna wondered, but drove on, drawing her 
 wraps tight around her against the unaccus 
 tomed air. Except for the lights at the Euro 
 pean Hotel and at the Elegant Booze, the 
 Honeycomb, and Uncle Dick s, the town was 
 dark. Straggling groups from the serenading 
 party still paraded the streets, singing, and 
 lurching noisily in each other s arms. Berna 
 gazed meditatively at the dusky roofs of the 
 town to which she had given a year s loving ser 
 vice, and which she had not seen since the 
 warm, sunny morning when she had driven with 
 Aleck to the station to take the train. The 
 town knew her now ; but what difference if it 
 did not ? He knew ! 
 
 As she toiled up the dark staircase leading to 
 the Telepheme office, supporting herself by her 
 stick, a crack of light shone into her eyes from 
 under the door ; and she heard the old press 
 jammed down sharply within. Barton had 
 
 181 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 plainly guessed her thought and gone silently 
 to work. How good every one was to her ! 
 
 She turned the knob and went in. A gush of 
 light greeted her. The place was all illumined. 
 Barton was at the press ; the boy was hurrying 
 about. From the inner room a voice she knew 
 cried out : 
 
 " We shall have to put that silver editorial 
 over to the issue after next, Barton. Our next 
 issue will have to be a kind of Jubilee Mutrie 
 number editorials, locals, everything. I ll do 
 the squibs this week and an account of the 
 President s visit, if you ll look after my regular 
 locals." 
 
 "All right!" responded Barton from his 
 press. After a moment he looked up and saw 
 Berna standing there. 
 
 " Why, Miss Dexter ! " he exclaimed, me 
 chanically stopping the press. He came toward 
 her, wiping his hand, which, however, he finally 
 wrapped in a corner of his printer s apron and 
 offered to her that way. 
 182 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 " You ought to have sent for me," he said, ab 
 stractedly. 
 
 She looked at him for a moment. 
 
 " Who s in there ? " 
 
 " What ? " asked Barton, offering her a chair, 
 with a doubtful glance over his shoulder, 
 
 She pointed. 
 
 " Oh, there ! Nobody, I guess." 
 
 " Will you do me a favour, Mr. Barton ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course. I don t know." 
 
 " Take this chair." Barton seated himself, 
 and stared after her as she pushed quickly into 
 the room where Rignold sat writing busily at 
 his old desk, which was littered with proofs 
 and manuscript. 
 
 "Berna!" he exclaimed, looking up as she 
 entered. 
 
 " Ben Rignold, what are you doing here ? " 
 
 " Getting up a little copy. I often come on 
 here of an evening to do my work, from old 
 habit. You don t mind, I hope ? " 
 
 " You mean my work?" 
 
 83 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 " I didn t say so." 
 
 "You don t need to. I heard you just now 
 give your order to Barton. Ben ! Ben ! 
 You re just wicked ! " 
 
 Tears filled her eyes. She sat down sud 
 denly. 
 
 "Let me move those," he said, rising, and 
 coming to her quickly ; and she saw that she 
 had seated herself on a chair heaped with a pile 
 of old exchanges. He moved them to another 
 chair, avoiding her eyes, which followed him 
 everywhere. As he took his seat again under 
 the lamp, which threw down a strong writing 
 light upon the table, she saw how worn he 
 looked. There were purple rings under his 
 eyes, and his face was drawn. His disordered 
 hair, which he had probably tumbled as he 
 wrote, gave him a wild look. It was three 
 months since she had seen him closely, by day 
 light. She reproached herself bitterly. 
 
 " You re too good to breathe ! " she murmured, 
 in continuance of her indictment, as she fastened 
 184 
 
" Captain, my Captain ! " 
 
 her eyes on him. "How dared you? Why 
 didn t you tell me ? " 
 
 "See here, Berna ! Why didn t you stay at 
 home ? Then you wouldn t have known." 
 
 "Well, I m glad enough I came," she said, 
 still breathless. 
 
 "Well, then, I ain t." 
 
 " So it s you, Ben Rignold, who have been 
 making my paper better than the Apex!" she 
 went on, unheeding. It s been you from the 
 beginning." She stopped suddenly, startled. 
 " Then it must be you, too, who have made the 
 Apex so bad ! " she added. 
 
 Rignold smiled. "Did you think it was 
 bad? 3 
 
 " Never till now. I never let myself. But I 
 know now that it s been the worst paper in the 
 State ! " 
 
 " Did you expect me to make it the best, with 
 your paper across the way ? " 
 
 " I didn t expect you to make mine the best ! 
 Oh, Ben!" 
 
 N 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 " Pshaw ! That was easy ! " he said, laugh 
 ing. "The trouble s been to make the Apex 
 poor enough without giving the scheme away. 
 I ve always been afraid that you d tumble, if the 
 town didn t. Come, Berna ! You didn t sup 
 pose I was working at that rate to succeed, did 
 you?" 
 
 " I thought " began Berna, tremu 
 lously. 
 
 " Then take it back, please ! The man who 
 couldn t succeed, with that paper and that back 
 ing, by smoking cigars in his rear office, ought 
 to give up the business. To make such a paper 
 fail takes work ! " 
 
 " Ben ! " she exclaimed. " You ve ruined your 
 self!" 
 
 " Oh no, I haven t. But I ve ruined the Apex. 
 The Sheriff is to pay me a visit to-morrow. 
 Nobody knows it yet ; but I may as well tell 
 you, because it ll be all out in the morning. I 
 had hoped to fail last week. But I couldn t 
 1 86 
 
"Captain, my Captain!" 
 
 get enough advertisements and subscriptions 
 dropped." 
 
 She looked thoughtfully at him for a full 
 moment. " Ben, I believe you re the best man 
 in the world," she said, solemnly. 
 " I guess not," laughed Rignold, uneasily. 
 
 "You are," she repeated. " And, Ben " 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 "You mustn t fail !" 
 
 " But I ve got it all fixed. After to-morrow 
 there won t be but one paper in Rustler." 
 
 "That s what I mean," she said, huskily 
 " Let s make it one ! Let s .... consoli 
 date ! " 
 " Berna ! " 
 
 " Well ? " she answered, looking down with a 
 deep blush. 
 
 He came and stood over her, and laid a hand 
 upon her chair. " Berna, do you mean it ? " 
 
 She looked up with tears streaming down her 
 face. 
 
 187 
 
The Average Woman 
 
 "I guess so." 
 "And Aleck?" 
 
 She smiled happily through her tears as she 
 laid a hand in his. 
 " Ben, dear, we will keep up the fight ! " 
 
 Printed by BAI.I.ANTYNE HANSON & Co. 
 J.oniinH and f.iiinl>nrfh 
 
W. B. 
 
 i86i-iSgi. 
 
 3^(o higher tribute to the memory of my dear friend and 
 colleague, Wolcott Balestier, could have been paid than by the 
 allusions to his extraordinary mind and character which have 
 been made by the eminent writers who ivere in constant contact 
 with him. It will, I hope, not be thought out of place for me 
 to add a word in affectionate remembrance of the delightful 
 and invigorating intercourse with him which I was privileged 
 to enjoy during the last years of his life. Joined with him in 
 work -which brought us together daily, 1 had a rare oppor 
 tunity of kyovjing the man of admiring his nature, full as it 
 tvas of disinterested kindness, and of wondering at the surprising 
 courage with which he sought difficulties for the satisfaction of 
 successfully overcoming them. He ignored the possibility of 
 failure in anything to which he gave his mind. 3\o one more 
 than myself could feel the blank left by his death, and it 
 seems too much to hope that even in time this blank can be 
 filled. 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEM*ANN. 
 
H Selection 
 
 FROM 
 
 MR. WM. HEINEMANWS LIST. 
 
 June 1892. 
 
 (Sreat 
 
 Each subject will form a complete volume of about 300 
 pages, crown Svo. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational 
 Ideals. By THOMAS DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D. 5$. 
 
 LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the 
 
 Jesuits. By Rev. THOMAS HUGHES, SJ. $s. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian 
 
 Schools. By Professor ANDREW F. WEST, Ph.D. 
 
 ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History 
 
 of Universities. By JULES GABRIEL COMPAYRE, Professor 
 in the Faculty of Toulouse. 
 
 ROUSSEAU; or, Education according to 
 
 Nature. 
 
 HERBART ; or Modern German Education. 
 PESTALOZZI; or, the Friend and Student 
 
 of Children, 
 
 FROEBEL. By II. COURTHOPE BOWEN, M.A. 
 
 HORACE MANN, and Public Education in 
 
 the United States. By NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, Ph.D. 
 
 BELL, LANCASTER, and ARNOLD; or, 
 
 the English Education of To-Day. By J. G. FITCH, LL.D., 
 Her Majesty s Inspector of Schools. 
 
2 MR. WILLIAM HEINEM ANN S LIST. 
 
 Crown Gopgtfgbt Series. 
 
 Mr. Heinemann has made arrangements with a number 
 of the first and most popular authors of to-day, 
 
 ENGLISH, AMERICAN, AND COLONIAL, 
 
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 These novels will not pass through an expensive two or 
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 The following volumes are now ready : 
 ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. By AM^LIE 
 
 RIVES, Author of " The Quick or the Dead," &c. 
 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 
 
 By"TASMA," Author of " Uncle Piper of Piper s Hill/ &c. 
 
 INCONSEQUENT LIVES. A Village Chroni 
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 COME LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY 
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 THE O CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD, Author of " Molly Bawn." 
 
 A BATTLE AND A BOY. By BLANCHE 
 
 WILLIS HOWARD, Author of " Guenn," &c. 
 
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 ings," &c. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN S LIST. 
 
 Ibefnemann s 30. 6>. 
 
 THE SCAPEGOAT. By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Times." Matchless of its kind." 
 
 UNCLE PIPER OF PIPER S HILL. By 
 
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 A MARKED MAN. Some Episodes in his Life. 
 
 By ADA CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Pall Mall. "Contains one of the best written stories of a 
 mesalliance that is to be found in modern fiction." 
 
 IN THE VALLEY. By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 Athenaum. "A novel deserving to be read. 1 
 
 THE THREE MISS KINGS. By ADA 
 
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 British Weekly. " A novel to be bought and kept for re 
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 PRETTY MISS SMITH. By FLORENCE 
 
 WARDEN. 
 
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 A ROMANCE OF THE CAPE FRONTIER. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 Observer. " A rattling tale genial, healthy, and spirited." 
 
 THE BONDMAN. By HALL CAINE. 
 
 Academy. "A splendid novel." 
 
 A MODERN MARRIAGE. By the MARQUISE 
 
 CLARA LANZA. 
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 Athenceum. "A decidedly charming romance." 
 
 DAUGHTERS OF MEN. By HANNAH LYNCH, 
 
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MR. WILLIAM HEINRMANWS LIST. 
 
 1befnemann International Xibrarg. 
 
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 IN GOD S WAY. From the Norwegian of 
 
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 Athetueum. "There are descriptions which certainly belong 
 to the best and cleverest things our literature has ever pro- 
 duced." 
 
 PIERRE AND JEAN. From the French of 
 Guv DE MAUPASSANT. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette " It isadmirable from beginning to end." 
 THE CHIEF JUSTICE. From the German 
 of KARL EMIL FRANCOS, Author of " For the Right," &c. 
 
 New Review. " Few novels of recent times have a more 
 sustained and vivid human interest." 
 
 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 From the Russian of COUNT TOLSTOY. 
 
 Scotsman. " It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of 
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 FANTASY. From the Italian of MATILDE SERAO. 
 
 Scottish Leader. " It is a work of elfish art, a mosaic of life 
 and love, of right and wrong, of human weakness and strength, 
 and purity and wantonness pieced together in deft and witching 
 precision." 
 
 FROTH. From the Spanish of DON ARMANDO 
 
 PALACIO VALDES. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. "Vigorous and powerful in the highest 
 degree Rare and graphic strength." 
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF FATE. From the Dutch of 
 
 LOUIS COUI ERUS. 
 
 PEPITA JIMENEZ. From the Spanish of 
 
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 THE COMMODORE S DAUGHTERS. From 
 
 the Norwegian of JONAS LIE. 
 HERITAGE OF THE KURTS. From the 
 
 Norwegian of BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN S LIST. 
 
 mew Works of Action, 
 
 NOR WIFE, NOR MAID. By Mrs. HUNGER- 
 
 FORD, Author of " Molly Bawn," &c. In Three Vols. 
 
 NOT ALL IN VAIN. By ADA CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 Author of " A Marked Man," &c. In Three Vols. 
 
 MAMMON. By Mrs. ALEXANDER, Author of 
 
 " The Wooing O t," &c. In Three Vols. 
 In Preparation. 
 
 THE NAULAKHA. A Tale of West and 
 East. By RUDYARD KIPLING and WOLCOTT BALESTIER. 
 In One Volume, crown 8vo. 
 
 THE AVERAGE WOMAN. Containing, A 
 Common Story, Reffey, and Captain My Captain. By 
 WOLCOTT BALESTIER. With a Portrait of the Author, and 
 an Introduction by Henry James. In One Vol., crown 8vo. 
 
 {popular SbflHitfl JBoofcs. 
 
 MADAME VALERIE. By F. C. PHILIPS 
 Author of "As in a Looking-Glass," c. 
 
 THE MOMENT AFTER. A Tale of the Un 
 seen. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 Guardian. "Particularly impressive, graphic, and powerful." 
 
 A VERY STRANGE FAMILY. By F. W. 
 
 ROBINSON^ Author of " Grandmother s Money," " Lazarus 
 in London," &c. 
 
 Glasgow Herald. " Delightful reading from start to finish." 
 
 CLUES; or, Leaves from a Chief Constable s 
 
 Note-Book. By WILLIAM HENDERSON, Chief Constable 
 of Edinburgh. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE." I found the book full of interest." 
 
6 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANWS LIST. 
 
 Drama. 
 
 THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF ARTHUR 
 
 W. PINERO. Published in Monthly Volumes, each con 
 taining a Complete Play, with its Stage History. Price 
 is. 6d. paper cover, 2s. 6d, cloth extra. 
 
 VOL. I. The Times. VOL. IV. The Hobby- 
 
 II. The Profligate. 
 With a Portrait. 
 III. The Cabinet 
 
 Horse. 
 V. Lady Bountiful. 
 VI. The Magistrate. 
 
 Minister. 
 
 *** To be followed by the Author s other Plays. 
 
 NERO AND ACTEA. A Tragedy. By ERIC 
 MACKAY, Author of "A Lover s Litanies," and "Love 
 Letters of a Violinist." Crown Svo, 5^. 
 
 HEDDA GABLER. A Drama in Four Acts. 
 By HENRIK IBSEN. Translated from the Norwegian by 
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 $s. Vaudeville Edition, paper, is. 
 
 *** A limited Large Paper Edition, with three Portraits, 2is. net. 
 
 THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 
 A Comedy in Four Acts. By LYOF TOLSTOY. Translated 
 from the Russian by E. J. DILLON. With an Introduction 
 by A. W. PINERO, and a Portrait of the Author. Small 
 4to, 5*. 
 
 THE PRINCESS MALEINE, Translated 
 from the French by GERARD HARRY; and THE IN- 
 TRTTDEB. By MAURICE MAETERLINCK. Translated 
 from the French. With an Introduction by HALL CAINE. 
 Small 410, with a Portrait. $s. 
 
 STRAY MEMORIES. By ELLEN TERRY. 
 
 One Volume, Illustrated. [/>/ tJie Press. 
 
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 HENRIK J^.GER. Translated by CLARA BELL. With the 
 Verse done into English from the Norwegian original by 
 EDMUND GOSSE. In One Volume, crown Svo, 6s. 
 
 SOME INTERESTING FALLACIES OF 
 
 THE MODERN STAGE. An Address delivered to 
 the Playgoers Club at St. James s Hall, on Sunday, 6th 
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 Svo, sewed, (><{. 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANWS LIST. 
 
 /HMscellaneous. 
 
 THE JEW AT HOME. By JOSEPH PENNELL. 
 
 With Illustrations by the Author. 4to. [In the Press. 
 
 IDYLLS OF WOMANHOOD. Poems. By 
 
 AMY DAWSON. Foolscap 8vo, gilt top, 55. 
 
 THE LITTLE MANX NATION. By HALL 
 
 CAINE, Author of " The Bondman." Crown 8vo, cloth 
 3-y. 6d. paper, zs. 6d. 
 
 GIRLS AND WOMEN. By E. CHESTER. 
 
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 GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY. By EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo, gilt top, -js. 6d. 
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 THE CANADIAN GUIDE-BOOK. The 
 
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 With an Appendix giving fish and game laws, and Official 
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 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. With Maps and many Illustra 
 tions. Crown Svo, limp cloth, 6s. 
 
 NOTES FOR THE NILE, Together with a 
 
 Metrical Rendering of the Hymns of Ancient Egypt, and of 
 the Precepts of Ptah-Hotep (the oldest book in the world). 
 ByHARDWicKE D. RAWNSLEY, M.A. Small 4 to, cloth, 5 s. 
 
 WOMAN THROUGH A MAN S EYE 
 GLASS. By MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. With Illus 
 trations by DUDLEY HARDY. Crown 8vo, 3*. 6d. 
 
 THE NEW EXODUS. The Story of the Tews 
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 THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENE 
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 pott 410, i as-. 6d. Also, 150 Copies on Hand-made Paper 
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MR. WILLIAM H BIN EM ANN S LIST. 
 
 THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
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