THRE 
 
 GERTRUDE 
 
 M 
 
 SHIELDS
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS AHGELBS
 
 i 
 She was intimately appealing
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 BY 
 
 GERTRUDE M. SHIELDS 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE 
 
 BY FLORENCE GARDNER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1918
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 THE CENTUBY Co. 
 
 Published, May, 1918
 
 TO 
 EDITH EATON ALEXANDER, 
 
 MOST DELIGHTFUL OK FRIENDS. 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 2132728
 
 CASTE THREE
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 UP to the second before the train pulled out of the 
 Sixty-seventh Street station, the Pullman was 
 the exclusive possession of a gray-eyed, dark-haired, 
 thin-legged youth who was intent upon a figure out- 
 side his window. He was watching a young man 
 outside, an oldish young man with jolly blue eyes and 
 a bright smile. The latter also had curly hair, which 
 was publicly to be observed because the jolly young 
 man was holding his derby a new autumn one of 
 great glossiness of finish in his hand. 
 
 Just as the train gave a premonitory lurch another 
 young man appeared in the doorway and tossed his bag 
 into the car with a commotion which distracted the at- 
 tention of the only other occupant from his brother on 
 the platform. The newcomer removed his hat to wipe 
 his forehead and grinned good-naturedly, thereby 
 causing the thin-legged youth to miss giving a last 
 wave of his hand to the man being left behind. This 
 disgruntled him, because he was very fond of his 
 brother Paul and might not see him again for some 
 time. 
 
 3
 
 4 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt Stevenson's presence in the Pullman was not 
 due to any desire to relieve himself of superfluous 
 wealth. The extra charges engendered by his riding 
 in the clean, well-ventilated car, undisturbed by a f ried- 
 chicken-and-banana-eating traveling public such as is 
 informally at home in a day-coach, would make a 
 disproportionately large hole in the small amount re- 
 maining after the purchase of a ticket from Chicago 
 to Alston, Indiana. Following his own cautious im- 
 pulses, he would have shunned the Pullman, but Paul 
 had led him into that section of the train, deposited the 
 bag on a seat, and got off without a thought, seemingly, 
 of any other course. He had, however, thought to 
 warn Hewitt from the platform, through a window 
 raised for the purpose, that porters expected tips and 
 punished people who forgot to give them. 
 
 The brown bag placed by Paul upon a seat was worn 
 off into yellow spots. It could hardly be called a re- 
 spectable bag. It looked like a bag that had seen 
 hard service. And it had. Paul had carried it when 
 he first began to travel for the wholesale grocery firm 
 of Mayer, Bergstrom & Mayer, Chicago, U. S. A., 
 long before he had been advanced to the position of 
 city salesman for the same firm. That had been five 
 years before, but the bag was thought good enough 
 for Hewitt to carry on this journey. 
 
 Hewitt himself had been in charge of the remainder 
 of his baggage, namely, an overcoat. The overcoat 
 had much in common with the bag, although it was not 
 a remnant of Paul's traveling days. It was Hewitt's
 
 CASTE THREE 5 
 
 own property. He had not intended wearing it an- 
 other winter, but then, his plans for September had not 
 included a journey to Alston, and the morning when 
 he and Paul had left the rooming-house where they 
 had lived for the past five years was chilly with the 
 breath of a cold lake breeze. So he had carried the 
 coat. Anyway, it could scarcely have been crowded 
 into the brown bag which bulged conspicuously on one 
 side. The bulge was the external indication that at 
 the last moment he had inserted two tennis-balls which 
 were not new but might still be of use if one only 
 played tennis for exercise. He forgot that he had 
 left his battered racket with Paul. The balls were 
 no evidence of Hewitt's enthusiasm for tennis. He 
 played very badly. He always objected to games be- 
 cause there were rules attached, and he had a great 
 objection to rules. But of course one must exercise, 
 infrequently. 
 
 The train sped away to the south, and the late 
 arrival stood looking in vain for a porter. He seemed 
 to expect the latter might be concealed behind a seat, 
 for he continued to stand, though tossed from side to 
 side by the train's motion, and to look up and down the 
 car as though, Hewitt thought cattishly, he could not 
 sit down until assisted by some one. When the 
 porter did appear, he surprised the young man by com- 
 ing up behind him, causing the passenger to start and 
 then grin needlessly. As he turned to confront the 
 porter the grin deepened, if that were possible. 
 
 " Howdy, Sam," said the young man. " That 's my
 
 6 CASTE THREE 
 
 bag." He pointed to a pretentious alligator piece at 
 his feet. 
 
 " My name ain't Sam," said the porter, presumably 
 in his native dialect, "but that's all right, Boy. 
 Wheh 'd yuh wanta sit? " 
 
 " Up front here 's all right." 
 
 The young man watched the colored servitor toss 
 the pretentious bag into the rack above a nearby seat, 
 and then proceeded to arrange his back and head and 
 legs in the chair, much to the surprise of the one spec- 
 tator who was capable of drawing conclusions from 
 his observations. Hewitt was astounded that the 
 other was able to arrange himself thus without aid. 
 
 The train moved swiftly past the lakes, swampy 
 rivers, woods, bare fields, and towns and villages that 
 succeed the smoky environs of Chicago on a journey 
 into Indiana and that make up the scenery of the north- 
 ern part of that state. Hewitt intermittently read a 
 Chicago morning paper, was aware of the lolling per- 
 son in the car with him, and thought. When the items 
 in the news-sheet ceased to stimulate his mental proc- 
 esses, he followed the streams of thought started by 
 some passing scene, although he pursued none of these 
 to a logical conclusion. 
 
 " Get your lunch in the diner," Paul had told him 
 at the same moment that he had reminded him of the 
 tip. " A little extravagance won't hurt you, and any- 
 way, you won't get into Alston until after three o'clock. 
 Besides, you want to demand such things for your- 
 self. Then you '11 get more in the end."
 
 CASTE THREE 7 
 
 He was relieved when the train drew up at eleven 
 and his companion of the Pullman got off, the obsequi- 
 ous porter following hard on his heels with the pre- 
 tentious alligator-bag. Hewitt breathed more freely 
 after he had seen the top of the young man's head 
 disappear past the window of the moving train and 
 the porter emerge into the car again. He had n't much 
 liked that young man. He was too well-dressed, too 
 urbane with the urbanity of small towns, and Hewitt 
 had another thrill of that cattish variety afflicting the 
 best of people at times when the destination of the 
 objectionable one was seen to be a mere village of 
 indescribable dinginess set flamboyantly on a muddy 
 river that looked ashamed of its protege. 
 
 An added reason for anathema was that the young 
 man had dozed during the two hours from Chicago. 
 He had n't even had a newspaper or a book to read. 
 He had intended dozing ; that was clear. 
 
 Hewitt himself now folded his newspaper carefully 
 and placed it on top of his bag. Then he pulled a soft, 
 leather-bound book from his pocket and perused it 
 when the monotony of the bare fields grew tiresome. 
 The book was Keats' " Selected Poems." 
 
 The young man interrupted his reading of the " Ode 
 to Autumn " for a moment when the first call for din- 
 ner rang from the front of the car. He continued to 
 read, however, since he must n't seem too anxious 
 about dinner. 
 
 The second call caused him to make his way non- 
 chalantly into the diner. At the entrance he stopped
 
 8 CASTE THREE 
 
 and stamped lightly, in order to bring the bottom of 
 one trouser leg down to its proper position on his ankle. 
 This pause also emphasized his appearance of being en- 
 tirely at his ease in the face of a dining-car and an 
 a la carte service. He ran his fingers through his 
 pompadour to make sure that an evasive lock that 
 frequently was not in place was now submissive. He 
 gained a seat after being jerked from side to side in a 
 way to bring a smile close to the surface. It did not 
 come entirely to the surface, however. Hewitt was 
 too quick for it. 
 
 Frankly expressed, Hewitt Stevenson's idea of 
 travel was " fun," but Hewitt Stevenson's age made 
 such frank expression an impossibility. He would 
 have liked to leave the impression with the two men 
 who were already engaged with a steak and its ac- 
 cessories at the other end of the car that he was a 
 trifle bored with this traveling, but that he was deter- 
 mined to be valiant in the presence of a necessary evil. 
 By limiting his order to simpler dishes, like a club- 
 sandwich, coffee, and a light dessert, he had enough 
 change left from a dollar bill for the tip. He felt a 
 certain pride in spending the entire dollar at one blow, 
 as it were, and yet there was present in him a vague 
 discontent with a world which made his acceptance of 
 such limitations desirable. It was so easy to imagine 
 yourself luxuriously the spender. 
 
 But his interest in the flood of impressions pouring 
 in upon him distracted his attention from an enforced 
 but not obtrusively distasteful poverty.
 
 CASTE THREE g 
 
 If Hewitt Stevenson's soul could have been exam- 
 ined and analyzed at that date in his development, what 
 would it have revealed? 
 
 Less than a year later, when he was writing poetry 
 to, but principally in secret about, Mary Young, he 
 had a tingling sensation before dawn one morning of 
 seeing light, gray, shapeless bubbles, airy as the mist 
 which lay over the grass and interlaced itself with the 
 branches of nearby trees, dancing back and forth out- 
 side his window. Only half-awake, still full of the 
 heaviness of sleep, he thought that one form, brighter 
 and airier than the rest, flung itself hither and thither 
 through the half-light. The others followed it. That 
 gay piece of nothingness, indescribably lovely and 
 magnetic, was the soul of Mary Young; those gray 
 forms were the souls of those Alstonians who were led 
 by Mary Young. 
 
 If Hewitt's soul of this September day could have 
 floated before* his eyes, it, too, would have been light, 
 gray, and bubbly, light as the mist which earlier in the 
 day had lain over these rivers and lakes and farms in 
 the northern part of his native state. It would have 
 been a jelly-fish kind of soul. It would not have been 
 the firm little prejudiced red soul of his childhood, 
 when right and wrong were divided by a strong line 
 and there were no difficulties about greater and lesser 
 goods; when sin was sin and holiness was holiness, 
 according to the emphatic ruling of the Methodist 
 church. Adolescence and Chicago and contact with 
 men who thought had changed all that. At one mo-
 
 10 CASTE THREE 
 
 ment it would have shown the blue and gold of great 
 ideals and fine emotions, at another the pink prettiness 
 of trivial content with the commonplace, and at an- 
 other the brownness of dull dissatisfaction with life 
 as it came to him. In time it might pass out of this 
 jelly-fish state and become a permanently beautiful, 
 bright soul. It might sink back into the grayness of 
 mist, the infinite from which it took its being, without 
 ever achieving distinctive color. It might remain an 
 indefinite mass, now and again putting forth protuber- 
 ances, like a one-celled animal, to touch the grayness 
 of other one-celled souls, and then withdrawing these 
 fingers into itself as it became increasingly aware of 
 the great law governing the essential aloneness of every 
 soul. Being the essence of Hewitt Stevenson, it 
 would never long remain the same. It was a groping 
 soul, reaching and retreating, expanding and depress- 
 ing. Beauty, in another age and amid other souls 
 intent upon the discovery of the beautiful, would have 
 been its law. In the great Middle West, in that ex- 
 panse of fertile country extending from the Appalachi- 
 ans to the mighty Mississippi, that land watered by 
 innumerable streams, covered with growing grain in 
 long, hot summers, with woods and vigorous cities 
 and a network of railroads and traction lines what 
 then of the soul of Hewitt Stevenson? 
 
 During the hours between his luncheon and his ar- 
 rival in Alston, Hewitt was not at all concerned with 
 his soul. He might think about it, certainly. He 
 might listen to Letsky, the young Jewish radical who
 
 CASTE THREE n 
 
 had been in the habit of haranguing violently and at 
 length at the back of Woody's book-store, speak on 
 the subject of the soul in general, although Letsky had 
 such a supply of sociological knowledge that the soul 
 was likely to be relegated to old age and elderly Brown- 
 ing societies and ministers of the gospel for discussion. 
 But in September of the year of our Lord nineteen 
 hundred and twelve you could not have persuaded him 
 to talk of his own soul. 
 
 " Next stop, Alston ! Next stop, Alston ! " called a 
 voice from the front of the car. This was later in the 
 afternoon, when the landscape had begun to pall and 
 traveling had become less zestful than the young man 
 had at first thought it. 
 
 Hewitt immediately became afraid that he would 
 not be ready when Alston was reached and that the 
 fast train speeding over the level stretch of central 
 Indiana would hurry on without depositing him on the 
 Alston platform, the goal of his journey. He reached 
 for his overcoat and cap in the rack above and shifted 
 uneasily in his seat, leaning forward to regard the 
 rolling prairie-farms prominently decorated with large 
 cylindrical silos, white farmhouses of varying degrees 
 of pretentiousness, and enormous barns of unvarying 
 pretentiousness. 
 
 "Brush?" 
 
 Hewitt obediently stood up, with the feeling that 
 porterly attentions were, after all, a matter of payment 
 and that his money was as efficacious in securing serv- 
 ice as another's. He stamped again to push down the
 
 12 CASTE THREE 
 
 elusive trouser leg that had before shown a tendency 
 to cling to his calf. He dropped some small change 
 into the hand of his black temporary retainer and had 
 his bag deposited at the door. 
 
 Hewitt had expected to be met by Grace or his 
 father. When you have been in Chicago for five 
 years, absent from the bosom of your family, you 
 naturally expect to be met at a railway station. Be- 
 sides, the bosom of his particular family had not re- 
 sided in Alston when the youngest son and brother 
 had left for the large city of the lakes. He was a 
 stranger in this town. 
 
 The station was manifestly an inadequate and soon- 
 to-be-discarded structure, if one were to judge by the 
 piles of " dressed " stone which loomed up from the 
 farther end and an expression of " My time is done ; 
 long live the king! " on the part of the building itself. 
 This expression was the result of the position of a 
 bay-window, two doors, and the platform, all of which 
 made one think of a nose, two eyes, and a forlorn 
 mouth, the last being responsible for its forlornity to 
 a sloping downward of itself into runways. 
 
 A taxi chugged in solitary spinsterhood at the end 
 of the station, its driver nowhere in sight, but possibly 
 frequenting the saloon across the way. A baggage- 
 man ran a truck hurriedly down the platform to re- 
 ceive some trunks, crates, and boxes from the train. 
 The day-coaches ejected a tousled, weeping boy, three 
 fussily dressed women, and a traveling salesman (to 
 judge from a spick-and-spanness of apparel and a con-
 
 CASTE THREE 13 
 
 temptuousness of mouth) who wanted to go on to 
 Indianapolis but couldn 't on account of the demands 
 of business. 
 
 " Fourteenth and Jackson," Hewitt read in a note- 
 book he took from his pocket. 
 
 So this was Alston, Indiana; population thirty-five 
 thousand or thereabouts! The figures held little sig- 
 nificance for one who had gone directly to Chicago 
 from the farm at the age of fifteen. To the Chicago- 
 bred, Alston was a small town or village. That it ex- 
 isted at all was of small interest to the busy places of 
 the globe, unless, of course, your family adopted it as 
 a place of residence. Then its existence was reluc- 
 tantly admitted. 
 
 Down the center of the wide street running north 
 and south from the station extended a single street- 
 car track, and as Hewitt made his way in the direction 
 indicated by a mumbling, tobacco-chewing baggage- 
 man, a small electric-car clanged and jerked its way 
 to the south, followed by a traction car of greater un- 
 wieldiness and more dignity. A large building hous- 
 ing a wholesale grocers' firm stood opposite the sta- 
 tion. Numerous small business-houses, drugstores, 
 bicycle repair-shops, second-hand clothing and furni- 
 ture stores, and restaurants, lined Meridian Street on 
 each side as he walked on for two or three blocks, 
 before the larger buildings appeared to tell him that 
 he was approaching the center of the business section. 
 
 A department-store occupied the first floor of a ten- 
 story office-building on a corner where tracks from
 
 14 CASTE THREE 
 
 east and west crossed those that Hewitt had already 
 noticed. There was a majesty about the ten stories 
 of this particular building, because of the contrast be- 
 tween it and its lower and older neighbors. An " in- 
 terurban " crowded with passengers, even on the rear 
 platform, rumbled north on the main street. 
 
 Hewitt was half-inclined to be surprised at the num- 
 ber of people who moved past him as he stood in front 
 of the department-store, his bag on the pavement at 
 his feet. A clean, plate-glass-windowed bank, a drug- 
 store teeming with customers, and a cigar-store filled 
 with men and boys, occupied the three corners of the 
 intersecting streets. " Eleventh," he read on a cross- 
 street sign. Farther along Meridian Street another 
 department-store of four stories, painted white and 
 marked on top in high, wire letters " The White 
 House," drew his attention as he walked across the 
 street, and he caught a glimpse of a dirty gray-stone 
 court-house, surrounded by a green lawn and a stone 
 coping lined with idlers, in the center of the " Square " 
 several blocks to the north. 
 
 Hewitt entered the drug-store for a supplement to 
 the indefinite help of his previous director. A group 
 of youths in no way different from a thousand other 
 youths in ready-to-wear garb whom Hewitt had been 
 wont to pass every day on the streets of Chicago en- 
 circled the cigar-counter and the soda-fountain inside. 
 They looked the newcomer over, those who were 
 not otherwise engaged, with no curiosity, exhibiting 
 no change in the content and self -sufficiency of their
 
 CASTE THREE 15 
 
 attitude. He was not so well-dressed as they and was 
 evidently a stranger, to judge from a bag and a folded 
 overcoat which the September afternoon did not 
 demand. 
 
 The young man's inquiry for Fourteenth and Jack- 
 son streets brought instructions about getting there. 
 " A block west to the post-office and then three blocks 
 south," said the girl in charge of the cigar-counter. 
 She was courteous, but as uninterested as the young 
 males around her. 
 
 Not that Hewitt was annoyed or more than cog- 
 nizant of this indifference of Alston, Indiana, to his 
 presence in its midst. He was a young man of some 
 intellectual prestige in that part of Chicago dominated 
 by an intellectual ideal. He was not, himself, con- 
 cerned with drug-store loafers, or even habitues. He 
 had come to Alston because an urgent letter from his 
 father and a long talk with his brother Paul had con- 
 vinced him that such a move might be wisdom. 
 Therefore he thanked the girl and started to go. 
 
 " Heh, Canby ! " shouted a tall, thin youth from the 
 front of the store, and he shot down the tiled floor 
 in pursuit of a plump boy who was in the act of swiftly 
 and surreptitiously escorting a girl out by the side 
 door. " Heh, I Ve got a date with Helen ! " 
 
 The plump one did not pause, but hastened his foot- 
 steps and fairly leaping into an automobile at the 
 curb, was in the act of driving off when his nimble 
 pursuer jumped on the running-board and grabbed the 
 girl by the arm.
 
 16 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I 've got a date with Helen myself, you boob ! " 
 the latter continued to aver. " Stop that car, you 
 sneak thief ! " 
 
 Hewitt, walking toward the post-office, was a spec- 
 tator of this trouble over the eternal feminine. He 
 smiled to himself when the plump boy in possession 
 gave a hard push which dislodged the raging thin one 
 from his position and sent him flying at a run back to 
 the drug-store under the momentum gathered in his 
 quick and unexpected step to the pavement. Hewitt 
 could hear the laughs of the witnesses of this unhappy 
 ending, who had hurried out of the drug-store to watch 
 it. 
 
 The young man realized, on going south along a 
 street marked Jackson, that he was practically retrac- 
 ing his steps to the station, although this street was 
 lined not with business places, but with pleasant resi- 
 dences, well-lawned abodes in front of which chil- 
 dren were playing on roller-skates. 
 
 At Twelfth Street a stone Methodist church of some 
 distinction stood next to a house built of the same ma- 
 terial. It was evidently a parsonage. A pretty, dark- 
 haired girl, arrayed in a trim suit and small hat, 
 walked from the door of the latter, got into a pony- 
 cart, and drove away, waving her hand to two women 
 who were emerging from the church. 
 
 There were three houses on the various corners of 
 Fourteenth and Jackson streets, but Hewitt had no 
 trouble in selecting his father's. It was the kind of 
 house he expected his father to live in. It was a brick
 
 CASTE THREE 17 
 
 structure of that type erected in the Middle West 
 during the mid-nineteenth century. From the front, 
 at an earlier day when the iron railings of the nar- 
 row front veranda were not rusted and broken and 
 when the lightning-rod rising straight and high, with 
 balls and curly-cues, had been an affair to congratulate 
 the owner upon, the house must have been consid- 
 ered an imposing addition to the residence section of 
 a young but growing Alston. It rose two stories 
 tall stories that told of enormously high ceilings 
 within. But from the side one saw the falseness of 
 the front's promise. The remainder of the house 
 wandered back indefinitely, being one story and roofed 
 with slate, and it ended in a frame summer kitchen 
 which seemed to cling helplessly to its brother- rooms. 
 
 For five years the inhabitant of a city whose typical 
 form in architecture is the brick or stone or stone- 
 veneered apartment-building, Hewitt was not critical 
 of the architecture of the house of his father's selec- 
 tion. He merely designated it, upon first glance, as 
 ugly, and he lumped its defects in the cover-all term, 
 " old-fashioned." 
 
 A straggly lawn, with a gnarled apple-tree too old 
 to bear fruit, lay around the house. A coal-yard was. 
 seen to lie between it and the railroad, concealed par- 
 tially from view by a high board fence. Hewitt felt 
 a strong hatred well up in him against the house's 
 surroundings. Dirty! Ugly! And to his twenty 
 years the latter word conveyed an immense heap of 
 opprobrium upon anything. An open lot opposite was
 
 i8 CASTE THREE 
 
 laid out in tennis-courts which could not, certainly, 
 conceal the rear of the buildings facing on Meridian 
 Street, an expanse of dirty doorways, piles of bar- 
 rels, rusted fire-escapes, and piles of paper. 
 
 The young man opened the door into the brick house 
 hurriedly. After all, despite the lapse which not being 
 met at the station hinted at, he had not seen his father, 
 his grandfather, or Grace for five years, and his inter- 
 est in them, which had waned in the interim, revived 
 as he swung open the door. 
 
 " Hello, everybody ! " he called, and started through 
 the living-room. 
 
 A figure, scarcely discernible in the semi-twilight of 
 the darkened room, moved from its position over the 
 register of a hot-air furnace. The room was very 
 warm, it seemed to Hewitt, fresh from the September 
 sunshine outside. 
 
 " Hello, grandpa ! " he said. 
 
 "How-do, Hewie?" answered a weak voice. 
 "Home?" 
 
 You might have thought from the words of the list- 
 less, cracked- voiced, old man that Hewitt had been 
 away for the morning. 
 
 " Does n't seem exactly like home to me," the boy 
 said, shaking the trembling hand his grandfather held 
 out to him. 
 
 " We 've moved since you was home, hain't 
 we?" 
 
 Hewitt walked out through the dining-room, con- 
 taining a heavy sideboard of intricate carving with a
 
 CASTE THREE 19 
 
 streaked old mirror in the back, a heavy oak table with 
 chairs to match, and a yellow plush " lounge," into the 
 kitchen. This looked more like the old farm-house, 
 this spotlessness of stove and table and cupboard. 
 Even the cat sitting in the doorway wanted to become 
 cleaner than any other cat in the world and went about 
 accomplishing that end with a gusto which it inter- 
 rupted to glance up at the new entrant. Immediately, 
 however, it resumed operations on the next paw. A 
 young man must not be allowed to think that his ar- 
 rival at home after a five years' absence made any dif- 
 ference in the conduct of life among the resident 
 householders. The cat's attitude was one of supreme 
 indifference to all departures and arrivals, a feline self- 
 content not to be pricked by any returning son, prodi- 
 gal or puritan. 
 
 Grace was in the summer kitchen building a fire of 
 kindling and small pieces of coal. At the sound of 
 footsteps she, too, turned to glance at the newcomer, 
 and then, like the cat, returned to her labor. 
 
 " Hello, Hewie ! " she essayed, with marked pla- 
 cidity. 
 
 " Hello," Hewitt vouchsafed. 
 
 He was half-discomfitted by the matter-of-factness 
 with which his family was taking his reentrance into 
 their bosom. He knew that people died and were bur- 
 ied without the occurrence drawing a single sign of 
 strong feeling from the Stevensons, but somehow he 
 had expected his arrival to create more of a stir than 
 death, a death outside the family.
 
 20 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I 'm going to bake," said Grace, continuing to lay 
 the chips of coal on the wood in the low stove. 
 
 Hewitt had intended to kiss Grace. He had felt 
 that the emotional impregnability of the home-staying 
 section of the Stevenson family was unsatisfactory and 
 not up to new ideals of family affection which he had 
 formed in Chicago from observation of other families. 
 Mr. Woody always kissed Mrs. Woody every time he 
 went home from the book-store, and although a sister 
 was not a wife, of course, a kiss was not here amiss, so 
 to speak. 
 
 But he did not kiss Grace. He picked up some 
 scraps of wood from the floor and took charge of the 
 fire, instead. 
 
 " Here, I '11 do that. You go ahead and attend to 
 your bread or pies or whatever you 're making." 
 
 Grace glanced at him inquiringly. The Hewitt of 
 five years before had grown up, she understood. He 
 did not look at all like Paul, whose curly hair and 
 ready smile Grace had always thought very becoming 
 to a young man. Indeed, Paul was rather the family 
 favorite, perhaps because of his long sojourn among 
 other tribes. He was to Grace as near an ideal of 
 manly beauty as she would ever develop. She had 
 never had any " young man " of her own, and Paul 
 had been accustomed to steal up to pull her hair, to 
 pin up her dress in ludicrous folds, or to pinch her 
 plump arms at unexpected moments in a way that 
 pleased her immensely, even while she pretended to be 
 greatly chagrined. Paul had a way about him, while
 
 CASTE THREE 21 
 
 Hewitt had always been more serious. Also, the lat- 
 ter's gray eyes, large, long-lashed, almost blurred by 
 dark lashes, and with a dreamy look in them which one 
 did not associate with the Stevenson side of the family, 
 were in annoying contrast to his dark hair, worn a 
 trifle long and combed back smoothly from his fore- 
 head, although it did not always stay back for long. 
 In fact, there was one strand which habitually fell over 
 his right temple, giving him a wild and unkempt ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 " Hewie was always all eyes," Grace thought to her- 
 self, " but they look kind o' funny now with his hair, 
 since it 's turned darker. It seems like his eyes ought 
 to be darker, too." She thus dispensed with the fea- 
 ture which was his chief claim to beauty. She also 
 noticed his extreme length of leg with disapproval. 
 Paul was shorter and heavier in proportion, more 
 manly. This length made Hewitt look awkward and 
 thin. She remembered with a sort of pride, however, 
 while disparaging his right to be called a handsome 
 young man, that her grandfather on her mother's side 
 had often been said to resemble " Honest Abe " 
 Lincoln in appearance. Hewitt would have to drink 
 lots of milk and eat potatoes while he was home. 
 Then, maybe, his eyes would n't look so important. 
 
 " Where 's father ? " Hewitt asked, when he had fin- 
 ished with the fire. 
 
 " Out at the farm. He 's been like a chicken with 
 its head off ever since we moved over here, and 
 grandpa and I got him to buy twenty acres of garden-
 
 22 CASTE THREE 
 
 land out here five miles. He drives out every day. 
 He does more work on it than the man he 's rented it 
 to on shares. He 's never been just satisfied, Hewie, 
 since we sold out." Grace frowned and turned the 
 drafts of the stove to heat the oven. " But where we 
 could n't get him to read a farm-journal ten years ago, 
 maybe there were n't so many then, now he wants 
 to take up every new notion that comes out in that big 
 ' weekly ' on gardening. I never saw his beat ! " 
 
 Hewitt moved away from the stove. The heat 
 poured out in a volume. 
 
 " I guess that will burn," he said. 
 
 " It 's all right. You run and look at the rest of the 
 house. You 've never been in it before, have you? " 
 
 He selected a peeled apple from the pile in the pan 
 on the table and set off on a tour of inspection. 
 
 " Cold, grandpa? " he asked his grandfather in pass- 
 ing. 
 
 The old man blinked uncertainly and turned his eyes 
 toward Hewitt. 
 
 " Perty cold for September. Used to have warm 
 Septembers in Indiana, but here lately they 've been 
 getting colder. I s'pose the 'lectricity in the tele- 
 phones and interurbans and lights makes a difference 
 in the atmosphere." 
 
 He dropped back in his chair and fell to dozing 
 again. 
 
 Hewitt ventured no farther than the door leading 
 into the " parlor." Its stiff cleanliness Was not invit- 
 ing. It resembled the parlor of the farm-house where
 
 CASTE THREE 23 
 
 he had lived until he was fifteen. In that far-off child- 
 hood he had never been comfortable in a single one 
 of the horsehair-covered, large, respectable chairs. 
 He had tried them one by one on the various occasions 
 when a funeral, the visit of a successful relative, or 
 that of the minister had caused the damp, unheated 
 parlor to be opened for living purposes. A red ingrain 
 carpet was on the floor. A " stand," marble-topped 
 and holding a Bible used only for birth and death 
 statistics and a limp-leather gift edition of " Lucile," 
 stood in one corner. Hewitt remembered that a neigh- 
 bor-girl had long before given that latter piece of airy 
 literature to Paul for Christmas. She had selected it, 
 Paul had told him, for the beauty of the binding, 
 rather than for the artistry of its poetic expres- 
 sion. 
 
 The ceiling fulfilled the promise of the exterior of 
 the house. It was extraordinarily high, and the elec- 
 tric-light wires, extending from one corner to the mid- 
 dle of it, hung down and ended in an unshaded bulb. 
 A bay-window looking to the south held two thrifty 
 ferns in bright colored jardinieres and a rubber-plant 
 similarly potted. A begonia, covered with pink, waxy 
 blossoms, stood on the window-sill, being partially 
 concealed by the long, heavy lace curtains with their 
 elaborate design of intertwined poppies in heavy white 
 thread. 
 
 Hewitt moved on into the first floor bed-rooms. 
 They contained old-fashioned oak furniture broad 
 beds covered with snow white " spreads " and headed
 
 24 CASTE THREE 
 
 by round bolsters, high, marble-topped bureaus, and 
 the same heavy lace curtains. 
 
 "Been upstairs?" Grace asked, when he emerged 
 into the kitchen again. " Kind o' nice, is n't it? You 
 can have the north room upstairs, Hewie. I Ve al- 
 ways had the south. It 's pleasanter, but I 'd 'a' had 
 to change all my things." 
 
 " Change ? I should say not ! The north one suits 
 me." 
 
 "How'd you like high school?" Grace asked, as 
 she pared the dough from the edge of a pie she was 
 finishing. 
 
 Hewitt stopped. 
 
 " I liked it. I 'm glad I went." 
 
 " You were n't so much older than the rest of the 
 boys, were you ? I thought you would n't be. You 
 were always bright in the country school." 
 
 " Nineteen is about the average for graduation, and 
 I 'm twenty." 
 
 " I 'm glad you went. An education is something 
 nobody can take away from you. You might unpack 
 your trunk before father comes, if you think you '11 
 stay for a while. Oh, they did n't bring it from the 
 station, did they? " 
 
 " I just brought a bag," he explained. 
 
 "You're going back to Chicago, are you?" she 
 asked quickly, but resumed her work on the pie imme- 
 diately. There was a hint of consternation in her 
 stopping her work for a second which seeped into 
 Hewitt's consciousness, dulled where his family's feel-
 
 CASTE THREE 2$ 
 
 ings were concerned but grown more acute by reason 
 of his long absence. He watched her with a faint 
 furtiveness in his eyes as she padded back and forth 
 from the kitchen to its summer substitute. 
 
 Grace was of that fair-skinned, reddish-haired type 
 which is flabbily heavy and abounds in forehead and 
 dim, almost indistinguishable, freckles. Her plump 
 white hands and her white wide forehead always 
 seemed about to break out into a perspiration, but 
 never did. Hewitt noticed this trait about her now. 
 There had been a time in his boyhood when he had 
 thought Grace pretty, but her pale eyes and porous skin 
 gave him a different impression now. Despite the new 
 note of sympathy and self -stimulated affection for his 
 family, born of a conviction that one should have that 
 sort of feeling for one's blood relatives, he found him- 
 self being critical of her " doughiness," as he mentally 
 and involuntarily referred to her plump softness. 
 
 His outward expression of this notice of her 
 " doughiness," however, was limited to a straightening 
 of his thin shoulders and a setting of his jaw, already 
 firm beyond the requirements of manly distinction. 
 These movements were performed with a vague idea 
 of fighting an unwelcome family inheritance, although 
 upon further thought he was able to remember that 
 he favored his mother, a nervous, energetic woman 
 prone to alternate between strenuous bursts of energy 
 and a silent, undemonstrative moodiness. She had 
 guided not only her own life, but had set her mark 
 upon her husband and her offspring.
 
 26 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt and Paul looked more like their mother's 
 side of the family, Charles Stevenson had always said 
 with pride. He admired the deceased Mrs. Stevenson 
 with increasing fervor as the years following her death 
 grew more numerous. He had given her a loyal 
 admiration, although too little monetary sign of it, 
 while she was yet alive and engaged in directing the 
 affairs of the farm-household in a way to make possi- 
 ble his financial success. He often referred now to 
 her power of " managing things." 
 
 In reply to Grace's questions about his intention of 
 returning to Chicago, Hewitt told her that he wanted 
 to talk to his father before he could be sure. The fur- 
 tiveness in his glance, veiled and unacknowledged, was 
 due to his recognition that she might want him to stay 
 at home, whether or not his father acquiesced to his 
 plans. He did n't want to stay long in Alston, he was 
 sure, although he knew he had better follow Paul's 
 advice. 
 
 "Do you like the girl Paul's going to marry?" 
 asked his sister above the noise of the slamming oven- 
 door. 
 
 " Yes. She 's awfully pretty. Her father has 
 some money, too. He 's a manufacturer." 
 
 " That 's what Paul said in his letter." 
 
 " He makes metal novelties." 
 
 " That 's what Paul said." 
 
 " They 're going to live up on the north side in a 
 nice apartment. Sun-parlor in it, and sleeping porch, 
 and so on."
 
 CASTE THREE 27 
 
 Grace stopped in the doorway to look at him as he 
 said this. 
 
 "How much rent?" she asked, resolutely deter- 
 mined to know and judge the girl of Paul's selection. 
 
 " Fifty or sixty, I think." 
 
 His sister closed her mouth to show her opinion of 
 Paul's prospective wife. 
 
 " It would have been better if Paul had waited and 
 helped you through college before he got married," she 
 said. 
 
 " I did n't want him to. He 's done enough for me 
 the way it is. He would n't have got that girl if he 'd 
 had to wait even a year to help me. She had lots of 
 men who liked her." 
 
 " She 'd have waited for Paul if she 'd thought 
 enough of him." 
 
 " May be. You see, though, a man has to step 
 lively to get a girl like that. She liked Paul especially 
 because she said he was intelligent. Paul reads a good 
 deal. He wants money, but he knows there are a lot 
 of other things in the world, too. Paul could talk as 
 well as the university men who boarded at the same 
 place we did." 
 
 This unusual length of comment on Hewitt's part 
 to a member of his family exhausted his conversational 
 facilities, and he wandered out into the back-yard and 
 around through the long, uneven grass to the front 
 veranda. He whistled softly an air which had risen 
 above the Chicago noises during the summer, without 
 realizing that he was throwing his esthetic musical
 
 28 CASTE THREE 
 
 taste to the winds by doing so. But even whistling 
 could not entirely drive away the queer faint-hearted- 
 ness which was closing in upon him as the sun dropped 
 lower and late afternoon, with its melancholy sugges- 
 tion of other late afternoons in pleasanter surround- 
 ings amid congenial companionship, passed gradually 
 into early evening. He kept watching the neglected 
 tennis-courts, the board fence about the coal-yard, and 
 the shabby cottages across the way, with a growing 
 hatred for such ugliness. In Chicago he had never 
 been so depressed by the same type of ugliness, perhaps 
 because he had never felt responsible for it. Here he 
 did. His family had selected this house with its dingy 
 outlook. He did n't like it. Why had n't they rented 
 a place farther up on Jackson Street, one of the clean, 
 newer residences he had passed in coming from the 
 drug-store ? 
 
 He wished just then that he and Paul were sitting 
 on a bench in Jackson Park, watching the bathers, and 
 the breakers a windy day like this always brought 
 out. Or that they were walking down Woodlawn, 
 "Brains' Row," toward the Midway. Or that they 
 were just sitting talking on the veranda of the board- 
 ing-house.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AT dinner Hewitt saw less use in being sorry for 
 himself and regained his normal youthful atti- 
 tude of acceptance. His father, more restless and with 
 the lines about his mouth and eyes grown deeper after 
 five years, aided in this process of acclimatization as 
 did also the hot dinner cooked with the culinary skill 
 handed down from mother to daughter on the farms 
 of the Middle West. 
 
 Charles Stevenson examined his son with eyes which 
 four years of retirement from active farming had in- 
 tensified, curiously enough. If he had expected to see 
 a too precise fop issue from the supposed sophistica- 
 tion of four years in a city he was disappointed. 
 Hewitt still had the naturalness of his childhood, was 
 still wholesome. He had developed, it is true, a refine- 
 ment of speech from which he often dropped back, 
 in the presence of this new-found portion of his family, 
 into Hoosierisms. He pronounced the " i " in " it " 
 with an un-Hoosierly precision which his father no- 
 ticed and resented, and his " a " was less flat than a 
 native's. But his carelessness of clothing, the ex- 
 ceptions being his cleanness of shirt and collar and 
 his shininess of shoes, made up for these assumed 
 
 29
 
 30 CASTE THREE 
 
 differences in speech, his father thought. He was 
 not so well-dressed as Paul had been on his infrequent 
 visits home. 
 
 Hewitt, also, did not exaggerate his care in table- 
 manners, as his father half -expected. Mr. Stevenson 
 had been prepared to emphasize his own indifference 
 to a city code of etiquette by leaving his spoon in his 
 cup while he drank, although in previous years this 
 had brought a storm of protest from Grace. He had 
 no intention of being cowed by the superiorities of a 
 son who had recently been graduated from a Chicago 
 high school, and so endowed with the prestige such a 
 course gave. 
 
 The grandfather regarded his descendant with curi- 
 osity, now that he was entirely awake and warmed by 
 dinner. 
 
 " That Sears Roebuck is a fine store in Chicago, 
 ain't it?" he queried. 
 
 "Ever buy anything there?" Hewitt asked, with 
 great good humor. 
 
 " No, not yet. We 're going to, though. There 's 
 a good lawn-mower in the catalogue. Your father 
 says maybe he '11 get one in the spring. I could cut 
 the grass." 
 
 " How 's Paul ? " Charles Stevenson inquired. 
 
 " He 's fine. He 's going to marry a nice girl this 
 fall." 
 
 There was silence while Grace cut some meat into 
 fine bits for her grandfather. Then Charles Stevenson 
 abruptly introduced the subject of the garden farm.
 
 CASTE THREE 31 
 
 " I Ve got a little garden patch five miles out," he 
 said. " We '11 go out to-morrow and look it over. 
 Nothing much left now, but it 's good ground. I 'm 
 fertilizing and rotating crops." 
 
 " That 's the idea," Hewitt managed to say with 
 some enthusiasm. He had a faint suspicion that his 
 father's sending for him to come home had something 
 to do with this garden plot. He resented the sus- 
 picion. That the Stevensons had been tillers of the 
 soil for three generations was not to influence a fourth 
 to attach his aims and hopes to the soil. Cities had 
 set their fingers upon Hewitt, and he had no desire to 
 unfasten their gentle hold. 
 
 When apple pie, luscious and juicy, had been eaten, 
 Charles Stevenson arose, patting his enlarged abdom- 
 inal regions according to habit and wiping the ends 
 of his short mustache vigorously with his folded nap- 
 kin. He was very leisurely, and grunted out an un- 
 convincing cough or two while advancing to the door- 
 way. There he turned ponderously and looked at his 
 son with blue eyes that began to twinkle mildly. A 
 breeze, wandering through the doorway, stirred the 
 thin, reddish gray hair that stood up in a curly flufri- 
 ness from his partly bald crown, giving him a half- 
 childish air of abandon which was incongruous with 
 his breadth of shoulder and the muscularity of his 
 physique. He did not speak, as Hewitt expected, but 
 coughed again and went out upon the front veranda. 
 
 Grace nodded in that direction; Hewitt understood 
 and followed his father.
 
 32 CASTE THREE 
 
 Mr. Stevenson was sitting in a big, caned chair, his 
 feet crossed and elevated to the narrow iron railing. 
 He was silent while his son drew up another chair and 
 sat down. 
 
 " I suppose you are anxious to know why I sent for 
 you, aren't you?" He seemed to take pleasure in 
 having mystified the boy. His eyes twinkled again 
 into a blurred smile. " I want you to go up to Purdue 
 for a couple of years and take an agricultural course. 
 Then you can come back here and I '11 buy up the 
 farm next to that garden of mine and we '11 start 
 farming again. Well?" 
 
 He regarded his son narrowly, the twinkle dying 
 almost imperceptibly in his eyes and giving place to 
 a marked concern for the answer to this generous 
 proposition. Hewitt understood immediately how 
 much his accepting this plan meant to his father. The 
 blow had fallen. He was now confronted with the 
 confirmation of his half-formed suspicions. But he 
 did not speak. 
 
 " Well, what do you say? " The man was irritably 
 impatient. 
 
 Hewitt had never in his life talked out any matter 
 with anyone except Paul. Somehow, Paul was dif- 
 ferent. You did n't mind saying things to him ; you 
 were, moreover, always understood. You counted on 
 that. Other people seldom understood ; they made you 
 want to dry up and thrash it out with yourself. At 
 present he was so sure that his father would certainly 
 not understand that he closed up his recently opened
 
 CASTE THREE 33 
 
 shell and set his jaw. The Stevensons had an inherent 
 tendency to set their jaws. They were always ex- 
 cept Paul either in the act of setting their jaws or 
 of releasing them from a set position. 
 
 His father's impatience waxed. He saw, no doubt, 
 that Hewitt might refuse even to discuss the matter 
 with him. His jaw, too, set. 
 
 " Well ? " he queried again, with added impatience. 
 
 Then something in the lines around his father's 
 mouth and eyes touched Hewitt, and he stopped being 
 a Stevenson. 
 
 " I tell you, Father, I 'm going to college, but I 
 want to take an academic course. I don't know what 
 profession I want to take up eventually. I 'm not sure 
 about anything, except that I first want a broad foun- 
 dation. I can't go to Purdue. Purdue's a good 
 school of its kind, but I don't want an agricultural or 
 an engineering course." 
 
 The impatience that had found only mild expression 
 and demanded more, burst. 
 
 " You might as well understand right now that I '11 
 pay for an agricultural course, and not for any other 
 one. You can take that and come back here, and 
 we'll run that farm. Or you can shift for yourself. 
 If you think for one minute that I 'm goin' to spend 
 my hard-earned money sendin' you to some college 
 to make a street-car conductor or a professor or a 
 snob out o' you, you 're mistaken. I 've made my 
 offer, and it '11 stand. You can go to Purdue for 
 two years, and I '11 pay all the expenses. I can afford
 
 34 CASTE THREE 
 
 to, if we 're going on a farm afterward. You better 
 think it over." 
 
 The rage subsided. He gazed into space, while his 
 son for the second time that day examined the rear 
 of the shops on the next street and wished himself 
 back in Chicago more heartily than ever. His father's 
 next words broke in on this current of desire. 
 
 " Look here, Hewie," he said, and his voice and 
 mood were perceptibly softened, " I 'm not rich. I 've 
 got money in the bank a few thousands. We can 
 live on the interest all right, getting what we do from 
 the garden out there. Grace and I and your grand- 
 father get along all right without skimping much. I 
 could n't afford to send you to college an ordinary 
 college for four years without cutting into the prin- 
 cipal. Anyway, you don't need a college education. 
 You 're educated right now all you need be. You 've 
 got what most men would consider a good education. 
 What we need in this country, instead of any more 
 two-by-four college graduates to fill up the cities 
 try in' to live better than their fathers did on less money 
 what we need is some good solid farmers with a 
 knowledge of soils and parasites and pigs and 
 dairyin'. What this country needs is some good young 
 farmers." 
 
 He subsided into his chair, ready for further length 
 of discourse. 
 
 " Now when I was young, we did n't have to be so 
 careful of soil and planting and so forth. There was 
 plenty of land to be had cheap. Why, Hewie, since
 
 CASTE THREE 35 
 
 your grandfather's time, land values have doubled in 
 this state. Your great-grandfather was one of the 
 pioneers in Indiana. He cleared some of the land 
 right around where we used to live. Then he moved 
 on into Illinois. Everybody in those days moved on. 
 But your grandfather came back to Indiana and bought 
 up some of the same land his father had cleared. 
 Land was n't high even then, and the soil was so good 
 that no one had to be careful. If you wore out one 
 field, there was another one to move to. It 's only 
 in the last few years that us younger farmers have 
 had to begin thinkin' about the land. And to tell the 
 truth, I was n't thinkin' much about it when I 
 owned that land over east of here. I was n't 
 thinkin' much about increasing the number of 
 bushels to the acre. But I 've been finding out some 
 things since I 've had more time to read. In 
 fact, for a couple of years I did n't have much else 
 to do but read, and I 've found out a lot of things 
 from these new farm journals. It used to be farmin' 
 and takin', but now it 's farmin' and puttin'. For 
 everything you take out of the soil, you 've got to put 
 something in. In fifty years, if it's handled right, 
 that garden and the farm next to it will be as good 
 as it was twenty years ago." 
 
 Hewitt was more interested than he had intended 
 or wanted to be. His father had developed mentally 
 during these few years. But no amount of eloquence 
 could have changed the boy's feeling about the agri- 
 cultural course.
 
 3 6 CASTE THREE 
 
 The September twilight deepened into darkness 
 which was soon pierced by the gleams of a street-light 
 on the corner in front of the house. The air became 
 clearer and cooler. Father and son silently watched 
 the automobiles which passed. Now and then a street- 
 car clanged its way along Meridian. Some boys gath- 
 ered on the tennis-courts across the street to play 
 " knock the wicket." 
 
 "What do you say, Hewitt?" questioned the man 
 after a while, with a complete absence of rancor. 
 
 Hewitt hesitated. 
 
 " I can't do it, Father. I already have my plans, 
 and it wouldn't be fair to myself to take your way. 
 Paul was going to help me. Now I '11 do it myself." 
 
 The older man looked at him. 
 
 " Then you 're going back to Chicago ? " 
 
 Hewitt suspected the same import of suppressed 
 appeal that had been present in Grace's similar ques- 
 tion of the afternoon. He disliked hurting his father, 
 but he wanted to go back to Chicago. 
 
 Five years before, Paul had come down to his 
 mother's funeral and had found his young brother 
 just finished with the country school and the possessor 
 of a keen, unsatisfied demand for more education. 
 They had all been glad enough to accept Paul's sug- 
 gestion that Hewitt go back to Chicago with him and 
 finish high school. His father had wanted Hewitt 
 to have that chance. The desire for education was a 
 part of his Anglo-Saxon traditions. But gradually, as 
 the boy had written short letters telling that he was
 
 CASTE THREE 37 
 
 working on Saturdays in a grocery, later in a drug- 
 store, and still later, during the last two years of high 
 school, in a book-store not far from the University 
 of Chicago, their father had let Paul and Hewitt pay 
 all the expenses of this education, with the load light- 
 ened only by an annual Christmas check of twenty 
 dollars or so. 
 
 Hewitt had had his country-school training supple- 
 mented by a year in a Chicago grammar school, and 
 had also spent four years in high school. But by far 
 the most important part of his education had been 
 gained during his association with Paul, with univer- 
 sity students who lived near them, and with others 
 who made Woody' s book-store a rendezvous and gen- 
 eral headquarters for the discussion of anything from 
 sex matters to the possible population of Mars or the 
 weaknesses in theoretical socialism. 
 
 Between school terms and in the summer Hewitt 
 had spent his time reading the books which these men 
 talked about. He did not at first understand all that 
 he read, but his mentality grew by leaps and bounds. 
 Psychology first, and later sociology, interspersed with 
 some elementary economics and bits of necessary 
 biology, had consumed his attention for a year. Be- 
 fore that, all his reading had been literature the 
 modern novelists and poets desultorily, Arnold, Pater, 
 and Coleridge by fits and starts, Sudermann, Haupt- 
 man, Maeterlinck, Rostand, Gorky and Andreyev in 
 translations, and the American realists intermittently. 
 
 Hewitt was the kind of boy that people take delight
 
 38 CASTE THREE 
 
 in attempting to influence the most different types 
 of people. Mr. Woody had tried to imprint upon 
 him his own devotion to the classics, with temporary 
 success. A woman suffragist of the aggressive, smil- 
 ing, sure-of -her self class had pursued him wildly for 
 an entire week, trying to persuade him that women 
 must have the vote; and Hewitt, already sure that 
 they should have it, but unwilling to admit as much 
 to the aggressive one, only succeeded in getting rid 
 of her as a companion by remarking with a contemp- 
 tuous smile that he himself did not yet have the vote 
 and so was little concerned with woman's possession 
 of it. 
 
 One young iconoclast distinctly not of the parlor 
 variety, a German Jew even thinner than Hewitt, had 
 been most potent in directing the course of his thought. 
 He was a youth who had come to Chicago from Ger- 
 many at the age of seven, unable to speak any but the 
 simplest English. With the keenness of the intellec- 
 tual of his race, he had absorbed the conventional 
 training of the Chicago schools and proceeded to be- 
 come a radical critic of all existing institutions. His 
 pet piece of iconoclasm was the failure of democracy. 
 During many evenings, rainy or snowy ones especially, 
 when business in the book-store was negligible, old 
 Mr. Woody and Hewitt and Letsky and others leaned 
 upon the glass show-cases and talked far into the night 
 on sex and religion and government and international 
 law and Greek art and any other subject that popped 
 into prominence for the nonce.
 
 CASTE THREE 39 
 
 Letsky, first of all, knew modern science. He kept 
 up to the second on progress in research. Then his 
 favorite method was to forge ahead from the point up 
 to which science stood sponsor and with a brilliant im- 
 agination tear down present systems to establish new 
 ones. Nothing was sacred to his prying mind. He 
 was intent upon rapid social progress. He saw ways. 
 Into the maelstrom in which he plunged Hewitt he 
 threw one straw Question everything ! 
 
 " Destructive thinking precedes every worthwhile 
 piece of construction," he used to say. " Question 
 everything. The man who wrote in a weekly recently 
 that the harsh critic is acting according to the theory 
 that ' the hand that rocks the boat rules the land,' 
 did n't carry his cleverness far enough. Rocking the 
 boat may prove that the craft is unseaworthy; and 
 then it can be made seaworthy." 
 
 A favorite butt of Letsky's wit was marriage. That 
 institution, the target of a great deal of cheaper wit 
 than the young Jew's, the chronic source of vaudeville 
 jokes, and presenting more apparent weaknesses than 
 any other institution, because more people live in close 
 relations with it and so are aware of its defects, served 
 for the skeleton upon which he draped his best mourn- 
 ing. 
 
 " Marriage among primitive people was beautiful, 
 compared to our modern system," he would declare. 
 
 " What have you to offer in place of the modern ? " 
 Mr. Woody always asked. 
 
 " Nothing yet. I 'm going to have something to
 
 40 CASTE THREE 
 
 offer in a few years, though," he returned laughing on 
 one occasion. 
 
 And both of his auditors, strange to say, were firm 
 in their belief that in five years or so he would have a 
 solution to the perplexities of this particular problem. 
 
 " Question everything " had been his last words to 
 Hewitt on the night before he left Chicago. " And 
 don't get married until I 've worked out this new 
 system," he had come back to the store-door to warn 
 him. 
 
 " Then you '11 go back to Chicago? " 
 
 His father's question had brought racing into 
 Hewitt's mind those talks with Letsky, the peacefulness 
 of being in the midst of intellectual movement, and the 
 satisfaction of feeling yourself learning from others. 
 But dominating all his desires was that last talk he 
 had had with Paul. 
 
 " Even if father wants you to carry out some plans 
 of his, instead of your own, you 'd better stay in 
 Alston," the latter had said. " You can't enter the uni- 
 versity this fall, if I get married. You can't cover all 
 your expenses with the money you can make yourself. 
 You need some to start on. Maybe father '11 help, if 
 he sees you 're insistent enough. Stay in Alston and 
 work and save your money. Father may help in the 
 end." 
 
 Now that he was in Alston and confronted by his 
 father's determination to have him turn scientific 
 farmer, he wanted to disregard Paul's advice and take 
 the first train back. But caution spoke.
 
 CASTE THREE 41 
 
 "Look here, Father," he said, shifting nervously in 
 his chair, " I want to go to Chicago University. I 
 can earn my own board and room there, if you '11 pay 
 for my tuition and my clothes. Next year, maybe, I 
 could manage all of it. I don't want to be a farmer. 
 I have other plans." 
 
 "What plans?" 
 
 " I haven't decided definitely. I think I I want 
 to write." He was ashamed of the confession. 
 
 "Write what?" 
 
 " I can't tell yet. Poetry or " 
 
 "Poetry?" 
 
 " Books of some kind." 
 
 " There 's no money in poetry." 
 
 Hewitt was angered. 
 
 " Do you think money 's the only thing in the 
 world?" 
 
 " You '11 find money is a blamed sight more impor- 
 tant than some other things you think are so impor- 
 tant now. When you 're sixty you '11 know it 's money 
 that keeps you out of the poor- farm. Money " 
 
 " I know. Of course one needs money. I need some 
 right now." A smile flickered into his eyes at the an- 
 omaly of his position. Deriding money, when he had 
 been begging for some of that same filthy silverware ! 
 
 " Well, you '11 not get it from me, unless you go 
 to Purdue and learn something practical. Poetry! 
 You '11 learn to earn your own living in my way, or 
 you '11 earn it the best way you can. D' you under- 
 stand?"
 
 42 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt considered losing his temper and thundering 
 a little understanding in his own behalf. He wanted, 
 or almost wanted, to tell his father that he did n't give 
 a damn whether he helped him or not, and to bring 
 his fist down on his chair-arm, as his father had done, 
 with an ultimatum of " Help me, or I '11 never darken 
 your door again ! " But he had rather lost the habit 
 of getting angry. Paul had taught him by example 
 a passivity in the face of others' anger. " What 's the 
 use ? " that amiable person always had said. 
 
 " All right, Father," was what Hewitt actually said. 
 " I guess I understand. Guess I '11 read a little and go 
 to bed." 
 
 Mr. Stevenson allowed his son to rise, stretch him- 
 self, and go into the house, before he rose quickly 
 and exclaimed hoarsely: 
 
 " Are you going back to Chicago? " 
 
 Hewitt allowed himself to be deliberate. He knew 
 that his father wanted him to stay, and he had a feel- 
 ing of power in delaying his answer. Also, he did 
 not wish to commit himself. So he equivocated. 
 
 " I can't tell. I '11 decide to-morrow," he replied. 
 
 Hewitt figured that if he could make even fifteen 
 dollars a week, at the end of a year he would have 
 seven hundred and twenty dollars. " If I could save 
 ten a week," he thought, " I 'd have five hundred and 
 twenty. Not so bad. I guess I '11 stay." But he 
 did not repeat this decision aloud. Instead, he yawned 
 as he reached the top of the stairs and switched on the 
 light in the hall.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HEWITT'S care the next morning as to his linen, 
 correctness of tie, and smoothness of hair 
 the last only conquered into submissiveness by brushing 
 and the application of a very little hair-oil would 
 have laid him open to the loud scorn of Letsky and 
 his radical associates. Five hundred and twenty dol- 
 lars is not to be sniffed at, however. In Chicago he 
 would have to pay for his board and room; here at 
 home he could save. And one must yield to popular 
 demand in regard to neatness of attire. Five years 
 before, Hewitt's head had been teeming with the boy- 
 ish " classics " which the farmers' sons around him 
 read and lent to each other. Not dime novels, to be 
 sure, for these had become passe, but stories in which 
 two bright youths apply for the same position of office 
 boy, or some equally delectable berth. The one who 
 is pressed, manicured, and washed, is always success- 
 ful over his untidy rival. Not that these tales in nine- 
 teen twelve ordinarily played a large part in Hewitt's 
 thought. But a possible five hundred and twenty 
 dollars in savings depended on his getting a position 
 in Alston, and savings meant college, and college 
 meant what might it not mean? Ultimate victory! 
 Letsky had been the center of a group who scorned 
 correct, or even spotless, clothing. To them it was 
 
 43
 
 44 CASTE THREE 
 
 the index of the materialistic, and hence the non-intel- 
 lectual type of mind. Some men went to the univer- 
 sity with the idea of getting a degree in order that 
 they might pursue professions or business, and so 
 might acquire money to sustain or raise the standard 
 of living set by their more or less prosperous fathers. 
 These were worthy only of contempt. They lived 
 in fraternity houses, or if not fortunate enough as 
 to athletic prowess or family resources to be affiliated 
 with such an organization, aped their luckier brethren. 
 Their object was to get through college with as little 
 work and as much enjoyment as possible. They 
 scorned the workers, the " grinds." 
 
 So said Letsky and his kind, although Hewitt had 
 upon one or two occasions remonstrated with them 
 and tried to make them understand that there were 
 exceptions to this brand of fraternity men his 
 friend Kenneth Reed, for instance, originally a friend 
 of Paul's, but since become David to Hewitt's Jonathan 
 during a winter when shortness of funds kept him close 
 to the campus. The young man had even taken 
 Hewitt to his fraternity house for dinner, where the 
 boy had been delighted with the gay air of careless 
 comradeship that prevailed there. 
 
 Letsky and his friends were obdurate to this line 
 of argument. Their creed was as follows: To dis- 
 tinguish ourselves from the class of materialistic, ig- 
 norant members of the American proletariat who de- 
 ceive themselves by thinking they are an aristocracy, 
 we disdain clothing as decoration. Clothes are all
 
 CASTE THREE 45 
 
 right in their place; society decrees that man cover 
 his nakedness. Not obeying this requirement would 
 possibly inconvenience us and, indeed, make it impos- 
 sible for us to take part in those gatherings of society 
 which please us. But in clothing ourselves we demand 
 the right to wear any kind of garment which our 
 fancy dictates. 
 
 All of which sounds extremely radical. In prac- 
 tice, these young intellectuals confined their " fancy " 
 to old clothing a year or two behind the fashions. 
 They refused to dress up, and a new collar meant that 
 some relative had confiscated and destroyed their last 
 frayed piece of neckwear. 
 
 " You spend too much money on clothes," Letsky 
 had recently told Hewitt, pointing the finger of scorn 
 at his year-old suit which had been cleaned and pressed. 
 Hewitt had immediately become ashamed of his bill 
 for pressing. " The true intellectual has no concern 
 with clothes," continued the other. " A natural state 
 of nakedness would clarify many of the world's ideals. 
 Your own Carlyle says as much." 
 
 In English literature Letsky permitted himself to 
 admire only two men the illustrious Scotch Thomas, 
 just quoted, and the Irish Bernard Shaw. Even they, 
 of course, had their glaring weaknesses for him. 
 
 Nevertheless, Hewitt, hating dirtiness with the 
 hatred of Grace's brother, paid strict attention to his 
 clothing on this morning. He was even cleaner than 
 usual, if that were possible. 
 
 He later explained to his father that his presence
 
 46 CASTE THREE 
 
 in the garden five miles out could be postponed, in 
 view of his determination to get a position that would 
 pay enough to make college the following year a pos- 
 sibility. 
 
 "What's the chance in the factories here?" he 
 asked him after breakfast. 
 
 " I don't know much about the factories. There 's 
 plenty of them here, though. The chamber of com- 
 merce has brought three or four new ones here lately. 
 The biggest one is out east from here. It manufac- 
 tures lighting and starting, and ignition systems. The 
 two men who began it about fifteen years ago sold out 
 last year to a company. An Indianapolis banker owns 
 most of the stock, I guess. It 's a good concern. It 
 built a country club this summer out east of town for 
 its employees. They say that those two men the fac- 
 tory 's named after name 's Preston experimented 
 in a shed back of their house when they were boys 
 trying to get their invention perfected. The older one 
 is the mechanical genius; the other runs the business 
 end. It 's the biggest factory here. It employs over 
 a thousand men, I 'spect. You might go there. I 
 guess there are about ten other good-sized factories 
 here, too, and lots of little ones." 
 
 " I believe I '11 go out to Preston's. The bigger the 
 place, the more chance of getting in." 
 
 Mr. Stevenson watched his son reach for his hat on 
 the line of hooks attached to the hall- wall. At last 
 he spoke again in an off-hand way, as though he had 
 just thought of the matter.
 
 CASTE THREE 47 
 
 " Look here, Hewie. I said I wouldn't help you 
 through college, but if you '11 stay here in Alston and 
 work and save your money, you understand that you 
 don't have to pay any board." 
 
 " All right." This was Hewitt's way of thanking 
 him. He had expected the proposition, but he had not 
 expected his father to speak of it so soon. 
 
 The youth was, on this bright September morning, 
 the victim of no such strong desire to be in Chicago 
 as he had been the night before. Sleep had eliminated 
 the nervous excitability that had given rise to that 
 painful discontent. Alston looked almost pleasant in 
 the morning light. 
 
 " Hello, Buster ! " he said to a small boy plodding 
 along the street with an air of extreme weariness. 
 "School begun?" 
 
 " Begins Monday." There was no belief in educa- 
 tion in the voice. 
 
 " Tough luck ! " laughed Hewitt. 
 
 The factory was located a mile or more from the 
 center of the city, much of the territory between it 
 and the business district being built up with small, old- 
 fashioned houses and cottages. The size of Alston, 
 as approximated during his walk, surprised Hewitt. 
 " It 's not so small," he was driven to admit. Just 
 before the groups of houses scattered into vacant lots 
 and garden tracts that indicated the margin of the 
 open country, he turned, as directed by the flagman at 
 the railway crossing, and passing a factory where 
 automobile and bicycle tires were made, emerged
 
 48 CASTE THREE 
 
 upon a wide, well-paved street showing a park on one 
 side and a stretch of neat, fresh cottages on the other. 
 He made his way for several blocks down this thoro- 
 fare before he approached a brick-and-stone office. In 
 front of it a well-kept lawn blossomed with geometric 
 beds of geraniums and petunias, and beyond it 
 stretched to the west and south an expanse of many- 
 windowed factory buildings. 
 
 Hewitt's sense of exhilaration, born of his brisk 
 walk and the clear coolness of the autumn morning, 
 waned slightly before the necessity of entering the 
 structure before him to ask for work. It really did n't 
 matter whether he got the position he was after or 
 not, he knew. There were other factories. He could 
 always go back to Chicago. He compelled himself to 
 assume a cheerfulness he did not feel while climbing 
 the steps and entering the clean, cool, outer office, 
 where a stenographer and clerk were working. 
 
 The young man stated his errand. The stenogra- 
 pher looked up with a curious glance, and then resumed 
 her work; but she could not resist a second look. If 
 she could have read the depth of Hewitt's indifference 
 to all feminine youth ! 
 
 " Mr. Cooke will see you in a moment," he was told. 
 " Sit down." 
 
 Mr. Cooke took his time about seeing him. Not 
 that the youth minded, though his discomfiture in- 
 creased. But he examined the offices at the rear, and 
 through a series of open doors he could see into a 
 factory-room beyond. Here twenty or more men
 
 CASTE THREE 49 
 
 were closing packing-cases and rolling trucks toward 
 an unseen entrance. 
 
 The result of his interview with Mr. Cooke was not 
 favorable. Business was a little slack, and Preston's 
 were not taking on any new men at the moment. 
 
 " You say you 're a graduate of a Chicago high 
 school ? What business experience have you had ? " 
 
 Hewitt told him about the grocery and the drug- 
 store and Woody 's book-store. 
 
 " I see," said the acting-manager. " You fill out 
 this blank, and we '11 file it. By the way, if you have 
 been working in a book-store, you might have some 
 chance to get in Smith's here. That 's the best one in 
 town. We '11 keep your application on file." 
 
 Hewitt walked out into the open air with a leaden 
 heart. He liked what he had seen of that factory, 
 and deprived of the opportunity of working there, it 
 became more tempting than ever. It was so clean and 
 orderly, the new kind of factory you read about, 
 probably with lounging-rooms and rest-rooms, and 
 even pool- and billiard-rooms. And that country club 
 his father had spoken of. That showed what kind of 
 people these were. Also, the story his father sug- 
 gested of the success of the two men who had begun 
 the business held an element of romance. The im- 
 mensity of the concern filled Hewitt with a new ad- 
 miration for Alston. He remembered, confronted 
 with the giant letters PRESTON on top of the fac- 
 tory, that he had seen a full-page advertisement of 
 this company in one of the largest weeklies. It was
 
 50 CASTE THREE 
 
 an impressively simple advertisement, with the infor- 
 mation : " Factories Alston, Indiana. Offices, 
 Detroit, Chicago, New York, and London." He had 
 only noticed this advertisement because of the unex- 
 pected information about Alston. Hewitt turned to 
 look at the buildings again, and caught a glimpse of 
 the little stenographer watching him. He hurried on 
 with no second thought of her.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HEWITT jumped into a street-car when he had 
 crossed the railroad on his return to town. It 
 jerked along spasmodically over uneven rails. He 
 lighted a cigarette in an attempt to regain some of his 
 spirits. 
 
 " I can always go back to Chicago," he told himself, 
 " and that 's where I want to go anyway." 
 
 The street-car clanged its way down Meridian 
 Street, where little pools lay in the ruts in the pave- 
 ment, giving proof that a sprinkler had passed recently. 
 Traffic was lighter than it had been on the previous 
 afternoon. A few automobile trucks and some wag- 
 ons clattered along, but pedestrians were few. 
 
 Hewitt wandered into the drug-store on the corner 
 again, because he wanted information about Smith's 
 book-store and because he wanted something to drink. 
 A negro was clattering tables and chairs into rooms to 
 facilitate his cleaning of the tile floor. Two clerks 
 were dusting show-cases. One of them was exchang- 
 ing jests with a pale boy who, decked in a white coat 
 and cap, was scrubbing energetically at the marble- 
 topped fountain. 
 
 " Where 's Smith's? " asked Hewitt. 
 
 " Three doors north," the girl at the cigar-counter 
 told him. 
 
 Si
 
 52 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Thank you." Then he turned to the boy at the 
 fountain. " Give me a ' coke/ " he said. 
 
 He drank the dark brown, iced liquid in three gulps. 
 It was a stimulant, and he needed stimulation. Hew- 
 itt hated the new. It unnerved him. A doubt of his 
 ever getting a position assailed him and crumpled his 
 backbone annoyingly. 
 
 He sauntered three doors north, and bolted quickly 
 into the entrance of Smith's book-store with a prelim- 
 inary feeling of failure. It was not a wide room. 
 Some shining, highly-polished office-desks on which 
 stood brass, green-shaded desk-lights made a row 
 through the center of it. Two clerks, a young man 
 and a fluffy-haired girl who watched him as he pro- 
 ceeded toward a desk behind the sporting goods coun- 
 ter at the rear, were arranging magazines they were 
 taking from a box. 
 
 "Something?" the girl asked in a professional 
 tone. 
 
 " I want to see Is Mr. Smith here? " 
 
 " Yes. He 's back there at the desk." 
 
 She returned to her work and said something to 
 the boy that Hewitt could not catch. The tatter con- 
 tinued to watch the newcomer as he walked toward 
 the desk at which Mr. Smith was writing, unaware of 
 footsteps approaching him. 
 
 Hewitt became irritated at the flush he could feel 
 creeping up into his cheeks and his hair as he found 
 himself involuntarily softening the sound of his foot- 
 steps. He had an uncomfortable sensation of being
 
 CASTE THREE 53 
 
 about to break into ingratiating Uriah Heep move- 
 ments with his hands. He threw off the desire with 
 a jerk, and stood quietly, hat in hand, with his head 
 thrown back in painful consciousness of the boy and 
 girl, until the man looked up inquiringly at him. Evi- 
 dently he was not so unaware of those footsteps as he 
 had seemed, but he immediately resumed operations on 
 the check-book under his hand. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The silence was broken at the end of an interval 
 during which Hewitt found himself growing hotter 
 and hotter. 
 
 "Could I talk to you?" asked Hewitt with some 
 difficulty. 
 
 He had been sure that he was going to stutter, but 
 he conquered that weakness and spoke with deceiv- 
 ing ease. 
 
 " Sure. Talk ahead." Mr. Smith, very broad of 
 shoulder and immense of abdomen, his high brown 
 derby pushed a little back on his bald head, swung 
 back in his swivel-chair and looked at Hewitt with 
 a quizzical smile. " Talk ahead. I 'm listening. 
 Pretty warm, isn't it?" 
 
 Hewitt had no desire to " talk ahead " in the 
 presence of those two annoying young persons who 
 were still busy over the magazines not far away, and 
 yet he could not very well ask Mr. Smith to see him 
 in a private room, since only one door was visible 
 and that opened into the alley back of the gray- 
 stone post-office. He tried to speak low, but the man's
 
 54 CASTE THREE 
 
 unnecessarily loud and distinct answers could be heard 
 anywhere within two hundred yards. 
 
 " I 'm trying to find a place to find work," Hewitt 
 began. He could feel the eyes of the fluffy-haired 
 girl upon him. " I 've worked for over two years in 
 Woody's book-store near the University of Chicago. 
 I want to stay in Alston this year, if I can find a place. 
 I was wondering if you needed anyone." The 
 finish was lamer than the beginning. 
 
 Mr. Smith shifted the brown derby forward and 
 examined Hewitt from head to toe with the appear- 
 ance of appraising him. Then he made out another 
 check, put it in an envelope, and addressed it. 
 
 " We need some one," he took the boy's breath 
 away by saying. " School begins Monday, and 
 there '11 be a rush for a few days. We can take you 
 on temporarily at seven a week, but the work may 
 only last a week unless we all take a fancy to you," 
 he added whimsically. 
 
 Hewitt caught his breath and nearly dropped his 
 cap at the same time. 
 
 " Seven a week ? " he said. " Why, I could make 
 six a week working after school and on Saturdays 
 at Woody's in Chicago." 
 
 " Well, this is not Chicago, Son, you know." 
 
 " But I 'm a high school graduate and know books." 
 
 " Where 'd you graduate from high school ? " 
 
 " Chicago." 
 
 " How long did you say you worked at Woody's? "
 
 CASTE THREE 55 
 
 " Two years and a little over." 
 
 "Well, this isn't Chicago, Son," he repeated. 
 " What 's your name? " 
 
 " Hewitt Stevenson." 
 
 " And you 're a graduate of a high school and 
 worked for two years in a book-store?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Smith seemed to have an inspiration. 
 
 "Typewrite?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes. Took it at school." 
 
 " All right, Son. Sit down there at that type- 
 writer and let 's see you copy this letter of mine." 
 He whirled in his chair and drew out two pages of 
 closely-written manuscript from a pigeon-hole, hand- 
 ing them to Hewitt. 
 
 The young man, with no idea whether or not this 
 was in the nature of a test, threw back the cover of 
 the machine and set to work trying to read the letter. 
 There were difficulties. Words thoroughly familiar 
 to the boy, when written in their usual form and 
 spelled according to recognized authorities, eluded his 
 grasp for entire minutes. He pondered over certain 
 expressions until he became afraid that Mr. Smith, 
 noting the absence of noise indicating progress on the 
 work, might turn around and seize the letter from his 
 unresisting hands in a fit of temper, although he did 
 not appear to be a tempestuous sort of person. He 
 typed the heading at length, and attempted the first 
 paragraph. If the words had been the short words
 
 56 CASTE THREE 
 
 of ordinary letter-writing or of speech, he could have 
 made a guess at the contents, being a good guesser, 
 but they were long words, very long words. 
 
 After ten minutes Hewitt gave up in despair and 
 approached the manager hesitatingly. 
 
 " Mr. Smith, I 'm sorry to bother you, but I can't 
 make out this word." 
 
 Mr. Smith put on the tortoise-rimmed spectacles 
 which dangled from a cord around his plump neck 
 and peered searchingly at the word indicated by 
 Hewitt's pointing finger. 
 
 " Don't write very plain, do I ? " he hemmed. 
 " Let 's see. That word is Oh, yes, that 's ' as- 
 signment.' I 'm a poor writer, Son. Always was. 
 Go ahead. You 're slow." 
 
 "I I stopped over that word. I hated to bother 
 you." 
 
 " All right. No bother. Go ahead," and he picked 
 up the morning paper and began to turn the pages 
 noisily. 
 
 A young man, dressed in the tight English style just 
 coming into vogue, hatless and sunburned, dashed in 
 at the door and back to the desk. 
 
 " Say, Dad, the golf tournament 's on and mother 
 and Ernestine and I '11 stay out at the club for lunch. 
 So you go to the restaurant. How 're things?" 
 
 'Things' are all right, Blake. Go ahead and 
 enjoy yourself while you 're young, and don't begin 
 to worry about the business." 
 
 They both laughed at this mild sarcasm.
 
 CASTE THREE 57 
 
 " Fine day for the last matches. You ought to 
 come out, Dad." 
 
 " No. No, thanks. Busy. Run along," and Mr. 
 Smith turned to adjust his glasses and continued his 
 reading. "How's that letter coming?" he asked 
 presently. 
 
 "All right, I guess," said Hewitt. "There's a 
 word here I can't make out, though. There 's a little 
 blot over it." 
 
 " Yes? Let 's see. Oh, yes. That 's " he puck- 
 ered his lips into a whistle. " Be darned if I know. 
 Lord, how I write. Never could read my own, 
 once it was cold. That 's ' Harper's Magazine! 
 Sure!" 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 Hewitt smiled to himself as he finished the sentence. 
 He clicked on to the end, stopping intermittently to 
 ponder over the elusive meanings, but at last it was 
 done, ready for the signature. 
 
 " Fine ! " admired the author of the original. 
 " Looks fine. I can't type a decent letter to save 
 my life. I worked over that touch method they sent 
 me a book about when I bought the machine, but I 
 could n't learn it. Blake my son who was just in 
 here could do this typewriting for me if he would, 
 but he 's too busy playing golf and making love to 
 the girls. Good boy but he likes to enjoy himself. 
 Natural enough. I did, too, when I was his age. 
 Now let 's see. I 'm to sign here. All right, Son, you 
 can come here and work for a week, and if you do
 
 58 CASTE THREE 
 
 well enough and take an interest in the business, we '11 
 see what we can do for you." 
 
 "Start at seven a week?" asked Hewitt, hesitat- 
 ingly. 
 
 " No. You can type my letters, so I '11 give you 
 ten." 
 
 "All right. Start to-day?" 
 
 " You just stay. I '11 show you around." 
 
 Hewitt hesitated again. 
 
 " If I start at ten and prove satisfactory, there is n't 
 any reason why I should n't expect to get fifteen before 
 long, is there?" 
 
 " Fifteen? " Mr. Smith puckered his forehead and 
 pursed his lips into an expression of doubt. " Well, 
 we '11 say ten and see what happens." 
 
 Hewitt was not entirely satisfied, but he liked Mr. 
 Smith. There was a wholesome healthiness about 
 him. He did n't have Mr. Woody's refinement nor 
 his classical tastes, certainly, but he was good-natured, 
 and that appealed to Hewitt. Therefore he stayed. 
 
 Hewitt sat gazing toward the front of the store, 
 where a woman was buying stationery from the boy 
 who had been unpacking magazines. Now that he 
 had the position he had been seeking, a surge of 
 superiority crept over Hewitt. He knew more about 
 books than any one in Alston, he would have wagered. 
 Out of ten a week he could save at least seven, but 
 he would see to it that the ten became fifteen soon. 
 
 The purchasing public who wandered in now and 
 again had the air of wanting something, though they
 
 CASTE THREE 59 
 
 were not sure what. Probably it was a " good " 
 monthly with lots of enormously interesting stories 
 about the romance of the slums, or about feminine 
 clerks in department-stores who were determined not 
 to " go wrong," or about the wealthy leisure-class 
 who had little to do except to get into mystery stories. 
 This, at least, was Hewitt's interpretation of their 
 wants. He made it while he was observing them and 
 Mr. Smith and the store and the two clerks who were 
 busying themselves in the front of the store, now that 
 they were sure Mr. Smith had decided to hire the 
 new clerk. He determined to like Mr. Smith. He 
 imagined, too, that he might like Blake Smith, should 
 he ever be thrown into close contact with him. But 
 any hopes he had of knowing Blake well rapidly 
 evaporated when a young newspaper-reporter, a high- 
 school boy, came in and saluted the manager and 
 owner with, " Good morning, Mr. Smith. Any news 
 for the Times?" 
 
 Mr. Smith looked at the young chap deliberately 
 and quite unintentionally knocked his glasses down the 
 front of a soiled vest, the two top buttons of which 
 were open, revealing a crinkled white shirt on which 
 some cigar ashes were reposing. 
 
 "News? There's plenty of news. Lots of it. 
 I 'm hiring a new clerk, for one thing." 
 
 The boy grinned. 
 
 " What d' you think the Times is, a country news- 
 paper ? " 
 
 " Well, we 're only thirty thousand, Eddie."
 
 60 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Thirty-five," contradicted the youth. 
 
 " May be. But here 's another item. Blake 's go- 
 ing back to Wisconsin to school next week." He 
 shook with a great chuckle. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " cried the reporter, " we 've been 
 running that item for a week now ! " He threw up his 
 hands and dodged out at a mock run. " I guess I '11 
 go where there 's some real news ! " 
 
 " Becker's cigar-store, I '11 bet! " and Mr. Smith's 
 prophecy proved true enough, as Hewitt could see. 
 " Those young kids can't resist that pool-room, even 
 when they know they ought to be working. Eddie's 
 father 's out West trying to get another start he 
 went under here and Eddie 's supposed to be 
 putting himself through high school. But he 's going 
 to lose his job, because he spends so much of his 
 time over there." Mr Smith chewed his cigar rumi- 
 natingly. " These kids ! But say, Hewitt, I '11 intro- 
 duce you to these clerks in a minute. You might as 
 well help around here a little. I want to explain some 
 things to you, too. By the way, what does your father 
 do?" 
 
 " Retired farmer." 
 
 " Won't invest his money, will he ? " This was in 
 the nature of a statement, rather than a question. 
 
 Hewitt shook his head. 
 
 " I don't know," he said, and felt sure that his father 
 would n't, also ashamed that this was so, in view of 
 Mr. Smith's evident disapproval. " I have n't been 
 home since he sold his land east of here."
 
 CASTE THREE 61 
 
 " Well, he won't. We tried to get him interested in 
 the citizens' heating company we were forming last 
 year to supply heat to the downtown property holders, 
 and he would n't budge from his first position. 
 Wanted his money safe in a bank. Now, about this 
 business. What do you want to work in a book- 
 store for ? Why does n't your father make a farmer 
 out of you?" 
 
 Hewitt explained half-impatiently. 
 
 " M'm," was Mr. Smith's contribution to the sub- 
 ject. " Bound to go to college ? " 
 
 " I want to go." 
 
 " All right. Now, about this business. The 
 Smiths have run a book-store in Alston ever since 
 there was an Alston. In fact, even before there was 
 an Alston I 'spect my ancestors had an idea that when 
 there was one, the Smiths would have a store there. 
 I 've watched this town grow from a few thousands 
 to thirty-five thousand. There are a few of us here 
 who came to Alston long before there was a natural 
 gas boom in these parts. Why, I remember when all 
 that section eater-cornered from the post-office was 
 woods, with a cemetery about where that big place 
 of Waite's is on Chase and Eleventh Streets. Alston 
 was n't very big in those days, and my father's furni- 
 ture business was more important than the book-and- 
 stationery part. Since then, of course, we Ve sold 
 out the furniture, except the office supplies. Now 
 what I 'm trying to explain to you, Hewitt, is that 
 this business of ours means a lot more than dollars
 
 62 CASTE THREE 
 
 and cents. If my family tried to live on the money 
 from this bookstore, they might have to cut down 
 on their living expenses more than they do. We 
 make money, but not enough to support my family 
 the way they choose to live. I don't spend so much, 
 but they like it, and I have the money to let them do 
 as they like. But if a person leaves this store dis- 
 satisfied, either with the service he gets or with the 
 merchandise he buys, I want to make it right with 
 him. Pleasing people costs money sometimes. I 
 know it. I do it. I want satisfied customers. See?" 
 
 The man chewed again at the cigar he held in his 
 hand and gazed at Hewitt, who was leaning against 
 a low counter. 
 
 " Sit down, Son." 
 
 Hewitt sat down. 
 
 " What do you know about books? " was next flung 
 at him. 
 
 He hesitated and looked his question. 
 
 " Novels, for instance? " he inquired. 
 
 Mr. Smith nodded. 
 
 " Not so much," he lied. He really thought he 
 knew a great deal about them. " Rather a poor lot as 
 a whole, the American novels," he said; then added, 
 "Are n't they?" 
 
 " H'm," said Mr. Smith noncommitally. 
 
 " Dreiser has an artist's message, I believe. He 's 
 the only realist who can approach Howells." 
 
 "Dreiser?" growled Mr. Smith. "I never heard 
 of him."
 
 CASTE THREE 63 
 
 " Indiana man. Used to live up here at Warsaw." 
 
 " Who else is good? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose Wharton, Churchill, Harrison, 
 Norris, and a few others have tried to do something 
 a little better than popular drivel. But our men as 
 a whole can't approach the English." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " There 's not enough intelligent reading in this 
 country to encourage the novelist to try to do better 
 than light sentimentality. A man in this country is 
 either popular and light, or poverty-stricken and ' high- 
 brow.' In England the reading public demands better 
 literature and gets it." 
 
 " H'm. How do you know so much about it? " 
 
 "I I read. Then, you see," he went on 
 apologetically, " being near a university you hear 
 these things discussed and like to know a little about 
 them yourself." 
 
 " All right, Hewitt. By the way, Mrs. Tom 
 Stewart wants some one sent up to take an order 
 for books and magazines. Wha-t do you say to go- 
 ing up yourself? You might like to talk to her. She 
 used to teach in Chicago before she married Tom. 
 Fine woman. But don't get too ' high-brow ' even 
 with her, Son. People, the- general run of people, even 
 bright ones, don't read much outside of magazines 
 and books on subjects they 're particularly interested 
 in. The most popular books in our store last year 
 were one on woman's suffrage and another on 
 ' bridge.' The women in Alston like those things.
 
 64 CASTE THREE 
 
 You run up to the Stewarts now. I '11 telephone Mrs. 
 Stewart and tell her I 'm sending you/' 
 
 "Where does she live?" 
 
 " Up on Eighth Street, in the ' four hundred ' 
 block. Big house set back in shrubbery. Green 
 house." 
 
 Hewitt braced up. He felt excited, relieved, now 
 that a little responsibility had been thrust on him. 
 He wanted to talk to this woman who had once lived 
 in Chicago, still the city of beauty, its glories bright 
 on the distant horizon. Blessed city of romance 
 the romance of the far-away! 
 
 The young man made his way through the morning 
 shoppers down Meridian Street to Eighth, which 
 stretched east and west, passing on the north side of 
 the court-house. Its length to the west was attractive 
 with large residences, some of them almost palatial, 
 surrounded by well-kept lawns and masses of 
 shrubbery. An electric coupe glided out from the 
 driveway of a stone house as Hewitt passed. A sweet- 
 faced old lady dressed in lavender smiled as she drove 
 in front of him. 
 
 The Stewart house was impressive, even to Hewitt's 
 Chicago-minded attitude. He climbed the stone steps 
 with a 1 new sense of the importance of Alston as a 
 center of wealth. A wide veranda, covered with a 
 thick screen of vines, stretched around the corner of 
 the house and ended in a porte-cochere under which 
 stood a powerful gasoline automobile. A white- 
 capped maid admitted him to a small library at the
 
 CASTE THREE 65 
 
 end of which a fire-place gleamed with a small wood- 
 fire. Hewitt thought, as he glanced into the living- 
 room on the other side of the hall, that he had never 
 seen such a beautifully furnished house. The furni- 
 ture was of the kind he had been accustomed to see 
 in the windows of Marshall Field's on the few occa- 
 sions when he found himself downtown in Chicago. 
 A quaint Hoosier autumn scene of beech woods hung 
 above the fire-place and held his attention for some 
 time. He liked it. He knew little about pictures, 
 but this one pleased him so much that he wondered 
 who the artist was. In sitting down he had fumbled 
 his cap on his knees, but he insistently held it still 
 when he became aware of these nervous movements. 
 
 " Hewitt Stevenson, from Smith's book-store," he 
 had told the maid with dignity. 
 
 A little girl appeared from behind a large wing- 
 chair in which she had been sunk with a book, and 
 yawned before she seemed aware of the boy. She 
 examined him with large, serious, brown eyes and 
 walked out, but paused in the hall to call back in 
 rippling soft tones : " Mother knows you are here, 
 does n't she ? " 
 
 Hewitt wanted to smile at her, but did not; her 
 seriousness seemed to deter him. 
 
 " Thank you. She knows," he said. 
 
 " You are to dress before lunch," Mrs. Stewart's 
 voice was heard saying before she appeared in the 
 doorway. " We 're going to drive to Indianapolis this 
 afternoon. You are to put on your new serge."
 
 66 CASTE THREE 
 
 " O mother, " the child began half -plaintively, but 
 she stopped, and Hewitt could hear her pattering 
 slowly up the heavily carpeted stairs. 
 
 When the woman entered the room, Hewitt arose 
 and stood gazing at her as she drew a chair closer 
 to his and sat down. He was breathless. She was, 
 he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever 
 seen. He grew more embarrassed, but she smiled. 
 When she smiled Hewitt could have knelt to her. 
 Her half-curling dark hair was drawn into a loose 
 knot rather high on her head. Her eyes were also 
 dark, and they held such depths that Hewitt felt he 
 dare not look into them for fear of losing altogether 
 his control over his power of speech. Beauty of other 
 kinds had affected him in the past in this way, but he 
 had never before seen a woman whom he could 
 honestly call beautiful. It gave him a start. He was 
 not at all aware of her clothes. She might have worn 
 silk or calico ; he would never have known. Her poise 
 was perfect. She sat with her fingers interlaced on 
 her lap. A dimple played in and out around one 
 corner of her sweet mouth as she talked. 
 
 "Mr. Smith sent you?" she said in a soft tone 
 that thrilled the boy even more than the child's had 
 done. 
 
 " He He said you wanted to order some books 
 and magazines." 
 
 He was not sure just what he had said the moment 
 the words were out of his mouth. He was, indeed,
 
 CASTE THREE 67 
 
 sure of nothing, except that he had never seen so per- 
 fect a being. 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 ' You are a stranger here? " 
 
 She was not certain how she had guessed it. There 
 were a great many young men in Alston whom she 
 had never seen, and certainly many whom she did not 
 know. But she felt there was something different 
 that was the term discriminating people always used 
 in describing Hewitt about this gray-eyed, im- 
 pressed boy sitting opposite her with his serious gaze 
 fixed so steadily upon her. 
 
 "I from Chicago," he managed to say. 
 
 " I, too, came from Chicago," she said, with an- 
 other smile that brought the delightful dimple into 
 play again and completely upset the little equilibrium 
 Hewitt still retained. 
 
 It was only after she had given him the list of 
 magazines she wanted that Hewitt became master of 
 himself, during the mechanical act of writing down 
 the names, and was able to impress her with the fact 
 that he was at least reasonably intelligent. Then 
 she subtly led him into giving her his views on modern 
 literature. Without realizing that he was losing his 
 embarrassment, he talked fluently to her of his own 
 enthusiasm for some recent poetry and drama. When 
 he stopped and heard her remark that she wanted 
 Galsworthy's new novel, he withdrew into his former 
 uncomfortable position and was terribly afraid that
 
 68 CASTE THREE 
 
 he had tired, or worse, had bored her with his conver- 
 sation. 
 
 " Wells has a corking new book out," he began to 
 say. Then he stopped, debated with himself, and 
 finally ended with a timid glance up at her from where 
 he was listing her desires in his notebook. 
 
 " But I do not like Wells, 1 ' she said, smiling. 
 
 " You must! " he burst out. " He is the best of the 
 present-day English writers." 
 
 " Are you sure ? " she asked, the dimple standing 
 out boldly. Instantly he became uncertain just what 
 his position on Wells was. He could not remember 
 what he had ever read of Wells. 
 
 " I rather prefer Bennett myself," she added, 
 amused at him, but not showing it. Instinctively she 
 recognized his attitude as a tribute. Naturally, a 
 beautiful woman cannot be beautiful for over thirty 
 years at least without knowing it, and without realiz- 
 ing just what a weapon her beauty is. 
 
 In the end she chose a play of his lauding, several 
 novels she had been only partially certain about, and 
 a new edition of " Vanity Fair." 
 
 " After all, the thing will never be made more amus- 
 ing or more gripping than Thackeray made it," she 
 said, in naming the last. 
 
 "He is great!" 
 
 She laughed outright at this. 
 
 ' That is a ' great ' tribute for such a harsh young 
 critic to give a dead author," she said, as he rose to 
 leave.
 
 CASTE THREE 69 
 
 " Perhaps his being dead is what makes me so cer- 
 tain," was his smiling retort. 
 
 During the remainder of the day, between tasks, 
 Hewitt's mind kept going back to this interview of the 
 morning. The exact words of the conversation ran 
 the gantlet of his self-criticism a hundred times. He 
 vaguely felt that he had not contained himself enough, 
 that he had let his foolish tongue run away with him, 
 and he chided himself unnecessarily for blushing and 
 acting the booby before her wonderful beauty. Some- 
 times, in reviewing the scene, he felt he had been too 
 distant to be impressive; at others, he frowned over 
 his lack of dignity. With increasing difficulty, as the 
 day advanced, he conjured up a picture of her face 
 as it had looked when she smiled. Once or twice early 
 in the day a perfect remembrance of it flashed into 
 his mind, but in the thousandth part of a second it was 
 gone, and a blank was all that remained when he tried 
 to repeat the trick. He felt a queer longing to pass 
 the green house, although he knew she had gone to 
 Indianapolis. 
 
 The fluffy-haired girl at the book store was friendly. 
 Hewitt curtailed her privileges of being first-on-the- 
 spot and therefore the logical one to make the ad- 
 vances, however. He preferred to be told things in a 
 round-about way by Mr. Smith, or to find them out for 
 himself, to having them told him by a girl of no great 
 beauty of feature compared to Mrs. Stewart, for 
 instance although there was an appealing prettiness 
 about her eyes that Hewitt, robbed of his contempt for
 
 7 o CASTE THREE 
 
 all young girls, might have felt drawn to. But he 
 chose, when a lull in the trade made his time his own, 
 to linger over the " weeklies," rather than to follow up 
 her advances. He might even be said to have snubbed 
 her. 
 
 The other clerk, whose name Mr. Smith had men- 
 tioned in introducing Hewitt as Joe Bales, held him- 
 self rather aloof. He seemed, however, from what 
 Hewitt could judge of his conversations with various 
 young girls and men and who wandered in to talk to 
 him during the day, a nice enough chap. But on the 
 occasions when Mr. Smith was not present he ap- 
 peared to be attentive to the fluffy-haired girl to a 
 marked degree marked, that is, to Hewitt, who was 
 the only observer, for when any of his friends came 
 in he was plainly unattentive. And the girl, under- 
 standing his desire to make her inconspicuous, honored 
 it and kept in the background. 
 
 Hewitt's selling of a bottle of ink and some linen 
 paper to a man whose subsequent happiness seemed 
 to hang on the result of his selection was his chief 
 activity during the afternoon. He was almost driven 
 to wonder why he was there at all. At times he even 
 felt himself in the way. Also, although he was not 
 prone to mind being alone, a twinge of disagreeable 
 loneliness did steal over him once when Joe Bales 
 became engaged in a more than usually animated con- 
 versation with three attractive girls who came in 
 ostensibly to buy the kind of magazines such girls 
 would buy, and lingered to talk to Joe.
 
 CASTE THREE 71 
 
 It suddenly occurred to Hewitt that everyone in 
 Alston was very social. In Woody's he had some- 
 times been secretly irritated at the frequency with 
 which people, who insisted on being social when he 
 had no such aim, ran in upon him and Mr. Woody. 
 Not girls, of course, except such serious minded, older 
 girls as took an interest in his high school precocity 
 and had poetic or sociologic enthusiasms similar to his 
 own. But important people had paid attention to 
 him. Professors stopped to exchange words with 
 him; their children treated him with respect; he was 
 a fixture at Woody's, a good worker, an accommodat- 
 ing salesman, an interesting boy. 
 
 Hewitt was glad when Mr. Smith called to him 
 from his desk and asked him to type another letter 
 for him, although that meant a great deal of hard 
 work on account of Mr. Smith's mentioned \veakness. 
 
 " You can make out the orders for those books and 
 magazines of Mrs. Stewart's, too," he was told after 
 he had finished the letter. " She brought in a check 
 while you were out to lunch. By the way, she said she 
 liked you, that you were intelligent." 
 
 A tingle of pleasure traveled along Hewitt's back- 
 bone. Then she had been impressed with him! 
 
 " You can work evenings next week. After that 
 you can stay two nights a week," Mr. Smith men- 
 tioned, and the implication that he meant Hewitt's 
 week to lengthen out indefinitely was strong. Indeed, 
 that morning was the last on which the week of trial 
 was ever mentioned between them. " You can arrange
 
 72 CASTE THREE 
 
 with Joe and Miss Rowe as to which ones. You 
 need n't stay this week. We 're not very busy. 
 Getting along all right ? " 
 
 " All right, I guess," said Hewitt. 
 
 " You '11 do. Mrs. Stewart knows intelligence when 
 she sees it. Half those boys who think they can work 
 in a book-store believe it 's a small matter whether 
 they know one book from another." 
 
 That, with the memory of Mrs. Stewart's approval, 
 kept the feeling of loneliness which had been growing 
 all the afternoon from returning. Most people did n't 
 matter; just those he really cared about did. And 
 Mrs. Stewart remained for a long time, even though 
 he saw her only once or twice during the winter, one 
 of those who did matter. Such beauty could not be 
 lightly dimissed. He considered framing a sentence 
 to Mr. Smith to bring forth some expression of his 
 recognition of her beauty, but the thought that Mr. 
 Smith might think him forward or ungentlemanly in 
 commenting upon the appearance of a customer held 
 him back. He fixed upon openings, such as, " Who 's 
 considered the best looking woman in Alston ? " or, 
 " By the way, that Mrs. Stewart is a mighty good 
 looking woman, is n't she ? " These were to be 
 thrown out casually and with great complacency, as 
 though the thought had just come to him while he 
 worked. But he remained silent. He wondered how 
 soon she would order books again. 
 
 During the moments before he was leaving for the 
 day he glanced over the poetry in the better " month-
 
 CASTE THREE 73 
 
 lies " and found one poem that he liked, a six-lined 
 lyric in simple meter with rhymed couplets. It told 
 of the sadness of a summer without love. He read 
 it over several times. He liked the simplicity of ex- 
 pression, and the thought behind the almost childish 
 words made him swallow hard. 
 
 "Coming to the dance to-morrow night, Joe?" 
 called a voice from the door. 
 
 Joe finished wrapping a package and broke the cord 
 with a jerk. 
 
 " No money," he called, with a laugh. 
 
 " Too bad. Borrow some." 
 
 " Credit exhausted," came the answer. 
 
 " So-long. Better come." 
 
 Six o'clock chimed from the clock above Mr. Smith's 
 desk. Hewitt picked his cap from the hook on the 
 inside of the door leading to the basement and started 
 out. 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Stevenson," said Miss Rowe, and 
 smiled at him from where she was putting on her hat. 
 
 Joe Bales glanced up quickly from the paper he was 
 reading. 
 
 " Be careful, Ellien," he said, with a grin that did 
 not entirely cover his intention to be sarcastic. 
 
 " Good night," said Hewitt, pretending not to 
 notice. 
 
 All the way home, past the gray-stone post-office, 
 the neat houses on Jackson Street, and the Methodist 
 Church, he was thinking of a poem he wanted to write. 
 It was to be about a lover who was spurned by a
 
 74 CASTE THREE 
 
 gloriously beautiful woman. Somehow all Hewitt's 
 poems, and also those of his contemporaries in Chicago 
 who went in for poetry, were pessimistic affairs. Per- 
 haps he took his happiness and often he was very 
 happy for whole days at a time in living, saving 
 his sad moments for written expression. The man in 
 the poem was hurt by the disdainful woman's indiffer- 
 ence, but he would not stop loving her. Worship of 
 beauty was its own excuse for existence or the lover 
 might die. But he rather liked the first way. There 
 was so little egotism in that attitude or was it only 
 baffled egotism saving itself? Hewitt, of course, did 
 not think of this last explanation. 
 
 " Hello, Hewie ! " said Grace from her position at 
 the front door as he climbed the steps. She was 
 enveloped in a large, ugly kitchen-apron, and looked 
 plumper and more unwieldly than usual. " Did you 
 like your place this afternoon?" 
 
 " It 's all right, I guess," he said moodily. Grace 
 was so so unesthetic in appearance. And her voice ! 
 She fairly twanged out the short " a " in " afternoon." 
 Why could n't your relatives be beautiful, he wondered. 
 Beauty was the only feminine possession worth having, 
 although it was only this afternoon that he had ever 
 put it as strongly as that. For a second he hated 
 Grace. She was so ugly. 
 
 " Father 's had his supper. He wanted to drive 
 over to Markleville to see about a horse." 
 
 " Oh," said Hewitt to this. 
 
 " Supper 's on the table. Come on in."
 
 CASTE THREE 75 
 
 Hewitt went into the bathroom with its tin tub in- 
 cased in wood, its dark marble lavatory, its wooden 
 shelf containing a bottle of crocodile liniment, " For 
 Man and Beast," he noticed on the label, and a bar 
 of unused perfumed toilet-soap. He was slow about 
 getting rid of the afternoon's grime. He kept think- 
 ing about his poem. And then he stopped a long time 
 to examine his face in the scarred mirror over the 
 lavatory. 
 
 " Come on to supper, Hewitt; it '11 be cold ! " called 
 Grace. 
 
 " Here 's a card from Paul," she told him, when he 
 came into the dining-room. 
 
 The post-card showed the library of the University 
 of Chicago. It was taken from the Midway. Hewitt 
 stopped to identify exactly the spot at which the picture 
 had been made. He was a long time reading the card, 
 despite the memory of Mrs. Stewart's notice of his 
 intelligence. 
 
 " Found what you wanted ? Remember my advice. 
 Margaret sends love. Paul." So ran his brother's 
 brief message. 
 
 Hewitt had no appetite for the broiled steak, fried 
 potatoes, and salt-rising bread Grace passed him. He 
 did not touch the pie she had placed beside his plate. 
 
 " Now you 'd better eat something," she said with 
 a frown. " You have n't had enough to keep a 
 mosquito alive. Eat some more of this meat. 
 Grandpa 's had all he wants, and it '11 have to be 
 thrown away."
 
 76 CASTE THREE 
 
 After supper Hewitt sat out on the porch until the 
 electric-light on the corner glared into his eyes. Then 
 he went upstairs and settled himself at his table to 
 write. He first wrote a letter to Paul in which he told 
 him that he had a position at ten dollars a week, but 
 that he thought he could get more soon. Grace and 
 his father were all right, and Grandpa was rather 
 weak. He himself had had a fine trip down from 
 Chicago. 
 
 He felt sure Paul could not read his longing to be 
 back in Chicago, even between the lines. 
 
 This letter addressed and stamped, he put a sheaf 
 of typewriting paper before him and started to work 
 on his poem, though he now had less heart for it than 
 he had had earlier in the evening. He had great 
 difficulty with the first line and made four starts before 
 it suited him. 
 
 Hewitt was in the midst of this act of composition 
 when Grace knocked on his door, opened it, and looked 
 in. 
 
 " What are you doing, Hewie? " she asked. 
 
 Hewitt was nonplussed. You do not like to make 
 the confession to your sister that you are engaged in 
 writing a poem. 
 
 " Reading," he said, shifting the sheets under his 
 arm. He did not consider this a lie ; it was primarily 
 a defense of his mature rights to do as he pleased 
 without being questioned. 
 
 " I wrote to Paul," he added, however. 
 
 " Did you ? I suppose you would n't like to go to
 
 CASTE THREE 77 
 
 the moving-picture show downtown, would you? 
 Father 's home." 
 
 Her voice sounded as if she expected him to refuse, 
 and that drove him to a delinquent and forced, 
 " Ye-e-e-s, I '11 go." He had only three lines of the 
 poem finished, and he wanted six. 
 
 " I '11 be down in a minute," he said. 
 
 " Good." 
 
 " What time does it begin? " 
 
 " There 's one show begins at eight." 
 
 " All right, I '11 be down."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IN mid-winter Hewitt was again sent to Mrs. 
 Stewart's to take an order for books, but on the 
 occasion of this visit, because he had spent so much 
 time since his first sight of her in worshipping her 
 and writing hopeless poetry about her, without really 
 feeling at all hopeless, he was determined to be more 
 composed and so was less amusing. She had no means 
 of knowing why he gulped awkwardly on being dis- 
 missed, or that he wanted to run back, snatch open the 
 door, and kiss her hand from a proper position on his 
 knees. 
 
 During a winter whose greatest excitement was 
 gained through his excursions into new realms of 
 science and art, Hewitt gained some insight into the 
 life of Alston, Indiana. He found, for one thing, that 
 the paucity of youths having the same interests as he 
 had, was amazing and saddening. Most of the boys 
 he met during the first few months in Alston cared 
 about only one thing to have a " good time." They 
 were capable of earning it. They strove manfully at 
 their work in order to gain the money necessary for 
 this " good time." Some of them were even am- 
 bitious. They wanted more money so that, instead of 
 going to Indianapolis in some one else's " roadster," 
 
 78
 
 CASTE THREE 79 
 
 they could some day go in their own. Smoking and 
 drinking made up a part of their " good time." They 
 danced continually, and had " dates " with the more 
 popular of the Alston girls whose fathers had made 
 or inherited money. 
 
 But the crisis of these " good times " were certain 
 trips to Indianapolis, which they made from time to 
 time in pairs or groups, and from which they always 
 returned home penniless but exhilarated. Hewitt 
 heard suggestive items concerning these trips from Joe 
 Bales, who continued during the winter to be his 
 fellow-workman and who was a party to all the social 
 stunts in which the younger Alstonians of a certain 
 type were concerned. Joe " went with " a girl whose 
 father was president of one of the largest banks. He 
 had " gone with " her ever since they were in high 
 school together, although they were often not on speak- 
 ing terms, Joe being a fickle boy who craved variety. 
 Joe confided to Hewitt that eventually he might marry 
 her, though her father would n't let them marry as 
 long as Joe showed no better signs of being able to 
 support her than he had done so far. Not that Joe 
 was worried by his inability to support a wife. 
 
 Miss Rowe left in the early winter, for some reason 
 that Joe seemed to know about but did n't mention, 
 and the next girl Mr. Smith hired was a plain one 
 whom neither Hewitt nor Joe liked, and who was not 
 bothered by young men generally. As long as Miss 
 Rowe had been there Joe had seemed to feel that 
 Hewitt at any moment might take it into his head
 
 8o CASTE THREE 
 
 to be more than friendly with the girl, thus depriving 
 him of prerogatives unquestionably his up to that 
 time. Hewitt was often disturbed and vaguely dis- 
 comfited by the long talks Joe and Miss Rowe had 
 Behind the projection where the basement stairs went 
 down. These always took place in Mr. Smith's 
 absence. Once Hewitt had heard them scuffling back 
 there, and he had whistled to Joe to warn him that 
 Mr. Smith was crossing the street from Abe Kahn's. 
 They had had no previous arrangement as to this 
 signal, but Joe guessed at the significance of it and 
 was busy unpacking some boxes of paper when the 
 owner arrived. 
 
 Hewitt resented these happenings. They made him 
 uneasy, and he became more distant than ever to Miss 
 Rowe. He screwed up his courage on one occasion 
 to remonstrate with Joe. 
 
 " Cut it, good boy," Joe laughed, with no rancor. 
 
 " She led a fellow on, "Joe told him confidentially 
 after her departure. " She 'd go the limit. I 'm not 
 going to take any chances with her. She 's going to 
 get somebody in bad some day." 
 
 Hewitt did n't like these confidences, but he listened 
 because he did n't want Joe to think him silly about 
 scruples. He had always supposed there was a code 
 of honor among men concerning these things, but Joe 
 and his associates seemed to have no such feeling. 
 
 " Hello, Joe. Heard the latest ? Jane Brown's go- 
 ing the pace. She 'd better watch out," was the " juicy 
 bit " poured into Joe's ear within Hewitt's hearing one
 
 CASTE THREE 81 
 
 day. And a few days later he learned that Jane 
 Brown had been sent East to school. " Her mother 
 found out some things, and her father kicked Clem 
 Wilson out the other night," came the word to 
 Joe. 
 
 Joe suggested, by reason of his growing friendli- 
 ness with Hewitt, that the two go together to Chicago 
 some week-end. For some reason Hewitt could not 
 understand, the other never seemed to think of taking 
 him to any of the dances in Alston, or of getting him 
 a " date." " He never seems to care much about 
 girls," Joe would have told you apologetically, if you 
 had inquired why he acted thus. 
 
 Hewitt rejected the offer of company to Chicago by 
 never referring to it. He made a hurried trip to the 
 metropolis when Paul was married, but that was his 
 only journey during that winter. He had no inten- 
 tion of endangering his college money. After Mr. 
 Smith raised his salary to fifteen dollars, he religiously 
 saved ten dollars a week. He read, or went to the 
 picture shows with Grace when duty demanded such 
 sacrifice. He became more and more quiet as the 
 winter wore away. Most of the few conversations 
 he had were with Mr. Smith about politics. He said 
 little at home. Two or three times during the autumn 
 he was seized with a terrible longing for Chicago, and 
 once he asked Mr. Smith to let him off for a week-end 
 to go; but he changed his plans at the last minute. 
 Going was too much like bowing to unnecessary 
 wishes. Letsky had at first written him long letters,
 
 82 CASTE THREE 
 
 but after the first few months these stopped. He 
 realized that the men who used to " save the world " 
 in the bookstore had closed their circle to exclude one 
 who had gone away. That was natural, but he missed 
 Mr. Woody 's fine talks about the classics, and Letsky's 
 tirades, too. 
 
 More and more as the winter passed Hewitt shut 
 up his personality in a shell composed principally of 
 books and the thoughts they stimulated. He lived a 
 secret life within. He had his moments of intense 
 excitement over a new scientific discovery or a newly 
 found torch in the literary world, but there being no 
 one to share these with, he kept them to himself and 
 lived a placid, colorless existence placid, at least, 
 to the observer in working and thinking. 
 
 Only at night in his room, undisturbed by custom- 
 ers or peering bystanders, he entered that fascinating 
 land of the fancy, the key to which is ever in the hand 
 of the imaginative. Then, in the manner of Sir 
 Samuel Pepys, " to bed," and up betimes to begin 
 again the round of a day's labor which would add a 
 dollar and sixty-six cents to the savings which, in their 
 turn, would carry him out of all this dullness into the 
 land of heart's desire. 
 
 One day in January Miss Rowe came into the store 
 when neither Joe nor Mr. Smith were there. The 
 girl who had followed her as clerk had been dismissed 
 directly after the Christmas rush. Eleanor Rowe 
 came back to where Hewitt was sitting at the type- 
 writer, copying a letter as complicated and misspelled
 
 CASTE THREE 83 
 
 as the first he had ever copied for Mr Smith. She 
 used the telephone to talk to a man whom she called 
 " Teddy," and then sauntered in the boy's direction. 
 She stood back of him, with one elbow on a pile of 
 books, a long brown fur thrown over her shoulder 
 hanging down her back. Hewitt spoke to her and 
 continued his work. Just as he was drawing the sheet 
 out of the machine she sat down on the arm of Mr. 
 Smith's chair, which was drawn up close, and swinging 
 one small, high-heeled shoe back and forth, began to 
 talk. 
 
 "Where's Joe?" she asked. 
 
 " Out on an errand," Hewitt said. 
 
 "When '11 he be back?" 
 
 " Before long, I guess." 
 
 "Say, what'd Joe ever tell you about me?" She 
 quizzically examined Hewitt's face at close range. " I 
 don't care so much about Joe. He 's awfully fickle. 
 He 's all right when there 's nobody else. He 's been 
 going with Gretchen Harrow since he and Helen 
 broke it off, has n't he ? Say, did he ever tell you any- 
 thing about me? " 
 
 She looked down at him with a puzzled, pleading 
 expression in her blue eyes that disarmed him. He 
 felt she did care about Joe. Nevertheless, he wished 
 she would go. He did n't want to talk to her. He 
 slipped another sheet into his machine and went to 
 work again. 
 
 " Mr. Stevenson, did he say anything about me?" 
 reiterated the girl.
 
 84 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt looked up at her with a touch of sympathy 
 in his gaze. 
 
 " No, he has never said anything about you to me. 
 Joe 's a nice boy. But listen. If I were you, I be- 
 lieve I 'd let him alone." 
 
 She slid down from the chair and stood with her 
 arm touching his shoulder. Then she leaned over him 
 and put her lips close to his ear. He moved restlessly 
 and stood up. She drew away and pouted. 
 
 " What I was going to say was," she began, with 
 lowered eyes, " why don't you come out some time? " 
 The question did not sound brazen as she said it. 
 Rather it was a timid attempt to soften his apparent 
 hardness. She seemed shy in putting it. 
 
 Hewitt frowned. 
 
 " Why, I I don't go out with girls. I 'm too 
 busy." 
 
 "Busy? Don't you like girls?" 
 
 She came closer to him. He started to move back 
 again from her, but suddenly she turned her face up 
 to his and spoke quickly, breathlessly. 
 
 " Kiss me, Hewitt," she said. 
 
 Her lips were on his before he could push her away. 
 Indeed, for a long time afterward he wondered 
 guiltily if he had tried to push her away. For a 
 second, spellbound, he stood motionless while she clung 
 to him, her face hot against his. The next instant he 
 had thrust her angrily from him. He walked to the 
 front of the store, warm and red. Presently she fol- 
 lowed him.
 
 CASTE THREE 85 
 
 " Not sore, are you ? " she asked as she came up to 
 him. Her voice had the same appealing tone she had 
 used in speaking about Joe. " Come out some time, 
 will you ? " 
 
 As she reached the door, Joe Bales swung in. He 
 was laughing and he patted her on the shoulder. 
 When he went back to hang up his hat, she followed 
 him. Joe jested with her, and, still laughing and 
 talking, they went back of the stairs. A moment later 
 Mr. Smith came in unheard at the alley-door. He 
 stood looking at them a moment. The girl wandered 
 carelessly toward Hewitt, but Mr. Smith caught Joe 
 by the arm. 
 
 " Look here, Joe, you need n't come back to-morrow. 
 I warned you before. I 'm not going to have any such 
 doings in my store. You get out ! " There was a 
 finality in his tone that prevented Joe from arguing 
 the matter. 
 
 " All right," Joe said, with a complacency meant to 
 mislead his employer as to his real feelings. " That 
 suits me. You can pay me now." But as Mr. Smith 
 came back from the cash-register with the money, he 
 dropped his blithe carelessness and spoke seriously. 
 " Say, Mr. Smith, I don't want to leave. I 'm not 
 so bad. I swear this '11 be the last time I '11 even 
 get near that girl. She 's the wrong kind, anyway. 
 I did appreciate your chucking her and not me before. 
 Look here, if this was Blake, you 'd give him another 
 chance. Try me another week, will you ? I '11 prove 
 that I 'm straight with you."
 
 86 CASTE THREE 
 
 Joe's pleading was all in vain. Presently he took 
 his money and walked to the front of the store, his 
 carefree air regained. He waited until Hewitt had 
 finished with a customer. Miss Rowe had already 
 gone. 
 
 "I'm fired, damn it!" he told him. "It's that 
 
 girl." 
 
 Hewitt was sorry. He shook Joe's hand and tried 
 to cheer him up. 
 
 " Try out at Preston's. They '11 be taking on some 
 men before long now." He hesitated. " That was 
 a shame about that girl. You let her alone, Joe." 
 
 Before Joe crossed the street to Becker's cigar-store 
 he had become his old jaunty self again. This jaunti- 
 ness was no pose. 
 
 " I '11 let you know, Stevenson, when I get some- 
 thing," he had said in leaving. 
 
 " If you get hard up " suggested Hewitt 
 
 " You betcha ! I '11 come around. Much obliged." 
 
 The affair ended to Hewitt's advantage, although 
 he felt guilty about the five dollars increase Mr. Smith 
 offered him to do the work that he and Joe had done 
 before. As a matter of fact, Hewitt had done most 
 of it right along. His remembrance of the girl's 
 kissing him only a few minutes before the incident 
 that had ended in Joe's dismissal was the cause of his 
 guilty twinge. Of course it had not been his fault, 
 and yet . The twinge was not made gentler by a 
 scarcely acknowledged admission that he had liked 
 the kiss.
 
 CASTE THREE 87 
 
 " Business won't amount to much after the last of 
 this month," Mr. Smith explained. " We '11 get some 
 high-school girls to help in the school-book rush the 
 end of the month. If you feel we can get along with- 
 out another man, Hewitt, all right. If you want one, 
 we '11 get one. I think you can do all the heavier 
 work, and we can get a woman. How about it? " 
 
 Hewitt thought he could manage. He agreed to 
 stay every night until eight. 
 
 Mr. Smith secured a woman, a steady, unimagin- 
 ative person, Hewitt decided, with his quick jumping 
 at conclusions where strangers were concerned. She 
 had a little girl who came to the store after school and 
 waited until six for her mother. 
 
 The town, with its peculiar interests and its neces- 
 sities for existence, might as well not have been, as 
 far as Hewitt was concerned. To him it was a place 
 in which to earn money, in order that one might leave 
 it. Of its life he knew little, except in so far as it 
 swung the inhabitants into his circle in Smith's store. 
 Into that life of its people he entered, that part of 
 their life in which they were readers of books, mag- 
 azines, and newspapers, and purchasers of office-sup- 
 plies, stationery, and sporting goods, with enough 
 zest to persuade the owner of the store that he was 
 invaluable as an assistant. When Hewitt was in 
 charge that gentleman felt free to pursue other business 
 for days at a time, certain that the traditional courtesy 
 of Smith's would remain intact. What was done 
 under the boy's management was thoroughly done, and
 
 88 CASTE THREE 
 
 gradually the responsibility of the establishment slipped 
 upon his shoulders, though always subject to the au- 
 thority of the owner. 
 
 Real study Hewitt saved for evenings after eight, 
 when he was free, and for Sundays. At the store 
 he kept up his current reading. 
 
 Of Miss Rowe he saw nothing. Joe borrowed some 
 money from him, after finding that he could n't get 
 into Preston's until March. This young man wan- 
 dered in intermittently during February with his 
 stories of dances, bob-sled parties, fraternity smokers, 
 and girls. Hewitt grew fond of Joe, who was matter- 
 of-fact but rather clever in a clownish sort of way. 
 
 Hewitt seldom found a mode of expression open to 
 himself. He lived a suppressed existence, missing 
 poignantly, as at first, the talks he had been wont to 
 have in Chicago with men of keen minds. He some- 
 times felt handicapped at being twenty, with college 
 postponed a year. At times a vast discontent with 
 life in general, its uneven distributions of favor, its 
 injustice, its hardships, and with his father in par- 
 ticular, whose refusal to help him through an academic 
 course rankled in moments of depression, surged over 
 him and left a scum of hate that only a large dose of 
 tramping through the dark night-streets could dissolve. 
 
 Blake Smith, skimming his way through Wisconsin, 
 became the source of a great deal of wonder to him. 
 He was certain that Blake, left to himself, would have 
 settled down in Alston with no thought above earning 
 enough to furnish him with spending money, just
 
 CASTE THREE 89 
 
 as Joe Bales did. But spurred on by his father's am- 
 bitions for him and a community feeling that college 
 was the thing, even though one got no more out of it 
 than social prestige and a bevy of friends who might 
 prove valuable at some future time and who contrib- 
 uted to the pleasures of being young and non-self-sup- 
 porting, he made his way back to the university year 
 after year, came home gay and care-free for vacations, 
 and enjoyed himself at home and abroad. 
 
 Mr. Smith talked a great deal about Blake, about 
 his ambitions for him and the conduct of his life, to 
 Hewitt. 
 
 " He can return to Alston and practice law, after 
 he gets a degree at Harvard, and make good in his 
 home state. It 's all right for some of the youngsters 
 to go to the city, but there 's a big chance for Blake 
 to make good right here. He has the advantage of 
 money and family back of him. The men who con- 
 stitute the government of this state come from the 
 smaller cities every time. There 's a reason for it. 
 In a city, appearances make a lot of difference; in a 
 smaller place, you have to have the real goods on 
 you." 
 
 Hewitt did n't believe this. He was firm in his 
 faith that it was only in cities, where you had to stand 
 on your own feet and not on your father's wealth and 
 position, on an inference of "like father, like son," 
 that a man had his real worth brought out. He 
 believed in the democracy of cities. He, himself, had 
 felt more important in Chicago than in Alston. The
 
 90 CASTE THREE 
 
 big men went to the big places, where the scope of 
 power was greater. 
 
 The aureole around the head of Chicago did not 
 decrease in brilliancy. New York was a dim place 
 where ships came to land and where Greenwich Village, 
 a highly colored but spurious Bohemia, existed ; where 
 books and magazines were published ; where you trav- 
 eled when you were rich. But he knew Chicago. He 
 knew there were men, like Letsky and Mr. Woody 
 and brilliant university men, who did things not for 
 money, but for purposes which had nothing to do with 
 their material welfare. There were men who did sci- 
 entific research for an unappreciative world, leaders in 
 their field. One Chicago University man had written 
 several novels, another had produced some fine poetic 
 dramas, and at least one had produced a successful 
 prose drama. Hewitt knew that these men lived on 
 the south side of Chicago. The thought kept him busy 
 with his books. The big men lived in the cities, Mr. 
 Smith to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Ernestine Smith dashed into the store at intervals 
 to see her father. She was a pretty girl, small, 
 piquante, with a pouting mouth her father never tried 
 to resist. She drove an electric automobile that her 
 father had given her when she graduated from high 
 school. She teased him, petted him, and demanded 
 things of him. He was even prouder of her inability 
 to do anything except amuse herself than he was of 
 Blake. " Now when Ernestine gets married ," his 
 favorite expression when talking about her, always
 
 CASTE THREE 91 
 
 brought a smile to Hewitt's eyes. The boys in Joe's 
 set hovered around her in turn. Joe always referred 
 to " Ernestine's new case." 
 
 Miss Smith seldom noticed Hewitt, but he was not 
 offended at not being treated with the same consid- 
 eration as marked her attitude toward Joe. Joe was 
 in her set. He belonged to the best local fraternity. 
 He was her kind. 
 
 Hewitt recognized, without giving the matter much 
 thought at first, that he seemed not to be anyone's kind 
 in Alston. In the autumn he had been superior to 
 this distinction. He had not wanted to be anyone's 
 kind in Alston. So back to his books he went. 
 
 One March day, bright with a promise of spring, 
 Hewitt burst the bonds of his silence. He and Mr. 
 Smith were standing over a table of new novels near 
 the front door. 
 
 " Rotten lot of novels," Hewitt exploded, with a 
 laugh. 
 
 " Oh, not so bad. What 's the matter with them, 
 Hewitt or with you ? Grouchy ? " 
 
 " Not grouchy, at least. But ' spring has came/ as 
 all the poets who break into the ' Linotype ' say, and 
 I 'm ready to let loose on the American novelist and 
 the American public." 
 
 " H'm," commented his auditor. " Plunge ahead." 
 
 " Well, take that! " Hewitt pointed to a new book 
 by a popular author whose supply could never catch 
 up with the demand. One or two novels a year slid 
 from his facile pen, to the disgust of the critics and
 
 92 CASTE THREE 
 
 the delight of the buyers of books. " That 's so poor 
 it 's a shame to charge a dollar thirty-five for it. 
 Cheap, trashy, misleading, sentimental, romantic rot! 
 It has the same relation to good literature that the 
 ' Alger ' books have to real child classics. 
 
 " Which reminds me of a story the boys tell about 
 the young Hesler boy the one the youngsters in our 
 neighborhood call ' Reading Hesler.' He borrowed 
 five * Alger ' books from Jim Inwood one night, and 
 took back the whole five early next morning. He said 
 he had read three the night before, and the remaining 
 two that morning before breakfast. How 's that for 
 a record for the ' Alger ' classics ? " 
 
 Hewitt stopped to laugh, before he continued his 
 tirade against the American novelist. 
 
 " The trouble with the American novelist is that he 
 wants to keep people from thinking, instead of making 
 them think." 
 
 " All right. That 's why Ernestine reads. She 
 wants to stop thinking for a minute." 
 
 Hewitt flushed in the effort to keep from expressing 
 his opinion of Ernestine's brain capacity. 
 
 " People want to be entertained," Mr. Smith went 
 on. 
 
 " That 's what is the matter with this country. Peo- 
 ple are so anxious to be entertained that their minds 
 will atrophy from disuse in another generation." 
 
 " H'm." 
 
 ' There are some intelligent people in this town who 
 prefer a good book to a poor one, but the average per-
 
 CASTE THREE 93 
 
 son wants some light, frothy, ' entertaining ' piece of 
 nonsense that will make life look beastly bad or an- 
 gelically good. They don't want the truth." 
 
 Mr. Smith sold a dictionary to a customer, while 
 Hewitt's disgust with the reading public grew hotter. 
 
 " Hurrah for Ho wells ? " questioned Mr. Smith, 
 when he returned to listen to his clerk. 
 
 " You 're right. If we had a few more real seek- 
 ers after truth in this country why, England has 
 more to the square inch than we have to the the 
 state!" 
 
 " H'm. But they 're not bright enough over there 
 to pay their industrial workers a living wage." 
 
 " Neither are we. And when we do, it 's only 
 because we 're so prosperous that we 're ashamed to 
 starve people in a new country that 's been running 
 over with natural resources for a few generations. 
 What we need is a good dose of socialism." 
 
 Hewitt was getting excited. This violent objection 
 to current novels, to the selfishness of the rich, to any 
 number of things no one had ever heard him mention, 
 had been boiling deep in his system for six months 
 with no escape. He released it now in a cloud of 
 steam. 
 
 This display was to Mr. Smith what his daughter's 
 novels were to her entertaining. He thrust the con- 
 ventional outlook at Hewitt, explained human nature 
 to his own satisfaction, and, to the scorn of the young 
 iconoclast, lauded American institutions. 
 
 " Tradition 's the thing, Son. Why, when I go to
 
 94 CASTE THREE 
 
 the Methodist church and sit there Sunday after Sun- 
 day listening to sermons preached on Bible texts and 
 spoken in English that would give your delicate nerves 
 the shivers, it 's so Hoosierish, full of ' ain't's ' and 
 ' folks ' and so on, I don't think much about whether 
 that church's doctrines are modern or not The main 
 thing I think about, when I think about such things 
 at all, is that the Methodist church is a good old insti- 
 tution that 's stood the wear and tear of time and 
 does a lot of good in the world. My father and my 
 grandfather, and some others before that, belonged 
 to the Methodist church. There 's a lot in tradition 
 you '11 never learn till you 're middle-aged, Son. And 
 unless you open your mind, you 're the kind that may 
 never learn at all." 
 
 " Tradition is the stumbling block to progress," re- 
 torted Hewitt. " The fact that our fathers did a 
 thing such and such a way is the very reason why 
 we should n't. If the Puritans had been satisfied to 
 let Charles the First do as he pleased, as their fathers 
 allowed some of the others to do, we would n't have 
 had parliamentary control as soon as we did." 
 
 " H'm ! I can't argue English history. Can't re- 
 member it. Stick to America, and I can understand 
 it perhaps." 
 
 Hewitt laughed. 
 
 "If our fathers had thought England was good 
 enough for them, you would n't be living in comfort 
 in Alston, Indiana, right now. They didn't stick to 
 traditions."
 
 CASTE THREE 95 
 
 " Perhaps they were sticking to some traditions," 
 Mr. Smith affirmed. " Anyway, they brought a good 
 many with them." 
 
 " Squarely caught," Hewitt admitted. " But what 
 we remember them for are those they broke. Then 
 there 's this about traditions, Mr. Smith. There '11 
 always be plenty of non-thinkers of lethargic back- 
 bone to see that traditions are well-guarded. What 
 every society needs is a group which is interested in 
 picking to pieces the traditions their fathers found 
 satisfactory and throwing away the bad parts. We 
 need" 
 
 Out of an automobile stepped a tall young woman 
 of perhaps twenty-five or more, dressed very smartly 
 and trailing a fur over her arm. Ernestine Smith 
 jumped out, too, and the tall girl flung one arm care- 
 lessly over Ernestine's shoulder. The girl who was 
 driving the car laughed at something they tossed back 
 at her. 
 
 There was something very attractive about the tall 
 girl, despite her intimacy with Ernestine. Under or- 
 dinary circumstances this would have prejudiced 
 Hewitt against her. He stopped his speech about what 
 America needs to protect her against the ogre who 
 pursues the young and causes them to turn and stick 
 their tongues out in childish irritation at its enor- 
 mously potent tentacles, and looked at her. She was 
 not beautiful, judged by standards set by placid beau- 
 ties enchanting of feature and poised in the knowledge 
 of woman's most powerful asset, or by the standard
 
 9 6 CASTE THREE 
 
 set by Mrs. Stewart, for example. But the individ- 
 uality of her clothing and its expensive simplicity, to- 
 gether with the natural distinction of her tall, almost 
 thin figure, drew eyes, where Mrs. Stewart's placidity 
 would have remained unnoticed. Then, once you had 
 looked carefully at her face, you forgot standards of 
 beauty. The clear-eyed animation of her expression, 
 the personal tribute in her glance, her soul, as Hewitt 
 afterward took to calling that something alive in her 
 which drew people to her, shone upon you and 
 blinded you to the purely physical. 
 
 Not that Hewitt was aware of all these things on 
 the first occasion of seeing her. He merely stopped 
 talking and looked at her, acknowledging her attrac- 
 tive. 
 
 " Here 's Mary, Dad ! " Ernestine was excited. 
 " We 've just brought her down from the train." 
 
 " Hello, Mary ! " Mr. Smith squeezed her hand cor- 
 dially and looked nearly as glad as Ernestine at seeing 
 her. She held his hand while she whispered words 
 that everyone could hear into his ear. 
 
 " Fatter than ever ! " 
 
 Mr. Smith beamed complacently, while Ernestine 
 and Mary laughed heartily. 
 
 Hewitt effaced himself, but he could hear the girl 
 deriding Mr. Smith for all his weaknesses in a way 
 to make him proud of possessing them, the little idio- 
 syncrasies he cherished with an egotism that made 
 them seem deserving of praise. 
 
 " He still is wearing his hat, Ernestine darling ! "
 
 CASTE THREE 97 
 
 Mary told his daughter, hugging her. " Has he had 
 it off since I left Alston ? It 's the same one he had 
 last summer, I remember. It was brown, and this 
 one is brown. Has he no shame ? Does n't he ever 
 buy a new one? " 
 
 Mr. Smith continued to beam. 
 
 " Money, Dad, money," Ernestine demanded. 
 " Mary has n't had any lunch ; so we '11 run over to 
 the Grand and get something." 
 
 Her father put a bill into her hand, and she and the 
 tall girl hastened out to the automobile, with a wave 
 for a generous man. Hewitt could hear them laugh- 
 ing as the car started off. 
 
 Mr. Smith was still cheerful over his bout with the 
 visitor, and presently he went back to where Hewitt 
 was working. 
 
 " Why did n't you stay up front there, Hewitt ? 
 That was Mary Young. She 's been in California for 
 the winter. Just came home to-day. She 's lived 
 here off and on with the Trimbles ever since she grad- 
 uated from some girl's college in the East. She prac- 
 tically lives with the Trimbles, Dr. Jimmy, you 
 know. Her mother 's married again and lives in Cal- 
 ifornia; so Mary stays here the greater part of the 
 time. Jolly girl." 
 
 Later in the afternoon, when Hewitt was helping 
 Mrs. Chancellor fill some orders for office-supplies, 
 Ernestine and Mary Young came back. 
 
 "Where's dad?" Ernestine half-pouted to Hewitt. 
 
 Mary leaned over and kissed her on the ear.
 
 98 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I don't believe he has entirely disappeared, dear. 
 You '11 find him." 
 
 Ernestine jerked away pettishly. 
 
 " Where is he, Mr. Stevenson? " 
 
 " He left about an hour ago. I think he went to the 
 bank." 
 
 Ernestine turned away. 
 
 " You might thank the young man," she was re- 
 minded. 
 
 " O Mary, you make me tired. Thanks," she turned 
 to say to Hewitt, however, with the pout breaking into 
 a smile. 
 
 " Who 's the boy you asked ? " he heard Mary ask 
 as they went out. 
 
 Hewitt reddened as he tied up the last order and 
 gave it to the delivery-boy. He approved of Mary 
 Young. She was n't Ernestine's type at all. 
 
 A day or two later he was discussing a book of 
 poetry with a teacher. 
 
 " It 's an anthology," he was saying. " It 's fairly 
 well selected. Five years ago an American publisher 
 would n't have risked an anthology of recent American 
 verse. This is a good sign." 
 
 Mary Young had come in while he was talking. 
 She hurried, with her graceful stride, to Mr. Smith's 
 desk. She was dressed, Hewitt observed, in a close- 
 cut blue suit and a small, veiled hat. 
 
 Hewitt sold the book. From the cash register Mr. 
 Smith beckoned to him. 
 
 " Hewitt, I want you to meet Mary," he said.
 
 CASTE THREE 99 
 
 " Hewitt Stevenson, Mary Young. He 's new since 
 you were here, Mary. He 's a Chicago product. He 
 thinks he knows a lot." 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 " You see, I asked Mr. Smith to introduce us," ex- 
 plained Mary. " I hate to think there is anyone of 
 importance in Alston whom I don't know." 
 
 Hewitt, in his embarrassment, took her jest about 
 his importance seriously. 
 
 " I 'm I'm not exactly what you 'd call ' impor- 
 tant ' in Alston," he apologized. She must n't be .de- 
 ceived about his valre to this city of his temporary 
 adoption. Ernestine, for instance, who was evidently 
 her devotee, had a very certain idea of his unimpor- 
 tance. 
 
 " Don't say it ! " she warned him, with a smile, 
 that was full of understanding. " Anyone who has 
 b-r-a-i-n-s " she spelled the word " is important 
 anywhere in the world. Good-bye," she said to Mr. 
 Smith. Then turning to Hewitt : " I want to lose my- 
 self for an afternoon in that soothing country con- 
 tained between the covers of Harper's Magazine. 
 Get me one, will you? Thank you. I '11 be calmly 
 optimistic in an hour." 
 
 " You're not pessimistic now ? " Hewitt inquired, 
 with a solicitude which was not forced. 
 
 " Never! Who would like me if I allowed myself 
 the pleasures of pessimism ? " 
 
 " I would," he wanted to say, but aside from the 
 childishness of the assertion, he feared to presume on
 
 ioo CASTE THREE 
 
 the slightness of their acquaintance. Hewitt was not 
 a plunger. 
 
 After that he thought of Mary a great deal for 
 several days. Indeed, she usurped Mrs. Stewart's 
 place as the center of his personal thought. The next 
 time she came in, however, she was in blithe conver- 
 sation with Ernestine and some of her friends. They 
 were all younger than Mary, and hung upon her words. 
 She nodded to Hewitt, but did not stop to speak to 
 him. He turned quickly to pick up a book he had 
 knocked from a shelf when she entered. He was dis- 
 appointed and was inclined to hate Ernestine. Indeed, 
 his hatred of her as a silly, brainless little snob flashed 
 over him in a fiery wave. He was so certain that 
 Mary's not talking to him was due to her! But he 
 fought back the fury that for a moment enveloped 
 him. Instinctively he felt sure that Mary Young 
 would never be influenced by Ernestine's ideas. What 
 had he expected? Surely not that she should stop 
 to converse with him, a stranger, whenever she came 
 into the store. Yet he had hoped for that, he knew. 
 
 That night Hewitt did an unprecedented thing he 
 read the society column of the newspaper. He did it 
 surreptitiously in his own room, and he found an item 
 announcing a bridge-party at the Trimbles for Mary 
 Young, " who until recently has been with her mother 
 in California." 
 
 His asking Grace at supper if she had ever heard 
 of Mary Young brought a gleam of dislike into his 
 sister's eyes.
 
 CASTE THREE 101 
 
 " Yes, I know who she is. Everybody does. She 's 
 been in California. She lives with the Trimbles over 
 on Twelfth. Why?" 
 
 " She comes over to Smith's with Ernestine that 's 
 all. I was just wondering." 
 
 Grace looked suspiciously at him. She did n't like 
 Mary Young. She had seen her downtown and in 
 the roadster with Tom Brandon several times during 
 the summer before. She could not have told you why 
 she did not like Mary. She had those extremely firm 
 prejudices for and against people which were always 
 founded on the most trivial items observed at first 
 glance. And she never changed. The origin of her 
 dislike for Mary may have been a hat which Mary 
 had worn quite unsuspectingly long before, or it 
 may have been Mary's association with Tom Brandon. 
 Every one knew Tom's weaknesses, and Grace's prin- 
 ciples would have been all for punishing him for 
 them. 
 
 Grace was an assiduous reader of the " society " 
 column of the daily paper. She knew the names and 
 membership of every club in Alston, and their number 
 was legion. She wondered vociferously whenever 
 some one who was supposed to be invited some place 
 was not asked. She followed the list of guests at 
 functions painstakingly, and wondered. She knew 
 more about the actual goings and comings of Mary 
 Young than Hewitt would ever know. Her disap- 
 proval of the Alstonians who danced, played bridge, 
 and went to parties, was intense and sincere. The
 
 102 CASTE THREE 
 
 Methodist church was firm in its stand against these 
 vices. It was not firmer than this member. 
 
 Hewitt saw her disapproval of Mary Young and he 
 never referred to her again.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FOR twenty years Hewitt Stevenson had been 
 gathering impressions. The process was for the 
 most part subconscious. What came, came. He was 
 not at all an active agent in the harvest; his passivity 
 was colossal and unprickable in that, as in other direc- 
 tions. He was an embryonic thinker. His thoughts 
 were not worth much to other people, but were greatly 
 to his credit. Young adolescents who have this desire 
 to think, we designate as dreamers, and so are done 
 with them. They are rather a nuisance. 
 
 Managing a book-store under a man who had owned 
 a book-store in Alston ever since there had been one 
 to own, did not consume one fourth of Hewitt's mental 
 energy. He did n't have to think much. He just did 
 things with his hands and a corner of his mind. Un- 
 der more favorable guidance and a more lucid under- 
 standing on the part of mature persons who were in 
 close contact with his physical existence, but who had 
 no conception of the seething of his mental life, he 
 would have groped less among the impressions hurling 
 themselves into his perceptions. He would have ar- 
 ranged, catalogued, discarded, preserved, and discrim- 
 inated among them. Deprived of sympathetic help he 
 buried himself in himself. Had he been inherently 
 nervous, instead of merely temperamental, this condi- 
 
 103
 
 104 CASTE THREE 
 
 tion might have brought on an introspective morbidity 
 which would have undermined the wholesomeness he 
 would later attain. His inheritance of a strong body 
 from pioneer ancestors who had tilled the soil, with a 
 strict clinging to all those harsh virtues which make in 
 the end for racial vigor, tided him over this phase. 
 His taking no part in the life of Alston was no mani- 
 festation of an eremitic tendency in his makeup. He 
 was, at twenty, tinged with the strong egotism which 
 makes a man dominate his social group or despise it. 
 However, it was not an assertive egotism; it was 
 merely the egoism, the introspective round of the 
 adolescent, enhanced by loneliness only half -acknowl- 
 edged, until it fills him with a conviction of the 
 superiority of his thought over that of others. 
 
 Mary Young's notice of Hewitt flattered him. He 
 was filled with the same overwhelming joy that greeted 
 Mrs. Stewart's comment upon him. In Chicago the 
 incident would have been less important. Surrounded 
 by others whose brain processes were similar to or 
 acuter than his own, the slight attention that Mary 
 Young's asking for an introduction to him and re- 
 ferring to his brains hinted at might have assumed 
 its proper perspective. There he was not a portrait 
 hung alone, but a part of a large group-picture. 
 
 In Alston, however, things were different. From 
 contact with Joe, from fleeting but pleasant glimpses 
 of Blake and from less savory insight into the life 
 of Ernestine, Hewitt had come to think of these as 
 representative of Alston. People seemed to be living
 
 CASTE THREE 105 
 
 very much on the surface. They avoided the depths. 
 All mental life was concerned with the social relation, 
 social being narrowed to mean " society." 
 
 Joe Bales and Ernestine and Blake never thought. 
 They had no interest in their city, their country, the 
 world, or humanity, except as a hunting-ground where, 
 clad in " good " clothes which were up-to-the-minute 
 as to fashion, they sought pleasure. 
 
 This game did not, in Joe's case, seem particularly 
 elusive. He found it in Becker's cigar-store, where 
 he played pool and smoked. He found it in the corner 
 drug-store, talking to the girl by the cigar-counter or 
 with other boys in similar pursuit of this tame animal 
 at the tables back of the soda-fountain, where they sat 
 while consuming lemonades, frappes, and various other 
 concoctions. He found it in plenty at dances. It 
 almost reversed normal processes and pursued him, 
 when he was just developing a " case." Afterward, 
 when the affair had continued long enough to pall, he 
 had to return to Helen Baxter for awhile and give over 
 hunting for the time being. 
 
 Joe could not have explained to anyone just what it 
 was in people that made them candidates for the posi- 
 tion of fellow-pursuer of pleasure, but he always knew 
 after a glance and a word whether a boy was eligible 
 or not. Hewitt was not, Joe felt, and Hewitt recog- 
 nized the justice of this decision, because he had made 
 similar decisions with regard to his own coterie in 
 Chicago, the requirements being different but the prin- 
 ciple remaining the same.
 
 io6 CASTE THREE 
 
 There was a time, just before Mary Young's ar- 
 rival in Alston, when Hewitt had spent several 
 March evenings spoiling his study with wishes that he 
 were more like Joe. The " Joes " of Alston had such 
 a good berth, such an accepted one, which became al- 
 most attractive when you looked upon it day after 
 day. At a time like this his thoughts always turned 
 to Miss Rowe. He had not seen her for some time, 
 and he and Joe had not spoken of her, although on 
 several occasions Hewitt had intended to bring up the 
 subject. 
 
 At the same time that this thought of Miss Rowe 
 appeared, however, some talks he had with Paul pushed 
 the other back. Paul had lived and learned ; he knew 
 that, whereas he had not been hurt by his experiences, 
 other men were. Hewitt's hints of ardent temper- 
 ament had made him afraid for the boy, too. 
 
 " There 's a strong instinct in us, Hewitt," he had 
 said on one occasion, " an instinct which the ministers 
 and churches say is animal, and hence bad. I don't 
 believe that, and neither will you. That instinct has 
 a purpose, of course. It gives us most of the purest 
 joy we have, and it insures the race against extinction. 
 It 's not primarily bad, but an abuse of it brings more 
 misery into the world than any other thing I know. 
 There 's a healthful outlet for desire. Overstimula- 
 tion ruins a man's nervous system and leads to other 
 evils you know about. Absolute denial, which is very 
 uncommon, often does, too. The only solution is mar- 
 riage. You prepare yourself. Get an education, and
 
 CASTE THREE 107 
 
 then marry some nice girl who enjoys the same kind 
 of thing that you do." 
 
 All this was said just before Paul's own engage- 
 ment. He had been very serious. 
 
 Paul could not have told Hewitt any fresh facts 
 about this basic instinct. The latter already knew 
 them from science, on the one hand, and from his ex- 
 perience on the farm on the other. His thoughts were 
 quite clean in this direction. His normal curiosity had 
 been uncorrupted by vulgar stories and ugly allusions, 
 because his father had forcibly injected the informa- 
 tion into the heads of farm-hands that they must " talk 
 clean or get off the place." His strict Methodism 
 made him feel strongly on this subject. 
 
 Charles Stevenson always arose at the same hour 
 on Sundays as on week-days. That hour was five 
 o'clock in the summer and six in the winter. He did 
 not require his family to live up to his standard, but 
 he never could sleep late, he said. 
 
 March gave way to a warm April that sent the buds 
 bursting into flowers and leaves, and brought the grass 
 in deep abundance. Dandelions sprang up on Alston 
 lawns, fat robins chirruped and sang to burst their 
 plump throats, and sparrows grew noisier and bolder. 
 
 " Earliest spring in fifteen years," Charles Stevenson 
 announced one Sunday morning, as he climbed the 
 steps to the summer kitchen to which Grace had already 
 transferred the cooking. " This ought to be a great 
 fruit year, unless we have one of those May frosts. 
 That old apple tree out there 's about ready to bloom.
 
 io8 CASTE THREE 
 
 It don't seem to have enough sense to know its fruit 's 
 not worth pickin'. How about soft-boiled eggs for 
 breakfast?" 
 
 He had already driven out to the garden and back, 
 and he was hungry. 
 
 Grandfather creaked his way to the front porch after 
 breakfast and grinned a toothless smile as he stretched 
 his stiff limbs and pounded his cane energetically upon 
 the floor. The world had metamorphosed over night. 
 The tennis-courts across the street were covered with 
 grass and weeds, young and flourishing. The trees 
 along Jackson Street were filmy with bursting buds and 
 young leaves. The sky's clear blue was broken by 
 flurries of fluffy clouds that skidded lithely toward 
 the north, blown by a brisk wind that was laden with 
 a delicate fragrance which even the smoke from pass- 
 ing trains could not altogether obliterate. 
 
 Old Mr. Stevenson sniffed, and his wrinkled face 
 broke into a ludicrous but convincing smile. 
 
 " Fine day, Charlie," he called back to his son, who 
 was still in the dining-room eating his toast and soft- 
 boiled eggs. " This is sure spring, I guess." 
 
 He sat down slowly and carefully in his wicker 
 chair, placing his cane against the wall and then 
 rubbing his hands together with a semblance of brisk- 
 ness. 
 
 " Makes a fellow young again, Charlie. What 's 
 the matter with that boy Hewie? Why ain't he up 
 and out fishin' this fine day ? " The old man chuckled 
 over memories.
 
 CASTE THREE 109 
 
 Hewitt slept until nine, as was his custom, a cus- 
 tom inaugurated while in Chicago with Paul and 
 gloriously to his liking. He got up to the accompani- 
 ment of a yawn and a tattoo by some jays on the slate 
 roof of the house. He sleepily rumpled his hair. 
 The sun was pouring in through the east window, and 
 he pulled down the shade before he thrust on a bath- 
 robe and made his way downstairs to the inconven- 
 iently located bathroom. Here he turned on the wa- 
 ter and splashed contentedly in a hot bath. 
 
 Presently he heard Grace calling at the door, 
 " Hewie ! Hewie ! I '11 put the eggs all ready on the 
 table. You can make your own toast. The coffee 's 
 on the stove. You clean up your things afterward. 
 I '11 not stay to church." 
 
 Grace never stayed to church, but weekly she an- 
 nounced her intention not to do so. According to the 
 dictates of her Methodist conscience and habit, she 
 went to Sunday school every week, but her Methodist 
 conscience could not compete with her sense of duty 
 to her family where " a good hot dinner " was con- 
 cerned. Her information as to her ten-thirty inten- 
 tions was extraneous, but she gave it regularly, to- 
 gether with the place of Hewitt's breakfast supplies 
 and the order to clean up afterward. 
 
 Hewitt thought she had gone upstairs to get her hat 
 and black silk coat, the latter a useful garment taken 
 out of a trunk every spring and replaced there in the 
 autumn as soon as the cold winds of October called 
 for heavier garb. But presently her voice rose again
 
 no CASTE THREE 
 
 above the sound of the draining of water from the tin 
 tub. She spoke with unnecessary force, Hewitt felt, 
 but he did not mention this feeling. 
 
 " Hewie, why don't you go to church to-day? It 's 
 so pretty outside ! I pressed your suit last night after 
 you went to bed. You ought to get a new one for 
 next Sunday. You go to church to-day. It'll do 
 you good. Father never goes any more, since we Ve 
 been in Alston. He says a city church is n't the same. 
 It looks as if some one in the family ought to go." 
 
 " All right. Perhaps," he called. 
 
 " Now you go, Hewie." 
 
 That Hewitt, after his breakfast was finished, did 
 go to church was not because he felt any need of a 
 scouring of his moral machinery in order to make him 
 run more smoothly along the social track. 
 
 During the winter he had spent the long, dull, lazy 
 Sundays in study. In that way he had filled the gap 
 which Paul's absence made in his recreation. In Chi- 
 cago they had gone on fine days to one of the beaches 
 or parks. Once in a great while they had gone to 
 the church sen-ice held in one of the university halls, 
 non-sectarian meetings at which well-known doctors of 
 theology and philosophy spoke to congregations of 
 students. On Sunday afternoons Paul went to see the 
 girl he eventually married, and Hewitt read or went 
 to Woody 's, where Letsky, Adam Conrad, Horace 
 Bowman, and Mr. Woody gathered to talk. 
 
 Although he had ceased to feel any enthusiasm for 
 Sunday since coming to Alston, Hewitt had found no
 
 CASTE THREE 111 
 
 difficulty in contenting himself with his books and his 
 study, interrupted by strolls to the drug-store for 
 cigars. 
 
 But spring, the brilliancy of the morning, and the 
 vigor engendered by the ostentatious fecundity of the 
 earth, gave birth to a restlessness in his blood that 
 would not quiet. He whistled over his breakfast and 
 the subsequent cleaning-up in accord with Grace's de- 
 mands. Afterward he sat upon the porch, fumbling 
 through the morning paper with its flamboyantly col- 
 ored supplements and unable to concentrate on its sub- 
 ject-matter. He examined the budding apple-tree, 
 stuck a dandelion in his coat lapel, moved about the 
 yard, went into the house, and came out again. 
 
 At ten-thirty he brushed his hat and started down 
 the walk. 
 
 " Not going to church, are you, Hewie? " his grand- 
 father called after him. 
 
 " I thought I might." 
 
 The old man laughed, a wheezing, uncertain laugh 
 that grated on Hewitt. He was familiar with his 
 grandfather's scorn of religion. He did not like it. 
 He himself was not a Christian, he would have told 
 you courageously, contemptuous of your Alstonian 
 surprise; but being yourself an unbeliever in the ac- 
 cepted forms and having a member of your family a 
 scoffer were two different things. The young might 
 be fascinating doubters; the old should be respectable, 
 especially since in this case a gray background of 
 bowing to conventional gods was desirable in order to
 
 112 CASTE THREE 
 
 sustain the contrast with his own orange differentness. 
 Thus he did not stop to discuss his going to church 
 with his relative. He thought atheism very extreme, 
 anyway; he himself was' only an agnostic. So far, 
 science, he felt, confirmed his views. 
 
 A peculiar, subtle quiet enshrouded the city. Peo- 
 ple were up and about as usual, but there was no clatter 
 of wagons and trucks, no noise, except at intervals the 
 sound of a jolting street-car on Eleventh, or the heav- 
 ier rumble of a traction-car. Even these sounds 
 seemed muffled. Men sat on their verandas sur- 
 rounded by sheets of the morning paper which they 
 were forgetting to read, absorbed in the signs of an 
 ordinarily belated spring. Sunday schools ejected a 
 host of children into the streets. Their apparel was 
 the finery of the newly arrived season. 
 
 Hewitt paused in front of the Methodist Church. 
 No, he would go to the Presbyterian. Denominations 
 made no difference to him. The Methodist Church 
 was less beautiful as a structure than the other, and 
 when Hewitt lent his presence to a church, he preferred 
 to do it in the midst of esthetic surroundings. 
 
 Groups of church-goers, well-dressed, clean, of all 
 classes, moved down Jackson Street. There were so 
 many churches in Alston! The number had always 
 surprised Hewitt. Everyone, he thought as he 
 watched the crowds, except the men on the verandas 
 who were reading and gazing, went to church. 
 
 In front of the Christian Church were lined auto- 
 mobiles, carriages, and buggies in immense array. A
 
 CASTE THREE 113 
 
 group of young girls ran out of the side door as he 
 passed. They were lithe, gay, and pretty. Their eyes 
 were on two boys across the street in front of the 
 library the Carnegie Library, of the type found in 
 nearly every town of any size in the Middle West. 
 They stepped on and off the curb into the street, self- 
 conscious in their best suits and new caps, half-shy, 
 and yet determined not to show it. A girl whom 
 Hewitt knew to be the daughter of an ex-Governor 
 who lent dignity to Alston was walking in front of him. 
 She was leading a child by the hand. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church, a new structure, was 
 architecturally beautiful. It was of light brown brick, 
 with white stone decorations. The crowning beauty 
 was, however, the Tiffany windows, which had none 
 of the crude ugliness associated in the Middle West 
 with the term stained-glass. They were of soft, ex- 
 quisitely blended colors, and were the work of an 
 artist. 
 
 Hewitt passed into the church with dignity. There 
 was a subdued murmur, a near absence of sound, in 
 the auditorium. Hewitt knew this to be the " society " 
 person's church. The Keiths and a few other fam- 
 ilies having money enough money, that is, to be 
 counted rich in Alston belonged here, but the con- 
 gregation was principally made up of those people who 
 dressed more than ordinarily well, who aped the ways 
 of the rich, if they themselves lacked wealth, and who 
 were at least on the fringes of " society." A great 
 many pretty girls, their enthusiasm and liveliness well
 
 114 CASTE THREE 
 
 under control, were already seated. The ex-Gover- 
 nor's daughter, whom Hewitt had always liked because 
 of her sweet friendliness, sat with a group of the 
 best-dressed people. A scattering of young men, some 
 of whom he knew slightly from their association with 
 Joe and Ernestine, were there, or they wandered in 
 before the service began. 
 
 Through the earlier part of the service Hewitt was 
 too taken up with thoughts aroused by his first ap- 
 pearance in an Alston church to hear much of what 
 was being said. The music of a surpliced quartette 
 pleased him. It carried him away into the heaven of 
 the purely emotional. He did not think at all during 
 the music, but only listened. Music always had the 
 effect of stiffening his body, while his soul soared to 
 heights, soared and soared. 
 
 Were these people in Alston, Indiana, as religious 
 as their attendance at church indicated, he wondered, 
 while the collection was being -taken. Was there a 
 strong conviction in their hearts that Christ was divine, 
 that God was Love, that there was a power for good 
 guiding them, a conviction that all these things were 
 true, despite accident, disillusionment and sorrow, and 
 although these people had strongly the air of coming 
 little in contact with any experiences except the super- 
 ficially satisfying? Did they believe in the creed they 
 recited with such glibness? They spent a great deal 
 of money every year on churches. They helped sup- 
 port foreign missions for the propagation of Christian- 
 ity. But were they sincere ?
 
 CASTE THREE 115 
 
 Hewitt wondered actively. He was a doubter, 
 prone to believe that others would find it hard to believe 
 what he had trouble in accepting. He was sure that 
 people in Alston went to church with more regularity, 
 and gave more freely than similar people in Chicago. 
 The latter seemed to him to be not very strong in 
 religious expression. Not that the average person of 
 the same class in larger cities was more wicked, 
 wicked, at least, according to Hewitt's standards, 
 but they expressed their religious instinct less. Was 
 it because there was less amusement to be had in Alston 
 on Sunday ? Or was it, and Hewitt welcomed this 
 conclusion with a smile of relieved surety, because 
 public opinion, fostered by the few sincerely religious 
 and austerely respectable, demanded church-going and 
 giving of men, and because Alstonians, known and 
 judged by these standards, followed its dictates to 
 preserve their reputations as respectable citizens? 
 
 These smartly dressed people before him, secure in 
 the possession of means, if not of wealth, well-fed, con- 
 tented, self-sufficient, subscribed to a doctrine having 
 its origin in the life of One who spoke to the poor, fed 
 the hungry, healed the sick, directed His counsel 
 against fine raiment and content and self-satisfaction. 
 How could these things be harmonized ? 
 
 The minister was a frail ascetic with gray hair. He 
 pushed it back from his pale face with long fingers 
 when he spoke. He recited a sentimental verse about 
 a dead child in closing. He enunciated with a pre- 
 cision which was irritating to Hewitt, who had heard
 
 ii6 CASTE THREE 
 
 little of his sermon, being too involved in his own spec- 
 ulations. 
 
 " ' Woe unto you when men shall speak well of 
 you,' " Hewitt remembered having heard. 
 
 By eleven forty-five, when the sermon was finished 
 and the music began again, Hewitt had arrived at the 
 conclusion that Christianity was a failure. He was 
 an enthusiast. He was an idealist. He was twenty. 
 " Question, question ! " Letsky had told him. Without 
 that advice he would naturally have questioned, ap- 
 praised and misappraised, lauded and damned. For 
 Hewitt was young. 
 
 On the streets afterward there was a suppressed 
 gaiety, a manifest cheerfulness which, despite the 
 failure of Christianity, had its. effect upon him. He, 
 too, responded to the feeling that all was well. 
 Whether or not people were consistent in their 
 Christianity, Sunday was a pleasant day, provided you 
 had gone to church, and kindness and democracy was 
 in the air. Georgia Keith, the ex-Governor's daugh- 
 ter, greeted him with a smile. Several business men 
 spoke cordially to him. He had a sense of belonging 
 to Alston for the first time, and the feeling was not 
 unwelcome. 
 
 Hewitt walked downtown on his way home to buy 
 some candy he decided he must have. A surprising 
 number of people were on the streets. Many of them 
 were country people, boys and young men especially, 
 who broke the monotony of the week on the farm by 
 these visits to town. They were standing on the side-
 
 CASTE THREE 117 
 
 walks, leaning against the buildings, or were walking 
 aimlessly in and out of cigar-stores and the cheaper 
 restaurants. 
 
 Hewitt remembered that his father had often made 
 stirring tirades against the exodus of the country 
 people on Sunday to the city. Country churches were 
 disappearing rapidly, he was accustomed to say with 
 angry vigor. As a good Methodist and a devoted 
 attendant and supporter of the little country church 
 close to the Stevenson farm east of Alston, he had 
 been disturbed by this modern enemy of the country 
 church. Traction-cars were an evil, when looked at 
 in this light. More than one dilapidated, desolate, 
 country church was scattered through Indiana, de- 
 serted during the last few years. People wanted ex- 
 citement, and were satisfied with nothing else. 
 
 Dinner at the Stevensons was a dull affair. Hewitt 
 always wanted to fidget through the last of it. The 
 heavy content of his father, Grace's attitude of self- 
 praise for having prepared such an excellent meal, 
 his grandfather's noisy supping of soft foods all 
 these elements tended to inforce the Sunday dullness. 
 Aglow during the first part of it from his unexpectedly 
 exhilarating attendance at church, he lost his cheerful- 
 ness toward the end, when his father broke into a long 
 discourse on intensive farming, including a veiled chid- 
 ing for a son who had scorned a life on the land. 
 Hewitt's uneasy movements during this lecture brought 
 a reproachful glance from Grace. 
 
 The heaviness which seized him after dinner made
 
 ii8 CASTE THREE 
 
 him want to sleep, but he resisted this impulse. Time 
 enough later to sleep, and besides, sleeping in the day- 
 time gave him a headache. He pulled a chair into the 
 side-yard under the gnarled apple-tree with its sug- 
 gested green of a coming leafage and tried to read 
 a magazine he had brought from the store. He turned 
 the pages and read the advertisements, fascinated for 
 the moment into forgetting how sleepy he was by 
 that of a steamship company describing tours to the 
 Mediterranean. He then read the advertisements of 
 schools, soap, insurance, breakfast-foods, automobile- 
 fixtures, guns, bicycles, bathroom-plumbing, and books. 
 
 An automobile or two, carrying gay seekers after 
 an afternoon's recreation on the open road, passed the 
 house. Some one waved to him from one of them. 
 
 Hewitt was nodding sleepily over a travel article, 
 when Dorr Coates, a twelve-year-old living west of the 
 Stevensons, tiptoed up behind him and tickled his ear 
 with a long grass. Hewitt jumped accommodatingly, 
 and ended by seizing the child by the collar and thrust- 
 ing the grass down his neck. He threatened to throw 
 him over into his own yard by the heels, and Dorr 
 wriggled fiercely. 
 
 " Come on over and shoot! " he screamed, as he was 
 tumbled into the soft grass. 
 
 "Shoot? Shoot what?" 
 
 " Targets. We 've got one up on the shed. You 
 stand out in the side-yard and shoot the rifle at it. 
 Dad did this morning."
 
 CASTE THREE 119 
 
 Hewitt stretched his arms over his head. 
 
 " Too sleepy," he yawned. 
 
 "Sleepy!" Dorr sneered, hitting his neighbor's 
 back. " Wake up, lazy ! Come on over ! " 
 
 Hewitt jumped the low iron fence, rusty and un- 
 stable, into the Coates's yard. Dorr had convinced 
 the fifteen-year-old boy across the street that no sport 
 was equal to shooting at a target, and so the group 
 consisted of three. 
 
 Dorr allowed Hewitt, as the oldest and most de- 
 serving of honor, to have the first five shots. He kept 
 a careful record of the points made on a huge sheet of 
 paper which came with the set of targets. 
 
 "Poor! Only forty-five points," he called when 
 Hewitt turned over the rifle to the next shot. That 
 target was harder to hit than Hewitt had supposed. 
 
 The fifteen-year boy from across the way did better. 
 He was the least bit inclined to be scornful of Hewitt's 
 mediocrity, although he hid this scorn under a fine 
 pretence of manly tolerance. His manner said : " We 
 cannot all perform at sports equally well in this world, 
 which nevertheless favors the skilful. So be it; but 
 I will be lenient with the less skilful." Dorr himself 
 ran up eighty points out of a possible one hundred and 
 twenty-five. 
 
 When Hewitt's turn came again, he carefully raised 
 the gun to his shoulder and took a much longer time 
 in sighting. He hit the shed half an inch off the round 
 target, and frowned.
 
 120 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Five ! " shouted Dorr after his second shot. 
 " Ten ! " he called at the third. The fourth shot hit 
 wood again, and the fifth brought him a twenty. 
 
 "Thirty-five!" was Dorr's seemingly gleeful an- 
 nouncement. 
 
 The other boy looked sad in sympathy. 
 
 Hewitt was piqued. He wiped his forehead, as 
 though the condition of that part of his anatomy might 
 be responsible for his poor marksmanship. His look 
 of consternation brought a roar from the Coates's 
 veranda, where Mr. Coates was shaking his fat sides 
 over the match. 
 
 " Go to it, Stevenson! " he cried. " I tried myself 
 this morning. It might be easier, I guess. Those 
 youngsters practice every day with their rifles, and 
 then pretend to be superior when we compete." 
 
 " I have n't touched a gun for five years," explained 
 Hewitt. But he was still piqued and regretted his in- 
 ferred apology. He applauded magnanimously the 
 trial of Coates, Junior, and was in the act of taking 
 the gun from the hands of the third shot when he 
 caught sight of a long " roadster " swerving around 
 the corner of Jackson Street and gliding slowly into 
 Fourteenth. Mary Young was in it, as Hewitt noted 
 at once. 
 
 Here he was with an air-rifle in his hands, caught 
 in the act of shooting at a target with two infants! 
 Hewitt grew so red, in spots on his cheeks and close 
 behind his ears, that Dorr noted and commented on his 
 condition. It was not in Hewitt to handle a situation
 
 CASTE THREE 121 
 
 like this as calmly and naturally as another would have 
 done. He shook the rifle in shooting, ruining an 
 already bad aim and hitting the roof of the shed. 
 Dorr's glee was unrestrained. 
 
 Hewitt could have turned a more dangerous rifle on 
 himself without regret. Mary Young, the only per- 
 son in Alston whose recognition that he had a 
 " b-r-a-i-n " counted, had seen him shooting at a tar- 
 get with children on a Sunday afternoon! Of course 
 he could not know that Mary Young looked casually 
 at him with the intention of waving her hand, and on 
 seeing his absorption in the game, didn't wave, but 
 went on with her conversation about the Trimbles to 
 the man at her side. As far as Hewitt was concerned, 
 the afternoon was spoiled. He was desolated because 
 he had not turned to speak to Mary. Any interest 
 he ever had had in hitting the target evaporated rap- 
 idly, and he fired his remaining four shots into the 
 air in a very unsportsmanlike manner. Dorr and his 
 companion acknowledged this verbally, and after 
 standing on the steps to talk to Mr. Coates about the 
 weather a topic upon which he now had no convic- 
 tions, Hewitt leaped the iron fence and resorted 
 again to the magazine and the seat under the apple- 
 tree. 
 
 He was more bored with the magazine, however, 
 than he had been when interrupted in the travel-article 
 by Dorr's demand for sport. The glassy blue sky, 
 with its blown fragments of white clouds, the emerald 
 of the grass, the fluffiness in the tops of the gently
 
 122 CASTE THREE 
 
 swaying trees, these no longer held the indefinable 
 joy of spring. Hewitt resented the day's brilliancy. 
 What was the use of Sunday and spring and youth, 
 when one had only this? "This" was, presumably, 
 the apple-tree and a chair and a magazine which he 
 did n't want to read. He wanted something. He 
 wanted something he had never before in his life ac- 
 knowledged that he wanted, if he had ever desired 
 it poignantly. He had been busy for a good many 
 years with ideas. Now suddenly, on this spring Sun- 
 day, he wanted people. He wanted the easy, gay 
 camaraderie, unquestioning in its heartiness of good- 
 fellowship and its easy acceptance of it, which was 
 Joe Bales' and Ernestine's and Mary Young's, though 
 he dimly understood that Mary's was snarled in other 
 relationships which he understood to be bound up in 
 the social game. 
 
 Hewitt's restlessness and moody dissatisfaction 
 drove him downtown. The moving-picture shows 
 were closed. Public opinion had demanded it. The 
 corner drug-store was thus the rendezvous of the young 
 on Sunday afternoons. Hewitt walked over to the 
 soda-fountain and ordered a drink. The boy thrust 
 it at him. He was in a hurry, for Sunday was a busy 
 day. The action hurt Hewitt, hurt his feelings, which 
 had suddenly become very delicate and were in a con- 
 dition to invite hurting. He had half -hoped for a 
 sight of Joe Bales, although he was sure it had been 
 Joe who had waved at him from a car earlier in the 
 afternoon. Some of Joe's friends surrounded the
 
 CASTE THREE 123 
 
 cigar-counter and leaned against the candy-cases, or 
 were seated at tables clinking ice in their glasses. 
 These habitues nodded at Hewitt, and then went on 
 talking or eating or idling with cigarettes. He left 
 without anyone having spoken to him. As far as the 
 stir of his presence in Alston created, he might as 
 well have been in Alaska or Alabama or any other 
 place beginning with an A. To the seasoned Alston- 
 ian, Hewitt Stevenson, once of Chicago and now of 
 their midst, did not exist. And to-day his not existing 
 for them made a difference to Hewitt. 
 
 The rest of that day he spent in writing letters to 
 Mr. Woody and to Paul, and in reading Oscar Wilde. 
 Not that Oscar Wilde was widely read in Indiana in 
 1913, or at least in Alston, but Letsky had read Wilde 
 because other people did not read him, and Hewitt had 
 begun by reading him because Letsky did, and had 
 ended by reading him because he filled a need. To- 
 day the plays, with their brilliant repartee, their sophis- 
 tication, and their cynicism, made him contented again. 
 They raised him to a plane where Mary Young's hav- 
 ing seen him shooting at a target with children and his 
 non-existence for Joe Bales's kind of man became un- 
 important matters with which he had no concern. 
 Among people like those in Wilde's plays he would 
 have shone, he felt sure. He would have scintillated, 
 been worldly cynical, yet good at heart, been self- 
 sacrificing even, like Mrs. Erlynne in "Lady Winder- 
 mere's Fan." He identified himself indiscriminately 
 with men and women. He ate and thrived upon
 
 124 CASTE THREE 
 
 Wilde's brand of romance, and in the presence of the 
 delightful sophistication of this individualist he felt 
 that it was not romance at all, but reality. How fine 
 that bit which ran thus : 
 
 "Lady W. 'Why do you talk so trivially about 
 life, then?' 
 
 " Lord D. ' Because I think life is far too im- 
 portant a thing to talk seriously about.' ' 
 
 Hewitt chuckled, enthralled over Lady Agatha and 
 her " Yes, Ma-ma," Agatha who was so fond of 
 " photographs of Switzerland," " such a pure taste." 
 
 By supper-time, when Grace placed the " cold bits " 
 upon the table, Hewitt was once more happy in that 
 fair country haunted by the creations of a master- 
 mind. He even became talkative. 
 
 Charles Stevenson discussed the farm-garden. It 
 was the core of his life. The weather filled him with 
 excitement. He ate cold chicken vociferously, and 
 talked fertilizer and seed and hot-beds to his heart's 
 content. 
 
 In the fastnesses of his room afterward, while the 
 cooling breeze, fresh and more than ever laden with 
 the perfume of bursting growth, fanned the curtains 
 and by eight o'clock had to be shut out by closed 
 windows, Hewitt read and thought. Much of his 
 thought on this evening was concerned with a distant 
 day when Alston would feel proud of having harbored, 
 though only for a year, a boy who had put the town 
 on the map, so to speak. He was not Alston's kind, 
 and he felt glad that he was not. In the stimulation
 
 CASTE THREE 125 
 
 of a new grip on himself, fostered by Oscar Wilde's 
 outlook, he knew his kind to be much superior to the 
 variety to be found in Becker's cigar-store and the 
 drug-store. Young know-nothings, these, to whom 
 the pleasure of the moment was everything! He, too, 
 if he wished, might grip the fleeting joy; but he chose 
 to prepare himself. Some day ! How he was to 
 distinguish himself was, of course, a question that need 
 not be immediately answered. After an afternoon and 
 evening of Wilde, the drama might suit him. He 
 would do bright, witty, clever things, until the world 
 noticed. And then ! 
 
 Ten o'clock found Mr. Wilde's products lying dis- 
 carded on the floor, while Hewitt gazed ecstatically 
 at the ugly, cracked, stained wall-paper above his bed 
 and saw a glorious life in the sunshine of Paris, New 
 York, or Rome or the tropics! Alston might pass 
 him unnoticed now; in a few years he would come 
 back ! No, he would never come back, unless it 
 should be to hold up its inhabitants to the derision of 
 a cultivated world who would read his account of 
 " A Journey to a Small Town Where I Spent a Year 
 of my Youth." 
 
 Hewitt went to sleep very happy, the conscious 
 center of a universe that Joe Bales did not know 
 existed, although Joe, at that moment in the swing on 
 the Gainor veranda, was the center of his own satis- 
 factory little universe, which glowed in the sun of his 
 sixty-seventh love affair.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MR. SMITH thought his assistant a very in- 
 tellectual young person. His opinion may 
 have been biased by the fact that there were so few 
 intellectual men in Alston that one who had rather 
 radical notions stood out in relief against a background 
 of youths who read nothing at all and thought nothing 
 at all, except about girls and other amusement. Mr. 
 Smith praised Hewitt to his family with no visible 
 effect upon his daughter, Ernestine. But this praise 
 had a marked effect upon Mary Young, who break- 
 fasted, lunched, and dined at the Smiths when not 
 otherwise occupied. 
 
 Mary was immensely fond of the young men in 
 Alston. She found them most amusing, and they 
 looked upon her as a superior but highly entertaining 
 person whom fortune had tossed into their midst 
 and who ought to be feted accordingly. She was as 
 popular as Ernestine, more popular, indeed, since 
 everyone liked Mary, even Hewitt. Hewitt, in addi- 
 tion to having Mr. Smith's recommendation as to 
 intellectual qualities, had his gray eyes and a boyish 
 seriousness. Mary liked novelty, in fact, she craved 
 it. Every newcomer to Alston, within the range of 
 " society," was cultivated for a time by Mary if 
 they proved interesting enough. 
 
 126
 
 CASTE THREE 127 
 
 Mary entered Smith's store one day during the week 
 following Hewitt's initiation into the church at- 
 mosphere and Sunday loneliness of Alston. She was 
 with Mrs. George Patton, the daughter-in-law and 
 wife, respectively, of the two owners of the Alston 
 Times. The Pattons had not only money, but in- 
 fluence. Mrs. Patton belonged to the best clubs and 
 was president of the Women's Council, an organiza- 
 tion made up of representatives from all the clubs in 
 the city. She had a penchant for managing things. 
 Generally this is not a popular trait among other 
 women, but Mrs. Patton remained popular because of 
 a cordiality which was stereotyped but convincing to 
 Alston. 
 
 Mary was in gray. Hewitt's eyes, not often ob- 
 servant where women were concerned, took in her ap- 
 pearance at a glance, and he worshipped. 
 
 Mrs. Patton wanted a novel. She thought the 
 author's name was Watts, but upon further consider- 
 ation, aided by a gloved finger placed upon her tight- 
 ened lips, she thought that was n't the name. 
 " Let 's see," she pondered. 
 
 " Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth ! " whispered Mary 
 Young to Hewitt. She had smiled and summoned 
 him with her finger when Mrs. Chancellor had started 
 forward to wait on them. 
 
 Hewitt thought this an excellent joke and laughed, 
 while Mrs. Patton pretended a great disgust for Mary 
 and her suggestion. She expected to be made fun of 
 when Mary was around. Everyone expected it.
 
 128 CASTE THREE 
 
 People invited Mary to ridicule them. It was flatter- 
 ing. 
 
 "It was Wells!" Mrs. Patton remembered, with a 
 start of pleasure. " ' Tongue Bung ' ? Could that 
 have been it ? " 
 
 " ' Barriers Burned Away/ by E. P. Roe," Mary 
 suggested. 
 
 "Mary J. Holmes?" Hewitt contributed, with a 
 splendid' show of wit. 
 
 Everyone was jolly over the purchase of " Tono- 
 Bungay " and a new travel-book that old Mr. Patton 
 wanted to review for the Tourist Club. Hewitt, him- 
 self, was as gay and airy about the whole sale as any- 
 one. Being democratic in the extreme, he felt very 
 important in being jolly with Mrs. Patton and Mary 
 Young, social leaders as they were. His shirt invol- 
 untarily expanded and gave him an overchested ap- 
 pearance, as though he had been taking breathing 
 exercises with a new kind of patent exerciser 
 guaranteed to make a muscular giant of the poor- 
 est specimen. Little thrills of joie de vivre chased 
 each other up and down his backbone in alarming 
 succession, for his backbone in its hibernization in 
 Alston had become unaccustomed to such activity. It 
 was a kind of hermit backbone, but it liked these 
 pseudo-chills of happiness. 
 
 Mrs. Patton had been introduced in the beginning, 
 so that a business transaction of buying two books 
 assumed the proportions of a social gathering under
 
 CASTE THREE 129 
 
 the espionage of Mary, who always made a social 
 gathering out of everything, at least so long as her 
 star was in the ascendancy. It was near enough being 
 fixedly in that position in Alston to enable one to 
 say that she always was jolly about everything. Her 
 jollity was a refined kind of jollity, needless to say, 
 but it was contagious and invigorating. Everyone 
 was a little jolly himself in consequence. 
 
 " I 'd ask Hewitt's opinion of Wells," Mary began 
 when the purchases had been made, ignoring his right 
 to be addressed as Mr. Stevenson though Hewitt 
 would never have required that formality of Mary 
 " if he was n't certain to break into a violent tirade, 
 and be lengthy. He 's awfully clever, Mildred. But 
 he knows it, and he glories in entangling innocent 
 women in long arguments that no one but he knows 
 the answer to. He does n't believe in woman's 
 suffrage, either. Imagine ! " 
 
 " Oh, I do ! " Hewitt hastened to contradict her. 
 " You deserve the vote. You managed things so well 
 in agricultural prehistoric times, when you managed 
 everything except the fighting, that I 'm all for giving 
 you a chance again." 
 
 " Did you know we managed things in prehistoric 
 times, Mildred?" Mary sighed. "Perhaps we had 
 better have the man lecture on the history of our 
 sex at our meetings. Soon there won't be any fun 
 in being a suffragette. We won't have any opposi- 
 tion."
 
 i 3 o CASTE THREE 
 
 " Even inheritance once came through the mother," 
 Hewitt volunteered further, feeling proud to teach 
 Mary and Mrs. Patton. 
 
 "Bravo! Isn't he sweet?" Mary flung to him 
 through Mrs. Patton, while she gave his arm a pat. 
 
 " Sometimes I doubt whether all women should 
 vote," Mrs. Patton said slowly. She looked at 
 Hewitt so steadily that he became disconcerted and 
 dropped his eyes. " Some of us are so so catty, 
 shall I say? I often discover the tendency in myself." 
 She was sorry to make this confession but was deter- 
 mined to be honest before a man who was willing to 
 grant all arguments in favor of her right to vote. 
 
 " You are a dear. I refuse to listen while you 
 malign yourself. No matter what other women are, 
 George would n't want me to let you call yourself 
 cattish," and Mary placed her hand gently over her 
 self -accuser's mouth. 
 
 " George says women are more likely to take the 
 personal attitude than men," the other continued when 
 she was allowed to speak. 
 
 " Tell George for me, darling, that he is wrong. 
 I have known so many men ! " 
 
 " You talk as if you were forty, Mary." 
 
 " I 'm eighty, if experience with men ages a per- 
 son." 
 
 " Conceited girl." 
 
 " No ; a simple statement of facts." 
 
 " Women would naturally be personal, because their 
 place has always been in the home, where personal re-
 
 CASTE THREE 131 
 
 lation is fostered. Business women, I should say, are 
 not inclined to be personal," Hewitt suggested, with 
 a fear that if he did not say something, he would be 
 altogether left out of the conversation. 
 
 Mrs. Patton shook her head. 
 
 " I think we are more self-sacrificing than men, but 
 I still think we are catty, the business women, too." 
 
 " Am I catty ? " mourned Mary into a hastily pro- 
 duced handkerchief. 
 
 " I don't know, Mary. Perhaps you are not, but 
 the rest of us are." 
 
 " I refuse to desert my sex. If the rest of you are, 
 so am I. Don't you think I am noble, Hewitt?" 
 
 Hewitt thought other things about her, if not that, 
 but he did not state them. 
 
 " Get your package, dear," Mary suggested to Mrs. 
 Patton after more of this jesting, and the young man's 
 shirt-front gradually assumed its normal position. 
 
 It was almost with desolation of spirit that Hewitt 
 watched them depart. He wanted Mary to stay and 
 talk. He could have amused her, he felt sure, and 
 there was no doubt about her ability to amuse him. 
 He needed amusement to make him forget the sad 
 yesterday, which became sadder in retrospect, Oscar 
 Wilde having lost his power to create superiority in 
 the white light of Monday's labor. He was running 
 over with information about books and the men who 
 made them, and she would have understood and 
 appreciated and responded, he felt sure. 
 
 But the sense of desolation soon had a relapse and
 
 132 CASTE THREE 
 
 weakened, while the memory of how pretty and quick 
 and fascinating she had been, revivified. Later in the 
 afternoon he felt stimulated and thought to lift him- 
 self out of an inferred mediocrity as a silent Alstonian 
 by opening a conversation with a young manufacturer 
 of mechanical toys. The latter came in nightly to buy 
 a New York paper. He was clean cut, sturdy, of 
 medium height, broad in proportion, and had a fine 
 head. Hewitt had been impressed with him before. 
 
 " Fine spring weather," Hewitt began unexpectedly. 
 
 " Yes," answered the manufacturer. " The country 
 looks great. My wife and I drove out last night." 
 
 "Of course it would take more than spring to 
 freshen up Alston," Hewitt laughed, with an air of 
 conscious superiority to country villages. " What I 
 never understand about small places is why they don't 
 build better buildings in the business section. People 
 here, for instance, take excessive pride in their resi- 
 dences, but look at that group of shacks across the 
 street there. A Chinese laundry, a restaurant, a shoe- 
 shining booth all in a one-story building that you 'd 
 think would have been torn down long ago. Why, 
 in Chicago " 
 
 " Oh, of course. The bigger cities have to rebuild. 
 The more they are like New York, the better, or 
 so they think. And after all, that 's what you 're after 
 for Alston, isn't it? You want it to be more like 
 Chicago, which is exactly like New York. Now my 
 idea for the business section of a small town would 
 be a pretty square a park, a fountain, trees, and so
 
 CASTE THREE 133 
 
 on, more like abroad with plain, dignified one, 
 two, or three-story buildings grouped around the green 
 spots. No ugly structures would be permitted." 
 
 Hewitt thought about the suggestion for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " I believe you 're right. That 's an idea. There 
 is n't really an artistic building in Alston. Well, you 
 might call the post-office and the Carnegie library 
 artistic. At least they 're simple and dignified." 
 
 " What a town like Alston needs is some pretty 
 trees and lawns downtown," went on the other. 
 " Somebody long ago, before land in cities became so 
 valuable, decided people ought to crowd together. I 
 suppose they were afraid somebody else would run off 
 with the town hall or the church some of our re- 
 spectable ancestors who distrusted everybody whose 
 father was n't a preacher. Business has to be concen- 
 trated, but my idea is to concentrate it in a beautiful 
 spot, instead of in one like this." He pointed to 
 Meridian Street, with its rather narrow roadway made 
 still narrower by tracks down the middle of it, its 
 crowded sidewalks, and its asphalted, treeless expanse 
 unbroken by a single beautiful spot. 
 
 "Where do you come from?" Hewitt asked curi- 
 ously. People who live in Alston and yet harbored 
 ideas astounded him. 
 
 " New York City." 
 
 " I might have known that you were n't a Hoosier. 
 Everyone in Indiana the native-born, I mean, 
 thinks his town is the best on the face of the earth.
 
 134 CASTE THREE 
 
 He would n't trade it for Florence or Paris or Rome, 
 with all their art-treasures thrown in. You can't 
 teach a Hoosier anything about his town." 
 
 Hewitt was improvising. He had never thought 
 of Hoosier pride in just this light before, but he 
 quickly warmed to his subject. He had a little bone 
 to pick with Alston after a disappointing Sunday when 
 nature had tried to teach him something he did n't 
 want to learn about man and a social law. 
 
 " The way the cow wandered a century ago is the 
 way for the Hoosier highway. That 's Hoosier 
 philosophy for you!" he added after a moment's 
 thought. 
 
 " No, that 's not Hoosier nature you 're talking 
 about; it's human nature," the young man laughed. 
 " You don't suppose the English are any different from 
 that, do you? Or our worthy Puritan ancestors? 
 Or the natives of the Buckeye State? We're all 
 alike. You swear by Chicago I suppose you lived 
 there once and I secretly swear by New York. 
 * Good little old New York,' I say to myself when 
 I 'm far away from it. We all like the things we 've 
 known when we were young and when life was still 
 full of illusions." 
 
 " I did n't seem to care for the farm," Hewitt 
 grinned. 
 
 " Wait until you are fifty," returned the other. 
 " An Indiana farm will then be Paradise with a capital 
 to you." 
 
 Hewitt doubted this statement.
 
 CASTE THREE 135 
 
 "Did you ever see a beautiful small town?" he 
 asked the man. 
 
 " A few, in the West. You see, the minute a man 
 goes West for good to live, he breaks with his old 
 traditions to a certain extent and starts in anew. 
 He 's no longer tied down by the idea that the way 
 his father did things is the best way. He wants things 
 more convenient, even more beautiful, though the 
 average American is n't on the trail of beauty. Cali- 
 fornia bungalows and apartments are a revelation to 
 the Middle Westerner." 
 
 " I believe I 'd like the West," Hewitt thought 
 aloud. 
 
 The young manufacturer examined him carefully. 
 
 "No, you wouldn't," he decided. "You'd like 
 New York. Interested mainly in books, aren't you? 
 Well, after all, the East 's the place for those who 
 cherish intellectual ideals. There's the same difference 
 between the East and the West in that respect as be- 
 tween New York and Europe. They have more art 
 traditions abroad. The thing's in the atmosphere. 
 The West is the place for the man who wants to live. 
 It may be a kind of superficial living, something like 
 Pacific Coast fruit very pretty to look at, but lack- 
 ing the eastern tang. For myself, I like the good old 
 Middle West. You get enough of the intellectual to 
 keep you alive. I '11 take Alston, Indiana, for mine, 
 People have time to live, and they 're not always break- 
 ing the speed limit. It's a pretty good town!" 
 
 Hewitt was sorry he felt that way about Alston.
 
 136 CASTE THREE 
 
 It detracted from the respect that up to this moment 
 he had felt for him. 
 
 The man started out of the door, but paused to call 
 back, with a laugh : 
 
 "Of course, between you and me and the gate- 
 post, I 'd like to build most of Alston over again, 
 around that pretty park with trees, lots of trees! 
 It mightn't be a bad plan to have a little stream 
 trickling through the middle, with plenty of fish in 
 it. Then all the tired business-men could satisfy 
 their desire for their favorite sport right at their own 
 doors. Good-night." 
 
 Hewitt was still smiling over the young manu- 
 facturer's parting words when Mr. Smith jogged in, 
 perspiring from the exertion of his walk from the 
 bank two blocks away. He removed his brown derby 
 to wipe his forehead, and fell back in simulated 
 exhaustion in the swivel-chair, which sagged danger- 
 ously under his weight. 
 
 "These Catholics!" he groaned. "They don't 
 want the world to progress. They 're stones in the 
 current of progress. They want to dam things up." 
 He puffed forth a voluminous sigh. " I 'spose I 'm 
 a little sweeping just a little. There are some good 
 Catholics. You 're not a Catholic, are you? " he asked 
 quickly, with a suspicious glance at the boy. 
 
 Hewitt grinned. 
 
 " Methodist-trained agnostic," he replied. 
 
 "All right. Now, about these Catholics. Gerald 
 Meyer 's always one of the first men here to give to
 
 CASTE THREE 137 
 
 public funds. Perhaps he thinks he ought to even up 
 in some way for that brewery of his. But these pesky 
 Burkes who run the clothing-store over on the Square ! 
 I 've been working half the afternoon trying to get 
 old Mike to give fifty or twenty-five or ten dollars to 
 the fund for Boosters' Day, and do you think he 'd 
 come through with a cent? Not a red Indian! I 
 never did have any use for Catholics. Dance and 
 carouse around after they 've gone to mass and had the 
 priest forgive all their sins! They make me pesky 
 hot!" 
 
 He mopped his brow again and swung back and 
 forth dangerously in his chair. 
 
 "Boosters' Day?" queried Hewitt. "What's 
 that?" 
 
 Mr. Smith emitted a groan. 
 
 " Lord ! Where have you lived all your life, Son? " 
 
 " We did n't have it on the farm or in Chicago." 
 
 " Well, we have it here. You '11 see. They 're a 
 great and beneficent institution. I helped start the 
 first one here. All the county comes to town to see 
 a parade and athletic contests and a balloon ascension 
 and to hear speeches. And we give them and in- 
 cidentally the apathetic citizens of our own town 
 proof in plenty that Alston is the best there is, and 
 getting better ! " 
 
 This speech further exhausted him. 
 
 " Wait and see, Boy. I 'm too tired after working 
 on that blamed Catholic to tell you all the good things 
 about Boosters' Day. Why, Abe Kahn gave fifty
 
 138 CASTE THREE 
 
 dollars, while Mike Burke would n't hand out a red 
 cent. It's the limit!" 
 
 But presently he broke out again with: 
 
 " He '11 get the benefit of it in trade, just like the 
 rest of us. Not that trade is all we 're thinking about. 
 We have Boosters' Day just out of exuberance of 
 spirits, as it were. Proud of Alston, and want to 
 show it, you understand." 
 
 Hewitt's day was not complete; it had been a good 
 day, what with his chat with the social arbiters of the 
 city and the talk with the young manufacturer who 
 had ideas. That night, not long before closing time, 
 he was arranging one of the show-windows for an 
 advance supply of tennis- and golf-goods, when he 
 was interrupted by Homer Gray, a young lawyer, who 
 came into the store with M. H. Keith, ex-Governor of 
 the state and Alston's most prominent citizen. 
 Hewitt jumped down from the platform in the 
 window. 
 
 " Hello, Stevenson," Gray called out familiarly. 
 His position as a rising young politician and candidate 
 for a city office made him uniformly cordial. He 
 knew, and was familiar with, everybody. Sometimes 
 his method was not convincing, but he did not realize 
 that. He understood that Mr. Keith was very popular 
 in political circles, that in his youth he had been noted 
 for an exuberant cordiality which had won him a 
 state-wide renown. Homer Gray considered Mr. 
 Keith a fine person to pattern himself after. Hewitt 
 did not like his conceited assumption, however, that
 
 CASTE THREE 139 
 
 the young man could have the wool pulled over his 
 eyes by an amateur. Hewitt never liked egotists, 
 that is, other egotists. 
 
 "You know Mr. Keith, don't you? Every one 
 knows the Governor. Hewitt Stevenson is Mr. 
 Smith's right-hand man, Mr. Keith; Charlie Steven- 
 son's boy, you know, of Fourteenth and Jackson 
 Streets." 
 
 The ex-Governor, a dignified, imposing, white- 
 haired man, whose habit of glaring at people was very 
 disconcerting until they discovered that the glare was 
 followed by a reassuring smile and a hearty hand- 
 shake, wanted a copy of President Wilson's " History 
 of the American People." 
 
 " A very great man, Mr. Wilson," he said. 
 
 " Not of the same caliber as his predecessor, Mr. 
 Roosevelt," Gray put in, with an important air of add- 
 ing something of note to the conversation. 
 
 " They are both great men, in the popular interpreta- 
 tion of that term," Hewitt began slowly, addressing 
 himself to Mr. Keith. An unnatural stepping-out 
 from his protective shell, in order to show his true 
 colors, was marking his actions on this day. He could 
 not at once understand his hardihood in feeling called 
 upon to make Homer Gray's remark sound colorless, 
 but he was determined to do so. He spoke carelessly 
 and forcefully, as though he had long been thinking 
 about this subject and was only now willing to give the 
 benefit of his thought to the public. He pointed out 
 that they both were great men in such different ways
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 as to make intelligent comparison impossible, like 
 comparing the army and the navy of a country as to 
 respective greatness. One had powers in a certain di- 
 rection, the other, in another. He said what most 
 of the non-partisan papers had been saying since before 
 Mr. Wilson's election, and which they would continue 
 to say until some one thought of something better, 
 but he said it impressively. At least, Mr. Keith 
 listened very intently, although Homer Gray tried 
 vainly several times to interrupt the flow of Hewitt's 
 speech-making. 
 
 " Very good," Mr. Keith commented, nodding his 
 approval when Hewitt had finished. 
 
 " But Mr. Roosevelt's vigor " Gray began. 
 
 " The distrust of American finance for a school- 
 master President is a tribute to his honesty of pur- 
 pose," Mr. Keith pronounced, disregarding Gray's 
 false start. " He will make good ; and the American 
 people the mass of the people will have more 
 faith in mentality and be less slow to disparage 
 brains." 
 
 Hewitt drew his lower lip over his upper and ap- 
 peared to ponder. What was really happening in his 
 mind was that he was considering that ex-Governors 
 were not, after all, such wonderful men. Here was 
 one conversing with him, Hewitt Stevenson, a mere no- 
 body, on political topics of the day, and his words 
 were no more weighty, to Hewitt's mind, than his own. 
 They were both saying what men all over the country 
 were saying, although Hewitt himself had digested his
 
 CASTE THREE 141 
 
 information so that now it was his own. He was not 
 so sure about the ex-Governor's assimilative processes. 
 The miracle of exchanging views and agreeing with 
 so great a man politically as an election had proved this 
 man to be, could not pass without creating a wonder- 
 ful stir in his nervous system, even while he dis- 
 paraged the ex-Governor. He thought, too, that in 
 Chicago he would never have had the opportunity of 
 talking at his ease with Mr. Keith. You never 
 parleyed with the great in Chicago the politically 
 great, that is, the men who received the laudation of 
 the crowd. The rich watched and appropriated them. 
 But here he was, a clerk in Smith's book-store, grow- 
 ing chummy with a former Governor of Indiana. 
 
 Hewitt puckered his eyebrows and ignored the 
 younger politician. What had he to do with any but 
 the "arrived"? 
 
 " Now take Roosevelt's books " Gray began. 
 But Hewitt's quick, seemingly unpremeditated remark 
 cut him short. 
 
 " Mr. Wilson's control over language is greater than 
 that of any man who has sat in the Presidential chair 
 since Lincoln," he said, " and all of his speeches taken 
 together, will in time be probably admitted to surpass 
 in beauty of language the bulk of Lincoln's utter- 
 ances." 
 
 Gray turned away to look at a book lying near him. 
 Mr. Keith nodded. 
 
 " But you must be careful not to seem too critical 
 of the great Lincoln," he warned. " I doubt whether
 
 H2 CASTE THREE 
 
 we of the new era desire to be critical of the finest 
 man the country has produced. He had the power 
 of fine feeling. That is the secret of the people's 
 adoration of him. Mr. Wilson has, as you say, an 
 admirable control over speech. He is a fine man." 
 He shook his head emphatically over the last words. 
 He had been a Republican governor of a state that was 
 doubtful in its party affiliation. 
 
 Gray's growing impatience here broke into action, 
 and he moved toward the door as cheerful and politic 
 as ever, now that he could end the conversation and 
 regain his position of importance as the political child 
 of Alston's leading citizen. 
 
 Hewitt's prejudice against Gray was founded, it is 
 to be feared, either on such evidence as Grace needed 
 to reach similar conclusions, or on the conflict between 
 their two vocal egos, each of which wanted to do 
 nothing so much as scream at the other when the angels 
 of dead eagles appeared to show a preference. And 
 of course, in any ordinary screaming contest Gray 
 would have won, because he was a native of Alston 
 and the author of a little book favorably commented 
 upon by the president of a university a little book 
 entitled " The History of the Communistic Movement 
 in Indiana." Hewitt must have realized Gray's ad- 
 vantages in order to make such good use of his latent 
 conversational powers to an audience that consisted of 
 a single man who had heard Gray's ideas on Roosevelt 
 many times before. 
 
 The two men left Smith's with a cheery " Good-
 
 CASTE THREE 143 
 
 night " that made the gray eyes that Grace thought 
 should have been brown light up with serene satisfac- 
 tion. It had been a good day, Hewitt's attitude said. 
 Alston was n't so bad. 
 
 But when the local and state celebrities stepped from 
 the door at seven-thirty he had not tasted the essence 
 of its sweetness. Kenneth Reed, the " David " of 
 former Chicago days, who had introduced Hewitt to 
 the fraternity ideal and had been defended by that 
 youth from Letsky's unconcealed scorn at save-the- 
 world meeting, peered doubtfully in at the door a few 
 minutes later. Hewitt was standing staring off into 
 space, waiting for eight o'clock to roll around. He 
 grasped Hewitt's hand with a grip that hurt. 
 
 "Hello, Hugh! Tickled to death. What you 
 doin'?" 
 
 " Reed, you boob ! When 'd you get in ? What 
 under heavens are you doing in Alston? When did 
 you see Paul ? " 
 
 " One at a time. Saw Paul last week, and when 
 I told him I was selling bonds in Indiana this month, 
 he told me to look you up in Alston. Just got in, and 
 had some dinner at the only hotel I saw handy, a 
 good one, strange to say. What are you doing to- 
 night?" 
 
 " Nothing, after eight. I close up then and go 
 home." 
 
 " Not home this night. You 're going to stay all 
 night at the Grand with me, and talk a little. See ? " 
 
 Hewitt glowed.
 
 144 CASTE THREE 
 
 " By the way, did you ever hear of a girl named 
 Mary Young in Alston? I met her in Chicago at a 
 dance last year. She 's a pippin. I want to see her." 
 
 Hewitt glowed some more. 
 
 "I should say so! Of course I know her. She 
 stays with Dr. Trimble. Come on back and call her 
 up." 
 
 That flickering tingle which had been pursuing his 
 vertebrae during the afternoon and evening attacked 
 them again. He was un-Hewittly speedy in leading 
 Kenneth Reed to the telephone, and was trembling in 
 a way that would have shamed him, had he known 
 there was anything the least unusual in his actions. 
 Reed knew Mary Young, Alston's fairest divinity and 
 a very Venus or Athena among femininity! He 
 looked the Trimble number up for him, and then ob- 
 tained the connection and asked for Mary Young. 
 His voice followed the example of his hands and shook 
 slightly in pronouncing the words. Wonderful Mary 
 Young! He handed the receiver the least bit unwill- 
 ingly to Reed before Mary answered. He wanted to 
 talk to her himself. . 
 
 Reed laughed uproariously for five minutes, while 
 Mary said things into the telephone that evidently were 
 laughter-producing. Hewitt smiled inanely in sym- 
 pathy, and wanted to tear the instrument from Reed's 
 ear to hear, too. What was she saying? 
 
 " Lyceum entertainment ? " laughed the favored one 
 at last. " I 'm on, but look here. Hewitt Stevenson
 
 CASTE THREE 145 
 
 you know him, don't you? Hewitt and I are old 
 pals from college days from mine, rather. He 's 
 my best friend, in Alston, Chicago, or any old place. 
 He goes to the famous lyceum, too. We '11 come for 
 you about what hour? Eight? O. K." 
 
 He turned and slapped Hewitt on the shoulder. 
 
 " We 're off for the great entertainment, Hugh. 
 Methodist church. Ever been inside of a church, my 
 boy? Yes? Seven-thirty now. I 'spose you want 
 to put on a clean collar and get a fresh handkerchief. 
 Why could n't I watch this store, while you go home 
 to doll up a little? What about it? " 
 
 Anything was possible to this Hewitt with a new 
 zest for life. 
 
 "Of course you can," he said. " Call me up at 
 home if some one wants anything you can't find the 
 price on." 
 
 "All right. Scoot!" 
 
 At seven fifty-five Hewitt was back, so clean as to 
 skin that he shone. He had even managed to give a 
 hurried shine to his shoes and had taken time to be 
 impressed by their age. For a fleeting moment, while 
 he observed the cut of Kenneth Reed's suit, he wished 
 he had a better suit of his own. His was really rather 
 shabby. He wore one suit all the time; that had 
 seemed enough to him. He was not a Joe Bales. 
 
 During the walk to the Trimbles they talked a great 
 deal about Chicago and the winter just past. Reed 
 explained that his temporary journey into the world of
 
 146 CASTE THREE 
 
 finance via the bond-selling route was in order to pro- 
 cure enough money for his expenses at law school 
 at Harvard. 
 
 " I 'm off for the effete East next fall, about the 
 time that you enter Chicago," Reed said. 
 
 Under cover of the semi-darkness created by the 
 overhanging trees on Twelfth Street, a darkness 
 through which flickered gleams from the street-lights 
 and the moon, Hewitt put his hand familiarly on 
 Reed's shoulder. 
 
 " I 'd like to see old Paul," he remarked. " Fine 
 little wife he has, isn't she?" 
 
 Reed agreed that she was. 
 
 " But it 's the single life for you and me for a few 
 years, eh, Hugh, old boy?" he went on. "It'll be 
 five years before I settle down on nothing a year, and 
 it '11 be longer for you. We should worry, though. 
 It 's a big world, and there are lots of things happening 
 all the time. So why weep because you can't have a 
 wife to support? " 
 
 Hewitt, having never been seriously worried about 
 his inability to support a wife for many a year to 
 come, agreed with all his friend said. He was not so 
 enthralled by a present which had been dull until to- 
 day, when things had brightened up, but the next year 
 would be a great one. 
 
 Lights were shining in most of the windows on 
 Twelfth Street. Hewitt glanced into them as they 
 passed. The houses were well-furnished. From one 
 of the more beautiful a sound of music issued, and he
 
 CASTE THREE 147 
 
 saw a young girl sitting reading under a lamp in an- 
 other. 
 
 The Trimble house was an old fashioned, white 
 frame structure, redeemed from the commonplace by a 
 wide stretch of lawn broken by artistically arranged 
 shrubbery. A fragrance of lilacs was wafted to the 
 two young men as they went up the steps to the small 
 square veranda. 
 
 Dr. Trimble opened the door, and Reed introduced 
 himself and Hewitt. They seated themselves in the 
 hall and talked to Dr. Jimmy every one in Alston 
 who had watched him grow into manhood called him 
 Dr. Jimmy about current affairs. That is, Kenneth 
 Reed talked. Hewitt's eyes kept wandering to the 
 top of the stairs which led out of the hall. Soon he 
 was rewarded by the sight of Mary Young. She was 
 descending in a dark suit and wore white summer furs. 
 
 Hewitt was reminded of his manners by the sudden 
 rising of Dr. Jimmy and Reed. In the excitement of 
 seeing Mary he had forgotten them. Besides, he had 
 let them grow stale in Alston; Grace did not seem to 
 mind whether or not one remembered to be polite, 
 outside of certain limits. 
 
 " Mr. Reed ! I am so pleased," Mary Young said, 
 with a delighted smile. " And Mr. Stevenson. To 
 think I didn't even know you two knew each other! 
 Terrible! And both from Chicago!" 
 
 The inference that everybody in Chicago knew 
 everybody else brought the expected smiles. 
 
 " Tell Martha I '11 be in whenever these young men
 
 148 CASTE THREE 
 
 bring me home from the Lyceum entertainment at the 
 Methodist church, Jimmy. Good-night." 
 
 Her animation was delicious. Hewitt was unable 
 to do anything but admire in silence. Kenneth Reed 
 managed to more than match her witticisms. They 
 played into each other's hands in great glee, and 
 allowed Hewitt to applaud. He walked very straight, 
 with his head thrown back. He must not shame Mary 
 and Reed by slouching. His habits in that direction 
 had been bad of late. It had seemed to make so little 
 difference in Alston whether or not you carried your- 
 self well. In Chicago one instinctively did it, because 
 appearances counted for so much, but several times 
 during this uneventful winter it had seemed to him 
 that nothing in the world, no big achievement, could 
 have made Alston admire him, the stranger in its heart. 
 He was in it, but not of it. Such a decision was an- 
 noying when it pushed itself into his consciousness. 
 
 The trio arrived at the Methodist Church a trifle 
 late from the musical point of view, but at the proper 
 moment if you were self-conscious enough to desire 
 your entrance to be impressive. The orchestra, a 
 seven-piece string orchestra of some merit, was play- 
 ing at the moment, and they waited near the door- 
 way. Then they were ushered to their seats half-way 
 down the aisle. Mary sat between Reed and Hewitt. 
 There was a stir about them as they sat down. People 
 were watching them. Their late entrance made them 
 conspicuous, and Mary Young always created a stir 
 in Alston. Hewitt's desire for attention was wellnigh
 
 CASTE THREE 149 
 
 satisfied by the feeling that a great many eyes were on 
 the group of which he was a minor but throbbing 
 part. 
 
 Mary smiled at him as she turned her head while 
 taking off her black hat and laying it on her lap. Her 
 attention then switched again to Kenneth. Hewitt re- 
 gretted that this was so, but Reed was saying low 
 things in her ear about Alston audiences. So he gave 
 his attention to the people in the church. 
 
 The auditorium was crowded, even the balconies be- 
 ing in use. Hewitt recognized some business men and 
 their families, many young women whom he saw daily 
 without ever being told their names, and a scattering 
 of young men who were factory-workers and clerks. 
 All were rather well-dressed, and some even smartly. 
 The younger portion of the crowd was, however, 
 leavened with old people, staunch church-goers 
 every line of their earnest, intent faces said, who 
 revered the church and all entertainments held within 
 its walls. 
 
 Hewitt had heard about this lyceum course. He re- 
 membered that some one had asked him to buy a ticket 
 for a dollar in the autumn. Later, he understood, you 
 paid more and reserved your seat. He had rejected the 
 offer to be allowed to hear an orchestra, a quartette, 
 some Scotch singers, a lecturer, a humorist, and a 
 reader at intervals throughout the winter and spring, 
 even at such a reduced figure. Such inanities 
 sentimental vocalists and platform speakers were 
 not for him. When he wanted to spend an evening
 
 150 CASTE THREE 
 
 in entertainment, he preferred a good book that he 
 could select for himself on its merits. No frappe 
 lyceum program, thank you! 
 
 Now, to his surprise, he found that he was enjoying 
 the whole affair. He was convinced that the presence 
 of Mary and Reed accounted for his interest, yet 
 An old woman back of him was whispering to her 
 equally aged husband: 
 
 " Mary Young. Who are the men? " he heard her 
 say. 
 
 " Don' know. Strange, ain't they? " 
 
 " Maybe ; but I think the young one worked at 
 Smith's." 
 
 This was food to Hewitt's liking, though somewhat 
 plainer than he would have desired. 
 
 A murmur of conversation filled in the intervals be- 
 tween the music. 
 
 " What is the next selection, Hewitt? " Mary turned 
 with her program to ask him. " I can't pronounce it. 
 Mr. Reed pretends that he can, but he refuses to help 
 me. Do tell me, please." 
 
 Hewitt looked his ignorance. 
 
 " Search me ! " he said slangily. " I only know 
 German well." 
 
 "Oh!" sighed Mary. "Isn't this German? I 
 only read French and " she whispered this " I 
 read it with great difficulty." 
 
 " It looks like Russian to me," Hewitt ventured, 
 while he flushed because Mary was talking to him. 
 
 "Russian?" Reed echoed. "Never! It's Bui-
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 garian. I '11 wager you on that. Plain, every-day 
 Bulgarian." 
 
 Mary examined him suspiciously. Then she turned 
 to Hewitt. 
 
 " I don't believe he really knows. We '11 decide 
 you and I whether it sounds like Bulgarian to us. 
 What is your idea of Bulgarian; weird and elusive? " 
 
 Hewitt was not sure about his ideas on any subject 
 except one Mary Young was more beautiful than 
 Mrs. Stewart and was the most charming woman in 
 the world. She was delightful. He caught his breath 
 when she looked at him so intently, so pleadingly, in- 
 cluding him in a league with her against Kenneth. 
 
 The music began again, and he listened. 
 
 " Was it Bulgarian ? " Mary asked anxiously, when 
 he turned to her at the end of it. 
 
 " Russian," Hewitt asserted, with such calm assur- 
 ance that Reed laughed. 
 
 " I 'm helpless in the face of Hewitt's mentality," 
 he acknowledged. " He knows everything. Have 
 you discovered that yet, Miss Young? He admits that 
 he knows everything. He 's a pupil of the great 
 Letsky! Ever hear of Letsky? Have Hugh tell you 
 about him some time." 
 
 " Will you tell me some time ? " Mary asked Hewitt, 
 her eyes on his so that he had to quickly glance down 
 at his program. 
 
 " He will never tell me," she accused him to Reed. 
 
 "Oh, he's bashful." 
 
 For the first time in the history of their relations
 
 152 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt became angry with Reed. Bashful! That 
 child's word! Bashfulness, the sin of babies! He 
 raised his eyebrows and spoke into Mary's ear with 
 exaggerated savoir faire. 
 
 " I will tell you some time very soon," he said, look- 
 ing at her, but immediately afterward he turned to 
 the advertisements in his program. 
 
 Later, when they were making their way out, Ken- 
 neth Reed suggested that the music had not been bad 
 after all. 
 
 " I approve," Mary said. " Did n't you like it, 
 Hewitt?" 
 
 Hewitt's thoughts were lost in the emotion Mary 
 and the music had colored to a brilliancy that was yet 
 soft with glamour. He did not hear what she said to 
 him, did not know, indeed, that she had spoken. 
 
 " Deaf, dumb, and stone blind ! Twas ever thus! " 
 laughed Reed. " Up in the clouds. Now what, 
 Stevenson? What next? Cabaret? Theaters? If 
 not, what?" 
 
 Hewitt had no idea what there was. He knit his 
 brow as though in thought, but Mary spoke first. 
 
 "These Chicago demands in Alston? Why, it's 
 time now for every good citizen over twenty to be at 
 home and in bed! The little children went long ago. 
 Only the high school boys and girls are allowed up 
 after ten. They dance." 
 
 " Is there a dance to-night? " 
 
 " I am speaking in general terms." 
 
 " Well, let 's eat at the Grand."
 
 CASTE THREE 153 
 
 " Suits me," said Hewitt, with an effort. 
 
 Downtown the streets were thinly peopled under the 
 glare of the five-branched electric-lamps forming two 
 narrowing rows along the main streets. 
 
 " Some town! " groaned Reed. " Behold the Great 
 White Way!" 
 
 " Please ! " begged Mary. " It 's a lovely town. I 
 love it." 
 
 " I thought you lived in California." 
 
 " Mother does. But you see I 've stayed with Dr. 
 Jimmy and Martha so much of the time that I feel 
 as if Alston really belonged to me. I 'm loyalty itself 
 to Alston. I love everybody in the place." 
 
 " Which shows where you stand, Hugh. Wake up 
 and thank her, boy ! " 
 
 Hewitt did both in imitation of Reed's mocking 
 spirit, but he wished his friend less noisy and less 
 observing. 
 
 They passed through the lobby of the almost de- 
 serted hotel. 
 
 " Anything to eat here? " Reed asked the desk-man. 
 
 " Nothing after eight now. The kitchen's being re- 
 modelled." 
 
 " Great guns ! I wish I lived here." 
 
 They all laughed, Reed most heartily of all. 
 
 " However you may feel about Alston, Indiana, 
 Miss Young, I can't share your enthusiasm. Is there 
 any place in this town where a starving man who has 
 endured a lyceum musical can get something to eat ? " 
 
 " Let 's try Benton's," Hewitt said.
 
 154 CASTE THREE 
 
 They tried Benton's, and found themselves in a close, 
 hot room, with a counter and a row of stools running 
 down one side and a row of tables down the other. 
 Some boys were perched on the stools devouring 
 sandwiches and pie. 
 
 Hewitt's appetite was not spoiled by the atmosphere 
 of Benton's. It had already been spoiled. He nibbled 
 with no heartiness at a club sandwich and drank a 
 great deal of water without quenching his thirst. 
 Mary Young whirled around and around in his head. 
 Was there ever such a wonderful person? 
 
 Long after he and Reed had stopped talking that 
 night in bed at the Grand, he lay gazing into the dark- 
 ness, trying to conjure up a glimpse of Mary as she 
 had looked when she asked him to " tell her some 
 time." Her eyes drowned one! He dreamed that he 
 was touching her face with his hands.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BOOSTERS' DAY, which Hewitt hadn't known 
 existed in the calendar of the saints until shortly 
 before it dawned upon Alston, arrived with a burst 
 of splendor in the person of the sun. Not that it 
 came unheralded. Its glories had been emblazoned 
 for weeks on bill-boards spread over the county. To 
 the youthful, it rivalled circus day as to promise. 
 There was to be speech-making and athletic contests 
 in the morning, dinner at most of the churches and 
 lodges at noon, and in the afternoon the crowning 
 event, a great parade, with floats and bands and all 
 the other paraphernalia of a great procession. Prizes 
 would be awarded for the best floats. Balloons would 
 be sent up from Athletic Park, with ten-dollar bills in 
 them. " Watch the Balloon ! " " Alston, the Great- 
 est Town in the State!" "Alston in 1830 and 
 Now ! " So read the enormous posters throughout the 
 town and county. 
 
 The evening before this important day was fraught 
 with excitement. People were already coming into 
 town to spend the night with their " folks." Some 
 farmers from the next county were reported to be 
 camping for the night in a stretch of woods a few 
 miles out. 
 
 A tense cheeriness was characteristic of the expres- 
 
 155
 
 156 CASTE THREE 
 
 sion on eyeryone's face when Hewitt walked down to 
 Smith's just before seven-thirty on the day of the 
 event. The porter at the drug-store was whistling 
 furiously and loudly, while a cloud of dust preceded 
 his broom as he swept out the store. 
 
 " It am arrived ! " he grinned to Hewitt. " Bet 
 it '11 rain." 
 
 " Would n't dare. We 'd mob the weather-man." 
 
 " Yes, suh, it '11 rain. Jest like cuhcus day, suh. 
 Allus rains. W'y, last cuhcus day this town was 
 neahly drownded in a bad thundah stohm that blowed 
 up about nine o'clock, and some folks neahly did n't 
 get home a' tall. Yes, suh, it'll rain." He chuckled 
 as he continued his labors on the side-walk. 
 
 The man who cleaned Smith's store had done the 
 greater part of his work the night before. 
 
 " I don't take no chances with Mr. Smith on 
 Boosters' Day. I cleaned all up last night," he 
 drawled as Hewitt went in. " Don't believe you '11 
 find any dirt around, Mr. Stevenson. I cleaned up 
 good last night, you bet. Mr. Smith '11 be rampagin' 
 'round inside o' ten minutes. I know him ! " He 
 gave a last flourish of his dust-cloth and trailed back 
 to the rear of the store. 
 
 Before eight, according to old Ben's prophecy, Mr. 
 Smith was on hand. He was wearing a new hat that 
 even Mary Young could n't make fun of and a fresh 
 spring suit. As usual, his spectacles were dangling 
 from their string, striking his white vest as he walked. 
 He strode back to his desk.
 
 CASTE THREE 157 
 
 " Anybody called me yet? " he asked Hewitt. 
 
 " Not since I came down. Anything I can do to 
 help?" 
 
 The man glared at Hewitt and then broke into a 
 broad smile. 
 
 " The Lord help me if I ever manage another 
 Boosters' Day! I've nearly drowned myself in 
 perspiration already, and I 'm not half done and it 's 
 not hot, either. I had Colonel Whitcomb from Indian- 
 apolis, best old-fashioned speaker in the state, 
 scheduled for a speech this morning. I advertised 
 him, and late last night I got a telegram that he 's sick 
 in bed. How 's that for luck ? Dumn it ! " 
 
 This mild explosive of very doubtful origin Mr. 
 Smith only used on especially irritating occasions. 
 " I 've called * long distance ' over this whole con- 
 sarned state," he went on, " and I can't get a soul to 
 speak." He puckered his lips in evident thought. 
 " Look here, Hewitt. Call Eli K. Badger at Craw- 
 fordsville for me. I bet he '11 speak, and he '11 give 
 'em the time of their lives while he 's doin' it. He 's 
 got a patriotic speech that '11 make their hair stand 
 on end, and half of 'em will want to enlist in the army 
 of this great nation to-morrow. Hurry up and get 
 him, or I '11 have to make the speech myself ! " 
 
 Eli K. Badger would speak, Mr. Smith found by 
 8:15, if Alston would pay the expenses of an auto- 
 mobile trip from Crawfordsville; he could not get 
 there by train. "Pay!" shouted Mr. Smith. 
 " We 'd pay for a private*car on a special train, if we
 
 158 CASTE THREE 
 
 had to. Tell him to get here, Hewitt, and to get here 
 quick!" 
 
 Automobiles were already honking their way along 
 Meridian Street, street-cars were unusually noisy as 
 they clattered over their uneven tracks, and an air of 
 festivity enwrapped the town. A vendor of patent 
 whistles shrieked his way in and out among the 
 rapidly gathering groups of boys and men, advertis- 
 ing his wares by whistling popular airs on the instru- 
 ment. Hewitt named him the " Infant Calliope," and 
 bought a whistle for Dorr Coates, who came in to wait 
 for his mother and perched himself on a table of books 
 to watch proceedings until he was permitted to take 
 part in the excitement. 
 
 " We can beat Muncie all to smash," he boasted. 
 " They did n't have any kind of a team last year, and 
 how could they work up a good one this early? Old 
 Cap Resoner can throw curves around their batters! 
 You ought to see Cap pitch ! He 's the best pitcher 
 Alston 's had since ' One Armed ' Ormsby went to the 
 big league. Old * One Armed ' was some pitcher, be- 
 lieve me! " He accented the " me " and drew up his 
 shoulders to add emphasis to this praise of the hero. 
 " He got his arm cut off when he was twelve while rid- 
 ing on a freight-car. He was some pitcher! Say, 
 Hugh, what if mama won't let me blow this whistle? " 
 
 " You try it out at Athletic Park at the ball-game, 
 and then throw it away," Hewitt suggested, feeling 
 uneasy about his innocent purchase, now that he was 
 reminded of Mrs. Coates's point of view.
 
 CASTE THREE 159 
 
 "I guess not!" Dorr affirmed. "You gave it to 
 me. I '11 tell her you did, and then she can't make 
 me throw it away, because that would look as if I 
 did n't appreciate it. See? " 
 
 He attempted a tentative blast to show immediate 
 appreciation, but Hewitt called quickly to him : 
 " Don't blow it in here, Dorr. Mr. Smith is busy." 
 
 " Oh," said the boy, and swung his legs to show that 
 he was not embarrassed by this reprimand. 
 
 Bunting-decorated automobiles began to appear at 
 nine, carrying the members of the G. A. R. who were 
 to have positions of honor at the court-house steps 
 during the speeches. A truck with a load of muslin 
 signs attached to long poles rattled across the car- 
 tracks and down Eleventh Street. Women and 
 children, gallant in spring array that was worn gen- 
 erally only on Sunday, began to gather along the 
 streets. 
 
 Mr. Smith's perturbation had not decreased. He 
 was talking to various chairmen of committees, and his 
 tone grew louder with every conversation. He took to 
 bellowing into the telephone, and banged the receiver 
 up and down on the hook between calls. 
 
 " Hello ! " he called into the transmitter in tones 
 that made that instrument almost unnecessary. " Op- 
 erator, speed up my connections ! " Followed more 
 clicking. " Operator, I 'm running this Boosters' Day, 
 and if you don't get me prompter service, we won't 
 have any parade. Understand ? Nine-O-nine ! And 
 be quick ! "
 
 160 CASTE THREE 
 
 Mr. Smith became at last entirely angry. 
 
 " Dumn those girls ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 A loud honking of a hoarse horn in front of the 
 store took Hewitt to the door. 
 
 "Mr. Smith there?" 
 
 " I '11 call him." 
 
 "Ask him if he got somebody in Whitcomb's 
 place?" 
 
 " Eli K. Badger of Crawfordsville. He '11 motor 
 over. Started about eight-thirty." 
 
 " Much obliged." 
 
 The car chugged away only to be followed presently 
 by another. 
 
 "Smith there?" 
 
 " Yes. He 's telephoning." 
 
 " Ask him where the Odd Fellows are to form for 
 this parade." 
 
 " Jackson and Sixteenth Streets." 
 
 An enormously large man, burly and lumbering, 
 stuck his head in the door soon after the foregoing. 
 
 "Smith here?" he queried, bulging his fish-eyes at 
 Hewitt and grinning. 
 
 " Back there telephoning." 
 
 " Ask him where the Elks are to form for the pa- 
 rade." 
 
 Mr. Smith's anger was not mitigated by these inter- 
 ruptions. He heard the question. 
 
 " Tell him to go to hell and find out ! " he roared. 
 
 " He said you 'd have to ask the chairman of the
 
 CASTE THREE 161 
 
 parade committee," Hewitt told the man at the door, 
 scarcely concealing a smile. 
 
 " Is he in hell ? " whispered the fat man, bulging out 
 his eyes farther and bursting into a huge guffaw that 
 shook his paunch of an abdomen and made the veins 
 in his neck swell blue. 
 
 " I don't doubt it. Mr. Smith is, anyway," Hewitt 
 said, as the man lumbered away, still shaking, to re- 
 peat the story at the bank-corner where some brother 
 Elks were holding forth over huge, black cigars. 
 
 Dorr squirmed during this last episode. He did n't 
 see the same joke as Hewitt and the fat Elk did, but 
 he thought their saying a word forbidden in his house- 
 hold was side-splitting, and he lost his balance and 
 fell to a sitting position on the floor from laughing. 
 
 " Watch out ! " Hewitt warned him. " They want 
 to use the ambulance in the parade." 
 
 At which Door laughed so hard that he was unable 
 to get up, and was still sitting, bent with " the giggles," 
 as he called them, when his mother, towing his starched 
 and beribboned little sister by the hand, came in after 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, Dorr, your clean linen trousers ! I have a 
 good notion to send you home for that ! You 've got 
 dirt all over the seat." 
 
 Dorr was momentarily nonplussed and angry. 
 Everything was so funny on Boosters' Day! And 
 here was a mother, a hindrance to fun, ranting about 
 trousers !
 
 162 CASTE THREE 
 
 " They 're not dirty," he denied, brushing them with 
 both hands and keeping the spot his mother had in- 
 delicately mentioned by name to the rear out of sight. 
 
 "Dirty? Turnaround!" 
 
 He backed away, red and angrier. 
 
 " They 're not dirty, I tell you ! " 
 
 " Well, come on," she sighed, tugged at by the 
 impatient little girl. " Get your cap from that case 
 and come on. Thanks for letting him stay, Mr. 
 Stevenson." 
 
 " No trouble; sorry he got his trousers dirty." 
 
 " That 's all right. He would have in a minute, any- 
 way. You can't keep a boy clean." 
 
 The store was momentarily empty, except for 
 Hewitt and Mr. Smith. But not for long. 
 
 Ernestine burst in, clad in a blue linen dress and 
 looking, if one were unprejudiced, very pretty. She 
 saw her father and ran back to him, with only a nod 
 for Hewitt. The latter smiled and determined not to 
 let that make any difference in the brightness of one 
 of the few really happy days he had had in Alston. 
 Boosters' Day was being very amusing, and he did n't 
 intend to allow a little snob for, after all, that was 
 what Ernestine really was, he concluded a little bitterly 
 interfere with his content. He was whistling when 
 she came back. She jumped into her electric and spun 
 away. 
 
 A few customers wandered in, cheerful and ready 
 to pause and pass the time of day with anyone and 
 everyone on Boosters' Day. " Great place. Alston.
 
 CASTE THREE 163 
 
 Best town in the state. Now Indianapolis was a fine 
 city, but you could n't be so comfortable in a city of 
 that size. You knew people in Alston, and they knew 
 you, and yet none of this * village gossip ' stuff. Big 
 enough to give everybody a business to mind, and a 
 mind to mind it." And so on ad infinitum. 
 
 At ten-thirty, or thereabouts, an automobile drew 
 up at the curb and blew its horn long and repeatedly. 
 Hewitt was on his way to the door, when he was 
 informed by a pompous, white-haired and white- 
 goateed little man who had jumped out that he was 
 Eli K. Badger of Crawfordsville. Mr. Badger's pres- 
 ence brought a gleam of hope into Mr. Smith's eyes. 
 Things might turn out all right, despite his worry, 
 once the morning was over. He strode on his short, 
 thick legs down the length of the store, mopping his 
 head as he went and panting audibly from exertion. 
 
 "If anybody stops here and wants to know what 
 to do next, tell 'em I said to use their common sense 
 and go ahead ! And say, Hewitt, lock up and go hear 
 the speeches. You can come back and open up in 
 time to get the crowd, and you ought to hear them." 
 
 " I '11 stay," Hewitt said. 
 
 " Do as I say. Lock up ! I did n't think about it 
 before." 
 
 But Hewitt had no desire to mingle with a warm, 
 dusty, blustery crowd in order to hear Eli K. Badger, 
 ex-Governor Keith, Homer Gray, the silver-tongued, 
 and W. K. Lombard, president of the school board, 
 make speeches on Alston, the United States of Amer-
 
 164 CASTE THREE 
 
 ica, and other topics. He preferred watching the 1 
 crowds, who were more interested in toy whips and 
 shooting crackers and in each other than in speech- 
 making. One country boy in a bright-banded straw 
 hat, ahead of the straw-hat season, an " ice-cream " 
 suit, brilliant tan shoes, square-toed and heavy, was 
 getting hilarious with a whip which he held poised in 
 one hand so as to tickle the uncovered necks of the 
 young girls who passed. Once their attention was 
 attracted to him, he ogled and winked and laughed, 
 until they bantered words with him or turned away in 
 disgust, their faces crimson and hauteur written large 
 in their plump dignity. 
 
 " Come on, girls ! I 'm a nice boy. I '11 buy you a 
 balloon. Come on and get a ' sody/ girls ! I 've got 
 a nickel," he called. And so on endlessly, until Hewitt 
 had to close the door to keep out the sound of what 
 soon ceased to be amusing. 
 
 By noon the entire state seemed to have emptied 
 into Alston. People, people, people! The street-cars 
 were scarcely able to make their way through the 
 crowds, and the " interurbans " clanged their bells 
 constantly in forcing a path down Meridian Street. 
 
 Back and forth surged the crowds. 
 
 Mr. Smith pushed in through the jam on the side- 
 walk before noon and told Hewitt to lock up while 
 he went home to lunch. Mrs. Chancellor was ill. Mr. 
 Smith himself was off to the Grand Hotel for dinner 
 with Eli K. Badger. Hewitt caught sight of Mr. 
 Keith, Homer Gray, and Mr. Lombard in the automo-
 
 CASTE THREE 165 
 
 bile outside, the center of the crowd's temporary in- 
 terest. 
 
 At noon, on his way home, he saw numerous evi- 
 dences of preparations for the parade. On the corner 
 across the street from his own house some boys were 
 turning an immense dray into a float. A log cabin 
 was being constructed on a platform on top of it, and 
 several stumps and small trees were in position around 
 it 
 
 Hewitt smiled as a tall boy astride the roof of the 
 log house slipped and was only kept from falling by 
 a smaller boy who seized his foot and held him until 
 he regained his balance. 
 
 " Hand me some nails ! " called the former, when he 
 was once again in position. 
 
 "Get 'em yourself!" 
 
 " How can I ? " he said helplessly. 
 
 " I eat 'em alive ! " yelled a barefoot, ragged urchin 
 who was " helping " by pinching the legs of the boys 
 on the platform. 
 
 " Get away from here, you rowdy ! " recommended 
 one of the workers, with a kick at the offender. 
 
 " Where 's George Rogers Clark? " called some one. 
 
 " Gone home to have his mother sew his trousers. 
 What 'd he wear his costume for this morning? He 11 
 have to pay for it. They came from a costumer in 
 Indianapolis." 
 
 " Serves him right. He was so smart about Mrs. 
 Lombard choosing him for George Rogers. I 'd 
 rather be an Indian, anyway."
 
 166 CASTE THREE 
 
 As Hewitt came up on the porch, a woman whom 
 he recognized as Mrs. Lombard stepped out of a blue 
 electric-coupe and came toward them. 
 
 " Are you all right, boys? " she asked. 
 
 " Tip top, except George Rogers Clark. He tore 
 his trousers and had to go home," said the tall boy on 
 the roof. 
 
 " That 's too bad. Don't fail to be in your costumes 
 at two sharp. We 're early in the parade. You had 
 all better go and get your dinners now." 
 
 " We 're not finished. We '11 be ready. Looks 
 pretty good, does n't it? " called the short, sturdy boy. 
 
 " It looks fine, except those trees are n't quite steady, 
 are they? " 
 
 "We'll fix them. Don't worry. We're out for 
 the prize." 
 
 " If you get it, I '11 have you at my house for dinner 
 tomorrow night. No. I tell you, you may all come, 
 prize or no prize. You are fine boys to work so 
 hard." 
 
 " Hurrah for Mrs. Lombard ! " Hewitt heard as he 
 went into the house, laughing. 
 
 " Did you come down-town? " he asked Grace from 
 the bath-room. Boosters' Day was exciting even 
 Hewitt, and his voice showed it. 
 
 " No ; I was too busy. Was it nice this morning? " 
 
 " Lots of people. Did n't know there were so many 
 people around Alston. Never saw so many people 
 since election night in Chicago. I did n't hear any of 
 the speeches. I kept the store open."
 
 CASTE THREE 167 
 
 He whistled a tune that the " Infant Calliope " had 
 been specializing on all the morning, and splashed the 
 water into his eyes and out again without losing a note, 
 except when the towel crossed his mouth. 
 
 " How was Eli K. ?" he asked his father at the table. 
 
 " Eli talked like he had his mouth full of hot mush. 
 If I was him, I 'd stay in Crawfordsville." 
 
 "Homer Gray fluent?" 
 
 " He '11 be in the Senate before he knows it. He 
 can talk more and say less than any living orator." 
 
 "What about Lombard?" 
 
 " Talked sense. Told what the school board had 
 done this year. He did n't embroider it any, either. 
 Lombard 's all right." 
 
 "Who else spoke?" 
 
 " Keith was good, too. He 's a smart man. It 's 
 too bad he 's not back in the governor's chair, instead 
 of the man we 've got there now. A darned Democrat 
 who don't know a good man when he sees one. Ap- 
 pointed that fool Porter from Lafayette to go to Wash- 
 ington to represent this state at that agriculturalist 
 meeting, and Porter don't know beans when the bag 's 
 opened. He 'd think they were potatoes or cherries." 
 
 " Nice weather for Boosters' Day, ain't it? " said 
 old Mr. Stevenson weakly. He had been helped to 
 the table by Hewitt. He was getting weaker as the 
 spring advanced, instead of stronger as they had ex- 
 pected. 
 
 "I'm about gone, ain't I, Hewie?" he sputtered, 
 when he had stopped sneezing.
 
 i68 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I guess not. You 've got twenty years before you 
 yet, grandpa. Perk up! You sit out on the porch 
 this afternoon and you can see the parade form. It 's 
 going to start along here." 
 
 " Mebbe, mebbe. My soup 's too hot, Grace," he 
 whimpered. 
 
 Hewitt was loquacious. Even grandfather laughed 
 at his tale of Mr. Smith and the fish-eyed Elk. After 
 dinner he sat on the porch and watched the boys across 
 the street working on the float. 
 
 " Get busy here, George Rogers ! " they were shout- 
 ing at a new arrival. " Lot of business you got tearin' 
 your pants and taking time out on such an occasion 
 as this. Got your dinner, too, did n't you ? " 
 
 The hero of the Revolution grinned, without deign- 
 ing a reply, and fell to work. Presently he explained 
 that he had n't had much. 
 
 " Say, fellows, have you seen the Preston float ? 
 It 's great." 
 
 " No, we did n't tear our pants." 
 
 " They '11 get the first prize." 
 
 "What d' we care? We're having fun, aren't 
 we? " said the tall boy, still working on the roof. 
 
 " Sure. You ought to see the florist's float, too." 
 George Rogers Clark was volunteering all this depress- 
 ing information. 
 
 " Say, George Rogers," began the tall boy, as he 
 pushed himself along the roof, " what have you been 
 doing besides getting your clothing repaired? " 
 
 " 'Fess up, boy! " came the chorus.
 
 CASTE THREE 169 
 
 " I met Mrs. Lombard up on Fourteenth street, and 
 she took me to see the others." 
 
 " All right, if Mrs. Lombard did it. Otherwise we 
 would have had to deal with you in our own convincing 
 manner," he was reassured by the roof-maker. 
 
 Hewitt stood up and stretched himself, then started 
 out for the store. 
 
 People were still thick on the streets, although on 
 Meridian itself the crowd was smaller. He was not 
 busy at the store and sat idle between sales, watching 
 the passersby. Mr. Smith puffed in at two o'clock. 
 
 "Anybody called here? I wonder if this parade 
 will get off, even at two-thirty. Half the floats are n't 
 done yet. I wish you 'd call Harry Brandon and tell 
 him I said to put the out-of-town bands back of the 
 Alston ones. The Alston men are sore because I sent 
 them to the rear. Call him right away," and out again 
 he went. 
 
 The parade was later than two-thirty. At three, 
 when the first float trundled into view down Meridian, 
 preceded by a boy's band playing the state song, the 
 tired spectators, foot-sore and apathetic, again took 
 courage. A shout went up along the line of march. 
 
 Hewitt, from a vantage point in the show-window 
 at Smith's, where he sat contentedly on a box and won- 
 dered incidentally what Letsky would say if he could 
 see him interested in an Alston Boosters' Day parade, 
 watched float after float rumble by. Scenes from the 
 history of Indiana, including one showing the founding 
 of Alston by an Indian chief, came first. Then came
 
 170 CASTE THREE 
 
 exhibitions from the various factories and business 
 houses. The bankers' association had a double dis- 
 play on two automobile trucks banking in 1830 and 
 in 1913. The leading florist rode in an automobile, a 
 canopy of roses over a body banked in carnations and 
 the wheels massed in sweet peas. Smith's " electric " 
 carried a bevy of girls dressed as Civil War belles. It 
 was labelled " Our Grandmothers." Mr. Smith him- 
 self drove a gasoline car, posted with banner advertise- 
 ments of books by Indiana authors. 
 
 Bands, playing patriotic airs, were interspersed 
 throughout the length of the procession. 
 
 Toward the end several automobiles loaded with the 
 members of the Suffrage League passed. They were 
 carrying yellow parasols and yellow banners bearing 
 mottoes advocating votes for women. In the first one, 
 driving Dr. Trimble's car, sat Mary Young. 
 
 Hewitt saw her and trembled. 
 
 As she reached a position directly in front of 
 Smith's, she looked up and saw Hewitt on his box in 
 the window. She gave him a wave of her free hand 
 and a radiant smile. He quivered with pleasure and 
 followed her with his eyes until he could no longer see 
 her, only a blur of yellow banners. 
 
 Wonderful Mary Young, with her gaiety and her 
 provoking smile and her remembering! It was as if 
 she had known that Hewitt had been scanning every 
 car for a glimpse of her, and, having found her, would 
 have lost all content in the day if she had failed to 
 look for him in Smith's. She had not failed. Mary
 
 CASTE THREE 171 
 
 Young was not the kind ever to fail one who put his 
 trust in her sympathy, Hewitt decided. 
 
 During the rest of the afternoon he ignored the 
 march of feet of tired but enthusiastic pleasure-seek- 
 ers, and read. He read Keats. Keats alone, of all 
 poets, could express the sensuous perception of joys, 
 even though all joys were fleeting, as were Hewitt's 
 after Mary Young remembered to wave at him in his 
 inconspicuous position as keeper of the book-store. 
 He was a youth piping on the Grecian urn, and Mary, 
 the maid, was ever young, ever dancing, ever pursued. 
 " What wild ecstasy ! " 
 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 
 
 And, happy melodist, unwearied, 
 
 Forever piping songs forever new; 
 More happy love ! More happy, happy love ! 
 
 Forever warm and still to be enjoyed, 
 Forever panting and forever young; 
 All breathing human passion far above, 
 
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
 A burning forehead and a parching tongue. 
 
 Wonderful, wonderful Mary Young, who could fill 
 him with an emotion that only Keats could express 
 for him ! He did not care to see her again soon, that 
 day nor any day. It was enough that she was on the 
 urn among other beauties, a beautiful figure wrought 
 by Beauty's and Love's own hands, serene, marbled, 
 in the land of Greece.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AN old man with a pack on his back, a very heavy 
 pack, walked from the East. In Greece he be- 
 came young again and was curious with the curiosity 
 of youth. He made his world beautiful with marble, 
 and thought and spoke. An old man again, he sailed 
 to Rome, and there he became young once more. He 
 organized his world with law into a great state, and 
 fought and was happy with the vigor of fighting youth. 
 
 When he was again old, he moved north. For a 
 long time he slept, while his world built a religion with 
 a form and scourged itself, or lavished luxury on itself, 
 and was ascetic or wanton according to its kind. He 
 awoke and built cathedrals to house his thoughts of an 
 omnipotent God, cathedrals that rivalled the temples of 
 Greece, full of the paintings of a renaissance. 
 
 A great ocean containing monsters stretched to the 
 west with a sea of fire and ogres at the end of that. 
 But the old man slept and awoke filled with a strange 
 yearning to conquer this deep. He found a shore 
 where gold was plentiful, and he fought again, and 
 seized the gold. 
 
 Age crept upon him, when he returned to a land 
 where gold would buy much. 
 
 A child stretched itself in a great land to the west, 
 
 172
 
 CASTE THREE 173 
 
 the old man in a new form, a child who strutted 
 and danced and made fine phrases about himself, gay 
 in the splendors of new dress which some one he 
 was not certain who was the giver had put upon 
 him. Vivid, strong, colorful, the child played and 
 laughed at age, bubbling with the glorious effervescence 
 that is the charm of childhood. 
 
 What matter that the child in its gay apparel, with 
 gold and grapes and woods around him, scampered and 
 ran and laughed at the temples and the cathedrals and 
 the law other young men had made? He wanted to 
 be happy and do deeds and surprise a gasping world 
 with his own new-found prowess. 
 
 He will become old. Let us not wish age upon him. 
 He still dances. He is proud of his finery. He is the 
 old man with the pack the heavy pack become a 
 child again on a new continent.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ONE night early in May Hewitt started out at 
 seven for a walk into the country. The spring 
 night was ravishing. Cool, perfumed, laden with the 
 sense of new life, it made its way into the boy's veins 
 like wine. He walked far out along Eighth Street 
 past the best of Alston's residences to a point where 
 the town dwindled into country. Smooth and almost 
 straight, like a ribbon, the road stretched before him, 
 bordered by clumps of dark shadow that proved to be 
 trees when one approached them. 
 
 Light in the east showed Alston, but here was the 
 open road. 
 
 Here and there a house with a light peered through 
 the twilight. Sometimes the sound of voices pierced 
 the evening stillness, but, as he walked on, the farms 
 grew larger and the houses farther apart. A tide of 
 loneliness, a joyful tide, as though all the winter he 
 had been waiting for this moment, swept through 
 Hewitt as he breathed in the sweet smell of the soil, 
 of growing things. He walked in tall, wet grass which 
 grew rank along the road. The soft, damp earth gave 
 under his steps, lending a welcome elasticity to his 
 movement. 
 
 Some frogs croaked bleakly and gurgled from a 
 
 i74
 
 CASTE THREE 175 
 
 pond in the middle of a field. The lights from an 
 approaching automobile blinded him as it came nearer, 
 and he stood silent, while it whirred past him and was 
 lost in the distance. He looked back again at the town, 
 and the light was even brighter now with the radiance 
 of a nearly full moon rising in the east. 
 
 As the moon brightened, it lighted up the mist which 
 was rising from the damp fields. In places this was 
 an impenetrable fog, hiding the lower part of the land- 
 scape, but disappearing in the brightening upper air. 
 Out of it might have suddenly come Puck or Peas- 
 blossom or any faery host, unsurprised by and unsur- 
 prising to a gray-eyed boy who would have stood firm 
 for talk. 
 
 " On such a night." . . . 
 
 What had not happened in other worlds in the long 
 ago on " such a night " ? 
 
 And yet he was glad that it was his night, that he 
 was walking down a road leading from Alston, alone 
 but surrounded by an invisible life which pulsed and 
 murmured like silence itself. 
 
 Mary Young had talked with him that day. Or, 
 perhaps, she had let him talk to her about Keats. 
 Mary remembered the name, she was sure, from her 
 school-days, after Hewitt had spoken for a while about 
 his poetry. He had read her, in such a low tone that 
 no invading customer would know what they were en- 
 gaged in reading, "The Ode to a Grecian Urn." She 
 had listened with her eyes half-closed, her chin almost 
 touching his shoulder as she leaned forward.
 
 176 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Do you like it ? " she asked curiously, when he had 
 finished. 
 
 " I like it," was his way of saying lamely that it was 
 the most beautiful poem in the world. 
 
 " Have you read it many times ? " 
 
 He did not tell her that he had read it hundreds of 
 times since Boosters' Day, with Mary Young among 
 those happy figures on the urn. 
 
 " Do you like all poetry, or only Keats? " she asked, 
 still with the curious light in her eyes. She continued 
 to hold them half-closed as she talked to him. 
 
 " Oh, one selects. I like a great deal of poetry." 
 
 " You read so much, don't you? " Her tone made 
 this sound like an accusation, and he was quick to re- 
 sent what another could have said with no such effect, 
 because he would have been contemptuous of an igno- 
 rance which did not put a proper value upon his blessed 
 books. 
 
 " Not so much," he said. " At least, I did n't used 
 to read so much. I 've kept up with my study this 
 winter, because I didn't want to get rusty in 
 Alston." 
 
 " Is there any danger of getting rusty in Alston ? " 
 
 It had been quite a question and answer affair, he 
 thought now, as he traced his way through the soft, 
 swishing grass and at the same time through the con- 
 versation of the afternoon. 
 
 "Don't you find it so?" he had asked, with some 
 of the same curiosity he had felt in her voice.
 
 CASTE THREE 177 
 
 She had paused and examined him again, and then 
 had rippled into a light laugh. 
 
 " I read. Does that keep one bright and shining, 
 like a good stew-pan in * Spotless Town ' ? " 
 
 "What do you read?" he asked, with a hint of 
 hostility. He had rather she did not laugh that way 
 when she was talking to him. 
 
 But she had ended the whole conversation by turn- 
 ing away to jest with Mr. Smith in the back of the 
 store, and had not answered his question. He had 
 been sorry for his tone, and blamed himself for her 
 not answering. He had not, he decided now in the 
 moonlight, been entirely courteous. Had there been 
 a hint of whimsicality in her eyes when she turned 
 away ? Why had it been there, if, indeed, it had been ? 
 Surely she approved of reading persons. 
 
 He pushed this doubt of her intellectuality away 
 from him. Had n't she made that remark about brains 
 counting in any place ? And had n't she talked of 
 amusing herself with Harper's in the way Ernestine 
 Smith would have spoken of entertaining herself with 
 a low-grade popular novel? And she had, on the lat- 
 ter occasion, spoken with the contempt of the person 
 who commonly reads heavier material. 
 
 Of course Mary Young was intellectual! She was 
 the one person in Alston on whom he could count for 
 sympathetic understanding. He could not doubt that. 
 
 The road ran into a little valley, and a sweep of 
 cooler, water-drenched air blew past his face, chilling
 
 178 CASTE THREE 
 
 him until a gradual rise in the ground made the air 
 warm again. A stone wall, low and inviting, half- 
 swathed in the mist which continued to rise from the 
 fields, bordered the road at this point. He pulled him- 
 self up on it and sat swinging his crossed feet in con- 
 tented solitude. 
 
 He had never in his life felt so consciously alone 
 with God, or whoever it was who dominated this 
 rolling country which seemed to dip down at the hori- 
 zons to form its sphere whoever lived in the great 
 expanse of sky with its multitude of stars whispering 
 together. Somewhere in the heights of the sky, behind 
 the blackness of that immensity, was a good God, he 
 felt sure to-night. He was in sympathy with Alston- 
 ian Methodist and Presbyterian notions about a per- 
 sonal God of Love to-night. 
 
 He liked to look up at the sky with a dim hope 
 of seeing into it. Vast distances opened up if one 
 looked for a long time, though at last there came a 
 point where minute atoms danced back and forth and 
 blinded one. 
 
 The moon traveled higher and higher in the east, 
 flooding the country with its white light. 
 
 A low " roadster " was creeping toward him from 
 the west. Its lights were dim, and it turned slowly 
 into a cross-roads fifty yards from where Hewitt sat. 
 He was not intent upon it; his mind was following 
 the changes in his thought and in the night. 
 
 He was, however, watching it, and the conviction 
 came suddenly that the girl in the " roadster," sitting
 
 CASTE THREE 179 
 
 low and with her face turned away toward the man, 
 was Mary Young. Somehow he did not want to think 
 about this. He could not even tell why he was so sure 
 about the truth of his impression. He had never seen 
 the hat before, he felt sure, even in the moonlight. He 
 had been thinking about Mary shortly before, he told 
 himself; that was why he had thought of her when 
 the " roadster " rounded the curve. 
 
 But he could not argue himself out of the convic- 
 tion. 
 
 In following the car with his eyes, he perceived that 
 the man's arm was around the girl's shoulder, and that 
 they were leaning toward one another. 
 
 A wave of overwhelming jealousy brought a film 
 over Hewitt's eyes. Who was the man? A swift 
 fury tore Hewitt's heart at the thought of this strange 
 man's touching Mary. He slid down from the wall 
 and watched the " roadster " as it slid quietly down 
 the road. Before it disappeared behind a clump of 
 bushes at the roadside, the man leaned closer to the 
 girl. Suddenly the beauty went out of the night. 
 His wonderful, radiant Mary Young! The man and 
 the girl had kissed each other, he felt certain, just be- 
 fore they passed out of sight behind the trees. He 
 shivered as though he were chilled. Why should 
 Mary, whom he had placed on the Grecian urn, a 
 beautiful maiden without flesh, who would outlast time, 
 why should she be kissing a man? He wondered 
 who the man was. The incident was earthy, sordid. 
 And it was not like the Mary of his dreams.
 
 i8o CASTE THREE 
 
 Each time he came back to this conclusion, and by 
 the time he had walked back to the city streets again 
 he had convinced himself that it had not been Mary 
 at all. How could he have been sure at fifty yards 
 by moonlight? He called himself a fool and shook 
 off his feeling of having been injured physically. 
 
 He sat up late in his room, reading some vol- 
 umes of poetry he had found at the library. They 
 were new. Mr. Smith never bought new poetry. 
 There were huge volumes of Tennyson and Browning, 
 desultory ones of Keats and Shelley and Byron and 
 Wordsworth, ugly, awkward sets of the nineteenth 
 century American poets, on his shelves, but he scorned 
 recent poetry as a salable article of merchandise. 
 
 So Hewitt bathed himself in emotion from a library 
 copy of some verse of the moderns. 
 
 In and out through it all walked a sweet, enchanting 
 ghost of Mary Young, clothed in a thousand soul -gar- 
 ments, tender, swift-footed enemy, friend, mother, 
 responsive lover, cruel, faithless woman, in and out 
 interminably, until a weary young man with gray eyes 
 and dark hair and thin legs found the print blurring 
 under -his eyes and went to bed, where he continued 
 to be haunted by a phantom that rose out of the mists 
 of moon-lit fields and evaded him endlessly, disappear- 
 ing with a whimsical laugh as he touched the spot 
 where she had been. He dreamed, too, that he and 
 Eleanor Rowe were riding through a dark country 
 in a low " roadster." He was going to kiss her, but
 
 CASTE THREE 181 
 
 just as he leaned toward her, Mary Young arose out 
 of the bushes by the roadside, laughing a delicious, 
 gurgling laugh that sent the shivers up and down his 
 spine. He woke and pulled the comforter over him. 
 He was shaking with a chill. 
 
 Any inclination he might have felt to brood over his 
 night glimpse of some one who might have been Mary 
 Young evaporated in the clear light of the May 
 morning that followed. He cast the whole episode 
 into the sphere of the unbelievable and was cheerful 
 about all his relations with the world. There was a 
 reaction in him to the mood which had led him to 
 take a walk in the country at all, and he became glow- 
 ingly social. In Hewitt's case this " being social " 
 took the form, of course, of conversations with Mr. 
 Smith, Mrs. Chancellor, and customers, lengthened 
 from the brief business speeches generally indulged in 
 because necessary. 
 
 It was impossible for him to be social in the sense 
 that Mary Young, entering into the lives of half the 
 yeople she met, was social. 
 
 He engaged his employer in a conversation on the 
 uselessness of such an institution as the family. 
 
 Mr. Smith was a firm believer in that venerable 
 institution. How else could one rear children to their 
 advantage ? 
 
 Hewitt himself believed in the family. Letsky had 
 given him books to read which proved that when man 
 was emerging from the animal stage and starting to-
 
 182 CASTE THREE 
 
 ward human society, the family, in primitive agricul- 
 tural society under the domination of the mother, was 
 a thriving and satisfactory affair. 
 
 But for purposes of being social a difference in opin- 
 ions was desirable; so he objected to the family and 
 gave his reasons. How many children were well- 
 reared ? How many children were brought up to wit- 
 ness the harmony which is the concomitant only of 
 intelligent love between the sexes? How many had 
 the advantages well, even of an orphan asylum, 
 for instance? 
 
 Mr. Smith hurried to the rescue of the home. The 
 family was sacred. The Methodist Church sanctioned 
 it. Let it rest ! 
 
 So Hewitt let the family, Mr. Smith, and himself 
 rest awhile, without maligning the Methodist Church 
 as an intelligent institution, selecting other most highly 
 profitable social institutions. 
 
 There were many other subjects in the world well 
 worth discussion. The main trouble in bringing them 
 up before Mr. Smith was that Mr. Smith did not want 
 to discuss them. The world was a pleasant place when 
 one got the things one wanted, and he had done so. 
 He desired money within limits, enough to supply his 
 own and his children's needs and those of the latter 
 were numerous and expensive, as befits a leisure class 
 whose conspicuous waste is a test of its importance. 
 He had wanted a loving wife and " nice " children, and 
 he had them. His wife's expression of her love was 
 not what some men would have desired, but it satis-
 
 CASTE THREE 183 
 
 fied him. He wanted her to be social, if she chose. 
 He had wanted to count in Alston, and, indeed, he did 
 count. He was one of the best citizens. What more 
 was there in the world to want? 
 
 He had never expressed himself so baldly as this to 
 Hewitt, but the boy understood his position. It is 
 a pleasant position, though it was not Hewitt's. But 
 then, Hewitt's desires were too vague to be written. 
 He did n't know what he wanted, which is a very un- 
 satisfactory state of affairs. Being sure of their 
 desires did n't run in his family, on his mother's side, 
 at least. You always wanted more than you had, 
 and made some effort to get it, although not always 
 a consistently forceful effort. Sometimes it was a 
 soul you wanted; you did not know for sure what 
 a soul was, and so you never knew whether or not you 
 had achieved possession of it. Sometimes you wanted 
 money. You worked then and schemed, and if you 
 did n't get as much as you wanted without too great 
 a strain of effort, you wanted a philosophical attitude 
 which made money cease to matter. That obtained, 
 you wanted something else. Hewitt had not shown 
 strong signs of this trait up to date, because Letsky 
 and Mr. Woody had been so sure of only one important 
 value the intellectual and he had been influenced 
 by their wants. 
 
 However, he realized that only unintellectual people 
 were satisfied. They could form no imaginative con- 
 ception of themselves in a more pleasant or a more 
 dignified position. He had often admired himself for
 
 184 CASTE THREE 
 
 vague glimpses of what he dubbed rightly or wrongly, 
 a " divine discontent." 
 
 " You '11 never reach a right conclusion until you 
 have gone through a series of wrong ones," Mr. 
 Woody used to say, to defend more conservative 
 thinkers to Letsky and his coterie. 
 
 So this May morning between sales, while he was 
 working in the back of the store, Hewitt wanted to 
 draw wrong conclusions, or almost any kind of con- 
 clusions, just so there would be good, hot, spicy argu- 
 ment about sex in novels. He knew that all people 
 who know what a novel is have strong opinions on sex 
 in novels. Hewitt believed in and read, when he 
 had time, all the starred books in the libraries. He 
 did n't think they should be starred. That was the 
 work of the bulk of sensuous, hide-bound, silly people 
 who were so afraid their innocent girl-babes it was 
 all right for their sons ; one could n't know what boys 
 read and did would find out something about the 
 great secrets of the flesh that they could n't let the 
 subject be mentioned in the household, but allowed the 
 afore-mentioned babes to find out such secrets in the 
 approved way from companions in the worst possible 
 form. 
 
 " But spare our daughters ! " quoth the sensuous, 
 hide-bound silly people. 
 
 According to Hewitt, 
 
 " Don't inflame us ! " quoth they, also. " In the 
 face of sex we are helpless, the creatures of a powerful 
 law. Let us avoid mention of sex in novels. We
 
 CASTE THREE 185 
 
 can learn of sex in moving-pictures and on the vaude- 
 ville stage and in cheap musical comedy, but save us 
 from sex in literature. So sacred do we hold our 
 right to smile at the suggestive, while spurning the 
 real." Hence one of Hewitt's chief joys on his 
 " social " days was to argue about sex. Other people 
 were shocked in the first place, then found him very 
 amusing. He became an enigma to the curious, who 
 could n't tell whether he was really bad, or only a 
 high-brow. 
 
 This morning he put out a tentative statement, swal- 
 lowing his smile. Mr. Smith remained silent, but a 
 scowl showed that he had heard. 
 
 Hewitt tried again. 
 
 "If people were n't so underhandedly interested in 
 sex as a pastime, they would n't mind having it put 
 into books," he averred with gusto. 
 
 " Shut up ! " growled Mr. Smith. 
 
 " Take most young men, Mr. Smith. They blush 
 and want a fellow to hush up when I mention sex in 
 my way." 
 
 "Young fools," was Mr. Smith's reluctant com- 
 ment. It was out before he could prevent it. 
 
 " Sex is more interesting to more people than any- 
 thing else in the world, is n't it ? " 
 
 "Shut up!" 
 
 " All right. That puts you in Joe Bales's class." 
 
 This impudence brought a chuckle, but the scowl 
 followed. 
 
 " When do you think the good citizens who won't
 
 1*86 CASTE THREE 
 
 allow Dreiser's books on the open shelves will put 
 that good old conservative institution, the red light 
 district, out of commission? " 
 
 " Look here, Son. There are a lot of things that 
 you don't understand. You 're meddling with fire 
 when you touch a big human proposition like sex. 
 Now go to work and keep still. We haven't settled 
 prostitution yet any place in the world." 
 
 " As animals, we did pretty well, but now that we 
 are men " Hewitt shrugged. 
 
 " We 're still animals." 
 
 " No. Savages have a well-controlled system for 
 sex satisfaction. They 're temperate by their own law. 
 We 're not." 
 
 Mr. Smith regarded him questioningly, his eyebrows 
 still lowering pugnaciously. 
 
 " You are wrong. Savages are the worst." 
 
 Hewitt could not swallow his smile this time. 
 
 " They learned all the vileness they know from 
 civilized men. Scientists have proved that." 
 
 "The devil they have!" 
 
 " I can prove it to you." 
 
 "H'm. All right. Shut up, now." 
 
 This " being social " drove Hewitt into other action 
 while he was alone in the store shortly after noon. He 
 took down the telephone receiver with great calmness 
 and called Dr. Trimble's number. By the time he got 
 Mary Young to the telephone, however, some of his 
 social calm, never deep, had left him, and he stuttered 
 ridiculously in telling her who he was.
 
 CASTE THREE 187 
 
 " Did n't you think I did lovely in the parade ? " she 
 asked, with her delicious laugh. 
 
 " I should say ! But what I want to know is, 
 whether when I can come down to tell you about 
 Letsky?" 
 
 " To-night," Mary stunned him by answering. 
 
 " I '11 come. Thank you. At eight." 
 
 This calling of Mary seems at first glance to have 
 been a spontaneous proceeding acted out on impulse. 
 Further consideration of his action proves it to have 
 been premeditated. 
 
 On the first of May Hewitt's account at the bank 
 stood at figures approaching two hundred and fifty 
 dollars. This meant that by September, when he left 
 for Chicago, should he continue to save fourteen dol- 
 lars out of eighteen, he would possess nearly four 
 hundred and fifty dollars. This mammoth and awe- 
 inspiring sum would insure his residence as a student 
 in Chicago University for three terms, if he were 
 careful of expenditure. He became as near a miser 
 as a bank-book would allow him to be. Rubber- 
 banded, it lay in his pocket. When he felt unusually 
 unimportant in Alston, he opened and read it. 
 
 But while on May first the book read two hundred 
 and fifty dollars, on May tenth it read two hundred 
 and twenty, and he had been paid between those dates. 
 Sanely considered, with import observed and digested, 
 these facts point in one direction reckless extrav- 
 agance. 
 
 On the night when he set out from Fourteenth and
 
 i88 CASTE THREE 
 
 Jackson Streets for Twelfth Street, his appearance 
 proved our deductions correct. He was clad in a blue 
 suit of good cut, which had cost thirty dollars. He 
 wore a silk shirt. Its price had been three dollars and 
 fifty cents. His shoes unheard-of extravagance 
 had cost eight dollars. He was the proud wearer of 
 silk socks. A new soft hat, with a jaunty turn to the 
 brim in exact imitation of Kenneth Reed's, completed 
 his costume. Total, forty-five dollars and fifty cents, 
 exclusive of unmentionables. 
 
 He felt uncomfortably new, dressed up, expensive. 
 But by slouching just a little, according to old habits 
 half-discarded of late, he felt that his newness was 
 not evident to others. Also, blowing his nose when- 
 ever he passed anyone who seemed to be mentally com- 
 menting on his appearance kept him from feeling so 
 noticeable at the moment. His handkerchief was quite 
 damp by the time he reached Dr. Trimble's.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HEWITT had evolved, in the course of his travels 
 through this vale, various theories concerning 
 heaven. This night proved them all wrong for an 
 hour, at least. Heaven was not, as he had supposed 
 in childhood, aided by pictures in a mammoth religious 
 book reposing on the " stand " in the farm-house, a 
 place where one tiptoed around on hard, outlined clouds 
 that should have been feathery but were not; where 
 golden-haired angels (they were never anything but 
 golden-haired, by some inexplicable discrimination 
 against brunettes in the population) played on golden 
 harps, surrounded by babies possessing arms and slight 
 pin-feather wings, but no bodies. Heaven was not 
 summer fields with sunshine and daisies, a dream of 
 his earlier adolescence, when work made one doubt 
 the essential goodness of the godly plan. Heaven was 
 the porch of the old-fashioned, wide-lawned Trimble 
 house on Twelfth Street, Alston, Indiana. 
 
 Dr. Jimmy, pulling his long legs reluctantly over the 
 porch floor on his way to save old Mrs. Cantline from 
 a death she had approached and evaded ten times in 
 one month, did not know that he was treading the floor 
 of heaven. He was unconcerned, and spoke to Mrs. 
 Trimble about having a carpenter mend one of the 
 pillars supporting the roof. It was rotting at the base. 
 
 189
 
 190 CASTE THREE 
 
 He was ignorant of other things, too. He did not 
 know that Mary Young, who was impudent to him as 
 he descended the steps as slowly as though Mrs. 
 Cantline really were dying this time and he did n't care, 
 was the queen of heaven. He thought in the inno- 
 cence of mature manhood that she was his wife's rela- 
 tive spending a few months with them until Martha 
 and the children went to the lakes for the hot weather. 
 
 Mary herself would have been surprised if she had 
 known just how high was the position she occupied 
 above the earth. 
 
 Only Hewitt, sitting in the swing with one foot 
 thrown nonchalantly over the other, knew all these 
 things. He also knew that neither Joe Bales nor any 
 of his set could have been more at their ease on any 
 Twelfth Street veranda than he was on the Trimbles'. 
 He felt as important as even he could have wished, 
 and unusually facile of speech. He felt keyed up for 
 talk talk on an elevated plane, different from the 
 talk, violent talk, into which Letsky's and Bowman's 
 and Simeon's conversations often degenerated. This 
 talk was to be combined with cleverness and wisdom, 
 rich in wit, bubbling with brilliance, in short, the talk 
 of the elite. 
 
 To begin with, there were obstacles to a free flow 
 of language which Hewitt had not counted on. A 
 group of boys who belonged to the set which danced 
 and motored and played pool and went to Indianapolis 
 with frequency were sitting on Caroline Walker's steps 
 next door to the Trimbles, and they were close enough
 
 CASTE THREE 191 
 
 so that bits of their conversation floated unsought to 
 where Hewitt and Mary were sitting. 
 
 Their presence would not have disturbed Hewitt 
 himself, except that Mary laughed several times at the 
 remarks which penetrated to them. 
 
 "What d' you know about Kokomo?" some one 
 said in the tone of the retort discourteous. 
 
 " I know something you never learned there ! I 
 know when to leave! " This was followed by a roar 
 of laughter. 
 
 Hewitt's remarks on the weather and Boosters' Day 
 and other subjects, supposed to be proper preliminaries 
 to the real talk of the evening, were cut into disgust- 
 ingly by these and other comments. How could one 
 be expected to be brilliant, even though stimulated by 
 clothing which had cost forty-five fifty, when the one 
 to whom you were addressing your brilliancy kept 
 smiling at other people's remarks? Mary must have 
 at last seen that her visitor was becoming piqued by 
 his position as runner-up, and stopped paying attention 
 to drifting fragments from next door. Anyway, the 
 young people over there were dividing up into pairs 
 and strolling off. Two and from where Hewitt 
 was sitting, he would have said they were Ernestine 
 Smith and Gerald Kahn, ran out to the Walker car 
 in front of the house and jumped into the back seat. 
 
 Hewitt settled himself more comfortably on the 
 swing, now that rivalry was eliminated. 
 
 " Let 's see. I promised to tell you about Letsky, 
 didn't I?"
 
 192 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Yes," Mary smiled at him. " But first, have you 
 heard from Kenneth Reed since he left? " 
 
 " Not a word. Have you ? " 
 
 " Just a tiny note from Indianapolis. He 's sweet, 
 is n't he?" 
 
 Hewitt would n't have gone that far in qualifying 
 Reed's likeableness, but he acquiesced. Mary seemed 
 to expect it of him. 
 
 " Do you think he will really go to Harvard, as he 
 expects? " 
 
 " I should say. He 's set on it." 
 
 "How old is he?" 
 
 " About let 's see twenty-three." 
 
 " He 's sweet," Mary repeated needlessly. 
 
 Conversation lapsed. If Mary really wanted to 
 hear about Letsky, it was her place, after having 
 stopped Hewitt's first attempt, to ask for more details. 
 Instead, she sat smiling to herself absent-mindedly. 
 
 "What have you been reading?" he asked, when 
 the silence had become painful to him. 
 
 " Bright, clever, appallingly light stories in mag- 
 azines," she said, and deepened her smile. 
 
 " Do you like them? " He wanted to hear her dis- 
 dain them. 
 
 " Well, in summer, you see It is summer, is n't 
 it, Hewitt? It has been almost hot to-day." 
 
 Hewitt thought this was self-evident and that an 
 answer was unnecessary, so he remained silent. He 
 observed the stars, the trees, the Walker automobile, 
 and finally Mary's hair, and he liked the last best. In
 
 CASTE THREE 193 
 
 the dim light from a rising moon it looked pretty, he 
 thought, brought up from her ears in that way, show- 
 ing tiny black points in the lobes of her ears. He 
 had always hated earrings, because Grace wore small 
 gold ones through holes that were really pierced in her 
 ears. Barbaric. But Mary Young's were different. 
 
 " Why don't you come and sit in the swing? " he 
 ventured in a low tone. 
 
 " Do you want me to? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Then I shall sit in the swing." 
 
 He felt better after that. She must like him, or she 
 would n't sit in the swing with him. 
 
 " I found a poem in a new book last night that I 
 liked," he said after he became used to having her so 
 near him. " I thought of you when I read it." 
 
 "Did you? That was sweet of you." 
 
 "Do you want to know what it was about?" 
 
 " Do tell me, please ! " she pled with him, frightened 
 that he would not, at least, so her voice sounded. 
 
 How beautiful she was when she turned her head 
 half-toward him in that way! Her dress was of some 
 fine, transparent, dark tissue that clung softly to her 
 arms. He felt a desire to touch it. 
 
 " It was about a boat on a sea. A man was in it 
 with a girl he liked. The sea was sparkling with 
 sunlight, and he thought, as they moved out into it, 
 that an after-life must be like that serene and peace- 
 ful and full of love." 
 
 She looked him full in the eyes, but her own were
 
 194 CASTE THREE 
 
 half-closed in that queerly disturbing way she had, 
 and there was a peculiar, puzzling smile on her 
 lips. 
 
 " Why did that make you think of me? " she asked. 
 
 " Because " he paused, and then decided that a 
 lie was safer, " the description of the woman was like 
 you." 
 
 " Oh," she said. 
 
 "Alston is a very queer town, isn't it?" he men- 
 tioned after a while. 
 
 "Is it? How?" 
 
 " No one reads poetry here." 
 
 " Do they in other places? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. I think so." 
 
 " Perhaps they do here." 
 
 " I have n't met anyone, except one school-teacher, 
 who does." 
 
 " Well, let 's count her," she laughed roguishly. 
 
 " She 's oldish." 
 
 Mary laughed harder than ever, that delicious laugh 
 that made him echo it. 
 
 " All right. We won't count her. Only young 
 poetry-readers shall count. But there are a great 
 many people in Alston whom you don't know, are n't 
 there?" 
 
 :< Ye-e-es," he was unwilling to admit. " But no 
 one buys poetry." 
 
 " Perhaps they already have the books." 
 
 " They could n't ; at least, not new poetry." 
 
 " Is n't there any other kind ? "
 
 CASTE THREE 195 
 
 He paused and examined her profile intently. Was 
 she arguing with him? 
 
 " Oh, there are the classics." 
 
 " Perhaps Alston reads the classics." 
 
 " Have you ever read Tennyson? " he asked. This 
 was in the nature of a test question. 
 
 " Every one does," she said, falling short of the 
 standard of Hewitt's ideal of a discriminating reader. 
 
 " He 's insipidly commonplace," he announced. 
 
 She glanced at him again with her half-closed eyes 
 and provoking smile. " You are hard to please." 
 But there was flattery in the accusation. " I suppose 
 every one passes through the stage of liking Tenny- 
 son ? " she suggested. 
 
 " And then outgrows him," he replied. 
 
 "Whom do you like?" 
 
 Hewitt studied the stars. Whether or not Mary 
 guessed the answer very personal and provocative 
 of annoyance, perhaps which almost slipped out, she 
 spoke quickly. " You read so much," she said. 
 
 " You said that the other day." 
 
 " You must be careful not to let life slip by while 
 you read about life." 
 
 He turned his head to look at her, astounded and 
 hurt. She was not an intellectual, to doubt his read- 
 ing. 
 
 " One lives in books," he defended himself. 
 
 " Not the same way. Experience is where one lives 
 truly." 
 
 " When you read Browning's ' Rabbi Ben Ezra/
 
 196 CASTE THREE 
 
 for instance, you mean that you have not lived very 
 poi-g-nantly ? " He pronounced the " g." 
 
 "Very what?" Mary asked curiously. 
 
 " Poi-g-nantly," he repeated. 
 
 " Do you want me to tell you something? " she asked 
 gently. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " You are mispronouncing it." 
 
 She instantly regretted her cruelty, for he flushed 
 and winced. 
 
 " I '11 pronounce it any way I choose," he said 
 angrily, trying to cover his confusion. 
 
 " It 's better to conform in the matter of pronunci- 
 ation." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 A breeze, arising as the moon brightened, stirred the 
 trees and tossed Mary's hair from her forehead. 
 
 " Are you very angry with me? " she asked him with 
 a soft intimacy, laying her hand on his for a second. 
 
 " I am not angry," he denied. 
 
 " Yes, you were. I could feel it in the air. Fiery 
 breath, you know." 
 
 He laughed outright. 
 
 " Anyway, whether Alston reads poetry or not, it 's 
 interested in money, money, money ! " he burst out 
 with, when the air had been cleared of the fiery breath. 
 " Alston is overflowing with Monera." 
 
 "What are Monera?" 
 
 " They 're a low order of animals. They just exist 
 to absorb food."
 
 CASTE THREE 197 
 
 "And Alston is like that?" 
 
 He was sure of it, and said so. 
 
 " What makes you think so?" 
 
 " Every one wants money ; they have n't time for 
 anything else." 
 
 " Is Chicago so different ? " she questioned. 
 
 That nonplussed him. 
 
 " There are some intellectuals in Chicago." 
 
 " And none in Alston ? " 
 
 Silence, while he considered this. 
 
 " You don't know that Alston would n't be very con- 
 siderate of genius, let us say." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Alston would be willing to recognize genius after 
 it had made good somewhere else, but Alston would n't 
 understand genius." Then,- for fear she might think 
 he thought himself a misunderstood genius, which he 
 didn't Letsky might have the spark, but he did n't 
 Hewitt went into an explanation. " Suppose 
 well, suppose that Keats had been born in Alston?" 
 
 Mary was willing to consider Keats in this con- 
 nection. 
 
 " He would have been a respectable doctor, or. " 
 
 "Or?" 
 
 " Or a complete failure as a doctor." 
 
 " Am I wrong in thinking I vaguely remember that 
 he was a failure as a doctor ? " 
 
 " He was ; but he was something vastly greater than 
 the best doctor." 
 
 " You rate poets so high ? "
 
 ig8 CASTE THREE 
 
 " The world rates literature high the part of the 
 world that counts." 
 
 "And which part is that?" 
 
 " The part that rates literature high," he smiled. 
 
 "Why would n't Keats have become a great poet in 
 Alston?" she wanted to know. 
 
 " Because what genius needs is understanding, and 
 Keats had that in nineteenth-century England. Leigh 
 Hunt, for instance, and a hundred others. He did n't 
 get what some young poets nowadays get in this 
 country a little condescending notice meant to make 
 parlor-pets out of them, but real understanding. 
 They cherished and fed his genius. England already 
 held up an ideal of great poetry to him. The ideal 
 is in the English air. That is why it will be a long, 
 long time before a great poet will come out of the 
 Middle West. There are not enough in Alston of 
 what some modern essayist calls ' masters-by-proxy/ ' 
 
 "And they?" 
 
 " They foster literature by their intelligent reading 
 and appreciation of it. Keats in Alston " Hewitt 
 shuddered. " He would have been neither of the 
 things I first said. He would have been a Chatter- 
 ton." 
 
 " I want to be an intellectual," Mary begged. 
 
 " I will call you one," he agreed, looking at her, 
 forgetting about the horror of a suicidal Keats and 
 only remembering other things besides Mary's mind. 
 
 " But don't damn Alston entirely until you know 
 everyone. Perhaps you will find that a great many
 
 CASTE THREE 199 
 
 people here are interested in the same things that you 
 are." 
 
 " They 're not. They don't read good books." 
 
 " You may be confounding wisdom and reading." 
 
 " That 's where one finds wisdom in books," he 
 asserted. 
 
 She shook her head emphatically, entrancingly. 
 
 An automobile skidded to a stop in front of the 
 house. 
 
 " Mary ! Mary Young ! " called a woman's voice. 
 
 Mary ran out to the car. She came back soon. 
 
 " We 're going for a ride," she smiled at Hewitt, 
 and went in for her coat and hat 
 
 He did not want to take a ride with these intruders, 
 whoever they were. He wanted to continue to talk 
 intimately with Mary in heaven. This being suddenly 
 thrown out into a cruel world which did n't appreciate 
 the intellectual at all, infuriated him. To Mary, he 
 was willing. But he was disappointed in her for 
 wanting to go. 
 
 However, he followed her out to the car and held 
 her arm while she put her foot on the running-board. 
 The young man in front said with emphasis that he 
 wanted her with him. That left Hewitt, when Mary 
 had hesitated for a second and then acceded to his 
 demands, to clamber into the back, where he sat stiff 
 and angry, on the folding seat. Three women, whom 
 Mary introduced as Mrs. Lombard, Mrs. Carl Haw- 
 trey, and Katherine Miller, occupied the wide seat. 
 
 " Of course Bob would seize upon Mary," Mrs.
 
 200 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hawtrey said. " That leaves Mr. Stevenson in the 
 uncomfortable position of entertaining two old ladies 
 and" 
 
 " An old maid," Katherine Miller chimed in. 
 " Let 's not be delicate." 
 
 "Where to? " called the czarish Bob. 
 
 " Indianapolis, Mary? " 
 
 Mary shook her head. 
 
 " Not to-night. Let 's ride out into the country." 
 
 " Don't you race, even if you do want to show off 
 our new car," Bob's mother warned him, with a twinkle 
 of her small blinking eyes at the rest of the party. 
 
 They chugged along between the car-tracks to the 
 edge of town, where the chauffeur, greatly amused by 
 a story Mary was telling him, turned into a smooth 
 pike and heightened his speed. 
 
 Hewitt felt awkward. He had lost all signs of that 
 capacity for wit and brilliancy which had been his for 
 a few happy moments earlier. He could not, think as 
 hard as he could, muster up a single remark that 
 wouldn't have been ridiculously inapropos and flat. 
 
 Katherine Miller and Mrs. Hawtrey were talking 
 about a club meeting. 
 
 At last, when Hewitt had begun to feel that his 
 silence was no longer bearable, a howling condemna- 
 tion of dullness, Mary turned in her seat and gave him 
 that quick, intimate smile. 
 
 " Don't let Hewitt monopolize the conversation," 
 she said gaily to the others. " He '11 tell you how 
 the world was made and what kind of animals you
 
 CASTE THREE 201 
 
 were before you became ladies. He 's frightfully in- 
 tellectual, you know, and terribly disapproving of 
 small-talk." She whispered the last, and then turned 
 again to Bob Hawtrey. That was the only notice she 
 took of him until they reached home. 
 
 He thought, even after these words of Mary's had 
 set everybody laughing and the conversational ball 
 rolling for the moment, that he had never been so un- 
 comfortable in his life. His knees hurt from the po- 
 sition he had put them into. The seat was none too 
 comfortable, and his stiffness of posture made it worse. 
 To try to appear at his ease, he took off his hat and 
 held it carelessly on his lap, but he found his fingers 
 involuntarily fumbling at the brim. He clutched it 
 tightly to put a stop to this nervous movement. 
 
 Mrs. Lombard at length tried to persuade him in 
 her gentle way to talk about Chicago. She always 
 went up for a week or two each winter for the the- 
 aters. She wanted to go to New York for grand 
 opera next year. She liked Chicago very much, but 
 there were advantages to be had in the way of music 
 in the eastern city. She also wondered if Hewitt re- 
 membered the first picture to the right of the entrance 
 of the Art Institute in an exhibition of the previous 
 summer. The son of her cousin had painted it. He 
 was doing very well at illustration work in New York 
 now. 
 
 Between her remarks he followed the conversation 
 Mrs. Hawtrey and Katherine Miller were having about 
 the country club.
 
 202 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Were you at the charity ball last week ? " Kath- 
 erine called to Mary at length. 
 
 " No. I went up to Marion for a dance." 
 
 " I thought I did n't see you." 
 
 And then they went back to the country club. 
 
 Hewitt's efforts at following up Mrs. Lombard's 
 leads were failures. It ended in her doing all the 
 talking, until Mrs. Hawtrey came to her rescue and 
 wanted to discuss Maude Adams's new play. 
 
 " Not nearly as sweet as her other ones were. I 
 was disappointed. We went clear to Chicago to see 
 her, made the trip purposely for that. It was very 
 disappointing." 
 
 " I thought it the most charming one Barrie had 
 done for her." 
 
 " Have you read Galsworthy's new novel? " Hewitt 
 asked Katherine Miller, not because he had any desire 
 to know, but because he felt it his duty, as a guest in 
 the Hawtrey car, to speak to her about something. 
 
 "No; I never read Galsworthy." Her tone was 
 sharp sharper, no doubt, than she meant to make it, 
 or else Hewitt was more ready to be abashed. At any 
 rate, he flushed up and remained silent until they 
 pulled up into a village ten miles out, where they 
 stopped while Bob Hawtrey bought boxes of candy 
 in a confectionery store. 
 
 By the time they were back again in Alston Hewitt 
 had grown to feel almost chummy with the terrible tor- 
 ture that assailed him since starting. He could not 
 tell why he should be so tortured. He was not awe-
 
 CASTE THREE 203 
 
 stricken by Mary's friends, but he was very sure that 
 the evening had been spoiled for him. 
 
 He climbed stiffly out when they drew up in front 
 of the Trimble house again. He performed the es- 
 sential courtesies of leave-taking with painful self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 " Good-night, everybody ! " Mary called, patting 
 Mrs. Hawtrey's hand and waving to the others. " It 
 was sweet of you to take us. Wasn't it a lovely 
 ride?" she turned to Hewitt as they went up the 
 walk. 
 
 " I must run home," he said joylessly. 
 
 " Must you right away ? " She looked at him 
 with her eyes half-closed, as she always did when she 
 wanted to impress him. 
 
 He turned half-away. 
 
 "Aren't you even going to say good-night?" she 
 said appealingly. 
 
 He took hold of her hand and drew it to his lips. 
 It was cool and soft. 
 
 " Good-night," he said softly, without looking at 
 her. He trembled as he moved from her down the 
 walk, and he knew that she was regarding him with 
 a strange, soft smile. 
 
 Mary did not immediately turn to enter the house. 
 
 What was she thinking?
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 are three separate castes in Alston," 
 Hewitt decided the next morning, as he sat on 
 the edge of his bed drawing on his old shoes. " There 
 are the workers, toilers, who don't count with the 
 others. There are the respectable, public-spirited, good 
 people, who run the churches and obey the social laws 
 and have some ideals which they cling to stubbornly 
 also an enormous number of prejudices. And there 
 are the society devotees, who set the pace and attempt 
 to distinguish themselves from the lower and harder 
 strata by following out an order of procedure radically 
 expensive and wasteful, impossible of correct imita- 
 tion by the masses." 
 
 At breakfast, while Grace talked to his father about 
 housecleaning, a terrible ordeal just over, Hewitt 
 went on with his thoughts about Alston castes. He 
 was not sure that the Hawtreys and the Lombards 
 belonged to the smartest society, but he had of late 
 been observing others who did belong. In fact, most 
 of Mary's associates belonged. Mrs. Smith belonged 
 decidedly, with Mr. Smith as a kind of unwilling but 
 accommodating hanger-on. Alston society and in 
 pursuing the subject further Hewitt decided that 
 society in all cities of similar size throughout the 
 
 204
 
 CASTE THREE 205 
 
 United States was founded primarily on the same prin- 
 ciples was founded on wealth. Not that many 
 people had accumulated the large sums understood 
 as wealth in other sections of the world, but they had 
 money sufficient to insure a lavish expenditure when 
 the ideals of caste three assumed lavish expenditure 
 necessary. 
 
 Wealth was not the only requirement for caste three, 
 by any means, though many people thought it was. 
 You had to have other things leisure, unused 
 energy, information about certain forms and ways of 
 acting, the key to the code, and certainly the desire 
 to do the same things that others wanted to do. 
 First of all, however, you must have enough money 
 to be able to forget money, at least, publicly. Poverty 
 was too concerned with obtaining the necessities of life 
 to take part in the pleasure of caste three. Culture, 
 in the broad sense, you did not have to have, although 
 if you did possess a wide information about the arts, 
 you acquired prestige thereby. But without money 
 you were still only a hanger-on; you were not an 
 integral part of the caste. 
 
 Hewitt remembered that Wilde said in one of his 
 plays that the requirements for society were your 
 ability to amuse, shock, or dine people. The third 
 class, Hewitt recognized, formed this necessary basis 
 of wealth. They furnished the money and the hospi- 
 tality. Clever people amused these others, and so paid 
 their way, although with the exception of Mary, whom 
 he gave credit for being extraordinarily clever not
 
 206 CASTE THREE 
 
 only in what she said, for that sometimes would not 
 have stood the test, but in her adroit handling of 
 people, he had found no one in Alston to whom he 
 would give credit for cleverness. There seemed to be 
 no place for it here. He inferred that all those who 
 showed signs of embryonic cleverness either turned 
 their wits to being like other people or went to the 
 larger cities. Cleverness suggested an aloofness, when 
 he considered that in itself, a solitariness of spirit. 
 Hewitt, being at the age which places that mental and 
 verbal skill which we call cleverness on a high plane 
 and worthy of the highest praise, put down a black 
 mark against the town of his residence. 
 
 As for shocking your way into Alston society, 
 Hewitt did n't believe it could be done. You must 
 be different from caste one and from caste two, the 
 working class and the " good " class, but you must 
 be exactly like caste three. If caste three believed 
 that playing gaily like children, but with added sub- 
 tleties, was the thing, you must not be poised and 
 quiet. Shocking your way into caste three, as very 
 estimable, clever people like Wilde might shock their 
 way into London or New York society, he did not 
 believe could be done in Alston. Alstonians were too 
 cautious, too near to caste two, to make that a work- 
 able scheme. They liked the different only in a very 
 mild form, and that after it had been vouched for by 
 caste three in New York or other portions of the East; 
 they could not be sure otherwise that it was the cor- 
 rect kind of differentness.
 
 CASTE THREE 207 
 
 Above all, then, caste three, in Alston, Indiana, was 
 not original in its demands. It was imitative, but 
 not of caste two, as caste two might be of it. 
 
 Having thus disposed of the organization of 
 Alston in a pseudo-sociological manner, Hewitt turned 
 his attention to his own actions of the night before. 
 Why had he sat stiff and pained, even though his 
 companions, at least the older women, had tried to 
 draw him out? Why, in short, had he been such a 
 speechless ass? He knew all the words he should 
 have spoken. He had a belief that Mrs. Lombard 
 and Mrs. Hawtrey, and Katherine Miller, too, would 
 have been interested in his penchant for the intel- 
 lectual, if he could have spoken at his ease. They 
 would have been responsive to his advances and ad- 
 miring of his acuteness, he felt sure the next morn- 
 ing. He who so wanted to be important had passed up 
 the best opportunity he had ever had to impress the 
 " best people." He was inwardly furious with him- 
 self and was sharp with his grandfather about passing 
 the eggs fried eggs, golden-centered and crisp 
 around the edges, swathed in brown bacon. 
 
 In retrospect he knew not only what he should have 
 said, but the exact manner of saying it. He should 
 have been careless and blithe. Then they would have 
 liked him, though intuitively he understood that im- 
 pressing the best families was better than having them 
 like you. It was prestige of one kind or another that 
 every one wanted. 
 
 Hewitt realized that whether or no Alston knew
 
 208 CASTE THREE 
 
 much about books and what they stood for, Mary 
 Young's vouching for him as an intellectual had its 
 force. They seemed all of caste three in Alston 
 to put so much confidence in Mary Young's valua- 
 tions. In thinking back over the one remark Mary 
 had made about and half to him when they were rid- 
 ing, he wondered if she had made it with the inten- 
 tion of justifying herself to them. Should they have 
 been wondering why Mary chose to have an engage- 
 ment with a boy who was only a clerk in Smith's 
 book-store, that would have explained it. His 
 brilliancy changed the aspect of her seeming lack of 
 discrimination in the selection of men with whom she 
 might have engagements. 
 
 Above all, caste three valued exclusiveness. To be 
 really worthy of note in caste three, or for that matter 
 in any community, you must do something better than 
 those around you. In Alston the best way to surely 
 distinguish yourself was by your ability to make 
 money, but there were other methods. 
 
 So mused Hewitt on his way to work, appraising 
 and misappraising in the manner of the thinker. 
 
 An automobile, driven by an old man whom he knew 
 to be the president of a company manufacturing a de- 
 vice for regulating the flow of gas in stoves, passed 
 him. People spoke of this man with admiration. 
 " He began without a cent," they would say, " and 
 look at him now ! " This man did not belong to caste 
 three, however. 
 
 Farther along on Jackson Street Hewitt passed
 
 CASTE THREE 209 
 
 Judge McCullough walking to his law-office, slowly, 
 as though he were no longer robust enough to carry 
 on his business. Alstonians were staunch admirers of 
 the judge. He had been on the Public Service Com- 
 mission of the state. He was a good man, stern, but 
 kind. 
 
 But caste three was not concerned with the judge 
 or with the president of the Gas Regulator Company. 
 Why? Because one must desire admittance to caste 
 three, and then, if one's credentials were good, one 
 was taken in. 
 
 Caste three was playing a game, a big game and 
 very important to millions of people in the world 
 to people who belonged and to those who did not. 
 You had to have leisure and a desire to play. You 
 had to pay to enter, and continue to pay after you were 
 in. You had to play well, up to a standard. And 
 much of your delight in it must be your feeling that 
 a great many other people who wanted to be were n't 
 in the game. Your exclusiveness gave you a thrill. 
 The difficulty of attainment also enhanced the value 
 of your being a player at all. You were careful not 
 to lightly throw away your privilege of playing with 
 the best people a rare privilege. That would make 
 Mary Young careful not to take up with anyone who 
 would be unworthy of caste three. Which made 
 Hewitt appear to be not so ineligible. 
 
 Consequently, despite his torture of the night before 
 and of this morning when the defects of his previous 
 action became vividly unsatisfactory to him, and his
 
 210 CASTE THREE 
 
 subsequent readiness to place himself against his will 
 in caste one with the mere workers who did not count, 
 before he had been at work in the book-store an hour, 
 surrounded by the comforting usual, Hewitt began 
 to display signs of that distending of the shirt across 
 his chest which he had shown previously. Had he not 
 parleyed with caste three? Turbulent, uneasy he had 
 been, yet he had parleyed. 
 
 Indeed, gradually during the day Hewitt forgot how 
 perturbed he had been while a guest in the Hawtrey 
 automobile. He was able to be haughty when Ernest- 
 ine came in during the afternoon to ask him, in the 
 absence of her father, to tie up a package of books she 
 was sending to Susannah Conners in New York. 
 She was so entirely nice to him after this favor that 
 he wondered if she knew that Mary Young had al- 
 lowed him to have an engagement with her. The 
 knowledge of the truth, that she did not know, would 
 have added another inch to his shirt distention. Did 
 he not understand caste three ? Which was more than 
 caste three did. 
 
 Ernestine stood talking to Hewitt for a few minutes 
 about her car. It had been taken to Indianapolis for 
 repairs, and she was getting impatient over the de- 
 lay. 
 
 " I 'm helpless without it," she said. " I hate gaso- 
 line cars, don't you? " 
 
 Hewitt had no preference about automobiles. He 
 had never thought much about the merits of the various 
 kinds, but under the stimulation of her question he
 
 CASTE THREE 211 
 
 decided rapidly, with great wisdom, no doubt, that 
 each kind had its good points. 
 
 In leaving, Ernestine smiled a good-bye to him. 
 
 There is an advantage in knowing a snob, young 
 or old, or in thinking some one is a snob. One is so 
 set up when the snob condescends to waste his or her 
 sweetness on one's own desert air, even though one is 
 contemptuous of the snob's original premise that snob- 
 bery is not despicable. That is, perhaps, the secret of 
 the fascination snobs often have for other very un- 
 snobbish people. One acquires the benefits of exclu- 
 siveness without making an effort, democracy being 
 one's hobby to procure it. 
 
 Among other important conclusions, exhilarated by 
 his recent experiences and the contemplation of them 
 into drawing conclusions, Hewitt underlined and 
 pigeon-holed one for future use, providing he kept 
 his head enough to use it: One is just as impressive 
 as one thinks oneself, granting, of course, that one 
 has any kind of a mind to begin with. Hewitt's mind 
 was all right, he admitted. Then all he had to do 
 was to consider himself impressive and he would be. 
 It was very simple. 
 
 He devoted various odd moments, which ordinarily 
 he would have spent in reading, in examining himself. 
 During the process he lost a part of the cherished shirt 
 distention aroused by Ernestine's notice of him. He 
 found that he was not a pleasant subject for minute 
 examination. In the first place, he was helpless, he 
 decided. He thought about action, but he was in-
 
 212 CASTE THREE 
 
 capable of acting to any greater advantage because of 
 his thought. Thinking was the end of his existence, 
 instead of a means to acuter existence. He wondered. 
 He must be lacking in that vital necessity called back- 
 bone, he decided. He grew quite angry about his lack 
 of back-bone. 
 
 Then, too, Hewitt had no confidence in himself out- 
 side the intellectual relation. " I am not," he was in 
 the habit of saying, and of being proud of saying, 
 " I am not a social person. I am a thinking person, a 
 hermit. I reject the world of things for the world 
 of ideas. So-ho! " He was so in the habit of saying 
 this to himself that he had begun to believe it. 
 
 People were becoming very interesting to Hewitt. 
 Even Ernestine was becoming interesting. He would 
 have liked to educate Ernestine. She must have a 
 good mind by inheritance if she had been fortunate 
 enough to have inherited her father's mind, which 
 Hewitt would have denied hotly before this but a 
 mind which had been ruined by something which Mrs. 
 Smith believed to be education. She had selected the 
 institution for Ernestine's advanced one year's educa- 
 tion. 
 
 At this point Hewitt abandoned himself and Ernest- 
 ine and Mrs. Smith's educational mistakes and caste 
 three. Some new books had come by express, and 
 in unpacking them rather feverishly he found a book 
 on Russia that he had been coveting. He had, in- 
 deed, been instrumental in getting it. It was his
 
 CASTE THREE 213 
 
 theory, recently developed and enthusiastically and 
 endlessly propagated, that the manager of a book-store 
 in a city like Alston he always called it a city to 
 Mr. Smith, which shows how he was developing a 
 line of attack not needed in Chicago, but very neces- 
 sary in Alston, a line commonly called " tact " had 
 immeasurable opportunities for educating his public. 
 Mr. Smith had never felt that the public needed 
 educating ; he had been satisfied to sell them what they 
 thought they wanted. 
 
 Acting on this theory, Hewitt approached Mr. Smith 
 one day with the suggestion that the fifty-cent edi- 
 tions of the popular novels be moved back. 
 
 " People are sure to buy them, anyway," he de- 
 clared. " There is already a demand for them. And 
 then on those first two tables let 's make displays." 
 
 " What sort of displays ? " Mr. Smith asked, puz- 
 zled. He was not combative, only not sure of Hew- 
 itt's idea. 
 
 " Well, displays of some good books." 
 
 "Classics?" " 
 
 " We might have those," Hewitt answered deliber- 
 ately. He did not want his employer to think he was 
 too anxious for this change. Mr. Smith was capable 
 of being prejudiced against the move, often accepting 
 the new with no avidity. 
 
 "If not classics, then what? " Mr. Smith demanded. 
 
 " My idea was to make a display of new books 
 serious ones, not novels."
 
 214 CASTE THREE 
 
 " We have n't enough and there 's no call for them." 
 
 " Order some, and we '11 have other orders from 
 those." 
 
 That said, Hewitt went about his work. There 
 was no use in appearing to be intent on change. 
 Mr. Smith required time to digest suggestions. One 
 must n't push. 
 
 In a few days, four or five at the most, Mr. Smith 
 came back to his desk with his eyebrows very 
 prominent. 
 
 " What books do you want to order for that first 
 table? " he growled, not paying the least attention to 
 his clerk, who was, as far as he was concerned in his 
 present mood, mere furniture. At least, he must not 
 think he was anything else. 
 
 " I '11 have to make a list from the reviews," Hewitt 
 said, with no joy discernible. " And say, Mr. Smith, 
 I don't believe it would be a bad idea to send out some 
 little booklets painted up a little, you know, and attrac- 
 tive, to people around town who might take an interest 
 in such books and tell them that you have a stock of 
 new ones. Tell them you 'd like them to come in and 
 look them with their discriminating eyes." He was 
 positively humble about this suggestion. 
 
 Mr. Smith's eyebrows became even more prominent. 
 
 " You attend to the whole business yourself, and if 
 we lose money, I '11 fire you for thinking of it." 
 
 That was why a new book on Russia was in the box 
 Hewitt was unpacking. 
 
 The same night, however, after he had lingered in
 
 CASTE THREE 215 
 
 Russia until long after closing time, Hewitt took up 
 again the unpleasant task of examining himself. 
 Mar}- Young was his reason for resuming it. As he 
 came out of the post-office on his way home, he saw 
 Mary coming down Twelfth Street with a man whom 
 Hewitt had not seen before, but whom he guessed 
 to be Tom Brandon. Joe Bales had always talked a 
 great deal about Tom. Joe admired him. Tom's 
 father had made a lot of money, so Joe said, on a 
 wheel for freight-cars. There was something queer 
 about the wheel, Joe thought, which made it safer 
 than other wheels. Brandon senior had started to 
 manufacture it, but later had sold out to a trust at an 
 immense figure. His son was spending his income 
 and more, people said. Tom had a reputation for 
 drinking and doing other reprehensible things, but 
 although he was the butt of much criticism, which he 
 seldom heard and never minded, from caste two, he 
 was defended and petted by caste three. " He 's a 
 peach ! " was Joe's way of putting it. Joe was not 
 exactly vital to caste three, since he would not have 
 enough money to make him that until his grandmother 
 died. But he had caste three's point of view. Tom 
 Brandon was the pet of the caste, the kind it wanted 
 to defend and protect, even while it did n't want its 
 daughters to marry him. 
 
 As the couple approached Hewitt, he saw a tall, 
 dark-haired, red-faced young man of thirty or more, 
 slim and trim, handsome despite his dissipation. 
 Mary Young was talking vivaciously to him, and he
 
 216 CASTE THREE 
 
 was so interested and amused that he burst into a laugh 
 that deepened into a roar as Hewitt walked down the 
 post-office steps. 
 
 Mary did not see Hewitt. She was too much en- 
 grossed with Tom Brandon. 
 
 Hewitt's heart behaved in a way it had taken to 
 behaving when he saw Mary. It tumbled over itself 
 two or three times, made a wild slide for his throat, 
 and ended by beating hard and furiously in its proper 
 place. Afterward he grew weak in the knees. His 
 heart had acted in this way enough times for him 
 to become accustomed to it, but he was nevertheless 
 always freshly surprised and was no more able than 
 before to stop his breathless weakness. 
 
 The reason this encounter led to further self-exami- 
 nation was that Mary was so vastly more interested 
 in Tom Brandon than she had been in Hewitt the 
 evening before. If her vivacity with Tom was the 
 normal gage of her social self, she had been un- 
 obtrusively bored with Hewitt the evening before. 
 
 He gasped. Bored with him, Hewitt Stevenson! 
 Any breath he had retained after catching sight of her 
 vanished. But it was not only wounded pride which 
 spoke in him. He was hurt far down in the sacred 
 places of his heart. She was not, after all, so very 
 interested in him, a twenty-one-year-old clerk in 
 Smith's book-store. Why should she be? What did 
 he the son of a retired farmer who would n't invest 
 his money and whose sole reading was farm journals 
 v/hat did he have that Mary Young should want ?
 
 CASTE THREE 217 
 
 She could so easily get admiration and attention from 
 other, more congenial sources. What did he, the her- 
 mit who lived in books, have in common with Mary 
 Young? 
 
 Hewitt writhed uncomfortably inside. There was 
 no distention of his shirt now. He was " poi-g- 
 nantly " unhappy. George Bernard Shaw was re- 
 quired to revive his self-respect. In company with 
 that unquestionably great iconoclast he shouldered 
 the waves of ignominy and reached the crest of the 
 swell. He swam with ease through Mary's lack of 
 real interest in him, through his place in caste one (to 
 which he returned whenever depression seized him), 
 through his unimportance as a citizen of Alston, 
 Indiana, into the safe waters of superiority to all 
 trivialities. He himself, as an individual who was n't 
 getting all that he wanted, receded into the distance. 
 His mind belonged to G. B. S., the king of publicists 
 and modern dramatic artists, who shocked caste two 
 of the world, amused scholars, made converts of youth, 
 and disgruntled age. 
 
 Hewitt's hurt sacred places sucked new life out of 
 a preface, and fiercely he determined not to be the 
 plaything of his feelings. He was far, far above 
 Alston and all its citizens, a star gazing down on a 
 badly made earth inhabited by silly, money-mad, 
 Tom Brandon's money probably did make a difference 
 to Mary trivial animals called men engaged in love 
 and war and business, alternately liking and hating, 
 the slaves of forces which they were too ignorant to
 
 218 CASTE THREE 
 
 control, the fools of forms they had made them- 
 selves. 
 
 The next day, when Ernestine brought Mary into 
 the store to get a book she wanted, Hewitt was very 
 dignified and distant. He was pleasant, but firmly the 
 master of his feelings. His heart only tumbled once, 
 instead of the customary three times, and he braced 
 his knees, so that he never knew whether they would 
 have wobbled, because he did n't give them the 
 opportunity to perform thus ignobly. 
 
 Mary was surprised when she noticed this calm 
 coldness. She left Ernestine to get the book and came 
 over to him. 
 
 " I 'm reading to-day," she said to Hewitt, leaning 
 close to where he stood hard against the case. She 
 meant him to know, he understood, that, stimulated 
 by his talk of the night before, she was reading more 
 serious literature than magazine stories, despite its 
 being summer. She wanted to be praised for it, too. 
 
 Hewitt did not praise her. He smiled, but she 
 knew, as anyone would have known, that the smile 
 was frigid. 
 
 " I 'm going to read Henry James," she said, not 
 daunted by the North Pole temperature. Mary was 
 never daunted by frigidity. This made her always 
 the mistress of any situation where that was counted 
 as a factor. 
 
 " He 's very difficult at times," Hewitt replied. 
 " Mr. Woody, a man in Chicago, always said so. 
 I 've never read anything by him."
 
 CASTE THREE 219 
 
 "Don't you think you would like him?" she said, 
 with a bright smile directly into his eyes. 
 
 " I have no feeling about him. I Ve never read 
 anything by him." 
 
 " But you know about him," she insisted. 
 
 " I know what Rebecca Harding West, a bright 
 young novelist, says about his earlier style. She 
 speaks of the time before he began to wrap his 
 sentences in the ' invalid shawls of relative clauses.' ' 
 Hewitt could not help being interested in the brilliancy 
 of that statement. It had been one of Mr. Woody's 
 favorite quotations. So the temperature rose per- 
 ceptibly, and they both laughed. That laugh put an 
 end to frigidity. 
 
 "Have you seen our new display of books?" he 
 asked with righteous pride. 
 
 " Did you select them? " she asked. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Did you get the booklet?" 
 
 " I came to see if they met ' the approval of my 
 discriminating eye,' " she said astutely. 
 
 Hewitt blushed. He was very proud of the wording 
 of that booklet. He had written it, selected the type 
 and color-scheme in fact, he alone was conducting 
 the experiment with serious books. Mary regained 
 ascendancy over his formerly injured feleings by select- 
 ing a volume of essays he recommended, in addition 
 to the Henry James that Ernestine had been having 
 Mrs. Chancellor buy for her. 
 
 " I intended to come in and buy a book the minute
 
 220 CASTE THREE 
 
 I saw the booklet," Mary said. " I shall tell every- 
 one I know to come in and buy a few volumes," she 
 added, with that charming air of intimacy which broke 
 down his last defense. 
 
 " Thanks. Mr. Smith says I am responsible for the 
 success of these sales. It 's an experiment. I think 
 public taste can be moulded.' 
 
 "Is that the reason you sent me a booklet?" she 
 accused him. 
 
 " No," he denied. " I did it as a personal remem- 
 brance." 
 
 " You 're a dear ! Come, Ernestine. You '11 never 
 get to your party at this rate. Good-bye, Hewitt." 
 
 She left him in a quiver of happiness. She was 
 wonderful, more wonderful than he remembered. 
 Tom Brandon probably read dime novels. 
 
 Hewitt called up Mary some time later that week. 
 She was still wonderful, unchanged. She told him 
 that she was going to be at the Pattons' for dinner, 
 and that he might, if he chose, come for her about 
 nine. 
 
 Nine fifteen found Hewitt at the door of the 
 Pattons' house on Eighth Street. George Patton, the 
 editor, opened the door and let him in. He was a 
 large man with a habit of raising his eyebrows until 
 they seemed about to enter the domain of his hair, 
 and then dropping them so quickly that you feared 
 they would n't get to the proper place for eyebrows, 
 but would drop to his pink cheeks, which were polished
 
 CASTE THREE 221 
 
 and smooth like a baby's. You gasped your relief 
 when you found that they did get back safely. He 
 always carried a stick of light, hard wood with a black 
 top, even in the house. People often judged him to 
 be lame by reason of this habit. When he sat down, 
 he leaned his two crossed hands on the top of it and 
 frowned over them, or lifted his eyebrows again. He 
 had a habit of grunting out short, abrupt, witty phrases 
 that surprised you, because for some reason you did n't 
 expect a person with round cheeks and placid eyes 
 to be either abrupt or witty. 
 
 Hewitt had never had any respect for Alston's news- 
 papers. He never read them, in fact. He culled news 
 from the Chicago papers. They were more satis- 
 factory. But after seeing Mr. Patton, he grew in- 
 terested. A man with those eyebrows might some day 
 unexpectedly say something excitedly satirical, and 
 Hewitt hoped, by reading thereafter the editorial page 
 daily, though hurriedly, not to miss it. 
 
 Hewitt was personally conducted into a long, large 
 room furnished in heavy upholstered furniture, 
 numerous lamps of various descriptions, a long row 
 of book-cases, a massive table, and other articles he 
 had n't time to take in. Mary Young was seated in 
 a low, deep davenport near the fireplace and backed 
 by the massive table. She smiled at him. 
 
 " You remember Mrs. Patton, don't you? And you 
 remember Hewitt Stevenson, Mildred? In a moment 
 he will be telling you, George, just where your political
 
 222 CASTE THREE 
 
 reasoning is wrong. He's dreadful! He has no re- 
 spect for the gray hairs of wisdom, absolutely none." 
 
 Mr. Patton raised his eyebrows at Hewitt. 
 
 " Thank heaven, then, that I have no gray hairs of 
 wisdom! " he said with an effect of having been very 
 abrupt, not with Mary, but with Hewitt. 
 
 " Sit down, Hewitt. I '11 be ready presently." 
 
 With that, Mary turned to continue her conversa- 
 tion with Mrs. Patton. She was defending some one 
 to her. 
 
 This left Hewitt to the mercies of the editor, who 
 was using his eyebrows again, this time upon a woolly, 
 roly-poly curly dog lying deep in the rug before the 
 fireplace, as though there were a fire, and appearing 
 to warm himself. 
 
 " Woosy-doosy warmin' himself? Nice ole woosy- 
 doosy ! Told, is n't it, for nice 'ittle dogs what like 
 fires ? " Mr. Patton was saying, as he knelt down with 
 some difficulty, dropping his stick in doing so, and 
 smoothed the rough curls of the dog. 
 
 Hewitt had never liked any dog since he had owned 
 one on the farm in his far-distant childhood. He had 
 always been convinced that everybody's viewpoint 
 with regard to dogs was the same as everybody's with 
 regard to babies. You liked your own very, very 
 much ; you did n't like anybody else's. Nevertheless 
 you pretended to. Now he stooped down and petted 
 the dog, because it seemed the polite thing to assume 
 some interest in the animal of the man in whose house 
 you were spending a little time while waiting for Mary
 
 CASTE THREE 223 
 
 Young to get ready to depart. Mr. Patton regained 
 his feet, equilibrium, and eyebrow movement simul- 
 taneously. The cur, imported from some remote 
 place where dogs are supposedly smaller and more 
 beautiful than in America, and so not really a cur at 
 all, snapped at Hewitt. 
 
 Why Mary did n't pay more attention to him became 
 more puzzling. Was it customary in caste three the 
 Fattens undeniably belonged to caste three ; they were, 
 indeed, the hub about which the caste had its being 
 to leave a man whom you had induced to enter a 
 house as your escort to the mercies of a host with a 
 sharp manner and a dog? Never able to get away 
 from the helplessness which assailed him whenever he 
 found himself away from his books and the customary, 
 Hewitt found himself getting into exactly the same 
 condition he had blamed himself for being in on the 
 night that the Hawtreys had taken them riding. He 
 now grew angry with himself, but that did not 
 eliminate his stiff weakness or his dumbness. 
 
 He called himself names, unpleasant names. He 
 gritted his teeth and tried to think of something be- 
 sides himself. Were all people like this in a new 
 situation? Or was the system of action peculiar to 
 him? Was he temperamentally bashful, or was he 
 merely afraid of not acting up to his ideal of him- 
 self? 
 
 He wasn't afraid of the Fattens. Far from it. 
 He could meet Mr. Patton, editor of the Alston morn- 
 ing paper, on his own ground, the subject being se-
 
 224 CASTE THREE 
 
 lected at random, and come off victor in an argument. 
 He was certain that Mrs. Patton, member of clubs and 
 president of the Woman's Council, was nevertheless 
 not his equal in mind. He did not overrate his mind 
 when he said that. He knew this for a fact. He 
 would have bet his two hundred and more dollars on 
 either one of the propositions, the matter to be judged 
 by reliable witnesses with a reputation for brains. 
 He was willing to call Mary an intellectual, and to 
 educate her, but these others could not shake his con- 
 viction that he was a superior soul to them. 
 
 But he couldn't talk to Mr. Patton. He tried. 
 He said that they were having an early spring, and 
 Mr. Patton was at the same time abrupt and lengthy 
 on the subject. He tried to introduce politics, upon 
 which he was just beginning, because of arguments 
 with Mr. Smith, to have more and more definite 
 opinions, but his voice sounded weak and faint, and he 
 did not much blame Mr. Patton for not following up 
 a lead from a youth who showed himself so unauthori- 
 tative. 
 
 When Mary at last arose and expressed her inten- 
 tion of going, Hewitt sighed with relief from the 
 strain of trying to appear intelligent, when every 
 moment he felt less intelligent. He would not have 
 bet his two hundred dollars when he left. He stood 
 up straight and smiled a wan good-bye at Mrs. Patton, 
 and shook hands limply with the editor. 
 
 " You must come over some evening with Mary 
 and play bridge," Mrs. Patton said in her cordial way,
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 a way that made Hewitt feel that she really did want 
 him to come. " Bring him, dear," she said to Mary. 
 
 Hewitt thanked her, and did n't mention that he 
 played only one card-game, poker, learned not because 
 he wanted to master it, but because Paul had liked 
 once in a while to have friends in for a game, and 
 Hewitt had wanted to accommodate Paul. He dis- 
 liked playing cards. No religious scruples, of course 
 hindered him, since he had no religion. He simply 
 hated to keep his mind glued on spots on cards, when 
 he wanted to think. 
 
 Out in the crisp air, clear and cool, he felt decidedly 
 better. He ran Mary down the walk to the street, 
 grasping her arm and pushing her along. She had 
 to stop at the end to pant, and they both shook with 
 laughter. Running with Mary was great sport, 
 Hewitt thought. 
 
 Mary was all for being jolly as usual, or perhaps 
 jollier, as they went on toward the Trimbles. She 
 made fun of Hewitt's conceit, a favorite subject for the 
 facetious, and of his tongue-tied condition at the 
 Fattens (she had had time in the midst of her defense 
 of some one to notice that, then), and of his new 
 vanity about clothes. 
 
 " You 've taken to wearing a new tie every time I see 
 you," she said saucily. This was not true, but he was 
 more dressy than of old, when Letsky had made him 
 feel that an undue attention to clothing was a sign 
 of the sunk-in-the-mud sort of proletarianism. He 
 dressed for decoration, to please Mary, although Mary
 
 226 CASTE THREE 
 
 was not supposed to know this, and in all probability 
 did not know it. " Some day I shall pass you on the 
 street and never recognize you at all. I identify 
 young men by their ties. I always look at them, and 
 then some afternoon when I see a blue tie with orange 
 futurist designs, I say to myself ' That youth I danced 
 with at Ernestine's open-house last night.' Now how 
 can I remember you, if you wear such a variety? In 
 your case I might be able to follow one change, but " 
 
 " Perhaps something in my eyes would say that I 
 knew you, and then you would remember if you 
 could manage just once to look higher than my tie." 
 
 " If I looked higher than your tie, you would try 
 to entangle my eyes with your dreadful gray ones, 
 would n't you ? " 
 
 He was glad of this evidence that she had seen the 
 color of his eyes. 
 
 " I should try," he said in a low tone and without 
 looking directly at her. This remark was very near 
 the venturesome, and besides, he said it with feeling. 
 
 "Don't ever!" she said just as low, but he under- 
 stood, without seeing the twinkle in her eyes. 
 
 A street light on the corner by the Presbyterian 
 Church was sputtering as they passed, and with a final 
 brave nicker it went out, leaving the street in dark- 
 ness. All the other street-lights around the city 
 those that before they had been able to see, went out, 
 too, and the houses became black. 
 
 The night was dark ; there were no stars or moon. 
 Hewitt could hardly distinguish curb from street, and
 
 CASTE THREE 227 
 
 in the first opaqueness which followed the disappear- 
 ance of light he put his foot carefully before him to 
 find the correct spot to step. 
 
 "What do you suppose is the matter?" wailed 
 Mary. 
 
 " Probably something is broken at the plant. This 
 is beastly. Here, take hold of my arm! There! 
 Keep hold. You can't see your next step." 
 
 " Neither can you," came softly from Mary. The 
 twinkle was still behind her words. 
 
 " I can't see, but I can judge." 
 
 "Couldn't I judge?" 
 
 " No. Women are too impulsive. You 'd be fall- 
 ing down in two minutes. You 'd think you were on 
 the sidewalk and find yourself in the street." 
 
 "But Hewitt" 
 
 "Be careful!" 
 
 " If you won't be cross about it." 
 
 " I did n't mean to be cross. I 'm worried." 
 
 "What about?' 
 
 " About whether I '11 get you home without breaking 
 some one's fence." 
 
 " Is n't this funny, Hewitt? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You 're cross again." 
 
 " Worry. Now we 're all right! " 
 
 They were on a wider street now, with the houses 
 set back and fewer trees, so that a faint glimmer from 
 the sky made the sidewalk discernible by peering 
 closely. Mary sighed with relief.
 
 228 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Now I suppose you will be pleasant again," she 
 said. 
 
 " Perhaps. Why don't those blamed lights come 
 on? Of all towns in the world " 
 
 "Alston's the worst?" 
 
 " It would be, if it were n't for " 
 
 " For what ? " She leaned forward toward him. 
 
 " For Mr. Smith." 
 
 Mary's twinkle became audible. Then she stopped 
 suddenly. 
 
 " There 's not a soul at home ! The Trimbles have 
 gone to the country. The maid 's coming back to 
 sleep in the house. I have n't the slightest idea about 
 lights!" 
 
 " We '11 find something. They surely have candles 
 some place." 
 
 "But if they haven't?" 
 
 " I '11 have to go down-town and scrape up a good 
 little coal-oil lamp like grandmother used to use." 
 
 The blackness about the Trimble steps was im- 
 penetrable. Hewitt grasped Mary's arm tightly and 
 groped for them. 
 
 " Did you swear then ? " she asked with exaggerated 
 innocence, when Hewitt struck the step with his shin. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "I dare you!" 
 
 " Blame it, keep still ! How can a fellow find any- 
 thing when you keep talking to him and distracting 
 his attention?" But by the time he finished this, he 
 had his hand on the door.
 
 CASTE THREE 229 
 
 " I forgot," Mary said guiltily at this point ; " the 
 key 's under the first pillar." 
 
 "The devil!" came the expected explosion. In- 
 deed, knowing Mary, we do not doubt that she had 
 forgotten the key's position to achieve this very re- 
 sult. 
 
 But the explosion cast no additional light on the 
 porch-floor where Hewitt was kneeling, feeling about 
 for the first pillar. When at last he got the key in 
 his fingers, he felt his way back painfully to the door. 
 
 " I '11 unlock it," said Mary, and after fumbling for 
 a long time she did succeed in opening it. " Now how 
 can we find a candle, with no light? " she queried, in 
 complaint against a fate that put out one's lights. 
 She had her hand on his arm again, and Hewitt took 
 hold of her fingers. How soft and cool they were! 
 He never would have thought it possible that a woman 
 could have such soft hands. 
 
 Hewitt was unable for a while to make any helpful 
 suggestions concerning finding candles without a light, 
 owing to his concern with tremors afflicting his nervous 
 system, although these had nothing to do with candles. 
 He was not afraid of the dark. He was thinking, 
 obsessed with thinking, of that "Kiss me, Hewitt!" 
 heard many months ago in the rear of Smith's store. 
 
 "Where do people keep candles, Hewitt?" asked 
 Mary, unafiflicted by tremors. 
 
 Hewitt took himself in hand. 
 
 " They might have them in the pantry or the cellar- 
 way."
 
 230 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I 'm sure they would n't." 
 
 A pause followed, during which Hewitt's tremors 
 revived. 
 
 " Don't you ever use candles on the table? " he asked 
 after a while. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; at parties. We '11 look in the dining- 
 room. Keep hold of my hand, Hewitt," as if he 
 had any intention of letting go ! " and perhaps I can 
 get through without killing either of us. If I die, 
 dear, from striking the corner of the stairs or a case- 
 ment, you go down-town and buy a candle." 
 
 A slow movement followed toward what might in 
 daylight, or under more favorable night conditions, be 
 the dining-room. Mary bumped into a chair. 
 
 " Look here, let me go first. I 'm not going to have 
 you get hurt hitting things." 
 
 " But you don't know anything about this house." 
 
 " I was in it once." 
 
 " Yes, but you did n't observe the exact position 
 of the furniture. Besides, it has probably been 
 changed since then. Martha's favorite indoor sport is 
 changing the furniture. Yesterday there was a table 
 right where I am now, but Oh, yes, here it is! 
 Oh, my elbow ! " 
 
 "Let me hold it, Mary!" 
 
 " How would that help ? " 
 
 " I have a soothing touch." 
 
 " You 're hurting my hand now! " 
 
 11 Oh, I 'm sorry! What under the sun ? " 
 
 " Did you hit the table, too? "
 
 CASTE THREE 231 
 
 " Something. Yes, it 's a table." 
 
 Silence, and again slow progress. 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 " I think I knocked a piece of pottery off the table," 
 Mary mentioned casually. 
 
 " O Hewitt ! " she added a moment later. 
 
 This frightened him. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " This is the dining-room. I felt the draperies in 
 the doorway. Yes, here 's a straight chair. And 
 here 's the buffet. Heavens ! I 've knocked down one 
 of Martha's choice pieces of china ! " 
 
 A great fumbling in drawers came next. 
 
 " Here is where the candles might be, but there 
 are n't any. Only silver holders. There are none in 
 this drawer either. Haven't you a match, Hewitt? " 
 
 Hewitt jumped. 
 
 "Never thought of that! One that's all." He 
 struck it against his shoe. It flared and went out. 
 
 "Say it, Hewitt!" 
 
 " Maybe I wanted it to go out." 
 
 " Why, how could you? " 
 
 " Mary ! " he said softly, tightening his hold on her 
 hand, " Mary, kiss me! " 
 
 It was out ! His arm was around her, her face was 
 close to his, her warm lips But she pushed him 
 away. 
 
 " Hewitt, you must n't ! I am putting you on your 
 honor. There 's not another person in this house. 
 You know it. Please help me find a candle." She
 
 232 CASTE THREE 
 
 was pleading 1 , and Hewitt, whether in caste one or 
 three, considered himself a gentleman. He drew back, 
 the eagerness dying out of his face. "If you had 
 only been careful of that match ! " 
 
 " I guess I had better go down-town and buy some 
 candles," he said slowly. 
 
 " And leave me here in this black house ? Hewitt, 
 how could you ? " 
 
 " Couldn't you go next door and stay? " he asked 
 flatly. 
 
 " Hewitt, you 're not being cross, are you ? Here ! 
 Perhaps there are some in here. There are! Three 
 fat ones. Now we will have to go into the kitchen 
 for matches. Where 's your hand ? " She found it 
 and pressed it. " Now you 're not cross, are you ? 
 Please!" 
 
 " Not very," he said with increasing zest. 
 
 " Be a good boy. Now go through this door. 
 Here is the stove. Here 's a match. Light a candle. 
 I want one, too. There ! " and she smiled with satis- 
 faction as the candle sputtered into a wavering flame 
 that shone on her hair and into her eyes. She stood 
 looking at Hewitt with that provoking smile. " We 
 might find some sandwiches if we looked," she sug- 
 gested, holding his glance. 
 
 " We had better not waste these candles," he said. 
 
 " You 're not being nice, Hewitt Stevenson ! 
 You 're being terribly glum. You knew you should n't 
 have tried to kiss me, did n't you ? " 
 
 He flushed, for he had not expected her to refer
 
 CASTE THREE 233 
 
 to the episode. He turned with his candle toward the 
 door into the dining-room and held it open for her. 
 
 " No sandwiches, old Glummy? " she smiled up into 
 his face, as she passed him with her flickering candle. 
 
 He laughed despite himself. 
 
 " Let 's sit on the porch and save fuel," he sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " You can't go until the maid comes, you know. 
 You 're protecting me." 
 
 "Don't you think she will come soon?" he asked 
 quickly, in mock alarm. 
 
 " You may pray about it on the steps." 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 But fortunately or unfortunately, according to your 
 point of view, whatever was wrong with the lighting 
 plant was repaired at this instant, and the electric 
 lamp in the hall flared into rosy light. 
 
 " And to think we might have sat calmly in the 
 swing all this time! " 
 
 " I would rather have done what we did," Hewitt 
 said in an almost noiseless voice, remembering a cul- 
 mination of tremors. 
 
 " You 're being nasty." 
 
 " No," he denied. 
 
 " What are you being, then? " 
 
 He sat on the railing and swung his legs idly to and 
 fro, while Mary watched him from the swing. 
 
 "I'm" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I 'm in love."
 
 234 CASTE THREE 
 
 "Don't be silly! With whom?" 
 
 "With you." 
 
 " That 's being sillier. I 'm five or six years older 
 than you." 
 
 " That does not matter." 
 
 " It should." 
 
 " It does n't. You are the most wonderful person 
 in the world." 
 
 " In the whole world ? Really ? " 
 
 He nodded seriously, though he knew she was mak- 
 ing fun of him. " You are an angel." 
 
 " Some people don't think that," she gleamed. 
 
 " You 're wonderful ! " Hewitt repeated, helpless 
 to increase his vocabulary. He sat down in the swing. 
 " Why don't you kiss me, Mary? " he whispered into 
 her ear, his breath warm against her cheek. 
 
 " No man ever asks a woman that," she said, and 
 looked down at her hands. 
 
 His head swam. Without moving his hands from 
 his knees, he leaned over and kissed her. 
 
 " O Hewitt ! " she said, with a catch in her breath. 
 " How silly ! " she went on angrily. " You are only 
 a child. How dare you? " 
 
 He leaned toward her again, but she evaded him, and 
 when he recovered his senses she was sitting under 
 the lamp in the hall with a newspaper in her hands. 
 He watched her from the door and was sorry, weak 
 and sorry, for the frown on her face, her beautiful 
 face.
 
 CASTE THREE 235 
 
 " Mary! " he called in a low voice. 
 
 She pretended not to hear. 
 
 "Mary, come out! " 
 
 " I 'm angry." 
 
 "Come out!" 
 
 " Will you promise? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "To be a gentleman?" 
 
 " I thought I was being a man," he said. 
 
 " You 're only a child.' 
 
 " You said that before." 
 
 " I repeat it," and she came toward the door. 
 "'Promise?" 
 
 " Nothing," he was firm in saying. 
 
 "If you try being silly again, you may never come 
 back again to see Mary." 
 
 " You don't mean it, though." 
 
 " Don't make me prove that I do." 
 
 When the maid came up the walk they were talking 
 blithely about books, and Mary was telling Hewitt 
 about Henry James and was superior about it, because 
 he had already confessed that he knew nothing about 
 this author. 
 
 " Everyone says ' The Awkward Age ' is the best," 
 she told him with unconcealed pride. 
 
 "Who is 'everyone'?" 
 
 " Don't be cross again, just because I know more 
 than you do about something. I mean the poor Al- 
 stonians who never read poetry."
 
 236 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt was contemptuous. 
 
 " I '11 wager there are not three people in Alston 
 who have ever read a word of Henry James." 
 
 " If I were a betting person," she said demurely, 
 " I would take you up on that. Hello, Tilly," she 
 called to the maid, " I 'm so glad you are home. 
 Was n't it terrible when the lights went out ? I should 
 have been frightened to death if Mr. Stevenson had n't 
 been here. Put a light in my room, will you, dear? " 
 
 Tilly would. She was a slave of Mary's, too. 
 
 " Thank you. Now that Tilly has come," she 
 turned to say to Hewitt, when the maid had gone 
 around the house, " you may feel free to leave at any 
 time." 
 
 " You 're kind." 
 
 " Am I not ? What are you going to be when you 
 grow up ? " 
 
 Hewitt ignored the inference that he was not grown 
 up. 
 
 " I don't know yet." 
 
 " I suppose you will write? " 
 
 He was so afraid that she was making fun of him 
 that he refused to reveal his plans for the future. He 
 felt that he could not have stood her laughing at his 
 intention to become a great poet, or, maybe, a novelist, 
 since the latter would probably pay better and he must 
 support himself. He might be both, he knew. 
 
 As he started to leave, she stood up and pulled his 
 head down to her and kissed his forehead. " That is 
 for being a good boy when I asked you to be. Good-
 
 CASTE THREE 237 
 
 night, dear." His head whirled again, and he backed 
 down the walk so as not to lose sight of her sooner 
 than was necessary. 
 
 " Good-night ! " she called from the door. 
 
 Hewitt had no inclination for bed when he reached 
 home. The house was dark and he went into the 
 kitchen to find something to eat. He had been re- 
 gretting those sandwiches for half an hour. An apple 
 pie was seized. Its indigestibility did not bother him. 
 He ate a huge piece and drank some milk. Then he 
 tiptoed to his room. He could hear snores from his 
 grandfather's room downstairs. He had always 
 wished that his grandfather would n't snore, but the 
 years did not lessen the intensity of this performance. 
 
 The door into Grace's room was open. He could 
 see her lying in the huge bed, by the light of the hall 
 lamp, a large, dim form. Good old Grace ! He was 
 ashamed of all the times he had been secretly irritated 
 at her bulk and her lack of subtlety and her country- 
 ness. Good old Grace! 
 
 He closed his door very gently so as not to disturb 
 the others. 
 
 There was poetry in Hewitt's soul which called for 
 release. He placed a pile of paper and his pen ready. 
 He attempted a beginning. He would write a poem 
 about a goddess and a mortal. The goddess, in a 
 spirit of jest, had allowed the mortal to kiss her. The 
 mortal must die for it. 
 
 " Diana roamed through Grecian woods," he wrote 
 after a period of intense concentration, but there he
 
 238 CASTE THREE 
 
 stopped. Not for the life of him could he think of a 
 word to rhyme with woods, and he wanted couplets. 
 
 " Diana roamed through Grecian woods," he 
 scanned on his ringers. 
 
 " Diana roamed the woods of Greece," he changed 
 it to, but found the same difficulty with the final word. 
 What rhymed with Greece, besides lease and peace 
 and niece, none of which suited the goddesses who 
 kissed mortals and killed them? 
 
 In the end he gave it up, hoping for more brilliant 
 thoughts on the morrow. A huge yawn shook Hewitt. 
 He undressed. He slept.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THAT kiss given and accepted on the Trimble 
 veranda, though denounced as silly and with a 
 great notice of difference in ages a matter to 
 be silent about reverberated through a week of 
 ecstasy. It colored Hewitt's smallest action. It sang 
 at night through the darkness, mingling itself with 
 the May breezes. It whistled its way into one's 
 dreams and changed their tenor. It whispered to one 
 in the daytime. Like the sun, it was the source of all 
 light. Wonderful Mary! 
 
 It must be admitted that it had its provoking 
 moments. It convinced Hewitt against his will 
 he pommeled the idea, kicked it, fought it off, but it re- 
 turned stronger than ever if possible, its strength in- 
 creased by opposition that Mary Young had been 
 in the " roadster " the night he had seen some one 
 on the Eighth Street pike. This should not have dis- 
 turbed his peace of mind, had he been sensible. Kiss- 
 ing was an innocent pastime much in vogue among Joe 
 Bales' set. Everybody kissed, as it were. It was 
 pleasant to kiss; therefore why not kiss? As long as 
 this argument was applied to oneself, it was a very 
 good one. However, to be of value a kiss must be 
 
 239
 
 240 CASTE THREE 
 
 one's exclusive property. Once it is a thing to give 
 others, to be free with, it loses in merit. 
 
 Mary's kiss to Hewitt she had n't kissed him, but 
 assuming that she had makes explanations easier 
 was worth a great deal. It was invaluable, let us say, 
 beyond computation of value. But if Mary had also 
 kissed Tom Brandon, the kiss dropped no, not to 
 zero from infinity, but close to it. Now assuming that 
 Tom Brandon was not the only man she had kissed, 
 but one of many, then, contrary perhaps to your ex- 
 pectations, the kiss rose halfway up the scale. If a 
 kiss was a kind of unit of exchange, like money, in 
 which you took what you wanted and gave something 
 else, admiration, attention, or love, a kiss was not 
 exactly what Hewitt had always thought it to be. But 
 Mary's kisses were worth more, because more people 
 than just Hewitt wanted them. 
 
 He supposed, in this mood when kissing played such 
 an enormous part in his thoughts, that half the men 
 in Alston, or in the world for that matter, would have 
 jumped at the chance to kiss Mary. She was irre- 
 sistible! Then if so many men wanted to kiss her, 
 and you did kiss her, you had an experience that was 
 worth as much as the demand made it worth. The 
 supply in the case of a girl like Mary was certain to 
 be very small in proportion to the demand. You can 
 easily see where this course of reasoning would bring 
 you. 
 
 Which was all very beautiful in an argument, but 
 left Hewitt at the same point from which he had
 
 CASTE THREE 241 
 
 started : he resented Mary's ever having kissed any one 
 else. He cursed in good round terms because he 
 was n't twenty-six or more to her probable twenty-five, 
 or whatever she was. Then he would have loved her 
 many years sooner and been the first to do so. He 
 was sure that in any clime, in any year, at any hour 
 when he had first seen Mary, he would have loved her. 
 Some author, he remembered, was always referring 
 to the chemistry of human beings and to their harmony. 
 There was something in his soul and in Mary's which 
 created this harmony, Hewitt felt. One's chemistry 
 was very much out of harmony with that of most 
 human beings. There were the dull, the loquacious, 
 the self-sufficient, the slow, the imperturbable, the non- 
 reading, the pedantic with all of these his chemistry 
 was very much out of harmony. 
 
 For whole days, when the reverberations from the 
 kiss were in the air, however, Hewitt ignored her pos- 
 sible kissing of Tom Brandon and others, and was 
 blissful. She liked him, Hewitt Stevenson ! She was 
 interested in him! She was adorable! Of course, in 
 looking back to the night when the Alston lighting 
 plant had broken down, overwhelming the city with 
 a reign of darkness which nevertheless had rebounded 
 to Hewitt's benefit, he vividly recollected that there 
 had really been more than one kiss. The more reason 
 for happiness. There had been the kiss in the dining- 
 room which failed of culmination, when she had begged 
 him to be a gentleman. There was the real kiss. 
 There was the forehead good-bye kiss, which was not
 
 242 CASTE THREE 
 
 to be ignored. Altogether, enough to place anyone 
 in a week's paradise, if only one could forget Tom 
 Brandon. 
 
 On Thursday of the beautiful week Mary called 
 Hewitt over the telephone. Some of the youngest set, 
 the high-schoolers, wanted her to chaperone a picnic 
 to Glendale. She wanted Hewitt to share the respon- 
 sibility. Would he? 
 
 Hewitt did n't see how he could go on an afternoon 
 picnic, or any other picnic, for that matter, with the 
 Smith store on his hands. But he would see Mr. 
 Smith. 
 
 He lingered, like a child about to beg for forbidden 
 fruits, in the vicinity of Mr. Smith. He waited until 
 conditions were favorable. Mr. Smith was just back 
 from lunch, and was engaged with the morning paper 
 which he had not read. He was chuckling over 
 Roger Bean in the cartoons. Roger was a representa- 
 tive citizen, married, with a plump, small-chinned 
 wife, a chunky baby, named Woodrow and called 
 " Woody " for short, and a maid, Golduh, who was 
 attended in sentimental relations by one Clarunz, a po- 
 liceman. The antics of Golduh were a source of daily 
 amusement to Mr. Smith, who chuckled at the first 
 reading, roared at the second, and passed the paper 
 to his friends at the third. Golduh was having un- 
 usual difficulties with Clarunz, and was mispro- 
 nouncing words and misusing the ones she could pro- 
 nounce. Mr. Smith shook, rattling his glasses down 
 upon his chest
 
 CASTE THREE 243 
 
 " See this? " he called to Hewitt. 
 
 " Yes, I read it this morning. Say, Mr. Smith," 
 he said, trying to act as if little hung on the coming 
 decision, using, as it were, the approach indifferent, 
 " some youngsters are having a picnic at Glendale to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " All right. I don't mind their using the land so 
 long as they clean it up." 
 
 Hewitt laughed. 
 
 " Mary Young wants me to help chaperone them. 
 What d' you think? Is there any way? " 
 
 " H'h," snorted Mr. Smith, looking at him over the 
 top of his glasses which were again temporarily in 
 place. " Why did n't you ask me earlier? " 
 
 " I only found it out this morning." 
 
 " Mary Young? H'm." He examined Roger Bean 
 et al and burst into another roar. " Dumn it ! That 
 man 's funny ! " Then presently : " What was that ? 
 Picnic? What time 'd'je want to go? " 
 
 " About three or four." 
 
 " All right. All right. Run on now and take this 
 cartoon over to Abe Kahn. I don't want him to miss 
 this one. That dumn Golduh!" More chuckles fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 Alston was the best city in the world, that day and 
 the next. It was a splendid city. In some ways it 
 might even have been said to have advantages over 
 Chicago. 
 
 The high-schoolers were gleeful picnickers. They 
 packed the twelve of themselves into two motors and
 
 244 CASTE THREE 
 
 almost forgot to count in the chaperones, so that 
 Hewitt was in danger of being separated from his won- 
 derful Mary when the youthful ones came after the 
 most essential part of any picnic and suggested that 
 Hewitt could get into one car and Mary into the other. 
 Hewitt refused flatly, and a boy reluctantly consented 
 to be torn from his own " date " in order to accom- 
 modate an obdurate Hewitt. 
 
 " Did you bring everything matches, sugar for 
 cocoa, salt, glasses, silver?" demanded Mary, before 
 she would even step into the car and behave the way 
 a proper chaperone should behave. 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 " Matches? " Mary insisted. 
 
 " I have some this time," said Hewitt, and they 
 were off. 
 
 Such speeding ! Mary thought it her duty to remon- 
 strate with Harvey Lombard, who was driving the 
 Lombard car. But Harvey was not one to have his 
 freedom curbed by a mere chaperone, even if she was 
 Mary and a friend of his mother's. " Be a sport, 
 Mary. This is a picnic," he assured her. 
 
 So what else was there for Mary to do, if she were 
 not to make herself unbearably unpopular an un- 
 heard of position for Mary but relapse into comfort 
 and amusement, the latter provided by Hewitt, who 
 was in fine spirits and mirthful. 
 
 At Glendale fires were built on two hilltops among 
 the beeches. One was to be used for cooking, and the 
 other for an evening camp-fire. The high-schoolers
 
 CASTE THREE 245 
 
 were more gleeful than ever. The most bashful was 
 gleeful and daring. 
 
 Mary and Hewitt left them to watch the fires and 
 went out on the river in a canoe. 
 
 " Do you like it? " Mary asked him, as they floated 
 down between green banks. 
 
 " Yes," his eyes said. 
 
 " I love it," she smiled. 
 
 "Is that all it?" 
 
 "You, too." 
 
 That, being invited, was not silly. They laughed 
 about it and cleared the air of any inclination on 
 Hewitt's part toward sentimentality. A splendid 
 breeze blew from the east, too, which put energy into 
 his paddle muscles, thus further doing away with the 
 fluid of sentimentality. 
 
 The young ones on the hill halloed to them as the 
 twilight crept over the water, accompanied by a rose- 
 and yellow- and crimson-streaked sky across meadow 
 and hill, and they beached their canoe and ran for 
 food. 
 
 Wienerwursts are a bourgeois meat in town, but 
 the best of delicacies in the woods, especially when 
 wrapped in bacon and unintentionally burned to a crisp 
 on one side, while the other remains in a virgin state 
 of rawness, the whole being slipped into a waiting bun. 
 The cocoa boiled over and burned the cook, who there- 
 upon upset half of the thick brown liquid into the 
 camp-fire amid the howls of an indignant assemblage 
 of cocoa-lovers.
 
 246 CASTE THREE 
 
 " The dickens ! " moaned the cook. " You don't 
 seem to care whether I was burned ! " 
 
 " Suck it! " recommended a doctor's son. 
 
 " There 's some oil in the car," Harvey told the cook. 
 
 " What a splendid fire ! " exclaimed Mary. 
 " Who 's responsible ? " 
 
 The one who had built it carried off Mary's praise 
 with a high hand and dragged a log almost beyond his 
 weight from the far end of the wood. 
 
 Hewitt was engaged, meantime, in sharpening the 
 two ends of a green stick upon which to toast two 
 " wieners " at once, with the bacon wrapped neatly 
 around and fastened to the points. He was so skilful 
 that both the meat cylinders were unburned and cooked 
 through, upon which the gleeful high-schoolers of 
 feminine gender surrounded him begging for " wie- 
 ners." Hewitt decided that they were the nicest per- 
 sons he had ever met, so natural, gay, and good-na- 
 tured, primed to enjoy themselves and to help everyone 
 else to enjoy himself. Mary Young finally objected 
 to their monopolizing him. 
 
 Hewitt found that being social with the progeny of 
 caste three was very easy. Youth, care- free youth, 
 with fathers and mothers and money to protect it! 
 Youthful fortunates whom a kind fate had placed in 
 families full of the wisdom which protects the child, 
 gives it a happy, disciplined, cheerful existence, trains 
 it to avoid tragedy, to grasp with firm fingers its happi- 
 ness, provides it with definite aims possible to be carried
 
 CASTE THREE 247 
 
 out, enables it to see and to seize the good. These 
 fortunates were of the second or third generation of 
 the successful. Their fathers and mothers, or, more 
 likely, their grandfathers and their grandmothers, came 
 into contact with tragedy in the raw, met and con- 
 quered it, grew wise. Reared in a small city where 
 plenty of other families with the same ideals of ex- 
 istence, the same interests, the same pursuits, the same 
 desire to lose sight of the depths life may have to offer, 
 they live on the broad, bright surfaces in the sunlight. 
 They talk, eat, sleep, play, ride, smile, and are content, 
 their lives a welcome anodyne. Or, if by any 
 chance fate plays tricks upon them and upsets the best 
 laid plans of mice and men, they still smile. 
 
 Altogether, the picnic at Glendale was a great suc- 
 cess. Hewitt had none of the knee tremblings, back- 
 bone stiffenings, the tongue-dryings which had ac- 
 companied his intercourse with the elders of caste 
 three. And Mary Young was, when you had her 
 to yourself amid surroundings which did not mu- 
 tilate your self-respect by inducing the bash fulness you 
 would n't admit, still more wonderful. The whole 
 affair made Hewitt feel strong and happy and healthy. 
 He forgot how Alston would have behaved about Keats 
 and genius in general, how it did n't know books, how 
 materialistic it was. He only wanted to remember 
 that a beech-woods by firelight is fairyland, if the queen 
 of fairyland is present in person and awfully nice to 
 a plain interloper from the city streets, and that the
 
 248 CASTE THREE 
 
 young Alstonians were among the few satisfactory 
 persons he had met in the course of his twenty-one 
 years. 
 
 After the remains of the meal had been thrown into 
 the fire and the silver and dishes had been packed in 
 baskets, everyone ran, holding hands to form a chain, 
 down the hill and up a second hill to the other fire, 
 which threw long gleams of light into the darkness of 
 the woods and the flickering bits of burning leaves 
 into the air above. Here everyone continued to be 
 gleeful and sang German songs in which Hewitt joined, 
 and later came popular songs which he didn't know 
 because he was disdainful of popular music. Mary 
 hummed these latter without knowing or caring that 
 Hewitt disapproved of such outbursts of the American 
 composer. She looked very beautiful as she leaned 
 against a beech-trunk, with the firelight playing across 
 her eager face. 
 
 A phrase he had read somewhere Hewitt was al- 
 ways indefinite concerning sources about the " eager 
 face of one who has lived too fast " flashed into his 
 head as he watched her. Not that Mary bore the 
 marks of fast living in the ordinary sense of those 
 words. It was only that she had the eager expression 
 of one who lived intensely. A phrase which he knew 
 to be Wells' followed : " An immense, tumultuous ca- 
 pacity for living, a tumultuous capacity for life." 
 Here was the secret of Mary's fascination for people, 
 of her success with the social set in Alston. It would 
 have been the secret of her success with life in New
 
 CASTE THREE 249 
 
 York or London or Paris or Rome or Babylon. 
 Hewitt could see her, when he tried, in any of those 
 places, with a crowd of adorers about her. It was the 
 mark of the artist in her, the artist who expresses him- 
 self in living. Wonderful Mary ! 
 
 At nine they packed themselves and their baskets 
 into the two cars and by the lights of the motors, wound 
 a slow, devious way down the steep hill, across a nar- 
 row bridge, through another beech-woods, and out 
 into the open road. The high-schoolers passed from 
 glee to hilarity. Mary made Hewitt get into the other 
 car to insure safe passage home, because something 
 might happen, if they did n't make sure that nothing 
 could. He went reluctantly. Afterward, although the 
 change deprived him of half an hour of Mary, he 
 stopped minding because the girls were flatteringly 
 attentive and the boys were funny. There was more 
 singing and an astonishing amount of wit. Everybody 
 was witty, with the wit of nonsense. Hewitt held 
 Harry Caylor down with an iron hand and forbade 
 racing, though his commands disgruntled the males. 
 
 They arrived in Alston, the whole fourteen occu- 
 pants of the two motors, with no bones broken, no 
 punctured tires, and a prevalent satisfaction with pic- 
 nics that found its only exceptions in Harvey Lombard 
 and Harry Caylor, who agreed that a little speeding 
 would not have hurt anyone and would have added 
 to their enjoyment immensely. 
 
 Mary saw everyone safe home and then was herself 
 taken home. Chicago stock dropped to ninety.
 
 250 CASTE THREE 
 
 There was a light in the kitchen when Hewitt 
 reached home, and also in his grandfather's room. 
 Grace tiptoed in when she heard him close the door 
 and cautioned him to be quiet. 
 
 " Grandpa 's awfully bad," she said in a troubled 
 voice. 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 " He 's been bad all afternoon. The doctor says he 
 can't last. He 's too old now to get over anything." 
 
 Hewitt did not express his sorrow, but he was 
 sorry. He stood with his hat in his hand at the foot 
 of the stairs, while Grace tiptoed back to the kitchen. 
 He could hear his father moving back and forth from 
 the dining-room into his grandfather's room, talking to 
 some one, evidently the doctor. Grace went in, and 
 there was more talking in the same hushed tones. 
 
 Hewitt laid his hat down and went in. His grand- 
 father was propped up in bed. His face and neck 
 were so thin that Hewitt was startled. His eyes 
 looked glassy and unseeing. The doctor was standing 
 with a thermometer in his hand, while Grace and Mr. 
 Stevenson looked on with frowns on their faces. 
 
 The scene was much like a picture Hewitt had often 
 seen on the wall of doctors' offices, showing a sick 
 woman, or a sick baby, he could n't remember 
 which, and a man with a pained expression almost 
 but not quite concealed by a bushy beard. Or was 
 it the doctor who had the beard ? Anyway, this scene 
 of his sick old grandfather reminded Hewitt of the 
 picture.
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 After a while the doctor sat down by the bedside, 
 and Mr. Stevenson seated himself nearby, with his 
 hands laid on his knees and his lips tightly closed. 
 Hewitt stood watching, not knowing what to do. 
 
 Grace, in passing him to go back to the kitchen, 
 where she seemed to be doing something with hot 
 water, motioned Hewitt to follow her. 
 
 " You go to bed, Hewie," she said in the same 
 hushed tone. " You can't help a bit, and he don't 
 know anybody. You get your sleep." 
 
 " Why don't you go to bed, Grace ? I '11 stay up 
 and watch." 
 
 Grace threw him a look which under other circum- 
 stances would have been contemptuous, but was now 
 a combination of disbelief in his abilities as a nurse 
 and a motherly sympathy with this disability. 
 
 " You can't do a thing. Go to bed. If anything 
 bad happens, we '11 call you, though there 's no use 
 even in that. Father won't move out of that room, 
 and you can't do anything." 
 
 His uselessness was plainly apparent. He did not 
 seem to count much as a factor in family trouble. 
 Picking up his hat mechanically, Hewitt followed 
 Grace's example of tiptoeing and went upstairs. He 
 left the door of his room open, because that seemed 
 to connect him with events downstairs and to work 
 against the feeling that it was not quite right for him 
 to go to bed, despite Grace's instructions. 
 
 He undressed slowly. The picture of the room 
 where his grandfather lay propped against the pillows,
 
 252 CASTE THREE 
 
 the table with the lamp, the doctor sitting thoughtfully 
 watching the patient, his father and Grace, kept rising 
 in his mind. He remembered the night his mother 
 had died, though it had been a long time since he had 
 thought of it. Why was it that people so often died 
 in the night? Were we nearer the spirit of the uni- 
 verse then? 
 
 Hewitt remembered how his father had brought him 
 into the room where his mother lay, looking so thin 
 that he was half- frightened of her, the skin drawn 
 tight over her high cheek-bones and a bright light in 
 her gray eyes. He had timidly taken hold of her hand 
 and had been startled by its coldness. What he had 
 been afraid of was not his mother, but a strange some- 
 thing which had become a part of her. He remem- 
 bered most vividly her wan smile as she had said 
 faintly to him, " Be a good boy, Hewie, and mind 
 Grace." 
 
 A lump swelled in Hewitt's throat. He had never 
 missed his mother very much. Paul and Chicago and 
 school had filled the new life he had entered from the 
 farm. Now he felt a sudden sympathy for Grace and 
 his father, who had endured seeing the place formerly 
 filled by her untenanted and empty. 
 
 Hewitt got into bed and pulled up the sheet. How 
 horrible old age was, when your mind wandered to 
 the past and stopped having a present, when your 
 teeth fell out and you had to eat soft things, and when 
 your bones creaked and refused to hold up the slouch- 
 ing flesh that once had been firm and hard! Hewitt
 
 CASTE THREE 253 
 
 never wanted to grow old. Youth, glorious youth, 
 with its joys and sorrows and dreams and aliveness 
 for him ! He had always wanted to get into a position 
 where he could tell that Belgian, Maeterlinck, author- 
 itatively that his theory was wrong, the theory that 
 an old man sitting by his lamp and thinking realizes 
 more from life than the active doer. 
 
 Why, even his father did not live very intensely, 
 Hewitt thought. 
 
 Old age was horrible! His grandfather had not 
 really been living for many years. When they lived 
 on the farm, he had not been anything but an old 
 man moving from one warm spot to another, except 
 in summer, when it was from one cool spot to another, 
 from the shade of the back-porch by the well to that 
 of the catalpa tree, and at last out by the spring-house 
 under the fir-hedge. He had petted the cat and the 
 dog, whittled hickory sticks into hundreds of walking 
 sticks, had eaten and slept. 
 
 Hewitt, in bed with the sheet under his chin, hoped 
 he never would grow old, and if he did, as he probably 
 would, that he would die before he had turned into 
 an automaton moved by nothing except a strange de- 
 sire to go on being an automaton and not to disinte- 
 grate into the dust from which it took its being. 
 
 Now, downstairs, his grandfather did not want to 
 die. He clung to life determinedly. Hewitt remem- 
 bered that once on the farm the old man had been very 
 ill and had broken out quite suddenly with a feeble, 
 " By Gad, if I could get up, I 'd get me some oranges ! "
 
 254 CASTE THREE 
 
 Later, when Mr. Stevenson wanted to have the Meth- 
 odist minister come in from the dining-room to talk 
 with him, he burst out with weak fierceness, " Lord, 
 what do I want with a damned preacher ? " Hewitt 
 had never cherished these memories of his grandfather 
 with any fondness. " The old sinner ! " he had once 
 called him to his mother, in the days when he was 
 taken regularly to church by the family and absorbed 
 the Methodist version of Christianity with avidity 
 with as much avidity, indeed, as later he took up the 
 views of scientists who made a new god with qualities 
 in common with the God of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, but different in many particulars, an impersonal 
 god who acted through laws he had created. 
 
 Whereas, according to all his theories of intolerance, 
 Hewitt should have sympathized with his grandfather's 
 pronounced atheistical tendencies, he nevertheless re- 
 sented having him for a grandfather. It wasn't re- 
 spectable. Hewitt theoretically hated the respectable, 
 but practically, if he had been selecting his family, he 
 would have chosen one which walked the straight and 
 narrow path of the usual. Youth could doubt; but 
 old age should have outgrown doubt. He preferred 
 his father's narrow-minded Methodism. At this point 
 he dropped asleep, with the thought of his grandfather 
 set aside by the memory of the high-schoolers and 
 Mary singing on the hill. Youth was so beautiful. 
 Why should n't one always keep the joys of youth ? 
 
 Hewitt awoke with a start. The sun, only dimmed 
 by its passage through the white blind, was shining on
 
 CASTE THREE 255 
 
 his bed. He jumped up guiltily. His grandfather 
 must be all right or they would have called him. He 
 dressed hurriedly and went downstairs. His father 
 and Grace were sitting over coffee and toast at the 
 kitchen table. 
 
 " Come on in to breakfast," Grace said in a voice 
 which was only different from her usual one by its 
 softness. " Grandpa died this morning about four." 
 
 Mr. Stevenson sat silently crunching his toast, and 
 Hewitt was reminded of the morning after his mother 
 died five, no, six years ago. 
 
 "Did he suffer much?" Hewitt asked, because he 
 felt that he must say something to show that he felt 
 sorry. He said this in a low voice and glanced invol- 
 untarily at his grandfather's closed door. 
 
 " He moaned all the time, but the doctor said he 
 did n't suffer as much as we thought he did. Eat 
 some breakfast, Hewie. There 's no use making your- 
 self sick." 
 
 " I remember once, when I was a little boy, my 
 mother made me a pair of trousers out of his," Mr. 
 Stevenson began, without looking at his children. " I 
 smoked a corn-silk cigarette and had to try to put it 
 out quick, so mother would n't see it. It burned a 
 big hole in my pocket, and mother was goin' to whip 
 me, but father would n't let her. He said I 'd live 
 and learn without much Methodist punishment." 
 
 There was no sadness in Mr. Stevenson's voice. He 
 was merely rehearsing facts so long past that they 
 had lost all power to arouse joy or sorrow in him.
 
 256 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Another time mother had all of us boys lined 
 up ready all six of us, all dead now, except your 
 uncle Jim out in Colorado and me she had us all 
 lined up ready for Sunday school. Father was 
 whittling canes. He was always whittling canes. 
 He 's made enough hickory canes in his life to give 
 one to every man in Alston. He sat there whittling 
 and smiling. Then when mother had us all ready, 
 he stood up kind o' slow and looked us all over care- 
 ful. * You look perty good, boys,' he said. * Let's 
 go fishin' .' I '11 never forget how mother looked as 
 she stood there. She just blazed. ' Maybe you think, 
 because you 're a heathen, your children are going to 
 be heathen, too, Mr. Stevenson! But they are not!' 
 And we all went to Sunday school. Father never 
 went. He said that God had played him too many 
 dirty tricks for him to believe in Him. I used to 
 wonder what they were. He 's never told to this day. 
 You could n't get him inside a church." He drank 
 some coffee. " I wonder if he 's sorry now," he 
 added. 
 
 Presently he arose. 
 
 " Maybe he and Matilda are talking over things 
 now," he said. " Matilda " was Hewitt's mother. 
 He then stood looking solemnly out of the back door 
 at the spring sunshine, his hands in his pockets. 
 " Matilda was the only one who could do anything 
 with him when he used to have spells moods. He 
 liked her. I suppose you 'd better call up the Odd 
 Fellows, Hewitt. He never went to the meetings, but
 
 CASTE THREE 257 
 
 he belonged." He walked out into the yard, and they 
 could see him nipping off ends of grapevine with his 
 knife. 
 
 Afterward Hewitt went to work, because Grace in- 
 sisted that he should. 
 
 " There 's not a bit of sense in your staying around 
 here wasting time," she said. " Father will be here 
 all day. I 'm going to lie down after awhile and get 
 some rest. I 've already sent a telegram to your Uncle 
 Jim. He can't get here for the funeral. He has n't 
 paid much attention to your grandfather for years, 
 anyway. Never gave a dollar toward taking care of 
 him. That 's his affair, of course. We did n't need 
 his help. You go to work, Hewie." 
 
 Hewitt demurred, but went. " Be a good boy and 
 mind Grace," came back to him in his mother's words. 
 And in this case he wanted to get back to the store 
 where life was going on without pause, although an 
 old man had passed out of it. 
 
 During the funeral ceremony in the stiff parlor sel- 
 dom used for anything except ceremonies, Hewitt held 
 Grace's arm protectingly, but she was calmer than he 
 was. He felt ashamed of his tears, but they welled 
 up in his eyes and wet his cheeks. His father sat 
 with set lips and vacant eyes, and Hewitt guessed that 
 his mind was on those far-off days when he had been 
 a little boy half -pleased and half-distressed over his 
 father's actions, especially those concerning the rear- 
 ing of the children an old man who did n't believe 
 in God because He had played him too many dirty
 
 258 CASTE THREE 
 
 tricks, never realizing that he was accusing a being by 
 his very expression. 
 
 The carriages full of Methodists and Odd Fellows, 
 whom the old man had never known in his days 
 of living, drove into the clean, neat, wooded cemetery 
 along smooth winding roads, among all the varieties 
 of small or pretentious headstones with which the 
 living commemorate the dead. 
 
 When the services were over, Hewitt told Grace 
 and his father that he would walk home later. Some 
 impulse made him want to remain. He wandered 
 through the thick grass, past the green mounds sur- 
 mounted by their monuments, under the yews, willows, 
 and maples, into the older part of the cemetery. 
 There, where a clear brook made a winding way, with 
 little movement discernible, over the smooth white-and- 
 brown pebbles, he sat down on the bank under a maple 
 and thought. 
 
 Hewitt always thought where other boys of twenty- 
 one acted. 
 
 For a while he was so concerned with the slight 
 evidences of current in the stream that he could not 
 think about what he had intended to think about 
 souls. The water was so clear that he could see the 
 grains of sand moving forward ever so gradually. 
 Some yellow leaves, the fine, thin leaves of a willow 
 farther upstream, floated past in leisurely procession, 
 a stately squadron. 
 
 His mother and his grandfather where were they? 
 In some place outside the sunlight of the May after-
 
 CASTE THREE 259 
 
 noon? He hoped that the place where they were was 
 bright. He hated dullness and mistiness. The heaven 
 of the spiritualists at least Letsky's version of it 
 filled Hewitt with horror. He did n't want his mother 
 to be a misty ghost in misty air, invisible to humans. 
 He wanted her to be in some pleasant, sunny place 
 like this. The graves did not detract from the bright- 
 ness; they only added serenity to it. They quieted 
 what in other parts of the out-of-doors might be the 
 over-brightness of May. In a brilliant blue sky floated 
 white cumulous clouds, fluffy at the top and straight 
 and sturdy across the bottom. They, too, reminded 
 him of ships at sea. It would be very pleasant to think 
 that his mother was in a heaven above the clouds, as 
 he had thought in his younger days. 
 
 He fell to wondering about souls. 
 
 Perhaps his grandfather was really done for, as the 
 Old Testament said, " dust returned to dust." If his 
 mind were something made by a queer mixture of 
 chemicals which no one understood, then probably he 
 was done for. If that were all, a gay life and a short 
 one, youth said. 
 
 Hewitt did not want to be a materialist. There 
 must be something beyond, although wanting some- 
 thing beyond often struck him as being a gross injustice 
 to a God who had given men an earth on which to 
 take their chances at happiness. The unsatisfactory 
 thing about the earth was that so few people procured, 
 despite unrelenting efforts, their happiness there. 
 Some didn't know how to procure it; some snatched
 
 260 CASTE THREE 
 
 and missed; some took it and then lost it; some got 
 only a little piece of it. 
 
 What was soul? Was it a sense of the beautiful, 
 the recognition of the spiritual, man's atom of the 
 infinite, a product of mind that existed only when one 
 wanted it to exist ? He had been in the habit of accus- 
 ing all except the few with a lack of soul. What he 
 meant by that, he decided, attempting to reduce his im- 
 pulsive generalities to their elements, was that all ex- 
 cept the few lacked a perception of the values of living, 
 and of beauty as a factor in those values. They 
 lacked personality, color. 
 
 Mary Young had such a beautiful soul! He was 
 not so sure about his grandfather's. Youth cannot 
 judge of age; it is too hidden in the crust deposited 
 by the years. But there must be a heaven where souls 
 would meet and understand each other. It would only 
 be in such a place that he and Mary Young would love 
 each other, not emotionally, unless emotion became 
 rarefied there, but with complete understanding. All 
 souls would understand, with the curtains of the flesh 
 rent asunder. The pure democracy! 
 
 Hewitt felt, when he was away from Mary, that 
 layer upon layer of things he could not understand, but 
 vaguely apprehended, lay between his soul and hers. 
 There had been instants when she was opaque to him, 
 when no gleam of a soul he could understand shone 
 through. She never seemed to see caste three in its 
 artificial relations to the rest of the world, but only to 
 value it highly as a sphere. She talked about democ-
 
 CASTE THREE 261 
 
 racy to him. She was democratic, she said with pride, 
 meaning that she was not limited by the lines set by 
 caste three. But she was n't democratic. 
 
 Well, if there were only this world, caste three might 
 be wise to set such store upon this one. 
 
 Hewitt decided to go back to the store. He 
 wouldn't work, but he would talk to Mr. Smith and 
 regain a sense of reality he found he often lost now 
 when he was away from people for any length of time. 
 He, the hermit ! 
 
 The business streets of Alston were crowded. 
 Hewitt felt relief in being again in the midst of bus- 
 iness which may pause, but never stops. Living, liv- 
 ing, living! That is death's best challenger. Death 
 can take one, but life goes on. To what inexplicable 
 ultimate conclusion ? The black angel takes his quota, 
 but the world wags on. 
 
 There was a hum of activity in the book-store. Mr. 
 Smith and Mrs. Chancellor were both busy, and they 
 had called in the errand-boy to help. Mr. Smith 
 caught sight of Hewitt and motioned for him. 
 
 " Mary Young called up a while ago. She wants 
 you to telephone her. Yes, we 're busy, but we can 
 manage. We have n't reached the point yet in Smith's 
 where we can't pay some honor to the dead." He 
 patted Hewitt's shoulder in gruff kindliness. 
 
 Death, even when it is your grandfather's, whose 
 age has found no message for your youth, does leave 
 a sting and a depression. Hewitt was glad to hear 
 Mary's voice.
 
 262 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I was just getting ready to run out to play golf 
 with the Millers, but you come down. I want to see 
 you." 
 
 She was dressed in a sheer white dress of lace, filmy 
 lace that showed just the suggestion of her warm neck 
 and arms through its meshes. She took Hewitt's 
 hand. 
 
 " I 'm so sorry. Sit down here with me and talk." 
 
 "I thought you were going to play golf?" he 
 stuttered, touched by her sympathy. 
 
 " I was, but I 'm going to talk to you now." 
 
 " That 's not fair. I can't have you being kind to 
 me when it spoils your fun." 
 
 "I've changed my golf clothes; so don't say any- 
 thing more about my going. I 'm dressed up. Can't 
 you see that? I dressed up for you." 
 
 She looked at him with half -closed eyes and the pro- 
 voking smile. He knew that she wanted to be thanked 
 for being nice to him. And he was in a mood not to 
 be too critical of the desire in her for thanks. He 
 had been he might as well admit it now just a 
 little bored with thinking about the soul. No one 
 could come to a conclusion about such things ; one only 
 changed conclusions. Here it was cheerful and lovely ; 
 death could not penetrate here, he felt sure. There 
 was some conspiracy against thoughts of death in 
 caste three. Hewitt was so extravagantly and frankly 
 worshipful in this mood that Mary enjoyed herself.
 
 CASTE THREE 263 
 
 She let him talk about books a little; but mostly they 
 talked about themselves, and most of all about Mary. 
 Hewitt tried to explain to her how she was different 
 from all the others in Alston, and Mary was as inter- 
 ested as people are when they are told admiringly that 
 they have succeeded in their attempts to distinguish 
 themselves from the commonplace. 
 
 " I must n't let you stay too late, because I am going 
 to Indianapolis for dinner," she told him at length. 
 
 The ancient fury of jealousy blinded Hewitt, but he 
 fought with it until the only indications that it had 
 been there were two mottled red spots under and 
 around his eyes. He tried to remember that he had 
 had almost two hours of her, that she had been sweet 
 and thoughtful on the day he needed her, but the 
 thought of her motoring to Indianapolis with Tom 
 Brandon he felt certain that the man was Tom 
 Brandon, although Mary had never uttered his name 
 to him filled him with a hot disregard for all other 
 facts. The jealousy flared after all. 
 
 "Why do you go to Indianapolis?" he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 " I like to go. I enjoy riding. Don't you want me 
 to be happy? " 
 
 " Of course I do. I want you to be happy." 
 
 But there was no satisfaction in his voice. He 
 wound his ringers in and out and would n't look at 
 her. 
 
 " Going to Indianapolis makes me happy. Then 
 are n't you glad to have me go? "
 
 264 CASTE THREE 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I can't bear having you go with Tom Brandon," 
 he said quickly. 
 
 "With whom?" 
 
 " With Tom Brandon." He did not want to repeat 
 it, but he had to. 
 
 A hard look came into Mary's usually gentle eyes, 
 and she spoke sharply. 
 
 " You can't know that I 'm going with Tom Bran- 
 don, so please don't talk about him." 
 
 He winced visibly and reached for his hat. 
 
 " I don't want to keep you," he said, and tried to 
 make his voice pleasantly indifferent. 
 
 " You aren't keeping me. Sit down, Hewitt! " she 
 commanded, with her old smile. " Don't be silly." 
 
 " I always seem to be silly, in your estimation," he 
 said, with a touch of bitterness. 
 
 " You are being silly to-day. You 're jealous. 
 There 's no use being jealous, dear. I like you aw- 
 fully, but you 're only a child. And I have to be 
 happy! " 
 
 The last was a cry not for him, but for life. Mary 
 was saying this almost defiantly, to something outside 
 of him and of her. Hewitt's jealousy died a quick and 
 shamed death. He sat down and gazed at her. 
 
 " I know," he said, just as though he did. " I 'm 
 sorry I acted that way. I 'm a brute. I understand 
 better than you think, even if I am a youngster to 
 you. I love you, Mary." There was an unexpected 
 eloquence in his voice. " I do want you to be happy.
 
 CASTE THREE 265 
 
 I 'd do anything in the world to make you happy. If 
 I bother you, send me away." 
 
 " You don't bother me. You help me. I like you 
 awfully. I sometimes think you really do understand, 
 in a way most men don't." She was intimately appeal- 
 ing. " Some time I want you to do something big. 
 Don't drivel. Be a man! Now you must run home. 
 I have to dress for dinner." 
 
 Hewitt got up with a feeling of finding his head in 
 a different place from where he expected to find it. 
 He smiled dimly and went out the door without look- 
 ing back that is, he intended not to look back, but 
 Mary's voice, gaily determined to be forgetful of all 
 that she had been saying, broke in. 
 
 " We have both been silly this time. Let 's forget 
 it and just be happy. Be a good boy. Laugh at every- 
 thing. Good-bye." 
 
 She had pulled a mask off and on again, and while 
 she had sat barefaced, he had seen Mary crying out for 
 something which life had n't given and might never 
 give her. He was n't sure what that something was. 
 But the mask was on again, and she would probably so 
 regret having pulled it off, if only for an instant, that 
 she would be all the gayer that night for Tom Bran- 
 don. 
 
 The subdued feeling which had been his all day, be- 
 cause of death, was still upon Hewitt. A Sunday quiet 
 was in the air for him. Some children were riding 
 a pony down the Trimble driveway as he went out. 
 Some others were roller-skating down the walk, happily
 
 266 CASTE THREE 
 
 unaware of any unsatisfactoriness in life. Perhaps 
 life was kind to them because they demanded so little. 
 Here was material for a philosophy. 
 
 What puppets we are, even caste three, the seem- 
 ingly impregnable. Are we ever rid of a sense of 
 our puppetry? Or is it only the Hewitts who are 
 cursed, or only youth which is cursed, with the remem- 
 brance of it?
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 PEOPLE have attempted to dispense with the law 
 of rhythm at various times in the history of the 
 individual and of the race. But law is law, and at- 
 tempts to set aside natural law have seldom proved suc- 
 cessful. In the workings of the emotions the law is 
 so clear that he who runs may read, because the emo- 
 tions are complex reactions difficult to analyze, but 
 clear of expression. Take the law of rhythm, for 
 example. There is no ecstasy without an accompany- 
 ing depression, no rise without a fall. If love is very, 
 very good to you to-day, to-morrow it will be very, 
 very distasteful or next week or next month. You 
 can't evade this law, except by staying safely and com- 
 fortably out of love, and then fate laughs and sends 
 you pell-mell into some other law concerned with other 
 emotions. 
 
 Hewitt's beautiful week came to an end. It did 
 not end until after he had composed his first love letter, 
 but it did end. With some relief he reached Smith's 
 store the morning after his grandfather's funeral. He 
 had been weltering in emotion, and satiety was re- 
 gretable. Another law. The mind loves a level, just 
 as it loves to desert the level and then to return to it. 
 
 He was business-like and pleasant. He wanted to 
 267
 
 268 CASTE THREE 
 
 eliminate the personal element from his affairs and ad- 
 just the flood of impressions that had rushed in upon 
 him without giving him time to masticate, digest, and 
 assimilate them properly. Unpacking magazines was 
 fun. One was dealing with paper, which is paper and 
 nothing else that one cares to wonder about. If he 
 had not been so determinedly business-like, he would 
 have been annoyed when Mrs. Chancellor came back 
 to help him. He wanted to be alone with things. He 
 wanted to adjust his new experiences until they became 
 a part of him. So it is with the egotist. 
 
 When the magazines were arranged in neat piles, 
 with the unpopular high-brow and mechanical journals 
 at one end, Hewitt set to work to clear the stationery 
 display from one window. Mr. Smith had told him to 
 put in office-supplies when he had time. By nine- 
 thirty, with the aid of the errand boy, he had the win- 
 dow filled with an office-desk, lights, paper, filing cab- 
 inets, and an adding-machine. By using pasteboard 
 sets of human figures, sent out by the adding-machine 
 company, the whole assumed a semblance of reality, 
 with a man at the desk and a girl at the machine. 
 Hewitt walked out to the street to take toll of his work. 
 The survey pleased him. 
 
 Mr. Smith stopped as he came in. 
 
 " What 's the matter with putting a dictionary at the 
 side of the desk there?" he asked. 
 
 " Had n't thought of it. I '11 put it in. How does 
 it all look?" 
 
 " Pretty 'good. I thought for a minute that it was
 
 CASTE THREE 269 
 
 a real girl. Coming down the street, it looks natural 
 as life. That adding-machine manufacturing concern 
 puts out good ads, does n't it? Good stuff." Then he 
 was gruffer than usual in his " good-morning " to Mrs. 
 Chancellor, by which Hewitt understood that ke really 
 was admiring the window. " Might change that other 
 window some day," he called from his desk. " I '11 
 give you a free hand with that one. You can put what 
 you like in it, and we '11 see what happens. Just so you 
 don't have us all in jail." 
 
 Under this stimulus Hewitt hatched plans for 
 making cards to advertise the new books Mr. Smith 
 had allowed him to order. " I '11 sell every one of 
 those or bust," was his inner decision. 
 
 " Come here, Hewitt ; I want you to write a letter 
 for me," Mr. Smith called to him. " And say," he 
 added in a confidential tone, " you can write this one 
 yourself from what I tell you. My writing is pretty 
 hard to make out, I guess." 
 
 By eleven Hewitt's concern with " things " had be- 
 come less intense. The law of rhythm was working. 
 
 He began to think about Mary. Mary had gone to 
 Indianapolis to dinner with Tom Brandon. While he 
 mechanically sold pens, pencils, and typewriting-paper 
 to a boy from Preston's, Hewitt followed Mary in 
 Tom's roadster over twilit roads to the city. Then 
 they went to a hotel for dinner. Mary would be en- 
 tirely at home in the atmosphere of the dining urban- 
 ites. The noise and color and music, combined with 
 the idea that this was the proper thing to stimulate the
 
 270 CASTE THREE 
 
 best people, would stimulate her. She would be 
 amused in a way in which she could never be amused 
 by the companionship of Hewitt, who lacked the pres- 
 tige to create excitement. Mary loved excitement. 
 He wondered if that was what she meant by happiness. 
 She demanded people with prestige and money to ob- 
 tain happiness. After that, what? Hewitt wondered. 
 
 Long, long ago, before he had met Mary, Hewitt 
 had a dim ideal of a woman, formulated in Chicago 
 where he came in contact with few women. This 
 woman out of the mist of the ideal had been a sensible 
 person, interested in a home and children and a garden, 
 a " homey " sort of person devoted to one man. They 
 the woman and the man sat on the veranda or 
 in the garden, which was, by the way, full of old-fash- 
 ioned holly-hocks and larkspur and bachelor buttons 
 and daisies and forget-me-nots and roses, talking about 
 their day and their children. A very sentimental af- 
 fair, especially when they began to talk about their 
 love for one another! 
 
 But Hewitt had been very fond of that woman. She 
 had worn dresses of plain linen, or even gingham, with 
 snowy collars and cuffs and low-heeled shoes. Her 
 hair was wavy and worn low on her slender column of 
 a neck. It was of gold. A very simple, beautiful, 
 lovable woman. 
 
 Since Mary Young had come into his life, Hewitt 
 had almost forgotten the other. Now she came back 
 into his mind as he wrapped up the office-supplies for 
 the boy from Preston's and made a record of the
 
 CASTE THREE 271 
 
 charge on the books dealing with the wholesale part of 
 the Smith trade. This woman of former dreams did 
 not find many people necessary to her existence. She 
 was content with the few; her happiness was within 
 her family. She and Mary would have had nothing in 
 common. Mary married ? Hewitt could not imagine 
 it. She was meant to suck the honey from a thousand 
 flowers, to fly through the sunshine from field to field 
 under a May sky flecked with soft clouds. Hers was 
 the sweetness drawn from a thousand sources. She 
 was meant to be loved by a hundred men. The world 
 was dull, unless she was of your part of it. Color 
 followed her. Lesser lights came into play when she 
 was absent, just as the moon and stars signal to one 
 another when the sun has gone, but they were not the 
 right lights. Mary was the sun. People knew that 
 she was. Ernestine Smith never went to a party unless 
 Mary was going to be there. Katherine Miller was 
 guided in all the details of her daily living by Mary. 
 Tom Brandon's sister refused to be made happy unless 
 Mary stayed with her at least a fourth of the time. 
 Abe Kahn's children had attached her to their house- 
 hold years before, and fought off all more youthful 
 acquaintances when they could have Mary. Hewitt 
 wondered if anyone ever played bridge in Alston with- 
 out Mary. 
 
 Wonderful Mary! She seemed to give all of her- 
 self to anyone she singled out as worthy of any part 
 of her. If you were important to Mary, she saw to 
 it that you became important to the world. She de-
 
 272 CASTE THREE 
 
 rided you, jested with you, pointed out your defects 
 to you , but to the world you were all wool and a 
 yard wide. 
 
 Hewitt sold a cheap story-magazine to a traveling 
 salesman and wondered how a man could endure wast- 
 ing his time over it. People, it seemed to him, actually 
 ran away from wisdom and courted vapidity. Such 
 is the intolerance of youth. 
 
 It was not until late afternoon that the reaction from 
 the emotionalism of the day before had worn itself out, 
 and emotion again became important. Hewitt had not 
 been emotional about Mary in the morning, only an- 
 alytical. That was an act of digestion. But when 
 Mary had been assimilated, she crept into his feelings 
 with extraordinary rapidity. Every item showing how 
 other people loved her added to his own reasons for 
 loving her. 
 
 He called her over the telephone, with the hope of 
 hearing her voice. He had not seen her for nearly 
 twenty-four hours and she had been out of Alston, an 
 experience that might have changed her. He could 
 hardly get to the telephone quickly enough, once he 
 decided to call her. Mary was playing golf at the 
 club, Mrs. Trimble told him. 
 
 Hewitt was disappointed. He felt, indeed, as if she 
 had gone to the club on purpose to evade him. But 
 this feeling passed. 
 
 Presently Hewitt decided to write her a note. He 
 selected a box of stationery with care. It must be 
 white, but he had difficulty deciding between the square
 
 CASTE THREE 273 
 
 and conventional club envelopes. He eventually 
 bought the conventional variety. He did n't want this 
 affair of writing a note to seem too studied. 
 
 The first note he composed, Hewitt wrote pains- 
 takingly. The writing, upon examination at comple- 
 tion, was deplorably neat and unlike his usual sprawl- 
 ing, broad-lined hand. The expression was stiff and 
 formal. It might have been addressed to Mrs. Patton 
 or Mrs. Lombard well, not quite that, but it was 
 formal. He tore it into small pieces and deposited 
 them carelessly in a waste-paper basket by Mr. Smith's 
 desk, and then, feeling that it was too conspicuous by 
 reason of the smallness of the bits, tore up an old letter 
 in the basket and spread the pieces over the first. 
 
 Incidentally, Hewitt did some work for Mr. Smith's 
 store, his salary demanding such service. Then he 
 went back to the note again. 
 
 Hewitt had long before seen that Mary was prima- 
 rily interested in him because he had intellectual tend- 
 encies. Had he arrived as a stranger in Alston, with 
 no claims to distinction as a thinker, he would have 
 been ignored by Mary. He did not feel slighted by 
 this knowledge; all the world was distinctive by ac- 
 complishment or inheritance, and was admired for 
 that distinctiveness by others in the world. The intel- 
 lectual was an indissoluble part of his youthful being. 
 Mary Young was indispensable to caste three because 
 of her possession through inheritance and training of 
 a vivid personality. It was no more to his discredit 
 that he be not indispensable, but important, to Mary
 
 274 CASTE THREE 
 
 because of his bias toward the intellectual. If Mary 
 valued him primarily for his intellectualism, and this 
 note failed to show the quality horrible! 
 
 Hewitt dashed off the next note in his natural, 
 sprawling, broad-lined writing, dashes doing for other 
 marks of punctuation. The capitals were printed ; the 
 whole was spontaneous looking. It was thoughtless 
 and careless in appearance, unworthy of him. He 
 slipped this draft under a pile of clean paper and 
 reached down a book for Mrs. Chancellor from the top 
 shelf. 
 
 " But this is n't the Mark Twain he wants," she 
 laughed, when Hewitt got down from the steps, holding 
 the copy of " Huckleberry Finn " out to him. 
 
 " We have n't ' Tom Sawyer.' Tell her that 's just 
 as good." 
 
 Hewitt returned to his writing with a hidden im- 
 patience. He had been standing at a back show-case, 
 but now he sat down at Mr. Smith's desk with a sigh 
 of relief. By compromising between the neat and the 
 careless, he finally produced a note which was satisfac- 
 tory to his critical eye. " Ma Cherie/' it began, that 
 being a phrase Hewitt had culled lately from his ex- 
 ceedingly elementary study of French. 
 
 Ma Cherie: 
 
 I wonder if you are happy to-day you who so want hap- 
 piness. 
 
 If happiness were a fruit to be plucked from the highest 
 bough of a tree, I would climb and bring it down to lay it 
 in the lap of my love.
 
 CASTE THREE 275 
 
 But happiness is a vegetable in one's own garden, planted 
 and tended by one's own hands, giving sometimes greatly, 
 sometimes niggardly. 
 
 It is not a plant easily brought to fruit. 
 
 In such a garden as that of your soul, it should give 
 greatly, more often than niggardly, however. 
 
 You are so beautiful and splendid, ma Cherie, like a fine 
 flower that a gardener has brought to blossom by plucking 
 away the other buds and allowing the juices of the plant to 
 flow only into this one. 
 
 HEWITT. 
 
 He reread this note with growing dissatisfaction. 
 He seemed to have been obsessed by that garden figure. 
 One might think him the product of his father's wishes, 
 to judge by that note. It was poetic and true, he 
 thought, but you did n't need to run an idea in the 
 ground just because it was a good one. 
 
 But Hewitt didn't write it over again. It and 
 he should stand or fall on its merits. He addressed 
 it, careful to keep the same compromise between neat- 
 ness and carelessness as he had used in the note itself. 
 He surveyed the inscribed envelope with critical pride. 
 
 When Mr. Smith came to look over business before 
 going home, Hewitt asked him if he might run down 
 the street for a minute. 
 
 " I want to attend to some business," he said, half- 
 abashed. 
 
 " Run ahead, Son. I 'm not a bear." 
 
 Hewitt walked with dignity down Meridian Street, 
 with greater dignity than usually marked his carriage. 
 It was the result of his inclination to run and a con-
 
 276 CASTE THREE 
 
 trolling determination to disregard this inclination, 
 both of which were due to his holding his first love- 
 letter in his hand. 
 
 The Lombard car swung into Eleventh Street as he 
 was crossing it. Hewitt looked quickly into it, afraid 
 lest he should see Mary Young. She was not there, 
 and relief released his taut heart and allowed it to 
 settle again into place. 
 
 At the telegraph-office he covered his trembling con- 
 fusion with a debonnair assumption that sending love- 
 notes was an everyday matter with people, and es- 
 pecially commonplace to him. 
 
 " Send a boy with this note, will you ? " he told the 
 woman at the desk, and placed a dime on it. 
 
 Then he sauntered out. He repeated the words of 
 the note to himself as he walked. "If happiness were 
 a fruit to be plucked from the highest branch of a tree, 
 I would climb and bring it down to lay it in the lap 
 of my love." Next he repeated that phrase about a 
 vegetable; " beautiful and splendid, like a fine flower 
 that a gardener has brought to blossom by plucking " 
 Hewitt's heart behaved in the way it was accustomed 
 to behave when he saw Mary. Suddenly he stopped. 
 " Plucked ! " He had used that word twice! He had 
 repeated it! The joy was instantly gone out of his 
 first love-letter. Repetition of a noticeable word! 
 The error was irreparable. Mary would notice it. 
 Any intellectual would notice such a thing. 
 
 When he reached the store, Hewitt was silent while 
 he watched the crowds pass the windows. He was
 
 CASTE THREE 277 
 
 waiting for Mrs. Chancellor to come to the front of 
 the store so that he could go home to supper. He had 
 practically spoiled that letter, he decided. 
 
 "Where's the meat, Hewie?" Grace asked him at 
 the door. 
 
 Vacancy. 
 
 " You did n't forget that meat, did you ? I told you 
 at noon, just as you got up from the table, to stop at 
 the Checkered Front grocery and get a slice of ham for 
 supper, because I thought that after I cooked a big 
 dinner to-day, a slice of ham with gravy would be 
 enough for supper. You remember that I told you? " 
 
 Her white forehead, which always seemed about to 
 break into perspiration, did so now. She sighed over 
 the idiosyncrasies of Man, and wiped her fat white 
 hands upon her apron. 
 
 " I '11 go back," said Man resignedly, as he always 
 is resigned before the sighing scorn of Woman. " I 
 forgot all about it." 
 
 " It '11 make supper so late that you '11 hardly get 
 back to the store on time. I don't see why you don't 
 remember things. You get moodier .every day. 
 You 're always thinking about something, but never 
 about the thing you ought to be thinking about. 
 You" 
 
 Woman was maligning the thinker, but Hewitt was 
 out of hearing. The end of the beautiful week was 
 not yet.
 
 278 CASTE THREE 
 
 Mary called Hewitt up that night when the store 
 was deserted. She had loved the note. He must 
 write her another one some time. She was proud of 
 being a flower. This last remark was meant to be 
 funny, because Mary gurgled into the telephone as 
 she said it. Hewitt was not amused, however. Those 
 phrases were sacred, in a way, and he did n't want her 
 to talk about them so that other people could hear her. 
 He was afraid the Trimbles were not away. 
 
 " What kind of a flower do you think I am? " she 
 asked him, with more gurgling. She must think that 
 awfully funny! So Hewitt decided not to be outdone 
 in a sense of humor, and laughed too. 
 
 " I think you are a blazing sun-flower." 
 
 " Oh, no ! I refuse to be. I want to be a rose or 
 an orchid or something expensive." 
 
 "If you are intent on expense, I '11 say an orchid, 
 then. That fits you." 
 
 " You mean that I 'm expensive? " 
 
 " Rather, I should imagine. That 's one reason why 
 I 'm not going to marry you." 
 
 " Are there any others ? " 
 
 " No. That 's enough." 
 
 " I 'm not expensive. I 'm not at all expensive ! 
 I 'm simple in my tastes. I 'm a simple maid with a 
 few desires. I could put that in a song, could n't I ? 
 * A simple maid with few desires.' It sounds like 
 poetry, I think." 
 
 " You are a song." 
 
 " You 're making fun of me. Please, will you write
 
 CASTE THREE 279 
 
 me another note some time? And make me a song? " 
 
 " Yes," he said very low into the mouthpiece, his 
 voice full of significance. 
 
 " Good-night," came faintly, reluctantly. 
 
 Hewitt was angry when a young manufacturer who 
 had shown evidence of having ideas during a conversa- 
 tion earlier in the spring came in to buy some news- 
 papers. He was a young man " with a head," that 
 term representing to Hewitt the highest praise he could 
 bestow on a fellow human being; but who wants a 
 mood of quiet ecstasy, generated by speech with Mary 
 Young, to be broken into by any young man's conver- 
 sation, head or no head? 
 
 " Fine day," said the young manufacturer, pausing 
 before he went out. 
 
 " Mighty fine," assented Hewitt, examining a bottle 
 of ink on the counter and wondering who under 
 heaven had left it there, and then remembering that 
 he had left it there himself. 
 
 " I suppose you have n't made any arrangements for 
 building a skyscraper across the street where that res- 
 taurant and shoe-shining shop are? " the manufacturer 
 continued, ready to break into a laugh when Hewitt 
 showed appreciation of this thrust. 
 
 " No. I thought I 'd let you build a park, and if I 
 liked the fishing, I 'd change my plans about sky- 
 scrapers," said Hewitt, but there was no invitation to 
 continue the discussion. 
 
 " Well, we '11 see," smiled the man, and walked out, 
 scanning the head-lines of his paper.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE beautiful week did end, of course. 
 It ended on Saturday afternoon. Hewitt was 
 working hard, because there was always a rush on the 
 last day of the week when the country people surged 
 into Alston to buy anything from a shoe to a tooth, 
 the latter from the advertising dentists who had " par- 
 lors " in the building next to the best drug-store. 
 Saturday, consequently, was not Hewitt's best think- 
 ing day. He was driven to action by necessity, and 
 his mind became muddled with impressions, distinct 
 among which was a wavering line of customers who 
 were definite or indefinite in their demands, according 
 as they were positive or passive of temperament. He 
 hated Saturdays with an awful hat/ed, although no 
 one, to observe his smile and his readiness for service, 
 would have guessed the blackness of mood that lay be- 
 hind it. 
 
 During the afternoon, when the store was most 
 crowded, Ernestine Smith ran in the door and went 
 back to her father. She did not wait for him to finish 
 with his customer, but burst into the middle of the 
 transaction. 
 
 " Daddy, we want to use the gasoline car this after- 
 noon! Katherine Miller has a guest from Chicago, 
 
 280
 
 CASTE THREE 281 
 
 and we are going to drive over to Marion for dinner. 
 You call for my ' electric,' if you want a car, will 
 you? " 
 
 Mr. Smith, in his usual role of doting parent, did 
 not mind using the ' electric,' and Ernestine was off 
 through the open door to the car outside. In it 
 Hewitt could see Katherine and some other girls 
 and Mary Young ! After the first glance he had eyes 
 only for Mary. She wore a drooping black hat and 
 a dark suit. She was leaning forward to talk to a 
 girl who must be the guest, and her eyes were eager. 
 Here was another person to impress! This idea 
 popped into Hewitt's mind, but he thrust it out again. 
 He refused to be disloyal to wonderful Mary. 
 
 She did not look in, though he was consumed with 
 a desire to have her do so. She was still leaning 
 forward eagerly when the car went off. 
 
 Hewitt turned back to his work with a sinking heart. 
 The world was, after all, a bleak affair, where one 
 wanted and wanted, and only found a crumb here 
 and there. What did he want? Well, just now he 
 wanted to be out of a beastly town where a leisure 
 class, intent upon amusing itself, flung its leisurely 
 enjoyment into your face and made you feel like a 
 worm whose work was useless, whose existence was 
 unimportant. " A person of no importance," he 
 paraphrased from Wilde, with a tinge of bitterness. 
 
 Thinking had then to give away to action, because 
 a doctor wanted to order a new book and a woman 
 in a lacy hat with a vacuous smile under it, wanted
 
 282 CASTE THREE 
 
 a fifty-cent box of pink stationery. Hewitt had a 
 notion to ask her whether she did not know that real 
 women did not use pink stationery in their corres- 
 pondence, women, that is, who counted, women like 
 Mary Young. Yes, after all, Mary was the one who 
 counted. And what was she? A clever woman who 
 chose to amuse herself. That was what Hewitt's 
 ideals of Woman had come to. All other women who 
 worked and strove and thought they had receded 
 unadmired into the background. Mrs. Chancellor, his 
 fellow-clerk, whose husband was dead Grace knew 
 all about how he had died, with not a thing to eat 
 in the house at the time worked all day and every 
 day, with no prospect of a pause in her labor, to sup- 
 port herself and her little girl. She washed and ironed 
 at night, and sewed when she could get a minute from 
 her work at the store. Mrs. Chancellor he had come 
 to regard as a very commonplace woman who did not 
 count. Grace, the soul of loyalty to everything bear- 
 ing the name of Stevenson, did not count. Women 
 who worked for art or social reform or charity or 
 families or any ideal did not count. No one counted, 
 except leisure-class, parasitic Mary Young! 
 
 A parasite on society. That was what she was. 
 So was Ernestine Smith and Katherine Miller and 
 Charlotte Hendricks and every other young girl in Al- 
 ston who cared about nothing in the world except 
 amusement. They spent all their days and nights 
 amusing themselves, or resting up so that they might 
 continue to amuse themselves. Society in the large
 
 CASTE THREE 283 
 
 could go hang, for all these young caste three women 
 cared! They were selfish, egotistic, yet without the 
 brains to be egoistic ! 
 
 Again business put a temporary stop to Hewitt's 
 thought. 
 
 The week beautiful was, indeed, ending. 
 
 No person should count who did not help in the 
 world's work. Altruism was an advance over selfish- 
 ness. Yet these parasites how he grew to love 
 that word ! hardly knew the meaning of altruism. 
 They were the sort who had been sucking the good 
 out of society and putting nothing back for genera- 
 tions of idlers! They were the same sort of pluto- 
 crats who had lived off the toil of generations of 
 sweat-shop workers of one kind or another since 
 society became specialized enough to sustain a pluto- 
 cracy. That their sustenance was derived from their 
 fathers' unsweated businesses as Ernestine's was 
 had no bearing, as far as Hewitt was concerned. 
 Some one paid for what they spent in leisure. Some 
 one had to work harder, in order that they might have 
 leisure. That was the law. 
 
 Mary Young was even worse than the others. She 
 did n't have enough money to entirely pay her own 
 way; she stayed in caste three by flattering the back- 
 bone of the caste, by being eager and zestful and 
 putting value on what they possessed by her interest 
 in it, by making others think themselves indispensable 
 to her and by proving that she was indispensable to 
 them. Here was parasitism of the worst order!
 
 284 CASTE THREE 
 
 Writhing with denunciations, Hewitt nearly lost 
 a sale. 
 
 The world was a beastly mess, anyway. People 
 who had clever heads got on. Work wasn't going 
 to get a man anywhere, unless it were science, where 
 you dealt with nature, which had n't any illusions 
 to be rilled with air of man's making. Cleverness 
 was all that counted! The people who were deter- 
 mined to help society help itself didn't get on in a 
 worldly way. They the scientists, artists, edu- 
 cators, and scholars gave their lives and received 
 a kick, like as not. A superintendent of schools in 
 a nearby town the size of Alston had committed 
 suicide the week before. Mr. Smith had known him. 
 
 " Fine man. Gave his life for that school system. 
 And what did he get out of it? They kicked him 
 into the wall when they got the chance." So Mr. 
 Smith had spoken in wrath. A biologist whom Mr. 
 Woody knew had spent his life in studying South 
 American fish, with the purpose of attempting to put 
 another link in the evolutionary theory. He lived 
 with five children on a sum which Mr. Smith would 
 have considered a mere pittance for two. And be- 
 cause he was a professor in a university, he had to keep 
 up an appearance of living respectably. 
 
 Some day the world would find out that men who 
 fooled them or built railroads for them or cornered 
 their food supply were not such men as those who gave 
 their lives and energies to society without adequate 
 pay. The world, as Hewitt saw it on that Saturday
 
 CASTE THREE 28? 
 
 afternoon at the end of the beautiful week, was a 
 vast conglomeration of mediocre people who wor- 
 shipped other mediocre people who supplied them with 
 ideals of material gain. Money, money, money! It 
 was a grand old world. The brilliant people who did 
 worthwhile things? The Lord save them; the 
 mediocre people surely would n't. It paid, then, to 
 pitch into life and take what you wanted. Grab 
 everything in sight! 
 
 This train of thought left Hewitt hot and exhausted. 
 He made the world's ingratitude a personal matter, 
 as though he had done something to deserve gratitude 
 and then had n't received it. In calmer moments he 
 knew that scientists and scholars and artists and public 
 servants have joys the masses know not of, but these 
 moments at the end of the beautiful week were not 
 notably calm. They might be called stormy moments, 
 and Mary, the cause of this distaste for a materialistic 
 world, continued to be joyful in the Smiths' car. 
 Hewitt could follow her in his mind's eye between 
 spurts of work. 
 
 :< Yon Cassius looks like some one I know," said 
 a voice that sounded familiar. 
 
 Hewitt whirled around. Kenneth Reed was com- 
 ing toward him. 
 
 " Why so lean and hungry, like any Caesar's ghost? " 
 
 Hewitt lost some of his melancholy and became 
 more un-Cassius-like. 
 
 " Gee, I 'm glad to see you, Reed ! Sit down until 
 I can get rid of this approaching customer."
 
 286 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I can't sit down ; I'm in. a. hurry. I 'm in this 
 town for one hour between trains. I 'm then off on 
 the ' traction ' for the north of this grand old Hoosier 
 state. Thence to Chicago. What shall I tell Paul 
 and his wife? " 
 
 " Tell them I wish No, don't." 
 
 "Who's kicked you now?" 
 
 " Nobody, but this town palls on one." 
 
 "Sure. How's Mary Young?" 
 
 " She and the Alston elite are out amusing them- 
 selves." Sarcasm would creep in, despite Hewitt. 
 
 " Don't be harsh, boy. What do you expect young 
 ladies to do? Not to work and spoil their com- 
 plexions, I hope? " 
 
 Hewitt laughed, and suddenly became ashamed of 
 his labels of parasite and egotist. A beautiful woman 
 might be her own excuse for existing. There 
 would n't be much use in having everybody with a 
 decent amount of work and leisure, if there were n't 
 people like Mary in the world to make life jolly after- 
 wards. 
 
 " But look here, brother," Reed continued, when the 
 customer had left, " don't fall in love with Mary 
 Young. She 's not your kind, and she 's been in the 
 game enough years to take what she wants without 
 caring who 's hurt. So stay out of the woods, even 
 if you do have a little gun you think is pretty good. 
 D'you hear?" 
 
 Hewitt looked up quickly from the box he was 
 unpacking. Immediately he returned to his work, to
 
 CASTE THREE 287 
 
 cover the flush that he could feel rising in his cheeks. 
 He wanted to tell Reed to mind his own business, 
 but telling him would give away the fact that he had 
 fallen in love with Mary Young. So he kept on with 
 the box until he felt himself growing calm again. 
 
 When he arose, brushing his palms against one an- 
 other, he pulled Reed's head forward in great good 
 humor and laughed. 
 
 " Don't worry about Mary, old sour grapes. Bet 
 you 're in love with her yourself." 
 
 " You 're off the track." Reed examined Hewitt 
 with a frown. Then he laughed. " We all have 
 to learn," he said with a grin. " I 'm off," he added 
 soon after. " Well, this life and the next one, maybe. 
 So long, Stevenson." 
 
 Hewitt watched him stride down Meridian Street 
 toward the traction station. 
 
 Recommendations to save ourselves, even when the 
 danger is imminent and discernible, are likely to be 
 de trop. 
 
 After supper he composed another note to Mary. 
 
 Alston is very black to-day, because you are not in it. I 
 suppose they hardly need any electric-lights in Marion to- 
 night. 
 
 To me, you are the sun and the moon and the seven stars. 
 
 I hope you are happy. If you are not, call to me and I 
 will come, like David the shepherd boy, when the devils en- 
 tered into Saul. My harp will be magic, because I am play- 
 ing to you. YOUR DEVOTEE. 
 
 P. S. Didn't you think to look into Smith's this after- 
 noon?
 
 288 CASTE THREE 
 
 Hewitt decided to send this note by mail. A mes- 
 senger would get to the Trimble house before Mary 
 arrived home, he was afraid. He put it in his pocket. 
 On further thought, however, he decided to go to a 
 florist's shop and send it with some flowers. In tre- 
 pidation he chose a corsage bouquet of roses and sweet 
 peas. 
 
 " Don't send them until after nine," he said. " Oh, 
 yes," he added, with an elaborate effect of careless- 
 ness, " put this note in with them." 
 
 After that the world seemed less the haunt of the 
 mediocre idealizing the mediocre and more a normal 
 state where you got some of the things you wanted, 
 if you played the game with enough skill. You prob- 
 ably wanted too much, anyway. 
 
 Mary thanked him for the flowers with a note. 
 
 You are a sweet boy to send Mary the corsage. She is 
 wearing it to-day to dinner. It looks boo'ful ! The note 
 was boo'ful, too. 
 
 I am so sorry I forgot to look in. We were in such a 
 hurry, and Katherine had a guest. 
 
 MARY. 
 
 Hewitt folded this in his pocket, and wore it out 
 with reading. There was no word in it of when he 
 was to see her again. 
 
 The next week, when he had gone three days with- 
 out seeing her, he wrote another letter. 
 
 Mary: 
 
 Where are the sun and the moon and the seven stars? 
 David plays to himself on a harp which gives forth only
 
 CASTE THREE 289 
 
 dull music. It is not a magic harp, because Saul has never 
 listened to its notes. " Where is Saul ? " David calls out 
 in anguish, and " Where is Saul ? " comes back the echo. 
 
 No reply came to this note. Hewitt learned in- 
 directly, through Mr. Smith, that Mary was assisting 
 Ernestine in giving a series of parties at the Country 
 Club. 
 
 " We 've had a house full of people for a week, 
 dumn it!" said Mr. Smith one morning. "I wish 
 all the men in this state who have young daughters 
 would keep them at home." 
 
 Despite this outburst, however, he told Hewitt one 
 noon, after he had appeared in the morning in his 
 best suit and hat and a clean, unspotted vest, with a 
 new black ribbon on his glasses, that he would not be 
 back until late. 
 
 " Luncheon at the Grand. I 'm giving it," he 
 added, jerking his glasses the length of their cord. 
 " They may leave now, Son these dumn guests of 
 Ernestine's. Don't ever have guests, Hewitt. Or a 
 daughter, either. They 're unhandy. They want you 
 to do things you don't want to." 
 
 The three days lengthened into two weeks, and still 
 Hewitt had not seen Mary. The Smith guests had all 
 gone to their respective homes, to Mr. Smith's ex- 
 pressed delight. Hewitt wondered if Mary had gone 
 away, and just as he had decided that this conclusion 
 was correct, she came into the store with Katherine 
 Miller. They wanted bridge score-cards, original 
 ones, if Smith's had any, Katherine said, without
 
 290 CASTE THREE 
 
 seeming to remember that she had ever been intro- 
 duced to Hewitt. Mary smiled at him and went on 
 talking to Katherine. 
 
 " I do wish we had sent to Chicago. There 's a 
 little shop on Michigan Avenue where you can get the 
 dearest ones. Hand-painted, you know. Prettier 
 than the ones Mildred Patton got in Indianapolis last 
 week." 
 
 " I '11 send for some next time," Katherine said. 
 " I '11 take a dozen of these," she added to Hewitt. 
 
 He was slow in wrapping them. 
 
 " How 's Hewitt?" Mary asked, when he handed 
 the package to them. 
 
 " All right," he said listlessly. 
 
 When they had disappeared down the street, he 
 walked to the back door and stood looking into the 
 alley. A rural mail-delivery wagon was drawing up 
 at the back door of the post-office. A bearded old man 
 climbed out and exchanged jocularities with a loafer 
 on the steps. Disagreeable smells from a restaurant 
 on Eleventh Street permeated the air. The smell of 
 cooking onions came to Hewitt. He hated it. 
 Through the trees on the lawn next to the post-office 
 he could see some wagons trundling along, and a girl 
 was talking to a young man on the sidewalk. Some 
 children bumped a hoop into them, and ran off without 
 seeming to care. 
 
 The air was warm, and a gust of wind brought a 
 stronger scent of cooking onions. They smelled 
 awful! Hewitt sat down on a low table back of
 
 CASTE THREE 291 
 
 Mr. Smith's desk. Those onions made him sick. 
 He grew white about the mouth and a pained look 
 deepened in his eyes. Things took to swimming be- 
 fore him. 
 
 He presently decided to go around to the drug- 
 store on Eleventh Street and get something to quiet 
 his churning stomach, but when he tried to get up, 
 everything turned black and he had to sit down again. 
 He leaned his head on his hand and wished he had 
 some cold ice-water, with lemon. 
 
 "What's the matter, Son?" Mr. Smith asked, 
 when he came back to his desk. " Not sick, are you? 
 You 'd better go home. What can I get for you ? 
 You look white as a sheet. Mrs. Chancellor, come 
 here ! Do something for this boy. He looks like he 's 
 going to faint! " 
 
 Mrs. Chancellor sent Mr. Smith to the drug-store 
 and bathed Hewitt's face in cold water, though he 
 resented this sturdily and wanted to be let alone. 
 
 " I 'm all right," he kept saying. " I '11 go home in 
 a minute. I 'm all right. Don't bother." 
 
 Mr. Smith brought the iced liquid the prescription 
 clerk had prepared for him. 
 
 "Drink this, boy!" he roared, as gently as any 
 sucking dove, and mopped his forehead and might 
 have been sick himself, to judge from the worried 
 look on his face. 
 
 Mrs. Chancellor held Hewitt's head. 
 
 " I always have these spells," he said in- 
 distinctly, " in hot weather sometimes."
 
 292 CASTE THREE 
 
 He opened his eyes to drink the liquid they gave 
 him, and then lay back against the desk and closed 
 his eyes. 
 
 " It was those onions ! " he murmured apolo- 
 getically. "The smell always makes me sick." 
 
 " You 'd better sit still for a while," Mrs. Chan- 
 cellor said in her gentle voice. 
 
 " I '11 send for the car. I '11 take you home," said 
 Mr. Smith, still mopping. " Dumn it! If I didn't 
 think he was going to faint ! " 
 
 " I 'm all right," Hewitt reiterated, trying to sit up 
 and making a bad job of it. " I 'm not going home, 
 Mr. Smith. It was kind of you to send for the car, 
 but I '11 be all right in a minute." 
 
 " He is better," said Mrs. Chancellor, as Hewitt sat 
 down in a chair by the door, where the air was cooler. 
 
 " H 'm," Mr. Smith said. " He looked pretty sick 
 to me for a while." 
 
 " He was sick." 
 
 The next day Mary Young called Hewitt over the 
 telephone. 
 
 " Ernestine said that her father was awfully worried 
 about you yesterday. Were you dreadfully ill ? Was 
 that the reason you were so haughty when I came in 
 with Katherine?" 
 
 " I was n't so very ill. Mr. Smith exaggerated. 
 He 'd never seen me have one of those spells before. 
 I wasn't haughty with you." 
 
 " Yes, you were. I wanted to say something, but 
 I was afraid of you. You are so terrible when you
 
 CASTE THREE 293 
 
 are cross, Hewitt! I've been wanting to see you 
 awfully." 
 
 A pause followed. She probably expected Hewitt 
 to say something, but he could think of nothing to say. 
 
 " I ' ve wanted to see you, but I 've been rushed to 
 death lately. Everyone has had guests. Parties, 
 bridge, everything ! " 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 " Hewitt, why don't you talk to Mary? " The in- 
 timate tone was in her voice, luring him to forget 
 that she had neglected him. " I 'm saying everything 
 that 's being said." 
 
 "What is there to say?" Hewitt asked helplessly. 
 He was still feeling the effects of the sudden sickness 
 of the day before. 
 
 " A million things. You have n't written me a note 
 in ages. I Ve wanted one. Have you been ill be- 
 fore?" 
 
 " No ; just yesterday. It was the heat. I " 
 
 " I thought perhaps that was why you had n't called 
 me up." She was loathe to refer to this neglect, her 
 voice said. 
 
 He had not called her up. He had been waiting for 
 a sign from her. One rather expected Mary to take 
 the initiative. Hewitt did, at any rate. And the un- 
 dercurrent persistently ran through his thought that 
 she had not wanted him, or she would have made the 
 signal. 
 
 " I was afraid you were too busy for me," he said. 
 " I was afraid you might not want to see me."
 
 294 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Hewitt ! I always want to see my friends, when 
 I can. When are you going to tell me about all the 
 new books you have discovered ? " 
 
 " Whenever you say." 
 
 " Let 's see. To-night 's bridge at the Brandons'. 
 To-morrow I 'm out to dinner. The next day 
 You may come then." 
 
 " I 'd like to come." 
 
 So, after all, there were to be other beautiful weeks 
 perhaps. 
 
 Hewitt could hear the Trimble children racing 
 through the upper hall when he arrived there on the 
 appointed night. Dr. Jimmy stopped on the veranda 
 to talk to him about business conditions. 
 
 " The Democrats don't seem to have brought that 
 panic all the calamity howlers expected, do they ? I 'm 
 disappointed. I always like people to get what they 
 want. It struck me that a good many people wanted 
 that panic, just to show what good prophets they 
 were." 
 
 " Soon there won't be such a thing as a panic. 
 We 're just finding out these days that they are not 
 necessary," Hewitt answered. 
 
 " Country used to go to smash, figuratively speak- 
 ing, every time the administration changed, especially 
 when the good old moneyed Republicans went out," 
 Dr. Jimmy laughed. 
 
 Hewitt opened the screen door for Mary, who was 
 coming downstairs, her slender, lithe figure lighted up
 
 CASTE THREE 295 
 
 by the glow from the rose piano-lamp. Wonderful 
 Mary! 
 
 The chill which had been over his emotions ever 
 since he had last seen her under conditions favorable 
 to him evaporated into thin air. Again the sun and 
 the moon and the seven stars were bright, and he 
 forgot about women who counted. There was only 
 one who counted. 
 
 " Politics? " she questioned, giving him her best, 
 most brilliant smile. "Jimmy adores finding some 
 one who will listen respectfully to his political theories. 
 I suppose you did out of politeness." 
 
 The noise of the children upstairs died away, and 
 the doctor went to his office. Mary bound the chains 
 fast again. They were not difficult to bind. 
 
 The only people in one's life who really counted, 
 after all, were the charming, beautiful women who 
 understood you. Hewitt did not attempt to be silly; 
 he was just thankful again to be smiled at and per- 
 suaded into saying the things he wanted to say. 
 There was no forest, as Kenneth Reed had said, con- 
 taining a vampirish Mary " who knew the game " and 
 was not Hewitt's kind, no little inefficient gun in 
 Hewitt's hand. In a flowery meadow a nymph piped 
 to the gods; and a hairy satyr, ugly and unworthy, 
 creeping in, listened, was enthralled, went near, until, 
 entrapped by the music meant for gods, he lay in the 
 grasses and was happy not to be driven away.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OTHER beautiful weeks which followed were not 
 so bright as the first. Such weeks are never as 
 bright as the first Besides, Hewitt was deprived of 
 self-confidence. He was afraid. Mary had for- 
 gotten him once. At any moment she might do so 
 again. She did know the game. 
 
 Knowing that his claim on her attention had from 
 the first rested on his being an ugly duckling among 
 Alston's barn-yard fowls, a duckling who might 
 eventually prove to be a soaring eagle, Hewitt played 
 this card with all the skill he could muster. But he 
 was never very skilful where people were concerned. 
 
 " Naturally we are all selfish. Altruism is so hard 
 to attain, because all our primary instincts are for 
 saving ourselves at whatever cost. Let us, you and 
 I, take altruism for our own," he wrote Mary. 
 
 " Love is an ideal. It is something to strive for. 
 It only comes to those who strive," he wrote again. 
 
 " Living is a fine art. Most people make it a sordid 
 business. I love you because you know it is an art, 
 even while you are unable to make it what you desire. 
 To live fully that is beautiful! But sometimes I 
 think, dear, that you think you are living fully, when 
 in reality you are only skimming the surface of ex- 
 citement." 
 
 296
 
 CASTE THREE 297 
 
 All the time, unselfish as he was on occasion and 
 always wished to be, Hewitt knew that he wanted 
 something besides making Mary live to the limit of 
 her capacities. He wanted to dominate her thought. 
 Sometimes he felt he had succeeded. At unexpected 
 moments she showed that she had been thinking about 
 something he had said or read to her long before. 
 At others he was certain that he had never dented 
 the smooth surface of her knowing mind. Her 
 thoughts seemed to flow in the old grooves, the grooves 
 that generations of caste three had made, changed by 
 new lands and new environments, but only slightly 
 changed. 
 
 Hewitt was amazed at Mary's inability to enter into 
 the lives of those outside her own circle. She was 
 splendidly kind and open to everyone, but that was 
 only because the ideal of herself as a frank, open- 
 hearted, democratic woman was stronger than her 
 ideal of herself as a follower of the rules of caste 
 three. As long as he remained away from her, 
 Hewitt dissected and analyzed her and her Alstonian 
 relations with admirable abstraction ; but when he was 
 with her he lost all power to think. He only wanted 
 to worship. There was never any silliness, no kisses. 
 Sometimes she caught at his hand or patted it, just 
 as she might have done with Ernestine or Katherine 
 or any of her girl-friends. 
 
 Hewitt's analysis of Mary became, as time went on, 
 more pronouncedly critical the better he knew her. 
 He began to see qualities in her which he could not
 
 298 CASTE THREE 
 
 admire. Moods attacked him. He became unhappy 
 and discontented. He read less, and dreamed more. 
 He grew nervous and fretful. He had fits of temper 
 when he wanted to argue with Mary about herself. 
 She was n't what he wanted her to be ; she must 
 change. She gave too much of her time to Ernestine 
 Smith, for example, who was a beastly little inane 
 snob not worth anyone's attention. Also, he disliked 
 Katherine Miller. 
 
 He introduced these topics at various times to 
 Mary, and thought more than he talked about them. 
 
 " Don't be jealous," she told him one night, when he 
 had been especially caustic. 
 
 " You don't care what people are ; you only care for 
 what they have," he retorted bitterly. 
 
 He knew the quizzical look which came into her eyes 
 when she was annoyed and wanted to ask him what 
 he had. 
 
 " It 's only money ! Alston is money-mad," he 
 added. 
 
 " Alston, Hewitt, is very much like every other city 
 in the world. Men have always wanted the advan- 
 tages which money gives them. Why, even your 
 precious old books could n't be written if there were n't 
 some men with leisure. Leisure depends on money." 
 
 " Yes, but here they think about money and noth- 
 ing else. With the men who write, it 's only a means 
 to an end." 
 
 " It 's a means here, too. We 're all hunting the 
 same thing satisfaction, happiness."
 
 CASTE THREE 299 
 
 " But such happiness! " 
 
 " We've said all this before, haven't we? Let us 
 try to be amusing, since we live in a town devoted to 
 amusement." 
 
 Mary tried to make him laugh, but Hewitt sat 
 frowning in discontent. 
 
 " If I had money you would marry me, would n't 
 you ? " he said suddenly and sharply. He knew, even 
 as he said it, that Mary would not marry him if he had 
 a million dollars. 
 
 " No," she answered softly. 
 
 "Why?" he demanded angrily. 
 
 " For one reason, you are too childish." Mary was 
 annoyed beyond words, and she walked into the house 
 and left him with his petulance. 
 
 When Hewitt had convinced himself that he was a 
 lunatic who had better watch himself before he en- 
 dangered too flagrantly his position, his cherished 
 position, as her friend, he went into the house. Mary 
 was sitting reading the newspaper. 
 
 " Mary, you '11 forgive me, won't you ? I don't 
 know what 's the matter with me. I don't know why I 
 say these things to you. I 'm a cad. You 've been 
 wonderful to me." 
 
 Perhaps because she was afraid Hewitt was going to 
 be emotional and cry about it, Mary let him sit on the 
 stairs and talk again to her. He thought she sighed 
 wearily when he left the veranda later in the evening. 
 
 Another time Katherine Miller came to take Mary 
 riding while Hewitt was present.
 
 300 CASTE THREE 
 
 "If Hewitt will come " Mary began from her 
 place beside the automobile. 
 
 " I 'm awfully sorry. I have an engagement down- 
 town at eight-thirty," he said, rising and coming down 
 the walk toward them. He glanced nonchalantly at his 
 watch. " It 's about that hour now," he added. 
 " You run ahead, Mary." 
 
 Mary had gazed at him questioningly. She knew 
 he had no engagement. Then she smiled bravely and 
 jumped into the car, with only a good-bye wave of her 
 hand to him. 
 
 Mary punished him for a few days, but a more than 
 usually contrite note softened her. 
 
 " Why did you behave that way about going rid- 
 ing?" she asked him later. 
 
 " I did n't want to go, and I did n't want you to 
 miss your fun." 
 
 " My dear boy, do you think I value riding as much 
 as that? Why did n't you want to go ? " she continued 
 persistently. 
 
 " Because I hate Katherine Miller." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " She makes me feel unimportant." 
 
 " Maybe " she began, and he caught the innuendo 
 before she stopped herself. 
 
 " She 's despicable ! " he cried out, paying Katherine 
 for Mary's thrust by an increase in hate. " I hate 
 her!" 
 
 " You hate so many people, dear." 
 
 Hewitt's fury mounted.
 
 CASTE THREE 301 
 
 " Not so many. Only the ones who let you make 
 fools of them." 
 
 " Hewitt! " Mary said, biting her lips. 
 
 " They 're all crazy about you, and you work them 
 to the limit. You get exactly what you want from 
 people, and then you fling them into the guttter." 
 
 The hurt look that instantly clouded Mary's eyes 
 brought Hewitt to her feet. 
 
 " I did n't mean it, Mary ! I I don't know 
 what 's the matter with me. I love you more than 
 anyone in the world, but I can't seem to think any- 
 thing but ugly things about you any more." 
 
 " I 'm sorry. I suppose I 'm not a very beautiful 
 subject for thought. You had better stop thinking 
 about me at all," she said, with a sad smile. " I don't 
 like quarreling with my friends. It 's rather disgust- 
 ing, isn't it ? " 
 
 "It's awful! I swear I'll never say mean things 
 to you again. You do forgive me, don't you? " 
 
 " Yes. Don't get excited. People can hear you." 
 
 After this Hewitt was careful for a time; he 
 could n't afford to take such risks. But his thinking 
 went on. The idea that Mary " worked " people grew 
 in him. She had little natural charm, he decided ; she 
 was merely artful. He could see it all. He composed 
 notes to let her see that he saw through her devices 
 for keeping people slavishly attached to her notes 
 in which veiled insults against her egotism were 
 shrouded in figures of speech which, even in the midst 
 of his emotion, brought a glow of pride to their
 
 302 CASTE THREE 
 
 creator. He wrote about the " Sahara sands of her 
 egotism." That was not original; he had read it 
 somewhere. She was a fallen Buddha, a burst bubble, 
 a bee that sucked the honey from a thousand flowers. 
 There was nothing delightful now about this last 
 quality. 
 
 Yet, in the midst of his turmoil of writing these 
 denunciations, Hewitt sneered at his own weakness 
 and called himself a fool for having been taken in 
 by the very qualities which he now detested. He had 
 always been a weakling. He had no power of action. 
 Action was strength; idle thought was a snare and a 
 delusion. He had idealized Mary. He had tried to 
 idealize himself as a devotee who, demanding nothing 
 in return for his love, was gaining everything. But 
 when put to the test, as now, he wanted returns. He 
 was tired, dog-tired, of getting nothing but a minimum 
 of attention, just because he had no prestige of riches 
 and position to offer her. 
 
 In his sane moments Hewitt wondered what he did 
 want. 
 
 As Mary had said, all wisdom was not in books. 
 A reader, a reader of imaginative literature, was sus- 
 taining himself on unreality. He took to hating 
 poetry and novels. What was an intellectual? One 
 who wanted material things and, not getting what he 
 asked for, deceived himself and the world into think- 
 ing that he wanted only the thin things of the mind. 
 Fools ! 
 
 There was no everlasting soul, Hewitt decided.
 
 CASTE THREE 303 
 
 There was no such thing as immortality. Those who 
 did n't get what they wanted on this earth, because 
 fate or their own silly ideals kept them from getting 
 what everyone wanted, tried to soothe themselves with 
 old tales of another world where those who did n't 
 get on in this one would achieve success. Fatuous 
 dream of weak souls! The battle was to the strong 
 or to the clever. Even those wise old Jews, before 
 Christianity swamped the world in its dreams of a 
 future existence, recognized this fact. Follow the 
 law of the wise men, they said; and then protected 
 themselves right here on this earth. Theirs was no 
 God of Love. Rather he was a God of Effort, who 
 punished weakness and abhorred disobedience of law. 
 
 Hewitt generally reached this point at night, a-fter 
 he had torn up a scathing note couched in flamingly 
 scorching figures of speech. He then wanted to get 
 up and walk around the room in order to relieve the 
 caged-animal feeling that choked him, but he was 
 always afraid of waking Grace. She would be sure 
 to come to his door in her night cap and ugly high- 
 necked gown, open it gently, and ask him, while blink- 
 ing the sleep out of her heavy eyes, what was the 
 matter. He did n't want Grace to come in ; so he 
 rolled restlessly in his bed and wondered why he 
 had ever come to Alston to be tortured by Mary 
 Young. 
 
 At last he went to sleep. 
 
 Note after note Hewitt destroyed. He spent hours 
 composing them in his mind, but his common sense
 
 304 CASTE THREE 
 
 always spoke at the last minute and he tore them 
 up. 
 
 Once, however, his common sense deserted him. 
 
 He wrote a note early in the morning, hurriedly 
 and excitedly, after he had spent a restless night, a 
 night sleepless and half-maddened by the hopelessness 
 of the circle of unanswerable thought. He thrust it 
 into the box at the post-office before he had time to 
 repent of his folly. He had a dim idea that if Mary 
 knew how tortured he was, she would do something 
 about it, relieve him of it. She was paying a great 
 deal of attention to Arthur Morgan, a Yale man who 
 was working in Alston during the summer. Hewitt 
 himself was beginning to mean less and less to her, 
 he was certain. This note would wake her up. She 
 would find that she must make some effort to keep him 
 in her train; she could not pull the wool over his eyes 
 as easily as she thought. 
 
 " Thank you," the note said among other things, " for 
 showing me the clumps of buttercups in your marsh, but 
 now I see them no more. Only mud, mud! Not long ago 
 I would have laughed at all the little gods, and said, ' Of 
 course there is mud; but if I choose to see only the flowers, 
 then I can laugh at you, little gods ! ' But now I am ready 
 to move to other gardens, beautiful gardens. You, being 
 heavy with mud, cannot move on. Adieu, ma cherie des 
 autres jours" 
 
 All day Hewitt kept thinking of Mary reading this. 
 She would half -close her eyes and read it twice. A 
 faint smile would light up her face. Then she would
 
 CASTE THREE 305 
 
 tear the note carefully and throw it away, supremely 
 indifferent. He writhed at the thought. 
 
 In other pictures he saw Mary read it with the 
 smile growing fainter and fainter, and she ended by 
 looking puzzled and sad. 
 
 What Mary did do, Hewitt did not for one moment 
 anticipate. He was standing at the stationery counter 
 the next afternoon when she came in. 
 
 " Good afternoon, Hewitt," she said, smiling 
 brightly at him. Then she turned toward Mrs. Chan- 
 cellor, who was standing at the cash register. Mary 
 threw her arm carelessly around her. " I want some 
 stationery, dear. White or brown. Not the kind I 
 bought last week. I did n't like that." 
 
 Her other arm she threw about Ernestine, and the 
 three, without noticing Hewitt further, came down 
 to where he stood. He moved away. He went to 
 the back of the store and remained there long after 
 Mary and Ernestine had gone. He felt sick and 
 weak, dreadfully weak, as though his legs were caving 
 in. Mary had chosen an excellent way of hurting 
 him. She was a devil ! 
 
 Joe Bales was standing on the corner when Hewitt 
 left the store that night. 
 
 " Hello, Joe ! " Hewitt called. He went up and 
 stood beside him, smoking. He talked about the 
 weather, and when enough time had passed to make 
 his next remark sound casual, Hewitt said : 
 
 "Say, Joe., where does Eleanor Rowe live?" 
 
 "Why, didn't you hear?" asked Joe quickly.
 
 3o6 CASTE THREE 
 
 "Hear what?" 
 
 " Why did you want to know where she lived? " 
 
 " I thought I 'd go see her sometime." 
 
 " Say, boy ; be careful ! Did n't you hear about 
 Teddy Burke? Her brother's after him. The 
 fellows say that Teddy has got her in bad." 
 
 Joe said this last in a matter-of-fact tone, as he 
 rolled a cigarette. Corner gossip, Hewitt decided, and 
 he tried to be as matter-of-fact as Joe. 
 
 " H'm," he said in Mr. Smith's style. 
 
 " That 's what they all say. I 'm glad I stayed 
 away from her. How 's the store? " 
 
 Hewitt talked business for a while and then strolled 
 home. He felt sorry for Eleanor Rowe. She was 
 a credit in contrast to some of the society buds of 
 Alston. Contrasted with Mary, the sly, wise, clever, 
 devilish Mary, she was an angel. She gave; she did 
 not take, take, take! Mary was angry, but not out- 
 wardly angry. She would continue to be pleasant, 
 even cordial to him. That was caste three's way. 
 They never displayed their anger. No; but they 
 struck hard when they wanted to hurt. 
 
 Presently Hewitt began to wonder why he had 
 written that note. So he wrote another note. He 
 told Mary that she was the most wonderful woman 
 in the world ; that he was a jealous brute, jealous about 
 Arthur Morgan; that, far from being a marsh, she 
 was a beautiful garden (the garden again) where he 
 loved to walk, satisfied only to smell the perfume of 
 the flowers. He begged Mary's forgiveness.
 
 CASTE THREE 307 
 
 Sending this note relieved him, although he read 
 and studied French until after midnight, trying to 
 make himself calm enough to sleep. Even after he 
 had gone to bed, he rehearsed the notes over and over 
 to himself, following every movement of Mary's in 
 the store that afternoon. Suppose she did not forgive 
 him? 
 
 He got up and raised the window higher. The 
 night seemed extraordinarily warm, intolerably so. 
 
 So he was to be punished for deserting the shrine 
 and assuming the role of critical spectator? Mary 
 would see to it that he was wounded time after time, 
 because he had doubted that she was fit for worship. 
 She was an artist. There was no depth to her 
 affection for anyone. She liked everyone who could 
 give her something she wanted. She had liked him, 
 because his was a temperament to heap adoration upon 
 her, to color the already beautiful picture she had 
 painted of herself. 
 
 Hewitt was wet with perspiration. 
 
 For two nights and days he went through a repe- 
 tition of this misery, alternately hating and adoring. 
 On the evening of the third day he walked past the 
 Trimble house, in hope of seeing her. She came 
 across the lawn from the Walkers' when she saw him. 
 
 " I have n't seen you in ages, have I ? You 're 
 sweet to come. I 'm staying all night with Hortense 
 Brandon. You can take me over." 
 
 Hewitt glowed with relief. She was, after all, 
 going to forgive him. She chatted impersonally of
 
 3o8 CASTE THREE 
 
 her comings and goings. The Brandons were plan- 
 ning to motor through Kentucky. Perhaps she would 
 go with them. Martha and the children were not 
 going to the lakes this year, since the weather had 
 remained so cool. Charlotte Walker had just returned 
 from the East. On and on she talked, with never a 
 word about Hewitt or marshes or buttercups or mud. 
 
 He listened intently, trying to be interested and not 
 critical. He did n't care if Charlotte had been in 
 China or whether the Brandons were going to India, 
 but he wisely kept this indifference to himself. He 
 attempted to tell her about a new book he wanted her 
 to read, but she had already heard about it from Kath- 
 erine Miller and did n't think she would like it. She 
 was really too busy to read, with her golf. 
 
 " I 'm playing so much better than last summer. 
 Aren't you glad, Hewitt?" 
 
 He said that he was. He was the beggar ; his part 
 was to play the game, though he glanced at her sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 " When are you going to Chicago? " she asked. 
 
 " About the fifth of September." The thought of 
 getting there had lost some of its zest. He had 
 stopped thinking much about Chicago. 
 
 "You'll love being in school again, won't you?" 
 she said. 
 
 " Oh, I guess so," he added indifferently. 
 
 " My dear ! " she chided him. " The next thing 
 you '11 be saying an education is useless ! " She 
 laughed at him.
 
 CASTE THREE 309 
 
 " Maybe it is," he said lamely. " An education 
 does n't always get people what they want. The 
 world 's a gamble, anyway." 
 
 " Last week you said that some day I would lose, 
 because I gambled with living." 
 
 " No. You play the game according to the rules. 
 I can't play anything. I loathe rules." 
 
 " You play tennis." 
 
 " Not well." Hewitt was gloomy. 
 
 A week before Mary would have teased him into 
 optimism, but to-night she went back to gossip about 
 her friends in caste three. All the way to the Bran- 
 dons' she chatted gaily. 
 
 " Will you come in with me?" she asked, as they 
 paused in front of the house. 
 
 " You have n't forgiven me," he said in a low, mis- 
 erable voice. 
 
 "Forgiven you for what?" Then her impersonal 
 gaiety slid aside and she looked at him with a glint 
 of scornful anger. " You can always run on to other 
 gardens," she said as she turned away. 
 
 Hewitt touched her arm. 
 
 " Mary, you know I did n't mean that ! " he cried. 
 
 " I am mud one day and beautiful buttercups the 
 next. Don't you suppose one gets tired of your moods 
 and your insults and your tempers? I tried to be 
 friends. You did n't meet me half-way. I am sick 
 of all this!" 
 
 "You never loved me! I only wanted that!" 
 
 " I liked you as much as I like anyone. I like a
 
 310 CASTE THREE 
 
 great many people. You can't be selfish enough to 
 want me to spend all my time with you. I did like 
 you. You have changed. Good-night." 
 
 " If I try again to be what I used to be? I don't 
 know what 's the matter with me ! Try me again, 
 Mary!" 
 
 " Perhaps," was all the satisfaction she gave him. 
 
 Hewitt was unable even to read that night. He fol- 
 lowed the incidents of his relations with Mary from the 
 first day of their meeting. Was anyone ever so mis- 
 erable, through his own fault, as he was? Now he 
 understood Dante and Andrea del Sarto and all other 
 men in the world's history who had loved and been 
 scorned. 
 
 He woke up in the night. If he could only die and 
 Mary could come and stand over him, her eyes sorrow- 
 ful and that sweet, intimate smile on her lips! 
 
 Alston was to have a Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation. A recently deceased old man had left Alston 
 funds with which to build a structure to house the 
 institution, on condition that the city should raise an 
 equal amount. Alston needed a Y. M. C. A., every 
 one agreed. Leading citizens therefore met to per- 
 fect plans for securing this money. Captains of teams 
 were selected ; the war was on. In two days the man 
 who had not subscribed as much as he knew everyone 
 thought he should subscribe began to feel uncom- 
 fortable while walking down the street. He was
 
 CASTE THREE 311 
 
 likely to be confronted by a member of a team, who 
 slapped him merrily on the shoulder and asked him 
 for a few more thousands or hundreds or for a few 
 more pennies, according to his known financial status. 
 
 Homer Gray came into Smith's on the first day of 
 the campaign. 
 
 " Hello, Stevenson ! " he called. " I want you on 
 my team for this Y. M. C. A. rush." 
 
 Hewitt stopped disliking Homer Gray's air of im- 
 portance. 
 
 " You 're number ten on my team. This '11 be some 
 pull." 
 
 " Look here, Gray," Hewitt demurred, " I can't 
 do anything like that. I 'm busy all day." 
 
 " Smith will let you off. Every public-spirited 
 citizen must do what he can. My team meets to-night 
 at five-thirty. There 's a dinner at the old Knights 
 of Columbus' rooms at six for all teams. Here are 
 a bunch of pledges and a list of names of the persons 
 you are to see. Get people! Don't let anyone slide. 
 Don't let any one get by. I 've put what each one is 
 expected by the committee to give. Get it." He 
 slapped Hewitt on the shoulder familiarly, laughed, 
 and was off, leaving a stupefied but willing Hewitt. 
 
 The list included ten men who possibly would give 
 more than a hundred dollars. Fifth on the list was 
 " Charles Stevenson, Fourteenth and Jackson." 
 Hewitt stopped to consider. So that was why he had 
 been honored. Well, come to think of it, there had 
 to be some reason why any one should be honored,
 
 312 CASTE THREE 
 
 and this was as good as any. Other people in Alston 
 were important because their fathers had money. 
 Why not he? 
 
 Mr. Smith agreed to divide the day with Hewitt. 
 
 " We '11 try alternate hours the first day," he said. 
 " I 'm captain of team two. I wanted you, but Homer 
 grabbed you before I had a chance. Go to it, Son. 
 Make good. Gray said you were a pusher, but that 
 you had n't got out of your shell here yet. Wake up 
 and show 'em." 
 
 Hewitt did not feel like a pusher as he started for 
 Preston's to interview a young electrical engineer. 
 " Two hundred " was marked beside the latter's name. 
 Hewitt whistled. He knew the man by sight and that 
 he had just been married. Two hundred? They 
 surely could n't expect men to give like that. 
 
 John Earle filled out a pledge for a hundred as soon 
 as he found that Hewitt was a team-member. 
 
 "Much obliged," Hewitt smiled. He did not urge 
 the other to give more. " We '11 do it yet," he said, 
 in leaving. 
 
 "Of course we will. Alston always comes 
 through," Earle answered. 
 
 Outside, Hewitt pondered. What tactics would 
 Homer Gray have used to-get the other hundred? He 
 frankly did not know. He thought a hundred dollars, 
 without arguing for it, was a godsend. 
 
 The next man, Waldon Kirst, was vice-president and 
 general manager of an iron fence-post company in the 
 vicinity of Preston's. Hewitt took him next.
 
 CASTE THREE 313 
 
 " Sit down," ordered Mr. Kirst in stentorian tones, 
 when Hewitt went into his office. He was a small 
 man with nerves. 
 
 " I 'm from team one, Y. M. C. A. fund," Hewitt 
 began. 
 
 "Yes? That's a great thing, that Y. M. C. A. 
 My boy's getting to the age where he needs it. I '11 
 give you fifty dollars." He turned to fill out the 
 pledge. 
 
 Hewitt moved uneasily. This man was down for 
 five hundred dollars. He could n't let the four hun- 
 dred and fifty slip. Homer Gray would think he was 
 a good-for-nothing. 
 
 " Now, see here, Mr. Kirst," Hewitt said, doubtful 
 of his ability to convince, "I we thought you would 
 want to give more than fifty, even. Fifty 's a nice 
 sum. We '11 be glad to get it. But do you realize 
 that that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was 
 only left to Alston on condition that the town raise an 
 equivalent sum? If we don't have every cent of the 
 money in ten days, the fund goes to charity and we 
 get no Y. M. C. A. We have to get this sum. You 
 are one of the men in town who are expected to con- 
 tribute largely in order to make up the money. In the 
 end we can expect to get five- and ten-dollar contribu- 
 tions from the general public, but the greater part has 
 to be given by the big business men. I have you down 
 for five hundred dollars. We know that you want to 
 give what you can. Five hundred would mean, Mr. 
 Kirst, that you are getting something more out of
 
 3H CASTE THREE 
 
 this Y. M. C. A. than mere protection for your son. 
 You would be helping to put an institution in Alston 
 which will mean that hundreds of boys every year are 
 given healthful recreation in an atmosphere to bring 
 out their best qualities. It means not only your boy, 
 but a thousand other boys in the course of a few years. 
 Now, another thing. Your factory employs about 
 how many men? A hundred and fifty young ones, 
 perhaps. Half of them are unmarried, let us say. 
 Seventy-five of your employees would join this 
 Y. M. C. A. and become better physical specimens. 
 Result: more work. Who gets the benefit? Your 
 company. You also get part of it. My suggestion, 
 Mr. Kirst, is that you give five hundred dollars or 
 more, if you feel inclined, and that your company 
 outside capital owns much of this concern, does n't it ? 
 
 give five hundred. How 's that ? You are getting 
 a personal benefit and the company is getting a ben- 
 efit." 
 
 Hewitt paused, surprised at himself, and then 
 blushed a little. Mr. Kirst looked at him, studying 
 him. 
 
 " Five hundred dollars," he said, and went over to 
 examine the landscape from the window. He drew 
 aside the curtains the better to examine the landscape 
 
 a landscape of corrugated -iron buildings and a 
 puffing switch-engine and a vacant lot edged with 
 diminutive cottages. " Well," he said, " I '11 make it 
 three hundred." He was pleased with himself, but 
 Hewitt quickly pricked this bubble.
 
 CASTE THREE 315 
 
 " Mr. Kirst, if every man in this town, every big 
 man who is in a position to command money, gives 
 three fifths of what he could give without feeling the 
 pressure, Alston will have no Y. M. C. A. Say you 
 can give three hundred without quivering an eyelash. 
 All right. Suppose you quiver an eyelash and give 
 five hundred." Hewitt smiled Homer Gray's smile 
 of cordial importance. One might as well do such 
 things. " That five hundred might mean a trifle in 
 sacrifice to you. Maybe you can't go to the motor- 
 races at Indianapolis next year, just to make the sacri- 
 fice a big one." They both laughed, and Hewitt was 
 glad he had remembered that Kirst was a motor-race 
 enthusiast. "All right. Alston has a Y. M. C. A. 
 Your boy gains by it. How about that five hundred ? " 
 
 " Let 's see," mused Mr. Kirst. 
 
 " Yours will be the second contribution on my list," 
 went on Hewitt. " I 'm on team one. Your name 
 will be published near the head of the first day's list. 
 That looks good for you and for the company. If iron 
 fence-posts were not selling well, you could n't give 
 five hundred. Thus it reflects your prosperity." 
 
 Walden H. Kirst made out the pledge deliberately. 
 
 " Thanks," smiled Hewitt, repeating Homer Gray 
 again. "Now what about the company?" 
 
 " I can't tell. I hardly think they '11 want to give 
 five hundred dollars. But I '11 see." 
 
 Hewitt shook hands cordially with the man. 
 
 He kept his father for his noon hour. He must 
 step cautiously there. His diffidence, shattered by his
 
 316 CASTE THREE 
 
 morning's success, returned in the presence of his 
 family. He had thought to bring up the subject for 
 discussion at the table, but his father was not well. 
 He was crabbed. " I feel awful weak," he kept say- 
 ing, and he ate little. 
 
 After dinner Hewitt sauntered out on the veranda 
 and sat down. He would have preferred to tackle 
 a hundred strangers for a thousand dollars apiece to 
 asking his father for three hundred. Gray had him 
 listed for five hundred, but Hewitt knew he could 
 never get that much. Once he decided that he 
 would tell Gray himself to approach Mr. Stevenson, 
 and he rose with the intention of going down-town, 
 leaving the subject untouched with his father. Then 
 the ridiculousness of making such a suggestion to Gray 
 struck Hewitt. 
 
 His father lay in the dining-room on the yellow 
 plush couch, with a handkerchief over his face. 
 Hewitt stood in the doorway observing him. He 
 would n't have a chance in the world, even for five 
 dollars, he felt sure. Quietly he withdrew. 
 
 He sat down on the steps. He became ashamed 
 when he thought of that dinner where team reports 
 were to be given. The most prominent men in Alston 
 would be there. 
 
 He went into the dining-room again. 
 
 " Say, Father," he began, seating himself at the 
 table and drumming restlessly on the cloth with one 
 hand, " did you know that old man Brandt when he
 
 CASTE THREE 317 
 
 died left a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Alston 
 for a Y. M. C. A., on condition that Alston raised the 
 remainder? " 
 
 " I heard it. They '11 never raise it" Mr. Steven- 
 son turned his face to the wall. " I 'm weak all over. 
 I 'd like to know what 's the matter with me." 
 
 " They '11 never raise it unless every man in Alston 
 does his share." The onslaught had begun. Hewitt 
 buckled on some of Homer Gray's energy, and sat up. 
 " Gray put me on his team," he added slowly. 
 
 " He did ? He 's a young fool. He thinks he 's 
 going to follow in Keith's footsteps. He '11 never do 
 it. He 's not a big enough man. He may land in 
 Congress some day, if he can fool enough people with 
 that line of talk of his. He '11 never fill the gover- 
 nor's chair." 
 
 " He 's pretty bright. He 's published a book." 
 
 " Lots of numskulls publish books." 
 
 " Anyway, he put me on his team. I got a hundred 
 dollars from a young engineer out at Preston's this 
 morning, and five hundred from Walden H. Kirst. 
 Langdon, at the file works, came through with three 
 hundred. I 've got Tracy, secretary of the mills, to 
 promise two hundred. He may make it five to- 
 morrow. What are you going to give, Father? " 
 
 The bomb fell to the ground without exploding. 
 
 " I promised Peterson at the bank I 'd give a hun- 
 dred." 
 
 " You '11 have to come through with more than a
 
 318 CASTE THREE 
 
 hundred, Father, if you want to hold up your head 
 in this town. They 're expecting five hundred from 
 you." Hewitt had grown bold. 
 
 " They '11 have to expect again. I 'd like to know 
 what 's the matter with me. I 'm sick all over, with 
 pains in my head." He moved. The handkerchief 
 fell off his head to the floor. 
 
 " I '11 get you a cold cloth for your eyes," Grace 
 called from the kitchen. 
 
 " That feels good," Mr. Stevenson said, when 
 Hewitt had brought it in and laid it on his head. " I 'd 
 like to know what 's the matter with me," he repeated. 
 
 " About this money," Hewitt began again. " It 's 
 like this, Father. Every man in this town who 's 
 known to have money and does n't give it is going to 
 be beastly unpopular when this campaign is over and 
 the lists are published." 
 
 " But I have n't any money," said his father slowly, 
 as though with an effort. 
 
 " You had enough to retire." 
 
 " That was n't much. I wish I 'd kept that farm. 
 I 'd feel more satisfied if I had it right now. This 
 idea of loafing around, trying to make a few acres 
 of garden fill up your time, is n't what it 's cracked up 
 to be. I 'm not rich. I wish I was." 
 
 " You 're not rich, but you could give five hundred 
 to this Y. M. C. A. and never notice it. Come on, 
 Father, be a sport. We need this thing. That Meth- 
 odist gymnasium they Ve just put up back of the 
 church does n't fill the bill by any means."
 
 CASTE THREE 319 
 
 " I never thought it would. I gave fifty dollars to 
 that because Grace wanted me to." 
 
 " Well, what it does in a small way the Y. M. C A. 
 will do in a large one. It 's ridiculous that Alston 
 has n't had a Y. M. C. A. before this. Consider me, 
 for instance. I 'm just at the age when a Y. M. C. 
 A. would save my soul, keep me off the streets, and 
 make a man of me." 
 
 A wan smile greeted this sally. 
 
 " I guess you '11 get along without a Y. M. C. A., 
 Hewie." 
 
 " But suppose I told you, Father, that your giving 
 five hundred dollars would make a difference in the 
 way I feel about Alston." This was said thoughtfully. 
 
 " How 's that? " his father said, removing the cloth 
 from his eyes to watch Hewitt. 
 
 "Well, it's like this: I've always felt like that 
 ticket-speculator in a show called ' The Country Boy.' 
 ' I 'd rather be a ripple on Michigan Avenue than a 
 tidal wave in a town like this.' Lately I 've begun feel- 
 ing a little differently. I 've thought once or twice that 
 this would n't be such a bad little city to settle down 
 in, if a man had some of the things he wanted here. 
 Not that I 've passed up the university idea. I 'm still 
 strong for that. But Alston 's a nice place to live, if 
 one has the things he wants. Now, if you added five 
 hundred dollars to that fund, I 'd feel, in a way, as 
 if Alston belonged to me. It 's hard to explain, 
 Father, but I believe I 'd feel differently." 
 
 There was silence, while Mr. Stevenson replaced
 
 320 CASTE THREE 
 
 the cloth on his eyes and settled himself again com- 
 fortably. 
 
 " Suppose, Hewie," he said after an interval, " sup- 
 pose I put it to you this way. I '11 give five hundred 
 dollars out of the money you '11 get after I 'm gone." 
 He paused. " I 'm not so old ; I may last twenty years 
 yet, Hewie. Our family lives a long time. But some 
 day you and Grace and Paul will get all I 've got. I 
 don't think it 's quite fair for me to give this five 
 hundred out of their share, too. We 're living on the 
 interest from the money from the land, and the prin- 
 cipal is not so enormous. You can take your five 
 hundred an.d give four hundred of it to this Y. M. 
 C. A. fund, if that 's what you want to do. You can 
 keep one hundred dollars to help on your college 
 money, and I '11 pay the hundred I 've already told 
 Peterson that I 'd contribute. I did n't feel as if I 
 could put you through college, Hewie, unless you could 
 go on the farm afterward and help put the money 
 back into the principal. But I 'd like you to come back 
 to Alston sometime and live here." 
 
 Hewitt stood up and stretched himself. 
 
 " But I want you to put in all the five hundred tinder 
 your own name, Father," he said. " I '11 contribute 
 ten dollars or so for my share. That '11 look better." 
 
 For almost ten days after this conversation Hewitt 
 let Mary Young wander in the hinterland of his mind. 
 Being a member of team one, Y. M. C. A. Publicity 
 Committee, meant work. It was work Hewitt grew 
 to like. He met all the leading citizens of Alston.
 
 CASTE THREE 321 
 
 He parleyed, dined, made a short and extremely boyish 
 speech at a dinner of the workers and a longer speech 
 to the employees of the Iron Fence-Post Company. 
 
 Chicago stock had dropped to fifty and there were 
 no sales.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 MARY, with her sixty or was it a hundred? 
 other interests, was not particularly aware 
 of neglect on the part of Hewitt Stevenson, clerk, 
 intellectual, and member of team one, Y. M. C. A. 
 Publicity Committee. When he met her on the street, 
 after the last dollar had been pledged for the founding 
 of the institution which was to safeguard the young 
 manhood of Alston, he remembered the " perhaps " 
 which had ended their last talk. She was cordial and 
 kind, but that signified nothing. Mary would have 
 been that to the Lord High Executioner himself, when 
 about to relieve her of her head. Caste three never 
 deserted their standard. Hewitt told her about his 
 small and modest part in the campaign just closed. 
 
 "When can I see you?" he asked, scanning her 
 face carefully in order to ascertain his exact status 
 in her affections. 
 
 " To-morrow night I 'm not doing anything," she 
 replied. 
 
 "May I come then?" He was less abject, more 
 sure of himself, although he had not been able to de- 
 cipher her expression. It is doubtful whether Mary 
 Young's expression could ever have been deciphered 
 by an amateur decipherer. It was a very excellent 
 mask, the mask of an expert, Mary Young's mask. 
 
 322
 
 CASTE THREE 323 
 
 Has it not already been stated that Mary did every- 
 thing well? 
 
 She nodded, and smiled her gay smile at some 
 passersby. 
 
 Hewitt was determined to show Mary that he was 
 as interesting as of old. She should n't discard him 
 on a pretext. She must know that it was the uncer- 
 tainty of his position which had driven him to the 
 figurative extravagance of that note about mud. 
 Surely she understood youth in love she who had 
 seen so many youths in love. And she must have seen 
 them. Of course there still were her faults insin- 
 cerity, superficiality, blind adherence to caste, lack of 
 depth of affection. But we all have our faults, mused 
 Hewitt, thinking of his own insignificant few. Man, 
 with a mind for the big, the vital, must overlook 
 pettiness in women, especially in beautiful women. 
 
 If he had thought to have a quiet evening with Mary 
 on the Trimble veranda, amid talk of books and of 
 him and of her and of Alston and of the world, 
 Hewitt must have been disappointed when she came 
 downstairs and told him they were going to the 
 Hawtreys to Margaret's " open house." He was not 
 entirely sure what an " open house " was in Alston, 
 but he knew it must be a social gathering at which he 
 would be bored and uncomfortable. Margaret Haw- 
 trey was young, eighteen or less. He had n't been 
 trained to social gatherings. They the best and the 
 worst of them disturbed him tremendously. Mary 
 knew this, he felt sure; yet she said they were going
 
 324 CASTE THREE 
 
 to Margaret Hawtrey's " open house." Probably 
 every one went to " open houses," every one being 
 those who were eligible to enter caste three. When 
 every one came, they probably conversed. He could 
 see and hear them conversing, conversing on the large 
 issues of life, the Country Club, other " open houses," 
 absent members of the caste, each other, people who 
 were almost in caste three, but who were not nearly 
 enough in to be counted as " every one," golf, embroid- 
 ery, travel to summer resorts, each other, the Country 
 Club. Into all this conversation on the " large issues " 
 he would be unable to enter, on account of paralysis 
 of the tongue, or, at worst, of nervous centers gen- 
 erally ; or, if he spoke, his remark would sound strange, 
 inapropos, forced, a remark to hear, ignore politely, 
 and let fall to the ground unanswered. His remarks 
 at social gatherings always sounded like that, especially 
 if the gathering consisted of young buds and girls 
 older than the high-schoolers and younger than Mrs. 
 Lombard. With oldish people, especially ladies, he 
 generally succeeded better, unless Mary was present 
 to paralyze him, to deprive him of all power even to 
 make an audible noise which might be mistaken, by 
 those who had never heard his voice, for an effort at 
 speech. 
 
 Hewitt felt that Mary would have given him sin- 
 cere admiration, had he possessed the social polish 
 which characterized Joe Bales and his friends. She 
 who was so at ease, even stimulated, in a group the 
 larger the group, the more stimulated she became
 
 CASTE THREE 325 
 
 could not understand tremors which robbed living of 
 its joy when he came into contact on a purely social 
 basis with more than one person. 
 
 But Hewitt's position with relation to Mary was 
 not such that he could begin the evening by complain- 
 ing of her decision to go to the Hawtreys' " open 
 house." He was unnaturally good-humored during 
 their journey to the heart of the social. He was 
 amusing, hard-heartedly amusing, deserting his cher- 
 ished position as defender of that part of humanity 
 which had drawn the seamy side to hurl pebbles at 
 the Alstonians she had no affection for and who could 
 be attacked cleverly without danger. He referred 
 glibly to the " Argus Pheasant." 
 
 "What is an 'Argus Pheasant,' Hewitt?" Mary 
 asked curiously. 
 
 He had used the term in speaking of a newly rich 
 woman who was a stranger in Alston and thus a mere 
 candidate for caste three. The latter regarded her 
 with a mixture of contempt and perplexed indecision 
 which the rich stranger within our gates deserves and 
 receives. She was, so the guardians of the walls had 
 almost decided, while waiting to see who would make 
 advances to her, an over-dressed person who threw out 
 too evident wiles toward young men. 
 
 " An Argus Pheasant," Hewitt explained demurely 
 and deliberately, as yet untouched by the misery he 
 knew would come upon him in the presence of " every 
 one," " is a bird that has developed its gorgeous 
 plumage at the expense of its free movement."
 
 326 CASTE THREE 
 
 Mary gurgled, and decided to remember that bon 
 mot. Cleverness often consists in borrowing the right 
 phrases. 
 
 The " open house " proved to be only slightly worse 
 than Hewitt had anticipated, because his expectations 
 had been of such a nature as to make the real event 
 impossible of much improvement in that direction. 
 Eighteen-year-old maidens, with escorts of like or 
 greater age, held the center of the stage until Mary 
 arrived. Conversation was indulged in, as he had ex- 
 pected, but it was not the main diversion of the eve- 
 ning Dancing was the chief attraction. This did not 
 simplify matters for Hewitt; rather, it complicated 
 them, for, if anything, he danced with less ease than 
 he talked on such occasions. He had taken lessons in 
 Chicago, he remembered, when he wanted to be more 
 than usually unhappy. He had struggled, but primar- 
 ily he did not conceive of man as a dancing animal. 
 Confronted by the " open house " as a function where 
 one danced, he quailed. His position was difficult. 
 If he danced, Mary would discover, and greet with 
 the disdain such a performance merited, his deficien- 
 cies as a dancing-man. If he refused, she would 
 think he was the canary who could sing but would not 
 do so. 
 
 The mothers of the eighteen-year-old girls were 
 distributed in chattering groups throughout the house 
 and upon the wide, vine-covered veranda. There was 
 a sprinkling of fathers. Evidently this was to be a 
 conspicuously large " open house." Groups already
 
 CASTE THREE 327 
 
 strolled out toward the rustic summer-house with its 
 Japanese lanterns, wandered through the house, or 
 sat on rustic seats. The affair would begin early and 
 last till a late hour. 
 
 Everything must come to an end in time, however, 
 mused the philosopher-by-necessity, at eight-thirty. 
 
 Mary's vivacity increased in proportion as they ap- 
 proached the house. 
 
 "Hello, dears!" she called to the nearest of the 
 talking groups of grown-ups. " Having a good 
 time?" 
 
 " The children are," replied Mrs. Lombard. 
 
 " I hope none of them heard you say ' children ' ! 
 Hewitt, you know every one up here? " 
 
 Hewitt thought, without being sure of anything 
 except his growing discomfiture, that he did. 
 
 Music from a saxophone and a piano, with an ac- 
 companiment of trap-drums, broke forth from the 
 inner regions. The dancers hastened inside. 
 
 " Hello, Mary ! So glad you came and that you Ve 
 brought Mr. Stevenson," Margaret Hawtrey called to 
 them. 
 
 " I want the next, Mary," came from the trees. 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 " Morgan." 
 
 " You do dance, don't you? " Mary turned- to say to 
 Hewitt. 
 
 He had not decided whether to tell the whole truth 
 or half a truth. Thus he hesitated, and the usual 
 happened.
 
 328 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Come, then ! You must dance with some of the 
 younger girls after this one. You '11 like them. 
 They 're dears. Margaret is to enter Wellesley. 
 You '11 have something in common. Now do be nice 
 and sociable/' 
 
 Hewitt did n't feel sociable. He felt stiff. He was 
 sorry he had not said a final and emphatic " No," 
 when asked whether or not he danced. This would 
 have made him an attendant on the mothers or free 
 to smoke in a chair far from the maddening crowd 
 of habitues. At the crucial moment his courage had 
 failed. He must again pay for a lack of skill, this 
 time to say the half -true " No." Well, he would 
 dance around once with Mary and then, before she 
 could introduce him to the young girls he was willing 
 to take her word for as being nice, retire into the 
 all-enshrouding darkness, once she had been put safely 
 into the hands of his rival, Morgan. Much as he 
 feared and hated Morgan's monopoly of Mary, Hewitt 
 would do this. He loved Mary well, but his comfort 
 better. 
 
 Mary led him into the brilliancy of the lighted 
 parlors where the saxophone orchestra held forth in 
 raucous tones so fascinating to the dancer. The 
 " eighteens " and their partners were engrossed in 
 their own rhythmical movement, but not to the ex- 
 clusion of Mary. They had hardly begun to dance 
 before her presence was noted. 
 
 "Hello, Mary!" called Tom Brandon. "I want 
 a dance with you."
 
 CASTE THREE 329 
 
 Hewitt was then introduced to Tom, while the two 
 couples danced along together. 
 
 " I suppose you know you are dancing with the 
 best dancer in town," Tom told him in friendly 
 fashion. 
 
 " I judged that," Hewitt managed to say. 
 
 He had never been more miserable in his life. His 
 knees were enormous wooden balls-and-sockets which 
 were permanently out of order. Despite his large, 
 awkward movements, his stiffness of back, his blurred- 
 ness of brains, however, they were moving with a 
 smoothness which must have been deceiving to spec- 
 tators. Mary made this deception possible. She 
 danced for three. He would have known it by her 
 silence, had he been ignorant of his inability to do 
 the necessary things in this branch of accomplishment. 
 She did not speak after they had talked to Tom Bran- 
 don. She probably had no breath for speech. She 
 was consuming large amounts of energy, Hewitt felt. 
 
 To Hewitt, the rooms through which they danced 
 were a swirl of blinding light, flickering with blurs 
 of color that were girls and streaks of black that were 
 men. All the world glided, laughing and talking, 
 through the intricate steps of the dance. They were 
 masters of this art. Only Hewitt watched his step 
 and, in the very act of watching, lost the slight mechan- 
 ical dexterity he had developed at that far distant 
 dancing-school and groped for the next move. Mary 
 followed with remarkable skill, considering her diffi- 
 culties.
 
 330 CASTE THREE 
 
 At the door, after having gone once around, Hewitt 
 stopped and drew Mary into the friendly semi-dark- 
 ness of the veranda. He was hot and miserable. 
 
 "Why did you bring me to this thing?" he con- 
 fronted her with, as he led her down the steps to the 
 lawn. 
 
 " I had an engagement with you, didn't I? After 
 I made it, Margaret wanted me to come to her ' open 
 house.' It 's quite informal. Your coming is per- 
 fectly proper, even though Margaret did n't know you 
 socially," she explained, with a gentleness he had no 
 right to expect. In the shadow of the trees she lost 
 her vivacity, he noticed. 
 
 " Some one else asked you to come ! " he went on 
 less angrily, but still emphatically wishing himself out 
 of it. 
 
 "What if some one did? Other people have the 
 right to ask me to go to an ' open house,' Hewitt." 
 
 He looked down sulkily at the ground 
 
 " I 'm sorry you had to come with me." 
 
 " I 'm not. So why should you be ? " She touched 
 his arm appeal ingly. 
 
 " But it 's hard on you to have to dance with me." 
 
 " You dance very well. Don't decide you do it 
 badly, for goodness' sake! That ruins anybody for 
 dancing." 
 
 " I 'm not a dancing man." 
 
 " Then you must become one. This is no age for 
 a recluse. Do everything, and do everything well." 
 
 " That 's the way you do things."
 
 CASTE THREE 331 
 
 " I try to be decently proficient in the things every- 
 body does. But come up to the house. You must 
 dance with some of the young girls. And talk! Act 
 interested in yourself and in them. You must." 
 
 " I 'm not interested in myself to-night." 
 
 " Then pretend to be." 
 
 Still miserable, Hewitt was led to the slaughter. 
 The dancers were streaming out into the air. He was 
 introduced to a great many of them, without hearing 
 their names. They swarmed about Mary millions 
 of them, it seemed to him. How could a man remem- 
 ber a million names, even if he heard them when they 
 were pronounced? He finally sat down, because the 
 other men in the group did, on the steps of the veranda. 
 Mary turned her attention to Margaret Hawtrey and 
 Bob Dillings. She parried laughing insults from 
 Harvey Lombard, who was allowed out with every- 
 one to-night on account of the intimacy between his 
 family and that of the hostess. Hewitt pondered over 
 Harvey's gay bantering. Why not be in bed, where 
 comfort lay? Caste three asks only that you let your 
 fountain of joy flow when in its midst, but Hewitt had 
 no fountain of joy. 
 
 At the beginning of the next dance Mary disap- 
 peared on the arm of Arthur Morgan. When the 
 group of which Hewitt was a non-existent portion 
 had broken up into pairs, he was left alone on the 
 steps. The movement which he made in getting off 
 the steps and out in the direction of the dimly lighted 
 summer-house, where the darkness was deeper, may
 
 332 CASTE THREE 
 
 be best described as " slinking." Slinking had become 
 Hewitt's ideal mode of locomotion. It meant evad- 
 ing the horrors of being social. It meant a beginning 
 of freedom for thought. It meant temporary peace, 
 which would be lengthened into three hours of peace 
 at the slightest opportunity. 
 
 He lighted a cigarette and slunk into the darkness. 
 He inhaled the blessed air of evening, unpolluted by 
 talk about the " great issues." He gazed at the quiet 
 stars. Peace dipped in its flight through space and 
 sat upon his shoulder. 
 
 Not for long did it stay there, however. 
 
 Fathers were about. Hewitt encountered two of 
 them. They observed him and spoke to him. The 
 ends of their cigars alternately darkened and glowed. 
 One of them scanned his face as best he could. 
 
 " I guess I don't know you, young man. I 'm Carl 
 Hawtrey. This is Mr. Lombard." 
 
 " Hewitt Stevenson, sir." He shook their prof- 
 fered hands. 
 
 " Come back with us. You don't want to miss this 
 dancing. Ladies must be taken care of. It strikes 
 me, Lombard, that the lads are n't so attentive as we 
 used to be. Eh?" 
 
 That left Hewitt in a position where courtesy made 
 demands. 
 
 " I think no one 's being left out this dance," he 
 said, but nevertheless started to accompany them to 
 the house. " I believe there are some extra young 
 men."
 
 CASTE THREE 333 
 
 " You ought to be showing the old ladies a 
 good time, then. Somebody has to make up for 
 our rheumatic incapacity. Eh, Lombard ? " He 
 laughed heartily, a laugh in which Hewitt could not 
 join. 
 
 Mr. Lombard agreed with everything Mr. Hawtrey 
 said, giving nods which sent his cigar into a glow 
 again. 
 
 So it was that at the beginning of the next dance 
 Hewitt was standing with the two fathers at the steps, 
 his cigarette cast aside, his arm hanging over the 
 railing, his manner heavy. Further misery was im- 
 minent, and he was not man enough to meet it with the 
 manner debonnair. 
 
 Mary Young had passed with her escort, all elas- 
 ticity and joy. They were even now running across 
 the lawn together in pursuit of Margaret and Bob 
 Dillings. A lump took its place permanently in 
 Hewitt's throat. He, too, wanted to be gay, but he 
 remained lumpier than before. 
 
 Once again the dancers went into the house. Mar- 
 garet Hawtrey was standing beside her mother when 
 the last couple strolled in. Duty called, and duty's 
 demands were reinforced by the presence of two 
 fathers. 
 
 "May I have this one?" Hewitt asked Margaret, 
 coming upon her so suddenly that she started. It 
 had been necessary for him to hurry, to strike while 
 his resolution remained hot. 
 
 " I should love to dance with you," she said, in the
 
 334 CASTE THREE 
 
 stereotyped extravagant form used by all the progeny 
 of caste three. 
 
 Hewitt talked. Margaret smiled at him and ex- 
 changed repartee with passing couples. Evidently he 
 was not convincing as a speaker on trivial subjects. 
 He decided this before the dance was half over, and 
 relapsed into painful silence which would have been 
 unnoticed had he been in full control of his pedal 
 extremities. He reddened with increasing splendor 
 about the ears. All visible parts of him reddened. 
 
 As soon as Margaret guessed from this flag of dis- 
 tress that he was uncomfortable, she turned all her 
 batteries of pleasantry into play and saved the day. 
 When the music stopped she swept him to a choice 
 seat and talked exclusively to him about books. She 
 had heard Mary say that he was intellectual ; therefore 
 she confined herself to intellectual subjects. 
 
 " Do you like Longfellow ? " she asked, wide-eyed. 
 She looked very pretty, Hewitt thought. 
 
 " One does n't like Longfellow in this day, I be- 
 lieve," he said, with a great show of thinking hard. 
 " One tolerates him, I should say." 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, astonished and saddened. " Is n't 
 it nice to like him ? " To like something it was n't 
 " the thing " among the best people to like was incom- 
 prehensible to Margaret. 
 
 " Well, it is ' nice ' to like any one who appeals to 
 you," Hewitt was quick to add. " You must follow 
 your own taste. I was only expressing my opinion." 
 
 " Oh ! " This time the " Oh " was one of relief.
 
 CASTE THREE 335 
 
 " What poems of his do you admire? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, the ones every one admires," was her in- 
 definite reply. 
 
 " You see," Hewitt leaned back and felt almost 
 comfortable for a few minutes, " Longfellow is 
 rather second-rate, according to our standards. He 
 wasn't great enough. Narrative poetry is in dis- 
 repute, anyway. The novel has entirely taken its 
 place. Poetry is going in the same direction as art. 
 There 's a tendency to write pure emotion, if you 
 understand that." 
 
 She gazed at him, with her wide eyes questioning. 
 
 " That 's very interesting," she said, smiling. 
 " Thank you for telling me. I don't read much. You 
 do, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose I read more than most men. 
 That 's rather my line. It 's not just books, you see. 
 People think that. A book is n't worth anything un- 
 less it is art or contains ideas. I am interested in 
 science myself." 
 
 " Are you going away to school? " 
 
 " To Chicago." 
 
 " I 'm going to Wellesley. Susannah Conners 
 you have n't met her have you ? and her mother are 
 in New York. She 's been at Smith this year. Sev- 
 eral of the girls here are going to Smith, but mother 
 and I chose Wellesley." She smiled at him again. 
 
 This was much better. Hewitt was almost enjoying 
 himself. 
 
 Mary was inside the house. Her voice floated out
 
 336 CASTE THREE 
 
 to Hewitt just as he made this decision about his feel- 
 ings. Instantly his content fled. He wondered if she 
 would continue to amuse herself with the natives, and 
 leave him to himself and young women who said they 
 admired Longfellow. 
 
 " There are schools which fit our needs," he began 
 again to Margaret. " Chicago stands for science. I 
 suppose Smith has something particularly good about 
 it, and Wellesley, too." 
 
 " Mother and I liked the catalogue's description of 
 it," Margaret replied. " Then we met such a nice girl, 
 while we were East last summer, who had been there. 
 If Susannah Conners were going back to Smith, I 
 would go with her. But she is n't. She has n't been 
 well, and her mother thinks of bringing her back to 
 Alston next winter. So perhaps I won't even go to 
 Wellesley. Susannah will hate not to go, but Aunt 
 Jean she is n't really my aunt, but everyone here 
 calls her that Aunt Jean always has her way about 
 Susannah." 
 
 Mary, in the house, was being jolly to five people 
 at once. Each thought she was being nice to him or 
 her personally, since she wasted as much attention on 
 the girls as on the men. Mary was incomparable! 
 Hewitt often thought of the fact gleaned from psy- 
 chology, that a memory of past successes is essential 
 to one's self-confidence. Mary must have an entire 
 book of past successes in her memory. She was the 
 center of every circle. No wonder caste three wanted 
 her at their parties, even the younger sets. She toned
 
 CASTE THREE 337 
 
 up a party, gave it zest. No dull moments existed 
 around Mary. They scurried away into dark cor- 
 ners when she appeared. 
 
 Hewitt listened to Mary and forgot to be thankful 
 to Margaret for playing the attentive hostess to him, 
 for that must be why she was pretending this great 
 interest in books. He began wishing that Mary would 
 come out and lay her hand on his head. 
 
 " I think so," he was saying to Margaret, in answer 
 to a question. He wondered what the question had 
 been. 
 
 Three Hewitts were present at the Hawtreys' " open 
 house." Three Hewitts were present wherever one 
 dragged them during these days. They were very 
 interesting for an introspective mind to watch. He 
 got some pleasure out of observing them, but he would 
 have preferred peace. 
 
 There was the Hewitt who was abjectly in love with 
 Mary Young. This one spent much time in yearn- 
 ing for a word or a look to show that she continued to 
 single him out as a recognized loyalist worthy of her 
 love. This Hewitt was generally present when Mary 
 stood out as the most attractive woman in a group. 
 He cried out for her to display her affection not only 
 to the public, but to the other two Hewitts who sat 
 critically taking notes on her, ready to emerge into 
 the light when the time was propitious and express 
 themselves in no mild terms. This Hewitt would have 
 sold his soul for a sign of deep and sincere feeling from 
 Mary. This was the Hewitt who spent miserable
 
 338 CASTE THREE 
 
 hours at night with the knowledge that he was only 
 twenty-one and an incident to Mary. 
 
 The- second Hewitt was the one who in Chicago had 
 been in permanent domination of all other Hewitts, 
 one who was enormously interested in books, because 
 books stood for ideas. This was Hewitt the intel- 
 lectual, or the embryonically intellectual. He was the 
 Hewitt whom Letsky had delighted and stimulated with 
 his radicalism, who loved the world because it held 
 other minds as keen or keener than his own, and who 
 loved argument. This second Hewitt pounced upon 
 foreign thought, loved France because it contained the 
 Paris of literature and art, handed a laurel wreath to 
 the Germany of philosophic thought, adored England 
 with a great fervor, because it was the land that had 
 fostered the traditions he had been reared upon. This 
 was the Hewitt who, in his youth, would have been the 
 happy companion of the wise, and who would have 
 been the enemy of all intellect, except his own, in 
 maturity. This was Hewitt the would-be thinker. 
 
 But there had crept up during the last month a dis- 
 gusting third Hewitt who hated and cherished hate, 
 a disagreeable Mr. Hyde among Hewitts, who showed 
 his fangs at a world which did not take him seriously 
 enough nor gave him what he wanted which was 
 praise for being the second Hewitt who snarled at 
 a world which contained a Mary who valued others 
 more than she did him. A veritable ogre was this 
 Hewitt. He excreted emphatically at Alston, spat in 
 rage at a town which neither patronized nor under-
 
 CASTE THREE 339 
 
 stood the things of the mind, but was willing to con- 
 descend to those who pretended they understood, if 
 these, lacking wealth and the prestige of acting ac- 
 cording to all rules of caste three, wished to be con- 
 descended to. The second Hewitt tried in vain to 
 convince this third one that Alston was only a child 
 interested in finding out trivial but exciting items 
 about itself and a material world which was being 
 liberal with these followers of hardy pioneers. Alston 
 in time would grow up into a fair maturity that was 
 convinced of other values. The ogre Hewitt thrust 
 reason aside. Spitting was fun and necessary to his 
 existence. Otherwise one swallowed the venom and 
 was poisoned. One must not repress hate. 
 
 Even more efficacious than Alston in arousing hate 
 in this third Hewitt was Mary the hoarder of scalps, 
 the vampire, the non-intellectual, the fraud who pre- 
 tended to value other standards than did her associates, 
 but was really the slave of convention, a Mary, in- 
 deed, among the Marthas of his former ideals! She 
 had let him approach near enough to see the wonders 
 of her love. Then she had wanted him to forget. 
 The novelty was no longer a novelty; it could be dis- 
 carded. But reaction and an unexpected stickiness 
 on the part of a boy who showed signs of being hurt 
 by this discarding had brought him into partial favor 
 again until that note about mud. That had relieved 
 Mary of further effort to be kind to Hewitt. But 
 he had not accepted the ultimatum. He had been 
 stricken with repentance. She might forgive. He
 
 340 CASTE THREE 
 
 was a good trophy, one of the most susceptible she 
 had ever dealt with, and since she could neglect him 
 when she chose, she had not cast him into outer dark- 
 ness as she might another offender or another doubter 
 of the divine right of woman, according to the roman- 
 tic ideal of love. She had not cast Hewitt out; she 
 had equivocated with a " perhaps." 
 
 The third Hewitt loathed Mary Young with an 
 awful loathing, because she had deprived him of his 
 self-respect. He had not been strong enough to resent 
 in action that first casting-off. This bitter self became 
 drunk with power when Mary took unusual pains to 
 be sympathetic and kind, and it hurled reproaches on 
 her for being herself. After all, that was what all 
 the Hewitts must conclude at last Mary was only 
 being herself. She was the self she had been during 
 a million years of her existence in a world of men and 
 women who seized the necessities, plucked off the 
 luxuries, and amused themselves in the leisure which 
 possessions gave them. She was very old in her 
 knowledge of the world. She "knew the game," as 
 Reed had said. She was hard, but she was wonder- 
 ful. 
 
 Mary's voice, which still floated to him from where 
 she sat entertaining five others inside, drew the first 
 Hewitt to the surface. He wished the next dance, 
 which would take a very kind but boresome Margaret 
 off his hands, would come. He wanted to run in to 
 Mary, take her out into the darkness, and hear her 
 voice, spoken only for him. He wanted to look at
 
 CASTE THREE 341 
 
 her eager face if she would only remain as eager 
 for him as she did for the others and prove his 
 subjection. 
 
 The saxophone blared its invitation. Hewitt arose, 
 excused himself to Margaret, and hurried away into 
 the house. Mary was standing with her hand thrown 
 over Bob Billings' shoulder, ready to dance. Hewitt 
 came up behind her. 
 
 " Mary," he said, trying to make his voice sound 
 like the voice of others who asked her to dance, " may 
 I have the next one ? " 
 
 "Five are promised ahead, Hewitt. Wait, Bob!" 
 She drew away from her partner and took Hewitt's 
 arm. " I want you to dance with Katherine Miller's 
 sister. She just came in. She 's sweet! " 
 
 Against his will Hewitt did so. He endured the 
 annoyance of trying to dance as blithely as Bob Dil- 
 lings, while he hated it, and of talking, when he had 
 no desire to do anything but get away from all this. 
 Toward the end of the evening Mary and Bob came 
 and sat with them, and Mary arranged the next few 
 dances for Hewitt. He endured that, too, in silence, 
 and at length begged for one with her later. 
 
 " You did n't ask me to save it," she said, smiling 
 her old intimate smile at him and putting her hand over 
 his on the railing in the darkness. " I 've promised 
 ahead all we '11 dance to-night. I 'm sorry." 
 
 There are degrees of torture. The nth degree was 
 what Hewitt suffered at the " open house," an institu- 
 tion supposed to entertain people. But, as he had
 
 342 CASTE THREE 
 
 thought philosophically, before forgetting to remain 
 philosophical, everything must end in time. Some- 
 where in the vicinity of midnight Mary came to him 
 to be taken home. 
 
 She was tired, and was glad to go. One is not un- 
 obtrusively the center of a group of eighteen-year-old 
 boys and girls. One remains eager and clever end- 
 lessly, but one gets hopelessly tired. Hewitt had con- 
 cealed his hatred for the " open house " as a social 
 gathering in which he took a disagreeable part, but 
 his mask was never so impenetrable nor so well-ad- 
 justed as Mary's. It slipped when he had opened the 
 door for her at the Trimbles' and stood waiting to say 
 good-night to her. 
 
 " Why did n't you dance with me after the first 
 one?" he demanded fiercely, his load of misery that 
 had been gathering weight all the evening finding voice 
 at last. 
 
 " I did n't think you wanted to dance with me," 
 Mary said, but she did not carry out this pretence as 
 she intended. She had played bridge all the morning 
 and golf all the afternoon. Her fingers were not 
 quick enough to hide the yawn that rushed to her lips. 
 " Now you may run on to your fairer gardens. 
 Hewitt," she said. "Mud is tiresome, isn't it? 
 Even buttercups don't conceal that fact. Buttercups 
 are such a common flower, anyway. You will love 
 all those younger girls when you learn to know them 
 better." She held out her hand to him. " Good- 
 night."
 
 CASTE THREE 343 
 
 Caught in the meshes of an overwhelming helpless- 
 ness, Hewitt gazed at the fingers which she held out. 
 He did not take them. He seemed fascinated by 
 them. 
 
 Mary dropped her hand and opened the door. With 
 her fingers on the knob, she paused. 
 
 " Good-night," she said again. 
 
 The third self in Hewitt brushed its brothers aside. 
 
 " Close that door ! " he commanded sharply, pulling 
 it shut for her. " I want to talk to you. You 've 
 made a fool of me. I 'm tired of being rolled into 
 a flat ribbon by the steam-roller of your colossal self- 
 ishness. / 'm the mud ! I 've known from the be- 
 ginning that I was mud under your feet. Your little 
 feet have trampled so many men that one more 
 or less does n't count ! You laugh afterward, while 
 they writhe. That's the kind of woman you are! 
 You led me to think you were the beautiful person I 
 wanted to think you were. You were full of fine 
 sympathy for my poor plans to be better than the world 
 around me. I know I 'm a fool ! You 've proved 
 that to me. I wrote poetry to you silly poetry 
 that I thought expressed something of what you meant 
 to me! You charmed me with your pretty ways. I 
 thought you were a woman to be worshipped. I put 
 you upon a high pedestal and bowed down to you. 
 I 'm only twenty-one. Don't mention that to me ! I 
 know I 'm only twenty-one. But my twenty-one is 
 older, in some ways, than Tom Brandon's thirty. 
 You know that. Thinking and knowing is what
 
 344 CASTE THREE 
 
 makes a man old or young. And I 've done more 
 thinking in my twenty-one years than Tom Brandon 
 or any of his kind will do in their entire lives. I 'm 
 not throwing bouquets at myself. I know what I 'm 
 talking about, I 've lived within myself for a long 
 time. I suppose I 'm a kind of hermit, and that I 'm 
 not used to the light, airy ways of your friends. I 've 
 always been deadly serious. I take things hard. 
 When I like people, I like them forever. As you 
 have said, I don't like many people. But when I 
 select, I choose for good and all forever ! I 'm 
 mad about you. I loved you from the first. You 
 were different from any one I had ever known. You 
 seemed so so unprejudiced and open-minded and 
 clever. But, more than that, you were so interested 
 in the things I love better than life itself. You were 
 wise and kind; and sometimes I think kindliness is 
 better than wisdom itself. Maybe that 's because I 
 am a weakling, afraid of people who get what they 
 want, no matter who 's hurt. I would have done any- 
 thing for you ! I would have sold my soul, like Faust. 
 I crawled on the ground when I thought I had mis- 
 judged you. I lay awake at night, when I felt you 
 had become bored with me, thinking up ways to win 
 back your interest. I I 've cried at night over you ! 
 I realized I was only a little part of your life so 
 small that I could disappear without your noticing it. 
 I 've wanted to die, so that you would come and stand 
 over me with tenderness in your eyes, the way you 
 looked at me once or twice before you had taken all
 
 CASTE THREE 345 
 
 you wanted of me. I wish I were dead to-night! 
 You 've taken away all the interest I used to have in 
 myself! Nothing counts now but you, Mary!" He 
 leaned closer, so that his eyes blazed into hers. " And 
 now, to-night, you fling that note into my face, that 
 note about mud! I wrote that note because you 
 maddened me. I love you! Day and night I think 
 about you. You go 'round and 'round in my mind, 
 when I try to think. I can't read poetry any more. 
 I can't even keep you out of my science. Nothing 
 matters any more, except you. And now you tell me 
 I can ' go on to fairer gardens.' There are no fairer 
 gardens. There are no other gardens in the world! 
 All the rest of the world is only ashes in my mouth. 
 Nothing makes any difference to me, except you! 
 But I 'm done with you to-night ! You '11 never 
 again call me with your devilish, intimate voice, and 
 have me answer. I 'm through ! No, I 'm not quite 
 through. I 'm going to kiss you. I 've not dared 
 to do that for months, poor fool that I am! You 
 have n't been worth a minute of devotion. I 'm mad ! 
 I know it ! " 
 
 Hewitt took her in his arms, while Mary fought, 
 helpless before the strength his fury gave him. He 
 kissed her again and again. He hurt her with his 
 strong hold. In the end she stopped fighting against 
 him and lay inert, her eyes closed. 
 
 The heaviness of her relaxed body brought Hewitt 
 to his senses. He released her so suddenly that she 
 fell back against the door, where she stood looking
 
 346 CASTE THREE 
 
 at him with puzzled, horror-stricken eyes. There was 
 surprise in her eyes, too. 
 
 He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of 
 the door-casing, and his arms hung limply at his sides. 
 His mouth twitched, and tears rolled down his cheeks. 
 Gradually the sight of his emotion changed her 
 wonder to something like pity. She touched his arm. 
 
 " Hewitt ! " Mary said gently. 
 
 " Hewitt ! " she repeated, when he did not move. 
 
 He looked at her, his face twitching. 
 
 They stood looking at each other for a long time, 
 while a breeze crept stealthily through the night, wav- 
 ing the vines hanging from the veranda pillars and 
 ruffling their hair. Hewitt appeared weak and ex- 
 hausted. He leaned forward at last, and then 
 straightened himself. 
 
 " Sit down on the steps," Mary said. " We must 
 talk." 
 
 He sat down, looking dazedly at the trees on the 
 lawn, with his chin on his hands. 
 
 " Hewitt," Mary began, sitting beside him so that 
 her arm touched his, " I am sorry." 
 
 He glanced quickly around at her, and then resumed 
 his contemplation of the trees. 
 
 " I did n't know you felt this way." 
 
 " I told you that I loved you.' 
 
 " Most boys would n't have taken it so hard. You 
 are different, I suppose. Most young men love and 
 get over it." 
 
 Hewitt shook his head. She went on:
 
 CASTE THREE 347 
 
 " I did n't understand. I thought you were like 
 the others. I was sorry afterward that I let you kiss 
 me that night the lights went out. But I did like you. 
 I am interested in you." And then, after a little 
 silence, " I did n't want to hurt you." 
 
 "Not lately," returned Hewitt. "You haven't 
 been interested in me. You never were, after the 
 first few weeks. I was strange, and when I stopped 
 being that, and you saw that I was just an ordinary 
 person, you wanted no more of me. It made me sick 
 the day you and Katherine Miller came in and you 
 only asked as an afterthought how I was feeling." 
 His voice was weak. " I felt that if only I had been 
 like Joe Bales, you would have gone on being in- 
 terested. But I 'm only a reader. I '11 never be like 
 those other men." 
 
 " You are a great deal more than a reader of books. 
 I don't know " Mary stopped. " I don't know why 
 you thought I had lost interest in you." 
 
 They were silent while the breeze ruffled their hair 
 again. The night was very still ; the street was dark. 
 A light in the house across the way went out, the 
 last in the neighborhood. The echo of a clanging 
 street-car down-town came to them through the 
 silence. A man lurched by, paused to hold on to the 
 iron fence next door, and then tottered on. 
 
 Mary held out her hand for Hewitt to take. He 
 held it tightly in both of his. 
 
 A faint stir in the bushes drew their attention for 
 a moment, but it passed.
 
 348 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I wish you were older, dear," she said after a long 
 pause. 
 
 " I am twenty-one." 
 
 But Mary shook her head. 
 
 " I am twenty-seven," she said. " I wish you were 
 my son," she added, with a touch of emotion. 
 
 Hewitt had to smile at this remark. 
 
 " I wish I had a baby, Hewitt. You see I 'm the 
 kind of woman who never marries. Men don't want 
 to marry me, except very young ones," she added 
 to stop his protest. " There have to be some women 
 left, I suppose, to amuse people. I do amuse people. 
 That is why they like me. That 's the way I earn 
 my way. I am hard, so people who don't like me say. 
 Do you think I have n't any feeling, Hewitt? " 
 
 " I have thought that you did n't," he returned 
 quietly. 
 
 " Sometimes I, too, think I have n't. All the feel- 
 ing I ever had I have fought down. People don't 
 want to see your heart. They just want to be amused. 
 They prefer you hard and bright. Then you are 
 clever; you amuse them." 
 
 Her fixed gaze was calm when Hewitt turned to 
 look at her. His first thought that an unhappy 
 love-affair had brought her to this point of view 
 he knew to be wrong. She was not sad because people 
 wanted her to amuse them; there was no tragedy 
 here. She was merely speaking of a course she had 
 chosen for herself. 
 
 " But sometimes I think it is too bad I can't be
 
 CASTE THREE 349 
 
 married and have a baby," Mary continued. " Some 
 people think a woman's right to have children ought 
 to allow her to have them out of wedlock. That 
 would make society impossible, of course. No, I 
 would n't do that. I like to be with people too well. 
 I shall never have a baby, Hewitt. Perhaps if I had 
 one, I would n't love it at all. Sometimes I can't love 
 anything. The power seems to come and go with 
 me." 
 
 " I know," he said. " I realized that was how you 
 were acting with me." 
 
 Mary frowned. 
 
 " Are n't people queer, Hewitt? " 
 
 " All of us," he replied gloomily. 
 
 " I should like to love everybody. I want every- 
 body to love me." He felt now that she had stopped 
 idealizing herself, even to herself, and was trying to 
 be frankly truthful. " I love admiration and atten- 
 tion. I suppose we all do. But with me it 's an 
 obsession. I have always been that way. I try to 
 make people in general love me, not only the men. 
 I spend tons of energy a month trying to make them 
 love me. Sometimes it 's not hard. But then, when 
 I am sure of them, I want to make new ones like me." 
 
 Hewitt understood. 
 
 " Hewitt, if you could only go on loving me, dear, 
 and not mind the gaps in my affection! I am just 
 myself. Emotion is hard to guide. Because I love 
 you one day is no surety that I will the next. Some- 
 times I love well, the ' Joe Bales ' kind of man.
 
 350 CASTE THREE 
 
 And at other times I love your kind. That is the kind 
 of woman I am." 
 
 She smiled, with an attempt to erase the nearness 
 to sentiment of her speech, but the smile faded before 
 the odd intensity of Hewitt's expression. 
 
 " I love so many people," Mary concluded, " and 
 never all of them at the same time." 
 
 Hewitt stood up and stretched his arms over his 
 head, as though he were making sure they would 
 work at his command. Mary arose, too. He drew 
 her close to him and examined her face by the dim 
 light before he kissed her. 
 
 " I can live on this for a long time," he said sadly. 
 " You may love the ' Joe Bales ' kind to-morrow, and 
 I shall understand. I don't think I will get angry 
 with you again. Maybe, when I go away from Alston, 
 I can stop loving you." 
 
 " This has been worth all the torture," he said later, 
 when he let her go. " I am glad I went mad." He 
 laughed, and opened the door for her. " Good-night, 
 Mary." 
 
 When he reached home Hewitt went softly to his 
 room and undressed without turning on the light. 
 He was still quiveringly wide-awake. He sat down 
 on his bed. He felt as though his system had been 
 cleared of a poison that had produced miseries and 
 furies, a misery which was now dissolved in a vivid 
 content. He* was happier than he ever remembered 
 to have been, even though he knew that to-morrow 
 no, not to-morrow ; not so soon as that, but before
 
 CASTE THREE 351 
 
 long she would again be the old Mary and Hewitt 
 a mere incident. 
 
 The third Hewitt was conquered, he thought. Love 
 was just what you made it, returned or tolerated. 
 You could be happy with it if you chose. It should 
 never again make a coward and a hater of him, so 
 Hewitt told himself.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 fT^HE third Hewitt was not dead, as he supposed, 
 J[ however. He was temporarily eliminated from 
 the race, but he convalesced later, although he never 
 did flourish as of old. Nevertheless, the evening upon 
 which this ego suffered partial eclipse was not with- 
 out its immediate effect upon the life of the composite 
 person called Hewitt Stevenson. There are ways and 
 ways of conquering old habits. Hewitt decided, while 
 still under the influence of the ecstasy of that night 
 when Mary had attempted explanation of herself, 
 that to put Mary out of the center of his life would 
 be a good move, a hard move, but a move worth the 
 trouble. One needed a spiked German helmet to deal 
 with walls such as lay between him and Mary, the wall 
 of her intermittent interest, and Hewitt's distant 
 Irish ancestry made a selection of such headgear im- 
 probable. His head was the kind likely to feel soft 
 and bruised after an encounter with stone walls. 
 
 Being in love would n't be such a serious matter, if 
 one had the hardihood to step out of it as though out 
 of a fair but no longer useful garment, leaving it to 
 lie in beautiful folds on the floor while one ran on. 
 Not, however, to run to fairer gardens. There were 
 no fairer gardens. (This was the morning after the 
 
 352
 
 CASTE THREE 353 
 
 explosion and there was a consequent clearing of the 
 air.) But there were other gardens or fields or what 
 you will. At any rate, one must go on. 
 
 Books had lost their hold upon Hewitt. In these 
 days they no longer offered the solace of the period 
 before he had begun living according to Mary's ideas 
 of what living should consist. Novels bored him. 
 They were for people who were not ready to live, or 
 for those whose living was in the past, a panorama to 
 be contemplated through the revived emotions the 
 novelist presented to one. Science seemed to require 
 more concentration than he could bring to any labor. 
 Mary remained a very disturbing element in his exist- 
 ence. 
 
 1 Hewitt decided that play was what he needed. He 
 wished for some of that old care-free joy in existence 
 which had been his on the farm and in Chicago, when 
 he and Paul had taken jaunts to the parks and the 
 Indiana sand-dunes and lakeside resorts. He had 
 buried himself long enough in an emotion which 
 alternately transfused itself into a heaven and a hell. 
 He wanted back his youth's birthright. 
 
 Alston was a pleasant place, if one were not dis- 
 gustingly critical. One man could not make over a 
 community in a month or a year by finding fault with 
 it. Words were inefficacious in such a situation, even 
 if one were willing to dedicate oneself solely to the 
 task of transforming Alston, Indiana, child of the 
 Middle West, into something Hewitt had no blue- 
 prints of an ultimate Alston, more satisfactory to
 
 354 CASTE THREE 
 
 the mind. Let well enough alone. In time it would 
 become introspective and find itself. 
 
 Meantime, it might be a good thing for Hewitt to 
 find himself. 
 
 The world, he decided, was an immense horn of 
 plenty, Mr. Hardy and others both ancient and 
 modern to the contrary notwithstanding. One could 
 not pluck all the fruits. One must choose. One must 
 pay. 
 
 This paying business was what bothered most 
 people, especially the young of the species. They did 
 not want to pay. They wanted to smile at the tall, 
 stately, meagerly dressed lady holding the horn, and 
 have her at once unload generously into their laps, 
 made more capacious by the holding out of voluminous 
 aprons fond mothers had made ample in the beginning. 
 They wanted a great deal of juicy, luscious fruit, with 
 no vegetables, and they did not want to pay for the 
 fruit. One lost one's delicate taste if one labored for 
 coin with which to pay. Fruits in variety and plenty 
 were presented for choice. If one had a banana taste, 
 which Hewitt did not, he loathed bananas with an 
 awful hatred, as food for train day-coaches on summer 
 Sunday afternoons, one picked out a banana and 
 gave the lady holder-of-the-horn a penny or a dime, 
 or whatever bananas were selling for. If one pre- 
 ferred pineapples, one also paid the current price. 
 It was the same with grape-fruit, plums, figs, or any 
 other fruit. 
 
 In August, 1913, Hewitt recognized that he had
 
 CASTE THREE 355 
 
 been crying out for three kinds of fruit. He had 
 wanted to be intellectual, to be social, and to have 
 Mary Young exclusively to himself. He had already 
 tested the quinine bitterness, combined with the satis- 
 fying firm tartness, of the grape-fruit of intellectual- 
 ism. He knew that he liked grape-fruit; but then, a 
 steady diet in youth, even of most delicious fruit, be- 
 comes tiresome if there is no variety. He would now 
 sample figs, fresh figs. One often did not like them 
 at first, he understood. He would try them again. 
 And the price? The meagerly clad lady smiled 
 enigmatically. 
 
 " You may pay for this fruit according to your 
 means," she seemed to say. " The largest and best 
 figs come high. We have, however, a medium-priced 
 fig and a cheap fig. Which will you have? " 
 
 Hewitt was cautious because of his training in a 
 work-a-day world and because of his experience with 
 fruit-vendors in Chicago. He decided upon a 
 medium-priced fig, and asked the price. The lady 
 studied him. Then she whispered in his ear, causing 
 him to start. 
 
 "Is that a meduim-priced fig?" he stuttered. 
 
 The lady smiled her affirmation, and he purchased, 
 wondering whether it was worth the price. But Mary 
 Young had to be defeated, the Mary who occupied his 
 mind to the exclusion of all else. 
 
 As a result of this buying, one August evening 
 found Hewitt, a fourth Hewitt who was determined 
 to be like other people by which he meant like Joe
 
 356 CASTE THREE 
 
 Bales and to enjoy the fleeting moments just as 
 other people did, standing against the soda-fountain 
 in, Becker's cigar-store. His elbows rested on the 
 marble and his feet were crossed. He was standing 
 unabashed, at his ease, comfortable. At least, he 
 looked that way. 
 
 In reality, Hewitt was introspecting and smiling in- 
 wardly. He knew that he wished he were in his 
 room reading or continuing his conversation with Mr. 
 Smith on socialism, which, naturally enough, Mr. 
 Smith thought was all tommy-rot and akin to anarchy. 
 But Hewitt was not the owner of grape-fruit. 
 
 He bought a " tin roof." This was not real prop- 
 erty, but ice-cream decorated with chocolate syrup and 
 peanuts in their brown skins. Hewitt hated it, but it 
 was a popular concoction and he was willing to go the 
 limit with figs. Becker's store sold hundreds of " tin 
 roofs " a day. It was the thing in Alston. 
 
 Bob Hawtrey had just strolled in and was light- 
 ing a cigar across the room at the patent cigar-lighter. 
 He blew out huge clouds of smoke and settled him- 
 self in a position similar to Hewitt's to watch the 
 crowds going back and forth along Meridian Street 
 to the picture-shows. Joe Bales came in. He began 
 a cigarette before he noticed his former fellow- 
 worker. 
 
 "Hello, Stevenson! Have a cigarette?" 
 
 " Thanks," said Hewitt, reaching for the silver case. 
 He lighted it and watched it flicker up and down as 
 he drew on it.
 
 CASTE THREE 357 
 
 "Anything doing to-night?" he queried, with ad- 
 mirable ease. 
 
 " Date," said Joe. " Fix me a ' tin roof/ Cobb," 
 he called to the white- jacketed boy at the fountain. 
 
 Silent puffing and eating followed. 
 
 " If you have a date you 'd better get to it," put in 
 Bob Hawtrey, without taking the trouble to glance at 
 Joe. " It 's eight-thirteen." 
 
 " I 'm not in such a hurry. Helen has a guest, and 
 I 've got to entertain 'em both. So I should worry 
 about hurry," Joe answered. " Say, Bob," he added, 
 " why don't you come and have a date with that girl? 
 She 's from Fort Wayne. Good looking, too. Only 
 going to be here a few days ; so you need n't be afraid 
 Helen '11 rope you for another with her. Come on ! " 
 
 " Can't. I 'm going to the movies and then home 
 to bed. I 've been tearing 'round all week." 
 
 "Quitter!" 
 
 " That 's right. I 'm going to be in bed by nine- 
 thirty. Here goes now for the show." He was at 
 the door, when voices coming in at the back from 
 the pool-room caused him to stop. 
 
 " Hello, boys," he said. 
 
 " Heard about Tom Brandon? " called one. 
 
 "No; what?" 
 
 " Arrested in Chicago for speeding. A big fine." 
 
 " Mary won't go to Indianapolis so often," said 
 another, with a slight sneer. 
 
 "Mary who?" 
 
 " Mary Young. I saw them at the ' Claypool ' on
 
 358 CASTE THREE 
 
 Monday night. They 're down there so often that " 
 He shrugged, and turned to buy a cigar. 
 
 Bob frowned. 
 
 " Soft pedal, you boob! You want to keep off the 
 subject of a girl like Mary Young in a place like 
 this." He glanced quickly at Hewitt, who was gazing 
 out the window and trying to remain unaware of the 
 fiery red that was surging into his face and neck. 
 
 "Shut up!" Bob finished. 
 
 " You know," continued the other, inferring that 
 he did not. 
 
 " I ought to." 
 
 " All right. You know," persisted the other. 
 
 Hewitt's face continued to blaze. He hoped they 
 did not notice, since this was not the eighteenth cen- 
 tury when men ran other men through for such 
 innuendo as that. He was relieved when Bob and 
 three of the newcomers went across the street toward 
 a moving-picture show. Joe had finished his " tin 
 roof " and was buying more cigarettes. When he had 
 flung his money on the counter, he turned to Hewitt. 
 
 " Say, Stevenson, you took Mary Young over to the 
 Hawtreys the other night, did n't you ? " 
 
 Hewitt nodded. 
 
 " She 's a fine girl. She 's too firm here to be hurt 
 by what a cigar-store loafer says about her. Tom 's 
 tough as the king of spades, but everybody knows 
 what Mary is." 
 
 Hewitt dropped his crossed foot and strolled toward 
 the door. That swine of a George Rowe! Eleanor
 
 CASTE THREE 359 
 
 Rowe's brother ! Lots of business he had to be cast- 
 ing sneers at Mary Young! So this was what figs 
 brought him to listening to slander against Mary 
 in a corner cigar-store! He had his hand on the 
 screen-door, preparatory to taking back figs to the 
 stately lady who had let him buy them without trying 
 to persuade him that they were not worth the price, 
 when Joe caught him by the arm in a friendly grasp. 
 " Why don't you come and have that date, Stevenson? 
 Helen told me to get somebody. Come on! I did n't 
 think about your caring for girls before." 
 
 Hewitt hesitated. Should he walk out into the 
 country and continue his psalm of hate against a town 
 that would house and be friendly with. a swine like 
 Rowe, or should he give the figs a further chance ? 
 
 " All right, I '11 go," he said finally. 
 
 Hewitt continued to pay for his chosen fruit. He 
 endured the agony of remaining nonchalant under the 
 critical scrutiny of Helen Baxter and her guest. He 
 talked and laughed ; he chattered and made jests. The 
 guest admired him to Helen when they went into 
 the house to get their hats, preparatory to going down- 
 town. 
 
 "Awfully good looking and clever, isn't he?" she 
 whispered. 
 
 " I did n't suppose he was so lively. Mary Young 
 says he is awfully brilliant," Helen told her. 
 
 If figs could only be paid for all at once, Hewitt 
 groaned within himself ! This constant drain of talk ! 
 This unceasing interest in passing trivialities! This
 
 360 CASTE THREE 
 
 mirthful jesting with a girl you mentally put down as 
 a high school light-weight who caught only half your 
 subtleties and then mangled them! How wonderful 
 Mary was ! She was an intellectual. Compared with 
 this girl from Fort Wayne, she was a Madame de 
 Stael, a George Eliot among women ! He had needed 
 this, he decided, to make him entirely appreciative of 
 Mary. It was the death rattle of the third Hewitt, 
 as it were. And then he remembered that he was 
 doing this to forget Mary. 
 
 In the semi-darkness of the movie-house they 
 fumbled blindly for seats, and at length found four 
 into which they crowded. They went in front of a 
 fat man and his fat wife, who widened the space be- 
 tween her knees, but did not get up. 
 
 " Heavens ! " moaned the girl from other parts. " I 
 nearly killed myself getting by that woman's knee." 
 
 "Want a bandage?" Hewitt laughed, presenting 
 her with his handkerchief. 
 
 "No. I turned my ankle, I think. It hurts 
 awfully!" 
 
 " Use the handkerchief to weep into, then ; I won't 
 care if you do get it wet." Hewitt felt ridiculous say- 
 ing such things, but his sally brought a smile from the 
 girl. 
 
 The strange thing about the whole affair was that 
 by the time they started into the drug-store " to eat," 
 as Joe put it, he began to like being social. Hewitt 
 managed that entire part of the programme, even to 
 drawing out the chairs for the girls and conducting the
 
 CASTE THREE 361 
 
 selection of food. Joe had stopped at the door to 
 speak to some girls who confronted him. 
 
 " Where 's Joe? " Helen pouted. 
 
 " You 're losing him," her guest assured her, and 
 threw a little wink at Hewitt. 
 
 " I 'm always losing him. I 've lost him weekly 
 for years. Joe and I have the most irregular * case ' 
 in Alston. Sometimes we 're on, but generally we 're 
 off. He 's had a dozen other cases since we started 
 ours in high school." 
 
 " And you? " Hewitt questioned. 
 
 " So have I," she admitted, smiling. 
 
 More " tin roofs " seemed to be in order, although 
 Hewitt drew the line on permanently entering the 
 roof -contracting business, as he put it with splendid 
 success. 
 
 When Joe re-entered the group Hewitt felt de trap, 
 because the three talked about a dance which he did n't 
 know anything about, but he refused to allow himself 
 the pleasure of introspection and kept firmly to the 
 artificial action he was demanding of himself. 
 
 While the four were in earnest consultation over 
 the best way to spend the remainder of the evening, 
 the Pattons and Mary Young came in, and before 
 Hewitt had time to wonder at Mary's apparently un- 
 escorted condition, Tom Brandon followed them and 
 sat down at their table. 
 
 What the four of which Hewit formed a part did 
 during the remainder of the evening suddenly became 
 unimportant. Mary nodded to him and smiled with
 
 362 CASTE THREE 
 
 her normal eagerness. She wore a corsage of yellow 
 daisies, a queer cultivated variety, combined with 
 some fluffy blue flowers. The whole rested against 
 the background of her old-blue dress. 
 
 " That 's a good-looking dress of Mary Young's, 
 is n't it? " Helen Baxter commented in a low tone. 
 
 " Beloved of Stevenson's heart," added Joe, with a 
 sly wink at Hewitt. 
 
 The assumed brilliancy of the social, as represented 
 by Joe and his female companions, dimmed and be- 
 came dullness to Hewitt, who was ashamed to watch 
 the table where Mary sat, yet was unable to keep his 
 thoughts away from it. He recognized that if Mary 
 had been in his place, she would have given attention 
 to Helen and Joe and the Fort Wayne girl to the 
 exclusion of all else. Part of the charm Mary had 
 for so many people was due, no doubt, to this faculty 
 for being irreproachably interested in the group of 
 which she was a member. Rules again. She never 
 let even the fringes of her mind be concerned with 
 others. 
 
 Hewitt tried not to make his smile wistful as he 
 passed Mary in going out, but something of that ele- 
 ment must have been in it, for she held his eyes for 
 a second and tried, so he thought, to remind him that 
 there was a bond between them, an intimate knowledge 
 of each other which she could never have in common 
 with those whom she only amused. A ripple of fresh 
 emotion enveloped Hewitt. It was as though a veil
 
 CASTE THREE 363 
 
 between them had been rent and they had looked into 
 each other's souls. 
 
 When he left Joe on the corner of Eleventh Street 
 at eleven-thirty, Hewitt's thoughts flew swiftly back 
 to Mary. He rehearsed a dozen times her entrance 
 into the drug-store, her bright nod to him, the wave 
 of her hand, that look she had given him as he went 
 out. She had not forgotten yet. She did love him 
 in her own way. She was a rare woman from whom 
 any kind of affection must be welcomed and cherished. 
 
 Presently his memory of her became hot with 
 George Rowe's sneering remark in the cigar-store. 
 Was she duping him into thinking there was no one 
 who counted, with every one held at the same arm's 
 length, while she gave to only one ? A red mist blew 
 before his eyes and blinded him, but he turned his 
 fury against George Rowe. The dirty worm! It 
 could n't be true ! She was too fine for that ! Yet 
 did he expect her to tell him, at twenty-one, that her 
 worldly relations were even more complicated than 
 he had even in his darkest moments imagined? It 
 could n't be true. Joe had said that Mary was too firm 
 in Alston to be hurt by what a cigar-store loafer said 
 about her, and Joe knew. Then why did she associate 
 with a man like Tom Brandon? He was patently a 
 weakling. Money did n't destroy that fact. But 
 Hewitt had no sooner asked the question than it an- 
 swered itself. Tom Brandon's position in Alston, 
 despite his being " as tough as the king of spades,"
 
 364 CASTE THREE 
 
 was indisputably sound. He could have committed 
 anything short of murder without endangering it. He 
 was the pet of caste three. Mary would have smiled 
 and turned away, if she had heard George Rowe's 
 insinuations. She would not even have been angered. 
 
 His father was sitting on the porch, with his feet 
 on the railing, when Hewitt reached home. He was 
 leaning back in a rocking-chair, and the reflection from 
 the corner street-light played upon his face. He 
 looked tired. He sat up with a start when his son 
 stepped near his chair, and he blinked like an owl in 
 the light. 
 
 " What 's the matter, Father? " 
 
 " Nothing. I don't seem to sleep very good lately," 
 his father said, with an attempt at briskness. 
 
 "Anything wrong?" 
 
 "No; I just don't sleep good. I'm tired out all 
 the time. I 'm just dead all the time. I don't have 
 any ' pep/ as you boys say." He sank back and closed 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Don't get sick," Hewitt said kindly. "Better 
 come in and go to bed now. It 's about twelve." 
 
 " I guess I '11 sit up a while longer." 
 
 " Want me to stay down ? " 
 
 " What for? " his father asked promptly. 
 
 " Oh, I thought I might sit down here and get a 
 little sleepier myself. I 'm pretty wide awake." 
 
 " You go to bed," was the command, issued with 
 pronounced finality. 
 
 In a few days Mr. Stevenson went to bed and stayed
 
 CASTE THREE 365 
 
 there. He did n't want a doctor. He was just 
 " dead tired " and got " kind o' dizzy " when he stood 
 up. He 'd just stay in bed and get over it " right " 
 before winter set in. This being August, Hewitt con- 
 sidered that his father was looking far ahead, but he 
 remained silent and worried. 
 
 Why did n't his father have a doctor and find out 
 what was the matter with him? There was no sense 
 in this lagging around, weak and dizzy, letting nature 
 take care of itself. Sometimes nature did a bad job 
 in taking care of itself. Thus Hewitt expressed his 
 worry to himself. He always grew angry when 
 people did n't do what he thought they ought to do. 
 
 He conferred with Grace about it. 
 
 " I 'm going to send for a doctor. I think father 
 ought to have one," he declared. 
 
 Grace looked at him with that mixture of contempt 
 and sympathy Hewitt remembered from other occa- 
 sions when he had seemed inclined to burden himself 
 with managing the household. 
 
 " Don't you send for a doctor. It won't do a bit of 
 good. Father would n't let a doctor near him. You 
 know that. It 's not a bit of use bothering him. 
 He 's exactly like your grandfather, dead set in his 
 ways. Just as soon as he gets so sick that he thinks 
 he 's going to die, he '11 tell me to send for a doctor. 
 Until then, it 's no use." 
 
 It took three days in bed with the tired feeling 
 to convince Charles Stevenson that a doctor might help 
 him.
 
 366 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Get a middle-aged one. I ain't going to have a 
 young one experimenting on me. I don't want 
 Crane. He did n't do anything for your grandfather. 
 I won't have him." 
 
 Hewitt and Grace debated the matter and called 
 in a middle-aged physician of authority. He pro- 
 nounced the case one of typhoid fever and ordered a 
 trained nurse. 
 
 Grace became frighened, and for the first time with- 
 in Hewitt's memory grew hysterical. She ended by 
 laying her head on his shoulder and sobbing violently, 
 while Hewitt patted her on the back, because that was 
 the way people, the feminine portion of people, were 
 comforted in books, while he wondered what she would 
 do if their father died. She would never go to 
 Chicago to live, and how could she stay here? He 
 was instantly ashamed of himself for projecting 
 wonder so far into the future. His father was not 
 going to die. He had typhoid fever. Well, other 
 men had had typhoid and had recovered. The prin- 
 cipal thing was good nursing, and he would have that. 
 
 Hewitt talked soothingly to Grace, his sympathy 
 taking the form of "There! No use worrying!" 
 " He '11 be all right," " Come on, now, Grace. No use 
 crying about it," and so on, with short phrases which 
 proved nothing, but comforted Hewitt into thinking 
 that at last he was important in his home. Grace 
 dabbed at her eyes nervously, and presently went back 
 to her father's room. 
 
 The nurse took full charge when she arrived. The
 
 CASTE THREE 367 
 
 house became very quiet and full of the sick man. He 
 dominated all else while he lay ill, growing thinner 
 and thinner during the last of the summer. 
 
 Figs and grape-fruit were equally scorned during 
 this period of his father's illness. At times Hewitt 
 longed to talk to Mary, but he seldom saw her. It 
 seemed to him that she must feel that after the night 
 when they had understood each other there was no 
 longer a reason for flattering him with her real or 
 feigned attention and sympathy. She was very fond 
 of him in her way. It was not Hewitt's way. She 
 knew the depth of his love for her. Then why should 
 they see each other? There was more amusement 
 to be had with those whom one did not understand. 
 The game was an exciting game the social game 
 and Hewitt was not in a position to play it with one 
 of Mary's experience. He was an opponent not 
 worthy of her best weapons, and so he was not ex- 
 hilarating to play with. She loved him in her way, 
 but she did not care to play with him. The whole 
 situation narrowed itself down to that. 
 
 Mary came into the store several times with Mrs. 
 Fatten or Ernestine or Katherine Miller. She always 
 stopped to talk to Hewitt, and looked into his eyes 
 with an expression which said that they understood, 
 an expression which never lost its power of making 
 him feel that a veil between their souls had been rent. 
 He did not tell her about his father's illness. It would 
 have been an item of insignificance to her. Besides, 
 after a while the fact of having a sick father became
 
 368 CASTE THREE 
 
 commonplace while he was at the store, as all events 
 at first strange and terrifying become commonplace 
 with long acquaintance. He grew accustomed to tip- 
 toeing into the house, asking how his father was, and 
 going to the door to look in at him where he lay white 
 and thin in the big bed. He became accustomed to 
 the stillness and the smell of medicine in the house. 
 Then, sometimes for hours at a time, he forgot about 
 his father, and once or twice he wished keenly that he 
 would get well, so that he himself could eat figs again 
 with Joe and his kind. Joe had asked Hewitt to have 
 " dates " with girls in caste three on several occasions. 
 His staying at home brought him back to his old habit 
 of reading. Caste three did not often exist for him. 
 Once or twice he wrote Mary a note which he did not 
 send, a note full of his beloved figures of speech, but 
 always beautiful figures now. The sea figure fas- 
 cinated him. There were analogies in it which pos- 
 sibly she would not discern. That never-changing, 
 for instance. Hewitt felt that sailors must have the 
 same feeling of having irrevocably cast their lot with 
 the sea as he had of being endlessly bound up with 
 Mary, no matter what her attitude. And in time it 
 might become unimportant whether or not she had an 
 attitude toward him. His love for her would be too 
 big an emotion to take into consideration such trifling 
 personalities. His devotion would be limited not by 
 her, but only by his own capacity for feeling. 
 
 This feeling possessed him when he had been read- 
 ing poetry and was overflowing with reflected emo-
 
 CASTE THREE 369 
 
 tion. Sometimes it seemed to him that he loved her 
 more since he had formed his voluntary refusal to be 
 disturbed by her. All the objectionable features in 
 their relationship had faded away. He forgot that 
 she was superficial, according to his former judgment, 
 selfish, a devotee of the rules of caste three. He re- 
 membered vividly her tricks of gesture, the look from 
 her eyes, her artistically smart clothing. Again she 
 walked through his dreams in a mist of romance, a 
 shrine at which he laid the essence of his spirit. 
 
 At other times Hewitt firmly decided that when his 
 father became well again and he could do as he pleased, 
 he would fling himself into the maelstrom of the 
 younger society set and amuse himself as Mary did. 
 He would drive her out of his heart by the sheer force 
 of his concern with amusement. He could, if he 
 chose, become as important to the young Alstonians as 
 she was to the older ones. 
 
 Then a reaction of feeling made Hewitt certain that 
 he wanted no one except Mary. The rhythm of emo- 
 tion had set in.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IN the midst of the placidity which characterized his 
 life after his understanding with Mary Young, a 
 placidity which his worry over his father could not 
 daunt, because his feelings were less wrapped up with 
 his father than with Mary, Hewitt had moments of 
 gnawing discontent with the flatness of existence. He 
 wondered if it were n't better to be ecstatic and then 
 miserable, than to live along on the planes of the un- 
 emotional. But even in the act of telephoning Mary, 
 in order that he might again talk to her and be wracked 
 by the pain of knowing that her interest in him was 
 only subsidiary to more engrossing ones, a filling in 
 of spare moments when caste three did not call, his 
 determination to retain his independence conquered 
 and he drew back into his shell. Hewitt rejected 
 fire. 
 
 He went home one night during the latter part of 
 August to find his father delirious. His cries, now 
 faint and then piercing, filled the house. Grace was 
 tense with fear, but mechanically, with tight lips that 
 struck Hewitt as being grotesquely out of keeping with 
 her white plumpness, she moved in and out of the 
 sick-room, helping the nurse. She did not speak to 
 Hewitt after she uttered one word " delirious ! " to 
 him as he entered the kitchen. He bit his lip and 
 
 3?o
 
 CASTE THREE 371 
 
 leaned against the wall in the awkwardness of his 
 youth. In a crisis at the store Hewitt would have been 
 the last to lose his ability to cope with it, but at home, 
 before Grace's mature contempt for his powers, he 
 relapsed into helplessness. He ate the supper she set 
 out for him on the scoured, linenless table, and then 
 got up and stood looking out into the twilight, his 
 hand on the door-casing. 
 
 When the doctor's voice came to him from the liv- 
 ing-room, he turned and followed him out on the front 
 veranda. When he was sure that Grace had returned 
 to the bedroom where his father lay, Hewitt addressed 
 the doctor. 
 
 " Just how bad is he, doctor? " he asked, taking his 
 hand out of his pocket and trying to show his concern. 
 
 " He '11 pull through, I hope." 
 
 Dr. Samson was a small man with a Van Dyke 
 beard. His speech was so abrupt that if Alstonians 
 had not known him to be a sterling doctor, he would 
 have angered his patients and lost them. As it was, 
 they expected short, sharp retorts to their questions. 
 He never encouraged relatives. His " he '11 pull 
 through, I hope " was worth another doctor's " he 's 
 a well man." 
 
 "But he's pretty bad to-night, isn't he?" Hewitt 
 persisted. 
 
 " He'll pull through." With that remark the doc- 
 tor was off the porch and down the steps into his elec- 
 tric automobile. He glided away, and Hewitt re- 
 turned his restless hands to his pockets.
 
 372 CASTE THREE 
 
 He walked slowly back through the house to the 
 kitchen-door again, and stood as before gazing into 
 the gathering darkness. He could not decide what 
 to do with himself. He ended by calling up Mrs. 
 Chancellor and asking her to go back to the store in 
 his place. " Father 's pretty bad," he said shortly, 
 and returned to the door again. 
 
 Grace came in after darkness had settled down. 
 She was breaking ice, mashing it with a wooden 
 weight. 
 
 " Let me do that," Hewitt said, starting toward her. 
 
 " I '11 do it." Without another word Grace con- 
 tinued her work, and then went out. 
 
 The cries from his father's room had died down, 
 but his voice came to Hewitt through an open window. 
 It grew louder when Grace opened the door in passing 
 in and out of the sick-room. He was talking fast, 
 about something that had happened in his childhood. 
 " Mother ! " he screamed suddenly, and Hewitt, sitting 
 on the back step leading down from the summer- 
 kitchen, shuddered. What a hot, sultry night! 
 
 He walked around the house through the long 
 grass. " Ought to be cut, this grass," he thought ab- 
 sently, kicking at it with his toes. He looked up at 
 the sky, unstarred and blue-black with the presage of 
 rain. He sat down on the front steps and watched 
 a mass blacker than the expanse above rise slowly out 
 of the east and cover the heavens. Vague rumblings, 
 far away, broke the stillness. 
 
 " Guess it '11 storm," he thought.
 
 CASTE THREE 373 
 
 " Goodness, it 's hot ! " said Grace's voice behind 
 him. " Maybe, if it 'd cool off, father 'd get better." 
 
 " Dr. Samson says he '11 pull through," mused 
 Hewitt, as though to himself. 
 
 " Goodness, it 's hot ! " repeated Grace, and he knew 
 that she was passing the corner of her apron over her 
 forehead. 
 
 He wished Grace would go hack into the house and 
 leave him. For some reason he resented her pres- 
 ence. 
 
 A louder rumble of thunder brought him to his feet. 
 It startled him. He sat down again, angry with him- 
 self. 
 
 " I hope it does rain/' said Grace, and came to the 
 edge of the steps to examine the prospect. " I guess 
 it will." 
 
 Fire flared up behind a mass of clouds in the east, 
 bringing out their rounded outlines with distinctness. 
 The thunder was louder this time, more disturbing. 
 The windows in the old brick house rattled in unison 
 with it. 
 
 Hewitt arose and shook himself. Grace went back 
 into the house, and he felt relieved. 
 
 A breeze was creeping, as though reluctant to be 
 there, through the tops of the trees along Jackson 
 Street. Then a flurry of wind caught Hewitt squarely 
 in the face, and he drew back, he could not have said 
 why, under the doorway. A tree close by suddenly 
 bent almost double, and in a moment stood quietly 
 upright again.
 
 374 CASTE THREE 
 
 The nurse, Hewitt saw, was standing just behind 
 him. She was smiling. " I hope it cools off," she 
 said pleasantly, and Hewitt again felt ashamed of the 
 nervousness that had driven him back into the door- 
 way. He walked to the railing to examine the sky. 
 
 Another gust of wind struck his forehead. The 
 mass of clouds, higher now, again stood out black 
 against a vivid flash of fire. The street-light on the 
 corner went out with a noisy sputter, and the blackness 
 around became opaque, thick enough to cut. 
 
 A steady wind blew against Hewitt's cheek, fanning 
 his damp hair from his forehead and filling his lungs 
 with fresh coolness. Drops of rain spattered at inter- 
 vals, loud as hail-stones, 'on the roof of the porch, 
 and presently the air was full of streaks of water 
 blown as far as the door, cold and streaming water. 
 Hewitt, backing into the house, heard the nurse going 
 into his father's room, and presently he heard the 
 bang of a dropping window up-stairs, where Grace 
 was. The electric-light globe, hung by its long cord 
 from the ceiling of the hall, swung backward and for- 
 ward with clock-like regularity in the wind. A door 
 upstairs slammed. 
 
 A dead silence, a silence that came to Hewitt as a 
 pronounced relief, ensued in the house. There was 
 not even a murmur from his father's bedroom. He 
 went to the door and opened it carefully. The nurse, 
 with her calm face, was sitting by the open window, 
 her hands crossed in her lap, her face turned to catch 
 the cool wind that blew into the room. A low light
 
 CASTE THREE 375 
 
 burned on a marble-topped table near the bed. Dimly 
 he saw his father stretched upon the white-covered bed, 
 his head a form rather than a color. 
 
 The nurse rose and came toward Hewitt with her 
 firm, quiet step. 
 
 " I think he will be better now," she said. " He 
 has been quiet for several minutes. The crisis has 
 probably passed." 
 
 " Dr. Samson said he would pull through," Hewitt 
 murmured, just to say something. 
 
 " Yes," answered the nurse, and turned to pick up 
 the clock from the table. 
 
 Hewitt stood for a few minutes, his eyes on his 
 father's still face, while the nurse poured some med- 
 icine into a spoon and dropped it into a glass of water. 
 Grace appeared in the doorway, her lips set perma- 
 nently in a line that drooped at the corners, her reddish 
 hair pulled back tight from her forehead and gathered 
 into a large heavy knot at the back, a knot which gave 
 the appearance of being precariously placed and at 
 any moment likely to fall down her back into a heavy, 
 ugly mass. 
 
 Hewitt turned to leave. 
 
 " You go to bed," Grace whispered to him as he 
 passed, hardly opening her lips to form the words. 
 
 Hewitt did not answer her. He walked into the 
 living-room and sat down with a book under the 
 reading-lamp. But he could not follow the words. 
 He was acutely aware of the whirl of driving rain 
 outside, the pattering steps of Grace in the kitchen,
 
 376 CASTE THREE 
 
 the swinging of the light in the hall. He closed the 
 front door. The carpet was getting wet. 
 
 He went into the kitchen and confronted Grace with 
 a touch of resentment. 
 
 " Look here, Grace," he said resolutely, keeping his 
 voice lower, " I 'm going to stay up myself to-night. 
 You must go to bed. You 've kept this up for weeks. 
 There 's no sense in it. You go to bed. I 'm going 
 to stay up myself." 
 
 Grace looked at him steadily, without speaking. 
 
 " Go to bed, Hewie," she said at last, gently. " You 
 know I would n't sleep a wink. Remember you have 
 to go to work to-morrow." 
 
 " I 'm going to stay up," he repeated stubbornly, 
 and sat down with his book again. 
 
 The rain was still streaming against the north win- 
 dows when a little later he looked at his watch. 
 Hewitt expected to find the hour was nine, or, at the 
 latest, ten. The hands pointed to two-thirty. He had 
 been asleep ! The house was still. There was not a 
 sound. He yawned and tiptoed to his father's door. 
 The nurse was at the table. 
 
 " He 's sleeping soundly ; his fever is down," she 
 smiled to him. " He 's all right," she added. 
 
 Hewitt was awakened by the sun shining through 
 his white blinds the next morning. He jumped to his 
 feet, to find his alarm-clock pointing to eight fifteen. 
 There was not a sound in the house. He raised his 
 blinds and looked upon a bright green world, wet and 
 glistening. It was a glorious, almost cold day, one
 
 CASTE THREE 377 
 
 such as comes at long intervals in August in Indiana. 
 A fat robin on the grass was splitting his throat with 
 his shrill call, and a woodpecker on the tin eaves was 
 announcing to the world that he was alive and well, 
 and working hard. 
 
 Hewitt went downstairs in his bathrobe for a cold 
 tub. He felt dull and lazy, despite the clear air and 
 a night's rest. He found Grace asleep on the yellow 
 plush-couch in the dining-room. A quilt, with yellow 
 tulips distributed regularly over its stitched white sur- 
 face, was thrown over her. Her mouth was slightly 
 open, giving a comical effect to her chubby face. He 
 went upstairs without his plunge, afraid to turn on 
 the water in the bathroom for fear of waking his 
 father and the nurse. The latter, he was sure, was 
 asleep in the room that had been his grandfather's. 
 
 On the seventh of September, the date when Hewitt 
 was to have left for Chicago, his father was sitting up 
 for the first time. He was cleanly shaven, and there 
 were tremendous hollows in his cheeks. His hands, 
 long and bony, lay inert on the covers at the end of 
 wrists incredibly thin. 
 
 " Of course I can't come," Hewitt wrote to Paul, 
 as though the fact were accepted with no regrets. " I 
 will stay here until the winter term. Father 's pretty 
 sick still, though he is sitting up. The nurse says he 
 won't be able to walk for a month, and then he' 11 have 
 to learn all over again, like a child. I think he did n't 
 care much whether he pulled through or not. He has 
 been rather knocked out by this farm business. I
 
 378 CASTE THREE 
 
 don't believe he has ever been satisfied since he sold 
 out and moved to town. That idea of his, that it 
 would be fine to be retired, with no pressing work to 
 do, seemed all wrong after he had tried it for a year, 
 and I think he 's been getting more and more run down 
 physically for ages. 
 
 " Sometimes, Paul, I feel guilty about not carrying 
 out his plans and going to Purdue, but I could n't. I 
 would have hated it. What do you think? Do you 
 think that I did right to stick to my own plans? 
 Sometimes I feel responsible for all this typhoid bus- 
 iness. It makes me sick. But a man's work makes 
 a lot of difference to him. I had to choose my own 
 kind, and it was not farming." 
 
 Hewitt mailed this letter on the day he had planned, 
 months before, to start for the university. He had 
 already talked matters over with Mr. Smith, and had 
 been assured that the book-store would go into bank- 
 ruptcy without him. 
 
 " I hope you don't go at Christmas time, either," the 
 proprietor told him with a laugh. Afterward he came 
 up to Hewitt and slapped him on the back with robust 
 friendliness. " Too bad, Son ; college will keep, 
 though." 
 
 Blake, too, came into the store one morning and 
 grasped Hewitt's hand. 
 
 " Awfully sorry you can't go away to school this 
 fall, Stevenson," he said, and smiled his sympathy. 
 The act had touched Hewitt. Blake Smith was true 
 blue, like his father.
 
 CASTE THREE 379 
 
 Charles Stevenson said not a word to his son about 
 college. He seemed to assume that Hewitt was to 
 remain in Alston indefinitely. Hewitt wondered 
 whether he did this without considering his disappoint- 
 ment, or whether he had forgotten. But college was 
 never mentioned between them. 
 
 After he had mailed his letter to Paul, Hewitt went 
 into the store and started his day's work with an at- 
 tempt at cheeriness. He was n't going to be a cad 
 about a disappointment. His mind kept turning to 
 Mary Young. Would she remember that he had in- 
 tended to leave Alston on that day? He wondered 
 if she knew how ill his father had been. The item 
 had been in the local paper. But she had never men- 
 tioned it to him. If she knew, she had forgotten, no 
 doubt. 
 
 He could not keep from thinking about Chicago, 
 however. Letsky and Bowman and the rest of the 
 radicals would be coming into the book-store for the 
 first session of the season. Mr. Woody Hewitt 
 could see him leaning on a pile of books, his white 
 head thrown back, an amused glitter in the dark eyes 
 behind his gold-rimmed spectacles would be arguing 
 with the alert, long-haired, violent Letsky. 
 
 Hewitt was more than usually courteous to cus- 
 tomers. He sought extra work, determined to fight 
 down the lump that kept pressing into his dry throat. 
 
 It was a dull day, rainy and gloomy, with a promise 
 of fall. 
 
 At five o'clock Hewitt lost the determined grip on
 
 380 CASTE THREE 
 
 himself he had inaugurated in the morning and called 
 up Mary Young. He had not talked to her for any 
 length of time since the beginning of his father's ill- 
 ness nearly a month before. 
 
 She was surprised. 
 
 "Hewitt? You deserter! I've hardly caught a 
 glimpse of you for months ! " 
 
 " You did n't want anything but a glimpse, did 
 you ? " he queried. 
 
 " You 're being naughty. Of course I want to see 
 you." 
 
 "To-night?" he asked, afraid that it couldn't be 
 true. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, and paused. " I 'm going to a 
 dance at the Alston Club. Would you like to come 
 down for an hour before I go ? " 
 
 Hewitt grasped at the straw. 
 
 When he went he had a sense of excitement that he 
 should have at last broken through his determination 
 not to demand bread of her. There was the chance 
 that she would behave toward him as she had done the 
 day of his grandfather's funeral, that she would kiss 
 his wounds and make him serene again. 
 
 The rain had stopped, leaving the air damp and full 
 of autumn chill. Hewitt had put on a new, light top- 
 coat over his blue summer suit. He had done so with 
 a thrill of satisfaction. His bank account had not 
 grown swollen during the summer months. His 
 wardrobe was in striking contrast to that of the fall 
 before, when he had come down on the Pullman from
 
 CASTE THREE 381 
 
 Chicago to Alston. He felt equal to being unaffected 
 by the scorn Letsky would heap upon him in Jan- 
 uary, that is, if he ever reached Chicago. To-night, 
 as he made his way through the chill air toward the 
 Trimble house, he felt doubtful about ever reaching 
 Chicago. It seemed far away, a city of the bright 
 dreams of youth that never come true. 
 
 He wondered why it had been his father who must 
 have typhoid and require his son's presence at home, 
 instead of Blake Smith's, for instance. Blake's road 
 seemed a very smooth and easy one to Hewitt. 
 
 He was thinking, too, as he walked through the 
 damp streets, that the tall woman in control over the 
 horn of plenty did n't exist for everybody. Some- 
 times she went into hiding or died, or somehow she 
 inexplicably disappeared with her fruits. He was in- 
 clined, in fact, to be doubtful of whether she had ever 
 appeared and offered him the opportunity of buying. 
 Some people were pursued by an inexorable fate which 
 snatched the good out of their lives. He, of all the 
 young men of his acquaintance in Alston, was the 
 only one who had seen a grandfather die and a father 
 lie near to death with typhoid, all in one summer, 
 and that the one before his intended entrance into a 
 university three years later than the average boy 
 graduated from high school. He who needed most to 
 hurry was the one whom fate retarded now. 
 
 Hewitt grew bitter. He wasn't getting a square 
 deal ; and he knew that the only reason he had n't been 
 a little bitter about it before was because he had had
 
 382 CASTE THREE 
 
 a sneaking hope that something he had n't known 
 what he expected would happen to make his plans 
 come out right. 
 
 Mary was radiant in a low-cut gown of dark blue 
 crepe over some shining white stuff that bared her 
 neck and arms. There was something white and fluffy 
 in her hair, arising from a blue band, which seemed 
 to make her eyes deeper and darker. She made Hew- 
 itt sit down while she told him about the dances and 
 parties that had kept her occupied for a month. Her 
 tone was apologetic, as though it were she, rather than 
 he, who had broken the cord of their seeing each other 
 often. Even as he recognized the paradox of the 
 situation, Hewitt was wondering if she were not right 
 about it that he had kept away because she had 
 not sent the signal for him to come. He suddenly 
 became scornful of his supposed strength. 
 
 Dr. Jimmy Trimble was sitting under a reading- 
 lamp in the library at the back of the hall, so that at 
 first Hewitt thought Mary was keeping to these trifles 
 of talk because of his presence. But at eight the doc- 
 tor went upstairs, where his wife could be heard mov- 
 ing through the hall, and Hewitt and Mary were left 
 alone in the living-room. 
 
 The trend of her talk did not change. She was gay 
 and charming. Hewitt sat watching her with his gray 
 eyes, which had taken on a look of childish sadness. 
 His mouth was set in a faint smile. His dark hair 
 lay smooth, boyishly smooth and so close cut above 
 his ears and neck that it seemed shaven. His fingers
 
 CASTE THREE 383 
 
 were interlaced between his knees as he leaned forward 
 to watch Mary. 
 
 He could have cried out with joy at her eager 
 beauty. She was like a child, he thought, reaching 
 out for the happiness she had once said she so wanted. 
 Was she getting it? No, she would never be satisfied, 
 because she wanted too much. She desired excite- 
 ment, joy, and never that contentment in which lay, 
 so thought Hewitt, real happiness. Would she never 
 be done with flitting in search of what could only be 
 found within herself? 
 
 These thoughts were flowing through a hinterland 
 of Hewitt's brain, while his disappointment over his' 
 spoiled university course became increasingly unimpor- 
 tant before the disappointment in his altered relations 
 with Mary Young. She did not even remember that 
 he had been planning to go to Chicago. She did not 
 mention it. She had forgotten it. 
 
 During the month or more since she had last talked 
 with him at any length, he had not existed for her. 
 Hewitt had a sudden queer feeling that when she com- 
 pletely forgot him, as she was sure to do if he left 
 Alston, he would cease to exist altogether. There 
 would be no Hewitt Stevenson. So sharp was his 
 emotion when he was near Mary ! 
 
 Hewitt was relieved, because he longed to be alone 
 with this new sorrow, when a swish of water in the 
 street and then a cessation of the sound told them that 
 a motor was stopping outside. He glanced out of the 
 window and recognized the visitor.
 
 384 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I must go now," he said, rising and reaching for 
 his coat and hat. 
 
 " It 's Tom Brandon. You shall ride down-town 
 with us. It 's wet to-night." 
 
 Hewitt tried to say that he wanted to walk, but 
 Mary's insistence and Brandon's arrival at the door 
 made refusal awkward; so he got into the car with 
 them, and talked commonplaces while they glided to- 
 ward Meridian Street. 
 
 " Drop me at the store," he suggested. Mrs. Chan- 
 cellor had agreed to lock up for him, but he wanted 
 to be sure that things were properly looked after for 
 the night. 
 
 " Good-night," Mary's voice echoed in his ear as he 
 unlocked the door of the darkened store and walked, 
 by the light from the windows, toward the rear. 
 There he switched on a desk-lamp and sat down in Mr. 
 Smith's swivel-chair. He pulled a copy of Browning 
 out of his overcoat pocket and laid it down. He had 
 lent it to Mary in the early summer, and she had re- 
 turned it to him to-night. 
 
 As he picked it up again and ran through the pages 
 without reading them, Hewitt found some scraps of 
 paper, torn scraps, but written upon in writing he 
 knew to be his, between the pages. He placed the 
 fragments in order against a page. This was a note 
 he had written Mary in July, when he had first begun 
 to grow discontented with her. He had spent, he re- 
 membered, a day and a night in composing it. He had 
 written and destroyed and written again, determined
 
 CASTE THREE 385 
 
 to make it beautiful. He had sent it by messenger, 
 with roses. 
 
 And here was the note, carelessly torn and thrust 
 into a convenient book. Hewitt felt sure Mary had 
 never read the poems he had marked for her in the 
 table of contents. The book had merely been near 
 her. He read the note slowly. It ran thus : 
 
 Dearest: 
 
 I, a moth, lately come out from the dullness of brown 
 cocoon, have seen the light of your candle. I flutter about, 
 blindly striving to warm myself at the flame of your strong 
 sweetness. My wings are singed and torn. They were 
 never very beautiful wings, and now they are uglier than 
 before. 
 
 But you, so full of the joy of existence, will look upon 
 them with gentle compassion, will you not, remembering that 
 they were burned at your candle? 
 
 I love you ! 
 
 HEWITT. 
 
 The inside of his cheek burned where he had drawn 
 the flesh between his teeth. He bit into it again and 
 again as he sat looking at the words on that torn 
 paper. Well, Mary had torn the paper. The words 
 had meant nothing to her, no more than a passing 
 feeling that here was another boy breaking out into 
 pretty speeches. 
 
 He lighted the scraps, one by one, over matches, and 
 allowed the charred pieces to drop through his fingers 
 into the basket. 
 
 It was after eleven when Hewitt looked at the court- 
 house clock on his way out. A man must stand on
 
 386 CASTE THREE 
 
 his own two feet, he was thinking, but he felt as if 
 he had suddenly come upon himself in front of a huge 
 stone wall, thick and impregnable, beating his head 
 against its hardness, while a voice, compassionately 
 and adorably sweet, sang a song from the other side 
 to make him forget his hurt. There was a gate far- 
 ther down the wall where men came and went, men 
 who, had this gate been closed, would have wandered 
 on to some spot where other songs were being sung. 
 But Hewitt did not know there was a gate. 
 
 Hewitt had thrown a book into the muddy gutter 
 when he first emerged from the store, but after he 
 had looked at the clock in the court-house tower until 
 the large hand moved, he went out and picked it up. 
 His face wore a smile that grew broader as he wiped 
 off the mud with his handkerchief. He put the damp 
 volume of Browning into his pocket and started for 
 home. 
 
 A few weeks later Hewitt heard from Mr. Smith 
 that Mary Young was going to Chicago, and that later 
 she would go back to California for the winter. But 
 before she left Alston she telephoned Hewitt one after- 
 noon and asked him to come down after he had closed 
 the store that evening. She wanted to say good-bye 
 to him, she said. 
 
 Despite his studied indifference, Hewitt could not 
 help being freshly angered when he saw that Katherine 
 Miller and her younger sister were there. They left, 
 however, before he did, and he had a few minutes 
 alone with Mary.
 
 CASTE THREE 387 
 
 '' You 're going to be a good boy, and grow famous 
 for Mary's sake, are n't you? " she asked Hewitt, pull- 
 ing her chair in front of him and taking his hands in 
 hers. 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 " You 're not going to forget me again, are you ? " 
 she asked, weaving her smooth fingers in and out 
 through his. 
 
 " How could I ? " Hewitt said, in a tone that be- 
 came a half-cry, despite his determination not to show 
 her that he cared greatly. 
 
 " You must n't ever forget me," Mary went on, al- 
 most solemnly. " And when you have become a great 
 person whom Alston bows down to, I shall come back 
 and marry you." She smiled at him to show that 
 she was jesting with him. 
 
 He left soon after this, shaking her hand in saying 
 good-bye. He knew he could have kissed her if he 
 had chosen to do it, but he determinedly regained his 
 indifference. 
 
 " You are going to forget me," Mary said half- 
 sadly, as Hewitt opened the door. " I can feel that 
 you are." 
 
 He smiled, and tried to make his expression enig- 
 matical, but he was sure that she understood.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 EVERY age has its compensations. Maturity is 
 debtor for an implacability which magnifies 
 atoms and ignores the great emotions. Youth has its 
 fine resiliency. 
 
 Hewitt Stevenson did not mope long because Mary 
 Young had considered him an episode to be lightly 
 passed over. He knew very well that the slight feel- 
 ing, affected or real, she had shown in parting from 
 him was only a tiny part of the emotion aroused by 
 her leave-taking of an entire community. She loved 
 Alston, she had always said, and she was not one to 
 leave it without making sure to the limit of her powers 
 that everyone for whom she had ever felt any affection 
 loved her to the end. This surety that Hewitt would 
 not forget her was only another blossom in an already 
 large bouquet she wanted to wear in departing from 
 Indiana. Yet that, Hewitt realized, was not a per- 
 fect explanation of Mary. In her way, she was fond 
 of him, too, just as she was of Katherine Miller and 
 Ernestine and the rest of her cortege. She was a 
 very wonderful Mary Young, but a very complex one. 
 
 Instead, indeed, of continuing to mope about Mary, 
 Hewitt's feeling on the morning after she left for 
 Chicago was one of profound relief. It was as
 
 CASTE THREE 389 
 
 though, in his love, he had been climbing a steep moun- 
 tain, rocky and dangerous with crevasses, and had at 
 last reached the top, where a broad valley, restful and 
 fair, lay stretched out before him, a valley heretofore 
 concealed by the mountain, but the more welcome be- 
 cause of relief from the effort expended in the climb. 
 Hewitt sat down on the mountain top. " Now I can 
 rest," he said to himself, referring to his mental state. 
 
 He worked with exhilaration during the first day, 
 certain that Mary Young would not be seen or heard, 
 to send his pulse booming and his heart pounding. He 
 felt safe, as though he could never again be moved, 
 protected by a thick skin of content. 
 
 " Now that we have proved to Alston that it can 
 take an interest in serious literature of the better type, 
 let 's start in on magazine taste," he said to Mr. Smith, 
 planting himself with his feet apart in front of that 
 gentleman as he sat scanning the morning paper. 
 
 " H'm," Mr. Smith snorted. " What next? " 
 
 " I haven't decided definitely, but that's right about 
 magazines," averred Hewitt, with a grin. " Want to 
 bet?" 
 
 "On what?" 
 
 " That I can decrease sales on the cheap, trashy ones, 
 and run up sales on the good ones." 
 
 " H'm," snorted Mr. Smith again. 
 
 " Let me have a window and a table up in front." 
 
 " Help yourself, Son. The store is yours." He 
 stood up and Hewitt made a deep bow. " I step back. 
 Age gives way."
 
 390 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Oh, don't put it that way," Hewitt demurred. 
 
 " All right ; but go ahead." 
 
 The rest of the week found Hewitt spending much 
 of his time over a case in the back of the store, where 
 he was busy with a ruler, a bottle of India ink, draw- 
 ing pens, and some fine brushes. 
 
 Mr. Smith stopped one morning, on entering the 
 store, to examine one of the windows. It was empty, 
 except for a rustic green bench against a background 
 of plain green wall. On the bench was thrown a copy 
 of one of the better thirty-five-cent magazines, gay in 
 its October cover. In another corner of the window 
 stood a placard boldly asking the passerby, " Who 
 killed Kenyon Stringer?" 
 
 Mr. Smith frowned and performed his old trick 
 of dropping his glasses over in the front of his none- 
 too-clean " vest." But his surprise was not complete 
 until he had read a second placard placed in the glass 
 of the door. It ran as follows : 
 
 No one knows who killed Stringer yet, because that is 
 not a real copy of Blank's Magazine in the window. It is 
 only an advance dummy. 
 
 But Blank's is out to-morrow ! 
 
 Get your copy, and find out the solution to the most inter- 
 esting mystery in fall fiction. 
 
 " H'm," Mr. Smith commented, glaring at Hewitt 
 as he went back to his desk. He found the latter 
 tapping away at the typewriter about some orders. 
 
 The next morning the window had been changed.
 
 CASTE THREE 391 
 
 The corner of a library was suggested by a sectional 
 bookcase, a table with a reading-light, and a chair. 
 On the table was laid the same magazine. A placard 
 in the corner announced: 
 
 Kenyon Stringer was not a member of the famous stage 
 triangle. 
 
 He was an irreproachable husband and father, but he was 
 murdered. 
 
 Why? 
 
 The person who is going to sit down in this room presently 
 will find out. 
 
 On the street door appeared a second placard : 
 
 Blank's is out ! 
 
 Get Yours To-day. 
 
 We have just 100 copies in stock. 
 
 At half-hour intervals during the afternoon, a young 
 man, hired for the purpose, appeared in the window, 
 sat down in the chair, switched on the light, and 
 occupied himself for some minutes with Blank's 
 Magazine. Then, when a crowd had gathered, he 
 went close to the glass and opened the magazine at 
 the beginning of the Kenyon Stringer murder-story, 
 where a full-page illustration greeted the eyes of the 
 onlookers. He proceeded to turn the pages of the 
 magazine, allowing his audience a glimpse of the at- 
 tractive, soft-toned illustrations. 
 
 Abe Kahn called Mr. Smith to the telephone about 
 four o'clock.
 
 392 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Say, Smith, I 'm going to have you arrested for 
 enticing the crowd away from my side of the street. 
 What under the sun is happening over there? " 
 
 "My assistant-manager is advertising Blank's Maga- 
 zine. Come on over and buy a copy." 
 
 "The divil! " said Mr. Kahn, and hung up. 
 
 At the end of the day Hewitt approached Mr. Smith. 
 His face wore a sly smile. 
 
 " Well? " queried his superior. 
 
 " I sold twenty-seven copies of Blank's to-day. 
 That 's twenty-six more than have ever been sold in 
 this store before. What do you think of my adver- 
 tising?" 
 
 " I don't like it. It 's not dignified business." 
 
 "Want me to stop?" 
 
 " No. How much did you pay that boy to sit in 
 the window ? " 
 
 " A dollar for the afternoon." 
 
 " Making money on that magazine? " 
 
 " No, not yet. But we will to-morrow, and next 
 month, too." 
 
 Charles Stevenson improved slowly. He sat up at 
 intervals for a few weeks, and then had a relapse. 
 The nurse was recalled for a week, but again he grew 
 better. There were moments when his son was sorry 
 that he had stayed home, instead of going to Chicago. 
 He seemed to mean nothing to his father. The latter 
 spoke to him when he came into the room at noon and 
 again at night, but he seemed uninterested in the 
 other's presence. Grace was absorbed in her father.
 
 CASTE THREE 393 
 
 She remained in his room most of the time. In fact, 
 she seemed never to enter the front part of the house, 
 except to sweep and dust. 
 
 " I suppose father likes to know I am here," Hewitt 
 wrote to Paul, " on Grace's account. He is still weak, 
 and he sits up only a part of the time. Grace looks 
 pretty thin, but she can't be induced to leave father, 
 even for an hour. You know how she is when she 
 decides on a course of action. She and father and 
 grandfather are all much alike in that respect. I won- 
 der if you and I are? Anyway, I don't see it." 
 
 Early in October a woman, who was very pretty and 
 smart, came into the store one afternoon and sub- 
 scribed for some magazines. Hewitt had never seen 
 her before, but he noted Mrs. Patton waiting in her 
 car outside. 
 
 " Mrs. Jean Conners," she told Hewitt, when he 
 asked her for her name. She had a frank, friendly 
 smile. 
 
 He remembered that Mary Young had spoken of 
 the Conners, and that Margaret Hawtrey, on the night 
 of the "open house," had spoken of Susannah Con- 
 ners as not going back to Smith College. So this 
 pleasant woman in black was Mrs. Conners, Mary 
 Young's friend, the mother of Susannah. He 
 watched her as she went out of the door, stepping 
 gracefully and firmly. Hewitt was reminded of the 
 nurse who had cared for his father, although the two 
 were very different types, Mrs. Conners being dark, 
 with brown eyes that looked kind. The nurse had
 
 394 CASTE THREE 
 
 been light, and was rather cold, except when she 
 smiled. But there was the same quiet surety of step 
 and intensity of kindness in both of them. 
 
 Later Mrs. Conners came in when Mr. Smith was 
 standing by the stationery case. 
 
 " Mr. Smith ! " she exclaimed with enthusiasm. 
 
 "Jean Conners!" he ejaculated explosively. 
 " When did you come back to town ? How 's HT old 
 New York, and how 's Susie ? " 
 
 " To begin with the last, don't call her Susie. It 
 bores her dreadfully. You see, with a year at college 
 and a summer in New York and at the seashore, she 
 has grown up, and I have to use her full name. I 've 
 been in Alston several days, and I 'm surprised that my 
 arrival was n't important enough for you to know 
 about it." She stopped, and smiled. " I 'm im- 
 mensely glad to be back," she added softly. " New 
 York is lovely sometimes, but one longs for Alston 
 and the old friends. In no place in the world are 
 people so nice as in Alston. Don't you believe it ? " 
 
 " I know it. I moved to Seattle once." 
 
 They laughed together. All Alston remembered the 
 time when Mr. Smith had packed his household goods 
 and gods and set out for the West with his wife and 
 children. In six months he was back in Alston, 
 ashamed to mention the glorious West. 
 
 " I could n't stand it. It was n't home," he con- 
 fessed to Mrs. Conners now, though in the past he had 
 never referred to his exit and reentrance. " Where 's 
 Susannah? "
 
 CASTE THREE 395 
 
 " In Indianapolis. She 's coming up to-day. She 's 
 been staying with Martha Trimble's sister for a few 
 days. You '11 love her. She 's so grown up." 
 
 Hewitt passed them, to close the door which had 
 been left open. 
 
 " Come here, Hewitt," Mr. Smith called to him. 
 " Mrs. Conners has come back to Alston, and I want 
 you to know her. This is Hewitt Stevenson, once 
 of Chicago, but now my right-hand man until 
 Christmas." 
 
 Mrs. Conners held out her hand to Hewitt. 
 
 " You 're Mary Young's Hewitt Stevenson, are n't 
 you ? " she said, with her kind smile. " I want you 
 to come to the little dinner-party I am having for my 
 daughter, Susannah, to-morrow night. You see, we 
 have been away for more than a year, and we must 
 hurry to catch up with our acquaintances. Mary wrote 
 me about you. She said Susannah would like you. 
 Will you come? " 
 
 " I shall be glad to come," said Hewitt, the hand she 
 still held beginning to tremble. Was he again to be 
 tortured by caste three functions? 
 
 " At six thirty, then," she said, releasing his hand 
 with a gentle pressure. 
 
 " Where are you staying? " Mr. Smith asked, while 
 Hewitt leaned unsteadily against the glass case and 
 tried to be natural. 
 
 " We 've taken Kathleen Harrow's house on Eighth 
 Street. It's furnished, you know. We shall stay 
 here this winter. Susannah was n't well. I refused
 
 396 CASTE THREE 
 
 to let her go back to Smith. She shall enjoy Alston, 
 and perhaps will return to school next year." 
 
 " At six thirty," she mentioned again to Hewitt, as 
 she turned to leave. 
 
 Mrs. Jean Conners, so Hewitt had learned from bits 
 of gossip picked up here and there during the year he 
 had spent in Alston, was a person who combined all 
 the ideal womanly qualities into a bundle, without 
 arousing any envy or jealousy in the hearts of other 
 women. She was a combination of Jane Addams, 
 Queen Louise, Florence Nightingale, and the ideal 
 mother. At least, all loyal Alstonians said so. She 
 practised the seven deadly virtues because she liked 
 to practise them, and other women, upon seeing how 
 splendid she appeared in any role, were filled with a 
 like desire to be virtuous. All in all, she was a great 
 adjunct to Alston, because the town grew better when 
 she entered it. She gave generously to the deserving 
 poor, and Alston was not so large but that this class 
 was known. She belonged to all the organizations 
 for the betterment of the city, and she was always 
 willing to give a helping hand, though she had not 
 Mrs. George Patton's managing talent. In fact, she 
 did n't manage anything, but she was always ready 
 with money and spirit which is often a more pop- 
 ular method than *Mrs. Patton's. Jim Conners had 
 made his money in gas, and then had died, leaving his 
 wife and Susannah to spend it. Everybody liked 
 them. Susannah was considered to be one of the
 
 CASTE THREE 397 
 
 two most attractive products of Alston. The other 
 was the Preston Ignition and Starting System. 
 
 But Mrs. Conners, in pursuing the virtues, did not 
 sacrifice her social position. It was, perhaps, too firm 
 to be sacrificed. Even if she had chosen to scorn 
 dancing and bridge-playing according to the ruling of 
 her Methodist Church, she would have remained se- 
 cure as a woman everybody invited to dances and to 
 bridge parties. People naturally liked her. 
 
 Mary Young had been devoted to her. This in 
 itself was a tribute to her positivity of character and 
 accomplishment, the fruit of the latter being, of 
 course, Susannah. Mary Young was never devoted 
 to any one who did not excel. She was the barom- 
 eter of an Alstonian's merit, not because she was, as 
 Hewitt had once accused her of being, a parasite on 
 the best of caste three, but because she admired, and 
 so gave devotion only to those who stood out as being 
 superior to the mass, even of her own group. 
 
 Young Alston was excited over Susannah's return 
 to its bosom. Ernestine Smith ran into the store late 
 in the afternoon to tell her father that Susannah was 
 coming at seven. Could n't they take Susannah and 
 her mother to the Grand Hotel for dinner? Mr. 
 Smith demurred. 
 
 " Let 's not go so fast," he said. " Why not wait 
 until the Conners are settled and ready for entertain- 
 ment? " 
 
 Ernestine pouted.
 
 398 CASTE THREE 
 
 "Dad!" 
 
 " All right. Go ahead. I s'pose I can eat some- 
 thing at home at six. I can't wait until seven-thirty 
 or so for my dinner." 
 
 "But you '11 come?" 
 
 " Want me? Why not just the young people? " 
 
 " We want all ages." 
 
 That settled it, since Ernestine wanted the whole 
 family. 
 
 Hewitt was standing at the door of the store that 
 evening, when the Smith car drew up and ejected Mr. 
 Smith. 
 
 " Forgot something," he explained, as he hurried, 
 in his peculiar way, back to his desk. 
 
 Hewitt moved away from the door, but not before 
 he had seen Ernestine, at the wheel, in earnest but 
 merry conversation with a girl whom Hewitt took to 
 be Susannah Conners. He could only make out that 
 she must be very pretty, under a hat which curved 
 down, concealing most of her features. One jumped 
 at the conclusion that Susannah was pretty. She was 
 taller than Ernestine, he judged, and not exactly 
 plump, but rounded. 
 
 Three of Joe Bales' friends Hewitt never dis- 
 tinguished among the young men of Alston hurried 
 up to the car and made a great to-do of shaking 
 hands and being tickled to death over Susannah's re- 
 turn. They also included Mrs. Conners in their dem- 
 onstration. 
 
 The next day Hewitt began to be uncomfortable, as
 
 CASTE THREE 399 
 
 a prelude to the Conners' dinner-party, early in the 
 morning. He had laid out his best suit, preparatory 
 to sending it to the cleaner's for pressing, but upon 
 gazing at it as it hung on the railing of the stairway, 
 he was seized with qualms concerning the appropriate- 
 ness of wearing a street suit to a dinner-party. He 
 drew his upper lip down under his lower one and 
 studied deeply. Joe Bales went to dinner-parties, but 
 Hewitt had never seen him in the act of going. He 
 might wear overalls, for all Hewitt knew, or, worse 
 still, full dress. Hewitt ended by sending the suit. 
 It required pressing, whether he wore it or not. He 
 also sent his light top-coat with the smart belt. He 
 liked that coat, and the cool evenings required one. 
 
 During the morning Hewitt was several times the 
 victim of an impulse to ask Mr. Smith what kind of 
 clothing a young man should wear to a caste three 
 dinner-party in Alston. He thought of opening 
 speeches, casual references to clothing in general, sup- 
 plemented by a remark on the common sense people 
 in Alston showed in refusing to be shackled by full 
 dress. He had worn a street-suit to the Hawtreys' 
 " open house," but that had been an informal dance. 
 The Conners had been living for a year in New York. 
 What would they expect of him ? 
 
 Hewitt ended by rejecting Mr. Smith as an advisor 
 concerning appropriate clothing. Mr. Smith would 
 see through his ruse, because he had heard Mrs. Con- 
 ners invite Hewitt to the party. 
 
 He thought once of telephoning Joe Bales at Pres-
 
 400 CASTE THREE 
 
 ton's to ask him about the matter, but that, too, was 
 rejected, because one hates above all jhings to be made 
 the laughing stock of one's contemporaries. Mr. 
 Smith would have been preferable to Joe. 
 
 At noon Hewitt had not come to the decision as 
 to whether to ask, or to remain silent and chance the 
 suit he had already sent to the cleaner's. The time 
 to act had come. If he had to buy a dress-suit, he 
 must buy it that afternoon. The bother of not being 
 able to have it tailored did not disturb him, because 
 he had, always been satisfied with " Smart Set " clothes. 
 They suited him. He rather disliked spending forty 
 or fifty dollars on a suit he probably would never need 
 again, but going to the Conners' dinner-party in the 
 wrong kind of clothing, and thus having his dis- 
 comfort augmented by the knowledge that he was in- 
 appropriately clothed, was not to be thought of not 
 if a dress-suit cost a hundred dollars ! 
 
 Hewitt walked back and forth the length of the 
 store several times after he returned from his dinner. 
 Mrs. Chancellor asked him if he was feeling well, and 
 he forced a smile of reassurance. 
 
 At length he put on his cap and walked across the 
 street to Kahn's Men's Furnishing Store. 
 
 Hewitt saw Mr. Kahn in the rear of the store, his 
 elbow on a high pile of folded coats, his face con- 
 torted into a frown. He was talking to a clerk. 
 
 Hewitt told the man who approached him that he 
 wanted to see Mr. Kahn, and when the latter moved 
 away, he went to the owner.
 
 CASTE THREE 401 
 
 Hewitt, too, leaned an elbow on a pile of coats. He 
 had prepared an opening speech, but his mind became 
 a blank. After a moment of awkward silence, he 
 spoke. 
 
 " Mr. Kahn, I want a word of advice. What kind 
 of clothes do men in Alston wear to a rather, a 
 dinner-party, the Conners', for instance?" 
 
 Mr. Kahn's mobile mouth made queer shapes, but 
 he did not smile. 
 
 " Not full dress, or even a Tuxedo, if that 's what 's 
 worrying you, Stevenson. Regular business clothes. 
 That suit I sold you in the spring is all right. Or we 
 have some new fall goods that will make you look 
 like a million dollars. Come on over here. I want to 
 show you a mottled gray cloth that will take your eye 
 in a minute." 
 
 " Yes," Hewitt hesitated, " but you could n't get it 
 done so that I could wear it to-night, could you? " 
 
 " I '11 fix things for you. Come over here." 
 
 Of course Hewitt bought a new suit of thick, gray 
 cloth, with bright threads running through it. He had 
 to be quick to hide a smile, when he looked at himself 
 in the tall mirror Mr. Kahn led him to. 
 
 " I told you you 'd look like a million," Mr. Kahn 
 told him. " You can have it at five-thirty. And the 
 price is only thirty-five dollars." 
 
 Thereafter the day was more pleasant, although a 
 new griffin erected its head toward five o'clock and 
 Hewitt hunted patiently, but without result, through 
 books on miscellaneous subjects on a back shelf, in
 
 402 CASTE THREE 
 
 search of a volume on etiquette. He went over to the 
 library finally, and there found three such books in 
 the open stacks. They dealt largely with formal re- 
 ceptions and etiquette in Washington and he came 
 across only one line that threw the least light on the 
 correct course of action at a small dinner-party in 
 Alston, Indiana. " Use the table silver from the out- 
 side in," said this third book. Hewitt had already 
 known this from going to hotels with Paul, but he 
 was glad to have it reaffirmed. He wondered whether 
 a gentleman pushed in the chair for the lady he took 
 in to dinner. He wondered about wine. They cer- 
 tainly would not serve wine, however, at a dinner-party 
 given in honor of a young girl. Besides, Grace had 
 said that the Conners were Methodists. So there was 
 no use deciding whether you cared for wine or not, or 
 any other little points like that. 
 
 By six-fifteen, when he stood arrayed in his new suit 
 and a quiet tie which Abe Kahn had helped him select, 
 with a clean handkerchief in his hand and a silk one 
 to match his tie in his upper coat-pocket, the weight 
 of helplessness before a dinner-party with caste three 
 was bearing down on Hewitt terribly. He applied 
 a little talcum powder to his nose, and then wiped it 
 off carefully with his handkerchief. He did n't want 
 the powder to show. He gave an extra polish to his 
 already immaculate brown shoes, and tried to get a 
 complete picture of his feet and legs by standing on 
 the bed and looking into the small oval of his bureau 
 mirror. He readjusted the cuff of his trousers as
 
 CASTE THREE 403 
 
 he got down. He pulled his coat forward on his 
 shoulders by lifting them slightly. He tied his scarf 
 again and pulled down his vest. It was a little snug, 
 he decided. He would have it refitted to-morrow. 
 
 " Hewitt ! " came Grace's voice from below. " Do 
 you know it 's twenty minutes after six? You 'd bet- 
 ter hurry ! " 
 
 He felt irritated by this reminder of the time, and 
 he pulled out his watch to see if five minutes could 
 have elapsed since his last examination of the gold 
 watch Paul had sent him the Christmas before. He 
 found that Grace was right, but this did not eliminate 
 his irritation. His cheeks were mottled with red in a 
 queer way they had when he became excited. They 
 were not red where cheeks should be red, but in spots, 
 especially near his jaws. He examined them with his 
 hand-mirror and applied talcum, but immediately he 
 rubbed it off again. 
 
 "Hewie!" called Grace from below. "If you 
 don't hurry, you'll be late at the Conners' and will 
 feel foolish." 
 
 Grace took especial interest in the Conners on ac- 
 count of the similarity of their religious faith to her 
 own. She was proud that Hewitt was going to their 
 house to dinner, although she did not let him see her 
 pride. 
 
 Hewitt gave a last brush to his smooth hair and 
 seized his top-coat and gray hat. The hat looked 
 rather battered, but a new suit and hat on the same 
 night would have been too conspicuous. Besides, he
 
 404 CASTE THREE 
 
 wanted a derby for winter, though he hesitated about 
 appearing in one for the first time. A derby was un- 
 usually noticeable when new. It was so stiff and 
 unwieldy. 
 
 He said good-bye to Grace and his father, who was 
 sitting up in a chair for the first time, and started off 
 at a brisk pace. He changed to a slower walk before 
 he passed the post-office. He was n't going to make 
 himself breathless and hot when he arrived rather 
 late, he feared at the Eighth Street residence. 
 
 Hewitt need not have feared. The guests had not 
 all arrived when he was ushered into the hall of the 
 dignified old Harrow house which the Conners had 
 taken for the winter. Their own house had been sold 
 to the Y. M. C. A. committee for an association 
 home. 
 
 The maid took his hat and coat, and Mrs. Conners 
 came through the heavy velvet curtains and took his 
 hand. There had always been something dramatic to 
 Hewitt about a woman's appearing in an opening of 
 heavy curtains. It now struck him that Mrs. Conners 
 was, in her way, as beautiful as Mrs. Stewart or Mary 
 Young. And then he was freshly struck by the thought 
 that he seemed very susceptible to woman's beauty 
 in Alston, whereas in Chicago he had never noticed 
 women. Oh, yes ; he remembered that he had thought 
 Paul's wife was pretty. 
 
 The Harrow house was furnished with the massive 
 carved furniture in vogue thirty or forty years before. 
 There were stiff portraits in oil on the walls, evidently
 
 CASTE THREE 405 
 
 the Harrow family of Civil War times, and from the 
 high ceilings hung elaborate chandeliers, with clinking 
 stalactite crystals hanging in clusters from their white 
 arms. 
 
 Susannah Conners was standing near the middle of 
 the room. She was dressed in silver and white, with 
 glistening little silver slippers. A silver band was 
 around her head. Her hair was bright, darker than 
 golden, but still bright, especially at her temples where 
 it curled into small rings that she evidently had tried 
 to brush back. It was laid in two wide braids around 
 her head above the silver band. Her flesh looked 
 warm and pink, especially rosy under the dark blue 
 eyes in which a faint suggestion of a smile played as 
 she was introduced to Hewitt. 
 
 Susannah led him into a back parlor as large and high 
 as the first. Instead of containing oil portraits, it was 
 decorated with oil landscapes of a hideous hard im- 
 possibility. In one picture a river was set in mother- 
 of-pearl between banks of harsh green upon which 
 mother-of-pearl daisies blossomed in heavenly pro- 
 fusion. That mother-of-pearl stream almost made 
 Hewitt laugh, despite his trembling diffidence before 
 Bob Hawtrey, Martin Booth, son of the town's leading 
 attorney and former Congressman, Anne Miller and 
 Margaret Hawtrey, who had not gone away to school, 
 after all. But he immediately forgot his inclination to 
 smile, being faced with the necessity of seating himself 
 easily and naturally in an enormous chair which swal- 
 lowed him with unexpected suddenness and left him
 
 406 CASTE THREE 
 
 buried in a sea of leather. He was startled, and felt 
 the mottled red crimsoning his cheeks. 
 
 Bob Hawtrey was telling about a fishing excursion 
 he had made on the lakes in the northern part of Michi- 
 gan. Martin Booth was listening, but Margaret Haw- 
 trey was humming an air and moving her foot ryth- 
 mically, a.s if uninterested, and Anne Miller was run- 
 ning her fingers through her fluffy hair before a glassed 
 oil-landscape which served her as a mirror. 
 
 Mrs. Conners interrupted the fish story by following 
 Hewitt and Susannah into the room and thrusting 
 Bob's head backward by the chin, while she looked into 
 his surprised face. 
 
 " I don't believe a word of it, you imaginative boy ! " 
 she said with a laugh. " Neither does Martin, even 
 though he behaves as though he did, nor Margaret 
 she's your sister nor Anne, who 's very busy making 
 herself pretty, nor Susannah, who 's very discerning, 
 though my daughter, nor Hewitt Stevenson. Now 
 have you the courage to go on ? " 
 
 She released his chin, and he stood up quickly and 
 placed his hands on her shoulders, shaking her with 
 vigor. 
 
 " Just because you Ve been in New York "he 
 began, and then releasing her, turned to Susannah. 
 " Susie " 
 
 Susannah put up an accusing finger at him. 
 
 "Robbie!" 
 
 " I forgot Susannah, did you meet Casper Howard 
 in Northampton ? "
 
 CASTE THREE 407 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " He 's a corking tennis-player. He played in the 
 state tournament last year, and was runner-up. He 
 goes around the country, winning state championships. 
 That 's a rotten system, is n't it," he addressed the 
 group as a whole, " permitting an out-of-state man to 
 compete for the state prize?" 
 
 " I wonder why they manage it that way ? " Hewitt 
 mused aloud. He was shocked at the strangeness of 
 his own voice. It sounded hollow, as though it were 
 issuing from a well of great depth. 
 
 Bob Hawtrey shrugged in answer, and Mrs. Conners 
 went toward the hall to bring in Helen Baxter and 
 Joe Bales. 
 
 The talk in the back parlor, as soon as they were 
 seated, broke up into group discussions, and Hewitt 
 found himself with Margaret Hawtrey with whom 
 he felt more at ease than with any one except Joe 
 and Martin Booth and Anne Miller. He resisted his 
 impulse to settle back in his leather grave and make 
 himself as inconspicuous as possible. He had n't been 
 invited to a dinner-party to be comfortable, but to help 
 other people enjoy themselves, even if he could n't. 
 So Hewitt sat up and leaned his hands forward across 
 his knees. His coat disturbed him. It seemed to slip 
 back, exposing too much collar in the back. He took 
 to lifting his shoulder at intervals in order to make it 
 set properly. This movement gave him something to 
 do, too, and kept him from feeling extremely awkward. 
 Margaret Hawtrey was being nice to him, he appre-
 
 408 CASTE THREE 
 
 ciated when she mentioned having read a novel by a 
 Chicago woman. She had liked it. She wondered if 
 any one else there had read it. 
 
 No one had, but Hewitt had read a previous one by 
 the same author and praised it, not because he felt that 
 it deserved praise, but because he wanted to repay Mar- 
 garet. This was not the demand of hostess upon guest, 
 and he appreciated her effort and wished to show her 
 that he did. 
 
 Martin Booth liked O. Henry, he said. He had 
 bought a set for himself, and often, when he went home 
 at night, he sat up in bed and read a few stories before 
 he went to sleep. O. Henry was a prince, according 
 to Martin. He said things in a way a fellow could 
 laugh at and still be touched about. That story, now, 
 about the young husband with the watch and the girl 
 with beautiful thick hair. The man sold his watch 
 and bought fancy combs for the girl, and she sold her 
 hair and bought him a watch-chain for Christmas. 
 That somehow got a fellow. It was a good story. 
 
 Anne Miller hated books. Katherine liked to read, 
 but she loathed them. The last was said with em- 
 phasis. If she ever got out of high school, and they 
 didn't make her go to college (she 'd never go of her 
 own free will) she would never open another book. 
 She preferred to dance and motor anything, except 
 to read! 
 
 Margaret was kindly superior to this attitude. One 
 was n't educated unless one read books. She was read- 
 ing " Vanity Fair " now.
 
 CASTE THREE 409 
 
 " Don't you adore it? " she asked Hewitt, with en- 
 thusiasm. " I adore Becky Sharp and Amelia." 
 
 The other group was having a more interesting time, 
 if noise was any test Joe Bales was trying to climb 
 up Bob Hawtrey by means of hands and feet, and Bob 
 was offering him no assistance. Their fun was inter- 
 rupted by Homer Gray's appearance. 
 
 " Go to it, lads ! " he said. " Mrs. Conners says to 
 enjoy yourselves. Susannah is back, so we should 
 worry about destruction of furniture." Bob had 
 backed against and upset a small revolving bookcase. 
 Joe hastened to rescue it, with no blush of shame. 
 
 " Ought n't to keep your bookcases out so far," he 
 blustered to Susannah. " Ought to put 'em against 
 the wall, where bookcases belong. Just because they 
 put 'em in the middle of the room in New York " 
 
 He was stopped by Susannah's hand over his mouth. 
 
 " I won't let you make fun of us ! " she said. 
 
 " Dinner," announced the same maid who had 
 opened the door. 
 
 There was no particular order about their going out 
 to dinner, Hewitt found, and he and Margaret Haw- 
 trey were the last to find their places, indicated by 
 hand-colored cards. Hewitt's chair was between Su- 
 sannah's and Margaret's. He felt relieved and glad. 
 He was sure that he could n't stand Anne Miller or 
 Helen Baxter during an entire dinner. He knew that 
 he took strong prejudices against people, as Mary 
 Young had told him, and he had already taken one 
 against Anne Miller on the night of Margaret's dance.
 
 410 CASTE THREE 
 
 Helen Baxter was not so bad, but she was not particu- 
 larly attractive to him. 
 
 Joe Bales was attending to Helen's chair, and Hewitt 
 did likewise for Susannah. In doing this, he again 
 noticed the rosy firmness of her skin and the bright 
 streaks in her hair at the temples. 
 
 She was like a water-lily, Hewitt decided, suddenly 
 pleased with this figure of speech. She was waxily 
 firm and strong, and rounded delicately. She was 
 slightly taller, when she stood, than any of the other 
 girls present, but in sitting her shoulders drooped 
 slightly forward in a way that made her look younger 
 than when she was erect. She must be nineteen, he 
 thought, but she looked that indeterminate age which 
 makes it impossible to judge accurately the age of one 
 of her type from sixteen to twenty-three or four. 
 There was a smile on her lips continually, but it was 
 hardly more than a negation of seriousness. 
 
 Homer Gray was guiding the general conversation 
 from his place beside Mrs. Conners. He seemed to 
 amuse her immensely by his quick bits of satire and his 
 explosive jests at the expense of the more youthful 
 members of the party. Susannah talked little, but she 
 turned to Hewitt several times with a comment meant 
 for him alone. This attention flattered him. She was, 
 he could tell, taking him very seriously, as a brilliant 
 person temporarily sojourning in Alston, as the kind of 
 a boy Mary Young had publicly valued. He was glad 
 now of Mary Young's endorsement. It was she who 
 had made possible this notice of his intellectual superi-
 
 CASTE THREE 411 
 
 ority. He was sorry for all the times a truant third 
 Hewitt had maligned and insulted her. She was a 
 wonderful Mary, and a real friend. She had spurned 
 him privately, but had lauded him to caste three. And 
 he felt now that he would willingly have endured all 
 the misery it seemed much less in retrospect than it 
 actually had been of loving her without hope of an 
 adequate return, if he had then known that it was Mary 
 who was to make it possible for him to sit almost 
 calmly beside Susannah Conners at a dinner-party in 
 her mother's house. It was sweet and entirely char- 
 acteristic of Mary to write to Mrs. Conners about him. 
 At a distance she had probably been overcome with 
 repentance for having aroused a love which had been 
 stronger than she had counted on. She would never 
 have admitted it in Alston, but she probably knew 
 that she had been responsible for an unhappiness in 
 him which she might have easily avoided from the 
 first. So she had written this letter, mentioning him 
 as a nice newcomer whom Susannah would like. 
 Hewitt correctly analyzed her act in this way. 
 
 Colleges, tennis, New York, golf, railroad accom- 
 modation between Alston and New York, and plays 
 came up in turn for light discussion. 
 
 Hewitt had few opinions on any of these subjects, 
 except about plays, and he used that interest for a 
 wedge to establish his position as a man who counted. 
 He had been necessarily quiet before, breaking into 
 speech only when Susannah's side-remarks made it 
 necessary for him to answer her.
 
 412 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I went to see Margaret Anglin in ' Green Stock- 
 ings ' during Christmas week with a couple of young 
 Yale professors, men in the history department, you 
 know. Guess whom we saw in a box? " Homer Gray 
 turned to Mrs. Conners, and she raised her eyebrows 
 to indicate her inability to guess correctly. " The 
 Vice-President. He nodded when he saw us. Hoosier 
 spirit, you know." Gray settled back in his chair, his 
 hands in the pockets of his buttoned coat, his chest out. 
 " I Ve met him, of course, scores of times around the 
 state. Very fine man personally. Our politics don't 
 agree, certainly, but I admire him." 
 
 " How was ' Green Stockings ' ? " Margaret Haw- 
 trey inquired, leaning forward. 
 
 " A very clever farce. A woman whose youngest 
 sister is to marry, causing her to wear green stockings, 
 trumps up a love-affair with a man named Smith from 
 India." 
 
 " And a real Smith appears and marries her," 
 Hewitt could not resist putting in. 
 
 "Did you see it?" Gray asked quickly. 
 
 Hewitt smiled. 
 
 " No," he replied. 
 
 " Ah, a clever guess. The whole thing was well 
 done. I should say that Miss Anglin is one of the 
 most intelligent of our actresses." 
 
 The dinner was a simple one, and Hewitt had 
 no trouble with the silver. Susannah and Margaret 
 were both prompt in selecting theirs, but he did not 
 have to watch, once he had run his eye over the row
 
 CASTE THREE 413 
 
 and placed each piece. He was so relieved that he 
 sighed, and Susannah glanced around curiously at him, 
 her smile deepening without knowing why, except that 
 she felt sympathy for this tall, gray-eyed boy who 
 was quiet, unobtrusive, and intellectual. 
 
 " Is she American ? " Hewitt put in again, looking 
 intently at Gray. The latter pursed his lips and 
 frowned. 
 
 "Isn't she?" he asked almost hostilely, or so 
 Hewitt thought, though he stopped frowning and 
 laughed. 
 
 " I was merely asking," Hewitt smiled. 
 
 Gray turned to Mrs. Conners. 
 
 " Very interesting woman. After the play I was 
 introduced to her. It seems one of my friends had 
 known her in Maine the summer before, and we 
 talked with her for a few minutes afterward." 
 
 Joe Bales was getting restless, Hewitt saw, but he 
 himself looked directly at Mrs. Conners and began to 
 speak. At first the words did not come evenly ; he even 
 stuttered over several, but he gained confidence as he 
 proceeded. He began with Miss Anglin, and branched 
 out into a talk on American drama. 
 
 " In time I suppose we will stop being amused by 
 musical shows, bad music, and nudity, and develop a 
 more distinctly American type of play that will really 
 entertain," he ended, and felt the mottled spots reap- 
 pearing on his cheeks. 
 
 Every one was watching Hewitt. He grew uneasy, 
 and for some reason his fingers touched the glass be-
 
 4H CASTE THREE 
 
 fore he intended them to. It turned over, and a 
 stream of water flowed across his remaining silver. 
 Hewitt quickly put his napkin over the pool, and the 
 maid took the glass away and quickly brought him 
 another. But for a few minutes he was as miserable 
 as he had been on that night when he attempted to 
 dance. Every one, the minute he had committed the 
 irreparable act, began talking gaily, except Joe Bales, 
 who glowered at him and brought a laugh from the 
 table. 
 
 "What did I tell you, Stevenson, before we started? 
 No tricks, now! That water was all right. There 
 . was nothing the matter with it ! " 
 
 Hewitt laughed, too, and decided there was no oc- 
 casion for great embarrassment. One must carry off 
 accidents like that with a high hand, and nobody 
 seemed to mind. If one seemed to mind, other people 
 became embarrassed, too. So he threw a remark or 
 two at Joe, and was answered in a way that brought 
 another laugh. 
 
 There was a long dish of olives and celery on the 
 table which had not been removed after the soup. 
 Joe pulled a piece of celery from it, and offered a bite 
 to Helen Baxter. She contemptuously pushed his 
 hand away. 
 
 " Joe, you Ve started ! " she said disapprovingly. 
 
 " Here, Hawtrey, have a bite ? " Joe called to Bob, 
 leaning across Helen. 
 
 Bob took one end of the celery in his mouth, bowing 
 in front of a disgusted Helen to do it. Joe seized the
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 other end in his teeth, and they pulled like two dogs. 
 Susannah shook with laughter. 
 
 " Now I 'm sure I 'm home," she said. 
 
 " I knew Joe would behave like this ! " wailed Helen, 
 as though she were responsible. 
 
 " Dear, Joe behaved like that before you knew he 
 existed," Mrs. Conners comforted her. 
 
 " I 'm awful. I 'm pure rowdy low-brow," Joe ad- 
 mitted, shaking his head over his deficiencies. " But 
 I 'm an angel beside Bob. He knocked the bookcase 
 over." 
 
 The formality of the dinner was broken, and the 
 young ones became exuberantly merry. Homer Gray 
 talked to Mrs. Conners, but not before Hewitt had 
 spoken again. 
 
 " Say," Martin Booth called, to attract Hewitt's at- 
 tention, " did you mean a while ago that you don't 
 think the Follies are good entertainment ? " 
 
 " I did n't have the Follies particularly in mind," 
 Hewitt said. " But they are a combination of vul- 
 garity, nudity, and bad music, are n't they ? " 
 
 " Well, I had n't ever considered them so. I like 
 them. They 're fine ! A crowd of us always goes up 
 from here to Indianapolis to see them. What about it, 
 Bob ? Do you care for the Follies ? " 
 
 " Only show I give a rap about. I call them good 
 comedy and catchy music. What 's your objection, 
 Stevenson? " 
 
 Hewitt shrugged. 
 
 " It 's hard to explain my objection, if you like them.
 
 416 CASTE THREE 
 
 Once in a while they get hold of a real comedian, and 
 sometimes they ' make ' a song, if you like that kind 
 of song. For my part, I don't care about them." 
 
 " But you are amused by the Follies, are n't you,. 
 Hewitt ? " Homer Gray asked. 
 
 " I have laughed," Hewitt admitted. " But it was 
 the laugh I sometimes give when a man slips and falls 
 on the ice." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 " Involuntarily, and not because I was sincerely and 
 reasonably amused." 
 
 " I wonder if there is such a thing as reasonable 
 amusement," Mrs. Conners suggested. 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hewitt answered. " All laughter which 
 is n't caused by a repressed desire coming to the surface 
 is reasonable, an intellectual process." 
 
 Joe was getting restless again. He looked steadily 
 at the ceiling and neglected his salad. 
 
 "What's up, Joe, literally up?" asked Margaret 
 Hawtrey. 
 
 " I 'm thinking," said Joe, without changing the 
 direction of his glance. " I 'm wondering if I '11 ever 
 laugh again." 
 
 Every one laughed at this, and Hewitt most of all. 
 He was beginning to enjoy himself. Caste three 
 wasn't at all the ogre he had thought it; at least, it 
 was n't when one could feel that he was having the 
 support of people whom he might really like in a 
 future when he should entirely lose his sense of 
 strangeness.
 
 CASTE THREE 417 
 
 A stream of repartee from Joe, in answer to Bob's 
 insulting insinuations concerning his lack of wit, fol- 
 lowed. Hewitt began to understand why caste three 
 liked Joe. He would have been in it, anyway, Hewitt 
 reconsidered, however, because of his grandmother. 
 Most people in Alston grew into caste three. They 
 did n't attain it ; they inherited it, which made their 
 positions easy and secure. 
 
 Hewitt wished he had been born into it, and in- 
 stantly felt ashamed. That seemed like repudiating 
 his poor, sick father and good old Grace. 
 
 The table became so noisy that Hewitt could turn 
 to Susannah without notice. 
 
 "You are Mary Young's friend, aren't you?" she 
 said, smiling deeply again. " Is n't Mary a dear? " 
 
 " I 'm fond of her," Hewitt acknowledged. " She 
 has a wonderful fascination for people, hasn't 
 she?" 
 
 " Yes. Everybody likes Mary. And she 's so 
 clever, and awfully intelligent." 
 
 "Isn't she?" 
 
 That was all, but it established a bond between 
 them, this understanding that Mary Young was a lovely 
 person for whom they both felt enthusiasm. 
 
 Susannah turned to talk to Martin Booth, and 
 Hewitt was left to sit quietly, or to join in the general 
 conversation. 
 
 From now on, with the Conners, he understood, on 
 account of Mary Young he was to occupy exactly the 
 position he made for himself. If he chose to be re-
 
 418 CASTE THREE 
 
 tiring and diffident, he would be allowed to remain so. 
 He would make himself count with these people, he 
 resolved. He would show them ! Not only Susannah 
 and her mother, but the others. He was n't going to 
 be a high-brow stick. He thought he had caught some 
 suggestion of an accusal of that attitude in Joe's jest 
 about never laughing again. Joe was not subtle enough 
 for that, though, Hewitt decided. 
 
 " Too bad we have n't another Y. M. C. A. to help. 
 Eh, Gray? " he laughed. 
 
 " I guess you thought that campaign was play." 
 
 " I liked it. I want another one." 
 
 "If you are so enthusiastic about soliciting dona- 
 tions, I can give you work any day in the week." 
 
 " Yes, Homer is chief of all organizations for beg- 
 ging money," declared Mrs. Conners. 
 
 " That 's not because I like it." 
 
 " No, but because you are capable." 
 
 " Little Peggy Stewart is sick," Margaret Hawtrey 
 mentioned. " I don't know why I thought of it." 
 
 "What's the matter with her?" Mrs. Conners 
 asked, motioning the maid to remove the salad. 
 
 " She has typhoid, we 're afraid. Mother was over 
 there this afternoon. The doctor has n't pronounced 
 it that, but Mrs. Stewart is afraid of it." 
 
 " That would be a shame." 
 
 " Peggy 's going to be the best-looking girl in town 
 when she grows up," Joe Bales warned them. " You 
 girls had better hurry and get married. There won't 
 be any men left for you."
 
 CASTE THREE 419 
 
 " You won't be left, you mean, Joe," Helen told 
 him. 
 
 ' You can bet your best boots I won't. I was over 
 to see her the other day." 
 
 " That 's probably why she 's sick," laughed Bob. 
 " People can't look at you without getting sick, Bales." 
 
 " Anyway, I say it 's a shame about Peggy. Hope 
 it 's not typhoid," Joe said. " She 's a sweet little 
 youngster." 
 
 " Typhoid 's pretty bad," Hewitt put in. " My 
 father has been ill with it for over two months. To- 
 day is the first time he has sat up in a chair." His 
 voice no longer sounded as if it were issuing from a 
 well. It was deep and strong. 
 
 " That is a shame," Mrs. Conners smiled to him. 
 " We all hope he gets well soon." 
 
 " His illness kept me from going to Chicago Uni- 
 versity this fall," went on Hewitt. The words were 
 not spoken before he regretted them. They would 
 think he was pulling a long face over doing his duty. 
 So he went on to explain, and emphasized the cheer- 
 fulness of his voice. " I might have gone, I suppose, 
 but I guess a man likes to know his children are near 
 by when he 's sick. Anyway, I would n't want to leave 
 my sister alone with him while he was still so weak. 
 The doctor says he will have to learn to walk all over 
 again." Childish, he decided that last speech was. He 
 would keep still for a while. Joe Bales and Martin 
 Booth and Bob Hawtrey were n't telling their family 
 troubles at a dinner-party.
 
 420 CASTE THREE 
 
 But if Mrs. Conners thought Hewitt had been child- 
 ish in his remarks about his father, she did not show it. 
 
 " Typhoid is dreadful," she said to him. " I 
 should n't want Susannah ever to have it." 
 
 " I shall run and get it," her daughter returned, with 
 mock seriousness, " if it is fashionable." 
 
 " All for the fashions, are n't you, Susie ? " Joe Bales 
 said, with an exaggerated grin. 
 
 Hewitt thought of Eleanor Rowe, though he could 
 not have told why. Other girls had gone out with 
 Joe, too, he felt sure, and then there were those In- 
 dianapolis excursions. Morals, considering Joe's case 
 and Tom Brandon's and others he knew about, did n't 
 make any difference about your acceptance in caste 
 three. Other qualifications were what counted. A 
 moral Hewitt might easily be less acceptable than a 
 loose-moralled Joe. Joe was funny and easy, also an 
 hereditary member of the group. That made the dif- 
 ference. 
 
 For the second time that evening Hewitt wished, and 
 was promptly ashamed of so wishing, that he had been 
 born into caste three. Of course overcoming defi- 
 ciencies of training might make a man wise and strong, 
 but one preferred to belong and be happy. Joe was 
 happy, Hewitt felt certain. He could not imagine Joe 
 as lying awake all night hating a girl who did n't love 
 him. There were lots of girls in the world, Joe would 
 have said. Neither could he imagine Joe as blaming 
 fate for postponing a college course. Joe would have 
 said that it did n't matter, that college could wait. Als-
 
 CASTE THREE 421 
 
 ton was fun, anyway. And as far as Joe's figuring 
 out what made people eligible for caste three that 
 thought was provocative of a smile. If chance had 
 placed Joe outside, he would never have cared to get 
 inside. Joe's position must be a comfortable one. 
 
 Hewitt wondered why some people were like Joe, 
 and why some were like him. He would have traded 
 dispositions with Joe and given him his bank-account 
 to boot a bank-account swelled by that extra hun- 
 dred dollars his father had let him have from his 
 future legacy. College might not make much differ- 
 ence in the long run, anyway. Why did people get 
 educated, if not to be eligible for the social life which 
 appealed to them? His old idea that knowledge was 
 desirable in itself had been slowly fading. Why ac- 
 quire more knowledge than would enable one to live 
 in a manner in accordance with your desires? He 
 wanted to read now, in order that he might talk about 
 what he had read. Knowing things gave one prestige. 
 
 " I think being fashionable is interesting," Anne Mil- 
 ler volunteered, with a little toss of her fluffy hair. " I 
 am comfortable when I know I am fashionably 
 dressed, and I am awfully uncomfortable in old clothes, 
 except at school and at the lakes, of course, where you 
 don't think about clothes." 
 
 " Anne 's a ' dinger ' on the clothes question," said 
 Joe, with a wag of his head. " She 's right there every 
 time. A veritable ' Vogue ' among ladies ! " He pro- 
 nounced the " u " in the word, and thereby gained a 
 laugh.
 
 422 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I like my clothes," answered Anne, undisturbed. 
 
 " So do I, dear," Susannah said to her. 
 
 "You mean like your own or mine?" 
 
 " Yours. You have an air. No one in New York 
 could approach you for pure style." 
 
 Anne examined Susannah for the purpose of discov- 
 ering whether or not she was being jested with, but 
 the latter's faint smile, always on her lips and so now 
 indicative of nothing, puzzled her, and she turned away 
 calmly to Martin Booth with a question about school. 
 
 During this exchange of pleasantries Homer Gray 
 had been talking with great aplomb to his hostess. A 
 sudden silence now brought his words to the rest of 
 the table. 
 
 " I sometimes wonder just where this European ques- 
 tion will land the dear old U. S. A.," he was saying. 
 " There 's that old problem over there about the ' bal- 
 ance of power.' Mr. Fairbanks, the former Vice- 
 President, was discussing the matter with me the other 
 day. He was making a trip through here, you know, 
 and he stopped off with Mr. Keith. You see, the sit- 
 uation is like this: Germany has been growing 
 stronger from year to year. England still controls 
 the sea, but Germany has organization, wonderful in- 
 ternal organization. We can take notes on efficiency 
 from Germany and learn a great deal. But we won't, 
 of course. As Mr. Keith says, ' America is too cock- 
 sure of herself.' She has ' the egotism of youth,' as 
 a famous New York publicist puts it. France has 
 little war strength. Russia is negligible. That leaves
 
 
 CASTE THREE 423 
 
 England and Germany. A young German girl who has 
 been studying at Barnard told one of my Yale friends 
 that her brothers, officers in the German army, had 
 been called to the German frontiers three or four times 
 during the last ten years. That looks as if Germany 
 were getting ready for something." 
 
 " What does Germany want ? " Martin Booth asked. 
 
 " Seaports and colonies." 
 
 " Let 's give her a few," Joe suggested. 
 
 " Of course this is a European question. America 
 is safe in her own hemisphere, unless Germany tries 
 doing things in Mexico or South America. She won't, 
 though. Germany is as crafty as Japan." 
 
 " How about Japan? " Hewitt asked. 
 
 " Japan will try now and then to take a piece of 
 China. She is too clever to entangle herself with a 
 real fighting power like the United States." 
 
 " I would n't be too sure about our standing army," 
 Martin Booth said. 
 
 " Our standing army is not large, I admit. But, as 
 C. J, Preston, who 's been traveling in Europe during 
 the last year, says, nearly every man in this country 
 can handle a gun with some degree of skill. The 
 greatest volunteer army in the world would arise to , 
 put down any power which threatened America. No 
 power will threaten America. They 're afraid to." 
 
 " But why go to war at all ? " Mrs. Conners sighed. 
 
 " That 's what a great many people in the world 
 have been saying for the last decade. The time is 
 ripe for a world peace, almost ripe."
 
 424 CASTE THREE 
 
 " Then why not have peace ? " 
 
 " Because two powers are not ready for peace." 
 
 "And they are?" 
 
 "Japan and Germany. They both want things. 
 Their present situation is not satisfactory to them." 
 
 " You say, ' Peace ! Peace ! ' and there is no peace ! " 
 Joe exploded, misquoting a famous orator. 
 
 Hewitt, drinking his demi-tasse and nibbling at his 
 cracker, almost choked at this remark. 
 
 "Be careful, Stevenson! You've performed once 
 this evening," Joe warned him. 
 
 " It was n't really funny. You were just surprised, 
 were n't you, Hewitt ? " Susannah asked him. It was 
 the first time she had addressed him by name, and her 
 calling him " Hewitt " pleased him. 
 
 " I was astonished at the paradox of Joe Bales 
 quoting Patrick Henry," he said, laughing. 
 
 " Ah ha! " Joe snorted, " Hewitt knows Patrick! " 
 
 " I once recited that speech at school, myself," Bob 
 Hawtrey said. " I was immensely impressive at the 
 end. I backed into the rostrum and fell down." 
 
 " What was impressed ? " an innocent Joe queried. 
 "The floor?" 
 
 " Raw, Joe," Martin accused him. " Let 's have 
 real wit, or none ! " 
 
 " I think that was a very good joke, Joe ! " Susannah 
 said. " That is, for you," she added softly. 
 
 " Shall we continue this flow of cleverness in the 
 parlor?" Mrs. Conners asked, rising. Homer Gray,
 
 CASTE THREE 42? 
 
 Hewitt noted, was quick to lift her chair back. He 
 imitated this lead, and was close behind Susannah as 
 she made her way to the door. Hewitt liked Susannah. 
 
 Music followed. Susannah sang some pretty 
 songs which Hewitt approved. Joe Bales also had his 
 opportunity to entertain, and played " Chop-Sticks " on 
 the piano, using both hands, a feat that was roundly 
 applauded. 
 
 " Consarn it, that 's hard work ! " he complained 
 afterward. " It was hard to learn, too. Say, Susie, 
 you taught me that, didn't you? Remember? " 
 
 Susannah did not. 
 
 " One night over at your house, after a dance. 
 Don't you remember? Your father came downstairs 
 in a bathrobe and sent me home, with kindly instruc- 
 tions not to wake the town thereafter." 
 
 Susannah did at length remember, and turned away 
 toward the window. Hewitt wondered if she was still 
 made sad by mention of her father. 
 
 Homer Gray presently reassumed his position as 
 self-appointed leader of conversation. He did this by 
 doing most of the talking himself, allowing the younger 
 and less able of the group to put in questions from 
 which he could develop a round talk. He spoke a 
 good deal about vice-presidents and ex-governors and 
 Yale professors. He casually introduced a Senator, 
 and once he referred in a careless tone to so unim- 
 portant a public servant as a Congressman, but that 
 individual was quickly passed over as being unworthy
 
 426 CASTE THREE 
 
 of the serious attention of the author of a book and 
 the prospective prosecuting attorney of Alston, if fate 
 permitted. 
 
 Some of Hewitt's old dislike for Homer returned, 
 but in the presence of the tolerance of the others, he 
 buried it, and was glad to find that later it had not sur- 
 vived interment. 
 
 Susannah and Margaret were able to steal time from 
 Mr. Gray's domination to speak about Wellesley and 
 Smith and Muncie and New York, but not for long. 
 They returned to the fold when Joe Bales wanted to 
 begin an argument with Homer on the subject of coast 
 defense, a subject about which Joe was entirely igno- 
 rant, but willing to talk. Susannah persuaded Joe 
 that golf was more interesting as a topic, since every- 
 body played golf she had forgotten Hewitt and 
 only Homer knew about coast defenses. Hewitt even 
 wondered if Homer did, but he inferred that the latter 
 must have picked up some information from the lead- 
 ers of the country on this point, since certainly so vital 
 a topic had not been left undiscussed in the seances 
 between Gray and the chief men of the day. 
 
 Golf lasted only a short while, because the weather 
 was getting too bad for regular play. So Homer was 
 in power again. Indeed, he had not given way, even- 
 to golf. He played very well. He had been runner- 
 up in the Country Club tournament last summer, and 
 might have come out winner, instead of in second 
 place, if the roots of a tree had n't interfered with his 
 stroke on the last hole.
 
 CASTE THREE 427 
 
 Joe Bales took exception to this explanation, with 
 his usual impudence. 
 
 " I suppose you should n't have got your ball among 
 the roots," he said. 
 
 At which thrust Homer turned to Mrs. Conners to 
 talk about other sports. 
 
 " I do hope we can skate this winter," Anne Miller 
 wished. 
 
 " Maybe the city will flood Athletic Park again for 
 a skating pond," said Martin. " I hope it will." 
 
 " Every one was skating in New York last winter," 
 Susannah said, innocent of offense. But Joe was ready 
 with a contemptuous, " What does a good Hoosier care 
 about what old New York does ! " 
 
 " We care a great deal," said Anne, with a toss of 
 her head. 
 
 Hewitt readjusted his coat by lifting his shoulders, 
 and then hoped that no one had noticed him. They 
 might think he had the habit, and he had always held 
 the opinion that any nervous habit was decidedly ob- 
 jectionable. But his coat did seem to creep down in 
 the back. It was about time for him to speak up, too. 
 He had made but one or two comments since dinner, 
 and they had been to Susannah about her singing or 
 about the music that was popular in Alston. He did n't 
 approve of ragtime, he assured her. He was glad she 
 sang really good music. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hawtrey dropped in on their way home 
 from a moving-picture show. Mrs. Hawtrey was soon 
 deep in personal talk with Mrs. Conners in a corner,
 
 428 CASTE THREE 
 
 and Homer Gray's leadership was superseded by the 
 talkative Mr. Hawtrey, who insisted in telling in detail 
 the story of the picture they had just seen. 
 
 " I tell you, that little girl gets me," he finished 
 slangily. " She could have me any day. She 's a 
 little artist. Got a cunning way about her. Pigeon- 
 toed, too. That gets a trifle tiresome, but she 's pretty 
 and attractive." 
 
 Every one seemed interested, except Hewitt, who 
 considered that regular attendance at the " movies " 
 numbed one's mind. He did not air his opinion, how- 
 ever, before people who seemed so wrapt up in moving- 
 picture theaters. He remained silent. It did n't seem 
 necessary to exert oneself to speak, now that Mr. Haw- 
 trey was doing all the talking. 
 
 When the Hawtreys at last arose to take their de- 
 parture, they insisted on taking Margaret and Bob 
 with them. 
 
 " These youngsters have been out every night this 
 week. I won't have it. Margaret thinks that because 
 she is out of school, she can dissipate all the time. I 
 won't have it. Get your hats, young ones." 
 
 The young ones were reluctant, but they obeyed a 
 persistent and firm parent. 
 
 Helen thought she must go, too, shortly after their 
 departure. Joe moaned, but said he would tear him- 
 self away, if she was sure her " mama " wanted her 
 before ten. " She does, Joe, you know," Helen as- 
 sured him. Martin Booth offered to take Anne home, 
 if she was ready, and Anne decided that she was.
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 429 
 
 " One must n't stay too late at a dinner-party, I sup- 
 pose," she sighed. 
 
 Hewitt became uneasy as this couple said good-night 
 and departed. Only he and Homer Gray were left. 
 It was time to go, but he was not exactly sure how to 
 make the break. He set his coat right again, and rose, 
 after Susannah had seated herself. 
 
 " Going my way, Gray? " he asked, with admirable 
 abandon. " I go to Jackson." 
 
 " Yes, we can walk down together." 
 
 The formalities were creditably got through with, 
 Hewitt felt, as the two made their way into the cold 
 night air. Susannah had smiled at him with a deeper 
 smile than he was sure ordinary politeness demanded, 
 and Mrs. Conners had been charming to the end. He 
 had told Susannah that he hoped she would let him 
 come again. 
 
 Caste three had been very pleasant, Hewitt decided, 
 as he walked alone up Jackson Street. They knew all 
 the rules, and yet took liberties with them. That was 
 why they were more fascinating than the severely re- 
 spectable.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN January Hewitt went to Chicago with less of a 
 thrill than he had expected to carry to the city with 
 a halo. He was sad about leaving Alston. He had an 
 impulse to throw aside his plans about college and re- 
 main with Mr. Smith to guide the reading of the town. 
 He was half-afraid that in his absence the good citizens 
 might fall again into a poverty of literature. But 
 Susannah was there to tend the flame, if she remem- 
 bered. She had proved a better pupil than Mary 
 Young. She read nearly everything Hewitt suggested, 
 and began to develop a power of critical comment that 
 made him glow with pride in her. 
 
 " Is n't it queer? " she had remarked with great per- 
 spicacity, after a thorough course in Maeterlinck and 
 Shaw. " No writer gets all of life into his work, 
 does he ? " 
 
 That was profound, Hewitt decided, and also true. 
 
 " No, each one portrays a tiny section through his 
 own temperament. If he tries to do more, he loses 
 what the Germans call ' viewpoint,' and becomes value- 
 less. He must, as Pater says, transcribe not the world, 
 but his sense of it, to be an artist." 
 
 "Who is Pater?" 
 
 430
 
 CASTE THREE 431 
 
 " Walter Pater was an English critic who wrote a 
 beautiful style and made brilliant critical decisions." 
 
 " How do you know so much more about literature 
 than other people in Alston? " Susannah had inquired 
 with innocent flattery. 
 
 " I am curious, and I am interested in art. Alston 
 is merely interested in living." 
 
 " And can't people be interested in both things ? " 
 
 " They could be interested, I suppose, but they don't 
 seem to be. Some one has said, Pater, perhaps, 
 that life is the enemy of art. Do you understand 
 that?" 
 
 Susannah had pondered, her forehead on her hand. 
 
 " I think I do. You have to observe, instead of act, 
 don't you, to be an artist?" 
 
 " Yes. It is a great deal like a florist with a plant. 
 He plucks off shoots and buds, so that one flower may 
 be large and perfect. Otherwise the plant has a great 
 many mediocre blossoms, but no fine one. The artist 
 has to have his life closely compressed into a narrow 
 channel, so that the water is deep. I Ve changed 
 figures of speech, but you understand, don't you? 
 The artist's energies must be concentrated, rather than 
 diffused." 
 
 " I wonder why Alston does n't have writers, as New 
 York does?" 
 
 " American writers flock to New York. That 
 seems to be the only place where they receive the 
 stimulation they need to make them pluck off the other 
 shoots and buds. In time Indiana will have great
 
 432 CASTE THREE 
 
 writers, just as Scotland and Ireland do. Indeed, we 
 have some who are now living below their possibilities, 
 but who may in time reach higher levels. You have 
 heard the New York joke that every new writer has 
 spent some part of his or her life in Indiana, have n't 
 you? There seems to be something in the rich soil 
 here that grows writing persons." 
 
 " You will be a great writer some day, won't you? " 
 Susannah had asked, with a repetition of her innocent 
 flattery. 
 
 " Who knows? There are thousands of young men 
 in Indiana with my possibilities. One or two out of 
 the thousand, by virtue of chance and hard work and 
 the knack of getting on, will succeed in being great 
 or near-great in the literary field. I may or may not 
 be one of them." 
 
 He remembered, as he rode to Chicago, that Susan- 
 nah had been certain that he would be one to make a 
 name for himself. 
 
 Hewitt spent two terms in the university, and then 
 returned to Alston in June. Susannah was just back 
 from New York, where she and her mother had been 
 during the spring months. 
 
 Hewitt was glad to be back in Alston. It had be- 
 come home to him. His father was strong again, and 
 was happier than he had been the year before. He 
 had bought more land next his garden farm and was 
 working it himself, driving out from Alston in his 
 buggy to his daily work. 
 
 In August Mr. Smith called Hewitt back to his desk
 
 CASTE THREE 433 
 
 one day. He examined him from top to toe, in a way 
 that reminded Hewitt of their first meeting. Then 
 he said, " H'm," and spilled his spectacles down the 
 front of his soiled vest. 
 
 "Want to have a talk with you, Hewitt." 
 
 " All the time in the world, Mr. Smith," responded 
 Hewitt, sitting down at his typewriter. He looked 
 more robust than he had the fall before, less obviously 
 the studious boy and more the man. 
 
 " I 've done a lot of thinking about you this winter. 
 You had n't any business to leave me to run this store, 
 while you went up to Chicago and enjoyed yourself 
 playing around that university. You made me depend 
 on you, and then you deserted me at the altar. It 
 made me pretty mad. I 've got a proposition to make 
 to you. H'm." 
 
 He paused to clear his throat, and looked so hard 
 into Hewitt's gray eyes that the latter laughed. 
 
 " I Ve always wanted that boy Blake to prepare to 
 come back to Alston to run this business. I like this 
 store. The Smiths have had it ever since there was an 
 Alston. I like it. I 'm attached to it. Now I have 
 a proposition to make to you. Yes ? " he called to 
 Mrs. Chancellor, who had asked him a question from 
 the front part of the store. " Yes, buy two. If the 
 Presbyterian Church will have breakfasts, I s'pose we 
 merchants must buy tickets. You can have them, 
 Hewitt. Take your girl." 
 
 Hewitt was not made self-conscious by this allusion 
 to Susannah Conners. He was beginning to take Su-
 
 434 CASTE THREE 
 
 sannah and the jibes his " case " had brought forth as 
 a matter of course. He rather liked them, it is feared. 
 It made him feel important to have his name coupled 
 with that of the most attractive young woman in 
 Alston. 
 
 " Now about this proposition," Mr. Smith continued 
 presently. " I 've always wanted Blake to step in here, 
 after he finished at Wisconsin, and take over the store. 
 But Blake can't see it that way. He 's got it in his 
 head to study law and to go to Harvard for his de- 
 gree. He 's had it in his head for a good many 
 years, and I 've never tried to force him into my plans. 
 It must be willingness on his part, or nothing. When 
 you came in here, almost two years ago now, I knew 
 you were the boy for the book business. You were 
 interested in books, and you knew them well enough 
 to be intelligent about selling them. I remember how 
 Mrs. Stewart congratulated me about you on the first 
 day I sent you up there to get an order. People saw 
 that you knew what you were talking about. And 
 that 's what it takes to make a success in any business. 
 I 've been thinking all winter. I 'd like to take a lease 
 on this shoe-store room next door, north of here, re- 
 build the room so that it fits with this one, and then 
 extend this store into both rooms. Then we could 
 carry a bigger line of office- furniture and put in a finer 
 line of stationery. Too many people have been send- 
 ing to Chicago and Indianapolis lately for paper. 
 We 've got to swing the trade into line again. 
 
 " Now here 's where you come in, Son. Your father
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 435 
 
 has money. I want him to put a few thousand dollars 
 into this store for you, and let you enter the firm as 
 a junior partner. I don't expect you to persuade him 
 to do it. I '11 talk to him myself. But I want to get 
 your word first that you '11 agree to give up this college 
 business. You know more now than Homer Gray, 
 and he went clear through Yale. I want you to agree 
 to stop college and take up the business this summer. 
 What do you say? " 
 
 " I '11 have to have time to think about it, Mr. 
 Smith," Hewitt said slowly. 
 
 Change the plans of his lifetime? And yet Hewitt 
 wondered if those plans had been so vividly pressing 
 during the last few months as they had been when he 
 first came to Alston, before caste three had adopted 
 him because Mary Young and Susannah Conners had 
 taken him up. He wondered if he had n't wanted Mr. 
 Smith to suggest something like this to him. He had 
 been working even harder than he had the year before 
 in the store. His life was filled with Susannah and 
 caste three and work. 
 
 Hewitt's " thinking about it " included a talk with 
 Susannah. 
 
 They were riding in the country the next Sunday 
 afternoon in her " roadster." The road led over a 
 picturesque bridge, and Hewitt stopped the car on the 
 opposite side with the suggestion that they lock the 
 motor and take a hike across the field and down to the 
 woods on the other side. They looked particularly 
 cool and inviting on such a warm August afternoon.
 
 436 CASTE THREE 
 
 Susannah acquiesced, and they set out. Hewitt held 
 her arm to help her over the rough land, and Susannah 
 grasped her dress in her hand, to keep it from being 
 caught on weeds and blackberry vines. 
 
 On the bank of the stream they sat down under a 
 white-trunked sycamore tree. 
 
 "Isn't it pretty?" Susannah said, turning to smile 
 at Hewitt. 
 
 "The woods?" he jested. 
 
 '* You would n't want to be called pretty, would 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes by you!" 
 
 " Don't be silly, Hewitt!" 
 
 The word " silly " brought up another picture in 
 which Mary Young was the principal figure. How 
 much more pleasant was this than that! No turbu- 
 lence, no violence in this love he felt for Susannah. 
 He wanted to protect her, to take care of her, to keep 
 her from being hurt. He wanted her confidence and 
 her affection, but he was not helpless before his desire. 
 He felt strong and manly, able to cope with the world 
 for her sake. 
 
 " I 'd like to be silly just once," Hewitt mused, 
 watching the clear water where it trailed over clean 
 rocks. 
 
 "Weren't you ever silly?" she asked. 
 
 " Oh yes." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Lots of times. I want to tell you something, 
 Susannah ! "
 
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 437 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 Then, as he turned to look into her blue eyes, Susan- 
 nah spoke quickly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't want to know," she said, and played 
 with a leaf that she tore from a bush close by. 
 
 " Are you afraid of what I want to tell you ? " 
 
 " No-o, not afraid. But you need n't say it yet." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I can't tell you. I don't know what you are going 
 to tell me, do I ? " She raised her eyes and smiled 
 whimsically at him. 
 
 " Yes, you do. Susannah, just how much do you 
 like Alston?" 
 
 " Heaps ! It 's home. Mother and I stay in New 
 York, but we always want to come back here. We 've 
 been here so long, you see." 
 
 " All of twenty years ! " 
 
 " Mother and father were both born in Alston. 
 Mother's father built that house the Y. M. C. A. has 
 now." 
 
 " You like Alston pretty much, then, don't you? " 
 
 She nodded, and tore up the leaf. 
 
 " Would you ever want to live any other place for 
 good ? " Hewitt asked, watching her face. 
 
 Susannah grew rosier under his eyes, and pulled at 
 another leaf. 
 
 " Why? " she suddenly asked, brazenly. 
 
 " Susannah, do you think your mother would let you 
 marry me, if you wanted to?" 
 
 " I don't know; I 've never asked her."
 
 438 CASTE THREE 
 
 They both laughed. 
 
 " Then I shall," Hewitt said. 
 
 "Don't!" Susannah commanded. 
 
 " Why ? Don't you want to marry me ? " 
 
 " I don't now," she said, in such a delicate voice that 
 Hewitt had difficulty in catching her words and moved 
 closer to hear. 
 
 He kissed her with some difficulty on the cheek, and 
 Susannah arose quickly. 
 
 " Kiss me right, won't you ? " Hewitt begged. 
 
 "What is 'right'?" 
 
 " This way." 
 
 After an hour of discussion they decided that Mr. 
 Smith's plan was a very good one, because it meant 
 that Hewitt would settle in Alston with prospects and 
 they could be married the sooner. 
 
 " If mother does n't mind," added Susannah, " for 
 she does believe in early marriages; but I think she 
 likes you." 
 
 <f Think she does ? " stormed Hewitt. " I know she 
 does!" 
 
 " She has n't ever led me to believe that," Susannah 
 contradicted. 
 
 " She told me long ago." 
 
 " But you will be a writer some day, won't you, 
 Hewitt ? " Susannah pleaded. " Mary Young always 
 said you would be one." 
 
 "We'll see," said Hewitt. He intended to be a 
 writer. He would wait until he had acquired a great 
 deal of solid wisdom. Then he would begin to write.
 
 CASTE THREE 439 
 
 But he would wait. There was no need to overload 
 a world, already weighted with mediocre literature, 
 with more youthful ravings. He would wait until he 
 became wise! 
 
 Mrs. Conners admitted, upon being put on trial, that 
 she had no violent objection to Hewitt as a son-in-law, 
 providing there was not to be a long engagement. She 
 did n't believe in long engagements. 
 
 Hewitt then signified to Mr. Smith his willingness 
 to become a junior member of the firm, providing his 
 father could be persuaded to put another section of 
 Hewitt's future legacy into the business. Mr. Steven- 
 son, firmly satisfied with his return to real work and 
 certain of an income from his land, consented to invest 
 five thousand dollars for Hewitt, after a lengthy con- 
 ference with Mr. Smith. 
 
 In September Mary Young came back to Alston to 
 spend the winter. One afternoon Mrs. Conners sug- 
 gested that the four of them Hewitt, Susannah, 
 Mary, and herself motor to Indianapolis for dinner 
 and go to the theater afterward. 
 
 Susannah drove the car, with Hewitt at her side, 
 ready to take the wheel when she grew tired. 
 
 At six they were established at a table at the Severin. 
 Hewitt had previously driven around to get tickets for 
 the Little Theater. 
 
 Mary Young was as effervescent as ever. Time de- 
 tracted no whit from her youth fulness. She was 
 gayer than youth itself, with the added tactfulness of 
 making others gay before her satisfaction became com-
 
 440 CASTE THREE 
 
 plete. She bandied insults with Hewitt, until Susan- 
 nah lost control of herself and laughed so loudly that 
 her mother remonstrated, insisting that the head-waiter 
 would want to remove the whole party. 
 
 Hewitt was very calm, and in fine mettle. Neither 
 Mary Young nor any member of caste three could now 
 deprive him of his wits. He had learned a great deal. 
 He found that people are likely to take you at your 
 own valuation, and he was valuing himself highly 
 now. He might have been accused of " showing off " 
 to Mary Young, who had not seen him for a year and 
 so had missed the steps in his progress toward security 
 of position in caste three in any place in the world. 
 
 Hewitt had found that if you belong to caste three in 
 Alston, Indiana, money and its concomitant the 
 willingness to make a conspicuous expenditure are 
 the only necessary requirements for entrance into caste 
 three in larger cities. Had he not been invited, upon 
 his entrance into Chicago University, to join a frater- 
 nity that ranked above Kenneth Reed's in social pres- 
 tige ? He had learned to be stimulated in the presence 
 of the unaccustomed, to desire the novel except in 
 the matter of love. He felt sure he would never desire 
 any love except Susannah's. 
 
 Between courses Hewitt led Susannah to the part of 
 the floor reserved for dancing. He danced splendidly. 
 He had learned that, too. 
 
 Just before coffee was served, Hewitt offered his arm 
 to Mary Young. 
 
 " I don't believe I 've danced with you but once in
 
 CASTE THREE 441 
 
 my life, have I, Mary? " he said, with a smile. " Try 
 me again, will you ? I 'm afraid I was rather a boor at 
 it that night at the Hawtreys." 
 
 " You a boor, dear ? " Mary denied, laughing and 
 pinching Susannah's ear. " Impossible ! " 
 
 Hewitt thought, as he led Mary Young around the 
 floor, that he had never danced with anyone who 
 waltzed so perfectly. She was wonderful. 
 
 " I wonder if you knew what a miserable time I was 
 having at Margaret Hawtrey's ' open house ' that 
 night ? " he asked her while they danced. 
 
 "Why should you have been miserable?" Mary 
 asked, sincerely puzzled. 
 
 " Because I danced so atrociously, in the first place, 
 and in the second, because I was so violently in love 
 with you, you who did n't care whether I continued 
 to exist, or died a pleasant death." 
 
 " You did n't dance atrociously, I am sure. I have 
 no memory of it, at least. And I did care whether 
 you existed. As for being in love with me, that 's 
 silliness ! " 
 
 " I was silly, was n't I ? " 
 
 "When, particularly?" 
 
 Hewitt, who had heretofore loathed references to 
 personal, intimate things, now spoke calmly. 
 
 " That night, after the lights went out, when I kissed 
 you. Then after the Hawtrey dance, when I exploded 
 against you and you explained how you loved so many 
 people." 
 
 Mary looked puzzled again.
 
 442 CASTE THREE 
 
 " I can't remember the last, but I do recall having 
 done something the night the lights went out that I 
 was sorry for. We were hunting for candles, were n't 
 we?" 
 
 Hewitt nodded. 
 
 " I was fond of you, Hewitt," she tried to convince 
 him. 
 
 " Not in the way I wanted you to be." 
 
 " What way was that ? I knew you didn't expect 
 me to marry you. That would have been too silly." 
 
 " There 's that word ' silly ' again. I don't know 
 what I wanted. I think I wanted you to adore me 
 violently. I suppose that if you had, I would have 
 been indifferent ever after. You were the unattain- 
 able, the beautiful. I was mad about you. I used to 
 lie awake at nights and make myself sick analyzing 
 you and hating you and loving you." 
 
 "You funny boy!" Mary murmured, putting her 
 tongue between her teeth at Susannah as they danced 
 near their table. " Is n't he a funny boy, Susannah ? " 
 she called. 
 
 Susannah nodded. 
 
 " Awfully," she said, smiling into Hewitt's eyes. 
 
 " Sweet Susannah ! " Mary murmured, as they 
 moved away from her. " At any rate, you are n't 
 miserable now, are you? " 
 
 " Not exactly," laughed Hewitt. 
 
 " I think your ever having been in love with me is 
 a chimera of your vivid imagination. You probably 
 never were."
 
 CASTE THREE 443 
 
 Hewitt understood that any affection Mary had had, 
 or still had for him, was very different from sexual 
 love. 
 
 " I was, but I 'm not," he said easily. 
 
 " Susannah, of course ! " sighed Mary, mockingly. 
 "What chance has age beside such radiant youth? 
 Is n't she adorable in blue ? " 
 
 " I was just mentioning to your fiance that you 
 should n't ever wear blue, dear, because it throws my 
 age into such contrast," she said to Susannah when 
 they returned to the table. 
 
 "Age, Mary?" put in Mrs. Conners, with a shake 
 of her head at the irrepressible girl. " You are so 
 much younger than these grown-up children. You will 
 never grow old ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 IN the end the crowd had its way with the alien 
 who might have been the intellectual leader of 
 mediocrity. Right thinking c'est le bonhcur 
 d'homme quand il pense juste, as the French say, after 
 Socrates. That is, man's happiness depends on think- 
 ing rightly. 
 
 Alston, Indiana, pointed to other methods of con- 
 tentment, however. There was the content of playing 
 golf and dancing and dining, of being diverted by 
 bridge, of working that one might play, of tying one- 
 self in a net of community interests, of taking one's 
 cue from other cities and thus developing one's own 
 city. Perhaps that is a fine way to live. 
 
 Hewitt, the alien, was only an outlander, a for- 
 eigner, until he found his place, an important, desir- 
 able, and contentful place, in caste three. The true 
 intellectual is forever the alien to every class. Hewitt, 
 however, had found his class. 
 
 Can't you see him, loving not only Susannah, but all 
 that she represents the gaiety, the cheerfulness, the 
 common-sense, the small luxuries of living, the igno- 
 rance of deep sorrows? 
 
 Susannah gaily takes life as it comes. She plays 
 golf, goes motoring, and dances, bears children and 
 
 444
 
 CASTE THREE 
 
 rears them all gladly and unquestioningly. Great 
 books are something outside of herself, which she 
 reads and ponders over and asks her husband about. 
 They are nothing else. They do not guide her life, 
 or even turn its course. There will never be a revolt 
 in her for imagined beauties that have been denied her. 
 She is content. 
 
 Hewitt will accept her two-generation traditions 
 none are firmer and sink into the restfulness of the 
 superficial. As he grows older he will be swathed in 
 the content of possessing some money, his own and 
 Susannah's, a pretty wife, social children, and a 
 pleasant home. He will read less and less poetry, as- 
 suring himself that only the discontented break forth 
 into poetic expression, forgetting that in the past he, 
 too, had searched for ideal beauty and been " divinely 
 discontented." He will read less and less philosophy, 
 science, and literature, remaining firm in the conviction 
 that his own ideas are final and adequate. He will 
 talk politics, with no new point of view, partisan poli- 
 tics, at the Alston Club while he plays billiards. He 
 will be elected treasurer of the Country Club, and 
 eventually he will become a member of that eminently 
 capable body, the Alston School Board. He will be a 
 loyal rooter for a greater Alston. At first a fighter 
 and later an accepter of the evils of prostitution, his 
 voice will be added to that of other members of the 
 Library Board in refusing to tolerate sex novels of 
 the more radical type on the library-shelves to corrupt 
 the sixteen-year-old. He will be the good citizen with
 
 446 CASTE THREE 
 
 a large voice in the management of the affairs of his 
 city. 
 
 Hewitt will be on the committee to welcome a far- 
 distant Presidential candidate to Alston. The man 
 will, indeed, ride in the Stevensons' new motor to the 
 Court House, and perhaps he will dine at the Steven- 
 sons' new home on Eighth Street. Hewitt will head 
 the contribution list for the Presbyterian Church, he 
 and Susannah having decided that it is, after all, 
 more convenient and esthetically more satisfying than 
 the older Methodist form. He will be one of those 
 business men who are surety for the success of the 
 " Chautauqua," which yearly invades Alston in Au- 
 gust with a call to a bigger outlook. He will forget 
 about Nietzsche and Plato and Walter Pater and Amy 
 Lowell. He will be so successful, so conventional, so 
 the leading citizen of Alston, Indiana! 
 
 Hewitt will have paid for his figs such expensive 
 figs. 
 
 In the spring after his marriage to Susannah at the 
 Methodist Church, Hewitt returned to the Harrow 
 house the Conners had decided to keep it until they 
 could build from the store late one afternoon with 
 a bad headache. Susannah was disturbed and sympa- 
 thetic. She put him to bed and tucked in the covers 
 about his neck lovingly, kissing him on his aching eyes 
 for good measure. 
 
 " You want the shades drawn, don't you, dear ? " 
 she asked softly.
 
 CASTE THREE 447 
 
 " Please. The light drives me mad," Hewitt said, 
 and tried not to sound mournful. 
 
 Susannah laid a cold cloth across his eyes and left 
 him, because he felt better alone, he told her. 
 
 .Hewitt lay there in the darkened room, almost 
 happy, except when his nerves suddenly became a 
 single string upon which the entire scale of pain was 
 played. Then he moved restlessly and writhed for a 
 moment; but the pain passed and he again lay quiet. 
 Presently he fell asleep. 
 
 Darkness was heavy in the room when he awoke, 
 and Susannah was standing over him with the delicate 
 smile which was little more than a negation of serious- 
 ness. Hewitt tried to smile at her as she switched 
 on the lights, but instead his face became distorted 
 with pain. 
 
 " This beastly headache ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Susannah turned off the lights, except one in a bed- 
 room lamp with a yellow shade on the dressing-table. 
 
 Hewitt was exceedingly hungry. There was a 
 gnawing at his vitals which seemed to make his head- 
 ache worse. He lay quiet, however, while Susannah 
 sat on the bed and rubbed his head with her fingers. 
 
 The gnawing grew more painful. Hewitt gasped 
 with the pain in his head. 
 
 Susannah kissed him. 
 
 " Could n't I get you something to eat, dear? Per- 
 haps you could eat something now, and then your head 
 would get better." 
 
 Hewitt demurred. He was too ill to eat, he as-
 
 448 CASTE THREE 
 
 serted. Susannah insisted. At length he consented 
 to make the attempt. 
 
 Susannah went downstairs. During her absence 
 Hewitt had distinctly pleasant impressions of her 
 goodness, of her kindly ways, of her hair that was 
 darker than golden, with the bright streaks over her 
 temples. He thought of her mother. A fine woman ; 
 an ideal mother-in-law! There were no jars in this 
 household, where every one said cheery " good-morn- 
 ings " and " good-nights," and every one highly 
 approved of every one else. He remembered that 
 Grace had always been sullenly averse to conversation 
 at breakfast, and that his father was equally silent, or 
 was prone to speak on fertilizers. How good Susan- 
 nah was ! 
 
 Hewitt felt almost able to get up when he heard 
 Susannah's footsteps on the stairs, but he remained in 
 bed with the wet cloth over his eyes. He was, indeed, 
 hardly able to look upon the food on the mahogany 
 tray, not because he had any interest to deceive Susan- 
 nah about his appetite, but because it seemed scarcely 
 proper to display too intense desire for food when he 
 had a headache. Susannah might doubt that he was 
 ill, and he was very ill. His head seemed at times 
 about to split open. But he was ravenously, unreason- 
 ably hungry. 
 
 Susannah took the cloth from his eyes and kissed 
 him again. 
 
 " Now, darling, you will eat something, won't you ? " 
 
 Hewitt was able, after the pillow had been patted
 
 CASTE THREE 449 
 
 into a renewed fluffiness and supplemented by another 
 one, to sit up and have the tray placed across his 
 sheeted and counterpaned knees a tray covered with 
 immaculate damask and decorated with a silver sugar- 
 bowl, a cream-pitcher, and a rose from a bouquet he 
 had sent Susannah for her birthday. Hewitt had 
 fallen easily into the way the Conners had of cele- 
 brating numerous anniversaries, although his own 
 family had never exchanged gifts, except at Christ- 
 mas. 
 
 He closed his eyes at the pain which rising to a 
 sitting posture had caused him. Nausea assailed him. 
 He asked Susannah to take away the tray. He could 
 not eat, not even beef-tea and wafers and a browned 
 young chicken and milk. He was too sick. 
 
 Susannah looked sad, and removed the tray two feet. 
 Perhaps he could eat in a minute, he told her, seeing 
 that she was saddened by his decision. 
 
 At last he did eat everything, while Susannah sat in 
 a chair close by and observed him. 
 
 He attempted to be jocular, when she stood up to 
 take away the tray with its empty dishes. 
 
 " That was a fine square meal, dear. I think I can 
 get up now.'' 
 
 Susannah protested against such indiscretion. 
 Hewitt insisted. She forced him to stay in bed " for 
 my sake, darling." He remained in bed. 
 
 The pain had been alleviated by the appeasing of 
 his appetite. His head hardly hurt at all now. Su- 
 sannah turned out the light and left him.
 
 450 CASTE THREE 
 
 " You must go to sleep again," she said, and closed 
 the door gently. 
 
 She had opened the curtains, and a spring breeze 
 played with the rose Hewitt had fastened to the coat of 
 his pajamas. He slipped the under-pillow to the floor 
 and lay down again, a soothing sense of intense satis- 
 faction enveloping him. Life was so good! 
 
 The faint voices of children were carried to Hewitt 
 by the light wind. Suddenly one began to cry. How 
 sad that any one should cry on such a pleasant spring 
 evening, when the world, despite a warring Europe, 
 seemed peaceful and quiet. He remembered a night 
 in his own childhood when his father had wanted him 
 to eat bread, and he had refused to change his diet of 
 peaches and cream. The tragedy of leaving the table, 
 inflamed, gulping, hating, and then choking back sobs 
 while he sat on the edge of his little bed in a back 
 room of the farmhouse and gazed dry-eyed into the 
 gathering darkness. The tragedies of childhood! 
 
 A sensation of being far from the disturbing trou- 
 bles of other days came over Hewitt. Calm, pro- 
 tected, dictating maturity had brought him figs and 
 taught him the rules ! Few of those disturbing moods 
 which had made his adolescence sad bothered him 
 now. There was no discontent such as strives to move 
 mountains, no poetics, no strong, balked emotion. 
 Hewitt, the hugger of the shore, was safe in the har- 
 bor of the commonplace. The town had conquered, 
 and figs and Susannah! His jelly-fish soul was be- 
 come of a pink prettiness that suited the town's taste.
 
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