X 
 
 ^ 
 
 o<J 
 
 
 THE OLD 
 
 RUPERT -^.V.
 
 or 
 
 The Old Nest
 
 " Don t love your children too much, little bird. 
 They ll fly away."
 
 The Old Nest 
 
 BY 
 
 RUPERT HUGHES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "EXCUSE ME," 
 " ZAL, " Miss 318," ETC. 
 
 New York 
 
 The Century Co* 
 1912
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1911, by 
 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Published March, 1912
 
 TO 
 
 YOUR 
 MOTHER 
 
 2228411
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART PAGE 
 
 I THE LAST FLEDGLING ... 1 
 
 II BUSY PEOPLE 75 
 
 III THE LONELY ONE 127
 
 PART I 
 THE LAST FLEDGLING
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 T T S too much for us, Hannah. I 
 A guess you 11 have to call Uncle 
 Ned." 
 
 "Gimme a minute to git my breath." 
 The old cook and her older mistress 
 had fought with the dining-room table 
 in a futile tug-of-war. It would not 
 come apart. They braced themselves, 
 and hung back in antipodal directions 
 like the human handles of a Greek jug; 
 but the table clung grimly to its own. 
 
 They sank into opposite chairs, gasping 
 with the unusual effort, and looked help 
 lessly at each other across the tenacious 
 boards. Mrs. Anthon panted, "The ta- 
 3
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ble holds together better than the fam 
 ily does, Hannah." 
 
 "Yes, ma am. It does so." 
 
 Mrs. Anthon reached forward an old 
 ivory hand, and ran it along the vener 
 able mahogany, with an approving 
 caress. Since any group of objects 
 that coheres seems to take on person 
 ality in human eyes, this table had come 
 to be regarded of old as a somebody, an 
 ancient retainer of the house. It had 
 even outlived three generations of the 
 family dog that crouched at its edge like 
 an immortal Lazarus pleading for 
 crumbs. 
 
 When Hannah decided that she had 
 got her breath, she rose from her chair, 
 difficultly, as cooks always rise from 
 chairs, and went to the porch to call in 
 Uncle Ned. 
 
 He was supposed to be engaged in 
 the usual spring yard-cleaning, but he 
 4
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 was lazy as only a negro knows how to 
 be lazy, and he spent most of his time 
 reflecting upon the consequences of his 
 last gesture, or deliberating over the 
 probable effects of his next. He raked 
 a pile of winter-sodden leaves as care 
 fully as if they were flakes of gold that 
 must not be broken with rough handling ; 
 he swept a walk more solemnly and 
 minutely than a monk illuminating one 
 of the Epistles of Paul. 
 
 Hannah found him leaning on a hoe, 
 as immobile as a painted peasant on a 
 painted field. At the sound of her 
 voice he suffered a positive epilepsy of 
 energy, and she must name him thrice 
 before he vouchsafed a hasty: 
 "Cain t you see Ah m busy!" 
 The same habit has been noted in 
 laborers on street-car tracks. They 
 evade toil with a lotus-eater s leisure- 
 liness till a car comes along, when they 
 5
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 assail their task so fanatically that the 
 car must stop, or play Juggernaut over 
 their infatuated frames. 
 
 Uncle Ned relinquished his hoe with a 
 sigh of regret, and reluctantly at length 
 consented to follow Hannah. He had 
 one rheumatismic knee, and his mode of 
 motion gave him the look of walking 
 cautiously around his own feet. 
 
 He was not often invited into the 
 house, and seemed unutterably afraid of 
 injuring the walls or the floor. Once in 
 the presence of his mistress, his hat slid 
 from his head and he made many a 
 salaam, wrinkling up his face and grin 
 ning like a wheedling hound. 
 
 "Hyah Ah am, Miss Anth n," he 
 said. "Ah had to leave ma hoe in de 
 air, but hyah Ah am. Yassum, hyah 
 Ah am. Ah m hyah " 
 
 Uncle Ned would go on like an alarm 
 6
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 clock till he was cut off. Mrs. Anthon 
 spoke softly into his talk : 
 
 "Hannah and I have been trying to 
 pull the table apart so that we can take 
 this leaf out. But it s too much for us, 
 Uncle Ned. Do you think you can fix 
 it?" 
 
 "Well, Ah don like to brag or boas , 
 but Ah reckon Ah kin lick dat ole table. 
 Yassum, Ah reckon Ah kin just abote 
 wrastle dat ole table to a stan still. 
 Yassum, Ah should n be supprised 
 ef " 
 
 "It sticks awfully tight, and you re 
 not as strong as you used to be." 
 
 "No m, dat s de dismal fack. What 
 wid rheumatics an ovawuk, Ah m con 
 siderable disparaged, but " he drew 
 himself up with pride "but Ah kin 
 well rememba de day when Ah could do 
 a lick of wuk as good as ever Ah could. * 
 1
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 After an elaborate debate on the plan 
 of attack, he set the two women at one 
 end of the table, while he laid hold of the 
 other. They fought the table up and 
 down the room and into the sideboard. 
 It clung to its last leaf like a mother re 
 sisting kidnappers; but at length, by 
 wrenches and jerks, it was overpow 
 ered. Its arms came out of their 
 sleeves, squealing protest, and the leaf 
 was left with tenons divorced from their 
 mortises. 
 
 Uncle Ned s face was like glowing 
 charcoal, and he held the plank aloft in 
 triumph. 
 
 "You see, dey s one or two things still 
 a-goin dat ole Uncle Ned can lick. Yas- 
 sum, dey s one or two, mebbe three 
 
 "It s the only leaf left in the old 
 table," Mrs. Anthon mourned. "The 
 others went into it one by one, and came 
 8
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 out one by one. And now the last of 
 them is gone." 
 
 There was such a dismay of loneli 
 ness in her tone and such a presage of 
 tears in her voice that even the old 
 darky s slow heart was touched. He 
 wiped his eye with the back of his wrist 
 bone, and proffered consolation. 
 
 "Don you worry, Miss Anth n. 
 Dis hyah ole leaf ain t gone fo good. 
 No, ma am. It 11 come a-snoopin an 
 a-slippin back in place ag in befo it 
 knows it s loose. Ain t Miss Em ly tole 
 me herseff dis ve y mawnin whilst Ah 
 was ca yin her trunk down to de ca ige, 
 dat she s gwine to come home in jus 
 a little less n no time at all?" 
 
 Mrs. Anthon refused to hope. Uncle 
 Ned persisted. 
 
 "Ah don see what fo you take dis 
 ole leaf out, anyhow. Only got to go to 
 9
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 de trouble o slammin him back in 
 ag in. Don t seem like you orter a 
 took me away f m ma job in de yahd fo 
 any such nonsense." 
 
 "The table is plenty large enough for 
 the doctor and me without it," said Mrs. 
 Anthon. "It makes it easier for us to 
 pass things, and it saves Hannah a lot 
 of steps, and and 
 
 She could not trust herself to speak 
 the real reason: that the old-time ex 
 panse of table was an unendurable re 
 minder of the absent children. The 
 empty spaces around the board showed 
 where plates had stood, plates that had 
 clattered much and come often back to 
 be refilled. She could never endure the 
 mute reminder of an empty chair 
 against the wall. As the children had 
 vanished from the family one by one, 
 their chairs were spirited away one by 
 one, to the garret. 
 
 10
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 She ordered Ned to take the evicted 
 leaf down to the cellar, and store it in 
 the rack with those that had gone be 
 fore. As he bent his shoulders to it, he 
 said: 
 
 "What s dese mahks on de unda- 
 neath o dis hyah table? Feels like 
 somebody done cyahve somethin . Ah 
 can t mek out de name. Ma eyes is 
 growin fibbler ev y day. When Ah 
 was young, though, Ah was sharpa- 
 sighted dan a lynnix. Ah could see in 
 de dahk. Ah could out-see a yowl." 
 
 Mrs. Anthon hardly needed to glance 
 at the time-blurred inscription. Her 
 eyes were feeble, too, but her memory 
 was keener for the trifles of lang syne 
 than for recent history. 
 
 "It must be Tom s name. I remem 
 ber it now just as if it was yesterday," 
 she said, and she made Ned put down 
 the board while she fumbled for her eye- 
 11
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 glasses. "It was his first pocket-knife. 
 He had always wanted one, and I was al 
 ways afraid, and his father was afraid 
 he d cut himself, too. But one day he 
 traded two of his school-books for a 
 jack-knife, and I was out calling that 
 day, and the poor child was left alone 
 in the house, and he had to amuse him 
 self some way, and so he pushed back 
 the tablecloth and cut his name where 
 his plate stood. See, there it is if I 
 can ever find my glasses! in letters 
 half an inch deep. I can feel them now. 
 Hannah, you ought to remember that." 
 
 "Oh, yes m. I remember it. I re 
 member it perfect. You and the doctor 
 come home an caught him before he 
 could finish it, and his paw whaled the 
 daylights out of him. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon winced at the pain and 
 the outcry even now. 
 
 "He had no right to whip him," she 
 12
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 insisted. "The poor child didn t mean 
 any harm. He thought it would please 
 everybody. He did n t want any mis 
 take made as to his place at table. But 
 his father was so unreasonable. We 
 had the board planed off as much as we 
 could, and it was all right when it was 
 turned over. It made the table a little 
 uneven, but Oh, here they are!" 
 
 She slipped her forehead into the 
 shafts of her spectacles, and smiled as 
 she made out the legend. 
 
 tHOmAS ANt 
 
 It was smoothed down like an old 
 epitaph, and about all that could be seen 
 was that the S and the N were faced the 
 wrong way. Thomas also had been 
 faced the wrong way by his father. The 
 mother forgot the intensely undignified 
 and unheroic vision of the yowling lad 
 taking his larruping the child had 
 13
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 learned early in life that a yelp in time 
 saves nine switches. The mother re 
 membered rather the solemn child, goug 
 ing as earnestly as if he were an 
 Egyptian historian carving a Pharaoh s 
 cartouche on an obelisk. 
 
 Uncle Ned rubbed his thumb across 
 the half-obliterated scars in the wood, 
 and chuckled. 
 
 "Dat suttainly is cyahved good and 
 deep! But Mista Tom has gone an 
 cyahved his name deepa and higha yit 
 in dat old New Yawk City town. An 
 people do tell me it takes a mighty 
 smaht man to make a deep dint in New 
 Yawk." 
 
 "Yes, he s doing wonderfully well 
 there, Uncle Ned. That s the worst of 
 it, all the children are doing so well they 
 have no time to come home." 
 
 "Dat s de trebble of havin such 
 smaht child n. Ah got abote fo ty of 
 14
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ma own, and dey hang on ma back like 
 Ah was a possum." 
 
 "You re lucky to have them near 
 you, Uncle Ned." 
 
 "Mebbe so, mebbe so, but Ah could 
 stan a few of em a mite fuddah off. 
 Seems lak all yo child n was nach ly 
 talentous, Miss Anth n. Miss Kate, 
 now, she useteh sing like a yangel, set- 
 tin out on top of a rainbow. Ah 
 reckon she s singin betta yit out in 
 New Yawk." 
 
 "She doesn t sing any more," sighed 
 Mrs. Anthon. 
 
 "Well, dat s too bad, but Ah reckon 
 she sung herseff into a nice husban ." 
 
 "Oh, yes, Mr. Ambler is a nice man," 
 Mrs. Anthon admitted with the caution 
 mothers use in praising their children s 
 mates. 
 
 Uncle Ned was beginning to enjoy the 
 warmth of the dining-room and the lux- 
 15
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ury of reminiscence. Sometimes he had 
 found that if he made himself very 
 agreeable, and, at just the right moment, 
 suffered a violent attack of coughing 
 and a rheumatic contortion or two, he 
 could successfully hint forth what he 
 called "one live coal from de good old 
 bottle" that was kept upstairs strictly 
 for medicinal purposes. 
 
 And now he began edging in that di 
 rection. 
 
 "Yassum, yo child n is suttainly a 
 credit to you, Miss Anth n. Mista 
 Frank, now: Ah undastan he s a 
 yahtist of de ve y highest pasuasium. 
 When he was abote knee-high to a duck, 
 he tole me he was goin to be a house and 
 sign painta." 
 
 Mrs. Anthon was glad to brag about 
 
 her children to almost anybody, most of 
 
 all to those who had known them in their 
 
 unformed and riotous years. So she 
 
 16
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 told Uncle Ned, "Oh, he isn t painting 
 signs now. He lives in Paris and paiats 
 for the Salons." 
 
 "Well, what you think of dat! Lives 
 in Pa is now! You know, Ah come 
 from Kentucky myseff. Yassum, my 
 fust owna lived not fur from Pa is. 
 Seems to me Ah rememba de Salons, 
 too. Neah as Ah can recollec dey was 
 abote de bes people dey was in Pa is. 
 
 "So Mista Frank paints for em. 
 "Well, what you think of dat ? And on y 
 dis mawnin Ah been lookin at de fust 
 paintin he eveh done. Mista Tom, he 
 cyahved large an deep, but Mista Frank 
 he painted wide an high. You remem 
 ba he made up his min he d paint his 
 name acrost de front de house, and he 
 clomb up yonda by de rough ends of dem 
 bricks like he was a fly, an he got de 
 fust letta finished a foot or mo high, 
 when he was interruptioned. "
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Humph, sniffed Hannah. I guess 
 he was! The poor child fell about a 
 hunderd feet or more, and lit on his poor 
 little head. And wasn t I washin a 
 winder in the poller, and seen him go by. 
 And I run out the house, and found him 
 layin there whiter than flour, and I let 
 out a scream; and the doctor happened 
 to be home; and he come runnin out; 
 and I says, Oh, Doctor, the poor child s 
 killed. And the doctor turned whiter 
 than what the boy was; and gethered 
 Frankie up in his arms ; and run into his 
 office holdin him tight; and tears spat- 
 term down on the blessed child s face; 
 and he laid Frankie down on his table; 
 and ran round the room lookin for 
 things; grabbin the wrong bottles, and 
 asking me what the labels was he 
 couldn t read em himself you know 
 doctors is different when it s their own. 
 Well, it was me that really brought 
 IS
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Frankie round, and the first thing he 
 said was and we bent down to hear 
 what it was, and the doctor that scared 
 I thought he d flop and the first thing 
 that Frankie said, was, Papa, I m hurt 
 so bad this time, I think I ought to have 
 a dollar. 
 
 It was one of those heirloom anec 
 dotes, of which every family has its col 
 lection, like Diggory s story of "the 
 grouse in the gunnery room." The An- 
 thon family had laughed at this story 
 this twenty year. It was perennial, 
 blooming afresh every time it was told, 
 and now the three hearers received it 
 as if it were this spring s own, laughing 
 themselves out upon it anew. 
 
 Uncle Ned was the first to stop laugh 
 ing. He felt at once that this hilarity 
 was a poor atmosphere for his progress 
 bottlewards. He brought the laughter 
 to a short stop with a quiet comment. 
 19
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Whilst Ah been lookin at dat letta 
 on de front de house dis mawnin Ah 
 been thinkin what a narrer scape dat 
 po boy had from nach ly killin hisseff 
 permanent." 
 
 Mrs. Anthon felt again the terror of 
 the thought. Hannah saw again the 
 pale, limp child on the ground, and there 
 was no more mirth. Women have a 
 way of taking their tragedies anyway; 
 those that they have escaped they suffer 
 just the same as if grief were a luxury 
 they would not be cheated out of. Now 
 Uncle Ned found the two women as ter 
 rified and mournful as if the accident 
 had happened yesterday instead of 
 twenty years ago, and had ended in 
 crape instead of a family joke. 
 
 Uncle Ned despaired of the whole sex, 
 and of his live coal. He caught up the 
 table-leaf in a manner full of impatient 
 20
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 impudence, though his words were only 
 a gruff: 
 
 "Whereat 70 want me put dis leaf?" 
 
 "Down in the cellar in the frame with 
 the others. It stands between the vine 
 gar barrel and the cabinet where the 
 preserved strawberries are, and you 
 mustn t hit your head on the rafters." 
 
 "Is de raftas weak?" he grinned; 
 then he shuffled toward the door, only to 
 turn round again. It took him four 
 steps to turn each way, and by that time 
 his grin was spread over his face like 
 molasses on a hoe-cake. 
 
 "You listen to me, and mahk my 
 words and mahk em good. De nex 
 time you sen me down in dat ole cella, 
 it 11 be fo to bring back de whole case 
 of table-leafs." 
 
 "Why do you say that!" 
 
 "Dey s somethin in ma bones dat 
 21
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 tells me something an ma bones ain t 
 fooled me yit. Ah always believes ma 
 bones. And ma bones tells me," lie 
 paused dramatically, and smacked his 
 lips, because he felt that now at last he 
 had found the way to the live coal "ma 
 bones tells me Miss Em ly is gone on 
 Yeast fo to bring back a husban of her 
 own." 
 
 If Uncle Ned had dreamed that this 
 prophecy would be received with joy, 
 he was quickly wakened. Unbelief and 
 anger and horror were all blended in 
 Mrs. Anthon s indignant denial. Han 
 nah reached for a broom. 
 
 * Get on out of here ! Trying to scare 
 Miss Anthon to death!" 
 
 Uncle Ned was sincerely sorry. His 
 jaw hung low, as he blinked : 
 
 "Don yo want Miss Em ly ma ied?" 
 
 "She s only a child," Mrs. Anthon 
 gasped. 
 
 22
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Well, mebbe so, mebbe so. Ah 
 reckon Uncle Ned d betta hurry up an* 
 die. He don even know what a chile is, 
 no mo . Ah thought Miss Em ly was a 
 fine, han some, high-steppin young lady 
 just a-inchin and a-inchin towa ds de 
 altar, and now Ah up and fines she s a 
 baby in ahms." 
 
 He began to move himself round again 
 on the slow turntable of his feet, and his 
 head shook as he muttered, "Well, 
 mebbe so, mebbe so. But Ah did n 
 think she was any chile de way she s 
 went moonin roun sence she come back 
 home de las time. Good mawnin !" 
 
 "Wait a minute. What do you mean 
 by saying you ve seen Miss Emily moon 
 ing around? What do you mean by 
 mooning, anyway?" 
 
 "Moonin"? Aw, go on, Miss Anth n, 
 you know what moonin is as well as any 
 body. Moonin is what you call when a 
 23
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 young lady goes roun and stan s roun 
 in de broad daylight like she thought she 
 was in de full moonlight." 
 
 "Get along with that board," Mrs. 
 Anthon commanded bruskly. 
 
 "Yassum, Ah m on ma way," he 
 chuckled and wheezed. "But Ah 11 be 
 back soon," he wheezed and chuckled. 
 "Miss Kate got ma ied in dis house, and 
 well, Ah ain t callin no names out 
 loud, but dey s one mo plum on de 
 tree, an it s a-slippin loose yah, yah, 
 whee-ee! Dey s goin to be one mo 
 weddin not fur from hyah, and Uncle 
 Ned 11 be dressed up wit genuwine 
 white cotton gloves on his black old 
 han s once ag in fer to open de ca ige 
 do ." 
 
 He made his exit with a whoop, but 
 the table-leaf caught in the casement, 
 and seemed reluctant to leave its domi 
 cile of years on years. When the old 
 24
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 man had finally carried it away to exile, 
 Mrs. Anthon nodded to Hannah. The 
 table had been left all ajar. 
 
 The two old women closed it, and it 
 came together across the empty space 
 with a snap ! The table was at its min 
 imum. There were no more leaves to 
 fall from that dead tree. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon sank into a chair. The 
 old negro was the last person in the 
 world to look to for a romantic proph 
 ecy, but sorry and shabby as the raven 
 may be, his croak does not encourage 
 cheer. 
 
 The mother-heart suddenly let go of 
 its belief that it could keep this girl a 
 girl ; and the loss brought bleeding with 
 it. Long ago she had hoped, in spite of 
 all she knew of babes, that her own 
 would somehow, by miracle, be kept at 
 babyhood, helpless bundles of love, pre 
 cious playthings. She had seen them 
 25
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 outgrow the haven of her bosom, the 
 compass of her embrace, or the power of 
 her arms to hold. They had outgrown 
 lullabies and rocking to sleep. They 
 had come to wash their own ears, and 
 the backs of their own necks, to comb 
 their own hair, to insist on bathing by 
 themselves unaided, and to put on their 
 own clothes. They had outgrown the 
 empire of the home fence, and sought 
 their play and knowledge outside the 
 yard. They had outgrown the very 
 town. 
 
 And now the last of them, the final 
 babe at breast, the final doll to clothe, 
 the final infant to teach, the final curly 
 head to comb and soothe, had grown and 
 changed and escaped. The mother was 
 childless now indeed. 
 
 It seemed only a night or two ago that 
 Emily was a little drowsy thing that 
 knelt by her knees, and fell asleep in the 
 26
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 middle of her prayer only a night or 
 two ago. And to-day the very servant 
 was saying that soon she would be kneel 
 ing under the overshadowing palms of 
 a preacher, kneeling at the elbow of a 
 grown man and a stranger who would 
 call her and make her his own, and take 
 her away from her home to a strange 
 place that they would call home, a 
 strange place where yesterday s babe 
 would be to-morrow s mother. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon gripped the arms of her 
 chair, and thought so hard, felt so 
 fiercely, that she did not hear the cough 
 racking Uncle Ned as he came up the 
 cellar stairs. He also coughed in at the 
 dining-room door. He had to cough 
 again and again before she turned her 
 dismal eyes his way. 
 
 "Cu ious thing abote dese ole lungs 
 of mine!" he said. "Even befo Ah go 
 on out in de yahd to commence ma wuk 
 27
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ag in, dem old lights o mine re lize how 
 dat cold wind is goin to smash em 
 afta me standin in dis hot room so long, 
 and gettin ma po s starin wide!" 
 
 Hannah came back in the room to lay 
 the cloth, and Mrs. Anthon simply 
 nodded to her : 
 
 The bottle is up in the bathroom 
 medicine chest." 
 
 "Ah feel betta a ready," sighed Un 
 cle Ned, and he tried to look better with 
 out looking quite well enough to be 
 pronounced cured. He was greatly con 
 cerned with looking unconcerned, and 
 kept his eyes shyly on the floor, though 
 his chops worked thirstily, and he 
 perked one ear after Hannah s foot 
 steps, which made a slow but dramatic 
 diminuendo up the steps, and a thrilling 
 crescendo down. 
 
 Uncle Ned took the glass she brought, 
 28
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 with a reproachful murmur : l Too bad 
 you went so fur and fotch so little." 
 But when she offered the pitcher, he 
 growled: " Never po water on a live 
 coal. It spiles de coal, and leaves on y 
 de smoke." 
 
 He raised the glass with a courtly 
 gesture, and gave Mrs. Anthon a silent 
 toast for benediction. His huge lips 
 smacked and his left hand followed the 
 course of the gulp. He felt and looked 
 as if he had swallowed a small comet. 
 The tears sprang out of his eyes, and he 
 gasped with exquisite anguish. Then 
 he grinned and said: 
 
 "Thank you ve y kinely, Miss An- 
 th n. Dat little live coal done staht sech 
 a blaze Ah m goin out an nach ly bu n 
 up dat yahd." 
 
 He made his turn, and went out, cir 
 cumventing his own feet. For several 
 29
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 minutes he almost worked, before the 
 reverie in which he lived enveloped him 
 again. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon had hardly seen or heard 
 him. She sat musing upon her loneli 
 ness, not heeding the slow errands of 
 Hannah to and fro, till finally the 
 abridged table was clothed and set. 
 
 Doctor Anthon found his wife still 
 there when he came home. He popped 
 a kiss on her tired brow, and said with 
 a professional sick-room cheer that dis 
 guised his own personal fatigues and re 
 grets : 
 
 "Well, Mother, I saw the little girl 
 off on the train. She sent you a million 
 kisses, and waved good-by till the train 
 started across the river. Why, what s 
 happened to the dining-room? It looks 
 so much bigger." 
 
 "The table is smaller." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 30
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 He understood, and they took their 
 places at the dual festival that now con 
 fronted them for some indefinite time. 
 He wanted to comfort his wife, but he 
 had no source of comfort to draw from. 
 
 He was picturing the dining-room as 
 it had been from the first high-chair that 
 wedged between them to the growing 
 colony of chairs, some high, some low, 
 and usually one chair with a big dic 
 tionary upon it for a middling child. 
 For years it had seemed that the table 
 was bigger than the room; the children 
 were perched almost on the window sills 
 and against the stove. When the Doc 
 tor was called to the telephone, as he 
 usually was at meal-time, he could 
 barely squeeze between the sierra of 
 chair-backs and the wall. And the time 
 he had had feeding that mob! The 
 amount of provender they could whisk 
 from view! The innocent greed, the 
 31
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 boisterous war of silver and china, the 
 chatter and laughter ; the appalling bills 
 they meant at butcher s and baker s, 
 grocer s and shoemaker s! 
 
 And now the small table, the table 
 cloth immaculate of gravy- splash and 
 jelly-blotch, the frugal meals, the soft 
 conversation of the lonely old captain 
 and mate on a deserted and drifting 
 ship, without cargo, crew or destination 
 now and evermore. 
 
 He felt all that his wife felt, but in a 
 man s way, and with a man s necessity 
 for looking bold in all adversities. The 
 dreary meal was nearly done before he 
 could muster the words and the spirit 
 to say: 
 
 11 We mustn t sit here and mope like 
 this, Mother. We re back where we 
 started, just you and me. We have 
 each other, and the children are all good 
 children, and they 11 be piling home any 
 32
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 day, and Emily at least will be with us a 
 long while yet. That was the last thing 
 she said as the train pulled out: Tell 
 mama, she shouted, tell mama, I 11 be 
 home just as soon as ever I can. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon met his smile with an 
 other, but there was more bravery than 
 hope in those two old smiles. 
 
 33
 
 II 
 
 WHILE these white polls were 
 drawing such deep significances 
 from the business of reducing a piece of 
 furniture by the width of one plank, the 
 young girl, the recentest deserter from 
 the family, was making magic carpet 
 adventure and Arabian enchantment out 
 of the taking of one of the regular trains 
 for New York. 
 
 Emily was running East with all the 
 speed an express could lend her. Even 
 that was not enough for her impatience, 
 for she sat with one warm cheek chilling 
 on the window as she tried to send her 
 eyes ahead like scouts to bring in yet 
 earlier tidings of Canaan. 
 
 Her eyes were still wet with the tears 
 34
 
 THE OLD N EST 
 
 she had shed in leaving her father and 
 mother, but the tears had been less those 
 of regret at the parting than tears of 
 tender affection and of pity for the tears 
 oozing from their brave old eyes. Hers 
 were the sweet April sprinkle of sympa 
 thy and affection; theirs were the acrid 
 drops of age relinquishing yet one more 
 dear thing the very eye-sweat of 
 agony. 
 
 The young girl s heart was as good as 
 any young heart, and it ached for the old 
 hearts; but it had its own needs and 
 duties. It called itself selfish and 
 granted itself absolution; for everybody 
 believes in expiation by nomination. 
 
 Emily was going East to visit her 
 married sister, and so her clearance pa 
 pers read. If she smuggled a little un 
 declared romance out of harbor, and 
 carried Cupid as a stowaway more or 
 less connived at well, youth has a right 
 35
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 to a few secrets. Heaven knows how 
 many old age acquires, and has thrust 
 upon it. 
 
 This train made its usual stops at the 
 usual matter-of-fact cities, but to Emily 
 their names were nothing more prosaic 
 than Verona, Ispahan, Damascus and 
 Istamboul. The station at the end of 
 Emily s time-table was entitled Eden, 
 but the porter said, We are just com 
 ing into New York. Shall I bresh you 
 off!" 
 
 Her sister actually met her at the 
 station which is something of a feat 
 in Manhattan. Kate had lived long 
 enough in a great city to have acquired 
 the habit of being always as busy as a 
 demon, and she hoped that Emily would 
 understand what a tribute of devotion 
 she was paying in being on hand. It 
 was almost the last word in hospitality, 
 not to say agility, to find on which of the 
 36
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 countless tracks, on which of the levels, 
 that one invariably late train would 
 probably sneak in. And then Kate had 
 to wait in the huddled humiliation of a 
 roped-in mob. 
 
 Kate, who was something of a cynic, 
 had noted what peculiar-looking people 
 had rushed out to meet what peculiar- 
 looking arrivals in the slipshod caravan 
 disgorged from the trains, and she could 
 not help hoping that Emily, whom she 
 had not seen for years, would not be 
 quite too unutterably dowdy and small 
 town. 
 
 She was not prepared for the vision 
 that arrived. Emily came up the line 
 like an allegory of spring, winsoming 
 her way across a wintry marsh. 
 
 Kate threw her head a little higher 
 to have one good proud look at her be 
 fore she claimed her. At that moment 
 a strange young man, who had stood at 
 37
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Kate s side, tiptoeing and peering, 
 started forward, ducked under the rope, 
 brushed aside two or three restraining 
 guards, and dashed through the incom 
 ing crowd. To Kate s amazement, he 
 made straight for Emily and Emily 
 made straight for him. 
 
 They merely shook hands, but their 
 looks were so ardent that it would have 
 been decenter to hug and kiss and be 
 done with it. In the grim and bustling 
 railroad station, mutual idolatry like 
 theirs was so conspicuous that even the 
 red-capped porters noted it, and rolled 
 their billiard eyes. 
 
 Kate gasped with curiosity and vexa 
 tion. When her sister came along, she 
 could do no more than say: 
 
 "Well, Emily" 
 
 And Emily only said : 
 
 "Why, Kitty!" 
 
 Kate kissed Emily sisterly, with a 
 38
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 railroad-station decorum; Emily, while 
 she was at it, hugged Kate so hard, and 
 kissed her so often, that Kate felt sure 
 the salute was vicarious, and that Em 
 ily s treacherous eyes were looking past 
 her own ear into the young man s eyes. 
 
 Kate fell in and walked alongside, and 
 Emily had the impudent naivete to fin 
 ish what she was saying to the young 
 man before she asked how Harry was 
 or even the children. At length Kate 
 nudged her : 
 
 1 You might at least introduce me. 
 
 Emily blushed six shades deeper, and 
 was so confused that she only mumbled : 
 
 "Oh, forgive me, Stephen. I want to 
 present you to my sister." 
 
 Kate nodded, and said: 
 
 "I am Mrs. Ambler. I presume you 
 are Mr. - 
 
 "Mr. MacLeod, yes," the young man 
 stammered, feeling now sure that Kate 
 39
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 had been told all about him, and ap 
 proved. 
 
 He tagged along with them to the taxi- 
 cab. Kate wondered if he were going 
 to get in, but he and Emily began a 
 serial farewell so prolonged that Kate 
 clambered in alone to hold the cab be 
 fore the indignant starter rented it to 
 somebody else. 
 
 When the tangle of other passengers 
 began to murmur protests, the young 
 couple consented to adjourn their ses 
 sion. Mr. MacLeod boosted Emily in 
 by the elbow, then pushed his hand on 
 to Kate. She took it, and said, meaning 
 to be sarcastic: "Come up and see us 
 some time, won t you?" But he an 
 swered with the most complacent de 
 light : " Oh, thank you ! I d love to ! " 
 
 Kate was going to give him the ad 
 dress, but he gave it himself to the 
 chauffeur, and the door was slammed 
 40
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 upon him. For the first few minutes, 
 Kate s indignation at Emily was 
 knocked out of her by the appalling 
 plunges of the taxicab. She wondered 
 if her head would not be snapped off, 
 and sent hurtling through the glass, and 
 she was hoping that when it did, it would 
 take the chauffeur s head along with it. 
 
 When the necessity of keeping her 
 cranium on her vertebrae had passed, 
 she turned to administer an elder-sis 
 terly, married-sisterly reproof to the 
 selfish young monster at her side. She 
 found Emily simmering in utter con 
 tentment like a cozy little kettle; and 
 Emily, again forgetting to ask how 
 Harry was, and the children, proceeded 
 to say, or rather to croon: "Isn t 
 Stephen simply the handsomest, dearest 
 thing you ever saw in all your born 
 days?" 
 
 Kate might have achieved something 
 41
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 crushing, but just then the taxicab vol 
 planed over a glorious boulder, plounced 
 into a pile of Belgian blocks, and slid- 
 dered through a pool of black mush all 
 at once. Kate was so churned and bat 
 tered and twisted askew that she was 
 glad to be alive. 
 
 Then they worried into Fifth Avenue, 
 and the going was good enough for them 
 to get their heads and hats and hair on 
 straight again, and settle down for a 
 woman-to-womanly chat, both talking at 
 once. 
 
 Somewhere in this chaos of conversa 
 tion Emily asked the polite questions, 
 and was told that Harry was all right 
 and the children all well except that one 
 was just getting over bronchitis, the 
 youngest was half-way through the 
 mumps, and the second boy just coming 
 down with vulgar fractions. 
 42
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Emily asked also about brother Tom, 
 the lawyer, and Kate answered : 
 
 "Oh, he s well. At least, I suppose 
 he is. Of course, I never see him. I 
 read his name in the papers once in a 
 while and telephone him my congratula 
 tions when he wins a big case. Then I 
 invite him to dinner, and spend half an 
 hour agreeing on an evening he can dine 
 with us, and then he telephones me that 
 he s unexpectedly prevented, which is 
 just what I expected. 
 
 "But he promised to come over to see 
 you this evening, if he had to disappoint 
 the Supreme Court. Tom s awfully 
 fond of you, Emily. But he thinks of 
 you as still in short skirts, with freckles. 
 You haven t freckles any more, have 
 you? That s nice. Tom will be killed, 
 though, to hear that you Ve got a love 
 affair. So am I. Little Emily with a 
 43
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 love affair. Think of it! It will make 
 us all feel terribly old. What do father 
 and mother say about it?" 
 
 "Well, I haven t told them yet. It 
 has n t gone quite far enough. 
 
 "Thank Heaven for that. But I sup 
 pose that some of these days you will be 
 stepping off into space the way the rest 
 of us did. And then how will they get 
 along at home those poor old souls 
 with not a single chick left! Eeally, 
 you ought to think of them, Emily." 
 
 "Well, in the first place, even if I 
 should marry Stephen, it won t be for 
 years and years." 
 
 "Oh, it s one of that kind of" 
 
 "Not at all, but you see, he has n t got 
 very far along in the world yet." 
 
 "That s good. I hope he starves till 
 he s ninety. Because really, papa and 
 mania oughtn t to be left alone out 
 there." 
 
 44
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Why didn t you think of that when 
 you got married?" 
 
 Well, you see, the rest of us always 
 left somebody at home. But it s differ 
 ent with you, Emily. It s more serious 
 when the last child goes, for one child 
 can keep a father and mother as busy as 
 ten! You really must be very careful, 
 Emily. And if I were you, I d try to 
 marry some nice fellow in Carthage. 
 There must be some nice fellows there 
 in Carthage several new families have 
 moved in since I left. Now if you really 
 love your poor old papa and mama, 
 you 11 do that, Emily. And try to live 
 next door, so that you can run in often. 
 Or better yet, you might just go and live 
 in the old house. There s plenty of 
 room since we are all away." 
 
 Kate was so delighted with the plans 
 she was devising for the little snub- 
 nosed, pig-tailed gawk she had bossed 
 45
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 about during her last years at Carthage, 
 that she was almost dazed when she 
 turned to Emily to see the effect of her 
 words, and found before her a stranger, 
 a perfect-featured, well-groomed, fash 
 ionably-gowned lady whose expression 
 was one of smiling disdain. Worse yet 
 was the poised self-control of Emily s 
 quiet comment : Since you re arrang 
 ing all the rest, Kate dear, what com 
 plexion would you prefer my husband to 
 have? and what wall-paper would you 
 select for our living-room?" 
 
 Kate flushed and gasped: 
 
 "Why, Emily, what a nasty temper 
 you ve developed since I knew you ! 
 
 46
 
 Ill 
 
 THAT night elder brother Tom came 
 to dinner. He, too, was astounded 
 to find that the ugly duckling he had left 
 in the home pond was a serene white 
 swan. Emily was astounded to find 
 how the hard work that brings success 
 had left grooves of hard work rather 
 than any glow of success on Tom s 
 strong face. He looked older than she 
 could have imagined an own brother of 
 hers to be. 
 
 When Kate broke the horrible news 
 that Emily had taken on a love affair, 
 Tom was worse shocked than she had 
 been. His first feeling was a primitive 
 revulsion against the brutality of any 
 man s daring to approach this child 
 47
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 amorously. A glance at Emily showed 
 him that many men were bound to ap 
 proach her so. His heart swung then 
 into the fear that Kate felt. 
 
 Oh, Lord, the poor old folks at home 
 are in for it now! The final solitude is 
 ahead of them! You mustn t forget, 
 Emily, how good they ve always been 
 to you. Even parents have some 
 rights. 
 
 And grown-up children have none, it 
 seems," Emily retorted. "Well, if you 
 all insist, I suppose I 11 have to go back 
 to Carthage, and live and die an old 
 maid." 
 
 "Oh, no, of course not. We don t 
 mean that at all. But " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 There was no answer, and the conver 
 sation flagged. Emily was bewildered. 
 She had come East expecting to be re 
 ceived with glowing welcome. And she 
 48
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 was received as a something wicked to 
 be admonished and reformed. 
 
 And her love affair: she had thought 
 of it as a gleaming altruism, a superla 
 tive surrender of herself to a young 
 man s career and his noble desires, 
 something sacred, a beatitude with a 
 halo on it. And lo, in the eyes of her 
 own brother and sister her sacrifice was 
 looked upon as a merciless act of ab 
 normal selfishness! She wished she 
 had never come East. She wished she 
 had never been born. 
 
 Kate had prepared an elaborate din 
 ner for the guest of honor, but this 
 Banquo of tragedy had come and taken 
 a chair at Emily s side. The feast was 
 as doleful as the lonely dinner in the far- 
 off old home which Kate and Tom were 
 picturing in their own minds. The vi 
 sion embittered them toward the relent 
 less Emily. Tom kept silence, but Kate, 
 4 49
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 when the dessert came round, was moved 
 to a parable. 
 
 Everybody declined fruit, as every 
 body always does at American dinners. 
 One would as soon think of eating the 
 silver or the flowers. But Kate took up 
 a large and gorgeous peach from Cali 
 fornia, and she was tormented enough to 
 say: 
 
 1 This peach reminds me of a certain 
 young lady. It is beautiful and shapely 
 and sweet, but break it open and you find 
 the heart of stone, hard and dark and 
 bitter." 
 
 She wrenched apart the mellow flesh 
 of the peach, and the stone, wrinkled 
 and unyielding, rattled on her plate. 
 Emily winced and turned pale at the 
 very sound; her lofty brows bowed 
 themselves in sudden pain and her wide 
 eyes were pools of sudden tears. 
 
 Tom felt a gush of sympathy for the 
 50
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 girl. His hand went out to seize and 
 squeeze her hand, and he stared tenderly 
 at her, though his words went to the 
 elder sister: 
 
 "We mustn t forget, Kate, that with 
 out that rock inside the peach, there is 
 no seed and no hope of future peaches. 
 Let s let the poor child alone. She has 
 youth and she has beauty, and if she 
 doesn t find happiness now, when, in 
 God s name, will she find it?" 
 
 This unexpected reenforcement 
 touched Emily s lonesome little soul, 
 and this middle-aged stranger was mag 
 ically restored to the brother she had 
 loved long ago. But curiously, though 
 as usual, approval and support shook 
 her faith in her own righteousness, when 
 opposition and rebuke had strengthened 
 it. 
 
 And now she was all for surrendering 
 herself to this other martyrdom. Emily 
 51
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 was determined to be a martyr to some 
 body or something. 
 
 "No, I 11 go home. I see now how 
 heartless it would be of me to leave papa 
 and mama. I promised them to come 
 back and I will. I 11 go home to-mor 
 row morning." 
 
 52
 
 IV 
 
 PROTESTS were vain. To-morrow 
 morning she would go. A little 
 later, however, she remembered that 
 young Mr. MacLeod had arranged to 
 call the next evening. She would be 
 compelled to stay over one day more 
 but not a second day at any cost. 
 
 Mr. MacLeod came the next evening. 
 He announced that he had bought tickets 
 for a very important play the next even 
 ing. Emily could hardly throw those 
 back on his hands, especially as they 
 were expensive seats, and Mr. MacLeod 
 had to work too hard for what little 
 money his cruel employers begrudged 
 him, to waste the tickets. 
 
 "Perhaps he might take some other 
 53
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 girl," Kate insinuated with amiable 
 malice. 
 
 Emily ridiculed the suggestion, but 
 she took no risks. Her father and 
 mother would not miss her for one day 
 more, or, in fact, a day or two more. 
 They would probably be displeased at 
 her taking so long and costly a voyage 
 for so brief a taste of the advantages of 
 the city. They would at least want her 
 to see the Metropolitan Art Gallery. 
 That was educational, and Stephen had 
 planned to take her there Sunday after 
 noon. He was very fond of pictures, 
 Stephen was. 
 
 Young Mr. MacLeod had met Emily 
 at a football game, when he was a col 
 legian and she a collegienne. He was 
 no special athlete, and she was not un 
 usually bloodthirsty. They happened 
 to be seated together in the same crowd 
 of friends. She had come with another 
 54
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 fellow, and lie had brought another girl ; 
 but before the first half of the game was 
 over, he had ceased to bellow himself 
 scarlet to the baton of the cheer-captain, 
 and was explaining the game in dulcet 
 tones to Emily. During the second 
 half, he and Emily had found so much to 
 say to each other that they ignored the 
 shocks of the rival buffalo lines. They 
 did not even see the sensational sixty- 
 five-yard run of whoever it was made 
 the famous sixty-five-yard run which 
 won that famous game for whichever 
 side it was that won it. 
 
 After the game was over, in the hor 
 rible jam of the crowd, he somehow lost 
 the young lady he brought, and Emily 
 somehow lost the young man that 
 brought her. So Stephen had to take 
 charge of her ; and very gallant it was of 
 him, too with the accent on the "lant." 
 
 The crush was so oppressive and so 
 55
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 rowdy that Emily came near fainting. 
 Mr. MacLeod fought the mob back 
 dauntlessly and with such unexpected 
 strength that he reminded her of Leon- 
 idas or Leander or somebody at the 
 bridge of Thermopylas, keeping back the 
 Persians from the city of Xerxes, or 
 something. 
 
 He got her home safely, but not very 
 speedily. Of course, she had to invite 
 him to call. Of course, he called. 
 
 They exchanged many letters during 
 the rest of the year, and the temperature 
 rose so gradually from "Dear Miss An- 
 thon" via "Dear Miss Emily Anthon" 
 to "Dearest Emily" that she hardly 
 noticed it. He graduated and obtained 
 a miserably unworthy and mercantile 
 position with an importing house in 
 New York. 
 
 Letters continued to flit back and 
 forth like carrier pigeons through the 
 56
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 long summer and the long winter. 
 Then the frenzy of spring that released 
 all the banked fires of the earth had 
 stirred their young hearts to unendur 
 able desire, and Emily had manipulated 
 the visit to Kate. And now they were 
 met again in mating time. Other ties 
 and other duties were like the ice walls 
 that jailed the streams, the withes of 
 snow that held back the tulips, the frosts 
 that drugged the leaves in their buds. 
 
 All over the world, the same thing 
 was going on in countless hearts. A 
 young Chinaman drafting a constitution 
 for a prehistoric despotism stopped in 
 the midst of an epoch-making clause to 
 kiss a cherry blossom that had been 
 thrown to him. A middle-aged Ger 
 man general, drafting a plan of attack 
 on Greenwich, paused to read over 
 again a letter from his third Frau-to-be. 
 A Norwegian scientist let slip a Nobel- 
 57
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Prize-winning discovery because he was 
 thinking of somebody when the reaction 
 took place. 
 
 The apple trees that year were full of 
 the same longing, the grass whispered 
 it, herds lowed it, and birds fluted it. 
 To each and every, it was the one new 
 and important event of human chronicle, 
 and began a new calendar. 
 
 By a conservative estimate, there 
 were only as many love-affairs on earth 
 that year as there are stars in the sky, 
 and they were all as absolutely novel 
 and unheard-of as an engaged couple s 
 first full moon. 
 
 The spring that year was also won 
 derful beyond words. It was written ex 
 pressly for Emily and Stephen, and no 
 season like it had been seen upon this 
 earth since the previous spring. Noth 
 ing at all could resemble its ineffable 
 sorceries, with the possible exception of 
 58
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 a hundred thousand springs or more be 
 fore and as many springs or more as 
 may come after. 
 
 For one thing, the snows melted that 
 spring, and the ice on the streams went 
 away somewhere. The ground which 
 winter had left as dark and hard as 
 bronze somehow took on the most ex 
 quisite green patina, and became so soft 
 that a number of people ran plows 
 through it. There were numerous in 
 conspicuous spots where small purple 
 miracles were enacted closely resem 
 bling the violets one had bought in the 
 shops during the winter. Apple and 
 cherry trees were suddenly overveiled 
 with brocaded robes that turned them 
 into huge bouquets upheld to a smiling 
 sky. That spring s breezes were aeo- 
 lian tunes whose rapturous syllables 
 nobody could explain, nor anybody un 
 derstand except any two bodies who 
 59
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 happened to be levering at a window or 
 in a meadow or a room or a park or any 
 where. 
 
 That spring was so fine, so superla 
 tively fine, that several persons tried to 
 describe it in poetry. Every language 
 was used, from Dyak to Basque, but 
 no language seemed entirely satisfac 
 tory. Music was tried. An Arab cross- 
 legged in a sea of sand endeavored 
 to play it on a many-stringed santir, 
 while a copper-colored Apache in Ari 
 zona squatted in the alkali and tried to 
 tap it on a drum to the satisfaction of 
 somebody under a blanket a little dis 
 tance off. But nobody managed quite 
 to succeed and the bliss remained ex 
 cruciating. 
 
 Stephen and his Emily knew, how 
 ever, that this spring was theirs alone, 
 made for them, and they for it. They 
 were grateful for it, and the only things 
 60
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 in the world they found hateful were the 
 absence of enough money for matri 
 mony, and the presence of too many 
 people for solitude. 
 
 When Sunday afternoon came, Ste 
 phen MacLeod came with it. Emily 
 told him that she had told her sister that 
 she was leaving for home Monday or 
 Tuesday. 
 
 "Or Wednesday or Thursday," 
 Stephen said; "or next year or not at 
 all." 
 
 Emily giggled at this, and thought 
 how amazing it was that the same man 
 could be at the same time so wonder 
 fully intelligent, so terribly handsome, 
 and so awfully witty. They could have 
 driven to the Metropolitan Art Gallery, 
 but walking was such good exercise. 
 
 The park was painfully crowded. As 
 Stephen deliciously put it: "The trou 
 ble with this park is that it is so well 
 61
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 named. It s so blamed Central that 
 everybody goes through it. 
 
 They found, however, certain fields, 
 where they could get a few yards away 
 from the throng. Emily said that ever 
 since that terrible experience in the 
 football crowd, crowds made her nerv 
 ous. But usually, just as they were 
 comfortably aloof on a plushy sward, 
 some policeman would blow his whistle 
 and howl to them to keep off the grass. 
 
 The whole park was a Gretna Green 
 of bird marriages and elopements. In 
 one of the trees, Stephen noted the be 
 ginnings of a nest. He was wonder 
 fully observing, Stephen. And "here 
 was a very early bird already erecting 
 his or was it her? home. Stephen 
 said that if the bird weren t careful, 
 the policeman would arrest it for work 
 ing on Sunday and walking on the grass. 
 Stephen also wondered what the bird 
 62
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 labor organizations would have to say 
 about a non-union bird building his own 
 house. 
 
 Emily and Stephen sat on the nearest 
 bench they could find and watched the 
 patient little squatter wattling his own 
 hut. Stephen, who knew a lot about 
 architecture and things, said: "That 
 bird builds his thatched roof upside 
 down, and forgets to put in his cellar." 
 
 He was always thinking up the quaint 
 est things. He kept Emily in a con 
 stant seethe of admiration. Then he 
 shot a thrill through her by solemnly 
 musing: "I wonder how long it will be 
 before we build our own little home, 
 Emily." 
 
 She choked with bliss at the thought 
 and squeezed his arm hard. It was 
 such a hard arm, too. Stephen was 
 wonderfully strong for such a brainy 
 man. 
 
 63
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 They sat enchantedly watching the 
 slow, swift work of the winged home- 
 weaver, finding and fetching its own 
 warp and woof, and needling it on the 
 tree-loom with its own beak. They 
 found in this ecstatic industry an em 
 blem of their own ambition, a reproof of 
 their own delay. 
 
 "With even smaller capital, and a sal 
 ary littler than mine," said Stephen, 
 "that bird is making his home ready for 
 his bride, and when it s ready, she won t 
 wait a minute. They 11 set up light 
 nestkeeping and trust to Providence. 
 It seems sort of foolish and cowardly 
 for us to go on postponing our happi 
 ness, making ourselves miserable for 
 fear we 11 be miserable. What would 
 you say if I asked you to get married 
 now, Emilums? We could rent a little 
 flat about as big as that nest, and I m 
 sure we could pick up crumbs enough to 
 64
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 keep from starving. What do you say, 
 Emilums?" 
 
 Emilums shivered with fear at the 
 thought, but it was rather that she was 
 afraid of the too great happiness than 
 of the too meager fortune. They talked 
 it over for hours, figuring the price of 
 potatoes and paradise on the back of an 
 envelope, and alternately resolving and 
 recoiling. When he was eager, she was 
 dubious ; and when he had convinced her 
 that it was feasible, he found himself in 
 doubt. 
 
 The question was still undecided when 
 they noticed that the bird had knocked 
 off work and the street lamps were 
 alight in sky and roadway. It was too 
 late to visit the Gallery now, and they 
 sauntered home through the beseeching 
 twilight, all thronged up with longing 
 and the aching need of one another s 
 companionship. 
 
 5 65
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Kate, being a resident of New York, 
 had never been inside the Metropolitan 
 Gallery, and she was easily duped as to 
 the educational value of Emily s after 
 noon among masterpieces. Emily was 
 delayed in leaving on Monday, and she 
 missed Tuesday s train, and something 
 happened Wednesday. Thursday Ste 
 phen brought great and fearful news. 
 His firm had decided to send him abroad 
 to learn the foreign end of their busi 
 ness. He was so excited that he tried 
 to tell everything at once. 
 
 "In the first place, the firm feels that 
 its foreign representatives must keep 
 up appearances, so they will increase 
 my salary. And in the second place, the 
 cost of living is so much less abroad that 
 two can live as cheaply as one." 
 
 Even Emily could feel that there was 
 some flaw in this logic, but she was 
 seized with a dread of a greater evil 
 66
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 than even the loneliness. AH good 
 Americans are taught that the chief in 
 dustry of foreign countries is wicked 
 ness. If any evil is seen in this climate, 
 it is manifestly imported. Fidelity is 
 an exclusively American product that 
 cannot stand transplanting to those nox 
 ious regions where vice reigns to the ex 
 clusion of every other activity. 
 
 Of course, Stephen was the noblest, 
 truest, purest, stanchest, well-meaning- 
 est darling on earth, but even Stephen 
 in Paris well, it was simply impossible. 
 Here was a problem, indeed. It was 
 quite inconceivable that Emily should 
 go home before it was settled. To re 
 turn to Carthage, leaving Stephen to 
 cross the ocean of virtue all by himself, 
 would be sheer treachery on Emily s 
 part ; it would be like abandoning in the 
 hour of need a soul for which she would 
 be eternally responsible. 
 67
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Those were wild days in the girl s 
 heart. She tried to persuade Stephen 
 to decline to go abroad ; to resign rather 
 than go abroad; to starve rather than 
 go abroad. But he pointed out that a 
 man must go where duty calls; a man 
 must make sacrifices for his career ; and 
 besides, though Paris was wicked, no 
 doubt, in spots, so was New York wicked 
 in spots, in many spots. Then he 
 painted a picture of unsuspected Man 
 hattan which frightened Emily so that 
 she felt impelled to hasten to Paris as 
 a refuge. 
 
 Besides, as Stephen explained, a visit 
 to Paris had educational advantages. 
 The Louvre was bigger even than the 
 Metropolitan Gallery, and if they saw 
 the Louvre it would more than make up 
 for missing the Metropolitan. And a 
 young lady nowadays ought to be able 
 to pronounce French correctly, and 
 68
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 know how to say "ongwee" and "dis- 
 tongay" and "ong bong pong" and 
 things like that. 
 
 The upshot of it all was that Emily 
 once more found herself confronting 
 an opportunity for martyrdom with ex 
 tenuating circumstances. To sacrifice 
 All to save her affianced husband from 
 a future of wickedness was so plainly 
 her holy duty, that she decided to cross 
 the Kubicon under the pleasant alias of 
 the Seine. 
 
 She wondered how Kate would take 
 it, so she said one day quite off-hand- 
 edly: 
 
 "Oh, Kate." 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 "Stephen is thinking of going to Paris. 
 What would you think if I thought of 
 going with him ? 
 
 "Instead of going home?" 
 
 * Ummm-humm. 
 69
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "I d think you were crazy, and I d 
 send for the Lunacy Board to come and 
 put you in a padded cell, before you be 
 gan to froth at the mouth and bit some 
 body. You weren t seriously thinking 
 of any such unutterable nonsense, were 
 you?" 
 
 "Oh, Stephen and I were talking it 
 over the other day." 
 
 "Well, if that s the best you and your 
 Stephen can find to talk about, you d 
 better send him about his business." 
 
 The next day Emily told Kate that 
 she and Stephen had gone and got them 
 selves indissolubly welded at the Little 
 Marriage Shop around the Corner. 
 Kate had a glorious temper, and Em 
 ily s one comfort during the storm was 
 the realization that the ship sailed the 
 next morning early. 
 
 She locked herself in her room to 
 write her mother all about it. But by 
 70
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 the time she had written eighteen pages, 
 she had only told half of Stephen s emi 
 nent qualifications as a husband and an 
 adorable son-in-law, and she had not be 
 gun to break the news of their marriage 
 and their foreign flight. And the day 
 was so far gone that she would never be 
 able to do the absolutely necessary shop 
 ping unless she left the letter to be fin 
 ished that night. 
 
 She had intended to borrow some 
 money from Kate, but she preferred to 
 face Stephen with a pauper s trousseau. 
 She slipped out the back way and spent 
 all of her funds and nearly all her 
 strength, trying to accomplish the im 
 possible. She bought so many exquisite 
 filmy things that she quite forgot to pro 
 vide herself with heavy cloaks and rugs 
 for Atlantic rigors. 
 
 She devoted the remainder of the 
 evening to packing and barely got 
 71
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 aboard with the gangway. She had 
 managed to send a long telegram to her 
 mother, telling her how necessary the 
 step was and how infinitely happy she 
 should be. 
 
 The pink thunderbolt prostrated Mrs. 
 Anthon. She pursued her husband all 
 over town by telephone and finally 
 brought him home from a patient in a 
 crisis. When she told him the baleful 
 news, he was stunned, but his sick-room 
 manner had become instinctive with him 
 and he patted his sobbing wife on the 
 back as he mumbled : 
 
 "There, there, honey! After all, 
 she s not dead, is she? I guess the 
 young man is a nice young fellow and 
 he 11 probably be good to her and make 
 her happy. And if he doesn t, she can 
 always come home." 
 
 "That s it," Mrs. Anthon wailed. 
 72
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "They can always come home. That s 
 why they never come home." 
 
 She cried all night, and the next day 
 she was a worn-out old woman. This ul 
 timate blast of storm left her as the 
 autumnal tree is left when some windy 
 night strips it of its final splendors and 
 leaves it bleak and bare. 
 
 73
 
 PART II 
 BUSY PEOPLE
 
 THE same old ocean with the same 
 old waves, infinitely varied in in 
 finite monotony. The same old honey 
 moon of the same old bridal couple 
 daubed with the same old thick coat of 
 bliss like fresh paint. The same old 
 ridiculous rapture, the same ostrich-like 
 efforts to conceal the utter happiness 
 that everybody made fun of and ought 
 to have envied. 
 
 That was the beginning of the nest- 
 building of Mrs. Emily Anthon Mac 
 Leod, who jumped whenever she heard 
 her new name, and had never seen how 
 it looked even on a visiting card. Of 
 course the hateful old passenger list had 
 to go and get it all wrong: "Mr. S. 
 77
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 MacLuders, Mrs. MacLuders." And it 
 looked a trifle tame next to "Prince 
 Marczali and valet, Princess Marczali 
 and two maids." 
 
 The princess was an American girl, 
 too, and she had accomplished the ambi 
 tion of every ambitious American girl, 
 but when Emily got a look at the prince 
 and took a look at Stephen, she decided 
 that she would not swap husbands with 
 the princess for all the valets and maids 
 in the world as a bonus. 
 
 Most of the passengers found the 
 voyage stupidly uneventful, but Stephen 
 and Emily found it incessantly exciting. 
 It was the first trip abroad for both of 
 them, and it was the first wedding jour 
 ney for both of them. Getting really 
 acquainted was so important that Emily 
 kept postponing the completion of that 
 long, long letter to her mother. 
 78
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 She had brought it with her, in order 
 to write it at her oceanic leisure, but day 
 followed day in the dateless transatlan 
 tic fashion, until land was sighted 
 and the writing-rooms were suddenly 
 crowded with eager writers. The boat 
 that brought on the pilot would take off 
 the mail. 
 
 Emily had barely time to scribble a 
 hasty note to her mother, promising a 
 real letter as soon as she was safely on 
 land. Stephen s mother and father 
 were both long since dead and he had 
 never seen Emily s parents. The fam 
 ished keenness of their longing for news 
 never occurred to him. Unconsciously 
 he abetted Emily s unwitting cruelty. 
 
 Part of Kate s bitterness had been 
 
 due to an instinctive foreknowledge that 
 
 if Emily married, Kate would be left to 
 
 break the news to the family and invent 
 
 79
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 elaborate explanations to zealously in 
 quiring friends, while Emily blithely put 
 off till the morrow all that she should 
 have done yesterday. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon was just recuperating 
 from Emily s telegram, when Kate s let 
 ter came to confirm the evil tidings. 
 There followed the age-long period of 
 the voyage across, the age-long period 
 of the letter s return. And at that she 
 received only a hastily jotted series of 
 rapturous exclamations a letter made 
 up chiefly of underlining and exclama 
 tion points with an allusion to the 
 beautiful home she and Stephen were 
 planning. 
 
 The new use of the old word was an 
 unexpected arrow in the mother s heart. 
 * She is planning a home with him ! she 
 brooded. "She has forgotten that she 
 has left a home here. A new home ! A 
 new home!" 
 
 PO
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 After this her heart was so benumbed 
 and so acquainted with neglect that she 
 did not resent the pitiful substitutes for 
 letters that followed, the outrageous 
 ready-made postal cards with photo 
 graphs of scenes, and just room enough 
 to crowd in a line, or a hasty and usu 
 ally anonymous phrase: "Isn t this 
 lovely! Love from both." "Here is 
 where we dined to-night." "Wish you 
 were with us. Love." "Isn t this 
 quaint? We are lunching on the side 
 walk! Love." 
 
 Emily was so hurried with the myriad 
 novelties of her first Paris, that several 
 days passed before she remembered 
 that she had a brother there. Then she 
 found that she had forgotten to bring 
 his address. She must write for it in 
 the next letter. All she recalled was 
 that it was TOO "the 15th of September" 
 or the "31st of February" or some date. 
 6 81
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Days passed, weeks passed. One 
 Sunday afternoon she and Stephen 
 visited the Luxembourg. They were 
 moving along with elbows interlocked, 
 poring over the catalogue a long while, 
 and then glancing briefly at a picture or 
 a statue. They liked best the paintings 
 with a dramatic emotion or a story, pic 
 tures with a libretto. They had turned 
 away contemptuously from an epoch- 
 making attempt to translate the translu- 
 cence of sunlight into opaque pigment, 
 when Emily s nails nipped Stephen s el 
 bow, and she whispered: "Look! I 
 do believe that s my brother Frank." 
 
 They walked round the stranger as if 
 he were a statue, while he was studying 
 the Monet as if it were a religious 
 text. A certain eccentricity of garb 
 and a quaint Parisian experiment in 
 whiskers on his chin only partly dis- 
 82
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 guised the Americanism of him. The 
 Anthon features were evident, and Em 
 ily, tiptoeing up behind him, murmured 
 over his shoulder: "Bawn joor, Fran- 
 swa." 
 
 The man turned, stared at her puz- 
 zledly a moment, recognized at once that 
 she was beautiful and gradually that she 
 was his sister, and promptly wrapped 
 his arms about her with a smack that 
 frightened two guardians into thinking 
 that the Mona Lisa thief had broken into 
 the Luxembourg. They recognized that 
 it was simply a matter of some artist 
 saluting a living masterpiece, and tap 
 ping their noses with their forefingers 
 returned to their own business. 
 
 It was Frank s turn to be struck by 
 one of the pink thunderbolts Emily 
 usually wielded. 
 
 "Emily!" he cried. "Well, what on 
 83
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 earth you in Paris ? Is mother with 
 you? How is she? What you doing 
 here? How well you re looking. I m 
 proud to own you." 
 
 "Oh, but you don t own me any 
 more." And she introduced her pro 
 prietor. The men shook hands with that 
 shyness savages feel, that delicacy 
 which leads many not-so-barbaric tribes 
 to make it a rule for relations-in-law 
 never to address or look at one another. 
 
 Emily began a glib epic of her ad 
 ventures and the three strolled blindly 
 past master-works, talking of Emily s 
 marvelous fate. Frank checked them 
 before Whistler s portrait of his mother. 
 
 "What do you think of that?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Such a dear old lady!" said Emily. 
 
 "Do you know I rather like it," said 
 Stephen, as if his opinion mattered. 
 "It isn t good art, of course, because 
 84
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 it s so very simple and it is n t fussy at 
 all. I bet he finished it in one sitting." 
 
 "As a matter of fact, he painted it out 
 a hundred times," said Frank. 
 
 "How tired his poor mother must 
 have grown," said Emily. "It seems 
 rather cruel to have kept the poor old 
 lady up." 
 
 "Cruel?" Frank exclaimed, "to make 
 an immortal portrait of your mother! 
 Do you suppose she was n t blissfully 
 happy and proud to think her son cared 
 to devote his best art and his tireless 
 labor to showing the rest of the world 
 just how she looked, his mother? If I 
 could only paint our mother, and spread 
 on canvas her poor, tired, sweet face 
 and her blessed folded hands and the 
 tender mood of her soul, I wouldn t 
 ask any more." 
 
 "Why don t you try?" Emily sug 
 gested brilliantly. 
 
 85
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "I ve tried numberless times, but I 
 can t come anywhere near a likeness. 
 There s no photograph of her taken for 
 the last fifteen or twenty years. She 
 was always camera-shy. And I can t 
 seem to get anything like a resem 
 blance. 
 
 "I should think a man could hardly 
 help that," said Stephen. 
 
 "If you were a painter, you d under 
 stand," said Frank. "You d recognize 
 your own mother at a glance among a 
 million women, wouldn t you?" 
 
 "Among all the other angels in 
 heaven," Stephen murmured. 
 
 "Describe her features to me," Frank 
 challenged. 
 
 "Well, she was a wonderfully sweet 
 little woman with gray hair and a won 
 derfully tender voice." 
 
 "We can t paint the voice. Describe 
 her features." 
 
 86
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 * Well, her face was n t exactly beau 
 tiful any more, and yet it was very 
 beautiful. She had er her eyes were 
 er " 
 
 "Yes, her eyes were " 
 
 Well, they were dark. 
 
 "Black?" 
 
 "No, not exactly black." 
 
 "Brown?" 
 
 "Well, I shouldn t exactly call them 
 brown either." 
 
 "Blue?" 
 
 "No, not blue exactly. No, not blue 
 at all, yet something on the blue order 
 with a suggestion of deep brown and 
 well, I can t say exactly." 
 
 "And her nose?" 
 
 "Her nose was was how can I de 
 scribe a nose exactly?" 
 
 "I ve got to paint it exactly. Was it 
 large or small?" 
 
 "Neither." 
 
 87
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Aquiline, Grecian, thick, thin, long, 
 short?" 
 
 "I give up. I can see her perfectly 
 till you tell me to describe her, then she 
 sort of er vanishes. It s a shameful 
 thing to confess, but " 
 
 "Every man is like that. And I m 
 like that when I try to paint my mother. 
 I Ve a great longing to save that blessed 
 face from oblivion, but I 11 never be 
 able to till I see her." 
 
 "Oh, how glorious!" said Emily. 
 " Do go home and visit her this minute. 
 
 "I can t quite do that. It takes so 
 long, and I have a big mural painting 
 I Ve contracted to finish, and oh, it s 
 quite impossible for me to leave. But if 
 mother could come over here 
 
 "Splendid!" cried Emily. "We ll 
 just make her come ! She s never been 
 abroad, and the ocean trip would do her 
 worlds of good, and she d simply dote
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 on Paris. I 11 write her and tell her 
 she just must come this very minute. 
 
 The upshot of this parley was that 
 Mrs. Anthon received a letter with a 
 French stamp, the first letter from her 
 son in what seemed a whole forever. 
 Along with it came a gurglingly happy 
 letter from the runaway child, urging her 
 mother to put on her bonnet and her 
 mits, and her father to pick up his silk 
 hat and his medicine bag, and step 
 right over to see them in their new 
 home; they really must not postpone 
 learning the unequaled charms and 
 beauties of Paris and Stephen, espe 
 cially Stephen. 
 
 The old couple read the two letters 
 and stared at each other in stupor, 
 and each said: "You d better go. I 
 can t." 
 
 The doctor shook his head with final 
 ity. He had come to feel that if he left 
 89
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Carthage for a day, the whole town 
 would perish in helpless agony. It was 
 manifestly impossible that he should 
 ever have a vacation till his last one. 
 The thought of being left alone by his 
 wife for a protracted period appalled 
 him, but he tried to look overjoyed and 
 he insisted that of all things on earth 
 what he most wanted was a portrait of 
 his wife. To have it painted by their 
 famous son was beyond his dreams. 
 
 But Mrs. Anthon declined to be lured. 
 
 "Me leave you here all by yourself 
 for Goodness knows how long!" she 
 sniffed. "Me ride all that ways on a 
 train and spend a week alone on a wab 
 bly boat and then go trapesing round 
 amongst a lot of foreigners! Why, I 
 can hardly go down town and do my 
 marketing in Carthage without getting 
 run over by a delivery wagon. Can you 
 see me in France? I d be sick and get 
 90
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 lost and never be heard of again. May 
 be that s what you re working for." 
 * It s your portrait I want. 
 "My portrait! Do you suppose I 
 want anybody ever to know what I look 
 like? I quit having my pictures taken 
 ages ago. Don t imagine I m going to 
 cross the sea to have one done now 
 and in colors, too ! And the very idea 
 of that dear child Frank wasting his 
 time and his genius trying to paint a 
 homely old crone like me, when he could 
 be painting something pretty. I m too 
 weak and old even to pack up my things. 
 I d never get there. I m weak and 
 afraid. I m a tired-out old woman, 
 and besides, I have nothing to wear." 
 
 This last sounded familiar to the 
 doctor. "Good Lord!" he growled. 
 "Nothing to wear! I bet that when 
 Judgment Day comes round, and Ga 
 briel blows his horn, you 11 reach over 
 91
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 into my grave and wake me up and say, 
 Time to get up, Paw; you re wanted ; 
 and I 11 jump up and reach for my 
 trousers and medicine case, and you 11 
 say, No, this time you re wanted in 
 Heaven ; and I 11 say, Well, come 
 along ; and you 11 say, Merciful Good 
 ness, I can t be seen by all those angels 
 in these old clothes. I can t go to 
 Heaven, I have nothing to wear. 
 
 They talked the matter over, each 
 urging the other to the luxury of a for 
 eign trip, and each dreading the idea of 
 travel as much as a deep-rooted tree 
 would fear it. At the last the doctor 
 growled: "If any visiting is done, I 
 guess it s the children s place to take 
 the trip. If they walked home, it 
 wouldn t be as far as you ve walked, 
 carrying them in your arms and run 
 ning on their errands. I guess you re 
 92
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 right, Mother. Here we are, and here 
 we d better stay, until 
 
 But there was no need of mentioning 
 by name the great, the dark Until. 
 
 93
 
 II 
 
 THE summer brooded over Carthage 
 long and heavily. The sky was 
 like the lid of a chafing-dish, the earth 
 like the pan thereof, and people sim 
 mered between in their own fat. 
 
 "The climate of Carthage," the doc 
 tor used to say, " averages up to just 
 about perfect. It s the coldest place 
 under Heaven in winter, and in the sum 
 mer it s the hottest place this side of 
 the Other Place." 
 
 Mrs. Anthon somehow gasped through 
 the stinging days and the suffocating 
 nights. Then autumn came, with its 
 savory, fruitful airs, its first frost, and 
 its repentant Indian summer. But 
 94
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 there is no Indian summer for weary 
 old mothers, and the incessant lapse of 
 leaves too weak to cling to the branches 
 filled her with a deep dread. 
 
 Then the winter fell upon the town 
 and froze it till it rang, and having 
 chilled it through and through, kept it 
 close muffled in snow. 
 
 No child came home; rarely did one 
 write, and then briefly. What notes 
 were sent breathed affection and devo 
 tion, but they were poor substitutes for 
 the visible, tangible, kissable, talkable 
 children, of whom she possessed now 
 only the photographs staring from wall 
 and mantel. They might as well have 
 been relics of dead children. 
 
 She devoted much toil and all her 
 money to Christmas presents. She re 
 membered all of the children, though 
 she had little cash to spare. She made 
 95
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 many presents with her own hands, and 
 had learned well what would please each 
 of them. 
 
 Their presents to her were spasmodic, 
 usually late in arriving, and always ac 
 companied with apologies for being a 
 trifle homely. Other people required 
 such pretentious gifts. Mothers must 
 take the will for the donation. 
 
 Shortly after the New Year had 
 erected one more milestone on the down 
 ward slope, there was a mighty flurry in 
 the house. One of the children actually 
 announced a visit. It was Jim. 
 
 Now Jim was Dr. Anthon s inconsol 
 able grief. He had chosen to be a phy 
 sician, and the old doctor s heart had re 
 joiced to think that he should be able 
 to take into partnership with him one 
 of his own sons, a close-kinned soul 
 whom he could train to the needs and 
 whims of staple patients of lifelong 
 96
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 standing, a son to whom he could whis 
 per the pitiful and dreadful secrets a 
 physician acquires. 
 
 The doctor had cheerfully encouraged 
 Jim to spend years and years and years 
 acquiring his education, in the knowl 
 edge that when the boy was ready, he 
 could settle down at home, live with the 
 family, and enter at once into a practice 
 that would save him from the prelimi 
 nary starvation-plus-idleness test of a 
 young doctor s nerves. But American 
 children do not often accept their fath 
 er s harness, nor willingly occupy ad 
 joining stalls. James Anthon, M.D., 
 just returned from Vienna, found Car 
 thage a world he disdained to conquer. 
 He moved out to Denver, and permitted 
 his father to support him through a pro 
 longed starvation period there. And 
 then, as usual, when patients began to 
 ring his bell intentionally, and he had 
 ? 97
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 begun to take in enough to have begun 
 to pay back what he had borrowed, he 
 fell a victim to an epidemic to which 
 even doctors are not immune. 
 
 He sent home her photograph instead 
 of an instalment on account, and elo 
 quently explained that, having taken 
 unto himself a wife, he must really bor 
 row a little more. And now the doctor 
 had an added absentee to support. 
 How they ever manage it, these small 
 town parents maintaining expensive off 
 spring in remote cities, is akin to the 
 miracle of the loaves and fishes. 
 
 But Jim prospered. Now and then 
 he sent home a little money, offener a 
 large promise, and the old doctor got 
 what joy he could out of both. That old 
 doctor could have found a little sunlight 
 in a third subcellar on a winter mid 
 night. Jim became a specialist none 
 of your all-round family upholsterers 
 98
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 like his father. He devoted his life to 
 the ear exclusively, and he wrote his 
 father that if he had been able to confine 
 himself to the right ear or the left, in 
 stead of having to generalize on both, he 
 might really have accomplished some 
 thing. 
 
 It was this Jim that telegraphed, this 
 extraordinarily famous aurist, whose 
 name was ringing in all deaf people s 
 ears. Jim sent word that he was com 
 ing home. It was not to stay, not even 
 for a visit, but for a stop-off. A big 
 convention of all the aural aurochs in 
 the world was to be held in Chicago to 
 look into the ears of the nation. Jim 
 was to read a paper on a minute sub 
 section of one of the premonitory symp 
 toms of titinnitus aurum, or bells in the 
 belfry. On his way to Chicago, he pur 
 posed to drop off the train, and spend a 
 day or three in his dear old home. His 
 99
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 wife and children would not be able to 
 come with him, he said, as the children 
 all had the earache. 
 
 Two or three days visit after six or 
 eight years absence was a small pay 
 ment on the debt he owed, but if he had 
 shot by on an aeroplane, his mother 
 would have taken it as a blessed tribute 
 of affection. 
 
 She sent for the old darky, and rat 
 tled the telegram before him. 
 
 "You re a prophet, Uncle Ned. 
 You re a prophet. Go get that table- 
 leaf up from the cellar at once. 
 
 Uncle Ned shouted and wheezed with 
 pride, and circumambulated his way to 
 and from the cellar, helped pull the 
 groaning table apart, and restore the 
 leaf to its ancient resting-place. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon would not tell him who 
 was coming, except that it was not Miss 
 Emily, nor Miss Kate, nor Master 
 100
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Frankie, nor Master Tommy. As that 
 left only Master Jamie, he guessed 
 Jamie ; but she refused to tell him. He 
 must wait and see. 
 
 The day of the visit came. The table 
 was bedecked, Jim s chair brought in 
 from the Siberia of the attic, and the best 
 dinner Hannah could spoil was ordered. 
 But no Jim. The next day no Jim. 
 The next day a telegram. He had been 
 detained by important consultations so 
 late that he had barely time to make 
 Chicago. He had arranged to pay his 
 visit on his way back. Nothing should 
 prevent him. The leaf remained in the 
 table on probation. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon heard Uncle Ned mutter 
 ing to Hannah that his bones told him 
 something. He would not say what it 
 was, but he believed in his bones, be- 
 because his bones had never fooled him 
 yet. 
 
 101
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 The Anthons searched the Chicago 
 journals, and they found a brief allu 
 sion to the fact that among other papers 
 read at the convention were those of 
 Doctors Braley, Wetmore, Author, Ser 
 geant, Tenniel, etc. Their wonderful 
 son was evidently the man in the typo 
 graphical disguise. The injustice and 
 inaccuracy of the press was loudly 
 denounced in at least one home that 
 week. 
 
 Two days passed, and Jim failed to 
 appear. Then a telegram came. This 
 also was from Denver and from Jim. 
 But Mrs. Anthon did not rattle it before 
 Uncle Ned. If there was any rattle, it 
 was a dry something in her heart. Jim 
 had been called back to Denver by a 
 vitally important consultation, and had 
 had to leave the convention immediately 
 after reading his paper, which had been 
 received with dignified silence, showing 
 102
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 what a profound impression it had pro 
 duced. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon sent for Uncle Ned, and 
 with Hannah s aid they wrenched the 
 table ajar again, took away the leaf, and 
 closed the boards like a coffin. Uncle 
 Ned s feet clumped down the cellar 
 stairs with the leaf bumping after. 
 
 And Mrs. Anthon looked bewilderedly 
 about the dining-room, and made a sud 
 den hurried rush to the stairs. She 
 hobbled up them slowly, shaking her 
 head, while Hannah, clinging to the 
 banister-post, kept calling up after her: 
 
 "You mustn t cry like that, Miss 
 Anthon. Shan t I make you some nice 
 tea?" 
 
 103
 
 Ill 
 
 BETWEEN Tom Anthon, tilting per 
 ilously backward in bis swivel- 
 chair, and the client, explaining eagerly 
 forward across the leaf of the desk, an 
 office boy interpolated a sheaf of letters. 
 
 The lawyer riffled them carelessly. 
 They were all typewritten and had all 
 been opened by a secretary except one 
 in an unofficial envelope, addressed in 
 an unmasculine hand and marked " Per 
 sonal." This letter halted the lawyer s 
 eyes an instant and his frown of intense 
 attention was mellowed by a hint of 
 lenity. 
 
 Neither the sex of the handwriting 
 nor its effect on the lawyer escaped the 
 client, whose very gesture had been 
 104
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 frozen in midair by the arrival of the 
 letters. He ventured a careless imper 
 tinence. 
 
 "A letter from a lady!" He said it 
 as one might murmur, "Aha!" 
 
 The lawyer flicked him with a glance 
 like the snap of a whip ; then, as a gen 
 tler rebuke, he held out the envelope for 
 inspection. The client realized a cer 
 tain dignity in the writing and stam 
 mered : 
 
 "An old-fashioned hand, isn t it? 
 Nice old lady client, eh?" 
 
 "My mother." 
 
 The soft, soft word seemed an evoca 
 tion; and the spirit of the room was 
 changed instantly, as if a venerable 
 woman had entered it by mistake. 
 The client felt almost an impulse to 
 rise and bow. He contented himself 
 with: 
 
 "Lucky man, to be getting letters 
 105
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 from your mother at your age! Mine 
 died when I was a child." 
 
 The lawyer pressed his advantage 
 with a youthful brag : 
 
 "My father is living, too." 
 
 The client s shaken head implied both 
 elegy and envy. 
 
 "No wonder they call you Lucky An- 
 thon. You must take great comfort in 
 them." 
 
 The lawyer flushed like a witness un 
 der a fire of cross-examination. 
 
 "I ought to. I do, of course. But 
 I m so infernally busy protecting you 
 malefactors of great wealth that I well, 
 you see, they live so far away. They 
 don t like New York. They hate to 
 travel. Father s a doctor he s afraid 
 to leave his patients for five min 
 utes. I haven t had time to get back 
 home for years. About all I do is to 
 send them presents on Christmases and 
 106
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 on their birthdays when I don t forget. 
 "When is my mother s next birthday! I 
 must look it up." 
 
 He jotted a query on the slant of his 
 calendar and put the letter in his pocket, 
 patting it first as if it were her hand. 
 Then he resumed his office face and 
 voice: "As you were saying 
 
 The client forgot his own business for 
 the luxury of reproach: 
 
 "A memorandum to look up your 
 mother s birthday! You ought to be 
 ashamed of yourself." 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "Why, if either of my parents were 
 living " 
 
 "Oh, no, you wouldn t. You think 
 you would, but you would n t. My let 
 ters home begin with apologies for neg 
 lect and end with vows to reform; but 
 this deadly grind, this eternal scram 
 ble" 
 
 107
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 The telephone bell broke in: Long 
 distance wants you." Lucky Anthon 
 had a brief chat with another lawyer 
 seated in a swivel-chair a thousand miles 
 away. He bade the astral visitor hold 
 the wire, while he took up a second tele 
 phone on his desk and pursued a New 
 York client all over town until he 
 brought him to earth at an automobile 
 road-inn, forty miles off. A hurried 
 consultation in telephonese with this 
 man; a bit of triangular converse from 
 mouthpiece to mouthpiece, and Anthon 
 had arranged a journey to Boston on 
 "the midnight." 
 
 Then he turned to the client at his 
 desk side and resumed the discussion of 
 an abstruse problem in higher legal 
 strategy, incessantly interrupted by the 
 nagging telephone, by telegrams, par 
 don-begging clerks, excuse-me-one-mo- 
 ment partners, stenographers summoned 
 108
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 to take dictations, bookkeepers to look 
 up figures, and what-not, whom-not. 
 
 Tom Anthon s brain had subdivided 
 itself into a syndicate of workers and his 
 mind was like a telephone exchange. In 
 such a maelstrom how could his moth 
 er s letter fail to be swept out of his 
 mind? 
 
 When he left for the afternoon it was 
 to dash to a conference; when he rode 
 uptown it was in the limousine office of a 
 railroad juggler. His dinner at the club 
 was a mere automatic process while his 
 mind was busy matching wits with one 
 of the lawyers of one of his multitudi 
 nous adversaries. He had planned to 
 go to the theater or the opera for relaxa 
 tion, but he was shunted on toward mid 
 night by a dozen matters and people that 
 could not wait. 
 
 He just made the train and crawling 
 into his berth declared his office hours 
 109
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ended. He shut his brain to thought as 
 if his skull were a roll-top desk and he 
 were pulling down and locking his fore 
 head. This was his salvation that he 
 could usually adjourn his mental con 
 gress when he reached his bed usually, 
 but not always. 
 
 The next morning he thought of his 
 mother s letter as he filled his eyes with 
 soap in the primeval conditions of the 
 sleeping-car s washroom. At breakfast 
 he thought of it again. He could not 
 find it in his pocket. He remembered 
 that he had hastily changed suits before 
 he took the train. He resolved to read 
 it as soon as he got back. He made a 
 memorandum to that effect and blushed 
 at the necessity; but the memorandum, 
 as timid and meek as the letter itself or 
 its author, seemed unable to assert its 
 rights. There was need of a memoran 
 dum to recall the memorandum. 
 110
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Anthon thought of the letter in court 
 rooms, at board meetings and in flying 
 taxicabs. It floated through his mind 
 at the oddest moments; but it always 
 came inopportunely and was frightened 
 away. 
 
 A week had passed before he put on 
 the same coat again. He found the let 
 ter by chance in the pocket where it had 
 lain in cold storage. He apologized to 
 it and caressed it again. As a final 
 atonement he gave it precedence over 
 the morning papers. He propped it 
 against the news-sheet propped against 
 the water bottle and he kept his eyes on 
 it. Though the headlines above it bran 
 dished black flags of battle, murder and 
 court decisions, he kept his eyes on the 
 thin little scrawling lines crisscrossing 
 the paper. The writing was shaky and 
 so frail that the very ink seemed gray. 
 
 "My darling boy," it began, and he 
 111
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 looked past it into a mirror which an 
 swered with a mirror s repartee. His 
 mother s darling boy had been a man 
 for years and years, had been married 
 and widowered. Other marriages had 
 orphaned him of his children and his 
 hair was sketched with gray lines. 
 
 He tried to recall the fat-cheeked, 
 curl-scrolled face that had once pouted 
 back at him from looking-glasses; but 
 this long-distance telescopy was too 
 much for him. He remembered how 
 that remote self had depended on the 
 writer of this letter depended on her 
 utterly for everything, from buttoning 
 up of mornings to tucking in of nights. 
 And now he was here, a scarred gladia 
 tor in the arena. He had traveled far, 
 changed much. 
 
 112
 
 IV 
 
 HE felt the swift wing-brush of a 
 wish to run home and climb into 
 his mother s lap. The very thought rid 
 iculed itself to death. The picture of his 
 huge, lank figure sprawled across the 
 knees of the dismayed and venerable lit 
 tle woman who was his mother made an 
 intolerable grotesque. 
 
 But the letter a long one for her : 
 
 My Darling Boy: 
 
 Now that I am able to sit up again, I am writ 
 ing to you first off. I do hope you haven t wor 
 ried and fretted over me these past four weeks. I 
 had been feeling right poorly for some time and 
 then one morning I could n t get up. I told your 
 father and he was all upset. You know he never 
 would treat any of his own family. He looked 
 right worried and called for Doctor Pusey to come 
 over. Doctor Pusey said I should stay in bed and 
 8 113
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 take care of myself or I d be down sick. It s a 
 good thing I did, for I might have been real sick. 
 I was in bed for a month as it was, scarcely able 
 to lift my head and suffering considerable pain. 
 
 I thought I d best not write you children, be 
 cause it would just worry you and you all have so 
 many things to worry you without fretting your 
 self over my ailments. I was real sick, though, 
 and your father was going to telegraph to Chicago 
 for some of the big doctors ; but I would n t let 
 him. He was right rundown himself, what with 
 sitting up nights with me, and an epidemic of 
 measles in the public school. 
 
 Anthon s face was a craven plea of 
 guilty. His mother had been ill, per 
 haps near death. She had lain abed for 
 a month without a line from him. Yet 
 it was she that apologized for not having 
 written! Anthon cursed himself for an 
 ingrate and read on : 
 
 A day or two ago I took a turn for the better. 
 I m just about what you d call well now. Yester 
 day I was able to sit up in my rocker for quite a 
 spell and it did n t tire me much. And to-day I m 
 so much better I had Hannah bring me some note- 
 114
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 paper and set the ink bottle on the sewing machine 
 close by, and get me a book to write on. And what 
 book do you suppose she brought me? It was 
 your old geography, honey. I ve been looking 
 through it; and your name is written in the front 
 as bold as a lion s and you d marked the book all 
 up, lining the pictures round with a lead pencil and 
 coloring some of them with crayons. I used to 
 think you would be the artist when you grew up, 
 instead of Frankie. Have you heard anything 
 from him or Emily and how they re getting along 
 in Paris. The poor things are so busy I can t ex 
 pect them to write. But I d like to know if 
 they re well. Emily is so careless about wrapping 
 up. Is Kate well? Do you ever see her? 
 
 But I was starting to write you about your 
 geography book. It s just like me to wander. 
 I remember how proud I was of you almost as 
 proud as I am now of the famous lawyer that folks 
 tell me is my son ! 
 
 Seems like it was only yesterday you were bring 
 ing the book to me to pronounce the hard words. 
 You used to follow me all over the house or call 
 to me from upstairs : "Mama ! say, mama, what s 
 the pronoun sation of" whatever it was. 
 
 While I looked over the pages and saw the ter 
 rible words they gave you poor little chicks to 
 memorize, I gave a kind of jump. I thought I 
 heard you calling me as you did once : " Say, 
 115
 
 -THE OLD NEST 
 
 mama, what s the kreck pronounsation of B-e- 
 1-u-c-h-i-s-t-a-n ?" And when I told you, you said : 
 "Who was Bellew and why did he kiss her?" I 
 could hear it just as plain as if you had been right 
 by; and I listened to hear your little feet on the 
 stairs, or to hear the banister whistle as you came 
 sliding down to show me the word. 
 
 And then I lost sight of the book and all, and a 
 couple of tears came spattering down on the geog 
 raphy. I ve been right poorly, you know, and 
 kind of weak still; and my eyes always had a sort 
 of trick of tearing up when I think of you chil 
 dren. 
 
 I thought, instead of sitting here making a baby 
 of myself over my boy s old schoolbooks, I d best 
 be writing you a few lines to keep you from wor 
 rying about me. You really must n t think any 
 thing of my being sick, for I 11 be able to go down 
 to breakfast most likely to-morrow, or to dinner, 
 the doctor says ; so you can see I in all right. 
 
 It s nice to be able to sit here in the bay window 
 and look out in the yard where you children used 
 to romp. It s terrible quiet now, specially with 
 the snow still lingering on in spots; but I guess it 
 won t be much longer. Your father says he thinks 
 the winter s back is about broke by now. Soon the 
 spring thaws will set in and the trees will be bud 
 ding out ; and before long the birds will be settled 
 down once more. It s nearly a year, and it seems 
 ten now since Emily went to New York and never 
 116
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 came home. Poor child, I wonder if her husband 
 is still good to her and if the spring is nice in 
 Paris like it is here. 
 
 How you children used to love the first sight of 
 spring, and how you used to come stampeding in, 
 all covered with mud and yelling like Comantchies 
 or however you spell it ; anyway, you d sing out, 
 "How long before dinner s ready? I m hungry !" 
 One after another you d storm in and houl, "I m 
 hungry !" and then one after another you grew up 
 and went away; and now it s my turn to be hun 
 gry hungry for my children; hungry all the time! 
 
 About the only thing I can do nowadays is just 
 to sit round and remember. Of course I m aw 
 fully proud of every one of my chicks and so 
 grateful for your success, but it s a terrible thing 
 to have you all so far away. This old house used 
 to be so crowded and so noisy I had to hold my 
 head to keep it from splitting; and now the house 
 is so empty and so silent I have to hold my heart 
 to keep it from breaking open. 
 
 Sometimes the house seems haunted all full of 
 ghosts, little ghosts, calling to me. Sometimes at 
 night I sit up in bed, thinking I hear one of you 
 calling and before I m awake I answer, "Yes, 
 honey," and the room is full of light. And then 
 I m awake and there s no child and it s all 
 dark. 
 
 Last night I heard you scream in pain you were 
 so frightened, and you were being chased by a big 
 117
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 frothy-mouthed dog and I was running to help you. 
 I reached you and took you in my arms and put 
 you behind me. I was going to grab the dog and 
 hold him till you got away. Then I woke up 
 and it was the whistle of that train that goes 
 through here at four o clock every morning. 
 
 I was trembling so I could hardly make myself 
 believe that I was in bed and that you were a 
 grown-up man two thousand miles away. I was 
 glad it was a dream; and yet I was sorry, too, 
 for after all I had held Little Boy You in my 
 arms and they were aching empty for you. 
 
 Of course I don t believe in dreams, unless it is 
 that they go by contraries. Still, I hope you 
 have n t been in any trouble have you ? Let me 
 know won t you? Dreams are so real. And I 
 always know that after that train whistles there s 
 a whole black hour before daybreak. In the win 
 ter it s longer yet and so cold and white when the 
 day comes. 
 
 My mind is really cheerfuller than this letter 
 sounds. Mostly I remember the pleasant things 
 about your childhood in this old house. And it s 
 funny how often I hear you shout, "Mama, 
 what s the kreck pronounsation of B-e-1-u-c-h-i-s- 
 t-a-n?" You howled every letter down the stair 
 way and I called back the right way to say it; 
 and you said : " "Who was Bel lew and why did he 
 kiss her?" 
 
 118
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 I remember I told your father about it when he 
 came home that day ; and he laughed till the neigh 
 bors must have thought he had a fit. And I 
 could n t tell you how often we ve told each other 
 that stpry that one and the one about Frank say 
 ing he was hurt so bad he ought to have a dollar. 
 We always laugh ; and then we say : " Those were 
 mighty smart children of ours. Too bad they had 
 to grow up !" 
 
 Back of all this pen-prattle, Lucky 
 Anthon felt grim tragedy. To him his 
 mother was such a figure as King Lear 
 deserted by his children. 
 
 And the vision of the wild old monarch 
 on the cliff roaring at fate through his 
 wind-blown beard was no more epic to 
 him than the mirage of the lorn little 
 mother in her rocking-chair, just sitting 
 round and remembering her far-off 
 grownups back into babyhood. 
 
 Anthon did not for a moment realize 
 how common, how innumerably ancient, 
 how inevitably future a type it is this 
 119
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 mother left at home by the brood issued 
 from her loins and no longer needful of 
 her breasts. 
 
 All over the world, all across history, 
 the finished veterans can be found the 
 deserted mothers, lonelying for their 
 children upon their laps again. But An- 
 thon did not think of this starry multi 
 tude; he thought only of his own one; 
 and his whole soul yearned and repented 
 within him. 
 
 He read the rest of the letter through 
 a mist. It was full of little gossips and 
 of tender inquiries as to his health, 
 warnings not to work too hard, to be 
 conservative in the matter of underwear 
 and to take good care of his precious 
 self. 
 
 And throbbing between the lines was 
 the craving for a word of greeting or 
 a crumb of news from him or Kate or 
 any of her children. 
 120
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 There was a postscript, of course 
 written in the space she had left blank 
 at the top of the first page : 
 
 I wish you could come home sometime. Your 
 father and I would be awful glad to see you. But, 
 of course, you re so busy with important things. 
 Anyway, you children mustn t worry about us; 
 we re all right. 
 
 That was all a meek little sigh of 
 perennial resignation, and no more ; but 
 it resounded through Anthon s heart 
 like a wail of despair. He loathed him 
 self for a traitor to the fundamental 
 duties of life. What on earth was im 
 portant compared with a mother s right 
 to keep the children she had borne and 
 sheltered! Or, at least, to see them now 
 and again? 
 
 121
 
 WITH a sort of ferocity, Anthon 
 thrust away from the table, left 
 his breakfast unfinished and strode to 
 the telephone, called up his sister and 
 vented on her the wrath he felt for him 
 self. 
 
 That you, Kate? Say! When did 
 you write mother last?" 
 
 "I don t remember, Tom. It was a 
 good while ago. Why?" 
 
 "You ought to be ashamed of your 
 self." 
 
 I am ; but, you see, the children have 
 been ill. 
 
 "So has mother." 
 
 "She has? Oh, Tom, that s terrible ! 
 How is she now ? 
 
 "She s better, she says; but you can t 
 122
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 believe her at all when she writes about 
 her own ills." 
 
 "I know; and she s not so young as 
 she used to be." 
 
 "She s still having birthdays, I sup 
 pose; when s her next one?" 
 
 The let me see ; the sixth, I think. 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Yes, that s it; the sixth. When is 
 the sixth?" 
 
 "Day before yesterday!" 
 
 "Oh, good heavens! So it was. 
 Is n t that terrible?" 
 
 "It s outrageous. Too late even to 
 telegraph her. Say, Kate, why don t 
 you run out and visit her?" 
 
 "I can t leave the children. Why 
 don t you go, Tom?" 
 
 "I m so infernally busy. That Py- 
 croft case is coming up any day. Why 
 doesn t Jim ever go home? He lives 
 out that way." 
 
 123
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Yes; but he always says he can t 
 leave his patients. And his wife 
 does n t get along very well with her 
 mother-in-law, you know." 
 
 "I won t have my mother called a 
 mother-in-law. Besides, Jim s wife is a 
 well, you know what she is." 
 
 "I know I never could understand 
 Jim s liking her." 
 
 "It s a burning shame, Kate. Here 
 we are, a big family, all alive none of 
 us in jail or the poorhouse; and mother 
 and father have to stick out there alone, 
 year in and year out." 
 
 "What can we do? Dad won t leave 
 his patients. Mother won t leave him." 
 
 "Well, I m going to reform. As 
 soon as I get this Pycroft suit off my 
 hands I m going out there." 
 
 "You ve been saying that for ten 
 years, Tom." 
 
 "I mean it this time." 
 124
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "You ve been saying that for ten 
 years, too." 
 
 "Well, can t we do something about 
 her birthday, at least?" 
 
 "You might telegraph her we just 
 found that the presents hadn t been 
 sent." 
 
 "That s a good idea." 
 
 " I 11 blame it on- Hold the wire till 
 I close the door. Hello! I started to 
 tell you a good scheme I 11 blame it on 
 Martha. I 11 say that I gave her the 
 presents to express and she forgot." 
 
 "Fine!" 
 
 "You get what you want to buy for 
 mother and send it up here, and I 11 see 
 that it is shipped at once." 
 
 "Can t you buy me something to 
 send? I never know what mother 
 wants." 
 
 "But, Tom, I can t get downtown in 
 this storm." 
 
 125
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "You ve got to, Kate. Mother s 
 gone through worse than snow for you." 
 
 "Well, all right. How much shall I 
 spend for you?" 
 
 "Oh, whatever is right. I m rather 
 hard up just now." 
 
 "That s another thing you ve said 
 for the past ten years." 
 
 "I know, and it s always been true. 
 The more I make, the less I have. Well, 
 get whatever strikes you as the right 
 thing. I don t care what it costs. In 
 fact you might splurge a little." 
 
 "That s the way to talk. Why don t 
 you come round to see me?" 
 
 "I ve been meaning to, Kate; but 
 I Ve been so frightfully 
 
 "Yes, so have I. Well, good-by, 
 Tom." 
 
 "Good-by, Kate." 
 
 12B
 
 PART III 
 THE LONELY ONE
 
 THE snow had grown old upon the 
 streets and yards of Carthage. 
 There was no uniformed force to cart it 
 away. People dug grooves in it along 
 their own walks and stumbled or 
 sleighed through the rest of it. 
 
 Now a new snow had fallen on the old, 
 filling up the grooves; and the voice of 
 the snow-shovel was loud in the town. 
 In front of the Anthon home Uncle Ned 
 was working with caution and resting 
 with extravagance. He belonged to the 
 black-and-white sketch the landscape 
 was. He was growing to look more and 
 more like an old grizzled ape with that 
 same wistful look about the mouth. In 
 9 129
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 winter it was safe to say that Uncle Ned 
 was wistful for a live coal. 
 
 He heard the front door open and 
 rather divined than saw Doctor Anthon 
 feeling his way down the slippery steps, 
 like a bather venturing into cold water. 
 With a mighty flurry, the darky com 
 pleted a path to the carriage block, 
 where the old doctor s old white horse 
 stood fetlock-deep in snow and would no 
 more have moved from his allotted post 
 than Casabianca. 
 
 "Eight smaht o snow this mawnin , 
 Doctah." 
 
 "Yes, it is, Uncle Ned. I hope you 11 
 get the path cleared before the next 
 storm comes." 
 
 The old darky whooped with laughter. 
 He was so notoriously lazy that he was 
 proud of it. Nothing flattered him like 
 an allusion to his unreliability. 
 
 The doctor never failed to have his lit- 
 130
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 tie joke on the subject. Pleased as ever 
 with its usual reception, he set his medi 
 cine case in the sleigh, unwrapped the 
 lines from the whipstock, climbed in 
 with elaborate care, fixed the laprobe 
 about him ; then pushed on the lines and 
 remarked "Click, click!" As the old 
 white horse moved off at a fumble-footed 
 jog, the doctor leaned back to wave his 
 hand in farewell to his wife. He could 
 not see so far as her window; but he 
 knew that she would be there in her 
 rocking-chair. And she waved back at 
 him. She could not see him either ; but, 
 seeing a blurring motion and hearing a 
 familiar rumble, she knew that the 
 sleigh had moved off and that he must 
 have waved to her as he had done in 
 fallibly for close on fifty years. 
 
 He was chuckling to himself as con 
 ceitedly as any young jackanapes. On 
 his calendar he had found that morning 
 131
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 a memorandum that it was his wife s 
 birthday. He planned to surprise her 
 nay, to amaze her by remembering it 
 with a gift. 
 
 Unfortunately he neglected to take the 
 memorandum along; and his genius for 
 forgetting effaced all thought of it from 
 his mind before the sleigh had gone two 
 blocks. 
 
 He did not remember it again for five 
 days, when his wife showed him the 
 gorgeous presents from the New York 
 chapter of the children. 
 
 "See what Tom and Kate have sent 
 me for my birthday ! she cried, dancing 
 like a child. 
 
 A mingling of guilt and jealousy 
 moved him to grumble in a low voice : 
 
 "Pretty late sending em, seems to 
 me." 
 
 "Better late than never," she bridled, 
 with a meaning glare. "And, besides, it 
 132
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 wasn t their fault. See Kate says 
 that Martha she s one of their hired 
 girls was given the package to express 
 and forgot all about it." 
 
 The physician s diagnosis was cyn 
 ical: "You don t believe that, do 
 you?" 
 
 "Well, anyway, it was nice of them to 
 take the trouble to think it up. They Ve 
 got enough to worry them without try 
 ing to keep track of my birthdays ! Lord 
 knows 1 they Ve been common enough." 
 
 She made an unheard-of luxury of the 
 remembrances from her son and her 
 daughter. They brightened her prison 
 like flowers thrown through iron bars. 
 
 For the winter was a siege to her. 
 She no longer dared to buffet the winds 
 and plod the drifts. Day in, day out, 
 her world was within doors. She plied 
 about the house, but always brought up 
 in the harbor of the old rocking-chair. 
 133
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Her mind did not stagnate, but she read 
 forever read good books, too. She had 
 been a fountain of ambition for power 
 and learning and substantial achieve 
 ment, but these had found their outlet 
 through her children. Her soul was like 
 a hidden spring whose waters are piped 
 to far cities. 
 
 The children she had conceived and 
 carried under her heart, and borne to 
 the day, and nursed over her heart, 
 and tended, guarded, consoled, cajoled, 
 taught, punished, rewarded, adored and 
 served the children for whom she had 
 done everything, from the most menial 
 task to the most inspired had left her, 
 one by one. They had fled from the old 
 house as if it were a prison ; and if they 
 ever felt homesickness they exercised a 
 most admirable self-control. 
 
 For her each going away from home 
 had been another travail, another sever- 
 134
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ing of a cord fastened to her own veins. 
 Some of her children were themselves 
 fathers and mothers; but none the less 
 they were still and forever flesh of her 
 flesh, heart of her heart. 
 
 She ached for them as they say a 
 shoulder aches for its amputated arm, 
 with an intolerable incompleteness. 
 
 She thought she would die if the win 
 ter outside did not end. The winter 
 within her soul she knew was come to 
 stay, but two winters at once were un 
 endurable. 
 
 And then spring came, with its ecstasy 
 of torment ; and her anguish was bitterer 
 yet. She would have had the winter 
 back again ; for spring came teasingly in, 
 like a pretty, pouting child that edges 
 slowly forward, then darts away, only to 
 sidle a little closer and be off once 
 more. 
 
 At last, spring was everywhere that 
 135
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 old returning flame, that old refurbishing 
 of the world to a brand-new unused 
 beauty, that old creation miracle all 
 afresh; but, though spring could return 
 to her landscape, she could not go out to 
 meet it half-way or answer its incanta 
 tions. She could just play spectator, 
 dim-eyed and envious, like an old actress 
 in a stage-box seeing her best roles 
 played by an upstart. 
 
 136
 
 II 
 
 IN front of her window grew a tree 
 a grave and reverend tree. All 
 winter it had been a stark and gloomy 
 skeleton of bole and bough. Suddenly 
 one morning it was all spotted over 
 with little buds. From these, by some 
 sleight-of-hand, the wizard Spring 
 brought forth uncoiling tendrils; and 
 they flipped out the most ridiculous toy 
 leaves, which by-and-by, as it were sur 
 reptitiously, became real leaves. And 
 soon almost unbeknown the old tree 
 was a huge green cathedral, with intri 
 cate aisles and choirs and chapels, where 
 birds held service from matins to ves 
 pers. 
 
 Everywhere else was the same magi- 
 137
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 clanship. Ugly heaps of dead wire were 
 becoming lilac bushes. The shriveled 
 husks in the tulip bed were stirring with 
 a strange yeast. The yellow blotches 
 left by the retreating snow were thatch 
 ing over with a glistening green. 
 
 Everything that had been dry and 
 bald and sharp was growing supple, 
 clothed upon and gracefully flexile; but 
 no renewing luster burnished her hair, 
 no suppleness brought youth again to 
 her members or made dewy violets of 
 her eyes. She sat by the window, a wit 
 ness. 
 
 Her whole being wished for a personal 
 April in her veins ; her heart supplicated 
 a portion of the universal miracle. She 
 felt bitter that the Almighty Power lav 
 ishing such infinite youth could not have 
 sprinkled her with a few drops of the 
 benison ; but all she said was : 
 
 "Father, I guess spring is here for 
 138
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 sure. The yard needs cleaning some 
 thing terrible." 
 
 "So it does. "We must set Uncle Ned 
 to work." 
 
 She superintended the enormous task 
 from her window, opening it now and 
 then to call out some suggestion. 
 
 From her eyry she watched the calen 
 dar of the birds unrolling in due rota 
 tion. Surely that bluebird leaping into 
 the reopening arena was the same azure 
 herald that had run on ahead of how 
 many pageants! And she would have 
 sworn that she remembered that prema 
 ture robin. He flaunted the same rusty 
 waistcoat on the same aldermanic 
 paunch and drew down the corners of his 
 mouth with the same disgust as he went 
 prospecting about the soggy, unkempt 
 lawn. 
 
 Then the birds came pouring in as if 
 the town were another Oklahoma opened 
 139
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 on signal. A winged horde of home 
 steaders swept down on the silent trees 
 and eaves, and the air was alive with 
 claim-staking, claim-jumping, mob jus 
 tice, lynching, race war, class hatred 
 and the milder activities of flirtation and 
 romance. 
 
 The old tree by the window was once 
 more chosen by a young couple. They 
 disdained to rent the ready-made man 
 sion of a former season and built afresh 
 on another bough, taking their material 
 where they found it and climbing up and 
 down aerial ladders from dawn to dusk. 
 The man of the family busied himself 
 chiefly as critic and supervisor. His 
 squaw did the heavy labor. 
 
 By-and-by the loose straws of the 
 neighborhood were a nest, with a very 
 solemn-looking matron almost always at 
 home. In the few intervals of her ab 
 sence, Mrs. Anthon could see a cluster 
 140
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 of round shapes, very large for jewels, 
 very small for eggs. 
 
 The young husband won her respect 
 by his fidelity and his gallantry in bring 
 ing his lady her meals. This seemed to 
 be his one excuse for existence, his one 
 industry birds not having yet reached 
 the social state where one goes to a 
 restaurant or telephones and orders in 
 his meals already predigested. 
 
 The bride in this Anthon tree ab 
 sorbed an amazing amount of provender 
 and consumed appalling quantities of 
 bird spaghetti, which her man brought 
 her looped up in his beak conveniently 
 for pushing down her gullet. Mean 
 while she, too, had not been idle ; for she 
 was pretending to be an oven and she 
 was keeping as warm as she could for 
 the sake of the hardshell children be 
 neath her. She could not give them 
 blood or milk as other mothers do; she 
 141
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 could only be a furnace to them while 
 her husband was her most ardent stoker. 
 The consequence of this mode of liv 
 ing, as the watcher at the window ex 
 pected, but found no less absorbing, was 
 the eventual presence of several more 
 gullets to stoke. Now the paterfamilias 
 was busier than ever. He plainly felt 
 his importance; and he gracefully con 
 cealed his undoubted disappointment at 
 the grotesque little monstrosities his 
 wife had educed from those exquisite 
 jewels he had bought her. As for the 
 mother, she was unspeakably conceited, 
 and with no little reason ; for had she not 
 contributed to the song of the world a 
 number of additions, and demonstrated 
 that there was not a bad egg in the lot? 
 And she doubtless hoped if birds are 
 ever foolish-wise enough to hope ! that 
 they would turn out a credit to the fam- 
 
 fly- 
 
 142
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 She was plainly determined that while 
 they were under her care they should not 
 lack for food, warmth or protection. 
 To her great relief, and their father s, 
 they grew their own clothes; but their 
 bringing-up required endless attention, 
 numberless battles, alarms, quarrels. 
 And there must have been much fatigue 
 and harrowing anxiety. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon could not but see the 
 closeness of the parallel with her own 
 case. She, too, had been an instrument 
 for the continuance of her species. She, 
 too, had been urged on to every endur 
 ance and sacrifice by some inner and 
 outer compulsion of instinct. She, too, 
 had been amazed and enraptured by the 
 marvelous things she had given the 
 world little animals that would grow to 
 be human beings like herself if pro 
 tected and fed. 
 
 She had protected and fed them; and 
 143
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 now they were of full stature, well and 
 honorable and prospering. She re 
 joiced that such success had been 
 granted to her private miracles. Other 
 women had seen their children die of 
 malnutrition or illness or accident run 
 over by wagons or trains, or drowned. 
 Other women had seen their children 
 taken away to prisons. None of these 
 horrors had marred her brood. She felt 
 that, after all, she had been blessed be 
 yond her deserts and she rebuked herself 
 for complaining of her loneliness. She 
 bent her head to murmur a prayer of 
 gratitude. 
 
 Her prayer was cut short by the mad, 
 clamorous panic of all the birds in the 
 neighborhood. Birds went from tree to 
 tree as if hurled from slings. They 
 rocked the branches with their own ex 
 citement. Everywhere birds could be 
 144
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 seen, with heads up and beaks scissoring 
 as they barked for help. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon leaned out to find the 
 cause of the excitement. She saw her 
 old cat prowling up the tree, lost among 
 the leafy branches, and searching 
 searching. Fate had tried to conceal 
 him by naming him Tom and he had 
 grown almost too lazy to purr; but 
 spring had quickened the pulse of the old 
 fireside loafer until he thought he was a 
 tiger in a jungle. Such attitudinizing, 
 such voluptuous sense of power, such 
 melodramatic villainy ! He was so fero 
 cious that he frightened himself and 
 kept looking back to see if his other self 
 were not about to spring on him. He 
 stalked the twisted streets of that tree as 
 if he were a man-eater raiding a village 
 in Bengal. He was not very much 
 afraid of the birds whetting their beaks 
 10 145
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 on the branches and shooting themselves 
 in his direction. And then he heard the 
 sharp, shrill tones of his mistress in 
 most unusual wrath: 
 
 "Tom! Come out of there! What 
 do you mean by Tom! you Thomas! 
 Come right to me. You come away 
 from there this instant!" 
 
 He wavered mutinously. He felt two 
 natures struggling within him. All the 
 ravening pride of the genus felis wres 
 tled with the effete acquirements of the 
 house cat. Habit won, as usual. The 
 disguised tiger reverted to old Tom and 
 slid clutchingly down the tree. Too bit 
 terly cowed even to strike back at the 
 emboldened fowl whizzing like shrapnel 
 about his lowered head, he slunk through 
 a cellar window and hid his blushes in 
 the coalhole, meditating on the evils of 
 these degenerate times. 
 
 The birds, ignoring the superavian 
 146
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 power that had intervened miraculously, 
 congratulated themselves upon a bril 
 liant victory and returned to the works 
 of peace. They said no prayers of 
 thanks; they made no sacrifices, set up 
 no votive tablets, established no holiday. 
 If they drew any lesson from the cam 
 paign at all it was that cats would 
 weaken if yelled at loudly and charged 
 at with enough appearance of sincerity. 
 
 It never occurred to them to resolve 
 that, since the prospect of a cat eating 
 their young had so wrung their hearts, 
 they would never eat anybody s else 
 young. They did not become vegeta 
 rians, rather than harrow up the souls 
 of sensitive grasshoppers, and hysterical 
 earthworms. They ate all of them they 
 could find, or kidnapped them to feed 
 their young withal. 
 
 No more did Mrs. Anthon moralize on 
 the event. She did not care for insect 
 147
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 melody and she did not know that earth 
 worms have a dual nature and are dou 
 bly amorous. She simply rejoiced with 
 the gladness humans feel when they have 
 rescued a songbird from the great si 
 lence; and she resolved to make sure 
 that Tom Beelzebub was locked up in 
 doors till the tenants of that nest had 
 raised their babies to full birdhood. 
 She would be their police. 
 
 It had seemed as if all the birds in the 
 world had chosen Carthage for this 
 year s estivation. But there were birds 
 enough to fit out many another Northern 
 spring and in a certain garden in the 
 outer rim of Paris there was also a tree 
 also with a bird honeymoon in it. 
 
 Near a window overlooking that gar 
 den a far-flown young American wife 
 sat day after day and dreamed of 
 Carthaginian springs and of future 
 springs. She watched her birds with a 
 148
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 strange sense of kinship, a sympathetic 
 anxiety from her own nest. Emily did 
 not gad about Paris these days. She 
 never went out at all, but just waited for 
 her wonderful Stephen to come home 
 and for the coming home of a more won 
 derful Stephen Second she hoped it 
 would be another Stephen, though he 
 wanted or said he wanted, a Junior 
 Emilums. 
 
 She meant to write to her mother and 
 tell her the great and unheard-of mira 
 cle-to-be; but she had a greater genius 
 for postponing tasks now than ever. 
 And she decided to save the news for a 
 glorious cablegram. 
 
 For once Emily s neglect was unwit 
 tingly kind, and her mother s loneliness 
 was not shot through with the terror she 
 would have felt, knowing that her little 
 girl was marching into the valley of the 
 greater agony, and among strangers on 
 149
 
 T.HE OLD NEST 
 
 the other side of the world. That 
 knowledge might have shod her old feet 
 with resolution for the long journey she 
 had counted impossible. 
 
 150
 
 Ill 
 
 THE Chicago papers reach Carthage 
 in the late forenoon and the in 
 habitants depend upon them as their 
 telescopes to the great outer universe. 
 Doctor Anthon read the Carthage morn 
 ing sheet to find out who was on "the 
 sick list" or what the town council had 
 decided about repairing the crossings 
 on Main Street. Mrs. Anthon read it to 
 see who was at whose party last night. 
 She rarely glanced at the metropolitan 
 journals. 
 
 That noon, as she was retailing to her 
 husband the exciting Waterloo of the 
 birds and Napoleon Tom, he listened 
 with only half an ear, his attention 
 riveted rather on the news from the 
 151
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 larger world. He turned a page surrep 
 titiously and gasped : 
 
 "Land of Goshen! Here s our boy s 
 picture ! 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "What has he done now?" 
 
 For a moment the mother s heart was 
 clutched with an anguish lest some great 
 misfortune had fastened on her child. 
 She stared at the portrait, leaning hard 
 on her husband s shoulder. Darby and 
 Joan would hardly have known this ma 
 ture gentleman for their child if the 
 portrait had not been labeled. 
 
 With trembling forefinger the father 
 ran among the headlines searching for 
 what shocking scandal might have in 
 volved their pride. His name was not 
 among them as a distinguished mur 
 derer, embezzler or divorce. At last 
 they ran him down. 
 152
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 "Here it is: President Appoints 
 New Yorker to Vacancy on Supreme 
 Bench. With quivering lips and a 
 heart that beat as if he had run hard and 
 long, the father read how this ultimate 
 laurel for an American lawyer had been 
 laid upon the brow of the eminent mem 
 ber of the bar known among his friends 
 and rivals as "Lucky Anthon." 
 
 The parents of all this grandeur sat 
 back and stared at each other. Their 
 first emotion was a thrill of joy at the 
 joy this would mean to their child him 
 self. 
 
 "He always said, you know," the 
 mother laughed "he always said that 
 for a lawyer the supreme bench was 
 what the college of cardinals is to a 
 priest. And now he s there!" 
 
 "And he s my son!" the old doctor 
 cried. 
 
 "Your son!" the mother stormed, 
 153
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 with an almost scandalous implication. 
 He s all mine! You wanted him to be 
 a doctor. I made you send him to the 
 law school. 
 
 "Well, I paid his expenses anyway," 
 the doctor grumbled, retreating to the 
 usual meekness of an American hus 
 band. 
 
 "Yes, but he s his mother s own 
 boy!" she repeated with eyes flashing 
 like an exultant girl s. 
 
 Their rapture was interrupted by the 
 telephone. A neighbor who took the 
 same Chicago paper, was howling con 
 gratulations and basking in the radiance. 
 The mother repeated the conversation 
 as soon as she could release herself 
 from the telephone : 
 
 "It s just like her. She took most of 
 
 the credit to herself: I always said he 
 
 would be a great man some day, she 
 
 said; and it shows what Carthage can 
 
 154
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 do when she tries. As if this old town 
 had anything to do with it. The glory 
 belongs entirely to the boy himself." 
 
 "And to his mother," the husband 
 added, as if he laid a posy at her feet. 
 
 The telephone rang again; and the 
 doctor saw a sudden flush overrun his 
 wife s cheek as she answered some un 
 expected question guiltily. 
 
 Why did n t we tell you ? Er why, 
 you see er of course, we knew it long 
 ago; but er those things are so con 
 fidential the President didn t want 
 anybody to he wanted to announce it 
 first himself the President did." 
 
 She sank into her chair in confusion. 
 "What do you suppose she had the im 
 pudence to insinuate? that we didn t 
 know about it ourselves until we saw it 
 in the paper ! The idea ! 
 
 "Well, of course," the doctor mum 
 bled, bashful before the truth "of 
 155
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 course, as a matter of fact, we didn t." 
 "Well, what of it I" 
 
 Perhaps, in view of the small share he 
 had been allotted in the son s soul, the 
 father felt justified in venturing a criti 
 cism: 
 
 "He might have telegraphed." 
 
 The mother rounded on him like a 
 leopardess whose cub has been threat 
 ened: 
 
 "Don t you suppose that a Supreme 
 Justice of the United States has more 
 important things to think of than send 
 ing telegrams to a couple of old fogies 
 like us?" 
 
 "It doesn t matter about me I have 
 no feelings to hurt; but he might have 
 thought of his mother. 
 
 "He does think of her. Didn t he 
 send me a perfectly beautiful birthday 
 present?" 
 
 "Five days late." 
 156
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 They spatted like a pair of sulky chil 
 dren; and the mother of an associate 
 justice of the United States Supreme 
 Court swept out of the room with a su 
 preme contempt for the mere village 
 physician who dared to criticize her 
 master work. 
 
 Once upstairs, however, in the old 
 rocker, which squealed so lonely a tune 
 and had seen so many lonely hours, the 
 truth of the neglect came down on her 
 like a bludgeon. She did not blame her 
 boy her heart always issued him ple 
 nary indulgences in advance; but she 
 blamed the mechanism of a world where 
 the mother must endure the bitterest 
 pains and dangers of her children, in 
 order that they may find their raptures 
 and their triumphs elsewhere. The 
 thorns for her for others the roses. 
 
 Her sad eyes roved from the new nest 
 of the new family to the deserted hut 
 157
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 of last year s birds. Like a warning 
 legend, a signboard, a symbol, it hung 
 within full view of the fresher habitation 
 and no bird heeded it. 
 
 Yet just one bird-generation ago it 
 was builded with equal frenzy by a like 
 young couple; it was the cradle of 
 a brood of fledglings, too, watched 
 through a precarious childhood to the 
 time of flight by a mother and father 
 equally fond and fanatic. 
 
 From this same window how many 
 hours she had watched over the destinies 
 of that little family! How well she re 
 membered that big day when the first 
 of the sprawling youngsters had gripped 
 the sill of the nest with anxious fingers 
 and looked forth longingly upon the 
 world; had teetered there and slumped 
 back, afraid to adventure; had stag 
 gered again to the great jumping-off 
 place and regarded the perilous sea of 
 158
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 air with terror, yet with desire and 
 finally, with a now-or-never, do-or-die 
 gulp, had stepped off into space. Some 
 how instinct and air pressure and long 
 grass had broken its fall, and the awk 
 ward aviator arrived on earth without 
 disaster. 
 
 What a cataclysm it had been to that 
 father and mother and the sympathetic 
 neighbors ! What mad shrieks and 
 chatters of advice and dashes to the 
 rescue what appeals and wailings and 
 warnings! How that bird mother and 
 father must have longed for hands and 
 arms to lift their prodigal with ! 
 
 Mrs. Anthon had watched the desper 
 ate lunges and tumbles of the homesick 
 flyaway. She had gone out in the yard 
 to help; but the chick was afraid of her 
 and the parents menaced her very eyes 
 with their beaks. To escape her, the lit 
 tle bird had managed even to hoist him- 
 159
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 self up to a sapling and from that to 
 swoop to another. And then she lost 
 him and never saw him again. 
 
 The parents continued to feed the re 
 mainder of the flock, but another day 
 saw their second child depart. In the 
 lonely nest there remained one only in 
 fant. Its parents ministrations plainly 
 did not suffice. It was more conserva 
 tive and waited for abundant strength. 
 For two days it waved its wings up and 
 down as if training for a great event, 
 and then it sailed away. The nest was 
 empty empty forever after. The par 
 ents sailed away, too. It was only hu 
 mans that hung about a deserted nest ! 
 
 That was a year ago, just about the 
 time her own last fledgling, Emily, had 
 gazed into the world too deep and 
 too long and flitted with unreturning 
 wings. And here, just a few boughs be 
 yond the ruins of a once busy home, 
 160
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 this other home was full of life and de 
 votion, of parental care and filial trust. 
 
 Mrs. Anthon shook her head over the 
 impending desolation of this little Troy. 
 She thrust up the window-sash, leaned 
 out on the ledge and mused upon the fu 
 ture knew how it would mimic the past. 
 Her heart called out to the mother bird, 
 though her lips hardly moved : 
 
 "Don t love your children too much, 
 little bird. They 11 fly away. They 11 
 leave you. They re only waiting till 
 their wings are strong enough. That s 
 all they re waiting for. That s all 
 you re feeding them for. They 11 leave 
 you; they will. The day is coming. 
 Your children will leave you as mine 
 left me. Poor little mother, you ve 
 kept them all warm and dry, and kept 
 the rain and the wind from them 
 and fed them so lovingly ! You d give 
 your life for them ; but they 11 fly away. 
 11 161
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Don t love them too much they 11 
 fly off. They 11 never come home. 
 They 11 forget the way back. They 11 
 forget you. Poor little mother, you 11 
 lose them soon. They 11 all fly away 
 all all fly away!" 
 
 162
 
 IV 
 
 THE whole afternoon the mother 
 nursed her lonely grief by the win 
 dow. Her husband had his patients, his 
 errands of importance, helping children 
 into the world and keeping olders from 
 slipping out of it. He was a man sent 
 for, begged for, needed. His work was 
 unending. 
 
 She had been a fruitful mother while 
 she could, and now she was without 
 career or ambition. She looked out 
 across that part of the town she could 
 see from her window. Every roof was 
 bereaved of children. Other towns got 
 them called away the bravest and the 
 most ambitious. Other mothers were in 
 her plight. 
 
 163
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 She could not blame her children for 
 leaving. She had left her own home and 
 her own home town when her husband 
 left his. She had deserted her parents. 
 They had deserted theirs and they 
 theirs on back into the days when the 
 nation was a wilderness, beyond the 
 ocean into foreign countries, where for 
 ever backward the procession could be 
 traced children always leaving home, 
 leaving home, leaving home. That was 
 human history; and that eternal serial 
 of heartache and farewell was the slow 
 spelling of the word " progress" across 
 the map of the world. 
 
 The word "progress" was poor con 
 solation to the victims of it. Mrs. An- 
 thon took no comfort in giving her own 
 heart as one more red brick in the end 
 less pavement men march on to unend 
 ing ambition. 
 
 164
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 History meant nothing real to her. 
 This new accession to the supreme court 
 of the supreme republic meant nothing 
 to her. His views on constitutional in 
 terpretations meant nothing to her. 
 She could not have understood one of 
 her own child s briefs or decisions. All 
 she felt was that her boy was far 
 away farther away than ever now; 
 that she meant nothing to him; she was 
 not worth a telegram in the hour of his 
 glory. He had forgotten that without 
 her he would never have been at all; 
 without her he would have died a thou 
 sand times. She did not blame him ; she 
 blamed herself, because somehow she 
 had failed to be important to him al 
 ways. 
 
 The shame was so bitter that she 
 would not reveal it to her own husband, 
 much less to the neighbors. She lied 
 165
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 glibly and nobly to all who asked her if 
 she had heard the news from her son 
 himself. 
 
 The ordeal was too much. A fever in 
 vaded her veins, her forehead burned, 
 her heart fluttered like a bird in a cat s 
 clutch. If she could have cried it would 
 have helped her. Tears would have 
 blessed her parched eyes like a shower 
 upon a desert; but the tears would not 
 come. 
 
 Her husband sent her to bed, got 
 medicines for her, wanted to sit up with 
 her. She would have none of his medi 
 cines or of him. His father heart was 
 hurt nearly as deeply as hers ; but, man 
 like, he was all for rebuking their neg 
 lectful son. She drove him to his own 
 room and lay supine and unimaginably 
 useless. She felt as useless and cast 
 away as an old broomhandle in the 
 world s back yard. 
 
 166
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 It was late when sleep arrived upon 
 her hot eyelids but it was a false sleep, 
 a usurper, full of nightmares and all too 
 vivid torments, whence she struggled to 
 waken and woke only to wish herself 
 asleep again. 
 
 Deep in the abysm of the night, true 
 slumber fell about her and her griefs 
 were erased from her benumbed soul. 
 After a time, when she was a little 
 rested, dreams began to throng about 
 her once more; but they were beautiful 
 dreams. 
 
 She was a young mother again, mend 
 ing things for little children to wear 
 through again. The old dead nest of a 
 house was repeopled with her young. 
 They laughed, sang, hooted, quarreled, 
 fought, shrieked, banged the piano, 
 broke the needle in the sewing machine, 
 fell down and wailed, got up and giggled. 
 
 Wherever she moved, they clung to 
 167
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 her skirts, sprawled in her way, de 
 manded her services, fought for her lap, 
 battled over who loved her best. The 
 silent house was fairly shaken with the 
 chaos of voices. "I m hungry! Can t 
 I have a piece of bread and jam? How 
 do you spell "What s the pro- 
 
 nounsation of How many times 
 
 does seventy-six go into fifty-eight? 
 Mama, make Frank let go of my hair! 
 Mama, Emily took my chewing-gum! 
 Mama, he hit me ! Kate hit me first ! I 
 did not ! You did so ! Mama, can I go 
 skating, swimming, to the circus, to the 
 strawberry festival, sleigh-riding, ball 
 game, picnic " 
 
 Among the children was one who bore 
 the least possible resemblance to a jus 
 tice of the Supreme Court. She missed 
 him suddenly from the riot. She won 
 dered where he was. She heard a wild 
 outcry. It was his voice. He was in 
 168
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 danger. She ran, eager to give her life 
 to save him from any harm ; and, as she 
 ran, she cried: 
 
 "Yes, honey! I m coming! Don t 
 be afraid!" 
 
 Abruptly she was awal^e. Her eyes 
 saw nothing but blackness all about. 
 Her shivering fingers found the bed. 
 She made out a little night-light breath 
 ing fitfully behind the cover of the sew 
 ing machine. The window-casements 
 were filled with the ink of utter gloom. 
 
 She realized that once more the whis 
 tle of the four-o clock express had 
 pierced her sleep, shuttled into and in 
 terwoven with her dream. 
 
 Her children were vanished from her. 
 Her little Tower of Babel was cursed 
 with annihilation. She was only an old 
 woman, alone ; and that mute black hour 
 before dawn loomed between her and the 
 light. 
 
 169
 
 SHE fell back shivering upon her pil 
 low, her lean fingers twitching at 
 the covers and her heart abandoned to 
 abject desolation. Neither sleep nor 
 tears brought mercy to her staring eyes ; 
 she was the shattered victim of the Jug 
 gernaut of Time. 
 
 She said to herself, with acrid irony: 
 "I am the mother of a supreme justice; 
 and this is the justice of the world. My 
 crime is that I was a mother ; my punish 
 ment is exile on this desert island in this 
 lonely sea ! 
 
 There was a faint murmur, hardly 
 more than a shuffling of the silence. It 
 grew less remote, less vague. It became 
 170
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 a rumble of wheels, a thudding of 
 horse s hoofs. 
 
 "The milkman is early this morning," 
 she thought. The rumble was a clatter. 
 It turned into the street before her 
 house. A man cried: "Whoa!" The 
 noise stopped. A carriage door opened. 
 Footsteps quickened along the walk, 
 stamped up the steps. The doorbell 
 was pulled; the still house rang with 
 alarm. 
 
 "Somebody for the doctor," she 
 thought. "Too bad they can t let him 
 sleep." 
 
 After an age of delay she heard him 
 strike a match in his room, saw a sliver 
 of light under her door, heard him 
 hastily slipping into his clothes, lighting 
 the gas in the hall, stumbling drowsily 
 down the steps, unlocking the door. 
 
 She heard his voice and another 
 man s. There seemed to be some excite- 
 171
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 ment. Probably some young father 
 begging her husband to come at once. 
 The voices were hurrying up the stairs. 
 That was strange! There was a knock 
 at her door. 
 
 "What is it?" she called. 
 
 Open the door!" her husband de 
 manded. 
 
 "What s the matter?" she gasped as 
 she pushed her feet into her slippers and 
 her arms into a wrapper. 
 
 "Open the door!" 
 
 She groped through the dark and 
 turned the key ; flung open the door anx 
 iously. A tall stranger rushed at her, 
 caught her in his arms and cried : 
 
 "Mother! Mother!" 
 
 Lips covered her cheeks with kisses 
 and, finding her lips, smothered her 
 questions. Before she could speak, she 
 knew that this strange, violent person 
 was one of the associate justices of the 
 172
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Supreme Court of the United States. 
 He told her so himself and added : 
 
 "As soon as I knew it for sure, I 
 jumped on the first train to bring you 
 the news myself. I hope you haven t 
 heard it. Have you?" 
 
 For all her panic of joy, she remem 
 bered to be this overgrown child s 
 mother, and to say what he so wanted to 
 hear: "No. I never dreamed of it. I 
 can t believe it!" 
 
 And her frowsy husband, grinning 
 like an overgrown lout, for once had tact 
 enough to perjure himself like a gentle 
 man, and gasp : 
 
 * Supreme Court ! Associate Justice ! 
 The President appointed you! Mother, 
 did you hear that ! 
 
 Nothing would do but that the prodi 
 gal magistrate should light the gas in 
 his mother s room and make her crawl 
 under cover. Then he stuffed the pil- 
 173
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 lows about her, and sat on the edge of 
 the bed and told her the whole story, 
 more or less as she had read it. 
 
 "I was so afraid I would n t succeed," 
 he explained, returning to childhood 
 again in the presence of his forebears. 
 "I didn t dare write you about it. 
 Then, when the news came from the 
 President himself, I started to telegraph 
 you. I wrote a dozen telegrams and 
 tore them all up. Finally I said: 
 Good Lord ! this is something I ve got 
 to tell her myself! I was pretty tired 
 anyway; so I just threw a few things 
 into a trunk, hopped into a taxicab and 
 barely caught the train. I ve been gig 
 gling like a baby all the way. The por 
 ter thought I was crazy. But I wanted 
 to surprise you; and I did didn t I? 
 -did n t I, Mother?" 
 
 She only squeezed his hand in both of 
 hers for reply and one or two tears came 
 174
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 out to see what was going on. They 
 shone like smiles in her adoring eyes. 
 He ran on boyishly: 
 
 "It s a shame to wake you up at this 
 hour, but I couldn t wait for a later 
 train. I ve come to stay for a week or 
 two and just visit with you. And then 
 I m going to bundle you and dad up and 
 take you to Washington for the big re 
 ception the President is going to give 
 me. I told him all about you when we 
 were talking over the appointment. I 
 told him that you were the most wonder 
 ful mother in the world and you had al 
 ways said I d get to the supreme bench 
 some day; and he said: We 11 have to 
 see if we can t make her a prophetess. 
 You re lucky to have her alive ! 
 That s what he said. You 11 come 
 won t you? You ve got to! You will 
 won t you?" 
 
 She stared at him as if he were a mi- 
 175
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 rage. She clung to him as if he were 
 salvation. Her eyes were drenched but 
 her lips were happy. Yet all she said 
 was: 
 
 "Oh, my blessed little boy, I could 
 never go so far." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you could," he insisted. 
 "And I m going to get all the children 
 there for a family reunion. Anybody 
 that does n t give bonds to come will be 
 sent for by a United States marshal. 
 They 11 all be there, I promise you that. 
 I ll extradite that scamp Emily for you. 
 And when I m on the Supreme Bench, 
 I m going to treat any child who does 
 not repay his mother s love in full and 
 with compound interest as a defaulter 
 of the first degree, and a home-wrecker 
 of the worst sort. And I m going to 
 sentence myself first. You glorious, 
 beautiful mother, you 11 promise to be 
 there, won t you? You ve got to! 
 176
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 Hasn t she, Dad? Isn t she beautiful! 
 My mother ! 
 
 For answer, she simply clutched his 
 hand and shook it with a strange fierce 
 ness ; and she shook all over, all through, 
 until the tears were flung from her eye 
 lids to his cheek. More tears took their 
 place. They came gushing and flood 
 ing; and she bent to her son s broad 
 shoulder and sobbed. 
 
 Her tears were not the only ones shed ; 
 but they seemed to make the room glad 
 and to sweeten the air like a May rain 
 scattering its largess on a drooping rose- 
 tree. 
 
 That is all. This has not been much 
 of a story to read not much plot, not 
 much adventure; and yet, if you who 
 read it should be moved to remember 
 piously your mother if she is dead ; or 
 
 if she lives, if you were impelled to sit 
 12 177
 
 THE OLD NEST 
 
 down and write her a letter or send her 
 a long telegram saying, "I am well, I 
 am thinking of you and I want you to 
 know how much I love you!" or, above 
 all, if you should be persuaded to go 
 home and see her why, then, this story 
 would have given more real joy than 
 perhaps any other story ever written. 
 
 THE END 
 
 178
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000118018