THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE BY MABEL HOTCHKISS ROBBINS THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPTBIOHT 1916 BY MABEL HOTCHKISS ROBBINS THE PILGRIM PRESS CONTENTS CHAPTER *** I WHAT'S IN A NAME? 3 II THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING ... 25 III THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK . . 45 IV ADVENTURES OF A " GENIUS " . . .59 V ADVENTURES AT SCHOOL AND ELSEWHERE . 83 VI LIGHTS AND SHADOWS .... 91 VII TROUBLES MULTIPLY FOR OUR HEROINE . 109 VIII ELIZABETH RECEIVES "A NINVITATION" . 125 IX OUR HEROINE is " TAKEN IN " . . . 141 X ELIZABETH DONS " SASSIETY TOGS " . .155 XI ELIZABETH WRITES FOR THE " SUN " . .169 XII ELIZABETH BASKS IN FAME'S LIGHT . .181 XIII A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY . . . .189 XIV " A COAL OF THE INFERNO "... 205 XV Miss DRURY'S ROMANCE .... 215 XVI JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT . . 233 XVII " HONORABLE MENTION " 259 XVIII LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM . . . .281 XIX THE MOUNT OF VISION 309 2229051 WHAT'S IN A NAME? WHAT'S IN A NAME? "Thar mus' be somethin' awful chillin' 'bout that thar firs' yell they give," said Marthy Prouty awesomely, hovering over the chip fire in the kitchen stove. "I hain't never heerd it no more'n twicet in my life, an' both times, though 'twas a fur throw from bein' chilly, I felt like 'twar cold enough t' freeze the har off' n a dog." "Gimme that sarcer o' lard," responded Mrs. O'Hara, noncommittally, indicating with her head, since both of her hands were occu- pied, "an' thin whin ye've hunted me up a bit o' cloth fer bundling it in, ye kin go on back t' bed. Ye'r more throuble'n y'er worth, anny- how," she added amiably. Marthy, who never absorbed a complete idea with any degree of alacrity, lifted the saucer from the back of the stove with slovenly disregard for her nightgown sleeves, and stood [3] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE staring dumbly while the older woman per- formed feats that would have raised the hair of a trained nurse. Mrs. O'Hara, it happened, was not a trained nurse. It is doubtful if she had ever heard of the genus. More, Modern Science as concerns the child, would have passed serenely over her head. But she had "had ten of her own," which was ample qualification in Cull Prairie. "Guess I will," said Marthy, upon whom the final injunction had begun to dawn "go on back t' bed, I mean. They got me out 'fore the crows gaped, s' help me! Beats all, how flighty folks is with their first, don't it? An' the younger they be the scar'der they git. (She's no more'n twenty-one, las' birthday, I hear.) Workin' out, a body's got t' be glad o' the little critters, though. I expect I'd never git a job 'thout 'em." She yawned profoundly, making of her mouth a capacious red cavern. Everything about Marthy was big and red, from her round, artless face to the voluminous flannel petticoat which she had hastily slipped on WHAT'S IN A NAME over her nightgown, and which she held help- lessly clutched at either side, in her thick, raw- looking fingers. In the course of her progress to the attic stairway, she stopped short, and peeped fearfully into the chamber of mys- teries. It was so still, it sent her heart into her mouth, but a slight agitation of the thin spread with the weak movement of a pair of round, pale, freckled girlish arms on the bed reassured her. "Glory!" she observed absently aloud, "they look like they hadn't hardly no more'n lost their grip on some pink an' grinnin' doll- critter!" Half way up the stairs, she paused again. (Marthy always paused with an idea.) "Glory," she reiterated dully, "s* help me, they do!" The newly-made mother seemed to have heard the words, for her rigid lips relaxed smilingly. Her crucifixion achieved, the dread, set-lipped, pain-wrung hours ticked off, she lay lapped in infinite weakness and peace, only folding her hands at intervals, by a habit of months, to pray that the baby might be [5] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE healthy and strong yes, and beautiful, she added definitely. By beautiful she meant ex- quisitely formed and soft-hued and dainty as a rose. She asked boldly. When one has lately reached down to the dim and doubtful borders of the Shadow Valley to kindle a tiny life-flame in the dark, one is justified perhaps in certain prayers. But they sap one's strength for all that. The mother of the chief mystery had just folded her hands for the third time, when the weakness had blotted out the prayer, and left her with only a brief, unaccounted- for space in her memory, the first sapping of her consciousness by illness in all her strong young life. When next she began to take account of things, the room's two paper shades were flap- ping against the window casings with the lap- ping sound of soft, hungry tongues, each little puff of wind that crossed the sills tangy with mignonette mignonette that she suddenly remembered planting in a very careful and very amateurish plat about the kitchen-garden in a time that, in the face of this new and really important epoch, seemed somehow very [6] WHAT'S IN A NAME trivial, and very far away; a circle of giddy white moths fluttered about the deep-yellow flower of the still dimly burning night-lamp; a sleepy sparrow just outside began a note, persistent, naive, questioning; the inner air was redolent of something keen and medicinal, and from the sitting-room beyond came the subdued sound of Mrs. O'Hara's voice and another. She dozed then, in snatches, dreamfully, and was not entirely sure of any sensation, save that after a blurred and confused interval that might have been hours or only moments, there was a very consciously suppressed foot- fall on the bare floor, and a wee body, a very miracle in its littleness, was laid beside her, the velvety wrinkles of the folded neck brush- ing her forearm with the creepy feeling of a sheathed paw. " 'Tis a gur-rl, darlint, th' saints aise ye," said Mrs. O'Hara, hastily and puffily. Next door, her own brood, early awakened, clamored for their breakfasts with clamorings that were beginning to make themselves heard throughout the neighborhood. [7] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Shure," she went on, "an' if ye do be nadin' me agin' ye hov but t' sind." She wiped her wet forehead in retreat with her faded rag of an apron, through the holes of which the darker stuff of her wrapper showed in dingy black islands. "An' ramim- ber if there's anny thing yer afther wantin'- she waved her hand comprehensively. Maggie O'Hara never recognized limitations of any sort. She had emerged from forty-odd years of biting poverty with a rotund figure and a spirit so lavish that it was hard to remember that she had nothing more substantial than good-will to give. In transit, she glanced swiftly over her shoulder, and crossed her sag- ging breast with a reverent gesture, which was her way of expressing her appreciation of the perfection with which the tiny head fitted into the crotch of the round young arm. There are women who don their mother- hood like a sightly and substantial gar- ment made to their measure, and others upon whom it falls like the flimsiest and most illy proportioned robe of chance. The girl mother on the bed adorned hers; she was as much a [8] WHAT'S IN A NAME queen in it as if a royal circlet lay on her loosened yellow hair. It bewildered her, and filled her heart, and suffused her eyes, but when she opened her lips to say something perhaps of her gratitude to Mrs. O'Hara, the wind took a second fling at the window shade nearest her, admitting a thin stream of the morning light, and revealing the real baby in contrast to the prayer baby a contrast so strong as to all but take her breath. In that moment the prayer baby disap- peared forever as in a mist. The real baby, poor little blue-nosed morsel, lay still on her back, her wee, ridiculous mouth nuzzling hun- grily, her red, clenched fists pawing the air with ineffectual searchings. She had not cried yet, but the desperate puckering of her crumpled, indeterminate features betrayed that she would, very shortly, unless her blind and feeble searchings resulted in something tangible and satisfying. A man who had been banished to outer darkness during the ordeal, and who had since returned to the scene of his banishment by awesome degrees, got up doubtfully from the [9] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE foot of the bed in the half light, and stood over mother and babe with a look of silent wonder. He was of medium height, slender build, a mild brown as to hair and eyes; and stress of feeling had washed his clean-shaven olive skin ghastly clear of color, but he gave still in spite of all an impression of physical vigor, being in truth of a sinewy strength in every toil- developed fibre of him a strength that had seemed only a miserable, useless, dragging weight in this great hour of paternity. His wife, her eyes yet on the red and wrinkled scrap of face, smiled weakly, her lashes sweeping the whiteness of her cheeks. The maternal prejudice is a force not to be lightly reckoned with. "She has the forehead of a genius, David," she said confidently, bridging in a breath the gap between the real child and the other. Her voice, pain-hoarse, rasped unnaturally, but there was no trace of recent disappointment in it. "The height and fullness, you know," she was finishing speculatively. David shifted his position with a motion of acquiescence, and bending down, slipped his [10] WHAT'S IN A NAME hand soothingly over hers in agreement, but he was glad that she could not get a better view of his face into which he was unable to summon so much confidence at a moment's notice. They remained quietly so for several mo- ments. The bond between the two, grippingly strong, defiant of human analysis, was yet as simple, as instinctive a thing, as might have existed between two mated and consulting her- mit thrushes. "I I've been wondering what name would be best for for a genius," she continued feebly after a time, her hand moving under his flutteringly as in the days of their precipitate courtship. "We never had one in our family, did you?" with a little anticipatory thrill. . . . "Something high-sounding. I thought, per- haps, like 'Elizabeth.' Not that" an un- guarded sigh very nearly betraying her "not that it's anything like what I'd planned. There was a prettier name, for a girl," gropingly, "one that put me in mind of a flower . . . 'Rosamond,' I believe, Rosamond Langdon." She dwelt deliciously on the words. THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "But why not 'Caroline,' for you?" sub- mitted David, for whom there was but one feminine name in the world. "Or, 'Sarah,' fer me?" abruptly broke in a thin, high voice that seemed to come from the keyhole, as a dried-looking atom of a brown woman, with a wry, humorous mouth, and a wisp of a sun-bonnet in her hand, hopped over the sill. "I got away the minute I could," she went on breathlessly, putting a business-like hand on David's sleeve, and surveying the occupants of the bed with the half -critical, half-puzzled look of the novitiate. "Rosie O'Hara brought in the news, an' I was on pins t' git started. But I've got one ol' 'cumbrance jus' now, that takes more waitin' on 'n a born cripple! . . . How's everything? Doin' well, th' ol' doctor said, when I halted him on the street. . . . I see you've got Marthy in the kitchen. With a boost or two, she'll be better'n nuthin'. . . . Are you feelin' very weak, Carrie?" with an awkward but not unsympathetic pat of the bedclothes. "Mis' O'Hara seemed t' think you needed quiet. She'll look in again, she [12] WHAT'S IN A NAME says, when she gets around to it. ... But this," disjointedly, "is no place t' stan' talkin'. Git out o' here, David Langdon, an' let your wife sleep." She tightened her hold on his arm, and led him forth, closing the door after her with a subdued but decisive snap. It would not have occurred to David to resist her if she had pro- posed leading him into the street and leaving him there. She was his elder sister his only living relative, in fact, so far as he knew, and for the most part, she had guided and directed him by virtue of her twelve years seniority from the days when he had sat forlornly on the floor in his motherless babyhood, and she had cuffed him, or shoved a bit of cooky into his mouth to stop his mild whimpering. Her executive ability was not to be doubted. It showed itself among other ways in her capable management of a flourishing home for sum- mer guests of Cull Prairie, in her energetic turns at practical nursing in a neighboring city; in everything, in short, to which she turned her hand. She knew it, too, and took a proper pride in it. But her efforts in the line [13] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE of molding her brother pleased her less. Not that she was conscious of any serious moral lack in him; it was only that he was a seer of strange and roseate things that she had never seen nor ever wished to see. If only she could have cuffed him, still, in his moments of ab- straction, or snatched from him his viewpoint in life as she had been wont to snatch a for- bidden plaything, it would have been to the im- mense relief of her feelings. He had a phi- losophy that would not hold water, as she never failed to tell him upon each occasion of their meeting, and she snapped her fingers at his schemes of world reform and betterment. Nevertheless, she could accuse him of none of the idleness which is the world-old moral brand of the dreamer. He had learned the stone-mason's trade in his early manhood, when she had decided that he had no further need of schooling, and the excellence of his work was a matter of comment throughout the countryside. Unfortunately, however, the returns of his labor, while put to no bad use, slipped through his fingers like water. At twenty-eight his prospects were not in the [14] WHAT'S IN A NAME ascendancy. Nor did the matter give him a moment's uneasiness. He seemed content to live on at the shabby old Langdon homestead which had fallen to his portion (together with the mortgage) unmindful of its rapidly dis- appearing paint, and the decay of its thickly vine-clad porches, feeling as if every faithful stick and stone of it, just as it stood, had a sacred and inalienable right to their places. It had nettled Sarah more than once to the point of speaking her mind, and, while the old subject had been long exhausted, she was never at a loss for a fresh issue. "I've got th' same ol' bone t' pick that always wants pickin' here," she began in almost the same instant that the door closed. "I saw your name at th' top of that subscrip- tion list, yesterday, for Mort Peeler, with ten dollars scrawled after it. Ten dollars! An* you with responsibilities aspringin' up around you like mushrooms! An* th' intrus' money af allin' due nex' week ! An* winter astalkin' a stone's throw frum th' door, when you can sit an' twiddle yer thumbs ! . . . When I see the management o' mos' men, it's 'n everlastin' joy [15] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE t' me that I'm single, that's all I have t' say, an' I s'pose I might as well keep m' breath fer coolin' m' soup, at that !" David, who had been prowling around blindly for the one rocker that the room con- tained a little stiff, creaky, calico-covered thing, seized upon it at last and proffered it humbly. "Sit down, Sarah," he urged courteously, himself sinking into a chair at the window, and leaning his elbow with some deliberation on the sill, while he cast about in his mind for something at the same time explanatory and pacifying. "I it wouldn't do to start a thing like that with less, you see. It sets the pace for others. And Mort is in pretty bad straits since the fire, it seems. He hadn't a cent of insurance on the place." He spoke with a habit of careful correctness caught from Caro- line. "But come," eagerly reverting to a more agreeable topic, "you haven't said what you thought of the baby." Caroline, still interestedly alert, lifted her head slightly from the pillow with some effort, and listened closely for the first time for her [16] WHAT'S IN A NAME sister-in-law's response. Sarah could always be depended upon to say what she thought. "Oh, as to that," she sniffed, venting the remainder of her spleen in the digression, "it's got my nose, flare an' turn-up, an' it's a runt ! Marryin' a child, you couldn't expect no full- sized children!" The listener dropped her head suddenly and pressed the fingers of her free hand to her ear with deafening effect, consoling herself with the thought that though Sarah invariably left a sting in her wake, there would be a warm dinner for David because of her, and several needed additions to the pantry store. Her gaze fell again to the soft expanse of baby brow to which she pinned her faith. "She couldn't be expected to understand," she mur- mured as if in apology to one who might have felt hurt. Already the little personality seemed very real to her. "She doesn't under- stand him, either, and more, she never will." When she removed her fingers, Sarah was whispering a shrill, insistent whisper that carried even better than her ordinary voice. "Does her mother do her folks know any- [17] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE thing about this the baby? Why have none of them come?" she was asking pointedly. Caroline, safe from observation, winced openly; David, under fire of direct gaze, cleared his throat nervously before answering. It was an exceedingly sore point with both of them that in their year of married life no one from this side of the house had yet set foot in the new home, and that the fact was becoming patent to other eyes. "Of course, living in Brooklawn, they might not find it convenient," he began apologetic- ally "that is," with his habit of truth, "pro- vided they knew." Sarah broke into an irritating laugh. "Brooklawn!" she snorted finally, forgetting that she had set out to whisper. "Ten miles an' a half away! No wonder they do not 'find it convenient'," with an affected mimicry of her brother's words. "You talk as if I hadn't cut my eye-teeth." David, at a loss, rested his chin in his hand, and reflected uncomfortably. The small work- ings of life, the insignificant whys and where- fores of his neighbor's conduct, interested him [18] WHAT'S IN A NAME not at all ordinarily. Being forced to take notice of them gave him a sense of obtrusive- ness and consequent disquietude. But he could not be entirely blind to them when they crossed his own path and touched his own life. Sarah's words had set loose a flood of recol- lections that he could never find wholly agree- able. He began to sort them over, mentally, for possible and presentable phases. To begin with, there was the family of Stratman from which Caroline had come, illy assorted as if gathered together capriciously under one roof- tree by the god of mischance. Then, there was his meeting with them on business, and the work he had undertaken on the pretentious home which the widowed and socially ambi- tious Mrs. Stratman was causing to be erected. Next, his impetuous wooing, that had car- ried him so far and so strangely out of his usual quiet course. And last, but not least well he had once found a pitifully bound plant- ling in a rocky crevice; if he had bruised his fingers in drawing it out to a wider growing spot, he was under no obligation to exhibit the bruises. [19] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Sarah, eyeing him sharply, felt confirmed in certain opinions she had held for some time. The extreme reticence of her brother was a further source of great irritation to her. "Her mother ought to know," she observed, recollecting herself, and speaking a shade more quietly, though with no less vehemence. "There's nothin' in the world more senseless 'n a break in the blood-bond, an' there's no woman-child anywhere that ever gets over needin' her mother," a certain delicate set of the lips belieing the roughness of her manner. "I've a notion to write to her myself, since you're so backward about it." David was on his feet in a moment. "I wouldn't, Sarah," he objected anxiously, beginning to pace the floor in a sudden acces- sion of nervousness. "The fact is, her her eyesight is not specially good, and you know your handwriting is well, not common. I doubt if she could read it." "She can hire a lawyer," said Sarah with easy unconcern, fishing in her petticoat pocket, and bringing to light something upon which she jotted an illegible memorandum. "If she's [20] WHAT'S IN A NAME as grand and mighty as you seem to think, the fee won't stop her." She snapped a bit of rubber about the scribbled pad with an air of finality as she spoke, and popping up, with a little flirt of her skirts, strode into the kitchen without an- other word, and put her surplus feeling into the concocting of a mess so savory as to warm the heart and water the mouth of the big, hungry, hopeless-eyed Marthy. Caroline sniffed wistfully in the faint, tempting odor that was wafted even to her, and receiving a tiny bowl of steaming broth as her portion, laid a grateful cheek for a mo- ment against the thin, tan-stained hand that offered it, and was surprised to see the quick tears well up in the sharp dark eyes. "It'll be all right," suddenly intoned Sarah, with unlooked-for understanding, get- ting down on her knees and speaking as to a very little child. "She shall know, an' of course she'll come soon. It'll be all right all right." [21] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING II THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING As it happened, a full two weeks went by before the promise materialized in the shape of a brief note, almost curt, which simply made mention of a time when the writer might be expected. The baby thrived and seemed likely to thrive. Sarah had got her patient, who mended slowly, into the covered rocker at the bedroom window on the morning of the day that the note had named, secretly delight- ing in the gentle humility of her, the childish tendrils of fair hair that clung moistly to her temples, the tender, unblemished skin, the shapely body with the firm roundness that never deserted it, even in lean and strenuous times, the excited tinge of pink in the face that had usually only a sort of soft pinched white- ness oddly at variance with the fuller flesh of throat and arms and breast. "Is yer mother partial at all t' colors?" she asked brusquely, to cover a certain shyness at [25] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE the question. " 'Cause I was thinkin' there's yer rose-color dressin' sacque ahangin' here in th' closet when ye might as well have it on." Caroline bent over and trailed her white fin- gers slowly across the baby's pillow. "Just look, Sarah," she murmured dream- ily, after a vague assent, gazing ponderingly into the depths of the soft-fringed, world-new eyes. "What can she be thinking? If only she could say!" "H'm," said Sarah shortly, taking down a wrapper that had hung over the sacque, and critically comparing the two, "give her time. I never saw the gal youngun yet that didn't duly reward all them that was waitin' for her t' get the use o' her tongue. Most of 'em 's subject t' reg'lar spells o' talkin' like somethin' loose a-flappin'." Caroline bit her lip and tried another tack. "What do you think the greatest gift a woman can be born with, Sarah?" she haz- arded after a time. "Common sense," said Sarah succinctly, with a final squint at the trailing folds of the longer garment. [26] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING "And the best she can gain her best ac- complishment?" plaintively urged the softer voice, determined to force a point. "Mindin' her own business," rejoined Sarah conclusively, tramping into the closet and re- placing the wrapper. "None of us do it, but that's neither hither nor yon. . . . There now," with a sudden change of tone, "what with all our dallyin' I'll bet she's come an' found us in a muss!" At the first tap of a summons to the front door, the faint pink had spread quite to Caro- line's temples, and something of the hue was reflected strangely in Sarah's sallow face as the expected visitor, having been admitted by her, swept rustlingly in without a word or a nod, and deliberately turned her back to give a final order to the driver of the vehicle that had brought her. She was a large woman, not fleshy, but with squarish hips and aggressive shoulders, and a portly erectness of carriage that made her seem larger still. A certain likeness in the features which had the same unexpected pinched look might have enabled a close ob- [27] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE server to identify her as the mother of Caro- line, but, beyond that, there was scarcely the vestige of a resemblance. Her hair at fifty was still decidedly, though dully, dark and wound about her head with conventional exactness. The conventions in appearance, indeed, were her law and her religion, as was apparent in the smallest personal detail in the tiny, even teeth which the dental art had subsituted for the larger, broad, uneven ones with which nature had endowed her, in the "pinch" glasses that had traced a purple line across the bridge of her nose, in the unyielding lines of her high waist, in the hampered gait which her cramped footgear made necessary. A distinctive aura that surrounded her told as plainly as if she had been branded with the fact that she was president of the Brooklawn Ladies' Social League and the Psychical Re- search Society, and was withal that greater pride of a semi-rural community, a "perfect" housekeeper. Brooklawn had long given her its unqualified endorsement, and if that en- dorsement had been tinged with something warmer, from certain quarters, since the ru- [28] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING mor of a year past that she had come into a handsome legacy from a departed uncle, she had seemingly felt no chagrin at it. As a mat- ter of fact, any fellow-townswoman who had been similarly blessed would have gone up im- mediately in her own estimation, regardless of other considerations. But she believed her- self a power in the church for all that. Nor could she in truth be said to be a hypocrite. In popular phrase, she lived up to her lights, only that the lights had an unhappy way of flickering and dimming futilely, and even, on occasion, of going out altogether, like poor little hurt and disappointed stars. She removed her elaborately feathered bon- net and drew off her gloves with the delibera- tion that characterized her, before making any inquiries about Caroline, and let her gaze travel with a mildly shocked expression over the striped hemp carpet, the flimsy lawn cur- tains, the uncolored prints on the stained paper walls, and even the harmless and entirely inno- cent china fruit-cellars on the clock shelf. A sagging clothesline with sundry diminutive garments met her eye through the open kitchen [29] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE door, and on a corner table beside her was a yellow wash-bowl and sponge and a scattered heap of newspapers on which lay a short pipe and a streak of gray-white ash. The table- cover of chenille touched the floor with its tas- seled borders, and from beneath it peeped a ragged magazine and the toes of David's "Sunday" shoes dragged there by their laces by the O'Hara's long-nosed pup, Snooty. On the whole, it was a rather untidy room, strewn as it was with its human litter, and be- yond any question a very plain one, even for a time when a real luxury was still rated at its full value, but it had, notwithstanding, that subtle home atmosphere that so hopelessly cheapens the merely luxurious. Mary Stratman, being one of those unfor- tunate, but not uncommon women who pass through a half century or more in this world without finding out any of the really good things in it, needless to say, failed to perceive it. Her mind was intent upon the contrast between this poor, childishly arrayed "parlor'* and the "drawing-room" of the home from which Caroline had come, with its weight of [30] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING velvet rugs and hangings, its broad pictures in oil, its heavily upholstered furniture, and con- spicuous square piano. Why this this place boasted not so much as a musical instrument of any sort, though Caroline had had six yes, it was six, terms of high-priced lessons ! Every value-weighing fibre in her cried out against the waste, the sinful waste, she labeled it regret- fully, of good money. Her thought slipped back involuntarily to the beginning of her own married life. If it had included a period of judicious pinching, it had been so long glossed over, she felt, as to be practically wiped out. Her three children, all daughters, had seen nothing, heard nothing, through her care, save of the later prosperity prosperity that had given them marked advantages, and that it had been tacitly understood was to mean to them one thing material advancement in the mat- ter of marriage. And that this should be, so far, the sole outcome of her pains! She comforted herself with the reflection that there had been no story, no publicity in connection with the affair. She had bent her head most creditably, she considered, to the [81] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE inevitable. And then there were still left to her Ellen and Virginia, both older than this wayward child, and therefore, presumably, less romantically inclined. That she would be so unfortunate as to duplicate this experience, she deemed unlikely. Meanwhile, Caroline, for all her gentleness the least tractable of the three, should learn the error of her way by unmistakable teaching, and the lesson would begin, without fuss or scene, with the demon- stration that her mother's attitude toward her was now solely one of duty. "Mrs. Stratman, I s'pose?" said Sarah after a fidgety interval, her crooked mouth working with the effort to keep an instinctive antagon- ism out of her voice. "You'll find your daugh- ter in there," indicating. Her duty done, she picked up her sunbonnet, and departed straightway for other fields, turning once on the porch half doubtfully. The older woman stepped inquiringly into the bedroom, and stopping short, studied the occupant of the rocker for a moment, and again, because good things had an unfortunate way of passing her by, she missed the soft light [32] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING of motherhood behind the girl's glistening lashes, the new tenderness in the red bow of her lips, and saw only the cheapness of the material of the dressing sacque she had hastily donned and the coarseness of the baby's woolen shawl. Still, having evidently planned to do so, she kissed Caroline lightly on the forehead, and drew a chair up before her. She said she was sorry they had heard nothing from her before, and that she herself would have been the first to write, only that she did not believe that to be the proper way to treat disobedience. She felt, too, that she had made everything clear from the first. It was a great deal harder, remember, to inflict discipline than to bear it. (Caroline had heard this so many times she believed it had made a dull little rut in her brain.) There were mothers, Mrs. Stratman further averred, who washed their hands of undutiful daughters, but she had stood ready always, she trusted, to do her part a part which just now it appeared she be- lieved consisted in remaining for the day, and arranging for the baby's christening during her stay, if the Reverend Mr. Lean, the parish [33] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE minister, with whom she had some acquaint- ance, could be procured upon such short notice. Had the christening been attended to as yet? No? Well, under the circumstances it was quite as well that it had not, for in thinking the matter over, she had settled upon the name "Barinka" for a great-aunt of her own whom she had always held in high esteem. "I chose a name from my side of the house," was her significant observation; "it is possible that she may grow into a good woman." Evidently the two ideas were analogous in her mind, for she set them together and left them so, drifting into the everyday details that engrossed her the bazaar of the Brooklawn church, the rpillow-top Ellen was embroidering for it, the lavender and white gown she was having made for Virginia. It was home news, and Caroline, who had felt so hurt at being cut off from it all, applied herself to listen, entering her care- ful "yeses" and "noes" at just the proper points, while in desperate undercurrent she mapped out wildly the possible career of a genius concealed under the name of Barinka. [34] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING That her mother never wavered in her deci- sions she was well aware. Moreover, though she was slow of thought and speech, things moved as a rule with dis- patch with Mrs. Stratman. Already, having remembered that certain household prepara- tions might be necessary to a christening, she had dropped Virginia's flounces abruptly at the pipings, and begun to reconnoiter, open- ing a drawer here and a cupboard there. Marthy Prouty, grown suddenly mutinous, stared at her disapprovingly from the kitchen door, but she did not stare long before she re- ceived a sharp order, and on the heels of that, others in such swift succession that, as she afterward woefully related, she "hadn't time t' draw no more'n a stunted breath between." At noon, David came in, slackening his pace and extending his hand rather consciously at sight of his guest. Mrs. Stratman, bending over the table for certain final dinner arrange- ments, hesitated and turned partly toward him. But she caught a glimpse in turning of his workman's jacket, the collar of which was al- ways bunched up on one side, the meek, yet [35] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE determined, bend of his neck, the dreamy, faith- ful, expectant brown eyes which never failed to irritate her, and she dropped her partially outstretched hand, and the expression of her mouth became so drastic as to make the little white frill at her throat look like a spring blossom that had opened mistakenly out in the cold. "There is no tea in the house, it seems," she said, seizing upon a triviality, and feeling that in some way she must be rid of him to get her- self in hand. "I always take tea for dinner," she finished pointedly. And David, whose fingers had a, way of growing unsteady in her presence, fumbled for his hat, and has- tened forth in his meager nooning to supply the deficiency. Directly after dinner, Sarah, turning into the street, was surprised to meet the usually good-natured Marthy, red-eyed and mum- bling, with a bundle under one arm, and her best hat, rose-laden, protruding from a box under the other. "I'm all done," was her tearful explana- tion. "I hain't never stayed under shelter [36] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING yet with no such a tart ol' plum, an' I don't reckon I'm agoin' t' begin now. If I've got to' be fit like that" sob "I'm agoin t' show my colors ev'ry time! An' all becus' she got me that rattled with orders, honest, I lumped the gravy as any human might! She's a- queening it down thar somethin' scan'lous," she added savagely, "over th' hull o' 'em, too, from Snooty up t' David, an' b' the looks o' things, she's got 'em all b' the ears!" A bit of information that sent Sarah into O'Hara Street at her earliest opportunity, only to find the queen temporarily departed, and a second rebellious subject holding the baby to her breast with a tenacity that seemed to be designed to defend it from something. The day had told on Caroline. There was a fever-spot on either cheek and she leaned forward agitatedly in her chair. "Oh, Sarah," she whispered with bare coherence, for the childish quiver of her lips, "mother's gone out to get the minister. She's going to have the baby christened Barinka." "Barinka!" ejaculated Sarah, staring, [37] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Bar-enk-a!" her Yankee tongue faltering over the unaccustomed syllables. "Fer mercy sakes, whut's that? It sounds like a handful o' cheap forks! She didn't lose no time over it," she pursued, turning and pressing the tip of her aspiring nose to the window. "I've got a vision ef there she ain't now with th' parson himself atearin' up the gravel after her! Look ahere, child," advancing impul- sively and putting both arms with unusual demonstration around her young sister-in- law, "we didn't get a chance t' plan much, that's a fact; but you why you jus' brace up an' smile, an' when it comes t' th' namin' part, you look at me, an' you call that youngun whatever you please!" Mrs. Stratman at this moment swept in majestically, the Reverend Mr. Lean, who was lean in name only, puffing and bowing in her wake. He was an eager, benevolent little man whose stomach arrived easily in advance of him, and there might have been an habitual twinkle in evidence behind his bristling white eyelashes had not Cull Prairie demanded of her ministers a sober eye. As [38] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING it was, he had learned the art of chuckling spasmodically within, while preserving an outward demeanor to which his deacons could take no exception. Having gained the im- pression that the case was urgent, he pro- ceeded at once to the service. "Name this child," he began solemnly, dip- ping his broad hand authoritatively into the bowl which had been provided for the pur- pose. "Elizabeth Anne," interposed Caroline dis- tinctly, before the words were well out of his mouth. The red circles on her cheeks had grown perceptibly, and her eyes sought the little dark snapping ones opposite her, as if she were hypnotized. Sarah sighed relievedly, and turned her gaze out of the window across the dull and crooked street, but never having attended a christening before, and being by no means sure that the crisis was past, she sat crouched tensely in her place like a dozing spaniel with one ear alert for hostilities. Mrs. Stratman opened her lips dumbly, and closed them again with unnecessary tight- [39] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE ness; then she interlaced her fingers slowly and painfully, so that the white showed in little bands at the knuckles, and kept them so until the solemn voice died out. She did not allude to the subject thereafter, and in the few remaining hours of her stay, Caro- line, struggling with a strange mixture of remorse and triumph and bodily weakness, strove to bring back some of the pleasant features of their life together only to feel the utter futility of the effort, and to wel- come at last with a relief of -which she was heartily ashamed, the final grating in depar- ture of the carriage wheels on the gravelly street. So visibly she moped, however, over her memory of the occasion in the days to come, that Mrs. O'Hara, attributing her grief to the absence of a christening party and guess- ing shrewdly at the state of her finances, arranged a sort of post-christening function to which the guests were requested to bring their own refreshments. They came in force and riotously with their cakes and their babies (for babies wtere the distinguishing feature of [40] THE TALE OF A CHRISTENING Cull Prairie) and Caroline, who by some freak of heredity was a democrat born, shook their hands affectionately and laughed with them until the tears stood in her blue eyes. But in the midst of festivities she stole into the bedroom where the babies lay, and care- fully lifting her own babe from amongst the warm and sleeping infants (not deeming it meet that genius should consort with the commonplace) she laid hers selectly in her crib, which happened to be only a clothes basket off duty. "I wouldn't mix up the babies," advised David in a whisper, cautiously tiptoeing 'after her. "Are you sure now" a shade of real anxiety in his voice "that you got the right one?" "As if!" indignantly gasped Caroline, who would have known Elizabeth Anne in Cim- merian darkness by her faintest move or whimper. "As if!" THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK Ill THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK The party call was not an institution In Cull Prairie, observances of this nature being among the least of its burdens; therefore it could only be said that "Grandma" Prouty and Miss Mittie Peeler from the squat, twin red houses beyond the O'Hara's had hap- pened upon the social code by accident. If a suspicion, ever so faint a suspicion of the fact, had been thrust upon the two, in truth, they would have opened their mouths and their colorless eyes, and shook their heads in apolgetic wonder. "We only come t' see the baby b' daylight," Miss Mittie would have maintained feebly and asthmatically. The baby was not unprepared for the emergency. Snugly ensconced in a sheltered corner of the uncertain porch which sagged alarmingly in a laudably persistent effort to demonstrate the principle of the inclined plane, she had thus far accepted with the [45] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE same fine show of indifference the various features of the pageantry of life, as it ap- peared to her, from the three fat geese that waddled up periodically to sozzle their great orange bills in the little shining rain pools in the weekly front yard, to the touzle-headed youngsters peeping daily through the gaping pickets, and darting like startled rabbits be- hind the bushes at the signal of a slamming screen door on their own side of the fence, and a loud injunction to "come away an' lave the babby shlape." One is not given to keen discrimination just at first, but there comes a day, a new day, and presto! a difference is borne in upon one for all that. Elizabeth Anne's earliest discovery in relation to the taller figures which seemed to come unchallenged and whose long illusive shadows slipped ghost- like in and out on the gravelled walk, cen- tered about the memory that it was these that were wont to chatter noisily above one, and sometimes even to take liberties with one's person. "Grandma" Prouty had pinched the round, [46] THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK pink, defenseless cheeks of a modest army of babies in the course of her sixty years, but her rough, sturdy, little thumb and fore- finger were still unremitting in their energy. She was a round, pitifully bent, bunchy, little old creature, with a seamed yellow face, but- toned with warts, a sparse, wispy knob of grayish hair bobbing aggressively over her crown, and a sharpness of speech and manner carefully calculated to hide the real warmth of her childishly simple heart. She refused the chair which Caroline hos- pitably dragged forth for her, and perched her odd stubby little body obstinately on the top porch-step. "You hain't said a thing about Her Sweet- ness," wheezingly reproved Miss Mittie, stepping over to the basket and tenderly rearranging the enveloping netting which "Grandma's" manipulations had left awry. She was thin and bent and bloodless, and a long siege at the village woolen mills had put factory hollows into her pale, shrunken cheeks and under her humble, watery eyes. "No, ner I hain't agoin* to," rejoined [47] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Grandma" Prouty decisively, stiffening her seamed little old neck and twirling her thumbs independently, while Mittie released her hold of the netting and slid down awk- wardly and apologetically beside her hostess on the step below. "Ef thar's one thing sickens me more'n another in this here yearth it's the talk some wimmin makes 'bout any youngun thet's onlucky enough t' git near 'em. Yassir! I got that wrought up only yistidy night 'bout it, I couldn't relish m' supper, though we'd pertaters in their skins an' onion gravy as nobudy need be ashamed t' hev water their mouth. 'Twas th' fleshiest o' them three fat wimmin that's a-boardin' t' yer siser-in-law's, Mis' Langdon, thet set me goin'. Sez she t' me a-standin' out in front o' Mort Peeler's place where little Joy wuz a-settin' in her cart, she sez, a-cooin' like th' cooinist dove, sez she, 'Thar's wonderful things in a baby's eyes, hain't thar? Trees,' she sez, 'an' gay little ships an' noddin' flow- ers an' runnin' brooks.' An' sez I, a-takin' her up none too sociable, 'I dunno,' I sez, 'I hain't got no picture-machine in my eye. D'ye [48] THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK see 'em in his'n, too?' fer she was atotin' one o' them puny, curled dogs with a ribbon-bow big ez a cabbage on his misfortunit scrawny neck. An' if ye'll b'leeve me she lifts up her head an' walks away like I wasn't wuth an- swerin' back!" "Why, gran 'ma," mildly expostulated Miss Mittie, coloring faintly, and searching Caro- line's face for her view of the matter, "didn't ye know that them kind o' folks is trained frum younguns up t' either talk sweet, er else go it dumb? Purty speakin' comes nat'ral t' them that's got it easy; not but whut thar's some that hain't too, as speaks awful takin'. Why, th' las' call I made on Mis' Bowers over t' Horton, she sez t' me, awipin' her eyes, she sez, *I never see a little youngun anywheres, not the dirties' ner th' shabbies',' she sez, 'but it puts me in mind o' some kind o' ,a posy, ef it's only a raggedy marigold awantin' water.' ' "Grandma's" pert little chin went up with a sudden jerk. ! . "Well, I reckon her'n is about as much in need b' water as any of 'em," she sniffed, [49] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE nothing daunted. "Them Anse Bowerses is too anxious 'bout diggin' money out o' them two-hundred-odd acres o' theirn t' pay much heed t' th' right an' proper bringin' up o' their offsprings. Pore things! They're arunnin' aroun' unkemp' an' half-clad most o' th' time, asneezin' an' acoughin', an' apick- in' up troubles off an' on, o' ev'ry color in th' land frum the pink eye t' the black measles, an' from the yaller janders back t' the brown keeters. "Yassir! Ye shore mind their Corabelle, her as went six years ago, come Christmas, o' the scarlet fever? They wuz alivin' down on the oF Whitby place, then, an' a tumble time they give the town of it what with the fear o' ketchin' it, an' the ol' Doc agivin' orders f er all us wimmen folks t' stay t' home lest we should carry it in our clo'es. My land o' livin', I don't take no stock in nuthin' like that! 'S if ye c'd gether up a fit o' sickness er a fever speckle in yer apron! "Them doctors an' sich-like ain't never satisfied, that's all, less'n they got the hull say-so. Want t' tell ye when ye'll clap yer [50] THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK bunnit onto yer head, an' walk outer yer own door! 'Not me,' says I t' Gaby. I dunno when it comes right to it but whut I seen th' thing acomin' 'bout ez quick ez any of 'em. Yassir! I'd a sign, I had, th' night 'fore Corabelle come down, an' sez I t' Marthy, 'thar's some plague er death acomin' t' this here town. You mark my words. I don't git no dream like the one I jus' had, fer nuthin'.' 'N' shore enough it proved up, too. "Corabelle she went 'side o' a month, an' goodness me! but she wuz a sad little with- ered up thing in all them flowers an' satin. Pore chil'I Too bad, I sez, they couldn't aspent a little more on her whilst she wuz alivin'. Dear knows, she ust t' plead some- thing pitiful t' go along t' th' fair down t' Horton. But Anse he couldn't spare her th' time frum weed pullin' an' hoein'. Gome t' die, though, an' they totes her fer th' fun'ral clean t' th' Mantey's church in Piperstown (Mis' Bowers bein' a Mantey 'fore she wuz married). Gaby an' me we rode along, bein' ast t' go special. Pore ol' Gaby, a common [51] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE house fun'ral was all he got when he come t' go in the spring, though I hev thought time an' again, ef only he could 'a' seen Jedge Hawkins asettin' thar nigh the coffin, an' awipin' them thar yallar-rimmed specs o' his'n on that silk handkercher 'twould 'a' made up to 'im fer 'tall." "Well, the baby's astirrin' out o' her little doze at las', and awhimperin' t' git took up," gaspingly broke in Miss Mittie, realizing that Grandma was well astride a gruesome hobby, and welcoming the diversion. "She's got a nose jus' like her Aunty's, hain't she?" queried Grandma, condescending to take notice. "They ain't very much fer purty, but they may be all right fer smellin', an' I dunno what else a nose wuz created fer." Caroline's response, as she delved with min- istrant arms among the pillows, was lost in a wail of babyish protest, but sympathetic Miss Mittie, catching sight of the hurt ex- pression of her mouth, squirmed in her place, and threw herself headlong into the breach. "Why I allus heerd that beauty wuz all in [52] THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK yer taste," she burst forth ingratiatingly in the painful staccato cut by her uncertain breath, "thar's some likes 'em light-com- plected now, like yer baby, an' others '11 pick the dark uns, say, like Brother Mort's little Joy. Brother Mort's folks is somewhat down at the heel, Mrs. Langdon, 'specially sence they wuz burnt out; but their baby sure is awful nice t' look at, in a dark-complected way, ef ye don't mind my sayin' so. Mort's wumman's got th' 'flammatory rheumatism, so I tends it, sometimes, frum mornin' till night, when I hain't able t' be t' the fac'try. Why, it'll sit thar all day long in that ol' wopper- jawed cart it's got> alookin' up at me with them big black eyes a-asking jest ez plain ez any langwidge, 'why in th' worl' did I come t' sech a place ez this?' "Why in th' worl' God's worl'? It's the same idee, I'm free t' tell ye. I've had m'self, time an' again, though that thar speaker thet wuz atalkin' down t' the Sun- day-school sez I'd got t' be red o' it, er sin somethin' awful. 'Think o' yer blessin's ye ongrateful wumman,' sez she t' me kind o' [53] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE stern-like, when I lets out t' her down thar a mite, 'say 'em right out, like they wuz a piece ye knowed by heart ev'rything ye've got t' be thankful fer.' An' sez I t' her, athinkin' quick, I sez, 'I'm glad I hain't no foolisher 'n I be, an' I'm glad that thar moley bunch o' mine's on m' neck, 'stid o' on m' nose; I'm glad m' bunions don't hurt me all the year 'round, an* thet m' asthmy don't down me more'n once a week; an' I'm glad thar's one young un an' a cat likes me, an' thet I don't hev t' die more'n once,' I sez, 'so there !' An' sez she t' me, 'Dear soul,' she sez, her shoulders ashakin' like she wuz laughin' er cryin', 'it's th* common things makes up th' real blessin's,' she sez, 'remember that.' An' I do sometimes when I looks at Joy, an' she looks back at me an' whut's yer hurry, Gran'ma? Ye hain't put on yer bunnit, ner said good-bye, ner nuthinV But "Grandma" Prouty, who never lis- tened to another's stories if she could help it, was already fumbling with the gate latch. "I expec' I got t' go, then, too," reluct- antly sighed Miss Mittie, slipping her hand [54] THE SHADOWS ON THE WALK out by degrees from under Caroline's sym- pathetic pressure, "er she won't speak t' me fer a week." She lifted her whitish, watery eyes, behind which few suspected the richly maternal soul. "I like younguns anyway I find 'em, Mis' Langdon," she was wheezing in farewell, "an' mebbe," guilelessly, "I'm some foolish 'bout Joy, her bein' s' fat an' healthy, an' with featur's all straight. So ye'll excuse me p'rhaps fer praisin' 'er up the way I done, an' . . . good-bye, an' . . . wait, gran'ma!" Caroline, who had risen, and stood with one slender hand clasping the post, would have smiled tolerantly as the two shambled out of the path into the street, but somehow the vision of Mort's baby with "features all straight " sobered her, and she turned, and leaning over the basket, fixed her attention earnestly on the yawning mite within. Time, which was doing much for the dis- tressing redness, had wrought also a head- covering wondrously fine a faint, delicate shadow of hair so light in its growth that it looked not unlike a sprinkling of golden [55] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE pollen from some hidden fairy mimosa. Would it have any ultimate effect on the tip-tilted nose, the abbreviated upper lip, the slightly underhung chin? Somewhere among the remarkable Stories of plastic infant linea- ments that had been stored away uncon- sciously in her memory was the tale of a woman who had transformed a thick, ugly mouth for her child into a veritable rosebud apparently by sheer force of will. A nose, however, she already had an inkling, was a finical member when it came to a case of modeling or remodeling. No; let her hold to that consoling breadth of baby-brow, those clear, bright, blue-gray baby-eyes. Plainly it was given to her to assist in the formation of a mental kink or curve that should put to shame the mere curve of beauty. "Patience, then!" whispered the wind in the little front yard, stirring the very tips of the soldierly trees at the gate, murmurously, as if to send, at the same time, the whispered word of coun- sel abroad to many mothers, and again, "Patience!" [56] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" IV f. ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" One must learn to pay for one's promo- tions in this world. When Elizabeth Anne had attained to the dignity of her own trundle bed, a little bear came out of the darkness with nightly regu- larity a hairy, pink-tongued, menacing little bear. To charm him away, not infrequently all but exhausted the family repertory of story and song, and incidentally brought to light unlocked for literary discrimination on the part of the little bear himself. " We should see the spirits ringing 'Round thee were the clouds away; ' Tis the child heart draws them singing In the silent seeming clay. Singing, stars that seem the mutest Go in music all the way." offered Caroline sweetly and ineffectually, on one side of the bed at these times. [59] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE And " There was a frog who lived in a spring, Water was so cold, he couldn't sing, So he tied his tail to a hick'ry stump And he reared and kicked, but he couldn't jump," offered Sarah on '(the other, a "classic" which from the moment of its first rendering had the effect of putting the unwelcome visitor (probably by the outrage of his poetic in- stincts) to immediate if temporary rout. Mother Goose refused to own it, Sarah averred, but It belonged to somebody in the Goose family, possibly Uncle. It troubled Caroline to reflect that this was the only "verse" in which this daughter of promise had yet manifested any particular interest, and her surprise was great when with the rapid passing of time Elizabeth Anne betrayed no marked elevation of taste. But she set herself to remember that she was as yet unaware of the order of genius that had been intrusted to her care. Clearly it was not of the domestic variety which ani- mates so many little girls. The little toy broom, pushed abstractedly through the [60] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" center of a room, as a boy might have pushed it, told that. Neither was it of the maternal sort, pos- sessed by girl mothers the world over. Eliza- beth Anne's doll, Mercedes, a radiant creature of wax, purchased by David in an affluent moment, was her rival, never her baby. "I s'pose you are prettier'n I am," she was once heard to observe wistfully to the waxen beauty (for a girl child is born with this knowledge), "but then you see," reflec- tively, "they had to give sixty cents for you, but God gave 'em me for nothing." It was shortly after this that Mercedes was relegated to the box in which she arrived (Caroline having all due respect for the sensitiveness of budding genius), and Bogey, a veteran alley cat, blind in one eye and scarred like a German duelist, supplanted her. Elizabeth Anne rejoiced in Bogey, chiefly perhaps for the reason that she felt easily superior to him in personal appearance. Un- fortunately, and as the only drawback to an otherwise delightful personality, he was a [61] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE victim of the wanderlust, and was only in- duced to remain by being shut in the wood- shed, a form of penance at which he protested with long-drawn eloquence. "Faith'n that bluddy owld spalpeen'll be singin' wan song too manny some wan av these toimes," prophesied old "Uncle" Pete O'Hara, who made his home with his niece Maggie, and took a profound interest in all the affairs of the neighborhood, "an' thin be all th' powers " darkly leaving the threat open to conjecture, "an' thin!" And Elizabeth Anne, hopping nimbly from one skinny leg to the other, promptly electri- fied the minister's wife, then arriving, with the polite injunction: "Don't be afraid, Mis' Lean, it's only my bluddy awld spalpeen av a cat." The "song" was black Bogey's last, it hap- pened, for next morning Belle O'Hara, who was three years Elizabeth Anne's senior, and who laid claim to previous ownership of the animal, dragged him limp and lifeless from the alleyway where he had been thrown, into the Langdon's back yard. [62] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" Belle O'Hara, the last of a long line of O'Haras, was a rather startling looking child, pallid as a gardenia, and very thin, with hunched shoulders, a contracted chest, large protruding china-blue eyes and a long, sharp chin that thrust its way inquisitively into everything. " 'Tis a wake we'll be afther havin'," she announced gravely to Elizabeth Anne, having disposed Bogey to her satisfaction against the cerise tissue paper lining of an incom- modious shoe-box coffin. "Ye see 'tis this way: Oi'll chry 'Bogey is dead,' an' thin ye'll chry it, an' thin we'll both chry it togither, an' sthart in over agin, an' th' more tears ye've got th' betther. * * * Och! Bogey is dead, Bogey is dead, me poor, poor owld Bogey!" And because she was born mistress of the art of weeping, real tears hung on her long dark lashes, and rolled down slowly and pathetically to the white point of her chin. Elizabeth Anne witnessed the performance with considerable interest, her forefinger in her mouth, her heel dug speculatively into [63] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE the soft ground. Somehow, although she could not have told why, the Springtime which was then looking with inspired gaze over sodden Cull Prairie did not seem like a season of grief. A delicate warmth, subtle and alluring, was stealing into the very heart of things. It swelled the red-fringed maple buds, and crept like a thing of life among the newest grass blades; it stirred in the coaxing breeze, and restored the far-away and long dull woodland to a thin, indefinite color that seemed to have been smeared on by brownie fingers. Something of the coming vigor and gladness was taking hold of her uncon- sciously in every active inch of her wiry little body. But she meant to do her part, and do it conscientiously. "Ah, Bogey is dead. Bogey is dead, me poor, poor old Bogey," she be- gan faithfully in her turn, but though her regret was quite sincere, the wail was con- spicuously absent, and she was obliged to dig both eyes painfully to secure even a sem- blance of tears an embarrassing circum- [64] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" stance by no means lost upon the observant Belle, who ishook her head dismally and burst forth afresh. "Shure I'm chryin' now for th' flint heart av ye," was her contemptuous ex- planation between sobs. J > It was partly because of her extreme youth that Elizabeth Anne accepted jibes of this sort with meek and chastened spirit, and re- mained the staunch friend and admirer of Belle O'Hara, but a more potent reason lay in the fact that Belle sometimes flatteringly begged her companionship in her far ings forth into the wonderful outer world beyond the confining pickets. There was a Union Sunday-school within easy walking distance the only one that then convened in the village and the O'Hara children found it much to their liking, par- ticularly in the holiday seasons. "On Aster Sunday there'll be eggs," Belle took to remarking with the beginning of Spring, "tacher says so painted wans, says she. Ask yer mither t' lave ye go along an' git wan. Painted er no, mayhap a body c'n ate 'em, annyhow." [65] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Now an egg was not a particular luxury in the dietary of Elizabeth Anne, but a painted one, being an entire novelty, seemed another matter, and the idea of receiving it as a gift added sensibly to its attraction. So it was a very radiant little girl who stepped forth on Easter Sunday, starched and curled and star-eyed, and with slim, clean hand very confident in Belle's rough-knuckled little fist. Never though, in the wildest stretch of her fancy, 1 could she have guessed that there were such long and wearisome preliminaries lead- ing up to a mere egg. Her cherished new straw hat with its daisy wreath, overshadowed by the more preten- tious headgear of the two larger girls be- tween whom she sat, began to incline rakishly over one ear; her white dress had lost its one-time freshness, her dangling feet ached wretchedly, and a sort of sullen sleepiness was fast overpowering her, when a sharp prod from a reminding elbow forced her into an upright position. "Don't shlape now, whativer ye do," urged [66] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" Belle in a muffled undertone, "th' eggs is comin' at lasht, begorry! Oi thot they was waitin' for th' bins t' lay. * * * Come on wid th' eggs! Nuthin's too good for th' Irish!" It was true indeed. Ardently watched for, they were something of a shock when they arrived, and adding appreciably to this shock was their condition of incompleteness, for each "egg," it was revealed upon examina- tion, consisted of a half shell, splotched with red paint about the edge for decoration, and with a miniature doll of cotton batting repos- ing within. "They're sweet," whispered Elizabeth Anne, rubbing her heavy lids and rising dazedly to the occasion. "Be th' greedy eye av her," growled Belle, scraping her feet in an abandon of wrath, "if she ain't wint an' tuk out th' mate! 'Tis th' sthingy wan she is, an' no mishtake!" "Belle O'Hara!" at this point exasper- atedly exclaimed the teacher in charge, a trim, soft-stepping maiden lady, "pray tell me how you got the talking habit." "Shure me mither put a sthick in me [67] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE mouth, ye pussy- futted humbug," retorted the already overtried Belle, sotto voce, "f keep it firiver open!" The lady being occupied and somewhat deaf, passed on none the wiser, but the report of this little passage at arms in another quarter brought about very unexpected re- sults, and for days Elizabeth Anne, learning the loneliness of the exclusive, saw nothing of Belle O'Hara save now and then an elusive glimpse of her spindling length from the kitchen window. It was a dull prospect, to say the least of it, and she gazed gloomily and unseeingly from the rose-red geranium on the window sill to the tall and paintless back-yard fence and dangled her brown stockinged legs so dejectedly that Caroline, watching her, was moved to try a certain experiment she had had in mind for some time. Where had she read of the moodiness of artistic genius? "Draw, Betty," she com- manded in the inspiration of the moment, delving into a drawer for paper and pencil. "Couldn't you draw the red flower on the sill, [68] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" or a tree, perhaps, or the little sparrow on the woodpile? Draw something you see, or remember." But the illy proportioned egg cradles and weird and unrecognizable cat funerals that Elizabeth Anne achieved after an hour's la- borious and accommodating effort would have disabused the most sanguine mind on this sub- ject. Still, she liked the idea of paper and pencil, which appealed to her dignity, and being already familiar with her letters, ac- cording to the educational mode of procedure then in vogue, she began presently, since no livelier form of diversion offered itself, to set them down, carefully and philosophically, copying from her alphabet blocks, and beg- ging aid in every difficulty. Of course Caroline spared no pains, but the arrival at this time of a second child, a son, in the family, threw the small daughter for the time being on her own resources, educationally and otherwise. She sulked fit- fully at first, keeping away from her mother's room with a feeling of distrust toward one [69] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE who would thus without warning bring in a stranger to supplant her. But when, in the course of her aimless wanderings about the house, she came upon a little wriggling flannel - wrapped bundle against the thin pink covering of her own bed, she retraced her steps, making a wide detour to keep out of the way of the rein- stated Marthy's reckless broom and its ac- companying cloud of dust, and clambered up cautiously in the darkened room beside the invalid. "Mother," she said forgivingly with the feeling of one in the same condemnation, "we couldn't help it, could we? There there's one of 'em in my bed, too." Being seized from behind at this moment in Marthy's unyielding grip, and forbidden every part of the house but the sitting room, she remained under the delusion the entire day, and sat stiffly and importantly, refusing her blocks and evidently debating with her- self a proper course of action. Aunt Sarah, observing her dejection, and feeling sorry for her in her brusque way, took [70] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" time to rush in sympathetically with several new and gorgeous picture and ABC books for her, but having glanced them through, she returned them with a deep and superior elder sister sigh to their wrappings. "They will do for the the babies or Mer- cedes," she said loftily, and betook herself to the town newspaper, the advertising section of which, appearing in large letters, was the only part at all accessible to her. Prominent among the advertisements, and so strikingly arranged that her eye invariably fell upon it, was the legend "R. S. Kail, clothier." It was a rebus to which she deter- mined to find the solution. "K-a-i-1," she spelled aloud difficultly at dinner, the paper beside her bowl of bread and milk, as was David's habit at meals in his busy seasons. "What does that spell, father?" "Kail," said David briefly between the finishing mouthfuls of his hastily swallowed pudding. "C-1-o-t-h," pursued the besieger after an interval, her spoon poised studiously in mid- air. [71] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Cloth," was the patient response as the besieged arose with an eye on the clock, and pushed back his chair. "-i-e-r," almost shouted the young torment, warming to her subject. "Ear," said David absently, reaching for his hat. He failed to get the connection of ideas, however, until later in the day when Mr. Kail himself chanced to drop in on a matter of business. Elizabeth Anne, only slightly acquainted with the caller, eyed him furtively as he entered, and having waited until the conversation had passed the stiff and intro- ductory stage, even managed to slip behind his chair to secure a rear view. Not in vain had a hint of the perfidy of the outer world been offered her. "Why, Mr. Kail," she observed involun- tarily, in the disappointed tones of the cheated, "both your ears are only skin, any- how." Of course explanations were in order, and it became necessary to produce the news- paper in corroboration of the fraud. Where- [72] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" upon Mr. Kail plead guilty with a laugh, presented his accuser with ten cents in silver, and begged for a curl, which, in sudden grati- tude she tugged at till the tears overflowed embarrassingly. It was all that could be expected of such teaching, deplored Caroline, who in the course of several days was restored to her domain, and she redoubled her efforts to make up for lost time, while the newcomer at her breast, paying the penalty of being a second child, passed through the initial stages of his career, even to the point of receiving his name "Robert" for a deceased cousin of the Lang- dons, with only the mildest passing comment of the interested. " 'Bade an' he's th' bye," said Mrs. O'Hara indefinitely. "Hain't he th' cunnin' little man critter?" wheezed Mittie Peeler admiringly. "I've felt him over," said Grandma Prouty with finality, "an' if he ain't tougher in his construction 'n tripe fried twicest, ye kin set me down fer a shore 'nough empty head!" Elizabeth Anne, in time growing recon- [73] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE ciled to the object of this attention, squatted before him on the floor where he lay, moist- eyed, and blinkingly absorbed in his array of fat toes, and read aloud to him elevatingly from Belle O'Hara's rejected Primer, "Dog, a dog. Ball, a ball." (There were other less conventional things in Belle's unsteady script, such as, "If my name you do not see, look on page 103," and its sequel, "There, fool, what do you see?" but these as yet baffled the efforts of its curious present owner.) The printed letters and their sounds, albeit, she found comparatively easy sailing, and so made rapid strides in the battered little book, though the subject of school had not been broached to her as an impetus, Caroline be- ing wary of the touch of the outside world, and continually postponing the time when it needs must hold undisputed sway. Never- theless in this she feared a little for her own wisdom and discussed the matter, pro and con, with Aunt Sarah in the long evenings when the children having been put to bed, were presumably asleep. It was by reason of these discussions and [74] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" periods of doubt that Elizabeth Anne reached the ninth year of her age before the door of the First Reader classroom opened to her a most extraordinary circumstance in Cull Prairie, and one that created so much neigh- borhood comment that, as a concession to public opinion, the chubby brother, who had grown into a sturdy, independent five year old with a slow, teasing smile and a con- spicuous lack of incisors, was permitted to accompany her to enter the Primer Class in the room adjoining. A' certain Miss Barlow, a strict but kindly, middle-aged woman with a broad, plain, hairy face, an air of practicability, and a keen in- terest in all problems pedagogical, was at the head of the school. She encountered the two children in the hallway on the morning of their arrival, and smiled a welcome. "I hope you will prove good children," she said in stereotyped phrase as was her habit, "and learn your lessons without making any trouble." Elizabeth Anne shifted her new First [75] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Reader under her arm, and gazed at the speaker frankly. "I don't b'leeve I'll make very much trouble," she said simply, " 'cause I'm a a genius, an' I 'mi quick, but I don't know about poor Robert," with a protecting arm about his neck, and a dubious sidewise glance in his direction, "you see he's just a common stick, an'," her voice sinking to a solemn under- tone, "an' Aunt Sarah's afraid he takes after grandmother Stratman." Miss Barlow pursed up her lips and stared. Here was a pedagogical problem with a ven- geance. "Little girl," she said primly at length, pushing up her spectacles for a better view, "I do not approve of children who boast." And the childish braggart, serenely uncon- scious of herself up to that moment, grew deeply scarlet and was only deterred from bolting through the outer door by the timely appearance and soothing words of the First Reader teacher, who resembled nothing so much as a clucking Plymouth Rock hen, [76] ADVENTURES OF A "GENIUS" and who took the new arrivals consolingly under her wing. So the day was saved for Elizabeth Anne, and she was duly installed in seat Number Eleven, while Robert was led into the ad- joining Primer Class as a sheep before his shearers dumb. Now across the aisle from Seat Number Eleven sat a boy with hair so red that one could not but marvel how his corner of the room failed to burst into flames. For the rest (he had been a neglected baby, being one of many) he had a scar on his chin and another on his nose, which gave him the general appearance of the late Bogey, the scraggy cat. But his mottled brown eyes were large and friendly, and they studied Elizabeth Anne, as she dropped into her place, with open in- terest, from the wabbly red bows at each side of her head, down the fresh blue-checked gingham apron to the squeaky soles of her brand-new shoes. "Here," he whispered enticingly, the ses- sion having begun, "here, take that." [77] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE He thrust into her hand a white candy heart from which he had already sucked the pristine sweetness and the carmine lettered sentiment. Some of the latter had probably been absorbed into his system along with the sugar, for across the smeary white surface he had supplied the penciled inscription, "Luv me." The surprised recipient deciphered it and sat as one spellbound. Then she put her head down on the desk and began to sob. It could never be said of Elizabeth Anne that she did not take life seriously. "There, there," insisted the hen-like teacher over and over with clucking repetition, "that will do, that will do." This failing to quell the disturbance or to bring about any reasonable explanation, the disconsolate one remained in at recess, and Miss Barlow was sent for. For her inspec- tion at last the crude and sticky token was shoved forward on the desk. "He he gave it to me," sobbed Elizabeth Anne, "but but I don't know how to love [78] ADVENTURES OF A " GENIUS " him." And her slim shoulders began to shake anew. Miss Barlow stepped back stiffly and took a puzzled turn across the room. Then she drew herself up with authority and gave orders for an immediate change of seat. "I should hope not," she said with em- phasis, taking up the offending heart gin- gerly with a bit of paper, and dropping it into the nearest waste-basket. "I should hope not indeed!" [79] ADVENTURES AT SCHOOL AND ELSEWHERE V ADVENTURES AT SCHOOL AND ELSEWHERE But the end was still afield. There was a terror in Miss Barlow's school a terror that recurred with painful frequency, and balked not a whit at tears. The new addition to the First Reader Class was extremely relieved to discover that it was confined entirely to pupils who failed to arrive on time. The offender was elevated on a stool in front of his classmates and every small scornful forefinger in the room was raised and pointed waveringly at him to the accompani- ment of the following doggerel in a shrill rack- ing key: " Five minutes late, when school has begun. What are rules for, if you break every one? Just as the scholars are seated and quiet, You hurry in with disturbance and riot. Why do you loiter so long by the way? All of the classes are formed for the day Hurry and pick up your reader and slate There's room at the foot for the scholar that's late." [83] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE So devout was the hope of Elizabeth Anne that this appalling disgrace might pass her family by, that she awoke at unseasonable hours in the morning, aroused Robert (who roared like a megatherium when the occasion demanded) and otherwise disturbed the house- hold peace, until David in self-defence dabbled in the family discipline, after which his de- fenceless son bore the burden alone, for once outside he was hurried along on his short, fat legs till the landscape became a mere blur. As it was necessary in the trip to and from school to cross the railroad tracks which stretched newly across the growing village, the disgrace was sometimes avoided at the immi- nent peril of life and limb. Belle O'Hara, who was in the Third Reader Class, and again much in evidence, was usually in the vanguard of the oncoming groups. "Don't lave no mazely owld engin' shkin yez out," was her slogan, "an' shneak in 't lasht t' foind th' hull low thribe pointin' at yez loike ye was a thafe in th' noight. Faith 'n it's mesilf 'u'd rather take a bastin' anny day." A real danger was merely a fillip to the [84] AT SCHOOL AND ELSEWHERE spirits of the redoubtable Belle, but many and varied were the depressing dream horrors that sprang up about her every-day path, chief among them th' fiery claw-futted griffin o' McCarty's marsh, th' goggle-eyed elvies o' th' Bogs, and th' wee owld gint o' the say, to which a pitiful mummy of a man, basking daily in the thin, late autumn sun, lent color. The utter absence of even an apology for a "say," the Prairie being a "dry" town in every sense of the word, in nowise disconcerted this spinner of tales. 'Tis foine 'n innocent th' owld man does be lukin', sittin' there wid th' shiny brown fists av' 'im atop av his stick. But luk out," she was wont to whisper sagely. "Give 'im s' much as the spheck av a chance, an' he'll hop forninst ye, thwist yez about in the twinklin' av an eye, an' climb up yer back wid the aise av a cat. An' yez'll not be gittin' rid av 'im s' handy nayther, f'r he'll sthick an' sthick the longest day ye live, be all the saints o' howly hiven." Her followers rallied a little closer at this, and some of the youngest would gladly have hidden their faces in her skirts had they dared. [85] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Not that there were any mollycoddles among them. A mollycoddle would not have been tolerated north of the railroad tracks, which had become a line of social demarcation in Cull Prairie, the "effete aristocracy" being well to the south. "Sthand on yer own fate," besought Belle of the younger element, of which she was the leading spirit, and she jibed and scolded and cajoled them and dubbed them with absurd nicknames according to her whim. There was "Sthicky" for his stupidity, and "Tar-r Babby" for the owner of a queer an- gular little face from which it was impossible to remove the grime; there was "Lanthern" for the red-headed boy; there was "Shquint" for "Tar-r Babby's" afflicted elder sister, and "Squatch" for the baby of the crew who fre- quently distinguished himself by falling in the mud. None might safely rebel, and none were spared. As the leader grew to feel her power, she began, too, to play on the various weak- nesses she found; on the vanity of black-eyed [86] AT SCHOOL AND ELSEWHERE Joy, the timidity of over-grown Terrence, the boundless credulity of Elizabeth Anne. "Shure there's nowhere so swate a draught as ditch water, though 'tis few there be that's afther knowin' it," she was wont to coax per- suasively on a clearing morning after a rain- swept night, sitting on her knees at the road- side ditch, making adroit feints at drinking from a battered cup, " 'tis th' sthuff that puts th' magic eye into ye, too," with a slow wink, "so's ye c'n see ev'ry thing ye want to, t' th' in- side wurrkin's o' folkses' stummicks." And Elizabeth Anne, under pressure of an elfish guiding hand, bent her head down, down to the muddy trickling water, only to have her courage fail her at the critical moment to the seeming disgust of the temptress, who laughed in her sleeve, and promptly devised new tests for her victim, setting her, on penalty of dire happenings, to curl the hair of impatient Snooty's tail, to gather a row of white dande- lion "balls" without scattering the "fluff," to watch until the heavy schoolroom dipper stirred of its own accord on the wall, and fi- nally on a literal search for a needle in a straw- [87] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE stack, the needle being supposedly of gold, and lost by a fairy, and the strawstack being, alas, the property of "th' wee owld gint o' th' say." At this, the crucial test, however, the trust- ing worm turned, so far as it dared, and ac- cepted the doubtfully preferred companion- ship of one Minnie Bird, a fat, white-faced, weak-voiced little denizen of the South Side, with a soul like a bit of thistledown. And still there seemed something to be desired. Minnie Bird, it soon came to light, was ob- sessed. Her one aim, her single desire in life, was to secure a part in a Fan Drill which was to be a feature of a prospective Sunday-school entertainment, and every time she opened her mouth, it was to say "fan" or "my blue fan" or "my Mommah says my fan," until the effect was truly bewildering. More, she very soon betrayed unmistakably her real reason for annexing Elizabeth Anne, whom she openly rated beneath her in the matter of social status, which was coming to be of some little moment in awakening Cull Prairie. [88] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS VI LIGHTS AND SHADOWS It was during the noon intermission of the second day of Elizabeth Anne's intimacy with Minnie Bird that Minnie said, "I wanted somebody to go to Miss Wade's with me, an' I've begged an' begged Lucile, 'til she says she's tired t' death of it. You see Miss Wade has charge of the Drill, an' I b'leeve she'd give me a part if I coaxed her. . . . Let's go now," with a sudden eager breath. . . . "Never mind your lunch," as her companion would have strayed hungrily in the cloakroom where the row of waiting lunch pails reposed, "we'll get the part first, and eat afterward." And Elizabeth Anne found herself drawn outside, and whisked along protestingly to- ward Main Street, where Miss Wade (none other than the Sunday-school teacher who had dispensed the "half" eggs) kept a miniature millinery store. The lady, who was busy with a wordy and [91] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE flaw-picking customer, looked up with some vexation at their flushed and jangling en- trance. She aimed to be a zealous, worthy worker, and she seriously believed that she loved children, but she did not intend to be annoyed by them every hour of the day. "Yes, ah yes," she said with purposeful deaf vagueness, the palm of one hand on her thin breast and the other scooping wing-like her deaf ear. "Step into the parlor, please," ner- vously opening a door behind her after fum- bling some moments with the lock, "and re- main until I have time to attend to you." So into the tiny, airless parlor the two stepped, perforce, and remained. The bland little porcelain clock on the shelf over the un- yielding sofa on which they sat struck the quarter hour, then the half, and ticked un- feelingly on. "She's f ergot us," whispered Elizabeth Anne in a tremor, "I'm going." "Don't, please don't," begged Minnie, the obsessed, in passionate answering whisper, "I might just miss my chance !" Main Street, in such dim portion of it as [92] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS was visible from the voluminously draped win- dow, bustled crudely on. At one end of it, Cad Prouty, the blacksmith, kept up the clear, steady klink, klink, klink of his hammer ; at the other, a railroad engine puffed and wheezed, and sent up great, white, streamy clouds. In the close room there was only silence, and two pairs of childish legs, an over-fat and a pipe- stem pair, dangling with infinite weariness from off the hard sofa. After many moments their owners grew a little bolder, and slipped down doubtfully, and examined at close range the trio of heavily- framed portraits on the staring white wall op- posite the sombre-looking grandmother with the thick-set neck and the sagging earrings; the little buffoon of a grandfather with his smirk, his low, white collar and his sparse whiskers; the stately uncle with his curly hair and his smug self-complacence. Again, they went a little further, and crooked their fingers at the pale-hued canary dozing on the floor of his cage in a stray streak of sunlight. But at every slight sound or movement in the adjoining room, they crept [93] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE back hastily, and smoothed their skirts and folded their hands again precisely in their laps. At last, after what seemed an interminable length of time, the door really opened, and Miss Wade appeared like a furtive apparition, her thin gray hair awry on her puzzled brow, her long, withered, bluish fingers lightly clasped before her. "Well!" she said with the air of one who awakens from a trance, "well !" The hands of the clock now pointed to ten minutes of one, the opening hour of the afternoon session. "Did you wish to see me?" said Miss Wade with her far-away, spirit-like smile. "We haven't had our lunch," cried Eliza- beth Anne irrelevantly, forgetting herself, and speaking with such vehemence that the words actually carried, while Minnie sat gasping with reddening lids and swelling throat. "Well, well," repeated their hostess, who breakfasted lightly at ten, and lunched still more lightly at two, and who would have seen no occasion to alter the Persian and Median fixity of her household regulations to the ex- [94] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS tent of opening her cupboard between meals had a winged delegation of the First Order of Cherubim descended upon her in quest of food. "You had better make haste to return, then, had you not? Perhaps you will come to see me another time?" still with the engaging and hazy smile. "She was polite," said Minnie dazedly, re- covering her voice when they reached the street, "but she put us right out." "And we haven't had our lunch," reiterated Elizabeth Anne, becoming obsessed in her turn, "and now, now/' desperately, "I'm starving without a pickle." " 'Tis all ye c'd expict av Fon Minnie," commented Belle O'Hara to the victim, when the story, as such stories will, leaked out. " 'Dade 'n anither such a ninny ye'd be slow in findin', widout 'twas th' loikes av yersilf." Elizabeth Anne hung her head as she had in the earlier days of Belle's thrusts. Perhaps Belle was right. It was not impossible that she was a ninny. She did not know, upon re- flection, what term would best apply to her. She only knew dimly that she was facing a [95] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE new regime, and that the only way to deter- mine whither a given act might lead was to perform the act, and that then it was too late to retrieve. But it would not all have been quite so per- plexing, perhaps, but for the new regime's spreading itself even to her own roof-tree, than which, as a general thing, an outer revo- lution is to be preferred. The new, inner order of things was epochal. It began with the advent of tiny Ruth. ( She had a scant four pounds to her credit, and no- body ever called her anything but tiny, but it is not to be imagined that her significance was 'in proportion to her size.) She brought a strained and uncomfortable hush in her royal train, to say nothing of a strange, bearded city doctor and a light-stepping, important nurse with a white cap. To come home now was to enter humbly by the back way, to find Aunt Sarah scurrying about the big, bare, ramshackle kitchen like a fugitive mouse, lighting the fire, "setting the buckwheats," and attempting to drive the im- perturbable Robert from the depleted cooky [96] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS jar in a breath. Or perhaps "Grandma" Prouty and Mittie Peeler were in possession of the ominously silent and hastily tidied room, sitting behind the cook-stove in unusually close proximity, and then the gloom thickened till it draped the walls like visible hangings. "Nosiree," was "Grandma" Prouty's ver- dict given portentously behind her knotty little hand, "thar hain't no tellin' how it'll come out. No sir, thar hain't. 'Twould be awful fer 'er t' be tuk with them pore little younguns ahang- in' onto 'er now, wouldn't it?" "Twould that," mournfully acquiesced the obedient Mittie, fetching a heart-breaking sigh by installments from the depths of her person, and dabbing at her eyes with her ruffled "com- pany" apron. "Ah g'wan ye blitherin' pair av human ghrave sthones," amiably growled the ap- proaching Maggie O'Hara, who never suf- fered a lament to go unscathed and who her- self would have laughed gamely, and danced a few clumsy and defiant waltz steps, had the chief executioner had her by the hand to lead her to the block. [97] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Maggie O'Hara was the welcome oasis in the desert of these days. "Away wid yer long faces," was her contemptuous command to the assembled supper group. "Shure th' big troubles pass ye by loike they niver knowed ye, an' 'tis out ye go wid a herrin-net huntin' f 'r th' shmall wans. 'Tis loike as if, havin' found a gold-mine in me back yard, I sh'd throuble mesilf f'r th' color av Teague's moustache, th' which does be shure a sorry match f'r th' hair av 'im entoirely." It was she who coaxed back the first coy color into the lips of the sick woman, and after the departure of the nurse carried her about the room as if she had been a feather-weight. It was she, too, who smoothed out the first little crease in her forehead that threatened to be permanent, and demanded the reason for its existence. "Gurrl, gurrl," she admonished soberly, "ye've no more rasin f'r throublin' yer hid than a linnet in a nest." Caroline smiled faintly at this, and a little afraid of Maggie's penetration, slipped the [98] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS home letter over which she had been brooding shamefacedly under her pillow. The unnatural gulf which existed between her mother and herself had given her no more than an undefined uneasiness before her mar- riage. Viewed at a distance, it had become paradoxically a thing of real regret, though changed in no wise save that now a definite reason might be ascribed to it. The home let- ters had come with conscientious fortnightly precision, since the occasion of Grandmother Stratman's first visit, and were answered in kind, precisely. The one under the pillow con- tained a note of special interest. It announced that the writer in consideration of the stress of circumstances, having duly considered the matter, would arrive in the course of a few days to remain so long as she seemed to be needed. She appeared at mid-week, and incidentally the new order of things for the youthful Lang- dons became climacteric. Elizabeth Anne's beloved stubby pencil and bulky pile of scrib- blings wherewith she beguiled her leisure were consigned at once to the waste paper box; the [99] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE periodically resurrected Mercedes, smiling freshly in her corner, was hastened into a second period of oblivion; and Snowball, the family cat, successor to Bogey, disappeared at once for more congenial fields. There was, moreover, a long and detailed code of manners at every meal, which increased the need of haste schoolward, and never before had one's face and neck demanded such pro- longed and painful scrubbing. Elizabeth Anne, straining her eyes after school hours over a seemingly endless supply of patchwork which she decorated liberally with the blood of her ringers when the needle mistakenly attacked her instead of the fabric, sighed heavily in view of these things and wiped off now and then a surreptitious tear. "How long will it last, mother?" she man- aged after a time to whisper forlornly, steal- ing into Caroline's bedroom under cover of darkness and making her way with outflung arms to the bed. The little dusk-hung room was quite as clear to her as it would have been in daylight, this low-ceiled room in which she had been born, [100] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS and which she needs must always see for the loving thought of her it seemed always to hold. Cheap-floored, rough-plastered, and un- adorned save for a few paltry trifles the serious-visaged St. Anthony over the box- dresser, the red heart pincushion with its bristling rows of rusty pins, the tiny china vase with its single dried sweet-swelling laven- der spray it was yet worth a king's ransom. A warm, groping hand came out toward her on the coverlet, a hand that was only a dim moving thing in the shadows and yet that she did not need to see. "What?" asked a patient voice from the whiteness of the pillow. A swift feeling of delicacy swept the soul of Elizabeth Anne. "Oh, school an' an' ev'ry thing," she answered jerkily, her throat swelling with the evasion. Let it be here related of Caroline that, re- gardless of her own aches and worries, she never failed a child in trouble. She smoothed the crumpled folds of the gingham apron soothingly; she drew the bent beribboned head quite down to her breast, and let her soft fin- [101] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE gers stray for comfort along the girlish cheek as though spelling a charm in silent language that should keep away every shadow of un- pleasantness. "Nothing lasts very long, Betty," she said simply, "and everything, remember every- thing, depends upon how well you do your work." Which revelation sent the young questioner to her reader and slate with such phenomenal application in the succeeding days as to bring her very soon into the limelight. "Unusual diligence," "very faithful," "advanced some- what beyond the grade," were some of the strange phrases that drifted to her ears when Miss Barlow and the First Reader Teacher stood beside her desk. And then it was made known to her that she was to be promoted with the "Division that was to pass into the Second Reader room," though that this was an occa- sion for rejoicing she learned only from the subdued and blissful squirming of the pro- moted "Division" a mode of felicitation which she unquestioningly adopted, swaying [102] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS her slim little length in mock joy like a reed in the wind. "Take care," cautioned Belle O'Hara, mys- teriously wagging her tousled head, when she heard the news, "luck comes, an' thin agin it goes! Oi saw a Banshee th' morn, sittin' o'er yer^ dure, an' sez Oi t' her wid me foinest shmirk, 'Th' top o' th' mornin' t' yez,' sez Oi, 'an' phwat now?' an' sez she t' me, shmirkin' back, she sez, 'All thim that has no toime t' wait does be wilcome t' run ahid. 'Tis no shkin off 'm yer nose, anyhow,' she sez, 'hav yez got that down in yer poipe f'r shmokin'?' ' That the Banshee was neither an idle nor a dallying one appeared that evening after the supper hour, when Belle's compelling Irish- white little face was thrust in excitedly at the kitchen door, while her shrill little voice wildly demanded Elizabeth Anne. "Go away," snapped Aunt Sarah, who was in no amiable mood, aggressively pushing her slipping spectacles onto the bridge of her nose, and turning her attention again to Grand- mother Stratman, who, cloaked, veiled and bonneted, and ready to start on her homeward [103] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE way, yet lingered for a final unburdening of her mind, the tips of her gloved fingers resting fastidiously on the oilcloth-covered table with its scattered gobs of tapioca and smears of sirup from the earthen sirup jar. (Aunt Sarah put on her spectacles chiefly in situa- tions in which she wished to be abundantly able to hold her own; they gave her a dignity she could attain to in no other way.) "What an impertinent child 1" said Grand- mother Stratman sharply, lifting her chin. Caroline, weakly dragging herself about, fidgeted uncomfortably between the two, clutching at her faded kimono with its washed- out blotches where once had been the freshness of roses, and glancing hopelessly from one to the other. "Go awayl" repeated Aunt Sarah crossly to the lingering Belle. "Tut, tut," said David chidingly from the shed where he had taken to smoking his pipe. "I was about to say," went on Grand- mother Stratman with a forced calmness which brought out numberless little lines of repres- sion about her decisive mouth, "what I find it [104] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS very hard to say. I don't know what people can be thinking of to bring into the world child after child with absolutely no prospects! What can ever come of it, save misery, and more misery? It's madness!" She brought her gloved hands together tragically. "Simply madness. Why, the day will come, may come any time, when you won't have a roof over your heads!" Elizabeth Anne, vaguely sensing the storm, and waiting for no more, wriggled un- seen out of the front door, and stopped mid- way in the path to make a sign. 'Tis Shnowball," disjointedly explained Belle, in immediate response, through stream- ing tears, "down be th' thracks, deader aven ner Bogey, wid a sthone hole in her blissid hid, an' hersilf sthiffer'n a rham-rod ! . . . Oi towld ye a Banshee was sittin' o'er yer dure. . . . Oi'll own though," in a brightening burst of candor, "Oi did be wishin' 'twas yer sphry little owld Aunt Sarah she wor afther, or betther sthill, yer gran'mither wid th' glassy eyes!" [105] TROUBLES MULTIPLY FOR OUR HEROINE VII The whim of a Banshee is outside the range of human comprehension. Evidently, like care, it might kill a cat. Similarly, why might it not crumble a chimney, or dissipate a roof, particularly if, as Grandmother had intimated, that were the catastrophe next in order, and the roof in ques- tion had long since evinced a willingness to meet it more than half way in the matter? Elizabeth Anne did not mean to be behind- hand in this contingency, and to that end she kept cold and sneaking vigil behind the goose- berry bushes, when the opportunity permitted, huddled in her short jacket and breathing futilely on her blue, unmittened fingers. Then the vista of the Second Reader Class, opening newly to her vision, dispelled even the memory in a rosy mist. For the Second Reader Class, it was soon borne in upon her, [109] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE offered attractions of which she had never dreamed. To begin with, it had autograph albums. One saw them every now and then, even in school hours, in the hands of their owners ; but if the teacher, a dark-skinned young woman with protruding eyes, drooping lids, and a con- tinual yawn, chanced to look up from her desk, they disappeared with incredible swiftness, giving just a tantalizing glint of their gor- geously designed covers. Wonderful, mysterious little books ! By no means was this the extent of their beauty. Deeper investigation, by way of several secret and half-reluctant confidences, revealed the fact that inside were hearts and darts and underscorings and bits of foil that seemed to have prisoned the sunshine, and scrolls and "name" cards and paper lace and skillful "penmanship" birds with curlicues elaborate enough to furnish designs for a coronation brocade. In a single breath of passionate desire Eliza- beth Anne laid bare the joylessness of life without an autograph album. In the next [110] TROUBLES MULTIPLY Caroline looked at David, and David looked at Caroline. Both looks, meaning-laden, told the worst. Outer darkness, social ostracism, tears! tears wiped away finally by Aunt Sarah and a ray of hope. Aunt Sarah had ideas on this subject. Ripe plums, she said, never fell into one's lap for the wishing. There was always some tree- shaking necessary. She proposed a course of figurative tree-shaking, with the attendant Yankee offer of a penny a day to a little girl who would bring the milk for her breakfast. Elizabeth Anne blinked. An album of reasonably good appearance then cost about forty cents. It would take (her mathemat- ical ideas were never of the clearest, but she made her deduction in the course of time, with furrowed brow and pursed-up lips) it would take more than five weeks for it to materialize in this way. Five weeks ! A lifetime would have seemed fully as promising. But the time managed to creep along somehow, and when the treasure finally came into her possession, it was appre- ciated accordingly. [in] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE In truth, it may even be said, entirely with- out exaggeration, that her appreciation was undue, for she carried the book about with her for days, wrapped in numerous folds of tissue paper, before she could make up her mind to permit anyone to write in it. No member of the Second Reader Class, it may be added, ever touched pen or pencil to those immaculate pages by request. Nothing less crude than the inscriptions of pupils in the upper grades, the majority of whom she scarcely knew by name, was allowed. They laughed at her at first, and then, prob- ably a little flattered, entered their sentiments with a flourish which she studied and admired at length, unmindful of her diminishing circle of Second Reader friends. Of these there was only one who presumed to tamper with the situation the Red-Headed Boy who had also "passed with the Division," and who seemed to be omnipresent. He was an experimentalist born, was the Red-Headed Boy. One thought of him some- how as being continually in an attitude of tip- toe on various little mounts of his own mak- [112] TROUBLES MULTIPLY ing, not a mean or prying attitude, mind you, but simply that of a friendly interest so deep and so real that it refused to stay within meager bounds and diffused itself, Pandora- like, at the least little touch of the lid of the confining receptacle. Rabbits knew it, and squirrels and gophers and all the timid wood-folk with whom he was wont to hold esoteric communings. They opened sundry little doors to him, too doors closed to other boy-hands more ruthless, less patient. He could not have been unaware of this seeming favoritism, and while the knowledge did not inflate him, it made him impatient of any closed door of whatever nature. Besides he had a plan with reference to the forbidden album, and fate in the shape of a protracted errand for willing girlish feet, favored it at an early date. Carefully unrolling the little book from its numerous swathings in his opportunity, he re- tired with it to an unmolested spot, and seek- ing the whitest of white pages, adorned it in the following fashion with such effort as to [113] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE bring beads of sweat to his yellow-speckled forehead : " Remember me when this you see, And see if you can find out who I be." Vain, alas, were his hopes and his unaccus- tomed flourishes. When Elizabeth Anne re- turned to her desk, her first act was to tenderly ,draw the precious volume from its abiding place, and gloat over its pages for the hun- dredth time. Presently she set her foot down hard, her thin lips tightened, and her gray eyes flashed unwonted fire. Then deliberately and with as much care as the uninvited writer had shown, she took up her pen, and inscribed beneath the unsought offering a sentiment entirely her own: "I know just who you be," she wrote vin- dictively, on vengeance bent, and religiously adhering to the rhyming order, "but I don't care, you see, I'll tear it out this day, and throw it right away." A threat which she immediately proceeded to execute. [114] TROUBLES MULTIPLY Nevertheless the triumph of the faithful Red-headed Boy was still to come, for today the little brown-covered album with its sheath of forget-me-nots yellowed by age is treasured only for that ragged stub of a page which once bore the handwriting of a friend. As for the others, colors and contours grew dull with time; the brush of memory failed in the retouching; faces appeared and reappeared momentarily with varying degrees of distinct- ness, and at last one and all slipped away hope- lessly from the dear, strangely-wrought, all too-rapidly dimming canvas of the past. Now the Second Reader Class had another attraction quite on a par with autograph al- bums. It consisted of a weekly dialogue, usu- ally adapted from a popular fairy story, and constituting a part of the Friday afternoon "speaking" exercises. For this the participants were allowed "cos- tumes" crude things of home manufacture, but invested with a glory totally dispropor- tionate to their claims. Elizabeth Anne rev- eled in a part which demanded gorgeous flow- ing draperies, and when the role of Princess [115] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Starbright, in a crepe paper robe of primrose yellow, fell to her lot well, earth has her Eden; Elizabeth Anne had her Princess Star- bright ! And the days, just then, were creeping back to luxurious warmth and sunniness, and there was a wafting of perfume in every sweep of breeze from the pink heaven of crab-apple blossoms beyond the schoolhouse, and dottings of bloodroot and hepaticas on teacher's desk like the tiny islands of a flowery archipelago. More, a tableau, the very height of enter- tainment in the eyes of the "Second Readers," had been arranged as a crowning feature of that week's performance. The magnificent effect was achieved very humbly by drawing the shades, and burning a powder on a shovel held in the hands of an up- per grade boy. The odor of the burning stuff was abominable, and the dramatic figures kneeling on the platform choked heroically to keep from coughing, but not one would have relinquished this supreme moment in the face of any ordeal. As for Princess Starbright, one might almost [116] TROUBLES MULTIPLY have seen the rapturous beating of her small excited heart under the royal folds of the Prin- cess' gown, and for days thereafter golden days, idyllic days, days to be drained to the dregs for their sweetness she trod in a maze of perfect delight, nor set her foot on common earth. "Histrionic?" pondered Caroline with a sinking fear, for the stage she had been taught to believe spelled everything unholy for wo- man. Never, she resolved, albeit, would she interfere with so sacred a thing as a natural gift whatever its trend. But at this point there arose an unlooked- for complication. The new votary of things magical, carried away with the charm of fairy license, began to turn it to practical account. Why banish so pretty a thing as the dream- world from everyday consideration? Why hold it always provokingly at arm's length from the workaday world? When the trees along O'Hara Street began to mark more vividly the penciled delicacy of their fresh trimmings against a bare expanse of sky, and a thousand feathered throats vied with each [117] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE other in a thousand flute-like notes of delight, it was easy to imagine that the one had reached down benignly and joined hands with the other. And then came a morning with something to add to the illusion. Down in the path at the school-yard gate where the trickling rains had worn a little beaten space, lay a rose a real rose, great, red, soft-petaled, long- stemmed, warm and satiny to its inner heart, breathing exquisite things. Elizabeth Anne, with a low cry, crouched to the ground, un- mindful of the wet, and lifted the exotic thing to her breast. "I've brought you a rose, Miss Barlow," she was panting a few moments later, having clambered up the stairs to that lady's office. Only the highest shrine, she felt sure, was worthy to receive such an offering, and she advanced triumphantly, being careful to keep well in the fore of chubby, red-faced short- legged Robert, who, immediately upon the dis- covery, had darted after her, and who now stood twirling his cap, and determined to have his part in the presentation. [118] TROUBLES MULTIPLY Miss Barlow looked up from the formidable pile of record-books she was examining. "H'm, thank you," she said critically, "where did you find it?" The donor clutched her starched apron strings with sudden embarrassment; it had oc- curred to her that a gift ought to be more than a mere "finding." "Home in a vase," she answered faintly, when she could summon the necessary courage. "My mother has hundreds an' hundreds of 'em," wildly the starched apron strings be- coming an unsightly ball in the working fin- gers "an' she lets me take 'em whenever I like." "H'm," again observed Miss Barlow, taking note of the signs, and thrusting the rosy beauty into a tall vase between two exact counter- parts of itself, "it looks so remarkably like one I lost on my way to school this morning, that I think you and I will have a little talk about it after school tonight. You may go now. You were very kind to bring it to me, but under the circumstances we cannot let the matter drop there." [119] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE And Elizabeth Anne retired sadly to the remotest corner of the wood-shed. "I did get it at home!" she declared stoutly to Robert, who followed tentatively, "y u know I did, but the the Monster the Mon- ster with the Great Head and the Basilisk Eyes" "Huh," stolidly interrupted the matter-of- fact Robert, who had witnessed proceedings from beginning to end, and who felt called upon to speak his mind, "you told a lie, that's all, an' got caught at it." "An* what's Miss Barlow goin' to do?" queried Minnie Bird with fat unconcern, ar- riving inopportunely on the scene. "Shave off her hid, an' ate her widout fryin'," unfeelingly taunted Belle O'Hara in her wake. Only Caroline bore patiently with the vic- tim of these hallucinations, and she endured until the reign of the Princess of the Beautiful Thumb Prints, a period when a small, sly, sooty thumb-mark, presumable cognizance of royal rank, appeared on every article in the [120] TROUBLES MULTIPLY house that by its breadth and fairness of sur- face seemed to invite the impression. It is doubtful, just here, however, whether her mild, motherly rebellion would have been adequate to the case, had it not been aided and abetted by an approaching epidemic of the measles. One by one, the unfortunate Second Readers steadily fell victims to the onslaught, Elizabeth Anne, believing it to be the work of a wicked magician, meanwhile practicing, in defense, all the charms of which she had any knowledge. When, despite the most careful effort on her part, her throat ached and swelled, and her eyes and head grew heavy, her surprise was boundless, but her faith unshaken. "Measles, of course," said the uncompromis- ing old doctor who had been called in to make an examination, and who sat staring owl-like through his spectacles. "Why, by tomorrow you'll be as speckled as a speckled hen." The patient drew herself up very stiffly against the pillow, winking hard, and fighting valiantly with a growing lump in her throat. "I don't see how it can be," she said stub- [121] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE bornly with clinched hands and blazing cheeks, "I've charmed it off for two weeks, I tell you. But if it just must come to this house, couldn't you wish it onto her?" with a hopeful gesture toward the coldly smiling Mercedes, whose f rowzled flaxen head stuck up at the foot of the bed. "She never says she's sorry for anything, an' she's got 'n awful wicked pride." But the doctor's prowess in this direction proved unequal to his professional skill, and his prediction being verified next morning, the reign of the Princess of the Beautiful Thumb Prints and all her kind came to a summary end. [122] ELIZABETH RECEIVES "A NHXTITATION " VIII ELIZABETH RECEIVES "A NINVI- TATION " It is a critical moment in the life of any of us when we get the initial blow at that firm, but delicately poised thing, our first faith. Elizabeth Anne, receiving it together with the measles, took it hard, but she did not intend to divulge the fact to the possibly unsympa- thetic. "You haven't got not a single speckle," she remarked superiorly to the still unmoved and vapid-mouthed Mercedes in her vantage point at the foot of the bed. "You poor, pink ninny. I don't b'leeve you could have anything! You don't look like it anyhow. Why, even Robert an' Baby Ve got 'em, an' folks with the measles get toast an' sage-tea ev'ry day! Mother," as an anxious face, alert and pallid and self-for- getful, appeared at the door, "why is it so still in here? Why don't somebody that can talk come and sit on the bed?" [125] t THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Caroline advanced a few steps with her pat- tering, slippered tread. "Because the measles are catching, Betty," she said in her definite, painstaking way, kneel- ing down and smoothing the hair back from the little red fevered forehead, "that is, who- ever comes near you is apt to get them, too." Elizabeth Anne sighed. "Put Mercedes in my arms, mother," she begged upon reflection, snuggling up and care- fully smoothing a little place between the sheets, "right up close." And Caroline's simple heart swelled with pity for a state so lonely as to bring forth this unwonted show of maternal tenderness. Meanwhile the drama of life in O'Hara Street went on in wonted fashion, and there came freely through the open windows (thrown wide to oncoming summer, the boon of the poor) the perfect medley of sound which made up its orchestral accompaniment, varying from the sparrow's repetitive and monotonous "chee- up, chee-up, chee-up" under the eaves to Marthy's tuneless and voluptuous "I wanta be an angel, an' with th' angels stand." [126] "A NINVITATION" These were broken into, ever and anon, by Grandma Prouty's shrill hagglings with the ragman, or Mittie Peeler's hacking cough, or Uncle Pete's rising denunciations of Carrick's goat: "Och, wirra th' day! Oi'll fhix 'im, th' spalpeen, an' Carrick wid 'im. Sowl av St. Michael, but th' baboon face av 'im is turnin' me sick wid hate!" As a sort of speechless climax to this tirade, Uncle Pete was given to hurling, javelin-wise a superannuated cabbage-stalk, and this, upon occasion, falling so wide of the mark as to land, via the window, in the middle of Elizabeth Anne's sick-bed, the startled occupant, now on the highroad to convalescence, and unable to contain herself longer as a mere listener, sat up suddenly and lifted her small voice for a lilt in the chorus. "Uncle Pete," she called pipingly to the little old irate figure under the window, "it's awful t' hate! Miss Wade says it's just the same as murder!" The challenged deliberated a moment, draw- ing soberly at his short pipe and gazing un- [127] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE easily at the narrow open space from which the sound apparently proceeded. "You b'leeve me, don't you?" persisted the small voice with all seriousness. Uncle Pete slowly removed his pipe and tapped it thoughtfully against the sill. "Mavourneen," he said gallantly, "Oi'd blave yez, no matter if Oi knowed ye wor lyin', but Oi'm thinkin', me gur-rl, f'r all thot, 'tis a foine sight healthier f'r thim two whiskered byes th' way it sthands." The argument was interrupted here by the regular slosh-slosh of Maggie's loose shoes, and her playful cuff on her old uncle's ear. Clutching wildly at her massive bosom was a very young, and very wide-eyed "calico" kit- ten, spitting desperately and with every hair erect. 'Tis a prisint f'r yez, yer Shnowball bein* kilt," she explained amiably, assisting the tensely clinging feet over the sill, and smooth- ing the scratches on her brawny arm with her tongue, "but faith 'n Oi dunno am Oi agivin' it 'r is it agivin' me." In her flapping apron pocket was a note [128] "A NINVITATION" from Belle, who had already had the measles. "Love av Hivin," said the note dramatically through many soiled erasure spots, "don't lave 'em kape ye in bed anny longer. P. S. : There's a show on Mane Street wid a dancin' bare. Yer frind Belle O'Hara." It was all too true, as a distant, syncopated drum-beat and the scurrying feet of Marthy, hair streaming, and a forgotten dish-rag in her hand, shortly testified beyond a question. Past her like a faded blue streak darted Belle, el- bows out and thin legs flying, while Maggie and Pete, not to be outdone, added their ener- gies to the race. Behind them, only martyrdom and the gall- ing of the martyr's shackles. But it was, after all, ultimately a disap- pointed audience for which the poor, old, buf- feted, browbeaten cinnamon bear danced that morning. There were greater glories, it ap- peared, concealed in a huge tent which had sprung up mushroom fashion on a vacant lot glories referred to at some length by the round old Teuton proprietor who stood agitatedly at the street corner. [129] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE And it was free all free! Save the mark! To attempt to enter was to be immediately ac- costed by a glib gentleman with a wild blond mop of hair, a bottle of K 's Pain Killer and the rather belated explanation, "You no puy my medicine, I charch you den cends to see my free show." Hapless, seeking, diversion-hungry Cull Prairie in the full swing of convalescence ! Had it not been already dosed till it was lean of purse and stomach? "There do be some fun in the mazles," con- fided the baffled Belle from a plant-stand mount under the window on her return. "Shure an' whin c'n ye thrust a German at tall, at tall?" Elizabeth Anne popped into a sitting pos- ture, eyes alight, and with an alacrity not at all consistent with respectable invalidism, but it was not to the defense of the German she sprang, nor had her eagerness anything to do with forbidden tents, or chagrined audiences, or pain-killing remedies. In a short, unexpectedly blossoming half hour, her martyrdom had been scattered to the [130] "A NINVITATION" four winds of heaven. She too had news news that had come grandly in a square white envelope from the postoffice. Caroline, upon reading it, had been divided between a smile and a tear; and David, who had brought it in, had put his arm around her shoulders, and so decided her in favor of the former. "An' an' it asks Robert an' me to come for a week's visit to Hedgegirt in Brook- lawn where our Grandmother Stratman lives, when we get better," announced the narrator triumphantly, as a climax, "an' you call it a 'ninvitation.' ' A "ninvitation" clean, white, red-sealed, ink written! descended an alien thing in O'Hara Street. The cinnamon bear might now well make his last bow, and retreat to the limbo of the shadows. Even Belle was properly impressed, and, no doubt believing herself privileged by so weighty a confidence, slipped in many times in the week to come, and sat with her hand cup- ping her chin in the little conferences between the daylight and the dark, which included only [131] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE the feminine members of the family, and in which the all-engrossing matter of a new dress was gone over and over. For, of course, acceptance was a foregone conclusion, and equally, of course, a frock befitting the occasion. So while the two minded the baby between them, Caroline took up a pencil, and set down some figures and pouted and frowned, and rumpled her usually smooth and shining hair, and ended by crossing out the figures, and burning the paper. But at last she put on her gray shawl, and went out silently into the twilight, and then they knew it was to come. Poor, marvelously eked-out little dress, evoked from none could tell where, save those who would not speak! Caroline turned away from its shining blue sateen splendor, when the parcel was opened, but Elizabeth Anne loved its dear, "near" silkiness, and pat- ted it with both hands and caressed it with her cheek. And when, after a little space all throbbing with hope and animation, it became an entity, [132] "A NINVITATION" and hung gracefully from a chair back, with its cotton lace frills, she danced madly for sheer joy, dragging Belle into the dance, and point- ing out to her proudly every feature of the cos- tume which had swelled gradually to wonder- ful proportions, including at the last a round, crimped muslin hat, a pair of white lisle mitts, and, as a final surprise, a string of pink glass beads, already the apple of their owner's eye. The last desire of her heart, it seemed, had been gratified in these, and when, with kaleido- scopic swiftness, as events always moved for her, the hour of starting was at hand, she stepped forth very confidently, clutching the previously procured tickets with one hand, and making frantic efforts to keep the immaculately gingham-clad Robert decorously at her side with the other. But the leave taking from the assembled group in the front yard had only begun, and from the general effusiveness of its nature one might have judged this a journeying to Algiers. "Good-bye," said "Grandma" Prouty, the [133] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE spokesman, on second thoughts thrusting out a little claw-like hand. "Good-bye," coughingly echoed Mittie Peeler, who had never been three miles away from Cull Prairie in her life, and who was ac- tually wiping her eyes. "Be good t' yersilves," suggested Maggie and Belle, hanging over the fence with as- sumed nonchalance. Caroline, a bit of faded gray checked ker- chief about her shoulders, followed them to the gate with her last admonitions. She had been eating a lunch, and there were childish traces of drippings about her warmly red mouth. "Take good care of Robert, and remember you're my little Betty-Genius," she said in a whisper. "And there's one thing, children," she finished doubtfully with a shy look around, "don't ask for syrup or drippings with your bread. Couldn't you won't you try to act as if you were used to the butter when it is passed?" It was the first time she had ever mentioned anything of the sort, and her embarrassment [184] "A NINVITATION " sent her back into the house before the farewells were satisfactorily over. Aunt Sarah, who had stood quietly back of her, and who seemed to have guessed the im- port of the whisper, ran after the travelers. "You're just as good as anybody," she said, apropos of nothing in particular, "remember that, and hold up your heads. Money makes no difference; it's the heart that matters, only the heart !" She tapped her flat little chest like an agitated woodpecker. At the corner was David, waiting to see them safely in the train. His mild eyes lit up with approval as his gaze fell upon them. To him, his daughter, in her blue gown and pink beads, seemed very well dressed indeed. He was half doubtful about touching her hand in its soft white mitt. Together they went on silently up the street, through the early summer sunshine, and as silently took their leave at the car steps. It was a big moment for both children, and their hearts pounded noisily against their ribs, as the heavily panting engine again took up its course. [135] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE However, it being only one station to Brook- lawn, the time they remained in the deep, won- derful, red plush seat seemed incredibly short, and almost before they had had time to adjust themselves to surroundings, or to find out to their satisfaction what the fat woman with the lustily crying baby meant to do in her extrem- ity, grandmother herself, rustling graciously in her silken coat, had taken a hand of each, and was leading the way down the broad board walk. As they climbed into the carriage she bent her head with an unexpected pecking move- ment, and touched with her lips the round, peach-hued circle of Robert's cheek, just where the dimple twinkled in and out, but when, in turn, she leaned toward Elizabeth Anne with similar intention, a certain meek, suggestive bend of the girlish neck deterred her, and she turned her attention instead to the driver her humble, thick-set, red-faced head farmer with an imperious gesture. The carriage sped along, out of the still, narrow Brooklawn streets into the wide and greening spaces beyond. Grandmother Strat- [136] "A NINVITATION" man sat up very straight, not speaking at first, perhaps not thinking it necessary to speak. In her hand-bag was a faintly scented roll which she drew forth presently, and scanned interestedly from time to time a pamphlet of the Brooklawn Ladies' Social League, with the topic for the week, "The Ethics of Children's Clothing," boldly underlined. [137] OUR HEROINE IS " TAKEN IN " IX OUR HEROINE IS " TAKEN IN " "I am surprised to see you in such a tawdry dress," said Grandmother Stratman at last in a low voice, deliberately restoring the pam- phlet, and breaking the heavy silence. She paused at the name which she would never willingly speak, but her gaze met her granddaughter's awe-filled eyes. "Your mother always had the most remark- able notions of clothes. There is positively no excuse in the world for tawdriness. The idea of a cheap bauble like that on your neck! I can't imagine anything more out of keeping. . . . And Robert, you have soiled and wrinkled your blouse unbelievably in so short a journey." By the time they had reached the preten- tious Stratman portico, the two children were gripping hands resolutely under the lap-robe in mutual sympathy. Still hand in hand, they walked into the [141] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE formidable sitting-room and caught a glimpse through heavy velvet portieres of the ornate parlor. In awed silence they sat down on the very edge of the slippery high-backed chairs, Aunt Ellen and Aunt Virginia, whom they had never before seen, looking at them intently, but seeming not to see them. There was something in the atmosphere that they could not comprehend, something that hampered sociability, and took away half the attraction of the soft carpets and velvets, the pictured faces looking down from the wall, the glittering sideboard in the room beyond, with its great bowl of huge deep -yellow or- anges, loot of some favored earth-spot. Even the final announcement of dinner, savory as it promised to be, did not appear to mitigate it. The aunts sat opposite them at dinner, and their gaze continued at closer range. Aunt Ellen, the elder, was rather short as compared to the other members of her family, and in- clined to stockiness, which was accentuated by her ruffled, bead-trimmed house dress. Her manner was spiritless, her drab hair parted in the middle and fastened in a heavy [142] OUR HEROINE IS "TAKEN IN" knot at the nape of her neck, her eyes large, of no definite color, and seeming still to hold the ghosts of shy, hidden dreams which practi- cal considerations had put to rout. "The boy Robert," she said, being the first to speak as they sank into their places, "favors Cousin Matthew as a child, I think. Remem- ber that observing way of his, and the tuft of hair on his crown that always would stand up straight?" She laughed faintly, as if questioning her mother's permission in the act; then, noting the preoccupation of the older woman who, be- ing hungry, was just then giving her first atten- tion to the viands, continued more boldly: "He has the same sort of ears, too so unfurled- looking and tight to his head, and those mis- chievous eyes are unmistakable." "I'd call them rather trickier than Cousin Matthew's," dissented Virginia, in more alert and independent fashion, resting her spoon on the edge of her soup plate. Her voice sounded sharp, being several keys higher than her sister's round tone, and the sharpness extended to her elbows and cheek- [143] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE bones, and was carried out in a general harsh thinness of body. Her dark hair was crimped, and piled high about a fan-shaped jet orna- ment ; there was a dangling double chain about her neck, a large square brooch at her throat, and three rings on a single finger of her right hand. "But I was thinking of the girl," she went on, reflectively. "She" (Elizabeth Anne al- ways resented the third person as applied to herself in her presence; it gave her a sense of being deaf and dumb, or lacking in some way) "she hasn't a feature in common with Caroline that I can see, and her nose is something I can't locate." "You don't happen to have met Sarah Lang- don," drily interposed Grandmother Strat- man, quirking her little finger as she lifted her glass, and abruptly joining in the conversa- tion, "or you might be enlightened." "Perhaps she is accountable, too, for the pert upper lip and the high shoulders," ob- served Virginia, elevating her brows. Ellen, beside her, jerkily touched her elbow, and coughed with a significant sound that was [ 144] OUR HEROINE IS "TAKEN IN" meant to imply: "Be careful. Perhaps they know more than they seem to." "How is your mother, Elizabeth?" she asked formally, uneasily changing the subject. To her, childhood was a bit of cipher code which she made kindly, if futile, efforts to translate. Elizabeth Anne started. She had been won- dering how one acted when one was used to the butter. "Very well, thank you," she answered al- most inarticulately, relieved to find that she still had the power of speech. "And your father?" inquired Aunt Ellen briskly, as if she feared that the topic might be lost. "Very well, thank you," repeated her niece weakly, wondering if there were any other suitable answer to this question, and amazed at her own stupidity. "And the baby?" inquired Aunt Ellen with a note of elation, feeling that she was doing well. Elizabeth Anne gulped. What was genius for, if not to help one in such an emergency as this ? She glanced appealingly at Robert, only [145] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE to find him at last industriously following Aunt Sarah's oft-repeated advice "to let his victuals stop his mouth." "What do you do when you are at home?" began the catechist with a fresh inspiration, neatly attacking her salad. The catechised sat up with a sudden jerk, crumpled her napkin, and caught her breath in a sharp little gasp. "We all do everything," she burst forth pre- cipitately and enigmatically with fearful pre- monitions of, "What does your mother do? And your father? And the baby?" that were likely to follow. "After all, that curve of her right eyebrow when she speaks is like Caroline's," broke in Virginia with the air of one who has made a discovery, "but her manners, or rather, her lack of them, remind me of Mm" with a pecu- liar emphasis on the pronoun. "Poor child!" Elizabeth Anne, fortunate in all fundamen- tal respects, had never before heard that epi- thet in connection with herself. It made her tingle, though she did not know why, with hot resentment. She jumped up with a sort of [ 146] OUR HEROINE IS "TAKEN IN" scattered, dissected feeling, when the meal was over, and would have escaped at the outer door, through which Robert had already crept pariah-like into the yard, when a firm hand de- tained her. "I dislike to see a girl romp out of doors with boys," said Grandmother, reprovingly. "You should have something to occupy you in the house. . . . Your mother says your eyes are weak. Let me see," unceremoniously lift- ing the small chin on her forefinger. "They don't look so to me. In any case, there will be something you can do without injury to them. Virginia, get me a skein of pea-green zepher and some perforated cardboard. We'll see if we can begin an 'air-castle'. . . . Of course you have been taught simple cross- stitch?" Elizabeth Anne gulped again, her awkward little untrained fingers fluttered in her lap ; the dismal negative almost stuck in her throat. For the first time in her life she was feeling stupid and incompetent, and the sensation was far from a pleasant one. "I am surprised," declared Grandmother [ 147 ] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE with the deliberate phrase that seemed to come oftenest to her lips. "I am truly surprised. It will show you something, girls," she added in an aside, "about her bringing up. One might almost think that Caroline intended to make a woman lawyer, or some equally dreadful and unfeminine thing of her. It's my impression, in fact, that she does." She selected several articles from her work- basket as she spoke, feeling skilfully among its contents with her long fingers ; and drawing her chair a trifle nearer to the window, snipped diligently a moment with her small scissors. "Since you are so backward as compared to the average girl of your age," she lamented, "I presume I shall have to take the work in my own hands. ... I shall begin with the bottom octagon. The design I select is the same that was used in the one you see under the hanging lamp." Elizabeth Anne turned her eyes mechani- cally upon the intricate beaded creation, and back to the deft movements of the shining needle in a sort of fascination. "How many horrid things you know!" she [148] OUR HEROINE IS "TAKEN IN" cried involuntarily, with a species of admira- tion she had hitherto reserved for some act of bravado on the part of the Red-Headed Boy. Aunt Ellen looked up furtively. Aunt Virginia toyed with her chain, and bit her lip. Grandmother started vexedly, dropping her pea-green skein to the floor. "Your bringing up is beyond my compre- hension," she said directly this time. "Let me show you what I had accomplished at your age." She laid the cardboard octagons methodi- cally upon the table, and rising, opened a drawer from which she drew forth a parcel wrapped in faded tissue-paper, from the en- veloping folds of which fell yard upon yard of wide, fine-meshed, knitted lace, ecru-hued with age. "I made this in a time of illness," she added reminiscently, "and my eyes, I dare say, were far weaker than yours, for they have been troublesome for many years." Elizabeth Anne looked up commiseratingly. [ 149] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Having found her tongue, she was seized with a rash desire to use it. "My dear," she said soberly, shaking her head in a little chiding fashion borrowed from Caroline, "you ought to have been more careful!" It was such a politely offered remark, that it was not easy to see how it could go very far astray, but again there was that peculiar bat- tery of eyes, and this time Aunt Ellen coughed and rose to get a drink, and Grandmother and Aunt Virginia sighed and exchanged glances, and murmured something about the fruits of disobedience. Matters did not seem very much inclined to simplify themselves just then, nor did they evince any tendency in that direction in the days to come. The harder the small fluttering fingers worked, the larger grew the heap of mutilated cardboard, and the more desolate the general outlook. But still the work went on with brief inter- missions. Between times, there were much debated wardrobe changes to be made. Grandmother [150] OUR HEROINE IS "TAKEN IN" was imperative in this matter. Bright colors and gewgaws, she said, were not for the chil- dren of those in meagre circumstances. She tapped the pamphlet of the B. L. S. L. as she said it, and drew down her mouth, so that innumerable little fine lines appeared at either side of it. They fostered wrong ideas and desires that, since they could not be legiti- mately gratified, would seek gratification in undesirable ways, she continued, forgetting that she was not before the Society. And then, when she had found her notebook, and jotted down a few sentences, she remem- bered, very fortunately she said, a little plain brown linen dress of Virginia's with shoes and bonnet to match, that were fully as good as new, though they had been stored away in the attic for years. [151] ELIZABETH RELINQUISHES HER " SASSIETY TOGS " X ELIZABETH RELINQUISHES HER " SASSIETY TOGS " With a very few changes the quaint little demure-setting garments fitted their new wearer as if they had been made for her, but the blood rose quite to her temples as she gazed at herself so clad in the long glass. It seemed a very different girl she found reflected there, and one she felt at once she could never like, to say nothing of the verdict of the home folks. Already in imagination she could hear Belle O'Hara's jibe, "Shure an' phat become av th' tumble grand sassiety togs?" "Doesn't Robert have to have any any dif- f'rent clothes at all?" she ventured at length, in a desperate endeavor to divert attention from herself. But the three, to all intents and purposes, felt incompetent to attempt anything in this line. They had other plans for Robert, it de- [155] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE veloped, plans that consigned him to bed for the greater part of a day, while his clothes re- ceived proper laundry attentions. He adopted new habits of life with much greater ease than did his sister, however, and lay calmly wrapped in a broad nightgown, staring at the ceiling and the pattern of the wall-paper, until he fell into a comfortable doze. "We're going home, home, tomorrow, do you hear?" whispered Elizabeth Anne, pouncing in and seizing him by the shoulder. "Mother's written, an' don't you ever dare t' tell I'm singin' like a bird inside ! It wasn't a single bit better 'n th' measles 1" It is not impossible that the sentiment, like other sentiments of this nature, was not con- fined to one side of the case, for early next morning the three hostesses, a pleasing vision of duty well done illuminating their faces, de- posited their young guests on a depot bench an hour before train time, and departed on a marketing expedition with a parting injunc- tion to "be good." Now, clearly, it is impossible to be anything but good on a stiff-backed depot bench for V [156] ELIZABETH RENOUNCES " SASSIETY " sixty solid minutes, the penance inflicted being sufficient for any sin outside the seven deadly and mortal category. The clickety-click of the busy telegraphic apparatus was confusing; the strangeness of the place seemed vast and bewildering; the re- sponsibility was terrific. Two youthful heads leaned despondently against the wall before it was over ; two pairs of small arms hung limply, and dejection forced itself even into the desul- tory conversation maintained solely for the benefit of the agent. "I don't b'lieve the train's ever comin'," mourned Robert, almost in his sister's nervous key, by reason of the unaccustomed stiffness of the gingham neckband that was all but throttling him. "Ask the man, Betty, how much longer it '11 be." 1 ^\ Elizabeth Anne sprang up determinedly, and lurched forward on her wobbly heels. Her feet, being the only generous portion of her anatomy, were protesting feverishly at their incommodious housing. "Will you please tell me where the train is?" [157] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE she asked vaguely with assumed coolness, stretching herself to her full height. The agent lifted his head, and the glimmer of a smile shone in his eyes, a smile that promptly evolved itself into a chuckle at nearer sight of the woebegone travelers. "You needn't laugh!" indignantly protested the questioner, again rising on tiptoe. "I don't always wear a bonnet an' dress like this. When I travel I usu'lly wear blue, an' I've got th' 1-loviest string o' pink beads in my parcel!" Her lips began to quiver uncontrollably, and the lower one rolled out so piteously that the man's good-natured, puzzled face sobered at once. "There, there," he said, amiably enough, "don't worry, little girl. Where do you want t' go? To Cull Prairie, you say? And you have the tickets? Why, I haven't the least doubt in the world, you'll get there before you know it without a bit of trouble." And contrary to the expectations of both children, his words proved true, for in due time they set foot again in their native town, which never before had looked half so attractive. [168] ELIZABETH RENOUNCES " SASSIETY " "Here comes Tim an' Billy an' Terrence with their slates!" shouted Robert, whirling on his heel like an enthused dervish. "I b'lieve I like school. I hope we can go tomorrow." This was a hitherto undreamed of attitude on his part. Elizabeth Anne's mind was occupied with another train of thought. "They sha'n't ever see me like this," she said, anxiously untying the sombre strings of her newly acquired bon- net, and dodging between the loose boards of a near-by fence. "Come, get behind here with me quick, Robert Langdon, an' don't you say a word." But, though his brotherly haste was all that could be desired, a round cap, tilted slightly backward, appeared shortly over the top board of the fence, and two brown surprised eyes, set in a golden spattering of freckles, peered down interestedly. They belonged to the Red- Headed Boy, who often strayed thus investi- gatingly from his kind. "Sh-sh!" cautioned Elizabeth Anne, recog- nizing him with relief, and tapping her lips with a warning forefinger. "You get right [159] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE down an' go ahead jus' as if you hadn't seen a thing!" "All right," he promised with ready loyalty, though having not the slightest idea of the occasion for secrecy, and he slid down without a question and proceeded thoughtfully on his way. The motioning fugitive looked after him gratefully; then, having waited until the coast was clear, she seized Robert's hand, and fairly dragged him, in her haste, the remainder of the way home. Caroline, kneeling beside the baby's crib with a tiny blanket in her hands, looked up with alarm as they darted through the door, start- ling into flight the calico kitten which had been licking her paws in prophecy of "company." "Dear, dear, what is the trouble?" she begged with a single embrace for both. "Are you frightened or hurt in any way? Answer me, Betty! Quick!" But Elizabeth Anne's overstrained nerves had given way, and the tears rolled silently down her cheeks. "Here, mother," she said when she could speak, solemnly extending the [160] ELIZABETH RENOUNCES " SASSIETY " little brown bonnet and the unfrilled waist out of which she had managed to slip, "you can sell these tomorrow to the ragman if he'll take "Why, why!" exclaimed Caroline, wrinkling her smooth brow, and feeling as if she had laid down her last sacrifice on the home altar, and the fire had refused to consume it. "Did Grandmother make them for you, and is this the way you feel about it? What can be the matter?" Her unrepentant daughter wiped the big tears off her chin. "I don't know what is the matter with her, for sure," she deliberated, unconsciously mis- interpreting the last question, "but I think I'm almost afraid, mother" an epithet from a past experience flashing upon her mind "I'm almost afraid she's a German!" * * * Did you ever achieve an unsought distinc- tion? Perhaps you have, and marveled for many days at the greatness thrust upon you. Perhaps it even went so far as to mark an [161] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE epoch on your way, as it did in the case of Elizabeth Anne, and then you marveled still more and resented it a little too, no doubt, to think that what you had deemed the high and golden roadway upon which your feet had been set should receive its markings, casually, as from the first little stray white pebbles in the hand of Fate. Elizabeth Anne, standing at the close of a long vacation on the threshold of the Third Reader Class, as a discoverer on the shadowy green rim of an unexplored world, hugging her f ringy burlap schoolbag to her thin little breast, and shaking her short locks, now bound in a fillet sharply defining her pale blond crown, attributed it all, simply enough, to the pin that had glinted up at her, point foremost, on her solitary way that morning, from the dusty, weedgrown stretch of sidewalk, and which she had saluted in grave and priestly monotone: "Find a pin and pick it up, and all that day you'll have good luck." If the point were directed from one, accord- ing to Belle O'Hara, one might as well relin- quish all hope of the good fortune that was [162] ELIZABETH RENOUNCES " SASSIETY " otherwise his due ; it dissipated one's luck alto- gether, or at best pointed it compromisingly to fields afar. Now the last days of vacation had brought (so carefully interlarded are the distinctions and their reverses in this life) a first skeleton to the Langdon family closet, a very small and insignificant creature of its kind, to be sure, but demanding, for all that, its full share of the trappings of secrecy. The fact was, the period had threatened seriously, and with boldly increasing insistence, to be one of the leanest of their lean times, when David, in the restlessness of a day of en- forced leisure, had come within gunshot of an overbold raccoon in a neighboring woodlot, and solved the problem of meat to the complete satisfaction of all concerned, until it was acci- dentally discovered that the O'Haras, who ate practically everything in the food line that would bear mastication, considered this animal too "gamey" for their consumption. Thereupon descended the curtain of dark- ness, and the guilty partakers of the feast walked aloof lest they betray the secret, and [163] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE guarded their lips with a discretion as difficult as it was new. The weight of the responsibility sat heavily on the elder-sister mind of Elizabeth Anne. Not altogether for the one little bony intruder, but rather that the one lent validity to the fear, since timidly harbored by her against her will, that there might be others lurking about in corners others less readily understood, more terrible. There was a Mortgage, she knew a Thing never spoken of save in a whisper a continu- ally hungry Thing, that held out both hands and cried, "Give, give," when there was nothing to give. Belle O'Hara, who seemed never to lack for information on any subject, and who had excel- lent reasons for being on intimate terms with this, said it meant that "somebody had a clutch on yer ownin's." She said it was a pity when a man "couldn't have his own shanty." It was not a pretty word, "shanty." Why could not Belle have said house, or home? Minnie Bird was much given to saying "my home," but then there was a [164] ELIZABETH RENOUNCES " SASSIETY " wide, white-painted piazza, all around the place where she lived, and a staircase, and Minnie's charming apple-blossom-tinted bedroom. Elizabeth Anne had been permitted a glimpse of it, once, on an errand, and that night it had rained and a bit of the plastering had fallen down in her own bedroom, and next morning there was a grimy puddle on the bare floor near the bed. It was natural, after all, that such a shrink- age in dignity should be marked by a cor- responding shrinkage in terms. And Belle had not meant it unkindly. She had added that, for herself, she was "sick av the Thing that was atin' 'em aloive," and that, some day, she was going to marry, and "be rid av it all f 'rivermore." "Oi'd a fure lafe clover, yistiday, in me shoe," she elaborated with a coy flutter of her skirts, "an' who sh'u'd Oi mate, comin' down th' thracks, but Jimmy Hannon an' Tim O'Neil? O'im takin' it t' mane that Oi c'n hov me pick av th' pair f'r a mon, though 'tis throublin' me sore which wan av th' twain Oi'll be pickin'." [165] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Her troubled confidante was aware of a little, unanalyzed shiver that seized her at the mem- ory of this speech. It had a sound, somehow, of future rattling. It was limiting, hounding, depressing. But she was glad of the Third Reader Class and the omen of a properly- directed pin point ahead. [166] ELIZABETH WRITES FOR THE " SUN " XI ELIZABETH WRITES FOR THE "SUN" 1 It was in the Third Reader Class that a wonderful thing was to happen. One could almost have guessed that it would by the important appearance of that section of the school. Gone were the infantile June flower-garden array of immense parti-colored hair bows, the pink curves, the enchanting dimples, the tooth- less smiles of the first and second years. The Third Readers were lean and angular and sinewy ; long exposure to vacation suns had put into the transparent brownness of their eager faces a variety of freckle decoration un- known to tenderer years, and here and there glinted a spark of wickedness in eyes that had known hitherto only artlessness and unblink- ing sincerity. To the dazzled orbs of the latest recruit [169] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE peeping at them from behind Miss Barlow's stately, ushering back they looked almost grown-up. Furthermore, adding to their importance, in the hand of each pupil was a handsome, little, red-covered book, which, it appeared, unlike the autograph album, there was no necessity of hiding, since, joy of joys, all the bright covers were presently resplendent in the clear wave of sunshine which streamed freely into this room. Afterward it came to light that these books, while small, had the high-sounding name of dictionary a term one delighted to dandle before one's lower-grade friends. The Third Reader teacher, in sharp contrast to the lady in the room adjoining, had wide- open gray eyes, and was very short and alert and busy. Her teeth were over-prominent and she smiled a great deal, but her dull orange chemi- sette and sprightly unexpected movements, that made her not unlike a joyous springtime robin, were clearly the admiration of her [170] ELIZABETH WRITES A POEM thirty-odd beholders as she hopped with bird- like agility to the blackboard, where boldly- white words at once began framing themselves with squeaking precision under her new and energetic crayon, to the tune of a gradually swelling chorus of pronunciation. Elizabeth Anne, lifting her voice on high in the general fervor, gloried in the effort. For her, mere words had always held an end- less fascination, and when the chorus of pro- nunciation had died out, and the class had been given certain instructions anent a Composition Period (one had a dizzy feeling of having all but circumnavigated the realm of knowledge at very mention of this) the spell refused to depart from her, and she sat with dreamy gaze fixed distantly on the slumberous, cloyingly sweet clover heads nodding without, her scarred pencil between her teeth, her fillet slipping neglectedly over one ear, her fingers strum- ming absently on the desk. Preliminaries being over, pens began to scratch very stiffly and very industriously all about her. Between whiles, indignant glances [171] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE came her way; once, a friendly, suggestive nudge. Wasted solicitude ! The dreamer stirred ; her small teeth relaxed their hold on the ill-treated pencil ; at the back of her brain a little inspiration was stealing, stealing. It scorned the platitude of prose. In sympathy with the droning bees in their Bagdad of scent and color, it wanted to sing itself. . . . Should she? Dared she? The wobbly lettered and blackly and deter- minedly punctuated sheets on every hand be- gan the flutter preparatory to collection. The time grew short, the need urgent. The little idea in desperation came forth; the paper slipped shyly and reluctantly into the Moni- tor's fingers. And then and then well, the race is not always to the fleet. "Well, now," said the lady at the desk, smil- ingly, in her terse, business-like voice, "Well, now!" And on Elizabeth Anne's unbelieving ears fell the sound of her own effort being read aloud: [172] ELIZABETH WRITES A POEM THE FAIRY Once there was a little fairy, Very sweet and very neat, And she came and sat beside me, Right beside me in my seat. " Will you help me, little fairy?" Said I, very soft and low. " Help yourself," then said the fairy, And she spread her wings to go. "I shall use it in the Cull Prairie Sun" said the Third Reader teacher, becoming inspired in her turn. "Perhaps you do not know that we are to have a column entitled 'School Items of Interest.' I did not ask for verse, but " Her prominent teeth were much in evidence. The Cull Prairie Sun, let it be here explained, was the town newspaper for which Elizabeth Anne had conceived an early fondness. It was now edited by the teacher's uncle, no other than the "Mr. Kail of the cloth ears," who had long had ambitions outside the clothing busi- ness, but whose editorial ability was yet a plant of so frail a growth that it needs must have withered and pined away altogether, but for the petting and watering it had at the hands of [173] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE this enterprising niece, who hoped some day to be able to assume the office herself. And the niece's plan, in this particular in- stance, wrought wonders for Elizabeth Anne. "In the newspaper!" breathed Caroline when, after the lapse of a silent and doubting week, this triumph was related at home. "Surely, Betty, you must be mistaken!" 1 She sat down quite suddenly, and the pink and white contended for supremacy in the fair young face she bent over the baby's. "Literary!" was her mental ejaculation. The vexed problem was solved at last. She had known that some time it must be, but she felt almost bewildered with the unexpected- ness of it. "Are you sure, child?" she repeated incredulously. It was just here David entered with the freshly printed sheet, reeking with printer's ink. "So our little girl has broken into print," he said jocularly, "and on the subject of fairies." "Fairy!" scoffed Robert, running a stubby forefinger laboriously down the page. "Fairy! [174] ELIZABETH WRITES A POEM Shucks! I'll bet 'twas a mouse that smelled your cheese sandwich!" "Mebbe I don't wish I wuz a poet!" flut- tered Mittie Peeler, breaking in upon the family group with the license of a frequent caller. "Ye'r soft enough 'thout," growled "Grand- ma" Prouty at her heels. "Yer brains is that watery, now, I c'n hear 'em a slushin' in yer head. Not but whut," with a sudden change of tone, "I hev seen some awful techin' po'try. A half nephew o' mine down t' Piperstown once wrote some ez 'ud fetch ye, an' no mis- take. Pore boy, th' grave got 'im o' grievin' afore he wuz thirty ! Yassir! 'Twas crossed in love he wuz fer all th' worl' like them story book men ye hear about. Y' never seed more pitiful grievin'. 'Aunt,' he'd say 't me on th' side when I wuz down thar avisitin' his step- ma, an' we'd set down of a mornin' fer a bit o' meat pie an' a cup o' coffee, 'I'm atryin' t' starve myself, I am, but I allus get too hun- gry.' Well, them stiddy ones is desarvin' o' their vicuals. Stiddy worker in a bake-shop [175] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE fer nigh onto ten years, he was. Allus' aturnin' his hand t' somethin' if 'twas only that po'try- mill o' hisn. Why, sez he, once, sez he: ' Pies and cakes, cakes and pies, Isabel's tongue turns easy to lies.' "An' again, a-turnin' th' crank 'nother way : ' Tarts an' doughnuts, doughnuts an' tarts; Stun t' the middle is some wimmin's hearts.' "Oh, 'twould fetch ye th' way I sez 'twould 'thout ye wuz th' stun-hearted kind yerself, an' thar hain't 'n awful lot o' them, not in these here parts be thar, Mis' Langdon?" But Caroline, who sat a little apart with misty eyes and dreamily curving lips, did not resume her part in the discussion until the little group had resolved itself once more into a purely family affair. "Grandmother shall have a copy," she said then, her thoughts on the Cull Prairie Sun, and a curious note of triumph in her voice. "H'm," said Elizabeth Anne in the manner [176] ELIZABETH WRITES A POEM employed by Miss Barlow in expressing a doubt. "She can scallop it, an' put it on a pantry shelf," cheerfully suggested Aunt Sarah, who had been waiting for the chance ever since her arrival. Whereat David wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and submitted nothing. Nevertheless, Grandmother received her copy almost before the all-pervading inky odor had died out of it, and her recognition of the achievement, which arrived in the course of time, was only a little less prim than the famous verses themselves. "I am much pleased," she wrote in her accu- rate hand, "to learn that the child is doing well in school. I should be more pleased to learn that she was progressing with her needle, in which work she seems more than ordinarily de- ficient. Your cousin Matthew's little Editha, four years younger than she, as you know, only last week finished a Sun-in-glory bed- quilt that is really a credit to the family." Caroline, reading the letter aloud, stopped short at this portion of it. Somewhere, rank- [177] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE ling in her heart, was a hidden fear of a certain justice in Grandmother's criticism. But a swift, reactionary rush of feeling dimmed her eyes. It was not to be expected that any child could develop to suit everyone's fancy. That reluctant, meagre bit of praise showed only an unrelenting spirit. And the dimness became two glistening drops on the reader's long lashes. "Don't cry, mother!" urged Elizabeth Anne, laying her soft, brown cheek of a sudden very tenderly against the hand that held the letter. "She said I didn't know how to make an air- castle," with unwonted penetration. "I knew she would say it, but never mind." "Oh, dear child," half sobbed Caroline out of her simple, overfilled heart, "promise me that always you will think, work, study ! Noth- ing shall stand in your way. Some day Grand- mother, yes, and the world perhaps, may be glad to read what you have written !" [178] ELIZABETH BASKS IN FAME'S LIGHT XII ELIZABETH BASKS IN FAME'S LIGHT Elizabeth Anne did not wholly understand the source of the storm ; neither did she know exactly what was required of her, save that it was something that was to bring great happi- ness to this dear soul who had so long brooded watchfully over her, waiting for she knew not what. But she gave her promise in all faith, and the vow stood between mother and daughter. "I will," she said firmly, her small jaw set with determination, her eyes deeply gray with stirring purpose. And she carried her head high with uncom- fortable consciousness for a week, remembering the promise, and the blink of a second silver piece from Mr. Kail (whose periodic visits she did not yet know had to do with the Mort- gage) and being aware that several times she had been pointed out by different persons in [181] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE the street as "the little girl whose verses were published in the newspaper." Somehow it seemed necessary to live up to their expectations a task that soon, very soon, became almost as distasteful as the kiss Mr. Kail, with his thick lip and thick, bulbous nose, had this time demanded for his coin. Fame even in Cull Prairie, Cull Prairie of the unassuming Middle West, has its draw- backs, you will observe. And the worst was yet to come! There was a butcher's son in the Third Reader Class, a pale-faced boy with sore eyes and a crippled foot, who conceived a deep dis- like for Elizabeth Anne and the productions of her stubby pencil. Who was she to be the recipient of any mark of honor? Why, he could "add in his head," while she was obliged to count her foolish little fingers, for had he not often caught her in the act! And his father had money, while hers was as poor as the most lorn and pining church mouse. It was high time, he considered, that [182] IN FAME'S LIGHT the circumstances in the case were properly adjusted. So he taunted the author of the verses on every possible occasion, hobbling unexpectedly out of corners and alleyways with some thrust. "Fairy-chaser" was his favorite characteriza- tion of her, and because of its reference to a subject about which she was daily becoming more sensitive, the shaft sank deep. "Hush, hush," urged Caroline soothingly, when the victim of this unique term sought sympathy tempestuously against her breast. "Poor Willie has a twisted foot, and to be obliged to walk in that way makes him cross and unpleasant." "God got his head on all right," observed Elizabeth Anne after a pause, in temporary forgetfulness of her grievance. "With just a little more care " she stopped significantly, as was the habit of the Third Reader teacher in repeating this phrase. "And, oh, mother," in sudden confession, "I don't believe I blame him very much for making fun of those verses. They've got as jingly in my head as a stone in a tin can. Just wait, mother, till [183] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE I have a chance to write a real story, and then you shall see!" But Caroline was fated not to "see," though in due course the "real story" burst into bloom, and lifted its head in gleeful abandon. "Once upon a time," it began in accepted fashion, "there was a beautiful girl named Genneveve. [The writer delighted in this name.] She had dark curls and luvely eyes an cheeks as red as Mercedees. But she was a disbeedent girl. By disbeedent we mean do- ing things your granmother tells you not to do. An one day there was an apple pie in the pantry and Genneveve begged for a piece, but they told her to wait till dinner. Stead of wait- ing though she ate all she could when nobody was looking, an after that she felt so ashamed of herself she ran outside, an jus kep on running an running till she fell into a big pit and died. But she looked awful white an grand in her coffin and everybody cried a lot. An my mother was disbeedent my granmother says an she is reeping the fruits but I never see any of them." Here the Third Reader teacher, whose eye [184] IN FAME'S LIGHT . had traveled hastily over the page as she col- lected the compositions, coughed unnecessarily, her handkerchief to her lips. Later, during the recess period, Elizabeth Anne coming softly back to the room for a forgotten apple, saw her re-reading it. The handkerchief was tucked in her belt now, and it was plain that she laughed. There was a little group of teach- ers from the adjoining rooms, about her, and it was equally plain that they were laughing, too. A sharp doubt smote the soul of Elizabeth Anne, and she went back the way she had come, wondering. "I hope your little story was a success to- day," said Caroline tentatively at bedtime, hesitant always to force even the simplest con- fidence. "Oh, yes," assented Elizabeth Anne without enthusiasm, "most of the teachers read it." "What was it about?" begged Caroline, car- ried away for the moment, and leaning her round young arms eagerly on the bed. "Were they pleased with it?" "It was about a girl that died" uncompro- [185] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE misingly. "I guess they liked it 'cause they laughed." "Smiled, you mean, don't you, Betty? Peo- ple laugh only when they are amused. It was not an amusing story, I should judge." "They smiled real noisy then," said Eliza- beth Anne a little grimly. "I wish that I might see the story," mur- mured Caroline wistfully. But the memory of a certain passage sent the hot blood to the brow of the writer. It struck her suddenly as uncalled for and disloyal. "I never can show it to you," she said stoutly. And to Caroline it was left, as to the dear mothers of all times, to keep these things and ponder them in her heart. [186] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY XIII A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY When Elizabeth Anne was twelve, she brushed the skirts of Tragedy, a personage of whose grim face she had never dreamed, whose very existence indeed she had never guessed. With one's days, so far, only little pearly spans of daylight, strung together like a daisy chain, golden heart on golden heart, snowy petal on snowy petal, how could one know, how could one guess? Surely by nothing writ on land or sky in all the clear autumnal script that spread just then from horizon to horizon the bluish haze, the burnished fields, the sloven thistle's ragged purple, the milkweed's satin darted fluff, the barbaric finery of a thousand sumacs. Surely by nothing spelt in the quiet peace of the woodroad, the idle chatter of a school turned loose, the overhanging bushes, the moist and satiny hazelnuts that fell with satisfied [189] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE clatter into sundry welcoming and capacious dinner buckets. It was a long, long road, the woodroad, and laggard feet did not tend to shorten it. The steady rat-tat-tat of the enterprising nut fall went on. Sticky fingers disengaging the loot from the scalloped, greenish-brown nests of its hiding waxed ambitious and more ambitious. The sun crept lower, the bird- song drowzed, the air grew strong and sweet and cooler. Plough horses, weary of their stint, stopped in the long, rich, black furrows, dropping their sombre faithful heads easefully, or reaching out now and again to the surrounding greenness for a succulent mouthful. Twittering squirrels debated with each other concerning the intru- sion. A mild-eyed rabbit in his lair awaited patiently his opportunity to fare forth on a supper expedition. Idle waiting! Still only an endless stream of stupid, foreign chatter, still only rat-tat-tat-tat ! Already, over and beyond the most distant scattering of houses, were sullen reddish streaks, the first fires of an early sunset, when -, [190] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY the sheepish vanguard of the peace-destroying crew at last wended its reluctant way into O'Hara Street. ; 'Tis avenin'," said Belle O'Hara informa- tively, breaking the weft of their enchantment. "An' now what?" with a whimsical wag of her head on which, adult fashion, the crow-blue hair was of late bunched with a single rusty hairpin. 'Tain't nuthin' t' me," boasted plump Joy Peeler, whose sleepy lashes and placid red mouth belied the tragic intensity of her big, black eyes. "Ma's abed with the rheumatiz, an' Aunt Mit's as soft as spoon-victuals over me. Anyhow, I hain't never had nobody lay a finger on me yet, an' I don't reckon I'm ever agoin' t'." "Ner me," quaveringly chimed in the Lit- tlest Girl with the mottled nose and the stiff, skimpy braids. "Ner me," soberly seconded the cross-eyed Carney twin with the blue welt across her fingers. "Ner me," echoed Elizabeth Anne, deter- mined to be in the running. [191] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Thud, thud, thud, went half a dozen pairs of padding youthful feet, mending the pace, and thud, thud, thud, went half the number of small repentant hearts. A wrathy hen with chicks darted scoldingly across the road before them, and settled herself anew. Grandma Prouty's guinea fowls set up a shrill reproachful shriek- ing. The Langdon kitchen windows, catching the far gleams in the west, delicate as the heart of a golden crocus, gave back the light coldly like a sheet of tin. "An' where's Tiny Ruth?" suddenly cried Belle, gaping open-mouthed at a certain oft-sought window, and uncon- sciously sounding the first note of the tragedy. "An' where's Tiny Ruth?" demanded fat Joy, her hands in her apron pockets. "An' where's Tiny Ruth?" piped the Littlest Girl and the Carney twins in concert, stopping short in their tracks. But this time Elizabeth Anne said no word. So limned on her consciousness was the little figure that, early or late, had there awaited her coming, it seemed that almost she could conjure it up out of nothing. The glowing eyes. The delicate precision of contour. The [192] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY half-opened baby lips. The little gaily waved hand. Words were poor things to describe Tiny Ruth. By some subtle essence in her wee pliant body she might have held the whole world cap- tive. She dimpled, and you smiled in spite of yourself, looking down on the warm sunniness of her hair. The lilac gray of her soft eyes clouded, and you turned away to hide an ab- surd mist in your own. From the upsweep of her silken lashes to the waxen fiowerlikeness of her dainty sole she was a princess, yes, and a regally contented princess, born. What if the little hand that held the sceptre were frail to a pitiful transparency nobody ever had the heart to put the truth into words. What if the little feet faltered now and then in their self-appointed journeyings, refusing to uphold the huddled babyish heap on the hearth rug it was so quickly smoothed over that a stranger, observing, might have imagined himself mistaken. What if a Grim Hand, pitilessly real, if shadow-hidden, at times seemed ready to be [ 193 ] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE reaching, reaching one does not harp upon the possible loss of a priceless treasure. Elizabeth Anne, these things rising in a mo- ment dimly cloudlike in her mind, together with a chance word let fall by Caroline at the breakfast table, crept into the narrow back- yard with unaccountable misgiving. Unswept, and daubed with dried tracks of mud, it had an alien look, half foreboding. But old Snooty was there, faithful, shaggy old Snooty, who served impartially two mis- tresses, and she patted his head with a momen- tary feeling of comfort, as she swung herself lightly over the sagging step at the door. The alien look extended, too, to the kitchen. The fire was out, and a general aspect of deso- lation assailed her. The muddy tracks con- tinued across the rough, wide-cracked floor where Robert, touzle-headed, and with small, syrup-smeared mouth set tight, forlornly counted his marbles. On the scarred, oilcloth- covered table were the remnants of a hasty din- ner a plate of cold boiled potatoes and the ever present syrup pitcher flanked by a dish [ 194] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY of stewed onions turning pallid in the thickness of the gravy. The two children stared at each other speech- lessly a second, eyes large with questioning. It was Elizabeth Anne who first ventured, tiptoeing across the sitting-room floor, and thence into the bedroom beyond, pushing open the door as the weak, hanging latch yielded readily to her fingers. A flickering candle sputtered on the box dresser, and by its light Caroline measured out some drops from a bottle. She looked up si- lently at the timid footstep, offering no re- proaches; but her face was enough. "Go get Marthy, dear," was all she said, interrupting, so, with her quiet speech the sound of labored baby breathing from the corner trundle bed. Elizabeth Anne was dimly conscious of backing out of the room; she knew that she fumbled about stupidly for her hat, attempt- ing to tie the strings, when at last she seized upon them, with fingers strangely useless. Someway, still strangely, she managed to get out into the yard, and through the gate, and [195] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE over beyond to the nearest of the little red houses. Strangely, too, she succeeded in humming a little air, in a key so foreign as to have a startling sound in her own ears, but with a make-believe coolness very helpful to her cour- age. Yet when she would have offered her greetings at the door, her voice behaved in an unseemly fashion in her throat, and she only beckoned to Marthy, whose broad, comfortable figure reposed on the sofa. "Wake up, gal, an' git a hustle on ye," shrilled grandma from her rocker, sitting up and stretching out her thin neck, and at once arriving at the purport of the visit. "They've got 'n almighty sick young-un over t' their place, er I hain't no jedge o' sick- ness. Skimpy feedin', I expec', along with him out o' work in the slack buildin' times. He'd gone fer the Doc when I wuz thar. Mebbe they'll not be gittin' him neither, head over heels in debt to 'm ez they be ; t' say nuthin' o' their Aunt Sary that's ferever atailin' 'em up gone off a-nu'ssin', and that squash-nose grocer pup refusin' t' trust 'm t'day. Ef it didn't [196] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY take more'n a barr'l o' horse strength t' git ye started I'd a-shipped ye out afore." "Um-m, ah, yah," yawned Marthy, lifting up her arms like rough red monoliths in her torn wrapper sleeves. But she gathered her- self together after a time. "Don't set up fer me, Gran'," she enjoined good-naturedly in passing. Elizabeth Anne plunged along at her side in the earthy dusk while she pantingly related a lurid dream which she poutingly averred had wrecked her afternoon nap. "Nawful bad sign, too," she was gasping as they went up the steps. "Nawful bad luck!" The gathering night came on apace. In a corner of the kitchen, a single cricket chirped lonesomely, the sound presently drowned by Marthy's clatter of the dishes. Once, a long- drawn, strangling cough from the bedroom. David and Caroline, with bowed heads, kept watch beside the bed. Robert, neglected, slept heavily on the floor; Elizabeth Anne took him under the arms, and half dragged, half carried him to his bed. He made no remonstrance, sturdy eight year old though he was. The [197] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE old doctor, busy on his rounds, had not yet appeared. "Want an o'nge, want an o'nge," begged a curiously muted little voice in the intervals of coughing. And always the sound trailed off into wistful silence. "Yes, yes, dear," promised Caroline feebly, over and over, but when she looked at David with needless questioning, he turned away his face. A few neighbors came in. The rank blue smoke from Uncle Pete's pipe filled the kitchen. Maggie O'Hara stood before the row of paper dolls on the window-sill, and burst into tears. Brave little array of inanimate children whose elaborate tissue finery attested to the painstaking care of a babe-mother who had crowded so much into her little day! The air of the room grew warm and heavy and unpleasant. Elizabeth Anne stole out, by and by, onto the porch in the coolness of the night. "Want an o'nge, want an o'nge," the wistful, muted voice seemed to follow her. And once, once, she had seen a great dish of [198] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY the golden globed fruit which all in satiety had passed by! She laid her hands over her ears suddenly, with the memory, feeling the need of utter silence in which to patch together in some blind fashion this jumbled puzzle of life which brought to one coveted things out of season, and bestowed in luxuriance where there was no need. The jostling of a shambling figure for a moment stirred her out of herself. It was her father. For all the streaming light from the flimsily draped windows he seemed blindly feeling his way, rather than walking as one who sees. "I have been a failure a failure," she heard him say, and the quivering bitterness of his voice found its way with an answering quiver to her hurt, elder-sister heart, awake by a single pang to its own burden of responsi- bility, torn so early with its own ineff ectuality, knowing paradoxically so much of pain, be- cause it could know so little. "Not you, father, but I I!" Another hour of the night dragged by. The [199] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE doctor came, but it was too late. One glance at his face, even in her inexperience, told her that. Her mother's face, marmoreal in its rigidity, confirmed it. There was nothing to do but wait, wait a black infinitude of wait- ing in the velvety dark that, like an all-per- vading Fatherly love, had thrown its quiet pall over the unrest and travail of a palpitating world. A sobbing sound, the beginning of a wail gaspingly repressed, the faithful old doctor's tired footstep in departure, and it was all over. All over, or was it only begun? To the tense child-watcher on the porch it seemed in that in- stant that above all sounds rose yearningly, and in some mysterious fashion outside world- ways, a universal cry never to be stilled that Tiny Ruth might have been spared. Spared to what? To a stark struggle that was making even the heart of a strong man faint? Her knees trembled beneath her. The far white star on the horizon, which had fixed her gaze, swam mistily. The foundations of her childish world began [200] A SHADOW OF TRAGEDY to crumble. It could not be said in all truth that in that hour her childhood slipped from her as a thing that was not, but something about her that was very young and very white and all-believing and unafraid, spread its little wings and flew away forever into the border- less shadow of the night. [201] A COAL OF THE INFERNO XIV "A COAL OF THE INFERNO" There are no pauses in the first warm puls- ings of youth, no idle dalliance with grief, or fear, or retrospect. A new page, a new aspect of things, the opening of a new door, if only the merest crevice, and lo! the fresh day is borne in, and life marches on in triumphant procession. Miss Barlow's school lent itself readily to the needs of the procession. As a prime factor of value, it was advantageous as to location, which is to say in terms familiar to juvenile Cull Prairie, it was "just across the street from 'Popcorn Ike's'." "Popcorn Ike," according to "Grandma" Prouty, kept a "confusionary" shop, but there was no evidence of confusion in his single and unceasing desire for pennies, which were lost to sight immediately in his little yellow claws, nor yet in his generously fly-specked windows with their methodical lines of candy-canes and [205] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE fat and eyeless chocolate "men." (The latter, by the way, for all their seeming innocence, were part of a clever gambling scheme, having, in occasional instances, a coppery coin stored away in their anatomy a coin acting like magic in inducing the lucky winning wight to invest his ill-gotten gains in another man, and another and another.) "Indade, an' th' brassy taste is but a relish, wance ye get used t' it," Belle O'Hara pro- claimed from the surge of the sidewalk to the group of Fourth Readers assembled on a par- ticular morning under the shop's striped awning. The recommendation, so far from being necessary, added only such an impetus on the little "men" that it presently became necessary to call forth a fresh relay. And still the reckless speculation went on. It was plain to be seen that the Fourth Read- ers, aside from a natural desire to enliven a wretchedly drab intermediary state, were under some particular stress or strain. The Carney twins' noses were pinker than usual by a full two shades, approaching, in- [206] "A COAL OF THE INFERNO" deed, a hue rarely riotous ; the yellow braids of the Littlest Girl seemed poised in the act of flight; Elizabeth Anne Langdon, penniless, and therefore as yet morally intact, clutched her well-swathed arithmetic desperately, a skinny forefinger pressed for convenience be- tween the mazes of the greatest common divi- sor; Angelina Bird, the child of an unfortunate cousin of the Birds who had lately been foisted upon them, dug the toe of her shabby slipper in the ground and writhed in general sympathy. But it was "Cousin Minnie" herself, her pouting lips still smeared with the brownish remains of no less than her tenth "man," in whom the emotion was to focus. The years did little for Minnie Bird save to lengthen somewhat her rather too well rounded limbs, necessitating in her garments a succes- sion of extra blue and white flounces. Her fat white neck with its coral beads, the puzzled expression of her wide hazel eyes, her poor little giddy, babyish brain remained unchanged. There are divers ways of bringing up chil- dren. Minnie Bird's mother, as the town gos- sips not infrequently deplored, was hardly an [207] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE adept in the ways of mothercraft. To her, her daughter was a creature to be decked in femi- nine frivols, toyed with when the fancy seized her, and relegated to a corner in her more seri- ous moments. At rare intervals, when the tale of a failure or a misdemeanor drifted to her ears, she spent a wakeful night, of which she long complained, devising some new and telling form of punishment. The fear of one of these periodic disturb- ances was in Minnie's gasping voice as she lolled about in the shop's doorway with the piped reiteration, "Oh, I know I'll fail; I just know I will, and what will mama do?" Sympathizers crowded round and related whisperingly how "folks has fell dead at a writ- ten examination" (the especial form of terror then creeping up on the Fourth Reader terri- tory) ; the girls to be examined stared and ex- claimed and fidgeted and began to chant rules in a monotonous key ; the boys slunk away with characteristic masculine dread of a scene, when suddenly in a lull, the thin gasping voice from the doorway rose to a wail, and Minnie, grown [208] "A COAL OF THE INFERNO" hysterical, beat her hands on her breast, and laughed unrestrainedly with the tears stream- ing down her cheeks, until Miss Barlow, cross- ing the street, heard the commotion, and came and led her away to the office. The reciting group began consciously to dis- band at that, following, one by one, embar- rassedly, into the shadows of the corridor, where a startled silence fell, save for Belle O'Hara's disgusted aside, "Och, ye pinheads, ye poor mis'rable pinheads! . . . Shure an' there she comes now, th' quanely wan wid th' cudgel av war-r in her hand!" The last remark was directed at the Fourth Reader teacher, Clarice Drury, by name, a newcomer to the town and to the school, and already at the bottom of the Fourth Reader upheaval, though she had held the reins of government scarcely a month. Circumstances had forced Miss Drury into the teaching pro- fession, and she was distinctly a rara avis in its sober-walking ranks. She advanced to ring the bell with a manner almost threatening, swinging her ribboned pointer, from which she was never long sepa- [209] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE rated, from side to side, though her unusual height and the naturally stealthy movements of her long limbs would have seemed to free her from the necessity of a stick. She was wearing just then a silken gown of a vivid green, being given, albeit, to as many guises as a female Caliph Haroun al-Raschid. Her lips and cheeks flamed artificially through an unevenly distributed powder coat- ing, her brows were straight, luxuriant and deeply black, her wheat-colored hair so befriz- zled and bepompadoured that the top of her head had almost lost its human semblance. "My Uncle Llewellyn says she's striking," murmured simple Angelina, all eyes and admiration. "Faith an' that's where he hit th' nail on the head," agreed Belle, falling into line at the sound of the gong, and pretending to search her forearm for the mark of a bruise in proof of her assertion. (Belle's scholarship was not reckoned among the desirable things in Miss Barlow's school but in her snail-like progress through the grades she picked up more than the rudiments of the three R's.) [210] "A COAL OF THE INFERNO" Miss Drury eyed her vindictively in passing, as if longing for further encounters, then, her class having assembled, she closed the door em- phatically, and freed her mind of certain things concerning "failures" and their deserts. She moved about the room meanwhile with the steady, even progress of a top-heavy mechanical toy. It was as if she spoke of some crackling inferno, and the doomed and tortured denizens thereof. The Fourth Reader class felt it to the tips of their small ink-smudged fingers as they took up their pens and fared forth unpro- tected into the jungle of the G. C. D. and the L. C. M. They hoped valiantly for the best, but the very atmosphere betrayed that they believed the hope a forlorn one. Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the steady, faithful pens ; and tick, tick, tick, remindingly observed the huge clock on the wall. , Elizabeth Anne, having set forth Rule One in three lines of painfully neat penmanship, sneezed violently in the draught from the half- opened window behind her and became aware at the same time that her page was hopelessly [211] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE bedewed, and that a sharp voice was speaking very close to her ear, while a pair of dark eyes from which little sparks seemed to shoot looked down angrily into her own. So descended upon her head the first little unexpected coal of the inferno! Angelina Bird, across the aisle, witnessing the encounter, buried her face in her ragged scrap of hand- kerchief, and began to sob heartrendingly. [212] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE XV MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE Angelina Bird would never have been re- marked for her mental or physical endow- ments, but her sympathies were vast and pecu- liar, having been gained in the hard school of poverty and orphanhood in which she had been bandied about from one relative to an- other, subsisting chiefly on a bone, a crust and a cuff. Never having been permitted to live any life of her own, she habitually sank her pitiful shred of personality in that of some other, and clung with the tenacity of a half-starved alley kitten. The disconsolate sound of her sniffling sent a vague unrest into other parts of the room. The Red Headed Boy, a clumsy black blot marring his morning's effort, sat like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage ; the Littlest Girl was seized with a nosebleed; the Carney twins, taking advantage of the general distraction, were caught "cheating"; a knock- [216] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE kneed little wight who was captured in an un- ceremonious flight to the outer door, explained haltingly after many demands that he "thought somebody was having a fit." Take it all in all, it was an exciting morning to say the least of it. The Fourth Readers put their heads together concerning it, at noon. There was smouldering rebellion in several quarters, but it did not show itself openly. The rural respect for "teachers, pastors, gov- ernors and masters" is a thing of much depth and stability, a habit of generations that is not put aside in a moment. And so it happened that Miss Drury did not seriously lose caste in their eyes as yet. The taller girls brandished sticks at recess, and imitated as nearly as possible her nervous tossing of a stray lock on her forehead; the shorter ones, bethinking themselves of her high color, pinched their cheeks in envious desire. Elizabeth Anne, sitting on a grassy knoll with Angelina's scarecrow arm about her, dried her eyes in thoughtful little dabs and took serious counsel with herself. From the first day she had looked upon the [216] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE new teacher as a goddess on a pedestal. It had been one of Miss Drury's amiable days, and she had praised the copybook of her admiring pupil, placing it on the desk where all might see, and Angelina Angelina who never by any chance had her own work praised had smiled broadly, and clapped her hands in silent pantomime. Now the goddess had seen fit to descend from her pedestal and shake a certain slim and well-meaning shoulder. Elizabeth Anne, de- spite her hurt and ruffled feelings, was not yet sure of the state of her own mind. As for Angelina, in her heart there was no guile. "She's awful beautiful, though, ain't she?" she was saying extenuatingly again and again. "I never seen anything like her before, 'cept once when I lived in L with Aunt Celia. There was one in a big store there, in a window, with jus' such hair, an' such a face (only more smilin') an' jus' such clo'es. An' she never walked out of it, 'cause I seen her ev'ry day in the same place. . . . You ain't mad, are you?" [217] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Mm-m-m no," mumbled Elizabeth Anne from behind set teeth. "An' you don't feel any worse 'cause I told you?" "No," said Elizabeth Anne, distinctly this time. One of her rare impulses to tenderness laid hold of her, and she leaned over and touched her lips lingeringly to Angelina's blue and bony and caressing little fingers. "There ain't nobody around got eyes like hers ner hair, ner teeth, ner nuthin' like her," persisted the recipient of this attention, who liked to clinch a matter. Elizabeth Anne cocked her head debatingly on one side like a considering sparrow. It was characteristic of her, too, to cling most tena- ciously to those idols about which she found it necessary to hang the most disguising dream fabrics. Faintly she lifted up her voice and agreed with Miss Drury's champion. More, she even began to feel that the lady must have justice done her in the list of her peculiar assets. Would it do to tell Angelina? There was one she had not named, one of overweening impor- [218] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE tance simple Angelina who could not be expected to know. Elizabeth Anne knew, and the very knowing restored in a measure her wounded self-esteem. The truth was, Miss Drury had a beau, enough in itself to distinguish her in the teaching ranks. Nor was she in any way insensible to the honor fate had so conferred upon her. He was smooth and broad-mouthed and white-vested as the most promising frog that ever lifted its head in McCarty's marsh, and it was only in keeping with the eternal fitness of things that he should dispense cooling and bubbling beverages at the corner drug-store a pursuit he followed in gentlemanly fashion, with alternate Friday afternoons to himself, when he invariably appeared at the school with a proprietary air that reminded one irresistibly of the Marquis of Carabas. Outside, there frequently awaited two paw- ing saddle-horses which the pair rode with con- siderable grace, or again, there would be visible in flashing glimpses through the street door, an equipage that would have turned the legendary Marquis green with envy. [219] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Neighborhood parties and socials came speedily to be considered incomplete without the dashing presence of the two, and, once, it was said, when they had been dancing the "galop" together in "Union Hall," the other dancers had stepped aside and given them the floor, but whether from admiration or from actual necessity, it would be a little hard to say. Elizabeth Anne regretted sincerely that it had not fallen to her portion to witness this terpsichorean triumph, and treasured in lieu of the mental picture that might have been hers, a magazine cut setting forth various attitudes in the waltz, explaining at Caroline's sweetly puzzled question that "Teacher had a pair of magic dancing slippers, the most wonderful in aU the world." This was all that Caroline a little quieter these days, a little less smiling, but none the less interested ever knew of Miss Drury or her remarkable possessions, though the end of the latter was not yet. As a further peculiar asset, Miss Drury had a spy. The spy was a large, swarthy, foreign- looking girl named Rachel, who sat in the back [220] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE row and reported secretly the doings and say- ings of her classmates in school and out. Rachel was halting of speech, low-browed, slow of motion and scarcely more than half- witted, but so proficient did she become in her specialty, that she even acquired the power to draw upon her imagination for offenses. Pun- ishments began to fall in new and unexpected places, and real guilt was apt to be overlooked. The Fourth Readers abandoned themselves to a reign of recklessness. Elizabeth Anne and the faithful Angelina entered into a compact. If one fell under the ban of Rachel's dis- favor, the other contrived to do likewise, and 'so halved the disgrace. It worked admirably, until Rachel, sneaking around a corner where the two sat in sober colloquy, slowly but surely descended upon it, and thrust out an accusing forefinger. "Ain't she cute?" observed Angelina in un- feigned admiration. Elizabeth Anne sprang to her feet red to the ears. "Cute!" she fairly blazed in the stress of her indignation, "Cute! she's the ugliest, stu- [221] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE pidest, hatefulest, meanest" she stopped, short of breath and superlatives, and finding herself in the unyielding clutches of the spy, surrendered the remainder of her noon inter- mission without further adieu. Indoors the air was warm and dull with the languor of early summer; there were muddy tracks across the soft wood floor and ugly ink smootches on the desk upon which Miss Drury leaned her white braceleted forearm. But it was not altogether unpleasant. The closeness was conducive to sleep, and sleep to dreams, and in the dreams teacher was a Queen with a jeweled robe and glittering ear-rings, and one's own self her lady in waiting. Here the dreamer stirred with importance, and awakening fully, stared uncomprehend- ingly into the shallow eyes above the ink-spat- tered desk eyes that stared back with equal blankness, since it was not in the nature of things that a single gleam of understanding should pass between the two. But some things hitherto unimagined were forcing their way into the unwilling younger mind, even as they had already found lodge- [222 ] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE ment among the more astute of the Fourth Readers. Among them was the circumstance that a punishment, or an examination, either, for that matter, might be accompanied with much gusto, and still amount to very little in a practical way. At the middle of the term, Miss Barlow, who, up to this time had been more than ordi- narily busy, made some deductions of her own along this line, and followed them with an in- terview more or less stormy an interview that had only the effect of enhancing for a time Miss Drury's high-handedness. A natural angry color came to heighten the hue that was not of blood in her cheeks; her voice grew more cutting; her prowlings about the room more continuous and aimless. Elizabeth Anne and Angelina in conclave resorted to the deaf and dumb alphabet which was lost upon the sneaking Rachel, but there was nothing derogatory to their goddess in the signs. Just now it would have been easier than ever to imagine her emerging from some oriental- draped queenly boudoir, only that her family [223] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE consisting of a flippant, middle-aged mother, a stumbling, white-haired father and a pimply, dissipated youth, had lately come to Cull Prairie and taken up their abode in a dingy, sprawling, long-deserted house on the South Side. There was a wide veranda at each side of the house and a ghostly corridor in front, the work of its long dead first occupant who had owned a family with aspirations. A once imposing, though now tipsy looking weather-vane deco- rated the top, and down to the street sloped a weedy front yard shut in by an ornamental lawn fence. The Fourth Readers hung over this fence in the twilight when they dared, and peeped shyly at the hanging gray-green shutters and the uncurtained windows. The majority of Cull Prairie teachers re- sided in places remote from the village, and a teachers' home was popularly thought to be necessarily a place of distinction. Elizabeth Anne, going a half mile out of her way on many an errand for the privilege of passing it ? MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE shut her eyes resolutely to the defects of the spot. It is not always easy to worship at a shrine with dusty, dilapidated steps and dirt-flecked windows. Sometimes, in fancy, she ascended the steps, and found teacher in a magnificently furnished throne-room, a golden crown on her head, and a host of eager servants rushing to do her bidding. It was a very agreeable experience and helped her wonderfully in the trying days pre- , ceding Miss Barlow's second interview with Miss Drury, after which there was an hiatus for a time in the Fourth Reader work, followed by the advent of a new lady in power, a tiny, middle-aged, gray-headed lady, so pale and so thin and so soft-voiced that one had to look twice to make sure she was not sketched upon the wall. It gave the class a strange f eeling of awe, as if death or some equal calamity had crept un- seen into their midst, and they sat silent, or walked painstakingly on tiptoe, and clattered never an ink-well nor a water-bottle. Elizabeth Anne, the stillest of them all, [226] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE awaited the coming of the first intermission to relieve her pent-up emotions, and then stole mouselike into the cloakroom and laid her head against the hard but ample bosom of the waste paper box. Angelina would not be far off Angelina who invariably sympathized whether she un- derstood or not. If there had been any doubt of it in her mind, it would have been dispelled in the next moment by the tight clutching arms about her knees and the round, beseech- ing eyes looking into hers. "I know," said Angelina impetuously, and not without pride in the fact, "you're lonesome, an' you want t' see her" She laid peculiar stress on the pronoun, as if it had had reference to the dead and sainted. "I knew you would, an' I've got a way oh, jus' th' easiest way! You see she borrowed a book of Aunt Bird's, an' forgot t' return it" the narrator's breath was coming pantingly "an' I I of course you'll go along?" Elizabeth Anne drew back. The unex- pected opening of the gates of any paradise, however much desired, is apt to prove embar- [226] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE passing. Besides, it is quite possible that in her secret heart she feared the shattering of her dream. But to ascend those steps in reality to enter that room ! She twined an arm ex- citedly about Angelina's slim waist the mo- ment they had secured permission, and the two set out with dancing feet and courage that diminished strangely at every step of the way. Arrived at their destination, they rapped faintly at the heavy, half -open hall door again and again, but though there was a sound of voices from within, there was no response. The voices were rising angrily. "Lost it! Lost your job?" barked the first incredulously. "I s'pose that hatin' work th' way you do, you thought you'd quit, seein* I was fool enough t' write you I'd married a little money. It was a mistake I tell you my mar- ryin'. The ol' simpleton's cracked. I took him fer a man o' means, like he set up t' be, an' all he's got's an addled patel . . . An* you with that diamon' locket an' clo'es way out o' yer station! . . . Well, you're done, that's all! There's no chance fer you here t' [227] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE be idlin' around in style. You can marry that sody- water man o' yours, or" "That'll do, ma," heatedly broke in the sec- ond voice, undeniably, by its force and timbre, Miss Drury's, "if you spent more time mindin' your own business" But her eye had caught the light flutter of Angelina's frayed petticoats, and she swal- lowed the closing words of her sentence, and flung the door open hastily on a room dirtier and more disordered even than the dust-laden stairs and dingy windows would have led one to suspect. The two women who were its occupants lounged in their rockers in untidy wrappers and with unkempt hair. The cheeks of the younger, bereft of their brilliance, showed high and sallow; the expression of her mouth was hard, and there were offensively sophisticated lines under her eyes. "Clark," she called up the stairway upon Angelina's stammered request, "bring down that book of Mrs. Bird's." The old man it was evidently her newly- made father she had been addressing shuffled [228] MISS DRURY'S ROMANCE about obediently. From his poor, gray, timid, wrinkled face, one might have judged that he was in fear of the two women. On the last step he stumbled, and dropped the book with a force that loosened it in its bindings. "You old fool!" hissed his step-daughter in his ear, as she stooped to recover it, "you clumsy old fool!" The two girls awkwardly and silently made their way back to the street. In Elizabeth Anne's heart was chaos. The feet of her idol had been revealed, and they were ugly to look upon, so ugly that there was nothing left to do but turn away and marvel. Worse, the ugliness refused to be hidden, but spread like circles in a still pool into which a pebble is flung. Neighborhood gossip seized upon it with avidity, and announced sensationally as a climax that "Miss Drury's beau had forged a check for nobody knows how much," and that "the hull fam'ly had gone the land knows where." "I tell you she was awful handsome though," maintained Angelina in the face of everything. [229] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE But Elizabeth Anne hung her head and an- swered nothing. Through it all she had been reminded of a shattered idol as by an insistent voice. "You old fool," it kept on saying, and the poor, simple face in her memory seemed to shrink and quiver again with fright, "you clumsy, old fool!" [230] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT XVI JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT It is an uplifting experience to stand on the little shining hill of the Fifth Reader Class, as one may stand on an elevation of this sort only once in the course of a lifetime, and look down. The flat trodden plains below are so very far away, the highest rose-touched pinnacle above so nearly within reach of an outstretched hand, so easy of achievement! It is a simple road, the road we have come, and much of the way we have been led by the hand, childishly and unresistingly. Behind us forever we believe are the simple events, the babyish needs and desires the little brown rabbits of the plains. Ahead, ahead, we dream, we shall slip away from guiding hands, and go unsupported in wider ways where the midday sun will be al- ways shining in a sky of crystal blue, dispelling [233] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE even the inevitable lurking shadows of the bushes. The prospect is too large, too far-reaching to be considered in a purely worldly light, and so we turn naturally to something outside worldliness something for which we may even have groped dimly in days gone by, but which, unhappily, has come to us chiefly, hitherto, in over-prosaic guise, or in terms beyond our ken. Susan Alicia Marsh (it is impossible to bring out the syllables without at least a semblance of music) with her softly pallid face and gentle, blue-veined hands, augmented this nat- ural proclivity. She had had charge of at least five successive installments of Cull Prairie "Fifth Readers," and so persistent in un- worldly fashion was she for all her gentleness, that to pass out from under her supervision without having felt at least the tuggings of one's deeper nature was enough in itself to relegate one to the ranks of the hopelessly unresponsive. "Ef I war given over t' sech a thing ez bet- tin', I'd bet mos' anything that some man she'd been agoin' with hed up an' died on 'er," [234] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT offered Mittie Peeler romantically when the subject came up for neighborhood discussion. "She looks t' me like she's been disapp'inted." She dragged the last word out lingeringly, and left it suspended as it were at her droop- ing, bluish lips. "Shucks an' nonsense!" morosely objected "Grandma" Prouty, prancing around and snapping her crooked, wrinkled fingers at this exposition of the case. "It's jus' like ye, Mittie Peeler t' talk that kind o' folderol! Yassir! Ye'd come up with a handful o' softness, ye would, if ye went down in a coal-cellar! Nbsiree, she ain't the kind fer love not her, I'm tellin' ye! Th' men folks hain't gifted with th' sense, more's the pity, thet leads 'em t' take up with wimmin like her. It's some painted fly-away critter, more like, that's awinnin' 'em. An' anyway, ef one of 'em'd up an' died on 'er, the way you put up, whut's t' hinder 'er frum gittin' an- other? She ain't turned no thirty 'ez I'm abreathin', an' she's got th' han'someness about 'er o' a piece o' statooary, ef ye take th' trouble t' look at 'er twicet. Now I got a notion, I hev, [235] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE it's some kind o' colicky pains o' the stumick that's agivin' her them blue and white looks o' her'n, an' ef 'tis, an' she's jus' agoin' straight along, atrustin' t' luck, an' not takin' nuthin' fer 'm she's like'n t' get tuk up an' swep' away one o' these days, forty years afore her time!" The feminine "Fifth Readers," newly in- stalled, themselves took up the topic in its various aspects. "My Uncle Llewellyn says her profile is Greek," thinly chirped the pirouetting Minnie Bird, whose dapper kinsman was the town con- noisseur in matters of this sort. "An' Uncle Llewellyn knows, too!" "Well, there's one thing sure she's got eyes a whole lot like the Lady Ermentrude's in that novel Aunt Mitt took away from me las' week," drawled rosy Joy Peeler, her hands on her generous hips. "Wisht I had it back. Aunt Mitt's got some awful funny idees, anyhow." Angelina Bird, also of the group, threw out her shabby-sleeved arms dramatically, and twisted like a contortionist to lay her head against the shoulder of Elizabeth Anne. "I dremp las' night that 'nangel come down with [236J JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT a white dress for her silk an' all inserting trimmed," she whispered for her ear only. "D'ye think maybe it's a sign she's goin' t' die?" Elizabeth Anne impatiently, and rather un- kindly, dislodged the confiding head. "You're just a bad as 'Grandma' Prouty," she said crossly, "and you ought to be ashamed!" Such is the elasticity of certain stages of girlish adoration, she was again on her knees to an idol at the very antipodes from the first she had known. Nor was her worship for that reason in any wise half-hearted or unfruitful. On the con- trary it came presently to blossom in a patient smile, a superlatively careful modulation of voice, a meek lifting of the eyes strange things that moved even long-suffering Caroline to expostulation, dear Caroline whose untiring arms now held a new baby, her lusty Donald, whose demands upon her practically excluded for her the outside world. It was not to be wondered at, in truth, if Caroline and other "Fifth Reader" mothers too, no doubt, came to believe in those days [237] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE that the outer world was populated mainly by one, a sympathetic and altogether prepos- sessing Susan Alicia Marsh. But all this was before the looming into prominence of a coming "Last Day," an event clearly destined to over-topple any of its pred- ecessors, and outstripping in point of im- portance any mere individual, even its apparent creator and instigator, for had not Miss Susan decreed that "this year" the ex- ercises were to take place in the new little church standing in white isolation on the very borders of the South Side? Cull Prairie as a whole held out eager arms to the occasion. It knew not the distractions of the drama, nor the lesser charms of the "movies" ; the "Last Day," therefore, fell upon a virgin field. And such a field! Junetime, rosetime and general smiles and rejoicing rolled into one, until it was as if the sunniest window of heaven had been suddenly opened, and the smell of heavenly rosemary wafted down. The sparrows on the back lawns knew about it, and came and chirped sociably of their [238] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT knowledge under one's bedroom window at the first peeping of day, until one lifted one's drowsy head from the pillow perforce, and smiled back a nodding assent; the grasses of the meadowlot, lush and kneedeep, heard of it, and whispered their approval to the wind; the "little folk" everywhere delightedly and mys- teriously took up the story. And such a pleasing rustle of paper patterns and essay sheets as there was under sundry favored rooftrees, and such an undreamed lavishness of white lawn and rainbow ribbon. And then, at the last, on the day preceding the great event oh, crowning feature of im- portance! there came from a neighboring town a young clergyman who was to make the address, and who smiled so happily upon Miss Susan that her white cheeks took on a delicate shell-pink under his glance, and so encourag- ingly upon the Fifth Reader class that it after- ward followed him to a member, for all the world, as Belle O'Hara later observed, as if he had had a bear on a chain, or a performing monkey with a velvet cap. Nor could it be gainsaid that his personal [239] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE charm more than atoned for any lack of this nature. He looked like a hero in a storybook, Elizabeth Anne maintained (and nowhere could be found a better authority on this sub- ject than she). By this, she explained, she meant, in partic- ular, his superior height (he towered head and shoulders above the average Prairieite), the "nobility of his brow," the "deepness of his eyes" and the "firmness of his chin." It is a pleasing novelty, it must be admitted, to discover a hero when one has known only heroines, more especially perhaps a hero who fits admirably into the situation. And here indeed was one at hand one fitted to cope even with the "Last Day" at full tide. One knew it at once by the decision of his step in the little entry on the eventful night, by the gracious nod of his head and the smiling assurance with which he made his way into the plush seat of honor beside the tiny stand with its burden of syringas and ribbon-tied diplo- mas. What a wave of expectation there was on every side as the hush fell, and the breath- less little organ in the corner bravely gave [240] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT voice to its fluttering strains of welcome, faintly and musically as a dying echo. How splendidly the lights burned, creating little pools of sleeping yellow to alternate with the grayness of shadows on the dim plastered walls of the rough hewn edifice! How freely the lilacs, festooned in purple luxuriance about the altar rail, gave out their fragrance! But the Fifth Reader class on the front benches instinctively closed its eyes and clasped its essays a little tighter to remember that once the organ ceased and the ministerial voice of welcome died out, the burden of the entertain- ment rested upon its own untried effort. The boys, in view of this impending disas- ter, began to wriggle, and crumple their caps, and slip down so low in their places that only a row of shorn crowns was visible over the backs of their benches; the girls paled and fumbled with their handkerchiefs, and crowded closer together. Minnie Bird was alternately biting her nails and twirling the rings on her overladen fingers. Angelina stared straight before her, open- mouthed and affrighted. Belle O'Hara, rest- [241] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE less and solitary, at the end of the bench, divided her time in conning over her lines half audibly, and surreptitiously soothing old Snooty, who had sneaked in with the evident intention of adding his voice to the general acclaim. And now the stress began to gain in force. The silence deepened. A score of young hearts pounded coward-fashion in as many bravely decked breasts. The room grew warmer, and suddenly very large, and the people in it loomed up as a multitude. At the rear of the little place a door slammed inauspiciously, sending two wavering yellow lights to their doom, and at a side window a frightened bird beat its wings momentarily against the glass. Yet, encouragingly, after all, the burden came directly to show symptoms of lightening. One by one the appointed victims ascended to be met with such beaming good humor as could not help put them at their ease. One by one they descended to an enthusiastic clapping of hands and more pronounced beaming. Elizabeth Anne, last in order, and clinging hopefully to Aunt Sarah's advice to think of [242] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT the audience as composed of clothespins, grew horrified for a moment in the very act of ascent to find herself, in the extremity of her need, repudiating it. They were not clothespins. They were Marthy Prouty, now Mrs. Beals, gorgeous in a red hat with a nodding purple feather, which the triplets, clustered about her, made frantic attempts, ever and anon, to capture; Mittie Peeler, fighting hopelessly with her interrupt- ing cough; "Grandma" Prouty with her doughty little arms folded on her breast; "Uncle" Pete, who applauded with his cane; and so on and on and on. And, yes, she wanted to please them; she felt sure of that, and somehow the wish helped to still her shak- ing fingers, and warm her heart, and lend vigor to her voice. And in a twinkling, as a dreaded tooth might have been extracted, it was all over, and the applause had begun again, and the young minister was rising and stepping forward for some parting w r ords. How well and how confidently he stood his ground! Was it possible that he had com- [243] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE pletely mastered the "clothespins" idea in ora- tory? . . . But no, see! he was growing visibly less calm; his eyes gleamed, and his ruddy cheeks grew ruddier, as he leaned nearer and yet nearer the almost spent "Fifth Readers." Was there not one among them just one who would make the decision tonight to turn whatever of knowledge he might be fortunate enough to acquire into channels of usefulness in the better life? The youthful band before him forgot the necessarily impersonal nature of the appeal, and hung their heads, so impassioned was he, so stentorian his voice. The girlish figures on the front seat moved agitatedly. Elizabeth Anne, in quite the cen- ter of the bench, opposite the speaker, looked about her inquiringly. The request was a simple one. Why did the occupants of the benches sit with downcast eyes and reluctant air? "Will not one, only one?" The speaker might have been waiting. His pause was im- pressive so impressive that, momentary in its [244] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT length, it appeared to stretch over many times the space of its intensity. The central figure of the row, an introverted shadow of anxiety on the peacefulness of the scene, wriggled toward him sympathetically. Then, unable to bear it longer, she leaned for- ward impulsively and almost without her own volition threw herself headlong into the breach. "I will," said Elizabeth Anne obligingly, wanting only to bring alleviation of possible embarrassment to her lonely towering hero. But, to her great surprise, he seemed for a moment just a moment disconcerted, and then, the exercises having concluded, he stepped down to her side with a big laugh, and shook her hand, and wished her well wishes apparently in which others joined, pressing about her, and also taking her hand. It was embarrassing not only the unex- pectedness of these salutations, but this unfor- tunate aptitude of hers, in acquiring unlocked for publicity, and she squirmed about and bit her lips and answered at random and lost her peace of mind altogether, until Miss Susan having made her way to her side, she felt the [245] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE touch of soothing hands on her hot cheeks, and Miss Susan's gentle voice was saying that she was pleased, more than pleased, and that she hoped that her dear little pupil would not for- get, in view of her new decision, to use her in- fluence for good not only with the younger brothers and sisters at home, but with her schoolmates in general. Sweet, fallible Miss Susan, a little dazed perhaps that night with her own happiness, and poor Elizabeth Anne, with her skin-deep experience and with no diplomacy to spare ! She took note of the expression "use your in- fluence," which impressed her. She turned it over and over in thought, and arriving, in a sense, at its meaning, tested its efficacy to her sorrow. For if there be one unfailing recipe for the loss of the love of one's fellowman, it consists simply in a pedantic endeavor to "use one's influence" with him. The worshiper of Miss Susan did not arrive at this deduction in a bound. It was rather by degrees more or less painful. But an ink- ling, a straw which showed the general direc- tion of the wind, came her way on the Satur- [246] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT day following when she happened upon Robert and his pet foeman, Teague O'Hara, Junior, engaged in their usual holiday discussion anent the merits and achievements of their respective fathers. The argument was at the point of branching out and waxing warm. "Shure, me fayther cud put duck's fate undher a hin," vouched the confident Teague with a swagger. "But my father once killed a giant, I tell you," interposed the less ready Robert, red to the ears, and falling back upon a worn topic. "He hung him to an apple tree, an' I'll show you th' rope in our attic any time you want t' see it." This was designed to enter into the high road to hostilties, but the provoking Teague hung back with a fine show of indifference. "Faith, thin, an' ye kin sphare yerself th* throuble, me bye," he returned with scathing coolness ; " 'tis th' same he borryed off me own fayther fer t' do th' hangin' wid, an' we'd be thankin' ye kindly fer th' raturn o' the same." "Prove it," snarled Robert, driven to the wall, and deepening apoplectically in hue. [247] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE "Do Oi take thot t' mane ye're misdoubtin* me wurrd?" Teague's able right arm now flailed the air with a menacing movement. The slower, but no less sturdy, member of his opponent rose vindictively for a counter blow, only to be met by a timidly restraining sisterly hand, while a sisterly voice, small and uncertain and barely recognizable, was re- proaching: "Why, Robert, don't you remem- ber we ought to forgive our enemies unto sev- enty times seven?" (This had been gleaned from a recent Sunday-school lesson.) "Is th' gur-rl wrong in her hid?" gasped Teague, dropping his fist and backing almost to the fence in a mastering surprise. "Ah, g' way," growled Robert, marching up to the peacemaker with a lordly front. "If you wanta talk in figgers, why don't you reckon it up ? . . . You can't do it, that's why!" triumphantly. . . . "How much is it, then?" advancing a grimy forefinger till it all but brushed her nose. "How much? . . How much?" And Elizabeth Anne, tried in the balance mathematically and found wanting, retired in [248] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT discomfiture, with the sneers of the two boys sounding in her ears. It was humiliating enough, but there were depths of humiliation below, depths furnished, at that, by so light and inconsequent a character as Joy Peeler. In the course of the years, Joy had changed from a quiet, tragic-eyed little girl to a rollick- ing, overgrown big one, with the shiftless blood of her ancestry running riot in her veins. Miss Susan (in school parlance) had "picked on" Joy, criticising mildly but harassingly her every movement, no doubt with a view to bet- ter things, and it was only natural that a faith- ful satellite should cast its light in a similar direction. Not that Joy was particularly suspectible to illumination, as one might have seen almost at a glance, noting her coming up the street on a certain Sunday afternoon, her jaws work- ing cheerfully on a huge wad of gum, her "Quarterly" bobbing frantically at the end of a ribbon, and a host of black, coquettish ring- lets fairly dancing at her temples. "It's a pleasant day," observed Elizabeth [249] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Anne, awkwardly falling into step, and speak- ing in the wee, wretched voice that was all she could command in these trying times of purpose. Joy looked down from her superior height, and sniffed. "Well, what of it?" she asked easily and ungraciously. "Why why nothing, of course," stam- mered her companion miserably, resolutely conquering a rising desire to flee ere her feet touched deeper waters. "An' an' I s'pose you know I didn't run after you just to talk about the weather. . . . It it's some- thing you do in Sunday-school I was think- ing about. . . . It's only that that" taking the plunge with closed eyes and a work- ing throat "well, you don't seem to care very much for the Twenty-third psalm. You al- ways chew your gum, or curl your hair on your finger, when the school recites it, an' j j " But Joy Peeler, her dimpled hands on her shaking sides, had broken into a loud, tolerant laugh. "Why, you odd little jigger," she said at [250] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT length, with good-natured contempt, eyeing the speaker as one might eye a puppy that had stood on his hind legs to reprove one, "you odd little jigger!" And her cowed adviser, flush- ing and paling under her scrutiny, concluded mournfully that there must be something wrong with this method of exerting one's in- fluence. Surely there must be some other less offensive way. It was while she was casting about in her mind to settle this perplexing matter that a famous temperance lecturer from a distant city chanced to visit the Sunday-school. Un- like the young minister, he was short and stout and rough and gray-bearded, but he, too, had, as he said, a special message for the young people a statement that sent an anticipatory hush into several wriggling quarters. He believed, he said further, that the mem- bers of the school, young as they were in the majority of cases, should become acquainted at once with the most vital question of the day. He was a forceful speaker, and his hearers shuddered and sighed and wondered if by any stretch of the imagination they could be called [261] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE drunkards, as he laid bare in denunciatory tide, the evils of a life of intemperance. "Please, Mister," piped Angelina Bird in the midst of the situation, waving aloft a little thin-fingered hand in a vain effort to stem the gradually rising current, "Cull Prairie ain't no drunken town! You'll not get a drop o' th' Devil's broth nearer'n Piperstown, so now!" Thirty-five youthful heads shook their part in this denial. Thirty-five youthful right hands ached to rise, even as simple Angelina's, and still the turbulent flow went on. Elizabeth Anne, sitting bolt upright in her chair, her thin lips indrawn, her arms locked upon her breast, and chills creeping up her spine, almost popped from her seat presently to hear thundered the ringing sentence: "Use your influence against it." The remainder of the lecture, so far as she was concerned, fell upon deaf ears. She saw she saw ah, what did she not see? For several holiday after- noons thereafter she mysteriously disappeared, and when she finally emerged from a favorite hiding-place she carried with her a precious [ 252 ] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT scarred pencil and a not over-clean sheet of paper which bore the following: THE DRUNKARD He toils not, neither does he spin, For strong drink surely has the best of him. He lives within four miserable walls, And scarlet are the veins on his eyeballs. He cares not for his little children five, And scolds and kicks his starved and ragged wife. His children stay all day out in the street; They hunt 'most everywhere for bread to eat. Their eyes are never filled with fun and joy, They sob and cry just like the baby boy The poor wife carries all day long, And tries so hard to sing a song. Oh, how the mother shivers when it's cold, Her shawl is thin, and oh, so very old. She wraps the baby in it now, And lays him down with one kiss for his brow. But in the morn when she called " Wake up, honey! " The angels had adopted baby Johnny. Oh, there are way and ways of spreading one's influence! Elizabeth Anne had had the Cull Prairie Sun in mind at the beginning, but why weakly limit oneself? There was a more assuming paper, The Fortnightly, on the sitting-room table, and to this, on consid- eration, "The Drunkard" was secretly dis- [253] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE patched, the cost of its sending being defrayed by the sacrifice of two days' licorice. Its publication was to be Caroline's surprise, for its author had wonderful visions of it in print. She knew it would appear, so she af- firmed to herself, for a twofold reason that had lately been revealed to her ; she had prayed that it might be, and Miss Susan had said that with prayer all things were possible. Thus far in life, from the earliest days of her memory, she had repeated only the care- fully reverent "Our Father" of Caroline's teaching. Now she added a strangely fervid clause of her own making, which she persisted in despite its seeming incongruity. Sometimes she buried her face prophet-wise in the loose sleeves of her gingham apron and repeated the words out of prayer season. It was something of a shock, therefore, when after the lapse of four patient weeks, "The Drunkard" returned in his original condition, together with a yellow and unfeeling communi- cation which began absurdly: "Dear Madam," and ended with some remarks almost disagree- ably polite. [254] JUST BEFORE THE GREAT EVENT "It may have been only an oversight," en- couraged Caroline with a troubled inflection when she was let into the secret. She was not sure that she was pleased at the independence of the act, but she did not mean to be wanting in sympathy. "I shouldn't worry about it, dear." Elizabeth Anne's response was inarticulate. She stood with drooping head and baffled eyes, feeling very much as she had felt years before, when, having offered all the propitiation in her power to the strange creature who had dis- pensed the measles, she had yet fallen a victim. They will take no denial, these insistent whys that come out to meet us so early in the way. And sometimes we set down our answer la- boriously, and again in a fashion quite offhand. It is all one. At best the answer is only a guess. But over and over, we must meet it somehow the unanswerable question that unfailingly confronts us at every turn of the way! [255 ] "HONORABLE MENTION" XVII "HONORABLE MENTION" "Know ye not," said a dog-eared little book Miss Susan's gift, and the most prominent object on Elizabeth Anne's squatty bureau "that they who run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize." To Elizabeth Anne, the daily morning chap- ter had become something more than a habit. To omit it, she had discovered from past ex- perience, or to close the book on an unfinished chapter, was to cheat oneself of the vision of Miss Susan's mystic-blue, approving eyes looking at one over the tops of the pages. Elizabeth Anne had no desire to lose, in any part, the sweet memory of a lost divinity, and many and varied were the ways in which she sought to stimulate it, but at this point she dropped the little volume with a small thud. So even this, her gift-book, her fetich, had entered into the conspiracy! Was there no- [259] where one could turn in avoidance of a hated subject? It had all begun portentously enough with the Grammar School and Principal Sensor and one Judge Merritt, a leading citizen ( lead- ing whither none could tell), and the end was still afar. Principal Sensor, who was a large, healthy, restless man, and who, like the majority of his sex to whom nature has been kind, had a caged appearance in the schoolroom, seemed to gloat over the thing. He had risen ostentatiously before the first year class; he had toyed with the wart on his chin, and tugged at his silk- dotted vest, and ran his hands through his curly brown hair. Cull Prairie, he said, when he had cleared his throat to his satisfaction, was blessed with a philanthropist, a real philanthropist, who had deigned to interest himself in the newcomers to the Grammar School. Despair laid its heavy fingers on the first year class. It felt fitted in its new importance to cope with many things. It had withstood, not altogether with- out credit to itself, oratory and temperance, [260] "HONORABLE MENTION" but philanthropy, real philanthropy! Where would it stop? Guileless eyes met others yet more guileless; a faint murmur went around. The big man was striking the blackboard in sharp little raps like an enterprising flicker. Philanthropy, it appeared, had to do variously with so-called themes, a contest, a committee of citizens, and a gold medal. The themes, looming well to the fore, sprawled across the board from top to bottom : "Homes Without Hands," "Fighting Wind- mills" (Elizabeth Anne had already stricken both of these from the list, mentally, in the belief that she had never seen the former with hands, and that the other was beneath her no- tice) ; "Politeness," "Parasites," "Winter Sports," "Whiskers," and so on uninspiringly. The first year class leaned back; its gaze traveled unenthusiastically from Mr. Sensor's silk dots, out across the lawn where catbirds were screeching joyously and irresponsibly through a soft flow of rain; and ingenious ideas of loopholes gathered in several alert and speculative minds. The erstwhile Fifth Reader class, Section [261] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE One, looked hopefully and pointedly at Eliza- beth Anne, who colored violently and felt, reasonably enough, that in the opprobrious epi- thet, "Fairy-chaser," she should have settled her score with fate, and wiped out the past. As it happened, the score refused to be settled. "I presume that Miss Elizabeth will soon be wearing a gold medal," said Mrs. Lean, on a parish call, with the most charitable inten- tion, and "Miss Elizabeth" wondered why she had never before detected the spice of malice that lay beneath that lady's broad and benevo- lent exterior. "It'll be jus' th' sweetest thing," mused Mit- tie Peeler drawlingly, fondling the white kitten in her lap; "you kin tie it onto Poody, here, with a blue ribbon. I hev seen decorated cats, hain't you, amongst the way-up folks?" "Mitt Peeler," jibed Grandma Prouty, whose back got a little rounder, and whose views a little gloomier, each year, but who seemed likely to live to be a hundred, "thar's times when I bleeve ye hain't jest hitched up right, someway, in yer wits. Th' idee o' stringin' a valyable like that onto a cat's neck ! [262] "HONORABLE MENTION" Abody'd think yer pore ol' head'd about run down fer sure. Now, if I 'a' won a thing like that thar medal when I wuz a gal, I'd never 'a' been satisfied less'n I'd 'a' hed it laid by somewhar in cotton fer t' wear with m* shroud!" "We are somewhat acquainted with Judge Merritt, who once visited at the Richman's here," wrote Grandmother Stratman in her nice, small-lettered hand, "and who, Mrs. Richman tells me, is now offering a prize for composition in your school. It seems to me that since Elizabeth has given all of her time to this work" (one could almost hear the sigh that was here inserted) "she ought to be able to win. Under the circumstances it would be some satisfaction to me, I must admit." "Looks like you're elected, Bet," chuckled Robert, thrusting his hands with an assump- tion of manliness into the pockets of his first long trousers. "Arrah, Mavourneen, 'tis yerself'll be the lucky young lady," flattered Mrs. O'Hara, waddling up behind. "Pooh," quoth Aunt Sarah in practical [263] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE offset, "them glitterin' things 're all in your eye. I don't believe I'd 's much as give it houseroom. I hate clutterers!" "But of course you will win, child," said Caroline afterward in dreamy expectancy. "Everyone seems to think so. A gold medal! Only fancy!" "What? What's this I hear?" queried David, looking up dazedly from a socialistic paragraph that had held him recently with close fascination in his rare spare moments. "A gold medal, did you say? Can't father see it? Show it to father!" The hand he held out was pitiably calloused and scarred, and a purple bruise showed itself vividly across the nails. Elizabeth Anne turned away her head. The sight of it had of late come to fill her with a heavy sense of her own helplessness, and a sort of dread as of some shadowy grim arbiter of their common fate. But it checked the im- patient response that rose to her lips. "I haven't won anything yet, father," she said with slow, forced patience, picking up a book to depart. [ 264 ] "HONORABLE MENTION" Outside, Belle O'Hara was waiting, wearing her best dress with a scarlet collar. Her brief school days were over, and she was on her way to the factory to apply for work. "Phwat's all this talk about a prize I'm hearin'?" she began at once, accommodating her pace to the shorter stride. " 'Tis me blessin' ye hov anyhow." Elizabeth Anne pulled her narrow hat brim down closer over her eyes and an actual, faint pallor spread under the streaks of freckles across her cheeks. "Don't say anything about it, Belle," she begged with a short, sharp catch in her voice, "please don't. I feel now as if a chunk of the world had got out of place some way, and was hanging right in the middle of my back." "Oi niver took no notice av it," returned Belle, gravely inspecting the spot. "This janius is poor sthuff, so 'tis. F'river carked up whin ye're afther nadin' it, an' th' cark sthuck in f'r dear loife! But begorry, gur-rl, if ye're wantin' a pointer: 'tis a committee I hear'll be awardin' th' proize; they'll be lukin' f'r some- thin' highfalutin', I'm thinkin'. Sthring in th' [265 ] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE big wur-rds f 'r all ye're worth. Shure th' dic- tionary '11 niver be missin' 'em." At the corner she turned, and waved her hand airily in farewell. "Sometimes," she called back soberly, "ye can do no betther 'n t' take th' advoice of a fool." Elizabeth Anne, with still a half hour's idle time on her hands, walked on soberly through the dancing vagrant motes of September sun- shine, and deliberated. Slowly, slowly, a light began to break, and hope appeared like a tiny freshet at the bottom of a dry arroyo. Now that she applied her mind to the fact, there was a "dictionary" word such as Belle had sug- gested that she remembered having lately hap- pened upon and thought highly impressive. It chanced to be "courteousness," and if her memory served her rightly it stood opposite the commoner term "politeness." And "Po- liteness" was the third in the Judge's list of topics ! Elizabeth Anne had not been years under Belle's decisive tutorship for nothing. Neither was she in the habit of letting the grass grow [266] "HONORABLE MENTION" under her feet. By recess time she had pre- pared with a selected list of unimpeachably weighty words a sort of working basis. At night, being elaborated, it appeared somewhat in this fashion: POLITENESS "Politeness is courteousness. The populace do not know much about it, nor care only the elevated. The behavior of the elevated is very distinguishable from that of the populace, and they are called ladies and gentlemen instead of just plain men and women. Some boys are conclusively lacking in courteousness, and cre- ate perturbation wherever they go. Such char- acters ought to be concisely dealt with. It is egotistical not to be in possession of courteous- ness, and it shows that one has no benignity. A person like this is called uncourtly or dis- courteous, and is meritorious of the contempt of all." Later, under the evening lamp, Caroline came upon this brief but weighty array of knowledge as it slipped from the "Beginners' [267] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Botany" to the floor during its writer's transit to her own room. Her eyes shone like twin stars as she held it up to the light. "Only listen, David," she cried, "from such a child!" And her pleased voice meandered through the intricate syllables. David was still deep in his article, but he was aware that a most high-flown communica- tion had fallen upon his ears. He shoved the paper aside and looked across the table at his wife's bent and shining head and half-opened flower lips. It meant daily sacrifice on the part of all concerned for Elizabeth Anne to remain in the Grammar School, but through all the household no mention was ever made of the fact. If some staple article of food were absent occasionally from the table, no one seemed to miss it. If the absence became too conspicuous, a laugh went round. After all, a prince may know more of pov- erty than a high-minded poor man. And David was a master of the art of contentment. "Our girl?" he said surprisedly at last. "Our girl! Well, well, it might have come [ 268 ] "HONORABLE MENTION" from the President of the United States!" And, for once, Caroline was satisfied. A committee of citizens, however, proved another matter. It was bored, frankly bored, by the heap of written material, and only a generous supply of cigars and a constant de- parture from the subject in hand, kept up its spirits sufficiently to hold it together. But the chairman found something, after considerable searching, that mildly struck his fancy. It was about the "Woods in Winter" and the text was a matter of small moment, for it was illustrated in a very creditable way, the penmanship was elaborate, and a handsome bow of red ribbon held the pages together. The chairman, it chanced, was interested in trees ; he was also interested in drawing, a sub- ject that he insisted ought to be added to the curriculum. And so to Minnie Bird, to whom the compo- sition belonged Minnie Bird who loved to draw and to make fancily curled and shaded letters, but who seldom took the trouble to formulate a correct English sentence was awarded the gold medal. And to Elizabeth [269] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Anne Langdon, whose work in composition had been taken note of before, the chairman an- nounced (in justice to the committee be it added that it had not been taken note of on this occasion) was awarded Honorable Mention for her effort (the effort part of it was true enough) . Elizabeth Anne received the announcement with furrowed brow. Honorable Mention! What might one be expected to do with it, pray ? It was impossible, obviously, to show it to one's friends, or to put it away in a cotton- lined box for safe keeping. A gold medal would have been bad enough in point of utility, but this, this was not even a tangible thing that could be used to "hang onto Poody," or as a decoration for the bosom of one's shroud! It was the outer semblance, the empty shell of an honor, it must be admitted, and for fully three days the recipient drooped. Then, the real life of the Grammar School having revealed itself to her, a joyous reaction set in. For the real life of the Grammar School was social in its nature. It began at about the third [270] "HONORABLE MENTION" week with an evening party a surprise for a girl named Isabel. The first year class, all of whose members were invited, with admirable social latitude (provided each supplied some article of refreshment), segregated itself into groups, and discussed the matter with befitting seriousness. Elizabeth Anne, in the rebound, threw her- self into the function heart and soul, and Caro- line, delighted at her returning animation, decided at once upon a first party dress. No one but she knew what pinching and planning a new gown would involve, but so successfully did she scheme that the result of her labors is still a matter of family history. The material of the dress was cashmere, a then much worn fabric, and the color a warm shade of wine, relieved by cream-white frills at the throat and wrists. The yoke and girdle were of velvet in a harmonizing shade, and the latter was fast- ened with a buckle set with a sparkling red ornament. This trinket was the crown of the wearer's bliss, and her meagre face, lyric with happi- ness, rivalled it in radiance, as she sat, basket [271] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE in hand, on the looked- for evening, awaiting the arrival of those who were to call for her. Gone for a season, at least, were the marks of the ugly duckling. Elizabeth Anne's angles in the evening dimness softened obligingly into curves; her deep gray eyes held an invitation to the coming woman ; her cheeks and lips were touched with the first freshness of youth. Truly, truly, earth's mainroads for one's feet were wide and pleasant, and life was a "jar of rose wine set high in the air!" Caroline, surveying her with ill-concealed admiration, moved about adjusting a curl here and a frill there, so it was David who, lamp in hand, was left to open the door at the modest little tap that came presently. It was David, too, who started back abruptly as the door swung ajar, and muttered an invol- untary ejaculation of surprise. He could not tell afterward whether it was the very red hair of the Red-Headed Boy who stood doffing his hat in the lamplight, or the scent of the berga- mot, or the gleaming whiteness of his shirt bosom, that had overcome him momentarily, [272] "HONORABLE MENTION" but certain it was he had not expected to see a young man on his threshold. It was only John, who had quite naturally rapped while the others waited at the gate, as Elizabeth Anne explained next morning, but somehow John had given to David, who had last noticed him as a toddler, a sharp thrust as to the passing of time. Caroline was surprised to see him take a little hand-glass from his pocket after the departure of the two, and examine his hair and the beard he had lately come to wear, with a sigh. In her heart, she sighed, too, but not for the passing of her youth, for the real mother- soul is selfless. It was only for a sudden glimpse of what the future might mean to Elizabeth Anne. Elizabeth Anne stripped of a "career" and destined to wifehood and moth- erhood, Elizabeth Anne who had never moth- ered a doll, nor patched a tear, nor baked so much as a playhouse cake! Here, the sigh becoming as large as a prayer, she slipped into her bedroom, and onto her knees, for she was still wont to pray, simply, out of the desire of her heart, even as Eliza- [ 278 ] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE beth Anne (only that she did not bury her face in her apron sleeve) , but the boon that she asked was so slow in putting itself into words that she rose uncertainly, and walked to the window, staring out at the starlit sky and the two pine trees at the gate that pointed forever heavenward, until a guilty sense that she had not prayed rightly began to steal upon her, and she tiptoed back and knelt again, asking only, this time, in her perplexity, that she might be given a "sign." Still, when all was said, was the matter wholly in a mother's hands? A glimpse of little Mary, who had come to fill Tiny Ruth's place, tucking in sturdy Donald, asleep on the sofa, reassured her. One has not far to go to find the "sign" for which one seeks. No, destiny had provided certain things, and destiny in a measure, no doubt, would take care of her own. But a single thought rankled in her heart at each recurring social function, and the social activity of the class increased with each year of the four-year course which the school offered. [274] "HONORABLE MENTION" It was so persistently the Red-Headed Boy who rapped; it was so evident that he wel- comed the opportunity. One liked him, too, in spite of oneself, with his honest brown eyes and quiet, straightforward manliness. Caroline would have a vision of him so long as she lived, she believed, standing, shy but determined, at the door, graduation night, his hands filled with white sweet peas, and a suggestion of a man's masterfulness in his manner. She tried to hide her relief afterward when Elizabeth Anne came to her with the news that John's family would remove to a Western State directly after his graduation, for there was a certain note in the girlish voice that touched her. How much might the tie have come to mean? She gazed full into the clear young face and breathed more freely. After all, Elizabeth Anne was barely eighteen, and her heart was a sealed book. But something undeniably pleasant had gone out of her life, and she went for solace almost at once, as she always did in a period of loss or stress, to her pencil, sometimes only [275] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE to make an entry in the diary she had begun in a little, old discarded copy-book, sometimes to write a jingle or a solemn essay, or again to set down a fancy so extravagant it seemed almost absurd in black and white. It was here that temptation fell upon her once more, and selecting her favorite from the lot, she sent it, again quite secretly, to The Comet, a little new paper that had sprung into life in a neighboring city. It is a world of miracles, is it not? At the end of two weeks, there came in response to the sender, a notably thin envelope, containing a note of acceptance and a check for three dol- lars, a sum with startlingly munificent pro- portions in her eyes. It almost swept her off her feet, and as for Caroline, her cup was full. What unbelievable highways of fame and splendor opened out of that wee, humble path- way to her mind's eye! At last they should know the sweep of bigger things; at last they should come into their rightful heritage ; at last they should leave off the eternal scrimping and seeking, and scotch forever the wolf at the door! At last! At last! [276] "HONORABLE MENTION" And Elizabeth Anne, knowing not the power and greatness of the Giant she had pledged herself to conquer, set out blithely so blithely, and such a little way ! "It'll never do," said Aunt Sarah with no uncertainty in one of the crises promptly evolved by the latest turn of affairs. . . . "There's th' new Normal, er Trainin' school for teachers, over on th' South Side, about ready for business, I hear; an' I'm needin' a girl for dishwashin' evenin's. I don't see why we couldn't make out t' have you go." [277 ] 'LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" Caroline had endorsed the Normal partly as an antidote for possible romance, and in this she was quite right in a general way. The Training School was not a mausoleum, neither was it a house of merriment. It was a place of monastic outlook with unadorned walls, alabaster clean, and straight, business- like corridors with black rubber matting. There was a sober-minded faculty (on no account referred to as "the teachers" here), and a campus where one felt sure that the yard should have been. The whole was dedicated unreservedly to the Child and his Realm a unique sort of child that subsequent experience all but proved a myth. Lacking that experience, however, one, of course, absorbed the glories of the subject, and marvelled that his eyes had so long been closed to a beauty so accessible. That is, the native Cull Prairie student mar- [281] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE veiled. There was shortly an influx of city young men and women to whom nothing seemed in the nature of a marvel. Cull Prairie, in her own phraseology, "ran after" this fac- tion, feeling that the height of things urban had been reached in the football team which now practiced Saturdays in O'Brien's pasture, though old Uncle Pete O'Hara, who shambled across a boggy marsh and scaled two fences to reach the spot, made morose mention of the need of an assistant to the fool-killer. "An' himsilf a foine an' able-bodied mon, too," he added with puzzled insistence. "Arrah, 'tis a fasht wan, th' comin' gineration, wid th' divhil an' disthruction aridin' on ahid. 'Tis the same Oi towld Maggie th' noight, through faith, an' she's not the wumman t' lave a mon enjye himsilf forseein' a bit o' trouble." Elizabeth Anne secretly studied the balloon sleeves and crimped and waved coiffures of the new girls. Her own hair, only a trifle less bleached looking now than when as a little girl she had run bareheaded in the sun, and no longer showing a tendency to curl, was braided in a single plait of pale, nondescript strands, [ 282 ] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" and wound about her crown like a tapering coronet. Her dress of half-wool Henrietta-cloth, fitted tightly to her slight figure, had been twice turned and dyed a deep and serviceable brown, which she hated. It looked like a blot, she thought, on the sea of fairer colors about it. The girl who sat opposite her in Assembly wore a gold neck chain with a delicately wrought pendant that took on an alluring pearly softness in the light. She was a clever girl, too, and made a splen- did showing when called upon to recite. Eliz- abeth Anne believed herself unjustly treated in the distribution of things. "I wish I could wear pearls," she said that night, glumly, over her dishpan; "they're beautiful!" "And so are the leaves of the trees," agreed Aunt Sarah, pointing out a scarlet maple in the woodlot, "but folks don't feel called upon t' deck themselves out in 'em, because they're t' be had fer th' takin'." Elizabeth Anne wondered. (There was plenty of time for solitary reflections, just [ 283 ] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE now, with Belle in the factory and Minnie get- ting ready for a coming-out party, and Angelina again on her circuit of relatives.) But she could not forget the vision of the new girls as they gathered in the walks and chatted with an occasional trim-looking youth. She tried to imagine what they could find to talk about at such length with young men to whom they had seemingly been strangers a week ago. Their banter, when she caught snatches of it, might as well have been couched in a foreign tongue for all that it meant to her. The hitherto unsuspected dullness hurt even worse than shabbiness and being out of the mode. It would have been more tolerable per- haps but this was a secret grudgingly shared even with her own heart had it not been for Laurel, whom, unfortunately, it was impos- sible for Caroline to foresee. In a Normal School it is always a Laurel or a Percival or a Launcelot. Elizabeth Anne knew nothing of Laurel, save that he was a nephew of Judge Merritt's and bore his surname. Just wherein lay his [284] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" particular merit, it would have been a little hard for a critical observer to have said. He was a lank youth of twenty, colorless and expressionless of face, his features rudi- mentary, his limbs long, his sandy hair thin and parted in the middle; and the Judge declared privately that he was not worth his salt. Young men not worth their salt, in the rural interpretation of that phrase, were commonly crowded into the teaching profession just then, so the Judge, who, upon the business failure and subsequent death of Laurel's father in a distant city, had offered the young man Nor- mal training, and provided him with clothes and lodging, was conscious of no wrong. And the school, the student portion of it at any rate, basing its estimate on the natty suits, low shoes, immaculate hats and silken ties with which he had been generously provided, set its seal of approval upon him. To Elizabeth Anne he appealed as the Poet, not by virtue of any rhyming ability of which he was possessed, mark you, but simply be- cause, as she would have said, he looked like a [285] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Poet, which, after all, is a consideration not to be lightly set aside. Now, locked in the heart of every girl of eighteen (all the "careers" in the world affect- ing it not an iota) is a decision concerning the calling of the man she will one day marry. It is a thing of slow growth, and dates from the Primary School, when she names her but- tons in presumable order of desirability: "Rich- man, Poorman, Beggarman, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian chief." Elizabeth Anne had long and openly scorned Minnie Bird for sordidly rejoicing when "Richman" had fallen to her portion, and being herself dissatisfied with the list in general had set it aside, and settled firmly, after mature reflection, upon a Poet. To be sure, she was somewhat vague in rela- tion to the term, but it still afforded, for all that, a splendid field for day dreams in the intervals of study, when her gaze strayed from "What the Child Must Know" to the nodding clumps of golden-glow at the outer confines of the campus. She did not know how these dreams became [286] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" confused with the name of Laurel Merritt, and she dropped her head, and bit her lip sharply, when she first became conscious that they had, in some way, come to include him. But the thought was not unpleasant, and since it intruded itself again and again, she felt powerless and half unwilling to banish it. Presently, gaining courage, she closed the heavy, red "Elements of Pedagogy" on her lap, and lifting her eyes gazed across the room to where he was sitting. It appeared that he, too, was staring out of the window. She could see the sharp curve of his lean jaw nd the absent motion of his idle fingers on the desk. Could it be that his thoughts were straying even as her's that he too was thinking perhaps of ? She checked the thought as absurd, and it was then she longed, with an intensity almost painful, to be pretty. Did any woman with freckles and a turn-up nose ever achieve the real desire of her life, or was she doomed forever to struggle along un- der a weak and miserable makeshift? The [287] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE question appealed to her as infinitely more important than the indefinite concerns of the still more indefinite child. It thrust itself for consideration between the prosy pages of the clumsy red book when she conscientiously reopened it. It followed her to classroom, where a weekly test was the order of the day. It rose tantalizingly on the page before her while she set down industriously and mechani- cally the pedagogical observations of the red- backed authority, for her a mere memory exer- cise, and, since her memory happened to be an excellent one, as easy as the proverbial falling off a log. She was finishing the last dull paragraph when she felt a slight tug at her sleeve, and half turning looked could it possibly be true? into the disturbed eyes of Laurel Merritt. He silently lifted his paper as she turned, but before her glance fell upon the still blank sur- face she seemed to know instinctively that he was entirely at sea. It was a dreadful moment, but a brief one, [288] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" To what depths will not even a new-born passion descend? Elizabeth Anne, who had never "cheated" in examination in her life, and who sincerely believed that she scorned such a proceeding as mean and stupid Elizabeth Anne, whose soul, always a timid one, trembled at the con- sequences of such a lapse in morals, not to men- tion the possibility of detection, could it be she who, under cover of one thin hand, whispered a cue feverishly and insistently? With great relief she heard the scratching of the pen behind her. The words, then, had carried. But the tug was repeated after a moment, several times in fact, and she found herself in a state of grow- ing excitement, answering questions and recit- ing definitions in a way that in a cooler moment she would have unhesitatingly labeled shame- less. However, Laurel Merritt presented a rea- sonably good paper in Pedagogy at this time, by reason of the several little jogs given his uncertain memory, and the Judge did not wash his hands of him as he had threatened he would [289] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE do in case of a poor showing. To do him jus- tice, he was grateful to his lately discovered ally. He began to speak in a very friendly way to her, whenever their paths crossed, though she was "not in his set," as he would have said. Elizabeth Anne, putting the memory of the means by which their acquaintance had been accomplished, resolutely behind her, was grateful in her turn. The friendship did not ripen very fast, but she would not have hastened it in any way any more than she would have thrust her fingers into a delicate white opening bud. She went her way to and from school thoughtfully and dreamily now, and reread several novels of which she was very fond, with a new sort of personal interest. Caroline took note of her growing womanli- ness, and attributed it to every cause but the true one, for as yet no word of Laurel had passed between them. Elizabeth Anne, so far from being secretive, would have said there was nothing to tell, but she knew that in her heart was a story, sweet if [ 290] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" unworded. It betrayed itself in her voice if he spoke to her unexpectedly, in her changing color and swiftly lowered lashes if he chanced to look her way, in so many little ways indeed that even he, with all his dull self-absorption, began to be aware of a strange adoration mysteriously centering about him. The discovery could hardly be said to have surprised him, or even to have moved him a jot out of the self -rut in which he had placidly existed his full score of years. It was rather opportune, he reflected, com- > ing to his notice on the eve of a "final" in a subject in which he felt himself to be most deficient. He speculated idly on whether she might prove of service to him again. He was surely not averse under the circum- stances to encouraging any sentiment she might entertain for him, and his languid lidded eyes brightened with an idea as he reached for his pen and a sheet of tinted note-paper. Elizabeth Anne, returning some time later from class, discovered the blue-hued message in her empty ink-well, and her small fingers trembled so that she extricated it with drffi- [291] culty, and her heart beat thickly in her throat at the sight of the handwriting, unmistakably his own. "To one which I love, and love dearly," he began (for syntax was never his strong point). The reader paused here and dwelt again upon each precious word, conflicting emotions swelling in her breast. Then, being the daughter of a philosopher, she took her newest eraser, and carefully effac- ing the offending pronoun, substituted the cor- rect one in close imitation of his flourish, that this cherished missive, when reread in the days to come, might give her only pleasure. "I have read your secret in your eyes," he went on in the fashion of a love story he had unearthed from the Judge's shelves, "and I am more than happy, for my heart has been yours from our first meeting. Let me know by some token how much you care. ... I will call tonight, dear, unless you say it is inconvenient. L. H. M." "Laurel Herbert Merritt" Elizabeth Anne whispered the name for which the barely leg- [292] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" ible letters of the signature stood, and as a "token" tucked the paper shyly in her bosom. Outside, a group of children from the Model Department joined her. She wanted to take their hands and skip along gaily, as they did. She had sometimes taken advantage of her small stature to join them in their play. But a strong new sense of dignity prevented her. She had come in a heart-beat out of the House of her Little Girlhood, with the key still warm against her breast, and delightful as she found the Dwelling of her Womanhood, she would not demean it with frivolous be- haviour. She bent down soberly and kissed* each round, surprised face as their ways parted and she turned into the homeward road. The white dust and the pink asters, the overhanging sumacs, and the frisking gophers in the culverts, all appealed to her now as part of a picture she had never before seen. On the home porch the vines hung thick and dusty, and two of the four household cats, mothers to flourishing families of kittens, basked serenely on the lowest step. (David had made sundry threats concerning the kit- [293] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE tens, but they still dozed peacefully in their haymow quarters.) From the kitchen chimney there was a thin cloud of bluish smoke rising slowly to meet the bluer autumn haze and already the appetizing supper odor of coffee and fried potatoes filled the air. Elizabeth Anne, who, up to this moment, had accepted it all, for all its limitations, as the best place in the world, began to wonder what Laurel might think of the basking cats and the patched porch and the dingy sitting-room car- pet. The thought held her silent and distrait during the usually merry supper hour, and beat in a warm surge at her temples when, the last supper cup washed and hung in its place, she heard him at the door, and went to admit him. He came in with some hesitation, born largely of condescension, and the introductions having been accomplished, sat down very near the door and crossed his knees, having first deposited his neat sailor hat on the head of the sofa with an air of careless ease. The household took a moment to adjust itself and rise to the occasion. [ 294 ] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" Then someone remarked politely concerning the dry weather a remark that was answered in kind and enlarged upon until it embraced every topic by any possibility related to it; the crops, the dust, an undue supply of potato beetles, a prospective Sunday-school picnic. Elizabeth Anne, fearful lest the supply might run out altogether, murmured an excuse and went to light the lamp in the bare little parlor. During her absence, prolonged by shyness, Laurel offered some opinions of the political situation and the prospects for the workingman that made David ache, and return grimly to his newspaper. Caroline having caught a glimpse of her daughter's unguarded face as she passed her in the doorway, found herself bereft of every- thing in the way of speech save a few inanities over which she bungled with a conversational clumsiness ordinarily quite foreign to her. In the stiff silences, Aunt Sarah, who had come to spend the evening, rocked shortly and clicked her knitting needles vindictively. Take it altogether, the call was an awk- ward one, and relief was the predominating [295] THE, GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE expression in several faces when the door finally closed upon the bowing Laurel, who departed with Elizabeth Anne's lecture note- book under one arm. But if the silence had been stiff before it was stiffer than ever now. "I I hope you like him," ventured a diffi- dent girlish voice at last, tremulously. Still silence. "He loves me," said Elizabeth Anne, stand- ing up very straight and launching her bolt with the least possible ceremony "me out of all those prettier girls !" She choked over her miracle this call of the Shadow Prince grown real, and brooking no denial for any reason. It was as if she told them of some beauteous thing before which their eyes were holden. "And I I return the feeling," proudly. "I didn't want to worry you. I've told you almost as soon as I knew it myself." "He pshaw!" said David, tugging at his beard. "Oh," said Caroline in a little groan she could not help. Her knees felt like water under her, and her voice was equally untrusty. [296] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" Robert, who had been steadily and silently whittling a stick, shut his knife with a snap, and backed warily into the kitchen, and Little Mary in the bedroom cried out lustily in her sleep. "I once loved a man with a wart on his nose," said Aunt Sarah whimsically when the cry had been lulled, "so I s'pose I'm elected t' keep still. But this one's awful rare done, Betsy, awful rare, and I'm misdoubtin' seri- ously he'll ever cook through." Elizabeth Anne afterward shed a few tears at the recollection of these things, sitting cross-legged on her own bed in the candle light, thereby adding to the distress of Caroline, who was watching her unobserved from the shadows of the doorway. "She really cares, I'm afraid," she moaned to herself, stealing away, when she could stand it no longer, to her own bed. "She really cares, David," she repeated dully. "There seemed to be a positive understanding between them. Dear, did you notice her eyes?" "He's a pup," growled David, savagely and unexpectedly, banging the shutters, which creaked sadly on their hinges, "a regular [297] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE He had been about to repeat the epithet, when a memory still keen and painful caught him up short. "But then your mother once said " be broke off instead, sheepishly. "Don't," said Caroline, holding out her hand. "Whatever happens we must bear it together. You know, dear," quiver ingly, "I could bear anything that way." And so the days of the Normal course sped on, and Elizabeth Anne, grown wistful and sedate, dreamed her dreams at closer range, sometimes with a flower from the Judge's gar- den pressed against her cheek, sometimes with a bit of paper bearing a few scribbled words. The friendship, slow in its inception, now progressed steadily. The Langdon family sitting-room gradually accustomed itself, to a weekly visit from Laurel, and the neighbor- hood, never slow to gather an inference, began to betray a rising interest in the matter. "My, but ain't he th' dude?" shrilled Grandma Prouty, thrusting out a suggestive elbow with undiminished dexterity. "Anybudy that 'u'd take two looks at them thar purple [298] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" ties 'n'd that thar carbuncle stick-pin, 'u'd have 'n awful greedy eye!" "I dremp o' beaux like him when I wuz young," wheezingly enthused Miss Mittie in her turn, "but somehow they didn't 'pear t' fall inta my lot. Sometimes I feel anyway like m' hull life hain't been nothin' but a barr'n waste, but I expect it'll make me all th' more anxious t' say: 'Oh death, where is thy sting?' ' "Ye'd better not go temp tin' Providence with none o' that stingin' talk, Mitt Peeler," hotly enjoined Grandma Prouty, resenting this incursion on her own domain, "er ye may git tuk at yer word when ye ain't lookin' fer it." "My dear girl," wrote Grandmother Strat- man, in the first letter she had ever penned to her grand-daughter, "is it true that you are engaged to be married to Mr. Laurel Merritt? A young lady who lives next door to me, and attends the Training School in your town, tells me that she has it on good authority, though your mother seems strangely reticent on the subject. ... I wish that you could ar- range to spend a week-end with me in the near future. The big house seems so lonely with [299] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Ellen at the Settlement, and Virginia in Japan at her missionary labors. In some ways my girls, dear as they are to me, have proven a disappointment. . . . (Here, out of the bag stepped the most serene and unconscious of cats.) Dear girl, if it be true, I am sure you are to be congratulated. I am sorry that I do not know Mr. Laurel personally ; but I un- derstand he is to be his uncle's heir, the Judge having no children of his own, and the Mer- ritts I know are very comfortably situated indeed." Poor Grandmother Stratman at almost seventy ! Elizabeth Anne, in the first full sweep of youth, put from her the more practical con- siderations, and scrip turally "held fast to that which was good." She wanted to hold fast to the days of the Normal course which were slipping away with a swiftness almost alarming. In two weeks more, Laurel, who had managed at last to weather the Normal tide, would have his position. It would take him to a new and distant town [300] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" where teachers were scarce, but it would open great possibilities, he said "possibilities for us both," he added significantly, for he had come to enjoy his power over her, and it gave him an agreeable sense of masculine superior- ity to see how confidently she waited upon his words. Most assuredly he would write every day if she wished, a promise which he kept for a time, when there seemed so much to tell about his generous salary and the place of impor- tance he had assumed both in the new town and the school. It did not occur to Elizabeth Anne that these letters were self-centered, much less that they were not exactly true as to detail. She herself had a position a more insignificant one than she had expected on the outskirts of Cull Prairie, affording her a monthly stipend of thirty-five dollars. She wrote humbly in re- turn, and hoped that the people of the new town appreciated their privileges. Meanwhile, she was not unhappy in her work, and always within easy access, was a re- cent letter in which he said that soon, very [801] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE soon, he would have something of importance to tell her in person. She would not let herself think of it any more definitely than that, but the timidest meanderings of her mind in this direction were like warming touches from the very hands of Joy. Once, she dreamed of his coming, and the dream was so real that she awaited him next day as if she had had an actual message. It was a bracing day of late summer that seemed to promise everything. She trod the aisles with prim little teacherish steps, and tried not to show the absurd delight that cried out to sing in her every move. A tot from the Primer class lifted her hand and kissed it as she passed by. The touch of the babyish lips made her heart swell with the deep, sweet meanings of life the possible call, waking newly in her, to a dim, transcending motherhood. Beside it, all other things in life seemed suddenly as a thin vapor. As the day waned, her eyes strayed oftener to the lonely stretch of white road, fruitlessly. It was only a foolish fancy, she reassured her- [ 302 ] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" self later, locking the door on the heels of the last small hanger-on and dragging her feet a little wearily through the thick, faded grass. But she would stop at the post-office and yes, the letter at least was there. She saw it in its place in the box and broke the seal almost at once, straying with her message out of the dingy little place into the more fitting sunlight. And then ah, then the sunlight of that day and many a day to come went out swiftly for Elizabeth Anne. The words had been care- fully chosen for once, but they hurt as she could never have dreamed mere words had power to hurt. "It is all over between us," he wrote at the last. "You are too sensible a girl, I know, to grieve for one who has ceased to love you. The fact is, there is someone else. . . . Do not write. I am leaving here tomorrow." Poor Elizabeth Anne, who could not read between the lines that he had failed in his vaunted place and was returning to the home of his mother to be a further problem there, [303] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE One's grief is none the less real because it is unseeing and baseless and imaginary. She only knew that she must get home somehow and face its light-hearted chatter now and always as best she could. Somewhere, she was thinking in a dull under- current, she had seen the word "blighted" in a magazine story which matched her experience. So this was what it meant to be "blighted!" The blight was a cold and gripping thing. It chilled and changed one hopelessly, and she reached blindly for the door and would have escaped to her own room, but the next moment Caroline's arms were around her, and her warm plump hands were chafing the numb girlish ones, and her tears were mingling with Elizabeth Anne's, though she asked never a word. It soothed the sting, but it could not take away the hurt. Dear Elizabeth Anne! Dear "blighted" Elizabeth Annes the wide world over! How can you know that when a few short years have been added to your life-sum oh, such a paltry few the healing balm of clearer sight will be [304] "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM" laid upon your poor blind eyes, and you will get down on your humble knees, and thank God from the very depths of your heart that he saw fit to "blight" you! [805] THE MOUNT OF VISION XIX THE MOUNT OF VISION At twenty-two the world turns 'round for us. We follow it with fascinated eyes, and demand of it a reason for our place in the scheme of the universe. The question is a sort of climax in the bristling array of "whys" with which we have so long grappled. Elizabeth Anne was brewing a solitary cup of tea over the battered little oil stove beside her desk when the weightiest "why" assailed her, and carried away by its immensity, she set down her teacup and went over to the window, leaning her arms dreamily across the sill. There was a distant hill just visible from this point of vision, and over it, etched cloud- fashion, she had come to fancy she could see the scenes of her life projected as on a great dim screen dull scenes she named them, in her pent-up youthfulness, of the duller days, slipping by, a gray-hooded procession, each so much like its predecessor as to give her a kin- [309] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE dred feeling with the little smooth-haired, bright-eyed mouse in the schoolroom trap, a mouse she would later carry, very much alive, to the edge of the adjacent wood, from whence he would promptly return, to be caught again with unfailing regularity, and wax fat on the baiting cheese. Another school year had passed over her head in the selfsame spot, and the time had rolled on to June, a drizzling, backward June that had at last wearied itself with its Niobe- like insistence and was now shining out with hysterical radiance on the over-wet and faintly yellowed blades of corn that reached out feebly for it. What a multitude of wants the earth supplied ! Surely the concerns of Providence were many. But in all this stress individual lives were reckoned with. Had she not had her own plan of life brushed aside, so to speak? And the ends of Providence were beneficent. What then was the manifest purpose in this, what indeed her thought was illumed save that greater things had been reserved for her. [310] THE MOUNT OF VISION At twenty-two we say greater not better and we mean achievement in the eyes of the world. And then Ambition looks us in the face for the first time squarely and we look back for a moment with a degree of boldness we know vaguely we shall never again be able to muster. Elizabeth Anne's ambition was like a sap- ling of uncertain inclination that had been so long coaxed in a single direction that a final response was inevitable. She would wrestle with her Giant, wrestle fearlessly and untir- ingly, yes, and conquer him too, in the end. But she trembled now with a troubled sense of the beginning of the fray that, and the memory of another course. Ambition had opened for her wayfaring as a sort of easy alternative. For Ambition, abetted by Fate, had pointed with unromantic forefinger to Mr. Richard Kail, the middle-aged and pros- perous and still unwed Mr. R. S. Kail of the Sun and the Mortgage and sundry other equally important things. It was a lately buried chapter in her life, when her own thoughts had gone masquerading [311] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE in a guise she did not know, and she wanted never to revert to it; but once, once she had promised almost. Well, little Mary had been ill, and her ringed, hungry eyes had been so like Tiny Ruth's looking back from the Far Country, and there was a new Baby Langdon crying to be fed, and but why detail excuses she felt might be multiplied almost indefinitely? Enough that for once at least she had known the thrill of the conqueror. Enough that there was still left to her, at her very elbow, waiting for fresh overtures her Giant. With what new means should she seek to begin operations ? Her own Romance? She hated a sniveling tale. . . . Minnie Bird's story? Why not? Viewed from the outside, it glittered like the most varnished fairy lore. Minnie Bird had been married a year ago this particular day to a young man from the nearest large city, a gay young man, who, in the eyes of the countryside, had appeared as little short of an Adonis. There had been an elaborately planned wed- [312] THE MOUNT OF VISION ding service and a no less elaborate wedding breakfast of many covers, and when it was all over, Angelina, tired, large-eyed, wretchedly- clad Angelina, who still won from life only the portion of labor, had appeared upon the scene to help "Aunt Bird," as she said, with the heavier work, "so long as she should be wanted." Elizabeth Anne had viewed only the cere- mony in the little church in company with sev- eral other elbowed North Siders, but she had let her imagination run riot over the rest, while she cried in the churchyard with the other girls, any one of whom would have found it hard to give a reason for her tears, since one and all be- lieved from the bottom of their hearts that the doors of the innermost paradise had swung ajar for the satin-robed Minnie with her bridal bouquet of snowy lilies of the valley. Minnie Bird Hemmingway was the dignified way in which the town newspaper made men- tion of her now, when the occasion arose. Eliza- beth Anne appreciated, but waived it. "Des- demona" was the name fixed upon by her for her story heroine, this appellation having [313] GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE" taken the place of "Gene vie ve" in her affec- tions. "The Joy of Desdemona," how it thrilled her and clung to her until by proxy it became a part of her own ! Luckily, vacation time was at hand, supply- ing her with unwonted leisure, and enabling her to steal away to the attic with her project. The attic, as further good fortune would have it, was quite bearable as to temperature, being supplied with no less than two windows, before which Caroline had put up neat white muslin shades. Its chief furnishings consisted of four backless chairs, a wrecked sofa, a more sorely wrecked rocker and an overturned car- pet-rag box which did duty as a desk. What more could the god of inspiration ask or demand? Elizabeth Anne, formulating her plot, stumbled about among these things as one who could not see. Now and then, in a radiant burst of fancy, she believed she had almost laid hands on the poor little white-faced, elusive Genius she pictured herself pursuing from corner to corner in a vain attempt to crowd into the struggle. She smiled absently if you [314] THE MOUNT OF VISION accosted her, and answered shortly and mum- blingly. She lost sight of daily small happen- ings, and was obliged to inquire the day of the week. She mistook small Mary's rag doll for a cushion, and tucked it abstractedly at her back, until the piercing wails of the young mother finally broke upon her preoccupied conscious- ness. For "one wants concentration to write a Ro- mance," as the writer explained in desperation to Caroline, who came to investigate the cause of the disturbance. And Caroline was well content wistful Caroline with the limpid blue eyes and the insatiate hope in her breast. Sometimes, thereafter, she came to the at- tic room softly with a few strawberries ar- ranged daintily on a saucer, and if the short pencil could be seen bobbing over a page busily, she put them in reach without a word, and creaked slowly back down the narrow stairs. She sang afterward, keeping time to the steady jog of the wooden cradle to which the last baby had been promoted, and Elizabeth Anne, reaching for her berries, and catching a [315] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE snatch of the air, made a deep resolve that some day she would justify the song. Some day she would bring into the life of the singer comforts even luxuries perhaps which she could not now with her pittance. Some day! Set it down in gold letters in the book of Twenty- two! "The Joy of Desdemona" was half com- pleted when there arose an opportunity to add to it the charm of reality not to be carelessly unconsidered. The morning mail brought a letter from Minnie, asking, nay demanding, a visit from her old school friend. Elizabeth Anne considered it with her purse in her lap, and a vision of another world, a city world of glitter and gaiety whose temptings forth she had long relegated perforce to the back of her brain, beckoning to her in renewed hope over the top of the pages. Then, resolution seated high on her brow, she gathered together her closely written sheets for safe keeping, blackened her shoes to their limit of lustre, mended her gloves and the little lace blouse that was considered "quite dressy" in Cull Prairie, fastened the [316] THE MOUNT OF VISION prim gray and white wing (that always wanted fastening) more securely to her hat, and in final proof of her intention, packed a small hand satchel. It was a two hours' journey to the place of her destination, and all the way there she con- gratulated herself that a certain little rainy day fund from the depths of her bureau drawer had been magicked at the eleventh hour into a blue striped parasol as a final touch to her adorning. "The very latest thing," the saleswoman at the Cull Prairie Emporium had assured her. There was a world of comfort in the phrase. "The very latest thing," the wheels seemed to chug and the creak of the ventilators to en- courage as she leaned forward nervously and smoothed her hair while the train drew up at the long station. Desdemona would know, Desdemona would approve, lucky Desdemona of the world of sparkle ! A final look around, a final tender brushing of the consoling "latest thing," and Minnie's hazel eyes had met hers in the crowd, and swept [817] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE her with a single oblique glance faintly discon- certing for all its unquestioned friendliness. Desdemona, ah, Desdemona to be sure, but how, at the same time, really Minnie Minnie after one year this voluptuous woman waft- ing oriental perfume and resembling in the ultra vividness of her complexion and raiment an artificial Killarney rose? Bewildered, she let herself be drawn aside and seated in the luxurious depths of the wait- ing limousine. More bewildered, she went through the maze of a few days as one who walked in a mist, only here and there a distinct impression really registering itself upon her brain the velvet feel of Minnie's plump, cig- arette-stained fingers as they wrought tactful changes about her person, the blase drone of her voice, the soft-footed unnecessary servants, the strangeness of the viands, the heaviness of the scents, the Babylonian lavishness on every hand these and in strange juxtaposition, the tired young man who had been the gay young man, and who tried so hard and so pathetically every day of his life to spell luxury with the [318] THE MOUNT OF VISION futile letters that were meant only for the humbler word comfort. Elizabeth Anne sat up and opened her eyes. How many times in these teeming haunts was the little tragedy of Minnie's home-making repeated? Was it a little tragedy? Alone in the monotony of her way home the question throbbed in her mind every mile of the way, till the familiar fields flew by, and the tops of the Prairie houses swept in sight. How good the air was, and how refreshing! Honest air she had called it almost in the reaction of her feeling. And the long, white, dusty Prairie road to the outskirts how serene it looked in the evening light, and how inviting. The home folks would be at supper, she knew, the lamplight streaming whitely into the dusk from the kitchen doorway, down the pebbled path with its pink-lined borders. Had they missed her? It seemed suddenly a very long time that she had been away. She felt older, some way, with her one glimpse of a great city and wiser. Ahead of her a few paces bobbed the active, wiry figure of little, [319] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE old Aunt Sarah tugging a pail of water from the woodlot spring faithful, little old Aunt Sarah, whose untiring back bore so many of their burdens. Unconsciously she fell into the same brisk business-like pace. How gladly now, she would sit at her feet and learn. The lamplight streamed forth in increasing radiance. In its brightness she could see Rob- ert with his first pay-envelope in his hands, a new manly swing to his shoulders, at which Caroline smiled and David looked up proudly. No, their "need of her, of which in her self- obsession she had fondly dreamed, was not so urgent as she had imagined. Clearly other strong young arms would help to forge the way. Clearly the way itself, hope-lighted, was only brightening with the years. But in all this was no reason for stopping short of a goal. Elizabeth Anne, humbled but persistent, squared her jaw, and in course of time, set upon her Giant afresh, now all but burying her weapons in verbiage, and covering many sheets. What a pity one might not label [320] THE MOUNT OF VISION one's efforts: "This is my first-born, my heart's blood, the biggest hope today that the world holds for me!" The three commonplace lines she had com- posed to accompany the written pages seemed so tame in comparison she tore the paper into shreds, and stood for a moment listening at the stair- door to a murmur of voices from below. "She has gone back to it," said Caroline, softly, as one enraptured. "I knew she would ! Oh, I have hoped so, prayed so, ever since she was born, that she might be uncommon!" "But I tell you I don't believe in it," de- murred Aunt Sarah, giving the stair-door a shove with her foot. "If you are uncommon, well an' good. An' even then Nature makes you pay up for it, an' dear, too." The listener lifted her head and held out her arms. She would pay, she would pay! What was the dream not worth? Thus she bargained, not knowing that just around the corner there was waiting for her a reality a reality that was to be sweeter and more lasting than any dream. [821] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE For it was at this time, quite silently and all unheralded, that the Man came into her life the Big Man, as she began to think of him from the first, for he was big-chested, big- fisted, big-hearted, deserving of his title in every goodly inch of him. The Prairie bestirred itself and took notice. Then it remembered the Red-Headed Boy (there were others, but none who could ap- proach the shade in violence) and held out its hand with a welcome there could be no mis- taking. Elizabeth Anne envied it its frank cama- raderie. For herself she found something con- fusing in the eyes of the returned wanderer, and was at the most elaborate pains in each of their frequent meetings that he should not dis- cover the fact. She hoped, she said firmly to herself and she so nearly believed what she said that she repeated it primly, sometime later, in his pres- ence, in the shadow of the honeysuckle vines on the porch that their old-time relations might continue without a difference. It sounded well, and he had dropped her [322] THE MOUNT OF VISION hand and bowed his head and seemed to ac- quiesce, and then ah, was it the witchery of the August moon, or the faint, sweet smell of the garden pinks, or the sighing of the unweary sentinels that pointed forever heavenward in some way neither could have told, the prim little course had gone all awry, and his lips had found hers in the warm dusk, and his arms had claimed her, and "John," said a small, strangely changed, submissive voice in his ear, "I never knew that love was like this." Simple Elizabeth Anne, whose genius like the primal, God-given genius of all her kind, lay only in loving and in all that love entails ! The white moon rose higher, the sounds of day died out, the social after-supper hour in Cull Prairie was in full sway. In the frayed, swaying hammock on the porch adjoining, Belle O'Hara (now a competent forewoman in the factory) fondled a white kitten, and crooned contentedly. Further down, at the gate, Maggie and a little company of calico-sunbonneted women joined in their nightly confab, the sound of their voices rising with their growing interest. [823] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE Could it be? yes, the magic of the night had spread they were talking about weddings. "It's been quite a spell since I seen a wed- din','' announced Grandma Prouty, as usual in her commanding point at the center of the group; "I reckon th' las' was when ol' Anse Bowers tuk Clarissy Kail t' be his second wum- man, an' then I couldn't noways relish it, her bein' sixteen an' him huggin' sixty like a sweet- heart. Beats all, how a body will begretch them ol' hawks their young chickens ! I hain't denyin' I set a good bit o' store on weddin's. Barrin' th' spice of 'em, I don't know o' nuthin', neither, thet puts me more in mind of a fun'ral." "A weddin' 's got any thin' else I ever seen beat seven diffrunt ways," coughingly rejoined white-faced Miss Mittie, with one hand for support on the gate post. "I only wish I could 'a' taken Joy's oldes' t' 'a' seen Clarissy in them handsome lace bride clo'es she'd got, th' takin' little thing bein' allus s' set on fixin' up that china doll o' her'n fer a bride." Elizabeth Anne, smiling, but misty-eyed, quietly exchanged looks with the Big Man at [324] THE MOUNT OF VISION her side, feeling suddenly how much more they had in common than the mere meeting place of years. Would the bond be knit closer and closer with the speeding of their days? Hopefully her hand slipped into his with the thought query, and answeringly his own re- ceived it the answer quite to her satisfaction and demanding no words. Caroline, coming softly up the path a few moments later, looked in upon them unob- served, and stole back as she had done in the old days in Elizabeth Anne's moments of in- spiration. What a changing world it was to be sure! A letter she had brought with her from the post-office slipped absently into her apron pocket. It was addressed to Elizabeth Anne Langdon and bore above a firm name that had set her fingers trembling with impatience at her first glimpse at it. Did it hold in the dignity of its literary wrapping everything or nothing? It mattered not, now, either way. It could wait unimportantly in its place. Far, far above it, the world-old beaten way again was calling, calling. Who, better than she, knew [325] THE GENIUS OF ELIZABETH ANNE the level plains of its mild drudgery, its drear morasses, and long, dark valleys of doubt and pain yes, and the heights, the ecstatic heights, the love heights where cooing voices soothed one's ear, and clinging, helpless arms entwined one's neck. Her hands were folded, but she had for- gotten her prayer, and she lifted her face in- stead and smiled. For in a single revealing flash, her woman's heart had told her that Elizabeth Anne had chosen the better part. THE END [326] UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 131 847 6 i