> THE Tragedy of the Unexpected, AND OTHER STORIES. BY NORA PERRY. BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 15227 Copyright, 1880, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 'ERKOTYPED AND PRINTED H. 0. HOCOHTON AND COMPANY CONTENTS. PAGE THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNEXPECTED .... 1 MRS. STANHOPE'S LAST LODGER .... 34 A FOOLISH GIRL 82 OUR ICE MAN 119 IN THE BED ROOM 160 "Mr NANNIE O" 202 IN A STREET CAR 232 MRS. F.'s WAITING-MAID 254 THE RIBBON OP HONOR 279 THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNEXPECTED. jj IM, old man, what 's up ? " " I don't know 's anything is up," was the rather surly response to this ques- tion. " Oh yes, there is, there 's been something to pay with you for the last three days, and you might as well out with it, for I tell you what, I can't stand this sort of thing any longer if you and I are to be joint occupants of this parlor." " What sort of thing, I should like to know ? " was the still more surly response to this appeal, ac- companied by a sudden movement of the square shoulders and an upward fling of the bent head which brought into the light a face with a look of haughty questioning upon it. The other only laughed a little as he met this look ; he did n't seem at all impressed by it ; laughed, and presently went on : " No, I can't stand it, Jim. That 's a fact. You Ve 1 2 The Tragedy of the Unexpected. done nothing but sit with your boot-heels jammed into that grate, and your eyes fixed upon both of those interesting objects to the exclusion of every- thing else, for the last three days. And I 'm blessed if in that time you 've given me a civil answer. And now I want to know what 's up." " I 'm very sorry if I r ve disturbed you, Hamlyn, but I think a man might be allowed the liberty of being silent when he 's not in the mood for conver- sation, without being brought to book in this way." Ned Hamlyn came round and laid his arm across the back of the chair in which his companion sat. " Jim, you 're a trump of a good fellow at heart, but you 've got a beastly temper though, have n't you ? " The good-natured insinuating affectionateness of this was indescribable. It had a peculiar effect upon Jim Marlowe, for he suddenly dropped his head against the chair back, and lifting his eyes to the face above him, exclaimed with abrupt vehe- mence, " Good Heavens ! how like you are to her, some- times." " Yes, I know, you 've told me so before, Jim. And so the trouble's there, is it with Miss Alice? I thought so." " Yes, Alice and I have parted, Ned. That 's what 's up." The Tragedy of the Unexpected. 3 " Quarreled, eh ? Well, what 's that ! make it up again," advised the other, cheerfully. u Easier said than done, when a woman tells you that she never wants to see you again." " Whew ! Well, that is rather strong, but see here, Marlowe, what had you been saying to her ? " Marlowe got up and stamped about the room. " Oh, I don't know, I don't know, Hamlyn. I don't suppose I was very amiable." " I don't suppose so, either," remarked Hamlyn, half laughing. " It all began about that little Colt Tom Colt. We were up at my Aunt Ann's, Alice and I, arid the Colts were there, the whole lot of 'em, beg- garly set. Colt Tom wanted to marry Alice, you know, and he 's forever hanging round her whenever he gets a chance ; and Alice, I think, takes a very mistaken way with him. She says she 's sorry for him, and, well, really, she 's so con- foundedly pleasant to the little cub that he 's got to be altogether too presumptuous, in my opinion. When I spoke about this to her the other night she disagreed with me, of course ; and when we came to argue the matter she would n't listen to reason, in fact, it was no argument whatever, and before I was in the least prepared for it I got my conge. That 's the whole of the matter." " Jim, somehow or other you've blundered aw- fully, for Miss Alice was very fond of you." 4 The Tragedy of the Unexpected. " I suppose a man always blunders when he dis- agrees with a woman," was the rather satiric reply. " He blunders in the way he expresses his dis- agreement, generally ; that 's where the trouble is." " I dare say. I dare say I made a fool of my- self, and was unnecessarily abrupt." " Well, this looks promising. Jim, try and re- call one or two of these abrupt remarks of yours. I want to get at the bottom of this thing, and set you right." " I don't know that I can recall the exact lan- guage I used, but I believe I conveyed to her that I thought her love of power and her vanity would seriously undermine her character if she was not careful, and not only destroy her own happiness but that of others." Ned Hamlyn gave a long, low whistle, more elo- quent than any words. Marlowe colored a little as he heard it. " Well, I suppose that means that you think I 've been an arrogant prig, Hamlyn." " Rather, yes." A moment's pause ; then, " Jim, I never saw such a fellow as you are to sit in judgment and pronounce on people. You may be in the right about it here, but to fling such a judgment straight in a woman's face ! I don't much wonder, 1 confess, that Miss Raymond or- dered you off." The Tragedy of the Unexpected. 5 " Ned, what do you mean by saying I may be right in my judgment here ? " " Only, that I don't know Miss Raymond well enough to dispute you." "Alice Raymond is a very noble girl, Hamlyn." " I always supposed so, and you talked to this ' noble girl ' as if she were a school - girl, who needed your superior wisdom to reform her wan- dering steps, and set her in the right path." " Hang it, Ned, don't make me out quite such a prig. I was hurt and sore, and I hated to see her demean herself by being friendly with that little whipper-snapper." " Jim, you 're a great deal cleverer than I am, lots of intellect and ' ability ' and all that, but I know one thing, I should never have presumed to be so ' cock sure,' as that fellow in ' Friends in Council ' says, that my judgment was so infallible when I was in a special state of irritation. I think I should have had a dim suspicion that my own shortcomings might weigh perhaps in the balance, and find me wanting in the power to measure an- other person." t." 44 But, Adelaide, you were so distant from the first." 44 1 never liked that kind of girl," pursues Ade- laide, without taking any heed of Mrs. Carney's suggestion. And Mrs. Carney, as she turns a\vav. says to herself, " Um, I don't know after all but A Foolish Girl. 101 Jack may be right." But not to Jack does she con- fide this sudden going over to his opinion. She keeps it bravely to herself, though that is the dull- est work always for Mrs. Carney, who has the keenest relish for " talking things over." She can- not, however, bring herself to face Jack's laugh, and the " I told you so " expression which she knows would dawn in his eyes at her confession. She consoles herself, however, for her silence by the observation which she takes from her new stand-point. And what does she see? She sees Adelaide a little apart, self -withdrawn and silent. She sees George more active than usual in all ex- ternal ways. He talks a good deal with Miss May- nard and very little with Adelaide, which is quite unlike the old way of things ; but this may be the result of circumstances. Adelaide* certainly is not very approachable. Several times George has made little overtures which have been met with anything but encouragement. And there was Miss Maynard smiling and friendly, and with all that background of the Hong Kong life, so fresh in both their minds, the discussion of which was a matter of entertainment to everybody but Adelaide There was the invalidism of Miss Maynard, too, which would call out a hundred and one atten- tions. But underneath all this there was some- thing else, some under-current which watchful Mrs. 102 A Foolish Carney began to feel. George had recovered from his embarrassment ; he no longer acted " queerly." But what was it, what link in the past, in those Hong Kong days, made a present atmosphere of unacknowledged intimacy ? Adelaide, sitting wrapped in her waterproof and her silence, feels this atmosphere very sensibly, feels it and rebels against it, all the while she is saying to herself per- haps, " George is n't my friend ; it 's nothing to me what he does." But George makes one more venture of friend- ship. It is just as the journey comes to an end, and they are all about to separate. He leaves Miss Maynard to her father then, and resolutely attaches himself to Adelaide, attending her with his usual unobtrusive courtesy, until he seats her in the car- riage. " You '11 come and see us soon," says good-nat- ured Mrs. Carney, leaning out of the window as the carriage drives away. And just as George is lifting his hat to them, another carriage whirls by, and Miss Maynard's voice cries out, shrill and gay : " At the Fifth Avenue ! remember, Mr. King." "Hong Kong must be a good school for famili- arity of manners, I should say," Adelaide remarks snappishly, drawing down her veil. Mrs. Carney bethinks herself of Adelaide's old free-and-easiness in ordering George about, and A Foolish Girl. 103 says nothing ; and Adelaide, fatuous young woman, congratulates herself as she goes up to her room that night that she has turned her back upon her bete noire that forward Miss Maynard. But, alas for these self-congratulations ! Before a month has transpired, Miss Maynard is a frequent visitor at Mrs. Carney's, Mrs. Carney having taken one of her great fancies for that young lady. So the old shipboard society meets again without a break, but with a variety which makes a great difference to Adelaide, for of this variety there is one man of whom we have heard before the Major Roberts of Mrs. Carney's detestation. This gentleman has the kind of good looks that men's men, like Jack Carney, call " showy," and women, especially quite young women, speak of as " so fascinating ! " and " a Guy Livingston sort of man, you know." It is needless to dilate upon this gentleman's popular- ity in feminine circles. We all of us know how fascinating to the ordinary feminine fancy is the Guy Livingston type of man, or a faint resem- blance to that type. Adelaide, it would appear from Mrs. Carney's hints, has long ago succumbed to this fascination, and it would appear also, from the nature of these hints, that she may have been in some sort a victim one of those upon whom the king smiled but to ride away ; and this is not far from the fact. Two or three years ago Ade- 104 A Foolish Girl. laide had met Major Roberts, and been the recip- ient of his attentions until he had been ordered away on a foreign cruise. Perhaps before he suih-d the girl had discovered that she was only one of Major Roberts's " friends." But this discovery seemed to cast no discredit upon Major Roberts in her estimation ; to take nothing from the glamour with which he was invested. He had never com- mitted himself. He had only looked now and then unfathomable things from his handsome dark eyes ; had, in fact, just evaded decided responsible love- making, and thus cleverly contrived to leave him- self entirely free from responsible intentions, with- out losing the admiration of the girl he so success- fully " left behind him." If you had told Adelaide that she was in love with Major Roberts, she would have scouted the accusation indignantly, but she would color and her heart would beat in answering you. The truth of the matter was, no doubt, that she was in love with love, and Major Roberts, with his handsome figure, his fine eyes, and great splendid dark beard, seemed to represent her ideal, to em- body her fancy ; and now here he was back again from his two years' cruise, with a bronze tinge to his brilliant complexion, which enhanced his Guy Livingston style wonderfully ; here he was back, " and at his old tricks again," said indignant Mrs. Carney, as she noted his decoue attentions to Ade- A Foolish Girl. 105 laide " attentions which mean nothing, just noth- ing at all ! " the little woman indignantly explained to her husband. What was her astonishment when her husband responded : " But I am not so sure of that, Kitty. When Roberts was hanging round two years ago he hadn't a dollar besides his pay, and now, my dear Mrs. Carney, Mr. Lothario has rather a nice fort- une which his father left him last year." " You don't say so ! " exclaims Mrs. Carney ; and then she goes on, " but how will that alter matters with such a selfish fellow ? " " Well, the selfish fellow can afford to please himself, Mrs. Carney." Mrs. Carney was silent in meditation. If this was true, here was the very opportunity that Ade- laide had always desired the rich man whom she could love. But if it ivas true, what of Jack's lit- tle theory ? and with a small spice of triumph she puts this question to Jack himself. But Jack only laughs and quotes, " There 's many a slip ; " and so the conversation ends. But not so do Mrs. Carney's speculations and observations end. Keep- ing a sharp lookout, after her sociable fashion, she sees that " there is something in " Jack's idea, for she sees that Major Roberta's attentions to Ade- 106 A Foolish laide at this time have a certain quality of ear- nestness that they have never had before. All this time there is George King coming and going, and Miss Maynard also a constant visitor. To Mrs. Carney, who had planned her own little programme, this was a game of cross purposes ; yet even now she could not make Adelaide out. The girl did not seem to be conscious of a change in Major Roberts. Her manner to him was as it had been almost from the first of this second meeting a queer union of gay excitement and irritability. Mrs. Carney, al- ways a match-maker, wonders at this crisis if she had n't better have a little talk with Adelaide and enlighten her, perhaps ; " for the girl, I believe, thinks he is fooling with her in the old fashion," she says to Jack. But Jack Carney replies, like the man of sense he is : "You just let things work their own way, little woman." It would seem that others besides Jack Carney have noted and commented upon Major Roberts's earnestness in his present pursuit ; for one day an old admirer of Adelaide's, meeting Mr. Carney, says : " So Roberts is going to range himself, eh, as our French friends would express it ? going to marry the little Payne girl ? Nice girl and a very nice thing for her ; don't you think so ? " "Well, I don't know I dare say it's a nice thing for Roberts." A Foolish Girl. 107 "Oh, you don't like Roberts, eh?" " Yes, I like Roberts well enough, but I don't think this ranging of his, as you call it, is a partic- ularly nice thing for the little Payne girl.' ' The young man laughs and goes away to tell his friends that Jack Carney does n't think much of Roberts. About the time that this conversation is taking place Major Roberts is leaving the Carney mansion after rather a prolonged interview with Miss Payne. Mrs. Carney is on the qui vive up stairs ; for did n't Major Roberts, on entering the library and finding her in possession, say to her with a significant smile that he should like to see Miss Payne alone and uninterrupted for a few mo- ments, thus plainly indicating his errand and his own confidence in the result ? But Adelaide does not immediately leave the library after Major Rob- erts's exit. Minute after minute goes by, until the little clock on the shelf has struck the half hour twice. Mrs. Carney can stand it no longer. Perhaps Ada is shy ; perhaps she is afraid that Mr. Carney is up stairs ; and so, fraudulently for- tifying herself, Mrs. Carney goes down to the li- brary. " Well, Ada," she says gayly, " why did n't you come up and tell me the good news? I've been waiting a whole hour for you ! " Ada turns her face from the window. What a curious look there 108 A Foolish G-h-L is upon it, and what a curious tone in her voice as she says : ** I had nothing to tell, Mrs. Carney." " Nothing to tell ! " and Mrs. Carney in a few unguarded sentences, in her usual reckless fashion, lets out her own little interview with Major Rob- erts and its significance to her. Then Adelaide finds her tongue, and a red flush comes into her pale cheek at the same time. " If Major Roberts advertises his confidence like this, then I am certainly justified in saying that Major Roberts made a mistake, and that I was not to be had. as he thought, for his asking." " What ! you don't mean to say, Adelaide, that you have rejected Major Roberts ? " " And why not, pray ? Better men than Major Roberts have been rejected ! " " But I thought I supposed " " Yes, I know you thought, and everybody, Ma- jor Roberts included, thought that I should only be too happy to pick up the Sultan's handkerchief whenever he pleased to throw it ; but you 're all mistaken." " But, Adelaide, after our conversation " " I never said I liked Major Roberts, never ! " interrupted Adelaide, passion vibrating in her tones. " I 'm not alluding to Major Roberts, particu- larly, now ; I was thinking of our conversations A Foolish Girl. 109 about money. Major Roberts, you know, has come into a fortune lately." " Yes, I know, but I never meant that I could marry a man without loving him, and I don't love Major Roberts I don't like him, even, now. I did think once, two or three years ago well, I did think that I was that he was a sort of hero. But since I 've seen him this time I 've found out my mistake. Oh, Mrs. Carney, I've been such a fool ! Girls are such fools ! To think I should have admired him. He is so vain, so artificial ! not a man's man at all. as I thought him." '" Well, I 'm glad you 've found him out, Ada. I never could understand how you girls could be so deceived by that grand manner. But I must say I think you 've been playing rather fast and loose, Ada, for you've certainly encouraged Major Rob- erts until everybody thought there 'd be but one end to the matter." " I have n't encouraged him, Mrs. Carney ; I never thought he meant anything serious until to- day." " What in the world could you be thinking of, then ? Everybody else had seen how in earnest he was." " Have they ? well, much good may it do them," Adelaide replies irritably. Mrs. Carney is certainly an amiable woman. 110 A Foolish Girl. She looks a moment at Adelaide, as if turning over something in her mind, and then, instead of keep- ing up the irritating subject, says kindly : 44 Come out for a drive with me, Ada ; it will do you good." Jt is a lovely day, the air full of warmth and brightness, and not a cloud to be seen in the April sky. So sweet is the influence of all this warmth and brightness, this tender atmosphere, that Ade- laide's vexed spirit yields to it involuntarily, and something of a girl's hope and lightness comes into her heart and shines out upon her face at last. " It really has done you good, Ada. I have n't seen you looking like- this for a long time," says Mrs. Carney, pleasantly exultant over the effect of her prescription. They are just returning to the city as Mrs. Carney says this, and Adelaide is on the point of responding, of confessing how much good she has gained, when a shrill, clear voice cries out : " Oh, Mrs. Carney, Miss Payne, how do you do ? Won't you come in ? " Adelaide turns her head in the direction from whence the voice proceeds, and sees Mi>> Maynard leaning over the gate, which shuts in a pretty green lawn, and at her side stands George King. The coachman is ordered to pull up for a moment just long enough for Mrs. Carney to ask about the A Foolish Girl 111 new house, and if Mr. Maynard likes to be so far out if they have got settled yet, etc. ; and then Miss Maynard, as they move off, says in a quick, happy way : " I am coming to see you very soon, Mrs. Car- ney, to see you and to bring you a piece of news ; " and as she speaks she moves her hand to her face. Perhaps it is to hide the rising blush in her cheeks, but at the moment there shines and sparkles out to them a ray of light and fire from a solitaire diamond. "A great, impudent diamond, Jack," is Mrs. Carney's curious description, as she tells her story of the day to her husband that evening. " And she looked so detestably happy, Jack, I could n't bear her ! ' Jack laughs, as he always does, at Mrs. Carney's queer little turns, and puts her in a cor- ner by saying : " Thought you were a great friend of Mary May- nard' s, Kitty ? " " I like Mary Maynard very well, but I always had a feeling that she had laid herself out to catch George, and I hate that kind of girl," is Mrs. Car- ney's contradictory reply. u I see you had made a new plan to marry George and Adelaide, the moment you found out she 'd given Roberts the go-by ; arid Mary May- nard has upset this plan; and you know, Kate, 112 A Foolish Girl. nothing ever vexes you like the upsetting of any of your little beneficent plans for other people's felicity." -Well, Jack, there 's one thing: if your little theory " What more Mrs. Carney would have said will never be known, for at this point a serv- ant interrupts her with the message that Miss May- nard and Mr. King are down stairs. " Did they ask for Miss Payne, Ann ? " " Yes 'm, and I spoke to her as I came along, but she says she 's a headache and will be excused, if you please." " Where is she, Ann ? " " In the school-room, ma'am." The school-room, as it is called, where Adelaide teaches the little Carneys, is at the extreme end of the house. It is a large room, cheerful enough when the sunshine is pouring in at the southwest windows, but looking very dismal as Adelaide sits there by a single low light, and a little chilly fire in a wide grate. But it has the virtue of being out of the way of everybody and everybody's noise, and thus a very fitting place for a person suffering with headache. Yet even at this isolated distance, Ade- laide can catch now and then a faint, far sound of laughter from the drawing-room. In vain .she tries to fix her mind upon Miss Thackeray's pretty story of " Elizabeth," which she has brought up from the A Foolish G-irl. 113 library ; for it seems she does not find her head- ache so severe as to exclude her from reading, or at least an attempt at it. But it is merely an at- tempt, not on account of the headache, but on ac- count of her wandering thoughts. The Caroline Gilmore of Miss Thackeray's story turns into Miss Maynard as she reads Miss Maynard, who has taken her friend away. John Dampier gets mixed up with George King and Major Roberts, and Elly, poor Elly, for she is in the midst of Elly's troubles, poor Elly suggests her own forlornness ; only Elly's case is nothing so bad as hers, as the saddest of written stories seem tame to our own stories when we are living them. By and by, over the laughter, there comes a sound of music ; there are the gay notes of the piano, and somebody is singing. It is Miss Maynard's far-reaching soprano, which her admirers have likened to Parepa's dulcet tones. But Adelaide shivers as she listens. She has never liked Miss Maynard, and she hears no sweetness in her voice. She makes another at- tempt to follow the story of " Elizabeth " instead of her own. She turns the page and begins to read of Elly's good friend, Miss Dampier, and straightway her thought flies back to herself as she thinks of Miss Dampier's sympathy and her own desolation. If only she had such a wise friend ! Mrs. Carney is kind, but riot like that sweet, 114 A Foolish Girl. motherly Miss Dampier, to whom poor Elly could confess everything all her foolishness and sor- row. Just at this point in her comparison a door opens somewhere in the upper hall, and the words of Hatton's pretty ballad, " Good-by, sweetheart," comes up to her full and clear, in Miss Maynard's clear voice. The next instant the song is shut out again, but somebody is coming down the long corridor leading to the school-room. It is very unkind of Mrs. Carney to send for her, Adelaide thinks, as the footsteps draw nearer, and some one knocks for admission. But that is not a servant who enters at her " Come in." She looks up quickly, and sees George King. A little flush of angry surprise rises into Adelaide's face, which deepens as George speaks : "Mrs. Carney sends me up to tell you Miss Maynard's news, Miss Ada." Adelaide can find no words to reply, and George goes on. He is telling her rather a long story, she thinks, about Miss Maynard, and Hong Kong, and a young German, whom Mr. Maynard did n't like. It is all very queer and confusing to Adelaide she can't follow half of it, until at the end George says, with a laugh : " But it is all right now. Von Raden has been promoted for his gallant conduct in the war, and Mr. Maynard can hold out no longer." A Foolish Girl. 115 "Yon Raden ? what has he to do with Miss Maynard ? " asks Adelaide, bewildered. George laughs outright. " Well, I always knew I was a bad hand at tell- ing a story. Von Kaden, Miss Ada, is the lover of the piece." " And you, George ? " " And I, Miss Ada, am the faithful friend of all parties of Von Raden especially, who is an ex- ceedingly good fellow, in spite of Mr. Maynard's prejudices against a foreigner. He will be here in the next steamer. Miss Ada, and then you will have a chance of seeing a very handsome young officer of the Prussian army." " George, was it this secret about the Prussian officer which made you and Miss Maynard blush and look so queerly when you met on board the Calabria ? " George blushes again at this question ; but he laughs at the same time, while he answers : " No, it was n't the secret about the Prussian officer ; it was because Mr. Maynard had taken it into his head that I was a safer man than the Prus- sian." " He wanted you to marry his daughter ! " " He did n't want her to marry the Prussian, Miss Ada," George replies modestly. " And it was n't until Miss Maynard gave me her entire 116 A Foolish Girl confidence about the Prussian which she did on the Calabria that we were either of us quite free from embarrassment when we met, for we had both been made aware of Mr. Maynard's little plans in regard to us." "And I thought it was you who were Miss Maynard's lover all this time, and I hated her, George ! " cried Adelaide, with sudden, reckless impulse. George is leaning against the mantel, but at this he starts forward and looks eagerly into Adelaide's face. " Thought it was I, Miss Ada ? " " And I hated her, George ! " Adelaide repeats irrelevantly. Down goes George on one knee beside the little low chair that he may get a better view of the oc- cupant. " Adelaide, do you mean," he begins ; and Adelaide, with a great bright flush coloring her cheeks, answers honestly : " Yes, George, I mean that I hated Mary May- nard for for your sake. I mean that I 've been a fool, George, all these years. I mean that I was so used to having you for my friend that I did n't know, until I thought that Mary Maynard was tak- ing my friend away, that " But Adelaide's ve- hement confession has spent itself, and the rest of the sentence is inarticulate upon George's coat A Foolish Girl. 117 collar, and with George's arm about her ; and George is quite content to ask no further questions at that moment, for he has got his heart's desire. *' So you were right in your little theory, after all, Jack." Jack gives rather a sleepy yawn ; and no wonder, for Mrs. Carney, just returned from a midnight interview with Adelaide, has awakened him from his first sleep to tell him her great news. " My little theory ? " he mutters sleepily. " Oh, that Adelaide is in love with King. I thought that was settled some time ago. I thought it was King you was n't sure of I thought " " Jack, you 're talking in your sleep. Did n't you hear me tell you that it 's all settled between Ada and George ? " " Is it ? Well, I am very glad something is settled for that foolish girl you and King are so fond of ; " and with these words Jack Carney turns his face to the wall and goes back to the dreams that Mrs. Carney has so ruthlessly inter- rupted. In the days that follow, while there is much re- joicing in the house of Carney over this foolish girl, the dear, discerning world, with its usual sa- gacity, hits the nail on the head in this wise : So Adelaide Payne is going to marry a poor 118 A Foolish Girl. man, after all. Such grasping ambition as hers aU ways ends in this way. She tried to catch Major Roberts, you know, and did n't succeed, poor thing ! so now she takes up with that red-headed George King. OUK ICE MAN. |E are sitting on the piazza of the Dit- worths' " cottage " at Newport. It is the summer of 1873, or rather the begin- ning of autumn, for it is just turned September. We are six in number: Mrs. Dit worth, her son Tenicke, Colonel Chadwick, my mother, and her two daughters, Rachel and Letitia. It is in the morning, just after breakfast, and we are sitting dawdling, digesting our breakfast and yesterday's news dribbled out to us by the Colonel and Ten- icke ; for, as is the custom in households with mas- culine members, the men of the party have at once appropriated the newspapers. I am listening vaguely to Tenicke's voice running along in a jerky account of some races somewhere, in which I have n't the faintest interest, and catch- ing Colonel Chadwick's exclamations of " By Jove ! " and " What a set of fools now ! " and " I knew the mare would win ! " and I am thinking vaguely 120 Our Ice Man. that it must be nearly time to drive to the beach, when Letitia breaks in, saying in one of her rap- turous tones, '* What a handsome fellow ! " Letitia is always breaking into little fervors of feeling or imitations of feeling over somebody, always pick- ing out charms unseen by other eyes ; so I am not interested or moved by this exclamation. But the gentlemen of our party are not so stolid as I am. Letitia is n't their sister, and what she thinks of one of their sex is by no means an uninteresting matter to them. Tenicke stops his jerky reading and throws up his chin in that near-sighted way of his, and Colonel Chadwick wheels entirely about to follow the direction of Letitia's dark eyes ; but both he and Tenicke fail to perceive the object of Letty's admiration. I laugh silently behind my fan, for I know the bent of my sister's mind. I know that she makes great pretensions toward being democratic in her tastes, and that she de- lights to astonish her fine friends by breaking out into what she calls honest admiration for a coal- heaver or some grimy giant of that ilk ; and so, while Tenicke and Colonel Chadwick are entirely adrift and perceive no earthly object whereupon to waste that enthusiastic exclamation, I am perfectly aware that the great hulking fellow who has just disappeared up the carriage drive at our right in short, our ice man is the object of Miss Letty's Our Ice Man. 121 present approval. " Blest if I can see anybody," says Tenicke after a moment. " Must have been a hero of your dreams," says the Colonel, laughing feebly. " Hush, here he comes again ; " and Miss Letty nods her beautifully gotten-up head to the right. " Oh, that fellah ! " and Tenicke looks relieved. " Yes, very good-looking, put together well. Looks as if he 'd pull a good oar if he knew how." Chadwick yawns and says nothing. This " fel- lah " is out of the pale of his masculine jealousy, for Colonel Chadwick is put together well, and knows how to pull a good oar, and is something else besides a great deal else, he thinks. So it happens that Letty's little remark falls flat and the races start up again. But we are not to be rid of Letty's ice man quite so easily. Presently there he is again, arid, as if our talk had mesme- rized him, his face is turned fully toward us with a look of curiosity in his gaze, which Letty at once translates into a look of admiration for herself. Then a sudden second thought assails her, and with that innocent air of hers, as if she had entirely for- gotten her first exclamation of admiration, she says : " How like he is to you, Mr. Ditworth how very like ! " Then immediately she recollects, and calls up with that surprising will-power, one of those small blushes, and a pretty little air of confusion. 122 Our Ice Man. Tenicke smiles broadly, not displeased, and says, " Thanks, Miss Letty." Whereat I laugh, a dis- cordant, disagreeable laugh, I am perfectly well aware, for nothing sets my teeth on edge like these little minauderies of Letty's, and Tenicke's pleased acceptance of them. Letty flings herself at his head, as she flings herself at every man's head ; and he likes it, as they all like it. At my laugh he turns quickly and flushes. Then with a half smile, ' You don't agree with your sister, Miss Rachel ? " "I what about, Mr. Ditworth ? " I make an- swer with malicious assumed oblivion. He knows it is assumed, and he flushes still deeper. " Now, Ray, that is so like you to pretend not to know of what we were speaking, to pretend that you did n't see the most striking resemblance between Mr. Ditworth and the the ice man who just passed," says my sister. I do not reply to the first part of this speech, but I stoutly maintain that I saw no possible resem- blance to Mr. Ditworth in the handsome fellow of Letty's sudden admiration. But all the time I am going flatly against the truth ; for even before Letty had spoken I had been struck with the cu- riously close resemblance, not merely of form but of feature, and something too of expression. But to feed Tenicke's vanity, to let him think for a moment that I was following in Letty's shameless Our Ice Man. 123 wake ! Never. I would perjure myself fifty times over before I would hazard the slightest suspicion of that. In the mean time Colonel Chadwick is saying, " Not such a bad-looking fellow really, but what a dog's life to lead." " A happy dog, I dare say," returns Tenicke. The Colonel shrugs his shoulders and quotes " If ignorance is bliss. " " I don't see why you need take it for granted that only the idlers have any use for brains," I say satirically. " On the contrary, as far as my knowl- edge of history goes, the great men, the brainy people, always come up from the workers." Then I quote freely, as far as my memory will allow me, the great names that have shone on the world unaided by birth and fortune. Tenicke smiles again, one of those easy exasperating smiles of his, and sitting back lazily in his chair he says : " I take nothing for granted, Miss Rachel, and I dare say this son of the soil, to put it sentimentally, may be carrying a volume of Homer in his pocket while he carries his icy burdens ; or perhaps he may be studying some of the sciences in his leisure moments, for I suppose he does have leisure mo- ments. Perhaps he is a great geologist or a second Tyndall in embryo ; and, regarding those blocks of ice, he may be studying new forms of water." I am in an inward flame, but outwardly I am as 124 Our Ice Man. icy as the subject under discussion, and I manage to hum in an absent way a bar of a Strauss waltz to show Mr. Ditworth that his impertinent familiar- ity in chaffing me is unheeded. It is just here Letty says sweetly, " Oh no, not Homer, Mr. Ditworth, but vei~y likely one of Bret Harte's books." Mr. Ditworth rouses himself. " Miss Letty, don't you know that it is an established fact that Bret Harte is only appreciated by the people of culture or with the cultivated instincts, never by the class he writes about, unless it may be the John Oakhursts?" " But this is a possible Tyndall, you admit, Mr. Ditworth, and consequently he may have the in- stincts of culture and be able to appreciate your Bret Harte," I suddenly say, forgetting for the moment my role of indifference and abstraction. " Oh yes ; I will concede to the possible Tyn- dall, Miss Rachel, with a low laugh and a quick glance shot at me. And here again down the car- riage drive he passes, this possible Tyndall, this bone of our contention. As I catch a full view of his face and see the straight brows, the square chin, and above all the level look of the eyes that seem to look into mine, I have a sudden odd sensation that something queer is going to happen, not then and there, but somewhere and some-when, not far distant. Our Ice Man. 125 Tenicke, who had also been observing the man, suddenly drops into seriousness. " I dare say that fellow enjoys himself better than I do. He gets good wages, lives simply and heartily no chance of his being bored, no chance of his making any great mistakes, no great risks possible to him. I 'm not sure but I 'd change places with him if I could." " Oh, now, Mr. Ditworth, you know you would n't ! " bursts forth Letty. " Well, no, I don't suppose I would ; but I stick to it a man might do worse. I 'm not sure but Miss Rachel thinks we are all doing worse, such fellows as Chadwick and I, dawdling round here." " I think nothing of the kind, for I have no thought upon the matter," I reply lazily. " It is eleven o'clock, and if we are going to the beach it is high time," remarks Mrs. Ditworth, rousing from a close conference with my mother upon the iniquities of servants and other domestic topics. I have no idea that either of them has heard a word of the conversation just narrated ; but I am no sooner in my room than my mother's very sweet voice says, at my elbow : " Rachel, I can't think why you are so rude to Mr. Ditworth." " Rude ? I did not mean to be rude, mother ; and I 'm sure if you could see Mr. Ditworth as I 126 Our Ice Man. do, if you could understand all his superciliousness, his idle affectations " " Rachel, you are usually clear-sighted, but I think you are strangely blinded in regard to Mr. Ditworth. I have watched him very closely, but I see nothing, nothing at all of what you say : on the contrary, he seems to me to be very tolerant and kind to you, Rachel, who are anything but kind to him." " Well, I 'm sure he does n't suffer for kindness. Letty fully makes up to him for anybody's cruelty," I retort rather flippantly, glad to find firm standing ground. But my mother does n't seem to think it firm standing ground. " Letty is polite to every one," she says, with a slight frown. I am exasperated, and unwisely, undutifully, per- haps, burst out, " Mother, you must see that Letty flings herself at his head." " Rachel, how can you use such slang ? How can you accuse your sister of such things ? " " Because it is true," I say doggedly, " and Let- ty in her heart knows that it is true, and Tenicke knows that it is true ; and it makes me hate him, the cool, easy way in which he takes it and likes it." " Rachel " there is a note in my mother's voice that brings me up sharply " Rachel, if this Our Ice Man. 127 is all true, I don't see why you have such special feeling about it. Letty, it may be, is unduly fond of admiration, and strives to please ; but it is her way with every one, and I never saw you so bit- ter about it before, Rachel." I am in a flame, and I answer hotly, "I hate to see her make such a fool of Tenicke Ditworth that 's all. He 's vain and idle and blase enough, heaven knows, but he was Jack's friend, and I hate to see him made such a fool of." " Letty is n't making such a fool, as you call it, of Mr. Ditworth. I think he understands her bet- ter than you do, Rachel ; and if he likes one of my daughters I am sure I shall not quarrel with him for it. But there is the carriage ; don't keep them waiting, my dear." I turn to the window. My cheeks, which were flaming a moment ago, feel stone cold. All my hot anger has gone out and left me. I hear my mother's steps going slowly down the stairs. I hear her saying presently, " Rachel will be here in a moment." But I am hearing at the same time her significant words, " If he likes one of my daughters I am sure I shall not quarrel with him." Am I quarreling with him because he likes Letty ? This is what my mother thinks. I forget for a few seconds the carriage that is wait- ing, forget everything in recalling all my mother's 128 Our Ice Man. words, all my mother's meaning ; and as I recall, every one of them pierces me like so many arrows ; and how cheap and mean and pitiful all my life seems, and how the color and brightness goes out of everything ; it is then I suddenly hear, " What in the world keeps Rachel so long ? " in L/etty's clear tones. I arouse myself, and looking down I see Tenicke sitting in the high beach wagon, and I meet his eyes, and know that he has been silently observant of me all this while. I turn swiftly and run down the stairs, and in another moment am seated beside Colonel Chadwick on the back seat, and we are whirling along the ave- nue. " What did keep you so long, Ray ? " asks Letty. She is in the front with Tenicke, looking round at me curiously and noting my pale cheeks and my lacklustre eyes. " I could n't find my hat," I lie boldly and briefly ; and then all at once Tenicke asks Letty a question, and she forgets my existence. We drive on through the long English-looking lanes, sweet with fresh- mown lawns and the standing clover in the upland fields, and cool with the coolness that the close un- seen sea brings. I hear as we go the chirr of the grasshopper, the whistling, calling, cooing notes of the robins, and the swiff, swiff of the lawn mowers, all blended together in a sweet summer sound, which Our Ice Man. 129 will not shut out the sound of my mother's words, and Letty's careless chatter and light, happy, con- scious laugh. The tide is very high that day, for there has been a storm, and Letty, who has always a horror of the sea, hears some one say that the undertow is dangerous, and straightway falls into a little panic of terror. " I cannot go in to-day. I know I should bring on one of my palpitations," she says in answer to Colonel Chadwick's remark that there is no possible danger. Tenicke does not urge her ; on the contrary, he says with a queer shyness, '" Don't urge her, Chad- wick. Let her do as she chooses." Then to Letty, with a little eager hesitation new to him, and as if he were speaking to a child, " I would n't have you go in, Letty, if you feel like that : I 'm sure it would harm you." A flattered look in Letty's eyes, a soft pink blush, a real honest blush, on her peachy cheek, at this ; and I turn away with my mother's words ringing through my brain. When I emerge from the bath- house I see only Teuicke at my door. Colonel Chadwick is chatting in the beach wagon with Letty. *' I 'm afraid of the undertow," he says, throwing a laughing look at us, a look that seems to embar- 130 Our Ice Man. rass Tenicke, but which only calls out another fine little blush on Letty's cheek. All is fish that comes to Letty's net, and she never ceases to feel trium- phant at any indications of a nibble. So it happens that I go in alone that day with Tenicke Ditworth. I can see everything as I saw it then. The brilliance of the sky, the wonderful clear atmosphere that showed far off to us an ocean steamer on the blue horizon line, and the great vexed waves that still remembered yesterday's rage and wrath. The water, with all the warm sun, is chilly, and I shiver as it breaks over me. " You are cold," says Tenicke. " Perhaps you had better not stay." " It will be over in a moment, this first little chill," I return. As we breast the great waves and beat back the strong tide my words are veri- fied. The chill goes, and the keen sense of exhil- aration comes back to me. But the undertow that Letty was afraid of is a reality of which we have need to be careful, if we do not fear it. I turn for an instant to look at the steamer far out at sea, and the next instant have lost control of myself. It is then that Tenicke flings his arm about me and says, " Give me your other hand." His tone is impera- tive, but I do not quarrel with it. The need I very well know is imperative ; and if it were less, if it were not at all, I did not care then. I had forgot- Our Ice Man. 131 ten my mother's words ; I had forgotten his parting glance at Letty, his solicitous words to her, and what all these had meant to me. I forgot every- thing but just the moment a wild, blind, intox- icating moment, in which I was alone out of the whole world with Jack's friend Jack's friend : not the idle, blase, supercilious gentleman I had sneered at for three weeks and more, had flung all my small shot of sarcasm at with a fierceness that had aroused my astute mother's suspicion and cov- ered me with shame an hour before Jack's friend; only Jack's friend, I lied to myself even then : even then, with his arm about me, with my heart beating wildly against his even then and after as we floated out together, my hand still unrelinquished, and myself caught now and again in that swift em- brace as the tide beat upward in its reverse current, threatening overthrow and danger ! Oh, how the beautiful day shone fairer than any day since Jack had died out of my days ! How the rain-washed heaven smiled with new cheer, and the sun warmed me through and through with its friendly beams ! As we go out, just up from the surf line we meet the beach wagon, and there is Letty smiling at us, or at Tenicke. who does not see her. " Were n't you frozen ? " she asks. " At first, yes," I answer lightly. " But you feel no chill now ? " asks Tenicke, looking toward me. 132 Our Ice Man. I know my eyes are shining, my cheeks aglow. " The sun was so warm," I answer irrelevantly. For a second Tenicke regards me steadily, fixedly. Then I escape from all their glances as I turn and labor up the waste of sand in my water-logged gar- ments. When I emerge from the bath-house, no longer a dripping mermaid, but clothed on with the nineteenth century righteousness of fine raiment, I perceive that there hns been a change in the ar- rangement of the morning. Tenicke is waiting to take his place beside me on the back seat, while Colonel Chadwick drives with Letty on the front. For a moment I am glad with the gladness that came upon me a half hour ago ; but what is it is it my own sneering, bitter spirit returned upon me, or is it Letty's minauderies that changes the whole atmosphere, and makes everything seem so cheap and mean and trivial as we turn down the blossomy road that long ago I named my English lane ? Tenicke, who is beside me, is no longer Jack's friend. He is the idle, blase man, with an affected languor in his voice and manner, and a supercilious- ness and condescension which I hate. And as Letty tosses him her arch glances, and pouts her lips for his benefit, he pays her back with a detestable in- terest of lazy smiles and glances which fill me with a kind of shamed wonder. Is this the man, I say Our Ice Man. 133 to myself, at whose touch a half hour ago I flamed and thrilled? As this thought, this question, assails me I flame anew with a scorching misery of mor- tification. Then, all at once, again flash up my mother's words : " If he likes one of my daugh- ters" And he likes my sister Letitia. This is what these glances and smiles signify : in love with my sister Letitia. I look at her fair, smooth, com- placent face, that no love will ever line with an anxious wrinkle, that no care will ever trace its worry upon, and I remember the stinging emphasis of judgment which Jack my Jack passed upon her last year. He was watching her at her fooleries with two or three young men at a party somewhere. 4k I shall despise the man who falls in love with Letty," he suddenly exclaimed to me; and when I said, " But girls must be girls, Jack, and you told me the other night that / liked to flirt altogether too well, sir," he returned, "And so you do, Rachel. You 're a vain little coquette ; but you 're not of Letty's kind. Letty 's so bloodless ; she does n't feel ; she has only sensations, and the greatest of these is vanity." As I look at her practicing her fooleries upon Tenicke, as I turn and look at Tenicke himself, a sense of loss comes over me. Must I despise Jack's friend? And Jack? If he were here now and saw his friend and his sister Letitia, would he keep his 134 Our Ice Man. word ? would he be able to despise this man, whom he had loved with a love passing the love of woman ? That night there was a small party at dinner twelve in all ; and as I sat at the end of the table with Colonel Chadwick, and looked across at Ten- icke, I thought I had never seen him in such a brilliant, careless mood. His dark eyes were shining, his languid manner quite gone and in its place a gayety that was almost boyish. And once or twice I met his eyes between the grapes and the tall epergne of flowers, and was held in spite of my- self by the bright and winsome look. " How handsome Tenicke is," says Colonel Chad- wick, as we dawdle over the dessert. I do not an- swer this, and the Colonel does n't seem to expect an answer ; and he is only following out the train of his own thoughts as he goes on, "And such a lucky fellow as he 's always been born with a gold spoon, you know. I wonder " I lift my eyes at the sudden pause, and then I follow the Colonel's glance, and see Barnet, the waiter, crossing the room with a yellow envelope in his hand a telegram, and for Tenicke. He breaks off in the sentence he is in the middle of, and. with the momentary surprise and expectancy one always feels at a message upon his face, tears open the wrapper. " He has lost money upon one of those Our Ice Man. 135 horses," I instantly think, as I catch the sudden con- traction of his brows and the compression of his lips. But it must be a long message, I think, also, as the seconds fly by, and he keeps that fixed look. I do not know whether any one else marks all this, nor whether the time seems so long to any one else be- fore he lifts his head and resumes his place again, and attempts to resume the old look attempts. I know very well it is only an attempt. Does any- one else know it ? The light stream of talk flows on, we all laugh and banter as we did five minutes ago ; but the real gayety has gone utterly out of Tenicke's face, and I notice that he is doing what is unusual with him, drinking very freely of cham- pagne. " He must have lost heavily. What a shame for men to do such things," I sum up with irrelevant indignation. My indignation deepens as I see the red flush rise to his cheek and the feverish glitter in his eyes, and as I see, too, that his mother is watching him anxiously. At the first possible moment she rises from the table, and as we go trooping into the parlor I find myself beside my host, and we two the last of the company, and thus in a measure alone together. " Rachel ! " I look up at him in amazement. He has never addressed me in this unceremonious manner, but he does not heed my look. " Rachel," he repeats, 136 Our Ice Man. / " what was the name of Jack's friend in Colorado that banking friend of his ? " "I I don't know," I stammer in answer. " Does your mother know ? could she find out ? " " She might." Some one speaks to him here, and he moves away. Presently I see him standing under the chandelier, laughing and talking much as usual ; but I fall to wondering, as I note the deepening flush upon his cheek, if his talk is as odd and in- consequent as his words to me; and as I regard him a swift, subtle, external change seems to have come over him. He looks all at once dissolute and degenerate. While he stands there Barnet comes in with the mail. There are several let- ters and the New York papers. Colonel Chad- wick, as is his custom, possesses himself of the pa- per, and runs his swift glance over the telegraphic column without breaking his frothy talk with pret- ty Mrs. Maverick. But in a moment he turns, for- getting all his fine manners, and reads aloud, in an excited tone, that first announcement of the Jay Cooke failure which so startled the whole world at the time. There is a various outcry from various voices, notes of speculation, wonder, and dismay. Most of the auditors feel the shock evidently, yet as evi- dently it is a recoverable shock. But Tenicke Dit- Our Ice Man. 137 worth ! For a few minutes I had lost sight of him. Now I turn to look at him. In that look I see all at once how I have blundered for the last twenty minutes. There is no perceptible change in his face. He sits idly drumming upon the table near him, but I am perfectly certain that this intelligence is not so new to him as to us ; that not half an hour since he had read the announcement privately conveyed in that telegram over which he had lin- gered so long. And he had read with it his own ruin. I wondered then, I wonder now, that no one seemed to see what I did. Perhaps, however, they were wiser than I thought, and kept their own well-bred, unasking counsel. At any rate the party breaks up much earlier than parties usually break up at the Ditworths'. When the door closes upon the last guest Tenicke returns to the little waiting group in the parlor, arid, with no sign now of excitement, says coolly, " I must catch the early train to-morrow morn- ing en route for New York. This affair is going to tell hardly upon us." He seems to address himself to Colonel Chad- wick, and the colonel answers, " Yes ; I thought so by your silence. I had no idea before that you were involved there, or I should n't have read " " Oh, that did n't matter. I had the news by telegram already." 138 Our Ice Man. My mother here rises, and we girls follow her ex- ample, and as we say good-night I know very well that it is good-by ; but I little think what a long time it will be before I see Jack's friend again. II. "LETTY may go to the Cargills', mother, and I will stay with you. I shall like that much better." " But you need a change, Rachel ; you are not very strong this summer." " I should n't get stronger at the Cargills'. I never cared for the Cargill girls ; they tire me. But Letty gets on with them admirably." My mother sighs and says no more. She is glad to have me with her, I know, but she is so truly unselfish that she will urge my leaving her if she thinks it is for my good. By and by Letty comes in, flushed and a little cross, her hands full of par- cels. I acquaint her with my determination to stay at home instead of accepting the Cargills' in- vitation. " Well, you can do as you like, of course, Ray. but I should think you 'd want to go somewhere, and the Cargills' seems our only chance this sum- mer. If it had n't been for that horrid, hateful fail- ure last year, we might be at the Ditworths' this minute." Our Ice Man. 139 " And we might not" I answer rather snap- pishly. Letty flings up her head. " You might not. I am quite sure 1 should have been there, and very likely I might have invited you to pass the sum- mer with me, Miss Rachel." " Don't be silly, Letty, or at least any sillier than you can help. If Tenicke Ditworth had had such an interest in you as you imply, he would n't have let you remain in such ignorance of him all these months," I break out hotly. " Tenicke Ditworth is a man of sense and some honor, I suppose, and of course he is very well aware that it would be in the very highest degree dishonorable for a man who is entirely without means to ask a girl to become his wife." I hold my peace now. I always get the worst of it with Letty; she is so self-complacent, so en- tirely convinced of her own power, of her own judgment. I hold my peace, but inwardly I am in anything but a peaceful frame of mind. It is eight, ten months ago since I bade Tenicke Dit- worth good-by, and no word from him has come to us since. I know now that Letty never had his heart. I knew it when he said good-by there ; when he held her hand for the moment and did not see her. Equally as well I know too I do not lie to myself any more I know that Tenicke Dit- 140 Our Ice Man. worth is more, immeasurably more, to me, than Jack 's friend. And he ? I look back to that last day when he held me in his arms while the waves dashed over us, when his kind voice questioned of my safety, and later, in that last good-by, the glance that held me for an instant as his arms held me a few hours before. This is all I have very insufficient food for love to feed on ; but I have grown quite shameless in these last ten months. I may be no more to him than Jack's sister, but I love him, love him, love him ! He is to me the one man in all the world ; and if 1 think now and again of the faults I found in him, I think with re- morse and humiliation of the bitter spirit, the de- mon of jealousy, which clouded my vision through all that summer time. And here with the summer again I am as utterly separated from him as if he had gone into that un- discovered country where I lost sight of my dear Jack so little while, and yet so long ago. But yet I am certain he is not dead. I am certain that some day I shall see him again, as I saw him ten months ago ; some day I shall hear his voice and feel the clasp of his hand. But in the mean time, during this waiting summer, I choose my own thoughts for company, instead of Letty and the Cargill girls. And Letty is quite content with my decision. She is not so obtuse but that she feels Our Ice Man. 141 now and then my critical spirit. But one day, as she sits plaiting a ruffle for her throat, it is the day before her departure, she says to me quite suddenly, as if the idea had all at once dawned upon hef, " I think it is very strange, Rachel, that we have never heard from the Ditworths any way, don't you?" u I don't know that I do. When Colonel Chad- wick went to Europe, last autumn, we lost our only link between us and the Ditworths." " But I should have thought that Mrs. Ditworth would have written to mother." " Mrs. Ditworth ? Why should she ? After all, our acquaintance was a very new one. We had only met the summer before at Rye, and her inter- est was through her son Tenicke's interest " I have an inward tremor as I pronounce this name, like Tennyson's " Fatima " " was through Ten- icke's interest in us for Jack's sake." " And so you think it was for Jack's sake en- tirely that we were invited for that month at New- port ? " I resume my book, disdaining to reply to this vain question so vainly asked with all Letty's sim- pering complacence. But presently I hear a new tone in my sister's voice. " Rachel, Rachel, come here ! " She is sitting by the window, and I am lying 142 Our Ice Man. upon the lounge with a book in my hand. I look up incuriously, but still perceptive of her change of tone. " Rachel, isn't this funny? Here is that New- port ice man, who looked so much like Tenicke." I do not wait for another call ; in a second I am on my feet and looking over Letty's shoulder at the stalwart figure just leaving the gate. Letty goes chattering on, but I cannot speak to her. My heart is beating up in my throat, and I am trem- bling and cold to my fingers' ends. The sight of that tall, t-inewy figure, clad in a blue flannel shirt and black trousers, suddenly obliterates all these ten long months, and I am sitting on a wide piazza, listening to the " swiff, swiff" of the lawn mowers and an occasional news item read in a fluent voice at my elbow, or I am " He is n't so like as I thought," says Letty, presently. I look with a last scrutiny as the man mounts the wagon, and I am constrained to admit that Letty is right. I am looking at a man of more muscular build than Tenicke Ditworth, with a face of red bronze entirely wanting in that fine Vandyke outline and brown silk beard of which I used to think that Jack's friend was so vain. But in spite of these differences, all the rest of the day I feel as if I was haunted. I go about the house with Tenicke's low voice in my ears, and with a close Our Ice Man. 143 crowding memory of glance and touch and presence that at last gives me the only dream of him in my sleep that I have had since I parted from him. The next dav Letty goes, and I am alone with my mother and our one small servant ; for, as Let- ty has said, the great panic has not passed us by, and we are by no means as comfortable in our cir- cumstances as last year at this time. Letty goes, and I am left to my dreams undisturbed ; and they don't " dim their fine gold " as the days go on. Vivid and clear they crowd upon me, until I am driven into a kind of desperation of desire that I must make them reality. I think with a shudder that it was just this wild trouble of fancied reality that haunted me when Jack died. Was Tenicke Ditworth dead ? But I knew myself the most unreasonable, the most besotted of mortal women when I asked this question of myself ; for I am perfectly well aware that the daily contemplation of what Letty was pleased to call Tenicke's double is really at the bottom of all these vivid fancies the material upon which my hungry heart and im- patient nature has been building up these airy structures. Day after day I place myself at the window and peer at the red bronze face which is like, yet so unlike Tenicke Ditworth's. And every day I am startled by the strange likeness in unlike- ness. Every day my pulses get some new impetus 144 Our Ice Man. from some new suggestion, some trick of movement or glance. My mother sits reading a letter from Letty one morning. " What is this," she suddenly asks, " about Mr. Ditworth ? ' Does Tenicke's Double still bring you ice ? ' " I hasten to explain Letty's fancied resemblance. I say nothing of my own fancy about it. And presently, as the gate clangs, my mother goes to the window to satisfy herself of this resemblance. After a moment's observation she turns away in- differently with but one remark : " Letty has very odd ideas of likeness." u And you don't think there is any likeness ? " I ask amazed. " To Mr. Ditworth ? Not the slightest ; not more than there would be between any two men of rather exceptionally fine physique and of that dark type. This man is larger, but not so tall as Mr. Ditworth, and with a heavier and coarser build." Is all this resemblance after all half imagination? As I ask myself this question I watch this man of coarser and heavier build mount to the wagon seat and drive off down the street. At that moment certainly I could see with my mother's eyes, and I could find no likeness to Tenicke Ditworth. It is at the latter part of this very day that my mother, regarding me earnestly and a little anxiously a moment, says : Our Ice Man. 145 " Rachel, you are growing thin with this confine- ment to the city. I think I did wrong in not in- sisting upon your going with Letty." " Mother, I could not stand the Cargill girls and Letty in a lump. That would make a skeleton of me in a week," I answer with vehement emphasis. " What unreasoning prejudices you do have, Rachel." " I suppose all prejudices are unreasoning. It isn't a matter of reason, but of instinct and unlike- ness. We are not of the same kind. Mother " I am sore and irritable, or I should never have said this " Jack felt just as I did about Letty, always." A flush crosses my mother's face. She remem- bers all Jack's little trials with pretty, foolish Letty, remembers them with pain, as mothers must the natural antagonisms of their children. But she says no more of my going to the Cargills', and I think she has forgotten my thin face until she hands me an invitation to spend a week with an old friend of hers two or three miles from the city. I did not care specially to go, but when I find my- self in the sweet country air once more, and scent the mown fields, and see the " far blue hills," I be- gin to relent of my apathy and feel that it is good to be alive and young. And when I find on the second day that there is to be " a garden party " 146 Our Ice Man. in the great old-fashioned pretty garden which seems to lie all about the house, I am more inter- ested in my fineries than I have been for months; and when I find at this party a rather handsome young man, who is of much consequence apparently to all the young women present, but who turns from their charms and persists in becoming my attendant cavalier, I am very far from displeased thereat, arid am quite easily persuaded to drop ' k that everlasting croquet mallet " and go on a tour of investigation down the queer, quaint ways of the winding foot- paths. That night when I stand crimping my hair before the mirror I look at my brightened face, and recall Jack's judgment of me "a vain little flirt." As the days go by I see no reason to doubt this judgment ; for my fine garden cavalier, who turns out to be a near neighbor, makes himself my sole protector in sundry explorations over "the far blue hills." At the end of the week my mother comes for me, as she had planned. u Ah, I knew you needed a change, Rachel," she says, in a pleased voice. " You are looking quite like yourself again." " Is n't she ? " repeats my hostess. Then presently I see the two walking in the old garden and talking earnestly together. When a lit- tle later my new acquaintance, Mr. Richard Par- Our Ice Man. 147 sons, saunters up the steps, I see my hostess tel- egraph by a glance to my mother, and I guess at once all the mystery of that conference. Mr. Parsons is one of the young men of whom mothers are sure to approve. He is well-looking and well-behaved, a genial, kindly soul, upon whom the world has showered good fortune befitting the good qualities. He is, to sum it all up, a safe man, and it is upon this safe man that I am expected to bestow myself. That this is the subject matter of the conference between my mother and her friend I do not need to be told. Until now I had never thought seriously of Mr. Parsons's possible feeling ; I had been a vain little flirt, but an unthinking one. But now I recall his looks, his tones, and a something empresse in his manner, which I had taken carelessly enough be- fore, but which return upon me with a fuller mean- ing. It had been a long summer day to me a day of transient pleasure, wherein I had rested a moment while I waited. To Richard Parsons it had been but the beginning of a summer which stretched out into an illimitable future. If I guessed at all this in that moment of retrospection, I have amplest confirmation in another week, for in that time Mr. Parsons has come to the point, and plainly declared his intentions, undeterred by the sudden stiffness which my awakened conscience 148 Our Ice Man. has infused at that late day into my manner. His evident astonishment at my rejection of his suit is sufficiently humiliating, without the curious amaze- ment of my mother's friend, and the surprised dis- appointment of my mother herself. " You seemed to like him so much, Rachel." " I did like him, but that is a very different mat- ter from loving." " It is often much safer to begin life with another on the liking you speak of than what young people call love," answered my mother with singular as- perity. I am dumb after this argument. Do all people, I wonder, outlive this love which is the burden of every poet's song since the world began ? I re- member an old story I have heard about my moth- er's beauty in her youth and the lovers that she had. " Your mother had the finest opportunities of any of us, and she married the poorest of them all," my aunt Catherine had often said to me, with a sharp frankness exceedingly unflattering to my father. I gather from this that it was most decid- edly a love match, and I look at the handsome face of my paternal parent as it appears in the crayon portrait above my head, and hunt up all my child- ish memories to recall his pleasant voice and win- ning ways. I suppose that he once delighted my mother with this pleasant voice, and with these win- Our Ice Man. 149 ning ways ; I suppose that she once thrilled at the touch of his hand or the sound of his footsteps like any love-smitten girl. But now, this " light that was never on sea or land," has faded into worse than nothingness. I think of a voice whose every intonation I know so well, of eyes that I could never meet even in my time of bitter cavil and jealousy without a quick- ened pulsation. Will there come a day when I shall look back with indifference, when I shall be able to meet the eyes and hear the voice perhaps with dulled senses? Now, with my blood at fever beat, I answer vehemently, No, no, no ! But how can I promise for myself? How can I say that I shall make exception to the myriads who, like my mother, " preach down a daughter's heart," having overlived the purple light of love and youth ? But I have nothing to do with that gray and empty fut- ure day. I will have nothing to do with it. Here is my youth, and with it my love that may never come nearer to me than now. But even so, I know, I know, that " all other pleasures are not worth its pains." As I come to this triumphant conclusion, as I feel that nothing, nothing can ever dim my " light that was never on sea or land," I get a letter from my sister with this piece of information : " What do you think ? Tom Cargill has come home from Colorado, and he says that his cousin 150 Our Ice Man. Harry, saw Tenicke Ditworth about twenty miles from Denver, and that he has married a rich widow, and is coming East shortly to buy back the Newport estate." All in a moment, " down go tower and temple." Shame and humiliation assail me. I have been living in an ideal world, and bowing down, like many another foolish woman, before an ideal hero. Poor and unfortunate, struggling with adverse fate, I had seen my hero, and in that condition had glo- rified him, had felt that I had a right in him. But what had I to do with a man who had smartly re- trieved his fortunes by marrying a rich widow ? " What does Letty say ? " asks my mother, com- ing into the room when I had arrived at this point. I hand the letter to her. She skims it through, but makes no comment. But as she returns it to me I ask suddenly, " Mother, did Mr. Ditworth ask you about Jack's friend in Colorado before he went away ? " " Yes, he asked me after dinner that day the news arrived in Newport of the Jay Cooke failure. It was Jacob Vanstart, you know. I gave him his name. That was sufficient, for Mr. Vanstart was the richest man in Colorado. I presume Mr. Dit- worth wanted hifl influence in entering into some business ; and I should n't be surprised if he had married Mr. Vanstart's widowed sister, Mrs. Baum." Our Ice Man. 151 So this was the end of my dreams ! Married to Mrs. Baum ! u Mother, do you suppose Tenicke Ditworth had this this Mrs. Baum in his mind I mean was that his business, to go out there and look up Mr. Vanstart's rich widowed sister?" I am reckless just now how I trample on and deface the clay im- age I have been worshiping. " What a foolish question, Rachel," my mother replies to this. " It is n't at all likely that Mr. Ditworth knew anything of Mr. Vanstart's sister ; or, if he did, that he would project such an under- taking in a moment." I laugh feebly, and then all at once the room becomes intolerable to me. Everything seems dwarfed and pinched, narrow and mean. I go out upon the little side stoop for a breath of fresh air. As I stand there pulling down some half-starved honeysuckle blossoms, the gate creaks on its rusty hinge, and I look up to see Tenicke Ditworth's Double ! The honeysuckle springs back from my hand, and my heart beats up in my throat again, as the strange resemblance strikes me anew. How like, oh, how like he is! For an instant, just an in- stant, I forget Letty's news, forget everything but the face that is recalled to me. Then, swift and sharp, everything returns upon me, and I am try- 152 Our Ice Man. ing to reconcile this face, the sweet, kind eyes Jack used to talk about, with Mrs. Baum's husband. Well, the days go by ; time gets on in a slow, sluggish fashion with me ; I eat and drink, laugh and talk with my mother and the few guests we have, much as usual ; but something has gone out of the days, and life seems disjointed and savorless. When I sit down to think now, there is no region of memory where I can rest apart from Jack and Jack's friend. Ever since I have had a young girl's thoughts, they have been interwoven with Jack and this friend of his. And now well, I try hard, all through the dull afternoons and the duller even- ings, to interest myself in the neighborly talk that comes in my way. But in the mornings, with a fool's insensate folly in the mornings I render my afternoon and evening task as difficult as possible by the observation I take at the side window of a certain stalwart figure whose every motion recalls with painful distinctness the man 1 am trying to put out of my mind and hearth fti this consistent occupation all the little summer bloom I had gained fades, and my thin cheeks grow thinner yet, until there are ugly hollows under the cheek-bones, and small wrinkled ripples beneath my eyes. But when did happy or unhappy lovers ever conduct themselves consistently ? Do I call myself a lover still, with my hero a hero no longer? I do not call Our Ice Man. 153 myself anything. I only feel that the past and I cannot separate without long throes of pain which I cannot measure. I only know that when I try to wrench myself away from my memories I am. like Milne's lover, in worse than an empty world. So the dreary, dusty days go on from bad to worse. When I look at myself in the glass now, I see a face unknown before ; pale, and growing every morning paler still, and at night a hot red color burning in two hard outlined spots upon my cheeks. I have read all my life sentimental stories of young women pining away for love, and I suppose I thought it was a very pretty thing to do. But if this is what I am doing, it is anything but a pretty piece of business. I am not dying, nor on the road to it. I am simply growing unhealthy and ugly as fast as possible. Womanlike, a feeling of resent- ment kindles within me at this contingency. To lose love and happiness and one's good looks all together is a threefold tragedy. So with jeering bitterness I appeal to myself against myself, as I sit late on Saturday afternoon beneath the dried-up honeysuckle on the little side porch, where, when the wind comes from the south, a small puff will now and then find its way over our high board fence. Everybody has gone away for the evening, and I am left alone to keep house and nurse my foolish fancies. " Creak, creak," the cart wheels 154 Our Ice Man. lazily roll over the pavement outside, and now and then the swift, smart rattle of a smart carriage, and two or three organ-grinders belaboring their wheezy old instruments, in the vain attempt to produce mel- ody. I am listening to all this with a dull ear and humming mechanically the " Blue Danube " waltz in broken time with the nearest organ, when the gate swings open. " No, no," I call out. " Don't come any nearer." Then I stop in dismay. It is not the grimacing young scamp of an organ-grinder I expected, but a tall, well-known figure in a navy-blue shirt. I for- get to explain my words in my surprise at this ap- pearance at this hour. But as the tall figure sways past me, heavily laden with an extra amount of ice, I remember that it is Saturday night ; that the day has been unusually warm, and so the belated time. I feel a little quiver of excitement as I make up my mind in the next moment to speak with this curious Double as he comes back. For I must explain my sharp exclamation ; one must be decent even to an ice man. Presently I hear his step crunching the gravel, and I meet him face to face as he turns the corner of the lattice. " I thought it was an organ- grinder when I spoke as you opened the gate," I began. Then I look up, standing quite near as I am, and I see, in the deep amber sunset light I see a smile slowly, then swiftly, breaking out of Our Ice Man. 155 eyes and lips, a smile that can only, only belong " Oh, Tenicke ! Tenicke ! " In a moment more I wonder for just a dizzy second or two if I am gone clean mad, for I am clinging fast to the blue-shirted arm and laughing and crying in a breath, " Oh, Tenicke ! Tenicke ! " Just a dizzy second or two, then I drag him in through the doorway, through the little side hall, into the cool empty parlor. The sunset light streams in through the half-open shut- ter, and falls iri one clear strong ray across the face, not of any stranger, of any vexatious Double, but the face yes, the face of Tenicke Ditworth him- self. " To think you did n't know me before, Rachel. I should make my fortune as an actor, should n't I?" He smiles down at me, but there are tears in his eyes, in his voice ; and at the sight, at the sound, I forget all about that foolish story of Mrs. Baum, all my proper decencies and proprieties are scat- tered to the winds, and I cast myself upon Tenicke Ditworth's breast, and out of my suddenly relieved heart, heedless of everything but the present, I make love, fond, desperate, shameless love, to our ice man. By and by I lift my head. The sunset glory has gone, but the new-risen moon shines full in my darling's face my darling's, not Mrs. Baum's, nor poor, pretty, shallow Letty's, as I had foolishly 156 Our Ice Man. fancied once, but mine, mine always from the very first, as I knew now ; and it is now for the first time I ask a question, a question that the one great fact of presence had put aside for these swift minutes. " How did it all happen ? How did it come to this?" " How did it come to this ? " and he touched his blue shirt with a half laugh. " Rachel, I don't suppose you can have any idea how quickly a for- tune can take wings. I don't think / had until I found at the end of a few months that I could n't raise a dollar without borrowing. I tried in the mean time to find some occupation, but my idle, desultory life had unfortunately left me at very loose ends in business adaptability ; and besides that, it was a terrible time ; all the situations were filled, and thousands like myself were out of em- ployment. I was walking down Broadway one morning considering what I should try next, when I met Jim Borland, whose father is the largest ice dealer you have in your city. In an instant I re- called our banter at Newport, and thought to my- self that as I could n't find an occupation to suit me, I might as well suit the occupation to myself. When I sounded Jim, he supposed I was after a clerkship in the counting-room. Good fellow, he would have turned somebody out for me if he could, but that was out of the question. When I told him it was Our Ice Man. 157 a carrier's place I proposed to take, you ought to have seen his face. I believe for a moment he thought I had been drinking, or that my losses had turned my brain. When he found that I was in earnest, he tried to dissuade me from my notion, as he called it. Something would be sure to turn up in a month or two, and in the mean time he would be my banker. But I was already in debt, and I knew better than he how unlikely anything of the kind that he supposed fitted for me was likely to turn up for the waiting. Well, that night I left New York with him, and two days after I was in- stalled in my carrier's route." " But how came you" " To be at your part of the city, and at your door? I had your address, Rachel, and I was such a romantic fool that I wanted to get a glimpse of you now and then ; and a little spirit of fun pos- sessed me too, the whole thing was so absurd. I had really no idea of wooing you, my dear girl, in this melodramatic sort of disguise. I was n't pro- posing to play theatre. But I wanted to see if you 'd know me, and it took you all summer " " If it had n't been for that curious Double of yours, that man who was so like you last season, I should never have doubted for an instant. But Tenicke, what does your mother think of all this; ' 158 Our Ice Man. " She does n't know it. She had a few thousands secured, thank God, elsewhere ; and her health fail- ing in all the worry and excitement, I got her off to Geneva with Chadwick and his sister. So you see I am working out the problem alone, Rachel. And I don't have altogether a bad time of it. I get six hundred dollars a year, and it suffices me, for I don't live the life of a dandy now. I have one room six miles out of town where I sleep, and where on Sundays I cook my own dinner and read Thoreau and Emerson." He laughs a little, hold- ing me away with two strong arms that lie may look in my face. After a moment he resumes : " Rachel, there 's to be a vacancy in the counting- room next month, and the general, old Mr. Bor- land, has offered it to me. And, Rachel, this is not all. I have found that out of the wreck of half a million I shall finally rescue five or six thousand dollars, and I'm going to put it into this ice busi- ness. Rachel, will you marry me on these pros- pects ? " " I '11 marry you now, Tenicke, on the six hun- dred dollars." " To-morrow, then ; that 's the carriers' holiday. My wedding suit will be out of fashion a year old, Rachel ; and you '11 have to keep house with me in my one room and make my coffee at five o'clock in the morning." Our Ice Man. 159 " I can make better coffee than you ever tasted, sir." We look at each other a moment, laughing, both of us ; then suddenly the arms that have been hold- ing me off for a better look at my foolishly fond face draw me nearer, and I am winking and blink- ing against our ice man's blue flannel shirt collar. Two months from that time we are married. I do not go to housekeeping in one room, certainly, but in a ridiculously small cottage ten miles out of town. Letty, looking on, does not envy me, but she only says, " To think that Tenicke Ditworth should turn out nothing but an ice man after all." IN THE RED ROOM. SHALL have to put you in the red room, Jenny. I had kept the east chamber for you, but we do have so much unexpected company anniversary week. Last night Mrs. Deane came with her baby, and the red room is so far away that I didn't feel as if it was just the thing to put her there." " No, of course not, and I 'm sure I 'd as lief sleep in the red room as the east room." " Mary Ann will sleep on the lounge in the room, so you won't mind." * For mercy's sake, Martha, what do you think I want Mary Ann to sleep in the room with me for?" " I was afraid you might get nervous, so far off from the rest of the rooms." " Get nervous ! why I should never think of such a thing. What should I get nervous about ? You have n't a burglar epidemic just now, have you, or perhaps a walking ghost ? " " No, not exactly." In the Red Room. 161 At this reply Jenny Merryweather turned sud- denty from the contemplation of her new traveling suit which the pier-glass before her reflected in all its beauties, turned suddenly and confronted her friend with her inquiring look. " Martha Carrique, it is a ghost, and you were going to smuggle me into his den actually without proper warning or introduction." " You ridiculous girl, there 's no ghost about it, but there is a foolish story connected with the room I thought you had heard." " Only a story of a ghost ! Only the ghost of a ghost ! Oh dear, Martha, what a disappointment. I did hope it was one of the veritable old colonial gentry such as used to be here once iii the flesh and blood. Perhaps Colonel Carrique himself, or one of the Hancock family, or that beautiful great, great, great aunt or grandmother of yours, whom Governor Hancock had to send home, because the Indian chief fell in love with her. But on the whole, I 'd rather it was that handsome Colonel Carrique in his royalist red coat, though it might n't be so proper, for I am so tired of seeing nothing but women, Martha, that I prefer even a visiting ghost to be a masculine one." " You ridiculous girl ! " repeated Mrs. Carrique, going off into one of her little spasms of laughter. " That 's the second time you 've called me that, 11 162 In the Red Room. Martha. But just think what an out-and-out lark this is for me. Six months tied down to that b-a ba, b-i bi, b-o bo, business, in that dear, dull, deserted-of-mankind, little native town of mine. Positively, Martha, there is n't but one young man left in the place, and he 's rather non compos. And for the rest, for the older ones, the married men, you never saw such ungallant creatures. No wo- man need be jealous of her husband in our to\vn, Martha. If Frank gets frisky here, you just bring him down to Balem, there 's something in the very air there that takes all the frisk out of them. Why, I went to a school-meeting one night, Martha, where I happened to be the only lady with seven gentle- men. Well, my dear, what do you think those seven men allowed me to walk home a quarter of a mile alone. Not one of them had the polite- ness, the decency, to offer himself as an escort. Stop, Martha, you need n't call me a ridiculous girl again ; I 'm not embroidering in the least, I 'm telling you a downright fact. The worst of it was, the injurious effect upon my sell-esteem. I was n't at all afraid to walk through our Puritanic little streets even if it had been midnight, but to have seven men unite in showing you that you were not sufficiently agreeable to charm them out of their stolid, selfish laziness even into momentary good manners was humiliating. Suppose they had known In the Red Room. 163 me all their lives ? What had that to do with it ? Oh. I tell you, Martha, I have n't held up my head since ! " and Jenny Merryweather disclosed all her little milk-white teeth at this announcement. Saun- tering along the wide halls, and the queer passage- ways in this queer old house, the two girls for Mrs. Carrique, spite of her matronly honors, was o"nly one of the Saturday Reviewers " great girls " came just at this crisis of the conversation to the red room in question. This room was situated in the northwest corner of the house, in what was called " the gable end." It was divided from the other bed-chambers by a long passage opening from the main hall by a narrow door. Seen in the noon sunshine, it looked the cosiest chamber in the world, with its red carpet and curtains, and the pretty out- look upon the gardens and the green hills of Mid- dlesex County. But that night when Mrs. Carrique accompanied her young guest again through the halls and passage-ways, and finally entered the isolated room to see if her not peculiarly reliable chambermaid had discharged her duty thoroughly, the red room had lost its cheerful aspect, and by the light of the two candles the red carpet and draperies took on a sombre depth and shade that was by no means enlivening, or at least such was the opinion of the hostess herself on this second visit. Jenny was chattering away as usual, and 164 In the Red Room. seemed to be entirely unobservant of the change which night had wrought in her surroundings. " It does look so lonesome here at night," at last broke out Mrs. Carrique, " that I do think you had better have Mary Ann sleep on the lounge." Jenny stopped pulling out the twenty-six hair- pins that held that marvelous structure of braids and curls and frizzes together, and turning rouncl from the mirror looked with real and not affected astonishment at her friend. " Martha, /think you are getting hipped in this old trap. The idea of your talking to me about nerves. Have n't we a whole pack of ghosts in Balem, and one a regular old witch ? Nervous ! my dear, feel of that arm," and with a gay little smile she held out a round, white member, the healthy firmness of which told an enviable story of circulation and digestion. " That means pulling oars with Jimmy and beating him at that," this merry little Jenny went on, nodding and smiling ; "and it means, too, Mrs. Martha Carrique, that I am so sound and healthy, as Aunt Desire says, 'so rudely healthy,' that if I have any nerves they are completely out of sight and out of mind. So now you can just go to bed and to sleep without any more worry about me, or threats of Mary Ann." Mrs. Carrique, thus adjured, takes a final survey of window and door fastenings, and bids her guest In the Red Room. 165 good-night. And not many minutes after Jenny Merryvveather, having disposed of those twenty-six hair-pins and the structure of braids and curls and frizzes, is snugly ensconced between the clover- scented sheets, sleeping the sleep of the just. u And to think, Frank, that I forgot to tell her the ghost story after all," says Mrs. Martha, as she rejoins her husband. " All the better that you did n't repeat that fool- ish stuff." " Well, I don't think that anything would disturb Jenny. I never saw such a girl. It was n't so strange that /should forget that I had n't told her the story, but that she should care so little as to ask no ques- tions on what is usually so interesting to girls." " But Jenny has been brought up on ghost stories. Balem is full of 'em, you know. She came here for something new, Martha." At the breakfast table the next morning Jenny appeared with the brightest of faces. " Well," she said laughingly, " your ghost did n't pay me a visit, Martha, but I did have the queerest dream." " I hope it was a pleasant one ; you know what the sign is about the first dream under a strange roof." " That it will come true ; well, I don't think my dream is likely to come true," and Jenny laughed again. 166 In the Red Room. " You 've no objection to telling it to us, have you ? " asked Mr. Carrique. " Oh, not in the least. I went to sleep almost as quick as my head touched the pillow, and it was in this first sleep that I met your ancestor Colonel Carrique. You know we had been speaking of him, Martha, and I had admired his portrait and told you that if I was to be visited by a ghost I should prefer the handsome royalist. Well I dreamed that I was at a great party in this very house, only the furniture was all of it quite old- fashioned, and instead of your big windows there were ever so many smaller ones, and so high from the floor they looked like prison windows to me" " Well, I declare, Jenny that was the very ap- pearance the house presented before we altered it. Did I ever give you that description of it ? " " No, I am sure you did n't, for the only letter I got from you after you purchased the house was an invitation to visit you, and as I have n't seen you since, until yesterday, and Frank answered my note to you by a telegram that he would meet me at 2 P. M., Wednesday, I don't see where you could have told your story of improvements." " Oh, I dare say she told you yesterday, Miss Jenny, when you first arrived." *' Indeed she did n't, Mr. Carrique. I don't lose my memory quite so easily as that," answered Jenny, laughing, but a little nettled. In the Red Room. 167 " I see, I s.ee, you are bound to put it all to the red room account," Mr. Carrique returned, gayly. Jenny looked at him with a rather puzzled face, but Mrs. Carrique sent her off of that track, by saying, *' Come, do go on with your dream, Jenny. There 's nothing I like so much to hear about as people's dreams." Thus adjured, Jenny went on. " When I came into the room where all these gentry were, the first person I saw distinctly was a tall, handsome man, in a red royalist uniform just like that in the pic- ture of Colonel Carrique, and the face of this gen- tleman was precisely like the face in the portrait. He came forward to meet me as I entered, and as he stood before me a moment what do you think he said ? " And here pausing, Jenny laughs and actually blushes a little. " We give it up ; none of this family are good at conundrums, Jenny," Frank Carrique remarks ; and so with another little laugh, and another little blush Jenny proceeds again : " He said in such a low tone that I understood at once that nobody but myself was expected to hear it : ' Miss Merry weather, my nephew has ar- rived, and is impatient to meet his promised wife/ The next moment he turned about and a young man not at all like the colonel and dressed in the fashion of to-day stood before me. He put out his 168 In the Red Room. hand to take mine, and as he did so I started back in a sort of fright, whereupon the old colonel bent down and whispered in my ear, ' It is of no use for you to resist, my dear ; it is your fate.' " This only 'frightened me the more, and I turned and ran out of the room as fast as my feet could carry me. The colonel ran after me not at all in a rage but laughing immoderately. But I was too swift for him. I ran straight to the red room and banged the door in his face. At that instant I awoke, laughing myself. I lay awake a few mo- ments, and then falling fast asleep again, I took up my dream just where I left off, for I heard the sound of the colonel's laughter growing fainter and fainter, and the sound of his footsteps as he went down the stairs. I had escaped the colonel, but there before me stood an old, old lady with a white satin dress over her arm. 'It's of no use for you to resist,' she said, repeating the colonel's words and wagging her head wickedly at me, ' it 's your fate ; ' and then wagging her head still more, 4 for this prank of yours, you will be married to- night, Miss.' Do what I would I could n't seem to escape from the old woman, until after that white satin dress had been donned, and then as she opened the door and seized my wrist to lead me down, I sprung away, but my foot caught in my grand gown, and I felt myself falling in that horrid way one In the Red Room. 169 does in dreams. While I was falling, I awoke again. I lay awhile speculating about my odd dream, and the special oddity of my resuming it in the man- ner I had. And in this speculation I fell asleep once more, and once more resumed the same thread. This time I was lying in a great canopied bed in that very red room, and the old lady and the colo- nel were standing before me looking as solemn as judges. The old lady came close up to the bed, and leaning over me, said in a shrill little voice : * You won't escape us again, Miss, I can tell you. That ancestress of yours served this family a nice trick in her day, and got us well scandalized by her folly.' Then that handsome colonel laughed, and said in the politest way : 'And you, my dear, are going to atone for all that. You'll unite' and snap here went the thread again. I suppose it was that horrid little black-and-tan terrier of yours who was yapping under my window that woke me this time. I went to sleep again, but I did n't re- sume my dream again, and I did so want to hear what the colonel was going to say." " The fact of it is, you were disappointed in not meeting that nephew again, Miss Jenny," said Frank Carrique, jocosely, x * "But was n't it a very odd dream, taking the fact of my resuming it twice after waking?" asked Jenny here, giving no heed to Mr. Carrique's fa- cetia. 170 In the Red Room. " Well, yes, it was rather odd, but still that fact of resuming a dream is n't uncommon." " No, I don't know that it is," returns Jenny, feeling somehow by Mr. Carrique's words and man- ner as if she had been telling a very foolish and uninteresting story. Martha, too, looked dull and distraite, and that little Mrs. Deane had a queer, constrained expression as if she were laughing at her. Abashed at first by these indications, our little school-mistress at the second turn of her thought became considerably nettled ; and being a rather quick-tempered little lady, there is no know- ing what sarcastic expression she might have found, if just at the moment a diversion had not been created by the arrival of fresh guests. Before the day was over the fresh guests and the fresh scenes, and Martha's real pleasure in her society shown at every turn, dispelled the little cloud entirely. Later, the memory, not the cloud itself, came be- fore her with a new significance. But this was so late, at the very end of her visit, indeed, that we won't talk of it just now. In the interim lay all that beautiful time of summer, and freedom from what she called that b-a ba, b-i bi, b-o bo business ; the weary little round of her primary school duties. There has come to be a saying in Boston that has almost passed into a proverb, that it always rains anniversary week ; but on this anniversary- In the Red Room. 171 of Jenny's first visit to her friend since that friend had arrived at the dignity of matronhood, and an ancestral mansion, on this first and most eventful visit of hers, the May sky refused to weep its usual anniversary tears, and the sun shone, with the ther- mometer in the eighties for days. But in and out, in and out, sometimes by horse-car and sometimes in Mr. Carriqne's pretty beach wagon, our little Yankee school-mistress took her way in the dust and heat to listen to the heresies in Tremont Tem- ple, or the more orthodox controversies in Music Hall. " How you can stand so much theology and phi- losophy, I don't see, Jenny," exclaimed Mrs. Mar- tha, one morning towards the end of the week, as Jenny came down equipped for her daily excursion. " And what 's more, Jenny, how you can compre- hend it all passes me." "Comprehend it? bless me," ejaculated Jenny briskly; "I don't pretend to comprehend half of it. Why, Martha, I go to see the people ; to meet my friends and acquaintances. You don't consider that I 'm a country girl compared to you, and that I 'm on a vacation lark, and mean to make the most of my time." " Goodness gracious ! " cried Mrs. Martha, at this, ".and I thought, and Frank thought, all the time, that you were up to all those isms ; and you 172 In the Red Room. just go there for nothing in the world but to meet the people, like any other girl." " Yes, did you expect I was n't like any other girl, I should like to know, Martha Carrique ? " Why, yes, in a way I suppose I did. And you are, you know, Jenny, rather on the intellectual pattern compared to me." Jenny laughed. " Compared to you ! My su- perior intellect, I suppose, is shown in teaching an infant-school, and not being afraid of ghosts. That last virtue, however, is only a matter of physical health. But, by the way, Martha, you have n't told me your ghost story yet, and now 's your time. I've got just twenty minutes before the car starts." Martha " looks queer." " Oh, it 's nothing but an old tale about the colonel arid some friend of his appearing now and then." u The old lady I met in my dream, very likely," laughs Jenny. "You have n't met her or the colonel since that first night, have you, Jenny ?" " No, but I met the nephew they were so anxious to make me marry, last night, and I 'm getting quite reconciled to the match, Martha." A little more in this gay strain, and then this pretty, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked " country girl," as she calls herself, trips off on that sight-seeing, social errand which, if the truth were told, brings In the Red Room. 173 more people together in Boston on this famous an- niversary week than all the ologies and isms com- bined. But in spite of her modest disclaimer of other interest Jenny had a quick mind and an ap- preciation of some fine things beyond her. And so on this last day as she sat in Tremont Temple, and heard the cadences of a far-famed voice, she forgot her social errand entirely, and listened, if not with thorough understanding, with great admiration and the keenest attention. It was in the midst of this eloquence, and while her attention was at its height, that .# lady acquaintance leaned over from a front seat and signaled for her fan. As she reached forward in passing it, a gentleman near her turned his face towards her. Jenny Merry weather's nerves were well sheathed, as she had said, under that firm, healthy flesh of hers ; but a very queer sensa- tion thrilled her as she saw that the face of this stranger was the face of the man she had twice met in her dreams the face of the man whom the old royalist had called his nephew. In the sudden movement the gentleman had changed his position and now sat where she had a full view of his linea- ments. Yes, there were the same marked linea- ments ; the high and long nose, the searching, but at the same time peculiarly drooping eyes, above which straight black brows and heavy, short-cut hair gave a resolute look, which the square shaven 174 In the Red Room. chin by no means counteracted. The only sign ot beard was on the upper lip a thickly-grown, well-trained ebon moustache. How the famous or- ator progressed in his discourse after this, Jenny never knew. But at the end of the discourse, as she stood waiting to pass out, she suddenly became aware that those searching eyes were fixed upon her face with a curious intentness. Friends and acquaintances approached her, and she responded to their salutations, and laughed and talked in her ordinary manner ; but all the time she was quite conscious of her unknown, mysterious neighbor, quite conscious that he was keeping her in view through the slow passage to the door. Then, in a moment, she lost sight of him. She was to meet Martha that day at the Parker House, where they were to have a tete-a-tete lunch together, and afterwards indulge themselves in a millinery hunt. Over that first cup of coffee Jenny told her strange story of the morning. Mrs. Martha looked as if all the ghosts of the ancestral mansion had suddenly appeared before her. When she found voice from the excess of amazement it was to say : " Who would have thought, Jenny, that sucli a little, matter-of-fact, practical person as you would have been the her- oine of such an uncanny mystery ? " Jenny laughed. Then in a moment, " Martha, In the Red Room. 175 you treat this little sequel to my dream with more respect than you did the dream itself." Martha colored, glancing at Jenny in a quick, observant way, hut made no reply. " And I don't know as I wonder at it," went on Jenny. " Of course, this queer fact of my meeting my dream- gentleman in broad daylight makes the chief in- terest in the dream itself. But T must say /found the dream exceedingly interesting before," with an arch, significant glance at Martha. But Martha, evidently not disposed to discuss this matter, asks abruptly : u Jenny, you said you met this person in your dream last night. Tell me about it." " Well, there is n't much to tell. I don't remem- ber any events as in the first dream. He seemed to appear before me as if for no other reason but to impress his face upon my memory, or it seems like that now ; for though it made a clear impres- sion in the first dream, it was nothing like the ex- actness with which every feature and every expres- sion fixed itself like a photograph in my mind last night." " I never heard anything like the whole affair, never," ejaculated Mrs. Carrique with emphasis. " / have," quietly returned Jenny. " Nothing of the kind, of course, ever came under my own observation or experience before, but I 've read and heard of such things. We 're Scotch folks, you 176 In the Red Room. know, on ray mother's side, and I 've heard Grandma MacKay tell a great many of those old, second-sight, Scotch stories, and specially about such dreams as mine. A great many of them, I believe, are purely imaginary, helped on by some old tradition, but now and then something like this experience of mine happens to some practical little body like myself." " I wonder what Frank will say to this ! " cried Mrs. Carrique, in a sort of triumph. "/sha'ii't tell him. but you can if you please." " Of course I shall," and that very night she kept her word. Frank Carrique laughed as was his wont. And what he said was not much more encouraging to Mrs. Martha. In fact, he doubted the whole story ; believed that Jenny had become so impressed with that dream-gentleman that she endowed the first fine-looking fellow she saw with his lineaments. " That shows how much you know Jenny Merry- weather ! " retorted his wife in great scorn. " She 's about as fanciful as you are, just about. I wish you 'd seen her at lunch while she was fresh from that queer encounter, and relating it to me. It really excited me so much that I forgot my appetite. But Jenny ! " and Mrs. Carrique stopped, unable to express herself adequately upon the marvel of Jenny's appetite at such a time. In the Red Room. 177 " I don't think Jenny is very fanciful, myself, Martha, but girls will be girls," declared Mr. Car- rique, with the young masculine air of settling the matter by his summing up. " And stupid men Witt be stupid men," retorted Mrs. Carrique, with a grimace at her lord and master. Aggravating as all this unbelief was to Mrs. Martha, she took pretty good care not to seek sympathy on the subject from Jenny. Her visit would come to an end now in three days, and she meant that it should end as smoothly and pleasantly as possible. The last night of all, the ancestral mansion was to be turned into a pretty scene of festivity a farewell party for the two or three guests whose departure would be nearly simultane- ous. On the morning of this last day Jenny came down equipped for an expedition to the city again. " Now, Jenny, what are you going to heat your- self up for to-day of all days the anniversaries are over, are n't they ? " " Yes, but I must have new ribbons for my pink dress." " And so you are going to heat yourself and get red and blowsy for to-night." " Martha wants you to look your best before her new relations. There 's to be a very strong force of Carriques to-night, you know ; and I believe she 178 In the Red Room. has a special design about a certain cousin of mine, Tom Carrique, who happens to be here now from Philadelphia." " Now, Frank " " Now, Martha, I 'm not going to have Miss Jenny taken unawares/' " Jenny, if you believe half that Frank says," began Mrs. Carrique, with a little guilty blush. " I don't," retorted Jenny, laughingly. " I be- lieve only one third, the other two thirds I put down to pure fancy, following his wise example of judgment where the opposite sex are concerned ! " There was a mischievous sparkle in the glance that this little Jenny darted at Mr. Carrique here, which winged her arrow straight to the mark. " Oh ho," thought that gentleman ; " so Mart, after all, went and told her of my heresy about that dream-hero of hers." But Mart had done nothing of the kind, as he found out later. Walls, it is said, have ears, but Jenny found not even a wall barrier as she sat on the door-stone that day and the wind came sweep- ing every sound to her, far and near. Slu- had been a good deal nettled, when this accident brought Mr. Carrique's persistent disbelief to her, but she had succeeded so well in keeping out of sight that no one suspected it until this small shot. Full of wonder, but fearing a little breeze, Mi>. In the Red Room. 179 Carrique turned the conversation by going back to the pink dress. " Why don't you wear your white tarlatan, Jenny? It would be lovely with a trimming ot pink roses and buds." " Yes, but where are the pink roses and buds, Mrs. Carrique ? " "At McDougal's greenhouse, my dear. I 've ordered loads of flowers from there and I might as well tell him to send me some roses. Don't you remember that small, perfect, pink rose we saw there the other day. I don't know what variety it is, I never can remember such things, but it would be just lovely for your white dress." This settled the matter, for Jenny had greater faith in Martha's taste than her own. That night standing before the long mirror in the red room, she suddenly turned to Martha, who was looping the overskirt, with the words : " Martha, you '11 think I 'm cracked, I dare say ; but as true as I am standing here, I remember now, for the first time, that I was looking just like this, in this white dress and pink roses I mean, when I found myself stand- ing before the old colonel in my dream. I remem- ber now, that I stood at this very glass before I went down, and regarded myself as I do now." " My goodness gracious ! " exclaimed Martha, dropping a whole paper of pins, in her trepidation. 180 In the Red Room. "You know I told you at the time that the nephew's dress was of the fashion of to-day, but I never remembered my own dress until this moment. This is what you call a latent memory, I suppose," and Jenny laughed a little. " My goodness gracious ! " again exclaimed Mrs. Martha, as she picked up her pins, " I believe it all comes of this room, Jenny, and but there's the bell and I 'm not half ready," with which cu- riously unfinished sentence Mrs. Martha whisked out of the room as if she were fleeing from a small army of ghosts. Jenny looked after her in sur- prise ; and for a moment as she stood there alone and heard the wind sweeping through the long passages, and clicking the old door latches, an un- defined feeling came over her, not of fear, but of something unusual, either in the atmosphere about her, or in her own state of mind. " It is all in my own mind, of course, and no wonder after all this queer dream work," she concluded, as she took up her gloves and went down to the drawing-room. Once in that gay, bright room, seeing the pretty reflection of herself in the long mirrors, and meet- ing an endless array of Carriques in one and two and three generations, she forgot all about the " dream work " and its puzzles, and remembered only the very agreeable present that she was looking her best, and that Tom Carrique's eyes, as In the Red Room. 181 he bent above her, were beaming with a flattering consciousness of that fact. The rooms were rapidly filling with brilliantly dressed people, but her new admirer held his place beside her, as if he intended to hold it for the rest of the evening, and they were both in the full swing of that remarkable nonsense young people delight in, when Jenny's attention was arrested by her host's voice, exclaiming in a tone of great astonishment : " What, you, Henry ! What in the world does this mean ? " " Don't be alarmed, Miss Merryweather," ex- plained her companion, "it 's only another Carrique; he is n't considered up to the Carrique standard of good looks, but, however, here he comes, so you can judge for yourself." " I came on in the Europe, and I should have been in to see you a day or two ago, but Morris and Kate wanted me to come out with them and surprise you." This was the answer Jenny heard in reply to Frank Carrique's question, and the next moment the owner of the voice came in sight, and she saw the hero of her dream again! Her gay companion rattled on, and she responded with that sense of perception which keeps the external routine of social life in order under difficult circumstances. But all the while she was watching the new-comer, listening to Martha's cordial reception of him, and holding her breath in a sort of eager restraint till she should be brought face to face ^^ith him. 182 In the Red Room. It was at this moment that the tension began to show a little. Tom Carrique, regarding her with a half-laughing scrutiny, said to her : " Miss Merry weather, what is it ? you look as if you had seen a ghost." u Perhaps I have," she answered, in the same tone. The next moment she knew that Frank Carrique was standing before her, and was saying in his jovial voice : " Here 's another Carrique, Miss Jenny. My cousin, Mr. Henry Carrique, fresh from Paris, Miss Merryweather." Then, almost reluctantly, she raised her eyes, and met the same intent gaze she had received in Tremont Temple three days ago. As Frank Car- rique moved off to speak to some one else, this new-comer, bending forward a little, asked in the quietest way : k ' Did you like Weiss the other morn- ing? I believe I saw directly back of me." ' What an impression my strange staring must have made upon him," was Jenny's uneasy thought at this. But she needn't have feared. Henry Carrique was no more vain or self-conscious than herself. He had not flattered himself by such ob- servance as Jenny had given him. She had inter- ested him for quite another reason. It was for this reason, doubtless, that he held his place be- side her for so long a time, talking to her in that In the Red Room. 183 same quiet confidential tone with which he had be- gun his conversation with her. " Henry has cut me out entirely with your little school-mistress," whispered Tom Carrique, in Mrs. Martha's ear, in the course of this " conversation." Mrs. Martha laughed, but she looked disturbed. She had always heard vague reports that Henry Carrique was a very agreeable man, who made himself fascinating to women with no intentions of marrying, and although she had by no means set herself to the onerous task of match-making, she did n't want her friend Jenny trifled with. Making a little detour presently she made a little effort at breaking up the prolonged tete-a-tete, but unsuccessfully. At this failure she beckoned to her husband. " Break up that flirtation, Frank, and bring Jenny over to me. I want her to know the Dun- ham girls." " Flirtation ! they are talking about the iron mines in some Russian town," Frank responded, with a laugh at his wife. " I don't care what they are talking about ; I tell you it 's a flirtation, Frank, and I want you to break it up. I don't approve of such monopolizing on the part of your cousin." Frank shrugged his shoulders. He saw how it was, but like a sensible host would that hostesses 184 In the Red Room. possessed the same shining virtue he hated to break up a tete-a-tete. " Why can't women let each other alone ? " was his inward query ; but being a very new husband he felt bound to please his wife at any cost, and so, though much against his will, went forward to do her bidding. It is very curious how a concealed motive will some- times convey itself to the person or persons most concerned. There was certainly nothing strange in the fact that a pretty girl like Miss Merry- weather should be wanted elsewhere, and Henry Carrique was sufficiently a man of society to know that he had rather monopolized the young lady ; but when Frank Carrique, following his wife, came up with the easy and natural request that Miss Jen- ny would allow him to introduce her to the Dunham girls, Henry Carrique knew that this was simply a ruse to separate him from his companion. He laughed a little, and thought quickly, " So I 'm warned off, eh ? " And, as a matter of course, a new element of interest was added to the curiosity he already felt about his new acquaintance. Jenny, too, as keen, perhaps keener, in her perceptions, made a conclusion not far from the truth, that Mr. Henry Carrique was somehow considered a danger- ous person, at least, as far as she was concerned, and so, as a matter of course again, a new element was added to her interest. To her there seemed In the Red Room. 185 to be a kind of fresh but unseen bond established between them from this fresh circumstance. After this she found it quite impossible to make a fur- ther confidant of her friend Martha to tell her, what would have been so natural under other conditions, the new fact of identification which had astonished her in the person of Mr. Henry Carrique. But that night, when the guests had all departed, and Frank was putting out the gas down stairs, Martha came into Jenny's room for " a little talk." " Well, Jenny, how did you like my favorite, Tom Carrique ? " was her salutation, in tones of suspicious airiness. Jenny, the most straightforward of mortals, drives through this manoeuvre at one plunge, and with a spirit which Mrs. Martha cannot mistake. " I liked him very well, Martha, but I found Mr. Henry Carrique much more interesting, partly be- cause I saw more of him, I suppose." " Yes, I dare say, Henry Carrique can make him- self very agreeable. He 's a great flirt, you know, or at least people say so. Nobody ever thought he 'd marry, until last year, when he sent home the news of his engagement. He 's acted very strangely about it ; did from the first ; but he 's very eccentric, and as he 's no relative nearer than a cousin, nobody has any particular claim upon his confidence." 186 In the Red Room. Jenny blushed a bright red at this information, but more from the vexation that always assails a person of quick perception when they discover that they are being indirectly warned, and " talked at," than from any other feeling. Never very prone to restrain that quick spirit of hers, she flashed out here, " Thanks, Martha, for your good intentions, but I don't need your caution, yet, at all events ; I 'm not in love with Mr. Henry Carrique." Martha colored up. the color of the red room it- self. " Now, Jenny, that is so like you." " So like me to see straight through your trans- parencies, Martha I know that," laughed Jenny. " But if you would n't beat round the bush with me, Martha ! " " Yes, if I 'd come at you brutally, and say, * Jenny Merryweather, Henry Carrique is a dan- gerous person, and in my opinion will fool you to the top of his bent, and then go off and marry that girl that he is engaged to, and leave you to wear the willow,' I suppose you mean to say that you 'd like that style of thing ? " retorted Martha, brought to bay. Thoroughly restored to good humor by this out- burst, Jenny replied, gayly : " Like it, I should adore that style, Mart ; I always like people to hit straight out. I hate any- body to give me little pokes on the sly." In the Red Room. 187 Mart laughed in return, and so the matter passed over, leaving Mrs. Carrique feeling as if she had been rather ridiculously premature, not only in her speech but her fears. But the next day when Henry Carrique walked in with that pleasant, easy manner of his, an hour or so before Jenny's de- parture, on some flimsy errand about a fan he had unwittingly taken away, Mrs. Martha got back more than her original fears and suspicions. But she would checkmate him yet. He had no doubt come with the design of accompanying Jenny to town on that long horse-car ride, which would take her to the Eastern station. The day was warm, the roads dusty, and Mrs. Martha had a head- ache, but to outwit this cool fellow, this dangerous schemer, she would gladly sacrifice herself ; and so when Jenny rose to take her departure, Martha whipped on her hat, pinned up her -pretty, black grenadine that the dust spoiled, and announced that sbe had concluded to go in to town with her. For a moment Jenny was " unaware " of the " situ- ation," and out of her honest heart protested in this wise. " Why, Martha ! it is very good of you, and I should like your company, but you can 't get back in time for your dinner at five, you know." " I intended to accompany Miss Merryweather, if I was happy enough to find her here, that is, if she would permit me," interposed Henry Carrique, in the most matter-of-course way. 188 In the Red Room. Mrs. Martha was breathless for a moment, at this very easy declaration of intentions. How- ever, she held her ground very neatly by impro- vising business in town, and the clever fiction of her husband's probable delay on this special after- noon. At this juncture, Jenny, biting her lip to conceal her amusement, met a look from Henry Carrique's laughing eyes, that seemed to establish another little link in the bond between them; and when he parted from her at the Eastern depot, there was a merry kind of intimate acquaintance in their man- ner which poor Mrs. Carrique little suspected re- sulted from her own indiscreet action. Going home, Jenny Merryweather had now two reasons for giving Mr. Henry Carrique the principal place in her thoughts. One, very nat- urally resulted from the odd dream. The other, the true girl reason of finding great interest in what she had been specially warned against. Mr. Henry Carrique also found himself stimulated to double interest for the same reason, which, after all, it is better to call the human reason, for mas- culine as well as feminine perversity develops equally in this direction. But Mrs. Frank, dear soul, received no light upon her own share in this business, even when about a month later her hus- band came home one night with the intelligence In the Red Room. 189 that Cousin Henry had joined a certain boating- club at Balem, and that gossip had it that he was very attentive to Miss Jenny Merryweather. " I shall just go out to Balem in the early train to-morrow morning," cried Mrs. Martha. " Now, my dear, look out how you meddle with such a matter." " I shall go out to Balem in the early train to- morrow morning, and do my duty. I know Jenny better than you do, sir, and I know that my words will weigh with her." " If it was n't for this queer engagement of his, 't would be all right," remarked Mr. Carrique, mus- ingly. " What ? " from Mrs. Martha, in accents of in- dignant amazement. The gentleman repeated his word. "And you can say that, knowing Henry Car- rique to be such an unprincipled flirt." It was now Frank Carrique's turn to look amazed. " An unprincipled flirt ! Henry Carrique ! Where did you get that idea, I should like to know." " Where should I get it ? From you, sir." " Now, Martha, you are such a headlong creat- ure. I told you once that Henry was an odd fel- low, and, though very attractive to women, that we did n't consider him a marrying man. You draw 190 In the Red Room. the conclusion from that, I suppose, that he is a male flirt. But he is nothing so contemptible. He is n't even much of a society man. He is interest- ing to men as well as to women." Mrs. Martha was silent a moment from a little feeling of anger towards her husband, and a little mortification likewise, for she was candid enough to know that her imagination sometimes translated things rather vividly. But presently she says tri- umphantly : "If this is the case, why do you feel annoyed about your news ? " " For the very simple reason that Henry may be quite unconscious that he may be interesting Jenny unduly. His joining the boating club is n't strange, for he is an intimate friend of Dick Otis, the president." " It 's a ladies' and gentlemen's club, is n't it, and they go sailing after sunset, by moonlight, and to picnics, and all that sort of thing, don't they ? " " I believe they do, Mart," and Frank Carrique laughed. " I shall go out to Balem in the early train to- morrow morning, and spend the day with Jenny, and you '11 come out for me in the afternoon, sir." It was altogether too much trouble for Frank Carrique to combat this positive decision ; and it is not unlikely that he felt, himself, the necessity for some sort of action in the matter. However it In the Red Room. 191 may have been, Mrs. Carrique took her own way after this without further protest from her hus- band ; and the next morning astonished Jenny Merry weather by her unexpected appearance. But Jenny Merryweather was a shrewd little person, as lias been shown, and this unexpected appear- ance led her to thinking at once ; and when Mrs. Martha began to approach the subject of boating parties in what she fondly supposed a most adroit manner, Jenny electrified her with : " Kow, Martha, what is it ? You have n't come all the way to Balem without a special purpose, and you might as well out with it at once." Thus it was that Martha Carrique was hurried into instant and premature confession of her errand. But Jenny took it all with great external calmness. " Odd, you call him odd," she said, hi answer to one of Martha's statements ; u I don't see anything odd about him. I can understand him very well." Poor Martha drew a deeper breath. " Jenny, I hope you do understand him, for if you do " " Don't say disagreeable things about Mr. Car- rique, Martha. He is my friend, nothing more, I assure you. But he is my friend ; we can like our friends too well to hear them attacked unjustly, and you 're attacking Mr. Carrique unjustly when you accuse him of trifling with me. He has been very kind and courteous to me. He knew from the first that 1 knew of his engagement." 192 In the Red Room. Martha could say no more. She felt now that she had said too much in using the word " trifling " as she had. When Frank came up the long, old- fashioned garden-path that night she hastened to meet him, that she might tell him the fruitlessness of her errand. Frank was generous enough not to say " I told you so ; I knew you would make a mess of it, my dear." Jt was only a few minutes later that the gentle- man who was the hero of all this anxiety and com- motion walked leisurely up the same garden-path. A bright, interested look came into Frank Car- rique's eyes ; a look that said plainly : " Ah, now I shall see for myself what everything means." When he saw the expression of Jenny's face, on guard as the poor child was ; when he saw Henry Carrique's glance and smile as he approached her, he felt that the meaning was only too evident, and that meaning under the circumstances what his wife had clearly foreseen and apprehended. Per- haps, after all, Martha was nearer right in her sum- ming up of Henry Carrique's character than he had been. As they sat there together on the wide piazza, with the outward appearance of harmony, there was what Edward Everett Hale would have called " an atmosphere " that contradicted this apparent harmony. Henry Carrique was by no means ob- tuse to this atmosphere, and remembering Mrs. .In the Red Room. 193 Frank's previous efforts, he was not far, perhaps, from penetrating its cause. A little ripple of amusement passed audaciously across his counte- nance, and looking seaward, where a piled up mass of heavy clouds was rising, he said lightly, " There 's thunder in the air." A flash of lightning at this moment sparkled in Mrs. Martha's eyes. She had seen the ripple of amusement, and the words sounded like a chal- lenge. Frank himself was not unmoved, and for the instant a desire to do or say something to the purpose was strong within him. Suddenly, as it seemed, the opportunity was given him. The wind had risen with the rising of the clouds, and a win- dow that fronted the southeast resisted Jenny's at- tempt at closing. Henry Carrique sprang to her assistance. As he turned back, Frank Carrique held towards him a small, flat, Russia leather case he had just picked up from the floor. The corner was torn off and disclosed a portion of a photo- graph of a woman's head. " Yours, Henry ? " A nod of thanks and that same audacious smile again from Henry Carrique. " That mysterious sweetheart of yours, Henry, I suppose. Come, it is time you told us something further about her, I think." There was a certain roughness in Frank Car- 13 194 In the Red Room. rique's voice, despite his jocular manner. Martha saw did they all see ? the sudden pallor of Jenny's face at this. Was it the sight of that pal- lor that produced such a change in Henry Car- rique's demeanor ? for in a moment his gayety, his lightness, fled, and after an instant of hesitation he seemed to come to a sudden resolution, which cost him a perceptible effort, an effort that brought a tinge of color to his cheek and a new tone into his voice as he spoke. For immediately acting, as was evident, upon this resolution, he moved his chair slightly forward and began : " You think I should tell you something further about my mysterious sweetheart, as you call her. I will tell you all that I know myself. About a year ago, when I was in Munich, I received a let- ter from Kate, containing her usual badinage and speculation, and question, about my prospect of settling in life, as she called it. She said she had heard, through friends in Paris, the Heydons, you know, that I was very attentive to a myste- rious young Polish girl who had been in society for a short time in Paris. I had met this Polish girl but three times, as it happened, and knew noth- ing more about her. Just after I had finished read- ing Kate's letter, I remember I went into Johnny Carew's studio. He was a student in Munich, you know, for two years. On his easel, as I went in, u In the Red Room. 195 picture met my eyes that attracted me, for two rea- sons, the beauty of the face, and the old-fashioned New England look of the dress which the figure was arrayed in. It was a copy he had been mak- ing, he told me, of an old miniature he had brought with him, the portrait of his mother's grand aunt, Drusilla Carew. We both of us sat down before this picture and examined it for a while together, and then he went out to keep an engagement, and I sat there for an hour to wait his return, and all the time directly in front of the portrait. I don't mean to say that I was thinking of the portrait all that time : I was thinking of a hundred other things ; but I found after I had left the studio the pictured face pursued me. I know I went to a musical party where I met several distinguished artists, but through the talk and the music, and amidst the throng of very pretty women, every now and then I would see in my mind's eye, as we say, Miss Drusilla Carew. It was not very singu- lar then, I suppose, that I should see the young woman again in my dreams that night. The next day I went into Carew's studio, and told him how his ancestress had haunted me. He laughed and remarked : " She 's coming back to atone to one of your family, I suppose, for her perfidy in the past." I was all at sea at this, greatly to his surprise, for he supposed, he said, that all the Carriques knew 196 In the Red Room. the old family traditions. However, I heard it then and there for the first time from his lips, tin- old story which I dare say you know, Frank, that a certain Miss Drusilla Carew broke faith, and broke the heart of a Henry Carrique a century ago, or at any rate worked a good deal of mischief with his life." Frank nodded. "Yes, I know that old story, Henry, but what connection " " Has it with my story ? It is the very root of it, as you '11 see, if you have patience. Well, to go on : after Johnny had related the old tradition to me, he produced several photographs that he had taken of his portrait, and allowed me my choice. Evidently, he declared, Miss Drusilla had some in- terest in me from thus haunting me, and it was but fair that I should possess her picture. So the joke was carried on by his inquiring, when we met, how my phantom sweetheart was. When I wrote to Kate directly after this, the matter being fresh in my mind, I carried the joke along by telling her that at last I had met my fate, but as all things were not as yet satisfactorily settled, though I considered myself an engaged man, I could not yet tell her the lady's name. When Johnny Carew wrote, as he was in the habit of doing now and then, to Kate's husband, he made mysterious mention of painting the portrait of Henry Carrique's sweetheart. So In tie Red Room. 197 you can see what a fixed matter it became in Kate's mind. Of course, when I returned I intended to confess that it was all jest. Well, I returned in May, as you know. The note in my memorandum- book is, * Landed in New York, May 23d.' I stayed in New York two or three days before I came on to Boston. The second night, May 24th, I had a curious dream. I dreamed that I was in your house, Frank, not in its present state, but as it was when Grandmother Carrique lived there, the old, unaltered colonial fashion. There seemed to be a great party gathered in the parlor, and I was the centre of it. As I stood there a young girl en- tered, whose face was the face of Drusilla Carew, but whose costume was that of the present day. Then I noticed that all the rest of the company were dressed in the old Revolutionary style. Only myself and this young girl were in the nineteenth century costume. As she entered I suddenly real- ized that the occasion was a bethrotal or a bridal, and this young girl and myself were the principal actors. I stepped forward eagerly at this, preceded by an elegant gentleman who was the image of old Colonel Carrique, as he is represented in Stuart's picture. But at this movement the young lady turned abruptly away, and presently, after a few words of remonstrance from the old colonel, she fled incontinently, followed by the colonel himself. 198 In the Red Room. The dream may not seem impressive to you, but it made an odd and fixed impression upon me. Well, this dream, as I said, occurred on the 24th of May. Three days after, 1 was sitting in Tremont Temple, listening to John Weiss. Suddenly a little com- motion took place near me somebody wanted a fan ; I turned and saw in the lady who held the fan the image of Drusilla Carew and of my dream ! I believe I may have been very rude in my close ob- servation, and almost pursuit of this lady ; but I hope she has forgiven me " a half smile here, a quick look at Jenny's face, Jenny's face which was downcast and colorless, but which with wonder- ful self-command showed little of the emotion that was agitating her, a quick look as quickly with- drawn, and then : " Three days or nights after this I went out to your place, Frank, to an evening party, and there I met the lady of my dream, the image of Drusilla Carew, and she was dressed, as 1 had seen her in my dream, in white with pink roses." He gave another quick look now at Jenny, and then drew the photograph from its case. " Here," to Frank, " you will see for yourself whose face this resembles." Frank Carrique, with a queer smile about his mouth, regarded the photograph. " Yes, I see," he said, " and it is not so much wonder. Drusilla Carew was Jenny Merry weath- In the Red Room. 199 er's grand aunt also, or her mother's. If Johnny Carew had n't been burrowing off there in Ger- many this half dozen years, he might have told you that there was a flesh and blood fac-simile of the old picture down here in Balem in a small cousin of his. But Johnny's story has another gap in it. Drusilla, poor soul, did n't break Henry Carrique's heart, but got her own broken instead. It was a made up match between the families, and upon Miss Drusilla rebelling they shut her up in a cer- tain red room in the Carrique mansion she was a ward of the old colonel's, and an inmate of the house until her majority. And here they threat- ened and persecuted the young woman until she went into a decline and died there. And ever since then there has been a story that at certain times, and to certain persons, these remote people appear and go through some of their disreputable old pranks of threatening and persecution. I always thought this a great piece of humbug, and I do now, but I must own, Jenny, that all this dream business of yours and Henry's is as pretty a piece of coinci- dence as anything I ever heard of. They did ap- pear to Jenny, you know, in a dream, Henry, and but I 'm not going to stay to tell you that. It 's time we were on our way if we are going to drive home to-night, Mart. The storm is over, you see, and I '11 bring the horse round." In the little in- 200 In the Red Room. terval of " bringing the horse round," Henry Car- rique was wise enough to ask no questions, but aft- erwards when he found himself alone with Drusilla Carew's grand niece, he asked one question, in the answer of which Jenny Merryweather gave up all the secrets of her heart, all the queer dreams of this strange summer, gave them up forever into the keeping of her dream's hero, and thus perhaps laid the restless ghost of the red room forever ; for it is another queer fact in this queer history, that from that time, from the moment of Jenny Merry- weather's betrothal to Henry Carrique, there was nothing further ever heard from the red room ; nobody's dreams were ever disturbed by a sight of old lady Carrique's vindictive visage, or Colonel Carrique's blandly cruel face. " It is a fact, you know, it is a fact, Frank, that lots of people have been worried by that old colo- nel and his godless old mother when they 've slept in the red room. There was Johnny Carew, and Tom and Mary, and all the Bartletts had a sight of 'em, and now the old thing is done with, and anybody, Carew or Carrique, can sleep the sleep of the just there. You may pooh pooh, and talk till you 're blind, Frank, but there is the fact ! " Thus Mrs. Frank Carrique, in answer to her skeptical husband. But skeptical as Frank Carrique is, he can never explain quite to his own matter-of-fact In the Red Room. 201 satisfaction the odd coincidence of those " duplicate dreams," as he calls them. It is a subject, however, that he generally avoids, but when drawn into it in family conclave he disclaims all knowledge of de- tails, and has latterly been known to term the whole history, " One of my wife's stories." Henry Carrique, with a less contracted and per- haps more courageous intellect, is quite willing to take Shakespeare's view, that " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy ; " but his little wife, with her Scotch ancestry, beats them all with her belief and unbelief. She scouts at Frank's " timid scoffing," as she calls it ; is entirely unbelieving in the theory of coincidence ; and believes, as implicitly as Grand- mother McKay ever could have done, that she and her husband were brought together by the ghosts of the red room. NANNIE 0." I HE RE she is, looking straight down at us with those frank, brown eyes. " No, they are black ! " Begging your pardon, they are brown hazel brown. I ought to know, for I have met their rays these thirteen years ever since I began to thiuk and speculate. Hazel hair too ; that prettiest and oddest combination eyes and hair to match. You can see the color in the curls there, running out over her neck ; how could she ever roll it back and submit to that powdering process? Yet it's pretty. The forehead shows its clear brunette tan, the cheeks their rose, " the mouth of your own geraniums red," in brighter contrast for those soft white puffs above them. There 's nothing else so different from to-day. That blue silk is fashionable like your own, my lady a square corsage; and the neck is as white as yours, and the shoulders shaped as finely. Yet she lived almost a century ago. No wonder you say, " Oh, that those lips had Ian- Nannie 0." 203 their " own geraniums red," like a bee into a rose, yearning to have some fairy, waft her down with her w r and from that painted enchantment, and see her step stately in hoop and farthingale along the gallery. I call it a gallery, though it 's only a wide hall, with no grandeur of fresco or carving ; but it is hung with these old family portraits from end to end. If my father had a passion in the world, it was for collecting these painted sem- blances of his race ; and here they are, a motley assemblage enough, " peace to their ashes." Here they are man, matron, and maid, soldiers, priests, and scholars ; and one or two with a ribbon across their broad breasts, starred, and otherwise orna- mented with signs of a foreign service. Courtly looking cavaliers, in good sooth, with faces that re- mind you of those young French heroes whose pict- ures are scattered all through the history of Napo- leon. These are my favorites ; but my father was fonder of " My Nannie O " than all the rest. " How came she by that title ? " Wait. I will let her tell her own story. Here is her diary written with her own hand that hand whose perfect copy clasps the great fan of pheasant feathers there. Just think, my lady, while you wave and flirt that little sandal-wood bijou, of the cunning dexterity those other small, fair fingers 204 "My Nannie 0." must have exerted in the management of that enor- mous thing. Yet, as Domenichino said of his early paintings, " It is not so bad after all." You per- ceive how the baby proportions of the hand are enhanced by its effort to compass the fan's bulky size, and how, in the stately movements, the soft, plumy tips would waft like some sunset cloud be- tween the lovely girl and her adorers. I am not sure, my lady, but she had the best of it. Behind this screen of defense, what chances she held of carrying on a prolonged siege, wherein her coy re- sistance was charmingly relieved by a bright glance, or a blush now and then flashing out through the plumy pheasant feathers, and setting the suitor's heart in a flame, to be quenched and fired again by the same tantalizing process ! What can you do, mia cara, with that pretty toy? You lean your pretty chin upon it in pretty attitudes, it is true ; you tap it lightly against those milky pearls, which stand in rows there between your scarlet lips ; you mockingly raise it before your face in a playful threat ; but " My Nannie O " had but to turn her slim wrist, and build a wall between herself and the sighing swain. Almost a century ago ! What a long, long time ! " And did she live to lose that dimpled smooth- ness, that bonny brown hair, that rose-geranium color?" " My Nannie 0." 205 No ; that is the best of it. There is no bowed figure, and wrinkled face, and silver hair, that once bloomed eighty years ago, and called itself " My Nannie O." No, " Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead." And she is always beautiful Evelyn Hope now to us. Eighty years ago, then, she was twenty a rose in bloom. Eighty years ago that fair hand first be- gan to pen HER DIARY. June 10, 1795. To-day I am twenty years old, and to-day I prom- ised to begin a diary a daily diary to the end of my life. The end of my life ! It makes me shiver ! I wonder when I shall die ! and 1 am so afraid of that thing called Death that thing ! Yes, an actual presence. Dr. Parker says I must be very wicked to feel so ; and if I don't repent and love the Lord, that I shall go to hell. His words are mere words nothing more to me. " Repent and love the Lord ! " He talks as if I had only to will repentance and love. Let us see ; what have I to repent of? Last night, in dancing with Mr. Glan- cey, I let my glove fall, and when he picked it up so gallantly, and asked to keep it, I pretended a great deal of propriety, and demanded it back again, when 206 "My Nannie 0." I did n't care a pin for it. Indeed, to tell the whole honest truth, which I will do in this diary, because it is between my soul and I, I would n't care for his keeping it provided he had stolen it 't was a pretty glove, and shaped to a pretty hand ! In this, then, I have acted a lie ; and I ought to repent of lies. I wonder what Tom's wife would say ; I '11 ask her. She 's very decorous and very strict. I shall ask her, " Jane, what should I have replied to Mr. Glancej , when he picked up my glove in the dance the other night, and asked to keep it ? " Jane will look at me in silent amazement a mo- ment ; then she will answer, " Why, ' No,' of course ! " " What, when I would rather he would have it than not ? Would n't that be a lie, Jane ? " Then how she will talk to me. I " must be very corrupt to feel so ! " I am not corrupt ! I am only natural. When he picked up the glove and asked for it, the thought came, quick as a flash, that it was a pretty thing for him to ask, and that it would be a pretty reminder of me. Then another flash brought up all the Sister Janes and the Aunt Prudences, and I answered " No ! " Eh ! but what did the naughty Nannie do' next? She gave him the flower that had lain on her neck through the evening ; and when he kissed the flower and said, " Happy flower, who does not envy thee ? " she made him a sweeping courtesy, and sent him a "My Nannie 0." 207 laughing response very softly, so that the Sister Janes and the Aunt Prudences could n't hear ! French women do these things, Jane will tell me, and French women are coquettes. Well, but then I came' honestly enough by it, Sister Jane. There is blood of the ancien regime in my veins, you know. Viscount Chastellux, who came over in the French fleet, was mamma's brother, dear ; that 's his portrait over the fire-place in mamma's room, you remember. He named me, too ; and they say I look like him have his nose and his hair. Only think that splendid young officer ! I am so vain of it my head is quite turned. There, I had forgotten that I was to confess my sins here on this white paper. Good little page, I '11 call thee a white-robed priest. That 's it I '11 turn Catholic just quietly here, and tell my beads on that pearl necklace De Gremont gave me. Now, down on your knees, Nannie, to confession ! Firstly, I have told a lie. Secondly, I stayed away from church last Sabbath because my new bonnet was n't done. Thirdly, I got into a passion with Hannah for putting powder on my hair when I told her not, and boxed her ears. That 's a pretty story to tell my lovers, eh ? I know some of my sweet sex who would relish the telling, though. Fourthly, after making beaux yeux at young Parson Leigh- ton, I refused him flatly yesterday. Fifthly, I went 208 "My Nannie 0." out on Tuesday with my young brother John, and gave him the slip while he stopped to watch the man with the puppet-show; and just at that time Mr. Glancey, whom papa does not favor, came up with me, and we went out on the old road for a walk, and did n't get back for two hours or more. Sixthly, when papa found this out by little John, and reproved me with sharpness, I swept him a saucy courtesy, and reminded him that I should never demean my old French blood : his first mar- riage, before he ever saw mamma, was a mesalliance with one of the provincial bourgeoisie. Seventhly, on going out of the room I encountered little John and scolded him for tale-bearing, shaming him into tears and indignant denials. Whereupon I told him that he should die in silence, if he would be a gentleman, rather than to tell secrets ; and I have treated him very cruelly since. Eighthly, I refused to ride with Mr. Edward Overing yesterday morn- ing because he chose to give me some advice about my conduct on the night of the ball, telling him I wished there would be another revolution, that we might see specimens of gentlemen here in America such as my mother remembers, and telling him vari- ous savage things that I '11 warrant spoilt his sleep that night. Ninthly, when my mother asked me to go to Mrs. Overing's this afternoon with the apple-jelly for little Sally, who has the measles, I " My Nannie 0." 209 answered " No ! " very unbecomingly, and said I was tired of the Overings, and would n't wait on them any longer. There was no one else to go then, and I saw her set out herself without a word. Here 's a list for you, good priest. Which do I repent? Which? Hear that! Well, I don't repent giving Mr. Glancey the flower, nor the courtesy ; but about the lie ? Oh, I 'm repenting that in sackcloth and ashes ! And I don't feel very bacf about my bonnet sin, though I suppose that it is because I am so wicked. But I am sorry I boxed Hannah's ears, for it was not becoming a gentlewoman ; and Hannah is a good girl, though she tries my temper with her forgetfulness. Then I am not sorry I refused Parson Leighton, for I did n't want him, and I could n't help making beaux yeux at him any more than I could help breathing ; for he has beaux yeux himself without the making, and he is forever following me about. And I don't repent walking with Mr. Glaucey, though papa frowns on him. He is a gentleman, though he is a gay British soldier, and a second son ; but I am sorry I spoke up to papa as I did that was mean and cowardly in me to reflect upon his poor young wife, whom he married for love, and who died so soon. And I am sorry I treated little Johnny so cruelly, for the lad is far better than I, and loves me more than anybody or any- 14 210 "My Nannie 0" thing, save his romantic notions of right and truth. As for refusing to ride with Mr. Edward Overing, I am not repenting much. He, to set himself up as my adviser ! For my last offense, I repent most heartily and honestly, and long to lay it all to the door of his high mightiness, Edward Overing; for if he had but held his peace, I should never have answered my sweet mamma so rudely, and allowed her to go through the hot sun on that tedious walk. My sweet mamma, who never said a sharp word to her disobedient, disrespectful daughter. But I am to put it all down to my hot temper my fiery Chastellux blood. I know there is no use in ex- cuses. I will have no shoulders but my own to bear this sin. To-morrow I will do penance. I will scourge my willful spirit by spending the whole day in mamma's service ; and it is house- cleaning day, so it will be bitter scourging enough, for I hate the whole thing. So endeth the first lesson of my diary ; sOj good little priest, I have knelt at thy confessional. Bless me in the name of my godfather, who be- lieved in the holy Catholic Church, the saints and the martyrs. Saturday, 1795 Well, I knew it would be so. I prophesied the very words. u You must be very corrupt to feel in this way." Yet they moved me as if unexpected. "My Nannie 0." 211 Oh Jane! Jane! in your cold, unnatural presence I feel so spelled with evil that I can never talk freely. But what matter ? She would not com- prehend if I did. And yet she is like most of the women one sees so artificial, so afraid to evince emotion. Even my kind, good Mary, Henry's wife, looked quite shocked at me one day when I told her I hoped that I should marry a man I loved some- time ; and more than that, as I declared that I liked the society of the other sex so much. So do all women the little hypocrites ! " Corrupt ! " how the word follows me how it angers me. My cheek flames, and yet I know it is a corrupt estimate. Yes, a corrupt estimate ! Jane is a type of most of the girls I know. There are the Eldons, the Drakes, and the Cartrights how they talk of proprieties ! how they turn up their noses (Liz Drake's is such a pug) at some poor sinner of their sex, whose steps have wan- dered out of their track ! I scared them most to death one day by reading a translation I made of La Magdalene. If I had n't been Judge M'Lean's daughter they would have flouted me me, Nannie Chastellux M'Lean. As it was, Miss Miriam El- don relieved her mind by a long rigmarole without rhyme or reason, on and concerning the sphere of woman. Then what did they do ? They fell to scandalizing poor little Mrs. De Croix. Such 212 "My Nannie 0." things as they told things that I would blush to repeat ; and they relished the telling. Jane was present, and she joined in the cry ! She liked it too ! A madness seized me then. I broke out in a storm of indignant passion at them. I told them their minds were fouller than many a lost sinner's life: that I, who could translate La Magdalene, would scorn to talk with my own sex what I would blush for men to hear. Oh, how my fiery Chastel- lux blood ran over. I exult to think of it. They were so frightened they turned pale, but they never answered me no, not a word. I conquered, as truth and right must in the end. I came off vic- torious with the tri-colored flag of justice, loyaute, et charite ! Huzza ! Vive la Charite f Wednesday, 1796. '. This morning I sat to Mr. Allston for my por- trait. Papa and Mr. Malbone came in in the midst of the sitting, which relieved me, for I was fast getting into a fidget ; for, as papa truly says, I do not relish sitting still, or in one place long. Mr. Malbone came and looked over Mr. Allston's shoulder at Mr. Allston's request, for they are fa- mous friends ; and I heard him say : '* What a prophetic look you have put into the eyes ; where did you find that lurking sadness ? " ** Where, indeed ? " and Mr. Allston suspended his . "My Nannie 0." 213 brush to look at me a perplexed expression crossed his face, and he seemed disturbed. Then Mr. Malbone came and stood beside me, and began telling me of our dear, delightful old Newport told me strange and wild traditions, till I got to thinking, I remember, of a story mamma once re- lated to us all when we were children ; a story of how my uncle Chastellux was once thrown upon a curious old island not unlike our Newport though it was in the south of France, and of a picture he brought away a picture of a lovely court dame, who was banished for some suspected treason from the kingdom to this little, quaint island city, and who pined and pined for her native land, till at last, grown desperate and crazed, she took her life into her own hands, arid when one morning my uncle went to pay his respects to her, he found the house in great commotion and the lady lying in state. An old servant put a package into his hands, addressed in a woman's handwriting to him. In it he found the painted likeness of herself, and a touching farewell, wherein she thanked him for his friendly offices. The likeness was one he had often seen her occupied upon, one that she had painted herself, and the last touch had been given but a few hours before the rash act which terminated her existence. It was evident to him that it was the eyes that had received the latest touch, for 214 "My Nannie 0." in their mystical depths he recognized a wild, prophetic light he had never seen before. So strangely and powerfully did this impress him, that my mother said that he never looked at the picture without an inward shudder and devoutly crossing himself, gay soldier and brave man though he was. Papa was displeased that mamma had told us this story he did not like for us to get such wild notions in our minds, he said. I was thinking of all this, as I sat there, when I was aroused by an exclamation of Mr. Allston's, " Look at her now, Edward ! " And I glanced up to see Mr. Malbone regarding me earnestly. " There, you see where I got the prophetic look ! " Papa came forward from the window where he had been reading a letter, and surveyed the por- trait : u My dear, of what were you thinking awhile ago?" I told him readily, and was surprised to see a heavy frown settle over his face, and he ut- tered his usual word when vexed, '* Pshaw ! " and then, " That childish story has frightened her ; get that look off, Mr. Allston, or I shall not know my brave Nan." ' I must take another sitting for it ; she is too fatigued now, said Mr. Allston." And thus it was arranged that I should go again the next day, which is to-morrow. Mr. Malbone promised me to finish his story of " My Nannie 0." 215 Newport sometime, if I would tell him mine the one to which I alluded to papa. " He is a nice youth, but very young too young for you, my gay little coquette ; so don't be turning the boy's brain with those arch glances," Mr. Allston whis- pered as I went out. That 's the way they go on. I can't say a civil thing to a young gentle- man but I am trying to turn his brain. It 's all in my blood this fiery, Chastellux blood, that sparkles and foams like wine so what can I do ? What do I care ? Yes, what do I care ? I am free free as God made me. Will I sell my birth-right for a mess of pottage ? for it comes to that, this putting rein and check on word and look and mo- tion, and perpetually acting a lie as Jane and the rest of them do. No, never ! " She would not dare say such things if she were other than she is if she were not Judge M'Lean's daughter." I overheard that sly snake, Sue Cart- right, say this to Hannah Carroll yesterday. Thank my stars I 'm Judge M'Lean's daughter then ! And Hannah, dear, kind little Hannah, defends me, and tells my saintly Susan I am not so much to blame, for I was actually educated in a convent a French convent ! What would papa say to that, I wonder ! Ah, but I yearn for la belle France ; for the gay streets, the assemblers, and the warm hearts. 216 "My Nannie 0." I am only half American. I cannot get used to their cold, stiff ways ; they are like their cold, chilly climate. I shrink and shudder under the influence of both. Ah, it is very triste here, very triste ! Hark ! what is that ? A guitar. Who plays a guitar ? Mon Dieu ! can it be De Gremont ! Wednesday, 1795. A whole week since I wrote here last. How irregular I am ! Ah Ciel, how perplexed one gets trying to think in two ways ! Ah, that I had never left la belle France ; that I had re- mained with ma grande mere ! But I shall never make a proper diary in this way. Where did I leave off a week since ? I stiall begin on Thursday then, the day I went to Mr. Allston what am I thinking of ? Shall I forget the strains of the guitar that moved me so strangely ? I knew it could be no other than De Gremont, and I sat spell-bound. I could scarcely credit my ears ; but when I heard that low, sweet song of Burns's he always sung to me, " And I '11 awa' to Nannie 0," my heart gave one great bound and I wept. He had come away from sunny France, away from the grand court, the palaces, and the people of his name for "My Nannie 0." 217 me. In that moment I had forgot that I had promised papa but yesterday to retract my refusal to young Parson Leight.on. I forgot that I had even fancied, myself, that I liked the young man ; for in that moment I knew that but one love, but one passion, would ever have possession of my heart ; that the love I had thought time and ab- sence had stifled was only sleeping ; that De Gre- mont was my destiny ; and I must give him some sign. What ? A happy idea came to me ; I caught my guitar the very guitar he had given me in France and began playing that sweet old melody from Favart's Opera. I did not dare to sing, but he knew the words well : " Though young and yet untaught, New feelings sway me now ; This love I never sought, It came I know not how." As I ceased he took up the strain and gave me that tenderest of all songs : "Ma mie Ma douce amie, Rdponds a mes amours, Fidele A cette belle Je 1'aimerai toujours." Then I heard his retreating footsteps, and I sat there quite still till they had entirely ceased. 218 " My Nannie 0." And he knew me well he did not linger : ah, he knows everything so well all the little nice shades of delicacy and courtly breeding. There is none like him here, not one ; and I thought he had forgotten me perhaps. And now he has come to seek me. Will papa frown upon him or smile? The French are our friends surely, the friends of America, then De Gremont has princely blood, a noble lineage. He is not very rich, but papa is not sordid. These thoughts, I remember, passed like light- ning through my mind, and all night they kept with me in my dreams. In the morning I awoke with a new feeling. Life was no longer stale, no longer triste here. While I had been sighing for la belle France more than its kingdom had come to me! I dressed myself with unusual care, for I knew not at what hour he would present himself. I had many fears that he would delay until my appoint- ment with Mr. Allston arrived, for I knew .what French habits were; \miehcharmante! at just a quarter before ten I heard a voice I knew so well asking at the door for papa. Oh, the sweet southern accent of France, how it thrilled my heart ! Then the two tones together reached me from the study ; then the tinkling of glasses as papa offered him wine ; then ah then, a message for me ! "My Nannie 0." 219 I ran down with such nervous haste I shook the powder from my hair upon my neck, and then I stayed at the threshold in a little fright of pleas- ure and pain. Presently I summoned courage and opened the door. A mist came before my eyes, but through it I was conscious of a glance that rapt me from that moment away from the world. Then he started forward to meet me he took my hand he murmured softly : " And I see you once more ! I have prayed for this hour, Nannie." Here my father interposed : " De Gremont, you know upon what terms you meet!" I heard the words, but they sounded afar off. I did not catch their meaning. I only com- prehended De Gremont's reply as he waived his hand with a little gesture as though he put away some obstacle. " Give her to me five minutes, five seconds, Monsieur M'Lean, and then" I was in some sort of a dream for a space severed from my common daily life and in a little sphere of rest and delight. Then my hand was released with a lingering pressure ; it was like a farewell, and be- fore he spoke I felt as if the north wind was blow- ing down to my southern vintage land, and I was once more alone. " M'amselle," he said, " I have told your father that I love you that I have good blood, good position, and respectable means. He approves all 220 "My Nannie 0." this, but refuses you to me because I am of the Mother Church ; because I am not of your faith ; and, m'amselle, he says you are to be given in marriage to a priest of his order ! " Then I told the whole truth. Was this a time for faltering ? I told of my preference long ago when we walked in the garden of the old chateau, and how it had grown to something deeper now, and that I could never consent to marry another man. Then my father put on his iron look. Ah me ! and as good as swore that I should never marry one of the corrupt Catholic Church ; indeed, that I should never marry other than young Leighton. My blood rose at this my fiery Chastellux blood and I said some rash things; and there before us both he stood, De Gremont, looking like an angel so kind, so sorrowful, so calm. Into my storm of words my father's stern voice broke again : he never looked at me. " De Gremont, you know the terms upon which you meet." " That I would give her up if I could see her now I remember ! " " But I will not be given up ! " I cried, in a little passion of tears. " I will not be given up, De Gremont ! " Oh the light that came into his eyes, the color " My Nannie 0." 221 that mounted to his cheek ; and I knew then that I had sealed my fate and his. The next moment he was gone ; he had wrung my hand at parting, and left a kiss upon it, and a tear it is my marriage ring. Then my father how he talked to me he called me " unmaidenly " and " forward," and sent me to my room with a fire in my heart and rebellion in my soul. At twelve, when I came down to keep my ap- pointment with Mr. Allston, he stood drawing on his gloves waiting to accompany me. I knew what it meant ; I was to be overlooked, watched. I am afraid I have a very bad heart, for I said to my- self : " Is this love that my father feels for me, this selfish determination to force me into compliance ? " Then I tried to remember how he had in many ways been very kind, and that he was my father and had a right to treat me thus : but I could not make it right ; the old rebellious heart kept on. Arrived at Mr. Allston's, we found the door ajar and passed in : two or three persons stood with their backs toward us looking at a picture ; and I heard one say : " It is the look of those who die young a sudden, undecaying death ! " I stepped forward they were standing before my portrait, absorbed in the contemplation. I glanced at papa he looked annoyed ; and beyond 222 "My Nannie 0." feeling a little wicked pleasure that he had over- heard this remark, I did not otherwise think of it. Afterward, when I spoke of it to mamma, she shuddered, and begged me not to think of such gloomy predictions. Somehow it does not trouble me at all and I wonder, for I am a superstitious little thing. Ah, mon Dieu ! nothing troubles me now but one cruel fate ; and death is better than separation surely. I sat a long while to Mr. Allston ; but at last he flung his brush down. " I do not know why it is," he said, " but I can- not get that look from the eyes : the more I labor the stronger it becomes." Papa came round and stood before it with a disturbed face, glancing at me now and then. " Your daughter is not well, perhaps, to-day, Mr. M'Lean?" " She was never better, sir ! " papa answered, with his coldest manner. "But let it rest a while; in a week or two the change may come easier." So \ve went home and left it, to my great relief, for I could think of nothing but the strange event of the morning. For the next three days I do not think papa had me out of his sight. On the morning of the fourth he called me into his study and told me something that turned me stone-cold that De Gremont had "My Nannie 0." 223 sailed for France. " I saw him last night," he went on, " when he intrusted me with this, which I told him I would give into your hands." I re- membered it a great seal-ring which had been his father's : a new hope shot into my heart as I took it. The motto was "Attendre et veitte" rudely cut upon the shield of gold, and I remembered the old > tradition he had once related to me. The ring had been in the family since the time of Louis Quatorze ; one of his ancestors had it made for a token a token of his constancy when separated from the lady of his love sending it to her by a trusty servant. She understood its meaning, and watched and waited, filled with hope and faith. I knew that he sent this ring to me for the same purpose, and / would wait and watch ! That very night, as I sat by the window after every one had gone to church but mamma and I, I heard a low, fine whistle the same tune, " My Nannie O!"' He had not gone then; it was all a ruse a solemn ruse ; no simple cheat of cunning, for he is the best and bravest gentleman that ever lived a sacred stratagem to overcome the force of might, not right. Mamma was in her room, and I was alone in the parlor ; again the low, fine whistle, nearer yet, under my very window. I leaned out, I spoke softly : " I am here and alone ; I will come out to you." 224 " My Nannie 0." I ran around by the currant path and met him met him alone for the first time in three years. Oh, well I remember that parting in the garden of the chateau ! well I remember how he looked as he said, u When I am my own master, Nannie, I shall ask you of your father ; but you will forget me ere then, perhaps." And in all the three years, because I had no word or token, I thought /was forgotten instead. I little understood his sense of honor and delicacy. And now he had asked rny father the fatal ques- tion fatal it had indeed proved ; and here we met, the scions of the houses of De Gremont and Chastellux, in secrecy and trepidation. He asked me to fly with him ; he said, and my heart ay, my conscience tells me truly, that we have no right to sacrifice ourselves to unjust prejudice and force. He told me of the letter my grandmother had written to my father a letter of approval, giving her consent, her benediction on our union. And for a question of belief in certain creeds this union must be denied and given up ; ay, worse I must enter into a marriage without love, and while my heart is another's ! Ah, mon Dieu ! what shall I do. A marriage without love is in- famy ; I would die rather, for I know what love is now. Thus three days have I been tortured and fluctuating ; every hour dreading discovery of De "My Nannie 0." 225 Gremont's stolen stay in the city, and to our even- ing interviews. To-night must witness my decision. Disobedience to my father, or a living death for years perhaps. What next shall be recorded upon these pages I marvel. Mutiny or death? I shudder and turn cold. Friday, 1795. I have decided ; last night, while the guests were assembled at Governor Adams's, I stole out in my gauze dress to the old pine avenue, where I had appointed to meet him. He was waiting for me : oh, so worn and haggard in these few days, yet looking so patient and kind ! I put my hands in his ; I said : " Armand, I will go with you I am yours ! " He did not burst out into any extravagance of joy at this. He took it solemnly and still ; for he feels with me that it is a sad and solemn thing we are to do. Solemnly and still, with hands clasping mine and eyes that grew misty with emotion, he looked down upon me and said : " God give me grace to make your happiness, Nannie ! " Then it was arranged for our departure. On Saturday night at eleven a French vessel is to sail for Toulon. He knows the captain, the officers they are friends, every one. There is a chaplain, 15 226 " My Nannie 0." too the old chaplain of the chateau who will marry us. All this time they have waited for us, the good, true people. After this interview I had to go back to the gay rooms, to answer inquiries as to my absence, and play my part in the scene. I thought we should never get away. The hours were endless, and all night I dreamed of my coming trial, yet deliv- erance It is now seven o'clock ; in three hours I go to meet thee, my beloved. Three hours, and I cut adrift from my father's house forever ! Ah, will he curse me ? He was never very soft, very gentle, but he must have loved me. I remember once when I was ill how he walked with me all night, a peevish, crying child, in his arms. I remember God stay such memories ! Oh, Lamb of God, give me consolation in this trying liour ; soften mv father's heart to me ! And my mother, my dear French mamma, she will not utterly hate me for this act. She has merci, she has charite. She loves her race the people of France ; she will have faith in me to the last. She knows I do not , demean myself by an alliance with the house of De Gremont. And little John God bless thee, little John ! thou lovest me, mon frere ; and I, oh, Jean ! Jean ! I may never see thee again ! Ten minutes of the three hours gone. I will "My Nannie 0." 227 write to the last, and leave this poor brief record of my New England life behind me, a better ex- planation than I could now give for my flight. Brief record, indeed, and offering what vivid con- trasts ! With what lightness I began it, with what tragic sorrow do I end it! How life, in one night, from a folded bud became a perfect flower ! How slow the minutes creep ! Yet ah, mon Dieu! each one hastens me forever from my fa- ther's house. My father's house ! To-morrow it will be all over. He will know what I have done, that I have fled from his roof and taken the actions of my life in my own hands ! To-morrow ! Oh, my father, forgive me ! See ! I leave a kiss for you on this insensible page a kiss and a tear ; and mother, my sweet French mother, you will say a prayer for me each night, and I for thee shall never cease praying ! And little Johnny, little Jean, I have thee in my heart mignon ; while it beats it will never turn cold to thee. Ah, Johnny, little Johnny, thou art all the child left now. Be brave and gentle, little Jean ; and intercede for me, if hearts are hardened to me when I go. And Jean, when thou gettest to be a man, do not judge me harshly and by the world's judgment. Believe that I acted not hastily, but with calm consideration ; and remember I loved thee, Jean, to the end ! .... The wind is rising how it soughs round the 228 "My Nannie 0." pines and maples ! Ah, and there is lightning over the hills. A storm is coming down to us. Well, it is fit, my beloved, for this wild and troubled de- parture ! How the time goes ! thoughts grow leaden, and I write but slowly as the hour approaches. Some- thing tells me I shall never look upon thy face again my father, nor hear my mother's voice, nor kiss the lips of little Jean. Never again ! Perhaps this storm may find a shroud for us. Ah, how the eyes of the portrait flashed upon me then. They are unchanged as he left them. * The look of those who die young a sudden, undecaying death ! " Is this my fate ? Am I going now to meet it ? Well, I would not turn back. I go to meet it calmly. The time approaches is now here. Fare- well father, mother, little Jean I go with your images in my heart, and love for you for evermore in my soul. Again, adieu / . . . . In family archives and town records there is a storv told of a fearful night in July, 1795, a night of storm disastrous on land and sea. Many vessels went to pieces on the rocks and in the wild winds. Many sad stories were told of shipwreck and loss ; but the saddest of them all was of the French ship L'Esperance. Not fifty miles from shore the storm burst upon her in its sudden fury, dismantling sails "My Nannie 0." 229 and driving her against the rocks, where one bolt of lightning finished the work of destruction. Guns of distress, fired at short intervals, brought the citi- zens from their beds down to the harbor. On that night Judge M'Lean, contrary to his habit, was singularly wakeful and restless ; he had retired early as was his wont, and, waking after a brief slumber, heard the wind rising and soughing round the pines and maples. A little later a door slammed with violence ! How high the wind must be ! did his wife hear it ? he asked. Yes, she had heard it, too. Just then the dog howled beneath the window a wild and mournful expression of dumb emotion. Then for a brief period there was a lull ; the wind sank away, and the air grew still and brooding. Slumber again came to the Judge, held him per- haps for an hour, when an awful crash, as if the heavens were rent asunder, awakened him. He started from his bed, flung on his dressing-gown, lighted a candle, and looked out into the hall ; he was not a nervous man, nor given to imaginings, but it seemed as if above the raving wind he heard the voice of his daughter Nannie calling in dire dis- tress. He listened again through the wide, old hall, and down the stairway once again, with ten der supplication, the sweet, young voice called " Fa- ther!" 230 " My Nannie 0." He waited no longer, but more rapidly than he had moved perhaps for many a day he strode on to her room. The door was open, a candle flaring low in its socket, and the bed unoccupied. Open on the table lay the " Diary." A few words, and he knew the truth. Yet her voice ! Ah ! she had repented at the eleventh hour and turned back. She was waiting at the door for pardon and admit- tance. He would give her both: and the great oaken door was unbarred for the penitent ; but only the rain claimed admittance the rain and the wind. In vain he shouted her name and waited for a reply. None came. Suddenly the minute-gun boomed through the night : once and yet again ; and once again from afar, borne down it seemed over sea and shore, that sweet, thrilling voice calling * k Father ! " Who may tell what strange, unusual promptings of the spirit stirred within that stern breast as out into the raging storm the Judge, obeying that call, took his way ? Only one boat crew dared to put out on that toss- ing sea, and that, after the stirring appeals of one who did not belong to their number; and when they pushed off from shore, at the helm there he sat, eager and watchful and still the old Judge. Returning, they brought the freight of death. Lashed together on a floating spar, hand clasped in "My Nannie 0." 231 hand, and tresses mingling, were the dead bodies of Armand de Gremont and Nannie Chastellux M'Lean. Long after, the sailors told how the stern old Judge sat rigid and motionless watching the pale, cold face of his dead daughter, and now and then saying softly, " Poor little Nannie ! " Long after, my father, the last of the old house of M'Lean, brought out of manifold wrappings the portrait of the Judge's daughter. The picture be- ing stained with mildew and must, in many places, he had it retouched. When the painter returned it, the wild, prophetic look that once baffled the unerring brush of Allston was no longer there ; the painter of another age had sacrilegiously stricken it out. But on twilight eves in July, when the wind is soughing through the pines and maples, looking into the lovely face there. I think I see the old, old gleam of prophetic intelligence ; and I say, softly, " The look of those who die young a sudden, undecaying death ! " Then I only recall the heroine of the French ship /,' ' Esperance Nan- nie Chastellux M'Lean. But when the sunshine of high noon streams down the hall I recall the arch young girl who scolded Hannah and swept a saucy courtesy to the gay British soldier. But in her tragic hour, as in her gay young life, never a truer, tenderer heart ever beat in womanly bosom than in the breast of " My Nannie O." IN A STREET CAR. I. IM MALLORY came swinging on a half- run round the corner of State Street to catch an up-town car. " A red car," his friend Saxon had told him ; and there it went full speed out of sight just as he came in view of it. An east wind was blowing, as it generally is blow- ing in Boston, and Jim Mallory shivered, and sneezed, and drew up his coat-collar, while he anath- ematized the Hub of the Universe and her east winds, as a Gothamite was bound to do. Presently, what with the dust in his eyes and the well-known delightful regularity of that city, Jim got * turned round," as the country folks say, and for a few min- utes could n't tell for the life of him which was up town or which was down town. " Confound the place ! " he began, when all at once it seemed as if all the cars in the city sud- denly appeared. There they were, red cars and green cars and blue cars, bearing down upon him In a Street Car. 233 in swift confusion. He hailed the first, and shouted where he wanted to go. The driver shook his head, and pointed backward in the most indefinite manner ; and there were six cars behind him. He hailed the second, and went through with the same humiliating experience. He hailed the third, he hailed the fourth, and all at once came to his senses at the fifth, and discovered they were every one going the wrong way, and he himself all out of the way on the wrong street. He breathed an ex- clamation more emphatic than polite, and dashed through to Tremont Street just in time to catch the car he was after. Jim was a handsome fellow, ordinarily, but you never would have suspected it now. To begin with, he had a cold in his head ; and for "A cold in the head What can be said, Uglier, stupider, more ill-bred?" Being a blond man, too, made it worse, as every blond, be they man or woman, can testify ; for flushed and swollen eyelids and excoriated nostrils show off to most dismal disadvantage beside a blond's "hair of yellow or beard of gold." And then the thin tissues, the light skin, which evinces every disarrangement ! Well, besides a cold in the head, Jim Mallory was covered with dust from his head to his feet. Then, because of the cold in his 234 In a Street Car. head, he had drawn his coat-collar up around his ears, and, because of a general uncomfortable con- dition, he had drawn his shoulders nearly up to his ears. Then something had happened to his hat. I don't know what it was. He did n't know what it was, or he never would have sat there right in the face of those five girls, looking like such a Guy, without trying to remedy it. It was some- thing between a crush and a twist, which, taken to- gether with his general muffy appearance, gave him the aspect of a forlorn and seedy old fellow at odds with himself and with the world. This was a climax for a young man who led off the German in Avenuedom, and who was spoken of usually by all feminine Avenuedom as "so distingue!" And there sat those five girls, without a suspicion of these facts in his history. Five girls as pretty as girls need to be, laughing and chattering like like well, like five girls. I don't think there is any comparison that will serve as well as that after all. There they sat, laughing and chattering, per- fectly heedless of the forlorn and seedy old fellow doubled up in the opposite corner. Such things as he found out ! For there was nobody else in the car but another forlorn and seedy old fellow at the end of the seat. And what heed did these girls think would be given to their chatter by these for- lorn old fellows ? In a Street Car. 235 " How do you get your hair into such a lovely fluff ? " inquired a brunette of a blond. "Why, I roll it up into curls, and then just pass a coarse comb through it. But yours is lovely, too, I 'm sure. How do you do yours ? " " Roll it on a heated slate-pencil." " Oh, but that hurts the hair so. I put mine into crimping-pins," said another. And still another : " I braid mine and press it." And still another : " Common hair-pins, I think, are the best of all. But then one looks so like a fury in any pins." Then the brunette gave a little giggle. " Oh, girls, I put my hair into pins once those great crimping-pins Lou uses. It was one morning when it rained, and I thought I was safe from vis- itors. I was going to the opera in the evening, and I wanted to look very nice, you know. Well, there I sat in the parlor, practicing my last sing- ing lesson, and never heard the bell nor a foot- step until some one crossed the threshold. Who do you suppose it was?" And the little dark head buried itself in a little Persian muff to smother an- other giggle. " We can't guess. Who was it ? " burst out the other four voices in the greatest excitement. Up came the head from its temporary hiding, the pretty face all a-blush, the dark eyes all a-dazzle 236 In a Street Oar. with laughter, the frizzed hair a little the worse for the Persian muff. " Oh, girls ! it was Will Hess with Langford Langford just home from Paris, you know! " "What did you do ?" from the chorus of four. " Oh, I did n't die, and I could n't run away ; for there they were, right before me : so I made the best of it, and laughed, for it was funny, and then I snatched our George's Scotch cap from the table where he had flung it that morning, and covered up my steel horns and my ugliness in a twink- ling." " Plucky, I declare ! " muttered Jim Mallory, inside of his coat-collar. " Will said I deserved a Captaincy for my cool- ness and strategy. Will is always making his bad puns, you know," concluded the fair speaker. And then the others took up the tale, and not one but had some gleeful misadventure to relate. And in this relating, what mysteries of rats and mice and waterfalls, of knots and coils and curls and crimps, were not revealed to Jim Mallory as he sat there unsuspected in his corner ! It was as good no, it was a great deal better than a play to him. But presently the car filled, and the heed- less voices hushed, and the play was over. And presently appeared the conductor, and Jim began rummaging his pockets for change. In a Street Car. 237 " What ! No money ! Where in thunder is my pocket-book ? " he almost said aloud. His pocket-book was gone, probably picked when he was frantically hailing those six cars. Yes, his pocket-book was gone. But he must have some loose change about him, certainly! and with all the blood in his veins rushing up into his face, Jim Mallory continued his search a fruitless search, for not a penny, even, could he find. Here was a pretty fix for a man to be in. A stranger, too; and just then Jim caught a sight of himself in a little pocket mirror he had turned out with other effects in his searching, and discovered what a forlorn-looking object he was, and, con- sequently, how much more difficult and disagreea- ble was his position ! What upon earth was he going to do ? What upon earth was he going to say ? He had a quick brain, usually fertile in expedients, but the igno- minious facts of the present case were too much for him. He had heretofore declared, with rather a grand manner, that a man should rule circum- stances ; and here were the most contemptible cir- cumstances ruling him with a rod of iron. " If it was n't for those five girls, now ! " he thought. But he might as well have said : " If it was n't for that conductor ! " and a great deal better, for there he was, slowly but steadily making his way toward 238 In a Street Car. the lower end of the car, with a wary eye for all whom he caught napping or negligent. And there were those five girls with their tickets fluttering in prompt readiness! All at once at this juncture he became conscious of a pair of the softest, ten- derest eyes he had ever seen fixed upon him with a look of shy commiseration. It was one of those five girls. It was the brunette, who curled her hair over a slate pencil, and dramatized her disha- bille. So, she had been watching him. She had seen his empty pockets, and was moved to pity thereby, spite of his forlorn and seedy appearance. He felt the blood go tingling up into his face again, but before he had time to know whether he was glad or sorry there was a pull at the bell, the car stopped, and two or three people were getting in. In the crowd and the confusion up started the little brunette, and nodding over her shoulder at her companions, made a hurried rush for the door. Jim Mallory, sitting there, saw once more those pitying brown eyes, and then, as her garments brushed past him, he felt a little ungloved hand thrusting something into his hand. His fingers closed over this u something " mechanically. For a moment he could see nothing in the hurry and confusion, but there was a near, faint scent of early violets, which suddenly vanished with a soft rustle of silk. He looked up then, and she was gone. In a Street Car. 239 He looked down and there in his palm was " Why, bless my soul, a car-ticket ! " as Jim him- self exclaims whenever he tells the story. And to follow Jim's words at this point, which will tell the story better than anybody else's words : " There had that little angel, under the disguise of crimped hair and a lot of other nonsense, taken note of my misfortunes, and made her little plan of relief, which she carried out. like the strategist she was, at the very climax of my desperation, arid when the stir and confusion about us would cover every movement. Was n't it splendid, though ? How many girls do you suppose would have done that for such a muff as 1 looked to be that day ? For I tell you, Tom," this was to Tom Saxon, " that I did look something awful. What with those con- founded cotton-samples from your office sticking to me, and the dust, and the cold in my head, and a smash in my hat, I was about as seedy a specimen as you ever saw." And Tom thought he might have been. But out of one dilemma Jim Mallory had stepped fairly into another. As that " little angel in crimped hair and a lot of other nonsense " stepped out of the car, after the performance of her impulsive action, which was really a very pretty action, something entered Jim's heart which he had no will nor wish to banish ; but, as 240 In a Street Car. I say, it was out of one dilemma into another " out of the frying-pan into the fire," Tom Saxon would laugh, for all the clew he had was a name that hundreds of girls in Boston owned. And the way he got this was at the moment of her vanish- ing, when the astonished four cried out in chorus, " What 's Molly getting off' here for ? " In vain Tom had brought him face to face with some half a dozen Mollys of his own acquaintance. From each, Jim Mallory had turned with a sigh of disappointment. Not one of them belonged to his angel in crimped hair. II. IT was curious how often after this Jim found it necessary to visit Boston. There was always some "business for the firm," which made it ab- solutely incumbent upon him to see Saxon & Co. And when he was there he fell into the habit of sauntering down Tremont Street about shopping hours. And from there to Washington Street, into Williams & Everett's, or Loring's library. And not only there, but into trimming stores, into jewelers' shops, into fancy-goods stores, into cars and omnibuses, and everywhere that he caught the glimpse of a little figure with dark, crimped In a Street Car. 241 hair tucked under a morsel of a bonnet. He passed the winter in this hunt. It was worse than the search for change that lucky arid unlucky day when he first met her ; or, as Tom Saxon jeeringly said, it was like that ancient search for a needle in a hay-mow. Such a reputation as he got, too, for the most impudent starer decorous Boston ever saw! " I think that New York friend of yours is hor- rid, Tom," said not less than six girls that winter to Tom Saxon. " Horrid ! how ? " asked Tom. " Why he follows you about and stares so ! " Tom looked at them. Every one had dark hair, and every one had it crimped. " He came into a car where I was one day," said one of these girls, "and just took an inventory of my features; and then, after fidgeting about two or three minutes, he dashed out." Tom gave such a laugh at this that the fair speaker looked at him in wonderment, and pri- vately told an intimate friend of hers afterward that she had reason to think that that Mr. Mallory was having a very bad influence upon Tom Saxon, for she had seen him " when well when he seemed very unlike himself, to say the least!" If Tom could have heard this I think he would have laughed still more. As it was, his laugh was 242 In a Street Car. all at Jim Mallory ; and Jim himself, though quite in earnest in his Quixotic search, saw the joke as readily as Tom, and, with ineffable bonhomie, en- joyed his own absurdity. As I say, he passed the winter in this hunt, and by spring the excitement seemed to have subsided, or, at least, to be externally overlaid by other things. Tom Saxon thought it had died out en- tirely until one day, as he was strolling across the Common, listening to some business suggestions of Mallory's, he saw Jim give a sudden start as a little dark lady passed, with her hair crepe and a gay voice, chatting volubly to her companion. " Jim, I thought you had dropped that string." Jim laughed, and sung, in a low baritone, "Her bright smile haunts me still." That was the last that Tom heard of the sub- ject until well, we will not anticipate. Winter passed, and spring had come ; and with the spring, premonitions of cholera. All the Mal- lory family, mother and sisters, were in a state of worry and fuss from the first, about this expected scourge. They had twenty plans in twenty days as to where they would go, and what they would do. Cape May, and Long Branch, and Newport went by the board, because somebody had told Mrs. Mallory that the sea-coast would be unsafe. In a Street Car. 243 Then came all the mountain resorts. This was too far, that was too near, another too full, etc., etc., until a queer little place, perched up among the Catskill Mountains, was decided upon. "And it will be so nice for you, James dear, for you can get your mails twice a day," said Mrs. Mallory. But " James dear " made no reply to this. He had other plans. " I 'm not going to sacrifice city comfort another summer for one of those mosquito haunts," he said to his partner, " And as for cholera bah ! " And so it came about that, for the first time in six summers, Jim took up his head-quarters in the deserted house at home, and found it, as he de- clared, the coolest and most comfortable summer resort he had known for a long time, I don't mean to say that he took no excursions away from the brick and mortar and marble. There was scarcely a week but found him for a day or so at one or another of the pleasant spots about New York, which were easily accessible to him by night trains or steamers. In the mean time his mother and three sisters wrote him frantic letters from the Kauterskill. They offered him every inducement they could think of plenty of room, pure air, a nice table, and " such pleasant society. ' " The Caledons most delightful people are 244 In a Street Car. here," wrote Kate Mallory ; " two charming daugh- ters and a son. They live on our street at home, too ; is n't it funny we came way up here to find each other out ? " And here followed an urgent entreaty to brother James to come up by Saturday night without fail and get acquainted with these de- lightful people. But brother James had made a partial engagement to go home with Mr. Wing, his partner, on Saturday night, and he did n't " see that he could get away from it," he wrote back to Kate. Before Saturday night, however, Jim Mallory found it the easiest thing in the world to get away from his partial engagement with Mr. Wing. It was Tuesday when he wrote to Kate. On Wednes- day morning, as he was walking down the street on the shady side, he suddenly heard a strange, shrill voice call out " Molly ! Molly! Molly!" He laughed a little at the remembrance this called up, and turned to look in the direction of the voice. There was n't a soul to be seen within speaking distance. But still that voice went on : " Molly ! Molly ! Molly ! " ending with a curious chuckle of laughter. He turned more quickly this time, and there, just above his head, discovered a gray parrot swinging in its great gilded cage. He laughed again, and the parrot took it up with his mocking chuckle, and with, it seemed to Jim, actually a In a Street Oar. 245 knowing wink at him, repeated once more : " Molly ! Molly! Molly!" Jim Mallory shrugged his shoulders, then thought of the little dark-eyed angel of his search, and was half a mind to lift his hat to her name, even when thus shrilly cried, when all at once something ap- peared at that window by which the parrot swung which rooted his feet to the pavement. This "something" was a little dark, dark head, crimped and curled, and decorated with brilliant little bows, that fluttered in the morning breeze like the pen- nons of his hope. He had spent a whole winter hunting for her. He had haunted Boston streets, and Boston cars, and Boston shops, day in and day out, without result; and here at last he found her here in New York, in the very heat of mid- summer ! And there she stood, talking and chattering to her bird, looking more like a little angel than ever ; and there below, looking up at her, stood Jim Mallory in a dazed and hopeless condition. It is n't possible for any young woman to remain long unconscious of such a gaze as this some attraction, magnetism, or whatever it may be, makes them " aware " at length. So presently the owner of the frizzed hair and the fluttering bows ceased talking to her bird, and, with a little start, became conscious of the observation of Jim Mai- 246 In a Street Car. lory ; and once observed by those bright eyes, no young man could have had the hardihood to have remained at his post. But I must say, Jim Mallory left his position gallantly some might have said audaciously but there is no audacity but of impertinence, and of this there was not a particle in Jim. So now when he met those bright eyes, and turned away with his hat lifted to them, I say he did sral- j lantly, and the young lady who was the object of this gallantry was intuitive enough to think so too. You may be sure that as he went he was not so dazed but that he sent a keen glance toward the door which shut in his little dark-eyed lady. But there was only the number 2767 no betraying door-plate gave him further clew. This was enough, however, for the present. More than enough you would have said if you had watched him that morn- ing. Wing, who was the sedate father of a family, catching the look in his eyes, asked him, with grim humor, if he had lately come into the possession of his Spanish estates. Mallory laughed his genial, jovial laugh, and confessed that he had had direct news of them. Fate, which had been so elusive with him for the last six months, now seemed to smile invit- ingly, for that very night as he paced slowly up In a Street Car. 247 the street, humming to himself " Her bright smile haunts me still," there from the doorway beamed the very smile he was singing of but but who the deuce was that that black-bearded, Italian-faced individual, who sat so composedly on the second step ? What if Jim saw his Span- ish estates disappearing in a blue mist at this if. The next moment the mist cleared. " Mr. Langford, when do you return ?" the lady asked of the black-bearded. Jim never heard the answer. What did he care when he returned ? he was only " Mr. Langford " to her. The next sentence brought the blue mist back a little. " Will says he should like to spend every winter in Paris." Will ? who was this Will ? what relation did he bear, confound him, to the dark-eyed little party ? Then he recalled the Will Hess of her gay misad- venture. So here he was again. Suppose now this Will Hess had long ago taken possession of his Spanish castle? Suppose but hark, what name is that? Can he believe his ears when Langford says : " Miss Caledon " ? Miss Cale- don ? Kate's Miss Caledori ? Yes, clearly, Kate's Miss Caledon, for presently she remarks about the Kauterskill, and something else, which explains 248 In a Street Car. her presence in New York for that week. Kate's Miss Caledon ! Was there ever anything like it ? " What an idiot I 've been ! " he soliloquized. " Rushing all over Boston, when if I had had my eyes open I dare say I might have met her a dozen times on Broadway. Visiting at the Hub with those four girls, I suppose, when I saw her." Which conclusion of Jim's was the most accu- rate one he had arrived at for some time, as he ascertained when he called upon Molly Caledon the next morning. Yes, he actually called upon her, upon the strength of Kate's last letter. To Molly Caledon this call seemed by no means hasty or singular, for after the manner of young women, she and Kate Mallory had become bosom friends in these last six weeks, and what so natural as " dear Kate's " brother calling upon her when she was in town? I think Kate herself would have been no little astonished if she could have listened to Jim's free reference to her letter ; and I think she might have been doubtful whether she had ever written that letter. Certain it is that Miss Caledon received the impression by this sketehy reference of Jim's, that it was at Kate's information of her presence, and at her suggestion that he ventured to call. But as I have said be- fore, what could seem more natural than this call ? In a Street Car. 249 And what more natural than Mr. Mallory's return- ing with her to the Mountains ? And what more natural than that on this journey these two should progress very rapidly in their acquaintance with such a mutual foundation of intimacy arid interest as " dear Kate ? " As for " dear Kate," she had the wit and tact to keep her astonishment within proper bounds, but whenever she found Jim alone did n't he have to take it ? " I can't imagine how you can be contented to stay here, Jim " she would say ; " and I can't imagine how Mr. Wing can do without you so long." But Jim could imagine, and so I think after a time could little Molly Caledon ; and so I think after a time could every member of the house ; and it was n't very difficult to prophesy the denouement either, in the estimation of these on-lookers. But to Jim it seemed much more difficult, for Molly Caledon was far too bright to carry her heart on her sleeve, and a spice of feminine coquetry helped her to play a game of hide-and-seek. There came a day, however, when she had to give it up, and acknowledge herself found, if not caught. It was the day Will Hess and Langford came. " Now, or never ! " thought Jim Mallory, as he watched her greeting with the aforesaid gentle- men. " Now, or never ! " I think Molly must 250 In a Street Car. have had a suspicion of his design, for with a queer, coquettish perversity she put him off, first with cro- quet, and then with a very animated discussion with Langford, and so on, through a list of employments and occupations that continually necessitated a third party. But Jim was too sharp for her at last. The mail had just come in, and as he read his letter from Wing with this item at the close : " One of us will probably have to go to Paris next year ; " a bit of strategy suddenly proposed itself to him, which he forthwith acted upon. Walking straight by the group wherein Miss Caledou stood talking animatedly with Langford, he glanced up from his letter with the most absorbed air and inquired of the landlord when the next train left. " Oh, are you going to New York, Mr. Mai- lory ? " asked Molly, with great sang-froid. " And if you are, will you undertake a commission for me ? " and Molly came forward from the group at this. Then she saw his serious preoccupied business face. " No bad news, Mr. Mallory ? " " Oh no, not in the least ; only my partner writes that one of us must go to Paris ; and I sup- pose that one will be your humble servant. How many commissions shall I execute for you there, Miss Caledon ? " looking straight into the pretty In a Street Car. 251 face before him. There was a quiver of the eye- lids a quiver of the lips, and a sudden forgetful- ness of the hide-and-seek game altogether ; and Jim knew that he had won. " Coine into the garden, Molly," he said, in a lower tone. " I 've something else to tell you." They went into the garden, and so absorbing was the story that he had to tell that he for- got all about the " next train " until Molly, as she heard the shrill whistle of the locomotive, looked up slyly into his face, and said : " How about the cars, Mr. Mallory ? I think you 've lost them ! " Jim laughed. " But I 've found something bet- ter than the cars, Molly." And then he laughed still more. And then he told her that other story of the cars when he had first met and fell in love with her. " And you don't mean to say that you were that old codger in the corner ? " asked Molly .in amaze. " I do, Miss Molly." " My ! but did n't we girls go on ? " " I should think you did. I found out all your hair-dressing secrets all about the crimp- ing and frizzing, you know and say, Molly, do you ' do ' your curls now over a slate-pencil ? 252 In a Street Car. and do you ever get caught in your hair-pins by such young gentlemen as Hess and Langford now ? " " My goodness, did I go on like that ? " "Just like that ; and I thought the story in the end of the Scotch cap was rather a plucky climax. And when I listened to it, and saw what a gay little bird of Paradise you were, I hud no idea that such a tender heart lurked beneath." Molly laughed a little and blushed a little as she said: "Well, I don't know how any one could have seen another in such a horrid dilemma with- out doing something to help him out of it. I re- member, though, how scared I felt as I jumped up ; for, you know, I had to get off there to hide the action, for I knew / should feel silly enough, and I knew it would be terribly embarrassing all round." " Yes, and in that way I learned your Christian name ; for all those four girls wondered what Molly was getting off there for." " And that was why you stopped under my win- dow, Sir, was it, when my bird called Molly ? " " Oh, you saw me at once, did you, Miss Molly ? " " I saw you lift your hat to me, Sir," answered Miss Caledon, rather confusedly. In a Street Car. 253 " And Molly, my girl ! " returned Jim Mallory, now dropping his gay tone, " I shall lift my hat always to the angel in your nature I discovered that day in the street car." MRS. F.'S WAITING-MAID. |HEN General Butler was in New Orleans, Colonel F. with his wife and family oc- cupied the confiscated mansion of a Mr. Chesang a Frenchman by birth, and a rebel by principle. There were Mrs. F. and her two chil- dren, Tom and Eva, a boy and girl of fourteen and eleven, and Mrs. F.'s sister a young lady of twenty. Besides these, two or three officers made it their home with them. It was a pleasant party, and Mrs. F. enjoyed it vastly, with one drawback, however. She was a New England woman, and accustomed to the domestic life of New England. Her house had always been a model of elegant nicety her servants well trained and reliable, as a usual tiling. To a person with her habits these slave-servants were almost intolerable. This. thru. was the drawback her bete-noir in the midst of so much that was delightful. " The idea, Tom," she would say to her husband, " of being obliged to have six people to do what two could do at the North ; and then of all the idle, careless, irresponsible creatures ! " Mrs. F:S Waiting-Maid. 255, The Colonel took it philosophically laughed at their idleness, quoted the climate, their training or want of training, and told Mrs. F. that in Rome she must expect to do as the Romans did. Mrs. F. knew all this, and a good deal more about it than Tom did, and she knew it was a trial. But one day she came in to dinner radiant. I believe she thought the worst of her troubles were over. " Tom ! " she said, in an exultant undertone as she stood by the window with him waiting for Ma- jor Luce to come in " Tom, I 've discharged Rose, and engaged a perfect jewel of a waiting- maid." " You don't say so ! Let's send out at once and have a cannon fired and the bells rung." " Now, Tom, be serious and listen. She is a Creole, and belonged formerly .in a French family up the river, and does n't speak a word nor under- stand a word of English ; " and Mrs. F. looked up in triumph as if the last item was the crowning virtue. The Colonel laughed gayly. "That's the best of all, is it, Kate ? " " It is n't the least, Colonel Tom. Do you re- member how Rose used to be found at key-holes sometimes ? " answered Mrs. Tom, significantly. Just here Major Luce came in, and the subject 256 Mrs. F.'s Waiting- Maid. was dropped as they turned to the dinner-table ; but when they rose the Colonel, who could never spare his fun, took Luce aside and said lowly, but not so lowly but that Mrs Tom heard : " Luce, I want you to go down to the General and communicate a bit of news to him it 's a bell- ringing, cannon-firing affair, Luce, and I've no doubt he '11 give orders " " Now, Colonel, you 're too bad ; " and Mrs. Tom, interposing, told the story herself ; but the Colonel had his laugh, and that was all he wanted. Four or five days passed, and nothing more was said about the new waiting-maid until one morning the Major asked, " How does Rose's successor get on, Mrs. F. ? " "Admirably. She's a perfect treasure, Major Luce. I knew I should like her in the beginning, she was so quiet and deft. Ah, Major, if you had ever had your muslins torn, and your laces lost, and your best silk dresses borrowed without your leave, you would appreciate what it is to be served by this Mathilde," concluded Mrs. F., with mock gravity. The Major laughed. ' ; I dare say I should, Mrs. F. ; but my muslins ' and laces are warranted not to tear or lose, and my best silk dresses don't fit anybody but myself." Later on that same day they were all sitting in Mrs. F:S Waiting-Maid. 257 the drawing-room, Mrs. F. and the Colonel, and Miss Yescey Mrs. F.'s sister, and Major Luce and two other officers who had dropped in for a call. It was getting late, and a wind had sprung up. Mrs. F. shivered with a little chill. " Kate, you are taking cold ; send for that para- gon to bring your shawl," suggested the Colonel, in an aside. When the paragon came in with the shawl he was busy talking again. Major Luce, who hap- pened to be disengaged and looking that way, was probably the only person conscious of her person- ality as she entered. " How well she carries her- self ! " he thought, vaguely. Then he glanced at her face. Below stiff folds of muslin, which con- cealed her hair, shone a pair of brilliant eyes, an olive cheek, and a mouth cut like Diana's, and curving beneath, a chin so firm, it was a trifle heavy. " She looks like a picture ; and where have I seen one like it ? " mused the Major. " I know. In Valsi's studio at New York there 's a Roman girl carrying a palm-branch, which she regards dis- dainfully. I used to think that Miss Laudersmine looked like it too, sometimes. Valerie Lauders- mine. I wonder where she is now. She was a Louisianian used to spend her winters at New Orleans. Flandsome, haughty creature how she 258 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. would lift that proud head of hers if she knew I put her in comparison with a slave-girl ! Heigh- ho ! I suppose she 's a rebel now. If she had been a man a pair of epaulets would have shone on her shoulders. And how soft she could be too, sometimes ! I called her Valerie once ah me ! " And in his recollection of Valerie Laudersmine he forgot Mathilde the waiting-maid. The waiting-maid, however, as the days went on, continued to give unbounded satisfaction to her mistress. Nobody ever dressed hair like her ; no- body was ever at once so deft and tasteful. Of course the Major forgot all about her ; never thought of her again until again she recalled the picture in Valsi's studio, and so Miss Lauders- mine. He was playing backgammon with Miss Vescey in Mrs. F.'s little sitting-room up-stairs one morning, and glancing over- the board he could see Mathilde sitting sewing in the room be- yond. ;t Did you ever see that Roman girl in Valsi's studio, Miss Vescey ? " " Oh yes. It 's a strange picture. I think." " Did you ever notice that your new waiting- woman looks like it ? " " No, I never thought of it ; but now you men- tion it, seems to me I do see the resemblance. Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 259 But you need n't speak so low, Major Luce ; she does n't understand a word of English." " Oh, she does n'.t ! " Presently Mrs. F. came in, and presently after coming in she wanted something which Mathilde must bring. " Mathilde ! " and Mathilde carne, quiet, sound- less of foot, arid prompt. She stood receiving the order, while the rest talked, oblivious of her. Major Luce was listening to Miss Vescey's description of the onvx ring she wore, and listening, was holding Miss Vescey's hand to look at the ring for the mo- ment. He glanced up from the hand suddenly, and caught a pair of eyes that were not Miss Vescey's ; dark, brilliant, and piercing, they startled him with an odd sensation, like peril ; but as quickly as he met them they were withdrawn. As she left the room the influence seemed to .pass, and he laughed at himself for it. He hardly thought of it again until the next day, as he was running up the stairs, he came upon her carrying a basket of flowers to her mistress's room. Two or three choice roses fell out at his feet, and he stooped involuntarily to pick them up. As he tossed them back he looked at her eyes again, but the lids were down, and her " Je vous remercie " was spoken in a swift nasal, and her whole air the very type of the class of slaves who are educated in the houses of the 260 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. French planters up the river. As she went in lie met Mrs. F. coming out. He could say to Mrs. F. what he could n't to Miss Vescey, for besides being a great friend of his she was a married friend. Mrs. F. knew a good deal about his affairs, one way and another, and what he hadn't told her she had guessed from what he had told. She knew about Valerie Laudersmine. She knew, that is, that, as the phrase goes, Miss Laudersmine and Major Luce had had a great flirtation, and that at the end of the summer, when she waited to hear of their engagement, that Luce suddenly disap- peared, and only came back when Miss Lauders- mine had left, and then with a gloomy face, and two or three bitter words that once or twice dropped from his lips. She had guessed the story, for she knew Valerie Laudersmine well enough to know how proud she was, and how high she looked ; and Everett Luce was not high enough for that looking. This was five years ago, and she supposed by this time that he had gotten over the whole affair, and perhaps forgotten Valerie Laudersmine. In a moment she knew that he had n't forgotten her when lie stopped her and said : u You remember Miss Laudersmine, Mrs. F. ? " " Oh yes." And Mrs. F. looked curiously up at his face. It was cool enough. Mrs. F. 7 s Waiting-Maid. 261 " Have you ever thought," he went on, " that your waiting-maid resembles her in some ways ? " u There ! " And Mrs. F. struck her two hands together in the sudden shock of thought. "There! that is it ! I knew there was something some resemblance to somebody." They sat down together in the alcove of the bay-window in the hall, and by-and-by Luce said, with a wistful, grave simplicity that touched Mrs. F. greatly : " I never quite got over Valerie Laudersmine, Mrs. F. ? " Mrs. F. said, in return, some kind, sympathetic, womanly things ; and under her spell he told her more of the affair than she had ever known before, and she found that she had not guessed wrongly. " It is a long while ago five years, Mrs. F. ; and I really thought the other day that I did n't care, you know, any more : but just the turn of a girl's cheek and a pair of black eyes, and that old nerve I thought dead goes to vibrating again, and it aches confoundedly, Mrs. F., though I had the tooth drawn long ago." He laughed, but it was a sad little laugh, sadder than any sigh to Mrs. F. Half ashamed of his confidence, he resumed : " I believe I am acting like a school-boy, or a fool, Mrs. F., but T am not going to say anything about it after this." 262 Mrs. F.'s Waiting- Maid. Mrs. F. assured him that he might say just as much as he pleased about it to her, and that he was neither a school-boy nor a fool iu her esti- mation for what he had told her. But she had something to say now. " There 's one thing you have n't thought of, Major Luce perhaps you never knew the fact. Valerie Laudersraine, when she was at Cape May that summer, had a waiting-maid who bore quite a curious resemblance to herself." Major Luce's face was all aflame in an instant. He wheeled round. " Who knows " " Exactly, Major Luce. Who knows but this girl is the quondam waiting-maid of Miss Lauders- mine ? Shall I ask her now ? " " Yes, if you will, now and here." Mrs. F. opened the door of her sitting-room and called " Mathilde ! " Mathilde dropped the flowers which she was arranging and obeyed the call with her usual alacrity. And as Major Luce looked again at this face which recalled another face the nerve he had fancied dead began to thrill again ; and it thrilled still more as he listened to the con- versation that ensued. It was in French, and the girl's voice was as he had heard it a while before nasal and a trifle shrill, like her class, not like the dulcet tones of Valerie -Laudersmine, that Mrs. F:S Waiting-Maid. 263 soft-voiced siren who had sung his heart away five years ago. " Mathilde," asked Mrs. F., " did you once be- long to Miss Laudersmine ? " Mathilde looked open-eyed surprise as she an- swered, briskly, " Oui, Madame." " How long since ? " " Five years," after a minute's counting on her brown fingers, and with a stronger nasal than ever. " And how came you to part from her ? " " Monsieur Laudersmine died, and Mademoi- selle Valerie went to live with her uncle. It was an exchange, Madame. Madame Chesang wanted me, and offered Celie for me. Celie can- not dress hair like me ; but Mademoiselle Vale- rie is good-natured, so she took Celie for me, Madame." " Do you mean to say, Mathilde, that Madame Chesang, who used to live in this house, was your mistress before you came to me ? " " Yes, Madame." " And that Monsieur Chesang is uncle to Miss Laudersmine ? " "Yes, Madame." " Did you come straight from Monsieur Che- sang's here ? and was Miss Laudersmine there ? " broke in Luce, in a slightly nervous tone. "Oh no, Monsieur. Mrs. Chesang died three 264 Mrs. F:* Waiting-Maid. years ago, and she gave me my freedom in her will ; then I came down to the city and lured out as fine laundress. I have n't seen Mademoiselle Laudersmine since, and I could n't tell where she is, Monsieur," with a curious, stealthy look at Luce from her piercing eyes. There was no more to be learned from her after this, and as soon as possible Mrs. F. dismissed her back to her task. But after this Luce was no more at rest. He could never see the slim, straight figure, nor the olive curve of Mathilda's cheek, nor the flash of her dark, brilliant eyes beneath those folds of muslin, but it set his heart to beating with old memories. One night she passed him, unconscious of his presence, as he stood in that very window-recess. The poise of her head, the undulation of her movements was so like, so very, very like ! " Confound the resemblance ! " he said, under his breath, and with an impatient stamp of his foot, a bitter, troubled, vexed face. Then he turned and looked after her. He saw her pass down the dim corridor. He saw her half turn the handle of a door, then pause, retrace her steps, and come swiftly, softly back. It flashed over him in an un- reasoning sort of way, just then, that Mrs. F. and her sister were both away for the evening ; at the same moment he shrank involuntarily within the Mrs. F:S Waiting-Maid. 265 embrasure. The next instant Mathilde flashed swiftly past his place of concealment and entered Mrs. F.'s room. And why not ? He had seen her enter at that very door many and many a time. Why not now ? There was no reason why not, to be sure ; but a curious sensation oppressed him as he watched her ; a sensation that was compounded of suspicion and peril ; and he remembered the same sensation once before when he had first seen her. One, two ; the seconds ticked by, in audible throbs from the great hall clock, and still he waited, watching now for her reappearance, yet half jeering at himself for the indefinable fancies that held him there. One, two ; it seemed an age. What was she about there so long ? So long ! Pshaw, it was but three minutes. Three minutes, in that time what might not be done ? " What a fool I am ! " he muttered. " I believe I have been drinking too much champagne ; I dare say the girl is putting her mistress's finery in order." But hark ! the door opens ; there she comes, the gay coral ear-rings sparkling and tinkling ; a smile lurking about her lips, which parting, hum swiftly a bit of the Marseillaise. How like the maid is to her quondam mistress ! The old pang strikes the 266 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. watcher in his nook as he sees her ; and he sees, too, one shapely hand thrust into an apron pocket, and hears the rustle of paper, and is half ashamed of himself for the suspicion that upon so slight a footing gains ground. But as she passes out of sight he says, with a certain dogged resolution : *' I '11 keep an eye on her any way ; if there 's mischief I'll find it out but I wish she wasn't so like, so very, very like." And he did keep an eye on her. Twice that evening in the garden grounds he crossed her path with the careless pretext of smoking. Twice he cut off her egress from the private gateway. At the last she turned with a gesture, and half an exclamation that was impatience and disappoint- ment all in one the impatience and disappoint- ment simply of a foiled coquette. " Possibly no deeper errand than to meet her lover ; " but as he made this inward remark he sighed satisfaction as he saw her flit up the stair- way before him. By and by the Colonel and his wife and Miss Vescey came in. It was early yet, and a storm brooded in gusty sobs about the house ; it brought damp and chill into the wide rooms, and Mrs. F., shivering under the influence, besought them to adjourn to her smaller boudoir, where Heckla should kindle a fire upon the hearth. Thither they went, and while Heckla, sable servi- Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 267 tor, kindled a blaze which sent out aromatic odors of cypress and cedar, Miss Vescey brewed a bever- age whose scents were of spices and wines. The scene so home-like and simple dispelled all fancies and suspicions, but still there was the possibility, and the Major told his story. The Colonel, shrewd soldier, was alert at once, listening intently and gravely ; but Mrs. F., nettled at any 'distrust of her favorite, made jest of the whole aifair. It was only some little French love-mottoes Mathilde was after, probably ; she herself had told Mathilde where to find them ; or it might have been a re- cipe for a cosmetic Madame Droyer had bestowed upon her, a most wonderful recipe for the hands ; and Mathilde had a passion for concocting messes ; and very likely, too, it was the young Creole who kept the drug-shop round the corner whom Ma- thilde was seeking at the gateways. Major Luce felt excessively annoyed at Mrs. F.'s annoyance ; annoyed and a trifle disturbed at this jest-making. Miss Vescey, cognizant of all this, tried to dispel it with the breath of a little song, airily chanted over her foamy distillation. A little French song, whose English " Heart, heart of mine, Why dost repine?" could scarcely give the impassioned aerial grace of 268 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. the original, which he had heard before. But it was the same lovely tune ; and he could imagine as he bent his head away from the singer, and dipped his mustache into the warm sparkle of the spiced wine frothing up in his glass he could imagine Valerie Laudersmine singing to him one summer night as they rowed down the river for lilies. Five years, and the lilies were all dead long ago and Valerie, perhaps she too had followed the lilies. A sharp pang pierced him. Dead ! he had not thought of that. Dead all that life and bloom and beauty ! He looked up suddenly ; it was a whisper through the song that caught his ear just a " My shawl, Mathilde," and there she stood, for once uncon- scious, for once rapt, away and apart betraying herself.' There was wistful depth in her eyes, there was melting sweetness on her lips, as if she might then be singing softly the old French song : " Heart, heart of mine, Why dost repine ?" A little tinkling crash, a start and exclamations, while Mrs. F. moved her violet silk from the scene of accident, and then they all fell to laughing over the Major's preoccupation. "Or was it Julia's song?" bantered the Colonel. " Yes, it was just that Miss Julia's song," with a single glance at Miss Vescey, which cost Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 269 Everett Luce all his self-command ; for over it flashed another glance, startled, yet, unafraid, which seemed to plead : " I trust you ; you will not be- tray." And while the others laughed and bantered he bent down to the fragments of his glass upon the floor, unheeding the reminder of Mrs. F. that Mathilde could perform that service ; and bending there, his hands touched hers, and he knew that perhaps he held her life Valerie Laudersmine's life in his keeping. Valerie Laudersmine ! All this time it had been Valerie Laudersmine, and he had not known. At first a thrill of delight, swift and unreasoning, at her simple presence ; then fear, anxiety, foreboding, and suspicion, which deepened into horror, at the fate that might be that must be closing around them. He drew a deep breath at the thought that he had betrayed her ; for, knowing now that it was Valerie Laudersmine, he knew no step of hers was purposeless in that house, nor that, left alone, she did other work than her own. What thwarted purpose was that in the garden then ? What noiseless errand in the room beyond? And he had betrayed her! Be- trayal what did it mean ? And this betrayal was assuredly of wrong and misdoing, of treason and conspiracy ! What did his loyalty command him to do but to betray all treason and conspiracy? 270 Mrs. F:S Waiting- Maid. His brain reeled with these questions, and his pulses throbbed dizzily, while still he bent there in such dangerous neighborhood, and still the laugh and bantering jest went on, and no one but they two conscious of the tragic undertone. " Curious creature she is ! " remarked the Col- onel, as, the fragments gathered up, Mathilde moved stately from the room. "A faithful creature!" interluded Mrs. F., with a little breath of malice. " See how she mends this old lace," holding up a web of Valenciennes. " Lace ? And how about that gold-lace on my coat, Mrs. F., which this ' faithful creature ' was to rejuvenate with her wonderful fingers?" asked the Colonel. ' How about it ? it 's like new. You could never tell the broken thread ; but look and see for yourself in the wardrobe in your loom." He came back with it on his arm, and, looking at it, fell into praises which satisfied even Mathilde's mistress. "And the papers in the inner pocket I told you of, you put in my cabinet, I suppose, as I sug- gested ? " "No, not in the cabinet; it was that day I AYUS ill in my room, and I dropped them in my writing- desk ; or Mathilde did for me." The eyes of Major Luce threw a startled, fearful Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 271 glance across the table ; and there was something in the answering glance of his superior that fully met it. Just a moment of waiting, then the Col- onel rose again. Mrs. F. looked up from the con- templation of her slippers on the fender. " Wait, and I '11 send Mathilde for the desk, Tom." But the Colonel had disappeared, and pres- ently returning bore in his hands a little escritoire of gilt and inlaying. " The key, Tom underneath there. Don't you remember the small secret drawer outside for it ? " It was but a second that turning of the key, that lifting of the lid ; but in the brief time what length of fear and dread, what fainting horror, pos- sessed him who watched and waited from the other side of the little table, where still Miss Vescey brewed her posset and hummed her song. But the song was coming to an end, no more to be resumed that night. It broke off suddenly, in the turning of a note, at a new note in her brother-in-law's gay voice. "Kate, Kate! what have you done?" It was not only displeasure, but it was the sharp, swift tone which bursts forth at only one crisis that of peril or its anticipation. Then in an instant dis- may seized upon the group there in an instant they all knew what had happened, that Major Luce's suspicions had come true ; but still in anx- 272 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. ious voice Mrs. F. cried, " What is it ? what have I done, Tom ? " 44 It was that plan of Gerritt's, Major, the whole line of attack, and the present disposition of our men in complete drawing ; " but the Major, before the Colonel had spoken more than the first half dozen words, had disappeared. He would save her yet from question or trial. If he reclaimed the lost paper, what more for all loyal purpose was needed ? If he reclaimed it ! Down a wide hall, as he went out of Mrs. F.'s boudoir, he caught the echo of a footstep. Follow- ing it, the flutter of a light garment led him on, and on, still on, though a maze of doorways and pas- sages until the fever of pursuit and delay nearly maddened him. Then a voice was it Mrs. F.'s ? far off at first, then coming nearer, called " Ma- thilde, Mathilde!" then other footsteps, other voices, when suddenly a breath of the storm blew coldly in from an opening door, and, following on, he found himself in the garden grounds, out in the wild tempestuous night. A late moon was strug- gling up through flying clouds, and by its fitful light he discerned what he sought. There she fled down the narrow, tortuous pathway which led to the river-gate. A moment more and he held her in his grasp a moment more and he was speak- ing to her vehemently, almost incoherently, calling Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 273 her " Valerie ; " imploring, beseeching, command- ing in a breath. At the first words she knew the danger; yet the reckless, adventurous spirit which had incited her on to the part she had undertaken still had possession of her. A strange exultant look gleamed from her eyes. " Well ! " she exclaimed, in the breathless pause. " The papers ! give me the papers, Valerie ! then go free, and God help you ! " he cried. She seemed to start at the solemn passion of his tone ; but immediately her voice rang steadily in answer : "At the foot of the garden, by the river-gate, under the lion's head, there is a receptacle for let- ters a cleft in the granite that will admit your hand* I dropped the packet there an hour ago an hour hence it would have been beyond your reach, if you had not prevented my egress from the grounds ; and so you checkmate me again, Sir." She stepped forward, as if to go, but still his de- taining hand lingered on her arm. " Well, am I to go free, Sir ? " in haughty ac- cents. What fate was it that held that moment ? There was no shadow of doubt of her in his mind as she spoke ; he believed she spoke only simplest truth, and that in the cleft of granite he should find what he sought ; but some bitter pang of parting, some 274 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. anxious fear for her welfare in the wild and dreary night made him hesitate perhaps. u But how can you go, where can you go alone, Val Miss Laudersmine, at this hour ? " Again his tone seemed to touch her; and she lifted wistful eyes a moment and answered gentler than before : " I have friends who wait for me." As she spoke, the wind rising in a fresh burst, a branch of the cypress under which he stood struck suddenly against her. Unprepared for the blow, she lost poise, reeled, and would have fallen but for her companion. As he caught her, something slipped from her hold and rustled to the ground. The moon came sailing up and showed him what it was a slender packet sealed with red wax. Good Heaven ! how well he knew it ! And how bitter the recognition now ; yet what Providence ! As he stooped to take it their eyes met. ** Yes, I deceived you," she exclaimed bitterly, but with the bitterness of defeat solely. " I told you it was at the foot of the garden when I held it here in my hands. I meant to have gained time, as you see : an accident prevented me." She stood as if waiting. She had deceived him. In how much more might she not even now be de- ceiving, misleading, and betraying ? What was she to him ? The woman whom he loved. But there Mrs. F:S Waiting-Maid. 275 was something else. There was his country and his honor ! Suddenly his mind cleared, and a divine resolution possessed him. " Valerie Miss Laudersmine, you are my pris- oner." The next instant lights gleamed from the open- ing doors, footsteps and voices rang a confusion of question and exclamation and wonder. It seemed an age to Major Luce that he stood there with his hand closed over Valerie Laudersmine's slight wrist, until the soldierly figure of Colonel F. stood be- fore them. At the first glance the Colonel saw the whole the double identity, the deep-laid, thwarted purpose, and the pang of discovery. In another moment he saw, too, how much loyalty and honor meant with Everett Luce, as he noted the firm yet gentle hold of detention, and the stern sorrow of his face as he handed him the packet. And Valerie Laudersmine was a prisoner in the house where she had fraudulently served. She uttered no complaint, she made no protest, she showed no sign of repentance, and none of anxi- ety through it all. Quietly and even tenderly, for the sake of her youth and her sex, and perhaps, too, for the sake of the brave fellow who had so painfully proved his loyalty, the examination was carried on, and 276 Mrs. F:* Waiting-Maid. the final judgment awarded. It was certainly gen- tle judgment, that sentence of banishment up the river, upon an unwilling parole d'honneur. Gen- tle judgment for her sin ; but she received it with the same cold, haughty apathy that had intrenched her from the first. " I alwiiys thought her heartless always," com- mented Mrs. F., with a pained, half-frightened face, after their last interview. " And to think we should have been so deceived by a little disguising ! " exclaimed Miss Vescey ; " but there never was such an actress as Valerie Laudersmine. The first time I ever saw her she played in Mrs. Althorpe's private theatricals, and how Charlie Althorpe raved about her ! " Heartless and an actress ! Perhaps they all judged her with this judgment except one, who might have been pardoned for even harsher judg- ment. But he, as those dark eyes were lifted to his for the last time, realized what divine possibili- ties were lost in the warping realities of her edu- cation and associations, and what she might have been if all her life had not been spent under an unnatural rule, where every selfish whim was fos- tered, and every idle wish indulged. Looking into her eyes, he said no word of reproach, but only with sad earnestness, " Good-by, Valerie." Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. 277 She dropped her hand in his ; it was icy cold, and her haughty voice faltered a little in reply- ing: *' You have done your duty, Major Luce, and I honor you for it." In an instant, by that glance, by that faltering tone, he knew how near, yet how far apart they were ; and he knew that when they parted it would be forever. But he had done his duty, and she honored him. To Mrs. F. he said, one day : " I suppose I shall overlive this, and perhaps at some time be a happy and contented man, with al- together another future than this that I thought possible once ; for neither men nor women give up their lives at one disappointment, however great, unless they are weak or wicked." This was good and true philosophy ; but it sounded a little too matter-of-fact and cool to Mrs. F., who remembered so vividly the sad pas- sion of love which had broken up into every word and look a little while since from this now quiet speaker. She had not fathomed Everett Luce yet. " He is n't a fellow to make a fuss about any- thing, but he is one to hold on to a feeling or a purpose a long time, Mrs. F.," commented tha 4 , lady's husband. 278 Mrs. F.'s Waiting-Maid. And Mrs. F. realized how true this was as time went on and found Major Luce untouched by all the bright eyes and winning smiles that lavished their sweetness upon him. THE RIBBON OF HONOR. HE night was very cold, and we had drawn up around the fire an open fire of sea- coal, which the size of the room rendered necessary, even when the furnace was, according to Patrick, "at the top of its hate." We were a small party my cousin, and my cousin's wife, her sister, Patty Emerson a dark-eyed, Castilian- looking girl, whom you were constantly naming, in your imagination, Seiiora Inez, or Dolores ; any- thing but the commonplace " Patty," to which she really responded and Major Howith, an English friend of my cousin's and a charming person, easy, jovial, and sympathetic, and with a background of personal history which dated from the Crimea. With myself we made just five, a group unequal as to whist, but quite equal to a much livelier pas- time story-telling. The Major, good fellow, had " opened the ball " with a " thrilling tale " or two from his Crimean experiences, and then for the first time we discovered that he was one of those heroes who had won the Victoria cross. Patty's eyes glistened. 280 The Ribbon of Honor. " Oh, to think," she cried out, " that we here in America have gone through such a war, have had such splendid heroes, and not a national badge or a ribbon of honor to crown and specialize our spe- cial heroes ! " My cousin who was himself something of a hero in the war, and whom we all called the Colonel, when we did not more affectionately and irrever- ently style him " Cousin Jim " at this point gave utterance to an exclamation which at once aroused our interest. " What is it, Colonel? there's a bee buzzing in your bonnet, that 's certain ; and, as I 've told all my stories for to-night, you might as well open up your budget," put in Major Howith. We all joined in this invitation, or suggestion, and, after a minute or two, my cousin's pleasant voice was tell- ing the story of the evening, the story of " THE RIBBON OF HONOR." " You remember Melroe ? " he began, glancing at us three ladies. " He was the brightest, gayest little fellow, this Melroe," addressing himself to Major Howith, " the life of my regiment, and he had won his captaincy though he was but three- and-twenty. The night before his last battle, I rec- ollect, was a specially merry evening all round, owing to Melroe's wit and humor and drollery. Dalzell, of the Fifteenth, and Melroe, had a tent The Ribbon of Honor. 281 together, and Hoyle and the two brothers Archy and Cam Browne, together with myself, were in- vited in that night to a little supper of Mel's giving. I recollect perfectly, as I went in, seeing Mel roe bending over the oysters which he was cooking upon a spirit-lamp. He was great at all those things, and Cam Browne was running him as only Cam Browne could. ' You 've missed your voca- tion, Mel ; you should have been apprenticed to Soyer/ Cam was saying. ' You always had a knack at that kind of messing ; and I remember,' turning to the rest of us, ' when he came a little urchin to school ; and he actually, at that tender age, had furnished himself with sundry tin cups and various conveniences for brewing messes ; and he was forever at it.' As I heard this I recalled the first time I met the youngster myself. I was at the same school, one of the seniors, and he was a little chap not yet turned into his teens, very fond of play, very fond of his tin-cup business, and very much afraid of ghosts. I used to meet him running down the corridors after dark. And once, I remember very well, when we were all in our rooms and the lights were being put out, how a little white face looked in, and a little, shaky voice cried, ' King, will you lend me your tooth- ache-drops ? ' I questioned the boy : ' Got the toothache, Mel ? ' ' No,' he answered, ' but Morty 282 The Ribbon of Honor. has.' ' So you braved the ghosts for Morty's tooth- ache,' I returned, viciously ; ' and what 's more, to my thinking, the cold.' I told him I did n't think I should crawl out of my warm bed on such an errand, and that Jack Frost, the very whitest ghost he ever saw, was waiting for him in that en- try. The little chap flared up like a rocket. * Do you think I 'd let a chap have a toothache for all the ghosts in the world ? ' he cried out passion- ately, winding up with, * Oh, I hate you, big boys ; you 're all so selfish ! ' I tried to mollify him by offering to light him back, but he snatched the drops and banged the door in my face ; and I heard him running down the dark corridor, gasping every inch of the way for fear of the ghosts ; and I know of this little man's lying awake for hours one night with his own toothache, which he bore rather than brave the dark corridors ! I told this story just as I am telling it now to the fellows that night in the tent, as we all stood and watched Mel roe at his oysters. I had a special reason for tell- ing it. I knew very well that not a man in all the regiment was so little understood as Holland Melroe perhaps so little appreciated. His es- timate there that night, with those who liked him heartily, too, was of a gay, good-humored fellow, who took his soldier's life as easily as was consis- tent with a good deal of laziness, and a little shrink- The Ribbon of Honor. 283 ing from any active service. I felt sure that I read him better than this, and that beneath this exterior of laziness and shrinking there lay noble qualities of courage and valor. As I finished my story that night, Dalzell called out, * You ought to have had a medal for overcoming your dragon, Mel.' * Or a cordon bleuj 1 Cam Browne suggested. From that they all fell to talking of the foreign system of badges and medals of honor, and one of the young men pulled out of his pocket, I recollect, a i Corn- hill Magazine,' and read to us Thackeray's Rounda- bout paper ' On Ribbons.' The final summing up of the talk was in great agreement with Thackeray, and the general conclusion that we ought to have a 'ribbon of honor,' 'not simply a Kearny cross, but a grand cordon bleu, or a medal coming straight from the heart and hand of that grand old fellow, Abraham Lincoln,' Dalzell burst out. ' Of course we 're all too modest to ever expect to be decked in that way, but how many of us would disdain it?' he concluded. " As the talk deepened, Melroe's face had lost its gayety, I noticed. He drew a deep sigh as Dal- zell spoke, and a wistful look came into his eyes. I could guess pretty well how it was with him. What was he, beside them ? What brilliant, or courageous, or soldierly, or spirited qualities had he ? These men would easily win their cordon 284 The Ribbon of Honor. bleu, for they were without fear. Without fear ! That was what was in his mind, as he very shortly confessed, by a blundering, honest question bearing directly upon the subject. How did it feel to be without fear ? Every man of them knew of this little white ghost of Melroe's, yet every one of them knew that he never had failed to do his duty. They had laughed quietly together over it, and said : ' Mel is a good fellow ; he never will run away, but he will never distinguish himself that is certain/ And now suddenly with his question arose another with them : How came he here into this voluntary service with this characteristic? But before asking it they answered his query, one and another smiling, yet serious and truthful. " At their first battle ? yes, it had been a shock, and then it was over. Various emotions assailed them now, but none of fe&r. But how was it with him ? they asked. They all knew something how it was, as I have said, but not wholly, until he burst out impulsively : " < Well, to tell the truth, boys, I will own that I am awfully afraid every time, to this day, and I can't get over it.' " ' But how came you here, anyway, with that feeling, and being here why do you stay ? ' asked Cam Browne. " For a moment there was a look of surprise on The Ribbon of Honor. 285 Mel roe's face, a look as if he doubted whether he had heard aright. " ' How came I ? ' he uttered, slowly ; ' how could I stay at home ? A man can't choose at such a time. If I saw an assassin enter my friend's house, while he lay sleeping, I might be very much afraid of the assassin, but I could n't very well go on my way in safety, and tell some other man to go forward to the rescue. I might recoil from the encounter, but I should recoil ten times more from the skulking away, from it. No,' he went on, ' I thought this all over ; I knew it would hurt, this kind of life, but I concluded it would hurt a great deal more to turn my back upon it. Why, believ- ing as I do, you know, a fellow could n't.' I can see Hoyle, and Dalzell, and the two Brownes, ex- change glances here. They two, ay, and every one of them there, I knew, thought of the story of the boy at school, even then manfully fighting his ghosts for his principle. Those of us who had smiled at this ghost, and said, * Mel is a good fel- low ; he never will run away but he never will distinguish himself that is certain,' now, in con- templation of this courageous cowardice, felt in- clined to doff our hats to the simple, manly fellow we had underrated, and to ask his pardon. But there was little said in acknowledgment or praise ; it was a tender subject, involving this foregone 286 The Ribbon of Honor. lighter estimate ; but there were warmth and friendliness in the * good-nights,' which conveyed to him a sense of sympathy, an assurance to his modest mind that he had not spoken too freely. I remember Cam Browne said laughingly as he left the tent, * After all, Captain, you may win your cor- don bleu before any of us yet.' " They were light words spoken hastily, out of the warm, kind heart of the young officer, as a good-natured remark to evince his belief in that moral courage that he admired. , Light words, and even while they were being spoken, perhaps fate was weaving that destiny which should make them no longer light words in the memory of us who listened to them. " The next day we fought the battle of Chancel- lorsville. Toward the latter part of the day, when defeat was beginning to stare us in the face, after the earlier promise of victory, which combined and splendid action and the most untiring gallantry had given, I received a message from Major Dalzell to send a reenforcement to the left wing, where Cap- tain Melroe and himself were endeavoring to hold their ground and save their colors. I had only a handful of men that I coufd ill spare, but I sent them immediately, for I knew that Dalzell would not have applied for help unless he had great need. Immediate action being suspended for a time on my The EMon of Honor. 287 right, I had a brief opportunity to observe the movements of the left. As I looked through my glass, I saw Dalzell advance with his column, not a large body of men, but compact and in order. A heavy roar of musketry met them ; still they kept on, though I could see that the raking fire had told. The next charge was more fatal. As the smoke cleared, the lamentable effect was ob- vious. More than one gallant fellow had fallen ; among them their leader, Dalzell. The column began to waver. The consequence at this particu- lar point of a panic and a rout would be especially disastrous. I rose in my saddle with my excite- ment. ' Ah,' I thought, ' if I could only dash for- ward to the rescue ! ' " At that moment I saw that a new leader had arisen. I saw him rush forward, I saw him glance back to the broken, wavering ranks, I saw him beckon them on with his sword, and, more than all, by an attitude of command that impressed me even then. At sight of him the wavering ranks closed in, and dashed forward, with a shout that reached me where I watched, and which I knew meant victory or death. A few moments later the Sixteenth came up to reenforce the right wing, and I had the liberty to ride forward. Melroe, for you have guessed that he was the leader who took Dalzell 's place, Melroe, by his magnetic leader- 288 The Ribbon of Honor. ship, his dash and spirit, had saved his colors, and won, for his men at least, a famous victory, one of those side-issues of success which go far to amelio- rate the greater defeat. u But it was a victory I did n't feel much like rejoicing in, as I saw Melroe himself lying on a little hillock, shot through the heart. The color- sergeant a little Irish fellow had dragged him to the upland where he lay, and as I approached, he took off his cap, more in honor to the dead than to me and said chokingly : " ' See that, Colonel ; he seized 'em out of my hand as I was tuk, dizzv-like, with this scratch on my forehead, and when I came to myself, he had got his death a-saving of me and the flag, sir.' ' The little sergeant had laid the colors upon the dead breast of his officer as tenderly as a mother might strew flowers upon her child. Cam Browne just then joining me, I pointed to the sad spectacle. Cam bent over and touched the tattered remnants that meant so much, and had cost so much. ' He has won his cordon bleu!' he said, significantly. Yes, he had won his cordon bleu, the brave little fellow, fighting a double enemy every inch of the way." The Colonel paused a moment, and took out an old memorandum-book ; opening it, he drew forth something that seemed of many colors, a strip either of paper or silk, only a few inches in length The Ribbon of Honor. 289 and breadth. " This," he resumed, " is a piece of that cordon bleu. It was wet with his blood when I took it, and I have kept it ever since, for I knew no one else who was nearer to Melroe than myself, for he was an orphan, and without brothers or sis- ters. If he had had a sweetheart, I would have sent it to her, that she might have known what a hero she had lost in this young fellow, whose deli- cate, sensitive nature shrank from the conflicts which his great soul urged him into. I have seen many brave charges, many forlorn hopes carried, since that day, Howith, but I never saw a braver charge or a more forlorn hope carried than this that led Melroe to his death. We mourned Dal- zell, good fellow, but there was something in the loss of Melroe that went beyond every other loss. We loved him better than we knew, and when we buried him there every one of us recalled that sen- tence of his, ' I might recoil from the encounter, but I should recoil ten times more from the skulk- ing away from it.' " A momentary silence fell upon us all as the Colo- nel ceased. But as he closed his memorandum- book, shutting in the strip of blood-stained, faded silk, a voice broke the silence : " James, give it to me Holland Melroe's cor- don bleu ! " " You, Patty ? " 19 290 The Ribbon of Honor. " Yes, to me, James," Patty answered, quite steadily, though white as the dead. Mechanically, perhaps instinctively, the. Colonel held out the sacred memento without a word. But the Colonel's wife had no such delicate instinct of the truth. " What do you mean, Patty ? " she exclaimed. " I mean," returned Patty, with great dignity, " that I have a better right to Holland Melroe's cordon bleu than any one else ! " " O Patty ! and all the time you were " But Mrs. King's discretion at this point came back to her; it was too late, however, to serve her pur- pose. " Yes, Emily ; all the time I was engaged to Morton Eames ! But you know who brought me into that. It was scarcely my own doing, and Hol- land Melroe never sought me after he discovered that my word was passed to another. But, before he discovered this, I knew his heart and mine. When I got news of his death I broke my en- gagement to Morton, but I could not go talking about Holland then. I had no right to tell the truth then who could not tell it before, who had to be told by death what the whole truth meant even to myself." By this time we had all been brought up, as it were, to Patty's revelation all but Mrs. King. I The Ribbon of Honor. 291 noticed vaguely that she looked disturbed, and glanced uneasily at Major Howith. But for that I should have forgotten his presence, yet even then he did not seem an intruder, stranger though he was. The Colonel, always fond of his little sister Patty, as lie called her, found new cause for ten- derness now. She had been Melroe's sweet- heart Melroe, whom he had loved ? And, lean- ing forward, he took her in his arms and kissed her. The next morning I got the meaning of Mrs. King's disturbance. She came into my room, with the words : " Just think of Patty's making such a mess of it ! " "What do you mean?" I inquired, thoroughly amazed. " Oh dear ! what do I mean ? Don't you see that Major Howith was immensely pleased with Patty? And now, just for that old sentimental nonsense being dragged up, it will fall through, for he is not the man to play second fiddle to any other man, dead or alive. And it would have been such a match for Patty ! " wound up the fascinating but worldly Mrs. King. I turned upon her all the vials of my wrath. Patty had come out most nobly, and she ought to be ashamed if she could n't appreciate such nobility, 292 The Ribbon of Honor. I declared. But I did no good ; she only reiterated her regrets at Patty's " mess," not a whit disturbed by my vials of wrath. In this iteration she was cut short by her husband's voice, as he came in from the little library which communicated with the room we occupied. " Emily, you don't know men quite as well as you think you do, my dear. When I went into the smoking-room last night Major Howith joined me ; and what do you think he said to me?" "Well, what?" inquired Mrs. Emily, making a little impatient movement. " He said that if Patty was to be won by any living man he should try his best to win her. You see, my dear, your way of looking upon things does n't always fit the case and the people. Howith is a man to appreciate just such silent endurance and faithfulness as Patty revealed, and he does n't believe that her heart is forever buried in Mel roe's grave any more than I do. It was my story of Mel that made everything fresh and living to her again. And now, Mrs. Emily, don't you talk this over to Patty not a word, mind, or you may never have Major Howith for a brother-in-law ! " Mrs. Emily laughed. " Oh, I can keep a secret when I like as well as Patty, and I '11 keep this ; and I 'm glad your senti- ment has turned out better than my sense this time, Sir ! " she retorted, gayly. The Ribbon of Honor. 293 Her husband laughed, too ; but he looked at her, I thought, a little sadly, as he replied : " Ah, Em ! perhaps you will see some time that our sentiment, as you call it, is better than your sense." But she never will ! It was four years after this conversation four years almost to a day that I went down to the St. Denis one bright morning to call upon Mrs. Felix Lundy Howith, who has just arrived from England on a three months' visit. Before I left her, a sweet-faced English girl came bringing in a sweet-faced half-English and half-American baby of two years, though he looked for all the world as much like a young Castilian as his dark-eyed mother. " And what is his name ? " I asked. " Holland Holland Melroe Howith. Felix named him, and he would have it so. Was n't it superb of him ? But Felix is superb you never saw such a man, dear, as Felix ! " I told my cousin, the Colonel, of this conversa- tion. He looked at his wife, that pretty, light-nat- ured, fascinating little Emily. " Here 's our sentiment against your sense, Mrs. Emily. You see how well it works." 294 The Ribbon of Honor. " Yes, I see," she answered ; " but " laughing in our faces " I was right in one thing : I told you the Major was n't the man to play second fiddle, and he is n't. He assigns that part to his son, you see!"