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 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY. Square 
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 THE STORY OF THYRZA. With frontispiece. 
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 ROSE MACLEOD. With frontispiece. Crown 
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 MARGARET WARRENER. i2mo, 1.50. 
 
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 MEADOW GRASS. Talesof New England Life. 
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 BY OAK AND THORN. A Record of English 
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 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
JOHN 
 
 WINTERBOURNE S 
 FAMILY 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE BROWN 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 $re$ Cambrib0e 
 1910 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ALICE BROWN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October iqio 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 228606 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S 
 FAMILY 
 
 i 
 
 THE old Winterbourne house, one of New England s 
 ancientry, stood at the west end of Clyde, among 
 other noble structures of an equal age, some of them 
 surrounded by spacious grounds and looking out at the back 
 upon fields sloping down to the Sutton River. Across the 
 river was Sutton itself, a dozing village. Clyde was dignified, 
 reminiscent of more formal customs, and yet tolerant. A few 
 of its estates had reached an admirable degree of cultivation, 
 with terraces, peony-topped, and arbors, grape-entwined. 
 These soberly attested the prosperity of owners who, shar 
 ing in some fashion the financial life of the day, perhaps went 
 to the city every morning, and returned at night to the con 
 ventional repose of a proper establishment. Others of the old 
 houses, belonging still to the best families, stayed as they 
 had been twenty or more years ago, in an untended ease. 
 The shrubs grew, reached their limit, and were allowed to de 
 cline into a natural state. The perennials in green-lichened 
 gardens ran out and were not renewed. This was usually when 
 women-folk had inherited and acquiesced in the unchanged 
 state of things as they had been when there was an active 
 head of the house, they, in their undefended state, being too 
 weak to cope with gardeners. 
 
 The Winterbourne mansion, large, with a beautiful line of 
 gambrel roof, had been vacant, save for one pensioner, for ten 
 
WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 years and over, and had fallen into disrepair, though every 
 last thing that happened to it seemed only, in the unpractical 
 eye, to augment its charm. The shingles, lichen-gray and 
 curled like lichens, let the water through to the rotting roof, 
 and that again transferred the ignominy of dark brown streaks 
 and patches to the ceilings : so that Lydia Pendleton,the old 
 servitor who had lived with the Winterbournes of three gen 
 erations and now lodged rent-free in the house, made it a part 
 of her duty, in northeast storms, to set pans all over the attic 
 floor to catch the drip. The walls cried for paint, the blinds 
 were racked and some of them yawning, and the repairs 
 needed without would have caused the heart of the carpenter to 
 leap for ecstasy. But to the eye in search of beauty only, of 
 that rich mellowness, the child of time, it was a lovely house, 
 shaded by trees, overgrown of vines, and with never a line in 
 all its leaf-embowered amplitude which was not obedient to 
 art. 
 
 Three years ago, John Winterbourne, the owner, and last 
 wearer of his name, had come home and settled down here 
 with only Lyddy to make his household. He was between 
 forty and fifty, a man who, without active choice of his own, 
 had lived a varied life, putting a finger or the whole hand, 
 according to his impetuous way into cloth and paper, and 
 even the printing of books, chiefly because work was not done 
 well enough, he thought, and the time needed his irascible 
 service to set it right, and withdrawing from trade suddenly 
 and petulantly also, it seemed, to this tangled retreat and the 
 slovenly ministrations of Lyddy, who had so long considered 
 the house her own shell that she hardly remembered how to 
 vary her eccentric system of work for anybody else, even a 
 revered Winterbourne. He was satisfied. So he was telling 
 James Trenton Lovell, his chum after a fashion, on a night 
 in March when they sat together by the fire in the great square 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 5 
 
 east room, which had, in this light, a stately and satisfying 
 aspect. The paint a great deal of it on wainscoting and 
 panels had turned to a fine ivory. What paper there was, 
 an old French design of castles and lovers and huntresses, 
 showed a perfect degree of preservation, and led the eye 
 round the walls through changing vistas of soft blue cloud 
 and castellated height. The furniture was faithful to a by 
 gone year when the house was built, dark-hued, spindle- 
 legged, some of it rich in carving and inlaid borders. All 
 that daylight could disclose, the subtle look of long neglect, 
 the dusk hid gracefully, and the firelight, playing over the 
 picture as if it were honorably worth disclosing, touched it 
 with a sombre charm. 
 
 The two men before the fire sat there with a little table 
 between them, on it a black book and an unlighted lamp. 
 The book was the Idyls of Theocritus. John Winterbourne 
 was a scholar of richer equipment than his friend, and he was 
 accustomed to sit here and read Greek aloud, while Lovell, 
 with a frowning brow and great excitement, followed from 
 another copy. 
 
 Winterbourne was a great fellow, broad-shouldered, 
 shaggy, with brown, gray-streaked hair and beard, deep lines 
 in his forehead, and astonishing eyes set under bushy brows. 
 They were dark eyes, sometimes hazel, often a soft brown ; 
 but it was the things they did that were amazing. They found 
 so many subjects in the world to be angry with that they 
 flashed and stared the unworthy down ; but children, as the 
 four in an equally shabby house at the other end of the vil 
 lage could have told, found them inviting, merry, full of 
 light. He was dressed like a workman of some unpretending 
 sort, in dark trousers and coat and a blue flannel shirt with a 
 collar rolling away under his thick beard. His hand was a 
 workman s hand, square, with fingers blunted at the end, the 
 
6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 sort that do things delicately, and with a fine network of 
 muscle on the lean brown back of them. As he sat idle now, 
 poring over the fire, they were folded before him in a supple 
 strength. 
 
 Jim Lovell, his friend was called in every-day usage, though 
 when he had served as consul in an Italian town and been 
 returned under some stigma of incapacity, his three-sectioned 
 name was the one the papers bruited. He was really a man in 
 middle youth, yet from some nervous lack of adaptability to 
 the world, a way of refusing its conventional favors, a timid 
 ity in the face of civilization, an ungracious yet involuntary 
 way of rebuffing the kindest offices if they brought mortal 
 man too near, he seemed to be not more than a decade 
 behind his friend. He was of a sanguine type, with thick hair 
 very much alive brushed back from his forehead in a crown, 
 quick gray eyes like a wood-creature s in their mobile seek 
 ing, a big nose and a very desirable mouth. When he had 
 a mother and sister to comment admiringly on his beautiful 
 mouth, his square chin with the dimple in it, and the slen- 
 derness of his neck, he used to wear a beard ; it defended 
 him from that terrifying certainty of being out in the world 
 with woman s eyes. But now his immediate women-kind 
 were dead, and as nobody praised him into panic, he forgot 
 some of his timidities and went shaven because he felt 
 cleaner so. 
 
 Winterbourne was speaking in his musing bass, looking 
 with an extreme content into the fire, as if it carried his eyes 
 farther yet to what is beyond the fire and beyond the world. 
 
 " This life suits me, Jim. If I could have my two meals 
 as Lyddy gives em to me, and my pipe, and my plunge off 
 the wharf, and a book and a fire, I could live forever and 
 not sicken." 
 
 Lovell looked round at him with a nod. He did not al- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 7 
 
 together agree. He had not his friend s type of robust 
 health, though when he kept the rules he was in a splendid 
 poise of being ; but he knew the more delicate variations of 
 nervous life. He was accustomed to fears of the unsubstantial 
 which we call fate or fortune ; he knew the black days when 
 we rise to an unfriendly world and creep shuddering to bed 
 again, under the dominion of an organization too subtly 
 poised. But these things he had taught himself to consider 
 his destined enemies, as actual a part of his burden of life as 
 if he had been born with defective senses. At last, in his late 
 twenties, after suffering hideously from the uneasy certainty 
 that life is a menace to the soul, forever pushing it toward 
 that uncomprehended variation we call death, he had de 
 cided to let his brain rule him and not his fleeting emotions. 
 So now he never betrayed his fears and heart-sicknesses, 
 nor owned to them within himself 
 
 "Yes," he said, with that brief nod, "it s a good life." 
 
 Winterbourne lighted the lamp with deftness, and then 
 put out a hand to the book. 
 
 " Ready ? " he inquired. 
 
 "Any time." 
 
 Winterbourne rose, and was taking a match from the 
 mantel safe, when there came a thin, jangling ring at the side 
 door. He listened an instant, frowning. 
 
 " What fool is that," he inquired, " coming in here to up 
 set our work ?" 
 
 Lovell also listened. This extreme miserliness over their 
 sober comfort embroidered with the imagery of Theocritus 
 made them look ludicrously, each to the other, as if they 
 were in a state of siege. Winterbourne saw it, and laughed 
 loudly. The sound ran out into the hall and over the house. 
 It might have come from some shaggy-hided satyr in the 
 woods, the volume of it was so rough and uncontrolled. 
 
8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I 11 answer it," he said. "Lyddy s gone to bed and 
 sleep. She never hears anything when she s off this floor; 
 she wouldn t come if she did." 
 
 He struck the match, lighted an untidy candle in a noble- 
 shaped candlestick on the mantel, and strode with it into 
 the hall. As he opened the door, a gust swept in, a wind 
 risen not an hour ago. When he had settled himself by his 
 fire that night it had been still and cold, and now the sudden 
 tempest surprised him so that he glanced up to see if the stars 
 were there and ask them what they thought about it. The 
 stars were there, glittering in the dark, so surprisingly splen 
 did that in looking at them he forgot to guard his candle, and 
 the gust put it out. Winterbourne was a man of quick rages 
 over small things. He gave himself up to them promptly, 
 even when he felt them coming ; it was a species of luxury 
 where the blood moved fast and you could say what you 
 liked, and exercise the savage man in you. Instantly he was 
 furious with the candle, but before he could show it, a miser 
 able voice, a woman s, half-conciliatory, half-impudent, as 
 if she had primed herself for a speech she dreaded, rose from 
 the step below him. 
 
 cc Mr. Winterbourne, Cousin Lyddy Pendleton said you 
 had an ear-trumpet." 
 
 Winterbourne was recalled from the stars and his erring 
 candle. He frowned down upon a small figure beneath his 
 level ; with the wind blowing its shawl, it seemed to be com 
 posed of wisps and tatters. 
 
 " Do you come here to-night routing me out of my sleep 
 to ask me if I ve got an ear-trumpet ?" he rolled out at her. 
 
 Lovell, within, hearing the tone, wondered at it, it seemed 
 so to fit the loftiest passages of the rhythmic Greek. He 
 could not but speculate on any call from the outer world that 
 evoked so grand a declamation. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 9 
 
 " Woman ! " ended Winterbourne. That he had added 
 with a large simplicity. He did not know her name, and the 
 title seemed to him permissible. 
 
 " Mercy! " said she, " I did n t think you d be abed as 
 early as this." 
 
 " I m not abed," Winterbourne declaimed, and she was 
 silent, not feeling at liberty to tell him that he had just of 
 fered something pointing that way. 
 
 " Well," said he, " do you want to see Lyddy ?" 
 
 " No, sir," she returned in haste, that being the last pos 
 sibility to be considered. " I would n t see her for anything 
 in the world. Lyddy s mother s cousin. They don t speak." 
 
 "You needn t come here with your wars and rumors of 
 wars," said Winterbourne. " Lyddy s all right." 
 
 " Mebbe she is. Mother s been terrible tryin , I know. 
 But what I meant was, if they d been speakin I d done it 
 through Lyddy." 
 
 " Woman ! " said Winterbourne again, liking the sound of 
 it as a mouth-filling word. Then he remembered Poe inci 
 dentally and that it had been a tempestuous night when he 
 also had a mysterious visitant. " c Thing of evil, " he 
 added, in his way of trusting to dull brains to lag behind 
 him, and not caring really whether they did or not, so that he 
 enjoyed the exercise of lingual vagaries, " do you want to 
 leave Lyddy a message? Is that it?" 
 
 " No, sir," she returned earnestly. " I just wanted to 
 know whether you d got an ear-trumpet." 
 
 "Well, then, I have," said Winterbourne. "Now what 
 have you got to say ? " 
 
 She seemed to break up in a panic of nervous apprehen- 
 .sion. 
 
 "O Mr. Winterbourne," she said, and between her 
 trepidation and the chill of the wind her teeth chattered, 
 
io JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " mother has n t heard a word for most nine years. That is, 
 except we scream. Then she can, when there ain t too much 
 noise. Ever so long ago Lyddy told mother you d made a 
 trumpet, an she was goin to borrow it an see if mother 
 could use it; an then she an mother fell out, so of course 
 we couldn t accept it of her. But now we re goin to move 
 to Sacker s Falls we re goin right off this week an* 
 Lyddy couldn t help herself if I come to you. So I come to 
 ask you about your trumpet." 
 
 Winterbourne stood before her in silence, and if she had 
 known him in the least she would have seen that a mingling 
 tide anger at her because she was out in the cold on such 
 an idiotically chosen night, an unwilling sympathy for her 
 mother who, he felt, might have remained deaf in seclusion 
 without sending here to waken his futile sorrow, and plain 
 disgust because people always did choose such incorrect ways 
 of doing business all this had swept him to the rostrum 
 where he was likely to break out terrifically. But while he 
 waited, bottling his wrath, she spoke again, in trembling. 
 
 "You seej Mr. Winterbourne, we heard twas so elegant 
 we knew twould be a high price, an we couldn t afford to 
 put much money into it, an* perhaps not any before an 
 other winter, an we could n t do it at all unless we were 
 pretty sure twould work. So what I wanted to ask you, 
 Mr. Winterbourne, was if you knew any body that had used 
 it, or if you was deaf yourself." 
 
 Winterbourne opened his lips and emitted an exasperated 
 baby roar, not at all tempered by the nearness of his listener. 
 As it left his lips, he was aware that she was turning, and 
 before he had fairly added, in an exasperated cry, " Great 
 Jupiter, woman, do I look as if I was deaf? " she had melted 
 away into the dark. He stood there a moment, looking into 
 the void of whirling dust, and then, leaving the door still 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY n 
 
 wide, plunged back into the house, rattled at the obstinate 
 drawer of a table, and fled out after her. 
 
 Lovell, trying to resume his interrupted quietude at the 
 hearth, was forced awake to the fact that the entering wind 
 was chilling his ankles, and heard his friend go dashing away, 
 down the street, calling something as he ran. Lovell thought 
 of closing the door, but as all temperatures were more or 
 less the same to him in his habitude of open-air life, he 
 merely put his feet up on the fire dogs, returned to the con 
 sideration of Theocritus, and waited. 
 
 It was ten minutes or more before Winterbourne was back 
 again, blown and muttering. He slammed the door shut, 
 and came in to his interrupted tranquillity. While he turned 
 up the wick and got open his books, Lovell waited ; then he 
 said, with only a casual interest, - 
 
 "What was it, Winterbourne?" 
 
 Winterbourne was eyeing his pipe waiting for him on the 
 table, as if he had a mind to smoke instead of reading. 
 
 " It was a damned woman," he said absently, " that wanted 
 an ear-trumpet for another totally condemned and pestifer 
 ous woman that happens to be her mother." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "She lost her temper," said Winterbourne, with inno 
 cence. "What for, I could n t see. I d been patient with her, 
 though she was enough to drive a quiet man to hanging. So 
 she took herself off in the sulks, and I had to pelt after her 
 and give her a trumpet." 
 
 "You didn t give her a trumpet, John?" Lovell looked 
 more awake than he commonly did over any but things of 
 immortal value, like poetry and the gods. 
 
 " Yes. I told you so." 
 
 " Now what do you want to bat round over the country 
 giving folks trumpets for? How many do you own anyway?" 
 
12 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Ear-trumpets." 
 
 Winterbourne was turning the leaves of his book, with an 
 absorption all anticipated pleasure. His rugged face cleared 
 of lines. He looked as if he had found at last the most 
 enchanting game, one, though he had played it long 
 enough to gauge its perfections fully, gay with the surprise 
 of first encounter. 
 
 " Two, that s all," said he. " This and the one I gave you. 
 That s on your mantelpiece, if I remember." 
 
 Then they both laughed. They were thinking how their re 
 newed acquaintance had begun. Winterbourne, coming back 
 to Clyde, had asked some welcoming old lady, the parson s 
 wife, maybe, about the son of his friend Lovell, and the old 
 lady had told him, with much concern, that young Lovell 
 was unhappily shut off from his kind. He was very deaf. 
 So, trumpet in hand, Winterbourne had sought him out, and 
 Jim was at first amazed, then touched by the kindness of it 
 and they had left the trumpet on the mantel. 
 
 " But it is n t on the mantel now," said Lovell. " It s in 
 that little cupboard overhead. I 11 tell you in case you want 
 it in a hurry. Don t give it away, Winterbourne. You don t 
 want to send it flying round Robin Hood s barn if you re 
 ever going to patent it." 
 
 "I m not going to patent it. I m not going to have any 
 thing to do with their infernal modern scheming to get them 
 selves booked for Tophet." 
 
 "That isn t what a patent does," said Lovell patiently. 
 "You know that, you violent old party." 
 
 Winterbourne looked up at him with a quarrelsome mien. 
 Why should all this, it asked persistently, keep him from 
 his book? 
 
 " I wish you d stop talking ear-trumpets," he said. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 13 
 
 " Well, so long as you ve invented it," Lovell ventured 
 a pace further, " the next step is a patent, if you want to get 
 it into circulation ; and you do or you would n t be so fly 
 with it the minute you hear anybody s deaf/ 
 
 " That s because I m a born fool," Winterbourne re 
 sponded. " I take their word for it. They want to hear, and 
 I weakly pass em out a trumpet. I know it is n t best for em 
 to hear. I know there is n t a syllable uttered from morning 
 till night in this derelict old world that s worth hearing " 
 
 "It was you that invented it." 
 
 " I did that for my mother. She wanted to hear, too, poor 
 old dear. They bought her a trumpet, and it buzzed infer 
 nally. So I got busy and made this, and I called it pan-pipes 
 and told her her clever son hatched it up for her. And 
 she loved it, and when she mislaid it for a week, I had to 
 make her another or she d have died of grief. And she s 
 gone, and the trumpets are here, and if anybody with deaf 
 ears wants em they may have em and go hang. I don t 
 take dirty money for em, do I ? Ready ? " 
 
 But while they poised on the point of entrance into the 
 world that looked to them every night fresh created, they 
 were plucked rudely back. The outer door opened, and a 
 young man came in. At the clicking of the latch Winter- 
 bourne had raised his leonine head with an angry shake and 
 opened his mouth to the roar that served him as protest 
 against a meddling world. But meeting the young man s 
 gaze, taking in the familiar pleasantness of his tall figure, the 
 clothes that always brought a scent of outer air, anger died 
 in him, and he nodded, in easy salutation. 
 
 This was Dwight Hunter, who, left alone with no blood- 
 connections, lived by himself on the outskirts of the town, a 
 mile farther on, and pursued varied occupations of an out 
 door life together calculated to relieve him from the neces- 
 
i 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 sity of going into the city on an early train and sitting at a 
 desk, or adopting other sophistical occupations which his 
 most respectable position would seem to entail upon him. 
 He was working and playing with these two older men be 
 cause they had recognized him as one of their own kind, 
 and prized him accurately. Perhaps, too, their solitary life 
 gave color and suggestion for his own. Because Lovell 
 lodged alone in a small house slightly removed from the 
 large one where he and his mother and sister had lived to 
 gether, Hunter found it easier to assume that as the natu 
 ral way of conducting bachelorhood when there were no 
 women-folk. So Mary Manahan plied back and forth be 
 tween him and Lovell, doing them daily service and keep 
 ing their domestic timepieces clicking in a desultory way. 
 At first young ladies matrimonially floating, some of whom 
 had been Hunter s schoolmates, thought it "ridiculous" 
 that he should be living so, in an out-at-elbows fashion; 
 their mothers even ventured gently to persuade him it 
 would never do. But he was an obstinate young man, of 
 terse address, and it was difficult to enter, uninvited, the 
 arena of discussion with him ; and as no eccentricity was 
 debated upon for long in Clyde, ladies and their daughters 
 retired presently to their customary well-bred repose, and 
 Hunter, though he was thought no less of, was recognized 
 as having plunged over the boundary of the deplorably 
 unconventional, and given his head to gallop there. 
 
 He came forward into the circle of lamplight, and halted, 
 cap in hand, the attitude of easy grace adopted not because 
 they were his elders but because he was born to an instinctive 
 courtesy. He was ripe for life, brown-eyed, brown-haired, 
 warm-colored, with teeth ready for beautiful laughter, and a 
 freshness of skin that spoke of the wind and the sun. The 
 two men looking at him had the same thought that he 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 15 
 
 belonged to the days of heavenly eld shut in there between 
 the dark covers of their book, and released for a while to run 
 these meadows, and, an alien presence, tread these streets to 
 show the world what was when Greece was young. Winter- 
 bourne wakened first from the dream. He laughed out. 
 
 "Where s Bacchus, Hunter?" he inquired. "Where s 
 Pan ? You left em outside, did n t you, boy ? " 
 
 Hunter smiled back. He knew the gods by name and 
 all their following, but he had no present use for them. 
 They seemed to him to belong to schoolmasters and men 
 elderly enough to like to rest their stiffening legs by the 
 fire in the evening, and roll out poetry, and potter over 
 what other men had achieved in open air. 
 
 " I ve put ten loads on the lower end of the field," he 
 offered. " Now you said something about ploughing up 
 round the house, so I did it. I ve ploughed within ten feet. 
 But you don t want the carrots up round the house, do 
 you ? Shan t I lay it down to lawn-grass? " 
 
 Winterbourne looked at him with the mild obstinacy of 
 a man who, having entered an unfamiliar occupation, sees 
 no way to preserve his courage in it but by keeping an in 
 flexible front. 
 
 " I want it all sowed down to carrots," he said. " Sum 
 mer carrots. Do you sow em broadcast, Hunter?" 
 
 The young man s face twisted for an instant and his eyes 
 shone, but he answered with a perfect gravity, 
 
 " No, Mr. Winterbourne. We sow em in drills. They 
 have to be in rows, you know, so you can get the wheel- 
 hoe between em." 
 
 Winterbourne nodded. 
 
 " I want," said he magnificently, as if he were demanding 
 some largess of the powers, " I want as many carrots on this 
 place as you can crowd in and leave me room to step. I 
 
1 6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 want carrots up to the front porch and down the walks. I 
 want em climbing up the gutter-pipes " 
 
 Hunter s eyes flashed again for an instant, but he re 
 marked quietly, 
 
 " They won t climb, Mr. Winterbourne. I can t guaran 
 tee anything there." 
 
 " Very well then," said Winterbourne, taking up his pipe 
 and filling it in haste, as if he might get in a smoke edge 
 wise between this interview and his reading, cc let em grovel 
 then, the dunderheaded things. Let em run down till 
 they re sick of it, when they might soar and wave. What 
 do you say, Jim ? " 
 
 Lovell roused himself from his frowning study of a page. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said, "yes. I should do that. By all 
 means do that." 
 
 The bell jangled peremptorily, and Winterbourne started 
 to his feet, match lighted and pipe in hand. 
 
 cc Hunter," he said silkily, " you go to the door for me, 
 there s a good boy. If it s a woman that wants an ear- 
 trumpet for a deaf parent, you tell her they re all given 
 out for the day. The supply s exhausted. Bank s closed." 
 
 Hunter stepped into the hall. He had a soft, light way of 
 moving, as if his muscles gave him pleasure, and the more 
 gayly they carried their loads, the greater the fun. Presently, 
 after a short colloquy, he was back again, a letter in hand. 
 
 " Special delivery," he said, and gave Winterbourne the 
 letter. 
 
 Winterbourne, taking it, regarded it gravely and with some 
 mistrust, as if it might be a document of a sort for which he 
 was unprepared. 
 
 " Oh," he said, and slipped it into his pocket. " Sit down, 
 Hunter. We might as well plan about to-morrow. Lovell, 
 wake up. Going clamming in the morning? " 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 17 
 
 Lovell closed his book on one thumb and did look up, the 
 misty light of his eyes gradually clearing as the sense of the 
 necessities of things throbbed back into them and pushed 
 the dreams away. 
 
 " What time s tide ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Low tide at five," said Hunter. He had perched, seem 
 ing to sit but giving no weight to it, on the back of an arm 
 chair at a greater distance from the fire. " I ve got boots and 
 the whole kit down in my shanty. I can make coffee there, 
 if you don t want to rout Lyddy out." 
 
 " I never want to," said Winterbourne. " Lyddy is in the 
 sere, where, if I treat her handsome, she ll stay till she s a 
 hundred and ten. But she s got to be treated handsome, or 
 she 11 slip her cable and be off." 
 
 " All right," said Hunter. " You be there by four and 
 I 11 have the grub." 
 
 The three of them paused a moment then, all looking at 
 the fire and gravely considering whether there were more pre 
 liminaries before they should part. Then Winterbourne, as 
 if he wanted to include Hunter in the bond of their fellow 
 ship, delivered himself of the sentiment that had begun the 
 evening. 
 
 " It s a good life, Hunter." 
 
 Hunter nodded. 
 
 " Suits me," he replied briefly. 
 
 cc You see," A^interbourne continued, bringing out a line 
 of thought he had presented to them many a time before, 
 " we live in a dangerous hour. There are enemies all about 
 us, banks and stock exchanges, labor-unions and trusts. They 
 are bent on killing the soul. If we are going to exist at all, 
 my boys, we Ve got to build up some occupation for our 
 selves that gets us our bread out of the old earth. What say, 
 Jim ? " 
 
1 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Lovell had not spoken, but he was really wondering, as 
 he often did, in moments when Ke was not actually reading 
 the poets, whether it did pay to live at all. This Winterbourne 
 seemed to surprise in him, and plucked it out of its breeding- 
 ground by a familiarity with his thought. Lovell had not 
 spoken, but Winterbourne took up his thought as if he had 
 uttered it. 
 
 "We ve talked that all out, Lovell. It s settled. It s a 
 good thing, life is. We ve spoiled it, some of us for our 
 selves, and a scurvy lot of them for other people. But it s a 
 good thing, ain t it, Hunter ? " 
 
 When Winterbourne felt closely in touch with his kind, 
 he alloyed his verbs with local usage, and felt it brought 
 him nearer. 
 
 " I m all right," said Hunter generously, as if that were 
 his contributory vote. 
 
 " We re all of us all right if we work with our hands and 
 get calloused and hungry. Now I calculate there are three 
 occupations that would support a man in this neighborhood 
 without his having to descend to the degradation of living on 
 money out at interest. He can plant carrots. That I m go 
 ing to do. He can go clamming. That I have done. He can 
 buy lobsters fresh from the pots, and peddle them round the 
 country-side. That I shall do. If I choose, I shall learn to 
 make baskets, and dispense them at summer hotels. I assume 
 that I shall lead a perfectly useful and innocent life in the 
 midst of simple occupations, and when I die the earth will re 
 ceive me hospitably. She 11 remember how much she s done 
 for me and like me the better for it." 
 
 Hunter was fixing him with a bright, awakened look. 
 
 " You know, Mr. Winterbourne," he said, " if you want 
 money, you can patent your ear-trumpet." 
 
 Winterbourne got out of his chair, took the pipe from 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 19 
 
 his mouth, and with the other hand lifted the poker in a 
 menace. 
 
 " Go home, boy," said he. " Go right home now. I could 
 split you from nave to chine, and I will if you bring any of 
 your devil s temptations here." 
 
 Hunter laughed, and got off the chair. 
 
 " Yes, I m going," he said. " But it s a fact. If you don t 
 patent it somebody else will, and you 11 like that, won t you ? " 
 
 Winterbourne advanced on him with the poker. 
 
 " Go home," said he. 
 
 " I wish I could see the thing. Lyddy told me about it. 
 She s got a deaf cousin she hates like poison, and it threw 
 her into a holy calm to know there was a trumpet and a 
 cousin that could n t get it." 
 
 " There s one of em down at my place," said Lovell, look 
 ing up. " I 11 show it to you." 
 
 Hunter was really going now. 
 
 "Four o clock," he called back to them from the outer 
 door. " Four sharp." 
 
 The door closed on him, and then Winterbourne, laugh 
 ing softly, put down the poker. He shook his pipe out into 
 the fire, and laid it on the mantel, with the gentle care of the 
 devoted smoker. There he stood for a moment, thinking. 
 
 " I guess," he said, as if he had thought of anything else 
 since his mind had been playing on the surface of things, " I 
 guess, Jim, I 11 read my letter." 
 
 Lovell looked up from his book where he had been skim 
 ming a page with more than usual facility. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "of course. Read your letter." 
 
 Winterbourne was turning it over in his hand, looking at 
 it with a curious tinge of apprehension. 
 
 " I will," he said. " It s from my wife." 
 
II 
 
 LOVELL looked up through an interest which was 
 reminding itself not to commit that last, worst offence, 
 and overstep the bounds of curiosity, and there 
 fore kept him from making more than the briefest mono 
 syllabic " Oh !" This renewal of his knowledge of Winter- 
 bourne, a figure of hearsay among his elders even, had been 
 of a man who had lived out of Clyde long enough to marry 
 a wife, make their home in New York for a number of years, 
 and then, in some unexplained fashion, determine to live 
 apart from her. When Lovell got so far, as he did two or 
 three times in the first days of their intimacy, he put the topic 
 aside as one he had nothing to do with ; and after that, look 
 ing at Winterbourne only through the medium of their kin 
 dred occupations, he never thought of it at all. But he was 
 sure, calling upon his inner unconfirmed memory, that there 
 was a wife living, and, he dimly thought, a grown-up child. 
 
 Winterbourne had run frowningly through the four closely 
 written pages, and now stooped and laid the paper on the 
 blaze. There was a finality in the act which made Lovell 
 again wonder a little, briefly. It seemed a summary fate to 
 inflict on a letter that had arrived with the haste of a special 
 stamp. Winterbourne spoke again in a moved and gentle 
 voice. 
 
 "She is coming here. She is coming home." 
 
 " When ? " asked Lovell, shaking himself into a practical 
 marching order of mind. 
 
 " To-night." 
 
 Lovell was getting out of his chair. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 21 
 
 " I 11 take myself off," he said. 
 
 Winter-bourne put out a powerful hand, and appeared, 
 by a touch on his shoulder, to be pushing him back. 
 
 " Don t," he counselled. He seemed really to be implor 
 ing a service. " She is coming on the last train. She does n t 
 want me to meet her. She s telephoned for a carriage, she 
 says. Stay with me till then, Jim." 
 
 It was, to Lovell s sensitive mind, although he was not 
 used to clutching at subtleties of motive in every-day act, as 
 if the other man anticipated an ordeal, and wanted compan 
 ionship until the moment of his meeting it. They resumed 
 their chairs, and Winterbourne, bending forward, took the 
 tongs and touched the sticks into a blaze. 
 
 " I have n t seen her," he said, still in that moved voice, 
 <c for over four years." 
 
 It was one year more than he had been here leading his 
 happy desultory life with the Greeks and his fond acquaint 
 ance with the earth. 
 
 " It s a long time," ventured Lovell, because that really 
 seemed all there was to say. 
 
 "Yes." Then he mused a space, and broke out afresh. 
 "You know she adopted a child, we did, a girl." 
 
 " I was n t sure. I rather thought there was a child." 
 
 "We never had one of our own. Catherine found this one 
 when it was about eight. She wanted it. She had a kind of 
 passion " He broke off here and turned his direct gaze 
 upon his friend. It seemed as if, with eyes so full of power, 
 he could find out all he needed to know before asking; yet 
 there was also a pathos of seeking in them. " I don t know 
 how much you know, Lovell," he continued, " about mod 
 ern women." 
 
 " I don t know anything at all," said Lovell violently. 
 
 His mind had not gone back so far as to summon his 
 
22 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAiMILY 
 
 mother and sister from the dim hall where they dwelt with 
 lamps of adoration burning before them. They stood for 
 something warm and kind, an ecstasy of well-wishing, and 
 he dared not think of them often lest he should bring upon 
 himself the turbulence of mind and body he knew as grief. 
 All the women outside that circle of his affections he regarded 
 with a horror of nervous distaste, as creatures who wanted 
 to tell him how much they had enjoyed the volume of 
 poems he had published years ago, as if the work were a 
 dish for the table, and who, on the strength of it, meant 
 to hale him to afternoon teas and to meet distinguished 
 strangers. 
 
 " I don t know anything about modern women," he added 
 hastily, as if a swift disclaimer might help in keeping them 
 away. 
 
 "No," said Winterbourne, almost tenderly, remembering 
 his secluded life, " you would n t. What we read here to 
 gether does n t prepare us for em. There are n t any Helens 
 though there s a little of Helen, maybe, a very little, if 
 you feel the charm. A little of Medea, a little of Electra 
 I can t pursue that. Well, my own wife, Lovell, had a passion 
 for I don t know what to call it for being active, for 
 living, for helping the world turn round." 
 
 Lovell nodded. He thought he understood. He was 
 willing to pretend he did, for this unravelling, he saw, Win 
 terbourne was not rinding an easy task. 
 
 " Clubs ? " he inquired, without looking up. 
 
 Winterbourne stared. 
 
 "Clubs? Oh, women s clubs. I guess so. All kinds of 
 things that were active and had information in em. She 
 brought up the girl to learn things and do things. I don t 
 think the girl is having a good time." 
 
 " What s her name ? " asked Lovell, because he felt it to 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 23 
 
 be friendly of him to show an interest, and this was the only 
 question safe enough. 
 
 " Celia. I fancy she accounts for their coming. My wife 
 writes there is something the matter with her/ 
 
 Lovell grunted sympathy, and Winterbourne went on 
 musing. 
 
 " She s a pretty girl, a striking girl. But she s not clever. 
 Catherine wanted her to be. She had her trained in a great 
 many subjects. I don t think she ever got very far in them. 
 I don t think she s happy, as I said. She s had a feeling, I 
 think, that she was a disappointment to my wife and that it 
 seemed ungrateful " He stopped, staring into the fire. 
 
 "Are you attached to her?" Lovell inquired, out of 
 his assumption of sympathy. 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 " I suppose your wife is attached to her." 
 
 "Oh, very much. Very much. She s been Catherine s 
 life-work. If Catherine could have played the fiddle, or dug 
 up Egyptian jugs, or danced barefooted in beads and veils 
 and things, I dare say she would n t have laid so much 
 stress on Celia. You can t tell." 
 
 " How long is it since you have seen her Celia? " 
 
 " Four years. Catherine took her abroad. She was to be 
 trained for something or other there. Then they came back 
 and something queer happened. Celia found her own sister." 
 
 " She d been hunting for her? " 
 
 " No. It was quite by chance and very simple. The girl 
 had been working in an ordinary place, a country boarding- 
 house, I think, and in some way they met and found they 
 were sisters, and Celia was n t to be separated from her." 
 
 "That was hard on your wife?" Lovell began tenta 
 tively. 
 
 " No. Catherine liked it. I think from her letters she 
 
24 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 liked it. You see the sister had a voice. So it seemed to 
 Catherine she could do some of the things with her she 
 never d been able to do with Celia." 
 
 " What s the sister s name ? " 
 
 Winterbourne thought for a moment. 
 
 "I don t recollect," he said. 
 
 "Haven t you ever seen her?" 
 
 "No. It all happened after my wife and Celia came back 
 from Europe, why, not more than six months ago. I d 
 been living here." 
 
 The little break in the narrative covered the reason why 
 he had begun living in Clyde while his wife careered about 
 the world ; but Lovell felt not even the mildest curiosity in 
 further probing. It seemed to him that there was for Win 
 terbourne, in the interval of waiting for family bonds to be 
 welded again, something in being allowed to free his mind 
 to one who would feel bound to forget it all next day. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I suppose your wife is running down 
 to see you and leaving the" He hesitated. To call them 
 girls seemed too familiar to a sense of courtesy trained in 
 Clyde, and the thin air of relationship forbade him to name 
 them daughters. "She ll leave the others behind her? "he 
 qualified. 
 
 " No," said Winterbourne. " They are coming too. She 
 comes to-night, and Celia and " He bent forward over 
 the coals, as if they could give him back the name he had 
 sacrificed "What made me holocaust that letter? Well, 
 Celia is coming and the other one, whatever they call her, in 
 the morning." 
 
 Lovell was one who believed fully in the simplicity of 
 daily life. He could drink from the spring and live for days 
 on bread and apples, and the luxurious convenience of rich 
 houses he scorned as contributing to the lax fibre of the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 25 
 
 men corrupted by them. But even he wondered at seeing 
 Winterbourne sitting there, hands folded, feet at rest, before 
 the coals, while exacting femininity was nearing this ram 
 shackle house fit only for the rats, or men with bachelor 
 habits, or Lyddy Pendleton. 
 
 "Don t you "he hesitated, and then found himself 
 obliged to continue "don t you want me to call Lyddy? " 
 
 " Oh, no," said Winterbourne, with an innocent self-pos 
 session. " Lyddy says she can t be broke of her rest. I think 
 she s right. I don t believe she can. Anyway, I don t dare 
 to try." 
 
 Lovell stared at him a moment, and again looked at the 
 fire. It occurred to him that he might mend that, and he 
 rose, laid on a stick, and then went poking about until he 
 found, by the dining-room fireplace, a charred turkey-wing. 
 With that he swept up the hearth, and keeping it still in 
 hand, stood for a further minute looking about the room. 
 Winterbourne was in a deep amaze. He awoke from it pre 
 sently, and glanced up to find Lovell at his task. 
 
 "Oh!" he cried. "Ah! What is it? You sweeping, Jim? 
 You re a dear fellow. But I don t believe we need to do 
 that, do you ? " 
 
 Lovell relegated the turkey-wing to the floor, and then, 
 because it looked untidily out of place, picked it up again 
 and hid it behind a row of books. Upon that, the disorder 
 of the room seemed to groan at him afresh, and he took out 
 his handkerchief and began walking about, running it over 
 surfaces in a stealthy way, as of one who recognized the in- 
 evitableness of the task and yet knew his own idea of it to 
 be shamefully superficial. Winterbourne watched him for a 
 moment out of eyes flooded with kindliness. Then he opened 
 his mouth and emitted a torrent of mirth. Lovell took no 
 notice. He appeared to be slightly interested now in his 
 
7 *6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 dusting from a personal standpoint, and even rubbed a sur 
 face or two with hopeful vigor. 
 
 "You need n t do that," said his host. " I d help you if it 
 would do any good. I d throw in my handkerchief and my 
 sark. You want to know why I don t? Because it s hopeless, 
 man, it s hopeless. You couldn t make this place fit to meet 
 Catherine Winterbourne s eye in less than a year s time and 
 two gallons of paint and some rags at the window and an 
 oriental rug on the floor. If you were in hell you would n t 
 go round sprinkling with a watering-pot, would you ? " 
 
 Lovell, arrested by the vigor of the simile, had paused, 
 and doubtful of the wisdom of his mission, seemed about 
 to relinquish it. 
 
 " Well," said Winterbourne, taking his halt for a virtual 
 retreat, " Catherine will regard this place as hell. You 
 could n t change its main features unless you adopted the 
 methods I have described. Put your handkerchief in your 
 pocket and come along and read Theocritus." 
 
 He seemed to have slipped into a mood of lightest gayety, 
 and Lovell, looking at him an instant, decided that it was 
 real, and that if the master of the house could take its dis 
 advantages so easily, he need not give him a lead. He 
 stared doubtfully at his handkerchief, shook it over the fire, 
 and then, because he hated smeared things, with a sudden 
 impulse tossed it into the blaze. It caught, and Winter- 
 bourne shook his head at him reproachfully. 
 
 "You are a prodigal," he said. "You will see the time 
 when you are glad to wipe your nose on a husk. I 11 have 
 another pipe. I can t read. I am excited. It s your dusting 
 the room. I never thought such convulsions were possible. 
 They re not in nature, man. The stars forbid them." 
 
 While he filled his pipe, Lovell stood on the other side 
 of the hearth, leaning on the mantel and preparing so 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 27 
 
 patently to speak that shades, like little tentative beginnings, 
 kept chasing over his face. 
 
 "John," he said at last, "if I m going to meet your 
 wife " 
 
 " You need n t, boy," said Winterbourne, lighting his 
 pipe and speaking between the puffs. "You don t like 
 women-folks. You shan t be brought here at the cart s tail. 
 I 11 come round to your house and we 11 go on with our 
 book." 
 
 Lovell seemed to take no notice of this concession. He 
 looked very earnestly desirous of setting forth something 
 in his mind, and at the same time too shy to do it. 
 
 " If you speak about me- " he began. 
 
 " Shan t, man, shan t. Would n t do such a thing. S pose 
 I d betray you to pink and white girls and mothers of 
 girls?" 
 
 " I was going to say, if I play off that idiotic old joke 
 on them, are you going to think it s any kind of dis 
 respect ? " 
 
 "Bless you, no," said Winterbourne heartily. "Why 
 should I?" 
 
 "I don t know. Only if you do, I won t enter upon it, 
 that s all. I won t do as I did with you when you brought 
 me the trumpet, and say, c I m no more deaf than you are ; 
 but I can keep away from em more or less." 
 
 " Lovell," said his friend earnestly, " it was a fortunate 
 moment for you when you decided not to hear. If I had 
 my life to live over again I d do the same, except with one 
 or two cronies I could trust, same as you with Dwight and 
 me. Every civilized woman that trailed me with that look 
 in her eyes that means tea and little sweet cakes, I d put 
 my hand up to my ear as you do; but I wouldn t be so 
 smooth as you. * Beg pardon, I Ve heard you say, c I m 
 
28 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 very deaf/ No, I d put my hand up to my ear and make a 
 face at em, and when they screamed I d say, c I m deaf 
 and I m a gargoyle. I Ve got down off the gutter for a 
 bat ; and then they d think I was deaf and dotty both. 
 So much the better. Meddlers ! " 
 
 Lovell was not .listening to him. He sat mutely con 
 sidering. 
 
 "You see," he said, at length, " it does save me an awful 
 lot. Folks meet me, and they don t speak to me. Some 
 times I have a crack with the fellows, and I don t know 
 what they think. Once Mrs. Ramsay stopped in the street 
 when I was having a klatsch with the little new parson. 
 What do you suppose she said ? c Your hearing is improv 
 ing, is n t it, Mr. Lovell ? Scared me blue. But before I 
 left the parson, I managed -to say I could hear men s voices 
 better than women s. But not well enough to go to 
 church!" 
 
 Wheels had stopped at the door. Both men knew it. 
 Winterbourne got up and tapped his pipe on the chimney- 
 piece. Confidence had gone out of him. 
 
 " She took an earlier train," he said, and Lovell as auto 
 matically agreed with him. 
 
 A hand was on the door, and the latch lifted. The master 
 of the house turned that way, but, the one motion made, 
 seemed unable to rouse himself from his stupor of arrested 
 life. Then, the door open a crack, a woman s clearly impe 
 rious voice without gave an order, evidently relating to 
 trunks, and Lovell, in that instant of pause, realized that 
 there was no way for him to fly unless he met the newcomer 
 face to face. He turned with a dash, threw up the front 
 window, sprang lightly out, and pulled down the sash after 
 him. 
 
 The act, in its haste and vigor, seemed to rouse Winter- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 29 
 
 bourne from his maze, and he strode forward to the door, 
 though not in time to show the readiest alacrity. His wife 
 was inside, pausing an appreciable moment in the hall, be 
 fore he could reach her, and his eyes took in her complete 
 and ornamental appearance. He had thought he knew ex 
 actly how she looked, line by line and tint for tint, but she 
 was so astonishingly urban in these ancient surroundings, 
 so equipped to make things move and insist upon her own 
 supremacy over them, that he caught his breath in wonder 
 and perhaps abashment. Here was a woman on the road 
 to middle life who had kept something pathetically fruitless 
 from the charm of youth, the special and indubitable appeal 
 that means emotion. Her hair was dusky, fine and thick, 
 and her eyes, of a dark blue, had plentiful lashes, strange 
 lids, too, that were a beauty in themselves, with a droop at 
 the outer corner, a mystical curve that meant what? per 
 haps nothing but sheer loveliness. She had a way of glanc 
 ing up under those lids in an unconsidered interrogation, 
 and this gave her sad charm an added force. 
 
 That face, the tragic pathos born in it and intensifying with 
 every year, Winterbourne remembered through the veil of 
 wilful oblivion he had hung before it. He had studied it 
 passionately in the old days when there was some hope in 
 his ardent heart of making it the index of a true content. 
 Later he had acquiesced in its sorrowing appeal, and coun 
 selled himself that happiness is no more than the wanton 
 guide of youth. After the lovely face had ceased to mark his 
 own calendar of good or ill fortune, and he had bent him 
 self obstinately to homely living and what he considered the 
 gods meant for man when they created a fruitful earth, he 
 had sometimes seen it before his shut eyes at the end of 
 sleep, in the early morning before he had got hold of his 
 self-commanding powers again, and he had groaned and bade 
 
3 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 it begone, assuring himself that it was only a part of the 
 tears of mortal things. 
 
 So he knew it ; but he was not prepared for the figure of 
 fashion his wife made in the instant she stood before him. 
 She had always been exquisitely careful in her dress, accord 
 ing to a nice perception. Then she had been thinking of 
 other things, inner ones, things of the soul, she would 
 have said. Now, in richness of material and harmony of tint, 
 she conformed to some standard he dimly recognized as set 
 ting her apart from him in his flannel shirt and the com 
 fortable wrinkles of his coat. This efflorescence in her he 
 was too simple to classify as clothes. He only thought she 
 had changed, in a way that embarrassed him. She had not 
 lagged on the road to beauty, and he had been tramping 
 through the mud of a ploughed field. 
 
 But she had taken the step between them and put up her 
 face to be kissed. Winterbourne performed the marital cere 
 mony sparsely and with some abashment. Now she was at 
 the door again saying in her rather nervous voice, 
 
 " Bring in the trunks, please. You 11 carry them upstairs, 
 I hope ? " 
 
 Some one shouldered a trunk and appeared with it in 
 the doorway. Winterbourne, when he saw it was Dwight 
 Hunter, made a small grimace which was not all a smile. The 
 young man had been delaying outside there to give husband 
 and wife an interval for meeting. Winterbourne stepped for 
 ward and laid hold of an end of the trunk. 
 
 " This is a neighbor of yours, Catherine," he said. " This 
 is Mr. Hunter." 
 
 Hunter set down his end of the burden and took off his 
 cap, which, after the salute, he tossed in a corner and pre 
 pared, again, to take up the trunk. Mrs. Winterbourne had 
 smiled at him rather absently. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 31 
 
 "I didn t know," she said, in what seemed a sufficient 
 apology, when it came to the accompaniment of her rather 
 intense method of speech. "The cabman hadn t any team 
 large enough, and Mr. Hunter offered his. Where shall I 
 have my trunks put P " 
 
 Winterbourne s first instinct was to answer truthfully, " I 
 don t know." He was himself sleeping in the chamber over 
 the sitting-room, because it was likely to be warmer, but he 
 had a sudden light of memory upon the picture it usually 
 made when he went up at twelve or one after his glorious 
 bouts with Lovell and Theocritus. There were days when 
 Lyddy forgot to make the bed, and he found coverlet and 
 sheets trailed on the floor in a disorderly abandon. This, he 
 felt immediately convinced, would be one of the days. Also, 
 he had built a fire there last night, and he remembered how 
 the wind in the morning had sifted the ashes over the floor. 
 All this was swiftly presented to him in a panoramic spasm 
 of fancy, and yet he seemed to answer promptly enough, 
 
 " The west chamber, Dwight." 
 
 Then they went up, his wife following, and as he passed 
 his own room he had the prudence to put out his hand and 
 shut the door. They entered the darkness of the west room, 
 and Dwight, setting down the trunk, said in a hushed tone, 
 as if he considered the exigency rather serious, 
 
 " I 11 run down and get the lamp." 
 
 While he was gone, Winterbourne and his wife stood in 
 silence together. He could hear her breathe, and he thought 
 she was even sniffing in the dampness of the place, testingly. 
 At that he felt a comical despair, and when Hunter came 
 plunging up bearing a light, he looked about him with almost 
 the same measure of curiosity his wife must be feeling. He 
 had not entered this room, nor others not needed in his 
 active daily life, since his return, and he was prepared to find 
 
32 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 that neglect and Lyddy together had wrought almost any 
 witch-work upon it. When he saw what was actually there., 
 his mind cleared, and he turned to his wife with a little 
 swagger of frank relief as if, after all, he had something to 
 offer a home-coming traveller. What he saw was the 
 majesty of a room built in simple proportions, with its old 
 beauties of wainscoting and panelling untouched. There was 
 a rich four-poster, covered by a sheet which seemed to him 
 sufficiently white for the purpose it served. There could be 
 a fire in five minutes, and no doubt the drawers of the high 
 boy contained plenty of bedding. He gazed at his wife in 
 an innocent community of satisfaction ; but his heart sank at 
 sight of her. She was regarding now this, now that of the 
 ancient furnishings with an incredulous disaffection. 
 
 " I should get my death in here," she remarked, with no 
 scorn but simply as a statement of a fact apparent to the 
 .dullest eye. She had the air of the person who can arrange 
 and dominate, and his spirit quailed before her. 
 
 " It can be aired," he essayed weakly, and made a stride 
 for the window. 
 
 She was in his path, and, by one quick gesture, stopped him. 
 
 " It would have to be aired a week and sunned and 
 cleaned. Where s Lyddy ? " 
 
 Meantime Hunter stood beside them with a shamefaced 
 air of sharing Winterbourne s discomfiture. 
 
 " I 11 go down and fetch up the other trunks," he offered 
 then in a conciliatory fashion, as if something in process of 
 moving might appease the lady. 
 
 She gave him a little nod, meaning concurrence. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "They ve got to be somewhere. You 
 have n t told me." She turned to Winterbourne. "Where s 
 Lyddy ? " 
 
 " Lyddy s abed." He was answering like a sulky child. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 33 
 
 " Abed ! Where is her room ? I 11 ring for her." 
 
 Winterbourne, with the defence of the weak in his hands, 
 grew at once bolder. 
 
 " I can t have Lyddy disturbed at this time of night/ he 
 announced. Then he looked at her appealingly, as if to beg 
 her, out of her womanly resources, to find some other path 
 to harmony. 
 
 " Is n t she doing your work? You wrote me she was." 
 
 " Yes, but she s an old woman, Kitty." He ventured on 
 the diminutive timidly, perhaps as a slightest possible atom 
 thrown into the balance, a coaxing weight. " You can t rout 
 Lyddy out." Then he raised his voice. " Here, Hunter. 
 Give over there. Don t tackle em alone." 
 
 He hastened down, grateful for a break in the current be 
 tween him and his wife, and together he and Hunter rattled 
 the trunks up and stood them in a row. Mrs. Winterbourne, 
 purse in hand, was turning to Dwight with a businesslike 
 inquiry on what had suddenly become her careworn face. 
 But Winterbourne, a hand on his shoulder, turned him 
 summarily about, and seemed to propel him toward the 
 stairs. 
 
 " Much obliged, my boy," he said. " I 11 be there in the 
 morning. Four o clock, remember." 
 
 Hunter, on the way down, reasoned rather perplexedly to 
 himself that a man whose wife had come home to a disordered 
 house and no adequate explanations of anything could hardly 
 be at liberty to go clamming at four o clock in the morning, 
 especially as the time was wearing on and four o clock would 
 be there before Winterbourne was likely to know it. He 
 stopped at the stair-foot, and having considered a minute 
 more, called back, 
 
 " I can t go to-morrow. See you again about it." 
 
 Then Winterbourne with his wife and the baggage in the 
 
34 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 unwelcome chamber heard the closing of the door and the 
 sound of wheels down the street. Another of his dear com 
 panions gone. He turned with an involuntary sigh to his 
 wife and spoke, all meekness. 
 
 " It s warmer downstairs," said he. 
 
Ill 
 
 WHEN they went downstairs and entered the sit 
 ting-room, Winterbourne felt a momentary acces 
 sion of courage because the familiar spot, with its 
 two chairs before the smouldering fire, and the fire itself, 
 gave him a habitable feeling. He drew forward Lovell s 
 chair, with a show of hospitality, and his wife, after looking 
 at it frowningly, as if, after her experience of the chamber, 
 she distrusted all surfaces, sat down and resigned herself to 
 alien circumstances. She recalled suddenly, though late, a re 
 solve she had made on her way here : a determination that 
 the old arguments, the old strife between her own idealism and 
 what she considered her husband s eccentric obstinacy, should 
 never be renewed. She had come home fully bent upon put 
 ting the homely and commonplace axioms of marital life into 
 force. Should he upbraid, she was prepared to meet him with 
 a smile. But he never did upbraid, she knew. He had childish 
 temper-fits at unexpected times, when he shook his fist at the 
 sky and bade it bear witness that no man was ever so much 
 the butt of godhead as he. Those, she felt almost sure, would 
 hardly trouble her now. She was even prepared to face his 
 most incomprehensible quality of devotion to hideously plain 
 living, his refusal to discuss ideals of any sort, and his tacit 
 denial that love between men and women demanded any 
 poetic expression after its first fervor had flown. So it was as 
 a very good wife that she sat gingerly in the doubtful chair 
 and said to him with careful deference, 
 
 " I don t think I gathered exactly why Lyddy was n t to be 
 called. Is she ill?" 
 
36 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Winterbourne answered shortly, because he was not at all 
 sure she might not defeat him on a domestic point, as being 
 within her rights, and hale Lyddy out of her retreat. 
 
 " She s got the worst of all sicknesses," he said briefly. 
 "She s old." 
 
 " Can she cook ? " 
 
 "She cooks, and likes it. Cooks well, too. What she 
 does n t like is being expected to hop round us three times 
 and make us more comfortable than humans ought to be. 
 Lyddy s got beyond playing that kind of a game." 
 
 His wife looked at the fire with a clarity of housewifely 
 justice. 
 
 " I suppose you pay her ? " she remarked. 
 
 " Pay her ? Why, yes, of course I pay her. She s laid up 
 a little, but she depends on that for shrouds and things." 
 
 "The girls are coming to-morrow." 
 
 Celia " he hesitated. 
 
 " And Lilian." 
 
 " Celia better ? " 
 
 He was still fumblingly anxious to show a proper interest, 
 and yet thinking how dear, how very dear, the black book 
 was at his side, the book he must not open, must hardly 
 think of lest he fly to it. 
 
 " Celia has n t been ill." 
 
 "You wrote me "He looked into the fire as if he could 
 perhaps summon up the telltale letter. "You said there was 
 something the matter with her." 
 
 " Oh, that ! " Her face took on the look of worry he knew 
 so well, out of the useless proficiency gained in his acquaint 
 ance with her emotional distresses of one sort or another. 
 "It s quite a long story. I didn t mean she was sick. I meant 
 she told lies." 
 
 "Told lies? What about?" 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 37 
 
 " Everything. It s come on her quite lately." 
 
 " What does she do ? Embroider what happens, or tell 
 what has n t happened ? " 
 
 " Both. It s very serious, John. I don t know what to do 
 with her." 
 
 He spoke flippantly out of his amusement over what he 
 felt was another of Catherine s mental tragedies. 
 
 " Why don t you send her to a specialist ? Send her to 
 an alienist? " 
 
 " I should like to. I Ve thought of it." 
 
 "Good God! don t put her under that kind of a lens. 
 The child is n t mad." 
 
 " No, but there s some lesion, there s something abortive 
 in her brain " 
 
 He stared at her. 
 
 " I wish we did n t have to borrow terms for things," he 
 said. " There s no more damning sign of the times than lay 
 men using words and thinking they Ve got somewhere by it. 
 Say the girl s a liar, if she is a liar. Don t fish out her brain 
 and fumble with it." 
 
 " But she s my responsibility." 
 
 He looked into the fire gloweringly and said nothing. 
 He had heard a great deal about Catherine s responsibilities. 
 They had almost [made him resolve, in a reactionary spite, 
 that he would have none. 
 
 " How is the other girl ? " he asked. 
 
 " Lilian? So far John, she s an enormous disappoint 
 ment." 
 
 " Well, you don t care, do you ? Your affections are n t 
 involved ? " 
 
 " My affections, no. But Celia s are." 
 
 "Is she fond of her?" 
 
 " Naturally. Her sister ! " 
 
3 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 She looked at him as if the implication that sisters were not 
 fond might be monstrous. Winterbourne thought he had 
 heard of such cases, but he said nothing because he remem 
 bered that, with Catherine, the clever thing was to avoid 
 argument. She had plenty of time for it, but it kept him from 
 the fellowship of books. That striking him less like an in 
 vitation than a picture rescued from old days and thrown 
 upon a screen before him for an instant, made him steal a 
 glance at the book waiting there for him, patient, inscrutable, 
 holding its beauties until the foolish mind got ready to aban 
 don these peddling discussions and come back to calms and 
 sanities. His hand crept out toward his pipe, too ; but he 
 withdrew it. That was one thing he could not remember 
 about Catherine. She might not mind smoking, but it seemed 
 reasonable that she did. 
 
 Catherine was settling to a leisurely flow of talk, of the 
 sort she chose, not the lazy interchange of trifles born out 
 of the common air, sparks struck out as the breath comes, 
 but stories interminably prolonged. Winterbourne hated 
 them. He liked to embark himself on a monologue, specula 
 tion about the things in heaven and earth ; but an infinite 
 number of parentheses opening his mind to the minds of 
 tedious people, he abhorred. She continued, 
 
 "You know how we found Lilian?* 
 
 " I believe you wrote me." 
 
 It was in one of the long letters constructed according to 
 an ill-chosen method of page-numbering, he readily assumed. 
 He knew how the letters looked, and how he faithfully 
 studied through them from the first page to the finish, and 
 then back to the second, which had to be tipped at right 
 angles, when the whole could as easily have been written like 
 a book. 
 
 " It was on our way to New York, you know, the month 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 39 
 
 after we came home from abroad. The train was stalled. 
 We got out and went to spend the night at an inn in that 
 little town. What was the name of that town ? I never can 
 remember." 
 
 Winterbourne shifted his feet, the one over the other. 
 
 "Never mind the town," he suggested. "It s probably 
 not material." 
 
 " No. Well, I shall think of it. And there was this girl. 
 She had a ring, it s exactly like a story, a little onyx 
 ring, hung round her neck by a ribbon, because it was too 
 little for her to wear. And that was so queer that it attracted 
 Celia s notice. She began to talk to her. And Lilian told 
 her name quite simply, Elizabeth Hartwell." 
 
 "I thought her name was Lilian." 
 
 " Oh, no. We call her Lilian because it s so much better 
 for a singing name Lilian Winterbourne. But her real 
 name is Elizabeth Hartwell." 
 
 "What condemned foolishness!" said Winterbourne, 
 escaped into his normal habit of outcry. " As if you couldn t 
 sing under one name as well as another. A crow doesn t 
 caw because he s a crow. If you called a thrush a catbird, it 
 would n t alter his throat." 
 
 "Oh, but it s most important! All those things are. 
 We ve gone into it very deeply and we know. And what do 
 you think she was actually doing when we found her ? " 
 
 She paused for the effect of her dramatic climax. 
 
 "Tying some kind of a trinket round her neck by a string, 
 was n t she ? " 
 
 " No, no. The ring was round her neck. That s how 
 Celia recognized her. You see she had the mate to it. Some 
 nice old gentleman that is, I think he was old. It may be 
 he was just middle-aged and seemed old to them " 
 
 " Catherine," broke in Winterbourne, so exactly in the 
 
40 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 tone of past fulminations that she jumped perceptibly in her 
 chair, " Catherine, I don t care how old he was." 
 
 " No, but these are facts, and I like to get them accurate. 
 Well, when they were children, he took a fancy to them be 
 cause they were pretty and cunning, and he gave them these 
 two little rings. Do you see ? " 
 
 Winterbourne gripped his hands on the arms of his chair 
 and waited. It was evident to him that he had broken his 
 intent to be the courteous and patient host, and he meant to 
 renew the guard on himself. 
 
 " And now what," she was continuing, " what do you 
 think she was actually doing when we found her? " 
 
 He shook his head at the fire, gloomily. 
 
 "She was washing a floor!" 
 
 The tone of high triumph with which she delivered this 
 at once convinced him that it was expected to have an enor 
 mous effect. 
 
 " Good for her ! " he responded, cordially, though in the 
 dark. 
 
 " Yes, she was washing a floor, precisely like Agnes Sur- 
 riage." 
 
 Winterbourne remembered far more about the Greece of 
 the Golden Age than about Great Britain s colonies ; but his 
 wife, innocent that she had failed of her effect, went on, 
 
 " Well, the girls were simply enchanted to find each other. 
 Lilian does n t say much, but I think she was enchanted, 
 too. And then we heard her singing about her work, and we 
 found she had this astounding voice oh, rich and perfectly 
 splendid." 
 
 "That s good," said Winterbourne patiently. 
 
 " Yes, was n t it ? And then the question was, what to do 
 about it ? " 
 
 That was it, Winterbourne reasoned, in recognized de- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 41 
 
 spair. Catherine would have to do something about it. She 
 could n t find a priceless voice and refrain from peering at 
 it and fingering it, and perhaps in the end somehow tarnish 
 ing it. 
 
 "Here was this glorious voice/ she continued, with high 
 relish of her tale, " and nothing was being done." 
 
 " Was n t she singing ? " 
 
 " Yes, in the parlor, in the evening, to a melodeon. They 
 called it an instrument. She called it so, too. Fancy ! " 
 
 " They are honest people," said Winterbourne, who had 
 no ear, save for the poetic description of a flute at dawn. 
 "They re all instruments of torture." 
 
 But she was ignoring him. These mild lunacies of his 
 seemed to her, as they always had, the outbreak of the mas 
 culine, which was also the childlike mind. She had the 
 theory, evolved from the surprises and griefs of her marital 
 experience, that men are but children. If you take them 
 otherwise, you are likely to die broken-hearted, of the disap 
 pointments they deal you. But a comprehensive scheme of 
 their undeveloped soul is your only safeguard. This, she 
 concluded, was one of the exigencies when she was not to 
 mind, and she continued, 
 
 " We took her away at once. Celia would n t hear to any 
 thing else. I believe if I had refused her, she would have 
 stayed herself." 
 
 " Took her away from a good place where she was con 
 tented and earning her living and singing to the boarders in 
 the evening ? " 
 
 "John, it was a common boarding-house a kind of 
 tavern." 
 
 " Was n t she contented there ? " 
 
 " Yes. That was the trouble. She was perfectly contented." 
 
 " Why have you gone and upset her life ? " Winterbourne 
 
42 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 pelted at her with exasperation. " What have you done it 
 for?" 
 
 Catherine saw he did n t understand, but she could afford 
 to explain herself. 
 
 " We carried her off to New York. The first thing was 
 to get her some clothes. She can t wear Celia s very well. 
 Celia is very slender. Then we took her to several music- 
 teachers I won t trouble you with the names. You 
 would n t know." 
 
 " No. Don t trouble me with anybody s name." 
 
 "They all agreed she sang wonderfully. She has a perfect 
 method. And we got a hearing for her." 
 
 She looked at him brightly, challenging his response to 
 the luck of it, but he was rearranging the fire, and saying 
 without interest, 
 
 "That s good." 
 
 "I simply went to all the people I knew and threw my 
 self on their mercies. I said, c Here s a girl that will sweep 
 the town some day. She s Sembrich, she s Lehmann. I 
 said anything that came into my head. I said, c When she s 
 arrived, we shall be glad we were in at the start/ I got some 
 perfectly splendid patronesses." 
 
 The word displeased him. It smacked of the worship of 
 the rich. 
 
 " Oh, I forgot to say I had her taught a half-dozen songs 
 - ballads, you know, something simple. And everybody 
 understood she was doing it quite without training. Well. 
 And what do you think ? The thing was a failure, a down 
 right, miserable failure." 
 
 " I suppose she missed the instrument," said Winter- 
 bourne, slyly glad she did fail. He thought there was some 
 thing unholy in the triumph of managing and conjuring by 
 empty names. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 43 
 
 "I suppose she did!" A warm indignation put life into 
 her lovely eyes. " She stood cowering there in that dress I d 
 paid I don t know how much for, and her hands shook, and 
 she sang like a little school-girl before her teacher. Oh, I 
 could have slapped her ! " 
 
 " She s a good girl," said Winterbourne. " She s the girl 
 for my money. I m glad she could n t stand up like a cock 
 atoo and squawk." 
 
 " Celia was in the back row. She got perfectly white. I 
 thought she was going to faint. And Lilian saw her towards 
 the end, and what do you think she did? She broke down 
 and began to cry." 
 
 " You got your Nemesis that time, did n t you, Catherine ? " 
 said Winterbourne, with indulgent sympathy. " Did n t that 
 teach you anything?" 
 
 "It taught me she d got to be made to meet an audience. 
 She s got to be taught to manage her voice " 
 
 " I thought she managed it by nature." 
 
 "So she does when nobody s looking at her. Or when 
 there s only a music-teacher in the room. She thinks he s 
 just a quiet, pleasant man that knows how to do something 
 Oh, well, I don t pretend to say what she thinks. But 
 stand her up before a well-dressed audience, and she s as 
 gauche as a heron on one leg." 
 
 "Well, you ve tried her and she doesn t work. Why 
 don t you let her alone ? " 
 
 " I can t let her alone. I can t for Celia s sake. Celia d 
 be broken-hearted. And I can t for her own sake. There 
 she s got this perfectly magnificent voice, and it simply 
 must be cultivated." 
 
 " Let her alone, Catherine. You let her alone. She s all 
 right as she is. She 11 marry a car-conductor, and sing to 
 her babies, and she 11 be a happy woman if you 11 let her." 
 
44 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 She gave a little shriek. 
 
 " A car-conductor ! Marry a car-conductor ! Celia s sis 
 ter!" 
 
 " Celia be hanged. Why should n t all our sisters marry 
 car-conductors ? And what s this pother about Celia s sis 
 ter? Celia was contented enough without any sister till she 
 knew she had one." 
 
 His wife was looking at him solemnly. 
 
 " John," she said, " I believe Celia has missed her all her 
 life." 
 
 " Oh, come, Catherine, don t get up theories about Celia." 
 
 " She has done more than I can tell you, already, for 
 Celia s development. Celia has been a rather unfeeling 
 child " 
 
 " She s been infernally dutiful trying to do the tricks you 
 expected of her." 
 
 " Yes, but I never felt any real affection in Celia. It was 
 a great sorrow to me. She needed somebody of her own 
 blood to bring it out. You know there s the family feeling 
 first, then the tribal feeling " 
 
 " Catherine, don t you hand me over the recipes you get 
 from reading clubs," said her husband, shaking his head at 
 her until his locks flew as in a breeze of his negation. " I 
 can t stand em." 
 
 " Celia is just beginning to comprehend the family feeling. 
 The rest will come. And it has got to come through Lilian." 
 
 " Now tell me." He thrust one hand into his pocket and 
 turned his great bulk sidewise in the chair. " If you are going 
 to begin this devil s symphony, this rake s progress through 
 the world for the approval of well-dressed people, why don t 
 you stay in the world, Catherine ? What are you here for 
 in Clyde, where we don t sing and we don t pipe, and we 
 won t dance to your piping? " 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 45 
 
 She faced him with eyes full of an earnest and pure pur 
 pose. It gave the words she presently uttered a startling 
 incongruity. 
 
 "John, I have n t a cent of money." 
 
 " The devil !" said Winterbourne, and stared at her. 
 
 She gazed back solemnly, aware of her embarrassment 
 and meaning to meet the question. 
 
 " Not a cent," she repeated. " I know what you d say if 
 you were n t too generous and great-hearted " 
 
 Winterbourne groaned over the warmth of the adjectives, 
 and felt how little they applied to the attempt at justice with 
 which he had managed the division of their goods. 
 
 " You d say," she went on, " that when I went abroad, four 
 years ago, you made over to me nearly everything you had." 
 
 " No, no, Catherine. I only gave you three-quarters. It 
 was n t because I was generous. It was because I knew how 
 to do sums. I sat down and figured it out that if you were 
 going to live a life of gilded vanities in Europe and the 
 cities of America, you d need three times as much as I, be 
 cause I was returning to the soil. That s all. But where did 
 it go ? I thought it was a kind of a little fortune." 
 
 " It was. I lost it." 
 
 " Lost it? Where? Carry it in your stocking and have it 
 tumble out, or keep it in your bedroom slipper and get it 
 dusted out of the window?" 
 
 She had not the slightest aversion to telling him, because 
 it evidently seemed to her that although she was unfortunate 
 she was not really culpable. 
 
 "I lost it," she said simply, "in the panic. Mrs. Green- 
 ough was putting a great deal into Western Silt, and I went 
 in as heavily as I could." 
 
 The madness of Ajax was nothing to this. That Winter- 
 bourne could understand, because God sent it. But this 
 
46 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 modern tawdry gambling according to the dicta of other 
 gamblers, for more money and more and more, when one 
 had a pocketful of clean coin to live honestly on he 
 could not even think of it. 
 
 " Catherine ! " he said. " Catherine ! " 
 
 The full note of his voice recalled her to what he must 
 be thinking. His temper-fits were never over what was 
 large and really tragic. They came when a pin pricked him 
 or he could not find his pipe. But if the moment were 
 really urgent, then he was as grave as all the judges. She 
 began to feel even terrified. Her heart beat faster, and with 
 out seeing just why, she realized that she was in a difficult 
 place. 
 
 " You don t think I ought to have done it," she said, in 
 a small voice. " You don t approve." 
 
 " It was your own money, Catherine." 
 
 " A great many people do it. Almost every one." 
 
 "Catherine, it was your own money." 
 
 She began to be hungry and a little chilled. He was her 
 husband, but he seemed like a stranger, and suddenly she 
 felt that her Celia, for whom she had lived so many years, 
 did not really love her very much, and that Lilian, whom 
 she was beginning to help, did not love her at all. And she 
 had no one of her own blood to turn to, and there was n t 
 a bed in the house fit to sleep in. The tears came silently, 
 and Winterbourne saw them on her cheeks. He stirred 
 uneasily in his chair. 
 
 " Oh, for God s sake, Catherine," he besought her, "don t 
 do that ! " 
 
 She seemed to have brought back in a rush the other 
 times he had seen her cry, and swept, with a besom of 
 emotion, all the great calm things that had occupied him 
 for the four years, out of the house so that they went 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 47 
 
 scudding into the night, ill-used, blameless creatures, their 
 locks flying in the wind. She looked about her, in desolate 
 acquiescence, until her eyes took in the possibilities of the 
 old leather sofa. 
 
 " I could curl up there," she said miserably. " I could 
 put my ulster over me." 
 
 Winterbourne got up and walked distractedly back and 
 forth, moved partly by the poor setting of the scene where 
 they were renewing their friendliness, but pursued, too, 
 though that he would not recognize, by a prophetic sense 
 that to-morrow would see the house swept and dusted, set 
 in the cold order that brought duties and social intimacies 
 in its train. She was confirming him. 
 
 " To-morrow we 11 see what can be done," she said, as 
 she rose languidly, sure at last that she was tired. "The 
 girls could have the two back chambers. I suppose there s 
 bed linen enough." 
 
 Winterbourne struck his clenched fist against a door, in 
 passing, and she started at the sound. What had he to do 
 with the knowledge of bed linen? his unquiet soul was ask 
 ing. Lyddy had reigned over his discomfort and reigned 
 well. His sheets might have been of flax washed by Nau- 
 sicaa and her maidens, or they might have been calico from 
 New England looms. But sleep on them was sweet because 
 he had gone to them from the occupations he loved. Cath 
 erine, curled up on the sofa, pulling her ulster to her chin, 
 was looking up at him with a tired face, but smiling rue 
 fully. He saw how fervently she wished she had n t come, 
 yet she was not going to be hateful enough to say it. That 
 was a way of behaving he could approve, and he had an 
 impulse of gratitude to her, so warm that he tucked the 
 ulster round her feet, murmuring something rhythmically 
 and grotesquely soothing in his beard. 
 
48 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " It is n t any worse than a sleeping car," she said, reas 
 suring herself, and then added what frightened him for 
 good and sent him shuddering up to his room: "We 
 must get some sleep. The girls will be coming in the 
 morning." 
 
IV 
 
 THE next morning Winterbourne woke early because 
 the time-piece of his mind, set to the hour for clam 
 ming, had not readjusted itself. There he lay on his 
 disordered bed, in the first cold light, and shuddered inwardly 
 to think how completely his castle of indolence had been sur 
 prised, and how weak its capitulation had shown it to be. He 
 sadly knew that no woman inheriting what were called decent 
 traditions could live in a house like his without turning to 
 with soap and water and hateful dust-raisings, and conjuring 
 it into the form other houses wore. The change seemed to 
 him more than he could bear without incurring danger of 
 that outbreak Lyddy characterized as " flying off the handle," 
 when his pulses hammered out an alarum against things as 
 they are. It had all been beautifully settled, he thought, 
 four years ago, when, by the sacrifice of mere money, he 
 had relegated his wife to the activities of her chosen exist 
 ence and had crept back here to luxuriate in simplicities. 
 But the bond that had drawn them together had capri 
 ciously tightened once more, and here they were back again, 
 pulling all awry in the double harness he, at least, deplored. 
 
 He stepped out of bed like an old man, and only after 
 his cold bath felt like facing the widespread difficulty. Even 
 the bath itself was on a diminished scale. Up to this time 
 he had run half a mile to the fresh river and taken a plunge 
 even when he had to break the ice to do it, but to-day his 
 waning spirits kept him to a meagre bowl. 
 
 When he went downstairs, rather softly as if he were 
 Afraid of calling the attention of orderly household gods to 
 
5 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 his sad condition, he heard voices from the dining-room and 
 groaned to himself, knowing exactly what sort of interview 
 was going on. 
 
 "But if you mean to work at all," his wife was saying, in 
 her clear and now didactic voice, " you must work properly." 
 
 " I ain t goin to work," Lyddy was returning, with her 
 peculiar indifference of tone. " My work s all behind me. 
 I m past my prime, an I ain t goin to kill myself for any 
 body." 
 
 The battle was on, he knew, and it required the full force 
 of his halting will to keep him from turning the other way 
 and crossing the hall, breakfastless, to the room where the 
 refuge of his books awaited him. But he took the last un 
 willing steps into the dining-room, and there his wife, clad 
 in a charming neglige, stood resting one hand on the table 
 in a judicial attitude, looking at Lyddy on her knees before 
 the sulking fire, blowing it without the aid of bellows, and 
 turning eyes wrinkled about from the smoke, to toss back 
 her negative phrases in a detached and altogether improper 
 manner to the mistress of the house. 
 
 Winterbourne looked at his wife for an instant s earnest 
 scrutiny before he entered the lists on the side of what he 
 considered the weaker combatant. Catherine was pale, but 
 charming. Her face had a wan patience that would have 
 gone to his heart if it were not so irritating. She seemed 
 to have made up her mind not to complain, and though it 
 nettled him in the necessity it bespoke for control, he knew 
 how much it cost her. Then he turned to Lyddy, who, in 
 her loose calico confined by an apron string at the waist, 
 her small twist of hair and the angularities of her squatting 
 figure, protruding elbows, even ears at too obtuse an angle, 
 was, he realized, a sight. He had been thinking of Lyddy 
 with nothing but gratitude, her years of service, her auto- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 51 
 
 matic way of creating good plain food, and then letting a man 
 alone to live out his life in a sane and natural fashion ; but 
 now, with her face lined by a thousand wrinkles, and the 
 general dustiness of her aspect, as if the grains from the fly 
 ing wheel of toil had ground into her and become a part of 
 her integument, he saw how unfitted she was to satisfy any 
 domestic ideal. But that only made him hate ideals the 
 more. 
 
 " Let the fire alone, Lyddy," he said compassionately, 
 because she seemed, with him, to be an outcast from some 
 mysterious precinct neither of them wished to enter. " It 11 
 do well enough." 
 
 He approached it and gave the forestick a warning kick, 
 with the result of upward-flying sparks and a following blaze. 
 Lyddy scrambled deftly up and stood before him, squat and 
 unlovely, yet, for his needs, serviceable to the last degree. 
 
 " Your breakfast s ready," she said to him, with an entire 
 and yet what seemed an innocent disregard of the mistress 
 of the house. " I ve set it out on the table." 
 
 With that she disappeared into the kitchen at her accus 
 tomed trot, and Winterbourne was left alone before his wife. 
 At once his sympathies were with her, because resistance had, 
 he saw, gone too far. She was looking at him with pathetic, 
 tear-filled eyes. 
 
 " I told her to prepare the table here," she said gently. 
 " I could see the dining-room was n t in use. I asked where 
 the table linen was." 
 
 " I Ve spoiled her," Winterbourne explained in haste. 
 " You see I eat in the kitchen and go off about my busi 
 ness. She does n t see why everybody should n t. Lyddy s 
 an old woman. It s a long time since she did any civilized 
 work." 
 
 " I know it, John ; but if you are going to make her 
 
52 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 your housekeeper, she must keep your house. If you are 
 going to pay her money, she must earn it." 
 
 "Well! well!" 
 
 Those were, he knew, quite accurate conclusions, yet they 
 belonged to the detestable civilized code he was trying to 
 abjure. He strode off to the kitchen, and presently, while 
 Catherine still waited, he was back again with a fine white 
 napkin in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He 
 spread the napkin on an end of the great mahogany table 
 and set down the cup upon it with the extreme care adopted 
 by hands when they distrust themselves in an unaccustomed 
 task. Then he went off to the kitchen again and returned 
 with a plate of corn-cake and a saucer of butter. Catherine, 
 watching him, felt absurdly small and pathetic with this ser 
 vice going on. She was hungry, and yet it did not come to 
 her that Winterbourne was bound by vows to share his food 
 with her. It seemed a grace in him. He drew off and re 
 garded his preparations frowningly. 
 
 " There ! " said he. He seemed satisfied. His brow cleared, 
 and his smile, warm and ready as the best sunshine, came 
 and illuminated him. " There s your breakfast, honey. Now 
 draw up." 
 
 A flush ran into her face and stayed there, lured by the 
 caressing word. She did not know he had drawn such lubri 
 cants from old stores to use them now on the children he 
 went to play with, at the end of the town, and that it slipped 
 out unbidden because she seemed so like a child herself. To 
 her it meant renewal of their bond. He drew back the chair 
 invitingly, and she slipped into it and tasted her coffee. It 
 was good. Lyddy might have forgotten all the arts that 
 make life gentle, but she had retained the faithful formulae 
 that please the palate. Catherine broke a piece of bread and 
 looked up at him with a recognition of its symbolism. But 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 53 
 
 he was regarding her in a frank satisfaction, intent only on 
 seeing her fed. 
 
 " Where s yours ? " she asked. 
 
 He smiled at her because, by eating, she was pleasing him. 
 
 " On the kitchen table," he answered, and before she could 
 remonstrate, he had gone to seek it. 
 
 So they breakfasted apart, Winterbourne, glancing up 
 from time to time as he devoured great pieces of the bread, 
 to interrogate Lyddy s back bending over the kneading- 
 board on another table, and wonder how her stubbornness 
 could be cast out. 
 
 The Winterbourne kitchen was large and square and low, 
 with a great blackened beam overhead, heavy doors, and an 
 enormous hearth invaded by a modern range. But beside it 
 was the door of the brick oven, Lyddy s adjunct to Saturday s 
 baking, and the mantel was high and narrow over it, melt 
 ing into the wall by a miracle of panelling. Winterbourne 
 loved the room because it had a homely look of comfort, 
 and always a cosy kindliness more enwrapping than the 
 warmth of fireplaces. Lyddy loved it, for it was her domain, 
 and even now in her stubborn mind she was considering 
 whether it would not be craftier to serve meals to the alien 
 woman without there in the dining-room than to dare her 
 into the kitchen, an invasion more to be deplored than the 
 taking of many extra steps. 
 
 Winterbourne had finished and risen from his chair. He 
 stood by the table looking at her, and Lyddy knew it, though 
 her back was turned. 
 
 " Lyddy," he said at length, quite peaceably. 
 
 Her heart knocked against her old side. She adored him, 
 and when he unc6nsciously coaxed her he was irresistible. 
 
 " Lyddy, you know that s my wife in there." 
 
 Lyddy heaved up one scornful shoulder. 
 
54 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " The two young ladies are coming this morning." 
 
 "Young ladies?" 
 
 She had to answer, out of the surprise of it. He nodded at 
 her obstinate back. If he was sorry for her, he was tempted 
 to explain, he was a thousand times more anguished for him 
 self. But he continued irreproachably, with a decorum his 
 wife could not have exceeded, 
 
 " Our daughter, Miss Celia, and her sister." In his desire 
 to fulfil the law he would have claimed both sisters, but at 
 the instant he failed to remember the other one s name. 
 
 " Who under the sun s that ? " Lyddy broke forth harshly. 
 " That s Dwight Hunter. Who s he got with him ? " 
 
 Dwight Hunter in his great wagon was driving up to the 
 door. He had on a suit of clothes conformable to usage, and 
 for that reason Winterbourne wondered why he looked so 
 strange. On the broad seat with him were two girls set off 
 by such bravery of veils and floating pennons that Winter- 
 bourne felt his heart drop at the sight of them. His coward 
 mind prompted him to sink back into his seat at the table, 
 put his head in his hands and burst into lamentations like the 
 bellowings of Ajax. These two hussies, he said to himself, 
 were bringing the city, with its meretricious splendors, into 
 his plain paradise. What his wife had begun last night with 
 her air of civilized equipment, they would treble. But with 
 that hoppling marriage-bond about his feet, he knew he 
 could not escape them, and that shame and an added suffer 
 ing lay in waiting until, with honeyed blandishments, they 
 came and dragged him from his lair. So he made a plunge at 
 the dining-room door, opened it, and was at once in the 
 midst of three women greeting one another affectionately. 
 
 Hunter, too, was there. He had brought in a couple of 
 suit-cases, and with his cap in hand, all young approba 
 tion of the lasses, was waiting to know where the luggage 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 55 
 
 could be carried. Winterbourne, in his mood of general dis 
 favor, felt a sudden hatred of him for being pleased. Hunter, 
 he knew, had gone unnecessarily to meet the train, to be sure 
 the incoming horde should find no difficulty in making their 
 onslaught, and Hunter was being paid for it in having come 
 on two charming girls who, not knowing his standing, were 
 treating him indifferently indeed, but pleasantly. And as 
 Winterbourne stood there, loathing everybody impartially, 
 Catherine saw him and gave a cry. 
 
 " Celia," she called, in a tone of happy warning, "don t 
 you see ? There s your father." 
 
 Celia, the slighter of the two girls, turned and came to him 
 with a silken rush, and the waft of a subtle breath not quite 
 a perfume. She put up her hands to his shoulders while his 
 arms unwillingly enveloped her. Then she gave him two 
 little kisses on his bearded cheeks, so light and yet so 
 quick that it seemed as if she ecstatically blew them to him. 
 Almost instantly she turned away, still keeping a hand on 
 him. 
 
 " Lilian," she called, in her rather high, pleasantly vibrat 
 ing voice. " Lilian, here s father." 
 
 Then Lilian advanced, though at a walking pace of two 
 or three steps, and Winterbourne expected another waft of 
 romantic fervor and more butterfly kisses. But the girl put 
 out her hand to him and waited until he took it, and he im 
 mediately felt impelled to lose no time in doing it. His great 
 fingers and palm closed upon a good-sized hand of a compact 
 feel, which returned his grasp with only a suitable degree of 
 warmth. Then he looked at her. There she was, his unknown 
 daughter, built with a more generous promise than the other 
 one, yet round and slender and tall enough for suggestions 
 of the statuesque, the calm. She had brown eyes and brown 
 hair, and a mouth touched with some wilful melancholy of 
 
56 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 youth. But although she looked so unassuming, a little sad 
 dened by some background of experience he could not touch, 
 she puzzled him. Holding her hand that instant, he felt as 
 if they were old friends, more bound to each other than to 
 the two women there who knew them both before. 
 
 Perhaps some word of welcome ought to have been ex 
 pected of him, but he failed to give it, and dropping her 
 hand, turned to Celia, who was talking in little breathless 
 sentences that seemed to want to express great pleasure at 
 seeing him. Celia, he thought, in spite of his wife s myste 
 rious hints of psychological complications, was easily enough 
 understood. She had, he noticed for the first time, a curious 
 resemblance to his wife, perhaps because she was of the same 
 eager type and they had worn upon each other in their 
 trained gymnastics toward the ideal until they moved and 
 carried themselves in the same way. Celia had a lovely slen- 
 derness. She was pale, with black eyes and soft black hair, 
 the nose with nostrils too large for beauty, perhaps, but 
 hinting pride. There were curves in her lips, unlike the soft 
 fulness of her sister s. She made the best of herself, it was 
 plain for the practised eye to see, and yet the simplicity of 
 her clothes so became her that she had all the naturalness of 
 a considered art. 
 
 "You didn t quite know you had another daughter, did 
 you, father ? " she was saying, with a laugh that ran in and 
 out of her speech like silver bells. 
 
 He meant to answer her, but instead he turned to the 
 other girl, standing there with what seemed to be an accus 
 tomed patience. 
 
 " What is your name ? " he asked. 
 
 " Elizabeth," she answered, in a low voice rich in natural 
 excellencies. "Lizzie Hartwell." 
 
 He found he was remembering his wife s picture of her 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 57 
 
 as they had come upon her washing a floor, the little ring 
 swinging by a ribbon about her neck. 
 
 " Is that what they called you when you " 
 
 "When I was at the tavern?" she answered, with the 
 same simplicity. " No. They called me Bess." 
 
 "I shall call you Bess," said Winterbourne. 
 
 But his wife and Celia were, he felt, making a little ago 
 nized flutter. 
 
 " I told you, John," his wife was saying, with a soft re- 
 proachfulness ; and Celia added, as if he had not been let 
 into secrets he would be sure to approve, 
 
 "We took the name of Lilian for her, Lilian Winter- 
 bourne. It makes such a difference, don t you know! Don t 
 you think it s a nice name, father, Lilian Winterbourne ? " 
 
 He could see, out of his old chafed memories of his wife s 
 management, how they had taken the girl over into their 
 hands and wafted even her name away from her, for every 
 body s good. She stood looking at him with those candid 
 eyes which did not appeal because the soul behind them evi 
 dently acquiesced in many things it would not have chosen, 
 but which somehow seemed to be asking for vindication and 
 the right to live. She spoke again, softly as if she breathed 
 it and were a little afraid of hurting somebody s desires or 
 prejudices. 
 
 " My name is Bessie Hartwell." 
 
 The two other women gave a little flurried rustle, and 
 exchanged a look, all a fleeting despair, yet kindly, too. 
 They seemed to see her returning to some old vice from 
 which the moment had but just now rescued her. 
 
 " Bess, you re a good girl," said Winterbourne inexpli 
 cably. Then he added, " Have you had breakfast ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Celia assured him, they had breakfasted at 
 the hotel before starting, very early indeed because they had 
 
5 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 been so anxious to be here. They had taken an earlier train 
 than the one mother suggested. Here she picked up 
 mother s hand with a pretty affection which seemed calcu 
 lated to the onlooker because it was so well-considered, and 
 Catherine, on her part, caught at the caressing hand quite 
 eagerly and held it. In the old days when Winterbourne had 
 given a daily amount of thought to the possibility of their 
 coming out superbly, he and Catherine, in their marriage 
 venture, he had studied her until he was acutely sensitive to 
 meanings in her face and air. Then he had given up the 
 puzzle and settled down into an unthinking acquiescence ; 
 but the data he had collected then were still at hand. He 
 knew, he found, why she was doing things. And the little 
 impetuous hand-clasp showed him that she was still eager for 
 affection she did not get, still trying, in some fashion, to ful 
 fil the ideal she had built up for herself. It terrified him, 
 and he turned brusquely away from them. 
 
 "You ll make yourselves comfortable, won t you?" he 
 said, with the bluff assumption that the materials for com 
 fort could be found. " I m going down to the Jellybys ." 
 
 Celia was ready with her light laugh. 
 
 " How curious! That s a name in Dickens." 
 
 Winterbourne was good-humored again. He nodded his 
 shaggy head at her and smiled. 
 
 cc Right you are," said he. " Their name is -Ramsay. I call 
 them Jellyby after their mother." 
 
 "That isn t Anna Clayton Ramsay?" asked his wife, 
 coming into the question with a social quickness. " The phi 
 lanthropist?" 
 
 " It s Anna Clayton Ramsay," Winterbourne returned, 
 with emphasis. " She has five children and a poor devil 
 of a husband. The poor devil of a husband goes into 
 town on the six-thirty every morning, and comes back after 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 59 
 
 dark. I never saw him. I don t believe anybody ever saw 
 him." 
 
 Dwight Hunter was running down the stairs. Everybody 
 had forgotten him, and nobody was ever to know that he had 
 found a broom above and had been sweeping the rooms where 
 he put the luggage, and awkwardly essaying the plumping 
 up of beds. 
 
 " Dwight," Winterbourne called, "did you ever see Ram 
 say, Mrs. Jelly by s husband?" 
 
 Dwight halted in the doorway, cap in hand and the signs 
 of his distress over feminine beauty in this Castle Dreadful 
 written all over his handsome face. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I ve seen Ramsay." 
 
 "What s he like? now what s Ramsay like, c crawling 
 between earth and heaven, and letting that woman plunge 
 herself into intellectual debauchery ? " 
 
 "John !" breathed his wife. 
 
 " Oh, Ramsay s a little fellow, with a green bag." 
 
 Winterbourne raised his fists and his glance to the ceiling. 
 The clenched hands seemed to have found something to pull 
 themselves up by, where in person he could interrogate the 
 highest tribunal. 
 
 " O all-ruling Jove ! " he thundered. " Odin ! Thor ! listen 
 to him. Ramsay is a man with a green bag. That s all we 
 any of us know of Ramsay, a little God-forsaken creature 
 stealing out in the morning light like a maggot from a 
 cheese, and doing jobs to support that woman and her 
 brood." 
 
 " He s with a broker," said Dwight impartially. 
 
 "I said so, didn t I?" 
 
 " How many children are there, father?" Celia inquired, 
 not that she cared, but because she had the habit of social 
 interchange. 
 
60 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " There are five children. Their mother is away all day 
 speaking before mothers clubs. She leaves an Irish girl 
 in the kitchen, and she left a puling old-maid aunt in a 
 bedroom until she died last year. The children are coming 
 up like puppies in a kennel. If I didn t go down there 
 every forenoon, and take a hand, they d be little Esqui 
 maux." 
 
 Bess glanced at him quickly. She had been standing in a 
 perfect stillness, like a statue of patience, but this seemed to 
 move her. Catherine gave him a sudden look, full of the old 
 jealousy that came of her being a childless wife. But it was 
 Celia who spoke, with that bright interest of her social read 
 iness. 
 
 " You take care of them ? What are their names, father ? " 
 
 " The oldest is Timothy. The third is Anthony. The dar 
 ling girl is Antoinette. I have never troubled to learn the rest 
 of their names. I begin at the bottom and call them Teeny 
 and Tiny and Tony and Tonty and Tim." 
 
 " Delicious ! and those are not their names ? " 
 
 But Winterbourne had talked enough about his share of 
 it. He was guiltily getting his soft hat and stick from the 
 hall, muttering in no articulate fashion, but to give himself 
 countenance for deserting the domestic field, when the day 
 was so near lost. Catherine, as his hand was on the latch, 
 slipped out after him. 
 
 " John," said she. 
 
 He waited, and looked at her, frowning. She went on in a 
 lowered tone, suiting the extreme of caution. 
 
 " Don t you think Mrs. Ramsay could do something ? " 
 
 He stared at her, and she continued looking at him with 
 her pathetic eyes. 
 
 " For Lilian, I mean. Get her a hearing somewhere. She 
 could, surely. Everybody knows her." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 61 
 
 Winterbourne thumped the floor with his stick and set a 
 guard upon his tongue. 
 
 " I should rather," he said at length, " put the girl into a 
 factory and let her earn day s wages." 
 
 " What, Lilian ? Don t, John. She could n t work in a 
 factory." 
 
 " Then let her starve," said Winterbourne, opening the 
 door and stepping out. "We 11 all starve before we conjure 
 up patronesses out of Jellybys and the women s clubs where 
 they riot and batten." 
 
 Not once had it happened, when he threw himself with a 
 kind of abandon into these futile rages, that his wife had 
 laughed. She never could laugh. They were solemn earnest 
 to her. Now he saw the tears coming, in the old way, and 
 grasped his stick and strode off, furious. Catherine stood a 
 moment watching him, despair in her heart and on her face. 
 Then she went droopingly in and Hunter met her at the 
 door, saying in a wheedling voice, 
 
 "Could I help you, Mrs. Winterbourne, about moving 
 furniture round, or anything? " 
 
IT was "down the road" where the Ramsays lived, 
 though Clyde had streets now, properly bricked, and the 
 road, according to the old sense, began outside the assem 
 blage of commodious houses and ran straight to the wharves, 
 smelling ever more and more of clams and tar. But Clyde 
 was all country, even in the heart of it, where a few of the 
 old houses had been hatefully transformed, the fences re 
 placed by a stone coping, verandas and bow-windows cruelly 
 blotching old-time simplicities. Living was very peaceful 
 here because the individual found such elbow-room. If a 
 man performed the oddest antics, he was not perpetually 
 reminded of them and his after peace endangered. The 
 listeners in twenty houses where the little bird of casual 
 rumor flew at once, might laugh, for the general sense of 
 humor was robust, but the laughter was indulgent, veined 
 redly with the recognition that human nature is of an eccen 
 tric pattern, and who knows where it might break next, 
 with so many seams across ? 
 
 It was a kindly place, the old dovetailing so closely into 
 the new that after all it did n t know how new it was, how 
 ready for seed which should not be all poppy and balm, as 
 it used to be in past days when the best families were about 
 all heaven was expected to see and take note of, and the 
 others worked for the best ones and touched caps to them 
 almost feudally. It was quite different now, the outsider 
 could have seen, though Clyde itself still looked at its own 
 image in the pond and thought there was nothing else to 
 be mirrored there, except of course the blue heaven, and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 63 
 
 that was intended for a background. But in the outskirts, 
 people of another sort were populous. They were clammers, 
 and Dwight Hunter was sending the clams up to market. 
 Certain other of the men were working for him " by the day," 
 and he was letting them out to the more prosperous who 
 wanted lawns kept up and gardens petted. Then there was 
 talk of starting creameries down by the Point, and of these 
 also Hunter was chief prophet. The town was not asleep, 
 and though it kept its older attitude of somnolence, it 
 would have you understand that presently it meant to be 
 broad awake. 
 
 Winterbourne went striding along, pounding with his 
 stick which he did not need with any middle-aged man s 
 necessity, but adopted as another vehicle of utterance. So, 
 when he was a boy, had he seen his grandfather stride and 
 stamp, but, he would innocently have told you, his grand 
 father had a whirlwind of a temper and behaved tempestu 
 ously indoors and out. When he reached the Ramsays 
 house, he stood for a moment at the end of the garden-path, 
 chuckling with anticipatory delight to see how many faces 
 were at the window awaiting him. There were four, exactly 
 the count he had expected, and he prolonged the moment 
 in artful contemplation of an imaginary something he was 
 turning over with his stick, to whet anticipation to its limit. 
 
 The house, a rambling square, three-storied, with yellow 
 paint coming off in blisters, had more of the look of departed 
 grandeur than Winterbourne s own. But the buds had be 
 gun to swell on the jessamine wreathing the tall rounded 
 trellis at the door, and it could be seen that, when spring 
 was fairly at work upon it, the tangled luxuriance of the 
 growth would be wonderful. A window came up, and child 
 ish voices rose in a tyrannous treble. 
 
 "Come along, Jackie! Come along! Come along!" 
 
64 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Wmterbourne raised his stick and shook it at them. 
 
 " Put down that window ! " he returned, in stentorian 
 measure, " or you 11 catch your deaths. Put it down ! If 
 you don t, I 11 turn myself into a snow man and melt." 
 
 The cries broke into giggles, and the window went down 
 swiftly. Winterbourne, vainglorious over his own discipline, 
 strode on to the house where he was nobody but Jack, by 
 his own decree, when it had been found that small tongues 
 stuck on the plentiful syllables of his appropriate name. 
 The door had not closed on him when, with a chorus of 
 squeals, the four were upon him : Teeny, the baby, very 
 little, in blue trousers ridiculously small; Tiny, the next, 
 also trousered, who had been the previous year what Teeny 
 was now; Tony, very much of a boy, he thought himself; 
 Tonty, the girl whose hair had begun to be long ; and Tim, 
 really grown-up, who lay on the sitting-room sofa with his 
 long legs over the end, figuring on a piece of paper backed 
 against a book. Winterbourne loved the welcome he was 
 getting, three children clinging to his hands and legs and 
 trying to climb up to the vantage-ground of his shoulders, 
 Tonty standing off a step in maiden modesty but looking 
 her shy adoration and her plain desire to be at the climbing, 
 and Tim calling from the sitting-room, 
 
 "Come in here, Jack." He could compass the three syl 
 lables, being grown-up, but he liked the privilege of short 
 ening, because it made him more a man. " Come in here 
 before you let those nimshis scuttle you." 
 
 They all went in, Tonty now by Tim, saying in her 
 motherly little way, 
 
 "Get up, Tim. You don t want to lie there, and make 
 Jackie come to you." 
 
 "Do, too," said Tim. 
 
 He said it impudently, but no one would have cared, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 65 
 
 because he was such a pleasing youth, with blue eyes, guile 
 less and full of glee, and beauties that fulfilled all the worn 
 poetic similes. It was true that his skin was roses and milk, 
 his hair as yellow as the sun. It curled with a vigor he re 
 sented, because it feminized him in a hateful way. Tim was 
 a beautiful youth, although he did not look at all as he 
 could have wished. A black-eyed brigand was the man he 
 would have liked to be. Winterbourne, seeing him in his 
 sun-god radiance, wondered again, as he often had, how 
 Mrs. Jellyby, with her weatherworn skin and her unbusked 
 redundances, could have given birth to such glorious 
 children. 
 
 The floor about the reclining Timothy was strewn with 
 scraps of paper, all closely figured. He made a sweep of his 
 long arm and gathered them up. 
 
 " See here, Jack," said he. " See what I Ve found out this 
 morning." 
 
 Winterbourne, listening, took up the youngest child and 
 settled her on his shoulder, where she sat still, looking gravely 
 down at the others, as if being enthroned were enough. She 
 had no sense of triumph, it was evident, only a grave recog 
 nition that fortune had come to her. It might hit any of the 
 others next time, this Olympian shower, but now she was 
 the beloved. Tim was arranging his slips with deft motions 
 of his long white fingers. 
 
 "If I had bought a hundred shares of Anakim," he de 
 livered with conviction, " bought it, that is, four weeks ago, 
 I could have sold it in three days and made eight hundred 
 dollars. Then I could have bought two hundred of Long 
 Valley it was down right then and made a thousand 
 more. Then " 
 
 Winterbourne, supporting the child with one hand, put 
 out the other and knocked the papers to the floor. 
 
66 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I d rather hear you blaspheme," he said, in his intem 
 perate outcry. " I d rather you d curse your ancestors and 
 the day you were born than lie here making up fortunes out 
 of the stock-market." 
 
 Timothy grinned at him in a fashion as sweet as any girl 
 could compass, and hunched himself upon one side to poke 
 the pillow under his back. 
 
 " You re an awful disappointment," said he. 
 
 " Disappointment ! Go to work, and I shan t be a disap 
 pointment. Don t you know the sea, the ocean with a million 
 sails - 
 
 "A million stern-propellers," murmured Timothy. 
 
 His beautiful blue eyes, full of laughter, were on Winter- 
 bourne s face. But he did not laugh really. He was mostly 
 too lazy to do that. 
 
 " The ocean is at your door." 
 
 " No, Jackie, it s at the end of Bent Bush Road. It s 
 three good miles." 
 
 " The ocean, the sea, man. You can get your living out 
 of it. You could build up an industry, fish, lobsters " 
 
 "You and Dwight had a poor haul out of your lobsters, 
 did n t you? Say, Jack, did n t you ? " 
 
 " We did," Winterbourne glowered. Another child was 
 clamoring at his knee, and he lifted her with some difficulty 
 and allowed her to dispose herself on his other shoulder. 
 "The lobsters were short. We threw em back, like honest 
 fishermen. If we d been bent on our infernal gains, we should 
 have kept em and peddled em out to farmers wives who 
 were glad to get em cheap and would n t have told." 
 
 "Jack," said Timothy pleasantly, " you re right. You re 
 always right. I ought to go to work. I can t. That s all. I 
 can t." 
 
 " Then you can jump into thesea," growled Winterbourne. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 67 
 
 " You don t have to lie down in the morning in God Al 
 mighty s sunlight and figure up dirty fortunes on paper." 
 
 At his first drastic recommendation, Tonty gave a little 
 hurt murmur, seeing in fancy her Timmie disappearing be 
 neath the waves. At once Winterbourne put down the two 
 children gently, both in an arm-chair, to take her small hand 
 in his and give her voiceless comfort. There she stood hold 
 ing to his fingers, after a little breath of relief, as if she were 
 sure, in that friendly grasp, he could not have the heart to 
 fling Timothy to the deep. 
 
 "I don t know," continued Timothy, "whether it s be 
 cause we re vegetarians, or whether it s because we have n t 
 inherited anything but discontents, but I m blest if I ve 
 got a grain of peth to fight with. I can t work, Jackie. It s 
 the last thing I could do." 
 
 "Then buy you a hecatomb of beeves," Winterbourne 
 fulminated. " Sacrifice them and eat them all up, and get some 
 strength into you. Don t come to me with your confounded 
 stock-exchange." 
 
 At this point Tonty left him and slipped forward to Tim s 
 ear, where she whispered, 
 
 " Show him some of it, Timmie." 
 
 "Bah! " he barked at her like a little dog in a way she 
 usually accepted with ecstasy, it scared her so. But that was 
 at times free from care, not when she was urging him to 
 strengthen himself in the approval of their darling friend. 
 For she it was who knew that when Tim was really happy, 
 actually amusing himself, he did the most beautiful embroid 
 ery, on anything he could find, even a window-curtain or the 
 skirt of mother s wedding dress. Tim, for some reason mys 
 terious to her, was ashamed of this. He brought out his silks 
 and needle when he was tired or dull, and then hid them 
 from the light. 
 
68 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 But now Winter-bourne took her hand again and turned 
 aside, leading her, as if she were a very honored lady with 
 whom he was about to begin a dance, to the room across the 
 hall. This the children had made their own. It was not a 
 nursery by decree, but they had rioted in it and settled them 
 selves impregnably in corners, so that it had been easier for 
 the family to withdraw and leave them eminent domain. The 
 walls had been painted a dark green, and were now a wilder 
 ness of maps and animals, done in chalk. Here was the 
 record of all ages. The older ones had tried to learn their 
 geography lessons by trial maps, and the youngest had made 
 the simplest sign-language of man and cow. Once, it was re 
 membered, Tonty, from a housewifely instinct, had started 
 out with a bowl of soapy water to wash the paint, not that 
 the room might be restored to conventional freshness, but 
 that the artistic vandals might find a clearer field for opera 
 tions; but as she came upon one after another record she had 
 been so wrought upon by the vision of old days that she 
 desisted, and left the medley as it was. The room was chiefly 
 now a treasure-house. If one of them was afraid to trust his 
 outdoor possessions without, he brought them in, however 
 inappropriately they fitted house-furnishings, and there they 
 stayed. There were croquet-balls, an old vane blown down by 
 a September wind, kitchen utensils rescued from the dump 
 because they might serve some unforeseen purpose, and the 
 mixed litter of real toys bought in the market but not so dear 
 as all this stubble from the field of life. 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay hardly ever looked into the room now. 
 Though she was brave enough to address meetings and frame 
 resolutions, this she scarcely dared. She called the children 
 to her in other rooms and tried to ignore the certainty that 
 when her back was turned their really happy moments were 
 spent in a limbo of toys gone mad. But they loved the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 69 
 
 room and so did Winterbourne. Tonty always kept the 
 hearth brushed, and whenever the weather was cool enough, 
 a fire burning. Winterbourne s big chair was drawn up, as it 
 had been day after day, and there were little chairs and stools 
 also ready, lest there should be a call for them, chiefly be 
 cause of fairy stories. He took his chair gravely, and Tonty 
 stood beside it for a moment until she could fix the others 
 with her eye. She was mistress of ceremonies and they knew 
 it, but they all meant to evade her if they could. She was a 
 sweet maid, with good brown eyes, an instinct of parted lips 
 that made her very pretty while she listened to you, and, 
 what was to Winterbourne an inexplicable attraction, a colony 
 of freckles on her nose. 
 
 "Tony," said she, "it s your turn." 
 
 Tony gravely took the stool next Winterbourne. 
 
 "Now, Tiny. Now, Teeny. No, you aren t going to 
 crowd. Teeny, you must n t put out your tongue. There 
 won t be any story if you do." 
 
 Winterbourne, also according to custom, rose now and 
 made her a ceremonious bow, indicating the little chair at his 
 right hand. 
 
 "Sit there, maidie," he said. 
 
 Whereupon Tonty dropped a curtsey with her foot prettily 
 behind her, and took it. They had both found it was highly 
 difficult to settle the others in their places unless Winterbourne 
 was also in his. This insurrectionary surplus seemed to feel 
 that the base of operations might easily change, whereas the 
 quieting effect of a stationary story-teller was evident. 
 
 " Once upon a time " said Winterbourne. Then he put 
 out his hand for Tonty s and she gave him hers. " Once upon 
 a time there was a frightful ogre. And he had a wife who 
 was n t an ogress. She was a lady and very beautiful. And 
 she came to him one day and said ( Ogre, here I am, and 
 
yo JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 here are two daughters, who are ladies and very beautiful. 
 What are you going to do with us? 
 
 He ceased, and Tonty, glancing up at him remindingly, 
 saw that he was looking into the fire, not as he often did, in 
 high pleasure as if he expected to find a million things there 
 to make his story better, but as if he had hurt himself or 
 somebody and felt very sad indeed. That was what Tonty 
 never could bear. 
 
 " Oh, dear!" she said under her breath. 
 
 Tiny, who, though a ridiculous mite, had the greatest un 
 derstanding among them all of the naughty possibilities of 
 life, inquired ruthlessly, 
 
 "Did he like his wife?" 
 
 " No," said Winterbourne hopelessly, as if out of a dream 
 where it would do no harm to tell the truth. " I don t be 
 lieve he liked her. Oh, I don t know whether he did or not ! 
 He never could tell." 
 
 " Well," said Tiny, putting her little worn shoes nearer 
 the blaze, "if he didn t like his wife and didn t like his 
 daughters, he d kill em, wouldn t he? Tell now how he 
 killed em." 
 
 Winterbourne started out of his reverie. 
 
 "I didn t say he killed em, did I ? Did I say that?" 
 
 He turned from one to another of the pointed faces, and 
 when he got to Tonty, he sighed in gratitude. She was look 
 ing at him with soft eyes and shaking her head. 
 
 "No," he said, " of course he didn t kill em. I don t 
 know, though. Maybe he killed the daughters. Fie would n t 
 kill his wife. She d suffered enough already." 
 
 "What s suffered?" inquired Tiny, with some difficulty 
 over the word. 
 
 But Winterbourne did not, according to his patient wont, 
 pause to answer. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 71 
 
 " We could kill the daughters, though," he said hopefully. 
 "There d be two of them out of the way. No, by George! 
 we could n t kill em both. One of em s got to live. She s 
 suffered enough, too. Well, the ogre did kill one of his 
 daughters." 
 
 Tiny pulled her feet back from the blaze, put her hands 
 between her knees, and drew her breath sharply with relish. 
 
 " How ? " she said. " How d he kill her ? Make it long." 
 
 " The ogre took a sack and filled it with barley-meal. And 
 then he called his daughter and said to her, c Put this barley- 
 meal together until you have grains of barley. And put the 
 grains of barley together until you have heads of barley. And 
 set the barley growing in the field, and set the birds to sing 
 ing over it 
 
 "What kind of birds ? " Tony inquired. He was a sports 
 man and owned a pea-shooter. 
 
 " Blackbirds and swallows and bluebirds and robins, those 
 four kinds. c And if you can t do that, says the ogre, c you 
 will be killed and eaten up/ 
 
 Tonty had drawn her hand away from the large one hold 
 ing it. He thought uneasily that it was done in a mute re 
 proach. Now she spoke quite firmly. 
 
 " I could finish it, Jackie." 
 
 " No ! no ! no !" voted the chorusing voices. 
 
 But Winterbourne was attending to her very carefully. 
 
 "Yes, I guess you d better finish it, maidie," he said. "I 
 don t know the end." 
 
 " So," said maidie, her eyes upon the fire as she knew a 
 real story-teller s were, because, as Winterbourne had once 
 confided to her, there was magic in the fire, " the little girl " 
 
 " I did n t say she was a little girl," Winterbourne inter 
 rupted her. "You mustn t say little girl. That makes me 
 sorry for her. You must say just c daughter. " 
 
72 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " So the daughter did all those things, and then she did n t 
 have to be killed." 
 
 She ended in a triumph at once to be quenched by the 
 gloom about her. 
 
 " What s the use of giving stories over to Tonty and let 
 ting her bust em ? " Tony bitterly inquired. 
 
 The tears were in Tonty s eyes. 
 
 " I have n t ever spoiled one before," she lamented. " I 
 haven t ever tried to finish one." 
 
 " That s the reason, then," said Tony. " Come on, Jack. 
 Tell another and keep the girls out of it." 
 
 Winterbourne raised himself from the dream of his 
 disordered house in the hands of three wise virgins, and 
 saw that something must be done, or this house also would 
 revolt. 
 
 " Come," he said, " all hands on deck. Trojan war. Tony 
 begin, and tell about the beauty of Helen." 
 
 It was a kind of game where all the most poetical talk had 
 place. Tony, who would have opened his mouth in scornful 
 laughter or a child s simplicity if the beauty of a modern 
 woman had been cited, gravely began a disquisition on the 
 cause of the Trojan War. He spoke of that he understood 
 not. The rape of Helen became a commonplace on his 
 tongue, and the two younger children listened and clasped 
 their knees with the sense that it was a real story and that 
 Tony was distinguishing himself. Then Tonty had some 
 thing to say about the delay at Aulis, and Tony was again 
 called upon to describe Achilles sulking in his tent. At in 
 tervals, when Winterbourne was especially pleased with their 
 fluency, he was caught up to a heaven where they could 
 not follow, and mouthed strange phrases. Some of the lines 
 Tony caught from him and piped them in his childish voice 
 with a spirit that gave Winterbourne great delight. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 73 
 
 " My little dears/ said he at length, "you are beginning 
 the path that will lead you to the only world worth living in." 
 
 Then they, all except Tonty, feeling in some way that they 
 were very popular and had done something to be greatly 
 commended, climbed upon him and pulled his beard and 
 explored his garments where they found hot strong pepper 
 mints. Finally he put them gently down. He rested his hand 
 for a moment on maidie s head and looked at her. 
 
 " Good-by, folks," he said. " Good-by, little dears." 
 
 They followed him in silence to the door. It was an ac 
 cepted discipline now that there should be no whimpering, 
 no clamoring to stay. Until a system had been adopted, the 
 air had been piercingly fretted with farewells. Winterbourne 
 had each time gone forth lashed, he had felt, by a rain of 
 tears. 
 
 When he got to the end of the garden-path, he looked 
 back again, and there they were as they had been to greet 
 him four clustering faces, the prettiest of nosegays at 
 the glass. 
 
 He walked home slowly, shy of what he was to find, and 
 went almost stealthily in at his own front door. Catherine 
 came instantly forward to meet him. 
 
 " O John," she said, in an agitation imperfectly con 
 trolled, "what do you think? Lyddy s locked herself into 
 the kitchen, and we can t any of us get in." 
 
VI 
 
 THERE they stood facing each other, the helpless 
 master of the house and the mistress, by legal right 
 and the courtesy of habit, their feet ensnared in a do 
 mestic coil. She had not perhaps found time to formulate an 
 expectation of outspoken sympathy, but it never could have 
 presented itself to her that any other emotion was to be 
 awakened by so foolish and yet trying catastrophe. Winter- 
 bourne did not look at her. He stared down at the rug and 
 considered, and at length, having stretched her patience to 
 breaking, he opened his lips. 
 
 " I don t know what we re going to do," he evolved. 
 
 " Don t know what we re going to do ? " Her amazement 
 intensified the words. She gasped over them, and they came 
 explosively. cc Why, what is there to do ? " 
 
 " I don t know," said Winterbourne seriously. " That s 
 what I say." 
 
 " You don t know ? Why, there s but one thing. The 
 woman s crazy. Discharge her." 
 
 Winterbourne shook his head. 
 
 " No, Catherine, she s not crazy. Besides, I can t discharge 
 her. She s entrenched herself, and she s got all the supplies." 
 
 Suddenly his face wrinkled up and he opened his lips to 
 a loud peal of that consecutive laughter poetically called 
 Homeric. His wife looked at him in a pained perplexity, as 
 if she dared not, without consideration, tell what she really 
 thought. Winterbourne sobered, and glanced at her kindly, 
 but still as if it were only their common misfortune that 
 Lyddy was shut up in the kitchen. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 75 
 
 " Poor old devil/ he was saying in his beard. " You Ve 
 got to be sorry for her. You can t let yourself be anything 
 else. It s her kingdom. She s reigned over it till she s old. 
 Now here you come in your slippery dresses " She had 
 no idea what he meant here, but he was really trying to 
 convey his own terror of the sound of silk petticoats under 
 cloth. " It s scared her almost to death." 
 
 " I see. You want us to go away." 
 
 The pathetic eyes sought his, not reproachfully, but with 
 extreme mournfulness. Winterbourne made haste to answer 
 them. 
 
 "Good Lord, no, I don t. Yes, I do, too. That is, I 
 wish you had n t wanted to come. You did want it. And 
 it s best. You can live here on what you d spend in car 
 riages in New York. It s right. It s best. But you Ve got 
 to give us time to get used to it. And Lyddy s in the 
 kitchen." 
 
 How to get her out. He put his hand to his beard and 
 thought, and at that instant some one came down the stairs 
 with a pace of quick and trained activity. Winterbourne 
 stared at the girl. He thought he had never seen her before. 
 But in an instant he cried out, 
 
 " Why, it s Bess! " And then, " Where did you get that 
 gown ? " 
 
 She was carrying a broom, and she stopped before him 
 and raised quiet eyes to his. When he had first seen her, she 
 had been pale, with no sickly pallor but rather a hue of de 
 spondency. Now the blood seemed to have flooded all the 
 farthest cells of her and wakened them to a glowing life. 
 
 " Where did you get that gown ? " Winterbourne repeated, 
 in a persistent interest. 
 
 She looked down at it with a pleasure of her own. It was 
 a brown gingham of a neat pattern, made with a simple waist 
 
76 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and plain skirt. Her sleeves were rolled high from the round 
 est arms he thought he had ever seen. They looked like 
 strong arms, too. She glanced deprecatingly now at Cather 
 ine as if, from that quarter, blame might be expected. 
 
 " It s my dress," she said. " I brought it with me." 
 
 She spoke as if it were especially hers, and all the others 
 that had been slipped on her after she left her humble estate 
 were troublesome lendings. Winterbourne nodded, pleased 
 with her. 
 
 " That was the dress you washed the floor in," he com 
 mented. 
 
 She turned to him with that look of earnest inquiry. 
 
 " I washed a good many floors in it," she said simply, and 
 her voice faltered. 
 
 Winterbourne looked for tears in those eyes, too, femi 
 nine tears were so mysteriously imminent ; but their steady 
 clarity was undisturbed. She addressed Catherine now. 
 
 " I could n t find any dust-pan. I swept the dirt into the 
 fire." 
 
 Catherine shook her head,, and for some unformulated 
 reason took the broom away from her. 
 
 " Have you got your hair all full of dust ? " she asked. 
 " Do you remember it was shampooed only yesterday ? " 
 
 <c I pinned a towel over it," said the girl dutifully. <c But 
 I wish I could find the dust-pan." 
 
 There was a melancholy cadence in her voice, and Win 
 terbourne, hearing it, thought at once of Philomela weeping 
 for her kindred and Cephalus for Procris, and burst out 
 laughing. She turned to him now, shamefacedly, as if she 
 were not used to pleasing of late and could blame nobody for 
 it, and Winterbourne sobered. 
 
 " The dust-pan is probably in the kitchen," he said. " But 
 you can t get in there. The door is bolted. Lyddy Pendle- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 77 
 
 ton stands within, her arm stretched from casing to panel 
 like Katherine Barlass of old." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Bess, not smiling. She took back the broom 
 and went on through the sitting-room with it while Catherine 
 shook her head distastefully. 
 
 " Do you see how she s returned to type ? " she said to 
 him, in a tone cautiously lowered. " Do you ? Here she is 
 dressed like a lady or she was when she came waiting 
 for a chance to make herself a career, and what does she do ? 
 She drags that disgraceful gown out of a trunk where she s 
 had it stowed, nobody knows why, and she s happier in it 
 than she s been all these months that Celia and I Ve been 
 working on her." 
 
 " That s a good dress," said Winterbourne, still chuck 
 ling at the lament for the lost dust-pan. " There s nothing 
 the matter with that dress." 
 
 " I tell you she s returned to type." . 
 
 " Well, where s Celia? Has she returned to type, too?" 
 
 A look of satisfaction lighted her. 
 
 " Celia is at the desk in the west room, the only clear spot 
 she can find. She s arranging the circular we mean to send 
 round to women s clubs about Lilian." 
 
 " Who s Lilian ? " 
 
 They had walked through into the dining-room, and now 
 she turned and looked at him as if she found him daft. 
 
 " Lilian ? why, Lilian is Celia s sister. You Ve just been 
 talking to her." 
 
 " No, I have n t," said Winterbourne. " I Ve been talk 
 ing to Bess Hartwell, plain, pretty Bess Hartwell. I adore 
 her already. And look at her ! " 
 
 The dining-room was in the main part of the square house 
 and the kitchen extending from it, at right angles, had two 
 windows and a door, commanded by the one back dining- 
 
78 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 room window. While they looked, Bess was about lifting 
 one of the kitchen windows by its lower sash. Her broom 
 leaned against the wall. She now mounted an old chair that 
 had been sitting in the shed, and stepped from it lightly 
 through the window. Winterbourne looked at his wife, and 
 drew a breath. 
 
 "That girl," said he, "has gone into the arena. She s a 
 Christian martyr." 
 
 " Well," said Catherine practically, " now she can open 
 the door. Go and try it, and if she has n t unfastened it al 
 ready, call to her." 
 
 Winterbourne put a restraining hand on her arm. His 
 face worked, but his tone was all solemnity. 
 
 " No, Catherine. You come with me. I 11 show you prints 
 of Tristram Shandy I found in the attic, or I 11 repeat 
 poetry to you. I Ve been learning it for the Jellybys. But 
 you, can t interfere between the lioness and the martyr. I 
 won t have it." 
 
 He took her by the arm, and she had to go back into the 
 sitting-room where there was a fire on a clean hearth. Win 
 terbourne looked about him suddenly. The room had a 
 colder air, yet it was pleasant, too. He had never seen the 
 tiles of the hearth glow more ruddily. Suspicion fell upon 
 him. 
 
 " Has she been sweeping here? " he asked. 
 
 Catherine had disposed herself prettily in Lovell s arm 
 chair, and now put out her foot to the blaze. 
 
 " I dare say," she returned, with a studied negation. 
 
 Winterbourne, laying on a stick, smiled broadly. 
 
 " I believe she has," he said to himself. " What a little 
 devil for brooms and dust-pans ! " 
 
 Bess, one foot in the kitchen, stayed poised for a moment 
 and looked about her. The kitchen itself, in its mellow 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 79 
 
 tints and the suggestiveness of comfortable uses, pleased 
 her. She saw a dozen things that could be done for its bet 
 tering, either in cleanliness or convenience ; but her eye 
 could not stay for that. It sought out the bent old figure in 
 the chair by the hearth, and her feet took her to it. Lyddy 
 looked the picture of inconsolable and silent grief. She had 
 done none of her tasks. The fire had gone down, and her 
 dishes, for lack of hot water, were unwashed. She felt her 
 self inundated and almost drowned by the influx of new 
 things, and the cruelty of it, now she was so near death, was 
 overwhelming to her. Bess halted by her chair. There was 
 indignation and ruth in her pink face. She looked down at 
 the gaunt calico-covered shoulder and forbore to touch it. 
 
 " We re not going to stay," said she. 
 
 Lyddy gave no sign of hearing. 
 
 " She would n t stay for a thousand dollars," the young 
 voice went on. Lyddy knew unerringly that she meant 
 Catherine. "You couldn t hire her to." 
 
 The homely speech meant something to Lyddy. She 
 gave a little grunt and a lurch in her chair. 
 
 " You need n t do anything for us," the girl continued, 
 her keen glance ready to note every responsive change in 
 the bowed figure. " You can cook for him. I could n t suit 
 him. You know all his ways." She paused an instant for 
 that shaft to strike. " I 11 cook for them, his wife and Celia. 
 You let me. I 11 clear up everything I get round. You 
 need n t open the kitchen door if you don t want to. I 11 
 take things out through the window." 
 
 " Don t be a fool," said Lyddy. 
 
 Bess felt encouragement. 
 
 " Truly you need n t," she averred. " What s the use of 
 having folks round underfoot in the kitchen ? You let me 
 blaze up the fire. Come ! " 
 
8o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Lyddy turned her eyes, almost lost in their map of wrin 
 kles, up to her and looked her slowly over. The eyes trav 
 elled from her face down the brown shoulder to the round, 
 strong arm. Then they went back to the face again. 
 
 " You some o their help ? " she asked. 
 
 " I ve been help all my life, here and there/ said Bess. 
 " I m going to put in some wood." 
 
 She did it with a practised hand while Lyddy watched 
 her. Not a movement, as the old woman saw, went amiss. 
 While the water heated, the new maid piled dishes and 
 washed off the kitchen table. Lyddy, vaguely soothed by 
 the accustomed sound of the fire, got up, after a while, and 
 herself put in a stick. 
 
 " I 11 do that," she said. 
 
 Bess was lifting the cloth over the rising bread, with a 
 wise finger-poke to test the lightness. Immediately she left 
 it, and while she washed dishes Lyddy moulded bread. 
 
 " What is there for dinner? " asked the girl at length. " I 
 could make em an omelet." 
 
 Lyddy answered gruffly, 
 
 " I can make it myself. You can go into t other part 
 how. The table-cloths are in the press in the back entry." 
 
 "I 11 set the table when it s time," Bess told her gravely. 
 
 She unbolted the door into the dining-room and left 
 Lyddy to her tasks. 
 
 Winterbourne and his wife were still before the fire, she 
 talking earnestly and he holding Lovell s book in his 
 hand and remembering he must get it to him lest Lovell, 
 who would never venture into this vortex, should miss it 
 sorely. Bess made her declaration briefly and with great 
 simplicity. 
 
 " She does n t want anybody in the kitchen," she an 
 nounced to Winterbourne. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 81 
 
 cc No/ He nodded in a grave concurrence. "That s fair 
 enough." 
 
 His wife took up the case, with her conclusive air of mas 
 tership. 
 
 " Not want anybody in the kitchen ? You ve just been in 
 yourself, Lilian?" 
 
 "I ve been helping," said the girl. "She won t mind me. 
 I m her kind." 
 
 Mrs. Winterbourne turned to her husband. 
 
 "John," said she, "how long is this going to last?" 
 
 He was wondering, knowing that it would last as long as 
 the invaders chose. But he answered temperately, with a 
 knowledge of her side of it and also a concern over it, 
 
 "You give Lyddy her head. It isn t much to ask, this 
 going into the kitchen, now is it ? What do you want to go 
 into the kitchen for ? " 
 
 "Lilian," said Mrs. Winterbourne, "will you put on a 
 decent dress and come in here and sit down ? " 
 
 The girl looked at her with eyes beseeching pardon. 
 
 "I can t," she said. "I ve got to help get dinner." 
 
 Then she disappeared and they heard the opening and 
 shutting of drawers in the back hall where she was examin 
 ing the stores of linen. 
 
 Winterbourne talked hard and consecutively in the next 
 hour, to keep his wife s attention in channels sufficiently 
 remote from kitchen sieges. Perhaps he told her things he 
 might otherwise have kept hidden. For instance, he said 
 he must go down to Jim Lovell s that afternoon and carry 
 his Theocritus. 
 
 " I remember Mr. Lovell perfectly," his wife responded. 
 " He wrote poetry. Does he write any now ? " 
 
 There was that terrifying gleam in her eye, the responsive 
 spark in the modern woman at the mention of accomplish- 
 
82 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 merit. Winterbourne had forgotten some things about her. 
 Once he would have known that the proximity of a poet 
 meant the pursuit of him for the illegitimate purposes of 
 autographs and teas. Yet he answered her unguardedly, 
 
 "He writes some, I believe. Jim doesn t publish. He s 
 the one creature I know that s living his own life." 
 
 "Doesn t publish? Why not? Is he too timid?" 
 
 "Yes, I guess Jim s timid before certain things." 
 
 " He ought to be pushed. He ought to have somebody 
 to push him." 
 
 " Oh, no, he oughtn t. If you pushed him, you d push 
 him into an abyss, the one where all the asses are struggling 
 for notoriety. Why, see here ! "In his vindication of Lovell 
 he forgot his caution toward her. She seemed to be a certain 
 part of the eager world judging a man who was not of its kind. 
 " Lovell had some money left him, a couple of years ago. 
 It was a good warm lump. To-day there isn t a sign of his 
 having it. He lives in his little garden house " 
 
 " Garden house ? What s that ? " 
 
 " It s a little house built for the help when his grand 
 father was bringing up his eight children and wanted the 
 big house for them. Jim lets the big house stand idle, and 
 Mary Manahan helps him do his work in the little one." 
 
 "Shocking!" 
 
 " No, it is n t shocking, Catherine. He is n t like me. I 
 collect dirt and I sit down and thrive in it. Lovell s as neat 
 as a bee, in the cleanest unpopulated hive you ever saw. 
 What s all this nonsense about women s housekeeping? 
 That isn t a sacred trust. A man can keep house as well as 
 a woman. Some of em do. Lovell does." 
 
 She was not heeding him. The moment he touched upon 
 abstract defence of the housekeeping male she was off on 
 more personal considerations of her own. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 83 
 
 "But where is the money?" she mused. 
 
 He looked at her frowning at the irrelevance of her curi 
 osity. 
 
 " Money? I don t know." 
 
 " The money that was left him." 
 
 " That is n t the point. The point is that Lovell did n t 
 use it to bathe in as some of them do and wash away all his 
 natural qualities. He stayed unchanged, just as he was when 
 he was teaching the academy here and writing verses. That s 
 what I m trying to tell you." 
 
 " Do you suppose he gave it away ? " 
 
 Winterbourne took his chair-arms in a mighty grip and 
 seemed to lift himself and the chair with him by a kind of 
 inner convulsion. 
 
 "Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth and Mars ! Don t I tell you 
 I don t know? Don t I tell you it s not my business or 
 yours either? " 
 
 " Is he of a philanthropic disposition? Is he interested in 
 the arts ? " 
 
 Winterbourne relaxed his grasp and seemed, by an effort, 
 to bind himself to the chair. Now his only thought was of 
 protecting Lovell s inner mind from the assaults of a tele 
 pathic curiosity. Lovell s solitude was so precious to him 
 that he could never fancy putting a question to disturb it ; 
 even a fantastic care had to be observed where an outer 
 world threatened to break in. It was impossible to classify 
 his friend because if he denied him one set of qualities she 
 was sure to trip him on that side. 
 
 " Lovell has n t any disposition at all," he said, out of his 
 fervor of discretion. "He s neither charitable nor unchar 
 itable. You know what Lyddy said about the soap-grease 
 man. She said he had n t a trait in his character. That s Jim 
 Lovell." 
 
 \ 
 
84 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " You don t mean your friend has been a soap-grease man ? " 
 
 Winterbourne ground his teeth at her and gripped at the 
 chair-arms again. 
 
 " I am embroidering my talk with pearls of rhetoric," he 
 said. " I am borrowing from Lyddy to describe Lovell the 
 more graphically. I tell you he has n t a trait in his char 
 acter." 
 
 " Is he as negative as that ? " 
 
 Winterbourne rumbled a laugh and gazed piously at the 
 fire. 
 
 " That s Lovell," said he. 
 
 " How could he be a poet ? " 
 
 " Well, maybe Jim is n t so very much of a poet." 
 
 " I must make a point of meeting him." 
 
 Winterbourne turned upon her. 
 
 " No, you won t, Catherine. I don t let Jim in for that." 
 
 " Do you mean you don t want me to meet your friends?" 
 
 " Not Lovell. Besides, you can t. There s something the 
 matter with him." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 Winterbourne considered whether Lovell s unique and 
 roundabout precaution to avoid social feats would do here, 
 in the face of such an eager huntress. Was it enough to be 
 deaf? She would ask if he had learned the lip language and 
 volunteer teaching it to him. 
 
 " He isn t seeing people, that s all," he hammered obsti 
 nately. "Jim s not up to it." 
 
 <c He s not tubercular?" 
 
 " Lord ! " Now he could only groan. 
 
 " In that case I should feel very seriously about his meet 
 ing the girls." 
 
 "Jim is n t going to meet the girls, or any girls. It s pre 
 cisely what I told you." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 85 
 
 " I believe he s tubercular. Does he take the open-air 
 treatment?" 
 
 At that instant, with the swish and rustle of the silk Win- 
 terbourne hated, but which he welcomed now for a diversion, 
 Celia came in from the next room. She had pencil and paper 
 in hand, and she perched herself on the arm of his chair and 
 displayed the sheets to him. 
 
 " Papa," said she, in the cosiest way, " you know all about 
 punctuation and proof-reading and things, don t you?" 
 
 "Papa" was an innovation. She had been taught to say 
 " father " soberly, and although it wore for him an ironic 
 flavor he did not really mind. But the diminutive made him 
 wriggle mentally and wish the feminine did not have to ex 
 press itself in mosaic. She was offering him the sheets more 
 definitely. 
 
 " These are Lilian s songs, her little repertory. I m mak 
 ing out an announcement for clubs. What do you think? " 
 
 Winterbourne fumbled for his eyeglasses, and she found 
 them for him, with odious quickness, pounced delicately, and 
 seemed about to set them on his nose. But their clouded 
 state struck her, and she made a pretty face. 
 
 "I m going to rub them !" she announced, with a bright 
 suggestion of usefulness that made him wince. He saw it go 
 ing further and further, into his desk even, and ordering his 
 papers about. She was breathing on the glasses in a charming 
 hurry, and now she rubbed them with her little handkerchief. 
 " There ! " she said. 
 
 Winterbourne felt that he really couldn t endure it if she 
 put them on his nose, and took them from her. He accepted 
 the sheet of paper and looked at it. 
 
 " Eattil batti ! Really ? Does that child know Italian ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, only enough to sing. She learns her songs, you 
 know." 
 
86 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Oh ! " He scanned it again, frowning, and gave it back 
 to her. " Yes," he said, " your words are all right. But it 
 seems to me a poor slatternly way to do." 
 
 "What, papa?" 
 
 " To learn like a parrot and sing what you don t know 
 the meaning of." 
 
 " But she does, in a way. She s been taught the why, 
 the kind of emotion that goes with them, and it s perfectly 
 easy to put it in. It ought to be easy, I should say," she 
 added as a wondering afterthought, remembering how im 
 possible her sister found it to warm at call. 
 
 If Celia had had the voice, she knew she would by this 
 time have had also money and a name. It was bitter to her 
 that her sister showed no sign of earning either. She wanted 
 them for Lilian who did not crave them for herself, and, it 
 sometimes seemed, wilfully forbore to work for them. 
 
 "It s bad business," Winterbourne was saying, "cheap, 
 miserable business jockeying with a language when you 
 have n t learned to respect it." 
 
 " Is n t that interesting, papa ? " she recalled herself from 
 her musings to say brightly. " It s so quaint." 
 
 Winterbourne thought over that in a puzzled helplessness. 
 He had never been in the set where she had moved at inter 
 vals, chiefly in travelling, and no one had told him that a 
 part of the modern game of smartness lies in the using of 
 words outside their natal meaning. He was to learn that Celia, 
 with a steadfast will, conformed seriously, even in little ways, 
 to what the world thought prettiest. It was always, now, for 
 Lilian. Often she got quite tired of fitting herself to dull 
 conformities ; but how otherwise should she make a way for 
 Lilian up that difficult path ? Winterbourne did not know 
 this now, its pathos and its weariness. He only wished she 
 would get off the arm of his chair and take a seat like a lady, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 87 
 
 or help her sister who was still stirring about the dining- 
 room. He was human enough in his softness toward lovely 
 things, and a young girl s caressing dutifulness might easily 
 have seemed moving to him ; but Celia, because his wife had 
 moulded her, was a part of the exactingness of trivial duties. 
 She, like his wife, was a policeman despatched from the puis 
 sant social world to arrest him in the midst of his innocent 
 pursuits and drag him back to some hideous service before 
 the gods that world worshipped. 
 
 As they sat there in silence for a moment, a sound arose 
 from the next room, a song most movingly simple, in a voice 
 borne upon a wind of content, as if the singer were happy 
 about little tasks. Celia sat so still that she seemed to be hold 
 ing a hand upon her heart to bid it beat more softly. The 
 color flushed her face. She looked adorably happy and eager. 
 This was the first time, she knew, that they had heard her 
 sister voluntarily singing since she had been captured and put 
 in a cage to sing. Winterbourne felt the hot tears in his eyes, 
 brought there as only the great heroic things had ever brought 
 them. A picture sprang before him of the old life he loved, 
 of honey in jars, and bread and wine, of " our brother the 
 ox," and simple content, of dreams of the unconquered earth 
 and islands yet to find. And at that moment the song ceased 
 and Bess came in, still in her brown serving-dress, though 
 the sleeves were down, and said to them with a simple 
 courtesy, " Dinner s ready." 
 
 Celia for an instant did not move, her sister looked so 
 different to her. The cowed and patient air was gone. She 
 had a gay color and a lovely light was in her eyes. They 
 would never sparkle and gleam like Celia s own, because 
 they had only a gentle unconscious humor to express; but 
 they glowed now, with a subdued fire. Celia rose, threw her 
 paper and pencil on the table, and put an arm about her. 
 
88 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Bess smiled faintly at her, as if she loved her without much 
 hope of making it evident in quite the right way, but as Celia 
 gave her a little spontaneous hug, she did light a little more 
 brightly, and they went out into the dining-room behind 
 Winterbourne and his wife. 
 
 Mrs. Winterbourne, when she saw the table, gave a sigh 
 of pleasure. At last, it said, some magic had been wrought 
 upon the ruin. Civilization had been brought into it. In 
 spite of the yellowed linen, the table was almost, in a simple 
 way, perfection. There were even flowers, a few yellow cro 
 cuses in a glass. Lyddy and Bess together had conjured up 
 a soup, for both of them knew the art of mixing the rem 
 nants of another day and enlivening them with condiments. 
 Bess moved in and out, serving them, and took her place 
 when they were helped. Catherine looked a remonstrance at 
 that, but remembering the locked door and the kitchen s 
 potential impregnability, evidently made up her mind to ac 
 cept it for the present satisfactory moment and bring about 
 justice when she could. 
 
 Winterbourne found he liked the atmosphere. Here was 
 a table and a fire burning on the hearth, here were three 
 pretty women to look at. As he ate he warmed, and forgot, 
 for a moment, the curtailment of his liberties. It was Celia 
 who led the talk, with charming insincerities of interest in 
 what, Winterbourne knew, did not fit her actual tastes. But 
 he was being fed and munificently forgave her ; he need not 
 listen very hard. One touch of nature there was in her real 
 curiosity about Dwight Hunter. He was quite unusual, she 
 proclaimed ; but when it was explained to her that he was 
 not really an expressman or really a ploughman, except by 
 choice, and that he had a college career behind him, she 
 seemed to welcome the harmonizing of things. 
 
 " That explains it," she said, with great satisfaction. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 89 
 
 "Explains what?" Winterbourne asked. 
 
 " Why, he s a gentleman. Lilian, did n t you feel that he 
 was a gentleman ? " 
 
 The other girl always seemed to respond patiently when 
 she was called Lilian ; but she was bringing in the omelet, 
 evidently soothed in all ways by its completeness, and could 
 answer out of that primary interest, " I did n t know." 
 
 " What is a gentleman ? " asked Winterbourne. 
 
VII 
 
 LOVELL was lost without his friend and his evening 
 haunt. For the last three years he had spent several 
 hours of every day with Winterbourne, keeping 
 pace with him, approximately, in Greek ; and when Win 
 terbourne dropped off after his wife got home, Lovell felt 
 bereft. He stepped about his little camping house, a long 
 living-room, a bedroom and a kitchen, and even after 
 Mary Manahan had done her daily adjusting in an ever- 
 fresh domain, made himself homespun tasks, then to settle 
 down in the austere quiet of it, to read and write. He had a 
 hatred of disorder in the measure of Winterbourne s toler 
 ance of it, and his little shell, though it was wholly lacking in 
 touches of ornamentation, gave a feeling of light and space. 
 A workman of any sort, in the arts, or even a lover of the 
 aspects of life, would have been happy there. It had two 
 requisites of beauty and comfort : the fireplaces were large 
 and the furniture was old. Lovell, a hermit in a village way, 
 had not thought before how much he depended on Winter- 
 bourne for the bread of life, silent accord, great laughter, 
 kindred tastes. Perhaps without him and his own careless 
 days undisturbed by womenfolk or concession to civil de 
 mands, he might not have been living so contentedly in his 
 little house, mirthfully escaping ladies who forced upon him 
 gentle hospitalities. Winterbourne had, without effort, made 
 the eccentric way seem perfectly feasible and natural : to 
 Hunter, also, who lived alone, when he was not driving about 
 the country on his various missions, he too relying on Mary 
 Manahan to keeD for him a pretence of outer comfort. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 91 
 
 On the fifth night, when Lovell was settling to his book, 
 a solitary pursuit now, almost become a task, Winter- 
 bourne came. Lovell heard him pounding down the path, an 
 offshoot from the driveway to the great house, threw open 
 the door, and stood there, an image of the ready host. It 
 was a night suddenly cold, and Winterbourne had resumed 
 his winter greatcoat with the cape. He wore a slouch hat 
 and carried a stick ; he was a picturesque figure of another 
 time when, even in men s attire, the flowing line prevailed. 
 He came in silently, laid his books on the table, and threw 
 aside his coat. 
 
 Lovell, in his anticipation of renewed comradeship, looked 
 quite boyish. His eyes glowed and his sanguine cheeks had 
 color. These last nights the room had been expectant of 
 Winterbourne s coming, table ready to be drawn up, two 
 chairs waiting by it, and the mugs yawning for beer. 
 
 Winterbourne threw himself into one of the chairs and 
 drew a long breath. He wrinkled his forehead as if pathet 
 ically remembering forsaken cares, and then looked about 
 the room. He spoke interrogatively and with a suggestion 
 of weariness, 
 
 " I guess we shall like this just as well, Jim ? " 
 
 Lovell nodded. It was to be perfectly recognized between 
 them that Winterbourne s own house had been rendered 
 uninhabitable by the advent of sprightliness and beauty. 
 Lovell laid his hand upon a book. 
 
 "Ready?" he asked. 
 
 Winterbourne was too tired with some subtile weariness 
 of nerve or spirit. He did not answer, but sat soaking in 
 the quiet of the place. 
 
 " Hunter s there all the time," he volunteered. 
 
 "At your house?" 
 
 " I believe he likes it. He moves furniture and puts up 
 
92 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 curtains. They re putting up curtains, Jim, over the whole 
 damned place." 
 
 "By George!" 
 
 Lovell glanced about his own living-room and thought 
 how clever he had been to abjure a curtain-breeding creature 
 there. But Winterbourne, head raised, was looking at him 
 as if he had in that instant made a discovery. 
 
 " It is n t the curtains," he said. "I vow I believe it is n t 
 the curtains." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 The pregnant " it " was, Lovell knew, his discontent at 
 the general complexion life had suddenly assumed. 
 
 " The curtains are well enough. I don t know but I 
 think they soften the light a little. It s what they stand 
 for." 
 
 He was going too fast now, for Lovell had not learned 
 exactly what species of womankind the marauders were. 
 He had even stayed out of the public streets as much as 
 possible and taken to the spongy woods, because he was 
 afraid of meeting them. Winterbourne was regarding him 
 solemnly. 
 
 " I have an idea," he said, " that when they ve got the 
 curtains all up, that won t be yet: Bess is sitting in a 
 low chair hemming them with little stitches, when the 
 curtains are done and up, they 11 give a tea." 
 
 The two men exchanged a glance of solemn meaning, 
 Lovell s all commiseration, knowing what his friend fore 
 saw, and Winterbourne s prophetic of what Lovell, too, 
 was in for. 
 
 " They re going to rope you in, my boy," he announced. 
 "They re on your trail." 
 
 Lovell looked nervously about him. 
 
 " What s the use of talking that way, Winterbourne," 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 93 
 
 he said, with a false courage. " I don t go to teas. Every 
 body knows I don t go to teas." 
 
 " Man alive, you ve written poetry." 
 
 "That was years ago. I can t be hauled up now for that 
 old offence." 
 
 "The volume is on tables all over this town. My wife 
 has seen it. She saw it in Mrs. Jellyby s sitting-room. Do 
 you want me to show you what kind of a woman my wife 
 is? She wrote Mrs. Jellyby a note, and it kept Mrs. Jel- 
 lyby at home a whole forenoon. What do you think of 
 that for a triumph ? I went to see the kids as usual, and 
 they were all crying like murder because their mother was 
 going to dress them up so my wife could inspect them when 
 she called." 
 
 Lovell was not acutely interested in the Ramsays, but 
 only in his own prospects of escaping teas for as long as 
 he could imagine time to last. 
 
 "I scooped up as many of the kids as I could carry and 
 retreated into the orchard with them," Winterbourne 
 brooded. " I was n t going to have them crammed into 
 their best tuckers and used for a show, poor little men and 
 women." 
 
 " I don t see what they want of the children," Lovell 
 said, in a tone of similar gloom, as if the purposes of 
 womankind bent on social schemes were nefarious, to be 
 unravelled. They might have been ogres hungry for chil 
 dren. Nor did Winterbourne see. He knew Celia professed 
 an interest in the children, and thought it human in her 
 and sweet, but it was beyond his guessing that Celia, in 
 this campaign for her sister s advancement, eagerly and with 
 a pitiful care sought out the means to please. 
 
 " My wife called on Mrs. Jellyby," he continued, unfold 
 ing as if before his own mind also the facts he had not 
 
94 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 been able to correlate in the fever of their happening. 
 "She said she must do it in the forenoon because Mrs. 
 Jellyby would be away every afternoon about her public 
 duties. She said she had to call herself because she could n t 
 wait for Mrs. Jellyby to call." 
 
 " Why could n t she ? " Lovell thought he could have 
 waited a long time for that consummation. 
 
 " Because Mrs. Jellyby is a great woman." 
 
 This Winterbourne delivered with the air of making an 
 exact quotation and Lovell had nothing to return but 
 "Oh ! " Now Winterbourne laid his hand upon the books. 
 " Come," said he, "let s get to work." But they were not 
 yet forgetfully absorbed in the flow of sound when Winter- 
 bourne looked up again. " Jim," said he, as if he might 
 have to quarrel with somebody, "should you say Mrs. 
 Jellyby s a great woman ? " 
 
 Lovell looked at him blankly and shook *his head. That 
 seemed to be sufficient and they relinquished the subject as 
 if it were a heaviness they plumped back into the sea, a 
 bad uneatable fish that might be allowed to live because 
 nobody could tackle him, and turned to their books. 
 
 An hour or so later there was a step at the door. 
 
 " That s Dwight," said Winterbourne, stopping in his 
 reading. 
 
 " No, it s not Dwight. He d come in." 
 
 The visitor knocked instead, and Lovell went to the 
 door. It was Tim Ramsay, looking very lank in a loose 
 greatcoat, the collar turned up to his ears and his hands 
 buried in the pockets. He wore a queer cap of Tony s be 
 cause his own could not be found, Tony had explained 
 that he had that afternoon been playing Prince Rupert s 
 men with it, and it turned him into a handsome bright- 
 eyed wood-creature of an older time than ours, the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 95 
 
 time that could offer a faun or a satyr in the dancing 
 lights. 
 
 "Just let me in, Lovell," he said, " if you ve got a fire. 
 It s a horrible night for spring." 
 
 Lovell closed the door after him and Winterbourne looked 
 kindly up at him while he stood on the hearth and warmed 
 his long white hands. 
 
 " The way I hate the cold ! " said Tim. He tossed his cap 
 into the wood-basket with an emphatic precision. " I d rather 
 starve than feel a shiver. I d rather hear one of mother s 
 speeches. I d rather anything/ 
 
 "What are you out in it for ? " Jim inquired inhospitably. 
 
 But he had drawn forward another chair and now heaped 
 the fire. He kept a store of apple-tree brush in the kitchen, 
 and some of that he brought in for the sudden heat and 
 glow. 
 
 Tim had thawed a little, and now he looked handsome in 
 his perfection of color, handsome and audacious. 
 
 "Jackie," said he, " how s ear-trumpets?" 
 
 " Has that got round?" said Winterbourne, with the air 
 of settling it as a topic. " I gave a trumpet to a woman that 
 was raging up and down the night screaming because her 
 mother was deaf." 
 
 "I know it. Her name s Ann Staples. She s Lyddy s 
 cousin. She and Lyddy don t speak. Her mother s had a 
 fight with Lyddy, and they Ve moved away to Sacker s Falls 
 because Lyddy owns half their house here and the front entry 
 can t be divided and they won t go out of half Lyddy s front 
 door, and they won t not go out because that makes it seem 
 as if Lyddy had the rights on t." 
 
 " Come, come, Lovell," Winterbourne beat in impatiently. 
 " Let s get to work." 
 
 "Got another trumpet, Jackie?" Tim was insisting. 
 
96 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Ear-trumpets are not like pocket handkerchiefs, silly 
 Billy. I don t create em by the dozen." 
 
 " Have n t you a model, Jackie ? How did you have this 
 one made, if you did n t have a model?" 
 
 " Yes, I had a model, Timothy. But that trumpet was 
 made many a year ago. I invented it for my mother, and she 
 used it for two years, and she said they were the happiest 
 years of her old age." 
 
 Winterbourne had forgotten his book at last. He sat brood 
 ing into the fire, and Lovell, who knew he was thinking of a 
 vanished time, was also silent, because he, too, had such 
 things to muse upon. But Tim was not silent. His mother was 
 very much alive in some region, uncharted for him, giving a 
 lecture ; and mothers were not, according to his experience, 
 matters for sentiment. 
 
 " Where s your model, Jackie ?" he persisted. 
 
 Winterbourne turned upon him. 
 
 " Why, you young gadfly," he demanded, " can t you drop 
 a thing when it s done? No, I haven t a model. If I had 
 one, and I suppose I did, to have the thing made, it s gone 
 to blazes long ago. I haven t thought of it for years. They ve 
 both been down here both of em in the old house, ever 
 since mother stopped using em." 
 
 " Both, Jackie? Got another one?" 
 
 " Yes, I ve another one. Mother got so nervous with only 
 one between her and the void I had to have her another made 
 to keep her quiet. I got one out for Lyddy one day when she 
 said the robins did n t sing as they used to. She was mad as 
 a hornet." 
 
 Tim was curving his handsome face into droll grimaces. 
 Lovell, it was evident, had become the object of his 
 mirth. 
 
 " Mother says poor Mr. James Lovell has an affliction in 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 97 
 
 his deafness," he threw in impishly. " I never noticed you were 
 deaf, Jim." 
 
 " It s intermittent," Lovell answered. 
 
 Timothy looked very alert, bright of eye and color. 
 Winterbourne, scanning him with his kindly, absent glance, 
 thought he was what Lyddy would call a likely boy, but poor 
 in wind and blood, lacking the physical endurance that leads 
 to mental stamina. 
 
 Another step struck the doorstone and the door opened 
 to Dwight Hunter. He was not cold in his short leather 
 jacket with the collar turned back from his flannel shirt. 
 
 " Good boy, Hunter!" Winterbourne called like a view- 
 halloo. 
 
 Lovell drew in the beer from a porch where it had been 
 cooling. He brought mugs and some store supplies of crack 
 ers and cheese, and they made a semicircle about the hearth. 
 Hunter was on his way down for the mail, he said. Mrs. 
 Winterbourne wanted it particularly. 
 
 "Jackie, is that Celia s sister?" Tim was asking, with a 
 new and alert interest. 
 
 " Is what Celia s sister?" 
 
 "The darling girl with the brown eyes. She came to the 
 door when I called at your house just now." 
 
 "No. It was Lyddy." 
 
 " Lyddy ! Lyddy ! I guess so. Tell that to the pimpernels 
 on the lea." 
 
 " It s Lyddy s business to go to the door," said Winter- 
 bourne, with a gruff implication. " There are no females at 
 my house known as darling girls." 
 
 " Oh," croaked Timothy, "that all ? Well, she was a dar 
 ling girl, just the same." 
 
 Hunter looked as if he thought small things of Tim, and 
 could have mentioned some of them if he would. Young as he 
 
98 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 was and splendidly attuned to the call of life, he had never 
 before plunged so eagerly into the small intimacies of domes 
 tic happenings. It was a new thing for him to be setting a 
 house in order for gracious ladies with pretty ways who seemed 
 to think of everything he did in terms of the most abounding 
 gratitude. Two of them, at least, were so responsive. The 
 other was softly quiet, but when tasks were to be done, she 
 played into his hands with an unaffected readiness that made 
 things move. The thought of the three women hurried him 
 to get back to them. He drained his mug and set it by, ris 
 ing as he did it. 
 
 " I m going to be down at the shack for two or three 
 days," he said. 
 
 Winterbourne knew there was business in that pleasure. 
 
 "What for?" he asked. 
 
 " I ve got to do some things to it. Put a new sill under 
 the west end. If I don t do it now there won t be time all 
 summer. You don t want to come along, do you?" He in 
 cluded Lovell and Winterbourne in his glance. " You could 
 go clamming when the tide serves. I should have a horse 
 down there, and you might rattle up the clams for the ex 
 press, one of you. I shan t come back nights. We could 
 have a blanket apiece on the floor." 
 
 This was philanthropy. Hunter loved to play with his 
 mates, but he had a hidden purpose in taking Winterbourne 
 away from his own house until it should be rehabilitated. 
 Hunter thought it quite natural for three dear ladies to want 
 to make their surroundings bloom like themselves. He had 
 an idea that when Winterbourne got fairly broken to har 
 ness he would like it as well as anybody, and it hurt his 
 newly recognized ideals tremendously to see ladies working 
 at such odds, tacking down rebellious carpet-corners, mend 
 ing chair-cushions, while the lion of the household kept growl- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 99 
 
 ing out his dissatisfaction. Hunter would have said that all 
 three ladies were working pathetically hard, but somehow 
 when he conjured up the vision of them it was only Bess he 
 saw in humble postures. 
 
 " Let me go, Dwight," said Timothy, from the chair where 
 he sat hunched together. " I never ve been on any of your 
 touts. I m going/ 
 
 " No, you re not, Tim," said Hunter, standing for his 
 last staring moment by the fire. 
 
 "Why ain t I?" 
 
 "Ain t invited." 
 
 " Oh, come, Dwight, I m going." 
 
 " Can t let you, Timmy. You d be cold." 
 
 He went off clanging the door behind him and whistling 
 down the walk, and Tim sulked patently, until he brightened 
 with a thought. 
 
 " I m going anyway, Jackie," said he pleasantly. " You 11 
 stand by me." 
 
 After he, too, had gone, the other men settled down to 
 their reading and made a quiet night of it. But when Winter- 
 bourne got home at something after two, he found his wife 
 by the fire waiting for him. She had on what he called some 
 kind of a soft loose thing that gave her an air of domesticity. 
 She wore the look he deplored in her because it tired him, 
 a bright readiness as if she never slept. While she was smil 
 ing at him in the wifely manner that meant to carry no re 
 proach, he found himself saying, 
 
 " Get to bed. Get to bed. How do you expect to be a 
 healthy woman if you don t have your sleep? " 
 
 " I could n t imagine where you were," she said irrele 
 vantly. 
 
 " I went down to Lovell s to smoke a pipe and read. I 
 might have told you." 
 
ioo JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He would have liked to smoke another pipe by his own 
 fire, but that would have put lead into her shoes, and he 
 stood, waiting for her to go. She was gazing down at the 
 floor, thinking. Presently she looked up. 
 
 "When am I going to meet your Lovell ?" she inquired. 
 
 " Meet Lovell ? You can t meet Lovell. Nobody can, as 
 you call meeting. He s invisible. He doesn t exist." 
 
 "Oh, yes, he does." She was affecting something merry 
 to persuade him and it tired him instead. " I shall do it some 
 time. Don t you think it s rather selfish of you two to have 
 your readings all by yourselves? Let us come. It would be 
 lovely for the girls." 
 
 Winterbourne looked at her in a speechless wonder. When 
 he spoke, it was very gently, because he distrusted his own 
 voice : 
 
 " Let me put out the light, Catherine. Run up to bed." 
 
 " Good-night," she said. 
 
 She had reached the door, the old feeling of defeat upon 
 her, the certainty that if they could pass through a veil, a fog, 
 they might meet face to face. But she tried too hard to pierce 
 it, and it enfolded her the more. 
 
 "I m off early in the morning," he said, good-natured 
 enough now that she would go. 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " To Hunter s shack. We re going to camp there for a 
 few days, he and Jim and I." 
 
 " We ll come down and call on you." It was radiant sug 
 gestion from her undimmed freshness of approach. 
 
 " Don t you do it, Catherine." He forbade it wearily. 
 " We re going carpentering and clamming. We shall be all 
 plastered over with gurry. You stay here and weave your 
 web and ravel it out again." 
 
 She was standing in the doorway, pale from her vigil and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 101 
 
 appealingly sweet, and she lifted her eyes to him while he 
 came with the lamp to light her way. 
 
 " What shall I ravel it for ? " she asked, with a settled wist- 
 fulness. " There are n t any suitors." 
 
 Her eager subtlety, her readiness to meet him, was one of 
 the things that separated them. If she would be content to 
 blur the edges a little, to forget, to leave the foolish past to 
 itself and welcome every day s sunrising, they could have had 
 pleasant human intercourse. She was determined, he saw, to 
 speak by the card. That was the kind of readiness society 
 had given her, the limbo where it was necessary to cap one 
 phrase by another. 
 
 "Then I shan t see you again," she was saying, as she 
 looked back at him. 
 
 " No," he returned, with the loud cheerfulness that aims to 
 reassure. "Good-night!" 
 
VIII 
 
 WINTERBOURNE had gone, and his house set 
 tled down into that especial peace which attends 
 the avocations of the mice when their enemy is 
 removed. Catherine, with the forever-undone task of charm 
 ing her husband no longer in hand, relapsed into the disor 
 dered kingdom of tired nerves, and Celia ran over the 
 house after her sister, reminding her to practise. Bess, for 
 the first time denying her captors anything, omitted to com 
 ply. The word was gently said, but it was final. She could 
 not practise, she explained, while there was so much work 
 on hand. Nor could she travel back and forth to the city 
 to be manicured and have her hair waved. She would not 
 even change her dress save from one serviceable neatness to 
 another. Then said Catherine, 
 
 " At least, Lilian, you must preserve your hands. It s 
 perfectly dear of you to help us out, and as for Lyddy, I 
 should think she d adore the ground you walk on, but 
 you must work in gloves/ 
 
 Returned to household verities, Bess found a courage she 
 had modestly conserved in Catherine s field of administra 
 tion. Now she spoke, in a tone all softness, yet immutable. 
 
 " You can t work in gloves." 
 
 She had been counselled to call Catherine mother, but 
 though she responded with a grateful " Thank you," as to 
 an invitation, she had, with some skill, avoided doing it, and 
 her denuded form of direct address sounded to Catherine 
 wilfully harsh. Here was another, Catherine thought griev- 
 ingly., who had no love for her. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 103 
 
 When Mrs. Ramsay sacrificed an afternoon really due at 
 a committee meeting in town, and came to call upon them, 
 Bess herself went to the door. Mrs. Ramsay standing there 
 on the step, large, uncorseted, but handsome with her sin 
 cere eyes and worn face, careless that her clothes were of the 
 fashion of years long gone, ignorant that dolmans no longer 
 held a universal sway, and that a fichu revealing a middle- 
 aged throat was not permissible, asked, at the pace of one 
 who has far more miles to trot before sundown than her 
 common-sense shoes could compass, for Mrs. Winter- 
 bourne, and seemed not to know she was addressing one of 
 Mrs. Winterbourne s daughters. Bess led her into the par 
 lor, and sought out Catherine in Celia s room considering 
 neckwear, wretchedly ironed by the town laundress, and 
 needing, Bess saw, with a professional eyebeam, a "going 
 over." 
 
 " Change your waist and come down," Catherine bade 
 her, and Celia affectionately added, 
 
 "Your skirt, too, dear. You can t see anybody in that." 
 
 When Catherine and Celia entered the sitting-room, Mrs. 
 Ramsay was using her moment of waiting in scanning a 
 pamphlet with her near-sighted eyes. Beside her on the 
 floor lay her yawning bag. She was the picture of benevo 
 lence unregulated by any art. In her girlhood, more than 
 one had emphasized brown as her color, and since then she 
 had worn gowns of a dull serge, when she could get it, or 
 if that failed, another material but the same hue. When she 
 was told, as it sometimes happened, that there was no serge 
 of her shade, she felt a vague indignation against a world so 
 ill-regulated as not to fulfil one of the laws of its own be 
 ing. But however uncertain the quest of the serge, she had 
 it made in the fashion of her mother s earliest years, with a 
 basque buttoned in front, scanty at some points and unrea- 
 
104 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 sonably voluminous in others. On this topic of clothes she 
 had also been perhaps too deeply influenced by the por 
 trait of her great-aunt, who had wanted to be a lawyer, and, 
 though she had qualified for the profession, had found her 
 self too early at the gate and had sat through bitter years 
 without a case. At a time when large sleeves were worn, 
 Mrs. Ramsay was highly approving, because, she said, they 
 allowed the muscles play; and after a capricious world veered 
 to a constricted shape, she kept her pattern and gave her 
 arms their will. 
 
 Now she tucked the pamphlet into her bag with an ac 
 customed haste, and rose to meet her hostess, to whom she 
 accorded a warm handshake and a delightful smile with a 
 glimpse of perfect teeth. But at Celia she looked searchingly, 
 as at a possible candidate for some sort of honors. 
 
 " So this," she said, " is our young lady." 
 
 Celia responded with her own charming smile and a little 
 bend of deference and pleasure. 
 
 " No, I m only Celia. Lilian is the one that sings." 
 
 They sat down, and Mrs. Ramsay looked from one to 
 the other with the air of collecting earnest information. 
 
 " She is here with you ? " she pursued. " I should like to 
 see her." 
 
 Catherine, who had not much idea whether Bess was at 
 the moment changing her dress to appear or plunging into 
 some of the mad pursuits she affected, window-washing or 
 the mixing of bread, rose to find her and engineer her en 
 trance in proper form. 
 
 " You are so good to come," said Celia, filling up the 
 first pause. 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay ignored that. She was so simply convinced 
 of being everywhere that her duty constrained her to be, that 
 it seemed waste of time to make it a subject of platitude. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 105 
 
 " I am very glad you have come here to live/* she said, 
 " very glad indeed. This is your father s home." 
 
 "Yes, this is papa s home." 
 
 " I came to Clyde rather late. I have n t much taste for 
 parochial gossip, but I did gather that this was his home by 
 inheritance. Were you and your sister born abroad ? " 
 
 "Oh no," said Celia, "we were born in this country. 
 Mamma and I have been travelling abroad lately." 
 
 " Your sister was studying there, I presume." 
 
 Celia hesitated. Her color grew and gave her for an in 
 stant a look of shyness. She answered then, in a quiet com 
 monplace, 
 
 " Not all the time." 
 
 " But she has studied abroad?" 
 
 Again the little hesitation, like a click before the words. 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 Then Catherine and Bess came in. The girl had slipped 
 into the plainest of white dresses. She had acquired also her 
 patient look of being led, if not against her will, yet certainly 
 not warmly with it. Mrs. Ramsay bestowed upon her the 
 same benignant handshake, and stood off a little looking at 
 her, with dropped chin, so that the plumpness of the neck 
 augmented itself maturely. 
 
 "Whom did you study with?" she inquired. But Celia 
 was moving about the chairs, and somehow the question 
 stayed unanswered. 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay was patient when that happened. She really 
 hardly knew it, because life seemed to her such a stress and 
 haste that before an answer was fairly voiced she was flying 
 on to another question. It seemed to her often as if people 
 had already handed in evidence when they were only collect 
 ing themselves to break ground. 
 
 "You must tell me all about it," she recommended Celia. 
 
io6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Write it down on a little slip. Write on one side of the 
 paper only. Remember that, dear, won t you ? Just tell 
 where she studied and where she has sung and those things 
 that interest people. Pupils!" It came explosively because 
 she thought of it in a flash and it seemed to her the thing. 
 " Should you like some pupils ? " she added, and turned to 
 Bess, who was regarding her with a slow gravity, as if she 
 were a peculiar lady to be watched lest she fire at you a 
 question you could n t answer. 
 
 " I can t teach," she said. " I don t know enough. I don t 
 know anything about singing myself, not the first thing." 
 
 That was surprising, but as Mrs. Ramsay looked at the 
 others and found them unmoved and smiling, she concluded 
 she could not have heard quite clearly. " Let us always," she 
 was accustomed to say, when she had not listened hard 
 enough or facts had afterwards escaped her, " let us always 
 give them the benefit of the doubt." Winterbourne, who 
 had heard her say it in her vaguest moments of being all 
 abroad over the kingdoms of an. earth needing reconstruc 
 tion, said it was the facts themselves to which she meant to 
 accord that benefit. 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay had lost herself for an instant in one of 
 those remote excursions that served her for sleep, if one 
 could ever fancy her as sleeping. In these brief flights she 
 seemed to forsake the topic she had been intensely regarding, 
 as one rests the eyes after long-continued work with a lens, 
 and looks temporarily, though no less painstakingly, at 
 something else. 
 
 " Your husband," she said to Catherine, " is an old friend 
 of James Trenton Lovell." 
 
 " An old friend," Catherine acquiesced. Then an echo of 
 her husband s confidence reached her from somewhere back 
 in her library of facts, though not the memory that it was a 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 107 
 
 confidence, and she added, " Mr. Lovell inherited some 
 thing, did n t he ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay bowed in a forensic manner. 
 
 " There was a rumor of it," she said, " but it was n t con 
 firmed. It was in the air. Previous to that time Mr. Lovell 
 left his consulate and retired to the little house where he lives 
 now. His habit of life has not changed. I fancy the report 
 was exaggerated." Having rested the eyes of her mind, she 
 transfixed Celia with the honest orbs of her actual vision. 
 " Did n t I understand you," she inquired, " that your sister 
 had studied abroad ? " 
 
 Celia was sitting straight in her chair, her lips a little 
 apart as if she were listening keenly to what might be to her 
 benefit or her apprehension. Suddenly, at the question, her 
 face flushed into a vividness of response, extreme interest, 
 defiance even. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in the clearest voice, " my sister studied 
 abroad." 
 
 Catherine drew a quick breath and went over to replace a 
 fallen log. Bess sat immovable, her hands clasped in her 
 lap as she had been sitting ; but her brown eyes, fixed on the 
 green, mistlike trees through the window, slowly filled with 
 tears. 
 
 " Were you abroad together?" Mrs. Ramsay continued. 
 
 " Yes," said Celia, in the same perfection of interest. 
 " Mamma and I were there over two years. I m sorry we Ve 
 no piano here, Mrs. Ramsay. Lilian could sing for you." 
 
 Bess got up from her chair and went to the window 
 where she seemed to be looking intently into the street. But 
 she saw only a patch of crocuses by the gate. The plough 
 had escaped them, and they sprang there like gold bubbles 
 blown in the face of the sun. They seemed to her, at the 
 instant, the only friendly thing she had met since she left 
 
io8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 her hard routine of work for a rougher road. Mrs. Ramsay 
 was rising, a process of some difficulty because she had to 
 collect the articles she had shed from her during this tem 
 porary encampment, and plunge through her bag for a hasty 
 inventory of things which should be there. At last she was 
 drawing on her gray lisle gloves and recapitulating her course 
 of action. She ignored Bess, only because the girl appeared 
 to be withdrawn by some modesty, some inherent aloofness, 
 from their colloquy. When the business aspect of her sing 
 ing was touched upon, she seemed not even to be in the 
 room : Catherine and Celia had recognized that, in a subtile 
 unconscious way, and were accustomed to talk in her pre 
 sence as if she were not there at all. 
 
 " If you will have her sing for a charity " Mrs. Ramsay 
 was remarking. 
 
 " Oh, anything ! " Catherine asseverated. 
 
 " I might get her a hearing. I will mention her to the club 
 women I meet. Mrs. Winterbourne, this has been a great 
 pleasure. I regard you as an acquisition to Clyde/ 
 
 She shook hands again seriously with the two who were 
 vividly crowding upon her with professions of interest in her 
 coming, and forgot the silent figure at the window, facing 
 them now, but out of their circle. Celia went with her to the 
 door, and when she returned, flushed with the fervor of charm 
 ing, she found Bess quieter than before, if that could be, as 
 still as a bird on its nest when the hunters are looking, and 
 Catherine in a nervous rage of anticipation. There was one 
 topic which Catherine, as she had told her husband, had never 
 broached to her daughter. Why she had not, when she dwelt 
 on it almost to the extinction of her powers, she could not 
 have said. It might have been terror of the ill in the girl which 
 seemed to be coming out now in this incredible falsifying. 
 It might have been the instinct to cover an unlovely thing, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 109 
 
 the well-bred attitude of ignoring what is to another s shame, 
 But now at last she knew the moment had come when her 
 self-control, tired by her husband, tired by Lyddy even, who 
 cooked stolidly in her kitchen stronghold and refused to re 
 cognize the existence of mistresses, tired by the passivity of 
 Bess who seemed to yield, but only flowed like water into 
 another form, her armor, before she knew it, was off, and 
 she stood there shaking for all the arrows of unkindliness 
 to wound; knowing from old memory of her scenes with her 
 husband how little appeal, reproach, the storm of tempera 
 ment avail, she yet hurled her missile at Celia who was enter 
 ing the room. 
 
 " How could you, oh, how could you ! " 
 
 Bess, with the quietest motion, had walked round the in 
 tervening chairs and ranged herself at Celia s side. She stood 
 there looking down at the floor, an image of control, even 
 of meek forbearance, but she seemed not to be taking sides 
 with any one even to the point of hearing. Celia, head up 
 and cheeks glowing, was looking her mother, who had the 
 position of her adversary, straight in the eye. 
 
 "What?" she asked. "How could I do what?" 
 
 Catherine felt herself daunted by the look. But the word 
 was at her lips, and she uttered it brokenly : " Lie." 
 
 A little wave of motion went over Bess, a shudder im 
 perfectly repressed, but Celia did not flinch. 
 
 " You re tired, mamma," she said pleasantly, though her 
 voice rang with an unnatural force. " Nobody lies. It s hor 
 rid to do that." 
 
 Now righteousness and truth were with Catherine, because 
 she saw them insulted and it made her no longer afraid. 
 
 "You haven t lied?" she repeated, the hot flash in her 
 eyes, a thrill in her voice. " You did n t tell her your sister 
 studied abroad?" 
 
no JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Did I ? " said Celia, with a coolness which yet seemed 
 not to be insolence at all. " I did n t know I told her so." 
 
 They stood confronting each other, Catherine breathless 
 now, terrified by the moral crisis. She turned to Bess. 
 
 " Bess," she said, forgetting, in the awfulness of the mo 
 ment the other name she had given her, "you heard? " 
 
 Bess did not lift her eyes. 
 
 "You heard," Catherine continued, "your sister told 
 Mrs. Ramsay you had studied abroad. You heard that." 
 
 Now the girl opened her lips, still without looking up. 
 Her voice crept through faintly as if it had scarcely strength 
 to come at all. 
 
 " I have n t heard anything." 
 
 Catherine stood staring at them, as if she doubted her own 
 ability to understand, even to see and hear. 
 
 U 6h," she breathed at last, "I can t bear this. I must 
 see my husband." 
 
 As she hurried to the door it was Celia who stopped her 
 with entwining arms, Celia whose cheek was pressed against 
 hers, and who laughed, speaking at a high pitch, with a note 
 that seemed forced and shrill. 
 
 " It s a joke, dearest, it s a joke ! Don t you see it s a 
 joke?" 
 
 Catherine allowed her trembling body to rest for a mo 
 ment in the compelling arms. When she withdrew herself, 
 she kept on her way to the door. 
 
 " I am going to order a carriage," she said, " and drive 
 down to their shooting-box. I must see my husband." 
 
 Celia was with her again. 
 
 " Let us go with you, dearest," she entreated, in her pret 
 tiest manner, coaxing in it, a child s wayward assumption 
 that it must be indulged. " We want to see what they are 
 doing when they go off to play and pretend it s work. We 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY in 
 
 want to see this old Mr. Lovell that has the fortune and hid 
 it in a hole." 
 
 "It s true, Celia," said Catherine quickly, thrown mo 
 mentarily off the track, " he had a fortune. Your father said 
 so. Yes, you may go. Only one of you 11 have to order a 
 carriage. Lyddy would n t do it if I should ask her." 
 
 She hurried upstairs, her eager mind, on this whiffof sug 
 gestion, wafted to another scene. But at the stairhead she 
 paused, her hand on the rail. " It was n t a joke," she said 
 aloud to herself, and then went on to her room to powder 
 her tear-stained face and make ready for the drive. 
 
 Celia went back into the room where her sister stood in 
 the same place, unmoved. But Bess had raised her eyes, and 
 now she met her sister s in a gaze where some hurt thing 
 seemed to be struggling to keep from expressing itself, and 
 yet imploring voicelessly never to let it be hurt any more. 
 
 " I will not " she said, and her voice failed her and 
 she began over. " I will never do it again. Not even for you. 
 Never ! never! " 
 
 Celia put quick arms about her, not winningly, as she had 
 encircled Catherine, but fiercely, as if love and shame con 
 strained her, and the two stood so clasped, a moment, trem 
 bling. 
 
 " What won t you do ? " Celia asked, in a whisper, when she 
 had recovered courage for it. 
 
 " Lie for you," Bess answered harshly. " Lie for either 
 of us." 
 
 Celia recovered herself first, suddenly and with violence, 
 as one throws and masters the plunging animal, emotion. 
 
 " I must go and order a carriage." She announced it with 
 a dignified quiet. " Get your hat and come." 
 
IX 
 
 THE drive to Headland Point was bordered by 
 marshes where miracles happened so capriciously 
 fast that even the constant eye could never keep 
 comprehensive note of them. There were wildly beautiful 
 curves of marsh islands and lagoons where water ran in, al 
 ways unexpectedly, even if you knew the tide, painted in a 
 deeper tone of that blue the skyey artists know the secret 
 of. Sometimes little white sailboats went slipping and dip 
 ping about these inland channels, playing jokes in naviga 
 tion, and again one would be left by the tide, and seem, at 
 a distance, to be taking an outing on dry land. 
 
 Celia had procured an ancient carryall and a shirt-sleeved 
 boy to drive. Bess had proffered her own services at the 
 reins, but Catherine forbade. It was in Mrs. Winterbourne s 
 mind that if her husband made them welcome she might 
 propose their all spending the night in the trig little place 
 her fancy had conjured up as the shooting-box a man of 
 Hunter s mechanical aptitudes would be sure to have built 
 for himself. To that end she had taken a toilet-bag with her, 
 packed for the girls necessities also, though they were not 
 yet admitted to her hopes. This was one of the sudden warm 
 days of spring, when summer comes with a leap and sets 
 things to moving madly. The wave of it touched them as they 
 drove, and wakened them in different measures. Catherine 
 drew the sigh that comes after tears, and roused with it to a 
 sense of something peacefully new outside her. What was 
 this world she looked at, this still reality she-had almost for 
 gotten in the little intricate game of " getting on " ? She had 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 113 
 
 a delicate sense of beauty, and it had tumultuously responded 
 to old-world marvels in her foreign travelling. She accorded 
 that response as its reasonable due to the romance of place, 
 its poetry collated for her by the consensus of minds. But 
 here under the light of home was the gentle stretch where 
 man had not reared marvels or destroyed them, plain, 
 kind New England, and the sight of it roused in her a 
 soothed longing as in the child who runs back to be com 
 forted and finds his mother there. She forgot her trouble 
 some charges, and let her eyes rest on the marsh where the 
 tide was flooding, and only when Bess made a low exclamation 
 did she look at her. 
 
 The girl had taken off her hat, and the short ends of her 
 brown hair were curling up in a new life with the moisture 
 and the heat. Her brown cheeks had the tint of red wine, 
 and she was leaning forward, hands in her lap, looking from 
 side to side. " The sea ! " she murmured, plainly to herself. 
 "The sea!" 
 
 Celia, sitting straight and buoyantly over the rocking of 
 the carryall, did not seem to hear her. The stormy look had 
 not left her face. Her eyes brooded gloomily and yet with 
 a fire of hope in them, on thoughts they determinedly did 
 not disclose. Catherine spoke, 
 
 " No, child, it s not the sea." 
 
 Her voice, kind as it always had been, took on a sympa 
 thetic warmth, and Bess started at it. 
 
 "I thought it was the sea." 
 
 " It s the tide, not the full sea. Did n t you ever see 
 the ocean ? " 
 
 Bess shook her head. There was an eloquent beating in 
 her throat. It seemed to say if idle waterways, messengers 
 of the deep, were such, what could she do when the full 
 swing of waves should smite her ? 
 
n 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " We shall have to inquire, said Catherine at length, when 
 their charmed progress had gone on leisurely. 
 
 The boy in shirt-sleeves answered with some scorn of 
 detail. 
 
 "I know where it is." 
 
 " Mr. Hunter s shooting-box ? " 
 
 " Well, I guess." 
 
 They turned here to the north, and took the tongue of 
 land with inland waters on one side and the sea on the other, 
 while the sound of waves came murmurously. Bess leaned 
 out of the carriage more and more, as if to meet the wonder. 
 When they had passed a bluff it was ready for her, the great 
 blue crawling, destructive, girdling snake of the world. In 
 stantly she was out over the wheel, and while she ran the 
 carryall drew up farther on before the old gray shingled 
 structure that was Hunter s refuge when he ran away from 
 town. On the end veranda stood a big figure as they 
 approached, it seemed colossal Winterbourne, hands in 
 his pockets, looking out to sea, and at first taking no more 
 notice of them than of any other insignificant detail. But he 
 was aware of them, for he laid his pipe on the window-ledge 
 and came down the step. 
 
 " Let her go," he said to his wife, a gesture indicating Bess. 
 There was tenderness in his voice and in his eyes. "She s 
 the natural woman. She 11 love the sea and go crazy about 
 it down there by herself." 
 
 " Lilian ? " asked his wife, stepping out prettily and feel 
 ing very glad to see him. "Yes, we 11 let her go. Have we 
 surprised you ? " 
 
 " No," said Winterbourne, with the unmoved patience his 
 voice bore for her. " Come and sit on the piazza. He need n t 
 take the horse out you 11 want to be getting back before 
 dark." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 115 
 
 Catherine remembered the bag under the seat and thought 
 she would not mention it. As she looked at the place it be 
 came at once evident to her that it was not for exquisite ways, 
 and she was reconciled. 
 
 " Celia, go down to her," said Winterbourne. His eyes 
 were soft with a knowledge of what the new daughter was 
 feeling. " Go down to your sister. Take her along the beach. 
 Tell her there s nothing between her and Spain, and she can 
 make the most of it." 
 
 Celia set off at a light run, and Winterbourne returned to 
 his wife. 
 
 " The other fellows have gone out fishing," he explained. 
 
 "Mr. Lovell is here?" 
 
 Winterbourne stared at her a moment, because he had no 
 idea why she should show the extra kindness of remember 
 ing Lovell. But after he had explained again that Lovell was 
 out fishing, he settled himself to entertainment of her, a task 
 for which he felt incompetent, if he was to do it according 
 to her ideals. 
 
 Celia met her sister face to face and stopped amazed at the 
 glow of her, the eyes that streamed a flood of pleasure, the 
 crimson cheeks, even the flying tendrils of her hair, crisping 
 every instant. Bess threw back her head and laughed, for no 
 reason except, it seemed, to open her mouth wide and drink 
 into it more of the salt wash of air. Her fervor, the bacchante 
 joy and abandon of her, passed into Celia s veins, and she, too, 
 laughed for nothing. The silence and the waves and the wind 
 had mad hold of them, and all the things they had learned 
 about the desirableness of speaking and walking as others do, 
 passed away from them and left them savage. 
 
 " Come," Celia bade her, " walk along the beach." 
 
 They took hands and hurried, their faces toward the crin 
 kling water. To Celia, who had crossed it and to whom it was 
 
u6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 a necessary adjunct to life on a steamer s deck, it suddenly 
 became the colossal marvel her sister found it. She wanted 
 to break the bonds of her silence, the silence she had lived 
 in ever since her childhood in her hospitable home, and 
 call out to it, inarticulate, even uncouth complainings like its 
 own. It would not understand. Nothing understood, but she 
 could at least have a voice and not an inharmonious one, in 
 the natural dissonance of life. Bess was hurrying more and 
 more. 
 
 "Stop !" she said, and with the word halted and plumped 
 herself down on the beach in the fashion of children who play 
 in the sand. She untied the ribbons of her correct shoes, pulled 
 offher stockings, rolled them into a neat wad, and stuck them 
 in the shoes. These shoes and stockings she threw with ac 
 curacy inland, where they landed in a hollow underneath a 
 tussock. Then she stood up, kilted her short skirt higher, 
 and was free. 
 
 Celia looked on for an instant and thought of Catherine. 
 But the little gray house was well behind them, and she, too, 
 fell upon the sand, took off her shoes and stockings and 
 hurled them into the tussock. Upon that, she rose and laid 
 hand upon her sister s wrist, and they ran, their white feet 
 flashing, sometimes on wet sand, with little wild excursions into 
 the water, and sometimes on the drier stretch. The Point runs 
 out into a miracle of water, the harbor still on one side, and 
 farther, toward the setting sun, brown roofs and the spires of 
 town. When the two had come to the narrowing tongue of 
 land, their spirits bade them continue and jump off into the 
 abyss of water, do anything but return. There they stood 
 and looked at each other, hot, with the blood in their cheeks, 
 and then took hands and danced. 
 
 Celia danced beautifully. She had been one of a club of 
 unprofessional girls of worshipful high degree who gave 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 117 
 
 entertainments for the benefit of the poor and the freeing 
 of their own fetters, and she could foot it deftly ; but Bess 
 delivered herself over to an untrained abandon the nymphs 
 would have understood and copied. All outdoors entered 
 into her and made her drunk. Her hair fell about her and 
 she helped it with a hairpin snatched out here and there. 
 Round and round they flew, and there the three fishermen 
 who had sent the boat on to an inner landing, by old Giles, 
 and were walking to stretch their legs, saw them and stood 
 amazed. 
 
 Tim, no fisherman, a picture of lank uselessness, shaded 
 by his gray felt hat, understood first, and with a glorious 
 yell was upon them, extending hands that begged to be 
 taken into the ring. Bess looked round and saw him, mod 
 erated her transports by a shade, and yet accepted him. It 
 seemed to her and to Celia, under the magic of the moment, 
 the expected thing for natural man to do. With the low sun 
 in their eyes and the west burning, the sea crawling away 
 from them and then advancing, a spell came upon them, and 
 on Lovell next. When he thought of it that night with a 
 burning face, he wondered how it could have been that he 
 seized Hunter by the arm and pulled him forward, that Tim, 
 with one of his uncanny laughs, had broken the ring to let 
 them in, and that they had all danced round three times on 
 the wet sands, and then had stopped and dizzily regarded 
 one another. 
 
 Tim, in his high voice, gave an impish hoot, and Dwight 
 Hunter stood straight, like a young savage, refraining from 
 sight of Bess, who, he knew, was twisting up her hair. 
 Lovell stood silently, his breath coming fast, and looked 
 with a serious adoration at the nymphs who had enslaved 
 him by dragging him back with their puissant soft hands 
 to Greece, to Olympus where the unseen are footing it to 
 
n8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 soundless measures he only remembered usually in the 
 pages of a book. 
 
 But they were walking on together, and Celia, recalled to 
 the customs of life, was talking gayly. Tim answered her, in 
 a swift interchange, and Lovell, on the other side of Celia, 
 looked at the curving line of her ear with the cloudy hair 
 behind it, and felt within him the madness of nature-wor 
 ship. Once she turned to him, her curved lips parted for a 
 word, and before he knew what he was saying he had stam 
 mered out his foolish subterfuge to women, "Excuse me. 
 I m a little deaf," and she had smiled divinely and turned 
 away again. 
 
 Bess and Hunter walked behind them with sedate steps, 
 a swinging stride where they accorded, and did not speak. 
 Bess had no perception of him except as one who, like her, 
 had seen the ocean, and was absorbed in its large presence. 
 The world and the sense of it came upon them all when 
 they neared the spot where two pairs of beautiful pumps lay 
 beneath a tussock. Celia cringed a little in her walk. Her 
 back, as Hunter s eyes dwelt upon it, got demure motions 
 as of a maiden escaping notice. Presently she stopped, and 
 Bess, coming to her side, stood with her. 
 
 " Will you go ? " Celia asked the men, with much dignity. 
 "We left our shoes here. Please don t wait for us." 
 
 The three went on without a word, though Tim croaked 
 and sang and tossed his hat into the air, never by any chance 
 catching it, but once setting his foot on it in acrobatic frenzy. 
 Bess and Celia, by the tussock, put on their shoes and stock 
 ings gravely and seemed, in the doing, to assume another 
 guise. They sat a moment after their feet were clad, giving 
 little touches to their hair, settling a collar and brushing the 
 sand from skirts. Celia spoke first: 
 
 "She d be ashamed of us." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 119 
 
 In their brief references to Catherine, when they were 
 alone, she was never known by her name or the scrupulously 
 affectionate title Celia gave her in direct address. It was an 
 unspoken point of honor with them not to discuss her, not 
 to exchange opinions about what she did or required of 
 them to do; but she was always known as "she." 
 
 " Why ? " Bess inquired, not gainsayingly but as if the 
 question had been bred out of Celia s statement. 
 
 " She d think it was because we are adopted." 
 
 They got up then and walked along, not hand in hand 
 but quickly, making a business of going, and when they 
 were nearing the house, Bess said impulsively, as if in de 
 fence of Catherine, 
 
 " She never did say it." 
 
 " No. She never said it, but she thinks it." 
 
 Again they kept on in silence, but when they had come 
 to the little veranda where the sound of voices mingled, 
 Bess turned to her sister, some new assertion in her manner, 
 not pride, not obstinacy, but as if the sea had lent her 
 strength. 
 
 " But," she said, " I am not adopted." 
 
 Then they mounted the steps, Celia hesitating a pace with 
 a question in her eyes, as if that issue might be carried further, 
 and came upon Catherine holding a court of four deferential 
 men. When she expected public tribute, Winterbourne s 
 patience never failed him. He had put her in the weather- 
 beaten arm-chair, and with a rough tenderness brought her 
 a shawl. She looked young and pretty, in an appealing way, 
 the soft rose of the wind in her cheeks and her eager eyes 
 interrogating the place. Tim was before her, hat in hand, 
 the bright hair all over his forehead, while he grew shriller 
 and more voluble in telling her how they had met two 
 nymphs on the beach and danced with them. Hunter, a 
 
120 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 rough hand on his shoulder, was warning him back into a 
 state of repression, and at that moment the nymphs ap 
 peared. Catherine, seeing them as they came up the steps 
 sedately, their faces flying the red of rebellion, understood 
 at once. 
 
 "Celia!" she said. 
 
 Celia came forward to her with a swift, pretty motion of 
 deprecating grace. 
 
 " She had n t seen the ocean/ she said unaffectedly, " Bess 
 hadn t. It set her crazy, set me crazy too because she 
 was. We danced." 
 
 Winterbourne laughed out in robust delight. 
 
 "That s the way it ought to be," he cried. "We ought 
 to have the spirit of men and women left in our legs. When 
 we gain a victory over the tariff or the browntail moths or 
 the man that puts up broadsides in the marshes, we ought 
 to take hands and dance in the market-place. God bless you, 
 my dear," he said to Bess, with a real affection and a wicked 
 impulse to plague his wife. "You have brought back to us 
 the manners of an older and a nobler time." 
 
 Bess, pursued by the mild reproach in Catherine s eyes, 
 slunk back against the veranda-rail and looked as dull as shy 
 ness could make her. Yet there were fugitive gleams in her 
 eyes, straying in quick glances round the corner of the house 
 to the crinkling sea. Hunter had disappeared for a moment, 
 and now he came back, in some diffidence of his own, to say, 
 
 " Mrs. Winterbourne, won t you stay to supper ? There s 
 fish. I m going to fry it." 
 
 Bess started forward with her instant impulse toward serv 
 ice, and Catherine made a little prohibitory motion toward 
 her. Perhaps Catherine, having the bare feet in mind, saw 
 the danger in launching her brood upon an unknown sea of 
 camping. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 121 
 
 "You are awfully kind," she said, "but I think we must 
 go back. The road was lovely in the afternoon light, but I d 
 rather not trust myself to our driver after dark. Mr. Lovell, 
 I am so glad to meet you. Your little book is on my table. 
 I have been trying to find the opportunity of telling you how 
 much I like it." 
 
 Lovell crimsoned and looked foolish. It was easy to es 
 cape his townswomen by fleeing to the seclusion of his chosen 
 failing. Here with these noble dames, when he should have 
 been most a gentleman, he called himself a clown hoppled 
 by that clumsy shift. Winterbourne saw him struggling and 
 came nobly in. 
 
 " Lovell s deaf as a post," he brutally said, " posts, had 
 docks, adders none so deaf as Jim. Let his little book 
 alone. Don t praise him for it. He d rather be hanged." 
 
 But Catherine had risen, and now she advanced to Loveli, 
 and offered him her hand. 
 
 " Come to see me," she said graciously. " I m going to 
 give a little tea, but don t wait for that. Come any afternoon, 
 any evening, if it s easier for you. Mr. Hunter, we 11 have 
 our carriage, please." 
 
 While Hunter went to summon the boy, who had hitched 
 to a spar he remembered, and now sat, chewing the cud of 
 atrophy, in the carriage, Catherine professed sudden interest 
 in the big bare living-room and bade Tim show it to her. 
 He went with a voluble willingness, measured perhaps by 
 his desire to devote every instant to the silent girls by the 
 rail. Winterbourne sauntered down the steps after Dwight 
 and stood, hands in his pockets, forgetting them all and wait 
 ing for the carriage to come up, when his duty of assistant 
 host would end. Celia had flashed three glances at Lovell, 
 standing there, handsome, manly, yet somehow out of the 
 picture, one when Catherine s gentle onslaught had con- 
 
122 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 fused him, one when Winterbourne had defended him to his 
 further shame, and one of her own, full of daring impulse. 
 She put her hand in her sister s and drew her away toward 
 the steps where Winterbourne awaited them this with a 
 little farewell nod for Lovell, a small, sweet smile. She spoke 
 to Bess, in a quick half whisper, penetrating as a cry : 
 
 " Did you look at him? He looks just like a poet." 
 
 Bess started and gave her hand a warning pressure. 
 
 "He does n t hear us/ said Celia, with composure. " Did n t 
 you know they said so? But he looks like a poet. I adore 
 his looks. I could adore him, too." 
 
 Without another look at Lovell, frozen to the spot, straight 
 ened into a man challenged by woman s innocent homage, 
 she passed down the steps with Catherine, and in a moment 
 they were in the carryall and driving away. Celia, her cheeks 
 flushed, looking flamingly handsome, sat straight, gazing at 
 the point between the horse s ears until Bess, as if it were 
 impossible to help it, leaned forward and asked her irrepress- 
 ibly,- 
 
 " Did you mean that? " 
 
 Celia glanced back with a widening of the eyes and lifted 
 brows, a look of warning that seemed to include Catherine 
 and the silent boy. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in a pronounced fervor. " I meant it." 
 
 " Meant what? " Catherine asked, rousing herself from her 
 muse over her husband as she had just seen him, calm, con 
 tented with the bare facts of living, enough air to breathe, 
 a sight of the sea, and the chance to use his hands. He was 
 incomprehensible to her in the simplicity of his needs. In 
 the way of women she wondered, as she had a thousand times, 
 whether she could not change him, and then, since that had 
 been the rock where her barque had split and she saw its black 
 hulk rising again from the waters, whether she could not 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 123 
 
 change herself. She was ready to be loved again, now in the 
 eager fulness of her prime. If he saw her doing humble tasks 
 like his own, would he love her? " Mean what ?" she roused 
 herself to ask again. 
 
 Celia answered without apparent premeditation. 
 
 " I said I should like to live forever in a place like that." 
 
 So it was striking them all, Catherine thought, the wind 
 of longing for a life more free. But Bess, at her sister s an 
 swer, leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes. She looked 
 suddenly dull and pale. 
 
 " Tired ? " asked Catherine kindly. 
 
 No," she said. " I don t believe I m tired." 
 
X 
 
 THEY drove quietly toward the west and through the 
 lower part of the little town, their magic city as they 
 saw it from the Point. Catherine was still musing, 
 her mind racing back and forward, comparing the present with 
 the past, trying to tint the one with colors matched to those 
 of old, Celia intent upon her map of life as it might be if 
 unknown lands were charted, and Bess shut up again in her 
 patience-breeding cell. So it was until they came to the new 
 club-house built within the year, and here a mob of boys 
 blocked progress, while a woman on the steps addressed 
 them. Catherine awoke out of her muse. 
 
 "That," said she, "is Anna Clayton Ramsay. Boy, wait 
 a minute. She s speaking, isn t she? That s very inter 
 esting." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay was explaining that a specified reverend 
 gentleman was ill and would consequently be unable to give 
 his lecture on the House-Fly, and the boys, chiefly of the 
 unprosperous and care-free moiety, having accepted that 
 statement with a blighting lack of interest, were now occu 
 pied, not with Mrs. Ramsay s announcement for the next 
 week, but in general combat, whackings of backs and cap- 
 pilfering, accompanied by yells of triumph as one or an 
 other onslaught came pat. Mrs. Ramsay was at a discount, 
 marked down very low indeed. It was disconcerting. When 
 she addressed the world she was accustomed to see admiring 
 assemblages of her peers, women prepared to respect her 
 subject and give it a deserved applause. Here she was no 
 where. She could neither amuse, according to a boy s con- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 125 
 
 ception, nor had she authority to admonish. The youthful 
 band for whom the club-house had been built, to the end 
 of entertainment and better morals, learned that there would 
 be "nothing doing" that night, and were expending uncon- 
 sumed energy on one another. Catherine called to the lady, 
 all unheeded in her kindly zeal, 
 
 " Mrs. Ramsay, here is a seat for you. Drive with us, 
 won t you? " 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay managed her difficult exit through the tur 
 moil, and, finding the step, lifted a substantial foot to it. 
 Bess, in a flash, was out on the other side, after her little 
 apologetic petition to Catherine : 
 
 " I d like to walk. Please let me. Celia, you come, too." 
 
 With a charming word to Mrs. Ramsay, Celia followed 
 her. The carryall went slowly on, and Bess stood watching 
 its back until, out of the small crowd, the boy whipped up 
 and it bobbed away at a brisker pace. Then she turned, 
 seemed to put her head down and cut the throng, pulling 
 Celia after her, until she found herself at the foot of the 
 steps. There she paused an instant for a breath, ran up the 
 steps and stood at the highest vantage. Celia, dazed, was 
 still beside her. Bess opened her lips and gave a cry, a 
 beautiful singing cry, as Brunhild might have called in her 
 playground of the air. The boys stopped singing ; they 
 were listening. She gave another. They turned to her. 
 Now while they faced her, she had her audience. 
 
 " Boys/ she said, " I m going to sing to you." 
 
 " Bully for you ! " answered a ringleader. 
 
 There were two or three dissenting groans. Some of 
 them had not been clever enough to read the promise in 
 the opening cry. 
 
 " Can we get into the hall ? " asked Bess. 
 
 No. There were groans of " no." Ma am Ramsay had car- 
 
126 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 ried off the key, they volunteered. It was evidently an un 
 popular proceeding. 
 
 " I 11 sing here," said Bess. 
 
 She sang the " Irish Washerwoman " and took up her 
 skirts and danced to it. The boys also danced. They 
 begged with catcalls and yells and almost with tears for 
 " Money Musk " and " Fisher s Hornpipe," but she de 
 nied them and led them into the twilight land of ballads. 
 They went to war with the Minstrel Boy and understood 
 perfectly all about it. Celia, too, fell heir to the wild charm 
 of it, and found she had an ache in her throat and smarting 
 eyes. Bess sang the " Wearing of the Green " then, and 
 young Erin joined her, and, in some danger of drowning 
 her out, was set upon by the majority and choked into ab 
 negation. Celia stood in the background and wondered. 
 She was conscious that here was power, a triumph of a sort, 
 and her own blood responded, yet with a bitterness of re 
 volt that this was not a victory to be scored. There was an 
 hour of this perhaps, and then the singer ceased. 
 
 "That s all, boys," said Bess. "Good-night." 
 
 It was not all, they assured her in their own language. 
 They could not have it so. No more flattering meed ever 
 came from a house that refuses to go home, and stamps its 
 greedy wonder. She sang them another and yet another. 
 
 " Boys," she said then, " I Ve got to go. I have n t had 
 my supper. I m as hungry as a shark." 
 
 That they acquiesced in. 
 
 " Will yer come again ? " a shrill voice asked her. 
 
 Yes, she would come again. Then they cheered her, and 
 through the lane they made, she and Celia took their way 
 to the narrow sidewalk, and began a sharp clip for home. 
 But not alone. Behind them was their adoring horde, tramp 
 ing in booted feet, pattering on bare soles, but silent now, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 127 
 
 a guard of honor. Once a rabble, it was an army. It fol 
 lowed to Winterbourne s gate. Celia, her hand on the door, 
 waited. Bess turned to her following. 
 
 "Good-night, boys," she said. "Thank you. Good 
 night." 
 
 "Same to you," returned the spokesman. But they 
 waited. She knew what they wanted, and she sang "Annie 
 Laurie." One boy of an admirable voice, used to the star 
 part in the "Echo Song" at school, joined her, but a critic 
 fell upon him and he ended, gurgling. 
 
 "Good-night," said Bess, and followed Celia in. 
 
 Catherine, crossing the hall, met them. "Didn t I hear 
 singing ? " she asked. 
 
 " No, dear," Celia answered. " Or it was some one going 
 by. Did your drive tire you ? " 
 
 That night Bess went to her room early and with a swift 
 directness made ready for bed. She was not likely to do much 
 of the vague wandering that makes a woman s chamber a 
 bower for musing, a halting-place for sitting, chin in hand, 
 to ponder over the marvels of the garden called youth that 
 opens without a break into the glade of love perhaps heart 
 break, perhaps death. This girl s muscles were too tired to 
 allow her blissful torpors. She would have sunk through them 
 into sleep. Her life had trained her to run from one task to 
 another and to keep her mind in an obedient concentration 
 on what might be required of her. When she went about her 
 chamber, it was indeed with a serious face, as if she had grave 
 topics to consider, as if, in the way of those who live much 
 alone, her best confidant was herself. But always her steps 
 were for a purpose, not the unconsidered flights of the woman 
 who begins to braid her hair and remembers something more 
 interesting; who stops to read a letter or look out a quota 
 tion from a book. Bess was a soldier always in marching 
 
128 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 order, and when she had put her head down on her pillow, it 
 was to close her eyes at once and brush off the cobwebs woven 
 by the day. 
 
 Before she was asleep there was a hand at her door, and 
 Celia in her nightgown came softly in. Bess sat up instantly 
 and asked if anything was the matter, but Celia, without an 
 swering, slipped into bed beside her and hugged her tight. 
 Bess accepted her timidly. She was a warm, sweet creature 
 who did not yet know how to express the shy inundations 
 of her own nature. Celia clung to her, trembling, and seemed 
 to cry a little. 
 
 "What is it?" Bess asked her, greatly troubled. "What 
 is it, sister?" 
 
 At last Celia told her. 
 
 "You are not happy," she said. " We Ve taken you away 
 from what you like, and you don t like this." 
 
 Bess stiffened beside her. 
 
 " No," she answered coldly, "you have n t taken me away 
 from what I liked. There was nothing I liked particularly." 
 
 The chilling of her tone was distressing to Celia. It hurt 
 her vanity, and something deeper still that strong devotion 
 binding her to her sister as the one thing she had of her own. 
 She was really crying now, shaking not more with the inten 
 sity of her sobs than from the misery of seeing the heaven 
 of her expectations darken day by day. 
 
 "You don t care about me, either," she said. "I don t 
 believe you care at all." 
 
 Bess gave her a little involuntary shake, and then caught the 
 slight form to her in compunction. 
 
 " Of course I care aboutyou," she said indignantly. "Are n t 
 we sisters? I guess I should care about my own sister, 
 should n t I ? " 
 
 But Celia, lying trembling in her arms, felt a distress she 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 129 
 
 could not even understand. It seemed to go back to the fact 
 that her sister did not really speak her language. She felt 
 with humility that Bess was her superior, in beauty, in her 
 rich gift, and, as the suffrages of the world seemed to denote, 
 in charm. But these subtilities of the inner life were closed 
 to her. There was a language Bess did not merely refrain from 
 using : she had not learned its elements. Celia made another 
 trial. 
 
 " You don t seem to care about anything, Lilian." 
 
 Her sister s breast lifted in one long sigh. 
 
 "Don t call me that when we are alone," she said. "Call 
 me Bess." 
 
 "Don t you like to be called Lilian?" 
 
 " It s not my name. My name is Lizzie Hartwell. I d 
 like well enough to be called Elizabeth. That was mother s 
 name. Or I d like to be called Bess." 
 
 Celia whispered jealously into her ear, as if she were afraid 
 even the world of night might overhear it, 
 
 " How do you know mother s name was Elizabeth ?" 
 
 " I went to the Poor Farm at Barnardsville and found 
 out." 
 
 " Why did you go there ? " 
 
 " Because the Callahans, that brought me up, told me I 
 came from the Poor Farm in Barnardsville. They took me 
 because I was a good strong child, and they had n t any of 
 their own." 
 
 Celia shuddered. 
 
 " You cold ? " asked Bess kindly, and drew a blanket 
 over her. 
 
 " I never heard of the Callahans," Celia pursued, as if in 
 hatred of it all. 
 
 cc No. They both died when I was fourteen. He d made 
 a little money teaming and bought him a house; but he 
 
130 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 took to drink and went downhill, and when he died there 
 was nothing left. And then his wife died, and I went to 
 work at the tavern." 
 
 " Were they " Celia found herself forced to this ques 
 tion, but she was afraid of it. " Were they good to you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Bess simply. " Real good." 
 
 " Did you " Here again she hesitated. It seemed im 
 possible to accept a bond between her sister and a teamster 
 who had taken to drink. "Were you fond of them ?" 
 
 Bess considered. 
 
 " I don t know as I was," she owned. " You can t tell 
 about children. They re like little pigs or kittens. They 11 
 go where the trough is, or where they find the warmest lap. 
 I don t believe they have much heart for old folks until 
 they Ve had a few hard knocks themselves and find out what 
 it is to " 
 
 She stopped there, apparently because no words offered 
 themselves to clothe her strong sense of the gigantic thing 
 life does to us when it moulds us into shape to move about 
 among the other organisms it has bred. 
 
 Celia had more questions to ask, but she shrank from 
 them and put her fear into words. 
 
 "I wish I knew what you found out about mother; but 
 I m almost afraid to ask." 
 
 Bess replied at once with no reproof of her, but a direct 
 and simple wonder. 
 
 " What makes you afraid of finding out anything about 
 your own mother ? " 
 
 Celia was conscious of a warm flood of affection toward 
 her sister, and of an angry partisanship for the unknown 
 others of her own blood, but she was also aware of an almost 
 proven certainty that Bess was not what could be called a 
 lady, and that, almost as indubitably, her mother also was not. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 131 
 
 " What was mother ? " she whispered. 
 
 " Why, she was just father s wife," said Bess, in a clear 
 tone that seemed to Celia to be too loud in the still chamber. 
 " Father was a carpenter." 
 
 "Oh!" It was a quick little cry, as if Celia had been 
 struck, or felt the sudden indignant pain of looking on at 
 the hurt of another. " Do you suppose," she whispered, in a 
 fierce revulsion, "she knows that?" 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Mamma." 
 
 There was a pause before the word, as if she used it un 
 willingly, or felt the disloyalty of borrowing it at all while 
 they were dwelling on the ties of blood. But to Bess all 
 these things were simpler. 
 
 " I don t know," she said. " Maybe. You d been put into 
 a minister s family, you know. The Callahans had taken me." 
 
 " And you went to find out about it all," said Celia, in 
 wonder and with a pang suffered at her own defection. " I 
 never once thought of going." 
 
 " It was n t to find out," said Bess. " I wanted to see 
 mother s grave and make sure twas taken care of." 
 
 " And was it P " 
 
 " Not very well. There was an old man that cut the grass 
 for his horse, but the stones were tipping. I had em fixed, 
 and set out a Province rose." 
 
 Even then Celia felt a little pang because her sister used 
 the colloquial pronunciation, and was probably ignorant that 
 France had a Provence as rich as its own roses. Bess seemed 
 to have been born yesterday, so far as the inherited common 
 places went. 
 
 " Father and she were there together," Bess continued 
 dreamily. "It was a nice spot. The clematis came over the 
 wall." 
 
i 3 2 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Did you find out anything about them ? " 
 
 "Yes. The old man s wife the one that cut the grass 
 showed me where they lived. T was a nice little house 
 with a piazza and jessamine by the door. She had a picture 
 of father a tintype. He was a tall man with a big nose and 
 kind of serious eyes. I 11 show it to you to-morrow." 
 
 " Was n t there any of her ? " 
 
 " No. The old lady said she would n t have any taken. 
 Her health had begun to fail, they were poor, you see, 
 and she d worked hard, and she was pretty peaked." 
 
 Celia could see that the old woman s testimony had made 
 deep impression on her. 
 
 " Mother s hair was c black as a crow/ I thought of that 
 the minute I saw you, the day you stooped down over me 
 when I was washing the floor, and showed me your little 
 ring like mine. I thought I guessed you looked like mother 
 and maybe I was more like father." 
 
 "But what made you think of it first?" Celia insisted, 
 " going to find out about them ? " 
 
 " Why, I d wanted to ever since I was a little girl." 
 
 " But you did n t try to find me ! " 
 
 " I was going to," Bess told her seriously, " but I had to 
 find them first. I could n t do either till I d saved up." 
 
 " How long did it take you to save ? " 
 
 " A good many years seven, I guess. I never Ve earned 
 much." 
 
 They were silent then, Celia thinking and Bess growing 
 sleepy. Celia felt not condemned as yet, but challenged to 
 be told why she had not been saving for years to substanti 
 ate her claim to her father and mother. But there was an 
 undercurrent of changeless purpose in her, and her sister s 
 last sentence rang in her ears as the text for an argument 
 she might use. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 133 
 
 " You have n t earned much," she repeated. " Think 
 what you could earn if you d only try. There s your voice. 
 Voices are gold mines." 
 
 "My voice," repeated Bess wonderingly. 
 
 She was used to thinking very simply of herself, with no 
 degree of pride, and her voice was a part of herself, a power 
 that gave pleasure, she knew, but not of any value adequate 
 to the estimate these two women placed on it. Catherine 
 and Celia amazed her. She was bemused at them. They ap 
 peared to her to be playing an intricate game of which she 
 did not know the terms, and she was at peace only when 
 she could escape from her brooding over it and lose herself 
 in the actual work for which, it seemed to her, the earth 
 was made. There were so many things to be put in order 
 on it, as she saw it, so many people to be fed and made 
 clean and have decent beds spread for them. The old-fash 
 ioned woman was not going out while girls like Bess, half- 
 mother, half-handmaiden, were born into the world. Celia 
 was asking her impatiently, 
 
 " Don t you want to sing ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Bess, "I like to sing well enough I like it 
 ever so much when I feel like it." 
 
 Celia was jealously afraid that it was only low people who 
 made her feel like it, because she had certainly done it with 
 glorious abandon to the gamins in the street. But Bess 
 should be forced to say. 
 
 " Don t you feel like it when nice people are listening to 
 you ? " she asked, with some degree of coldness, " people 
 like mamma, like Mrs. Ramsay or papa?" 
 
 "Oh, I could sing for him any time he asked me," said 
 Bess warmly. "Any time, all the time, if he wanted I 
 should." 
 
 " Now, why ? What makes the difference ? " 
 
i 3 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " He would let me " an eloquent note had come into 
 her voice, " he would let me sing in my gingham dress. 
 I can t do anything when I m made into a kind of a 
 monkey." 
 
 " Do you mean you don t like nice clothes ? " 
 
 " I do like them," the woman in her cried out eagerly. 
 
 Celia was encouraged greatly. Nothing but genuine pas 
 sion, the due of clothes, could have bred that warm note, 
 she knew, in her sister s voice. Bess was continuing. 
 
 " But if I ve got to wear tight slippers and pretend I ve 
 always done it, if I Ve got to keep from speaking about the 
 Callahans or the tavern why, it s as much as my life is 
 worth to remember not to speak and if I Ve got to pre 
 tend I studied abroad, and hear you Oh ! " 
 
 Her voice died weakly in the thought of the shame and 
 tediousness of it all. 
 
 " Hear me what? " asked Celia. 
 
 But Bess would not continue, and Celia beat upon her 
 silence with rougher and yet heartbroken entreaties. At 
 length she said it herself. 
 
 "Well, I know what it is," she announced sullenly. "You 
 think I say what is n t so." 
 
 But Bess would not even strengthen the situation by ac 
 cepting it. 
 
 " I do it for you," said Celia passionately. " I never did 
 it in the world till I tried to make a way for you." 
 
 " But I don t want a way made for me," Bess assured 
 her now, in tears of a vexed harassment. 
 
 "Then you should want it. Don t you want to prove to 
 her that there s something in us as good as if we were n t 
 waifs and strays ? " 
 
 " Why, I should n t care about that," said Bess, in a 
 wonder. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 135 
 
 " I care, then. I care dreadfully. I Ve been a disappoint 
 ment to her. She s wanted me to study everything she 
 could think of that would bring me before the world and 
 do her credit. And I can only go just so far and then stop. 
 I can t be a credit to her and she knows it. She s awfully 
 disappointed." 
 
 " What does she want you to be a credit for? " Bess in 
 quired, groping. 
 
 " Why, because everybody has to have something to be 
 proud of. It may be money, or genius, or social position. 
 And she s got nothing. Her husband can t make money 
 for her " 
 
 " He could if he wanted to," Bess averred jealously. 
 " He s too good." 
 
 " Well, he has n t made it. And he won t entertain with 
 her. He won t even live with her " 
 
 " He s living with her now." 
 
 " See how he 11 scud out of the house the minute she 
 begins to bring people into it. No. She s a disappointed 
 woman. And she s disappointed in me, and I can t bear it, 
 and if she s going to be disappointed in you, too, I shall 
 wish we were both dead." 
 
 " Don t wish that," said Bess, out of a dull experience. 
 " It does no good." 
 
 This was the closest talk they had ever had about their 
 personal relations. Celia had been too afraid of rinding out 
 what would be better unknown, to probe far into her sister s 
 mind. She had, in an involuntary cowardice, determined to 
 accept her as she was and invite her at once into her own 
 house of life. But when it proved that Bess had to be 
 dragged there, and that she stayed only from minute to min 
 ute because duty bade her and not as if she had any settled 
 purpose of remaining, then they had to come to close quar- 
 
136 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 ters, to understand each other better. There had got to be a 
 common language between them, and this Celia was trying 
 to establish. Bess, in her habit of silence, would never have 
 asked a question till the day of doom. She accepted life, she 
 accepted people and what they did to her. If they were 
 exacting, she stood up and took ill-usage. If they were ador 
 ably kind she had never contemplated that possibility. 
 Sometimes they asked too much of her in a way she had to 
 resent, and offered her hideous homage she had dealt with 
 like a savage, but her one stint was to endure. Besides, 
 Celia was dinning into her ears in a further pursuance of her 
 persuasion : 
 
 " She has lost money, quantities of it." 
 
 " Did she tell you ? " 
 
 " No, but a friend of hers did. They speculated together, 
 and one day Mrs. Greenough came to the house when she 
 was out and told me they d lost nearly everything, and cried 
 in my arms." 
 
 "Did you like her?" Bess asked curiously. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " But she cried in your arms." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Celia carelessly. " She was awfully up 
 set." 
 
 Bess had been guilty of her inevitable moment of wonder 
 whether Celia s ready embrace, her phraseology of endear 
 ment, were more than a valueless coinage, though stamped 
 with the current die. But this she could not let herself pur 
 sue because it was too puzzling for her, and also it brought 
 her shame. A shadowy verdict in the back of her mind told 
 her that Celia, too, should be ashamed. Now she broached 
 what seemed to her the only feasible plan bred out of this 
 confusion of lost money and conflicting aims. 
 
 " Why don t we go away together, you and I ? We could 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 137 
 
 support ourselves. Then they need n t maintain us. That 
 would be something off their hands." 
 
 "Go away!" Celia contemplated it for only an instant 
 of incredulity. " Give it all up ! Give up her ? You re 
 crazy." 
 
 " You re too fond of her to give her up," Bess suggested 
 humbly. " Well, I m glad of that. You ought to be, and 
 grateful, too." 
 
 Celia did not commit herself upon that point, and Bess 
 asked, in a moment, with timidity, 
 
 " Celia, when you said that before that man Mr. Lovell 
 about liking him, you know " She could not utter the 
 actual word, adore, but Celia understood and gave a little 
 concurring sound, " did you mean it ? " 
 
 But at that Celia laughed and would not answer. 
 
 " I thought for a minute," Bess averred, in a tone that 
 indicated she was. ready to be derided if she were really as 
 foolish as she hoped, "I almost thought now you can be 
 as mad as you want to with me for a minute I almost 
 thought you meant he should hear you, and you d thought 
 how she said he had money and Oh, you know you ve 
 tried to get money from so many people and it s always for 
 me." Her voice died miserably, in the shame of it. 
 
 Celia touched her cheek with a little cool, kind kiss and 
 would not tell. But presently she said curiously, 
 
 "Bess, did any man ever kiss you ? " 
 
 Bess came upright in bed, escaping her sister s arms. She 
 sat there breathing resentment of a sort that seemed to be 
 power in itself. 
 
 " Don t talk to me about them," she said, with a hot 
 spasm in her voice. " I hate them." 
 
 "Men?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
i 3 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " What for ? What should you hate them for ? Come 
 back and tell me." 
 
 Bess sat there in her lovely state, her brows knotted over 
 angry eyes. This she felt, and hated the tension of it and 
 was glad nobody could see her in the dark. She was savage 
 at the thought of emotion, and turned her back on it. Only 
 the cool, clear ways of being suited her. 
 
 " They used to try to talk to me at the tavern," she said. 
 "They were mostly a common lot. Some of them the 
 worst of them tried to " 
 
 Her voice failed her, and Celia, in an equal throb of 
 anger, sat up in bed beside her. 
 
 " To kiss you ? " she whispered, as if the word hurt her. 
 
 "Yes." In her sister s voice there was nothing but shame. 
 
 " And they did n t ! they did n t ! " Celia cried. 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "What did you do?" 
 
 " Went away. Hid. Looked them in the face. One man 
 I knocked down." 
 
 "You did, Bess ? You did that? How could you?" 
 
 " I could n t if he d expected it. I was ashamed of it. I 
 never saw him again." 
 
 " Did you think you had killed him ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Were you frightened?" 
 
 " No. I hated him." 
 
 Then they went back to their pillows, and shuddered out 
 their horror of it each alone. 
 
 " That s why " Bess yielded to a choking sob "that s 
 why I don t want you to lead them on. That was leading 
 him on this afternoon. It s dreadful." 
 
 " But he s not like that," Celia wondered. 
 
 " No. But you don t know what it is. You re pretty, dar- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 139 
 
 ling." The tender word had never escaped her before, and 
 Celia, who was beginning to know her, saw how deep an emo 
 tion must have given it birth. "They could n t help liking 
 you. But they ve thought I was the dirt under their feet. So 
 you be careful." 
 
 They clasped hands then and dropped away to sleep. But 
 in the middle of the night, Celia came half-awake and turned 
 to her sister. 
 
 "But you were n t," she cried wildly, out of her dream, 
 " you were n t the dirt under their feet." 
 
 " No, dear, no," said Bess, and drew the blanket over her. 
 
XI 
 
 THE next morning Winterbourne came home, enter 
 ing the kitchen door and finding Lyddy seated at the 
 corner of the bare cooking-table, taking her early cup 
 of tea. This, he realized, with a sensation of immediate peace, 
 was as he liked the house, asleep, with a silent servitor ready 
 to let him share her own simple satisfactions. The forms of 
 social life, the necessity of doing this or that according to an 
 established code lest you break faith with the other movers in 
 the game, seemed to him like finding litter in what should be 
 an uninterrupted path the road to true pleasure and the 
 arts. Lyddy, who no doubt enshrined him in her heart as 
 the fount of all her blessings, had no obtrusive respect to 
 offer him, and that he liked. She looked up, and nodded at 
 him, and inquired with only a moderate show of interest, 
 "Got home?" 
 
 "Yes," said Winterbourne. "Any more tea?" 
 Lyddy rose, for sufficient answer, poured him a cup, and 
 gave it to him on the broadside of the bare table. She went 
 into the dining-room and returned with the great dish of fruit 
 ready for the family breakfast and set it before him beside 
 the bread and butter that had made her own repast. Winter- 
 bourne was greedy of fruit. He sat and ate oranges with a 
 generous gusto, and then attacked his bread and tea in the 
 delight of the healthy man s appetite for simple things. Lyddy 
 began mixing a corn-cake for breakfast, and Winterbourne 
 sometimes watched her lame trot about the kitchen and some 
 times stared out of the window with an equally absent gaze. 
 If home could be like this, he was glad to be here. Lyddy 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 141 
 
 slid her cake into the oven and clanged the door on it. Then 
 she stood by the stove, evidently calculating on her next move 
 in the day s circuit. But suddenly her mood seemed to be 
 sharply invaded. She turned on him a quick glance from her 
 piercing eyes. 
 
 " How long they goin to stay?" she inquired. 
 
 Winterbourne started, brought back to social ties. 
 
 "Who?" he asked perversely. 
 
 " Your folks." 
 
 cc My wife will stay as long as it suits her," he returned 
 with dignity, which instantly broke down under the certainty 
 that Lyddy knew him better than any human person, except, 
 perhaps, that sane, sweet child who was Celia s sister. She 
 seemed to show capacities of understanding all the normal 
 desires and aversions of healthy life. " Oh, I don t know," 
 he added irritably. " Why under the heavens can t you like 
 folks, Lyddy? What s the sense of your being so cross- 
 grained and no good generally ? " 
 
 Lyddy took no notice. 
 
 " You don t like folks yourself," she remarked, with an 
 unmoved front. 
 
 " I don t ? Who is it I don t like, you old catamount ? " 
 
 Lyddy s mouth widened in the knowing grin that answered 
 her for rare acknowledgment of the humors of the world. 
 
 cc Me, I guess," she vouchsafed calmly, and went into the 
 woodshed about some more remote task. 
 
 Winterbourne shook his head at her back, and then even 
 shook his fist, and went off through the dining-room to the 
 sitting-room, where he thought he could light a fire and steal 
 half an hour s reading before the women were down. But as 
 he went, he debated uneasily in a strain he hardly dared ac 
 cept as the thoughts he was willing to think. Did he fail to 
 like people ? he wondered. Did he fail to like his wife ? 
 
142 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 The dining-room, as he walked through it, looked differ 
 ent to him. There was a subtile air of exquisite order and a 
 cleanliness so fine, where everything had been clean before, 
 that he almost felt the fragrance of it in his nostrils. There 
 were muslin curtains at the windows. These he did not note 
 as curtains. Only he saw there was a veiled and shimmering 
 effect where once there had been squares of light from win 
 dows not always clear. The whole thing seemed veiled in an 
 artful way, petticoated. He grumbled a little, inarticulately. 
 It was exquisite, yet it meant women. But in the sitting-room, 
 in his own den, there was another sort of difference, clean 
 liness here, but not ornamented and befringed. There were 
 no draperies at the windows. Yet the house-genius had been 
 here, also, only to another end. The litter of dust and chips 
 that had used to mark his trail when he brought in wood was 
 replaced by a speckless floor. The andirons shone. The win 
 dows sparkled at him. The fire burned brightly, and, most 
 tranquillizing sight, his light-stand was drawn before the fire 
 and his book was on it. There, too, was his chair, and he 
 smiled confidentially to himself in thinking that, if his pipe 
 and pouch were not at that moment in his pocket, they would 
 seem to be welcome on the bare, clean mantel, destitute of 
 hatefully obstructing vase or statuette. 
 
 He sank into his chair and stretched his legs to the blaze, 
 looking somnolently into it, not because he was sleepy thus 
 early after daybreak, but because fire always charmed him. 
 He heard steps in the dining-room, and looked across the 
 hall at Bess moving about in a quiet, absorbed way, setting 
 the table. She had on a white dress with a blue figure in it, 
 made in what he thought a very modest fashion to fit her 
 work, with a round waist and only a few ruffles. That it was 
 old-fashioned he did not know, really her best dress saved 
 from the tavern days and brought with her into these am- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 143 
 
 bitious paths because, although she might not, two weeks 
 ago, have expected to wear it ever, it had cost her too much 
 pains, too many stolen minutes of sewing after ten at night, 
 to be relinquished lightly. While he watched her with the 
 half-smile of absorbed attention, she set a large clear glass 
 of jonquils on the table, and when she found she had put 
 them in a shaft of sunlight, seemed to stop, absorbed, and 
 regard them with a musing wonder. Winterbourne under 
 stood. She was worshipping them, he thought, and while she 
 worshipped, the spring outside the window and the spring 
 of life quickened in her. But she took herself away. There 
 were other tasks. One was to find the morning paper on the 
 hall floor and bring it in to him, with her careful air of wish 
 ing to fulfil all needs as soon as possible. 
 
 " You need n t give me that," said Winterbourne. " I 
 don t want your morning paper." 
 
 She smoothed it into a compacter fold, and laid it on the 
 side table. 
 
 " Don t you, sir?" she asked; and then, evidently as a 
 service not to be resisted, took a handful of cones out of the 
 basket and dropped them on the fire. 
 
 Winterbourne laughed out. Her painstaking satisfaction 
 in all the little beauty-breeding devices of the house gave her 
 a touching interest. 
 
 "Daughter of earth !" he said. 
 
 " What, sir ? " asked Bess. 
 
 He laughed again, and put out his hand to her as if in a 
 deferred greeting, and she laid hers in it. She looked at him, 
 frankly smiling. He was entirely worthy to be the master of 
 the house, her instinct told her, whom it would be her pride 
 to serve. 
 
 "Bess," said Winterbourne, "you sang something in 
 Italian, the other day Che faro " 
 
i 4 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He seemed to be prompting her, and she nodded, her eyes 
 still on his, like a creature that has been caught and needs 
 to know what is expected of it. 
 
 " Sing it to me," he commanded. 
 
 She opened her lips obediently, and the room echoed to 
 lovely melody. Winterbourne fancied the old walls thrilled 
 in pleasure, though he smiled at her painstaking eagerness 
 in the task, and understood perfectly that she was so pleased 
 to see him that the music was quite a fountain of joy. Her 
 white teeth, the beautiful red of her open mouth, commended 
 themselves to him, and he thought her exquisitely endowed, 
 if only, for purposes of song, she proved to have sufficient 
 brains. 
 
 "What did it mean, Bess?" he asked her gently, still 
 keeping her hand. 
 
 Her face, eager for his approval, warmed by a quick, 
 bright flush. He was afraid the seeking eyes were about to 
 have tears in them. 
 
 " I forgot," she faltered. " I do know what it means, but 
 I forgot." 
 
 " You thought it was just a song," he encouraged her. 
 "You wanted to please me with it. You did n t remember 
 it was written by somebody in trouble." 
 
 " Was he in trouble? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 "He?" 
 
 " The composer ? " 
 
 Winterbourne wondered when he should find the depth 
 of her ingenuousness. 
 
 " Not the composer," he answered, with that same quietude 
 which seemed calculated to leave her, like a bird, sitting on 
 the eggs of her wonder. " The lover. It is sung by Orpheus, 
 you know. He loved Eurydice so much that he went down 
 into hell to find her." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 145 
 
 Bess was looking at him in a clear, bright questioning. 
 She seemed to challenge the gravity of his meaning. 
 
 " He could n t really," she rejoined. " What makes you 
 say he did ? " 
 
 " It is an old story," Winterbourne continued cautiously, 
 proving his way by study of her face. " We can say any 
 thing, if the story s old enough." 
 
 " He couldn t go down into hell," Bess rejoined, with 
 entire conviction. " Nobody but Christ could do that." 
 
 This brought Winterbourne to earth he found debatable. 
 
 " The old stories mean a good deal," he said. " They 
 mean something that is always true. Don t you think, if you 
 loved a person very much, you could bear to go down into 
 hell to find him ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered promptly, " I could, Celia, or 
 you." 
 
 This was unexpected, and he dropped her hand. But she 
 was evidently considering the means of locomotion thither 
 with the quiet absorption in things as they are. 
 
 " But there would n t be any way," she said conclusively. 
 " There is n t any road down into hell. Hell is n t a place." 
 
 This seemed hopeful, and he asked, "What is it? " But 
 she shook her head. 
 
 He changed his ground. " Do you know Italian ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she nodded brightly, as if she had now the 
 means to please him. " I know this song. I learned it when 
 I was sitting in the hall, waiting for my lesson. He was 
 teaching it to somebody else. And I know Batti, batti, and 
 I know three others." 
 
 " But this song : Orpheus sings it. What does it mean ? 
 What did he mean by singing it ? " 
 
 By that he seemed to have found the numb spot in her 
 
i 4 6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 brain, and she looked at him with no manner of response. 
 She even seemed distressed, as if knowing she was about to 
 disappoint him. That Winterbourne saw, and forestalled it 
 quickly. 
 
 " Never mind," he said. " After breakfast you come in here 
 to me, and we 11 talk Italian. I m going to tell you what 
 you d say if you and I were living in Italy and I wanted 
 to ask you what those yellow flowers are out there on the 
 table " 
 
 " Daffys ! " she breathed involuntarily. 
 
 " And what there was for breakfast, and what makes Lyddy 
 fasten us out of the kitchen " 
 
 " Why, it s her kitchen," said Bess, " I know that." 
 
 Winterbourne gave a hoot of laughter, and wondered 
 whether, though she looked so sweetly appointed for life, she 
 might really be an idiot child after all ; and at that moment 
 there was the swift rustle of silk on the stairs, and his wife 
 came in, attaching her lorgnon to her chain. Celia followed 
 her. They were both, in the most flattering manner, respon 
 sive at the sight of him. 
 
 " John ! " exclaimed his wife, and " Papa ! " Celia vouch 
 safed, coming in but one beat after. They ranged themselves 
 in front of him, and regarded him with a welcome that seemed 
 overdrawn. He pulled his brows together and scowled at 
 them. 
 
 " What s this ? " he asked. He put out a forefinger, and 
 touched Catherine s sleeve. 
 
 " This ? " She looked down at it through her lorgnon. 
 " What does it seem to be, John ? Celia, what is it ? " 
 
 He had removed the mandatory forefinger. Now it was 
 indicating Celia s person. 
 
 " I want you to tell me what this is ? " he demanded. " The 
 cloth, the goods." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 147 
 
 " Mercy, papa, they re lingerie waists," said Celia. cc I 
 don t know what the cloth is. It s cotton. Do you want to 
 know what our skirts are ? Mine s serge and mamma s 
 is etamine" 
 
 Winterbourne spoke to himself, as if in wonder. 
 
 " They look like soft stuff. They don t look as if they d 
 make a noise, and yet wherever you go about the house, 
 it s rustle, rustle, like blades of corn against each other in 
 the wind." 
 
 " That s petticoats," said Celia. " Silk petticoats. Every 
 body has silk petticoats." 
 
 " No, they don t," said Winterbourne. " She does n t 
 have em." He pointed a tragic arm at Bess who had brushed 
 up the hearth and was prepared to leave the room when this 
 invocation brought her back, half-startled, into public notice. 
 " She does n t go round the house with screaming petticoats. 
 She walks softly, like a decent girl. My father Jupiter ! 
 Pleiades and Orion and the sun and moon ! " His rage came 
 upon him. His beard seemed to bristle and his hair to rise. 
 " Are women to go crackling round this earth breaking into 
 the music of the spheres, drowning the voice of the morning 
 stars as they sing together, with the swish, swish of petticoats 
 made by damned silkworms ? " 
 
 " O John ! " trembled his wife. 
 
 She had risen so sweetly, and her day seemed to be dark 
 ened before her by a sombre curtain. But somebody gave a 
 little giggle. It was Bess, there on the threshold looking 
 back at them. For an instant Celia was aghast, but she saw 
 the mirth run into Winterbourne s eyes, and augmented it 
 with a little shout and crow of pleasure. It seemed to her 
 that, by no effort, she had the key to him, or rather that 
 Bess, without knowing it, held the key and had lent it to her 
 for one brief sufficient minute. For the first time in his life, 
 
i 4 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 perhaps, Winterbourne saw the key was delivered up. He 
 snatched a block of wood from the hearth and threatened 
 them. 
 
 " Out of my way ! " he commanded. " Out of this room ! 
 Go ! efface yourselves, eat your breakfasts, get some nour 
 ishment into your brains, and then you, Bess, come back to 
 me and take your lesson. " 
 
 They went, the two girls gayly, and his wife in a smiling 
 compliance with what seemed to be the new order of the day. 
 But as Bess brought in the breakfast and Mrs. Winterbourne 
 painstakingly read over an editorial she was sure Anna Clay 
 ton Ramsay had assimilated perfectly, if she had not even 
 written it, her delicate hand, holding the lorgnon, trembled 
 a little, and she took a timid glance or two over it at her 
 husband, peacefully reading in the other room. When the 
 coffee was before her, she looked at Bess and nodded toward 
 him. 
 
 " Call your father, Bess," she said half-suggestingly. " Or 
 you might touch the bell/ 
 
 "He s had his breakfast/ said Bess. "He had it in the 
 kitchen half an hour ago." 
 
 It was a remark she was not unwilling to make, Cath 
 erine saw with pain. It looked like another proof of the 
 girl s social density. How should it not be disturbing for 
 one member of the family to prefer to take his breakfast in 
 the kitchen ? 
 
 Bess ate in some haste and then sat with her hands 
 tightly folded under the cloth, glancing from one to the 
 other as if she were in readiness for the meal to end. When 
 Catherine did rise, and Celia, having selected a jonquil to 
 draw through her belt, with her, Bess flew about her tasks 
 with hurrying feet. She always cleared the table and carried 
 the dishes into the kitchen, to leave Lyddy in a carefully 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 149 
 
 woven illusion that her work lay there and in no other part 
 of the house. Celia helped, in a pretty, desultory way, and 
 when they had done, Bess vanished to present herself before 
 Winterbourne who had now partly forgotten and was deep 
 in poetry. For two or three minutes she stood silently be 
 fore him, and then he did look up at her. 
 
 "What? "He frowned. "What is it? You re the girl that 
 laughed at me awhile ago. What do you want now ? " 
 
 She did not seem able to speak, but fastened on him with 
 reminding eyes. 
 
 "I know," said Winterbourne. He laid down his book. 
 "To be sure I know. We re going to talk Italian. Sit you 
 down in that little chair, and answer what I bid you." 
 
 Now Celia and Catherine had arrived, Catherine with her 
 lorgnon unnecessarily to her eyes, and curiosity coming out 
 all over her, like steam. 
 
 " Are you going to teach that child Italian ? " she asked. 
 "That s perfectly splendid of you. But you can t stop 
 there. We 11 have a class." 
 
 Winterbourne laid his glasses on his book and looked at 
 her. He did not storm. In the back of his mind there was 
 a ticklish suspicion that somebody might laugh, because the 
 unknown had happened and he had been laughed at once. 
 
 " No," said he, " no, Catherine. It s not going to be a 
 class. You and Celia run about your business. Bess and I 
 are going to talk Italian and we re going to talk alone." 
 
 " But really, dear," said his wife, with an animated play of 
 the lorgnon, " it would be of the greatest possible use to us 
 if you d let us come in. Celia speaks quite fluently, as it is. 
 She was of the greatest service in Florence when all I could 
 think of was acqua calda^ and every time I said it, it seemed 
 as if I were asking for cold water instead of hot. It is hot, 
 is n t it calda ? Yes, I know how I had to remember that 
 
1 5 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 difference all the time. But don t you think, if you really 
 want Bess to learn, she will acquire confidence a great deal 
 faster if there are more of us " 
 
 Winterbourne rose from his chair and stood ceremoni 
 ously, looking at his wife. She faltered ; the words froze on 
 her lips. Celia was standing in the doorway, enchanted that 
 her sister had found a partisan. She kissed her hand to them 
 impartially. 
 
 "Come, mamma," said she. "Come help me address the 
 envelopes for the circular." 
 
 "Well, if you really don t want us," said Catherine, "if 
 you really think 
 
 Here she retreated, and Winterbourne resumed his seat. 
 
 " Take your chair, child," he said, with an immediate 
 gentleness for his chosen pupil. " Yes, that stool s well 
 enough. Now, here we are ! " 
 
 Bess was not there entirely. She was looking at the door 
 way where Catherine had disappeared. Distress of a mild 
 nature was on her smooth forehead. 
 
 " Don t you think, sir," she hesitated, " don t you think 
 you might have let them stay?" 
 
 "What? Stay? Oh," said Winterbourne, quite uncon 
 cerned about them now they were gone. " No, they don t 
 want to stay. They only want to dance round the pot and 
 stir it if they think there s something doing. You and I 
 have got to kill the kid and skin it and pick the herbs and 
 watch the pot all day. Then when it comes supper-time, 
 they can skulk round and taste the brew, if they like. Not 
 now. Now we re going to talk about Italy." 
 
 She sat like a still little animal, her eyes almost unwink- 
 ingly on his face. She was afraid, he saw, of letting wisdom 
 slip, and it tickled him because nothing was so important as 
 all this came to. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 151 
 
 " What can you tell me about Italy ? " he asked, pur 
 posely in the manner of the instructor. 
 
 She accepted the cue and responded instantly, 
 
 " Italy is situated in the southern part of the continent of 
 Europe. Rome is the capital of Italy. The principal pro 
 ductions are " 
 
 It was, he thought, his own old geography, probably stud 
 ied in some country region where one generation inherited 
 the textbook of another, and the traditions of teaching had 
 been unchanged for fifty years. But he stopped her. 
 
 " That s very well," said he, " very well indeed. Now I 
 want to tell you how I went there." He began as if it were 
 a fairy story, and Bess sat with that unchanging gaze upon 
 his face. " When I was little more than a boy," said Winter- 
 bourne, "perhaps three years older than you are now, I took 
 passage on a small fruit steamer and shipped for Italy. We 
 had a long voyage, and all the way I was reading from a 
 case of books I took with me. I had a beautiful time. We 
 landed at Naples and I went straight to Rome." 
 
 " The capital ! " 
 
 " Yes, the capital. I m not going to tell you what I saw 
 there, nor what I saw in Florence, nor the little hill towns 
 that are as beautiful," he paused for a simile and selected 
 one to fit her, " as pretty as the picture on a card." 
 
 Bess nodded. 
 
 " It was very warm, the sky was blue, the sea was blue, 
 there were flowers, and men and women in queer and pretty 
 clothes. But what I want really to tell you about Italy is 
 this." 
 
 He leaned forward and looked into her eyes with his 
 great brown ones, bright with their enchanter s gleam. 
 What he had to say to her, she saw, was of immense im 
 portance to him, and she made up her mind it must be 
 
1 52 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 valuable to her also. As he seemed to be probing her intelli 
 gence by that piercing eye-gleam, so she was calling on her 
 mind to meet it. Winterbourne felt sure that at least she 
 would memorize what he told her. 
 
 " Italy," he said, " is a very old country. So is Greece. 
 So is all Europe old. But now we re talking about Italy 
 and we won t speak of any of the others, except Greece, 
 because from Greece Italy got beautiful stories. In the old, 
 old times when Italy and Greece were as beautiful as they are 
 now, and more beautiful because none of their temples had 
 been destroyed, men believed there were a great many gods." 
 
 " Yes," said Bess breathlessly. " They were pagans." 
 
 " We know some of the things they believed about the 
 gods. We have learned the stories about them. They are 
 the most wonderful stories there are. They always will be, 
 because they are about things that are just as true to-day 
 as they were then. They are eternal." 
 
 " Eternal ! " said Bess, as if she liked the sound. 
 
 " Do you know the story of Cupid and Psyche ? " 
 
 She had heard of Cupid, possibly, he thought, in connec 
 tion with valentines, but never of Psyche, and he told her. 
 
 "She should not have asked him," said Bess, at the end. 
 
 "She didn t ask anything," said Winterbourne, watching 
 her. " She only lighted the lamp, to see." 
 
 "Yes, but it J s just the same. It s just like asking people 
 questions when they don t want to tell you." 
 
 This was the first door opened, he saw. She was fitting 
 his word eternal to the old and making it the new. She had 
 a mind. 
 
 " Then there were Orpheus and Eurydice." 
 
 "Cbefaro " she breathed. 
 
 "Yes. I told you it was a love-story. But it s more 
 than a love-story." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 153 
 
 He paused there, and wondered how far she could follow 
 him. What had her unmellowed mind to do with myth or 
 nature-worship ? But he risked it and leaped with her into 
 Greece, to Persephone and the Vale of Enna. Winterbourne 
 was a story-teller by gift. He contended that life was all 
 one big story and the little stories were the children of it ; 
 to make them, remember them, tell them, this was not the 
 diversion of an idle hour, but the weaving of the many- 
 colored web of being and causing it to move in sun and 
 wind. He grew eloquent as he went on, lured by her answer 
 ing warmth, the brightness of her face. She was vividly 
 responsive. Somehow, as he saw, he was making spring and 
 the awakening walk before her like a procession of nymphs. 
 As he talked, the flowers opened and before he ended, the 
 Vale of Enna bloomed, blossom by blossom, at their feet. 
 She clapped her hands softly. 
 
 " I like that," said she. " That s a good story. It s better 
 than a love-story." 
 
 " But it is a love-story." 
 
 "Better than just a love-story, about a man and a woman. 
 That s silly, half the time." 
 
 Winterbourne watched her curiously, probing for the 
 heart of her simple mystery. 
 
 "That s only one story," he said. "When you sing 
 your song, about Orpheus and Eurydice " 
 
 "Cbefaro?" 
 
 "Yes. Would you rather think it s about the wind sigh 
 ing and singing over the souls of the dead, or would you 
 rather think Orpheus is a young man in love with a girl 
 and going down into hell to find her?" 
 
 There was no choice, he saw. Her face dulled at the 
 apparition of the young man. 
 
 "Sing it," he bade her suddenly, with a masterful vio- 
 
154 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 lence. {C Orpheus is the unhappy wind wailing over the 
 brown earth to find the flowers. What would happen if he 
 could call the spring back again ? There would be green 
 grass and hot sun and flowers everywhere. Sing about it 
 the way we feel in winter when we want the spring." 
 
 She got obediently off her stool, folded her hands, fixed 
 her eyes on the quickened trees without, and began to sing. 
 The tone was glorious. The light came into his eyes at the 
 throbbing beauty of it. Bess was not longing for love and 
 lovers. She was what he had called her, a daughter of earth, 
 and the earth and the sun and the waters and winds called 
 to her and moved her and caused her to be obedient to 
 them. 
 
 " Yes," he said, when she had finished. " That s true. 
 That s right. Now sit down and I 11 tell you how we 
 talked in Italy." 
 
 She sat down, warm-eyed and flushed by his praise, and 
 he began to teach her simple phrases. She was very dutiful 
 in repeating them with the extremest care, but when they mul 
 tiplied, she grew restive. Then she asked, 
 
 " Don t you think I d better get a pencil and paper ? " 
 
 He nodded, and she brought them and, in a childish hand, 
 wrote on a book propped upon her knee. When he had done, 
 she slipped the paper into her apron-pocket, and stood up. 
 
 " Thank you, sir," she said. " I 11 learn them all before 
 to-morrow. Here is Mr. Hunter." 
 
 Dwight Hunter had come in through the kitchen and was 
 waiting, cap in hand, to speak. Winterbourne, seeing him, 
 thought what a handsome boy he was, not unlike Orpheus, 
 and wondered how this singing girl could help sending him a 
 luring cry in her rich young voice, with a look even, to 
 follow. But Bess was asking him only, 
 
 " Mr. Hunter, do you know where the rest of the carrot- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 155 
 
 seed was put ? The dogs have scratched up a big place half 
 way down the lot ; I m going to sow some more." 
 
 " It s up in the shed-chamber," said Hunter, looking at 
 her in a dumb way, as if it hurt him to speak to her, and yet 
 as if he must speak. " I put all the seeds together there." 
 
 She passed him, and he came in to Winterbourne. 
 
 " Sit down, Hunter," said Winterbourne kindly. "Any 
 thing the matter ? What is it, Dwight ? " 
 
 The young man looked at him in the same appealing way 
 that had yet a fierceness in it. 
 
 " I m going to marry her," he said. 
 
 Winterbourne gripped the arms of his chair, and looked 
 at him. 
 
 " Good God, Dwight," he said at length, " you can t marry 
 her." 
 
 " I m going to," said Dwight immovably, as if the words 
 cost him something and the fact would demand of him yet 
 more. " Why can t I ? " 
 
 " She won t have you, boy. She does n t care for any 
 thing but the sun and moon." :;. tl 
 
 To Dwight, who knew nothing about the touchstone of 
 Orpheus applied to her, this was madness, but he only an 
 swered steadily, 
 
 " She s got to." 
 
 " Well, don t hurry her, then. She s nothing but a child." 
 
 " I ve got to hurry her. Lovell s gone to town." 
 
 "What s that got to do with it? " 
 
 " He s gone to get togs. He asked me who was a good 
 tailor." 
 
 Winterbourne stared, puffing his cheeks with astonish 
 ment. 
 
 "What does he want of a tailor?" was what occurred to 
 him to say. 
 
156 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " He danced with us, down at the Point." 
 
 " Lovell danced ! my heavenly Belshazzar and the Milky 
 Way ! Can t men dance with a girl but they must marry 
 her ? " 
 
 " I shall ask her before he gets back/ said Dwight. 
 
 He turned and left the room, and it was only when Winter- 
 bourne heard his determined stride into the kitchen that he 
 awoke enough to take out his pipe and fill it slowly. But he 
 read no more that morning. 
 
 Hunter went out through the kitchen where Lyddy was 
 making puff-paste, and climbed the rough open stairs to the 
 shed -chamber. There was Bess by the cobwebby window, at 
 the end of the room, frowning over packets of seeds. 
 
 " I don t believe you ve marked these right," said she, as 
 he approached her. " This ain t carrot-seed." 
 
 " Bess ! " said Hunter. 
 
 She looked up at him, unmoved. Everybody was in the 
 habit of calling her Bess, but his voice carried a little special 
 appeal. Dwight Hunter had never been in love. He had 
 been a shy youth in college, and since his lonely living down 
 here, he had had very little intercourse with women. Now 
 he was moved beyond his own power of estimating the great 
 ness of his emotion, and chiefly, in this new barbaric way, 
 because she seemed to him so different from any other girl, 
 not only because he loved her but because she was so simple, 
 so innocently bold and free. A self deeper than his conscious 
 one seemed to assume that because his mind was so tumultu- 
 ously toward her, hers must be as swiftly seeking him. 
 
 " Bess !" he said. He held out his hands to her in a boy s 
 fashion. " Bess, I m awfully fond of you." 
 
 One of his hands touched her sleeve. She felt it, and the 
 blood surged into her face. Dwight Hunter felt a stinging 
 blow on one cheek and then the other. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 157 
 
 " Find me the carrot-seed," said a stern maiden voice. 
 " Then you go down those stairs and don t you speak to me 
 again." 
 
 He stood for a moment looking at her. What temptation 
 assailed him to strike down the woman, bind her in his arms 
 with primal violence, and walk down the stairs with her slung 
 over his shoulder, he did not then tell. She was not looking 
 at him. She still sought, with a cruel patience, among the 
 rough seed-papers. Suddenly he awoke. He swept one paper 
 out from the others, with a motion of his hand. 
 
 " There s your carrot-seed," he said, as if it were a blow, 
 and walked away through the length of the chamber and down 
 the stairs. 
 
 Bess waited with the stillness of a clever little animal. 
 Then she picked up her carrot-seed, and went quietly down, 
 and out to sow it. 
 
XII 
 
 MRS. RAMSAY, at eleven o clock at night, was sit 
 ing by the writing-table in her study, her fretted 
 brow propped on one hand while the other hand 
 made careful notes on the manuscript page. The study es 
 pecially hers was a little room at the head of the stairs where 
 the sun never shone through the one window, this not 
 only because it faced the north, but for the pile of books 
 and pamphlets on the sill, and Mrs. Ramsay was never in 
 sight of the day when she could pause to move them and 
 have the window washed. The table was scattered all over 
 with letters and reports and dusty bundles of papers of an 
 outworn significance, which yet, because time scarcely ran to 
 it, could not be thrown away. Here she never found anything 
 except after prolonged search. But that she accepted ; it 
 suggested no drastic measure of setting in order, because 
 she had not been accustomed to finding things readily any 
 where. It seemed to her a part of the inevitable difficulty 
 of the world to steer her bark through these thick waters of 
 circumstance. It was like living on a planet where there 
 were perpetual thunder-showers, or one walked in the ooze 
 of marshes. The planet was simply made that way, and the 
 pilgrim might as well content himself. 
 
 A figure appeared in the doorway, but she did not heed 
 it. A shadow falling on the page to which her earnest mind 
 was glued meant only a call from the outer world which 
 would make itself manifest, in some form of " view halloo," 
 if it really needed to be heard. If it was the maid of general 
 work saying Tiny had lost her rubbers, the maid would 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 159 
 
 get tired of waiting and, in a logical access of inventive zeal, 
 find the child footgear of some sort. But sometimes, she 
 was aware, she had to listen, and now, when a voice hailed 
 her, she looked wearily up. 
 
 " Mum," said Tim. 
 
 She was very fond of him. Something of the first bloom 
 of her married life clung to him. He came when a child was 
 a wonder, and not after she had begun to think of them as 
 little citizens who would make the ship of state move more 
 securely if their cherished individuality could, be respected. 
 He was still a child. After his advent there was her stay in 
 Europe, studying sociology, leaving him and his father in 
 bemused dependence on each other. The other children 
 came years after, but they never seemed so like princes of 
 direct descent: only a little alien colony of the mother state. 
 
 " Are n t you gone to bed yet ? " asked his mother. " Is n t 
 it late for you ?" 
 
 Tim stepped in and seated himself on a pile of periodicals, 
 tied in bundles because Mrs. Ramsay had found that in their 
 unbound state they had been used for fire-lighting by maids 
 who undervalued the printed word. 
 
 " I don t go to bed with the children," said Tim. " Come 
 on out of here, mum. Come down into the nursery. There s 
 a fire there." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay capped her fountain pen, placed it upright 
 in her bag beside the table, because she meant to take an 
 early train, and rose to follow him. Tim, too, got up from 
 his pile of pamphlets, and they toppled after him. But he 
 did not pick them up nor did his mother see they blocked 
 the passage to the door. To Tim the room was predestined 
 confusion hopeless in a fashion that nothing but fire could 
 better; like his mother he was used to finding his way in 
 labyrinths of her own making. 
 
160 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Where s your father ? " she asked, her hand on the gas. 
 " Run along, dear. I m going to turn this out." 
 
 "Father s gone to bed," said Tim, from the hall. " He 
 was done up. Said old Gregory s been ugly as the devil." 
 
 " Oh ! " commented Mrs. Ramsay, unmoved. 
 
 She had been used for many years to the daily tempera 
 ture of old Gregory s mind. He was her husband s em 
 ployer, and it seemed to her quite natural that even a head 
 clerk should come under the changing sun of favor or dis 
 favor. They went down the dark stairs to the nursery where 
 Tim had been keeping up the fire after the children went to 
 bed, lying there on the hearth, his head almost in the blaze, 
 dreaming, not the vague deliciousness of youth, but weaving, 
 contriving, planning, making an ignorant child s picture of a 
 warm future. 
 
 He had taken the precaution, before he left, of drawing a 
 big chair to the hearth and building up the blaze, to beguile 
 his mother into staying with him while he talked. He and 
 even the little children knew a great many things about her 
 that she was quite ignorant of herself. They knew she was 
 often so tired that if she could be made very comfortable 
 a state she never sought she would stay and talk to them, 
 lulled by her bodily repose. They seldom wanted it. She 
 did not, being neither very affectionate nor beautiful, seem 
 to them a particularly interesting person ; but for reasons of 
 state they often had to consult her in parliamentary form. 
 So now, when she sank into the chair, it was with a little sigh 
 of unconscious bodily weariness. She was never tired, she 
 told people, and she needed little sleep ; but yet she did 
 have periods of lethargy when she thought she was thinking. 
 Timmy knew better. He knew mother was done up. He 
 took a chair at the other side of the hearth, because he wished 
 to impress her, and Mary, the maid, had so often exhorted 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 161 
 
 him not to "sprawl about so," that Timmy understood 
 sprawling to be unlovely. 
 
 " Mother," said he, "do you know anybody that s got 
 any money ? " 
 
 " Why, no," said Mrs. Ramsay. " I don t know that I 
 do. Why, yes, I suppose I do. A great many of our club 
 members are influential women. I suppose they have money. 
 Why, yes, I suppose I know people who have money." 
 
 " I want money," said Tim, " the worst way." 
 
 "Well, I dare say your father can give you some," said 
 Mrs. Ramsay. "How much do you need?" 
 
 He passed that over as the link he was not yet ready to forge. 
 
 "You know, mum," he said, " I think I Ve got a good 
 thing. If I let you in, will you keep still till I tell you to 
 speak?" 
 
 "Don t you think you d better go to your father?" she 
 asked dreamily. Her mind was not on him. A delicious sen 
 sation that she described next day as the sort of momentwhen 
 we feel at one with life was stealing over her; but she was 
 really sleepy with the liberty to indulge it. 
 
 " I can t," said Tim decisively, frowning at the fire. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I guess you can. Why can t you?" 
 
 " Father ain t a practical man. I ve got to have practical 
 men go in with me, and I Ve got to have some money to 
 keep up my end." 
 
 " Your language does n t always please me, Timmy," said 
 his mother, without severity, conscious of the warmth of the 
 fire on her knees. " I am surprised that a young man of your 
 antecedents and training should find the slightest temptation 
 to say c ain t." 
 
 "The amount of it is," Timmy continued, "we want money. 
 We need it, mum. We need it mighty bad." 
 
 " The rich man is not the man to be envied," said Mrs. 
 
1 62 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Ramsay. " It is the good citizen, the man who carries his 
 wealth in his heart and head." 
 
 "Look at dad," said Tim in dispassionate argument. "Did 
 you ever see such a poor old crow picking up corn in the 
 same field he s been tottering in fora hundred years? Why, 
 dad s a sight." 
 
 "Your father is not an ambitious man." 
 
 "Ambitious! I shouldn t think he was. He s been 
 squeezed so hard the blood s all out of him. He ain t am 
 bitious nor anything else. He s got four kids to put through 
 college: no, three, Tonty s only a girl. She ll probably 
 marry." 
 
 "Antoinette will assuredly have a collegiate course whether 
 she is a girl or not," said his mother, with some severity due 
 to her tenets of belief. She had almost concluded, " whether 
 she wants it or not," because she knew that, as a matter of 
 principle, Tonty would have to enter the world sufficiently 
 equipped. 
 
 "Well, Tonty is a girl," said Tim. "Count her in then. 
 Four kids to educate. How s he going to do it ? Don t count 
 me. I did n t want to go to college, and I did n t. I think 
 I m a polished specimen as I am, don t you, mum ?" 
 
 " You seem to forget that your mother s lectures are re 
 munerative," she reminded him. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know, but you ain t going to keep on batting 
 round the way you do. We ve got to have an income." 
 
 " I have no doubt," said Mrs. Ramsay, with dignity, "that 
 we shall always be able to live in a simple manner, suited to 
 our tastes, and that the children will be properly educated. 
 If you want a little money, dear, your father or I could let 
 you have it. But you know my hope for you, Timmy. You 
 know I am waiting with the greatest interest, dear, the great 
 est impatience, for you to decide on a profession." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 163 
 
 Tim got up and leaned an elbow on the mantel. 
 
 " Well," he said, in a curious tone of uneasiness and rather 
 sullen determination, as if he brought out something he could 
 more happily have kept hidden, " I don t want a profession. 
 I ain t fitted for it. I don t see how I could be. I don t want 
 to study, mother. You know I can t put my mind on things." 
 
 " My dear," said his mother, " you have awell-stored mind. 
 Think how mother used to read to you. She read to you by 
 the hour." 
 
 "Well, what made you do it?" said Tim irritably. "I 
 did n t want you to. I d much rather have been asleep. Why 
 did n t you make me read to myself, or set me something 
 to learn and lick me if I did n t do it? You don t any more 
 know how to bring up a kid than you know how to fly." 
 
 "We shall all fly some time," said Mrs. Ramsay sleepily. 
 His words had touched some spring in her mind, and she was 
 responding with a pin-feather from one of her lectures. " We 
 shall have our wings." 
 
 " Well, maybe we shall," said Tim gloomily, " but some 
 of us 11 fly mighty near the ground, and every chance we get, 
 we 11 roost. I tell you, mum, it s true, and you take it from 
 me, I ain t been brought up to do anything whatever unless 
 I get some queer sort of a soft snap that 11 let me in for some 
 thing rich. That s so. Believe it? " 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay had nodded, and the jar awoke her. It seemed 
 to her that she was being criticised for her educational meth 
 ods, and she answered, 
 
 "You could n t be treated like other children, dear. You 
 were very individual." 
 
 " Well, if I was individual then, I m individual now," said 
 Tim. " And the individual s going to act. Mother, see here. 
 I Ve got an invention. That s the head and tail of it." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay came awake. 
 
1 64 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " My son !" she said. " You Ve invented something? Now, 
 you see ! you were n t like other children, and if I had driven 
 you along the old ruts, you d have been in them now. You 
 have had long fallow times for thought " 
 
 " I Ve been as lazy as the devil," said Tim. " That s 
 what you mean." 
 
 " Your mind has been seething and ripening, and now 
 the moment has come, and it has brought forth fruit. As 
 well put a child in a strait waistcoat, as well bandage its feet 
 like the Chinese tyrant, as forbid it the growth of its free 
 intelligence." 
 
 " Cut it, mum, cut it," said Tim, with a restored good 
 nature. " That s out of a lecture. I heard it one night when 
 I was waiting with your overshoes." 
 
 His spirit was again rising. He had taken a step he 
 dreaded to take, and now it was done the rest of the path 
 seemed easy. His dread had not been of telling his mother, 
 because she, he knew, was easily approached, but the first 
 move seemed the difficult one. He was not used to action. 
 His long courses of dreaming over the financially possible 
 involved nothing for himself but the tacking on a second 
 dream when the first palled. Now he was to do. 
 
 " But," said he, " money s the thing. Money s what 
 I Ve got to have." 
 
 " To get your patent," she supplied. 
 
 " No, not precisely. That 11 be easy enough. I could get 
 that out of dad. Tell him I Ve got to have some clothes. 
 Show him my shoes. They d be enough." 
 
 " That is ever the way," saio Mrs. Ramsay fondly. " The 
 inventor barters everything tor his dream. Think of Ben- 
 venuto Cellini, think of the pottery man. I [can t at this 
 minute recall his name " 
 
 " Don t go harking back to those Johnnies," said Tim 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 165 
 
 sunnily. " They re dead and buried. You think of your 
 little flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy Timothy, and see what 
 you can do for him. Who s got money, mum ? Who ll 
 shell out?" 
 
 "How much does it cost to get a patent, child? " 
 
 " Never you mind. That s only the first step. We ve 
 got to manufacture. We ve got to form a company." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay brooded. 
 
 " Strange," she said, in her deep tone, " when a human 
 exigency like this arises, how precious money is. Take the 
 individual, the scholar, he can scorn it. James Trenton 
 Lovell could receive a legacy and cast it behind him " 
 
 Tim stood up straight, as if the words had given him a 
 shock. 
 
 " Cast it behind him ? " he asked. " Where d he cast it ?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " We none of us know," she responded. " We only know 
 James was given a legacy, and that he refused it." 
 
 " The ass ! " Tim contributed. " The old moth-eaten 
 hermit of an ass. What d he do that for ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he did n t do it." Mrs. Ramsay rose and stood 
 closer to the fire, looking at it lovingly. She would have 
 said, if her mental photograph had been demanded, that she 
 was of an ascetic habit, but warmth and food and right in 
 dulgences had a soft appealing for her, not to be recognized, 
 but ascribed to the general beneficence of the universe and 
 its effect on her spiritual state. " Don t speak uncharitably, 
 dear. If James did refuse it, it was from the highest mo 
 tives. We can be sure of that." 
 
 Tim had forgotten her. He stood on his side of the fire 
 place, looking at the coals and wondering how he should 
 have allowed himself to pass over Lovell s reputed fortune. 
 He had heard about it. Talk had buzzed vaguely all round 
 
1 66 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 it, but nobody had found out what it was, and after the first 
 wonder, the town had gone to sleep again, according to its 
 wont. 
 
 "I m going over to see him." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay was turning away to her chamber. 
 
 " To see James Lovell ? " she repeated, with her uncon- 
 sidered mildness. " Not to-night, dear. It s very late." 
 
 "He sits up till all hours." Tim was seeking out his hat 
 from a pile of unassorted headgear on the hall table. " Don t 
 fasten up, mum. I 11 be in some time." 
 
 He banged the front door after him, and she heard him 
 plunging away. She stopped to put out the hall lamp. 
 
 " Mother," said a little voice above her, and she looked 
 up. 
 
 Tonty stood in the hall, looking over the rail. She was 
 in her nightgown, and sleep still creased and flushed her 
 little anxious face. 
 
 "What is it, dear ?" inquired Mrs. Ramsay, ascending 
 heavily. 
 
 " I heard something," said Tonty, in a voice subdued to 
 the hour. 
 
 The three others, younger than she, would wake pre 
 sently to a less controlled alarm, and it would be her task 
 to comfort them. 
 
 " It was only your brother going out to make a call," said 
 Mrs. Ramsay. 
 
 She was proceeding to her own room and Tonty followed 
 after, in a perfect self-possession, yet trembling with her 
 fear and the cool of the night air. 
 
 "Then it s daytime, is n t it?" she inquired, with an in 
 credulous hope. " No, it must be evening. Do you think 
 he s going to see Jackie ? " 
 
 Who Jackie was, Mrs. Ramsay had never learned, but 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 167 
 
 it was one of her tenets that childhood must not be de 
 ceived. No chimney in her house had ever warmed to the 
 descent of Santa Claus, no brownie had ever swept her 
 floor, nor fairy godmother brought gifts. None of these 
 things had happened with her knowledge, though unknown 
 worlds thrilled about her and beat at the doors of her sleep 
 ing apprehension. And children must be told the truth 
 exactly. 
 
 " He has gone to call on James Lovell," she replied. 
 " Run along now and get into bed. Don t wake the others." 
 
 Tonty went obediently, and was over her sill ; but at the 
 dusky cavern of the room she hesitated and fled back again, 
 with a soft thud of feet. Her hands almost laid hold of her 
 mother s dress, but not quite. 
 
 " Mother," she said, " mother." 
 
 " Well, dear? " asked her mother, looking benignly down 
 at her. " What is it ? Mother s waiting for you to go back to 
 bed." 
 
 "You couldn t " Tonty s breath seemed to fail her, 
 and she added weakly " you could n t stand here and talk 
 a minute, could you ? " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Mrs. Ramsay kindly. " It s very late 
 for little girls. It s late for mother, too. Run along now, 
 and let mother see you shut the door." 
 
 Tonty went quickly, because that was the easiest way to 
 do it. She got inside the chamber, and pulled the door softly 
 to. That shut her inside the blackness. She felt her way to 
 the bed, and put her hand by chance on Tiny s face, and 
 then she might have screamed if that would not have waked 
 three sleeping creatures who would all have wanted water. 
 But how did she know it was Tiny s face ? She had left 
 Tiny in the bed when she heard the noise downstairs, but 
 that was a long time ago, and many things in the history of 
 
1 68 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 so dark a chamber might have happened since. She knelt 
 by the bed, and prayed : " Please let it be Tiny." It seemed 
 to her that she prayed a long time, and it did no good be 
 cause there was no sign that it was Tiny, and it was impossi 
 ble to get into bed until she had assurance. But she put her 
 head on the bedside and then in an instant found she was 
 saying, " Dear Jackie, let it be Tiny " ; and immediately she 
 was so sure it was, that she could get up and slip into bed 
 and seek Tiny s little curled-up hand. 
 
XIII 
 
 TIM made haste to Lo veil s door because, although 
 Lovell was accustomed to sit up to all hours, this 
 was midnight and beyond. The light was burning 
 in his little house, and Tim, before making himself known, 
 stepped up to the window with no attempt at caution, and 
 looked in. There was a fire across the shining andirons, and 
 a man sat on the straight old-fashioned sofa along the wall 
 opposite, watching the blaze. Tim frowned at the sight, be 
 cause this, seeming to be a visitor, made his coming futile; 
 but he paused and looked again, and when the man stirred, 
 with a familiar motion, Tim laughed out. At that the sitting 
 figure started and turned to face him there unseen. Tim went 
 to the door now, opened it, and walked in. It was Lovell 
 himself sitting on the sofa and regarding him with a stead 
 fast, unwelcoming look, apparently demanding why his soli 
 tude should be disturbed, Lovell in fine new clothes. Tim 
 went gravely to the mantel, took down a candle, lighted it, 
 and walked over to the sofa. There, holding the candle at 
 convenient points, he eyed Lovell up and down from the top 
 of his clipped head to his obviously new shoes. Lovell met 
 his gaze in an unmoved calm, as if it might prove a small 
 relief to be pronounced upon. Tim returned the candle to 
 its place, and took his host s own accustomed chair at the 
 hearth. 
 
 " Behold," said he, in a pleasant tone, " the bridegroom 
 cometh." 
 
 Lovell got up, threw a log on the fire, and wiped his hands 
 from the powdery dust of the bark ; he wiped them on his 
 
1 7 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 impeccable trousers. There was a freedom of motion in the 
 act, indicating a purpose. He might possibly, it seemed, find 
 more familiarity in the clothes which he was now regarding 
 with a mixture of rage and anxiety when they looked as if 
 they had been worn. Tim, with an elfin intelligence, read 
 him clearly. 
 
 " Your trousers, Jim," he said, from an admiring solem 
 nity, " are a dream, simply a dream." 
 
 Lovell seemed to glance at them, but a dogged something 
 within him told of relief. He would need all the dreamlike 
 garments he could get to drag him back to life long enough 
 to accomplish one foolish but inevitable purpose. 
 
 " You ain t dressed for the part," Tim vouchsafed. 
 
 " What part ? " 
 
 " Hermit." 
 
 " Don t be a fool. I never called myself a hermit." 
 
 " Nor poet," said Tim slyly. 
 
 " Nor poet, either." 
 
 " Well, you re all right, all right. You re just the same 
 kind of a Johnnie everybody else is except me. I couldn t 
 sport such a cravat nor such a coat at one o clock in the 
 morning nor any old time, not if you were to draw me on a 
 jury and tell me this was the uniform. You re elegant, Jim, 
 just elegant." 
 
 "I m a fool," said Lovell, going back to his position on 
 the sofa. "Take it from me a fool." 
 
 But he looked a very handsome fellow sitting there at his 
 frowning ease, and Tim, while he conquered an inclination 
 to laugh, generously conceded it. Again his impish intelli 
 gence told him Lovell was forswearing his old lounging-chair 
 and taking to the sofa to practise sitting on sofas at afternoon 
 calls. He had a deliriously happy vision of a " Book of 
 Beauty " he had seen in his mother s attic, where a young 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 171 
 
 lady of the early sixties sat winding wool from the hands of 
 a slim-waisted gentleman of the same period; and a wild im 
 pulse assailed him to ask Lovell if they should practise wind 
 ing yarn. But this unconsidered tableau, he thought, spoke 
 ill for his own hopes. It was a simple matter to mulct a her 
 mit of despised gold, but not a man equipped for conquest. 
 
 " Going to book, Jim ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Book ? " 
 
 " For the race. Play the game, vote, call on girls " 
 
 Lovell frowned at that, and then settled into his obstinate 
 calm. Timothy knew then. The two girls at the Winter- 
 bournes were at the bottom of it. If he were ever to find any 
 trace of the old Lovell, the poet, the student, the scorner of 
 pomps, it was time to do it now. 
 
 " Got any money, Jim?" he asked. 
 
 "How much do you want?" Lovell made an instinctive 
 dive into his empty pockets. 
 
 " I can put you on to a good thing." 
 
 " Oh, is that all ? I m going to bed," said Lovell. The 
 warmth of his first hour alone there opposite the fire with 
 that new energy assailing him had gone. " Sit here as long 
 as you like, only see the door s tight when you go." 
 
 " I m not fooling," Tim asserted. " I know of a company 
 that s going to be formed, and dad hasn t a nickel to put 
 into it. Say, you ve got money ! " 
 
 Lovell turned upon him. 
 
 "Have I, indeed?" he demanded. "Who says so?" 
 
 "All of em. They say you ve got it, or had it. If you 
 have n t made ducks and drakes with it, chucked it down a 
 hollow tree or something, you give it to me. I don t mean 
 give it to me. Put it into the company many shares as you 
 want." 
 
 " I don t want any shares," said Lovell. 
 
172 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He was standing, looking absently into the fire. How 
 should he tell his paper and pencil that night what he saw 
 there what flaring winds of passion, what castles and the 
 shapes of leaves P " What s your company ? " 
 
 "I won t tell you not unless you promise you ll think 
 of going in with me. If you ll do that, maybe I will." 
 
 Lovell shook his head. 
 
 " No," he said, " no. I don t know anything about your 
 companies and your shares. Come, let s get to bed. I don t 
 want to turn you out " 
 
 Tim picked up his hat and went, begging to the last, and 
 Lovell, shutting the door on him with small ceremony, took 
 the lamp and went into his bedroom. It had a good-sized 
 mirror, taken from the big house because the poet side of 
 him loved sumptuous things and the gilt scroll-work on it 
 pleased him. He stood before it, lamp in hand, and looked 
 at himself, frowning a little with the intentness of the scru 
 tiny. What he saw pleased him but moderately, a man of 
 good size and bearing, with a square forehead, very direct 
 gray-blue eyes, and a firm enough mouth with diversifying 
 curves in it. The mouth was odious to him because his mem 
 ories of what his mother and sister used to say of it were 
 still so disconcerting. "James has a beautiful mouth," he 
 heard his mother remark, fondly contemplating his photo 
 graph, which she insisted on keeping on the centre table 
 propped against the astral lamp. She never looked at him 
 when she said it, and James, with a sense that the mouth was 
 something that was his and yet not his, used to writhe in 
 his chair under the feeling that the idea had become so im 
 personal to her that she might offer it at any time, in any 
 company. 
 
 " Beautiful ! " his sister would dutifully respond, because 
 the rule of the house was that mother, because she was mother 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 173 
 
 and had a stiff knee, must be indulged. Lovell thought that 
 had got him into his habit of biting his lips, a vice he pursued 
 until his mother noted it and watched him for its recurrence, 
 saying at each downfall, " Don t do that, my son. You have 
 a beautiful mouth." 
 
 Well, he thought, the mouth was there. It was sufficiently 
 firm, even after all it had gone through. It was well enough. 
 The chin was finely cut, and he elected to pay no attention 
 to the dimple in it. What he chiefly wished to see was whether 
 he looked in the main no worse, if no better, than other fel 
 lows who might not have had his own tawdry experience. The 
 lamp gave him no ecstatic assurance, but it offered no facers, 
 and he went to bed, to forget himself and what he was pretty 
 sure was going to be the morrow s foolish deed. 
 
 But the next afternoon it was without thinking much about 
 it, except as an act already determined upon, that, in all the 
 austerity of his conventional gear, he went up to the Win- 
 terbournes and knocked. He had been used to walking in, 
 after the familiar custom of the town, for his lost evenings 
 with Winterbourne and the Greeks; but those were behind 
 him. He never hoped for them again, and saw before him 
 the exacting call of a new relation miserably veiled, as yet, in 
 doubt. 
 
 Lyddy came limping to the door, and stared at him with 
 a frank surprise. Perhaps if he had not looked her in the 
 eye and asked somewhat more severely than anything save a 
 wavering will, giving itself even the advantage of a truculent 
 port, might have counselled, she would have frankly told him 
 how he seemed to her in his new clothes. But she informed 
 him in detail where all the family might be found. Mr. Win 
 terbourne and Bess she made no halt at her familiar name 
 were studying in the sitting-room, Mrs. Winterbourne 
 had gone to town with that Mrs. Ramsay, and Miss Celia was 
 
i 7 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 in the garden. Lovell hesitated before her, and she divined 
 him. 
 
 " You can go out this way, if you want," she said, her 
 gleaming eye on his. " She s the only one that ain t busy." 
 
 So Lovell went through the kitchen and down the steps 
 of the back door and came upon Celia pacing dreamily in the 
 spring air, between rows of budding green. The garden, like 
 all the Winterbourne estate, had suffered in the desertion of 
 the owner, and he had not yet haled this flowery patch back 
 to an assured prosperity. Bess had been digging about some 
 of the perennials, and Hunter, seeing her, had brought his 
 hoe and gone into the business of liberation, to please her. 
 Finding him at work, she had given no sign of gratitude or 
 even interest, but he was pleased to note that her own frag 
 mentary toil went on there in early mornings before he came. 
 She it was who had decreed the sowing of lawn-grass near the 
 house, where Winterbourne had elected to raise carrots. Win 
 terbourne had come out one morning and found Hunter sow 
 ing grass. 
 
 " You told me the carrots were all in," the master said, 
 with dark suspicion. 
 
 Hunter kept on with his accurate wave and toss of the seed. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "This is grass-seed." 
 
 Winterbourne felt one of his rages coming on, but at that 
 moment Bess walked around the corner of the house. He 
 appealed to her : 
 
 "Will you listen to this? I tell this fellow to put in car 
 
 rots 
 
 But Bess came up to him. Her hair was blowing, and the 
 light of day was in her eyes. 
 
 "Why, yes," said she, " course you Ve got to have grass- 
 seed up here by the house. I told him so. You can t plant 
 carrots round your rock-o -door." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 175 
 
 That was an old term for the doorstep. Lyddy made a 
 commonplace of it, and Winterbourne loved the girl for us 
 ing it in the manner of the soil. He looked at her a moment, 
 broadly smiling, and she smiled back, in no community of 
 understanding mirth, but because she approved of him. 
 So the lawn was sown, and Winterbourne rejoiced in his 
 defeat. 
 
 Celia had no inborn taste for gardens : but this one, en 
 closed in its high fence, gave space for solitary musing, and 
 she wandered up and down, looking the sweetest of lone 
 maidens, but brooding practically on ways and means. Lov- 
 ell, a little dashed because she did not know him, went to 
 ward her fast, and suddenly she did place him, and held out 
 her hand. 
 
 " How good of you to find me," she said. " I might have 
 missed you." 
 
 Lovell had perhaps not himself realized how deeply in 
 earnest he was. He kept her hand a moment and threw it 
 away from him with a little fling, as if he abjured all the helps 
 to courage. But after all, what had he to say to her ? Could 
 he begin, " I have chosen to confess to you, because you are 
 a beautiful young woman and I am afraid you will not be 
 pleased"? 
 
 " It is so warm," Celia was saying, in a clear voice tuned 
 to his insufficient hearing. 
 
 She looked at him with large and reflective eyes, thinking, 
 in the undercurrent that went on in her now all the time, that 
 here was a unit of the millions more fortunate than she and 
 bound to serve her if she could but combine them rightly, 
 knowing he was predisposed toward her and wondering how 
 she might take the best advantage of the moment. The be 
 ginning was to talk to him. " Come down into the grape 
 arbor," she said. " I Ve been sitting there." 
 
176 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He followed her, his throat dry with indignation against 
 himself for walking into a corner where he must needs ap 
 pear like a fool to get out again. In the arbor she sank into 
 one of the wicker chairs, looked at him with her pleasant 
 smile, which was yet not warm, and waited. He took in her 
 look, like a picture hung before him, the slenderness of her, 
 the pretty dress with its light green stripe and the green rib 
 bon at her waist, the warmth of her hair, and the pure out 
 line of her cheek. He felt dizzily for a moment that he did 
 not know whether he had spoken or not, and then said, in 
 what instantly sounded to him like a voice too rough, 
 , "You don t know me. * 
 
 Celia was still looking at him with that cool, clear smile. 
 
 " I know you are a poet/ she said in a low voice, and 
 asked herself inwardly, in that unconscious way she had of 
 referring all her words and acts to a standard of aesthetic mean 
 ing, whether the tone had been thrilling enough to fit that 
 word. 
 
 He made a slight outward motion of the hands, as if all 
 that he cast to the abyss of unconsidered things where tal 
 ents, genius even, might lie while he sought the mere basis 
 for human living. 
 
 "Don t say that," he adjured her. "Has anybody told 
 you anything about me?" 
 
 Immediately that seemed to him asinine, because there 
 was no reason why anybody should have spoken of him. 
 But she was smiling at him in a bewildering way and assur 
 ing him that they had. All the time she was wondering, in 
 a disengaged inner chamber of her brain, what he had done 
 with the money they said he threw away. It seemed the 
 height of folly or the top of splendor to throw away money 
 Bess could use to such advantage. 
 
 " I could understand," she told him. " I understand per- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 177 
 
 fectly. That s exactly how a poet would feel. I m awfully 
 proud of myself because I could partly understand." 
 
 He stared at her in an unbelieving gratitude. She must 
 mean, he knew, that old plague spot in his life, the young 
 folly that had helped bewilder his mother s days, and had 
 bound his sister to him in a passionate desire to make up 
 to him for the world s odium. The money he was said to 
 have abjured was as far from his thought as any other in 
 considerable thing that might have plagued him, for a mo 
 ment, to be forgotten. But here, it seemed, was the most 
 delicate spirit of the spring bringing its own gentlest fra 
 grant air to blow about his past and make all well. 
 
 " That s not all," he said. " Those things that thing 
 is past and gone. It s an infernal folly I came to talk to 
 you about about my being deaf. I m not deaf." 
 
 She was staring at him in a sweet confusion. It was 
 Celia s endowment that, whatever seemed desirable to feel, 
 she could really compass for the moment. 
 
 "Oh!" she said, in a maiden shame that implied the 
 memory of the admiring comment she had thrown out that 
 other day. 
 
 He did not make the least pretence at not remembering. 
 
 " I heard it," he said. He was rather pale now, and 
 looking directly at her. " That s why I came. When you 
 said it, I felt like a fool. But I thought I d better tell you. 
 I wanted to be an honest fool, at least." 
 
 She sat looking at him with her air of restrained emotion, 
 really wondering what he would like her to say. She had 
 divined the spring of humor in him, and suddenly her face 
 crinkled into laughter. She stretched out both hands to 
 him, not, he found at once when he put out his own to 
 take them, in more than a spontaneous gesture of her own, 
 having nothing to do with him. But as she withdrew them 
 
1 78 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 before his hands could meet them, there seemed to be no 
 thing incomplete in the action but, on the contrary, some 
 thing very pretty. 
 
 " It s so funny ! " she murmured. " Is n t it funny to 
 you ? What made you do it ? " 
 
 His face relaxed, but rather grimly. 
 
 " I did n t do it to be funny/ he said briefly. " I can t 
 explain it to you. But I d got mortal tired of talking. That 
 seemed to be one way of getting out of it." 
 
 " But aren t you tired any more ? Are you willing to talk 
 
 3 
 now r 
 
 Her charming face, still creased into mirth, was set upon 
 him with its divided beauty of wistful eyes and smiling 
 lips. Now he was openly answering the smile. 
 
 " I don t know that I particularly want to talk," he 
 owned, seeking through his inner store of reasons. " But I 
 look mighty foolish to myself for hatching it up." 
 
 " I wonder why," she reflected. She was sitting now, 
 hands clasped over her knees, looking at him musingly. 
 
 " Well, you re a new person," said Lovell, selecting the 
 outside of such reasons as he found. " You ve come in 
 here and brought your verdicts with you. You turned a 
 light on me. I look like a fool, that s all I know." 
 
 " Oh, not a fool," she hastened, " a poet." 
 
 At that he frowned, and she knew at once she was snap 
 ping that string too boldly. Her face broke up again into 
 smiling. 
 
 "It s funny," she declared. "It s awfully funny. Don t 
 be sorry you did it. I wouldn t have missed it for the 
 world." 
 
 "Don t be sorry I ve been deaf?" he said good-hu- 
 moredly, getting on his feet, and looking down at her. 
 " Well, I 11 try not. Only you can remember I m not deaf 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 179 
 
 any more. I ve got back my hearing. That s what old 
 Mrs. Staples said when Winterbourne sent her a trumpet." 
 
 "How did he send her a trumpet? Sit down and tell 
 me/ 
 
 That was a new pretext for keeping him. But Lovell 
 did not sit down. He walked a few steps through the arbor 
 and broke off a twig. With this in his hand, to snap again 
 into infinitesimal lengths, he felt more at ease. He had ner 
 vous hands that communicated their needs swiftly to his 
 brain. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know exactly how it was. Only she came 
 here no, her daughter came a while ago and demanded 
 an ear-trumpet. He happened to have one on hand; so he 
 gave it to her." 
 
 " What a curious thing to have on hand ! You speak as 
 if it were a pencil or a piece of soap ! " 
 
 " It is curious, but that s the way it was." 
 
 She was looking up at him, her face brimming over, and 
 before knowing what brought its accession of mirth, he 
 smiled back at it. 
 
 " You could say he happened to have another ear-trumpet 
 round," she hinted, " or a sovereign remedy for ears, and 
 that s what cured you. That s why you aren t hard of hear 
 ing any more." 
 
 He started. 
 
 "My king ! " said he. " You don t mean to tell me I ve got 
 to stop being deaf? " 
 
 " But you ve confessed it. So you re not deaf, are 
 you?" 
 
 He shook his head in a droll bewilderment. 
 
 " I never thought it was going to let me out of the advan 
 tage I d gained. If I had " 
 . " You would n t have done it ? " she challenged him. 
 
i8o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 [ " I should have thought twice." 
 
 "Well ! " Instantly she sobered into a sympathetic tender 
 ness, and Lovell felt small and young. " It would be a shame 
 to take it away now you ve got used to it. I 11 tell you what 
 we 11 do. You shall be deaf to all the rest and not to me." 
 
 It was said with an air of bright discovery, and Lovell al 
 most shouted, he was so pleased with it. 
 
 " That s exactly it," he assured her. " That s what I should 
 like above all. So you see it s brought me luck." 
 
 "What luck?" 
 
 " Why, we ve got a secret together. Maybe you don t call 
 that luck. I do." He sobered, and his voice showed softened 
 recollection. "It s brought me luck before this." 
 
 "What, Mr. Lovell?" 
 
 "Well, it brought Winterbourne. He heard I was deaf, 
 and what does the old dog do but bring me down a trumpet, 
 the twin to old Mrs. Staples s. When I saw him and his hon 
 est phiz and the trumpet in his hand well, I laughed, but 
 I could have cried. But I asked him in, and we had it out 
 together, and you might have heard him roar from here to 
 Dixie." He paused there, looked reflective, then looked fool 
 ish, and added, " He left the trumpet though and to-day 
 I brought it back." 
 
 "To-day? now ? You have n t it with you?" 
 
 He nodded and took out pan-pipes from his pocket, the 
 innocent-looking little wonder-worker that to-day everybody 
 knows the outline of. Celia put out her hand for it, regarded 
 it curiously, and set it to her ear. 
 
 "No," said Lovell, "it s not for you." 
 
 But he gazed at her with a keen regard, tenderly even, and 
 wished he had some artist s immortal presentment of her as 
 she looked then, like youth or beauty holding the shell to 
 her ear, listening to what? Time, perhaps, the presage of 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 181 
 
 eternity. But when the delicate pose had lasted long enough, 
 she was looking at him, at last, and smiling. 
 
 " Could you hear the grass grow?" he asked her. 
 
 "Almost." 
 
 " I m going to let you laugh at me again," said Lovell. 
 "I m so unused to making calls, I wanted a reason. I took 
 the trumpet. I thought if I found you all together I d make 
 that the pretence. But if I found you alone I should just 
 offer my confession and be absolved." 
 
 "And what shall I do with the trumpet?" She was look 
 ing at it drolly now, as if such helps to living were jokes to 
 her immortal youth. " Keep it to hear the grass grow ? " 
 
 " Give it to Winterbourne, if you will, and see he puts it 
 away. It s too valuable to be left lying round." 
 
 Celia came to her feet, because she saw he was really going. 
 Besides she felt him to be cleverer than she, and the inter 
 view was, she felt, being left at precisely the right point. 
 
 " Well, we Ve got our secret," she said brightly. " It makes 
 me feel about five." 
 
 Lovell shook his head. 
 
 " I feel more than five," he told her. " Sometimes I feel 
 about seventy-five. But I don t object to a secret. Listen. 
 I m going to prove to you that I m not deaf." 
 
 " But you told me." 
 
 "I m going to prove it. I 11 tell you what is going to 
 happen in a minute. Your sister has run up into the shed- 
 chamber. I heard her speak to Lyddy, and then step on that 
 first creaking stair. Winterbourne is coming. I smell his to 
 bacco. Tim Ramsay is coming in through your side gate. I 
 heard him shoo the cat. Now I m off. Good-by." 
 
 He looked about him, evidently for a way of escape that 
 should not bring him face to face with the incursion he had 
 foretold, saw the clear place in the fence where the grapevine 
 
1 82 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 had not found the top, and, regardless of new clothes, went 
 over. Celia, remembering his face as it had smiled upon 
 her, decided that he did more than refrain from objecting to 
 a secret. He liked it very much. 
 
 Winterbourne, true to prophecy, appeared in the doorway, 
 smoking his pipe. 
 
 " O papa," Celia called to him, " here s your ear-trumpet." 
 
XIV 
 
 WINTERBOURNE advanced, smiling wryly, and 
 Tim, who had followed him through the dining- 
 room, came on behind. 
 
 " I begin to think," said Winterbourne, " that if I opened 
 the almanac at random, I should find in the margin, About 
 this time look out for ear-trumpets. What s the thing pur 
 suing me for? Where d you get it, Celia?" 
 
 " Mr. Lovell brought it. Is n t it wonderful, papa ? " 
 
 Winterbourne smiled quizzically at her. By this time he 
 knew her trick of pretty, unmeaning speech. Tim had taken 
 pan-pipes out of his hand, and went round in a mock excite 
 ment, listening at the region supposedly of Winterbourne s 
 heart, and then at a spider s web where a fly was buzzing. But 
 Winterbourne, his eyes drawn that way, lifted the fly out of 
 the web of doom, delicately unwound the threads with his 
 great fingers, and set him free. Celia, watching him, found it 
 an attractive thing to have done, and wondered why she 
 hadn t thought of it. 
 
 " Listen," she said to Tim. " You can hear the grass grow." 
 
 " There s only one place where you can hear the grass 
 grow," said Winterbourne. His face took on that soft, fine 
 look it had when his mind travelled miles and miles at light 
 ning rate, to unknown beauties whereof it knew the secret. 
 
 "Where is that, papa?" 
 
 "It s in Schubert s Fruhlingsglaube. I swear you can hear 
 the roots." 
 
 "I m going to make your sister sing into this thing," Tim 
 announced. 
 
1 84 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Simple Simon," said Winterbourne, " pan-pipes is n t for 
 you. Wait fifty odd years till you ve grown to it." 
 
 "What is there so grand about the thing anyway?" Tim 
 wondered. " What makes it so much better than any other 
 trumpet?" 
 
 But Winterbourne had no notion of talking mechanism 
 with the feckless loon he thought Timothy to be. Besides 
 he was telling Celia something. 
 
 " I wish I d known Lovell was here. He s done me an 
 ill turn." 
 
 " No, papa, not really ? " 
 
 "Lovell has n t printed anything for years, and now he s 
 gone and written up the Valley of Birds, and sent it to the 
 Sun." 
 
 "Now what is the Valley of Birds, papa?" 
 
 Tim was wandering about, directing pan-pipes here and 
 there, and finally mounting the kitchen steps. 
 
 " Put that in the drawer of my desk when you re done 
 with it," Winterbourne called. " The upper right-hand little 
 drawer." 
 
 He, too, was preparing to wander away, for he was not at 
 ease in solitude with Celia. Her comments, her questions, 
 were after a prearranged model. Bess, he would have said, 
 had the old habit of wonder. She belonged to the childhood 
 of the race. She was unspoiled. 
 
 " But the Valley of Birds ?" Celia reminded him. 
 
 " Well ! " he paused to make a story of it. " You see the 
 lower part of my land, down there where the carrots are, 
 opens into a lane and the lane leads to a good big stretch of 
 woods. They re first-growth pine. They re monarchs. 
 You Ve got to bow the knee. But before you get in among 
 them there s a fringe of light wood, birch, poplar. Just 
 about now it s divine. Well, inside the shade the birds seem 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 185 
 
 to know they can have it their own way. They come earlier 
 there, they sing louder, they seem to sing longer in the year. 
 I ve called it the Valley of Birds, that s all." 
 
 " But what s Mr. Lovell done to it? " 
 
 " Why, the devil possessed him, and he s written a pretty 
 essay about it and told where it is, the fool, and students in 
 nature-study and old ladies with spy-glasses 11 come down 
 here to find it. And if they do, I m blest if I don t send 
 them over to Lovell s and tell them he s a distinguished 
 author and wants to be interviewed. Blest if I don t !" 
 
 He walked off muttering maledictions, but with a face as 
 sunny as the day, and Celia, looking after him, thought he 
 was very handsome but his manners were most unrefined. She 
 went slowly in, musing on Lovell now, her pretty brows knitted. 
 
 "Where s my sister, Lyddy? " she asked in the kitchen. 
 
 Lyddy was taking her afternoon rest by the window in 
 the sun. 
 
 " Up in the shed-chamber," she wakened to answer briefly, 
 and Celia turned back and climbed the old rough stairs. 
 
 The door was open and she paused there to look at Bess, 
 seated by a cobwebby south window, and asleep. She had on 
 her print morning dress, and her sleeves, rolled up a little, left 
 her white wrists free. She had thrown her head back in the 
 chair, and Celia, regarding the beautiful outline of it and the 
 serious, sweet look of her flushed face, thought she seemed 
 more a young mother than a girl. Her eyes came open sud 
 denly and met her sister s. 
 
 " What is it ?" she asked quietly, without stirring. Celia 
 went in and sat down on a stool at her feet. 
 
 " What makes you stay up here ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don t know," said Bess. She glanced about her, as if 
 to seek some sufficient reason. "It s kind of away from 
 everything. It smells good, too, herbs and old things." 
 
1 86 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Celia had a moment of considering whether Lovell was too 
 young a man to be expected to do anything for Bess. If he 
 had been an old man, it would be simple. After all, it was 
 really only borrowing money on the security of a voice. 
 Perhaps, even with a young man, it was simple. At least 
 nothing would be lost if he liked her, and nothing was more 
 likely than that he should, for he was half hermit in his tastes, 
 and here was Bess making the shed-chamber her retreat. 
 
 " Mr. Lovell has just called," she said. 
 
 " Has he ? " asked Bess, with no appearance of interest. 
 
 "He looked very handsome. * 
 
 But this Bess did not answer, and Celia, looking up at 
 her, saw that she was frowningly, yet with delicacy, extract 
 ing a fly from a cobweb on the pane. Rescues seemed to go 
 in pairs that day. 
 
 " Do you think he s handsome, Bess? " insisted Celia. 
 
 " Handsome ? " echoed Bess. She had unwound the last 
 filament from the fettered gauze and now set the prisoner 
 free outside the window. " I guess so. It don t make so 
 much difference about men-folks anyway. If they re strong 
 and well, that s enough." 
 
 Celia looked at her a moment and then burst out laugh 
 ing. This was a real laugh, not her tinkling accompaniment. 
 
 " I should think you were Lyddy," she cried. " O you 
 darling thing ! " 
 
XV 
 
 IT was not many days after this that Bess, sweeping off 
 the front steps to save Lyddy s old bones, saw a little 
 figure full of haste, yet dignity, advancing up the path. 
 It was Tonty, clad in blue checked gingham and anxiety, no 
 hat on her smoothly braided brown hair, and a little willow 
 switch in her hand. That Tonty always carried when she 
 walked abroad, because she was afraid of Tom Peasley s 
 turkey-gobbler. She stopped a couple of feet short of the 
 flight of steps, and regarded Bess with some surprise and 
 much pleasure, evidently having expected to encounter 
 Lyddy. 
 
 " Is Jackie at home ? " she asked. 
 
 She had heard Winterbourne s name, but chiefly from 
 her mother s lips and those of persons inclined to stiffness 
 and willingness to be grown up, and she made no doubt 
 that Jackie was his own best name. 
 
 " Who, little dear ? " Bess answered, with a desire to get 
 her arms about the womanly figure. 
 
 " Is Jackie at home ? " 
 
 Winterbourne himself now came round the corner, smok 
 ing his morning pipe and picking his way on the flagstones 
 bordered by the newly springing grass. 
 
 " Well, my buttons ! " said he. " If here is n t the lady 
 of the manor and the Maid of the Mist! I do feel honored, 
 
 mum." 
 
 He took out his pipe and knuckled his forehead in good 
 old English style. But Tonty found no awakening laughter. 
 Her face broke up into relief and happiness and misery, 
 
1 88 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and when he reached her on the walk, she set upon him 
 and clung. 
 
 " O Jackie," she choked, " Tony s awful sick." 
 " Tony sick ? " he asked her gravely. " Where s mother ? " 
 " Mother s gone to Cleveland. Is it far ? " 
 " Pretty far," Winterbourne replied grimly. " But Hades 
 is n t," he added, with an afterthought of Mrs. Ramsay 
 and her disordered house. " Never you mind, ladykin. 
 I 11 get my hat, and we 11 see what s the matter with old 
 Tony." 
 
 " Shan t I go with you ? " Bess was asking. 
 She had set her broom inside the hall closet, and given 
 her sleeves a downward smooth, to make them ready for the 
 street. Her eyes were warmly questioning. Winterbourne 
 knew through the certainty of his natural understanding of 
 her that she was on fire to get into a house where there 
 were dirt and children. 
 
 " Come along," he said. And when he had got his hat 
 and Bess had slipped a bottle into her pocket, he took 
 Tonty s hand and they walked off down the street, Bess 
 following. 
 
 Tonty had looked doubtfully and somewhat jealously on 
 the prospect of a third on their quest, but Bess having the 
 insight to fall behind, her presence was not really chal 
 lenged. It came out now, in the course of judicious ques 
 tioning, that Tony had been coughing for several days, but 
 to-day he lay on the sofa and said he could n t get up, and 
 bade them bring him plum-cake. And Mary, the cook, had 
 been sick upstairs, and Tonty felt he ought to be denied 
 plum-cake, but there was no one to ask. Besides there was 
 no plum-cake to give him. Then they were at the slipshod 
 old house, and Tonty, scrupulously standing aside to let 
 the strange lady enter, and vaguely conscious of the confu- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 189 
 
 sion to salute her, wished, in her little anxious soul, she had 
 taken care of Tony herself. 
 
 " Here we are," said Winterbourne. "This is our room." 
 
 He threw open the nursery door, and Bess went in. 
 Tony was lying on the .sofa, his small person flanked by 
 offerings from the nursery store. Tin soldiers were there, a 
 set of clothespins Winterbourne had painted for Tonty long 
 ago, and helped her dress in petticoats, and the tops of the 
 establishment, three mangled and one in health, were wait 
 ing for the master hand to spin them. Tiny and Teeny sat 
 in little chairs in the exact middle of the room, having been 
 put there by Tonty at her departure, lest they should either 
 take fire at the coals or come too near Tony s delirious 
 grasp. Tony himself was red in the face, really, Tonty 
 knew, from roaring for each particular thing he wanted and 
 exacted as the tribute of one nigh unto his end. He cocked 
 one eye at Winterbourne, and then closed it. He was not 
 altogether pleased at the advent of grown-ups. Tony had 
 counted on a superior day. 
 
 Bess went forward to him in a silent haste. She knelt on 
 the floor, and looked at him, felt his hands and his skin, 
 and held one of his solid wrists in hers. 
 
 " What is it, boy ? " she asked. 
 
 Tony opened both eyes a slit and seemed to investigate 
 her motives. But he closed them tight again, and groaned 
 distressingly. Winterbourne was frowning with anxiety. 
 
 " What do you think, Bess?" he inquired. "Think I d 
 better call Pelham ?" 
 
 " Mary s been sick upstairs just the same way," Tonty 
 volunteered. Her smooth forehead was tied into knots of 
 care. " Mary got sick as much as a week ago, and first she 
 talked all the time and her face was red just like Tony s, and 
 we carried her up all our things to see if she d like em, and 
 
1 90 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 when father came home at night he got the doctor. And 
 the doctor sent her away to Mary s sister s. But Tony s 
 sick just the same way." 
 
 Bess had put her hands under Tony s arms, and now 
 she lifted the firm little body and set it upright. She was 
 all of a smile, and Winterbourne, watching her, thought 
 her a witch of a girl who seemed to know nothing and yet 
 was unfailingly on deck. 
 
 "Tonty," said she, "can you find me some molasses?" 
 
 Tonty stared at her. This was far from anything she had 
 expected. 
 
 " In the kitchen I could," she returned dutifully. 
 
 "We ll go into the kitchen to make it. Tony s got to 
 have molasses candy. If we sent for the doctor, that s what 
 he d say, first thing. I guess mother wouldn t mind, would 
 she?" 
 
 "Oh, no," Tonty replied, in a conviction devoid of bit 
 terness. " Mother would n t mind." She could have ex 
 plained that mothers were sleepy beings whose only care 
 was lest they should not find something or catch the train. 
 
 Bess took Tiny and Teeny each by the hand, and gave 
 Winterbourne a beckoning glance. 
 
 "Here we go into the kitchen," said she, "to make the 
 candy for Tony. It s too bad Tony s too sick to go, but 
 maybe he 11 be better by the time the candy s started." 
 
 Tonty showed the way, and Winterbourne followed on, 
 knowing it was expected of him, but he had an illuminating 
 glimpse over his shoulder at a little figure sitting bolt up 
 right on the couch, eyes shining and body in a tension to 
 be up and in the midst of the molasses carnival. 
 
 In the kitchen was Harriet Beale, a willing, slipshod 
 girl of sixteen, working her way through a multitude of 
 last night s dishes. Harriet saw no reason for washing 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 191 
 
 dishes until the present supply gave out, and nobody in 
 this figment of a home seemed to have preferences to a 
 counter effect. She was not surprised at their advent, hav 
 ing long ago learned not to expect the sky to fall in the 
 regulation way at the Ramsays . It always fell criss-cross, 
 or had a fashion of slumping down in the middle. She 
 found the molasses for them, and the butter, and washed a 
 spider, old to the point of an artistic smoothness, and Bess 
 measured with what seemed a careless hand but was masterly 
 from long practice, and as she mixed and stirred and the 
 smell of hot molasses filled the air, she sang. 
 
 Three children stood a pace away and looked at her, and 
 Winterbourne, sunk into a big chair in the kitchen corner, 
 watched her and let his mind wander back to the simpler 
 times when earth maidens such as she enthralled the hearts 
 of men and helped them turn the soil from wildness into 
 garden. She seemed to belong there, in the old, old time 
 before the pageant of life had begun to shine brighter than 
 life itself. She was singing little songs to gay measures, not 
 always with words to them, and he found himself charmed 
 and dulled by them as if she had expected him to be; and 
 when he remembered the children he saw they, too, were 
 charmed. 
 
 But there were four children now instead of three. Tony 
 had come slowly and softly in from the nursery, at first like 
 a little criminal lest he should be questioned and made to 
 remember his chosen state of solitary invalidism, and then, 
 when he found himself ignored, quite boldly, as one who 
 had returned to his lost manhood. Still singing, she poured 
 the candy into its tins, and set the tins in water, and when 
 the brew had hardened slightly, creased it into squares. 
 Then she allowed the spell to break. 
 
 " Three pieces apiece this forenoon," she said to Tonty. 
 
1 92 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "Three this afternoon. Not any more until to-morrow. 
 Harriet 11 give them to you and set what s left in the upper 
 cupboard. Now let s come out and play in the old sleigh." 
 
 But they waited for it to cool, and then went most gayly, 
 the twelve pieces in a little dish in Tonty s hand. And 
 when they were settled in the sleigh under the grapevine 
 that straggled from the sweet-bough tree to the fence, 
 Winterbourne and Bess left them there and went home to 
 gether. He was wondering at her, looking at her now and 
 again from under his heavy brows. 
 
 "Bess," said he, "how did you know there was an old 
 sleigh to play in?" 
 
 She was walking happily along, pleased with the spring 
 air, glad he was beside her, and all a pleasant warmth from 
 the kindly sun. Now she returned him a little glance of 
 surprise. 
 
 "Saw it there from the front walk," she said, "when we 
 went in." 
 
 " How d you know Tony was shamming? " 
 
 "Oh, anybody could tell that. He hadn t any pulse to 
 speak of. His skin was just as moist! And didn t you hear 
 her say the girl had been sick upstairs and they d carried 
 her up things? Why, he got on to that quick as a wink. 
 He saw that s the way to get things." 
 
 " Well, is he going to keep on shamming when he wants to 
 get things ? " 
 
 Winterbourne felt his own ignorance beside her. She seemed 
 to him the universal guardian of mankind, dowered by nature 
 with all sorts of knowledge needed for the upgrowing of the 
 race. But only thoughts of the simplest were hers, if indeed 
 she thought at all. She was going along at a fine free pace, 
 swinging a little lilac switch she had picked up, and flicking her 
 skirt with it. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 193 
 
 "Oh, no," she said, " it has n t gone far. He 11 forget all 
 about it by night. They 11 only remember the candy. Except 
 Tonty. She s the kind that remembers everything." 
 
 Winterbourne felt a sudden desire to know her better. 
 
 "Are you the kind that remembers every thing?" he asked. 
 
 She took it with the greatest simplicity, and seemed to 
 think a moment before she answered. 
 
 " I don t know," she said then, gravely. " I don t dwell 
 on things. I don t have time." 
 
 " Do you think you work too hard?" 
 
 Tenderness lay in his tone, and it made her turn to him. 
 
 " Oh, no," she said, in some surprise. " I m strong as a 
 horse. No, I guess I never ve worked too hard. But Celia " 
 a swift radiance passed across her face " Celia s made dif 
 ferent. It s well she did n t have to do the things I have. 
 They d have broken her down." 
 
 " But Celia has n t any gift as you have." He said it in 
 voluntarily, longing, as he often did, to know exactly how 
 she looked upon her own endowment. 
 
 " Has n t any gift?" 
 
 She was puzzled, he could see. 
 
 " No. You can sing, and Celia can t." 
 
 " I m sick and tired to death of all this talk about my sing 
 ing." She was not only sick and tired but irritated, too, and 
 that, breaking the surface of her gentleness, made him see 
 how honestly she felt it. " Singing s no great shakes. I 
 should think anybody could sing." 
 
 " But they can t. Don t you know they can t ? " 
 
 " No, I suppose they can t," she conceded doubtfully. 
 
 " Bess, you must n t say things are n t any great shakes." 
 
 "Must n t I, sir?" She turned toJiim liquid brown eyes 
 full of an adoring dutifulness. " Then I won t." 
 
 "Why don t you ask why you mustn t? " 
 
i 9 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "I don t need to, sir. If you tell me to do anything, I 11 
 do it." 
 
 This moved him to such despairing love of her that he 
 had to say rudely, to counteract it, 
 
 " Bess, you re disgustingly servile. You re always doing 
 what everybody wants you to. You ve no will of your own." 
 
 "Haven t I, sir?" she asked him; but at the moment 
 she said it, a picture flashed upon her of Dwight Hunter 
 turning away from her, the blood rushing into his cheek after 
 that sounding blow. 
 
 " Not a jot." He was working himself up to move her if 
 he could. " But when it comes to the one thing you might 
 do and ought to do, you won t hear to anybody." 
 
 " I 11 hear to you, sir." 
 
 A sweet trouble was upon her face. He knew that without 
 looking. 
 
 " You won t sing." 
 
 " I do sing, sir. I sing a lot." 
 
 "Yes, but you won t give up your life to it. Look how 
 you charmed those kiddies this morning. Why, you could 
 charm everybody folks that are sick, Bess, folks that are 
 in trouble. Don t you want to charm em ? " 
 
 Her eyes swam in tears. She made a little involuntary 
 motion like, he thought, the impulse to touch his arm. 
 
 " Have I got to, sir ? " she asked imploringly. 
 
 "What the devil makes you hate it so?" 
 
 " I don t hate to sing. I hate to have on tight clothes 
 and long under my feet and slippers that hurt me and 
 tell lies about what I know and where I Ve been. I hate to 
 be shut up in a room with a lot of people and sing to them. 
 The air gets bad. It makes me sick." 
 
 All kinds of appeals were in her voice. She seemed to be 
 beseeching him to deliver her from a slavery she abhorred, and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 195 
 
 he thought of the savage, used to free air, caught by civiliza 
 tion and succumbing to white men s miseries. 
 
 " Well, Bess/ he said, " I give it up. There ought to be 
 a forest primeval for you and me." 
 
 " Yes, sir," she said, almost, his ear told him, on the verge 
 of tears. " I d go anywhere with you." 
 
 That was beautiful but also startling, and set him wonder 
 ing how, when life was over for a man and he had settled 
 down to translating Theocritus, things should grow so exceed 
 ingly queer about him. But they were at the side door and 
 Dwight Hunter was coming out of the yard. He was frown 
 ing and giving the last turn to a handkerchief about his 
 fingers. 
 
 " Hurt you?" Winterbourne asked. 
 
 Dwight shook his head. 
 
 " Not much. I was moving some of the old planks to 
 clean the cellar and got a sliver a yard long. I can t find the 
 whole of it." 
 
 " Give me a try. Then Bess 11 do it up for you." 
 
 Winterbourne innocently saw her again ministering to 
 humanity in this day of hurts and hypochondria. But she 
 dealt him his next surprise. 
 
 " I guess you can get it out," she said to Dwight, and 
 walked by him to the house. 
 
 He gave an involuntary wince of pain of one sort or an 
 other, the hurt finger or the mind, and kept his way. 
 
 " It s all right," he called back to Winterbourne. " Pel- 
 ham sover here in his buggy, waiting for some tomato-plants 
 I ve got for him. He ll fix me up." 
 
 But when Winterbourne went in, Bess was waiting for him 
 in the hall. She looked a shade paler perhaps, but she spoke 
 indifferently : 
 
 "Do you think he s hurt?" 
 
196 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " If he is, you don t deserve to be told," said Winterbourne, 
 regarding her with a growing smile. He liked to see human 
 nature come out under velvet disguises, and he wondered 
 what there was about Dwight Hunter to make a girl hate 
 him. " I thought you were a kind of angel, Bess ; but I guess 
 you re a little devil after all/ 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Bess meekly, " I guess I am." 
 
 Then she took her broom from the hall closet and went 
 out to finish sweeping the-front steps. 
 
 But that night she had an errand to do, and stepped away 
 through the dusk. Bess had a heavy heart that night and an 
 angry mind. Her mind had been telling her how foolish it all 
 was, what she was going to do, and she had an irritated sense 
 that she ought not to have been forced by the nature of things 
 to do it. But that something inside us which insists upon or 
 derly deeds told her she had really got to take a walk and 
 make a speech. Her way led her to the west along an elm- 
 bordered busy road and over the vocal Sutton that was little 
 more than a brook, though from the courtesy of remembered 
 spring floods, it had to be called a river. Here she stopped 
 and sat down, in the old attitude of the thoughtful or musing, 
 on the high rail where generations of schoolboys had hacked 
 their names. The stream was small now and flowed silently, 
 but the moon glinted in it and that invited her. She was in a 
 mood so still that it might have been called sadness if she were 
 ever sad, but her muscles were always too healthfully strained, 
 her blood always flowed too normally, to allow of that. If she 
 could have looked at herself as Celia was always looking on 
 at her own inner complexities, she would have said that the 
 master control of her nature was a great obedience, a patience 
 resultant from it. . 
 
 Bess never knew why she was to be patient, only some 
 voice told her she had to be. The rebellions of another sort 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 197 
 
 of nature would have seemed to her much like madness. As 
 she sat here, she thought about her voice, whether it would 
 please Winterbourne to have her take those complex and 
 briery paths for they were briery, however plainly they 
 promised to be carpeted with velvet ease that seemed to 
 lead to that doubtful benefit called singing. If he wished it, 
 so it must be, but she hoped, even out of her obedience, that 
 it need never come to that. It was very pleasant sitting on 
 the rail and communing with a moon too far away to trouble 
 her by asking her to be something other than her calm de 
 sires bade, but her errand gave her a little reminding prick, 
 and she rose and went stoutly, though unwillingly, on. 
 
 The road led at last to a white house, glamorous in the 
 moonlight, for it had a porch of noble proportions, and on 
 the pillars of it the light lay sweetly and turned it into some 
 thing more beautiful even than rich men s palaces, the hint 
 of other countries and other times when in pillared seclusions 
 dwelt old gods. Bess did not think of it in that way, but it 
 seemed to her full of peace and lovely. There was no light 
 in the front of the house, but far back in the barn at the side 
 she saw the glint of a lantern, and went for it straight, be 
 cause it seemed better than going into the house at all. When 
 she neared it enough to see that the light was stationary 
 within, not swinging as a man did chores at night, she came 
 face to face with the great door, and stood there a moment 
 listening, looking also at what she had not expected. 
 
 Dwight Hunter, surrounded by monstrous shadows, stood 
 in the dark seclusion of the barn. He was at a bench, rub 
 bing down a piece of wood, and as he lifted it to sight across 
 it critically, she had no difficulty in seeing what it was : the 
 curved leg of a highboy, still in the rough but tending in 
 the right line. As she stood, about to speak, he gave a little 
 exclamation, and threw down the wood. Then he stood star- 
 
198 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 ing frowningly at her where she waited in the dark, but, the 
 unrecognizing look on his face told her, not seeing her. Now 
 it seemed for the first minute that she was spying upon him, 
 invading his solitude, and she advanced, speaking his name, 
 too timidly, she found, to suit her own ideas of the common 
 place nature of the errand she had come on. So she said it 
 again, more firmly, and it sounded like defiance. In the in 
 stant she had time to see how fagged he looked, with that 
 expression of youth undone which is not in the least like the 
 tiredness of age. It is the aspect of the sturdy man who 
 has run a race. There was sadness in his eyes. It made them 
 pathetic, and seeing that, her motherly heart yearned inquir 
 ingly toward him, and then caught itself back again with a 
 species of anger. He was alert now, aware of her step and 
 the outline of petticoats; but when she came forward into 
 the circle of light, he gave an incredulous, 
 
 " Good God ! what are you here for ? " 
 
 He had been thinking of her while he worked, and now 
 that she appeared like the embodiment of a dream, he was, 
 though amazed, not greatly so, for the dream lingered and 
 she seemed the unreal phantom it had woven. She spoke at 
 once: 
 
 " I came to beg your pardon." 
 
 " My pardon ! " he echoed in amaze. " What do you want 
 to beg my pardon for?" 
 
 Her cheeks reddened, he could see in the lantern-light, 
 and her eyes awoke with that defiance he had more than once 
 called into them. But she was determined to be good and 
 she spoke steadily: 
 
 " For what I did." 
 
 He knew what she had done; his cheek, he had thought 
 more than once that day, burned with the memory of it. He 
 had meant, in moments of furious recollection, to pay her 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 199 
 
 back, not in blow for blow, but some mortification of the mind 
 that should put her in her place ; for after all she was just a 
 girl, and it need n t turn her into a raging fury to know a man 
 was in love with her. Again he had wondered, in pauses just 
 as fierce, how if he paid his debt in kisses. But seeing her 
 alone in the poor hospitality of his shop, and having, hard- 
 worked as he knew she was all day, walked so far to make 
 her reparation, the evil spirit went out of him, and he took 
 up the piece of wood he had thrown on his bench and held 
 it out to her. 
 
 "Want to see what I m doing?" he asked. 
 
 She did want to, and suddenly grateful to him for not lead 
 ing her along the road of her mortification, she took it and 
 said quite humbly, 
 
 "It belongs to a highboy. Do you mend them? " 
 
 " I m always mending old truck/ 1 The tired look had gone 
 out of his eyes ; his face was eager and strong again with the 
 color flushing in. " Come here and see." 
 
 He took up the lantern and turned to the back of the barn. 
 Bess followed him, and then she became aware that she was 
 in a colony of bureaus, tables, chairs, all old, some pathetic 
 in their dilapidation, some in a perfect state, yet evidently 
 awaiting the gloss which should proclaim them ready for 
 their place again in the world. It all bewildered her. 
 
 " Why," said she, " I did n t know you were jn the furniture 
 business." 
 
 "I m not," said he, with the carelessness of the man who 
 is displaying his own weakness, yet not calling notice to it. 
 " But I can t help working on old things. I can t help buying 
 em and putting em to rights. I say to myself I 11 sell em, 
 but I don t." 
 
 " You can t, can you ? " said Bess, with unexpected com 
 prehension. " I don t blame you. I could n t either." 
 
200 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He could have thrown up his hat, if he had had one, and 
 uttered a barbaric yell. She actually understood. She could 
 speak, too, his language. But he bent over a sewing-table 
 and said, in a melting voice she conceived to be for the table 
 alone, 
 
 " Do you like this? " 
 
 "It s inlaid," said Bess, passing her hand delicately along 
 the front. 
 
 What sprang in his mind was the resultant query, "Won t 
 you let me give it to you ?" But this he had sense enough 
 to suppress, saying instead, "It s the last thing I finished. " 
 
 Then they walked up and down aisles of dusky wood, and 
 he held the lantern here and there to show new beauties and 
 flaming possibilities in one-legged things that had been bar 
 barously used. No suspicion touched him that this was a 
 simulated interest to make their reconciliation the more last 
 ing. He had a clear comprehension of Celia s ardent likings 
 for whatever her protagonist liked, and could smile at them 
 ,even while he approved, knowing they were the ways of a 
 girl; but Bess, he knew, was different. He would even have 
 said she had no time to concern herself with the tricks of 
 other mating creatures, bound, in spite of themselves, to carry 
 on nature s ancient will. But one question he did put, from 
 his desire to know more about her and come into the country 
 where she lived, as she to-night had entered briefly into his. 
 
 "What makes you like old furniture?" 
 
 " I don t know," said Bess, with her direct honesty. " There 
 was a good deal of it in the tavern where I worked. I used 
 to rub it. They did n t make me, but it needed it, so I did." 
 
 This recalled him to the hardships of her life, as he saw 
 her at Winterbourne s day by day. Dwight loved to work 
 with his own hands, but he was uneasy in seeing these women- 
 things, with the bloom of youth upon them, too hard bestead. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 201 
 
 " You re tired/ he told her. " Sit down in this chair. It 
 was great-grandfather s. I found it in the cellar." 
 
 That was the tone she resented, the tenderness of it, and 
 instantly her panoply of heightened color and stiffened neck 
 was upon her. But she had determined to be good, and the 
 thought was really present with her. She turned about, and 
 he also, to let the light of his lantern lead her to the door. 
 
 " What makes you like it ? " she said, with a last effort to 
 make the penitential journey complete "old furniture? " 
 
 He had put the lantern out, by a swift dash, and now 
 he set it down and was walking with her to the gate. 
 
 " I don t know exactly," he said. " I fixed over one 
 piece it was mother s little sewing-chair and then I 
 wanted to do some more. I guess I like wood. I like the 
 grain of it, the way it comes out. I always thought I d like 
 to make a fiddle." 
 
 Bess turned to him there in the moonlight with a stirring 
 of the first acknowledged interest he had ever roused in 
 her. 
 
 " Can you play ? " she asked. " Can you play the 
 fiddle?" J 
 
 " Why, yes, a little," said he, thinking not of the fiddle 
 but the harmonies in her voice. 
 
 " Could you play in concerts ? " she challenged him. 
 There was excitement in her tone, even beseeching. 
 
 " No, of course I could n t. I ve spoiled my hands be 
 sides. Look how I Ve worked." 
 
 Her excitement seemed suddenly quelled, and she turned 
 away from him in the dying dawn of that first flutter of it. 
 For an instant she had wondered whether he stood with her 
 in the inexplicable bond of partially knowing how to do 
 naturally something which, the knowing had decreed, must 
 furthermore be displayed through a forced travail, artificially. 
 
202 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY, 
 
 Only he was not, perhaps, like her, pressed, to the point of 
 cruelty, to do it. 
 
 "Good-night," she said. "I m sorry " 
 
 He knew this was to the end of her further abasement 
 and said involuntarily, 
 
 " Don t." 
 
 But she ended, neither, it appeared, hearing him or want 
 ing to hear. " I m sorry I did n t behave like a lady." 
 
 He was beside her on the country road, fitting his steps 
 to hers. He meant, she saw, to go home with her. She 
 stopped. 
 
 " Don t ! You re very kind," she added, from this same 
 stubborn desire to do her full courteous duty, " but I m 
 not afraid." 
 
 He only waited for her. 
 
 " I d get my coat," he said, "if it was n t for keeping you 
 waiting." 
 
 " I don t want you to go," said Bess, " truly I don t." 
 
 "Well, then," said Dwight, "I won t. Good-night." 
 
 But after a few rods on her rapid way, she looked back, 
 sure of what she was to see. There he was, following leis 
 urely. He meant, in her phrasing, to see her home, that no 
 harm come to her. The only way to shorten the irritating 
 situation was to walk fast, and this she did. 
 
XVI 
 
 BESS went in at the front door and paused a moment 
 in the hall to put the hair back from her moist fore 
 head. She had walked as fast as she well could, to 
 show Dwight Hunter she wanted to shake off the unwill 
 ing service of his protection as soon as possible. She knew 
 exactly where he dropped off, at the moment the lights of 
 home shone out for her. 
 
 " Bess, is that you ? " Catherine s voice came to her from 
 the dining-room. 
 
 Catherine was sitting at the large table there, looking over 
 a paper she had once written on a visit to Venetian palaces. 
 When she had realized how public-spirited Mrs. Ramsay 
 was, it seemed to her that she ought to do something to 
 keep abreast of events and justify herself in being. The 
 paper was all she had to contribute to the public weal, but 
 she was doubtful of its value, and at this minute she sat 
 wondering whether she liked to go in to Winterbourne with 
 it and ask him what he thought. But it was a difficult quest. 
 She did so want to do something admirable, and yet there 
 were no voices within her that ever told her whether she did 
 well or ill. Intemperate admirations these were her lot 
 after the common judgment taught her mind which way to 
 go, and when its approbation soured, she, too, condemned 
 unflinchingly. 
 
 " Bess," she called again, " come here." 
 
 Bess went out to her, unwillingly, knowing she was no fit 
 object for the judging eye. Catherine, cool and sweet in her 
 lilac muslin, looked up at as tousled a maid as ever bacchanal 
 
204 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 revels left to smooth a tumbled mop of hair and coax the 
 hot blood out of glowing cheeks. 
 
 " Celia has been looking for you/* said Catherine, and 
 then, when Bess came an unthinking step further toward the 
 lamplight, "Where have you been?" 
 
 Bess did not answer. Her doglike eyes besought indul 
 gence. 
 
 "Where under the sun have you been?" Catherine in 
 sisted, now with a tinge of sharpness. " How you look, child! 
 Tell me where you ve been." 
 
 Then she made no secret of it. Until this moment, it had 
 not seemed to her that she had been anywhere at all to chal 
 lenge censure, but the one glimpse of Catherine, the image 
 of the world and its proprieties, told her. 
 
 "I went up to see Dwight Hunter." 
 
 " To see him ? Where did you go to see him ?" 
 
 "To his house," Bess answered, in a tried beseechingness 
 of eye and voice. " I knew where it was." 
 
 " What did you want to see him about ? " Catherine per 
 sisted. Something some infection of the girl s own emo 
 tion told her there was more in this than met the eye. 
 
 " I wanted to see him," Bess repeated ; and, softly though 
 it was, Catherine knew she would vouchsafe no more. 
 
 " But you can t go to call on young men at their houses," 
 she told her, not unkindly. "You mustn t do that sort of 
 thing. It is n t decent." 
 
 At the word not deliberately chosen two things hap 
 pened. Bess, her eyes now all an appealing fright, put up 
 her head and turned it from side to side in a way of an 
 guished petition. Were there yet more things for her to 
 learn in a mysterious and unfriendly world? Also, Winter- 
 bourne s voice came from the sitting-room where he had his 
 lamp and book. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 205 
 
 "Come, Catherine, come! Don t go round inaugurating 
 dryads into that kind of mystery." 
 
 At the sound of his voice even, whatever the words might 
 be, Bess flew to him. He thought in alarm, as he looked up 
 to meet her rush and onset from the doorway, that she 
 might be about to cast herself at his feet. But she did not 
 speak. She stopped in front of him, her hands pressed to 
 gether, her eyes eloquently beseeching him. They seemed to 
 say a great many things, and he, reading them, though im 
 perfectly, was moved to the core. " Do you blame me ? " 
 they seemed to say. "Tell me, master, and quickly, for if 
 you do the end has come." 
 
 This Winterbourne did not translate. He only felt the 
 necessity of a quick rebuttal of all censure. 
 
 "Go to bed, child," he said kindly, "you re tired." 
 Then as her eyes still questioned him, he answered them. 
 " You re a good child. You re the best ever yes, and the 
 tiredest. Go to bed, Bess-." 
 
 She drew a long breath, and, with one last look at him, 
 all gratitude and warm devotion, fled up the front stairs. 
 
 Then Winterbourne heard Catherine pushing back her 
 chair, and he knew she meant to talk it over. Bess, on the 
 landing above, saw Celia waiting, she also ready with the 
 cry, 
 
 " O Bess, where have you been ? " 
 
 Bess had not meant to stay for talk, but she took Celia s 
 hand humbly and turned with her into the room. Celia s 
 candles were lighted, yet in the dimness of the chamber she 
 hardly saw how perturbed her sister was, though something 
 in her air bespoke a troubled haste. 
 
 . " Where Ve you been, Bess?" she questioned. She drew 
 her down on the side of the bed, Bess yielding, though not 
 willingly. 
 
206 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I went up to see Dwight Hunter/ said Bess. She 
 seemed all a dogged patience. 
 
 "To see Dwight Hunter? What for?" 
 
 " I wanted to see him." 
 
 "Couldn t you wait till to-morrow? He s sure to be 
 here." 
 
 " No," said Bess. " I couldn t wait very well." 
 
 " What was it ? " Celia insisted. " What did you want to 
 say to him?" 
 
 " I wanted to say I was sorry." 
 
 "Sorry! What for?" 
 
 " I slapped him," said Bess, with simplicity. 
 
 She was beginning to feel the delicious aching numbness 
 of the body that had been active in the open air a good 
 deal of the time through the long day. Celia put a hand 
 on her shoulder and shook her gently. 
 
 " Wake up, Bess," she bade her, in a voice of laughter. 
 " Do you know what you said ? You said you slapped him." 
 
 "Yes, I did," said Bess, in her dull patience. It began 
 to seem to her at last a little thing to have raised a pother 
 so inconceivably great. Or perhaps it was a large thing and 
 she was again proven to be incompetent to meet these exi 
 gencies. " I slapped him, but I knew I had n t behaved like 
 a lady and I went to tell him so. Good-night." 
 
 She rose, and put her arms above her head with the silent 
 yawn which Celia meant some time to abolish in her, but 
 which still seemed, so sweet she was, so fragrant the red 
 mouth she opened, not undesirable after all. 
 
 " But what made you ? " Celia was pressing, not believing 
 in the heinous deed in the least, and yet having to approach 
 what had really happened by that only possible way. "What 
 had he done to you ? " 
 
 But that was never to be told. Nor would Bess lie, for 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 207 
 
 she was going to her own room as soon as might be, to say, 
 " Now I lay me," and it was not a square game to approach 
 her kind personal deity save with clean lips. 
 
 "I slapped him/ she repeated. "That s all." 
 
 And though Celia held her dress, ostensibly to kiss her, 
 she was resolutely gone. 
 
 When Winterbourne heard Catherine coming, he laid 
 down his book. Some announcing aura told him he was to 
 discourse with her in the way that tired and terrified him 
 because it ended nowhere. What was the use of communing, 
 he would have said, battling with clumsy clouts of words to 
 approach an understanding where none is ? If you under 
 stand, you two souls who are talking together, you can do 
 it without words. If you don t leap at apprehension, keep 
 silence, for words will never help you. As he saw her com 
 ing, pathetic in the trouble of her brows, he remembered 
 those other first days when he was ready to help halting 
 words with kisses and appear to acquiesce while his mind 
 was yet afar. But that day was past. It belonged to the 
 spring of life when God Himself seemed to have decreed 
 that kisses were a part of the substance of things. Not now. 
 They had ceased to be a part of the game. But what she 
 had in hand for him was neither argument nor appeal. It 
 was pure amazed assertion. 
 
 "Everything she does is right to you, every single 
 thing." 
 
 Winterbourne was taken by assault. Here was something 
 that sounded like accusation, and yet the partisanship she 
 chid him for could not be wrong. 
 
 " It is n t a sin to go to see a young man," he bade her re 
 member, speaking mildly, taking up his book. " Not here 
 in Clyde. When you get a nymph into your house, a crea 
 ture that washes off her conscience every day in mountain 
 
208 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 brooks, why, you must n t corrupt her by the moth-eaten 
 rules of a blasted old world. You just can t do it, Cat." 
 
 It was the harum-scarum name he had called her in mo 
 ments of their young gayety together, but it could not move 
 her now. She was seeing how she had been wronged, by 
 nature, by the chance of life. Her starved being was perpet 
 ually on its knees before that ineffable picture of the perfect 
 love, and Winterbourne seemed her tyrant because he might 
 have completed it for her and would not by a really tender 
 word. 
 
 " Shan t I look out for her ? " she persisted, rather breath 
 lessly. " Shan t I prevent her from doing the things nice 
 young girls don t do ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Winterbourne. He laid down his book again 
 and reminded his old irritation to lie low. " If she s got to be 
 a nice girl. But why can t you let her be what she is ? She s 
 as clean as Venus before the sea waves were dried off. She s 
 like a creature made out of the earth and stuck together with 
 honey, and given fragrances for breath. See how she makes 
 an old jaded lingerer like me sit up and remember his poetry. 
 She s divine, Cat, because she s so human. She s all service 
 and love and darlingness. Don t you spoil her. 
 
 He had given rein to picturesque simile because he really 
 wanted very much to show her how desirable it would be to 
 recognize a jewel when they had it. 
 
 "You don t say Celia s divine," his wife reminded him. 
 
 A little red spot had come upon each cheek. Her eyes 
 had bright points in them, not of anger but of many passions 
 blended. Winterbourne thought he might be about to return 
 to his book, and laid a loving hand on it. 
 
 " Celia ! " he said. The tone sounded to her contemptuous, 
 so careless was it. " I don t know what Celia is. She does n t 
 herself, yet. You ve moulded her and pushed and pinched 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 209 
 
 and praised and reprimanded, until she s a kind of model 
 of what you want her to be. She s no more like what s in 
 side her than a corset s like a figure. The other girl s un 
 touched/ 
 
 " She pleases you," his wife continued, in her low rapid 
 voice, that seemed to hold unspoken accusation. " Every 
 thing she does is right. You love her." 
 
 It was not the word. That might reasonably have been 
 used to indicate a man s atmosphere toward even an adopted 
 daughter. The tone struck him in the face, and he could not 
 look at her for the shame of it. But he had to look, and see 
 ing the piteousness of her agitation, he quieted himself and 
 answered, 
 
 "That s a big word. I don t like such big words every 
 day." 
 
 Her face quivered into grief. 
 
 " I can t please you," she lamented, yet softly as if she were 
 afraid to err. "I thought I could if I came back. I never 
 can." 
 
 Winterbourne sat still, his strong hands tight on the chair- 
 arms, thinking. Suddenly he got up and brought a seat for 
 her. 
 
 " Sit down, Catherine," he said, out of his miserable kind 
 liness toward her. "We don t want to talk about these things. 
 We want to look at the fire in the winter when there is one. 
 We want to read our book in summer, or listen to the leaves 
 swishing. That s what belongs to our time of life." 
 
 But not to hers, he knew, and her soft rebellious face told 
 him. She had not had all her life as women count it, and the 
 broken ideal of it she was ever holding to her breast and 
 cherishing. He could have groaned over the pity of it, the 
 futility. 
 
 " You think everything she does is right," she insisted. 
 
210 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Well, everything she does is right, pretty nearly." Then 
 he thought she had not cared about the sliver in Dwight 
 Hunter s hand and chuckled a little to himself. 
 
 (C Celia is as perfect as she is." 
 
 "Celia s thinking about herself," said Winterbourne. 
 " Don t you see that s the beauty of Bess ? She never thinks 
 of herself for a minute. Her cheek s no softer than Celia s. 
 She may not be as pretty, but she s on the side of nature, 
 and at the same time everlasting righteousness." 
 
 Catherine sat silent for a moment. Then she opened her 
 mouth to the saying he had heard from her lips the day they 
 had their last talk before she went abroad, and he came down 
 here to his solitude ; it was incredible that she should ever 
 say that thing again. There had been no answer to it then, 
 and yet it had hurt them both so boundlessly that he could 
 not conceive of her even mustering courage to break that 
 ground a second time. 
 
 "You don t love me." 
 
 " Don t, dear," he said, and it was all he thought he could 
 say. 
 
 But the kind word liberated her tongue, and indeed now 
 she had passed into that other chamber of the house of life 
 where, in spite of temperance and reason, old wrongs lift up 
 their heads and claim to speak. 
 
 " Cat," said Winterbourne, " don t. Look here. It s non 
 sense for us to be fighting over two young baggages like 
 these of yours, as if it made any difference anyway what we 
 thought of em or what we did n t. They 11 marry, and this 
 place shall know them no more. I only tell you Bess never 
 thinks of herself and see where it s led us ! " 
 
 He was smiling at her whole-heartedly, every nerve in him 
 praying her not to suffer any more, and even for his poor 
 sake to go to bed and let him decline upon his book in 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 211 
 
 peace. But she was looking at him with a blurred, wistful 
 face. 
 
 " You mean," she mused, " it s what George Eliot tells 
 us. Bess has learned renunciation." 
 
 " My Lord, no ! I mean she s a part of the natural world. 
 She s got sympathy. She sees what you want and does it. 
 She knows I want my dinner in peace and a quiet hour with 
 my book. If she could do the pesky God-forsaken things 
 you want her to, stand up in a long-tailed gown and sing 
 to a horde of people that don t know bad air when they 
 breathe it, she d even do that; but the poor devil! she 
 doesn t know how. She s so natural that when you put her 
 into your kaleidoscope and shake it up round her, she gets 
 bemused." 
 
 " Yes," said Catherine to herself really now, " you love 
 her." 
 
 Winterbourne felt his face grow hot, and he put a hand 
 impatiently to his eyes, as if in an instant he expected sting 
 ing tears. His brain, the brain that gave him delight, also 
 some other part of him within that always told him it was the 
 real being subservient to no sense, no organ, and these were 
 all his servants, his brain that ran about over the natural 
 world and brought him back colors and scents to delight in, 
 asked him at this point if he could answer her when she 
 forced upon him the old issue love. After all, what did he 
 think of it ? It was easy to abjure emotion, but when it came 
 back in its chariot, overriding caution and the old fear of it, 
 what was it anyway but a savage king never to be defeated, 
 only to be deflected perhaps and leave the territory unrav- 
 aged, and grass to lift its head? Winterbourne had thought 
 he was going to be actually happy in his middle life, even in 
 old age, and now that Catherine had come sweeping back 
 upon him, he wished she, too, might be happy. He laid his 
 
212 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY; 
 
 hand for an instant on hers where it gripped the chair-arm 
 in a nervous tension. 
 
 " Cat," he said, " there are a lot of things I d like to tell 
 you. I believe I Ve learned em before you. Maybe you 
 never 11 learn em at all. But I d like to tell you." 
 
 So intimate a suggestion drew her mind nearer him. She 
 quieted her wish to whimper childishly, and listened. But 
 Winterbourne could not at once speak. His mind went back 
 over all he had read, all he had lived, and his approach to a 
 solving of this terrible discontent the human creature has for 
 another creature who, it assumes, might make it at home in 
 these fastnesses of an alien world. Catherine was implying 
 that because she had once loved him she could love him 
 still ; that because the index of spring had pointed to him as 
 arbiter of the sunniest of hours, he had to be that now when 
 the dial had changed. Vain hope! He was another man, she 
 was another woman, not the younglings of that earlier time, 
 and they had not lived together through those common tasks 
 that bind human souls each to each. But all he was feeling 
 he could only put into the inapposite statement, 
 
 " Catherine, we re awfully fragmentary." 
 
 " I don t understand you," she said, listening hope 
 fully, as if perhaps he meant to say some illuminating 
 thing. 
 
 Winterbourne thought of the old simpler peoples. It 
 seemed to him reasonable that a Greek might have had the 
 vision of Diana in the thicket and been faithful unto the death 
 that meant Olympus and the sight of the goddess face to face. 
 But here in this modern day the face of things was broken 
 up into little facets, and sometimes they reflect one light, 
 sometimes another, until we tire of them and long for the 
 russet peace of autumn days. But out of this bog he had to 
 flounder if he was to get anywhere at all. 
 
JOHN .WINTERBOURNE S^ FAMILY 213 
 
 " Don t tell me I love folks," he said whimsically. " I just 
 feel kindly toward em. That s all that s left in us when 
 we re tending toward fifty." 
 
 " It ought not to be all that s left," she cried, with her old 
 wildness of rebuttal. " Things ought to go on to be more 
 and more." 
 
 " But they don t, child, they don t. You might as well say 
 my eyes ought to be sharper and sharper but they re not. 
 I use glasses, and when I lose em I swear damnably because 
 I can t see a page." 
 
 Catherine remembered a solemn word used a great deal in 
 the lectures and reading she loved. 
 
 " You talk," she said, " as if the soul did n t exist." 
 
 " No, I don t. Be whipped if I do," said Winterbourne. 
 He ran his eloquent fingers through his brush of curling hair. 
 He was now defending what he believed in and what he did 
 love. cc But the soul looks through a great many windows 
 here. It sees a good many colors. It s haunted by strange 
 odors the ships that come from far, Cat the souls that 
 sail in from other planets. They bring these things. The 
 soul, she sits there and looks out; but what she sees she 
 does n t want to possess, not if she s been looking out a good 
 long time. Catherine, I am forty-six years old. I m as gnarled 
 as an apple tree. Don t you act as if I were a lilac in bloom. 
 
 I A- " 
 
 m not. 
 
 Most of this was misty enough to her, but she returned 
 to the question in hand. 
 
 " I can t help it," she said. "You look at Bess as if she 
 were another lilac-bush in bloom. You love to have her in 
 the room with you. You turn to her for every single thing 
 you want." 
 
 " Why, God bless me, of course I do ! " said Winterbourne, 
 in an extreme of irritation. " It s like having a bunch of roses 
 
2i 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 in the room. Besides, she understands me. I understand her, 
 The girl s as immediate to me as my own hand." 
 
 Then he saw what he had done. Catherine got up, and 
 stood a moment, her white face toward him. The eyes did 
 not seem to reproach him, or to bid him mark their dis 
 tended misery. 
 
 " Good-night," she said. 
 
 * She seemed to melt away. Winterbourne sat there looking 
 into the grate where the fire might have been. He was dis 
 gusted, all through, with his rash habit of speech, with a life 
 that so classified as to leave the unclassified no chance to 
 exist in decency. 
 
 " There s something," he said, " to spoil every damned 
 thing." 
 
 He did not think he had sat there a long time, though he 
 was not reading, when there was a little stir beside him. He 
 looked up. Bess was there. When she got to her own room 
 she had sat down by the window to coax back her peace of mind, 
 because there was no great pleasure in praying when you had 
 probably committed sin. And now here she was at his side, 
 looking at him with kind eyes that always had a petition in 
 them, the prayer that they might do something for him. 
 
 " I wanted to ask you, sir," she said, " if you think I Ve 
 done wrong. I want to be " she hesitated over the word, 
 it meant so many strictures and hatefulnesses, and then 
 brought it out with a gulp u a lady." 
 
 There she stood, still holding him with those beseeching 
 eyes. Winterbourne looked into them for a long moment. 
 They seemed to him like wells of comfort where a man might 
 wash himself of offence, if he were conscious of it. But there 
 was no need of his bathing there, to come out clean. She 
 was, as he had said in that hurried moment, as immediate to 
 him as his own hand, but how sweeter than all the roses of 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 215 
 
 all the Junes, a rose of heaven for him. He wanted to say 
 a great many things to her, now that she had been thrown 
 by his forced declaration into such communion with him. 
 He wanted to ask her whether she, too, did not wish they 
 were innocent, free creatures by some inland sea, uninhabited 
 by these phantasms of an artificial world. But waking, he 
 said to her gravely, 
 
 "You are a lady, Bess." 
 
 Her eyes interrogated him. She also had evidently a little 
 explanation to make. 
 
 "I wish I could be what she wants me to." 
 
 This was either tribute to Catherine s ideals or an avowal 
 of affection for her. Winterbourne was pretty sure it was not 
 the last. 
 
 "Bess," said he, "want to have a secret with me? " 
 
 Her face went all over a sweet bloom. She answered ra 
 diantly, 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 ! "I ll tell you. When you do anything I don t think 
 they 11 like, I 11 give you a hint of it." 
 
 " Thank you, sir," she answered fervently. 
 
 It seemed to Winterbourne that turn about would sweeten 
 discipline. 
 
 "And when I m cantankerous, you tell me." 
 
 " You never are," she assured him, in a voice the sweet 
 flattery of which was its honesty. " You re just right." 
 
 Winterbourne shook his head at her. That issue he could 
 not stay to combat. 
 
 " And when I tell you or you tell me," he continued, his 
 smiling eyes full upon her, "you 11 say it s because we ve 
 got a secret. Know what the secret s going to be, Bess ?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 She longed to know. Her glowing look told him. 
 
2i6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " The secret is," he spoke with an impressiveness kept 
 ordinarily for Tonty, " the secret is that I m going to take 
 you for my daughter, and you re going to take me for your 
 venerable daddy." 
 
 He was amazed at the effect on her. She seemed to be on 
 tiptoe with delight. 
 
 " Shall I call you anything/ she breathed, "anything 
 different ? " 
 
 "No, simpleton, of course not. Don t I tell you it s a 
 secret? Wouldn t that give it away ? No though some 
 times if we were in a great prairie or a desert Know where 
 Sahara is, Bess ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," she answered dutifully. " It s in Africa." 
 
 "Well, if we were there, and there wasn t the leastest 
 chance of anybody s hearing us, except it was an ostrich 
 maybe, you could just whisper, c Daddy, and I d whisper, 
 What is it, kiddie? " 
 
 Anything like the warm delight of her face he had not seen. 
 It came upon him that two most blessed things had happened : 
 Bess adored him " beyond beyond," and the little game had 
 snatched her at one leap out of her lonesomeness. 
 
 "Is Celia " she began. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " No. I ve got just one only kid. Celia must n t even 
 know it. Good-night, kiddie." 
 
 He spoke the word in the merest whisper, a moving of the 
 lips. 
 
 " Good-night," she said. 
 
 When she was at the door he waved a hand to her. His 
 eyes felt hot. So slight a thing had changed her into the gay 
 and glowing creature youth should be. Then he sat there a 
 long time, not with his book but his inmost self. He had be 
 gun to wonder whether it had all got to begin again, the thing 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 217 
 
 he hated so he thought he had got rid of it what he called 
 responsibility. For he had known in his soul for a long time 
 that when he said he was leaving the world that he might 
 translate Theocritus, he had been leaving it because he 
 thought the world and he might very well do without each 
 other. But now the burdens none of them tragic, but little 
 parcels you might bring home from market were piling on 
 his back. There was no peace save in the upper sky, and 
 there you could n t breathe. 
 
XVII 
 
 BEFORE dawn Bess heard a tapping at her door. She 
 thought she was in the tavern, called, while the kind 
 liness of sleep engulfed her, to speed some drummer 
 on his way. 
 
 " In a minute," said she, while she set her feet, tranced like 
 the rest of her, on the floor and put her hands to her shut 
 eyes. But the knockings continued, at little nervous intervals ; 
 and they, the character of them and the look of her room, 
 told her she was in this new phase of life where heaven alone 
 knew what eccentric needs would summon her. 
 
 She went to the door, and there Catherine in her night 
 gown stood shuddering with recurrent spasms. Her face had 
 a blank, draggled pallor as if she had scarcely slept, and her 
 eyes were staring. The years, almost effaced by day when 
 she called upon the framing of pretty gowns and exquisite 
 toilet arts to help her, were here, straggling their marks all 
 over her face, the pathetic map of life. 
 
 " I m afraid," she said. 
 
 Bess for an instant stood looking at her, wondering whether 
 to snatch her into her own warm bed ; but that seemed a 
 liberty toward a lady who was, to her humility, unap 
 proachable. So she put an arm about her softly, yet with 
 determination, and turned with her toward Catherine s 
 chamber. 
 
 " It s early," she said. " You come back to bed." 
 
 " Don t wake Celia," Catherine whispered as they passed 
 Celia s door. "Don t wake him." 
 
 When she was in her bed, and Bess had drawn up a 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 219 
 
 blanket to shield her from the cold of dawn, she lay with 
 her eyes fixed solemnly on the girl and said again, 
 
 " I m afraid." 
 
 " You lie still," said Bess. " I m going to get you some 
 thing." 
 
 Catherine s eyes seemed to beseech her not to go, but Bess, 
 with her air of knowing what errands she had to do, had 
 walked out of the room. Catherine heard her hastening down 
 the stairs. In ten minutes, perhaps, she was back with a cup 
 of hot milk, and Catherine shook her head on the pillow. 
 
 "I don t want that," she said. 
 
 Bess only slipped an arm under her. 
 
 " You need something inside you," she stated, and put the 
 cup to her lips. 
 
 So Catherine drank, but as she lay back, she said again, 
 as if unmoved in a conviction, 
 
 " I m afraid." 
 
 Bess had run her arms into a wrapper, and now she sat 
 down, the yellow folds of it falling beautifully about her. 
 
 "Aren t you surprised?" Catherine interrogated her. 
 " Did you ever see a grown-up woman afraid ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Bess, beginning to plait the curling ends of 
 her brown braid. " You go to sleep now, and I 11 sit here. 
 When you wake up, you won t be afraid." 
 
 "Yes, I shall," said Catherine. " I haven t slept all night. 
 Why should you think I can sleep now? " 
 
 " Did you say your prayers ? " asked Bess, with simplicity. 
 
 The unheard-of challenge startled Catherine out of her 
 panic, to pure wonder. 
 
 " What makes you ask that? " she queried. 
 
 " I thought maybe you d better say em now," said Bess 
 with the same air of referring the matter to an ordinary 
 remedy. " That s all." 
 
220 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Do you say your prayers?" Catherine countered. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I did n t know you were a churchwoman." Human curi 
 osity and hot milk were working a momentary wholesome 
 change in her. 
 
 " I don t go to meeting very often/ said Bess. " I don t 
 care much about it." 
 
 " Then what prayers do you say ? " 
 
 " I say < Now I lay me. That s all I know." 
 
 Catherine simply stared at her. But Bess had put her head 
 back against the grandfather chair and closed her eyes. The 
 lashes were very thick and long. Perhaps her broken lethargy 
 was returning upon her; it might be she was willing to lull 
 Catherine by a good example. Catherine watched her for a 
 while in a jealous questioning. She could not help wonder 
 ing how it would seem to have such a velvet surface and such 
 curves of the upper lip. How would it feel to be so singularly 
 endowed that John Winterbourne could say, "She is as im 
 mediate to me as my own hand " ? Yet it had to be accepted 
 that Bess was, in the nature of her, essential to her also, in 
 her need. She had a pained sense of the girl s triumphing 
 youth and some peculiar quality that made her at one with life. 
 It hurt her inconceivably to see her husband turning, though 
 so unconsciously and with such honest clarity, to that whole 
 some serviceableness ; yet it had bred in her no rancor against 
 Bess. And here, in her own extremity, she also was seeking 
 her, because Bess mysteriously had help and would give it. 
 
 With the light and perhaps the consciousness of scrutiny, 
 Bess awoke and seemed to gather in the situation anew. 
 Then she smiled down at Catherine slightly but -most natu 
 rally, as if difficulties gave her an especial pleasure. 
 
 "You lie still," she said. " I m going to dress me, and then 
 I 11 bring your breakfast." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 221 
 
 " No," said Catherine perversely, the idea of requiring ex 
 traordinary service suddenly, now it was stated, repugnant to 
 her. " Send Lyddy." But this was knowing Lyddy would 
 not come. 
 
 " You lie still," said Bess again. " I m going to dress 
 
 me." 
 
 A little later, for she was always to the fore with break 
 fast, lest Lyddy had foundered by the way, and this morn 
 ing there was no time for dallying and choosing among crisp 
 prettinesses, she was in the kitchen, and Lyddy, loosely drift 
 ing back and forth on her efficient errands between table and 
 stove, turned to look with sardonic disapproval at the little 
 tray she was making comely. 
 
 "Cat s foot!" said Lyddy. "Who s got the pip? You 
 better by half set down here an eat your own breakfast. 
 Fever de lurks, that s what s up chamber two stomachs 
 to eat an nary one to work." 
 
 But Bess was absorbed. She need n t answer, because 
 Lyddy was now hers without conciliation. She carried up the 
 tray and packed Catherine about with pillows, so engrossed 
 in swift efficiency that there was no use in checking her. She 
 caused the breakfast to be eaten, and then put the patient 
 back again into her nest and adjured her with authority to 
 stay there until she should come again. Then, having car 
 ried down the tray and eaten her own breakfast, she looked 
 about for Winterbourne and spied him in the back garden, 
 where he was surveying the world with the air of one who 
 meant presently to do something in it. 
 
 Winterbourne had had his morning smoke, which was not 
 actually the same as his after-breakfast one ; and because the 
 earth looked kindly to him, he was about to take out his pipe 
 to add one zest more. To him appeared Bess, bareheaded, 
 and comely as the morning. She seemed to furnish another 
 
222 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 reason. But her first address stopped his hand midway in the 
 quest for his tobacco-pouch. 
 
 " Your wife s broken down," said she briefly. 
 
 He stared at her, and she repeated it. 
 
 " Broken down ? " Winterbourne questioned. " Don t talk 
 as if she was a shay." 
 
 That was Greek to her, and again she made her statement, 
 unaltered. 
 
 " How do you know ? " Winterbourne inquired. " Did she 
 tell you?" 
 
 " No, sir, but I ve seen her and she says she s afraid." 
 
 " Afraid of what ? " 
 
 " I don t know, sir. But she is, and that s the way they 
 are sometimes." 
 
 " Why, you preternaturally wise young simpleton, you 
 babe and suckling," he interrogated her, yet struck so palpably 
 by her solemn assertiveness that he tucked the pouch back 
 into his pocket and kept only the pipe for company, " where 
 did you learn to be a medical man? Was Hippocrates your 
 uncle? How s old Galen?" 
 
 " I don t know them, sir," said Bess, more rapidly and still 
 cogently because she thought Catherine might be wanting 
 her. " But I Ve seen a good many ladies just like this. They 
 break down, ladies do." 
 
 "Where did you see em, Hop-o -my-Thumb ? " 
 
 " One season I worked in the sanatorium, the year there 
 was the fire in the tavern and we had to shut down. They 
 came to get ozone." She spoke as if it might be something 
 from the bargain-counter. 
 
 "What s ozone?" Winterbourne asked, his eyes all 
 points of fun and the crinkles about them interlacing. 
 
 " I don t know, sir, but they said it was there and the ladies 
 came to get it." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 223 
 
 " Did you like being there, you trumpery barmaid, mix 
 ing your ozone and serving it out by the glass ? " 
 
 4C Not very well. But what I was going to say " 
 
 " Why did n t you like it? " 
 
 She answered now to the point, seeing there was no switch 
 ing him off until that issue was put by. 
 
 " There was a good deal of complaint. They were pretty 
 nervous. And they wanted to give you fees/ 
 
 " Wanted to give me fees ? " 
 
 "Me, sir. When I did things for em." 
 
 " Did you like that, Bess? " 
 
 The brown eyes opened on him in a mild surprise. 
 
 "Why, I didn t take em, sir. I had my regular wages." 
 
 Winterbourne slapped his leg and crowed. 
 
 " Athena, listen to her ! " he adjured the upper air. " She s 
 your own girl. Why did n t you take em ?" 
 
 She was getting impatient now, her errand all undone. 
 
 " Why, sir, I told you. I had my regular wages. But what 
 I was going to say, if you send for the doctor, he 11 tell her 
 she s got to lie still maybe for a year." 
 
 So vividly was last night present to Winterbourne s con 
 sciousness that he might have been forgiven if his mind, that 
 errant servitor, suggested, in a burst of reckless comment, 
 that it did not in the least shrink from such a prospect. But 
 what he said was, 
 
 "Good God!" 
 
 " So I thought if maybe you d just encourage her to lie 
 abed mornings and then get up and kind of take her mind 
 off herself why, that would be the best. There s no need 
 of their lying abed a year, sir. It does em harm in the end." 
 
 She looked so earnest with her calm eyes fixed upon him 
 in the convincingness of her part, so sweet all through with 
 her hair blowing about her pretty face, that, in spite of the 
 
224 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 mysterious ill-fortune that had befallen his wife, Winter- 
 bourne could have burst out into great laughter. Bess always 
 affected him so, in a differing ratio. Sometimes he wanted to 
 laugh at her, she was so queer, sometimes tenderly, she was 
 such a little fool. But she always challenged mirth. 
 
 " I m going in now/ she said. " You encourage her." 
 
 " Where s Celia ? Has she got cracked or frayed or broken 
 since I saw her yesterday?" 
 
 "She s sleeping late. There s Tonty, Mr. Winterbourne. 
 I guess she s looking for you." 
 
 Tonty was coming wandering out at the back door by 
 which Lyddy had sent her to find Jackie. She looked like 
 a little girl out of a good book, with the long hair she had 
 painstakingly curled in the habit of an older time, because 
 mother s hair in the picture was curled just so, and a large 
 hat in her hand. Her dear little face, with its pointed chin, 
 had its usual gravity, and it was apparent she had come to 
 deliver a message. 
 
 " Jackie," she said. 
 
 "What say. Dame Partlet?" Winterbourne responded, 
 making her a bow. That she liked. He did it so gravely there 
 was no derision in it. 
 
 " Mother said I was to tell you she had broken down." 
 
 Winterbourne looked at Bess. There was terror in his 
 glance. 
 
 "Is this a world-wide calamity?" he inquired of her. 
 " Are ladies falling in fragments about us ? " 
 
 Bess was paying no attention to him. This was her pro 
 vince. He was the helpless male. 
 
 "Where is mother?" she asked Tonty confidentially. 
 
 " In bed with a lot of papers. She s broken down." 
 
 "It s no use, Bess," said Winterbourne. "It s no man 
 ner of use. I shall be daffy if I hear any more of these things. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 225 
 
 You take Tonty in and give her some lemon-pie or some 
 thing, and I ll go clamming." 
 
 Tonty brightened at the reference to lemon-pie, but Bess 
 had taken her hand. 
 
 "I ll go back with her," she said. "Come, Tonty. I m 
 going to see mother." 
 
 That struck Tonty as being unnecessary, apparently, until 
 she had the lemon-pie, and she looked back, wistful and re- 
 mindingly at Jackie who had prescribed it. He watched them 
 away, but when they were outside the gate he followed with 
 a couple of strides. 
 
 " Did n t mother say anything more, Tonty ? " he be 
 sought. 
 
 " No. She said I was to tell you she d broken down." 
 
 Winterbourne stood there in the road and watched them 
 away. He knew he ought to go in and see Catherine, 
 the shards of her, at least, but he was afraid to. And why 
 why his dazed intelligence asked him, if Anna Clayton 
 Ramsay had flown into a million pieces did she send the 
 news of it to him like the message of ill to Cleopatra ? 
 
 " It s my damned good-nature," he grumbled. 
 
 Then he thought for a moment of the duties of life and 
 how, wearisome as they were, he meant to tackle them, and 
 at the same minute saw Dwight Hunter in his ample cart 
 driving off for sea-weed. 
 
 " Hi ! " said Winterbourne. 
 
 Hunter stopped, and Winterbourne mounted beside him 
 and drove off into the shining day, as care-free as a boy 
 going swimming against orders. But he did not drive so 
 irretrievably far that conscience was drugged indeed. In the 
 midst of a paean from Dwight about the old furniture that 
 went for a song down the valley yesterday, he heaved a sigh. 
 
 " Draw up, Dwight," he bade him. " I Ve got to get out." 
 
226 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Forgot something ? " asked Hunter, doing it. 
 
 C Yes. Forgot my manners, forgot my decency. Good- 
 by, old man." 
 
 Then Dwight drove on, and Winterbourne betook him 
 self, muttering, along the road to Mrs. Ramsay s. 
 
 Tonty could not be persuaded to talk when she and Bess 
 set forth, and so Bess gave up the task of setting her at ease, 
 and they went on together in the silence that is sometimes 
 ease itself. Tonty s Tittle heart instantly felt lighter. She 
 found it quite difficult to converse except with Jackie, and 
 it seemed to her a beautiful lady who went along humming 
 and showed no interest in her going to school or her taste in 
 kittens. At the front door three other little figures were in 
 line to meet them, - - Tony with a tier buttoned, in defiance 
 of its nature, in front, this because, in the family troubles 
 of the morning, he had manfully dressed himself. Tonty 
 noted that badge of haste and waved a hand to him, a signal 
 to hide himself behind the more properly apparelled ; but 
 Tony stood still with his hand on the hoe-handle which was 
 this morning his comforter, and Bess with her little guide 
 passed them and went on to Mrs. Ramsay s room. 
 
 It was a big room in the front of the house, with dark fur 
 niture of the wrong period, of a large uncouthness and much 
 be-knobbed. The great bed had been slept in, and the circu 
 lar untidy nest of its occupant showed that she had not gone 
 through the rite of opening it to the air. Bess, seeing this 
 lair of the escaped lady, was about to ask Tonty where they 
 should look for her next, when there on a sofa, the floor 
 under it stuffed with papers, her bonnet on and unhappily 
 askew, they saw her. One glove even was on. Her bag, dis 
 gorging papers, was at her side slumped under one arm. 
 
 Bess on the way to her had time to feel that the room 
 was a chaos of papers and that it ought to be cleared out. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 227 
 
 There were papers on the table, a package on the wash- 
 stand even between bowl and pitcher, and a ragged-edged 
 pile of them along one wall, these yellowed from long life, 
 the folds brown with dust. Bess, who had done a great deal 
 of cleaning in her short day, could have told you what a 
 sneezy job it would have been to reorganize that treasured 
 litter. It was almost possible to wonder how one could have 
 slept in the room on a breezy night with the window open, 
 for the rustling of so much disengaged matter of leaves. 
 When Bess stood at her side, Mrs. Ramsay opened her eyes. 
 
 " Go away, Tonty," she said distinctly, and Tonty, with 
 a fear upon her, went. " There s no reason why the child 
 should be frightened," Mrs. Ramsay continued, shutting her 
 eyes again after a recognizing look at Bess. " Fear is the one 
 tyrant." 
 
 Bess, with an instinct that she must look too tall for 
 kindness to the prostrate figure on the sofa, drew up a chair, 
 itself the repository of papers, and placed herself on the edge 
 of it, not invading their sovereignty. 
 
 "I sent for Mr. Winterbourne," said Mrs. Ramsay. She 
 spoke with a deliberate care that evidently cost her a good 
 deal. " I wanted to tell him my son I can t remember his 
 name " 
 
 "Tim?" 
 
 " I think so. My son has gone to the city this morning 
 with I can t remember the name." 
 
 " With his father ? " 
 
 " With something that belongs to Mr. Winterbourne. I 
 can remember Mr. Winterbourne s name. Why can t I re 
 member the names I can t remember ? " 
 
 " You d better stop trying. You d better go to sleep," 
 said Bess, snatching for a comparison, out of her serviceable 
 memory of the lady at the sanatorium who could n t find the 
 
228 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 names of things she wanted, and was forced to decline upon 
 makeshifts until she had become sufficiently heartened on 
 ozone to begin words over again. 
 
 But Mrs. Ramsay was paying no attention to hygienic 
 promptings. 
 
 " The thing my son has carried is very important to Mr. 
 Winterbourne " she asserted. " What do you think it 
 could be?" 
 
 " If it s anything he s borrowed/ Bess ventured at ran 
 dom, " he 11 return it all right." 
 
 " No, it s not that. He has n t borrowed it. He has " 
 Her brows contracted over the memory of some past shock 
 or trouble. " What do you think it could be ? A nutmeg- 
 grater? Is that it? Is it black-silk mitts ? Does that sound 
 right to you ? " 
 
 Bess, in time of sick minds, could invent gloriously and 
 swear to the invention of anybody else. 
 
 " Either of em would do," she assured Mrs. Ramsay. 
 " You shut your eyes now. I 11 tell him." 
 
 " Tell him something must be done," Mrs. Ramsay ad 
 jured her. " If he does n t look out, the circingle will be 
 sold." And then she did shut her eyes, and Bess might 
 have thought she was resting except for her knitted brows 
 and the moving of her mouth. 
 
 Bess got softly out of her chair, and Mrs. Ramsay opened 
 her eyes at the rustle, and said clearly, 
 
 cc There s one thing more. I want to tell you why I am 
 sure I ve broken down. You don t notice it, of course, 
 but I can t remember. When I try to remember a word, it 
 looks like an ink-eraser the kind with the band round the 
 middle." 
 
 " I 11 get you a glass of water," said Bess. 
 
 She went downstairs to the kitchen, where the little maid, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 229 
 
 like one impelled upon a mission imperfectly understood 
 but acquiesced in, was washing dishes with the air of having 
 done it ever since Bess had seen her last. No, she did n t 
 know anything about Mrs. Ramsay s not feeling well. Mrs. 
 Ramsay d had her breakfast with her bonnet on, same as 
 she always did, to take the eight-thirteen. She did n t see 
 her go out, but then she was busy washing the dishes. No, 
 she guessed Mary was n t coming back to cook. Mary d had 
 a dreadful time with her liver and her tubes going on a year 
 now. She said she d have left long ago if it had n t been for 
 the children. So Bess went back home with her budget of 
 news, and met Winterbourne by the way. 
 
 " Well ? " said he, standing still under the big ash tree 
 while she also paused. " Well, Atlas, what do you make 
 of it?" 
 
 The name puzzled her, why should she be called a 
 school book ? but she could n t stop for that. 
 
 " It s true what Tonty said," she told him, with unmoved 
 directness. "Her mother s broken down." 
 
 Winterbourne stood looking at her for a full minute 
 while she met his gaze as squarely, her own only seeming to 
 ask him if he wanted to know anything more. 
 
 " Bess," said he, " have you by accident a sense of humor 
 about you ? " 
 
 "What, sir?" 
 
 " Could you roll on the ground and scream, if you weren t 
 afraid of mussing your frock, because this old world s so 
 funny ? Or does it seem to you a perfectly natural and simple 
 thing for two ladies in one morning to announce that they Ve 
 broken down? Speak up, Oracle. I Ve got to know." 
 
 " I suppose they might as well break down the same 
 morning as different mornings," said Bess practically. " It s 
 just something that happens to you, same as a cold would 
 
2 3 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 be. Lots of folks have colds the same day. Mr. Winter- 
 bourne, do you think the Ramsays have any money ? " 
 
 " I think they re poor as barley soup. I think Ramsay 11 
 blow the top of his head off some day, if he ever sits down 
 to consider how he s going to provide for his children and 
 his wife and his old waterlogged craft." 
 
 " Then, Mr. Winterbourne," said Bess, with a resolution 
 she had evidently no least thought of his gainsaying, " we ve 
 got to take Mrs. Ramsay over to your house for a month or 
 so, till we see how it s going to turn." 
 
 "Take Anna Clayton Ramsay into my house?" he pelted 
 at her. "You young basilisk, do you know what you re 
 saying?" 
 
 "It s all the way I see," she remarked, also, it was evi 
 dent, sending her mind skirmishing about to guess whether 
 there might not indeed prove to be expedients that pleased 
 him better. " Then that little Harriet could take some care 
 of the children, and I could take care of Mrs. Ramsay and 
 your wife, same time." 
 
 " My father Jupiter! " Winterbourne broke out. He took 
 off his hat and looked up into the clear sky. "Artemis, do 
 you hear? Cytherea, here is a maiden that ought to belong 
 to you alone do you hear, you trumpery old second-hand 
 lot of Olympians? What you going to do about it?" 
 
 Bess was looking at him in concern. His suffused fore 
 head, the veins starting out on it in picturesque meandering, 
 the light in his bright eyes these seemed to her like a dis 
 proportionate madness. 
 
 "Don t you feel well, sir?" she inquired. "Why don t 
 you put your hat on ? It s a warm day." 
 
 Winterbourne stared at her for an instant of entire joy in 
 one so impervious to Fortune s ironies. He broke into a 
 great laugh and did replace his hat. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY t 231 
 
 "Bess," said he, "I would rather couch with the Ne- 
 mean lion, I would crawl into the mouth of the horny croc 
 odile and read my Homer there, rather than admit Anna 
 Clayton Ramsay to my hearthstone. Nay, girl ! but stay. 
 You said she had lost her memory of words." 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Winterbourne. Come, let s be moving on 
 home." 
 
 "Then do as you like, you wilful jade. If she s dumb, 
 that s all I ask of her. You shall have her to wait upon and 
 use up your own youth on. Have your way, Mad Hatter. 
 Have your way." 
 
 But Bess, walking faster and faster toward home, did give 
 a thought in the pauses of planning how Mrs. Ramsay could 
 have the chintz chamber, to Winterbourne s own surprise 
 when he found out, in the course of days, that ladies breaking- 
 down was not so ironic an affair as might be supposed. But 
 she was too busy a young woman to worry about contingen 
 cies before they came. The corner of her mouth, the one 
 Winterbourne could see, was smiling delightfully. She had 
 seen Celia waiting for them by the gate, Celia in a blue 
 gown, looking like the morn itself. Bess called to her, her 
 name with a boyish "Hullo!" and Winterbourne, hearing 
 the tone that at once enriched her voice, wondered how she 
 could be so animated over a tended piece of garden pretti- 
 ness. His own tastes ran all to wildings, that, having to 
 court no favor of wind and sun, are the more robust. 
 
 " Where Ve you been, you two?" Celia asked. 
 
 She came in between them and tucked an arm in theirs. 
 " I overslept. Mother did, too. Lyddy said them that 
 wanted coffee could make it." She laughed at that, as if her 
 young vitality needed no support from coffee or anything 
 else. 
 
 " Have you had it? " Bess asked her, ready, Winterbourne 
 
232 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 knew, to brew it instantly or boil her a roc s egg if an atom 
 of it might please her appetite. 
 
 "No, I don t want it. I ve had some bread and milk. 
 But where ve you been, you two?" 
 
 Here Winterbourne broke away from the affectionate 
 clasp, and with the certainty very strong within him that he 
 could n t bear the recital of any more of woman s woes, went 
 round to the side door whence he could escape to the arbor 
 and his smoke. 
 
 " Sit down here a minute," said Bess. " I want to tell you 
 about it." 
 
 They sat down together on the stone step, both radiant 
 in the beauty of youth, but one with the air of the creature 
 born to luxury and the other all willing servitude. Even 
 their hands were different. Celia thought that as she took 
 up her sister s brown paw in her own fragile one; she 
 choked a little thinking what that meant, so many years lost 
 to song. And to what end? But wonder crowded out these 
 accustomed thoughts of hers, for Bess was telling in a few 
 terse sentences what had happened and what she meant to 
 do. Celia could not exclaim her amazement sufficiently. 
 
 "Take her here!" she kept repeating. "Take her here! 
 What can you do with her? " 
 
 "She s got to have quiet," said Bess. "She s got to be 
 fed, too. I don t believe she s had very much to eat, late 
 years. She s been too drove." 
 
 The word hit Celia in the centre of her fastidiousness, as 
 a phrase from Bess was likely to do now and then. Her 
 brows contracted. 
 
 "But you say she s ill, too?" she inquired, her mind at 
 liberty to jump back to Catherine. "Why don t we have 
 the doctor?" 
 
 Then Bess explained, as she had to Winterbourne, that 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 233 
 
 these things were simple as any other task of the day and 
 doctors only complicated them. They were so careful, they 
 made you think the matter was more serious than it was. 
 All the broken-down needed was food and courage, a plenty. 
 They got up from the step and, turning to go in together, 
 Celia still absently kept her sister s hand. 
 
 "Well, Bess/ she said. The tone was bitter and Bess 
 looked at her. "Well, Bess, it s all coming out of you." 
 
 The answer that it needn t all come out of her did not 
 present itself to Bess. She only said the thing that did come 
 to her and appeared to cover everything. 
 
 " I can do it as well as not. I don t mind such things." 
 
 Celia turned upon her in a loving rage. 
 
 "You don t seem to see what it means," she fumed, her 
 voice suppressed to the proximity of Catherine s window 
 overhead. "If you re doing all these things, you can t sing. 
 The days are going and you never will." 
 
 "Sing?" repeated Bess, dazed for an instant, and then 
 rising to the assault of the word that was always pelting her. 
 " Oh, I can sing fast enough. There s no trouble about that." 
 
 " I wish I had it," Celia raged. " I wish I had the voice. 
 You d see where I d be. You d see where I d put us both." 
 
 Bess was looking at her in a simple wonder. If Celia 
 needed things, she thought as she had before, why then she 
 must get them for her. She might even go through the 
 nightmare of standing up in heated rooms and singing for 
 that. 
 
 "What you want, dear?" she asked, like a mother. "What 
 is it you want?" 
 
 "I want money," Celia said, in a voice as hard as any 
 metal ever coined. "Then I d put us both where we ought 
 to be. Come, let s go up and see her." 
 
XVIII 
 
 MRS. RAMSAY, not having taken off her bonnet 
 or removed the glove from her mismated hand, 
 was put into a carriage, and Winterbourne, at the 
 top notch of amazement, watched her being borne into his 
 house and up his stairs. Then Bess shut the door upon her, 
 and the void received her. It was Winterbourne s pleasing 
 task, handed him by Bess in her way of seeing the immediate 
 issue and no reason why it should not be met, to find Ramsay 
 after he came home from the city that late evening, and tell 
 him his shattered wife had been spirited away from him to 
 hygienic influences. Winterbourne undertook the errand in 
 a mood of waxing indignation over making himself an agent 
 in such a coil. Where was Theocritus ? Where were the long 
 hours with Lovell in a kindred recognition that the world 
 could be made to stand still while one turned the printed 
 page ? Contesting that on the way home, after his mission had 
 been warily accomplished, he met Lovell himself, and men 
 tally collared him, in the sudden relief that here was some 
 body who would listen to language that need not be diluted. 
 
 " I Ve seen Ramsay," said Winterbourne, as if that cov 
 ered the enormous area of his wrongs. 
 
 Lovell had been pelting along in the summer night, after 
 an attempted call at Winterbourne s, where Celia, meeting 
 him at the door, had told him they had two invalids in the 
 house, and yet had given him a kind quarter erf* an hour in 
 the beguiling dusk, where, in her white gown, she looked to 
 him like the angels he had been forgetting of late years 
 personified virtues, embodied mysticisms and beauties. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 235 
 
 "I hear his wife s with you," he responded. "What s 
 Ramsay say?" 
 
 "Say? Jim, do you know how Ramsay looks?" 
 
 " Why, yes, of course I do. I ve seen Ramsay." 
 
 " He looks like pyjamas of a Monday hanging on the line. 
 He s a sketch of a man. He is n t even washed in. He s as 
 neutral as maccaroni." 
 
 "Well," said Lovell. He had turned to walk along with 
 Winterbourne, the clever suggestion of impulse being that, 
 if he got legitimately back to the Winterbourne gate, Celia 
 might be standing there yet. "What would you?" he con 
 tinued with a laugh. "Ramsay s not a Viking. Who wants 
 him to be?" 
 
 "I had a kind of a hope that Ramsay was a gay bucca 
 neer. They said he didn t even come home Sundays. I 
 thought he was whooping it up in town." 
 
 "Didn t you know why Ramsay doesn t come home 
 Sundays ? I could have told you that. He works like the 
 mischief all the week. He s crowded all the time by that firm 
 of his ; but he does n t dare to yip because he can t afford to 
 lose his job and there s nothing left in him now to get an 
 other. And Sundays he goes to a cheap hotel in town, and 
 sleeps till Monday." 
 
 "Can t he sleep at home?" 
 
 "No. There s the children. And his wife reading essays 
 to him." 
 
 "The children! They might play backgammon on my 
 shirt-front and I could sleep." 
 
 " Well, Ramsay can t. They re his children. If they were 
 yours, maybe you couldn t, either." 
 
 " My Father Jupiter," groaned Winterbourne, taking off 
 his hat and looking up incidentally at Orion. " Mother Sky 
 and Brother Trees, we re all mad together ! Well, I ve got 
 
23 6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Anna Clayton Ramsay at my house, and I m a broken 
 man." 
 
 "Say, Winter-bourne," Lovell rushed in with the haste of 
 one who has n t recognized rights to interfere, "what s going 
 to come of all this? Your wife is sick, and now you ve 
 adopted Anna Clayton Ramsay. Lyddy never 11 stir her 
 stumps in this philanthropy. Your girls are going to break 
 down themselves. It s all coming on them." 
 
 "On whom?" Winterbourne inquired, frowning at the 
 night. 
 
 "Oh, Celia and her sister." 
 
 " Don t you worry," said Winterbourne sardonically, 
 "nothing s coming on Celia." 
 
 "No," said Lovell, with innocence. "We must prevent 
 it if we can. I don t believe Bess would let it. She knows 
 how delicate Celia is." 
 
 Winterbourne burst into a laugh. 
 
 "There s one of those young women, my son," said he, 
 "that is worthy of a special and particular part a statue, 
 pure gold, of Artemis in a shrine of leaves. I d like to see 
 her there." 
 
 " Yes," said Lovell, his heart responding. 
 
 All the poetic desires of his youth came flooding back 
 upon him. It seemed to him that fancies were beating softly 
 about in the night-air, their wings too close. They kept him 
 from breathing almost, the soft warmth and fragrance of 
 them and the answering choke in his throat. And this, he 
 thought, was nothing in him. It was one girl, and because 
 she was what she was. 
 
 "Winterbourne," he said. 
 
 This was a voice Winterbourne had not heard from him. 
 Lovell always seemed to him as cool as a frosty morning. 
 
 "Winterbourne, she s the only one for me." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 237 
 
 The tone told it all, so eloquently that Winterbourne felt 
 it like a blow. It brought an assault upon his own breath, 
 and for an instant he halted and lost a step. 
 
 "Jim," said he, " is Clyde a desert island ? Were n t there 
 any girls here before these two came?" 
 
 " Not like her." 
 
 " Well, it s all right if you can get her, but somehow I 
 never thought of her going the old way." 
 
 "What do you mean by the old way?" Lovell de 
 manded, in the fierce revulsion from his shyness. 
 
 " Oh, you know wedding rings, all the rest of it. I sort 
 of hoped she d be Diana in the brake. I knew the earth 
 would take care of her. The earth s her mother." 
 
 The poetic form of it fitted in with LovelFs mood. To 
 him, too, Celia was Diana, mysterious, untouched. He had 
 no hope, in the humility of this first vision, ever to find the 
 inner heart of her, but he had many knightly feelings about 
 being her servitor. 
 
 "I know it," he said soberly. "I did n t suppose you d 
 hit her off at once ; somehow I thought I was the only one 
 to know her." 
 
 Winterbourne put his hand up through his hair and 
 seemed to sweep away the gigantic dreams of night. 
 
 " It s easy to be a fool in the dark," he said. " All the 
 infernal old curiosities that come out with light are in abey 
 ance. Well, we think alike about her, if that s any comfort 
 to you. Look at the two girls. Look at the difference in 
 em. Should n t you say one grew up out of the earth in the 
 deep woods and the other was made in a candy-factory ? " 
 
 " No," said Lovell, with innocence. " Bess does n t sug 
 gest the candy-factory. But Celia is all that. She grew up 
 out of the earth and bloomed. She is a lily in a garden of 
 spice." 
 
23 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Again Winterbourne stopped, the surprise of it now the 
 assault upon his heart. 
 
 " Celia! " he muttered, himself in a supreme amaze. "In 
 the name of the prophet, Celia! " 
 
 " What is it?" Lovell asked briefly, coming out of his 
 own particular musing. 
 
 But Winterbourne laughed a big laugh with joy in it. 
 The thicket was unbroken. His maid hid there, unsus 
 pected even. But Lovell was too good a fellow^to start 
 unwarned on his pilgrimage toward Celia. 
 
 " Tell you what, Jim," said Winterbourne. 
 
 " Well." 
 
 Winterbourne stopped to laugh again. 
 
 " If you should marry Celia," he heard Lovell s quick 
 responsive breath, " take my advice. Early, very early, let 
 her see you re master. Dress her in hodden gray, whatever 
 that is, and set her to weeding the onions. Knock the non 
 sense out of her, if you have to jam her head against the 
 wall to do it. That s the last word of a doting father." 
 
 They were at the gate, and Winterbourne, chuckling, 
 thought the dark might well be illuminated by the probable 
 flash in Lovell s eyes. 
 
 " Night, Jim," said he. "Think it over." 
 
 " Winterbourne," Lovell s voice came crisply after him 
 up the path. " Winterbourne ! " 
 
 He stopped, returned a step, genial with the delight that 
 overtook him on finding humanity shocked into candor. 
 But Lovell had but one scornful word to say : 
 
 " Winterbourne, you re drunk." 
 
 " Ain t either," said Winterbourne. " I m never drunk 
 unless it s with hexameters. I took the privilege of a dot 
 ing father, and you don t like it. Night, Jim." 
 
 According to his custom then, when there were compli- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 239 
 
 cations to interfere with a quiet smoke, Winterbourne took 
 his way to the arbor ; but after his pipe was ready and the 
 lighted match lifted, he forbore. The smell would tell them 
 where he was. Celia would come down to pester him with 
 soft attentions, Anna Clayton Ramsay might even send for 
 him to hear the draft of a new speech for he had no 
 faith in such energy failing. A sun might as likely break 
 and bestrew the void before its course was finished. Anna 
 Clayton Ramsay was probably at that moment mounting a 
 table or a bureau for a rostrum and holding forth. So he 
 walked softly into the night and had his smoke, a part of it 
 under the old willow tree by Sutton River, where there was 
 a convenient log, and the stillness made it seem as if no hu 
 man thing had come there or would come. Once there was 
 a hurried step. He thought it was Dwight Hunter on the 
 road, and took his pipe out of his mouth to listen and per 
 haps to call. But the figure went by, and Winterbourne 
 said nothing, because solitude was blessed to him. When 
 he was alone on nights like these, he seemed able to put a 
 hand out and touch the great weft of things as a whole, and 
 find how unbroken it is in spite of the tangle of the threads 
 we weave by day. He had taken large and solemn joy of 
 these later years when he was outside the actual circle of 
 things, in musing over the indestructibility of the web and 
 the marvellous pattern of it. None of that happy contem 
 plative acquiescence had been possible to him while he was 
 in the grip of his emotions, bound upon the wheel of things, 
 but in fleeing bonds he thought he had escaped what had 
 brought him ill. At least they had sealed his eyes so that he 
 had not yet been able to take in this vision of the whole. 
 He had hoped, in an undefined fashion, that Lovell, too, 
 meant to escape the tyranny of things, to read his book and 
 fall into the calm ecstasy of watching the sunset come and 
 
2 4 o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 go. But Lovell was still young. He must break paths for 
 himself, even if they led to market. But Winterbourne, 
 though his house just now was a carnival of action, knew 
 that all his own paths would lead into the green wood of 
 tranquillity. In the green wood was Bess, also. He hoped 
 he could keep her there in a little leafy shrine. 
 
 When he went homeward, it was in great peace. The 
 hour was late, and he meant to slip with all possible soft 
 ness up to his own room. There was a light in the kitchen 
 and a figure moving there. But as he watched the strange 
 ness of it, a hand pulled down one curtain and then the 
 other. Winterbourne went up the path to the side door. 
 Some one was stirring in the kitchen. There was a soft 
 familiar sound, a broom on the floor, Bess, he sup 
 posed, sweeping away her prettiness. He swore at the 
 shame of it, opened the door and went in, a mandate on 
 his lips concerning bed. The figure turned to meet him. 
 It had a dust-pan in its hand, and shame was on its face. 
 It was Dwight Hunter. Winterbourne, in the surprise of 
 it, did not even refer it to Jupiter, as he was in the way 
 of doing. He dropped into Lyddy s own chair by the 
 window. 
 
 "Well, my son," said he, "what next?" 
 
 Hunter, having seen who it was, and that old Winter- 
 bourne wasn t to be eluded like the petticoats before whom 
 he had feared he might have to justify himself, took up the 
 dust very deftly and looked about him with an anxious eye, 
 to see what had escaped him. The kitchen was a marvel of 
 tidiness. Winterbourne, now his attention was called to it, 
 could see that. One point only seemed to afford Hunter a 
 perfect gratification, that because it mirrored an unusual 
 deed perfectly accomplished. 
 
 "Cast your eye over that stove," said he. "At first I 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 241 
 
 couldn t find the blacking. Look at it shine." Then he 
 grinned. 
 
 " Hunter," said Winterbourne judicially, "are you bring 
 ing the treasured lore of young manhood into my kitchen 
 as a trophy to lay at Celia s feet?" 
 
 "Celia be hanged," said Hunter, returning the broom to 
 its nail and looking about him with a concentrated energy. 
 
 " Her stock is very well up, I d have you know," Win 
 terbourne assured him. " I ve been getting quotations. Oh, 
 you d better not sniff at Celia." 
 
 Hunter was paying no attention at all. 
 
 " Lyddy s gone to bed," said he, " cantankerous as an old 
 witch. She says she s got sciatica, and there were folks 
 enough in the house before. The devil s in her, that s all. 
 You bear too much from that old cormorant." 
 
 "Are you laying the pride of your young manhood at 
 Lyddy s feet then?" Winterbourne inquired pleasantly, yet 
 resolved to push it. 
 
 "Oh, come, hush up!" Hunter flushed a little. "She 
 went upstairs and left the kitchen on its head. She won t 
 stir her old stumps to get breakfast. You see if she does. 
 And somebody else 11 have to do it, and it s a mighty dis 
 couraging thing to find the kitchen upside down." 
 
 He sounded quarrelsome. 
 
 " So it is, Hercules, so it is. Celia is going to find it right- 
 side up when she comes in to make the morning coffee." 
 
 "Celia be blowed, I tell you!" 
 
 "Young man, Celia is my daughter." 
 
 " No, she isn t either. You don t care a straw about her." 
 
 "Then it s evident you haven t done it to please me." 
 Winterbourne seemed to be musing. 
 
 " I m not pleasing you to any great extent nowadays," 
 said Hunter. He looked angry enough and willing to show 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 it. "I don t seem to care about the way things are going on 
 here. If you had the spirit of a rabbit, you d get a good girl 
 into this house " 
 
 "And have Lyddy hang herself to the bed-post by her 
 garters? " 
 
 "Lyddy! I m sick of Lyddy. What business have you 
 got anyway, taking a girl into your house and then working 
 her to death to make things go as that old beldame wants 
 em to ? You ve got to make a change and do it quick, or 
 something s going to happen." 
 
 Winterbourne liked him very much in his red-hot anger, 
 his brown hands gripping the chair-back he had been put 
 ting straight, and his jaw set firm. Hunter was "mad," as 
 school-boys had seen him years ago, and as he had n t found 
 occasion to be since, he had dominated the world so simply 
 and it had so obeyed him. But Winterbourne was n t going 
 to give in. After all, it was his kitchen and Bess was his 
 chosen kid. He got up from the chair, and yawned a little. 
 
 " All right, Hunter," he agreed. " I ve got to go to bed. 
 So Ve you. There s another day coming." 
 
 " I mean it," Dwight assured him. " A man s laziness can 
 go too far." 
 
 Winterbourne had opened the door and stood looking out. 
 But there was something in the air that made it likely he ex 
 pected Dwight to go, and the youth blunderingly did, feeling 
 righteous but somehow crude and foolish. Yet he was awake 
 to the injustice of it all. A man like Winterbourne, as clever 
 as he, he thought, could make you feel young byjust stand 
 ing by and laughing. But he had no business to. He d better 
 get a capable girl into the kitchen and stop talking about 
 Jupiter and Theocritus. Dwight had loved the talk about 
 Theocritus until it became apparent that Bess was being 
 lashed too hard. That sent Theocritus up in smoke. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 243 
 
 " Dwight," Winterbourne called him. 
 
 "Well," said Dwight, pausing in the path. 
 
 " You re certain you don t consider Celia a lily in a garden 
 of spice?" 
 
 To this Dwight had no answer. The quizzical twist in the 
 tone of it sent him swinging on his heel and down the path. 
 
 "Well," said Winterbourne to the stars, "it s evident 
 I ve got no friends." 
 
 He went to bed, laughing softly and not entirely with 
 mirth. But the next morning it was at last decreed that he 
 should see his wife. He went in on a lumbering tiptoe, trying 
 to get used to the queerness of it a woman in health over 
 night and then in a state of fragility where you mustn t ex 
 cite her, mustn t even gainsay her, as he understood. She 
 lay in her bed, very pretty and young, with the lines smoothed 
 out of her face, wistfully charming, but evidently entirely ac 
 quiescent in her task of not getting up. Winterbourne felt an 
 instant pity of her. It swallowed up the impish wonder he 
 had felt over the situation while it was imperfectly under 
 stood. 
 
 " Well, young lady," said he, standing by the bedside. 
 " Want me to read to you ? " 
 
 She made the slightest motion of her head on the pillow. 
 It was negation accomplished with the smallest amount of 
 energy. Immediately Winterbourne felt that, contrary to 
 her usual faithful habit, she did not wish him to stay. She 
 expected him to go. 
 
 "Bess wants me to say my prayers," she informed him, in 
 a tone of wonder. 
 
 " Well," said Winterbourne, covering the issue as well as 
 he could, in the dark as he was over the theological aspect 
 of it, "it wouldn t do most of us any harm." 
 
 " She says I must do it when I m afraid." 
 
244 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Oh, come, Cat, you re not afraid. You ve got that up 
 to scare the rest of us." 
 
 " I am," she insisted. " I feel afraid." 
 
 "Want me to go now? " he asked, answering something 
 in her eyes. 
 
 She nodded, and he went. On the stairs he met Bess in 
 afternoon trim, calm as a lake without a ripple. She seemed 
 to him the only relieving incident in a world of tedium and 
 madness. He stopped on the landing to let her pass. 
 
 " Bess," said he, in spite of himself offering her his per 
 sonal pocket of complaint, " the times are most infernally 
 out of joint." 
 
 " I m glad you did n t stay," said Bess, intent as ever 
 upon the direct issue. " I m going to tell her about Mrs. 
 Ramsay." 
 
 " Doesn t she know that woman s here ? " 
 
 " No. I guess I d better tell her. Mrs. Ramsay keeps 
 sending her messages, only she can t remember the word, 
 and I get all mixed up." 
 
 " Bess, does n t it seem to you as if this house was a par 
 ticular bedlam broke loose ? " 
 
 She was meeting his frowning gaze with her calm scrutiny. 
 
 "Why, no," she said, unmoved. " It seems to me about 
 as everything is all the time." 
 
 " Does there seem to you anything unusual in the fact that 
 you re working night and day to keep this old scow afloat ? " 
 
 " No," said Bess, apparently thinking it over as something 
 deserving consideration though it had not occurred to her 
 before. " Most everybody s got all they can do everywhere 
 all the time." 
 
 This seemed to cover the matter, but he had one word 
 more for her this left from the blows Hunter had dealt him. 
 That arrow had hit, and the place was stinging yet. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 245 
 
 "You re going to have a maid, Bess. You re not going 
 to be Cinderella any longer." 
 
 "A maid? What for?" 
 
 " To keep you from breaking your back over this infernal 
 house." 
 
 "Well, I guess I m not," said Bess with promptitude. 
 " Where d Lyddy be ? You can get all the girls you want 
 to, but they won t come into Lyddy s kitchen if I can help 
 it. There!" 
 
 It was the first sign of intemperate heat he had seen in 
 her. It quite touched her up to something imperfect and 
 human, and he liked it. She went on to her task, and he to 
 his pipe downstairs and his reflections on the changing 
 pageant of the world. 
 
XIX 
 
 CELIA wanted a garden of life, pretty posy-beds to 
 bloom and wave their ribbons and banners, all the 
 world meantime saying, "How fine your garden is! 
 How much better than other gardens, and how clever you 
 were to make it! " But she had crude ways of arriving. Some 
 even tawdry-minded girl born with an easy recognition of men 
 and spoils could have taught her many things: yet those are 
 the clevernesses that come by nature, and really no teaching 
 ever avails. She was no sportsman. She never trod delicately 
 enough, and even having winged the bird, she was apt to 
 pounce too quickly, and holding him for one moment in her 
 impetuous hands, start back frightened at the ebbing warm 
 life of him, the blood she had drawn, and drop him, herself 
 to run away into deeper coverts. 
 
 There is one endowment of woman that comes by grace 
 and not by learning, the power to manage a man, and it 
 is distributed with as much eccentricity as the glory of the 
 singing voice, or the instinct of seeing a sunset as it will 
 look in paint. Is not music a gift, heaven-descended ? So is 
 innate coquetry, and as capriciously given. The daughter of 
 all the Caesars may go earless and croaking, and some slave 
 sprung out of ignominy may carry divinest airs to the heaven 
 that gave them birth or coax them out of wood and string. 
 There is no reason in this save the unexplained reasons of 
 Nature, who brazenly shows her hand, though no one is game 
 enough to play against her. Cleopatra is as likely to be born 
 one of a hovel as in gilded wedlock. 
 
 There are unwashed, uncombed maidens enough in the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 247 
 
 world who with the unconsciousness of instinct can lead men 
 by a silken leash ; but Celia was not of them, and would not, 
 by instinct, have wished to be. She had all the virginal with 
 drawals, panics, even, that made her sister so austere. If she 
 could have been a princess, unapproached save for obei 
 sances, that would have pleased her mightily, and she would 
 have kept her throne inviolate. Prince consorts were not for 
 her. But here she was in the wrong place, colored by ideals 
 that kept her smarting. The world, she conceived through 
 Catherine s teaching, was an assemblage of competitive ranks 
 where it is necessary to seem wonderful. In a subordinate 
 place, she was surfeited with favors she never could repay, 
 except according to the dull old recipe of being a good girl ; 
 this put her nature on its mettle, bade it somehow reach the 
 top, wherever that might be, and justify itself. And since she 
 had n t a talent or an aptitude to bless her, she must, as the 
 game was to be played any way, fall back on the cleverer ones 
 and coax them, through tact alone, to play for her. 
 
 Celia was never wilfully self-seeking. She was only an 
 egotist, a little wood-animal doubling and darting because 
 it must, a creature with the instinct of self-preservation inor 
 dinately developed. And because she must live, as she con 
 ceived it, she made love to the more fortunate, and did it 
 badly. It had been her course all through her stay abroad. 
 If she had not been so startlingly pretty, men would have 
 said she was too intense, too near the verge of forwardness 
 with no irresponsible "go " in her to complete the fun. She 
 was always a mystery in the end, for she invariably had panic 
 when the emotion she seemed to have challenged made its 
 own demand. But even then she had not cared so passion 
 ately as she did now to enter into some kind of a kingdom 
 and take Bess with her. Before, there had been a dozen col 
 ored strands of action, none of them so very strong, to make 
 
248 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 her court supremacy gratitude to Catherine, affection for 
 her, it might be, the bitter knowledge that in no way save that 
 of making good could she wipe off her score after all Cather 
 ine had done for her. But now there was Bess, passionately 
 loved, a part of her, born of the same parents, unpicturesque 
 though they might be, and Bess had the treasure that might 
 set them both right with a world that demanded fireworks. 
 
 So she sat with Lovell in the arbor one summer dusk, 
 waiting for Bess to finish her cares and come out to them, 
 and thought, while she talked in her soft voice with the lovely 
 thrill in it, of his money and how Bess might possibly come 
 into it, and whether Bess could even marry him. She knew 
 persons of a genial mind were ready enough to lend money 
 to young musicians weighted with an untrained talent, and 
 Lovell, above all men she ever saw, seemed to her careless 
 enough to saunter the way of a fancy, if it were picturesque. 
 So she talked of Bess, how dear she was, how wilfully sacri 
 ficed to commonplace cares, and how the universe ought 
 to rock with horror while such a voice was being sacrificed 
 that Bess might save old Lyddy s pains. 
 
 Lovell was a willing voyager on the flow of it. Whatever 
 she talked about, the topic pleased him best. Her chal 
 lenge, the intensity of her, had been the piercing call to 
 rouse him from his ease and make him swear at himself for 
 the grotesque futility of the past behind him. His life had 
 one beauty-spot, the time of his short consulship, when 
 Italy showed him her lovely face, and poetry cried to him 
 through the nights that were but golden bridges between 
 ecstatic days. He was off his head then, he knew, with youth 
 and the newness of the world too much of a boy to have 
 been there, except as a wandering student, but put into the 
 place ostensibly from his extraordinary capacities and really 
 because his father had a friend at Washington. This was the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 249 
 
 brief time of his perfect accord with life as he found it there, 
 running back over the strings of the past, his fingers evoking 
 a thin music of their own, all aglow in the present, and the 
 certainty that never was the world going to see a life like his 
 life. Then the swift foolish drama, the Italian nobleman, 
 wearer of a title entwined with memories, of the American 
 and the American s wife, and the duel, and he, the Ameri 
 can consul, on the grounds with them in a fever of youthful 
 pomp and chivalry. But the duel ended in smoke, and the 
 American lady was taken to England, and the Italian was 
 doubly picturesque with more trophies at his sword-hilt; 
 and the American consul went home under a cloud, the 
 papers smoking with the fun and folly of it, and reporters 
 meeting him at the pier. 
 
 His mother never knew exactly how it was. Her dim 
 senses were easily hoodwinked, and she was thankful, in her 
 porcelain way, that dear James had given up Italy for New 
 England. Covered with the shame of it, dear James had 
 turned himself, as fast as he could, into a hermit ; and here 
 he was dancing at the end of the leash a woman held. Would 
 he have loved Celia if he had seen her even in all her young 
 freshness in a garden of other girls, yet not blooming for 
 him alone ? He never asked himself. But she had, in her 
 untrained way, taken a shot at him the shot of direct 
 address, of the fixed gaze of admiration. She had called 
 him a poet, and this in her memorable voice. It was a chal 
 lenge he had at least to remember. For the next thing she 
 said, he was listening. And she had said many things few 
 of them adroit, none of them indeed personal, but all borne 
 on that thrilling voice which seemed to be for him alone 
 and to say the unutterable even when the words were too 
 slight for the memory to hold them half an hour. 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Ramsay s better," she was telling him now. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "She hasn t got back her memory though. It s lovely to 
 have her here, of course," Celia never allowed that any 
 thing connected with the emotions was not lovely, "only 
 it s so hard for Bess." 
 
 "It s hard for you." 
 
 "It s not so hard for me as for Bess," she said, in her 
 candor of giving credit, the pretty way of it so beguiling 
 that double credit to herself abounded. " She s more practical 
 than I am, so she sees more things to do. I should like to 
 catch her up and run with her and never stop till she s safe 
 from all these hateful things." 
 
 " Where would she be safe?" 
 
 "Where she could study. Where she could sing." 
 
 Celia never told anybody that Bess herself, the owner of 
 the voice, carried it uneasily, awkwardly almost, ready to 
 drop it in a corner if such might be and go on her unham 
 pered way without it. That would be too damaging ; and 
 more than that, the final height to be won, after the path 
 had been smoothed, was the will of Bess herself. In the last 
 resort of ease, she must be made to sing. 
 
 "W T here could she study?" 
 
 "In Italy." 
 
 Lovell s mind made answer, throwing half-floutingly for 
 him to catch, the word that hurt him most Italy, haunt 
 of beauty, home of the emotions, picture painted by the 
 immortals themselves to show what heavenly life might be. 
 It was always drawing him, and the pathos of his leaving it 
 forever beating him back. Some time, when he was an old 
 man, he had told himself, he might return to it ; but to 
 night, with Celia gleaming in the dusk there like the big 
 challenge she seemed to him, Hope got him for a moment by 
 the arm and whispered to him. He spoke, not knowing 
 clearly what he was saying but rushing to get it over : 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 251 
 
 "We ll take her with us, if you ll go with me." 
 
 Celia said nothing at all, and the white of her dress 
 showed not even a pulsation of breath. She was so still that 
 it seemed to him he had, in putting a stop to their incon- 
 sidered intercourse, denied the course of life in her. There 
 was no retreat now, even if he wished it, and he did wish it 
 in a measure. His brain told him it was too soon, but his 
 heart, that had despaired of life, was beating in a life that 
 would be manifest. 
 
 " Celia," he said. His voice shook. He put out a hand 
 that trembled, but it touched the air. Only it had to show 
 the frozen maiden how fain it was of her own cold hand. 
 " Celia, go with me." Bess was out of it now, even as a lure. 
 " Marry me, Celia. Celia ! " 
 
 But Celia had no voice. She was filled through every vein 
 with fright, unfeignedly shocked at the turn the road had 
 taken. She wanted to say, 
 
 " Can t you love Bess ? Can t you give us some money 
 and not love her ? Can t you give it to her voice ? Oh, for 
 pity s sake ! " 
 
 Lovell spoke again. 
 
 " Say something, dear." 
 
 Then, because she could say nothing, she rose suddenly, 
 without recognized will of her own, and pushed her chair 
 abruptly in the doing. But she could not run. How impos 
 sible to say " no " to golden fortune, and how impossible to 
 turn her back ! If she did that, some primitive impulse in 
 her answering the elemental in him told her she would be 
 pursued. So she stood there in what seemed a voluntary 
 waiting. Lovell, too, rose. 
 
 "You don t say c no, " he threw at her in a roughened 
 voice. " You won t say c yes. " Then inconceivably, to her, 
 because she had not realized that such things were so in- 
 
252 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 stant in their onslaught, he had taken her to him and kissed 
 her lips, with certainty, with passion. 
 
 " Let me go ! " she managed breathlessly. " Let me go ! " 
 
 But he was the master of fate, her mind still told her, 
 though not the master of her will. She must not anger him. 
 He was talking softly, in triumph, in the enchantment of it, 
 close to her ear. 
 
 " No, * he was saying, " no. Let them find us here. 
 We ll tell them all. Celia!" 
 
 Her name even was intoxicating to him. He said it fool 
 ishly, and then because he found her shuddering, he was 
 kinder, and reminded himself suddenly how rough it was to 
 bruise a flower just gathered. But he kept her near a mo 
 ment more, whispering to her. 
 
 "If I let you go, you ll leave me. I shan t see you till 
 to-morrow. You must promise first." 
 
 Her lips, her chin, were trembling. She could not steady 
 them. 
 
 " Promise," he was saying. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Promise to let it be quickly. You shall have her with 
 you." 
 
 "Bess?" 
 
 " Not at first. Not for a minute, till I m used to you. 
 We 11 stay here awhile. Then we 11 go abroad, and she 11 
 go with us." 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 " You promise me ? " 
 
 Then from his kinder clasp she did escape, and seemed 
 to melt away through the dusk, out of the room, and though 
 he, listening, could not hear her, up the stairs. He knew 
 a door closed, and, with nothing to stay for in an empty 
 house, he went away home, song in his heart, exultation in 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 253 
 
 his mind. He was having that most intoxicating of all 
 draughts, the sweetest in life perhaps except the first drop 
 of some heavenly cup renewal. Life had once, while he 
 was dancing with her, thrown her bright domino aside and 
 turned into a zany, flouting him. Now here she was again, 
 an angel, not a mountebank, and he was adoring her with 
 an added passion after loss. 
 
 He went home to his grave little house and lighted can 
 dles because the dusk was too moving for him. He saw in 
 every gleam the whiteness of a woman s gown. His ecstasy 
 kept pounding along through his veins, but not frantically 
 now. It was set to solid business. He was planning how he 
 would open the big house to-morrow and put workmen into 
 it. He even got out pencil and paper and made lists of tasks 
 to be hastened. But he knew, though he could not without 
 trembling too much look full in the face of his bright des 
 tiny, that he was, strangely selected, he who had failed, the 
 master of life. 
 
 Bess was lying on the outside of her bed, resting for half 
 an hour until she should give Mrs. Ramsay her posset for 
 the night. Celia, in a fury of noiseless haste, rushed in and 
 dropped on her knees by the bedside. She buried her face 
 in the clothes and sobs shook her. 
 
 "What is it?" Bess entreated, bending over her. "What 
 is it, lambie ? " 
 
 It was one of the few tender words she knew, remem 
 bered from some childish tragedy when she had been com 
 forted. 
 
 But Celia cried and would not stop. She seemed to her 
 self to be washing her cheeks clean of that incredible touch. 
 For her lips, she could not think of them. All her being 
 had become the tempestuous sea of a great revulsion. 
 
 "How could you?" she wanted to hurl at Lovell, over 
 
254 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and over like stones from a height of hurt maidenhood. 
 "Oh, how could you?" 
 
 Bess was comforting her chiefly in an inarticulate way, with 
 strokings of the hair and little sympathetic sounds. Very 
 soon Celia got up and wiped her wet face and smoothed 
 back her hair. She sat on the bedside and let Bess keep her 
 nerveless hand. At last, when the ebb of sobbing breaths 
 would let her, she whispered, 
 
 " Let s go away from here." 
 
 " We can t," said Bess, soothing the hand, " not while 
 there s so many sick." 
 
 " She is n t sick," said Celia, for the first time disclosing 
 her bare mind, unclothed by sympathetic formulae. " She s 
 tired of not having her own way." 
 
 Bess shook her head reprovingly, like a mother, in the 
 darkness. 
 
 " No, no," she said, as to a child. " Folks do get sick 
 that way. They get tired out. I Ve seen em." 
 
 " But what has she to be tired of," Celia insisted sav 
 agely, " except what I said not having her own way ? " 
 
 Bess hardly thought she could tell. But she knew this was 
 a real thing. 
 
 " You be patient," she counselled. " Some time we 11 go 
 away." 
 
 " Should you like to ? " Celia asked her eagerly. 
 
 " I d like it ever so much," Bess answered, without hesi 
 tation. But the qualifying thought came afterwards. " I 
 should n t like to leave him," she remembered frankly. 
 
 Celia s hand gripped hers. " Who ?" she asked. "Who 
 is it you would n t want to leave ? " 
 
 Her scared mind leaped at the possibility that Bess might 
 be thinking of Lovell, who hatefully would not think of her. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Winterbourne," Bess was answering in an 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 255 
 
 unconsidered candor. cc It would be awful not to see him 
 every day. I should n t know how to get along/ 
 
 " But he does n t like us. Yes, he does like you, but it s 
 only because you make things smooth. He does n t care 
 about an earthly thing except to read his book and smoke." 
 
 " Oh, yes, he does," said Bess. Their secret was warm 
 about her heart, tucked in round it like a coverlet on a cold 
 night. She smiled a little to herself, and when she spoke, 
 Celia caught the lighter note. " But don t you worry. Some 
 day we 11 go away. Maybe some day soon." 
 
 "What could we do?" Celia asked her, with a feverish 
 desire to prove the way. 
 
 There was a small hope in her, too. She never forgot how 
 Bess had been told that she had, miraculously, a perfect 
 method. She could sing. She could induct them both into 
 courts of ease, and Catherine, afar, would catch the echo of 
 the plaudits fluttering round them. Celia knew she could do 
 that instantly, if she had been the one with a voice and a 
 perfect method. Bess answered her with the utmost sim 
 plicity, 
 
 " We could keep boarders." 
 
 Celia snatched her hand away. 
 
 " I believe you " She stopped. 
 
 Out of her rage she was too near telling Bess what such 
 a thought must mean. For that instant she believed her 
 sister had the soul of a maid-servant and no more ; but the 
 sweet temperate voice of her unwittingly sounded a recall. 
 
 <c What is it you believe ? Maybe you would n t like to 
 keep boarders. But you see I know how. I could do it real 
 well. I guess that s all I could do." 
 
 There had been a halting step on the stairs, and now 
 Lyddy came, a small, uncouth figure lighted by the candle 
 on the tray she carried. On the tray were also delicate cups 
 
256 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and napery and a steaming pitcher. This she offered to 
 Bess with a hostile, grudging air of being obliged to enter 
 the prevailing philanthropic folly. 
 
 "Here s their milk," she said, as if it might be their 
 poison rightfully earned. " I ve brought it so fur." 
 
 Bess took the tray and thanked her briefly. That was all 
 Lyddy wanted. Full gratitude would have embittered the 
 service she rendered of her free will, and made her stop to 
 wonder whether she was going to be drawn into any em- 
 broglio of kindness, having volunteered thus much to save 
 a step. At the door she turned. 
 
 "You go to bed arter you give that to em," she threw 
 back, as if it were a missile. "You 11 git wore out." 
 
 They heard her limping off to bed, and then Bess took 
 the tray up and laughed a little as she did it. There were 
 tears in her voice when she spoke again, and they were such 
 rare visitants that Celia asked her jealously, 
 
 " What are you crying for ? " 
 
 " I m not crying," said Bess ; but she added simply, 
 " Lyddy s so good to me ! " 
 
XX 
 
 MRS. RAMSAY, from having been one of the 
 brightest stars of feminine influence, flashing down 
 the void of a world disordered, had simply become 
 a cipher, not even of any use in augmenting the significant 
 figures before it. She lay prone, perhaps shocked at herself, 
 ignoring her plight as much as possible, not calling for the 
 children any more than she had in the days when she knew 
 they were at hand, and compliant before the mandates of 
 Bess as if they were budded from omniscience. She grew 
 pretty, too, her cheeks blooming under rest, and her crisp 
 nightgown more becoming to her than any sleazy regalia 
 had ever been. 
 
 Tim hung about the house, not concerned, it seemed, 
 but ready to run on cheerful errands that had to do with 
 her, and she saw him often. She awaited him anxiously, 
 and when he came, asked him with a querulous insistence 
 whether he had done it yet. Sometimes he told her "yes," and 
 then she was pleased, though not, it seemed, believing him, 
 and when he varied his reply, through some impulse of 
 mood, she spoke to him heatedly and bade him do it now. 
 But she never could think of the word which was the key 
 to what she wanted him to do. Sometimes she appealed to 
 Bess, and begged her to consider whether it could be foot- 
 warmers or flatirons that Tim had so betrayed, and then 
 Bess would waylay Tim at his next coming and tell him 
 he really mustn t talk to his mother about the thing that 
 troubled her. And what, she asked him, was the thing ? 
 Why not tell her, that she mighvwhen she was appealed to, 
 
25 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 know what to say ? But Tim laughed at it all, in the frank 
 est unconcern. Mother d been gassing all her life, he said. 
 No wonder she d gone dotty over words. He would n t see 
 her that day, but he d come again. 
 
 Bess did n t like him fully. What was the use, her prac 
 tical working sense told her, of girl s prettiness when you 
 were n t a girl ? It was n t serviceable, and with Bess things 
 had to be operative in some way before they could be ac 
 cepted. Tim went whistling down the stairs from his 
 mother s door that morning, and Bess was again out of con 
 ceit with him, for his mother would hear him and have to 
 be soothed because he hadn t come in. 
 
 At the door Tim came on Celia, bright-eyed, pink- 
 cheeked with excitement, and blue in the dress. She held a 
 letter in a white hand that rustled the pages into their folds 
 almost as if he might read them. She was a model for a 
 painter s conception of the first love-letter or some such sen 
 timentality, and she greatly appealed to Timothy. Bess he 
 was a little afraid of. She had no notion of luxurious ease 
 as applied either to herself or anybody else. You had to be 
 laid by the heels, to inherit her soft indulgences. If you 
 could put one foot before the other, she was as likely to 
 send you sweltering off to the store with the thermometer 
 in the eighties because mother wanted a lemon. But Celia 
 was a different stuff, delicate, pretty bit out of a garden 
 nosegay. She liked him, too. Tim had a way of talking that 
 seemed to her very clever. It was caught, a little of it, from 
 Winterbourne, a scrap from Lovell, and welded flimsily 
 with some of Hunter s blunt directness ; but when it was 
 finished it seemed to be Timothy s own, and Celia, who 
 had no picturesque loquacity, was much impressed by it. 
 Winterbourne could n t move her because he was too rough. 
 She couldn t endure the thought of his unkempt beard, and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 259 
 
 the words from its midst would have had to be very sweet 
 indeed to earn her tolerance, songs from such a thicket. 
 
 Lovell, she would have said yesterday, was tremendously 
 clever, but to-day, with that touch of his cheek against hers 
 still stinging it to shame, she thought everything about him 
 odious. The letter, so hastily folded, she tucked into the 
 little bag at her side. It was from Lovell, all an ecstasy of 
 hope. He could not be with her that morning, it told her, 
 because he had heard Hopkins, the builder, was going off 
 for a trip up-country, and Lovell had to see him before he 
 went and talk over putting the big house in order. Tim, 
 coming down the stairs and smiling, with no idea of being 
 married, looked like a nice playmate, and Celia smiled back 
 at him. 
 
 "Where you going?" he asked. 
 
 She had no appearance of going anywhere, but he was 
 suddenly enamoured of walking with her in green shade, and 
 starting before Bess had time to weight him with an errand. 
 But she did n t answer him directly. Her eyes crinkled with 
 a smile and she said, 
 
 "You always look as if you hadn t a thing to do." 
 
 Tim paused beside her and noted how soft her hair was 
 and how prettily it grew up from her neck. 
 
 " Don t either," he said. " I ve got a lot to do, and I 
 look it." But she was still smiling and crinkling at him, and 
 he responded and looked more like a girl than ever, show 
 ing his white teeth. " Well, then, if I don t look as ragged 
 as I feel, it s because I ve got this blasted pink-and-white 
 skin." 
 
 "Don t you like your complexion?" 
 
 cc Like it ? Think you d like to have a complexion if you 
 were n t a girl ? Fellows don t have complexions. They have 
 skin." 
 
2 6o JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "How can you say you don t like it," returned Celia, in 
 one of her too direct commendations. 
 
 The universally popular, she had reasoned long ago, was 
 the universally complaisant, and no harsh comment, no lost 
 opportunity for an ingratiating speech, did she permit her 
 self. They had, by an involuntary accord, sauntered down 
 the steps together, down the path into the street. Now they 
 were pacing along under its elms. 
 
 " Sometimes I think I 11 stain myself all over with wal 
 nut juice," said Tim, though cheerfully, not at all fitting the 
 gloom of his discontent. " Or black, like a nigger. This 
 rosy-posy stunt won t do when you re going into business. 
 It s against you. Worse than a stutter when you re trying 
 to sell a bill o goods." 
 
 He took off his hat to match her bare head, and ribbons 
 of sunlight through the elms fell on the gold of his hair 
 and lighted it to the absurdest commentary on his discon 
 tent. 
 
 " Are you going into business?" Celia asked, to keep the 
 topic moving. 
 
 She was glad to be walking somewhere, in motion, before 
 Lovell could hurry through his business trysts to find her. 
 She might bear it to meet him in the street, never, she 
 thought, at arm s reach again. 
 
 " You bet I m going into business." 
 
 "What kind?" 
 
 " Oh, I m going into business all right. Say," Timothy 
 threw at her like a return to confidential speech, " I know 
 an awfully good thing, and I d let anybody in that would 
 help me. But I m blocked, just blocked." 
 
 Celia wanted to say, " Let me in. I m blocked, too, and 
 I would I had the money to buy my ticket out again to 
 freedom." But what she said, according to her way of em- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 261 
 
 broidering the garments of common life, was a sympathetic 
 "Can t some of us help you?" 
 
 " Yes," said Timothy moodily. 
 
 He looked like a sulky child, and with his hat struck at 
 the twigs looking over the tops of garden fences. " Winter- 
 bourne could help me." 
 
 "Why, he would," said Celia. "Just ask him. I ll ask 
 him for you." 
 
 "I ve asked him, in a way. He s a mule. Winterbourne s 
 a pig-headed mule." 
 
 Celia thought he might be. She had found no thorough 
 fare with Winterbourne. They had turned into the open 
 road, and she indicated with a nod an old house sleeping in 
 a grass-tangled yard, a house with blinds hanging and a 
 wintry look of not wanting to live any more. 
 
 " I often go in there and sit on the steps and think," she 
 said. 
 
 So they turned in and up the path where bouncing-bet 
 was cheerful, and by and by two or three persistent sweet- 
 williams, stragglers from old time, would bloom, and sat 
 down together on the rickety steps under the blackened 
 knocker. 
 
 " The fellow that owned this was like the rest of us," 
 said Tim gloomily. " Some of us, I mean, here in Clyde. 
 We just can t stir our stumps to get ahead, and the moss 
 grows over us." 
 
 "Does Hopkins the builder live round here?" she in 
 quired, with a sudden thought. 
 
 He stared at her. 
 
 "What do you want of Hopkins?" 
 
 " Nothing. I want to know where he is." 
 
 " Way over the other end of the town." 
 
 She sighed with relief, and delivered herself up to the 
 
262 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 enjoyment of the day. Lovell, she was glad to believe, was 
 safe with Hopkins. 
 
 " Now," she said, leaning cosily against the trellis thick 
 with jessamine, " tell me about your business troubles." 
 
 " I told mother and she jumped on me. I d tell Lovell 
 in a minute if I could get anything out of him. Do you 
 really want to know ? " 
 
 " Of course I want to know." 
 
 The bees humming in the white clover along the path 
 made her sigh with the pleasure of summer s kindness, and 
 think, too, they were so busy, of Bess at home. Celia had 
 an impression she should like to work, if only she could find 
 something worthy an ornamental young maid s doing. But 
 the present moment was a pleasing one. Here was Timothy 
 ready to like her very much, in a simple fashion, and he had 
 nothing to offer her beyond the liking. She need not turn 
 and twist the pattern of it to make it more or less. She felt 
 companioned in a way. 
 
 " Well, you 11 just have to keep it to yourself." 
 
 Tim was dying to tell her. He felt very important over 
 his scheme, and he was as yet unrecognized. His mother 
 had threatened him when he showed her the outermost folds 
 of it. Celia, he knew, would treat him like a man. 
 
 " I won t tell," said Celia. 
 
 "Honest? Hope to die?" 
 
 "Hope to die." 
 
 " Well, it s about an ear-trumpet." 
 
 "How funny. Whose?" 
 
 " Winterbourne s the one he invented." 
 
 " How nice and quaint that was of him." 
 
 "Well, he d have been quainter if he d invented some 
 thing and sold it." 
 
 " Perhaps he can t sell things. He s not that kind." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 263 
 
 " He s too lazy. There s Winter-bourne s weak spot. He 
 won t patent it." 
 
 " I think that s nice," said Celia cosily, liking the summer 
 sounds and airs more and more. She was only half listening. 
 
 "You do, do you? Well, I don t. Do you know how 
 many deafies there are in the United States?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Do you know how many there are in the continent of 
 Europe, in the world?" 
 
 "No; do you?" 
 
 "Well, no," said Tim, oratorically collapsing, "I don t. 
 But I mean to before I start my company." 
 
 " What company ? " 
 
 " Winterbourne won t patent his trumpet. Does it occur 
 to you what that means ?" 
 
 She shook her head. It did not seem to her much of a 
 summer-day s dream. 
 
 " Well, I 11 tell you what it means. You girls ! you don t 
 know anything that amounts to a Hannah. Somebody else 11 
 get hold of it and patent it, and they 11 make money out 
 of it, mints of money." 
 
 " Mr. Winterbourne won t let them." 
 
 " He can t help it if they ve done it." 
 
 "He d expose them." 
 
 " Pah ! what harm s that do when the thing s selling like 
 blazes ? If a man wants to hear the clock tick, you don t 
 s pose he s going to say, ( I won t buy that elegant trumpet 
 because those Johnnies are quarrelling over the patent, do 
 you ? Well, I should say not." 
 
 " It s very interesting," said Celia, because this was a 
 word that covered so much : imperfect understanding of a 
 dull situation, even inattention on her part. She hardly 
 dared ask a question now after that moment s somnolence, 
 
264 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 because it might touch the very point he had just been elu 
 cidating. 
 
 " So," said Timothy, " I m going to get out the patent 
 myself." 
 
 That roused her. 
 
 "You? He won t let you." 
 
 " He can t help himself. I m not going to tell Winter- 
 bourne, am I ? He J ll find it out when the patent s safe and 
 the factories are roaring out trumpets, three hundred thou 
 sand million a day, sold at twenty dollars apiece, net." 
 
 This seemed in some way to touch the family interests, 
 and Celia felt she ought to do something; yet it was all 
 imperfectly understood, and though ready to take an atti 
 tude, she hardly knew what one was appropriate. 
 
 " But it s his trumpet," she offered weakly. 
 
 u Well, s pose he had a million dollars, now, that he 
 would n t put in the bank and would n t give away and did n t 
 spend. S pose I saw it lying in the middle of the road to 
 tempt all the crooks or get ground into the ruts by teams 
 if I said, C I 11 just cart that million dollars off to the 
 bank for Winterbourne, and when he s ready for it he 11 
 find it s been rolling up at four per cent, well, now, 
 should you call me a good pious little boy or should n t 
 you?" 
 
 Celia felt his own glow at the cleverness of it all. She sat 
 up and began to listen. 
 
 " If you re going to do it for him " 
 
 " I m going to do it because he won t do it," said Tim 
 fractiously, if grandly. " I expect to be paid for it. I expect 
 to take some stock." 
 
 "Stock?" 
 
 " Why, yes. We shall form a company. Folks 11 put in 
 capital. Some of the stock will be in Winterbourne s name. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 265 
 
 He 11 wake up some day and wish he had half a dollar in 
 the bank. Then I 11 say to him, c Well, there s your stock 
 in the Pan-pipes Company. It s up to seven hundred and 
 eighty now. Why don t you realize?" 
 
 " Pan-pipes. Is that what it s called ?" 
 
 " Yes. He named it. Bully name ! " 
 
 "When are you going to tell him?" 
 
 "Holy Peter! If I told him, he d scuttle the ship." 
 
 "You said he couldn t." 
 
 " He can t after I ve got the patent. I ve taken my first 
 steps. That s what mother read the riot act about. Mad ! 
 Never saw a woman so mad. I told her the morning she 
 took to her bed. She said I d got to get back the trumpet 
 and go right straight over and tell him all about it. Well, 
 I should say !" 
 
 " But where did you get the trumpet?" 
 
 Tim looked at her and smiled. He sang a line of a pop 
 ular song. 
 
 " That s telling," said he. 
 
 Celia shook her head at him. He seemed an irresponsible 
 boy, but not to be seriously reprimanded because the tex 
 ture of his intentions hung so flimsily. Tim couldn t do 
 any harm. You had only to look at him to see that. This 
 was an inconsiderable comedy it pleased him to think clever 
 enough to be played. It never would be, so let her take it 
 at his valuation and give him the comfort of it. But she 
 was as silly as he, and a quick heat stained her face almost, 
 it seemed, before she recognized the thought that gave it 
 birth. He was a foolish boy and this a summer-day s tale, 
 but yet, was there something in it to coax fortune to come 
 walking over the Winterbourne threshold ? 
 
 "How are you blocked? " she persisted. "You said you 
 were blocked." 
 
266 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "Why, there s a woman got one of the trumpets. Win- 
 terbourne gave it to her. Lovell knows it, and Hunter, too, 
 I guess. But I wanted to get it out of her hands." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 Here he hesitated. 
 
 " Why, if Winterbourne cuts up rough, if he swears he 
 invented it, that ll help give him a case. I don t want one 
 of em in existence besides the one I ve submitted for my 
 patent." 
 
 " But he did invent it." 
 
 " Oh, not so you d notice it, not if he won t patent it. If 
 I pick up an apple in the road, ain t it my apple ? The one 
 that s going to be patented is the one I ve handed in." 
 
 "Money!" breathed Celia involuntarily. "Think of 
 having money." 
 
 " Well, you will have money," said Tim composedly. "I 
 wish the thing was something universal, an egg-beater or a 
 glove-snap or a tack. A few weeks ago, I thought I d in 
 vented a tack, double-headed. No go! First hardware 
 man damned it. But I guess there are dearies enough. Say ! " 
 From his lips even Celia did not find the challenging mon 
 osyllable offensive. It was ingenuous, confiding rather. " I 
 believe I 11 tell you how little Timothy went on his adven 
 tures to find the lost trumpet and how he got busted by the 
 way. Swear you never 11 tell ? " 
 
 Celia nodded. Her color was high. He thought she was 
 the nicest girl he had ever seen, and game to a remarkable 
 degree. 
 
 " Say," he confided to her. " I believe you re a sport." 
 It was a compliment of the purest water, but she could not 
 stop to curtsey for it. " I 11 tell you what I did. I laid for 
 the neighbors of the Stapleses and I talked with em about 
 hens, about eggs, about calves, about ducks. I walked out 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 267 
 
 that way every morning. I told em I was walking off my 
 flesh." 
 
 " You have n t any flesh." 
 
 "That s because I ve walked it off. Then one day one 
 of em said the Stapleses that used to live over this way had 
 gone to Backer s Falls. I collared mother that night and got 
 five dollars off n her, and I spent it in a ticket to Backer s 
 Falls and a ticket back. Then I tottered round till I came 
 on the Stapleses." 
 
 "Didn t you ask?" 
 
 " I guess not. Nobody s going to say when Jack Win- 
 terbourne hauls me over the coals that I went anywhere pre 
 meditated. I saw that sleazy daughter that s Lyddy s cousin, 
 and she said, Why, Timothy Ramsay, when d you blow 
 down ? Mother was taken away last week. 
 
 " Taken away?" 
 
 " Died. So I saw it was destiny, and I said, ( Where s that 
 ear-trumpet? c ln the house, says she, c and as soon as I can 
 leave the children long enough, I m going to carry it back 
 to Mr. Winterbourne. He was very kind, says she, ( but 
 he did scare me most to death the night I went there. 
 
 " So you took it back for her?" 
 
 " I offered to, but do you s pose she d let me touch it ? 
 No! Mr. Winterbourne had been very kind to her, she 
 said, and t was but right she should pass it into his own 
 hand." 
 
 " I don t believe she has done it," Celia reflected. " I 
 have n t seen any such person." 
 
 " I don t believe she has, but if I meet her with it in the 
 dark, I m going to garrote her and pick her pocket of it. 
 I don t want Winterbourne to see that trumpet again. I 
 don t want him reminded of it. If nobody says trumpet, he 
 never 11 think of it till the day o doom. I want it, though. 
 
268 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 I want to get it into my own hands. I want to rid the earth 
 of pan-pipes except the one I Ve put in train for Washington." 
 
 Celia was looking at him innocently. 
 
 "You re awfully clever, are n t you ? " she inquired. 
 
 He glanced at her in some suspicion, and then enlarged 
 perceptibly. 
 
 " How could you know it would be so easy," she pursued, 
 " to make your application, to get people interested?" 
 
 " That s the joke of it. Who d you s pose I went to ? 
 Old Gregory. Father works for him." 
 
 "Then your father knows?" 
 
 " Not he. But I went to old Gregory. He took to it like 
 a mouse to cheese." 
 
 " You persuaded him ! Oh, you must be clever ! " 
 
 Tim shook his head. He would gladly have had it so, 
 but the reason was too palpable. 
 
 " Old Gregory," said he, and laughed, " old Gregory s 
 deafer n two posts." 
 
 " So he tried it." 
 
 " Mm. He was sitting there in his office like a frog, 
 swelled all up. You know the kind, all bonds and truffles. 
 You could see he ate like a pig every day of his life. 
 Father s afraid of him as he is of old Nick. I got into the 
 office. He looked as if he d eat me. ( What s this, what s 
 this? said he. I passed him pan-pipes and poked it at his 
 ear. Mad ? My word ! I believe he thought I was going to 
 dynamite him. But what do you s pose ! he began to hear. 
 I wish you could have seen him! I snatched it away from 
 him then. I thought he d eat it. c You the agent? said he. 
 c How much is it ? Then I got him to understand it was n t 
 an ear-trumpet only. It was a gold mine. And old Gregory 
 took hold and he s been pushing ever since. Little Timothy 
 has n t had to do a darned thing." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 269 
 
 Celia was listening now. She hardly knew even the terms 
 of conventional business, and this began to seem to her a 
 scheme of gigantic proportions, brilliant, but wrong some 
 where, though where she was not exactly sure. It really 
 looked to her as if Timothy were assuming a credit which 
 should be Winterbourne s; but then she knew how Winter- 
 bourne would fulminate against receiving any credit whatso 
 ever. Again it looked as if Timothy had helped himself 
 freely to another man s property, and yet she seemed to see 
 in him a shining altruist who would preserve to Winter- 
 bourne the fortune he ignored. Then she asked the ques 
 tion of all questions, 
 
 " It couldn t make money, could it?" 
 
 It could, he told her, and descanted on the prospect until 
 she, too, kindled. But if it was so important that Winter- 
 bourne should be hoodwinked, why was he telling his 
 mother, why was he telling her at this present time ? Tim 
 looked at her for a moment, at a loss. He had, she saw, 
 hardly thought of that in its clear proportions. Then he 
 recovered himself. 
 
 "A man has to speak to somebody," he said, and she saw. 
 He had been too vain to keep close counsel. He was swag 
 gering perceptibly now. " Mother never d open her head 
 if she said she wouldn t. Mother looks like Joseph s coat, 
 but she s a good fellow all the same. Don t you s pose I 
 made her take the oath before I let her in, same as I did 
 you? Did n t I swear you in ? " 
 
XXI 
 
 LYDDY was not very strong. Her back was no back 
 at all, so far as old-time lifting or agile service went; 
 her legs were so stiff of a morning that, if there had 
 been no question of kitchen prerogative, she might not have 
 come down at all. But a change was manifest in the ease of 
 the work, and the eyes and the indifference of old age kept 
 her from seeing why. Lyddy worshipped order, but the 
 lethargy of her years was upon her, and Bess silently went 
 over her tasks and made them right. But however she left 
 the kitchen at supper-time for an evening of small cares with 
 her patients, in the morning it was in fine array with a rigid 
 cleanliness to be remarked. One evening, at last, she came 
 down early on a version of the sight that had staggered 
 Winterbourne a fortnight before : Dwight Hunter, in work 
 ing shirt-sleeves of dark blue, the matted hair wet on his 
 forehead, and a look of absorption on his face such as indi 
 cates the serving male in tasks "not realized," a look of 
 care, of scrutinizing worry, was hanging the mop in its 
 place outside the door leading down into the shed. She 
 looked inevitably at the floor. It was damp, but carefully 
 dried, its yellow surface shining. The enormity of his inter 
 ference broke upon her, the probably long continuance of it, 
 and Bess, the serene, felt her cheeks grow hot. Hunter also 
 began to regard the floor and their eyes met over the clean 
 expanse of it. Her eyes were angry eyes. He saw that, and 
 his heart failed, not so much because he wanted to please her, 
 but that discovery put an end to more service for her, more 
 stolen moments of filling kerosene cans and washing lamp- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 271 
 
 chimneys, more consecrated sweeping of floors to the end 
 that her back should not be bent. She spoke : - 
 
 " What are you doing in this kitchen?" 
 
 He had recovered himself. The game was lost, but doubt 
 less he could conceive other ways of easing her. After all, 
 her displeasure was only the temporary expression of the 
 distaste he knew she felt for him. 
 
 " I was just going," he said. " Good-night." 
 
 Bess, with an unconscious sense of sacredness in a floor 
 newly washed, glanced down before she set her foot on it. 
 But it was dry enough, and she advanced upon him. 
 
 "What have you been doing?" she threw at him. She 
 was beautiful, enraged. Her soft, kind loveliness bloomed 
 out hotly and flamed into a bacchic grace. He stared at 
 her. "What is it?" she commanded, like a mother or a 
 school-teacher admonishing erring boyhood. " Why don t 
 you tell me?" 
 
 " I can t," said Hunter with simplicity. " You re so 
 pretty." 
 
 That seemed the top-notch of insult, to wash a floor and 
 then say he could n t answer because she was so pretty. She 
 softened a little, making no doubt he really was touched in 
 the brain. " Did you do this floor ? " she still demanded. 
 
 He plucked up will to face her. 
 
 "Yes, I did." 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 Guile, the friend of cowardice, came to him, pelting along 
 with horse and sword. 
 
 "To save Lyddy s doing it." 
 
 Her face smoothed into the calm he loved. Its own rosy 
 glow overspread it. 
 
 " Did you truly ? " said Bess. " I think that was awfully 
 nice." 
 
272 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He felt no compunction. Joy was in him and a pleasur 
 able surprise that it was going to be so easy to get a part 
 of his way. 
 
 " Lyddy s an old woman," he rejoined piously. 
 
 "Yes," said she, in a thoughtful concurrence. "I ought 
 to help her more. But I get so busy in the rest of the house. 
 I must look out for the kitchen better than I have." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Hunter, in haste. " That would upset her. 
 It stirs her up when you work too hard." 
 
 " Yes, I know it. Lyddy s been good to me." 
 
 " I can do a little turn like this any night," said Hercules 
 largely. "If you catch me at it, just don t say anything, and 
 there we are. I should feel like an awful fool to have any 
 body find it out." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " It isn t man s work," she admonished him. 
 
 " Gammon ! what is man s work ? " 
 
 " Not kitchen things." 
 
 He understood, though she could not tell him, that man s 
 work to her was the largely picturesque, the struggle with 
 the earth and the weather, not such piffling jobs as this ; and 
 his heart swelled, appropriating its own atomic part of the 
 general commendation. The barriers seemed to be down be 
 tween them because she had reproved him, nay, in a more 
 unstilted fashion, scolded him as mothers do, and wives. 
 
 " This is no place for a man anyway," she announced. 
 
 "What? This kitchen? Clyde?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " You re all settling down," she continued, in her tone of 
 conviction, "like old maids." 
 
 " I don t feel much like an old maid," he ventured. 
 
 She had embarked on her certainties, evolved in thinking 
 while she tended her two invalids. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 273 
 
 " There s you and Mr. Lovell and Mr. Winterbourne. 
 You Ve all been living alone just long enough." 
 
 " So I think," he hastened to supply. 
 
 But she was looking at him from the most ingenuous 
 innocence. 
 
 " I can understand about Mr. Winterbourne/ she went 
 on. " He s studying." 
 
 " No, he is n t either," Hunter threw back at her. " He s 
 reading a book he likes, and it s no more to his credit than 
 if he read a novel. Winterbourne s as lazy as they make 
 em." 
 
 The flash came into her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, how can you?" she reproached him. 
 
 He had checked their better understanding and remem 
 bered it too late. But scruples were as nothing to him. He 
 hastened to repair his blunder. 
 
 " Winterbourne s a good chap. I Ve no quarrel with what 
 he s doing. But Lovell and me what s the matter with us ? " 
 
 " You re settled down. It s no kind of a life for a man to 
 shut himself up and do his own housework and read books." 
 
 " We don t do our own housework," he reminded her. 
 " Mary Manahan does." 
 
 She gave a little decided shake of the head. 
 
 " I can t help it. You eat alone and go out and leave the 
 dishes on the table. It s awful." 
 
 Hunter was looking at her with a broad smile that told, 
 if she had not been too absorbed to see it, how dear he 
 thought her. 
 
 " What do you want us to do?" he inquired. " Stay and 
 clear up, or take the dishes with us ?" 
 
 "You know what I mean." She frowned a little. "Some 
 times they wait there half the forenoon, before she gets 
 round." 
 
274 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Oh 5 that it? Well, that does n t hurt me any. They re 
 washed by the time I m home most always." 
 
 " It isn t as if you had to live that way, either of you. 
 Lyddy says so." 
 
 His heart gave an athletic bound. Lyddy had talked about 
 him, unsolicited, perhaps, but Bess had listened. 
 
 " It is a poor life," he said artfully. "It s infernally lone 
 some." 
 
 " That is n t it. It s no matter whether folks are lone 
 some or whether they re not. But it is n t decent." 
 
 " What better do you think we could do ?" 
 
 She looked at him as if she had a pleasant secret to tell. 
 
 " You could go abroad." 
 
 " Go abroad ! " That was the last thing he had expected 
 to find hidden in her. 
 
 " Yes, you could go everywhere and tramp, and see things, 
 and talk with folks. And you re a man and you could go 
 alone." 
 
 " Yes," said Hunter, again artfully, " that s the cinch a 
 man has. Now if you wanted to go ever so much, you 
 could n t do it alone, could you ? " 
 
 " I would," she said under her breath, but he caught it. 
 
 " Do you want to go ? " he asked her. " Is that what 
 you d like?" 
 
 But the glow had died out of her; it might have been 
 that she hastily let fall the curtain between them. 
 
 " Oh, no," she said bluffly. " Besides, I m too busy." 
 
 He saw the talk was over, but he persistently drew her 
 back, by more speciousness cleverly continued. 
 
 " I might like to go," he said meditatively, yet watching 
 her. He wanted so much to detain her in this kind mood 
 of half-intimacy that it looked as if, should she turn to leave 
 him really, he might have to lay hand upon her skirt like 
 
JOHN, WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 275 
 
 the child he felt with her and draw her back. " I went over 
 once, the summer I was out of college." 
 
 She woke again to her warm interest. 
 
 " To Italy ? Did you go to Italy ? " 
 
 "Yes, I went to Italy." 
 
 " Mr. Winterbourne says you almost go crazy there, it s 
 so different." 
 
 The right word had escaped her, he saw. She had de 
 clined breathlessly on the bathos of this. But the fire in her 
 lent itself to him. He remembered in a flash many things 
 he had not thought of every day in the working stress of his 
 life here. He had a shy passion of his own for poetry and 
 all the lighter, brighter garland of life we call art, though 
 he had not had space of late to nourish it, so bent was he 
 on making good in his chosen occupations. He did have 
 time to wonder at this new side of her, that she who was 
 perennially in the dress of a workwoman, and whose hands 
 knew no distaste of toil, should seem to be recalling him to 
 the sweet hungers outside toil itself. 
 
 " You d like it, Bess," he said, and neither noticed he 
 had made free with her name. Indeed she, servant as she 
 was, was too used to it to think it strange. " You d love 
 Italy." 
 
 " He says so," she returned, her soft eyes taking on their 
 look of absent musing ; and he felt again the thrill of jeal 
 ous rage he often had when she looked at Winterbourne or 
 spoke of him. 
 
 " You see, I m busy, too," he reminded her, in that un 
 changed desire to keep her with him. 
 
 She shook her head. Again, he saw, she disapproved, 
 and he liked that. It brought them nearer. 
 
 "You can play on the fiddle," she said, "and you don t 
 practise. You just see to clams and teaming." 
 
276 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He ventured a little rallying of his own. 
 
 " You can t say anything. You can sing, and you spend 
 your time cooking and making beds." 
 
 " That s different. Singing s nothing. Anybody can 
 sing." 
 
 " Now what a fool thing that is to say." He wondered 
 if a little tender roughness would draw them nearer. " I 
 can t." 
 
 " I mean it s so easy. If you can, you can, and there s 
 an end of it." 
 
 "You just don t want to sing, do you?" he pursued, in 
 a real curiosity now. " You re as obstinate as you re 
 frightfully obstinate." 
 
 She was looking thoughtfully out through the darkened 
 window. 
 
 " I don t suppose I can make you see," she said. " Yes, 
 I d like to sing, if it would please folks." 
 
 "It does please them, doesn t it? Don t you know 
 that ? " 
 
 " He says it does." 
 
 She spoke shyly, yet not, he saw, for any reason connected 
 with himself. It was her elderly god, he ironically thought, 
 the man taking his evening walk now along country roads 
 and thinking of Theocritus. 
 
 " Who s he ? Winterbourne ? " 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Yes, he talked to me about it. I m going to do it when 
 ever I can, so s to get used to it. He says it s my talent. So 
 I can t fold it up in a napkin." 
 
 She looked at him in a sweet humility as if she wondered 
 if he would confirm that ; and so imbued was he with the 
 pity of seeing her always at household tasks, that he had an 
 absurd picture of her at a table folding something shiny in 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 277 
 
 the glossiest of white napkins she had ironed. He had rough, 
 crass things to say to her. He wanted to accuse her : " I 
 believe you don t see anything in this world except through 
 Winterbourne s eyes," but he knew she would answer, 
 out of the childlike clarity of her innocence, that she need 
 not. Why should she? Winterbourne was here to see for 
 her. She was turning away to the cupboard. 
 
 " I just came down to get some water for the night," she 
 said, and when she brought the pitcher, he began pumping 
 for her. That was the happiest minute Dwight Hunter 
 thought he had ever had, to do something for her with the 
 strength of his arm while she stood by waiting, acquiescing 
 in his service. He believed he had learned things about her 
 to-night, things that made her more lovely. To this moment 
 he had followed her and longed for her because the innocent 
 appeal of her hidden nature had awakened harmonizing 
 notes in him. Now she had opened a door, and he had 
 looked into the ordered stillness of her mind where were 
 desires, light, bright lamps tended, illuminating what she 
 would like to be. Winterbourne had roused her, he could 
 see, to at least a wistful sense that there were beauties out 
 side her restricted room of life, paths where she might walk 
 if she ever escaped the drudgery of the present task. He 
 gave Winterbourne credit for that, angry as he was over her 
 unquestioning obedience to him. Winterbourne had awak 
 ened something in her, some desire to grow. She came out 
 of her muse and turned to him, practicality again on her lips. 
 
 "That little boy with the hair off the top of his head 
 where he got scalded belongs to one of the men that works 
 for you." 
 
 Hunter, recalled from the vision of her in Italy, wander 
 ing and singing, adored for her beauty and her voice, could 
 only stare at her. 
 
278 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I met him the other day, smoking," said Bess. "You d 
 better speak to him about it." 
 
 " Did n t you speak to him ? " he responded, rising val 
 iantly to meet whatever she might expect of him. 
 
 " I did, but he would n t care anything about me. I m 
 nothing but a woman. Tim Ramsay was laughing at him, 
 and the boy thought it was grand. I 11 set the pitcher down 
 here. I guess I 11 fasten up now, after you go." 
 
 There was no way but to go, yet on the step he paused a 
 minute. " How did you know who the boy was ? " he asked. 
 
 "Oh, he belongs to the club." 
 
 " What club ? Mrs. Ramsay s ? " 
 
 " It s the same boys. It s a kind of a glee club now. I 
 go down two evenings a week and we sing." 
 
 " How do you get there ? " 
 
 He wondered if Winterbourne went with her. 
 
 " Why, I just go." 
 
 "Walk?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "Why, yes. I don t speak about it. She would n t like it." 
 
 He knew nothing about the filial use of the pronoun. 
 She, he thought, meant Mrs. Ramsay, who might not like 
 to have her club reft from her. 
 
 " Are you teaching those little chaps to sing ? " he asked 
 her, melted at her beneficence. 
 
 Bess laughed. Her white teeth became her. 
 
 " No," she said. " I don t know one note from another. 
 I learn em things by ear, and we sing em together." 
 
 She was shutting the door, and he walked away. She 
 had said " learn," and he had heard her with ears attuned 
 to the academic speech of Clyde, but it seemed to him 
 funnily sweet and dear of her. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 279 
 
 Bess did not go upstairs at once. She looked about the 
 kitchen with a housewife s intent to see that everything was 
 in order for the night, and the perfection of it brought a 
 sweetness of approval to her face. It had been kind of him, 
 she knew, to do so much for Lyddy. So young a man, so 
 handsome, for Bess knew that about him, so well fitted 
 for the dashing career of " quality," must be good indeed 
 to pay such tribute to an old woman s stiffened back. She 
 heard Celia s step, the rustle of her dress, and waited. Celia, 
 too, must be coming for water. She was a pretty figure out 
 of the gloom of the doorway where she stood a moment 
 like a picture, her soft muslin, with its lace, wrapped about 
 her in something near enough antique folds to let you call 
 her nymph or dryad, whatever you will that walks in beauty. 
 The sisters smiled at each other with that lighting of the 
 face that visited each at sight of the other, with no alloy of 
 an expected social kindness. 
 
 " Water ? " asked Bess, and laid her hand on the pump- 
 handle. 
 
 "Yes." Celia dropped into a chair, and put her head 
 back wearily on the door-casing. " Bess, don t you think 
 it s queer we should have to pump for ourselves ? " 
 
 Bess looked at her with widened eyes. 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 " Is n t it queer not to be able to ring a bell, and say, 
 c Bring me a glass of water ? We have to pump." 
 
 Bess stood there drawing the pump-handle slowly down, 
 that she might not lose her stroke, bringing only a drizzle 
 while she thought. 
 
 " I don t know," she said. " Somebody s got to pump." 
 
 Celia looked down at her own delicate hands lying against 
 the lace and muslin of her dress. 
 
 " I wish I did n t hate it so," she said. 
 
280 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Hate pumping? I 11 do it for you." She began to do 
 it vigorously. 
 
 Celia rose from her chair and laughed. 
 
 "You re such a ninny, darling child." She had heard 
 Winterbourne call Bess a ninny the other day when she had 
 wanted to make him fresh tea because he was late. It sounded 
 kind. All Celia s terms were borrowed. She had different 
 pigeon-holes for them, and used them freely. " Or else you re 
 cleverer than all the rest of us. There, that s cold enough." 
 
 " I 11 get you the little lustre pitcher," said Bess, and 
 went back to the dining-room. She felt, not only from 
 Celia s charms and her own tenderness for her, but from 
 these discontents, that nothing was too good for her. She 
 must have her draught from the little precious antique 
 pitcher, not a kitchen clay. 
 
 Celia stood there very pretty, conscious of that, though 
 there was no one to see her, wrapped in her own musings, 
 and there came a knock, a soft one, at the door. She opened 
 it at once, and a woman, a little creature, wrapped in a shawl, 
 though the night was warm, stepped instantly nearer the sill, 
 and lifted up an eager face. 
 
 " I saw you through the window," she said. " I knew 
 Lyddy wa n t here. I knocked at t other door an* nobody 
 come. Where s Mr. Winterbourne?" 
 
 " He s gone to walk, I think," said Celia kindly. She 
 was always gentle. Her best manners were for all grades of 
 an appreciative world. " Can I give him a message ? " 
 
 "It s this." The little creature, with a quick proffer of 
 it into the light, indicated a small newspaper packet under 
 her shawl. " It s his ear-trumpet." 
 
 "His ear-trumpet?" This followed so closely on the 
 heels of Tim s disquisition on trumpets that Celia opened 
 her eyes at her and said at once, "Yes, I know." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 281 
 
 " I Ve brought it to him/* said the little creature. " I 
 got a ride from the Falls, an Cousin Jerry s goin back 
 to-night with the steers, an so maybe if Mr. Winterbourne 
 ain t in I can t see him ; but I want to give him back his 
 trumpet an tell him I dunno how mother ever d have got 
 along without it." 
 
 " I 11 tell him," said Celia. She looked so radiant under 
 the excitement of it that the woman forgot how tired she 
 was from the jolting of Cousin Jerry s team, and thought 
 she was the prettiest creatur that anybody ever set eyes on. 
 Celia bent forward and laid her delicate hand on the paper, 
 and Ann Staples gave it up to her. " I 11 tell him," she 
 said. " He 11 be so pleased." 
 
 Then she heard Bess coming from the dining-room and 
 almost pushed the little figure back into the night s obscu 
 rity. " I 11 tell him," she said again softly, but with the 
 brightest smile. " Good-night." She had shut the door, 
 and when Bess came in, Celia was standing there looking 
 strangely brilliant with a package in her hand, the hand 
 hanging by her side, but still the package evident. Celia 
 was listening. But she heard the light steps really hurry 
 ing down the walk, and the quick latch of the gate. Then 
 she did turn to Bess, and laughed softly, not so much as if 
 she were amused as excited, pleased. Bess, like the other 
 woman, was amazed at the prettiness of her. 
 
 "Who was it?" she asked. 
 
 "Who was what?" Celia countered. 
 
 " At the door. I heard somebody going." 
 
 "Oh," said Celia, and really laughed, "the milkman." 
 
 "The milkman? Why, twas a woman. I heard her voice. 
 Was n t she talking to you ? " 
 
 " It was the milkman s wife," said Celia. " Did I say the 
 milkman ? It was his wife." 
 
282 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "What did she want?" 
 
 " Let s fill the pitcher. Then I ll take it up." 
 
 " I had the greatest time finding it," Bess absently told 
 her, filling it. " I guess Lyddy thought we were using it too 
 common. Twas hidden round the corner of the shelf. 
 What s that bundle, Celia? Did she leave it?" 
 
 "It s ajar," said Celia. "Give me the pitcher. I won t 
 wait. Come in and talk a minute before you go to bed." 
 
 "One of our jars? Well, aren t you going to leave it 
 down here ?" 
 
 " I 11 put it in the pantry as I go by." 
 
 She did flit into the pantry, pitcher in one hand and the 
 parcel in the other. But when she came out Bess, pumping 
 for a fresh relay, thought she was carrying the parcel still, 
 in the hand hanging by her side. Bess laughed a little. 
 Celia s absent ways were sweet to her. Bess thought they 
 were probably an intrinsic part of that magic state of mind 
 and manners known as being a lady. 
 
 Celia, in her room, closed the door and locked it, and then 
 lighted two candles and set them together on her dressing- 
 table. She never would use lamps in her own room. They 
 were hot, she said, and smelled. She was used to undressing 
 with an array of candles, walking back and forth in their 
 dim, gentle beam, thinking, or sometimes sitting before her 
 glass illuminated by them, the light falling on her bare arms. 
 Now she plucked off the newspaper, with a distaste for it as 
 having come from nobody knew where in a moist, uncleanly 
 grasp, and tossed it into the fireplace. There she seta match 
 to it, and while it burned she took the black, worn creature 
 it had contained and eyed it curiously. Here again was pan 
 pipes, the silent thing, ready to make everybody s fortune 
 if Winterbourne would let it. She turned it over at this 
 angle and another, and finally, after wiping it off with a 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 283 
 
 towel in every available crevice, she laid it on the table be 
 tween the two candles and sat gazing at it, with the cruel 
 wonder of youth that has suffered no lack as yet through 
 the crippling of the senses. What a foolish little thing it 
 was, she thought, to have such incredible importance. It 
 looked perfectly simple, and as if anybody could have in 
 vented it long ago. She saw no special and unbounded 
 importance in having it invented, because it seemed to her 
 that if you got to the point where a sense failed, you prob 
 ably were too old to care about using it, anyway. The 
 milk of kindness was not soured in Celia, but no harsh birth- 
 pains had yet brought forth from her that which required 
 nourishing. She was a little animal, with her own hungers 
 to satisfy. But pan-pipes answered her no question. There 
 it lay, silent, neither unkind nor compliant ; and presently 
 she took it up, still with that distaste for something that had 
 been the intimate companion of an old woman not likely to 
 have been clean, and dropped it in an empty drawer. None 
 of the drawers locked, and she threw some papers over it. 
 
 While she moved back and forth making ready for bed, 
 she forgot to think of the candle-light on her round arms 
 or even of the little black servitor in the drawer, and how 
 glad Tim Ramsay would be to get his hands on it. It had 
 come upon her in a great wave that this day had passed and 
 Lovell had not found her. To-morrow he would, undoubt 
 edly, but to-night, in a violence of maiden aloofness, she 
 blew out her candles and went to her bed. Before she fell 
 asleep, she thought incidentally that Bess had not come in, 
 and then another flick from the drift of floating memories 
 reminded her that she had told Bess a lie, an absurd one 
 about a milkman. Celia smiled off" into a drowse. She for 
 got Lovell, and remembered only that the lie was about a 
 milkman, and absurd. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE next time Bess slipped out of the house and 
 down to the club-room to meet her boys, she found 
 an excited set of them, the gang, as they had al 
 ways been, and now her most unaffected intimates. They 
 laid hold of her, the youngest among them, and dragged 
 her in, pouring out their tale in concert and inviting one 
 another to shut up. Inside, the reason was evident. One end 
 of the room had its platform and desk where Mrs. Ramsay 
 used to sit to read tales of statesmen, and behind the desk 
 was now a blackboard. Who had put it there ? The boys 
 did not know. They accused her tumultuously, thinking that 
 would betray its purpose. They suggested Mrs. Ramsay, 
 lying speechless in her bed, poor lady, because even now 
 she could not find the right word and would not willingly 
 use the wrong one, and looked at Bess with gimlet eyes, 
 imploring her not to tell them anything so terrible, because 
 that would mean history and dates. And while everybody 
 talked in a sweet ingenuous discord, Dwight Hunter arrived, 
 in his best clothes, the boys were not slow in seeing, and 
 with his fiddle-case. He made his coming as incidental and 
 reasonable as could be, and Bess saw at once how he could 
 not have done otherwise than come, because he knew music 
 and it was his logical task to teach it. The boys scuffed a 
 little with their feet in being seated. They were not best 
 pleased, but he was a young man they all hoped to resemble 
 in a few years ; and besides father, in each case, worked for 
 him. And Hunter, like a diplomat, having thought it out 
 beforehand, at once began to teach them a part-song and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 285 
 
 never curbed their vocal turbulence at all, as Bess was used 
 to doing. They must roar, he knew, until he was accepted. 
 So the blackboard was not touched at all, save at the end, 
 when the others were filing out, and the little smoker whose 
 head had been scalded slipped up and wrote on it, while 
 Hunter and Bess were talking, " I swore off," and Bess, 
 seeing him erasing it in an access of shyness, yet understood, 
 though not knowing that, according to the older delinquent s 
 proposition, he and Hunter had sworn off together. 
 
 Presently it happened that she and Hunter were walking 
 homeward, and she was gentle to him, in a contrite way, 
 having seen how little she had known the good that was in 
 him toward Lyddy and his fellow boys. The last farewell 
 said to them by the gang was from the most adventurous 
 boy of all, who slipped up to them on their way, having 
 followed so far because his voice and resolution failed to in 
 quire before. 
 
 "Say/ said he, "what s the blackboard for?" 
 
 " Write music on," said Dwight, adopting a like form of 
 terseness as being the most complete medium at this degree 
 of friendship. 
 
 " So s we can sing it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Gee ! " 
 
 Then Dwight and Bess walked along rather silent, he 
 eager not to lose any instant of putting himself forward in 
 her acceptance, yet made soft and still by the atmosphere of 
 her at his side. She seemed to him something very strong 
 and sweet, able to do most things, but strangely needing 
 protection meanwhile, to be obeyed because she was so wise 
 and good, and to be planned for always. Yet this being 
 civilized life, and conversation the code of it, he sought 
 about for words and found them logically in Mrs. Ramsay. 
 
286 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "She doesn t deserve to get on her pins again," he an 
 nounced, when Bess had represented her as improving. 
 
 "Why not?" said Bess, with an open-minded candor. 
 
 " She s made an everlasting fool of herself. Don t you 
 think she s made a fool of herself?" He was sure of his 
 ground here, remembering her flattering implication that 
 kitchen-work was beneath a man. " You would n t want 
 votes for women," he said admiringly. 
 
 " No, I don t want to vote, specially," said Bess. " But I 
 might have to." 
 
 "Why should you have to?" 
 
 " It might seem best." 
 
 "You don t believe in a woman like Mrs. Ramsay, leav 
 ing her children to riot and Winterbourne playing nurse to 
 em. What atom of good has she ever done ? " 
 
 There was no heat in this. It was all one to him whether 
 the Ramsay children grew up to be Hottentots, but he 
 wanted to understand Bess profoundly. 
 
 " No, I don t believe in that," said Bess. She seemed, 
 as she often did, to have difficulty in expressing her strong 
 conviction. " But I guess she could n t help it if she felt 
 just that way. Some folks have to act as they have to, even 
 if it never does any good, don t they ? " 
 
 Dwight was silent for a moment, while Mrs. Ramsay, 
 her manuscripts, her handbag, her benevolent service to a 
 world that intermittently smiled at her, rearranged them 
 selves in his mind. He began to see in her the first dusty 
 reformer, disfigured by the dirt she has kicked up in her 
 own path, the unconsidered rubble that will go to the foun 
 dation of goodly temples. He was under the dominion of 
 the woman s mind in that clarity of sympathy that comes 
 through the rapport of what we call love. He guessed out 
 reasons and feelings in his lady before she voluntarily dis- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 287 
 
 played them, and every one of them redounded to her own 
 dominance over him. Now he saw, Bess was not a woman 
 bent on lowly service because it called her. She would ad 
 minister, if affairs beckoned her, and with as humble a 
 mind. Mrs. Ramsay had been the rebel who went untidily 
 about upsetting the machinery of ordered life because she 
 must, and Bess was of those who would answer the call 
 to put it in order. But he did not reflect that Bess was of 
 a generation later than Mrs. Ramsay, and her discontents, 
 if she had them, would be of another complexion. Perhaps 
 she had none. He had seen, as Winterbourne had, though 
 not with as clear a recognition and power of formulating, 
 that, however Bess might strain in the collar of hard life, 
 she was not an image of resignation but of obedience. 
 
 " Good-night," she said. 
 
 They were at the gate, and he had not talked to her, he 
 knew, with any degree of cogency that would urge her to 
 think of him after he had gone. She was opening the house- 
 door softly because it was simpler for no one to know she 
 had been away, and he went on with his fiddle-case. He 
 thought of what a man had said to him once of the girl he 
 had meant to marry, who died in her beautiful youth : 
 " When you re older, you take fancies to women ; but when 
 you re young, you know." 
 
 He knew. All he wished, in this beguilement of the 
 summer night, was that they two were in a simple, savagely 
 natural life together, on an island perhaps, where the large 
 calm look of the earth and heaven would fit her, and where 
 they could be as happy as the child she was. 
 
 He was not surprised to meet Winterbourne, smoking, 
 hands behind him and eyes bent on the ground. This was 
 his favorite walk, to the little bridge and back again. After 
 that he usually went on to the Ramsays and patrolled the 
 
288 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 house half an hour, called out Harriet to ask if the children 
 were safe and Ramsay had got home. Once he saw Ram 
 say s silhouette on the curtain, in the children s sleeping- 
 room, a distraught outline, hat atop, as if Ramsay, like his 
 wife, could never pause to take off travelling gear. Winter- 
 bourne chuckled at that. He was glad Ramsay had been 
 kicked by destiny into some fellowship with his own chil 
 dren. What business had a man to beckon souls into this 
 precarious world if he did n t mean to be their guardian after 
 they got here ? Sometimes, after his late return from town, 
 Ramsay came up to the house to see his wife, and this strange 
 pair, about whom nobody in the world knew anything ex 
 cept that they had brought into the world beautiful children, 
 were left to a ten minutes communion, Mrs. Ramsay per 
 haps forgetting her words, and Ramsay affected by it in a 
 manner no one could estimate. 
 
 To-night, on his musing course, Winterbourne stopped 
 at Dwight s nearness, and gave him good-evening. He did 
 not notice the violin-case. He was not used to marking the 
 detail of life unless it concerned him personally. 
 
 " Looks like dry weather," he said. 
 
 <c Yes." Dwight stood a moment, staring at him and 
 thinking of Bess. "Winterbourne," he said without calcu 
 lation, because it burst from him, " she believes in women s 
 voting." 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Bess." 
 
 Winterbourne laughed softly under his breath. 
 
 " Bless her buttons," said he. " Mrs. Ramsay been at 
 her?" 
 
 "No. It doesn t sound like conversion. Sounds as if she 
 thought it was common-sense. That s how everything 
 sounds as soon as she gets hold of it." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 289 
 
 "Well," said Winterbourne, "why not? For heaven s 
 sake, why not? Why shouldn t Bess Hartwell be setting 
 the town in order and not my infernal house? I d have her 
 for mayor if I could. She d clean us up mighty quick. She d 
 mend this highway." He planted a great foot three inches 
 lower in a hole and kicked. "The infernal fools! They 
 plough up the sides of the road into the middle, and we live 
 in mud from March to November. It ought to be an abso 
 lute monarchy. You and I ought to be put to breaking 
 stones to make good roads, or building pyramids for tombs 
 of poets Jim Lovell d go in there Jim s a poet " 
 
 So embarked, Dwight knew he would go on world with 
 out end, lulled by the sound of his words, largely careless 
 of their intent; he made no scruple of interrupting. 
 
 " But look at Mrs. Ramsay." 
 
 " Mrs. Ramsay s a criminal," said Winterbourne, start 
 ing on. " She ought to be walled up alive. They d have 
 done it in the good old days." 
 
 But as he went Winterbourne s mind abode with Mrs. 
 Ramsay, and while it formulated her, he muttered, cursing 
 her with his fervid tongue because she was derelict to duty 
 and yet doing her ample justice within that tribunal inside 
 him. Poor, careworn, worried housewife over a world disor 
 dered ! This was what he saw she was, single of aim, sincere 
 in every flurried raid, without vanity, in evidence every 
 where because, like the older enthusiast, she who might have 
 spent herself in religious consecration, she must bear her 
 testimony. Not an abuse of them all but she had fought it; 
 she was the champion of peace, of suffrage, of forest pre 
 servation, of temperance what cause lived where Anna 
 Clayton Ramsay s name was unheard ? She had broken her 
 own nerve on the wheel of the universe, and here was the 
 small planet of which she had vowed to be vicegerent, to 
 
290 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 keep it sweet and blooming, rolling through space with 
 nothing to rule over it but the far-away greatest God of all 
 Who lets His underlings play what tricks they will with gov 
 ernance and mete out to themselves their own desert. 
 
 Winterbourne got quite angry over it all, as he stumped 
 along. He saw Anna Clayton Ramsay now as the worship 
 per of order in the large, not in the little. She had been 
 willing to leave her own house windows blurred that the 
 world s windows might be clearer toward the light. Yet her 
 own children had to look out of her windows. He went 
 home in a temper. Bess, carrying one of her abounding 
 trays, with its two glasses of yellow drink, met him in the 
 hall, and was smiling only in passing. But he took the tray 
 from her and steadied it on a newel-post while he hurled at 
 her, 
 
 "I m as much of a criminal as Anna Clayton Ramsay." 
 
 "Her door s open," Bess indicated, in little more than 
 dumb show. 
 
 " I don t care. She s a criminal. She ought to be on bread 
 and water ball and chain iron cage like the old French 
 cardinal s, forever damned. She lets her house go to thunder, 
 and I let you try to keep mine from going, and some day 
 you 11 drop in your tracks, and I shall fall into the pit with 
 Anna Clayton Ramsay." 
 
 " She s sick," said Bess. She was smiling at him in an 
 affection that seemed to say, " I am faithfulness, too, as well 
 as love. As I smile now I shall keep on smiling." 
 
 " Don t care," said Winterbourne. " Bess, do you think 
 there s anything better for a man or woman to do than just 
 stick to their job?" 
 
 Bess had one of her moments of incredible density. 
 
 "What job?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh, you little ninnyhammer! the job he finds facing 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 291 
 
 him when he opens his eyes on this infernal world. The 
 job he makes for himself. Anyway, his job. Aren t those 
 four yellow-topped children over there Anna Clayton Ram 
 say s job ? " 
 
 "There are five," said Bess. " Don t you count Tim?" 
 
 Winterbourne looked at her and grinned. She was beyond 
 words provoking, and often he had a glimmering sense that 
 her response to the obvious might be only the veil of what 
 she really thought. 
 
 " Bess," said he, "sometimes I think you re not half such 
 a fool as you look." 
 
 She broke down then and giggled, and sat on the lower 
 stair and laughed noiselessly until she cried two round clear 
 tears that rolled down her pink cheeks like little worlds in 
 a heavenly sunrise, and Winterbourne had the sudden in 
 spiration that Dwight Hunter, if he were there, might think 
 with rapture of kissing them away. 
 
 "Bess," said he rashly, "do you like Dwight Hunter?" 
 
 She looked up at him in recovered seriousness. 
 
 "Better n I did at first," she answered at once. "He s 
 so good to the poor." 
 
 " Good to the poor ? My buttons ! What s he done ? " 
 
 Bess thought she knew, but she fancied she was in the 
 confidence of the young philanthropist. 
 
 " I just thought so," she said. She rose and took on 
 her manner of quiet practicality. She laid her hands on the 
 tray. 
 
 " No, no," said Winterbourne. " I 11 carry it up. I ought 
 to be court-martialled and shot for not toting everything for 
 you, you little nigger. Bess, I never saw you really laugh, 
 before." 
 
 Her lips curved again. 
 
 " I guess I don t laugh very often." 
 
292 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Is it because you re too infernally tired all the time ? 
 I bet it is. This thing has got to stop. There s going to 
 be a wench in the kitchen, and Anna Clayton Ramsay s 
 going to be carted off to a sanatorium, and Lyddy to the 
 work- us, and I m going to send for a grand piano and a 
 pile of books, and you re going to be crammed with cul 
 ture and sent abroad to marry a wicount. Now I 11 carry 
 up the tray." 
 
 At the head of the stairs Bess took one glass from it and 
 went in to Mrs. Ramsay. 
 
 "You carry in the other," she commanded. 
 
 So Winterbourne unwillingly, even startled, as not having 
 foreseen the path his helpfulness would lead him, took on 
 himself the task of Ganymede and went into his wife s cham 
 ber, she sitting pretty and rosy against pillows, not in the least, 
 he grudgingly thought, Bess and her cares still in his mind, 
 like any invalid he ever saw. The old eager look leaped 
 into her eyes at sight of him, and he, giving her the glass 
 awkwardly, met it with a kindly one. If she was not sick 
 and sometimes on his evening walks he doubted whether 
 she was not able to be very much on deck she must be 
 encouraged to a better state of things. She had something 
 to say to him, and pointed out the chair at her side. 
 
 "John, I think Bess believes in the immanence of God." 
 
 " Of course she does. She s too healthy not to." 
 
 " Do you mean her physical health ? " 
 
 " Of course I do. Partly. Her blood flows true. When 
 she stands upright, there s a line from the throne of God 
 going straight through her and pinning her to the earth. 
 And the currents go both ways, up from the earth and down 
 from God." 
 
 Catherine did not know what he meant, though it sounded 
 mystical and she strained her tired mind to see if she could 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 293 
 
 get out of it something valuable to be salted down. She had 
 a great idea of using things afterwards, not perhaps for com 
 petitive display, but in some fashion to add to the richness 
 of life. Winterbourne also didn t quite know what he meant, 
 only that it was exactly as Bess seemed to him. 
 
 "What makes you say it s because she s healthy? * 
 Catherine groped again. " If that was so, the people with 
 the strongest bodies would be the most spiritual. And 
 they re not." 
 
 " Anything that s unspoiled believes in God," said Win 
 terbourne dogmatically. "Anyway he believes in Him 
 enough to be afraid of Him or fight Him. Bess is such a 
 perfect darling she believes in Him and loves Him." 
 
 Catherine did not think he ought to call even so filial 
 a creature "darling"; but she let it pass, finding in herself 
 scant strength for any controversy. 
 
 " Afraid of Him ! " she said. " I can understand that. 
 * Caliban upon Setebos. 
 
 Winterbourne had not read very far in the poet Brown 
 ing. He said, after one trial, he had no music and was a 
 slovenly workman besides. It wasn t because he was cryp 
 tic that people had to cut paths through his labyrinths ; it 
 was because he had been too cocky to take pains. So he 
 shared the impression common among others in a more 
 humble intellectual walk, that Setebos was an island. 
 
 " I don t know anything about that," he said. " I only 
 know if there s a thunder-shower, I m afraid and put my 
 head under the bedclothes. When the sun comes out I 
 strut. That s because I ve heard Zeus speaking. Bess 
 would n t do that. When the lightning wakes her, she prob 
 ably pops her head up and says, ( Want something, Father 
 Zeus ? What d ye lack ? Hebe asleep ? Ganymede gone 
 on a tout ? Want me to carry a tray to somebody ? " 
 
294 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "John," said Catherine, almost in a portentous tone, "did 
 you know that Anna Clayton Ramsay believes we are God ? " 
 
 "Does she?" Winterbourne responded grimly. "Well, 
 I never ve seen anything in Anna Clayton Ramsay person 
 ally to support her claim." 
 
 " I have always been an agnostic," Catherine went on ; 
 but Winterbourne forgot she was sick and to be considered, 
 and emitted the sound that served him for a groan. 
 
 "An agnostic, Cat! You re not an agnostic. Nobody is 
 but a few old dickeys that have read books till their heads 
 are addled. You ve just got hold of a lot of terms, and 
 they ve choked you up so you can t breathe. You re like a 
 mouse in a rag-bag. The bag shakes so you can t even 
 make a nest there." 
 
 "But you re not a churchman yourself, John," she re 
 minded him. 
 
 "A churchman !" said Winterbourne, with scorn, getting 
 out of his chair. " I believe in Jupiter, and so does Bess. I 
 swear by Jupiter and I swear by Bess. So does Jupiter, I bet 
 you. We re a close corporation." 
 
 Catherine was looking at him and frowning, forgetting to 
 drink her egg-nog. The glass shook a little in her grasp, and 
 Winterbourne steadied it for her. 
 
 " There, there," he said with a gruff kindliness, " drink 
 your milk." 
 
 But he wondered at the same time how a delicate creature 
 like this could be fed all day long and continue to absorb 
 it. Catherine had not finished her queries. 
 
 "She says I must pray, too." The phrase held wonder. 
 
 "Bess?" 
 
 "But she doesn t know any prayers except c Now I lay 
 me. I had her get the prayer-book and read me some. She 
 quite waked up, John. She said they were beautiful. But I 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 295 
 
 persuaded her to go to church, a week ago Sunday, and last 
 Sunday she wouldn t go. She said it made her sleepy." 
 
 " Good for Bess ! Don t you interfere between her and 
 Jove, Catherine." 
 
 " It is n t Jove." Her eyes grew larger. It looked even 
 as if she had been frightened by something sacrilegious per 
 haps, and Winterbourne, noting that, thought it seemed like 
 terror at seeing sacred unapproachable things brought to the 
 aid of the market-place. " She said I must pray for strength 
 to do what I ought to do. But when I asked her what I 
 ought to do, she said she did n t know. What do you sup 
 pose she thinks I ought to do?" 
 
 Winterbourne did n t know either ; but the imp inside him 
 that commented on current events suggested it might be that 
 she should cease drinking egg-nogs and get up and behave 
 prettily. 
 
 "I asked her if she prayed night and morning, and she 
 said no, she was too busy. Don t you think that s the 
 queerest thing ? " 
 
 " No. I think it s the most outrageous thing I ever heard." 
 
 "Oh, she didn t intend to be outrageous." But though 
 he had not meant that, he would not tell her what did seem 
 to him as outrageous, that the child should not have time 
 for her baby-prayers. " But when I asked her when she did 
 pray, she said, Most all the time. Does she seem to you 
 like a religious girl, John ? " 
 
 " She seems to me like a martyr in this abominable house," 
 Winterbourne muttered within his beard. 
 
 "What? But this is queer, too. I asked her if she knelt 
 to pray, and she said no. She said if she did that folks might 
 see her and it would take her mind off. Now if she s as 
 devout as she seems, shouldn t you think she d be glad to 
 be in difficult circumstances?" 
 
296 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " No, by thunder!" said Winterbourne, " I shouldn t. 
 She s a perfectly normal creature, and she knows the Al 
 mighty understands her like a book. She knows she needs 
 every grain of powder she s got for warfare. She is n t going 
 to spend any popping off at marks." 
 
 " Do you mean the conservation of energy ? " 
 He hated his colloquialisms when they were so belabored. 
 "Good-night, Catherine," he said. "You ll be tired." 
 "You were dear to come," she told him. Her face 
 smoothed out, and the brightness ran back into it. He had 
 the shamed pleasure of escape, flavored with the certainty 
 that she would want him to come again. 
 
XXIII 
 
 WINTERBOURNE went down into his particu 
 lar sitting-room, where the windows were wide 
 open and the night breeze came in, thinking at 
 first that he would light his lamp and read away the hours 
 that always seemed to be at his command for this loved 
 pleasure. Sleep was not so necessary to him as it used to 
 be, and he often found himself wishing it was not desirable 
 at all. Though he thought he had a healthy acquiescence 
 in the course of things, the wane of physical life, the going 
 hence into a decreed obscurity when the body is no more, 
 he kept a steady serious love for the earth and her beau 
 ties, and no hours of day and night together were enough 
 to exhaust his tried passion for her. But to-night even 
 Theocritus seemed a task. He was a little tired, more with a 
 weariness of the mind from his few minutes with Catherine 
 than from the day itself. All his occupations now, he would 
 frankly have owned, were play. It was play to help Dwight 
 Hunter run up and down the rows of carrots with a wheel- 
 hoe, fun to think their feathery green was his because he 
 had evoked it from the earth, fun to go clamming and come 
 home so full of salt air that his body was one great appe 
 tite, and then to stretch his legs and smoke. But when 
 inconvenient questions began to play upon his brain, then 
 he was tired. 
 
 His problem now was to save Bess from her task of 
 nurse and kitchen-maid ; but she would not be saved. She 
 knew more than any of them about the scared mind of 
 Lyddy, fearing more invasion, trembling over her kitchen 
 
298 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 rights, wondering, in spite of her trust in Winterbourne, 
 whether she might not be crowded out altogether and per 
 haps end her days with the relations with whom she had 
 had perpetual warfare. To Winterbourne, Lyddy was a 
 dear old creature intimately connected with his own life ; 
 but even he did not see through the crust of her cantanker- 
 ousness that she was a pathetic old woman with a trembling 
 heart. For her sake Bess would have no other kitchen 
 help. Therefore, the only other factor in the problem was 
 Mrs. Ramsay, and she must go. Sick or well she must go 
 home to her own job. The phrase pleased him, and he bit 
 his teeth on the stem of his cold pipe and repeated it grimly. 
 Her husband and her children were the job she had under 
 taken. 
 
 Then suddenly, under his breath, Winterbourne began 
 to laugh. He continued, though still softly, because no un 
 restrained mirth was so necessary to him as to bethink him 
 self not to call down something feminine from above to 
 inquire what the matter was. Even Bess would have broken 
 his self-communing into pieces. The cap he had meant for 
 Mrs. Ramsay had been suddenly caught by some breeze of 
 fancy, whirled about and settled on his own head, and, 
 to his pathetic terror, it fitted. What if this house, what 
 if the wife he had married and the attendant train of cir 
 cumstance, were his job, as Mrs. Ramsay s gold-topped 
 children were hers ? He had for the last few years avoided 
 fruitless speculation over the earlier part of his life. Hav 
 ing settled that he and Catherine were to, live apart, he 
 chose not to dwell upon it any more. It had seemed to 
 him that he had turned out of a way that led nowhere a 
 path where you were expected to keep flowers always blos 
 soming, but where there were fragrances too heavy for the 
 normal nerves, into a broad highway, and here the world was 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 299 
 
 walking up and down on its sane, commonplace errands, 
 and it was a man s chief pleasure to look on. But could it 
 be that, having entered the choking path and begun to water 
 the flowers there, he had got to continue cherishing them ? 
 Possibly nobody earned exemption by merely wanting it, 
 and was it his task to recognize that he still had a house, in 
 the warmest meaning of the word, and that it was his task 
 to set it in order and keep it so ? 
 
 He resolutely turned back to the beginning of it all, 
 when Catherine had left him to go abroad, and they had 
 both realized that it was for their lifetime. This was his 
 deed. He had not said it should be so, but he had made it 
 so by dividing the property and showing her that his was 
 to be henceforth a different order of life, one that she not 
 only was unfitted to enter, but that she would not wish 
 to share. He made himself recall pictures he had then 
 resolutely put by as part of the hurt of life that need not 
 be perpetuated. Why should a man in the light of modern 
 day scarify himself with knives of penitence? He saw her 
 wan face when they parted, the pathetic eyes that seemed 
 always to be beseeching him to make her happiness. It 
 was n t he, he often wanted to tell her, out of his first sav 
 age impatience at it all, it was n t he that had the power of 
 life and death over her happiness. It was life itself. This 
 present world, if you let yourself be imprisoned by the pas 
 sions and desires of it, is a bad box to be in. That, she 
 never had the wit to recognize. She looked to him as the 
 inferior god who could weave certainties, just as Lyddy 
 turned to him to make her safety. And he saw now that if 
 it was his job, he had got, if not to cause her happiness, to 
 help her to endurance. 
 
 Winterbourne, in his way of long reflection, was always 
 recognizing the pathos of woman-things who are so in love 
 
3 oo JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 with happiness. Yet perhaps it was being in love with 
 beauty really, because, satisfy the ideal in them, and they 
 will starve, walk over hot iron, accept martyrdom gladly. 
 It made him angry with them, furious, that they should 
 keep on carrying this banner of the ideal into the market 
 place, and expecting men to rally round it. It made so 
 much trouble, not for him only and his busy mates, but for 
 the women, too. Why was it that they had to worship this 
 absurd romance, the glamour that exists only to veil the 
 hard condition underneath ? Nobody could meet their im 
 possible ideals, nobody but the poets on the printed page; 
 the poets themselves were no such admirable figures, unless, 
 indeed, they were dead. 
 
 His mind went wandering off into the past where there 
 were knights and that kingdom in the air called chivalry. 
 It was enchanting to him, too, the aerial framework of it, 
 when he saw it in the sky. But how men who were making 
 trusts and fighting trusts, rolling over and over, their teeth 
 at each other s throats in the dust of the highway, could be 
 expected to see gleaming cities above them, armies fight 
 ing in the clouds, he could not guess. Yet the unalterable 
 conviction never left him that Catherine looked to him for 
 her happiness and to no one else. And he had, in the years 
 so far behind them that they two were no longer the two 
 they were then, given her the biggest of promissory notes. 
 But nature, as colossal in her brute way as the soul of man, 
 had risen up and denied her joy. He could not create it for 
 her, because they were different people now. How could he 
 make her serene when she made him uneasy ? With Bess he 
 was as much at ease as if she were a pretty child playing in the 
 yard while he pursued his chosen homely tasks. If he called 
 her to look at a butterfly, she would come, say c Pretty/ and 
 return to her own as simple deeds. But Catherine, if he 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 301 
 
 summoned her to see the butterfly, would flush and glow 
 and ask him if he meant the soul. They were not mates of 
 kindred tastes, going hand in hand together through a world 
 they saw with the same eyes. What should be done about 
 it now? Should he try to make her see with his eyes? The 
 petty tyranny of it ! Her way was as good as his, if he could 
 stomach it. Should he try to see with hers ? Impossible. It 
 would wear out his endurance in a week, so that he would 
 have made himself more cruel to her than before. Yet, he 
 saw more plainly, the more he forced himself to look the 
 state of things in the face, that it could not be shifted. It 
 was his job. 
 
XXIV 
 
 EVERY morning Winterbourne went over to the Ram- 
 says and started the children on their day. At first, 
 finding Tonty doing it, he washed the faces of Teeny 
 and Tiny, but this he gave over because Tim, seeing him 
 at it, had laughed. Winterbourne set a big bowl on the play 
 room hearth as a spot that might be slopped with impunity, 
 and Tim stood in the doorway several minutes, creased with 
 mirth, to note the stoical forbearance on the nurse s face, 
 the look, suited to the children s expectations, as if he liked 
 it. Yet Winterbourne did it badly, deft as he was, because 
 Teeny and Tiny, from his participance in it, would regard 
 it as a game. Winterbourne looked up and saw him, and at 
 Tim s morning face of smiles, he frowned. 
 
 "Come here, young man," he said. "Take a hand your 
 self." 
 
 But Tim refused and gave the variety of laugh known as 
 a snicker. 
 
 "You go ahead, Jackie," he recommended. "You re 
 doing it elegant. Nobody can do it as elegant as you." 
 
 Winterbourne dried a shining pink cheek tenderly with a 
 towel too smooth to take the water, and albeit full of holes. 
 It was all he and Tonty had been able to find. 
 
 " They re your own blood and bone, young man," he 
 said. "You d better take a hand at them now and then." 
 
 But Tim shook his head. sunnily and went away whistling. 
 The wise Tonty heard this, and it gave her a serious look 
 for a long time after the children were clean and until the 
 day s carnival had made them dirty again. This was the first 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 303 
 
 time she had suspected that Jackie s deeds, done for them, 
 were not a part of his pleasure. Now it seemed that they 
 were tasks, undertaken from benevolence, though she did 
 not know so long a word, and the knowledge graved 
 another line in her understanding of life, a line that 
 should some time set its visible counterpart upon her fore 
 head also. From that morning she herself washed the two 
 smallest faces, and bribed Tony, by means that led to her 
 own penury in toys and dearest possessions, to wash his. 
 Sometimes the bribes were big enough, sometimes they 
 failed, and then Tony went smooched like a coal-man. But 
 the two little ones she could manage by the sleight of her 
 vigorous young arm, and they were made to rise the earlier 
 that she and they might have their daily battle over the 
 tub. 
 
 Tonty was very much hated about this time. Often her 
 lavatory offences were not forgotten all day long, and she was 
 an outcast from her clan. On Saturday only there was a riot 
 known as full bath. Of this little Harriet had official charge, 
 but so ill did she accomplish her mission that Mr. Ramsay 
 himself, the unknown as much almost to his children as to 
 the town, plunged into the breach and either scrubbed his 
 offspring or in some dark fashion ensured their cleansing. 
 
 Winterbourne felt at one time a grudging appreciation of 
 Mrs. Ramsay. Here she had been known as an absentee 
 mother, and yet, behold, the children were manifestly in 
 greater disorder than before her exile. This, in a modified 
 form, he said one day to Tim. 
 
 "The children evidently miss their mother very much," 
 he conceded. 
 
 Tim replied with an airy cynicism, 
 
 " They miss Mary Flaherty, that s who they miss. If 
 Mary d come back, we d all be as smooth as silk." 
 
304 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 As smooth as silk they had never been since Tim s birth, 
 yet everything being relative, it might seem so now. 
 
 But a solemn morning had come when, summoned by 
 Bess, the children were to see their mother, and the three of 
 them, marshalled by Tonty, set forth on the road, with hair 
 just escaping from its douche and brushing into the curl 
 nature had long ago decided upon, and cheeks shining pink. 
 Tonty had thought the proprieties demanded that Tim also 
 should go, but he had drawn the sheet up to his chin and 
 bidden her forge ahead and let a man sleep. Tonty reasoned 
 that he also was a child, though so long a one, and it seemed 
 an ill return for the clemency of Bess in bidding them to this 
 great ceremonial not to respond fully. They all had an im 
 perfect idea of what they were to see. Once they had pottered 
 off alone to a woman s club in town where mother was to 
 speak, and had never reached it at all, through an incomplete 
 understanding of the way ; but they had brought up at a 
 cider mill, and been taken home by a farmer in the edge of 
 the evening, soaked through and through with the juice of 
 apples, and heavy-headed with sleep. But this was a festival 
 decreed and they went toward it gravely. They were four 
 beautiful children, the sun lighting their golden tops, and 
 whatever raiment they had on hidden by four of the dirtiest 
 tiers mortal child was ever clothed withal. Bess saw them 
 coming their eager straggling way, and went down the path 
 to meet them. She appraised the tiers, and regretted them, 
 but said nothing, knowing from the care on Tonty s brow 
 that the best possible had been done, and to criticise would 
 be to add a darker veil to that sweet, serious face. 
 
 Bess had a little table set out in the arbor. There were 
 heart-shaped cookies for it, by and by, and goblets of morn 
 ing s milk. She took a hand of Tony, for he was frowning 
 by this time in suspicion of the quest, and went in with a gay 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 305 
 
 alacrity, as if it were a very nice errand they had come on. 
 Tony squirmed a little to get his fingers away from her strong 
 ones, and his face twisted slightly. He wanted to roar out 
 with the candor of the natural man and demand what he was 
 here for anyway, on strange stairs. But even as he longed, 
 his small legs were lifting over the treads, and he reflected 
 that after all he was a man ; and then he was in a pretty room 
 and a lady lay there in bed, with a ruffle round her neck, and 
 he was led up to her, the others following, and told, " Here s 
 mother." Bess released him then and gave the others a kindly 
 little poke to get them into line, and turned about and left 
 them. She had things to do in the adjacent room, and her 
 good sense told her to let Mrs. Ramsay see her children un 
 hindered. But really nobody but Tonty, who pondered many 
 things in her heart, and had kept a clear memory that Jackie 
 had told her mother was sick and gone away to get well, 
 knew it was mother at all. It was a nice pink lady with smooth 
 brown hair, the braids of it coming out on each shoulder of 
 her nightie, and she was looking at them steadily. There 
 was a good deal of the baby in Tony, when he was not on 
 his native ground. He got uneasy under the look, and thought 
 he would turn away in a minute and begin to whistle; but 
 somehow he stayed staring back at her, and really in his con 
 fusion and the strain of it all, he wanted to cry. But the lady 
 looked at Tonty now more directly than at the rest and said 
 plainly, 
 
 " How dirty their shoe-strings are ! " 
 
 She had meant to say tiers, and the innocent word had 
 flown away and incontinently escaped her. All the corners 
 of her mind that had to do with speech were disordered still. 
 She would have a great deal of repacking and labelling to do 
 there before she could put her hand on things in the dark. 
 Tonty frowned anxiously, and bent to look at their pathetic 
 
3 o6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 feet. She had insisted on shoes to-day because it was a Sun 
 day occasion, and the mismated yawning gear she found had 
 not justified the valor of the search. Yet the strings, soggy 
 with dust and wear, had not seemed to her inferior enough 
 to merit scrutiny. 
 
 " Come here," said Mrs. Ramsay. More pink had run 
 into her face and her eyes glistened. Something in the spec 
 tacle of four clean faces in the morning sun, four gleaming 
 heads, seemed to her noteworthy. " Kiss mother," she in 
 vited them. 
 
 Tonty gravely did it, and with her duteous right arm 
 brought Teeny and Tiny to the scratch. They would have 
 kissed anybody that looked as pleasant as the lady in bed, 
 if they happened to feel like kissing. Being normal little 
 animals, they sometimes felt so madly like it that they could 
 have kissed the turkey-gobbler if he would have put his 
 feathers flat long enough for them to stop being afraid of 
 him. And again Helen herself might have wooed and seen 
 them taking to their bosoms some damaged doll of sawdust 
 lineage. But Tony was in no such vein. He stepped back a 
 pace, and his freckles stood out roundly over the pallor under 
 them. 
 
 " You ain t mother," he said hoarsely. " I won t." 
 
 " Of course I m mother," said Mrs. Ramsay remind- 
 ingly, almost meltingly, for he looked to her a very nice 
 little boy. Besides, she was hurt. " Why do you think I m 
 not mother?" 
 
 Challenged thus to the point of pure reason, Tony was 
 ready, with indisputable proof. 
 
 " Mother," said he, "wears a bonnet and gloves." 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay seemed to collapse visibly in the bed, and 
 stared at her little boy, not to put him out of countenance, 
 but with a sincere desire to comprehend him. She had begun 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 307 
 
 to wonder about her children, how they were doing without 
 the wise brooding she made no doubt she gave them. Hav 
 ing summoned them, she had seen them, in candid anticipa 
 tion, flocking to her breast. But here was a set-faced little 
 boy, hands clenched across his rotundity under the dirty 
 tier, and he abjured her. Mrs. Ramsay had never felt so 
 small, not when a statesman, in open meeting, challenged 
 her statistics. 
 
 Tonty was mortified. She felt partly the hostess of the 
 meeting and partly the mother of the three piebald waifs, 
 half-clean half-dirty, like illustrations of the origin of evil. 
 It was her part to offer some gracious consolation to the 
 repulsed lady, the while her good little right hand itched to 
 lay upon Tony the smacking he deserved. 
 
 " Shall you come home soon, mother? " she inquired, with 
 a sweet precision, and Mrs. Ramsay replied that she should 
 come as soon as she stopped remembering her cerebellum. 
 And here Bess, judging the interval by the amount of work 
 she had done in absence, considered it time to remove the 
 guests, and swept them all downstairs before her, almost 
 tumbling over one another now in their eagerness to escape, 
 and out to their arboreal banquet, where even Tonty, released 
 from the spell of the attractive but exacting lady called 
 mother, chorussed with the rest. 
 
 While they ate and choked ecstatically, Winterbourne on 
 his own mission, self-appointed, the child of last night s rev 
 erie, appeared at his wife s bedside. She was quite placid. 
 The time for her mid-forenoon drive was not yet ; she had 
 had breakfast, and to lie unnoted, by the world forgot, was as 
 near release from her haunting nervous miseries as she could 
 now attain. But here was her husband, something that 
 looked like eagerness shining in his eyes; really it was only 
 the determination to be a good boy. 
 
3 o8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I want you to dress, Catherine," said he, " and come out 
 for a walk. 
 
 She looked up at him in a terrified amaze. The time was 
 not many weeks ago when she would have hailed the invi 
 tation as the paean to the bride, and gone with him light- 
 footed. Now she had passed into that no man s land where 
 bed is the house of refuge, and its laws concern risings and 
 sleepings and the administering of food. In so far as he 
 would drag her forth, he was an invader, her enemy. 
 
 "Where s Bess?" she helplessly besought him. Bess, 
 being omniscient, would know whether this thing had to be. 
 
 "You needn t put on all your things," he encouraged 
 her. " We re going down the back path to the Valley of 
 Birds. Nobody 11 see you. In ten minutes I ll knock." 
 
 He left her, and when the door closed behind him, she 
 could feel no relief. She knew he was on the other side of 
 it, inexorable, and that here was the chance she had come 
 back to seize of being a wife after his own indifferent 
 heart, now mysteriously requiring her. She did get up, and 
 she did dress, the outer covering only her pretty neglige; 
 and with a shawl over that and her braids down her back she 
 looked like a frightened creature reft unprepared from home. 
 She opened the door uncertainly, hoping he was gone ; but 
 he was there in the plenitude of his strength and mastery. 
 
 "That s a good girl," said he. "Now take my arm. 
 We 11 slip out at the side door, and nobody 11 be the wiser." 
 
 Bess, she prayed, would be the wiser. All her hope lay 
 in championship, at some random point, when they went 
 through the house. But the sitting-room, the blinds closed 
 toward the full sun, lay in a clouded peace. Children s voices 
 came from the back, but that was not the way they were 
 going. Through the door he drew her, in a haste she found 
 it hard to follow, and down the path between the carrots, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 309 
 
 through the gate and into a green lane. Midway in the car 
 rots she had a recurrence of her sense that it was absurd to 
 have them there, encroaching toward the house, but it was 
 only a comment of the mind now. Her feelings were en 
 gaged far otherwise. Since she was going to die before they 
 reached home, what matter whether carrots had been sown 
 or asphodel? The lane led to a miraculous pasture here in 
 the outskirts of the town, pine woods, a violet bank in the 
 early days of the year, and a spring. But in the midst was a 
 circular knoll, and this was where they were wont to come 
 to sit, and here nested the birds who had found out that in 
 Winterbourne s woods they were never shot. There was a 
 peculiar orchestral effect of them here, as if the way the val 
 ley lay drew in sounds from all woodland quarters, and in 
 the evening it was brave to hear the " kling " of the thrush, 
 and fancy you were in deeper coverts. 
 
 Catherine knew its beauties and repute, and that the way 
 to it even, the winding lane with roses and tangled black 
 berry, was like a road to summer ; but to-day the forms of 
 things rose darkly before her eyes, and the smoke of glory, 
 as from an altar where beauty burns before high God, was 
 absent. But still he bore her along, talking a little, in his 
 big voice that sounded louder than it need, and she could 
 not answer. Winterbourne never heeded that from anybody. 
 He was of the race of the born soliloquist. What he said 
 was the innocently egotistic expression of his own mind, like 
 savage man roaring in the wilderness because something in 
 him demands release. After a long time, it seemed to her, 
 they were in the Valley of Birds, and Winterbourne released 
 her arm with a breath of content over his clever purpose. 
 
 "Sit down on the bank, Catherine," he bade her. " Lie 
 down. Lie on your back and look up. Don t you call this 
 better than the ceiling of a room ? " 
 
3 io JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 She did lie down, but on her side, and put an arm over 
 her eyes to shut out the hateful trees. 
 
 " We must come by dawn some day/* he said, disposing 
 himself on the grass with satisfaction. "That s when the 
 birds get in their work. Little devils ! to say all they ve got 
 to say while they re alone ; they know we re tied to our 
 beds by sloth and civilization, because we use up every 
 thing we ve got in the course of twenty-four hours and can t 
 renew ourselves in time to be up at the morning chorus. 
 If we held service in the woods, we should know a few 
 things we don t now." 
 
 So he rolled on, forgetting Catherine, forgetting every pre 
 conceived determination, and conscious of what he some 
 times called, in moments of formulating, the Pan feeling, 
 the sense that he was at one with his habitation, the earth. 
 The earth currents ran without let through his veins, and he 
 was not too old to feel his heart beat with a serene ecstasy. 
 He murmured to himself now stanzas of poetry, the mean 
 ing of it, the English or the Greek of it not mattering, so 
 that the sound seemed to his ears to fit the diapason of the 
 time. Winterbourne felt blest, as he lay and looked up into 
 his own trees. Here he was in a seclusion he could govern, 
 as deep, so far as the ear and eye went, at this point, as if 
 forests encompassed him. He had the robust health that 
 lets a man still answer the call of beauty and of life, and dis 
 ordering emotions were far behind him. And then his eyes, 
 following down the curious fretwork of a tree-bole to the 
 needles below it, were caught by the blue and white figure 
 stretched there in its unthinking grace, and he remembered 
 the woman-thing he had brought out to lie in the lap of the 
 woods and be mothered by the great kindness of the air. 
 
 "Cat," he said softly, "you asleep?" 
 
 " No," she answered, in as still a voice, not taking her 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 311 
 
 arm down from her eyes. " John, how are we ever going 
 to get home ? " 
 
 To her, also, it was the primeval wilderness, but with a 
 difference. He, in his musing, found himself shocked back 
 to verities. Here he had been regarding the wood festival 
 as a deep solemnity, and she was wondering how she could 
 get home. But he bade himself remember that Bess said she 
 was sick, and little as it looked like it, treat her as one in 
 competent. 
 
 "You don t want to go back yet," said he. It was a 
 kindly tone, almost the one he would have used to Tonty, 
 only she never would have been so incomprehensible. "You 
 want to get yourself soaked with the air and the sun." 
 
 " The sun must be on me," said the muffled voice. " I m 
 very warm." 
 
 " Wait till that sunbeam creeps down the pine at your 
 left. Look at it, Cat. See how it lights the bark." 
 
 She put her arm closer over her eyes. 
 
 " Do you think you could go home and get Bess ? " she 
 asked him. 
 
 Her voice had a sound of terror. Winterbourne thought 
 he heard the prophecy of tears. But it at once became evi 
 dent to him that she was depending too entirely on Bess, 
 and this was the matter. Take away her staff, and she would 
 walk alone. 
 
 "You don t want Bess," he said reprovingly, and yet in a 
 kindly way, too, because he could not, in his heart, imagine 
 how anybody who had known the ministrations of that calm 
 strength could fail to call on her. 
 
 " I do want her," Catherine cried. 
 
 He scented hysteria the more nearly. 
 
 " I m going to die, John. I m willing to die, but I hate 
 the feeling of it. Call Bess, or you 11 be sorry." 
 
3 i2 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 The insistency of it did move him, as a woman, let her 
 be demanding enough, is sure to move a man. He yields 
 out of a large affectation of good-nature perhaps, out of 
 chivalry, of boredom, he may tell himself; but the boy in 
 him answers the mother in her and he gives way. 
 
 "You re a silly, Cat," said he. Nevertheless he got on 
 his feet. " I 11 find her, but Bess 11 tell you you re a 
 silly." 
 
 At the edge of the clearing he stopped. She had called 
 him back. She was sitting up now, her eyes distraught, the 
 color in her face disordered. 
 
 " Let me go, too," she cried. " I can t be left here, John. 
 I m afraid, afraid!" 
 
 Winterbourne returned to her. This, in a measure, he 
 could understand. He took her wrists, drew her up, and 
 kept one hand within his arm. 
 
 " Come on then," he said. " I know what you re afraid 
 of. I felt it myself once, by the sea, in a bright day when 
 there was nobody in sight nor likely to be." 
 
 But her teeth were chattering, and she shuddered while 
 he led her out. It was nothing to her to know what she 
 was afraid of, while the dreadful place loomed dark about 
 her and the way through the lane stretched into impossible 
 miles. 
 
 " It was Pan," Winterbourne s cheerful voice boomed 
 against her ears, "the god Pan. He s in the stillness, you 
 know. He makes himself manifest because we omit his wor 
 ship. But the fear s all he expects of us. That s recognition. 
 That s all he wants, old Pan." 
 
 But naught heard Catherine save that words were beating 
 at her ears, and she felt her feet drag heavily. Midway in 
 the lane she stopped, and found a little voice. 
 
 " It s over, John. I m dying." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 313 
 
 Winterbourne, recalled from Pan, got an arm about her, 
 and looked down into her face. And then her knees really 
 did give way, and the weight of her on his arm was the only 
 sign of her being a creature still in this world. He looked 
 at her distraught, but for a second only. The spring he 
 thought of that was behind them. For an instant he con 
 sidered leaving her there by the pathside, and running home 
 for Bess ; but if she was ever to wake she might wake 
 frightened and that would be infernal. Pan might get her, 
 after all. So he lifted her to his heart, and carrying her as 
 he might have carried Tonty, for she was very light and he 
 was strong, he strode homeward as fast as he could go, and 
 once he put his cheek down to hers and then kissed the 
 tangle of her hair. It was a pity Catherine could not have 
 had the kiss in the days when kisses freely given would 
 have beatified her; but perhaps then she would not have 
 prized this kind at all, for it was pure, warm pity of some 
 thing he had hurt. And when he came out into the carrot- 
 patch, there was Bess, as if their need had summoned her, 
 standing like a sea-woman perhaps watching for her hus 
 band s boat, hand over her eyes in the attitude of those who 
 look and wait. 
 
 Winterbourne thought he had never been so glad to see 
 any human creature. He felt like throwing Catherine at her 
 and himself also into her arms those kind arms, in the 
 illusion of his need, seemed big enough and blubbering 
 like Tony on her breast. But all he did do was to stride on, 
 and say in a monotone when he reached her, 
 
 " I ve killed her, Bess, I Ve killed her." 
 
 Bess turned, and, he noted, stepping over carrot-plumes 
 with precision, went on with him. She took up Catherine s 
 lax hand and held the wrist a moment. 
 
 " I ve killed her, Bess," he said again ; and she answered 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 him quite seriously, as if she had to believe every word he 
 said, 
 
 " No, no, you did n t mean to." 
 
 And then Winterbourne despaired indeed, andjtnew Bess 
 also judged that Catherine was dead. He carried her into the 
 sitting-room, as still now as it had been with its morning 
 peace upon it, and laid her on the old hard sofa. Bess mean 
 time flew for brandy, for several things, he thought, for she 
 came back with her hands full ; but before the brandy had 
 fairly touched her lips, Catherine s eyes opened, and Winter- 
 bourne, looking down upon her, gulped and said, " My 
 God ! " He wanted to say it a great many times, knowing it 
 would be a relief to him, but Bess gave him a quick frown 
 and shook her head. He knew he must be derelict indeed 
 for Bess to frown at him, and took it meekly. Catherine had 
 things administered to her, and resumed her aspect of a hu 
 man creature with blood in her, and then what did she do 
 but turn from Bess whom she had been crying out for, who 
 was her rescuer, Winterbourne would fervently have sworn, 
 her earthly hope and prop, to him who had dragged her from 
 her bed and taken her out into the tree-solitudes to hear dis 
 sertations on Pan. She smiled even, and when she spoke 
 there was a little undertone of pleasure in her voice. 
 
 " Did n t we have a nice time, John ? " 
 
 Winterbourne could only stare at her. Then he grinned 
 a little. Catherine was game, he thought. 
 
 " You help her upstairs," Bess commanded, with her air of 
 giving not much attention to the present outward state of 
 things, having so much to think about. 
 
 So Winterbourne put his arms about his wife and lifted 
 her again, though Catherine had been willing to take less of 
 him, and carried her up in silence to her bed. 
 
 When Bess came down, her kingdom being once more in 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 315 
 
 security, he was waiting for her in the hall. His hand was 
 closed upon an idle pipe. Not even that solace would he 
 allow himself until he knew where he stood as criminal or 
 sound citizen. 
 
 " Going to hit me, Bess?" he inquired. "Going to turn 
 your old father out of doors? " 
 
 But she had no questions to ask. There was too much to 
 do in the world, and she had got out of the habit of curios 
 ity, save as it furthered deeds. 
 
 " I guess she 11 go right off to sleep," she said, " after she s 
 had her milk and egg." 
 
 He followed her to the kitchen. 
 
 "What was it, Bess?" he insisted. 
 
 " Why, she fainted away," said Bess, as if faints even were 
 all in the day s work. " Here, you measure me a pint of 
 milk while I beat these eggs. It s time for Mrs. Ramsay s 
 too." 
 
 Hercules did it with precision, being used to chemistry in 
 his youth. 
 
 " Is her heart wrong ? " he suggested. " Don t you think 
 she d better see a doctor ? " 
 
 " She s just give out, that s all," said Bess, with one of her 
 returns to the vernacular. " She s got no strength. That s 
 the way they are." 
 
 " They ! " Who were they ? He pondered on it weakly 
 and dared not ask. Had Catherine entered some classified 
 estate never more to emerge to the vaguer limits of the mass ? 
 But he had to inquire finally, or perish with the wonder 
 of it. 
 
 " Who s they, Bess ? " he insisted, following her like a 
 boy, tagging her while she went from kitchen to the stairs 
 again with her two foaming beakers deftly carried. She was 
 treating him like a boy, too. 
 
316 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Why, folks when they ve used themselves up," she 
 vouchsafed him, almost impatiently it seemed, because he 
 did n t know. " They get just this way. Mrs. Ramsay s done 
 it one way; she has another. Men-folks do it, too. Some 
 times they drop dead when they re making a speech. That s 
 because they ve wore their hearts out. Sometimes they get 
 just like this." 
 
 She was halfway up the stairs now, and he stood finger 
 ing the newel-post in a maze. 
 
 " Then it s getting worn out?" he said. "Bess, hold on 
 a minute. If it s getting worn out, how about you? I don t 
 suppose the rig you re running here, being nigger dog to 
 everybody, I don t suppose you think that s going to wear 
 you out, do you ? " 
 
 She looked gravely down at him and made the answer he 
 least expected. 
 
 " It might, I s pose, but I don t mean to let it." 
 
 She went on, leaving him confounded. He had looked for 
 some gay disclaimer, some bravado of youth flaunting its 
 own strength, but the brief homely words opened his mind 
 suddenly to the idea that she was fighting a fight and knew 
 it. She was not only serving other people, but she had the 
 masterly sense to see that she, too, must be saved. 
 
 " By Jupiter ! " Winterbourne swore. He dared not call, 
 as he so often did in mere warm blood, on the Most High 
 God of all, because it seemed, in a way, as if he dared not, 
 as if he himself had somehow offended by being out of the 
 fight, and if he challenged the God of all, he might hear 
 answers. 
 
XXV 
 
 CELIA had to meet Lovell at last, and hearing him 
 in the sitting-room, asking Bess for her, she went 
 straight about it, taking a hat in her hand : for though 
 she walked bareheaded always, it seemed wise to indicate 
 that she was on her way out of doors. In the hall she met 
 Bess, who had not lingered with him, and flashed a glance 
 at her. No, he had not told. Bess wore her air of serene pre 
 occupation, not as one who has learned that an unexpected 
 brother has stormed her threshold. And then Celia, with the 
 frankest air of morning welcome, unillusioned by the memory 
 even of kisses in the moonlight, went in to meet him. He was 
 changed. The first glance at him as she advanced, hand pret 
 tily out, told her that. As that other moment had shocked 
 and terrified her, it had transfigured him with hope and con 
 fidence. He looked like a splendid young man of another 
 type than Dwight Hunter, but as fortunate in strength and 
 prospective mastery. She felt a thrill at this, which might 
 have been a little personal pride in him, but was more than 
 half gratified vanity that her momentary conqueror was of 
 an admirable mould. Lovell himself, if he had had time in 
 these fleeting moments of the best days of his life, to look 
 into a mirror and interrogate himself, would have wondered 
 at the change in him. The old wary look lest the undesired 
 should speak to him, the introspective beginning of bent 
 shoulders, had given place to the tense muscles and high pose 
 of the man set on victory. His love for Celia was so infinitely 
 more than a fancy or a passion for a girl. She had called 
 him out of that seclusion where the soul is practically done 
 
3 i8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 for, because it has taught itself to desire nothing. Now he 
 aspired to everything. If he had had any design of a tenderer 
 greeting than this hand-clasp in the morning light, he could 
 not, in the face of her frank attitude, bring it about. 
 
 " I m going to walk," she said. "You want to come?" 
 
 " I came to get you," said Lovell, at once delighted at their 
 according views. " I want you to come over to the house a 
 minute." 
 
 " The house ? What house ? " The candid glance inquired 
 as her tone did. 
 
 "Mine." 
 
 "Why, I can t, Mr. Lovell." 
 
 The set title he did not like. He frowned at it, but dis 
 missed it as matter that might be settled at some tenderer 
 time. 
 
 "Why can t you?" 
 
 " There s nobody to go with me. Mamma is ill in bed. It 
 would be queer." 
 
 That he considered seriously. 
 
 "Nothing s queer in Clyde," he ventured. "Except me. 
 I m tabulated queer, but I m not going to be any more." 
 
 "Oh, do be queer," said Celia brightly. "You mustn t 
 change, or I shan t know you." 
 
 "I shan t change about other things." 
 
 This was a brief indication that love-making was not to be 
 superseded by the overhauling of houses. " But I want you. 
 You Ve got to come. Hopkins is putting off his vacation for 
 me, and we must know what to do." 
 
 "Who s Hopkins?" Yet she knew who Hopkins was. 
 
 " The builder. How can he tell whether the missus J ll 
 like her house unless she gives the orders?" 
 
 That note in his voice almost angered her. She did not 
 love him apparently, her appraising sense of the moment 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 319 
 
 told her. She was sorry. It would have been so easy, living 
 in the big house with him, to take Bess to her and establish 
 both their lives. 
 
 " Come," she said, for it was evident he had meant in 
 another instant to find her hand. "Come on out doors." 
 
 She spoke lightly, as she thought Tonty, just arrived to 
 make her mother a proper womanly call, might have spoken, 
 and she went immediately out of the room, he following. 
 Then he had his inspiration. 
 
 " Why," said he, " there s Winterbourne ! " 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 She was going down the path, her pretty dress enwrapping 
 her, he felt, with similes surging about him, like the calyx 
 of a rose. She hummed a little under her breath, and he 
 knew that he was following her into the land of faerie. But 
 he would much rather stay and get the house ready for their 
 mating. 
 
 " If you want a chaperon, why not Winterbourne ? " he 
 pressed it. " He s always wandering up and down the earth. 
 He s got nothing to do. In a minute we shall see him sit 
 ting under a tree somewhere, and we 11 call upon him to 
 come and hear us talk ceilings and gutter-pipes." 
 
 Celia laughed and sang a little clearly. Winterbourne was 
 not going to be told secrets about engagements. But there 
 was no danger. She knew where he was ; he had gone down 
 to the Ramsays to lull three little Ramsays into seemliness 
 with old wives tales while Tonty made her call. 
 
 " I can talk ceilings just as well outdoors," said she. 
 "Come, let s go into the Valley of Birds. Mr. Winter- 
 bourne s down there lying on his back, smoking. Come." 
 
 Lovell fell into step with her and they went down the 
 lane, Celia singing in her light true voice, with a regret she 
 could never help behind it, that hers was not the marketable 
 
320 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 one. Then we should see. Out in the open day, daring came 
 on her, and a sense of mastery over such a helpless thing as 
 a man in love. Why had she dreaded to see him ? He 
 could n t kiss her, because there would never be any mo 
 ment when she was unprepared. He couldn t marry her 
 against her will. He was a well-made creature with a domi 
 nating look now there was something he wanted to domi 
 nate; but she, too, was good-looking, and she could take a 
 hand at reigning. And the woman s desire to play with what 
 it has caught possessed her, and she liked it. She had been 
 all her later life the plaything of another s will. Catherine had 
 pursued her into the desire to be something of mark, and 
 now suddenly, through nature and not herself, because a man 
 was a man and she had inexplicably bidden him remember 
 that she was a woman, she stood queen in her own right. 
 At the wood-opening she stopped and turned her candid 
 eyes on him. 
 
 " I don t believe " She hesitated here, and he helped her 
 tenderly. 
 
 "What don t you believe, dearest?" 
 
 " I don t believe I want Mr. Winterbourne told why you 
 are taking me to see the house. I don t want anybody told." 
 
 That seemed fitting in her, a most maidenly deliciousness. 
 He was a poet, and he thought he saw with her the lovely 
 vague outlines of her dream. 
 
 " Don t you, dearest ? " He bent toward her, better to note 
 the flush in her cheek averted now while she broke a spray 
 from the wilding hedge, and showed the more to him her 
 sweet confusion, for it was not a blossomy spray, but only 
 a homely branch to give pretext to her eyes and fingers. " I 
 want them to know. They ll have to know, you see. If 
 we were back a century or two, I could carry you off to my 
 stronghold, but not now." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 321 
 
 " I d like that better," said Celia, and laughing, looked at 
 him again. 
 
 It was not a confused face she turned on him ; it was just 
 Celia s face, untouched by soft emotion. But he was in his 
 dream, and she looked to him any way and of any hue the 
 dream required. 
 
 "I should like it better, too," he said; and her heart 
 leaped in a kind of resentment at his voice and the messages 
 it was willing she should hear. " Then it could be now. It 
 could be to-day." 
 
 Celia did not know she had so many fierce passions in her, 
 and she walked quickly on as if, though they were within, 
 they were also a mob that could overtake her. She had had 
 her discontents, a plenty, but this virginal revolt against a 
 man appealing always, some secret voice in him to a hidden 
 voice in her, and getting an answer even, if only of anger 
 and despite, this was new to her. She hurried their pace into 
 the Valley of Birds, and sat down by the tree-bole where 
 Winterbourne had bidden Catherine, that other day, see the 
 play of sunshine on the bark. 
 
 "He isn t here," she said. "Mr. Winterbourne is n t 
 here." 
 
 Lovell, too, threw himself down and looked at her, tumul 
 tuous feeling in his eyes. 
 
 " I m glad," he said. " Good man, not to be here ! " 
 
 His spirit seemed to be getting the better of her, and she 
 found herself wondering whether it would dash her self-con 
 trol, make her betray herself and show how much she hated 
 him. 
 
 " Do you come here often ? " she asked crudely. 
 
 He laughed a little. 
 
 " I used to come a lot. That s when I wrote poetry. I 
 thought it had got to be written out-of-doors. Jackass ! " 
 
322 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He was smiling with an idle patronage for the young poet 
 who had, after all his shots at greatness, yet managed this 
 last crowning feat of man: persuaded a wonderful girl to love 
 him. His momentary retrospect released her. For an instant 
 she did not feel the summons of that inner self of his laying 
 fine wires to her door. She could afford to play a little in 
 her turn. 
 
 " I want to know your poetry," she offered meltingly. 
 
 The poet, surprised, came broad awake, accusingly. 
 
 " You said you d read it." 
 
 She caught herself up. Her laugh came on the dot. 
 
 " So you did remember," she challenged him. 
 
 " Getting a rise out of me ? Is that it ? " 
 
 " I meant to find out whether you did remember." 
 
 "Well, I did. I haven t thought of much else. It was n t 
 the verses. It was your reading em. It seemed so " 
 
 He could not think logically of any particular thing it 
 seemed to indicate, except that it was destined and adorable. 
 
 " But I do want to know them better," she insisted. " I 
 want to hear you read them. I wish we had the book. We 
 could read them here." 
 
 Lovell, shaking his head in decisive turns from side to 
 side, looked at her in something more nearly approaching 
 a query of her real complexion of mind than he had ever 
 shown. It seemed to ask whether indeed she could be cut 
 out of the pattern, or anything approaching it, of the ladies 
 who bade him to teas with a horrible prospective tendency 
 to yearn over his verse. 
 
 " Not on your life," said he. " You don t catch this minor 
 poet reading his own stuff." 
 
 " But why ? " Celia persisted, with a delicate upward lilt 
 of tone. " You know so well how it ought to be read. You 
 could interpret it." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 323 
 
 That had a familiar ring. Was this the way the Ramsay 
 faction used to talk when they besought him to share his 
 gifts with them ? He felt a wave of the old nervous terror. 
 
 " Don t, dearest. You 11 make me begin to be deaf." 
 
 "You can t be deaf with me. You promised." 
 
 " I ought to have made you promise, same time, not to 
 flatter me. I like other kinds, dearest. Tell me you like 
 me awfully. That s flattering enough. Don t tell me I m 
 a poet. I m just what Tony s bending pins to catch. I m 
 a minny, not a whale. Not a trout even. Just a minny." 
 
 " Do you think," said Celia, " that Tim Ramsay is n t 
 very well understood ? " 
 
 "Tim?" He showed his frank surprise. "Why, there s 
 nothing about Tim to understand." 
 
 " You d say he s all on the surface ? " 
 
 "What there is of him. He s got a nice complexion. 
 That s on the surface." 
 
 He was looking idly before him now, following the waver 
 ing course of a white butterfly that had somehow strayed into 
 the cool of the woods, and went wandering about, drawing 
 indecisive curves upon the air, like a weak hand striving to 
 form lines, and hesitating. 
 
 " Don t you think he might have good ideas," she ven 
 tured, seeing, in this mood of his, how far away they were 
 from pan-pipes and patents, " if somebody would only help 
 him develop them ? " 
 
 "Ideas about what? See that butterfly. He s lost in the 
 infinite." 
 
 She had time to stop and widen her eyes over the but 
 terfly. 
 
 " If some one would help him out," she ventured. 
 
 Lovell did n t understand. He began to give a lazy 
 disquisition on Tim, who had never seemed to him any- 
 
3 24 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 thing but an unmarketable commodity whom Mrs. Ram 
 say had, in the period of her discontents and unformulated 
 theories, summoned into the world. Perhaps he was like 
 Ramsay, save that he could n t figure. Perhaps he was the 
 memory of Mrs. Ramsay s girlhood, before she became a 
 caryatid with a world or the temple of the millennium on 
 her head and hands. But he did not know how to elucidate 
 Tim s prenatal tendencies or his present faculties to an 
 idealizing young woman who was caught by his complexion. 
 
 " Oh, Tim s all right," he said absently. " Do you like 
 white paint all over the house?" 
 
 She smiled and shook her head at the paint. 
 
 "You see he wants to make a business venture," she 
 pursued, though doubtfully. " And I feel as if he ought to 
 have the advice of an older man." 
 
 Lovell threw her a quick look. 
 
 "Tim Ramsay been talking to you?" he inquired. 
 
 She retreated. She thought there was displeasure in his 
 tone. 
 
 " Oh, no, not talking. Only he seems pathetic somehow. 
 They don t teach him to do anything " 
 
 " He would n t do it if they did. Tim s lazy. He s got 
 no stamina. That s why he s lazy. The boy s no better 
 than a weakling girl." 
 
 " There, you see ! you own he s to be pitied." 
 
 "You re divine," said Lovell, falling into his coma of 
 blind love, " you women. You idealize and pity and build 
 up pedestals, and we re no such matter as you think us." 
 His mind had gone suddenly back to his mother and sister 
 and their adoration of him, and with this passion for a girl 
 opening his eyes to the way women s fancies ought to be cher 
 ished, he wondered if he had been kind to them. " But don t 
 waste anything on Tim. He never 11 grow up. You 11 see." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 325 
 
 " I d waste something on him," she dared. " If I had it, 
 I d waste money." 
 
 The word was out, the word she had at the back of her 
 brain, but she said it like a pretty jest. Again he threw her 
 that sharp, sudden look, and it stayed on her. 
 
 " What s Tim been saying to you ? " he asked. 
 
 " Nothing, nothing," she protested. " Only I somehow 
 got the idea he was clever. I thought he might invent 
 something, had invented it, and I thought with his father 
 always in the city and his mother sick why, it seemed a 
 shame no one should help him." 
 
 " He brought something of the sort to me a while ago," 
 Lovell said absently. " No, I should n t give Tim money." 
 
 She rose to her feet. 
 
 " Come, then," she wanted to say, "the talk is over. This 
 was what we were to consider, and since it s ended and you 
 won t, there s nothing else." 
 
 He, too, rose, and stood staring at her, awed by the 
 strained pallor of her face. He had never seen her look 
 like that. It was as if the white butterfly, strayed into the 
 large darkness of the woods, had suddenly become the soul 
 of which it was the symbol, and wanly faced him. Celia s 
 eyes filled with tears. She looked about her at the tree- 
 trunks and the light sifting down beyond them. It was 
 all beauty, that impalpable veil upon the form of things to 
 bid the soul worship and the eye rejoice in the prophecy 
 of the ineffable. That it was beautiful she saw, but she 
 could not beckon it to her heart with that glad rush of 
 music to the ear. She had muffled herself so that the call 
 of things failed to reach her. She had spun about herself a 
 web. What was it? She thought of Bess with a little 
 breath of relief, a grasping for her as if that might keep her 
 sane. If Bess were here, she would see the beauty. She 
 
326 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 might be too tired, she might have to shut her lovely eye 
 lids down and just lie and listen to the needles murmuring; 
 but she and the spot would be akin. Celia did not even 
 know whether Bess had ever been here. She felt indignant 
 pity for her, tied down to common tasks, and it seemed as 
 if she must be at home that minute, kissing her and telling 
 her how wroth she was. But it did not come to her, since 
 Bess had been trained to do all these hard, hateful things 
 and she had not, that she could make her less tired. 
 
 All this time, a moment only perhaps, but long to both 
 of them, Lovell stood watching the tragic misery of her 
 look, waiting, in an extremity of sympathy, for it to clear. 
 She turned to him slowly. The guarded sweetness was off 
 her face. She seemed to be about to appeal to him, to beg 
 him to help her brush away the web; but the color ran 
 into her cheeks again, and she laughed hardily. 
 
 "Come," she said, "let s go home." 
 
 They went, silently. Once in the lane he tried to take 
 her hand; but she seemed remote, and a sad strangeness 
 assailed him. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked at the door. " What was it, 
 Celia?" 
 
 Now she could laugh again. 
 
 " What was it ? " she asked, in her high, clear voice. 
 " Why, nothing ! " 
 
XXVI 
 
 WINTERBOURNE was at the Ramsays while 
 Tonty made her dutiful call. He had Teeny on 
 one knee and Tiny on the other, and Tony sat 
 before him, legs apart in painful travesty of man s majesty, 
 whittling, but not omitting to keep a sharp ear out for the 
 story. 
 
 " Once upon a time," said Winterbourne, musing and 
 telling the story to himself, as he almost always did when 
 Tonty was not there, for then he could tell it to her, u once 
 upon a time there was a little boy/ 
 
 Tony gave a nod of perfect satisfaction. The story, then, 
 was for him. 
 
 " Everybody thought he was a little boy, but he was n t. 
 He was a fool." 
 
 Tony, disgusted, withdrew from participation. But then 
 he remembered there were kings fools, and they always 
 said the best things and came out ahead. So he took heart. 
 
 "Was it a king s fool ?" he asked hopefully. 
 
 " Maybe," said Winterbourne. " We 11 see before we 
 get through. Well, one day when he was quite a young 
 fool, he found he had some money in his pocket." 
 
 "Gold?" 
 
 "Yes, gold in a silk purse. He had n t really known he 
 had it, but as soon as he thought about it a minute, he re 
 membered that every little boy and every fool has some to 
 buy things with. Only he must be sure he buys the thing 
 he wants most, for if he does n t, he 11 be sorry all his life." 
 
 Tony whittled no more, but, knife on knee, sat staring 
 
328 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 up at him. There was poignant anxiety in the gaze hope, 
 too. Had he also a silk purse, since it was said that all boys 
 had them? Winterbourne read the query. 
 
 " No, Tony," said he, " you won t find the purse for a 
 number of years yet. But you ll find it in time, and then 
 you must be sure to buy the right things with it." 
 
 " Did this fellow ? " Tony asked, abandoning hope for 
 himself. He was used to these postponings of valuable ex 
 perience to some future which was, apparently, to be his at a 
 shadowy time. It seemed to him a part of the disgusting way 
 things were arranged. You had to acquiesce in them for a while 
 because grown-ups had a way of knowing how to keep them 
 out of your reach ; but when he saw Dwight Hunter driving 
 a pair of horses, or Winterbourne smoking a pipe of heavenly 
 dusk, he knew this would not be so always. 
 
 " Well, this fool looked round, as soon as he found he had 
 
 the silk purse, and he saw a pretty child a little girl she 
 
 
 was 
 
 " One of us ? " Tony inquired. 
 
 " No, not one of you. But he liked her, and he said to the 
 big Market-Man, c How much? " 
 
 "Where s the Market-Man? " Tony inquired. 
 
 He would never have been allowed to interrupt so fre 
 quently if Tonty had been there, and this he knew and it 
 gave the moment piquancy. 
 
 " He is said to live up in the sky," said Winterbourne. 
 " But besides that He lives on the earth and in the sea." 
 
 "Is He a whale?" 
 
 " No, He s bigger than a whale." 
 
 " Then He could n t live in the world without our seeing 
 of Him." 
 
 "We do see Him sometimes. We could oftener, if we 
 didn t think about anything else. Well, the fool asked 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 329 
 
 the big Market- Man how much, and He said, C A11 you Ve 
 
 , > 
 got. 
 
 " Did He look in the silk purse? " asked Tony. "Or how d 
 He know how much he had got?" 
 
 " No, He did n t look in the silk purse, but He knew 
 what the price was, because it s always that. If a fool wants 
 to buy a little girl, he must always pay all he s got. He can t 
 have any tops, or any engines, or any bow n arrers. One 
 reason is, little girls are so hungry. They eat a lot." 
 
 " Tonty don t." Tony accorded this in rebuttal. 
 
 " No, but Tonty hasn t been bought yet. They re not 
 half so hungry till they re bought. Anyhow, if they are, they 
 don t say anything about it. But there s lots of things they 
 want to eat, then, pretty things, all of them. They want to 
 eat rose-leaves and violet-leaves and cream and honey and 
 cinnamon and nutmeg and clove and mace." 
 
 "Altogether?" 
 
 "Yes, all together and separate. And they want everything 
 to smell like roses all the time. Well, when the little girl 
 had lived with the fool a long spell, she thought she would 
 buy her a little girl of her own, and she did. And she had 
 to eat rose-leaves and violet-leaves and cream and honey and 
 mace and nutmeg and cinnamon and cloves. And the fool 
 got tired of seeing them do it, for he wanted beefsteak and 
 bread and clear water " 
 
 " I m hungry," Tiny piped from his knee, and Teeny 
 wriggled with antiphonal protest. 
 
 "So he said to the two little girls, c You run away and 
 play in a garden where you can get rose-leaves and violet- 
 leaves all the time, and I 11 go back home where I was, and 
 lie down under a haystack and go fast asleep. " 
 
 " Little Boy Blue ! " Tiny remembered. 
 
 " So the two little girls went off into the garden, and I dare 
 
330 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 say they just crammed themselves with violets and roses, 
 there were such a lot there, and the rivers ran cream and 
 honey, and there was cinnamon on every bush " 
 
 " Stick cinnamon ? " 
 
 This from Tony, who chewed it in lieu of the tobacco he 
 had seen other yet not greater men gloriously squirting. 
 
 " Yes, stick and ground. All the guns were loaded with cin 
 namon powder. They shot moonbeams with them. Well, 
 the fool went back, and lay down under the haystack." 
 
 " Was Boy Blue there?" Tiny inquired. 
 
 " Hush up," said Tony, "there ain t any." 
 
 He had reached the period of agnosticism when it soothed 
 him to announce, from point to point, that there weren t any. 
 
 " No, he d waked up and gone to look after the sheep. 
 But the fool went to sleep. No, only just half asleep. He 
 could hear the birds singing and the leaves moving and the 
 river running by, and other fools talking while they worked, 
 or bought little girls themselves. He had a beautiful time. 
 But pretty soon somebody touched him on the shoulder. 
 Wake up! said some one. It was the little girl. And then 
 he looked up and rubbed his eyes to get the sand out of 
 them, and what should he see but the little girl he had bought 
 and the little girl she had bought. And he saw the little girl 
 she had bought had bought another little girl, and there they 
 stood, the little girl he had bought and the little girl she had 
 bought and the little girl she had bought, three of them in a 
 row. c Wake up, said the little girl he had bought. She said 
 it quite loud, so he couldn t say he didn t hear. We ve 
 all come to live with you/ 
 
 Teeny and Tiny were both wriggling now. They did n t 
 think it was much of a story. But Winterbourne only kept 
 a clutch on each little back and went on with it. This story 
 he was telling to himself. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 331 
 
 " So the fool waked up, and he tried to stay awake. But 
 he could n t really. The birds were singing, and they made 
 him sleepy, and the river was running, and that made him 
 sleepy, and he heard the grass growing, and that made him 
 sleepy. But he could n t tell the three little girls they must 
 go and build them a house of their own. So he said, c Come 
 in. You re welcome. Help yourself. 
 
 " In the haystack ? " Tony inquired. 
 
 cc Yes. And they came in. But pretty soon they said, 
 two of them said it, c Where s the rose-leaves and the 
 violets and the cinnamon ? And he said, c There is n t 
 any. " 
 
 " Which of em said it?" Tony wanted to know. 
 
 " The little girl he d bought, and the little girl she d 
 bought. The other one just ate bread and drank water. He 
 could get things for her as well as not." 
 
 "Then why didn t he keep her, and send the others 
 home ? " Tony inquired, with masculine insight. 
 
 Winterbourne shook his head and screwed up his face in 
 a way they, for some reason, always liked. 
 
 " That s it, Tony. You can t do it. After you ve bought 
 one little girl, she s your little girl, and you can t go round 
 swapping off for other little girls. No, sir. Well, there were 
 n t any rose-leaves, and there was n t any cinnamon. And if 
 he d had his silk purse back again, so he could go out and 
 buy em, there would n t have been anything to buy beef 
 steak and bread with, and he d have had to starve. Tony, 
 what do you think you d do ? " 
 
 " I d let them starve," said Tony. " They would n t 
 starve long. They d go into the kitchen." 
 
 "Admirable Tony!" Winterbourne cried. "Wise young 
 judge! Sage from the Orient! Has it been put into your 
 mouth, O babe and suckling, to guide my murky way?" 
 
332 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Tony for an instant thought he was being made light of, 
 but as he was a young man of proud self-estimate, and Jackie, 
 he had always considered, merely his toy and tool, he de 
 cided to dismiss the suspicion. Yet it clung slightly to the 
 word babe, disquietingly like one in more familiar use ; but 
 this he knew could never be applied to him. 
 
 "Well, what d he do?" asked Tony. 
 
 Winterbourne sat dejected. 
 
 " I don t know," he owned. " No, I m blest if I know. 
 Sometimes I think if he was any kind of a fool, he d say to 
 em right out, 4 Now, if you re going to stay here, you come 
 into the kitchen and eat bread with me. 
 
 " Lyddy s in your kitchen," said Tony. " Only Harriet s 
 in ours. Lyddy makes little cakes like a heart and that girl 
 gives em to us." 
 
 " Lyddy ? Lyddy is n t a girl. She s a woman-lady." 
 
 " No, that other girl. Bess. She gives you things to eat." 
 
 " Yes," said Winterbourne dreamily. " She gives you 
 things to eat. Well, Tony, so you think they d go into the 
 kitchen before they d starve ? " 
 
 But Tony had forgotten about that. He wished Jackie 
 would invite them all to go home with him, where the girl 
 undoubtedly, at a hint, would give them cookies. 
 
 " I guess Harriet won t cook us anything to-day," he 
 offered speciously. " She don t ever cook little cakes." 
 
 " Or," said Winterbourne, " suppose he should say to the 
 big Market- Man, c I m very sleepy, sir. I like my bed here 
 by the haystack. I hate to sit in parlors, smelling cinnamon 
 and rose. But would the big Market-Man say, You made 
 your choice, Winterbourne, old boy. I m sorry, sorry as I can 
 be, but it s the best I can do for you. No more snoozes under 
 haystacks, listening to the birds. No more deciding you d 
 done your stent and you could loaf the rest of your days. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 333 
 
 No, you re going to keep moving now. There s likely to 
 be a watchman on the tower, and it s got to be you. 
 
 He pulled himself awake. He had been near swearing, in 
 the distaste of it all, but he remembered who sat with him 
 and upon him, and forbore. But he had been talking in a 
 grown-up tone, and they were tired of him. Tony shut his 
 jack-knife and put it in his pocket with a manly air. The 
 two little ones groped their way down, and they all began to 
 make new plans for themselves. 
 
 " Now you run into the kitchen with Harriet," Winter- 
 bourne bade them. " Tonty 11 be home in a little while. 
 I m going back that way and I 11 send her." 
 
 But Tony had plans of his own. He saw Winterbourne 
 well up the road and set out with a man s stride, head down, 
 after him. He was going to the house where there lived 
 little cakes with holes in the middle. Tony, at this period 
 of his life, had the hard Jot of one who plays a difficult part. 
 He was such a very little boy, and yet, at moments of dash 
 ing imitation, so proficient, that he forgot, and everybody 
 else with him, how little he was. Therefore his career was 
 dotted with ignominious surrenders. 
 
 Tonty had made only a short call, but Bess thought she 
 needed refreshing after it, and had a little plate and a cup 
 and saucer waiting on a small table in the sitting-room. 
 There was a pitcher with milk in it, and a little teapot with 
 hot water in it, and a little sugar-bowl, because Bess knew 
 how much rather Tonty would sit down and pour play tea 
 for herself than have any number of children s festivals ad 
 ministered as to a child in any arbor. Tonty loved it. She 
 got out of her chair and put a small kiss primly on her 
 mother s cheek. 
 
 " Should you like to have me come to-morrow? "she in 
 quired. 
 
334 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 She herself was not particular. She could not find out 
 whether the pink lady known as mother, who never got up, 
 really wished to see her or not, and she often found her face 
 burning, when she escaped from the prudish little calls, with 
 the effort to think of something to say. 
 
 " Yes, Antoinette, come to-morrow," her mother bade 
 her. " Brush your hair at night and use the pink paste on 
 your elbows." 
 
 Tonty went downstairs then, being familiar with the fact 
 that the lady known as mother said queer things, but accept 
 ing it in a child s way because the lady known as Bess seemed 
 to accept it. Then she had her little luncheon and poured a 
 small cup of cambric tea for Bess, who took it gravely while 
 they talked about dolls and whether they liked black ones 
 or whether they were just horrid, and then they went off 
 together into the shed-chamber where Bess thought she had 
 seen a little trunk for a doll s clothes. And Mrs. Ramsay 
 lay and looked at the wall-paper and thought of nothing at 
 all. The working force, the laboring class of nerve and muscle 
 within her, had taken its revenge. It was on strike. Her 
 nerves had been driven at the pace of forty thousand motor 
 cars for years and years, and now they had lain down in the 
 harness and said, "We won t go at all." Suddenly Mrs. 
 Ramsay had discovered how blissful it is to do nothing, and 
 neither ideals nor shame under the ministrations of her neigh 
 bors could woo her forth. Bess, the puissant, could not stir 
 her. Now, she had announced, Mrs. Ramsay would be the 
 better for an afternoon drive ; but Mrs. Ramsay would not 
 hear to it. She did not even answer. She turned her smooth 
 brown head on the pillow and said she thought she felt huffy, 
 which Bess, considering by skill of her own, interpreted as 
 sleepy. 
 
 The lady s illness had roused waves of consternation and 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 335 
 
 sympathy throughout a world. Letters had come from scores 
 of clubs, reminders of imminent engagements, warm expres 
 sions of concern : for Mrs. Ramsay was a power. But for these, 
 though she must have known their sources, Mrs. Ramsay 
 did not care. " Open them," she said to Bess, when the first 
 consignment came over from Mr. Ramsay, helpless in the 
 emergency of a wife whose business was a book as tightly 
 sealed to him as his had been to her, and they had gone 
 naturally into Celia s hands. She was a graceful scribe, and 
 wrote charming notes of explanation, venturing, with every 
 hint of an engagement not to be fulfilled, to suggest that 
 Lilian Winterbourne would sing ballads, and enclosing the 
 little circular that had never brought in a return. Only one 
 club accepted the proffer of the unknown Lilian, and when 
 Celia, against all probability of her thinking of it with any 
 thing but terror, flew to her in triumph, Bess turned on her 
 eyes of amazed reproach. 
 
 " Why, of course I can t," she said. " Who s going to do 
 the work ? " 
 
 And Celia was forced to rescind her offer, saying, in her 
 own fluent way, that she found her sister had an engagement 
 for that afternoon. 
 
 Ladies resident in Clyde, hearing that Mrs. Ramsay was 
 lying ill at the Winterbournes , called in due form to ask 
 for her and tender help. They were darling ladies, of a kind 
 almost gone out now except in the illustrations of artists 
 who don t know how to do them, and rely on guesses at a 
 period that, to their young eyes, might as well be known at 
 once as the dark ages. They had every accompaniment of 
 a gentler, quainter village civilization but the crinoline. Clyde 
 was a place where, though fashion was accurately copied 
 among the class that had every opportunity and desire to 
 be a smart set, you could wear what clothes you pleased. 
 
336 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Except in the smart set, which might have been better known 
 as the flaunting annuals of the garden, changes in deference 
 to fashion were unheard of. The votaries of constancy would 
 as soon have thought of altering the style of their sleeves 
 because some French minion had decreed it, as they would 
 of levelling a gambrel roof to a flat one, to suit the season. 
 They bought the best material, these dear ladies, and had it 
 made up according to a style that had pleased once and kept 
 its vogue through worth. Dolmans had been graceful 
 and genteel. In Clyde, dolmans never went out. There was 
 IH every sewing-room great accumulation of narrow black 
 velvet ribbon, wide silk fringe, and something known as 
 lutestring. With lutestring Lovell s mind had intimate con 
 nection. He used, in his poet days, to hear his mother talk 
 of it, and it gave him a thrill, a response to the time of 
 spinets and ringlets, that was never to be lost to him. So 
 softly-stepping ladies barred with parallels of velvet ribbon 
 and tangled with fringe, the only thing about them capable 
 of enmeshing, came in their low-heeled shoes to the Winter- 
 bournes door, and often they brought jelly and delicate blanc 
 mange^ made from the moss itself, no grocer s instantane 
 ous substitute. Celia was always delighted to receive them, 
 and they spoke of her afterwards as very pleasing. One 
 of them it was the wife of the old minister who had died 
 that year, an ancient lady cut out of ivory, all yellow tones 
 in face and hair said to her, "My dear, I hear you have 
 a beautiful voice. Young Dwight Hunter told me so. He 
 was seeing to my cistern. We ve had quite a time getting 
 it cleaned out." 
 
 It was her sister, Celia brightly conceded. She was ready 
 to sing in public, to women s clubs especially. And at that 
 instant, to her mortification, Bess came in, just pushing down 
 her sleeves and warm from kitchen work. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 337 
 
 The minister s wife, through the habit of a long life when 
 she was first lady of the town, had no hesitations. She looked 
 kindly at Bess, and asked, " So you re the one, my dear ? 
 you re the one that sings. I wish you d sing something to 
 
 me now." 
 
 Celia felt one of her moments of despair. Bess, she knew, 
 had her mind on making breadcake and saving Lyddy. How 
 should she recall even the words of the songs she had been 
 so painstakingly taught ? But Bess just sat down opposite the 
 minister s wife, dropped her hands in her lap, those dear 
 plump hands like mothers hands, that looked sometimes, so 
 great was the surge and stress they lived in, as if soapsuds 
 had wilfully boiled them, smiled at the minister s wife 
 and asked, " Should you like a hymn ? " 
 
 "We Ve no piano here yet," Celia was beginning; but 
 Bess had evidently determined that this was her venture. 
 
 She sang three hymns, and the minister s wife cried. 
 
 "You have a great gift, my dear," she said, as she rose to 
 go. " I must n t keep you now from your invalids, but I 
 hope to see your gift made much of. I hope to live to see 
 you singing in church." 
 
 To sing in clubs and concert-halls did not much affect the 
 minister s wife and the other ladies of her color who pre 
 served the dear traditions of Clyde. They, too, went to the 
 meetings of the Woman s Club founded by the annual bed, 
 and relished every word, these hardy perennials, with an 
 unction the annuals could hardly guess, for it had in it the 
 savor of, "It sounds as if it must be so, but, dear us! what 
 are we coming to ! " Yet all the strife of factions and the 
 reaching out for better things went on without them, as a 
 comet may whisk by the ordered stars. They really lived in 
 their world of old remembrance, and after the surge and dash 
 of club meeting, they melted softly back to its repose. But the 
 
338 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 minister s wife lost no time in telling her intimates among 
 the perennials how beautifully Bess had sung, and a stream 
 of wilfully ancient-seeming ladies directed itself, day by day, 
 to the house, and as regular as their admission was the under 
 standing that Bess should sing to them. For the first time Celia, 
 to her perfect amazement, saw her sister delighting in her 
 voice and unrestrained in using it. She could not, it seemed, 
 be tired in this incidental homely sharing of her gift. Old 
 ladies loved her, and the news got round, and the annuals in 
 their silken petals came flaunting in, and frightened her and 
 she was dumb. To Celia, the world was upside down. 
 
 But something else came of all this. The waves of Mrs. 
 Ramsay s illness threw up other treasure on the shore. 
 When John Winterbourne had come back, three years be 
 fore, to live in his house, there had been a waft of curiosity 
 and interest. Men and women who had known him a little 
 in his youth, or been the intimates of his father and mother, 
 came to call; but he never returned the visits. He was im 
 mersed, they found, in his book, and he seemed to show 
 them out with haste, not surprising, because they hoped 
 they knew the ways of scholars. And he had taken to an inti 
 macy with James Trenton Lovell, and this also was fitting, be 
 cause James was a scholar and a poet, too, though debarred, 
 poor fellow ! by his infirmity from entering into the village 
 life. But now it became known through the lively interest 
 in perennials and annuals that there were at Winterbourne s 
 (this in another language, that of the young men who went 
 to town daily) two stunning girls, and it was to be hoped, 
 when the illness in the family was over, that the town would 
 see more of them. 
 
 Celia was in evidence. She often walked abroad, clad in 
 gowns that commended themselves almost holily to the 
 feminine eye that knew how to distinguish what when it 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 339 
 
 becomes what, though the young men thought she must be 
 a particularly nice girl because she dressed so simply. She 
 was really pretty, too, they decided, for her beauty spoke 
 for itself without adorning ; and at this their sisters laughed 
 aloud and lost no time in enlightening them on the money 
 and genius that go into clothes wonderfully conceived and 
 simply made. 
 
 These things that were going on below stairs, Catherine 
 did not guess. She was thinking how incredible a thing it is 
 that man who has once loved us should not love us again, 
 and whether she had, as mistress of the house, any duty to 
 Mrs. Ramsay as a guest, and whether the moral obliquity in 
 Celia was straightening out. She and Mrs. Ramsay, each 
 knowing the other had become derelict, had, each for the 
 other, a terrified distaste. Far from wanting to talk over their 
 ills, they chose not to hear the mention of the other s name. 
 Each, an altruist, insisted upon reigning absolute and egotis 
 tical in the kingdom of rest. This was nature s ironic joke. 
 " You can t get the better of me," the great jovial mother 
 was saying to them. " Broke my rules, did you ? See how 
 you like my reactions." 
 
 But to Mrs. Ramsay lying this morning in her luxury of 
 nothingness, came a sound, and perhaps because the mental 
 part of her had gone so completely to sleep and nothing was 
 left but the human creature that holds the strings of actual 
 life, the sound went straight to the core of Mrs. Ramsay,who 
 had, though she ignored them as soon as she could rise to 
 address a meeting, given birth to beautiful children. It was 
 the cry of Tony. He had followed on after Winterbourne, 
 at first and as long as he could compass it, with his man s 
 stride, and then, when Winterbourne seemed in danger of 
 getting out of sight, with the dog-trot of the little boy afraid 
 he will be lost. For Tony, though he was not the least of 
 
340 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Mrs. Ramsay s children, was not much used to going out 
 alone. They always made their raids as a clan, this family, 
 and when, a quarter of a mile away from home, the world- 
 loneliness suddenly came upon them, there was always Tonty 
 to become mother, by a swift transformation. No matter 
 what Tonty was, a pirate or a redskin, you had only to call 
 on the maternal in her, and there was she beside each flagging 
 one to take a hand or even administer the rebuke which is 
 in itself so heartening, because if you thought you were 
 going to be killed in a few minutes by a tiger or a ghost, of 
 course you could n t be cross to your little brother. You d 
 be going to see God almost the next instant, and you d be 
 afraid. 
 
 But now, Tony, alone, unsupported by his clan, was out of 
 breath and heart. Suddenly he was all baby, and his legs, as 
 he called on them, hatefully shortened. His throat hurt him, 
 and he was in a rage with Winterbourne, who would n t turn 
 round and see him, and ask where he was going. Then he 
 could answer, as man to man, " Oh, I thought I d go over 
 to your house," and Winterbourne might, in a kind of rough- 
 and-tumble wherein there was no offence to dignity, toss him 
 up to his shoulder and carry him the rest of the way. But 
 Winterbourne never looked behind. He strode up the path 
 to his own door, threw open the screen with one motion, and 
 disappeared. Tony also, in due time, went up the path and 
 banged at the screen. No one came. He flattened his little 
 nose on the wires and looked in. The hall was large and still. 
 There were broad stairs. He remembered climbing them that 
 other day to see somebody in bed. Then for Tony was 
 clever he considered that it might be possible to open the 
 door another way. So he reached up to the handle and 
 pulled it toward him, and once it banged away from him 
 and caught the ends of two fingers when it shut. Rising 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 341 
 
 passion, of his hurt fingers, of his lonely soul, was pent in 
 him until he had tugged it open once more and got round 
 the edge of it. There he let it go, and it returned upon him, 
 shamefully slapping him, and Tony fell upon the floor of the 
 great still hall and cried aloud, since his warfare was over, to 
 all that had deserted him. 
 
 This Mrs. Ramsay, enisled in peace, heard; it called to her 
 and her alone as, it might be, there were no other woman in 
 the universe. She whipped out of bed and down the stairs, 
 barefooted, and swooped upon the wreck of a dirty little boy 
 on the point, if indications were correct, of being deafened by 
 his own roars and drowned in his own tears. She snatched 
 him up and, hand over his mouth, fled with him to her cham 
 ber. There she set him on the floor, and Tony, red with 
 grief and suffocation, could keep silence very well now with 
 out the restraining hand. He had been shocked into dumb 
 ness. He was afraid to cry. Mrs. Ramsay fell upon his tier 
 and tore it from him. She skinned him as neatly as a mother 
 more used to homely parts. Vain peeling! he was just as dirty 
 underneath. His little bare feet were dusty only. His clothes 
 were sights. Not this a child to be taken into bed with a 
 clean mother, however instinct yearned for him. But Mrs. 
 Ramsay was really a great woman, a captain in emergency. 
 She snatched a pillow from the chair and reft its case off. 
 She sat down and lifted Tony to her knee, and there she 
 pulled the pillow-case deftly to his shoulder blades. He was 
 in a sleeping-bag, frightened to death but still securely there, 
 warranted to leave the cleanest sheets inviolate. And then, 
 before he could do much more than wonder whether it was 
 a nice game and he might laugh, she had slipped into bed with 
 him, and he was scientifically cuddled in her arms. 
 
 For an instant Tony thought it was force, and the man 
 in him rebelled. Then two lips touched his hot, tear-wet 
 
342 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 cheek. That made him consider a moment, and while he 
 was reflecting, his tired legs stretched themselves a little in 
 their cramping pillow-case, and each of them succumbed to 
 a sensation like drawing a long breath. He caught a sobbing 
 breath himself, and then another, and when Bess came in, 
 in half an hour or so, she found Mrs. Ramsay snuggling a 
 sleeping Tony to her breast and watching the door with 
 warning eyes. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Mrs. Ramsay. " He s a tired baby." 
 
XXVII 
 
 WINTERBOURNE was wandering in the early 
 evening, as he loved to do. The question of his 
 complex family would not down. Back and forth 
 in the country road he walked, with a look now and then 
 at the stars. He had his favorites among the constellations. 
 Orion was the boy, he was wont to say, that kept you spe 
 cial company, he flashed there so steadfastly in that brave 
 line of belt and sword. But there was nothing illuminative 
 in him to-night. Winterbourne thought of Lovell, and 
 their broken companionship, and started off toward the 
 little house to find him. It had not been by intention that 
 their common interests had failed. Events had been too 
 fussy and insistent, and come between them. He scarcely 
 saw Lovell now, from day s end to day s end. He had a 
 confused and scornful feeling that the chap was following 
 some girl s petticoat, Celia s, he believed, though Celia was 
 so far out of his scheme of things compelling that he could 
 hardly conceive of her luring with any direct light. A moment 
 he stopped outside Lovell s window and watched the light 
 burning steadily there. A peace, the memory of old beloved 
 occupations, fell upon him with the unconscious signal of 
 the lamp. He knew what Lovell was doing, bending over 
 his Greek, laboriously putting it into very good English. 
 Lovell had not his own long-continued practice ; he waded 
 heavily at times, but when he got to the English transcript 
 he was sometimes winged. Winterbourne opened the door 
 and walked in. 
 
 The picture was somewhat as he had conceived. Lovell 
 
344 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 sat at the table, forehead upon his hand and the other hand 
 stationary, its pencil upon a doubtful point on a sheet of 
 drawing-paper. Winterbourne glowed a little at the thought 
 that he had come upon the dot. Lovell needed him to clear 
 the way. He threw down his hat, set his stick in the corner 
 and drew up his chair. 
 
 " Hard at it?" he inquired. 
 
 Lovell had glanced at him at the opening of the door, and 
 given him a nod of greeting. 
 
 " I m glad you ve come, Winterbourne." He said it ab 
 sently. 
 
 " Ay," returned Winterbourne, in a queer old-fashioned 
 way he had sometimes, of speaking out of books. Perhaps 
 he remembered, in some secret corner of him, that his mother 
 had been Scotch. " What is it, lad ? " 
 
 " It s this confounded chimney." 
 
 " Chimney, lad ? " Winterbourne had expected to hear 
 some purist s question over readings. 
 
 " Yes, this chimney. The furnace-pipe goes into this flue, 
 and of course that cuts us out of a fire in the dining-room. 
 Well, you want a fire in the dining-room more than you 
 want it in any other room in the house." 
 
 "The dining-room?" Winterbourne repeated. "Jim, what 
 have ye there ?" 
 
 Lovell explained, with some impatience. It appeared to 
 his submerged mind that anybody would have known why 
 he was working on chimneys. 
 
 " The east chimney," he repeated. His hair hung over 
 his forehead and clung dankly. He looked harassed and yet 
 most happily alert. "At the house." 
 
 " Oh, your big house. Going to let it ? " 
 
 " No, I m not going to let it. I m going He stopped 
 there and laughed a little. Celia was not ready, he had 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 345 
 
 remembered. So far, it was the secret of her maiden diffi 
 dence. 
 
 But Winterbourne had lost even the perfunctory inter 
 est that had prompted him to question. He drew back his 
 chair to the cold hearth and stretched out his legs for 
 thought. He saw no reason why Lovell should not occupy 
 his outer mind with chimneys, the while the inner one con 
 cerned itself with questions that are of the only real import 
 to breathing man. 
 
 " Lovell," said he, " I ve been thinking to-day that the 
 things our brains set themselves upon will be swept away. 
 When the brain dies, the records we Ve been graving on her 
 will crumble with her." 
 
 " Undoubtedly," said Lovell. But while he said it he was 
 making marks. 
 
 Winterbourne, if he had not become entirely absorbed in 
 his own thought, would have known he dreamed of chimneys. 
 
 " So what do we want to love our dear pursuits so much 
 for?" he inquired of Lovell and the world of atoms in the 
 listening room. " We want to read Greek because it gives 
 us the keenest pleasure we ve yet known. We want to 
 escape the man or woman that keeps us from our book, 
 because we love our book. But when our brain dies, the 
 memory of our book will be dead, too. Won t it ? Or do 
 ye think it won t ? Is the brain the tool ? Does it make some 
 thing the soul can keep ? " 
 
 Lovell said nothing, but Winterbourne had ceased to need 
 response. He had embarked. 
 
 " So what lives, man ? It s what s been kind. It s what 
 has helped some other heart to live. And we do want to 
 live." 
 
 "Yes," said Lovell, out of his consideration of a niche for 
 a sideboard, " we want to live." 
 
346 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "We want to see other planets. We want to spin across 
 the void and find worlds making. Yet I m blest if I d choose 
 to be any nearer the stars than I am now. I don t like my 
 coat-tails singed; but that s not it. I want them to be far 
 enough away to keep that trumpery jewelled look of being 
 put up for us to think they re there for us, and feed our con 
 ceit on it. But we want to live, Jim. I did n t use to know 
 we did. I ve even thought within a year, I could die, grate 
 ful for it all, and be glad of nothingness. But I can t. And 
 if I mean to live, I m bound to feed the only part of me 
 that s got any show at all. Not my brain, Jim. That s not 
 got a show. Not a sign of it." 
 
 " No," said Lovell, from his housebuilding study. " That s 
 a fact." 
 
 " I don t despise the man that tries to live so he won t 
 go to hell," mused Winterbourne. " My old Scotch uncle 
 used to say the only body that was n t afraid of hell was 
 the one that had n t been there. So I think, Jim, my boy, 
 if it s my brain that s my stumbling-block, if it s because 
 I want to read my book in peace that I m tempted to get 
 rid of whatever stands in my way, why, then " and a 
 familiar phrase came to him, and he never paused to see 
 the grotesqueness of it here " why, then, I must cut it 
 off and cast it from me." 
 
 After that he sat in silence and smoked, and Lovell made 
 calculations, and neither had a word more for the other 
 until the moment of parting, when Winterbourne, with a 
 " Good-night to ye," took his hat and stick and went forth. 
 Yet they had had excellent communion in the way of silent 
 folk who like the presence of their kind. Lovell breathed 
 a little faster for a moment after he had gone, sitting there, 
 with pencil poised, weighing his new destiny. He would 
 have said there were rhapsodies in him to pour out to Win- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 347 
 
 terbourne alone, who knew the sound of the song of life in 
 books or from the lips of man. But the poet had cc no 
 speech nor language." He had gone back into the "glory 
 and the dream " where all things are made new, all of them 
 inevitable, all taking their orbits with a rush. And the only 
 thing he could make articulate even to himself was that he 
 must have a clear dining-room flue. 
 
 Winterbourne strode off up the road; but when he reached 
 his own house, he could not enter. Houses constrained 
 him. In the night, outside walls, he felt himself wild and 
 glad, and a nature that got no full chance to speak in the 
 prescribed intercourse of men, talked freely with unseen 
 presences. Winterbourne had always, even through his 
 youth and the hard work of his business life, held to that 
 sense of the larger quest which poets only keep alive in us. 
 He had no defined religion. A creed made him blasphemous 
 with the childishness of vain repetition. But the core of 
 him was a passionate belief. He knew there was a reality 
 that answered to these shows of things, and in the night it 
 almost spoke to him. " Thou wilt call and I shall answer 
 Thee," his soul said then. He almost heard the call. It 
 seemed to be telling him now that there was a thing to do 
 touching the muddle he had made of his own life, not a 
 way out of it but a way to answer the call while he stayed 
 in it. It said beyond question, the voice, that he could 
 never go back to his care-free existence in a slipshod house 
 that he hardly saw with his bodily eyes because the Greeks 
 were all about him. The house was swept and garnished, 
 and old ladies of Clyde were daily filing through it. He 
 had his own sufficient solitude; but that was not it. The 
 atmosphere of calm outside him had been invaded. Before 
 he had felt the stillness and forgetfulness of his kind to ex 
 tend through the town because, as soon as the event of 
 
348 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 his homecoming was over Clyde had ceased to think of 
 him to the sea it extended, and the confines of the world. 
 And now he was in it again, life as busy as a hive, and 
 Catherine looked to him as her own special god, and he 
 was really the special god of Bess, he knew, and bound to 
 save her before her youth and bloom were gone. 
 
 He walked on over the bridge, pausing there as one 
 always has to at dark water for a searching of its mystery, 
 for by night the shallowest of it may be any depth and rich 
 in glints of stars, and then on to Hunter s where, late 
 though it was, there was a light in the barn as there had 
 been on the night Bess went there, and Hunter, the color 
 in his face, was at work like a young artisan who has his 
 bread to win. He looked up as Winterbourne s foot struck 
 the barn run, and threw down his tool. More red ran 
 into his skin and he started forward. Did he think because 
 she had come there once that she would come again ? But 
 Winterbourne s bulk approached, and Dwight took up his 
 tool. 
 
 " Oh, it s you," he said, in man s tone to man. Who 
 could say, while he worked, what graces had been circling 
 round him, calling him to take hands for the lovely dance 
 of life ? 
 
 " What are you doing ? " Winterbourne queried. " What 
 do you do it for ? " 
 
 It seemed to him that Dwight, being free, might sit at 
 this moment at a table with a book. 
 
 " It s the prettiest bit of inlaying I Ve come across," said 
 Dwight. He held his lamp to the curving edge. "Aside- 
 board, don t you see ? It s going between the two windows." 
 
 "Where?" asked Winterbourne, to show a decent in 
 terest. 
 
 "Why, in the dining-room, man, of course." He fell to 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 349 
 
 work again, and Winterbourne, with a sense that he had 
 been hearing about dining-rooms before that night, stood 
 still and watched him. Suddenly Dwight came upright, tool 
 in hand, and looked at him heatedly. " Can t you do any 
 thing to keep her from killing herself?" he inquired. 
 
 Winterbourne stared at him in good faith. 
 
 " What do you go round adopting girls for," Dwight 
 continued bitterly, as if to lash him into a decent sense of 
 responsibility, "if you re not going to take care of em 
 after you Ve got em ? " 
 
 "Do you mean Bess?" Winterbourne inquired humbly. 
 The context made it evident he could not mean Celia. 
 
 " I do. I mean Bess." 
 
 " I agree with you. She s being killed." 
 
 " Then why don t you prevent it, man ? Why don t you 
 prevent it? " 
 
 The sick passion of the tone roused Winterbourne. 
 
 "You like her, boy? " he said kindly. 
 
 "Like her ! " The misery of his voice and look told how 
 wholly he had succumbed to the delirium of it. 
 
 Winterbourne straightened. 
 
 " Then I 11 tell you," he said, " you can t have her." 
 
 "Can t have her?" 
 
 "No. She s too damned precious." 
 
 " For me ? " 
 
 " For any man in this world gone wrong, where nature 
 drives us mad and we long for a woman and we make her 
 love us and we tire of her." 
 
 "You think I ll tire of her?" 
 
 "You re a man. You re like the rest of us." 
 
 The smile on Hunter s lips told that he, at least, was not 
 like the rest ; but he put it differently. 
 
 "She s not like the rest." 
 
350 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " No, she s not. She s fit for heroes." 
 
 Dwight stood staring straight in front of him, a rapt look 
 on his face. He was no hero. He was doing over furniture. 
 But he felt himself the size of heroes. He recalled himself 
 to Winterbourne. 
 
 " So you re not with me," he said briefly. 
 
 " You must do as you will," said Winterbourne. " She s 
 not my child, though you say I Ve adopted her." 
 
 "She adores you." This came bitterly. 
 
 Winterbourne lifted his head an inch, and his lips smiled. 
 
 " Thank God ! " he said. " I have n t missed everything." 
 
 He turned and walked away out of the barn, but in a 
 moment he was back. Dwight stood as he had left him. 
 
 " Dwight," he said, "we re not in our right minds. It s 
 come over us too suddenly. Get her if you can. But be good 
 to her. Don t stop loving her. My God ! why have we got 
 to stop loving them, and why can t they stop loving us ? I 
 tell you what it is, Dwight, don t give up reading the poets. 
 There. Good-night. Get her if you can." 
 
 When he was home again, he halted under his wife s win 
 dow, and saw Bess moving back and forth against it, and 
 asked himself how it would seem to be young again and the 
 lover of a girl. He knew well how it would seem. But he 
 took off his hat and stood there a moment, and the passion 
 in him was a prayer that she might find the passion of love 
 enduring. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 IT was next morning that Winterbourne and Bess stood 
 talking for a moment in the garden by the gate. She 
 was looking for Tonty, due to make her daily call, and 
 telling him about the ravishment of Tony and his pillow 
 slip eclipse, and how Mrs. Ramsay, when the time came for 
 the awakening and the man-child roaring for his supper, 
 would hardly be parted from him. 
 
 " Then she s a human woman," said Winterbourne grudg 
 ingly. He never saw Mrs. Ramsay as a normal being. "She 
 has a passion for her young." 
 
 " It will do her good, I guess," Bess sagely told him. 
 " She seemed worried because he was so dirty. I told her 
 nothing could be done with so little help at home." 
 
 Dwight Hunter came in sight now, on his big team, driv 
 ing slowly because he had birch-wood for a perennial lady 
 "down the road." Bess ran out and waited for him, and 
 Dwight stopped, took off his cap and jumped down to speak, 
 all a rapt listening, if perhaps he could in some way serve her. 
 It seemed to him he had made a step or two toward her 
 favor, since the day she struck him in the shed-chamber ; 
 but that he now humbly knew, although it was not conven 
 tional, he had won for himself by his savage haste. 
 
 "Remember," she said, "it s the club to-night. The 
 boys." 
 
 "Oh, yes," he told her fervently, "I ll be there." 
 
 " I shan t go to-night," said Bess. "You need n t tell them 
 so, but I may not go any more. You can teach them things, 
 and I can t do anything but sing with em." 
 
352 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 He stared at her, aghast. Was this the end of his diplo 
 macy ? 
 
 "Why, they won t sing for me," he argued. Dwight al 
 most felt there were tears in his voice. " They won t even 
 stay the evening out. You ve got to go." 
 
 " Oh, yes, they 11 stay," Bess assured him, out of her sage 
 calm. " They won t dare not to. Their fathers work for you. 
 I m too busy. I m awfully glad to have you take it off my 
 hands." 
 
 She gave him a little kindly smile and left him. The 
 smile told him she was perfectly certain of his moving in 
 terest in boys with singing voices, and he tried feebly to 
 respond. But he stepped sorrowfully on his load again and 
 drove away. What, he wondered, had Winterbourne to do 
 with it? 
 
 " That," said Winterbourne to her as she came back, " is 
 the King of Clyde." She looked at him for the reason. " He s 
 the only live man here. All the other live men go into the 
 city to earn money. They take their brains out of Clyde. 
 The deader it is, the better they like it ; it s quieter to come 
 back to." 
 
 "Why doesn t he go?" Bess inquired. It seemed as if 
 she thought it better that he should. 
 
 " I m going to tell you, Bess. Three years ago when I 
 came back here, he asked my advice. He was a good deal 
 with Lovell, and I fell in with Lovell because of the Greek. 
 He asked my advice because I was older. You know, kid, 
 your daddy s very old." 
 
 " You re not," she denied, with indignation. " You re 
 just like any of us." 
 
 " Oh, no, I m not. My name is Tithonus. Any grass 
 hopper 11 tell you. Well, Hunter s father had died. He was 
 a rich man, a contractor, a man in politics in the city. They 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 353 
 
 kept this for a summer place. Dwight was expected to go 
 in with his father. He d been with him a year or so, and he d 
 found out how his father s contracts were got, how he d 
 played into the hands of the politicians and they d played 
 into his. Well, at first Dwight could n t do anything about 
 it but look into it. His father was a sick man. Then he died, 
 and the boy found he was at a good deal of a disadvantage. 
 He could n t well carry on business at the old stand without 
 playing the old game. The firm was pretty well known. 
 And the other sort knew it, too, the ones that wanted to play 
 fair. So he elected to throw up the job there, and build up 
 something in Clyde." 
 
 "Yes," said she, "of course he d have to." 
 
 Winterbourne rather expected to hear Dwight acclaimed a 
 hero, but an indication of bare honesty was evidently no 
 more than she expected of every man. 
 
 " But he d better go into the city," she said reprovingly, 
 as if Winterbourne had made him an exile. " Not stay in 
 his barn every night doing over old furniture." 
 
 " Don t you like to have him do over furniture ? " he in 
 quired meekly. He felt as if she were the mother of men, 
 with the secrets of life in her apron-pocket. 
 
 " Men that have got to live in the world can t put aside 
 seeing folks," she answered briefly. " He d better hunt up 
 the young men he was in college with, or folks as good as 
 he is. If he just sees the men here that are doing day s 
 works, he 11 get to think that s all there is." 
 
 " All there is, sapient one ? " 
 
 Bess had a suspicion that he was laughing at her, but she 
 never cared, when it was he. 
 
 " He 11 get to think he knows it all," she explained. 
 " He s pretty young." 
 
 " He s older than you are, ninnyhammer, a good two 
 
354 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 years. " She ignored that even by an eyebeam, with an impli 
 cation that this was beside the question. " How about your 
 consorting with Lyddy and me and doing housework? " he 
 pursued. " How about your deteriorating, Missy ? Bess, I m 
 going to tell you something. Your only salvation is to go 
 away from here, and I m going to send you. Your daddy s 
 going to send you/ 
 
 She looked at him in a questioning apprehension. 
 
 " Oh, no, sir," she said. " I just could n t go." 
 
 " Why could n t you ? " 
 
 " I could n t go away from you." 
 
 It was the most innocent avowal, and the clarity of it 
 brought tears to his eyes. 
 
 " Imbecile ! " he threw at her. " Kids have to leave their 
 fathers. They have to go away and learn to sing and rest 
 their backs and use good English, too, you say some 
 frightful things, blockhead." 
 
 She was watching him with an anxious wistfulness. 
 
 " I think I get along with my Italian. Don t you think 
 so?" she inquired. For she had incredibly found a half-hour 
 here, an hour there, and though she was often sleepy from 
 her tasks, she did absorb amazingly. 
 
 " What good is your Italian going to do you, young sport, 
 if you don t go anywhere to show it off? Of course I d rather 
 you d be here. I d rather you d settle in a house in Clyde, 
 where I could go in of an evening and rest my old bones. 
 But if you don t marry somebody in Clyde, off you go." 
 
 Bess laughed. She knew the tempestuous indignations of 
 him, the outcry that meant very little wool indeed. She went 
 off down the road to meet Tonty, who had been signalled, and 
 Winterbourne strode back through the kitchen for a morn 
 ing call he meant to make his wife. In the kitchen Lyddy 
 took her hands out of the dish-pan and hailed him. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 355 
 
 " You sit down here a minute," she said, with the curtness 
 which clothed fealty, " an* see if you can tell me what this 
 is. I can t find my other spe tacles." 
 
 She had no glasses but the ones that glittered now upon 
 her. This Winterbourne knew, but he fancied Lyddy had 
 long ago given up the accomplishment known as reading 
 handwriting as one of the graces so little to be needed in 
 another state of existence that it might as well be dropped 
 now. She handed him from her deepest pocket a wayworn 
 letter, and he opened it and read. It was from the previously 
 hostile Ann, and abounded, short as it was, in professions of 
 piety. Its purport was that, having religion herself, she wanted 
 Lyddy to know it and to be assured that they were to meet 
 in the harbor of heaven. And she was sorry for what was 
 past and gone, and would Lyddy tell Mr. Winterbourne 
 how much she thanked him for mother s ear-trumpet that 
 she gave to the young lady in the kitchen. 
 
 " Of all the sassy jades ! " Lyddy commented sufficiently. 
 " Meet me above! well, I guess when we meet, twill be 
 somewheres else. All she means is, she s afraid I 11 remem 
 ber I own half that house, an she thinks I 11 move in. 
 Mebbe I will, to spite her." 
 
 Winterbourne went on to make his wife the morning call, 
 but in the sitting-room, face to face, he met her. Catherine 
 had on a pretty floating dress. She was pale, and her eyes 
 sought his apprehensively, as if, though wonder was in her 
 as to the amount she could do, she was determined to show 
 her will. For an instant Winterbourne forgot she was an in 
 valid unlawfully out of bed. 
 
 "Hallo," said he. "I was going up to see you." 
 
 " I thought I d come down and ask whether we could n t 
 have a little walk," she said. 
 
 " And come home as we did the other day, pick-a-back ? 
 
356 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 No, Cat. I don t take you far from home until you re on 
 your pins again. But you can get as far as the garden, can t 
 you? There s the arbor." 
 
 He gave her his arm, and she went with him through the 
 kitchen, where Lyddy would not look at her, but sniffed 
 brazenly when she was bidden good-morning, though she 
 immediately conceded a reply on Winterbourne s ominous 
 pause. In the arbor, lying in a long chair with the grape- 
 leaves shading her, Catherine was glad within that she had 
 not been forced to go farther for his company. 
 
 " Kitty," said Winterbourne, "do you think you re able 
 to talk a little business ? " 
 
 She would undertake anything, her grateful glance told 
 him, so he would call her by some small name. 
 
 "When you said you d lost money," he ventured, watch 
 ing her to see how she might receive it, "did you mean what 
 you said exactly? Was it all you had? " 
 
 Her eyes widened in their look of terror. 
 
 " O John," she said, " it was all I had. And Celia needs 
 things now, and so do I." 
 
 "Ah !" He said it meditatively, and seemed to retire be 
 hind his beard. Then he remembered she was ill, and war 
 ranted to faint at any point, and smiled at her. "Well, well," 
 he qualified, " we must do the best we can." 
 
 Celia at that moment appeared in the doorway, and Tim 
 Ramsay s golden head rose over her shoulder. They, too, 
 were bound for the arbor, but seeing it occupied, Celia smiled, 
 and with a hand-wave turned back into the house. She was 
 pale. Her eyes had shadows under them. At that moment 
 she was no longer girl, but woman. 
 
 " What does she want with that yellow-headed loon ? " 
 Winterbourne said, frowning. " I J d dress him in petticoats 
 and give him a seam to sew. If he s going to be a man, he d 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 357 
 
 better be put into Dwight Hunter s gang and work on the 
 road." 
 
 The side door swung behind them, as he spoke, and Tim 
 and Celia took the path through the lane to the Valley of 
 Birds. 
 
 "Don t you like him?" Catherine was asking. "Don t 
 you think he s nice for the girls to be with ? " 
 
 " Nice ! Sugar and cream, that s all he is. But Celia won t 
 mind. She 11 say he s dear and lovely, if you ask her. I 
 dare say she thinks so, too. She s garbled her adjectives so 
 long she can t tell what they mean." 
 
 "John," said his wife, "I don t think you like Celia." 
 
 " I don t know her. I don t know the real Celia. I don t 
 believe Celia does." 
 
 He was talking to her with plain honesty, for he had con 
 cluded that if he and Catherine were to join their fortunes, 
 as the upper gods seemed to indicate, it must be as business 
 partners, on the square. This was prudential, too. He could 
 coddle her while she was sick. In a time of her need, he 
 could play a game with her, but heart and flesh would fail 
 him if he were to continue it. 
 
 " Celia s got an idea it s attractive to find everything 
 darling and dear and sweet. It s all her damned vanity. 
 She wants to be the princess that had "jewels drop out of 
 her mouth. Well, she s earned her own punishment, and 
 she never knows now whether she likes or hates. She talks 
 a jargon of affection. Maybe she feels it, but more likely it 
 poisons her. Reaction, Catherine, that s what it is. What we 
 call punishments are reactions. She s littered her standards 
 up, and I don t believe she can pick out evil from good." 
 
 Catherine was enormously taken with this. It was the 
 kind of talk she had always hoped he would respect her 
 enough to share with her. 
 
358 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "I don t know what you mean by her vanity," she ven 
 tured, wishing she might sound as intellectual to him as he 
 did to her. " Celia does n t seem to me vain." 
 
 " That s it. She s too vain to appear vain. She s got a 
 theory of the way she ought to act, and she s going to act 
 just that way if the bottom drops out. If I could hear Celia 
 swear once " 
 
 "John!" 
 
 " If she said to me just once, You re a doddering old 
 fool, and your beard s untidy, and I hate you, I could say, 
 Good for you, Celia. You re half worthy to be your sister s 
 
 sister. 
 
 "You don t call Bess vain." There was the old haunting 
 note of jealousy. 
 
 " Bess ! don t you talk about Bess. She s your nurse, 
 and she J s broken her back for you. And she s my wife s 
 nurse and broken her back for the whole of us. No, we 
 can t talk about Bess." 
 
 It was safer, even she saw, to talk about Celia. 
 
 " Don t you find Celia cheerful ? " she inquired. 
 
 " No, not what I call cheerful. I don t call a perfunctory 
 twitter cheerful. By the Lord, Kit, that s why I don t like 
 her. She s no sense of humor." 
 
 "Has Bess?" Again the tone he chafed under. "She 
 does n t laugh much, either." 
 
 " No, Bess does n t laugh much. Maybe she has n t 
 time." He thought a minute, with a sudden vision of her as 
 he saw her a week ago, standing under an apple tree in a 
 gleeful transport while Hunter from above passed her down 
 Tony, who had got stranded there. " Yes, I guess Bess would 
 laugh more if she had time. She could n t be on the terms 
 she is with the old earth and not see her ironies. But I can tell 
 you why Celia can t laugh. She s so busy scheming out what 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 359 
 
 it s pretty to think and feel, she would n t dare take off her 
 hat to an irony. It might not be the irony other folks took 
 off theirs to." 
 
 "John," his wife whispered it in her caution, "do you 
 ever see any sign of her saying what is n t so ? " 
 
 " No, Kit, no." He shook his head decisively. He was 
 not going to be found in that form of espial. Involuntary 
 ones were enough. " I don t have many words with her." 
 
 But all the time, while his tongue was continuing this 
 rather acrid chattering, he was thinking of the money she 
 had lost and the money he had n t earned, and wondering 
 what they were to live on. There was plenty for the pre 
 sent. His part of the property was intact, but he knew 
 something about his wife s exquisite needs as they used to 
 be, and he had no hope that a sumptuous Celia s could be 
 less. And Bess, in spite of herself, was to have the riches of 
 the world : travel, lessons, leisure to fold her dear plump 
 hands and listen to the love-making a prince was probably 
 conning now, in a palace garden, till she should come. 
 
 Lyddy stepped to the door and tossed out a bee she had 
 captured in a towel. Lyddy was queer : she would scarify 
 human creatures, but she could never let a dumb thing suffer 
 hurt. The sight of her was like a call to Winterbourne, like 
 a key to complete a circuit with his brain. He jumped, and 
 Catherine jumped with him. 
 
 "By Jove!" said he, "my pan-pipes." 
 
 "What is it, John?" 
 
 He laughed in pleasure at his cleverness. 
 
 " Don t you fret, old lady. I 11 patent pan-pipes. There s 
 nothing like them. It s a simple job." 
 
 He sat there uneasily for ten minutes or so, and she could 
 not keep him. Impatience was upon him to find his pan 
 pipes and be gone, perhaps to Lovell to ask him if the idea 
 
360 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 were really feasible, since Lovell had told him he was a fool 
 not to do it ; perhaps to take the thing apart and see if some 
 more cunning channel could be devised. Catherine had lost 
 his attention, and she grew straightway tired. When she rose, 
 he got instantly on his feet. 
 
 "Going in?" said he. "Come on, then. I Ve got to find 
 something in there." 
 
 Celia on the way down through the lane looked at Tim 
 casually. He was moody, and he had no talk to proffer. 
 Even his answers had. a sulky tinge. 
 
 "How is it?" asked Celia. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " How are the pan-pipes ?" 
 
 " Blast the pan-pipes ! " 
 
 Celia looked at him in delicate reproof. Yet her eyes were 
 curious. 
 
 "Things are n t going well?" she guessed. 
 
 "Things would go well if old Gregory would do as I 
 asked him. What s a man want to go into a thing for and 
 then light out and say no more about it ? " 
 
 " Gregory ? " 
 
 " Yes. I ve been up to town twice to find him, and they 
 say he has n t been to the office more than half an hour a day 
 for a month." 
 
 "What does your father say?" 
 
 "Dad? He s so surprised he acts as if he was drunk. 
 He s taking charge and Gregory s raised his salary." 
 
 "Why don t you write ? " 
 
 "Can t. Dad opens the letters." 
 
 " Oh, but you should tell your father." 
 
 " Not much ! He d give the whole thing away to Winter- 
 bourne. Dad s no sport." 
 
 " But where is Gregory ?" 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 361 
 
 Tim looked gloomily into the grove they were approach 
 ing. 
 
 " That s it. Maybe he s gone on to Washington. Maybe 
 he s forming a company. I tell you I ve let Gregory in for 
 something good, and he s playing fast and loose with me. 
 And I can t get my hand on the other trumpet. Ann 
 Staples 11 just as likely as not wait a year before she brings 
 it back. You can t tell anything about those people. They 
 say they re going to do a thing and then they don t do it." 
 
 They had reached the grove, and Celia sat down with a 
 graceful calm, and Tim roamed back and forth and flung 
 his hands about and scowled. 
 
 " Come here," said she. 
 
 He came, and stood before her, not scowling now, she was 
 so pretty. She was opening her little silk bag, and he watched 
 her with no more than the interest you accord a creature who 
 does everything charmingly but in whose present deed you 
 have no concern. But she spread the bag wider and drew 
 out something black and queer: pan-pipes. 
 
 Celia sat looking at him. Tim whitened under his pink 
 at the surprise of it and the simplicity. 
 
 "Where d you get it ?" he asked. " She bring it back ? " 
 ; Celia nodded. 
 
 " Give it to you ? " 
 
 She nodded again. 
 
 "Anybody else round ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Bully ! you got it for me ? " 
 
 Something more assertive swelled his port, and he seemed 
 less like Tim who was good to play with than a man as other 
 men. She felt haughty. 
 
 " I don t know what I got it for." Here she told the 
 truth. " I got it," she added, " so that the right thing 
 
362 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 might be done with it. I did n t want it to fall into the 
 wrong hands." 
 
 " Mine are the right hands/ Tim chuckled. " Give it to 
 me, quick as a wink, and I never 11 forget you the longest 
 day I live. Girls don t care about spoils, or I d see you have 
 a lot of shares. Honest, I would. I will." 
 
 Why had she done it? Celia knew no more than he. His 
 muddled comprehension of what might be done with a mi 
 raculous trumpet by the time it reached her was more elastic 
 still. She had an unformulated hope that somehow the pos 
 session of it would give her after Winterbourne of course, 
 to whom the thing belonged something of the one definite 
 medium that lets you stand upright on your feet and face 
 the world. If the trumpet meant money, it must mean that 
 to her. She put it back into the bag, and Tim s extended 
 hand dropped foolishly. 
 
 " Just what did you want of it ? " she asked him, with her 
 nicest air. 
 
 " I want to patent it." He was answering eagerly, as if, 
 could he satisfy her, she might yield. 
 
 " But Mr. Gregory has the other one to patent." 
 
 "It s all one. What s the use of splitting hairs. I told 
 you before. I Ve put the only trumpet I had into Gregory s 
 hands. S pose he loses his ? S pose he ain t got the right 
 kind of a model made? We want something to fall back 
 
 on." 
 
 But she knew there was more. The real reason was be 
 hind, for he had told her. It was to be kept out of Winter- 
 bourne s hands, so that when Winterbourne said, " I made 
 this thing," he would have no sign of it to point at. It 
 looked, even to her unpractised mind, like a flimsy web. 
 
 " But Mr. Winterbourne could explain how it was made," 
 she objected. " He could draw a plan of it in a minute, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 363 
 
 probably. You could n t. You don t know any more about 
 it than I do." 
 
 Tim looked sulky. It was his defence. 
 
 " That s nothing to do with getting a patent," said he 
 sagely. "You just get the patent. Gregory knows how. 
 Then Winterbourne could whistle. He can t sue us. He s 
 got no money. And when he hears he s down for a double 
 handful of shares, I guess even Winterbourne 11 withdraw 
 any suit he s brought. Why, Winterbourne ain t got the 
 sand to stick to anything. He ll get mad, and then he ll 
 get over it, and let his wife pocket the loot. You 11 see." 
 
 Celia sat thinking, her hand on her silk bag. 
 
 " Don t wrinkle up your forehead so," Tim said daringly. 
 " When you do that, you look thirty." 
 
 She put up her head and flashed a glance at him. But she 
 released her forehead. 
 
 "I think," she said, " I 11 keep the trumpet." 
 
 Then she rose to go, and Tim in the soreness of disap 
 pointed hopes could think of nothing but "Oh, come 
 now!" while he turned with her dejectedly. It was half a 
 game to him. It made him feel experienced, and fed his 
 desire to stand among men and cause them to forget his pink- 
 ness. There was daring in it, too. He was going, he thought, 
 to prove himself. 
 
 " But I tell you one thing," he said, in his way up the 
 lane, "just one thing. I m going to Washington." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 He did not know what for. He felt he was getting nearer 
 patents so. 
 
 " I m going to ask mother for the money. She won t tell. 
 She can t tell. She could n t remember the word for trumpet 
 to save her soul." 
 
 Tim whistled here, and thought the day was fine and the 
 
364 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 girl with him was pretty and fortune at his elbow. But Celia 
 continued thoughtful. They reached the house together and 
 he went up the stairs to Mrs. Ramsay. Celia chose to go 
 through the sitting-room, because she could reach the side 
 stairs better, and there sat Catherine resting, and Winter- 
 bourne, at his desk, was red with wrath. He had pitched the 
 papers out of a certain drawer, and was pawing them as if 
 the motion were, not to find something, but the product of 
 his indignation. 
 
 "Where in all the holes and corners of a universe on its 
 way to blinding torment is my ear-trumpet?" he cried. 
 
 Catherine put her hands to her ears, and added her small 
 pipe, 
 
 "John, don t!" 
 
 He was in one of his rages over little things. But Winter- 
 bourne had carefully explained to her, years ago, that little 
 things were the only ones it was possible to rage over. You 
 could curse if a stream of water hit you in the face. You 
 never could put out your tongue at an avalanche or the sea. 
 There was colossal dignity in mortal things, he hoped he 
 knew, and to them he had to bow. But there was a set of 
 little devils deputed to plague him, and in their presence and 
 the action of their machinations he was not going to keep a 
 caitiff s silence. Bess appeared at the door and he faced her, 
 red of face and bristling. 
 
 " I Ve lost my ear-trumpet ! " 
 
 She echoed him innocently, 
 
 "Ear-trumpet?" 
 
 " Don t repeat my words. I said ear-trumpet. It was in 
 this drawer. It s gone. What infernal woman has been crawl 
 ing through my drawer ? " 
 
 " O John !" Catherine s voice came beating in. 
 
 Bess advanced, in an unmoved calm. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 365 
 
 " Let s see," she said, with a maternal formula. "Are you 
 sure you put it here ? " 
 
 "Am I sure I put it here? Ye gods, why can t women 
 accept a fact? Sure I put it here? Girl, I tell you I had it 
 here. Take that from me, and say no more. * 
 
 Winterbourne always got academic when the little imps 
 were after him, and there is no doubt that it did impress the 
 feminine ear. Catherine lay down now on the couch where she 
 had been sitting, as one unable to leave the room while the 
 storm was whistling, and Celia stood with whitened face, an 
 image of calm. She, too, knew she must stay to see which 
 way the wind would blow. 
 
 " What does it look like? " innocent Bess inquired. 
 
 " Look like? It looks like an ear-trumpet." 
 
 " But I never saw an ear-trumpet, daddy." She used 
 the name unthinkingly, and Catherine and Celia stared at 
 her. 
 
 " Then it s time you did, if you re all going to run chariot 
 races through my things and lose em for me. Why, ninny, 
 it looks like the one you ve got." 
 
 "The one I ve got?" 
 
 "Yes, density. The one the woman brought back and gave 
 to you in the kitchen." 
 
 " But she did n t," Bess assured him. " I have n t seen any 
 woman with an ear-trumpet in the kitchen. No, Mr. Winter- 
 bourne, it is n t here. There s nothing here but papers and 
 pipes and things." 
 
 " Then Lyddy s right," Winterbourne declaimed, as if the 
 discovery of the perfidy of all things earthly had plunged him 
 into utter gloom. " She says the Stapleses are the devil s own. 
 The girl lied. Who s that knocking at my door?" 
 
 There had been a demanding knock with a stick, evidently 
 on the screen. 
 
366 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I 11 go, in a second." This from Bess, who was hastily 
 stemming the tide of papers falling to the floor. 
 
 "Not in here, John," Catherine said faintly. "Don t let 
 me see any one." 
 
 "It s some fool of a woman that wants to be sung to," 
 Winterbourne said bitterly out of his new understanding of 
 the frailty of things here below. " Stay here, Bess. I 11 go 
 to my own door, and if it s an agent, he shall be hamstrung." 
 
 When he was over the threshold, Catherine swung to the 
 door behind him, so that no stranger should, if he gained ad 
 mittance to the hall, give her the necessity of speech. Bess 
 had stopped short in picking up the papers. She remembered 
 something. She turned to Celia standing there unmoved, her 
 silk bag in one hand, the other hand upon her dress, as if in 
 another instant she might lift her skirt and run like Atalanta. 
 
 "Celia," said Bess, "that wasn t the woman that night?" 
 
 " What night ? " Celia asked, in a hard monotony of tone. 
 Her eyes looked warningly at her sister. "Don t speak," 
 they said. " Don t speak." 
 
 But Bess ignored the message. Perhaps it never reached 
 her. 
 
 "The night the woman came and gave you a package 
 when I was out of the room and you said it was the milk 
 man s wife. I forgot to tell you I asked the milkman next 
 morning what she wanted and he has n t any wife, Celia. And 
 I meant to tell you. I thought it was a joke. I meant 
 
 Her voice trailed off from its unconcern into understand 
 ing, into terror. Her face suddenly lost its rose, and with 
 thin white cheeks they looked at last alike, except that Celia s 
 pallor was that of anger and hers was that of fear. Catherine s 
 eyes were on Celia only. 
 
 " O Celia," she said, in her intense undertone. " Was that 
 it ? Did you tell her what was n t true ? " 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 367 
 
 Celia turned her blazing eyes away from her sister s face. 
 She could answer Catherine. 
 
 "You are absurd," she said. " Yes, it was a joke. Of course 
 it was a joke." 
 
 Then she walked out of the room. They heard her pause 
 a moment on the stairs, it might have been in trembling 
 or the intention to return; but she went on, and then Cath 
 erine began to cry weakly. 
 
 " O Bess, how dreadful it is, how dreadful she can be! " 
 
 Bess had gone on putting the papers back into the drawer. 
 She had an air of preoccupation only. Her mind had with 
 drawn to its inner workroom to collect itself and judge, 
 match little piece to piece. 
 
 " I 11 get you something to take in a minute," she said 
 absently. " As soon as Mr. Winterbourne s caller has gone, 
 you d better run upstairs." 
 
 " It is n t true," Catherine was insisting. " She had the 
 look she always has when she says what is n t true. But 
 what object could she have, Bess, what object ? That s what 
 makes it so terrible. She s got to the point where it s ingrain. 
 She says things without an object." 
 
 " She told you," Bess reminded her. The color had not 
 come back to her face. She looked stony with pain. "She 
 said it was a joke." 
 
 "It isn t a joke. John says she s no sense of humor. 
 It was the other thing. O Bess, it seems as if I could die 
 if I could keep her from doing that." 
 
 " I could die, too," the girl s inner self responded, but her 
 lips answered, " The caller has gone. Mr. Winterbourne 
 has gone with him. Now you can run up to bed." 
 
 Winterbourne, going to the door, had found there, on 
 the other side of the screen, a short globular man, dressed 
 faultlessly in a light gray summer suit, with correct tie and 
 
368 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 every evidence that he prized the toilet even in its lesser 
 niceties. He took off his hat ceremoniously and showed 
 that he was bald save for a little curling wisp, made for 
 comedy, on the top of his poll. His face was pink and 
 shining. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said he, " but can you tell me how 
 to find the Valley of Birds ? " 
 
 No man less likely to seek out a poetic valley had ever 
 entered Winterbourne s ken. He stepped outside and asked 
 unbelievingly, 
 
 " Did you say the Valley of Birds ? " 
 
 Whereupon, at the first indication of his lips to open, the 
 stranger whipped up an ear-trumpet and presented the 
 mouth to Winterbourne. Winterbourne fell back in wild 
 amaze. 
 
 " My God, man," he bellowed, " where did you get my 
 trumpet ? " 
 
 He had not omitted to speak into it, and the stranger, in 
 his turn, fell back. His spectacled blue eyes popped with 
 an absurd terror. Now Winterbourne remembered that he 
 had a voice of dry, toneless quality, one of the voices of the 
 deaf. He was turning about with a conclusive dignity, in 
 haste, also, as if the outcome of the affair had not been 
 what he hoped. 
 
 " I am sorry to have troubled you," said he. " I won t 
 intrude upon you." 
 
 But Winterbourne was after him. He arrested him with 
 a hand on his shoulder and violently pulled about the arm 
 that had seemed to be concealing pan-pipes at his side. 
 Winterbourne forced it to the stranger s ear and spoke 
 into it. 
 
 " The Valley of Birds," he said, " is down through my 
 lane and through my carrot-field. I 11 show it to you." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 369 
 
 He finished after pan-pipes had left the stranger s ear. " But 
 that s my trumpet, and I can just as well kill you in the 
 Valley of Birds as here. Better." 
 
 Therefore the stranger apprehensively, and Winterbourne 
 with decision, walked off together, and once, on their way 
 through the lane, the stranger caught a bright yellow flash 
 from bough to bough of the elm tree in the neighboring 
 field. He stole a look at Winterbourne, a child s look of 
 guilt, of temptation not to be denied, and whipped out pan 
 pipes and put it to his ear. He stopped and stood en 
 tranced. The oriole sang. 
 
 " Ah ! " It was acute delight. However he had come upon 
 pan-pipes, Winterbourne forgave him. 
 
XXIX 
 
 WHEN they reached the circle of the grove, the 
 little man turned to Winterbourne and asked, yet 
 as if he already knew, 
 "Valley of Birds?" 
 
 Winterbourne nodded, entirely tamed, whoever had his 
 ear-trumpet, by curiosity. The little man sat down on a 
 bank, his plump legs sticking out, and set the trumpet to 
 his ear. He listened beatifically. Winterbourne also sat, 
 slipped down an incline slightly on the pine-needles, found 
 himself a more commodious hollow adapted to his frame, 
 and watched. The other man had forgotten him. He sat 
 in a rapt communion with sound. And yet there was not so 
 very much sound either. It was getting late for birds. Once 
 he turned the trumpet up into the tree, and his mouth 
 widened. He shook his head in ecstasy, as if to say, " That s 
 the boy for me," and Winterbourne wondered whether he 
 could possibly have caught the pother of a squirrel running 
 up and down excitedly, put about, it seemed, by man s in 
 vasion. Winterbourne, brimming with interest and satis 
 faction, thought he should be content to watch the stranger 
 everlastingly. He had never seen a creature more mysteri 
 ously happy. And the trumpet was his own trumpet. 
 There could be no doubt about it. There was even the 
 little irregular dent in the rim, this from the time his mother 
 dropped it on the fender. 
 
 Winterbourne had a great many illuminating thoughts. 
 He had never considered that hearing was especially valu 
 able as a factor of happiness to a man over forty. It would 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 371 
 
 be practically a mistake to lose it, he knew, but happi 
 ness ! Was the singing of birds so much to mortal man, 
 when by diving into a book the sea of oblivion to this time 
 could close over him and he could be on Hymettus with 
 the bees ? He felt that he had a great deal to think about, 
 while his silent companion was listening. He was learning 
 things about life itself, and this, when he could escape from 
 books, was his game. Suddenly the stranger drew a long, 
 open-mouthed breath of satisfaction. He put down the 
 trumpet and his hand with it on the ground at his side, and 
 shut his eyes tight a minute, as if to rest them from the 
 ecstasy that had been pouring in through all the senses. 
 Then he opened them, he had sudden ways for so rotund 
 a man, clapped pan-pipes to his ear, and presented it to 
 Winterbourne. 
 
 " My name is Gregory," said he. " I have n t had the 
 pleasure of meeting you." 
 
 Winterbourne wanted to know many things far more than 
 he wanted to fulfil the convention of telling his own name. 
 
 "How did you hear about the Valley of Birds?" he 
 hastened to inquire. 
 
 "Article in the Sun" said Gregory, "signed by a man 
 named Lovell." 
 
 "I told him " said Winterbourne, meaning to add, 
 " I told him how it would be." But he cut it short, remem 
 bering the ecstasy on his visitor s face. Did he wish to shut 
 off any creature just born into the delights of sound ? " You 
 enjoy it?" he remarked tritely. 
 
 Gregory nodded. 
 
 "The amount of it was this," said he. "Since I ve had 
 my trumpet this trumpet I ve been on a prolonged 
 spree." 
 
 Winterbourne looked at him the more questioningly, his 
 
372 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 correct clothes, the freshness of his face. Gregory, accus 
 tomed to calling on his eyes to help his ears, read the look 
 and shook his head. 
 
 " No, no," said he, "figurative, figurative. I ve given up 
 work, that s all. I go to the office an hour every morning. 
 Then I escape, sir, I escape. I take this trumpet and run 
 away. I go to vaudeville; I get into the country. I came 
 down here because that fellow said there were more birds 
 here to the square inch than in any other bit of woods in 
 New England. I m on the loose. I can hear, man, and I m 
 going to hear every sound that peeps for fear the thing shuts 
 down again. I haven t heard for thirty-eight years. How 
 I Ve carried on my business, God only knows. If I had n t 
 a good son and a clerk that s worth his weight in gold, I 
 could n t, that s all. What ? " 
 
 Winterbourne seemed about to speak, but he hesitated 
 gravely. Could he say to this creature new-born into the world 
 of satisfactions, " Where did you get my trumpet ? " Was it 
 not indeed, by the law of equity, Gregory s own trumpet? 
 Winterbourne felt a little awed at himself for inventing such 
 a thing. When his mother used it, he had settled down with 
 great pleasure to her satisfaction in reentering family inter 
 course. But here was a sane middle-aged man drunk with 
 delight because he was new-born again into a world worth 
 living in. Winterbourne felt like a creator, in a small way. 
 He wondered, too, how many other brokers, hungry for the 
 song of birds, might have been using it if he had spread 
 it broadcast. Was this another chamber of life he should 
 have entered instead of running off to his own games in the 
 forest of plenty ? 
 
 " May I see that ? " he compromised with curiosity, hold 
 ing out his hand. 
 
 Gregory misunderstood him. wilfullv. Winterbourne saw. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 373 
 
 He would not let the thing go out of his grasp. He lifted it 
 again and smiled at Winterbourne. 
 
 "When I tell you/ said he confidentially, "that this is 
 the only trumpet ever invented that doesn t change the 
 human voice, that gives you Frovafore, by Jove ! as you 
 heard it when you were fifteen well, I would n t part from 
 it for all the money in the Standard Oil." 
 
 Winterbourne dropped his hand. It was Gregory s trum 
 pet, he understood. The gods had given it to him. 
 
 " Who owns this place?" Gregory was asking. 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Indeed ! Let me congratulate you, sir. May I inquire 
 your name ? " 
 
 " Winterbourne. John Winterbourne." 
 
 He was by no means prepared for the effect of this as a 
 facer. What less moving than telling his own unmarked name ? 
 But Gregory dropped the trumpet, hid it, Winterbourne 
 saw, in the pocket of his loose coat. With some difficulty 
 he got on his short legs. 
 
 "I ll be going," said he. 
 
 Now Winterbourne was roused. What did the shade of 
 pallor mean overspreading the rounded cheek? What that 
 gleam of the blue eyes, a moment before so trusting? He 
 also came upon his feet and towered. 
 
 " No, you don t," said he. " What is there in my name to 
 set you off? Where did you get that trumpet? " 
 
 Gregory was walking, hands in his coat-pockets, that, 
 Winterbourne knew, to keep a grip of one on pan-pipes, 
 he was walking off. But Winterbourne was in face of him, 
 a hand rhetorically extended. 
 
 " Where," he roared, forgetting that to Gregory without 
 his magic servitor the thunder might be rumbling the same 
 question without avail, "where did you get my trumpet? " 
 
374 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Gregory could not, without the loss of some dignity, con 
 tinue. He might dodge on the wood-path, but his legs were 
 short and he was no sprinter. The red surged back into his 
 face. He swelled a little with a sudden anger, and plucked the 
 trumpet from his pocket. Again he set it to his ear. 
 
 " I thank you, sir," said he stiffly, " for one of the most 
 enjoyable hours of my life. Good-morning." 
 
 Winterbourne, without scruple, laid a hand upon his arm 
 and kept the trumpet in its place. 
 
 " Where," said he, in the modified tone adapted, he knew, 
 to pan-pipes, " where did you get that trumpet ? " 
 
 Gregory looked him for more than an instant in the 
 eyes, appraising him. He made his hasty resolution. 
 
 " Come," said he. " We might as well talk it over." And 
 it was he who led the way back into the grove, Winterbourne 
 following. Gregory sat down on a tree-trunk this time, and 
 Winterbourne gravely took a place beside him, near, also, 
 judging that the trumpet, in some fashion, might escape him 
 if it were not within reach. Gregory turned to him with a 
 dash of appeal. 
 
 " Come, now," said he, cf put yourself in my place. I 
 had n t heard a word for thirty-eight years. The minute I 
 put that thing to my ear, I was bewitched. Do you suppose 
 I could let it go out of my hands into a mechanic s, to fiddle 
 with it, to make diagrams and models? He might spoil it. 
 God ! you don t expect a man that s been deaf for thirty- 
 eight years to do a thing like that, do you ? " 
 
 " By Jupiter, no ! " Winterbourne understood it all no 
 more than the dead, but Gregory looked as if he were going 
 to cry. He could read the signs of that, and wanted to say 
 to him, " Don t do that. Catherine does that." 
 
 "Well!" said Gregory. He was in a measure relieved, 
 but he seemed to be pouring out his grievances at once, the 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 375 
 
 thirty-eight years he had been shut out from paradise and the 
 ironic chance that brought him a trumpet only to snatch it 
 from him. " Nobody s understood it. Even my wife ain t. 
 Why can t you tend to your business if you have got an 
 ear-trumpet? she says; c why can t you tend to it better? 
 My son don t understand it. It s he and the head clerk 
 that s keeping the house running. My son comes to me, 
 and says, Father, can t you give us half a day? You don t 
 need to be off every day, do you ? And I say to him, c I ve 
 given you every day for thirty-eight years and I ve written 
 out my orders and it s cost me blood. And now, says I, 
 4 1 can hear. Can t see what that means to a man, can ye ? I 
 can hear. And I m going to hear, I says, { every blessed 
 thing that s going. Why, man, when I wake up now, I can 
 hear my watch tick on the little stand, head o my bed. First 
 time I heard it, I took it and kissed it. My wife saw me do 
 it, and she says to me, c Manuel, you crazy ? 
 
 His blue eyes were full of tears. Winterbourne s, too, 
 filled, and he was not ashamed. But he spoke into the 
 trumpet. 
 
 "Where did you get the thing? where did you get it?" 
 
 Gregory was watching him now, as if to see how he would 
 take it. 
 
 " I suppose," he countered, "he s your son." 
 
 "Who s my son?" 
 
 " His name s Winterbourne." 
 
 " Whose name is Winterbourne ? " 
 
 " But you need n t tell me he invented a thing like that. I 
 thought at first he might, he s such a fool. It takes a fool 
 to invent a thing." 
 
 " Oh, does it ? " Winterbourne returned. 
 
 " When they don t know anything else, they 11 up and in 
 vent something the sanest man would n t have dreamed of. 
 
376 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Well, I thought, at first, he might have done it. I don t now. 
 I think the thing was stolen." 
 
 His excitement was so great, evidently over coils he had 
 tried to loose before, that Winterbourne, with an instinct that 
 it was the only way, began a species of wheedling. 
 
 "Well, man, it s an interesting story. When did you see 
 him first?" 
 
 " He came to my office. He made his way in over a good 
 deal of opposition. Said he had a message. Could n t see 
 anybody but me. I was rather upset that day, for Ramsay, 
 my confidential clerk, was out, wife sick, and the clerk 
 that brought the message got an idea he was from Ramsay." 
 
 "Ramsay!" 
 
 "So I had him in. He came up to me, I thought he 
 was going to shoot me, but way he looked I knew t was 
 no such game, and stuck this up to my ear, and then he 
 says, Good-morning, Mr. Gregory. And I heard him, 
 plain as you hear me now. I told you how I kissed the watch. 
 Well, I wonder I didn t kiss him. And I ve hardly had 
 that trumpet away from my ears long enough to eat and 
 sleep." 
 
 Winterbourne, brows shaggily knit, was listening and 
 thinking hard. There was still call for persuasiveness, but he 
 wheedled absently, having too much to ponder. 
 
 "It s a great story. He d heard you needed a trumpet 
 and he d brought you one ? " 
 
 " He d brought it to me to get his patent." 
 
 " His patent ! The young whelp ! " 
 
 Gregory had his turn at a question. 
 
 " Mr. Winterbourne, is the young man your son ? " 
 
 " I ve no son. Did the misbegotten cub say he was my 
 son?" 
 
 " No. but his name is Winterbourne." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 377 
 
 " His name is Belial," Winterbourne supplied, fortissimo. 
 " Where does he live, the viper ? " 
 
 "Sutton. That s his post-office address. And Sutton, I 
 take it, is next town to this." 
 
 They looked at each other. Then Gregory went on very 
 firmly : 
 
 " Now, Mr. Winterbourne, I m all ready to own I m in 
 the wrong. A young man comes to me and puts an inven 
 tion into my hand. I m to patent it for him. I m to engi 
 neer the thing and see it through. I don t. I break my 
 word. I sit down and use the thing, and I take no steps 
 toward doing what I said I d do. And I see the thing s been 
 worn, and I suspect it s stolen, and I take no steps about 
 that. I only know I ve got something I would n t part with 
 if there was a new commandment made to cover the case 
 not unless I could get another like it. That s where we are." 
 
 Winterbourne s eyes still had their far-away look, but he 
 put out his hand, and Gregory gripped it with much satisfac 
 tion. 
 
 "If I could tell you," said Winterbourne, "how the 
 thing was made, if I could give you a diagram of the inside 
 of it, so you could have it manufactured at the next shop, 
 at a cost of a few dollars, would you believe I d seen the 
 thing before?" 
 
 Gregory believed him perfectly, and was content to make 
 a nod for answer. 
 
 "And somebody else has seen it before," he commented. 
 "It s been used." 
 
 Winterbourne was not ready yet to tell him who had used 
 it. He was still pulling his brows together and thinking. 
 Then the most obvious thought of all occurred to him. 
 
 "How did he look?" 
 
 "The boy?" 
 
378 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "Was he a boy?" 
 
 " Eighteen, I should say. Looked sixteen. Blue eyes, 
 light hair, skin like a girl, all over pink." 
 
 Now Winterbourne knew. He came to his feet abruptly 
 and his hat felt the jar. He righted it with one hand and 
 stretched the other, palm up, to Gregory. He had the effect, 
 in his passion, of resisting a stiff breeze. 
 
 " Gregory," said he, " that s my trumpet. Give it here." 
 
 " Not on your life," said Gregory. " Don t you under 
 stand me? I can t be without it." 
 
 " I 11 give you another. You shall have the twin of it, or 
 you shall have this back. But I know who stole it. I 11 con 
 front the whelp." 
 
 Gregory removed it from his ear and, with a motion of 
 ultimate decision, consigned it to his pocket. From that 
 point his part in the interview was a bold game of guessing; 
 he could hear nothing. 
 
 " No man shall patent an invention of mine," stormed 
 Winterbourne. " I 11 patent it myself, or it shall rot. Do you 
 mark me, man ? Give me my trumpet." 
 
 "You ve got all your senses, and I m one short," Greg 
 ory hurled back at him. " If you think I 11 give up the one 
 thing that makes life worth living, you re mighty well mis 
 taken." 
 
 "Take it out of your pocket, you fool," roared Winter- 
 bourne. "Don t you know this is an epic moment? Don t 
 you see it s going to be known through all time as the 
 battle of the ear-trumpet? It s your weapon, man. Do you 
 suppose Hector would have been slain if Achilles had kept 
 his spear in his tail pocket? Out with your trumpet, Roland, 
 for this is Roncesvalles." 
 
 The splendor of the moment had overcome him, and he 
 thought no more of Gregory save as the pasteboard protag- 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 379 
 
 onist to give him something to tilt against while his own 
 steed of fancy pranced and curvetted. But to Gregory, who 
 had no background of historical tapestries, the moment was 
 a painful one, full of the most prosaic verities. Full of cru 
 elty, even, for it appeared that some one was about to push 
 him back again into his silent world. He began manfully, 
 yet almost hysterically withal, to explain : 
 
 "See here, I d rather die than give it up to you. It s 
 death to be without it. Why, my life ain t worth a rotten 
 apple to me, to lose it now I ve had it once." 
 
 The market, if it. could have seen its Gregory, would have 
 been amazed. His clerks would have looked upon him as 
 an alien thing. Here was a man who, from the very impos 
 sibility of doing his work against odds, had done it grimly 
 and with a savage precision ; and he was almost weeping. 
 
 "I don t want to take it away from you, you infernal 
 idiot!" Winterbourne raged, hysterical in his turn and his 
 own way that splintered masts and ripped the rigging into 
 tatters. " Do you suppose I d let a thing lie for a hundred 
 years rotting in a drawer and then steal it like a felon from 
 the man that needs it ? I want to find the cub that stole it, 
 that s what I want. Take it out of your pocket and put it 
 up to your ear so you can hear sense. Do you want to drive 
 a man crazy?" 
 
 But Gregory, immovable and grand as any other defender 
 of a passionate interest, stood with his hands in his pockets, 
 one of them clutching the trumpet, and faced him. No 
 yielding was in those tear-wet eyes nor about the mouth shut 
 into a moveless line. They watched and interrogated each 
 other so, for a pregnant moment. Then Winterbourne saw 
 his own defeat. Nothing was left but compromise. He put 
 his hand on Gregory s shoulder, turned him about, and 
 Gregory saw they were to go. He, too, compromised to that 
 
380 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 extent, and they got step together and went out of the grove, 
 Winterbourne muttering. On their way up through the 
 ]ane, undoubtedly the same thoughts travelled, pace for pace, 
 through both their minds. Gregory was combating his im 
 pulse to run because Winterbourne, long of limb, could over 
 take him, and Winterbourne was reasoning that he might, 
 if he chose, stop him on the spot and extract the trumpet. 
 He was big enough. 
 
 So they went on into the street and along its length, 
 Gregory unknowing why he went, to the Ramsays , and there 
 Tonty, watering an iris that did n t need it from a diminu 
 tive pot Winterbourne had given her, and in an ecstasy of 
 housewifely content, met them joyously, and at sight of her 
 Winterbourne s passion cooled. He had nourished the cer 
 tainty that Tim would have to be killed, that everlasting 
 justice should be satisfied ; but Tonty s serene little face 
 reminded him he could not shed the blood of Tonty s Tim. 
 So he asked for him gently, and Tonty answered out of her 
 shyness because a stranger was with him, that Tim had gone 
 to see mother. Winterbourne turned back down the path, 
 his prisoner with him, and Tonty, rapt with delight because 
 they had taken off their hats to her, grown gentlemen as 
 they were, watched them away. And Winterbourne, going 
 up his own path, where Gregory had hesitated for an instant 
 because it seemed as if this might be a point for them to 
 part company, met Tim coming sunnily out. Winterbourne 
 forgot that this was Tonty s Tim, and saluted him fortissimo. 
 
 "You misbegotten young cub, where is my ear-trumpet? 
 You stole one ; now where s the other ?" 
 
 And Mrs. Ramsay, sitting above at the window in the 
 first moment of her cure, when she had wanted a book in 
 her hand, turned from the pages of the old fashion-magazine 
 Bess had innocently given her, heard and listened. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 381 
 
 Tim turned a shade less pink. Winterbourne saw it, and 
 so did Gregory, who had become, at sight of him, the type 
 of man in an office alive with clerks. Tim was instantly un 
 comfortable in a way he was not used to. He lived his own 
 capricious life untrammelled. If he did wrong in small ways, 
 the heavens never fell. And now, challenged and unpre 
 pared, he spoke suddenly and unadvisedly. 
 
 " I have n t got your trumpet. Your daughter s got it." 
 
 Winterbourne, taken aback, stared at him. 
 
 "My daughter?" 
 
 Tim was immediately sorry. He knew he had broken the 
 code. He had told on his accomplice, but though that cer 
 tainty and regret were well alive in him he said without pre 
 meditation, 
 
 "Yes. Celia s got it." 
 
 Winterbourne opened the door. 
 
 "Come in," said he. 
 
 Gregory, full to the brim now with determination to see 
 it through, preceded him, and so, constrained by a glance, 
 did Tim, impudent, but uneasy. In the sitting-room Bess, 
 who had heard them coming, gathered up her book her 
 Italian book, Winterbourne saw with a pang of love for her 
 dutifulness and was about to leave them. 
 
 "Call your sister," Winterbourne bade her. 
 
 She looked at him in a sudden apprehension, he thought, 
 but she went, and he heard her on the stairs. Winterbourne 
 drew forth a chair for Gregory, but Tim, left standing, put 
 his hands in his pockets and whistled until Winterbourne s 
 frown seemed to him too thunderous, and he stopped. It was 
 a moment before Celia came, Bess following. Celia was pale, 
 Winterbourne, in his stern-eyed questioning, saw, but she 
 met his gaze candidly. Bess, behind her, leaned against the 
 casing of the door, and Winterbourne saw she was shaking 
 
382 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and that her hands, entwining upon each other, would not 
 be still. That caused him to speak gently. 
 
 " Celia, have you got my ear-trumpet ? " 
 
 Celia looked at him in a sympathetic questioning. Had he 
 lost something it seemed to say, something he cared very 
 much about? 
 
 " No, papa," said she. 
 
 Winterbourne,when the occasion was big enough, felt no 
 rages. The present one was very big, he saw, judging from 
 the look on the face of Bess; and his blood cooled. He 
 seemed to see, too, with a great liking for Gregory, that this 
 was why Gregory now stayed out of it. Though with the 
 trumpet in his pocket, he was outside family affairs. 
 
 "Think again, Celia," said Winterbourne. " I have found 
 one of them. That s the one that should have been in the 
 desk. Where s the other ? " 
 
 Then the irony of the puissance of small things came over 
 him, and but for Bess and the anguish of her face he could 
 have laughed. The theft of an ear-trumpet ! and here they 
 were standing about in search of the malefactor. Celia was 
 looking straight at him. At least, he thought in admiration, 
 she was game. Then she glanced at Tim, and her lip 
 curled. 
 
 " I know where it is, papa," she said. "It s upstairs." 
 
 "Get it," said Winterbourne, and Celia composedly turned 
 about, passed her sister without a glance, and went up the 
 stairs. 
 
 " Bess," said Winterbourne kindly, " don t you think 
 you d better go to my wife ? She might want something." 
 
 She shook her head, and then, in a moment, Celia came, 
 the trumpet in her hand. At sight of it, Gregory s eyes 
 lighted with a passion of fervor. They seemed to say, " So 
 there s another one." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 383 
 
 Celia gave the trumpet to Winterbourne with a dutiful 
 grace. 
 
 " Did you want to see me ? " she hesitated. 
 
 " No," said Winterbourne, "I did n t want to see you." 
 
 And again she left the room and went up the stairs. Win 
 terbourne stood for a moment, thinking. Then he walked 
 to the front door and opened the screen wide. 
 
 Tim followed him, good-natured, acquiescent. Nothing 
 was going to happen, he saw. His experience was that among 
 civilized people things did n t happen. 
 
 "That s all," said Winterbourne. "You can go." 
 
 The screen closed behind him, but Mrs. Ramsay, clothed 
 in her street dress and ready to come down, had heard, and 
 slipped back to her own room. There was a stranger below, 
 she knew. She would wait. Winterbourne turned. 
 
 "Now! " said he, and Gregory, in an understanding of the 
 crisis, drew out the trumpet in hiding. He took his chair 
 again and Winterbourne pulled out another. The little table 
 where Theocritus lay was between them, and on it Winter- 
 bourne laid down his trumpet as if it were a game of cards 
 and he was showing his hand. 
 
 " That the boy ? " he asked. 
 
 Gregory nodded. He had his question ready. 
 
 " Relative of yours ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Name Winterbourne?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "What is his name? " 
 
 " Ramsay." 
 
 "Not Ramsay s boy ? Not our Mr. Ramsay?" 
 
 Winterbourne nodded. 
 
 " Well, well," said Gregory. He sat in a muse, his eyes 
 absently on the twin trumpet. " Well," said he, " I m sorry. 
 
384 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 I m most infernally sorry for Ramsay. He s an invaluable 
 man." 
 
 " Now," said Winterbourne, " how was it?" 
 
 This was business, and Gregory at once became the busi 
 ness man. He told succinctly how Tim had come, acting like 
 a fool so far as the practical aspect of the thing went, but 
 clever, oh, yes ! bright in his talk as well as being a fool. And 
 Gregory had not, he owned, gone into it really. For as soon 
 as the thing met his ear, he had been bewitched, and he had 
 no desire save to get it into his own private keeping for a day, 
 an hour. Then, he had believed, he could look into it, or 
 hand it over to a man who would understand it, from within. 
 But he had known underneath that he could n t hand it over 
 to anybody. All he really wanted was to get rid of Tim, 
 inventor or no, unplumbed, hug his treasure to his breast, 
 and embark on the wave of glorious living. He was a crim 
 inal, Gregory owned, but he offered it with a smile because, 
 pan-pipes at his ear, he knew he should hear what Winter- 
 bourne had to say in turn. What it was made no difference 
 in his sum of happiness. The human tongue now might ap 
 prove or revile him ; at least he should have the ecstasy of 
 that communion. 
 
 But Winterbourne was looking at him in almost a melt 
 ing interest. He had, the confession told him, made a man. 
 He had topped a creature with a sense the law of life had 
 taken away. 
 
 " Don t worry yourself, my friend," said he. " I can make 
 you a million just like this. You shall never be without it. 
 I 11 give you the drawing this day." 
 
 "You invented it yourself?" Gregory said, looking at 
 him in an adoring gratitude ludicrous from those eyes. 
 
 "Yes, I invented it." 
 
 " It s never been patented? " 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 385 
 
 "No. I ve been too lazy, man. I Ve been too lazy. I never 
 thought " He paused and ran back over his forgetfulness 
 of it. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 Gregory so loved to hear the human voice that he could 
 have begged it to go on indefinitely. Winterbourne answered 
 slowly, 
 
 " I never thought what I was keeping them out of, the 
 people that could n t hear. God forgive me ! I Ve let them 
 perish in their silence." 
 
 To do something for them had brought him nearer them. 
 For an instant he thought with passion, not of his old with 
 drawals, but the approach to men if he could go, pan-pipes 
 in hand, and open their ears for them. " I have n t remem 
 bered it for years," he said, "except when somebody s ap 
 pealed to me. But God forgive me ! I thought of it this 
 forenoon because I wanted to get some money out of it." 
 
 " You can get some money out of it," Gregory assured 
 him briefly. 
 
 cc Not too much," Winterbourne held him back. " Not 
 too much. Let em pick it off every tree." Then he be 
 thought him that it would be dinner-time presently and Bess 
 would have to feed them, if they sat there. " I 11 tell you 
 what we ll do," said he. "I can t ask you to my table be 
 cause we re short of help. But there s a little tavern a mile 
 along the road, and there we ll eat. And I 11 take a roll of 
 paper and a pencil in my pocket and I 11 put the inside of 
 pan-pipes before you, and you ll see it s no such hard mat 
 ter to make a man hear." 
 
 Bess saw them walking away together down the street. 
 Gregory, the trumpet at his ear, was looking up and listen 
 ing with devoted interest, and Winterbourne, from the wag 
 ging of his head, was rolling out a monologue. 
 
XXX 
 
 CELIA was locked in her room. Bess did not know 
 whether she had eaten any dinner at all, but after she 
 had knocked two or three times at intervals and been 
 told to go away, she had to see that her patients were fed, 
 and went about that in a preoccupied haste, her mind heavily 
 upon Celia. Mrs. Ramsay she found in a state of majestic 
 insubordination. She had her clothes on, and she stated that 
 she must see Mr. Winterbourne at once. She had thought 
 of the word she wanted to say to him all these weeks, and 
 she could pronounce it perfectly. She wanted to see him and 
 also she wished to see her son. 
 
 "Tony?" Bess inquired, knowing how assuaging Tony 
 had been in the maternal arms of late. 
 
 But it was not Tony. It was Tim. Mrs. Ramsay said this 
 with a compression of the lips befitting the Spartan mother. 
 Tim, most evidently, was to be dealt with. Catherine 
 also had been to Celia s door, and once, on a return from 
 this fruitless pilgrimage with a face of woe, she met Bess. 
 She whispered . portentously, in her way of regarding Celia 
 as a creature pathologically undone, and Bess had a sudden 
 sense of outrage that Catherine should know her darling had 
 been so put to shame. 
 
 " Bess," Catherine whispered, " you must deal with her. 
 I haven t the strength." 
 
 In the middle of the afternoon Celia set her door ajar, and 
 Bess, watching for it, knocked timidly. Celia bade her come 
 in, composedly enough, and Bess entered and locked the 
 door behind her. Celia, dressed very carefully in an out-door 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 387 
 
 gown, sat by the window, doing nothing. Her room had al 
 most an austere aspect of tidiness. She seemed to have been 
 putting away the trifles that ordinarily had place on her bu 
 reau and her table. Bess dared not look her in the face. Celia 
 had done even childishly wrong, and they both felt the shame 
 of it. But she started at her sister s voice. It was hard in a 
 way that indicated anticipation of a serious, not a trifling 
 moment. 
 
 " Why do you do that ? " Celia was asking her. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Lock the door." 
 
 " I did n t want her to come in," Bess answered simply. 
 
 Then she went forward and, without premeditation, sank 
 on the floor, laid her arms upon her sister s knees, and put 
 her head down on them. Expressed emotion was the rarest 
 thing with her. She could look it in a still, warm way, but 
 its outspoken language she seemed never to have learned. 
 To Celia, gazing down at her, the brown head with its beauti 
 ful hair, the abandon of the strong shoulders, it seemed as 
 if she had never loved her sister so terribly, with such an 
 ache, such a sense of isolation with her, as if they two were 
 clinging together in a world unfriendly to them. But she 
 said, in the same hard voice, 
 
 "What are you doing that for? Get up and sit in a 
 chair." 
 
 Bess did get up, her hands fruitlessly to her face, to cover 
 it from tears. She was crying in a silent way, and Celia looked 
 at her quietly and loved her and wanted to hurt her because 
 she cried. 
 
 " We must go away, dear," Bess said, as soon as she could 
 speak. " I Ve been thinking about it all the afternoon." 
 
 "Where?" Celia asked it coldly, without real interest. 
 
 " I don t know yet. I Ve been thinking. We could do 
 
388 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 one thing anyway." She looked at Celia now timidly, know 
 ing how she would take it. " We could go back to the 
 tavern." 
 
 "Where you worked? " 
 
 " Yes." She took a little sip of courage at being even 
 hearkened to. " I could do the cooking. They d take me on 
 again. They d be glad and you could board." Celia was 
 looking at her with an unmoved face, and Bess plucked up 
 heart to continue. " Mrs. Ramsay won t stay long. She s 
 fretting about her children. I ve seen it. Maybe she d be 
 better at home. She could do a little here and there and not 
 think so much about herself." 
 
 " You want to get back," said Celia bitterly. 
 
 "I ?" 
 
 " Yes. You re homesick for the tavern, the boarders, your 
 work." 
 
 The last word was hard to utter. It projected an infini 
 tude of servile tasks, and Bess, even, was abhorrent to her 
 for the moment because she could endure them. Bess sat 
 now regardless of covering her tear-stained face, hands clasped 
 about her knees, looking sadly past her sister. 
 
 " No," she said, " no. I d done with the place pretty 
 soon after you took me away from it. I don t want to go 
 back to it. But it s the only place there is." 
 
 A momentary curiosity qualified Celia s look. 
 
 " What do you like ? " she asked. " Where do you want 
 to stay ? " 
 
 A soft radiance beamed from Bess. It made her face into 
 a glowing wonder. 
 
 " Here," she said softly, as if to her inner mind. " Oh, 
 there s no place like here." 
 
 "This house?" 
 
 "This house, this town." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 389 
 
 She looked like a creature fallen in love, but Celia, study 
 ing her, judged that it must be, incredible as it seemed, with 
 the place. Bess was thinking only of Winterbourne, how kind 
 he was, how safe everything was with him, the smallest and 
 the biggest, because he was just kind and allowed you to be 
 free. Celia s face had hardened again from its momentary 
 breaking. 
 
 "Then what do you want to go away for?" she asked. 
 
 "We must," said Bess. The look of grief had come 
 again. " We ve done " She stopped, and Celia went on 
 for her, 
 
 "Don t say we ve done. We haven t done anything. 
 I Ve told lies, you mean." 
 
 Bess, tongue-tied by nature, found it impossible to show 
 her that with the tie between them and the love between 
 them, their loneliness of kin, the sin of one was the other s 
 sin also, and they must stand or fall together. 
 
 "And what about?" said Celia, in scorn. "An ear- 
 trumpet ! I said I had n t it when I had. An ear-trumpet 
 was not to be found for half an hour when nobody particu 
 larly wanted it, and I was asked if I had it, and I said 
 no." 
 
 In the confusion of her mind, the strain of her anger, 
 and because she needed food, it was all unmeasured folly 
 to her. It seemed foolish that Tim had wanted it, foolish 
 in her to have taken it for him, to have denied she had it. 
 The thought uppermost in her mind was that Tim was a 
 fool, and he had been allowed by a silly destiny to bring 
 about this upheaval. She was angry to the bottom of her 
 consciousness. That she could not altogether have ex 
 plained. But the world seemed now her enemy. Bess was 
 speaking at last. She had thought of some things so long 
 that now they came fluently. 
 
390 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " It is n t what we ve done to-day. It s all that led to it." 
 
 "Led to what? Mislaying an ear-trumpet?" 
 
 Bess looked at her in an agony. She wished Cclia would 
 understand and she need not say it. 
 
 " Why, we owe them everything," she said. " They 
 brought you up." 
 
 Celia s face seemed to harden again. 
 
 "Well," she returned. "What then?" 
 
 Bess had it all thought out. 
 
 "They ve been so square with us. They Ve made you 
 a lady. Just think, Celia, you re a lady." She spoke as if 
 the word even were incredible. 
 
 " Don t say I m a lady in that tone," Celia bade her 
 harshly, " as if it was so astonishing to be a lady. Are n t 
 you a lady?" 
 
 " Oh, no," said Bess, with a perfect simplicity. " I can t 
 even speak good grammar. I Ve worked too hard. But 
 you re a lady, Celia. Oh, you re lovely ! " 
 
 She rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of pity and ad 
 miration, and sorrow over the mischance that had made her 
 sister look so soiled to her. Celia was plucking up a little 
 spirit. Somebody still admired her, it appeared, and on 
 that she could thrive meagrely. Blame seemed to slay her. 
 But Bess. knocked down the fair fabric she had erected. 
 
 "And it s all no good," she said, "no good. If we do 
 things like that, we re low and mean. I wish we d died 
 before it." 
 
 "Things like what? Saying things " 
 
 Bess nodded, not looking at her. 
 
 " Saying they re so when they re not. Mother would n t 
 have done it," she grieved. "The way the old woman 
 spoke of her! She was sweet. Father wouldn t have done 
 it, either." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 391 
 
 "Why do you say he wouldn t? What do we know 
 about him ? " 
 
 Bess put up her head a little in Celia s own way. 
 
 " We know one thing. The folks there told me. There 
 was a little bound girl, and the family that had her did n t 
 treat her well, and the neighbors did n t dare to make any fuss 
 about it because they were afraid the man would burn their 
 barns. But father did it. He had it brought into court, 
 and he stood up and faced it. I know that about him." 
 
 "Well," said Celia. Then she laughed a little, but there 
 was no mirth in it. " So I m the black sheep. I am a dis 
 grace to you." 
 
 Bess wrung her hands in a spontaneous action of grief. 
 
 " How can you ! " she said. " You are the prettiest the 
 dearest it s only because you must n t, Celia, you must n t 
 say what is n t true." 
 
 Celia suddenly looked sick and pale. She had resolved 
 to eat no more in that house; but her healthy young body 
 cried for food. Yet what could she do? If she went away, 
 as she intended doing, it was her enemy s money she must 
 go on. But that, she reflected, in another moment, could 
 be paid back. The food also might be, in some fashion. 
 
 "Could I have a glass of milk?" she asked humbly, and 
 Bess gave a little cry, the articulate sound a mother might 
 make in hastening to her young. 
 
 " I 11 bring it to you here," she said, and hurried out. 
 
 Celia made no objection to that. It was too hard, she 
 knew, to leave the room and meet Catherine s insistent 
 eyes. Bess came back with her kind little tray, and Celia 
 ate, hungrily and with a careful determination to prime her 
 self for action. 
 
 "There," said she at the end, " run away now. I m going 
 out. I m going to walk a little. When I come back " but 
 
392 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 there she stopped. It was suddenly evident to her that she 
 was going to lie again. 
 
 "Couldn t I go with you?" Bess had hesitated. 
 
 " No. I want to think." 
 
 Was that, too, a lie? she wondered suddenly. Her mind 
 was beginning to torment her. 
 
 Bess went heavily away down the stairs, and Celia, listen 
 ing, heard her going on to the kitchen with her tray. Celia 
 pinned on her hat hastily and took her little bag. After a 
 moment s listening she slipped down the front stairs and 
 noiselessly out at the door. Walking down the path and 
 along the street, she felt with a sick heart that something 
 dreadful in its definiteness had been done. She had taken 
 upon herself exile from Bess, who had not cast her off, but 
 from whom she had parted when it was evident that her 
 sister was ashamed of her. And hurrying on, her head held 
 high to meet the bright day before which she was deter 
 mined to own no shame, she saw Lovell coming, driving fast, 
 with his hat off, and that alert, delighted look she called to 
 his face already overspreading it. She would have passed 
 him, but he had driven to the curb. 
 
 " Can t I take you somewhere?" he asked. 
 
 She shook her head, essaying a smile. He was out of the 
 wagon and beside her. 
 
 "What is it, Celia? " he was asking warmly. 
 
 Celia felt her eyes rilling with tears. He seemed, by his 
 admiring love, to be reinstating her on old grounds. He, at 
 least, did not find her a disgrace. 
 
 "I m going away," she said. 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 "To Boston." 
 
 " When are you coming back ? " 
 
 " I m not coming." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 393 
 
 "Celia!" 
 
 The sun, she saw, would fail out of his heaven. She nodded 
 over her shoulder at the house. 
 
 " I have left them." 
 
 Lovell stood still a moment, enraged she found with what 
 must have been her wrongs, and that consoled her slightly. 
 
 " Get in," he said then. "We ll drive a little, and I 11 take 
 you to the station if you ve got to go." 
 
 It was a tone she felt obliged to hear, and she stepped into 
 the wagon, he following her. They went rather fast until 
 they were out of the street, and Lovell turned into a leafy 
 road skirting the back of the station and drew the horse to 
 a walk. 
 
 "Now," said he, "what is it?" 
 
 She felt uneasily that she had never heard this tone in 
 him. He had been the suppliant bringing tribute to his dear. 
 This almost made it seem as if here was some one else to 
 reckon with. Something must be said, and she offered 
 weakly, 
 
 "They are not to blame." 
 
 " You don t mean they ve turned you out ? " 
 
 " I chose to go." 
 
 " Not Winterbourne Winterbourne would n t do a thing 
 like that." 
 
 " They don t know I am going. I decided upon it my 
 self." 
 
 "Your sister? Is she going? " 
 
 " No. Bess is n t going." 
 
 " What does this mean, Celia ? " said Lovell, in a tone of 
 resolution. " You ve got to tell me." 
 
 How could she tell him ? Could she say, " I said I had n t 
 an ear-trumpet when I had?" The puerile folly of it. He would 
 lift his face to heaven and laugh with an uncontrolled shout- 
 
394 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 ing like Winterbourne s own. But the ear-trumpet was not 
 it. That was the last silly cue that brought on all the other 
 tragedy about her, Catherine s sickened looks and that un 
 bearable sad plea from Bess. It was what had gone before. It 
 was the ill way they evidently believed her life was tending. 
 
 " I am not what they thought," she said, and it sounded 
 as if she said it haughtily. 
 
 Lovell looked upon her frowningly, wondering, she saw, 
 not in the least intending to accept anything less than the 
 clean fact. 
 
 " But that s ridiculous," said he. " They Ve known you all 
 your life. People don t turn us out for sentimental reasons. 
 Guess again ! " 
 
 He was laughing, and the bright day made it seem for 
 the moment as if she might at least smile a little ; but the 
 thought of Bess and her grief dried her throat anew. 
 
 " I m going to see Winterbourne about this," he said, with 
 energy. " It s a fancy you Ve got up. I never heard of any 
 thing more intangible." 
 
 " No," said Celia. " It s not intangible. It s true. I m go 
 ing away, and if you see Mr. Winterbourne, if you see any 
 of them to talk about it, I shall go away from you." 
 
 "Then," said Lovell, "if you are going away, you must 
 come to me. We must be married now, short off. The house 
 is n t begun even, but you could wait for that. You could stand 
 my little shanty, knowing you were going to have the other." 
 
 He was the adoring lover. Her heart gave a cry of tri 
 umph. She must seem to him very nice indeed. In that light he 
 looked very nice to her, a companion, a vindicator. But was 
 it true, her brooding mind insisted on putting in here, that 
 she could claim vindication ? Or was she what Bess thought 
 her? Pondering it, she answered absently, 
 
 "No, not that." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 395 
 
 "Not that? It s the only thing. What are you going to 
 do in Boston ? " 
 
 She did not know. 
 
 " Have you any money ? " He asked it as if it were the 
 most ordinary thing to ask, with a simplicity that made it 
 delicate. 
 
 " A little." 
 
 "A little won t do. You must let me give you some." 
 
 "No! no!" 
 
 That, he saw, was definite, and it settled the case for 
 him. 
 
 " Then you will stay here. You will let me drive you 
 back home, and you will be ready to-morrow morning and 
 I 11 come and marry you." 
 
 " Why, no ! " she said, " why, no ! " 
 
 "Yes. Have your hat on, dearest, and we 11 walk out of 
 the house after it s over. I 11 ask no questions either of you 
 or the family. It s a complication a misunderstanding 
 some folly, I haven t a doubt; but we must tackle it and 
 ignore it and live it down. And I m the gainer, if it drives 
 you to me." 
 
 His very air was of gay certainties. This was what life had 
 done for him. He had had his own complications to live down 
 and had done it in the wrong way, so retrospect declared. 
 He would never be again on the craven s side. 
 
 " No," said Celia, " no." 
 
 " I shall come," he asserted, " at ten to-morrow. You will 
 be ready for me." 
 
 " I can t be married in that house," she flung out desper 
 ately. 
 
 He considered. Courting lads and lasses were always 
 driving or walking away to the minister and coming home 
 man and wife. It was conformable enough to the standard 
 
396 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 of Clyde. But for his only and unapproached lady it would 
 not do. She must have the sanction of roofs and covenants. 
 
 " Yes/ said he, " you must be ready for me at ten. I 
 shall be there." 
 
 Celia felt, with a mingling of terror and surprise, that she 
 had never been faced by a will so strong. Lovell himself 
 was riding bareback on the joy of dominating circumstance. 
 No more Theocritus for him until the hand of age began to 
 press him down, inch by gentle inch. This was life, life. He 
 turned, and they drove slowly back again, past the station, 
 and Celia saw she was not to go. She hardly knew what she 
 wished. The sheer passion of an hour before, when anger 
 was the spur to action, had gone, and she knew, if she threw 
 herself capriciously out into the world, there was nothing for 
 her to do there. 
 
 "Will you " she began. They were nearing Winter- 
 bourne s again, and her teeth seemed to shut convulsively 
 upon the words " will you if I do it, will you be good to 
 my sister ? Will you let her come to me ? " 
 
 He looked round at her. 
 
 "Good to your sister? How can you ask me? She shall 
 live with you. I shan t rule you, dear. I m ruling you now 
 because it s best but not after." 
 
 He got out and held up his hands to her. But she did 
 not move, and he saw she looked most miserable. Her eyes 
 were interrogating his. Bess had come to the door, and stood 
 there awaiting them. Celia knew that, and something in Bess 
 seemed to constrain her in what she had to say: 
 
 " If I should tell you what the trouble was, you would n t 
 want me." 
 
 Lovell felt surprise, uneasiness at the pain she was un 
 dergoing, but he forbade his eyes to flinch. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I should want you whatever it was." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 397 
 
 " If it was my fault " she began, as if she were making 
 dreary confession before Bess, who stood on the steps un 
 consciously impelling her. 
 
 " If it was your fault. Come, jump out. I Ve got a lot to 
 do before to-morrow." 
 
 " If I were a person to disgrace you " 
 
 "Jump out," he bade her even gayly now. "You and I 
 aren t going to talk this over. We re going to begin to live. 
 There s a new world created, and it s ours." 
 
 There spoke the poet in him, irrepressibly, though he had 
 bade himself now take every exigency like a man only be 
 cause nothing was better than to be a man. 
 
 Celia did step down from the wagon, and not seeing, went 
 up the path where Bess awaited her, and Lovell turned 
 away. He drove rapidly now, and to Celia s hearing the sound 
 was of a part with his peremptory words. Bess came down 
 a step to meet her and touched her dress humbly, as if she 
 must make sure of her and dared not offer a caress. 
 
 " I was afraid," she said. " I saw your little bag was gone." 
 
 Celia s harshness toward her the harshness of hurt love 
 was melted. She felt gentle and very tired, and it was 
 restful to her to have escaped that surge of passions. 
 
 " Come upstairs," she said. " I Ve got to talk to you." 
 
 In her own room, while Bess waited, eager to do a service, 
 she languidly took off her hat and gloves, and then turned 
 to regard her sister. She did not want to sit. That seemed 
 to begin an interview from which she might not easily es 
 cape. 
 
 " Bess," she said, " Mr. Lovell is coming here to-morrow. 
 He is going to marry me." 
 
 Bess looked at her a moment. 
 
 "Sit down, dear," she said then, soothingly. "No, you 
 lie down. You re all tired out." 
 
398 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Celia saw she had not understood. But she could not 
 argue it. 
 
 "It will be at ten," she said drearily. " Could you help 
 me drag in my trunks from the back hall ? I must do my 
 packing." 
 
 Now Bess believed it, but she was confounded by the 
 pace the world was making. 
 
 "Celia," she implored, "what is it? What s set you off 
 to do a thing like that ? O Celia, not to get away from 
 here ? " 
 
 Celia felt that the way to attain silence was to give a rea 
 son. It was impossible to enter into talk. 
 
 " We have been engaged to be married for " She was 
 about to say " for a long time," and then that frightened 
 consciousness told her here were lies again. " We are to be 
 married," she ended. " Come, let s get the trunks." 
 
 There was no way but to agree. She was keyed to a point 
 where she could have dragged them in alone, and Bess 
 helped her, working noiselessly, and then stood by in frozen 
 misery while Celia folded delicate things and packed them 
 with a care. It was not the part of Bess to dally while work 
 went on, and presently she too began folding and laying 
 cleverly. The task was an anguish to her. She had some 
 times thought, in a shy, hidden way, of Celia s marrying. 
 Celia was so beautiful that the most wonderful lot of all 
 seemed decreed for her, and now here the dewy moment had 
 come and they were making ready for it as if destiny were 
 behind. But she could not speak. Once the tears came, but 
 she wiped them away lest they touch her sister s clothes 
 and make an omen. When they had finished and Celia 
 shut down the last lid, she looked at Bess, and aware of the 
 trouble of it all, yet now not much moved by it, said imperi 
 ously, though in a quiet way, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 399 
 
 " One thing. You must not speak of it." 
 
 " Not speak of it ? Not to her ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " But, Celia, I must speak to him." 
 
 " No. If they are here when I go downstairs, they can be 
 told. They can be there if they like. I would have gone 
 away, but " She was about to say that Lovell had for 
 bidden it, but she could not use his name. He seemed to 
 belong to her and yet was alien to her. "It would n t be fair 
 to them." 
 
 "But this isn t fair to them. It s their house. O Celia, 
 we couldn t use it so and not tell them." 
 
 Celia stood a moment thinking bitterly. Was this another 
 point, her outraged vanity asked her, where she was dense 
 to the propriety of life ? Was Bess, who always counselled 
 the unselfish thing, more gently bred than she? 
 
 " Very well," she said. " Tell them then. But don t tell her 
 till morning. She d have things to eat. She d talk with me. 
 And tell him that. Tell him I won t be talked to." 
 
 Bess, without a look at her, because she seemed to herself 
 now to have helped bring this incredible destiny about, and 
 she would plague her sister no more, was softly going. But 
 Celia came after her, with a little rush, and threw passionate 
 arms about her. 
 
 " You can live with me," she whispered, in her fierce devo 
 tion to the tie of blood, " if you re willing to. He says so." 
 
 They kissed, and Bess dared the question some one, she 
 felt, must ask. 
 
 "O Celia, do you like him? Enough, Celia, do you like 
 him well enough ? " 
 
 " You re to live with me," Celia threw at her. " There ! 
 go, and I 11 lie down." 
 
XXXI 
 
 WINTERBOURNE, after such an afternoon in 
 the city as he had not had for years, and loathed 
 at any period of his life, came home agiow all 
 over at the pleasure of it. Gregory had insisted on dropping 
 in at a vaudeville where a girl with a sweet voice sang a top 
 ical song charmingly. Winterbourne hated topical songs and 
 close theatres, but it seemed to him he could spend more 
 time than that in alien pursuits at Gregory s side, watching 
 him bathe himself in life. Then, when Gregory could escape 
 the seductions of the world of sound, they retired to his 
 library in the quiet house whence women-folk had fled to 
 the country, and sat down at a table for a stiff business talk, 
 while Winterbourne drew models and explained and learned 
 to know the promoter, the man to whom affairs were an open 
 book. The upshot of it was that Gregory would take hold 
 of pan-pipes and disseminate it with an enthusiasm to make 
 it earn its way. Winterbourne liked him. There was some 
 thing that tickled his sense of fun in Gregory s babylike de 
 bauch among the things of sense, a hard nut like him. 
 
 He came home in abounding good-humor, yet bent on 
 one task, this concerning Tim. He would have been pre 
 pared to find Bess waiting for him with some simple comfort 
 or other, or even Celia, picturesquely affectionate, or per 
 haps his wife, risen from her bed of languor to resuscitate 
 romance; but what he did meet knocked him into an unex 
 pected flurry. He entered his own sitting-room and halted 
 at the vision there, Mrs. Ramsay clothed in her perfect 
 mind, rather majestic, so that you might laugh a little at her 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 401 
 
 if you would, seeing how she recalled the intellectual ladies of 
 a long-past day, the tinge of old-fashioned grandiosity, but 
 very direct and purposeful. 
 
 She began at once. She had been waiting for him. 
 
 " Mr. Winterbourne, I have recovered the use of my 
 speech." 
 
 " I am delighted, Mrs. Ramsay." He put his hat and stick 
 away he was a more careful man in these days, having 
 found Bess setting his confusions in order and sank into 
 his chair. " You Ve had a nasty time." 
 
 " During my stay," said Mrs. Ramsay, in her careful Eng 
 lish, " for which I shall never cease to be grateful, I have 
 been endeavoring to make a certain statement to you. But 
 my tongue would not serve me. Now I have command of 
 it. Mr. Winterbourne, my son Timothy possessed himself 
 of your ear-trumpet. He stole it." 
 
 Winterbourne felt like groaning. He had come home at 
 peace with all the world, knowing that the only task left him 
 was castigating Timothy for Timothy s good, and here was 
 the ear-trumpet cropping up again. But he rose bravely to 
 the assault. 
 
 " Don t mention it, Mrs. Ramsay. I 11 settle that with 
 Tim when I get round to it." 
 
 She sat majestically and now shook her head. 
 
 " No, Mr. Winterbourne. For the sake of Timothy we 
 must go into it very thoroughly. When my boy told me 
 he was about to patent an invention, I thought he had de 
 vised something unaided. Then I found he had in some 
 way possessed himself of something that belonged to 
 you." 
 
 Winterbourne remembered the day in the arbor, and 
 thought he could explain the way. But chiefly was he anxious 
 to escape more parleying. 
 
402 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "It doesn t matter, Mrs. Ramsay," he said kindly. 
 
 But then at once it became apparent to him that she felt 
 disgraced in her child, that she had felt it all these weeks, 
 and that she was suffering with shame, and his heart grew at 
 once compassionate toward her; she seemed to him some 
 thing to be protected, like one of her own children. She had 
 passed into that changed estate where we are, because we 
 surfer, again like little children. She was not storming bat 
 tlements now, and disturbing his ears with the whanging of 
 her steel on steel. She was the normal woman, and he could 
 see how Ramsay had very naturally loved her. 
 
 " Something," she said, " must be done for my son. I have 
 not spoken to his father. We have not talked about the 
 children very much." 
 
 Immediately he saw that she, absentee as she had been 
 from her own household, had wished to save Ramsay, also an 
 absentee, to the end that he should pursue his figuring in 
 peace. 
 
 " You are a man of the world," she continued. " Timothy 
 has tried to do a disgraceful thing." 
 
 " The reason he did n t do it," Winterbourne found him 
 self saying bluntly, " is the way he took to do it. The 
 boy " he was ending, "the boy s a fool," but he quali 
 fied, " The boy s not used to business." 
 
 "No. But he must be punished. I should like to have 
 you prescribe the form of punishment. I should wish to 
 know you had administered it." 
 
 Winterbourne nodded. He thought of his stout stick. 
 That seemed to fit a culprit of Tim s calibre. But now 
 he was getting uneasy with this majestic lady, whose pose 
 seemed almost to cry out for the turban of Mrs. Hannah 
 More. He wished she would go to bed. 
 
 "All right, Mrs. Ramsay," said he. " I ll see to Tim." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 403 
 
 She rose. He saw she was trembling, and knew the inter 
 view had cost her something. 
 
 " I cannot express my gratitude to your household," she 
 was saying. " As for that sweet girl who has devoted herself 
 to me, I shall probably never be able to repay her in this 
 world. If there is a world to come, as I am fully convinced, 
 I hope she will there be recompensed. I shall go home to 
 morrow." 
 
 Winterbourne s heart leaped for joy. 
 
 " Do you think you are quite able ? " he inquired hypo 
 critically. 
 
 "I am rested," said Mrs. Ramsay, "sufficiently to go on. 
 And my children need me." 
 
 She shook hands with him in a definitive way, and Winter- 
 bourne, shuddering at the possibilities of her, rhetorical and 
 pugnacious, watched her go. And then, as if she had been 
 waiting, Bess came to him from the dining-room, and he was 
 horrified at the change in her. 
 
 "What is it, child? " said he. 
 
 She stopped at a distance from him and drooped her head 
 against the mantel, holding by it with one hand. 
 
 " Celia is going to be married," she said in a low voice, 
 "to-morrow morning. She and Mr. Lovell." 
 
 Winterbourne started out of his wonder. He thought only 
 of Lovell, and in the instant knew how undesirable Celia 
 seemed to him because he felt merely that Lovell must be 
 saved. 
 
 " I 11 go down and see him," said he. 
 
 " No," said Bess, " no." She said it quietly, yet he was 
 stayed by the commandingness of it. "Let it be as it is. If 
 you are willing to have her married here, in this room, 
 that will be all we can do." 
 
 " Does my wife know ? " 
 
4 o 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " It would spoil her night. I thought I d tell her in the 
 morning." 
 
 " But he must n t," Winterbourne was saying, really to 
 himself, " he must n t do a thing like that." 
 
 "Please let them," said Bess simply. 
 
 It was all she could say. It was evident to her that Celia 
 must go on. The only point now was to have it done in an 
 ordered calm. Winterbourne looked at her a while, her evi 
 dent grief, her drooping pose, and yet the inflexibility of her 
 when she had made up her mind. 
 
 " Bess," he said, at length, " I wish you had n t been 
 dragged into all this. We re not very happy here. I wish 
 you did n t have to grow under our shadow." 
 
 She was always amazing him. Now she lifted her head, and 
 her face glowed all over in that lovely color. 
 
 " Oh, don t be sorry," she said, in a voice of exquisite 
 emotion. " I m not. I m glad. If I never had come, I never 
 should have seen you." 
 
 As he looked at her, she seemed to him the most sacred 
 and the purest thing born into this complex life. She loved 
 him. She was devoted to him. She joyously confessed it ; yet 
 it was a love all honor, all restraint. He doubted, in this prob 
 ing of its meaning, whether, if he were willing to sully the 
 spring of life for her, it could even be turned into the mud 
 died pool of desires forbidden. But something had to be said, 
 and none of them should be the base brood of sentiment 
 gone wrong. 
 
 "You had to come, child, did n t you? " he said, in the 
 kind voice she loved. " You had to help us out of the holes 
 we were in, Mrs. Ramsay and all." 
 
 She smiled at him, and for the moment it seemed as if she 
 had forgotten Celia. 
 
 "Well," said Winterbourne, "you re my well-beloved 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 405 
 
 daughter, and what you say goes. Celia shall be married in 
 this room, and I 11 black my shoes and brush my hair. And 
 now I m going out. Don t sit up for me." 
 
 Her alarm was instantly awake. 
 
 " You re not going to Mr. Lovell s ? " 
 
 "No, child. I m going to see Tim Ramsay. I ve got an 
 errand to him. Good-night, kid." 
 
 " Do you want your stick? " she asked, out of her instinct 
 of service. 
 
 "Yes," said Winterbourne grimly, " I want it very particu 
 larly. Good-night." 
 
 When he was gone, Bess looked about the room with an 
 incredulous gaze, as if a thing like marriage could not enter 
 there so unannounced, crowned, and to the music of heart 
 beats. Then the most remarkable thing she had ever known 
 befell her. Dwight Hunter, in his best clothes, she had time 
 to notice, opened the door, came in, and stood there waiting. 
 He was very handsome, very well equipped for another life 
 than sweeping kitchens, a superb young man. Hunter had 
 always come near to putting himself wrong with her because 
 he seemed so humbly suing her. His air had changed. 
 
 " Bess," he began directly, " I tried to work to-night and 
 I could n t." 
 
 " I m glad of it," she said quickly. "You give too much 
 time to that old furniture." 
 
 "That isn t my only work. I tried to fiddle. That pleases 
 you. But I ve spoiled my hands. It doesn t matter. The 
 fiddling s behind me, and I don t care. But it s come to me 
 that I can t do anything of any sort until things are settled 
 between you and me." 
 
 He was talking with an intensity of determination to say 
 what was in his mind. She listened gravely and with some 
 concern, he seemed so moved, almost so harsh. 
 
406 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " I ve just one thing to say to you/ said Hunter. "It s 
 this. I want you to marry me. It s not likely you 11 say yes 
 on the spot, but I d like to have you thinking it over, keep 
 ing me in your mind, trying me, you know, so you can come 
 to a decision as soon as possible." 
 
 The way he set forth his petition had something dry in it, 
 almost indifferent. Yet his face was not impassive. It be 
 sought her to think well of him. He was to have his turn at 
 surprises. Bess was smiling at him, wondering, it seemed. 
 Her eyes were lovely in their brightness. 
 
 "Are you sure," she said, "you mean it, just like that?" 
 
 " Just like what, Bess ? " But she would not answer, and 
 he had to find the words again. " I want to marry you. 
 Don t you see ?" 
 
 " Oh," said Bess, " that s the most beautiful thing that 
 was ever said to me. Oh, I thank you. I can t tell you how 
 I thank you." 
 
 Did ever a girl receive an offer of a man in such a spirit ? 
 Yet there was something lacking. He could not open a 
 door to the rush of feeling in himself. She was no nearer 
 him, even further it might be, than she was before. He 
 wanted to stretch out his hands to her, but that seemed use 
 less, she was really so far away. But she was glad, and yet 
 it was for some reason he had not fathomed and even, it ap 
 peared, not due to him at all. 
 
 " Thank you," she said again, shyly, it seemed, this 
 time. 
 
 "Then," said Hunter, and now the nervous tension of it 
 all made him laugh a little, " then, Bess, I m accepted." 
 
 She started back a pace. 
 
 " Oh, no," said she, " not that. It could n t be that any 
 way, but it s lovely of you to ask me. That s what I 
 mean." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 407 
 
 Hunter felt the irony of it a little, as he had years ago 
 when, in the testing of his various powers, he had sent an 
 article to a magazine and received it again with expressions 
 of gratitude almost profuse. 
 
 " What are you so mighty pleased for," said he, " if you 
 won t have me ? " 
 
 Bess looked at him, in a soft implication that she was still 
 thankful and he would understand. 
 
 " Of course I could n t do it," she repeated. " But you see 
 you think I m worth it. Fit for it, I mean." 
 
 " Fit to marry me ? Why, Bess, you d have to stoop to 
 
 me." 
 
 He meant that fiercely ; she saw it, but she shook her 
 head. 
 
 " Oh, no," she said, in her tone of certainty. " You see 
 I m not a lady, and you re splendid." 
 
 Was ever flattery so beguilingly given because it was so 
 honest ? Hunter felt his face reddening, and suddenly he 
 wanted to laugh. He began to have for her the feeling Winter- 
 bourne had, that she was the simplest, most delicious instance 
 of unconscious humor the world had yet produced. 
 
 " Don t chaff," said he. Then his tone softened into the 
 lovingest one possible, because the clear look of her eyes 
 seemed so appealing to him. " What do you want to say 
 you re not a lady for, when you re what you are ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don t even speak good grammar," she assured 
 him eagerly. "I don t know how to do the things ladies 
 do, and if I did know I should n t do em. They d just 
 bother me." 
 
 "What things, Bess?" 
 
 He was beginning to be diverted now. Passionate love was 
 retiring a pace in favor of an unstinted amusement at her de 
 licious queerness. 
 
4 o8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "Making calls," she answered promptly, "and talking 
 about books. I like to do things with my hands, and be alone, 
 and take care of houses. You see, I m not a lady." 
 
 If Hunter had ever doubted that he wanted her, the doubt 
 would have fled now pursued by his unconquerable laughter. 
 She looked at him in mild reproach, not seeing he was think 
 ing how she would enliven every hour from the morning until 
 the evening with her clear candor. 
 
 " I should n t think you d laugh," said she reproachfully. 
 
 Then he sobered. 
 
 " Bess," said he, " you re a very beautiful lady." 
 
 She bent her head a little, involuntarily, as if it felt a 
 crown. 
 
 "Thank you," said she. "It means a good deal coming 
 just now." 
 
 " Then you see," he said craftily, addressing himself to her 
 conceit, if she had any, "you have something very few people 
 have. You ve a beautiful voice." 
 
 She looked at him in quick suspicion, in blank discourage 
 ment. 
 
 " It is n t on account of that you re asking me," she said, 
 " because I can sing ? ". 
 
 " Oh, no," he hastened to assure her. " I should love you 
 if you were dumb as an owl." 
 
 " Because I could n t bear that again." 
 
 " Bess," said Hunter, for he felt things had gone far 
 enough for him to venture a bribe, "you say you re not 
 what you d like to be. Now you marry me, and we ll go to 
 Europe and talk grammar all day long." 
 
 "Oh, no," she said innocently. "I don t have to go to 
 Europe to learn things. He d teach me." 
 
 "Winterbourne?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, her clear gaze upon him. "He knows 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 409 
 
 everything. Oh, I can learn things, if I only get a mite of 
 time." 
 
 " Bess," he ventured guardedly, " you re fond of Winter- 
 bourne ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered fervently, " he s everything to 
 me. I read something the other day that told what he was : 
 Your father and mother and brother and sister. Celia is my 
 sister and she s everything to me, but he s everything, 
 too." 
 
 Hunter advanced upon her and caught up both her 
 hands in his and held them until they were hurt. That he 
 knew, and meant it. 
 
 "Well," he said, "there s one thing he s not. He s not 
 your lover." She looked at him in a new-born haughtiness. 
 " And I am," he hastened. "And he s not your husband. 
 And that I m going to be. Remember." 
 
 She pulled her hands away and he was ready to let them 
 go, not quite sure himself of the prudence of restraint, and 
 she looked ruefully at their bruised plumpness. He thought 
 she was angry, but to his amaze she suddenly smiled up at 
 him. 
 
 " That s all right," she said. " I m glad you hurt me. 
 Once, you know " 
 
 " Well, out with it." 
 
 She was ashamed, but she answered humbly. 
 
 " Once I struck you. I was n t a lady." 
 
 " We re quits then, Bess." 
 
 But she had talked enough about these matters. There 
 was just one thing more to say. 
 
 "But I wish you d go to Europe," she assured him. 
 " You ought to make the most of yourself. It is n t enough 
 for a young man like you to be driving round on an ex 
 press cart here in Clyde." 
 
4 io JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 "What if I like it? Just as you like not making calls?" 
 
 " Oh, there s other things," she assured him. " He says 
 you re the King of Clyde. You ought to know all the 
 things there are in the world, so you ll be a good king." 
 
 He was profoundly touched. 
 
 cc Ought I ? " he said, and put out his hand to her. Bess 
 gave him hers frankly, and before she could think what was 
 befalling her, he had kissed it. " Ought I ? " he asked 
 again. " Well, you ought to yourself. Good-night, Queen 
 of Clyde." 
 
 Then he went without delay, and Bess was left holding 
 her hand behind her, shut tight because it was so shy over 
 the touch upon it. Bess did not know what to think of 
 herself. She was a little, a very little happier, even if Celia 
 was going to be strangely married to-morrow, and she knew 
 it was because so splendid a person had thought her worth 
 his name. 
 
 And this was how Winterbourne had done his errand to 
 Tim. He had walked up to the Ramsay door and opened 
 it and gone in. But Tim was not, as he expected, lying on 
 the sofa, where he spent so much of his lazy life. He was 
 sitting under a lamp with a dingy chimney, absorbedly out 
 lining a pond lily in white on a breadth out of a discarded 
 petticoat. There were long stitches for water and soft shaded 
 blooms. It was Japanese. There was illusion in it. But 
 Winterbourne s casual glimpse at it, before Tim tossed it 
 guiltily behind the sofa, only tended to confirm his theory 
 that Tim was a poor trumpery thing. 
 
 "Get up," said Winterbourne. He grasped his stick the 
 tighter. " Get up and come with me." 
 
 Tim did not move. 
 
 " That you, Jackie ? " he inquired. Winterbourne read 
 the uneasiness in his voice. " Have a chair." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 411 
 
 " Get up," said Winterbourne, and reached down to him, 
 putting a hand by chance upon his collar. 
 
 Then Tim rose and followed him out of the house and 
 down the path. There he stopped and faced about. 
 
 " Say, Jackie, what is it ? " he asked fretfully. " I Ve got 
 a cold." 
 
 "Timothy Ramsay," said Winterbourne, "you are a 
 sneak and a liar, and the worst of it is, you re a fool. And 
 I came up here to-night to thrash you like a little boy, but 
 I won t do it, for your mother s a good and a pathetic woman, 
 and she s sold all she s got for dross, and your father s to 
 be pitied. So I bid you mend your ways, and be honest, 
 man, honest. And " here the warmth in him came burst 
 ing out " when Mr. Gregory and I ve got our manufac 
 turing in order, maybe we 11 send you out to sell a bill of 
 goods: for you re a pretty lad and you could talk the legs 
 off a brass pot. Good-night, and mend your ways." And 
 he took the road home and muttered to himself, "I m a 
 fool, a putty-hearted fool." 
 
 Bess sat on his steps waiting for him. She got up and 
 walked in before him, pausing then in the hall because she 
 had just one thing to say. Winterbourne had to look at 
 her steadily to be sure the dim light even had not blinded 
 him, for here she was all of a radiance who had been so cast 
 down. 
 
 " Daddy," said she. 
 
 She whispered, and he whispered mysteriously back, 
 "Yes, kiddie." 
 
 " Mr. Hunter has asked me to marry him. So I wanted 
 to tell you I 11 study all the books you say, because I Ve 
 got to be different." 
 
 "Lord above us!" said Winterbourne. "So he s got 
 ye." 
 
412 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " No, no," said Bess, in great surprise that he could 
 think it. "Why, no! only if he says I m good enough for 
 that, why, I Ve got to make something of myself. He 
 thinks I m a lady. It s wonderful. I Ve got to be one." 
 
 So she ran upstairs, having shared her deep conclusion, 
 and left him pondering. 
 
XXXII 
 
 THE strangeness of the next morning was all one 
 with Celia s conception of it. At ten o clock she 
 came downstairs, Bess, her face overspread with what 
 seemed apprehension, beside her, and Lovell was waiting at 
 the stair-foot. Inside the room were the others, the young 
 parson, eager to please, making conversation out of local 
 nothings, and Catherine, dead white in a pretty neglige y 
 looking as if the sky had fallen. Winterbourne, out of pity 
 for her, because she incredibly considered it so important, 
 stood by her clad in his seldom-worn best, and amid this 
 hush of circumstance, Celia was married and kissed, and 
 walked out of the house with Lovell, who alone looked what 
 weddings should induce in mortal man. The little parson 
 stayed briefly and expressed his sympathy for Mrs. Winter- 
 bourne, who, it began to dawn upon him, looked very ill 
 indeed ; and then he went, and Catherine rose to go to her 
 own room but turned instead and, crying silently, leaned 
 upon Winterbourne s shoulder, where he endeavored to re 
 suscitate her by large pats of a gentle hand and mumbled 
 kindnesses. 
 
 Bess, apparently not seeing them, her own face sad with 
 wakefulness and the misery of it all, moved about setting 
 back chairs to an exact line, and now, having felt so much, 
 feeling nothing. Catherine was talking wildly among her 
 sobs. 
 
 " She never loved me, John. She never had a spark of 
 love forme. She never told me she. was engaged to him " 
 
 "You ve been sick," Winterbourne reminded her. He 
 
4H JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 was most unaffectedly sorry for her, and his shoulder was 
 getting wet with tears which gave him a comical distaste. 
 " Of course she did n t bring you a hue and cry like that." 
 
 " She walked out of the house as if I were a stranger 
 to her. When I kissed her, it was like kissing a marble 
 image " 
 
 Bess was before them, speaking tremblingly but with reso 
 lution. 
 
 " It is n t because she is n t thankful to you. We re both 
 thankful." 
 
 Catherine was recalled. 
 
 "No, no," she murmured. "That s not it. It was be 
 cause I wanted her to love me. I ve loved her so much." 
 Then Bess turned away, and left them, and Catherine had 
 more to say. " Nobody has ever loved me," she averred, 
 standing there shuddering in the circle of her husband s 
 arm. " No one. You know it, John." 
 
 Winterbournewas silent fora moment, the big kind hand 
 stroking her shoulder. This was emotion, unsummoned by 
 its object, undesired. He had the natural man s desire to 
 run. But he called upon himself, with some echo of the 
 voices he had been evoking out of the night to rule his being, 
 to meet her trouble for her because she was, for this earthly 
 span, his destiny. 
 
 " Catherine," said he. There was authority in his voice, 
 something new also, in that it implied he had been listening 
 to her. " You re a goose," said Winterbourne. " You waste 
 your time brooding over this thing we call love. Don t you 
 do it. Look at the leaves. Look at the sky. Why, they re 
 enough to spend a lifetime over. You get well, Kit, and 
 we 11 take a walk. We 11 take one every day, and see how 
 the world s getting on. But we must n t fret like this over 
 people s not loving us. It s we can t, that s all." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 415 
 
 She withdrew a pace and looked at him. The words were 
 kindly. They were not warm, yet there was an implication 
 somewhere that she was to share his life. She felt a little 
 nearer him. 
 
 " See here, Catherine," said he. " I Ve been watching a 
 deaf man hear. I suppose I can imagine what it would be 
 for a blind man to see. Now you and I Ve got all our senses. 
 So the world s ours. Wake up, girl. Stop dreaming about 
 old dreams. Let s see if we can get busy the few years there 
 are left to us." 
 
 "You mean," she said timidly, "for others?" 
 
 Winterbourne put his hand in his pocket and grasped his 
 pipe. He held it hard. It seemed to help him, when there 
 were formulated altruisms in the air. 
 
 "No," said he, "you bet I don t. I mean, worship the 
 sun when he comes up and thank him when he goes to bed, 
 and read a book and not think so very much about what we 
 wish we had. That s the devil s own work, Cat. It fevers 
 your mind up. If you were nursing children it would make 
 them sick with the taint of it." 
 
 She knew that. Her mind, when she mused over what 
 she desired, grew muddy and heaved like an unquiet lake. 
 She looked at him with adoration in her eyes, fear, too, the 
 fear we feel before those we greatly love. 
 
 "You show me," she besought humbly. 
 
 Winterbourne shook his head. 
 
 " No," said he, "I can t. It s unnatural. It s the woman 
 that s got to make the pace. You think it over. You see if 
 it is n t. Now run upstairs. This afternoon we 11 have a 
 walk." 
 
 She went, without another demanding look at him. Climb 
 ing the stairs slowly, she heard Bess moving about in Mrs. 
 Ramsay s room. What did Bess think, she wondered, of 
 
4 i 6 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S; FAMILY 
 
 Celia s marriage ? She felt something deeply, for her face 
 showed it, but she went about her tasks unchanged. Was 
 that the secret of her power, that she demanded nothing and 
 fed other minds without disturbing them ? In her own room 
 Catherine did not throw herself down to rest as she had 
 thought she must. She sat wondering whether, for the first 
 time, she could enter Winterbourne s house of life and live 
 there. She had never for a moment before contemplated that. 
 It had seemed to her that his domain was on the ground 
 floor, where a hundred rude servitors could come in at any 
 minute with their muddy boots. His boots too were muddy, 
 for he was always tramping out into the world and plunging 
 back with its clay upon him. She wanted him to live with her 
 in her tower near the stars, and when he would n t come she 
 cried and ran down to his ground floor to beseech him. But 
 if she loved him, could n t she love him in his own house of 
 life ? He would n t climb to hers. And yet, was it climbing P 
 Was she, after all, anything but the harsh creditor who in 
 sisted on the fulfilment of a bond? He had said, all those 
 years ago, that he adored her, and she was insisting he should 
 adore her still. 
 
 Catherine had to formulate, even now when she had re 
 solved to live and formulate no more. She had to be head 
 long, too, and because it seemed to her that Bess won love, 
 she would be like Bess. So she dressed carefully, in a shirt 
 waist and short skirt, and trembling a good deal, because 
 she was really tired and not yet less than half an invalid, 
 went downstairs and appeared beside Bess in the dining-room 
 where she was putting a cupboard in order, preparatory to 
 leaving when her chance should come. For Bess suddenly 
 had her plans, and they all had to do with leaving Catherine 
 the sway of her own house, and herself travelling the diffi 
 cult road that meant becoming a lady 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 417 
 
 " Bess/ said Catherine, "will you give me something to 
 do?" 
 
 Bess looked about at her, startled. Then her mind righted 
 itself, understanding that this was one step upward in a sick 
 woman s climb. 
 
 " You could sit here and dust these cups," she said. " I 11 
 put them up." 
 
 Celia had walked with her husband to their little house, 
 which Mary Manahan had spent the night cleaning and 
 Lovell fastidiously refining in its previous orderly array. He 
 opened the door for her, and she went in. Then the bride 
 groom s transport of heaven attained came upon him, and 
 he took her in his arms and kissed her. This Celia suffered; 
 but she grew whiter, and, he felt, trembled. That seemed 
 beautiful to him ; her remoteness made a part of her charm. 
 But she took off her hat, and began gayly now to play the 
 game of householding here for an interval until the big house 
 should be ready. 
 
 Lovell, in a hidden way, was wild with the delight of it. 
 His poor drab life had turned into a miracle. Here was no 
 fruit of effort ; he was being surfeited with good fortune big 
 enough for heroes. He had played the coward s part, with 
 drawn from deeds and the desire of them; but destiny had 
 plucked the golden apple and tossed it down to him. He 
 could do household tasks, and set out their luncheon, laugh 
 ing at himself for having the wit to do it, salad and wine 
 and berries, with a cup of coffee after. But he felt no dispar 
 agement of his lenten fare. He had lived simply so long that 
 it seemed the most fastidious way, and she, he knew, must 
 be one with him. After luncheon they went into the big house, 
 and she wakened to some real animation over its beauty, the 
 lovely panelling, the perfect consistency of it all. It seemed 
 
4 i 8 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 to her ready to begin living in at once; but he explained 
 to her the practical needs of a place so long vacant. Then 
 they came back and found the invisible Mary had washed 
 their dishes and again tidied up, and the charm of it began 
 to envelop Celia. It was like living in a fairy house. 
 
 They ate their supper, bread and milk, and this frugality 
 Lovell laughed at with no shame, but told her she should 
 have servants as soon as there was room for them. And then, 
 as she sat in her chair by the west window, wondering at the 
 way things were moving, her mind ready to turn hither or 
 yon as the rein of chance should guide it, Lovell came and 
 threw himself on the floor beside her and laid his face upon 
 her knee. He was suddenly, she saw, profoundly moved, and 
 the overwhelmingness of it all came upon her in a rush. He 
 was madly in love with her, and she was his wife. She sat 
 there thinking this, growing cold to her finger-tips, wishing 
 she dared touch his hair, for that would be some sort of an 
 swer, and knowing she could not, and suddenly he lifted his 
 ardent eyes to hers. What he saw there sobered him and 
 calmed the transport of possession. She had paled. She trem 
 bled. He liked that, because she was to be won. But there 
 was something he did not like. 
 
 "What is it, Celia?" he asked her quietly. 
 
 She answered at once, in a low voice, without emotion. 
 
 " I am afraid." 
 
 "Afraid? of what?" 
 
 "Of you." 
 
 For it had come upon her, sitting there while he trembled 
 with love of her, that she was in the presence of a very big 
 thing indeed. Whatever it might mean to her to be beloved, 
 to him it meant infinitely to love her, and some response was 
 born in her, if only that of wonder and an involuntary re 
 spect as at the presence of something incomprehensible. By 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 419 
 
 a great leap, her mind compassed fealty as something she 
 owed him. He was smiling now, in his lover s confidence. 
 
 " You are so beautiful," he said irrationally. " Dearest ! " 
 That seemed to him a sufficient answer to her fears. But now 
 he rushed a whole length on his headlong way. " Say you 
 love me," he besought her. "Say the words." 
 
 Celia answered instantly, afraid, indeed, to hesitate. 
 
 " I can t." 
 
 He rose to his knees now and put his arms about her and 
 his face to hers. 
 
 " Say it," he commanded. He laughed at the pretty play 
 of it all. "Say you love me." 
 
 " I can t," said Celia, in a dull despair. " I don t suppose 
 I do." 
 
 He drew back, stung by the lash of it, his face suddenly 
 changed. He got on his feet and took a chair within arm s 
 length of her. 
 
 "What is it?" he entreated her, now with a studied and 
 extreme gentleness. " Celia, what s the matter?" 
 
 She wrenched the words out and seemed to throw them at 
 him. 
 
 " I don t know what love is." 
 
 He considered. 
 
 " Don t you love your sister ? " This he asked her gently, 
 seeking, it seemed, to find the first steps toward leading her 
 in the lovely way she surely meant to go. 
 
 A flash came over her face, brightening in the eyes, quiv 
 ering over the mouth. She was remembering what it is to be 
 condemned by one beloved as she had been by Bess. 
 
 " It is different," she managed to say, " She is a girl. You 
 are a man." 
 
 "And you don t love me?" 
 
 It was not spoken in harshness. She seemed to have 
 
420 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 dragged it forth, and he who really knew nothing of her inner 
 mind, could not guess what passion of dawning loyalty toward 
 his love for her lay in the effort she was making to set him 
 right. He got up and walked across the room once and back 
 again. The golden apple had not, it seemed, dropped into his 
 treasury. Destiny was more exact. What he had thought a 
 fairy fortune was nothing but a big challenge over again, and 
 he who had failed a challenge once might be on the verge of 
 double failure. In the midst of his tumultuous passion he 
 had the calm to remind himself of that. He spoke, with a 
 considered quiet. 
 
 " Then why are we here ? " 
 
 She shook her head, and he waited for her to answer. 
 Suddenly it seemed to her the basest possible deed that she 
 should have taken advantage of his warm belief and that they 
 were here. He was still waiting for her to speak. 
 
 "I have treated you," she said in a low voice, "horribly." 
 
 Lovell considered. He considered her, her beauty chiefly, 
 which seemed the index of purity alone. 
 
 " You puzzle me," he said then, but more, it was evident, 
 to his own mind than to her. There they sat, a world between 
 them, Celia conscious of a stronger emotion than she had 
 ever felt in her life before. Come what would of it, she must 
 not deceive him in the slightest breath. He looked to her 
 entirely unlike the man who had made love to her a week 
 ago. He had become her judge. If she had to pay the pen 
 alty of ill deeds, it would be by insisting that he know her 
 fully. It would be tearing down the fabric of his house of 
 life, with hers. Celia had been like Bess, shy in her dreams 
 of what love might be ; but now, without warning, the vision 
 of it came upon her and she saw it in its adorable simplicity, 
 its morning tints. She saw herself suddenly as she might have 
 been, a young creature caught up on the wings of a man s 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 421 
 
 devotion and swept away to an enchanted paradise. But she 
 had manipulated, juggled, and therefore she was jaded before 
 her time. And every minute she grew colder and looked 
 colder also, so that he began, studying her face, to wonder at 
 her. 
 
 " Celia," said he, at length, "I can t make you out." 
 
 She laughed a little, a note of derision in the sound. 
 
 "No," she said. "Shall I tell you? Do you want to know 
 why I am in disgrace with the Winterbournes ? " 
 
 He considered for a moment. In the first impulse of 
 chivalrous partisanship he had meant not to listen; but she 
 was on a dark road, he saw, where, if he was to carry light, 
 he must be with her. 
 
 " I think you d better tell me," he said then. 
 
 Now it was Celia who deliberated. She could have laughed 
 at the task before her. Again she thought how funny it would 
 be to say, 
 
 " I said I didn t know where an ear-trumpet was. I did 
 know." 
 
 She remembered, in the quickness of the mind that heels 
 on great emotion, that Winterbourne had once said we are 
 never angry because of the little thing that sets us off. It is 
 all the accretion of old wrongs. In other homely words, the 
 last straw breaks the back. She had not lied about an ear- 
 trumpet merely. She had seen things as they were and shown 
 them as they were not. She had said, " I love," when she 
 had not loved, and now the swift insistency of the truth eluded 
 her. Best not to meddle with facts, for then would come in 
 the ear-trumpet again and the irony of it. 
 
 " I tell lies," said Celia, speaking as simply now as Bess 
 might have done. That was the first step of her calvary. She 
 drew a heavy breath, reflecting that the next one might be 
 easier. 
 
422 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 But Lovell was not one inch away from his perplexity. He 
 held out his hands to her. 
 
 "Come, Celia," he said. " Come here. It will be easier to 
 talk so." 
 
 She shook her head, and he tried argument. 
 
 "It is n t a lie that we love each other, is it?" 
 
 She could not answer. How did she know now exactly 
 what the truth of this r had come to be? He was smiling at 
 her. The beautiful mouth his mother and sister had loved 
 was very sweet. 
 
 " Well," said he, " it s true we re married. What did we 
 marry for ? " 
 
 Celia shook her head. 
 
 " I almost don t know," she said, seeking to be exact. " I 
 suppose I wanted to get away from them." 
 
 " Not from Bess ? " 
 
 " I wanted a home for Bess. I wanted her to stop work 
 ing and study and sing." 
 
 " You thought I would give her a home ? " 
 
 She nodded, not looking at him. 
 
 "Well," said Lovell, "I will." He spoke without bitter 
 ness, anxious only, it appeared, to get on to matters more 
 immediate to themselves. "How about you, Celia? We won t 
 think about Bess. She shall come to you. How about you? 
 When you married me, didn t you think you loved me?" 
 He said it humbly, as if, fully as he had believed it to be true, 
 the assurance of it would be incredible. 
 
 Celia shook her head. 
 
 "How do I know?" she said, and then in a despairing 
 irritability, " Oh, how tired I am ! " 
 
 Lovell rose at once. He had become the solicitous host. 
 The summer night had been gathering, and now she was 
 little more to him than a voice in the darkness, yet much 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 423 
 
 more, the warm presence of her, the indeterminate shape 
 toward which all his blood seemed tending. But of this, the 
 compelling power of her, he must not think. He lighted 
 candles now, and in the ray of them she stole a look at him 
 and saw how pale he was and how set his mouth had grown. 
 She had not known in the least what sort of a man it was she 
 juggled with. He began to seem a very potent force indeed. 
 He had taken a candle, and seemed waiting for her. 
 
 " Let me show you your room," he said now. " The bed 
 room there. You must n t be afraid, though it s the ground 
 floor. I shall be out here." 
 
 Celia rose wearily. She was stiff with tiredness,and hermus- 
 cles ached. Midway to take the candle from him, she paused 
 and stretched her arms to heaven, overcome with the con 
 tradictions of her lot. She was homesick, and yet she had no 
 home. She was passionately anxious to be loved was not 
 the vanity Winterbourne had credited her with the obverse 
 side of true desire? and here was a man who, but a minute 
 ago, had loved her. She wanted with every fibre of her to be 
 approved, and if ever woman had been admired, she had 
 been. Yet it did her no good because she had become hate 
 ful to herself. She stood there now looking past him, her 
 great eyes widening. 
 
 "The trouble is "she said. 
 
 " Well," said Lovell, " the trouble is ? " 
 
 The trouble was, her fighting soul was crying, if she had 
 made so many veils between her and the truth, should she 
 ever see it ? But she put out her hand and took the candle 
 from him. 
 
 " Good-night," she said. The door closed behind her and 
 Lovell went back to the mantel, put out the candles, and sat 
 down in his chair by the window. 
 
 And there he sat all night and thought chiefly, it seemed 
 
4 2 4 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 to him for no reason, of his ancestor, the soldier, whose life 
 had been devoted to a woman the wife who never left her 
 bed, who was beset with peevishness from the reaction of torn 
 nerves, and to whom he hastened in every absence from af 
 fairs, as to the perfect mate. That was love fulfilled. But this, 
 too, was more than the winning of the woman creature, the 
 transcendent bride; it was the challenge of life itself. "I 
 must keep my head/ he kept commanding himself above 
 that tumult of the mind. u I must keep my head." But what 
 gibes beset him in the darkness. He was paying penalty, as 
 he always did in actual life, for the creative nature, the seeing 
 eye, the quick comparison, the too responsive nerve. What 
 ever Lovell might accomplish, he was of those who look upon 
 life, recoil from it perhaps, suffer horribly with what seems 
 at times the disease of it, and recreate it in some form of art. 
 All the phantoms that understand how to rend and tear 
 thronged upon him ; here, a thousand voices told him, was 
 another joke on him out of the unexpectedness of the general 
 comedy. He was Time s fool. But a savage conviction had 
 been strengthening in him, in this fallow, silent interval, that 
 it is of no use to see, or even write, if you cannot also get your 
 grip on circumstance, the jade, and whirl her about to be your 
 handmaid. The one real stint is to be a man. And again he 
 told himself " I must keep my head." 
 
XXXIII 
 
 CELIA was so tired that she slept all night, waking 
 only once, for a minute or two of homesick terror ; 
 but before the mind could rouse itself really, she 
 was off again, and it was the late morning before she woke 
 for good. Then care leaped upon her. Grief had her by 
 the throat, and she succumbed to that sickness of the mind 
 which is the young s own and the old are never likely to feel 
 again, the blessed old who have learned " this too will pass." 
 But here she was, every nerve on fire and her blood hurry 
 ing to augment the flame. Something had to be done. As 
 she dressed she thought intently. Nothing, it seemed, would 
 make the place where she found herself in any slight degree 
 better save to take herself away. When she went out, Lovell 
 was waiting, and the table, fastidiously laid, was ready. He 
 turned at once, after their good-morning, to the spirit-lamp, 
 and asked her in the tone of the camping chum how she 
 liked her eggs. She thought she did n t want any; but when 
 she saw him put his in, it seemed to her she did, and he was 
 adroitly ready, timing them. 
 
 Then they sat down together, and Celia had no small talk 
 afoot. In the glance she stole at him, she saw his night had 
 not been the truce between miseries that hers had been. He 
 looked jaded. His eyes wore the look of pain. She would 
 have been surprised to know how persistently all night he 
 had been thinking, not of her, but of the desirability that he 
 should not fail. Of his sharp need of her, his sense of out 
 rage at the trick she and fortune together had combined for 
 him, he did not dare, now even at the sight of her, to think. 
 
426 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Lovell had learned that in time of grief you have to husband 
 your power for the actual siege; you have none to spare for 
 fusillades. And over and over again, sitting opposite her at 
 the table, he thought of the old colonel and his chivalric serv 
 ice. But he did talk a little, about the house, and Hopkins, 
 who was a perpetual question-mark, and Celia was grateful to 
 him. And then, breakfast being over, he asked her if she 
 did n t want to go down the brook path behind the house and 
 leave the scene to Mary Manahan. She agreed at once, un 
 derstanding, from his manner and also from her sense of what 
 must come, that she was to have her trial there. 
 
 For Celia now had no idea that she was to escape or that 
 she wished to. Something had got to be done to reconstruct 
 the disorder of her life. Some hidden self was speaking in 
 her, some inheritance from her working ancestors who had 
 bent themselves to bring comeliness out of disarray. They 
 went out together and down the path to the fringing woods, 
 small trees on the border, oaks and birches, and within, a 
 higher knoll where pines began. These had been thinned 
 persistently and with wisdom, so that something great had 
 been attained by tall clean-growing trees with space between. 
 But Lovell chose the little path down to the singing brook, 
 and by its plashy solitude he halted and showed her the seats 
 under trees and asked if they should stay. Celia sat down 
 and began at once, looking up at him with a serious strained 
 face from which consciousness of self and the vanity of 
 beauty s challenge had gone utterly. 
 
 " Let s have it over," she said. 
 
 "What?" he asked. He, too, seated himself, but where 
 it would not be easy to see her face. He wanted to give her 
 every chance. 
 
 " I have got to tell you," said Celia, cc everything about 
 
 me." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 427 
 
 " That s as you choose." 
 
 "I ve got to. Don t tell me I needn t. I must. You 
 don t know me. I wish I could make you. You know Mrs. 
 Winterbourne adopted me." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " She cared a lot about me ; but I don t know whether it 
 was about me or because she had to care about some 
 thing." 
 
 " Did you care about her ? " 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 " Yes, at first. But when I began to grow up she wanted 
 me to do things I could n t do." 
 
 " What things ? " 
 
 " She wanted me to be clever, she did n t care how. I had 
 lessons on the piano for years, then the violin. I hated them. 
 I can t play." 
 
 There was more bitter feeling in her voice than he had 
 heard in it as yet. 
 
 " Poor child! " he muttered. There was relief in pitying 
 her. 
 
 " I can sing a little, a very little. She made me have les 
 sons, but I did n t sing well enough, don t you see ? She 
 thought I could paint, I believe she thought I really could 
 do that if I was n t obstinate, but 1 could n t. I am stupid, 
 Mr. Lovell. I have no brain." 
 
 He was looking at her hand lying on her knee, the deli 
 cate white hand that wore his mother s ring. He craved to 
 touch it, and the sickness of the longing made him glad she 
 could not see his face. Celia went on. 
 
 " We were thrown all the time with people that could do 
 things, women that write books and talk in public. Once 
 she thought perhaps I could write. I tried everything, to 
 please her. I wanted to, myself. I wanted to be liked. But 
 
428 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 I found out one thing. I found it out all of a sudden. I m 
 not an affectionate person." 
 
 This was thrown in with the uplift of a timid question. 
 
 " Are n t you ? " he asked stupidly from his dream, still 
 thinking of the white hand. 
 
 "I feel ever so far away from most people. When they 
 begin to come nearer I don t like it. But I found out if I 
 did n t run away, if I seemed nearer, they liked me. That 
 pleased her. I was popular. She would rather have had me 
 called intellectual ; but I could n t be, and so she was glad 
 to have me charming." 
 
 " Were they men ? " Lovell asked, out of a new pang, 
 "men you charmed? " 
 
 " Not so much as women. The women were her friends. 
 That was the way to please her. But she was always studying 
 me and she studied out that, and one day she told me I said 
 I loved people to make them love me, and that when I d 
 gone away from them I never thought of them again. Well, 
 I did n t." 
 
 " Then " he reminded her, after too long a pause. 
 
 "Then we found Bess." Her voice took on strength and 
 color. " She was my own sister. I d never had anything my 
 own. She did n t try to make me over. She just liked me 
 and thought I was right. She had her voice, you know, and 
 for a little while I believed that was going to set us at the 
 top of things, where we could be everything mamma ex 
 pected of us. And mamma wished it awfully. But she lost 
 money and we had to come down here, and Bess won t sing, 
 can t sing, when you want her to or when it 11 do her any 
 good, and I went mad over it, I wanted money so. I knew 
 if we had enough to go away without mamma, we could man 
 age it somehow. I felt I could lead her on to sing, not 
 letting her be watched and driven. I knew she d sing to 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 429 
 
 please me. And when I heard of a way to make money, I 
 listened and if I heard of a person that had money," 
 her voice sank here, in shame unbearable, " I wondered 
 if he would send Bess and me away for her to study, 
 and when she began to sing, then we could pay him 
 back." 
 
 There she paused. This was the story as she knew it. 
 Of the fears upon her lest somehow she had woven a veil 
 about herself through which she could not see the way, and 
 the other almost formless apprehension lest after all she did 
 not care so very much whether a thing were true or false, she 
 did not speak. She could not, indeed, for these things were 
 too subtile for her to formulate. Only dread was upon her 
 lest she had closed doors upon her free spirit, doors that in 
 Bess were open all day long letting in the sun and wind. It 
 was her first view of wilful sin. But, she told herself, when 
 these things set upon her, she had at least begun to care lest 
 they were so. She had seen the face of evil. It had sickened 
 her. 
 
 " I see," Lovell said now, gravely. "Well," he continued, 
 and there was still no bitterness in his tone, "there is money 
 enough. You and Bess can go away now. You can go 
 abroad." 
 
 "No," said Celia, "no. I Ve thought it out. I thought 
 it out in a minute last night before I went to sleep. I Ve 
 made a bad start. Don t men start wrong?" 
 
 " Yes. You knew that about me. You knew I d made a 
 bad start and told me so. It was your sweetness about it 
 that gave me a new chance." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No," she said, "I did n t know anything about it." 
 
 "That day I came to see you in the arbor," he reminded 
 her. He was passionately eager to believe that this at least 
 
430 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 had been real among the blossoms that made the garland of 
 his fancy for her crowning. 
 
 " No," she said, " I don t remember. Maybe I said I did. 
 Have n t I told you that ? You must believe it. Whatever 
 I thought would please you I suppose I did/ 
 
 Another flower from the garland was torn and ragged at 
 his feet. He almost saw it lying there. But he had made up 
 his mind that come what sad knowledge of her there might, 
 he would not say irrevocable words. 
 
 " I 11 tell you the story of it," he began. " I m a dis 
 graced man in a small way. It s only right for you to 
 know." 
 
 He told her the story briefly, and she listened. 
 
 "No," she said, at the end. " I thought it had something 
 to do with money. Mrs. Ramsay said you had a fortune and 
 would n t use it." 
 
 " There s more or less," he said briefly. " I put it away 
 when I took to living here alone. But there it is. It s 
 yours. You shall use it for yourself and Bess." 
 
 Two tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away, 
 not to be indebted to their dramatic power, and suddenly 
 got up and went to him. 
 
 "What shall I do?" she asked him passionately. "What 
 can I do? If there is any decent thing a woman in my place 
 can do, tell me." 
 
 He shook his head slightly and looked up at her with a 
 whimsical smile. The irony of it all was strong upon him. 
 Here was the world in summer clothes, here were brooks 
 and birds and the utmost the created scheme could do for 
 joyance. Here were the lover and she, the beloved. What 
 foolish litany of remorse it was to harp upon old sins, past 
 shames, when all the floods of life were mounting. The 
 poet in him longed to break loose, to soar on wings into 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 431 
 
 the face of the sun ; but there was a canker at the heart of 
 life. The beloved did not love him, and there was no 
 upward flight save with her. 
 
 " You 11 have to go abroad," he said, seeking dizzily for 
 the commonplace. " You and Bess." 
 
 "No," she declared, "no. I won t use your money. I 
 won t use you." 
 
 " I could go with you," he represented again. " You could 
 take me for a courier." 
 
 "No." Then she essayed timidly, "If I could stay here 
 a little, if I could seem to keep your house then when I 
 went finally for you must hate me people won t talk so 
 much. I can t," she cried, " I can t have you ridiculous !" 
 
 He drew a quick breath at the respite. It was better to 
 have her so, imprisoned, than to lose her. But he answered 
 only, 
 
 "No, Celia. I don t hate you." 
 
 " I could seem to keep your house," she was brooding. 
 " I could learn things from Bess. She knows everything." 
 
 He entered into it as if it were a game. 
 
 " And the old ladies of Clyde will call upon you and offer 
 you recipes for cake." 
 
 The slightest touch of lightness in their story moved him 
 to incredulity that these things could be. There she sat, 
 more lovely than he had ever known her, softer in her re 
 flective mood, a creature fitted for all the needs of life. She 
 was his, so far as outer judgments went, and here it was sum 
 mer and paradise in the making. Some spell seemed to have 
 made his lovely lady into a changeling. He tried impetu 
 ously to recall her. 
 
 "Celia, we re under a midsummer madness. Why, you 
 tell me these things as if they were real. They re not. 
 You re the dearest, the loveliest " 
 
432 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 There he stopped, for she looked at him practically and 
 said in a quiet earnest, 
 
 " No, I m not lovely. I m a kind of a twisted creature. 
 Bess despises me." 
 
 The look of pain on her face seemed to him more than he 
 could bear. 
 
 " No ! " he cried hotly. 
 
 " Oh, she does n t even know it, but she does despise me. 
 And I ve got to make myself all over before I shall stop 
 despising myself. There won t be time in one life either." 
 
 Her moodiness alarmed him. Then he began to love her 
 without any thought of himself, except now and then when 
 she was so desirable to him that he had to cry for her un- 
 reasoningly. 
 
 "Celia," said he. The tone made her look at him. It was 
 full of a gay brightness. " Celia, why don t we play a little 
 game ? We re two children living in the woods. We ve run 
 away from the world because it plagued us." 
 
 She was smiling at him, yet with rueful tear-wet eyes. 
 
 " No," she said. " I can t play that way. I had to run 
 away from it because I d been naughty." 
 
 "To tell the truth, then, so did I. So here we are. We 
 both know just how naughty we ve been, but it s nobody s 
 business but our own." 
 
 " Are you going to be as nice to me as that ? " she asked him. 
 
 " Just that nice," he said. " We re two children in the 
 woods. And we can t talk about grown-up things because 
 we don t know the grown-up language. We ve left all that 
 behind us." 
 
 Celia had risen. She stood looking at him, something 
 vivid in her face. 
 
 " If I had a brother," she said then, " I d like him to have 
 been like you." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 433 
 
 This was wormwood, but it was a part of the bitter course. 
 Lovell gulped upon it, and then made his answer : 
 
 " Let s go home now and see about dinner." 
 
 She caught his spirit gayly. To her also it seemed incred 
 ible that last night s tragedy, should have dawned into this 
 garden day. 
 
 " Don t we dig roots and things ? " she asked. 
 
 " No, for there s the wigwam. It 11 have something bub 
 bling in the pot. You J ll see." 
 
 So she walked before him in the path when it was narrow, 
 and then beside him where there was room for two, and he 
 prophesied how Mary Manahan, the invisible, would have 
 become fired to wondrous acts with culinary needs upon 
 her. Hammering, that cheerful sound if the heart beats with 
 it, was going on in the big house. They stopped there for a 
 ten minutes oversight, and Hopkins met them with bluff 
 good-humor to ask a dozen questions, and refer matters to 
 the new mistress. The workmen, men of Clyde all of them, 
 who had known Lovell from his school-days, glanced up at 
 her with a keen neighborly look to see what manner of 
 woman she was. 
 
 It left her with a quickened heart. The day went on with 
 its little cares, and Lovell asked her this or that, as if her 
 will were in the thing he sought. Toward night again she 
 turned to him wildly when they had talked of everything he 
 could bring her to decide about the house. 
 
 " We can t keep on like this," she said. 
 
 "You hate it so?" 
 
 He was less tense than she because he was more tired. 
 The burden of the whole was his. She was letting herself 
 sink more and more into the pit of remorse to fulfil her 
 punishment. It was his task to upbear her. She shook her 
 head. 
 
434 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " No. It s not discontent. It s because I ought never to 
 have come." 
 
 They stood looking at each other across the little distance 
 between them, the chasm of separated lives. Lovell was 
 thinking, with a grim grip on facts as he had them. He 
 wanted to refer this case to life, the big tribunal of things as 
 they are. Did it do any good to persuade a woman to love 
 you if the primal spring of it is not within her? Yet she loved 
 Bess. Now she showed what she had been thinking. 
 
 " Bess has not come to see me." 
 
 Her mouth drew miserably as she said it. Her eyes looked 
 piteously at him. Lovell called upon his inner adjudicator 
 again to help him keep his head. 
 
 "Don t you know why?" he asked her, and in spite 
 of himself his smile was bitter. " She thinks we are too 
 happy." 
 
 "Too happy!" 
 
 " Nobody would run in upon a bride and groom until they 
 gave some hint they were to be found." 
 
 " You don t think it s because she despises me ? " 
 
 Lovell, obeying the impulse that seemed to him sanest 
 because it was the biggest, suddenly took her by the shoul 
 ders and gave her a little shake. 
 
 " Celia," said he, as brusquely as he would, " if you were 
 a child, I d have you whipped." Then before she had got 
 over the surprise of it, he took his hands away, and laughed, 
 with a tender mirth, too, because she seemed to him so dear 
 and small. "You re such a simpleton! Here s this solid 
 earth, and you act as if we were on an egg-shell, and you were 
 being hunted to death by bogies." 
 
 She came a step nearer him, and whispered, 
 
 " Do you think I have hurt my brain ? She said so once. 
 She thought she never talked to me about the things she 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 435 
 
 saw in me; but it was n t so. She said if I said I liked what 
 I did n t like, by and by I should n t know what I liked 
 myself." 
 
 "Then by George," said Lovell, "I hope it s so. You 
 said last night you did n t like me. Perhaps you don t know. 
 Perhaps you re in love with me. Perhaps you adore me, 
 sweetest, as I do you. I do, Celia, I do. Understand that. 
 Remember it, too, my girl." 
 
 She looked at him, fascinated, the warm kindliness of his 
 face, the mouth that encouraged, the eyes that beckoned. 
 She felt pride in him, and Lovell was clever enough to see 
 she liked him better so than mawkishly undone for her. 
 
 "There s one thing I won t stand," said he, " I won t 
 live in a spider s web of casuistry. I know all that kind of 
 thing. I can do it better than you can. You ve got to be a 
 good girl, a plain, nice, good girl. Now, see here : Mary 
 Manahan is n t coming to-night. I told her not to. You put 
 on an apron and wash the dishes." 
 
 " I have n t any apron," said Celia faintly. 
 
 " Then you take a towel and pin it round you. I ve seen 
 Mary Manahan do it when she forgot her apron. I m going 
 over to shut up the house. Hopkins has n t any key." 
 
 He walked out and left her, and Celia, in a daze, did as 
 she was told, and when he came back, cheer on his lips and 
 terror in his heart for fear he had lost her, she was sitting 
 with folded hands waiting for him. 
 
 "You are very patient with me," she said, at once. " Re 
 member, it won t last long. I m not going to stay." 
 
 Lovell walked up to her and stood there, making himself 
 as immovable within as he hoped he looked in his bodily 
 estate. 
 
 "We ll have that out now," he said. "You re not going 
 to leave me." 
 
436 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Not going to ? Not if I " 
 
 "Not if you think you want to. You re going to stay 
 right here. And before we get through with each other 
 you re going to love me with all your heart and soul and 
 body- She put up her head at that, and the lightning of 
 fear shot over him lest he had offended cc as I do you," he 
 ended, in a way that shut her lips. 
 
 " One thing," she essayed, " Bess is not going to take 
 money from you." 
 
 " Perhaps not. That s for her to say." 
 
 " No. It s for me. To have you think I did it for 
 that " 
 
 "You told me you did but never mind." 
 
 "And then to have it succeed to make use of you I 
 should kill myself." 
 
 She looked wild-eyed now, and he wondered whether he 
 was pressing her too far. 
 
 " We don t kill ourselves," he said coldly, "if we re well- 
 bred people. We play the game." 
 
 At this she stiffened perceptibly. 
 
 "And a part of the game," he went on "Do you 
 mind ? " He got up and took his pipe. She shook her head 
 and Lovell began to smoke. He did it very seldom, some 
 times not for weeks together, but it seemed to him a helpful 
 stage accessory at the moment, "a part of the game until 
 we move into the other house where there s room for help, 
 is doing what work Mary Manahan can t get round to. I 11 
 see to Hopkins. You see to the house." 
 
 The tone, not the words, struck fire from her. 
 
 " You speak to me," she said hotly, forgetting her estab 
 lished despair, " as if I were a squaw." 
 
 Lovell puffed a moment, and held down the beautiful 
 words beginning with "liege-lady" that came running in, a 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 437 
 
 lovely troop, to assure him they were there and ready to 
 be used. " Do I ? " said he. " Maybe." 
 
 But immediately on the heels of that he had a page to read 
 her of Winterbourne s translation, not saying the English 
 words were his, and she quieted under the lovely flow of it. 
 But she rose early and took her candle. He had put aside 
 his pipe. 
 
 "Wait," he said. 
 
 She had turned away with her good-night. She looked 
 soft-eyed and sad. He held out his hand, and at the in 
 stant saw the little warning thrill in her, a start away from 
 him. 
 
 " No," said he. " Don t be afraid." Then she looked at 
 him and he took her hand and they stood facing each other. 
 " Don t think of that again," said Lovell, as if it were a com 
 mand. 
 
 " What ? " she asked faintly. 
 
 "Don t think I m going to kiss you. I never shall 
 not till you want me to. Good-night." 
 
 She left him to his dreams, his waking ones, for tired as 
 he was he could not sleep at once. All manner of his long- 
 loved desires had been resurrected in him the great colony 
 known as youth. She would have wondered, if she could 
 have seen them thronging, there were so many and of such 
 brave array. Old stories, chivalry and faerie, romance of love 
 and death, contributed their names. He was in a state of 
 quickened life. For the body and its demands, crudely 
 deified by materialists, he did not at that moment care a 
 straw. He wanted his wife, the soul of her, the ultimate es 
 sence, not possession, against a will not with him. He saw 
 the vision as romance saw it imperfectly, and as he had for 
 gotten to see it while he minded his book in these lethargic 
 days. The poets even were there. They thronged about 
 
438 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 him, bidding him remember. What should he remember? 
 The binding of the bride to the saddlebow by his arm and 
 his blended will, the quest that he should be brave and true. 
 And to that end, he bade himself sleep, to wake on the 
 morrow a sane man. 
 
XXXIV 
 
 BESS sought out Winterbourne in his seclusion by 
 the window where he sat, omitting to light his lamp, 
 and thought. She looked, in the dusk, subdued and 
 drooping. A part of her cares were over, for Mrs. Ramsay 
 had gone home. 
 
 " Sit down, child," said Winterbourne. 
 
 But she continued to stand, her hands clasped before her 
 rather like a suppliant. 
 
 " Do you think, sir," she said, " I might go and see her 
 to-morrow?" 
 
 "Who? Mrs. Ramsay?" 
 I "No, sir, Celia." 
 
 " Why not, for heaven s sake ? " 
 
 " She might n t want me. If she is so happy, will she want 
 me?" 
 
 The tone was profoundly sad. Winterbourne had an in 
 stinct that he d better tell her a story as he did the children 
 when they looked like tears. But there was no story except, 
 in a metaphor he chose to use for himself, that he meant pre 
 sently to have a duel with his wife from which one or both 
 of them would not return. 
 
 "Of course," he said. "Go and see her by all means. Go 
 to-morrow morning. Bess, are you tired out ? " 
 
 She looked at him in a clear-eyed honesty. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Ramsay s off, at least. Bess, what is to be 
 come of that woman ? Is she going batting round same as 
 ever and let her children run to weed ? " 
 
440 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Bess considered. 
 
 " I guess she s thought a good deal about the children 
 while she could n t see em," she confessed. " She never saw 
 em much before, except morning and night. She did n t 
 sense how dirty they were." 
 
 "And yet," he rallied her, "you want to vote. Hunter 
 says you do. Don t you see what it makes of a woman to 
 hurl herself about trying to vote and putting her ringer 
 in every individual pie and leaving her own pie un 
 baked?" 
 
 "Well," said Bess practically, "if Mrs. Ramsay could 
 vote, she would n t have to take so much time trying to. She 
 could just go and do it, same as men do, and then spend 
 the rest of the day at home, same as men do in their offices. 
 That s all." 
 
 Winterbourne stared at her and then threw back his head 
 and laughed. 
 
 "Excellently reasoned, wench," said he. "And now, how 
 about your own career ? The last time you mentioned it a 
 man had asked you to marry him, and you concluded with 
 a form of logic I can t follow, that you were going to make 
 yourself into a kind of a creation a wedding-cake affair 
 something called a lady. Was that it?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Now, Bess, what is a lady ? Do you want to be like 
 Mrs. Ramsay?" 
 
 No, she did n t. From her face that was plain. 
 
 " Do you want to be like Celia ? " 
 
 There, though she flushed and looked imploring as if 
 begging him to leave her darling uncriticised, she would say 
 nothing, and he knew he should gain no more by using 
 Catherine for a standard. 
 
 " Now, Bess," said he, " what s all this about being a 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 441 
 
 lady ? Sit down, or I shall have to get up. If you re going 
 to be one, I Ve got to treat you scrupulously." 
 
 So she sat down. 
 
 " I don t even use good grammar," she said, in her old 
 formula and with a shamed eloquence of look. 
 
 "The mischief you don t! What else?" 
 
 She put out her hand and laid it on his page. 
 
 "I can t read your books." 
 
 " Well, if you d lived fifty years ago, you d have been 
 unladylike if you could. That s Greek, simpleton. You can 
 read English, can t you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, sir. I do when I get a chance." 
 
 "Now what do you read, Bess?" he asked, with curiosity. 
 " What are your books ? " 
 
 She hung her head. 
 
 " I don t like most things, sir," she said. " That s the 
 trouble. I like poetry." 
 
 " God save you, child, you like poetry ? Where d you 
 get it?" 
 
 "There were some books at the sanatorium. I read them 
 when I swept the room." 
 
 " When she swept the room ! Hear her, gods, the little 
 slavey ! Well, whose poems were they ? Mr. Longfel 
 low s?" 
 
 " No, sir. They were there, too. But there were some I 
 read more. I could have read them all night." 
 
 "Whose were they?" 
 f. "His name was Keats John Keats." 
 
 Winterbourne could have cried over her, she seemed so 
 exquisitely and particularly the child of his own spirit. 
 
 " Bess," said he, " do you suppose you want to be a 
 learned pig? * 
 
 She understood him absolutely. That was her way with 
 
442 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 him. The words might be uncouth or foreign to her, but she 
 always caught their meaning. It was like a signal code. 
 
 "I want," said she, groping for an answer, " I want to do 
 the best I can." 
 
 He, in his turn, understood. Was it not another version of 
 Jean Paul s " I have made what I could of the stuff"? He 
 got up. His eyes were wet. 
 
 " Good-night, child," he said. " Go and find your sister 
 in the morning. I ve got a lamp somewhere. 1 11 rub it up, 
 and we ll see." 
 
 The next morning, by the light of day with no glamour 
 in it, he went to his wife s chamber. It was to be what he 
 had been calling, in his mind, his duel with her. She sat 
 there by the window, trig and fine in her short dress, ready, 
 he guessed, for him to ask her to go out a pace. She was 
 pale, her face looked harried, and she was evidently having 
 distressing thoughts. But they were of Celia, not of him. 
 
 " John," she said at once, "what made her do it ? In that 
 way, that horrible, uncouth way ? What made her ? " 
 
 Winterbourne drew up a chair and sat down by her. 
 
 " Let Celia be," he said. "She s gone into another wig 
 wam. She s not our business any more." 
 
 "She s my responsibility " 
 
 Winterbourne leaned forward and looked her in the face. 
 
 " Catherine," said he, "pay attention to me. I ve come to 
 propose to you." 
 
 The homely phrase arrested her. The color came, and she 
 waited with parted lips. 
 
 " I want to propose to you," said he slowly, to give her 
 time, "to go on pilgrimage with me." 
 
 "With you? " She was more than ready. 
 
 " I want you to go abroad with me, for six months, a year 
 perhaps." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 443 
 
 "We two alone? " 
 
 " No. I intend to take Dwight Hunter. I intend taking 
 Bess." 
 
 She could not make out the combination, nor did he mean 
 she should. He simply meant to tear out his own roots from 
 the earth they were delighting in, and give himself to the 
 wind of destiny for the sake of something other than him 
 self. 
 
 <c Catherine," said he, cc there s lots I Ve got to say to you. 
 I don t know how. We Ve come together again. It s by 
 your will. I suppose we shall stay together. That 11 be by 
 mine. By mine distinctly. But we Ve got to be good fellows. 
 We Ve got to let youth have its way about us." She opened 
 her lips to say, " I don t feel old," but he forestalled her: 
 " You re not old. I m not either, though I m a thousand 
 years older than you are. But spring won t come again. 
 Don t you see, we have one day of life. Dawn won t come 
 again. But midday s here. It s the edge of the afternoon. 
 The sun is n t in our eyes as it was in the morning. We Ve 
 got to see things as they are. And we 11 see em together, if 
 you agree, like good soldiers. Will you, old friend ? " 
 
 No one but the woman who has been worshipped and can 
 not resign her sovereignty knows the bitterness of being 
 called to action when she is listening to be wooed to love. 
 But there was no doubt that, in spite of all her clamoring, 
 he, as he was, was dear to her. Not knowing him yet, very 
 well, she had the luck to recognize in this his call to her, 
 the last one perhaps he would ever give, and, unless she 
 would lose him utterly, to be in some form accepted. And 
 she gave herself as entirely as the bride, and as ignorantly. 
 But she had the one inevitable question : 
 
 " John, is it for Bess ? " 
 
 He answered instantly. 
 
444 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " Yes. Not to form her, not to pester her. Let her alone. 
 Let her sing or not sing. Give her her head. Are you up to 
 that?" 
 
 Yes, she was up to that. She was up to anything he chose 
 to ask of her. So high was the thought of the quest in her 
 that she was abjuring the old jealousies. 
 
 "And we can t travel like royalty," he said. "But you 
 shall be comfortable. There s enough for that. And we 11 
 come back here after, and maybe I can buy an annuity for 
 you for may be the gods " He paused there, but he had 
 thought for one hopeful moment that the gods might draw 
 him elsewhere to a kinder quest. 
 
 He got up, bent over her in a courtly way and kissed 
 her hand. And though he left her gravely, Catherine, sitting 
 there with the delight upon her of doing his will, felt hap 
 piness come flooding in. 
 
 Winterbourne gave himself no time to reconsider. He 
 went at once to find Dwight Hunter, at home and fuming 
 because some man summoned had not appeared. Dwight 
 looked harassed, angry like a nervous animal, and his boots 
 were caked with soil. Winterbourne began on him at once : 
 
 " Dwight, we re going abroad, my wife and I." 
 
 Dwight stood still, and looked at him, a question inten 
 sifying his face. 
 
 " She 11 be with Celia ? " he managed. 
 
 "She s going with us." 
 
 Rage leaped into his eyes, but he said nothing. 
 
 " This is what I want," said Winterbourne. He was 
 overawing him by the direct glance, as he had overawed his 
 wife. " I want you to throw over your dickering throw it 
 on Lovell s shoulders. It 11 be good for him. He s a poet. 
 He s elected to be a greasy citizen. And I want vou to go 
 with us." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 445 
 
 Hunter kept on staring at him. He could not believe it. 
 
 "You fool!" Winterbourne broke out, "don t you see 
 what I m offering you ? I m going to give her a holiday, 
 but you don t you see, you dolt, the part you re cast for ? 
 Italy, man, and if you can t turn her head in Italy, you re 
 a jackass and don t deserve her." He flung himself about 
 and was striding off. He heard the heavy boots behind him. 
 "Take it or leave it," Winterbourne called. He was in a 
 blind rage at life for constraining him to go on pilgrimage 
 again and drag these impedimenta. " You ve had the offer. 
 Take it or leave it." 
 
 Hunter s hand was on his. Winterbourne stopped to grip 
 it, and then looked into the young face and saw it glowing. 
 
 "When do we sail? " asked Hunter. 
 
 But what did Bess say when she was told the door had 
 opened to her? She was all dressed conformably in crisp 
 things, ready, even he could see, to make the call her sister 
 would commend. 
 
 " Bess," said he, " you re going abroad in a few weeks, 
 you and my wife and Dwight Hunter and I." 
 
 He thought he had never seen eyes widen so startlingly. 
 The rosy color poured into her face, and she was living 
 beauty. But what she said was this, 
 
 " We can t all go. Who 11 get in the carrots? " 
 
 Winterbourne beat the ground with his stick and wanted 
 to yell in pure delight. 
 
 "And she can t go," said Bess firmly, "until she s seen 
 a doctor." 
 
 " Seen a doctor ? You young filibuster, you re her doctor 
 and she s .getting well." 
 
 " Oh, no, I ain t," said Bess wisely. " I should n t think 
 of taking her off so far unless a doctor said we could." 
 
446 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 " You don t believe in doctors." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do. Only if she d had one then, she d have 
 settled right down on him." 
 
 How did she know Catherine so well, he wondered, the 
 abandon of her rush, the intense conviction with which she 
 would have become an invalid? 
 
 " So you had your doctor round the corner, you quack, 
 taking the bread out of his mouth and ready to put your 
 hand on him if you needed him ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Bess absorbedly. " But you call him in 
 now. You ask her to see him. He ll tell her she can go." 
 She walked away a step on her errand, and then turned and 
 came back to him. " What s Dwight Hunter going for ? " 
 she asked abruptly. 
 
 "He s going to tug your shawl-strap," shawl-straps 
 were much used when he had gone before, " and leave me 
 a hand to carry my wife s. I m going to make him into a 
 slavey for the whole of us. He s young and I m old. Don t 
 you ever forget your daddy s old." 
 
 What she was thinking he did not know, but in a moment 
 her face cleared. 
 
 " Well," she said conclusively, " it ll do him good. Maybe 
 he won t stay with us long." 
 
 Then she went on to Celia, who saw her coming and waited 
 for her in the doorway. Celia had been alone most of the 
 morning, peeping into her trunks, wondering what she 
 should do with her things, whether she should unpack them, 
 as she had done by the more delicate, or assume she was 
 going away. She waited for Bess now in a great longing and 
 excitement. Bess, she knew, would make all well. There 
 would be no secrets between them, now things had gone 
 so far, no pretences that the present state was not all misery. 
 Yet when Bess came up the steps, her eager face alight, Celia 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 447 
 
 forgot she could throw herself into her arms and sob out her 
 sorrows there. She did kiss her sister tenderly, but she sud 
 denly seemed to herself a different person. Was it partisan 
 ship of Lovell because she was in his house, and it was only 
 decent to be loyal to him ? Whatever it was, there was 
 something immutably fixed in her to keep the curtain before 
 his ignominy of living with an alien wife. They went into 
 the house, hand clasped in hand, and Celia, not knowing 
 what she was about to say, adventured, 
 
 "The other house is getting on." 
 
 " Do you like it, dear ? " Bess asked her tenderly. It 
 seemed wonderful to her to find Celia s mind fixed upon 
 houses and furnishings. 
 
 " It s very pretty. Yes, it s lovely. It s so big and old." 
 
 " Shall you have dotted muslin ? " 
 
 " Dotted muslin ? " 
 
 "Yes, for curtains. It always seemed to me the prettiest 
 that ever was." 
 
 Celia determined, in a rush, that if she stayed to order 
 curtains, they should be dotted. Then Bess told her news, 
 and Celia sat and looked at her. It was incredible. Bess was 
 going abroad, and Celia was not giving it to her, nor was 
 there mention of her going too. How should there be? Here 
 she was in her house of life. Who would think of dragging 
 her out of it to lesser than the ecstatic joys that dwell in 
 married love ? But because Bess knew no more about plans 
 and seasons, they talked of other things, of housekeep 
 ing and little practical ways Celia had never conceived of 
 until here was a home of her own and the care of it. When 
 Bess rose to go, she stood a moment, daring something. 
 Then she said, 
 
 " Had n t you better run round and see her pretty 
 soon ? " 
 
448 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 Celia looked unmoved. She was not conscious of wanting 
 to see Catherine. 
 
 "She s fond of you," Bess insisted. 
 
 Celia s eyebrows gloomed. She seemed to be thinking 
 back over an unkindly time. 
 
 " I 11 come," she said then. " Yes, I 11 come." 
 
 They kissed, and Bess went away, and Celia sat with idle 
 hands, thinking. It was about Bess. The distinction of her, 
 the difference between her and the crying, whining world, 
 was that she did something all the time. She set her hand 
 to things. It evidently was the way to keep alive. Then 
 Lovell came, hot and dishevelled. He had been working at 
 the house with the men, to speed things on the faster. It 
 was twelve o clock and Mary Manahan had not appeared. 
 Lovell had met her in the road. She had been sent for, to 
 see a sister come from far to spend the day. 
 
 "And there s no dinner," Celia said, aghast. 
 
 "There s bread," said Lovell, "milk, cold meat. Buck 
 up, squaw, and eat what there is in the wigwam." 
 
 And Celia laughed. The sound of it, free, unconsidered, 
 threw him off his seat of self-control. He wanted to ask her 
 if she could do it again, perhaps, if he would give himself to 
 witticism as choice. But she was spreading the cloth, and he 
 would not hinder her. 
 
 " Bess was in," she said. Ah, that was why she looked so 
 happy. " She s going abroad." 
 
 "She? Who else?" 
 
 She told him. 
 
 " You 11 want to go, Celia," said Lovell soberly. The 
 light had gone out, for him. He felt tired. 
 
 " No," she said. She was pouring milk into the glasses. 
 
 " Here, don t you give me all the cream. I like it pale. 
 You can go, Celia. You shall." 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 449 
 
 She heartened herself to glance at him. 
 
 " You want me to ? " 
 
 He would not answer that. 
 
 " What did Bess think ? " he asked. 
 
 " About what ? " 
 
 " About you. What it s best for you to do." 
 
 She turned to him now in what seemed a raging pride. 
 
 "Bess? I shouldn t ask Bess. Do you think I d tell 
 Bess any of the things you re suffering?" 
 
 She went tremblingly about her tasks and Lovell dared 
 not look at her lest the pathos and loveliness of her undo 
 him quite and make him spoil the good begun. By and by 
 she stopped and surveyed the table with an anxious care. 
 
 " Do you think," she appealed to him, "do you think 
 that s right ? " 
 
 Lovell made himself answer soberly, 
 
 " Yes. Looks to me all right." 
 
XXXV 
 
 IT was on a day at the end of the hurried weeks before 
 the Winterbournes sailing that Lovell came into the 
 little house to tell Celia the big one was finished. She 
 sat there by the window for it was in the first warmth of 
 September, when you could not get too much of summer 
 going and read in a small green book. This, as he entered, 
 she dropped at her side, but he knew the cover. The poems 
 were his, and this was the first time Celia was really reading 
 them. She looked at him differently, he thought, with a 
 question unexpressed. 
 
 "What are you thinking?" he asked her. He sat down 
 on the other end of her couch and gazed at her with tired 
 eyes. The house was done. Hopkins and his neighborly 
 men had gone. Paint would need more drying, but it would 
 not be long before life could begin there. But of what com 
 plexion it would be, neither of them knew. " What were 
 you thinking?" Lovell asked. 
 
 She drew her brows together slightly. He saw, as he had 
 lately, with a pang, that she considered carefully before she 
 spoke, and spoke exactly. Did she think herself a subject 
 for morbid psychology? That was too cruel. 
 
 " I Ve been thinking I don t know you," she said. 
 
 The answer to that was, " And I don t know you." But 
 he said, 
 
 " Nobody knows anybody except in two ways." 
 
 " What are they ? " 
 
 cc Likeness or passionate love." 
 
 She pondered that for a moment. 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 451 
 
 " There s sympathy," she said timidly, because he seemed 
 to her so much cleverer than she. 
 
 " Passionate love is sympathy the nth power. * He took 
 the book from her hand and furled leaf after leaf and hooted 
 at it all. Then he shut it and threw it on the floor. " Poor 
 young devil! " 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because he thought the world was his." 
 
 " And was n t it ? Why was n t it ? " 
 
 " He turned coward. He lost his grip." 
 
 Celia had a swift vision of the calmness of his binding her 
 down to a sane life with him, and, without violence of com 
 mand, forcing her acquiescence. 
 
 " You have n t lost your grip on me," she wanted to say, 
 and dared not, knowing she could not foresee the answer to 
 that. " But you Ve got your grip again ? " she hesitated. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Do you know what I was then?" He gave the book 
 on the floor a tap with his foot. " I was young." 
 
 " But you re young now." 
 
 There were maternal stirrings in her, desires that he 
 should be assuaged and comforted. Her eyes were dewy as 
 they looked on him, but that he did not see. He was not 
 meeting her eyes, these days, being plainly afraid of the 
 shock and surprise of orbed splendor under their fringing 
 shade. 
 
 " I don t mean years," he said. " It s something else. 
 When you re really young you walk in beauty. The 
 smoke out there that fall look over the hills and river 
 that s sacrificial smoke rising to the Most High. And the 
 gods Winterbourne s gods are all about, and the Most 
 High sits up there above them to make it right, and does n t 
 care which we worship because it s all one." He seemed to 
 
452 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 be speaking now out of a dream of the smoky day, the mist 
 in his eyes, and speaking, he half felt, to Winterbourne, who 
 understood things so and who let himself loose to talk in 
 just this way. How Winterbourne had led him ! until he 
 turned away for this paradise of a woman s eyes. " And the 
 woman you love," he went on drunkenly, beguiled by the 
 silence and the slumbrous haze, " you see her through veils. 
 She is the hidden, the unapproachable " 
 
 Celia got noiselessly on her feet. She could not bear it, 
 the sharp wonder of hearing him tell what the woman should 
 be and she was not. Lovell, too, came awake, and passed a 
 hand over his eyes. But the dream was not over. " She 
 looks to him " he went on, trying to recapture that vision 
 of the bending, floating other than himself which himself 
 had inevitably to pursue " she looks " 
 
 Now he was on his feet staring at her, and Celia looked 
 at him in flooding prayer that whatever ill he saw in her he 
 would not tell her. And Lovell saw in her that she longed 
 only to be his handmaid, and yet here was his decreed lady. 
 " She looks," he said, while his hands found her, " she looks 
 like you." 
 
 That night it was that Winterbourne went to see the chil 
 dren for the last half-hour. But they were in bed, all but 
 Tonty, who knew he would come, and had slipped into her 
 little wrapper and run down to the nursery, where she sat 
 watching. Mother, too, was in bed. She spent a great many 
 hours there, but between times she was on one domestic 
 raid after another, drilling the children and the new cook in 
 the minutiae of life, but pleasing them on the whole because, 
 though exacting and terribly clear-sighted, she was calm and 
 kind. Winterbourne came in softly. He would have come 
 earlier save that he wanted the decks clear of Mrs. Ramsay, 
 
JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 453 
 
 and he knew Tonty would be waiting. In a moment they 
 were established, he in the big chair, and she, now there 
 were no smaller ones to favor, in his arms, his cheek against 
 her silky head. 
 
 " Timmy s going to school," said she. 
 1 " Where ? " asked Winterbourne. 
 
 " Mother found her wedding-skirt all sewed over with 
 flowers, and she s sent him to the art school." 
 
 "Will Timmy like it?" 
 
 Tonty did n t know. She had an impression that it would 
 mean the safety of bits of silk and cushions. They wouldn t 
 be sewed over with flowers any more. 
 
 "Tonty," said Winterbourne, "you know I m going to 
 sea. I m going to be the Flying Dutchman." 
 
 "Oh!" she cried. She knew that story, and it troubled 
 her on a windy night. 
 
 " Don t you fret," said Winterbourne, seeing he had 
 chosen ill. " There is n t any Dutchman. It s only a rein 
 carnation myth." 
 
 "Oh ! " said Tonty, quite satisfied: for though she might 
 be staggered at long words, the tone he put them in assured 
 her they were innocuous. 
 
 "Tonty," said Winterbourne, "I 11 tell you a little mite 
 of a story. Once there was a boy named Jackie. And he had 
 two little girl-children. One was named Tonty and one was 
 named Bess." 
 
 "Me?" 
 
 " You ? I should say not. Much nicer ! " 
 
 But she knew. 
 
 " And one walked on one side of him and held his hand, 
 and the other walked on the other side of him and held his 
 hand. And lots of other children held on to him, some to 
 his coat-tails and some to his arms, and some sat on his feet 
 
454 JOHN WINTERBOURNE S FAMILY 
 
 and he could hardly walk. But he knew he d got to walk." 
 He stopped here, musing. The vision of the endless road 
 was strong upon him. If he could say, " This is my life and 
 I ve lived more than half of it, well or ill. I won t trouble 
 myself about the rest ! " But it was all going to be his life, 
 the whole endless road, and if he stopped here and sat down 
 under a tree, it would only mean so many steps not done. 
 " He had a lot to carry," said Winterbourne pathetic 
 ally, humorously too. "He d got his father and his grand 
 father and his great-grandfather, and so many more they 
 made a pile sky-high. And some of em that clung to his 
 elbows were heavy as lead. But the two little girls that held 
 his hands " 
 
 "Me." 
 
 " And Bess. They each carried a little lantern, and that 
 lighted the way. So he set out quite bravely, and the two 
 little girls carried the lanterns splendidly " 
 
 " Did they go out ? " Tonty asked, with an anguished ap 
 prehension. " Oh, did mine go out? " 
 
 " No, sir ! They burned forever and ever. Lanterns never 
 really go out. Don t you forget that." 
 
THE WARES OF EDGEFIELD 
 
 By ELIZA ORNE WHITE 
 
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 "A truly entertaining domestic novel. . . . The history 
 of two generations of people of an excellent New 
 England type is treated with feminine shrewdness 
 and sympathy." - New York Tribune. 
 
 " Not the least charm of this quiet story of New Eng 
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