OLDiiADAME 
 ANDOTHER 
 TMGEDIES 
 
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OLD MADAME 
 Other Tragedies 
 
OLD MADAME 
 
 Other Tragedies 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 
 
 Author of An Inheritance^ A Master Spirit, 
 The Scarlet Poppy, etc. 
 
 SOLD BY THE 
 
 MitRCANTILE L: 
 NEW YO 
 
 
 M 354495 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Richard G. Badger tf Co. 
 1900 
 
 (v*3) 
 
Copyright 1899 
 By Richard G. Badger ©" Co. 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 
 • ••"•• • 
 
 • • •" • « « 
 
 • • » • « • * 
 
 THANKS ARK DUE TO THE CENTURY COMPANY 
 TO MESSRS. J. B. LIPPINCOTT & COMPANY 
 TO MR. JOHN BRISBEN WALKER AND OTHERS 
 FOR THE COURTESY OF REPUBLICATION 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Old Madame 9 
 
 Ordronnaux 69 
 
 The Wages of Sin 155 
 
 Her Story 205 
 
 A Lost Identity . . • 253 
 
 A t ^ '<^ Q HT 
 
Old Madame 
 
SOLD BY Ti 
 
 MERCANTILE lMr^I!!*,'^ £ i:!€nAKr.'' 
 NEW' YOBilS''^J-''0RV^. 
 
 Old Madame 
 
 MISS BARBARA! Barbara, honey I 
 Where's this you're hiding at?" 
 cried old Phillis, tying her bandana head- 
 gear in a more flamboyant knot over her 
 gray hair and brown face. "Where's this 
 ' you're hiding at? The Old Madame's 
 after you." 
 
 And in answer to the summons, a girl 
 clad in homespun, but with every line of 
 her figure the lines, one might fancy, of 
 a wood-and-water nymph's, came slowly up 
 from the shore and the fishing-smacks, with 
 a young fisherman beside her. 
 
 Down on the margin, the men were haul- 
 ing a seine and singing as they hauled ; a 
 drogher was dropping its dark sails ; bare- 
 footed urchins were wading in the breaking 
 roller where the boat that the men were 
 
id; : : :0LD MADAME 
 
 launching dipped up and down; women 
 walked with baskets poised lightly on their 
 heads, calling gayly to one another; sands 
 were sparkling, sails were glancing, winds 
 were blowing, waves were curling, voices 
 were singing and laughing, — it was all the 
 scene of a happy, sunshiny, summer morn- 
 ing in the little fishing-hamlet of an island 
 off the coast. 
 
 The girl and her companion wound up 
 the stony path, passing Phillis, and paused 
 before a low stone house that seemed only 
 a big bowlder itself, in whose narrow, open 
 hallway, stretching from door to door, 
 leaned a stately old woman on her staff, — 
 a background of the sea rising behind her. 
 
 " Did you wish for Barbara, Old Ma- 
 dame ? " asked the fisherman, as superb 
 a piece of rude youth and strength as any 
 young Viking. 
 
 She fixed him with her glance an instant. 
 
 "And you are his grandson?" said the old 
 woman. "You are called by his name — 
 the fourth of the name — Ben Benvoisie. 
 I am not dreaming ? You are sure of it ? " 
 
OLD MADAME n 
 
 "As sure as that you are called Old 
 Madame," he replied, with a grave pride 
 of self-respect, and an air of something sol- 
 emn in his joy, as if he had but just turned 
 from looking on death to embrace life. 
 
 "As sure as that I am called Old Ma- 
 dame," she repeated. " Barbara, come here. 
 As sure as that I am called Old Madame." 
 
 But she had not always been Old Ma- 
 dame. A woman not far from ninety now, 
 tall and unbent, with her great black eyes, 
 glowing like stars in sunken wells, from her 
 face scarred with the script of sorrow — 
 a proud beggar, preserving in her little 
 coffer only the money that one day should 
 bury her with her haughty kindred — once 
 she was the beautiful Elizabeth Champer- 
 noune, the child of noble ancestry, the heir- 
 ess of unbounded wealth, the last of a great 
 house of honor. 
 
 From birth till age, nothing that sur- 
 rounded her but had its relation to the 
 family grandeur. Her estate — her grand- 
 father's, nay, her great-grandfather's — lay on 
 
12 OLD MADAME 
 
 a goodly Island at the mouth of a broad river ; 
 an Island whose paltry fishlng-vIUage of 
 to-day was, before her time, a community 
 where also a handful of other dignitaries 
 dwelt In only less splendor. There were 
 one or two of the ancient fishermen and 
 pilots yet living when she died, who, bab- 
 bling of their memories, could recall out of 
 their childhood the stately form of her 
 father, the Judge Champernoune, as he 
 walked abroad In his black robes, who came 
 from over seas to marry her mother, the 
 heiress of the hero for whom the King of 
 France had sent — when. In the French and 
 Indian wars, the echoes of his daring deeds 
 rang across the water — to make him Baron 
 Chaslesmarle, with famous grants and 
 largesse. 
 
 And In state befitting one whom the King 
 of France thus with his own hand exalted, 
 had the prodigal Baron Chaslesmarle spent 
 his days — never, however, discontinuing 
 the vast fisheries of his father. In which he 
 had himself made fortunes before the King 
 had found him out. And although the title 
 
OLD MADAME 13 
 
 died with him, and the pension died before 
 him, for the King of France had, with 
 treacherous complaisance, ceded the island 
 to the enemy one day when war was over, 
 yet store of land and money were left for 
 the sole child, who became the wife of Judge 
 Champernoune and the mother of Elizabeth. 
 What a sweet old spot it was in which 
 Elizabeth's girlhood of ideal happiness went 
 by ! The house, — a many-gabled dwelling, 
 here of wood and there of brick, with a 
 noble hall where the original cornices and 
 casements had been replaced by others of 
 carved mahogany, the panels of the doors 
 rich with their thick gilding, and the cellars 
 three-deep for the cordials and dainties with 
 which the old Baron Chaslesmarie had stored 
 them, — was, a part of it, once brought from 
 foreign shores as the great Government- 
 house. Set in its brilliant gardens, it was a 
 pleasant sight to see — here a broad upper 
 gallery giving airy shelter, there a flight of 
 stairs running from some flower-bed to some 
 casement, with roses and honeysuckles clam- 
 bering about the balustrade, avenues of 
 
14 OLD MADAME 
 
 ash and sycamore leading away from It, an 
 outer velvet turf surrounding it and ending 
 in a boundary of mossy granite bowlders. 
 The old baron slept in his proud tomb 
 across the bay — by the fort he had de- 
 fended, the chapel he had built, in the grave- 
 yard of his people, proud as he. And Ben 
 Benvoisie, the lad whom gossips said he had 
 snatched from the shores of some Channel 
 Island in one of the wild voyages of his 
 youth, slept at his feet, — but another Ben 
 Benvoisie lived after him. In a dimple be- 
 tween these bowlders of the gardens' boun- 
 dary. Judge Champernoune and his wife and 
 his other child were laid away. There was 
 always something sadly romantic to Eliza- 
 beth in the thought of her father walking 
 over the island from time to time, and se- 
 lecting this spot for his eternal rest, where 
 the rocky walls enclosed him, the snows of 
 winter and the bramble-roses of summer 
 covered him, and the waves, not far remote, 
 sang his long lullaby. 
 
 By the time that Elizabeth inherited the 
 place, the importance of the island town had 
 
OLD MADAME 15 
 
 gone up the river to a spot on the main- 
 land, and one by one the great families had 
 followed, the old judge buying the land of 
 them as they went, and their houses, dismem- 
 bered, with fire and with decay, of a wing here 
 and a gable there, and keeping but little trace 
 of them. The judge had no thought of leav- 
 ing ; and the people would have felt as if the 
 hand of Providence had been withdrawn 
 had he done so. Nor had Elizabeth any 
 thought of it, when she came to reign in her 
 father's stead and infuse new life into the 
 business of her ancestors, that had continued, 
 as it were, by its own momentum, since, 
 although Judge Champernoune had not 
 thought it beneath his judicial dignity to 
 carry it on as he found it, yet, owing to his 
 other duties, he had not given it that per- 
 sonal attention it had in the vigor and impetus 
 of the Chaslesmaries. She had not a mem- 
 ory that did not belong to the place. Certain 
 sunbeams that she recalled slanting down the 
 warehouses rich with the odors of spices and 
 sugar, through which she had wandered as 
 a child, were living things to her; a foggy 
 
1 6 OLD MADAME 
 
 morning, when an unseen fruiter in the sea- 
 mist made all the air of the island port deli- 
 cious as some tropical grove, with its cargo 
 of lemons, seemed like a journey to the ends 
 of the earth. And the place itself was her 
 demesne, she its acknowledged chatelaine ; 
 there was not a woman in the town who had 
 not served in her mother's kitchen or hall ; 
 it was in her fishing-smacks the men went 
 out to sea, in her brigs they ran down to the 
 West Indian waters and over to the Mediter- 
 ranean ports — perhaps, alas, the African ; it 
 was her warehouses they filled with goods 
 from far countries, which her agents scattered 
 over the land — for a commerce that had be- 
 gun with the supplying of the fishing-fleets, 
 had swelled into a great foreign trade. And 
 their homes were all that she could make 
 them in their degree ; their children she 
 herself attended in sudden illness, having 
 been reared, as her mother was before her, in 
 the homely surgery and herb-craft proper 
 to those that had others in their charge ; and 
 many a stormy night, in later years, did the 
 good Dame Elizabeth leave her own children 
 
OLD MADAME 17 
 
 in their downy nests, and hasten to ease some 
 child going out of the world on the horrible 
 hoarse breath of croup, or to bring other 
 children into the world in scorn of doctors 
 three miles off. 
 
 She was twenty-five when the step-son of 
 her father's sister, her cousin by marriage but 
 not by blood, appeared to fulfil the agree- 
 ment of their parents, to take effect when he 
 should finish his travels — which, indeed, he 
 had been in no haste to end. She had not 
 been without suitors, of high and low degree. 
 Had not the heir of the Canadian governor 
 spoken of a treaty for the hand of this fair 
 princess ? Was it not Ben Benvoisie, the 
 bold young master of a fishing-smack, with 
 whom she had played when a child, who 
 once would have carried her off to sea like 
 any Norse pirate, and who had dared to leave 
 his kiss red on her lips? Had Elizabeth 
 been guilty of thinking that, had she been a 
 river-pilot's daughter, such kisses would not 
 come amiss ? 
 
 Yet long ago had she understood that she 
 was pledged to her Cousin Louis, and she 
 
i8 OLD MADAME 
 
 waited for his coming. His eyes were as blue 
 as hers were brown, his hair as black as hers 
 was red, his features as Greek as hers were 
 Norman, his stature as commanding as her 
 own. 
 
 '* Oh, he was a beauty, my Cousin Louis 
 was ! " she used to say. 
 
 She never called him her lover, nor her 
 husband — he was always her Cousin Louis. 
 
 " So you have come, sir,*' she said, when 
 he stepped ashore, and crossed the street and 
 met her at the gate, and would have kissed 
 her brow. " More slowly, sir," she said, 
 drawing back. " You have come to win, not 
 to wear. Elizabeth Chaslesmarle Champer- 
 noune Is not a ribbon or a rose, to be tossed 
 aside and picked up at will.'' 
 
 " By the Lord ! " cried Cousin Louis. " If 
 I had dreamed she were the rose she Is, the 
 salt seas wDuld not have been running all 
 these years between me and her sweetness — 
 and her thorns." 
 
 " This Is no court, and these no court- 
 ladles. Cousin Louis," she replied. " We are 
 plain people, used only to plain speeches." 
 
OLD MADAME 19 
 
 " Plain, indeed/' said Cousin Louis. " Only 
 Helen of Troy was plainer! '' 
 
 " Nor do flattering words/' she said, " well 
 befit those whose slow coming flatters ill." 
 
 But the smile with which she uttered her 
 somewhat bitter speech was of enchanting 
 good-humor, and Cousin Louis thought his 
 lines had fallen in pleasant places. 
 
 He was not so sure of it when a month 
 had passed, and the same smile sweetened 
 an icy manner still, and he had not yet been 
 able, in the rush of guests that surrounded 
 her, to have a word alone with Elizabeth. He 
 saw that jackanapes of a young West Indian 
 planter bring the color to her cheek with his 
 whispered word. He saw her stroll down 
 between the sycamores, unattended by any 
 save Captain Wentworth. But let him strive 
 to gain her ear and one of the young officers 
 from Fort Chaslesmarie was sure to inter- 
 cept him, — strive to attend her walk, and 
 Dorothy and Jean and Margaret and Belle 
 seemed to spring from the ground to her 
 side. From smiling he changed to sullen, 
 and from sullen to savage — to abuse his 
 
20 OLD MADAME 
 
 folly, to abuse her coquetry, to wonder if he 
 cared enough for the winning of her to en- 
 dure these indignities, and all at once to dis- 
 cover that this month had taught him there 
 was but one woman in the world for him, 
 and all the rest were shadows. One woman 
 in the world, — and without her, life was so 
 incomplete, himself so halved, that death 
 would be the better portion. 
 
 How then ? What to do ? Patience 
 gave up the siege. He was thinking of des- 
 perate measures on the day when, moping 
 around the shores alone in a boat, he espied 
 them riding from the Beacon Hill down 
 upon the broad ferry-boat that crossed the 
 shallow inlet. How his heart knocked his 
 sides as he saw that pale, dark West Indian, 
 with his purple velvet corduroys, and his 
 nankeen jacket and jockey-cap, riding down 
 beside her, — as he saw Wentworth spring 
 from the stirrup to offer a palm for her foot 
 when they reached the door ! But Cousin 
 Louis had not waited for that ; he had put 
 some strength to his strokes and was at the 
 door before him, was at her side before him. 
 
OLD MADAME 21 
 
 compelling his withdrawal, offering no palm 
 to tread on, but reaching up and grasping 
 her waist with his two hands. 
 
 " By heaven ! " he murmured then, as 
 Wentworth was beyond hearing, his eyes 
 blazing on hers. " What man do you think 
 will endure this ? What man will suffer 
 this suspense in which you keep me ? " 
 
 '^ It is you. Cousin Louis, who are keeping 
 me in suspense," she answered, as she hung 
 above him there. 
 
 And was there anything in her arch tone 
 that gave him hope ? He released her then, 
 but when an hour later he met her again, 
 " Very well," he said. In the suppressed key 
 of his passion. " I will keep you in the sus- 
 pense you spoke of no more. You will 
 marry me this day, or not at all. By my 
 soul, I will wait no longer for my answer ! " 
 
 " You have never asked me, sir, before," 
 she said. " How could you have an answer ? 
 I hardly know if you have asked me now." 
 
 But, that sunset, with Belle and Margaret 
 and Jean and Dorothy, she strolled down to 
 the little church, that by some hidden pass- 
 
22 OLD MADAME 
 
 word was half-filled with the fishing-people 
 and her servants. And when she came 
 back, she was leaning on Cousin Louis's 
 arm very diff^erently from her usual habit, 
 and the girls were going on before. 
 
 " If I had known this Cossack fashion was 
 the way to win/' Cousin Louis was saying — 
 when a scream from Margaret and Belle and 
 Dorothy and Jean rang back to them, and, 
 hurrying forward, they found the girls with 
 their outcry between two drawn swords, for 
 Wentworth and the West Indian had come 
 down into the moonlit glade to finish a sud- 
 den quarrel that had arisen over their wine, 
 as to the preference of the fair chatelaine, 
 
 " Put up your swords, gentlemen," said 
 Cousin Louis, with his proud, happy smile, 
 " unless you wish to measure them with mine. 
 It would be folly to fight about nothing. 
 And there is no such person as Elizabeth 
 Champernoune." 
 
 The men turned white in the moonlight to 
 see the lovely creature standing there, and 
 before they had time for anger or amazement, 
 Elizabeth said after him : 
 
OLD MADAME 23 
 
 " There is no such person as Elizabeth 
 Champernoune. She married, an hour ago, 
 her Cousin Louis." 
 
 Ah me, that all these passions now should 
 be but idle air ! Perhaps the hearts of the 
 gallants swelled and sank and swelled again, 
 as they looked at her, beautiful, rosy and 
 glowing, in the broad white beam that bathed 
 her. They put up their swords, and went to 
 the house and drank her health and were 
 rowed away. 
 
 Elizabeth and Cousin Louis settled down to 
 their long life of promised happiness, in the 
 hospitality of an open hearth around which 
 friends and children clustered, blest, it seemed, 
 by fortune and by fate. Gay parties came and 
 went from the town above, from larger and 
 more distant towns, from the village and port 
 across the bay. Life was all one long, sweet 
 holiday. What pride and joy was theirs when 
 the son Chaslesmarie was born ; what tender 
 bliss Elizabeth's when the velvet face of the 
 little Louise first lay beneath her own and 
 she sank away with her into a land of downy 
 dreams, conscious only of the wings of love 
 
24 OLD MADAME 
 
 hovering over her ! How, at once, as child 
 after child came, they seemed to turn into 
 water-nixies, taking to the sea as naturally as 
 the gulls flying around the cliffs ! How each 
 loiterer in the village would make the children 
 his own, teaching them every prank of the 
 waves, taking them in boats far beyond the 
 outer light, bringing them through the break- 
 ers after dark, wrapped in great pilot-coats 
 and drenched with foam ! She never knew 
 what was fear for her five boys, the foster- 
 brothers of all the other children in the vil- 
 lage. Only the little maiden Louise, pale as 
 the rose that grew beneath the oriel, she kept 
 under her eye as she might, bringing her up 
 in fine household arts and delicate accomplish- 
 ments, — ignorant of the shadow of Ben Ben- 
 voisie stalking so close behind as to darken 
 all her work. 
 
 Her husband had taken the great business 
 that Elizabeth's people had so long carried 
 on through their glories and titles, their sol- 
 diery and war, their other pursuits if they 
 had them ; his warehouses lined the shores ; 
 the offing was full of his ships ; he owned 
 
OLD MADAME 25 
 
 almost the last rod of land on the island, and 
 much along the main. He did not pretend 
 to maintain the state of the old baron ; but 
 to be a guest at Chaslesmarie was to live a 
 charmed life awhile. He was a man of singu- 
 lar uprightness ; as he grew older apt to bursts 
 of anger, yet to Elizabeth and to his household 
 he was gentleness itself; some men trembled 
 at the sound of his voice, but children never 
 did. If he was not so beloved as his wife by 
 the fishing-people, it was because he was not 
 recognized master as of right, and because he 
 exacted his due, although tossing it in the 
 lap of the next needy one. But he was a 
 person with whom no other took a liberty. 
 "A king among men, was my Cousin Louis," 
 Old Madame used to say, and sigh and sigh 
 and sigh again as she said it. 
 
 But the hospitality of the island was not all 
 that of pleasure and sumptuous ease. It was 
 a place easily reached by sail from one or 
 more of the great towns, by boat from the 
 town above; and in the stirring and muttering 
 of political discontent, the gentlemen who ap- 
 peared and disappeared at all hours of the 
 
16 OLD MADAME 
 
 day, and as often by night, folded In cloaks 
 wet with the salt sea spray, wore spurs at their 
 heels and swords at their sides to some pur- 
 pose. And when at last war came — Horror 
 of horrors, what was this ! Cousin Louis and 
 his island had renounced allegiance to the 
 crown, and had taken the side of the colo- 
 nial rebels and the Continental Congress. 
 
 " We ! '' cried Elizabeth, who knew little of 
 such things, and had a vague idea that they 
 owed fealty still to that throne at whose foot 
 her grandfather had knelt. " We, whom the 
 King of France ennobled and enriched ! *' 
 
 "And for that price were we sold ere we 
 were born, and do we stay slaves handed 
 about from one ruler to another?" her hus- 
 band answered her. "We have ennobled and 
 enriched ourselves. We have twice and thrice 
 repaid the kings of France in tribute money. 
 Soon shall the kings of France go the way 
 of all the world — may the kings of Britain 
 follow them ! Henceforth, the people put 
 on the crown. I believe in the rights of 
 man. I live under no tyranny — but yours,*' 
 he said gayly. 
 
OLD MADAME 27 
 
 "A Chaslesmarie ! A Champernoune ! " 
 Elizabeth was saying to herself, heedless of 
 his smile. 
 
 "We are an insignificant islet," her husband 
 urged. " The kings of France have betrayed 
 us. The kings of Britain have oppressed us. 
 We renounce the one. We defy the other!'' 
 And he ran the flag under which the rebels 
 fought, up the staff at Chaslesmarie, and it was 
 to be seen at the peak of all his brigantines 
 and sloops that, leaving their legitimate affairs, 
 armed themselves and scoured the seas, and 
 brought their prizes into port. But freely as 
 this wealth came in, as freely it went out ; for 
 Cousin Louis did nothing by the halves. And 
 heart and soul being in the matter, it is safe 
 to say that not one guinea of the gold his 
 sailors brought him in, during that long strug- 
 gle, remained to him at its close. 
 
 It was during this struggle that, when one 
 day the sloop " Adder's-tongue " sailed, the 
 elder son of Ben Benvoisie — who had long 
 since married a fisherman's daughter — was 
 found on board, a stowaway. Great was 
 Ben Benvoisie's wrath when he missed his 
 
28 OLD MADAME 
 
 son ; but there was nothing to be done. 
 He rejected Cousin Louis' regrets with 
 scorn. But when the sloop brought in her 
 prizes, and the first man ashore told him his 
 son had died of some ailment before he 
 sighted an enemy, then his rage rose in 
 a flame, he towered like an angry god, and 
 standing on the head of the wharf, in the 
 presence of all the people, he cursed Cousin 
 Louis, root and branch, at home and abroad, 
 — a black cloud full of bursting lightnings 
 rising behind him as he spoke, as if he had 
 a confederate in evil powers, — cursed him in 
 wild and stinging words that made the blood 
 run cold, that cut Cousin Louis to the heart, 
 that, when they were repeated to her, made 
 even Elizabeth turn faint and sick. " There 
 is a strange second-sight with those Benvoi- 
 sies," she said. " God grant his curses 
 come to naught.'' But she seldom saw 
 him at a distance without an instant's 
 prayer, and she knew that the fishing-people 
 always after that sight of him, standing there 
 at the head of the wharf, with his blazing 
 eyes and streaming hair, and the rain and 
 
OLD MADAME 29 
 
 the lightning and thunder volleying around 
 him, held some superstitions of their own 
 regarding the evil eye of the Benvoisies, and 
 kept silent watch to see what would come 
 of it all. 
 
 But the war at last was ended, the world 
 was trying to regain its equilibrium, and 
 continental money was at hand on every 
 side, and little other. Cousin Louis, who 
 had faith in the new republic, believed with 
 an equally hot head in its own good faith, 
 and sent word far and near that he would 
 redeem the current paper, dollar for dollar 
 in gold. And he did so. There were bar- 
 rels of it in his warehouse garrets, and his 
 grandchildren had it to play with. "It is 
 Ben Benvoisie's word," said Elizabeth, when 
 they saw the mistake. But Cousin Louis 
 laughed and kissed her, and said it had sunk 
 treasure, to be sure, but asked if Ben Ben- 
 voisie's word was to outweigh his fisheries 
 and fleets and warehouses and hay-lands — 
 his splendid boys, his girl Louise ! And 
 he caught the shrinking, slender creature to 
 his heart as he spoke — this lovely young 
 
30 OLD MADAME 
 
 Louise, as fair and fragile as a lily on its 
 stem, whom he loved as he loved his life, 
 his flower-girl, as he called her, just blos- 
 soming into girlhood, with the pale rose-tint 
 on her cheek, and her eyes like the bee-lark- 
 spur. How was he, absorbed in his count- 
 ing-room, forgetful at his dinner-table, taking 
 his pleasures with guests, with gayeties, to 
 know that his slip of a girl, not yet sixteen, 
 met a handsome hazel-eyed lad at the foot 
 of the long garden every night, — Ben Ben- 
 voisie the third, — and had promised to go 
 with him, his wife, in boy's clothes, when- 
 ever the fruiter was ready for sea again ! 
 But old Ben Benvoisie knew it. And he 
 could not forbear his savage jeer. And the 
 end was that Cousin Louis, at the foot of 
 the long garden one night, put a bullet 
 through young Ben Benvoisie's arm, and 
 carried off his fainting girl to her room that 
 she showed no wish to leave again. " She 
 will die," said Cousin Louis, one day toward 
 the year's close, " if we do not give way." 
 
 " She would better," said Elizabeth, who 
 knew what the misery of her child's marriage 
 
OLD MADAME 31 
 
 with old Ben Benvoisie's son must needs be 
 when the first glamour of young passion 
 should be over. 
 
 And she did. And Cousin Louis' heart 
 went down into the grave with her. 
 
 " It is not only old Ben Benvoisie's 
 word/' said Elizabeth. " It is his hand.'' 
 
 Her secret tears were bitter for the child, 
 but not so bitter as they would have been 
 had she first passed into old Ben Benvoisie's 
 power, and been made the instrument for 
 humbling the pride and breaking the heart 
 daily of her brothers Chaslesmarie and Cham- 
 pernoune, and of the hated owner of the 
 " Adder's-tongue," had she lived to smart and 
 suffer under the difference between the rude 
 race reared in a fishing-hut, and that reared 
 in the mansion of her ancestors. Perhaps 
 Old Madame never saw the thing fairly ; it 
 always seemed to her that Louise died of 
 some disease incident to childhood. " I have 
 my boys left," said Elizabeth. "And no 
 one can disturb my little grave." 
 
 It was two graves the second year after. 
 For Chaslesmarie, her first-born and her dar- 
 
32 OLD MADAME 
 
 ling, whose baby kisses had been sweeter 
 than her lover's, the life in whose little limbs 
 and whose delicious flesh had been dearer 
 than her own, his bright head now brighter 
 for the fresh laurels of Harvard, — Chasles- 
 marie, riding down from the Beacon Hill, 
 where he had gone to see the fishing-fleet 
 make sail, was thrown from his horse, and 
 did not live long enough to tell who was the 
 man starting from the covert of bayberry- 
 bushes. But Elizabeth carried a stout heart 
 and a high head. She could not, if she 
 would, have bent as Cousin Louis did, nor 
 did the proud serenity leave her eye, although 
 his darkened with a sadness never lightened. 
 None knew her pangs, nor saw the tears 
 that stained her pillow in the night; she 
 would, if she could, have hid her suffering 
 from herself She began to feel a terrible 
 assurance that she was fighting fate ; — but 
 she would make a hard fight of it. Con- 
 scious of her integrity of purpose, of the 
 justice of her claims, of her right to the 
 children she had borne, there was something 
 in her of the spirit of the ancients who 
 
OLD MADAME ^3 
 
 dared, if not defy the gods, yet accept the 
 combat offered by them. Champernoune 
 was the heir instead, that was all. Then 
 there were the twin boys. Max and Rex, two 
 lawless young souls ; and the youngest of 
 all, St. Jean, whose head always wore a halo 
 In Elizabeth's eyes. With these, why should 
 she grieve ? Now she was also the mother 
 of angels ! 
 
 Again, after a while, the frequent festivities 
 filled the house, and the great gold and 
 silver plate glittered In the dark dining-room 
 and filled It, at every touch, with melodious 
 and tremulous vibrations. Now the Legis- 
 lature of the State, one and all, attended a 
 grand banqueting there, now the Governor 
 and his Council ; now navy-yard and fort 
 and town, and far-off towns, came to the 
 balls that did not end even with the bright 
 outdoor breakfast, but ran Into the next 
 night's dancing, and a whole week's gayety. 
 Now It was boating and bathing In the creeks ; 
 now It was sailing out beyond the last lights 
 with music and flowers and cheer; and all 
 the time It was splendor and sumptuousness 
 
34 OLD MADAME 
 
 and life at the breaking crest. And Eliza- 
 beth led the dance, the stateliest of the 
 stately, the most beautiful still of the beau- 
 tiful. And if sometimes she saw old Ben 
 Benvoisie's eyes, as he leaned over the gate 
 and looked at her a moment within the 
 gardens and among her roses, it was not to 
 shudder at them. What possessed Eliza- 
 beth in those days ? She only felt that the 
 currents of her blood must sweep along in 
 this mad way, or the heart would stop. 
 
 Then came Champernoune's wedding, — 
 he and that friend whom the chief magistrate 
 of the land delighted to honor, marrying 
 sisters in one night. How lovely, how 
 gracious, how young the bride ! Was it at 
 Gonaives that year that she died dancing? 
 Was it at Gonaives that the yellow-fever 
 buried Champernoune in the common 
 trench ? 
 
 Elizabeth was coming up the landing from 
 the boat, her little negro dwarf carrying her 
 baskets, when the news reached her quick 
 senses, as the one that spoke it meant it 
 should. She staggered and fell. The doctors 
 
OLD MADAME 35 
 
 came to bind up the broken bones, and only 
 when they said, " At last it is quite right ; 
 but, dear lady, your dancing days are over," 
 did any see her tears. She had buried her 
 only girl, her first-born boy, her married 
 heir, without great signs of sorrow. She had 
 plunged into a burning house in the village 
 once, gathering her gauzy skirts about her, 
 to bring out the little Louise whom an un- 
 faithful nurse had taken there and forsaken 
 in her fright. She had waded, torch in hand, 
 into the wildly rolling surf of a starless night 
 to clutch the bow of Chaslesmarie's boat that 
 was sweeping helplessly to the breaker with 
 the unskilled child at the helm. She had 
 shut herself up with Champernoune, when 
 Ben Benvoisie brought back the small-pox 
 to the village, and had suffered no one to 
 minister to him but herself. And when the 
 dog all thought mad tore Cousin Louis' 
 arm, she herself had sucked the poison from 
 the wound. 
 
 Yet with that sentence, that absurd little 
 sentence, that her dancing days were over, it 
 seemed all at once to Elizabeth that every- 
 
36 OLD MADAME 
 
 thing else was over, too. With Champer- 
 noune now everything else had gone — state 
 and splendor, peace and pleasure, hospitality 
 and home and hearth, and all the rest. All 
 things had been possible to her, the mastery 
 of her inner joy itself in one form or an- 
 other, while she held her forces under her. 
 But now she herself was stricken, and who 
 was to fight for them ? Who, when the stars 
 in their courses fought against Sisera ! 
 
 But as wild as the grief of Cousin Louis 
 was, hers was as still, though there were 
 ashes on her heart. She went about with a 
 cane when she got up, unable to step a min- 
 uet or bend a knee in prayer. " But see," 
 cried old Ben Benvoisie to himself, " her 
 head is just as high ! " 
 
 Not so with Cousin Louis. He sat in 
 his counting-room, his face bent on his hands 
 half the time. Cargoes came in unheeded, 
 reports were made him unregarded, ships lay 
 at the wharf unloaded, the state of the mar- 
 ket did not concern him — nothing seemed 
 of any matter but those three graves. Then 
 he roused himself to a spasmodic activity, 
 
OLD MADAME 37 
 
 gave orders here and orders there, but his 
 mind was otherwhere. With the striking of 
 the year's balance he had made bad bargains, 
 taken bad debts, sent out bad men with his 
 fleets, brought in his fares and his fruits and 
 foreign goods at a bad season, lost the labor 
 of years. A fire had reduced a great prop- 
 erty elsewhere to ashes ; a storm had scattered 
 and destroyed his southern ships. " Some- 
 thing must be done," said Cousin Louis. 
 And he looked back from his counting-room, 
 on the fair mansion from whose windows he 
 had so long heard song and laughter float- 
 ing, with its gardens round about it, where 
 the sweet-briar and the tall white rose climbed 
 and looked down at the red rose blushing at 
 their feet, where the honeysuckles shed their 
 fragrance, where the great butterflies waved 
 their wings over all the sweet old-fashioned 
 flowers that had been brought from the gar- 
 dens of France and summer after summer 
 had bloomed and spiced the air, where the 
 golden robins flashed from bough to bough 
 of the lane of plum-trees, and the sunshine 
 lay vivid on the encircling velvet verdure. 
 
38 OLD MADAME 
 
 " Her home, and the home of her people 
 for a century behind her — the people whose 
 blood in her veins went to make her what 
 she is — noblest woman, sweetest wife, that 
 ever made a man's delight. The purest, 
 proudest, loftiest soul that looks heaven in 
 the face. O God, bless her, my dear wife — 
 dearer than when I wooed you or when I 
 wedded you, by all the long increase of years ! 
 Something must be done,'* said Cousin Louis, 
 "or that will go with the rest." 
 
 Perhaps Cousin Louis began to forefeel the 
 future then. Certainly, as a little time passed 
 on, an unused timidity overwhelmed him. 
 Against Elizabeth's advice he began to call 
 in various moneys from here and there where 
 they were gathering more to themselves. 
 " There is to be another war with the British," 
 he said. " We must look to our fortunes." 
 But he would not have any interference with 
 their way of life, the way Elizabeth had al- 
 ways lived. There must still be the dinner 
 to the judges, the supper to the clergy, the 
 frequent teas to the ladies of the fort, the 
 midsummer throng of young people, the 
 
OLD MADAME 39 
 
 house full for the Christmas holidays ; Max 
 and Rex were to be thought of, St. Jean was. 
 not to grow up remembering a house of 
 mourning. Why had no one told them that, 
 in all the festive season before Champer- 
 noune's death, the younger boys not being 
 held then to strict account, old Ben Benvoisie, 
 sitting with them on the sea-beaten rocks, had 
 fired their fancy with stories of the wild sea- 
 life that had blanched his hair and furrowed 
 his face before the time ? One day St. Jean 
 came in to break the news: Max and Rex 
 had run away to sea. " I should have liked 
 to go," said St. Jean, "but I could not leave 
 my mother so." 
 
 "By the gods !" said his father. "You 
 shall go master of the best ship I have ! " 
 And in due time he sent him supercargo to 
 the East, that he might learn all that a lad 
 who had tumbled about among ropes and 
 blocks and waves and rocks, ever since his 
 birth, did not already know. But he for- 
 bade his wife to repeat to him the names of 
 Rex and Max ; nor would they ever again 
 have been mentioned in his presence but for 
 
40 OLD MADAME 
 
 the report of a ship that had spoken the 
 craft they took, and learned that it had been 
 overhauled, and Max, of whom nothing 
 more was ever heard, pressed into the Brit- 
 ish service, and Rex, ordered aloft on a 
 stormy night, had fallen from the yard into 
 the sea, and his grave was rolled between 
 two waves. 
 
 As Elizabeth came home from the little 
 church — the first time she went out after 
 this — thinking, as she went, of the twilight 
 when she found Champernoune, who had 
 stolen from the lightsome scenes that greeted 
 him and his young bride, to stand a little 
 while beside the grave where his brother 
 Chaslesmarie slept — she met old Ben Ben- 
 voisie. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you know how good it 
 is yourself." 
 
 " Is not the curse fulfilled, Ben Benvoisie ? " 
 she demanded. "Are you going to spare 
 me none ? " 
 
 " None," said Ben Benvoisie. 
 
 The servants were running toward her 
 when she reached the house. The master 
 
OLD MADAME 41 
 
 had a stroke. A stroke indeed. He sat in 
 his chair a year, head and face white, speaking 
 of nothing but his children's graves, they 
 thought. " Too cold — too damp. Why did 
 I bury there?'' he murmured. "I will go 
 have them up," he said. " Oh, why did I 
 bury so deep — cold — cold — Elizabeth ! " 
 But when Elizabeth answered him, the thing 
 he would say had gone, and when he died at 
 last, for all his struggle for speech, it was 
 still unspoken. 
 
 Ah, what a year was that when the long 
 strain was over, and she placed him where 
 she was to lie herself, at her father's feet ! 
 Things went on as they would that year. 
 Wrapped in an ashen apathy, Elizabeth 
 hardly knew she breathed, and living less at 
 that time in this world than the other, the 
 things of this world had small concern for 
 her. Born, too, and reared in wealth, she 
 could as easily have understood that there 
 was any other atmosphere about her as any 
 other condition; and the rogues, then, had it 
 all their own way. Suits for western lands 
 that were the territorial possessions of princes 
 
42 OLD MADAME 
 
 were compromised for sums she never saw ; 
 blocks of city houses were sold for taxes ; 
 heaven knows what else was done, what 
 rights were signed away on papers brought 
 for her name as administratrix. And when 
 St. Jean came home from sea, where were the 
 various moneys that his father had been call- 
 ing in for so long a time ? There was not a 
 penny of them accounted for. 
 
 St. Jean was a man before his time. He 
 looked about him. The great business had 
 gone to the dogs, and some of the clerks 
 and factors had gone with it ; at least, they 
 too had disappeared. Other men, in other 
 places, had taken advantage of the lapse, es- 
 tablished other houses, opened other fish- 
 eries, stolen their markets. There was not 
 enough of either fleet left in condition to 
 weather a gale. "It has all been at the top 
 of the wave," said St. Jean, " and now we 
 are in the trough of the sea.'* But he had 
 his ship, the " Great-heart,'' and with that he 
 set about redeeming his fortunes. And his 
 first step was to bring home to his mother a 
 daughter-in-law as proud as she — Hope, 
 
OLD MADAME 43 
 
 the orphan of a West Indian prelate, with 
 no fortune but her face, and with manners 
 that Elizabeth thought unbecoming so pen- 
 niless a woman. 
 
 When St. Jean went away to sea again, 
 he established his wife — Little Madame, 
 the people had styled her — in a home of 
 her own. For large as the Mansion was, it 
 was not large enough to hold those two 
 women : a home in a long low stone house 
 that belonged to the estate and had once 
 been two or three houses together, — at 
 which one looked twice, you might say, to 
 see if it were dwelling or bowlder, — and 
 which he renovated and then filled with 
 some of the spare pictures and furnishings 
 of the Mansion-house. And there Hope 
 lived, cheered Elizabeth as she could, and 
 cared for the children that came to her. 
 And how many came ! And Elizabeth, who 
 could never feel that Hope had quite the 
 right to a place as her rival in St. Jean's 
 affections, took these little children to her 
 heart, if she could not yet altogether take 
 their mother ; and they filled for her many 
 
44 OLD MADAME 
 
 a weary hour of St. Jean's absences on his 
 long voyages, — St. Jean who, in some mi- 
 raculous way, now represented to her father 
 and husband and son. 
 
 Elizabeth had time enough for the little 
 people ; for friends did not disturb her much 
 after the first visits of condolence. Trouble 
 had come to many of them, as well. Doro- 
 thy and Margaret and Belle and Jean, and 
 their compeers, were scattered and dead and 
 absorbed and forgetful, and she summoned 
 none of them about her any more with 
 music and feasting. Of all her wealth now 
 nothing remained but a part of the land on 
 the island and the adjoining main, with its 
 slight and fickle revenue. Of all her con- 
 course of servants there were only Phillis 
 and Scip, who would have thought them- 
 selves transferred to some other world had 
 they left Old Madame. 
 
 But the Mansion of Chaslemarie was a 
 place of pleasure to the children still, at any 
 rate ; and the little swarm spent many an 
 hour in the old box-bordered garden, where 
 the stately lady walked on Phillis's arm, and 
 
OLD MADAME 45 
 
 in the great hall where she told them the 
 history of each of the personages of the tall 
 portraits, from that of the fierce old Chasles- 
 marie of all down to the angel-faced child 
 St. Jean ; told them, not as firing pride with 
 memories of ancient pride, but as storied in- 
 cidents of family life ; and as she told them 
 she lived over her share in them, and place 
 and race and memories seemed only a part 
 of herself. 
 
 " Madame," said St. Jean once, when at 
 home, — no child of hers had often called 
 her mother,—^ ^^ I think if we sold the place 
 and moved away we would do well. The 
 soil is used up, the race is run out — if we 
 transplanted and made new stock ? Here is 
 no chance to educate the children or to re- 
 build our fortunes now. Somewhere else, 
 it may be, I could put myself in better busi- 
 ness connection — " 
 
 The gaze of his mother's burning black 
 eyes bade him to silencCo She felt as if in 
 that moment he had forsworn his ancestors. 
 
 " Leave this place of whose dust we are 
 made ! " she cried. " Or is it made of the 
 
46 OLD MADAME 
 
 dust of the Chaslesmaries ? And how short- 
 sighted — here, where, at least, we reign ! 
 Never shall we leave it ! See, St. Jean, it is 
 all yours," — and from command her voice 
 took on entreaty, and how could St. Jean 
 resist the pleading mother ! He went away 
 to sea again, and left all as before. 
 
 But the earth had moved to Elizabeth 
 with just one thrill and tremor. The idea, 
 the possibility, of leaving the place into 
 which every fibre of her being was wrought 
 had shaken her. It was a sort of conscious 
 death into whose blackness she looked for 
 one moment — so one might feel about to 
 lose identity. She walked through the 
 rooms with their quaint and rich furnish- 
 ing, sombre and heavy, their gilded panels, 
 their carved wainscot, the old French por- 
 traits of her people that looked down on 
 her and seemed to claim her ; she paused in 
 the oriel of the yellow drawing-room, where 
 it always seemed like a sunshiny afternoon 
 in an October beech-wood — paused, and 
 looked across the bay. 
 
 There gleamed the battlements of the 
 
OLD MADAME 47 
 
 fort that her grandfather, the baron, had 
 built ; there was the church below, there was 
 the tomb, among the graves of those whose 
 powers had come to their flower in him ; 
 the grassy knoll, beyond, gleamed in the 
 gold of the slant sun and reminded her of 
 the days when, a child, she used to watch 
 the last glint on the low swells of the graves, 
 across the blue waters of the bay whose 
 rocky islets rose red with the rust of the 
 tides. Far out, the seas were breaking in 
 a white line over the low red ledge, and, 
 farther still, the lighthouse on the dim old 
 Wrecker's Reef was kindling its spark to 
 answer the light on the head of Chaslesmarie 
 that her grandfather had first hung in the 
 air. Close at hand, a boat made in, piled 
 high at either end with the brown sea-weed, 
 the fishing-sails were flitting here and there, 
 as there had never been a day when they 
 were not ; and the whole, bathed with the 
 deepening sunset glow, glittered in peace 
 and beauty. There had not been ten days 
 in all her life when she had not looked upon 
 the scene. No, no, no ! As well give up 
 
48 OLD MADAME 
 
 life itself, for this was all there was of life to 
 her. There was the shore where, when a 
 child, she found the bed of garnets that the 
 next tide washed away. Here could she just 
 remember having seen the glorious old 
 Baron Chaslesmarie, with his men-at-arms 
 about him. Here had her dear father 
 proudly walked, with his air of inflexible 
 justice, and the wind had seized his black 
 robes and swept them about her, running at 
 his side. Here had her mother died. Here 
 had she first seen the superb patrician beauty 
 of her husband's face when he came from 
 France, with his head full of Jean Jacques 
 and the rights of man. Here was the little 
 chapel where they married, the linden avenue 
 up which they strolled, with the branches 
 shaking out fragrance and star-beams to- 
 gether above them — the first hour, the first 
 delightful hour, they ever were alone to- 
 gether, she and her cousin Louis. Oh, here 
 had been her life with him — a husband ten- 
 derer than a lover, a man whose loftiness 
 lifted his race and taught her how upright 
 other men might be, a soul so pure that the 
 
OLD MADAME 49 
 
 light of God seemed to shine through it 
 upon her ! Here had been her joys, here 
 had been her sorrows ; here had she put her 
 love away and heard the moulds ring down 
 on that dear head ; here had the world dark- 
 ened to her, here should it darken to her 
 forever when all the shadows of the grave 
 lengthened around her. Father and mother, 
 husband and child, race and land, they were 
 all in this spot. These people, all of whom 
 she knew by name, were they not like her 
 own ? Could the warmth of the blood bring 
 much nearer to her these faces that had sur- 
 rounded her since time begun — these men 
 and women whose lives she had ordered, 
 whose children had been fostered with her 
 children, who half-worshipped her in her girl- 
 hood, who half-worshipped her still as Old 
 Madame? Could she leave them? Not 
 though St. Jean's " Great-heart " went down, 
 — St. Jean's ship for which Hope on her 
 house-top sat so long watching. " I refuse 
 to think of it," she said. " It is infinitely 
 tiresome." And then the children trooped 
 in and stopped further soliloquy ; and she 
 
50 OLD MADAME 
 
 let them dress themselves out In her stiff old 
 brocades that had been sent for just after 
 she married and had never needed to be 
 renewed, — the cloth-of-silver and peach- 
 bloom, the flowered Venetian, the gold-shot 
 white paduasoy ; she liked to see the pretty 
 Barbara and Helena and Bess prancing 
 about the shining floors, holding up the 
 long draperies, and she would have decked 
 them out in her old silver-set jewels, too, 
 had they not been parted with long since 
 when Cousin Louis was calling in their 
 moneys. It all renewed her youth so 
 sweetly, if so sadly, and the mimic play in 
 some obscure way making her feel they only 
 played at life, relieved her of a sense of re- 
 sponsibility regarding their real life. When 
 they tired of their finery, she led them 
 down, as usual, before the portrait of this 
 one and of that, and told over the old sto- 
 ries they liked to hear. 
 
 " Madame," said little Barbara, lifting her 
 stiffs peach-blossom draperies, "why is it 
 always 'then,' — why is it never ' now ' ? " 
 
 But the old dame's heart did not once cry 
 
OLD MADAME 51 
 
 Ichabod. To her the glory never had de- 
 parted. It was as imperishable as sky and 
 air. 
 
 It was the threatened war-time again at 
 last ; and Hope, with her sweet soft eyes 
 watching from the house-top, saw her hus- 
 band's ship come in, and with it its consort 
 — just a day too late. The embargo had 
 been declared, and he hailed from a for- 
 bidden port. Other sailors touched other 
 ports and took out false papers for protection. 
 St. Jean scorned the act. He relied on pub- 
 lic justice : he relied on a reed. His cargoes 
 were confiscated, and his ships were left at 
 the wharf to rot before he could get hearing. 
 In those two vessels was the result of his 
 years of storm and calm, nights when the 
 ship was heavy by the head with ice, days 
 when her seamy sides were scorched and 
 blistered by the sun, the best part of his 
 life. And gone because he preferred pov- 
 erty to perjury. 
 
 " Better so," said Old Madame. " I am 
 prouder of my penniless son than of any mer- 
 chant prince with a false oath on his soul." 
 
52 OLD MADAME 
 
 And her own contentment seemed to her all 
 that could be asked. She never thought of 
 regretting the matter ; but she despised the 
 General Government more than ever, and 
 would have shown blue-lights to the enemy, 
 had he been near and wanted a channel, were 
 it not that he was Cousin Louis' enemy as 
 well. 
 
 Alas ! a bitterer enemy was near. One 
 tempestuous winter's night the minute-guns 
 were heard off Wrecker's Reef, — and who 
 but St. Jean must lead the rescue ? Hope, 
 cloaked and on her house-top, with the glass 
 saw it all ; saw St. Jean climb the reef as the 
 moon ran out on the end of a flying scud of 
 cloud to glance on the foam-edged roll of 
 the black wild seas ; saw the others following 
 along the sides of the ice-sheathed rock to 
 carry succor to the freezing castaways, and 
 saw, too, a plunging portion of the wreck 
 strike one form, and hurl it headlong. It was 
 her husband. And although he was brought 
 back alive, yet the blow upon his breast, and 
 the night's exposure in the icy waters, in his 
 disheartened state, did deathly work upon 
 
OLD MADAME 53 
 
 St. Jean, and he was laid low and helpless 
 long before his release. 
 
 Then Elizabeth sold the hay-fields along 
 the main-land to pay the bills of the doctor, 
 who was also the druggist, to try softer air 
 for the prostrated man, to bring him home 
 again. She had loved to see the sun ripen- 
 ing the long stretch of their rich grasses with 
 reds and purples, with russets and fresh- 
 bursting green again, as far as eye could see. 
 But she forgot she had ever owned them, or 
 owning them had lost them. They were 
 there still when she gazed that way. Then 
 the Thierry place followed, and the little 
 Hasard houses, — they had not yet learned 
 how to be poor. 
 
 " There is the quarry,'* said St. Jean, his 
 heart sore as his hand was feeble. " We can- 
 not work it now." 
 
 " The grocer took it long ago,'' said Eliz- 
 abeth. 
 
 " And the Podarzhon orchard ? " 
 
 " Oh, the Podarzhon orchard ! Yes, your 
 great-grandsire used to call it his pot of 
 money. Well, the trees were old and ran 
 
54 OLD MADAME 
 
 to wood, — your father renewed so many ! 
 But the apples had lost their flavor, — what 
 apples they used to be ! Oh, yes, we ate 
 up the Podarzhon orchard some time since. 
 And the lamb-pasture brought the children 
 their great-coats and shoes last year. And 
 the barley-field — How lucky that we hap- 
 pened to have them, my dear ! " 
 
 "And I dying," groaned St. Jean. "What, 
 what is to become of them ! " 
 
 *^To become of them ! " said the unfalter- 
 ing spirit. "Is there question what will be- 
 come of any of the blood of Chaslesmarie ? '* 
 ; A night came, at length, when Hope 
 fainted in her arms — Elizabeth's last child 
 was dead. "A white name and a white 
 soul," said Elizabeth. " I thank God 1 
 knew him ! " And the Geoffrey field went 
 to bury him. "I shall be with him soon," 
 she said, smiling, not weeping. " Heaven 
 can hardly be more holy than he made earth 
 seem, he was so like a saint ! " After that, 
 she felt as if he had no more than gone on 
 one of his long voyages. She sold the few 
 acres of the Millet farm in a month or two ; 
 
OLD MADAME 55 
 
 they had nothing else to live on now but 
 such small sales ; and from a portion of the 
 proceeds she put aside, in a little hair-covered 
 coffer, her grave-clothes, with the money, in 
 crisp bank-notes, that should one day suffice 
 to lay her away decently between her graves. 
 And then she and Hope sat down and spent 
 their days telling over the virtues of their 
 dead. 
 
 It was a summer day, when the late wild- 
 roses were just drooping on their stems and 
 the wanton blackberry vines were every- 
 where putting out their arms, and all things 
 hung a little heavily in the still air before 
 the thunder-storm, that Elizabeth climbed 
 alone, with her staff, to the dimple among 
 the rocks where her dear ones lay. She 
 paused at the top to look around her. Here 
 swept the encircling river, with the red rocks 
 rising from its azure ; beyond it the main- 
 land lifted softly swelling fields that had 
 once belonged to her ancestors of glorious 
 memory ; far away to the south and east, 
 over its ledges and reefs mounting purple 
 to the bending sky, stretched the sea, its 
 
S6 OLD MADAME 
 
 foaming fields also once theirs and yielding 
 them its revenues. Now, — nothing but these 
 graves, she said ; the graves of renown, of 
 honor, of lofty purity. " No, no," said 
 Elizabeth aloud. " Renown, honor, purity 
 are not buried here. St. Jean's children 
 cannot be robbed of that inheritance. Fire 
 that still burns must burst through the ashes. 
 It is fallen indeed; but with these children it 
 shall begin its upward way again ! '' 
 
 " It's upward way again," said a deep 
 voice. And, half-starting, she turned to see 
 old Ben Benvoisie sitting on one of the 
 graves below her. 
 
 " So you are satisfied at last, Ben Benvoi- 
 sie," said Elizabeth, after a moment's gazing. 
 
 " Satisfied with what ? " 
 
 " Satisfied that not one child is left to my 
 arms, and that, when the mortgage on the 
 Mansion falls due, not one acre of my birth- 
 right is left to my name." 
 
 " Do you think I did it, then. Old Ma- 
 dame ? " asked the man, pulling his cloak 
 about him. "Am I one of the forces of 
 nature ? You flatter me ! Am I the pride. 
 
OLD MADAME 57 
 
 the waste, the love of pleasure, the heedless- 
 ness of the morrow, the self-confidence of 
 your race, that forgot there was a world out- 
 side the sound of the name of Chaslesmarie ? 
 Did I take one life away from you ? " he 
 cried, as he tottered to his stick. "Nay, 
 once I would have given you my own ! Did 
 I take a penny of your wealth ? I am as 
 poor to-day as I was seventy years ago when 
 I laid my life at your feet, and you laughed 
 and scorned and spurned it, and thought so 
 lightly of it you forgot it ! " 
 
 Elizabeth was silent a little. Her hood 
 fell back, and there streamed out a long lock 
 of her silver hair in which still burned a 
 gleam of gold. Her black eyes, softer than 
 once they were, met quietly the gaze that 
 was reading the writing of the lines cut in 
 her face, like the lines whipped into stone 
 by the sharp sands of the desert. 
 
 " It was not these levelling days,'* she 
 said. " I was the child of nobles — " 
 
 "And I was a worm at your feet. A 
 worm with a sting, you found. But it was 
 not you I cursed," he cried in a hoarse pas- 
 
58 OLD MADAME 
 
 sion, — " not you, Elizabeth Champernoune ! 
 It was the master — '' 
 
 " Louis and I were one/' she answered 
 him. " We are one still. A part of him is 
 here above the sod ; a part of me is there 
 below it. We shall rest beside each other 
 soon, as we did every night of forty years. 
 Soon you, too, Ben Benvoisie, will go to 
 your long sleep, and neither your banning 
 nor your blessing will help or hurt the gene- 
 ration that is to come." 
 
 " Will it not ? '' he said. And he laughed 
 a low laugh half under his breath. "Yet 
 the generations repeat themselves. Look 
 there ! " And he wheeled about suddenly 
 and pointed with his stick, as if it had been 
 an old wizard's wand. " Look yonder at 
 the beach," he said. " On the flat bowlder 
 by which we found the bed of garnets when 
 you and I were too young — eighty years 
 ago, is it? — to know that you were the 
 child of nobles, and I a worm ! " 
 
 And there, on the low, flat rock, distinct 
 against the turbid darkness of the sky, sat 
 the pretty Barbara, a brown-eyed lass of six- 
 
OLD MADAME 59 
 
 teen, and the arm about her shoulder was 
 the arm of young Ben Benvoisie, the old 
 man's grandson, and his face, a handsome 
 tawny face with the blue fire of its eyes, was 
 bent toward hers — and hers was lifted. 
 
 " Leave them to their dream a little while. 
 Old Madame, before you wake them," said 
 the old man, in a strangely altered voice. 
 
 " I shall not wake them," said Elizabeth. 
 
 And they were silent a moment again, 
 looking down at the figures on the rocks. 
 And the two faces that had bent together 
 there, had clung together in their first long 
 sweet kiss of love, parted, with the redness 
 of innocent blushes on them, and were 
 raised toward the distant sea, now dimly 
 streaked with foam and wind. 
 
 " I have seen ninety years," said old Ben 
 Benvoisie. " And you. Old Madame ? " 
 
 " I have lived eighty-five," she answered, 
 absently. 
 
 " Long years, long years, " he said. 
 "But, at last," he said, "at last. Dame 
 Elizabeth, my flesh and blood and yours are 
 one ! " 
 
6o OLD MADAME 
 
 Elizabeth turned to move away, but his 
 voice again arrested her. " Look ye ! " he 
 said. " When those two are one, once and 
 forever, when Chaslesmarie is sunk in Ben- 
 voisie, when you are conquered at last, I 
 shall tell them where Master Louis buried 
 his moneys. Old Madame ! *' 
 
 She had been going on without a word ; 
 but she stopped and looked back over her 
 shoulder. " Only they are conquered, Ben 
 Benvoisie, who contend," she said. " And 
 I have never contended. Perhaps I had 
 rather see her dead. I do not know. But 
 Barbara has her own life to live in these 
 changed times. She is too young, I am too 
 old, to make her live mine. And were I 
 conquered," she cried in a great voice, " it is 
 not by you, but by age and the slow years 
 and death ! I defy you, as I have defied 
 Fate ! For, take the bread from my mouth, 
 the mantle from my back, yet while I live 
 the current in my veins remains," cried the 
 old Titaness, " and while I live that current 
 will always run with the courage and the 
 honor of the Chaslesmaries and Champer- 
 nounes ! " 
 
OLD MADAME 6i 
 
 " Not so/' said the other. " Conquered 
 jrou are. Conquered because your race 
 ceases. Because Chaslesmarie is swallowed 
 up in Benvoisie as death is swallowed up in 
 victory ! " 
 
 But she had gone on into the gathering 
 darkness of the storm, from which the 
 young people fled up the shore, and heard 
 no more. And the storm burst about the 
 island, and the old Chaslesmarie Mansion 
 answered it in roof and rafter, trembling as 
 if to the buffets of striving elemental foes. 
 And all at once the flames wrapped it ; and 
 gilded wainscot, Dutch carving, ancestral 
 portraits, were only a pile of hissing cinders 
 when the morning sun glittered on rain- 
 drops, rocks, and river. And Elizabeth, 
 with her little hair-coffer of cere-clothes and 
 money, had gone to Hope's cottage, and 
 old Ben Benvoisie was found stretched upon 
 the grave where she had seen him sitting. 
 And they never knew where Cousin Louis 
 had buried his money. 
 
 " Miss Barbara ! Barbara, honey ! " called 
 old Phillis, again, a little before noon. 
 
62 OLD MADAME 
 
 " Where's this you's hiding at ? Old Ma- 
 dame wants ye. Don't ye hear me tell ? " 
 
 And pretty Barbara came hesitatingly up 
 the rocks that made each dwelling in the 
 place look as if it were a part of the island 
 itself, tearful and rosy and sparkHng, And 
 by her side, grave as became him that day, 
 and erect and proud as his grand-parent, 
 was old Ben Benvoisie's grandson. 
 
 " Barbara," said the Old Madame pres- 
 ently, breaking through the reverie caused 
 by their first few words, " did my eyes de- 
 ceive me yesterday? Have you cut adrift? 
 Have you made up your mind that you can 
 do without fine dresses and silver dishes 
 and—" 
 
 "Why, I always have," said Barbara, 
 looking up simply. 
 
 "That is true," said Elizabeth. "And 
 so they do not count for much. And you 
 think you know what love is — you baby ? 
 You really think you love this sailor-lad? 
 Tell me, how much do you love him, 
 child?" 
 
 " As much, Madame dear," said Barbara, 
 
OLD MADAME 63 
 
 shyly, dimpling, glancing half askance, " per- 
 haps as much, grandmamma, as you loved 
 Cousin Louis." 
 
 " Say you so ? Then it were enough to 
 carry its light through life and throw it far 
 across the dark shadows of death, my child ! 
 And you," she said, turning suddenly and 
 severely to young Ben. "Is it for life, or 
 for a holiday, a pleasuring, a pastime ? " 
 
 He looked at her as if, in spite of the 
 claims of parentage and her all but century 
 of reign, he examined her right to ask. 
 "Since Barbara promised me," said he at 
 last, " I have felt. Old Madame, like one 
 inside a church." 
 
 " Something in him," said Elizabeth. 
 " Not altogether the sweetness of the senses, 
 but rather the sacredness of the sacrament." 
 
 And although they were not married for 
 twice a twelvemonth, Elizabeth considered 
 that she had married them that morning. 
 And the reddest bonnet-rouge among the 
 fishermen had a thrill as if all thrones were 
 levelled when, at old Ben Benvoisie's fun- 
 eral, — in the simple procession where none 
 
64 OLD MADAME 
 
 rode, — after young Ben and Barbara, they 
 saw Hope and Old Madame walk, as became 
 the next of kin. 
 
 And so one year and another crept into 
 the past. And at length Old Madame fell 
 ill. 
 
 " I am going now, Hope," she said. " I 
 should like to see Barbara's baby before I 
 go. But remember that there is money for 
 my burial in the little coffer. And there is 
 still the Dernier's wood-land to sell — " 
 
 " Do not think of such things now," said 
 Hope. " God will take care of us in some 
 way. He always has. We are as much a 
 part of the universe as the rest of it." 
 
 "We are put in this world to think of 
 such things," said Elizabeth. " We are put 
 in this world to live in it, not to live in an- 
 other. Now I am going to another. We 
 shall see what that will be. From this I 
 have had all it had to give. I came into it 
 with the reverence and revenue of princes. 
 I go out of it a beggar," she cried, in a tone 
 that tore Hope's heart. " I came into it in 
 purple — I go out of it in rags — " 
 
OLD MADAME 65 
 
 Rags. Before they laid her away with 
 those who had made part of her career of 
 splendor and of sorrow, they opened the 
 little hair-coffer, — moths had eaten the 
 grave-clothes and a mouse had made its nest 
 in the bank-notes. And to-day nothing is 
 left of Chaslesmarie or Champernoune — 
 not even a name and hardly a memory. And 
 the blood ennobled by the King of France 
 is the common blood of the fishers of the 
 island given once with all its serfs and vas- 
 sals — the island-fishers who sell you a 
 string of herring for a shilling. 
 
Ordronnaux 
 
Ordronnaux 
 
 * : 
 
 HARDLY had Ordronnaux married 
 Emilia when circumstances developed 
 in him an extraordinary — jealousy one 
 might call it, had he had any one concerning 
 whom to be jealous ; but as it was, the 
 passion must be as nameless as the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 He had married Emilia, knowing that 
 she cared nothing for him, but knowing 
 also that she cared for no one else, and 
 presuming that his devotion could warm the 
 stone to life. In fact he had not been sure 
 that he would not rather have it so than 
 otherwise ; and perhaps he had pictured in 
 his dreams the slow dawn of the rosiness 
 of love across the cold marble of his statu- 
 esque wife. He had never pictured in any 
 dream the unbearable suffering it might be 
 69 
 
70 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 if that cold marble remained always icy to 
 his touch, irresponsive to his smile. 
 
 In the first moment that he had seen 
 Emilia, still young himself and she far 
 younger, he had adored her. He was 
 calling at the country-house of a friend, 
 when the beautiful thing coming in at the 
 glass door, tall and slender and with her 
 arms full of flowers, paused waiting for her 
 companions who had lingered on the lawn 
 outside. A face like the face of a dream it 
 was that Ordronnaux saw, he hardly be- 
 lieved he saw it till he looked again, — so 
 soft and bright, with the pale carmine of the 
 cheek, the snow of the forehead, the deep 
 violet of the black-lashed eye, the violet 
 shadows around it; and he noted all the 
 beauty in a glance, from the pearly oval of 
 the chin to the glitter of the chestnut hair 
 waving in ripples of gold and brown about a 
 perfect head, whose stag-like carriage gave 
 such alluring intimation of that shy reserve 
 which one longs to penetrate, as one does 
 some hollow of the woods, whose wealth 
 sunbeam and sudden shadow half reveals 
 
ORDRONNAUX 71 
 
 and veils. As she turned and saw him, a 
 little startled, she dropped a part of the 
 roses and honeysuckles that she held, and 
 bent to gather them again. He sprang to 
 help her ; he touched her warm, white hand, 
 a lock of her hair brushed his face, he 
 looked in her great sweet innocent eyes, 
 and when he rose he had resolved to marry 
 her ! Then her companions came in, and 
 there were greetings and presentations and 
 gayety and confusion ; and presently Louise 
 was singing at the piano, and Alice and 
 Captain Harriman were waltzing down the 
 room to her song ; the others were flirting 
 over the photographs ; and through all the 
 commotion Emilia sat calmly in the em- 
 brasure of the window, weaving her flowers, 
 without speaking — it seemed to him as 
 serene and inaccessible as a star. 
 
 He placed himself beside her, and jpassed 
 the spray towards which she stretched her 
 hand. But though she responded gently 
 to his sentences, she said almost nothing 
 herself; — he imagined then that her silence 
 was more eloquent than words ; when she 
 
72 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 lifted those violet eyes, he felt the same 
 emotion as when reading an exquisite 
 poem ; when the white lids fell it was like 
 the ceasing of music. In three months he 
 married Emilia. 
 
 When he first proposed, although most 
 men would have called it decided rejection, 
 Ordronnaux considered that his proposal 
 was neither refused nor accepted. " Please 
 say no more," she murmured. " I could 
 not love you." She was not a month 
 from school, and her notion of a lover, 
 nourished on the romances read aloud in 
 the dormitory by stealth, was of some one 
 very different from Ordronnaux, of whom 
 she had heard Harriman say that when 
 going about his mountain-farm he wore 
 his trousers tucked into great top-boots, 
 and was followed by a pack of hounds, 
 and the picture had impressed her un- 
 pleasantly ; the lovers in her romances were 
 always in full dress. But Ordronnaux 
 followed her home ; he took the hearts of 
 father and mother by storm, — such hearts 
 as they had ; he told them what Emilia 
 
ORDRONNAUX 73 
 
 had said to him, and they added their per- 
 suasions to his. 
 
 It was a home whose poverty, if it did 
 not just escape squalor, was yet very ham- 
 pering, especially to high-born tradition; 
 she had just left that other home, the home 
 of her late schoolmates, Alice and Louise, 
 where luxury and beauty were the handmaids, 
 and she felt the wants and restrictions here 
 as though the place were noisome — the little 
 rooms, the shabby furnishing, the scanty 
 table, the weary and irritable nerves of her 
 mother, the fierce humors of her unfortunate 
 father. She did not know any way to avoid 
 them all ; she had been educated not for 
 work, but for display — for the treasure of 
 her beauty had been early discovered, and it 
 had been intended that she should make a 
 brilliant marriage. Now that the chance had 
 come, and she had declined to take advan- 
 tage of it and of the means of restoring her 
 family to its old place, peace was allowed her 
 neither by day nor night. Well — Ordron- 
 naux' home was like the one, leaving which 
 had so lately made her feel as if the gates of 
 
74 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 Paradise had closed : if she married him, he 
 would take her there, he would provide for 
 those she left behind. It was the selling of 
 a slave ; but yet she might learn to love him, 
 — there was no reason why not, — only that 
 he had loved her too suddenly and too much, 
 and had suffered her to feel it, and had so re- 
 pelled her, as a flower might shrink from the 
 too ardent sun. There are women who need 
 to be compelled, and who feel only contempt 
 for the suppliant. 
 
 One night as Ordronnaux sat listening to 
 the mother, — an appalling woman, — Emilia 
 revolved all these things : she was so still 
 that he thought it could be only because he 
 was detestable to her. She left the room on 
 some errand, and as she returned he came 
 out and met her in the little hall ; he bade 
 her good night, and he took the hand she 
 proffered — and in a sudden despair he raised 
 it to his lips. " Do not be offended," he 
 said but half audibly, throwing back his head 
 with a haughty defiance of his hopelessness. 
 " It is the last, as well as the first time. I 
 am going away. For since it never can be 
 mine — " 
 
ORDRONNAUX 75 
 
 " Will you have it without the love ? '* she 
 asked, not looking up, red with shame. 
 
 In an instant, he had bent his head again 
 above the hand and had covered it with 
 kisses and with tears. She opened her great 
 eyes in astonishment ; she knew nothing of 
 the wild moods and crises of passion. 
 
 " I do not understand," she said, " how 
 you can be willing to marry a woman who 
 does not love you." 
 
 " If I do not make you love me, once my 
 wife ! " he cried — " then may God forget me 
 in my day of trouble ! " he added, between 
 his teeth. 
 
 She trembled with a superstitious fear of 
 him and of his love. 
 
 "Are you sure you will not regret it ? " she 
 asked, falteringly. 
 
 " Never ! Never ! " 
 
 " Nor make me ? " 
 
 " I will make you happy ! " he said as fer- 
 vently as though he took an oath. 
 
 She did not know how to play with a man's 
 sufferings ; having given him hope, he might 
 have his way — and she married him the 
 next week. 
 
76 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 What a hateful wedding-journey It was ! 
 They spent a day In New York, where a 
 mistress of the modes, as she called herself, 
 waited on EmIHa In her rooms with fabrics 
 and styles, measured her, noted her complex- 
 ion and the color of her hair. In what Emilia 
 felt as prolonged Insolence ; and then they 
 were travelling where, as It chanced, Emilia's 
 simple wardrobe answered all purposes, and 
 on their return to the city a trousseau awaited 
 her to whose preparation the dressmaker had 
 bent all her resources, and to accept which 
 Emilia found harder than she had found It 
 to accept Ordronnaux. 
 
 As Emilia, preparing for the first ball given 
 In her honor by Ordronnaux' friends, put 
 on the royal silk, the web-Hke lace, bound 
 the golden bands about her wrists. It all 
 seemed to her a livery of service. As she 
 lifted her hands the clink of her heavy brace- 
 lets was like the clank of chains ; and her face 
 burned with the disgrace. But she did not 
 tear the livery off, as In the first moment she 
 had felt Inclined. It was due to Ordronnaux 
 that his wife should appear as he wished. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 77 
 
 " If I am his wife," she said, " I have a right 
 to this sumptuousness." But the color did 
 not leave her cheek, for she knew that in 
 her inmost soul she was no wife at all — 
 only a creature that had been bought and 
 sold. And she slowly began to hate the 
 buyer. 
 
 But what a picture she was, as Ordron- 
 naux came into the room for her — the 
 white velvet of the toilette, with its satin 
 facings pale-tinted as if a sunbeam had 
 sifted through a rose upon them ; the 
 creamy Alen9on lace, the dimpled arm, 
 the waxen shoulder, the half defiant, half 
 submissive air, the perfect head and face 
 and bloom ! He came smilingly towards 
 her, and opening a box he held, he took 
 from it and bound in her hair a bandeau 
 of great solitaire stones, about her throat 
 another, and flower by flower of diamond 
 sparks he fastened together for her to 
 secure upon her bodice till the stomacher 
 was all ablaze. She shivered when it was 
 done, and drew the lace across them, half 
 shrouding their radiance — and then she 
 
78 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 saw herself in the mirror. Perhaps she 
 would not have been a woman If there had 
 not come a pulse of pleasure at the sight ; 
 but, directly, the lovely vision in the glass 
 was blurred by the big tear that followed 
 — it might have been so different if she had 
 loved the giver. Ordronnaux did not see 
 the tear; stooping he laid a kiss on the 
 white shoulder, and then all at once he 
 folded his arms about her and she felt his 
 great heart beat. Quickly and angrily she 
 freed herself. "Don't! Don't !" she cried 
 before she thought. " Don't try to buy my 
 love with gifts or you may buy my hate ! " 
 
 A winter wind with all its frost could 
 not have blown a bitterer breath across 
 a blossoming field than these words, this 
 action, flung across Ordronnaux' new hopes. 
 He drew back, chilled to his heart of hearts. 
 It would have been impossible for him to 
 sneer — but just then there came a rap upon 
 the door. " Mrs. Ordronnaux' carriage is 
 waiting for her," said the servant with 
 profound obeisance ; and whether Ordron- 
 naux felt it or not, Emilia felt a sneer in the 
 
ORDRONNAUX 79 
 
 mere circumstance. Nor could she quite 
 discriminate — it seemed to her that, after 
 all, the sneer came from Ordronnaux, though 
 he had only laid her cashmere on her 
 shoulders and handed her without a word 
 to her carriage. Yet when the night was 
 over, and she returned triumphant to the 
 hotel from the ovation which Ordronnaux' 
 friends had rendered to his wife, she half 
 repented herself. She was sensible that the 
 homage was rendered to her own obvious 
 beauty and fancied sweetness too, yet she 
 knew well how much was owing to the 
 position in which Ordronnaux had placed 
 her; she knew from her brief month's ex- 
 perience in Alice's home that neither her 
 beauty nor her sweetness would command 
 this homage without the splendor also. " It 
 was the conduct of a silly girl," she said to 
 herself, dwelling still upon the moment 
 before they went out. " I will do better," 
 she said, " next time." But next time did 
 not come. 
 
 Ordronnaux' nature was a strangely in- 
 flammable one, and a hurt healed but slowly 
 
8o ORDRONNAUX 
 
 under its feverish stress. Proud and pained, 
 he could not submit to such a rebuff again ; 
 and, while still smarting, he resolved to woo 
 Emilia no more in the old way. Perhaps 
 he was angry with her, the least in the 
 world : for all that, his passion was none the 
 less — only every throb of the unanswered 
 love was all the greater pang for the anger 
 that made it so sore. Some natural self-re- 
 spect told him that she did not know him ; 
 he saw that he had been too precipitate ; he 
 hoped that many days of closer life alone 
 with him might reveal to her a side that was 
 worthy of her affection ; he determined to 
 take her away, — as soon as the period which 
 had been given out as that of their intended 
 stay had elapsed, — to his home, where in 
 much seclusion she could learn to lean on 
 him, and where he would surround her with 
 silent tenderness, but never annoy her again 
 with expression of it till the time seemed 
 ripe. 
 
 Poor Ordronnaux ! He was not accus- 
 tomed to this self-abasement. So far his 
 life had been a success ; he had wished for 
 
ORDRONNAUX 8i 
 
 little that did not come with the wish ; fort- 
 une had smiled upon him, and so had 
 women — and now the only woman whose 
 smile could make his sunshine was colder 
 than snow. He had been in many respects 
 a fine fellow, — generous, brave, kind and 
 gentle ; he had hardly any conceit, — think- 
 ing that much was due to circumstance and 
 little to himself, that prodigality was no 
 virtue when one cared nothing for what was 
 squandered, that courage was an easy thing 
 where there was no constitutional timidity, 
 that misfortune had never tried his temper. 
 He did not pride himself upon his integrity ; 
 anything other than integrity he would have 
 believed impossible to an Ordronnaux. He 
 was not a handsome man ; though one who 
 loved him would have found a rough 
 grandeur in the straight, strong lines of his 
 dark face, and his smile was an illumination. 
 Doubtless if Emilia, ignorant as she was of 
 all experience of love, had been thrown into 
 his society, and allowed to remain without 
 feeling herself an object of too passionate 
 pursuit, without having all her antagonism 
 
82 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 aroused by undue pressure, without being 
 sullied by the suggestion that her beauty 
 was at barter for his wealth, without having 
 every avenue of romance closed upon her 
 too, she would have felt for him eventually 
 some degree of attachment. Now, in spite 
 of her resolve to do better, — perhaps some- 
 what because he afforded her no opportunity 
 to carry out the resolve, — when she saw 
 Ordronnaux opposite her in the carriage, 
 silent and abstracted, the sight sometimes 
 gave her a disdainful repulsion ; as she took 
 his arm to enter an assembly, — rustling and 
 glittering though she were in the lustre of 
 his gifts, — it was almost with a quiver of 
 abhorrence. She was afraid of herself; she 
 prayed every night of her life that she might 
 be made to love her husband — and resented 
 his existence every morning. 
 
 But Ordronnaux did not fail in any ob- 
 servance. He addressed her as Emilia, and 
 remembering, it might be, that in his mother's 
 church it was held that by assuming the atti- 
 tude of receiving the living grace, grace could 
 not fail to come, he followed a course of con- 
 
ORDRONNAUX 83 
 
 duct which by taking it for granted that 
 everything was right between them, might 
 some day, through sheer force of habit, make 
 it so. That Emilia should not feel this re- 
 ducing her to the level of a household pet, 
 and revolt against it, tacitly and decently, but 
 with all her strength, was not to be expected. 
 Tacit as the revolt was, Ordronnaux, of 
 course, was aware of it ; yet why such devo- 
 tion should be repugnant to her who had 
 never known a lover he did not understand. 
 Sometimes he was conscious of a resentment 
 on his own part, a dull, smouldering resent- 
 ment in which there was, nevertheless, a 
 spark of fire, — a resentment against the cold- 
 ness, the silence, the daily robbery of hap- 
 piness, the withholding of the smiles that 
 should be his, the veiling of the emotions he 
 should share, — yet he smothered it, know- 
 ing that she had promised nothing, that it 
 was his task to win all. Still, he was pos- 
 sessed with eagerness to know the nature that 
 she hid. Thus he kept her under survey — 
 every word, glance, gesture ; nothing escaped 
 him. If she looked lingeringly at a land- 
 
84 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 scape he remembered it inefFaceably, if she 
 stooped to smell a flower he plucked it, if 
 she smiled at a thought he was on fire to 
 know the thought; he was envious of the 
 moments when she was alone, — though 
 heaven knows she made the moments when 
 he was with her insufferable, — and, while he 
 adored her as his mistress, he distrusted her 
 as his rival. "He watches me as a wild 
 creature watches its prey," she thought. "Is 
 it doubt, or love ? Or is it more like a sort 
 of madness than either ! " But the truth 
 was that he was full of an indefinable jeal- 
 ousy of herself! 
 
 In pursuance of his system, and because 
 it gave him a proud pleasure, — pleasure 
 whose other side was pain, — he rode and 
 drove with her, was sufficiently by her side 
 at dinners, receptions and operas, took her 
 everywhere she might desire to go : people 
 who watched them could have seen only the 
 customary absorption of the newly-married ; 
 people who listened to them could have 
 heard only the gently spoken commonplaces 
 of two rather silent and high-bred persons. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 85 
 
 who did not carry their hearts on their 
 sleeves. 
 
 " Ordronnaux is infatuated/' Harriman, 
 who had been in the city, said to Alice on 
 his return. "He loves with what you may 
 call fatuity. It is certainly maladroit." 
 
 " To give a woman .the whip-hand so ? " 
 laughed Colonel Greve. " You women have 
 been slaves so long, you make sad tyrants 
 when you have the chance ! '' 
 
 " How disagreeable ! " said Alice. "It 
 vexes me to hear you talk so. There is no 
 such thing as tyranny and fatuity in love." 
 
 " Well, it is, at any rate," said Harriman, 
 " very uncomfortable for anybody who knows 
 what a brilliant fellow Ordronnaux is, — you 
 never saw him, did you, Greve ? — to meet 
 him now ! He is so occupied furtively 
 watching Emilia, listening to her, admiring 
 her, under his mask of elegant passivity, that 
 he appears — I shouldn't like to say, dolt- 
 ish—" 
 
 " No, I should hope not ! " cried Louise. 
 
 " But tame and torpid," said Harriman, 
 "to the last degree. I hope he shines a 
 
86 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 little more in private or Emilia will think 
 she has married nothing but a gold-stick In 
 waiting ! " 
 
 They were in a gallery of paintings one 
 morning, Ordronnaux and Emilia, and had 
 paused to look at a picture — a strange pict- 
 ure for them to look at together. " Two in 
 the Campagna/' was its name, and stray re- 
 membrances of the poem it illustrated flashed 
 upon them both as they gazed at the vast 
 champaign with its ruined tombs, its broken 
 arches, its nebulous purples, the ghost of the 
 great city far away, the two lovers on the 
 grass with all the glory of the sunlit air 
 trembling about them — about them and 
 their passion, their perplexity, their pain. 
 
 " What are the verses ? " asked Ordron- 
 naux, bending over her. " Can you recall 
 them now ? I heard you reciting them once, 
 almost a year ago, I think. I used to know 
 them myself: 
 
 * Let us be unashamed of soul. 
 
 As earth lies bare to heaven above. 
 How is it under our control 
 To love or not to love ? ' " 
 
ORDRONNAUX 87 
 
 He repeated, low-voiced, 
 
 ** * I would that you were all to me. 
 
 You that are just so much, no more, — 
 Nor yours, nor mme, nor slave nor free * — 
 
 I seem to have lost them," he said. 
 
 Emilia would have bitten off her tongue 
 rather than not have continued the recita- 
 tion in unshaken tones. Since he knew she 
 could hardly have forgotten the poem, not 
 to repeat it was to imply that she would not 
 feel it if she could, to falter was to imply 
 that she meant it. 
 
 '* 'I would I could adopt your will. 
 
 See with your eyes, and set my heart 
 
 Beating by yours, and drink my fill 
 
 At your life's springs, your part, my part 
 
 In life for good or ill.' " 
 
 " Ah, yes," he said, as she ceased. " I 
 remember it all now. A powerful picture, 
 a powerful poem. Yes — 
 
 *' < Only I discern 
 Infinite passion, and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn! ' " 
 
88 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 And there was a bitter intensity in his tone 
 that Emilia could not fail to understand, 
 and of which she was still thinking, — for to 
 her the poem bore a very different meaning, 
 when he sauntered away to speak with some 
 one in another portion of the gallery, and 
 left her sitting there. 
 
 As she gazed at the picture, without see- 
 ing it now, a person at the other end of the 
 sofa rose, and she glanced aside: a tall, pale 
 man with a rather heroic face, as seen in that 
 swift half glimpse, and a knightly bearing 
 despite his crutch, — evidently a soldier 
 wounded in the war, — made her the very 
 slightest inclination, a sort of irresistible 
 tribute to the glance of such beautiful eyes, 
 and went out. She looked after him ab- 
 sently, and, when her gaze returned, she saw 
 that he had left a white rose, — a little white 
 Scotch rose with which he had been trifling, 
 — upon her open catalogue that lay on the 
 sofa between them. She took up the cata- 
 logue, and the rose with it, unaware that 
 Ordronnaux, in approaching, had seen the 
 whole, and she held it, quite sure it was no 
 
ORDRONNAUX 89 
 
 accident, half wondering, not wholly pleased, 
 and yet somehow vaguely touched. She 
 kept the rose when she took Ordronnaux' 
 arm, partly for its sweetness, partly because 
 she could not churlishly refuse so simple an 
 oflFering, partly for the grain of sentiment 
 dear to her who felt herself starved for it ; 
 he observed it in a glass upon her table by 
 and by ; and he was there in the evening 
 when she moved in her slow grace, as she saw 
 a full-blown petal drop, and took the rose 
 and shut it in a book. " I like to come across 
 a dead rose in a book," she said, thought- 
 lessly to the caller who was present, she sel- 
 dom spoke to Ordronnaux when she could 
 help it, " I fancy some romance shut in with 
 it there." The whole thing was simple 
 enough ; but Ordronnaux would not have 
 stayed in the city another night ; and it was 
 the next day that he took her home by a 
 roundabout Canadian journey that consumed 
 some weeks. The turf had long been green 
 in the city squares, and the sunny slopes 
 purple with violets ; that embowered ances- 
 tral mansion of his among the hills, with all 
 
90 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 its flower-set lawns about it, would be put- 
 ting on its loveliest look, and Ordronnaux 
 wished Emilia to see it first when not one 
 white rose, but a myriad, climbed around 
 the windows ! 
 
 " Emilia," he said, as they alighted at the 
 porch, while the breath of the honeysuckles 
 floated about them, and turned to look down 
 the velvet swards, with their border of freshly 
 green chestnut wood, to the great cliflf whose 
 wall rose between them and the lower earth, 
 " this is your home. I wish," he said fer- 
 vently, " I wish you may be happy here ! " 
 
 " I thank you," she said. 
 
 It could not have been less to the merest 
 stranger. She felt herself a liar in making it 
 so much. 
 
 He led her through the apartments, quaint 
 and low-browed with the old beams and pan- 
 els of the ceilings, apartments enriched by 
 the gleanings of the foreign travel of many 
 generations of wealth : the lovely drawing- 
 rooms, where want of height was compen- 
 sated by space and the immense crystal 
 openings of the windows that made them all 
 
ORDRONNAUX 91 
 
 sunshine, save where tne shadows of leaves 
 were dappling the white velvet carpets 
 among their rose and azure hints and phan- 
 toms of flowers : there were marble sirens 
 and sylphids shining between the pale silken 
 curtains there, mellow landscapes now and 
 then upon the walls, now and then a bronze 
 beautiful as when some ancient dreamer first 
 saw its god stand dark against the sunny- 
 sky, an ebony escritoire, or easel, with its 
 mosaic, throwing up the splendor here, an 
 oriental trevet, a wonder of gilding and lacq- 
 uer starting from the shadows there, silken 
 divan and fauteuil and hassock of the same 
 pale perfect tints as curtains and carpets, 
 soft in shade as the fading clouds are, almost 
 as pillowy — rooms too brilliant and beauti- 
 ful for Emilia's moods. Nor did she like 
 much better the dark library, with its cases 
 carved from black and ancient teak, solid 
 and heavy as the primeval rock, the desk 
 upheld by a bent deity of Farther India 
 with all his dragon-like folds and involu- 
 tions, the table a huge black lotus itself; 
 the whole place full of demoniacal sugges- 
 
92 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 tions of learning. There were other rooms 
 no more to her fancy, for the translucent 
 china and the ringing salvers had a covert 
 insult to her excited sensitiveness ; and the 
 first exclamation of pleasure that she ut- 
 tered was over a little parlor at the head of 
 a flight of stairs. Everything seemed to be 
 quite a hundred years old there; the once 
 vermilion velvets of the hangings and the 
 unique upholstery had faded now to a silver 
 grey, with a mere dream of the rose left 
 upon them, a sort of frosty hoariness over 
 all. Through the single window, a long bal- 
 conied window, the sunlit steeps of a distant 
 mountain hung its valleys in mid-air, a mag- 
 nificent picture full of magical moods and 
 changes. There was but one other — a 
 portrait, hanging opposite the window, of a 
 dark and pale lady. 
 
 " Do you like the room ? " asked Ordron- 
 naux. 
 
 "It is very lovely," said Emilia. 
 
 " Make it your sitting-room," he replied 
 then, " where you are never to be disturbed. 
 It opens from your dressing-room, you see; 
 
ORDRONNAUX ^^ 
 
 my own rooms are on the other side/' And 
 then he led her to the portrait. " It is my 
 mother," he said, as they stood before it. 
 And, in spite of all contradictory feeling, 
 there was something exquisitely pathetic to 
 Emilia in the moment ; she pitied Ordron- 
 naux and his dead mother as she did herself, 
 and the tears dazzled her an instant. 
 
 It was one of those well-painted portraits 
 whose eyes follow you. Emilia had not no- 
 ticed it before. As she looked at it now she 
 could not hinder a sense of guilt, — those 
 eyes were capable of reading her soul ; and 
 it was not so she should have met her hus- 
 band's mother. It seemed all at once im- 
 possible to live with those eyes pursuing her. 
 Calm, clear eyes — presently they would be 
 avenging eyes. 
 
 "If she were but alive ! " Ordronnaux 
 said. " She would have loved you well." 
 
 Emilia was only thankful she was dead. 
 
 And so it happened that in all the old- 
 fashioned house, there was not a single room 
 whose atmosphere Emilia could assimilate 
 with that of her own interior life, and the 
 
94 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 whole place was only a beautiful prison, a 
 prison that she loathed the first day she 
 crossed its threshold — loathed it because 
 it was her place of bondage, loathed it be- 
 cause all the old Ordronnaux' that had once 
 made a part of it seemed to rise in every 
 room and to rebuke her. 
 
 There were not many neighbors, nor were 
 those very congenial — a few wealthy fami- 
 lies who of late years came for the summer 
 scenery, and had bought some acres from 
 the small farmers; the Ordronnaux' owned 
 mountain and forest for miles, still in the 
 original grant which dated back nearly to 
 the days of Captain John Mason. When 
 the first visits were received, and one or two 
 stupid tea-parties given and returned, the 
 social intercourse was almost at an end. 
 
 The domestic machinery was so perfect 
 that where Emilia was, no murmur of it 
 came. In the long bright mornings, the 
 birds, the bees, the wind in the leaves, made 
 all the sound there was. Ordronnaux was 
 away, perhaps, riding about the farm, 
 whither she had declined to ride with him, 
 
ORDRONNAUX 95 
 
 selecting the timber that needed felling In 
 the woods, or else writing and reading In 
 the library ; and Emilia was very lonely. 
 In the evenings they sat together, as she felt 
 necessary in her sacrifice to outward decency, 
 for they had an unspoken compact of civil- 
 ity — he with his newspapers, she with her 
 fancy-work or book. At first Ordronnaux 
 read aloud whatever was of interest; but 
 Emilia's absent air of revery was often what 
 no gentleman could break in upon ; and 
 save the few simple phrases uttered occasion- 
 ally, there would be no sound the evening 
 through but the plaintive moaning of the 
 iEolian harp she had strung in a hall-win- 
 dow, and which nearly drove Ordronnaux 
 wild. Thus the loneliness became some- 
 thing palpable, and out of its intense Iso- 
 lation Emilia divined that she was to be 
 starved Into love — and all the rebel In her 
 rose. She knew that she was wrong; she 
 felt herself wicked ; the feeling only made 
 her more so. In some Inexplicable way she 
 nursed an increasing rancor towards Ordron- 
 naux — to think that the place might have 
 
96 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 been so dear to her, that the morning rides 
 in the green sun and shadow of the woods 
 might have been so pleasant, the long even- 
 ings together might have been so rapturous, 
 his gifts so precious, if she had but loved 
 her husband ! That she did not, she held 
 to be his fault, not hers. " He has work 
 before him, if he means to break me in ! " 
 she said, and quite aware that she did it vi- 
 ciously, she laid out for herself a course of 
 study that should make the days fly — but 
 it did not. "At any rate," she said, "it 
 will keep me from losing my reason." 
 
 Going on with her work of hating Ordron- 
 naux, — for indifference toward a lover must 
 needs harden to harshness towards a jailer, — 
 Emilia took, of course, no pains to preserve 
 his admiration. She put on the simple gar- 
 ments of the wardrobe she had at her mar- 
 riage ; she knotted her long hair in the easiest 
 fashion. Yet, although Ordronnaux, remem- 
 bering women in resplendent toilets, might 
 wish Emilia would array herself in the bright- 
 ness that belonged to the Ordronnaux ladies 
 — through it all he could think only of a 
 
ORDRONNAUX 97 
 
 goddess In disguise, for she could not change 
 the silver-sweet tones of her voice, she could 
 not change the warmth of carnation on her 
 cheek, the depth of the violet in her eye, and 
 every movement, every outline was only flow- 
 ing grace. 
 
 As for Ordronnaux, the loneliness reacted 
 on him corrosively. Though he loved his 
 home, and had been full of his object of win- 
 ning her in it, yet he had been accustomed to 
 having his friends about him here, and wide- 
 hearthed hospitality had been the order of the 
 day. Now to sit before the statue of a martyr 
 for hours was fast getting to be an ordeal. 
 It was not, however, that mere material lone- 
 liness of Emilia's that he felt, — and from 
 which, in some unwhispered way, she yet un- 
 consciously looked for escape, — it was the 
 loneliness of the inner soul. He was losing 
 confidence ; and his days and his nights were 
 a keen misery. With all his passion he could 
 not choke back a subtle, acrimonious under- 
 current of mortification at his failure ; some- 
 times a swift choler tore a fiery sentence from 
 his lips, — Emilia only glancing up in a silent 
 
98 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 surprise and shrinking closer to herself; but 
 he saw in that glance the wild spirit looking 
 through her eyes that he had never made 
 captive. Yet sometimes again as she sat, 
 unconscious of his gaze, tired and sad and 
 listless, he yearned over her, he felt that he 
 must take her in his arms and comfort her or 
 his heart would burst, and he pitied her as 
 you would pity a sick child. He saw that 
 he had made a great mistake; he feared 
 that the task he had set himself was an im- 
 possible one ; he began to be hopeless of 
 overcoming the hostility in which, despite its 
 headstrong folly, he could see a germ of 
 justice. 
 
 It was once when compassion got the 
 better of his more selfish determination, as 
 it often did just when he thought his resolu- 
 tion was the sternest, that he invited her 
 family to visit her. Emilia countermanded 
 the invitation. She sent her sister some of 
 Ordronnaux' unused gifts, her mother the 
 money to take a different journey, telling 
 them, briefly, her plans had changed. She 
 felt that they had sold her, and she had not 
 
ORDRONNAUX 99 
 
 yet forgiven them enough to care to see 
 them. When Ordronnaux heard of this, he 
 turned towards Emilia in amazement, " I 
 thought I was giving you a pleasure, Emilia ! " 
 he said. " Shall I never find myself making 
 you happy ? " 
 
 She threw her arms up suddenly with a 
 gesture of abandon and despair. "You are 
 making me devilish ! " she said. And she 
 rushed past him from the room. 
 
 He had worshipped this woman, he had 
 expended himself in her service, he had 
 bound himself in iron fetters at her feet, and 
 she told him that his presence, his efforts, 
 his love, were making her devilish ! He was 
 mad with rage — an insane whirl of blind, 
 angry fury in which he lost all consciousness 
 of himself. He dashed from the house and 
 traversed for hours, uncovered, the rainy 
 woods, he knew not where or how. He 
 never knew when he returned — he found 
 himself in bed ; the physician and nurse be- 
 side him ; a beautiful shadow, a cold and un- 
 pitying phantom of a wife, going and coming 
 about him. 
 
loo ORDRONNAUX 
 
 He lay there and looked at her day after 
 day, so calm, so unmoved, doing her technical 
 duty, and doing it without a ray of warmth 
 — whether she read to him, as she would 
 have read beside a hospital bed, or soothed 
 his aching temples with the magnetic touch 
 of her fingers, or sung him softly to sleep. 
 He was weak in his self-pity to think it was 
 so much to him, so little to her. And then 
 he marvelled at and despised himself. 
 
 And as he got about, a great change 
 came over Ordronnaux. 
 
 He had been looking at the past as one 
 looks at the wrong side of a tapestry, and 
 deriding himself, and questioning if there 
 were woman born who would not scout 
 such a slave as he had been. He said the 
 glamour of beauty had deceived him, that 
 he was like the poor fellow of the middle- 
 ages who wedded one of the Wild Ladies, 
 and found her not flesh and blood. He said 
 that the fever had burned out all his pas- 
 sion, that it was impossible he should love 
 Emilia any more. 
 
 Sometimes now, indeed, in the new line 
 
ORDRONNAUX ; loi 
 
 of thought which he^'allW^id *M;.V^S^l{iii(?V- 
 dronnaux wondered if Emilia discharged 
 her duty so perfectly as to satisfy herself 
 — she whom it was so hard to satisfy ! And 
 in this wonder he found himself wondering 
 if there were any other whose remembrance 
 stood between him and his wife ; yet he 
 knew there was not, — since she had never 
 received a gallantry more pronounced than 
 the giving of that white rose in the picture- 
 gallery had been, — and he felt like one 
 guilty of sacrilege. But an idea that has 
 found entrance into the mind, like vermin in 
 the house, is not easily abolished ; and ob- 
 serving her in her cold pride, her mechani- 
 cal duty, her sublime belief that no fault 
 was hers, he suspected her worthiness. As 
 he longed for her love, he longed for her 
 humiliation. " I had better lose her alto- 
 gether," he said, " than have her as she is. 
 I want no odalisque." 
 
 Emilia should have had a care ; it is one 
 thing to be the prisoner of a magnanimous 
 adorer, another to be that of an offended 
 master. She should have remembered that 
 
I02 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 tJrier^i^re'jU^Jcitji) a. wines. which make a sharp 
 vinegar. Ordronnaux had not altogether 
 deceived himself; he must at that time 
 ?have ceased, at any rate for awhile, to love 
 Emilia. 
 
 But a man with the affairs of an estate 
 on his hands does not give all his attention 
 to affairs of the heart ; and although these 
 might be the dominant of Ordronnaux' life, 
 he had necessarily to bestow a good deal 
 of time on more material considerations. 
 Nevertheless a thought, a determination, 
 that has once taken shape, hardens when 
 you are not thinking of it. 
 
 " I met Captain Harriman in town yes- 
 terday," said Ordronnaux at dinner one 
 day, after a couple of nights' absence. 
 "He is to be married in March." 
 
 " It is settled then," remarked Emilia 
 indifferently, crumbling her bread. 
 
 "You are not enthusiastic on the sub- 
 ject," he said with that strange, new smile 
 of his, although she did not lift her eyes to 
 see it. 
 
 " On marriage? Oh, no." 
 
ORDRONNAUX 103 
 
 " I thought you might be interested ; you 
 were such friends. Though to be sure," 
 lifting his eyebrows, " women's friendships, 
 like their other emotions, are rather in- 
 scrutable." 
 
 ^^ I am very fond of Alice. But why 
 she should leave so delightful a home — " 
 
 " Perhaps a home is not all she thinks 
 of in marrying ! " exclaimed Ordronnaux. 
 "Well," he added quickly, as if to cover 
 the outburst, " I asked him to bring Alice 
 and Louise here for Christmas ; and I sup- 
 pose Louise will like to have Colonel Greve 
 invited — a match, I imagine, though I 
 have not seen him yet." 
 
 " They have never been in a hill country 
 in winter," answered Emilia, as if to make 
 it evident that she considered it no affair of 
 hers who came or went, in that house. 
 
 " Nor have you either, Emilia." 
 
 " No," she said, in a tone as cool as the 
 season she spoke of. 
 
 " I chose that time," said Ordronnaux, 
 "because I shall be going and coming a 
 good deal till then, if not afterward also, 
 
I04 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 off and on, with business. I hope you 
 will not be more lonesome than usual." 
 
 " Not in the least/' said Emilia. And if 
 there were any sarcasm in his hope, there 
 was as much in her assurance. 
 
 But in the compassion that so frequently 
 overcame his sternest resolves, — and that, 
 when he was a boy, and had trapped any 
 little wild animal, always made him give it 
 one chance for its life, — the next morning, 
 after the servants had left the room, and 
 Ordronnaux and his wife had returned to 
 the perusal of the letters they had opened 
 as usual and laid down again beside their 
 breakfast plates, he glanced up from a long 
 document and said : " I have been think- 
 ing that you will find so little to amuse you 
 while I am gone, that really you had better 
 accompany me." 
 
 " Do not concern yourself about me," 
 she cried tartly, with a deep flush on her 
 cheek and a sparkle in her eye, and escaped 
 .from the room quickly. Perhaps it was 
 nothing but the April weather of her moods 
 in which now every day there came storms 
 
ORDRONNAUX 105 
 
 and showers. Perhaps the letter she had 
 just read perplexed her or incensed her. 
 Whatever it was, she had the day for second 
 thoughts. 
 
 '^ By the Lord, this is a happy home ! " 
 cried Ordronnaux, stalking from the room 
 himself. " These poles shall be changed for 
 better or worse by spring ! " And he did 
 not return till twilight. 
 
 When he did come home, though, the air 
 was serene again. A fire of unhewn logs, 
 such as, later in the season, blazed every- 
 where through the house, rolled its flames in 
 the great chimney-place, and diflfused warmth 
 across the premature chill of the stormy 
 night ; and Emilia sat beneath the lamp, as 
 beautiful as any dream. No stranger gazing 
 through the pane could have conjectured how 
 hollow a simulacrum of a home was the 
 charming scene. 
 
 "By the way," said Ordronnaux, after a 
 while, closing his book, " I neglected to say 
 yesterday, — not, of course, that it matters to 
 me now, — but after our guests arrive, it will 
 give me pleasure if you — will wear — " 
 
io6 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 He paused. Whether you are careless of 
 giving offence or not, it is difficult to com- 
 mand a person to wear your gifts that have 
 been scorned. 
 
 ^^ Oh, certainly," said Emilia, looking up 
 lightly. " All my splendor is at their ser- 
 vice. I should not think of anything else." 
 The graciousness of air and tone might have 
 been disconcerting to Ordronnaux a little 
 while ago. 
 
 Yet Emilia could have given you no reason 
 for her graciousness. Only her heart was 
 something lighter than it had been, if her 
 brain was bewildered. When she ran up 
 into her sitting-room that morning, she had 
 opened the letter crumpled in her hand and 
 glanced at it again, as if to make sure it was 
 no fairy paper to turn into withered leaves 
 — perhaps to make sure that any one dared 
 so address her. It was a brief letter, as the 
 eyes of the portrait reading over her shoulder 
 might have seen : 
 
 " I had hoped there would be no trouble 
 in your lot. But I saw you walking in the 
 wooH, and you were weeping; I have seen 
 
ORDRONNAUX 107 
 
 it many times. Has sorrow so early cast her 
 shadow across you ? Can you not step into 
 the sunshine, and let the shadow stay where 
 it belongs — on me ? Is sympathy of value 
 to you ? Can you find comfort in the 
 thought that one is near you, not a stranger, 
 even though the tie is nothing more than a 
 dead white rose ? " 
 
 As Emilia read those concluding lines 
 some sound made her turn her head, and 
 she encountered the eyes of that portrait. 
 She crushed the paper together under the 
 convicting glance, without an idea why she 
 did so, and hurriedly went away. But all 
 day she carried the note about with her, 
 and read it and re-read it ; and by nightfall 
 a curious exultation filled her, as she thought 
 there was one person in the world she might 
 call friend. Father and mother had sacrificed 
 her ; Alice, Louise, and her companions had 
 but hastened on the sacrifice ; here was, per- 
 haps, one friend whom she might really call 
 her own ! And as she sat under the lamp 
 that evening, sheltered as her face was with 
 her fan, Ordronnaux or another could but 
 
io8 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 have admired the half smile playing round 
 the lip and the dreamy light in the eye. 
 
 Did Emilia, with reflection, if not with in- 
 stinct, resent this intrusion ? Did she feel 
 any outrage upon her as a wife, any insult 
 as a woman ? Not after that first bewilder- 
 ment, the first shrinking, the first blush. 
 All her wrongs she carried over to the ac- 
 count of Ordronnaux; it was owing to his 
 false step that she could be the recipient of 
 such a letter. Should she answer it ? Oh, 
 no, of course not. Nor could she, by the 
 way ; there was no address — a punctilio that 
 pleased her. Yet, after all, it was not un- 
 pleasant to have had it ; it was not unpleas- 
 ant to feel a reserve of strength in . that 
 unknown ally. An older woman might 
 have been wroth with the writer ; but Emilia 
 felt the secret of her discontent safe with one 
 who cared to make it less, and valued his 
 commiseration above her pride. She was 
 extremely young ; she was at variance with 
 everybody ; she knew nothing of the world ; 
 she needed a friend sorely. She remembered 
 but very dimly the half-glimpsed face of the 
 
ORDRONNAUX 109 
 
 hero who had laid the flower on her book — 
 yet not a face, she was sure, ever to wear a 
 stain of dishonor, the possibihty not occur- 
 ring to her, only the impossibility. She was 
 not sorry when, two days later, there came 
 another note, craving forgiveness if the first 
 one had been in error, asking if she could 
 think that her wonderful beauty had impelled 
 him, rather than the beautiful soul behind it, 
 suggesting that, if she valued the writer's 
 friendship, she should wear, as she walked 
 upon the terrace that day, a white rose. 
 
 Ordronnaux happened to be in the green- 
 house when she came in, for roses had long 
 since done blossoming outside. As she 
 passed him, he himself gathered a flower 
 and some fragrant leaves, and handed them 
 to her, with a mute glance of his dark eyes. 
 She hesitated, but it was the only white rose 
 in the place ; and as she took it, though it 
 was without a word, the act of hypocrisy 
 crimsoned her face. Perhaps the romantic 
 consciousness of her new and viewless friend 
 looking at her from some mysterious coign 
 of vantage compensated Emilia. Ordron- 
 
no ORDRONNAUX 
 
 naux turned on his heel, flicking off with his 
 stick, to the gardener's round-eyed scandal, 
 the heads of a whole row of Japan lilies as 
 he walked away. 
 
 In the letter of cordial thanks that came 
 presently to Emilia from the unknown, this 
 time with the postmark of the distant city, 
 an address was given to which she might 
 send a reply. There was a little fire on her 
 hearth, for the mornings and nights were 
 now cool among the hills ; Emilia laid the 
 note with its two forerunners on the coals, 
 and watched them shrivel and blaze ere she 
 wrote the reply whose idea she at first had 
 flouted. 
 
 " I have burned your letters. They were 
 most kind — too kind for me. I do not 
 know how you found me out. I do not 
 know what makes me trust you so — per- 
 haps my need. But I must try to do my 
 duty alone.'' 
 
 She mailed the letter herself, walking to 
 the village post-office. The woods through 
 which she went on the side of the Cliffy were 
 
ORDRONNAUX m 
 
 in the perfect ripeness of their green growth ; 
 sometimes a red branch holding out a torch 
 to illuminate the mossy depths where all 
 wild vines and briers ran riot over the sharp 
 and scattered fragments fallen from the Cliff 
 a century since ; sometimes a wilderness of 
 withered ferns and brakes spreading in the 
 shadow a field of the cloth of gold. A royal 
 wealth of asters and golden-rods glistening 
 with gossamers lined all the path, and here 
 and there a brook, swollen by the early rains, 
 rushed down the wayside steep, a torrent of 
 raging silver falling from the clouds, and 
 gentians and maiden-hair received the spray. 
 The year rested like a full tide whose ebb 
 one has not begun to perceive, and Emilia 
 felt the cheeriness soothe her perturbation. 
 But coming out upon the open country, and 
 seeing the soft low-hanging mists half veiling 
 the winy and golden mosaic of the meadows, 
 and seeing the mountains clothe themselves 
 in new forms and tender colors as she walked, 
 the earthly purple slopes, with all their bloom 
 of distance, refining into the clearer light of 
 infinity and heaven, she felt at odds with the 
 
112 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 great peace and beauty. " I am nothing but 
 an atom/' she said. " This hard nature 
 goes on the same whether I am wretched 
 or happy. What difference does it make 
 whether I am good or bad ? " And she 
 went along, with her wounds freshly opened. 
 As she came inside the gates she met Ordron- 
 naux waiting to make the customary cere- 
 monious adieux ere he rode to the station, 
 amusing himself the while with the prancing 
 of his badly broken horse. He smiled as 
 she approached. " Good-bye," he cried. 
 " I shall be gone perhaps ten days,'' and he 
 reined up his horse beside her, but did not 
 dismount. " Now," he said gayly, " if I 
 were a knight in an old ballad, you would 
 step upon my foot and climb behind me, 
 and ^ cast your arms about me,' and we 
 should ride away and see the world to- 
 gether ! " It was but lately he could have 
 spoken in that light manner to Emilia. 
 
 " How can you mock me so ? " she said, 
 and hurried on. 
 
 If Emilia were solitary now, there was 
 presently a certain freedom in the solitude. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 113 
 
 a comprehension that at last Ordronnaux 
 cared for her so little that she should be 
 annoyed no more by his anxieties, which 
 sent her spirits up a buoyant and defiant 
 height, and made her feel capable of wild 
 and daring action. It was an unfortunate 
 time for another letter to arrive from the 
 Unknown, for she would surely answer it. 
 
 And another letter came from him, re- 
 fusing to be silenced, pronouncing their cor- 
 respondence as legitimate as that of any other 
 friendship, declaring himself, in deferentially 
 masked, but unmistakable language, no vo- 
 tary, no lover, saying that through great 
 trouble which had befallen him he needed 
 her consolation as she needed his. 
 
 Emilia, of course, failed to see the imper- 
 tinence of the very existence of this letter. 
 Otherwise, there was a certain delicacy and 
 firmness in its tone that was agreeable to her. 
 When it went on with some slight confi- 
 dences, it interested her. In years he was 
 not far before her, but in experience, in sen- 
 sation, he was a generation her senior, the 
 writer said, — trusting possibly to Emilia's 
 
114 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 literal reception of his words, — and when 
 they met, if ever, he should be older still by- 
 all the crowded experiences of the enterprise 
 he was about to undertake. And he urged 
 her to write to him freely, to write the small 
 incidents of her days, her thoughts, and 
 fancies — a distraction to her, and a delight 
 to him. 
 
 And Emilia did. 
 
 If her correspondent were one who had 
 any design of evil, he might have been sur- 
 prised at the simplicity of her letters, awe- 
 struck, in a degree, at the innocence and 
 purity of her soul as those letters translated 
 it, while week by week passed and they still 
 came, speaking of her uneventful life, the 
 books she read, the sights she saw, the re- 
 flection those sights kindled — letters deal- 
 ing at first with little but outside objects, 
 then lingering with enthusiasm over the ac- 
 count of some book she had come across in 
 the great dark library, till stimulated by re- 
 plies, they hurried on towards emotional and 
 personal confessions, guileless and trifling 
 confidings of a hitherto unsoiled nature ig- 
 
ORDRONNAUX 115 
 
 norant of the wrong and dangers here, but 
 confidings which opened the way to closer 
 intimacy. In one letter she had to tell of 
 the autumn burning of the brush at night, 
 and the huge apparitions of the burners 
 passing before the blaze from vast star-lit 
 darkness to darkness, and of the contrast 
 between that Dantean scene and that of the 
 first snow on the Chieftain's head, one blush- 
 ing sunrise just as the Indian summer came. 
 And if, in reply, he warned her against be- 
 coming the spectator at scenic effects of nat- 
 ure rather than the sharer of nature's moods 
 and phases, it only gave her a greater sense 
 of security in writing. In another letter she 
 told him of her climbing the hill in the late 
 autumn morning to see a rainbow slowly 
 throwing its arch along, and building across 
 the hills beneath. "A wondrous sight," 
 she wrote, " the edge of a far blue hill grew 
 green and vivid, then the yellow light broke 
 in a flash beyond, like a wave whose foam 
 was rosy, and as the rose, the gold, the green, 
 came on, the violet followed, the mists rose 
 to make it, weaving to and fro a weft spun 
 
ii6 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 of the very dew of the morning, so airy, so 
 unsubstantial, and yet, as the arch sprang 
 whole and perfect, so firm and so fixed, that 
 I could think only of the solid stones at the 
 foundation of the earth, the shining stones, 
 rather, at the foundation of the City of God, 
 you remember, with its chrysoprase, its ja- 
 cinth and amethyst. St. John must have 
 climbed a mountain-top, and have seen just 
 such a thing as this beneath him before he 
 told of the rainbow like an emerald round 
 the throne." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " the answer came. 
 " For my part, I imagine the prophet, as 
 the poet, needs no more actual sight than 
 the inner apocalyptic vision. You and I are 
 perhaps far enough from the City of God, 
 — I am, I know, — and need to climb the 
 heights ; but to St. John in the desert, that 
 City descended out of heaven. Yet you 
 have interpreted the meaning of your rain- 
 bow, the everlasting firmness of the great 
 viewless laws, better than words interpret 
 music." 
 
 " I am in the desert, too," she wrote; "and 
 
ORDRONNAUX 117 
 
 your letters are bringing me a heavenly peace 
 there. And peace in my house, too, — for, 
 as one in it comes and goes, I can even 
 pity him that he has no such resource, such 
 liaven as I have, and can feel some interest 
 in his existence, some sorrow for his state, 
 and the eyes of his dead mother do not 
 pain me as they did. And now that the 
 winter is all about me, and I am shut in by 
 one of its great white, whirling, moonlighted 
 storms, I feel like a cradled child.'' 
 
 " I am glad you are at peace," he wrote. 
 "It ought to give me peace to know it. But 
 
 alas ! Still there is for me the next thing 
 
 to peace — effort ; and for that all directions 
 are open. What if, while you harmonize the 
 elements of your life, I should lose myself 
 striving to complete a harmony only less 
 perfect than spiritual unisons can be ? Do 
 you recall, in the little book I sent you, that 
 conception of a future art in which the great 
 science and beauty of color should be devel- 
 oped as fully as that of sound has been ? 
 Since nobody feels more keenly than I what 
 may be the opulence of the unrevealed re- 
 
ii8 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 serves of color in the dark and chemic rays, 
 nobody exults more keenly in the depths of 
 the unexhausted wells of color that we have, 
 why shall not I begin the development ? To 
 me a sheet of clear and pure tint, be it blush 
 or blue or amber, gives rapturous and inmost 
 satisfaction ; and let such colors flow into 
 one another with soft counterchange and sil- 
 very blooms, and I have the delight that a 
 perfect strain of music gives. Think then, 
 to those who love absolute color passion- 
 ately, what some great symphony, founded 
 on the seven colors as on the seven tones, 
 might be, with the palpitating glow and 
 gloom, the combination of its chords, the 
 magnificent movement of its members through 
 all delicious fluctuation to complete corre- 
 spondence and marriage ! Think of a chro- 
 mata in violet minor, with its radiant corre- 
 lations ! Think of that fancy of Haweis' 
 of delicate ^ melodies composed of single 
 floating lights, changing and melting from 
 one slow intensity to another, through the 
 dark, until some tender dawn of opal from 
 below might perchance receive the last flut- 
 
ORDRONNAUX 119 
 
 tering pulse of ruby light and prepare the 
 eye for some new passage of exquisite 
 color ! ' Well, somebody is to discover the 
 notation from which these marvels are to be 
 produced — why not I ? Somebody is to 
 discover the instruments, and decide whether 
 they shall appeal to chemistry or to elec- 
 tricity. To my mind those instruments are 
 all ready for the final touch. For since color, 
 as well as sound, is the result of vibration, 
 all that is necessary may be to combine the 
 initial of light and sound, which it would 
 seem that electricity could do in some at- 
 tachment to the present musical instrument ; 
 so that the strings, for instance, should pro- 
 duce the vibration requisite to render the 
 violet rays, the brass the brilliant yellows, 
 the wood the deep rich reds. Think then 
 of the orchestra that in producing any match- 
 less piece, — the Italian Symphony, — shall 
 translate every tone into its own color, or 
 rather every color into its own tone, and you 
 sit with all that changing splendor entrancing 
 your soul to the accompaniment of its per- 
 fect music ! Yet, I suppose, it is not for 
 
I20 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 this generation to do, but for one whose 
 childhood is the master of many sciences. 
 I suppose that generation is to come; for 
 since education in the parent becomes in- 
 stinct in the child, there cannot but some 
 day spring up a great perfect race on our 
 ashes ! '' 
 
 Fanciful speculations — but these, and 
 such as these, beguiled Emilia from her- 
 self. How different, she thought, from the 
 tame and commonplace action of Ordron- 
 naux' mind, as she had seen it ! And, in 
 return, she poured out her own ideas as 
 freely, revealing artlessly an organization 
 open on every side to the impulses of 
 beauty, and responding to sweet influences 
 like a living growth still adding to its wealth 
 and strength. It would have been evident 
 to any reader that she was young, and that 
 she had a nature to be moulded, but with an 
 individuality withal which it was a fascina- 
 tion to discover, and which to discover was 
 to love — an individuality capable of ca- 
 prices of shy and sullen reserve to-day, 
 and bountiful confession to-morrow ; with a 
 
ORDRONNAUX 121 
 
 temper that had needed some hot annealing 
 of trouble ; with a heart ready as a rose to 
 open with all its burden in its own time 
 under fostering suns, but not to be torn 
 apart by rude fingers without destruction. 
 It would have been no wonder if the reader 
 of letters so simple, so sweet, so confiding as 
 hers, came to share the fate of all who knew 
 Emilia, — had he begun in hate he could 
 have ended only in love, — if he abandoned 
 himself at last to his passion. 
 
 Emilia did not vex herself much at this 
 time about Ordronnaux, nor did he trouble 
 her much with his presence. Tolerably 
 convinced that the old adoration of her 
 beauty was over and done with, she paid 
 little heed to his movements, and never 
 asked herself if his love were capable of 
 arising all the stronger from that reaction. 
 Whether he had penetrated the secret of 
 her letters, or not, never crossed her mind, 
 for it never crossed her mind that it was 
 a secret. When she saw him, outside her 
 window, spending half the day breaking in 
 his great black stallion, she was forced to 
 
122 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 admire the two animals together, outlined 
 against the snow, as she admired any- 
 bronze in the hall ; but, in general, his dis- 
 quiet, his constant going and coming, his 
 curious scrutiny of herself, his abrupt re- 
 marks sometimes, sometimes his strangely 
 gentle air, the undecipherable smile with 
 which she more than once found him re- 
 garding her, the way in which he ceased in 
 the midst of what he was saying and sud- 
 denly strode from the room, were all to 
 her but parts of the unaccountable and 
 rather disagreeable behavior of one from 
 whom she expected nothing better and to 
 which she gave no second thought. Giv- 
 ing it no second thought, of course she saw 
 no struggle between love and indignation 
 and reproach. 
 
 And thus, as the winter had folded more 
 and more closely its white curtains about 
 Emilia, the passage of these letters had been 
 her reliance. There was a strange cold splen- 
 dor in the air, and the icy glare from the 
 huge Cliff, — which she had so often longed 
 to push out of the way, — walled her out 
 
ORDRONNAUX 123 
 
 from the world like the frost of the tomb. 
 Her friends had not come at Christmas, 
 having been detained by the great storms, 
 the cause she imagined of her correspond- 
 ent's delay in carrying out the enterprise he 
 had spoken of, which she had taken for 
 granted was a long tour, but of which he 
 had made no further mention. Ordronnaux 
 was away a good deal, often kept away by 
 impenetrable drifts ; sometimes he was gone 
 on dangerous hunting expeditions for days 
 together — lying at the bottom of some cruel 
 rift, for all she knew, among these hills that 
 seemed to her like vast creatures of some 
 primordial origin crying out to one another 
 now and then in the thunder of an avalanche 
 upon the silent night. When Ordronnaux 
 was at home he spent long hours in the li- 
 brary by himself But she obeyed the wish 
 that he had expressed, and dressed every 
 evening as for an occasion ; she thought, 
 perhaps, that as he had made the beauty his 
 property he had a right to see it set as he 
 chose, or possibly in the general kindliness 
 that was pervading her she was willing to 
 
124 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 afford him pleasure; possibly she could no 
 longer feel towards him as once she did — 
 for there are emotional and mental processes 
 of unscrutable secrecy even to their posses- 
 sor. There might have been something 
 heart-piercing in the sight of her, with all 
 her pulsating bloom and brightness, as re- 
 mote in that world of her own thoughts as 
 if she were a being of another race, another 
 planet. She was no longer the splendid and 
 stately woman, wearing a dignity of wifehood, 
 but a beautiful young girl again, light-footed, 
 light-hearted, kindly spoken, breaking into 
 carols as she moved about the house, living 
 in the hidden little life of her own dreams. 
 Whether Ordronnaux had undergone any 
 new change in her regard or not, sometimes 
 he seemed to feel all this, and he threw down 
 his book and walked the room, where they 
 were sitting, by the half hour. Once as he 
 came in, bringing a puff of frosty air with 
 him, from the piazza where he had been 
 stalking, he went and leaned over her chair, 
 watching the bright flower she wrought ; as 
 she glanced up she saw there was a strange 
 
ORDRONNAUX 125 
 
 light on his face, his lips were parted, his 
 face fevered. "Are you ill, again?" she 
 exclaimed. But he shook his head and 
 walked away. Presently she looked up 
 once more. " I am not good company for 
 you, am I ? '* she said. " I did not think 
 till lately that it must be dull for you. 
 Would you like to have me sing to you ? " 
 And she went to the piano, and sang. He 
 followed, and turned the leaves for her; 
 now and then he joined in, but only now 
 and then, as if his voice were not quite under 
 his control, as if it were unequal to the weight 
 of some emotion. When she rose, she held 
 the edge of the piano, as if it were all she 
 could do, as she said: " Do you know — I 
 am going to make a confession — " 
 
 " It is I that should make confession ! " 
 he cried warmly. 
 I "Oh no, indeed," she said in that calm 
 
 silver treble. "You have done so much to 
 make me contented here, and I have been so 
 ungracious ! I — that is — if — if we cannot 
 be more, we can at least be friends ? " and 
 she held her hand winningly towards him, in 
 
126 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 amazement to see him wheel about and 
 march out of the room. And she heard him 
 treading the crisp snow outside, followed by 
 his dogs. 
 
 The letters, and the emotions they aroused, 
 had been having a softening effect on Emilia ; 
 she had discerned a glimmer of her culpabil- 
 ity in rendering Ordronnaux' home offen- 
 sive to him. She had made her effort, 
 and the repulse mortified and confounded 
 her. She stood a moment, silent and won- 
 dering and affronted, and then she went to 
 her own room and took refuge with her un- 
 known friend and her letters ; and she had 
 the field to herself, for Ordronnaux was away 
 again at daybreak. 
 
 Emilia began to live simply from letter to 
 letter, — to reckon her time by them ; the 
 delay of one depressed and its hastening 
 elated her. Presently she was modelling 
 her thoughts and ways after the ideas and 
 wishes that she gathered thus, looking at the 
 universe through another's eyes ; and, all the 
 time, she was doing her utmost to be worthy 
 of this friendship — a friendship of high 
 
ORDRONNAUX 127 
 
 philosophy, she would have told you, since 
 not a word had yet occurred in all these 
 letters to put her on her guard. If a letter 
 lingered now, she fancied her friend were ill ; 
 and she was in a flutter of apprehension till 
 she heard; when, as many times, a heavy 
 snow blocked the trains and no mails came, 
 she walked the house like an unquiet ghost, 
 realizing what it would be to her if those 
 letters never came again, warm and flushed 
 with an access of gratitude that they had 
 come so long, trembling directly lest the 
 mind she so valued should one day outgrow 
 her and have no more to say to her at all. 
 Poor Ordronnaux' telegrams, that from time 
 to time were forwarded from the station, she 
 hardly glanced at thoroughly. 
 
 One March morning there came a letter 
 which she opened with her usual haste, and 
 her face fell to see that, instead of the long 
 pages of delight, there were but four lines — 
 he was to be in that portion of the country 
 and would delay over a train, and be that 
 day in the light wood where he, unseen, had 
 seen her walk, if she cared to meet him. 
 
128 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 If she cared to meet him! She might 
 have known how she had cared by the eager 
 way in which the blood surged up and 
 crimsoned all her face, by the shaking of her 
 hands as she dressed herself hastily, without 
 a thought of her appearance, thinking only 
 of what she was to see, and hurrying impet- 
 uously along, for it was ten o'clock, and at 
 ten he had said he would be there. 
 
 She entered the wood where, every day, 
 she walked, and through which there was 
 always a trodden path. The naked boughs 
 let in the sunshine, and here and there the 
 crust had thawed from the mossy stones. 
 The red hips of the wild rose, the skeleton 
 seed-vessels of the gerardia, the brown leaves 
 still clinging to a young oak, the swelling 
 buds on the trees, all gave the place a sort 
 of stir and life, even in that nipping air. 
 Through openings of the lichened stems, 
 looking down over the low country, she 
 could see the dazzle of the sunshine, and the 
 blue melting to a soft wide blush along the 
 far horizon and giving a pale flame-like 
 aureole to all the pointed pines. Once in a 
 
ORDRONNAUX 129 
 
 while a branch caught her and detained her ; 
 a black crow rose flappingly and startled her, 
 a dark green hemlock shivered in the wind 
 and shook down its silver weight about her. 
 She thought nothing could be more beauti- 
 ful than this walk through the yet winter 
 wood to meet the person on whom it seemed 
 to her now her whole world swung. She 
 had not stopped to fasten the white fur 
 cloak, with its black fox edgings and blue 
 linings that she wore, her chestnut hair, gilded 
 in the sunshine, was blown from under her 
 hood, her cheeks were damask in the fresh 
 wind, her eyes were glowing, her mouth was 
 dimpled with its eager smile; she heard a 
 footstep and half paused, her heart in her 
 throat. Now she should see him, the one 
 who had given a value to life, the hero whose 
 dimly seen, dimly remembered face she had 
 never been able to recall — and Ordronnaux 
 came round the curve of the path, walking 
 from the station with his knapsack on his 
 shoulder. " Have you come to meet me ? " 
 he cried, extending his hand. " How did 
 you know I had come ? I did not telegraph. 
 
I30 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 purposely — I thought I should surprise 
 you." He had surprised her. And of course 
 there was nothing to do but to turn about, 
 half stupefied, with Ordronnaux, and walk 
 quietly back again, gathering one dead thing 
 and another as she choked back childish tears 
 of disappointment. Once in her own room 
 again, she let those tears come in a flood. A 
 salt and bitter flood. But out of no bitterer 
 or Salter flood was it that once before Love 
 rose ! 
 
 For, as the drops were still falling through 
 Emilia's fingers she snatched her hands from 
 her face and looked about her in a sudden 
 horror, a scorching blush tingled over her 
 like a wave of hot air, from head to foot, her 
 tears seemed to turn to fire, she bounded to 
 her feet and wrung her hands, and went and 
 hid her face, and wished that she had never 
 been born. In one moment she had seen 
 the precipice upon which she stood. On 
 which she stood? Say rather the height 
 from which she had fallen, from which she 
 had fallen here among all corrupt things ! 
 
 She dragged herself through the day, and 
 
ORDRONNAUX 131 
 
 dressed and descended to dinner, daring to 
 do nothing else ; and although Ordronnaux 
 had much to talk of that was pleasant, — for 
 he had been at Harriman's wedding, to ex- 
 cuse herself from which she had used the 
 pretext of a cold, — yet never was there so 
 long or so cruel an evening as that, before 
 she could hide herself in darkness. 
 
 In the week that followed now, Emilia 
 endured anguish. Forsaken, she felt, dis- 
 graced. Because aware of them herself at 
 last, she made sure that her sensations were 
 recognized and known by their object also. 
 That was the reason he neither came nor 
 made explanation, not because Ordronnaux 
 was on the train, — for why should that have 
 hindered him ? No, she was served as she 
 deserved. The sharpest pang of all was 
 that — as she deserved ! She dare not hope 
 for another letter ; she was self-convicted of 
 crime in the wish for one ; she felt that she 
 had become a thing unfit ever to enter 
 again into communication with the mind 
 that seemed to her like some far white 
 spirit. Blame for him, in the casuistry of 
 
132 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 her love, she did not dream of; he was a 
 friend simply and entirely ; it was she, a 
 wife, on whom all the blame must rest — 
 how could, how could she have drifted here, 
 how could she have so far forgotten her- 
 self as to write in the beginning ! Her 
 own self-reproach was too vivid to let her 
 dwell on his share, or in her simplicity to 
 remember that he was a man, in the current 
 of the world, who knew what he was about. 
 And yet she longed for a single word ; she 
 shivered one instant at the possibility that, 
 after all, he might not know, might never 
 know, and she despaired the next — she 
 knew ! If she had not lost already, loss, in- 
 evitable loss, only to be bridged by death, 
 was before her, she saw. But she had not 
 reached the point of any serious thought, 
 everything with her yet was in the ferment 
 of emotion. Her nerves were all alive ; she 
 started at every sound ; she cringed at Or- 
 dronnaux' most quiet words ; she knew what 
 he had suffered now, and she paused, even 
 in the midst of her pain, wishing she could 
 make some reparation. When, in the game 
 
ORDRONNAUX 133 
 
 of chess that he one night proposed, he took 
 her ice-cold hand in his, to move her pawn 
 and she felt the heat and the pulse and the 
 tremor there, she burst into tears. But Or- 
 dronnaux seemed to take no notice of these 
 moods — why should he, after all that had 
 gone before ? 
 
 At length, as Emilia sat, heavy-eyed and 
 pale at the breakfast-table, hoping for noth- 
 ing any more, the letters being brought in, it 
 happened that Ordronnaux handed Emilia 
 hers. He would have been blind not to see 
 the wild light that suddenly ran like summer 
 lightning through her eyes. She sat on 
 thorns, hearing him read from one of his let- 
 ters that Harriman would be there that day 
 with Alice and Louise, and that Colonel 
 Greve would join them by a later train ; try- 
 ing vainly to drink her coffee ; conscious of 
 Ordronnaux' frequent gaze until his depart- 
 ure warranted her own, and she could tear 
 open her letter. 
 
 It was not the letter that Emilia had ex- 
 pected or hoped for. As she read it, alone 
 in her room, her heart leaped up and almost 
 
134 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 stifled her with its swift beatings. In the 
 first moment she clasped it to her breast with 
 ecstasy, in the next she had whirled it from 
 her to the floor. But she ran and seized it 
 again, kissed it passionately, and hurried up 
 and down the room with it as a caged creature 
 does, or as one might go whose feet were 
 winged with joy. 
 
 " You see of course it was impossible to 
 go," he said. " And perhaps it was as well. 
 For, let me say it, — if I had seen you come 
 smiling towards me, your soul in your face, 
 all eager and glad to meet me, I could not 
 have done anything but take you to my 
 heart ! Yes, I have written it ! Now you 
 know — what yet you must have known be- 
 fore. I love you ! I love you ! I love you ! 
 Does this seem recreant? To have seen 
 your beautiful spirit unfolding like a flower 
 in these months, and have done otherwise, 
 had been recreant indeed ! When I think — 
 as I do think ! — that you also, you — No, 
 it is not for me to speak. I ask nothing. 
 Never to my gaze may the eye brighten or 
 the cheek redden, never may I feel the dear 
 
ORDRONNAUX 135 
 
 hair touch my face — yet with a word, a word, 
 you can lead me out of darkness into light. 
 But say it or not, it shall be enough for me 
 to know that I love you and 
 
 * In the midmost heart of grief 
 My passion clasps a secret joy! ' " 
 
 It would have been out of the question for 
 Emilia to go down stairs again that day, but 
 for the fact that Captain Harriman and his 
 party were coming and she must brace her- 
 self to the exertion. And in the meantime 
 what was she to do ? Answer the letter — 
 she could not. But as she lay on the lounge, 
 that first fervor of her passion spent, a lock 
 of her loosened hair fell across her neck ; she 
 rose quickly and took the scissors and sev- 
 ered it, and wrapping the bright and fragrant 
 tress in an envelope, without so much as a 
 single pencilling inside, she directed it with 
 the usual address, and rang the bell and or- 
 dered It to be sent with the other letters to 
 the post — nor did she know that Ordron- 
 naux himself took the letters to the post that 
 day on the way to meet his guests. But what 
 
136 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 lover could have desired a dearer answer, 
 could have had a tenderer? 
 
 She was in her wrapper still when they 
 came, and her heart warm now to all the 
 world, she ran flying down the stairs to re- 
 ceive them, though the wealth of that un- 
 braided hair was still streaming about her, 
 radiant with the happiness she had not yet 
 begun to sift or search, into which realization 
 of sin or sorrow or separation had not come, 
 the rose burning on her cheek, the smiles 
 wavering about her lips; and Ordronnaux, 
 having directed Harriman, who had been 
 there before and knew the house, to his 
 quarters, attended them to the sitting-room, 
 where, sooth to say, he had scarcely been 
 before since he first brought Emilia home. 
 There was a peculiar excitement about Or- 
 dronnaux that day — you could not tell 
 whether it was the unquiet of joy or trouble ; 
 but Emilia had no eyes to see it. Alice and 
 Louise flitted round the room, looking at this 
 thing and that ; Ordronnaux standing by the 
 fireplace and once in a while stealing a look 
 at Emilia where she sat, the moment that 
 
ORDRONNAUX 137 
 
 any one ceased talking to her, wrapped again 
 in her rosy dream. And presently the dress- 
 ing-bell rang. " This will never do," said 
 Ordronnaux. "Will you show Mrs. Harri- 
 man her room; Emilia — the oriel? I sent 
 Harriman there. And Louise, you said, you 
 would put in the south gable. I suppose 
 Colonel Greve will be along directly, but 
 John will take care of him." 
 
 "He was to come in the express," said 
 Louise, " and bribe the conductor to let him 
 off at your station." 
 
 " I shall be glad to meet him at last ; he 
 is an elusive fellow, a sort of Myth of a Man 
 who did Supernatural things with a battery." 
 
 " Prodigies ! " said Alice. 
 
 " That opens a new field," exclaimed Ord- 
 ronnaux. 
 
 ** *The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.' 
 
 Ladies, you have a half hour to settle the 
 affair and show this recluse the fashions ! " 
 
 " What a perfect place, Emilia ! " they 
 cried, as she led the way to the south gable. 
 " And how lovely you look ! How happy 
 you are ! " 
 
138 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 " It is a lonesome place," she answered, 
 lest they should discover her confusion. 
 
 "You say that to hide yourself, Emilia ! '* 
 cried Alice gayly. " Nothing is lonesome 
 where your husband is ! Oh, I could live 
 here forever with — " 
 
 She paused, blushing, and Emilia blushed 
 too, blushed red and redder with a stinging 
 blush that seemed to burn and brand itself 
 upon her. In the presence of this pure and 
 faithful young wife she could not say a word, 
 for she remembered the thing she had just 
 done. 
 
 Perhaps it did not need the violet velvet 
 that she wore to heighten the color of her 
 cheek, when Emilia had descended to dinner, 
 and make Ordronnaux feel a thrill coursing 
 through him at the spectacle of her loveli- 
 ness, as she stood talking with Harriman 
 while they waited for Colonel Greve. Was 
 it the too abundant light, was it the heat 
 that suddenly brought a deathly pallor to 
 blanch Emilia's face ? She grasped the back 
 of the chair beside her, her heart was giving 
 such throbs that it seemed all the room 
 
ORDRONNAUX 139 
 
 could hear them, she glanced at Ordronnaux 
 in a terror to see him start and tremble and 
 turn as white himself. For fate had found 
 him out. The gentleman who, as the ser- 
 vant announced Colonel Greve, left his 
 crutch and came forward to be presented to 
 his host and hostess, was no other than the 
 hero of the white rose. 
 
 Emilia bent before him, as cold and pallid 
 that moment as a corpse. But Ordronnaux 
 had recovered himself and was beside her, 
 taking the Colonel's hand and welcoming 
 him with pleasant cordiality. Then the 
 new-comer passed to Louise. " I declare," 
 he said under his breath, " your friend, the 
 hostess, is the most wonderful piece of 
 mechanism I ever saw ! Is it wax or mar- 
 ble ? You don't pretend to call it flesh and 
 blood? Does she ever speak .^ It is Inez 
 de Castro over again ! Now I will tell you 
 a secret," he said, taking her fan. " That is 
 the rival I have held over your head ! But 
 I should hardly have known her. How did 
 I ever dare to give her a flower ! You see 
 she has not forgiven the liberty ! " And 
 
I40 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 then the butler had entered and the wonder- 
 ful piece of mechanism had taken his arm 
 and they were at the table. As Emilia 
 raised her eyes to him a moment, she saw 
 that he wore upon the lapel of his coat a 
 little Scotch white rose. Ordronnaux saw it 
 too, and he was grinding his teeth at the 
 strange coincidences of chance while he sent 
 the Colonel his sherry. 
 
 But if Emilia had been able to utter any 
 words during the dinner, beyond those of 
 simplest civility, she had no opportunity. 
 For never had she heard or seen Ordronnaux 
 precisely as then — it was true that circum- 
 stances never allowed it before, for gracious 
 — or ungracious — coolness on the part of 
 a vis-a-vis does not promote conversational 
 talent. But now, as if some hidden sting 
 urged him, jest and epigram sparkled from 
 his lips, and even Emilia was obliged to lis- 
 ten and to question what ailed him, and to 
 remember by and by 
 
 " That frail blaze 
 Of excellence that neighbors death,'* 
 
ORDRONNAUX 141 
 
 as, restlessly brilliant, with an artificial 
 gayety, perhaps, that hid a trouble behind 
 its coruscation, he kept Colonel Greve en- 
 gaged so constantly that there was no possi- 
 bility of his addressing an undertone to his 
 hostess, had he desired it, until the evening 
 ended — as it did very early, on account of 
 the fatigues of the long journey to that place 
 on the winter hills. 
 
 As Emilia sat on the hassock in her sit- 
 ting-room, a few moments after the separa- 
 tion down stairs, cowering over the fallen 
 ashes, white and cold, and totally bewildered, 
 unable to comprehend or reconcile the events 
 of the day, clasping her hands on her fore- 
 head with a sense that she must be going 
 distracted, Ordronnaux rapped upon the 
 door leading from his own rooms, and, with- 
 out waiting for permission, came in. He 
 went to the long window, and lingered there 
 a moment, listening to the great wind that 
 swept by, and looking out silently at the 
 picture there — the light of the unseen moon 
 flooding all the hollow of the sapphire sky, 
 where the snow-clad mountain peak hung 
 
142 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 like a giant crystal glittering in many colors 
 on the dark. 
 
 Then he came and threw some logs upon 
 the fire, — for though it had melted that 
 April day in the sun, it was still winter 
 among those hills. 
 
 As the odorous black birch began to snap 
 and send up its jets of flame, she looked up 
 and saw him leaning an arm upon the man- 
 tel-shelf, and gazing down at her. 
 
 " Emilia, my dear wife,'* said he then, 
 gently, " can you listen to something I have 
 to say to you ? '' 
 
 She could not speak ; she made a motion 
 with her hand. 
 
 " Do you remember," he said, " that once 
 I swore to you to make you happy ? Well 
 — in what I have to say I want still to give 
 you the least pain, the greatest happiness I 
 may. I think it was early last Fall that you 
 received a letter, without signature, from a 
 person who, by an equivoque^ implied that 
 he had given you a white rose ? " 
 
 She looked up heavily, as he went on, not 
 so much astonished, perhaps, as stunned. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 143 
 
 "You did not reply to the letter/' he 
 said ; " though in response to the next one, 
 you wore at your throat the flower you were 
 asked to wear. And you answered the third 
 by an attempt to end the matter." 
 
 " Yes/' she said, slowly. 
 
 " But others followed. You were per- 
 suaded that you had a right to exchange 
 letters with a friend. You thought of no 
 imprudence. Soon you enjoyed the letters." 
 
 " Yes," she said, again. 
 
 " As your friend sketched out his plans, 
 and hopes, and thoughts, you also confided 
 in him. There was nothing to hide from 
 one who knew already of your married un- 
 happiness. You told him all the delicate 
 imaginings and desires that had been con- 
 cealed — from me, at least — that — perhaps 
 he kindled ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " she said again. 
 
 "As you so hesitatingly, and then so 
 freely, revealed to him the reserves of your 
 nature, that friend became your lover. He 
 appointed a day to meet you. With dis- 
 appointment you met only me." 
 
144 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 " Yes/' she said. 
 
 "A week afterward you received from 
 him a passionate declaration. That was 
 this morning. And your reply — " 
 
 " Do not think," she said, stolidly, with 
 her dry lips, " that I should not in time have 
 told you all this." 
 
 "And do not think that 1 should have 
 troubled you about it. I do not know," 
 said Ordronnaux, leaving her and walking 
 up and down after his habit, "I cannot say 
 how it would have ended ; but for the acci- 
 dent to-night of this man and his accursed 
 white rose, this man whom I recognized and 
 whom you did, as the one who dropped his 
 flower on your book." He came back and J 
 stood before her again. " Once you play- 
 fully declared that you had a confession to 
 make," said he, " and I answered that it was 
 I who should make confession. Are you 
 listening ? Emilia, it was I that wrote you 
 the letters." 
 
 She lifted her head, and stared at him a 
 moment. " It is impossible," she said. 
 
 " No," said Ordronnaux, advancing a step. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 145 
 
 with a flush on his dark face. "It is not 
 impossible. It is true. When I recovered 
 from the illness in which what I had en- 
 dured all summer ended, I felt that my love 
 for you had burned out, and that if I kept 
 the ashes warm with a pleasant indiflFerence, 
 it was as much as I could hope. And then, 
 as I saw you pursuing a cold precision of 
 duty, I wondered if you suff^ered no pang of 
 reproach, of pity, if you had reason to be 
 satisfied with yourself. I resolved to test 
 you. I wrote you the first letter — " 
 
 " I do not believe you ! *' she cried. " It 
 was not your handwriting ! " 
 
 " You never saw my handwriting, Emilia. 
 You never saw my handwriting other than 
 in those letters. I always telegraphed you, 
 if you will remember. I swear to you I 
 wrote them — " 
 
 She sprang up and stood before him, 
 trembling from head to foot. 
 
 " Pray, hear the whole," cried Ordron- 
 naux. And he took her hands and gently 
 placed her in the great arm-chair that he 
 wheeled where the flicker of the firelight 
 
146 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 fell on her with all the wild beauty of that 
 changing spot on her cheek, that fixed lustre 
 in her eye, that quiver on her lip. 
 
 " I will tell you the truth/' he said. " I 
 was sorry when you came to the greenhouse 
 and took that white rose from me." He 
 paused a moment, lifting one thing and an- 
 other from the shelf and putting it down 
 again, as he leaned over the blaze, and did 
 not look at her. 
 
 "And then I was reckless," he con- 
 tinued. " I said I would see it through. I 
 would see what you were made of It could 
 do me no harm. Perhaps I thought — " 
 he faltered; "yes, perhaps I was so base," 
 he said, slowly, " as to think that if the bond 
 that had loosened grew irksome, here would 
 be the means of destroying it in my own 
 hand. Yet that was but momentary, a mo- 
 mentary madness. When your first letter 
 came, — that little, heart-broken letter, — it 
 touched me. I had the world before me; 
 you had nothing. I said to myself I would 
 lighten your days a little, if any human in- 
 terest could do it; and so I wrote. And 
 
ORDRONNAUX 147 
 
 then — you know the rest," said Ordron- 
 naux, " As week by week those letters un- 
 folded all your spirit, and I had the very 
 bloom of your being there, the love that 
 had died for your fair face, your lips, your 
 smile, was born again for the sweet soul that 
 I was discovering. This morning, this very 
 morning, I handed you the letter which con- 
 tained the avowal of that love. This morn- 
 ing I had your reply." And he drew from 
 his breast the long lock of bright brown hair, 
 and pressed it to his lips. 
 
 Emilia reached forward, and snatched it 
 from his hand and threw it on the fire. 
 The flame caught it, and it curled and 
 writhed, snake-like, to a cinder. 
 
 " What do I care ? " cried Ordronnaux, 
 imperiously. "You love me. At last I 
 know you love me ! " And he bent toward 
 her with his open arms. 
 
 " Never ! " cried Emilia, drawing dog- 
 gedly away. " Never ! If what you say is 
 true, you have killed the man I loved ! 1 
 never loved a man who was capable of prac- 
 tising a fraud ! " 
 
148 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 Ordronnaux rose, and stood as if a blow 
 had been dealt him. "You are right/' he 
 said, hoarsely, after a while. " Before God, 
 Emilia, I never looked at it so till now. I 
 should have told you that fraud and an Or- 
 dronnaux — " 
 
 " Yes,'* she cried, suddenly, " a fraud ! 
 Oh, all you dead and gone Ordronnaux that 
 from these walls have been accusing me of 
 crime this long, long week, now you see 
 where all your boasted honor ends ! Ends 
 in the man who beguiles his own wife from 
 virtue, and betrays her ! " 
 
 There was a moment's silence, in which 
 you heard the drop drip from the eaves. 
 
 " Emilia," said Ordronnaux then, still 
 gently. " If I have done wrong, are you the 
 one to have no mercy on me ? " 
 
 Another silence, and then for answer 
 there came a tempest of tears. 
 
 "Is it true," said he, when the tears had 
 passed, and there had been no sound in the 
 room save the keening of the wind and the 
 falling and shattering of one icicle and an- 
 other for many minutes, " is it true that I 
 
ORDRONNAUX 149 
 
 have killed your Ideal ? Is there nothing 
 left from which you can revive it ? No love 
 of beiauty and of heaven ? No aspiration ? 
 No sympathy in books, in music, in color ? 
 No personal interest whatever ? After this 
 winter's companionship in those letters, can 
 you live alone and live at all ? I loved your 
 soul, Emilia — I thought that you loved 
 mine ! " 
 
 He turned away. And then he came 
 back passionately. He stooped and took 
 her, impassive, in his arms, he kissed her 
 unreturning lips in one long throbbing kiss 
 — a kiss that was half a sob. Then he re- 
 l^ased her and went back to the window, 
 where he had lingered when he first came in. 
 
 The room suffocated him, it seemed as if 
 his brain were on fire, he threw open the 
 valves and stepped out upon the little bal- 
 cony — an instant too soon. For there came 
 the swift rush and muffled thunder of an 
 avalanche of snow and ponderous icicle from 
 the gable-end above, and Emilia saw Or- 
 dronnaux fall beneath the shock, saw him as 
 if that, like all the rest, were a part of some 
 bad dream. 
 
I50 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 But with the next heart-beat, — whether 
 it were an instinct of common humanity 
 that stirred in her, or whether that long 
 melting kiss had warmed her back to newer, 
 richer life, — she started from her chair, and 
 had seized Ordronnaux' shoulders and had 
 dragged him in, the snow with him, had 
 flung together the valves of the window 
 behind him, and was kneeling over him while 
 the flashing of the firelight disclosed to her 
 the white sharp face as fixed as death, whiter 
 for the thread of blood that trickled from a 
 wound beneath the hair. 
 
 In that instant a withering sense may 
 have overwhelmed her of what she lost 
 in losing Ordronnaux — the companionship, 
 the sympathy, the love of which he spoke. 
 " I loved your soul, too ! " she cried out. 
 " Speak to me, look at me ! You kissed 
 me a moment since," she said, her face on 
 his, "kiss me again, oh Ordronnaux, my 
 love, my husband ! " 
 
 A quiver crept through the frame she 
 half upheld. 
 
 Even in that trance, the twin of death, he 
 must have felt that cry. 
 
ORDRONNAUX 151 
 
 His pulse fluttered, his heart was beating 
 in great plunges — yet he dared not open 
 his eyes at once, lest it should all be naught, 
 till again he felt the touch of that soft cheek, 
 of those warm, trembling lips, and his own 
 lips answered and detained them. 
 
 The moon came round with all her purple 
 shadows, and looked at them sitting there 
 before the dying embers, in that rapturous 
 hour of recital, of forgiveness, of passion — 
 an hour borrowing something of its bliss 
 from the sorrow it had so nearly touched, 
 from the sorrow yet to come ! On what a 
 bright world the sun would rise, they 
 thought ! What messages of cheer, though 
 the household were about them, would flash 
 between the eyes of husband and of wife 
 conscious of the glad new secret of their 
 happiness ! What a future splendid with 
 hope, rich with possession stretched before 
 them ! 
 
 " I must forgive you," said Emilia, push- 
 ing back the bright fallen hair. " Yet, oh ! 
 how can you forgive me ! It was such a 
 fatal flaw in me — I see it all now — I was 
 
152 ORDRONNAUX 
 
 so Ignorant ! But your love must be to me 
 like God's love — " 
 
 " And it was no fatal flaw in me ? " he 
 cried. " Oh, my darling, the forgiving is 
 all done before we reach heaven ! Do you 
 know, Emilia, when you recalled me to life 
 there, a little while ago, with that kiss, — 
 that kiss, my wife, that led me out of dark- 
 ness into light, — I said to myself that I was 
 dead, that I was in heaven." 
 
 "You thought you deserved heaven 
 then?" she said archly, 
 
 " At any rate, I have it ! " cried Ordron- 
 naux. 
 
 And let us hope he had. For the icy 
 spear had done its work, its slow and hidden 
 work. And, as his head fell forward with 
 those words, the man who held her in his 
 arms was dead. 
 
The Wages of Sin 
 
 S - 
 
The Wages of Sin 
 
 THE brook trickled down from the 
 pass of the hills, a slender stream that 
 you could step across, curving and looping, 
 scattering diamonds, taking the sun in its 
 brown shallows. Springs bubbled up along 
 the way to feed it, and trout flashed their 
 red-jewelled sides in its pools, other brooks 
 swelled it to a stream, birches bordered it, 
 willows dipped in it, pine trees darkened 
 it, marsh-mallows lighted its coves, arrow- 
 heads and the scarlet cardinals saw them- 
 selves painted there, and in their turn the 
 fringed gentians lifted their deep blue to 
 match the blue it mirrored. And when the 
 lucid ice sheathed it, and the snow powdered 
 it, Judith Dauntry could still hear it tinkling 
 below, as it wound its way about the farm 
 that was hers, and made its boundary. Such 
 155 
 
156 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 as it was, it was the only friend she had in 
 the world. 
 
 She sat high up in the pass, one gray day, 
 on the stone from under which the brook 
 bubbled, and looked down the long valley 
 over a wide and wild and lonely country — 
 a drear and desolate country in the dun hues 
 of late autumn, arched by an immensity of 
 gray wind-driven clouds. What did she and 
 her pain signify in all this wide hollow of 
 earth and sky? A mote in the immensity, 
 a sigh melting into the clouds — something 
 that would pass as all pain passes. Another 
 woman had perhaps sat here with her own 
 pain long and long ago — and who knew of 
 it, who remembered it? It was as if it had 
 never been. But for Judith now the pain 
 swelled and filled the whole space ; there 
 was nothing but pain in the world. 
 
 A watery sunshine struggled through the 
 clouds, just as a man came round the thicket 
 and climbed up toward her, a tall and 
 slender stooping shape, at the sight of which 
 the tears sprang and blinded her so that she 
 saw neither sunshine nor lover. But they 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 157 
 
 were not tears for herself. Her own pain 
 was too deep and dry and hard for tears. 
 They were the tears of something like an 
 infinite compassion for this poor creature 
 who asked bread of her. And should she 
 give him a stone ? 
 
 He sat down beside her in silence. Pres- 
 ently his arm stole round her ; and she laid 
 her head back with a swift sob that tore its 
 way up in spite of her. 
 
 " Is it as bad as that? " he said. 
 
 "It's giving up everything/' she answered, 
 without moving. " People, friends, meet- 
 ing, the minister — good name. And before 
 long you — you — will believe evil of me, 
 too." 
 
 « I ! You think so ! " 
 
 He felt her shudder. " We are the same 
 thing," he said hotly. "We give up the 
 world. We can get along without it. You 
 are worth the world to me ! Besides," he 
 added presently, and more slowly, " it isn't 
 as if it was not right in the sight of 
 God — " 
 
 " Don't bring God into it," she cried pas- 
 
158 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 sionately, lifting her head, and tossing the 
 loose and long black hair out of her eyes, 
 " now, or ever ! We are giving up this 
 world. And we are giving up the other. 
 Oh, my God ! I can never say my prayers 
 again ! " And she stood up, her hands 
 pressed to her eyes as if they would shut 
 out light forever. 
 
 He stood up, too. "Well," he said. 
 "That's all. It shan't be. FU go back — 
 back to hell." He wavered a moment. 
 The sun burst out of the cloud and gilded 
 his hair, thin pale hair like a child's, blow- 
 ing about the face, the face that was weak 
 and wistful, with strange, soft, beautiful eyes. 
 "Yes," he said. "I'll go back to warming 
 my feet in the moonshine. I can rub along 
 with Esther. And if I can't — there's al- 
 ways water in the river. As for the child — 
 it's better than nothing." 
 
 " Than nothing," she said. 
 
 He looked at her, a sort of sullen sadness 
 in his eyes. " I'll break your heart if I 
 stay," he said. 
 
 " And you'll break it if you go ! " she 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 159 
 
 cried. And she moved swiftly, and threw 
 her arms about him and pressed her lips on 
 his. " No, no, no ! '' she cried, between her 
 kisses. " It is all over. It is done. We 
 shall always have each other. What do we 
 care for any one else! Heaven — it is a 
 dream, a fable ! It will be heaven to be 
 together. And after that, sleep ! " 
 
 "In one grave.*' 
 
 " Oh, why do you speak of graves ? '* she 
 exclaimed, with a vehement gesture. 
 
 ^^ Because it would be better if you were in 
 yours now, as every one would say." 
 
 " Very well. Let us say the worst that 
 can be said. Let us call it a grave. But 
 we are together in it. We shall always be 
 together. See, the sun has come out," she 
 cried between her passionate embraces. " I 
 take it for a sign. It was so dreary a 
 moment since, and now, look ! " and she 
 pointed down the reaches of dun gold and 
 misty violet along the great plain. " It is 
 like a valley in Eden." 
 
 " And we the first man and woman." 
 Do you know where we are ? It is 
 
 <c 
 
i6o THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 the old Stone of Sacrifice of the Sachems." 
 She stooped, and laid her hand upon it. 
 " I, Judith Dauntry," she said, " promise 
 you, Ellis GofF, the faithfulness, the obedi- 
 ence, of my life ! " 
 
 He bent, too, and laid his hand, cold and 
 trembling, over hers. ^^And I, Ellis GofF, 
 take the sacrifice," he said. 
 
 And if a more bleeding sacrifice were never 
 laid upon the stone, neither whispered the 
 thought of it. As she straightened herself 
 and gazed at him, with the new gladness in 
 her eyes, the sun transfigured all her tall and 
 shapely being into a thing of majestic beauty, 
 lingered in the brown depths of her eyes, 
 gave her face a bloom, the edges of her lips 
 a scarlet transparence, and made her smile a 
 radiance. " Come, now," she said, gathering 
 her cloak, and clasping his hand. 
 
 She stepped across the brook, and paused 
 over the pool where the vertical sunbeams 
 turned the pebbles at bottom into live jewels 
 — a ruby, an emerald, an amethyst — flash- 
 ing up through the clear depth. She re- 
 leased her grasp, and kneeled down, and 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN i6i 
 
 dipped both hands in the pure water. 
 " See ! " she said, " I wash off all the old 
 days, the old faiths, the old ways. It is a 
 baptism into the new — no, the old, the 
 very old ! Dip your hands in, too, Ellis ! 
 Now we go back to nature.'* 
 
 She did not notice that the sun went in 
 and left only gray pebbles at the bottom of 
 the pool. She forgot her sorrows, her fears, 
 her doubts, her misery of the morning. She 
 went along in the sudden blaze of a joy 
 burning itself out as swiftly as intensely. 
 
 So they followed the brook's way till it 
 skirted the edge of Harden Hill, and sud- 
 denly with rapids and falls dipped into the 
 valley, where they lost sight of the source 
 and the great plain and saw only the ring of 
 hills and the farm, around one promontory 
 of which the brook washed before it wound 
 again about the base of the hills and went 
 down and past the town to find the river 
 and at last the embracing sea. 
 
 Through the cut of the hills one saw the 
 sparkle of the spire below ; no other dwell- 
 ing was in sight; the wooded slopes en- 
 
i62 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 circled the spot like giants lying at their 
 ease. Here in the dimple of rich land be- 
 fore them lay Judith Dauntry's home, and 
 their prison. 
 
 The farm filled the hollow ; except for 
 garden-spots, when it became hers Judith 
 had it laid down to grass. She had a little 
 money at interest, left her with the farm by 
 her parents, who had come from England 
 and settled here. They had nothing else, 
 these two ; for Ellis had given Esther his 
 own house, and she had sold it and gone 
 with her child to her mother — perhaps with 
 the vague hope that he would follow her 
 when the spell that Judith Dauntry had cast 
 upon him should come to naught. He had 
 been living in a hut in the woods since then. 
 
 But the two understood what was before 
 them. They would expose themselves to 
 the retribution of insult no more than was 
 unavoidable. A wandering factor had al- 
 ways bought the standing grass ; the garden- 
 plots would give them vegetables sufficient 
 for the year; there were maples in the 
 wood-lot for their sugar; and for the rest 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 163 
 
 there were the domestic animals, and there 
 were a few sheep on the hillside whose 
 fleeces Judith would spin and weave ; and 
 with this they would be nearly independent 
 of the world. At present they had clothes ; 
 and when anything further was needed it was 
 not impossible for Ellis to make a detour 
 through the woods and over the hills to 
 places where he was unknown. Once a 
 year must Judith confront the human race : 
 when she went to draw her pittance of 
 money. And so they began the long days 
 and nights. 
 
 Judith gave herself no time to think. 
 She would have the low, dark rooms pleas- 
 ant for Ellis. She found long evergreen 
 trailers ; and she brought the forest she had 
 loved into the house with great hemlock 
 boughs, not knowing that to Ellis, whose 
 nature was that to which companionship, 
 people and the gay side of life are sympa- 
 thetic, the forest and its gloom and awesome- 
 ness only accented trouble. She put his 
 clothes in order, singing all day long; she 
 made him savory dishes, and filled his pipe ; 
 
i64 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 and wherever she was in the house on the 
 dark and dour November days sunshine 
 seemed to follow her. 
 
 For a while, too, he met her on this 
 plane. It was a long day-dream of joy. 
 They looked neither backward nor forward ; 
 they were in a radiant present, indifferent as 
 the madman to whom it matters not though 
 palaces fall and continents crumble while he 
 plays with straws in the sunshine. If into 
 this day-dream there crept the least faint 
 suffusion of something like nightmare — I 
 know not what — perhaps an unrecognized 
 sense each of wrong to the other — neither 
 at first perceived it. But it spread like the 
 shadow of a sailing cloudy it never lifted ; 
 and it darkened now and then to gloom. It 
 was some time before Judith in her own 
 deep content observed that the smile on his 
 face had become a seldom thing. It did not 
 fairly enter her perception till the night of 
 the charivari. 
 
 It had taken many weeks for the virtue 
 of the town below to discover and realize 
 and resent the outrage that had been done 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 165 
 
 it. But at last it had become penetrated 
 with the consciousness of sin in the neigh- 
 borhood ; and it had taken punishment into 
 its own hands. 
 
 It was in the dead of the winter night, in 
 the middle of the January thaw, that Judith 
 waked with hideous cries and fierce discords 
 of blaring horns rending the air about her. 
 As soon as she could move, for the beating 
 of her heart, she crept to the window and 
 through the crack of the curtain looked out 
 on a mob of men and boys, hooting and 
 hallooing, beating on drums and gongs, blow- 
 ing fish-horns, singing ribald songs, uttering 
 derisive yells, filling all the place with an 
 incredible foulness of outcry. Perhaps it 
 was the fit way to characterize guilt — it 
 seemed to Judith suddenly as if she were 
 the virtue and they were the vice. She 
 went back, and took Ellis in her arms, and 
 lay there feeling the long shudders that 
 swept him from head to foot. She did not 
 kiss him, or caress him. All at once she 
 knew that her kiss or caress at that moment 
 would be hateful to him. She only held his 
 
1 66 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 head upon her breast, and clasped him closer 
 as insult after insult struck her, and vile 
 words pierced her ears like stabs. And she 
 felt him cower as she held him. 
 
 How long the ordeal might have lasted, 
 one cannot say ; but the south wind blowing 
 down the gap brought with it a burst of 
 rain ; and in the chill and soaking shower 
 the crowd melted away. 
 
 But neither Judith nor her lover stirred 
 or spoke for many hours. They lay awake 
 till the dark winter dawn, she with thrills 
 of apprehension and of defiance that were 
 agony, he blenching and horror-struck. 
 Then the white light struck up the ceiling, 
 and they saw that the rain had turned to 
 snow, and a merciful pure mantle covered 
 all signs of the night. " I have been the 
 means of your enduring this ! " he said. 
 And then he shook with a torrent of tears 
 as fierce as the sleet that whipped the pane ; 
 and she sat beside him, and lifted his head 
 to her shoulder, and hushed him, pouring 
 over him the calmness of her courage. 
 
 " If we go away ? " she said, half unwill- 
 ingly. 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 167 
 
 " Where will we go that our guilt will not 
 go, too ? " he cried. 
 
 But by and by he slept. And when he 
 came down the fire was sparkling, and the 
 coffee was hot, and there was work to do ; 
 and presently anger took the place of fear, 
 and dulness finally scarred the wounds both 
 of anger and of grief. 
 
 "If Esther should get a divorce — " he 
 said, as they sat beside the hearth a few 
 nights later, the fire glancing over Judith's 
 sumptuous red and brown colors brightening 
 his white face into something ethereal before 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Would you ask her ! " said Judith. 
 " Would you accept mercy at her hands ! " 
 
 " Then we could marry ! '* the whelp 
 urged. 
 
 '' And with no sin ? " asked Judith, laugh- 
 ing bitterly. "We will not deceive our- 
 selves, at any rate. The sin would be the 
 same, even if it were legalized. Divorce 
 simply makes sin lawful. And then it is 
 called by another name. It is the same still, 
 only it ceases to be a crime because it ceases 
 to be against law." 
 
i68 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 "At all events it would be obeying the 
 law." 
 
 . " I have no voice in making the law, why 
 should I obey it ? " 
 
 " I had a voice, though," said Ellis. 
 
 " And what are we saying anyway ? " cried 
 Judith, joyously. " We agreed that sin had 
 no part in us, that we were returning to 
 nature ! " 
 
 "Well, well," he added presently, "we 
 can sell the farm." 
 
 *^ No one will buy it," Judith replied. 
 
 " Then we can leave it, and go seek our 
 fortunes." 
 
 "On the road? You are fit for it!" 
 cried Judith, her blood up, her resentment 
 fired. " No ; we will stay here. Come what 
 will, we have our rights here. If we have 
 done wrong, we will take our punishment 
 here." 
 
 Perhaps she wished him to say they had 
 done no wrong. But he was silent. And 
 Judith had already begun to take her pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 The mood passed, however, with the 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 169 
 
 storm. And Ellis found his fiddle and 
 played out his dreams ; and as she listened 
 and gazed at him, grown white and thin, 
 with the melancholy droop of the eye, what 
 was still any remembrance of home or any 
 hope of heaven ? When, the old violin laid 
 aside, Judith sat at his feet before the fire, 
 as his arm lay on her shoulder, she felt her 
 soul .go out of her with his kiss upon her 
 mouth ; and while he gazed at the proud 
 outlines and the rich colors of her face and 
 at the soft darkening of her glowing eyes 
 brimming with tenderness, here was home, 
 and here was heaven, and their love justified 
 itself to him. 
 
 At last the soft spring weather came, with 
 high light in the pale azure, with the gleam 
 upon the hills like a shimmer of green sun- 
 shine far and wide, with the murmur of in- 
 numerable water-courses, with a heaven full 
 of perfumed air. And then there was much 
 to do out of doors, and she helped him in 
 the garden-plots and in the fields, and she 
 set out her plants and slipped them and 
 made the flower-beds. And the smile came 
 
lyo THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 back to his face and the song to his lip, and 
 the cunning to his hand upon the strings ; 
 and they sat at night upon the doorstone in 
 the cool sweet dark and heard the shrill 
 piping of frogs, and the murmurs far away 
 among the hills, and felt themselves a part 
 of the great world of wonder of the night, 
 and forgot the world that was well lost. 
 
 Dusk and dawn now for many days it 
 had been hot and dry ; and the corn was 
 high in the field, when the virtue of the 
 town happened to remember itself, and a 
 crowd, led largely by the need of excitement 
 and the inherent love of baiting the defence- 
 less, visited the farm, with horns and cat- 
 calls, as before, with showers of stones and 
 clamor of obscene railing. When the mob 
 had gone there was hardly a whole pane of 
 glass left in the house, the live stock were 
 scared away, the corn was trodden into the 
 soil, and the fire that had destroyed the crop 
 of grass was still pouring down the slope in 
 billows to be quenched only in the brook. 
 
 It chanced that Judith and Ellis heard 
 the rout coming, and had time to escape to 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 171 
 
 a secure hiding-place in the wood. When 
 at daybreak they returned to the desolated 
 place, Judith's indignation was at a white 
 heat. " We pay our tax ! " she cried. 
 "And we have a right to protection. I 
 will go to the selectmen and demand repara- 
 tion ! " 
 
 " Better let sleeping dogs lie," said Ellis. 
 "If those people chose they could put us in 
 the state-prison. We can claim nothing of 
 the law. We live in defiance of law." And 
 there was something hard and glittering in 
 his eye. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Judith, " you regret it ! " 
 
 " I regret nothing," said he. 
 
 " Nothing ! " she repeated with a note of 
 joy. " As for their law," she said presently, 
 " it is the thought and will of people a hun- 
 dred years ago. Why should we be gov- 
 erned by the whim of men dead for a 
 century and less wise than we when living ? 
 We are a law to ourselves ! — And the grass 
 will grow again," she added. She had a 
 sort of angry joy, as if she took sides with 
 martyrdom, while tramping wood and 
 
172 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 meadow with Ellis to find the cows, to see 
 the chickens one by one come home to 
 roost, waiting on him as he reset the panes 
 of glass. 
 
 When all was done, a few evenings later, 
 they sat at the brookside where the stream 
 bayed out before winding round the head 
 of the farm, and watched the night fall 
 softly through the flush of the sunset 
 painted there. For the only good fortune 
 of these two was that nature seemed to 
 melt into their condition, to be their friend 
 and their consolation — they in some way 
 uncertain of being all in all to each other, 
 she uncertain of his respect, he uncertain 
 of her long allegiance. They lingered there 
 as if they dreaded going up to the house, 
 as if while they were out of doors they 
 were like the other wild things of the out- 
 door state and subject to no laws but those 
 of unfettered life. He rubbed his hands 
 in the bayberry growing there, in order 
 to remove the scent of the material with 
 which he had been working. "It is only 
 to do again,'* he said. " It would be better 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 173 
 
 — it would be better — if we had gone 
 away/' 
 
 " Perhaps so. In the first place," said 
 Judith, remembering that once she had half 
 suggested it. 
 
 " Then no one would have known ; and 
 we should not be outcasts. We are out- 
 casts, Judith." 
 
 " I do not mind that, if you do not. 
 And if we had gone in the beginning — 
 But now, never ! " cried Judith. " I will 
 not be driven by wretches like that from 
 my father's house, from my own dwelling ! 
 They have filled me with hate where there 
 was nothing but kindness. Let them look 
 at their own sins ! " 
 
 " And hate," said Ellis, " is suffering." 
 
 " You loved the world, the people of the 
 world, more than I did," she said. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "but I love you 
 more than them." 
 
 And silently they stayed there under the 
 stars, in the midnight and the dew, half 
 dreaming, half awake, in each other's arms, 
 the dank and fragrant wind blowing over 
 
174 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 them as it blows over graves, till the 
 summer night was wearing itself away to 
 dawn. 
 
 The two had but little more than repaired 
 the mischief of the last raid when they were 
 again assailed by that element of the town 
 which found the thing not only good sport 
 but a sort of sop to conscience. This time 
 they caught Ellis before he could make shel- 
 ter. Possibly they had not meant to burn 
 any of the buildings, but, their tar taking fire, 
 the burning barn, with its occupants, lighted 
 them upon their hideous work. They were 
 satisfied when it was done ; and they left 
 in a straggling body, singing songs that 
 echoed into the firmament that had blenched 
 before the flames which Judith, from her 
 nook among the reeds, saw red within the 
 brook, as if the brook rolled blood. 
 
 The horrible object that was creeping 
 feebly away to the forest, and that Judith 
 found and brought home, by that time ut- 
 terly overcome, bore no more resemblance to 
 Ellis Gofi^ than any shapeless viscous mass 
 does to an ivory sculpture. In the midst 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 175 
 
 of her anguish she remembered a picture 
 she had seen of some foul harpy. But she 
 did her best, swiftly and silently, with stim- 
 ulants, with warmth, with shards, laboring 
 all night and day and night again, till he 
 was able to help himself, and nursing him 
 through the long illness of wounds and 
 bruises and shattered nerves. He was 
 dearer to her than ever now. He needed 
 her. And if the poetry had gone out of her 
 love, there was in it the fierceness of tender- 
 ness, the passion of protection, that a she- 
 lion may feel for her cub. 
 
 One day Judith had gone wandering 
 barefoot down the bed of the brook, look- 
 ing for leeches, having fancied they might 
 be of use to Ellis in his headaches. Just 
 where the shallows ended, some children 
 were picking berries from the bushes on the 
 banks and pulling water-cresses from among 
 the stream-washed pebbles. Judith, still in 
 the water, stood and watched them for a 
 moment. Presently one of them ran to her 
 with a stem of berries, offering them. 
 " You must not eat those ! " cried Judith. 
 " They are poison ! " 
 
176 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 The child, who had been attracted per- 
 haps by the brown and gold sunshine of 
 Judith's face, perhaps through some con- 
 genital force, a little abashed now by the 
 rebuff, turned to run, when Judith put out 
 a hand to detain her and to look in the rosy 
 dimpled face where the blue eyes beamed 
 from a tangle of long brown lashes. 
 " What is your name ? " she asked. 
 
 " Ellie Goff," was the reply. " We hgye 
 run away,'* said the child, with a sweet in- 
 fantile accent. " There is a bad woman up 
 here, and we have come to see her." 
 
 Judith for an instant, half a heart-beat, 
 felt as if an adder had stung her. And then 
 the blood stormed up and darkened her 
 eyes as she gazed. She did not heed the 
 words much, after the first blenching. She 
 did not give the child's mother a thought. 
 It was Ellis's child. Suddenly she snatched 
 the child in her arms, and held her to her 
 heart and kissed the little frightened mouth, 
 and set her down and hurried away so 
 quickly, the water plashing about her, that 
 she seemed to vanish. But from that time 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 177 
 
 Judith felt an emptiness, a strange aching 
 want, not for anything that had gone out of 
 her life, but for something that would never 
 come into it. 
 
 Ellis was still very weak and ill when the 
 minister came up the brookside, finding no 
 one in the house, and saw Judith sitting be- 
 side the bed that she had heaped of hemlock 
 boughs out there, and on which Ellis lay 
 like a white shadow. 
 
 The severity with which the good man 
 was steeled melted a little at the sight. 
 Then his long-stimulated sense of right and 
 righteousness revolted against the pity. 
 "Ellis Goff!" he said sternly. "Where 
 are your wife and child ? " 
 
 Ellis GofF looked at him. But there was 
 not a ray of recognition in the pale eyes. 
 
 "You see," said Judith, her dark face 
 now colorless with waiting and watching and 
 wrath, "to what you and your sort have 
 brought him ! '' 
 
 " Judith Dauntry," said the minister, " I 
 see to what your and his sin has brought 
 him." Then after a moment, and with a 
 
178 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 second thought, he added : " But I did not 
 come to accuse you. I came to help you — 
 if I might." 
 
 " You are very good," said Judith, from 
 all the height of her fault. "We do not 
 need your help." 
 
 "You need it very much," said the minis- 
 ter gently. " No one has ever needed it 
 more." 
 
 " Very well," said Judith, the color now 
 sweeping over her face till it looked like a 
 flower in the sun. " We decline to receive 
 it. Be so good as to go away." 
 
 And then, as he did not turn, she stooped 
 and took Ellis in her strong arms. " If you 
 do not go, you will drive us out of the light 
 and air," she said. 
 
 It seemed impossible to the minister, as 
 he looked at the splendid creature suddenly 
 flaming there, that she could be a thing of 
 shame. She was, rather, like some great 
 angel of succor to the suffering. Not like 
 those forces of Death and Sleep bearing off 
 Sarpedon of which he had lately been read- 
 ing, but like an emanation of light and life. 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 179 
 
 Except so far as earth is beautiful, the 
 earthly and the animal had no part in her 
 just then. 
 
 " No/' said he, " let me stay a little while. 
 That is too big a burden for you. Put him 
 down. If I talk with you I will not offend 
 you." And he seated himself on the rock 
 where the brook's spray in seasons of flood 
 had thickened the moss to a velvet carpet. 
 
 No one spoke for a time. The sky soared 
 far and blue, a soft wind blew through it, 
 birds darted here and there in it; swallows 
 skimmed across the pools that answered the 
 gleam of their wings with a sword-blue shim- 
 mer; only the bubbling of the brook broke 
 the sweet stillness, running on all unaware 
 of anything but feeding springs and bending 
 heavens and calling seas. 
 
 " Judith," said the minister at last, ^^ I 
 knew your father and mother. I gave them 
 the bread of communion. I christened you. 
 If you care nothing for their good name, nor 
 for the Lord above us all, at least you must 
 know that the life you are living is — small 
 though the consideration be — a reproach to 
 my work among my people." 
 
i8o THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 " I live my own life/' said Judith, holding 
 her head haughtily, although her eyes were 
 lowered under their heavy white lids. 
 
 " No one lives his life alone. The world 
 is on one side of us, the law of God upon 
 the other/' 
 
 " Love is the fulfilling of the law," said 
 Judith with a sudden lightning of the eyes. 
 
 "You take the word profanely on your 
 lips. Do you think that means such love as 
 yours and his ? " 
 
 Judith turned and gazed at the white, still 
 being on the dark hemlock boughs, her 
 heart swelling with a surging tenderness. 
 " Oh," she murmured to herself, " God can 
 yearn to his creation in no other way than I 
 yearn toward him ! " But she said nothing 
 aloud. 
 
 "You know," said the minister, still 
 gently, " that the love referred to is that 
 of man to man, of God in man, which makes 
 the common weal, the good of the com- 
 munity — " 
 
 "The community ! " exclaimed Judith, fac- 
 ing him with an infinite disdain. "The people 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN i8i 
 
 who destroy crops, who burn buildings with 
 the animals in them, singing vile songs, call- 
 ing vile names, subjecting a man like Ellis — 
 one known among them — to the most in- 
 famous torture short of crucifixion — mak- 
 ing him what you see him ! No. I came 
 out from that community. I left it, thank 
 God ! I want nothing of it." 
 
 "And you want everything," said the 
 minister — " its science, its medicine, its 
 help, its sympathy." 
 
 " I ask nothing of it but that it shall let 
 me alone. I will have — I swear it ! I 
 swear it by his sufferings ! — neither its for- 
 giveness nor its forbearance — " 
 
 " Then it cannot let you alone." 
 
 " I curse it ! " said Judith, lifting her arms 
 high in imprecation. " I curse it from the 
 bottom of my heart ! " 
 
 And the minister went away. And Judith 
 sat through the great noon stillness, too 
 much of a tumult in her soul to feel any- 
 thing of the brooding power in that 
 
 " Eternal sky 
 Full of light and of deity,'* 
 
1 82 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 watching the brook go by sweeping all its 
 enamel of damascene blue with it, a new 
 misery coming with the thought that so life 
 as well was flowing by to some great end 
 where she and Ellis might be sundered as 
 widely apart as any two drops of the spray 
 that flashed and foamed where the stream 
 rippled round the rock and sung him now 
 to sleep. 
 
 But the brook always brought her com- 
 fort; she saw the two drops melting into 
 one, and she smiled, changing the shadow 
 of the screening boughs as the light shifted. 
 She kneeled and held his thin hand above 
 her heart, feeling that she fought any fate 
 that would come between them. Then she 
 went up to the house and brought down his 
 food and her own — and she sat watching 
 him through the wheeling hours without a 
 conscious sensation other than of aching 
 tenderness. 
 
 It was the next Sunday that the minister 
 preached a sermon on the rights of the indi- 
 vidual sinner, which perhaps he did not very 
 well understand himself; which certainly his 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 183 
 
 people did not understand ; but the spirit of 
 which was like an atmosphere of mercy. 
 And occupied, perhaps, with their own in- 
 iquities, the townspeople left Ellis and 
 Judith to theirs. 
 
 The . minister, indeed, came up again ; 
 but no one appeared. Under cover of dark- 
 ness, too, he brought medicines and strength- 
 ening things for Ellis. He found them 
 afterward where he had left them, with the 
 book, with the newspaper, untouched. And 
 in a melancholy dissatisfaction with himself, 
 in an angry rancor against sin, and a dark 
 foreboding for them, he left them to their 
 own devices. 
 
 The doctor, a young man full of enthu- 
 siasms, was not so easily repulsed. " I am 
 not sure," he said to Judith, "that I am 
 doing you a kindness. But humanity re- 
 quires it. Now he will live. And that 
 signifies — ? " 
 
 " Oh, all heaven and earth ! " she an- 
 swered passionately. 
 
 "Is it really then so much worth while to 
 
1 84 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 "It is worth the whole of life and of eter- 
 nity ! " she cried, lifting her great solemn 
 eyes. 
 
 " Upon my word/' he said, " I may un- 
 derstand the theory and practice of medicine, 
 but I do not understand you. What is 
 there in this man — I think I have earned 
 the right to ask — that you should give up 
 everything life has to offer for the sake of 
 coming into this prison with him ? " 
 
 " I have not found it a prison." 
 
 " You will ! " 
 
 "As it may be." 
 
 "You are under an infatuation, a mad- 
 ness," said the doctor, still probing the sore. 
 "You should be saved from it. You were 
 worth saving once. If Ellis Goff were 
 stronger, finer, not all worthless — But then 
 he would not be here. He has betrayed his 
 wife, abandoned his child, played false to his 
 friends. A weakling, idle, self-indulgent — " 
 
 " You have done all you can for him ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. There is nothing left but to 
 follow the regimen I have given." 
 
 " There is your fee, then. My obliga- 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 185 
 
 tion for your work has forced me to listen 
 so far. But no more." 
 
 And the doctor went out, leaving the fee 
 behind him, as if he had been dismissed 
 from an offended royal presence. 
 
 Now and then, partly through the divine 
 kindness of his profession, partly through 
 human interest and curiosity, he came again, 
 but never to suggest to her that Ellis Goff 
 was not a prince among men, and always to 
 feel that she regarded himself impersonally 
 as an instrument of health, like air or light, 
 not as one with whom shame, anger, or for- 
 giveness had any place or part. 
 
 But forgiveness was rarely in her thoughts. 
 One morning, indeed, when the climbing 
 rose that her mother had brought from the 
 home in the old country was in bloom, full 
 of fragrance, thrusting out its countless 
 sprays, and a trailer had caught her gown 
 as if one stretched a hand to take her, and 
 the flower with the dew still on it brushed 
 its velvet against her cheek and breathed its 
 breath on her lips, the face of her mother 
 seemed to swim like an apparition before 
 
i86 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 her, and the knowledge of what her 
 mother's thoughts concerning her must be 
 wrapped her in one instant like a flame. 
 She threw her arms about the rose, thorns 
 and all, and bowed her head upon them and 
 cried, till Ellis's voice in the distance, weak 
 and ailing, recalled her to the present. 
 
 Once a year in her camlet cloak and her 
 hood, Judith went down to the post-office, 
 at the time her small interest money was 
 due, went to the savings-bank and drew the 
 slender dividend, went to the town hall and 
 paid her tax, her head high, her eye level, 
 the color burning on her dark cheek; and 
 she returned by the path along the brook, 
 where Ellis came to meet her. At sight of 
 him she threw off her proud demeanor as 
 if it had been a coat of mail, and went back 
 with his hand in hers. " Who saw you, Ju- 
 dith ? " once he asked tremulously. 
 
 "No one," she answered calmly, "but 
 the business men, the machines." 
 
 She did not tell him that she had heard 
 the exclamation, " My God ! Can that be 
 Judith Dauntry ! " But she paused by a 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 187 
 
 still, dark cove of the brook, and with a 
 sunbeam striking her, hung over it a mo- 
 ment to see the red and gold splendor of 
 her reflection, the grace of line and curve, 
 the lustre of glance and smile. "Yes," she 
 said to herself, as she replaced her hood, " it 
 is Judith Dauntry. And all that she was in 
 the eyes of Ellis GoiF she is still.'* 
 
 Many a time after that in their rambles 
 did she pause to look at herself in one of 
 the brook's pools, through the sudden fear 
 that there was some change in the beauty 
 that the little looking-glass of the house 
 failed to give, so indifferent Ellis strangely 
 seemed, so rapt in thoughts other than any 
 thought of her, so like a person far away 
 from home. 
 
 Time passed ; Ellis played on the old 
 fiddle still — dreams, listless melodies, tune- 
 less wanderings ; often, too, with a false note 
 that he failed to mind. He spoke little, and 
 he strayed oflF into the woods, and was 
 sometimes gone for more than the day, 
 coming home dazed and limp and useless. 
 Often in the night he woke with a cold 
 
i88 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 sweat of terror, the sound of the old horns 
 and cries in his ears, clawing her, imploring 
 her protection. So seldom had his endear- 
 ments grown that even these moments gave 
 her a sort of fearful joy while she held him 
 in her strong young arms and soothed and 
 hushed him off to sleep again. 
 
 It became evident to Judith, by and by, 
 that that last dreadful night had wrought Ellis 
 a wrong from which he was not to recover — 
 as if he felt himself to be the thing his tort- 
 urers had made him. The abasement of it 
 had become his. She had brought it upon 
 him, she said ; and her defiance of the world 
 sank before the fact. 
 
 She resolved, although but vaguely, that 
 they should go away now, as soon as the 
 means could be compassed. A change of 
 base, a new existence, might revive the intel- 
 ligence that had failed with self-respect. 
 And she began to spare from their small in- 
 come, pinching and starving and living on 
 the hope of it. But as soon as the little 
 money was saved it had to be spent, after 
 Judith's long tramp across the hill and dusty 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 189 
 
 highway to the town where she was not 
 known, for something necessary to Ellis's 
 recovery. Season after season passed, and 
 they were still there. 
 
 One day Ellis came home from a day and 
 night's ramble in the woods of Harden Hill. 
 He had met some charcoal-burners there 
 and had made fellowship with them. Now 
 he staggered up the grass, and fell across the 
 doorstep. She ran to raise him : but for 
 her long habit of care she would have 
 dropped him as quickly, in his malodorous 
 and revolting condition. The contents of 
 their jugs had been urged upon him till he 
 was beside himself. Presently the experi- 
 ence was repeated. When she went for the 
 little hoard of money it was gone. When 
 the thing had happened the third time, she 
 ceased to save a penny. It was, however, a 
 rare occurrence afterward ; but she never felt 
 entirely safe except when she had left him 
 asleep and had come down at night to the 
 brookside to be alone with the stars. In 
 some strange way the murmuring of the 
 brook seemed always the voice of a friend. 
 
I90 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 " See/' it said then, " when f^am still I mir- 
 ror the stars of heaven. Be still, too. Some 
 time I shall find the great sea, and the 
 mighty crests will take me, and I shall know 
 myself no more." Alas ! It had come to 
 this ! Still in the flush of youth, still Hving, 
 still loving, she was looking to death as a 
 refuge. Often, of a summer morning, she 
 took her work out to the brookside ; the 
 busy babble of the water gave them both a 
 sense of the stir of the world. Fortunate 
 brook, it was going somewhere ! Often 
 there was no work; and while Ellis thought 
 he angled for trout, she idly dreamed dis- 
 jointed dreams — for she might not think of 
 that past before Ellis came into her life ; and 
 there was no future. More often than 
 otherwise the texts her father had used to 
 read aloud would start up in her memory, 
 texts that in those days had meant nothing 
 to her, and now meant an unformed terror. 
 " I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall 
 devour every green tree in thee,'' she said. 
 And then the bitter words recurred to her 
 memory : " Thou shalt drink of thy sister's 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 191 
 
 cup, deep and large — It containeth much — 
 thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and 
 sorrow, with the cup of abomination and 
 desolation." The intense luxuriance of 
 green in leaf and bough, the crystal floods 
 of light, the singing wind, the billowing fra- 
 grances and woody spices, the redundance 
 of life in all the springing, growing summer, 
 no longer gladdened her, it made her tremble. 
 " When the whole earth rejoiceth I will make 
 thee desolate ! " she said. 
 
 Ellis did no work now ; Judith did it all, 
 outdoors and within. If she grew hard 
 and sinewy and old before her time, there 
 was none to see but Ellis — and did he 
 care? In the summers he went to bed like 
 a child, at nightfall ; and she sat on the 
 sunken doorstep, sometimes thinking bitter 
 thoughts, sometimes a sweet memory touch- 
 ing her in the dark like a wandering per- 
 fume, sometimes her mind as empty as the 
 vast dusk across which the bats flitted indis- 
 tinctly. Of a winter night he slept in his 
 chair, and she mended their clothes on the 
 other side of the fire. And it came about 
 
192 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 at last that observing him, thin, pallid, va- 
 cant, she felt the bounding fulness of her 
 own life, and saw as plainly as if it were 
 before her eyes that the bubble she had 
 grasped had broken between her fingers. 
 
 It made no difference. If it were not the 
 old passionate love, it was pity. And the 
 pity was a pain. And the pity was all he 
 needed. 
 
 " You treat me like a child," he said petu- 
 lantly at some precaution she took. 
 
 "Well ; it is good to be a child," she an- 
 swered. 
 
 " Yes. I should like to be a child again. 
 I should not do just as I have done," he 
 said, after a moment. " Perhaps I should 
 not be here. Would you be here again, 
 Judith ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Judith. 
 
 " I don't suppose any one would call you 
 a good woman, Judith ? " then he asked 
 plaintively. 
 
 " No," said Judith. But her eyes dark- 
 ened. 
 
 " Then it doesn't matter if I wouldn't do 
 as you would? " 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 193 
 
 " Nothing matters now/' said Judith. 
 
 " Are you angry, Judith ? They used to 
 say you had a temper. Do you remember 
 the dance when all the men wanted to dance 
 with you so that you thought they were 
 making game, and it affronted you, and you 
 started for home alone, and I ran after and 
 went along with you ? I could, you know. 
 I was a married man. And they drank your 
 health at the supper afterward. ^ Judith 
 Dauntry ! ' Ross Marvin said. * A name to 
 conjure with ! ' And Ben Turner called out, 
 ^ Don't use that name too freely ! ' And of 
 course the girls didn't like it. ^ Unless you 
 want to see a pair of black eyes flash light- 
 ning ! ' said Ann Talbot. Judith Dauntry 
 had black eyes, you know. That was in 
 the good old days. Yes, that night was the 
 beginning, Judith. Your father was at the 
 gate — he was a good man — " 
 
 " Don't ! " cried Judith sharply. 
 
 " Don't what? — He died next year. Yes. 
 Sometimes, do you know, Judith, I seem to 
 myself like another man. It's a long while 
 ago, isn't it? There was a woman named 
 
194 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 Esther — Judith ! wasn't Ross Marvin, 
 wasn't Ben Turner, with the men that came 
 up here one black night? There was a 
 black night? It wasn't a dream, a night- 
 mare, was it, Judith? Oh, Judith, come 
 here, take hold of me, help me ! " And un- 
 til he forgot himself again Judith comforted 
 him as a mother comforts her nursling. 
 
 One summer crept by after another. 
 There was nothing by which to tell this 
 winter from the last. They saw no people, 
 except the chance wayfarer or the charcoal- 
 burners ; they had no newspaper ; no whis- 
 per of the way the world went came to 
 them. The minister died ; Esther died ; 
 they never heard of it. A pestilence of 
 fever passed ; it did not touch them. War 
 swept its red fire over the land ; they felt 
 nothing of it. They were forgotten ; and 
 they did not know it. 
 
 If sometimes an infinite weariness took 
 possession of Judith, if sometimes this weak 
 and querulous shadow of a man seemed 
 something far oflF and alien, she remembered 
 that even with that she had brought him to 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 195 
 
 his evil plight. And she knew, without 
 formulating it, that she was better with him 
 than without him ; she said to herself that, 
 of two old trees grown side by side, if one 
 be taken away, presently the other fails and 
 falls. 
 
 One day the meagre interest money did 
 not come. Judith had been defrauded by 
 the agent. She had to draw from the sum 
 in the savings bank. As long as that sum 
 eked itself out she paid her tax. But there 
 came a time when no tax had been paid for 
 so long, that the officials visited the place. 
 They saw a brown and withered woman at 
 the chopping-log, an ashen, wizened man in 
 the doorway, playing weakly a droning fid- 
 dle to no tune other than that the frogs 
 piped in the marshes of the brook below. 
 And at the end of a few questions they went 
 away and let the taxes go. When — after 
 her long absences grown indiffisrent to the 
 public eye — Judith went down into the 
 town with some baskets she had woven 
 from osiers, hoping to sell them, she lost 
 her way among new thoroughfares, new 
 
196 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 buildings, new faces ; the old town was 
 gone. 
 
 But she did not realize that with the old 
 town was gone also the full knowledge of 
 her misdeed, that she herself had become 
 little more than a tradition. 
 
 The living was scanty now — sometimes 
 the broth of one of the chickens of their 
 dwarfed breed or of some little wild creature 
 taken in a snare, the garden-crop that Judith 
 raised, the bread and porridge she made 
 herself of grain beaten in a mortar or 
 ground between two stones. All the money 
 they had was that which the factor paid 
 them for the grass, cheating them in price 
 and measure. Life was simplified to the 
 mere fact of keeping alive. Lean and hag- 
 gard, wrecks of themselves, they looked at 
 each other merely with the eyes of usage. 
 There were periods in which Ellis did not 
 speak a word ; possibly there were no 
 thoughts in his mind ; possibly the thoughts 
 were too cruel for words. One day he sud- 
 denly transfixed her with a glance in the 
 pale eye that had lost its old shadow of long 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 197 
 
 black lashes, a glance that might have been 
 struck from blue steel. " Do you know," 
 he said sternly, *^ where Judith Daun- 
 try is?" 
 
 She ran to him and threw her arms about 
 him. Old, bleary, unlovely, the soul for 
 love of which she had made the world dust 
 in the balance was still hidden there. 
 " Here I am ! Here I am ! Oh, Ellis, 
 don't you know me ? " she cried. 
 
 He loosened her hands. "You are tak- 
 ing a liberty," was what his manner said. 
 But he made no sound. 
 
 At other times he knew who she was per- 
 fectly well, and submitted with a gentle 
 patience to the ministrations that kept him 
 scrupulously clean. Occasionally he walked 
 out with her to the brook, leaning on his 
 stick and on her arm with the old confi- 
 dence. Sitting beside the lucid brown and 
 white depths and sparkles, the murmur of 
 the rippling flow would lull him into a half 
 sleep of which the dreams may have been 
 apparitions from the days of his youth. 
 For he would start and say to her, " Was it 
 
198 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 well done, Judith ? Are you sorry now?** 
 And she would press the thin and freckled 
 hand to her sunken lips, and think how 
 great and splendid were the fires of their 
 youth to be such ashes now ! 
 
 The flowing of the brook always so 
 quieted the restlessness of Ellis that they 
 had long been wont to stumble along to- 
 gether and rest there in pleasant weather, 
 saying nothing, thinking nothing, lost in 
 some inane dream. If Judith went over 
 again and again the days that were no 
 more, she gave no sign. If she spoke it 
 was about the yarn she knit, the habits of 
 the speckled hen, the rheumatism that bent 
 and gnarled them both. She had ceased to 
 think of herself as an abandoned woman ; so 
 far as she thought of it at all she had a dim 
 sense of being virtuous. 
 
 They had been sitting there in silence a 
 long time one afternoon, when he suddenly 
 looked up startled and bewildered. " Some 
 one said — who was it?" he exclaimed — 
 " some one just told me that Ellis GoflF was 
 dead. — Poor fellow," he said, a few moments 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 199 
 
 afterward. It was like a great flash of reve- 
 lation to Judith. 
 
 Ellis GofF was dead indeed not many days 
 later. He stole away one morning as Judith 
 was occupied inside the house, and hobbled 
 along to the brook, and followed its wind- 
 ing up and up into the pass of the hills, and 
 then stooped and drank from the palm of 
 his old hand the drops that dashed into it. 
 She found him half his length across the 
 Stone of Sacrifice, half in the pool where he 
 had bent to see the pebbles turned into live 
 jewels again or had fallen face downward in 
 the water. But there were no jewels flash- 
 ing splendor from the clear depth when Ju- 
 dith found him. It was dark night. Only 
 one star glinting there showed there was 
 a heaven above. 
 
 When the old doctor came up, as he 
 occasionally did, and led by some indistinct 
 sound followed along the brook the next 
 morning, he saw Judith sitting there, staring 
 into Ellis's dead face as his head lay on her 
 knee, now singing as a mother sings to her 
 child, now cooing like a dove, now scream- 
 
200 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 ing like an eagle. Old, comfortless, Judith 
 Dauntry had gone mad. 
 
 They carried her away to the almshouse ; 
 and the town took the place for the taxes. 
 And in time the glancing, dancing brook 
 was set to turning wheels. But they never 
 could keep the old woman long away — she 
 tramping mile after mile to find it. The 
 children knew the gaunt figure in the long 
 cloak and hood as that of some tragic thing. 
 To-day the savage in them threw stones at 
 her; to-morrow they ran after her to hear 
 the low voice muttering, " Except that the 
 Lord had shortened those days, except that 
 the Lord had shortened those days." 
 
 One night the merry boys made a bonfire 
 of the old house. The flames wallowed up 
 the sky, and the brook repeated them again 
 to heaven. The later winter weather gave 
 the ruins a glitter of huge icicles. When 
 Judith toiled up the way at last and came 
 upon the charred and shining heap she gave 
 a great cry. " The wages of sin is death ! '' 
 she cried. She went along mechanically, as 
 though she would see if the brook had gone 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN 201 
 
 with the dwelling. And presently she sat 
 down upon the ice, bending her ear like one 
 who would listen more plainly to the music 
 of the tinkle underneath the icy mail. And 
 there she fell asleep and became ice herself 
 And when the Poormaster came up, swear- 
 ing under his breath, he found that Judith 
 Dauntry had taken her wages. 
 
Her Story 
 
Her Story 
 
 WELLNIGH the worst of it all is 
 the mystery. 
 If it were true, that accounts for my being 
 here. If it were not true, then the best thing 
 they could do with me was to bring me here. 
 Then, too, if it were true, they would save 
 themselves by hurrying me away ; and if it 
 were not true — You see, just as all roads 
 lead to Rome, all roads led me to this Re- 
 treat. If it were true, it was enough to craze 
 me ; and if it were not true, I was already 
 crazed. And there it is ! I can't make out, 
 sometimes, whether I am really beside my- 
 self or not ; for it seems that whether I was 
 crazed or sane, if it were true, they would 
 naturally put me out of sight and hearing — 
 bury me alive, as they have done, in this Re- 
 treat. They ? Well, no — he. She stayed 
 205 
 
2o6 HER STORY 
 
 at home, I hear. If she had come with us, 
 doubtless I should have found reason enough 
 to say to the physician at once that she was 
 the mad woman, not I — she, who, for the 
 sake of her own brief pleasure, could make 
 a whole after-life of misery for three of us. 
 She — Oh no, don't rise, don't go. I am 
 quite myself, I am perfectly calm. Mad! 
 There was never a drop of crazy blood in 
 the Ridgleys or the Bruces, or any of the 
 generations behind them, and why should it 
 suddenly break out like a smothered fire in 
 me ? That is one of the things that puzzle 
 me — why should it come to light all at 
 once in me if it were not true ? 
 
 Now, I am not going to be incoherent. 
 It was too kind in you to be at such trouble 
 to come and see me in this prison, this grave. 
 I will not cry out once : I will just tell you 
 the story of it all exactly as it was, and you 
 shall judge. If I can, that is — oh, if I can ! 
 For sometimes, when I think of it, it seems 
 as if Heaven itself would fail to take my 
 part if I did not lift my own voice. And I 
 cry, and I tear my hair and my flesh, till I 
 
HER STORY 207 
 
 know my anguish weighs down their joy, 
 and the little scale that holds that joy flies 
 up under the scorching of the sun, and God 
 sees the festering thing for what it is ! Ah, 
 it is not injured reason that cries out in that 
 way : it is a breaking heart ! 
 
 How cool your hand is, how pleasant 
 your face is, how good it is to see you ! 
 Don't be afraid of me : I am as much my- 
 self, I tell you, as you are. What an ab- 
 surdity ! Certainly any one who heard me 
 make such a speech would think I was in- 
 sane and without benefit of clergy. To ask 
 you not to be afraid of me because I am 
 myself Isn't it what they call a vicious 
 circle ? And then to cap the climax by add- 
 ing that I am as much myself as you are 
 myself! But no matter — you know better. 
 Did you say it was ten years ? Yes, I knew 
 it was as much as that — oh, it seems a hun- 
 dred years ! But we hardly show it : your 
 hair is still the same as when we were at 
 school ; and mine — Look at this lock — 
 I cannot understand why it is only sprinkled 
 here and there : it ought to be white as the 
 
2o8 HER STORY 
 
 driven snow. My babies are almost grown 
 women, Elizabeth. How could he do with- 
 out me all this time ? Hush now ! I am 
 not going to be disturbed at all ; only that 
 color of your hair puts me so in mind of 
 his : perhaps there was just one trifle more 
 of gold in his. Do you remember that lock 
 that used to fall over his forehead and which 
 he always tossed back so impatiently. I used 
 to think that the golden Apollo of Rhodes 
 had just such massive, splendid locks of 
 hair as that ; but I never told him ; I never 
 had the face to praise him ; she had. She 
 could exclaim how like ivory the forehead 
 was — that great wide forehead — how that 
 keen aquiline was to be found in the portrait 
 of the Spencer of two hundred years ago. 
 She could tell of the proud lip, of the fire 
 burning in the hazel eye. She knew how, 
 by a silent flattery, as she shrank away and 
 looked up at him, to admire his haughty 
 stature, and make him feel the strength and 
 glory of his manhood and the delicacy of 
 her womanhood. 
 
 She was a little thing — a little thing, but 
 
HER STORY 209 
 
 wondrous fair. Fair, did I say ? No : she 
 was dark as an Egyptian, but such perfect 
 features, such rich and splendid color, such 
 great soft eyes — so soft, so black — so 
 superb a smile ; and then such hair ! When 
 she let it down, the backward curling ends 
 lay on the ground and she stood on them, 
 or the children lifted them and carried them 
 behind her as pages carry a queen's train. 
 If I had my two hands twisted in that hair! 
 Oh, how I hate that hair ! It would make 
 as good a bowstring as ever any Carthaginian 
 woman's made. 
 
 Ah, that is atrocious ! I am sure you 
 think so. But living all these lonesome 
 years as I have done seems to double back 
 one's sinfulness upon one's self. Because 
 one is sane it does not follow that one is a 
 saint. And when I think of my innocent 
 babies playing with the hair that once I saw 
 him lift and pass across his lips ! But I will 
 not think of it ! 
 
 Well, well ! I was a pleasant thing to 
 look at myself once on a time, you know, 
 Elizabeth. He used to tell me so : those 
 
2IO HER STORY 
 
 were his very words. I was tall and slender, 
 and if my skin was pale it was clear with a 
 pearly clearness, and the lashes of my gray 
 eyes were black as shadows ; but now those 
 eyes are only the color of tears. 
 
 I never told a syllable about it — I never 
 could. It was so deep down in my heart, 
 that love I had for him : it slept there so 
 dark and still and full, for he was all I 
 had in the world. I was alone, an orphan 
 — if not friendless, yet quite dependent. I 
 see you remember it all. I did not even sit 
 in the pew with my cousin's family, — there 
 were so many to fill it, — but down in one 
 beneath the gallery, you know. And al- 
 together life was a thing to me that hardly 
 seemed worth the living. I went to church 
 one Sunday, I recollect, idly and dreamingly 
 as usual. I did not look off my book till a 
 voice filled my ear — a strange new voice, 
 a deep sweet voice, that invited you and 
 yet commanded you — a voice whose sound 
 divided the core of my heart, and sent thrills 
 that were half joy, half pain, coursing through 
 me. And then I looked up and saw him at 
 
HER STORY 211 
 
 the desk. He was reading the first lesson : 
 " Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have 
 called thee by thy name: thou art mine." 
 And I saw the bright hair, the bright up- 
 turned face, the white surplice, and I said to 
 myself. It is a vision, it is an angel; and I 
 cast down my eyes. But the voice went on, 
 and when I looked again he was still there. 
 Then I bethought me that it must be the 
 one who was coming to take the place of 
 our superannuated rector — the last of a fine 
 line, they had been saying the day before, 
 who, instead of finding his pleasure other- 
 wise, had taken all his wealth and prestige 
 into the Church. 
 
 Why will a trifle melt you so — a strain 
 of music, a color in the sky, a perfume? 
 Have you never leaned from the window 
 at evening, and had the scent of a flower 
 float by and fill you with as keen a sorrow 
 as if it had been disaster touching you? 
 Long ago, I mean — we never lean from 
 any windows here. I don't know how, but 
 it was in that same invisible way that this 
 voice melted me ; and when I heard it say- 
 
212 HER STORY 
 
 ing, " Behold, I will do a new thing ; now 
 It shall spring forth ; shall ye not know It ? 
 I will even make a way in the wilderness, 
 and rivers in the desert," I was fairly crying. 
 Oh, nervous tears, I dare say. The doctor 
 here would tell you so, at any rate. And 
 that is what I complain of here : they give 
 a physiological reason for every emotion — 
 they could give you a chemical formula for 
 your very soul, I have no doubt. Well, 
 perhaps they were nervous tears, for certainly 
 there was nothing to cry for, and the mood 
 went as suddenly as it came — changed to a 
 sort of exaltation, I suppose — and when 
 they sang the psalm, and he had swept in, 
 in his black gown, and had mounted the 
 pulpit stairs, and was resting that fair head 
 on the big Bible in his silent prayer, I too 
 was singing — singing like one possessed : 
 
 ** Then, to thy courts when I repair. 
 My soul shall rise on joyful wing, 
 The wonders of thy love declare. 
 
 And join the strain which angels sing." 
 
 And as he rose I saw him searching for the 
 
HER STORY 213 
 
 voice unconsciously, and our eyes met. 
 Oh, it was a fresh young voice, let it be 
 mine or whose. I can hear it now as if it 
 were someone else singing. Ah, ah, it has 
 been silent so many years ! Does it make 
 you smile to hear me pity myself? It is 
 not myself I am pitying: it is that fresh 
 young girl that loved so. But it used to 
 rejoice me to think that I loved him before 
 I laid eyes on him. 
 
 He came to my cousin's in the week — 
 not to see Sylvia or to see Laura : he talked 
 of church-music with my cousin, and then 
 crossed the room and sat down by me. I 
 remember how I grew cold and trembled — 
 how glad, how shy I was ; and then he had 
 me sing; and at first Sylvia sang with us, 
 but by and by we sang alone — I sang alone. 
 He brought me yellow old church music, 
 written in quaint characters : he said those 
 characters, those old square breves, were a 
 text guarding secrets of enchantment as 
 much as the text of Merlin's book did ; and 
 so we used to find it. Once he brought a 
 copy of an old Roman hymn, written only 
 
214 HER STORY 
 
 in the Roman letters : he said it was a hymn 
 which the ancients sang to Maia, the mother- 
 earth, and which the Church fathers adopted, 
 singing it stealthily in the hidden places of 
 the Catacombs ; and together we translated 
 it into tones. A rude but majestic thing it 
 was. 
 
 And once — The sunshine was falling 
 all about us in the bright lonely room, 
 and the shadows of the rose leaves at 
 the window were dancing over us. I had 
 been singing a Gloria while he walked up 
 and down the room, and he came up behind 
 me : he stooped and kissed me on the 
 mouth. And after that there was no more 
 singing, for, lovely as the singing was, the 
 love was lovelier yet. Why do I complain 
 of such a hell as this is now? I had my 
 heaven once — oh, I had my heaven once ! 
 And as for the other, perhaps I deserve it 
 all, for I saw God only through him : it was 
 he that waked me to worship. I had no 
 faith but Spencer's faith ; if he had been 
 a heathen, I should have been the same, and 
 creeds and systems might have perished for 
 
HER STORY 215 
 
 me had he only been spared from the 
 wreck. And he had loved me from the first 
 moment that his eyes met mine. " When I 
 looked at you/' he said, " singing that sim- 
 ple hymn that first day, I felt as I do when 
 I look at the evening star leaning out of the 
 clear sunset lustre : there is something in 
 your face as pure, as remote, as shining. It 
 will always be there,'* he said, " though you 
 should live a hundred years." He little 
 knew, he little knew ! 
 
 But he loved me then — oh yes, I never 
 doubted that. There were no happier 
 lovers trod the earth. We took our pleas- 
 ure as lovers do : we walked in the fields ; 
 we sat on the river's side ; together we 
 visited the poor and sick ; he read me the 
 passages he liked best in his writing from 
 week to week ; he brought me the verse 
 from which he meant to preach, and up in 
 the organ-loft I Improvised to him the 
 thoughts that it inspired in me. I did that 
 timidly Indeed : I could not think my 
 thoughts were worth his hearing till I forgot 
 myself, and only thought of him and the 
 
2i6 HER STORY 
 
 glory I would have revealed to him, and 
 then the great clustering chords and the full 
 music of the diapason swept out beneath my 
 hands — swept along the aisles and swelled 
 up the raftered roof as if they would find 
 the stars, and sunset and twilight stole 
 around us there as we sat still in the suc- 
 ceeding silence. I was happy : I was hum- 
 ble too. I wondered why I had been 
 chosen for such a blest and sacred lot. It 
 was so blessed to be allowed to minister 
 one delight to him. I had a little print 
 of the angel of the Lord appearing to 
 Mary with the lily of annunciation in his 
 hand, and I thought — I dare not tell you 
 what I thought. I made an idol of my 
 piece of clay. 
 
 When the leaves had turned we were 
 married, and he took me home. Ah, what 
 a happy home it was ! Luxury and beauty 
 filled it. When I first went into it and left 
 the chill October night without, fires blazed 
 upon the hearths ; flowers bloomed in every 
 room ; a marble Eros held a light up, 
 searching for his Psyche. " Our love has 
 
HER STORY aiy 
 
 found its soul/' said he. He led me to the 
 music-room — a temple in itself, for its 
 rounded ceiling towered to the height of 
 the house. There were golden organ-pipes 
 and banks of keys fit for St. Cecilia's use ; 
 there were all the delightful outlines of 
 violin and piccolo and harp and horn for 
 any who would use them ; there was a 
 pianoforte near the door for me — one such 
 as I had never touched before ; and there 
 were cases on all sides filled with the rarest 
 musical works. The floor was bare and in- 
 laid ; the windows were latticed in stained 
 glass, so that no common light of day ever 
 filtered through, but light bluer than the 
 sky, gold as the dawn, purple as the night ; 
 and then there were vast embowering chairs, 
 in any of which he could hide himself away 
 while I made my incantation, as he some- 
 times called it, of the great spirits of song. 
 As I tried the piano that night he tuned the 
 old Amati which he himself now and then 
 played upon, and together we improvised 
 our own epithalamium. It was the violin 
 that took the strong assuring part with 
 
21 8 HER STORY 
 
 strains of piercing sweetness, and the music 
 of the piano flowed along in a soft cantabile 
 of undersong. It seemed to me as if his 
 part was like the flight of some white and 
 strong-winged bird above a sunny brook. 
 
 But he had hardly created this place for 
 the love of me alone. He adored music as 
 a regenerator ; he meant to use it so among 
 his people : here were to be pursued those 
 labors which should work miracles when 
 produced in the open church. For he was 
 building a church with the half of his fort- 
 une — a church full of restoration of the old 
 and creation of the new : the walls within 
 were to be a frosty tracery of vines running 
 to break into the gigantic passion-flower 
 that formed the rose-window ; the lectern a 
 golden globe upon a tripod, clasped by a 
 silver dove holding on outstretched wings 
 the book. 
 
 I have feared, since I have been here, 
 that Spencer's piety was less piety than 
 partisanship : I have doubted if faith were 
 so much alive in him as the love of a great 
 perfect system, and the pride in it I know 
 
HER STORY 219 
 
 he always felt. But I never thought about 
 it then: I believed in him as I would have 
 believed in an apostle. So stone by stone 
 the church went up, and stone by stone our 
 lives followed it — lives of such peace, such 
 bliss ! Then fresh hopes came into it — 
 sweet trembling hopes ; and by and by our 
 first child was born. And if I had been 
 happy before, what was I then ? There are 
 some compensations in this world : such 
 happiness could not come twice, such happi- 
 ness as there was in that moment when 1 
 lay, painless and at peace, with the little 
 cheek nestled beside my own, while he bent 
 above us both, proud and glad and tender. 
 It was a dear little baby — so fair, so bright ! 
 and when she could walk she could sing. 
 Her sister sang earlier yet; and what music 
 their two shrill sweet voices made as they 
 sat in their little chairs together at twilight 
 before the fire, their curls glistening and 
 their red shoes glistening, while they sang 
 the evening hymn, Spencer on one side of 
 the hearth and I upon the other ! Some- 
 times we let the dear things sit up for a later 
 
220 HER STORY 
 
 hour in the music-room — for many a canti- 
 cle we tried and practised there that hushed 
 hearts and awed them when the choir gave 
 them on succeeding Sundays — and always 
 afterward I heard them singing in their 
 sleep, just as a bird stirs in his nest and sings 
 his stave in the night. Oh, we were happy 
 then ; and it was then she came. 
 
 She was the step-child of his uncle, and 
 had a small fortune of her own, and Spencer 
 had been left her guardian; and so she was 
 to live with us — at any rate, for a while. 
 I dreaded her coming. I did not want the 
 intrusion ; I did not like the things I heard 
 about her ; I knew she would be a discord in 
 our harmony. But Spencer, who had only 
 seen her once in her childhood, had been 
 told by some one who travelled in Europe 
 with her that she was delightful and had a 
 rare intelligence. She was one of those 
 women often delightful to men indeed, but 
 whom other women — by virtue of their 
 own kindred instincts, it may be, perhaps 
 by virtue of temptations overcome — see 
 through and know for what they are. But 
 
HER STORY 221 
 
 she had her own way of charming : she was 
 the being of infinite variety — to-day glad, 
 to-morrow sad, freakish, and always exciting 
 you by curiosity as to her next caprice, and 
 so moody that after a season of the lowering 
 weather of one of her dull humors you were 
 ready to sacrifice something for the sake of 
 the sunshine that she knew how to make so 
 vivid and so sweet. Then, too, she brought 
 forward her forces by detachment. At first 
 she was the soul of domestic life, sitting at 
 night beneath the light and embossing on 
 weblike muslin designs of flower and leaf 
 which she had learned in her convent, lis- 
 tening to Spencer as he read, and taking 
 from the little wallet of her work-basket 
 apropos scraps which she had preserved 
 from the sermon of some Italian father of 
 the Church or of some French divine. As 
 for me, the only thing I knew was my poor 
 music ; and I used to burn with indignation 
 when she interposed that unknown tongue 
 between my husband and myself. Pres- 
 ently her horses came, and then, graceful in 
 her dark riding-habit, she would spend a 
 
222 HER STORY 
 
 morning fearlessly subduing one of the 
 fiery fellows, and dash away at last with 
 plume and veil streaming behind her. In 
 the early evening she would dance with the 
 children — witch-dances they were — with 
 her round arms linked above her head, and 
 her feet weaving the measure in and out as 
 deftly as any flashing-footed Bayadere might 
 do — only when Spencer was there to see : 
 at other times I saw she pushed the little 
 hindering things aside without a glance. 
 
 By and by she began to display a strange 
 dramatic sort of power : she would rehearse 
 to Spencer scenes that she had met with 
 from day to day in the place, giving now 
 the old churchwarden's voice and now the 
 sexton's, their gestures and very faces ; she 
 could tell the ailments of half the old 
 women in the parish who came to me with 
 them, and in their own tone and manner 
 to the life ; she told us once of a street- 
 scene, with the crier crying a lost child, the 
 mother following with lamentations, the 
 passing strangers questioning, the boys 
 hooting, and the child's reappearance, fol- 
 
HER STORY 223 
 
 lowed by a tumult, with kisses and blows 
 and cries, so that I thought I saw it all ; 
 and presently she had found the secret and 
 vulnerable spot of every friend we had, and 
 could personate them all as vividly as if she 
 did it by necromancy. 
 
 One night she began to sketch our por- 
 traits in charcoal : the likenesses were not 
 perfect ; she exaggerated the careless ele- 
 gance of Spencer's attitude ; perhaps the 
 primness of my own. But yet he saw there 
 the ungraceful trait for the first time, I 
 think. And so much led to more : she 
 brought out her portfolios, and there were 
 her pencil-sketches from the Rhine and 
 from the Guadalquivir, rich water-colors of 
 Venetian scenes, interiors of old churches, 
 and sheet after sheet covered with details of 
 church architecture. Spencer had been ad- 
 miring all the others — in spite of some- 
 thing that I thought I saw in them, a some- 
 thing that was not true, a trait of her own 
 identity, for I had come to criticise her 
 sharply — but when his eye rested on those 
 sheets I saw it sparkle, and he caught them 
 up and pored over them one by one. 
 
224 HER STORY 
 
 " I see you have mastered the whole 
 thing/' he said : " you must Instruct me 
 here/' And so she did. And there were 
 hours, while I was busied with servants and 
 accounts or with the children, when she was 
 closeted with Spencer in the study, criticis- 
 ing, comparing, making drawings, hunting 
 up authorities ; other hours when they 
 walked away together to the site of the 
 new church that was building, and here an 
 arch was destroyed, and there an aisle was 
 extended, and here a row of cloisters 
 sketched into the plan, and there a row 
 of windows, till the whole design was re- 
 versed and made over. And they had the 
 thing between them, for, admire and sympa- 
 thize as I might, I did not know. At first 
 Spencer would repeat the day's achievement 
 to me, but the contempt for my ignorance 
 which she did not deign to hide soon put an 
 end to it when she was present. 
 
 It was this interest that now unveiled a 
 new phase of her character : she was devout. 
 She had a little altar in her room ; she knew 
 all about albs and chasubles ; she would 
 
HER STORY 225 
 
 have persuaded Spencer to burn candles In 
 the chancel ; she talked of a hundred mys- 
 teries and symbols ; she wanted to embroider 
 a stole to lay across his shoulders. She 
 was full of small church sentimentalities, 
 and as one after another she uttered them, 
 it seemed to me that her belief was no 
 sound fruit of any system — if It were belief, 
 and not a mere bunch of fancies — but only, 
 as you might say, a rotten windfall of the 
 Romish Church : it had none of the round 
 splendor of that Church's creed, none of the 
 pure simplicity of ours : It would be no stay 
 in trouble, no shield in temptation. I said 
 as much to Spencer. 
 
 " You are prejudiced,'' said he : " her be- 
 lief is the result of long observation abroad, 
 I think. She has found the need of out- 
 ward observances : they are, she has told 
 me, a shrine to the body of her faith, like 
 that commanded in the building of the 
 tabernacle, where the ark of the covenant 
 was enclosed in the holy of holies." 
 
 " And you didn't think it profane In her 
 to speak so ? But I don't believe It, Spen- 
 
226 HER STORY 
 
 cer/' I said. " She has no faith : she has 
 some sentimentalisms." 
 
 "You are prejudiced/* he repeated. 
 " She seems to me a wonderful and gifted 
 being." 
 
 " Too gifted," I said. " Her very gifts 
 are unnatural in their abundance. There 
 must be scrofula there to keep such a fire in 
 the blood and sting the brain to such ac- 
 tion : she will die in a madhouse, depend 
 upon it." Think of my saying such a thing 
 as that ! 
 
 " I have never heard you speak so be- 
 fore," he replied coldly. " I hope you do 
 not envy her her powers." 
 
 " I envy her nothing," I cried. "For she 
 is as false as she is beautiful!" But I did — 
 oh I did! 
 
 " Beautiful ? " said Spencer. " Is she 
 beautiful ? I never thought of that." 
 
 "You are very blind, then," I said with 
 a glad smile. 
 
 Spencer smiled too. "It is not the kind 
 of beauty I admire," said he. 
 
 " Then I must te^ch you, sir," said she. 
 
HER STORY 227 
 
 And we both started to see her in the door- 
 way, and I, for one, did not know, till 
 shortly before I found myself here, how 
 much or how little she had learned of what 
 we said. 
 
 "Then I must teach you, sir," said she 
 again. And she came deliberately into the 
 firelight and paused upon the rug, drew out 
 the silver arrows and shook down all her 
 hair about her, till the great snake-like coils 
 unrolled upon the floor. 
 
 " Hyacinthine," said Spencer. 
 
 "Indeed it is,'' said she. "The very 
 color of the jacinth, with that red tint in 
 its darkness that they call black in the shade 
 and gold in the sun. Now look at me." 
 
 " Shut your eyes, Spencer," I cried, and 
 laughed. 
 
 But he did not shut his eyes. The fire- 
 light flashed over her: the color in her 
 cheeks and on her lips sprang ripe and red 
 in it as she held the hair away from them 
 with her rosy finger-tips ; her throat curved 
 small and cream-white from the bosom that 
 the lace of her dinner-dress scarcely hid; 
 
228 HER STORY 
 
 and the dark eyes glowed with a great light 
 as they lay full on his. 
 
 " You mustn't call it vanity," said she. 
 "It is only that it is impossible, looking at 
 the picture in the glass, not to see it as I see 
 any other picture. But for all that, I know 
 it is not every fool's beauty : it is no daub 
 for the vulgar gaze, but a masterpiece that it 
 needs the educated eye to find. I could tell 
 you how this nostril is like that in a famous 
 marble, how the curve of this cheek is that 
 of a certain Venus, the line of this forehead 
 like the line in the dreamy Antinous' fore- 
 head. Are you taught ? Is it — ? " 
 
 Then she twisted her hair again and fas- 
 tened the arrows, and laughed and turned 
 away to look over the evening paper. But 
 as for Spencer, as he lay back in his lordly 
 way, surveying the vision from crown to 
 toe, I saw him flush — I saw him flush 
 and start and quiver, and then he closed his 
 eyes and pressed his fingers on them, and 
 lay back again and said not a word. 
 
 She began to read aloud something con- 
 cerning services at the recent dedication of 
 
HER STORY 229 
 
 a church. I was called out as she read. 
 When I came back, a half hour afterward, 
 they were talking. I stopped at my work- 
 table in the next room for a skein of floss 
 that she had asked me for, and I heard her 
 saying, " You cannot expect me to treat you 
 with reverence. You are a married priest, 
 and you know what opinion I necessarily 
 must have of married priests.'* Then I 
 came in and she was silent. 
 
 But I knew, I always knew, that if Spencer 
 had not felt himself weak, had not found 
 himself stirred, if he had not recognized that, 
 when he flushed and quivered before her 
 charm, it was the flesh and not the spirit 
 that tempted him, he would not have lis- 
 tened to her subtle invitation to austerity. 
 As it was, he did. He did — partly in 
 shame, partly in punishment ; but to my 
 mind the listening was confession. She had 
 set the wedge that was to sever our union — 
 the little seed in a mere idle cleft that grows 
 and grows and splits the rock asunder. 
 
 Well, I had my duties, you know. I 
 never felt my husband's wealth a reason whv 
 
230 HER STORY 
 
 I should neglect them any more than another 
 wife should neglect her duties. I was wanted 
 in the parish, sent for here and waited for 
 there: the dying liked to see me comfort 
 their living, the living liked to see me touch 
 their dead ; some wanted help, and others 
 wanted consolation ; and where I felt myself 
 too young and unlearned to give advice, I 
 could at least give sympathy. Perhaps I 
 was the more called upon for such detail of 
 duty because Spencer was busy with the 
 greater things, the church-building and the 
 sermons — sermons that once on a time 
 lifted you and held you on their strong 
 wings. But of late Spencer had been preach- 
 ing old sermons. He had been moody and 
 morose too : sometimes he seemed oppressed 
 with melancholy. He had spoken to me 
 strangely, had looked at me as if he pitied 
 me, had kept away from me. But she had 
 not regarded his moods: she had followed 
 him in his solitary strolls, had sought him in 
 his study ; and she had ever a mystery or 
 symbol to be interpreted, the picture of a 
 private chapel that she had heard of when 
 
HER STORY 231 
 
 abroad, or the ground-plan of an ancient 
 one, or some new temptation to his ambition, 
 as I divine. And soon he was himself again. 
 
 I was wrong to leave him so to her, but 
 what was there else for me to do ? And as 
 for those duties of mine, as I followed them 
 I grew restive ; I abridged them, I hastened 
 home. I was impatient even with the deten- 
 tions the children caused. I could not leave 
 them to their nurses, for all that ; but they 
 kept me away from him, and he was alone 
 with her. 
 
 One day at last he told me that his mind 
 was troubled by the suspicion that his mar- 
 riage was a mistake ; that on his part at least 
 it had been wrong ; that he had been think- 
 ing a priest should have the Church only for 
 his bride, and should wait at the altar mor- 
 tified in every affection ; that it was not for 
 hands that were full of caresses and lips that 
 were covered with kisses to touch the sacra- 
 ment, to offer praise. But for answer I 
 brought my children and put them in his 
 arms. I was white and cold and shaking, 
 but I asked him if they were not justifica- 
 
232 HER STORY 
 
 tion enough. And I told him that he did 
 his duty better abroad for the heartening 
 of a wife at home, and that he knew better 
 how to interpret God's love to men through 
 his own love for his children. And I laid 
 my head on his breast beside them, and he 
 clasped us all and we cried together, he 
 and I. 
 
 But that was not enough, I found. And 
 when our good bishop came, who had always 
 been like a father to Spencer, I led the con- 
 versation to that point one evening, and he 
 discovered Spencer's trouble, and took him 
 away and reasoned with him. The bishop 
 was a power with Spencer, and I think that 
 was the end of it. 
 
 The end of that, but only the beginning 
 of the rest. For she had accustomed him 
 to the idea of separation from me — the idea 
 of doing without me. He had put me away 
 from himself once in his mind : we had been 
 one soul, and now we were two. 
 
 One day, as I stood in my sleeping-room 
 with the door ajar, she came in. She had 
 never been there before, and I cannot tell 
 
HER STORY 0.^2^ 
 
 you how insolently she looked about her. 
 There was a bunch of flowers on a stand 
 that Spencer himself placed there for me 
 every morning. He had always done so, 
 and there had been no reason for breaking 
 off the habit ; and I had always worn one of 
 them at my throat. She advanced a hand to 
 pull out a blossom. " Do not touch them/' 
 I cried : " my husband puts them there.'' 
 " Suppose he does," said she lightly. 
 "For how long?" Then she overlooked 
 me with a long sweeping glance of search 
 and contempt, shrugged her shoulders, and 
 with a French sentence that I did not under- 
 stand turned back and coolly broke off the 
 blossom she had marked and hung it in her 
 hair. I could not take her by the shoulders 
 and put her from the room. I could not 
 touch the flowers that she had desecrated. I 
 left the room myself, and left her in it, and 
 went down to dinner for the first time with- 
 out the flower at my throat. I saw Spencer's 
 eye note the omission : perhaps he took it 
 as a release from me, for he never put the 
 flowers in my room again after that day. 
 
234 HER STORY 
 
 Nor did he ask me any more into his 
 study, as he had been used, or read his ser- 
 mons to me. There was no need of his talk- 
 ing over the church-building with me — he 
 had her to talk it over with. And as for our 
 music, that had been a rare thing since she 
 arrived, for her conversation had been such 
 as to leave but little time for it, and some- 
 how when she came into the music-room and 
 began to dictate to me the time in which I 
 should take an Inflammatus and the spirit in 
 which I should sing a ballad, I could not 
 bear it. Then, too, to tell you the truth, 
 my voice was hoarse and choked with tears 
 full half the time. 
 
 It was some weeks after the flowers ceased 
 that our youngest child fell ill. She was 
 very ill — I don't think Spencer knew how 
 ill. I dared not trust her with any one, and 
 Spencer said no one could take such care of 
 her as her mother could ; so, although we 
 had nurses in plenty, I hardly left the room 
 by night or day. I heard their voices down 
 below, I saw them go out for their walks. 
 It was a hard fight, but I saved her. 
 
HER STORY 235 
 
 But I was worn to a shadow when all was 
 done — worn with anxiety for her, with al- 
 ternate fevers of hope and fear, with the 
 weight of my responsibility as to her life ; 
 and with anxiety for Spencer too, with a 
 despairing sense that the end of peace had 
 come, and with the total sleeplessness of 
 many nights. Now, when the child was 
 mending and gaining every day, I could not 
 sleep if I would. 
 
 The doctor gave me anodynes, but to no 
 purpose: they only nerved me wide awake. 
 My eyes ached, and my brain ached, and my 
 body ached, but it was of no use : I could 
 not sleep. I counted the spots on the wall, 
 the motes upon my eyes, the notes of all the 
 sheets of music I could recall. I remem- 
 bered the Eastern punishment of keeping 
 the condemned awake till they die, and won- 
 dered what my crime was ; I thought if I 
 could but sleep I might forget my trouble, 
 or take it up freshly and master it. But no, 
 it was always there — a heavy cloud, a horror 
 of foreboding. As I heard that woman's 
 step go by the door I longed to rid the 
 
-^6 HER STORY 
 
 house of it, and I dinted my palms with my 
 nails till she had passed. 
 
 I did not know what to do. It seemed 
 to me that I was wicked in letting the thing 
 go on, in suffering Spencer to be any longer 
 exposed to her power ; but then I feared to 
 take a step lest I should thereby rivet the 
 chains she was casting on him. And then I 
 longed so for one hour of the old dear 
 happiness — the days when I and the chil- 
 dren had been all and enough. I did not 
 know what to do ; I had no one to counsel 
 with ; I was wild within myself, and all dis- 
 traught. Once I thought if I could not rid 
 the house of her I could rid it of myself; 
 and as I went through a dark passage and 
 chanced to look up where a bright-headed 
 nail glittered, I questioned if it would bear 
 my weight. For days the idea haunted me. 
 I fancied that when I was gone perhaps he 
 would love me again, and at any rate I might 
 be asleep and at rest. But the thought of 
 the children prevented me, and one other 
 thought — I was not certain that even my 
 sorrows would excuse me before God. 
 
HER STORY 237 
 
 I went down to dinner again at last. How 
 she glowed and abounded in her beauty as 
 she sat there ! And I — I must have been 
 very thin and ghastly : perhaps I looked a 
 little wild in all my bewilderment and hurt. 
 His heart smote him, it may be, for he came 
 round to where I sat by the fire afterward 
 and smoothed my hair and kissed my fore- 
 head. He could not tell all I was suffering 
 then — all I was struggling with ; for I 
 thought I had better put him out of the 
 world than let him, who was once so pure 
 and good, stay in it to sin. I could have 
 done it, you know. For though I still lay 
 with the little girl, I could have stolen back 
 into our own room with the chloroform, and 
 he would never have known. I turned the 
 handle of the door one night, but the bolt 
 was slipped. I never thought of killing her, 
 you see : let her live and sin, if she would. 
 She was the thing of slime and sin, a splen- 
 did tropical growth of the passionate heat 
 and the slime : it was only her nature. But 
 then we think it no harm to kill reptiles, 
 however splendid. 
 
238 HER STORY 
 
 But It was by that time that the voices 
 had begun to talk with me — all night long, 
 all day. It was they, I found, that had kept 
 me so sleepless. Go where I might, they 
 were ever before me. If I went to the 
 woods, I heard them in the whisper of every 
 pine tree. If I went down to the seashore, I 
 heard them in the plash of every wave. I 
 heard them in the wind, in the singing of 
 my ears, in the children's breath as I hung 
 above them, — for I had decided that if I went 
 out of the world I would take the children 
 with me. If I sat down to play, the things 
 would twist the chords into discords ; if I 
 sat down to read, they would come between 
 me and the page. 
 
 Then I could see the creatures : they had 
 wings like bats. I did not dare speak of 
 them, although I fancied she suspected me, 
 for once she said, as I was kissing my little 
 girl, " When you are gone to a madhouse, 
 don't think they'll have many such kisses." 
 Did she say it ? or did I think she said it ? 
 I did not answer her, I did not look up : I 
 suppose I should have flown at her throat if 
 I had. 
 
HER STORY 239 
 
 I took the children out with me on my 
 rambles : we went for miles ; sometimes I 
 carried one, sometimes the other. I took 
 such long, long walks to escape those noi- 
 some things : they would never leave me 
 till I was quite tired out. Now and then I 
 was gone the whole day ; and all the time 
 that I was gone he was with her, I knew, 
 and she was tricking out her beauty and 
 practising her arts. 
 
 I went to a little festival with them, for 
 Spencer insisted. And she made shadow- 
 pictures on the wall, wonderful things with 
 her perfect profile and her perfect arms 
 and her subtle curves — she out of sight, 
 the shadow only seen. Now it was Isis, 
 I remember, and now it was the head 
 and shoulders and trailing hair of a float- 
 ing sea-nymph. And then there were cha- 
 rades in which she played ; and I can't tell 
 you the glorious thing she looked when 
 she came on as Helen of Troy with all 
 her " beauty shadowed in white veils," you 
 know — that brown and red beauty with its 
 smiles and radiance under the wavering of 
 
240 HER STORY 
 
 the flower-wrought veil. I sat by Spencer, 
 and I felt him shiver. He was fighting and 
 struggling too within himself, very likely ; 
 only he knew that he was going to yield 
 after all — only he longed to yield while he 
 feared. But as for me, I saw one of those 
 bat-like things perched on her ear as she 
 stood before us, and when she opened her 
 mouth to speak I saw them flying in and 
 out. And I said to Spencer, " She is tor- 
 menting me. I cannot stay and see her swal- 
 lowing the souls of men in this way." And 
 I would have gone, but he held me down fast 
 in my seat. But if I was crazy then — as 
 they say I was, I suppose — it was only 
 with a metaphor, for she was sucking Spen- 
 cer's soul out of his body. 
 
 But I was not crazy. I should admit 
 I might have been if I alone had seen those 
 evil spirits. But Spencer saw them too. 
 He never told me so, but — there are subtle 
 ways — I knew he did ; for when I opened 
 the church door late, as I often did at that 
 time after my long walks, they would rush 
 in past me with a whizz, and a? I sat in the 
 
HER STORY 241 
 
 pew I would see him steadily avoid looking 
 at me ; and if he looked by any chance, he 
 would turn so pale that I have thought he 
 would drop where he stood ; and he would 
 redden afterward as though one had struck 
 him. He knew then what I endured with 
 them ; but I was not the one to speak of 
 it. Don't tell me that his color changed 
 and he shuddered so because I sat there 
 mumbling and nodding to myself. It was 
 because he saw those things mopping and 
 mowing beside me and whispering in my ear. 
 Oh what loathsomeness the obscene creatures 
 whispered ! Foul quips and evil words I 
 had never heard before, ribald songs and 
 oaths ; and I would clap my hands over my 
 mouth to keep from crying out at them. 
 Creatures of the imagination, you may say. 
 It is possible. But they were so vivid that 
 they seem real to me even now. I burn 
 and tingle as I recall them. And how could 
 I have imagined such sounds, such shapes, 
 of things I had never heard or seen or 
 dreamed ? 
 
 And Spencer was very unhappy, I am 
 
242 HER STORY 
 
 sure. I was the mother of his children, and 
 If he loved me no more, he had an old kind- 
 ness for me still, and my distress distressed 
 him. But for all that the glamour was on 
 him, and he could not give up that woman 
 and her beauty and her charm. Once or 
 twice he may have thought about sending 
 her away, but perhaps he could not bring 
 himself to do It — perhaps he reflected It was 
 too late, and now It was no matter. But 
 every day she stayed he was the more like 
 wax In her hands. Oh, he was weaker than 
 water that Is poured out. He was abandon- 
 ing himself, and forgetting earth and heaven 
 and hell Itself, before a passion — a passion 
 that soon would cloy, and then would sting. 
 It was the spring season: I had been 
 out several hours. The sunset fell while 
 I was In the wood, and the stars came 
 out ; and at one time I thought I would He 
 down there on last year's leaves and never 
 get up again. But I remembered the chil- 
 dren, and went home to them. They were 
 In bed and asleep when I took off my 
 shoes and opened the door of their room — 
 
HER STORY 243 
 
 breathing so sweetly and evenly, the little 
 yellow heads close together on one pillow, 
 their hands tossed about the coverlid, their 
 parted lips, their rosy cheeks. I knelt to feel 
 the warm breath on my own cold cheek, and 
 then the voices began whispering again : 
 "If only they never waked ! they never 
 waked ! '' 
 
 And all I could do was to spring to my 
 feet and run from the room. I ran shoeless 
 down the great staircase and through the 
 long hall. I thought I would go to Spencer 
 and tell him all — all my sorrows, all the 
 suggestions of the voices, and maybe in the 
 endeavor to save me he would save himself. 
 And I ran down the long dimly-lighted 
 drawing-room, led by the sound I heard, to 
 the music-room, whose doors were open just 
 beyond. It was lighted only by the pale 
 glimmer from the other room and by the 
 moonlight through the painted panes. And 
 I paused to listen to what I had never lis- 
 tened to there — the sound of the harp and 
 a voice with it. Of course they had not 
 heard me coming, and I hesitated and 
 
244 HER STORY 
 
 looked, and then I glided within the door 
 and stood just by the open piano there. 
 
 She sat at the harp singing — the huge 
 gilded harp. I did not know she sang — she 
 had kept that for her last reserve — but she 
 struck the harp so that it sang itself, like some 
 great prisoned soul, and her voice followed 
 it — oh so rich a voice ! My own was white 
 and thin, I felt, beside it. But mine had 
 soared, and hers still clung to earth — a con- 
 tralto sweet with honeyed sweetness — the 
 sweetness of unstrained honey that has the 
 earth-taste and the heavy blossom-dust yet 
 in it — sweet, though it grew hoarse and 
 trembling with passion. He sat in one of 
 the great arm-chairs just before her : he was 
 white with feeling, with rapture, with forget- 
 fulness ; his eyes shone like stars. He 
 moved restlessly, a strange smile kindled 
 all his face : he bent toward her, and the 
 music broke off in the middle as they threw 
 their arms around each other, and hung 
 there lip to lip and heart to heart. And 
 suddenly I crashed down both my hands on 
 the keyboard before me, and stood and 
 glared upon them. 
 
HER STORY 245 
 
 And I never knew anything more till I 
 woke up here. 
 
 And that is the whole of it. That is the 
 puzzle of it — was it a horrid nightmare, an 
 insane vision, or was it true ? Was it true 
 that I saw Spencer, my white, clean lover, 
 my husband, a man of God, the father of 
 our spotless babies, — was it true that I saw 
 him so, or was it only some wild, vile con- 
 juration of disease ? Oh, I would be willing 
 to have been crazed a lifetime, a whole life- 
 time, only to wake one moment before I 
 died and find that that had never been ! 
 
 Well, well, well ! When time passed and 
 I became more quiet, I told the doctor here 
 about the voices — I never told him of 
 Spencer or of her — and he bade me dis- 
 miss care. He said I was ill — excitement 
 and sleeplessness had surcharged my nerves 
 with that strange magnetic fluid that has 
 worked so much mischief in the world. 
 There was no organic disease, you see ; only 
 when my nerves were rested and right, my 
 brain would be right. And the doctor gave 
 me medicines and books and work, and 
 
246 HER STORY 
 
 when I saw the bat-like things again I was 
 to go instantly to him. And after a little 
 while I was not sure that I did see them. 
 And in a little while longer they had ceased 
 to come altogether. And I have had no 
 more of them. I was on my parole then in 
 the parlor, at the table, in the grounds. I 
 felt that I was cured of whatever had ailed 
 me : I could escape at any moment that I 
 wished. 
 
 And it came Christmas time. A terrible 
 longing for home overcame me — for my 
 children. I thought of them at this time 
 when I had been used to take such pains 
 for their pleasure. I thought of the little 
 empty stockings, the sad faces ; I fancied I 
 could hear them crying for me. I forgot all 
 about my word of honor. It seemed to me 
 that I should die, that I might as well die, if 
 I could not see my little darlings, and hold 
 them on my knees, and sing to them while 
 the chimes were ringing in the Christmas 
 Eve. And winter was here and there was so 
 much to do for them. And I walked down 
 the garden, and looked out at the gate, and 
 
HER STORY 247 
 
 opened it and went through. And I slept 
 that night in a barn — so free, so free and 
 glad ! And the next day an old farmer and 
 his sons, who thought they did me a 
 service, brought me back, and of course I 
 shrieked and raved. And so would you. 
 
 But since then I have been in this ward 
 and a prisoner. I have my work, my 
 amusement. I send such little things as I 
 can make to my girls. I read. Sometimes 
 of late I sing in the Sunday service. The 
 place is a sightly place ; the grounds, when 
 we are taken out, are fine ; the halls are spa- 
 cious and pleasant. 
 
 Pleasant — but ah, when you have trodden 
 them ten years ! 
 
 And so, you see, if I were a clod, if I had 
 no memory, no desires, if I had never been 
 happy before, I might be happy now. I am 
 confident the doctor thinks me well. But he 
 has no orders to let me go. Sometimes it is 
 so wearisome. And it might be worse if 
 lately I had not been allowed a new service. 
 And that is to try to make a woman smile 
 who came here a year ago. She is a little 
 
248 HER STORY 
 
 woman, swarthy as a Malay, but her hair, 
 that grows as rapidly as a fungus grows in the 
 night, is whiter than leprosy : her eyebrows 
 are so long and white that they veil and 
 blanch her dark dim eyes ; and she has no 
 front teeth. A stone from a falling spire 
 struck her from her horse, they say. The 
 blow battered her and beat out reason and 
 beauty. Her mind is dead : she remem- 
 bers nothing, knows nothing; but she fol- 
 lows me about like a dog : she seems to 
 want to do something for me, to propitiate 
 me. All she ever says is to beg me to do 
 her no harm. She will not go to sleep with- 
 out my hand in hers. Sometimes, after 
 long effort, I think there is a gleam of in- 
 telligence, but the doctor says there was once 
 too much intelligence, and her case is hope- 
 less. 
 
 Hopeless, poor thing! — that is an awful 
 word : I could not wish it said for my worst 
 enemy. 
 
 In spite of these ten years I cannot feel 
 that it has yet been said for me. 
 
 If I am strange just now, it is only the 
 
HER STORY 249 
 
 excitement of seeing you, only the habit of 
 the strange sights and sounds here. I should 
 be calm and well enough at home. I sit 
 and picture to myself that some time Spencer 
 will come for me — will take me to my girls, 
 my fireside, my music. I shall hear his 
 voice, I shall rest in his arms, I shall be 
 blest again. For, oh, Elizabeth, I do for- 
 give him all ! 
 
 Or if he will not dare to trust himself at 
 first, I picture to myself how he will send 
 another — some old friend who knew me 
 before my trouble — who will see me and 
 judge, and carry back report that I am all I 
 used to be — some friend who will open the 
 gates of heaven to me, or close the gates of 
 hell upon me — who will hold my life and 
 my fate. 
 
 If — oh if it should be you, Elizabeth ! 
 
A Lost Identity 
 
A Lost Identity 
 
 It 
 
 WHEN two seedlings, planted side by 
 side, watered by the same shower, 
 warmed by the same sun, shaken by the 
 same breezes, have grown so close together 
 that their roots make one tangle and their 
 stems one fibre, how is it possible to separate 
 them and leave them any life at all ? Sepa- 
 rated, can they be more than dead wood to 
 be used for the purpose of others, with no 
 vitality or joy of their own further than the 
 log has that burns upon the hearth? I 
 thought of that once in looking on the union 
 of Leonard and Helena. Never have I 
 seen two people so sufficient to themselves 
 through all the changes of the planet. Sepa- 
 rated, would either of them live other than 
 as a soulless shadow? They thought not; 
 looking at their happiness as if it were a 
 
 ^53 
 
254 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 thing held in their hands ; unashamed of 
 their love, and speaking of it freely in any 
 passionate moment. 
 
 " I think," she had once said, " that if we 
 were cast away upon a desert island, with just 
 a book or two, we should be so happy as to 
 ask for nothing more." 
 
 " I have often thought of it," he answered 
 her. " How much at one we are ! Do you 
 know there are some substances that for a 
 long time seem to be simple, one element 
 only, strong, potent for good ; but find at 
 last and mix with such a substance its pow- 
 erful attacking acid, and it resolves into two 
 principles, each faint, powerless, good neither 
 for itself nor for anything else. If death 
 should be that powerful attacking force for 
 us, resolving us into something other than 
 the one we are — " 
 
 " Death cannot do it ! " she cried trium- 
 phantly. 
 
 " No," he said. " Life cannot do it. Not 
 even death can do it. We shall be one to 
 the grave, in it and beyond it ! " 
 
 They could hardly remember a time when 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 255 
 
 they had not been a part of each other, in 
 childhood or youth or maturity. Although 
 there was a difference of two or three years 
 in their ages, no pleasure was complete for 
 Helena unless Leonard shared it, and the sor- 
 row of one was the sorrow of both. When 
 not yet strong enough to climb they used to 
 kiss each other through the wickets. Later 
 they played together in the orchard grass 
 and fell asleep in one another's arms beneath 
 the old plum trees there. Helena was five 
 years old — a little gypsy like creature, with 
 her great black eyes and rich color, and the 
 fine flowing threads of her thick black hair 
 about her face — and Leonard, fair and 
 comely as a child of light, when they set out 
 to walk to the end of the world together, 
 hand in hand along the dusky highway in the 
 sun, till the end seemed as far oflF as the 
 beginning. 
 
 They were children of much promise; and 
 Flelena's ambitions did not suffer her to 
 remain far behind Leonard in their studies. 
 When he went away to school, she felt as 
 if some integral portion of herself had 
 
2s6 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 been severed from the rest, and she forgot 
 her loneliness only by burying herself in 
 her books. When he came home he told 
 her how bitter were those first days with- 
 out her. Perhaps the next half-term was not 
 so hard to him. It was just as hard to 
 Helena, alone with her books, without the 
 stimulus of contact with a class, but content 
 with only his own emulation and approba- 
 tion. She would lose herself in the delights 
 of her geometrical demonstration, which had 
 a sort of poetry in it to her mind, in the 
 marvels of her astronomy or chemistry, but 
 in the remaining moments she only seemed 
 to live till Leonard should come home again. 
 She went, with others, to his examination 
 when school was ending. She knew the the- 
 orem almost as well as he, could read the Vir- 
 gilian line as well ; but how swiftly and simply 
 and easily he made the one plain, how grace- 
 fully and lightly he rendered the other ! And 
 when he recited the ballad of Naseby, with a 
 white face, and a fire kindling in those lumin- 
 ous gray eyes, her heart thrilled and her blood 
 ran cold, although in studying by herself she 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 257 
 
 had hated all the Puritan rant. That was 
 sad to her — that she and Leonard should 
 not think alike in all things : but they did 
 not. She formed her feminine conclusions 
 alone, and he had subtle and accomplished 
 masters, and a further reach and fuller grasp 
 of mind. He had a great mind, she thought 
 to herself; he would do a great work in the 
 world, whether he went into politics and 
 helped " recast the nations old into another 
 mould,'* whether he sat down with a philo- 
 sophical thesis and taught people how to 
 think, or whether he took his medical degree 
 and concerned himself with the origin of 
 matter. And then, at last, Leonard was in 
 college, coming home and inseparable from 
 her in his long vacations, but beginning to 
 have a thousand thoughts that were not her 
 thoughts. 
 
 '^ How strange it is," she said to him one 
 day, after an historical discussion, " that we 
 who used to have one thought are growing 
 so apart ? " 
 
 " We shall never grow apart, even if one 
 of us thinks white black and the other thinks 
 
258 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 it blue,*' he responded. " Those are surface 
 things ; they do not change our natures and 
 ourselves. But for all your hatred of the 
 enemies of church and king, you are a Puri- 
 tan of the Puritans yourself, my lady," he 
 said, with his jesting voice. And he laughed 
 as he said it, twisting the long, loose tress of 
 darkness that had fallen on his shoulder as 
 they leaned over the same book. What 
 odds were any of her fancies ? She was still 
 the same sweet Helena. 
 
 " How can you say such a thing? " 
 
 " Because it is true. You reproach me for 
 loving the Naseby ballad — you, who have 
 inherited from two hundred years of Puritan 
 ancestry their cast of mind, their austerity of 
 conviction, their — I suppose if you knew I 
 won fifty dollars at cards the night before I 
 came home — " 
 
 '' Oh, Leonard ! Leonard ! " 
 
 " I said so. The Puritan ! " 
 
 "The Puritan ! *' she exclaimed, the tears 
 suspended on her glittering lashes. " Have 
 I their intolerance, their cruelty, their vul- 
 garity, their — " 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 259 
 
 " You have their habit of thought, altered 
 to the altered times. You are not the Pu- 
 ritan of the seventeenth century, but you are 
 of the nineteenth. You are ready to cry be- 
 cause I won some money at cards ! " and he 
 laughed so gayly that she could not be 
 angry. 
 
 " I should not think you would care for 
 the society of so disagreeable — " 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! " he answered her. " I 
 allow no one to abuse my friends.'' 
 
 " But, Leonard, about the cards ? You 
 know how dangerous it is, how ruinous, how 
 it destroys the very fibre of the mind — '' 
 
 " To win money at cards ? Look here, 
 Helena, if you gaze at me so charmingly as 
 that I may make you a promise. And it 
 would be a cruelty to exact it, for I play an 
 excellent game." 
 
 She was so beautiful to him in her indig- 
 nation that he cared nothing about the in- 
 dignation. 
 
 When the college days were over, their 
 triumphs had been Helena's as much as 
 Leonard's. And then before settling to the 
 
26o A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 study of his profession, he went about the 
 country a little, and at the end of it spent 
 the time in Europe thought necessary. 
 Travel elevates the point of view or enlarges 
 its vision. Helena felt when Leonard re- 
 turned that there was something about the 
 masculine mind, whether inherent quality or 
 long descended culture, that was beyond her 
 feminine power. And yet she never seemed 
 sweeter to Leonard than at that moment. 
 There was a trifle of pensiveness about her, 
 too, that was wonderfully attractive in one 
 of as wanton spirits as hers often were; the 
 melancholy droop of the long black lash 
 touched the heart with a sort of pleasant 
 pain. 
 
 But Leonard was out in the world now ; 
 he no longer spent every moment with He- 
 lena. He was pursuing his profession, and 
 he was led hither and thither by the mo- 
 ment. He had an interest and a curiosity 
 in everything — and sometimes it was a fact 
 of science, and sometimes it was a pretty 
 girl. If he followed the pretty girl as he 
 would a show in the street, luring him on — 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 261 
 
 if to him she was only a picture, with some 
 human interest added, but no interest of his 
 own, how was Helena to know it ? The 
 melancholy droop of the lash became a droop 
 of the lovely corners of the mouth as well. 
 Leonard was hers, had always been hers. 
 That another person should attract him 
 seemed to her a robbery of her own identity. 
 And apparently that yellow-haired Louisa 
 Dane was attracting him with those sketch- 
 ing fingers of hers. The one defect in Leon- 
 ard was that he had no love for music, and 
 music was the passion of Helena's soul. On 
 the other hand he had a fair talent with his 
 pencil, and Louisa Dane knew how to drip 
 the color from her brushes in a way that 
 kindled the warmth of his admiration. As 
 for Helena she could not draw a straight line 
 or a crooked one. If Leonard wanted to 
 stroll off sketching with Louisa Dane, he 
 was free to do so ; she had no right to pro- 
 hibit it ; all the more, Louisa Dane seemed 
 to her a poor sort of thing. And if he forgot 
 her in amusing himself, this dark foreigner, 
 Giuseppe Maldoni, who had drifted to the 
 
262 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 great county town and was giving music les- 
 sons there, knew how to beguile your soul 
 out of your body ; and the mornings He- 
 lena and Giuseppe spent together, with violin 
 and piano and song, were full of nothing 
 but music. 
 
 " What under heaven do you see in that 
 swarthy son of thunder?'* asked Leonard 
 one day with vexation, meeting the Italian 
 going out. 
 
 " All that you see in that ^ daughter of the 
 gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair,' " 
 she replied : " a community of interest." 
 
 " What community of interest can I have 
 with Louisa Dane ? " he cried. " She is 
 teaching me to mix my colors." 
 
 "And Giuseppe is teaching me how to 
 move the world with diminished sevenths." 
 
 " Giuseppe, indeed ! And since how 
 long ? Pshaw ! A regular shibboleth. 
 There seems to be a cant to every art. 
 There is something sensual about music, 
 Helena," he said, leaning back his head, 
 with his hands clasped behind it, where he 
 had thrown himself on the lounge, "Am- 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 263 
 
 mals almost invariably recognize its power ; 
 its best ministers are people of limited intel- 
 ligence ; even idiots have been known — '* 
 
 " Stop, stop, sir ; it is like blasphemy ! 
 The one divine thing on earth, the one thing 
 that lifts the soul to heaven, that solaces sor- 
 row, that crowns joy — " 
 
 " There, there, there ! " he cried, " or I 
 shall think you have gone mad. It is a dia- 
 lect, I suppose," he added, reflectively. 
 
 "And there is no dialect or shibboleth 
 in your and Louisa Dane's talk about 
 tones and technique and schools and mor- 
 bidezza — " 
 
 " But you see we have the real things to 
 show for it : we have tones or technique — 
 or we haven't." 
 
 And then she laughed and began to 
 warble " Una voce poco fa." 
 
 " I dare say," he said, " that you are 
 doing that in a manner to move a stone, if it 
 had an ear for music. That sort of thing 
 always makes me remember a scene in a 
 madhouse near a city on the French coast, 
 where a fellow on a flute drew the maniacs 
 
264 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 after him as Orpheus drew the brutes. A 
 singular place it was — I must see it again 
 some day — they had ideas there about the 
 brain and its management/' 
 
 But Helena's light-hearted singing was 
 due to her having just learned a secret of 
 nature, and being suddenly convinced of the 
 fact that this yellow-haired youth, with his 
 clear gray eyes and Greek face, was not to 
 find his complement in any girl as yellow- 
 haired, as gray-eyed, as Greek-faced as him- 
 self Perhaps he knew he was not in love 
 with the pleasant girl who sketched with 
 him : certainly what he did not know was 
 that he was in love with the girl who sang 
 with the Italian. She was going to teach 
 him. She — she herself — had long known 
 — and she stopped her singing and hid her 
 crimson face between her hands. 
 
 What happened to her inner conscious- 
 ness did not hinder Helena from practising 
 the next morning with Giuseppe, from walk- 
 ing in the woods with him, and trying to 
 note on paper the musical value of the 
 susurrus of the pines and the tinkle of cat- 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 265 
 
 bird's song and bobolink's, of copying out 
 for him certain exercises that he needed, of 
 taking down the rich and sweet unwritten 
 melodies of his land, of which he knew 
 scores ; of reading with him the treatises on 
 counterpoint, canon and fugue. It was all 
 very simple — why should Leonard disturb 
 himself? But he did. " I can never have 
 Helena a moment to myself! " he exclaimed 
 to Helena's Aunt Jane. 
 
 "And why should you expect it?" said 
 Aunt Jane. And at the glance he gave her. 
 Aunt Jane, who had put brown paper on a 
 thousand bumps for him, and given him 
 tarts and puffs as liberally, and received all 
 his childish confidences, who had saved him 
 from countless punishments, and loved him 
 as if he belonged to her, replied, " You look 
 as if I were good enough to eat, and you 
 meant to do it." 
 
 " I have found out — I have found out. 
 Aunt Jane, what is the matter with me ! " 
 he cried, and laid his head in the good 
 ample lap. 
 
 "Well, well, my dear boy," she said, with 
 
266 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 her fingers on his clustering locks, "we all 
 have a time to find that out. Thank good- 
 ness, if you don't find out anything worse. 
 For,' to save my soul, I can't make out what 
 Helena means if she doesn't mean to marry 
 this Italian." 
 
 " Marry him ! " cried Leonard, in white 
 amazement. " Why she can't. She is mine 
 and I am hers, we — we — we have been as 
 good as married ever since she was born." 
 
 " She'll cry salt tears for her folly yet," 
 said Aunt Jane grimly — her customary 
 volubility quenched in her own tears for 
 the time. And Leonard went away on fire 
 to his finger tips, and when Helena capped 
 her enormities by going up on the noon 
 train to the city on Saturday afternoon with 
 Giuseppe, to hear Faust, the first person 
 in the house that her eyes rested on was 
 Leonard, white and radiant himself with the 
 play of his passions. Nothing to him was 
 all the light and shadow of that ideal drama 
 of love, and youth, and joy, and grief; he 
 saw none of it, he heard none of it, as he 
 saw Helena grow ruddy or grow pale, smile 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 267 
 
 or weep with satisfaction in the song and 
 the singer. And when he observed people 
 wondering at her vivid Spanish effect, and 
 heard them inquiring who she was, he ground 
 his teeth with rage again to think she was 
 subject to such remark and accompanied by 
 Giuseppe. 
 
 " Leonard at the opera ! " she said, as 
 they brushed by him coming out. " Don't 
 tell me after this that the tonic sol-fa repre- 
 sents senseless hieroglyphics to you ! Now, 
 you are coming home with us." 
 
 " Going home with you ! " he exclaimed 
 in the same suppressed tone and with flam- 
 ing eyes. "How dare you speak to me so ! 
 I am never going home ! '' 
 
 " I think you will," she said, with the 
 smile that disclosed the little teeth like ker- 
 nels of white corn in that sweet and whole- 
 some mouth of hers. " For I will sing to 
 you and the Signor the ^Ave Maria' and 
 the ^ Jewel Song.' " She was making prom- 
 ises to vacancy, for Leonard was not there ; 
 but he had carried away her roses — her 
 bunch of great yellow roses — in his hand. 
 
268 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 He came, all the same, with the evening, 
 although delaying till the church bells rang 
 nine. Helena was alone, and there were no 
 lights in the room other than those shed 
 from the soft sea-coal fire ; but that gleam 
 illumined the deep claret tint of her velvet 
 bodice and the gold flowered gauze scarf she 
 wore, till she looked like a Venetian donzella 
 waiting to be painted by Pordenone. She 
 was waiting for Leonard only ; she had been 
 watching for him and pacing the floor in a 
 suspense, lest she had gone too far, that was 
 growing beyond her bearing, as turn after 
 turn she stopped at the window and saw no 
 shadow on the garden walk. And when he 
 came in, as he always did, without knocking, 
 she was standing just beside the door, and 
 her arms were about his neck and their lips 
 met together, and there was no more doubt 
 or darkness between them. 
 
 "To think," she said, by and by, "your 
 being troubled about poor Giuseppe, — and 
 his wife whom he adores, at home, with their 
 six children ! '' 
 
 " Do not speak of it," he shuddered. " It 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 269 
 
 is all too dreadful. Let me forget it. Or 
 else I can hardly be glad of it as opening my 
 eyes and giving you to me at last." 
 
 " And you didn't know you cared for me 
 till I practised scales with a singing mas- 
 ter?" 
 
 " Did you ? ' 
 
 "Why, I knew it always ! " she said. 
 
 " I knew you were a part of me ! " he 
 cried. " I knew you were vital to me. I 
 could not dream of existence without you. 
 I cannot dream of existence without you 
 now. I would not live one hour if you 
 were out of the world. Oh, Helena, my 
 love, how awful it is that one person staying 
 can make life heaven or hell, and going can 
 eclipse the sun itself! " 
 
 " And would my going eclipse the sun ? " 
 she asked archly. "Are you so different 
 from other men that no other woman could 
 console you ? " 
 
 " I am different from other men. For 
 me there is but one woman in the world ; 
 the rest are shadows. I never thought what 
 it would be to love you before; you have 
 
270 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 seemed, without thinking, so inseparable 
 from myself and my life. Helena, I don't 
 know but I was happier before I was 
 happy ; happier in my unconscious con- 
 tent/' But with her head upon his breast, 
 and her eyes gazing up at him — eyes 
 purple-dark as the velvet of a heartsease 
 petal, he knew that words were all in vain, 
 that he was absorbingly and tumultuously 
 happy now, and that he must make the 
 most of it, for life was too long for such 
 bliss to last. 
 
 And Helena — she kept feeling that now 
 it was time to die — all other moments in 
 life would seem pale and thin beside these 
 supreme ones. " How beautiful you are ! '* 
 he cried. " Your eyes have a light in them 
 that does not belong to earth, and your 
 smile is only the expression of an inner 
 beauty — " 
 
 "Hush, hush!" she said. "You never 
 used to speak to me so." 
 
 "And perhaps I never shall again. I 
 seem never to have seen or thought of it 
 before. But it is not for your beauty that I 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 271 
 
 love you. It would be all the same with 
 me if you were scarred and marred. But I 
 must speak now ; this once I must lay my 
 soul bare and let you know how precious 
 you are to me. I must look at it myself. 
 I never knew it till this year began. Singu- 
 lar phenomenon — this love — it is a bur- 
 den, it is a dolor, but oh, what unspeakably 
 delicious dolor ! " 
 
 And the maiden to whom this fervid love 
 was tendered slept upon the clouds by 
 night, and seemed to walk a track of sun- 
 beams into heaven itself by day. All things 
 shared her happiness ; the people in the 
 house and on the street ; the postman or 
 the tramp ; it was never cloudy weather 
 when she flung that smile across their way. 
 It seemed good to staid old folk whose hey- 
 day was long over, like Aunt Annabel or 
 Aunt Betty, to see such irradiating bliss in 
 the world ; and it was good for all who 
 crossed her path. She wanted them to be 
 glad of her gladness, and she pitied them so 
 much to think they could not have that 
 gladness for their own that she could not do 
 enough for them. 
 
272 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 The lovers would probably have been 
 married at once, had not the death of 
 Helena's uncle, with whom she had always 
 lived, and the discovery of his Insolvent 
 estate, leaving her the three aunts with no 
 one but herself on whom to rely, necessarily 
 postponed matters a little. She made ar- 
 rangements at once to take the scholars left 
 after Signor Giuseppe's departure, and she 
 played the organ for an early church and 
 received a salary for singing in the choir of 
 a later one. And she stipulated before she 
 married to be allowed to continue this 
 course. But what a sweetness that year's 
 engagement added to her life ! When she 
 was used to remember it afterward it seemed 
 only like one long, bright summer's day. 
 
 Yet sweet as that was, the married life was 
 sweeter. Leonard prospered in his profes- 
 sion ; and the goodness of two or three 
 grateful patients, who died at last, gave him 
 the means to buy Cragsnest, a small estate 
 upon the mountain side which they had 
 long coveted. It was a trifle too far away 
 from the town for a physician's convenience ; 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 273 
 
 but he had his office hours In town, and 
 had succeeded so well that he could afford 
 indifference as to the accessibility of his 
 house. What pleasure they had in beauti- 
 fying the place ! Every rose they planted, 
 they planted together. " Their blossoms 
 will seem to be your breath/' he said. 
 
 Over all towered the dark forest of pines. 
 " I will never have one of them cut down/' 
 he said. "We have sat beneath them so 
 much that they have fed and grown great on 
 our happiness ; something of you has gone 
 into them, Helena. When we are apart I 
 always feel you there as I see the stars 
 shining through them. There shall be no 
 change here so long as you are the pole star 
 of my being." 
 
 " But the earth swmgs to new pole stars,*' 
 she said mischievously, and then repenting 
 the mischief. 
 
 They had the satisfaction of children in 
 arranging the interior of the house, also; 
 this room looked out upon a purple moun- 
 tain view ; it should be fitted in old-gold, 
 and the tiles around the fireplace should 
 
274 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 be done in the massed petals of deepest 
 crimson roses. This room opened on the 
 rushing brook and its still, deep pool, like a 
 bit of fallen sky ; its colors, lighted with crys- 
 tals, should be the cool blues that doubted 
 if they were not greens, like ^Enid's 
 
 *' Splendid silk of foreign looms 
 Where like a shoaling sea the lovely blue 
 Played into green." 
 
 This room, leading into the study, should 
 be full of flowers and gay with summer 
 chintz; and the library should have the 
 velvet, mossy shadows of sunlit woods. 
 The aunts were coming to live with them, 
 the aunts whom Leonard loved as much as 
 she did; and Helena clasped her hands in 
 joy a hundred times a day to think what a 
 home it was, and how perfect the days would 
 be in it. They hung the pictures together 
 — chiefly Leonard's water colors — lifting 
 and lowering them and standing back and 
 admiring them and each other ; and they set 
 up their books and arranged the details of 
 their housekeeping plans, all in Leonard's 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 275 
 
 spare moments ; and there was not, speaking 
 loosely, a particle of dust in the house that 
 had not connected with it some association, 
 some romance, some fact of their lives for 
 both of them. The day that they moved 
 in was almost as much to Helena as the day 
 when, crying and laughing together, her face 
 like sun and rainbows and April showers, 
 she had kissed her aunts and gone away, 
 having become in law that part of Leonard 
 which she had always been in fact. "To 
 walk to the end of the world together," he 
 said. 
 
 She sat on the doorstep one night, years 
 afterward, looking down the blue mist of the 
 gorge that a long beam was just lighting 
 with its dusty gold, and life seemed to 
 her to stretch away like an endless path 
 among the islands of the blest. What a 
 union was hers and Leonard's, she mused. 
 They read the same books together, and re- 
 read the old ones ; they almost thought 
 the same thoughts together; they grew 
 more alike each day ; they had dropped 
 the old quarrels about matters remote as the 
 
276 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 Puritans, possibly for new ones ; but where 
 they differed, the difference only brightened 
 their lives with gayety. Yet they had had 
 their troubles together ; at first some effort 
 to make both ends meet, some amazement 
 to Helena to find her husband mortal 
 enough to like his soup clear and his coffee 
 hot, some revelation to Leonard that Helena 
 had a temper of her own ; and then the pa- 
 tients had been a nuisance to her, she had hated 
 them all — especially the women who adored 
 and confided in their doctor — but not half so 
 much a nuisance as the music was to him, 
 music that filled his house with clatter and stole 
 his wife away every Sunday. And in these 
 years, too, Helena had gone down between 
 the gates of death, and as her husband bent 
 beside her in her recovery, she realized afresh 
 what she was to him, and how the breath of 
 his life hung upon hers. " They are beauti- 
 ful," he said of his children ; " they are you, 
 they are me, they are their own fresh new 
 beings, the spark of whose life was our love. 
 But they are nothing to me beside you, my 
 darling.'' But when they died she thought 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 277 
 
 his heart would break. She herself felt as 
 he had thought he should feel — a tender 
 grief, a perfect love, a trust in the hand 
 that gave them and reclaimed them ; but 
 Leonard was spared, and having Leonard she 
 had all. And there was, moreover, a cer- 
 tain ecstasy in her sorrow, with the thought 
 of what it meant to have children in heaven. 
 " It is a sacrament," she said to Leonard. 
 " We had them, God has them ; God and 
 we, and no others enter into it. It is a 
 positive and actual breaking of sacramental 
 bread. And oh, my darling ! " she would 
 cry, throwing her arms about him, " since I 
 have you — " 
 
 But as time went on, and no other children 
 came, she saw that it was a grief to Leon- 
 ard, an increasing grief. He loved other 
 people's children, and longed for his own. 
 And she was content with only him. Yet 
 for any and every drawback, what a perfect 
 home theirs had been ; what generous hospi- 
 tality had reigned within its open doors ; 
 how the poor knew its gates as the birds do 
 the branching trees; what cheerfulness and 
 
278 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 sweetness, and gay, bright social life and love 
 of man dwelt there ! Once in a while, it is 
 true, Helena had a smouldering mood that 
 blazed out when she suspected some woman 
 of making sickness a pretence for the com- 
 fort of the doctor's presence, and wrathfully 
 forbade him ever to bring that woman into 
 the house — ending always by carrying her, 
 herself, all manners of dainties by day, and 
 sitting up with her at night. Yes, on the 
 whole, an almost perfect home — and no two 
 days alike in it. 
 
 Leonard came and sat beside her as the 
 purple began to wipe out the gold in the mist 
 of the gorge below and a pale star trembled 
 upon the upper air. "Ah, what a beau- 
 tiful world it is ! '' she sighed. 
 
 " Because you are in it," he answered her, 
 lightly. 
 
 " Do you really think so still," she said, 
 " when we have been married eight years, and 
 after all my tempers ? " 
 
 " I shall think so forever ! You are to me 
 lovelier than the day I married you — a closer 
 part of the fibre of my inmost being." 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 179 
 
 " I think I believe you/' she said, half 
 shyly. " I think if I were to die you are the 
 one man in the world who would not marry 
 again/' 
 
 " Marry again ! '' he cried, drawing her 
 toward him fervently. " When I so detest 
 second marriages that I hold them allowable 
 only as evidence that the first was no mar- 
 riage at all ? And I, who have been your 
 husband, profane your memory by putting 
 another woman in your place ! Thank 
 heaven, there are some things that are im- 
 possible ! '' And she returned his embrace as 
 fervently. 
 
 " And 1 should not live to marry again,'' 
 he said. " If grief did not kill me, there are 
 quieting potions that would. What should 
 I have to live for? How could I survive 
 the loss of half myself — half myself from 
 the day of your birth, and for eight years 
 the very breath of my being ! Not even 
 death could divorce two lives knit like 
 ours ! " 
 
 She had become so used to such assevera- 
 tions that I doubt if she would not have felt 
 
28o A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 a little wronged and defrauded had he failed 
 to make it as emphatic. As it was, for some 
 subtle reason, it only filled her with a deep 
 and quiet satisfaction. " I pray that we may 
 go together," she cried, clinging to him 
 closely. To her he was the best, the 
 greatest, the loftiest man alive. He had 
 something of the largeness of the gods to 
 their worshippers ; something, too, of the 
 helplessness of the child to its mother. She 
 knew that her flashes and blazes and singing 
 spells were only a succession of new experi- 
 ences to him that gave her something of 
 Cleopatra's swiftest charm. She wondered 
 why he was not more moved by that mar- 
 vellous voice of hers, the inmost sweetness 
 of whose tones had a thrill that moved other 
 men to tears. But then in turn she could 
 not stand spellbound before the operations 
 where his surgeon's knife wrought wonders ; 
 — and her voice was but a pleasure of the 
 senses, she said, while his skill was the salva- 
 tion of a life. She did not often let him see 
 her in such tender mood as this ; she would 
 have died for him if it would have done him 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 281 
 
 any good ; she would have died with him 
 any day he asked it. 
 
 She had a chance presently. 
 
 They had gone down to the seaside for a 
 week's change, as, when his duties allowed 
 him, they sometimes did. For he had pe- 
 riods of such absorption in his work that he 
 came out of it all half wrecked and needing 
 rest. He was living a great life, beginning 
 the making of a great name. And standing 
 with many as a sort of vicegerent of the 
 powers of health and strength, it sometimes 
 seemed to himself, in his rapt study, that he 
 was on the verge of discovering mighty 
 secrets of the powers of life and death. It 
 seemed so to Helena, too. 
 
 The day was a perfect one, with now and 
 then a capful of wind blowing out of the 
 little round clouds that swelled up over the 
 horizon like bubbles. 
 
 " Will you go out with me ? " asked 
 Helena. 
 
 " With all these flaws ? '' he asked. 
 
 "Just as you please. Then I will go 
 alone." 
 
282 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 " Alone ! What in heaven's name could 
 you do alone ? '' 
 
 " I fancy," she said, the laugh brightening 
 all the rich color in her cheek, " I could 
 drown, in order that you should blow the 
 fresh breath of life into me with all your 
 occult powers ! " 
 
 " Life would be much more comfortable, 
 Helena, if there were something in it you 
 were afraid of. Well, here we go,'* and he 
 gathered up his lazy length and reached his 
 hat. "If we drown, it is your fault." 
 
 "It doesn't much matter about drowning, 
 though," she said, swinging her hat as they 
 went along the shingle, and unaware that 
 she spoke in other than a matter-of-fact-way, 
 "if we drown together." 
 
 "Are you so indifferent to life — in such 
 a hurry to be through — " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, never ! But it is all so 
 blest that I am half the time afraid some- 
 thing will happen." 
 
 " But the worst that could happen is 
 death, and — " 
 
 " No, indeed ; the worst that could hap- 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 283 
 
 pen would be that you might look at some 
 other woman ! '' and then they both 
 laughed, knowing well the habit of her 
 jealous pangs, and ran along to the boat, it 
 signifying little that neither of them knew 
 much about a boat, and that they were run- 
 ning before the wind directly in the track 
 of the sea-going steamers. 
 
 " Could anything be more perfect ? " said 
 Helena, half recumbent in the stern, sea and 
 sky making a sapphire and lapis ring about 
 her. "We seem to be alone in this great 
 hollow shell of the sea and sky. It is like 
 our old lover days over again." 
 
 " Only better," he answered her. 
 
 " Only better," she repeated. 
 
 "We must come out at night, with the 
 sea and the stars, and the freedom of the 
 universe, alone together." And as they 
 sailed he told her histories of the old craft 
 that had ploughed these waters — fire ships 
 and phantom ships — and recited to her 
 verses of his own inditing, for now and then 
 he turned off a little song as perfect as a 
 pearl. 
 
284 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 ^-That is the strangest thing/' she said, 
 " that you, who don't know what music is, 
 should have the writing of such verses, and 
 I, who am music's confidante, cannot write a 
 melody." 
 
 "You are a melody," he said. And just 
 at that instant there was a roar, a rush, a 
 ringing of bells that sounded in their ears 
 like gongs, wild cries, a vast black bulk 
 towering over them, a crash, a sweep of 
 many waters, and then nothingness. 
 
 Half an hour afterward a fisherman found 
 a broken boat afloat bottom side up, and a 
 man entangled in the rigging, his head above 
 the water, unconscious, but alive. Trim- 
 ming his sail speedily, he took the half- 
 drowned man ashore. And after the sick- 
 ness and delirium of weeks, as wretched and 
 desolate a man as walked the earth, Leonard 
 Vance took up his colorless life, alone, as he 
 said, till the sea gave up its dead. For 
 Helena was never found. I scraped the 
 moss away, the other day, from a stone set 
 up as a memorial without a grave, and over- 
 grown with bramble roses, to read the name 
 upon it : 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 285 
 
 Helena Vance. 
 
 Lost at Sea. 
 Aged 28. 
 
 To the happy, half a score of years may 
 pass like a dream in the night. They may 
 pass like a dream in the night, too, to those 
 who are simply unaware of their lapse, as a 
 woman lying helpless and speechless in a 
 large hospital for the insane, near a town on 
 the French coast, could hardly fail to be. 
 She had been brought there by the captain 
 of a French steamer, who had picked her up 
 at sea, — pitying passengers having subscribed 
 a sum of money for her comfort. He knew 
 nothing about her ; the injury to her skull 
 — for she had been, perhaps, dragged the 
 whole length of the keel and hurt by the 
 propeller — had already made her insensible 
 before the apoplexy of drowning took place, 
 and although, when drawn on board the 
 steamer, she was found, after long effort, to 
 be living, she had no language and no con- 
 sciousness. The fine texture of the frag- 
 ments left of the garments torn and cut and 
 
286 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 wrenched away indicated comfortable circum- 
 stances ; but no name was to be found on 
 any of the remaining portions. Yet one 
 could hardly look at her and not imagine 
 her to have been a person of singular refine- 
 ment, as she evidently still was of singular 
 attraction — dark and shapely, with chiselled 
 features and a wealth of night-black hair. 
 The captain, who left her at the hos- 
 pital on landing, had intended to insert ad- 
 vertisements respecting her in the American 
 newspapers, but whether he did so or not no 
 one knew, as he was himself lost at sea on 
 the return voyage. 
 
 And so she had remained where he had 
 left her, her case exciting some interest 
 among surgeons. The fracture of the skull 
 had long been reduced, and it was thought that 
 a slow absorption would relieve the brain of 
 pressure, and in time restore the patient to 
 herself and so to her friends. She had 
 gradually waked from her stupor, and given 
 faint glimmers of reason, and become morq 
 and more intelligent, although so slowly that 
 one recognized it only by comparison with 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 287 
 
 the past. When at last she spoke, it was In 
 French. Whether that was her native 
 tongue was doubtful, from a certain pecu- 
 liarity of pronunciation. It was possible 
 she had learned it as a child learns its 
 mother tongue, hearing it spoken about 
 her; but, on the other hand, if she be- 
 longed, as her dark, rich color seemed to 
 say, to the southern provinces, that would 
 account for the peculiarity. In the eighth 
 year of her stay, however, she, once in a 
 while, said something in a foreign tongue, 
 German, perhaps, or English. The case was 
 inexplicable. Some months later she seemed 
 to be full of perplexing thoughts, of melan- 
 choly memories, of doubt and wonder ; she 
 obtained from the attendants all that they 
 knew about herself; but she said nothing in 
 reply, as if uncertain whether she dreamed 
 or waked. The physicians regarded it as an 
 unfavorable symptom that she became very 
 sad. One day she was heard humming an 
 Italian air full of fioriture ; she wept after- 
 ward, she could not have told you why. 
 And then she soothed a demented child by 
 
288 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 singing to him softly all the morning. The 
 attendants got in the way of asking her to 
 sing whenever the wards were noisy, and she 
 always brought quiet — an old official of the 
 place used to do the same thing with his 
 flute, they said. Once when a danger- 
 ous and murderous maniac had broken loose 
 and was dealing havoc on his way, she aston- 
 ished everybody within the walls by walk- 
 ing coolly toward him and bursting into a 
 triumphal song, full throated, resounding, 
 sweet to the soul's satisfaction, till the 
 maniac crept to her feet and allowed the at- 
 tendants to secure him. But after that she 
 seemed more bewildered and sad than 
 before. 
 
 One morning, in the tenth year of her 
 stay, wrapped in her long cloak and big blue 
 hood, and walking in the grounds, of which 
 she had long had the liberty, she suddenly 
 threw up her hands, uttering a loud cry, " I 
 have it all ! I have it all ! '' slipped through 
 the gate and was gone. The clot was ab- 
 sorbed at last ; the cure was complete. 
 
 Possibly it was the same woman who 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 289 
 
 shipped that night on an outward-bound 
 vessel as stewardess, took her wages in the 
 American port, purchased fresh undergar- 
 ments with a feverish haste, and bought a 
 railway ticket for the town where Helena 
 Vance was born and had lived her happy- 
 life. 
 
 How slow was the train ! No lively tune 
 could its motion make in her mind ; the 
 wheels clamored and clattered only to the 
 movement of a funeral march. She could 
 neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep. Ten 
 years ! It was an eternity ! Would they 
 be alive — Leonard — the dear old aunts ? 
 Who had taken care of the poor things in 
 all these years ? How they must have 
 missed her, their darling ! How he must 
 have missed her, his other self! Robbed of 
 ten years of happiness, condemned to ten 
 years of solitude and suffering — if, indeed, 
 he had not himself found the refuge he had 
 always looked for in her loss, the refuge 
 of the grave. How she would work to 
 atone to him, to make him happy, in all 
 their remaining years, with a redoubled hap- 
 
ago A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 piness, as if the whole tide, that should have 
 belonged to the years that were lost in that 
 black gap of unconsciousness, flowed back 
 with ten times repeated strength and depth. 
 Oh, if he only lived ! She longed unspeak- 
 ably once more to feel his arms about her, 
 his kisses on her mouth ; to look into his 
 eyes and to hear his voice. Ten years could 
 not have changed him so much ; they had 
 hardly changed her at all, with that long 
 slumber of the brain. And once more to 
 have that shelter, that support, that care, 
 that worship ! Her heart beat so it choked 
 her ; she trembled with eagerness, with fear, 
 with hope, with joy. And yet — if she — 
 should — meet Leonard with a smile on his 
 face — 
 
 Five o'clock of a gray afternoon, when a 
 woman in a long cloak and a blue hood that 
 nearly hid her face walked slowly up the 
 hillside to Cragsnest as if the throbbing of 
 her heart made it barely possible to move. 
 
 The place had changed a little. The 
 house and gardens were the same — yes, 
 there were the roses. " Their blossoms will 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 291 
 
 seem to be your breath/' he had said. Some- 
 body cared for them then. " Oh, roses, what 
 happiness you witnessed once ; what happi- 
 ness you shall again ! " she said. But still 
 there was a change — yes, it was the wilder- 
 ness of trees above and below that were 
 being cut away, and piles of cord-wood and 
 great logs made a confusion of the place, as 
 if, instead of being a finished home a century 
 old, it were a new clearing in the forest. It 
 made her shake a little, as her eyes wan- 
 dered up and down ; she felt as if that would 
 not happen if Leonard lived there still ; 
 the spot should be sacred to him with mem- 
 ory of her. What was it he had once said ? 
 " There shall be no change here so long as 
 you are the pole star of my being." What 
 was it she had answered him ? " The earth 
 swings to new pole stars ! '' 
 
 She went round to a door in the gable, 
 tottering at last, and leaning on the jamb a 
 moment ; she pulled her big hood about her 
 face, and knocked and went into a room 
 where three old ladies sat. 
 
 Nothing in the room had been moved 
 
292 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 from Its original place — paper and pictures 
 and carpets were only a little faded — that 
 was all. A pale old woman slumbered in 
 her chair in the hebetude of age, from which 
 she seldom waked ; one read a novel in a 
 state of bland contentment and well-being ; 
 and one, the lively little bustling Aunt Jane, 
 was busy with a work basket and humming 
 pleasantly to herself the while. If the three 
 had missed their niece in the beginning, they 
 were reconciled by this, and lived a happy, 
 easy life, cared for in sufficient comfort, evi- 
 dently. 
 
 " Let you rest ? '' chirruped Aunt Jane. 
 " To be sure, my good woman. Take the 
 rocking chair. You see, this is the house 
 of rest," glancing at her sisters. "Are ♦you 
 going far ? " 
 
 " Not far,'' was the low reply. 
 
 " From the neighborhood here ? " 
 
 " I used to live here once, long ago, long 
 ago." 
 
 "Ah, indeed," said Aunt Jane, viewing 
 on her stretched fingers the hole she was to 
 darn. " Then you find the place changed, 
 I suppose." 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 293 
 
 *^ Oh, yes — oh, yes/' 
 
 "Well, it is changed. And it's a pity, 
 too. But they have been cutting down the 
 trees ever since Leonard married again. He 
 found it profitable, and having two famiUes 
 to support — " 
 
 " Is — is — is Leonard married again ? " 
 How the voice shook ! It was only a 
 ghastly whisper. 
 
 " You knew him, then ? Oh, yes, long 
 since. Let's see — five years, I think. 
 His son is quite a lad. He — " 
 
 " And he is the one that would not live 
 if his wife died ! " said the other, with a 
 sudden hysterical laugh that made Aunt 
 Betty look up from the pages of her novel. 
 And then the world was going out — it was 
 all black — it was going out — No, no ; she 
 must not, she would not, lose her self- 
 control ! 
 
 Aunt Jane's needle was suspended in the 
 air a moment with surprise, and then, slow 
 to take offence or imagine evil, she answered, 
 even although to unheeding ears : " Yes, 
 I see you knew him pretty well. But he 
 
294 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 mourned her enough. He mourned her 
 enough. And then, you see, he was a man, 
 I can't say anything — we couldn't, you see. 
 He takes care of us. And he had a right 
 to marry." 
 
 There was a gasp, as if the other tried in 
 vain to speak, or had repeated the words be- 
 fore the sound came to fill them. " Did he 
 — did he — marry Louisa Dane ? " 
 
 " Louisa Dane, indeed ! He married a 
 little pale, thin woman that he met in the 
 cars, sick and weak, with air cushions and 
 rugs and hot water bottles. And there was 
 a great accident, and this miserably little 
 creature who could not take care of herself 
 began to take care of everybody else. And 
 he's a doctor, you know. And it rather 
 fetched him," said poor Aunt Jane, uncon- 
 scious of her slang. "It made him fond of 
 her, and by and by — he was so sad and 
 solitary — he went and brought her home. 
 He didn't undertake to bring her here," 
 said Aunt Jane, emphatically. " He isn't 
 the same Leonard. But they seem happy. 
 And, as I said, they have a little lad." 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 295 
 
 " The little lad," murmured a voice of 
 infinite sadness. 
 
 "And Leonard was always so fond of 
 children. But for my part/' snapped Aunt 
 Jane, " I always think there's a good deal of 
 make-believe about that sort of sick person 
 — can't button her own boots one year, and 
 a competent housekeeper the next ! Yes, 
 Leonard is married again, and very comfor- 
 table. Where does he live ? " guessing rather 
 than hearing the words. " Down town near 
 the post office. But he comes up once a 
 month or so to settle accounts and give di- 
 rections. He keeps his old study here, and 
 he always comes in at the end gate and goes 
 in there, and comes out to see us by and 
 by," continued the garrulous old soul, for 
 the visitor allowed her to run on. 
 
 She was pulling herself together now. 
 The shock was vast. Her brain seemed to 
 reel, as if she put forth all her strength to 
 save herself in the fall down a black and 
 unknown chasm. Only now a grim fancy 
 crossed her of Leonard shut in the town, 
 getting all the small ways of the townspeople. 
 
^g6 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 living cheaply, with closed doors. Interested 
 in the small gossip, small pleasures, small 
 pursuits of the town, forgetting the old 
 studies, the search Into veiled secrets of sci- 
 ence, the great name once possible, the fame 
 half reached. And their life up on the hill 
 had been so free and fine. And It was dust 
 and ashes ! Ah ! why had some fire from 
 heaven not fallen and reduced the place It- 
 self to the same ashes that Its life had found ! 
 For herself — 
 
 She must not think of herself yet — that 
 would come by and by ; that would come In 
 the terrible days and nights when the black 
 waves rose around her, and one wave tossed 
 to another, and a blacker storm, to be fol- 
 lowed by as black a calm, raged within. 
 
 She sat very still In the chair. She was 
 trying to bring some order from the con- 
 fusion, to stop this bell that was tolling the 
 one word In her ear like a death knell. 
 Leonard was married again. To a little 
 delicate woman. She made his home agree- 
 able to him ; she had no temper, no caprices, 
 no gay rout of friends — and there was no 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 297 
 
 music. Doubtless his dinners were always 
 nicely cooked, his clothes in perfect order. 
 And he was very comfortable ; yes, vastly 
 more comfortable than he had ever been 
 before. There were no discussions, no differ- 
 ing views, no quarrels — he had a reverential 
 feeling for this good and placid, delicate 
 white woman. And there was the little lad. 
 
 What was there left for herself but the 
 effacement that fate had given her? 
 
 Yet if she could see him once again ! 
 Perhaps she would better not. She might 
 betray herself It would be harder still. 
 Now she could go as she came. She could 
 make the sacrifice. She was sure of herself. 
 But should she see his eyes — 
 
 " I declare ! '' said Aunt Jane. " That's 
 Leonard now, coming in the gate. And 
 Bridget's dusting the study — she was late 
 in her sweeping to-day — and not half 
 through.'' 
 
 " I will go in, then, if you please. I know 
 the way. I came to speak with him," said 
 the other, and she called all her forces and 
 rose. 
 
298 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 "Well, if you would just as lief. My 
 ankle's lame, and I rather favor it," said 
 Aunt Jane, looking after her, as she groped 
 her way rather than walked. " Just Helena's 
 height, poor girl ! " said Aunt Jane as the 
 door closed, "and there was something in 
 her voice like Helena's too. Didn't know 
 he had a down town office, L suppose ; and 
 she does seem weak. I declare I don't see 
 how Annabel wears such holes in her stock- 
 ings and she never setting her foot to the 
 ground ! I wonder if it can be possible that 
 Bridget wears them herself the odd week." 
 
 The study opened from the flower room, 
 empty now, but once a bright little spot of 
 gay chintzes, and roses and oleanders and 
 palms and camelias. It seemed as if Bridget 
 were never coming out. Any one might hear 
 this heart beat like the hammers of a forge. 
 It would be dark presently, and she must be 
 going. Not once did she think of breaking 
 off that marriage. If he could make it, he 
 could keep it. Perhaps he was happier so ; 
 she would not add to his troubles by re- 
 appearing on the scene. And then there was 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 299 
 
 the little lad. She sank upon the seat In 
 the lonely place, and her arms fell straight 
 across her knees, with her head between 
 them. It was despair. That little lad was 
 the keenest blow of all — he must needs love 
 his own child — and it was hers, that other 
 woman's ! Ah, how cruel was fate, was 
 nature, was God ! There was nothing for 
 her but obliteration, annihilation of all that 
 made life. 
 
 Dimly under all the pang was a feeling 
 that she would like to see that little lad. 
 
 At last Bridget went out by the door into 
 the garden, and so away. There was a 
 movement of a chair drawn to a table, of a 
 curtain pushed up for light. She was hardly 
 acting with volition now, but as if necessity 
 had taken hold of her. She dropped her 
 hood and noiselessly stole into the study, 
 where lay the last western light, for Leon- 
 ard's back was turned, and she fell upon a 
 chair that would be opposite him when he 
 should turn again. He slightly wheeled his 
 chair about on the pivot, still looking at the 
 paper in his hand. How grave he was; 
 
300 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 how pale ; how still. All the old fire had 
 gone, all the old light and laughter. He 
 was silent, full of reserve, contented, it might 
 be, but with gaps of bitter memories, one 
 would say. And beautiful — beautiful as 
 even in his proudest yotith ! Giving his 
 life in small ways to others now — what 
 better could she herself do ! Perhaps she 
 had no blame for him — but she had lost 
 him — he had gone away from her forever, 
 forever ! 
 
 She moved, her profile lying half to the 
 light that came full upon it ; the rustle made 
 him glance up. For a moment — a thrill, 
 a throb — he gazed on her, stone still, as 
 if a cataclysm had struck him dumb. And 
 then he sprang to his feet and started back 
 in a kind of horror. 
 
 " Helena ! *' he cried in a voice of agony. 
 
 She, too, stood up. He was holding out 
 his arms to her with a great sob. It seemed 
 as if a wind blew her into them. But as his 
 head bent, she turned even her cheek away. 
 "At least," he said, "at least I may take 
 you in my arms again ! " And as suddenly 
 
A LOST IDENTITY 301 
 
 and impetuously he released her, walking to 
 the window. When he turned she was 
 gone. 
 
 " We have seen a ghost/' said Aunt Jane, 
 that midnight, after all the quiet search. 
 But I think that Leonard Vance knew 
 whether he had seen a ghost or not. 
 
 Three weeks from the day she slipped 
 through the asylum gates near the city on 
 the French coast, the woman in the long 
 cloak and blue hood walked in again — 
 if it were the same woman. Her long, black 
 hair was as white as if ashes had been sifted 
 over it. Ashes had been sifted over it — - 
 the ashes of a dead happiness. I have 
 met with nothing more concerning her, un- 
 less the subjoined paragraph in a foreign 
 journal had reference to her in her life of 
 effacement : 
 
 At the conflagration occurring last week in the Asylum 
 of Our Lady of the Suffering Heart, the loss of life 
 would have been appalling but for the presence of mind 
 of one of the attendants. It seems that when the fire 
 broke out the wildest panic seized the unfortunate in- 
 mates, and all would inevitably have perished in the 
 
302 A LOST IDENTITY 
 
 flames had not this attendant of* whom we speak sud- 
 denly begun to sing. Her clear soprano voice — a 
 voice that seemed, to those assisting at the prodigious 
 spectacle, sweeter than anything ever heard on earth — 
 rose over the stupendous uproar, as the singer stood quite 
 still in the centre of the main hall, with the roof ready 
 to fall in, till the wretched people had gathered about 
 her, when, still singing, she quiedy led them out into 
 safety. Whether this attendant is some retired prima 
 donna assoluta with a history, or whether merely a 
 simple person caring for the insane, is not known. But 
 she is to be placed at once in a responsible position at 
 the head of the female wards of the new asylum, in the 
 performance of the sad duties to which she has devoted 
 her life. 
 
 But it has seemed to me that in the career 
 of this simple country doctor there was 
 something more than the sorrow of a man 
 who had lost the wife of his youth and had 
 by and by married again — there was a 
 tragedy as if the stars had crashed together 
 and extinguished the light of heaven. 
 
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